The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Yes, they say they are among those who did not join the Ritual. But this cannot be true, Trull Sengar. They must be ghosts, willed into flesh, held here by the timelessness of the Gate at the end of this cave. My friend, they do not know themselves.’ And then he paused. Can this be true?

  ‘Ulshun Pral says he remembers his mother. He says she is still alive. Although not here right now.’

  ‘Ulshun Pral is a hundred thousand years old, Trull Sengar. Or more. What he remembers is false, a delusion.’

  ‘I do not believe that, not any more. I think the mystery here is deeper than any of us realize.’

  ‘Let us go on,’ Onrack said. ‘I would see this Gate.’

  They left the chamber of the beasts.

  Trull was filled with unease. Something had been awakened in his friend – by the paintings – and its taste was bitter. He had seen, in the lines of Onrack’s back, his shoulders, a kind of slow collapse. The return of some ancient burden. And, seeing this, Trull had forced himself to speak, to break the silence before Onrack could destroy himself.

  Yes. The paintings. The crime. Will you not smile again, Onrack? Not the smile you gave me when you turned to face me just now – too broken, too filled with sorrow – but the smile I have grown to treasure since coming to this realm.

  ‘Onrack.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do we still know what we are waiting for? Yes, threats approach. Will they come through the Gate? Or from across the hills beyond the camp? Do we know in truth if these Imass are indeed threatened?’

  ‘Prepare yourself, Trull Sengar. Danger draws close…on all sides.’

  ‘Perhaps then we should return to Ulshun Pral.’

  ‘Rud Elalle is with them. There is time yet…to see this Gate.’

  Moments later, they came to the edge of the vast, seemingly limitless cavern, and both halted.

  Not one Gate. Many gates.

  And all were seething with silent, wild fire.

  ‘Onrack,’ Trull said, unslinging his spear. ‘Best return to Rud Elalle and let him know – this is not what he described.’

  Onrack pointed towards a central heap of stones. ‘She has failed. This realm, Trull Sengar, is dying. And when it dies…’

  Neither spoke for a moment.

  Then Onrack said, ‘I will return quickly, my friend, so that you do not stand alone – against what may come through.’

  ‘I look forward to your company,’ Trull replied. ‘So…hurry.’

  Forty-odd paces beyond the camp rose a modest hill, stretched out as if it had once been an atoll, assuming the plains had once been under water and that, Hedge told himself as he kicked his way through a ribbon of sand studded with broken shells, was a fair assumption. Reaching the elongated summit, he set down his oversized crossbow near an outcrop of sun-bleached limestone, then walked over to where Quick Ben sat cross-legged, facing the hills two thousand paces to the south.

  ‘You’re not meditating or something, are you?’

  ‘If I had been,’ the wizard snapped, ‘you’d have just ruined it and possibly killed us all.’

  ‘It’s all the posturing, Quick,’ Hedge said, flopping down onto the gravel beside him. ‘You turn picking your nose into a Hood-damned ritual, so it gets I just give up on knowing when to talk to you or not.’

  ‘If that’s the case, then don’t ever talk to me and we’ll both be happy.’

  ‘Miserable snake.’

  ‘Hairless rodent.’

  The two sat in companionable silence for a time, then Hedge reached out and picked up a shard of dark brown flint. He peered at one serrated edge.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Quick Ben demanded.

  ‘Contemplating.’

  ‘Contemplating,’ Quick Ben mimed, head wagging from side to side in time with each syllable.

  ‘I could cut your throat with this. One swipe.’

  ‘We never did get along, did we? Gods, I can’t believe how we hugged and slapped each other on the back, down at that river—’

  ‘Stream.’

  ‘Watering hole.’

  ‘Spring.’

  ‘Will you please cut my throat now, Hedge?’

  The sapper tossed the flint away and dusted his hands with brisk slaps. ‘What makes you so sure the baddies are coming up from the south?’

  ‘Who says I’m sure of anything?’

  ‘So we could be sitting in the wrong place. Facing the wrong direction. Maybe everybody’s getting butchered right now even as I speak.’

  ‘Well, Hedge, if you hadn’t of interrupted my meditating, maybe I’d have figured out where we should be right now!’

  ‘Oh, nice one, wizard.’

  ‘They’re coming from the south because it’s the best approach.’

  ‘As what, rabbits?’

  ‘No, as dragons, Hedge.’

  The sapper squinted at the wizard. ‘There always was a smell of Soletaken about you, Quick. We finally gonna see what scrawny beastie you got hiding in there?’

  ‘That’s a rather appalling way of putting it, Hedge. And the answer is: no.’

  ‘You still feeling shaky?’

  The wizard glanced over, his eyes bright and half mad – his normal look, in other words. ‘No. In fact, the very opposite.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I stretched myself, way more than I’d ever done before. It’s made me…nastier.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Don’t sound so impressed, Hedge.’

  ‘All I know is,’ the sapper said, grunting to his feet, ‘when they roll over you, there’s just me and an endless supply of cussers. And that suits me just fine.’

  ‘Don’t blast my body to pieces, Hedge.’

  ‘Even if you’re already dead?’

  ‘Especially then, because I won’t be, will I? You’ll just think it, because thinking it is convenient, because then you can go wild with your damned cussers until you’re standing in a Hood-damned crater a Hood-damned league across!’

  This last bit had been more or less a shriek.

  Hedge continued his squinting. ‘No reason to get all testy,’ he said in a hurt tone, then turned and walked back to his crossbow, his beloved lobber. And said under his breath, ‘Oh, this is going to be so much fun, I can’t wait!’

  ‘Hedge!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone’s coming.’

  ‘From where?’ the sapper demanded, readying a cusser in the cradle of the crossbow.

  ‘Ha ha. From the south, you bloated bladder of piss.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Hedge said, coming to the wizard’s side.

  She had chosen to remain as she was, rather than veer into her Soletaken form. That would come later. And so she walked across the plain, through the high grasses of the basin. On a ridge directly ahead stood two figures. One was a ghost, but maybe something more than just a ghost. The other was a mage, and without question more than just a mage.

  A sliver of disquiet stirred Menandore’s thoughts. Quickly swept away. If Rud Elalle had selected these two as allies, then she would accept that. Just as he had recruited the Tiste Edur and the one known as Onrack the Broken. All…complications, but she would not be alone in dealing with them, would she?

  The two men watched as she ascended the gentle slope. One was cradling a bizarre crossbow of some kind. The other was playing with a handful of small polished stones, as if trying to choose one as his favourite.

  They’re fools. Idiots.

  And soon, they will both be dust.

  She fixed on them her hardest glare as she drew up to the edge of the crest. ‘You two are pathetic. Why stand here – do you know who approaches? Do you know they will come from the south? Meaning that you two will be the first they see. And so, the first they kill.’

  The taller, darker-skinned one turned slightly, then said, ‘Here comes your son, Menandore. With Ulshun Pral.’ He then frowned. ‘That’s a familiar walk…Wonder why I never noticed that before.’

 
; Walk? Familiar walk? He is truly mad.

  ‘I have summoned them,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘We must prepare for the battle.’

  The shorter one grunted, then said, ‘We don’t want any company. So pick somewhere else to do your fighting.’

  ‘I am tempted to crush your skull between my hands,’ Menandore said.

  ‘Doesn’t work,’ the wizard muttered. ‘Everything just pops back out.’

  The one with the crossbow gave her a wide smile.

  Menandore said, ‘I assure you, I have no intention of being anywhere near you, although it is my hope I will be within range to see your grisly deaths.’

  ‘What makes you so sure they’ll be grisly?’ the wizard asked, now studying one pebble in particular, holding it up to the light as if it was a gem of some sort, but Menandore could see that it was not a gem. Simply a stone, and an opaque one at that.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

  He glanced across at her, then closed his hand round the stone and brought it down behind his back. ‘Nothing. Why? Anyway, I asked you a question.’

  ‘And I am obliged to answer it?’ She snorted.

  Rud Elalle and Ulshun Pral arrived, halting a few paces behind the wizard and his companion.

  Menandore saw the hard expression in her son’s face. Could I have seen anything else? No. Not for this. ‘Beloved son—’

  ‘I care nothing for the Finnest,’ Rud Elalle said. ‘I will not join you in your fight, Mother.’

  She stared, eyes widening even as they filled with burning rage. ‘You must! I cannot face them both!’

  ‘You have new allies,’ Rud Elalle said. ‘These two, who even now guard the approach—’

  ‘These brainless dolts? My son, you send me to my death!’

  Rud Elalle straightened. ‘I am taking my Imass away from here, Mother. They are all that matters to me—’

  ‘More than the life of your mother?’

  ‘More than the fight she chooses for herself!’ he snapped. ‘This clash – this feud – it is not mine. It is yours. It was ever yours! I want nothing to do with it!’

  Menandore flinched back at her son’s fury. Sought to hold his eyes, then failed and looked away. ‘So be it,’ she whispered. ‘Go then, my son, and take your chosen kin. Go!’

  As Rud Elalle nodded and turned away, however, she spoke again, in a tone harder than anything that had come before. ‘But not him.’

  Her son swung round, saw his mother pointing towards the Imass at his side.

  Ulshun Pral.

  Rud Elalle frowned. ‘What? I do not—’

  ‘No, my son, you do not. Ulshun Pral must remain. Here.’

  ‘I will not permit—’

  And then the Bentract leader reached out a hand to stay Rud Elalle – who was moments from veering into his dragon form, to lock in battle with his own mother.

  Menandore waited, outwardly calm, reposed, even as her heart thudded fierce in her chest.

  ‘She speaks true,’ Ulshun Pral said. ‘I must stay.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘For the secret I possess, Rud Elalle. The secret they all seek. If I go with you, all will pursue. Do you understand? Now, I beg you, lead my people away from here, to a safe place. Lead them away, Rud Elalle, and quickly!’

  ‘Will you now fight at my side, my son?’ Menandore demanded. ‘To ensure the life of Ulshun Pral?’

  But Ulshun Pral was already pushing Rud Elalle away. ‘Do as I ask,’ he said to Menandore’s son. ‘I cannot die fearing for my people – please, lead them away.’

  The wizard then spoke up, ‘We’ll do our best to safeguard him, Rud Elalle.’

  Menandore snorted her contempt. ‘You risk such a thing?’ she demanded of her son.

  Rud Elalle stared across at the wizard, then at the smiling one with the crossbow, and she saw a strange calm slip over her son’s expression – and that sliver of disquiet returned to her, stinging.

  ‘I shall,’ Rud Elalle then said, and he reached out to Ulshun Pral. A gentle gesture, a hand resting lightly against one side of the Imass’s face. Rud Elalle then stepped back, swung round, and set off back for the camp.

  Menandore spun on the two remaining men. ‘You damned fools!’

  ‘Just for that,’ the wizard said, ‘I’m not giving you my favourite stone.’

  Hedge and Quick Ben watched her march back down the slope.

  ‘That was odd,’ the sapper muttered.

  ‘Wasn’t it.’

  They were silent for another hundred heartbeats, then Hedge turned to Quick Ben. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘You know exactly what I’m thinking, Hedge.’

  ‘Same as me, then.’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Tell me something, Quick.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was that really your favourite stone?’

  ‘Do you mean the one I had in my hand? Or the one I slipped into her fancy white cloak?’

  With skin wrinkled and stained by millennia buried in peat, Sheltatha Lore did indeed present an iconic figure of dusk. In keeping now with her reddish hair and the murky hue of her eyes, she wore a cloak of deep burgundy, black leather leggings and boots. Bronze-studded vest drawn tight across her chest.

  At her side – like Sheltatha facing the hills – stood Sukul Ankhadu, Dapple, the mottling of her skin visible on her bared hands and forearms. On her slim shoulders a Letherii night-cloak, as was worn now by the noble born and the women of the Tiste Edur in the empire, although this one was somewhat worse for wear.

  ‘Soon,’ said Sheltatha Lore, ‘this realm shall be dust.’

  ‘This pleases you, sister?’

  ‘Perhaps not as much as it pleases you, Sukul. Why is this place an abomination in your eyes?’

  ‘I have no love for Imass. Imagine, a people grubbing in the dirt of caves for hundreds of thousands of years. Building nothing. All history trapped as memory, twisted as tales sung in rhyme every night. They are flawed. In their souls, there must be a flaw, a failing. And these ones here, they have deluded themselves into believing that they actually exist.’

  ‘Not all of them, Sukul.’

  Dapple waved dismissively. ‘The greatest failing here, Sheltatha, lies with the Lord of Death. If not for Hood’s indifference, this realm could never have lasted as long as it has. It irritates me, such carelessness.’

  ‘So,’ Sheltatha Lore said with a smile, ‘you will hasten the demise of these Imass, even though, with the realm dying anyway, they are already doomed.’

  ‘You do not understand. The situation has…changed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Their conceit,’ said Sukul, ‘has made them real. Mortal, now. Blood, flesh and bone. Capable of bleeding, of dying. Yet they remain ignorant of their world’s imminent extinction. My slaughtering them, sister, will be an act of mercy.’

  Sheltatha Lore grunted. ‘I cannot wait to hear them thank you.’

  At that moment a gold and white dragon rose into view before them, sailing low over the crests of the hills.

  Sukul Ankhadu sighed. ‘It begins.’

  The Soletaken glided down the slope directly towards them. Looming huge, yet still fifty paces away, the dragon tilted its wings back, crooked them as its hind limbs reached downwards, then settled onto the ground.

  A blurring swirl enveloped the beast, and a moment later Menandore walked out from that spice-laden disturbance.

  Sheltatha Lore and Sukul Ankhadu waited, saying nothing, their faces expressionless, while Menandore approached, finally halting five paces from them, her blazing eyes moving from one sister to the other, then back again. She said, ‘Are we still agreed, then?’

  ‘Such glorious precedent, this moment,’ Sheltatha Lore observed.

  Menandore frowned. ‘Necessity. At least we should be understood on that matter. I cannot stand alone, cannot guard the soul of Scabandari. The Finnest must not fall in his hands.’

  A slight catch
of breath from Sukul. ‘Is he near, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. I have stolen the eyes of one travelling with him. Again and again. They even now draw to the last gate, and look upon its wound, and stand before the torn corpse of that foolish Imass Bonecaster who thought she could seal it with her own soul.’ Menandore sneered. ‘Imagine such effrontery. Starvald Demelain! The very chambers of K’rul’s heart! Did she not know how that weakened him? Weakened everything?’

  ‘So we three kill Silchas Ruin,’ Sheltatha Lore said. ‘And then the Imass.’

  ‘My son chooses to oppose us in that last detail,’ Menandore said. ‘But the Imass have outlived their usefulness. We shall wound Rud if we must, but we do not kill him. Understood? I will have your word on this. Again. Here and now, sisters.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Sheltatha Lore said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sukul Ankhadu, ‘although it will make matters more difficult.’

  ‘We must live with that,’ Menandore said, and then turned. ‘It is time.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘A few pathetic mortals seek to stand in our way – we must crush them first. And Silchas Ruin has allies. Our day’s work begins now, sisters.’

  With that she walked towards the hills, and began veering into her dragon form.

  Behind her, Sheltatha Lore and Sukul Ankhadu exchanged a look, and then they moved apart, giving themselves the room they needed.

  Veering into dragons.

  Dawn, Dusk and the one known as Dapple. A dragon of gold and white. One stained brown and looking half-rotted. The last mottled, neither light nor dark, but the uneasy interplay between the two. Soletaken with the blood of Tiam, the Mother. Sail-winged and serpent-necked, taloned and scaled, the blood of Eleint.

  Lifting into the air on gusts of raw sorcery. Menandore leading the wedge formation. Sheltatha Lore on her left. Sukul Ankhadu on her right.

  The hills before them, now dropping away as they heaved their massive bulks yet higher.

  Clearing the crests, the ancient ridge of an ancient shore, and the sun caught gleaming scales, bloomed through the membranes of wings, while beneath three shadows raced over grass and rock, shadows that sent small mammals scurrying for cover, that launched birds into screeching flight, that made hares freeze in their tracks.