The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Some wounds never heal, and that man has just taken such a wounding. Would that Dujek had left Whiskeyjack hidden beneath the rain-cape …

  Anomander Rake was at Korlat’s side. He said nothing for a long time, then he turned away. ‘Korlat, how will you answer this?’

  She replied tonelessly, ‘Orfantal makes ready, Lord. We will hunt Kallor down, my brother and I.’

  Rake nodded. ‘When you do, leave him alive. He has earned Dragnipur.’

  ‘We shall, Lord.’

  The Son of Darkness then faced the others. ‘High Fist Dujek. High Mage Tayschrenn. Moon’s. Spawn is dying, and so has been abandoned by my people. It shall be sent eastward, over the ocean – the power within it is failing, and so it will soon settle beneath the waves. I ask that these three fallen Malazans – slain by a betrayer delivered here by myself and Caladan Brood – these three Malazans, be interred in Moon’s Spawn. It is, I believe, a worthy sarcophagus.’

  No-one spoke.

  Rake then looked at Picker. ‘And I ask that the dead among the Bridgeburners be interred there, as well.’

  ‘Is there room for all our fallen?’ Picker asked.

  ‘Alas, no. Most of the chambers within are flooded.’

  Picker drew a deep breath, then glanced at Dujek.

  The High Fist seemed incapable of making a decision. ‘Has anyone seen Captain Paran?’

  No-one replied.

  ‘Very well. As to the disposition of the fallen Bridgeburners, the decision is yours, Lieutenant Picker.’

  ‘They were always curious about what was inside Moon’s Spawn,’ she said, managing a wry grin. ‘I think that would please them.’

  * * *

  In the supply camp haphazardly assembled in the parkland north of the killing field, at one edge, the seven hundred and twenty-two Mott Irregulars were slowly gathering, each one carrying burlap sacks stuffed with loot taken from the city.

  Leaning against a tree was a massive table, flipped over to reveal the painted underside. The legs had snapped off some time in the past, but that had simply made it easier to transport.

  The painted image had been glowing for some time before anyone noticed, and a substantial crowd had gathered to stare at it by the time the warren within the image opened, and out stepped Paran and Quick Ben, followed by a short, robustly muscled woman with black hair.

  All three were sheathed in frost, which began to fade immediately as the warren closed behind them.

  One of the Mott Irregulars stepped forward. ‘Greetings. I am High Marshal Jib Bole, and something’s confusing me.’

  Paran, still shivering from Omtose Phellack’s brutally cold air, stared at the man for a moment, then shrugged. ‘And what’s that, High Marshal?’

  Jib Bole scratched his head. ‘Well, that’s a table, not a door…’

  * * *

  A short while later, as Paran and Quick Ben made their way through the dusk towards the killing field, the wizard softly laughed.

  The captain glanced over at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Backwoods humour, Paran. Comes with talking with the scariest mages we’ve ever faced.’

  ‘Mages?’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s the wrong name for them. Warlocks might be better. Swamp-snuffling warlocks. With bits of bark in their hair. Get them into a forest and you won’t find them unless they want you to. Those Bole brothers, they’re the worst of the lot, though I’ve heard that there’s a lone sister among them who you wouldn’t want to meet, ever.’

  Paran shook his head.

  Kilava had departed their company immediately after their arrival. She had offered the two men a simple word of thanks, which Paran sensed was in itself an extraordinary lowering of her guard, then had slipped into the gloom of the forest.

  The captain and the wizard reached the trader track and could see it straightening and climbing towards the ridge that faced the killing field and the city beyond. Moon’s Spawn hung almost directly above them, shedding misty rain. A few fires still lit Coral, but it seemed that the darkness that was Kurald Galain was somehow smothering them.

  He could not push the recent events from his mind. He was unused to being the hand of … redemption. The deliverance of the Jaghut child from the wounded portal of Morn had left him numb.

  So long ago, now … outside Pale. I’d felt her, felt this child, trapped in her eternal pain, unable to comprehend what she had done to deserve what was happening to her. She had thought she was going to find her mother – so Kilava had told her. She had been holding her brother’s hand—

  And then it had all been torn away.

  Suddenly alone.

  Knowing only pain.

  For thousands of years.

  Quick Ben and Talamandas had done something to the child, had worked their sorcery to take from her all memory of what had happened. Paran had sensed Hood’s direct involvement in that – only a god could manage such a thing, not a simple blocking of memories, but an absolute taking away, a cleansing of the slate.

  Thus. The child had lost her brother. Had found an uncle instead.

  But not a kindly one. The Seer carries his own wounds, after all …

  And now Burn’s realm had found new denizens. Was now home to an ancient warren.

  ‘Memories,’ Quick Ben had said, ‘of ice. There is heat within this chaotic poison – heat enough to destroy these servants. I needed to find a way to slow the infection, to weaken the poison.

  ‘I’d warned the Crippled God, you know. Told him I was stepping into his path. We’ve knocked him back, you know…’

  Paran smiled to himself at the recollection. The ego of gods was as nothing to Quick Ben’s. Even so, the wizard had earned the right to some fierce satisfaction, hadn’t he? They had stolen the Seer from under Anomander Rake’s nose. They had seen an ancient wrong righted, and were fortunate enough to have Kilava present, to partake of the redemption. They had removed the threat of the Seer from this continent. And, finally, through the preservation of Omtose Phellack, they had slowed the Crippled God’s infection to a turgid crawl.

  And we gave a child her life back.

  ‘Captain,’ Quick Ben murmured, a hand reaching up to touch his shoulder.

  Ahead, beyond the last of the trees, a mass of figures, covering the slopes of a broad, flat-topped hill. Torches like wavering stars.

  ‘I don’t like the feel of this,’ the wizard muttered.

  * * *

  When the darkness dissipated, the bodies were gone, those on the hilltop and those on the bed of the wagon that Picker and her soldiers had guided onto the side of the road below. There had been nothing elaborate to the interment. The disposition of the fallen within the massive, floating edifice was left to the Tiste Andii, to Anomander Rake himself.

  Gruntle turned and looked up to study Moon’s Spawn. Leaning drunkenly, it drifted seaward, blotting the brightening stars that had begun painting the land silver. The night’s natural darkness would soon swallow it whole.

  As Moon’s Spawn drew its shadow after it, there was revealed, on the ridge on the other side of the trader road, a small gathering of soldiers, positioned in a half-circle around a modest bier and a pile of stones.

  It was a moment before Gruntle understood what he was seeing. He reached out and drew Stonny closer to him. ‘Come on,’ he whispered.

  She did not protest as he led her from the hill, down the slope, through silent, ghostly ranks that parted to let them pass. Over the road, across the shallow ditch, then onto the slope leading to the ridge.

  Where the remaining hundred or so Grey Swords stood to honour the man who had once been Fener’s Shield Anvil.

  Someone was following at a distance behind Gruntle and Stonny, but neither turned to see who it was.

  They reached the small gathering.

  Uniforms had been scrubbed clean, weapons polished. Gruntle saw, in the midst of the mostly Capan women and gaunt Tenescowri recruits, Anaster, still astride his horse. The Mortal Sword’s felin
e eyes thinned on the strange, one-eyed young man. No, he is not as he was. No longer … empty. What has he become, that he now feels like my … rival?

  The Destriant stood closest to the still form on the bier, and seemed to be studying Itkovian’s death-pale face. On the other side of the bier a shallow pit had been excavated, earth heaped on one side, boulders on the other. A modest grave awaited Itkovian. Finally, the Capan woman turned.

  ‘We mark the death of this man, whose spirit travels to no god. He has walked through Hood’s Gate, and that is all. Through. To stand alone. He will not relinquish his burden, for he remains in death as he was in life. Itkovian, Shield Anvil of Fener’s Reve. Remember him.’

  As she made to gesture for the interment to begin, someone stepped round Gruntle and Stonny, and approached the Destriant.

  A Malazan soldier, holding a cloth-wrapped object under one arm. In halting Daru, he said, ‘Please, Destriant, I seek to honour Itkovian…’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘I would do … something else, as well.’

  She cocked her head. ‘Sir?’

  The Malazan removed the cloth to reveal Itkovian’s helm. ‘I – I did not wish to take advantage of him. Yet – he insisted that he fared better in the exchange. Untrue, Destriant. You can see that. Anyone can. See the helm he wears – it was mine. I would take it back. He should be wearing his own. This one…’

  The Destriant swung round, looked down at the body once more, said nothing for a long moment, then she shook her head. ‘No. Sir, Itkovian would refuse your request. Your gift pleased him, sir. None the less, if you have now decided that the helmet you gave to him is indeed of greater value, then he would not hesitate in returning it to…’ She was turning as she spoke, and, her gaze travelling to the now weeping soldier, then past to something beyond them all, her words trailed away to silence.

  Gruntle saw the young woman’s eyes slowly widen.

  The Grey Swords’ Shield Anvil suddenly pivoted in a soft clatter of armour, then, a moment later, the other soldiers followed suit.

  As did Gruntle and Stonny.

  The lone Malazan had been but the first. Beneath the silver starlight, every surviving soldier of Dujek’s Host had marched to position themselves at the base of the ridge’s slope, forming ranks. Flanked by Tiste Andii, Rhivi, Barghast, Black Moranth – a vast sweep of figures, standing silent—

  —and then Gruntle’s scan continued eastward, down to the killing field, and there, once more, were the T’lan Imass, and they too were coming forward.

  Silverfox stood off to the far side, watching.

  The Grey Swords, stunned into silence, slowly parted as the first of the T’lan Imass reached the ridge.

  A Bonecaster came first, holding in one hand a battered seashell hanging from a leather thong. The undead creature halted and said to the Destriant, ‘For the gift this mortal has given us, we shall each offer one in turn. Together, they shall become his barrow, and it shall be unassailable. If you refuse us this, we will defy you.’

  The Destriant shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she whispered. ‘There will be no refusal.’

  The Bonecaster walked up to Itkovian, laid the shell down on the man’s chest.

  Gruntle sighed. Ah, Itkovian, it seems you have made yet more friends.

  The solemn procession of modest gifts – at times nothing more than a polished stone, carefully set down on the growing pile covering the body – continued through the night, the stars completing their great wheel in the sky until fading at last to dawn’s light.

  When the Malazan soldier added Itkovian’s helmet to the barrow, a second wave began, as soldier after soldier ascended the slope to leave the man a gift. Sigils, diadems, rings, daggers.

  Through it all, Gruntle and Stonny stood to one side, watching. As did the Grey Swords.

  With the last soldiers leaving the hill, Gruntle stirred. He stared at the massive, glittering barrow, seeing the faint emanation of Tellann sorcery that would keep it intact – every object in its place, immovable – then reached up with his left hand. A soft click, and the torcs fell free.

  Sorry, Treach. Learn to live with the loss.

  We do.

  * * *

  The gloom remained, suffusing the entire city of Coral, as the sun edged clear over the seas to the east. Paran stood with Quick Ben. They had both watched the procession, but had not moved from their position on the hill. They had watched Dujek join the silent line of gift-givers, one soldier honouring another.

  The captain felt diminished by his inability to follow suit. In his mind, the death of Whiskeyjack had left him too broken to move. He and Quick Ben had arrived too late, had been unable to stand with the others in formal acknowledgement – Paran had not believed that so simple a ritual possessed such importance within himself. He had attended funerals before – even as a child in Unta, there had been solemn processions where he walked with his sisters, his mother and father, to eventually stand before a crypt in the necropolis, as some elder statesman’s wrapped corpse was delivered into the hands of his ancestors. Ceremonies through which he had fidgeted, feeling nothing of grief for a man he had never met. Funerals had seemed pointless. Hood had already taken the soul, after all. Weeping before an empty body had seemed a waste of time.

  His mother, his father. He had not been there for either funeral, had believed himself sufficiently comforted by the knowledge that Tavore would have ensured noble ceremony, proper respect.

  Here, the soldiers had kept ceremony to a minimum. Simply standing at attention, motionless, each alone with their thoughts, their feelings. Yet bound together none the less. The binding that was shared grief.

  And he and Quick Ben had missed it, had come too late. Whiskeyjack’s body was gone. And Ganoes Paran was bereft, his heart a vast cavern, dark, echoing with emotions he would not, could not show.

  He and the wizard, silent, stared at Moon’s Spawn as it drifted ever farther eastward, out over the sea, now a third of a league distant. It rode low in the air, and some time soon – perhaps a month from now – it would touch the waves, somewhere in the ocean, and then, as water rushed once more into the fissures, filling the chambers within, Moon’s Spawn would sink. Down, beneath the insensate seas …

  No-one approached them.

  Finally, the wizard turned. ‘Captain.’

  ‘What is it, Quick Ben?’

  ‘Moon’s Spawn. Draw it.’

  Paran frowned, then his breath caught. He hesitated, then crouched down, hand reaching to wipe smooth a small span of earth. With his index finger he etched a round-cornered rectangle, then, within it, a rough but recognizable outline. He studied his work for a moment, then looked up at Quick Ben and nodded.

  The wizard took a handful of Paran’s cloak in one hand, said, ‘Lead us through.’

  Right. Now how do I do that? Study the card, Paran – no, that alone will land us on its damned surface, a short but no doubt thoroughly fatal fall to the waves below. A chamber, Picker said. Rake’s throne room. Think darkness. Kurald Galain, a place unlit, silent, a place with cloth-wrapped corpses …

  Eyes closed, Paran stepped forward, dragging Quick Ben with him.

  His boot landed on stone.

  He opened his eyes, saw nothing but inky blackness, but the air smelled … different. He moved forward another step, heard Quick Ben’s sigh behind him. The wizard muttered something and a fitful globe of light appeared above them.

  A high-ceilinged chamber, perhaps twenty paces wide and more than forty paces long. They had arrived at what seemed the formal entrance – behind them, beyond an arched threshold, was a hallway. Ahead, at the far end of the chamber, a raised dais.

  The huge, high-backed chair that had once commanded that dais had been pushed to one side, two of its legs on a lower step, the throne leaning. On the centre of the dais three black-wood sarcophagi now resided.

  Along the length of the approach, to either side, were additional sarcophagi, upright, on which black-webbed
sorcery played.

  Quick Ben hissed softly through his teeth. ‘’Ware the looter who penetrates this place.’

  Paran studied the sorcery’s soft dance over the unadorned sarcophagi. ‘Wards?’ he asked.

  ‘That, and a lot more, Captain. But we need not be worried. The Bridgeburners are within these ones flanking the approach. Oh, and one Black Moranth.’ He pointed to a sarcophagus that, to Paran’s eyes, looked no different from all the others. ‘Twist. The poison in his arm took him a bell before the first wave of Dujek’s companies.’ Quick Ben slowly walked towards another sarcophagus. ‘In here … what was left of Hedge. Not much. The bastard blew himself up with a cusser.’ The wizard stopped to stand before the coffin. ‘Picker described it well, Hedge. And I will tell Fiddler. Next time I see him.’ He was silent a moment longer, then he turned to Paran with a grin. ‘I can picture him, his soul, crouching at the base of Hood’s Gate, driving a cracker between the stones…’

  Paran smiled, but it was a struggle. He set off towards the dais. The wizard followed.

  Quick Ben spoke names in a soft voice as they proceeded. ‘Shank … Toes … Detoran … Aimless … Runter … Mulch … Bucklund … Story … Liss … Dasalle … Trotts – uh, I would’ve thought the Barghast … no, I suppose not. He was as much a Bridgeburner as the rest of us. Behind that lid, Paran, he’s still grinning…’

  As they walked, Quick Ben spoke aloud every name of those they passed. Thirty-odd Bridgeburners, Paran’s fallen command.

  They reached the dais.

  And could go no further. Sorcery commanded the entire platform, a softly coruscating web of Kurald Galain.

  ‘Rake’s own hand,’ the wizard murmured. ‘These … spells. He worked, alone.’

  Paran nodded. He had heard the same from Picker, but he understood Quick Ben’s need to talk, to fill the chamber with his echoing voice.

  ‘It was his leg, you know. Gave out at the wrong moment. Probably a lunge … meaning he had Kallor. Had him dead. He would never have extended himself so fully otherwise. That damned leg. Shattered in that garden in Darujhistan. A marble pillar, toppling … and Whiskeyjack was just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.