All at once hands grasped his ankles and he was being roughly dragged.
Harllo cried out as his chin struck an obstruction and when he lifted his head up the top crunched on rock, scraping away skin and hair. ‘Bainisk! What—’
He fell free of the chute, thumping down. The hands released his ankles and now grasped his upper arms, lifting him to his feet.
‘Bainisk—’
‘Shhh! Word’s come down – someone came to find you – from the city.’
‘What?’
‘Vidikas killed him – in a duel – and now he’s called for you to be brought to him. It’s bad, Harllo. I think he’s going to kill you!’
But this was too much to hear, too much all at once – someone had come – who? Gruntle! And Vidikas had…had killed him. No. He couldn’t have – he didn’t— ‘Who was he?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Listen, we’re going to escape, you and me, Harllo – do you understand?’
‘But how can we—’
‘We’re going deeper in, to the Settle—’
‘But that’s not safe—’
‘There are huge cracks on that side – some of them, they got to go right up and out, lakeside. We get there, and then along the shoreline, all the way back to the city!’
They had been hissing back and forth, and now they heard shouts echoing down from the main passage.
‘Venaz – that figures, doesn’t it? Come on, Harllo, we got to go now!’
They set out, each with a lantern, Bainisk taking a coil of rope as well, down through the fresh workings – there was no one there yet, as first the air had been bad and then there’d been flooding and only the shift before the last of the hoses was snaked out to see how much more water was seeping back in. After fifty or so paces they were ankle-deep in icy water and flows slicked the side walls and drops rained down from the ceiling. The farther in they went, the more cracks they saw – everywhere, all sides, above and below – proof that they were reaching the Settle, where half a cliff was sinking towards the lake. The rumours were that it was only days from collapse.
The tunnel descended in irregular shelves, and now the water was at Harllo’s thighs, numbingly cold. Both were gasping.
‘Bainisk – will this go back up?’
‘It will, if the water’s not too deep, it will, I promise.’
‘Why – why are you doing this? You should’ve just handed me over.’
Bainisk was some time before answering. ‘I want to see it, Harllo.’
‘You want to see what?’
‘The city. I – I just want to see it, that’s all. When I heard, well, it was as if everything fell into place. This was the time – our best chance – this close to the Settle.’
‘You’d been thinking about this.’
‘Yes. Harllo, I never stop thinking about this.’
‘The city.’
‘The city.’
Something clanged somewhere behind them – still distant, but closer than expected.
‘Venaz! They’re after us – shit – come on, Harllo, we got to hurry.’
The water reached Harllo’s hips. He was having trouble working his legs. He kept stumbling. Twice he almost let his lantern sink down too far. Their desperate gasping echoed on all sides, along with sloshing water.
‘Bainisk, I can’t—’
‘Drop your light – just take hold of my shirt – I’ll pull you. Don’t let go.’
Groaning, Harllo let the lantern sink into the water. A sudden hiss, something cracking. When he released the handle the lantern vanished into the blackness. He took hold of Bainisk’s ragged shirt.
They continued on, Harllo feeling his legs trailing behind him but only from the hips – below that there was nothing. A strange lassitude flowed into him, taking away the icy cold. Bainisk was chest-deep now, whimpering as he sought to keep the lantern held high.
They stopped.
‘The tunnel goes under,’ said Bainisk.
‘Issallright, Bainisk. We gan stop now.’
‘No, hold on to this ledge. I’m going under. I won’t be long. I promise.’
He set the lantern on a narrow ledge. And then he sank down and was gone.
Harllo was alone. It would be much easier to let go, to relax his aching hands. Venaz was coming, he’d be here soon. And then it would be over. The water was warm now – that might be one way to escape them. Do what Bainisk had just done. Just sink away, vanish.
He wasn’t wanted, he knew. Not by his mother, not by anyone. And the one who’d come to find him, well, that man had died for that. And that wasn’t right. Nobody should go and die for Harllo. Not Gruntle, not Bainisk, not anybody. So, no more of any of that – he could let go—
Foaming water, thrashing, gasps and coughs. An icy hand clutched at Harllo.
‘We can get through! Harllo – the tunnel on the other side – it slopes upward!’
‘I can’t—’
‘You have to! The city, Harllo, you have to show it to me – I’d be lost. I need you, Harllo. I need you.’
‘All right, but…’ He was about to tell Bainisk the truth. About the city. That it wasn’t the paradise he’d made it out to be. That people starved there. That people did bad things to each other. But no, that could wait. It’d be bad to talk about those things right now. ‘All right, Bainisk.’
They left the lantern. Bainisk uncoiled some of the rope and tied the end about Harllo’s waist, fumbling with numbed hands on the knot. ‘Take a few deep breaths first,’ he said. ‘And then one more, deep as you can.’
The plunge into the dark left Harllo instantly disoriented. The rope round his waist pulled him down and then into the face of the current. He opened his eyes and felt the thrill of shock from the icy flow. Strange glowing streaks flashed past, possibly from the rock itself, or perhaps they were but ghosts lurking behind his eyes. At first he sought to help Bainisk, flailing with his arms and trying to kick, but after a moment he simply went limp.
Either Bainisk would pull them both through, or he wouldn’t. Either way was fine.
His mind began to drift, and he so wanted to take a breath – he couldn’t hold back much longer. His lungs were burning. The water would be cool, cool enough to quench that fire for ever more. Yes, he could do that.
Cold bit into his right hand – what? And then his head was lifted above the surface. And he was sucking in icy lungfuls of air.
Darkness, the rush and gurgle of water flowing past, seeking to pull him back, back and down. But Bainisk was tugging him along, and it was getting shallower as the tunnel widened. The black, dripping ceiling seemed to be sagging, forming a crooked spine overhead. Harllo stared up at it, wondering how he could see at all.
And then he was being dragged across broken stone.
They halted, lying side by side.
Before too long, the shivering began. Racing into Harllo like demonic possession, a spirit that shook through him with rabid glee. His teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Bainisk was plucking at him. Through clacking teeth he said, ‘Venaz won’t stop. He’ll see the lantern – he’ll know. We got to keep going, Harllo. It’s the only way to get warm again, the only way to get away.’
But it was so hard to climb to his feet. His legs still didn’t work properly. Bainisk had to help him and he leaned heavily on the bigger boy as they staggered skidding upslope along the scree-scattered path.
It seemed to Harllo that they walked for ever, into and out of faint light. Sometimes the slope pitched downward, only to slowly climb yet again. Pain throbbed in Harllo’s legs now, but it was welcome – life was returning, filled with its stubborn fire, and now he wanted to live, now it mattered more than anything else.
‘Look!’ Bainisk gasped. ‘At what we’re walking on – Harllo, look!’
Phosphorescent mould limned the walls, and in the faint glow Harllo could make out the vague shapes of the rubble underfoot. Broken pottery. Small fragments of burned bone.
‘It’s got to lead up,’ Bainisk said. ‘To some cave. The Gadrobi used them to bury their ancestors. A cave overlooking the lake. We’re almost there.’
Instead, they reached a cliff ledge.
And stood, silent.
A vertical section of rock had simply plummeted away, leaving a broad gap. The bottom of the fissure was swallowed in black, from which warm air rose in dry gusts. Opposite them, ten or more paces across, a slash of diffuse light revealed the continuation of the tunnel they had been climbing.
‘We’ll climb down,’ said Bainisk, uncoiling the rope and starting to tie a knot at one end. ‘And then back up. We can do this, you’ll see.’
‘What if the rope’s not long enough? I can’t see the bottom, Bainisk.’
‘We’ll just find more handholds.’ Now he was tying a loop at the other end which he then set round a knob-like projection. ‘I’ll throw a snake back up to dislodge this, so we can take the rope with us for the climb up the other side. Now, you go first.’ He tossed the rest of the rope over the edge. They heard it snap out to its full length. Bainisk grunted. ‘Like I said, we can find handholds.’
Harllo worked his way over the side, gripping hard the wet rope – it wanted to slide through, but if that happened he knew he was dead, so he held tight. His feet scrambled, found shallow ledges running at an angle across the cliff-face. Not much, but they eased the strain. He began working his way down.
He was perhaps three body-lengths down when Bainisk began following. The rope began swaying unpredictably, and Harllo found his feet slipping from their scant purchases again and again, each time resulting in a savage tug on his arms.
‘Bainisk!’ he hissed. ‘Wait! Let me go a little farther down first – you’re throwing me about.’
‘Okay. Go on.’
Harllo found purchase again and resumed the descent.
If Bainisk started up again he no longer felt the sways and tugs. The rope was getting wetter, which meant that he was reaching its end – the water was soaking its way down. And then he reached the sodden knot. Sudden panic as he sought to find projections in the wall for his feet. There were very few – the stone was almost sheer.
‘Bainisk! I’m at the knot!’ He craned his neck to look down. Blackness, unrelieved, depthless. ‘Bainisk! Where are you?’
Since Harllo’s first call, Bainisk had not moved. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally dislodge the boy, not after they’d made it this far. And, truth be told, he was experiencing a growing fear. This wall was too even – no cracks, the strata he could feel little more than ripples at a steeply canted angle. They would never be able to hold on once past the rope – and there was nothing he could use to slip the loop round.
They were, he realized, in trouble.
Upon hearing Harllo’s last call – the boy reaching the knot – he readied himself to resume his descent.
And there was a sharp upward tug on the rope.
He looked up. Vague faces peering over, hands and more hands reaching to close on the rope. Venaz – yes, there he was, grinning.
‘Got you,’ he murmured, low and savage. ‘Got you both, Bainisk.’
Another tug upward.
Bainisk drew his knife one-handed. He reached down to cut the rope beneath him, and then hesitated, looking up once more at Venaz’s face.
Maybe that had been his own, only a few years ago. That face, so eager to take over, to rule the moles. Well, Venaz could have them. He could have it all.
Bainisk reached up with the knife, just above his fist where it held tight. And he sliced through.
Dig heels in, it will not help. We must wing back to the present. For everything to be understood, every facet must flash alight at least once. Earlier, the round man begged forgiveness. Now, he pleads for trust. His is a sure hand, even if it trembles. Trust.
A bard sits opposite an historian. At a nearby table in K’rul’s Bar, Blend watches Scillara unfolding coils of smoke from her mouth. There is something avid in that gaze, but every now and then a war erupts in her eyes, when she thinks of the woman lying in a coma upstairs. When she thinks of her, yes. Blend has taken to sleeping in the bed with Picker, has taken to trying all she could think of to awaken sensation once more in her lover. But nothing has worked. Picker’s soul is lost, wandering far from the cool, flaccid flesh.
Blend hates herself now, as she senses her soul ready to move on, to seek the blessing of a new life, a new body to explore and caress, new lips to press upon her own.
But this is silly. Scillara’s amiability was ever casual. She was a woman who preferred a man’s charms, such as they were. And truth be told, Blend had played in that crib more than once herself. So why now has this lust awakened? What made it so wild, so needy?
Loss, my dear. Loss is like a goad, a stinging shove that sets one lunging forward seeking handholds, seeking ecstasy, delicious surrender, even the lure of self-destruction. The bud cut at the stem throws its last energy into one final flowering, one glorious exclamation. The flower defies, to quote in entirety an ancient Tiste Andii poem. Life runs from death. It must, it cannot help it. Life runs, to quote a round man’s epitome of poetic brevity.
Slip into Blend’s mind, ease in behind her eyes, and watch as she watches, feel as she feels, if you dare.
Or try Antsy, there at the counter on which are arrayed seven crossbows, twelve flatpacks of quarrels amounting to one hundred and twenty darts, six shortswords, three throwing axes of Falari design, a Genabarii broadsword and buckler, two local rapiers with fancy quillons – so fancy the weapons were snagged together and Antsy had spent an entire morning trying to separate them, with no luck – and a small sack containing three sharpers. He is trying to decide what to wear.
But the mission they were about to set out on was meant to be peaceful, so he should just wear his shortsword as usual, peace-strapped as usual, everything as usual, in fact. But then there were assassins out there who wanted Antsy’s head on a dagger point, so maybe keeping things usual was in fact suicidal. So he should strap on at least two shortswords, throw a couple of crossbows over his shoulders and hold the broadsword in his right hand and the twin rapiers in his left, with a flatpack tied to each hip, the sharper sack at his belt, and a throwing axe between his teeth – no, that’s ridiculous, he’d break his jaw trying that. Maybe an extra shortsword, but then he might cut his own tongue out the first time he tried saying anything and he was sure to try saying something eventually, wasn’t he?
But he could run the scabbards for all six shortswords through his belt, and end up wearing a skirt of shortswords, but that’d be all right, wouldn’t it? But then, where would he carry the sharpers? One knock against a pommel or hilt and he’d be an expanding cloud of whiskers and weapon bits. And what about the crossbows? He’d need to load them all up but keep everything away from the releases, unless he wanted to end up skewering all his friends with the first stumble.
What if—
What’s that? Back to Blend, please? Flesh against flesh, the weight of full breasts in hands, one knee pushing up between parted thighs, sweat a blending of sweet oils, soft lips trying to merge, tongues dancing eager and slick as—
‘I can’t wear alla this!’
Scillara glanced over. ‘Really, Antsy? Didn’t Blend say that about a bell ago?’
‘What? Who? Her? What does she know?’
To that entirely unselfconscious display of irony, Blend could only raise her brows when she caught Scillara’s eye.
Scillara smiled in response, then drew again on her pipe.
Blend glanced over at the bard, and then said to Antsy, ‘We’re safe out there now, anyway.’
Eyes bulging, Antsy stared at her in disbelief. ‘You’d take the word of some damned minstrel? What does he know?’
‘You keep asking what does anyone know, when it’s obvious that whatever they know you’re not listening to anyway.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry, that so confused me I d
oubt I could repeat it. The contract’s cancelled – Fisher said so.’
Antsy wagged his head from side to side. ‘Fisher said so!’ He jabbed a finger at the bard. ‘He’s not Fisher – not the famous one, anyway. He’s just stolen the name! If he was famous he wouldn’t be just sittin’ there, would he? Famous people don’t do that.’
‘Really?’ the bard who called himself Fisher asked. ‘What are we supposed to do, Antsy?’
‘Famous people do famous things, alla time. Everybody knows that!’
‘The contract has been bought out,’ the bard said. ‘But if you want to dress as if preparing for a single-handed assault on Moon’s Spawn, you go right ahead.’
‘Rope! Do I need rope? Let me think!’ And to aid in this process Antsy began pacing, moustache twitching.
Blend wanted to pull a boot off and push her foot between Scillara’s thighs. No, she wanted to crawl right in there. Staking a claim. With a hiss of frustration she stood, hesitated, and then went to sit down at the bard’s table. She fixed him with an intense stare, to which he responded with a raised brow.
‘There’re more songs supposedly composed by Fisher than anyone else I’ve ever heard of.’
The man shrugged.
‘Some of them are a hundred years old.’
‘I was a prodigy.’
‘Were you now?’
Duiker spoke. ‘The poet is immortal.’
She turned to face him. ‘Is that some kind of general, ideological statement, Historian? Or are you talking about the man sharing this table with you?’
Antsy cursed suddenly and then said, ‘I don’t need any rope! Who put that into my head? Let’s get going – I’m taking this shortsword and a sharper and anybody gets too close to me or looks suspicious they can eat the sharper for breakfast!’
‘We’ll stay here,’ Duiker said when Blend hesitated. ‘The bard and me. I’ll look in on Picker.’
‘All right. Thanks.’
Antsy, Blend and Scillara set out.
The journey took them from the Estates District and into Daru District, along the Second Tier Wall. The city had fully awakened now, and in places the crowds were thick with the endless machinery of living. Voices and smells and needs and wants, hungers and thirsts, laughter and irritation, misery and joy, and the sunlight fell on everything it could reach and shadows retreated wherever they could.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 791