Blood and Bone

by Ian C. Esslemont

  Saeng held herself quivering in tensed suppressed energies. She felt as if she should explode. That she should throw herself upon the man in an ecstasy of ripping and destruction. But before she could act Hanu snapped out an arm to grab the man by his throat.

  Saeng’s power dropped from her in a rush. Her shoulders slumped, her hair falling.

  Pon-lor’s hands scrabbled at Hanu’s armoured gauntlet. He gurgled, his face reddening. Her brother lifted him from his feet. The man was gasping now, frantic, his face purpling.

  ‘Hanu …’ she called, warning.

  The man’s eyes found hers. They glistened in panic.

  ‘Drop him,’ she urged. When her brother did not respond she sent, ‘Please do not kill him, Hanu.’

  The man crashed limply to the ground. She came to stand where he lay wheezing and flailing groggily.

  ‘You owe me your life,’ she told him. ‘Now kindly leave us alone.’ She motioned to Hanu, and, taking his arm, limped away.

  *

  When Pon-lor’s vision cleared he found Thet-mun, crouched, peering down at him. He was moodily chewing on some sort of stick or stalk.

  The lad was shaking his head. ‘Man. I really can pick ’em, can’t I? First Jak, now you. Fuckin’ losers.’ He shook his head again.

  Pon-lor sat up and rubbed his neck. He experimentally edged his head from side to side. ‘We will follow them at a discreet distance.’

  ‘No we fucking won’t. You can. I won’t. I’m goin’. I’ve had it.’

  Massaging his neck, Pon-lor squinted up at him. ‘No? I could compel you, you know.’

  The lad straightened. He took the stick from his mouth, picked at his teeth. ‘And there’s a thousand ways I could get you killed in this jungle. I could feed you something that would eat you from the inside out. I could direct you into poisonous leaves. Lead you over a pit.’

  Pon-lor flexed his neck, felt the vertebrae pop. ‘I get the idea.’

  The lad was nodding vigorously. ‘Yeah. So … there you go. I’m leavin’.’

  ‘Would you like my advice? Before you go?’

  Thet-mun scowled down at him, uncertain. ‘What? Advice? Whaddya mean?’

  Pon-lor waved him off. ‘Go home, Thet. Go back to your village. Claim your quarter section of land. Take a wife. Raise some kids.’

  The lad chuffed a laugh. ‘Yeah, right. That’s for losers. Farming! Ha!’ And he walked away, laughing and shaking his head. He disappeared almost immediately as if swallowed whole.

  Pon-lor sat for a time. He massaged his neck. In the silence, the jungle noise of birds calling and insects whirring swelled to fill the air. The sun shafted down through the canopy raising steaming tendrils of mist where it touched. Ants swarmed over the disturbed rotting vegetation that littered the floor.

  Sighing, he rose, dusted himself off. He tore a strip of cloth from the edge of his robe and used it to tie back his hair. He cast his awareness out upon the leagues surrounding him. Almost instantly he sensed her there. The signature of her aura was unmistakable. Suppressed for now, but present all the same.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, he set off. Here and there amid the root-tangled dirt he discerned the hardened depression of the yakshaka’s heavy tread. Broken stems and brushed aside branches betrayed his lumbering progress. He nodded his satisfaction to himself. Yes, very good. All those days observing the bandits finding their way through the jungle. Following spoor. Identifying sign.

  He reclasped his hands and rocked back and forth on his sandals in meditation. Yes. I do believe I’m getting the hang of it.

  * * *

  The priest had promised to drop them some way from the target so that they would have time to recover from the Crippled God’s magics. As it was, Mara found that her reaction was nowhere near as violent as before. She was shaken, dizzy and nauseous, yes, but far from her earlier experience of nearly blacking out. She wondered whether she should be relieved or alarmed by the development.

  She staggered to a nearby tree to lean, panting, bent over, hands on knees. She caught her breath, swallowed stinging bile. Her vision had cleared and now she could see her fellows picking themselves up off the leaf-littered jungle floor. Some had vomited – the new ones: Shijel and Black. They straightened now, recovering. Shijel drew his longswords and Black spat to clear his mouth then dropped his visor and readied his wide shield.

  This was a piece of work long delayed. The priest had been missing for a good week. Mara had been of the hopeful opinion that he’d died – succumbed to one of the many diseases he obviously carried. And good riddance. Yet eventually he’d surfaced again, accosting them last night, even more emaciated and insanely obsessed than before. And Skinner had surprised him, promising to go after the shard lost in Himatan. He said he’d return the next night to run the errand. And so he had. And here they were.

  Skinner now looked to Petal, who motioned aside. ‘We’re close. It’s a large party – too large. We’ll have to try to snatch it.’

  ‘Very well. Get us as close as you can and we’ll make a lunge for it.’

  The big man’s neck bulged as he gave a curt answering nod. Skinner pointed to the priest. ‘You. Be quiet or I’ll run you through.’

  The priest’s response was a long low inarticulate snarl.

  Petal gestured, raising his Warren, then motioned them on. The party advanced, Petal and Skinner leading, Shijel and Black with the priest, while Mara brought up the rear. Petal’s magics would obscure them – at least momentarily – perhaps enough to allow them to grab the prize then escape by way of the priest. Mara glimpsed the raiders through the trees and was surprised. At first she thought them locals who’d taken up arms and armour, dressed and painted as they were. But the stock differed, heavier, and darker or lighter of skin. The equipage troubled her; too familiar. A mercenary force out of Quon Tali? Perhaps.

  Petal led them in a roundabout way towards their goal. It blazed unmistakable, like a lodestone of power in Mara’s vision. It lay wrapped on a makeshift litter of poles and cloth. They were almost at the shard when one of the painted raiders, a squat frog-like fellow with bulging mismatched eyes, stood up right before them and kicked Petal in his ample stomach.

  Everything went to the Abyss after that. She instantly raised her Warren to blast away all those nearby. She unfortunately tossed aside Shijel and Black as well. Battle commands sounded amid the kicked-up dust and dead leaves and a thrill of recognition blazed through her. Malazans! Damned Malazans making their own play for the shard! It seemed this new emperor differed from his predecessors regarding the Shattered God. The others had been far too timid, to her mind.

  The damned priest was right – this could not be allowed.

  She turned for the litter but it wasn’t there. It had been spirited away somehow when she’d been distracted. Petal rose nearby, grasping his gut in both hands. He murmured, wincing, ‘The Enchantress herself works against us.’

  Blast it! They’d been so close!

  Skinner appeared, his bared Thaumaturg officer’s sword bloodied. He dragged the priest along by his shirt. ‘We startled them but they’re regrouping,’ he said, grimly. To Petal, ‘Where is it?’

  The fat mage was rubbing his wide middle. ‘Hidden away.’

  ‘Well – find it!’

  ‘It will take time. This one is an inspired practitioner … his mind is particularly atypical.’

  ‘We don’t have time.’ Skinner restrained the priest like an uncooperative dog.

  ‘They will attack!’ the priest wailed.

  ‘Of course,’ Skinner answered, studying the surrounding jungle. ‘They’re Malazans.’

  Black and Shijel came running up. ‘On their way,’ Black announced.

  Skinner shook the gangly priest savagely, demanding, ‘Can you track it?’

  The man yanked his rag shirt free and smoothed it down in a sad effort to regain his dignity. His gaze became sly as he peered past Mara. ‘Of course. Yes. No one can hide my master f
rom me.’ He brushed past her closely, taking the opportunity to run a hand up her trousers over her buttock. He sped onward, her backhanded slap just missing his head.

  Starting off, Skinner ordered, ‘Petal. Take these two and run these Malazans off our track. Mara, you’re with me.’ He chased after the priest.

  Mara followed. As she left she heard a despairing Petal murmur, ‘Ah, running … Oh, dear.’

  The chase was a confusing dash through a maze of immensely tall and wide tree trunks that almost touched one another. Thick roots writhed over the ground like ridged snakes, some nearly as tall as she. Ahead, Skinner jumped the roots, pushed through tall fronds of undergrowth and parted stands of stiff spear-like grasses. The nightly rain started falling from the canopy in fat drops. In his glittering black armour the man moved like a patch of deeper night amid the streamers of starlight and the Jade Banner’s glow. Unencumbered by heavy armour or weapons, Mara kept up.

  She almost slammed into the priest who was standing stock still, poised as if listening to the night. Skinner stood nearby. ‘What is it?’ she asked him, her voice low. The big man’s shrug of contempt seemed to call a curse down on all this damned mummery.

  ‘Something new,’ the priest answered. He pointed to the darkness. ‘Another mage. Follower of that pathetic usurper, Shadowthrone.’

  ‘Can you still track it?’ Skinner demanded, unimpressed.

  The man jerked, insulted. ‘Of course! Yes. It calls to me. Offspring of my master.’

  Skinner waved him onward. ‘Well …’

  ‘Fine!’ He adjusted the rags that passed as his long shirting, hanging down past his loin wrap, then ran on. Skinner chuffed his scorn and followed. Mara fell in behind. They went slower now, tracing a winding route. The dense woods and stands of bamboo appeared far more dark this night than Mara remembered. Meanas, closing in upon us. To either side routes beckoned, appearing to be the way Skinner had taken, but she ignored them, keeping her eye upon the trail the priest had broken; somehow his passage erased or overlay the puzzling twisting of ways and paths that wove all about her. Tatters of shadows even seemed to hang here and there like torn spiderweb.

  Then she burst in upon a standoff, almost tumbling forward. The priest struggled in the grip of a soldier while another faced Skinner. Two others, the mages, stood at the litter.

  ‘Back off or he’s dead,’ the Malazan holding the priest warned.

  Skinner gave an off-hand wave. ‘A good plan, soldier. But there’s a flaw. You see – I don’t give a damn.’ And he attacked, clashing swords with the soldier who faced him.

  ‘Gotta do it, Murk …’ one of the mages warned the other.

  The second winced. ‘Oh man, I really don’t want to …’

  Do what? Mara summoned energies for a strike. Then the two mages and the litter between them disappeared as if smothered by darkness. Hood take it! The soldier holding the priest threw him into Skinner then the two Malazans fled in opposite directions.

  Skinner snatched the priest by his throat. ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I do not know!’ he wailed. ‘It is gone! My torment will be unending!’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ He turned his helmed head to Mara.

  She studied the dissipating lines of manipulation: a distraction? Were they in truth still there? Merely disguised? Yet she detected a betraying blurring and melting away. ‘Shadow,’ she judged.

  ‘Him!’ the priest snarled. ‘Upstart. Poseur. He is nothing!’

  Skinner shook the priest again, making his teeth clack. ‘Can you follow?’

  The priest batted at Skinner’s armoured forearm. ‘Yes, I shall! My master’s reach knows no boundaries. Ready yourselves.’

  Mara clenched her gut and throat in queasy anticipation.

  The surroundings blurred darkly, as if enmeshed in thickening shifting murk. Then the nauseating inner twist seemed to yank her inside out and she fell to her knees and one hand, gagging. This could not be good for her, she decided.

  ‘Sacred Queen!’ someone yelped.

  ‘Do not move,’ Skinner barked.

  Blinking to clear her vision, Mara peered up. They’d found them. Two mages sitting with the litter. She glanced around: they were still within woods, but this one was very different. Far more dark and crowded, the trees and brush all black, bare and brittle, seemingly dead. The sky churned above them like a cauldron of lead. Shadow. How it unnerved her. People shouldn’t be here. This is not our realm.

  The priest was pawing at the wrapped package, chuckling and whispering to it. One of the mages slapped him away and he hissed at the man.

  ‘You led us on a good chase, Malazan,’ Skinner said. ‘But it’s done now. Stand aside.’

  The taller, slimmer mage in the tattered shirt and vest sent something through his Warren. He’s the one! Mara sent a thrust of power against him, slapping him backwards to smack his skull against a tree trunk. Broken branches rained down. The man wrapped his arms around his head and curled into a ball. He groaned his pain.

  ‘What was that?’ Skinner demanded.

  ‘He sent something. A summoning.’

  ‘Take it!’ Skinner ordered. ‘We must go.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The priest tore at the strapping securing the pack to the litter.

  Snarling under his breath, Skinner started forward, impatient. ‘Just—’ He stopped, as the priest had frozen, staring off into the woods. Something was approaching, pushing its way stiffly through the dense brush. Mara experienced a momentary thrill of terror when, for an instant, she thought it an Imass.

  But it was not – though the resemblance was strong. It was a desiccated corpse in ancient tattered armour of leather and mail, a tall sword at its back. Patches of hair still clung to cured tea-brown scraps of flesh over a round skull. Empty dark sockets regarded them. The dried lips had pulled back from yellowed teeth. The animated corpse pointed a finger – all sinew and knobby joints – to the litter.

  ‘Who brought this here?’ it asked. Its voice was a breathless stirring of dead things.

  The other Malazan mage’s eyes had grown huge at the appearance of this ghoul and he spluttered, ‘Er, we did, sir. But we didn’t mean no insult. We was just fleeing this one!’ He pointed to Skinner, who merely crossed his arms in a slither of armoured scales.

  ‘I know of you, skulker of borders,’ the priest sneered from where he crouched hugging the pack. ‘I know your strictures. You cannot interfere!’

  Mara started, shocked. Skulker of borders? Edgewalker? She raised her Warren to its greatest intensity. All mages are warned of this one – the most potent haunt of Shadow.

  ‘True,’ it breathed, its voice so soft. ‘However, you are within Emurlahn.’

  ‘Then we shall go,’ Skinner announced, and he reached for the pack.

  In a leathery creaking of dried muscle and ligament, the legendary creature edged its head to one side, as if it were listening to some voice none other could hear. ‘I cannot foresee the outcome,’ it said, in warning.

  Skinner paused. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Is this your wish?’ the haunt asked, facing away once more, as if addressing nothing.

  Ignoring the creature, Skinner closed a gauntleted fist on the pack and pointed furiously to the priest. Howling his terror, the servant of the Chained God gestured and threw himself aside. The wrenching inner yanking snatched Mara, pulling her backwards, and she almost fainted from the clawing sense of violation. Her vision blackened and stars dazzled her eyes. She fell upon dirt, groaning, her stomach heaving. Still groggy, she pushed herself upright.

  Skinner was there, the bag in his hand. But it hung limp, in tatters. He raised the torn canvas and leather strapping to his visor, studied it, then threw it down with a curse. The priest lay kicking and pounding the ground. It was as if he’d been taken by some sort of fit: shrieking curses, babbling in strange languages, even chewing and biting at the dirt in the extremity of his rage.

  ‘They cannot remain in Shadow,’ Skinner
said. ‘They will return.’

  This seemed to work upon the priest and he calmed, his convulsions easing. He pushed himself to his knees yet still appeared stricken, weaving, his eyes sleepy, not focusing upon anything at all. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘We must await them. Our master requires as many disparate parts as possible. He is much assailed. All his children he must gather to himself. Greater power is needed …’

  Curious, Mara asked, ‘For what?’

  Slowly the priest raised his head. His eyes lost their emptiness to focus upon her, and flooded with hate almost insane in its intensity. ‘Why, to win free of course, you useless fool!’

  *

  It was a blessing and a curse that Murk had been off squatting in the woods when the attack came. A blessing because he was out of sight in a stand of brittle grasses, but a curse in that he wasn’t done.

  Shouts of astonishment and surprise sounded from the camp, followed by an explosion of power that knocked him over even though he was squatting down, his feet wide splayed. Uprooted plants and broken branches slapped across him, followed by a haze of suspended dust and dirt. ‘What the fuck?’ he exclaimed before clamping his mouth shut and cursing himself for a fool. He allowed one wipe to his bare arse with a handful of leaves then pulled up his trousers and fumbled at the lacing.

  He pushed his way out of the dense stand. All was quiet now, the camp deserted but for new figures whom he merely glimpsed before ducking back into cover. He pushed through to the other side of the stand and ran, raising Meanas to cloak him as he went. A drifting haze of Mockra-laid mental confusion, distraction and a profusion of false trails lay revealed before him. It would have completely defeated him had not he and Sour worked together so long that they automatically allowed paths for each other through their defences and traps. He raced on, sensing their direction already.

  They had gone to ground in a clearing at the centre of a ring of thick trunks that the locals called raintrees. He dropped his disguise of shadows, making Ostler and Dee jump – even though Sour had no doubt warned them he was on his way.