House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  Kalam reeled back, barely in time to avoid the deadly fount, and dropped into another roll.

  Three times over, to end finally on his back once more. Paralysis stealing through him once again.

  He stared upward at the spinning stars . . . until the darkness devoured them.

  In the ancient fortress that had once functioned as a monastery for the Nameless Ones, but had been old even then—its makers long forgotten—there was only darkness. On its lowermost level there was a single chamber, its floor rifted above a rushing underground river.

  In the icy depths, chained by Elder sorcery to the bedrock, lay a massive, armoured warrior, Thelomen Toblakai, pure of blood, that had known the curse of demonic possession, a possession that had devoured its own sense of self—the noble warrior had ceased to exist long, long ago.

  Yet now, the body writhed in its magical chains. The demon was gone, fled with the outpouring of blood—blood that should never have existed, given the decayed state of the creature, yet existed it had, and the river had swept it to freedom. To a distant waterhole, where a bull enkar’al—a beast in its prime—had been crouching to drink.

  The enkar’al had been alone for some time—not even the spoor of others of its kind could be found anywhere nearby. Though it had not sensed the passage of time, decades had in fact passed since it last encountered its own kind. Indeed, it had been fated—given a normal course of life—to never again mate. With its death, the extinction of the enkar’al anywhere east of the Jhag Odhan would have been complete.

  But now its soul raged in a strange, gelid body—no wings, no thundering hearts, no prey-laden scent to draw from the desert’s night air. Something held it down, and imprisonment was proving a swift path to mindless madness.

  Far above, the fortress was silent and dark. The air was motionless once more, barring the faint sighs from draughts that flowed in from the outer chambers.

  Rage and terror. Unanswered, except by the promise of eternity.

  Or so it would have remained.

  Had the Beast Thrones stayed unoccupied.

  Had not the reawakened wolf gods known an urgent need . . . for a champion.

  Their presence reached into the creature’s soul, calmed it with visions of a world where there were enkar’al in the muddy skies, where bull males locked jaws in the fierce heat of the breeding season, the females banking in circles far above. Visions that brought peace to the ensnared soul—though with it came a deep sorrow, for the body that now clothed it was . . . wrong.

  A time of service, then. The reward—to rejoin its kin in the skies of another realm.

  Beasts were not strangers to hope, nor unmindful of such things as rewards.

  Besides, this champion would taste blood . . . and soon.

  For the moment, however, there was a skein of sorcerous bindings to unravel . . .

  Limbs stiff as death. But the heart laboured on.

  A shadow slipping over Kalam’s face awakened him. He opened his eyes.

  The wrinkled visage of an old man hovered above him, swimming behind waves of heat. Dal Honese, hairless, jutting ears, his expression twisted into a scowl. ‘I was looking for you!’ he accused, in Malazan. ‘Where have you been? What are you doing lying out here? Don’t you know it’s hot?’

  Kalam closed his eyes again. ‘Looking for me?’ He shook his head. ‘No-one’s looking for me,’ he continued, forcing his eyes open once more despite the glare lancing up from the ground around the two men. ‘Well, not any more, that is—’

  ‘Idiot. Heat-addled fool. Stupid—but maybe I should be crooning, encouraging even? Will that deceive him? Likely. A change in tactics, yes. You! Did you kill this enkar’al? Impressive! Wondrous! But it stinks. Nothing worse than a rotting enkar’al, except for the fact that you’ve fouled yourself. Lucky for you your urinating friend found me, then led me here. Oh, and it’s marked the enkar’al, too—what a stench! Sizzling hide! Anyway, it’ll carry you. Yes, back to my haunted abode—’

  ‘Who in Hood’s name are you?’ Kalam demanded, struggling to rise.

  Though the paralysis was gone, he was crusted in dried blood, the puncture wounds burning like coals, his every bone feeling brittle.

  ‘Me? You do not know? You do not recognize the very famosity exuding from me? Famosity? There must be such a word. I used it! The act of being famous. Of course. Most devoted servant of Shadow! Highest Archpriest Iskaral Pust! God to the bhok’arala, bane of spiders, Master Deceiver of all the world’s Soletaken and D’ivers! And now, your saviour! Provided you have something for me, that is, something to deliver. A bone whistle? A small bag, perchance? Given to you in a shadowy realm, by an even shadowier god? A bag, you fool, filled with dusky diamonds?’

  ‘You’re the one, are you?’ Kalam groaned. ‘The gods help us. Aye, I have the diamonds—’ He tried to sit up, reaching for the pouch tucked under his belt—and caught a momentary glimpse of the azalan demon, flowing amidst shadows behind the priest, until oblivion found him.

  When he awoke once more he was lying on a raised stone platform that suspiciously resembled an altar. Oil lamps flickered from ledges on the walls. The room was small, the air acrid.

  Healing salves had been applied—and likely sorcery as well—leaving him feeling refreshed, though his joints remained stiff, as if he had not moved for some time. His clothing had been removed, a thin blanket stiff with grime laid over him. His throat ached with a raging thirst.

  The assassin slowly sat up, looking down at the purple weals where the enkar’al’s talons had plunged, then almost jumped at a scurrying sound across the floor—a bhok’aral, casting a single, absurdly guilty, glance over a knobby shoulder a moment before darting out through the doorway.

  A dusty jug of water and a clay cup lay on a reed mat on the stone floor. Flinging the blanket aside, Kalam moved towards it.

  A bloom of shadows in one corner of the chamber caught his attention as he poured a cup, so he was not surprised to see Iskaral Pust standing there when the shadows faded.

  The priest was hunched down, looking nervously at the doorway, then tiptoeing up to the assassin. ‘All better now, yes?’

  ‘Is there need to whisper?’ Kalam asked.

  The man flinched. ‘Quiet! My wife!’

  ‘Is she sleeping?’

  Iskaral Pust’s small face was so like a bhok’aral’s that the assassin was wondering at the man’s bloodlines—no, Kalam, don’t be ridiculous—‘Sleeping?’ the priest sputtered. ‘She never sleeps! No, you fool, she hunts!’

  ‘Hunts? What does she hunt?’

  ‘Not what. Who. She hunts for me, of course.’ His eyes glittered as he stared at Kalam. ‘But has she found me? No! We’ve not seen each other for months! Hee hee!’ He jutted his head closer. ‘It’s a perfect marriage. I’ve never been happier. You should try it.’

  Kalam poured himself another cup. ‘I need to eat—’ But Iskaral Pust was gone. He looked around, bemused.

  Sandalled feet approached from the corridor without, then a wild-haired old woman leapt in through the doorway. Dal Honese—not surprisingly. She was covered in cobwebs. She glared about. ‘Where is he? He was here, wasn’t he? I can smell him! The bastard was here!’

  Kalam shrugged. ‘Look, I’m hungry—’

  ‘Do I look appetising?’ she snapped. A quick, appraising glance at Kalam. ‘Mind you, you do!’ She began searching the small room, sniffing at corners, crouching to peer into the jug. ‘I know every room, every hiding place,’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘And why not? When veered, I was everywhere—’

  ‘You’re a Soletaken? Ah, spiders . . .’

  ‘Oh, aren’t you a clever and long one!’

  ‘Why not veer again? Then you could search—’

  ‘If I veered, I’d be the one hunted! Oh no, old Mogora’s not stupid, she won’t fall for that! I’ll find him! You watch!’ She scurried from the room. Kalam sighed. With luck, his stay with these two would be a short one.

  Iskar
al Pust’s voice whispered in his ear. ‘That was close!’

  Cheekbone and orbital ridge were both shattered, the pieces that remained held in place by strips of withered tendon and muscle. Had Onrack possessed anything more than a shrunken, mummified nugget for an eye, it would have been torn away by the Tiste Liosan’s ivory scimitar.

  There was, of course, no effect on his vision, for his senses existed in the ghostly fire of the Tellann Ritual—the unseen aura hovering around his mangled body, burning with memories of completeness, of vigour. Even so, the severing of his left arm created a strange, queasy sense of conflict, as if the wound bled in both the world of the ritual ghost-shape and in the physical world. A seeping away of power, of self, leaving the T’lan Imass warrior with vaguely confused thoughts, a malaise of ephemeral . . . thinness.

  He stood motionless, watching his kin prepare for the ritual. He was outside them, now, no longer able to conjoin his spirit with theirs. From this jarring fact there was emerging, in Onrack’s mind, a strange shifting of perspective. He saw only their physicality now—the ghost-shapes were invisible to his sight.

  Withered corpses. Ghastly. Devoid of majesty, a mockery of all that was once noble. Duty and courage had been made animate, and this was all the T’lan Imass were, and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, without choice, such virtues as duty and courage were transformed into empty, worthless words. Without mortality, hovering like an unseen sword overhead, meaning was without relevance, no matter the nature—or even the motivation behind—an act. Any act.

  Onrack believed he was finally seeing, when fixing his gaze upon his once-kin, what all those who were not T’lan Imass saw, when looking upon these horrific, undead warriors.

  An extinct past refusing to fall to dust. Brutal reminders of rectitude and intransigence, of a vow elevated into insanity.

  And this is how I have been seen. Perhaps how I am still seen. By Trull Sengar. By these Tiste Liosan. Thus. How, then, shall I feel? What am I supposed to feel? And when last did feelings even matter?

  Trull Sengar spoke beside him. ‘Were you anyone else, I would hazard to read you as being thoughtful, Onrack.’ He was seated on a low wall, the box of Moranth munitions at his feet.

  The Tiste Liosan had pitched a camp nearby, a picket line paced out and bulwarks of rubble constructed, three paces between each single-person tent, horses within a staked-out rope corral—in all, the precision and diligence verging on the obsessive.

  ‘Conversely,’ Trull continued after a moment, his eyes on the Liosan, ‘perhaps your kind are indeed great thinkers. Solvers of every vast mystery. Possessors of all the right answers . . . if only I could pose the right questions. Thankful as I am for your companionship, Onrack, I admit to finding you immensely frustrating.’

  ‘Frustrating. Yes. We are.’

  ‘And your companions intend to dismantle what’s left of you once we return to our home realm. If I was in your place, I’d be running for the horizon right now.’

  ‘Flee?’ Onrack considered the notion, then nodded. ‘Yes, this is what the renegades—those we hunt—did. And yes, now I understand them.’

  ‘They did more than simply flee,’ Trull said. ‘They found someone or something else to serve, to avow allegiance to . . . while at the moment, at least, that option is not available to you. Unless, of course, you choose those Liosan.’

  ‘Or you.’

  Trull shot him a startled look, then grinned. ‘Amusing.’

  ‘Of course,’ Onrack added, ‘Monok Ochem would view such a thing as a crime, no different from that which has been committed by the renegades.’

  The T’lan Imass had nearly completed their preparations. The bonecaster had inscribed a circle, twenty paces across, in the dried mud with a sharpened bhederin rib, then had scattered seeds and dust-clouds of spores within the ring. Ibra Gholan and his two warriors had raised the equivalent of a sighting stone—an elongated chunk of mortared fired bricks from a collapsed building wall—a dozen paces outside the circle, and were making constant adjustments beneath the confusing play of light from the two suns, under Monok Ochem’s directions.

  ‘That won’t be easy,’ Trull observed, watching the T’lan Imass shifting the upright stone, ‘so I suppose I can expect to keep my blood for a while longer.’

  Onrack slowly swung his misshapen head to study the Tiste Edur. ‘It is you who should be fleeing, Trull Sengar.’

  ‘Your bonecaster explained that they needed only a drop or two.’

  My bonecaster . . . No longer. ‘True, if all goes well.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it?’

  ‘The Tiste Liosan. Kurald Thyrllan—this is the name they give their warren. Seneschal Jorrude is not a sorcerer. He is a warrior-priest.’

  Trull frowned. ‘It is the same for the Tiste Edur, for my people, Onrack—’

  ‘And as such, the seneschal must kneel before his power. Whereas a sorcerer commands power. Your approach is fraught, Trull Sengar. You assume that a benign spirit gifts you that power. If that spirit is usurped, you may not even know it. And then, you become a victim, a tool, manipulated to serve unknown purposes.’

  Onrack fell silent, and watched the Tiste Edur . . . as a deathly pallor stole the life from Trull’s eyes, as the expression became one of horrified revelation. And so I give answer to a question you were yet to ask. Alas, this does not make me all-knowing. ‘The spirit that grants the seneschal his power may be corrupted. There is no way to know . . . until it is unleashed. And even then, malign spirits are highly skilled at hiding. The one named Osseric is . . . lost. Osric, as humans know him. No, I do not know the source of Monok Ochem’s knowledge in this matter. Thus, the hand behind the seneschal’s power is probably not Osseric, but some other entity, hidden behind the guise and the name of Osseric. Yet these Tiste Liosan proceed unawares.’

  It was clear that Trull Sengar was, for the moment, unable to offer comment, or pose questions, so Onrack simply continued—wondering at the sudden extinction of his own reticence—‘The seneschal spoke of their own hunt. In pursuit of trespassers who crossed through their fiery warren. But these trespassers are not the renegades we hunt. Kurald Thyrllan is not a sealed warren. Indeed, it lies close to our own Tellann—for Tellann draws from it. Fire is life and life is fire. Fire is the war against the cold, the slayer of ice. It is our salvation. Bonecasters have made use of Kurald Thyrllan. Probably, others have as well. That such incursions should prove cause for enmity among the Liosan was never considered. For it seemed there were no Tiste Liosan.

  ‘Monok Ochem considers this, now. He cannot help but consider this. Where are these Liosan from? How distant—how remote—their home? Why are they now awakened to resentment? What does the one hidden behind the guise of Osseric now seek? Where—’

  ‘Stop! Please, Onrack, stop! I need to think—I need—’ Trull rose suddenly, flinging a dismissive gesture at the T’lan Imass, then strode off.

  ‘I think,’ Onrack said quietly to himself as he watched the Tiste Edur storm away, ‘that I will revert to reticence.’

  A small chunk of mortared brick had now been positioned in the centre of the ring; its top was being inscribed with slashes and grooves by the bonecaster, and Onrack realized that Monok Ochem had already discerned the celestial patterns of the two suns and the numerous moons that wheeled overhead.

  Colours played constantly over this landscape in sullen blood hues, occasionally overwhelmed by deep blues that limned everything in a cold, almost metallic sheen. At the moment, magenta dominated, a lurid tone as of reflected conflagration. Yet the air remained still and damp, eternally pensive.

  A world aswarm in shadows. The hounds that Onrack had inadvertently freed from their stone prisons had cast scores of them. The battered warrior wondered where the two beasts had gone. He was fairly certain that they were no longer in this realm, in this place known as the Nascent.

  Shadow and spirit reunited . . . the beasts had possessed something . . . unusual. As if ea
ch was shaped of two distinct powers, two aspects chained together. Onrack had unleashed those hounds, yet, on second consideration, perhaps not freed them. Shadow from Dark. That which is cast . . . from that which has cast it. The warrior lowered his gaze to study his own multiple shadows. Was there tension between him and them? Clearly, there was a binding. But he was the master and they his slaves.

  Or so it seemed . . . Silent kin of mine. You precede. You follow. You strive on my flanks. Huddle beneath me. Your world finds its shape from my bone and flesh. Yet your breadth and length belong to Light. You are the bridge between worlds, yet you cannot be walked. No substance, then. Only perception.

  ‘Onrack, you are closed to us.’

  He lifted his gaze. Monok Ochem stood before him. ‘Yes, Bonecaster. I am closed to you. Do you doubt me?’

  ‘I would know your thoughts.’

  ‘They are . . . insubstantial.’

  Monok Ochem cocked his head. ‘None the less.’

  Onrack was silent for a long moment. ‘Bonecaster. I remain bound to your path.’

  ‘Yet you are severed.’

  ‘The renegade kin must be found. They are our . . . shadows. I now stand between you and them, and so I can guide you. I now know where to look, the signs to seek. Destroy me and you shall lose an advantage in your hunt.’

  ‘You bargain for . . . persistence?’

  ‘I do, Bonecaster.’

  ‘Tell us, then, the path the renegades have taken.’

  ‘I shall . . . when it becomes relevant.’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘No.’

  Monok Ochem stared down at the warrior, then swung away and returned to the circle.

  Tellann commanded that place now. Tundra flowers had erupted from the mud, along with lichen and mosses. Blackflies swarmed at ankle height. A dozen paces beyond stood the four Tiste Liosan, their enamel armour glowing in the strange magenta light.

  Trull Sengar watched from a position fifteen paces to Onrack’s left, his arms tightly crossed about himself, a haunted expression on his lean face.