The Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  This, more than at any other time beforehand, gave brutal truth to the conviction that Adjunct Tavore was cold iron, thrust into the soul of a raging forge...

  'None to Witness', (The Lost History of the Bonehunters), Duiker of Darujhistan

  'Put that down,' Samar Dev said wearily from where she sat near the window.

  'Thought you were asleep,' Karsa Orlong said. He returned the object to the tabletop. 'What is it?'

  'Two functions. The upper beaker contains filters for the water, removing all impurities. The water gathering in the lower beaker is flanked by strips of copper, which livens the water itself through a complicated and mysterious process. A particular ethereal gas is released, thus altering the air pressure above the water, which in turn—'

  'But what do you use it for?'

  Samar's eyes narrowed. 'Nothing in particular.'

  He moved away from the table, approached the work benches and shelves. She watched him examining the various mechanisms she had invented, and the long-term experiments, many of which showed no evident alteration of conditions. He poked. Sniffed, and even sought to taste one dish filled with gelatinous fluid. She thought to stop him, then decided to remain quiet. The warrior's wounds had healed with appalling swiftness, with no signs of in­fection. The thick liquid he was licking from his finger wasn't particularly healthy to ingest, but not fatal. Usually.

  He made a face. 'This is terrible.'

  '1 am not surprised.'

  'What do you use it for?'

  'What do you think?'

  'Rub it into saddles. Leather.'

  'Saddles? Indirectly, I suppose. It is an ointment, for the suppurating wounds that sometimes arise on the lining of the anus—'

  He grunted loudly, then said, 'No wonder it tasted awful,' and resumed his examination of the room's contents.

  She regarded him thoughtfully. Then said, 'The Falah'd sent soldiers into the keep. They found signs of past slaughter — as you said, not one Malazan left alive. They also found a demon. Or, rather, the corpse of a demon, freshly killed. They have asked me to examine it, for I possess a little knowledge of anatomy and other, related subjects.'

  He made no reply, peering into the wrong end of a spyglass.

  'If you come to the window, and look through the other end, Karsa, you will see things far away drawn closer.'

  He scowled at her, and set the instrument down. 'If something is far away, I simply ride closer.'

  'And if it is at the top of a cliff? Or a distant enemy encampment and you want to determine the picket lines?'

  He retrieved the spyglass and walked over. She moved her chair to one side to give him room. 'There is a falcon's nest on the ledge of that tower, the copper-sheathed one.'

  He held up the glass. Searched until he found the nest. 'That is no falcon.'

  'You are right. It's a bokh'aral that found the abandoned nest to its liking. It carries up armfuls of rotting fruit and it spends the morning dropping them on people in the streets below.'

  'It appears to be snarling...'

  'That would be laughter. It is forever driven to bouts of hilarity.'

  'Ah — no, that wasn't fruit. It was a brick.'

  'Oh, unfortunate. Someone will be sent to kill it, now. After all, only people are allowed to throw bricks at peo­ple.'

  He lowered the spyglass and studied her. 'That is mad­ness. What manner of laws do you possess, to permit such a thing?'

  'Which thing? Stoning people or killing bokh'arala?'

  'You are strange, Samar Dev. But then, you are a witch, and a maker of useless objects—'

  'Is that spyglass useless?'

  'No, I now understand its value. Yet it was lying on a shelf...'

  She leaned back. 'I have invented countless things that would prove of great value to many people. And that presents me with a dilemma. I must ask myself, with each invention, what possible abuses await such an object? More often than not, I conclude that those abuses outweigh the value of the invention. I call this Dev's First Law of Invention.'

  'You are obsessed with laws.'

  'Perhaps. In any case, the law is simple, as all true laws must be—'

  'You have a law for that, too?'

  'Founding principle, rather than law. In any case, ethics are the first consideration of an inventor following a particular invention.'

  'You call that simple?'

  'The statement is, the consideration is not.'

  'Now that sounds more like a true law.'

  She closed her mouth after a moment, then rose and walked over to the scriber's desk, sat and collected a stylus and a wax tablet. 'I distrust philosophy,' she said as she wrote. 'Even so, I will not turn away from the subject... when it slaps me in the face. Nor am I particularly eloquent as a writer. I am better suited to manipulating objects than words. You, on the other hand, seem to possess an un­expected talent for... uh... cogent brevity.'

  'You talk too much.'

  'No doubt.' She finished recording her own unexpect­edly profound words — profound only in that Karsa Orlong had recognized a far vaster application than she had intended. She paused, wanting to dismiss his genius as blind chance, or even the preening false wisdom of savage nobility. But something whispered to her that Karsa Orlong had been underestimated before, and she vowed not to leap into the same pit. Setting the stylus down, she rose to her feet. 'I am off to examine the demon you killed. Will you accompany me?'

  'No, I had a close enough examination the first time.'

  She collected the leather satchel containing her surgical instruments. 'Stay inside, please, and try not to break anything.'

  'How can you call yourself an inventor if you dislike breaking things?'

  At the door, she paused and glanced back at him. His head was brushing the ceiling in this, the highest chamber in her tower. There was something… there in his eyes. 'Try not to break any of my things.'

  'Very well. But I am hungry. Bring more food.'

  ****

  The reptilian corpse was lying on the floor of one of the torture chambers situated in the palace crypts. A retired Avower had been given the task of standing guard. Samar Dev found him asleep in one corner of the room. Leaving him to his snores, she stationed around the huge demon's body the four lit lanterns she had brought down from above, then settled onto her knees and untied the flap of her satchel, withdrawing a variety of polished surgical instruments. And, finally, her preparations complete, she swung her attention to the corpse.

  Teeth, jaws, forward-facing eyes, all the makings of a superior carnivore, likely an ambush hunter. Yet, this was no simple river lizard. Behind the orbital ridges the skull swept out broad and long, with massive occipital bulges, the sheer mass of the cranial region implying intelligence. Unless, of course, the bone was absurdly thick.

  She cut away the torn and bruised skin to reveal broken fragments of that skull. Not so thick, then. Indentations made it obvious that Karsa Orlong had used his fists. In which, it was clear, there was astonishing strength, and an equally astonishing will. The brain beneath, marred with broken vessels and blood leakage and pulped in places by the skull pieces, was indeed large, although arranged in a markedly different manner from a human's. There were more lobes, for one thing. Six more, in all, positioned beneath heavy ridged projections out to the sides, includ­ing two extra vessel-packed masses connected by tissue to the eyes. Suggesting these demons saw a different world, a more complete one, perhaps.

  Samar extracted one mangled eye and was surprised to find two lenses, one concave, the other convex. She set those aside for later examination.

  Cutting through the tough, scaled hide, she opened the neck regions, confirming the oversized veins and arteries necessary to feed an active brain, then continued on to reveal the chest region. Many of the ribs were already broken. She counted four lungs and two proto-lungs attached beneath them, these latter ones saturated with blood.

  She cut through the lining of the first of three stomachs,
then moved quickly back as the acids poured out. The blade of her knife sizzled and she watched as pitting etched into the iron surface. More hissing sounds, from the stone floor. Her eyes began watering.

  Movement from the stomach, and Samar rose and took a step back. Worms were crawling out. A score, wriggling then dropping to the muddy stone. The colour of blued iron, segmented, each as long as an index finger. She glanced down at the crumbling knife in her hand and dropped the instru­ment, then collected wooden tongs from her satchel, moved to the edge of the acid pool, reached down and retrieved one of the worms.

  Not a worm. Hundreds of legs, strangely finned, and, even more surprising, the creatures were mechanisms. Not living at all, the metal of their bodies somehow impervious to the acids. The thing twisted about in the grip of the tongs, then stopped moving. She shook it, but it had gone immobile, like a crooked nail. An infestation? She did not think so. No, there were many creatures that worked in concert. The pond of stomach acid had been home to these mechanisms, and they in turn worked in some fashion to the demon's benefit.

  A hacking cough startled her, and she turned to see the Avower stumble to his feet. Hunched, twisted with arthritis, he shambled over. 'Samar Dev, the witch! What's that smell? Not you, I hope. You and me, we're the same sort, aren't we just?'

  'We are?'

  'Oh yes, Samar Dev.' He scratched at his crotch. 'We strip the layers of humanity, down to the very bones, but where does humanity end and animal begin? When does pain defeat reason? Where hides the soul and to where does it flee when all hope in the flesh is lost? Questions to ponder, for such as you and me. Oh how I have longed to meet you, to share knowledge—'

  'You're a torturer.'

  'Someone has to be,' he said, offended. 'In a culture that admits the need for torture, there must perforce be a torturer. A culture, Samar Dev, that values the acquisition of truths more than it does any single human life. Do you see? Oh,' he added, edging closer to frown down at the demon's corpse, 'the justifications are always the same. To save many more lives, this one must be surrendered. Sacrificed. Even the words used disguise the brutality. Why are torture chambers in the crypts? To mask the screams? True enough, but there's more. This,' he said, waving one gnarled hand, 'is the nether realm of humanity, the rotted heart of unpleasantness.'

  'I am seeking answers from something already dead. It is not the same—'

  'Details. We are questioners, you and I. We slice back the armour to uncover the hidden truth. Besides, I'm retired. They want me to train another, you know, now that the Malazan laws have been struck down and torture's popular once more. But, the fools they send me! Ah, what is the point? Now, Falah'd Krithasanan, now he was something — you were likely just a child, then, or younger even. My, how he liked torturing people. Not for truths — he well under­stood that facile rubbish for what it was — facile rubbish. No, the greater questions interested him. How far along can a soul be dragged, trapped still within its broken body, how far? How far until it can no longer crawl back? This was my challenge, and oh how he appreciated my artistry!' Samar Dev looked down to see that the rest of the mechanisms had all ceased to function. She placed the one she had retrieved in a small leather pouch, then repacked her kit, making sure to include the eye lenses. She'd get them to burn the rest of the body — well away from the city, and upwind.

  'Will you not dine with me?'

  'Alas, I cannot. I have work to do.'

  'If only they'd bring your guest down here. Toblakai. Oh, he would be fun, wouldn't he?'

  She paused. 'I doubt I could talk him into it, Avower.'

  'The Falah'd has been considering it, you know.'

  'No, I didn't know. I think it would be a mistake.'

  'Well, those things are not for us to question, are they?'

  'Something tells me Toblakai would be delighted to meet you, Avower. Although it would be a short acquaintance.'

  'Not if I have my way, Samar Dev!'

  'Around Karsa Orlong, I suspect, only Karsa Orlong has his way.'

  ****

  She returned to find the Teblor warrior poring over her collection of maps, which he'd laid out on the floor in the hallway. He had brought in a dozen votive candles, now lit and set out around him. He held one close as he perused the precious parchments. Without looking up, he said, 'This one here, witch. The lands and coast west and north... I was led to believe the Jhag Odhan was unbroken, that the plains ran all the way to the far-lands of Nemil and the Trell, yet here, this shows something different.'

  'If you burn holes in my maps,' Samar Dev said, 'I will curse you and your bloodline for all eternity.'

  'The Odhan sweeps westward, it seems, but only in the south. There are places of ice marked here. This continent looks too vast. There has been a mistake.'

  'Possibly,' she conceded. 'Since that is the one direction I have not travelled, I can make no claim as to the map's accuracy. Mind you, that one was etched by Othun Dela Farat, a century ago. He was reputed to be reliable.'

  'What of this region of lakes?' he asked, pointing to the northerly bulge along the coast, west of Yath Alban.

  She set her equipment down, then, sighing, she crouched at his side. 'Difficult to cross. The bedrock is exposed there, badly folded, pocked with lakes and only a few, mostly impassable rivers. The forest is spruce, fir and pine, with low-lying.thickets in the basins.'

  'How do you know all that if you have never been there?'

  She pointed. 'I am reading Dela's notes, there, along the border. He also says he found signs suggesting there were people living there, but no contact was ever made. Beyond lies the island kingdom of Sepik, now a remote subject of the Malazan Empire, although I would be surprised if the Malazans ever visited. The king was clever enough to send delegates proposing conditions of surrender, and the Emperor simply accepted.'

  'The mapmaker hasn't written that much.'

  'No, some of that information was mine. I have heard, now and then, certain odd stories about Sepik. There are, it seems, two distinct populations, one the subject of the other.' She shrugged at his blank look. 'Such things interest me.' Then frowned, as it became obvious that the distant expression on the giant's tattooed visage was born of some­thing other than indifference. 'Is something wrong?'

  Karsa Orlong bared his teeth. 'Tell me more of this Sepik.'

  'I am afraid I have exhausted my knowledge.'

  Scowling at her answer, he hunched down over the map once more. 'I shall need supplies. Tell me, is the weather the same as here?'

  'You are going to Sepik?'

  'Yes. Tell the Falah'd that I demand equipment, two extra horses, and five hundred crescents in silver. Dried foods, more waterskins. Three javelins and a hunting bow with thirty arrows, ten of them bird-pointed. Six extra bowstrings and a supply of fletching, a brick of wax—'

  'Wait! Wait, Karsa Orlong. Why would the Falah'd simply gift you all these things?'

  'Tell him, if he does not, I will stay in this city.'

  'Ah, I see.' She considered for a time, then asked, 'Why are you going to Sepik?'

  He began rolling up the map. 'I want this one—'

  'Sorry, no. It is worth a fortune—'

  'I will return it.'

  'No, Karsa Orlong.' She straightened. 'If you are pre­pared to wait, I will copy it — on hide, which is more resilient—'

  'How long will that take?'

  'I don't know. A few days...'

  'Very well, but I am getting restless, witch.' He handed her the rolled-up map and walked into the other chamber. 'And hungry.'

  She stooped once more to gather in the other maps. The candles she left alone. Each one was aspected to a local, minor god, and the flames had, one and all, drawn the attention of the host of spirits. This hallway was crowded with presences, making the air taut, bridling, since many of them counted others as enemies. Yet, she suspected, it had been more than just the flickering flames that had earned the regard of the spirits. Something about Toblakai hims
elf...

  There were mysteries, she believed, swirling in Karsa Orlong's history. And now, the spirits drawn close, close and... frightened...

  'Ah,' she whispered, 'I see no choice in the matter. None at all...' She drew out a belt-knife, spat on the blade, then began waving the iron through the flame of each candle.

  The spirits howled in her mind, outraged at this unexpected, brutal imprisonment. She nodded. 'Yes, we mortals are cruel…'

  ****

  'Three leagues,' Quick Ben said under his breath.

  Kalam scratched at the stubble on his chin. Some old wounds — that enkar'al at the edge of the Whirlwind's wall had torn him up pretty bad — were aching after the long forced march back towards the Fourteenth Army. After what they had seen in the warren, no-one was in the mood to complain, however. Even Stormy had ceased his endless griping. The squad was hunkered down behind the assassin and the High Mage, motionless and virtually invisible in the darkness.

  'So,' Kalam mused, 'do we wait for them here, or do we keep walking?'

  'We wait,' Quick Ben replied. 'I need the rest. In any case, we all more or less guessed right, and the trail isn't hard to follow. Leoman's reached Y'Ghatan and that's where he'll make his stand.'

  'And us with no siege equipment to speak of.'

  The wizard nodded. 'This could be a long one.'

  'Well, we're used to that, aren't we?'

  'I keep forgetting, you weren't at Coral.'

  Kalam settled down with his back against the ridge's slope and pulled free a flask. He drank then handed it to the High Mage. 'As bad as the last day at Pale?'

  Quick Ben sipped, then made a face. 'This is water.'

  'Of course it is.'

  'Pale... we weren't fighting anyone. Just collapsing earth and raining rocks.'