Return of the Crimson Guard (77 page)

Ho started, shocked. ‘Kill them? How in Togg's teats is he to manage that? Talk them to death?’

A cackle. ‘Ha! That's a good one. I don't know how. But he does intend to introduce them to our guest down below.’

Introduce them? Sweet Soliel, no. Who knows what might become of that?
‘I'll get my things. Many thanks, Su.’

‘Oh, I'm coming with you.’

At the tunnel he paused, pulled on his jerkin and sandals. ‘I'm rather in a hurry.’

The Wickan witch was tapping her way along the uneven tunnel. She waved a hand contemptuously. ‘Faugh! There's no rush. You know how these things go. Everyone has a stick to throw on to the fire. They'll be talking through the night watch.’

They came to the broad main gallery and Ho was surprised to find it nearly deserted. ‘Where is everyone?’

Su jabbed her stick to the beaten earth floor. ‘Didn't I just tell you, fool? They're down below!’

Slowly walking along, down a side gallery, Ho tucked his hands into the sash he used to hold up his old worn pantaloons, so loose after he'd lost so much weight. ‘And no one came to tell me …’

‘I
came! Thank you very much!’

‘Other than you, Su.’

She leaned heavily on her stick, a bit out of breath. ‘Poor Ho. You really didn't think that you could simply stand aside, did you? Yath has been whispering against you for years! Undermining you constantly! Haven't you noticed?’

A shrug. ‘No …’

‘Bah! You blind idiot! Not much of an infighter, are you …’ She sighed. ‘Ah well, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I suppose I'll just have to work with the material the Gods have mockingly cursed me with.’

Ho stopped short. ‘Your innuendo and vague pronouncements might impress the others, Su, but I have no time for them.’ The witch caught up with him, peered aside.

‘Oho! Some spirit! There's one segment of spine left in there after all!’

Ho refrained from commenting that she, of all people, should not talk about spines. He collected a full lamp from a nearby alcove and lit it from another, then crossed to a steeply sloped side tunnel complete with guide-rope. He led while Su huffed and puffed her way down behind. Small stones they kicked loose bounced and rattled down the slope until so distant their noise was lost in the dark. Hot, humid air wafted up the tunnel in a steady stream, licking at the lamp flame. ‘All right,’ Ho finally announced, ‘what did you mean by that comment?’

A cackle from the dark above. ‘Ha! Takes you longer than anyone to admit you're human just like the rest of us, doesn't it? Makes perfect sense! Ha!’

Ho slowed his descent.
Was the hag merely casting darts into the dark? Yet every one falls just that degree of uncomfortably close
… ‘I've no idea what you're talking about.’

The stick echoed from the dirt behind. ‘Oh, come, come! The ore inhibits any new castings but the old remain! I…
smell
… you, Ho.’

Queen, no.
He froze. ‘Unkind, Su. Precious little water down here, after all.’

The crone's long face loomed into the guttering lamplight. The flame danced in her black eyes; she leered conspiratorially. ‘I smell the old ritual on you, magus. The forbidden one. How did you manage it? Everyone thinks it lost.’

And so it must remain.
He pulled away, descending. ‘I've no idea what you're talking about.’

‘Very well! Be that way. It seems trust is in as short a supply down here as initiative. I don't begrudge you your caution. But you could end the farce below should you wish. Just bring forth a fraction of what sleeps within, magus. I believe it is possible despite the ore.’

Possible! Aye, it may well be possible – bringing madness with it! And I have a strong aversion to madness, witch. Very strong.

*

After a long gentle curve and another long descent the narrow tunnel met a natural cavern, its floor levelled by dirt that Ho knew had been excavated from elsewhere further within. Its walls rose serried like the teeth of a comb, climbing in teardrop shape to an apex lost in the dark. A knot of men and women, a selection of the Pit's inmates, filled the floor. Lamps on tall poles lit the gathering in a dim gold light. Without slowing down Su pushed her way through the crowd, elbows jabbing and stick poking. ‘Out of the way, fools!’ she hissed.

Ho, following, squeezed past, nodding to inmates he knew who glared, holding shins and sides. ‘Sorry.’

Broaching the front he found the two newcomers, Treat and Grief, surrounded by a gang of the more hale men armed with spears. Both looked healthy and, if anything, bored by the proceedings. Grief especially radiated contempt, standing with arms crossed and mouth crooked as if ready to laugh. Yath and Sessin stood nearby. Catching sight of Ho, Yath pointed his staff. ‘Here he is! Of course he has come. Their Malazan confederate. We'll deal with you next, Ho.’

‘Confederate?’

‘You have been seen on many occasions secretly meeting with these two spies. Do you deny it?’

Ho scratched his scalp, shrugging. ‘Well, we've talked, yes. I've talked with everyone here at one time or another.’

‘Brilliant,’ Su muttered under her breath. ‘What are you doing here, Yath?’ she barked. ‘Is this a court? What are the charges? Under whose authority are you empowered?’

Yath stamped his staff on the soft ground. ‘Quiet, witch!’

‘Or you will deal with me later also? When will it end? How many will you kill?’

Behind his full beard Yath smiled and Ho realized that Su had overplayed her hand. He opened his arms, gesturing broadly. ‘No one here is going to die. What do you think I am? We are all civilized people down here – a description I extend even to you, Su. I am merely planning a small demonstration. A little show for our new friends meant to impress upon them the importance of our work.’ Yath glanced about the crowd entreatingly. ‘It is, after all, what they have come for. Is it not?’

From the nods and shouts of agreement, Ho understood that, as Su said, he had been withdrawn from the community for far too long now. How could their small brotherhood of scholars and mages have come to this? Singling out ‘spies’ for punishment; arming themselves; sowing fear? Those who would speak against Yath were obviously too disgusted to even bother coming down.
Like himself.

‘We don't know what might happen, Yath. It's too dangerous.’

‘Silence! You have discredited yourself, Ho. Plotting with your fellow Malazans.’

‘Malazan? I'm from Li Heng, Yath.’

‘Exactly. From the very centre of the Malazan Empire.’ Yath waved the spearmen to move the prisoners forward. Sessin stepped up between Yath and the two, his hands twitching at his sides. Ho could only stare; the ignorance the man's statement revealed was stunning. How can one possibly reason one's way across such a gap?

‘Yath,’ Ho called, following with the crowd, ‘you know about as much about Malaz and Quon Tali as I know about Seven Cities! Many on the continent consider the Malazans occupiers just as you do!’ But the tall Seven Cities priest was no longer listening.

Amid the spearmen, Grief peered back to Ho. ‘What's gonna happen?’

‘Quiet,’ warned a number of the guards. Grief ignored them.

‘They're just going to … show you something. It's nothing physically threatening.’

The man's mouth pulled down as he glanced away, considering. ‘I'm kinda curious myself.’

Su, Ho noted, was watching the two with keen interest, her sharp eyes probing. After a moment she let out a cawing laugh. She edged her head up to Ho and smiled as before, touched the side of her hooked nose, winked.

‘What is it?’ he murmured.

‘Something else I smell. Took me a while to place it. Was a long time ago at the Council of All Clans.’

‘What?’

‘You'll see. You and Yath, I think. Ha!’

Ho snorted. ‘More of your games.’

‘Ha!’

The path led away to a crack in the stone wall of the cavern. Beaten earth steps led down through the narrow gap to another cavern, this one excavated from the layered, seared sedimentary stone that carried the Otataral ore. The spearmen pushed Treat and Grief to the fore where yath and Sessin waited. Beyond them, a walkway of earth climbed the far wall that appeared made of some smooth and glassy rock.

Grief glanced around. ‘This is it?’

Yath had at his mouth a grin of hungry triumph. He urged, ‘Look more closely. Raise the lights!’

Poles were taken down, lamps affixed, and re-straightened. The light blossomed, revealing a wall of dark green stone that held hidden depths where reflections glimmered. Ho watched as, stage by stage, slow realization took hold of Grief. ‘No – it can't be …’ the fellow murmured. His gaze went to the bulge excavated at the base, the slope up to a gaping cave opening, the jutting cliff above this cut off by the roof of the cavern. Of all the forgotten Gods,‘ he said. He looked to Yath, open unguarded wonder upon his dark Napan face. ‘A jade giant … I'd read of them, of course. But this …’ He shook his head, staggered beyond words.

Ho shared the man's astonishment; no matter how often he came down to look it stupefied, and humbled, every time. The oval cave, taller than two men, now transformed itself in his mind's eye to a mouth, yawning – or screaming. The bulge below, the chin. One then scaled this lower half of the face to the upper, then face to head, head to neck, and … and that was as far as Ho's imagination could carry the exercise. It became absurd. Unimaginable. How could such a thing possibly be constructed? Would it not collapse under its own colossal weight?

But of course, they come from elsewhere. Yet would not such a Realm, no matter how alien, possess its own properties, its own set of physical laws which could not be contravened? It was too much for Ho – as it had proved for this entire battalion of professional mages, scholars and theurgical researchers who had made the mystery their primary fixation for the last three decades.

All these revelations were lost on Treat who nudged Grief. ‘What is it?’

Grief just shrugged. ‘A fucking big statue.’

‘Come, come,’ urged Yath, starting up the walkway. ‘Come for a better look.’ He waved Grief to follow. The man's eyes were narrow in open distrust, but he clearly could not turn down such an opportunity.
One of us after all.
Ho decided.

Grief followed the Seven Cities priest up the walkway of beaten dirt. It ended at the edge of the dark cave, the open gaping mouth. Yath gestured within and backed away. Keeping a wary eye on the priest, Grief leant forward, cast a quick glance in and flinched back, stunned. ‘A throat!’ he called down. ‘They carved a throat!’

Ho, his eyes closed, nodded, almost despairing. Yes, a throat. And none of our sounding stones have yet to reach bottom. There is not enough rope in all the island to descend the innards of this statue. And so the mystery only confounds us further: as there is a throat, what of a stomach? Intestines? Ought one continue deeper into this
route of inquiry? Perhaps not. What would a giant statue of jade eat? More reasonably, it would have no need for sustenance. Why then a throat?

‘And what do you hear?’ Yath urged, a hand clutched at his own throat, his eyes feverishly bright.

Grief cocked his head, crouched, silent for a time. Everyone below stilled as well. ‘I hear a breeze … sighing, or whispering … like the wind through a forest in the fall.’

‘He's a strong one,’ Su whispered to Ho. Edging her head sideways, she glanced up. ‘What did you hear?’

‘Screams of the insane. You?’

She dropped her head. ‘Inconsolable weeping.’

Yath now spread both his hands over the carved jade face, his long fingers splayed. He pressed the side of his own face to it, his mouth moving silently.