But Redmask had other plans. And to aid in the deception, Toc suspected, some arcane sorcery from the K’Chain Che’Malle.
An elder appeared, walking into the fire’s glow on bowed legs. Toc had seen this one speaking to Redmask, often riding at the war leader’s side. He crouched down opposite Toc and studied him for a dozen heartbeats, then spat into the flames, nodded at the answering sizzle, and spoke: ‘I do not trust you.’
‘I’m crushed.’
‘Those arrows, they are bound in ritual magic. Yet no spirit has blessed them. What sort of sorcery is that? Letherii? Are you a creature of the Tiles and Holds? A traitor in our midst. You plot betrayal, vengeance against our abandoning you.’
‘Trying to inspire me, Elder? Sorry to disappoint you, but there are no embers in the ashes, nothing to stir to life.’
‘You are young.’
‘Not as young as you think. Besides, what has that to do with anything?’
‘Redmask likes you.’
Toc scratched the scar where an eye had been. ‘Are your wits addled by age?’
A grunt. ‘I know secrets.’
‘Me too.’
‘None to compare with mine. I was there when Redmask’s sister killed herself.’
‘And I suckled at the tit of a K’Chain Che’Malle Matron. If tit is the right word.’
The old man’s face twisted in disbelief. ‘That is a good lie. But it is not the game I am playing. I saw with my own eyes the great sea canoes. Upon the north shore. Thousands upon thousands.’
Toc began returning the arrows to the hide quiver. ‘These arrows were made by a dead man. Dead for a hundred thousand years, or more.’
The wrinkled scowl opposite him deepened. ‘I have seen skeletons running in the night – on this very plain.’
‘This body you see isn’t mine. I stole it.’
‘I alone know the truth of Bast Fulmar.’
‘This body’s father was a dead man – he gasped his last breath even as his seed was taken on a field of battle.’
‘The victory of long ago was in truth a defeat.’
‘This body grew strong on human meat.’
‘Redmask will betray us.’
‘This mouth waters as I look at you.’
The old man pushed himself to his feet. ‘Evil speaks in lies.’
‘And the good know only one truth. But it’s a lie, because there’s always more than one truth.’
Another throatful of phlegm into the campfire. Then a complicated series of gestures, the inscribing in the air above the flames of a skein of wards that seemed to swirl for a moment in the thin smoke. ‘You are banished,’ the elder then pronounced.
‘You have no idea, old man.’
‘I think you should have died long ago.’
‘More times than I can count. Started with a piece of a moon. Then a damned puppet, then…oh, never mind.’
‘Torrent says you will run. In the end. He says your courage is broken.’
Toc looked down into the flames. ‘That may well be,’ he said.
‘He will kill you then.’
‘Assuming he can catch me. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s ride a horse.’
With a snarl, the elder stormed off.
‘Courage,’ Toc muttered to himself. ‘Yes, there is that. And maybe cowardice truly is bred in the very bones.’ Because let’s face it, Anaster was no cold iron. Nor hot, for that matter.
From somewhere in the night came the keening howl of a wolf.
Toc grunted. ‘Yes, well, it’s not as if I had the privilege of choice, is it? I wonder if any of us has. Ever.’ He raised his voice slightly, ‘You know, Torrent – yes, I see you hulking out there – it occurs to me, given the precedent, that the question of cowardice is one your Awl must face, tomorrow. I have no doubt Redmask – if he has any concerns – is thinking on that right now. Wondering. Can he bully all of you into honour?’
The vague shape that was Torrent moved off.
Toc fell silent, tossed yet another lump of rodara dung onto the fire, and thought about old friends long gone.
The lone line of scuffed footprints ended with a figure, trudging up the distant slope of clay and pebbles. That was the thing about following a trail, Hedge reminded himself. Easy to forget the damned prints belonged to something real, especially after what seemed weeks of tracking the bastard.
T’lan Imass, as he had suspected. Those splayed, bony feet dragged too much, especially with an arch so high it left no imprint. True, some bowlegged Wickan might leave something similar, but not walking at a pace that stayed ahead of Hedge for this long. Not a chance of that. Still, it was odd that the ancient undead warrior was walking at all.
Easier traversing this wasteland as dust.
Maybe it’s too damp. Maybe it’s no fun being mud. I’ll have to ask it that.
Assuming it doesn’t kill me outright. Or try to, I mean. I keep forgetting that I’m already dead. If there’s one thing the dead should remember, it’s that crucial detail, don’t you think, Fid? Bah, what would you know. You’re still alive. And not here either.
Hood take me, I’m in need of company.
Not that damned whispering wind, though. Good thing it had fled, in tatters, unable to draw any closer to this T’lan Imass with – yes – but one arm. Beat up thing, ain’t it just?
He was sure it knew he was here, a thousand paces behind it. Probably knows I’m a ghost, too. Which is why it hasn’t bothered attacking me.
I think I’m getting used to this.
Another third of a league passed before Hedge was able to draw close enough to finally snare the undead warrior’s regard. Halting, slowly turning about. The flint weapon in its lone hand was more a cutlass than a sword, its end strangely hooked. A hilt had been fashioned from the palmate portion of an antler, creating a shallow, tined bell-guard polished brown with age. Part of the warrior’s face had been brutally smashed: but one side of its heavy jaw was intact, giving its ghastly mien a lopsided cant.
‘Begone, ghost,’ the T’lan Imass said in a ravaged voice.
‘Well I would,’ Hedge replied, ‘only it seems we’re heading in the same direction.’
‘That cannot be.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you do not know where I am going.’
‘Oh, perfect Imass logic. In other words, absurd idiocy. No, I don’t know precisely where you are going, but it is undeniably to be found in the same direction as where I am headed. Is that too sharp an observation for you?’
‘Why do you hold to your flesh?’
‘The same reason, I suppose, why you hold on to what’s left of yours. Listen, I am named Hedge. I was once a soldier, a Bridgeburner. Malazan marines. Are you some cast-off from Logros T’lan Imass?’
The warrior said nothing for a moment, then, ‘I was once of Kron T’lan Imass. Born in the Season of Blood-from-the-Mountain to the clan of Eptr Phinana. My own blood arrived on the shores of Jagra Til. I am Emroth.’
‘A woman?’
A clattering, uneven shrug.
‘Well, Emroth, what are you doing walking across Hood’s forgotten ice-pit?’
‘There is no pit here.’
‘As you say.’ Hedge looked round. ‘Is this where abandoned T’lan Imass go, then?’
‘Not here,’ Emroth replied. Then the cutlass lifted and slowly pointed.
Ahead. The direction Hedge had decided to call north. ‘What, are we headed towards a huge pile of frozen bones, then?’
Emroth turned and began walking once more.
Hedge moved up alongside the undead creature. ‘Were you beautiful once, Emroth?’
‘I do not remember.’
‘I was hopeless with women,’ Hedge said. ‘My ears are too big – yes, that’s why I wear this leather cap. And I got knobby knees. It’s why I became a soldier, you know. To meet women. And then I discovered that women soldiers are scary. I mean, a lot more scary than normal women, which is saying somet
hing. I guess with you Imass, well, everyone was a warrior, right?’
‘I understand,’ Emroth said.
‘You do? Understand what?’
‘Why you have no companions, Hedge of the Bridgeburners.’
‘You’re not going to turn into a cloud of dust on me, are you?’
‘In this place, I cannot. Alas.’
Grinning, Hedge resumed, ‘It’s not like I died a virgin or anything, of course. Even ugly bastards like me – well, so long as there’s enough coin in your hand. But I’ll tell you something, Emroth, that’s not what you’d call love now, is it? So anyway, the truth of it is, I never shared that with anybody. Love. I mean, from the time I stopped being a child, right up until I died.
‘Now there was this soldier, once. She was big and mean. Named Detoran. She decided she loved me, and showed it by beating me senseless. So how do you figure that one? Well, I’ve got it worked out. You see, she was even less lovable than me. Poor old cow. Wish I’d understood that at the time. But I was too busy running away from her. Funny how that is, isn’t it?
‘She died, too. And so I had a chance to, you know, talk to her. Since we found ourselves in the same place. Her problem was, she couldn’t put enough words together to make a real sentence. Not thick, much. Just inarticulate. People like that, how can you guess what’s in their mind? They can’t tell you, so the guessing stays guessing and most of the time you’re so wrong it’s pathetic. Well, we worked it out, more or less. I think. She said even less as a ghost.
‘But that’s the thing with it all, Emroth. There’s the big explosion, the white, then black, then you’re stirring awake all over again. A damned ghost with nowhere worthwhile to go, and all you’re left with is realizations and regrets. And a list of wishes longer than Hood’s—’
‘No more, Hedge of the Bridgeburners,’ Emroth interjected, the tremor of emotion in its voice. ‘I am not a fool. I comprehend this game of yours. But my memories are not for you.’
Hedge shrugged. ‘Not for you either, I gather. Gave them all away to wage war against the Jaghut. They were so evil, so dangerous, you made of yourselves your first victims. Kind of a backwards kind of vengeance, wouldn’t you say? Like you went and done their work for them. And the real joke is, they weren’t much evil or dangerous at all. Oh, maybe a handful, but those handful earned the wrath of their kin real fast – often long before you and your armies even showed up. They could police themselves just fine. They flung glaciers at you, so what did you do to defeat that? Why, you made your hearts even colder, even more lifeless than any glacier. Hood knows, that’s irony for you.’
‘I am unbound,’ Emroth said in a rasp. ‘My memories remain with me. It is these memories that have broken me.’
‘Broken?’
Another shrug. ‘Hedge of the Bridgeburners, unlike you, I remember love.’
Neither spoke for a time after that. The wind whipped bitter and dry. The crusted remnants of snow crackled underfoot in the beds of moss and lichen. On the horizon ahead there was a slate-grey ridge of some sort, angular like a massed line of toppled buildings. Above it the sky was milky white. Hedge gestured northward. ‘So, Emroth, is that it?’
The half-shattered head lifted. ‘Omtose Phellack.’
‘Really? But—’
‘We must cross it.’
‘Oh, and what lies beyond?’
The T’lan Imass halted and stared at Hedge with its withered, shadow-shrunken eyes. ‘I am not sure,’ it replied. ‘But, I now believe, it may be…home.’
Damn you, Emroth. You’ve just made things a lot harder.
The temple stood on a low hill, the land barren on all sides. Its huge cyclopean walls looked battered, shoved inward as if by ten thousand stone fists. Crooked fissures tracked the dark grey granite from ground level to the massive lintel stone leaning drunkenly above what had once been a grand, noble entranceway. The remnants of statues jutted from pedestals set to either side of the broad, now sagging steps.
Udinaas did not know where he was. Just another dream, or what started as a dream. Doomed, like all the others, to slide into something far worse.
And so he waited, trembling, his legs crippled, broken and lifeless beneath him – a new variation on the theme of incapacity. Bludgeoning symbol to his many flaws. The last time, he recalled, he had been squirming on the ground, limbless, a broken-backed snake. It seemed his subconscious lacked subtlety, a most bitter admission.
Unless, of course, someone or something else was sending these visitations.
And now, corpses had appeared on the stony slopes beneath the temple. Scores, then hundreds.
Tall, skin pale as the shell of turtle eggs, red-rimmed eyes set deep in elongated, chiselled faces, and too many joints on their long limbs, transforming their stiff expressions of death into something surreal, fevered – but that last detail was no surprise.
And now, a smudge of motion in the darkness beneath the lintel stone. A figure staggering into view. Unlike the dead. No, this one looked…human.
Splashed in blood from head to toe, the man reeled forward, halted at the top of the steps and looked round with wild, enraged eyes. Then, flinging his head back, he screamed at the colourless sky.
No words. Just fury.
Udinaas recoiled, sought to drag himself away.
And the figure saw him. One crimson, dripping hand, lifting, reaching out for him. Beckoning.
As if grasped by the throat, Udinaas lurched closer to the man, to the temple, to the cold scree of corpses. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘not me. Choose someone else. Not me.’
‘Can you feel this grief, mortal?’
‘Not for me!’
‘But it is. You are the only one left. Are their deaths to be empty, forgotten, without meaning?’
Udinaas tried to hold on to the ground, but the stones pulled loose under his hands, the sandy soil broke free as his nails dragged furrows in his wake. ‘Find someone else!’ His shriek echoed, as if launched directly at the temple, in through the gaping entrance, and echoing within – trapped, stolen away, rebounding until it was no longer his own voice, but that of the temple itself – a mournful cry of dying, of desperate defiance. The temple, voicing its thirst.
And something shook the sky then. Lightning without fire, thunder without sound – an arrival, jarring loose the world.
The entire temple heaved sideways, clouds of dust gasping out from between mortarless joins. It was moments from collapse—
‘No!’ bellowed the figure at the top of the stairs, even as he staggered to regain his balance. ‘This one is mine! My T’orrud Segul! Look at these dead – they must be saved, delivered, they must be—’
And now another voice sounded, behind Udinaas, high, distant, a voice of the sky itself. ‘No, Errant. These dead are Forkrul Assail. Dead by your own hand. You cannot kill them to save them—’
‘Dread witch, you know nothing! They’re the only ones I can save!’
‘The curse of Elder Gods – look at the blood on your hands. It is all of your own making. All of it.’
A huge shadow swept over Udinaas then. Wheeled round.
Wind gusting, tossing tangled black hair upward from corpses, buffeting the torn fragments of their clothes; then, a sudden pressure, as of vast weight descending, and the dragon was there – between Udinaas and the Errant – long hind limbs stretching downward, claws plunging through cold bodies, crushing them in the snapping of bones as the enormous creature settled on the slope. Sinuous neck curling round, the huge head drawing closer to Udinaas, eyes of white fire.
Its voice filled his skull. ‘Do you know me?’
Argent flames rippling along the golden scales, a presence exuding incandescent heat – Forkrul Assail bodies blackened beneath her, skin crinkling, peeling back. Fats melting, popping from sudden blisters, weeping from joints.
Udinaas nodded. ‘Menandore. Sister Dawn. Rapist.’
Thick, liquid laughter. The head swung away, angled up towards the Errant
. ‘This one is mine,’ she said. ‘I claimed him long ago.’
‘Claim what you like, Menandore. Before we are done here, you will give him to me. Of your own will.’
‘Indeed?’
‘As…payment.’
‘For what?’
‘For news of your sisters.’
She laughed again. ‘Do you imagine I don’t know?’
‘But I offer more.’ The god raised his red hands. ‘I can ensure they are removed from your path, Menandore. A simple…nudge.’
The dragon shifted round, regarded Udinaas once more. ‘For this one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, you can have him. But not our child.’
It was the Errant’s turn to laugh. ‘When last did you visit that…child, Menandore?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Only this. He is grown now. His mind is his own. Not yours, Menandore. You are warned, and this time I demand nothing in return. Elder Gods, my dear, can on occasion know mercy.’
She snorted – a gust of raw power. ‘I have heard that. Fine propaganda, the morsel you feed to your starving, pathetic worshippers. This man, this father of my child, he will fail you. T’orrud Segul. He has no faith. The compassion within him is like a meer-rat in a pit of lions – dancing faster than you can see, ever but moments from annihilation. He has played with it for a long time, Errant. You will not catch it, cannot claim it, cannot bind it to your cause.’ She voiced her cruel laughter once more. ‘I took more from him than you realize.’
Including, bitch, my fear of you. ‘You think you can give me away, Menandore?’
The eyes flared with amusement or contempt or both. ‘Speak then, Udinaas, let us hear your bold claims.’
‘You both think you summoned me here, don’t you? For your stupid tug of war. But the truth is, I summoned the two of you.’
‘You are mad—’
‘Maybe so, Menandore. But this is my dream. Not yours. Not his. Mine.’
‘You fool,’ she spat. ‘Just try banishing us—’
Udinaas opened his eyes, stared up at a cold, clear night sky, and allowed himself a smile. My dream, your nightmare. He pulled the furs tighter about himself, drawing up his legs – making sure they weren’t broken. Stiffness in the knees – normal, what came of scrabbling over rock and ice – but warm with life. ‘All is well,’ he whispered.
The Malazan Empire Page 618