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

  Kiska fell back next to Jheval. They shared a look; Kiska irritated and Jheval knowing.

  Curl by curl, mounting clouds over clouds, the Whorl rose higher in the dull sky of the Warren until it was as if it were leaning over them. The closer they came the more it resembled the front of a churning sandstorm, though seeming immobile. It cut across the landscape as a curtain of hissing, shimmering dust and dirt.

  ‘Can we cross it?’ Kiska yelled, having to raise her voice to be heard over the waterfall-roar.

  ‘How should I know?’ the priest answered, annoyed.

  The ravens swooped past them then to land to one side where something pale lay half buried in the sands. They pecked at it, scavenging, and Kiska charged. Waving her arms, yelling, she drove them from their perches atop what appeared to be the body of a huge hound.

  Jheval ran up, morningstars in his fists. ‘Careful!’

  Kiska knelt next to the beast, stroked its head; it was alive, and pale, as white as snow beneath the dirt and dust.

  ‘A white hound,’ Jheval mused. ‘I’ve never heard of the like.’ He beckoned the priest to them but the man refused to come any closer. He stood alone, hunched and bedraggled, looking like the survivor of a shipwreck. The hound was panting, mouth agape, lips pulled back from black gums, its fearsome finger-long teeth exposed. ‘Is it wounded?’

  Kiska was running her hands down its sides. ‘I don’t see any wound. Perhaps it is exhausted.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘No.’ She stroked its head. ‘I suppose not. A handsome beast.’

  Jheval snorted. ‘Deadly.’

  The thing in the bag at Kiska’s side was squirming now, as though impatient. She rose. ‘We should pass through.’

  Jheval gestured helplessly to the storm. ‘And what is on the other side? Is anything? We’ll be lost in this front, just like at home.’

  Kiska freed the cloth from her helmet, wrapped it round her face. ‘There must be something. The hound came from there.’

  ‘Yes, fleeing!’

  A shrug was all she would give to such an unknown.

  Glaring his irritation, Jheval undid his sash – it proved to be a very long rope of woven red silk. He offered an end to Kiska and she tied it to her belt, asking, ‘What of the priest?’

  The warrior made a face. ‘If we lose him, we lose him. Something tells me, though,’ he added, sour, ‘we won’t be so lucky.’

  ‘Very well.’ Kiska hunched, raising one arm to her face and clamping her staff under the other like a lance.

  Before the wall of churning dust took her, Kiska cast one last glance to the priest. He was motionless, as if torn, peering back into Shadow, then at them. She urged him on with a wave of the staff and then she had to clench her eyes against the storm of dust.

  The passage through the barrier, or front, or whatever it was, took far less time than Kiska anticipated. Within, she was tense, readied for an attack, though none came. All she noticed were voices or notes within the rampaging wind. Calling, or wailing, or just plain gibbering. She did not know what to make of it. At one point she thought she was seeing things as, in the seeming distance, immense shapes grappled: one a rearing amorphous shape with multiple limbs, the two others dark as night. It appeared to her that the two night-black shapes ate the larger monstrosity. Quite soon she stumbled out into clear still air to find herself on naked rock.

  She pulled the scarf from her face. Dust sifted from her cloak and armour to drift almost straight down in the dead air.

  She flinched as Jheval began untying the rope at her belt, but then she relaxed and allowed him the intimacy. ‘Where are we?’ she breathed, wondering.

  The man peered round, narrow-eyed. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t like it.’

  ‘Is it the Abyss?’

  ‘No,’ answered a third voice and they turned to see the priest. Dirt layered his robes and grey kinky hair. He shook himself like a dog, raising a cloud of dust. ‘Though it is close, now. Closer than we would like. This is still Emurlahn, now a border region of Chaos. Half unformed, sloughing back into the inchoate.’ The priest’s eyes tightened in anger, almost to closed slits. ‘Lost now to Shadow.’

  For an instant Kiska believed she’d seen him somewhere before. Then the man peered about, confused. ‘I see no fish …’

  The thing at her side wriggled and pushed at the sides of the burlap bag. She knelt. ‘I suppose now is as good as any time.’ Jheval stepped close – a hand, she noted, on the dagger at his belt. She laid the bag down, now bulging and shifting from whatever was within. She undid the string and straightened up. The thing worked its way free of the coarse cloth. It looked like a sculpture of twigs and cloth, batshaped, winged, somehow animate. It launched itself in the air, the wings of tattered cloth flapping.

  It flittered about them as agile as a bat or a moth. Then suddenly the two ravens were among them, stooping, black beaks snapping. Kiska raised her arms. ‘No!’

  The thing pounced on Warran’s head, clutching his hair with its little twig fingers, chirping angrily. The priest bellowed and leapt into the air. He ran in a blind panic, batting at the thing while the two ravens whirled overhead, harrying him. Kiska and Jheval watched him go, arms waving, to disappear amid the rocks.

  She eyed Jheval, uncertain. ‘Sometimes I think that fellow is much more than he seems … at other times, far less.’

  ‘I think he’s lost his mind,’ Jheval muttered. He scanned the horizon then pointed. ‘There’s something.’

  Kiska shaded her eyes though the light was diffuse. There was a smear in the distance, a dark spot low on the horizon like a storm cloud. ‘Well … Warran did run in that direction, more or less.’

  Jheval shrugged and started off. She followed, arms draped over the stave across her shoulders.

  After a time the bat-thing returned to circle Kiska then flew off again in the general direction of the smear on the horizon. They came across Warran fanning himself on a rock. Of the ravens, she saw no sign. Jheval peered down at the winded sweaty priest for a moment and then said, ‘Perhaps we should rest here.’

  ‘I’m not tired,’ Kiska said.

  ‘Perhaps not. But who knows how long it has been. Or,’ and he caught her eye, ‘when we may get another chance.’

  She grunted at that, acquiescing. ‘Our guide …’

  ‘No doubt it will return.’

  ‘Yes. Sleep,’ Warran enthused, brightening. ‘I will keep watch.’

  Jheval and Kiska shared a look. ‘I’ll go first,’ said Jheval.

  Kiska arranged her cloak, set her staff and knives on their belt next to her. Then she rolled on to her side and attempted to rest.

  It seemed the next instant that someone was shaking her booted foot and she raised her head to see Jheval wave her up. It was darker now – not as night proper, as the light of ‘day’ was not proper either. She sat up as he sat down. There was something in his expression as their gazes met. Wonder? Apprehension? She couldn’t quite tell. In any case with a nod he directed her attention to one side then lay down. She rose, collected her weapons.

  She found Warran standing off to that side, but he was obviously not what Jheval meant with his nod – it was certainly what Warran himself was staring at in the far distance.

  For a moment the bizarre horizon line confused her until she remembered that this was Chaos and so need not make sense to her. The darkened sky was dominated by rippling curtains of light such as those she’d seen over the Strait of Storms in her youth. But these lights circled and danced around an empty black spot in the sky close to the horizon. And it may be that she was mistaken, but it also seemed as if the land itself curved up to meet the thing.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked Warran, hushed. ‘The Whorl?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. That is it. And it looks as if it does not end in Chaos. It looks as if it touches upon the Abyss. Upon nonexistence itself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that
hole is eating everything. Chaos included.’

  At first she rejected the man’s melodramatic pronouncement. Ridiculous! Yet, Chaos was stuff. Just unformed or differently organized stuff that she would call chaotic. Not nothingness. That was Outside. Beyond. The Infinite Abyss.

  Gods above and below. Infinite. Did that mean unquenchable? Would it perhaps never stop? Was Tayschrenn somehow involved in such a … such a flaw in existence?

  Or was he its first victim?

  ‘Yes, everything,’ Warran continued, eyeing the distant bruise as if personally affronted. ‘Even all the fish.’

  Bakune did not think his time wasted while he waited for the eve of the new year, the Festival of Renewal. He haunted the common room of the Sailor’s Roost – or Boneyman’s, as everyone called it – and listened to the bustle and murmur of illegal commerce surrounding him. Then slowly, as he became a familiar face, he started asking questions. And in less than a week he learned more about the habits, preferences and operations of the Roolian black market and smuggling than he’d pieced together in a lifetime administering justice from the civil courts. At first he fumed at Karien’el. It seemed he’d been the man’s pet; fed only what the captain wanted pursued. But then, as he had more time to reflect, he realized that as much of the blame lay with him.

  This deeper understanding came one night while he sat with the Jasstonese captain of a scow that plied the main pilgrim way of the Curl, from Dourkan to Mare. The man, Sadeer, was rude, a glutton, and smelled like a goat, but he loved to talk – especially if the audience was appreciative of his wisdom.

  ‘These pilgrims,’ Sadeer announced, belching and wiping his fingers on his sleeves, ‘we feed on them. They are our food.’

  Bakune cocked a brow. ‘Oh? How so?’

  The fat captain gestured as if encompassing the town and beyond. ‘Why, our entire economy depends upon them, my friend. What would this town be but a wretched fishing village were it not for your famous Cloister and Hospice? And what demand would there be for my poor vessel, such as it is? We feed upon them, you see?’

  ‘Their gold is much needed, yes,’ Bakune admitted, sipping his drink.

  Sadeer choked on a mouthful of spice-rubbed fish. He waved furiously. ‘No, no,’ he finally managed, and gulped down a glass of wine. ‘That is not really what I mean. Gold is just one measure – you see? The meaningless transfer of coin from one bag to another is just a mutually agreed-upon measure of exchange. The important value lies elsewhere …’

  Bakune dutifully rose to the bait: ‘And where is that?’

  Sadeer wagged a sausage-like finger. ‘Ah-ha, my friend! You have hit upon it. The true value, the deeper measure, is attention. Attention and relevance. That is what really matters in the end. The lack of gold, the condition of poverty, that can be remedied. But the lack of attention? Irrelevance? These are much harder to overcome. They are in fact terminal.’

  ‘I see … I think.’

  The Jasstonese captain was picking his teeth with a sliver of ivory. ‘Exactly. The true economy is relevance. Once you are judged irrelevant – you are out.’

  Later that night, after Sadeer had risen, belching, and lumbered off to find a brothel, Bakune sat at his small round table thinking. Attention. He’d not paid attention. Or had turned a convenient blind eye to what he did not want to pursue. That was his fault. A narrowed vision – and wasn’t that precisely what the priest had accused him of?

  Two days later came the Festival of Renewal. Boneyman’s was crowded. It was not a day, nor a night, to be a foreigner on the streets of Banith, or in all of Rool for that matter. Unless one wore the loincloth of the penitent. From the door, Bakune watched while the holy icons were paraded through the streets on their cumbersome platforms held aloft by hordes of the devout all competing for the privilege – some trampled underfoot in an ecstasy of fervour. A number of the platforms carried young girls or boys draped in the white silk of purity, dusted with the red petals of sacrifice. Drops of blood spotted the silks of some, dripping from the stipulated woundings at wrists and neck.

  Bakune now winced at the sight. How could he not have seen it before? The children, the red petals symbolizing blood, the woundings. All prescribed. All handed down as ancient ritual. What was all this but a more sophisticated playing out of what in earlier times had been done in truth? Ranks of the penitents came next, marching in step, naked but for their loincloths, each wielding flail or whip or chain, each lashing their backs in step after slow measured step up the devotional way to the Cloister doors.

  Blood now flowed in truth. No stand-in. No delicate inferential symbolism. Flesh was torn. A carmine sheen smeared the backs of these men. It ran down their legs to paint their footsteps red. Bakune flinched as cold drops struck his cheek. He raised a hand and examined the traces on his fingers.

  I am implicated. Marked as accomplice and abettor. Sentenced. My hands are just as red.

  Unable to stand the sight of it all, he went inside.

  He stood at the bar of the low-ceilinged common room and glimpsed Boneyman himself sitting in a far corner: bald, gleaming in sweat, nothing but hollow skin and bones; hence the name.

  ‘Not a good night to be out,’ growled a voice next to Bakune and he turned: the priest had emerged from their room.

  Bakune signed for a glass of wine. ‘Does everyone know my plans?’

  ‘Not so hard to guess.’

  ‘You would dissuade me?’

  A slow shake of the head. ‘No. I’ll come along.’

  ‘You will? Why?’

  ‘You’ll need me.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘In case you succeed.’

  Bakune studied the man: the squat toad-like posture that instead of conveying weakness or sluggishness somehow gave the impression of great power held in check. ‘And if you are along, then so too your companion, Manask, yes?’

  The man grimaced his irritation. ‘Yes. But on a night like this … he would hardly be noticed.’

  But Bakune was not listening; he was plucking at half-memories. Something about two men, a priest and a giant. Something about the first invasion … ‘Did you fight in the first invasions?’

  The man’s gaze slid to the open door where hordes still lined the way and the occasional icon or statue of the Lady tottered past over the heads of the crowd. ‘You are Roolian,’ he said. ‘What do you think of your quaint local festival now?’

  So, a change of topic. Very well … for now. ‘It disgusts me,’ Bakune answered curtly, and he downed his wine.

  The narrow weighing gaze slid back to Bakune. ‘Disgust … Is that all?’

  Bakune considered. He examined his empty glass. No. There was more than that. Far more. ‘It terrifies me,’ he admitted.

  The priest was nodding his slow profound agreement.

  At dusk Hyuke and Puller thumped down at Bakune’s table. ‘What’s the plan?’ the sergeant asked. He was tossing nuts into his mouth one by one and spitting the shells to the floor. The nuts stained his mouth red.

  ‘Surveillance,’ Bakune said, and he grimaced his distaste at the sight of the man’s carmine lips, teeth, and tongue.

  ‘Is that all? What if we get a bite?’

  ‘Then capture.’

  The ex-Watchmen nudged one another, winking.

  ‘Alive!’ Bakune said.

  The two lost their smirks.

  ‘You have your truncheons?’

  ‘Yeah. Got ’em.’

  ‘And the priest will be along as well.’

  ‘Hunh,’ grunted Hyuke. ‘That means the big guy.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  Hyuke gave a look that asked how stupid he could be.

  Bakune coughed into a fist. Right. How could anyone not see that thief?

  Puller had been pinching his lower lip. ‘Where?’ he suddenly asked.

  ‘Where what?’ Hyuke said, annoyed. ‘Where’d we see him? When he escaped. That’s when. Eluding pursuit, he called it. Throwing a guy
off a roof! That’s eluding pursuit all right.’

  ‘No, no. Not that. And anyway, you weren’t hurt so bad. No, what I mean is where are we going?’

  Hyuke glared at his partner. ‘Fine. Right.’ He looked to Bakune.

  The Assessor envisioned his map. How useless that they should have taken it, he realized, when he had every detail impressed upon his mind. ‘We’ll keep watch on the South Way.’

  Hyuke grunted his ill-tempered agreement and spat more shells on to the floor.

  The priest was waiting for him in the kitchen. The old cook – whose name Bakune had yet to discover – eyed the two of them like chickens ready for dismemberment. Bakune bowed a wary farewell to her and they hurried out into the alley. They kept to the lesser side streets, but even here the noise was inescapable, a constant low roar punctuated by cheering and chants.

  As the dusk deepened, bonfires lit the night at major crossroads. Crowds circled them, chanting prayers to invoke the renewal and return of the Lady. Bakune saw the flaw in his plan then. Tradition dictated that these fires be kept alight all through the night. The most devoted would circle them continuously in a slow shuffle till dawn. The Cloister would be jammed with pilgrims and the priests would all be pressed into performing cleansings and blessings.

  The night was just too damned busy. Still, was that not cover enough for anyone who could slip away or go unnoticed among the hordes and the tumult? What to do? He leaned to the priest. ‘We can’t see anything from here.’

  The priest was nodding. He slipped a hood up over his head and motioned Bakune onward. They joined the throngs pushing and shoving their way up and down the street. Hawkers waved roasted meats on sticks and all the usual amulets, beads, blessed healing salves, and other trinkets.

  The crowd thickened, pulling them along. Not even the priest’s none so gentle thrusts could free them. Bakune heard chanting ahead, and as the words uttered from hundreds of throats clarified in his mind the hair on the nape of his neck rose.

  Burn her! they chanted. Burn her!