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

  At the broken fountain dedicated to Poliel, Temper rinsed bucketful after bucketful of freezing cold water over his head. He then jogged onto Toc Way, but before long he slowed and looked about. Shouldn’t Stone Lane be right ahead? He squinted into denser patches of night. The rows of houses and shop fronts did not look familiar. Something tonight seemed to be tricking his sense of direction, causing him to even doubt where he’d just been.

  He drew off his helmet again, pushed back his wet hair, and wiped the remaining cold water from his face. Had he somehow turned around? But where? The way twisted between the uninterrupted rear walls of shops and houses. A shockingly brisk breeze gusted at him and he heard the rasp and creak of numerous branches lashing in the wind. Yet the island was practically deforested. The surge of the surf… when had it disappeared? These last months he had worked, eaten, and slept to its reassuring beat. Was the heavy mist obscuring it? Yet the winds were fierce tonight; contrary.

  He started up a cobbled rise. No matter the twists and turnings, up led to Mock’s Hold, and that had to be the mercenaries’ target. There couldn’t be anything else to interest them on the island.

  After a number of turns the ground levelled and Temper lost his way in a maze of narrow lanes he’d never before come across. Scarf-thin wisps of cloud scudded overhead and the full moon, a pool of suspended mercury, dazzled his vision. Only Mock’s Hold squatting high upon its cliff, silver and black in the monochrome glare, reassured him that he was indeed still on Malaz. Otherwise he would have sworn he’d wandered into another town, another country.

  Dry hot air tickled the nape of his neck and he rubbed at it; his hand came away gritty with sand. Sand? Where in the world had that come from? He stood still, rubbing the grains between thumb and forefinger as he looked about. Hadn’t the moon just been to the left of the cliffs a moment earlier?

  A deep bull-like snort reverberated up the narrow lane behind him – the distant cough of an animal scenting spoor. Then came a grinding of claws over stone. Temper swallowed, backed against a wall. Automatically his hands moved to check his weapons. A door stood to his right and he hammered at it. No answer. He pounded the sturdy planks again. A voice spoke, but in no language Temper had ever heard before.

  ‘Open up,’ he growled.

  The voice croaked again and this time Temper recognized a word: hrin. Hrin? Hadn’t someone once told him that was an ancient word for revenant?

  His mouth dried from a new sort of fear – the dread of one’s senses corroding. This was his worst fear of the Warrens: the way they could twist the mind. A physical enemy he could face, but insanity? How do you fight that? Old Rengel’s warning echoed: ‘The bloodshed summoned it. Fiends and worse rule this night!’

  He turned and ran. Flint cobbles jarred under his feet. Boarded shop fronts passed, blind and forbidding. From far away a bell rang mutely, as if from a ship at sea. He stopped, listening. The third bell of evening. To the left a lane curved steeply downwards, the roofs of warehouses just visible beyond – the waterfront, but shrouded in fog. While he watched, the dense bank rose like an unnatural tide, clearing the warehouses and crawling up the lane.

  He backed away, turned, and sprinted uphill. Up, just keep going up. That’s where he’ll find them. But then what? What could he—

  An explosion of sound, a blood-freezing howl that made him stumble and clasp his hands to his ears. The agonizing call rose and fell like the inconsolable keening of the dead. Temper pulled his weapons though he could see nothing of the beast – nor hope to accomplish anything against such a monster.

  Togg protect him. Had it scented him? Did it smell at all? Perhaps it followed some other kind of less mundane spoor. He saw the fog still rising and ran on.

  The rutted lane he followed crossed a narrow stairway. He started up then stopped. Noise carried from below: something shuffling through the mist obscuring the lane. His first urge was to make a stand at the crossing; put an end to this unmanning fear and anticipation, one way or another. Yet his experience, the accumulated wisdom of decades amidst the smoky tumult of battle, warned against it. What reason had he to believe that whatever was down there knew of him, or even sought him? Why force a confrontation by blocking this narrow passage? Snarling under his breath, he backed up the stairs, weapons held ready.

  The worn steps ended at a shoulder-width cleft between buildings facing Jakani Square. Temper felt his way along the walls and out onto the square. It was a shifting sea of mist, the cobbles treacherous beneath his feet. Echoes of his steps returned distorted and hollow.

  A gust cooled his face and through the mist he glimpsed house fronts looming dark, shadows flitting past so fast he couldn’t follow them.

  From the gloom came a mewling. He adjusted his grips and tried to steady his breath. A scrape and scuffle there, from the alley, a hunched shape advancing with agonizing slowness.

  He readied himself, one blade held high, the other low. Yet he hesitated to attack; something wasn’t right. The figure came forward unsteadily, weaved side to side, shuffling. Temper had heard enough of the animal sounds of injured men to know it well. The man – for it was a man – hugged himself as he limped. His arms were crossed tight around his stomach as if he carried a precious gift. Temper lowered his weapons. What was this? Some sort of damn fool trick?

  Closer now, the man kept coming and Temper gave ground to him, shouting, ‘Stay!’

  The man halted. The head tilted to one side. His mouth worked, a soundless black void in the night. One arm rose, stretched out to him. Temper heard the viscous suck of half-dried blood tearing, and then a braided mass slopped from the man’s stomach to the pavement – the coils and glistening viscera of his entrails. The man collapsed.

  Temper tried to moisten his mouth but couldn’t untrap his tongue. He advanced, prodded the corpse with the point of his weapon. Dead. Long dead, or so it seemed to him.

  ‘Listen to me,’ the corpse whispered.

  Temper snapped his swords to guard.

  One hand, slick with gore, urged him closer.

  ‘The hound,’ it moaned. Temper leaned forward. He detected no air escaping the mouth. ‘It killed me. Killed us all.’ This man, he realized, was one of the gang of mercenaries that had captured him. ‘And it… it…’ The hand urged Temper even closer. He lowered his head and the hand snatched at his sleeve. He tried to brush it off but the fingers clung like hooks.

  The dead face leered a carious grin. ‘And… it’s following me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now… you’re dead, too.’

  Temper looked up to where a wet red trail of blood led away from the corpse. A track that wove and pooled back to the stairs he’d just climbed. ‘Bastard!’

  The corpse gave a mocking laugh.

  Temper tried to rise but the hand still gripped him. ‘Scum.’ Temper hacked the hand from its limb. It spun away, poised for a moment mid-air, then slapped down onto the stones.

  Low panting tolled up the narrow stairway. Temper backed away, scanned what he could of the square. It boasted some seven main lanes radiating out. Before even thinking he was sprinting for the nearest exit.

  Up constricted lane after lane he fled in panic. His lungs flared and his throat was rasped raw. Slowing, gasping for air, he admitted his mistake. Fool! You can’t evade the damned thing. Stand and fight. He turned and pressed his back to a wall of chiselled stone boulders. It chilled the steel lobster-tail guard at the nape of his neck. Gulping down great mouthfuls of air, he tried to calm himself. Don’t wind yourself before a fight; conserve energy. Ha! Too late for that. He was acting like a pimply conscript facing his first engagement.

  Beams of moonlight now split in half shuttered buildings across the way. From a nearby house an old woman wailed prayers to Burn the Preserver. A distant scream sounded and was cut off. Temper wiped at his face and pushed himself from the wall. Not the best spot for what he had in mind; he needed more room to manoeuvre.

  Two turnings brought him
to a wide length of esplanade that served as a morning market. Temper now knew where he’d ended up: close to the concourse that led to Reacher’s Way. Rats scampered from him as he chose a spot close to the middle gutter and kicked the rotten litter from underfoot. Crouched low, he swung his arms and rolled his shoulders.

  He could hear it out there past the gusting wind, chuffing and snorting. Gods! It sounded as big as a horse! An urge was on him to kick down a door and get behind solid walls. Yet what could he do in one of these tiny shops? Hide under a table? The beast would trap him like a cornered rat.

  A brassy call rolled in with the wind, rising and falling like a wolf’s plaintive cry. Temper tilted his head and listened. Had it run off? No, from up the lane he’d taken came the grating of claws over stone. Hood’s teeth! More than one of the beasts!

  He watched as the shadows swirled beneath the driving cloud cover and prayed that iron could harm the demons. Often it could when backed by enough strength. Like the time Urko, a commander famed for his brawn, dismembered an enk’aral during the campaigns in north Falar. But he was no Urko. He could only hope for one good shot. A shame, really. He’d always thought to fall fighting, but he would have wished for a more even match.

  Now all was silent. He’d lost track of the thing in the shadows – assuming the noise he’d heard had been the beast. He listened, arms tensed, waiting for it.

  Claws scoured stone, rear and left. Temper risked a glance but saw nothing.

  Then he caught the sharp snick of talons and hurled himself to the side, swinging his blade only to dash sparks from the cobbles. As he fell he saw a hound bigger than a Fenn mountain lion snapping shut jaws where he’d stood but a moment before. The brute loped on, its nails furrowing stones. Temper caught one glimpse of a shaggy brown pelt and a scarred rear limb before it leapt again, dissolving into shadow.

  Crawling to his feet, he gazed into the patch of darkness where the hound had disappeared. Not fair. Not bloody fair, my friend. He swore then to hurt the thing before it tore him limb from limb, never mind the hopelessness of ever achieving that.

  From all around now came the sound of bestial claws. A cold wind brushed the square of clinging mist, but he still couldn’t spy it. Then, across the way, he caught a deeper shadow in the gloom. Eyes the colour of heated amber flashed open, and a growl that the shook windows in their frames rolled over him. It raised the hairs on his neck, but now at least he knew: the full frontal assault.

  It surged towards him, astounding speed in the stretch of its stride. It was on him before he could decide whether it was real or an illusion.

  He managed to ram his hand and weapon, hilt-first, into the beast’s maw but its onrush snatched him from his feet and dragged him clattering and bouncing beneath its massive chest. The iron scales of his armour gouged through his shoulder. The monster’s fangs closed on his forearm, grating against the bones. Temper roared at the searing pain.

  The beast hauled him to a wall and shook him as a terrier might a rat. It would rip his arm off in a moment.

  Channelling all his pain into one ferocious effort, he swung his free hand up and smashed the iron pommel of his weapon down on the fiend’s skull. It rang like a bell, and the beast jerked and snorted as if it would release its grip. But then it merely coughed, sending a blast of hot fetid air into Temper’s face. It heaved forward, dragging him over the cobbles, smashing him into walls and battering his body against timbers as it loped through the labyrinth of alleys. Stone steps gouged his back and cracked against his knees. He threw up a gout of froth and blood. Screams followed him and as his mouth filled with his own bloodied vomit, Temper knew the cries weren’t just his.

  Eventually the beast wearied of the game and let him roll away. Crippled, his arm broken and mangled, he was past pain and long past fear. He was in a place he hadn’t known since his last battle nearly a year ago, and it was like a strange reunion. He was floating, euphoric. It was the place he retreated to during the worst of his engagements. Where all his strength and resilience flowed unbound. Where his body moved like some remote automaton of flesh and bone; where no injury could reach. Lying broken and dirt-smeared, he bared his teeth at the hound.

  It towered over him, heaving great bellows of hot air, its coat a mangy reddish brown, grown tangled over the scars of countless battles, its eyes blazing.

  With his good hand, Temper edged a dirk from its sheath at his hip. End it! he urged the lantern eyes. Do it now!

  The head lunged toward his chest. Temper thrust the dirk up point-first into the open maw. The beast recoiled, hacking and snarling. It shook its muzzle; sprayed blood and saliva.

  Temper tried to laugh but could only gag. He held the blade up. Got you! Hurt you, you Hood-spawned bastard!

  Pawing at its mouth and chuffing, it ran in circles, shook its enormous skull, then smashed into a wall of whitewashed plaster that crumpled. The beast turned back to glare at him. A mere wasp’s sting, Temper admitted sadly. His arm fell and the weapon clattered to the stones. Dizziness and a black onrushing wind smothered his senses. From a vast distance, he watched as the beast coiled for another spring.

  He must have lost consciousness, as the visage he avoided through every battle and duel now gazed down at him. The Hooded One himself, come at last to collect his spirit. Temper wished he had the strength to spit at him. A cowl of darkness descended over him, and he felt himself falling, on and on until he was smothered in night and knew nothing more.

  You can’t find me. You won’t find me. You’ll never find me. Arms wrapped tightly about her knees, Kiska rocked herself back and forth, back and forth. Never find me, never find me. She sat in a tiny hut while a silent rain drifted down around her. She rubbed her chin over her hurt knee.

  Who can’t find you? she asked herself.

  No one. Not one person ever. None of the kids she played hide and seek with. None of the local thieves she competed against. Not even Auntie when she tried her magic. But she could find anyone. She always did. Auntie said she had a talent for it.

  And what else can’t find you?

  Kiska rocked for a time. She hummed to herself. No one. No one. A whimper sounded from her side and she glanced down. A dog lay curled against her haunch.

  A large dog. It peered up at her with sad eyes full of fear.

  Kiska sighed, freed one arm from its grip of her knees and stroked the dog. It whimpered again and huddled closer. She nodded in agreement.

  I think they could find you, girl, she told herself. If they wanted to.

  She sighed again and massaged her knee where her black pants were torn and blood had dried in a rough crust. She flexed the leg and winced at the pain. The dog whined its alarm.

  Can’t stay here forever.

  She rubbed her eyes. Stay here.

  On this island? Forever? ‘A living death,’ Kiska whispered into the dark.

  The dog cocked one ear. She peered down at it. Sorry, boy. I just can’t hide any longer.

  She pushed herself to her feet. She had staggered into an outhouse, a boarded shack hardly larger than an upright coffin. She looked out over the half-door. Boards covered the rear windows of a house belonging to a young family Kiska knew. They exported dried fish and were quite well-to-do. They even had an outhouse in their vegetable garden.

  So here she was. The biggest night of her life and she was hiding in a shitter. Everything she wished for all her life had materialized and what has she done? Run away!

  The dog rested its head on one of her muddied slippers and peered up at her. Kiska searched her pockets and sheaths. A length of cord and a scarf, needles, cloths soaked in unguents given to her by Agayla. This was all she had left. She unfolded one cloth and pressed it to her knee. She hissed at the pain. Yet who could’ve guessed at the vast difference between hoping for action, and the sight of a man’s head bursting like a melon in the maw of some monster from another realm? No wonder she’d found herself throwing up in a back alley.

  That man from th
e Imperial cutter… he hadn’t been afraid to walk the streets. He’d faced down an entire nest of cultists. And he must’ve known what he was walking into. She was certain of that. Yet he had come. Oleg said his message had to get to him, a message he believed vitally important. But he was mad. Agayla, though… she’d also sent her after him.

  Her hand found the flattened scroll at her chest. This was for him. Had he reached the Hold yet? He must have – but who could be sure on a night like this? And the gatekeeper – Lubben – he would let her know if he had. He might even let her in. If she played it right.

  Kiska opened the door. The dog whimpered afresh. Looking back, she saw it still curled on the privy floor, unwilling to even push its nose past the threshold. She bid goodbye and headed for a shortcut she knew to Rampart Way.

  The night had turned unearthly still. Even her slippers and the whisper of her breath sounded deafening. Then suddenly, randomly, a hound’s baying shattered the calm, causing her to shrink. But other than these terrifying moments – each of which she was certain would be her last – it was as if the night stood frozen. Only the moon appeared to move, watching her with its silver eye as she made for the waterfront where the shore lapped the cliffs and the oldest wharves ceased at a thatch of rotten piers.

  She climbed the slick stones jumbled at the cliff’s base. Salt spray beaded on her shirt and the waves beneath her murmured, unnaturally subdued. Her cordsoled slippers gripped the broken rock, but her hands slid, cut open on its knife-like edges.

  Soon she reached the barest lip in the uneven stones – an animal path dating back generations to when wild goats still clambered over the island. The track was long forgotten and invisible to those beneath and above. She fancied it was the mystery behind the phantom departures and arrivals of the island’s pirates.

  She carefully edged her way up the slick rock ledges, most no wider than her foot. Thorned brush choked the route, forcing her to ascend behind or over. But she knew the way blindfolded, as she’d often climbed it at night. It led to her favourite spot on the island – after Agayla’s rooms, that is.