The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  If there could be one god, with one voice, this is the sound it would make – to stop us in our endless madness.

  But look on, Withal. See the truth. We do not listen.

  He made his way past these exhausted and wounded comrades, pushed his way into the heaving mass. The stench rocked him. Abattoir, sewer, cutter’s floor. Thick enough to choke him. He struggled against vomiting – here inside this helm – no, he would not do that. Could not.

  Faces now, on all sides. None speaking, and the look in their eyes was flat, flatter than anything he’d ever seen. And they were all straining towards the front line, moving up to take their places, to fill the gaps, the unending gaps, as if to say If you will kill us all, kill me next. But do not think it will be easy.

  Suddenly, he felt ready for this. Walk until something bars your path. Then stand, until you fall. Whoever said life was complicated?

  The channels and currents had carried him to the left flank, well away from that immovable knot at the centre, where a sword’s laughter had taken for itself all the Shore’s madness, every last scrap of it.

  He saw Brevity, though at first he did not recognize her – that solid, handsome face, the wry look in her eyes, all gone. In their place a mask of wet blood over dried blood, over blood that had turned into black tar. A slash had opened one cheek, revealing two rows of red molars. There was nothing sardonic left, but she commanded that front line, her will clenched like a fist.

  Off her shield side, two Shake fell and three Liosan pushed in to widen the gap.

  Eyes widening at the perfect, breathtaking simplicity of what was needed of him, Withal surged to meet them.

  This was something new. Yan Tovis could feel it. Yedan Derryg had advanced the line to the very edge of the breach, and there they had held against the Liosan. This time there was to be no foothold. He would refuse them a single step upon the strand.

  He had explained nothing, and as she fought, crowded hard against that wound – from which Liosan poured like blood – she began to realize that, this time, there would be no respite, not until one side or the other fell, to the very last soldier. What had begun would not end until the last sword swung down, or sank deep in writhing flesh.

  How had he known? What had he done on the other side of the gate? What had he seen?

  She caught glimpses of her brother, there, where the terrifying pealing laughter went on and on, where blood fountained, where Liosan bodies piled ever higher and they stood on them, fighting for balance, face to face, weapons flashing. Glimpses. A face she barely knew, so twisted was it, the Hust sword dragging him past exhaustion, past all reason of what the human body could withstand. Of his face, she could see the white bones beneath translucent flesh, could see all the veins and arteries and the root-mat of vessels, could see the bloody tears that streamed down from his eyes.

  Night had come to the Shake. The sand had measured the time, in a kind of stillness, a kind of silence that was beneath all this, and the grains slipped down, and now had come the eternity just before dawn, the time of the Watch. He stood. He fought, his stance wide to find purchase on a hill of bodies.

  See him. In the eternity before dawn. When among mortals courage is at its weakest, when fear sinks talons on the threshold and will not let go. When one awakens to such loneliness as to twist a moan from the chest. But then…you feel it, breath catching. You feel it. You are not alone.

  The Watch stands guard.

  They would not break, would not yield – all those who stood now with him. Instead, at his sides they died, and died.

  She was a thing of ash and blood, moulded into something vaguely human-shaped, tempered by the crushed bone of her ancestors, and she fought on, because her brother would not yield, because the very border that was Lightfall, and the wound, had now become the place where it would be decided.

  And still the Liosan came, lunging wild-eyed from the swirling chaos – most did not even have time to react, to make sense of the nightmare world into which they had just stumbled, before a pike plunged into them, or a sword lashed down. And so they died, there on that threshold, fouling those who came after them.

  She had no idea how many of her people were left, and a vision that had come upon her a century ago, maybe longer, of Yedan Derryg standing alone before the breach, the very last to fall, now returned to her, not as some dreadful imagining, but as prophetic truth.

  And all because I would not kneel to the Shore.

  There was no dragon challenging the breach. If one came, she now would not hesitate. She would fling herself down, trusting in Yedan to kill the damned thing, trusting in the power of her own blood to claim that dying creature, hold it fast, grasp hold of its blood and lift it, higher, yet higher, to make a wall, to seal this gate.

  Why did I wait? Why did I resist?

  Why did I believe my freedom was worth anything? Why did I imagine that I had the right to choose my destiny? Or choose to deny it?

  Only the defeated kneel. Only slaves, the ones who surrender their lives – into the hands of others.

  But now… I would do it. To save my people, this pitiful remnant. Come to me now, my child-witches. See me kneel. Bleed me out. I am ready.

  A Liosan fell to her sword, on to his knees before her, as if mocking her sudden desire, and over his head she saw her brother – saw him turn, saw him find her. Their gazes locked.

  Yan Tovis loosed a sob, and then nodded.

  Yedan Deryyg threw out his arms to the sides. Roared, ‘Back! Ten paces!’

  And hail welcome to the dragon.

  She watched Spinnock Durav enter the throne room yet again, and wondered at the absence of his smile. That face did not welcome solemn regard, wore it like an ill-fitting mask. Made it lined where it should be smooth, made the eyes flinch when he looked up to meet the gaze of the one seated on this throne.

  He smelled of burnt wood, as if he had dragged the death of a forest behind him, and now the smoke swirled round his legs, his kneeling form, like serpents only she could see.

  ‘Highness,’ he said.

  ‘Speak to me,’ said a strained, half-broken voice, ‘on the disposition of my legions.’

  ‘Certain leaders among us,’ Spinnock replied, eyes lowering to fix on the dais, or perhaps a pair of booted feet, ‘are in their souls unleashed. ’Tis the scent upon this wind—’

  ‘If the fire draws closer, the city will burn.’

  ‘Against that conflagration, Highness, only you can stand, for it is by your will – we see that now. We see your grief, though we do not yet understand its meaning. What pact have you made with Silanah? Why does she lay waste to all the land? Why does she drive ever closer to proud Kharkanas?’

  ‘Proud?’ The word was a sneer. ‘I am now one ghost among many, and it is only ghosts who belong here. If we are to be forgotten, the city must fall. If we are to be forgiven, the city must swallow our crimes. If we are to be dust, the city must be ash. That is how to end this.’

  ‘We have journeyed long, Highness. From the Outer Marches, on a hundred hidden paths only a thief would remember. And then the violence took our leaders. The blood of Eleint.’

  ‘Cursed blood!’

  ‘Highness?’

  ‘No! It poisoned me once – you know that, Spinnock Durav! You were there!’

  He bowed his head still further. ‘I saw what was done, yes. I saw what you sought to hide away.’

  ‘I did not ask them to come back. I didn’t!’

  He lifted his gaze, tilted his head. ‘I sense…this is important. Highness. Who did you not ask to come back?’

  Hard, cold hands closed on her face. She felt them like her own, felt the long fingers like prison bars, smelled the wax of melted candles. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Hear what, Highness?’

  ‘Their screams. The dying! Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Highness, there is a distant roar. Lightfall—’

  ‘Lightfall!’ Her eyes widened but she could not speak
, could not think.

  ‘What is happening?’ he demanded.

  What is happening? Everything is happening! ‘Are they in disarray? Your troops?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Highness. They wait on Blind Gallan’s Road.’

  Blind Gallan’s Road? There was no such road. Not then. Not when Spinnock Durav came to kneel before his lord. I have lost my mind. A sudden whimper, and she shrank back in the throne. ‘Take off that mask, Spinnock Durav. You were never so old.’

  ‘Who did you ask not to come back?’

  She licked her lips. ‘She should have taken the throne. She was a true queen, you see. Of the Shake. And the Letherii, the ones she saved. I don’t belong here – I told them—’

  But Spinnock Durav was on his feet, a growing horror on his face. ‘Highness! Sandalath Drukorlat! What is that roar?’

  She stared at him. Moved her mouth to make words. Failed. Tried a second time. ‘The breach. They’ve come again – tell Anomander – tell him! No one can stop them but him! The Shake – dying. Oh, Mother bless us. DYING!’

  Her shriek echoed in the vast room. But he was already leaving. Out in the corridor now, shouting orders – but that voice, too desperate, too frantic. Not like Spinnock Durav at all.

  Lord Nimander Golit Anomandaris, firstborn of the fraught union of Son of Darkness and the First Daughter of Draconus, fell to his knees. His body trembled as he struggled against the blood of the Eleint and its terrible need, its inescapable necessity. Where was Skintick? Desra? Nenanda?

  The stones of the river bed crunched beside him, and he felt hands clutch his shoulders. ‘Resist this, Lord. We’re the last two left. Resist the call of the Eleint!’

  He lifted his head, baffled, and stared into Korlat’s ancient eyes. ‘What – who?’

  ‘She has commanded Silanah. She has summoned the Warren of Fire, and set upon the dragon the madness of her desire – do you understand? She would burn this realm to the ground!’

  Gasping, he shook his head. ‘Who sits upon the throne? Who would do this in Mother Dark’s name?’

  ‘Can you not smell the blood? Nimander? There is war – here – I don’t know who. But souls are falling, in appalling numbers. And on the Throne of Darkness sits a queen – a queen in despair.’

  He blinked. A queen? ‘Where is Apsal’ara?’

  Korlat looked across the river. ‘Into the city, Lord.’

  ‘And Spinnock?’

  ‘He has followed – to beseech the queen. To make sense of this – Nimander, listen to me. Your Soletaken kin, they have succumbed to Silanah’s power – she now commands a Storm. If we now veer, you, myself, Dathenar and Prazek – we shall be forced to fight them. In the skies above Kharkanas, we shall annihilate each other. This must not be.’

  Nimander forced himself to his feet. ‘No. Silanah. She must be stopped.’

  ‘Only the Queen can command her to stop, Nimander.’

  ‘Then…take me to her.’

  When Korlat hesitated, he studied her, eyes narrowing. ‘What is it, Korlat? Who is this Queen of Darkness?’

  ‘I fear…no matter. Go, then, Nimander. Convince her to release Silanah.’

  ‘But – where will you go?’

  ‘The war. I will go with Dathenar and Prazek. Lord, I believe I know where the battle will be found. I hope that I am wrong. But…go. Walk where your father walked.’

  How long ago was it? She could not remember. She was young. The night before she had taken a boy to her bed, to remind herself that not everything was pain. And if she later broke his heart, she’d not meant to. But this was a new day, and already the night just past seemed centuries away.

  She’d been with her brother’s hunting party. On the spoor of tenag. The day was warm, the sun bright and pleased with itself.

  They heard his laughter first, a deep thing, hinting of thunder, and they followed it down into a depression thick with chokecherry and dogwood. A figure, lying against a slope. He was Imass, like them, but they did not recognize him, and this in itself was startling. Disturbing.

  She could see at once, when she and her kin gathered close, that his wounds were fatal. It was a wonder he still lived, and an even greater wonder that he could laugh as he did, and through all the agony in his eyes, that mirth still shone when he looked up at them.

  Her brother was first to speak, because that was his way. ‘What manner of stone do you wear?’

  ‘Stone?’ the dying man replied, showing a red smile. ‘Metal, my friends. Armour. A Tel Akai gift.’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Clanless. I wandered. I came upon an army, my friends.’

  ‘There is no army.’

  ‘Jaghut. Tel Akai. Others.’

  They were silenced by this. The Jaghut were despised. Feared. But an army of Jaghut? Impossible.

  Were they now at war? Her clan? Her people? If so, then they would all die. An army of Jaghut – the words alone opened like Omtose Phellack in her soul.

  ‘I joined them,’ said the man, and then, lifting a mangled hand, he added, ‘Set no crime at my feet for that. Because, you see, I am the last left. They died. All of them. The Jaghut. The Tel Akai. The Jheck. All…dead.’

  ‘What enemy has come among us?’ her brother asked, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘None but that has always been with us, friends. Think well on my words. When you slay a beast, when you hunt as you do now, and blood is spilled. When you close upon the beast in its dying, do you not see its defiance? Its struggle to the very last moment? The legs that kick, the head that tries to lift, the blood frothing from the nostrils?’

  They nodded. They had seen. And each time they had felt something fill their hearts, choke in their throats. One needed to bite back on that. Things were as they were.

  ‘Bless the Jaghut,’ the stranger said, his head falling back. He laughed, but it was short, frail. ‘Why defy death, when you cannot help but fail? They would tell you why. No. They would show you why – if only you had the courage to see, to stand with them, to understand the true enemy of all life.’ His eyes found her, her alone, and once more he managed a smile. ‘Now I will die. I will…fail. But I beg of you,’ and his eyes glistened, and she saw that they were beautiful eyes, especially now, ‘a kiss. Many a woman cursed me in my youth. Even as they loved me. It was…glorious.’

  She saw the life draining from those eyes, and so she leaned forward, to catch its leaving. With a soft kiss. His breath was of blood. His lips were cracked, but they were warm.

  She held that kiss, as that warmth left. Held it, to give him as much of her as she could.

  Her brother pulled her away, held her in his arms the way he used to, when she was much younger, when she was not so guarded with her own body.

  They took the armour, before leaving his body to the wild. And she claimed that armour for her own. For that kiss.

  And now, she wanted it back. Hissing in frustration, Apsal’ara scanned the empty chamber. She was far beneath the ground floor of the palace. She was where they’d put her armour and her mace, the first time she’d been captured in their midst. They’d been amused by her – it was always that way, as if Kharkanas held nothing worth stealing, as if the very idea of theft was too absurd to countenance.

  But someone had stolen her armour!

  Seething with outrage and indignation, she set out in search of it.

  All reason had left the face of their lord. Froth foamed the corners of his mouth as he screamed his rage, driving the ranks into the maw of the gate, and it was indeed a maw – Aparal Forge could see the truth of that. The fangs descended again and again. They chewed his people to bloody shreds and splintered bones. And this was an appetite without end.

  They could not push past, not a single damned step – denying the legions a foothold, a place into which their Soletaken masters could come, could veer and, in veering, at last shatter the opposition.

  The commander on the other side had anticipated them. Somehow, he had
known the precise moment at which to modify his tactics.

  Aparal watched the mangled bodies being pulled from the swirling maelstrom of the gate, watched the way those bodies floundered like wreckage, bobbing on human hands and shoulders, out to the deep trenches already heaped high with the dead. Apart from the elite companies, hardly any soldiers remained. This iron mouth has devoured the population of an entire city. Look well, my Soletaken kin, and ask yourself: whom will you lord it over now? Who will serve you in your estates? Who will raise the food, who will serve it, who will make your fine clothes, who will clean your shit-buckets?

  None of this was real. Not any more. And all the ordered precision of existence was now in shambles, a bloodied mess. There was nothing to discuss, no arguments to fling back and forth, no pauses in time to step back and study old tapestries on the walls and pray for the guidance of heroic ancestors.

  Saranas was destroyed, and when this was done it would be as empty, as filled with ghosts, as Kharkanas. Light finds the face of Darkness, and lo, it is its own. Is this not what you wanted, Kadagar? But, when you finally possess what you wanted, who, O Lord of Ghosts, who will sweep the floors?

  And now, at last, the elite ranks were pushing up against the gate – all the fodder had been used up. Now, then, arrived the final battle.

  Aparal made his way down to where the wounded were being left, abandoned, alongside the trenches. The chorus of their cries was horrible beyond measure – to enter this place was an invitation to madness, and he almost welcomed that possibility. He pushed past the staggering, dead-eyed cutters and healers, searching until he found one man, sitting cradling the stump of his left arm, the severed end of which trailed wisps of smoke. A man not screaming, not weeping, not yet reduced to a piteous wretch.