Toll the Hounds

CHAPTER TWO

Fisher kel Tath

Dragon Tower stood like a torch above Black Coral. The spire, rising from the northwest corner of the New Andiian Palace, was solid black basalt, dressed in fractured, faceted obsidian that glistened in the eternal gloom enshrouding the cily. Atop its flat roof crouched a crimson-scaled dragon, wings folded, its wedge head hanging over one side so that it seemed to stare down on the crazed shadowy patchwork of buildings, alleys and streets far below,

There were citizens still in Black Coral — among the humans — who believed that the ferocious sentinel was the stone creation of some master artisan among the ruling Tiste Andii, and this notion left Endest Silann sourly amused. True, he understood how wilful such ignorance could be. The thought of a real, live dragon casting its baleful regard down on the city and its multitude of scurrying lives was to most truly terrifying, and indeed, had they been close enough to see the gleaming hunger in Silanah’s multifaceted eyes, they would have long fled Black Coral in blind panic.

For the Eleint to remain so, virtually motionless, day and night, weeks into months and now very nearly an entire year, was not unusual. And Endest Silann knew this better than most.

The Tiste Andii, once a formidable, if aged, sorcerer in Moon’s Spawn, now a barely competent castellan to the New Andiian Palace, slowly walked Sword Street as it bent south of the treeless park known as Grey Hill. He had left the fiercely lit district of Fish, where the Outwater Market so crowded every avenue and lane that those who brought two-wheeled carts in which to load purchases were forced to leave them in a square just north of Grey Hill. The endless streams of porters for hire — who gathered every dawn near the Cart Square — always added to the chaos between the stalls, pushing through with wrapped bundles towards the carts and slipping, dodging and sliding like eels back into the press. Although the Outwater Market acquired its name because the preponderance of fish sold there came from the seas beyond Night — the perpetual darkness cloaking the city and the surround shy;ing area for almost a third of a league — there could also be found the pale, gem-eyed creatures of Coral Bay’s Nightwater.

Endest Silann had arranged the next week’s order of cadaver eels from a new supplier, since the last one’s trawler had been pulled down by something too big for its net, with the loss of all hands. Nightwater was not simply an unlit span of sea in the bay, unfortunately. It was Kurald Galain, a true manifestation of the warren, quite possibly depthless, and on occasion untoward beasts loomed into the waters of Coral Bay. Something was down there now, forcing the fishers to use hooks and lines rather than nets, a method possible only because the eels foamed just beneath the surface in the tens of thousands, driven there by terror. Most of the eels pulled aboard were snags.

South of Grey Hill, the street lanterns grew scarcer as Endest Silann made his way into the Andiian district. Typically, there were few Tiste Andii on the streets. Nowhere could be seen figures seated on tenement steps, or in stalls lean shy;ing on countertops to call out their wares or simply watch passers-by. Instead, the rare figures crossing Endest’s path were one and all on their way somewhere, probably the home of some friend or relation, there to participate in the few re shy;maining rituals of society. Or returning home from such ordeals, as tenuous us smoke from a dying fire.

No fellow Tiste Andii met Endest Silann’s eyes as they slipped ghostly past. This, of course, was more than the usual indifference, but he had grown used to it. An old man must need a thick skin, and was he not the oldest by far? Excepting Anomander Dragnipurake.

Yet Endest could recall his youth, a vision of himself vaguely blurred by time, setting foot upon this world on a wild night with storms ravaging the sky. Oh, the storms of that night, the cold water on the face. . that moment, I see it still.

They stood facing a new world. His lord’s rage ebbing, but slowly, trickling down like the rain. Blood leaked from a sword wound in Anomander’s left shoul shy;der. And there had been a look in his eyes. .

Endest sighed as he worked his way up the street’s slope, but it was an uneven, harsh sigh. Off to his left was the heaped rubble of the old palace. A few jagged walls rose here and there, and crews had carved paths into the mass of wreckage, salvaging stone and the occasional timber that had not burned. The deafening col shy;lapse of that edifice still shivered in Endest’s bones, and he slowed in his climb, one hand reaching out to lean against a wall. The pressure was returning, making his jaw creak as he clenched his teeth, and pain shot through his skull.

Not again, please.

No, this would not do. That time was done, over with. He had survived. He had done as his lord had commanded and he had not failed. No, this would not do at all.

Endest Silann stood, sweat now on his face, with his eyes squeezed shut.

No one ever met his gaze, and this was why. This. . weakness.

Anomander Dragnipurake had led his score of surviving followers on to the strand of a new world. Behind the flaring rage in his eyes there had been triumph.

This, Endest Silann told himself, was worth remembering. Was worth holding on to.

We assume the burden as we must. We win through. And life goes on.

A more recent memory, heaving into his mind. The unbearable pressure of the deep, the water pushing in on all sides. ‘You are my last High Mage, Endest Silann. Can you do this for me?’

The sea, my lord? Beneath the sea?

‘Can you do this, old friend?’

My lord, I shall try.

But the sea had wanted Moon’s Spawn, oh, yes, wanted it with savage, relentless hunger. It had railed against the stone, it had besieged the sky keep with its crushing embrace, and in the end there was no throwing back its dark swirling legions.

Oh, Endest Silann had kept them alive for just long enough, but the walls were collapsing even as his lord had summoned the sky keep’s last reserves of power, to raise it up from the depths, raise it up, yes, back into the sky.

So heavy, the weight, so vast-

Injured beyond recovery, Moon’s Spawn was already dead, as dead as Endest Silann’s own power. We both drowned that day. We both died.

Raging falls of black water thundering down, a rain of tears from stone, oh, how Moon’s Spawn wept. Cracks widening, the internal thunder of beauty’s collapse. .

I should have gone with Moon’s Spawn when at last he sent it drifting away, yes, I should have. Squatting among the interred dead. My lord honours me for His sacrifice, but his every word is like ashes drifting down on my face. Abyss below, I felt the sundering of every room! The fissures bursting through were sword slashes in my soul, and how we bled, how we groaned, how we fell inward with our mortal wounds!

The pressure would not relent. It was within him now. The sea sought vengeance, and now could assail him no matter where he stood. Hubris had delivered a curse, searing a brand on his soul. A brand that had grown septic. He was too broken to fight it off any more.

I am Moon’s Spawn, now. Crushed in the deep, unable to reach the surface. I descend, and the pressure builds. How it builds!

No, this would not do. Breath hissing, he pushed himself from the wall, staggered onward. He was a High Mage no longer. He was nothing. A mere castellan, fretting over kitchen supplies and foodstuffs, watch schedules and cords of wood for the hearths. Wax for the yellow-eyed candlemakers. Squid ink for the stained scribes. .

Now, when he stood before his lord, he spoke of paltry things, and this was his legacy, all that remained.

Yet did I not stand with him on that strand! Am I not the last one left to share with my lord that memory?

The pressure slowly eased. And once again, he had survived the embrace. And the next time? There was no telling, but he did not believe he could last much longer. The pain clutching his chest, the thunder in his skull.

We have found a new supply of cadaver eels. That is what I will tell him. And he will smile and nod, and perhaps settle one hand on my shoulder. A gentle, cautious squeeze, light enough to ensure that nothing breaks. He will speak his gratitude.

For the eels.

It was a measure of his courage and fortitude that the man had never once denied that he had been a Seerdomin of the Pannion Domin; that, indeed, he had served the mad tyrant in the very keep now reduced to rubble barely a stone’s throw behind the Scour Tavern. That he held on to the title was not evidence of some misplaced sense of manic loyalty. The man with the expressive eyes understood irony, and if on occasion some fellow human in the city took umbrage upon hearing him identify himself thus, well, the Seerdomin could take care of himself and that was one legacy that was no cause for shame.

This much and little more was what Spinnock Durav knew of the man, beyond his impressive talent in the game they now played: an ancient game of the Tiste Andii, known as Kef Tanar, that had spread throughout the population of Black Coral and indeed, so he had heard, to cities far beyond — even Darujhistan itself.

As many kings or queens as there were players. A field of battle that expanded with each round and was never twice the same. Soldiers and mercenaries and mages, assassins, spies. Spinnock Durav knew that the original inspiration for Kef Tanar could be found in the succession wars among the First Children of Mother Dark, and indeed one of the king figures bore a slash of silver paint on its mane, whilst another was of bleached bonewood. There was a queen of white fire, opal-crowned; and others Spinnock could, if he bothered, have named, assuming anyone was remotely interested, which he suspected they were not.

Most held that the white mane was a recent affectation, like some mocking salute to Black Coral’s remote ruler. The tiles of the field themselves were all flavoured in aspects of Dark, Light and Shadow. The Grand City and Keep tiles were seen as corresponding to Black Coral, although Spinnock Durav knew that the field’s ever-expanding Grand City (there were over fifty tiles for the City alone and a player could make more, if desired) was in fact Kharkanas, the First City of Dark.

But no matter. It was the game that counted.

The lone Tiste Andii in all of the Scour, Spinnock Durav sat with four other players, with a crowd now gathered round to watch this titanic battle which had gone on for five bells. Smoke hung in wreaths just overhead, obscuring the low rafters of the tavern’s main room, blunting the light of the torches and candles. Rough pillars here and there held up the ceiling, constructed from fragments of the old palace and Moon’s Spawn itself, all inexpertly fitted together, some leaning ominously and displaying cracks in the mortar. Spilled ale puddled the uneven flagstones of the floor, where hard-backed salamanders slithered about, drunkenly attempting to mate with people’s feet and needing to be kicked off again and again.

The Seerdomin sat across the table from Spinnock. Two of the other players had succumbed to vassal roles, both now subject to Seerdomin’s opal-crowned queen. The third player’s forces had been backed into one corner of the field, and he was contemplating throwing in his lot with either Seerdomin or Spinnock Durav.

If the former, then Spinnock was in trouble, although by no means finished. He was, after all, a veteran player whose experience spanned nearly twenty thousand years.

Spinnock was large for a Tiste Andii, wide-shouldered and strangely bearish. There was a faint reddish tinge to his long, unbound hair. His eyes were set wide apart on a broad, somewhat flat face, the cheekbones prominent and flaring. The slash that was his mouth was fixed in a grin, an expression that rarely wavered.

‘Seerdomin,’ he now said, whilst the cornered player prevaricated, besieged by advice from friends crowded behind his chair, ‘you have a singular talent for Kef Tanar.’

The man simply smiled.

In the previous round a cast of the knuckles had delivered a Mercenary’s Coin into the Seerdomin’s royal vaults. Spinnock was expecting a flanking foray with the four remaining mercenary figures, either to bring pressure on the third king if he elected to remain independent or threw in his lot with Spinnock, or to drive them deep into Spinnock’s own territory. However, with but a handful of field tiles remaining and the Gate not yet selected, Seerdomin would be wiser to hold back.

Breaths were held as the third king reached into the pouch to collect a field tile. He drew out his hand closed in a fist, then met Spinnock’s eyes.

Nerves and avarice. ‘Three coins, Tiste, and I’m your vassal.’

Spinnock’s grin hardened, and he shook his head. ‘I don’t buy vassals, Garsten.’

‘Then you will lose.’

‘I doubt Seerdomin will buy your allegiance either.’

‘Come to me now,’ Seerdomin said to the man, ‘and do so on your hands and knees.’

Garsten’s eyes flicked back and forth, gauging which viper was likely to carry the least painful bite. After a moment he snarled under his breath and revealed the tile.

‘Gate!’

‘Delighted to find you sitting on my right,’ Spinnock said.

‘ I retreat through!’

Cowardly, but predictable. This was the only path left to Garsten that allowed him to hold on to the coins in his vault. Spinnock and Seerdomin watched as Garsten marched his pieces from the field.

And then it was Spinnock’s turn. With the Gate in play he could summon the five dragons he had amassed. They sailed high over Seerdomin’s elaborate ground defences, weathering them with but the loss of one from the frantic sorcery of the two High Mages atop the towers of Seerdomin’s High Keep.

The assault struck down two-thirds of Seerdomin’s Inner Court, virtually isolating his queen.

With the ground defences in sudden disarray on the collapse of command, Spinnock advanced a spearhead of his own mercenaries as well as his regiment of Elite Cavalry, neatly bisecting the enemy forces. Both vassals subsequently broke in uprising, each remaining on the field long enough to further savage Seerdomin’s beleaguered forces before retreating through the Gate. By the time the game’s round reached him, Seerdomin had no choice but to reach out one hand and topple his queen.

Voices rose on all sides, as wagers were settled.

Spinnock Durav leaned forward to collect his winnings. ‘Resto! A pitcher of ale for the table here!’

‘You are ever generous with my money,’ Seerdomin said in sour amusement.

‘The secret of generosity, friend.’

‘I appreciate the salve.’

‘I know.’

As was customary, the other three players, having retreated, could not par shy;take of any gesture of celebration by the game’s victor. Accordingly, Spinnock and Seerdomin were free to share the pitcher of ale between them, and this seemed a most satisfying conclusion to such a skilfully waged campaign. The crowd had moved off, fragmenting on all sides, and the servers were suddenly busy once more.

‘The problem with us night owls,’ said Seerdomin, hunching down over his flagon. When it seemed he would say no more he added, ‘Not once does a glance to yon smudged pane over there reveal the poppy-kiss of dawn.’

‘Dawn? Ah, to announce night’s closure,’ Spinnock said, nodding. ‘It is a con shy;stant source of surprise among us Tiste Andii that so many humans have re shy;mained. Such unrelieved darkness is a weight upon your souls, or so I have heard.’

‘If there is no escape, aye, it can twist a mind into madness. But a short ride beyond the north gate, out to the Barrow, and bright day beckons. Same for the fishers sailing Outwater. Without such options, Spinnock, you Andii would indeed be alone in Black Coral. Moon’s Spawn casts a shadow long after its death, or so the poets sing. But I tell you this,’ Seerdomin leaned forward to refill his flagon, ‘I welcome this eternal darkness.’

Spinnock knew as much, for the man seated opposite him carried a sorrow heavier than any shadow, and far darker; and in this he was perhaps more Tiste Andii than human, but for one thing, and it was this one thing that made it easy for Spinnock Durav to call the man friend. Seerdomin, for all his grief, was somehow holding despair back, defying the siege that had long ago defeated the Tiste Andii. A human trait, to be sure. More than a trait, a quality profound in its resilience, a virtue that, although Spinnock could not find it within himself — nor, it was true, among any fellow Tiste Andii — he could draw a kind of sustenance from none the less. At times, he felt like a parasite, so vital had this vicarious feeding become, and he sometimes feared that it was the only thing keeping him alive.

Seerdomin had enough burdens, and Spinnock was determined that his friend should never comprehend the necessity he had become — these games, these nights among the eternal Night, this squalid tavern and the pitchers of cheap, gassy ale.

‘This one has worn me out,’ the man now said, setting down his empty flagon. ‘I thought I had you — aye, I knew the Gate tile was still unplayed. Two tiles to get past you, though, and everything would have been mine.’

There wasn’t much to say to that. Both understood how that single gamble had decided the game. What was unusual was Seerdomin’s uncharacteristic need to explain himself. ‘Get some sleep,’ Spinnock said.

Seerdomin’s smile was wry. He hesitated, as if undecided whether or not to say something, or simply follow Spinnock’s advice and stumble off to his home.

Speak not to me of weakness. Please.

‘I have acquired the habit,’ the man said, squinting as he followed some minor ruckus near the bar, ‘of ascending the ruins. To look out over the Nightwater. Remebering the old cat-men and their families — aye, it seems they are breeding anew, but of course it will not be the same, not at all the same.’ He fell silent for a moment, then shot Spinnock a quick, uneasy glance. ‘I see your lord.’

The Tiste Andii’s brows lilted. ‘Anomander Rake?’

A nod. ‘First time was a couple of weeks ago. And now. . every time, at about the twelfth bell. He stands on the wall of the new keep. And, like me, he stares out to sea.’

‘He favours. . solitude,’ Spinnock said.

‘I am always suspicious of that statement,’ Seerdomin said.

Yes, I can see how you might be. ‘It is what comes from lordship, from rule. Most of his original court is gone. Korlat, Orfantal, Sorrit, Pra’iran. Vanished or dead. That doesn’t make it any easier. Still, there are some who remain. Endest Silann, for one.’

‘When I see him, standing alone like that. .’ Seerdomin looked away. ‘It unnerves me.’

‘It is my understanding,’ observed Spinnock, ‘that we all manage to do that, for you humans. The way we seem to haunt this city.’

‘Sentinels with nothing to guard.’

Spinnock thought about that, then asked, ‘And so too the Son of Darkness? Do you people chafe under his indifferent rule?’

Seerdomin grimaced. ‘Would that all rulers were as indifferent. No, “indifferent” is not quite the right word. He is there where it matters. The administration and the authority — neither can be challenged, nor is there any reason to do so. The Son of Darkness is. . benign.’

Spinnock thought of the sword strapped to his lord’s back, adding the tart flavour of inadvertent irony to his friend’s words. And then he thought of the dead cities to the north. Maurik, Setta, Lest. ‘It’s not as if any neighbouring kingdoms are eyeing the prize that is Black Coral. They’re either dead or, as in the south, in complete disarray. Thus, the threat of war is absent. Accordingly, what’s left for a ruler? As you say, administration and authority.’

‘You do not convince me, friend,’ Seerdomin said, his eyes narrowing. ‘The Son of Darkness, now that is a title for a bureaucrat? Hardly. Knight of Darkness to keep the thugs off the streets?’

‘It is the curse of a long life,’ Spinnock said, ‘that in eminence one both rises and falls, again and again. Before this, there was a vast and costly war against the Pannion Domin. Before that, an even deadlier and far longer feud with the Malazan Empire. Before that, Jacuruku. Seerdomin, Anomander Rake has earned his rest. This peace.’

‘Then perhaps he is the one who chafes. Staring out upon the harsh waters of the Cut, the twelfth bell tolling like a dirge in the gloom.’

‘Poetic,’ Spinnock said, smiling, but there was something cold in his heart, as if the image conjured by his friend’s words was somehow too poignant. The notion sobered him. ‘I do not know if my lord chafes. I have never been that important; little more than one warrior among thousands. I do not think we have spoken in centuries.’

Seerdomin’s look was incredulous. ‘But that is absurd!’

‘Is it? See me, Seerdomin, I am too capricious. It is my eternal curse. I was never one for command, not even a squad. I got lost in Mott Wood, five days stumbling through briar and brush.’ Spinnock laughed, waved one hand. ‘A hopeless cause long ago, friend.’

‘It’s commonly held, Spinnock, that all you remaining Tiste Andii — survivors from all those wars — are perforce the elite, the most formidable of all.’

‘You were a soldier, so you know better than that. Oh, there are heroes aplenty among the Andii ranks. But just as many of us who were simply lucky. It’s the way of things. We lost many great heroes in our battles against the Malazans.’

‘A hopeless cause, you claim to be.’ Seerdomin grimaced. ‘Yet a master campaigner in Kef Tanar.’

‘With soldiers of carved wood, I am most formidable. Living ones are another matter entirely.’

The man grunted, and seemed content to leave that one alone.

They sat in companionable silence for a time, as Resto delivered another pitcher of ale, and Spinnock was relieved, as the ale flowed from pitcher to flagon to mouth, that no more talk of past deeds in distant fields of battle arose that might unhinge the half-truths and outright lies he had just uttered.

And when the moment came when dawn unfurled its poppy blush upon the far eastern horizon, a moment unseen by any within the city of Black Coral, Spinnock Durav nodded, but mostly to himself. Eternal darkness or not, a Tiste Andii knew when light arrived. Another irony, then, that only the humans within Night were oblivious of the day’s beginning, of the passage of the unseen sun beyond the gloom, of its endless journey across the sky.

Before they both got too drunk, they agreed upon the time for a new game. And when Seerdomin finally rose unsteadily to his feet, flinging a careless wave in Spinnock’s direction before weaving out through the tavern door, Spinnock found himself wishing the man a safe journey home.

A most generous send-off, then, even if delivered in silence.

Anomander Rake would be setting out for the throne room by now, where he would steel himself to face the brutal demands of the day, the allocation of stipends, the merchant grievances to be adjudicated, reports on the status of supplies, one or two emissaries from distant free cities seeking trade agreements and mutual protection pacts (yes, plenty of those).

Oh, the Knight of Darkness fought all manner of beasts and demons, did he not?

Darkness surrendered. But then, it always did. There was no telling how long the journey took in that time within Kurald Galain, nor the vast distances covered, stride by stride by stride. All was in discord, all was unrelieved and unrelieving. Again and again, Nimander Golit seemed to startle awake, realizing with a shiver that he had been walking, an automaton in the midst of his comrades, all of whom glowed dully and appeared to float in an ethereal void, with the one named Clip a few paces ahead, striding with a purpose none of them could emulate, Ni shy;mander would then comprehend that, once more, he had lost himself.

Rediscovering where he was elicited no satisfaction. Rediscovering who he was proved even worse. The young man named Nimander Golit was little more than an accretion of memories, numbed by a concatenation of remembered sensations — a beautiful woman dying in his arms. Another woman dying beneath his hands, her face turning dark, like a storm cloud that could not burst, her eyes bulging, and still his hands squeezed. A flailing body flung through the air, crashing through a window, vanishing into the rain.

Chains could spin for eternity, rings glittering with some kind of life. Worn boots could swing forward, one after another like the blades of a pair of shears. Promises could be uttered, acquiescence forced like a swollen hand pushing into a tight glove. All could stand wearing their certainty. Or feeling it drive them forward like a wind that knew where it was going. All could wish for warmth within that embrace.

But these were empty things, bobbing before his eyes like puppets on tangled strings. As soon as he reached out, seeking to untangle those strings, to make sense out of it all, they would swing away, for ever beyond his reach.

Skintick, who seemed ready with a smile for everything, walked at his side yet half a step ahead. Nimander could not see enough of his cousin’s face to know how Skintick had greeted the darkness that had stretched ever before them, but as that impenetrable abyss faded, and from the way ahead emerged the boles of pine trees, his cousin turned with a smile decidedly wry.

‘That wasn’t so bad,’ he murmured, making every word a lie and clearly delighting in his own mockery.

Damp air swirled round them now, cool in its caress, and Clip’s steps had slowed. When he turned they could see the extent of his exhaustion. The rings spun once round on the chain in his hand, then snapped taut. ‘We will camp here,’ he said in a hoarse voice.

Some previous battle had left Clip’s armour and clothes in tatters, with old bloodstains on the dark leather. So many wounds that, if delivered all at once, they should probably have killed him. Little of this had been visible that night on the street in Second Maiden Fort, when he had first summoned them.

Nimander and Skintick watched their kin settle down on the soft loam of the forest floor wherever they happened to be standing, blank-eyed and looking lost. Yes, ‘explanations are ephemeral. They are the sword and shield of the attack, and behind them hides motivation. Explanations strive to find weakness, and from the exploitation of weakness comes compliance and the potential of absolute surrender.’ So Andarist had written, long ago, in a treatise entitled Combat and Negotiation.

Skintick, his long jester’s face faintly pinched with weariness, plucked at Ni shy;mander’s sleeve, gestured with a nod of his head then set out to one side, threading between trees. After a moment, Nimander followed.

His cousin halted some thirty paces from the makeshift camp, where he settled on to his haunches.

Across from him, Nimander did the same.

The sun was beginning to rise, bleeding light into the gloom of this forest. With it came the faint smell of the sea.

‘Herald of Mother Dark,’ Skintick said quietly, as if measuring the worth of the words. ‘Mortal Sword. Bold titles, Nimander. Why, I’ve thought of one for each of us too — not much else to occupy my time on that endless walk. Skintick, the Blind Jester of House Dark. Do you like it?’

‘You’re not blind.’

‘I’m not?’

‘What is it you wished to talk about?’ Nimander asked. ‘Not silly titles, I should think.’

‘That depends. This Clip proudly asserts his own, after all.’

‘You do not believe him?’

A half-smile. ‘Cousin, there is very little I truly believe. Beyond the oxy shy;moronic fact that supposedly intelligent people seem to revel in being stupid. For this, I blame the chaotic tumult of emotions that devour reason as water devours snow.’

‘“Emotions are the spawn of true motivations, whether those motivations be conscious or otherwise,”’ said Nimander.

‘The man remembers what he reads. Making him decidedly dangerous, not to mention occasionally tedious.’

‘What are we to discuss?’ Nimander asked, in some exasperation. ‘He can claim any title he wishes — we can do nothing about it, can we?’

‘Well, we can choose to follow, or not follow.’

‘Even that is too late. We have followed. Into Kurald Galain, and now here. And in the time ahead, to the journey’s very end.’

‘To stand before Anomander Rake, yes.’ Skintick gestured at the surrounding forest. ‘Or we could just walk away. Leave Clip to his dramatic accounting with the Son of Darkness.’

‘Where would we go, then, Skintick? We don’t even know where we are. What realm is this? What world lies beyond this forest? Cousin, we have nowhere else to go.’

‘Nowhere, and anywhere. In the circumstances, Nimander, the former leads to the latter, like reaching a door everyone believes barred, locked tight, and lo, it opens wide at the touch. Nowhere and anywhere are states of mind. See this for shy;est around us? Is it a barrier, or ten thousand paths leading into mystery and won shy;der? Whichever you decide, the forest itself remains unchanged. It does not transform to suit your decision.’

‘And where is the joke in that, cousin?’

‘Laugh or cry, simple states of mind.’

‘And?’

Skintick glanced away, back towards the camp. ‘I find Clip. . amusing.’

‘Why does that not surprise me?’

‘He has created a vast, portentous moment, the moment when he finally stands face to face with the Son of Darkness. He hears martial music, the thunder of drums, or howl of horns sweeping round the high, swaying tower where this fated meeting no doubt will occur. He sees fear in Anomander Rake’s eyes, in answer to his own fury.’

‘Then he is a fool.’

‘Us young folk commonly are. We should tell him.’

‘Tell him what? That he is a fool?’

Skintick’s smile broadened briefly, then he met Nimander’s eyes once more. ‘Something more subtle, I should think.’

‘Such as?’

‘The forest does not change.’

Now it was Nimander’s turn to glance away, to squint into the greyness of dawn, the misty wreaths shrouding the ankles of the trees. She died in my arms. Then Andarist died, bleeding out on to the cobbles. And Phaed was pulled from my hands. Thrown through a window, down to her death. I met the eyes of her killer, and saw that he had killed her. . for me.

The forest does not change.

‘There are,’ Skintick said in a low voice, ‘things worth considering, Nimander. We are seven Tiste Andii, and Clip. So, eight. Wherever we now are, it is not our world. Yet, I am certain, it is the same world we have come to know, to even think of, as our own. The world of Drift Avalii, our first island prison. The world of the Malazan Empire, Adjunct Tavore, and the Isle that was our second prison. The same world. Perhaps this here is the very land where waits Anomander Rake — why would Clip take us through Kurald Galain to some place far from the Son of Darkness? We might find him another league onward through this forest.’

‘Why not to his front door?’

Skintick grinned his pleased grin. ‘Indeed, why not? In any case, Anomander Rake will not be alone. There will be other Tiste Andii with him. A community. Nimander, we have earned such a gift, haven’t we?’

To that, Nimander wanted to weep. I have earned nothing. Beyond remon shy;stration. Condemnation. The contempt of every one of them. Of Anomander Rake himself. For all my failures, the community will judge me, and that will be that. Self-pity tugged at him yet further, but he shook it off. For these who followed him, for Skintick and Desra and Nenanda, Kedeviss and Aranatha, yes, he could give them this last gift.

Which was not even his to give, but Clip’s. Clip, my usurper.

‘And so,’ he finally said, ‘we come back to the beginning. We will follow Clip, until he takes us to our people.’

‘I suppose you are right,’ Skintick said, as if satisfied with the circular nature of their conversation, as if something had indeed been achieved by the effort — though Nimander could not imagine what that might be.

Birdsong to awaken the sky to light, a musty warmth hinted at in the soft breaths rising from the humus. The air smelled impossibly clean. Nimander rubbed at his face, then saw Skintick’s almond-shaped eyes shift their gaze to over his shoulder, and so he turned, even as a fallen branch crackled underfoot to announce someone’s arrival.

Skintick raised his voice, ‘Join us, cousin.’

Aranatha moved like a lost child, ever tremulous, ever diffident. Eyes widening as they always did whenever she awakened to the outside world — she edged forward. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Nenanda was asking Clip about all sorts of things, until Desra told him to go away.’

Skintick’s brows lifted. ‘Desra? Stalking Clip now, is she? Well, my only surprise is that it’s taken this long — not that there was much chance within Kurald Galain.’

Nimander asked her, ‘Did Nenanda manage to get an explanation from Clip about where we are? And how far we still have to go?’

She continued creeping forward. The muted dawn light made her seem a thing of obsidian and silver, her long black hair glistening, her black skin faintly dusted, her silver eyes hinting of iron that never appeared. Like some Goddess of Hope. But one whose only strength lay in an optimism immune to defeat. Immune to all reality, in fact. ‘We have emerged somewhere south of where we were supposed to. There are, Clip explained, “layers of resistance”.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t understand what that means, but those were his words.’

Nimander briefly met Skintick’s eyes, then smiled up at Aranatha. ‘Did Clip say how much farther?’

‘Farther than he’d hoped. Tell me, do either of you smell the sea?’

‘Yes,’ Nimander replied. ‘Can’t be far, either. East, I think.’

‘We should go there — perhaps there will be villages.’

‘You possess impressive reserves, Aranatha,’ said Skintick.

‘If it’s not far. .’

With a wry smile, Skintick straightened.

Nimander did the same.

It was simple enough to walk in the direction of the rising sun, clambering over tree-falls and skirting sinkholes. The only trails they crossed were those left by game — nothing taller than deer and so branches hung low over them — and none led to the sea. The air grew warmer, then, all at once, cooler, and ahead was the sound of wind singing through branches and leaves, and then the crashing of surf. Slanting bedrock pushed up between trees, forcing them to climb, scrambling up a sharply rising cant.

They emerged to find themselves atop a cliff of wind-scoured rock and stunted, twisted trees. The sea was before them, glittering fierce in the sun. Enormous swells rolled in, pounding the jagged, unforgiving shoreline far below. The coast to the north and the south was virtually identical as far as could be seen. Well out from shore, explosions of spume betrayed the presence of submerged reefs and shallows.

‘Won’t find any villages here,’ Skintick said. ‘I doubt we’d find much of anything, and as for skirting this coast, well, that looks to be virtually impossible. Unless, of course,’ he added with a smile, ‘our glorious leader can kick rock to rubble to make us a beach. Or summon winged demons to carry us over all this. Failing that, I suggest we return to our camp, burrow down into the pine needles, and go to sleep.’

No one objected, so they turned about to retrace their route.

Seeing the rage ever bridling and boiling beneath the surface of the young warrior named Nenanda was a constant comfort to Clip. This one he could work with. This one he could shape. His confidence in Nimander, on the other hand, was vir shy;tually nonexistent. The man had been thrust into a leader’s role and it clearly did not suit him. Too sensitive by far, Nimander was of the type that the world and all its brutal realities usually destroyed, and it was something of a miracle that it had not yet done so. Clip had seen such pathetic creatures before; perhaps indeed it was a trait among the Tiste Andii. Centuries of life became a travail, an impossible burden. Such creatures burned out fast.

No, Nimander was not worth his time. And Nimander’s closest companion, Skintick, was no better. Clip admitted he saw something of himself in Skintick — that wry mockery, the quick sarcasm — yes, other traits common among the Andii. What Skintick lacked, however, was the hard vicious core that he himself possessed in abundance.

Necessities existed. Necessities had to be recognized, and in that recognition so too must be understood all the tasks required to achieve precisely what was necessary. Hard choices were the only choices that could be deemed virtuous. Clip was well familiar with hard choices, and with the acceptable burden that was virtue. He was prepared to carry such a burden for the rest of what he anticipated would be a very, very long life.

Nenanda might well be worthy to stand at his side, through all that was to come.

Among the young women in this entourage, only Desra seemed potentially useful. Ambitious and no doubt ruthless, she could be the knife in his hidden scabbard. Besides, an attractive woman’s attentions delivered their own reward, did they not? Kedeviss was too frail, broken inside just like Nimander, and Clip could already see death in her shadow. Aranatha was still a child behind those startled eyes, and perhaps always would be. No, of this entire group he had recruited from the Isle, only Nenanda and Desra were of any use to him.

He had hoped for better. After all, these were the survivors of Drift Avalii. They had stood at the side of Andarist himself, crossing blades with Tiste Edur warriors. With demons. They had tasted their share of blood, of triumph and grief. They should now be hardened veterans.

Well, he had managed with worse.

Alone for the moment, with Aranatha wandering off and probably already lost; with Nenanda, Desra and Kedeviss finally asleep; and with Nimander and Skintick somewhere in the woods — no doubt discussing portentous decisions on things relevant only to them — Clip loosened once again the chain and rings wrapped about his hand. There was a soft clink as the gleaming rings met at the ends of the dangling chain, each now spinning slowly, one counter to the other as proof of the power they held. Miniature portals appearing and disappearing, then reappearing once more, all bounded in cold metal.

The fashioning of these items had devoured most of the powers of the Andii dwelling in the subterranean fastness that was — or had been — the Andara. Leaving his kin, as it turned out, fatally vulnerable to their Letherii hunters. The cacophony of souls residing within these rings was now all that remained of those people, his pathetic family of misfits. And his to control.

Sometimes, it seemed, even when things didn’t go as planned, Clip found himself reaping rewards.

Proof, yes, that I am chosen.

The chain swung, rings lifting up and out. Spun into a whine like the cries of a thousand trapped souls, and Clip smiled.

The journey from the Scour Tavern back to the New Palace skirted the ruins of the great fortress, the collapse of which had brought to an end the Pannion Domin. Unlit and now perpetually shrouded in gloom, the heaped rubble of black stone still smelled of fire and death. The ragged edge of this shattered monument was on Spinnock Durav’s left as he walked the street now called Fringe Stagger. Ahead and slightly to the right rose Dragon Tower, and he could feel Silanah’s crimson eyes on him from atop its great height. The regard of an Eleint was never welcome, no matter how familiar Silanah’s presence among Rake’s Tiste Andii.

Spinnock could well recall the last few times he had been witness to the dragon unleashed. Flames ripping through the forest that was Mott Wood, crashing down in a deluge, with a deafening concussion that drowned out every death-cry as countless unseen creatures died. Among them, perhaps a handful of Crimson Guard, a dozen or so Mott Irregulars. Like using an axe to kill ants.

Then, from the very heart of that fiery maelstrom, virulent sorcery lashed out, striking Silanah in a coruscating wave. Thunder hammering the air, the dragon’s scream of pain. The enormous beast writhing, slashing her way free, then, trailing ropes of blood, flying back towards Moon’s Spawn.

He recalled Anomander Rake’s rage, and how he could hold it in his eyes like a demon chained to his will, even as he stood motionless, even as he spoke in a calm, almost bored tone. A single word, a name.

Cowl.

And with that name, oh, how the rage flared in those Draconean eyes.

There had begun, then, a hunt. The kind only a fool would choose to join. Rake, seeking out the deadliest wizard among the Crimson Guard. At one point, Spinnock remembered standing on the high ledge on the face of Moon’s Spawn, watching the mage-storms fill half the northern night sky. Flashes, the knight charge of thunder through a smoke-wreathed sky. He had wondered, then, if the world was on the very edge of being torn apart, and from the depths of his soul had risen a twisted, malignant thought. Again. .

When great powerrs strode on to the field of battle, things had a way of getting out of hand,

Had it been Cowl who first blinked? Bowing out, yielding ground, fleeing?

Or had it been the Son of Darkness.

Spinnock doubted he would ever find out. Such questions were not asked of Anomander Rake. Some time later, it was discovered by the Tiste Andii, Cowl had resurfaced, this time in Darujhistan. Causing more trouble. His stay there had been blessedly brief.

Another vision of Silanah, laying the trap for the Jaghut Tyrant in the Gadrobi Hills. More wounds, more ferocious magic. Wheeling over the ravaged plain. Five Soletaken Tiste Andii whirling round her like crows escorting an eagle.

Perhaps he was alone, Spinnock reflected, in his unease with the alliance between the Tiste Andii and the Eleint. There had been a time, after all, when Anomander Rake had warred against the pureblood dragons. When such crea shy;tures broke loose from their long-standing servitude to K’rul; when they had sought to grasp power for themselves. The motivation for Rake’s opposition to them was, typically, obscure. Silanah’s arrival — much later — was yet another event shrouded in mystery.

No, Spinnock Durav was far from thrilled by Silanah’s bloodless regard.

He approached the arched entrance to the New Palace, ascending the flagstone ramp. There were no guards standing outside. There never were. Pushing open one of the twin doors, he strode inside. Before him, a buttressed corridor that humans would find unnaturally narrow. Twenty paces in, another archway, opening out into a spacious domed chamber with a floor of polished blackwood inset with the twenty-eight spiralling terondai of Mother Dark, all in black silver. The inside of the dome overhead was a mirror image. This homage to the goddess who had turned away was, to Spinnock’s mind, extraordinary; appallingly out of place.

Oh, sages might well debate who had done the turning away back then, but none would dismiss the terrible vastness of the schism. Was this some belated effort at healing the ancient wound? Spinnock found that notion unfathomable. And yet, Anomander Rake himself had commissioned the terondai, the Invisible Sun and its whirling, wild rays of onyx flame.

If Kurald Galain had a heart in this realm’s manifestation of the warren, it was here, in this chamber. Yet he felt no presence, no ghostly breath of power, as he made his way across the floor to the curling bone-white staircase. Just beyond the turn above wavered a pool of lantern light.

Two human servants were scrubbing the alabaster steps. At his arrival they ducked away.

‘Mind the wet,’ one muttered.

‘I’m surprised,’ Spinnock said as he edged past, ‘there’s need to clean these at all. There are all of fifteen people living in this palace.’

‘You’ve that, sir,’ the man replied, nodding.

The Tiste Andii paused and glanced back. ‘Then why are you bothering? I can hardly believe the castellan set you upon this task.’

‘No sir, he never did. We was just, er, bored.’

After a bemused moment, Spinnock resumed his ascent. These short-lived creatures baffled him.

The journey to the chambers where dwelt the Son of Darkness was a lengthy traverse made in solitude. Echoing corridors, unlocked, unguarded doors. The castellan’s modest collection of scribes and sundry bureaucrats worked in offices on the main floor; kitchen staff, clothes-scrubbers and wringers, hearth-keepers and taper-lighters, all lived and worked in the lower levels. Here, on the higher floors, darkness ruled a realm virtually unoccupied.

Reaching the elongated room that faced the Nightwater, Spinnock Durav found his lord.

Facing the crystal window that ran the entire length of the Nightwater wall, his long silver-white hair faintly luminous in the muted, refracted light cast into the room by the faceted quartz. The sword Dragnipur was nowhere in sight.

Three steps into the chamber and Spinnock halted.

Without turning, Anomander Rake said, ‘The game, Spinnock?’

‘You won again, Lord. But it was close.’

‘The Gate?’

Spinnock smiled wryly. ‘When all else seems lost. .’

Perhaps Anomander Rake nodded at that, or his gaze, fixed somewhere out on the waves of Nightwater, shifted downward to something closer by. A fisher boat, or the crest of some leviathan rising momentarily from the abyss. Either way, the sigh that followed was audible. ‘Spinnock, old friend, it is good that you have returned.’

‘Thank you, Lord. I, too, am pleased to see an end to my wandering.’

‘Wandering? Yes, I imagine you might have seen it that way.’

‘You sent me to a continent, Lord. Discovering the myriad truths upon it necessitated. . fair wandering.’

‘I have thought long on the details of your tale, Spinnock Durav.’ Still Rake did not turn round. ‘Yielding a single question. Must I journey there?’

Spinnock frowned. ‘Assail? Lord, the situation there. .’

‘Yes, I understand.’ At last, the Son of Darkness slowly swung about, and it seemed his eyes had stolen something from the crystal window, flaring then dimming like a memory. ‘Soon, then.’

‘Lord, on my last day, a league from the sea. .’

‘Yes?’

‘I lost count of those I killed to reach that desolate strand. Lord, by the time I waded into the deep, enough to vanish beneath the waves, the very bay was crimson. That I lived at all in the face of that is-’

‘Unsurprising,’ Anomander Rake cut in with a faint smile, ‘as far as your Lord is concerned.’ The smile faded. ‘Ah, but I have sorely abused your skills, friend.’

Spinnock could not help but cock his head and say, ‘And so, I am given leave to wield soldiers of wood and stone on a wine-stained table? Day after day, my muscles growing soft, the ambition draining away.’

‘Is this what you call a well-earned rest?’

‘Some nights are worse than others, Lord,’

‘To hear you speak of ambition, Spinnock, recalls to my mind another place, long, long ago. You and I. .’

‘Where I learned, at last,’ Spinnock said, with no bitterness at all, ‘my destiny.’

‘Unseen by anyone. Deeds unwitnessed. Heroic efforts earning naught but one man’s gratitude.’

‘A weapon must be used, Lord, lest it rust.’

‘A weapon overused, Spinnock, grows blunt, notched.’

To that, the burly Tiste Andii bowed. ‘Perhaps, then, Lord, such a weapon must be put away. A new one found.’

‘That time is yet to arrive, Spinnock Durav.’

Spinnock bowed again. ‘There is, in my opinion, Lord, no time in the foreseeable future when you must journey to Assail. The madness there seems quite. . self-contained.’

Anomander Rake studied Spinnock’s face for a time, then nodded. ‘Play on, my friend. See the king through. Until. .’ and he turned once more back to the crystal window.

There was no need to voice the completion of that sentence, Spinnock well knew. He bowed a third time, then walked from the chamber, closing the door behind him.

Endest Silann was slowly hobbling up the corridor. At Spinnock’s appearance the old castellan glanced up. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘is our Lord within?’

‘He is.’

The elder Tiste Andii’s answering smile was no gift to Spinnock, so strained was it, a thing of sorrow and shame. And while perhaps Endest had earned the right to the first sentiment — a once powerful mage now broken — he had not to the second. Yet what could Spinnock say that might ease that burden? Nothing that would not sound trite. Perhaps something more. . acerbic, something to challenge that self-pity-

‘I must speak to him,’ Endest said, reaching for the door.

‘He will welcome that,’ Spinnock managed.

Again the smile. ‘I am sure.’ A pause, a glance up into Spinnock’s eyes. ‘I have great news.’

‘Yes?’

Endest Silann lifted the latch. ‘Yes. I have found a new supplier of cadaver eels.’

‘Lord of this, Son of that, it’s no matter, izzit?’ The man peeled the last of the rind from the fruit with his thumb-knife, then flung it out on to the cobbles. ‘Point is,’ he continued to his companions, ‘he ain’t even human, is he? Just another of ’em hoary black-skinned demons, as dead-eyed as all the rest.’

‘Big on husking the world, aren’t ya?’ the second man at the table said, winking across at the third man, who’d yet to say a thing.

‘Big on lotsa things, you better believe it,’ the first man muttered, now cutting slices of the fruit and lifting each one to his mouth balanced on the blade.

The waiter drew close at that moment to edge up the wick in the lantern on the table, then vanished into the gloom once more.

The three were seated at one of the new street-side restaurants, although ‘restaurant’ was perhaps too noble a word for this rough line of tables and unmatched wooden chairs. The kitchen was little more than a converted cart and a stretch of canvas roof beneath which a family laboured round a grill that had once been a horse trough.

Of the four tables, three were occupied. All humans — the Tiste Andii were not wont to take meals in public, much less engage in idle chatter over steaming mugs of Bastion kelyk, a pungent brew growing in popularity in Black Coral.

‘You like to talk,’ the second man prodded, reaching for his cup. ‘But words never dug a ditch.’

‘I ain’t alone in being in the right about this,’ the first man retorted. ‘Ain’t alone at all. It’s plain that if the Lord Son was dead and gone, all this damned darkness would go away, an’ we’d be back to normal wi’ day ’n’ night again.’

‘No guarantees of that,’ the third man said, his tone that of someone half asleep.

‘It’s plain, I said. Plain, an’ if you can’t see that, it’s your problem, not ours.’

‘Ours?’

‘Aye, just that.’

‘Plan on sticking that rind-snicker through his heart, then?’

The second man grunted a laugh.

‘They may live long,’ the first man said in a low grumble, ‘but they bleed like anybody else.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ the third man said, fighting a yawn, ‘you’re the mastermind behind what you’re talking about, Bucch.’

‘Not me,’ the first man, Bucch, allowed, ‘but I was among the first t’give my word an’ swear on it.’

‘So who is?’

‘Can’t say. Don’t know. That’s how they organize these things.’

The second man was now scratching the stubble on his jaw. ‘Y’know,’ he ventured, ‘it’s not like there’s a million of ’em, is it? Why, half the adults among us was soldiers in the Domin, or even before. And nobody took our weapons or armour, did they?’

‘Bigger fools them,’ Bucch said, nodding. ‘Arrogance like that, they should pay for, I say.’

‘When’s the next meeting?’ the second man asked.

The third man stirred from his slouch on his chair. ‘We were just off for that, Harak. You want to come along?’

As the three men rose and walked off, Seerdomin finished the last of his kelyk, waited another half-dozen heartbeats, and then rose, drawing his cloak round him, even as he reached beneath it and loosened the sword in its scabbard.

He paused, then, and formally faced north. Closing his eyes, he spoke a soft prayer.

Then, walking with a careless stride he set off, more or less in the direction the three men were taking,

High on the tower, a red-scaled dragon’s eyes looked down upon all, facets reflecting scenes from every street, every alley, the flurry of activity in the markets, the women and children appearing on flat rooftops to hang laundry, figures wandering here and there between buildings. In those eyes, the city seethed.

Somewhere, beyond Night, the sun unleashed a morning of brazen, heady heat. It gave form to the smoke of hearth fires in the makeshift camps alongside the beaten tracks wending down from the north, until the pilgrims emerged to form an unbroken line on the trails, and then it lit into bright gold a serpent of dust that rode the winds all the way to the Great Barrow.

The destitute among them carried shiny shells collected from shoreline and tidal pools, or polished stones or nuggets of raw copper. The better off carried jewellery, gem-studded scabbards, strips of rare silk, Delantine linen, Daru councils of silver and gold, loot collected from corpses on battlefields, locks of hair from revered relatives and imagined heroes, or any of countless other items of value. Now within a day’s march of the Great Barrow, the threat of bandits and thieves had vanished, and the pilgrims sang as they walked towards the vast, descended cloud of darkness to the south.

Beneath that enormous barrow of treasure, they all knew, lay the mortal remains of the Redeemer.

Protected for ever more by Night and its grim, silent sentinels.

The serpent of dust journeyed, then, to a place of salvation.

Among the Rhivi of North Genabackis, there was a saying. A man who stirs awake the serpent is a man without fear. A man without fear has forgotten the rules of life.

Silanah heard their songs and prayers.

And she watched.

Sometimes mortals did indeed forget. Sometimes, mortals needed. . reminding.