Benuck Fill sat watching his mother wasting away. Some kind of cancer was eating her up inside. She’d stopped talking, stopped wanting anything; she was like a sack of sticks when he picked her up to carry her to the washtub to wipe down all the runny stuff she leaked out these days, these nights. Her smile, which had told him so much of her love for him, and her shame at what she had become – that horrible loss of dignity – had changed now into something else: an open mouth, lips withered and folded in, each breath a wheezing gasp. If that was a smile then she was smiling at death itself and that was hard for him to bear. Seeing that. Understanding it, what it meant.
Not long now. And Benuck didn’t know what he would do. She had given him life. She had fed him, held him, kept him warm. She had given him words to live by, rules to help him shape his life, his self. She wasn’t clever, very, or even wise. She was just an average person, who worked hard so that they could live, and worked even harder when Da went to fight in Pale where he probably died though they never found out either way. He just never came back.
Benuck sat wringing his hands, listening to her breathing, wishing he could help her, fill her with his own breath, fill her right up so she could rest, so she’d have a single, final moment when she didn’t suffer, one last moment of painless life, and then she could let go . . .
But here, unseen by any, was the real truth. His mother had died eight days ago. He sat facing an empty chair, and whatever had broken in his mind had trapped him now in those last days and nights. Watching, washing, dressing. Things to do for her, moments of desperate care and love, and then back to the watching and there was no light left in her eyes and she made no sign she heard a thing he said, all his words of love, his words of thanks.
Trapped. Lost. Not eating, not doing anything at all. Hood’s hand brushed his brow then and he slumped forward in his chair, and the soul of his mother, that had been hovering in anguish in this dreadful room all this time, now slipped forward for an eternal embrace.
Sometimes, the notion of true salvation can start the eyes.
Avab Tenitt fantasized about having children with him in his bed. Hadn’t happened yet, but soon he would make it all real. In the meantime he liked tying a rope round his neck, a damned noose, in fact, while he masturbated under the blankets while his unsuspecting wife scrubbed dishes in the kitchen.
Tonight, the knot snagged and wouldn’t loosen. In fact, it just got tighter and tighter the more he struggled with it, and so as he spilled out, so did his life.
When his wife came into the room, exhausted, her hands red and cracked by domestic travails, and on her tongue yet another lashing pending for her wastrel husband, she stopped and stared. At the noose. The bloated, blue and grey face above it, barely recognizable, and it was as if a thousand bars of lead had been lifted from her shoulders.
Let the dogs howl outside all night. Let the fires rage. She was free and her life ahead was all her own and nobody else’s. For ever and ever again.
A week later a neighbour would see her pass on the street and would say to friends that evening how Nissala had suddenly become beautiful, stunning, in fact, filled with vitality, looking years and years younger. Like a dead flower suddenly reborn, a blossom fierce under the brilliant warm sunlight.
And then the two gossipy old women would fall silent, both thinking the same dark thoughts, the delicious what-if and maybe-she notions that made life so much fun, and gave them plenty to talk about, besides.
In the meantime, scores of children would stay innocent for a little longer than they would have otherwise done.
Widow Lebbil was a reasonable woman most of the time. But on occasion this gentle calm twisted into something malign, something so bound up in rage that it overwhelmed its cause. The same thing triggered her incandescent fury, the same thing every time.
Fat Saborgan lived above her, and around this time every night – when decent people should be sleeping though truth be told who could do that on this insane night when the mad revelry in the streets sounded out of control – he’d start running about up there, back and forth, round and round, this way and that.
Who could sleep below that thunder?
And so she worked her way out of bed, groaning at her aching hips, took one of her canes and, standing on a rickety chair, pounded against the ceiling. Her voice was too thin, too frail – he’d never hear if she yelled up at him. Only the cane would do. And she knew he heard her, she knew he did, but did it make any difference?
No! Never!
She couldn’t go on with this. She couldn’t!
Thump thump scrape thump scrape thump thump – and so she pounded and pounded and pounded, her arms on fire, her shoulders cramping. Pounded and pounded.
Saborgan should indeed have heard the widow’s protest, but, alas, he was lost in his own world, and he danced with the White-Haired Empress, who’d come from some other world, surely, to his very room and the music filled his head and was so sweet, so magical, and her hands were soft as doves held as gently as he could manage in his own blunted, clumsy fingers. And soft and frail as her hands were, the Empress led, tugging him back and forth so that he never quite regained his balance.
The White-Haired Empress was very real. She was in fact a minor demon, conjured and chained into servitude in this ancient tenement on the very edge of the Gadrobi District. Her task, from the very first, had been singular, a geas set upon her by the somewhat neurotic witch dead now these three centuries.
The White-Haired Empress was bound to the task of killing cockroaches, in this one room. The manner in which she did so had, over decades and decades, suffered a weakening of strictures, leaving the now entirely loony demon the freedom to improvise.
This mortal had huge feet, his most attractive feature, and when they danced he closed his eyes and silently wept, and she could guide those feet on to every damned cockroach skittering across the filthy floor. Step crunch step crunch – there! A big one – get it! Crunch and smear, crunch and smear!
In this lone room, barring the insects who lived in terror, there was pure, unmitigated joy, delicious satisfaction, and the sweetest love.
It all collapsed at around the same time as the floor. Rotted crossbeams, boards and thick plaster descended on to Widow Lebbil and it was as much the shock as the weight of the wreckage that killed her instantly.
Poor Saborgan, losing his grip on the wailing Empress, suffered the stunning implosion of a cane driven up his anus – oh, even to recount is to wince! – which proved a most fatal intrusion indeed. As for the Empress herself, well, after a moment of horrific terror her geas shattered, releasing her at last to return to her home, the realm of the Cockroach Kings (oh, very well, the round man just made up that last bit. Forgive?). Who knows where she went? The only thing for certain is that she danced every step of the way.
The vague boom of a collapsing floor in a squalid tenement building somewhere overhead went unnoticed by Seba Krafar, Master of the Assassins’ Guild, as he staggered down the subterranean corridor, seeking the refuge of his nest.
Would the disasters never end? It had all started with that damned Rallick Nom cult, and then, almost before the dust settled on that, their first big contract ran up against the most belligerent, vicious collection of innkeepers imaginable. And the one that followed?
He suspected he was the only survivor. He’d left his crossbowmen to cover his retreat and not one of them had caught up with him; and now, with gas storage caverns igniting one after another, well, he found himself in an abandoned warren of tunnels, rushing through raining dust, coughing, eyes stinging. All ruined. Wrecked. He’d annihilated the entire damned Guild.
He would have to start over.
All at once, the notion excited him. Yes, he could shape it himself – nothing to inherit. A new structure. A new philosophy, even.
Such . . . possibilities.
He staggered into his office, right up to the desk, which he leaned on with both hands on its pitted surface. An
d then frowned at the scattering of scrolls, and saw documents strewn everywhere on the floor – what in Hood’s name?
‘Master Krafar, is it?’
The voice spun him round.
A woman stood with her back resting against the wall beside the doorway. A cocked crossbow was propped beside her left boot, quarrel head resting on the packed earthen floor. Her arms were crossed.
Seba Krafar scowled. ‘Who in Hound’s name are you?’
‘You don’t know me? Careless. My name is Blend. I’m one of the owners of K’rul’s.’
‘That contract’s cancelled – we’re done with you. No more—’
‘I don’t care. It’s simple – I want the name. The one who brought you the contract. Now, you can give it to me without any fuss, and I will walk out of here and that’s the last you’ll see of me, and all your worries will be at an end. The Guild removed from the equation. Consider it a gift, but now it’s time for you to earn it.’
He studied her, gauging his chances. She didn’t look like much. There was no way she’d reach that crossbow in time – two quick strides and he’d be right in her face. With two knives in her gut. And then he’d send a note to Humble Measure and claim one more down – leaving what, two or three left? He’d get paid well for that, and Hood knew he needed the coin if he was going to start over.
And so he attacked.
He wasn’t sure what happened next. He had his knives out, she was right there in front of him, and then her elbow smashed into his face, shattering his nose and blinding him with pain. And somehow both thrusts he sent her way, one seeking the soft spot just beneath her sternum, the other striking lower down, failed. One blocked, the other missing entirely, dagger point driving into the wall she’d been leaning against.
The blow to his face turned his knees to water, but only for the briefest of moments, for Seba Krafar was a bull of a man, a brawler. Damage was something to shake off and then just get on with it, and so, shoulder hunching, he attempted a slanting slash, trying to gut the bitch right then and there.
Something hard hammered his wrist, sending the dagger flying, and bones cracked in his arm. As he stumbled back, tugging the other knife from the wall, he attempted a frantic thrust to keep her off him. She caught his good wrist and her thumb was like an iron nail, impaling the base of his palm. The knife dropped from senseless fingers. She then took that arm and twisted it hard round, pushing his shoulder down and so forcing his head to follow.
Where it met a rising knee.
An already broken nose struck again, struck even harder, in fact, is not something that can be shaken off. Stunned, not a sliver of will left in his brain, he landed on his back. Some instinct made him roll, up against the legs of his desk, and he heaved himself upright once more.
The quarrel took him low on the right side, just above his hip, glancing off the innominate bone and slicing messily through his liver.
Seba Krafar sagged back down, into a slump with his back against the desk.
With streaming eyes he looked across at the woman.
Malazan, right. She’d been a soldier once. No, she’d been a Bridgeburner. He used to roll his eyes at that. A Bridgeburner? So what? Just some puffed up ooh-ah crap. Seba was an assassin. Blood kin to Talo Krafar and now there was a monster of a man—
Who’d been taken down by a quarrel. Killed like a boar in a thicket.
She walked over to stand before him. ‘That was silly, Seba. And now here you are, face broken and skewered. That’s your liver bleeding out there, I think. Frankly, I’m amazed you’re not already dead, but lucky for you that you aren’t.’ She crouched and held up a small vial. ‘If I pour this into that wound – once I pluck out the bolt, that is, and assuming you survive that – well, there’s a good chance you’ll live. So, should I do that, Seba? Should I save your sorry arse?’
He stared at her. Gods, he hurt everywhere.
‘The name,’ she said. ‘Give me the name and you’ve got a chance to survive this. But best hurry up with your decision. You’re running out of time.’
Was Hood hovering? In that buried place so far beneath the streets? Well, of course he was.
Seba gave her the name. He even warned her off – don’t mess with that one, he’s a damned viper. There’s something there, in his eyes, I swear—
Blend was true to her word.
So Hood went away.
The cascade of sudden deaths, inexplicable and outrageous accidents, miserable ends and terrible murders filled every abode, every corner and every hovel in a spreading tide, a most fatal flood creeping out through the hapless city on all sides. No age was spared, no weight of injustice tipped these scales. Death took them all: well born and destitute, the ill and the healthy, criminal and victim, the unloved and the cherished.
So many last breaths: coughed out, sighed, whimpered, bellowed in defiance, in disbelief, in numbed wonder. And if such breaths could coalesce, could form a thick, dry, pungent fugue of dismay, in the city on this night not a single globe of blue fire could be seen.
There were survivors. Many, many survivors – indeed, more survived than died – but alas, it was a close run thing, this measure, this fell harvest.
The god walked eastward, out from Gadrobi District and into Lakefront, and, from there, up into the Estates.
This night was not done. My, not done at all.
Unseen in the pitch black of this moonless, smoke-wreathed night, a massive shape sailed low over the Gadrobi Hills, westward and out on to the trader’s road. As it drew closer to the murky lights of Worrytown, the silent flier slowly dropped lower until its clawed talons almost brushed the gravel of the road.
Above it, smaller shapes beat heavy wings here and there, wheeling round, plummeting and then thudding themselves back up again. These too uttered no calls in the darkness.
To one side of the track, crouched in high grasses, a coyote that had been about to cross the track suddenly froze.
Heady spices roiled over the animal in a warm, sultry gust, and where a moment earlier there had been black, shapeless clouds sliding through the air, now there was a figure – a man-thing, the kind the coyote warred with in its skull, fear and curiosity, opportunity and deadly betrayal – walking on the road.
But this man-thing, it was . . . different.
As it came opposite the coyote, its head turned and regarded the beast.
The coyote trotted out. Every muscle, every instinct, cried out for a submissive surrender, and yet as if from some vast power outside itself, the coyote held its head high, ears sharp forward as it drew up alongside the figure.
Who reached down to brush gloved fingers back along the dome of its head.
And off the beast bounded, running as fast as its legs could carry it, out into the night, the vast plain to the south.
Freed, blessed, beneficiary of such anguished love that it would live the rest of its years in a grassy sea of joy and delight.
Transformed. No special reason, no grim purpose. No, this was a whimsical touch, a mutual celebration of life. Understand it or stumble through. The coyote’s role is done, and off it pelts, heart bright as a blazing star.
Gifts to start the eyes.
Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, walked between the shanties of Worrytown. The gate was ahead, but no guards were visible. The huge doors were barred.
From beyond, from the city itself, fires roared here and there, thrusting bulging cloaks of spark-lit smoke up into the black night.
Five paces from the gates now, and something snapped and fell away. The doors swung open. And, unaccosted, unnoticed, Anomander Rake walked into Darujhistan.
Howls rose like madness unleashed.
The Son of Darkness reached up and unsheathed Dragnipur.
Steam curled from the black blade, twisting into ephemeral chains that stretched out as he walked up the wide, empty street. Stretched out to drag behind him, and from each length others emerged and from these still more, a forest’s worth of iron ro
ots, snaking out, whispering over the cobbles.
He had never invited such a manifestation before. Reining in that bleed of power had been an act of mercy, to all those who might witness it, who might comprehend its significance.
But on this night, Anomander Rake had other things on his mind.
Chains of smoke, chains and chains and chains, so many writhing in his wake that they filled the breadth of the street, that they snaked over and under and spilled out into side streets, alleys, beneath estate gates, beneath doors and through windows. They climbed walls.
Wooden barriers disintegrated – doors and sills and gates and window frames. Stones cracked, bricks spat mortar. Walls bowed. Buildings groaned.
He walked on as those chains grew taut.
No need yet to lean forward with each step. No need yet to reveal a single detail to betray the strength and the will demanded of him.
He walked on.
Throughout the besieged city, mages, witches, wizards and sorcerors clutched the sides of their heads, eyes squeezing shut as unbearable pressure closed in. Many fell to their knees. Others staggered. Still others curled up into tight foetal balls on the floor, as the world groaned.
Raging fires flinched, collapsed into themselves, died in silent gasps.
The howl of the Hounds thinned as if forced through tight valves.
In a slag-crusted pit twin sisters paused as one in their efforts to scratch each other’s eyes out. In the midst of voluminous clouds of noxious vapours, knee deep in magma that swirled like a lake of molten sewage, the sisters halted, and slowly lifted their heads.
As if scenting the air.
Dragnipur.
Dragnipur.
Down from the Estates, into that projecting wedge that was Daru, and hence through another gate and on to the main avenue in Lakefront, proceeding parallel to the shoreline. As soon as he reached the straight, level stretch of that avenue, the Son of Darkness paused.
Four streets distant on that same broad track, Hood, Lord of Death, fixed his gaze on the silver-haired figure which seemed to have hesitated, but only for a moment, before resuming its approach.
Toll the Hounds Page 107