The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Gods, we should have had sex – then I’d know!

  Another whirling attack, again the shrieking reverberation of iron and flint, a flurry of sparks cascading down. And Rhulad staggered back once more.

  The Emperor was now streaming with sweat.

  Karsa Orlong did not even seem out of breath.

  Inviting a fatal response, Rhulad Sengar dropped down onto one knee to regain his wind.

  Invitation not accepted.

  After a time, in which the score or fewer onlookers stared on, silent and confused; in which Chancellor Triban Gnol stood, hands clasped, like a crow nailed to a branch; the Emperor straightened, lifted his sword once more, and resumed his fruitless flailing – oh, there was skill, yes, extraordinary skill, yet Karsa Orlong stood his ground, and not once did that blade touch him.

  Overhead, the sun climbed higher.

  Karos Invictad, his shimmering red silks stained and smudged with grit and dust, dragged Tehol Beddict’s body across the threshold. Back into his office. From down the corridor, someone was screaming about an army in the city, ships crowding the harbour, but none of that mattered now.

  Nothing mattered but this unconscious man at his feet. Beaten until he barely clung to life. By the Invigilator’s sceptre, his symbol of power, and was that not right? Oh, but it was.

  Was the mob still there? Were they coming in now? An entire wall of the compound had collapsed, after all, nothing and no-one left to stop them. Motion caught his eye and his head snapped round – just another rat in the corridor, slithering past. The Guild. What kind of game were those fools playing? He’d killed dozens of the damned things, so easily crushed under heel or with a savage downward swing of his sceptre.

  Rats. They were nothing. No different from the mob outside, all those precious citizens who understood nothing about anything, who needed leaders like Karos Invictad to guide them through the world. He adjusted his grip on the sceptre, flakes of blood falling away, his palm seemingly glued to the ornate shaft, but that glue had not set and wouldn’t for a while, would it? Not until he was truly done.

  Where was that damned mob? He wanted them to see – this final skull-shattering blow – their great hero, their revolutionary.

  Martyrs could be dealt with. A campaign of misinformation, rumours of vulgarity, corruption, oh, all that was simple enough.

  I stood alone, yes, did I not? Against the madness of this day. They will remember that. More than anything else. They will remember that, and everything else I choose to give them.

  Slaying the Empire’s greatest traitor – with my own hand, yes.

  He stared down at Tehol Beddict. The battered, split-open face, the shallow breaths that trembled from beneath snapped ribs. He could put a foot down on the man’s chest, settle some weight, until those broken ribs punctured the lungs, left them lacerated, and the red foam would spill out from Tehol’s mashed nose, his torn lips. And, surprise. He would drown after all.

  Another rat in the corridor? He turned.

  The sword-point slashed across his stomach. Fluids gushed, organs following. Squealing, Karos Invictad fell to his knees, stared up at the man standing before him, stared up at the crimson-bladed sword in the man’s hand.

  ‘No,’ he said in a mumble, ‘but you are dead.’

  Brys Beddict’s calm brown eyes shifted from the Invigilator’s face, noted the sceptre still held in Karos’s right hand. His sword seemed to writhe.

  Burning pain in the Invigilator’s wrist and he looked down. Sceptre was gone. Hand was gone. Blood streamed from the stump.

  A kick to the chest sent Karos Invictad toppling, trailing entrails that flopped down like an obscene, malformed penis between his legs.

  He reached down with his one hand to pull it all back in, but there was no strength left.

  Did I kill Tehol? Yes, I must have. The Invigilator is a true servant of the empire, and always will be, and there will be statues in courtyards and city squares. Karos Invictad, the hero who destroyed the rebellion.

  Karos Invictad died then, with a smile on his face.

  Brys Beddict sheathed his sword, knelt beside his brother, lifted his head into his lap.

  Behind him, Ormly said, ‘A healer’s on the way.’

  ‘No need,’ Brys said. And looked up. ‘An Elder God comes.’

  Ormly licked his lips. ‘Saviour—’

  A cough from Tehol.

  Brys looked down to see his brother’s eyes flick open. One brown, one blue. Those odd eyes stared up at him for a long moment, then Tehol whispered something.

  Brys bent lower. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, does this mean I’m dead?’

  ‘No, Tehol. Nor am I, not any longer, it seems.’

  ‘Ah. Then…’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Death – what’s it like, Brys?’

  And Brys Beddict smiled. ‘Wet.’

  ‘I always said cities were dangerous places,’ Quick Ben said, brushing plaster dust from his clothes. The collapsing building had nearly flattened them both, and the wizard was still trembling – not from the close call, but from the horrendous sorcery that had lit the morning sky – a devouring, profoundly hungry sorcery. Had that energy reached for him, he was not sure he could have withstood it.

  ‘What in Hood’s name was that?’ Hedge demanded.

  ‘All I know, it was old. And vicious.’

  ‘We gonna get any more, you think?’

  Quick Ben shrugged. ‘I hope not.’

  They went on, through streets filled with rubble, and on all sides the cries of the wounded, figures staggering in shock, dust and smoke lifting into the sunlight.

  Then Hedge held up a hand. ‘Listen.’

  Quick Ben did as he was bid.

  And, from somewhere ahead – closer to the Eternal Domicile – the echo of ‘Sharpers!’

  ‘Aye, Quick, aye. Come on, let’s go find ’em!’

  ‘Wait – hold it, sapper – what are—’

  ‘It’s the Fourteenth, you thick-skulled halfwit!’

  They began hurrying.

  ‘Next time I see Cotillion,’ Quick Ben hissed, ‘I’m going to strangle him with his own rope.’

  Six leagues to the north, a bone-white dragon with eyes of lurid red sailed through the morning sky. Wings creaking, muscles bunching, the wind hissing against scales and along bared fangs that were the length of shortswords.

  Returning, after all this time, to the city of Letheras.

  Hannan Mosag had been warned. The Crippled God had been warned. And yet neither had heeded Silchas Ruin. No, instead, they had conspired with Sukul Ankhadu and Sheltatha Lore, and possibly with Menandore herself. To get in his way, to oppose him and what he had needed to do.

  More than this, the Letherii Empire had been hunting them for an inordinate amount of time, and out of forbearance Silchas Ruin had ignored the affront. For the sake of the Acquitor and the others.

  Now, he was no longer ignoring anything.

  An empire, a city, a people, a Tiste Edur Ceda and a mad Emperor.

  The brother of Anomander and Andarist, for ever deemed the coldest of the three, the cruellest, Silchas Ruin flew, a white leviathan with murder in its heart.

  White as bone, with eyes red as death.

  Rhulad Sengar stumbled away, dragging his sword. Sweat streamed from him, his hair hanging ragged and dripping. He had struck again and again, not once piercing the defensive net of his challenger’s stone sword. Six paces between them now, chewed-up sand soaked and clumped with nothing but spatters from the glistening oil that made the coins gleam.

  Silent as all the other witnesses, Samar Dev watched on, wondering how all this would end, wondering how it could end. As long as Karsa refused to counter-attack…

  And then the Toblakai raised his sword and walked forward.

  Straight for the Emperor.

  As easy as that, then.

  Who rose with a sudden smile and lifted his weapon into a guard position.


  The flint sword lashed out, an awkward cut, yet swung with such strength that Rhulad’s block with his own weapon knocked one of his hands loose from the grip, and the iron blade flailed outward, and then, all at once, that cursed sword seemed to acquire a will of its own, the point thrusting into a lunge that dragged the Emperor forward with a scream.

  And the blade sank into Karsa’s left thigh, through skin, muscle, narrowly missing the bone, then punching out the back side. The Toblakai pivoted round, even as with appalling fluidity he brought his sword in a downward cut that sliced entirely through Rhulad’s shoulder above the sword-arm.

  As the arm, its hand still gripping the weapon now bound – trapped in Karsa’s leg – parted from Rhulad’s body, the Toblakai back-swung the flat of his blade into Rhulad’s face, sending him sprawling onto the sand.

  And Samar Dev found that she held the knife, the blade bared, and as Karsa turned to face her, she was already slicing deep across her palm, hissing the ancient words of release – letting loose the imprisoned spirits, the desert godlings and all those who were bound to the old knife—

  Spirits and ghosts of the slain poured forth, freed by the power in her blood, streaming down over the rows of benches, down onto the floor of the arena.

  To the terrible sounds of Rhulad Sengar’s shrieking, those spirits rushed straight for Karsa, swept round, engulfed him – swirling chaos – a blinding moment as of fires unleashed—

  —and Karsa Orlong, the Emperor’s sword and the arm still holding it, vanished.

  Lying alone on the sands of the arena, Rhulad Sengar spilled crimson from the stump of his shoulder.

  And no-one moved.

  To dwell within an iron blade had proved, for the ghost of Ceda Kuru Qan, a most interesting experience. After an immeasurable time of exploration, sensing all the other entities trapped within, he had worked out a means of escaping whenever he wished. But curiosity had held him, a growing suspicion that all dwelt in this dark place for some hidden purpose. And they were waiting.

  Anticipation, even eagerness. And, indeed, far more bloodlust than Kuru Qan could abide.

  He had considered a campaign of domination, of defeating all the other spirits, and binding them to his will. But a leader, he well understood, could not be ignorant, and to compel the revelation of the secret was ever a chancy proposition.

  Instead, he had waited, patient as was his nature whether living or dead.

  Sudden shock, then, upon the gushing taste of blood in his mouth, and the frenzied ecstasy that taste unleashed within him. Sour recognition – most humbling – in discovering such bestial weakness within him – and when the summoning arrived in the language of the First Empire, Kuru Qan found himself rising like a demon to roar his domination over all others, then lunging forth from the iron blade, into the world once again, leading a dread host—

  To the one standing. Thelomen Tartheno Toblakai.

  And the sword impaling his leg.

  Kuru Qan understood, then, what needed to be done. Understood the path that must be forged, and understood, alas, the sacrifice that must be made.

  They closed round the Toblakai warrior. They reached for that cursed sword and grasped hold of its blade. They drew with ferocious necessity on the blood streaming down the Toblakai’s leg, causing him to stagger, and, with Kuru Qan in the forefront, the spirits tore open a gate.

  A portal.

  Chaos roared in on all sides, seeking to annihilate them, and the spirits began surrendering their ghostly lives, sacrificing themselves to the rapacious hunger assailing them. Yet, even as they did so, they pushed the Toblakai forward, forging the path, demanding the journey.

  Other spirits awakened, from all around the warrior – the Toblakai’s own slain, and they were legion.

  Death roared. The pressure of the chaos stabbed, ripped spirits to pieces – even with all their numbers, the power of their will, they were slowing, they could not get through – Kuru Qan screamed – to draw more of the Toblakai’s power would kill him. They had failed.

  Failed—

  In a cleared circle in an old Tarthenal burial ground, a decrepit shaman seated cross-legged in its centre stirred awake, eyes blinking open. He glanced up to see Ublala Pung standing just beyond the edge.

  ‘Now, lad,’ he said.

  Weeping, the young Tarthenal rushed forward, a knife in his hands – one of Arbat’s own, the iron black with age, the glyphs on the blade so worn down as to be almost invisible.

  Arbat nodded as Ublala Pung reached him and drove the weapon deep into the shaman’s chest. Not on the heart side – Old Hunch needed to take a while to die, to bleed out his power, to feed the multitude of ghosts now rising from the burial grounds.

  ‘Get away from here!’ Arbat shouted, even as he fell onto his side, blood frothing at his mouth. ‘Get out!’

  Loosing a childlike bawl, Ublala Pung ran.

  The ghosts gathered, pure-blooded and mixed-bloods, spanning centuries upon centuries and awake after so long.

  And Old Hunch Arbat showed them their new god. And then showed them, with the power of his blood, the way through.

  Kuru Qan felt himself lifted on a tide, shoved forward as if by an enormous wave, and all at once there were spirits, an army of them.

  Thelomen Tartheno Toblakai.

  Tarthenal—

  Surging forward, the chaos thrust back, recoiling, then attacking once more.

  Hundreds vanishing.

  Thousands voicing wailing cries of agony.

  Kuru Qan found himself close to the Toblakai warrior, directly in front of the flailing figure, and he reached back, as if to grab the Toblakai’s throat. Closed his hand, and pulled.

  Water, a crashing surf, coral sand shifting wild underfoot. Blinding heat from a raging sun.

  Staggering, onto the shore – and yes, this was as far as Kuru Qan could go.

  Upon the shore.

  He released the warrior, saw him stumble onto the island’s beach, dragging that sword-impaled leg—

  Behind the old Ceda, the sea reached out, snatched Kuru Qan back with a rolling, tumbling inhalation.

  Water everywhere, swirling, pulling him ever deeper, ever darker.

  They were done.

  We are done.

  And the sea, my friends, does not dream of you.

  On the arena floor, Emperor Rhulad Sengar lay dead. Bled out, his flesh where visible pale as river clay, and as cold. Sand dusted the sweaty coins and all the blood that had poured from him was turning black.

  And the onlookers waited.

  For the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths to rise again.

  The sun rose higher, the sounds of fighting in the city drew closer.

  And, had anyone been looking, they would have seen a speck above the horizon to the north. Growing ever larger.

  One street away from the Eternal Domicile, Fiddler led his squad onto the rooftop of some gutted public building. Flecks of ash swirled in the hot morning air and all the city that they could see was veiled behind dust and smoke.

  They’d lost Gesler and his squad, ever since the garrison ambush, but Fiddler was not overly concerned. All opposition was a shambles. He ran in a crouch to the edge facing the Eternal Domicile, looked across, and then down to the street below.

  There was a gate, closed, but no guards in sight. Damned strange. Where is everyone?

  He returned to where his soldiers waited, catching their breaths in the centre of the flat rooftop. ‘All right,’ he said, setting down his crossbow and opening his satchel, ‘there’s a gate that I can take out with a cusser from here. Then down we go and straight across and straight in, fast and mean. Kill everyone in sight, understood?’ He drew out his cusser quarrel and carefully loaded the crossbow. Then resumed his instructions. ‘Tarr takes up the rear crossing the street. Bottle, keep everything you got right at hand—’

  ‘Sergeant—’

  ‘Not now, Corabb. Listen! We’re heading for the throne room. I want Cuttle out fron
t—’

  ‘Sergeant—’

  ‘—with sharpers in hand. Koryk, you’re next—’

  ‘Sergeant—’

  ‘What in Hood’s name is it, Corabb?’

  The man was pointing. Northward.

  Fiddler and the others all turned.

  To see an enormous white dragon bearing down on them.

  An infrequent scattering of cut-down Letherii soldiers and small fires left behind by munitions had provided enough of a trail for Quick Ben and Hedge, and they were now crouched at the foot of a door to a burnt-out building.

  ‘Listen,’ Hedge was insisting, ‘the roof here’s right opposite the gate. I know Fid and I’m telling you, he’s on that Hood-damned roof!’

  ‘Fine, fine, lead on, sapper.’ Quick Ben shook his head. Something…I don’t know…

  They plunged inside. The stench of smoke was acrid, biting. Charred wreckage lay all about, the detritus of a ruined empire.

  ‘There,’ Hedge said, then headed on into a corridor, down to a set of stairs leading upward.

  Something…oh, gods!

  ‘Move it!’ Quick Ben snarled, shoving the sapper forward.

  ‘What—’

  ‘Hurry!’

  The huge dragon angled down, straight for them.

  Fiddler stared for a moment longer, seeing the beast opening its mouth, knowing what was coming, then he raised his crossbow and fired.

  The bolt shot upward.

  A hind limb of the dragon snapped out to bat the quarrel aside.

  And the cusser detonated.

  The explosion flattened the marines on the rooftop, sent Fiddler tumbling backward.

  The roof itself sagged beneath them with grinding, crunching sounds.

  Fiddler caught a glimpse of the dragon, streaming blood, its chest torn open, sliding off to one side, heading towards the street below, shredded wings flailing like sails in a storm.

  A second bolt flew out to intercept it.

  Another explosion, sending the dragon lurching back, down, into a building, which suddenly folded inward on that side, then collapsed with a deafening roar.

  Fiddler twisted round—