‘Heboric!’ She struggled against him, but he would not relent. They reached the flap and he pushed her outside. ‘What are you—’ A hard shove and she stumbled back.
Through a flare of wards.
Sha’ik slowly righted herself. She must have stumbled. Oh yes, a conversation with Ghost Hands. All is well. I’m relieved by that, for it allows me to think on more important things. My nest of betrayers, for example. Must have words with Bidithal again tonight. Yes . . .
She turned from the ex-priest’s tent and made her way back to the palace.
Overhead, the stars of the desert sky were shimmering, as they often did when the goddess had come close . . . Sha’ik wondered what had drawn her this time. Perhaps no more than casting a protective eye on her Chosen One . . .
She was unmindful—as was her goddess—of the barely visible shape that slipped out from the entrance to Heboric’s tent, flowing in a blur into the nearest shadows. Unmindful, also, of the scent that barbed shape now followed.
Westward, to the city’s edge, and then onto the trail, padding between the stone trees, towards a distant glade.
Bidithal sat in the seething shadows, alone once more, although the smile remained fixed on his withered face. Febryl had his games, but so did the once High Priest of the Shadow cult. Even betrayers could be betrayed, after all, a sudden turning of the knife in the hand.
And the sands would fold one more time, the way they did when the air breathed hard, in, out, back, forth, stirring and shifting the grains as would waves against a beach, to lay one layer over another in thin seams of colour. There were no limits to the number of layers, and this Febryl and his fellow conspirators would soon discover, to their grief.
They sought the warren for themselves. It had taken Bidithal a long time to unveil that truth, that deep-buried motivation, for it had remained in the silence between every spoken word. This was not a simple, mundane struggle for power. No. This was usurpation. Expropriation—a detail that itself whispered of yet deeper secrets. They wanted the warren . . . but why? A question yet to be answered, but find an answer he would, and soon.
In this, he knew, the Chosen One relied upon him, and he would not fail her. In so far as what she expects from me, yes, I will deliver. Of course, there are other issues that extend far beyond Sha’ik, this goddess and the Whirlwind Warren she would rule. The shape of the pantheon itself is at stake . . . my long-overdue vengeance against those foreign pretenders to the Throne of Shadow.
Even now, if he listened very—very—carefully, he could hear them. And they were coming. Closer, ever closer.
A tremble of fear took his limbs, and shadows scurried away from him momentarily, only returning when he had settled once more. Rashan . . . and Meanas. Meanas and Thyr. Thyr and Rashan. The three children of the Elder Warrens. Galain, Emurlahn and Thyrllan. Should it be so surprising that they war once more? For do not we ever inherit the spites of our fathers and mothers?
But a ghost of that fear remained. He had not called them, after all. Had not understood the truth of what lay beneath the Whirlwind Warren, the reason why the warren was held in this single place and nowhere else. Had not comprehended how the old battles never died, but simply slept, every bone in the sand restless with memory.
Bidithal raised his hands and the army of shadows crowded within his temple gathered closer.
‘My children,’ he whispered, beginning the Closing Chant.
‘Father.’
‘Do you remember?’
‘We remember.’
‘Do you remember the dark?’
‘We remember the dark. Father—’
‘Ask it and close this moment, children.’
‘Do you remember the dark?’
The priest’s smile broadened. A simple question, one that could be asked of anyone, anyone at all. And perhaps they would understand. But probably not. Yet I understand it.
Do you remember the dark?
‘I remember.’
As, with sighs, the shadows dispersed, Bidithal stiffened once more to that almost inaudible call. He shivered again. They were getting close indeed.
And he wondered what they would do, when they finally arrived.
There were eleven in all. His chosen.
Korbolo Dom leaned back on his cushions, eyes veiled as he studied the silent, shrouded line of figures standing before him. The Napan held a goblet carved from crystal in his right hand, in which swirled a rare wine from the Grisian valleys on Quon Tali. The woman who had kept him amused earlier this night was asleep, her head resting on his right thigh. He had plied her with enough durhang to ensure oblivion for the next dozen bells, though it was the expedience of security rather than any insipid desire on his part that necessitated such measures.
Drawn from his Dogslayers, the eleven killers were appallingly skilled. Five of them had been personal assassins to Holy Falah’dan in the days before the Empire, rewarded with gifts of alchemy and sorcery to maintain their youthful appearance and vigour.
Three of the remaining six were Malazan—Korbolo Dom’s own, created long ago, when he realized he had cause to worry about the Claw. Cause . . . now that’s a simplification almost quaint in its coyness. A multitude of realizations, of sudden discoveries, of knowledge I had never expected to gain—of things I had believed long dead and gone. There had been ten such bodyguards, once. Evidence of the need for them stood before him now. Three left, the result of a brutal process of elimination, leaving only those with the greatest skill and the most fortuitous alliance of Oponn’s luck—two qualities that fed each other well.
The remaining three assassins were from various tribes, each of whom had proved his worth during the Chain of Dogs. The arrow from one had slain Sormo E’nath, from a distance of seventy paces, on the Day of Pure Blood. There had been other arrows striking true, but it had been the one through the warlock’s neck—the assassin’s—that had filled the lad’s lungs with blood, that had drowned his very breath, so that he could not call upon his damned spirits for healing . . .
Korbolo sipped wine, slowly licked his lips. ‘Kamist Reloe has chosen among you,’ he rumbled after a moment, ‘for the singular task that will trigger all that subsequently follows. And I am content with his choices. But do not think this diminishes the rest of you. There will be tasks—essential tasks—on that night. Here in this very camp. I assure you, you will get no sleep that night, so prepare yourselves. Also, two of you will remain with me at all times, for I can guarantee that my death will be sought before that fateful dawn arrives.’
I expect you to die in my place. Of course. It is what you are sworn to do, should the need arise.
‘Leave me now,’ he said, waving his free hand.
The eleven assassins bowed in unison, then filed silently out of the tent.
Korbolo lifted the woman’s head from his thigh, by the hair—noting how she remained insensate to the rough handling—and rose from the cushions, letting her head thump back down. He paused to drink a mouthful of the wine, then stepped from the modest dais and approached the side chamber that had been partitioned off by silk hangings.
Within the private room, Kamist Reloe was pacing. Hands wringing, shoulders drawn up, neck taut.
Korbolo leaned against a support post, his mouth twisting into a slight sneer at seeing the High Mage’s fretting. ‘Which of your many fears plagues you now, Kamist? Oh, do not answer. I admit I’ve ceased caring.’
‘Foolish complacency on your part, then,’ the High Mage snapped. ‘Do you think we are the only clever people?’
‘In the world? No. Here, in Raraku, well, that’s another matter. Who should we fear, Kamist Reloe? Sha’ik? Her goddess devours her acuity—day by day, the lass grows less and less aware of what goes on around her. And that goddess barely takes note of us—oh, there are suspicions, perhaps, but that is all. Thus. Who else? L’oric? I’ve known many a man like him—creating mystery around themselves—and I have found that what it usually hides is an
empty vessel. He is all pose and nothing more.’
‘You are wrong in that, I fear, but no, I do not worry about L’oric.’
‘Who else? Ghost Hands? The man’s vanished into his own pit of hen’bara. Leoman? He’s not here and I’ve plans for his return. Toblakai? I think we’ve seen the last of him. Who is left? Why, none other than Bidithal. But Febryl swears he almost has him in our fold—it’s simply a question of discovering what the bastard truly desires. Something squalid and disgusting, no doubt. He is slave to his vices, is Bidithal. Offer him ten thousand orphaned girls and the smile will never leave his ugly face.’
Kamist Reloe wrapped his arms about himself as he continued pacing. ‘It’s not who we know to be among us that is the source of my concerns, Korbolo Dom, it’s who is among us that we do not know.’
The Napan scowled. ‘And how many hundreds of spies do we have in this camp? And what of the Whirlwind Goddess herself—do you imagine she will permit the infiltration of strangers?’
‘Your flaw, Korbolo Dom, is that you think in a strictly linear fashion. Ask that question again, only this time ask it in the context of the goddess having suspicions about us.’
The High Mage was too distracted to notice the Napan’s half-step forward, one hand lifting. But Korbolo Dom’s blow died at that very moment, as the import of Kamist Reloe’s challenge reached him. His eyes slowly widened. Then he shook his head. ‘No, that would be too great a risk to take. A Claw let loose in this camp would endanger everyone—there would be no way to predict their targets—’
‘Would there be a need to?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We are the Dogslayers, Korbolo Dom. The murderers of Coltaine, the Seventh, and the legions at Aren. More, we also possess the mage cadre for the Army of the Apocalypse. Finally, who will be commanding that army on the day of battle? How many reasons do the Claw need to strike at us, and at us specifically? What chance would Sha’ik have if we were all dead? Why kill Sha’ik at all? We can fight this war without her and her damned goddess—we’ve done it before. And we’re about to—’
‘Enough of that, Kamist Reloe. I see your point. So, you fear that the goddess will permit a Claw to infiltrate . . . in order to deal with us. With you, Febryl and myself. An interesting possibility, but I still think it remote. The goddess is too heavy-handed, too ensnared by emotion, to think with such devious, insidious clarity.’
‘She does not have to initiate the scheme, Korbolo Dom. She need only comprehend the offer, and then decide either to acquiesce or not. It is not her clarity that is relevant, but that of Laseen’s Claw. And do you doubt the cleverness of Topper?’
Growling under his breath, Korbolo Dom looked away for a moment. ‘No,’ he finally admitted. ‘But I do rely on the goddess being in no mind to accept communication from the Empress, from Topper, or anyone else who refuses to kneel to her will. You have thought yourself into a nightmare, Kamist Reloe, and now you invite me to join you. I decline the offer, High Mage. We are well protected, and too far advanced in our efforts for all of this fretting.’
‘I have survived this long, Korbolo Dom, because of my talent in anticipating what my enemies would attempt. Soldiers say no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. But the game of subterfuge is the very opposite. Plans derive from persistent contact with the enemy. Thus, you proceed on your terms, and I will proceed on mine.’
‘As you like. Now, leave me. It is late, and I would sleep.’
The High Mage stopped pacing to fix the Napan with an unreadable look for a moment, then he swung about and left the chamber.
Korbolo listened until he heard the flap in the outer room swish open, then close. He listened on, and was satisfied to hear the draws being tightened by one of his bodyguards positioned just outside the entrance.
Draining the last of the wine—damned expensive but tastes no different from the dockside swill I choked down on the Isle—he flung the goblet down and strode to the mass of cushions at the far end. Beds in every room. I wonder what that signifies of my personality? Then again, those other ones are not for sleeping in, are they. No, only this one . . .
In the front room on the other side of the silk partitions, the woman lay unmoving on her own heap of cushions, where Korbolo had left her some time back.
Continuous, overwhelming imbibing of durhang—like any other intoxicant—created a process of diminishment of its effects. Until, while a layer of insensate numbness still persisted—a useful barrier against such things as having her head yanked up by her hair then dropped back down—cool awareness remained beneath it.
Advantageous, as well, the rituals her master had inflicted upon her, rituals that eliminated the weakness of pleasure. There could be no loss of control, not any more, for her mind no longer warred with feelings, for of feelings she had none. An easy surrender, she had found to her delight, for there had been little in her life before her initiation to seed warm remembrances of childhood.
And so she was well suited to this task. Uttering the right sounds of pleasure to disguise her indifference to all of Korbolo Dom’s peculiar preferences. And lying motionless, unmindful even of a throat slowly filling with phlegm from the near-liquid smoke of the durhang, for as much time as was needed, before the subtle, tasteless drops she had added to his wine took effect.
When she could hear his deep, slow breaths that told her he would not easily awaken, she rolled onto her side in a fit of coughing. When it had passed she paused again, just to be certain that the Napan still slept. Satisfied, she clambered to her feet and tottered to the tent flap.
Fumbled with the ties until a gruff voice from just beyond said, ‘Scillara, off to the latrines again?’
And another voice softly laughed and added, ‘It’s a wonder there’s any meat on her at all, the way she heaves night after night.’
‘It’s the rust-leaf and the bitter berries crushed in with the durhang,’ the other replied, as his hands took over the task of loosening the draws, and the flap was drawn aside.
Scillara staggered out, bumping her way between the two guards.
The hands that reached out to steady invariably found unusual places to rest, and squeeze.
She would have enjoyed that, once, in a slightly offended, irritated way that none the less tickled with pleasure. But now, it was nothing but clumsy lust to be endured.
As everything else in this world had to be endured, while she waited for her final reward, the blissful new world beyond death. ‘The left hand of life, holding all misery. And the right hand—yes, the one with the glittering blade, dear—the right hand of death, holding, as it does, the reward you would offer to others, and then take upon yourself. At your chosen moment.’
Her master’s words made sense, as they always did. Balance was the heart of all things, after all. And life—that time of pain and grief—was but one side of that balance. ‘The harder, the more miserable, the more terrible and disgusting your life, child, the greater the reward beyond death . . .’ Thus, as she knew, it all made sense.
No need, then, to struggle. Acceptance was the only path to walk.
Barring this one. She weaved her way between the tent rows. The Dogslayers’ encampment was precise and ordered, in the Malazan fashion—a detail she knew well from her days as a child when her mother followed the train of the Ashok Regiment. Before that regiment went overseas, leaving hundreds destitute—lovers and their get, servants and scroungers. Her mother had then sickened and died. She had a father, of course, one of the soldiers. Who might be alive, or dead, but either way was thoroughly indifferent to the child he had left behind.
Balance.
Difficult with a head full of durhang, even inured to it as she had become.
But there were the latrines, down this slope, and onto the wooden walkways spanning the trench. Smudge-pots smouldering to cover some of the stench and keep the flies away. Buckets beside the holed seats, filled with hand-sized bundles of grass. Larger open-topped casks w
ith water, positioned out over the trench and fixed to the walkways.
Hands held out to either side, Scillara navigated carefully across one of the narrow bridges.
Long-term camp trenches such as this one held more than just human wastes. Garbage was regularly dumped in by soldiers and others—or what had passed for garbage with them. But for the orphans of this squalid city, some of that refuse was seen as treasure. To be cleaned, repaired and sold.
And so, figures swarmed in the darkness below.
She reached the other side, her bare feet sinking into the mud made by splashes that had reached the ridge. ‘I remember the dark!’ she sang out, voice throaty from years of durhang smoke.
There was a scrabbling from the trench, and a small girl, sheathed in excrement, clambered up to her, teeth flashing white. ‘Me too, sister.’
Scillara drew out a small bag of coins from her sash. Their master frowned on such gestures, and indeed, they ran contrary to his teachings, but she could not help herself. She pressed it into the girl’s hands. ‘For food.’
‘He will be displeased, sister—’
‘And of the two of us, I alone will suffer a moment of torment. So be it. Now, I have words from this night, to be brought to our master—’
He had always walked with a pitching gait, low to the ground, sufficient to have earned him a host of unflattering nicknames. Toad, crab-legs . . . the names children gave each other, some of which were known to persist into adulthood. But Heboric had worked hard as a youth—long before his first, fateful visit into a temple of Fener—to excoriate those appellations, to eventually earn Light Touch, in response to certain skills he had acquired on the streets. But now, his sidling walk had undergone a transformation, yielding to an instinctive desire to drop even lower, even to using his hands to propel him along.
Had he considered it, he would have concluded, sourly, that he moved less like a cat than an ape, such as those found in the jungles of Dal Hon. Unpleasant to the eye, perhaps, but efficacious none the less.
House of Chains Page 69