The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (180 page)

If anyone can make it, it's Fiddler. The bastard's always been charmed. A sapper all his life, it seems, with a sapper's extra sense. What would he say if he stood here beside me right now? “Don't like it, Kal. Something's awry all right. Move those hands of yours…”

Kalam frowned, glanced back down at his hands, willing them to lift clear of the rail.

Nothing.

He attempted to step back, but his muscles refused, deaf to his command. Sweat sprang out beneath his clothes, beading the backs of his hands.

A soft voice spoke beside him. “There's such irony in this, my friend. You see, it's your mind that's betrayed you. The formidable, deadly mind of the assassin Kalam Mekhar.” Salk Elan leaned on the rail beside him, studying the city. “I've admired you for so long, you know. You're a damned legend, the finest killer the Claw ever had—and lost. Ah, and it's that loss that rankles the most. Had you the will for it, Kalam, you could now be in command of the entire organization—oh, Topper might disagree, and I'll grant you, in some ways he's your superior by far. He would have killed me on the first day, no matter how uncertain he was of whatever risk I might have presented. Even so,” Salk Elan continued after a moment, “knife to knife, you're his better, friend.

“Another irony for you, Kalam. I was not in Seven Cities to find you—indeed, we knew nothing of your presence there. Until I came across a certain Red Blade who did, that is. She'd been following you since Erhlitan, before you delivered the Book to Sha'ik—did you know you led the Red Blades directly to that witch? Did you know that they succeeded in assassinating her? That Red Blade would have been here with me, in fact, if not for an unfortunate incident in Aren. But I prefer working alone.

“Salk Elan, a name I admit to being proud of. But here and now, of course, my vanity insists that you know my true name, which is Pearl.” He paused, looked around, sighed. “You threw me but once, with that sly hint that maybe Quick Ben was hiding in your baggage. I almost panicked then, until I realized if that were true, I'd already be dead—sniffed out and fed to the sharks.

“You should never have left the Claw, Kalam. We don't deal with rejection very well. The Empress wants you, you know, wants a conversation with you, in fact. Before skinning you alive, I imagine. Alas, things aren't so simple, are they?

“And so, here we are…”

In his peripheral vision, Kalam saw the man draw forth a dagger. “It's those immutable laws within the Claw, you see. One in particular, which I'm sure you well know…”

The blade sank deep into Kalam's side with a dull, distant pain. Pearl withdrew the weapon. “Oh, not fatal, just lots of blood. A weakening, if you will. Malaz City is quiet tonight, don't you think? Not surprising—there's something in the air—every cutpurse, guttersnipe and thug can feel it, and they're one and all keeping their heads low. Three Hands await you, Kalam, eager for the hunt to start. That immutable law, Kalam…in the Claw, we deal with our own.”

Hands gripped the assassin. “You'll awaken once you hit the water, friend. Granted, it's something of a swim, especially with the armor you're wearing. And the blood won't help—this bay's notorious for sharks, isn't it. But I've great confidence in you, Kalam. I know you'll make it to dry land. That far, at least. After that, well…”

He felt himself being lifted, edged over the rail. He stared down at the black water below.

“A damned shame,” Pearl gasped close to his ear, “about the captain and this crew, but I've no choice, as I'm sure you understand. Farewell, Kalam Mekhar.”

The assassin struck the water with a soft splash. Pearl stared down as the disturbance settled. His confidence in Kalam wavered. The man was in chain armor, after all. Then he shrugged, drew forth a pair of throat-stickers and swung to face the motionless figures lying on the main deck. “A good man's work is never done, alas,” he said, stepping forward.

The shape that emerged from the shadows to face him was huge, angular, black-limbed. A single eye gleamed from the long-snouted head, and hovering dimly behind that head was a rider, his face a mockery of his mount's.

Pearl stepped back, offered a smile. “Ah, an opportunity to thank you for your efforts against the Semk. I knew not where you came from then, nor how you've come to be here now, or why, but please accept my gratitude—”

“Kalam,” the rider whispered. “He was here but a moment ago.”

Pearl's eyes narrowed. “Ah, now I understand. You weren't following
me
, were you? No, of course not. How silly of me! Well, to answer your question, child, Kalam has gone into the city—”

The demon's lunge interrupted him. Pearl ducked beneath the snapping jaws—and directly into the sweeping foreclaw. The impact threw the Claw twenty feet, crashing him up against a battened-down dory. His shoulder dislocated with a stab of pain. Pearl rolled, forcing himself into a sitting position. He watched the demon stalk toward him.

“I see I've met my match,” Pearl whispered. “Very well.” He reached under his shirt. “Try this one, then.”

The tiny bottle shattered on the deck between them. Smoke billowed, began coalescing.

“The Kenryll'ah looks eager, wouldn't you say? Well—” he struggled to his feet—“I think I'll leave you two to it. There's a certain tavern in Malaz City I've been dying to see.”

He gestured and a warren opened, swept over him, and when it closed, Pearl was gone.

Apt watched the Imperial demon acquire its form, a creature twice its weight, hulking and bestial.

The child reached down and patted Apt's lone shoulder. “Let's be quick with this one, shall we?”

 

A chorus of shudders and explosions of wood awoke the captain. He blinked in the darkness as
Ragstopper
pitched wildly about him. Voices screamed on deck. Groaning, the captain pushed himself off the bed, sensing a clarity in his mind that he'd not known in months, a freedom of action and thought that told unequivocally that Pearl's influence was gone.

He clambered to his cabin door, limbs weak with disuse, and made his way into the passage.

Emerging on deck, he found himself in a crowd of cowering sailors. Two horrific creatures were battling directly in front of them, the larger of the two a mass of shredded flesh, unable to match its opponent's lightning speed. Its wild flailing with a massive double-bladed axe had reduced the deck and the rails to pulp. An earlier swing had chopped through the mast, and though it remained upright, snagged in cordage somewhere high above them, it leaned precariously, its weight canting the ship hard over.

“Captain!”

“Have the lads drag the surviving dories clear, Palet, and back up astern—we'll lower 'em from there.”

“Aye, sir!” The acting First Mate snapped out the commands, then swung back to offer the captain a grin. “Glad you're back, Carther—”

“Shut your face, Palet—that's Malaz City out there and I drowned years ago, remember?” He squinted at the warring demons. “
Ragstopper
's not going to survive this—”

“But the loot—”

“To Hood with that! We can always raise her—but we need to be alive to do it. Now, let's lend a hand with those dories—we're taking on water and going down fast.”

“Beru fend! The sea's crawling with sharks!”

 

Fifty yards farther out, the captain of the fast trader stood with his First Mate, both of them straining to make out the source of the commotion ahead.

“Back oars,” the captain said. “Full stop.”

“Aye, sir.”

“That ship's going down. Assemble rescue crews, lower the boats—”

Horse hooves clomped on the main deck behind them. Both men turned. The First Mate stepped forward: “You there! What in Mael's name do you think you're doing? How did you get that damned animal on deck?”

The woman tightened the girth-strap another notch, then swung up into the saddle. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But I cannot wait.”

Sailors and marines scattered as she drove the horse forward. The creature cleared the side rail and leaped out into darkness. A loud splash followed a moment later.

The First Mate turned back to his captain, jaw hanging.

“Get Ship's Mage and a goat,” the captain snapped.

“Sir?”

“Anyone brave and stupid enough to do what she just did has earned our every assistance. Have Ship's Mage clear a path through the sharks and whatever else might await her. Be quick about it!”

Beneath the whirlwind's towering spire was a lower billowing of dust as the massive army decamped. Borne on wayward gusts, the ochre clouds spread out from the oasis, settling here and there among the weathered folds of ruins. The air was lit gold on all sides, as if the desert had at last unveiled its memories of wealth and glory, only to reveal them for what they truly were.

Sha'ik stood on the flat roof of a wooden watchtower near the palace concourse, the scurrying efforts of an entire city beneath her almost unnoticed as she stared into the opaqueness to the south. The young girl she had adopted kneeled close by, watching her new mother with sharp, steady eyes.

The ladder below creaked incessantly to someone's labored ascent, Sha'ik slowly realized, and as she turned she saw Heboric's head and shoulders emerge through the trap. The ex-priest clambered onto the platform and laid an invisible hand on the girl's head before turning to squint at Sha'ik.

“L'oric's the one to watch,” Heboric said. “The other two think they're subtle, but they're anything but.”

“L'oric,” she murmured, returning her gaze to the south. “What is your sense of him?”

“You've knowledge that surpasses mine, lass—”

“Nevertheless.”

“I think he senses the bargain.”

“Bargain?”

Heboric moved to stand beside her and leaned his tattooed forearms on the thin wooden railing. “The one the goddess made with you. The one that proves that a rebirth did not in truth occur—”

“Did it not, Heboric?”

“No. No child chooses to be born, no child has any say in the matter. You had both. Sha'ik has not been reborn, she has been re-
made
. L'oric may well seize on this, believing it to be a gap in your armor.”

“He risks the wrath of the goddess, then.”

“Aye, and I don't think he's ignorant of that, lass, which is why he needs to be watched. Carefully.”

They were silent for a time, both staring out into the south's impenetrable shroud. Eventually Heboric cleared his throat. “Perhaps, with your new gifts, you can answer some questions.”

“Such as?”

“When did Dryjhna choose you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When did the manipulation begin? Here in Raraku? Skullcup? Or on a distant continent? When did the goddess first cast her gaze upon you, lass?”

“She never did.”

Heboric started. “That seems—”

“Unlikely? Yes, but it is the truth. The journey was mine, and mine alone. You must understand, even goddesses cannot foresee unexpected deaths, those twists of mortality, decisions taken, paths followed or not followed. Sha'ik Elder had the gift of prophecy, but such a gift, when given, is no more than a seed. It grows in the freedom of a human soul. Dryjhna was greatly disturbed by Sha'ik's visions. Visions that made no sense. A hint of peril, but nothing certain, nothing at all. Besides,” she added with a shrug, “strategy and tactics are anathema to the Apocalypse.”

Heboric grimaced. “That doesn't bode well.”

“Wrong. We are free to devise our own.”

“Even if the goddess did not guide you, someone or something did. Else Sha'ik would never have been given those visions.”

“Now you speak of fate. Argue that with your fellow scholars, Heboric. Not every mystery can be unravelled, much as you believe otherwise. Sorry if that pains you…”

“Not half as sorry as I am. But it occurs to me that even as mortals are but pieces on a gameboard, so too are the gods.”

“ ‘Elemental forces in opposition,' ” she said, smiling.

Heboric's brows rose, then he scowled. “A quote. A familiar one—”

“It should be. It's carved into the Imperial Gate in Unta, after all. Kellanved's own words, as a means to justify the balance of destruction with creation—the expansion of the Empire, in all its hungry glory.”

“Hood's breath!” the old man hissed.

“Have I sent your mind spinning in other directions, Heboric?”

“Aye.”

“Well, save your breath. The subject of your next treatise—no doubt that handful of obscure old fools will dance in excitement.”

“Old fools?”

“Your fellow scholars. Your readers, Heboric.”

“Ah.”

They were silent again for some time, until the ex-priest spoke once more. “What will you do?” he asked softly.

“With what has happened out there?”

“With what's still happening. Korbolo Dom reaping senseless slaughter in your name—”

“In the name of the goddess,” she corrected, hearing the brittle anger in her own voice. She'd already exchanged sharp words with Leoman on this subject.

“Word of the ‘rebirth' has probably reached him—”

“No, it has not. I have sealed Raraku, Heboric. The storm raised around us can scour flesh from bones. Not even a T'lan Imass could survive the passage.”

“Yet you have made an announcement,” the old man said. “The Whirlwind.”

“Which has raised in Korbolo Dom doubts. And fears. He is very eager to complete the task he's chosen. He's still unfettered, and so is free to answer his obsessions—”

“And so, what will you do? Aye, we can march, but it will take months to reach the Aren Plain, and by then Korbolo will have given Tavore all the justification she needs to deliver a ruthless punishment. The rebellion was bloody, but your sister will make what's already happened seem like a scratch on the backside.”

“You assume she is my superior, Heboric, don't you? In tactics—”

“There's precedent for how far your sister will go in cruelty, lass,” he growled. “Witness you standing here…”

“And there lies my greatest advantage, old man. Tavore believes she will face a desert witch whom she has never met. Ignorance will not sway her contempt for such a creature. Yet I am not ignorant of
my
enemy…”

A subtle change had come to the distant roar of the Whirlwind towering behind them. Sha'ik smiled. Heboric's sense of that change came moments later. He turned. “What is happening?”

“It will not take us months to reach Aren, Heboric. Have you not wondered what the Whirlwind is?”

The ex-priest's blind eyes widened as he faced that pillar of dust and wind. Sha'ik wondered how the man's preternatural senses perceived the phenomenon, but his next words made it clear that whatever he saw was true. “By the gods, it's
toppling!
”

“Dryjhna's Warren, Heboric, our whirling road to the south.”

“Will it take us there in time, Fel—Sha'ik? In time to stop Korbolo Dom's madness?”

She did not answer, for it was already too late.

 

As Duiker rode in through the gates, gauntleted hands reached out to grasp the halter and reins, dragging his mare to a stuttering halt. A smaller hand closed on the historian's wrist, tugging with something like desperation. He looked down, and saw in Nether's face a sickly dread that poured ice into his veins.

“To the tower,” she pleaded. “Quickly!”

A strange murmuring was building from Aren's walls, a sound of darkness that filled the dusty air. Sliding down from the saddle, Duiker felt his heart begin to thunder. Nether's hand pulled him through the crowd of Garrison Guards and refugees. He felt other hands reach out, touch lightly as if seeking a blessing or conferring one, then slip past.

An arched doorway suddenly yawned before him, leading to a gloomy landing with stone steps rising along the inside of the tower wall. The sound from the city walls was building to a roar, a wordless cry of outrage, horror and anguish. It echoed with mad intent within the tower, and rose in timbre with each step that the warlock and the historian climbed.

On the middle landing she swept him past the T-shaped arrow slits, edging them both behind the pair of bowmen pressed against the narrow windows, then on, up the worn stairs. Neither archer even so much as noticed them.

As they neared the shaft of bright light directly beneath the roof hatch, a quavering voice reached down.

“There's too many…I can do nothing, no, the gods forgive me—too many, too many…”

Nether ascended the shaft of light, Duiker following. They emerged onto the broad platform. Three figures stood at the outer wall. The one on the left Duiker recognized as Mallick Rel—the adviser he had last seen in Hissar—his silks billowing in the hot wind. The man beside him was probably High Fist Pormqual, tall, wiry, slope-shouldered and wearing clothes that would beggar a king, his pale hands skittering across the top of the battlement like trapped birds. To his right stood a soldier in functional armor, a torc on his left arm denoting his commander's rank. He held his burly arms wrapped around himself, as if trying to crush his own bones. The stress bound within him seemed about to explode.

Near the hatch sat Nil, a disarrayed jumble of limbs. The young warlock swung a gray, aged face toward Duiker. Nether swept down to wrap her brother in a fierce hug that she seemed unwilling or unable to relax.

The soldiers lining the walls to either side were screaming now, a sound that cut the air like Hood's own scythe.

The historian went to the wall beside the commander. Duiker's hands reached out to grip the sun-baked stone of the merlon. Following the rapt gaze of the others, he could barely draw breath. Panic surged through him as his eyes took in the scene on the slope of the closest burial mound.

Coltaine.

Above a contracting mass of less than four hundred soldiers, three standards waved: the Seventh's; the polished, articulated dog skeleton of the Foolish Dog Clan; the Crow's black wings surmounting a bronze disc that flashed in the sunlight. Defiant and proud, the bearers continued to hold them high.

On all sides, pressing in with bestial frenzy, were Korbolo Dom's thousands, a mass of footsoldiers devoid of all discipline, interested only in slaughter. Mounted companies rode past them along both visible edges, surging into the gap between the city's walls and the mound—though not riding close enough to come within bow range from Aren's archers. Korbolo Dom's own guard and, no doubt, the renegade Fist himself had moved into position atop the mound behind the last one, and a platform was being raised, as if to ensure a clear view of the events playing out on the nearer barrow.

The distance was not enough to grant mercy to the witnesses on the tower or along the city's wall. Duiker saw Coltaine there, amidst a knot of Mincer's engineers and a handful of Lull's marines, his round shield a shattered mess on his left arm, his lone long-knife snapped to the length of a short sword in his right hand, his feather cloak glistening as if brushed with tar. The historian saw Commander Bult, guiding the retreat toward the hill's summit. Cattle-dogs surged and leaped around the Wickan veteran like a frantic bodyguard, even as arrows swept through them in waves. Among the creatures one stood out, huge, seemingly indomitable, pin-cushioned with arrows, yet fighting on.

The horses were gone. The Weasel Clan was gone. The Foolish Dog warriors were but a score in number, surrounding half a dozen old men and horsewives—the very last of a dwindled, cut-away heart. Of the Crow, it was clear that Coltaine and Bult were the last.

Soldiers of the Seventh, few with any armor left, held themselves in a solid ring around the others. Many of them no longer raised weapons, yet stood their ground even as they were cut to pieces. No quarter was given, every soldier who fell with wounds was summarily butchered—their helmets torn off, their forearms shattered as they sought to ward off the attacks, their skulls crumpling to multiple blows.

The stone beneath Duiker's hands had gone slick, sticky. Iron lances of pain shot up his arms. He barely noticed.

With a wrenching effort, the historian pulled back, reaching out red fingers to grip Pormqual—

The garrison commander blocked him, held him back.

The High Fist saw Duiker, flinched away. “You do not understand!” he screamed. “I cannot save them! Too many! Too many!”

“You can, you bastard! A sortie can drive right to that mound—a cordon, damn you!”

“No! We'll be crushed! I must not!”

The commander's low growl reached Duiker. “You're right, Historian. But he won't do it. The High Fist won't let us save them—”

Duiker struggled to free himself of the man's grip but was pushed back.

“For Hood's sake!” the commander snapped. “We've tried—we've all tried—”

Mallick Rel stepped close, said softly, “My heart weeps, Historian. The High Fist cannot be swayed—”

“This is murder!”

“For which Korbolo Dom shall pay, and dearly.”

Duiker spun around, lurched back to the wall.

They were dying. There, almost within reach—no, within a
soldier
's reach. Anguish closed a black fist in the historian's gut.
I cannot watch
.

Yet I must
.

He saw fewer than a hundred soldiers still upright, but it had become a slaughter—the only battle that remained was among Korbolo's forces for the chance of delivering fatal blows and raising grisly trophies with triumphant shrieks. The Seventh were falling, and falling, using naught but flesh and bone to shield their leaders—the ones who had led them across a continent, to die now, almost within the shadow of Aren's high walls.

And on those walls was ranged an army, ten thousand fellow soldiers to witness this, the greatest crime ever committed by a Malazan High Fist.

How Coltaine had managed to get this far was beyond Duiker's ability to comprehend. He was seeing the end of a battle that must have run without cessation for days—a battle that had ensured the survival of the refugees
—and this is why that dust cloud was so slow to approach
.

The last of the Seventh vanished beneath swarming bodies. Bult stood with his back to the standard bearer, a Dhobri tulwar in each hand. A mob closed on him and drove lances into the veteran, sticking him as they would a cornered boar. Even then he tried to rise up, slashing out with a tulwar to chop into the leg of a man—who reeled back howling. But the lances stabbed deep, pushed the Wickan back, pinned him to the ground. Blades flashed down on him, hacking him to death.