The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  He shared the confusion of his fellow warriors. Something was awry here. With both the Letherii and with…us. With Hannan Mosag. Our Warlock King.

  Our shadows are dancing. Letherii and Edur, dancing out a ritual—but these are not steps I can recognize. Father Shadow forgive me, I am frightened.

  Nineteen ships of death sailed south, while four K’orthan raiders cut eastward. Four hundred Edur warriors, once more riding a hard silence.

  It fell to the slaves to attend to the preparations. The Beneda corpse was laid out on a bed of sand on the floor of a large stone outbuilding adjoining the citadel, and left to drain.

  The eye sockets, ears, nostrils and gaping mouth were all cleaned and evened out with soft wax. Chewed holes in its flesh were packed with a mixture of clay and oil.

  With six Edur widows overseeing, a huge iron tray was set atop a trench filled with coals that had been prepared alongside the corpse. Copper coins rested on the tray, snapping and popping as the droplets of condensation on them sizzled and hissed then vanished.

  Udinaas crouched beside the trench, staying far enough back to ensure that his sweat did not drip onto the coins—a blasphemy that meant instant death for the careless slave—and watched the coins, seeing them darken, becoming smoky black. Then, as the first glowing spot emerged in each coin’s centre, he used pincers to pluck it from the tray and set it down on one of a row of fired-clay plates—one plate for each widow.

  The widow, kneeling before the plate, employed a finer set of pincers to pick up the coin. And then pivoted to lean over the corpse.

  First placement was the left eye socket. A crackling hiss, worms of smoke rising upward as the woman pressed down with the pincers, keeping the coin firmly in place, until it melded with the flesh and would thereafter resist being dislodged. Right eye socket followed. Nose, then forehead and cheeks, every coin touching its neighbours.

  When the body’s front and sides, including all the limbs, were done, melted wax was poured over the coin-sheathed corpse. And, when that had cooled, it was then turned over. More coins, until the entire body was covered, excepting the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. Another layer of melted wax followed.

  The task of sheathing consumed most of the day, and it was near dusk when Udinaas finally stumbled from the out-building and stood, head bowed, while the cool air plucked at the sweat on his skin. He spat in an effort to get the foul stench out of his mouth. Burnt, rotting flesh in the building’s turgid, oven-hot confines. The reek of scorched hair. No amount of scented oil and skin-combing could defeat what had seeped into his pores. It would be days before Udinaas had rid himself of that cloying, dreadful taste.

  He stared down at the ground between his feet. His shoulder still ached from the forced healing done by Uruth. Since that time, he had had no opportunity to speak with Feather Witch.

  To his masters, he had explained nothing. They had, in truth, not pressed him very hard. A handful of questions, and they’d seemed content with his awkward, ineffectual answers. Udinaas wondered if Uruth had been as unmotivated in her own questioning of Feather Witch. The Tiste Edur rarely displayed much awareness of their slaves, and even less understanding of their ways. It was, of course, the privilege of the conquerors to be that way, and the universal fate of the conquered to suffer that disregard.

  Yet identities persisted. On a personal level. Freedom was little more than a tattered net, draped over a host of minor, self-imposed bindings. Its stripping away changed little, except, perhaps, the comforting delusion of the ideal. Mind bound to self, self to flesh, flesh to bone. As the Errant wills, we are a latticework of cages, and whatever flutters within knows but one freedom, and that is death.

  The conquerors always assumed that what they conquered was identity. But the truth was, identity could only be killed from within, and even that gesture was but a chimera. Isolation had many children, and dissolution was but one of them—yet its path was unique, for that path began when identity was left behind.

  From the building behind him emerged the song of mourning, the Edur cadence of grief. Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…A sound that always chilled Udinaas. Like emotion striking the same wall, again and again and again. The voice of the trapped, the blocked. A voice overwhelmed by the truths of the world. For the Edur, grieving was less about loss than about being lost.

  Is that what comes when you live a hundred thousand years?

  The widows then emerged, surrounding the corpse that floated waist-high on thick, swirling shadows. A figure of copper coins. The Edur’s singular use of money. Copper, tin, bronze, iron, silver and gold, it was the armour of the dead.

  At least that’s honest. Letherii use money to purchase the opposite. Well, not quite. More like the illusion of the opposite. Wealth as life’s armour. Keep, fortress, citadel, eternally vigilant army. But the enemy cares nothing for all that, for the enemy knows you are defenceless.

  ‘Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…’

  This was Daughter Sheltatha Lore’s hour, when all things material became uncertain. Smudged by light’s retreat, when the air lost clarity and revealed its motes and grains, the imperfections both light and dark so perfectly disguised at other times. When the throne was shown to be empty.

  Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate. But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation. In this way, worship could become pragmatism, and pragmatism was a cold god.

  Errant make ours a cold god, so we may act without constraint. A suitable Letherii prayer, though none would utter it in such a bold fashion. Feather Witch said that every act made was a prayer, and thus in the course of a day were served a host of gods. Wine and nectar and rustleaf and the imbibing thereof was a prayer to death, she said. Love was a prayer to life. Vengeance was a prayer to the demons of righteousness. Sealing a business pact was, she said with a faint smile, a prayer to the whisperer of illusions. Attainment for one was born of deprivation for another, after all. A game played with two hands.

  ‘Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…’

  He shook himself. His sodden tunic now wrapped him in damp chill.

  A shout from the direction of the sea. The K’orthan raiders were returning. Udinaas walked across the compound, towards the Sengar household. He saw Tomad Sengar and his wife Uruth emerge, and dropped to his knees, head pressed to the ground, until they passed. Then he rose and hurried into the longhouse.

  The copper-sheathed corpse would be placed within the hollowed trunk of a Blackwood, the ends sealed with discs of cedar. Six days from now, the bole would be buried in one of a dozen sacred groves in the forest. Until that moment, the dirge would continue. The widows taking turns with that blunt, terrible utterance.

  He made his way to the small alcove where his sleeping pallet waited. The longboats would file into the canal, one after the other in the grainy half-light. They would not have failed. They never did. The crews of nineteen Letherii ships were now dead—no slaves taken, not this time. Standing on both sides of the canal, the noble wives and fathers greeted their warriors in silence.

  In silence.

  Because something terrible has happened.

  He lay down on his back, staring up at the slanted ceiling, feeling a strange, unnerving constriction in his throat. And could hear, in the rush of his blood, a faint echo behind his heart. A double beat. Hunh hunh Huh huh. Hunh hunh Huh huh…

  Who are you? What are you waiting for? What do you want with me?

  Trull clambered onto the landing, the cold haft of his spear in his right hand, its iron-shod butt striking sparks on the flagstones as he stepped away from the canal’s edge and halted beside Fear. Opposite them, but remaining five
paces away, stood Tomad and Uruth. Rhulad was nowhere to be seen.

  Nor, he realized, was Mayen.

  A glance revealed that Fear was scanning the welcoming crowd. There was no change in expression, but he strode towards Tomad.

  ‘Mayen is in the forest with the other maidens,’ Tomad said. ‘Collecting morok. They are guarded by Theradas, and Midik and Rhulad.’

  ‘My son.’ Uruth stepped closer, eyes searching Fear’s visage. ‘What did he do?’

  Fear shook his head.

  ‘They died without honour,’ Trull said. ‘We could not see the hand that delivered that death, but it was…monstrous.’

  ‘And the harvest?’ Tomad asked.

  ‘It was taken, Father. By that same hand.’

  A flash of anger in Uruth’s eyes. ‘This was no full unveiling. This was a demonic summoning.’

  Trull frowned. ‘I do not understand, Mother. There were shadows—’

  ‘And a darkness,’ Fear cut in. ‘From the depths…darkness.’

  She crossed her arms and looked away. Trull had never seen Uruth so distressed.

  And in himself, his own growing unease. Fully three-fifths of the Tiste Edur employed sorcery. A multitude of fragments from the riven warren of Kurald Emurlahn. Shadow’s power displayed myriad flavours. Among Uruth’s sons, only Binadas walked the paths of sorcery. Fear’s words had none the less triggered a recognition in Trull. Every Tiste Edur understood his own, after all. Caster of magic or not.

  ‘Mother, Hannan Mosag’s sorcery was not Kurald Emurlahn.’ He did not need their expressions to realize that he had been the last among them to understand that truth. He grimaced. ‘Forgive me my foolish words—’

  ‘Foolish only in speaking them aloud,’ Uruth said. ‘Fear, take Trull and Rhulad. Go to the Stone Bowl—’

  ‘Stop this. Now.’ Tomad’s voice was hard, his expression dark. ‘Fear. Trull. Return to the house and await me there. Uruth, tend to the needs of the widows. A fallen warrior faces his first dusk among kin. Propitiations must be made.’

  For a moment Trull thought she was going to object. Instead, lips pressed into a line, she nodded and strode away.

  Fear beckoned Trull and they walked to the longhouse, leaving their father standing alone beside the canal.

  ‘These are awkward times,’ Trull said.

  ‘Is there need,’ Fear asked, ‘when you stand between Rhulad and Mayen?’

  Trull clamped his mouth shut. Too off-balance to deflect the question with a disarming reply.

  Fear took the silence for an answer. ‘And when you stand between them, who do you face?’

  ‘I—I am sorry, Fear. Your question was unexpected. Is there need, you ask. My answer is: I don’t know.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘His strutting…irritates me.’

  Fear made no response.

  They came to the doorway. Trull studied his brother. ‘Fear, what is this Stone Bowl? I have never heard—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied, then walked inside.

  Trull remained at the threshold. He ran a hand through his hair, turned and looked back across the compound. Those who had stood in welcome were gone, as were their warrior kin. Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan Cadre were nowhere to be seen. A lone figure remained. Tomad.

  Are we so different from everyone else?

  Yes. For the Warlock King has asked for Tomad’s sons. To pursue a vision.

  He has made us his servants. Yet…is he the master?

  In his dream, Udinaas found himself kneeling in ashes. He was cut and bleeding. His hands. His legs. The ash seemed to gnaw into the wounds with avid hunger. The tightness in his throat made him gasp for breath. He clawed at the air as he clambered onto his feet and stood, wavering—and the sky roared and raced in on all sides.

  Fire. A storm of fire.

  He screamed.

  And found himself on his knees once more.

  Beyond his ragged breathing, only silence. Udinaas lifted his head. The storm was gone.

  Figures on the plain. Walking, dust roiling up behind them like wind-tossed shrouds. Weapons impaled them. Limbs hung from shreds of tendon and muscle. Sightless eyes and expressions twisted with fearful recognition—faces seeing their own deaths—blind to his own presence as they marched past.

  Rising up within him, a vast sense of loss. Grief, then the bitter whisper of betrayal.

  Someone will pay for this. Someone will pay.

  Someone.

  Someone.

  The words were not his, the thoughts were another’s, but the voice, there in the centre of his skull—that voice was his own.

  A dead warrior walked close. Tall, black-skinned. A sword had taken most of his face. Bone gleamed, latticed with red cracks from some fierce impact.

  A flash of motion.

  Metal-clad hand crashed into the side of Udinaas’s head. Blood sprayed. He was in a cloud of grey ash, on the ground. Blinking burning fire.

  He felt gauntleted fingers close about his left ankle. His leg was viciously yanked upward.

  And then the warrior began dragging him.

  Where are we going?

  ‘The Lady is harsh.’

  The Lady?

  ‘Is harsh.’

  She awaits us at journey’s end?

  ‘She is not one who waits.’

  He twisted as he was pulled along, found himself staring back at the furrow he’d made in the ashes. A track reaching to the horizon. And black blood was welling from that ragged gouge. How long has he been dragging me? Whom do I wound?

  The thunder of hoofs.

  ‘She comes.’

  Udinaas turned onto his back, struggled to raise his head.

  A piercing scream.

  Then a sword ripped through the warrior dragging Udinaas. Cutting it in half. The hand fell away from his ankle and he rolled to one side as iron-shod hoofs thundered past.

  She blazed, blinding white. A sword flickering like lightning in one hand. In the other, a double-bladed axe that dripped something molten in its wake. The horse—

  Naught but bones, bound by fire.

  The huge skeletal beast tossed its head as it wheeled round. The woman was masked in flat, featureless gold. A headdress of arching, gilt scales rose like hackles about her head. Weapons lifted.

  And Udinaas stared into her eyes.

  He flinched away, scrabbling to his feet, then running.

  Hoofs pounded behind him.

  Daughter Dawn. Menandore—

  Before him were sprawled the warriors that had walked alongside the one dragging him. Flames licking along wounds, dull smoke rising from torn flesh. None moved. They keep dying, don’t they? Again and again. They keep dying—

  He ran.

  Then was struck. A wall of ridged bone smashing into his right shoulder, spinning him through the air. He hit the ground, tumbled and rolled, limbs flopping.

  His eyes stared up into swirling dust, the sky behind it spinning.

  A shape appeared in its midst, and a hard-soled boot settled on his chest.

  When she spoke, her voice was like the hissing of a thousand snakes. ‘The blood of a Locqui Wyval…in the body of a slave. Which heart, mortal, will you ride?’

  He could not draw breath. The pressure of the boot was building, crushing his chest. He clawed at it.

  ‘Let your soul answer. Before you die.’

  I ride…that which I have always ridden.

  ‘A coward’s answer.’

  Yes.

  ‘A moment remains. For you to reconsider.’

  Blackness closed around him. He could taste blood in the grit filling his mouth. Wyval! I ride the Wyval!

  The boot slipped to one side.

  A gauntleted hand reached down to the rope he used as a belt. Fingers clenched and he was lifted from the ground, arching, head dangling. Before him, a world turned upside down. Lifted, until his hips pushed up against the inside of her thighs.

  He felt his tunic pulled
up onto his belly. A hand tearing his loincloth away. Cold iron fingers clamped round him.

  He groaned.

  And was pushed inside.

  Fire in his blood. Agony in his hips and lower back as, with one hand, she drove him up again and again.

  Until he spasmed.

  The hand released him and he thumped back onto the ground, shuddering.

  He did not hear her walk away.

  He heard nothing. Nothing but the two hearts within him. Their beats drawing closer, ever closer.

  After a time someone settled down beside Udinaas.

  ‘Debtor.’

  Someone will pay. He almost laughed.

  A hand on his shoulder. ‘Udinaas. Where is this place?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He turned his head, stared up into the frightened eyes of Feather Witch. ‘What do the tiles tell you?’

  ‘I don’t have them.’

  ‘Think of them. Cast them, in your mind.’

  ‘What do you know of such things, Udinaas?’

  He slowly sat up. The pain was gone. No bruises, not even a scratch beneath the layer of ash. He dragged his tunic down to cover his crotch. ‘Nothing,’ he replied.

  ‘You do not need divination,’ she said, ‘to know what has just happened.’

  His smile was bitter. ‘I do. Dawn. The Edur’s most feared Daughter. Menandore. She was here.’

  ‘The Letherii are not visited by Tiste Edur gods—’

  ‘I was.’ He looked away. ‘She, uh, made use of me.’

  Feather Witch rose. ‘Wyval blood has taken you. You are poisoned with visions, Debtor. Madness. Dreams that you are more than the man everyone else sees.’

  ‘Look at the bodies around us, Feather Witch. She cut them down.’

  ‘They are long dead.’

  ‘Aye, yet they were walking. See this track—one of them dragged me and that is my trail. And there, her horse’s hoofs made those.’

  But she was not looking, her gaze instead fixed on Udinaas. ‘This is a world of your own conjuring,’ she said. ‘Your mind is beset by false visions.’