Blood and Bone

by Ian C. Esslemont

  An eruption of power swiped her to the slick decking where she slammed into the side. Groggy, she fumbled for a grip to pull herself up. The hummingbirds were gone, as was what was left of the sails, and even the upper masts had been sheared away. On the deck only Gwynn and Nagal remained standing; all others had been pushed to the sides in a circle outwards from the mage in black. Something hit the deck at Shimmer’s feet. A dead hummingbird. It lay dull and lustreless now, so tiny. She peered up. Others fell all about. A pattering rainbow deluge of dead birds. Most struck the river, slightly behind, as the vessel continued its unhurried advance. She limped to where Rutana was straightening to her feet.

  ‘And just what in the name of Hood was that?’ she snarled.

  The woman gave another of her uncaring shrugs. Shimmer noted that she was completely untouched; not one cut or jab marked her face or hands. ‘An inhabitant of Himatan, like any other.’

  ‘D’ivers?’

  Again the indifferent shrug. ‘Of a kind. The forest is full of many such creatures. Here you will find all the old things that once walked the earth before you humans came.’

  ‘Well … you could have warned us.’

  She laughed, waving a hand to dismiss her. ‘Even I have seen only a fraction of that which exists within these leagues,’ she said, and walked away.

  Shimmer cast about for K’azz, to find him at the stern where he and others had thrown a rope to Cole, who had jumped overboard and now swam after the lumbering ship. Beneath the tiller arm lay the captain, dead, his eye sockets bloody and empty, his throat a torn gaping wound.

  K’azz joined her to regard the captain. He motioned to Turgal nearby. ‘Find some cloth.’ He saluted and headed for the companionway.

  Sighing, Shimmer raised her gaze to the shore. Hidden animals still roared and hooted in the distance in answer to Gwynn’s great blast of power. Masses of strange birds churned, flapping their huge ungainly wings over the ragged treetops. You humans, the woman had said. You humans.

  Shimmer drew a hand down her slick hot face; it came away wet with blood that dripped from her palm to the decking. She felt a terrible foreboding that somehow they were never going to get out of this jungle.

  * * *

  Of course a Hood-damned storm would gather as he and Sour unravelled the last of the chains coupled to their dolmen anchors. Only four now remained, each at a compass point, and beneath the centre of the plaza the thing this entire installation was constructed to contain jerked and struggled like a gaffed dhenrabi the size of a war galley. Murk gestured his disgust to the massed black clouds blotting the night sky as the wind, the discharge of thunder, and the combers crashing into the shore made conversation almost impossible. From where he crouched next to the dolmen, Sour caught the wave and answered with the expression he was named for. Rain pelted down but at least it was warm rain, not like the freezing sleet of north Genabackis. Yusen emerged from the sheets to lean close to Murk.

  ‘Now?’ he asked.

  Murk nodded and raised a hand in the mount up sign. Yusen gave a curt jerk of his head and went to his men, signing orders. Murk found Sour’s squinted gaze and they turned to where Spite sat cross-legged facing the plaza, her back blade-rigid. Sour gestured him over and now Murk gave a sour look, but he went.

  Kneeling next to the woman the first thing he noticed was the heat. The great fat raindrops actually hissed to steam as they touched her shoulders and hair. Her gaze was locked ahead, the eyes an eerie all-carmine that churned like flame. ‘Which one next?’ he shouted.

  The eyes did not shift, did not so much as blink while Murk waited. Silent, the woman extended an arm to point opposite. Murk grunted his understanding and retreated to Sour.

  ‘Across the way,’ he told Sour, then signed to Yusen.

  Sour packed up his sodden leather satchel of shells, bits of wood, and other found bric-a-brac that he used to somehow ‘read’ the maze they faced. A team of five mercenaries led by the three big swordsmen Ostler, Tanner and Dee jogged up to join them, plus the silent scout Sweetly and the lieutenant, a Seven Cities native, to judge by her sharp coffee-hued features beneath a bright domed helmet woven round by a cord of yellow silk.

  He and Sour started tracing the border of the plaza. The team spread out round them. When they reached the dolmen Sour clambered down into the excavation pit and laid out his satchel. Murk crouched, peering down. The rain dripped from his nose and snaked down his ankles. The squat little fellow studied the base of the dolmen for a time. He picked up the bits and pieces he’d gathered together and let them fall on the soaked leather. This pattern he studied for a while. Then, as before, he raised his Thyr Warren and reached in towards the pulsing cable of power wound about the stone to manipulate it as one might a knot or trick puzzle. Murk had no idea how the unimpressive fellow managed it. He definitely was no bright spark; wordplay blew right past him; and he could be as slow as the son of the village idiot. It must be instinctive – that was the only explanation Murk could think of. A freak talent like that old man he’d heard tell of that the prince of Anklos kept in his court who could give you the day’s date in any calendrical system you would care to mention.

  Murk had his own Warren at his fingertips and so he saw when the bound energies tore free of the dolmen like a whip and snapped Sour backwards with a crack that echoed from every stone. He ran to where the fellow lay immobile, his chest steaming in the rain, and tapped one unshaven cheek with the back of a hand. ‘Sour? You with us?’

  The fellow coughed and Murk caught a whiff of rotten breath and turned his head aside. He stood and prodded the man with a toe. ‘You all right?’

  Sour nodded, blinking as the rain pattered down into his eyes. ‘Got a kick like a mule.’

  ‘Yeah, well. You should stop getting intimate with them.’

  The fellow peered around confused then screwed up his eyes to squint. ‘But I never have …’

  ‘Never mind.’ He reached out a hand and Sour took it. Murk pulled him upright. ‘Last one.’

  Sour frowned, then brightened. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  Murk signed to their bodyguard mercs. Sour went to collect his gear.

  This time either Sour got it just right, or was more careful. In any case the sizzling band of power slipped away as easily as a released fishing line and he grinned up at his partner like the naughty boy who’d let it go. ‘Damn good,’ Murk said, hands on his knees. ‘Let’s see Miss Nibs.’

  Spite was standing when they found her in the sleeting rain. A steady pounding announced the surf crashing on to the nearby strand. Something seemed to echo that pulse from within the roiling gravel of the plaza. ‘You will aid me,’ she told them without so much as turning her head.

  ‘Yes,’ Murk answered – though he didn’t think they could contribute much of anything.

  Spite simply stepped forward to sink straight down into the gravel as if it were a pool. In a panic, Murk struggled to follow her through his Warren. He found her approaching the small object at the centre of the installation where it jumped and kicked very much like that proverbial hooked fish; except that the power this captive bled would’ve boiled off any lake. Held only by the remaining two chains of woven potency it swung wildly now, hissing through the gravel as if the tons of stone did not exist. Spite closed warily, her hands raised.

  Murk had no idea what her plan was – but he most certainly did not expect her to simply snatch out and grab hold of the thing as it swung by. The resulting explosion of energy tore through the plaza. In that curious double image available to a mage viewing a scene through both his Warren and his mundane vision, Murk watched the underside of the gravel plaza sear and boil even as the surface erupted upwards, sending the mercenaries running and ducking under their shields.

  Murk reduced his Warren-sensitivity against the roaring forge-like energies. He saw that whereas Sour had applied an uncanny delicacy of manipulation to undoing the bonds, Spite was all pure force and overwhelming power. Spite, it seemed, possesse
d no subtlety whatsoever. The rock-grinding might being brought to bear made Murk’s teeth ache.

  ‘Like some damned Ascendant!’ Sour yelled next to his ear. Murk nodded his appalled agreement. ‘Ever hear of any one of these Chainings being broken?’ Murk shook his head.

  Then with a crack as of a stone cleaving, it was done. The two remaining bonds sizzled, swinging and snapping loose like whips. Spite weakly churned a path through the gravel, making for them. She held something that was painful to look at through his Warren.

  An arm broached the surface of the heated stones where the rain hissed and misted, then a head. Spite drew back her arm and heaved something towards them. Appalled, Murk watched it arc through the air. Shit, was all he could think. ‘Don’t touch it!’ he bellowed.

  But everyone was half deaf from the cracks of thunder, the pounding rain and the blasts of power. One of the mercenaries reached for the object, and screamed – briefly. Murk and Sour ran for the fellow. They pushed through the gathered bodyguards to find a blackened corpse, ribcage curving up through crisped flesh, arms ending in white sintered bones, yet head and face completely unmarred. The moustached fellow looked as if he’d merely closed his eyes in sleep. The object lay within the seared carcass: a smoking casket of black stone, chased and edged in silver, like a lady’s jewellery box.

  ‘Get a pack,’ Sour ordered.

  Two mercenaries ran to obey. Murk noted that the man’s armour was torn. Consumed the flesh only. Gods, man, will it even be safe to carry? How to touch it? ‘Get some sticks,’ he told Sweetly, who nodded.

  ‘Murk!’ Sour called from the plaza.

  Standing, he told the female mercenary: ‘Make a stretcher!’ In the panic of the moment the woman gave a quick Malazan salute. Murk ran to his partner.

  Spite lay hugging the stone lip, only her head and shoulders above the gravel. Sour knelt next to her but wasn’t helping. There was something in his gaze – wonder and perhaps even a wide-eyed dread. The woman fairly glowed with power, her flesh steaming and hissing. Murk thought he caught a glimpse of rough dark-scaled features, and hands misshapen taloned claws. The eyes burned like pits of melted stone. ‘You have it?’ she grated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get me up.’

  Murk held up his hands. ‘We can’t touch you yet …’

  ‘Oh, for the love of Night! Get a sword or something!’

  ‘Right.’

  Spite jerked then, sinking to her open, surprised lips. For an instant those formidable eyes, so superior, so scornful, widened in unguarded panic. ‘Oh, no …’ she whispered, and then she disappeared as if snatched back by some giant.

  Murk switched to Meanas to see what was going on. The chains of puissance, loose and unbounded, had flailed about seeking something to latch on to, anything, and had found Spite. She fought now, caught between the two lashing tendrils of punishing powers. Even as Murk watched, she was weakening. She kicked ineffectually and struggled to summon the streams of her own Warren-energies. But she was already exhausted and now she hung limp, her arms loose and drifting.

  ‘Overcome,’ Sour murmured, awed. ‘What’re we gonna do?’

  ‘You’re going to untie those last two bonds! Let’s go!’

  ‘Can’t … she’d just fall into the Abyss and that’ll be the end of her.’

  ‘Well, then – we’ll pull her up!’

  ‘Can’t yank on those chains, man. Use your head.’

  Yusen came to their side. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Trap’s closed on her,’ Sour answered.

  The man wiped the rain from his face, scowling. His disgusted expression seemed to wonder why nothing ever went right. ‘Can’t hang around here. We have to disappear.’

  ‘The captain’s right,’ Sour told Murk. ‘You have any idea what’s on its way right now?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he answered, thinking furiously. ‘Is the stretcher made?’

  ‘Yes. But we haven’t touched the … thing.’

  ‘All right. Let’s pack up. Come back later once the dust has settled out.’

  ‘Right.’ Yusen jogged off. Murk waved for Sour to follow him to the body. Here their escort waited while through the rain the rest of the troop could be glimpsed withdrawing to the coast between the dolmens. Murk motioned Sour to the pack laid next to the corpse. Sweetly tossed down two broken sticks. Murk took them up and bent over the body.

  ‘Poor Crazy-eye,’ one of the mercs said, and he made a sign to D’rek, goddess of rot and rejuvenation.

  ‘Always actin’ before thinkin’,’ added another.

  Murk, who had been bent over the seared torso, now leaned back to blink up at them. ‘You finished?’

  They frowned down at him, puzzled, drops falling from the rims of their helmets. ‘Yeah,’ one said, shrugging. ‘I s’pose so.’

  ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  Sour laid out a sodden blanket. ‘Put it on this. We’ll wrap it.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  He used the sticks to feel about. He dug against the curve of the blackened pelvic bone. Turning the box vertical he managed to get a good grip and he lifted it from the still-smoking cavity that once held Crazy-eye’s viscera. He laid it on the blanket and used the sticks to roll it over and over, then picked it up and slipped it into the pack which Sour was holding open.

  Sour set the pack into the stretcher and tied it down with rope.

  Murk motioned to the mercenaries. ‘Who’s got it?’

  Their guards all backed away, hands raised and open.

  ‘Oh, come on! We’re not …’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ the Seven Cities woman answered.

  Murk waved to Sour, impatient. ‘Fine. Let’s go.’

  Sour struggled with the stretcher’s spear hafts, grumbling, ‘Not bloody fair …’

  Murk waited a moment for Sour to ready himself then jogged for the shore and the waiting ship. Their guards spread out around them.

  They found the crest of the strand lined by the troop, all crouched down in the rain. They crab-walked, hunched, to Yusen who alone was standing, scanning the storm-lashed seas. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Boat’s not here,’ the man answered, almost in a lazy drawl.

  Murk eyed the white-capped waves as they crashed the beach. ‘Well … they must’ve just withdrawn.’

  ‘Oh, they’ve withdrawn all right.’ And the officer pointed out to sea.

  Murk squinted into the overcast pall. Far towards the steel-grey horizon he could just make out the pale smear of sails and darker shadow of the hull. ‘What? They’ve abandoned us?’

  Yusen regarded him through a half-lidded gaze. ‘What goes around comes around, hey?’

  Murk adjusted his grip on the rain-slick spear hafts. ‘Shit. Well, now what? We follow the coast? Find a port?’

  ‘You see any ports on the way in?’

  Murk shook his head. In fact, the coast had been completely uninhabited.

  ‘No. If we want to get lost there’s only one place for us.’ The officer raised his chin to the south.

  Murk followed the man’s gaze and his shoulders fell. The jungle. The damned jungle. He heard Sour cursing away under his breath.

  Yusen signed the move out, indicating the south. He stopped suddenly and eyed Murk and Sour and the burden between them, then turned on the Seven Cities woman. ‘What’s this, Burastan?’

  The woman saluted. ‘Sorry, Cap—Sorry.’ She gestured curtly and Ostler came and took Murk’s place, as Dee did Sour’s. After one last warning glare Yusen turned away.

  Had the woman almost said ‘Captain’? And was her name really Burastan? But Ostler and Dee took off with the stretcher bouncing between them and Murk had to run after them shouting: ‘Hey! No. Take it easy, damn it!’

  *

  With the evening, the low oppressive massing of clouds of the wet season announced their nightly downpour. Skinner, dressed as always in his blackened shimmering coat of armour, his barrel helm pushed back high on his head,
stood at the open cloth flap of his tent where he appeared to be watching the descending curtains of rain. Within, Mara and her fellow mage Petal leaned over a tabletop cluttered in maps and documents of rotting woven plant fibres.

  Sighing, Mara picked up a glass of wine. She eyed her commander’s scaled back. That armour. Gift of Ardata, he called it. Everyone else had abandoned their metal armour as useless in this constant damp. Now heavy layered leathers couldn’t be purchased for anything less than their weight in silver. Yet no rust or stain marred that blackened scale coat. And it seemed nothing could penetrate it. Perhaps that’s why Ardata had been unable to retrieve it when … well, when they parted ways.

  ‘Our Master of the Inner Circle remains committed?’ Petal asked in his slow and deliberate manner.

  ‘Quite,’ Skinner answered, keeping his back to them.

  Petal pursed his thick lips, nodding. He tapped a blunt finger to the documents. ‘I calculate this force to be a full third of the entire Thaumaturg military. Their only currently assembled field army. Leaving but scattered garrisons across their lands …’

  Mara lifted the glass, saluting. ‘To its success, then.’ She cocked a brow and offered a mocking smile. ‘May it advance far indeed.’

  Skinner returned and picked up his glass to answer her toast. ‘As far as it is able.’

  ‘To the very end,’ Petal added.

  Mara’s raised senses detected a familiar, and unwelcome, arrival. The insolent one has returned. She swallowed her wine while lifting a hand for silence. ‘Our would-be master approaches.’

  Skinner grimaced his distaste. ‘Again? He is most insistent.’

  The three faced the tent portal where the dusk was obscured by a shadow and the ragged figure of a beggar or itinerant monk slipped within. He glared as if enraged, his eyes black and wide behind the strings of his matted hair. ‘Your cowardice and delay have cost us dear!’

  Skinner’s frown deepened. ‘What is this?’

  ‘While you have sat upon your hands others have moved against us!’