Deadhouse Gates

by Steven Erikson

  For the briefest yet most satisfying of moments, Kalam saw a flicker of uncertainty rattle Elan's face, before a smooth smile appeared. 'And where does he hide, up in the crow's nest with that dubiously named lookout?'

  Kalam turned away. 'Where else?'

  The assassin felt Salk Elan's eyes on his back as he strode away. You've the arrogance common to every mage, friend. You'll have to excuse my pleasure in spreading cracks through it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I stood in a place where all shadows converged the end of the Path of Hands Soletaken and D'ivers through the gates of truth where from the darkness all mysteries emerged.

  The Path

  Trout Sen'al'Bhok'arala

  They came upon the four bodies at the edge of an upthrust of roots that seemed to mark the entrance to a maze. The figures were contorted, limbs shattered, their dark robes twisted and stiff with dried blood.

  Recognition arrived dull and heavy in Mappo's mind, an answering of suspicions that came with little surprise. Nameless Ones… Priests of the Azath, if such entities can have priests. How many cold hands have guided us here? Myself… Icarium… these two twisted roots… journeying to Tremorlor—

  With a grunt, Icarium stepped forward, his eyes on a broken staff lying beside one of the corpses. 'I have seen those before,' he said.

  The Trell frowned at his friend. 'How? Where?'

  'In a dream.'

  'Dream?'

  The Jhag gave him a half-smile. 'Oh yes, Mappo, I have dreams.' He faced the bodies again. 'It began as all such dreams begin. I am stumbling. In pain. Yet I bear no wounds, and my weapons are clean. No, the pain is within me, as of a knowledge once gained, then lost yet again.'

  Mappo stared at his friend's back, struggling to comprehend his words.

  'I arrive,' the Jhag continued in dry tones, 'at the outskirts of a town. A Trellish town on the plain. It has been destroyed. Scars of sorcery stain the ground… the air. Bodies rot in the streets, and Great Ravens have come to feed—their laughter is the voice of the stench.'

  'Icarium—'

  'And then a woman appears, dressed as are these here before us. A priestess. She holds a staff, from which fell power still bleeds.

  "What have you done?" I ask her.

  '"Only what is necessary," is her soft reply. I see in her face a great fear as she looks upon me, and I am saddened by it. "Jhag, you must not wander alone."

  'Her words seem to call up terrible memories. And images, faces—companions, countless in number. As if I have rarely been alone. Men and women have walked at my side, sometimes singly, sometimes in legion. These memories fill me with grief, as if in some way I have betrayed every one of those companions.' He paused, and Mappo saw his head slowly nod. 'Indeed, I understand this now. They were all guardians, like you, Mappo. And they all failed. Were, perhaps, killed by my own hand.'

  He shook himself. 'The priestess sees what lies writ upon my face, for hers becomes its mirror. Then she nods. Her staff blossoms with sorcery… and I wander a lifeless plain, alone. The pain is gone—where it had lodged within me, there is now nothing. And, as I feel my memories drift apart… away… I sense I have but dreamed. And so awaken.' He turned then, offered Mappo a dreadful smile.

  Impossible. A twisting of the truth. I saw the slaughter with my own eyes. I spoke with the priestess. You have been visited in your dreams, Icarium, with fickle malice.

  Fiddler cleared his throat. 'Looks like they were guarding this entrance. Whatever found them proved too much.'

  'They are known on the Jhag Odhan,' Mappo said, 'as the Nameless Ones.'

  Icarium's eyes hardened on the Trell. 'That cult,' Apsalar muttered, 'is supposed to be extinct.' The others looked at her. She shrugged. 'Dancer's knowledge.'

  Iskaral sputtered. 'Hood take their rotting souls! Presumptuous bastards one and all—how dare they make such claims?'

  'What claims?' Fiddler growled.

  The High Priest hugged himself. 'Nothing. Speak nothing of it, yes. Servants of the Azath—pah! Are we naught but pieces on a gameboard? My master scoured them from the Empire, yes. A task for the Talons, as Dancer will tell you. A necessary cleansing, a plucking of a thorn from the Emperor's side. Slaughter and desecration. Merciless. Too many vulnerable secrets—corridors of power—oh, how they resented my master's entry into Deadhouse—'Iskaral!' Apsalar snapped. The priest ducked as if cuffed.

  Icarium faced the young woman. 'Who voiced that warning? Through your mouth—who spoke?'

  She fixed cool eyes on him. 'Possessing these memories enforces a responsibility, Icarium, just as possessing none exculpates.'

  The Jhag flinched.

  Crokus had edged forward. 'Apsalar?'

  She smiled. 'Or Cotillion? No, it is just me, Crokus. I am afraid I have grown weary of all these suspicions. As if I have no self unstained by the god who once possessed me. I was but a girl when I was taken. A fisherman's daughter. But I am no mere girl any more.'

  Her father's sigh was loud. 'Daughter,' he rumbled, 'we ain't none of us what we once were, and there ain't nothing simple in what we've gone through to get here.' He scowled, as if struggling for words. 'But you ordered the High Priest to shut up, to protect secrets that Dancer—Cotillion—would want kept that way. So Icarium's suspicions were natural enough.'

  'Yes,' she countered, 'I am not a slave to what I was. I decide what to do with the knowledge I possess. I choose my own causes, Father.'

  Icarium spoke. 'I stand chastised, Apsalar.' He faced Mappo again. 'What more do you know of these Nameless Ones, friend?'

  Mappo hesitated, then said, 'Our tribe welcomed them as guests, but their visits were rare. I believe, however, that indeed they view themselves as servants of the Azath. If Trell legends hold any truth, then the cult may well date from the time of the First Empire—'

  'They have been eradicated!' Iskaral shrieked.

  'Within the borders of the Malazan Empire, perhaps,' Mappo conceded.

  'My friend,' Icarium said, 'you are withholding truths. I would hear them.'

  The Trell sighed. 'They have taken it upon themselves to recruit your guardians, Icarium, and have done so since the beginning.'

  'Why?'

  'That I do not know. Now that you ask it—' He frowned. 'An interesting question. Dedication to noble vows? Protection of the Azath?' Mappo shrugged.

  'Hood's stubby ankles!' Rellock growled. 'Might be guilt, for all we know.'

  All eyes swung to him.

  After a long, silent moment, Fiddler shook himself. 'Come on, then. Into the maze.'

  Arms and limbs. What clawed at the binding roots, what stretched and twisted in a hopeless effort to pull free, what reached out in supplication, in silent appeal and in deadly offer from all sides, was an array of imprisoned life, and few among those horridly animate projections were human in origin. Fiddler's imagination failed his compulsive desire to fashion likely bodies, heads and faces to such limbs, even as he knew that the reality of what lay hidden within the woven walls would pale his worst nightmares.

  Tremorlor's gnarled gaol of roots held demons, ancient Ascendants and such a host of alien creatures that the sapper was left trembling in the realization of his insignificance and that of all his kind. Humans were but one tiny, frail leaf on a tree too massive even to comprehend. The shock of that unmanned him, mocking his audacity with an endless echo of ages and realms trapped within this mad, riotous prison.

  They could hear battles raging on all sides, thus far mercifully in other branches of the tortured maze. The Azath was being assailed from all fronts. The sound of snapping, shattering wood cracked through the air. Bestial screams rent the iron-smeared air above them, voices lost from the throats that released them, voices the only thing that could escape this terrifying war.

  The crossbow's stock was slick with sweat in Fiddler's hands as he edged forward, keeping to the centre of the path, beyond the reach of those grasping, unhuman hands. A sharp bend lay just ahead. The sapper crouch
ed down, then glanced back at the others.

  Only three Hounds remained. Shan and Gear had set off, taking divergent paths. Where they were now and what was happening to them Fiddler had no idea, but Baran, Blind and Rood did not seem perturbed at their absence. The sightless female padded at Icarium's side as if she was nothing more than a well-trained companion to the Jhag. Baran held back as rearguard, while Rood—pale, mottled, a solid mass of muscle—waited not five paces from Fiddler's position, motionless. Its eyes, a dark liquid brown, seemed fixed on the sapper.

  He shivered, his gaze flicking once again to Blind. At Icarium's side … so close… He understood that proximity all too clearly, as did Mappo. If bargains could be struck with a House of the Azath, then Shadowthrone had managed it. The Hounds would not be taken—as much as Tremorlor would have yearned for such prizes, for the abrupt and absolute removal of these ancient killers—no, the deal involved a much greater prize…

  Mappo stood on the Jhag's other side, the burnished long-bone club raised before him. A surge of compassion flooded Fiddler. The Trell was being torn apart from within. He had more than just shapeshifters to guard against—there was, after all, the companion he loved as a brother.

  Crokus and Apsalar, the former with his fighting knives out and held in admirably relaxed grips, flanked Servant. Pust slunk along a step behind them.

  And this is what we are. This, and no more than this.

  He had paused before the bend in response to an instinctive hesitation that seemed to wrap an implacable grip around his spine. Go no farther. Wait. The sapper sighed. Wait for what?

  His eyes, still wandering over the group behind him, caught on something, focused.

  Rood's hackles had begun a slow rise.

  'Hood!'

  Movement exploded all around him, a massive shape barrelling into view directly ahead with a roar that turned Fiddler's marrow into spikes of ice. And above, a thudding flapping of leathery wings, huge talons darting down.

  The charging Soletaken was a brown bear, as big as a noble-born's carriage, both flanks brushing the root walls of the maze, where arms were pulled, stretched, hands closed on thick fur. The sapper saw one unhuman limb torn from the trio of joints that formed its shoulder, spurting old, black blood. Ignoring these desperate efforts as if they were no more than burrs and thorns, the bear lunged forward.

  Fiddler dropped to the root-bound floor—the bark hot and greasy with some kind of sweat—sparing no breath to shout even a warning. Not that it was needed.

  The bear's underside swept over him in a blur, the fur pale and smeared in blood, then it was past, even as the sapper rolled to follow its attack.

  The bear's attention was fixed exclusively on the blood-red enkar'al hovering before it—another Soletaken, shrieking with rage. The bear's paws lashed out, closing on empty air as the winged reptile darted backward—and into the reach of Mappo's club.

  Fiddler could not fathom the strength behind the Trell's two-handed, full-shouldered swing. The weapon's tusked head struck the enkar'al's ridged chest and plunged inward with a snapping of bones. The enkar'al, itself the size of an ox, seemed literally to crumple and fold around that blow. Wing bones broke, neck and head were thrown forward, eyes and nostrils spraying blood.

  The reptilian Soletaken was dead before it struck the root wall. Talons and hands received and held it.

  'No!' Mappo roared.

  Fiddler's gaze darted to Icarium—but the Jhag was not the cause of the Trell's cry, for the Hound Rood had attacked the massive bear, striking it from the side.

  With a scream the Soletaken lurched sideways, up against the root wall. Few were the reaching limbs that could hold fast such a beast, yet one awaited it, one wrapped its green-skinned length around the bear's thick neck, and that one possessed a strength beyond even the Soletaken's.

  Rood clamped a flailing paw in its jaws, crushing bones, then tore the appendage away with savage shakes of its head.

  'Messremb!' the Trell bellowed, struggling in Icarium's restraining grip. 'An ally!'

  'A Soletaken!' Iskaral Pust shrieked, dancing around.

  Mappo sagged suddenly. 'A friend,' he whispered.

  And Fiddler understood. The first friend lost this day. The first…

  Tremorlor laid claim to both shapeshifters as roots snaked out, wrapping around the newcomers. The two beasts now faced each other on their respective walls—their eternal resting places. The Soletaken bear, blood gushing from the stump at the end of one limb, struggled on, but even its prodigious strength was useless against the otherworldly might of the Azath and the arm that held it, now tightening. Messremb's constricted throat struggled to find air. The red rims around its dark-brown eyes took on a bluish cast, the eyes bulging from their damp, streaked nests of fur.

  Rood had pulled away and was placidly devouring the severed paw, bones and flesh and fur.

  'Mappo,' Icarium said, 'see that stranger's arm crushing the life from him—do you understand? Not an eternal prison for Messremb. Hood will take him—death will take him, as it did the enkar'al…'

  The entwining roots from the opposing walls reached out to each other, almost touching.

  'The maze finds a new wall,' Crokus said.

  'Quickly then,' Fiddler snapped, only now regaining his feet. 'Everyone to this side.'

  They moved on, silent once again. Fiddler found his hands trembling incessantly now where they gripped his pitiful weapon. The strengths and savagery he had witnessed minutes earlier clashed with such alarm that it left his mind numb.

  We cannot survive this. A hundred Hounds of Shadow would not be enough. Such shapeshifting creatures have arrived in their thousands, all here, all in Tremorlor's grounds—how many will reach the House? Only the strongest. The strongest… And what is it we dare? To step within the House, to find the gate that will take us to Malaz City, to the Deadhouse itself. Gods, we are but minor players… with one exception, a man we cannot afford to unleash, a man even the Azath fears.

  Sounds of fierce battle assailed them from all sides. The other corridors of this infernal maze played host to a mayhem that Fiddler knew they themselves would soon be unable to avoid. Indeed, those terrible sounds had grown louder, closer. We're getting nearer the House. We're all converging…

  He stopped, turning towards the others. He left his warning unspoken, for every face, every set of eyes that met his, bespoke the same knowledge.

  Claws clattered ahead and the sapper whirled to see Shan arrive, slowing quickly from a frantic run. Her flanks were heaving, tracked in countless wounds.

  Oh, Hood…

  Another sound reached them, approaching from up the trail, from where the Hound had just come.

  'He was warned!' Icarium cried. 'Gryllen! You were warned!'

  Mappo had wrapped his arms around the Jhag. Icarium's sudden surge of anger stilled the air on all sides—as if an entire warren had drawn breath. The Jhag was motionless in that embrace, yet the sapper saw the Trell's arms strain, stretch to an unseen force. The sound that broke from Mappo was a thing of such pain, such distress and fear that Fiddler sagged, tears starting from his eyes.

  The Hound Blind stepped away from Icarium's side, and the shock of seeing her tail dip jolted through the sapper.

  Rood and Baran joined Shan, forming a nervous barrier—leaving Fiddler on the wrong side. He scrambled back, his limbs moving jerkily, as if weakened by a gallon of wine in his veins. His gaze held on Icarium, as the edge they now all tottered on finally revealed itself, promising horror.

  All three Hounds flinched and jolted back a step. Fiddler spun about. The path ahead was closed into a new wall, a seething, swarming wall. Oh, my, we meet again.

  The girl was no more than eleven or twelve, wearing a leather vest on which was stitched overlapping bronze scales—flattened coins, in fact—and the spear she held in her hands was heavy enough to waver as she resolutely maintained her guard stance.

  Felisin glanced down at the basketful of braided flo
wers at the girl's bare, dusty feet. 'You've some skill with those,' she said.

  The young sentry glanced again at Leoman, then the Toblakai.

  'You may lower your weapon,' the desert warrior said.

  The spear's trembling point dropped down to the sand.

  The Toblakai's voice was hard, 'Kneel before Sha'ik Reborn!'

  She was prostrate in an instant.

  Felisin reached down and touched the girl's head. 'You may rise. What is your name?'

  As she climbed hesitantly upright, she answered with a shake of her head.

  'Likely one of the orphans,' Leoman said. 'None to speak for her in the naming rite. Thus, she has no name, yet she would give her life for you, Sha'ik Reborn.'

  'If she would give her life for me, then she has earned a name. So with the other orphans.'

  'As you wish—who then will speak for them?'

  'I shall, Leoman.'

  The edge of the oasis was marked by low, crumbling mud-brick walls and a thin scatter of palms under which sand crabs scuttled through dry fronds. A dozen white goats stood in nearby shade, light-grey eyes turned towards the newcomers.

  Felisin reached down and collected one of the bracelets of braided flowers. She slipped it over her right wrist.

  They continued on into the heart of the oasis. The air grew cooler; the pools of shadow they passed through were a shock after so long under unrelieved sunlight. The endless ruins revealed that a city had once stood here, a city of spacious gardens and courtyards, pools and fountains, all reduced to stumps and low ridges.

  Corrals ringed the camp, the horses within them looking healthy and fit.

  'How large is this oasis?' Heboric asked.

  'Can you not enquire of the ghosts?' Felisin asked.

  'I'd rather not. This city's destruction was anything but peaceful. Ancient invaders, crushing the last of the First Empire's island enclaves. The thin sky-blue potsherds under our feet are First Empire, the thick red ones are from the conquerors. From something delicate to something brutal, a pattern repeated through all of history. These truths weary me, down to my very soul.'