The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  The fleet that had appeared in Katter Sea, poised to interpose its forces to prevent the retreat of Twilight’s garrison at Fent Reach, had, upon the city’s surrender, simply moved on. Preternaturally swift, the blood-red sails of five hundred raiders now approached Trate Bay. And in the waters beneath those sleek hulls…a thing. Ancient, terrible, eager with hunger. It knew this path. It had been here before.

  Since that time, and at the Ceda’s command, she had delved deep in her search to discover the nature of the creature the Tiste Edur had bound to their service. The harbour and the bay beyond had once been dry land, a massive limestone shelf beneath which raced vast underground rivers. Erosion had collapsed the shelf in places, creating roughly circular, deep wells. Sometimes the water below continued to flow as part of the rivers. But in some, the percolating effect of the limestone was blocked by concretions over time, and the water was black and still.

  One such well had become, long ago, a place of worship. Treasures were flung into its depths. Gold, jade, silver and living sacrifices. Drowning voices had screamed in the chill water, cold flesh and bone had settled on the pale floor.

  And a spirit was fashioned. Fed on blood and despair, beseeching propitiation, the unwilling surrender of mortal lives. There were mysteries to this, she well knew. Had the spirit existed before the worship began, and was simply drawn to the gifts offered? Or was it conjured into existence by the very will of those ancient worshippers? Either way, the result was the same. A creature came into being, and was taught the nature of hunger, of desire. Made into an addict of blood and grief and terror.

  The worshippers vanished. Died out or departed, or driven to such extreme sacrifices as to destroy themselves. There was no telling how deep the bed of bones at the bottom of that well, but, by the end, it must have been appalling in its vastness.

  The spirit was doomed, and should have eventually died. Had not the seas risen to swallow the land, had not its world’s walls suddenly vanished, releasing it to all that lay beyond.

  Shorelines were places of worship the world over. The earliest records surviving from the First Empire made note of that again and again among peoples encountered during the explorations. The verge between sea and land marked the manifestation of the symbolic transition between the known and the unknown. Between life and death, spirit and mind, between an unlimited host of elements and forces contrary yet locked together. Lives were given to the seas, treasures were flung into their depths. And, upon the waters themselves, ships and their crews were dragged into the deep time and again.

  For all that, the spirit had known…competition. And, Nekal Bara suspected, had fared poorly. Weakened, suffering, it had returned to its hole, there beneath the deluge. Returned to die.

  There was no way of knowing how the Tiste Edur warlocks had found it, or came to understand its nature and the potential within it. But they had bound it, fed it blood until its strength returned, and it had grown, and with that growth, a burgeoning hunger.

  And now, I must find a way to kill it.

  She could sense its approach, drawing ever nearer beneath the Edur raiders. Along the harbour front below, soldiers were crowding the fortifications. Crews readied at the trebuchets and ballistae. Fires were stoked and racks of hull-breaching quarrels were wheeled out.

  Arahathan in his black furs had positioned himself at the far end of the main pier and, like her, stood facing the fast-approaching Edur fleet. He would seek to block the spirit’s attack, engage it fully for as long as it took for Nekal Bara to magically draw close to the entity and strike at its heart.

  She wished Enedictal had remained in the city, rather than returning to his battalion at Awl. Indeed, she wished the Snakebelts had marched to join them here. Once the spirit was engaged, Enedictal could have then shattered the Edur fleet. She had no idea how much damage she and Arahathan would sustain while killing the spirit—it was possible they would have nothing left with which to destroy the fleet. It might come down to hand to hand fighting along the harbour front.

  And that is the absurdity of magic in war—we do little more than negate each other. Unless one cadre finds itself outnumbered…

  She had six minor sorcerors under her command, interspersed among the companies of the Cold Clay Battalion arrayed below. They would have to be sufficient against the Edur warlocks accompanying the fleet.

  Nekal Bara was worried, but not unduly so.

  The red sails fluttered. She could just make out the crews, scampering on the foredecks and in the rigging. The fleet was heaving to. Beneath the lead ships, a dark tide surged forward, spreading its midnight bruise into the harbour.

  She felt a sudden fear. It was…huge.

  A glance down. To the lone, black-swathed figure at the very end of the main pier. The arms spreading wide.

  The spirit heaved up in a swelling wave, gaining speed as it rushed towards the harbour front. On the docks, soldiers behind shields, a wavering of spear-heads. Someone loosed a ball of flaming pitch from one of the trebuchets. Fascinated, Nekal Bara watched its arcing flight, its smoke-trailing descent, down towards the rising wave.

  It vanished in a smear of steam.

  She heard Arahathan’s roar, saw a line of water shiver, then boil just beyond the docks, lifting skyward a wall of steam even as the spirit’s bulk seemed to lunge a moment before striking it.

  The concussion sent the lighthouse wavering beneath her feet and she threw her arms out for balance. Two-thirds of the way down, along a narrow iron balcony, onlookers were flung into the air, to pitch screaming down to the rocks below. The balcony twisted like thin wire in the hands of a blacksmith, the fittings exploding in puffs of dust. A terrible groaning rose up through the tower as it rocked back and forth.

  Steam and dark water raged in battle, clambering ever higher directly before Arahathan. The sorceror was swallowed by shadow.

  The lighthouse was toppling.

  Nekal Bara faced the harbour, held her arms out, then flung herself from the edge.

  Vanishing within a tumbling shaft of magic. Slanting downward in coruscating threads of blue fire that swarmed around a blinding, white core.

  Like a god’s spear, the shaft pierced the flank of the spirit. Tore a path of incandescence into the dark, surging water.

  Errant—he’s failing! Falling! She sensed, then saw, Arahathan. Red flesh curling away from his bones, blackening, snatched away as if by a fierce whirling wind. She saw his teeth, the lips gone, the grimace suddenly a maddening smile. Eyes wrinkled, then darkening, then collapsing inward.

  She sensed, in that last moment, his surprise, his disbelief—

  Into the spirit’s flesh, down through layer upon layer of thick, coagulated blood, matted hair, slivered pieces of bone. Encrusted jewellery, mangled coins. Layers of withered newborn corpses, each one wrapped in leather, each one with its forehead stove in, above a face twisted with pain and baffled suffering. Layers. Oh, Mistress, what have we mortals done? Done, and done, and done?

  Stone tools, pearls, bits of shell—

  Through—

  To find that she had been wrong. Terribly wrong.

  The spirit—naught but a shell, held together by the memory within bone, teeth and hair, by that memory and nothing more.

  Within—

  Nekal Bara saw that she was about to die. Against all that rose to greet her, she had no defence. None. Could not—could never—Ceda! Kuru Qan! Hear me! See—

  Seren Pedac staggered out into the street. Pushed, spun round, knocked to her knees by fleeing figures.

  She had woken in a dark cellar, surrounded by empty, broken kegs. She had been robbed, most of her armour stripped away. Sword and knife gone. The ache between her legs told her that worse had happened. Lips puffed and cut by kisses she had never felt, her hair tangled and matted with blood, she crawled across greasy cobbles to curl up against a stained brick wall. Stared out numbly on the panicked scene.

  Smoke had stolen the sky. Brown, murky light, the dis
tant sound of battle—at the harbour front to her left, and along the north and east walls ahead and to her right. In the street before her, citizens raced in seemingly random directions. Across from her, two men were locked in mortal combat, and she watched as one managed to pin the other, then began pounding the man’s head against the cobbles. The hard impacts gave way to soft crunches, and the victor rolled away from the spasming victim, scrambled upright, then limped away.

  Doors were being kicked down. Women screamed as their hiding places were discovered.

  There were no Tiste Edur in sight.

  From her right, three men shambling like marauders. One carried a bloodstained club, another a single-handed sickle. The third man was dragging a dead or unconscious girl-child by one foot.

  They saw her. The one with the club smiled. ‘We was coming to c’llect you, Acquitor. Woke up wanting more, did ya?’

  She did not recognize any of them, but there was terrible familiarity in their eyes as they looked upon her.

  ‘The city’s fallen,’ the man continued, drawing closer. ‘But we got a way out, an’ we’re taking you with us.’

  The one with the sickle laughed. ‘We’ve decided to keep you to ourselves, lass. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you safe.’

  Seren curled tighter against the wall.

  ‘Hold there!’

  A new voice. The three men looked up.

  Iron-haired, blue-eyed—she recognized the newcomer. Maybe. She wasn’t sure. She’d never seen armour like that before: she would have remembered the blood-red surcoat. A plain sword at the stranger’s left hip, which he was not reaching towards.

  ‘It’s that foreign bastard,’ the man with the club said. ‘Find your own.’

  ‘I just have,’ he replied. ‘Been looking for her the last two days—’

  ‘She’s ours,’ said the sickle-wielder.

  ‘No closer,’ the third man growled, raising the child in one hand as if he meant to use the body for a weapon.

  Which, Seren now saw, he had done already. Oh, please be dead, child. Please have been dead all along…

  ‘You know us, foreigner,’ the man with the club said.

  ‘Oh yes, you’re the terrors of the shanty town. I’ve heard all about your exploits. Which puts me at an advantage.’

  ‘How so?’

  The stranger continued walking closer. She saw something in his eyes, as he said, ‘Because you haven’t heard a thing about mine.’

  Club swung. Sickle flashed. Body whipped through the air.

  And the girl-child was caught by the stranger, who then reached one hand over, palm up, and seemed to push his fingertips under the man’s chin.

  She didn’t understand.

  The man with the club was on the ground. The other had his own sickle sticking from his chest and he stood staring down at it. Then he toppled.

  A snap. Flood and spray of blood.

  The stranger stepped back, tucking the girl-child’s body under his right arm, the hand of his left holding, like a leather-wrapped handle from a pail, the third man’s lower jaw.

  Horrible grunting sounds from the staggering figure to her right. Bulging eyes, a spattered gust of breath.

  The stranger tossed the mandible away with its attendant lower palate and tongue. He set the child down, then stepped closer to the last man. ‘I don’t like what you did. I don’t like anything you’ve done, but most of all, I don’t like what you did to this woman here, and that child. So, I am going to make you hurt. A lot.’

  The man spun as if to flee. Then he slammed onto the cobbles, landing on his chest, his feet taken out from under him—but Seren didn’t see how it had happened.

  With serene patience, the stranger crouched over him. Two blurred punches to either side of the man’s spine, almost at neck level, and she heard breastbones snap. Blood was pooling around the man’s head.

  The stranger shifted to reach down between the man’s legs.

  ‘Stop.’

  He looked over, brows lifting.

  ‘Stop. Kill him. Clean. Kill him clean, Iron Bars.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  From the buildings opposite, faces framed by windows. Eyes fixed, staring down.

  ‘Enough,’ she said, the word a croak.

  ‘All right.’

  He leaned back. One punch to the back of the man’s head. It folded inward. And all was still.

  Iron Bars straightened. ‘All right?’

  All right, yes.

  The Crimson Guardsman came closer. ‘My fault,’ he said. ‘I had to sleep, thought you’d be safe for a bit. I was wrong. I’m sorry.’

  ‘The child?’

  A pained look. ‘Run down by horses, I think. Some time past.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Trate’s falling. The Edur fleet held off. Until Nekal Bara and Arahathan were finished. Then closed. The defences were swarmed by shadow wraiths. Then the warriors landed. It was bad, Acquitor.’ He glanced over a shoulder, said, ‘At about that time, an army came down from inland. Swept the undermanned fortifications and, not a hundred heartbeats ago, finally succeeded in knocking down the North Gate. The Edur are taking their time, killing every soldier they find. No quarter. So far, they’ve not touched non-combatants. But that’s no guarantee of anything, is it?’

  He helped her to stand, and she flinched at the touch of his hands—those weapons, stained with murder.

  If he noticed he gave nothing away. ‘My Blade’s waiting. Corlo’s managed to find a warren in this damned Hood-pit—first time in the two years we been stuck here. What the Edur brought, he says. That’s why.’

  She realized they were walking now. Taking winding alleys and avoiding the main thoroughfares. The sound of slaughter was on all sides. Iron Bars suddenly hesitated, cocked his head. ‘Damn, we’ve been cut off.’

  Dragged into the slaughter. Bemused witness to the killing of hapless, disorganized soldiers. Wondering if the money-lenders would be next. Udinaas was left staggering in the wake of the emperor of the Tiste Edur and twelve frenzied warriors as they waded through flesh, cutting lives down as if clearing a path through reeds.

  Rhulad was displaying skill that did not belong to him. His arms were a blur, his every move heedless and fearless. And he was gibbering, the manic sound punctuated every now and then by a scream that was as much terror as it was rage. Not a warrior triumphant. Neither berserk nor swathed in drenched glory. A killer…killing.

  An Edur warrior near him fell to a Letherii soldier’s desperate sword-thrust, and the emperor shrieked, lunged forward. The mottled sword swung, and blood splashed like water. His laughter pulled at his breath, making him gasp. Edur faces flashed furtively towards their savage ruler.

  Down the street, carving through a rearguard of some sort. Udinaas stumbled over corpses, writhing, weeping figures. Blind with dying, men called for their mothers, and to these the slave reached down and touched a shoulder, or laid fingertips to slick foreheads, and murmured, ‘I’m here, my boy. It’s all right. You can go now.’

  The apologetic priest, chain-snapped forward step by step, whispering hollow blessings, soft lies, forgiving even as he prayed for someone—something—to forgive him in turn. But no-one touched him, no fingertips brushed his brow.

  For the burned villages. Retribution. Where were the moneylenders? This war belonged to them, after all.

  Another hundred paces. Three more Edur were down. Rhulad and eight brethren. Fighting on. Where was the rest of the army?

  Somewhere else.

  If one could always choose the right questions, then every answer could be as obvious. A clever revelation, he was on to something here…

  Another Edur screamed, skidded and fell over, face smacking the street.

  Rhulad killed two more soldiers, and suddenly no-one stood in their path.

  Halting in strange consternation, trapped in the centre of an intersection, drifts of smoke sliding past.

  From the right, a sudden arrival. />
  Two Edur reeled back, mortally wounded.

  The attacker reached out with his left hand, and a third Edur warrior’s head snapped round with a loud crack.

  Clash of blades, more blood, another Edur toppling, then the attacker was through and wheeling about.

  Rhulad leapt to meet him. Swords—one heavy and mottled, the other modest, plain—collided, and somehow were bound together with a twist and pronation of the stranger’s wrist, whilst his free hand blurred out and over the weapons, palm connecting with Rhulad’s forehead.

  Breaking the emperor’s neck with a loud snap.

  Mottled sword slid down the attacker’s blade and he was already stepping past, his weapon’s point already sliding out from the chest of another Edur.

  Another heartbeat, and the last two Tiste Edur warriors were down, their bodies eagerly dispensing blood like payment onto the cobbles.

  The stranger looked about, saw Udinaas, nodded, then waved to an alley-mouth, from which a woman emerged.

  She took a half-dozen strides before Udinaas recognized her.

  Badly used.

  But no more of that. Not while this man lives.

  Seren Pedac took no notice of him, nor of the dead Edur. The stranger grasped her hand.

  Udinaas watched them head off down the street, disappear round a corner.

  Somewhere behind him, the shouts of Edur warriors, the sound of running feet.

  The slave found he was standing beside Rhulad’s body, staring down at it, the bizarre angle of the head on its twisted neck, the hands closed tight about the sword.

  Waiting for the mouth to open with mad laughter.

  ‘Damned strangest armour I’ve ever seen.’

  Seren blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘But he was good, with that sword. Fast. In another five years he’d have had the experience to have made him deadly. Enough to give anyone trouble. Shimmer, Blues, maybe even Skinner. But that armour! A damned fortune, right there for the taking. If we’d the time.’