The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (103 page)

“Which one is that?” one of the guards demanded.

“Obelisk,” Kalam said. “The woman's a fake. As any seer of talent would know, that card's inactive in Seven Cities.”

“An expert in divination, are you?” the old woman snapped.

“I visit a worthy seer before any overland journey,” Kalam replied. “It would be foolish to do otherwise. I know the Deck, and I've seen when the reading was true, when power showed the hand. No doubt you intended to charge these guardsmen once the reading was done, once you'd told them how rich they were going to become, how they'd live to ripe old ages, fathering heroes by the score—”

Her expression unveiling the charade's end, the old woman screamed with rage and flung the Deck at Kalam. It struck him on the chest, cards clattering on the tabletop in a wild scatter—which settled into a pattern.

The breath hissed from the Pardu woman, the only sound to be heard within the common room.

Suddenly sweating, Kalam looked down at the cards. Six surrounded a single, and that single card—he knew with certainty—was his.
The Rope, Assassin of Shadow
. The six cards encircling it were all of one House.
King, Herald, Mason, Spinner, Knight, Queen…High House Death, Hood's House all arrayed…around the one who carries the Holy Book of Dryjhna
. “Ah, well,” Kalam sighed, glancing up at the Pardu woman, “I guess I sleep alone tonight.”

 

The Red Blade Captain Lostara Yil and her companion soldier were the last to leave Ladro Keep, over an hour after their target had departed on his stallion, riding south through the dusty wake of the sandstorm.

The forced proximity with Kalam had been unavoidable, but just as he was skilled at deception, so too was Lostara. Bluster could be its own disguise, arrogance a mask hiding an altogether deadlier assurance.

The Deck of Dragons' unexpected fielding had revealed much to Lostara, not only about Kalam and his mission. The Keep's sergeant had shown himself by his expression to have been a co-conspirator—yet another Malazan soldier prepared to betray his Empress. Evidently, Kalam's stop at the Keep had not been as accidental as it appeared.

Checking their horses, Lostara turned as her companion emerged from the Keep. The Red Blade grinned up at her. “You were thorough, as always,” he said. “The commander led me a merry chase, however. I found him in the crypt, struggling to climb into a fifty-year-old suit of armor. He was much thinner in his youth, it seems.”

Lostara swung herself into the saddle. “None still breathing? You're certain you checked them all? What of the servants in the back hallway—I went through them perhaps too quickly.”

“You left not a single heart still beating, Captain.”

“Very good. Mount up. That horse of the assassin's is killing these ones—we shall acquire fresh horses in Intesarm.”

“Assuming Baralta got around to arranging them.”

Lostara eyed her companion. “Trust Baralta,” she said coolly. “And be glad that—this time—I shall not report your skepticism.”

Tight-lipped, the man nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”

The two rode down the keep road, turning south on the coastal road.

 

The entire main floor of the monastery radiated in a circular pattern around a single room that was occupied by a circular staircase of stone leading down into darkness. Mappo crouched beside it.

“This would, I imagine, lead down to the crypt.”

“If I recall correctly,” Icarium said from where he stood near the room's entrance, “when nuns of the Queen of Dreams die the bodies are simply wrapped in linen and placed on recessed ledges in the crypt walls. Have you an interest in perusing corpses?”

“Not generally, no,” the Trell said, straightening with a soft grunt. “It's just that the stone changes as soon the stairs descend below floor level.”

Icarium raised a brow. “It does?”

“The level we're on is carved from living rock—the cliff's limestone. It's rather soft. But beneath it there are cut granite blocks. I believe the crypt beneath us is an older construct. Either that or the nuns and their cult hold that a crypt's walls and approach must be dressed, whereas living chambers need not be.”

The Jhag shook his head, approaching. “I would be surprised. The Queen of Dreams is Life-aspected. Very well, shall we explore?”

Mappo descended first. Neither had much need for artificial light, the darkness below offering no obstacle. The spiral steps showed the vestiges of marble tiling, but the passage of many feet long ago had worn most of them away. Beneath, the hard granite defied all evidence of erosion.

The stairs continued down, and down. At the seventieth step they ended in the center of an octagonally walled chamber. Friezes decorated each wall, the colors hinted at in the many shades of gray. Beyond the staircase's landing, the floor was honeycombed with rectangular pits, cut down through the tiles and the granite blocks beneath removed. These blocks were now stacked over what was obviously a portalway. Within each pit was a shrouded corpse.

The air was dry, scentless.

“These paintings do not belong to the cult of the Queen,” Mappo said, stating the obvious, for the scenes on the walls revealed a dark mythos. Thick fir trees reared black, moss-stained boles on all sides. The effect created was of standing in a glade deep in an ancient forest. Between the trunks here and there was the hint of hulking, four-legged beasts, their eyes glowing as if in reflected moonlight.

Icarium crouched down, running a hand over the remaining tiles. “This floor held a pattern,” he said, “before the nuns' workers cut graves in it. Pity.”

Mappo glanced at the blocked doorway. “If answers to the mysteries here exist, they lie beyond that barricade.”

“Recovered your strength, friend?”

“Well enough.” The Trell went to the barrier, pulled down the highest block. As he tipped it down into his arms, he staggered, voicing a savage grunt. Icarium rushed to help him lower the granite block to the floor. “Hood's breath! Heavier than I'd expected.”

“I'd gathered that. Shall we work together, then?”

Twenty minutes later they had cleared sufficient blocks to permit their passage into the hallway beyond. The final five minutes they had an audience, as a squall of bhok'aral appeared on the staircase, silently watching their efforts from where they clung from the railings. When first Mappo and then Icarium clambered through the opening, however, the bhok'arala did not follow.

The hallway stretched away before them, a wide colonnade lined by twin columns that were nothing less than the trunks of cedars. Each bole was at least an arm-span in diameter. The shaggy, gouged bark remained, although most of it had fallen away and now lay scattered over the floor.

Mappo laid a hand on one wooden pillar. “Imagine the effort of bringing these down here.”

“Warren,” Icarium said, sniffing. “The residue remains, even after all these centuries.”

“After
centuries?
Can you sense which warren, Icarium?”

“Kurald Galain. Elder, the Warren of Darkness.”

“Tiste Andii? In all the histories of Seven Cities that I am aware of, I've never heard mention of Tiste Andii present on this continent. Nor in my homeland, on the other side of the Jhag Odhan. Are you certain? This does not make sense.”

“I am
not
certain, Mappo. It has the feel of Kurald Galain, that is all. The
feel
of Dark. It is not Omtose Phellack nor Tellann. Not Starvald Demelain. I know of no other Elder Warrens.”

“Nor I.”

Without another word the three began walking.

By Mappo's count, the hallway ended three hundred and thirty paces later, opening out into another octagonal chamber, this one with its floor raised a hand's width higher than that of the hallway. Each flagstone was also octagonal, and on each of them images had been intricately carved, then defaced with gouges and scoring in what seemed entirely random, frenzied destruction.

The Trell felt his hackles stiffening into a ridge on his neck as he stood at the room's threshold. Icarium was beside him.

“I do not,” the Jhag said, “suggest we enter this chamber.”

Mappo grunted agreement. The air stank of sorcery, old, stale and clammy and dense with power. Like waves of heat, magic bled from the flagstones, from the images carved upon them and the wounds many of those images now bore.

Icarium was shaking his head. “If this is Kurald Galain, its flavor is unknown to me. It is…corrupted.”

“By the defilement?”

“Possibly. Yet the stench from those claw marks differs from what rises from the flagstones themselves. Is it familiar to you? By Dessembrae's mortal tears it should be, Mappo.”

The Trell squinted down at the nearest flagstone bearing scars. His nostrils flared. “Soletaken. D'ivers. The spice of shapeshifters. Of course.” He barked out a savage laugh that echoed in the chamber. “The Path of Hands, Icarium. The gate—it's here.”

“More than a gate, I think,” Icarium said. “Look upon the undamaged carvings—what do they remind you of?”

Mappo had an answer to that. He scanned the array with growing certainty, but the realization it offered held no answers, only more questions. “I see the likeness, yet there is an…unlikeness, as well. Even more irritating, I can think of no possible linkage…”

“No such answers here,” Icarium said. “We must go to the place we first intended to find, Mappo. We approach comprehension—I am certain of that.”

“Icarium, do you think Iskaral Pust is preparing for more visitors? Soletaken and D'ivers, the imminent opening of the gate. Is he—and by extension Shadow Realm—the very heart of this convergence?”

“I do not know. Let's ask him.”

They stepped back from the threshold.

 

“
We approach comprehension
.” Three words evoking terror within Mappo. He felt like a hare in a master archer's sights, each direction of flight so hopeless as to leave him frozen in place. He stood at the side of powers that staggered his mind, power past and powers present.
The Nameless Ones, with their charges and hints and visions, their cowled purposes and shrouded desires. Creatures of fraught antiquity, if the Trellish legends held any glimmer of truth. And Icarium, oh, dear friend, I can tell you nothing. My curse is silence to your every question, and the hand I offer as a brother will lead you only into deceit. In love's name, I do this, at my own cost…and such a cost
.

The bhok'arala awaited them at the stairs and followed the two men at a discreet distance up to the main level.

They found the High Priest in the vestibule he had converted into his sleeping chamber. Muttering to himself, Iskaral Pust was filling a wicker rubbish container with rotted fruit, dead bats and mangled rhizan. He threw Mappo and Icarium a scowl over one shoulder as they stood at the room's entrance.

“If those squalid apes are following you, let them 'ware my wrath,” Iskaral hissed. “No matter which chamber I choose, they insist on using it as repository for their foul leavings. I have lost patience! They mock a High Priest of Shadow at their peril!”

“We have found the gate,” Mappo said.

Iskaral did not pause in his cleaning. “Oh, you have, have you? Fools! Nothing is as it seems. A life given for a life taken. You have explored every corner, every cranny, have you? Idiots! Such over-confident bluster is the banner of ignorance. Wave it about and expect me to cower? Hah. I have my secrets, my plans, my schemes. Iskaral Pust's maze of genius cannot be plumbed by the likes of you. Look at you two. Both ancient wanderers of this mortal earth. Why have you not ascended like the rest of them? I'll tell you. Longevity does not automatically bestow wisdom. Oh no, not at all. I trust you are killing every spider you spy. You had better be, for it is the path to wisdom. Oh yes indeed, the path!

“Bhok'arala have small brains. Tiny brains inside their tiny round skulls. Cunning as rats, with eyes like glittering black stones. Four hours, once, I stared into one's eyes, he into mine. Never once pulling gaze away, oh no, this was a contest and one I would not lose. Four hours, face to face, so close I could smell his foul breath and he mine. Who would win? It was in the lap of the gods.”

Mappo glanced at Icarium, then cleared his throat. “And who, Iskaral Pust, won this…this battle of wits?”

Iskaral Pust fixed a pointed stare on Mappo. “Look upon him who does not waver from his cause, no matter how insipid and ultimately irrelevant, and you shall find in him the meaning of dull-witted. The bhok'aral could have stared into my eyes forever, for there was no intelligence behind them. Behind his eyes, I mean. It was proof of my superiority that I found distraction elsewhere.”

“Do you intend to lead the D'ivers and Soletaken to the gate below, Iskaral Pust?”