The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  And her friend, the one buried beneath the oldest tree, he’d told her he was trapped. He couldn’t go any further, even with her assistance. But help was on the way, although he wasn’t certain it would arrive in time.

  She thought about that man, Tehol, who had come by last night to talk. He seemed nice enough. She hoped he would visit again. Maybe he’d know what to do—she swung round on the root and stared up at the square tower—yes, maybe he’d know what to do, now that the tower was dead.

  Chapter Eleven

  Faded sails ride the horizon

  So far and far away to dwindle

  The dire script

  Writ on that proven canvas.

  I know the words belong to me

  They belong to me

  These tracks left by the beast

  Of my presence

  Then, before and now, later

  And all the moments between

  Those distant sails driven

  Hard on senseless winds

  That even now circle

  My stone-hearted self

  The grit of tears I never shed

  Biting my eyes.

  Faded sails hovering as if lifted

  Above the world’s curved line

  And I am lost and lost to answer

  If they approach or flee

  Approach or flee unbidden times

  In that belly swollen

  With unheard screams so far

  And far and so far and away.

  THIS BLIND LONGING

  ISBARATH (OF THE SHORE)

  Drawn to the shoreline, as if among the host of unwritten truths in a mortal soul could be found a recognition of what it meant to stand on land’s edge, staring out into the depthless unknown that was the sea. The yielding sand and stones beneath one’s feet whispered uncertainty, rasped promises of dissolution and erosion of all that was once solid.

  In the world could be assembled all the manifest symbols to reflect the human spirit, and in the subsequent dialogue was found all meaning, every hue and every flavour, rising in legion before the eyes. Leaving to the witness the decision of choosing recognition or choosing denial.

  Udinaas sat on a half-buried tree trunk with the sweeping surf clawing at his moccasins. He was not blind and there was no hope for denial. He saw the sea for what it was, the dissolved memories of the past witnessed in the present and fertile fuel for the future, the very face of time. He saw the tides in their immutable susurration, the vast swish like blood from the cold heart moon, a beat of time measured and therefore measurable. Tides one could not hope to hold back.

  Every year a Letherii slave, chest-deep in the water and casting nets, was grasped by an undertow and swept out to sea. With some, the waves later carried them back, lifeless and swollen and crab-eaten. At other times the tides delivered corpses and carcasses from unknown calamities, and the wreckage of ships. From living to death, the vast wilderness of water beyond the shore delivered the same message again and again.

  He sat huddled in his exhaustion, gaze focused on the distant breakers of the reef, the rolling white ribbon that came again and again in heartbeat rhythm, and from all sides rushed in waves of meaning. In the grey, heavy sky. In the clarion cries of the gulls. In the misty rain carried by the moaning wind. The uncertain sands trickling away beneath his soaked moccasins. Endings and beginnings, the edge of the knowable world.

  She’d run from the House of the Dead. The young woman at whose feet he’d tossed his heart. In the hope that she might glance at it—Errant take him, even pick it up and devour it like some grinning beast. Anything, anything but…running away.

  He had fallen unconscious in the House of the Dead—ah, is there meaning in that?—and had been carried out, presumably, back to the cot in the Sengar longhouse. He had awoken later—how long he did not know, for he’d found himself alone. Not even a single slave present in the building. No food had been prepared, no dishes or other signs of a meal left behind. The hearth was a mound of white ash covering a few lingering embers. Outside, beyond the faint voice of the wind and the nearer dripping of rainwater, was silence.

  Head filled with fog, his movements slow and awkward, he’d rebuilt the fire. Found a rain cape, and had then walked outside. Seeing no-one nearby, he had made his way down to the shoreline. To stare at the empty, filled sea, and the empty, filled sky. Battered by the silence and its roar of wind and gull screams and spitting rain. Alone on the beach in the midst of this clamouring legion.

  The dead warrior who was alive.

  The Letherii priestess who had fled in the face of a request for help, to give solace and to comfort a fellow Letherii.

  In the citadel of the Warlock King, Udinaas suspected, the Edur were gathered. Wills locked in a dreadful war, and, like an island around which the storm raged in endless cycles, the monstrous form of Rhulad Sengar, who had risen from the House of the Dead. Armoured in gold, clothed in wax, probably unable to walk beneath all that weight—until, of course, those coins were removed.

  The art of Udinaas…undone.

  There would be pain in that. Excruciating pain, but it had to be done, and quickly. Before the flesh and skin grew to embrace those coins.

  Rhulad was not a corpse, nor was he undead, for an undead would not scream. He lived once more. His nerves awake, his mind afire. Trapped in a prison of gold.

  As was I, once. As every Letherii is trapped. Oh, he is poetry animate, is Rhulad Sengar, but his words are for the Letherii, not for the Edur.

  Just one meaning culled from that dire legion, and one that would not leave him alone. Rhulad was going to go mad. There was no doubt about that in the mind of Udinaas. Dying, only to return to a body that was no longer his, a body that belonged to the forest and the leaves and barrow earth. What kind of journey had that been? Who had opened the path, and why?

  It’s the sword. It has to be. The sword that would not release his hands. Because it was not finished with Rhulad Sengar. Death means nothing to it. It’s not finished.

  A gift meant, it seemed, for Hannan Mosag. Offered by whom?

  But Hannan Mosag will not have that sword. It has claimed Rhulad instead. And that sword with its power now hangs over the Warlock King.

  This could tear the confederacy apart. Could topple Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan. Unless, of course, Rhulad Sengar submitted to the Warlock King’s authority.

  A less problematic issue had it been Fear, or Trull. Perhaps even Binadas. But no, the sword had chosen Rhulad, the unblooded who had been eager for war, a youth with secret eyes and rebellion in his soul. It might be that he was broken, but Udinaas suspected otherwise. I was able to bring him back, to quell those screams. A respite from the madness, in which he could gather himself and recall all that he had been.

  It occurred to Udinaas that he might have made a mistake. A greater mercy might have been to not impede that swift plummet into madness.

  And now he would have me as his slave.

  Foam swirled around his ankles. The tide was coming in.

  ‘We might as well be in a village abandoned to the ghosts,’ Buruk the Pale said, using the toe of one boot to edge a log closer to the fire, grimacing at the steam that rose from its sodden bark.

  Seren Pedac stared at him a moment longer, then shrugged and reached for the battered kettle that sat on a flat stone near the flames. She could feel the handle’s heat through her leather gloves as she refilled her cup. The tea was stewed, but she didn’t much care as she swallowed a mouthful of the bitter liquid. At least it was warm.

  ‘How much longer is this going to go on?’

  ‘Curb your impatience, Buruk,’ Seren advised. ‘There will be no satisfaction in the resolution of all this, assuming a resolution is even possible. We saw him with our own eyes. A dead man risen, but risen too late.’

  ‘Then Hannan Mosag should simply lop off the lad’s head and be done with it.’

  She made no reply to that. In some ways, Buruk was right. Prohibitions and traditions
only went so far, and there was—there could be—no precedent for what had happened. They had watched the two Sengar brothers drag their sibling out through the doorway, the limbed mass of wax and gold that was Rhulad. Red welts for eyes, melted shut, the head lifting itself up to stare blindly at the grey sky for a moment before falling back down. Braided hair sealed in wax, hanging like strips from a tattered sail. Threads of spit slinging down from his gaping mouth as they carried him towards the citadel.

  Edur gathered on the bridge. On the far bank, the village side, and emerging from the other noble longhouses surrounding the citadel. Hundreds of Edur, and even more Letherii slaves, drawn to witness, silent and numbed and filled with horror. She had watched most of the Edur then file into the citadel. The slaves seemed to have simply disappeared.

  Seren suspected that Feather Witch was casting the tiles, in some place less public than the huge barn where she had last conducted the ritual. At least, there had been no-one there when she had looked.

  And now, time crawled. Buruk’s camp and the Nerek huddled in their tents had become an island in the mist, surrounded by the unknown.

  She wondered where Hull had gone. There were ruins in the forest, and rumours of strange artefacts, some massive and sprawling, many days’ travel to the northeast. Ancient as this forest was, it had found soil fertile with history. Destruction and dissolution concluded every passing of the cycle, and the breaking down delivered to the exhausted world the manifold parts to assemble a new whole.

  But healing belonged to the land. It was not guaranteed to that which lived upon it. Breeds ended; the last of a particular beast, the last of a particular race, each walked alone for a time. Before the final closing of those singular eyes, and the vision behind them.

  Seren longed to hold on to that long view. She desperately sought out the calm wisdom it promised, the peace that belonged to an extended perspective. With sufficient distance, even a range of mountains could look flat, the valleys between each peak unseen. In the same manner, lives and deaths, mortality’s peaks and valleys, could be levelled. Thinking in this way, she felt less inclined to panic.

  And that was becoming increasingly important.

  ‘And where in the Errant’s name is that delegation?’ Buruk asked.

  ‘From Trate,’ Seren said, ‘they’ll be tacking all the way. They’re coming.’

  ‘Would that they had done so before all this.’

  ‘Do you fear that Rhulad poses a threat to the treaty?’

  Buruk’s gaze remained fixed on the flames. ‘It was the sword that raised him,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Or whoever made it and sent it to the Edur. Did you catch a glimpse of the blade? It’s mottled. Made me think of one of the Daughters they worship, the dappled one, what was her name?’

  ‘Sukul Ankhadu.’

  ‘Maybe she exists in truth. An Edur goddess—’

  ‘A dubious gift, then, for the Edur view Sukul Ankhadu as a fickle creature. She is feared. They worship Father Shadow and Daughter Dusk, Sheltatha Lore. And, on a day to day basis, more of the latter than the former.’ Seren finished the tea then refilled the tin cup. ‘Sukul Ankhadu. I suppose that is possible, although I can’t recall any stories about those gods and goddesses of the Edur ever manifesting themselves in such a direct manner. It seemed more like ancestor worship, the founders of the tribes elevated into holy figures, that sort of thing.’ She sipped and grimaced.

  ‘That will burn holes in your gut, Acquitor.’

  ‘Too late for that, Buruk.’

  ‘Well, if not Ankhadu, then who? That sword came from somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Nor does it sound as if you even care. This listlessness ill suits you, Acquitor.’

  ‘It’s not listlessness, Buruk, it’s wisdom. I’m surprised you can’t tell the difference.’

  ‘Is it wisdom taking the life from your eyes, the sharpness from your thoughts? Is it wisdom that makes you indifferent to the nightmare miracle we witnessed yesterday?’

  ‘Absolutely. What else could it be?’

  ‘Despair?’

  ‘And what have I that’s worthy of despair?’

  ‘I’m hardly the one to answer that.’

  ‘True—’

  ‘But I’ll try anyway.’ He drew out a flask and pulled out the stopper, then tilted it back. Two quick swallows, after which he sighed and leaned back. ‘It strikes me you’re a sensitive type, Acquitor, which probably is a quality for someone in your profession. But you’re not able to separate business from everything else. Sensitivity is a pervasive kind of vulnerability, after all. Makes you easy to hurt, makes the scars you carry liable to open and weep at the slightest prod.’ He took another drink, his face growing slack with the effects of the potent liquor and nectar, a looseness coming to his words as he continued, ‘Hull Beddict. He’s pushed you away, but you know him too well. He is rushing headlong. Into a fate of his own choosing, and it will either kill him or destroy him. You want to do something about it, maybe even stop him, but you can’t. You don’t know how, and you feel that as your own failure. Your own flaw. A weakness. Thus, for the fate that will befall him, you choose not to blame him, but yourself. And why not? It’s easier.’

  She had chosen to stare at the bitter dregs in the cup embraced by her hands, sometime during the course of Buruk’s pronouncements. Eyes tracking the battered rim, then out to the fingers and thumbs, swathed in stained, scarred leather. Flattened pads polished and dark, seams fraying, the knuckles stretched and gnarled. Somewhere within was skin, flesh, muscle, tendon and callus. And bone. Hands were such extraordinary tools, she mused. Tools, weapons, clumsy and deft, numb and tactile. Among tribal hunters, they could speak, a flurry of gestures eloquent in silence. But they could not taste. Could not hear. Could not weep. For all that, they killed so easily.

  While from the mouth sounds issued forth, recognizably shaped into meanings of passion, of beauty, of blinding clarity. Or muddied or quietly cutting, murderous and evil. Sometimes all at once. Language was war, vaster than any host of swords, spears and sorcery. The self waging battle against everyone else. Borders enacted, defended, sallies and breaches, fields of corpses rotting like tumbled fruit. Words ever seeking allies, ever seeking iconic verisimilitude in the heaving press.

  And, she realized, she was tired. Tired of it all. Peace reigned in silence, inside and out, in isolation and exhaustion.

  ‘Why do you say nothing, Acquitor?’

  He sat alone, unspeaking, a cloak of bear fur draped over his hunched shoulders, sword held point-down between his gold-clad feet, the long banded blade and broad bell-hilt in front of him. Somehow, he had managed to open his eyes, and the glitter was visible within the hooded shadows beneath his brow, framed in waxed braids. His breath came in a low rasp, the only sound in the massive chamber in the wake of the long, stilted exchange between Tomad Sengar and Hannan Mosag.

  The last words had fallen away, leaving a sense of profound helplessness. None among the hundreds of Edur present moved or spoke.

  Tomad could say no more on behalf of his son. Some subtle force had stolen his authority, and it came, Trull realized with dread, from the seated figure of black fur and glittering gold, from the eyes shining out from their dark holes. From the motionless sword.

  Standing in the centre dais, the Warlock King’s hard eyes had slowly shifted from Tomad to Rhulad, and they held there now, calculating and cold.

  The sword needed to be surrendered. Hannan Mosag had sent them to retrieve it, and that task could not be called complete until Rhulad placed it in the hands of the Warlock King. Until that happened, Fear, Binadas, Trull, Theradas and Midik Buhn all stood in dishonour.

  It fell now, finally, to Rhulad. To make the gesture, to heal this ragged wound.

  Yet he made no move.

  Trull was not even sure his brother was capable of speaking, given the terrible weight encasing his chest. Breathing sounded difficult, excruciatingly laboured. It was extraordi
nary that Rhulad was able to keep his arms up, the hands on the grip of the sword. From a lithe, supple youth, he had become something hulking, bestial.

  The air in the hall was humid and rank. The smell of fear and barely restrained panic swirled amidst the smoke from the torches and the hearth. The rain outside was unceasing, the wind creaking the thick planks of the walls.

  The rasping breath caught, then a thin, broken voice spoke. ‘The sword is mine.’

  A glitter of fear from Hannan Mosag’s eyes. ‘This must not be, Rhulad Sengar.’

  ‘Mine. He gave it to me. He said I was the one, not you. Because you were weak.’

  The Warlock King recoiled as if he had been struck in the face.

  Who? Trull shot the question with a sharp glance at Fear. Their eyes met, and Fear shook his head.

  Their father was facing Rhulad now. Emotions worked across his face for a moment and it seemed he was ageing centuries before their very eyes. Then he asked, ‘Who gave you this sword, Rhulad?’

  Something like a smile. ‘The one who rules us now, Father. The one Hannan Mosag made pact with. No, not one of our lost ancestors. A new…ally.’

  ‘This is not for you to speak of,’ the Warlock King said, his voice trembling with rage. ‘The pact was—’

  ‘Was something you intended to betray, Hannan Mosag,’ Rhulad cut in savagely, leaning forward to glare past his hands where they were folded about the sword’s grip. ‘But that is not the Edur way, is it? You, who would lead us, cannot be trusted. The time has come, Warlock King, for a change.’

  Trull watched as Rhulad surged to his feet. And stood, balanced and assured, back straight and head held high. The bear cloak was swept back, revealing the rippling coins. The gold mask of Rhulad’s face twisted. ‘The sword is mine, Hannan Mosag! I am equal to it. You are not. Speak, then, if you would reveal to all here the secret of this weapon. Reveal the most ancient of lies! Speak, Warlock King!’