The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (121 page)

“How long ago?”

“Years. Decades. We're in a warren, Corporal. No telling how time works here.”

Gesler grunted. “What say we check the captain's cabin? There might be a log.”

“And a ‘take to the oars' whistle.”

“Yeah. You know, if we hide that drum-beater, I could send Stormy down here to beat the time.”

“You've a wicked sense of humor, Gesler.”

“Aye. Thing is, Stormy tells the world's most boring sea tales. It'd do a favor to anyone he meets from now on to spice things up a little.”

“Don't tell me you're serious.”

The corporal sighed. “No,” he said after a moment. “I won't invite madness on anyone, Mage.”

They returned to the main deck. The others stared at them. Gesler shrugged. “What you'd expect,” he said, “if you was completely insane, that is.”

“Well,” Felisin replied, “you're talking to the right crowd.”

Kulp strode toward the cabin hatch. The corporal sheathed his sword and then followed. The hatch descended two steps, then opened out into a galley. A large wooden table commanded the center. Opposite them was a second hatch, leading to a narrow walkway with berths on either side. At the far end was the door to the captain's cabin.

No one occupied the berths, but there was gear aplenty, all waiting for owners who no longer needed it.

The cabin door opened with a loud squeal.

Even with all they had seen thus far, the interior was a scene of horror. Four bodies were immediately visible, three of them twisted grotesquely in postures of sudden death. There was no evidence of decay, but no blood was visible. Whatever had killed them had crushed them thoroughly without once breaking skin. The exception sat in the captain's chair at the end of a map table, as if presiding over Hood's own stage. A spear jutted from his chest, and had been pushed through to the chair, then beyond. Blood glistened down the front of the figure's body, pooled in his lap. It had stopped flowing, yet looked still wet.

“Tiste Andii?” Gesler asked in a whisper.

“They have that look,” Kulp replied softly, “but not quite.” He stepped into the cabin. “Their skins are gray, not black. Nor do they look very…refined.”

“The Tiste Andii of Drift Avalii were said to be pretty barbaric—not that anyone living has visited the isle.”

“None returned, in any case,” Kulp conceded. “But these are wearing skins—barely cured. And look at their jewelry…” The four bodies were adorned in bone fetishes, claws, the canines of beasts, and polished seashells. There was none of the fine Tiste Andii craftwork that Kulp had had occasion to see in the past. Moreover, all four were brown-haired, the hair hanging loose and uncombed, stringy with grease. Tiste Andii hair was either silver-white or midnight black.

“What in Hood's name are we seeing?” Gesler asked.

“The killers of the Quon sailors and the Tiste Andii, is my guess,” Kulp said. “They then sailed into this warren, maybe by choice, maybe not. And ran into something nastier than them.”

“You think the rest of the crew escaped?”

Kulp shrugged. “If you've got the sorcery to command headless corpses, who needs a bigger crew than the one we're looking at right here?”

“They still look like Tiste Andii,” the corporal said, peering closely at the man in the chair.

“We should get Heboric in here,” Kulp said. “Maybe he's read something somewhere that'll bring light to all this.”

“Wait here,” Gesler said.

The ship was creaking now as the rest of the group began moving around on the main deck. Kulp listened to the corporal's footsteps recede up the walkway. The mage leaned both hands on the table, scanning the charts splayed out on its surface. There was a map there, showing a land he could not recognize: a ragged coastline of fjords studded with cursory sketches of pine trees. Inland was a faint whitewash, as of ice or snow. A course had been plotted, striking east from the jagged shoreline, then southward across a vast ocean. The Malazan Empire purported to have world maps, but they showed nothing like the land he saw here. The Empire's claim to dominance suddenly seemed pathetic.

Heboric stepped into the cabin behind him. Kulp did not turn from his study of the chart. “Give them a close look,” the mage said.

The old man moved past Kulp, crouching down to frown at the captain's face. The high cheekbones and angular eye sockets looked Tiste Andii, as did the man's evident height. Heboric reached out tentatively—

“Wait,” Kulp growled. “Be careful what you touch. And which arm you use.”

Heboric hissed in exasperation and dropped his arm. After a moment, he straightened. “I can only think of one thing. Tiste Edur.”

“Who?”

“
Gothos's Folly
. There's mention of three Tiste peoples arriving from another realm. Of course the only one that's known to us is the Tiste Andii, and Gothos only names one of the other groups—Tiste Edur. Gray-skinned, not black. Children of the unwelcome union of Mother Dark with the Light.”

“Unwelcome?”

Heboric grimaced. “The Tiste Andii considered it a degradation of pure Dark, and the source of all their subsequent ills. Anyway,
Gothos's Folly
is the only tome where you'll find mention of them. It also happens to be the oldest.”

“Gothos was Jaghut, correct?”

“Aye, and as sour-tempered a writer as I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Tell me, Kulp, what does your warren reveal?”

“Nothing.”

Heboric glanced over in surprise. “Nothing at all?”

“No.”

“But they look to be in stasis—this blood's still wet.”

“I know.”

Heboric gestured at something around the captain's neck. “There's your whistle, assuming we're going to make use of what's below decks.”

“Either that or we sit here and starve.” Kulp stepped closer to the captain's corpse. A long bone whistle hung from a leather thong, resting alongside the spear's shaft. “I sense nothing from that bone tube either. It may not even work.”

Heboric shrugged. “I'm going back up for what passes for fresh air. That spear's Barghast, by the way.”

“It's too damned big,” Kulp countered.

“I know, but that's what it looks like to me.”

“It's too big.”

Heboric made no reply, disappearing up the walkway. Kulp glared at the spear.
It's too big
. After a moment he reached out and gingerly removed the whistle from around the corpse's neck.

Emerging onto the main deck, the mage glanced again at the whistle. He grunted. It was alive with sorcery now.
The breath of Otataral's in that cabin. No wonder their sorcery couldn't defend them
. He looked around. Stormy had positioned himself at the prow, his ever-present crossbow strapped to his back. Baudin stood near him, cradling his bandaged hand. Felisin leaned against the railing near the main mast, arms crossed, appallingly cool with a pyramid of severed heads almost at her feet. Heboric was nowhere to be seen.

Gesler approached. “Truth is heading up to the crow's nest,” he said. “You got the whistle?”

Kulp tossed it over. “Chosen a course yet?”

“Truth will see what he sees, then we'll decide.”

The mage craned his head, eyes narrowing on the lad as he lithely scrambled up the rigging. Five breaths later Truth clambered into the crow's nest and vanished from sight.

“Fener's hoof!” The curse drifted down, snared everyone's attention.

“Truth!”

“Three pegs to port! Storm sails!”

Gesler and Kulp rushed to the starboard railing. A smudge marred the formless horizon, flickering with lightning. Kulp hissed. “That Hood-damned wizard's followed us!”

The corporal spun around. “Stormy! Check what's left of these sails.” Without pause he put the whistle to his lips and blew. The sound was a chorus of voices, keening tonelessly. It chilled the air, the wail of souls twisted past torture, transforming pain into sound, fading with reluctance as Gesler pulled the whistle away.

Wood thumped on either side as oars were readied. Heboric stumbled from the hold hatch, his tattoos glowing like phosphor, his eyes wide as he swung to Gesler. “You've got your crew, Corporal.”

“Awake,” Felisin muttered, stepping away from the main mast.

Kulp saw what she had seen. The severed heads had opened their eyes, swiveling to fix on Gesler as if driven by a single ghastly mechanism.

The corporal seemed to flinch, then he shook it off. “Could've used one of these when I was a drill sergeant,” he said with a tight grin.

“Your drummer's ready down below,” Heboric said from where he stood peering down into the rowers' pit.

“Forget the sails,” Stormy said. “Rotted through.”

“Man the steering oar,” Gesler ordered him. “Three pegs to port—we can't do nothing but run.” He raised the whistle again and blew a rapid sequence. The drum started booming in time. The oars swung, blades flipping from horizontal to vertical, then dipped down into the sluggish water and pulled.

The ship groaned, crunching through the meniscus of crust that had clung to the hull. The
Silanda
lurched into motion and slowly eased round until the rapidly approaching storm cloud was directly astern. The oars pushed slimy water with relentless precision.

Gesler looped the whistle's thong around his neck. “Wouldn't the old Emperor have loved this old lady, Kulp, eh?”

“Your excitement's nauseating, Corporal.”

The man barked a laugh.

The twin banks of oars lifted the
Silanda
into a ramming pace and stayed there. The cadence of the drum was a too swift heartbeat. It reverberated in Kulp's bones with a resonance that etched his nerves with pain. He did not need to descend into the pit to affirm his vision of that thick-muscled, headless corpse pounding the gourds against the skin, the relentless heave and pull of the rowers, the searing play of Hood-bound sorcery in the stifling atmosphere. His eyes went in search of Gesler, and found him standing at the sterncastle alongside Stormy. These were hard men, harder than he could fathom. They'd taken the grim black humor of the soldier further than he'd thought possible, cold as the sunless core of a glacier.
Bloody-minded confidence…or fatalism? Never knew Fener's bristles could be so black
.

The mad sorcerer's storm still gained on them, slower than before, yet an undeniable threat nonetheless. The mage strode to Heboric's side.

“Is this your god's warren?”

The old man scowled. “Not my god. Not his warren. Hood knows where in the Abyss we are, and it seems there's no easy wakening from this nightmare.”

“You drove the god-touched hand into Stormy's wound.”

“Aye. Nothing but chance. Could have as easily been the other one.”

“What did you feel?”

Heboric shrugged. “Something passing through. You'd guessed as much, didn't you?”

Kulp nodded.

“Was it Fener himself?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. I'm not an expert in matters religious. Doesn't seem to have affected Stormy…apart from the healing. I didn't know Fener granted such boons.”

“He doesn't,” the ex-priest muttered, eyes clouding as he looked back at the two marines. “Not without a price, anyway.”

 

Felisin sat apart from the others, her closest company the pyramid of staring heads. They didn't bother her much, since their attention remained on Gesler, on the man with the siren whistle of bone dangling on his chest. She thought back to the round in Unta, to the priest of flies. That had been the first time sorcery had been visited upon her. For all the stories of magic and wild wizards, of sorcerous conflagrations engulfing cities in wars at the very edges of the Empire, Felisin had never before witnessed such forces. It was never as common as the tales purported it to be. And the witnessing of magic left scars, a feeling of overwhelming vulnerability in the face of something beyond one's control. It made the world suddenly fey, deadly, frightening and bleak. That day in Unta had shifted her place in the world, or at least her sense of it. And she'd felt off-balance ever since.

But maybe it wasn't that. Not that at all. Maybe it was what I lived through on the march to the galleys, maybe it was that sea of faces, the storm of hate and mindless fury, of the freedom and hunger to deliver pain writ so plain in all those so very normal faces. Maybe it was the people that sent me reeling
.

She looked over at the severed heads. The eyes did not blink. They were drying, crackling like egg white splashed on hot cobblestones.
Like mine. Too much has been seen. Far too much
. If demons rose out of the waters around them right now she would feel no shock, only a wonder that they had taken so long to appear
and could you be swift in ending it all, now? Please
.

Like a long-limbed ape, Truth came scrambling down from the rigging, landing lightly on the deck and pausing close to her as he brushed dusty rope fibers from his clothes. He had a couple of years on her, yet looked much younger to her eyes.
Unpocked, smooth skin. The wisps of beard, all too clear eyes. No gallons of wine, no clouds of durhang smoke, no weighty bodies taking turns to push inside, into a place that had started out vulnerable yet was soon walled off from anything real, anything that mattered. I only gave them the illusion of getting inside me, a dead-end pocket. Can you grasp what I'm talking about, Truth?

He noted her attention, gave her a shy smile. “He's in the clouds,” he said, his voice hoarse with adolescence.

“Who is?”

“The sorcerer. Like an untethered kite, this way and that, trailing streamers of blood.”

“How poetic, Truth. Go back to being a marine.”