When he reached the detachment, Captain Peles raised her chin to motion back behind him and he turned. She stood there. The captain signed for her detachment to move on.
He watched her. For the longest time they remained unmoving, studying one another over the stretch of dusty dirt road between, she motionless beside the unfinished gate to their little yard hemmed in by the house and paddock. Such a small allotment, hardly enough to get by, let alone prosper. He thought of his family’s many estates in Unta. The largest, hard by the Gris border, a man could not cross in a full day’s riding. All that had been his before the Insurrection, before his choice to side against the Empress’s edicts on the Wickan pogrom had stripped him of it. Now the Emperor offered it all back for his return to active duty – and just where, he believed he knew. And he’d accepted. Not for himself of course, but for Halgin. It would be his legacy now. He hoped his son would have better luck of it than he or his father before him.
He raised a hand in farewell and she answered, slowly. He lowered his arm and turned away.
* * *
In the end Kiska had no idea why she agreed to Agayla’s request that she accompany her up-island for a walk among the windswept hills. Perhaps it was the daytime sight of the Deadhouse: if anything even more foreboding in the full glare of the sun and even more unsettling to her senses now than she remembered from her youth.
Could this tomb-like dilapidated hulk really be of the Azath? A mysterious network of dwellings, caves or houses, call them what you would – structures, of some sort – that some claimed pervade creation? All she knew of them was what she had overheard speculated about in Tayschrenn’s presence, and that precious little. In fact, she remembered scholars who had approached Tayschrenn for his knowledge of them and their outrage at his opinion that the Azath were not a matter for human investigation. ‘They are waning,’ she heard him say once. ‘We should let them go in peace.’
She rested a hand on the low wall of piled fieldstones surrounding the house’s grounds and thought of another night, seemingly so long ago, when she had faced the brooding presence last. That night saw the only known successful assault upon an Azath; and that by the most cunning – and probably most insane – mage of their time. The Emperor himself. All other would-be assailants through the ages, human, daemon, Jaghut, now crowded the many mounds humping the dead grounds, enslaved to the house.
Agayla was probably right. Perhaps but for the older woman’s intervention she too would now be rotting within one of those burial mounds. That would have been the most likely outcome. Too perilous a throw by far. She turned away to head to the river road to join Agayla for their walk. She would spend the day with her then say her farewells. Another tack, then, towards finding Tayschrenn. Genabackis, perhaps. The Moranth may be of help.
Leaving, she noticed an old man squatting against a stone wall across the way; his great thick arms hung over his knees, and a white thatching of scars criss-crossed his bald pate. The man’s gaze followed her as she left. She thought he looked vaguely familiar: probably from her youth on the island.
She met Agayla just outside the town proper, where allotments and garden plots widened and irrigation channels of set slate bordered the flint road. The fields were dull now with dead stalks. Low bruised clouds pressed overhead, cast up from the south, the Strait of Storm. The chill winds hinted at worse to come.
Her aunt carried a wicker basket on one arm, a shawl over her shoulders. ‘Remind you of the old days?’ she asked, and brushed wayward strands from her face.
‘I suppose so.’
Agayla headed off without comment in her swift energetic walk that Kiska recalled from those old days. Following, she pulled her thick lined cloak tighter and felt about for her gloves. After a time she called, ‘Mushrooming, are we?’
‘A little late for that. Roots mainly. Some stalks. Like the arrow.’
Kiska wouldn’t know an arrow plant if it jabbed her in the eye.
They climbed inland. Agayla struck off the road, following a narrow dirt path that wound between low brush. Looking back, Kiska caught glimpses of the town and the bay beyond before it was cut from view by an intervening hillock. She began to wonder just how far her aunt intended to take them.
At last she pushed through a dense stand of alder, their limbs cast backwards by the constant sea winds, to find Agayla sitting on a lump of rock before a circle of tall standing stones.
‘There you are!’ her aunt announced, patting the rock next to her. ‘Come sit with me.’
Kiska shrugged within her heavy cloak and came to stand next to her aunt. ‘Agayla,’ she began, awkwardly. ‘This has been … pleasant. But I really must be getting back to town …’
The woman raised a hand for silence. ‘Shh. It’s almost time. Now sit.’ She produced an apple from the basket.
Kiska grudgingly sat. ‘Time for what?’
‘This circle is sacred to many gods. Did you know that?’ Before Kiska could reply, she continued, ‘In the old days people were sacrificed here.’
Kiska eyed her aunt, wondering what the old woman was on about. Her mind wasn’t starting to meander in her old age, was it? She bit into the apple.
‘Ah … here we are.’
But Kiska had felt it too. She stood, dropping the apple, and slipped her hands into her cloak to rest where twin long-knives hung sheathed tightly to her sides. A shimmering was climbing between the stones … a wavering curtain of opalescent light. It fluttered to life around the circle’s full circumference.
‘What is this?’
‘Mind your manners now,’ Agayla said. She was pushing back her hair, adjusting her shawl.
Kiska eyed her, mistrustful. ‘What’s going on?’
Agayla stood before her, looked her up and down then gently laid a hand on her cheek. The palm was warm, smooth, and dry. It seemed as if the woman was examining her face for something and Kiska had no idea what it was she sought. ‘We are about to speak to one of the greatest powers presently at play here in this world,’ she began. ‘No – hush. Many name her a goddess but to me she is more, and I suppose less, than that. Not like Burn or Fanderay or Togg. Not some ancient entity or force that has come to represent what we choose to cast upon it. She remains a real living person whose influence transcends others’ because she is here, now, and can intervene directly as she sees fit.’ She gave Kiska’s chin a squeeze and gently edged her head side to side. ‘So behave yourself. Speak only when you are spoken to. Bow. Show some of those fancy manners you should have learned in Unta.’
The woman released her and Kiska shook her head as if to recover from some spell or blow. Greater influence than the gods’? What could her aunt possibly be on about? She eyed the shimmering barrier. ‘Who then? What mage?’
Agayla laughed. ‘Oh, Kiska. Not some mage or magus. The greatest. The Enchantress. The Mistress of Thyr. The Queen of Dreams.’ And she took her niece’s hand and led her through the curtain of light.
The brilliant glare momentarily blinded Kiska, and as she blinked to clear her vision she slowly became aware of her surroundings. It was the circle of standing stones she knew, but surrounded by a shimmering reflective silver border. And, standing at its centre waiting to meet them, a woman wrapped in loose pale blue cloth that was draped about her in countless folds. Kiska held back, dazzled by the vision of this diminutive, slim, raven-haired beauty. How could this be real? She’d heard that this woman walked with Anomander generations ago. Yet was she not the greatest enchantress of the age? She could appear as she wished and this was her choice; it was up to her, Kiska, to take from it what she would.
Agayla shared no such hesitation. She knelt before the woman, murmured something that sounded close to an invocation. But the Enchantress laughed and raised her up with her hands, saying, ‘Do not kneel before me, Agayla. Surely you of all people have not fallen to the cult of worship.’
Agayla bowed. ‘I give homage where I choose, m’lady.’
The Enchantress tur
ned her glance upon Kiska. ‘So this is the one.’
The force of the woman’s attention struck her like a blow. Kiska found she could not order her thoughts. It was as if she were standing before a titanic waterfall or a storm front at sea; all she could do was stare, awestruck by the vision.
The woman had advanced and taken her hands, one in each of her own. ‘You would follow a perilous trail, Kiska.’ She searched her face as Agayla had and nodded as if having satisfied some unspoken question. Motes of gold seemed to float in her eyes. ‘It is good you do not pursue this out of some sort of infatuation. For I do not see him capable of such feelings. Still …’ She regarded Agayla. ‘For her to travel alone …’
‘I can think of one or two I would trust,’ Agayla said, frowning. ‘But they have taken on other duties.’
‘There is someone I can call upon—’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Kiska blurted out.
Agayla glared her irritation. The Enchantress waved a hand. ‘That is not the question. You must sleep sometime. And a lone traveller is too much of a temptation. Fortunately I have someone in mind …’ and she gestured aside, inviting.
A man stepped through the barrier. He was of middling height but wiry and obviously powerful. Under desert robes he wore armour Kiska recognized as the style of Seven Cities, a mix of boiled leather and mail. His dark flat features and long black moustache sealed his identity as a son of that region. The most ridiculous weapons hung strapped at his belt: two morningstars. ‘Who is this?’ she demanded.
Again her aunt glared for her silence.
The man appeared similarly unimpressed. He indicated Kiska with a lift of his chin but addressed the Enchantress. ‘When we made our deal I told you I was done with protecting.’
‘I do not need anyone’s protection.’
The Enchantress raised a hand. ‘This is … which name would you prefer?’
‘Damn fool comes to mind,’ the man ground out. Yet he bowed. ‘Jheval.’
‘This is Kiska. She is searching for someone. And it is a mission that has my blessing. The man she wishes to locate may be of interest to you, Jheval. He is Tayschrenn, once High Mage of the Malazan Empire.’
The man’s eyes widened and he almost stepped backwards. ‘You would ask me to help find him?’
‘The gratitude of the Empire would no doubt be extraordinary if he could be found and brought back to them.’
Those dark eyes narrowed then within their many wrinkles and a decidedly wolfish grin climbed his lips in a way that Kiska found hardly reassuring. ‘Thank you for your concern … m’lady,’ she said, ‘but I do not need this fellow.’
‘You will fail if you go alone.’
The finality of that pronouncement chilled Kiska.
‘How are we—’ Jheval began, then corrected himself. ‘That is, how is the man to be tracked down?’
The Enchantress gestured to a burlap sack atop the broad stone at the centre of the circle. Kiska could not recall seeing it there before.
‘The Void that took the High Mage opened on to Chaos and there your trail will take you. When you reach its borders open this. The thing within will then lead you on.’
Kiska wrapped the sack in her cloak. It was dirty, as if it had been buried. From what she could glimpse inside all it seemed to contain were broken twigs and a few scraps of cloth.
‘I can send you on your way from here,’ the Enchantress said. ‘Is that acceptable?’
‘Thank you, m’lady,’ Kiska said, bowing.
Jheval grunted his agreement.
Agayla, whom Kiska had thought uncharactisterically quiet all this time, now embraced her, kissing her cheeks. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘I see in the weave that this search will not be the simple task you believe. You may not know what it is you are really after.’
Kiska would have spoken, but she was silenced by the tears that brimmed in her aunt’s eyes. A moment ago she would have thought such a thing impossible. I never thought of her as old before yet now, suddenly, I see her so. Time is cruel.
The Enchantress motioned aside. ‘You will see hills. Keep them to your left.’ Kiska bowed again and turned away. Jheval followed, his hands tucked into his leather belt.
After the two had gone, the Enchantress gently brushed a hand across Agayla’s face. ‘Do not cry, Weaver.’
‘I fear I have sent the child to her death.’
‘I cannot see into Chaos. But what she has taken as her failure has wounded her to her core. I can only hope she will come to forgive herself.’
‘So much is on its way, T’riss. I see it in the weft. The knots ahead come so thick they may choke the shuttle. The cloth may part.’
‘It may. We can only do our best to see to it that it only tears in certain places.’
Agayla smiled then, perhaps at her fears. ‘Yes. It will be a new order.’
The Queen of Dreams’ face hardened as she looked off into the distance. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice taut with something almost like distaste. ‘Let us hope it will be a better one.’
* * *
It took Bakune two months of questioning, searching archives, and squeezing minor city officials to track down the family name and possible current residence of the family of Sister Charity. Whether the woman yet lived remained to be discovered.
He left his offices at noon on foot, wrapped in a plain wool cloak. He took the west road until it exited the town proper and here he turned off the way, down towards the coast where a ghetto of shacks and huts spilled down the slope. Dogs raged at his heels, knowing full well he did not belong. Dirty half-naked children stared at him, many obviously the half-breed by-blows of Roolian mothers and the Malazan occupiers. Young toughs collected in the muddy narrow paths, staring silently at what he imagined must be quite the apparition of a Roolian citizen wandering lost in the maze of their neighbourhood. At every turn round a staked tent or wattle and daub hut the crowd seemed to grow until he faced a solid wall of young men and women, dressed no better than the urchins, many carrying wasted limbs, milky blinded eyes, ugly swellings, and other disfigurements of illnesses – all from the filth of their poverty, no doubt.
‘I’m looking for the Harldeth family,’ he called to one of the young men. ‘Harldeth. Do you know the name?’
Blocking Bakune’s way, the fellow just stared. His mouth was twisted in a harelip and Bakune would have suspected him slow but for the unaccountable hostility simmering in his gaze. ‘Stranger,’ a weak voice called from a nearby hut. Bakune ducked his head to squint into the darkness.
‘Yes?’
‘Enter.’
He had to crouch almost double to slip within. He found an old man cross-legged on a woven mat next to a dead blackened hearth. The man was bare-chested despite the gathering cold of autumn. Bakune introduced himself, and was invited to sit. The stink of smoke and old rotten food made him almost gag; he elected to crouch on his haunches. After the old man had sat regarding him for a time, his night-black eyes unreadable, Bakune prompted again, ‘Yes? You know the Harldeth?’
‘I know the family.’
‘Will you take me to them?’
‘Why do you seek them?’
‘I’m assessing a death. I need to question Lithel Harldeth. She was once a nun in the Cloister. I’m told her family now lives out here.’
The old man cocked his head. ‘So, you are assessing a death … Where is the Watch? Where are their truncheons? Where is your signed confession?’
Bakune pulled away, offended. ‘That’s not how we do things. We assess to apportion the balance of innocence and culpability.’
The old man just gave a sad indulgent smile. ‘You should spend more time out here, Assessor Bakune.’ He struggled to rise, pulling up a tall walking stick, which he held horizontal. ‘Come.’
Outside, the old man made some gesture and the crowd backed away. Bakune looked sharply at him; he wore only dirty trousers and jerkin, his grey hair hung stringy and bedraggled, yet his wiry
limbs, dark as stained wood, held an obvious strength. A stone on a thong round his neck was the man’s only decoration other than the old branch he held as a staff. A thin cold rain had begun to fall that the old man ignored, though it chilled Bakune. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, struck by a sudden vague recollection.
‘No, Assessor. You most certainly do not know me. This way …’
Surprised yells sounded up the mud path the way Bakune had come and the crowd parted there to reveal his two Watch guards, their cloaks pulled back from the shortswords hung at their sides.
‘Who are these?’ the old man asked.
Bakune sighed. Lady-damned fools! They’ll ruin everything! ‘Guards that the Watch captain insists follow me around.’
The old man’s dark eyes slid to Bakune; the indulgent, almost pitying smile returned. ‘Guards, Assessor? Or minders?’ He started off before Bakune could respond.
The path the old man followed was bewilderingly twisted, probably deliberately so. His two guards plodded along behind, hands at their belts. Each muddy trail they took between crowded shacks seemed identical to the last. Everyone ignored Bakune now, going about their daily business, carrying bundled firewood, earthenware pots of water. Women cooked over low smoky fires.
Then the old man stopped abruptly at a wattle and daub hut, no different from any other. He gestured within.
‘Thank you.’
He did not answer, only motioned inside once again.
Within, a family sat eating. Startled, Bakune nearly backed out until the woman present, mother Bakune assumed of the four wide-eyed children, pointed to a woven reed hanging farther within. Bowing, Bakune edged around the staring family and brushed the hanging aside. A thick cloud of smoke blinded him. He had entered what proved to be no more than a tiny nook, and he pressed a fold of his cloak over his nose and mouth. Eventually he made out a low shape hunched before some sort of altar cluttered with burned-down candle stubs, clay lamps, small rudely shaped statues, and stands of smouldering incense sticks.
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