It was, of sorts, a gift.
‘Kallor,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Take this as you will, or not at all. I – I am sorry. That you are driven to this. And . . . and may you one day show your true self. May you, one day, be redeemed in the eyes of the world.’
Kallor cried out, as if struck, and he staggered back. He recovered with bared teeth. ‘My true self? Oh, you damned fool! You see only what you want to see! In this last moment of your pathetic, useless life! May your soul rage for eternity in the heart of a star, Tiste Andii! May you yearn for what you can never have! For all infernal eternity!’
Spinnock had flinched back at the tirade. ‘Do you now curse me, High King?’ he asked in a whisper.
Kallor’s face looked ready to shatter. He dragged a forearm across his eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. I will kill you clean. For what you have shown me this night – I have never before faced such a defence.’ And then he paused, edging forward again, his eyes burning in their pits. ‘You had chances, Spinnock Durav. To strike back. You could have wounded me – yes, you could have . . .’
‘I was not here to do that, Kallor.’
The High King stared, and a glint of comprehension lit in his face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You only needed to delay me.’
Spinnock closed his eyes once more and settled his head back. ‘For a time. You may never accept this, but it was for your own good. It’s a mess over there. In that city. My Lord wanted you kept away.’
Kallor snarled. ‘How generous in his mercy is your Lord.’
‘Yes,’ sighed Spinnock, ‘he was ever that.’
Silence, then.
Not a sound. A dozen laboured heartbeats. Another dozen. Finally, some odd unease forced Spinnock to open his eyes yet again, to look upon Kallor.
Who stood, head bowed.
‘Yes,’ said Spinnock, in true sorrow, ‘he is gone.’
Kallor did not lift his gaze. He did not move at all.
‘And so,’ continued Spinnock, ‘I have stood here. In his stead. One last time.’ He paused. ‘And yes, it makes my death seem . . . easier—’
‘Oh shut up, will you? I am thinking.’
‘About what?’
Kallor met his eyes and bared his teeth. ‘That bastard. The bold, brazen bastard!’
Spinnock studied the High King, and then he grunted.
‘Well, that’s it, then.’
‘I don’t ever want to see you again, Spinnock Durav. You are bleeding out. I will leave you to that. I hear it’s quieter, easier – but then, what do I know?’
The Tiste Andii watched him set off then, up the road, to that fair city that even now bled with its own terrible wounds.
Too late to do anything, even if he’d wanted to. But, Spinnock Durav now suspected, Kallor might well have done nothing. He might have stood aside. ‘High King,’ he whispered, ‘all you ever wanted was a throne. But trust me, you don’t want Rake’s. No, proud warrior, that one you would not want. I think, maybe, you just realized that.’
Of course, when it came to Kallor, there was no way to know.
The Great Ravens were descending now, thumping heavily on to the blood-splashed, muddy surface of the road.
And Spinnock Durav looked skyward then, as the dark forms of two dragons sailed past, barely a stone’s throw above the ground.
Racing for Kallor.
He saw one of the dragons suddenly turn its head, eyes flashing back in his direction, and the creature pitched to one side, coming round.
A moment later the other dragon reached Kallor, catching him entirely unawares, talons lashing down to grasp the High King and lift him into the air. Wings thundering, the dragon carried its charge yet higher. Faint screams of fury sounded from the man writhing in that grasp.
Dragon and High King dipped behind a hill to the north.
One of the Great Ravens drew up almost at Spinnock’s feet.
‘Crone!’ Spinnock coughed and spat blood. ‘I’d have thought . . . Darujhistan . . .’
‘Darujhistan, yes. I’d have liked to. To honour, to witness. To remember, and to weep. But our Lord . . . well, he had thoughts of you.’ The head tilted. ‘When we saw you, lying there, Kallor looming as he so likes to do, ah, we thought we were too late – we thought we had failed our Lord – and you. We thought – oh, never mind.’
The Great Raven was panting.
Spinnock knew that this was not exhaustion he was seeing in the ancient bird. You can shed no tears, yet tears take you none the less. The extremity, the terrible distress.
The dragon that had returned now landed on the grasses to the south of the track. Sembling, walking towards Spinnock and Crone and the haggle of Crone’s kin.
Korlat.
Spinnock would have smiled up at her, but he had lost the strength for such things, and so he could only watch as she came up to him, using one boot to shunt a squawking Crone to one side. She knelt and reached out a hand to brush Spinnock’s spattered cheek. Her eyes were bleak. ‘Brother . . .’
Crone croaked, ‘Just heal him and be done with it – before he gasps out his last breath in front of us!’
She drew out a quaint flask. ‘Endest Silann mixed this one. It should suffice.’ She tugged loose the stopper and gently set the small bottle’s mouth between Spinnock’s lips, and then tilted it to drain the contents, and he felt that potent liquid slide down his throat. Sudden warmth flowed through him.
‘Sufficient, anyway, to carry you home.’ And she smiled.
‘My last fight in his name,’ said Spinnock Durav. ‘I did as he asked, did I not?’
Her expression tightened, revealed something wan and ravaged. ‘You have much to tell us, brother. So much that needs . . . explaining.’
Spinnock glanced at Crone.
The Great Raven ducked and hopped a few steps away. ‘We like our secrets,’ she cackled, ‘when it’s all we have!’
Korlat brushed his cheek again. ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How long did you hold him back?’
‘Why,’ he replied, ‘I lit the torches . . . dusk was just past . . .’
Her eyes slowly widened. And she glanced to the east, where the sky had begun, at last, to lighten.
‘Oh, Spinnock . . .’
A short time later, when she went to find his sword where it was lying in the grasses, Spinnock Durav said, ‘No, Korlat. Leave it.’
She looked at him in surprise.
But he was not of a mind to explain.
Above the Gadrobi Hills, Kallor finally managed to drag free his sword, even as the dragon’s massive head swung down, jaws wide. His thrust sank deep into the soft throat, just above the jutting avian collar bones. A shrill, spattering gasp erupted from the Soletaken, and all at once they were plunging earthward.
The impact was thunder and snapping bones. The High King was flung away, tumbling and skidding along dew-soaked grass. He gained his feet and spun to face the dragon.
It had sembled. Orfantal, on his face an expression of bemused surprise, was struggling to stand. One arm was broken. Blood gushed down from his neck. He seemed to have forgotten Kallor, as he turned in the direction of the road, and slowly walked away.
Kallor watched.
Orfantal managed a dozen steps before he fell to the ground.
It seemed this was a night for killing Tiste Andii.
His shoulders were on fire from the dragon’s puncture wounds, which might well have proved fatal to most others, but Kallor was not like most others. Indeed, the High King was unique.
In his ferocity. In his stubborn will to live.
In the dry furnace heat of the hatred that ever swirled round him.
He set out once more for the city.
As dawn finally parted the night.
Kallor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.’
Anomander Rake
; Son of Darkness
The continent-sized fragments of the shattered moon sent reflected sunlight down upon the world. The fabric of Night, closed so tight about the city of Black Coral, began at last to fray. The web that was this knotted manifestation of Kurald Galain withered under the assault. Shafts broke through and moonlight painted buildings, domes, towers, walls and the long-dead gardens they contained. Silvery glow seeped into the dark waters of the bay, sending creatures plunging to the inky blackness of the depths.
New world, young world. So unexpected, so premature, this rain of death.
Endest Silann could feel every breach as he knelt on the cold mosaic floor of the temple’s Grand Vestry. He had once held the waters back from Moon’s Spawn. He had once, long, long ago, guided his Lord to the fateful, final encounter with Mother Dark herself. He had clasped the hand of a dying High Priestess, sharing with her the bleak knowledge that nothing awaited her, nothing at all. He had stood, gods, so long ago now, staring down at his blood-covered hands, above the body of a sweet, gentle woman, Andarist’s wife. While through the high window, the flames of dying Kharkanas flickered crimson and gold.
The Saelen Gara of the lost Kharkanan forestlands had believed that the moon was Father Light’s sweet seduction, innocent maiden gift to Mother Dark. To remind her of his love, there in the sky of night. But then, they had also believed the moon was but the backside of Father Light’s baleful eye, and could one rise up and wing the vast distance to that moon, they would discover that it was but a lens, and to look through was to see other worlds for whom the moon was not the moon at all, but the sun. The Saelen Gara talespinner would grin then, and make odd motions with his hands. ‘Perspective,’ he’d say. ‘You see? The world changes according to where you stand. So choose, my children, choose and choose again, where you will make your stand . . .’
Where you will make your stand. The world changes.
The world changes.
Yes, he had held back the sea. He had made Moon’s Spawn into a single held breath that had lasted months.
But now, ah, now, his Lord had asked him to hold back Light itself.
To save not a fortress, but a city. Not a single breath to hold, but the breath of Kurald Galain, an Elder Warren.
But he was old, and he did not know . . . he did not know . . .
Standing twenty paces away, in a niche of the wall, the High Priestess watched. Seeing him struggle, seeing him call upon whatever reserves he had left. Seeing him slowly, inexorably, fail.
And she could do nothing.
Light besieged Dark in the sky overhead. A god in love with dying besieged a child of redemption, and would use that child’s innocence to usurp this weakened island of Kurald Galain – to claim for itself the very Throne of Darkness.
For she has turned away.
Against all this, a lone, ancient, broken warlock.
It was not fair.
Time was the enemy. But then, she told herself with wry bitterness, time was always the enemy.
Endest Silann could not drive back every breach. She had begun to feel the damage being wrought upon Night, upon the Tiste Andii in this city. It arrived like a sickness, a failing of internal balances. She was weakening.
We are all weakening.
An old, broken man. He was not enough, and they had all known – everyone except the one who mattered the most. Lord Rake, your faith blinded you. See him, kneeling there – there, my Lord, is your fatal error in judgement.
And without him – without the power here and now to keep everything away – without that, your grand design will collapse into ruin.
Taking us with it.
By the Abyss, taking us all.
It seemed so obvious now. To stand in Rake’s presence was to feel a vast, unassailable confidence. That he could gauge all things with such precision as to leave one in awe, in disbelief and in wonder.
The plans of the Son of Darkness never went awry. Hold to faith in him, and all shall settle into place.
But how many plans worked out precisely because of our faith in him? How many times did we – did people like Endest Silann and Spinnock Durav – do things beyond their capability, simply to ensure that Rake’s vision would prove true? And how many times can he ask that of them, of us?
Anomander Rake wasn’t here.
No, he was gone.
For ever gone.
Where then was that solid core of confidence, which they might now grasp tight? In desperation, in pathetic need?
You should never have left this to us. To him.
The sickness in her soul was spreading. And when she succumbed, the last bulwark protecting every Tiste Andii in Black Coral would give way.
And they would all die. For they were the flesh of Kurald Galain.
Our enemies feed on flesh.
Lord Anomander Rake, you have abandoned us.
She stood in the niche as if it was a sarcophagus. Fevered, watching Endest Silann slowly crumple there in the centre of that proud, diffident mosaic spanning the floor.
You failed us.
And now we fail you.
With a gasp of agony, Apsal’ara lunged backward along the beam. The skin of her hands and forearms had blackened. She kicked in desperate need, pushing herself still farther from that swirling vortex of darkness. Sliding on her back, over the grease of sweat, bile and blood. Steam rose from her arms. Her fingers were twisted like roots—
The pain was so vast it was almost exquisite. She writhed, twisted in its grip, and then pitched down from the beam. Chains rapped against the sodden wood. Her weight pulled them down in a rattle and she heard something break.
Thumping on to ash-smeared clay.
Staring as she held up her hands. Seeing frost-rimed shackles, and, beneath them, broken links.
She had felt the wagon rocking its way back round. Horror and disbelief had filled her soul, and the need to do something had overwhelmed her, trampling all caution, trampling sanity itself.
And now, lying on the cold, gritty mud, she thought to laugh.
Free.
Free with nowhere to run. With possibly dead hands – and what good was a thief with dead, rotting hands? She struggled to uncurl her fingers. Watched the knuckles crack open like charred meat. Red fissures gaped. And, as she stared, she saw the first droplets of blood welling from them. Was that a good sign?
‘Fire is life,’ she intoned. ‘Stone is flesh. Water is breath. Fire is life. Stone is water is flesh is breath is life. Pluck a flower from a field and it will not thrive. Take and beauty dies, and that which one possesses becomes worthless. I am a thief. I take but do not keep. All I gain I cast away. I take your wealth only because you value it.
‘I am Apsal’ara, Mistress of Thieves. Only you need fear me, you who lust to own.’
She watched her fingers slowly straighten, watched flakes of skin lift and then fall away.
She would survive this. Her hands had touched Darkness, and lived still.
As if it mattered.
Even here, beneath the wagon, the dread sounds of war surrounded her. Chaos closed in on all sides. Souls died in numbers beyond counting, and their cries revealed a loss so far past comprehension that she refused to contemplate it. The death of honourable souls. The immense sacrifice wasted. No, none of this bore thinking about.
Apsal’ara rolled on to her side, and then on to her knees and elbows.
She began crawling.
And then gasped anew, as a familiar voice filled her head.
‘Mistress of Thieves. Take the eye. The eye of the god. Apsal’ara, steal the eye . . .’
Trembling – wondering – how? How could he reach so into her mind? He could do so only if . . . only if—
Apsal’ara gasped a third time.
And so . . . once in pain, once in wonder, and once in . . . in hope.
She resumed crawling.
Pluck your flower. I am coming for you.
Oh yes, I am coming for you.
With
each soul consumed, the power of chaos grew. Hunger surged with renewed strength, and the beleaguered defenders fell back another step.
But they were running out of steps.
The indomitable legions surrounded the now stationary wagon and its dwindling ring of souls. The countless dead who had answered Hood’s final summons were melting away, most of them too ancient to call upon memories of strength, to even remember that will alone held power. In standing against the enemy, they had done little more than marginally slow the advance of chaos, as all that remained of them was ripped apart, devoured.
Some, however, were made of sterner things. The Grey Swords, delivered unto Hood by the loss of Fener, fought with grim ferocity. Commanding them, Brukhalian was like a deep-rooted standing stone, as if capable of willing himself immovable, unconquerable. He had, after all, done this before. The company fought and held for a time – an impressive length of time – but now their flanks were under assault, and there was nothing to do but retreat yet closer to the enormous wagon with its heap of bodies.
A score of Seguleh, all that remained of the Second’s forces, formed one impossibly thin link with the Grey Swords. Each one had fallen to Anomander Rake, and this knowledge alone was sufficient, for it burned like acid, it stung like shame. They wore their masks, and as they fought, the painted slashes, the sigils of rank, began to fade, worn away by the fires of chaos, until upon each warrior the mask gleamed pure. As if here, within the world of this sword, some power could yield to greater truths. Here, Dragnipur seemed to say, you are all equal.
The Grey Swords’ other flank closed up with another knot of soldiers – the Bridgeburners, into which remnants of other Malazan forces were falling, drawing upon the élite company’s ascendant power, and upon the commander now known as Iskar Jarak.
The Bridgeburners were arrayed in a half-circle that slowly contracted under the brunt of the assault. Grey Swords on one flank, and the last of the Chained on the other, where a huge demon formed the point of a defiant wedge that refused to buckle. Tears streamed down the demon’s face, for even as it fought, it grieved for those lost. And such grief filled Pearl’s heart unto bursting. Pearl did not fight for itself, nor for the wagon, nor even the Gate of Darkness, the Wandering Hold. The demon fought for its comrades, as would a soldier pushed beyond breaking, pushed until there was nowhere else to go.
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