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

  Sour slid further into cover and wiped a sleeve across his slick face. Murk joined him. ‘So … maybe we should just save time and run off now?’ Sour asked.

  Murk rested his arms on his knees. ‘Naw. I’m kinda curious.’

  Sour’s gaze slit almost closed. ‘Curious? You’re curious. You mean your wretched Shadow patron’s all curious, ain’t that what you mean!’

  ‘Oh, and you’re sayin’ little Miss Enchantress ain’t!’

  Sour blew a nostril to empty it. ‘Don’t need to be a fortune-teller to know where this is gonna end. With us handed our heads!’

  Murk looked to the darkening sky, now clearing of the thick clouds. ‘You know – when you predict the same damned thing over and over it kinda loses its credibility.’

  ‘Call for rain long enough and you’re bound to be right.’

  Murk threw open his arms. ‘Now that doesn’t even make any goddamned sense!’

  Sour’s wall-eyed gaze shifted to right and left. ‘It will … eventually.’

  ‘Would you stop that!’

  ‘You lovebirds finished your little spat?’ a new voice asked from the cover of nearby brush.

  ‘Whosat?’ Sour called, sinking even lower.

  A fellow straightened from the thicket and approached to squat next to them. It was one of Yusen’s scouts. The man wore leathers, long-knives at his sides, and a plain and battered Malazan-issue iron helmet that brought back plenty of memories to Murk. None of them happy. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he demanded – he was of the opinion that when caught off guard an aggressive front can often compensate.

  The scout shifted a twig from one side of his mouth to the other while eyeing them. ‘Cap’n wants your report.’

  ‘What report?’ Sour asked.

  ‘On what you’ve sniffed out.’

  ‘We ain’t seen nothing,’ Sour answered, crossing his arms.

  The man removed the twig from his mouth, studied it, then tucked it back in. ‘Yeah. I see that.’

  Murk wanted to slap the damned thing from the fellow’s mouth. ‘Listen, merc. What’s your name?’

  ‘Sweetly,’ the man answered, his face flat of any emotion.

  ‘Sweetly,’ Murk echoed. ‘What’s your name – Sweetly?’

  The scout glanced about the darkening shadows of the dunes and pockets of low dry brush. His gaze returned to them. The twig sank as his mouth drew down. ‘’Sright. Now c’mon. You two got a report to make.’ He jerked his head towards the coast and started off.

  Murk and Sour followed along. ‘Oh look at me,’ Sour grumbled sotto voce as they walked. ‘I’m a tough guy. I chew twigs. Look out for me.’

  ‘You just don’t like meetin’ someone named Sweetly,’ Murk told him, smiling.

  Sour’s grumbling descended into dark mouthings.

  They found a camp pitched just inland, sheltered from the winds by a high dune. Pickets led them to a central tent, currently more of a simple awning as its canvas sides were still raised. Yusen ducked from beneath. Sweetly gave a tilt of his head then ambled off.

  The mercenary captain regarded them from within the deep nests of wrinkles surrounding his eyes then drew a heavy breath and crossed his arms.

  ‘What?’ Sour said, bristling.

  ‘Let’s have it,’ the man sighed.

  ‘She’s interested in the dolmens,’ Murk answered.

  ‘Dolmens?’

  ‘The standing stones. That’s why we’re here.’

  Yusen got a pained look on his face. He lowered his eyes to study the ground for a time. ‘Damn. I was hoping that wasn’t the case.’

  Sour glanced to Murk. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now you two stay on her good side, that’s what,’ Yusen answered.

  Again, Murk almost saluted. ‘Yes, Cap’n,’ he said. The man shot him a searching sideways glance then grimaced his impatience and waved them away. They ambled off.

  After searching for a while Murk stopped a mercenary and asked, ‘Which one’s our tent?’

  ‘That one,’ the woman answered, pointing to a pile of poles and bundled canvas. Then she walked away.

  ‘Yeah, very funny,’ Murk called after her. He waved to Sour. ‘Looks like you’ll have to put it up.’

  ‘Me? Whaddya mean, me? You put it up.’

  ‘No, you.’

  ‘You.’

  ‘I ain’t.’

  ‘Well, I sure ain’t.’

  ‘Both of you put it up!’ a mercenary bellowed from the next tent. ‘Or I’ll put them tent-poles up where they don’t belong!’

  Both offered choice gestures towards the side of the tent then knelt to the damp canvas. ‘Just like the old days, hey?’ Sour murmured.

  ‘Yeah. Unfortunately.’

  * * *

  K’azz, it turned out, fully intended to go alone. He only acquiesced to a token guard when Shimmer told him flat out they would come regardless. In the end she chose two of the remaining Avowed mages, Lor-sinn and Gwynn, and three of their best swords: Cole, Turgal, and Amatt.

  Tarkhan, captain of the Third Company, would be left behind to command Stratem. Shimmer was not happy with this arrangement as the Wickan tribesman, a formidable knife-fighter, had been among the top lieutenants of Cowl’s ‘Veils’. Though, she could admit, the intervening years of commanding the Third through various contracts across the world did appear to have tempered the man. And K’azz had every confidence in him. But then, that was one thing K’azz always did well – give and instil confidence.

  Seeing the surviving Avowed gathered together in Haven was a pleasure for Shimmer – and at the same time a melancholy reunion. A pleasure to see old friends; heartbreaking for all the absent faces and the painful thinness of the ranks. Her count put the total number at less than seventy. Yet that number varied as the occasional lost Avowed would suddenly appear in Stratem, having made their way from imprisonment, service to some patron, or from simply being stranded in this or that land. And there was always Cal-Brinn’s Fourth Company as well: gone missing in Assail lands but possibly still surviving if Bars’ reappearance was any indication. Of the near forty Avowed who chose to follow Skinner into exile, well, they would meet them soon enough.

  * * *

  A week later, the foreigners’ vessel, the Serpent, was readied and fully victualled. When all had been stowed away and the vessel started south under quarter-sail, Rutana turned to K’azz and growled resentfully, ‘I was expecting some sort of an army yet here you come nearly alone. This is an insult to my mistress. Better not to have answered at all.’

  Again, to Shimmer’s eyes, K’azz displayed remarkable forbearance in merely quirking his lips. ‘I understand your mistress is something of a seer – surely then she knew this when she sent you…’ and, bowing in the face of the sour woman’s mutterings, he added, ‘I will be in my cabin.’

  Alone with Rutana at the vessel’s side, Shimmer offered no comment. The woman wrenched angrily at the bindings on her arm, shot her a hot glare, and grumbled, ‘And I hate all this damned water.’ She marched off. Shimmer leaned over the side to watch the foaming wake. She rather enjoyed being at sea.

  Exiting the Sea of Chimes, they headed west round the desolate coast of the Grey Lands. This desert wasteland supported only the thinnest scatterings of scrub and stunted twisted oak and pine. Shimmer had heard the mages discussing whether its barrenness was due to natural unproductive soils and lack of rainfall, or whether the ruins of ancient K’Chain Che’Malle citadels hinted at another possible cause. In either case it was a forbidding peninsula of windswept semi-arid desert, scrubland and broken rock.

  Once past its horn, which the Guard had named half jokingly ‘Cape Dire’, the Jacuruku pilot sent them more or less on a due west heading out into the rough waters of what some called the ‘Explorers’ Sea’ and others the ‘White Spires Sea’, named for the hazards of its many floating ship-sized mountains of ice. Indeed, it was even speculated that an immense floating field of ice blocked passage between the
se lands and those to the immediate west – Jacuruku itself. Yet this vessel had slipped through as, Shimmer knew, another ship bearing Crimson Guard deserters had as well: Kyle and other Bael land recruits who then went on to rescue K’azz from the Dolmens.

  And now he leads us back to this land. Why? What is so pressing at these Dolmens of Tien? K’azz spoke little of his time there though it had changed him profoundly: before, like Shimmer, he’d not shown his age but when he returned he looked every one of his hundred plus years. From Rutana’s words, and her commander’s reaction, she gathered that something inhabited the Dolmens. Something that he agreed mustn’t be disturbed.

  * * *

  The crossing was for the most part boring. Rutana and Nagal kept to their cabin, as did K’azz. The dull repetitive drone of shipboard routine would only be broken by jolting periods of sheer terror when the call ‘Ice spire!’ rang from the lookouts. Then all aboard ran for the sides while the crew scrambled to the sails and the pilot rammed the tiller aside. Shimmer and the other Avowed watched fascinated as the emerald and white glowing floating sculptures edged past. They looked to her to have been made by the gods, so otherworldly and beautiful were their curving blade-like lines.

  Now that they had entered the corridor of ice crags, the captain ordered the sweeps unshipped and their progress slowed to a tentative crawl. Crew and Avowed passengers alike watched from the sides, long poles at hand. Two observers occupied the crow’s nest at all times. Yet despite all these precautions one night Shimmer was thrown from her hammock as the ship rocked and shuddered beneath her like a hammered child’s toy. She lay stunned on the timbers while around her everyone groaned, rousing themselves. The sound of something scraping the ship’s planking tore at her ears and ran its jagged clawed nails down her spine.

  ‘Ice crag!’ came the panicked yell from above.

  Pretty damned late! Shimmer grabbed her gear and ran for the deck. Up top she found open panic as the sailors ran about, yet the captain was calmly shouting and pointing: ‘Shanks, inspect the damage! Why aren’t the pumps sounding? Stow that cargo!’

  She crossed to the slim figure of K’azz, peering over the side. ‘What happened?’

  He shrugged. ‘Some sort of submerged ice mountain no one saw. Sideswiped us.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Everyone took a hand at the pumps. A bucket line was organized. All the while the ship’s carpenter and his apprentices were below inspecting the damage. Finally, Shimmer was waved to where the captain, K’azz and Rutana were speaking with the carpenter, Shanks.

  ‘Not at sea,’ the carpenter was saying as he shivered, sodden, his lips blue.

  ‘No choice,’ the captain growled.

  ‘Something temporary, perhaps?’ K’azz suggested.

  ‘Land!’ came a shout from the lookout, startling everyone.

  The captain scowled behind his beard. ‘Are you daft, man!’ he bellowed back. ‘There’s no land here!’

  ‘Ice!’

  The captain and the carpenter shared a wary glance.

  ‘What is it?’ K’azz asked.

  ‘The floating ice field,’ Rutana answered after neither of the sailors responded. ‘Haunted. No one goes near it.’

  ‘No choice, I should think,’ K’azz said. He gave the captain a speculative look. ‘We’ll heave up and repair on the ice.’

  The captain waved his dismissal. ‘This is no slim galley. We don’t have enough hands to heave up on to the ice.’

  ‘We have enough mages – isn’t that so, Rutana?’

  The woman’s hard gaze narrowed, perhaps at the implied challenge, then she sneered her answer. ‘Of course!’

  * * *

  The captain ordered a narrow set of sail and they limped slowly towards the distant white line to the west. They slipped under high clouds and a snowfall began of thick huge flakes that Shimmer could almost hear hissing as they touched the wood of the ship. The captain knocked the snow from his shoulders and tangled hair as if it were some sort of contagion. Watching Shimmer’s amusement at the man’s antics, Rutana crossed to her side to explain: ‘Many name this the Curse of the Demons of Cold. The Jaghut. Somewhere within, a shard of their frozen realm, Omtose Phellack, endures. It is the cause of this. And it hates us – all who are not of their kind.’

  ‘Or perhaps it is we who hate all others who are not of our kind,’ K’azz observed from nearby.

  The Jacuruku envoy appeared surprised by the suggestion – and she startled Shimmer by nodding even as she scowled. ‘You are right to say so.’

  Once the ship came close to the edge of the vast plain of ice, a party containing the Avowed mages Gwynn and Lor-sinn, together with Rutana and Nagal, disembarked to prepare a surface for the vessel. Shimmer watched from the railing while some sort of chute was melted in the jagged shore. Then the crew fixed lines and almost everyone disembarked. With the aid of the mages and Nagal and Rutana, the Serpent was slowly eased up, stern first, on to the carved chute of gleaming ice.

  That night they camped on the ice. The captain and crew jumped at every crack and rumble and shot anxious glances to the tall mounds of jumbled shelves that looked to Shimmer like a giant’s heap of carelessly piled timber. The captain had even insisted that pickets be posted, though the waste appeared devoid of all habitation. K’azz acquiesced, murmuring to Shimmer that in fact there might be carnivorous beasts about.

  Shimmer agreed to the pickets, but she did not think anyone at risk, what with the Avowed present, plus the Jacuruku emissaries. That night, while doing a tour of the perimeter, she found K’azz out on the ice with Turgal. The latter still preferred heavy armour, as had been his habit. He now wore a cuirass of banded iron with mail skirting and a large shield on his back, all beaten and badly scraped. The long grip and pommel of a hand-and-a-half blade stood tall from the sheath at his side. The two stood staring off to the west across the ice field. She joined them to scan the plain, which was brilliantly lit by the Great Banner arcing high like a sickly bruise across the night sky.

  After seeing no movement at all among the ink-black shadow and nauseatingly green snow, she asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you not sense it there?’ Turgal asked, his voice hoarse, as if from disuse.

  ‘Sense what?’

  ‘The shard our Jacuruku emissary spoke of,’ K’azz explained.

  ‘Shard?’

  ‘Omtose Phellack,’ Turgal added, his breath pluming. ‘The icemagery of the Jaghut. Don’t you sense it there?’

  ‘No.’ Shimmer almost added I am no mage, but snapped her mouth shut, realizing and neither are they. How then…? Well, K’azz invoked the Vow after all. Perhaps that gave him some sort of privileged insight. But Turgal? Why should he possess such an awareness?

  And yet … there were times when she sensed people nearby before seeing them; and the Jacuruku emissaries – their potency buzzed at her awareness like two distracting flies. So, perhaps she should not be surprised.

  ‘A danger?’ she asked.

  K’azz shook his head. ‘No. It is fading. In a hundred years, who knows? All this may be gone.’

  A wind sharp with cold blew particles of ice into Shimmer’s eyes and bit at her naked hands. ‘Yet to have endured for so long … Why now?’

  The snow crackled beneath K’azz’s boots as he shifted his stance. ‘It seems that perhaps we live now in an age when the old is passing away.’ He cocked his head, thinking. ‘Yet does it seem this way to us merely because we are living now? Or does every age feel the same to those who live through it? Every age, after all, is an age of transition from what came before to what will follow.’

  Turgal gave a soft laugh in appreciation of the point. ‘A question for the cross-eyed philosophers of Darujhistan I think, Duke.’

  ‘No. Let us have mercy upon them. They are cross-eyed enough.’

  ‘Come,’ Shimmer urged, motioning to the tents. ‘This inhuman cold grips my bones.’

  K’azz eye
d her, surprised. ‘You are cold?’

  * * *

  All the crew and the Guard lent a hand to the repairs, which were completed in less than three days. Their fourth and last night, Shimmer suddenly awoke in the utter darkness. She knew that something powerful was approaching; she did not know how she knew, but she was certain of it. In the dark she pulled on her long mail coat, belted on her whipsword, and ducked out of the tent.

  Outside it was quiet but for the snow and ice particles hissing wind-driven against the hide tents. That and the stentorian snoring of a few of the sailors. And it had to be the sailors, for Shimmer saw that her fellow Avowed were awake already. Like ghosts summoned to some haunt, the figures of her companions walked silently among the tents, tying their last knots, adjusting belts, gathering to the west where they formed line – all without any given order.

  She joined them next to K’azz. ‘What is it?’ she whispered, her breath steaming.

  Without shifting his slit gaze from the darkened ice field he answered, ‘Not certain yet. But close.’

  Shimmer signed ‘Ready’ to the left and right. Turgal unsheathed his massive hand-and-a-half blade and raised his shield. Amatt drew his heavy broadsword and likewise readied his wide infantryman’s shield. Cole, who fought after the two-sword style, stepped aside a way for room to slide free his twinned longswords. Lor-sinn and Gwynn took up positions behind the line.

  ‘Ware!’ Gwynn warned, his voice taut with anticipation.

  Shimmer scanned the snowdrifts and gleaming wind-bitten ice shelves, seeing nothing. Damn, it was strong! She felt it now: a terrible potency. In fact, she’d not felt anything like it since—

  Dust or some sort of wind-lashed dirt spun upwards like a wave from the snow. While they watched it merged, solidifying to reveal a single figure wrapped in ragged furs. It stood on legs of naked bone stained brown. A fleshless face stared at them from beneath the ridge of the bone helmet fashioned from the skull of some prehistoric beast. An Imass.