Heboric smiled. ‘Alone? He has always been thus.’
‘Then why is your smile that of a broken man, Ghost Hands?’
I grieve for humanity. This family, so at war with itself. ‘To that, L’oric, I shall not answer.’
‘I shall now speak with Ghost Hands alone,’ Sha’ik pronounced.
But Heboric shook his head. ‘I am done speaking, for now, even with you, Chosen One. I will say this and nothing more: have faith in the Master of the Deck. He shall answer the House of Chains. He shall answer it.’
Feeling ancient beyond his years, Heboric climbed to his feet. There was a stir of motion beside him, then young Felisin’s hand settled on his forearm. He let her guide him from the chamber.
Outside, dusk had arrived, marked by the cries of the goats as they were led into the enclosures. To the south, just beyond the city’s outskirts, rumbled the thunder of horse hoofs. Kamist Reloe and Korbolo Dom had absented themselves from the meeting to oversee the exercises of the troops. Training conducted in the Malazan style, which Heboric had to admit was the renegade Fist’s only expression of brilliance thus far. For the first time, a Malazan army would meet its match in all things, barring Moranth munitions. Tactics and disposition of forces would be identical, ensuring that numbers alone would decide the day. The threat of the munitions would be answered with sorcery, for the Army of the Whirlwind possessed a full cadre of High Mages, whilst Tavore had—as far as they knew—none. Spies in Aren had noted the presence of the two Wickan children, Nil and Nether, but both, it was claimed, had been thoroughly broken by Coltaine’s death.
Yet why would she need mages? She carries an otataral sword, after all. Even so, its negating influence cannot be extended over her entire army. Dear Sha’ik, you may well defeat your sister after all.
‘Where would you go, Ghost Hands?’ Felisin asked.
‘To my home, lass.’
‘That is not what I meant.’
He cocked his head. ‘I do not know—’
‘If indeed you do not, then I have seen your path before you have, and this I find hard to believe. You must leave here, Ghost Hands. You must retrace your path, else what haunts you will kill you—’
‘And that matters? Lass—’
‘Look beyond yourself for a moment, old man! Something is contained within you. Trapped within your mortal flesh. What will happen when your flesh fails?’
He was silent for a long moment, then he asked, ‘How can you be so sure of this? My death might simply negate the risk of escape—it might shut the portal, as tightly sealed as it had been before—’
‘Because there is no going back. It’s here—the power behind those ghostly hands of yours—not the otataral, which is fading, ever fading—’
‘Fading?’
‘Yes, fading! Have not your dreams and visions worsened? Have you not realized why? Yes, my mother has told me—on the Otataral Isle, in the desert—that statue. Heboric, an entire island of otataral was created to contain that statue, to hold it prisoner. But you have given it a means to escape—there, through your hands. You must return!’
‘Enough!’ he snarled, flinging her hand away. ‘Tell me, did she also tell you of herself on that journey?’
‘That which she was before no longer matters—’
‘Oh, but it does, lass! It does matter!’
‘What do you mean?’
The temptation came close to overwhelming him. Because she is Malazan! Because she is Tavore’s sister! Because this war is no longer the Whirlwind’s—it has been stolen away, twisted by something far more powerful, by the ties of blood that bind us all in the harshest, tightest chains! What chance a raging goddess against that?
Instead, he said nothing.
‘You must undertake the journey,’ Felisin said in a low voice. ‘But I know, it cannot be done alone. No. I will go with you—’
He staggered away at her words, shaking his head. It was a horrible idea, a terrifying idea. Yet brutally perfect, a nightmare of synchronicity.
‘Listen! It need not be just you and I—I will find someone else. A warrior, a loyal protector—’
‘Enough! No more of this!’ Yet it will take her away—away from Bidithal and his ghastly desires. It will take her away…from the storm that is coming. ‘With whom else have you spoken of this?’ he demanded.
‘No-one, but I thought…Leoman. He could choose for us someone from Mathok’s people—’
‘Not a word, lass. Not now. Not yet.’
Her hand gripped his forearm once more. ‘We cannot wait too long, Ghost Hands.’
‘Not yet, Felisin. Now, take me home, please.’
‘Will you come with me, Toblakai?’
Karsa dragged his gaze from Urugal’s stone face. The sun had set with its characteristic suddenness, and the stars overhead were bright. The snakes had begun dispersing, driven into the eerily silent forest in search of food. ‘Would you I run beside you and your puny horses, Leoman? There are no Teblor mounts in this land. Nothing to match my size—’
‘Teblor mounts? Actually, friend, you are wrong in that. Well, not here, true, as you say. But to the west, in the Jhag Odhan, there are wild horses that are a match to your stature. Wild now, in any case. They are Jhag horses—bred long ago by the Jaghut. It may well be that your Teblor mounts are of the same breed—there were Jaghut on Genabackis, after all.’
‘Why have you not told me this before?’
Leoman lowered his right hand to the ground, watched as the flare-neck unwound down the length of his arm. ‘In truth, this is the first time you have ever mentioned that you Teblor possessed horses. Toblakai, I know virtually nothing of your past. No-one here does. You are not a loquacious man. You and I, we have ever travelled on foot, haven’t we?’
‘The Jhag Odhan. That is beyond Raraku.’
‘Aye. Strike west through the Whirlwind, and you will come to cliffs, the broken shoreline of the ancient sea that once filled this desert. Continue on until you come to a small city—Lato Revae. Immediately to the west lies the tip of the Thalas Mountains. Skirt their south edge, ever westward, until you come to River Ugarat. There is a ford south of Y’Ghatan. From the other side, strike west and south and west, for two weeks or more, and you will find yourself in the Jhag Odhan. Oh, there is some irony in this—there were once nomadic bands of Jaghut there. Hence the name. But these Jaghut were fallen. They had been predated on for so long they were little more than savages.’
‘And are they still there?’
‘No. The Logros T’lan Imass slaughtered them. Not so long ago.’
Karsa bared his teeth. ‘T’lan Imass. A name from the Teblor past.’
‘Closer than that,’ Leoman muttered, then he straightened. ‘Seek leave from Sha’ik to journey into the Jhag Odhan. You would make an impressive sight on the battlefield, astride a Jhag horse. Did your kind fight on horseback, or simply use them for transport?’
Karsa smiled in the darkness. ‘I will do as you say, Leoman. But the journey will take long—do not wait for me. If you and your scouts are still beyond the Whirlwind upon my return, I will ride out to find you.’
‘Agreed.’
‘What of Felisin?’
Leoman was silent for a moment, then he replied, ‘Ghost Hands has been awakened to the…threat.’
Karsa sneered. ‘And what value will that be? I should kill Bidithal and be done with it.’
‘Toblakai, it is more than you that troubles Ghost Hands. I do not believe he will remain in camp much longer. And when he leaves, he will take the child with him.’
‘And that is a better option? She will become no more than his nurse.’
‘For a time, perhaps. I will send someone with them, of course. If Sha’ik did not need you—or at least believe she does—I would ask you.’
‘Madness, Leoman. I have travelled once with Ghost Hands. I shall not do so again.’
‘He holds truths for you, Toblakai. One day, you will need to seek him out
. You might even need to ask for his help.’
‘Help? I need no-one’s help. You speak unpleasant words. I will hear them no more.’
Leoman’s grin was visible in the gloom. ‘You are as you always are, friend. When will you journey into the Jhag Odhan, then?’
‘I shall leave tomorrow.’
‘Then I had best get word to Sha’ik. Who knows, she might even condescend to see me in person, whereupon I might well succeed in ending her distraction with this House of Chains—’
‘This what?’
Leoman waved a dismissive hand. ‘The House of Chains. A new power in the Deck of Dragons. It is all they talk about these days.’
‘Chains,’ Karsa muttered, swinging round to stare at Urugal. ‘I so dislike chains.’
‘I will see you in the morning, Toblakai? Before you depart?’
‘You shall.’
Karsa listened to the man stride away. His mind was a maelstrom. Chains. They haunted him, had haunted him ever since he and Bairoth and Delum rode out from the village. Perhaps even before then. Tribes fashioned their own chains, after all. As did kinship, and companions, and stories with their lessons in honour and sacrifice. And chains as well between the Teblor and their seven gods. Between me and my gods. Chains again, there in my visions—the dead I have slain, the souls Ghost Hands says I drag behind me. I am—all that I am—has been shaped by such chains.
This new House—is it mine?
The air in the clearing was suddenly cold, bitterly so. A final, thrashing rush as the last of the snakes fled the clearing. Karsa blinked his eyes into focus, and saw Urugal’s indurated visage…awakening.
A presence, there in the dark holes of the face’s eyes.
Karsa heard a howling wind, filling his mind. A thousand souls moaning, the snapping thunder of chains. Growling, he steeled himself before the onslaught, fixed his gaze on his god’s writhing face.
‘Karsa Orlong. We have waited long for this. Three years, the fashioning of this sacred place. You wasted so much time on the two strangers—your fallen friends, the ones who failed where you did not. This temple is not to be sanctified by sentimentality. Their presence offends us. Destroy them this night.’
The seven faces were all wakeful now, and Karsa could feel the weight of their regard, a deathly pressure behind which lurked something…avid, dark and filled with glee.
‘By my hand,’ Karsa said to Urugal, ‘I have brought you to this place. By my hand, you have been freed from your prison of rock in the lands of the Teblor—yes, I am not the fool you believe me to be. You have guided me in this, and now you are come. Your first words are of chastisement? Careful, Urugal. Any carving here can be shattered by my hand, should I so choose.’
He felt their rage, buffeting him, seeking to make him wither beneath the onslaught, yet he stood before it unmoving, and unmoved. The Teblor warrior who would quail before his gods was no more.
‘You have brought us closer,’ Urugal eventually rasped. ‘Close enough to sense the precise location of what we desire. And there you must now go, Karsa Orlong. You have delayed the journey for so long—your journey to ourselves, and on to the path we have set before you. You have hidden too long in the company of this petty spirit who does little more than spit sand.’
‘This path, this journey—to what end? What is it you seek?’
‘Like you, warrior, we seek freedom.’
Karsa was silent. Avid indeed. Then he spoke. ‘I am to travel west. Into the Jhag Odhan.’
He sensed their shock and excitement, then the chorus of suspicion that poured out from the seven gods.
‘West! Indeed, Karsa Orlong. But how do you know this?’
Because, at last, I am my father’s son. ‘I shall leave with the dawn, Urugal. And I will find for you what you desire.’ He could feel their presence fading, and knew instinctively that these gods were not as close to freedom as they wanted him to believe. Nor as powerful.
Urugal had called this clearing a temple, but it was a contested one, and now, as the Seven withdrew, and were suddenly gone, Karsa slowly turned from the faces of the gods, and looked upon those for whom this place had been in truth sanctified. By Karsa’s own hands. In the name of those chains a mortal could wear with pride.
‘My loyalty,’ the Teblor warrior quietly said, ‘was misplaced. I served only glory. Words, my friends. And words can wear false nobility. Disguising brutal truths. The words of the past, that so clothed the Teblor in a hero’s garb—this is what I served. While the true glory was before me. Beside me. You, Delum Thord. And you, Bairoth Gild.’
From the stone statue of Bairoth emerged a distant, weary voice. ‘Lead us, Warleader.’
Karsa flinched. Do I dream this? Then he straightened. ‘I have drawn your spirits to this place. Did you travel in the wake of the Seven?’
‘We have walked the empty lands,’ Bairoth Gild replied. ‘Empty, yet we were not alone. Strangers await us all, Karsa Orlong. This is the truth they would hide from you. We are summoned. We are here.’
‘None,’ came Delum Thord’s voice from the other statue, ‘can defeat you on this journey. You lead the enemy in circles, you defy every prediction, and so deliver the edge of your will. We sought to follow, but could not.’
‘Who, Warleader,’ Bairoth asked, his voice bolder, ‘is our enemy, now?’
Karsa drew himself up before the two Uryd warriors. ‘Witness my answer, my friends. Witness.’
Delum spoke, ‘We failed you, Karsa Orlong. Yet you invite us to walk with you once again.’
Karsa fought back an urge to scream, to unleash a warcry—as if such a challenge might force back the approaching darkness. He could make no sense of his own impulses, the torrential emotions threatening to engulf him. He stared at the carved likeness of his tall friend, the awareness in those unmarred features—Delum Thord before the Forkassal—the Forkrul Assail named Calm—had, on a mountain trail on a distant continent, so casually destroyed him.
Bairoth Gild spoke. ‘We failed you. Do you now ask that we walk with you?’
‘Delum Thord. Bairoth Gild.’ Karsa’s voice was hoarse. ‘It is I who failed you. I would be your warleader once more, if you would so permit me.’
A long moment of silence, then Bairoth replied, ‘At last, something to look forward to.’
Karsa almost fell to his knees, then. Grief, finally unleashed. At an end, his time of solitude. His penance was done. The journey to begin again. Dear Urugal, you shall witness. Oh, how you shall witness.
The hearth was little more than a handful of dying coals. After Felisin Younger left, Heboric sat motionless in the gloom. A short time passed, then he collected an armload of dried dung and rebuilt the fire. The night had chilled him—even the hands he could not see felt cold, like heavy pieces of ice at the end of his wrists.
The only journey that lay ahead of him was a short one, and he must walk it alone. He was blind, but in this no more blind than anyone else. Death’s precipice, whether first glimpsed from afar or discovered with the next step, was ever a surprise. A promise of the sudden cessation of questions, yet there were no answers waiting beyond. Cessation would have to be enough. And so it must be for every mortal. Even as we hunger for resolution. Or, even more delusional: redemption.
Now, after all this time, he was able to realize that every path eventually, inevitably dwindled into a single line of footsteps. There, leading to the very edge. Then…gone. And so, he faced only what every mortal faced. The solitude of death, and oblivion’s final gift that was indifference.
The gods were welcome to wrangle over his soul, to snipe and snap over the paltry feast. And if mortals grieved for him, it was only because by dying he had shaken them from the illusion of unity that comforted life’s journey. One less on the path.
A scratch at the flap entrance, then the hide was drawn aside and someone entered.
‘Would you make of your home a pyre, Ghost Hands?’ The voice was L’oric’s.
The Hig
h Mage’s words startled Heboric into a sudden realization of the sweat running down his face, the gusts of fierce heat from the now raging hearth. Unthinking, he had fed the flames with piece after piece of dung.
‘I saw the glow—difficult to miss, old man. Best leave it, now, let it die down.’
‘What do you want, L’oric?’
‘I acknowledge your reluctance to speak of what you know. There is no value, after all, in gifting Bidithal or Febryl with such details. And so I shall not demand that you explain what you’ve sensed regarding this Master of the Deck. Instead, I offer an exchange, and all that we say will remain between the two of us. No-one else.’
‘Why should I trust you? You are hidden—even to Sha’ik. You give no reason as to why you are here. In her cadre, in this war.’
‘That alone should tell you I am not like the others,’ L’oric replied.
Heboric sneered. ‘That earns you less than you might think. There can be no exchange because there is nothing you can tell me that I would be interested in hearing. The schemes of Febryl? The man’s a fool. Bidithal’s perversions? One day a child will slip a knife between his ribs. Korbolo Dom and Kamist Reloe? They war against an empire that is far from dead. Nor will they be treated with honour when they are finally brought before the Empress. No, they are criminals, and for that their souls will burn for eternity. The Whirlwind? That goddess has my contempt, and that contempt does naught but grow. Thus, what could you possibly tell me, L’oric, that I would value?’
‘Only the one thing that might interest you, Heboric Light Touch. Just as this Master of the Deck interests me. I would not cheat you with the exchange. No, I would tell you all that I know of the Hand of Jade, rising from the otataral sands—the Hand that you have touched, that now haunts your dreams.’
‘How could you know these—’ He fell silent. The sweat on his brow was now cold.
‘And how,’ L’oric retorted, ‘can you sense so much from a mere description of the Master’s card? Let us not question these things, else we trap ourselves in a conversation that will outlive Raraku itself. So, Heboric, shall I begin?’
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 315