The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  Quell and Gruntle scrambled over the wall and raced for them.

  Glanno Tarp was shrieking something, his words unintelligible as he sought to crawl away from the scrap.

  From the Jaghut woman sorcery erupted, a thundering, deafening detonation that lit up the entire corral and all the buildings nearby. Blinking against the sudden blindness, Gruntle staggered in the mud. He heard Quell fall beside him. The coruscating, actinic light continued to bristle, throwing everything into harsh shadows.

  Glanno Tarp resumed his shrieks.

  As vision returned, Gruntle saw, to his astonishment, that both Boles still lived. In fact, they had each pinned down an arm and were holding tight as the Jaghut woman thrashed and snarled.

  Drawing his cutlasses, Gruntle made his way over. ‘Jula! Amby! What are you doing?’

  Two mud-smeared faces looked up, and their expressions were dark, twisted with anger.

  ‘A swamp witch!’ Jula said. ‘She’s one of them swamp witches!’

  ‘We don’t like swamp witches!’ added Amby. ‘We kill swamp witches!’

  ‘Master Quell said this one can help us,’ said Gruntle. ‘Or she would have, if not for you two jumping her like that!’

  ‘Cut her head off!’ said Jula. ‘That usually works!’

  ‘I’m not cutting her head off. Let her go, you two—’

  ‘She’ll attack us!’

  Gruntle crouched down. ‘Jaghut – stop snarling – listen to me! If they let you go, will you stop fighting?’

  Eyes burned as if aflame. She struggled some more, and then ceased all motion. The blazing glare dimmed, and after a few deep, rattling breaths, she nodded. ‘Very well. Now get these two fools off me!’

  ‘Jula, Amby – let go of her—’

  ‘We will, once you cut her head off!’

  ‘Do it now, Boles, or I will cut your heads off.’

  ‘Do Amby first!’

  ‘No, Jula first!’

  ‘I’ve got two cutlasses here, boys, so I’ll do it at the same time. How does that suit you?’

  The Boles half lifted themselves up and glared across at each other.

  ‘We don’t like it,’ said Amby.

  ‘So leave off her, then.’

  They rolled to the sides, away from the Jaghut woman, and she pulled her arms loose and clambered to her feet. The penumbra of sorcery dimmed, winked out. Breathing hard, she spun to face the Bole brothers, who’d rolled in converging arcs until they collided and were now crouched side by side in the mud, eyeing her like a pair of wolves.

  Clutching his head, Master Quell stumbled up to them. ‘You idiots,’ he gasped. ‘Jaghut, your husband’s cursed this village. Tralka Vonan. Can you do anything about that?’

  She was trying to wipe the mud from her rotted clothes. ‘You’re not from around here,’ she said. ‘Who are you people?’

  ‘Just passing through,’ Quell said. ‘But our carriage needs repairs – and we got wounded—’

  ‘I am about to destroy this village and everyone in it – does that bother you?’

  Quell licked his muddy lips, made a face, and then said, ‘That depends if you’re including us in your plans of slaughter.’

  ‘Are you pirates?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wreckers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Necromancers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then,’ she said, with another glare at the Boles, ‘I suppose you can live.’

  ‘Your husband says even if he dies, the curse will persist.’

  She bared stained tusks. ‘He’s lying.’

  Quell glanced at Gruntle, who shrugged in return and said, ‘I’m not happy with the idea of pointless slaughter, but then, wreckers are the scum of humanity.’

  The Jaghut woman walked towards the stone wall. They watched her.

  ‘Master Quell,’ said Glanno Tarp, ‘got any splints?’

  Quell shot Gruntle another look. ‘Told you, the cheap bastard.’

  At last the sun rose, lifting a rim of fire above the horizon on this the last day of the wrecker village on the Reach of Woe.

  From a window of the tower, Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape stood watching his wife approaching up the street. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘I’m in trouble now.’

  In the moments before dawn, Kedeviss rose from her blankets and walked out into the darkness. She could make out the shape of him, sitting on a large boulder and staring northward. Rings spun on chains, glittering like snared stars.

  Her moccasins on the gravel scree gave her away and she saw him twist round to watch her approach.

  ‘You no longer sleep,’ she said.

  To this observation, Clip said nothing.

  ‘Something has happened to you,’ she continued. ‘When you awoke in Bastion, you were…changed. I thought it was some sort of residue from the possession. Now, I am not so sure.’

  He put away the chain and rings and then slid down from the boulder, landing lightly and taking a moment to straighten his cloak. ‘Of them all,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you, Kedeviss, are the sharpest. You see what the others do not.’

  ‘I make a point of paying attention. You’ve hidden yourself well, Clip – or whoever you now are.’

  ‘Not well enough, it seems.’

  ‘What do you plan to do?’ she asked him. ‘Anomander Rake will see clearly, the moment he sets his eyes upon you. And no doubt there will be others.’

  ‘I was Herald of Dark,’ he said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said.

  ‘I was Mortal Sword to the Black-Winged Lord, to Rake himself.’

  ‘He didn’t choose you, though, did he? You worshipped a god who never answered, not a single prayer. A god who, in all likelihood, never even knew you existed.’

  ‘And for that,’ whispered Clip, ‘he will answer.’

  Her brows rose. ‘Is this a quest for vengeance? If we had known—’

  ‘What you knew or didn’t know is irrelevant.’

  ‘A Mortal Sword serves.’

  ‘I said, Kedeviss, I was a Mortal Sword.’

  ‘No longer, then. Very well, Clip, what are you now?’

  In the grainy half-light she saw him smile, and something dark veiled his eyes. ‘One day, in the sky over Bastion, a warren opened. A machine tumbled out, and down—’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, we saw that machine.’

  ‘The one within brought with him a child god – oh, not deliberately. No, the mechanism of his sky carriage, in creating gates, in travelling from realm to realm, by its very nature cast a net, a net that captured this child god. And dragged it here.’

  ‘And this traveller – what happened to him?’

  Clip shrugged.

  She studied him, head cocked to one side. ‘We failed, didn’t we?’

  He eyed her, as if faintly amused.

  ‘We thought we’d driven the Dying God from you – instead, we drove him deeper. By destroying the cavern realm where he dwelt.’

  ‘You ended his pain, Kedeviss,’ said Clip. ‘Leaving only his…hunger.’

  ‘Rake will destroy you. Nor,’ she added, ‘will we accompany you to Black Coral. Go your own way, godling. We shall find our own way there—’

  He was smiling. ‘Before me? Shall we race, Kedeviss – me with my hunger and you with your warning? Rake does not frighten me – the Tiste Andii do not frighten me. When they see me, they will see naught but kin – until it is too late.’

  ‘Godling, if in poring through Clip’s mind you now feel you understand the Tiste Andii, I must tell you, you are wrong. Clip was a barbarian. Ignorant. A fool. He knew nothing.’

  ‘I am not interested in the Tiste Andii – oh, I will kill Rake, because that is what he deserves. I will feed upon him and take his power into me. No, the one I seek is not in Black Coral, but within a barrow outside the city. Another young god – so young, so helpless, so naïve.’ His smile returned. ‘And he knows I am coming for him.’

  ‘Must we then stop you ou
rselves?’

  ‘You? Nimander, Nenanda, all you pups? Now really, Kedeviss.’

  ‘If you—’

  His attack was a blur – one hand closing about her throat, the other covering her mouth. She felt her throat being crushed and scrabbled for the knife at her belt.

  He spun her round and flung her down to the ground, so hard that the back of her head crunched on the rocks. Dazed, her struggles weakened, flailed, fell away.

  Something was pouring out from his hand where it covered her mouth, something that numbed her lips, her jaws, then forced its way into her mouth and down her throat. Thick as tree sap. She stared up at him, saw the muddy gleam of the Dying God’s eyes – dying no longer, now freed – and thought: what have we done?

  He was whispering. ‘I could stop now, and you’d be mine. It’s tempting.’

  Instead, whatever oozed from his hand seemed to burgeon, sliding like a fat, sleek serpent down her throat, coiling in her gut.

  ‘But you might break loose – just a moment’s worth, but enough to warn the others, and I can’t have that.’

  Where the poison touched, there was a moment of ecstatic need, sweeping through her, but that was followed almost instantly by numbness, and then something…darker. She could smell her own rot, pooling like vapours in her brain.

  He is killing me. Even that knowledge could not awaken any strength within her.

  ‘I need the rest of them, you see,’ he was saying. ‘So we can walk in, right in, without anyone suspecting anything. I need my way in, that’s all. Look at Nimander.’ He snorted. ‘There is no guile in him, none at all. He will be my shield. My shield.’

  He was no longer gripping her neck. It was no longer necessary.

  Kedeviss stared up at him as she died, and her final, fading thought was: Nimander…guileless? Oh, but you don’t… And then there was nothing.

  The nothing that no priest dared speak of, that no holy scripture described, that no seer or prophet set forth in ringing proclamation. The nothing, this nothing, it is the soul in waiting.

  Comes death, and now the soul waits.

  Aranatha opened her eyes, sat up, then reached out to touch Nimander’s shoulder. He awoke, looked at her with a question in his eyes.

  ‘He has killed Kedeviss,’ she said, the words soft as a breath.

  Nimander paled.

  ‘She was right,’ Aranatha went on, ‘and now we must be careful. Say nothing to anyone else, not yet, or you will see us all die.’

  ‘Kedeviss.’

  ‘He has carried her body to a crevasse, and thrown her into it, and now he makes signs on the ground to show her careless steps, the way the edge gave way. He will come to us in shock and grief. Nimander, you must display no suspicion, do you understand?’

  And she saw that his own grief would sweep all else aside – at least for now – which was good. Necessary. And that the anger within him, the rage destined to come, would be slow to build, and as it did she would speak to him again, and give him the strength he would need.

  Kedeviss had been the first to see the truth – or so it might have seemed. But Aranatha knew that Nimander’s innocence was not some innate flaw, not some fatal weakness. No, his innocence was a choice he had made. The very path of his life. And he had his reasons for that.

  Easy to see such a thing and misunderstand it. Easy to see it as a failing, and then to believe him irresolute.

  Clip had made this error from the very beginning. And so too this Dying God, who knew only what Clip believed, and thought it truth.

  She looked down and saw tears held back, waiting for Clip’s sudden arrival with his tragic news, and Aranatha nodded and turned away, to feign sleep.

  Somewhere beyond the camp waited a soul, motionless as a startled hare. This was sad. Aranatha had loved Kedeviss dearly, had admired her cleverness, her percipience. Had cherished her loyalty to Nimander – even though Kedeviss had perhaps suspected the strange circumstances surrounding Phaed’s death, and had seen how Phaed and her secrets haunted Nimander still.

  When one can possess loyalty even in the straits of full, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.

  Kedeviss, you were a gift. And now your soul waits, as it must. For this is the fate of the Tiste Andii. Our fate. We will wait.

  Until the wait is over.

  Endest Silann stood with his back to the rising sun. And to the city of Black Coral. The air was chill, damp with night’s breath, and the road wending out from the gates that followed the coastline of the Cut was a bleak, colourless ribbon that snaked into stands of dark conifers half a league to the west. Empty of traffic.

  The cloak of eternal darkness shrouding the city blocked the sun’s stretching rays, although the western flanks of the jumbled slope to their right was showing gilt edges; and far off to the left, the gloom of the Cut steamed white from the smooth, black surface.

  ‘There will be,’ said Anomander Rake, ‘unpleasantness.’

  ‘I know, Lord.’

  ‘It was an unanticipated complication.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘I will walk,’ said Rake, ‘until I reach the tree line. Out of sight, at least until then.’

  ‘Have you waited too long, Lord?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That is well, then.’

  Anomander Rake rested a hand on Endest’s shoulder. ‘You have ever been, my friend, more than I deserve.’

  Endest Silann could only shake his head, refuting that.

  ‘If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.’

  Endest nodded, unable to speak. There should be tears streaming down his face, but he was dry inside – his skull, behind his eyes, all…dry. Despair was a furnace where everything had burned up, where everything was ashes, but the heat remained, scalding, brittle and fractious.

  ‘The day has begun.’ Rake withdrew his hand and pulled on his gauntlets. ‘This walk, along this path…I will take pleasure in it, my friend. Knowing that you stand here to see me off.’

  And the Son of Darkness set out.

  Endest Silann watched. The warrior with his long silver hair flowing, his leather cloak flaring out. Dragnipur a scabbarded slash.

  Blue seeped into the sky, shadows in retreat along the slope. Gold painted the tops of the tree line where the road slipped in. At the very edge, Anomander Rake paused, turned about and raised one hand high.

  Endest Silann did the same, but the gesture was so weak it made him gasp, and his arm faltered.

  And then the distant figure swung round.

  And vanished beneath the trees.

  Book Four

  Toll the Hounds

  Like broken slate

  We take our hatred

  And pile it high

  Rolling with the hills

  A ragged line to map

  Our rise and fall

  And I saw suffused

  With the dawn

  Crows aligned in rows

  Along the crooked wall

  Come to feed

  Bones lie scattered

  At the stone’s foot

  The heaped ruin

  Of past assaults

  The crows face each way

  To eye the pickings

  On both sides

  For all its weakness

  The world cannot break

  What we make

  Of our hatred

  I watched the workers

  Carry each grey rock

  They laboured

  Blind and stepped

  Unerringly modest paths

  Piece by sheared piece

  They built a slaughter

  Of innocent others

  While muttering as they might

  Of waves of weather

  And goodly deeds


  We the Builders

  Hanasp Tular

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pray you never hear an imprecise breath

  Caught in its rough web

  Every god turns away at the end

  And not a whisper sounds

  Do not waste a lifetime awaiting death

  Caught in its rough web

  It hovers in the next moment you must attend

  As your last whisper sounds

  Pray you never hear an imprecise breath

  Rough Web

  Fisher

  The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins in love and ends with grief.

  Time unravels now. Event clashes upon event. So much to recount, pray this sad-eyed round man does not falter, does not grow too breathless. History has its moments. To dwell within one is to understand nothing. We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one’s own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour. You will flinch with the wounds. We shall all flinch.

  As might a crow or an owl, or indeed a winged eel, hover now a moment above this fair city, its smoke haze, the scurrying figures in the streets and lanes, the impenetrable dark cracks of narrow alleyways. Thieves’ Road spreads a tangled web between buildings. Animals bawl and wives berate husbands and husbands bellow back, night buckets gush from windows down into the guttered alleys and – in some poorer areas of the Gadrobi District – into streets where pedestrians duck and dodge in the morning ritual of their treacherous journeys to work, or home. Clouds of flies are stirred awake with the dawn’s light. Pigeons revive their hopeless struggle to walk straight lines. Rats creep back into their closed-in refuges after yet another night of seeing far too much. The night’s damp smells are burned off and new stinks arise in pungent vapours.

  And on the road, where it passes through the leper colony west of the city, a weary ox and a tired old man escort a burdened cart on which lies a canvas-wrapped figure, worn riding boots visible.

  Ahead awaits Two-Ox Gate.

  Hover no longer. Plummet both wings and spirit down to the buzzing flies, the animal heat sweet and acrid, the musty closeness of the stained burlap. The old man pausing to wipe sweat from his lined brow with its array of warts and moles, and his knees ache and there is dull pain in his chest.