Stonewielder (47 page)

Shell felt her brow crimping as her gaze narrowed. ‘I do not understand, Ena.’

The girl-woman giggled, covering her mouth. ‘You do not know, do you? Why, everyone in these lands knows the Sea-Folk hate to be captive. We throw ourselves into the sea rather than be prisoner.’ And she grinned like an imp. ‘So many of us taken away disappear like that.’

Shell felt her brows rising as understanding dawned. She looked at Lazar, who was smiling crookedly in silent laughter.

High praise indeed, coming from him.

Beneath the setting sun a dark line caught Shell’s eye and she shaded her gaze. ‘What’s that ahead to the west?’ she asked, her eyes slitted almost closed.

Ena’s smile was torn away and a hand rose in a gesture against evil. ‘The Ring!’ she hissed. Turning, she yelled orders at her kinsmen and women. All were galvanized into action. Hands went to mouths and piercing whistles flew like birdcalls between the boats. Gear was shifted and a mast appeared, dragged out from beneath everything to be stepped in place. Tarps covering equipment and possessions were whipped free, rolled and mounted as shrouds. The speed and competence of the transformation dazzled Shell. She tried to find Ena to ask what was going on, but was brushed aside as everyone on board seemed to be holding a line or adjusting stowage. She finally reached the girl towards the bow, where she was twisting a sheet affixed to the sail.

‘What’s going on? What is it?’

She shot a glance ahead. ‘You do not know? No, of course not.’ She sighed, searching for words. ‘It is, how do you say … a cursed place. A haunt of the Lady herself. The Ring. A great circle ridge around a deep hole. Some say bottomless. And it is guarded. Korelri Stormguard are there. None dare approach. It is very bad luck we come to it so late. Those thieving landsmen delayed us half the day!’

Shell nodded, allowing her to return to her work. She found a place where she could sit out of the way at the bow and peered ahead, trying to separate some detail from the sunset. Stormguard here! Just within reach. What would these Sea-Folk say if they knew they were carrying four outlanders intent upon challenging this military order that so dominated the region? They would probably think us insane. All these generations
they
have survived beneath the very gaze of the Lady through strategies of trickery and deception.

Perhaps, she thought, hugging herself for warmth, they would be wise to follow suit.

*    *    *

Kiska dreamt of her youth on Malaz Island. She was walking its storm-racked rocky coast, with its litter and treasure and corpses of wrecks from three seas. And she was reviewing the ruin that was
her life.
My childishness and wilfulness. Yet who isn’t when young? My foolish decisions. Yet how else does one learn?
Her loss on the field at the plains.
I failed him!
She picked her way through the bleached timbers and crab-picked bones while all around her the island appeared to be shrinking. Eventually she could complete a full circuit in a mere few strides.

And it was closing even tighter.

A sharp pain such as stepping on a nail woke her. Groggy, she blinked up at jagged stone above. Her cave. Her prison. She was still here.

‘Hist! Kiska! Are you still with me?’

She raised her head. Jheval was there, silhouetted against the slightly lighter cave mouth. ‘Yes,’ she croaked. Her mouth felt as dusty and dry as the cave floor itself. ‘Regrettably.’

‘I’m hearing something new,’ he murmured, keeping his voice as low as possible.

There is nothing new in Shadow
, Kiska pronounced to herself. Now where had she heard something like that?

‘And I haven’t seen our friends for some time now.’

Meaningless. Without significance. Empty. Futile
.

‘Kiska!’

She blinked, startled. She’d dropped off again. She levered herself up by the elbows. ‘Yes?’

He gestured her to him. ‘Come here. Listen. What do you make of this?’

Crawling to the cave mouth was one of the hardest things Kiska had ever forced herself to do. She thought she could hear her every sinew and ligament creaking and stretching as she moved. She fancied she could see the bones of her hands through her dusty cracked skin. She planted herself next to Jheval, who appeared to be watching her carefully. ‘Yes?’ she demanded.

He glanced away and seemed to crook a smile as he turned to the silvery monochrome landscape beyond. ‘Listen.’

Listen? Listen to what? Our flesh rotting? The sighing of sands? There’s nothing
—

She heard something. Creaking. Loud abrasive squeaking and creaking like wood on wood. What in the world? Or – in Shadow?

‘Perhaps we should have a look, yes?’

‘It does sound … close.’

The man was grinning now through the caked-on dirt of his face. How pale the son of the desert looked now, dust-covered. Like a
ghost. Though a lively one. She felt a kind of resentful admiration: he seemed to not know how to give up.

‘Very good. The both of us, yes? Side by side.’

She nodded, swallowed to sluice the grit from her mouth. ‘Yes. Let’s go. I have to get out of here.’

‘Yes. I feel it too.’ He edged forward, hunched, then straightened outside the narrow crack. Kiska picked up her staff and followed. Out on the sand slope she expected the air to be fresher and cooler, different somehow. Yet the lifeless atmosphere seemed no better. It was as if all Shadow was stale, somehow suspended.

They climbed a nearby bare hill. Kiska tried to be watchful. She knew they should expect an attack at any instant. But she could not muster the necessary focus; she just felt exhausted by all the waiting and almost wanted to have it over with. And no hound appeared. When they reached the crest and looked beyond, they saw why.

It was a migration. Across the plain before them stretched columns of large creatures. Through the plumes of dust it appeared as if many of them marched in teams, heaving on ropes drawing gigantic boats lashed to wheeled platforms. It was the ear-splitting screeching of these wooden wheels that assaulted them, even from this great distance.

‘Locals on the move,’ Jheval said, and started down the hillside.

Kiska followed, reluctant. Walking out upon them in the open? How could he know they weren’t hostile? They didn’t look even vaguely human.

Before they reached the lowest hill a figure veered towards them, a picket, or outlier of some sort. As they neared, he – or she, or it – reared ever taller until it became clear to Kiska that it was nearly twice their height. It was, clearly, a daemon, a Shadow creature. Dull black, furred in parts, carrying on its back a brace of spears twice again its own height. It looked insectile: multiple-faceted eyes, a mouthful of oversized fangs, out-of-proportion skinny limbs that appeared armoured. Jheval hailed it, waving. Kiska gripped her staff and winced. She almost shouted:
How do you know it speaks our language? How do you know it won’t eat you?

It stopped, peered down to regard the two of them. Jheval stood with arms crossed, examining the creature in turn. Kiska kept her staff at the ready.

‘Do you understand this language?’ Jheval asked.

‘Yes, I know this tongue,’ it replied in a startlingly high piping voice.

Jheval was clearly surprised. ‘You do? Why?’

‘This is the language of the pretenders.’

Pretenders? Ah! Cotillion and Shadowthrone
.

‘Greetings. I am Jheval. This is Kiska.’

‘My name would translate as Least Branch.’

Jheval gestured beyond, to the columns of its brethren. ‘You are on some sort of migration?’

‘Yes. Though not one of our choice. We have been forced to move. Our home has been destroyed.’

Destroyed? Queen forfend! What force could possibly overcome an entire race of Shadow daemons? And here, in their own homeland
.

Jheval was studying the columns. ‘You are sea-people?’

‘Yes. We fished the giant bottom-feeders. We gathered among the shallow wetlands. But the great lake that has supported my people since before yours rose up on your hind legs has been taken from us. Great Ixpcotlet! How we mourn its passing.’

An entire lake gone? ‘What happened?’ Kiska asked, astonished. This went against all her impressions of a timeless Shadow realm.

She imagined that many expressions must be flitting across Least Branch’s face, but she and Jheval could not read them. ‘A Chaos Whorl has eaten into this realm you call Emurlahn. It has swallowed Ixpcotlet. It grows even as we flee.’

Kiska almost dropped her staff. ‘A Whorl? Like a Void? Touching Chaos?’

Some sort of membrane shuttered across Least Branch’s eyes – an expression of surprise? ‘Yes. Just so. We go to find another body of water, and to warn others. Perhaps we may even find the Guardian.’

Kiska stared anew. ‘A guardian? Gaunt, ancient? Carries a sword?’

The creature took a step backwards, obviously stunned. ‘You know of him?’

‘Yes. I’ve met him. He calls himself Edgewalker.’

‘He spoke to you? That is … unusual. We name him the Guardian.’

Jheval was eyeing her, clearly surprised himself.

Least Branch gestured, inviting them to accompany him. ‘Come, won’t you? Don’t you know it is dangerous out here? The Hounds are about.’

All the way down the hill Kiska wondered if Least Branch was
tempted to ask why the two of them laughed so much. How they chuckled uncontrollably, then, catching one another’s gaze, burst out anew.
Don’t you know the Hounds are about?

Least Branch led them to the rear of the migration. They passed two of the boats. Each towered over them, scaled to their gigantic makers. They rumbled on their immense platforms pulled by teams of hundred of the daemons. The dust blinded and choked them and Kiska glimpsed Jheval untying the cloth wrapped about his helmet to wind it over his mouth and face. She imitated him, winding a scarf over her face and leaving only a slit for her vision. The noise was the worst, as wooden wheels shrieked against wooden axles. The daemons did not seem to mind the cacophony but it almost drove Kiska mad.

Behind the horde, among the churned-up dirt, the shin-deep ruts and tossed rubbish, the gnawed bones, broken pots and excrement, Least Branch stopped to point back along the trail of broken earth. ‘Just follow our path. You cannot miss it. But you do not really seek this Whorl, do you? It opens on to the shores of Chaos. And we sense behind it an unhinged intelligence. We flee it. As you should, too.’

Kiska was staring up the trail all the way to the flat horizon, which to her eyes appeared bruised, darker. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe it’s what we’re here for.’

‘Then I must say farewell, though I confess I am tempted to accompany you.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because I believe there is a chance you will meet the Guardian. I say this because he has spoken to you once and so may again, for he seldom does anything without a reason. And so, should you meet him, ask him this for myself and for my people, the fishers of Ixpcotlet – why did he do nothing? Why did he not intervene? We are very confused and disappointed by this.’

Kiska faced Least Branch directly, gazing almost straight up. ‘If I meet him I will ask. This I swear.’

The daemon waved its thin armoured limbs, the meaning of the gesture unknown to Kiska. ‘I will have to be satisfied with your vow. My thanks. Safe journeying to you.’

‘Goodbye. And our thanks.’

‘Fare you well,’ Jheval added.

They watched the great daemon lumber away. The spears clattered
and swung on its back as it went. Alone now, free of their huge guide, Kiska felt exposed once more, though the plains that surrounded them lay utterly flat and featureless.

Jheval cleared his throat. ‘Well, I suppose we’d best get on our way.’

Kiska eyed him: his fingers were tucked into the lacing securing his morningstars; a habit of his while walking. Thinking of her behaviour during their imprisonment, Kiska said nothing, nodding and starting off. Perhaps they would discuss those days – perhaps even weeks, who knew? – of cramped involuntary companionship some time in the future. Right now it was too close and too raw.

Perhaps, as she suspected, neither of them would ever mention it again.

*    *    *

They had assembled forty thousand regulars supported by a backbone of six thousand Malazan veterans of the Sixth. The force was known officially as the Army of Rool. Envoy Enesh-jer commanded, representative of Overlord Yeull. Ussü served as adviser, while Borun commanded his detachment of a thousand Black Moranth. The Overlord remained at the capital, Paliss.

Ussü was mounted, out of consideration if not for his age, then for his rank. Most of the officers and all of the Envoy’s staff were mounted. However, there was no organized cavalry force large enough to play a major part in any engagement, save harassment, scouting and serving as messengers. The Jourilan and Dourkan might pride themselves on their cavalry, but it had never been cultivated in Rool, or Mare. Possibly the peoples of Fist followed the model of the Korelri – who of course considered horses particularly useless.