Two of these cultists numbered among Apsalar’s targets for assassination. She memorized the other names, in case the opportunity arose.
The second, third and fourth tablets contained lists of contacts made in the past week, with notes and observations that made it plain that Mebra had been busy weaving his usual web of extortion among a host of dim-witted victims. Merchants, soldiers, amorous wives, thieves and thugs.
The fifth tablet proved interesting.
Sribin, my most trusted agent, has confirmed it. The outlawed Gral, Taralack Veed, was in Ehrlitan one month past. Truly a man to be feared, the most secret dagger of the Nameless Ones. This only reinforces my suspicion that they have done something, an unleashing of some ancient, terrible demon. Even as the Khundryl wanderer said, and so it was no lie, that harrowing tale of the barrow and the fleeing dragon. A hunt has begun. Yet, who is the prey? And what role has Taralack Veed in all this? Oh, the name alone, scribed here in damp clay, fills my bones with ice. Dessimbelackis curse the Nameless Ones. They never play fair.
‘How much longer are you going to do that?’ Curdle demanded beside her.
Ignoring the shade, Apsalar continued working her way through the tablets, now seeking the name of Taralack Veed. The ghosts wandered about, sniffing every now and then at the two unconscious Pardu, slipping outside occasionally then returning, muttering in some unknown language.
There were thirty-three tablets in the pit, and as she removed the last one, she noted something odd about the pit’s base. She brought the lantern closer. Shattered pieces of dried clay. Fragments of writing in Mebra’s hand. ‘He destroys them,’ she said under her breath. ‘Periodically.’ She studied the last tablet in her hand. It was dustier by far than all the others, the script more faded by wear. ‘But he saved this one.’ Another list. Only, in this one she recognized names. Apsalar began reading aloud: ‘Duiker has finally freed Heboric Light Touch. Plan ruined by the rebellion, and Heboric lost. Coltaine marches with his refugees, yet there are vipers among the Malazans. Kalam Mehkar sent to Sha’ik, the Red Blades following. Kalam will deliver the Book into Sha’ik’s hands. The Red Blades will kill the bitch. I am well pleased.’ The next few lines had been carved into the clay after it had hardened, the script looking ragged and hurried. ‘Heboric is with Sha’ik. Known now as Ghost Hands, and in those hands is the power to destroy us all. This entire world. And none can stop him.’
Written in terror and panic. Yet… Apsalar glanced over at the other tablets. Something must have happened to have eased his mind. Was Heboric now dead? She did not know. Had someone else stumbled on the man’s trail, someone aware of the threat? And how in Hood’s name had Heboric – a minor historian of Unta – ended up in Sha’ik’s company?
Clearly the Red Blades had failed in their assassination attempt. After all, the Adjunct Tavore had killed the woman, hadn’t she? In front of ten thousand witnesses.
‘This woman is waking up.’
She looked over at Telorast. The shade was hovering over the Pardu guard lying near the entrance. ‘All right,’ Apsalar said, pushing the heap of tablets back into the pit and replacing the stone. ‘We’re leaving.’
‘Finally! It’s almost light outside!’
‘No causeway?’
‘Nothing but ruin, Not-Apsalar. Oh, this place looks too much like home.’
Curdle hissed. ‘Quiet, Telorast, you idiot! We don’t talk about that, remember?’
‘Sorry.’
‘When we reach my room,’ Apsalar said, ‘I want you two to tell me about that throne.’
‘She remembered.’
‘I don’t,’ Curdle said.
‘Me neither,’ Telorast said. ‘Throne? What throne?’
Apsalar studied the two ghosts, the faintly luminous eyes peering up at her. ‘Oh, never mind.’
The Falah’d was a head shorter than Samar Dev – and she was of barely average height – and he likely weighed less than would one of her legs cut clean away at the hip. An unpleasant image, she allowed, but one frighteningly close to reality. A fierce infection had set in the broken bones and it had taken four witches to draw the malign presence out. That had been the night before and she still felt weak and light-headed, and standing here in this blistering sun wasn’t helping.
However short and slight the Falah’d was, he worked hard at presenting a noble, imposing figure, perched there atop his long-legged white mare. Alas, the beast was trembling beneath him, flinching every time Karsa Orlong’s Jhag stallion tossed its head and rolled its eyes menacingly in the mare’s direction. The Falah’d gripped the saddle horn with both hands, his thin dark lips pinched and a certain timidity in his eyes. His ornate, jewel-studded telaba was dishevelled, and the round, silken and padded hat on his head was askew as he looked on the one known to all as Toblakai, once-champion of Sha’ik. Who, standing beside his horse, was still able, had he so chosen, to look down on the ruler of Ugarat.
Fifty palace guards accompanied the Falah’d, none of them – nor their mounts – at ease.
Toblakai was studying the massive edifice known as Moraval Keep. An entire flat-topped mesa had been carved hollow, the rock walls shaped into imposing fortifications. A deep, steep-walled moat surrounded the keep. Moranth munitions or sorcery had destroyed the stone bridge spanning it, and the doors beyond, battered and scorched, were of solid iron. A few scattered windows were visible, high up and unadorned, each sealed by iron doors barbed with angled arrow-slits.
The besieging encampment was squalid, a few hundred soldiers sitting or standing near cookfires and looking on with vaguely jaded interest. Off to one side, just north of the narrow road, sprawled a rough cemetery of a hundred or so makeshift, shin-high wooden platforms, each holding a cloth-wrapped corpse.
Toblakai finally turned to the Falah’d. ‘When last was a Malazan seen at the battlements?’
The young ruler started, then scowled. ‘I am to be addressed,’ he said in his piping voice, ‘in a manner due my authority as Holy Falah’d of Ugarat—’
‘When?’ Toblakai demanded, his expression darkening.
‘Well, uh, well – Captain Inashan, answer this barbarian!’
With a quick salute, the captain walked over to the soldiers in the encampment. Samar watched him speaking with a half-dozen besiegers, saw the various shrugs in answer to his question, saw Inashan’s back straighten and heard his voice get louder. The soldiers started arguing amongst themselves.
Toblakai made a grunting sound. He pointed at his horse. ‘Stay here, Havok. Kill nothing.’ Then the warrior strode to the edge of the moat.
Samar Dev hesitated, then followed.
He glanced at her when she stopped at his side. ‘I will assault this keep alone, witch.’
‘You certainly will,’ she replied. ‘I’m just here for a closer look.’
‘I doubt there will be much to see.’
‘What are you planning, Toblakai?’
‘I am Karsa Orlong, of the Teblor. You know my name and you will use it. To Sha’ik I was Toblakai. She is dead. To Leoman of the Flails, I was Toblakai, and he is as good as dead. To the rebels I was—’
‘All right, I understand. Only dead or nearly dead people called you Toblakai, but you should know, it is only that name that has kept you from rotting out the rest of your life in the palace pits.’
‘That pup on the white horse is a fool. I could break him under one arm—’
‘Yes, that likely would break him. And his army?’
‘More fools. I am done speaking, witch. Witness.’
And so she did.
Karsa clambered down into the moat. Rubble, broken weapons, siege-stones and withered bodies. Lizards scampered on the rocks, capemoths rising like pale leaves caught in an updraught. He made his way to a point directly beneath the two massive iron doors. Even with his height he could barely reach the narrow ledge at their base. He scanned the wreckage of the bridge around him, then began piling stones, choosing the larger fragments and f
ashioning rough steps.
Some time later he was satisfied. Drawing his sword, he climbed the steps, and found himself at the same level as the broad, riveted locking mechanism. Raising his stone sword in both hands, he set the point in the join, in front of where he judged the lock to be. He waited a moment, until the position of his arms and the angle of the blade was set in his mind, then he lifted the sword away, edged back as far as he could on the makeshift platform of rubble, drew the weapon back, and swung.
The blow was true, the unbreakable chalcedony edge driving into the join between the doors. Momentum ceased with a snapping sound as the blade jammed in an unseen, solid iron bar, the reverberations pounding through Karsa’s arms and into his shoulders.
He grunted, waited until the pain ebbed, then tugged the weapon free in a screech of metal. And took aim once again.
He both felt and heard the crack of the bar.
Karsa pulled the sword loose then threw his shoulder against the doors.
Something fell with a loud clang, and the door on the right swung back.
On the other side of the moat, Samar Dev stared. She had just witnessed something… extraordinary.
Captain Inashan came up alongside her. ‘The Seven Holies protect us,’ he whispered. ‘He just cut through an iron door.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘We need…’
She glanced over. ‘We need what, Captain?’
‘We need to get him out of Ugarat. Away, as soon as possible.’
Darkness in the funnel within – angled walls, chutes and arrow-slits. Some mechanism had lowered the arched ceiling and narrowed the walls – he could see that they were suspended, perhaps a finger’s width from contact with each other and with the paved floor. Twenty murderous paces to an inner gate, and that gate was ajar.
Karsa listened but heard nothing. The air smelled rank, bitter. He squinted at the arrow-slits. They were dark, the hidden chambers to either side unlit.
Readying the sword in his hands, Karsa Orlong entered the keep.
No hot sand from the chutes, no arrows darting out from the slits, no boiling oil. He reached the gate. A courtyard beyond, one third sharply bathed in white sunlight. He strode forward until he was past the gate and then looked up. The rock had been hollowed out indeed – above was a rectangle of blue sky, the fiery sun filling one corner. The walls on all four sides were tiered with fortified landings and balconies, countless windows. He could make out doorways on those balconies, some yawning black, others closed. Karsa counted twenty-two levels on the wall opposite him, eighteen on the one to his left, seventeen to the right, and behind him – the outer wall – twelve in the centre flanked by projections each holding six more. The keep was a veritable city.
And, it seemed, lifeless.
A gaping pit, hidden in the shadow in one corner of the courtyard, caught his attention. Pavestones lifted clear and piled to the sides, an excavated shaft of some sort, reaching down into the foundations. He walked over.
The excavators had cleared the heavy pavestones to reach what looked to be bedrock but had proved to be little more than a cap of stone, perhaps half an arm’s length thick, covering a hollowed-out subterranean chamber. That stank.
A wooden ladder led down into the vault.
A makeshift cesspit, he suspected, since the besiegers had likely blocked the out-drains into the moat, in the hopes of fostering plague or some such thing. The stench certainly suggested that it had been used as a latrine. Then again, why the ladder? ‘These Malazans have odd interests,’ he muttered. In his hands he could feel a tension building in the stone sword – the bound spirits of Bairoth Gild and Delum Thord were suddenly restive. ‘Or a chance discovery,’ he added. ‘Is this what you warn me of, kindred spirits?’
He eyed the ladder. ‘Well, as you say, brothers, I have climbed into worse.’ Karsa sheathed his sword and began his descent.
Excrement smeared the walls, but not, fortunately, the rungs of the ladder. He made his way past the broken shell of stone, and what little clean air drifted down from above was overwhelmed by a thick, pungent reek. There was more to it than human waste, however. Something else…
Reaching the floor of the chamber, Karsa waited, ankle-deep in shit and pools of piss, for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Eventually, he could make out the walls, rounded, the stones bearing horizontal undulations but otherwise unadorned. A beehive tomb, then, but not in a style Karsa had seen before. Too large, for one thing, and there was no evidence of platforms or sarcophagi. No grave-goods, no inscriptions.
He could see no formal entranceway or door revealed on any of the walls. Sloshing through the sewage for a closer look at the stonework, Karsa almost stumbled as he stepped off an unseen ledge – he had been standing on a slightly raised dais, extending almost out to the base of the walls. Back-stepping, he edged carefully along its circumference. In the process he discovered six submerged iron spikes, driven deep into the stone in two sets of three. The spikes were massive, thicker across than Karsa’s wrists.
He made his way back to the centre, stood near the base of the ladder. Were he to lie down with the middle spike of either set under his head, he could not have reached the outer ones with arms outstretched. Half again as tall and he might manage it. Thus, if something had been pinned here by these spikes, it had been huge.
And, unfortunately, it looked as if the spikes had failed—
A slight motion through the heavy, turgid air, a shadowing of the faint light leaking down. Karsa reached for his sword.
An enormous hand closed on his back, a talon lancing into each shoulder, two beneath his ribs, one larger one stabbing down and around, just under his left clavicle. The fingers clenched and he was being hauled straight up, the ladder passing in a blur. The sword was pinned against his back. Karsa reached up with both hands and they closed about a scaled wrist thicker than his upper arm.
He cleared the hole in the capstone, and the tugs and tearing in his muscles told him the beast was clambering up the side of the pit, nimble as a bhok’aral. Something heavy and scaled slithered across his arms.
Then into bright sunlight.
The beast flung the Teblor across the courtyard. He landed hard, skidding until he crashed up against the keep’s outer wall.
Spitting blood, every bone in his back feeling out of place, Karsa Orlong pushed himself to his feet, reeled until he could lean against the sun-heated stone.
Standing beside the pit was a reptilian monstrosity, two-legged, the hanging arms oversized and overlong, talons scraping the pavestones. It was tailed, but that tail was stunted and thick. The broad-snouted jaws were crowded with interlocking rows of dagger-long fangs, above them flaring cheekbones and brow-ridges protecting deep-set eyes that glistened like wet stones on a strand. A serrated crest bisected the flat, elongated skull, pale yellow above the dun green hide. The beast reared half again as tall as the Toblakai.
Motionless as a statue, it studied him, blood dripping from the talons of its left hand.
Karsa took a deep breath, then drew his sword and flung it aside.
The creature’s head twitched, a strange sideways tilt, then it charged, leaning far over as the massive legs propelled it forward.
And Karsa launched himself straight at it.
Clearly, an unanticipated response, as he found himself inside those raking hands and beneath the snapping jaws. He flung his head straight up, cracking hard against the underside of the beast’s jaw, then ducked back down, sliding his right arm between the legs, wrapping it about the creature’s right one. Shoulder pounding into its belly, his hands closing tight on the other side of the captured leg. Then lifting, a bellow escaping him as he heaved the beast up until it tottered on one leg.
The taloned hands hammered down on his back, slicing through the bear fur, ravaging his flesh in a frenzy.
Karsa planted his right leg behind the beast’s left one, then pushed hard in that direction.
It crashed down and he
heard bones snap.
The short tail whipped round, struck him in his midsection. Air exploded from Karsa’s four lungs, and once more he was spinning through the air, striking the pavestones and leaving most of the skin of his right shoulder and hip on the hard stone as he skidded another four paces—
Over the edge of the pit. Down, cracking hard against one edge of the capstone, breaking it further, then landing face first in the pool of sewage in the tomb, rubble splashing on all sides.
He lifted himself, twisting into a half-seated position, spitting out foul fluids even as he tried to draw air into his lungs. Coughing, choking, he crawled towards one side of the tomb, away from the hole in the ceiling.
Moments later he managed to restore his breathing. Shaking the muck from his head, he peered at the shaft of sunlight reaching down around the ladder. The beast had not come after him… or had not seen him fall.
He rose and made his way to the ladder. Looked straight up, and saw nothing but sunlight.
Karsa climbed. As he drew level with the pit’s edge, he slowed, then lifted himself until he could just see the courtyard. The creature was nowhere in sight. He clambered quickly onto the pavestones. Spitting again, he shook himself, then made his way towards the keep’s inner entrance. Hearing no screams from beyond the moat, he assumed that the beast had not gone in that direction. Which left the keep itself.
The double doors were ajar. He entered a broad chamber, its floor tiled, the walls bearing the ghosts of long-faded murals.
Pieces of mangled armour and bits of blood-crusted clothing lay scattered about. Nearby stood a boot, twin bones jutting from it.
Directly opposite, twenty paces away, was another doorway, both doors battered down and smashed. Karsa padded towards it, then froze upon hearing the scrape of claws on tile in the gloom beyond. From his left, close by the entrance. He backed up ten paces, then sprinted forward. Through the doorway. Hands slashed down in his wake, and he heard a frustrated hiss – even as he collided with a low divan, propelling him forward, down onto a low table. The wooden legs exploded beneath his weight. He rolled onward, sending a high-backed chair cartwheeling, then sliding on a rug, the thump and click of the creature’s clawed feet grew louder as it lunged in pursuit.
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