House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  ‘But why? Are you truly loyal to the notion of apocalypse? Of chaos and destruction?’

  ‘No. I have something else in mind. I must speak with the goddess—before she takes Sha’ik’s soul.’

  Heboric stared at the High Mage for a long time, seeking to discern what L’oric sought from that vengeful, insane goddess.

  ‘There are two Felisins,’ L’oric then murmured, eyes half veiled. ‘Save the one you can, Heboric Light Touch.’

  ‘One day, L’oric,’ Heboric growled, ‘I will discover who you truly are.’

  The High Mage smiled. ‘You will find this simple truth—I am a son who lives without hope of ever matching my father’s stride. That alone, in time, will explain all you need know of me. Go, Destriant. Guard her well.’

  Ghosts pivoted, armour shedding red dust, and saluted as Karsa Orlong limped past. At least these ones, he reflected dully, weren’t shackled in chains.

  The blood trail had led him into a maze of ruins, an unused section of the city notorious for its cellars and pitfalls and precariously leaning walls. He could smell the beast. It was close and, he suspected, cornered.

  Or, more likely, it had decided to make a stand, in a place perfectly suited for an ambush.

  If only the slow, steady patter of dripping blood had not given away its hiding place.

  Karsa kept his gaze averted from that alleyway of inky shadows five paces ahead and to his right. He made his steps uncertain, uneven with pain and hesitation, not all of it feigned. The blood between his hands and the sword’s grip had grown sticky, but still threatened to betray his grasp on the weapon.

  Shadows were shredding the darkness, as if the two elemental forces were at war, with the latter being driven back. Dawn, Karsa realized, was approaching.

  He came opposite the alley.

  And the hound charged.

  Karsa leapt forward, twisting in mid-air to slash his sword two-handed, cleaving an arc into his wake.

  The tip slashed hide, but the beast’s attack had already carried it past. It landed on one foreleg, which skidded out from under it. The hound fell onto one shoulder, then rolled right over.

  Karsa scrambled back to his feet to face it.

  The beast crouched, preparing to charge once again.

  The horse that burst out of a side alley caught both hound and Toblakai by surprise. That the panicked animal had been galloping blind was made obvious as it collided with the hound.

  There had been two riders on the horse. And both were thrown from the saddle, straight over the hound.

  The impact had driven the hound down beneath the wildly stamping hoofs. Somehow, the horse stayed upright, staggering clear with heavy snorts as if seeking to draw breath into stunned lungs. Behind it, the hound’s claws gouged the cobbles as it struggled to right itself.

  Snarling, Karsa lunged forward and plunged the sword’s point into the beast’s neck.

  It shrieked, surged towards the Toblakai.

  Karsa leapt away, dragging his sword after him.

  Blood gushing from the puncture in its throat, the hound rose up on its three legs, weaving, head swaying as it coughed red spume onto the stones.

  A figure darted out from the shadows. The spiked ball at the end of a flail hissed through the air, and thundered into the hound’s head. A second followed, hammering down from above to audibly crack the beast’s thick skull.

  Karsa stepped forward. An overhead two-handed swing finally drove the hound from its wobbling legs.

  Side by side, Leoman and Karsa closed in to finish it. A dozen blows later and the hound was dead.

  Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas then stumbled into view, a broken sword in his hand.

  Karsa wiped the gore from his blade then glared at Leoman. ‘I did not need your help,’ he growled.

  Leoman grinned. ‘But I need yours.’

  Pearl staggered from the trench, clambering over sprawled corpses. Since his rather elegant assassination of Henaras, things had gone decidedly downhill—steeper than that trench behind me. Countless guards, then the ghostly army whose weapons were anything but illusory. His head still ached from Lostara’s kiss—damned woman, just when I thought I’d figured her out . . .

  He’d been cut and slashed at all the way through that damned camp, and now stumbled half blind towards the ruins.

  The darkness was being torn apart on all sides. Kurald Emurlahn was opening like death’s own flower, with the oasis at its dark heart. Beneath the sorcerous pressure of that manifestation, it was all he could do to pitch headlong down the trail.

  So long as Lostara stayed put, they might well salvage something out of all this.

  He came to the edge and paused, studying the pit where he’d left her. No movement. She was either staying low or had left. He padded forward.

  I despise nights like these. Nothing goes as planned—

  Something hard struck him in the side of his head. Stunned, he fell and lay unmoving, his face pressed against the cold, gritty ground.

  A voice rumbled above him. ‘That was for Malaz City. Even so, you still owe me one.’

  ‘After Henaras?’ Pearl mumbled, his words puffing up tiny clouds of dust. ‘You should be owing me one.’

  ‘Her? Not worth counting.’

  Something thumped heavily to the ground beside Pearl. That then groaned.

  ‘All right,’ the Claw sighed—more dust, a miniature Whirlwind—‘I owe you one, then.’

  ‘Glad we’re agreed. Now, make some more noises. Your lass over there’s bound to take a look . . . eventually.’

  Pearl listened to the footfalls pad away. Two sets. The wizard was in no mood to talk, I suppose.

  To me, that is.

  I believe I am sorely humbled.

  Beside him, the trussed shape groaned again.

  Despite himself, Pearl smiled.

  To the east, the sky paled.

  And this night was done.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  On this day, Raraku rises.

  xxxiv.II.1.81 ‘Words of the Prophecy’

  The Book of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic

  THE WHIRLWIND GODDESS HAD ONCE BEEN A RAGING STORM OF WIND and sand. A wall surrounding the young woman who had once been Felisin of House Paran, and who had become Sha’ik, Chosen One and supreme ruler of the Army of the Apocalypse.

  Felisin had been her mother’s name. She had then made it her adopted daughter’s name. Yet she herself had lost it. Occasionally, however, in the deepest hours of night, in the heart of an impenetrable silence of her own making, she caught a glimpse of that girl. As she once had been, the smeared reflection from a polished mirror. Round-cheeked and flushed, a wide smile and bright eyes. A child with a brother who adored her, who would toss her about on one knee as if it was a bucking horse, and her squeals of fear and delight would fill the chamber.

  Her mother had been gifted with visions. This was well known. A respected truth. And that mother’s youngest daughter had dreamed that one day she too would find that talent within her.

  But that gift only came with the goddess, with this spiteful, horrific creature whose soul was far more parched and withered than any desert. And the visions that assailed Sha’ik were murky, fraught things. They were, she had come to realize, not born of any talent or gift. They were the conjurings of fear.

  A goddess’s fear.

  And now the Whirlwind Wall had closed, retracted, had drawn in from the outside world to rage beneath Sha’ik’s sun-darkened skin, along her veins and arteries, careening wild and deafening in her mind.

  Oh, there was power there. Bitter with age, bilious with malice. And whatever fuelled it bore the sour taste of betrayal. A heart-piercing, very personal betrayal. Something that should have healed, that should have numbed beneath thick, tough scar tissue. Spiteful pleasure had kept the wound open, had fed its festering heat, until hate was all that was left. Hate for . . . someone, a hate so ancient it no longer possessed a face.

  In moments of cold re
ason, Sha’ik saw it for what it was. Insane, raised to such extremity that she understood that whatever had been the crime against the goddess, whatever the source of the betrayal, it had not earned such a brutal reaction. The proportions had begun wrong. From the very start. Leading her to suspect that the proclivity for madness had already existed, dark flaws marring the soul that would one day claw its way into ascendancy.

  Step by step, we walk the most horrendous paths. Stride tottering along the edge of an unsuspected abyss. Companions see nothing amiss. The world seems a normal place. Step by step, no different from anyone else—not from the outside. Not even from the inside. Apart from that tautness, that whisper of panic. The vague confusion that threatens your balance.

  Felisin, who was Sha’ik, had come to comprehend this.

  For she had walked that same path.

  Hatred, sweet as nectar.

  I have walked into the abyss.

  I am as mad as that goddess. And this is why she chose me, for we are kindred souls . . .

  Then what is this ledge to which I still cling so desperately? Why do I persist in my belief that I can save myself? That I can return . . . find once more the place where madness cannot be found, where confusion does not exist.

  The place . . . of childhood.

  She stood in the main chamber, the chair that would be a throne behind her, its cushions cool, its armrests dry. She stood, imprisoned in a stranger’s armour. She could almost feel the goddess reaching out to engulf her on all sides—not a mother’s embrace, no, nothing like that at all. This one would suffocate her utterly, would drown out all light, every glimmer of self-awareness.

  Her ego is armoured in hatred. She cannot look in, she can barely see out. Her walk is a shamble, cramped and stiff, a song of rusty fittings and creaking straps. Her teeth gleam in the shadows, but it is a rictus grin.

  Felisin Paran, hold up this mirror at your peril.

  Outside stole the first light of dawn. And Sha’ik reached for her helm.

  L’oric could just make out the Dogslayer positions at the tops of the cobbled ramps. There was no movement over there in the grey light of dawn. It was strange, but not surprising. The night just done would make even the hardest soldier hesitant to raise a gaze skyward, to straighten from a place of hiding to begin the mundane tasks that marked the start of a new day.

  Even so, there was something strange about those trenches.

  He strode along the ridge towards the hilltop where Sha’ik had established her forward post to observe the battle to come. The High Mage ached in every bone. His muscles shouted pain with every step he took.

  He prayed she was there.

  Prayed the goddess would deign to hear his words, his warning, and, finally, his offer.

  All hovered on the cusp. Darkness had been defeated . . . somehow. He wondered at that, but not for long—there was no time for such idle musings. This tortured fragment of Kurald Emurlahn was awakening, and the goddess was about to arrive, to claim it for herself. To fashion a throne. To devour Raraku.

  Ghosts still swirled in the shadows, warriors and soldiers from scores of long-dead civilizations. Wielding strange weapons, their bodies hidden beneath strange armour, their faces mercifully covered by ornate visors. They were singing, although that Tanno song had grown pensive, mournful, sighing soft as the wind. It had begun to rise and fall, a sussuration that chilled L’oric.

  Who will they fight for? Why are they here at all? What do they want?

  The song belonged to the Bridgeburners. Yet it seemed the Holy Desert itself had claimed it, had taken that multitude of ethereal voices for itself. And every soul that had fallen in battle in the desert’s immense history was now gathered in this place.

  The cusp.

  He came to the base of the trail leading up to Sha’ik’s hill. There were desert warriors huddled here and there, wrapped in their ochre telabas, spears thrust upright, iron points glistening with dew as the sun’s fire broke on the east horizon. Companies of Mathok’s light cavalry were forming up on the flats to L’oric’s right. The horses were jittery, the rows shifting uneven and restless. The High Mage could not see Mathok anywhere among them—nor, he realized with a chill, could he see the standards of the warleader’s own tribe.

  He heard horses approach from behind and turned to see Leoman, one of his officers, and Toblakai riding up towards him.

  The Toblakai’s horse was a Jhag, L’oric saw, huge and magnificent in its primal savagery, loping collected and perfectly proportionate to the giant astride its shoulders.

  And that giant was a mess. Preternatural healing had yet to fully repair the terrible wounds on him. His hands were a crimson ruin. One leg had been chewed by vicious, oversized jaws.

  Toblakai and his horse were dragging a pair of objects that bounced and rolled on the ends of chains, and L’oric’s eyes went wide upon seeing what they were.

  He’s killed the Deragoth. He’s taken their heads.

  ‘L’oric!’ Leoman rasped as he drew rein before him. ‘Is she above?’

  ‘I don’t know, Leoman of the Flails.’

  All three dismounted, and L’oric saw Toblakai favouring his mangled leg. A hound’s jaws did that. And then he saw the stone sword on the giant’s back. Ah, he is indeed the one, then. I think the Crippled God has made a terrible mistake . . .

  Gods, he killed the Deragoth.

  ‘Where is Febryl hiding?’ Leoman asked as the four of them began the ascent.

  Toblakai answered. ‘Dead. I forgot to tell you some things. I killed him. And I killed Bidithal. I would have killed Ghost Hands and Korbolo Dom, but I could not find them.’

  L’oric rubbed a hand across his brow, and it came away wet and oily. Yet he could still see his breath.

  Toblakai went on, inexorably. ‘And when I went into Korbolo’s tent, I found Kamist Reloe. He’d been assassinated. So had Henaras.’

  L’oric shook himself and said to Leoman, ‘Did you receive Sha’ik’s last commands? Shouldn’t you be with the Dogslayers?’

  The warrior grunted. ‘Probably. We’ve just come from there.’

  ‘They’re all dead,’ Toblakai said. ‘Slaughtered in the night. The ghosts of Raraku were busy—though none dared oppose me.’ He barked a laugh. ‘As Ghost Hands could tell you, I have ghosts of my own.’

  L’oric stumbled on the trail. He reached up and gripped Leoman’s arm. ‘Slaughtered? All of them?’

  ‘Yes, High Mage. I’m surprised you didn’t know. We still have the desert warriors. We can still win this, just not here and not now. Thus, we need to convince Sha’ik to leave—’

  ‘That won’t be possible,’ L’oric cut in. ‘The goddess is coming, is almost here. It’s too late for that, Leoman. Moments from being too late for everything—’

  They clambered over the crest.

  And there stood Sha’ik.

  Helmed and armoured, her back to them as she stared southward.

  L’oric wanted to cry out. For he saw what his companions could not see. I’m not in time. Oh, gods below—And then he leapt forward, his warren’s portal flaring around him—and was gone.

  The goddess had not lost her memories. Indeed, rage had carved their likenesses, every detail, as mockingly solid and real-seeming as those carved trees in the forest of stone. And she could caress them, crooning her hatred like a lover’s song, lingering with a touch promising murder, though the one who had wronged her was, if not dead, then in a place that no longer mattered.

  The hate was all that mattered now. Her fury at his weaknesses. Oh, others in the tribe played those games often enough. Bodies slipped through the furs from hut to hut when the stars fell into their summer alignment, and she herself had more than once spread her legs to another woman’s husband, or an eager, clumsy youth.

  But her heart had been given to the one man with whom she lived. That law was sacrosanct.

  Oh, but he’d been so sensitive. His hands following his eyes in the fashioning of forbidden imag
es of that other woman, there in the hidden places. He’d used those hands to close about his own heart, to give it to another—without a thought as to who had once held it for herself.

  Another, who would not even give her heart in return—she had seen to that, with vicious words and challenging accusations. Enough to encourage the others to banish her for ever.

  But not before the bitch killed all but one of her kin.

  Foolish, stupid man, to have given his love to that woman.

  Her rage had not died with the Ritual, had not died when she herself—too shattered to walk—had been severed from the Vow and left in a place of eternal darkness. And every curious spirit that had heard her weeping, that had drawn close in sympathy—well, they had fed her hungers, and she had taken their powers. Layer upon layer. For they too had been foolish and stupid, wayward and inclined to squander those powers on meaningless things. But she had a purpose.

  The children swarmed the surface of the world. And who was their mother? None other than the bitch who had been banished.

  And their father?

  Oh yes, she went to him. On that last night. She did. He reeked of her when they dragged him into the light the following morning. Reeked of her. The truth was there in his eyes.

  A look she would—could—never forget.

  Vengeance was a beast long straining at its chains. Vengeance was all she had ever wanted.

  Vengeance was about to be unleashed.

  And even Raraku could not stop it. The children would die.

  The children will die. I will cleanse the world of their beget, the proud-eyed vermin born, one and all, of that single mother. Of course she could not join the Ritual. A new world waited within her.

  And now, at last, I shall rise again. Clothed in the flesh of one such child, I shall kill that world.

  She could see the path opening, the way ahead clear and inviting. A tunnel walled in spinning, writhing shadows.

  It would be good to walk again.

  To feel warm flesh and the heat of blood.

  To taste water. Food.