Emancipor Reese had managed to find a more suitable bottle from the cellars and had filled the two goblets before hastily retreating from the room, his sickly pallor if anything even starker on his lined face.
Quick Ben was none the less tentative as he took his first sip. After a moment, he swallowed, then sighed.
Sitting across from him, Bauchelain half smiled. 'Excellent. Now, having made the effort to penetrate this estate's defences, you are here with some purpose in mind. Thus, you have my utmost attention.'
'Demonic summoning. It's the rarest and most difficult discipline among the necromantic arts.'
Bauchelain responded with a modest shrug.
'And the power it draws upon,' Quick Ben continued, 'while from Hood's own warren, is deeply tainted with Chaos. Striding both sides of that border between those warrens. As an aside, why do you think the summoning of demons is death-aspected?'
'The assertion of absolute control over a life-force, Quick Ben. The threat of annihilation is inherently death-aspected. Regarding your observation of the influence of the Warren of Chaos, do go on.'
'The warrens have been poisoned.'
'Ah. There are many flavours to chaotic power. That which assails the warrens has little to do with the elements of the Warren of Chaos with which I am involved.'
'So, your access to your warrens has not been affected.'
'I did not say that,' Bauchelain replied, pausing to drink some wine. 'The… infection… is an irritant, an unfortunate development that threatens to get worse. Perhaps, at some point in the future, I shall find need to retaliate upon whomever is responsible. My companion, Korbal Broach, has communicated to me his own growing concern—he works more directly through Hood's warren, and thus has felt the greater brunt.'
Quick Ben glanced over at the crow on the mantelpiece. 'Indeed. Well,' he added, returning his gaze to Bauchelain, 'as to that, I can tell you precisely who is responsible.'
'And why would you tell us, mage? Unless it be to elicit our help—I am assuming you are opposing this… poisoner. And are in search of potential allies.'
'Allies? Elicit your help? No, sir, you misunderstand me. I offer my information freely. Not only do I expect nothing in return, should you offer I will respectfully decline.'
'Curious. Is yours a power to rival the gods, then?'
'I don't recall referring to gods in this conversation, Bauchelain.'
'True enough; however, the entity responsible for poisoning all the warrens is without doubt a formidable individual—if not a god then an aspirant.'
'In any case,' Quick Ben said with a smile, 'I don't rival gods.'
'A wise decision.'
'But, sometimes, I beat them at their own game.'
Bauchelain studied the wizard, then slowly leaned back. 'I find myself appreciating your company, Quick Ben. I am not easily entertained, but you have indeed proved a worthy diversion this night, and for that I thank you.'
'You're quite welcome.'
'My companion, Korbal Broach, alas, would like to kill you.'
'Can't please everyone.'
'Very true. He dislikes being confused, you see, and you have confused him.'
'Best he remain perched on the mantelpiece,' Quick Ben quietly advised. 'I don't treat hecklers very well.'
Bauchelain raised a brow.
The shadow of wings spread suddenly vast to Quick Ben's left, as Korbal Broach dropped from his position and began sembling even as he descended.
The Malazan flung his left arm out, waves of layered sorcery sweeping across the intervening space, to strike the necromancer.
Half man, half bedraggled crow, Korbal Broach had not completed his sembling into human form. The waves of power had yet to blossom. The necromancer was lifted from his feet by the magical impact, caught in the crest of that sorcery. It struck the wall above the fireplace, carrying the oddly winged, semi-human figure with it, then detonated.
Painted plaster exploded in a cloud of dust. The wall shook, crumpling inward at the point where Korbal Broach hit—punching a hole through to whatever was on the other side. The last sight Quick Ben had of the man was that of his boots, before the roiling dust and twisting tendrils of power obscured the wall.
There was the sound of a heavy thump beyond, in what was probably a corridor, then the patter of plaster on the hearthstone was all that broke the silence.
Quick Ben slowly settled back into his chair.
'More wine?' Bauchelain asked.
'Please. Thank you. Apologies for the mess.'
'Think nothing of it. I have never before seen—what—six, perhaps seven warrens all unleashed at once, all intricately bound together in such complementary fashion. You, sir, are an artist. Will Korbal Broach recover?'
'I am your guest, Bauchelain. It would be poor form to kill your companion. After all, strictly speaking I am his guest, as well.'
With the chimney thoroughly compromised, the room was slowly filling with smoke.
'True,' Bauchelain admitted. 'Although, I reluctantly point out, he sought to kill you.'
'No need for dismay,' the Malazan responded. 'I was not greatly inconvenienced.'
'And that is what I find most astonishing. There was no sign of chaotic poison in your sorcery, Quick Ben. You can imagine the plethora of questions I would like to ask.'
There was a groan from the corridor.
'And, I confess,' Bauchelain continued, 'that curiosity is a rather obsessive trait of mine, often resulting in regrettable violence to the one being questioned, particularly when he or she is not as forthcoming as I would like. Now, six, seven warrens—'
'Six.'
'Six warrens, then—all at once—your claim to finding little inconvenience in the effort strikes me as bravado. Therefore, I conclude that you are, shall we say it bluntly: used up.'
'You make it clear that my welcome is at an end,' Quick Ben said, sighing as he set down the goblet.
'Not necessarily. You need only tell me everything, and we can continue in this civil fashion.'
'I'm afraid that won't be possible,' the Malazan replied. 'None the less, I will inform you that the entity poisoning the warrens is the Crippled God. You will have to consider… retaliation… against him. Rather sooner than you might think.'
'Thank you. I'll not deny I am impressed by your mastery of six warrens, Quick.Ben. In retrospect, you should have held back on at least half of what you command.' The man made to rise.
'But, Bauchelain,' the wizard replied, 'I did.'
The divan, and the man on it, fared little better when struck by the power of a half-dozen bound warrens than had the wall and Korbal Broach moments earlier.
Quick Ben met Emancipor Reese in the smoky hallway leading to the estate's front doors. The servant had wrapped a cloth around the lower half of his face, his eyes streaming as he squinted at the wizard.
'Your masters require your attention, Emancipor.'
'They're alive?'
'Of course. Although smoke inhalation—'
The servant pushed past Quick Ben. 'What is wrong with all of you?' he barked.
'What do you mean?' the Malazan asked after him.
Emancipor half turned. 'Ain't it obvious? When you swat a wasp to the ground, you then use your heel, right? Otherwise, you're liable to get stung!'
'Are you encouraging me to kill your masters?'
'You're all Hood-damned idiots, that's what you are! Clean this up, Mancy! Scrub that down! Bury this in the garden! Pack those trunks—we're leaving in a hurry! It's my curse—no-one kills them! You think I like my job? Idiots! You think—'
The old man was still roaring as Quick Ben retreated outside.
Talamandas awaited him on the threshold. 'He's right, you know—'
'Quiet,' the wizard snapped.
In the courtyard beyond, the undead guards had all toppled from the walkway on the wall and lay sprawled on the flagstones, but movement was returning to them. Limbs wavered and twitched. Like armoure
d beetles on their backs. We'd better get out of here. Because, now, I am all used up.
'I'd almost moved to that wall you destroyed, you know.'
'That would have been very unfortunate,' Quick Ben replied. 'Climb aboard—we're leaving.'
'Finally, some wisdom!'
Bauchelain's eyes opened. Emancipor looked down on him.
'We're in the garden, master,' the servant said. 'I dragged you and Korbal out. Doused the fire, too. Got to go open all the windows now…'
'Very good, Emancipor,' the grey-bearded necromancer groaned after a moment. 'Emancipor,' he called when the servant made to move away.
'Master?'
'I confess… to a certain… confusion. Do we possess some chronic flaw, Emancipor?'
'Sir?'
'Underestima—oh, never mind, Emancipor. Be about your tasks, then.'
'Aye, master.'
'Oh, and you've earned a bonus for your efforts—what do you wish?'
The servant stared down at Bauchelain for a dozen heartbeats, then he shook his head. 'It's all right, master. Part of my job. And I'll be about it, now.'
The necromancer raised his head to watch the old man trudge back into the house. 'Such a modest man,' he breathed. He looked down the length of his tattered, bruised body, and raggedly sighed. 'What's left in my wardrobe, I wonder?'
Insofar as he could recall—and given recent events—not much.
Shrouded once more in shadow, Quick Ben made his way down the rubble-littered street. Most of the fires had either died down or been extinguished, and not one of the remaining structures showed any light behind shutters or from gaping windows. The stars commanded the night sky, though darkness ruled the city.
'Damned eerie,' Talamandas whispered.
The wizard softly grunted. 'That's rich, coming from someone who's spent generations in an urn in the middle of a barrow.'
'Wanderers like you have no appreciation of familiarity,' the stick-snare sniffed.
The dark mass of the Thrall blotted the skyline directly ahead. Faint torchlight from the square before the main gate cast the structure's angled stones in dulled relief. As they entered an avenue that led to the concourse they came upon the first knot of Barghast, surrounding a small fire built from broken furniture. Tarps slung between the buildings down the avenue's length made the passage beyond a kind of tunnel, strikingly similar to market streets in Seven Cities. Figures lay sleeping along the edges down the entire length. Various cookfires painted smoke-stained, mottled patterns of light on the undersides of the tarps. A good many Barghast warriors remained awake, watchful.
'Try wending unseen through that press, Wizard,' Talamandas murmured. 'We'll have to go round, assuming you still cling to your bizarre desire to slink like a mouse in a hut full of cats. In case you've forgotten, those are my kin—'
'Be quiet,' Quick Ben commanded under his breath. 'Consider this another test of our partnership—and the warrens.'
'We're going straight through?'
'We are.'
'Which warren? Not D'riss again, please—these cobbles—'
'No no, we'd end up soaked in old blood. We won't go under, Talamandas. We'll go over. Sere, the Path of the Sky.'
'Thought you'd exhausted yourself back at the estate.'
'I have. Mostly. We could sweat a bit on this one.'
'I don't sweat.'
'Let's test that, shall we?' The wizard unveiled the warren of Sere. Little alteration was discernible in the scene around them. Then, slowly, as Quick Ben's eyes adjusted, he detected currents in the air, the layers of cold and warm flowing parallel to the ground, the spirals coiling skyward from between the tarps, the wake of passing figures, the heat-memory of stone and wood.
'Looks sickly,' the sticksnare muttered. 'You would swim those currents?'
'Why not? We're almost as insubstantial as the air we see before us. I can get us started, but the problem then is keeping me afloat. You're right—I've no reserves left. So, it's up to you, Talamandas.'
'Me? I know nothing of Sere.'
'I'm not asking you to learn, either. What I want is your power.'
'That wasn't part of the deal!'
'It is now.'
The sticksnare shifted and twitched on Quick Ben's shoulder. 'By drawing on my power, you weaken the protection I offer against the poison.'
'And we need to find that threshold, Talamandas. I need to know what I can pull from you in an emergency.'
'Just how nasty a situation are you anticipating when we finally challenge the Crippled God?' the sticksnare demanded. 'Those secret plans of yours—no wonder you're keeping them secret!'
'I could have sworn you said you were offering yourself up as a sacrifice to the cause—do you now balk?'
'At madness? Count on it, Wizard!'
Quick Ben smiled to himself. 'Relax, I'm not stoking a pyre for you. Nor have I any plans to challenge the Crippled God. Not directly. I've been face to face with him once, and once remains enough. Even so, I was serious about finding that threshold. Now, pull the cork, shaman, and let's see what we can manage.'
Hissing with fury, Talamandas growled reluctant assent. Quick Ben rose from the ground, slipped forward on the nearest current sweeping down the length of the street. The flow was cool, dipping down beneath the tarps. A moment before reaching the down-draught, the wizard nudged himself upward, into a spiral of heat from one of the fires. They shot straight up.
'Dammit!' Quick Ben snapped as he spun and cavorted on the column of heat. Gritting his teeth, the wizard reached for the sticksnare's power—and found what he had suspected to be the truth all along.
Hood's. Through and through. Of the Barghast gods, barely a drop of salty piss. The damned newcomers are stretched far too thin. Wonder what's drawing on their energies? There's a card in the Deck, in the House of Death, that's been a role unfilled for a long, long time. The Magi. I think it's just found a face—one painted on a stupid acorn. Talamandas, you may have made a terrible mistake. And as for you, Barghast gods, here's some wisdom to heed in the future. Never hand your servants over to another god, because they're not likely to stay your servants for long. Instead, that god's likely to turn them into weapons… aimed directly at your backs.
Dear Barghast gods, you're in a world of predators, nastier by far than what was around in the past. Lucky for you I'm here.
He drew on that power, harshly.
The sticksnare writhed, twig fingers digging into the wizard's shoulder and neck.
In his mind, Quick Ben closed an implacable grip on the Lord of Death's power, and pulled.
Come to me, bastard. We're going to talk, you and I.
Within his clenched hand was the rough weave of cloth, stretching, bunching. The breath of Death flowed over the wizard, the presence undeniable, heavy with rage.
And, in the clutch of a mortal, entirely helpless.
Quick Ben grunted a laugh. 'So much for thresholds. You want to ally with me, Hood? All right, I'll give you fair consideration, despite the deception. But you're going to have to tell me what you're up to.'
'Damned fool!' Hood's voice was thunderous in the wizard's skull, launching waves of pain.
'Quieter,' Quick Ben gritted. 'Or I'll drag you through hide and all and Fener won't be the only god who's fair game.'
'The House of Chains must be denied!'
The wizard blinked, knocked sideways by Hood's statement. 'The House of Chains? It's the poison we're trying to excise, isn't it? Burn's fever—the infected warrens—'
'The Master of the Deck must be convinced, mortal. The Crippled God's House is finding… adherents—'
'Wait a moment. Adherents? Among the pantheon?'
'Betrayal, aye. Poliel, Mistress of Pestilence, aspires to the role of Consort to the King in Chains. A Herald has been… recruited. An ancient warrior seeks to become Reaver; whilst the House has found, in a distant land, its Mortal Sword. Mowri now embraces the Three—Cripple, Leper and Fool—which are in place of Sp
inner, Mason and Soldier. Most disturbing of all, ancient power trembles around the last of the dread cards… mortal, the Master of the Deck must not remain blind to the threat.'
Quick Ben scowled. 'Captain Paran's not the blinkered type, Hood. Indeed, he likely sees things clearer than even you—far more dispassionately, at least, and something tells me that cold reason is what will be needed come the time to decide. In any case, the House of Chains may be your problem, but the poison within the warrens is mine.' That, and what it's doing to Burn.
'Misdirection, wizard—you are being led astray. You will find no answers, no solutions within the Pannion Domin, for the Seer is at the heart of an altogether different tale.'
'I'd guessed as much, Hood. Even so, I plan on unravelling the bastard—and his power.'
'Which will avail you nothing.'
'That's what you think,' Quick Ben replied, grinning. 'I am going to call upon you again, Hood.'
'And why should I answer? You've not heard a word I've—'
'I have, but consider this, Lord. The Barghast gods may be young and inexperienced, but that won't last. Besides, young gods are dangerous gods. Scar them now and they'll not forget the one who delivered the wound. You've offered to help, so you'd better do just that, Hood.' 'You dare threaten me—'
'Now who's not listening? I am not threatening you, I am warning you. And not just about the Barghast gods, either. Treach has found a worthy Mortal Sword—can you not feel him? Here I am, a thousand paces or more away from him, with at least twenty walls of stone between us, and I can feel the man. He's wrapped in the pain of a death—someone close, whose soul you now hold. He's no friend of yours, Hood, this Mortal Sword.'
'Do you not think I welcomed all that he has delivered? Treach promised me souls, and his human servant has provided them.'
'In other words, the Tiger of Summer and the Barghast gods have followed through on their sides of the deal. Now, you'd better do the same, and that includes relinquishing Talamandas when the time comes. Hold to the spirit of the agreement, Hood… unless you learned nothing from the mistakes you made with Dassem Ultor…'
The wizard felt seething rage burgeon from the Lord of Death, yet the god remained silent.
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