Bult asked, “Who was High Fist before him?”
“Cartheron Crust, who drowned one night in Aren Harbor.”
Kulp snorted. “Crust could swim drunk through a hurricane, but then he went and drowned just like his brother Urko. Neither body was ever found, of course.”
“Meaning?”
Kulp grinned at Bult, but said nothing.
“Both Crust and Urko were the Emperor’s men,” Duiker explained. “It seems they shared the same fate as most of Kellanved’s companions, including Toc the Elder and Ameron. None of their bodies were ever found, either.” The historian shrugged. “Old history now. Forbidden history, in fact.”
“You assume they were murdered at Laseen’s command,” Bult said, baring his jagged teeth. “But imagine a circumstance where the Empress’s most able commanders simply…disappeared. Leaving her isolated, desperate for able people. You forget, Historian, that before Laseen became Empress, she was close companions with Crust, Urko, Ameron, Dassem and the others. Imagine her now alone, still feeling the wounds of abandonment.”
“And her murder of the other close companions—Kellanved and Dancer—was not something she imagined would affect her friendship with those commanders?” Duiker shook his head, aware of the bitterness in his voice. They were my companions, too.
“Some errors in judgment can never be undone,” Bult said. “The Emperor and Dancer were able conquerors, but were they able rulers?”
“We’ll never know,” Duiker snapped.
The Wickan’s sigh was almost a snort. “No, but if there was one person close to the throne capable of seeing what was to come, it was Laseen.”
Coltaine spat on the floor once again. “That is all to say on the matter, Historian. Record the words that have been uttered here, if you do not find them too sour a taste.” He glanced over at a silent Sormo E’nath, frowning as he studied his warlock.
“Even if I choked on them,” Duiker replied, “I would recount them nonetheless. I could not call myself a historian if it were otherwise.”
“Very well, then.” The Fist’s gaze remained on Sormo E’nath. “Tell me, Historian, what hold does Mallick Rel have over Pormqual?”
“I wish I knew, Fist.”
“Find out.”
“You are asking me to become a spy.”
Coltaine turned to him with a faint smile. “And what were you in the trader’s tent, Duiker?”
Duiker grimaced. “I would have to go to Aren. I do not think Mallick Rel would welcome me to inner councils any more. Not after witnessing his humiliation here. In fact, I warrant he has marked me as an enemy now, and his enemies have a habit of disappearing.”
“I shall not disappear,” Coltaine said. He stepped closer, reached out and gripped the historian’s shoulder. “We shall disregard Mallick Rel, then. You will be attached to my staff.”
“As you command, Fist,” Duiker said.
“This council is ended.” Coltaine spun to his warlock. “Sormo, you shall recount for me this morning’s adventure…later.”
The warlock bowed.
Duiker retrieved his cloak and, followed by Kulp, left the chamber. As the doors closed behind them, the historian plucked at the cadre mage’s sleeve. “A word with you. In private.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Kulp replied.
They found a room further down the hallway, cluttered with broken furniture but otherwise unoccupied. Kulp shut and locked the door, then faced Duiker, his eyes savage. “He’s not a man at all—he’s an animal and he sees things like an animal. And Bult—Bult reads his master’s snarling and raised hackles and puts it all into words—I’ve never heard such a talkative Wickan as that mangled old man.”
“Evidently,” Duiker said dryly, “Coltaine had a lot to say.”
“I suspect even now the priest of Mael is planning his revenge.”
“Aye. But it was Bult’s defense of the Empress that shook me.”
“Do you countenance his argument?”
Duiker sighed. “That she regrets her actions and now feels, in full, the solitude of power? Possibly. Interesting, but its relevance is long past.”
“Has Laseen confided in these Wickan savages, do you think?”
“Coltaine was summoned to an audience with the Empress, and I’d guess that Bult is as much as sewn to his master’s side—but what occurred between them in Laseen’s private chambers remains unknown.” The historian shrugged. “They were prepared for Mallick Rel, that much seems clear. And you, Kulp, what of this young warlock?”
“Young?” The cadre mage scowled. “That boy has the aura of an ancient man. I could smell on him the ritual drinking of mare’s blood, and that ritual marks a warlock’s Time of Iron—his last few years of life, the greatest flowering of his power. Did you see him? He fired a dart at the priest, then stood silent, watching its effect.”
“Yet you claimed it was all a lie.”
“No need to let Sormo know how sensitive my nose is, and I’ll continue treating him as if he was a boy, an impostor. If I’m lucky he’ll ignore me.”
Duiker hesitated. The air in the room was stale, tasting of dust when he drew breath. “Kulp,” he finally said.
“Aye, Historian, what do you ask of me?”
“It has nothing to do with Coltaine, or Mallick Rel or Sormo E’nath. I require your assistance.”
“In what?”
“I wish to free a prisoner.”
The cadre mage’s brows rose. “In Hissar’s jail? Historian, I have no clout with the Hissar Guard—”
“No, not in the city jail. This is a prisoner of the Empire.”
“Where is this prisoner kept?”
“He was sold into slavery, Kulp. He’s in the Otataral mines.”
The cadre mage stared. “Hood’s breath, Duiker, you’re asking the help of a mage? You imagine I would willingly go anywhere near those mines? Otataral destroys sorcery, drives mages insane—”
“No closer than a dory off the island’s coast,” Duiker cut in. “I promise that, Kulp.”
“To collect the prisoner, and then what, rowing like a fiend with a Dosii war galley in hot pursuit?”
Duiker grinned. “Something like that.”
Kulp glanced at the closed door, then studied the wreckage in the room as if he had not noticed it before. “What chamber was this?”
“Fist Torlom’s office,” Duiker answered. “Where the Dryjhnii assassin found her that night.”
Kulp slowly nodded. “And was our choosing it an accident?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“So do I, Historian.”
“Will you help me?”
“This prisoner…who?”
“Heboric Light Touch.”
Kulp slowly nodded a second time. “Let me think on it, Duiker.”
“May I ask what gives you pause?”
Kulp scowled. “The thought of another traitorous historian loose in the world, what else?”
The Holy City of Ehrlitan was a city of white stone, rising from the harbor to surround and engulf a vast, flat-topped hill known as Jen’rahb. It was believed that one of the world’s first cities was buried within Jen’rahb, and that in the compacted rubble waited the Throne of the Seven Protectors which legend held was not a throne at all, but a chamber housing a ring of seven raised daises, each sanctified by one of the Ascendants who set out to found Seven Cities. Ehrlitan was a thousand years old, but Jen’rahb the ancient city, now a hill of crushed stone, was believed to be nine times that.
An early Falah’d of Ehrlitan had begun extensive and ambitious building on the flat top of Jen’rahb, to honor the city buried beneath the streets. The quarries along the north coast were gutted, whole hillsides carved out, the ten-ton white blocks of marble dressed and transported by ship to Ehrlitan’s harbor, then pulled through the lower districts to the ramps leading to the hill’s summit. Temples, estates, gardens, domes, towers and the Falah’d palace rose like the gems of a virgin crown on Jen’rahb
.
Three years after the last block had been nudged into place, the ancient buried city…shrugged. Subterranean archways collapsed beneath the immense strains of the Falah’d Crown, walls folded, foundation stones slid sideways into streets packed solid with dust. Beneath the surface the dust behaved like water, racing down streets and alleys, into gaping doorways, beneath floors—all unseen in the unrelieved darkness of Jen’rahb. On the surface, on a bright dawn marking an anniversary of the Falah’d rule, the Crown sagged, towers toppled, domes split in clouds of white marble dust, and the palace dropped unevenly, in some places no more than a few feet, in others over twenty arm-spans down into flowing rivers of dust.
Observers in the Lower City described the event. It was as if a giant invisible hand had reached down to the Crown, closing to gather in every building, crushing them all while pushing down into the hill. The cloud of dust that rose turned the sun into a copper disc for days afterward.
Over thirty thousand people died that day, including the Falah’d himself, and of the three thousand who dwelt and worked within the Palace, but one survived: a young cook’s helper who was convinced that the beaker he had dropped on the floor a moment before the earthquake was to blame for the entire catastrophe. Driven mad with guilt, he stabbed himself in the heart while standing in the Lower City’s Merykra Round, his blood flowing down to drench the paving stones where Fiddler now stood.
His blue eyes narrowed, the sapper watched a troop of Red Swords ride hard through a scattering crowd on the other side of the Round.
Swathed in thin bleached linen robes, the hood pulled up and over his head in the manner of a Gral tribesman, he stood motionless on the sacred paving stone with its faded commemorative script, wondering if the rapid thumping of his heart was loud enough to be heard by the crowds moving nervously around him. He cursed himself for risking a wander through the ancient city, then he cursed Kalam for delaying their departure until he’d managed to make contact with one of his old agents in the city.
“Mezla’ebdin!” a voice near him hissed.
Malazan lapdogs was an accurate enough translation. The Red Swords were born of Seven Cities, yet avowed absolute loyalty to the Empress. Rare—if at the moment unwelcome—pragmatists in a land of fanatical dreamers, the Red Swords had just begun an independent crackdown on the followers of Dryjhna in their typical fashion: with sword edge and lance.
Half a dozen victims lay unmoving on the bleached stones of the Round, amidst scattered baskets, bundles of cloth, and food. Two small girls crouched beside a woman’s body near the dried-up fountain. Sprays of blood decorated nearby walls. From a few streets away the alarms of the Ehrlitan Guard were ringing, the city’s Fist having just been informed that the Red Swords were once again defying his inept rule.
The savage riders continued their impromptu, indiscriminate slaughter up a main avenue leading off from the Round, and were soon out of sight. Beggars and thieves swooped in on the felled bodies, even as the air filled with wailing voices. A hunchbacked pimp gathered up the two girls and hobbled out of sight up an alleyway.
A few minutes earlier Fiddler had come near to having his skull split wide open upon entering the Round and finding himself in the path of a charging Red Sword. His soldier’s experience launched him across the horse’s path, forcing the warrior to swing his blade to his shield side, and a final duck beneath the swishing sword took the sapper past and out of reach. The Red Sword had not bothered pursuing him, turning instead to behead the next hapless citizen, a woman desperately dragging two children from the horse’s path.
Fiddler shook himself, breathing a silent curse. Pushing through the jostling crowd, he made for the alley the pimp had used. The tall, leaning buildings to either side shrouded the narrow passage in shadow. Rotting food and something dead filled the air with a thick stench. There was no one in sight as Fiddler cautiously padded along. He came to a side track between two high walls, barely wide enough for a mule and shin-deep in dry palm leaves. Behind each high wall was a garden, the tall palm trees entwining their fronds like a roof twenty feet overhead. Thirty paces on the passage came to a dead end, and there crouched the pimp, one knee holding down the youngest girl while he pressed the other girl against the wall, fumbling at her leggings.
The pimp’s head turned at the sound of Fiddler striding through the dried leaves. He had the white skin of a Skrae and showed blackened teeth in a knowing grin. “Gral, she’s yours for a half jakata, once I’ve broken her skin. The other will cost you more, being younger.”
Fiddler stepped up to the man. “I buy,” he said. “Make wives. Two jakatas.”
The pimp snorted. “I’ll make twice that in a week. Sixteen jakatas.”
Fiddler drew the Gral long-knife he’d purchased an hour earlier and pressed the edge against the pimp’s throat. “Two jakatas and my mercy, simharal.”
“Done, Gral,” the pimp grated, eyes wide. “Done, by the Hooded One!”
Fiddler drew two coins from his belt and tossed them into the leaves. Then he stepped back. “I take them now.”
The simharal fell to his knees, scrabbling through the dried fronds. “Take them, Gral, take them.”
Fiddler grunted, sheathing the knife and gathering one girl under each arm. Turning his back on the pimp, he walked out of the alley. The likelihood that the man would attempt any treachery was virtually nonexistent. Gral tribesmen often begged for insults to give cause for their favorite activity: pursuing vendettas. And it was reputedly impossible to sneak up on one from behind, so none dared try. For all that, Fiddler was thankful for the thick carpet of leaves between him and the pimp.
He exited the alleyway. The girls hung like oversized dolls in his arms, still numbed with shock. He glanced down at the face of the older one. Nine, maybe ten years of age, she stared up at him with wide, dark eyes. “Safe now,” he said. “If I set you down, can you walk? Can you show me where you live?”
After a long moment, she nodded.
They had reached one of the tortuous tracks that passed for a street in the Lower City. Fiddler set the girl down, cradling the other in the crook of his arm—she seemed to have fallen asleep. The older child immediately grasped his robes to keep from being pushed away by the jostling crowd, then began tugging him along.
“Home?” Fiddler asked.
“Home,” she replied.
Ten minutes later they passed beyond the market district and entered a quieter residential area, the dwellings modest but clean. The girl guided Fiddler toward a side street. As soon as they reached it, children appeared, shouting and rushing to gather around them. A moment later three armed men burst from a garden gate. They confronted Fiddler with tulwars raised as the crowd of children dispersed on all sides, suddenly silent and watchful.
“Nahal Gral,” Fiddler growled. “The woman fell to a Red Sword. A simharal took these two. I bought them. Unbroken. Three jakatas.”
“Two,” corrected one of the men, spitting on the cobbles at Fiddler’s feet. “We found the simharal.”
“Two to buy. One more to deliver. Unbroken. Three.” Fiddler gave them a hard grin. “Fair price, cheap for Gral honor. Cheap for Gral protection.”
A fourth man spoke from behind Fiddler. “Pay the Gral, you fools. A hundred gold jakatas would not be too much. The nurse and the children were under your protection, yet you fled when the Red Swords came. If this Gral had not come upon the children and purchased them, they would now be broken. Pay the coin, and bless this Gral with the Queen of Dreams’ favor, bless him and his family for all time.” The man slowly stepped around. He wore the armor of a private guard, with a captain’s insignia. His lean face was scarred with the hatched symbol of a veteran of Y’ghatan and on the backs of his hands were the pitted tracks of incendiary scars. His hard eyes held Fiddler’s. “I ask for your trader name, Gral, so that we may honor you in our prayers.”
Fiddler hesitated, then gave the captain his true name, the name he had been born with, long ago.
One of the guards approached with coins in hand. Fiddler offered the sleeping child to the captain. “It is wrong that she sleeps,” he said.
The grizzled veteran received the child with gentle care. “We shall have the House Healer attend to her.”
Fiddler glanced around. Clearly the children belonged to a rich, powerful family, yet the abodes within sight were all relatively small, the homes of minor merchants and craftworkers.
“Will you share a meal with us, Gral?” the captain asked. “The children’s grandfather will wish to see you.”
Curious, Fiddler nodded. The captain led him to a low postern gate in a garden wall. The three guardsmen moved ahead to open it. The young girl was the first through.
The gate opened into a surprisingly spacious garden, the air cool and damp with the breath of an unseen stream trickling through the lush undergrowth. Old fruit and nut trees canopied the stone-lined path. On the other side rose a high wall constructed entirely of murky glass. Rainbow patterns glistened on the panes, beaded with moisture and mottled with mineral stains. Fiddler had never before seen so much glass in one place. A lone door was set in the wall, made of bleached linen stretched over a thin iron frame. Before it stood an old man dressed in a wrinkled orange robe. The deep, rich ochre of his skin was set off by a shock of white hair. The girl ran up to embrace the man. His amber eyes held steadily on Fiddler.
The sapper dropped to one knee. “I beg your blessing, Spiritwalker,” he said in his harshest Gral accent.
The Tano priest’s laughter was like blowing sand. “I cannot bless what you are not, sir,” he said quietly. “But please, join me and Captain Turqa in a private repast. I trust these guardians will prove eager to regain their courage in taking care of the children, here within the garden’s confines.” He laid a weathered hand on the sleeping child’s forehead. “Selal protects herself in her own way. Captain, tell the Healer she must be drawn back to this world, gently.”
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 74