The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (586 page)

More sparks and Cutter glanced over to see Felisin Younger lighting her own pipe. The Daru ran a hand through his hair, squinting in the glare of the sun's light reflecting off the cliff-side. He dismounted. ‘All right,' he said, leading his horse. ‘Let's camp.'

Greyfrog bounded after Heboric, clambering over the rock like a bloated lizard.

‘What did he mean?' Felisin asked Cutter as they made their way along the trail. ‘Blood and Elder Gods – what are Elder Gods?'

‘Old ones, mostly forgotten ones. There's a temple dedicated to one in Darujhistan, must have stood there a thousand years. The god was named K'rul. The worshippers vanished long ago. But maybe that doesn't matter.'

 

Tugging her own horse along in their wake, Scillara stopped listening to Cutter as he went on. Elder gods, new gods, blood and wars, it made little difference to her. She just wanted to rest her legs, ease the aches in her lower back, and eat everything they still had in the saddle-packs.

Heboric Ghost Hands had saved her, drawn her back into life, and that had lodged something like mercy in her heart, stifling her inclination to dismiss the mad old man outright. He was haunted in truth, and such things could drag the sanest mind into chaos. But what value could be found in trying to make sense of all that he said?

The gods, old or new, did not belong to her. Nor did she belong to them. They played their ascendancy games as if the outcome mattered, as if they could change the hue of the sun, the voice of the wind, as if they could make forests grow in deserts and mothers love their children enough to keep them. The rules of mortal flesh were all that mattered, the need to breathe, to eat, drink, to find warmth in the cold of night. And, beyond these struggles, when the last breath had been taken inside, well, she would be in no condition to care about anything, about what happened next, who died, who was born, the cries of starving children and the vicious tyrants who starved them – these were, she understood, the simple legacies of indifference, the consequences of the expedient, and this would go on in the mortal realm until the last spark winked out, gods or no gods.

And she could make peace with that. To do otherwise would be to rail at the inevitable. To do otherwise would be to do as Heboric Ghost Hands did, and look where it took him. Into madness. The truth of futility was the hardest truth of all, and for those clear-eyed enough to see it, there was no escape.

She had been to oblivion, after all, and had returned, and so she knew there was nothing to fear in that dream-thick place.

True to Heboric's words, the rock shelter revealed the signs of countless generations of occupation. Boulder-lined hearths, red ochre paintings on the bleached walls, heaps of broken pottery and fire-split, charred bones. The clay floor of the hollow was packed hard as stone by countless passings. Nearby was the sound of trickling water, and Scillara saw Heboric crouched there, before a spring-fed pool, his glowing hands held over the placid, dark-mirror surface, as if hesitating to plunge them down into the coolness. White-winged butterflies danced in the air around him.

He journeyed with the gift of salvation. Something to do with the green glow of his hands, and the ghosts haunting him. Something to do with his past, and what he saw of the future. But he belonged to Treach now, Tiger of Summer.
No reconciliation
.

She spied a flat rock and walked over to sit, stretching out her weary legs, noting the bulge of her belly as she leaned back on her hands. Staring down upon it, cruel extrusion on what had once been a lithe form, forcing an expression of disgust on her features.

‘Are you with child?'

She glanced up, studied Cutter's face, amused at his dawning revelation as it widened his eyes and filled them with alarm.

‘Bad luck happens,' she said. Then, ‘I blame the gods.'

Through slitted eyes, in the bar of shadow cast by the great helm's ridged brow, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas studied the woman.

Harried aides and functionaries rushed past her and Leoman of the Flails, like leaves in a torrential flood.
And the two, standing there, like stones. Boulders. Like things…rooted, yes, rooted to bedrock.
Captain Dunsparrow, now Third Dunsparrow. A Malazan.

A woman, and Leoman…well, Leoman liked women.

So they stood, oh yes, discussing details, finalizing the preparations for the siege to come. The smell of sex a heady smugness enveloping the two like a poisonous fog. He, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas, who had ridden at Leoman's side through battle after battle, who had saved Leoman's life more than once, who had done all that had ever been asked of him, was loyal.
But she, she is desirable.

He told himself it made no difference. There had been other women. He'd had a few himself from time to time, although not the same ones as Leoman had known, of course. And, one and all, they had been nothing before the faith, withering into insignificance in the face of hard necessity. The voice of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic overwhelmed with its descending squall of destruction. This was as it should be.

Dunsparrow. Malazan, woman, distraction and possible corrupter. For Leoman of the Flails was hiding something from Corabb, and that had never before happened. Her fault. She was to blame. He would have to do something about her, but what?

He rose from the Falah'd's old throne, that Leoman had so contemptuously discarded, and walked to the wide, arched window overlooking the inner keep compound. More chaotic scurrying below, dust twisting in the sun-speared air. Beyond the palace wall, the bleached rooftops of Y'Ghatan, clothes drying in the sun, awnings rippling in the wind, domes and the cylindrical, flat-topped storage buildings called maethgara that housed in vast containers the olive oil for which the city and its outlying groves were renowned. In the very centre of the city rose the eight-sided, monstrously buttressed Temple of Scalissara, with its inner dome a mottled hump of remnant gold-leaf and green copper tiles liberally painted by bird droppings.

Scalissara, Matron Goddess of Olives, the city's own, cherished protector, now in abject disrepute. Too many conquests she could not withstand, too many gates battered down, walls pounded into rubble. While the city itself seemed capable of ever rising again from the dust of destruction, Scalissara had revealed a more finite number of possible resurrections. And, following the last conquest, she did not return to pre-eminence. Indeed, she did not return at all.

Now, the temple belonged to the Queen of Dreams.

A foreign goddess. Corabb scowled. Well, maybe not entirely foreign, but still…

The great statues of Scalissara that once rose from the corners of the city's outer fortifications, marble arms plump and fleshy, upraised, an uprooted olive tree in one hand, a newborn babe in the other, the umbilical cord wrapped snake-like up her forearm, then across and down, into her womb – the statues were gone. Destroyed in the last conflagration. Now, on three of the four corners, only the pedestal remained, bare feet broken clean above the ankles, and on the fourth even that was gone.

In the days of her supremacy, every foundling child was named after her if female, and, male or female, every abandoned child was taken into the temple to be fed, raised and schooled in the ways of the Cold Dream, a mysterious ritual celebrating a kind of divided spirit or something – the esoterica of cults were not among Corabb's intellectual strengths, but Leoman had been one such foundling child, and had spoken once or twice of such things, when wine and durhang loosened his tongue. Desire and necessity, the war within a mortal's spirit, this was at the heart of the Cold Dream. Corabb did not understand much of that. Leoman had lived but a few years under the guidance of the temple's priestesses, before his wild indulgences saw him expelled into the streets. And from the streets, out into the Odhans, to live among the desert tribes, and so to be forged by the sun and blowing sands of Raraku into the greatest warrior Seven Cities had ever beheld. At least in Corabb's lifetime. The Fala'dhan of the Holy Cities possessed grand champions in their day, of course, but they were not leaders, they had nothing of the wiles necessary for command. Besides, Dassem Ultor and his First Sword had cut them down, every one of them, and that was that.

Leoman had sealed Y'Ghatan, imprisoning within its new walls an emperor's ransom in olive oil. The maethgara were filled to bursting and the merchants and their guilds were shrieking their outrage, although less publicly since Leoman, in a fit of irritation, had drowned seven representatives in the Grand Maeth attached to the palace. Drowned them in their very own oil. Priests and witches were now petitioning for beakers of that fell amber liquid.

Dunsparrow had been given command of the city garrison, a mob of drunken, lazy thugs. The first tour of the barracks had revealed the military base as little more than a raucous harem, thick with smoke and pool-eyed, prepubescent boys and girls staggering about in a nightmare world of sick abuse and slavery. Thirty officers were executed that first day, the most senior one by Leoman's own hand. The children had been gathered up and redistributed among the temples of the city with the orders to heal the damage and purge what was possible of their memories. The garrison soldiers had been given the task of scouring clean every brick and tile of the barracks, and Dunsparrow had then begun drilling them to counter Malazan siege tactics, with which she seemed suspiciously familiar.

Corabb did not trust her. It was as simple as that. Why would she choose to fight against her own people? Only a criminal, an outlaw, would do that, and how trustworthy was an outlaw? No, there were likely horrific murders and betrayals crowding her sordid past, and now here she was, spreading her legs beneath Falah'd Leoman of the Flails, the known world's most feared warrior. He would have to watch her carefully, hand on the grip of his new cutlass, ready at a moment's notice to cut her clean in half, head to crotch, then across, diagonally, twice –
swish swish!
– right shoulder to left hip, left shoulder to right hip, and watch her part ways. A duty-bound execution, yes. At the first hint of betrayal.

‘What has so lightened your expression, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas?'

Stiffening, he turned, to find Dunsparrow standing at his side. ‘Third,' he said in sour grunt of greeting. ‘I was thinking, uh, of the blood and death to come.'

‘Leoman says you are the most reasonable of the lot. I now dread closer acquaintance with his other officers.'

‘You fear the siege to come?'

‘Of course I do. I know what Imperial Armies are capable of. There is said to be a High Mage among them, and that is the most disturbing news of all.'

‘The woman commanding them is simple-minded,' Corabb said. ‘No imagination, or none that she's bothered showing.'

‘And that is my point on that issue, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas.'

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘She's had no need, as yet, to display the extent of her imagination. Thus far, it's been easy for her. Little more than marching endless leagues in Leoman's dust.'

‘We are her match, and better,' said Corabb, straightening, chest swelling. ‘Our spears and swords have already drawn their foul Malazan blood, and shall do so again. More of it, much more.'

‘That blood,' she said after a moment, ‘is as red as yours, warrior.'

‘Is it? Seems to me,' he continued, looking out upon the city once more, ‘that betrayal is a dark taint upon it, to so easily twist one of its own into switching sides.'

‘As with, for example, the Red Blades?'

‘Corrupted fools!'

‘Of course. Yet…Seven Cities born, yes?'

‘They have severed their own roots and now flow on the Malazan tide.'

‘Nice image, Corabb. You do stumble on those often, don't you?'

‘You'd be amazed at the things I stumble on, woman. And I will tell you this, I guard Leoman's back, as I have always done. Nothing has changed that. Not you and your…your—'

‘Charms?'

‘Wiles. I have marked you, Third, and best you be mindful of that.'

‘Leoman has done well to have such a loyal friend.'

‘He shall lead the Apocalypse—'

‘Oh, he will at that.'

‘—for none but he is equal to such a thing. Y'Ghatan shall be a curse name in the Malazan Empire for all time—'

‘It already is.'

‘Yes, well, it shall be more so.'

‘What is it about this city, I wonder, that has driven so deep a knife into the empire? Why did the Claw act here against Dassem Ultor? Why not somewhere else? Somewhere less public, less risky? Oh yes, they made it seem like a wayward accident of battle, but no-one was fooled. I admit to a fascination with this city, indeed, it is what brought me here in the first place.'

‘You are an outlaw. The Empress has a price on your head.'

‘She does? Or are you just guessing?'

‘I am certain of it. You fight against your own people.'

‘My own people. Who are they, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas? The Malazan Empire has devoured many peoples, just as it has done those of Seven Cities. Now that the rebellion is over, are your kin now Malazan? No, that thought is incomprehensible to you, isn't it? I was born on Quon Tali, but the Malazan Empire was born on Malaz Island. My people too were conquered, just as yours have been.'

Corabb said nothing, too confused by her words. Malazans were…Malazans, dammit. All of a kind, no matter the hue of their skin, the tilt of their eyes, no matter all the variations within that Hood-cursed empire.
Malazans!
‘You will get no sympathy from me, Third.'

‘I did not ask for it.'

‘Good.'

‘Now, will you accompany us?'

Us?
Corabb slowly turned. Leoman stood a few paces behind them, arms crossed, leaning against the map-table. In his eyes a sly, amused expression.

‘We are going into the city,' Leoman said. ‘I wish to visit a certain temple.'

Corabb bowed. ‘I shall accompany you, sword at the ready, Warleader.'

Leoman's brows lifted fractionally. ‘Warleader. Is there no end of titles you will bestow upon me, Corabb?'

‘None, Hand of the Apocalypse.'

He flinched at that honorific, then turned away. A half-dozen officers stood waiting at one end of the long table, and to these warriors, Leoman said, ‘Begin the evacuation. And no undue violence! Kill every looter you catch, of course, but quietly. Ensure the protection of families and their possessions, including livestock—'

One of the warriors started. ‘But Commander, we shall need—'

‘No, we shall not. We have all we need. Besides, those animals are the only wealth most of the refugees will have to take with them. I want escorts on the west road.' He glanced over at Dunsparrow. ‘Have the messengers returned from Lothal?'

‘Yes, with delighted greetings from the Falah'd.'

‘Delighted that I am not marching on to his city, you mean.'

Dunsparrow shrugged.

‘And so he is dispatching troops to manage the road?'

‘He is, Leoman.'

Ah! She is already beyond titles!
Corabb struggled to keep the snarl from his voice. ‘He is Warleader to you, Third. Or Commander, or Falah'd—'

‘Enough,' cut in Leoman. ‘I am pleased enough with my own name to hear it used. From now on, friend Corabb, we shall dispense with titles when only officers are present.'

As I thought, the corruption has begun.
He glared at Dunsparrow, but she was paying him no attention, her eyes settled possessively on Leoman of the Flails. Corabb's own gaze narrowed.
Leoman the Fallen
.

 

No track, alley or street in Y'Ghatan ran straight for more than thirty paces. Laid upon successive foundations, rising, it was likely, from the very first maze-wound fortress city built here ten thousand years or more past, the pattern resembled a termite mound with each twisting passageway exposed to the sky, although in many cases that sky was no more than a slit, less than an arm's length wide, overhead.

To look upon Y'Ghatan, and to wander its corridors, was to step into antiquity. Cities, Leoman had once told Corabb, were born not of convenience, nor lordship, nor markets and their babbling merchants. Born not even of harvest and surplus. No, said Leoman, cities were born from the need for protection. Fortresses, that and nothing more, and all that followed did just that: follow. And so, cities were always walled, and indeed, walls were often all that remained of the oldest ones.

And this was why, Leoman had explained, a city would always build upon the bones of its forebears, for this lifted its walls yet higher, and made of the place a more formidable protection. It was the marauding tribes, he had said, laughing, that forced the birth of cities, of the very cities capable of defying them and, ultimately, conquering them. Thus did civilization arise from savagery.

All very well, Corabb mused as they walked towards this city's heart, and possibly even true, but already he longed for the open lands of the Odhans, the desert's sweet whispering wind, the sultry heat that could bake a man's brain inside his helmet until he dreamed raving that he was being pursued by herds of fat aunts and leathery grandmothers who liked to pinch cheeks.