The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Words like the lap of waves, the god Mael’s formless affectation and insidious patience. This, my fourth conversation with Rel. Oh, how I dislike this creature! Duiker cleared his throat. “The Empress takes little heed of me, Jhistal…”

  Mallick Rel’s soft laugh was like the rattle of a snake’s tail. “Unheeded historian or unheeding of history? Hint of bitterness at advice rejected or worse, ignored. Be calmed, no crimes winging back from Unta’s towers.”

  “Pleased to hear it,” Duiker muttered, wondering at the priest’s source. “I remain in Hissar as a matter of research,” he explained after a moment. “The precedent of shipping prisoners to the Otataral mines on the island reaches back to the Emperor’s time, although he generally reserved that fate for mages.”

  “Mages? Ah, ah.”

  Duiker nodded. “Effective, yes, although unpredictable. The specific properties of Otataral as a magic-deadening ore remain largely mysterious. Even so, madness claimed most of those sorcerers, although it is not known if that was the result of exposure to the ore dust, or the deprivation from their Warrens.”

  “Some mages among the next slave shipment?”

  “Some.”

  “Question soon answered, then.”

  “Soon,” Duiker agreed.

  The T-shaped quay was now a maelstrom of belligerent Wickans, frightened dock porters and short-tempered warhorses. A cordon of Hissar Guard provided the stopper to the bottleneck at the dock’s end where it opened out onto the cobbled half-round. Of Seven Cities blood, the Guards had hitched their round shields and unsheathed their tulwars, waving the broad, curving blades threateningly at the Wickans, who answered with barking challenges.

  Two men arrived on the parapet. Duiker nodded greetings. Mallick Rel did not deign to acknowledge either of them—a rough captain and the 7th’s lone surviving cadre mage, both men clearly ranked too low for any worthwhile cultivation by the priest.

  “Well, Kulp,” Duiker said to the squat, white-haired wizard, “your arrival may prove timely.”

  Kulp’s narrow, sunburned face twisted into a sour scowl. “Came up here to keep my bones and flesh intact, Duiker. I’m not interested in becoming Coltaine’s lumpy carpet in his step up to the post. They’re his people, after all. That he hasn’t done a damned thing to quell this brewing riot doesn’t bode well, I’d say.”

  The captain at his side grunted agreement. “Sticks in the throat,” he growled. “Half the officers here saw their first blood facing that bastard Coltaine, and now here he is, about to take command. Hood’s knuckles,” he spat, “won’t be any tears spilled if the Hissar Guard cuts down Coltaine and every one of his Wickan savages right here at the Quay. The Seventh don’t need them.”

  “Truth,” Mallick Rel said to Duiker with veiled eyes, “behind the threat of uprisings. Continent here a viper nest. Coltaine an odd choice—”

  “Not so odd,” Duiker said, shrugging. He returned his attention to the scene below. The Wickans closest to the Hissar Guard had begun strutting back and forth in front of the armored line. The situation was but moments away from a full-scale battle—the bottleneck was about to become a killing ground. The historian felt something cold clutch his stomach at seeing horn bows now strung among the Wickan soldiers. Another company of guards appeared from the avenue to the right of the main colonnade, bristling with pikes.

  “Can you explain that?” Kulp asked.

  Duiker turned and was surprised to see all three men staring at him. He thought back to his last comment, then shrugged again. “Coltaine united the Wickan clans in an uprising against the Empire. The Emperor had a hard time bringing him to heel—as some of you know first-hand. True to the Emperor’s style, he acquired Coltaine’s loyalty—”

  “How?” Kulp barked.

  “No one knows.” Duiker smiled. “The Emperor rarely explained his successes. In any case, since Empress Laseen held no affection for her predecessor’s chosen commanders, Coltaine was left to rot in some backwater on Quon Tali. Then the situation changed. Adjunct Lorn is killed in Darujhistan, High Fist Dujek and his army turn renegade, effectively surrendering the entire Genabackan Campaign, and the Year of Dryjhna approaches here in Seven Cities, prophesied as the year of rebellion. Laseen needs able commanders before it all slips from her grasp. The new Adjunct Tavore is untested. So…”

  “Coltaine,” the captain nodded, his scowl deepening. “Sent here to take command of the Seventh and put down the rebellion—”

  “After all,” Duiker said dryly, “who better to deal with insurrection than a warrior who led one himself?”

  “If mutiny occurs, scant his chances,” Mallick Rel said, his eyes on the scene below.

  Duiker saw half a dozen tulwars flash, watched the Wickans recoil and then unsheathe their own long-knives. They seemed to have found a leader, a tall, fierce-looking warrior with fetishes in his long braids, who now bellowed encouragement, waving his own weapon over his head. “Hood!” the historian swore. “Where on earth is Coltaine?”

  The captain laughed. “The tall one with the lone long-knife.”

  Duiker’s eyes widened. That madman is Coltaine? The Seventh’s new Fist?

  “Ain’t changed at all, I see,” the captain continued. “If you’re going to keep your head as leader of all the clans, you’d better be nastier than all the rest put together. Why’d you think the old Emperor liked him so much?”

  “Beru fend,” Duiker whispered, appalled.

  In the next breath an ululating scream from Coltaine brought sudden silence from the Wickan company. Weapons slid back into their sheaths, bows were lowered, arrows returned to their quivers. Even the bucking, snapping horses fell still, heads raised and ears pricked. A space cleared around Coltaine, who had turned his back on the guards. The tall warrior gestured and the four men on the parapet watched in silence as with absolute precision every horse was saddled. Less than a minute later the horsesoldiers were mounted, guiding their horses into a close parade formation that would rival the Imperial elites.

  “That,” Duiker said, “was superbly done.”

  A soft sigh escaped Mallick Rel. “Savage timing, a beast’s sense of challenge, then contempt. Statement for the guards. For us as well?”

  “Coltaine’s a snake,” the captain said, “if that’s what you’re asking. If the High Command at Aren thinks they can dance around him, they’re in for a nasty surprise.”

  “Generous advice,” Rel acknowledged.

  The captain looked as if he’d just swallowed something sharp, and Duiker realized that the man had spoken without thought as to the priest’s place in the High Command.

  Kulp cleared his throat. “He’s got them in troop formation—guess the ride to the barracks will be peaceful after all.”

  “I admit,” Duiker said wryly, “that I look forward to meeting the Seventh’s new Fist.”

  His heavy-lidded eyes on the scene below, Rel nodded. “Agreed.”

  Leaving behind the Skara Isles on a heading due south, the fisherboat set out into the Kansu Sea, its triangular sail creaking and straining. If the gale held, they would reach the Ehrlitan coast in four hours. Fiddler’s scowl deepened. The Ehrlitan coast, Seven Cities. I hate this damned continent. Hated it the first time, hate it even more now. He leaned over the gunnel and spat acrid bile into the warm, green waves.

  “Feeling any better?” Crokus asked from the prow, his tanned young face creased with genuine concern.

  The old saboteur wanted to punch that face; instead he just growled and hunched down deeper against the barque’s hull.

  Kalam’s laugh rumbled from where he sat at the tiller. “Fiddler and water don’t mix, lad. Look at him, he’s greener than that damned winged monkey of yours.”

  A sympathetic snuffling sound breathed against Fiddler’s cheek. He pried open one bloodshot eye to find a tiny, wizened face staring at him. “Go away, Moby,” Fiddler croaked. The familiar, once servant to Crokus’s uncle Mammot, seemed to have adopted the sapper, the
way stray dogs and cats often did. Kalam would say it was the other way around, of course. “A lie,” Fiddler whispered. “Kalam’s good at those—” like lounging around in Rutu Jelba for a whole damn week on the off-chance that a Skrae trader would come in. “Book passage in comfort, eh, Fid?” Not like the damned ocean crossing, oh no—and that one was supposed to have been in comfort, too. A whole week in Rutu Jelba, a lizard-infested, orange-bricked cesspool of a city, then what? Eight jakatas for this rag-stoppered sawed-in-half ale casket.

  The steady rise and fall lulled Fiddler as the hours passed. His mind drifted back to the appallingly long journey that had brought them thus far, then to the appallingly long journey that lay ahead. We never do things the easy way, do we?

  He would rather that every sea dried up. Men got feet, not flippers. Even so, we’re about to cross overland—over a fly-infested, waterless waste, where people smile only to announce they’re about to kill you.

  The day dragged on, green-tinged and shaky.

  He thought back to the companions he’d left behind on Genabackis, wishing he could be marching alongside them. Into a religious war. Don’t forget that, Fid. Religious wars are no fun. The faculty of reasoning that permitted surrender did not apply in such instances. Still, the squad was all he’d known for years. He felt bereft out of its shadows. Just Kalam for old company, and he calls that land ahead home. And he smiles before he kills. And what’s he and Quick Ben got planned they ain’t told me about yet?

  “There’s more of those flying fish,” Apsalar said, her voice identifying the soft hand that had found its way to his shoulder. “Hundreds of them!”

  “Something big from the deep is chasing them,” Kalam said.

  Groaning, Fiddler pushed himself upright. Moby took the opportunity to reveal its motivation behind the day’s cooing and crawled into the sapper’s lap, curling up and closing its yellow eyes. Fiddler gripped the gunnel and joined his three companions in studying the school of flying fish a hundred yards off the starboard side. The length of a man’s arm, the milky white fish were clearing the waves, sailing thirty feet or so, then slipping back under the surface. In the Kansu Sea flying fish hunted like sharks, the schools capable of shredding a bull whale down to bones in minutes. They used their ability to fly to launch themselves onto the back of a whale when it broke for air. “What in Mael’s name is hunting them?”

  Kalam was frowning. “Shouldn’t be anything here in the Kansu. Out in Seeker’s Deep there’s dhenrabi, of course.”

  “Dhenrabi! Oh, that comforts me, Kalam. Oh yes indeed!”

  “Some kind of sea serpent?” Crokus asked.

  “Think of a centipede eighty paces long,” Fiddler answered. “Wraps up whales and ships alike, blows out all the air under its armored skin and sinks like a stone, taking its prey with it.”

  “They’re rare,” Kalam said, “and never seen in shallow water.”

  “Until now,” Crokus said, his voice rising in alarm.

  The dhenrabi broke the surface in the midst of the flying fish, thrashing its head side to side, a wide razorlike mouth flensing prey by the score. The width of the creature’s head was immense, as many as ten arm-spans. Its segmented armor was deep green under the encrusted barnacles, each segment revealing long chitinous limbs.

  “Eighty paces long?” Fiddler hissed. “Not unless it’s been cut in half!”

  Kalam rose at the tiller. “Ready with the sail, Crokus. We’re going to run. Westerly.”

  Fiddler pushed a squawking Moby from his lap and opened his backpack, fumbling to unwrap his crossbow. “If it decides we look tasty, Kalam…”

  “I know,” the assassin rumbled.

  Quickly assembling the huge iron weapon, Fiddler glanced up and met Apsalar’s wide eyes. Her face was white. The sapper winked. “Got a surprise if it comes for us, girl.”

  She nodded. “I remember…”

  The dhenrabi had seen them. Veering from the school of flying fish, it was now cutting sinuously through the waves toward them.

  “That’s no ordinary beast,” Kalam muttered. “You smelling what I’m smelling, Fiddler?”

  Spicy, bitter. “Hood’s breath, that’s a Soletaken!”

  “A what?” Crokus asked.

  “Shapeshifter,” Kalam said.

  A rasping voice filled Fiddler’s mind—and the expressions on his companions’ faces told him they heard as well—Mortals, unfortunate for you to witness my passage.

  The sapper grunted. The creature did not sound at all regretful.

  It continued, For this you must all die, though I shall not dishonor your flesh by eating you.

  “Kind of you,” Fiddler muttered, setting a solid quarrel in the crossbow’s slot. The iron head had been replaced with a grapefruit-sized clay ball.

  Another fisherboat mysteriously lost, the Soletaken mused ironically. Alas.

  Fiddler scrambled to the stern, crouching down beside Kalam. The assassin straightened to face the dhenrabi, one hand on the tiller. “Soletaken! Be on your way—we care nothing for your passage!”

  I shall be merciful when killing you. The creature rushed the barque from directly astern, cutting through the water like a sharp-hulled ship. Its jaws opened wide.

  “You were warned,” Fiddler said as he raised the crossbow, aimed and fired. The quarrel sped for the beast’s open mouth. Lightning fast, the dhenrabi snapped at the shaft, its thin, saw-edged teeth slicing through the quarrel and shattering the clay ball, releasing to the air the powdery mixture within the ball. The contact resulted in an instantaneous explosion that blew the Soletaken’s head apart.

  Fragments of skull and gray flesh raked the water on all sides. The incendiary powder continued to burn fiercely all it clung to, sending up hissing steam. Momentum carried the headless body to within four spans of the barque’s stern before it dipped down and slid smoothly out of sight even as the last echoes of the detonation faded. Smoke drifted sideways over the waves.

  “You picked the wrong fishermen,” Fiddler said, lowering his weapon.

  Kalam settled back at the tiller, returning the craft to a southerly course. A strange stillness hung in the air. Fiddler disassembled his crossbow and repacked it in oilcloth. As he resumed his seat amidships, Moby crawled back into his lap. Sighing, he scratched it behind an ear. “Well, Kalam?”

  “I’m not sure,” the assassin admitted. “What brought a Soletaken into the Kansu Sea? Why did it want its passage secret?”

  “If Quick Ben was here…”

  “But he isn’t, Fid. It’s a mystery we’ll have to live with, and hopefully we won’t run into any more.”

  “Do you think it’s related to…?”

  Kalam scowled. “No.”

  “Related to what?” Crokus demanded. “What are you two going on about?”

  “Just musing,” Fiddler said. “The Soletaken was heading south. Like us.”

  “So?”

  Fiddler shrugged. “So…nothing. Just that.” He spat again over the side and slumped down. “The excitement made me forget my seasickness. Now the excitement’s faded, dammit.”

  Everyone fell silent, though the frown on the face of Crokus told the sapper that the boy wasn’t about to let the issue rest for long.

  The gale remained steady, pushing them hard southward. Less than three hours after that Apsalar announced that she could see land ahead, and forty minutes later Kalam directed the craft parallel to the Ehrlitan coastline half a league offshore. They tacked west, following the cedar-lined ridge as the day slowly died.

  “I think I see horsemen,” Apsalar said.

  Fiddler raised his head, joining the others in studying the line of riders following a coastal track along the ridge.

  “I make them six in all,” Kalam said. “Second rider’s—”

  “Got an Imperial pennon,” Fiddler finished, his face twisting at the taste in his mouth. “Messenger and Lancer guard—”

  “Heading for Ehrlitan,” Kalam added.

  F
iddler turned in his seat and met his corporal’s dark eyes. Trouble?

  Maybe.

  The exchange was silent, a product of years fighting side by side.

  Crokus asked, “Something wrong? Kalam? Fiddler?”

  The boy’s sharp. “Hard to say,” Fiddler muttered. “They’ve seen us but what have they seen? Four fisherfolk in a barque, some Skrae family headed into the port for a taste of civilization.”

  “There’s a village just south of the tree-line,” Kalam said. “Keep an eye out for a creek mouth, Crokus, and a beach with no driftwood—the houses will be tucked leeward of the ridge, meaning inland. How’s my memory, Fid?”

  “Good enough for a native, which is what you are. How long out of the city?”

  “Ten hours on foot.”

  “That close?”

  “That close.”

  Fiddler fell silent. The Imperial messenger and his horse guard had moved out of sight, leaving the ridge as they swung south toward Ehrlitan. The plan had been to sail right into the Holy City’s ancient, crowded harbor, arriving anonymously. It was likely that the messenger was delivering information that had nothing to do with them—they’d given nothing away since reaching the Imperial port of Karakarang from Genabackis, arriving on a Moranth Blue trader having paid passage as crew. The overland journey from Karakarang across the Talgai Mountains and down to Rutu Jelba had been on the Tano pilgrim route—a common enough journey. And the week in Rutu Jelba had been spent inconspicuously lying low, with only Kalam making nightly excursions to the wharf district, seeking passage across the Otataral Sea to the mainland.

  At worst, a report might have reached someone official, somewhere, that two possible deserters, accompanied by a Genabackan and a woman, had arrived on Malazan territory—hardly news to shake the Imperial wasp nest all the way to Ehrlitan. So, likely Kalam was being his usual paranoid self.

  “I see the stream mouth,” Crokus said, pointing to a place on the shore.

  Fiddler glanced back at Kalam. Hostile land, how low do we crawl?

  Looking up at grasshoppers, Fid.

  Hood’s breath. He looked back to the shore. “I hate Seven Cities,” he whispered. In his lap, Moby yawned, revealing a mouth bristling with needlelike fangs. Fiddler blanched. “Cuddle up whenever you want, pup,” he said, shivering.