The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  ‘There are…roots…filling your entire being. Every vein and artery, the thinnest capillaries…alive…’

  ‘My ootooloo – they said it would take over, eventually. Its appetites are’ – she smiled – ‘boundless. But I have learned to control them, more or less. It possesses its own rigour, yes?’

  ‘You are dead and yet not dead, not any more – but what lives within you, what has claimed your entire body, Shurq Elalle, it is alien. A parasite!’

  ‘Beats fleas.’

  He gaped.

  She grew impatient with his burgeoning alarm. ‘Errant take your rituals. I am content enough as I am, or will be once I get scoured out and some new spices stuffed—’

  ‘Stop, please.’

  ‘As you like. Is there something else you wanted to discuss? Truth is, I have little time for high priests. As if piety comes from gaudy robes and self-righteous arrogance. Show me a priest who knows how to dance and I might bask in his measure, for a time. Otherwise…’

  He bowed. ‘Forgive me, then.’

  ‘Forget trying to resurrect your faith, Banaschar, and try finding for yourself a more worthy ritual of living.’

  He backed away, and very nearly collided with the Adjunct and Tavore’s ever-present bodyguard, Lostara Yil. Another hasty bow, then flight down the steps.

  The Adjunct frowned at Shurq Elalle. ‘It seems you are upsetting my other passengers, Captain.’

  ‘Not my concern, Adjunct. I would be of better service if I was on my own ship.’

  ‘You lack confidence in your first mate?’

  ‘My incomplete specimen of a human? Why would you imagine that?’

  Lostara Yil snorted, then pointedly ignored the Adjunct’s quick warning glance.

  ‘I will have many questions to ask you, Captain,’ Tavore said. ‘Especially the closer we get to Letheras. And I will of course value your answers.’

  ‘You are being too bold,’ Shurq Elalle said, ‘heading straight for the capital.’

  ‘Answers, not advice.’

  Shurq Elalle shrugged. ‘I had an uncle who chose to leave Letheras and live with the Meckros. He wasn’t much for listening to advice either. So off he went, and then, not so long ago, there was a ship, a Meckros ship from one of their floating cities south of Pilott – and they told tales of a sister city being destroyed by ice, then vanishing – almost no wreckage left behind at all – and no survivors. Probably straight down to the deep. That hapless city was the one my uncle lived on.’

  ‘Then you should have learned a most wise lesson,’ Lostara Yil said in a rather dry tone that hinted of self-mockery.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. People who make up their minds about something never listen to advice – especially when it’s to the contrary.’

  ‘Well said.’ Shurq Elalle smiled at the tattooed woman. ‘Frustrating, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you two are done with your not very subtle complaints,’ the Adjunct said, ‘I wish to ask the captain here about the Letherii secret police, the Patriotists.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Shurq Elalle said, ‘that is not a fun subject. Not fun at all.’

  ‘I am not interested in fun,’ Tavore said.

  And one look at her, Shurq Elalle reflected, was proof enough of that.

  With twelve of his most loyal guards from the Eternal Domicile, Sirryn marched up Kravos Hill, the west wall of Letheras two thousand paces behind him. The tents of the Imperial Brigade dominated in the midst of ancillary companies and lesser brigades, although the Tiste Edur encampment, situated slightly apart from the rest, to the north, looked substantial – at least two or three thousand of the damned savages, Sirryn judged.

  Atop Kravos Hill stood half a dozen Letherii officers and a contingent of Tiste Edur, among them Hanradi Khalag. Sirryn withdrew a scroll and said to the once-king, ‘I am here to deliver the Chancellor’s orders.’

  Expressionless, Hanradi reached out for the scroll, then passed it on to one of his aides without looking at it.

  Sirryn scowled. ‘Such orders—’

  ‘I do not read Letherii,’ Hanradi said.

  ‘If you’d like, I can translate—’

  ‘I have my own people for that, Finadd.’ Hanradi Khalag looked across at the officers of the Imperial Brigade. ‘In the future,’ he said, ‘we Edur will patrol the boundaries of our own camp. The parade of Letherii whores is now at an end, so your pimp soldiers will have to make their extra coin elsewhere.’

  The Edur commander led his troop away, down off the summit of the hill. Sirryn stared after them for a moment, until he was certain they would not return. He then withdrew a second scroll and approached the Preda of the Imperial Brigade. ‘These, too,’ he said, ‘are the Chancellor’s orders.’

  The Preda was a veteran, not just of battle, but of the ways of the palace. He simply nodded as he accepted the scroll. ‘Finadd,’ he asked, ‘will the Chancellor be commanding us in person when the time comes?’

  ‘I imagine not, sir.’

  ‘That could make things awkward.’

  ‘In some matters, I will speak for him, sir. As for the rest, you will find, once you have examined that scroll, that you are given considerable freedom for the battle itself.’

  ‘And if I find myself at odds with Hanradi?’

  ‘I doubt that will be a problem,’ Sirryn said.

  He watched the Preda mull that over, and thought he saw a slight widening of the man’s eyes.

  ‘Finadd,’ the Preda said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘How fares the Chancellor, at the moment?’

  ‘Well indeed, sir.’

  ‘And…in the future?’

  ‘He is most optimistic, sir.’

  ‘Very good. Thank you, Finadd.’

  Sirryn saluted. ‘Begging your leave, sir, I wish to oversee the establishment of my camp.’

  ‘Make it close to this hill, Finadd – this is where we will command the battle – and I will want you close.’

  ‘Sir, there is scant room left—’

  ‘You have my leave to move people out at your discretion, Finadd.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Oh, he would enjoy that. Grubby soldiers with dust on their boots – they always imagined themselves superior to their counterparts in the palace. Well, a few cracked skulls would change that quick enough. By leave of their very own Preda. He saluted again and led his troops back down the hill.

  The man looked familiar. Had he been a student of hers? Son of a neighbour, son of another scholar? These were the questions in Janath’s mind as the troop dragged them from Tehol’s home. Of the journey to the compound of the Patriotists, she now recalled very little. But that man, with the familiar face – a face that stirred oddly intimate feelings within her – would not leave her.

  Chained in her cell, chained in the darkness that crawled with vermin, she had been left alone for some time now. Days, perhaps even a week. A single plate of watery stew slid through the trap at the foot of the door at what seemed irregular intervals – it would not be pushed into her cell if she did not leave the empty plate from the last meal within easy reach of the guard. The ritual had not been explained to her, but she had come to admire its precision, its eloquence. Disobedience meant hunger; or, rather, starvation – hunger was always there, something that she had not experienced in the household of Bugg and Tehol. There had been a time, back then, when she had come to loathe the taste of chicken. Now she dreamed of those damned hens.

  The man, Tanal Yathvanar, had visited but once, apparently to gloat. She’d no idea she had been wanted for sedition, although in truth that did not surprise her much. When thugs were in power, educated people were the first to feel their fists. It was so pathetic, really, how so much violence came from someone feeling small. Small of mind, and it did not matter how big the sword in hand, that essential smallness remained, gnawing with very sharp teeth.

  Both Bugg and Tehol had hinted, occasionally, that things would not go well if the
Patriotists found her. Well, them, as it turned out. Tehol Beddict, her most frustrating student, who had only attended her lectures out of adolescent lust, now revealed as the empire’s greatest traitor – so Tanal Yathvanar had said to her, the glee in his voice matched by the lurid reflections in his eyes as he stood with his lantern in one hand and the other touching his private parts whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. She had been sitting with her back to the stone wall, head tilted down chin to chest, with her filthy hair hanging ragged over her face.

  Tehol Beddict, masterminding the empire’s economic ruin – well, that was still a little hard to believe. Oh, he had the talent, yes. And maybe even the inclination. But for such universal collapse as was now occurring, there was a legion of co-conspirators. Unwitting for the most part, of course, barring that niggling in their guts that what they were doing was, ultimately, destructive beyond measure. But greed won out, as it always did. So, Tehol Beddict had paved the road, but hundreds – thousands? – had freely chosen to walk it. And now they cried out, indignant and appalled, even as they scurried for cover lest blame spread its crimson pool.

  As things stood at the moment, the entire crime now rested at Tehol’s feet – and Bugg’s, the still elusive manservant.

  ‘But we will find him, Janath,’ Tanal Yathvanar had said. ‘We find everyone, eventually.’

  Everyone but yourselves, she had thought to reply, for that search leads you onto a far too frightening path. Instead, she had said nothing, given him nothing at all. And watched as the sword got ever smaller in his hand – yes, that sword, too.

  ‘Just as we found you. Just as I found you. Oh, it’s well known now. I was the one to arrest Tehol Beddict and Scholar Janath. Me. Not Karos Invictad, who sits day and night drooling over his box and that blessed two-headed insect. It has driven him mad, you know. He does nothing else.’ He then laughed. ‘Did you know he is now the richest man in the empire? At least, he thinks he is. But I did the work for him. I made the transactions. I have copies of everything. But the real glory is this – I am his beneficiary, and he doesn’t even know it!’

  Yes, the two-headed insect. One drooling, the other nattering.

  Tanal Yathvanar. She knew him – that was now a certainty. She knew him, because he had done all this to her before. There had been no dissembling when he had talked about that – it was the source for his gloating over her, after all, so it could not be a lie.

  And now her memories – of the time between the end of the semester at the academy, and her awakening in the care of Tehol and Bugg – memories that had been so fragmented, images blurred beyond all understanding, began to coalesce, began to draw into focus.

  She was wanted, because she had escaped. Which meant that she had been arrested – her first arrest – and her tormentor had been none other than Tanal Yathvanar.

  Logical. Reasonable intuitions from the available facts and her list of observations. Cogent argument and standing before her – some time ago now – the one man who offered the most poignant proof as he babbled on, driven by her lack of reaction. ‘Dear Janath, we must resume where we left off. I don’t know how you got away. I don’t even know how you ended up with Tehol Beddict. But once more you are mine, to do with as I please. And what I will do with you will not, alas, please you, but your pleasure is not what interests me. This time, you will beg me, you will promise anything, you will come to worship me. And that is what I will leave you with, today. To give you things to think about, until my return.’

  Her silence, it had turned out, had been a weak defence.

  She was beginning to remember – past those ordered details arranged with clinical detachment – and with those memories there was…pain.

  Pain beyond comprehension.

  I was driven mad. That is why I could not remember anything. Entirely mad – I don’t know how Bugg and Tehol healed me, but they must have. And Tehol’s consideration, his very uncharacteristic gentleness with me – not once did he seek to take advantage of me, although he must have known that he could have, that I would have welcomed it. That should have awakened suspicion in me, it should have, but I was too happy, too strangely content, even as I waited and waited for Tehol to find himself in my arms.

  Ah, now isn’t that an odd way of putting it?

  She wondered where he was. In another cell? There were plenty of moaners and criers for neighbours, most beyond all hope of communication. Was one of them Tehol Beddict? Broken into a bleeding, gibbering thing?

  She did not believe it. Would not. No, for the Great Traitor of the Empire, there would have to be spectacle. A Drowning of such extravagance as to burn like a brand into the collective memory of the Letherii people. He would need to be broken publicly. Made the singular focus for this overwhelming tide of rage and fear. Karos Invictad’s crucial act to regain control, to quell the anarchy, the panic, to restore order.

  What irony, that even as Emperor Rhulad prepared to slaughter champions – among them some reputed to be the most dangerous Rhulad would ever face – Karos Invictad could so easily usurp the attention of everyone – well, among the Letherii, that is – with this one arrest, this one trial, this one act of bloodletting.

  Doesn’t he realize? That to kill Tehol Beddict this way will be to make of him a martyr? One such as has never been seen before? Tehol Beddict sought to destroy the Letherii system of Indebtedness. Sought to destroy the unholy union of coin and power. He will be the new Errant, but a new kind of Errant. One bound to justice, to freedom, to the commonality of humans. Regardless of whether he was right, regardless even if these were his aims – none of that will matter. He will be written of, a thousand accounts, and in time but a handful will survive, drawn together to forge the heart of a new cult.

  And you, Karos Invictad, oh, how your name will ride the breath of curses, for ever more.

  Make someone a martyr and surrender all control, of what that someone was in life, of what that someone becomes in death. Do this, Karos Invictad, and you will have lost, even as you lick the man’s blood from your hands.

  Yet, perhaps the Invigilator understood all of that. Enough to have already murdered Tehol Beddict, murdered him and dumped the body into the river, weighted down with stones. Unannounced, all in the darkness of night.

  But no – the people wanted, needed, demanded that public, ritualized execution of Tehol Beddict.

  And so she went round and round, in the swirling drain of her mind, the bottomless well that was her spirit’s defensive collapse sucking her down, ever down.

  Away from the memories.

  From Tanal Yathvanar.

  And what he had done to her before.

  And what he would do to her now.

  The proud, boisterous warrior who had been Gadalanak returned to the compound barely recognizable as human. The kind of failure, Samar Dev was led to understand, that infuriated this terrible, terrifying Emperor. Accordingly, Gadalanak had been cut to pieces. Long after he was dead, Rhulad’s dread sword had swung down, chopping, slashing, stabbing and twisting. Most of the man’s blood had probably drained into the sand of the arena floor, since the corpse carried by the burial retinue of Indebted did not even drip.

  Puddy and other warriors, still waiting their turn – the masked woman included – stood nearby, watching the bearers and their reed stretcher with its grisly heap of raw meat and jutting bone cross the compound on their way to what was known as the Urn Room, where Gadalanak’s remains would be interred. Another Indebted trailed the bearers, carrying the warrior’s weapon and shield, virtually clean of any blood, spattered or otherwise. Word had already come of the contest’s details. The Emperor had cut off Gadalanak’s weapon-arm with the first blow, midway between hand and elbow, sending the weapon flying off to one side. Shield-arm followed, severed at the shoulder. It was said the attending Tiste Edur – and the few Letherii dignitaries whose bloodlust overwhelmed panic at sudden financial straits – had then voiced an ecstatic roar, as if answering Gadalanak’s own
screams.

  Silent, sober of expression and pale as bleached sand, Puddy and the others watched this grim train, as did Samar Dev herself. Then she turned away. Into the side corridor, down its dusty, gloomy length.

  Karsa Orlong was lying on the oversized cot that had been built for some previous champion – a full-blood Tarthenal, although still not as tall as the Teblor now sprawled down its length, bared feet jutting over the end with the toes pressed against the wall – a wall stamped with the grime of those toes and feet, since Karsa Orlong had taken to doing very little, ever since the announcement of the contests.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gadalanak. Within two or three heartbeats – I think it was a mistake, all of you deciding not to attend – you need to see the one you will fight. You need to know his style. There might be weaknesses—’

  Karsa snorted. ‘Revealed in two heartbeats?’

  ‘The others, I suspect, will now change their minds. They will go, see for themselves—’

  ‘Fools.’

  ‘Because they won’t follow your lead in this?’

  ‘I wasn’t even aware they had, witch. What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  She stepped into the room. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘You are dragging your ghosts with you.’

  ‘More like they’re clinging to my heels, gibbering – something is building within you, Karsa Orlong—’

  ‘Climb onto me and we can relieve that, Samar Dev.’

  ‘Amazing,’ she breathed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, you idiot. I was just commenting on how you can still manage to shock me on occasion.’

  ‘You only pretend to innocence, woman. Take your clothes off.’

  ‘If I did, it would only be because you have worn me down. But I won’t, because I am tougher than you think. One look at the odious stains your feet have left on that wall is enough to quench any ardour I might – in sudden madness – experience.’

  ‘I did not ask you to make love to my feet.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be exercising – no, not that kind. I mean, staying limber, stretching and the like.’