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

  Fisher had then rather reluctantly revealed that he had travelled through this region before. After demonstrating local knowledge to the satisfaction of Malle’s own expert on Assail, the mage Holden, the Gris noblewoman offered to take him on, she said, to play and sing tales for her edification.

  Therefore, it was in a Malazan-style field tent that Fisher sat idly strumming his current instrument, a stringed idum, consisting of a long narrow arm on a round gourd-like body. It was a traditional instrument of the Seven Cities region.

  He was strumming and plucking, exploring possible composition elements for his current travels, when a voice spoke from within the tent. ‘You play well.’

  He lowered the instrument’s arm from where he’d held it close to his ear and turned on his stool next to the open flap. Outside, the fires of the expedition crackled and cast a flickering light within the tent. His guest still lay under his blankets on the travois, but now his eyes glittered as dark as if the night itself was watching.

  ‘You are with us!’ Fisher came to his side. ‘I am Fisher. Fisher Kel Tath. And you are?’

  ‘I…’ The Andii frowned. ‘I am…’ He rubbed his brow and the frown rose into growing alarm. Fisher glanced away from the open panic that surfaced in the man’s night-black eyes. ‘I – cannot remember,’ he confessed, almost awed. ‘I cannot remember anything.’

  Fisher pulled his stool next to the travois. ‘It is all right. I understand you nearly drowned. No doubt your memories will return in time. Do you remember anything of the sea, or drowning?’

  ‘No. That is…’ The man rubbed his brow with both hands as if struggling to pull memories from his mind. ‘Perhaps. I think I remember … fighting for breath.’

  Fisher studied the man. Could he in truth be amnesiac? He’d heard that sometimes a near death by drowning could do that to a person. Of course, a sceptic would note how that was all too convenient. ‘So. You do not remember your name. What of your past? Any images, or places?’

  The Andii gave an angry shake of his head – angry only with his own failure. ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘Yet you are of the opinion that I play well.’

  The man offered a half-smile. ‘Perhaps I should say that your playing was pleasing to my ear.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I thank you. Now, what of a name? I cannot just say hey you.’

  ‘No. That would certainly not do.’ He sat up in the travois then rubbed his brow anew, as if dizzy. He looked to Fisher and the bard thought the man’s glance uncharacteristically open and unguarded for an Andii. Or for any adult, for that matter. It was too much of the honest artlessness of youth. ‘Can you give me one?’

  Half wincing, Fisher lowered his gaze. Ye gods, what a responsibility! Naming an Andii was not something anyone should casually take on. Yet he knew many old Tiste Andii lays, and they were jammed full of names and ancestries. ‘I … could,’ he allowed.

  ‘Very good.’ And the man sat waiting as if Fisher was about to bestow it right away.

  Fisher gave a rather nervous laugh. ‘Let me consider the matter. Such things require … care.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ And the man nodded his acceptance.

  Fisher cleared his throat into the silence. ‘In the meantime, let me see to kitting you out properly. We are headed into mountains. Your thin cloth trousers and shirt, though they are of an expensive weave, will not do. And you need footgear of a sort – that will be a challenge. And some sort of weapon. Do you use a sword?’

  With the mention of the word ‘sword’ the man’s head snapped to him and for an instant the black eyes held an expression that was far from innocent openness. Then the mood cleared and the Andii smiled as if having discovered something. ‘Yes. I remember … a sword. Something about a sword.’

  Fisher slapped his thighs and rose. ‘There you are. Progress already. Soon it will all come back. Now wait here – I’ll see what I can pull together.’

  He made the rounds of the three camps. Marshal Teal offered to sell him equipment at an insultingly inflated price. Enguf’s raiders had no extra gear, and were in fact short of everything themselves. He returned to the Malazan camp and headed for Malle’s tent.

  Three guards sat on stools before the closed flap. A small fire burned low in front of them while behind a thin slit of lamplight cut through the tent opening. They were three of a kind: gnarled veterans in battered light armour, the heaviest item of which was a shirt of mail. Like three boulders, Fisher thought, that had rolled and bashed their way across countless fields and continents until every edge carried a bruise or a scar.

  ‘Lookee here,’ one commented, nudging his fellow. ‘It’s that foreign screecher. Where’s that cat you keep stretched on a stick and torture every night?’

  ‘Evening, lads,’ Fisher said placidly. ‘Here to see the mistress. And it’s an idum. An instrument out of Seven Cities.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ the first said. ‘Heard them played. Broke every one of them I saw after that.’

  ‘You wasn’t in Seven Cities,’ the one on the right objected.

  ‘Was so.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said the one in the middle. ‘I remember it distinctly – he was advertised as the famous Malazan dancing boy.’

  The one on the right now nodded his agreement. ‘Oh, I remember now. His bum was everywhere.’

  The first joined in the nodding. ‘I distracted them and you stuck your knives in – or something like that.’

  Fisher struggled to keep his face straight. ‘Gentlemen … your mistress?’

  ‘Now I know she wasn’t in Seven Cities,’ the middle one said.

  The one on the right rubbed his jaw with a gnarled paw. ‘She mighta bin.’

  ‘Would you announce me?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘As what?’ the first asked, looking him up and down. Fisher raised his eyes to the night sky. The guard nudged the one in the middle. ‘Your turn.’

  This one kicked the one on his right. ‘Your turn.’

  The last dropped his hand from his jaw and sighed his annoyance. ‘I can’t believe I have to be the one to go to all the trouble.’ He lifted his head and shouted: ‘Hey, Malle! It’s that foreign bandolier here to see you!’

  ‘That’s balladeer, Riley dear,’ Malle called from within. ‘Now send him in.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Riley asked out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘He wouldn’t fit so well across your chest,’ the one in the middle answered.

  ‘Oh, I dunno about that,’ Riley answered, eyeing Fisher up and down. ‘He just might.’

  Fisher sketched a salute and edged between them.

  Inside, a number of lamps cast a warm yellow glow. Tables and stools cluttered the front half of the tent. Hangings concealed a private rear sleeping chamber. With Malle were her two hired mages, one of whom he knew: the old and battered Holden of Cawn, mage of Serc. The other was new to him: a young plain lass, obviously the mage of Telas he’d sensed earlier. A low table between them lay cluttered with scraps of food, glasses, and rolled sheets of parchment he recognized as charts and maps.

  Malle waved to a stool. ‘Fisher Kel Tath,’ she invited. ‘Please be seated.’

  ‘I thank you, m’lady.’

  She waved a black-gloved hand to Holden. ‘Holden of Cawn.’

  ‘The songster and I know each other of old, ma’am,’ Holden explained.

  ‘Oh. How convenient.’ She indicated the girl. ‘This is Alca of Cat, new to my service.’

  Fisher bowed to the girl, whose pale lipless mouth drew down as if anticipating some sort of insult from him. He merely inclined his head in greeting once more, and indicated the rolled parchments. ‘You come well prepared.’

  ‘These?’ Malle snorted her scorn and tossed back a tiny glass of some thick blood-red liqueur. ‘Mere traveller’s tales. Might as well draw monsters on their borders.’ She eyed him speculatively. ‘You, however, have travelled through here before.’

  ‘Along the coast only, ma’am. Never
inland.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Very dangerous.’

  She eyed her mages. ‘How very encouraging. Dangerous in what manner?’

  He shrugged, extended his legs. ‘I do not know exactly. All I can say is that those who attempt to cross the spine of the Bone range are never seen again. There are stories, of course. Many rumours.’

  Malle refilled her tumbler from a tall thin crystal decanter. ‘And have these stories a common theme?’

  ‘A monster. A threat. A price to be paid.’

  The woman held the tiny glass between the fingertips of both hands and studied him over the rim. Under her steady gaze he was thankful that he had told her the truth.

  ‘Interesting…’ she said at last.

  Fisher frowned at that. ‘How so?’

  ‘Holden?’

  The old mage cleared his throat and spat into a bronze pot next to his feet. ‘The oldest accounts have a road that tracks the top of the Bone Peninsula. Know you of that?’

  Now Fisher regarded Malle steadily. ‘I have heard stories of such an ancient traveller’s account. It is said that the imperial archive in Unta possesses it.’

  Behind the glass a small tight-lipped smile came and went from the old woman’s mouth. ‘Archivists can get into debt as easily as anyone.’ She waved to invite him to speak. ‘What have you heard?’

  Fisher wasn’t certain that he believed the woman’s explanation, but outwardly he gave the appearance of not particularly caring either way. ‘I am a singer, a collector of songs and tales. And there are very old ones from this region that speak variously of the Bone Road, the Bridge of Bone, or the Way of Bone.’

  ‘Colourful,’ the old woman commented dryly. ‘Any other hazards we should be mindful of?’

  Fisher opened his arms. ‘Well, there are always bandits, thieves, and mountain tribes.’

  ‘I doubt that any ragged bandits would attack a party of some hundred armed men and women,’ the girl sneered. ‘Hard knocks for poor rewards.’

  Fisher shifted his gaze to her. ‘Some might fight to defend their territory.’ The girl just snorted, looking sour.

  ‘Anything else?’ Malle enquired.

  Fisher nodded. ‘Then there are the supernatural dangers.’

  Holden chuckled and winked. ‘Ah yes. The legendary ghoulies, ghosties and giants of Assail.’

  Fisher did not share the man’s amusement. ‘The ghosts are real, my friend. The further north you go the worse they get. That and the cold.’

  Alca leaned forward. She slid her forearms along her thighs to her knees. ‘These stories of cold and ice interest me. Since we landed I have sensed it. It is Elder. Omtose Phellack. This land was once held by the Jaghut – is that not so?’

  Fisher studied the girl more closely; not so young as he had thought. And a scholar. Perhaps a researcher into the Warrens. He crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands over his knee. ‘Some say all lands were once held by the Jaghut. But yes. It is thought that their mark lingers.’

  ‘And beyond the Jaghut there lies the threat of the namesake of this region,’ said Malle.

  Fisher simply blinked at her. ‘Those are just stories, m’lady.’

  ‘Indeed? Let us hope so.’

  Her tone told Fisher that his audience was at an end. He bowed his head and rose.

  ‘You had wished to speak of some matter?’ she enquired.

  Fisher’s brows shot up – ah yes. He’d quite forgotten. ‘Our guest is awake and I wish to request equipment for him. Warm sturdy clothes and a weapon.’

  ‘And does our guest possess a name?’

  Fisher shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, he remembers nothing. The shock of nearly drowning, perhaps.’

  The old woman’s smile of sympathy was cold. ‘Perhaps.’ She gestured curtly to Holden. ‘See to it.’

  ‘Aye, ma’am.’

  Bowing to all, Fisher ducked from the tent. As he crossed the camp it occurred to him that he’d entered to make a request only to find himself the object of an intense cross-examination regarding the peninsula and the lands beyond. Understandable, he supposed, given that they intended to penetrate within. Yet among the rolled charts and pressed fibre sheets he’d glimpsed a flat wooden box, closed and clasped. And he knew such boxes. They held draughting instruments: compasses, tools for measuring angles and scales. These people were not only consulting maps – they were assembling their own.

  The party might in truth be after gold, but he considered it a good bet that these Malazans were after something else as well.

  * * *

  Once Jute Hernan, late of Delanss, was certain the Silver Dawn had passed beyond of the maze of rocks that choked the entrance to the aptly named Fear Narrows, he loosed the terror that squeezed his own chest like bound cordage and inhaled fully. He allowed his gaze to rise inland, up the calm channel of the long twisting narrows itself.

  What he saw waiting ahead did not give him much cheer. Tall sheer cliffs on both sides offered little or no anchorage. And the Dawn was in desperate need of refit and repairs after threading through the Guardian Rocks; she was leaking at the seams, stores were water-spoiled, and she was desperately short of sweet water. Once more, he did his best to dredge up the tales of this region that he’d soaked up with his warm milk and bread when a boy. They told of how those vessels with enough luck, or piloted with enough skill, to navigate the Guardian Rocks could look forward to shelter within a protected port called Old Ruse, itself one of the many wonders of the region.

  Scanning the rearing cliff walls, he saw no hint of any such tranquil or welcoming harbourage. Perhaps it was all sailors’ fancies and flights of tale-telling round the alehouses. Yet so far the stories had proved accurate to some degree. Yes, the lands could be found more or less south of Genabackis; yes, the north-east coast was warded and ringed by hidden rocks and shoals; and, yes, an even worse hazard along this stretch of shore was its inhabitants, who, having no interest in trade or relations with the outside world, treated any vessels within their reach as sheep to be slaughtered. Thus supporting the mariners’ universal wariness of the Wreckers’ Coast. And if one did pass beyond all this, one came to a narrow inlet warded by series after series of jagged rocks. A formation any vessel would only dare attempt during the hours of highest tides. The Guardian Rocks.

  Now, according to all the tales, what lay before his crew of the pick of all the mariners and pirates of Falar was Fear Narrows: a hostile inhospitable chute which allowed access to the broad calm Sea of Dread. Deceptively calm. Or so the stories always went.

  Jute headed for the Dawn’s quarterdeck, nodding encouragement to the men and women of the crew as he went. Not that he felt it – it was simply his role as he saw it: reassuring these volunteers, each of them daring and intrepid enough to answer his call to join a voyage like none before. A voyage to the ends of the world in search of riches, though for most, including himself, such a voyage was a reward in itself.

  He thought of what might lie in wait for them beyond the Sea of Dread: fortresses constructed from the bones of earlier travellers foolish enough to trespass there; strangling mists; limitless fields of ice taller than any city tower; forests guarded by giants of ice and rime. And beyond all these, mountains harbouring a race said to be willing to offer any gift a traveller daring and tenacious enough to reach them might think to request, yet no gift worth the harrowing price demanded by these legendary Assail.

  Jute mentally cast all such unknowns overboard. One threat at a time! Right now his job was to see to finding safe anchorage for the Dawn, and such harbourage looked to be scarce indeed.

  At the stern stood their master steersman, Lurjen, a short and broad stump of a fellow, gripping the side-mounted steering arm. His leathers were darkened with sweat and more ran in rivulets down his bald, sun-burnished pate. His massive arms still appeared to quiver from the exertion of heaving the ponderous oar to the directions of their navigator, who sat on a short stool behind him, lea
ning forward, chin almost resting on her walking stick. Ieleen of Walk, Jute’s navigator and his wife. A legend she was among the mariners of Falar, and some whispered witch or sorceress of Ruse, for her seeming miraculous intimacy with wave and channel. All the more fantastic as she was completely blind.

  ‘Sorceress you are, my dear!’ Jute called. ‘Your reputation is unshakable now.’ Sorceress indeed, dearest, he added silently. How else did you steal my heart away?

  ‘I just listen to the waves, luv,’ she answered, and she winked one staring wintery-white eye. ‘Our friends are still with us,’ she added, motioning to the rear with a tilt of her head.

  Jute cast a glance behind where the last of the rocks now disappeared from sight. Indeed, some three or four vessels were still treading their wake. When they’d arrived out beyond the mouth of the narrows they’d found a great mass of foreign vessels at anchor awaiting the right tide. Or just waiting and watching to see who would be the next fools to dare attempt the jumbled currents and hidden tearing teeth of the Guardian Rocks.

  For a time they too had waited and watched as well. They witnessed six vessels make the attempt; each went down in a mass of shattered timber. Jute thought he could almost hear the screams of the crews as they were sucked down into the curling, tumbling currents and dashed against the rocks. And after each attempt a wash of corpses and litter of rope and broken wood rode the waves out on to the equally aptly named Sea of Hate.

  Then, one day just before dawn, Ieleen gave him the nod and he ordered all the crew to the oars – no sails for this narrow passage – and they’d set out, following her directions. Their navigation through the shoals down the Wreckers’ Coast must have impressed the masters of other ships, for five other vessels quickly followed their route.

  Of his part in that turning twisting run Jute was not proud. Ieleen barked her commands while Lurjen grunted and huffed, heaving the steering arm back and forth. The Dawn yawed and pitched so steeply that half the time one or the other side’s oars waved uselessly to the sky. Yet his love seemed to have taken all this into her calculations as she sat staring sightlessly, her head tilted ever so slightly, as if listening to someone whispering in her ear. All he could do was hang on tight to the mainmast, shouting to keep order among the crew as oars struck rocks to throw men bodily from the benches, or knock them senseless. Timber groaned as hidden rocks scoured the sides and keel. Many times the crew were not so much rowing as using the oars as poles to fend off looming black pillars that jutted from the foaming waters like saw-teeth.