The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (1280 page)

No!

Ignoring her fist, even as it shot out for his head, Gesler sent his own blow – not into her face, but into the shoulder of the arm holding the dog.

The hardest punch he ever threw.

Crushing impacts, and then—

 

The soldier's punch spun Reverence round, the stunning power behind it shattering her shoulder, even as her own blow connected with his forehead, splitting it, snapping his head back and breaking the vertebrae of his neck.

He was dead before he struck the ground.

But her right arm was useless, and she sagged to one knee as the dog pulled itself free of her numbed hand.

No matter. I will kill it next. A moment – to push past this pain – to clear my thoughts.

 

Bent kicked free, stumbled away. Air filled his lungs. Life flooded back into him. In his mind, a red mist, yearning need, and nothing else. Head lifting, the beast turned back to his master's enemy.

But his master was lying so still, so emptied of all life.

The Wickan cattledog was not bred for its voice. It rarely barked, and never howled.

Yet the cry that now came from Bent could have awakened the wolf gods themselves.

And the white-skinned woman straightened then and laughed, slowly turning to face the beast.

Bent gathered his legs beneath him. The scarred nightmare of his muzzle peeled back, revealing misshapen, jagged fangs.

And then someone stepped past him.

 

Hood advanced on the Forkrul Assail even as she was turning towards the dog. When she saw him, she cried out, took a step back.

He closed.

Her left fist snapped out but he caught it one-handed, crushed both wrist bones.

She screamed.

The Jaghut then reversed his grip on that wrist and added his other hand. With a savage lunge he whirled her off her feet, slammed her body down on the stone.

Yelping, the dog backed away.

But Hood was not yet done with her. He swung her up again, spun and once more hammered her on to the stone. ‘
I have had
,' the Jaghut roared, and into the air she went again, and down once more, ‘
enough
' – with a sob the crushed, broken body was yanked from the ground again – ‘
of—

‘
your—

‘
justice!
'

 

As the stranger dropped the limp arm he still held, Bent crawled over to his master's side. He lay down, settling his heavy head across the man's chest.

The stranger looked at him, but said nothing.

Bent showed his teeth to make his claim clear.
He is mine.

 

The heavy thud of wings made Hood turn round – to see a Shi'gal Assassin descend to the Great Altar. Half crouched yet still towering over the Jaghut, it regarded him with cold eyes.

Hood glanced over at the heart of the Crippled God.

The Pure's ancestral chains were gone – destroyed with her own death. The heart was finally free, lying pulsing feebly in a pool of blood.

The smaller dog arrived, rushing over to worry at the torn face of the Forkrul Assail.

Grunting, Hood gestured towards the heart, and then turned away, to stare out over the lands to the west. Beyond the fields heaped with corpses, beyond the armies now gathered, virtually motionless with exhaustion. And now figures were climbing the stairs.

He heard the winged assassin lifting into the air and he knew that the creature now clutched that pathetic heart. The Shi'gal's shadow slipped over the Jaghut, and then he could see it, rising yet higher, winging towards the setting sun. Then his gaze fell once more, looking down on the devastation below.

I once sat upon the Throne of Death. I once greeted all who must in the end surrender, with skeletal hands, with a face of skin and bone hidden in darkness. How many battlefields have I walked? Must I walk one more?

But this time, they are the ones who have left.

Guardians of the Gate, will you tell all these, who come to you now, that it all meant nothing? Or have you something to give them? Something more than I ever could?

Others had arrived. He heard the wailing of a woman in grief.

And was reminded that there was, in truth, no sadder sound in all the worlds.

 

Bitterspring, Lera Epar of the Imass, lay propped up against cold bodies. Her wound had been bandaged, the flow of blood staunched. Around her the survivors were moving about, many simply wandering, while others stood motionless, heads lowered, scanning the ground for familiar faces.

She saw her kin. She saw Thel Akai. She saw K'Chain Che'Malle and Jaghut.

And she watched Onos Toolan leaving them all, stumbling northward, on to the stretch of flat land edging the walled port city that had once been the capital of the Forkrul Assail empire.

None of the Imass called after him. None asked where he was going. He was the First Sword, but so too was he a man.

She tilted her head back, studied the procession up the scalded stone stairs of the Spire. Prince Brys Beddict, Aranict, Queen Abrastal, Spax of the Gilk Barghast, the priest-woman of the K'Chain Che'Malle. The eleven remaining Jaghut were also making their way in that direction.

It is done, then. It must be done.

There is peace now. It must be peace – what other name for this terrible silence?

More rain began to fall, as the day's light slowly died, but this rain was pure and clear. She closed her eyes and let it rinse clean her face.

 

Onos Toolan walked past the city, out on to a barren headland of gorse and heather. The day's light was fast fading, but he was indifferent to that, and the ground underfoot, which had been soaked in blood, was now slick with simple rain.

The sun spread gold across the western horizon.

And then, in the distance, he saw three figures, and Onos Toolan's eyes narrowed. Like him, they seemed to be wandering. Like him, lost in the world. He drew closer.

The sword in his right hand, thick with gore but now showing its gleaming stone as the rain washed down its length, then fell to the ground, and he was running. His heart seemed to swell in his chest, seemed to grow too large for the bone cage holding it.

When they saw him, he heard childish cries, and now they were rushing towards him, the girl not carrying the boy winging ahead. All three were crying as they ran to meet him.

He fell to his knees to take them into his arms.

Words were tumbling from the twins. A saviour – an Awl warrior they had lost in the storm. A witch who had stolen them – their escape – and he had promised them he would find them, but he never did, and—

Lifting his gaze, still facing into the north, Onos Toolan then saw something else.

A vague shape that appeared to be sitting on the ground, curled over.

He rose, the girls reaching up to take his arms, the boy clinging to one shin. And then he moved forward, taking them all with him. When the boy complained, Storii picked him up in her arms. But Onos Toolan walked on, his steps coming faster and faster.

It was not possible. It was—

And then once more he was running.

She must have heard his approach, for she looked up and then over, and sat watching him rushing towards her.

He almost fell against her, his arms wrapping tight round her, lifting her with his embrace.

Hetan gasped. ‘Husband! I have missed you. I – I don't know where I am. I don't know what has happened…'

‘Nothing has happened,' he whispered, as the children screamed behind them.

‘Onos – my toes…'

‘What?'

‘I have someone else's toes, husband, I swear it—'

The children collided with them.

In the distance ahead, on a faint rise of land, Onos Toolan saw a figure seated on a horse. The darkness was taking the vision – dissolving it before his eyes.

And then he saw it raise one hand.

Straightening, Onos Toolan did the same.
I see you, my brother.

I see you.

When at last the light left the rise of land, the vision faded from his eyes.

BANASCHAR REMEMBERED HOW SHE HAD STOOD, THE SWORD IN ITS
scabbard lying on the map table before her. A single oil lamp had bled weak light and weaker shadows in the confines of the tent. The air was close and damp and it settled on things like newborn skin. A short time earlier, she had spoken to Lostara Yil with her back to that weapon, and Banaschar did not know if Tavore had used those words before and the question of that gnawed at him in strange, mysterious ways.

If they had been words oft repeated by the Adjunct, then what tragic truths did that reveal about her? But if she'd not said them before – not ever – then why had he heard them as if they were echoes, rebounding from some place far away and long ago?

Lostara had been to see Hanavat, to share in the gift of the son that had been born. The captain's eyes had been red from weeping and Banaschar understood the losses these women were now facing – the futures about to be torn away from them. He should not have been there. He should not have heard the Adjunct speak.

‘It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future's world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.

‘I am no mother, but I need only look at Hanavat to find the strength I need.'

The words were seared into his memory. In the voice of a childless woman, they left him more shaken, more distraught than he perhaps would otherwise have been.

Was this what they were fighting for? Only one among a host of reasons, surely – and in truth he could not quite see how this path they'd chosen could serve such aspirations. He did not doubt the nobility of the Adjunct's motivations, nor even the raw compassion so driving her to seek what was, in most eyes, virtually impossible. But there was something else here, something still hidden.

How many great compassions arose from a dark source? A private place of secret failings?

After she had sent Lostara away, Tavore had turned once more to the sword, and after a time Banaschar had stirred from his seat on the war-gear chest, risen and walked to her side.

‘I have stopped running, Adjunct.'

She was silent, her eyes fixed on the weapon in its battered, scratched scabbard.

‘I – I wish to thank you for that. Proof,' he added with a sour smile, ‘of your gifts of achieving the impossible.'

‘Priest,' she said, ‘the Chal'Managa – the Snake – that was a manifestation of D'rek, was it not?'

He found himself unable to meet her eyes, but managed a simple shrug. ‘I think so. For a time. Her children were lost. In her eyes, anyway. And that made her just as lost, I suppose. Together, they needed to find their way.'

‘Those details do not interest me,' she said, tone hardening. ‘Banaschar, tell me. What does she want? Why is she so determined to be here? Will she seek to oppose me?'

‘Why would you think I have answers to those questions, Adjunct?'

‘Because she never left you either. She needed at least one of her worshippers to live on, and for some unknown reason she chose you.'

He wanted to sit down again. Anywhere. Maybe even on the floor. ‘Adjunct, it is said that a worm finding itself in a puddle of ale will get drunk and then drown. I've often thought about that, and I admit, I've come to suspect that any puddle will do, and getting drunk has nothing to do with it. The damned things drown anyway. And yet, oddly enough, without any puddles the worms don't show up at all.'

‘We have left the new lake behind us, Priest. No one drowned, not even you.'

‘They're just children now.'

‘I know.'

Banaschar sighed, nodded down at the sword. ‘She will protect it, Adjunct.'

He heard her breath catch, and then, ‘But…that might well kill her.'

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

‘Are you certain of this, Demidrek?'

‘Demi— Gods below, Adjunct – are you a student of theology as well? Tayschrenn was—'

‘As the last surviving priest of the Worm of Autumn, the honorific belongs to you, Banaschar.'

‘Fine, but where are the gold-stitched robes and the gaudy rings?'

An aide entered behind them, coughed and then said, ‘Adjunct, three horses are saddled and waiting outside.'

‘Thank you.'

Suddenly Banaschar was chilled, his hands cold and stiff as if he'd left them in buckets of ice-water. ‘Adjunct – we do not know if the heart will be freed. If you—'

‘They will succeed, Demidrek. Your own god clearly believes that—'

‘Wrong.'

She was startled to silence.

‘It's simpler than that, Adjunct,' Banaschar went on, the words tasting of ashes. ‘D'rek doesn't care if the Crippled God is whole or not – if he's little more than a gibbering fool, or a gutted body with a huge hole in his chest, it doesn't matter. Whatever you have of him,
she wants it gone.
'

‘Then…' Her eyes narrowed.

‘Correct. Listen to her last Demidrek, because he knows when his god has lost all faith.'

‘They won't fail,' Tavore whispered, eyes once more on the sword.

‘And if the Perish betray them? What then?'

But she was shaking her head. ‘You don't understand.'

‘All our putative allies, Adjunct – are they strong enough? Wilful enough? Stubborn enough? When the bodies start falling, when the blood starts flowing – listen to me, Tavore – we have to weigh what we do – all that we do here – on the likelihood of their failing.'

‘I will not.'

‘Do you think I have no respect for Prince Brys Beddict – or Queen Abrastal? But Adjunct, they are striking where Akhrast Korvalain is at its strongest! Where the most powerful of the Forkrul Assail will be found – has it not once occurred to you that your allies won't be enough?'

But she was shaking her head, and Banaschar felt a flash of fury –
will you be nothing more than a child, hands over your ears because you don't like hearing what I have to say?

‘You do not yet understand, Demidrek. Nor, it seems, does your god.'

‘So tell me then. Explain it to me! How in Hood's name can you be so sure?'

‘The K'Chain—'

‘Adjunct – this is the last gasp of those damned lizards. It doesn't matter who
seems
to be commanding them either – the Matron commands. The Matron
must
command. If she sees too many of her children dying, she will withdraw. She has to! For the very survival of her kind!'

‘They are led by Gesler and Stormy, Banaschar.'

‘Gods below! Just how much faith have you placed in the efforts of two demoted marines?'

She met his eyes unflinching. ‘All that I need to. Now, you have indulged your moment of doubt, I trust. It is time to leave.'

He studied her for a moment longer, and then felt the tension draining from him. Managed a lopsided smile. ‘I am Demidrek to the Worm of Autumn, Adjunct. Perhaps she hears you through me. Perhaps, in the end, we can teach D'rek a lesson in faith.'

‘Better,' she snapped, picking up the sword.

They stepped outside.

The three horses were waiting, two saddles as yet unfilled. Slouched in the third one… Banaschar looked up, nodded in greeting. ‘Captain.'

‘Priest,' Fiddler replied.

He and the Adjunct swiftly mounted up – the scrawny animals shifting beneath them – and then the three of them swung away. Rode out from the Malazan encampment on the grassy plain.

Riding northwest.

 

There had been few words on that journey. They rode through the night, alternating between canter and trot. The western horizon was lit on occasion with lurid lightning, the flashes stained red, but overhead the Jade Strangers commanded the night sky, bright enough to expunge the stars, and the rolling grasslands around them bore a hue of healthy green the day's light would reveal as false. There had been no rain in this place for years, and the hoofs of their horses kicked up broken blades of grass like scythes.

When they came in sight of a lone rise that dominated all the others, the Adjunct angled her horse towards it. The lesser hills they crossed as they drew closer all bore signs of ancient camps – boulders left in ragged rings to mark where the sides of tipis had been anchored down. A thousand paces to the northwest the land dropped down into a broad, shallow valley, and its far slope was marked by long curving stretches of rocks and boulders, forming lines, blinds and runs for herd beasts now long gone, as vanished as the hunters who had preyed upon them.

Banaschar could feel the desolation of this place, like an itch under his skin, a crawling unease of mortality.
It all passes. All our ways of doing things, seeing things, all these lost ways of living. And yet…could I step back into that age, could I stand unseen among these people, I would be no different – no different inside…gods, could I explain this, even to myself, I might someday make a claim to wisdom.

Our worlds are so small. They only feel endless because our minds can gather thousands of them all at once. But if we stop moving, if we hold to one place, if we draw breath and look around…each one is the same. Barring a few details. Lost ages are neither more nor less profound than the one we live in right now. We think it's all some kind of forward momentum, endless leaving behind and reaching towards. But the truth is, wherever we find ourselves – with all its shiny gifts – we do little more than walk in circles.

The thought makes me want to weep.

They drew rein at the base of the hill. The sides were uneven, with projections of rust-stained bedrock pushing up through the thin skin of earth, the stone cracked and fissured by untold centuries of frost and heat. Closer to the summit was a crowded chaos of yellow-white dolomite boulders, their softer surfaces pecked and carved with otherworldly scenes and geometric patterns. Spikewood and some kind of prairie rose bushes, skeletal now and threatening with thorns, filled the spaces between the boulders.

The Adjunct dismounted, drawing off her leather gloves. ‘Captain.'

‘Aye,' he replied. ‘It will do.'

When Fiddler slipped down from his horse, Banaschar followed suit.

The Adjunct in the lead, they ascended the hillside. Now closer to the rotted outcrops, Banaschar saw bleached fragments of human bone trapped in cracks and crevasses, or heaped on ledges and in niches. On the narrow, winding tracks between the up-thrust bedrock, his boots crunched on beads made from polished nuts, and the ground was littered with the withered remnants of woven baskets.

Reaching the summit, they saw that the dolomite boulders formed a rough ring, perhaps ten paces across, with the centre area more or less level. When the Adjunct walked between two boulders and stepped into the clearing, her lead boot skidded and she lurched back. Righting herself, she looked down, and then crouched to pick something up.

Banaschar reached her side.

She was holding a spear point made from chipped flint, almost dagger length, and the priest now saw that the entire stretch of level ground was carpeted in thousands of similar spear points.

‘Left here, all unbroken,' muttered Banaschar, as Fiddler joined them. ‘Why, I wonder?'

The captain grunted. ‘Never could figure out holy sites. Still, those tools are beautifully made. Even an Imass would be impressed.'

‘Here is my guess,' Banaschar said. ‘They discovered a technology that was too successful. Ended up killing every animal they saw, until none were left. Why? Because we are all equally stupid, just as shortsighted, twenty thousand years ago or tomorrow, makes no difference. And the seduction of slaughter is like a fever. When they finally realized what they'd done, when they all began starving, they blamed their tools. And yet,' he glanced across at Fiddler, ‘even to this day, we think efficiency's a good thing.'

Fiddler sighed. ‘I sometimes think we only invented war when we ran out of animals to kill.'

Dropping the spear point – it broke in half when it struck the layer of its kin – the Adjunct stepped forward. Stone snapped with every stride. When she was at the very centre, she turned to face them.

‘This is not a matter of sacredness,' she said. ‘There is nothing worth worshipping in this place, except perhaps a past that can never again exist, and the name for that is
nostalgia.
I am not a believer in innocence, either.'