The end, in fact, of the one thing never before questioned. Continuation. We tell ourselves that each of us must pass, but that our kind will live on. This is the deeply buried taproot feeding our very will to live. Cut that root, and living fades. Bleeding dry and colourless, it fades.
He was invited to weep one last time. To weep not for himself, but for his species.
When fell the last salty tear of the Imass? Did the soil that received it taste its difference from all those that came before? Was it bitterer? Was it sweeter? Did it sting the ground like acid?
He could see that tear, its deathly drop dragged into infinity, a journey too slow to measure. But he knew that what he was seeing was a conceit. The last to die had been dry-eyed—Onos Toolan had witnessed the moment here in this false past—the wretched brave lying bound and bleeding and awaiting the flint-toothed ivory blade in a stranger’s hand. They too were hungry, desperate, those strangers. And they would kill the Imass, the last of his kind, and they would eat him. Leave his cracked and cut bones scattered on the floor of this cave, with all the others, and then, in sudden superstitious terror, the strangers would flee this place, leaving nothing behind of themselves, lest wronged ghosts find them on the paths of haunting.
In that other world, the end of Tool’s kind came at the cut of a knife.
Someone was howling, flesh stretched to bursting by a surge of rage.
The children of the Imass, who were not children at all, but inheritors nevertheless, had flooded the world with the taste of Imass blood on their tongues. Just one more quarry hunted into oblivion, with nothing more than a vague unease lodged deep inside, the mark of sin, the horror of a first crime.
The son devours the father, heart of a thousand myths, a thousand half-forgotten tales.
Empathy was excoriated from him. The howl he heard was rising from his own throat. The rage battered like fists inside his body, a demonic thing eager to get out.
They will pay—
But no. Onos Toolan staggered onward, hide-bound feet crunching on frozen moss and lichen. He would walk out of this damning, vicious fate. Back to his own world’s paradise beyond death, where rituals delivered curse and salvation both. He would not turn. He was blind as a beast driven to the cliff’s edge, but it did not matter; what awaited him was a death better than this death—
He saw a rider ahead, a figure hunched and cowled as it waited astride a gaunt, grey horse from which no breath plumed. He saw a recurved Rhivi bow gripped in one bony hand, and Onos Toolan realized that he knew this rider.
This inheritor.
Tool halted twenty paces away. ‘You cannot be here.’
The head tilted slightly and the glitter of a single eye broke the blackness beneath the cowl. ‘Nor you, old friend, yet here we are.’
‘Move aside, Toc the Younger. Let me pass. What waits beyond is what I have earned. What I will return to—it is mine. I will see the herds again, the great ay and the ranag, the okral and agkor. I will see my kin and run in the shadow of the tusked tenag. I will throw a laughing child upon my knee. I will show the children their future, and tell them how all that we are shall continue, unending, for here I will find an eternity of wishes, for ever fulfilled.
‘Toc, my friend, do not take this from me. Do not take this, too, when you and your kind have taken everything else.’
‘I cannot let you pass, Tool.’
Tool’s scarred, battered hands closed into fists. ‘For the love between us, Toc the Younger, do not do this.’
An arrow appeared in Toc’s other hand, biting the bowstring and, faster than Tool could register, the barbed missile flashed out and stabbed the ground at his feet.
‘I am dead,’ said Tool. ‘You cannot hurt me.’
‘We’re both dead,’ Toc replied, his voice cold as a stranger’s. ‘I will take your legs out from under you and the wounds will be real—I will leave you bleeding, crippled, in terrible pain. You will not pass.’
Tool took a step forward. ‘Why?’
‘The rage burns bright within you, doesn’t it?’
‘Abyss take it—I am done with fighting! I am done with all of it!’
‘On my tongue, Onos Toolan, is the taste of Imass blood.’
‘You want me to fight you? I will—do you imagine your puny arrows can take down an Imass? I have snapped the neck of a bull ranag. I have been gored. Mauled by an okral. When my kind hunt, we bring down our quarry with our own hands, and that triumph is purchased in broken bones and pain.’
A second arrow thudded into the ground.
‘Toc—why are you doing this?’
‘You must not pass.’
‘I—I gifted you with an Imass name. Did you not realize the measure of that honour? Did you not know that no other of your kind has ever been given such a thing? I called you friend. When you died, I wept.’
‘I see you now, in flesh, all that once rode the bone.’
‘You have seen this before, Toc the Younger.’
‘I do not—’
‘You did not recognize me. Outside the walls of Black Coral. I found you, but even your face was not your own. We were changed, the both of us. Could I go back . . .’ He faltered, and then continued, ‘Could I go back, I would not have let you pass me by. I would have made you realize.’
‘It does not matter.’
Something broke inside Onos Toolan. He looked away. ‘No, perhaps it doesn’t.’
‘On the Awl’dan plain, you saw me fall.’
Tool staggered back as if struck a blow. ‘I did not know—’
‘Nor me, Tool. And so truths come round, full circle, with all the elegance of a curse. I did not know you outside Black Coral. You did not know me on the plain. Fates have a way of . . . of fitting together.’ Toc paused, and then hissed a bitter laugh. ‘And do you recall when we met at the foot of Morn? Look upon us now. I am the withered corpse, and you—’ He seemed to tremble, as if struck an invisible blow, and then recovered. ‘On the plain, Onos Toolan. What did I give my life for? Do you recall?’
The bitterness in Tool’s mouth was unbearable. He wanted to shriek, he wanted to tear out his own eyes. ‘The lives of children.’
‘Can you do the same?’
Deeper than any arrows, Toc struck with his terrible words. ‘You know I cannot,’ Tool said in a rasp.
‘You will not, you mean.’
‘They are not my children!’
‘You have found the rage of the Imass—the rage they escaped, Tool, with the Ritual. You have seen the truth of other pasts. And now you would flee—flee it all. Do you really believe, Onos Toolan, that you will find peace? Peace in self-deception? This world behind me, the one you so seek, you will infect with the lies you tell yourself. Every child’s laugh will sound hollow, and the look in every beast’s eye will tell you they see you truly.’
The third arrow struck his left shoulder, spun him round but did not knock him down. Righting himself, Tool reached to grip the shaft. He snapped it and drew out the fletched end. Behind him, the flint point and a hand’s-width of shaft fell to the ground. ‘What—what do you want of me?’
‘You must not pass.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want nothing, Tool. I want nothing.’ And he nocked another arrow.
‘Then kill me.’
‘We’re dead,’ Toc said. ‘That I cannot do. But I can stop you. Turn round, Onos Toolan. Go back.’
‘To what?’
Toc the Younger hesitated, as if uncertain for the first time in this brutal meeting. ‘We are guilty,’ he said slowly, ‘of so many pasts. Will we ever be made to answer for any of them? I wait, you see, for the fates to fit together. I wait for the poisonous beauty.’
‘You want me to forgive you—your kind, Toc the Younger?’
‘Once, in the city of Mott, I wandered into a market and found myself in front of row upon row of squall apes, the swamp dwellers. I looked into their eyes, Tool, and I saw their suffering, their longing,
their terrible crime of living. And for all that, I knew that they were simply not intelligent enough. To refuse forgiveness. You Imass, you are. So. Do not forgive us. Never forgive us!’
‘Am I to be the weapon of your self-hatred?’
‘I wish I knew.’
In those four words, Tool heard his friend, a man trapped, struggling to recall himself.
Toc resumed. ‘After the Ritual, well, you chose the wrong enemy for your endless war of vengeance. It would have been more just, don’t you think, to proclaim a war against us humans. Perhaps, one day, Silverfox will come to realize that, and choose for her undead armies a new enemy.’ He then shrugged. ‘If I believed in justice, that is . . . if I imagined that she was capable of seeing clearly enough. That you and you alone, T’lan Imass, are in the position to take on the necessary act of retribution—for those squall apes, for all the so-called lesser creatures that have fallen and ever fall to our slick desires.’
He speaks the words of the dead. His heart is cold. His single eye sees and does not shy away. He is . . . tormented. ‘Is this what you expected,’ Tool asked, ‘when you died? What of Hood’s Gate?’
Teeth gleamed. ‘Locked.’
‘How can that be?’
The next arrow split his right knee-cap. Bellowing in agony, Tool collapsed. He writhed, fire tearing up his leg. Pain . . . in so many layers, folding round and round—the wound, the murder of a friendship, the death of love, history skirling up in a plume of ashes.
Horse hoofs slowly thumped closer.
Blinking tears from his eyes, Tool stared up at the ravaged, half-rotted face of his old friend.
‘Onos Toolan, I am the lock.’
The pain was overwhelming. He could not speak. Sweat stung his eyes, more bitter than any tears. My friend. The one thing left in me—it is slain. You have murdered it.
‘Go back,’ said Toc in a tone of immeasurable weariness.
‘I—I cannot walk—’
‘That will ease, once you turn around. Once you retrace your route, the farther you get away . . . from me.’
With blood-smeared hands, Tool prised loose the arrow jutting from his knee. He almost passed out in the wave of agony that followed, and lay gasping.
‘Find your children, Onos Toolan. Not of the blood. Of the spirit.’
There are none, you bastard. As you said, you and your kind killed them all. Weeping, he struggled to stand, twisting as he turned to face the way he had come. Rock-studded, rolling hills, a grey lowering sky. You’ve taken it all—
‘And we’re far from finished,’ said Toc behind him.
I now cast away love. I embrace hate.
Toc said nothing to that.
Dragging his maimed leg, Tool set out.
Toc the Younger, who had once been Anaster First Born of the Dead Seed, who had once been a Malazan soldier, one-eyed and a son to a vanished father, sat on his undead horse and watched the broken warrior limp to the distant range of hills.
When, at long last, Tool edged over a ridge and then disappeared behind it, Toc dropped his gaze. His lone eye roved over the matted stains of blood on the dead grasses, the glistening arrows, one broken, the other not, and those jutting from the half-frozen earth. Arrows fashioned by Tool’s own hands, so long ago on a distant plain.
He suddenly pitched forward, curling up like a gut-stabbed child. A moment later a wretched sob broke loose. His body trembled, bones creaking in dried sockets, as he wept, tearless, leaking nothing but the sounds pushing past his withered throat.
A voice broke through from a few paces away, ‘Compelling you to such things, Herald, leaves me no pleasure.’
Collecting himself with a groan, Toc the Younger straightened in the saddle and fixed his eye upon the ancient bonecaster standing now in the place where Tool had been. He bared dull, dry teeth. ‘Your hand was colder than Hood’s own, witch. Do you imagine Hood is pleased at you stealing his Herald? At your using him as you will? This will not go unanswered—’
‘I have no reason to fear Hood—’
‘But you have reason to fear me, Olar Ethil!’
‘And how will you find me, Dead Rider? I stand here, yet not here. No, in the living world I am huddled beneath furs, sleeping under bright stars—’
‘You have no need of sleep.’
She laughed. ‘Guarded well by a young warrior—one you knew well, yes? One you chase at night, there behind his eyes—and yes, when I saw the truth of that, why, he proved my path to you. And you spoke to me, begging for his life, which I accepted into my care. It has all led . . . to this.’
‘And here,’ Toc muttered, ‘I’d given up believing in evil. How many others do you plan to abuse?’
‘As many as I need, Herald.’
‘I will find you. When my other tasks are finally done, I swear, I will find you.’
‘To achieve what? Onos Toolan is severed from you. And, more importantly, from your kind.’ She paused, and then added with a half-snarl, ‘I don’t know what you meant by that rubbish you managed to force out, about Tool finding his children. I need him for other things.’
‘I was fighting free of you, bonecaster. He saw—he heard—’
‘And failed to understand. Onos Toolan hates you now—think on that, think on the deepness of his love, and know that for an Imass hatred runs deeper still. Ask the Jaghut! It is done, and can never be mended. Ride away from this, Herald. I now release you.’
‘I look forward,’ said Toc, gathering the reins, ‘to the next time we meet, Olar Ethil.’
Torrent’s eyes snapped open. Stars in blurred, jade-tinged smears spun overhead. He drew a deep but ragged breath, shivered beneath his furs.
Olar Ethil’s crackling voice cut through the darkness. ‘Did he catch you?’
He was in no hurry to reply to that. Not this time. He could still smell the dry, musty aura of death, could still hear the drumbeat of hoofs.
The witch continued, ‘Less than half the night is done. Sleep. I will keep him from you now.’
He sat up. ‘Why would you do that, Olar Ethil? Besides,’ he added, ‘my dreams belong to me, not you.’
Rasping laughter drifted across to him. ‘Do you see his lone eye? How it glitters in darkness like a star? Do you hear the howl of wolves echoing out from the empty pit of the one he lost? What do the beasts want with him? Perhaps he will tell you, when at last he rides you down.’
Torrent bit down one reply, chose another: ‘I escape. I always do.’
She grunted. ‘Good. He is filled with lies. He would use you, as the dead are wont to do to mortals.’
In the night Torrent bared his teeth. ‘Like you?’
‘Like me, yes. There is no reason to deny it. But listen well, I must leave your side for a time. Continue southward on your journey. I have awakened ancient springs—your horse will find them. I will return to you.’
‘What is it you want, Olar Ethil? I am nothing. My people are gone. I wander without purpose, caring not if I live or die. And I will not serve you—nothing you can say can compel me.’
‘Do you believe me a Tyrant? I am not. I am a bonecaster—do you know what that is?’
‘No. A witch.’
‘Yes, that will do, for a start. Tell me, do you know what a Soletaken is? A D’ivers?’
‘No.’
‘What do you know of Elder Gods?’
‘Nothing.’
He heard something like a snarl, and then she said, ‘How can your kind live, so steeped in ignorance? What is history to you, warrior of the Awl’dan? A host of lies to win you glory. Why do you so fear the truth of things? The darker moments of your past—you, your tribe, all of humanity? There were thousands of my people who did not join the Ritual of Tellann—what happened to them? Why, you did. No matter where they hid, you found them. Oh, on rare occasions there was breeding, a fell admixture of blood, but most of the time such meetings ended in slaughter. You saw in our faces the strange and the familiar—which of the two frightened yo
u the most? When you cut us down, when you carved the meat from our bones?’
‘You speak nonsense,’ Torrent said. ‘You tell me you are Imass, as if I should know what that means. I do not. Nor do I care. Peoples die. They vanish from the world. It is as it was and ever will be.’
‘You are a fool. From my ancient blood ran every stream of Soletaken and D’ivers. And my blood, ah, it was but half Imass, perhaps even less. I am old beyond your imagining, warrior. Older than this world. I lived in darkness, I walked in purest light, I cast curses upon shadow. My hands were chipped stone, my eyes spawned the first fires to huddle round, my legs spread to the first mortal child. I am known by so many names even I have forgotten most of them.’
She rose, her squat frame dangling rotted furs, her hair lifting like an aura of madness to surround her withered face, and advanced to stand over him.
A sudden chill gripped Torrent. He could not move. He struggled to breathe.
She spoke. ‘Parts of me sleep, tormented by sickness. Others rail in the fury of summer storms. I am the drinker of birth waters. And blood. And the rain of weeping and the oil of ordeal. I did not lie, mortal, when I told you that the spirits you worship are my children. I am the bringer of a land’s bounty. I am the cruel thief of want, the sower of suffering.
‘So many names . . . Eran’ishal, Mother to the Eres’al—my first and most sentimental of choices.’ She seemed to flinch. ‘Rath Evain to the Forkrul Assail. Stone Bitch to the Jaghut. I have had a face in darkness, a son in shadow, a bastard in light. I have been named the Mother Beneath the Mountain, Ayala Alalle who tends the Gardens of the Moon, for ever awaiting her lover. I am Burn the Sleeping Goddess, in whose dreams life flowers unending, even as those dreams twist into nightmares. I am scattered to the very edge of the Abyss, possessor of more faces than any other Elder.’ She snapped out a withered, bony hand, the nails long and splintered, and slowly curled her fingers. ‘And he thinks to hunt me down!’ Her head tilted back to the sky. ‘Chain down your servants, Hood!’ She fixed him once more with her eyes. ‘Tell me, mortal! Did he catch you?’
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