He raised Heboric’s right forearm, studied the glistening, flushed stump in the growing light.
“You can never go back,” she said. “The priesthood made sure of that. He isn’t what he was, and that’s that.”
With a silent snarl Baudin pulled the forearm around to push the stump against the sacred mark.
The air screamed. The sound battered them, flung them both down to scrabble, claw, mindlessly dig into the rock—away…away from the pain. Away! There was such agony in that shriek, it descended like fire, darkening the sky overhead, spreading hairline fissures through the bedrock, the cracks spreading outward from under Heboric’s motionless body.
Blood streaming from her ears, Felisin tried to crawl away, up the trembling slope. The fissures—Heboric’s tattoos had blossomed out from his body, leaped the unfathomable distance from skin to stone—swept under her, turning the rock into something slick and greasy under her palms.
Everything had begun to shake. Even the sky seemed to twist, yanked down into itself as if a score of invisible hands had reached through unseen portals, grasping the fabric of the world with cold, destructive rage.
The scream was unending. Rage and unbearable pain meshed together like twin strands in an ever-tightening rope. Closing in a noose around her neck, the sound blocked the outside world—its air, its light.
Something struck the ground, the bedrock under her shuddering, throwing her upward. She came back down hard on one elbow. The bones of her arm shivered like the blade of a sword. The glare of the sun dimmed as Felisin fought for air. Her wide eyes caught a glimpse of something beyond the basin, lifting ponderously from the plain in a heaving cloud of dust. Two-toed, a fur-snarled hoof, too large for her to fully grasp, rising up, pulled skyward into a midnight gloom.
The tattoo had leaped from stone to the air itself, a woad-stained web growing in crazed, jerking blots, snapping outward in all directions.
She could not breathe. Her lungs burned. She was dying, sucked airless into the void that was a god’s scream.
Sudden silence, out beyond the ringing echoes in her skull. Air flooded her, cold and bitter, yet sweeter than anything she had known. Coughing, spitting bile, Felisin pushed herself onto her hands and knees, shakily raised her head.
The hoof was gone. The tattoo hung like an after-image across the entire sky, slowly fading as she watched. Movement pulled her gaze down, to Baudin. He’d been on his knees, hands cupping the sides of his head. He now slowly straightened, tears of blood filling the lines of his face.
The ground under her feeling strangely fluid, Felisin tottered to her feet. She looked down, blinking dumbly at the mosaic of limestone. The swirling furred patterns of the tattoo still trembled, rippling outward from her moccasins as she struggled for balance. The cracks, the tattoos…they go down, and down, all the way down. As if I’m standing atop a bed of league-deep nails, each nail kept upright only by the others surrounding it. Have you come from the Abyss, Fener? It’s said your sacred warren borders Chaos itself. Fener? Are you among us now? She turned to meet Baudin’s eyes. They were dull with shock, though she could detect the first glimmers of fear burning through.
“We wanted the god’s attention,” she said. “Not the god himself.” A trembling seized her. She wrapped her arms around herself, forcing more words forth. “And he didn’t want to come!”
His flinch was momentary, then he rolled his shoulders in something that might have been a shrug. “He’s gone now, ain’t he?”
“Are you sure of that?”
He shook off the need to answer, looking instead at Heboric. After a moment’s study, he said, “He breathes steadier now. Nor so wrinkled and parched. Something’s happened to him.”
She sneered. “The reward for missing getting stomped on by a hair’s breadth.”
Baudin grunted, his attention suddenly elsewhere.
She followed his gaze. The pool of water was gone, drained away until only a carpet of capemoth corpses remained. Felisin barked a laugh. “Some salvation we’ve had here.”
Heboric slowly curled himself into a ball. “He’s here,” he whispered.
“We know,” Baudin said.
“In the mortal realm…” the ex-priest continued after a moment. “Vulnerable.”
“You’re looking at it the wrong way,” Felisin said. “The god you no longer worship took your hands. So now you pulled him down. Don’t mess with mortals.”
Either her cold tone or brutal words in some way steeled through Heboric. He uncurled, raised his head, then sat up. His gaze found Felisin. “Out of the mouth of babes,” he said with a grin that knew nothing of humor.
“So he’s here,” Baudin said, looking around. “How can a god hide?”
Heboric rose to his feet. “I’d give what’s left of an arm to study a field of the Deck right now. Imagine the maelstrom among the Ascendants. This is not a fly-specked visitation, not a pluck and strum on the strands of power.” He lifted his arms, frowning down at the stumps. “It’s been years, but the ghosts are back.”
Watching Baudin’s confusion was a struggle in itself. “Ghosts?”
“The hands that aren’t there,” Heboric explained. “Echoes. Enough to drive a man mad.” He shook himself, squinted sunward. “I feel better.”
“You look it,” Baudin said.
The heat was building. In an hour it would soar.
Felisin scowled. “Healed by the god he rejected. It doesn’t matter. If we stay in our tents today we’ll be too weak to do anything come dusk. We have to walk now. To the next water-hole. If we don’t we’re dead.” But I’ll outlive you, Baudin. Enough to drive the dagger home.
Baudin shouldered his pack. Grinning, Heboric slung his arms through the straps of the pack she’d been carrying. He rose easily, though taking a step to catch his balance once he straightened.
Baudin led the way. Felisin fell in behind him. A god stalks the mortal realm, yet is afraid. He has power unimaginable, yet he hides. And somehow Heboric had found the strength to withstand all that had happened. And the fact that he’s responsible. This should have broken him, shattered his soul. Instead, he bends. Could his wall of cynicism withstand such a siege for long? What did he do to lose his hands?
She had her own inner turmoil to manage. Her thoughts plundered every chamber in her mind. She still envisaged murder, yet felt a vaguely mocking wave of comradeship for her two companions. She wanted to run from them, sensing that their presence was a vortex tugging her into madness and death, yet she knew that she was also dependent on them.
Heboric spoke behind her. “We’ll make it to the coast. I smell water. Close. To the coast, and when we get there, Felisin, you will find that nothing has changed. Nothing at all. Do you grasp my meaning?”
She sensed a thousand meanings to his words, yet understood none of them. Up ahead, Baudin gave a shout of surprise.
Mappo Trell’s thoughts traveled westward almost eight hundred leagues, to a dusk not unlike this one but two centuries past. He saw himself crossing a plain of chest-high grass, but the grass had been plastered down, laden with what looked like grease, and as he walked the very earth beneath his hide boots shifted and shied. He’d known centuries already, wedded to war in what had become an ever-repeating cycle of raids, feuding and bloody sacrifices before the god of honor. Youth’s game, and he’d long grown weary of it. Yet he’d stayed, nailed to a single tree but only because he’d grown used to the scenery around it. It was amazing what could be endured when in the grip of inertia. He had reached a point where anything strange, unfamiliar, was cause for fear. But unlike his brothers and sisters, Mappo could not ride that fear across the full span of his life. For all that, it had taken the horror he now approached to prise him from the tree.
He had been young when he walked out of the trader town that was his home. He was caught—like so many of his age back then—in a fevered backlash, rejecting the rotting immobility of the Trell towns and the elder warriors who’d become merc
hants trading in bhederin, goats and sheep, and now relived their fighting paths in the countless taverns and bars. He embraced the wandering ways of old, willingly suffered initiation into one of the back-land clans that had retained the traditional lifestyle.
The chains of his convictions held for hundreds of years, snapped at last in a way he could never have foreseen.
His memories remained sharp, and in his mind he once again strode across the plain. The ruins of the trader town where he’d been born were now visible. A month had passed since its destruction. The bodies of the fifteen thousand slain—those that had not burned in the raging fires—had long since been picked clean by the plain’s scavengers. He was returning home to bleached bone, fragments of cloth and heat-shattered brick.
The ancient shoulder-women of his adopted clan had divined the tale from the flat bones they burned, as the Nameless Ones had predicted months earlier. While the Trell of the towns had become strangers to them all, they were kin. The task that remained was not, however, one of vengeance. This pronouncement silenced the many companions who, like Mappo, had been born in the destroyed town. No, all notions of vengeance must be purged in the one chosen for the task ahead. Thus were the words of the Nameless Ones, who foresaw this moment.
Mappo still did not understand why he had been chosen. He was no different from his fellow warriors, he believed. Vengeance was sustenance. More than meat and water, the very reason to eat and drink. The ritual that would purge him would destroy all that he was. You will be an unpainted hide, Mappo. The future will offer its own script, writing and shaping your history anew. What was done to the town of our kin must never happen again. You will ensure that. Do you understand?
Expressions of dreadful necessity. Yet, without the horrific destruction of the town of his birth Mappo would have defied them all. He’d walked the overgrown main street, with its riotous carpet of weeds and roots, and had seen the glimmer of sun-bleached bones at his feet.
Near the market round, he discovered a Nameless One awaiting him, standing in the clearing’s center, gray-faded robes flickering in the prairie wind, hood drawn back to reveal a stern woman’s visage. Pale eyes met his as he approached. The staff she held in one hand seemed to writhe in her grip.
“We do not see in years,” she hissed.
“But in centuries,” Mappo replied.
“It is well. Now, warrior, you must learn to do the same. Your elders shall decree it so.”
The Trell slowly gazed around, squinting at the ruins. “It has more the feel of a raider’s army—it’s said that such forces exist south of Nemil—”
Her sneer surprised him with its unveiled contempt. “One day he shall return to his home, as you’ve done here and now. Until that time, you must attend—”
“Why me, damn you!”
Her answer was a faint shrug.
“And if I defy you?”
“Even that, warrior, will demand patience.” She raised the staff then, the gesture drawing his eye. The twisting, buckling wood seemed to reach hungrily for the Trell, growing, filling his world until he was lost in its tortured maze.
“Strange how a land untraveled can look so familiar.”
Mappo blinked, the memories scattered by the sound of that familiar soft voice. He glanced up at Icarium. “Stranger still how the mind’s eye can travel so far and so fast, yet return in an instant.”
The Jhag smiled. “With that eye you might explore the entire world.”
“With that eye you might escape it.”
Icarium’s gaze narrowed as he scanned the rubble-strewn sweep of desert below. They’d climbed a tel the better to see the way ahead. “Your memories always fascinate me, since I seem to have so few of my own, and more so since you have always been so reluctant to share them.”
“I was recalling my clan,” Mappo said, shrugging. “It is astonishing the trivial things one comes to miss. Birthing season for the herds, the way we winnowed the weak in unspoken agreement with the plains’ wolves.” He smiled. “The glory I earned when I’d snuck into a raiding party’s camp and broken the tips of every warrior’s knife, then sneaked back out with no one awakening.” He sighed. “I carried those points in a bag for years, tied to my war belt.”
“What happened to them?”
“Stolen back by a cleverer raider.” Mappo’s smile broadened. “Imagine her glory!”
“Was that all she stole?”
“Ah, leave me some secrets, friend.” The Trell rose, brushing sand and dust from his leather leggings. “If anything,” he said after a pause, “that sandstorm has grown a third in size since we stopped.”
Hands on his hips, Icarium studied the dark wall bisecting the plain. “I believe it has marched closer, as well,” he said. “Born of sorcery, perhaps the very breath of a goddess, its strength still grows. I can feel it reaching out to us.”
“Aye.” Mappo nodded, repressing a shiver. “Surprising, assuming that Sha’ik is indeed dead.”
“Her death may have been necessary,” Icarium said. “After all, can mortal flesh command this power? Can a living being stay alive being the gateway between Dryjhna and this realm?”
“You’re thinking she’s become Ascendant? And in doing so left her flesh and bones behind?”
“It’s possible.”
Mappo fell silent. The possibilities multiplied each time they discussed Sha’ik, the Whirlwind and the prophecies. Together, he and Icarium were sowing their own confusion. And whom might that serve? Iskaral Pust’s grinning face appeared in his mind. Breath hissed through his teeth. “We’re being manipulated,” he growled. “I can feel it. Smell it.”
“I’ve noted your raised hackles,” Icarium said with a grim smile. “For myself, I’ve become numb to such notions—I have felt manipulated all my life.”
The Trell shook himself to disguise his flinch. “And,” he asked softly, “who would be doing that?”
The Jhag shrugged, glanced down with a raised eyebrow. “I stopped asking that question long ago, friend. Shall we eat? The lesson needed here is that mutton stew is a taste superior to that of sweet curiosity.”
Mappo studied Icarium’s back as the warrior strode down into camp. But what of sweet vengeance, friend?
They rode down the ancient road, harried by banshee gusts of sand-filled wind. Even the Gral gelding was stumbling with exhaustion, but Fiddler had run out of options. He had no answer to what was happening.
Somewhere in the impenetrable sweeps of sand to their right a running battle was under way. It was close—it sounded close, but of the combatants they could see no sign, nor was Fiddler of a mind to ride to investigate. In his fear and exhaustion, he’d arrived at a fevered, panicky conviction that staying on the road was all that kept them alive. If they left it they would be torn apart.
The battle sounds were not clashing steel, nor the death cries of men. The sounds were of beasts—roars, snaps, snarls, keening songs of terror and pain and savage fury. Nothing human. There might have been wolves in the unseen struggle, but other, wholly different throats voiced their own frantic participation. The nasal groans of bears, the hiss of large cats, and other sounds—reptilian, avian, simian. And demons. Mustn’t forget those demonic barks—Hood’s own nightmares couldn’t be worse.
He rode without reins. Both hands gripped the sand-pitted stock of his crossbow. It was cocked, a flamer quarrel nocked in place, and had been since the scrap began, ten hours ago. The gut-wound cord was weary by now, he well knew. The wider than usual spread of the steel ribs told him as much. The quarrel would not fly far, and its flight would be soft. But he needed neither accuracy nor range for the flamer to be effective. The knowledge that to drop the weapon would result in their being engulfed—he and his horse both—in raging fire, kept reminding him of that efficacy each time his aching, sweat-slick hands let the weapon slip slightly in his grip.
He could not go on much longer. A single glance back over his shoulder showed Apsalar and Crokus still with him, their
horses past the point of recovery and now running until life fled their bodies. Not long now.
The Gral gelding screamed and slewed sideways. Fiddler was suddenly awash in hot liquid. Blinking and cursing, he shook the fluid from his eyes. Blood. A Fener-born Hood-damned gushing fountain of blood. It had shot out from the impenetrable airborne sand. Something got close. Something else stopped it from getting any closer. Queen’s blessing, what in the Abyss is going on?
Crokus shouted. Fiddler looked back in time to see him leap clear of his collapsing mount. The animal’s front legs folded under it. He watched the horse’s chin strike hard on the cobbles, leaving a smear of blood and froth. It jerked its head clear in one last effort to recover, then rolled, legs kicking in the air a moment before sagging and falling still.
The sapper pried a hand loose from the crossbow, gathered the reins and drew his gelding to a halt. He swung the stumbling beast around. “Dump the tents!” he shouted to Crokus, who had regained his feet. “That’s the freshest of the spare mounts. Quickly, damn you!”
Slumped in her saddle, Apsalar rode close. “It’s no use,” she said through cracked lips. “We have to stop.”
Snarling, Fiddler glared out into the biting sheets of sand. The battle was getting closer. Whatever was holding them back was giving ground. He saw a massive shape loom into view, then vanish again as quickly. It seemed to have leopards riding its shoulders. Off to one side four hulking shapes appeared, low to the ground and rolling forward black and silent.
Fiddler swung the crossbow around and fired. The bolt struck the ground a half-dozen paces from the four beasts. Sheets of flame washed over them. The creatures shrieked.
He spared no time to watch, pulling at random another quarrel from the hardened case strapped to the saddle. He’d only a dozen quarrel-mounted Moranth munitions to start with. He was now down to nine, and of those only one more cusser. He spared a glance as he loaded the quarrel—another flamer—then resumed scanning the wall of heaving sand, leaving his hands to work by memory.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 94