Memories of Ice

by Steven Erikson

  'Very well. You don't want me to kill this caravan guard, then?'

  Gruntle stepped away in alarm, half drawing his cutlasses. 'You'll regret the attempt,' he growled.

  'Be calmed, Captain.' Bauchelain smiled. 'My partner has simple notions—'

  'Simple as an adder's, you mean.'

  'Perhaps. None the less, I assure you, you are perfectly safe.'

  Scowling, Gruntle backed away down the trail. 'Master Keruli,' he whispered, 'if you're watching all this—and I think you are—I trust my bonus will be appropriately generous. And, if my advice is worth anything, I suggest we stride clear and wide of these two.'

  Moments before he moved beyond sight of the crater, he saw Bauchelain and Korbal Broach turn their backs on him—and Moon's Spawn. They stared down into the hole for a brief span, then began the descent, disappearing from view.

  Sighing, Gruntle swung about and made his way back to the camp, rolling his shoulders to release the tension that gripped him.

  As he reached the road his gaze lifted once more, southward to find Moon's Spawn, hazy now with distance. 'You there, lord, I wish you had caught the scent of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, so you'd do to them what you did to the Jaghut Tyrant—assuming you had a hand in that. Preventative medicine, the cutters call it. I only pray we don't all one day come to regret your disinterest.'

  Walking down the road, he glanced over to see Emancipor Reese, sitting atop the carriage, one hand stroking the ragged cat in his lap. Mange? Gruntle considered. Probably not.

  The huge wolf circled the body, head low and turned inward to keep the unconscious mortal within sight of its lone eye.

  The Warren of Chaos had few visitors. Among those few, mortal humans were rarest of all. The wolf had wandered this violent landscape for a time that was, to it, immeasurable. Alone and lost for so long, its mind had found new shapes born of solitude; the tracks of its thoughts twisted on seemingly random routes. Few would recognize awareness or intelligence in the feral gleam of its eye, yet they existed none the less.

  The wolf circled, massive muscles rippling beneath the dull white fur. Head low and turned inward. Lone eye fixed on the prone human.

  The fierce concentration was efficacious, holding the object of its attention in a state that was timeless—an accidental consequence of the powers the wolf had absorbed within this warren.

  The wolf recalled little of the other worlds that existed beyond Chaos. It knew nothing of the mortals who worshipped it as they would a god. Yet a certain knowledge had come to it, an instinctive sensitivity that told it of… possibilities. Of potentials. Of choices now available to the wolf, with the discovery of this frail mortal.

  Even so, the creature hesitated.

  There were risks. And the decision that now gnawed its way to the forefront had the wolf trembling.

  Its circling spiralled inward, closer, ever closer to the unconscious figure. Lone eye fixing finally on the man's face.

  The gift, the creature saw at last, was a true one. Nothing else could explain what it discovered in the mortal man's face. A mirrored spirit, in every detail. This was an opportunity that could not be refused.

  Still the wolf hesitated.

  Until an ancient memory rose before its mind's eye. An image, frozen, faded with the erosion of time.

  Sufficient to close the spiral.

  And then it was done.

  His single functioning eye blinked open to a pale blue, cloudless sky. The scar tissue covering what was left of his other eye tingled with a maddening itch, as if insects crawled under the skin. He was wearing a helm, the visor raised. Beneath him, hard sharp rocks dug into his flesh.

  He lay unmoving, trying to remember what had happened. The vision of a dark tear opening before him—he'd plunged into it, was flung into it. A horse vanishing beneath him, the thrum of his bowstring. A sense of unease, which he'd shared with his companion. A friend who rode at his side. Captain Paran.

  Toc the Younger groaned. Hairlock. That mad puppet. We were ambushed. The fragments coalesced, memory returning with a surge of fear. He rolled onto his side, every muscle protesting. Hood's breath, this isn't the Rhivi Plain.

  A field of broken black glass stretched away on all sides. Grey dust hung in motionless clouds an arm's span above it. Off to his left, perhaps two hundred paces away, a low mound rose to break the flat monotony of the landscape.

  His throat felt raw. His eye stung. The sun was blistering overhead. Coughing, Toc sat up, the obsidian crunching beneath him. He saw his recurved horn bow lying beside him and reached for it. The quiver had been strapped onto the saddle of his horse. Wherever he'd gone, his faithful Wickan mount had not followed. Apart from the knife at his hip and the momentarily useless bow in his hand, then, he possessed nothing. No water, no food. A closer examination of his bow deepened his scowl. The gut string had stretched.

  Badly. Meaning I've been… away… for some time. Away. Where? Hairlock had thrown him into a warren. Somehow, time had been lost within it. He was not overly thirsty, nor particularly hungry. But, even if he had arrows, the bow's pull was gone. Worse, the string had dried, the wax absorbing obsidian dust. It wouldn't survive retightening. That suggested days, if not weeks, had passed, though his body told him otherwise.

  He climbed to his feet. The chain armour beneath his tunic protested the movement, shedding glittering dust.

  Am I within a warren? Or has it spat me back out? Either way, he needed to find an end to this lifeless plain of volcanic glass. Assuming one existed…

  He began walking towards the mound. Though it wasn't especially high, he would take any vantage point that was available. As he approached, he saw others like it beyond, regularly spaced. Barrows. Great, I just love barrows. And then a central one, larger than the rest.

  Toc skirted the first mound, noting in passing that it had been holed, likely by looters. After a moment he paused, turned and walked closer. He squatted beside the excavated shaft, peered down into the slanting tunnel. As far as he could see—over a man's height in depth—the mantle of obsidian continued down. For the mounds to have showed at all, they must be huge, more like domes than beehive tombs. 'Whatever,' he muttered. 'I don't like it.'

  He paused, considering, running through in his mind the events that had led him to this… unfortunate situation. The deathly rain of Moon's Spawn seemed to mark some kind of beginning. Fire and pain, the death of an eye, the kiss that left a savagely disfiguring scar on what had been a young, reputedly handsome face.

  A ride north onto the plain to retrieve Adjunct Lorn, a skirmish with Ilgres Barghast. Back in Pale, still more trouble. Lorn had drawn his reins, reviving his old role as a Claw courier. Courier? Let's speak plain, Toc, especially to yourself. You were a spy. But you had been turned. You were a scout in Onearm's Host. That and nothing more, until the Adjunct showed up. There'd been trouble in Pale. Tattersail, then Captain Paran. Flight and pursuit. 'What a mess,' he muttered.

  Hairlock's ambush had swatted him like a fly, into some kind of malign warren. Where I… lingered. I think. Hood take me, time's come to start thinking like a soldier again. Get your bearings. Do nothing precipitous. Think about survival, here in this strange, unwelcome place…

  He resumed his trek to the central barrow. Though gently sloped, it was at least thrice the height of a man. His cough worsened as he scrambled up its side.

  The effort was rewarded. On the summit, he found himself standing at the hub of a ring of lesser tombs. Directly ahead, three hundred paces beyond the ring's edge yet almost invisible through the haze, rose the bony shoulders of grey-cloaked hills. Closer and to his left were the ruins of a stone tower. The sky behind it glowed a sickly red colour.

  Toc glanced up at the sun. When he'd awoken, it had been at little more than three-quarters of the wheel; now it stood directly above him. He was able to orientate himself. The hill lay to the northwest, the tower a few points north of due west.

  His gaze was pulled back to the reddish
welt in the sky beyond the tower. Yes, it pulsed, as regular as a heart. He scratched at the scar tissue covering his left eye-socket, winced at the answering bloom of colours flooding his mind. That's sorcery over there. Gods, I'm acquiring a deep hatred of sorcery.

  A moment later, more immediate details drew his attention. The north slope of the central barrow was marred by a deep pit, its edges ragged and glistening. A tumble of cut stone—still showing the stains of red paint—crowded the base. The crater, he slowly realized, was not the work of looters. Whatever had made it had pushed up from the tomb, violently. In this place, it seems that even the dead do not sleep eternal. A moment of nervousness shook him, then he shrugged it off with a soft curse. You've known worse, soldier. Remember that T'lan Imass who'd joined up with the Adjunct. Laconic desiccation on two legs, Beru fend us all. Hooded eye-sockets with not a glimmer or gleam of mercy. That thing had spitted a Barghast like a Rhivi a plains boar. Eye still studying the crater in the mound's flank, his thoughts remained on Lorn and her undead companion. They'd sought to free such a restless creature, to loose a wild, vicious power upon the land. He wondered if they'd succeeded. The prisoner of the tomb he now stood upon had faced a dreadful task, without question—wards, solid walls, and armspan after armspan of compacted, crushed glass. Well, given the alternatives, I imagine I would have been as desperate and as determined. How long did it take? How malignly twisted the mind once freed?

  He shivered, the motion triggering another harsh cough. There were mysteries in the world, few of them pleasant.

  He skirted the pit on his descent and made his way towards the ruined tower. He thought it unlikely that the occupant of the tomb would have lingered long in the area. I would have wanted to get as far away from here and as fast as was humanly possible. There was no telling how much time had passed since the creature's escape, but Toc's gut told him it was years, if not decades. He felt strangely unafraid in any case, despite the inhospitable surroundings and all the secrets beneath the land's ravaged surface. Whatever threat this place had held seemed to be long gone.

  Forty paces from the tower he almost stumbled over a corpse. A fine layer of dust had thoroughly disguised its presence, and that dust, now disturbed by Toc's efforts to step clear, rose in a cloud. Cursing, the Malazan spat grit from his mouth.

  Through the swirling, glittering haze, he saw that the bones belonged to a human. Granted, a squat, heavy-boned one. Sinews had dried nut-brown, and the furs and skins partially clothing it had rotted to mere strips. A bone helm sat on the corpse's head, fashioned from the frontal cap of a horned beast. One horn had snapped off some time in the distant past. A dust-sheathed two-handed sword lay nearby. Speaking of Hood's skull…

  Toc the Younger scowled down at the figure. 'What are you doing here?' he demanded.

  'Waiting,' the T'lan Imass replied in a leather-rasp voice.

  Toc searched his memory for the name of this undead warrior. 'Onos T'oolan,' he said, pleased with himself. 'Of the Tarad Clan—'

  'I am now named Tool. Clanless. Free.'

  Free? Free to do precisely what, you sack of bones? Lie around in wastelands?

  'What's happened to the Adjunct? Where are we?'

  'Lost.'

  'Which question is that an answer to, Tool?'

  'Both.'

  Toc gritted his teeth, resisting the temptation to kick the T'lan Imass. 'Can you be more specific?'

  'Perhaps.'

  'Well?'

  'Adjunct Lorn died in Darujhistan two months ago. We are in the ancient place called Morn, two hundred leagues to the south. It is just past midday.'

  'Just past midday, you said. Thank you for the enlightenment.' He found little pleasure in conversing with a creature that had existed for hundreds of thousands of years, and that discomfort unleashed his sarcasm—a precarious presumption indeed. Get back to seriousness, idiot. That flint sword ain't just for show. 'Did you two free the Jaghut Tyrant?'

  'Briefly. Imperial efforts to conquer Darujhistan failed.' Scowling, Toc crossed his arms. 'You said you were waiting. Waiting for what?'

  'She has been away for some time. Now she returns.'

  'Who?'

  She who has taken occupation of the tower, soldier.'

  'Can you at least stand up when you're talking to me.' Before I give in to temptation.

  The T'lan Imass rose with an array of creaking complaints, dust cascading from its broad, bestial form. Something glittered for the briefest of moments in the depths of its eye-sockets as it stared at Toc, then Tool turned and retrieved the flint sword.

  Gods, better I'd insisted he just stay lying down. Parched leather skin, taut muscle and heavy bone… all moving about like something alive. Oh, how the Emperor loved them. An army he never had to feed, he never had to transport, an army that could go anywhere and do damn near anything. And no desertions—except for the one standing in front of me right now.

  How do you punish a T'lan Imass deserter anyway? 'I need water,' Toc said after a long moment in which they simply stared at each other. 'And food. And I need to find some arrows. And bowstring.' He unstrapped his helmet and pulled it clear. The leather cap beneath it was soaked through with sweat. 'Can't we wait in the tower? This heat is baking my brain.' And why am I talking as if I expect you to help me, Tool?

  'The coast lies a thousand paces to the southwest,' Tool said. 'Food is available there, and a certain seagrass that will suffice as bowstring until some gut can be found. I do not, alas, smell fresh water. Perhaps the tower's occupant will be generous, though she is less likely to be so if she arrives to find you within it. Arrows can be made. There is a salt-marsh nearby, where we can find bone-reed. Snares for coast birds will offer us fletching. Arrowheads…' Tool turned to survey the obsidian plain. 'I foresee no shortage of raw material.'

  All right, so help me you will. Thank Hood for that. 'Well, I hope you can still chip stone and weave seagrass, T'lan Imass, not to mention work bone-reed—whatever that is—into true shafts, because I certainly don't know how. When I need arrows, I requisition them, and when they arrive they're iron-headed and straight as a plumb-line.'

  'I have not lost the skills, soldier—'

  'Since the Adjunct never properly introduced us, I am named Toc the Younger, and I am not a soldier, but a scout—'

  'You were in the employ of the Claw.'

  'With none of the assassin training, nor the magery. Besides which, I have more or less renounced that role. All I seek to do now is to return to Onearm's Host.'

  'A long journey.'

  'So I gathered. The sooner I start the better, then. Tell me, how far does this glass wasteland stretch?'

  'Seven leagues. Beyond it you will find the Lamatath Plain. When you have reached it, set a course north by northeast—'

  'Where will that take me? Darujhistan? Has Dujek besieged the city?'

  'No.' The T'lan Imass swung its head round. 'She comes.'

  Toc followed Tool's gaze. Three figures had appeared from the south, approaching the edge of the ring of barrows. Of the three, only the one in the middle walked upright. She was tall, slim, wearing a flowing white telaba such as were worn by highborn women of Seven Cities. Her black hair was long and straight. Flanking her were two dogs, the one on her left as big as a hill-pony, shaggy, wolf-like, the other short-haired, dun-coloured and heavily muscled.

  Since Tool and Toc stood in the open, it was impossible that they had not been seen, yet the three displayed no perturbation or change of pace as they strode nearer. At a dozen paces the wolfish dog loped forward, tail wagging as it came up to the T'lan Imass.

  Musing on the scene, Toc scratched his jaw. 'An old friend, Tool? Or does the beast want you to toss it one of your bones?'

  The undead warrior regarded him in silence.

  'Humour,' Toc said, shrugging. 'Or a poor imitation. I didn't think T'lan Imass could take offence.' Or, rather, I'm hoping that's the case. Gods, my big mouth…

  'I was considering,' Tool replied sl
owly. 'This beast is an ay, and thus has little interest in bones. Ay prefer flesh, still warm if possible.'

  Toc grunted. 'I see.'

  'Humour,' Tool said after a moment.

  'Right.' Oh. Maybe this won't be so bad after all. Surprises never cease.

  The T'lan Imass reached out to rest the tips of its bony fingers on the ay's broad head. The animal went perfectly still. 'An old friend? Yes, we adopted such animals into our tribes. It was that or see them starve. We were, you see, responsible for that starvation.'

  'Responsible? As in overhunting? I'd have thought your kind was one with nature. All those spirits, all those rituals of propitiation—'

  'Toc the Younger,' Tool interrupted, 'do you mock me, or your own ignorance? Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish.'

  'And we're no different, you're saying—'

  'We are, soldier. We possess the privilege of choice. The gift of foresight. Though often we come too late in acknowledging those responsibilities…' The T'lan Imass's head tilted as he studied the ay before him, and, it seemed, his own skeletal hand where it rested upon the beast's head.

  'Baaljagg awaits your command, dear undead warrior,' the woman said upon arriving, her voice a lilting melody. 'How sweet. Garath, go join your brother in greeting our desiccated guest.' She met Toc's gaze and smiled. 'Garath, of course, might decide your companion's worth burying—wouldn't that be fun?'

  'Momentarily,' Toc agreed. 'You speak Daru, yet wear the telaba of Seven Cities…'

  Her brows arched. 'Do I? Oh, such confusion! Mind you, sir, you speak Daru yet you are from that repressed woman's empire—what was her name again?'

  'Empress Laseen. The Malazan empire.' And how did you know that? I'm not in uniform… She smiled. 'Indeed.'

  'I am Toc the Younger, and the T'lan Imass is named Tool.'

  'How apt. My, it is hot out here, don't you think? Let us retire within the Jaghut tower. Garath, cease sniffing the T'lan Imass and awaken the servants.'