Orb Sceptre Throne (6 page)

She was getting used to the strangeness of this bizarre realm so far from the world she knew. And she wondered whether that was a bad sign. Her companion, Leoman of the Flails, had named it the ‘Shores of Creation’.

Firstly, there was the dawn – if such a term could be applied. It seemed to emerge from beneath the sea of molten light. It began as a brightening in one direction, call that the east if you must, though any magnet and needle brought here probably would not know what to do. The glimmering sea of energy seemed to give up some of its shine and this bright wash, or wave, swelled over the dome of the starry sky, obscuring it in a kind of daylight that, in its turn, faded back into starry night.

Of their route of entry, the Chaos Whorl, she could find only the faintest bruising against the horizon in one direction, and that fading like the last traces of twilight. Perhaps the army of Tiste Liosan with Jayashul and her brother, L’oric, had overcome the magus who sustained that gap, or tear, in creation.

Or perhaps he’d simply fled. Who knew? Not she. Not trapped here in this eternal neverplace. Which was just as well, since yet again she’d failed. Even with the help of her witch aunt Agayla and the Enchantress, the Queen of Dreams herself, she’d failed. And now it was over, everything, over and done. No more striving. No more seeking. No more self-recrimination – what was the point?

It was, she decided, in one way deliciously liberating.

She laid her head on Leoman’s bare arm. Was it then desperation that finally drove them together? Or mere loneliness? They were, after all, the only man and woman in all creation. And this man: one of the Malazan Empire’s deadliest enemies. He had been bodyguard to the rebel leader Sha’ik. Then he’d commanded the Seven Cities Army of the Apocalypse and delivered to the Empire one of its bloodiest maulings at the city of Y’Ghatan.

Yet no ogre. Harsh, yes. Calculating, and a survivor. In the end not too unlike her.

His breathing pattern changed and she knew he was awake. He sat up, ran his gaze down her naked flank and thigh and smiled from beneath his long moustache. ‘Good morning to you.’

Gods, how she ached to tell him to get rid of that moustache! ‘If it is a morning.’

Grunting, he crossed his legs and set his arms on his knees. ‘We can only assume.’

‘So, what now? Do we build a hut from driftwood? Weave hats from leaves and raise a brood of savages?’

‘There is no driftwood,’ he said absently, eyes narrowed to the south.

She sifted a hand through the fine black sand they lay upon. ‘I’d always wondered how those old creation of the race myths ran. Populating the land was one thing, but what about the second generation? I suppose if you’re all for polygamy and incest in the first place it wouldn’t strike you as a problem …’

She glanced up: his narrowed gaze was steady on the distance. ‘Burn take it! You’re not ignoring me already, are you?’

His mouth quirked. ‘Not yet.’ He raised his chin to the south. ‘Our friend is gone.’

She rolled over, scanned the sky over the shore. Gone indeed, their titanic neighbour. A being so immense it seemed as if he could hug the entire floating mountain of the Moon’s Spawn within the span of his arms. Now there was no sign of him. And she hadn’t heard a thing.

She sprang to her feet, began dressing. ‘Why didn’t you say something, dammit!’

He peered up at her, still smiling. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt. You don’t like it when I interrupt you.’

She threw her weapon belt over a shoulder. ‘Very funny. C’mon.’

He pulled on the silk shorts he wore beneath his felt trousers – for the itching, he’d explained. ‘Something tells me there’s no hurry, Kiska. If there’s any place to abandon haste, this is it.’

She continued arming herself. ‘Your problem is you’re lazy. You’d be happy just to lie here all day.’

‘And make love to you? Certainly.’

‘
Leoman!
You can turn off the charm, yes?’

He pulled his stained quilted gambeson over his head, yanked it down. ‘With you, Kiska? No charm. It’s the moustache – the moustache gets them every time.’

‘Gods deliver me!’ Kiska headed off down the beach.
If he only knew
.

Three rocky headlands later Kiska stood peering down on yet another long scimitar arc of black beach. The clatter of jagged volcanic rocks announced Leoman’s approach. He sat with a heavy sigh, adjusted the leather wrapping over his trouser legs. ‘He’d have a hard time hiding, Kiska.’

She bit back a snarl of disgust. ‘Don’t you want to find out what’s here?’

An uninterested wave: ‘There’s nothing here.’

She eyed the broad smooth expanse of the beach, noted something there, something tall. ‘Over there.’

Closer, she saw now why she’d missed it. The same dull black as the sands, he was. Now about her height, since he was sitting. As they approached, feet shushing through the sands, he stood, towering to twice that. He reminded her of a crude sculpture of a person carved from that fine-grained black stone, basalt. His hands were broad fingerless shovels, his head a worn stone between boulder-like shoulders. He was identical in every detail to the mountain-sized titan they’d watched these last weeks digging in the sea of light, apparently building up the shoreline. Leoman stepped up next to her, hands near his morningstars, but those weapons still sensibly strapped to his sides. ‘Greetings,’ she called, her voice dry and weak.
Gods, how does one address an entity such as this?

Stone grated as it cocked its head aside as if listening.

‘My name is Kiska, and this is Leoman.’ She waited for an answer. The entity merely regarded them – or so she imagined, as now she could see that it had no eyes, no mouth, no features at all that could be named a face. ‘Do you understand—’

She flinched as a voice spoke within her mind: ‘
Do you hear me? For I hear you
.’ The wonder in Leoman’s widened eyes made it clear that he had heard as well. ‘Yes. I – we – can hear you.’

‘
Good. I am pleased. Welcome, strangers! You are most welcome. For ages none have visited. I have been alone. Now even more come! I am gladdened
.
’

At that she could not suppress an eager glance to Leoman.
More! It said more!
His answering gaze held warning and caution. She brushed them aside: if this thing wanted to kill them there was little they could do about it. She took a steadying breath. ‘And your name? What should we call you?’

‘
No name such as I understand your term. I carry what you would call a title. I am Maker
.’

She stared, speechless.
All the gods above and below
. Maker. The Creator? No. It did not say
Creator
. It said
Maker
. Muttering distracted her: Leoman murmuring beneath his breath. She almost laughed aloud. The Seven Cities invocation of the gods! Cynical Leoman thrown back on to his roots! Yet the prayer seemed mouthed more in wonder than devotion.

She tried to speak, couldn’t force words past her dry throat. Her knees felt watery and she stepped back, blinking. Leoman’s hand at her shoulder steadied her. ‘There are others, you say?’ she managed to force out. ‘More of us?’

‘
One other like you. One other not
.’

‘I see …’
I think
. ‘May we meet them? Are they here?’

‘
One is
.’ An arm as thick and blocky as a stalactite gestured further down the beach. ‘
This way
.’ Maker turned, stepping, and when the slab-like foot landed the sands beneath Kiska’s feet shuddered and rocks cracked and tumbled down the surrounding headlands.

Now we hear him? Perhaps he has made himself somehow different in order to communicate
. Walking alongside, she saw no one else on the sweep of the black sands. Yet some object did lie ahead. A flat polished flag of stone, deep blood-red veined with black. Garnet, perhaps. And on the slab what appeared no more than a wind-gathered pile of trash: a fistful of twigs and leaves. Kiska gasped and ran ahead.

Their guide.

She knelt at the stone. Maker towered over her, his featureless domed head bent to peer downwards. Leoman came walking up behind, his hands tucked into his wide weapon belt.

‘Is it … dead?’ she asked.

‘
For this creature, a curious distinction. What essence animated it before was not its own. And now, though that vital essence might have fled, an even greater potentiality yet remains within
.’

‘It was with us.’

‘
I thought as much. You arrived soon after
.’

Kiska swept the remains into its small leather bag. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she asked, ‘And the other? The one like us?’

‘
The other is gendered as this one
,’ Maker said, indicating Leoman. ‘
He came to me out of the Vitr
.’

She blinked up at him. ‘The Vitr?’

Maker’s blunt head turned to the restless surging sea of light. ‘
The Vitr. That from which all creation comes
.’

‘All … creation? Everything?’

‘
All that exists. All distils out of the Vitr. And all returns to dissolution. You, I. All life essence. All sentience
.’

Kiska felt her brows rising higher and higher. ‘
All
? Everything? All races? Surely not the dragons … the Tiste … or the Jaghut.’

Maker’s shovel hands clenched into fists with a grinding and crackling of rock. The sands at his wide feet hissed and glowed, sintering into black obsidian glass. The beach shuddered and a great landslide of rocks echoed among the distant headlands. Kiska found herself on the ground, and rolled away from the searing heat surrounding Maker.

‘
Speak not to me of the meddling Jaghut!
’

The juddering of the ground faded away. She had covered her face to shield it from the radiance and now her leather sleeve came away red and wet. She coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. Leoman was dabbing at his nose. ‘My apologies, Maker,’ she managed, coughing more.

The entity had raised his fists before his blank stone face and seemed to regard them as if astonished. The hands ground open. ‘
No – it is I who must apologize. I am sorry. My anger … they have done me a great wound
.’ The arms fell to hang loose at his sides. ‘
As to those you name dragons, the Eleint. I myself have assisted beings who emerged fully formed from the Vitr. Some took that form. I do not know whether they were the first of their kind, or if others came into existence elsewhere. As to the Tiste … the Andii emerged from eternal night, true, yet what of the vital essence which animates? I believe the underlying energy which moves all originates here, in the Vitr. And for that some would name it the First Light
.’

Kiska regarded the great shifting sea, awed. First Light? Yet who was to say otherwise? Could this ‘sea’ be nothing less than a great reservoir or source of energy – power, puissance, call it what you would. It was theology, or philosophy, all far beyond her. She returned her attention to Maker. ‘And this other? The one like us?’

‘
I aided him in his emergence from the Vitr
…’

Kiska laughed, and winced at the note of hysteria. ‘Then I assure you, Maker, he is nothing like us.’

‘
He is. He is formed as you, and mortal
.’

‘Mortal? His name? Does he have a name?’

Maker shifted, glass crackling, and started a slow lumbering walk down the beach. Kiska moved alongside. ‘
Understand, little one, those who have experienced the Vitr first hand emerge as if freshly born. Newly formed, or re-formed. His mind carries nothing of his prior existence. And he has proved a great help in my work and a balm to my loneliness. I named him Then-aj-Ehliel, Gift of Creation
.’

‘Your … work?’ Leoman asked from where he trailed behind.

Stone grated as the great domed head turned to Leoman. ‘
Why, the bolstering and maintenance of the edge of existence, of course, against the constant erosion of the Vitr
.’

Kiska found that she’d stopped walking. Her hands covered her face, where they brushed dried flakes of blood. The ground seemed to waver drunkenly and there was a roaring in her ears.
Gods below!
This was … this was … impossible! What was she doing here? What could she possibly …