It was Jethiss. He still wore the old armoured hauberk he’d salvaged. Yet something was odd about his outline. As he neared, his steps now audible over the rocks, Kyle’s breath truly caught as he saw that the man’s left sleeve of leather and mail hung loose. It swung empty in the winds.
Somehow, in some manner, the man had lost an arm.
Only now did the Andii appear to become aware of them. He halted, taken aback, then changed direction to approach. Though the air was bitingly frigid and the winds punishing, a sheen of sweat covered his face and ran dripping from his chin. The Andii possessed near black-hued skin, yet Kyle would have said that the man was pale – perhaps from shock, or loss of blood.
He halted, weaving slightly, before them, his chest heaving, and nodded his greeting.
Kyle’s gaze fell to fix upon the strange new weapon now sheathed at his side. The pommel was an oddly contoured knob. It and the grip appeared to be constructed of the same material: pale, like ivory, but not glowing like his white blade. Portions of the pommel and grip were smooth while others possessed a rough and porous look. Slowly, the realization came of just what he was looking at – what the sword had been moulded from – and he raised his appalled gaze to where the man’s sleeve hung empty.
Not even the cruellest gods would dare …
Jethiss nodded to them again, affirming their guess. He raised his arm to wipe the sweat from his face, swallowed hard. ‘The justice of the Forkrul,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘is harsh indeed.’
‘A sword worthy of you…’ Fisher breathed in wonder, his face sickly.
The Andii was breathing heavily. The trial he’d endured must have been ghastly. He nodded his agreement at Fisher’s words. ‘Yes.’
‘And your memories?’
‘With me once more.’
‘Then,’ Fisher asked, ‘would you give us your name?’
‘Mother Dark offered a title.’
Fisher’s breath caught. He spoke low, as if not daring to say the words aloud: ‘Son of Darkness…’
Jethiss gestured, inviting them to descend with him. ‘Now more of an honorific, in truth.’
The Andii’s tone was light, but Kyle saw with what trouble he walked, the rigid control he was forcing upon himself to remain erect. He wanted to reach out to help steady the man, but his instincts told him that he mustn’t.
‘There was a terrible battle,’ Jethiss murmured aloud as they descended. ‘At the feet of a gate. I wandered lost for an unknown time. A woman’s voice spoke to me from the Eternal Night. She told me I was needed to stand as I had before. But that the cost would be great. That I would have to lose myself to find myself anew.’ He paused to press a hand to Fisher’s shoulder. ‘And so I have. My old name no longer fits. I am Jethiss. As for the title … we shall see if I prove worthy.’
‘Where will you go?’ Kyle asked, careful to give the man room as he walked at his left side.
‘I would travel to Coral,’ Jethiss answered. ‘There is a modest barrow there I would pay my respects to. A good friend. Many evenings we spent together playing Kef Tanar.’ He offered them a smile. ‘I would be honoured if you would accompany me.’
‘The honour is mine,’ Fisher answered.
‘And mine,’ Kyle added, feeling eminently comfortable with the idea of travelling with the Andii. It seemed to him altogether fitting and strangely proper that the White Blade should be found walking alongside what he imagined, one day, might come to be known as the Blade of Bone.
GLOSSARY
Elder Races
Tiste Andii: Children of Darkness
Tiste Edur: Children of Shadow
Tiste Liosan: Children of Light
K’Chain Che’Malle: one of the Four Founding Races, presumed extinct
Imass: an ancient race of which only the undead army, the T’lan Imass, remain
T’lan Imass (the Armies of the Diaspora)
Logros, Guardians of the First Throne
Kron, First to the Gathering
Betrule (lost)
Ifayle (lost)
Orshayn (lost)
Kerluhm (lost)
Trell: an ancient race of nomadic pastoralists
Jaghut: an ancient race of recluses
Thelomen/Toblakai: an ancient race, pre-agriculturalists
The Warrens
Kurald Galain: The Elder Warren of Darkness, Elder Night
Kurald Emurlahn: The Elder Warren of Shadow, Elder Shadow
Kurald Thryllan: The Elder Warren of Shadow, Elder Light, also known as Liosan
Omtose Phellack: The Elder Jaghut Warren of Ice
Tellann: The Elder Imass Warren of Fire
Starvald Demelain: The Eleint (dragon) Warren
Thyr: The Path of Light
Denul: The Path of Healing
Hood’s Paths: The Paths of Death
Serc: The Path of Sky
Meanas: The Path of Shadow and Illusion
D’riss: The Path of the Earth
Ruse: The Path of the Sea
Rashan: The Path of Darkness
Mockra: The Path of the Mind
Telas: The Path of Fire
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ASSAIL
Copyright © 2014 by Ian Cameron Esslemont
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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ISBN 978-0-7653-2998-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-3000-0 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4299-4861-6 (e-book)
First published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers
First U.S. Edition: August 2014
eISBN 9781429948616
First eBook edition: July 2014
Read on for an excerpt from
DANCER’S LAMENT
Path to Ascendancy
Book 1
Ian C. Esslemont
A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York
Prelude
THE PRIZE WAS HIS AND NONE WOULD ROB HIM OF IT. A recent shudder of the earth had exposed it here on the Seti Plains, close by the Great Cliff, south of the river Idryn, near to where Burn herself is said to rest.
Uneasily, most obviously.
A small twinge, or minor itch, or passing flatulence from the Great Goddess had shaken the ground not more than a fortnight ago. And now this tunnel, or cave, revealed here in this narrow rocky cleft. His find. True, he’d only come across it because he’d caught a hint of movement out there on the plains and so had clambered down into the gorge out of prudent care. The plains curse, the man-eating beast Ryllandaras, was never far.
So it was his. Yet not his alone.
Someone else was lurking about: a sneaky fellow hard to pin down. And coming from him, from Dorin Rav, that was saying a lot. Not in all Quon or Tali had he met his match in stealth or murder. The so-called ‘Assassin Guilds’ he’d dug up these last years had proved themselves no more than gangs of brutes and thugs for hire. Not one true practitioner among them.
He’d been disgusted.
So much for the exploits of the thief queen Lady Apsalar, or daring Topaz, the favourites of so many jongleur songs. Petty greed, sadistic cruelty, and a kind of slope-browed cunning were all he’d found among the criminal underworld – if that was what you could call it. All of which, he had to allow, was at least the minimal requirement for extortion, blackmail, theft, and murder for hire.
Not that that had stopped him fr
om profiting from their ineptitude. A few well-placed thrusts and their stashes of coin rode tightly wrapped in a baldric across his chest – a baldric that also supported a selection of graded blades and lengths of rope.
He was of the opinion that one can never carry too much rope.
He passed the best of the night crouched on his haunches in a thick stand of desert tall-grass, patiently watching that dark opening, and saw nothing. A hunting snake slithered over one sandalled foot. Midges and chiggers feasted upon him. A lizard climbed his shirt, lost its footing on his sweat-slick neck and fell inside the padded, cloth-covered armour vest he wore next to his skin.
Yet he hadn’t twitched. And still his rival had not revealed himself. Then, just as the sun kissed the lips of the narrow crevice ridge high above, a rock clattered close to the shadowed gap.
He ground his teeth. Somehow the bastard had slipped past. Very well. He’d follow. Dog the man until whatever lay ahead was revealed. The least the fellow could do was make himself useful by falling first into any hidden dangers.
He edged out to the mouth of the gap and, hunched, a blade ready, felt his way down. Just within, he paused to press himself against one wall of jagged broken rock. He listened and waited for his vision to adjust. A brush of cloth on stone sighed ahead. He felt his way onward.
A descending slope of loose broken rock ended at a narrow corridor of set blocks. Ancient, these, gigantic and of a dark stone he didn’t recognize. He searched the gloom; where had the Hood-damned bastard gone? Then a dim ringing ahead as of metal on stone, quickly muted. He pressed himself to a wall – could he be seen outlined by the faint light behind? He darted forward.
The corridor ended at a wall that supported a door in the form of a slab of rock of similar origin. The slab stood at an angle aslant of the portal, a slim opening running top to bottom, at the foot a gap where a slim man or woman might just squirm within.
Damn the fellow for winning through first!
He knelt at the fissure, only to flinch away from the mouldy stink of things long dead. The still air was cold too, unaccountably so. Crystals of frost glittered on the rock. Wincing, he slipped one arm through. His other hand brushed the thick door slab. A nest of symbols carved in the naked rock writhed beneath his fingers.
Wards. Glyphs. A tomb. Or hoard. Out here? In the middle of nowhere?
Yet this had not stopped his rival.
He slid onward. Rising, brushing away the accumulated dust of centuries, it seemed to him passing strange that fine sand and grit should still choke the gap. Such speculations, however, were driven away by a wan golden glow coming from further ahead. There’s the bastard and now’s your chance.
He drew another blade and slid along the wall. His breath plumed in the oddly chill air.
It was a low-roofed chamber: a lost cellar or tomb, perhaps. Gloom swallowed its exact size and shape, which might have been circular. The low flame from a single clay oil-lamp provided the only faint light. Hoar frost glittered on what of the walls he could see. The lamp rested on a monolithic raised stone platform at the chamber’s centre. A large figure, a near giant, sat at the block, slouched forward, arms resting on the surface. Its hair was long and iron-grey and hung in tangled lengths that obscured its features. Before it on the slab sat the remains of a mummified animal of some sort – possibly a monkey, Dorin thought.
Where was his rival? Hiding behind the stone? Must have nerves of iron.
He drew a breath to call the fellow out, but almost bit his tongue as the mummified animal moved. The thing reached out to sort among the dusty objects cluttering the stone. With a nimble long-fingered hand, it picked up what looked like a slim wooden tile and waved it through the air, showering dust and bright crystals of ice everywhere.
The corpse lashed out to slam the tile to the slab and Dorin grunted his shock.
‘Don’t meddle,’ the corpse breathed in a voice like creaking wood. It raised its head, revealing outsized canines and bright gleaming eyes. ‘I smell a breeze,’ it said. ‘That crack that lets in mice and cockroaches … and other pests …’
The tall figure shifted its head to fix those unnatural eyes upon Dorin. ‘Come in, then – since you have already.’ The being’s gaze shifted slightly to the left. ‘You too.’
Dorin spun to see his rival there just to one side.
Behind him all this time! A damned mage!
The fellow was short and young, dark-skinned – Dal Honese. Young? Well, no older than I. And he was an ugly lad with a scrunched-up face and a sad patchy attempt at a beard and moustache. He wore loose dark robes, dirty and tattered, and carried a walking stick – though he didn’t grip it like a warrior. In answer to Dorin’s scowl he flashed uneven yellow teeth.
Dorin shifted aside to face them both.
‘You are Jaghut,’ the newcomer called to their host, pleased with himself.
The huge man’s expression remained unchanged. He lowered his head. ‘I should think that obvious.’
Dorin took satisfaction from the fall of the smirk from the Dal Hon’s face.
The creature – a Jaghut, or Jag, such as Dorin had heard of in stories – waved them in. ‘Come, come. Make yourselves at home. We have all the time in the world.’
That gave Dorin pause. But not so his rival, who pushed in without hesitation. The youth bent over the huge block to study the scattered wooden tiles. ‘You are doing a reading,’ he announced.
‘Another stunning deduction,’ the Jag observed, acidly.
Dorin edged up behind his rival. Why so bravely, or foolishly, offer his back now? Because he knows I’ll not act in front of the Jag. Cheap courage, that. He made a point of standing close to the Dal Hon’s side. Let him sweat.
Squinting in the dim lamplight the young fellow was studying the dust-covered cards, tapping a thin finger to his lips. ‘This casting has defeated you for some time.’
One thick brow arched ever so slightly. The lips drew back further from the sallow canines. ‘Indeed.’
Dorin swept a quick glance over the wooden cards – artefacts as oversized as their host. The shadowed figures and images painted on their faces held little interest for him. His mother had once hired a reader to foretell his future … the woman’s screams had woken all the neighbours. After that, there’d been no more readings for Dorin Rav.
The dark-skinned youth reached out for the nearest wooden slat but the animal – more than a monkey or diminutive ape, Dorin now saw; possibly, then, a nacht of the southern isles – batted his arm aside. It chattered something that sounded eerily like ‘Doan medo’. The Dal Hon answered by hitting its hand away. The two then actually fell into a slapping fight there over the stone, until the Jag snarled his irritation and pushed the creature out of the youth’s reach, from where it busied itself making faces at the lad, who responded with scrunched-up leers of his own.
Dorin mustered his courage to clear his throat and ask, ‘What did you mean by “all the time in the world”?’
The Jag inclined his head as if acknowledging the justness of the question. ‘This structure is my retreat. None may be allowed to know of its existence.’ He raised a hand in a near apology. ‘Now that you are here … you may never leave.’
Dorin did his best to keep his expression neutral – to hide his thoughts – but a smile crept over the being’s wide mouth, entirely baring his canines, and he laughed, low and sardonic. ‘You would not succeed, my friend.’ He tapped a thick yellow nail, more like a talon, to the platform.
Squinting, Dorin examined the solid block of dark rock, some three paces in length. The surface was inscribed in an intricate pattern of swirls and those grooves were inlaid with silver. A humanoid shape lying flat, encircled by a series of complicated wards and sigils …
Dorin stepped away from what had resolved itself into a stone sarcophagus. This one’s?
The Dal Hon meanwhile had set out exploring the chamber, poking his stick into the distant edges. ‘Well then,’ the lad mused from the
dark, ‘I suppose we should make ourselves at home.’ He found a shelf along one wall, jabbed the stick at it, and objects tumbled, crashing loudly in the confined quarters.
The Jag scowled his annoyance. ‘Must you?’
‘Sorry.’ The youth raised a small pot fashioned of plain brown earthenware, now cracked. He held it out. ‘Your most precious treasures, I assume?’
The Jag growled from somewhere deep within his throat. ‘Grave offerings, I’ll have you know.’
The Dal Hon returned to his explorations. The nacht had jumped from the sarcophagus and now stalked along behind the youth, mimicking his every move. Dorin put his back to one wall next to where the tunnel entered the chamber. Should I try the door? Might as well. He retreated up the tunnel. In the almost absolute dark, he felt along the door slab; the gap was there, but it now seemed far too slim for his shoulders. He’d slipped through that? How in the name of the Queen of Mystery …
Returning to the chamber, he found the Jag once more bent over the wooden cards. A frown of puzzlement now creased his long face.
‘Is this your bed?’ the Dal Hon called from somewhere in the darkness.
The Jag let out a long hissed breath and pressed his fingers to his temples, his elbows on the stone sarcophagus. He growled, ‘I suppose I shall have to kill you now.’
The youth emerged from the gloom, his walking stick tapping. He spoke lightly, as if disinterested, ‘But then you would just be alone again, wouldn’t you?’
The fellow came alongside, and Dorin whispered, heated, ‘What have you got us into?’
A vexed look from the lad – no younger than he, Dorin had to remind himself. ‘I was following you.’
Dorin clenched his teeth. ‘I thought I was following you—’
‘Please,’ the Jag rumbled, ‘must I now endure your bickering?’
Dorin edged open his cloak to reveal his many knives.
The Dal Hon’s brows rose. ‘You could?’
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 400