The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (150 page)

Kalam was silent for a dozen heartbeats, then he said, “The gods are smiling indeed.”

The captain's head bobbed. “Smooth and beguiling, them smiles.”

“Who do I thank for this arrangement?”

“Says he's a friend of yours, though you've never met—though you will aboard my ship,
Ragstopper
, in two days.”

“His name?”

“Salk Elan, he called himself. Says he's been waiting for you.”

“And how did he know I would come to this inn? I did not know of its existence an hour ago.”

“A guess, but an informed one. Something about this being the first one you come to down from the gate in the necropolis. Too bad you weren't here last night, friend, it was even quieter, at least until the wench fished a drowned rat out of that keg over yonder. Too bad you and your friends missed this morning's breakfast.”

 

Kalam slammed the rickety door behind him, pausing to regain control.
Quick Ben's arrangements? Not likely. Impossible, in fact—

“What's wrong?” Minala was sitting at the table, a wedge of melon in one hand. Voices from the garden indicated parents bathing reluctant children.

The assassin closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them with a sigh. “You've been delivered to Aren—and now we must go our separate ways. Tell Keneb to go out until he finds a patrol or one finds him, and then make his report to the City Guard's commander—leaving me entirely out of that report—”

“And how does he explain us getting into the city?”

“A fisherman brought you in. Keep it simple.”

“And that's it? You won't even say goodbye to Keneb, or Selv, or the children? You won't even let them show their gratitude for saving their lives?”

“If you can, Minala, get yourself and your kin out of Aren—go back to Quon Tali.”

“Don't do it like this, Kalam.”

“It's the safest way.” The assassin hesitated, then said, “I wish it could have been…different.”

The wedge of melon caught him flush on one cheek. He spent a moment wiping his face, then picked up his saddlebags and threw them over one shoulder. “The stallion's yours, Minala.”

In the main room, Kalam made his way to the captain's table. “All right, I'm ready.”

Something like disappointment flickered in the man's eyes, then he sighed and tottered upright. “So you say. It's a middling long walk to where
Ragstopper's
moored—with luck I'll only have to show my charter a dozen or so times. Hood knows, what else do you do with an army camped in a city, eh?”

“That rag of a shirt you're wearing won't help matters, Captain. I imagine you're looking forward to ditching the disguise.”

“What disguise? This is my lucky shirt.”

 

Lostara Yil leaned back against the wall of the small room, her arms crossed as she watched Pearl pacing back and forth near the window.

“Details,” he muttered, “it's all in the details. Don't blink or you might miss something.”

“I must report to the Red Blade commander,” Lostara said. “Then I shall return here.”

“Will Orto Setral give you leave, lass?”

“I am not relinquishing this pursuit…unless you forbid me.”

“Gods forbid! I enjoy your company.”

“You are being facetious.”

“Only slightly. Granted, you've displayed little ease of humor. However, we have shared quite an adventure thus far, have we not? Why end it now?”

Lostara examined her uniform. Its weight was a comfort—the armor she had worn when disguised was a shattered mess and she had happily discarded it after the Claw's healing of her wounds.

Pearl had offered nothing to relieve the mystery of the demon that had appeared during the night engagement out on the plain, but it was clear to the Red Blade that the incident still troubled the man.
As it does me, but that is past now. We have made it to Aren, still on the assassin's trail. All is as it should be
.

“Will you wait here for me?” she asked.

Pearl's smile broadened. “Until the end of time, my dear.”

“Dawn will suffice.”

He bowed. “I shall count the heartbeats until then.”

She left the room, shutting the door behind her. The inn's hallway led to a wooden staircase that took her into the crowded main room. The curfew made for a captive clientele, although the mood was anything but festive.

Lostara ducked under the staircase and passed through the kitchen. The eyes of the cook and her helpers followed her as she walked to the back door, which had been left ajar to provide a draft. It was a reaction she was used to. The Red Blades were much feared.

She pushed open the door and stepped out into the alley. The river's breath, mingled with the salt of the bay, was cool against her face.
I pray I never travel the Imperial Warren again
.

She walked to the main street, her boots loud on the cobbles.

A dozen soldiers of the High Fist's army accosted her as she reached the first intersection on her way to the garrison compound. The sergeant commanding them stared at her with disbelief.

“Good evening, Red Blade,” he said.

She nodded. “I understand that the High Fist has imposed a curfew. Tell me, do the Red Blades patrol the streets as well?”

“Not at all,” the sergeant replied.

There was an expectancy among the soldiers that Lostara found vaguely disturbing.

“They are tasked with other responsibilities, then?”

The sergeant slowly nodded. “I imagine they are. From your words and from…other things, I gather you are newly arrived.”

She nodded.

“How?”

“By warren. I had an…an escort.”

“The makings of an interesting story, no doubt,” the sergeant said. “I will have your weapons now.”

“Excuse me?”

“You wish to join your fellow Red Blades, yes? Speak with Commander Orto Setral?”

“Yes.”

“By the High Fist's order, issued four days ago, the Red Blades are under detention.”

“What?”

“And await trial for treason against the Malazan Empire. Your weapons, please.”

Stunned, Lostara Yil made no resistance as the soldiers disarmed her. She stared at the sergeant. “Our loyalty has been…challenged?”

There was no malice in his eyes as he nodded. “I am sure your commander will have more to say on the situation.”

 

“He's gone.”

Keneb's jaw dropped. “Oh,” he managed after a moment. Frowning, he watched Minala packing her gear. “What are you doing?”

She whirled on him. “Do you think he gets away leaving it like that?”

“Minala—”

“Be quiet, Keneb! You'll wake the children.”

“I wasn't shouting.”

“Tell your commander everything, you understand me? Everything—except about Kalam.”

“I am not stupid, no matter what you may think.”

Her glare softened. “I know. Forgive me.”

“You'd better ask that of your sister, I think. And Kesen and Vaneb.”

“I will.”

“Tell me, how will you pursue a man who does not want to be pursued?”

A hard grin flashed on her dark features. “You ask that of a woman?”

“Oh, Minala…”

She reached up to brush his cheek with one hand. “No need for tears, Keneb.”

“I blame my sentimental streak,” he said with a weary smile. “But know this, I shall remain hopeful. Now, go and say good-bye to your sister and the children.”

“We can't stay here.”

Felisin's eyes narrowed on the mage. “Why not? That storm outside will kill us. There's no sheltering from it—except here, where there's water…food—”

“Because we're being hunted,” Kulp snapped, wrapping his arms around himself.

From where he sat against a wall, Heboric laughed. He raised his invisible hands. “Show me a mortal who is not pursued, and I'll show you a corpse. Every hunter is hunted, every mind that knows itself has stalkers. We drive and are driven. The unknown pursues the ignorant, the truth assails every scholar wise enough to know his own ignorance, for that is the meaning of unknowable truths.”

Kulp looked up from where he sat on the low wall encircling the fountain, the lids of his eyes heavy as he studied the ex-priest. “I was speaking literally,” he said. “There are living shapeshifters in this city—their scent rides every wind and it's getting stronger.”

“Why don't we just give up?” Felisin said.

The mage sneered.

“I am not being flippant. We're in Raraku, the home of the Whirlwind. There won't be a friendly face within a hundred leagues of here, not that there's a chance of making it that far in any case.”

“And the faces closer at hand aren't even human,” Heboric added. “Every mask unveiled, and you know, the presence of D'ivers and Soletaken is most likely
not
at the Whirlwind's beckoning. All a tragic coincidence, this Year of Dryjhna and the unholy convergence—”

“You're a fool if you think that,” Kulp said. “The timing is anything but accidental. I've a hunch that someone
started
those shapeshifters on that convergence, and that someone acted precisely because of the uprising. Or it went the other way around—the Whirlwind goddess guided the prophecy to ensure that the Year of Dryjhna was now, when the convergence was under way, in the interest of creating chaos within the warrens.”

“Interesting notions, Mage,” Heboric said, slowly nodding. “Natural, of course, coming from a practitioner of Meanas, where deceit breeds like runaway weeds and inevitability defines the rules of the game…but only when useful.”

Felisin stayed silent, watching the two men.
One conversation, here on the surface, yet another beneath. The priest and the mage are playing games, the entwining of suspicion with knowledge. Heboric sees a pattern, his plundering of ghostly lives gave him what he needed, and I think he's telling Kulp that the mage himself is closer to that pattern than he might imagine. “Here, wielder of Meanas, take my invisible hand…”

Felisin decided she had had enough. “What do you know, Heboric?”

The blind man shrugged.

“Why does it matter to you, lass?” Kulp growled. “You're suggesting surrender: let the shapeshifters take us—we're dead anyway.”

“I asked, why do we struggle on? Why leave here? We haven't got a chance out in the desert.”

“Stay, then!” Kulp snapped, rising. “Hood knows you've nothing useful to offer.”

“I've heard all it takes is a bite.”

He went still and slowly turned to her. “You heard wrong. It's common enough ignorance, I suppose. A bite can poison you, a cyclical fever of madness, but you do not become a shapeshifter.”

“Really, then how
are
they created?”

“They aren't. They're born.”

Heboric clambered to his feet. “If we're to walk through this dead city, let us do so now. The voices have stilled, and I am clear of mind.”

“What difference does that make?” Felisin demanded.

“I can guide us on the swiftest route, lass. Else we wander lost until the ones who hunt us finally arrive.”

 

They drank one last time from the pool, then gathered as many of the pale fruits as they could carry. Felisin had to admit to herself that she felt healthier—more
mended—
than she had in a long time, as if memories no longer bled and she was left with naught but scars. Yet the cast of her mind remained fraught. She had run out of hope.

Heboric led them swiftly down tortuous streets and alleys, through houses and buildings, and everywhere they went, they trod over and around bodies, human, shapeshifter and T'lan Imass, ancient scenes of fierce battle. Heboric's plundered knowledge was lodged in Felisin's mind, a trembling of ancient horror that made every new scene of death they stumbled upon resonate within her. She felt she was close to grasping a profound truth, around which orbited all human endeavor since the very beginning of existence.
We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on
. She wondered if the gift of revelation—of discovering the meaning underlying humanity—offered nothing more than a devastating sense of futility.
It's the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance…all the bastion of fools
.

The wind moaned at their backs, raising small gusts of dust at their feet, rasping like tongues against their skin. It carried in it a faint scent of spice.

Felisin judged an hour had passed before Heboric paused. They stood before the grand entrance to a temple of some kind, where the columns, squat and broad, had been carved into a semblance of tree trunks. A frieze ran beneath the cracked, sagging plinth, each panel a framed image which Kulp's warren-cast light eerily lit from beneath.

The mage was staring up at the images.
Hood's breath!
he mouthed.

The ex-priest was smiling.

“It's a Deck,” Kulp said.

Yet another pathetic assertion of order
.

“The Elder Deck, aye,” Heboric nodded. “Not Houses but Holds. Realms. Can you discern Death and Life? And Dark and Light? Do you see the Hold of the Beast? Who sits upon that antlered throne, Kulp?”

“It's empty, assuming I'm looking at the one you mean—the frame displays various creatures. The throne is flanked by T'lan Imass.”

“Aye, that is the one. No one on the throne, you say? Curious.”

“Why?”

“Because every echo of memory tells me there
used
to be.”

Kulp grunted. “Well, it's not been defaced—you can see the back of the throne, and it looks as weathered as everywhere else.”

“There should be the Unaligned—can you detect those?”

“No. Perhaps around the sides and back?”

“Possibly. Among them you'll find Shapeshifter.”

“All very fascinating,” Felisin drawled. “I take it we're to enter this place—since that's where the wind is going.”

Heboric smiled. “Aye. The far end shall provide our exit.”

The interior of the temple was nothing more than a tunnel, its walls, floor and ceiling hidden behind packed layers of sand. The wind raised its voice the farther in they went. Forty paces later they could discern pale ochre light ahead.

The tunnel narrowed, the howling wind making it difficult to resist being pushed forward headlong, and they were forced to duck into a shambling crouch near the exit point.

Heboric held back just before the threshold to let Kulp pass, then Felisin. The mage was the first to step outside; Felisin followed.

They stood on a ledge, the mouth of a cave high on a cliff face. The wind tore at them as if seeking to cast them out, flinging them into the air—and a fatal drop to jagged rocks two hundred or more arm-spans below. Felisin moved to grip one crumbling edge of the cave mouth. The vista had taken her breath away, weakened her knees.

The Whirlwind raged, not before them but beneath them, filling the vast basin that was the Holy Desert. A fine haze of suspended dust drifted above a floor of seething yellow and orange clouds. The sun was an edgeless ball of red fire to the west, deepening its hue as they watched.

After a long moment Felisin barked a laugh. “All we need now is wings.”

“I become useful once again,” Heboric said, grinning as he stepped out to stand beside her.

Kulp's head whipped around. “What do you mean?”

“Tie yourselves to my back—both of you. This man's got a pair of hands and he can use them, and for once my blindness will prove a salvation.”

Kulp peered down the cliff face. “Climb down this? It's rotten rock, old man—”

“Not the handholds I'll find, Mage. Besides, what choice do you have?”

“Oh, I simply can't wait,” Felisin said.

“All right, but I'll have my warren open,” Kulp said. “We'll fall just as far, but the landing will be softer—not that it'll make much difference, I suppose, but at least it gives us a chance.”

“You have no faith!” Heboric shouted, his face twisting as he fought back peals of laughter.

“Thanks for that,” Felisin said.
How far do we have to be pushed? We're not slipping into madness, we're being nudged, tugged and pulled into it
.

A hot, solid pressure closed on her shoulder. She turned. Heboric had laid an invisible hand on her—she could see nothing, yet the thin weave of her shirt's fabric was compressed, slowly darkening with sweat. She could feel its weight. He leaned close. “Raraku reshapes all who come to it. This is one truth you can cling to. What you were falls away, what you become is something different.” His smile broadened at her snort of disdain. “Raraku's gifts are harsh, it's true,” he said in a tone of sympathy.

Kulp was readying harnesses. “These straps are rotting,” he said.

Heboric swung to him. “Then you must hold tight.”

“This is madness.”

Those were my words
.

“Would you rather await the D'ivers and Soletaken?”

The mage scowled.

 

Heboric's body felt like gnarled tree roots. Felisin clung with trembling muscles, not trusting the straining leather straps. Her gaze remained fixed on the ex-priest's wrists—the unseen hands themselves were plunged into the rock face—while below she heard his feet scrambling for purchase again and again. The old man was carrying the weight of the three of them with his hands and arms alone.

The battered cliff was bathed in the setting sun's red glare.
As if we're descending into a cauldron of fire, into some demonic realm. And this is a oneway trip—Raraku will claim us, devour us. The sands will bury every dream of vengeance, every desire, every hope. We will all of us drown, here in this desert
.

Wind slapped them against the cliff face, then yanked them outward in a biting swirl of airborne sand. They had entered the Whirlwind once again. Kulp shouted something lost in the battering roar. Felisin felt herself being pulled away, raised up horizontal by the frantic, hungry wind. She hooked one arm around Heboric's right shoulder.

Her muscles began shuddering with the strain, her joints burning like fanned coals. She felt the harness straps around her tightening as they slowly, inevitably, assumed the strain.
Hopeless. The gods mock us at every turn
.

Heboric continued the climb downward, into the heart of the maelstrom.

From inches away, Felisin watched as the blowing sand began abrading the skin stretched over her elbow joint. The sensation was nothing more than that of a cat's tongue, yet the skin was peeling back, vanishing.

Her legs and body rode the wind, and from everywhere she felt that dreadful rasp of the storm's tongue.
I will be nothing but bones and sinew when we reach bottom, tottering fleshless with a rictus grin. Felisin unveiled in all her glory…

Heboric stepped away from the cliff face. The three of them fell in a heap onto a ragged floor of rocks. Felisin screamed as the stones and sand pressed hard against the ravaged skin of her back. She found herself staring back up the cliff, revealed in patches where the gusting sand momentarily thinned. She thought she saw a figure, fifty arm-spans above them, then it was swallowed once more by the storm.

Kulp tugged at the straps with frantic haste. Felisin rolled clear, pushing herself onto her hands and knees.
There's something…even I can feel it—

“On your feet, lass!” the mage shouted. “Quickly!”

Whimpering, Felisin struggled upright. The wind slapped her back down in a lash of pain. Warm hands closed on her, lifted her up into the crook of rope-muscled arms.

“Life's like that,” Heboric said. “Hold tight.”

They were running, leaning into the raging wind. She squeezed shut her eyes, the agony of her flayed skin flashing like lightning behind her eyelids.
Hood take this! All of it!

They stumbled into sudden calm. Kulp hissed his surprise.

Felisin opened her eyes on a motionless mist of dust, describing a sphere in the midst of the Whirlwind. A large, vague shape was tottering toward them through the haze. The air was redolent with citrus perfume. She struggled until Heboric set her down.

Four pale men in rags were carrying a palanquin on which sat, beneath an umbrella, a vast, corpulent figure wearing voluminous silks in a splash of discordant colors. Slitted eyes peered out from sweat-beaded folds of flesh. The man raised one bloated hand and the bearers halted.

“Perilous!” he squealed. “Join me, strangers, and take leave of yon dangers—a desert filled with beasts of most unpleasant disposition. I offer humble sanctuary through artful sorcery invested into this chair at great personal expense. Do you hunger? Do you thirst? Ahh, but look at the wounds upon the frail lass! I possess healing unguents, I would see such a delectable morsel with skin smoothed once again into youthful perfection. Tell me, is she perchance a slave? Might I make an offer?”

“I am
not
a slave,” Felisin said.
And I am no longer for sale
.