Memories of Ice

by Steven Erikson

  'Why are you telling me, soldier?' Whiskeyjack rumbled. 'You talk to your immediate superior.'

  The woman scowled, pivoted to face Paran. 'The watch—'

  'I heard, Detoran. Have the Bridgeburners get their gear and assemble in the compound.'

  'It's still a bell and a half before we leave—'

  'I'm aware of that, soldier.'

  'Yes, sir. At once, sir.' The woman ambled off. Whiskeyjack sighed. 'About that offer—'

  'My tutor was Napan,' Paran said. 'I've yet to meet a Napan who knows the meaning of respect, and Detoran's no exception. I'm also aware,' he continued, 'that she's no exception as far as Bridgeburners go, either.'

  'It seems your tutor taught you well,' Whiskeyjack muttered. Paran frowned. 'What do you mean?'

  'His disrespect for authority's rubbed off, Captain. You just interrupted your commander.'

  'Uh, my apologies. I keep forgetting you're not a sergeant any more.'

  'So do I, which is why I need people like you to get it right.' The veteran turned to Mallet. 'Remember what I said, Healer.'

  'Aye, sir.'

  Whiskeyjack glanced once more at Paran. 'The hurry up and wait was a good touch, Captain. Soldiers love to stew.'

  Paran watched the man head off towards the gatehouse, then said to Mallet, 'Your private discussion with the commander, Healer. Anything I should know?'

  Mallet's blink was sleepy. 'No, sir.'

  'Very well. You may rejoin your squad.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  When he was alone, Paran sighed. Thirty-eight bitter, resentful veterans, already twice betrayed. I wasn't part of the treachery at the siege of Pale, and Laseen's proclamation of outlawry embraced me as much as it did them. Neither event can be laid at my feet, yet they're doing it anyway.

  He rubbed at his eyes. Sleep had become an… unwelcome thing. Night after night, ever since their flight from Darujhistan… pain—and dreams, no, nightmares. Gods below… He spent the dark hours twisted beneath his blankets, his blood racing through him, acids bubbling in his stomach, and when consciousness finally slipped from him, his sleep was fitful, racked with dreams of running. Running on all fours. Then drowning.

  It's the blood of the Hound, coursing undiminished within me. It must be.

  He had tried to tell himself more than once that the Shadow Hound's blood was also the source of his paranoia. The thought elicited a sour grin. Untrue. What I fear is all too real. Worse, this vast sense of loss… without the ability to trust—anyone. Without that, what do I see in the life awaiting me? Naught but solitude, and thus, nothing of value. And now, all these voices… whispering of escape. Escape.

  He shook himself, spat to clear the sour phlegm in his throat. Think of that other thing, that other scene. Solitary. Baffling. Remember, Paran, the voice you heard. It was Tattersail's—you did not doubt it then, why do so now? She lives. Somehow, some way, the sorceress lives…

  Ahh, the pain! A child screaming in darkness, a Hound howling lost in sorrow. A soul nailed to the heart of a wound… and I think myself alone! Gods, I wish I were!

  Whiskeyjack entered the gatehouse, closed the door behind him and strode over to the scribe's table. He leaned against it, stretched out his aching leg. His sigh was like the easing of endless knots, and when it was done he was trembling.

  After a moment the door opened.

  Straightening, Whiskeyjack scowled at Mallet. 'I thought your captain'd called for an assembly, Healer—'

  'Paran's in worse shape than even you, sir.'

  'We've covered this. Guard the lad's back—you having second thoughts, Mallet?'

  'You misunderstand. I just quested in his direction—my Denul warren recoiled, Commander.'

  Whiskeyjack only now noted the pallid cast of the healer's round face. 'Recoiled?'

  'Aye. That's never happened before. The captain's sick.'

  'Tumours? Cancers? Be specific, damn it!'

  'Nothing like that, sir. Not yet, but they'll come. He's eaten a hole in his own gut. All that he's holding in, I guess. But there's more—we need Quick Ben. Paran's got sorceries running through him like fireweed roots.'

  'Oponn—'

  'No, the Twin Jesters are long gone. Paran's journey to Darujhistan—something happened to him on the way. No, not something. Lots of things. Anyway, he's fighting those sorceries, and that's what's killing him. I could be wrong in that, sir. We need Quick Ben—'

  'I hear you. Get him on it when we get to Pale. But make sure he's subtle. No point in adding to the captain's unease.'

  Mallet's frown deepened. 'Sir, it's just… Is he in any shape to take command of the Bridgeburners?'

  'You're asking me? If you want to talk to Dujek about your concerns, that's your prerogative, Healer. If you think Paran's unfit for duty—do you, Mallet?'

  After a long moment, the man sighed. 'Not yet, I suppose. He's as stubborn as you are… sir. Hood, you sure you two aren't related?'

  'Damned sure,' Whiskeyjack growled. 'Your average camp dog has purer blood than what's in my family line. Let it rest for now, then. Talk to Quick and Spindle. See what you can find out about those hidden sorceries—if gods are plucking Paran's strings again, I want to know who, and then we can mull on why.'

  Mallet's eyes thinned as he studied the commander. 'Sir, what are we heading into?'

  'I'm not sure, Healer,' Whiskeyjack admitted with a grimace. Grunting, he shifted weight off his bad leg. 'With Oponn's luck I won't have to pull a sword—commanders usually don't, do they?'

  'If you gave me the time, sir—'

  'Later, Mallet. Right now I've got a parley to think about. Brood and his army's arrived outside Pale.'

  'Aye.'

  'And your captain's probably wondering where in Hood's name you've disappeared to. Get out of here, Mallet. I'll see you again after the parley.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  Chapter Three

  Dujek Onearm and his army awaited the arrival of Caladan Brood and his allies: the fell Tiste Andü, Barghast clans from the far north, a half-score mercenary contingents, and the plains-dwelling Rhivi. There, on the still raw killing ground outside the city of Pale, the two forces would meet. Not to wage war, but to carve from bitter history, peace. Neither Dujek nor Brood, nor anyone else among their legendary company, could have anticipated the ensuing clash—not of swords, but of worlds…

  Confessions of Artanthos

  SHALLOW RIDGES RIBBONED THE HILLSIDES A LEAGUE NORTH OF PALE, barely healed scars of a time when the city's presumptions reached out to devour the steppes bordering the Rhivi Plain. Since memories began the hills had been sacred to the Rhivi. Pale's farmers had paid for their temerity with blood.

  Yet the land was slow to heal; few of the ancient menhirs, boulder rings and flat-stone crypts remained in place. The stones were now haphazardly piled into meaningless cairns alongside what used to be terraced fields of maize. All that was sacred in these hills was held so only within the minds of the Rhivi.

  As in faith, so we are in truth. The Mhybe drew the antelope hide closer about her thin, bony shoulders. A new array of pains and aches mapped her frame this morning, evidence that the child had drawn more from her in the night just past. The old woman told herself she felt no resentment—such needs could not be circumvented, and there was little in the child that was natural in any case. Vast, cold-hearted spirits and the blind spells of sorcery had conspired to carve into being something new, unique.

  And time was growing short, so very short.

  The Mhybe's dark eyes glittered within their nests of wrinkles as she watched the child scampering over the weathered terraces. A mother's instincts ever abided. It was not right to curse them, to lash out at the bindings of love that came in the division of flesh. For all the flaws raging within her, and for all the twisted demands woven into her daughter, the Mhybe could not—would not—spin webs of hate.

  None the less, the withering of her body weakened the gifts of the heart to which she so desperately clu
ng. Less than a season past, the Mhybe had been a young woman, not yet wedded. She had been proud, unwilling to accept the half-braids of grass that numerous young, virile men had set down before the entrance to her tent—not yet ready to entwine her own braid and thus bind herself to marriage.

  The Rhivi were a damaged people—how could one think of husband and family in this time of endless, devastating war? She was not as blind as her sister-kin; she did not embrace the supposed spirit-blessed duty to produce sons to feed into the ground before the Reaper's Plough. Her mother had been a reader of bones, gifted with the ability to hold the people's entire repository of memories—every lineage, reaching back to the Dying Spirit's Tear. And her father had held the Spear of War, first against the White Face Barghast, then against the Malazan Empire.

  She missed them both, deeply, yet understood how their deaths, and her own defiance of accepting a man's touch, had together conspired to make her the ideal choice in the eyes of the host of spirits. An un-tethered vessel, a vessel in which to place two shattered souls—one beyond death and the other held back from death through ancient sorceries, two identities braided together—a vessel that would be used to feed the unnatural child thus created.

  Among the Rhivi, who travelled with the herds and raised no walls of stone or brick, such a container, intended for a singular use after which it would be discarded, was called a mhybe, and so she had found herself a new name, and now every truth of her life was held within it.

  Old without wisdom, weathered without the gift of years, yet I am expected to guide this child—this creature—who gains a season with every one I lose, for whom weaning will mean my death. Look at her now, playing the games a child would play; she smiles all unknowing of the price her existence, her growth, demands of me.

  The Mhybe heard footsteps behind her, and a moment later a tall, black-skinned woman arrived to stand beside the Rhivi. The newcomer's angled eyes held on the child playing on the hillside. The prairie wind sent strands of long black hair over her face. Fine, scaled armour glinted from beneath her black-dyed, rawhide shirt.

  'Deceptive,' the Tiste Andü woman murmured, 'is she not?'

  The Mhybe sighed, then nodded.

  'Hardly a thing to generate fear,' the midnight-skinned woman continued, 'or be the focus of searing arguments…'

  'There have been more, then?'

  'Aye. Kallor renews his assault.'

  The Mhybe stiffened. She looked up at the Tiste Andü. 'And? Has there been a change, Korlat?'

  'Brood remains steadfast,' Korlat replied after a moment. She shrugged. 'If he has doubts, he hides them well.'

  'He has,' the Mhybe said. 'Yet his need for the Rhivi and our herds outweighs them still. This is calculation, not faith. Will such need remain, once an alliance with the one-armed Malazan is fashioned?'

  'It is hoped,' Korlat ventured, 'that the Malazans will possess more knowledge of the child's origins—'

  'Enough to alleviate the potential threat? You must make Brood understand, Korlat, that what the two souls once were is nothing to what they have become.' Her eyes on the playing child, the Mhybe continued, 'She was created within the influence of a T'lan Imass—its timeless warren became the binding threads, and were so woven by an Imass bonecaster—a bonecaster of flesh and blood, Korlat. This child belongs to the T'lan Imass. She may well be clothed in the flesh of a Rhivi, and she may well contain the souls of two Malazan mages, but she is now a Soletaken, and more—a Bonecaster. And even these truths but brush the edges of what she will become. Tell me, what need have the immortal T'lan Imass for a flesh and blood Bonecaster?'

  Korlat's grimace was wry. 'I am not the person to ask.'

  'Nor are the Malazans.'

  'Are you certain of that? Did not the T'lan Imass march under Malazan banners?'

  'Yet they do so no longer, Korlat. What hidden breach exists between them now? What secret motives might lie beneath all that the Malazans advise? We have no way of guessing, have we?'

  'I imagine Caladan Brood is aware of such possibilities,' the Tiste Andü said drily. In any case, you may witness and partake in these matters, Mhybe. The Malazan contingent approaches, and the Warlord seeks your presence at the parley.'

  The Mhybe turned about. Caladan Brood's encampment stretched out before her, precisely organized as usual. Mercenary elements to the west, the Tiste Andü holding the centre, and her own Rhivi camps and the bhederin herds to the east. The march had been a long one, from the Old King Plateau, through the cities of Cat and then Patch, and finally onto the south-wending old Rhivi Trail crossing the plain that was the Rhivi's traditional home. A home torn apart by years of war, of marching armies and the incendiaries of the Moranth falling from the sky … quorls whirling in black-specked silence, horror descending on our camps… our sacred herds.

  Yet now, we are to clasp wrists with our enemy. With the Malazan invaders and the cold-blooded Moranth, we are to weave braids of marriage—our two armies—jaws locked on one another's throats for so long, but a marriage not in the name of peace. No, these warriors now seek another enemy, a new enemy…

  Beyond Brood's army to the south rose the recently mended walls of Pale, the stains of violence a chilling reminder of Malazan sorceries. A knot of riders had just departed from the city's north gate, an unmarked grey banner announcing their outlawry for all to see as they slowly rode across the bare killing ground towards Brood's encampment.

  The Mhybe's gaze narrowed suspiciously on that pennant. Old woman, your fears are a curse. Think not of mistrust, think not of the horrors visited upon us by these once-invaders. Dujek Onearm and his Host have been outlawed by the hated Empress. One campaign has ended. A new one begins. Spirits below, shall we ever see an end to war?

  The child joined the two women. The Mhybe glanced down at her, saw within the steady, unwavering eyes of the girl a knowledge and wisdom that seemed born of millennia—and perhaps it was indeed so. Here we three stand, for all to see—a child of ten or eleven years, a woman of youthful visage with unhuman eyes, and a bent old woman—and it is, in every detail, an illusion, for what lies within us is reversed. I am the child. The Tiste Andü has known thousands of years of life, and the girl… hundreds of thousands.

  Korlat had also looked down at the child. The Tiste Andü smiled. 'Did you enjoy your play, Silverfox?'

  'For a time,' the girl replied in a voice surprisingly low. 'But I grew sad.'

  Korlat's brows rose. 'And why is that?'

  'There was once a sacred trust here—between these hills and spirits of the Rhivi. It is now broken. The spirits were naught but untethered vessels of loss and pain. The hills will not heal.'

  The Mhybe felt her blood turn to ice. Increasingly, the child was revealing a sensitivity to rival the wisest shoulderwoman among the tribes. Yet there was a certain coolness to that sensitivity, as if a hidden intent lay behind every compassionate word. 'Can nothing be done, daughter?'

  Silverfox shrugged. 'It is no longer necessary.'

  Such as now. 'What do you mean?'

  The round-faced girl smiled up at the Mhybe. 'If we are to witness the parley, Mother, we'd best hurry.'

  The place of meeting was thirty paces beyond the outermost pickets, situated on a low rise. The recent barrows that had been raised to dispose of the dead after the fall of Pale were visible to the west. The Mhybe wondered if those countless victims now watched from afar the scene unfolding before her. Spirits are born of spilled blood, after all. And without propitiation, they often twist into inimical forces, plagued by nightmare visions and filled with spite. Is it only the Rhivi who know these truths?

  From war to alliance—how would such ghosts look upon this?

  'They feel betrayed,' Silverfox said beside her. 'I will answer them, Mother.' She reached out to take the Mhybe's hand as they walked. 'This is a time for memories. Ancient memories, and recent memories…'

  'And you, daughter,' the Mhybe asked in a low, febrile tone, 'are you the bridge between the two
?'

  'You are wise, Mother, despite your own lack of faith in yourself. The hidden is slowly revealed. Look on these once-enemies. You fight in your mind, raising up all the differences between us, you struggle to hold on to your dislike, your hatred of them, for that is what is familiar. Memories are the foundations of such hatred. But, Mother, memories hold another truth, a secret one, and that is all that we have experienced, yes?'

  The Mhybe nodded. 'So our elders tell us, daughter,' she said, biting back a faint irritation.

  'Experiences. They are what we share. From opposite sides, perhaps, but they are the same. The same.'

  'I know this, Silverfox. Blame is meaningless. We are all pulled, as tides are pulled by an unseen, implacable will—'

  The girl's hand tightened in the Mhybe's hand. 'Then ask Korlat, Mother, what her memories tell her.'

  Glancing over at the Tiste Andü, the Rhivi woman raised her brows and said, 'You have been listening, yet saying nothing. What reply does my daughter expect from you?'

  Korlat's smile was wistful. 'Experiences are the same. Between your two armies, indeed. But also… across the breadth of time. Among all who possess memories, whether an individual or a people, life's lessons are ever the same lessons.' The Tiste Andü's now-violet eyes rested on Silverfox. 'Even among the T'lan Imass—is this what you are telling us, child?'

  She shrugged. 'In all that is to come, think on forgiveness. Hold to it, but know too that it must not always be freely given.' Silverfox swung her sleepy gaze to Korlat and the dark eyes suddenly hardened. 'Sometimes forgiveness must be denied.'

  Silence followed. Dear spirits, guide us. This child frightens me. Indeed, I can understand Kallor… and that is more worrying than anything else.

  They came to a halt far to one side of the place of parley just beyond the pickets of Brood's encampment.

  Moments later, the Malazans reached the rise. There were four of them. The Mhybe had no difficulty in recognizing Dujek, the now-renegade High Fist. The one-armed man was older than she had expected, however, and he sat in the saddle of his roan gelding as would a man pained with old aches and stiff bones. He was thin, of average height, wearing plain armour and an undecorated standard-issue short-sword strapped to his belt. His narrow, hatchet face was beardless, displaying a lifetime of battle scars. He wore no helmet, the only indication of rank being his long grey cape and its silver-wrought fastening.