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

  ‘I will see you dead!’ the young man howled.

  ‘He has run, Magister,’ a guard said, his gaze shaded against the swirling dust.

  Metal clattered to the stone flagging as limbs cracked or hissed away into nothing. Faces had been gouged away into flat discs, bone and all. A head snapped off as the thinned neck gave way with a crack. Which of these, if any, was cursed Khun-Sen himself Pon-lor could not bring himself to care. One cursed figure, an elderly soldier, perhaps Khun-Sen, toppled over to burst into fragments.

  ‘Shall we pursue, m’lord?’ a guard asked, his tone now far more respectful.

  ‘No. They know this labyrinth. We’ll never track them. Let’s find the eastern path.’

  ‘Yes, m’lord.’

  The dense iron-grey cloud of dust was dissipating. Pon-lor could now see across the chamber. A good finger’s thickness covered every surface. He tilted his head to brush the fine powdered stone from his hair. Armour and weapons littered the floor, along with the corpses of his dead. As the last of the grit sifted away Pon-lor faced a mere four standing guards, all wrapped in shrouds of grey, like the ghosts of Chanar Keep themselves. The four stood blinking at one another through the smeared masks of pulverized stone as if shocked to find themselves alive.

  ‘Magister…’ murmured one, gesturing to his side.

  Pon-lor peered down to see the bloodied, now dust-caked arrowhead and a good hand’s width of haft standing from his torso. He’d almost forgotten about it. ‘Break it off and pull it out,’ he told the guards.

  They exchanged uneasy glances but nodded their acquiescence.

  ‘This will hurt, Magister…’ one told him, reaching for the haft.

  Pon-lor took hold of the man’s sash to steady himself. ‘No, Melesh – it is Melesh? Yes? I quite assure you it will not.’

  * * *

  If any ships witnessed the storm that arose upon the great empty tract of ocean between Quon Tali and the shores of Jacuruku, none survived to tell the wonders of the sight. No natural tempest was this. The sea clashed as if driven to war against itself. Mountainous waves swelled as current surged against current. Deep troughs the size of valleys opened as if to reveal the infinite depths. The winds battled and slashed each other into shreds of cloud and sleet.

  Through these howling squalls a single vessel did push south by southwest. Long and low it was, of black wood lacquered in countless layers. It possessed no masts. Its deck was fully enclosed but for a single small hatch. Single banks of twenty oars to a side fought the contrary winds and slam of waves in a steady inhumanly powerful stroke.

  As if in defiance of the storm a woman stood open to the elements upon the deck. Her clothes hung from her, utterly soaked. Water ran in rivulets from her hacked short hair and slid wind-driven across her face. She stood with arms crossed beneath her outer robes, her gaze slit against the cutting sleet. Twice a day another woman emerged from the small hatch. This one wore light leather armour, belted and studded. A pale mask hid half her face. Though the deck was featureless polished wood and the wind raged in gusting contrary blows her footing was sure as she crossed to the first woman. Here she offered a meagre ball of food or a skin of water that the first always refused, and then she would withdraw, bowing.

  Who would it be? T’riss, the Enchantress, Queen of Dreams, and one-time companion to Anomandaris, wondered. Which of them shall be first? She sensed them all far to the west, all gathered for the potential transfiguration. And who shall it be, and into which state? And will they be pleased with the results? Too many futures now beckoned for any to see the clear path. Even she.

  And it is the mortals who will choose.

  There it was. The unwelcome truth – her forte. As ash-dry in her mouth as in anyone’s.

  After all these ages … the choice was no longer hers. Indeed, she saw now that it never was. That what she had taken as control, the subtle manipulation, all the light plucking of such diverse threads, had been no more than the kicking of stones down a hill. They do end up at the bottom where you want them, but how they got there … well … one can hardly take the credit.

  And speaking of tumbling stones … she sensed them, then, her first visitors.

  Get of the Errant. The vindictive two-faced Twins.

  It was the Lad who faced her. The rain slashed through his wavering translucent image. His pointed ferret face twitched in something resembling a wink.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said and he heard her though the raging winds annihilated her words.

  He took on an expression of anxious concern. ‘I have come to warn you.’

  ‘Warn me of what?’

  He wavered closer as if to impart some secret news. ‘Have you not seen there is a strong chance that this gambit of yours will bring you to your end?’

  I have seen that and infinitely more than you can conceive of, you capering fool. ‘Yes.’

  The Lady swung round from her rear. The wind did not touch her long brushed hair. Her pale face pulled down in a sad moue. She sighed: ‘How desperately you must have loved him from afar…’

  For a moment T’riss lost her footing and stumbled backwards. She righted herself, her brows crimped in puzzlement. ‘What nonsense is this?’

  The Lady sighed once more, as if in empathy. But malice glittered in her black eyes. ‘Unrequited love is the cruellest, they say. And now he is gone.’

  The Queen of Dreams’ brows rose as understanding came. ‘No…’

  The Twins circled her now. ‘Do not throw your life away in some mad plan,’ the Lad urged.

  ‘You were as nothing to him, in any case,’ the Lady said with a flick of her hand.

  Why do they seek to dissuade me? I wonder which of all the possible outcomes it is that they fear. And how could I ever know for certain? She offered an easy shrug. ‘You presume too much.’

  The Lady stopped before her. Her mouth tightened into a cruel knowing slash. ‘She will destroy you.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘She has barred you from her lands,’ said the Lad.

  ‘So she has.’

  ‘She’s tried to kill you already,’ the Lady added.

  T’riss stood deathly still for a time. When she spoke her voice was frigid: ‘You presume far too much … That is enough from you.’

  The Twins bowed – yet mockingly. ‘No,’ said the Lady, ‘that is enough from you…’

  ‘… as there shall be no more from you,’ finished the Lad.

  And the two faded from sight leaving the glistening black deck empty, rain-slashed and awash in spray.

  T’riss sensed the approach of her Seguleh bodyguard, Ina. The woman stopped next to her. She was crouched, her bent legs leaning with the drunken yaw and pitch of the deck. In the tilt of her masked head T’riss read a question.

  ‘It was nothing, Ina. Just a chance encounter.’

  CHAPTER VI

  I am amused by the attitude of these people of Jakal Uku towards antiques and the possessions of any deceased person generally. Childishly, they absolutely do not wish to possess such objects and have no desire for them. I once noted a wonderful pugal (a carved low sitting table) left in an abandoned hut. ‘What a fine piece of the woodcarver’s art!’ I exclaimed to my local friend. ‘Why is it thrown aside?’

  ‘I would not touch it,’ he answered. ‘I would think of the persons who sat at it before me and whether their lives were happy and if they are happy now watching me sit where they once did.’

  Whelhen Mariner

  Narrative of a Shipwreck and Captivity within a Mythical Land

  Old Man Moon made all the preparations. Through the heat of the day Saeng sat in the hut on its tall poles. She fanned Hanu, all the while feeling rather like a bird in a cage. She watched Moon coming and going from the surrounding jungle. In the clear light of day he appeared no more than a tattooed old man. A village elder, priest, or monk. He laid up a great pile of firewood, set the fire, then set to grinding various ingredients in a mortar: charcoal, som
e kind of red dirt or clay, and plant roots. The mortar was no more than a slab of basalt bearing a depression in its top that he pushed a stone across. He then set a number of pointed sticks on a slab of wood together with a row of grey earthenware pots. Last, he unrolled a long sheet of woven rattan matting.

  The boy Ripan, meanwhile, had been tasked with watching the fire. This he pursued only in the most negligent manner, heaving loud aggrieved sighs, and raising a palm leaf fan over the fire in a desultory wave.

  One time when Moon had gone off into the woods, the lad drew out his flute. He blew a series of descending hauntingly sad notes, and sang: ‘Woe to whoever would reach for the Moon … they fail to see the cliff before their feet…’ and he sent her a sharp-toothed grin.

  Towards evening Old Man Moon’s wrinkled tattooed face appeared at the hut’s entrance. ‘Things are nearly ready.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ called Ripan from the fire, ‘you should wait for the Night of our Ancestors, or the Festival of Cleansing. Those would be far more propitious…’

  ‘You forget whom you speak to,’ the old man snapped in his first betrayal of any temper in front of Saeng. He smiled up reassuringly. ‘I am Old Man Moon! I decide what times are propitious, and which are not. Now come, we will begin.’

  ‘And my brother?’

  He raised a placating hand. ‘Later. After your payment.’

  Saeng did not move. ‘Payment usually follows services.’

  ‘I always receive my due first. But, if it makes you feel any better, I assure you that what you provide for me will not be binding or efficacious unless I pay for it. It’s all part of the exchange.’

  Saeng was not completely convinced, but there appeared to be nothing she could hold the man to. Her mouth tight with misgiving, she climbed down the ladder, assisted by Moon.

  ‘Very good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Play for us, Ripan.’

  The youth rolled his eyes to the purpling, half-overcast sky.

  ‘There, now.’ Moon stood next to the rattan matting. He set to rolling up his waistcloth wrap and exposed a loincloth that was no more than a strip running vertically between his flat wrinkled flanks.

  Not only was Saeng horrified to be presented with the old man’s withered buttocks, but she saw that each was entirely pristine.

  Oh, my ancestors, no! Not this.

  He lay on his stomach and rested his head on his folded arms. He sighed contentedly. ‘Very good.’

  Saeng cleared her throat. ‘So. I’m to tattoo your…’ She couldn’t think of any way to say it.

  ‘As you can see, I’m running out of options. I could turn over. Would you prefer that?’

  ‘No! No thank you. This is fine.’

  ‘I thought as much. Ripan – you’re not playing.’

  ‘It’s not time yet,’ the lad answered resentfully.

  Moon raised his head to peer up at the trees and the gathering evening. ‘Ah! You are right. I’ve got ahead of myself, I am so eager.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘I apologize. I haven’t been myself since I had something of an accident recently. But tonight should go a long way to remedying that.’

  Saeng frowned down at the old man. A recent accident? She remembered a night not so long ago. Her neighbours screaming, pointing up at the black sky. And on the moon: had she glimpsed a flash of light? Then darkness swirling across the scarred round face obscuring it for nights on end.

  ‘Are you the moon?’ she asked, unable to withhold all wonder from her voice.

  He chuckled indulgently. ‘No, child. Not itself, of course. But I live its life and it mine. Long ago I chose to tie myself to it as intimately as if it were my twin. I can still remember when the vision of it first revealed itself to me all those ages ago.’ He laid his head back down on his folded arms. ‘At that time I moved through darkness without being aware what darkness was – it was all I knew. But then, unbidden, the vision came to me of the moon floating among the stars. Glorious, it seemed to me. A hanging pool of quicksilver. Its light was silvery cool. Magical. I swore then that I had found my essence and I took the moon as my patron. My inspiration. My source.’ He glanced back to her once again. ‘Do you know what I mean by that?’

  ‘I believe so,’ she answered, slowly. She recalled a few of the more ancient shades from her childhood speaking of the greatest of the entities that emerged from the vastness of the past. And how each had their Aspect, their province, or facet. Earth, Dark, Water, Light, and more. Why not the moon?

  ‘Of course you know what happened then, yes?’

  She shook her head then realized he couldn’t see and so murmured, ‘No.’ Before her eyes the spinning glyphs and symbols continued their shimmering graceful arc across the old man’s back, as if mirroring the turning of the infinite night above.

  ‘The moon fades.’ Ripan spoke up, and he blew a long sad note that trailed down into silence.

  ‘Yes. The sun rose. The moon was but stealing its glow from the sun. For the first time I beheld the sun and it terrified me. It seemed my wanderings had brought me into Tiste lands. I paid my respects to Mother Dark but kept to myself mostly. Now I live here and I pay my respects to Lady Ardata.’

  ‘You serve the Demon-Queen?’

  ‘Demons?’ He cocked his head. ‘Well, there are a few, I suppose. But there are one or two of everything here. Long ago Ardata offered sanctuary to all the creatures and spirits you humans cared to name monsters. Which, it seems, conveniently includes everything other than you. Here you will find many things that have elsewhere disappeared from the face of the earth. Even some things that have been forgotten all together.’

  ‘Himatan…’ Saeng breathed.

  ‘Indeed. Some few humans live in the jungles as well. But they are just one kind among many. And they tread lightly for it.’ He closed his eyes and sighed once more. ‘Ah, child. You should have seen it then. The moon, I mean. Wondrous! It used to be much larger in the sky, you know. Very much larger. These late days it is but a shrunken grey shadow of its former glory. And it had brothers and sisters, then. Other moons.’

  ‘All gone now,’ murmured Ripan, pointedly.

  ‘Yes. Some lost their way and wandered off. Others fell to break up in great fiery cascades.’ He shook his head in sad reminiscence.

  Saeng studied the assemblage of tattooing instruments and what she assumed to be powdered pigments or tints in the coarsely fired earthenware pots. She picked up one long stick to find it tipped in an iron point that glimmered blue-grey in the fading twilight.

  Struck by a thought, she said, ‘I always assumed you’d be female, you know. Where I come from, the moon is always portrayed as female.’

  The old man nodded where he lay, his head on his folded arms. ‘Yes. I understand that is how it is now – among you humans. And the Tiste as well, I believe. But in the eldest cults, the ones that date back to when awareness first raised its eyes to the sky in wonder, among these, where people move in unison with the seasons, the moon is always male and the sun female. Such is the irrefutable logic of fertility. The sun gives life. The sun provides. What does the moon do? It has no light of its own – it can only steal some small glow from the sun. It is but a pale modest attendant to the infinitely flowing and infinitely giving life abundance that is the sun.’

  She found him gazing at her over his shoulder. ‘As part of me is to Light.’

  Saeng frowned and opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that but he raised his head, announcing, ‘Ah! Now we can begin.’ Saeng peered about, wondering why suddenly it was time. Then she saw it. The moon had risen. Its pallid magical light streamed through the trees. A few narrow beams of wavering liquid silver now fell across Old Man Moon’s elbow and one shoulder. The tattoos within this light blazed to life like distant stars.

  Saeng raised the instrument in her hand. ‘But … what do I do?’

  ‘Ah! Simplicity itself!’ Moon shifted an arm and smoothed a patch of earth. He scratched a symbol in the dirt. ‘Start with that one.’

&nbs
p; Swallowing her distaste, she examined his right buttock. ‘Where?’

  ‘The outside top. Work inward.’

  Wonderful. Work inward! But what do I do when I reach … well, maybe I should cross that bridge when I come to it.

  ‘And what do I use, you know, for ink?’

  ‘Ah. Take up the nearest pot…’

  Saeng lifted it and peered inside: the dust scintillated like powdered silver.

  ‘… and spit into it.’

  Spit? ‘What? Spit? Really?’

  ‘Yes. Quite so. It is required.’

  Gods look away! This was getting worse and worse. Hanu better damn well appreciate it! She spat, but as she did so a great gust of the powder blew up into her face and she coughed, nearly dropping the pot. She wiped her watering eyes. ‘I’m so sorry!’

  Ripan laughed, and it was not a friendly laugh.

  ‘It is fine,’ Moon assured her. To Ripan, a curt, ‘Play!’

  The youth took up his flute and blew a squalling note. He winked over the instrument.

  ‘Try not to exhale next time,’ Moon explained.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she answered tightly, rather annoyed that he hadn’t mentioned it before.

  She crouched next to him, tucked her legs beneath her, and bent down over his withered flanks. She dabbed the tip of the instrument into the globe of liquid silver her spit had become, then studied the symbol the old man had drawn.

  Taking a deep breath, she set to work.

  * * *

  Old Man Moon talked the entire time. Concentrating on her task, Saeng hardly heard half of what he said. Occasionally he would raise a hand, saying, ‘good enough’ or ‘extend that line’. But other than these simple instructions he seemed content to leave her to it. Each new glyph or arcane symbol he traced in the dirt for her. As the work progressed Saeng was disconcerted to see some of her handiwork join the orderly march of signs spinning across the old man’s flank and back. Ripan kept up a low tuneless accompaniment that seemed to wander drearily, and frankly was no help to her concentration.