The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  ‘A sad admission indeed,’ Seren Pedac murmured, then edged forward, over the tumbled rocks, and into the night beyond.

  Udinaas removed his pack and settled down on the littered floor, dried leaves crunching beneath him. He leaned against a tilted slab of stone and stretched out his legs.

  Fear moved up to crouch at the very edge of the cave mouth.

  Humming to herself, Kettle wandered off into a nearby side chamber.

  Silchas Ruin stood regarding Udinaas. ‘I am curious,’ he said after a time. ‘What gives your life meaning, Letherii?’

  ‘That’s odd. I was just thinking the same of you, Tiste Andii.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘All right,’ Udinaas said. ‘You have a point.’

  ‘So you will not answer my question.’

  ‘You first.’

  ‘I do not disguise what drives me.’

  ‘Revenge? Well, fine enough, I suppose, as a motivation – at least for a while and maybe a while is all you’re really interested in. But let’s be honest here, Silchas Ruin: as the sole meaning for existing, it’s a paltry, pathetic cause.’

  ‘Whereas you claim to exist to torment Fear Sengar.’

  ‘Oh, he manages that all on his own.’ Udinaas shrugged. ‘The problem with questions like that is, we rarely find meaning to what we do until well after we’ve done it. At that point we come up with not one but thousands – reasons, excuses, justifications, heartfelt defences. Meaning? Really, Silchas Ruin, ask me something interesting.’

  ‘Very well. I am contemplating challenging our pursuers – no more of this unnecessary subterfuge. It offends my nature, truth be told.’

  At the tunnel mouth, Fear turned to regard the Tiste Andii. ‘You will kick awake a hornet’s nest, Silchas Ruin. Worse, if this fallen god is indeed behind Rhulad’s power, you might find yourself suffering a fate far more dire than millennia buried in the ground.’

  ‘Fear’s turning into an Elder before our eyes,’ Udinaas said. ‘Jumping at shadows. You want to take on Rhulad and Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan, Silchas Ruin, you have my blessing. Grab the Errant by the throat and tear this empire to pieces. Turn it all into ash and dust. Level the whole damned continent, Tiste Andii – we’ll just stay here in this cave. Come collect us when you’re finished.’

  Fear bared his teeth at Udinaas. ‘Why would he bother sparing us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the ex-slave replied, raising an eyebrow. ‘Pity?’

  Kettle spoke from the side chamber’s arched doorway. ‘Why don’t any of you like each other? I like all of you. Even Wither.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Udinaas said, ‘we’re all just tortured by who we are, Kettle.’

  No-one said much after that.

  Seren Pedac reached the edge of the forest, keeping low to remain level with the stunted trees. The air was thin and cold at this altitude. The stars overhead were bright and sharp, the dust-shrouded crescent moon still low on the horizon to the north. Around her was whispered motion through the clumps of dead leaves and lichen – a kind of scaled mouse ruled the forest floor at night, a species she had never seen before. They seemed unusually fearless, so much so that more than one had scampered across her boots. No predators, presumably. Even so, their behaviour was odd.

  Before her stretched a sloped clearing, sixty or more paces, ending at a rutted track. Beyond it was a level stretch of sharp, jagged stones, loose enough to be treacherous. The fort squatting in the midst of this moat of rubble was stone-walled, thick at the base and tapering sharply to twice the height of a man. The corner bastions were massive, squared and flat-topped. On those platforms were swivel-mounted ballestae. Seren could make out huddled figures positioned around the nearest one, while other soldiers were visible, shoulders and heads, walking the raised platform on the other side of the walls.

  As she studied the fortification, she heard the soft clunk of armour and weapons to her left. She shrank back as a patrol appeared on the rutted track. Motionless, breath held, she watched them amble past.

  After another twenty heartbeats, she turned about and made her way back through the stunted forest. She almost missed the entrance to the cave mouth, a mere slit of black behind high ferns beneath a craggy overhang of tilted, layered granite. Pushing through, she stumbled into Fear Sengar.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘We were beginning to worry, or, at least,’ he added, ‘I was.’

  She gestured him back into the cave.

  ‘Good news,’ she said once they were inside. ‘We’re behind the garrison – the pass ahead should be virtually unguarded—’

  ‘There are K’risnan wards up the trail,’ Silchas Ruin cut in. ‘Tell me of this garrison, Acquitor.’

  Seren closed her eyes. Wards? Errant take us, what game is Hannan Mosag playing here? ‘I could smell horses from the fort. Once we trip those wards they’ll be after us, and we can’t outrun mounted soldiers.’

  ‘The garrison,’ Silchas said.

  She shrugged. ‘The fort looks impregnable. I’d guess there’s anywhere between a hundred and two hundred soldiers there. And with that many there’s bound to be mages, as well as a score or more Tiste Edur.’

  ‘Silchas Ruin is tired of being chased,’ Udinaas said from where he lounged, back resting on a stone slab.

  Dread filled Seren Pedac at these words. ‘Silchas, can we not go round these wards?’

  ‘No.’

  She glanced across at Fear Sengar, saw suspicion and unease in the warrior’s expression, but he would not meet her eyes. What conversation did I just miss here? ‘You are no stranger to sorcery, Silchas Ruin. Could you put everyone in that fort to sleep or something? Or cloud their minds, make them confused?’

  He gave her an odd look. ‘I know of no sorcery that can achieve that.’

  ‘Mockra,’ she replied. ‘The warren of Mockra.’

  ‘No such thing existed in my day,’ he said. ‘The K’risnan sorcery, rotted through with chaos as it is, seems recognizable enough to me. I have never heard of this Mockra.’

  ‘Corlos, the mage with Iron Bars – the Crimson Guard mercenaries – he could reach into minds, fill them with false terrors.’ She shrugged. ‘He said the magic of Holds and Elder Warrens has, almost everywhere else, been supplanted.’

  ‘I had wondered at the seeming weakness of Kurald Galain in this land. Acquitor, I cannot achieve what you ask. Although, I do intend to silence everyone in that fort. And collect for us some horses.’

  ‘Silchas, there are hundreds of Letherii there, not just soldiers. A fort needs support staff. Cooks, scullions, smiths, carpenters, servants—’

  ‘And the Tiste Edur,’ Fear added, ‘will have slaves.’

  ‘None of this interests me,’ the Tiste Andii said, moving past Seren and leaving the mouth of the cave.

  Udinaas laughed softly. ‘Red Ruin stalks the land. We must heed this tale of righteous retribution gone horribly wrong. So, Fear Sengar, your epic quest twists awry – what will you tell your grandchildren now?’

  The Edur warrior said nothing.

  Seren Pedac hesitated; she could hear Silchas Ruin walking away – a few strides crunching through leaves – then he was gone. She could hurry after him. Attempt one last time to dissuade him. Yet she did not move. In the wake of Ruin’s passage the only sound filling the forest was the scurry and rustle of the scaled mice, in their thousands it seemed, all flowing in the same direction as the Tiste Andii. Sweat prickled like ice on her skin. Look at us. Frozen like rabbits.

  Yet what can I do? Nothing. Besides, it’s not my business, is it? I am but a glorified guide. Not one of these here holds to a cause that matters to me. They’re welcome to their grand ambitions. I was asked to lead them out, that’s all.

  This is Silchas Ruin’s war. And Fear Sengar’s. She looked over at Udinaas and found him studying her from where he sat, eyes glittering, as if presciently aware of her
thoughts, the sordid tracks each converging on a single, pathetic conclusion. Not my business. Errant take you, Indebted.

  Mangled and misshapen, the K’risnan Ventrala reached up a scrawny, root-like forearm and wiped the sweat from his brow. Around him candles flickered, a forlorn invocation to Sister Shadow, but it seemed the ring of darkness in the small chamber was closing in on all sides, as inexorable as any tide.

  He had woken half a bell earlier, heart pounding and breath coming in gasps. The forest north of the fort was seething with orthen, a rock-dwelling scaled creature unique to this mountain pass – since his arrival at the fort he had seen perhaps a half-dozen, brought in by the maned cats the Letherii locals kept. Those cats knew better than to attempt to eat the orthen, poison as they were, yet were not averse to playing with them until dead. Orthen avoided forest and soft ground. They dwelt among rocks. Yet now they swarmed the forest, and the K’risnan could feel something palpable from their presence, a stirring that tasted of bloodlust.

  Should he crouch here in his room, terrified of creatures he could crush underfoot? He needed to master this unseemly panic – listen! He could hear nothing from the fort lookouts. No alarms shouted out.

  But the damned orthen carpeted the forest floor up the pass, massing in unimaginable numbers, and that dread scaly flood was sweeping down, and Ventrala’s panic rose yet higher, threatening to erupt from his throat in shrieks. He struggled to think.

  Some kind of once in a decade migration, perhaps. Once in a century, even. A formless hunger. That and nothing more. The creatures would heave up against the walls, seethe for a time, then leave before the dawn. Or they’d flow around the fort, only to plunge from the numerous ledges and cliffs to either side of the approach. Some creatures were driven to suicide – yes, that was it…

  The bloodlust suddenly burgeoned. The K’risnan’s head rocked back, as if he’d just been slapped. Chills swept through him. He heard himself begin gibbering, even as he awakened the sorcery within him. His body flinched as chaotic power blossomed like poison in his muscles and bones. Sister Shadow had nothing to do with this magic racing through him, nothing at all, but he was past caring about such things.

  Then, as shouts rose from the wall, K’risnan Ventrala sensed another presence in the forest beyond, a focus to all that bloodlust, a presence – and it was on its way.

  Atri-Preda Hayenar awoke to distant shouts. An alarm was being raised, from the wall facing up-trail. And that, she realized as she quickly donned her uniform, made little sense. Then again, there wasn’t much about this damned assignment that did. Pursue, she’d been told, but avoid contact. And now, one of those disgusting K’risnan had arrived, escorted by twenty-five Merude warriors. Well, if there was any real trouble brewing, she would let them handle it.

  Their damned fugitives, after all. They could have them, with the Errant’s blessing.

  A moment later she was flung from her feet as a deafening concussion tore through the fort.

  K’risnan Ventrala screamed, skidding across the floor to slam up against the wall, as a vast cold power swept over him, plucking at him as would a crow a rotted corpse. His own sorcery had recoiled, contracted into a trembling core deep in his chest – it had probed towards that approaching presence, probed until some kind of contact was achieved. And then Ventrala – and all that churning power within him – had been rebuffed.

  Moments later, the fort’s wall exploded.

  Atri-Preda Hayenar stumbled from the main house and found the compound a scene of devastation. The wall between the up-trail bastions had been breached, the impact spilling huge pieces of stone and masonry onto the muster area. And the rock was burning – a black, sizzling coruscation that seemed to devour the stone even as it flared wild, racing across the rubble.

  Broken bodies were visible amidst the wreckage, and from the stables – where the building’s back wall leaned precariously inward – horses were screaming as if being devoured alive. Swarming over everything in sight were orthen, closing on fallen soldiers, and where they gathered, skin was chewed through and the tiny scaled creatures then burrowed in a frenzy into pulped meat.

  Through the clouds of dust in the breach, came a tall figure with drawn swords.

  White-skinned, crimson-eyed.

  Errant take me – he’s had enough of running – the White Crow—

  She saw a dozen Tiste Edur appear near the barracks. Heavy throwing spears darted across the compound, converging on the ghastly warrior.

  He parried them all aside, one after the other, and with each clash of shaft against blade the swords sang, until it seemed a chorus of deathly voices filled the air.

  Hayenar, seeing a score of her Letherii soldiers arrive, staggered towards them. ‘Withdraw!’ she shouted, waving like a madwoman. ‘Retreat, you damned fools!’

  It seemed they had but awaited the command, as the unit broke into a rout, heading en masse for the down-trail gate.

  One of the Tiste Edur closed on the Atri-Preda. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘The K’risnan is coming – he’ll slap this gnat down—’

  ‘When he does,’ she snarled, pulling back, ‘we’ll be happy to regroup!’

  The Edur unsheathed his cutlass. ‘Call them into battle, Atri-Preda – or I’ll cut you down right here!’

  She hesitated.

  To their right, the other Tiste Edur had rushed forward and now engaged the White Crow.

  The swords howled, a sound so filled with glee that Hayenar’s blood turned to ice. She shook her head, watching, as did the warrior confronting her, as the White Crow carved his way through the Merude in a maelstrom of severed limbs, decapitations and disembowelling slashes that sent bodies reeling away.

  ‘—your Letherii! Charge him, damn you!’

  She stared across at the Edur warrior. ‘Where’s your K’risnan?’ she demanded. ‘Where is he?’

  Ventrala clawed his way into the corner of the room furthest from the conflagration outside. Endless, meaningless words were spilling from his drool-threaded mouth. His power had fled. Abandoning him here, in this cursed room. Not fair. He had done all that was asked of him. He had surrendered his flesh and blood, his heart and his very bones, all to Hannan Mosag.

  There had been a promise, a promise of salvation, of vast rewards for his loyalty – once the hated youngest son of Tomad Sengar was torn down from the throne. They were to track Fear Sengar, the traitor, the betrayer, and when the net was finally closed around him it would not be Rhulad smiling in satisfaction. No, Rhulad, the fool, knew nothing about any of this. The gambit belonged to Hannan Mosag, the Warlock King, who had had his throne stolen from him. And it was Hannan who, with Fear Sengar in his hands – and the slave, Udinaas – would work out his vengeance.

  The Emperor needed to be stripped, every familiar face twisted into a mask of betrayal, stripped, yes, until he was completely alone. Isolated in his own madness.

  Only then—

  Ventrala froze, curled tight into a foetal ball, at soft laughter spilling towards him…from inside his room!

  ‘Poor K’risnan,’ it then murmured. ‘You had no idea this pale king of the orthen would turn on you, this strider of battlefields. His road is a river of blood, you pathetic fool, and…oh! look! his patience, his forbearance – it’s all gone!’

  A wraith, here with him, whispering madness. ‘Begone,’ he hissed, ‘lest you share my fate! I did not summon you—’

  ‘No, you didn’t. My chains to the Tiste Edur have been severed. By the one out there. Yes, you see, I am his, not yours. The White Crow’s – hah, the Letherii surprised me there – but it was the mice, K’risnan…seems a lifetime ago now. In the forest north of Hannan Mosag’s village. And an apparition – alas, no-one understands, no-one takes note. But that is not my fault, is it?’

  ‘Go away—’

  ‘I cannot. Will not, rather. Can you hear? Outside? It’s all quiet now. Most of the Letherii got away, unfortunately. Tumbling like drunk goats down the s
tairs, with their captain among them – she was no fool. As for your Merude, well, they’re all dead. Now, listen! Boots in the hallway – he’s on his way!’

  The terror drained away from Ventrala. There was no point, was there? At least, finally, he would be delivered from this racked, twisted cage of a body. As if recalling the dignity it had once possessed, that body now lurched into motion, lifting itself into a sitting position, back pushed into the corner – it seemed to have acquired its own will, disconnected from Ventrala, from the mind and spirit that held to that name, that pathetic identity. Hannan Mosag had once said that the power of the Fallen One fed on all that was flawed and imperfect in one’s soul, which in turn manifested in flesh and bone – what was then necessary was to teach oneself to exult in that power, even as it twisted and destroyed the soul’s vessel.

  Ventrala, with the sudden clarity that came with approaching death, now realized that it was all a lie. Pain was not to be embraced. Chaos was anathema to a mortal body. It ruined the flesh because it did not belong there. There was no exaltation in self-destruction.

  A chorus of voices filled his skull, growing ever louder. The swords…

  There was a soft scuffing sound in the hallway beyond, then the door squealed open.

  Orthen poured in, flowing like grey foam in the grainy darkness. A moment later, the White Crow stepped into view. The song of the two swords filled the chamber.

  Red, lambent eyes fixed on Ventrala.

  The Tiste Andii then sheathed his weapons, muting the keening music. ‘Tell me of this one who so presumes to offend me.’

  Ventrala blinked, then shook his head. ‘You think the Crippled God is interested in challenging you, Silchas Ruin? No, this…offence…it is Hannan Mosag’s, and his alone. I understand that now, you see. It’s why my power is gone. Fled. The Crippled God is not ready for the likes of you.’

  The white-skinned apparition was motionless, silent, for a time. Then he said, ‘If this Hannan Mosag knows my name, he knows too that I have reason to be affronted. By him. By all the Tiste Edur who have inherited the rewards of Scabandari’s betrayal. Yet he provokes me.’