‘Like Father,’ he answered and she smiled, though it was tinged with sadness. A cold chill of wetness brushed his cheek as she kissed him. ‘Goodbye.’
None of his uncle’s household, his cousins or their hired men-at-arms, challenged him as he climbed the hill to the longhouse and entered. The hounds greeted him eagerly, nosing his hands for treats. He stroked them all and shushed them as he crossed to the wide stone fireplace with its mantel of chiselled river stones. Reaching up, he lifted the spear from its wooden rests. The thick ash haft and the broad leaf-shaped head, unique in being struck from some unfamiliar stone, felt lighter than the last time he’d held it: at his father’s funeral pyre.
He was halfway across the hall when a woman’s voice commanded: ‘Orman! That is not yours to take.’ He turned. Raina, Jal’s wife, stood wrapped in a blanket at the door to their sleeping chamber.
‘It comes to me from my father.’
‘That is for Jal to decide.’
‘I claim it as my father’s bequest.’
Raina turned to the sleeping chamber. ‘Jal! Rouse yourself, you great oaf! Your nephew is an ungrateful thief!’
He did not wait for the household to bestir itself. Raina’s screeching shouts followed him down the hillside. ‘Orman! We name you thief! None will harbour you! Outlaw! You will be hunted down like the dog you are!’
He broke into a run then, making for the woods. His breath plumed and Boarstooth felt as light as a willow branch in his hand. The blade of creamy brown stone seemed to sing as it sliced the cold night air.
Ahead rose forested hillside heaped above hillside up on to slope and ridge, climbing to the broad shoulders of the Salt Mountains. Their snowcapped heights glowed dark silver in the moonlight, home to the leagues upon leagues of the Iceblood Holdings. This wild country beckoned to him now – a near infinity of possibilities, it seemed, his for the taking. A promise made by his father years ago.
CHAPTER II
Her life, she decided, had been nothing more than a string of failures. Wretched failures. One piled on to the other. And all after so many had sacrificed so much to bring her into her birthright; her mother, the Rhivi tribes, Malazan marines, citizens of Darujhistan – honourable and not so honourable – had striven heroically to help her become what she was fated to become: Silverfox, Summoner to the ancient undying self-accursed T’lan Imass.
Her mother had given up her own life to nourish her. The Rhivi had endured privation and the loss of many in their migrations; one of the most beloved Malazan officers had given his life championing her; and now, after she had been named the T’lan Imass Summoner come again, it was the Imass themselves who threatened to destroy her.
She had been born to unite the many T’lan Imass clans in one gathering dedicated to the dismissal of the Tellann ritual that bound them through life and death to their relentless pursuit of the Jaghut. A war that had dissolved into irrelevance countless millennia ago as that alien race faded away into isolated individuals who retained no interest in anyone’s affairs. Even those of their own kind.
Yet not all the T’lan considered the war over. Here in Assail there remained one last vestige of that conflict. A soul-wrenching legacy that threatened even her sympathies for these ancient people.
Now she spent her days and nights keeping watch on the coast where the Warren, or Realm, of Tellann tended to draw those Imass guided by this lingering presence. Here they found her, and something else. Something none of them had ever anticipated, nor even imagined.
* * *
When she was at her very lowest Pran Chole would come to spend time with her – or perhaps to watch over her should she consider some sort of sudden drastic action to end her misery. She had yet to decide whether his silent company was a consolation or an aggravation. In the past, he’d once offered himself up as the defenceless target and recipient of her anger, her fury, and her outrage at the injustice of her fate. And she had beaten upon him the way a smith punishes his anvil. Yet she’d seen since how he had done it as a gift to her, out of love. That she should turn her fury upon him rather than herself.
Now she was not certain what her feelings were for the ancient Bonecaster – the closest thing to a father she could claim to have had. When she was at her lowest he could somehow sense it. He would come to her tent among the dunes, entering just as any living being would through the loose front flap, ducking his head bearing its broken-antlered headdress, to stand silent and watchful. Offering the last thing that remained to him to try to ease her mind: his company.
Sometimes, on nights like these, when the wind howled off the coast and the waves pummelled the beach as if meaning to wash it from existence utterly, she would sit cross-legged next to her small fire while her hide tent shuddered and jerked about her, and he would come to stand just inside the opening as if uncertain of his welcome. She was not uncomfortable in his presence; and indeed, his attention wasn’t upon her at all. The dark empty pits of his sockets gazed steadily aside, towards the coast, ever sensing for newcomers.
Of course he need not have bothered with this awkward gesture of companionship. She of all people, Silverfox, was never alone. It was what she was. How she had been created. And she considered it her curse. Three entities resided within her. Pran Chole himself, among others, had pulled the three together to create what he hoped would become the first living T’lan Imass Bonecaster and Summoner in many millennia. And he had succeeded. Mighty beings, dead and dying, had been lashed to her soul as if by bloody sinew and dried roots: Tattersail, powerful Malazan cadre mage, indeed potent enough to be considered a High Mage; Bellurdan, a Thelomen giant in life and huge in soul in death; and most closed to her of all, Nightchill, a sorceress of the Malazan Empire. In life, for a time, they had served Kellanved, the first emperor. But in death they agreed to serve the child Silverfox – destined to release the T’lan Imass from their self-inflicted bondage.
And when she was at her very nadir, as on this night, she could not help but note her hands as she prodded the dying embers of the fire; their wasted bird-like lines, all sinew and bone, the skin blotched by age-spots. Not the hands of the youth she was – at least in years. By the number of seasons she had seen she should be an adolescent. Yet her purpose, what she was formed to do, had arrived early. And so was she quickened to meet it. The cost had been terrible, and not just to her. The need had consumed her mother first. It had taken the many potential decades of her life. And now it was overwhelming hers.
She flexed her hands to warm them then returned to stirring the embers with a stick of broken brittle driftwood. All this Pran Chole witnessed. The low fire cast a bronze glow across his dry withered face, though the empty sockets of his eyes remained hidden in darkness beneath his headdress of weathered, broken antlers. How many such scenes had this Imass seen? The fire’s flush suited him, she decided.
Her thoughts turned then to another Imass, one who had shared many similar nights across the sea in Genabackis, and had become what Silverfox considered the closest thing to a friend among them: Lanas Tog of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass. The warrior who came bearing the message of war in Assail.
She sighed then, examining her limp useless hands, and Pran Chole, who knew her so well, broke his silence. His voice was the brushing of sand across the dunes: ‘She did what she thought she had to do, child.’
That she should be so transparent irked her and she growled, ‘She should not have lied.’
‘She did not lie. You could say she told a half-truth. What she imagined would bring us to this land.’
‘She must’ve known we would not join her.’
The ancient undying warrior offered the answer of his accumulated millennia of wisdom: he lifted his bony shoulders in a small shrug. ‘She guessed some would.’
Silverfox felt a fury mounting at that betrayal. Within her, the mountain-shaking ire of Bellurdan bellowed anew at those who had defied her command, while an icy vow from Nightchill whispered: never forget nor forgive. Yet s
he and Tattersail still could not believe that there would be those who would put their ancient enmity first – even after the lessons of Genabackis and the benediction of the Redeemer who had granted the T’lan Imass the possibility of hope once more. This clinging to the past troubled her young soul the most. ‘It is so utterly needless,’ she murmured, watching the embers burn themselves out.
Pran Chole did not answer. After a moment she glanced up to see that she was alone.
Certainty chilled her spine then. Gods, no. Not again. I can’t go. Can’t bear to witness it all again. It tore her apart to see it. But she should; if her words could sway just one …
She threw open the loose hide flap and ran for the breakers crashing beyond the intervening high dunes.
She found Pran Chole standing knee high in the foaming surf, facing the empty ocean. ‘Who comes!’ she shouted over the wind and the surge of waves.
‘I know not,’ he answered, as phlegmatic as ever.
She scanned the water, dark and webbed beneath the chill stars and passing courses of clouds. Her hides, sodden to her thighs, pulled upon her, heavy and clinging. Then darker shapes came emerging from the trough and rise of the waves: ravaged skulls, broken caps of bone and cured leather; the jagged stone tips of spears; the humped shoulders of animal hides. T’lan Imass strode forward from the surf, some dozen or more.
‘They are of the Kerluhm,’ Pran Chole murmured tonelessly. He pushed into the waves.
Though she was dreading it, the news still made her clench her fists and press one to her breast. Gods, no! More of them. Will they not stop coming? Why not others?
Pran Chole raised a hand of bone and cured leathery skin. ‘Greetings, Kerluhm,’ he called. ‘I am Pran Chole of the Kron. We honour you.’
‘I am Othut K’ho,’ one answered. ‘We honour the Kron.’ A ragged cape of sewn animal skins hung from this one’s bare bone shoulders. He turned to Silverfox and lowered himself to one knee in the surf. The others of his band joined him. ‘Summoner,’ he murmured as softly as Pran. ‘We honour you as well.’
She raised a hand for pause. Now, she knew, she had to command when her every instinct urged her to plead. ‘My thanks, Othut. If you honour me I must ask you to agree to forestall any action until I have explained fully.’
His battered mien wrinkled up even more as his mostly fleshless brow crinkled. ‘Explain?’ he breathed. His empty sockets edged to the north and he murmured, ‘We are newly reawakened to the world, true. We were caught crossing the Agadal and the ice took us. It seems we slept for ages. And while we slumbered, interned, that river of ice carried us far afield indeed. I awoke on the shore of an unknown sea and freed what companions I could find. Then we heard the Call…’
‘Listen to me, Othut,’ she interjected, speaking with all her power over the roar of the surf. ‘If you honour me you must follow my command. And I command an end to the war, Othut. It is over. No more hostilities. We gather here and I will release you all. Is this understood, Othut? Are you listening?’
The Kerluhm’s rotted head, its tannin-stained skull peeking from behind the mummified flesh, had edged aside to Pran, and it raised a bone-thin arm to point to the north. ‘Is what I sense true?’ it asked, and Silverfox heard the familiar stunned amazement in his words.
Pran answered in a slow firm nod. ‘It is so. And we of the Kron name them beyond the boundary of the Ritual.’
Silverfox stood frozen, fists clenched at her sides, fairly quivering in dread. Now would come the answer, she knew. The T’lan did not dissemble. Nor hide their intent. It would happen now.
‘We Kerluhm,’ Othut answered, his voice even more raw and jagged, ‘do not.’
‘No!’ she cried once more – as she always did – but to no effect. The waves boiled about her as Kron warriors surged through the surface and they and the Kerluhm locked blades that clashed and grated. Pran shifted to stand protectively before her, though never in all the battles played out here on these beaches did one Imass ever move to threaten her.
She fell to her knees, the water at her breast, her face in her hands. Failure! Utter wretched failure once more! The cold waves splashed over her. The surge of bodies fighting around her died away.
‘It is over,’ Pran Chole said unnecessarily. ‘They have fled. My warriors pursue.’
She raised her face. Her tears felt hot on her chilled wet cheeks. ‘Your numbers are diminishing, Pran. Some time soon too many will arrive and you will be overrun. What then?’ she yelled. ‘What then!’
‘You will not be harmed.’
She lunged to her feet. Her wet hides slapped about her, almost pulling her over. She threw up a hand as if to strike his stone-hard face. ‘I do not speak of myself!’ She jabbed a finger to the north. ‘I speak of them! Them! What will happen to all those thousands … so many. A crime beyond imagining, Pran! And you Imass the perpetrators. Mass murderers…’ The enormity of it made her dizzy and she could not continue.
‘Omtose Phellack remains active in the north. It protects them yet.’
‘For how long!’ she threw back at him. ‘It is weakening. You know this! In the little time we’ve been here I have felt it weakening.’
To this Pran could only offer the wordless gesture of those who live long enough in the indifferent world: the subtle lift of the shoulders that says, who is to know?
* * *
Fisher Kel Tath found the Bone Peninsula much the same as when he’d left it so very long ago. Which is to say: insular, murderous, and savage. The pocket city-states still jostled and warred amongst themselves seeking supremacy. And each, in its turn, succeeded in grasping a taste of said supremacy only to be dragged down eventually by some new alliance of its neighbours, said alliance then flying apart in the inevitable betrayals and killings. And so it went. On and on. Endlessly repeating itself and none apparently learning a thing from it. Fisher was even more disheartened and disgusted than when he’d fled it all originally.
Yet he’d returned. Drawn not by the steep inlets and forested mountain slopes that so figured in his youth, but by hints from readings in the divinatory Dragons deck, by whispered rumours, and by plain gut instincts that told him that things were about to change here in the lands of Assail, so very ancient and clinging to the old ways of family, clan and blood-feud.
He lingered in Holly, at the top of the mountainous peninsula. It was one of the more northerly of the coastal kingdoms. They were named kingdoms here along the coast, though in any other region they would rate as little more than baronies, or minor city-states. He lingered because when he arrived he found himself anticipated by a horde of foreigners all come ashore from the outland vessels now crowding the tiny fishing harbour of this modest fortress and town.
It seemed that for all his seeking out of subtle readers of the deck, paying of noted prophets, and even time spent insinuating himself into the good graces of a certain priestess of the Queen of Dreams for hints of future events, he had failed to discover the news that was clearly common knowledge: that streams bedded in gold had been discovered in northern Assail lands.
He did not know whether to consider it a personal failing, or a sad comment on the skills of said clairvoyants. In any case, he now had a seat in a tavern quite taken over by foreigners – and he was thought by everyone to be among them – while strategy was being hammered out around the captain’s table.
It was a raucous affair of banged fists, yelled insults, and daggers half drawn while their owners, hired swords, and plain men-at-arms watched one another suspiciously.
‘We must all march together overland.’ This was Marshal Teal of Lether, tall, pole-slim and sour-faced, who possessed the largest force: a pocket army of forty armed fortune-hunters, all probable ex-soldiers. He called himself ‘Marshal’, though Fisher couldn’t recall such a rank associated with the Letherii military.
‘Overland is too slow!’ This from Enguf, called the Broad, a man who couldn’t be more opposite to the pale-lipped Letherii commander: a
squat, flame-haired south Genabackan pirate who’d landed with a crew of twenty armed, lean and hungry swordsmen. ‘Those who continue on to the inland sea will take everything!’
‘We have no time for such games,’ cut in the third commander at the table, a Malazan aristocrat, Malle of Gris. She was an older woman, wiry, in thick layered finery of the sort that was fashionable in Unta two decades ago. Thick silver wristlets gleamed at her wrists like manacles, and kohl lined her eyes giving her something of the look of an owl. ‘That you landed here betrays your intent clearly.’
‘And that is?’ Enguf answered, not the least intimidated by the woman’s haughty manner.
She dismissed him with a wave of a skinny hand. ‘We three must have seen maps or heard accounts that hint of the dangers all along the inland sea. The Sea of Dread, many style it. The Anguish Coast. Are we three not betting that few of these vessels will reach the inland Sea of Gold? Better to cut across the top of the peninsula, neh? Though the mountain passes of the Bone range no doubt hold their own dangers.’
‘Quite so, Malle,’ put in Marshal Teal. ‘We will march for the top of the Demon Narrows. To a settlement named Destruction Bay.’
‘Hardly encouraging, that,’ muttered Enguf.
‘Not to worry,’ said Malle. Her lips thinned into a humourless predatory smile. ‘I believe that to be a description of what awaits those foolish enough to attempt the narrows.’
‘We are resolved then?’ enquired Teal. He signed to his second, who drew a sheet of parchment from a pouch. ‘We the undersigned,’ he began, dictating, ‘agree to equal shares of all profits accruing, after shared expenses, from our venture in gathering mineral resources from the Salt range.’ When his aide had finished, he signed the document then slid it and the quill across to Malle, who also signed. She offered it to Enguf, who scowled at the sheet and the other two commanders.
‘Must I?’ he growled distastefully.
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) Page 339