The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (306 page)

Every meal since had tasted wine-soaked, reminding Coll of the almost two years he had wasted as a drunk, drowning in misery’s dark waters as only a man in love with self-pity can. He would have liked to call the man he had been a stranger now, but the world had a way of spinning unnoticed, until what he’d thought he’d turned his back on suddenly faced him again.

Even worse, introspection – for him at least – was a funnel in sand, a spider waiting at the bottom. And Coll well knew he was quite capable of devouring himself.

Murillio strode into view again.

‘The ant danced blind,’ Coll said.

‘What?’

‘The old children’s tale – remember it?’

‘You’ve lost your mind, haven’t you?’

‘Not yet. At least I don’t think so.’

‘But that’s just it, Coll. You wouldn’t know, would you?’

He watched Murillio spin round once more, step past the wall’s edge and out of sight.
The world spins about us unseen. The blind dance in circles. There’s no escaping what you are, and all your dreams glittered white at night, but grey in the light of day. And both are equally deadly. Who was that damned poet? The Vindictive. An orphan, he’d claimed. Wrote a thousand stories to terrify children. Was stoned by a mob in Darujhistan, which he survived. I think – that was years ago. His tales live in the streets, now. Singsong chants to accompany the games of the young.

Damned sinister, if you ask me.

He shook himself, seeking to clear his mind before stumbling into yet another pitfall of memory. Before she’d stolen his estate, before she’d destroyed him, Simtal had told him she carried his child. He wondered if that child had ever existed – Simtal fought with lies where others used knives. There’d been no announcement of any birth. Though of course the chance of his missing such an announcement was pretty much certain in those days that followed his fall. But his friends would have known. Would have told him, if not then, then now …

Murillio stepped into view.

‘A moment there,’ Coll growled.

‘Now what? The beetle flipped on its back? The worm circling the hole?’

‘A question, Murillio.’

‘All right, if you insist.’

‘Did you ever hear tell of a child born to Simtal?’

He watched his friend’s face slowly close, the eyes narrowing. ‘That is a question not to be asked in this temple, Coll.’

‘I’m asking it none the less.’

‘I do not think you’re ready—’

‘Not for you to judge and you should know better, Murillio. Dammit, I’ve been sitting on the Council for months! And I’m still not
ready?
What absurdity is—’

‘All right all right! It’s just this: there’s only rumours.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I’m not. There was a span of more than a few months – just after your, uh, demise – when she made no public appearance. Explained away as mourning, of course, though everyone knew—’

‘Yes, I know what everyone knew. So she hid out for a time. Go on.’

‘Well, we believed she was consolidating her position. Behind the scenes. Rallick was keeping an eye on her. At least I think he was. He’d know more.’

‘And you two never discussed the details of what she was up to, what she looked like? Murillio—’

‘Well, what would Rallick know of mothering?’

‘When they’re with child, their bellies swell and their breasts get bigger. I’m sure our assassin friend has seen one or two so-afflicted women on Darujhistan’s streets – did he just think they were eating melons whole?’

‘No need to be sarcastic, Coll. All I’m saying is, he wasn’t sure.’

‘What about the estate’s servants? Any women who’d just given birth?’

‘Rallick never mentioned—’

‘My, what an observant assassin.’

‘Fine!’ Murillio snapped. ‘Here’s what I think! She had a child. She sent it away. Somewhere. She wouldn’t have abandoned it, because at some point she would have wanted to use it, as a verifiable heir, as marriage-bait, whatever. Simtal was lowborn; whatever contacts she had from her past were private ones – kept from everyone but those involved, including you, as you well know. I think she sent the child that way, somewhere no-one would think of looking.’

‘Almost three, now,’ Coll said, slowly leaning back to rest his head against the wall. He closed his eyes. ‘Three years of age…’

‘Maybe so. But at the time there wasn’t any way of finding—’

‘You’d have needed my blood. Then Baruk…’

‘Right,’ Murillio snapped, ‘we’d just go and bleed you one night when you were passed-out drunk.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, you ox, back then, there didn’t seem much point!’

‘Fair enough. But I’ve walked a straight line for months now, Murillio.’

‘Then you do it, Coll. Go to Baruk.’

‘I will. Now that I know.’

‘Listen, friend, I’ve known a lot of drunks in my time. You look at four, five months being sober and think it’s eternity. But me, I see a man still brushing the puke from his clothes. A man who could get knocked right back down. I wasn’t going to push – it’s too soon—’

‘I hear you. I don’t curse your decision, Murillio. You were right to be cautious. But what I see – what I see now, that is – is a reason. Finally, a real reason to hold myself up.’

‘Coll, I hope you’re not thinking you can just walk into whatever household your child’s being raised in and take it away—’

‘Why not? It’s mine.’

‘And there’s a place waiting for it on your mantelpiece, right?’

‘You think I can’t raise a child?’

‘I
know
you can’t, Coll. But, if you do this right, you can pay to see it grow up well, with opportunities that it might not otherwise have.’

‘A hidden benefactor. Huh. That would be … noble.’

‘Be honest: it would be
convenient,
Coll. Not noble, not heroic.’

‘And you call yourself a friend.’

‘I do.’

Coll sighed. ‘And so you should, though I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such friendship.’

‘Since I don’t want to depress you further, we’ll discuss that subject some other time.’

The massive stone doors to the chamber of the sepulchre swung open.

Grunting, Coll rose from the bench.

The Knight of Death stepped into the hallway to stand directly before Murillio. ‘Bring the woman,’ the warrior said. ‘The preparations are complete.’

Coll strode to the entrance and looked within. A large hole had been carved through the floor’s solid stone in the centre of the chamber. Shattered stone rose in heaps banked against a side wall. Suddenly chilled, the Daru pushed past the Knight of Death. ‘Hood’s breath!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s a damned sarcophagus!’

‘What?’ Murillio cried, rushing to join Coll. He stared at the burial pit, then spun to the Knight. ‘The Mhybe’s not dead, you fool!’

The warrior’s lifeless eyes fixed on Coll’s companion. ‘The preparations,’ he said, ‘are complete.’

*   *   *

Ankle-deep in dust, she stumbled across a wasteland. The tundra had disintegrated, and with it the hunters, the demonic pursuers who had been such unwelcome company for so long. The desolation surrounding her was, she realized, far worse. No grasses underfoot, no sweet cool wind. The hum of the blackflies was gone, those avid companions so eager to feed on her flesh – though her scalp still crawled as if some had survived the devastation.

And she was weakening, her youthful muscles failing in some undefinable way. Not weariness alone, but some kind of chronic dissolution. She was losing her substantiality, and that realization was the most terrifying of all.

The sky overhead was colourless, devoid of cloud or even sun, yet faintly illuminated by some unseen source. It seemed impossibly distant – to look upward for too long was to risk madness, mind railing at its inability to comprehend what the eyes were seeing.

So she held her gaze fixed directly ahead as she staggered on. There was nothing to mark the horizon in any direction. She might well be walking in circles for all she knew, though if so it was a vast circle, for she’d yet to cross her own path. She had no destination in mind for this journey of the spirit; nor the will to seek to fashion one in this deathly dreamscape, had she known how.

Her lungs ached, as if they too were losing their ability to function. Before long, she believed, she herself would begin to dissolve, this young body defeated in a way that was opposite to what she had feared for so long. She would not be torn to pieces by wolves. The wolves were gone. No, she knew now that nothing had been as it had seemed – it had all been something different, something secret, a riddle she’d yet to work out. And now it was too late. Oblivion had come for her.

The Abyss she had seen in her nightmares of so long ago had been a place of chaos, of frenzied feeding on souls, of miasmic memories detached and flung on storm winds. Perhaps those visions had been the products of her own mind, after all. The true Abyss was what she was now seeing, on all sides, in every direction—

Something broke the horizon’s flat line, something monstrous and crouched, bestial, off to her right. It had not been there a moment ago.

Or perhaps it had. Perhaps this world itself was shrinking, and her few frail steps had unveiled what lay beyond the land’s curvature.

She moaned in sudden terror, even as her steps shifted direction, drew her towards the apparition.

It grew visibly larger with every stride she took, swelled horribly until it claimed a third of the sky. Pink-streaked, raw bones, rising upward, a cage of ribs, each rib scarred, knotted with malignant growths, calcifications, porous nodes, cracks, twists and fissures. Between each bone, skin was stretched, enclosing whatever lay within. Blood vessels spanned the skin, pulsing like red lightning, flickering and dimming before her eyes.

For this, the storm of life was passing. For this, and for her as well.

‘Are you mine?’ she asked in a rasping voice as she stumbled to within twenty paces of the ghastly cage. ‘Does my heart lie inside? Slowing with each beat? Are you me ?’

Emotions suddenly assailed her – feelings that were not her own, but came from whatever lay within the cage. Anguish. Overwhelming pain.

She wanted to flee.

Yet it sensed her. It demanded that she stay.

That she come closer.

Close enough to reach out.

To touch.

The Mhybe screamed. She was in a cloud of dust that clawed her eyes blind, on her knees suddenly, feeling as if she was being torn apart – her spirit, her every instinct for survival rearing up one last time. To resist the summons. To flee.

But she could not move.

And then the force reached out. It began to pull.

And the land beneath her shifted, tilted. The dust slicked The dust became as glass.

On her hands and knees, she looked up through streaming eyes, the scene dancing before her.

The ribs were ribs no longer. They were legs.

And skin was not skin. It had become a web.

And she was sliding.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Were the Black Moranth a loquacious people, the history of Achievant Twist would be known. And were it known, from what preceded first mention of him following the alliance with the Malazan Empire; his sojourn during the Genabackan Campaigns of that same empire; and of his life within the Moranth Hegemony itself – one cannot but suspect that the tale would be worthy of more than one legend.

L
OST
H
EROES

B
ADARK OF
N
ATHII

The vision mountains loomed dark and massive, blotting the stars to the west. Her back to the vertical root wall of a toppled tree, Corporal Picker drew her rain cloak tighter against the chill. On her left, the distant walls of Setta formed a ragged black line on the other side of the starlit river. The city had proved closer to the mountains and to the river than the maps had indicated, which had been a good thing.

Her gaze remained fixed on the path below, straining in search of the first smudge of motion. At least the rain had passed, though mist had begun to gather. She listened to the drip of water from the pine boughs on all sides.

A boot squelched in mossy mud, then grated on granite. Picker glanced over, nodded, then returned her attention to the trail.

‘Expect a while yet,’ Captain Paran murmured. ‘They’ve considerable ground to cover.’

‘Aye,’ Picker agreed. ‘Only Blend runs a fast point, sir. She has eyes like a cat.’

‘Let’s hope she doesn’t leave the others behind, then.’

‘She won’t.’
She’d better not.

Paran slowly crouched at her side. ‘I suppose we could have flown directly over the city and saved ourselves the trouble of checking it out on foot.’

‘And if there’d been watchers they’d have seen us. No need to second guess yourself, Captain. We don’t know what the Pannion Seer’s got for eyes in this land, but we’d be fools to think we were entirely alone. We’re already risking big with thinking we can travel at night and not be detected.’

‘Quick Ben says it’s the condors and nothing else, Lieutenant, and they only take to the sky during the day. So long as we keep under cover when the sun’s out, we should be able to pull this off.’

Picker slowly nodded in the darkness. ‘Spindle agrees. So do Bluepearl and Shank and Toes. Captain, with us and just us Bridgeburners frog-hopping with the Black Moranth, I’d have little concern. But since we’re flying point on—’

‘Shh – there, down below. Saw something.’

Blend was her usual admirable self, moving like a shadow, vanishing entirely for one, two, three heartbeats, then reappearing ten paces closer, zigzagging her way to where Picker and Paran waited.

Though neither officer had moved nor made a sound, Blend had somehow found them. Her teeth flashed white as she squatted down in front of them.