‘I would counsel a withdrawal from High Fort, but the king would not agree to that, would he?’
Brys shook his head. ‘Your assessment is accurate. Even a disaster would be seen to have…benefits.’
‘The elimination of his wife and son, yes. A tragic state of affairs, wouldn’t you say, my young friend? The heart of the Cedance, I have come to realize, can be found in a systemic denial. And from that heart, all else is derived. Our very way of life and of seeing the world. We send soldiers to their deaths and how do we see those deaths? As glorious sacrifices. The enemy dead? As the victims of our honourable righteousness. Whilst in our cities, in the narrow, foul alleys, a life that ends is but tragic failure. What, then, is the denial whereof I speak?’
‘Death.’
Kuru Qan placed the lenses once more before his eyes and peered at Brys. ‘You see, then. I knew you would. Brys, there is no Hold of Death. Your task? Naught but keeping an old man company on this night.’
The King’s Champion rubbed at his face. His eyes felt full of grit, and he was unaccountably chilled. He was, he realized, exhausted.
‘Our manic accumulation of wealth,’ Kuru Qan went on. ‘Our headlong progress, as if motion was purpose and purpose inherently virtuous. Our lack of compassion, which we called being realistic. The extremity of our judgements, our self-righteousness—all a flight from death, Brys. All a vast denial smothered in semantics and euphemisms. Bravery and sacrifice, pathos and failure, as if life is a contest to be won or lost. As if death is the arbiter of meaning, the moment of final judgement, and above all else judgement is a thing to be delivered, not delivered unto.’
‘Would you rather we worship death, Ceda?’
‘Equally pointless. One needs no faith to die, one dies none the less. I spoke of systemic denial, and it is indeed and in every way systemic. The very fabric of our world, here in Lether and perhaps elsewhere, has been twisted round that…absence. There should be a Hold of Death, do you understand? Relevant? The only relevance. It must have existed, once. Perhaps even a god, some ghastly skeleton on a throne of bones, a spin and dance of cold-legged flies for a crown. Yet here we are, and we have given it no face, no shape, no position in our elaborate scheme of existence.’
‘Perhaps because it is the very opposite of existence—’
‘But it isn’t, Brys, it isn’t. Errant take us, death is all around us. We stride over it, we breathe it, we soak its essence into our lungs, our blood. We feed upon it daily. We thrive in the midst of decay and dissolution.’
Brys studied the Ceda. ‘It occurs to me,’ he said slowly, ‘that life itself is a celebration of denial. The denial of which you speak, Kuru Qan. Our flight—well, to flee is to lift oneself clear of the bones, the ashes, the fallen away.’
‘Flee—to where?’
‘Granted. Nowhere but elsewhere. I wonder if what you’ve said is being manifested, in creatures such as Kettle and that thief, Shurq Elalle—’
The Ceda’s head snapped up, eyes suddenly alert behind the thick lenses. ‘I’m sorry? What did you say?’
‘Well, I was speaking of those who are denied death in truth, Ceda. The child, Kettle—’
‘The guardian of the Azath? She is undead?’
‘Yes. I’m sure I mentioned—’
Kuru Qan was on his feet. ‘Are you certain of this? Brys Beddict, she is an undead?’
‘She is. But I don’t understand—’
‘Stand up, Brys. We’re going. Now.’
‘It’s all the fallen people,’ Kettle said. ‘They want answers. They won’t go until they get answers.’
Shurq Elalle kicked away an insect that had crawled onto her boot. ‘Answers about what?’
‘Why they died.’
‘There are no answers,’ Shurq replied. ‘It’s what people do. Die. They die. They always die.’
‘We didn’t.’
‘Yes we did.’
‘Well, we didn’t go away.’
‘From the sound of it, Kettle, neither did they.’
‘That’s true. I wonder why I didn’t think of that.’
‘Because you were about ten years old when you died.’
‘Well, what do I do now?’
Shurq studied the overgrown, ground-heaved yard. ‘You gave me the idea, and that’s why I am here. You said the dead were gathering. Gathering round this place, hovering just outside the walls. Can you talk to them?’
‘Why would I want to? They never say anything interesting.’
‘But you could if you had to.’
Kettle shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘Good. Ask for volunteers.’
‘For what?’
‘I want them to come with me. On an outing. Tonight and again tomorrow night.’
‘Why would they want to, Mother?’
‘Tell them they will see more gold than they can imagine. They will learn secrets few in this kingdom possess. Tell them I am going to lead them on a tour of the Tolls Repository and the royal vaults. Tell them, the time’s come to have fun. Terrifying the living.’
‘Why would ghosts want to scare the living?’
‘I know, it’s a strange notion, but I predict they will discover they’re very good at it. Further, I predict they will enjoy the endeavour.’
‘But, how will they do that? They’re ghosts. The living can’t even see them.’
Shurq Elalle swung about and stared out on the milling crowds. ‘Kettle, they look pretty solid to us, don’t they?’
‘But we’re dead—’
‘Then why couldn’t we see them a week ago? They were just flits, on the edge of our vision back then, weren’t they? If that, even. So what has changed? Where has their power come from? Why is it growing?’
‘I don’t know.’
Shurq smiled. ‘I do.’
Kettle walked over to one of the low walls.
The thief watched her speaking to the ghosts. I wonder if she realizes. I wonder if she knows she’s more alive now than dead. I wonder if she knows she’s coming back to life.
After a moment the child returned, pulling her fingers through her hair to loosen the snarls. ‘You are smart, Mother,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re my mother and that’s why.’
‘I have some volunteers?’
‘They’ll all go. They want to see the gold. They want to scare people.’
‘I need some who can read and some who can count.’
‘That’s okay. So tell me, Mother, why are they growing more powerful? What’s changed?’
Shurq looked back at the square, squalid tower of stone. ‘That, Kettle.’
‘The Azath?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ the child said. ‘I understand now. It died.’
‘Yes,’ Shurq said, nodding. ‘It died.’
After Mother had left, thousands of ghosts following, Kettle walked to the tower’s entrance. She studied the flagstones set before the door, then selected one and knelt before it. Her fingernails broke prying it loose, and she was surprised at the sting of pain and the welling of blood.
She had not told Shurq how hard it had been speaking to those ghosts. Their endless voices had been fading the last day or two, as if she was becoming deaf. Although other sounds—the wind, the dead leaves scurrying about, the crunch and munch of the insects in the yard, and the sounds of the city itself—all were as clear as ever. Something was happening to her. That beating vibration in her chest had quickened. Five, six eights a day, now. The places where her skin had broken long ago were closing up with new, pink skin, and earlier today she had been thirsty. It had taken some time to realize—to remember, perhaps—what thirst was, what it signified, but the stagnant water she had found at the base of one of the pits in the yard had tasted wonderful. So many things were changing, it seemed, confusing her.
She dragged the flagstone to one side, then sat beside it. She wiped the dust from its blank, polished surface. There were funny patterns in it. Shells, the imprint of plan
ts—reeds with their onion-like root-balls—and the pebbled impressions of coral. Tiny bones. Someone had done a lot of carving to make such a pretty scene of dead things.
She looked down the path, through the gate and onto the street. Strange, to see it so empty now. But, she knew, it wouldn’t be for long.
And so she waited.
The bleeding from her fingertips had stopped by the time she heard the footfalls approaching. She looked up, then smiled upon seeing Uncle Brys and the old man with the glass eyes—the one she had never seen before yet knew anyway.
They saw her, and Brys strode through the gate, the old man following behind with nervous, tentative steps.
‘Hello, Uncle,’ Kettle said.
‘Kettle. You are looking…better. I have brought a guest, Ceda Kuru Qan.’
‘Yes, the one who’s always looking at me but not seeing me, but looking anyway.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that,’ the Ceda said.
‘Not like you’re doing now,’ Kettle said. ‘Not when you have those things in front of your eyes.’
‘You mean, when I look upon the Cedance? Is that when I see you without seeing you?’
She nodded.
‘The Hold of the Azath is gone, child, yet here you remain. You were its guardian when it was alive—when you were not. And now, you are its guardian still? When it is dead and you are not?’
‘I’m not dead?’
‘Not quite. The heart placed within you. Once frozen…now…thawing. I do not understand its power, and, I admit, it frightens me.’
‘I have a friend who said he’ll destroy me if he has to,’ Kettle said, smiling. ‘But he says he probably won’t have to.’
‘Why not?’
‘He says the heart won’t wake up. Not completely. That’s why the Nameless One took my body.’
She watched the old man’s mouth moving, but no words came forth. At his side, Uncle Brys stepped closer, concern on his face.
‘Ceda? Are you all right?’
‘Nameless One?’ The old man was shivering. ‘This place—this is the Hold of Death, isn’t it? It’s become the Hold of Death.’
Kettle reached over and picked up the flagstone. It was as heavy as a corpse, so she was used to the weight. ‘This is for your Cedance, for where you look when you don’t see me.’
‘A tile.’ Kuru Qan looked away as she set it down in front of him.
‘Ceda,’ Uncle Brys said, ‘I do not understand. What has happened here?’
‘Our history…so much is proving untrue. The Nameless Ones were of the First Empire. A cult. It was expunged. Eliminated. It cannot have survived, but it seems to have done just that. It seems to have outlived the First Empire itself.’
‘Are they some sort of death cult?’
‘No. They were servants of the Azath.’
‘Then why,’ Brys asked, ‘do they appear to have been overseeing the death of this Azath tower?’
Kuru Qan shook his head. ‘Unless they saw it as inevitable. And so they acted in order to counter those within the barrows who would escape once the tower died. The manifestation of a Hold of Death may turn out to have nothing to do with them.’
‘Then why is she still the guardian?’
‘She may not be, Brys. She waits in order to deal with those who are about to escape the grounds.’ The Ceda’s gaze returned to Kettle. ‘Child, is that why you remain?’
She shrugged. ‘It won’t be long now.’
‘And the one the Azath chose to help you, Kettle, will he emerge in time?’
‘I don’t know. I hope so.’
‘So do I,’ Kuru Qan said. ‘Thank you, child, for the tile. Still, I wonder at your knowledge of this new Hold.’
Kettle pulled an insect from her hair and tossed it aside. ‘The pretty man told me all about it,’ she said.
‘Another visitor?’
‘Only once. Mostly he just stands in the shadows, across the street. Sometimes he followed me when I went hunting, but he never said anything. Not until today, when he came over and we talked.’
‘Did he tell you his name?’ the Ceda asked.
‘No. But he was very handsome. Only he said he had a girlfriend. Lots. Boyfriends, too. Besides, I shouldn’t give my heart away. That’s what he said. He never does. Never ever.’
‘And this man told you all about the Hold of Death?’
‘Yes, Grandfather. He knew all about it. He said it doesn’t need a new guardian, because the throne is already occupied, at least everywhere else. Here too, soon. I’m tired of talking now.’
‘Of course, Kettle,’ Kuru Qan said. ‘We shall take our leave of you, then.’
‘Goodbye. Oh, don’t forget the tile!’
‘We will send some people to collect it, child.’
‘All right.’
She watched them walk away. When they were gone from sight she headed over to her friend’s barrow, and felt him close. ‘Where are you taking me this time?’
Her hand in his, she found herself standing on a low hill, and before them was a vast, shallow valley, filled with corpses.
It was dusk, a layer of smoke hanging over the vista. Just above the horizon opposite, a suspended mountain of black stone was burning, columns of smoke billowing from its gashed flanks. Below, the bodies were mostly of some kind of huge, reptilian creature wearing strange armour. Grey-skinned and long-snouted, their forms were contorted and ribboned with slashes, lying in tangled heaps. Here and there in their midst lay other figures. Tall, some with grey skins, some with black.
Standing beside her, he spoke. ‘Over four hundred thousand, Kettle. Here in this valley alone. There are other…valleys. Like this one.’
A score of leathery-winged beasts were crossing the valley at one end, far to their right.
‘Ooh, are those dragons?’
‘Spawn. Locqui Wyval, searching for their master. But he is gone. Once they realize that, they will know to wait. It will prove a long wait.’
‘Are they waiting still?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did this battle happen?’
‘Many thousands of years ago, Kettle. But the damage remains. In a short while, the ice will arrive, sealing all you see. Holding all in stasis, a sorcery of impressive power, so powerful it will prove a barrier to the dead themselves—to the path their spirits would take. I wonder if that was what the Jaghut had intended. In any case, the land was twisted by the magic. The dead…lingered. Here, in the north, and far to the south, as far as Letheras itself. To my mind, an Elder god meddled. But none could have foreseen the consequences, not even an Elder god.’
‘Is that why the tower has become the Hold of Death?’
‘It has? I was not aware of that. This, then, is what comes, when the sorcery finally dies and the world thaws. Balance is reasserted.’
‘Shurq Elalle says we are at war. The Tiste Edur, she says, are invading Lether.’
‘Let us hope they do not arrive before I am free.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they will endeavour to kill me, Kettle.’
‘Why?’
‘For fear that I will seek to kill them.’
‘Will you?’
‘On many levels,’ he replied, ‘there is no reason why I shouldn’t. But no, not unless they get in my way. You and I know, after all, that the true threat waits in the barrows of the Azath grounds.’
‘I don’t think the Edur will win the war,’ she said.
‘Yes, failure on their part would be ideal.’
‘So what else did you want to show me?’
A pale white hand gestured towards the valley. ‘There is something odd to all this. Do you see? Or, rather, what don’t you see?’
‘I don’t see any ghosts.’
‘Yes. The spirits are gone. The question is, where are they?’
Terrified screams echoed as Shurq Elalle walked down the wide, high-ceilinged corridor to the Master Chamber of the Tolls Repository. Guards, servants, cler
ks and cleaning staff had one and all succumbed to perfectly understandable panic. There was nothing worse, she reflected, than the unexpected visitations of dead relatives.
Ahead, the double doors were wide open, and the lanterns in the huge room beyond were swinging wildly to immanent gusts of spirited haste.
The thief strode into the chamber.
A squalid ghost rushed up to her, rotted face grinning wildly. ‘I touched it! My last coin! I found it in the stacks! And touched it!’
‘I am happy for you,’ Shurq said. ‘Now, where are the counters and readers?’
‘Eh?’
Shurq moved past the ghost. The chamber was seething, spirits hurrying this way and that, others hunched over tumbled scrolls, still others squirming along the shelves. Chests of coins had been knocked over, the glittering gold coins stirring about on the marble floor as gibbering wraiths pawed them.
‘I worked here!’
Shurq eyed the ghost drifting her way. ‘You did?’
‘Oh yes. They put in more shelves, and look at those lantern nooks—what idiot decided on those dust-traps? Dust is a fire hazard. Terrible fire hazard. Why, I was always telling them that. And now I could prove my point—a nudge, a simple nudge of that lantern there, yes…’
‘Come back here! Nothing burns. Understand?’
‘If you say so. Fine. I was just kidding, anyway.’
‘Have you looked at the ledgers?’
‘Yes, yes, and counted. And memorized. I was always good at memorizing; that’s why they hired me. I could count and count and never lose my place. But the dust! Those nooks! Everything might burn, burn terribly—’
‘Enough of that. We have what we need. Time for everyone to leave.’
A chorus of wavering voices answered her. ‘We don’t want to!’
‘There’ll be priests coming. Probably already on their way. And mages, eager to collect wraiths to enslave as their servants for eternity.’
‘We’re leaving!’
‘You,’ said Shurq to the ghost before her, ‘come with me. Talk. Give me details.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’
‘Leave that lantern alone, damn you!’
‘Sorry. Terrible fire hazard, oh, the flames there’d be. Such flames, all those inks, the colours!’
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 429