The Bonehunters

by Steven Erikson

'Yes.'

  'There was another woman, a young girl.'

  'Yes. We wanted her, Shadowthrone and I. As it turns out, I know she lives, and indeed she appears to be precisely where we wanted her to be, with one crucial difference—'

  'It is not you and Shadowthrone who control her.'

  'Guide, not control — we would not have presumed control, Apsalar. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her new master. The Crippled God.' He hesitated, then said, 'Felisin Younger is Sha'ik Reborn.'

  Apsalar nodded. 'Like a sword that kills its maker... there are cycles to justice.'

  'Justice? Abyss below, Apsalar, justice is nowhere to be seen in any of this.'

  'Isn't it?' She faced him again. 'I sent Cutter away, because I feared he would die if he stayed with me. I sent him away and that is what killed him. You sought to use Felisin Younger, and now she finds herself a pawn in another god's hand. Treach wanted a Destriant to lead his followers into war, but Heboric is killed in the middle of nowhere, having achieved nothing. Like a tiger cub getting its skull crushed — all that potential, that possibility, gone. Tell me, Cotillion, what task did you set Cutter in that company?'

  He did not answer.

  'You charged him to protect Felisin Younger, didn't you? And he failed. Is he alive? For his own sake, perhaps it is best that he is not.'

  'You cannot mean that, Apsalar.'

  She closed her eyes. No, I do not mean that. Gods, what am I to do... with this pain? What am I to do?

  Cotillion slowly reached up, his hand — the black leather glove removed — nearing the side of her face. She felt his finger brush her cheek, felt the cold thread that was all that was left of the tear he wiped away. A tear she had nor known was there.

  'You are frozen,' he said in a soft voice.

  She nodded, then shook her head suddenly as everything crumbled inside — and she was in his arms, weeping uncontrollably.

  And the god spoke, 'I'll find him, Apsalar. I swear it. I'll find the truth.'

  Truths, yes. One after another, one boulder settling down, then another. And another. Blotting out the light, darkness closing in, grit and sand sifting down, a solid silence when the last one is in place. Now, dear fool, try drawing a breath. A single breath.

  There were clouds closed fast round the moon. And one by one, gardens died.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cruel misapprehension, you choose the shape

  and cast of this wet clay in your hands, as the wheel

  ever spins

  Tempered in granite, this fired shell hardens

  into the scarred shield of your deeds, and the dark

  decisions within

  Settle hidden in suspension, unseen in banded strata

  awaiting death's weary arrival, the journey's repast

  to close you out

  We blind grievers raise you high, honouring all

  you never were and what rots sealed inside follows you

  to the grave

  I stand now among the mourners, displeased

  by my suspicions as the vessel's dust drifts—

  oh how I despise funerals.

  The Secrets of Clay, Panith Fanal

  His eyes opened in the darkness. Lying motionless, he waited until his mind separated the sounds that had awakened him. Two sources, Barathol decided. One distant, one close at hand. Caution dictated he concentrate on the latter.

  Bedclothes rustling, pulled and tugged hy adjusting hands, a faint scrape of sandy gravel, then a muted murmur. A long exhaled breath, then some more shifting of positions, until the sounds became rhythmic, and two sets of breathing conjoined.

  It was well. Hood knew, Barathol wasn't the one with a chance of easing the haunted look in the Daru's eyes. He then added another silent prayer, that Scillara not damage the man with some future betrayal. If that happened, he suspected Cutter would retreat so far from life there would be no return.

  In any case, such matters were out of his hands, and that, too, was well.

  And so... the other, more distant sound. A susurration, more patient in its rhythm than the now quickening lovemaking on the opposite side of the smouldering firepit. Like wind stroking treetops... but there were no trees. And no wind.

  It is the sea.

  Dawn was approaching, paling the eastern sky. Barathol heard Scillara roll to one side, her gasps low but long in settling down. From Cutter, a drawing up of coverings, and he then turned onto one side and moments later fell into sleep once more.

  Scillara sat up. Flint and iron, a patter of sparks, as she awakened her pipe. She had used the last of her coins to resupply herself with rustleaf the day before, when they passed a modest caravan working its way inland. The meet­ing had been sudden, as the parties virtually collided on a bend in the rocky trail. An exchange of wary looks, and something like relief arriving in the faces of the traders.

  The plague was broken. Tanno Spiritwalkers had so pronounced it, lifting the self-imposed isolation of the island of Otataral.

  But Barathol and his companions were the first living people this troop had encountered since leaving the small, empty village on the coast where their ship had delivered them. The merchants, transporting basic staples from Rutu Jelba, had begun to fear they were entering a ghost land.

  Two days of withdrawal for Scillara had had Barathol regretting ever leaving his smithy. Rustleaf and now lovemaking — the woman is at peace once more, thank Hood.

  Scillara spoke: 'You want I should prepare breakfast, Barathol?'

  He rolled onto his back and sat up, studied her in the faint light.

  She shrugged. 'A woman knows. Are you upset?'

  'Why would I be?' he replied in a rumble. He looked over at the still motionless form of Cutter. 'Is he truly asleep once more?'

  Scillara nodded. 'Most nights he hardly sleeps at all — nightmares, and his fear of them. An added benefit to a roll with him — breaks loose his exhaustion afterwards.'

  'I applaud your altruism,' Barathol said, moving closer to the firepit and prodding at the dim coals with the point of his cook-knife. From the gloom to his right, Chaur appeared, smiling.

  'You should at that,' Scillara said in reply to Barathol's comment.

  He glanced up. 'And is that all there is? For you?'

  She looked away, drew hard on her pipe.

  'Don't hurt him, Scillara.'

  'Fool, don't you see? I'm doing the opposite.'

  'That's what I concluded. But what if he falls in love with you?'

  'He won't. He can't.'

  'Why not?'

  She rose and walked over to the packs. 'Get that fire going, Barathol. Some hot tea should rake away the chill in our bones.'

  Unless that's all you have in them, woman.

  Chaur went to Scillara's side, crouching to stroke her hair as, ignoring him, she drew out wrapped foodstuffs.

  Chaur watched, with avid fascination, every stream of smoke Scillara exhaled.

  Aye, lad, like the legends say, some demons breathe fire.

  ****

  They let Cutter sleep, and he did not awaken until mid-morning — bolting into a sitting position with a confused, then guilty expression on his face. The sun was finally warm, tempered by a pleasantly cool breeze coming in from the east.

  Barathol watched as Cutter's scanning gaze found Scillara, who sat with her back to a boulder, and the Daru flinched slightly at her greeting wink and blown kiss.

  Chaur was circling the camp like an excited dog — the roar of surf was much louder now, carried on the wind, and he could not contain his eagerness to discover the source of that sound.

  Cutter pulled his attention from Scillara and watched Chaur for a time. 'What's with him?'

  'The sea,' Barathol said. 'He's never seen it. He probably doesn't even know what it is. There's still some tea, Cutter, and those packets in front of Scillara are your breakfast.'

  'It's late,' he said, rising. 'You should've woken me.' Then he halted. 'The sea? Beru fend
, we're that close?'

  'Can't you smell it? Hear it?'

  Cutter suddenly smiled — and it was a true smile — the first Barathol had seen on the young man.

  'Did anyone see the moon last night?' Scillara asked. 'It was mottled. Strange, like holes had been poked through it.'

  'Some of those holes,' Barathol observed, 'seem to be getting bigger.'

  She looked over, nodding. 'Good, I thought so, too, but I couldn't be sure. What do you think it means?'

  Barathol shrugged. 'It's said the moon is another realm, like ours, with people on its surface. Sometimes things fall from our sky. Rocks. Balls of fire. The Fall of the Crippled God was said to be like that. Whole mountains plunging down, obliterating most of a continent and filling half the sky with smoke and ash.' He glanced across at Scillara, then over at Cutter. 'I was thinking, maybe, that something hit the moon in the same way.'

  'Like a god being pulled down?'

  'Yes, like that.'

  'So what are those dark blotches?'

  'I don't know. Could be smoke and ash. Could be pieces of the world that broke away.'

  'Getting bigger...'

  'Yes.' Barathol shrugged again. 'Smoke and ash spreads. It stands to reason, then, doesn't it?'

  Cutter was quickly breaking his fast. 'Sorry to make you all wait. We should get going. I want to see what's in that abandoned village.'

  'Anything seaworthy is all we need,' Barathol said.

  'That is what I'm hoping we'll find.' Cutter brushed crumbs from his hands, tossed one last dried fig into his mouth, then rose. 'I'm ready,' he said around a mouthful.

  All right, Scillara, you did well.

  ****

  There were sun-bleached, dog-gnawed bones in the back street of the fisher village. Doors to the residences within sight, the inn and the Malazan assessor's building were all open, drifts of fine sand heaped in the entranceways. Moored on both sides of the stone jetty were half-submerged fisher craft, the ropes holding them fast stretched to unravelling, while in the shallow bay beyond, two slightly larger carracks waited at anchor next to mooring poles.

  Chaur still stood on the spot where he had first come in sight of the sea and its rolling, white-edged waves. His smile was unchanged, but tears streamed unchecked and unabating from his eyes, and it seemed he was trying to sing, without opening his mouth: strange mewling sounds emerged. What had run down from his nose was now caked with wind-blown sand.

  Scillara wandered through the village, looking for what­ever might prove useful on the voyage they now planned. Rope, baskets, casks, dried foodstuffs, nets, gaffs, salt for storing fish — anything. Mostly what she found were the remnants of villagers — all worried by dogs. Two squat storage buildings flanked the avenue that ran inward from the jetty, and these were both locked. With Barathol's help, both buildings were broken into, and in these structures they found more supplies than they could ever use.

  Cutter swam out to examine the carracks, returning after a time to report that both remained sound and neither was particularly more seaworthy than the other. Of matching length and beam, the craft were like twins.

  'Made by the same hands,' Cutter said. 'I think. You could judge that better than me, Barathol, if you're at all interested.'

  'I will take your word for it, Cutter. So, we can choose either one, then.'

  'Yes. Of course, maybe they belong to the traders we met.'

  'No, they're not Jelban. What are their names?'

  'Dhenrabi's Tail is the one on the left. The other's called Sanal's Grief. I wonder who Sanal was?'

  'We'll take Grief,' Barathol said, 'and before you ask, don't.'

  Scillara laughed.

  Cutter waded alongside one of the swamped sculls beside the jetty. 'We should bail one of these, to move our supplies out to her.'

  Barathol rose. 'I'll start bringing those supplies down from the warehouse.'

  Scillara watched the huge man make his way up the avenue, then turned her attention to the Daru, who had found a half-gourd bailer and was scooping water from one of the sculls. 'Want me to help?' she asked.

  'It's all right. Finally, I've got something to do.'

  'Day and night now.'

  The glance he threw her was shy. 'I've never tasted milk before.'

  Laughing, she repacked her pipe. 'Yes you have. You just don't remember it.'

  'Ah. I suppose you're right.'

  'Anyway, you're a lot gentler than that little sweet-faced bloodfly was.'

  'You've not given her a name?'

  'No. Leave that to her new mothers to fight over.'

  'Not even in your own mind? I mean, apart from blood-fly and leech and horse tick.'

  'Cutter,' she said, 'you don't understand. I give her a real name I'll end up having to turn round and head back. I'll have to take her, then.'

  'Oh. I am sorry, Scillara. You're right. There's not much I understand about anything.'

  'You need to trust yourself more.'

  'No.' He paused, eyes on the sea to the east. 'There's nothing I've done to make that... possible. Look at what happened when Felisin Younger trusted me — to protect her. Even Heboric — he said I was showing leadership, he said that was good. So, he too trusted me.'

  'You damned idiot. We were ambushed by T'lan Imass. What do you think you could have done?'

  'I don't know, and that's my point.'

  'Heboric was the Destriant of Treach. They killed him as if he was nothing more than a lame dog. They lopped limbs off Greyfrog like they were getting ready to cook a feast. Cutter, people like you and me, we can't stop creatures like that. They cut us down then step over us and that's that as far as they're concerned. Yes, it's a hard thing to take, for anyone. The fact that we're insignificant, irrelevant. Nothing is expected of us, so better we just hunch down and stay out of sight, stay beneath the notice of things like T'lan Imass, things like gods and goddesses. You and me, Cutter, and Barathol there. And Chaur. We're the ones who, if we're lucky, stay alive long enough to clean up the mess, put things back together. To reassert the normal world. That's what we do, when we can — look at you, you've just resurrected a dead boat — you gave it its function again — look at it. Cutter, it finally looks the way it should, and that's satisfying, isn't it?'

  'For Hood's sake,' Cutter said, shaking his head, 'Scillara, we're not just worker termites clearing a tunnel after a god's careless footfall. That's not enough.'

  'I'm not suggesting it's enough,' she said. 'I'm telling you it's what we have to start with, when we're rebuilding — rebuilding villages and rebuilding our lives.'

  Barathol had been trudging back and forth during this conversation, and now Chaur had come down, timidly, closer to the water. The mute had unpacked the supplies from the horses, including Heboric's wrapped corpse, and the beasts — unsaddled, their bits removed — now wandered along the grassy fringe beyond the tideline, tails swishing.

  Cutter began loading the scull.

  He paused at one point and grinned wryly. 'Lighting a pipe's a good way of getting out of work, isn't it?'

  'You said you didn't need any help.'

  'With the bailing, yes.'

  'What you don't understand, Cutter, is the spiritual necessity for reward, not to mention the clarity that comes to one's mind during such repasts. And in not understanding, you instead feel resentment, which sours the blood in your heart and makes you bitter. It's that bitterness that kills people, you know, it eats them up inside.'

  He studied her. 'Meaning, I'm actually jealous?'

  'Of course you are, but because I can empathize with you I am comfortable withholding judgement. Tell me, can you say the same for yourself?'

  Barathol arrived with a pair of casks under his arms. 'Get off your ass, woman. We've got a good wind and the sooner we're on our way the better.'

  She threw him a salute as she rose. 'There you go, Cutter, a man who takes charge. Watch him, listen, and learn.'

  The Daru stared at her, bemused.
r />   She read his face: But you just said...

  So I did, my young lover. We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn't something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you'll find they're one and all tyrants or would'be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.

  ****

  Chaur held on to the steering oar whilst Cutter and Barathol worked the sails. The day was bright, the wind fresh and the carrack rode the swells as if its very wood was alive. Every now and then the bow pitched down, raising spray, and Chaur would laugh, the sound child-like, a thing of pure joy.

  Scillara settled down amidships, the sun on her face warm, not hot, and stretched out.

  We sail a carrack named Grief, with a corpse on board. That Cutter means to deliver to its final place of rest. Heboric, did you know such loyalty could exist, there in your shadow?

  Barathol moved past her at one point, and, as Chaur laughed once more, she saw an answering smile on his battered, scarified face.

  Oh yes, it is indeed blessed music. So unexpected, and in its innocence, so needed...

  ****

  The return of certain mortal traits, Onrack the Broken realized, reminded one that life was far from perfect. Not that he had held many illusions in that regard. In truth, he held no illusions at all. About anything. Even so, some time passed — in something like a state of fugue — before Onrack recog­nized that what he was feeling was... impatience.

  The enemy would come again. These caverns would echo with screams, with the clangour of weapons, with voices raised in rage. And Onrack would stand at Trull Sengar's side, and with him witness, in helpless fury, the death of still more of Minala's children.

  Of course, children was a term that no longer fit. Had they been Imass, they would have survived the ordeal of the passage into adulthood by now. They would be taking mates, leading hunting parties, and joining their voices to the night songs of the clan, when the darkness returned to remind them all that death waited, there at the end of life's path.

  Lying with lovers also belonged to night, and that made sense, for it was in the midst of true darkness that the first fire of life was born, flickering awake to drive back the unchanging absence of light. To lie with a lover was to celebrate the creation of fire. From this in the flesh to the world beyond.