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

  The mist closed in like a shroud. The bay, some hundred yards down, lay smothered in low-lying fog. In the southern sky, lights flickered green and pink, reminding Kiska of the legends of the Riders who rose in winter to tow sailors to their doom. She also remembered the tales of ghosts and revenants said to haunt the Hold above. Even these cliffs boasted an entire host of spirits – drowned sailors deceived into drawing too close to the shoals, tricked by her ancestors, wreckers and pirates all. It was said you could still hear their moaning at night, seeking vengeance on their murderers. She’d grown up on such yarns and believed not a one. Including those of a certain demon-haunted Shadow Moon…

  When her outthrust hand told Kiska she’d reached a depression in the veined granite, she threw herself into the opening she knew awaited ahead. She gasped for air, and not just from the strain of the climb. Her clothes clung to her, heavy and damp. The air retained the rich fetor of rotting humus and bird droppings. Kiska leant against one inward-canted wall to steady her breath. The crevice she stood in couldn’t really be called a cavern: it was more like a ragged cleft in the living rock of the island, a jagged fissure that shot straight into the cliff. Her heel dislodged chips of stone that shifted and crunched. She’d found places within where there was no floor to speak of at all, just a thinning skim of darkness descending straight down to a finger’s breadth.

  She had played here as a child. It was her secret hide-away, though she had the feeling Agayla was aware of its existence. She’d explored every inch of the radiating cracks and the galleries of narrow, vertical faults. And though island legends told of secret caves and hidden troves of gems and gold, she’d found no trace of them. Broken decayed slats and bits of salt-dissolved iron scattered here and there were all she’d kicked up as reward for her efforts.

  Overhead passed a portion of Rampart Way; it would be a difficult final climb. She rubbed warmth back into her hands and felt the burn of cuts as circulation flowed into salt-encrusted wounds. Perhaps she should wrap them in lengths of cloth. But what if it should slip or come loose?

  Noise clattered from without. Kiska pressed herself against the cliff wall and listened: fabric brushing over stone, falling pebbles. Someone climbing outside. She edged farther into the cavern. As she did so, a shape from within loomed in the narrow stone confines like one of the revenants she’d heard tell of.

  An instant of soul-clutching dread slowed her enough for the figure – a flesh and blood man – to grasp her hand. She almost smiled at such a mistaken move and used his resistance to snap a kick to the opposite side of his head.

  The man grunted but held on. Kiska lost her grin.

  A foot lashed out and cracked against her wounded knee. She bit down a shriek of stabbing pain as the leg gave way. He released her hand as she fell.

  ‘Don’t struggle,’ he told her.

  She stared up at him; here in the dark he was mostly shadow, but there was something familiar about him.

  He shook out a slim length of cord and stepped over her. Her every instinct wailed against being bound again, and she lashed out with her good leg, catching him high in the inner thigh.

  A loud hiss escaped his lips, yet he bent over her again. Kiska covered her face, cried, ‘No, please!’ She slipped the knife from the back of her collar. Before she could use it his booted foot came down on her wrist and something hard like a knout of iron smashed against her temple. The cavern’s darkness exploded into a dazzle of red and yellow pinpoints that shimmered and faded slowly.

  ‘You’ve a few moves,’ he allowed, grudging, ‘but you’re out of your depth here, child. Don’t make me kill you.’

  Kiska blinked against the lights befuddling her vision. ‘Who in the Lady’s Pull are you?’

  The man ignored her. ‘Turn your back,’ he told her. She obeyed and he tied her wrists together. Another figure climbed up into the opening and the man moved to his side. They spoke and against the light of the moon Kiska recognized him. The flat, scarred face, cat’s whiskers moustache: the bodyguard of the very man she sought.

  She laughed. The men ignored her, continued speaking in low tones she couldn’t catch. The newcomer was sent out again. The Seti tribesman returned to her. He pulled a black cloth from within his cloak. Kiska recognized the cloth and where it would be thrown.

  ‘I have a message for your master,’ she said as he readied the cloth for her head. The hands hesitated a fraction of a heart beat, continued down.

  Darkness enveloped Kiska. ‘The man he met in the garden is dead,’ she said, too quickly and loud for her liking. Her heart hammered.

  Silence. The sullen lurch and suck of the surf beneath. Kiska listened: not even the clatter or shift of stone chips underfoot. Nothing. Was he still there? Was anyone? Would they leave her here? Perhaps it was a sort of twisted kindness. After all, she’d be safer tied up here than roaming the streets tonight.

  A hand took hold of the hood at its uppermost fold. It gently lifted up and away from her head. Her hair caught at its coarse weave.

  A man crouched before her: a long, narrow mahogany-tanned face that appeared oddly seamless, bland even. Sunken, dark, black-ringed eyes. Brown pate shaven but for a long braided queue at his shoulder. A straight slash of mouth. Lips Kiska imagined shattering should they be forced to smile. Her quarry.

  ‘I’m told you have a message for me.’

  He spoke aristocratic Talian with a hint of an accent she couldn’t place. As out of place on this island as gold in a fish’s mouth.

  He waited, expressionless. Kiska found her voice. ‘In my shirt.’ She tried to raise her arm but only wrenched her wrist.

  He raised one hand. ‘May I?’

  ‘Yeah – yes.’

  He wore black leather gloves, his fingers long and thin.

  ‘No!’ barked the bodyguard. He yanked her away by the back of her collar then rummaged at her shirt. His hand brushed her small breast. She smiled to unnerve him but his eyes remained empty of emotion.

  ‘Hattar…’ her target murmured reprovingly. She peered up at him. ‘Yes. Hattar.’

  He found the scroll then shoved her over and pressed one knee down on her shoulder. His weight drove all breath from her. The scroll crackled as he tore at it.

  ‘Hattar,’ the man sighed, ‘you cannot read.’

  Hattar grunted something. ‘Let her up.’

  Unwillingly, he eased his weight. She gasped a deep breath, choked on dust and dirt she sucked in. Her side ached, pressed firmly into the uneven stones.

  ‘I will speak with her.’

  ‘Hunh?’

  ‘Raise her up.’

  ‘My Lord…’

  Silence. Kiska waited. A look from the Lord perhaps? A gesture? Hattar knelt within her sight. He held a wicked curved blade to her face. His other hand twisted a grip in her hair. He brought his scarred nut-brown face close to hers.

  ‘You and my master will speak,’ he whispered. ‘But this dagger,’ and he wagged it before her eyes, ‘if you twitch, it will reach your heart through your back before you are even aware of it tickling your pretty soft skin. Do you understand me?’

  She nodded, wide-eyed.

  Hattar returned her nod. He raised her up and shifted her round. His master held the scroll in one hand and was tapping it against the other. The lips were curved downward ever so slightly. ‘My apologies for Hattar. He takes his duties very seriously.’

  Kiska almost nodded, stopped herself. ‘Yes. He does.’ The man sighed, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘What is your aunt’s name?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Agayla.’

  ‘What does she do at Winter’s Turn – Rider’s Retreat, I understand you sometimes call it here.’

  Kiska stared. Had she heard that right? Winter’s Turn? She almost shrugged but felt a prick to one side of her spine and held herself rigid. ‘Ah, she… she consults the Dragons deck for the coming year.’

  ‘Yes. Many do. And?’

  A test. He was challenging her obviously.
Why Winter’s Turn? What was so… she remembered then. One eve sneaking down the stairs and watching from the cover of the landing while Agayla sat up all night, from midnight’s bell till dawn’s light. The side to side woosh of the shuttle. The click and rattle of the loom. Weaving. All night. Kiska licked her dry lips. ‘She weaves.’

  Her target nodded. ‘And what is your name?’

  ‘Kiska.’

  The brow arched. ‘Your real name?’

  ‘What? Is it in there?’

  He just waited, patient. Kiska could sense Hattar at her back eagerly tensed for the killing blow. ‘Kiskatia Silamon Tenesh.’

  He nodded again. ‘Very well, Kiska. You may call me… Artan.’

  ‘Artan? That’s not your real name.’

  ‘No. It isn’t.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ Kiska stopped herself from asking his real name; he wouldn’t tell her anyway.

  Artan opened the scroll. He started ever so slightly, surprised, and Kiska decided that whatever was written there must be startling indeed to have broken through his iron control. He let out a breath in a long hiss while tapping the scroll against his fingertips.

  ‘Does she say how I saw your meeting?’ she asked. Artan did not answer. It seemed to Kiska that his gaze stared into the distance while at the same time was turned inward in meditation.

  ‘Artan?’

  He blinked, rubbed again at his ancient, tired-looking eyes. As if struck by a new thought, he studied her. ‘No. That is not its message.’

  ‘Then what does it say?’

  He held it out to her, open. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’

  There was no writing on the scroll. Instead, a hasty rectangle was sketched on the parchment. Within the rectangle was drawn a spare stylised figure. Kiska couldn’t quite make it out. A mounted warrior? A swimming man?

  Curious, she looked closer: blue, she saw. Gleaming opalescent colours. Plates of armour shining smooth like the insides of shells. And ice, the growing skein of freezing scales. ‘I see ice,’ she breathed, awed.

  ‘Truly?’ Artan plucked it back. It withered into ash in his gloved hands. He brushed them together. The gesture troubled Kiska; she’d seen poor street conjurers use the same trick.

  ‘So. Your message?’ he asked.

  Kiska stared. ‘Wasn’t that…’

  Artan cocked a brow and Kiska saw that she was right: his mouth did little more than remain a straight slash. ‘No. That was her message. Not yours.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘We’ve met. A few times… long ago.’

  ‘Really? Well, my message is about Oleg.’

  Both thin brows rose. ‘You know his name?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘I see. Go on.’

  ‘I, ah, I followed you to your meeting with him.’ Artan sent a look over her shoulder to Hattar. Rueful? Accusatory? A growl sounded behind her.

  She hurried on. ‘After you left he was killed by a man in grey robes.’

  Artan’s lips almost pursed, the dark eyes narrowed. ‘Then pray, how did he tell you his name?’

  ‘Ah. Well. You see, I waited, then went into the garden and looked at him.’

  ‘And he spoke to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Artan sighed. ‘The Shadow Moon. Of course. What did he say?’

  Kiska frowned. ‘Well, it was strange and rambling. And the words – I don’t know what they mean. Anyway, Oleg said the message was for you.’

  Artan jerked, surprised. ‘He named me?’

  ‘No. He said it was for the man who was just with him. And he – well, he did call you an irresponsible idiot.’

  Artan allowed his lips the slimmest cold upturning that could generously be called a smile. He touched his gloved fingers to his lips. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He said that, ah, that now he was dead he could see that he’d been right all along.’

  ‘A rather unassailable position,’ Artan observed dryly. Kiska continued: ‘He said that Kellan—’ Something cracked off her skull from behind. ‘Hattar!’

  Kiska blinked tears from her eyes. ‘My apologies,’ Artan said, ‘I should have told you. We do not say that name.’

  ‘Obviously. Well, what I was trying to tell you was that he – that is, Oleg – said only fools think he is returning for the Imperial throne.’

  Artan’s gaze rose past her shoulder to Hattar. ‘Then, pray, what is he returning for?’

  ‘For a different throne. For the throne of Shadow.’ Artan’s jaws tightened – the masked expressions of a lifetime of guarding one’s thoughts. ‘I’m sorry. But this is nothing I haven’t heard from Oleg before.’ He stood, brushed at his pants.

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kiska. But how do you know?’

  ‘Because someone else confirmed it.’

  Artan paused. His face did not change, but Kiska could tell she had caught his interest. ‘Who confirmed it?’

  ‘While I was in town I was swept up in something – a Changing – and I was in Shadow. I met someone there. An old creature like a walking corpse, or like an Imass, named Edgewalker. He said many people have tried for the Shadow throne.’ She waited expectantly, but the information seemed to signify nothing to Artan.

  ‘And did he say… the emperor… would?’

  ‘Well, no. He just wasn’t surprised. He—’ Kiska’s shoulder’s slumped. Damn! She had told him!

  ‘I’m sorry. I need more evidence than this.’

  Artan was right, of course. It was all just the babbling of a man who’d admitted hating Kellanved. She was a fool to have believed him.

  ‘We must be going.’

  ‘Wait! He said that during this conjunction the paths between realms are accessible.’

  Artan nodded. ‘Yes. But that was not our dispute. I acknowledge it, in theory.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, Oleg said that during transubstantiation existed the greatest possibility for… ah… for entombment. That then lay the greatest opportunity to entrap him. That you should act then.’ Kiska frowned. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  Artan sighed. ‘It’s all thaumaturgic theory. His own research. I’m not so sure of it myself. Was that all?’

  ‘No. One other thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, this last bit sounds kind of silly to me.’

  ‘Just this last part?’

  Kiska laughed nervously. ‘Yeah, well. He said don’t be fooled by appearances. That he plans on losing all to gain everything. That defeat would seal his victory.’

  Artan rubbed at his sunken eyes with thumb and forefinger. Kiska wondered if the gesture was a habit of which the man was not even aware.

  ‘Poor old Oleg,’ Artan sighed, ‘Hedging and oracular to the end. Thank you, Kiska. I’ll keep these speculations in mind.’

  ‘But I’m coming with you, aren’t I?’

  ‘Great One below, no.’ ‘What?’ ‘Hattar, tie her up more securely.’

  ‘At once.’

  ‘Wait—’

  A gag whipped across her mouth and yanked tight. The plainsman tied her elbows to her sides, pushed her down and bound her legs.

  From the cavern opening Artan said, ‘Goodbye. Give my regards to your Aunt.’

  Kiska cursed him through the gag. Hattar stood over her. He studied his handiwork. They were alone in the cave.

  He knelt beside her, took out his fur hat and pulled it down over his long oiled hair. ‘If you are any good, you’ll work your way out of these bindings. If you do, don’t follow us. If I find you pursuing us again, I’ll clip your feathers, little bird. You understand?’

  She cursed him to the most distant of Hood’s Paths. He chuckled – at her predicament she supposed – and left. She was alone.

  For a few moments she lay still, listening to be sure she was indeed on her own and that he wasn’t watching from the opening. Then she concluded this was foolish, that he wouldn’t hang around here with his master gone, and began wriggling. She twi
sted and waggled her hands to wedge a thumb at just the right angle against a rock, then pressed. It dislocated with a crack and a familiar jab of pain. Then, using the edges of stones – even the walls themselves – she teased and plucked and coerced the rope coils at her wrist down toward her fingers. After that it was easy to accomplish the rest.

  Throwing off the rope at her legs, she was free. And in much less time than that bastard Hattar planned on, she was sure. Not pursue them! She’d follow all right. She’d get ahead of them! She’d show what she could accomplish. No one left her trussed up like a prize pig at a banquet.

  She’d climb up to Rampart Way, then sneak into the Hold. Climb the wall itself if she had to. Just as she did years ago to see if she could. Aunt Agayla’s warning then flashed into her thoughts: do not enter the Hold! But Artan would be there. And besides, if there were great things happening, and even greater powers contending, no one would pay her a mind.

  CHAPTER IV

  A lone orange ember flickered dully within a maelstrom at the heart of an icy ocean. It bobbed and surged with each heave of the fisherman’s oars that cracked and clattered off chunks of ice. Circling at a distance, Riders plunged and reared, darting in close then submerging. Javelins of ice hurled at the skiff burst into clouds of mist. The fisherman forced his chant through lips frozen to his teeth.

  One Rider dared to lunge within the circle of calm surrounding the fisherman. Wave-borne, it reared close only to howl and beat at its arms as its glittering pearl armour melted, then it plunged beneath the boiling surface. Far off, amid the whitecaps and rafts of ice, five indigo-robed Riders watched, conferring. They cradled amethyst wands at their chests. Cold pulsed from them as an expanding sphere. Kneeing their churning wave-mounts, they dispersed. One raised its wand to the south.

  Out of the heaving waters from far under the clouds came yet another crag of ice, this one the smallest of the flotilla. Riders at all sides shepherded its progress. The fisherman rowed on oblivious, back hunched, his whole being focused on the effort of rowing and his song. The berg loomed closer, a dark shape frozen at its heart.