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

  She bit back a snarl of disgust. ‘Don’t you want to find out what’s here?’

  A disinterested wave: ‘There’s nothing here.’

  She eyed the broad smooth expanse of the beach, noted something there, something tall. ‘Over there.’

  Closer, she saw now why she’d missed it. The same dull black as the sands, he was. Now about her height, since he was sitting. As they approached, feet shushing through the sands, he stood, towering to twice that. He reminded her of a crude sculpture of a person carved from that fine-grained black stone, basalt. His hands were broad fingerless shovels, his head a worn stone between boulder-like shoulders. He was identical in every detail to the mountain-sized titan they’d watched these last weeks digging in the sea of light, apparently building up the shoreline. Leoman stepped up next to her, hands near his morningstars, but those weapons still sensibly strapped to his sides. ‘Greetings,’ she called, her voice dry and weak. Gods, how does one address an entity such as this?

  Stone grated as it cocked its head aside as if listening.

  ‘My name is Kiska, and this is Leoman.’ She waited for an answer. The entity merely regarded them – or so she imagined, as now she could see that it had no eyes, no mouth, no features at all that could be named a face. ‘Do you understand—’

  She flinched as a voice spoke within her mind: ‘Do you hear me? For I hear you.’ The wonder in Leoman’s widened eyes made it clear that he had heard as well. ‘Yes. I – we – can hear you.’

  ‘Good. I am pleased. Welcome, strangers! You are most welcome. For ages none have visited. I have been alone. Now even more come! I am gladdened.’

  At that she could not suppress an eager glance to Leoman. More! It said more! His answering gaze held warning and caution. She brushed them aside: if this thing wanted to kill them there was little they could do about it. She took a steadying breath. ‘And your name? What should we call you?’

  ‘No name such as I understand your term. I carry what you would call a title. I am Maker.’

  She stared, speechless. All the gods above and below. Maker. The Creator? No. It did not say Creator. It said Maker. Muttering distracted her: Leoman murmuring beneath his breath. She almost laughed aloud. The Seven Cities invocation of the gods! Cynical Leoman thrown back on to his roots! Yet the prayer seemed mouthed more in wonder than devotion.

  She tried to speak, couldn’t force words past her dry throat. Her knees felt watery and she stepped back, blinking. Leoman’s hand at her shoulder steadied her. ‘There are others, you say?’ she managed to force out. ‘More of us?’

  ‘One other like you. One other not.’

  ‘I see …’ I think. ‘May we meet them? Are they here?’

  ‘One is.’ An arm as thick and blocky as a stalactite gestured further down the beach. ‘This way.’ Maker turned, stepping, and when the slab-like foot landed the sands beneath Kiska’s feet shuddered and rocks cracked and tumbled down the surrounding headlands.

  Now we hear him? Perhaps he has made himself somehow different in order to communicate. Walking alongside, she saw no one else on the sweep of the black sands. Yet some object did lie ahead. A flat polished flag of stone, deep blood-red veined with black. Garnet, perhaps. And on the slab what appeared no more than a wind-gathered pile of trash: a fistful of twigs and leaves. Kiska gasped and ran ahead.

  Their guide.

  She knelt at the stone. Maker towered over her, his featureless domed head bent to peer downward. Leoman came walking up behind, his hands tucked into his wide weapon belt.

  ‘Is it … dead?’

  ‘For this creature, a curious distinction. What essence animated it before was not its own. And now, though that vial essence might have fled, an even greater potentiality yet remains within.’

  ‘It was with us.’

  ‘I thought as much. You arrived soon after.’

  Kiska swept the remains into its small leather bag. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she asked, ‘And the other? The one like us?’

  ‘The other is gendered as this one,’ Maker said, indicating Leoman. ‘He came to me out of the Vitr.’

  She blinked up at him. ‘The Vitr?’

  Maker’s blunt head turned to the restless surging sea of light. ‘The Vitr. That from which all creation comes.’

  ‘All … creation? Everything?’

  ‘All that exists. All distills out of the Vitr. And all returns to dissolution. You, I. All life essence. All sentience.’

  Kiska felt her brows rising higher and higher. ‘All? Everything? All races? Surely not the dragons … the Tiste … or the Jaghut.’

  Maker’s shovel hands clenched into fists with a grinding and crackling of rock. The sands at his wide feet hissed and glowed, sintering into black obsidian glass. The beach shuddered and a great landslide of rocks echoed among the distant headlands. Kiska found herself on the ground, and rolled away from the searing heat surrounding Maker.

  ‘Speak not to me of the meddling Jaghut!’

  The juddering of the ground faded away. She had covered her face to shield it from the radiance and now her leather sleeve came away red and wet. She coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. Leoman was daubing at his nose. ‘My apologies, Maker,’ she managed, coughing more.

  The entity had raised his fists before his blank stone face and seemed to regard them as if astonished. The hands ground open. ‘No – it is I who must apologize. I am sorry. My anger … they have done me a great wound.’ The arms fell to hang loose at his sides. ‘As to those you name dragons, the Eleint. I myself have assisted beings who emerged fully formed from the Vitr. Some took that form. I do not know whether they were the first of their kind, or if others came into existence elsewhere. As to the Tiste … the Andii emerged from eternal night, true, yet what of the vital essence which animates? I believe the underlying energy which moves all originates here, in the Vitr. And for that some would name it the First Light.’

  Kiska regarded the great shifting sea, awed. First Light? Yet who was to say otherwise? Could this ‘sea’ be nothing more than a great reservoir or source of energy – power, puissance, call it what you would. It was theology, or philosophy, all far beyond her. She returned her attention to Maker. ‘And this other? The one like us?’

  ‘I aided him in his emergence from the Vitr …’

  Kiska laughed, and winced at the note of hysteria. ‘Then I assure you, Maker, he is nothing like us.’

  ‘He is. He is formed as you, and mortal.’

  ‘Mortal? His name? Does he have a name?’

  Maker shifted, glass crackling, and started a slow lumbering walk down the beach. Kiska moved alongside. ‘Understand, little one, those who have experienced the Vitr first hand emerge as if freshly born. Newly formed, or re-formed. His mind carries nothing of his prior existence. And he has proved a great help in my work and a balm to my loneliness. I named him Then-aj-Ehliel, Gift of Creation.’

  ‘Your … work?’ Leoman asked from where he trailed behind.

  Stone grated as the great domed head turned to Leoman. ‘Why, the bolstering and maintenance of the edge of existence, of course, against the constant erosion of the Vitr.’

  Kiska found that she’d stopped walking. Her hands covered her face, where they brushed dried flakes of blood. The ground seemed to waver drunkenly and there was a roaring in her ears. Gods below! This was … this was … impossible! What was she doing here? What could she possibly …

  Hands supported her: Leoman. ‘Kiska. You are all right?’

  She laughed again. All right! ‘Did you hear that? What Maker said.’

  ‘Yes. Maintaining the shores. I understand.’

  Yet the desert nomad sounded unimpressed. Queen of Dreams! Was there nothing that could ruffle this man’s reserve? She brushed away the rest of the dried blood, straightened.

  ‘Kiska,’ Leoman began gently, ‘the odds that this one could be …’

  She pulled away. ‘Yes, yes.’

  Maker raised an arm to
gesture down the coast. ‘Follow the shore on further. He is there, helping in my work.’

  She bowed. ‘Our thanks, Maker. We are in your debt.’

  ‘Not at all. It is I who am indebted. It is good to see others. Good to speak to others.’

  Bowing again, Kiska headed off. As she walked, the sands pulling at her boots, she made every effort to keep her legs from wobbling and gasps of suppressed tears from bursting forth. This was impossible. She had wandered too far. The urgent unanswerable needs that drove her on now seemed … gods, she could hardly even recall them! Oponn’s jest! Even if she found the man she no longer had anything to say to him. No compelling case to make for his return. She had nothing to offer save … herself. And now … now she was no longer so certain of that either.

  It took nearly a month of digging. Ebbin worked entirely alone. He trusted no one else with the secret of his discovery; and, in truth, the youths and his two hired guards were quite content to spend their days lazing in the shade while he sweated underground. The dirt and stones he loosened from the blockage he pushed behind him to dump straight down to the water below.

  With more funds from his backer he’d bought supplies, including two new lanterns. One lit his work now as he succeeded in clearing a narrow gap through the rockfall to peer beyond. To his enormous relief the tunnel continued onward. Ebbin wiped a grimed sleeve across his face, picked up the lantern, and wriggled ahead. He clawed his way through the dirt, then raised the light within the half-choked narrow confines. The flame burned as straight as a knife-blade. No air movement at all. He peered up the pipe-like length of the tunnel. Ruled straight, perfectly circular. Angling upwards as well. And no vermin, no detritus, no cobwebs. It was strange that the fall should have been so localized, but he shrugged off his concerns and began shuffling forward on his elbows and knees.

  The tunnel debouched on to a circular chamber that in the poor light appeared smoothly domed. Shattered stone littered the floor. He stepped in carefully over the sharp shards. As his vision adapted to the gloom, openings emerged from the dark: smaller side chambers, all broken open, circled the circumference of the main tomb.

  Beaten after all! Cheated! Yet how could someone have preceded him? Not one word in the records hint at such a tomb! He wiped the cold sweat from his face. Damn them! The looting was most likely done almost immediately after completion. Cousins of workers, or sharp-eyed locals spying upon the construction. He kicked through the wreckage. Something uneven under his feet. He knelt, cupped the lamp-flame.

  A skull stared back up at him. He flinched; then, recovering, brushed aside more of the pulverized stone. More. A row … no … a circular band of human skulls set almost flush with the floor. And more bands. Ring upon nested ring of them. Rising, he closed upon a large shadowy object ahead.

  At the centre, a mystifying sculpture-like construction: twin arches intersecting to create four triangular openings. Within, resting upon an onyx plinth, a cloaked corpse. And upon that corpse, glittering amber in the lamplight, a hammered mask of gold, plain, embossed with a face. And the mouth sculpted into the faintest of smiles like an aggravating, knowing smirk of superior knowledge.

  Ebbin almost stepped in to reach for that exquisite object, but something stopped him. Some instinct. And perhaps he was mistaken, but was that a ghostly, whispered not for you … so faint he might have imagined it there in the dead silence so far underground? He pulled back his hand. Odd … these chambers looted, yet this crowning prize untouched. Why so?

  He backed away, raised his lantern to the outer walls. All of the smaller side niches broken open, their plinths empty. No, not all. One remained, its sealing door unscathed. He crossed to it. The door consisted of a single carved granite slab, unmarked, without any sigil. No hint of who, or what, lay within.

  He tapped the solid rock. An aristocrat of the legendary Imperial Age? He eyed the central dais-like installation.

  Or loyal retainer thereof.

  He ran his hands over the cold polished slab. He did not have the chisels to cut through this. And there was no way he was going to let his cretin assistants down here. No – to do this properly would take tools and resources currently beyond his reach.

  He’ll have to see his backer. And with this breakthrough the man will have to grant him further monies. He’s bankrolled him this far, after all. Remarkable foresight and vision this businessman from One Eye Cat has shown. Even if others murmur against the man and spread ugly rumours of criminal interests. He of the odd northern name: Humble Measure.

  Returning to the tunnel an instinct, or irking detail, made him pause. Something about those sub-chambers. He counted them: twelve. Why always this mystical number? The legends? The old folk tales of the twelve fiends? Mere mythology handed down from ancient practices? Or a homage from the builders? He shook his head. Too tenuous as yet.

  Perhaps an answer would be forthcoming.

  Word had spread across Genabackis that the great Warlord of the north had for a time established a camp in the hills east of Darujhistan, the city that had taken his friend and sometime enemy, Anomander, Lord of Moon’s Spawn and Son of Darkness. Emissaries from across the north, the Free Cities and the Rhivi Plains came and went from his tent. They came asking for adjudication of land rights issues or title inheritances, and to settle territorial disputes. The great hulking beast of a man spent his days and evenings sitting cross-legged on layered carpets, drinking interminable cups of tea while city representatives and tribal elders argued and complained.

  One such night, when the issue of Sogena’s unfair taxation regime had degenerated into reminiscing of the old days before the arrival of the hated Malazans, Brood arose and went from the tent. Jiwan, son of one of the Warlord’s trusted old staff of Rhivi, and now making a name for himself within the great man’s council, took it upon himself to follow and intrude upon the Ascendant’s solitude.

  He found him standing alone in the night, staring west where the blue glow of the hated city softened the night. And perhaps the great man stared even further, beyond the city, to the barrow raised by his own hands in honour of his friend.

  Jiwan thought of the rumours circulating that the tomb was actually empty. After all, how could any darkness contain the one known as the Son of Mother Dark herself? But he neither knew nor cared about the truth of that. He did know that only fear of this man kept war from flaring in the north once again. A peace that held the Rhivi’s place upon the plains. The peace of the Warlord.

  A peace that may now be slipping. He cleared his throat to announce his presence. ‘You are troubled, lord?’

  The man swung his heavy beast-like gaze to him, then away, to the distant glow. ‘I allowed myself the luxury of thinking it was all over, Jiwan. Yet they rest uneasy. In the south. The Great Barrow of the Redeemer. And the Lesser, his Guardian. And this one of my friend. There is a tension. A stirring. I feel it.’ He voice softened almost into silence. ‘I was fooling myself. Nothing is ever finished.’

  ‘The sword is shattered, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, it is shattered.’

  ‘And the Lord of Moon’s Spawn is gone.’

  ‘Yes, he is gone.’

  Jiwan was uncertain. ‘You fear, then, the Malazans shall be emboldened? ’

  The Warlord glanced at him, surprise showing on his blunt, brutal features. ‘The Malazans? No, not them. With Rake gone … It is his absence that troubles me.’

  Jiwan bowed, taking his leave. He knew it was right and proper that the Warlord should mourn his friend, but he, Jiwan, must think first of his people. An enemy was encamped on their borders to the north and the south, an enemy that was solid and real, not the haunted dreams of some troubled old man. The damnable Malazans. Who else would be emboldened by the fall of Anomander? They might seize this opportunity. But he was reluctant to speak of it yet. Loyalty and gratitude to the Warlord still swayed too many hearts among the elders. This too he understood. For he was not of stone; he felt it as well. Yet times move on
– one must not remain a captive of the past.

  He came to a decision. Changing direction, he headed instead to the corral. He would send word to the north for more warriors to gather. They must be ready should the Warlord call upon them … or not.

  The nights in Darujhistan were far more hushed now than he could ever remember. Muted. One could perhaps even call the unaccustomed mood sombre. Ill-fitting airs for the city of blue-flame, of passions, or, as that toad friend of his named it, the city of dreams.

  For his part Rallick hoped the mood was not one of tensed expectation.

  It was past the sixth hour of night by the Wardens’ bells. He stood at an unremarkable intersection in the Gadrobi district. Unremarkable but for one very remarkable thing: here, Hood, self-appointed godhead of death, met his end. Followed shortly thereafter by his destroyer, Anomander Rake, Lord of Moon’s Spawn.

  Events dire enough to shake the confidence of anyone.

  No second- or third-storey lights shone in any window facing this crossroads. All forsook it. Patrons refused to enter the shops facing the site, and so the surrounding blocks progressively became abandoned. For who would live overlooking such an ill-omened locale? Weeds now poked up through cobbles. Doors gaped open, the empty shop-houses looted. In the heart of the most crowded and largest metropolis of the continent lay this blot of abandonment and death.

  The thought caused Rallick to shift uneasily. Dead heart.

  Yet not completely lifeless; another figure came walking up, boots kicking through the litter, his hands tucked beneath his dark cloak. Rallick inclined his chin in greeting. ‘Krute.’

  ‘Rallick.’

  ‘Survived the guild bloodletting, I see. I’m pleased.’

  A soft grunt. ‘Too few of us old-timers did. Gadrobi’s my parish now. Shows you one way to get promoted.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The man peered about. The wrinkles framing his small eyes tightened. ‘But … I gotta wonder … who’s really in charge?’