The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  The Che’Malle were camped—if one could call it that—behind the rise at her back. They had built a fire inviting Kalyth’s comfort, but this night she was not interested in comfort.

  The Shi’gal Assassin still circled high in the darkening sky above them—their nightly sentinel who never tired and never spoke and yet was known to all (she suspected) as their potential slayer, should they fail. Blessings of the spirits, that was a ghastly creature, a demon to beggar her worst nightmares. Oh, how it sailed the night winds, a cold-eyed raptor, a conjuration of singular purpose.

  Kalyth shivered. Then, squeezing shut her eyes as the sun’s sickle of fire dipped below the horizon, she slid the disc into her mouth.

  Stinging like a snake’s bite, and then numbness, spreading, spreading . . .

  ‘Never trust a leader who has nothing to lose.’

  At these muttered words from the human female, drifting over the hummock down to where stood the K’Chain Che’Malle, the K’ell Hunter Sag’Churok swung round his massive, scarred head. Over his eyes, three distinct lids blinked in succession, reawakening the camp’s reflected firelight in a wet gleam. The Matron’s daughter, Gunth Mach, seemed to flinch, but she remained closed to Sag’Churok’s tentative query.

  The other two K’ell Hunters, indifferent to anything the human might say, were half-crouched and facing away from the ring of stones that surrounded a half-dozen bricks of burning bhederin dung, away from the flames that could steal their night vision. The enormous cutlasses at the ends of their wrists rested point-down, their arms stretched out to the sides. By nature, K’ell disliked such menial tasks as sentry duty. They existed to pursue quarry, after all. But the Matron had elected to send them out without J’an Sentinels; further proof that in keeping all her guardians close, Gunth’an Acyl feared for her own life.

  Senior among these K’ell, Sag’Churok was Gunth Mach’s protector, and should the time come when the Destriant found a Mortal Sword and a Shield Anvil, then he would also assume the task of escorting them on the return to Acyl Nest.

  Errors in judgement plagued Ampelas Rooted. A flawed Matron produced flawed spawn. This was a known truth. It was not a thing that could be defeated or circumvented. The spawn must follow. Even so, Sag’Churok knew an abiding sense of failure, a dull, persistent anguish.

  Beware the leader . . .

  Yes. The one they had chosen, known as Redmask, had proved as flawed as any K’Chain Che’Malle of the Hive, and the cruel logic of that still stung. Perhaps the Matron was correct in electing a human to undertake the search this time.

  Visions bound with intent whispered through Sag’Churok. The Shi’gal Assassin, wheeling in the darkness far above them, had thrust a sending into the brain of the K’ell Hunter. Cold, rough-skinned, careless of the pain the sending delivered—indeed, it was of such power that Gunth Mach’s head snapped up, eyes fixing on Sag’Churok as ripples overflowed to brush her senses.

  Intruders in vast herd, countless fires.

  ‘Perhaps, then, among these ones?’ Sag’Churok sent in return.

  The one who leads is not for us.

  A bestial scent followed that statement, one that Sag’Churok recognized. Glands awakened beneath the heavy armoured scales along the K’ell’s spine, the first of the instinctive preparations for hunting, for battle, and as those scales seemed to lift and float on the thickening layer of oil, the innermost lids closed over his eyes, rising from below to entirely sheathe his vision. Boulders on a distant hill suddenly glowed, still bearing the heat of the sun. Small creatures moved in the grasses, revealed by their breaths, their rapidly beating hearts.

  K’ell Rythok and Kor Thuran both caught the bitter signature of the oil, and they straightened from their crouches, swinging free their swords.

  A final thought reached Sag’Churok. Too many to slay. Best avoid.

  ‘How do we avoid, Shi’gal Gu’Rull? Do they bestride our chosen path?’

  But the Assassin did not deem such questions worth an answer, and Sag’Churok felt the Shi’gal’s contempt.

  Gunth Mach sent her guardian a private thought. He wishes that we fail.

  ‘If he so hungers to slay, then why not these strangers?’

  It is not for me to say, she replied. Gu’Rull spoke not to me, after all, but to you. He would admit to nothing, but he holds you in respect. You have Hunted and like me you have borne wounds and tasted your own blood and in that taste we both saw our mortality. This, Gu’Rull shares with you, while Rythok and Kor Thuran do not.

  ‘And yet in his careless power his thoughts leak to you—’

  Does he know of my growth? I think not. Only you know the truth, Sag’Churok. To all others I reveal nothing. They believe me still little more than a drone, a promise, a possibility. I am close, first love, so very close.

  Yes, he had known, or thought he had. Now, shock threatened to reveal itself and the K’ell struggled to contain it. ‘Gunth’an Acyl?’

  She cannot see past her suffering.

  Sag’Churok was not certain of that, but he sent nothing. It was not for him to counsel Gunth Mach, after all. Also, the notion that the Shi’gal Assassin sought to share anything with him was troubling. The taste of mortality was the birth of weakness, after all.

  Rythok addressed him suddenly, gruffly pushing through his inner turmoil. ‘You waken to threat, yet we sense nothing. Even so, should we not quench this useless fire?’

  Yes, Rythok. The Destriant sleeps and we have no need.

  ‘Do you hunt?’

  No. But we are not alone in this land—human herds move to the south.

  ‘Is this not what Acyl desires? Is this not what the Destriant must find?’

  Not these ones, Rythok. Yet, we shall pass through this herd . . . you will, I think, taste your own blood soon. You and Kor Thuran. Prepare yourselves.

  And, with faint dismay, Sag’Churok saw that they were pleased.

  The air thickened, clear as the humour of an eye, and all that Kalyth could see through it shimmered and shifted, swam and blurred. The sweep of stars flowed in discordant motion; the grasses of the undulating hills wavered, as if startled by wayward winds. Motes of detritus drifted about, shapeless and faintly pulsing crimson, some descending to roll across the ground, others wandering skyward as if on rising currents.

  Every place held every memory of what it had once been. A plain that had been the bottom of a lake, the floor of a shallow sea, the lightless depths of a vast ocean. A hill that had been the peak of a young mountain, one of a chain of islands, the jagged fang of the earth buried in glacial ice. Dust that had been plants, sand that had been stone, stains that had been bone and flesh. Most memories, Kalyth understood, remain hidden, unseen and beneath the regard of flickering life. Yet, once the eyes were awakened, every memory was then unveiled, a fragment here, a hint there, a host of truths whispering of eternity.

  Such knowledge could crush a soul with its immensity, or drown it beneath a deluge of unbearable futility. As soon as the distinction was made, that separation of self from all the rest, from the entire world beyond—its ceaseless measure of time, its whimsical game with change played out in slow siege and in sudden catastrophe—then the self became an orphan, bereft of all security, and face to face with a world now become at best a stranger, at worst an implacable, heartless foe.

  In arrogance we orphan ourselves, and then rail at the awful solitude we find on the road to death.

  But how could one step back into the world? How could one learn to swim such currents? In self-proclamation, the soul decided what it was that lay within in opposition to all that lay beyond. Inside, outside, familiar, strange, that which is possessed, that which is coveted, all that is within grasp and all that is forever beyond reach. The distinction was a deep, vicious cut of a knife, severing tendons and muscles, arteries and nerves.

  A knife?

  No, that was the wrong weapon, a pathetic construct from her limited imagination. Indeed, the force that divided was s
omething . . . other.

  It was, she now believed, maybe even alive.

  The multilayered vista before her was suddenly transformed. Grasses withered and blew away. High dunes of sand humped the horizon, and in a basin just ahead of her she saw a figure, its back to her as it knelt in the hard-edged shadow of a monolith of some sort. The stone—if that was what it was—was patinated with rust, the mottled stains looking raw, almost fresh against the green-black rock.

  She found herself drawing closer. The figure was not simply kneeling in worship or obeisance, she realized. It was digging, hands thrust deep into the sands, almost up to the elbows.

  He was an old man, his skin blue-black. Bald, the skin covering the skull scarred. If he heard her approaching, he gave no sign.

  Was this some moment of the past? Millennia unfolding as all those layers fleeted away? Was she now witness to a memory of the Wastelands?

  The monolith, Kalyth suddenly comprehended, was carved in the likeness of a finger. And the stone that she had first seen as green and black was growing translucent, serpentine green, revealing inner flaws and facets. She saw seams like veins of deep emerald, and masses that might be bone, the colour of true jade, deep within the edifice.

  The old man—whose skin was not blue and black as she had first believed, but so thickly tattooed in swirling fur that nothing of its natural tone remained—now spoke, though he did not cease thrusting his hands into the sand at the base of the monolith. ‘There is a tribe in the Sanimon,’ he said, ‘that claims it was the first to master the forging of iron. They still make tools and weapons in the traditional manner—quenching blades in sand, just as I’m doing right now, do you see?’

  Though she did not know his language, she understood him, and at his question she squinted once more at his arms—if his hands gripped weapons, then he had pushed them deep into the sands indeed.

  Yet she saw no forge—not even a firepit—anywhere in sight.

  ‘I do not think,’ the man continued, gasping every now and then, as if in pain, ‘I do not think, however, that I have it exactly right. There must be some other secrets involved. Quenching in water or manure piles—I have no experience in such things.’ He paused. ‘At least, I don’t think I do. So much . . . forgotten.’

  ‘You are not Elan,’ Kalyth said.

  He smiled at her words, although instead of looking at her he fixed his gaze on the monolith. ‘But here is a thing,’ he said. ‘I can name, oh, a hundred different tribes. Seven Cities tribes, Quon Talian tribes, Korel tribes, Genabackan—and they all share one thing and one thing only and do you know what that is?’

  He waited, as if he had addressed the monolith rather than Kalyth, who stood beside him, close enough to reach out and touch. ‘I will tell you,’ he then said. ‘Every one of them is or is about to be extinct. Melted away, in the fashion of all peoples, eventually. Sometimes some semblance of their blood lives on, finds new homes, watered down, forgetful. Or they’re nothing but dust, even their names gone, for ever gone. No one to mourn the loss . . . and all that.’

  ‘I am the last Elan,’ she told him.

  He resumed pushing his hands deep into the sand, as deep as he could manage. ‘I am readying myself . . . to wield a most formidable weapon. They thought to hide it from me. They failed. Weapons must be tempered and tempered well, of course. They even thought to kill it. As if such a thing is remotely possible’—he paused—‘then again, perhaps it is. The key to everything, you see, is to cut clean, down the middle. A clean cut—that’s what I dream of.’

  ‘I dream of . . . this,’ she said. ‘I have ridden the Spotted Horse. I have found you in the realms beyond—why? Have you summoned me? What am I to you? What are you to me?’

  He laughed. ‘Now that amuses me! I see where you’re pointing—you think I don’t? You think I am blind to this, too?’

  ‘I ride the—’

  ‘Oh, enough of that! You took something. That’s how you get here, that’s how everyone gets here. Or they dance and dance until they fall into and out from their bodies. Whatever you took just eased you back into the rhythm that exists in all things—the pulse of the universe, if you like. With enough discipline you don’t need to take anything at all—which is a good thing, since after ten or twenty years of eating herbs or whatever, most shamans are inured to their effects anyway. So the ingesting serves only as ritual, as permission to journey.’ He suddenly halted all motions. ‘Spotted Horse . . . yes, visual hallucinations, patterns floating in front of the eyes. The Bivik called it Wound Drumming—like blossoming bloodstains, I suppose they meant. Thump thump thump . . . And the Fenn—’

  ‘The Matron looks to our kind,’ she cut in. ‘The old ways have failed.’

  ‘The old ways ever fail,’ the old man said. ‘So too the new ways, more often than not.’

  ‘She is desperate—’

  ‘Desperation delivers poison counsel.’

  ‘Have you nothing worthwhile to tell me?’

  ‘The secret lies in the tempering,’ he said. ‘That is a worthwhile thing to tell you. Your weapon must be well tempered. Soundly forged, ingeniously annealed, the edges honed with surety. The finger points straight towards them, you see—well, if this were a proper sky, you’d see.’ His broad face split in a smile that was more a grimace than a signature of pleasure—and she thought that, despite his words suggesting otherwise, he might be blind.

  ‘It is a flaw,’ he continued, ‘to view mortals and gods as if they were on opposite sides. A flaw. An error most fundamental. Because then, when the blade comes down, why, they are for ever lost to each other. Now, does she understand? Possibly, but if so, then she terrifies me—for such wisdom seems almost . . . inhuman.’ He shook himself and leaned back, withdrawing his arms from the sand.

  She stared, curious and wondering at the weapons he held—only to find he held none. And that his hands, the hue of rust, gleamed as if polished.

  He held them up. ‘Expected green, did you? Green jade, yes, and glowing. But not this time, not for this, oh no. Are they ready? Ready to grasp that most deadly weapon? I think not.’

  And down went those hands, plunging into the sands once more.

  A foot troop of human scouts, ranging well north of the main herd, had caught sight of the lone campfire. They now moved towards it—even as the distant flickering flames winked out—and, spreading out into a crescent formation, they displayed great skill in stealth, moving virtually unseen across the plain.

  One of the scouts, white-painted face covered in dark cloth, came near a motionless hare and the creature sensed nothing of the warrior edging past, no more than five paces away.

  Few plains were truly flat or featureless. Dips and rises flowed on all sides; stretches tilted and in so doing mocked all sense of distance and perspective; burrow mounds hid beneath tufts of grass; gullies ran in narrow, treacherous channels that one could not see until one stumbled into them. To move unseen across this landscape was to travel as did the four-legged hunters and prey, from scant cover to scant cover, in fits and starts, eloquent as shadows. Even so, the Wastelands were aptly named, for much of the natural plain had been scoured away, and spans of little more than broken rock and windblown sand challenged any measure of skill.

  Despite such restrictions, these scouts, eighteen in number, betrayed not a breath as they closed in on where that campfire had been. Although all bore weapons—javelins and odd single-edged cutlasses—the former remained slung across their broad backs, while the swords were strapped tight, bound and muffled at their sides.

  Clearly, then, curiosity drove them to seek out the lone camp, to discover with whom they shared this land.

  Two thousand paces and closing, the scouts slipped into a broad basin, and all that lit them now was the pale jade glow of the mysterious travellers in the night sky.

  The crescent formation slowly inverted, the central scout moving ahead to form its apex. When the troop reached a certain distance, the lead scout would venture
closer on his own.

  Gu’Rull stood awaiting him. The towering K’Chain Che’Malle should have been clearly visible, but not a single human saw him. When it was time to kill, the Shi’gal Assassin could cloud the minds of his victims, although this was generally only effective while such targets were unsuspecting; and against other Shi’gal, J’an Sentinels and senior Ve’Gath Soldiers, no such confusion was possible.

  These humans, of course, were feeble, and for all their stealth, the heat of their bodies made them blaze like beacons in Gu’Rull’s eyes.

  The lead scout padded directly towards the Assassin, who waited, wings folded and retracted. The hinged claws on his narrow, long fingers slowly emerged from their membrane sheaths, slick with neural venom—although in the case of these soft-skinned humans, poison was not necessary.

  When the warrior came into range, Gu’Rull saw the man hesitate—as if some instinct had awakened within him—but it was too late. The Assassin lashed out one hand. Claws sliced into the man’s head from one side, through flesh and bone, and the strength of the blow half tore the scout’s head from his neck.

  Long before the first victim fell, Gu’Rull was on the move, an arching scythe of night rushing to the next warrior. Claws plunged into the man’s midsection, hooked beneath the rib cage, and the assassin lifted him from his feet and then flung the flailing, blood-spewing body away.

  Daggers flashed in the air as the rest of the scouts converged. Two of the thrown weapons struck Gu’Rull, both skidding off his thick, sleek scales. Javelins were readied, poised for the throw—but the Shi’gal was already amongst them, batting aside panicked thrusts, claws raking through bodies, head snapping out on its long neck, jaws crushing skulls, chests, biting through shoulders. Blood spattered like sleet on the rough, stony ground, and burst in dark mists in the wake of the Assassin’s deadly blows.

  Two scouts pulled back, sought to flee, and for the moment Gu’Rull let them go, occupied as he was with the last warriors surrounding him. He understood that they were not cowards—the two now running as fast as they could southward, each choosing his own path—no, they sought to bring word of the slaughter, the new foe, to the ruler of the herd.