The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Torrent swung himself back into the saddle. She heard him sigh. ‘Tell me, Cafal, what do you see?’

  ‘It’s night—I can’t see much. We are on the northern edge of the Wastelands, I think. And so, around us, there is nothing.’

  Torrent grunted, clearly amused by something in the Barghast’s reply.

  Cafal nosed the bait. ‘What makes you laugh? What do you see, Torrent?’

  ‘At the risk of melodrama,’ he said, ‘I see the landscape of my soul.’

  ‘It is an ancient one,’ Setoc mused, ‘which makes you old inside, Torrent.’

  ‘The Awl dwelt here hundreds of generations ago. My ancestors looked out upon this very plain, beneath these same stars.’

  ‘I am sure they did,’ acknowledged Cafal. ‘As did mine.’

  ‘We have no memory of you Barghast, but no matter, I will not gainsay your claims.’ He paused for a time, and then spoke again, ‘it would not have been so empty back then, I imagine. More animals, wandering about. Great beasts that trembled the ground.’ He laughed again, but this time it was bitter. ‘We emptied it and called that success. Fucking unbelievable.’

  With that he reached down to Setoc.

  She hesitated. ‘Torrent, where will you ride from here?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It didn’t before. But I believe it does now.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not for you—I see nothing of the path awaiting you. No. For me. For the ghosts I have brought to this world. I am not yet quit of them. Their journey remains incomplete.’

  He lowered his hand and studied her in the gloom. ‘You hold yourself responsible for their fate.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I will miss you, I think.’

  ‘Hold a moment,’ said Cafal, ‘both of you. Setoc, you cannot wander off all alone—’

  ‘Have no fear,’ she cut in, ‘for I will accompany you.’

  ‘But I must return to my people.’

  ‘Yes.’ But she would say no more. She was home to a thousand hearts, and that blood still ran sizzling like acid in her soul.

  ‘I shall run at a pace you cannot hope to match—’

  Setoc laughed. ‘Let us play this game, Cafal. When you catch up to me, we shall rest.’ She turned to Torrent. ‘I shall miss you as well, warrior, last of the Awl. Tell me, of all the women who hunted you, was there one you would have let snare Torrent of the Awl?’

  ‘None other than you, Setoc . . . in about five years from now.’

  Flashing a bright smile at Cafal, she set off, fleet as a hare.

  The Barghast grunted. ‘She cannot maintain such a pace for long.’

  Torrent gathered his reins. ‘The wolves howl for her, Warlock. Chase her down, if you can.’

  Cafal eyed the warrior. ‘Your last words to her,’ he said in a low voice, and then shook his head. ‘No matter, I should not have asked.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Torrent replied.

  He watched Cafal find his loping jog, long legs taking him swiftly into Setoc’s wake.

  The city seethed. Unseen armies struggled against the ravages of decay, gathered in unimaginable numbers to wage pitched battles with neglect. Leaderless and desperate, legions massing barely a mote of dust sent out scouts ranging far from the well-travelled tracks, into the narrowest of capillaries threading senseless stone. One such scout found a Sleeper, curled and motionless—almost lifeless—in a long abandoned rest chamber in the beneath-the-floor level of Feed. A drone, forgotten, mind so somnolent that the Shi’gal Assassin that had last stalked Kalse Rooted had not sensed its presence, thus sparing it from the slaughter that had drenched so many other levels.

  The scout summoned kin and in a short time a hundred thousand soldiers swarmed the drone, forming sheets of glistening oil upon its scaled hide, seeping potent nectars into the creature’s body.

  A drone was a paltry construct, difficult to work with, an appalling challenge to physically transform, to awaken with the necessary intelligence required to take command. A hundred thousand quickly became a million, and then a hundred million, soldiers dying once used up, hastily devoured by kin that then birthed anew, in new shapes with altered functions.

  The drone’s original purpose had been as an excretor, producing an array of flavours to feed newborn Ve’Gath to increase muscle mass and bone density. It was fed in turn by armies serving the Matron as they delivered her commands—but this Matron had been late in the breeding of Ve’Gath. She had produced fewer than three hundred before the enemy manifested and battle was joined. The drone, therefore, was far from exhausted. This potential alone gave purpose to the efforts of the unseen armies, but the desperation belonged to another cause—exotic flavours now marred Kalse Rooted. Strangers had invaded and had thus far proved insensible to all efforts at conjoining.

  At long last the drone stirred. Two newborn eyes opened, seven distinct lids peeling back in each one, and a mind that had known only darkness—for excretors had no need for sight—suddenly looked upon a realm both familiar and unknown. Old senses merged with the new ones, quickly reconfiguring the world. Lids flickered up and down, constructing an ever more complete comprehension—heat, current, charge, composition—and many more, few of which the ghost understood beyond vague, almost formless notions.

  The ghost, who did not even know his own name, had been drawn away from his mortal companions, swept along on currents that none of them could sense—currents that defied his own efforts at description. In helpless frustration, he settled upon the familiar concepts of armies, legions, scouts, battles and war, though he knew that none of these was correct. Even to attribute life to such minuscule entities was quite probably wrong; and yet they conveyed meaning to him, or perhaps he was simply capable of stealing knowledge from the clamouring host of instructions that raced through all of Kalse Rooted in a humming buzz too faint for mortal ears.

  And now he found himself looking down upon a drone, a K’Chain Che’Malle unlike any he had ever seen before. No taller than a grown male human, thin-limbed, with a mass of tentacles instead of fingers at the ends of those arms. The broad head bulged behind the eyes, and at the base of the skull. The slash of a mouth was that of a lizard, lined with multiple rows of fine, sharp fangs. The colour of the two large, oversized eyes was a soft brown.

  He watched it twitch for a time, knowing the creature was simply exploring the extent of its transformation, unfurling its ungainly limbs, turning its head from side to side in rapid flickers as it caught new and strange flavours. He saw then its growing agitation, its fear.

  The smell of unknown invaders. The drone was able to gather, enclose and then discard the information that belonged to feral orthen and grishol; and this permitted it to isolate the location of the invaders. Alive, yes. Distant, discordant sounds, multiple breaths, soft feet on the floor, fingers brushing mechanisms.

  The flavours the drone had once fed to Ve’Gath were now turned upon itself. In time, it would increase in size and strength. If the strangers had not departed by then, the drone would have to kill them.

  The ghost struggled against panic. He could not warn them. This creature, so flush now with necessities and enormous tasks—the great war against the deterioration of Kalse Rooted, the ghost assumed—could not but see the clumsy explorations of Taxilian, Rautos and the others as a threat. To be eradicated.

  The drone, named Sulkit—this being a name derived from birth-month and status, indeed a name once shared by two hundred identical drones—now rose on its hind limbs, thin, prehensile tail slithering across the floor. Oils dripped from its slate-grey hide, pooled and then quickly vanished as the unseen army, emboldened, purified and enlivened by the commander it had itself created, dispersed to renew its war.

  And the ghost withdrew, raced back to his companions.

  ‘If this was a mind,’ said Taxilian, ‘it has died.’ He ran his hand along the sleek carapace, frowning at the ribbons of flexible, clear glass rippling
out from the iron dome. Was something flowing through that glass? He could not be certain.

  Rautos rubbed his chin. ‘Truly, I do not see how you can tell,’ he said.

  ‘There should be heat, vibration. Something.’

  ‘Why?’

  Taxilian scowled. ‘Because that would tell us it’s working.’

  Breath barked a laugh behind them. ‘Does a knife talk? Does a shield drum? You’ve lost your mind, Taxilian. A city only lives when people are in it, and even then it’s the people doing the living, not the city.’

  In the chamber they had just left, Sheb and Nappet bickered as they cleared rubbish from the floor, making room for everyone to sleep. They had climbed level after level and, even now, still more waited above them. But everyone was exhausted. A dozen levels below, Last had managed to kill a nest of orthen, which he had skinned and gutted, and he was now arranging the six scrawny carcasses on skewers, while off to one side bhederin dung burned in a stone quern, the fire’s heat slowly driving back the chilly, lifeless air. Asane was preparing herbs to feed into a tin pot filled with fresh water.

  Bewildered, the ghost drifted among them.

  Breath strode back into the chamber, eyes scanning the floor. ‘Time,’ she said, ‘for a casting of the Tiles.’

  Anticipation fluttered through the ghost, or perhaps it was terror. He felt himself drawn closer, staring avidly as she drew out her collection of Tiles. Polished bone? Ivory? Glazed clay? All kinds, he realized, shifting before his eyes.

  Breath whispered, ‘See? Still young. So much, so much to decide.’ She licked her lips, her hands twitching.

  The others drew closer, barring Taxilian who had remained in the other room.

  ‘I don’t recognize none of them,’ said Sheb.

  ‘Because they’re new,’ snapped Breath. ‘The old ones are dead. Useless. These’—she gestured—‘they belong to us, just us. For now. And the time has come to give them their names.’ She raked them together in a clatter, scooped them up and held the Tiles in the enclosed bowl of her hands.

  The ghost could see her flushed face, the sudden colour making her skin almost translucent, so that he could discern the faint cage of bones beneath. He saw her pulse through the finest vessels in her flesh, the rush and swish of blood in their eager circuit. He saw the sweat beading on her high brow, and the creatures swimming within it.

  ‘First,’ she said, ‘I need to remake some old ones. Give them new faces. The names may sound like ones you’ve heard before, but these are new anyway.’

  ‘How?’ demanded Sheb, still scowling. ‘How are they new?’

  ‘They just are.’ She sent the Tiles on to the floor. ‘No Holds, you see? Each one is unaligned, all of them are unaligned. That’s the first difference.’ She pointed. ‘Chance—Knuckles—but see how it’s at war with itself? That’s the truth of Chance right there. Fortune and Misfortune are mortal enemies. And that one: Rule—no throne, thrones are too obvious.’ She flipped that Tile. ‘And Ambition on the other side—they kill each other, you see?’ She began flipping more Tiles. ‘Life and Death, Light and Dark, Fire and Water, Air and Stone. Those are the old ones, remade.’ She swept those aside, leaving three remaining Tiles. ‘These are the most potent. Fury, and on its opposite side, Starwheel. Fury is just what it says. Blind, a destroyer of everything. Starwheel, that’s Time, but unravelled—’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Rautos asked, his voice strangely tight, his face pale.

  Breath shrugged. ‘Before and after are meaningless. Ahead and behind, then and soon, none of them mean anything. All those words that try to force order and, uh, sequence.’ She shrugged again. ‘You won’t see Starwheel in the castings. You’ll just see Fury.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Her smile was chilling. ‘I just do.’ She pointed at the second to last Tile. ‘Root, and on the other side, Ice Haunt—they both seek the same thing. You get one or the other, never both. This last one, Blueiron there, that’s the sorcery that gives life to machines—it’s still strong in this place, I can feel it.’ She turned the Tile on to its other side. ‘Oblivion. Ware this one, it’s a curse. A demon. It eats you from the inside out. Your memories, your self.’ She licked her lips once more, this time nervously. ‘It’s very strong right now. And getting stronger . . . someone’s coming, someone’s coming to find us.’ She hissed suddenly and swept up the last Tiles. ‘We need—we need to feed Blueiron. Feed it!’

  Taxilian spoke from the doorway. ‘I know, Breath. It is what I am trying to do.’

  She faced him, teeth bared. ‘Can you taste this place?’

  ‘I can.’

  From one side Asane whimpered, and then flinched as Nappet lashed out a foot to kick her. He would have done more but Last interposed himself between the two, arms crossed, eyes flat. Nappet sneered and turned away.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Rautos. ‘I taste nothing—nothing but dust.’

  ‘It wants our help,’ Taxilian announced.

  Breath nodded.

  ‘Only I don’t know how.’

  Breath held up a knife. ‘Open your flesh. Let the taste inside, Taxilian. Let it inside.’

  Was this madness, or the only path to salvation? The ghost did not know. But he sensed a new flavour in the air. Excitement? Hunger? He could not be certain.

  But Sulkit was on its way. Still gaunt, still weak. On its way, then, not to deliver slaughter.

  The flavour, the ghost realized, was hope.

  ______

  Some roads, once set out upon, reveal no possible path but forward. Every other track is blocked by snarls of thorns, steaming fissures or rearing walls of stone. What waits at the far end of the forward path is unknown, and since knowledge itself may prove a curse, the best course is simply to place one foot in front of the other, and think not at all of fate or the cruel currents of destiny.

  The seven or eight thousand refugees trudging in Twilight’s wake were content with ignorance, even as darkness closed in as inexorable as a tide, even as the world to either side of the Road of Gallan seemed to lose all substance, fragments drifting away like discarded memories. Linked one to another by ropes, strands of netting, torn strips of cloth and hide—exhausted but still alive, far from terrible flames and coils of smoke—they need only follow their Queen.

  Most faith was born of desperation, Yan Tovis understood that much. Let them see her bold, sure strides on this stony road. Let them believe she had walked this path before, or that by virtue of noble birth and title, she was cloaked with warm, comforting knowledge of the journey they had all begun, this flowing river of blood. My blood.

  She would give them that comfort. And hold tight to the truth that was her growing terror, her surges of panic that left her undergarments soaked with chill sweat, her heart pounding like the hoofs of a fleeing horse—no, they would see none of that. Nothing to drive stark fear into them, lest in blind horror the human river spill out, pushed off the road, and in screams of agony find itself shredded apart by the cold claws of oblivion.

  No, best they know nothing.

  She was lost. The notion of finding a way off this road, of returning to their own world, now struck her as pathetically naïve. Her blood had created a gate, and now its power was thinning; with each step she grew weaker, mind wandering as if stained with fever, and even the babble of Pully and Skwish behind her was drifting away—their wonder, their pleasure at the gifts of Twilight’s blood had grown too bitter to bear.

  Old hags no longer. Youth snatched back, the sloughing away of wrinkles, dread aches, frail bones—the last two witches of the Shake danced and sung as if snake-bitten, too filled with life to even take note of the dissolution closing in on all sides, nor their Queen’s slowing pace, her drunken weaving on the road. They were too busy drinking her sweet blood.

  Forward. Just walk. Yedan warned you, but you were too proud to listen. You thought only of your shame. Your brother, Witchslayer. And, do not forget, your guilt. At the brutal reprieve
he gave you. His perfect, logical solution to all of your problems.

  The Watch is as he must be. Yet see how you hated his strength—but it was nothing more than hating your own weakness. Nothing more than that.

  Walk, Yan Tovis. It’s all you need do—

  With the sound of a sundered sail, the world tore itself wide open. The road dropped from beneath the two witches, then thundered and cracked like a massive spine as it slammed down atop rolling hills. Dust shot skyward, and sudden sunlight blazed down with blinding fire.

  Pully staggered to where Twilight had collapsed, seeing the spatters of blood brown and dull on the road’s cracked, broken surface. ‘Skwish, y’damned fool! We was drunk! Drunk on ’er an now ye look!’

  Skwish dragged herself loose from the half-dozen Shake who had tumbled into her. ‘Oh’s we in turble now—this anna Gallan! It’s the unnerside a Gallan! The unnerside! Iz she yor an dead, Pully? Iz she?’

  ‘Nearby, Skwish, nearby—she went on too long—we shoulda paid attention. Kept an eye on ’er.’

  ‘Get ’er back, Pully! We can’t be ’ere. We can’t!’

  As the two now young women knelt by Yan Tovis, the mass of refugees was embroiled in its own chaotic recovery. Broken limbs, scattered bundles of possessions, panicked beasts. The hills flanking the road were denuded, studded with sharp outcrops. Not a tree in sight. Through the haze of dust, now drifting on the wind, the sky was cloudless—and there were three suns.

  Yedan Derryg scanned his troop of soldiers, was satisfied that none had suffered more than bruises and scrapes. ‘Sergeant, attend to the wounded—and stay on the road—no one is to leave it.’

  ‘Sir.’

  He then set out, picking his way round huddled refugees—wide-eyed islanders silent with fear, heads lifting and turning to track his passage. Yedan found the two captains, Pithy and Brevity, directing one of their makeshift squads in the righting of a toppled cart.

  ‘Captains, pass on the command for everyone to stay on the road—not a single step off it, understood?’