The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire)

by Ian C. Esslemont

  While they played their game of bones the guards tossed back shots of the spirits, gasping as it seared their throats. Temper silently cursed them for amateur fools, the most useless hands out of a bad lot. Of course there was no way Ash would’ve spared good men for this duty; he needed everyone he could muster for whatever lay ahead. Fists clenched on the table, Temper could stand the inaction no longer and called out to them across the room: ‘You don’t really expect Ash to come back, do you?’

  Coop gaped at him.

  All four guards turned, their eyes glistening through the brazier’s hanging smoke.

  ‘Shut your Hood-cursed mouth.’

  ‘Been paid already have you?’

  The youngest jerked up from the table. Another pulled him down, growled, ‘Shut that mouth or I’ll pin your tongue to your jaw.’

  Temper grimaced into the haze. He was almost disappointed he hadn’t goaded them into action. At least then it would all be over, one way or another. Waiting was not his strength. Fifty more heartbeats and he’d charge them. That bottle would do well as a weapon. He had to get moving; he wasn’t even sure where Ash and his gang were headed.

  Coop’s boot nudged his. Temper glanced over. The innkeeper, pale-faced and goggle-eyed, stared down at the floor. Temper followed his gaze. Fog, like the advancing lip of a tide, covered the stone floor in a layer no thicker than a thumb’s width. It was welling up from behind the small pantry door. That dark stairwell down into cold cellars no one ever enters. Soliel’s Mercy! Never mind the storm outside: what was gathering right here around them now?

  Faro suddenly jerked upright, making Coop yelp. His eyes, clear and aware, made Temper glance away; they opened onto depths far greater than those of any cellar. Faro murmured to Trenech, ‘Shtol eg’nah lemal.’

  It was a language Temper had never heard before, though it reminded him somewhat of Old Talian. But Trenech understood. His eyes snapped to the front of the room.

  The young guard jumped to his feet. ‘Shut that old—’ A hound’s roar tore through the air of the common room, exploding from just outside the door. The guards froze, glanced to the door then each other. Their eyes gleamed wide in the firelight. A scream sounded then, a man’s cry of utter horror and hopelessness, ending in sobs even as the guards erupted from their chairs. Weapons scraped from sheaths and the guards whispered among themselves, then the oldest of them edged to the door. His free hand hovered at the latch.

  ‘Bell?’ he called. ‘Bell? You there?’

  The latch ground as he opened it. He pulled the door towards him and looked out. A cold wind blew in, whipped flames and sent the clouds of smoke and fog swirling. Temper heard rain hissing down.

  The guard shouted up the stairwell. ‘Bell? Theo?’

  A sigh from across the table brought Temper’s attention around. Faro murmured to Trenech, ‘Soon, my friend. Very soon.’ The man now spoke thickly accented Talian.

  Trenech nodded. They ignored Temper and Coop, who sat, eyes bulging, the rag pressed into his mouth.

  From across the room, the youth came snarling to the table, his knife out. His pale face glistened with sweat. He waved the knife first at Trenech, then Temper, but when they didn’t flinch he turned his attention to Faro. To get at him he’d have to reach in past Trenech, and Temper could see he was unwilling. The knife shook in his hand. He quivered with nerves, frustration and fear. This, knew Temper, was the moment a man could snap.

  ‘You shut him up or by the Gods I swear I’ll kill the bastard. I will!’

  Temper nodded. Trenech and Faro acted as if no one had spoken.

  ‘Eli!’ the older guard called. ‘Eli, get back over here, damn you!’

  Hunching, the youth edged away, his boots scraping the floor. The door was eased closed and the four conferred. It sounded to Temper as if they were arguing over just who would go outside to check on their companions.

  The low fire in the massive hearth guttered then, and went out. No one said a word. The braziers and low torches now supplied the only light, dim and smoky-yellow. The fire hadn’t been blown out or smothered. Rather it seemed to Temper as if the flames had been sucked back down into the very stone itself. A damp cold bit at his ankles. There was sorcery gathering as of a slow summoning, an upwelling like the pressure behind a geyser. Temper had felt its like on a hundred battlefields; soon it would burst.

  Low under his breath, Temper hissed to Faro, ‘Stop it. No sense making things worse.’

  The old man blinked his rheumy eyes as if he were fluttering on his own knife-edge. ‘Things,’ he announced, ‘will become much worse if you do not leave this place at once.’

  Temper gaped and pushed himself back from the table. What was the old man up to?

  Eli had heard. ‘That’s damn well it!’ he shouted, and came marching across the room.

  Temper shot an appeal for help to the other three guards. They looked on with lazy indifference. None moved to help.

  Eli waved the knife. ‘Get out of the damned booth.’ Faro didn’t even seem aware of the threat. He stared off into space.

  ‘Come on,’ said Temper, trying to sound reasonable, ‘the old man’s booze-addled.’

  The blade swung to him. ‘You,’ breathed Eli, his eyes dilated, ‘can shut the Abyss up.’

  Temper said nothing. At first he’d been hopeful, seeing that no veteran had remained behind. Now he wished one was here. Any veteran of Imperial engagements, marine or otherwise, would smell the danger, the oddness, the charged atmosphere. It reeked of the Warrens; of sorcery. And all any poor foot soldier could do in the face of that was run for cover.

  Faro broke the stalemate. He announced, unbidden, ‘You have all been warned.’

  Eli lunged into the booth but Trenech’s hand grabbed his arm. He gave a sharp twist and Temper heard the snap of bones, then Coop’s scream. Trenech released the arm and Eli straightened, gaping at the ragged end of bone poking out from the meat of his forearm. He threw his head back and loosed a shriek that ended when Trenech chopped a hand across his throat. A lash of hot blood droplets whipped across the booth as he toppled backwards.

  Coop screamed again but Temper clamped a hand over the brewer’s mouth. He held himself motionless, staring into Faro’s glazed eyes.

  A stunned pause, then the trample of boots as the three remaining guards rushed Trenech. Curses, a hoarse yell, a crash as a body slammed into one of the heavy oak tables. Then silence. It had lasted barely an instant.

  Coop struggled in Temper’s grip then froze. Faro was staring across the table. His lips climbed into a satisfied smile. Temper released Coop, who lay his head on the table, whimpering.

  ‘Leave now,’ Faro said. ‘Shadow – and Others – come. The Heralds announce. We must be ready.’

  Temper swallowed, nodded. Coop took breath to speak but Temper covered his mouth again and edged out of the booth, dragging the man after him. Trenech stood with his back to the room, blocking the front entrance like a granite obelisk.

  Temper pulled Coop to the back door but across the floor lay all the guards, dead, crushed by blunt blows. The brewer took one look at the mangled bodies and fainted dead away.

  CHAPTER III

  The single tiny vessel struggled lost on an ocean of storm. Above, lightning lashed through a solid roof of cloud. The brazier at the boat’s mid-thwart glowed, a single beacon of orange against the night. The fisherman rowed, driving the skiff’s prow into the heaving waves. All around hail and driven rain tore the slate-grey waters, yet no spray touched the boat to hiss in the brazier or flatten the fisherman’s blowing hair. Bronze torcs gleamed at his tanned wrists and the bulk of his wool sweater hid the strength of his arms. Overhead, the roiling clouds seemed to shudder with each sweep of his oars, and every flex of his broad back. He chanted louder now, teeth clamped onto the stem of his pipe, keening into the raging wind:

  ‘Was summer I went a rowin’ with my glowing bride

  We laughed and tarried ’mid the silken pools.

/>   Prettier than the lily blossom is my love,

  She moves with grace upon the sheen.

  Her eyes are deeper than the sea,

  Her heart is warmer than all the cold, cold, sea.’

  Out amid the waves, riders broached the surface. Their opalescent armour shone silver and sapphire. They leant back then heaved jagged ice-lances. The gleaming weapons darted across the waves. As they entered the eye of calm surrounding the skiff, they burst into mist.

  From the distant south, parting a curtain of driving sleet as it came, reared a crag of deepest aquamarine and hoarfrost silver. It advanced upon the skiff with the irresistible majesty of a glacier, but the fisherman heaved upon his oars. In front of him the brazier glowed like a crimson sun. Pennants of vapour shot from the iceberg’s leading face. Shards calved away, throwing up clouds of spray.

  At the iceberg’s skirts the waves churned into a boiling froth as it drove on towards the skiff. But before it came close it sank down, sucked into the depths. The remaining emerald slick of sizzling water disappeared under a slurried web of ice.

  New figures now broached the ice-mulched sea. Deepest indigo, their scaled helms revealed only darkness within. Instead of a long lance of barbed ice, each bore short blunt wands of amethyst and olivine. These they levelled at the distant skiff. From their tips cyan lightning leaped, splitting the air, only to dissipate into nothing before the skiff’s prow. One by one the figures dived, wands held high.

  For a time the skiff was alone on the waves, rising and falling like a piece of flotsam as the fisherman rowed on. But soon more shapes appeared, pale, opalescent, diving in circles around the skiff. Then, from out of the fog, came another ice mountain. Driving sleet tore into the waves all around, but still the fisherman heaved on the oars, back hunched, pipe jutting from between his teeth. He chanted…

  ‘Her heart is warmer than all the cold, cold sea.’

  Kiska jogged down Riverwalk. To one side the Malaz River flowed dark and gelid within its stone banks. Her leather slippers padded silently on the wet cobbles. She’d seen nothing of her target since leaving the Lightings. A low swirling ground-fog obscured the distance and brushed cold fingers across her face and shoulders. Black clouds rushed overhead; it was as if the stars themselves were snuffed out. Only the moon, low on the horizon, cast a tattered pallid glow over the glistening streets. Kiska hoped to check on her quarry closer to the centre of town, yet she’d seen nothing of him thus far. Had he and his bodyguards come this way? Perhaps some errand had taken him elsewhere. But where else could he have gone?

  She felt as if she were the last living soul on the island and she shuddered at the thought. On Stone Bridge she paused to glance up and down the river front. Thin rain, more like hanging vapour, softened the distances. Nothing moved – yet things seemed to be moving. She glanced back, squinted. Shadows. Shadows that flickered like soot-fouled flames.

  As she watched, the wave of shadows came sweeping down the hillside. It engulfed the riverfront shacks on their stilts and swept on, swallowing the water like a wash of treacle. In a few heartbeats it would pass right over where she stood. Too late, she urged her legs to move. She was still on the bridge when it enveloped her. She ran blind, wiping at her eyes. As the cobbles of the bridge fell from under her feet she yelled and stumbled into ice-cold water.

  At first she thought she had fallen into the river, then realized it was only a surface flow – a thin sheen over wet sand. She straightened, gasping for air, her heart hammering. Now that the shadows had dissolved the night brightened. Kiska saw that she stood among tall sand dunes, silver in the moonlight.

  She was no longer in Malaz – she knew that – though she had a suspicion of where she might be. The sky was an angry pewter, streaked by high clouds that rippled as she watched. Steep dunes surrounded her like tall waves. She climbed one and turned to marvel at her new surroundings. Smooth, almost sensual, curved hills of sand stretched in every direction. The region resembled the place Oleg had just taken her – the Warren of Shadow.

  One detail was jarring, however: the source of the silver-green glow that dominated one horizon. A glacier. Kiska had never seen one with her own eyes, but it resembled the descriptions she’d heard from travellers – a mountain of glowing ice, they’d called it. She’d discounted the stories herself, thought them exaggerated by booze-addled memories. But here was proof. Kiska reflected sourly on just how small her island was, just how bounded her own experience must be. She tried to imagine the crushing weight of all that ice, its dimensions. Just how far away was it? The rolling landscape gave no clue. She brushed the wet sand from her clothes and shivered in the cold wind.

  A breathless voice spoke behind her: ‘I’d forgotten just how impressive it is at first sight.’

  She spun, knives out, only to jump back and yelp her surprise.

  Whatever it was, it was dead. Or rather, it was a corpse. Desiccated flesh, empty eye sockets, grinning yellowed teeth. Rags of clothing hung from its angular frame – what was once a thick layered cloak over age-worn leather and bronze armour. The hilt of a sword in a corroded scabbard jutted behind one shoulder. Cold horror stole over Kiska.

  ‘You’re from Malaz?’ the corpse asked in archaic Talian.

  ‘Yes,’ she stammered, ‘Malaz. Malaz Island.’

  Its head, seemingly welded to its helm of corroded bronze, nodded slowly. ‘An island now, is it? I have walked that land many times.’

  ‘Who are you? Where am I?’

  ‘I am called Edgewalker. I walk the borders of Kurald Emurlahn. What you call Shadow. And this is part of that realm.’

  Kiska pointed a knife to the far mountain of ice. ‘Then what is that?’

  ‘Something that belongs here no more than you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kiska lowered her arm, shivered. ‘Well, I didn’t ask to come here.’

  ‘You were swept up by a Changing, a shadow storm. They will be frequent. I suggest you stay indoors.’

  ‘Indoors?’ Kiska barked a laugh. ‘Where?’ Then she clamped her mouth shut. ‘You mean… you will send me back?’

  ‘Yes. I will. You do not belong here.’

  ‘Then I suppose I should give you my thanks.’ Kiska pushed back her hair, eyed the dunes. Was this really Malaz? Then she remembered. ‘Do you know a man named Oleg?’

  ‘No. I know of no one by that name.’

  ‘What of a ruler? If this is Shadow then does it have a throne?’

  Edgewalker remained silent for a time, long enough for Kiska to lean closer. Had he died?

  But at last he asked, ‘What of it?’

  ‘I was told someone would attempt to take it this night.’

  ‘Countless have tried. All have failed. Even those who succeeded for a time. Myself included, after a fashion.

  Now I walk its boundaries forever. And I fared better than most.’

  Bizarrely, Kiska felt disappointed by the acknowledgement. She’d half-suspected, half-hoped, that Oleg had been insane. Now she tried to recall more of his babbling.

  A low moaning raised the hairs at her neck. The creature raised one sinewy arm like the twisted branch of an oak and pointed back across the stream. Gold rings glinted on his withered fingers. ‘A Hound has found your scent. Run while you can, child.’

  She needed no more convincing, yet she suddenly remembered. ‘What is entombment? What is that?’

  ‘The price of failure. Eternal enslavement to Shadow House.’

  The baying returned, closer now, echoing from the distant wall of glittering ice. ‘You haven’t much time,’ said the being, its voice no more than the scratching of leaves. ‘Go to Obo’s tower. Beg his protection.’

  ‘Obo’s tower? But that’s an empty ruin. Obo’s just a myth.’

  ‘No doubt so were certain Hounds a mere hour ago.’ Kiska blinked her surprise. ‘But what of you? Will you be safe?’

  The brittle flesh of the being’s neck creaked as it cocked its head to regard her through empty sockets. ‘The H
ounds and I are akin. Slaves to Shadow in our own ways. But I thank you for your concern. Now you must go.’

  The creature raised a clawed hand in farewell and at that the world darkened. All around shadows writhed like black wings. For an instant she thought she heard a chorus of whispers in a confusing multitude of languages. Then the shadows whipped away, and she recognized where she stood: Riverwalk, south of Malaz River.

  Immediately, a howl tore through the night so loud that Kiska jumped as if the Hound was beside her, ready to close its jaws. She took off at a run, not daring to glance behind. Ahead, a mere few blocks, the jagged top of Obo’s ruined tower thrust into the clouds like a broken dagger. Another bellow, loud as a thunderclap, and she stumbled. Screams rose around her, torn from the throats of terrified citizens locked in their houses. She raced around a corner and over an open square, then dived the low stone wall of the tower grounds. Amongst the leaves and tossed garbage of the abandoned yard she lay trembling, straining to listen.

  But she heard nothing, only the surf, strangely distant, and the rush of wind. Slowly, she brought her breath under control, stilled her pulse. Something kicked through the fallen branches and she suppressed a yelp. She raised her head a fraction: a thin foot in leather sandals. She looked up. An old man in tattered brown woollen robes, hefting a tree limb as a staff. He was bald but for strands of long wild white hair in a fringe over his ears.

  He glowered down the length of a long hooked nose. ‘What’s this?’ he muttered, as if he’d stepped on a cow turd.

  Kiska blinked up at him. Who was this doddering oldster? Surely not Obo, the malevolent ogre of legend. ‘Who in the Queen’s wisdom are you?’ she asked warily, and climbed to her feet, watching the man all the while.

  ‘Who am I?’ the fellow squawked. ‘Who am I? Some guttersnipe invades my home and questions me?’

  ‘Your home?’

  ‘Yes, my home.’ The old man swept his staff up at the tower and Kiska saw that it now rose massive and undamaged into a night sky gleaming with stars but free of any moon. She peered around – the familiar hillsides ran down to the sea while to the north the cliffs rose like a wall – yet no city surrounded them. Not one building marred a field of wind-swept marsh grasses and nodding cattails.