Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Unlike Tiam,’ Ampelas said, ‘when we’re killed we stay dead.’

  ‘Which brings me to what I truly need to understand. The Elder Gods. They are not simply of one world, are they?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And how long have they been around?’

  ‘Even when Darkness ruled alone,’ Ampelas replied, ‘there were elemental forces. Moving unseen until the coming of Light. Bound only to their own laws. It is the nature of Darkness that it but rules itself.’

  ‘And is the Crippled God an Elder?’

  Silence.

  Cotillion found he was holding his breath. He had taken a twisted path to this question, and had made discoveries along the way – so much to think about, in fact, that his mind was numb, besieged by all that he had learned. ‘I need to know,’ he said in a slow release of his breath.

  ‘Why?’ Edgewalker asked.

  ‘If he is,’ Cotillion said, ‘then another question follows. How does one kill an elemental force?’

  ‘You would shatter the balance?’

  ‘It’s already been shattered, Edgewalker! That god was brought down to the surface of a world. And chained. His power torn apart and secreted in minuscule, virtually lifeless warrens, but all of them linked to the world I came from—’

  ‘Too bad for that world,’ Ampelas said.

  The smug disregard in that reply stung Cotillion. He breathed deep and remained silent, until the anger passed, then he faced the dragons again. ‘And from that world, Ampelas, he is poisoning the warrens. Every warren. Are you capable of fighting that?’

  ‘Were we freed—’

  ‘Were you freed,’ Cotillion said, with a hard smile, ‘you would resume your original purpose, and there would be more draconean blood spilled in the Realm of Shadow.’

  ‘And you and your fellow usurper believe you are capable of that?’

  ‘You as much as admitted it,’ Cotillion said. ‘You can be killed, and when you have been killed, you stay dead. It is no wonder Anomandaris chained the three of you. In obstinate stupidity you have no equals—’

  ‘A sundered realm is the weakest realm of all! Why do you think the Crippled God is working through it?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Cotillion to Ampelas in a quiet tone. ‘That is what I needed to know.’ He turned away and began walking back down the approach.

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘We will speak again, Ampelas,’ he said over a shoulder, ‘before it all goes to the Abyss.’

  Edgewalker followed.

  As soon as they were clear of the ring of stones, the creature spoke: ‘I must chide myself. I have underestimated you, Cotillion.’

  ‘It’s a common enough mistake.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘Why should I tell you?’

  Edgewalker did not immediately reply. They continued down the slope, strode out onto the plain. ‘You should tell me,’ the apparition finally said, ‘because I might be inclined to give you assistance.’

  ‘That would mean more to me if I knew who – what – you are.’

  ‘You may consider me… an elemental force.’

  A dull chill seeped through Cotillion. ‘I see. All right, Edgewalker. It appears that the Crippled God has launched an offensive on multiple fronts. The First Throne of the T’lan Imass and the Throne of Shadow are the ones that concern us the most, for obvious reasons. In these two, we feel we are fighting alone – we cannot even rely upon the Hounds, given the mastery the Tiste Edur seem to hold over them. We need allies, Edgewalker, and we need them now.’

  ‘You have just walked away from three such allies—’

  ‘Allies who won’t rip our heads off once the threat’s been negated.’

  ‘Ah, there is that. Very well, Cotillion, I will give the matter some consideration.’

  ‘Take your time.’

  ‘That seems a contrary notion.’

  ‘If one is lacking a grasp of sarcasm, I imagine it does at that.’

  ‘You do interest me, Cotillion. And that is a rare thing.’

  ‘I know. You have existed longer…’ Cotillion’s words died away. An elemental force. I guess he has at that. Dammit.

  There were so many ways of seeing this dreadful need, the vast conspiracy of motivations from which all shades and casts of morality could be culled, that Mappo Runt was left feeling overwhelmed, from which only sorrow streamed down, pure and chilled, into his thoughts. Beneath the coarse skin of his hands, he could feel the night’s memory slowly fading from the stone, and soon this rock would know the assault of the sun’s heat – this pitted, root-tracked underbelly that had not faced the sun in countless millennia.

  He had been turning over stones. Six since dawn. Roughly chiselled dolomite slabs, and beneath each one he had found a scatter of broken bones. Small bones, fossilized, and though in countless pieces after the interminable crushing weight of the stone, the skeleton’s were, as far as Mappo could determine, complete.

  There were, had been, and would always be, all manner of wars. He knew that, in all the seared, scar-hardened places in his soul, so there was no shock in his discovery of these long-dead Jaghut children. And horror had run a mercifully swift passage through his thoughts, leaving at the last his old friend, sorrow.

  Streaming down, pure and chilled.

  Wars in which soldier fought soldier, sorceror clashed with sorceror. Assassins squared off, knife-blades flickering in the night. Wars in which the lawful battled the wilfully unlawful; in which the sane stood against the sociopath. He had seen crystals growing up in a single night from the desert floor, facet after facet revealed like the petals of an opening flower, and it seemed to him that brutality behaved in a like manner. One incident leading to another, until a conflagration burgeoned, swallowing everyone in its path.

  Mappo lifted his hands from the slab’s exposed underside and slowly straightened. To look over at his companion, still wading the warm shallows of the Raraku Sea. Like a child unfolding to a new, unexpected pleasure. Splashing about, running his hands through the reeds that had appeared as if remembered into existence by the sea itself.

  Icarium.

  My crystal.

  When the conflagration consumed children, then the distinction between the sane and the sociopath ceased to exist. It was his flaw, he well knew, to yearn to seek the truth of every side, to comprehend the myriad justifications for committing the most brutal crimes. Imass had been enslaved by deceitful Jaghut tyrants, led down paths of false worship, made to do unspeakable things. Until they had uncovered the deceivers. Unleashing vengeance, first against the tyrants, then against all Jaghut. And so the crystal grew, facet after facet…

  Until this… He glanced down once more upon the child’s bones. Pinned beneath dolomite slabs. Not limestone, for dolomite provided a good surface for carving glyphs, and though soft, it absorbed power, making it slower to erode than raw limestone, and so it held those glyphs, faded and soft-edged after all these thousands of years to be sure, but discernible still.

  The power of those wards persisted, long after the creature imprisoned by them had died.

  Dolomite was said to hold memories. A belief among Mappo’s own people, at least, who in their wanderings had encountered such Imass edifices, the impromptu tombs, the sacred circles, the sight-stones on hill summits – encountered, and then studiously avoided. For the hauntings in these places was a palpable thing.

  Or so we managed to convince ourselves.

  He sat here, on the edge of Raraku Sea, in the place of an ancient crime, and beyond what his own thoughts conjured, there was nothing. The stone he had set his hands upon seemed possessed of the shortest of memories. The cold of darkness, the heat of the sun. That, and nothing more.

  The shortest of memories.

  Splashing, and Icarium was striding up onto the shoreline, his eyes bright with pleasure. ‘Such a worthy boon, yes, Mappo? I am enlivened by these waters. Oh, why will you not swim and so be blessed by Rarak
u’s gift?’

  Mappo smiled. ‘Said blessing would quickly wash off this old hide, my friend. I fear the gift would be wasted, and so will not risk disappointing the awakened spirits.’

  ‘I feel,’ Icarium said, ‘as if the quest begins anew. I will finally discover the truth. Who I am. All that I have done. I will discover, too,’ he added as he approached, ‘the reason for your friendship – that you should always be found at my side, though I lose myself again and again. Ah, I fear I have offended you – no, please, do not look so glum. It is only that I cannot understand why you have sacrificed yourself so. As far as friendships go, this must be a most frustrating one for you.’

  ‘No, Icarium, there is no sacrifice involved. Nor frustration. This is what we are, and this is what we do. That is all.’

  Icarium sighed and turned to look out over the new sea. ‘If only I could be as restful of thought as you, Mappo…’

  ‘Children have died here.’

  The Jhag swung round, his green eyes studying the ground behind the Trell. ‘I saw you pitching rocks. Yes, I see them. Who were they?’

  Some nightmare the night before had scoured away Icarium’s memories. This had been happening more often of late. Troubling. And… crushing. ‘Jaghut. From the wars with the T’lan Imass.’

  ‘A terrible thing to have done,’ Icarium said. The sun was fast drying the water beaded on his hairless, green-grey skin. ‘How is it that mortals can be so cavalier with life? Look at this freshwater sea, Mappo. The new shoreline burgeons with sudden life. Birds, and insects, and all the new plants, there is so much joy revealed, my friend, that my heart feels moments from bursting.’

  ‘Infinite wars,’ Mappo said. ‘Life’s struggles, each trying to push the other aside, and so win out.’

  ‘You are grim company this morning, Mappo.’

  ‘Aye, I am at that. I am sorry, Icarium.’

  ‘Shall we remain here for a time?’

  Mappo studied his friend. Bereft of his upper garments, he looked more savage, more barbaric than usual. The dye with which he had disguised the colour of his skin had mostly faded away. ‘As you like. This journey is yours, after all.’

  ‘Knowledge is returning,’ Icarium said, eyes still on the sea. ‘Raraku’s gift. We were witness to the rise of the waters, here on this west shore. Further west, then, there will be a river, and many cities—’

  Mappo’s gaze narrowed. ‘Only one, now, to speak of,’ he said.

  ‘Only one?’

  ‘The others died thousands of years ago, Icarium.’

  ‘N’karaphal? Trebur? Inath’an Merusin? Gone?’

  ‘Inath’an Merusin is now called Mersin. It is the last of the great cities lining the river.’

  ‘But there were so many, Mappo. I recall all their names. Vinith, Hedori Kwil, Tramara…’

  ‘All practising intensive irrigation, drawing the river’s waters out onto the plains. All clearing forests to build their ships. Those cities are dead now, my friend. And the river, its waters once so clear and sweet, is now heavy with silts and much diminished. The plains have lost their topsoil, becoming the Lato Odhan to the east of the Mersin River, and Ugarat Odhan to the west.’

  Icarium slowly raised his hands, set them against his temples, and closed his eyes. ‘That long, Mappo?’ he asked in a frail whisper.

  ‘Perhaps the sea has triggered such memories. For it was indeed a sea back then, freshwater for the most part, although there was seepage through the limestone escarpment from Longshan Bay – that vast barrier was rotting through, as it will do again, I imagine, assuming this sea reaches as far north as it once did.’

  ‘The First Empire?’

  ‘It was falling even then. There was no recovery.’ Mappo hesitated, seeing how his words had wounded his friend. ‘But the people returned to this land, Icarium. Seven Cities – yes, the name derives from old remembrances. New cities have grown from the ancient rubble. We are only forty leagues from one right now. Lato Revae. It is on the coast—’

  Icarium turned away suddenly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not yet ready to leave, to cross any oceans. This land holds secrets – my secrets, Mappo. Perhaps the antiquity of my memories will prove advantageous. The lands of my mindscape are the lands of my own past, after all, and they might well yield truths. We shall walk those ancient roads.’

  The Trell nodded. ‘I will break camp, then.’

  ‘Trebur.’

  Mappo turned, waited with growing dread.

  Icarium’s eyes were fixed on him now, the vertical pupils narrowed to black slivers by the bright sunlight. ‘I have memories of Trebur. I spent time there, in the City of Domes. I did something. An important thing.’ He frowned. ‘I did… something.’

  ‘It is an arduous journey ahead of us, then,’ Mappo said. ‘Three, maybe four days to the edge of the Thalas Mountains. Ten more at the least to reach the Mersin River’s Wend. The channel has moved from the site of ancient Trebur. A day’s travel west of the river, then, and we will find those ruins.’

  ‘Will there be villages and such on our route?’

  Mappo shook his head. ‘These Odhans are virtually lifeless now, Icarium. Occasionally, Vedanik tribes venture down from the Thalas Mountains, but not at this time of year. Keep your bow at the ready – there are antelope and hares and drolig.’

  ‘Waterholes, then?’

  ‘I know them,’ Mappo said.

  Icarium walked over to his gear. ‘We have done this before, haven’t we?’

  Yes. ‘Not for a long while, my friend.’ Almost eighty years, in fact. But the last time, we stumbled onto it – you remembered nothing. This time, I fear, it will be different.

  Icarium paused, the horn-rimmed bow in his hands, and looked over at Mappo. ‘You are so patient with me,’ he said, with a faint, sad smile, ‘whilst I wander, ever lost.’

  Mappo shrugged. ‘It is what we do.’

  The Path’Apur Mountains rimmed the far horizon to the south. It had been almost a week since they had left the city of Pan’potsun, and with each day the number of villages they passed through had dwindled, whilst the distance between them lengthened. Their pace was torturously slow, but that was to be expected, travelling on foot as they did, and with a man in their company who had seemingly lost his mind.

  Sun-darkened skin almost olive beneath the dust, the demon Greyfrog clambered onto the boulder and squatted at Cutter’s side.

  ‘Declaration. It is said that the wasps of the desert guard gems and such. Query. Has Cutter heard such tales? Anticipatory pause.’

  ‘Sounds more like someone’s bad idea of a joke,’ Cutter replied. Below them was a flat clearing surrounded by massive rock outcroppings. It was the place of their camp. Scillara and Felisin Younger sat in view, tending the makeshift hearth. The madman was nowhere to be seen. Off wandering again, Cutter surmised. Holding conversations with ghosts, or, perhaps more likely, the voices in his head. Oh, Heboric carried curses, the barbs of a tiger on his skin, the benediction of a god of war, and those voices in his head might well be real. Even so, break a man’s spirit enough times…

  ‘Belated observation. Grubs, there in the dark reaches of the nest. Nest? Bemused. Hive? Nest.’

  Frowning, Cutter glanced over at the demon. Its flat, hairless head and broad, four-eyed face were lumpy and swollen with wasp stings. ‘You didn’t. You did.’

  ‘Irate is their common state, I now believe. Breaking open their cave made them more so. We clashed in buzzing disagreement. I fared the worse, I think.’

  ‘Black wasps?’

  ‘Tilt head, query. Black? Dreaded reply, why yes, they were. Black. Rhetorical, was that significant?’

  ‘Be glad you’re a demon,’ Cutter said. ‘Two or three stings from those will kill a grown man. Ten will kill a horse.’

  ‘A horse – we had those – you had them. I was forced to run. Horse. Large four-legged animal. Succulent meat.’

  ‘People tend to ride them,’ Cutter said. ‘Until they dro
p, then we eat them.’

  ‘Multiple uses, excellent and unwasteful. Did we eat yours? Where can we find more such creatures?’

  ‘We have not the money to purchase them, Greyfrog. And we sold ours for food and supplies in Pan’potsun.’

  ‘Obstinate reasonableness. No money. Then we should take, my young friend. And so hasten this journey to its much-awaited conclusion. Latter tone indicating mild despair.’

  ‘Still no word from L’oric?’

  ‘Worriedly. No. My brother is silent.’

  Neither spoke for a time. The demon was picking the serrated edges of its lips, where, Cutter saw upon a closer look, grey flecks and crushed wasps were snagged. Greyfrog had eaten the wasp nest. No wonder the wasps had been irate. Cutter rubbed at his face. He needed a shave. And a bath. And clean, new clothes.

  And a purpose in life. Once, long ago, when he had been Crokus Younghand of Darujhistan, his uncle had begun preparing the way for a reformed Crokus. A youth of the noble courts, a figure of promise, a figure inviting to the young, wealthy, pampered women of the city. A shortlived ambition, in every way. His uncle dead, and dead, too, Crokus Younghand. No heap of ashes left to stir.

  What I was is not what I am. Two men, identical faces, but different eyes. In what they have seen, in what they reflect upon the world.

  ‘Bitter taste,’ Greyfrog said in his mind, long tongue slithering out to collect the last fragments. A heavy, gusty sigh. ‘Yet oh so filling. Query. Can one burst from what one has inside?’

  I hope not. ‘We’d best find Heboric, if we are to make use of this day.’

  ‘Noted earlier. Ghost Hands was exploring the rocks above. The scent of a trail led him onward and upward.’

  ‘A trail?’

  ‘Water. He sought the source of the spring we see pooling below near the fleshy women who, said jealously, so adore you.’

  Cutter straightened. ‘They don’t seem so fleshy to me, Greyfrog.’

  ‘Curious. Mounds of flesh, water storage vessels, there on the hips and behind. On the chest—’

  ‘All right. That kind of fleshy. You are too much the carnivore, demon.’