The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (862 page)

Cowl.

And with that name, oh, how the rage flared in those draconean eyes.

There had begun, then, a hunt. The kind only a fool would choose to join. Rake, seeking out the deadliest wizard among the Crimson Guard. At one point, Spinnock remembered standing on the high ledge on the face of Moon's Spawn, watching the mage-storms fill half the northern night sky. Flashes, the knight charge of thunder through a smoke-wreathed sky. He had wondered, then, if the world was on the very edge of being torn apart, and from the depths of his soul had risen a twisted, malignant thought.
Again…

When great powers strode on to the field of battle, things had a way of getting out of hand.

Had it been Cowl who first blinked? Bowing out, yielding ground, fleeing?

Or had it been the Son of Darkness?

Spinnock doubted he would ever find out. Such questions were not asked of Anomander Rake. Some time later, it was discovered by the Tiste Andii, Cowl had resurfaced, this time in Darujhistan. Causing more trouble. His stay there had been blessedly brief.

Another vision of Silanah, laying the trap for the Jaghut Tyrant in the Gadrobi Hills. More wounds, more ferocious magic. Wheeling over the ravaged plain. Five Soletaken Tiste Andii whirling round her like crows escorting an eagle.

Perhaps he was alone, Spinnock reflected, in his unease with the alliance between the Tiste Andii and the Eleint. There had been a time, after all, when Anomander Rake had warred against the pure-blood dragons. When such creatures broke loose from their long-standing servitude to K'rul; when they had sought to grasp power for themselves. The motivation for Rake's opposition to them was, typically, obscure. Silanah's arrival – much later – was yet another event shrouded in mystery.

No, Spinnock Durav was far from thrilled by Silanah's bloodless regard.

He approached the arched entrance to the New Palace, ascending the flagstone ramp. There were no guards standing outside. There never were. Pushing open one of the twin doors, he strode inside. Before him, a buttressed corridor that humans would find unnaturally narrow. Twenty paces in, another archway, opening out into a spacious domed chamber with a floor of polished blackwood inset with the twenty-eight spiralling
terondai
of Mother Dark, all in black silver. The inside of the dome overhead was a mirror image. This homage to the goddess who had turned away was, to Spinnock's mind, extraordinary; appallingly out of place.

Oh, sages might well debate who had done the turning away back then, but none would dismiss the terrible vastness of the schism. Was this some belated effort at healing the ancient wound? Spinnock found that notion unfathomable. And yet, Anomander Rake himself had commissioned the
terondai
, the Invisible Sun and its whirling, wild rays of onyx flame.

If Kurald Galain had a heart in this realm's manifestation of the warren, it was here, in this chamber. Yet he felt no presence, no ghostly breath of power, as he made his way across the floor to the curling bone-white staircase. Just beyond the turn above wavered a pool of lantern light.

Two human servants were scrubbing the alabaster steps. At his arrival they ducked away.

‘Mind the wet,' one muttered.

‘I'm surprised,' Spinnock said as he edged past, ‘there's need to clean these at all. There are all of fifteen people living in this palace.'

‘You've that, sir,' the man replied, nodding.

The Tiste Andii paused and glanced back. ‘Then why are you bothering? I can hardly believe the castellan set you upon this task.'

‘No sir, he never did. We was just, er, bored.'

After a bemused moment, Spinnock resumed his ascent. These shortlived creatures baffled him.

The journey to the chambers where dwelt the Son of Darkness was a lengthy traverse made in solitude. Echoing corridors, unlocked, unguarded doors. The castellan's modest collection of scribes and sundry bureaucrats worked in offices on the main floor; kitchen staff, clothes-scrubbers and wringers, hearth-keepers and taper-lighters, all lived and worked in the lower levels. Here, on the higher floors, darkness ruled a realm virtually unoccupied.

Reaching the elongated room that faced the Nightwater, Spinnock Durav found his lord.

Facing the crystal window that ran the entire length of the Nightwater wall, his long silver-white hair was faintly luminous in the muted, refracted light cast into the room by the faceted quartz. The sword Dragnipur was nowhere in sight.

Three steps into the chamber and Spinnock halted.

Without turning, Anomander Rake said, ‘The game, Spinnock?'

‘You won again, Lord. But it was close.'

‘The Gate?'

Spinnock smiled wryly. ‘When all else seems lost…'

Perhaps Anomander Rake nodded at that, or his gaze, fixed somewhere out on the waves of Nightwater, shifted downward to something closer by. A fisher boat, or the crest of some leviathan rising momentarily from the abyss. Either way, the sigh that followed was audible. ‘Spinnock, old friend, it is good that you have returned.'

‘Thank you, Lord. I, too, am pleased to see an end to my wandering.'

‘Wandering? Yes, I imagine you might have seen it that way.'

‘You sent me to a continent, Lord. Discovering the myriad truths upon it necessitated…fair wandering.'

‘I have thought long on the details of your tale, Spinnock Durav.' Still Rake did not turn round. ‘Yielding a single question. Must I journey there?'

Spinnock frowned. ‘Assail? Lord, the situation there…'

‘Yes, I understand.' At last, the Son of Darkness slowly swung about, and it seemed his eyes had stolen something from the crystal window, flaring then dimming like a memory. ‘Soon, then.'

‘Lord, on my last day, a league from the sea…'

‘Yes?'

‘I lost count of those I killed to reach that desolate strand. Lord, by the time I waded into the deep, enough to vanish beneath the waves, the very bay was crimson. That I lived at all in the face of that is—'

‘Unsurprising,' Anomander Rake cut in with a faint smile, ‘as far as your Lord is concerned.' The smile faded. ‘Ah, but I have sorely abused your skills, friend.'

Spinnock could not help but cock his head and say, ‘And so, I am given leave to wield soldiers of wood and stone on a wine-stained table? Day after day, my muscles growing soft, the ambition draining away.'

‘Is this what you call a well-earned rest?'

‘Some nights are worse than others, Lord.'

‘To hear you speak of ambition, Spinnock, recalls to my mind another place, long, long ago. You and I…'

‘Where I learned, at last,' Spinnock said, with no bitterness at all, ‘my destiny.'

‘Unseen by anyone. Deeds unwitnessed. Heroic efforts earning naught but one man's gratitude.'

‘A weapon must be used, Lord, lest it rust.'

‘A weapon overused, Spinnock, grows blunt, notched.'

To that, the burly Tiste Andii bowed. ‘Perhaps, then, Lord, such a weapon must be put away. A new one found.'

‘That time is yet to arrive, Spinnock Durav.'

Spinnock bowed again. ‘There is, in my opinion, Lord, no time in the foreseeable future when you must journey to Assail. The madness there seems quite…self-contained.'

Anomander Rake studied Spinnock's face for a time, then nodded. ‘Play on, my friend. See the king through. Until…' and he turned once more back to the crystal window.

There was no need to voice the completion of that sentence, Spinnock well knew. He bowed a third time, then walked from the chamber, closing the door behind him.

Endest Silann was slowly hobbling up the corridor. At Spinnock's appearance the old castellan glanced up. ‘Ah,' he said, ‘is our Lord within?'

‘He is.'

The elder Tiste Andii's answering smile was no gift to Spinnock, so strained was it, a thing of sorrow and shame. And while perhaps Endest had earned the right to the first sentiment – a once powerful mage now broken – he had not to the second. Yet what could Spinnock say that might ease that burden? Nothing that would not sound trite. Perhaps something more…acerbic, something to challenge that self-pity—

‘I must speak to him,' Endest said, reaching for the door.

‘He will welcome that,' Spinnock managed.

Again the smile. ‘I am sure.' A pause, a glance up into Spinnock's eyes. ‘I have great news.'

‘Yes?'

Endest Silann lifted the latch. ‘Yes. I have found a new supplier of cadaver eels.'

 

‘Lord of this, Son of that, it's no matter, izzit?' The man peeled the last of the rind from the fruit with his thumb-knife, then flung it out on to the cobbles. ‘Point is,' he continued to his companions, ‘he ain't even human, is he? Just another of 'em hoary black-skinned demons, as dead-eyed as all the rest.'

‘Big on husking the world, aren't ya?' the second man at the table said, winking across at the third man, who'd yet to say a thing.

‘Big on lotsa things, you better believe it,' the first man muttered, now cutting slices of the fruit and lifting each one to his mouth balanced on the blade.

The waiter drew close at that moment to edge up the wick in the lantern on the table, then vanished into the gloom once more.

The three were seated at one of the new street-side restaurants, although ‘restaurant' was perhaps too noble a word for this rough line of tables and unmatched wooden chairs. The kitchen was little more than a converted cart and a stretch of canvas roof beneath which a family laboured round a grill that had once been a horse trough.

Of the four tables, three were occupied. All humans – the Tiste Andii were not wont to take meals in public, much less engage in idle chatter over steaming mugs of Bastion kelyk, a pungent brew growing in popularity in Black Coral.

‘You like to talk,' the second man prodded, reaching for his cup. ‘But words never dug a ditch.'

‘I ain't alone in being in the right about this,' the first man retorted. ‘Ain't alone at all. It's plain that if the Lord Son was dead and gone, all this damned darkness would go away, an' we'd be back to normal wi' day 'n' night again.'

‘No guarantees of that,' the third man said, his tone that of someone half asleep.

‘It's plain, I said. Plain, an' if you can't see that, it's your problem, not ours.'

‘Ours?'

‘Aye, just that.'

‘Plan on sticking that rind-snicker through his heart, then?'

The second man grunted a laugh.

‘They may live long,' the first man said in a low grumble, ‘but they bleed like anybody else.'

‘Don't tell me,' the third man said, fighting a yawn, ‘you're the mastermind behind what you're talking about, Bucch.'

‘Not me,' the first man, Bucch, allowed, ‘but I was among the first t'give my word an' swear on it.'

‘So who is?'

‘Can't say. Don't know. That's how they organize these things.'

The second man was now scratching the stubble on his jaw. ‘Y'know,' he ventured, ‘it's not like there's a million of 'em, is it? Why, half the adults among us was soldiers in the Domin, or even before. And nobody took our weapons or armour, did they?'

‘Bigger fools them,' Bucch said, nodding. ‘Arrogance like that, they should pay for, I say.'

‘When's the next meeting?' the second man asked.

The third man stirred from his slouch on his chair. ‘We were just off for that, Harak. You want to come along?'

As the three men rose and walked off, Seerdomin finished the last of his kelyk, waited another half-dozen heartbeats, and then rose, drawing his cloak round him, even as he reached beneath it and loosened the sword in its scabbard.

He paused, then, and formally faced north. Closing his eyes, he spoke a soft prayer.

Then, walking with a careless stride, he set off, more or less in the direction the three men were taking.

 

High on the tower, a red-scaled dragon's eyes looked down upon all, facets reflecting scenes from every street, every alley, the flurry of activity in the markets, the women and children appearing on flat rooftops to hang laundry, figures wandering here and there between buildings. In those eyes, the city seethed.

Somewhere, beyond Night, the sun unleashed a morning of brazen, heady heat. It gave form to the smoke of hearth fires in the makeshift camps alongside the beaten tracks wending down from the north, until the pilgrims emerged to form an unbroken line on the trails, and then it lit into bright gold a serpent of dust that rode the winds all the way to the Great Barrow.

The destitute among them carried shiny shells collected from shoreline and tidal pools, or polished stones or nuggets of raw copper. The better off carried jewellery, gem-studded scabbards, strips of rare silk, Delantine linen, Daru councils of silver and gold, loot collected from corpses on battlefields, locks of hair from revered relatives and imagined heroes, or any of countless other items of value. Now within a day's march of the Great Barrow, the threat of bandits and thieves had vanished, and the pilgrims sang as they walked towards the vast, descended cloud of darkness to the south.

Beneath that enormous barrow of treasure, they all knew, lay the mortal remains of the Redeemer.

Protected for ever more by Night and its grim, silent sentinels.

The serpent of dust journeyed, then, to a place of salvation.

Among the Rhivi of North Genabackis, there was a saying.
A man who stirs awake the serpent is a man without fear. A man without fear has forgotten the rules of life.

Silanah heard their songs and prayers.

And she watched.

Sometimes, mortals did indeed forget. Sometimes, mortals needed…reminding.

On this morning, so fair and fresh with the warm breeze coming down off the lake, there were arrivals. Was a city a living thing? Did it possess eyes? Could its senses be lit awake by the touch of footsteps? Did Darujhistan, on that fine morning, look in turn upon those who set their gazes upon it? Arrivals, grand and modest, footsteps less than a whisper, whilst others trembled to the very bones of the Sleeping Goddess. Were such things the beat of the city's heart?

But no, cities did not possess eyes, or any other senses. Cut stone and hardened plaster, wood beams and corniced façades, walled gardens and quiescent pools beneath trickling fountains, all was insensate to the weathering traffic of its denizens. A city could know no hunger, could not rise from sleep, nor even twist uneasy in its grave.

Leave such things, then, to a short rotund man, seated at a table at the back of the Phoenix Inn, in the midst of an expansive breakfast – to pause with a mouth crammed full of pastry and spiced apple, to suddenly choke. Eyes bulging, face flushing scarlet, then launching a spray of pie across the table, into the face of a regretfully hungover Meese, who, now wearing the very pie she had baked the day before, simply lifted her bleary gaze and settled a basilisk regard upon the hacking, wheezing man opposite her.

If words were necessary, then, she would have used them.

The man coughed on, tears streaming from his eyes.

Sulty arrived with a cloth and began wiping, gently, the mess from a motionless, almost statuesque Meese.

 

On the narrow, sloped street to the right of the entrance to Quip's Bar, the detritus of last night's revelry skirled into the air on a rush of wild wind. Where a moment before there had been no traffic of any sort on the cobbled track, now there were screaming, froth-streaked horses, hoofs cracking like iron mallets on the uneven stone. Horses – two, four, six – and behind them, in a half-sideways rattling skid, an enormous carriage, its back end crashing into the face of a building in a shattering explosion of plaster, awning and window casement. Figures flew from the careering monstrosity as it tilted, almost tipping, then righted itself with the sound of a house falling over. Bodies were thumping on to the street, rolling desperately to avoid the man-high wheels.

The horses plunged on, dragging the contraption some further distance down the slope, trailing broken pieces, plaster fragments and other more unsightly things, before the animals managed to slow, then halt, the momentum, aided in no small part by a sudden clenching of wooden brakes upon all six wheels.

Perched atop the carriage, the driver was thrown forward, sailing through the air well above the tossing heads of the horses, landing in a rubbish cart almost buried in the fête's leavings. This refuse probably saved his life, although, as all grew still once more, only the soles of his boots were visible, temporarily motionless as befitted an unconscious man.

Strewn in the carriage's wake, amidst mundane detritus, were human remains in various stages of decay; some plump with rotting flesh, others mere skin stretched over bone. A few of these still twitched or groped aimlessly on the cobbles, like the plucked limbs of insects. Jammed into the partly crushed wall of the shop the conveyance's rear right-side corner had clipped was a corpse's head, driven so deep as to leave visible but one eye, a cheek and one side of the jaw. The eye rolled ponderously. The mouth twitched, as if words were struggling to escape, then curled in an odd smile.

Those more complete figures, who had been thrown in various directions, were now slowly picking themselves up, or, in the case of two of them, not moving at all – and by the twist of limbs and neck it was clear that never again would their unfortunate owners move of their own accord, not even to draw breath.

From a window on the second level of a tenement, an old woman leaned out for a brief glance down on the carnage below, then retreated, hands snapping closed the wooden shutters.

Clattering sounds came from within the partly ruined shop, then a muted shriek that was not repeated within the range of human hearing, although in the next street over a dog began howling.

The carriage door squealed open, swung once on its hinges, then fell off, landing with a rattle on the cobbles.

On her hands and knees fifteen paces away, Shareholder Faint lifted her aching head and gingerly turned it towards the carriage, in time to see Master Quell lunge into view, tumbling like a Rhivi doll on to the street. Smoke drifted out in his wake.

Closer to hand, Reccanto Ilk stood, reeling, blinking stupidly around before his eyes lit on the battered sign above the door to Quip's Bar. He staggered in that direction.

Faint pushed herself upright, brushed dust from her meat-spattered clothes, and scowled as scales of armour clinked down like coins on to the stones. From one such breach in her hauberk she prised loose a taloned finger, which she peered at for a moment, then tossed aside as she set out after Reccanto.

Before she reached the door she was joined by Sweetest Sufferance, the short, plump woman waddling but determined none the less as both her small hands reached out for the taproom's door.

From the rubbish cart, Glanno Tarp was digging himself free.

Master Quell, on his hands and knees, looked up, then said, ‘This isn't our street.'

Ducking into the gloom of Quip's Bar, Faint paused briefly until she heard a commotion at the far end, where Reccanto had collapsed into a chair, one arm sweeping someone's leavings from the table. Sweetest Sufferance dragged up another chair and thumped down on it.

The three drunks who were the other customers watched Faint walk across the room, each of them earning a scowl from her.

Quip Younger – whose father had opened this place in a fit of ambition and optimism that had lasted about a week – was shambling over from the bar the same way his old man used to, and reached the table the same time as Faint.

No one spoke.

The keep frowned, then turned round and made his way back to the bar.

Master Quell arrived, along with Glanno Tarp, still stinking of refuse.

Moments later, the four shareholders and one High Mage navigator of the Trygalle Trade Guild sat round the table. No exchange of glances. No words.

Quip Younger – who had once loved Faint, long before anyone ever heard of the Trygalle Trade Guild and long before she hooked up with this mad lot – delivered five tankards and the first pitcher of ale.

Five trembling hands reached for those tankards, gripping them tight.

Quip hesitated; then, rolling his eyes, he lifted the pitcher and began pouring out the sour, cheap brew.

 

Kruppe took a mouthful of the dark magenta wine – a council a bottle, no less – and swirled it in his mouth until all the various bits of pie were dislodged from the innumerable crevasses between his teeth, whereupon he leaned to one side and spat on to the floor. ‘Ah.' He smiled across at Meese. ‘Much better, yes?'

‘I'll take payment for that bottle right now,' she said. ‘That way I can leave before I have to witness one more abuse of such an exquisite vintage.'

‘Why, has Kruppe's credit so swiftly vanished? Decided entirely upon an untoward breaking of fast this particular morning?'

‘It's the insults, you fat pig, piled one on another until it feels I'm drowning in offal.' She bared her teeth. ‘Offal in a red waistcoat.'

‘Aaii, vicious jab. Kruppe is struck to the heart…and,' he added, reaching once more for the dusty bottle, ‘has no choice but to loosen said constricture of the soul, with yet another tender mouthful.'

Meese leaned forward. ‘If you spit that one out, Kruppe, I will wring your neck.'

He hastily swallowed, then gasped. ‘Kruppe very nearly choked once more. Such a morning! Portents and pastry, wails and wine!'

Heavy steps descending from the upper floor.

‘Ah, here comes yon Malazan saviour. Mallet, dear friend of Kruppe, will Murillio – sweet Prince of Disenchantment – recover to his fullest self? Come, join me in this passing ferment. Meese, sweet lass, will you not find Mallet a goblet?'

Her eyes narrowed into thin slits. ‘How about one for yourself, Kruppe?'

‘Delightful suggestion.' Kruppe wiped at the bottle's mouth with one grimy sleeve, then beamed across at her.

She rose, stalked off.

The Malazan healer sat down with a heavy sigh, closed his eyes and rubbed vigorously at his round, pallid face, then looked round the bar. ‘Where is everyone?'

‘Your companion of the night just past Kruppe has sent home, with the assurance that your self is safe from all harm. 'Tis dawn, friend, or rather morning's fresh stumping on dawn's gilt heels. Ships draw in alongside berths, gangplanks clatter and thump to form momentous bridges from one world to the next. Roads take sudden turns and out trundle macabre mechanisms scattering bits of flesh like dark seeds of doom! Hooded eyes scan strangers, shrikes cry out above the lake's steaming flats, dogs scratch vigorously behind the ears – ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets' treasured value – there, now, let us sit back and watch, with pleased eyes, as Meese fills our cups to brimming glory. Why—'

‘For Hood's sake,' Mallet cut in, ‘it's too early for your company, Kruppe. Let me drink this wine and then escape with my sanity, I beg you.'

‘Why, friend Mallet, we await your assessment of Murillio's physical state.'

‘He'll live. But no dancing for a week or two.' He hesitated, frowning down into his goblet, as if surprised to find it suddenly empty once more. ‘Assuming he comes out of his funk, that is. A mired mind can slow the body's recovery. Can reverse it, in fact.'

‘Fret not over Murillio's small but precise mind, friend,' Kruppe said. ‘Such matters ever find solution through Kruppe's wise ministrations. Does Coll remain at bedside?'

Mallet nodded, set the goblet down and rose. ‘I'm going home.' He glowered across at Kruppe. ‘And with Oponn's pull, I might even get there.'

‘Nefarious nuisances thrive best in night's noisome chaos, dear healer. Kruppe confidently assures you a most uneventful return to your atypical abode.'

Mallet grunted, then said, ‘And how do you plan on assuring that?'

‘Why, with worthy escort, of course!' He poured himself the last of the wine and smiled up at the Malazan. ‘See yon door and illimitable Irilta positioned before it? Dastardly contracts seeking your sad deaths cannot indeed be permitted. Kruppe extends his formidable resources to guarantee your lives!'

The healer continued staring down at him. ‘Kruppe, do you know who offered this contract?'

‘Ringing revelations are imminent, treasured friend. Kruppe promises.'

Another grunt, then Mallet wheeled and walked towards the door and his escort, who stood smiling with brawny arms crossed.

Kruppe watched them leave and weren't they just quite the pair.

Meese slouched down in the chair Mallet had vacated. ‘Guild contract,' she muttered. ‘Could simply be some imperial cleaning up, you know. New embassy's now up and running after all. Could be somebody in it caught word of Malazan deserters running a damned bar. Desertion's a death sentence, ain't it?'

‘Too great a risk, sweet Meese,' Kruppe replied, drawing out his silk handkerchief and blotting at his brow. ‘The Malazan Empire, alas, has its own assassins, of which two are present in said embassy. Yet, by all accounts, 'twas a Hand of Krafar's Guild that made the attempt last night.' He raised a pudgy finger. ‘A mystery, this one who so seeks the death of inoffensive Malazan deserters, but not a mystery for long, oh no! Kruppe will discover all that needs discovering!'

‘Fine,' Meese said, ‘now discover that council, Kruppe, for the bottle.'

Sighing, Kruppe reached into the small purse strapped to his belt, probed within the leather pouch, then, brows lifted in sudden dismay: ‘Dearest Meese, yet another discovery…'

 

Grainy-eyed, Scorch scowled at the teeming quayside. ‘It's the morning fisher boats,' he said, ‘comin' in right now. Ain't no point in hangin' round, Leff.'

‘People on the run will be coming here early,' Leff pointed out, scooping out with his knife the freshwater conch he had purchased a moment ago. He slithered down a mouthful of white, gleaming meat. ‘T'be waitin' for the first ships in from Gredfallan. Midmorning, right? The new locks at Dhavran have made it all regular, predictable, I mean. A day through with a final scoot to Gredfallan, overnight there, then on with the dawn to here. Desperate folk line up first, Scorch, 'cause they're desperate.'