The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Ah,’ said the High Priestess from the doorway, ‘all is right with the world again. Later, Spin.’

  ‘Yes, High Priestess,’ he replied, electing to ignore her sarcasm. And the need it so poorly disguised.

  Rain had rushed in from the sea, turning the paths into rivers of mud. Salind sat in the makeshift shed, legs curled up beneath her, shivering as water dripped down through holes in the roof. More people had come scratching at her door, but she had turned them all away.

  She’d had enough of being a High Priestess. All her heightened sensitivities to the whims of the Redeemer were proving little more than a curse. What matter all these vague emotions she sensed from the god? She could do nothing for him.

  This should not have surprised her, and she told herself that what she was feeling wasn’t hurt, but something else, something more impersonal. Perhaps it was her grieving for the growing list of victims as Gradithan and his sadistic mob continued to terrorize the camp – so much so that some were planning to leave as soon as the road dried out. Or her failure with the Benighted. The expectations settling upon her, in the eyes of so many people, were too vast, too crushing. She could not hope to answer them all. And she was finding that, in truth, she could answer none of them.

  Words were empty in the face of brutal will. They were helpless to defend whatever sanctity might be claimed, for a person’s self, for their freedom to choose how they would live, and with whom. Empathy haunted her. Compassion opened wounds which only a hardening of the soul could in the future prevent, and this she did not want – she had seen too many faces, looked into too many eyes, and recoiled from their coldness, their delight in vicious judgement.

  The righteous will claim sole domain on judgement. The righteous are the first to make hands into fists, the first to shout down dissenters, the first to bully others into compliance.

  I live in a village of the meek, and I am the meekest of them all. There is no glory in being helpless. Nor is there hope.

  Rain lashing down, a drumming roar on the slatted, angled roof, the sound of a deluge that filled her skull. That the Redeemer will embrace is neither just nor unjust. No mortal can sanction their behaviour in the Redeemer’s name. How dare they so presume? Miserable faces marching past, peering in through the cracks in her door. And she wanted to rail at them all. You damned fools. Absolution is not enough! But they would then look upon her, moon-eyed and doleful, desperate that every question yield an answer, clinging to the notion that one suffered for a reason and knowledge of that reason would ease the suffering.

  Knowledge, Salind told herself, eases nothing. It just fills spaces that might otherwise flood with despair.

  Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

  ‘I am no High Priestess,’ she croaked, as water trickled down her face.

  Heavy boots splashing in the mud outside. The door was tugged back and a dark shape blotted out the pale grey light. ‘Salind.’

  She blinked, trying to discern who so spoke to her with such…such compassion. ‘Ask me nothing,’ she said. ‘Tell me less.’

  The figure moved, closing the door in a scrape of sodden grit that filled the shed with gloom once more. Pausing, standing, water dripping from a long leather cloak. ‘This will not do.’

  ‘Whoever you are,’ Salind said, ‘I did not invite you in. This is my home.’

  ‘My apologies, High Priestess.’

  ‘You smell of sex.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine so.’

  ‘Do not touch me. I am poison.’

  ‘I – I have no desire to…touch you, High Priestess. I have walked this village – the conditions are deplorable. The Son of Darkness, I well know, will not long abide such poverty.’

  She squinted up at him. ‘You are the Benighted’s friend. The only Tiste Andii for whom humans are not beneath notice.’

  ‘Is this what you believe of us, then? That is…unfortunate.’

  ‘I am ill. Please go away, sir.’

  ‘My name is Spinnock Durav. I might have told you that when last we met – I do not recall and clearly neither do you. You…challenged me, High Priestess.’

  ‘No, I rejected you, Spinnock Durav.’

  There might have been something like wry amusement in his tone as he replied, ‘Perhaps the two are one and the same.’

  She snorted. ‘Oh, no, a perennial optimist.’

  He reached down suddenly and his warm palm pressed against her forehead. She jerked back. Straightening, he said, ‘You are fevered.’

  ‘Just go.’

  ‘I will, but I intend to take you with me—’

  ‘And what of everyone else so afflicted in this camp? Will you carry them all out? Or just me, just the one upon whom you take pity? Unless it is not pity that drives you.’

  ‘I will have healers attend the camp—’

  ‘Do that, yes. I can wait with the others.’

  ‘Salind—’

  ‘That’s not my name.’

  ‘It isn’t? But I was—’

  ‘I simply chose it. I had no name. Not as a child, not until just a few months ago. I had no name at all, Spinnock Durav. Do you know why I haven’t been raped yet? Most of the other women have. Most of the children, too. But not me. Am I so ugly? No, not in the flesh – even I know that. It’s because I was a Child of the Dead Seed – do you know the meaning of that, Tiste Andii? My mother crawled half-mad on a battlefield, reaching beneath the jerkins of dead soldiers until she found a member solid and hard. Then she took it into herself and, if she were blessed, it would spill into her. A dead man’s seed. I had plenty of brothers and sisters, a family of aunts and a mother who in the end rotted with some terrible disease that ate her flesh – her brain was long gone by then. I have not been raped, because I am untouchable.’

  He stared down at her, evidently shocked, horrified into dumb silence.

  She coughed, wishing she did not get sick so often – but it had always been this way. ‘You can go now, Spinnock Durav.’

  ‘This place festers.’ And he moved forward to pick her up.

  She recoiled. ‘You don’t understand! I’m sick because he’s sick!’

  He halted and she finally could make out his eyes, forest green and tilted at the corners, and far too much compassion gleamed in that regard. ‘The Redeemer? Yes, I imagine he is. Come,’ and he took her up, effortlessly, and she should have struggled – should have been free to choose – but she was too weak. Pushing him away with her hands was a gesture, a desire, transformed into clutching helplessly at his cloak. Like a child.

  A child.

  ‘When the rains stop,’ he murmured, his breath no doubt warm but scalding against her fevered cheek, ‘we shall rebuild. Make all this new. Dry, warm.’

  ‘Do not rape me.’

  ‘No more talk of rape. Fever will awaken many terrors. Rest now.’

  I will not judge. Not even this life of mine. I will not – there is weakness in the world. Of all sorts. All sorts…

  Stepping outside with the now unconscious woman in his arms, Spinnock Durav looked round. Figures on all sides, both hooded and bare-headed in the rain, water streaming down.

  ‘She is sick,’ he said to them. ‘She needs healing.’

  No one spoke in reply.

  He hesitated, then said, ‘The Son of Darkness will be informed of your…difficulties.’

  They began turning away, melting into the grey sheets. In moments Spinnock found himself alone.

  He set out for the city.

  The Son of Darkness will be informed…but he knows already, doesn’t he? He knows, but leaves it all to…to whom? Me? Seerdomin? The Redeemer himself?

  ‘Give my regards to the priestess.’

  Her, then, this frail
thing in my arms. I will attend to her, because within her lies the answer.

  Gods, the answer to what?

  Boots uncertain in the slime and mud, he made his careful way back. Night awaited.

  And, rising up from the depths of his memories, the fragment of some old poem, ‘The moon does not rain, but it weeps.’ A fragment, yes, it must be that. Alas, he could not recall the rest and so he would have to settle with the phrase – although in truth it was anything but settling.

  I could ask Endest – ah, no, he is gone from us for the time being. The High Priestess, perhaps. She knows every Tiste Andii poem ever written, for the sole purpose of sneering at every one of them. Still.

  The words haunted him, mocked him with their ambiguity. He preferred things simple and straightforward. Solid like heroic sculpture – those marble and alabaster monuments to some great person who, if truth be known, was nowhere near as great as believed or proclaimed, and indeed looked nothing like the white polished face above the godlike body – oh, Abyss take me, enough of this!

  In the camp, in the wake of the Tiste Andii’s departure with the High Priestess half dead in his arms, the bald priest, short and bandy-legged and sodden under rain-soaked woollen robes, hobbled up to Gradithan. ‘You saw?’

  The ex-soldier grunted. ‘I was tempted, you know. A sword point, right up back of his skull. Shit-spawned Tiste Andii bastard, what in Hood’s name did he think, comin’ here?’

  The priest – a priest of some unknown god somewhere to the south, Bastion, perhaps – made tsk-tsking sounds, then said, ‘The point is, Urdo—’

  ‘Shut that mouth of yours! That rank ain’t for nobody no more, you understand? Never mind the arsehole thinkin’ he’s the only one left, so’s he can use it like it was his damned name or something. Never mind, cos he’ll pay for that soon enough.’

  ‘Humble apologies, sir. My point was, she’s gone now.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘She was the Redeemer’s eyes – his ears, his everything in the mortal world – and now that Tiste Andii’s gone and taken her away. Meaning we can do, er, as we please.’

  At that, Gradithan slowly smiled. Then said in a low, easy voice, ‘What’ve we been doin’ up to now, Monkrat?’

  ‘While she was here, the chance remained of awakening the Benighted to his holy role. Now we need not worry about either of them.’

  ‘I was never worried in the first place,’ the once-Urdomen said in a half-snarl. ‘Go crawl back into your hole, and take whoever with you as you fancy – like you say, nothing stopping us now.’

  After the horrid creature scurried off, Gradithan gestured to one of his lieutenants. ‘Follow that Andii pig back into Night,’ he said. ‘But keep your distance. Then get word to our friends in the city. It’s all taken care of at the Barrow – that’s the message you tell ’em, right? Go on and get back here before dawn and you can take your pick of the women – one you want to keep for a while if you care to, or strangle beneath you for all I give a shit. Go!’

  He stood in the rain, feeling satisfied. Everything was looking up, and up. And by squinting, why, he could almost make out that cursed tower with its disgusting dragon edifice – aye, soon it would all come down. Nice and bloody, like.

  And though he was not aware of it – not enough to find cause for the sudden shiver that took him – he turned away from that unseeing regard, and so unknowingly broke contact with sleepy, cold, reptilian eyes that could see far indeed, through rain, through smoke, through – if so desired – stone walls.

  Carved edifice Silanah was not. Sleepless, all-seeing protector and sentinel, beloved of the Son of Darkness, and possessed of absolute, obsidian-sharp judgement, most assuredly she was all that. And terrible in wrath? Few mortals could even conceive the truth and the capacity of the implacably just.

  Which was probably just as well.

  ‘Mercy in compassion, no dragon lives.’

  When skill with a sword was but passing, something else was needed. Rage. The curse was that rage broke its vessel, sent fissures through the brittle clay, sought out every weakness in the temper, the mica grit that only revealed itself in the edges of the broken shards. No repairs were possible, no glue creeping out when the fragments were pressed back together, to be wiped smooth with a fingertip.

  Nimander was thinking about pottery. Web-slung amphorae clanking from the sides of the wagon, the horrid nectar within – a species of rage, perhaps, little different from what had coursed through his veins when he fought. Rage in battle was said to be a gift of the gods – he had heard that belief uttered by that Malazan marine, Deadsmell, down in the hold of the Adjunct’s flagship, during one of those many nights when the man had made his way down into the dark belly, jug of rum swinging by an ear in one hand.

  At first Nimander had resented the company – as much as did his kin – but the Malazan had persisted, like a sapper undermining walls. The rum had trickled down throats, loosened the hinges of tongues, and after a time all those fortifications and bastions had stretched open their doorways and portals.

  The rum had lit a fire in Nimander’s brain, casting flickering red light on a host of memories gathered ghostly round the unwelcoming hearth. There had been a keep, somewhere, a place of childhood secure and protected by the one they all called Father. Ridged spines of snow lining the cobbled track leading to the embrasure gate, a wind howling down from grey mountains – a momentary abode where scores of children scurried about wild as rats, with the tall figure of Anomander Rake wandering the corridors in godlike indifference.

  What had there been before that? Where were all the mothers? That memory was lost, entirely lost.

  There had been a priest, an ancient companion of the Son of Darkness, whose task it had been to keep the brood fed, clothed, and healthy. He had looked upon them all with eyes filled with dismay, no doubt understanding – long before any of them did – the future that awaited them. Understanding well enough to withhold his warmth – oh, he had been like an ogre to them all, certainly, but one who, for all his bluster, would never, ever do them harm.

  Knowing this, they had abused their freedom often. They had, more than once, mocked that poor old man. They had rolled beakers into his path when he walked past, squealing with delight when his feet sent them flying to bounce and shatter, or, better yet, when he lost his balance and thumped down on his backside, wincing in pain.

  Such a cruel fire, lighting up all these ghastly recollections. Deadsmell, in his sleepy, seemingly careless way, had drawn out their tale. From that keep hidden in the fastness of some remote range of mountains to the sudden, startling arrival of a stranger – the aged, stooped Tiste Andii who was, it was learned with a shock, Anomander’s very own brother. And the arguments echoing from their father’s private chambers, as brothers fought over unknown things – decisions past, decisions to come, the precise unfolding of crimes of the soul that led to harsh accusations and cold, cold silences.

  Days later, peace was struck, somehow, in the dark of night. Their father came to them then, to tell them how Andarist was taking them all away. To an island, a place of warmth, of stretches of soft sand and pellucid waters, of trees crowded with fruit. And there, standing in the background during this imparting of a new future, was old Endest Silann, his face ravaged by some extremity of emotion – no more beakers underfoot, no more taunts and elusive imps racing to escape imagined pursuits (he never pursued, never once reached to snatch one of them, never raised a hand, never even raised his voice; he was nothing but a focus for their irreverence – an irreverence they would not dare turn upon their father). He had had his purpose and he had weathered it and now he wept as the children were drawn together and a warren was opened, a portalway into an unknown, mysterious new world where anything was possible.

  Andarist led them through.

  They would learn new things. The weapons awaiting them.

  A stern teacher, not one to mock, oh no, that was quickly made clear when a casual cu
ff against the side of Skintick’s head sent him flying – a cuff to answer some muttered derision, no doubt.

  The games ended. The world turned suddenly serious.

  They came to love that old man. Loved him far too much, as it turned out, for where Anomander might well have proved capable of pushing back the horrors of adulthood and its terrible world, Andarist was not.

  Children made perfect soldiers, perfect killers. They had no sense of mortality. They did not fear death. They took bright pleasure in destruction, even when that destruction involved taking a life. They played with cruelty to watch the results. They understood the simplicity of power found there in the weapon held in the hand.

  See a bored child with a stick – and see how every beast nearby flees, understanding well what is now possible and, indeed, probable. See the child, eyes scanning the ground, swinging the stick down to crush insects, to thrash flowers, to wage a war of mayhem. Replace the stick with a sword. Explain how guilt need not be considered when the ones who must die are the enemy.

  Unleash them, these children with the avid eyes.

  Good soldiers. Andarist had made them good soldiers. What child, after all, does not know rage?

  But the vessel breaks.

  The vessel breaks.

  The Dying God, Nimander now believed, was a child. The mad priests poured him full, knowing the vessel leaked, and then drank of that puerile seepage. Because he was a child, the Dying God’s thirst and need were without end, never satiated.

  As they journeyed along the road, ever westward, they found themselves between planted fields. Here the scarecrows were truly dead, used up. Withered, webbed in black scraps of cloth, stiffly rocking in the wind. Poured out, these lives, and Nimander now saw these fields as bizarre cemeteries, where some local aberration of belief insisted that the dead be staked upright, that they ever stand ready for whatever may come.

  Watchers of this road and all the fools who travelled it.

  Once, on Drift Avalii, almost a year before the first attacks, two half-dead Dal Honese had washed up on the rocky coast. They had been paddling to the island of Geni, for reasons unexplained, in an ancient dugout. Both were naked, as they had used up every scrap of cloth from their garments to stuff into the cracks in the hull – too many cracks, it turned out, and the beleaguered craft eventually sank, forcing the two men to swim.