The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  After all, the Tiste Edur had returned. Tomad Sengar, Hanradi Khalag and three other former war chiefs of the tribes, as well as over four thousand seasoned warriors who’d long ago left their naivety behind, lost in Callows, in Sepik, Nemil, the Perish Coast, Shal-Morzinn and Drift Avalii, in a host of foreign waters, among the Meckros – the journey had been long. Fraught—

  ‘The nest is about to be kicked awake,’ Taralack Veed said, a rather ugly grin twisting his features.

  Yan Tovis shrugged. ‘To be expected. We have been absent a long time.’

  ‘Maybe your Emperor is already dead. I see no Tiste Edur in that contingent.’

  ‘I do not think that likely. Our K’risnan would have known.’

  ‘Informed by their god? Yan Tovis, no gift from a god comes for free. More, if it sees fit, it will tell its followers nothing. Or, indeed, it will lie. The Edur do not understand any of this, but you surprise me. Is it not the very nature of your deity, this Errant, to deceive you at every turn?’

  ‘The Emperor is not dead, Taralack Veed.’

  ‘Then it is only a matter of time.’

  ‘So you continually promise.’

  But he shook his head. ‘I do not speak of Icarium now. I speak of when a god’s chosen one fails. And they always do, Twilight. We are never enough in their eyes. Never faithful enough, never fearful enough, never abject enough. Sooner or later we betray them, in weakness or in overwrought ambition. We see before us a city of bridges yet what I see and what you see are two different things. Do not let your eyes deceive you – the bridges awaiting us are all too narrow for mortals.’

  Their ship slowly angled in towards the central imperial dock like a weary beast of burden, and a handful of Edur officers were now on deck, whilst sailors readied the lines along the port rail. The stench of effluent from the murky waters rose thick enough to sting the eyes.

  Taralack Veed spat onto his hands and smoothed back his hair yet again. ‘Almost time. I go to collect my champion.’

  Noticed by no-one, Turudal Brizad, the Errant, stood with his back to a quayside warehouse thirty or so paces from the main pier. His gaze noted the disembarking of Tomad Sengar – the venerable warrior looking worn and aged – and his expression, as he observed the absence of Tiste Edur among the delegation from the palace, seemed to grow darker by the moment. But neither he nor any of the other Edur held the god’s attention for long. His attention sharpened as the Atri-Preda in command of this fleet’s Letherii Marines strode the length of the gangway, followed by a half-dozen aides and officers, for he sensed, all at once, that there was something fated about the woman. Yet the details eluded him.

  The god frowned, frustrated by his diminishing percipience. He should have sensed immediately what awaited Yan Tovis. Five years ago he would have, thinking nothing of the gift, the sheer privilege of such ascendant power. Not since those final tumultuous days of the First Empire – the succession of ghastly events that led to the intercession of the T’lan Imass to quell the fatal throes of Dessimbelackis’s empire – had the Errant felt so disconnected. Chaos was rolling towards Letheras with the force of a cataclysmic wave, an ocean surge that simply engulfed this river’s currents – yes, it comes from the sea. That much I know, that much I can feel. From the sea, just like this woman, this Twilight.

  Another figure appeared on the plank. A foreigner, the skin of his forearms a swirl of arcane tattoos, the rest of his upper body wrapped in a roughly woven cape, the hood hiding his features. Barbaric, wary, the glitter of eyes taking it all in, pausing halfway down to hawk and spit over the side, a gesture that startled the Errant and, it seemed, most of those standing on the dock.

  A moment later another foreigner rose into view, pausing at the top of the gangway. The Errant’s breath caught, a sudden chill flowing through him, as if Hood himself had arrived, his cold breath whispering across the back of the god’s neck.

  Abyss take me, all that waits within him. The foment none other here can see, could even guess at. Dear son of Gothos and that overgrown hag, the stain of Azath blood is about you like a cloud. This was more than a curse – all that afflicted this fell warrior. Deliberate skeins were woven about him, the threads of some elaborate, ancient, and deadly ritual. And he knew their flavour. The Nameless Ones.

  Two soldiers from Triban Gnol’s Palace Guard moved to await the Jhag as he slowly walked down to the dock.

  The Errant’s heart was thudding hard in his chest. They have delivered a champion, a challenger to the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths—

  The Jhag stepped onto solid ground.

  From the buildings beyond the harbour front, birds rose suddenly, hundreds, then thousands, voicing a chorus of shrieks, and beneath the Errant’s feet the stones shifted with a heavy, groaning sound. Something large collapsed far into the city, beyond Quillas Canal, and distant screams followed. The Errant stepped out from the wall and saw the bloom of a dust cloud rising behind the caterwauling, panicked pigeons, rooks, gulls and starlings.

  The subterranean groaning then ceased and a heavy silence settled.

  Icarium’s tusked mouth revealed the faintest of smiles, as if pleased with the earth’s welcome, and the Errant could not be sure – at this distance – if that smile was truly as childlike as it seemed, or if it was in fact ironic or, indeed, bitter. He repressed the urge to draw closer seeking an answer to that question, reminding himself that he did not want Icarium’s attention. Not now, not ever.

  Tomad Sengar, what your son will face…

  It was no wonder, he suddenly realized, that all that was to come was obscured in a maelstrom of chaos. They have brought Icarium…into the heart of my power.

  Among the delegation and other Letherii nearby, it was clear that no particular connection had been made between Icarium’s first touch on solid ground and the minor earthquake rumbling through Letheras – yet such stirrings were virtually unknown for this region, and while the terror among the birds and the bawling of various beasts of burden continued unabated, already the consternation of those within the Errant’s sight was diminishing. Foolish mortals, so quick to disregard unease.

  In the river beyond, the water slowly lost its shivering agitation and the gulls further out began to settle once again amidst yet more ships angling towards shore. Yet somewhere in the city, a building had toppled, probably some venerable ancient edifice, its foundations weakened by groundwater, its mortar crumbled and supports rotted through.

  There would have been casualties – Icarium’s first, but most assuredly not his last.

  And he smiles.

  Still cursing, Taralack Veed turned to Yan Tovis. ‘Unsettled lands – Burn does not rest easy here.’

  The Atri-Preda shrugged to hide her queasy shock. ‘To the north of here, along the Reach Mountains, the ground shakes often. The same can be said for the north side of the ranges to the far south, the other side of the Draconean Sea.’

  She saw the glimmer of bared teeth in the hood’s shadow. ‘But not in Letheras, yes?’

  ‘I’ve not heard of such before, but that means little,’ she replied. ‘This city is not my home. Not where I was born. Not where I grew up.’

  Taralack Veed edged closer, facing away from Icarium, who stood listening to the two palace guards as they instructed him in what was to come. ‘You fool,’ he hissed at her. ‘Burn’s flesh flinched, Twilight. Flinched – because of him.’

  She snorted.

  The Gral cocked his head, and she could feel his contempt. ‘What happens now?’ he asked.

  ‘Now? Very little. There are secure residences, for you and your champion. As for when the Emperor chooses to face his challengers, that is up to him. Sometimes, he is impatient and the clash occurs immediately. Other times, he waits, often for weeks. But I will tell you what will begin immediately.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘The burial urn for Icarium, and his place in the cemetery where resides every challenger Rhulad has faced.’

  ‘Ev
en that place will not survive,’ Taralack Veed muttered.

  The Gral, feeling sick to his stomach, walked over to Icarium. He did not want to think of the destruction to come. He had seen it once, after all. Burn, even in your eternal sleep, you felt the stabbing wound that is Icarium – and none of these people here countenanced it, none was ready for the truth. Their hands are not in the earth, the touch is lost – yet look at them: they would call me the savage.

  ‘Icarium, my friend—’

  ‘Can you not feel it, Taralack Veed?’ In his unhuman eyes, the gleam of anticipation. ‘This place…I have been here before – no, not this city. From the time before this city was born. I have stood on this ground—’

  ‘And it remembered,’ growled Taralack Veed.

  ‘Yes, but not in the way you believe. There are truths here, waiting for me. Truths. I have never been as close to them as I am now. Now I understand why I did not refuse you.’

  Refuse me? You considered such a thing? Was it truly so near the edge? ‘Your destiny will soon welcome you, Icarium, as I have said all along. You could no more refuse that than you could the Jaghut blood in your veins.’

  A grimace. ‘Jaghut…yes, they have been here. In my wake. Perhaps, even, on my trail. Long ago, and now again—’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Omtose Phellack – the heart of this city is ice, Taralack Veed. A most violent imposition.’

  ‘Are you certain? I do not understand—’

  ‘Nor I. Yet. But I shall. No secret shall survive my sojourn here. It will change.’

  ‘What will change?’

  Icarium smiled, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and did not reply.

  ‘You will face this Emperor then?’

  ‘So it is expected of me, Taralack Veed.’ A bright glance. ‘How could I refuse them?’

  Spirits below, my death draws close. It was what we wanted all along. So why do I now rail at it? Who has stolen my courage?

  ‘It is as if,’ Icarium whispered, ‘my life awakens anew.’

  The hand shot out in the gloom, snatching the rat from atop the wooden cage holding the forward pump. The scrawny creature had a moment to squeal in panic before its neck was snapped. There was a thud as the dead rat was flung to one side, where it slid down into the murky bilge water.

  ‘Oh, how I hate you when you lose patience,’ Samar Dev said in a weary tone. ‘That’s an invitation to disease, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘Life is an invitation to disease,’ the huge warrior rumbled from the shadows. After a moment, he added, ‘I’ll feed it to the turtles.’ Then he snorted. ‘Turtles big enough to drag down this damned ship. These Letherii live in a mad god’s nightmare.’

  ‘More than you realize,’ Samar Dev muttered. ‘Listen. Shouts from shore. We’re finally drawing in.’

  ‘The rats are relieved.’

  ‘Don’t you have something you need to do to get ready?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. Knock a few more chips off your sword, or something. Get it sharp.’

  ‘The sword is unbreakable.’

  ‘What about that armour? Most of the shells are broken – it’s not worthy of the name and won’t stop a blade—’

  ‘No blade will reach it, witch. I shall face but one man, not twenty. And he is small – my people call you children. And that is all you truly are. Short-lived, stick-limbed, with faces I want to pinch. The Edur are little different, just stretched out a bit.’

  ‘Pinch? Would that be before or after decapitation?’

  He grunted a laugh.

  Samar Dev leaned back against the bale in which something hard and lumpy had been packed – despite the mild discomfort she was not inclined to explore any further. Both the Edur and the Letherii had peculiar ideas about what constituted booty. In this very hold there were amphorae containing spiced human blood and a dozen wax-clad corpses of Edur ‘refugees’ from Sepik who had not survived the journey, stacked like bolts of cloth against a bloodstained conch-shell throne that had belonged to some remote island chieftain – whose pickled head probably resided in one of the jars Karsa Orlong leaned against. ‘At least we’re soon to get off this damned ship. My skin has all dried up. Look at my hands – I’ve seen mummified ones looking better than these. All this damned salt – it clings like a second skin, and it’s moulting—’

  ‘Spirits below, woman, you incite me to wring another rat’s neck.’

  ‘So I am responsible for that last rat’s death, am I? Needless to say, I take exception to that. Was your hand that reached out, Toblakai. Your hand that—’

  ‘And your mouth that never stops, making me need to kill something.’

  ‘I am not to blame for your violent impulses. Besides, I was just passing time in harmless conversation. We’ve not spoken in a while, you and I. I find I prefer Taxilian’s company, and were he not sick with homesickness and even more miserable than you…’

  ‘Conversation. Is that what you call it? Then why are my ears numb?’

  ‘You know, I too am impatient. I’ve not cast a curse on anyone in a long time.’

  ‘Your squalling spirits do not frighten me,’ Karsa Orlong replied. ‘And they have been squalling, ever since we made the river. A thousand voices clamouring in my skull – can you not silence them?’

  Sighing, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. ‘Toblakai…you will have quite an audience when you clash swords with this Edur Emperor.’

  ‘What has that to do with your spirits, Samar Dev?’

  ‘Yes, that was too obscure, wasn’t it? Then I shall be more precise. There are gods in this city we approach. Resident gods.’

  ‘Do they ever get a moment’s rest?’

  ‘They don’t live in temples. Nor any signs above the doors of their residences, Karsa Orlong. They are in the city, yet few know of it. Understand, the spirits shriek because they are not welcome, and, even more worrying, should any one of those gods seek to wrest them away from me, well, there is little I could do against them.’

  ‘Yet they are bound to me as well, aren’t they?’

  She clamped her mouth shut, squinted across at him in the gloom. The hull thumped as the ship edged up alongside the dock. She saw the glimmer of bared teeth, feral, and a chill rippled through her. ‘What do you know of that?’ she asked.

  ‘It is my curse to gather souls,’ he replied. ‘What are spirits, witch, if not simply powerful souls? They haunt me…I haunt them. The candles I lit, in that apothecary of yours – they were in the wax, weren’t they?’

  ‘Released, then held close, yes. I gathered them…after I’d sent you away.’

  ‘Bound them into that knife at your belt,’ Karsa said. ‘Tell me, do you sense the two Toblakai souls in my own weapon?’

  ‘Yes, no. That is, I sense them, but I dare not approach.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Karsa, they are too strong for me. They are like fire in the crystal of that flint, trapped by your will.’

  ‘Not trapped,’ he replied. ‘They dwell within because they choose to, because the weapon honours them. They are my companions, Samar Dev.’ The Toblakai rose suddenly, hunching beneath the ceiling. ‘Should a god be foolish enough to seek to steal our spirits, I will kill it.’

  She regarded him from half-closed eyes. Declarative statements such as that one were not rare utterances from Karsa Orlong, and she had long since learned that they were not empty boasts, no matter how absurd the assertion might have sounded. ‘That would not be wise,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘A god devoid of wisdom deserves what it gets.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  Karsa stooped momentarily to retrieve the dead rat, then he headed for the hatch.

  She followed.

  When she reached the main deck, the Toblakai was walking towards the captain. She watched as he placed the sodden rat in the Letherii’s hands, then turned away, saying, ‘Get the hoists – I want my horse on deck and off
this damned hulk.’ Behind him, the captain stared down at the creature in his hands, then, with a snarl, he flung it over the rail.

  Samar Dev contemplated a few quick words with the captain, to stave off the coming storm – a storm that Karsa had nonchalantly triggered innumerable times before on this voyage – then decided it was not worth the effort. It seemed that the captain concluded much the same, as a sailor hurried up with a bucket of seawater, into which the Letherii thrust his hands.

  The main hatch to the cargo hold was being removed, while other hands set to assembling the winches.

  Karsa strode to the gangway. He halted, then said in a loud voice, ‘This city reeks. When I am done with its Emperor, I may well burn it to the ground.’

  The planks sagged and bounced as the Toblakai descended to the landing.

  Samar Dev hurried after him.

  One of two fully armoured guards had already begun addressing Karsa in contemptuous tones. ‘—to be unarmed whenever you are permitted to leave the compound, said permission to be granted only by the ranking officer of the Watch. Our immediate task is to escort you to your quarters, where the filth will be scrubbed from your body and hair—’

  He got no further, as Karsa reached out, closed his hand on the guard’s leather weapons harness, and with a single heave flung the Letherii into the air. Six or more paces to the left he sailed, colliding with three stevedores who had been watching the proceedings. All four went down.

  Voicing an oath, the second guard tugged at his shortsword.

  Karsa’s punch rocked his head back and the man collapsed.

  Hoarse shouts of alarm, more Letherii soldiers converging.