The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Paran turned towards the Malazan camp. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  ‘Sir?’ she asked behind him.

  ‘He is yours, Destriant. With my blessing.’

  She staggered then, against her horse, which grunted and sidestepped.

  Paran spun. ‘What—’

  The woman righted herself, lifted a hand to her brow, then shook her head. ‘I am sorry. There was … weight … to your use of that word.’

  ‘My use – oh.’

  Oh. Hood’s breath, Ganoes – that was damned careless. ‘And?’ he reluctantly asked.

  ‘And … I am not sure, sir. But I think you would be well advised to, uh, exercise caution in the future.’

  ‘Aye, I think you’re right. Are you recovered enough to continue?’

  She nodded, collecting the reins of her horse.

  Don’t think about it, Ganoes Paran. Take it as a warning and nothing more. You did nothing to Anaster – you don’t even know the man. A warning, and you’ll damn well heed it …

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Glass is sand and sand is glass! The ant dancing blind as blind ants do on the lip of the rim and the rim of the lip.

  White in the night and grey in the day – smiling spider she never smiles but smile she does though the ant never sees, blind as it is –

  and now was!

  TALES TO SCARE CHILDREN

  MALESEN THE VINDICTIVE (B.?)

  ‘Mindless panic, alas, makes her twitch.’ The Seerdomin’s voice above him said, ‘I believe it has grown … excessive of late, Holy One.’

  The Pannion Seer’s reply was a shriek: ‘Do you think I can’t see that? Do you think I’m blind?’

  ‘You are all wise and all knowing,’ the Seerdomin officer rumbled. ‘I was simply expressing my concern, Holy One. He can no longer walk, and his breath seems so laboured within that malformed chest’

  ‘He’ … crippled … crumpled ribs like skeleton hands closing tighter on lungs, ever tighter. Seerdomin. This is me you describe.

  But who am I?

  I’d felt power once. Long ago.

  There is a wolf.

  A wolf. Trapped in this cage – my chest, these bones, yes, he cannot breathe. It hurts so to breathe.

  The howls are gone. Silenced. The wolf cannot call … call …

  To whom?

  I’d rested my hand, once, on her furred shoulder. Near the neck We’d not yet awakened, she and I. So close, travelling in step, yet not awakened … such tragic ignorance. Yet she’d gifted me her mortal visions, her only history – such as she knew it to be, whilst deep in her heart slept …

  … slept my beloved.

  ‘Holy One, your mother’s embrace will kill him, should he be returned to it—’

  ‘You dare order me?’ the Seer hissed, and there was trembling in his voice.

  ‘I do not command, Holy One. I state a fact.’

  ‘Ultentha! Dearest Septarch, come forward! Yes, look upon this man at your Seerdomin’s feet. What think you?’

  ‘Holy One,’ a new voice, softer, ‘my most trusted servant speaks true. This man’s bones are so mangled—’

  ‘I can see!’ the Seer screamed.

  ‘Holy One,’ the Septarch continued, ‘relieve him from his horror.’

  ‘No! I will not! He is mine! He is Mother’s! She needs him – someone to hold – she needs him!’

  ‘Her love is proving fatal,’ the Seerdomin said.

  ‘You both defy me? Shall I gather my Winged Ones? To send you to oblivion? To fight and squabble over what’s left? Yes? Shall I?’

  ‘As the Holy One wills.’

  ‘Yes, Ultentha! Precisely! As I will!’

  The Seerdomin spoke. ‘Shall I return him to the Matron, then, Holy One?’

  ‘Not yet. Leave him there. I am amused by the sight of him. Now, Ultentha, your report.’

  ‘The trenches are completed, Holy One. The enemy will come across the flats to face the city wall. They’ll not send scouts to the forested ridge on their right – I will stake my soul on that.’

  ‘You have, Ultentha, you have. And what of those damned Great Ravens? If but one has seen…’

  ‘Your Winged Ones have driven them off, Holy One. The skies have been cleared, and so the enemy’s intelligence is thus thwarted. We shall permit them to establish their camps on the flats, then we shall rise from our hidden positions and descend upon their flank. This, in time with the assault of the Mage Cadres from the walls and the Winged Ones from the sky, as well as Septarch Inal’s sortie from the gates – Holy One, victory will be ours.’

  ‘I want Caladan Brood. I want his hammer, delivered into my hands. I want the Malazans annihilated. I want the Barghast gods grovelling at my feet. But most of all, I want the Grey Swords! Is that understood? I want that man, Itkovian – then I will have a replacement for my mother. Thus, hear me well, if you seek mercy for Toc the Younger, bring to me Itkovian. Alive.’

  ‘It will be as you will, Holy One,’ Septarch Ultentha said.

  It will be as he wills. He is my god. What he wills, all that he wills. The wolf cannot breathe. The wolf is dying.

  He – we are dying.

  ‘And where is the enemy now, Ultentha?’

  ‘They have indeed divided, two days past, since they crossed the river.’

  ‘Yet are they not aware that the cities they march towards are dead?’

  ‘So their Great Ravens must have reported, Holy One.’

  ‘Then what are they up to?’

  ‘We are unsure. Your Winged Ones dare not draw too close – their presence is yet to be noted, I believe, and best we keep it that way.’

  ‘Agreed. Well, perhaps they imagine we have set traps – hidden troops, or some such thing – and fear a surprise attack from behind should they simply ignore the cities.’

  ‘We are granted more time by their caution, Holy One.’

  ‘They are fools, swollen with the victory at Capustan.’

  ‘Indeed, Holy One. For which they will dearly pay.’

  Everyone pays. No-one escapes. I thought I was safe. The wolf was a power unto himself, stretching awake. He was where I fled to.

  But the wolf chose the wrong man, the wrong body. When he came down to take my eye – that flash of grey, burning, that I’d thought a stone – I’d been whole, young, sound.

  But the Matron has me now. Old skin sloughing from her massive arms, the smell of abandoned snakepits. The twitch of her embrace – and bones break, break and break again. There has been so much pain, its thunder endless of late. I have felt her panic, as the Seer has said This is what has taken my mind This is what has destroyed me.

  Better I had stayed destroyed. Better my memories never returned. Knowledge is no gift.

  Cursed aware. Lying here on this cold floor, the softly surging waves of pain receding – I can no longer feel my legs. I smell salt. Dust and mould. There is weight on my left hand It is pinned beneath me, and now grows numb.

  I wish I could move.

  ‘… salt the bodies. There’s no shortage. Scurvy’s taken so many of the Tenescowri, it’s all our troops can do to gather the corpses, Holy One.’

  ‘Mundane diseases will not take the soldiers, Ultentha. I have seen this in a dream. The mistress walked among the Tenescowri, and lo, their flesh swelled, their fingers and toes rotted and turned black, their teeth fell out in streams of red spit. But when she came upon my chosen warriors, I saw her smile. And she turned away.’

  ‘Holy One,’ the Seerdomin said, ‘why would Poleil bless our cause?’

  ‘I know not, nor do I care. Perhaps she has had her own vision, of the glory of our triumph, or perhaps she simply begs favour. Our soldiers will be hale. And once the invaders are destroyed, we can begin our march once more, to new cities, new lands, and there grow fat on the spoils.’

  The invaders … among them, my kin. I was Toc the Younger, a Malazan. And the Malazans are coming.

  The laugh that came from his throat began
softly, a liquid sound, then grew louder as it continued.

  The conversation fell silent. The sound he made was the only one in the chamber.

  The Seer’s voice spoke from directly above him. ‘And what amuses you so, Toc the Younger? Can you speak? Ah, haven’t I asked that once before?’

  Breath wheezing, Toc answered, ‘I speak. But you do not hear me. You never hear me.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Onearm’s Host, Seer. The deadliest army the Malazan Empire has ever produced. It’s coming for you.’

  ‘And I should quake?’

  Toc laughed again. ‘Do as you like. But your mother knows.’

  ‘You think she fears your stupid soldiers? I forgive your ignorance, Toc the Younger. Dear Mother, it must be explained, has ancient … terrors. Moon’s Spawn. But let me be more precise, so as to prevent your further misunderstanding. Moon’s Spawn is now home to the Tiste Andii and their dreaded Lord, but they are as lizards in an abandoned temple. They dwell unaware of the magnificence surrounding them. Dear Mother cannot be reached by such details, alas. She is little more than instinct these days, the poor, mindless thing.

  ‘The Jaghut remember Moon’s Spawn. I alone am in possession of the relevant scrolls from Gothos’s Folly that whisper of the K’Chain Nah’rhuk – the Short-Tails, misbegotten children of the Matrons – who fashioned mechanisms that bound sorcery in ways long lost, who built vast, floating fortresses from which they launched devastating attacks upon their long-tailed kin.

  ‘Oh, they lost in the end. Were destroyed. And but one floating fortress remained, damaged, abandoned to the winds. Gothos believed it had drifted north, to collide with the ice of a Jaghut winter, and was so frozen, trapped for millennia. Until found by the Tiste Andii Lord.

  ‘Do you comprehend, Toc the Younger? Anomander Rake knows nothing of Moon’s Spawn’s fullest powers – powers he has no means of accessing even were he to know of them. Dear Mother remembers, or at least some part of her does. Of course, she has nothing to fear. Moon’s Spawn is not within two hundred leagues of here – my Winged Ones have searched for it, high overhead, through the warrens, everywhere. The only conclusion is that Moon’s Spawn has fled, or failed at last – was it not almost destroyed over Pale? So you’ve told me.

  ‘So you see, Toc the Younger, your Malazan army holds no terror for any of us, including dear Mother. Onearm’s Host will be crushed in the assault on Coral. As will Brood and his Rhivi. Moreover, the White Faces will be shattered – they’ve not the discipline for this kind of war. I will have them all. And I will feed you bits of Dujek Onearm’s flesh – you’d like some meat again, wouldn’t you? Something that hasn’t been … regurgitated. Yes?’

  He said nothing, even as his stomach clenched in visceral greed.

  The Seer crouched lower and touched a fingertip to Toc’s temple. ‘It’s so easy breaking you. All your faiths. One by one. Almost too easy. The only salvation you can hope for is mine, Toc the Younger. You understand that now, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘Very good. Pray, then, that there is mercy in my soul. True, I’ve yet to find any myself, though I admit I’ve little searched. But perhaps it exists. Hold to that, my friend.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Seer straightened. ‘I hear my mother’s cries. Take him back, Seerdomin.’

  ‘As you command, Holy One.’

  Strong arms gathered Toc the Younger, lifted him with ease from the cold floor.

  He was carried from the room. In the hallway, the Seerdomin paused.

  ‘Toc, listen to me, please. She’s chained down below, and the reach does not encompass the entire room. Listen. I will set you down beyond her grasp. I will bring food, water, blankets – the Seer will pay little heed to her cries, for she is always crying these days. Nor will he probe towards her mind – there are matters of far greater import consuming him.’

  ‘He will have you devoured, Seerdomin.’

  ‘I was devoured long ago, Malazan.’

  ‘I – I am sorry for that.’

  The man holding him said nothing for a long moment, and when he spoke at last, his voice cracked. ‘You … you offer compassion. Abyss take me, Toc, I am ever surpassed. Allow to me, please, my small efforts—’

  ‘With gratitude, Seerdomin.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He set off once more.

  Toc spoke. ‘Tell me, Seerdomin, does the ice still grip the sea?’

  ‘Not for at least a league, Toc. Some unexpected twist of the currents has cleared the harbour. But the storms still rage over the bay, and the ice out there still thunders and churns like ten thousand demons at war. Can you not hear it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll grant you it’s faint from here. From the keep’s causeway, it is a veritable assault’

  ‘I – I remember the wind…’

  ‘It no longer reaches us. Yet another wayward vagary, for which I am thankful.’

  ‘In the Matron’s cave,’ Toc said, ‘there is no wind.’

  * * *

  Wood splintered, a sickening sound that trembled through the entire Meckros fragment. Lady Envy paused in her climb towards the street’s ragged, torn end. The slope had grown suddenly steeper, the frost slick on the cobbles underfoot. She hissed in frustration, then drew on a warren and floated to where Lanas Tog stood on the very edge.

  The T’lan Imass did not so much as sway on her perilous perch. Wind ripped at her tattered skins and bone-white hair. The swords still impaling her glistened with rime.

  Reaching her side, Lady Envy saw more clearly the source of the terrible, snapping sounds. A vast section of ice had collided with them, was grinding its way along the base in a foaming sluice of jetting water and spraying ice.

  ‘Dear me,’ Lady Envy muttered. ‘It seems we are ever pushed westward.’

  ‘Yet we drive towards land none the less,’ Lanas Tog replied. ‘And that is sufficient.’

  ‘Twenty leagues from Coral by this course, and all of it wilderness, assuming my memories of the region’s map are accurate. I was so weary of walking, alas. Have you seen our abode yet? Apart from the canting floor and alarming views through the windows, it is quite sumptuous. I cannot abide discomfort, you know.’

  The T’lan Imass made no reply, continued staring northwestward.

  ‘You’re all alike,’ Lady Envy sniffed. ‘It took weeks to get Tool in a conversational mood.’

  ‘You have mentioned the name earlier. Who is Tool?’

  ‘Onos T’oolan, First Sword. The last time I saw him, he was even more bedraggled than you, dear, so there’s hope for you yet.’

  ‘Onos T’oolan. I saw him but once.’

  ‘The First Gathering, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes. He spoke against the ritual.’

  ‘So of course you hate him.’

  The T’lan Imass did not immediately reply. The structure shifted wildly beneath them, their end pitching down as the floe punched clear, then lifting upward once more. There was not even a waver to Lanas Tog’s stance. She spoke. ‘Hate him? No. Of course I disagreed. We all did, and so he acquiesced. It is a common belief.’

  Lady Envy waited, then crossed her arms and asked, ‘What is?’

  ‘That truth is proved by weight of numbers. That what the many believe to be right, must be so. When I see Onos T’oolan once more, I will tell him: he was the one who was right.’

  ‘I don’t think he holds a grudge, Lanas Tog. I suppose, thinking on it, that makes him unique among the T’lan Imass, doesn’t it?’

  ‘He is the First Sword.’

  ‘I have had yet another, equally frustrating conversation with Mok. I’d been wondering, you see, why he and his brothers have not challenged you to combat yet. Both Senu and Thurule have fought Tool – and lost. Mok was next. Turns out the Seguleh will not fight women, unless attacked. So, by way of warning, do not attack them.’

  ‘I have no reason to, Lady Envy. Should I find one, ho
wever—’

  ‘All right, I’ll be more direct. Tool was hard-pressed by both Senu and Thurule. Against Mok, well, it was probably even. Are you a match to the First Sword, Lanas Tog? If you truly seek to reach the Second Gathering in one piece, to deliver your message, then show some restraint.’

  Iron grated against bone as Lanas Tog shrugged.

  Lady Envy sighed. ‘Now, which is more depressing? Attempting civil conversation with you and the Seguleh, or staring into the suffering eyes of a wolf? I cannot even comment on Garath’s mood, for the beast still seems upset with me.’

  ‘The ay has awakened,’ Lanas Tog said.

  ‘I know, I know, and truly, my heart weeps on her behalf, or at least on behalf of the miserable goddess residing within her. Then again, they both deserve a few tears, don’t they? An eternity alone for the not-quite-mortal ay cannot have been fun, after all.’

  The T’lan Imass turned her head. ‘Who has granted the beast this edged gift?’

  Lady Envy shrugged, smiling with delight at the opportunity to return such a gesture. ‘A misguided sibling who’d thought he was being kind. All right, perhaps that was too simplistic an answer. My sibling had found the goddess, terribly damaged by the Fall, and needed a warm-blooded place to lay her spirit, so that it could heal. Serendipity. The ay’s pack was dead, whilst she herself was too young to survive in normal circumstances. Worse yet, she was the last left on the entire continent.’

  ‘Your sibling has a misplaced sense of mercy, Lady Envy.’

  ‘I agree. We have something in common after all! How wonderful!’

  A moment later, as she studied the T’lan Imass at her side, her effusiveness drained away. ‘Oh,’ she muttered, ‘what a distressing truth that proved to be.’

  Lanas Tog returned her gaze to the tumultuous panorama stretching away to the northwest. ‘Most truths are,’ she said.

  ‘Well!’ Lady Envy ran her hands through her hair. ‘I think I’ll head down and stare into a wolf’s miserable eyes for a time! Just to improve my mood, you understand. You know, at least Tool had a sense of humour.’

  ‘He is the First Sword.’

  Muttering under her breath as she made her way back down the street, slippered feet barely brushing the icy cobbles, Lady Envy only paused when she reached the entrance to the house. ‘Oh! That was quite funny! In an odd way. Well! How extraordinary!’