Gardens of the Moon

by Steven Erikson

  For an abandoned belfry tower, this place had witnessed a lot of drama lately.

  'Are we waiting for night?' Apsalar asked.

  Crokus nodded.

  'Then we find this Challice?'

  'That's right. The D'Arles will be at Lady Simtal's Fête, I'm sure of it. The estate has an enormous garden, almost a forest. It goes right up to the back wall. Getting in should be easy.'

  'Won't you be noticed once you join the guests, though?'

  'I'll be dressed as a thief. Everybody will be wearing costumes. Besides, there'll be hundreds of people there. It might take an hour or two, but I'll find her.'

  'And then?'

  'I'll think of something,' Crokus said.

  Apsalar stretched out her legs on the paving stones and crossed her arms. 'And I'm supposed to hide in the bushes, huh?'

  He shrugged. 'Maybe Uncle Mammot will be there,' he said. 'Then everything will be all right.'

  'Why?'

  'Because that's what Coll said,' Crokus shot back, exasperated. Was he supposed to tell her she'd been possessed for who knew how long? 'We'll work out a way to get you home,' he explained. 'That's what you want, right?'

  She nodded slowly, as if no longer certain of that. 'I miss my father,' she said.

  To Crokus, Apsalar sounded as though she was trying to convince herself. He'd looked at her when they'd arrived, thinking, Why not? And he had to admit to himself now that her company wasn't bad. Except for all the questions, of course. Mind, what if he'd been in her situation, waking up thousands of leagues from home? It'd be terrifying. Would he have held up as well as she seemed to be doing?

  'I'm feeling all right,' she said, watching him. 'It's as if something inside is keeping things together. I can't explain it any better, but it's like a smooth, black stone. Solid and warm, and whenever I start getting scared it takes me inside. And then everything's fine again.' She added, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push you away.'

  'Never mind,' he said.

  Within the shadows of the stairwell, Serrat studied the two figures out on the platform. Enough was enough. She'd opened her Kurald Galain Warren into a defensive layering of wards around her. No more of these invisible enemies. If they wanted her, they'd have to show themselves. And then she'd kill them. And as for the Coin Bearer and the girl, where could they hope to escape to, up here on this tower?

  She unsheathed her daggers and prepared for her attack. A dozen wards protected her back, all along the staircase. An approach from there was impossible.

  Two sharp points touched her flesh, one under her chin and the other beneath her left shoulder blade. The Tiste Andii froze. And then she heard a voice close to her ear – a voice she recognized.

  'Give Rake this warning, Serrat. He'll only get one, and the same for you. The Coin Bearer shall not be harmed. The games are done. Try this again and you'll die.'

  'You bastard!' she exploded. 'My lord's anger—'

  'Will be in vain. We both know who sends this message, don't we? And, as Rake well knows, he's not as far away as he once was.' The point beneath her chin moved away to allow her to nod, then returned. 'Good. Deliver the message, then, and hope we don't meet again.'

  'This will not be forgotten,' Serrat promised, shaking with rage.

  A low chuckle answered her. 'Compliments of the Prince, Serrat. Take it up with our mutual friend.'

  The daggers left her flesh. Serrat exhaled a long breath, then sheathed her weapons. She snapped a Kurald Galain spell and vanished.

  Crokus jumped at a faint plopping sound from the stairwell. He laid his hands on his knives, tensing.

  'What's wrong?' Apsalar said.

  'Shhh. Wait.' He felt his heart pound hard against his chest. 'I'm ducking at shadows,' he said, sitting back. 'Well, we're off soon, anyway.'

  It was an age of wind, sweeping across the grass plains beneath a pewter sky, a wind whose thirst assailed all life, mindless, unrelenting like a beast that did not know itself.

  Struggling in his mother's wake, it was Raest's first lesson in power. In the hunt for domination that would shape his life, he saw the many ways of the wind – its subtle sculpting of stone over hundreds and then thousands of years, and its raging gales that flattened forests – and found closest to his heart the violent power of the wind's banshee fury.

  Raest's mother had been the first to flee his deliberate shaping of power. She'd denied him to his face, proclaiming the Sundering of Blood and thus cutting him free. That the ritual had broken her he disregarded. It was unimportant. He who would dominate must learn early that those resisting his command should be destroyed. Failure was her price, not his.

  While the Jaghut feared community, pronouncing society to be the birthplace of tyranny – of the flesh and the spirit – and citing their own bloody history as proof, Raest discovered a hunger for it. The power he commanded insisted upon subjects. Strength was ever relative, and he could not dominate without the company of the dominated.

  At first he sought to subjugate other Jaghut, but more often than not they either escaped him or he was forced to kill them. Such contests held only momentary satisfaction. Raest gathered beasts around him, bending nature to his will. But nature withered and died in bondage, and so found an escape he could not control. In his anger he laid waste to the land, driving into extinction countless species. The earth resisted him, and its power was immense. Yet it was directionless and could not overwhelm Raest in its ageless tide. His was a focused power, precise in its destruction and pervasive in its effect.

  Then into his path came the first of the Imass, creatures who struggled against his will, defying slavery and yet living on. Creatures of boundless, pitiful hope. For Raest, he had found in them the glory of domination, for with each Imass that broke he took another. Their link with nature was minimal, for the Imass themselves played the game of tyranny over their lands. They could not defeat him.

  He fashioned an empire of sorts, bereft of cities yet plagued with the endless dramas of society, its pathetic victories and inevitable failures. The community of enslaved Imass thrived in this quagmire of pettiness. They even managed to convince themselves that they possessed freedom, a will of their own that could shape destiny. They elected champions. They tore down their champions once failure draped its shroud over them. They ran in endless circles and called it growth, emergence, knowledge. While over them all, a presence invisible to their eyes, Raest flexed his will. His greatest joy came when his slaves proclaimed him god – though they knew him not – and constructed temples to serve him and organized priesthoods whose activities mimicked Raest's tyranny with such cosmic irony that the Jaghut could only shake his head.

  It should have been an empire to last for millennia, and its day of dying should have been by his own hand, when he at last tired of it. Raest had never imagined that other Jaghut would find his activities abhorrent, that they would risk themselves and their own power on behalf of these short-lived, small-minded Imass. Yet what astonished Raest more than anything else was that when the Jaghut came they came in numbers, in community. A community whose sole purpose of existence was to destroy his empire, to imprison him.

  He had been unprepared.

  The lesson was learned, and no matter what the world had become since that time, Raest was ready for it. His limbs creaked at first, throbbing with dull aches bridged by sharp pangs. The effort of digging himself from the frozen earth had incapacitated him for a time, but finally he felt ready to walk the tunnel that opened out into a new land.

  Preparation. Already he'd initiated his first moves. He sensed that others had come to him, had freed the path of Omtose Phellack wards and seals. Perhaps his worshippers remained, fanatics who had sought his release for generations, and even now awaited him beyond the barrow.

  The missing Finnest would be his first priority. Much of his power had been stored within the seed, stripped from him and stored there by the Jaghut betrayers. It had not been carried far, and there was nothing that could prev
ent his recovering it. Omtose Phellack no longer existed in the land above – he could feel its absence like an airless void. Nothing could oppose him now.

  Preparation. Raest's withered, cracked face twisted into a savage grin, his lower tusks splitting desiccated skin. The powerful must gather other power, subjugate it to their own will, then direct it unerringly. His moves had already begun.

  He sloshed through the slush now covering the barrow's muddy floor. Before him rose the slanted wall that marked the tomb's barrier. Beyond the lime-streaked earth waited a world to be enslaved. Raest gestured and the barrier exploded outward. Bright sunlight flared in the clouds of steam rolling around him, and he felt waves of cold, ancient air sweeping past him.

  The Jaghut Tyrant walked into the light.

  The Great Raven Crone rode the hot streams of wind high above the Gadrobi Hills. The burst of power that launched tons of earth and rocks a hundred feet into the sky elicited a cackle from her. She dipped a wing, eyes on the white pillar of steam, and banked towards it.

  This, she laughed to herself, should prove interesting.

  A wash of air pounded down on to her. Shrieking her outrage, Crone twisted and slid along the shunting wind. Massive shadows flowed over her. Her anger was swept away on a surge of excitement. Head craning, she beat the air with her wings and climbed again. In matters such as these, a proper point of view was essential. Crone climbed higher still, then cocked her head and looked down. By the light of the sun scales flashed iridescent from five ridged backs, but of the five one shone like fire. Sorcerous power bled in ripples from the web of their spread wings. The dragons sailed silent over the landscape, closing on the billowing dust-cloud above the Jaghut tomb. Crone's black eyes fixed on the dragon that blazed red.

  'Silanah!' she screamed, laughing. 'Dragnipurake t'na Draconiaes! Eleint, eleint!' The day of the Tiste Andii had come.

  Raest emerged into rich afternoon sunlight. Yellow-grassed hills rose in weathered humps in every direction but the one he faced. To the east behind a thinning curtain of drifting dust stretched an empty plain.

  The Jaghut Tyrant grunted. Not so different after all. He raised his arms, feeling wind slide along his cabled muscles. He drew a breath, tasting the life-rich air. He quested lightly with his power and exulted in the waves of fear that answered it – answers that came from the mindless life beneath his feet or hiding in the grasses around him. But of higher life, higher concentrations of power, he sensed nothing. Raest drove his senses down into the ground, seeking what dwelt there. Earth and bedrock, the sluggish molten darkness beneath, down, down to find the sleeping goddess – young as far as the Jaghut Tyrant was concerned. 'Shall I wake you?' he whispered. 'Not yet. But I shall make you bleed.' His right hand closed into a fist.

  He speared the goddess with pain, driving a fissure through the bedrock, feeling the gush of her blood, enough to make her stir but not awaken.

  The line of hills to the north lifted skyward. Magma sprayed into the air amid a rising pillar of smoke, rock and ash. The earth shuddered even as the sound of the eruption swept over Raest in a fierce, hot wind. The Jaghut Tyrant smiled.

  He studied the shattered ridge and breathed the heavy, sulphurous air, then turned about and strode west towards the highest hill in that direction. His Finnest lay beyond it, perhaps three days' walk. He considered opening his Warren, then decided to wait until he reached the hill's summit. From that vantage point, he could better judge the Finnest's location.

  Half-way up the slope he heard distant laughter. Raest stiffened just as the day darkened suddenly around him. On the sward before him he saw five enormous shadows sweeping up the slope, then beyond the hill's summit. The sunlight returned. The Jaghut Tyrant looked into the sky above him.

  Five dragons banked in perfect formation, their heads dipping to watch him as they glided back in his direction. 'Estideein eleint,' he whispered, in his Jaghut tongue. Four were black, barbed in silver along the wings and flying two to either side of the fifth dragon, this one red and twice as large as the others. 'Silanah red-wings,' Raest muttered, eyes narrowing. 'Elder-born and true-blooded Tiam, you lead Soletaken, whose blood is alien to this world. I feel you all!' He raised fists to the sky. 'Colder than the ice born of Jaghut hands, as dark as blindness- I feel you!'

  He lowered his arms. 'Harass me not, eleint. I cannot enslave you, but I will destroy you. Know that. I will drive you to the ground, each and all, and with my own hands I shall tear your hearts from your chests.' His eyes narrowed on the four black dragons. 'Soletaken. You would challenge me at the command of another. You would battle with me for no reason of your own. Ah, but if I were to command you I would not throw your lives away so carelessly. I would cherish you, Soletaken, I would give you causes worth believing in, show you the true rewards of power.' Raest scowled, as their derision swept through his mind. 'So be it.'

  The dragons passed low overhead in silence, banking once again and disappearing behind the hills to the south. Raest spread his arms wide and unleashed his Warren. His flesh split as power flowed into him. His arms shed skin like ash. He both felt and heard hills crack all around him, the snapping of stone, the sundering of crags. To all sides the horizons blurred as dust curtained skyward. He faced south. 'This is my power! Come to me!'

  A long minute passed. He frowned at the hills before him, then cried out and whirled to his right just as Silanah and the four black dragons, all less than ten feet above the ground, plunged over the summit of the hill he'd been climbing.

  Raest screamed at the whirlwind of power battering him, his shrunken eyes locked on Silanah's blank, empty, deadly gaze – eyes as large as the Jaghut's head – as it bore down upon him with the speed of a springing viper. The red dragon's jaws opened wide and Raest found himself staring down the beast's throat.

  He screamed a second time and released his power all at once.

  The air detonated as the Warrens collided. Jagged shards of rock ripped in all directions. Starvald Demelain and Kurald Galain warred with Omtose Phellack in a savage maelstrom of will. Grasses, earth and rock withered to fine ash on all sides, and within the vortex stood Raest, his power roaring from him. Lashes of sorcery from the dragons lanced into his body, boring through his withered flesh.

  The Jaghut Tyrant flayed his power like a scythe. Blood spattered the ground, sprayed in gouts. The dragons shrieked.

  A wave of incandescent fire struck Raest from the right, solid as a battering fist. Howling, he was thrown through the air, landing in a bank of powdery ash. Silanah's fire raced over him, blackening what was left of his flesh. The Tyrant clambered upright, his body jerking uncontrollably as sorcery gouted from his right hand.

  The ground shook as Raest's power hammered Silanah down, driving the dragon skidding and tumbling across the slope. The Tyrant's exultant roar was cut short as talons the length of a forearm crunched into him from behind. A second clawed foot joined the first, snapping through the bones of Raest's chest as if they were twigs. More talons flexed around him as a second dragon sought grip.

  The Tyrant twisted helplessly as the claws lifted him into the air and started ripping his body apart. He dislocated his own shoulder in reaching round to dig his fingers into a sleek scaled shin. At the contact, Omtose Phellack surged into the dragon's leg, shattering bone, boiling blood. Raest laughed as the claws spasmed loose and he was flung away. More bones snapped as he struck the ground, but it did not matter. His power was absolute, the vessel that carried it had little relevance. If need be, the Tyrant would find other bodies, bodies in the thousands.

  He climbed once more to his feet. 'Now,' he whispered, 'I deliver death.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The flowering of light from darkness

  brought into my sight there on the field

  a host of dragons caught

  like a crest of wind before the eternal flame.

  I saw the ages in their eyes

  a worldly map inscribed

  in each whirle
d scale on their hides.

  Their sorcery bled from them

  like the breathing of stars

  and I knew then

  that dragons had come among us ...

  Anomandaris

  Fisher (b.?)

  Shadows crowded the garden's undergrowth. Adjunct Lorn rose from her crouch and brushed the dirt from her hands. 'Find an acorn.' She smiled to herself. 'Plant it.' Somewhere beyond the heavily wooded garden, servants shouted at each other as they scrambled about making last-minute arrangements. She hitched her cloak's tail into her belt and quietly slipped among the boles of vine-wrapped trees. A moment later the back wall came into view.

  An alley lay beyond, narrow and choked with the leaves and fallen branches from the gardens rising above the walls on its either side. Her route in – and now out – was a thing of ease. She scaled the rough-stoned wall, grasping vines when necessary, then slid over the top.

  She landed with a soft crunch of twigs and dry leaves, within shadows as deep as those in the garden. She adjusted her cloak, then walked to one end of the alley where she leaned against a corner, crossed her arms and smiled at the crowds passing to and fro on the street before her.

  Two tasks left to perform, then she would leave this city. One of those tasks, however, might prove impossible. She sensed nothing of Sorry's presence. Perhaps the woman was indeed dead. Under the circumstances it was the only explanation.

  She watched the sea of people, its tide of faces swirling past. The latent madness there made her uneasy, especially with the city's guards maintaining an aloof distance. She wondered at the taint of terror in that multitude of faces, and how almost every face seemed familiar.

  Darujhistan blurred in her mind, becoming a hundred other cities, each rising out of her past as if on parade. Joy and fear, agony and laughter – the expressions merged into one, the sounds coming to her no different from each other. She could distinguish nothing, the faces becoming expressionless, the sounds a roar of history without meaning.