Familiar. Apsalar searched her memory, her mind rushing down one false trail after another. Familiar… yet not.
With a faint smile on his clean-shaven, handsome face, he stepped forward and held up both hands. ‘I’m not sure which name you go by now. You were little more than a child – was it only a few years ago? Hard to believe.’
Her heart was thudding hard against her chest, and she wondered at the sensation within her. Fear? Yes, but more than that. Guilt. Shame. She cleared her throat. ‘I have named myself Apsalar.’
A quick nod. Recognition, then his expression slowly changed. ‘You do not remember me, do you?’
‘Yes. No, I’m not sure. I should – I know that much.’
‘Difficult times, back then,’ he said, lowering his hands, but slowly, as if unsure how he would be received as he said, ‘Ganoes Paran.’
She drew off her gloves, driven by the need to be doing something, and ran the back of her right hand across her brow, was shocked to see it come away wet, the sweat beading, trickling, suddenly cold on her skin. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I might ask you the same. I suggest we retire to my cabin. There is wine. Food.’ He smiled again. ‘In fact, I am sitting there right now.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘It seems you have come into some power, Ganoes Paran.’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
She followed him to the cabin. As he closed the door behind her, his form faded, and she heard movement from the other side of the map-table. Turning, she saw a far less substantial Ganoes Paran. He was pouring wine, and when he spoke the words seemed to come from a vast distance. ‘You had best emerge from your warren now, Apsalar.’
She did so, and for the first time felt the solid wood beneath her, the pitch and sway of a ship at sea.
‘Sit,’ Paran said, gesturing. ‘Drink. There’s bread, cheese, salted fish.’
‘How did you sense my presence?’ she asked, settling into the bolted-down chair nearest her. ‘I was travelling through a forest—’
‘A Tiste Edur forest, yes. Apsalar, I don’t know where to begin. There is a Master of the Deck of Dragons, and you are sharing a bottle of wine with him. Seven months ago I was living in Darujhistan, in the Finnest House, in fact, with two eternally sleeping house-guests and a Jaghut manservant… although he’d likely kill me if he heard that word ascribed to him. Raest is not the most pleasant company.’
‘Darujhistan,’ she murmured, looking away, the glass of wine forgotten in her hand. Whatever confidence she felt she had gained since her time there was crumbling away, assailed by a swarm of disconnected, chaotic memories. Blood, blood on her hands, again and again. ‘I still do not understand…’
‘We are in a war,’ Paran said. ‘Oddly enough, there was something one of my sisters once said to me, when we were young, pitching toy armies against each other. To win a war you must come to know all the players. All of them. Living ones, who will face you across the field. Dead ones, whose legends are wielded like weapons, or held like eternally beating hearts. Hidden players, inanimate players – the land itself, or the sea, if you will. Forests, hills, mountains, rivers. Currents both seen and unseen – no, Tavore didn’t say all that; she was far more succinct, but it’s taken me a long time to fully understand. It’s not “know your enemy”. That’s simplistic and facile. No, it’s “know your enemies”. There’s a big difference, Apsalar, because one of your enemies could be the face in the silver mirror.’
‘Yet now you call them players, rather than enemies,’ she said. ‘Suggesting to me a certain shift in perspective – what comes, yes, of being the Master of the Deck of Dragons?’
‘Huh, I hadn’t thought about that. Players. Enemies. Is there a difference?’
‘The former implies… manipulation.’
‘And you would understand that well.’
‘Yes.’
‘Does Cotillion haunt you still?’
‘Yes, but not as… intimately.’
‘And now you are one of his chosen servants, an agent of Shadow. An assassin, just like the assassin you once were.’
She levelled her gaze on him. ‘What is your point?’
‘I’m not sure. I’m just trying to find my feet, regarding you, and whatever mission you are on right now.’
‘If you want details of that, best speak with Cotillion yourself.’
‘I am considering it.’
‘Is that why you have crossed an ocean, Ganoes Paran?’
‘No. As I said, we are at war. I was not idle in Darujhistan, or in the weeks before Coral. I was discovering the players… and among them, true enemies.’
‘Of you?’
‘Of peace.’
‘I trust you will kill them all.’
He seemed to wince, looked down at the wine in his glass. ‘For a short time, Apsalar, you were innocent. Naïve, even.’
‘Between the possession of a god and my awakening to certain memories.’
‘I was wondering, who created in you such cynicism?’
‘Cynicism? You speak of peace, yet twice you have told me we are at war. You have spent months learning the lie of the battle to come. But I suspect that even you do not comprehend the vastness of the coming conflict, the conflict we are in right now.’
‘You are right. Which is why I wanted to speak with you.’
‘It may be we are on different sides, Ganoes Paran.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think so.’
She said nothing.
Paran refilled their glasses. ‘The pantheon is splitting asunder. The Crippled God is finding allies.’
‘Why?’
‘What? Well… I don’t really know. Compassion?’
‘And is that something the Crippled God has earned?’
‘I don’t know that, either.’
‘Months of study?’ Her brows rose.
He laughed, a response that greatly relieved her.
‘You are likely correct,’ she said. ‘We are not enemies.’
‘By “we” I take it you include Shadowthrone and Cotillion.’
‘As much as is possible, which isn’t as much as I would like. None can fathom Shadowthrone’s mind. Not even Cotillion, I suspect. Certainly not me. But he has shown… restraint.’
‘Yes, he has. Quite surprising, if you think about it.’
‘For Shadowthrone, the pondering of the field of battle has consumed years, maybe decades.’
He grunted, a sour expression on his face. ‘Good point.’
‘What role do you possess, Paran? What role are you seeking to play?’
‘I have sanctioned the Crippled God. A place in the Deck of Dragons. A House of Chains.’
She considered for a time, then nodded. ‘I can see the reason in that. All right, what has brought you to Seven Cities?’
He stared at her, then shook his head. ‘A decision I chewed on for what seemed forever, and you grasp my motives in an instant. Fine. I am here to counter an enemy. To remove a threat. Only, I am afraid I will not get there in time, in which case I will clean up the mess as best I can, before moving on—’
‘To Quon Tali.’
‘How – how did you know that?’
She reached for the brick of cheese, produced a knife from her sleeve and sliced off a piece. ‘Ganoes Paran, we are going to have a rather long conversation now. But first, where do you plan to make landfall?’
‘Kansu.’
‘Good, this will make my journey quicker. Two minuscule companions of mine are even now clambering onto the deck, having ascended via the trees. They will any moment begin hunting rats and other vermin, which should occupy them for some time. As for you and me, let us settle to this meal.’
He slowly leaned back in his chair. ‘We will reach port in two days. Something tells me those two days will fly past like a gull in a gale.’
For me as well, Ganoes Paran.
Ancient memories whispered through Dejim Nebrahl, old stone walls lit red with reflect
ed fire, the cascade of smoke down streets filled with the dead and the dying, the luscious flow of blood in the gutters. Oh, there was a grandness to the First Empire, that first, rough flowering of humanity. The T’rolbarahl were, in Dejim’s mind, the culmination of truly human traits, blended with the strength of beasts. Savagery, the inclination towards vicious cruelty, the cunning of a predator that draws no boundaries and would sooner destroy one of its own kind than another. Feeding the spirit on the torn flesh of children. That stunning exercise of intelligence that could justify any action, no matter how abhorrent.
Mated with talons, dagger-long teeth and the D’ivers gift of becoming many from one… we should have survived, we should have ruled. We were born masters and all humanity were rightly our slaves. If only Dessimbelackis had not betrayed us. His own children.
Well, even among T’rolbarahl, Dejim Nebrahl was supreme. A creation beyond even the First Emperor’s most dread nightmare. Domination, subjugation, the rise of a new empire, this is what awaited Dejim, and oh how he would feed. Bloated, sated by human blood. He would make the new, fledgling gods kneel before him.
Once his task was complete, the world awaited him. No matter its ignorance, its blind disregard. That would all change, so terribly change.
Dejim’s quarry neared, drawn ever so subtly onto this deadly track. Not long now.
The seashell vest glimmered white in the morning light. Karsa Orlong had drawn it from his pack to replace the shredded remnants of the padded leather he had worn earlier. He sat on his tall, lean horse, the blood-spattered, stitched white fur cloak sweeping down from his broad shoulders. Bare-headed, with a lone, thick braid hanging down the right side of his chest, the dark hair knotted with fetishes: finger bones, strips of gold-threaded silk, bestial canines. A row of withered human ears was sewn onto his belt. The huge flint sword was strapped diagonally across his back. Two bone-handled daggers, each as long and broad-bladed as a short sword, were sheathed in the high moccasins that reached to just below his knees.
Samar Dev studied the Toblakai a moment longer, gaze lifting to fix on his tattooed face. The warrior was facing west, his expression unreadable. She turned back to check the tethers of the packhorses once more, then drew herself up and into the saddle. She settled the toes of her boots into the stirrups and gathered the reins. ‘Contrivances,’ she said, ‘that require no food or water, that do not tire or grow lame, imagine the freedom of such a world as that would bring, Karsa Orlong.’
The eyes he set upon her were those of a barbarian, revealing suspicion and a certain animal wariness. ‘People would go everywhere. What freedom in a smaller world, witch?’
Smaller? ‘You do not understand—’
‘The sound of this city is an offence to peace,’ Karsa Orlong said. ‘We leave it, now.’
She glanced back at the palace gate, closed with thirty soldiers guarding it. Hands restless near weapons. ‘The Falah’d seems disinclined for a formal leavetaking. So be it.’
The Toblakai in the lead, they met few obstacles passing through the city, reaching the west gate before the morning’s tenth bell. Initially discomforted by the attention they received from virtually every citizen, on the street and at windows of flanking buildings, Samar Dev had begun to see the allure of notoriety by the time they rode past the silent guards at the gate, enough to offer one of the soldiers a broad smile and a parting wave with one gloved hand.
The road they found themselves on was not one of the impressive Malazan feats of engineering linking the major cities, for the direction they had chosen led… nowhere. West, into the Jhag Odhan, the ancient plains that defied the farmer’s plough, the mythical conspiracy of land, rain and wind spirits, content only with the deep-rooted natural grasses, eager to wither every planted crop to blackened stalks, the soil blown into the sky. One could tame such land for a generation or two, but in the end the Odhan would reclaim its wild mien, fit for naught but bhederin, jackrabbits, wolves and antelope.
Westward, then, for a half-dozen or so days. Whereupon they would come to a long-dead river-bed wending northwestward, the valley sides cut and gnawed by the seasonal run-off from countless centuries past, gnarled now with sage brush and cacti and grey-oaks. Dark hills on the horizon where the sun set, a sacred place, the oldest maps noted, of some tribe so long extinct their name meant nothing.
Out onto the battered road, then, the city falling away behind them. After a time, Karsa glanced back and bared his teeth at her. ‘Listen. That is better, yes?’
‘I hear only the wind.’
‘Better than ten thousand tireless contrivances.’
He turned back, leaving Samar to mull on his words. Inventions cast moral shadows, she well knew, better than most, in fact. But… could simple convenience prove so perniciously evil? The action of doing things, laborious things, repetitive things, such actions invited ritual, and with ritual came meaning that expanded beyond the accomplishment of the deed itself. From such ritual self-identity emerged, and with it self-worth. Even so, to make life easier must possess some inherent value, mustn’t it?
Easier. Nothing earned, the language of recompense fading away until as lost as that ancient tribe’s cherished tongue. Worth diminished, value transformed into arbitrariness, oh gods below, and I was so bold as to speak of freedom! She kicked her horse forward until she came alongside the Toblakai. ‘But is that all? Karsa Orlong! I ask you, is that all?’
‘Among my people,’ he said after a moment, ‘the day is filled, as is the night.’
‘With what? Weaving baskets, trapping fish, sharpening swords, training horses, cooking, eating, sewing, fucking—’
‘Telling stories, mocking fools who do and say foolish things, yes, all that. You must have visited there, then?’
‘I have not.’
A faint smile, then gone. ‘There are things to do. And, always, witch, ways of cheating them. But no-one truly in their lives is naïve.’
‘Truly in their lives?’
‘Exulting in the moment, witch, does not require wild dancing.’
‘And so, without those rituals…’
‘The young warriors go looking for war.’
‘As you must have done.’
Another two hundred paces passed before he said, ‘Three of us, we came to deliver death and blood. Yoked like oxen, we were, to glory. To great deeds and the heavy shackles of vows. We went hunting children, Samar Dev.’
‘Children?’
He grimaced. ‘Your kind. The small creatures who breed like maggots in rotting meat. We sought – no, I sought – to cleanse the world of you and your kin. You, the cutters of forests, the breakers of earth, the binders of freedom. I was a young warrior, looking for war.’
She studied the escaped slave tattoo on his face. ‘You found more than you bargained for.’
‘I know all about small worlds. I was born in one.’
‘So, experience has now tempered your zeal,’ she said, nodding. ‘No longer out to cleanse the world of humanity.’
He glanced across and down at her. ‘I did not say that.’
‘Oh. Hard to manage, I would imagine, for a lone warrior, even a Toblakai warrior. What happened to your companions?’
‘Dead. Yes, it is as you say. A lone warrior cannot slay a hundred thousand enemies, even if they are children.’
‘A hundred thousand? Oh, Karsa, that’s barely the population of two Holy Cities. Your enemy does not number in the hundreds of thousands, it numbers in the tens of millions.’
‘That many?’
‘Are you reconsidering?’
He shook his head slowly, clearly amused. ‘Samar Dev, even tens of millions can die, one city at a time.’
‘You will need an army.’
‘I have an army. It awaits my return.’
Toblakai. An army of Toblakai, now that would be a sight to loosen the bladder of the Empress herself. ‘Needless to say, Karsa Orlong, I hope you never make it home.’
‘Hope as you lik
e, Samar Dev. I shall do what needs doing in my own time. None can stop me.’
A statement, not a boast. The witch shivered in the heat.
They approached a range of cliffs marking the Turul’a Escarpment, the sheer face of the limestone pocked with countless caves. Cutter watched Heboric Ghost Hands urge his mount into a canter, drawing ahead, then reining in sharply, the reins cutting into his wrists, a flare of greenish fire blossoming at his hands.
‘Now what?’ the Daru asked under his breath.
Greyfrog bounded forward and halted at the old man’s side.
‘They sense something,’ Felisin Younger said behind Cutter. ‘Greyfrog says the Destriant is suddenly fevered, a return of the jade poison.’
‘The what?’
‘Jade poison, the demon says. I don’t know.’
Cutter looked at Scillara, who rode at his side, head lowered, almost sleeping in the saddle. She’s getting fat. Gods, on the meals we cook? Incredible.
‘His madness returns,’ Felisin said, her voice fearful. ‘Cutter, I don’t like this—’
‘The road cuts through, there.’ He pointed. ‘You can see the notch, beside that tree. We’ll camp just up ahead, at the base, and make the climb tomorrow.’
Cutter in the lead, they rode forward until they reached Heboric Ghost Hands. The Destriant was glaring at the cliff rearing before them, muttering and shaking his head. ‘Heboric?’
A quick, fevered glance. ‘This is the war,’ he said. Green flames flickered across his barbed hands. ‘The old belong to the ways of blood. The new proclaim their own justice.’ The old man’s toadlike face stretched into a ghastly-grimace. ‘These two cannot – cannot – be reconciled. It is so simple, do you see? So simple.’
‘No,’ Cutter replied, scowling. ‘I do not see. What war are you talking about? The Malazans?’
‘The Chained One, perhaps he was once of the old kind. Perhaps, yes, he was that. But now, now he is sanctioned. He is of the pantheon. He is new. But then, what are we? Are we of the blood? Or do we bow to the justice of kings, queens, emperors and empresses? Tell me, Daru, is justice written in blood?’
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