The Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

  And so Koryk had been immersed in the old rituals — those that could be remembered — and they had been, he had known even then, godless and empty. Serving only the living, the half-blood kin around each of them.

  There was no shame in that.

  There had been a time, much later, when Koryk had come upon his own language, protecting the miserable lives of the women from whom he had first learned the art of empty worship. A mindful dialect, bound to no cause but that of the living, of familiar, ageing faces, of repaying the gifts the now unwanted once-whores had given him in his youth. And then watching them one by one die. Worn out, so scarred by so many brutal hands, the indifferent usage by the men and women of the city — who proclaimed the ecstasy of god-worship when it suited them, then defiled human flesh with the cold need of carnivores straddling a kill.

  Deep in the sleep of Carelbarra, the God Bringer, Koryk beheld no visitors. For him, there was naught but oblivion. As for the fetishes, well, they were for something else. Entirely something else.

  ****

  'Go on, mortal, pull it.'

  Crump glowered, first at Stump Flit, the Salamander God, Highest of High Marshals, then at the vast, gloomy swamp of Mott. What was he doing here? He didn't want to be here. What if his brothers found him? 'No.'

  'Go on, I know you want to. Take my tail, mortal, and watch me thrash about, a trapped god in your hands, it's what you all do anyway. All of you.''

  'No. Go away. I don't want to talk to you. Go away.'

  'Oh, poor Jamber Bole, all so alone, now. Unless your brothers find you, and then you'll want me on your side, yes you will. If they find you, oh my, oh my.'

  'They won't. They ain't looking, neither.'

  'Yes they are, my foolish young friend—'

  'I ain't your friend. Go away.'

  'They're after you, Jamber Bole. Because of what you did—'

  'I didn't do nothing!'

  'Grab my tail. Go on. Here, just reach out...'

  Jamber Bole, now known as Crump, sighed, reached out and closed his hand on the Salamander God's tail.

  It bolted, and he was left holding the end of the tail in his hand.

  Stump Flit raced away, laughing and laughing.

  Good thing too, Crump reflected. It was the only joke it had.

  ****

  Corabb stood in the desert, and through the heat-haze someone was coming. A child. Sha'ik reborn, the seer had returned, to lead still more warriors to their deaths. He could not see her face yet – there was something wrong with his eyes. Burned, maybe. Scoured by blowing sand, he didn't know, but to see was to feel pain. To see her was.. terrible.

  No, Sha'ik, please. This must end, it must all end. We have had our fill of holy wars — how much blood can this sand absorb? When will your thirst end?

  She came closer. And the closer she drew to where he was standing, the more his eyes failed him, and when he heard her halt before him, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas was blind.

  Yet not deaf, as she whispered, 'Help me.'

  ****

  'Open your eyes, friend.'

  But he didn't want to. Everybody demanded decisions. From him, all the time, and he didn't want to make any more. Never again. The way it was now was perfect. This slow sinking away, the whisperings that meant nothing, that weren't even words. He desired nothing more, nothing else.

  'Wake up, Fiddler. One last time, so we can talk. We need to talk, friend.'

  All right. He opened his eyes, blinked to clear the mists – but they didn't clear – in fact, the face looking down at him seemed to be made of those mists. 'Hedge. What do you want?'

  The sapper grinned. 'I bet you think you're dead, don't you? That you're back with all your old buddies. A Bridgeburner, where the Bridgeburners never die. The deathless army — oh, we cheated Hood, didn't we just. Hah! That's what you're thinking, yeah? Okay, then, so where's Trotts? Where are all the others?'

  'You tell me.'

  'I will. You ain't dead. Not yet, maybe not for a while either. And that's my point. That's why I'm here. You need a kicking awake, Fid, else Hood'll find you and you won't see none of us ever again. The world's been burned through, where you are right now. Burned through, realm after realm, warren after warren. It ain't a place anybody can claim. Not for a long time. Dead, burned down straight to the Abyss.'

  'You're a ghost, Hedge. What do you want with me? From me?'

  'You got to keep going, Fid. You got to take us with you right to the end—'

  'What end?'

  'The end and that's all I can say—'

  'Why?'

  "Cause it ain't happened yet, you idiot! How am I supposed to know? It's the future and I can't see no future. Gods, you're so thick, Fid. You always were.'

  'Me? I didn't blow myself up, Hedge.'

  'So? You're lying on a bunch of urns and bleeding out – that's better? Messing up all that sweet honey with your blood—'

  'What honey? What are you talking about?'

  'You better get going, you're running outa time.'

  'Where are we?'

  'No place, and that's the problem. Maybe Hood'll find you, maybe no-one will. The ghosts of Y'Ghatan — they all burned. Into nothing. Destroyed, all those locked memories, thousands and thousands. Thousands of years... gone, now. You've no idea the loss...'

  'Be quiet. You're sounding like a ghost.'

  'Time to wake up, Fid. Wake up, now. Go on...'

  ****

  Wildfires had torn across the grasslands, and Bottle found himself lying on blackened stubble. Nearby lay a charred carcass. Some kind of four-legged grass-eater — and around it had gathered a half-dozen human-like figures, fine-furred and naked. They held sharp-edged stones and were cutting into the burnt flesh.

  Two stood as sentinels, scanning the horizons. One of them was... her.

  My female. Heavy with child, so heavy now. She saw him and came over. He could not look away from her eyes, from that regal serenity in her gaze.

  There had been wild apes on Malaz Island once. He remembered, in Jakatakan, when he was maybe seven years bid, seeing a cage in the market, the last island ape left, captured in the hardwood forests on the north coast. It had wandered down into a village, a young male seeking a mate – but there were no mates left. Half-starved and terrified, it had been cornered in a stable, clubbed unconscious, and now it crouched in a filthy bamboo cage at the dockside market in Jakatakan.

  The seven-year-old boy had stood before it, his eyes level with that black-furred, heavy-browed beast's own eyes, and there had been a moment, a single moment, when their gazes locked. A single moment that broke Bottle's heart. He'd seen misery, he'd seen awareness — the glint that knew itself, yet did not comprehend what it had done wrong, what had earned it the loss of its freedom. It could not have known, of course, that it was now alone in the world. The last of its kind. And that somehow, in some exclusively human way, that was its crime.

  Just as the child could not have known that the ape, too, was aged seven.

  Yet both saw, both knew in their souls – those darkly flickering shapings, not yet solidly formed — that, for this one time, they were each looking upon a brother.

  Breaking his heart.

  Breaking the ape's heart, too — but maybe, he'd thought since, maybe he just needed to believe that, a kind of flagellation in recompense. For being the one outside the cage, for knowing that there was blood on the hands of himself and his kind.

  Bottle's soul, broken away... and so freed, gifted or cursed with the ability to travel, to seek those duller life-sparks and to find that, in truth, they were not dull at all, that the failure in fully seeing belonged to himself.

  Compassion existed when and only when one could step outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the cage.

  Years later, Bottle had tracked down the fate of that last island ape. Purchased by a scholar who lived in a solitary tower on the wild, unsettled coast of Geni, where there dwelt, in the forests inland, ban
ds of apes little different from the one he had seen; and he liked to believe, now, that that scholar's heart had known compassion; and that those foreign apes had not rejected this strange, shy cousin. His hope: that there had been a reprieve, for that one, solitary life.

  His fear was that the creature's wired skeleton stood in one of the tower's dingy rooms, a trophy of uniqueness.

  Amidst the smell of ash and charred flesh, the female crouched down before him, reached out to brush hard finger pads across his forehead.

  Then that hand made a fist, lifting high, then flashing down—

  ****

  He flinched, eyes snapping open and seeing naught but darkness. Hard rims and shards digging into his back — the chamber, the honey, oh gods my head aches... Groaning, Bottle rolled over, the shard fragments cutting and crunch­ing beneath him. He was in the room beyond the one containing the urns, although at least one had followed him to shatter on the cold stone floor. He groaned again. Smeared in sticky honey, aches all over him... but the burns, the pain — gone. He drew a deep breath, then coughed. The air was foul. He needed to get everyone going — he needed—

  'Bottle? That you?'

  Cuttle, lying nearby. 'Aye,' said Bottle. 'That honey—'

  'Kicked hard, didn't it just. I dreamed... a tiger, it had died — cut to pieces, in fact, by these giant undead lizards that ran on two feet. Died, yet ascended, only it was the death part it was telling me about. The dying part – I don't understand. Treach had to die, I think, to arrive. The dying part was important — I'm sure of it, only... gods below, listen to me. This air's rotten — we got to get moving.'

  Yes. But he'd lost the rat, he remembered that, he'd lost her. Filled with despair, Bottle sought out the creature—

  —and found her. Awakened by his touch, resisting not at all as he captured her soul once more, and, seeing through her eyes, he led the rat back into the room.

  'Wake the others, Cuttle. It's time.'

  ****

  Shouting, getting louder, and Gesler awoke soaked in sweat. That, he decided, was a dream he would never, ever revisit. Given the choice. Fire, of course, so much fire. Shadowy figures dancing on all sides, dancing around him, in fact. Night, snapped at by flames, the drumming of feet, voices chanting in some barbaric, unknown language, and he could feel his soul responding, flaring, burgeoning as if summoned by some ritual.

  At which point Gesler realized. They were dancing round a hearth. And he was looking out at them — from the very flame itself. No, he was the flame.

  Oh Truth, you went and killed yourself. Damned fool.

  Soldiers were awakening on all sides of the chamber – shouts and moans and a chorus of clunking urns.

  This journey was not yet done. They would go on, and on, deeper and deeper, until the passage dead-ended, until the air ran out, until a mass of rubble shook loose and crushed them all.

  Any way at all, please, except fire.

  ****

  How long had they been down here? Bottle had no idea. Memories of open sky, of sunlight and the wind, were invitations to madness, so fierce was the torture of recalling all those things one took for granted. Now, the world was reduced to sharp fragments of brick, dust, cobwebs and dark­ness. Passages that twisted, climbed, dropped away. His hands were a battered, bloody mess from clawing through packed rubble.

  And now, on a sharp down-slope, he had reached a place too small to get through. Feeling with his half-numbed hands, he tracked the edges. Some kind of cut cornerstone had sagged down at an angle from the ceiling. Its lowermost corner — barely two hand's-widths above the rutted, sandy floor — neatly bisected the passage.

  Bottle settled his forehead against the gritty floor. Air still flowed past, a faint stirring now, nothing more than that. And water had run down this track, heading somewhere.

  'What's wrong?' Cuttle asked behind him.

  'We're blocked.'

  Silence for a moment, then, 'Your rat gone ahead? Past the block?'

  'Yes. It opens out again — there's an intersection of some kind ahead, a hole coming down from above, with air pulling down from it and straight into a pit in the floor. But, Cuttle — there's a big cut stone, no way to squeeze past it. I'm sorry. We have to go back—'

  'To Hood we do, move aside if you can, I want to feel this for myself.'

  It was not as easy as it sounded, and it was some time before the two men managed to swap positions. Bottle listened to the sapper muttering under his breath, then cursing.

  'I told you—'

  'Be quiet, I'm thinking. We could try and break it loose, only the whole ceiling might come down with it. No, but maybe we can dig under, into the floor here. Give me your knife.'

  'I ain't got a knife any more. Lost it down a hole.'

  'Then call back for one.'

  'Cuttle—'

  'You ain't giving up on us, Bottle. You can't. You either take us through or we're all dead.'

  'Damn you,' Bottle hissed. 'Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe there's no way through? Why should there be? Rats are small — Hood, rats can live down here. Why should there be a tunnel big enough for us, some convenient route all the way out from under this damned city? To be honest, I'm amazed we've gotten this far. Look, we could go back, right to the temple — and dig our way out—'

  'You're the one who doesn't understand, soldier. There's a mountain sitting over the hole we dropped into, a mountain that used to be the city's biggest temple. Dig out? Forget it. There's no going back, Bottle. Only forward; now get me a knife, damn you.'

  ****

  Smiles drew out one of her throwing-knives and passed it up to the child ahead of her. Something told her that this was it — as far as they would go. Except maybe for the children. The call had come to send the urchins ahead. At the very least, then, they could go on, find a way out. All this effort — somebody had better live through it.

  Not that they'd get very far, not without Bottle. That spineless bastard — imagine, depending on him. The man who could see eye to eye with rats, lizards, spiders, fungi. Matching wits, and it was a tough battle, wasn't it just.

  Still, he wasn't a bad sort — he'd taken half the load that day on the march, after that bitch of a captain revealed just how psychotic she really was. That had been generous of him. Strangely generous. But men were like that, on occasion. She never used to believe that, but now she had no choice. They could surprise you.

  The child behind Smiles was climbing over her, all elbows and knees and running, drippy, smearing nose. It smelled, too. Smelled bad. Awful things, children. Needy, self-centred tyrants, the boys all teeth and fists, the girls all claws and spit. Gathering into snivelling packs and sniffing out vulnerabilities — and woe to the child not cunning enough to hide their own — the others would close in like the grubby sharks they were. Great pastime, savaging someone.

  If these runts are the only ones here who survive, I will haunt them. Every one of them, for the rest of their days. 'Look,' she snarled after an elbow in the nose, 'just get your smelly slimy hide out of my face! Go on, you little ape!'

  A voice from behind her: 'Easy there. You was a child once, you know—'

  'You don't know nothing about me, so shut it!'

  'What, you was hatched? Hah! I believe it! Along with all the other snakes!'

  'Yeah, well, whoever you are, don't even think of climb­ing past me.'

  'And get that close? Not a chance.'

  She grunted. 'Glad we're understood, then.'

  If there was no way through — they'd all lose their minds. No doubt of that at all. Well, at least she had a couple knives left — anybody fool enough to come for her and they'd pay.

  ****

  The children were squirming through — even as Cuttle dug into the floor with the knife — and then huddling on the other side. Weeping, clinging to each other, and Bottle's heart cried out for them. They would have to find courage, but for the moment, there seemed to be no hope of that.

  Cuttle'
s grunts and gasps, then his curse as he broke the knife's point — not very promising sounds. Ahead, the rat circled the edge of the pit, whiskers twitching at the flow of warm air coming from the shaft. She could climb round to the other side, and Bottle was willing the creature to do so — yet it seemed his control was weakening, for the rat was resisting, her head tilted over the edge of the pit, claws gripping the pocked side, the air flowing up over her...

  Bottle frowned. From the shaft above, the air had been coming down. And from the pit, flowing up. Conjoining in the tunnel, then drifting towards the children.

  But the rat... that air from below. Warm, not cool. Warm, smelling of sunlight.

  'Cuttle!'

  The sapper halted. 'What?'

  'We've got to get past this! That pit — its edges, they've been cut. That shaft, Cuttle, it's been mined, cut through – someone's dug into the side of the tel — there's no other possibility!'

  The children's cries had ceased with Bottle's words. He went on, 'That explains this, don't you see? We ain't the first ones to use this tunnel — people have been mining the ruins, looking for loot—'

  He could hear Cuttle moving about.

  'What are you doing?'

  'I'm gonna kick this block out of the way—'

  'No, wait! You said—'

  'I can't dig through the damned floor! I'm gonna kick this bastard outa the way!'

  'Cuttle, wait!'

  A bellow, then a heavy thump, dust and gravel stream­ing from above. A second thump, then thunder shook the floor, and the ceiling was raining down. Screams of terror through the dust-clouds. Ducking, covering his head as stones and sherds descended on him, Bottle squeezed his eyes shut — the dust, so bright –

  Bright.

  But he couldn't breathe — he could barely move beneath the weight of rubble atop him.

  Muted yells from behind, but the terrible hiss of rubble had ceased.

  Bottle lifted his head, gasping, coughing.

  To see a white shaft of sunlight, dust-filled, cutting its way down. Bathing Cuttle's splayed legs, the huge found­ation stone between them.