The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Quick Ben licked his lips. ‘Shall I be specific or will a summary suffice, Adjunct?’

  She said nothing.

  The High Mage shrugged. ‘It will be war, yes, but a messy one. The Crippled God’s been busy, but his efforts have been, without exception, defensive, for the Fallen One also happens to know what is coming. The bastard’s desperate, probably terrified, and thus far, he has failed more often than succeeded.’

  ‘Why?’

  He blinked. ‘Well, people have been getting in the way—’

  ‘People, yes. Mortals.’

  Quick Ben nodded, eyes narrowing. ‘We have been the weapons of the gods.’

  ‘Tell me, High Mage, how does it feel?’

  Her questions struck from unanticipated directions, Lostara could see, and it was clear that Quick Ben was mentally reeling. This was a sharp talent, a surprising one, and it told Lostara that Adjunct Tavore possessed traits that made her a formidable tactician—but why had none of them seen this before?

  ‘Adjunct,’ the wizard ventured, ‘the gods have inevitably regretted using me.’

  The answer evidently satisfied her. ‘Go on, High Mage.’

  ‘They will chain him again. This time it will be absolute, and once chained, they will suck everything out of him—like bloodflies—’

  ‘Are the gods united on this?’

  ‘Of course not—excuse me, Adjunct. Rather, the gods are never united, even when in agreement. Betrayals are virtually guaranteed—which is why I cannot fathom Shadowthrone’s thinking. He’s not that stupid—he can’t be that stupid—’

  ‘He has outwitted you,’ Tavore said. ‘You “cannot fathom” his innermost intentions. High Mage, the first god you have mentioned here is one that most of us wouldn’t expect to be at the forefront of all of this. Hood, yes. Togg, Fanderay—even Fener. Or Oponn. And what of the Elder Gods? Mael, K’rul, Kilmandaros. No. Instead, you speak of Shadowthrone, the upstart—’

  ‘The once Emperor of the Malazan Empire,’ cut in Keneb.

  Quick Ben scowled. ‘Aye, even back then—and it’s not easy to admit this—he was a wily bastard. The times I thought I’d worked round him, beat him clean, it turned out he had been playing me all along. He was the ruler of shadows long before he even ascended to that title. Dancer gave him the civilized face, that mask of honest morality—just as Cotillion does now. But don’t be fooled, those two are ruthless—none of us mortals are worth a damned thing, except as a means to an end—’

  ‘And what, High Mage, would that end be?’

  Quick Ben threw up his hands and leaned back. ‘I have little more than rude guesses, Adjunct.’

  But Lostara saw something shining in the wizard’s eyes, as if he had been stirred into wakefulness from a long, long sleep. She wondered if this was how he had been with Whiskeyjack, with Dujek Onearm. No wonder they saw him as their shaved knuckle in the hole.

  ‘I would hear those guesses,’ the Adjunct said.

  ‘The pantheon comes crashing down—and what emerges from the dust and ashes is almost unrecognizable. The same for sorcery—the warrens—the realm of K’rul. All fundamentally changed.’

  ‘Yet, one assumes, at the pinnacle . . . Shadowthrone and Cotillion.’

  ‘A safe assumption,’ Quick Ben admitted, ‘which is why I don’t trust it.’

  Tavore looked startled. ‘Altruism from those two?’

  ‘I don’t even believe in altruism, Adjunct.’

  ‘Thus,’ she observed, ‘your confusion.’

  The wizard’s ascetic face was pinched, as if he was tasting something unbearably foul. ‘Who’s to say that the changes create something better, something more equitable? Who’s to say that what emerges isn’t even worse than what we have right now? Yes, it might seem a good move—driving that mob of miserable gods off some cliff, or some other place that puts them out of reach, that puts us out of their reach.’ He was musing now, as if unaware of his audience. ‘But consider that eventuality. Without the gods, we’re on our own. And with us on our own—Abyss fend!—what mischief we might do! What grotesque invention to plague the world!’

  ‘But . . . not entirely on our own.’

  ‘The fun would pall,’ Quick Ben said, as if irritated with the objection. ‘Shadowthrone has to realize that. Who would he have left to play with? And with K’rul a corpse, sorcery will rot, grow septic—it will kill whoever dares use it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Tavore with a certain remorselessness, ‘it is not Shadowthrone’s intent to reshape anything. Rather, to end it once and for all. To wipe the world clean.’

  ‘I doubt that. Kallor tried it and the lesson wasn’t lost on anyone—how could it be? Gods know, Kellanved then went and claimed that destroyed warren for the empire, so he couldn’t be blind . . .’ His words fell away, but Lostara saw how his thoughts suddenly raced down a new, treacherous track, destination unknown.

  Yes, they claimed Kallor’s legacy. But . . . what does that signify?

  No one spoke for a time. Blistig stood rooted—he had not moved from the moment the Adjunct began speaking, and what should have been a confused expression was nowhere to be seen on his rough features. Instead, he was closed up with a kind of obstinate belligerence, as if everything he had heard thus far wasn’t relevant, could not rattle the cage—for even as the cage imprisoned him within it, so it kept everything else at a safe distance.

  Sinn sat perched on the oversized chair, glowering at the tabletop, pretending not to listen to anything being said here, but she was paler than usual.

  Keneb leaned forward on his elbows, his hands against the sides of his face: the pose of a man wishing to be elsewhere.

  ‘It comes down to gates,’ Quick Ben muttered. ‘I don’t know how, or even why, but my gut tells me it comes down to gates. Kurald Emurlahn, Kurald Galain, Starvald Demelain—the old ones—and the Azath. No one has plumbed the secrets of the Houses as they have, not even Gothos. Windows on to the past, into the future, paths leading to places no mortal has ever visited. They have crawled up and down the skeleton of existence, eager as bone-grubs—’

  ‘Too many assumptions,’ Tavore said. ‘Rein yourself in, High Mage. Tell me, have you seen the face of our enemy to the east?’

  The look he shot her was bleak, wretched. ‘Justice is a sweet notion. Too bad its practice ends up awash in innocent blood. Honest judgement is cruel, Adjunct, so very cruel. And what makes it a disaster is the way it spreads outward, swallowing everything in its path. Allow me to quote Imperial Historian Duiker: “The object of justice is to drain the world of colour.” ’

  ‘Some would see it that way—’

  Quick Ben snorted. ‘Some? Those cold-eyed arbiters can’t see it any other way!’

  ‘Nature insists on a balance—’

  ‘Nature is blind.’

  ‘Thus favouring the notion that justice too is blind.’

  ‘Blinkered, not blind. The whole notion is founded on a deceit: that truths are reducible—’

  ‘Wait!’ barked Keneb. ‘Wait—wait! You’re leaving me behind, both of you! Adjunct, are you saying that justice is our enemy? Making us what, the champions of injustice? How can justice be an enemy—how can you expect to wage war against it? How can a simple soldier cut down an idea?’ His chair rocked back as he suddenly rose. ‘Have you lost your minds? I don’t understand—’

  ‘Sit down, Fist!’

  Shocked by the order, he sank back, looking defeated, bewildered.

  Hood knew, Lostara Yil sympathized.

  ‘Kolanse,’ said Tavore. ‘According to Letherii writings, an isolated confederation of kingdoms. Nothing special, nothing particularly unique, barring a penchant for monotheism. For the past decade, suffering a terrible drought, sufficient to cripple the civilization.’ She paused. ‘High Mage?’

  Quick Ben rubbed vigorously at his face, and then said, ‘The Crippled God came down in pieces. Everyone knows that. Most of him, it’s said, fell on Korel, which is what gave that continen
t its other name: Fist. Other bits fell . . . elsewhere. Despite the damage done to Korel, that was not where the true heart of the god landed. No, it spun away from the rest of him. It found its very own continent . . .’

  ‘Kolanse,’ said Keneb. ‘It landed in Kolanse.’

  Tavore said, ‘I mentioned that penchant for monotheism—it is hardly surprising, given what must have been a most traumatic visitation by a god—the visitor who never went away.’

  ‘So,’ said Keneb through clenched teeth, ‘we are marching to where the gods are converging. Gods that intend to chain the Crippled God one final time. But we refuse to be anyone’s weapon. If that is so, then what in Hood’s name will we be doing there?’

  ‘I think,’ Quick Ben croaked, ‘we will have the answer to that when we get there.’

  Keneb groaned and slumped back down, burying his face in his hands.

  ‘Kolanse has been usurped,’ said Tavore. ‘Not in the name of the Crippled God, but in the name of justice. Justice of a most terrible kind.’

  Quick Ben said, ‘Ahkrast Korvalain.’

  Sinn jumped as if stung, then huddled down once more.

  Keneb’s hands dropped away, though the impressions of his fingertips remained, mottling his face. ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘The Elder Warren, Fist,’ said the Adjunct, ‘of the Forkrul Assail.’

  ‘They are preparing the gate,’ Quick Ben said, ‘and for that, they need lots of blood. Lots.’

  Lostara finally spoke. She could not help it. She knew more about the cult of Shadow than anyone here, possibly excepting Quick Ben. ‘Adjunct, you say we march at the behest of no god. Yet, I suspect, Shadowthrone will be most pleased when we strike for Kolanse, when we set out to destroy that unholy gate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Tavore said. ‘I take it we now comprehend High Mage Quick Ben’s angst. His fear that, somehow, we are playing into Shadowthrone’s hands.’

  I think we are.

  ‘Even when he was Emperor,’ said Keneb, ‘he learned to flinch from the sting of justice.’

  ‘The T’lan Imass occupation of Aren,’ said Blistig, nodding.

  Tavore flicked a glance at Blistig, and then said, ‘Though we may share an enemy it does not mean we are allies.’

  Adjunct, that is too brazen. Fiddler’s reading was anything but subtle. But she was awestruck. By what Tavore had done here. Something blistered in this chamber now, touching like fire everyone present—even Blistig. Even that whelp of nightmare, Sinn. If a god showed its face in this chamber at this moment, six fists would vie to greet it.

  ‘What is the gate for?’ Lostara asked. ‘Adjunct? Do you know that gate’s purpose?’

  ‘The delivery of justice,’ Quick Ben offered in answer. ‘Or so one presumes.’

  ‘Justice against whom?’

  The High Mage shrugged. ‘Us? The gods? Kings and queens, priests, emperors and tyrants?’

  ‘The Crippled God?’

  Quick Ben’s grin was feral. ‘They’re sitting right on top of him.’

  ‘Then the gods might well stand back and let the Forkrul Assail do their work for them.’

  ‘Not likely—you can’t suck power from a dead god, can you?’

  ‘So, we could either find ourselves the weapon in the hands of the gods after all, or, if we don’t cooperate, trapped between two bloodthirsty foes.’ Even as she spoke those words, Lostara regretted them. Because, once said, everything points to . . . points to the worst thing imaginable. Oh, Tavore, now I understand your defiance when it comes to how history will judge us. And your words that what we will do will be unwitnessed—that was less a promise, I think now. More like a prayer.

  ‘It is time,’ the Adjunct said, collecting her gloves, ‘to speak with the King. You can run away now, Sinn. The rest of you are with me.’

  ______

  Brys Beddict needed a moment alone, and so he held back when the Queen entered the throne room, and moved a few paces away from the two helmed guards flanking the entrance. The Errant was on his mind, a one-eyed nemesis clutching a thousand daggers. He could almost feel the god’s cold smile, icy and chilling as a winter breath on the back of his neck. Inside and outside, in front of him and behind him, it made no difference. The Errant passed through every door, stood on both sides of every barrier. The thirst for blood was pervasive, and Brys felt trapped like a fly in amber.

  If not for a Tarthenal’s mallet fist, Brys Beddict would be dead.

  He was still shaken.

  Since his return to the mortal world, he had felt strangely weightless, as if nothing in this place could hold him down, could keep him firmly rooted to the earth. The palace, which had once been the very heart of his life, his only future, now seemed but a temporary respite. This was why he had petitioned his brother to be given command of the Letherii army—even in the absence of enemies he could justify travelling out from the city, to wander to the very border marches of the kingdom.

  What was he looking for? He did not know. Would he—could he—find it in the reaches beyond the city’s walls? Was something out there awaiting him? Such thoughts were like body-blows to his soul, for they sent him reeling back—into brother Hull’s shadow.

  Perhaps he haunts me now. His dreams, his needs, slipping like veils in front of my eyes. Perhaps he has cursed me with his own thirst—too vast to be appeased in a single life—no, he will now use mine.

  Ungracious fears, these. Hull Beddict was dead. The only thing that haunted Brys now was his memories of the man, and they belonged to no one else, did they?

  Let me lead the army. Let us march into unknown lands—leave me free, brother, to try again, to deliver unto strangers a new meaning to the name ‘Letherii’—not one foul with treachery, not one to become a curse word to every nation we encounter.

  Let me heal Hull’s wounds.

  He wondered if Tehol would understand any of that, and then snorted—the sound startling both guards, their eyes shifting to him and then away again. Of course Tehol would understand. All too well, in fact, on levels far surpassing Brys’s paltry, shallow efforts. And he would say something offhand, that would cut deep enough to bite bone—or he might not—Tehol was never as cruel as Brys dreaded. And what odd dynamic is that? Only that he’s too smart for me . . . and if I had his wits, why, I would use them with all the deadly skill I use when wielding a sword.

  Hull had been the dreamer, and his dreams were the kind that fed on his own conscience before all else. And see how that blinded him? See how that destroyed him?

  Tehol tempered whatever dream he held. It helped having an Elder God at his side, and a wife who was probably a match to Tehol’s own genius. It helps, too, I suppose, that he’s half mad.

  What of Brys, then? This brother least of the three? Taking hold of a sword and making it a standard, an icon of adjudication. A weapon master stood before two worlds: the complex one within the weapon’s reach and the simplified one beyond it. I am Hull’s opposite, in all things.

  So why do I now yearn to follow in his steps?

  He had been interred within stone upon the unlit floor of an ocean. His soul had been a single thread woven into a skein of forgotten and abandoned gods. How could that not have changed him? Perhaps his new thirst was their thirst. Perhaps it had nothing whatsoever to do with Hull Beddict.

  Perhaps, indeed, this was the Errant’s nudge.

  Sighing, he faced the doors to the throne room, adjusted his weapon belt, and then strode into the chamber.

  Brother Tehol, King of Lether, was in the midst of a coughing fit. Janath was at his side, thumping on his back. Bugg was pouring water into a goblet, which he then held at the ready.

  Ublala Pung stood before the throne. He swung round at Brys’s approach, revealing an expression of profound distress. ‘Preda! Thank the spirits you’re here! Now you can arrest and execute me!’

  ‘Ublala, why would I do that?’

  ‘Look, I have killed the King!’

  But Tehol was finally
recovering, sufficiently to take the goblet Bugg proffered. He drank down a mouthful, gasped, and then sat back on the throne. In a rasp he said, ‘It’s all right, Ublala, you’ve not killed me . . . yet. But that was a close one.’

  The Tarthenal whimpered and Brys could see that the huge man was moments from running away.

  ‘The King exaggerates,’ said Janath. ‘Be at ease, Ublala Pung. Welcome, Brys, I was wondering where you’d got to, since I could have sworn you were on my heels only a few moments ago.’

  ‘What have I missed?’

  Bugg said, ‘Ublala Pung was just informing us of, among other things, something he had forgotten. A matter most, well, extraordinary. Relating to the Toblakai warrior, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘The slayer of Rhulad Sengar has returned?’

  ‘No, we are blessedly spared that, Brys.’ And then Bugg hesitated.

  ‘It turns out,’ explained Janath—as Tehol quickly drank down a few more mouthfuls of water—‘that Karsa Orlong set a charge upon Ublala Pung, one that he had until today entirely forgotten, distracted as he has been of late by the abuses heaped upon him by his fellow guards.’

  ‘I’m sorry—what abuses?’

  Tehol finally spoke. ‘We can get to that later. The matter may no longer be relevant, in any case, since it seems Ublala must leave us soon.’

  Brys squinted at the abject Tarthenal. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the islands, Preda.’

  ‘The islands?’

  Ublala nodded solemnly. ‘I must gather all the Tarthenal and make an army. And then we have to go to find Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘An army? Why would Karsa Orlong want an army of Tarthenal?’

  ‘To destroy the world!’

  ‘Of course,’ interjected Bugg, ‘by my last census there are fourteen hundred and fifty-one Tarthenal now settled on the islands. One half of them not yet adults—under seventy years of age by Tarthenal reckoning. Ublala’s potential “army” will amount to around five hundred adults of reasonable maturity and dubious martial prowess.’

  ‘To destroy the world!’ Ublala shouted again. ‘I need a boat! A big one!’

  ‘These sound like heady matters,’ Brys said after a moment, ‘which require more discussion. For the moment—forgive me, Ublala—we are soon to entertain the Malazan high command. Should we not begin discussing that impending meeting?’