The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (59 page)

“Oponn?” Rake’s head turned slowly, and the captain once again looked into eyes of deep, cold blue. Paran’s spirits sank. The Tiste Andii’s gaze fell to the sword, then again to Shadowthrone. “Begone,” Rake said. “The matter is ended.”

Shadowthrone dipped his head. “For now.” The god raised his hands and shadows gathered around him. The surviving Hounds closed in, leaving their dead kin where they lay. The shadows thickened, became opaque, entirely hiding those within. When they dispersed, the lord and his Hounds were gone.

Paran eyed the Tiste Andii who now faced him. After a moment the captain shrugged.

Rake’s brows rose. “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s the extent of your comments? Do I speak with Oponn directly? I thought I sensed a presence before, but when I looked more carefully . . . nothing.” Rake shifted grip on his sword, the point rising. “Do you hide within, Oponn?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” Paran replied. “Apparently Oponn saved my life or, rather, brought me back to life. I’ve no idea why, but I’ve been told that I’ve become Oponn’s tool.”

“You are journeying to Darujhistan?”

Paran nodded.

“May I approach?” Rake asked, sheathing his sword.

“Why not?”

The Tiste Andii strode up to him and laid a hand against his chest. Paran felt nothing untoward. Rake stepped back. “Oponn may have been within you in the past, but it seems the Twins have hastily withdrawn. I see their signs, but no god controls you now, mortal.” He hesitated. “Their treatment of you was . . . unkind. If Caladan Brood was here he could heal that . . . You’re no longer Oponn’s tool.” The Tiste’s eyes remained blue, but they’d lightened to the color of the sky. “But your sword is.”

There was a squawk nearby and both turned to see a Great Raven alight on one of the Hound’s bodies. It plucked out an eye and gobbled it down. Paran fought back a wave of nausea. The huge battered bird hopped toward them.

“This man’s sword, Master,” the raven said, “is not Oponn’s only tool, I’m afraid.”

Paran shook his head, his only surprise the realization that nothing surprised him anymore. He sheathed his sword.

“Speak on, Crone,” Rake commanded.

The raven cocked its head at Paran. “Here, Master?”

Rake frowned. “Perhaps not.” He faced the captain again. “Hold on to that weapon until your luck turns. When that happens, and if you’re still alive, break it or give it to your worst enemy.” A grin crossed his features. “Thus far, it seems your luck holds.”

Paran hesitated. “I’m free to go?”

Lord Anomander Rake nodded.

The captain looked around, then strode off in search of the surviving horses.

Minutes later, the shock came to Paran, driving him to his knees. Toc was gone. He’d dragged the man with him in his relentless, mindless pursuit across the plain. He looked up, eyes unseeing. He’d called Hairlock his enemy. He’d proclaimed Lorn’s death his final goal. As if these two things would answer the anguish within him, would heal the pain of loss.
But the demon is within me
.

Oponn had been unkind . . . What had Rake meant?
Have any of these thoughts been my own? Look at me—my every move seems a desperate search for someone to blame, always someone else. I’ve made being a tool of a god an excuse, a justification for not thinking, for simply reacting. And others have died for it
.

Rake had also said, “Finish what you start.” He would have to deal with his own demons later. There could be no turning back. But it had been wrong to think that what he planned would end the pain within him. Adding Lorn’s blood to his stained hands would not achieve what he sought.

Paran rose, collected the reins of the surviving horses. He led the beasts back to the scene of the fight. The Tiste Andii had vanished, but the Hounds remained, motionless dark humps in the yellow grass. He dropped the reins and approached one. The slice across its chest still leaked blood. Crouching, Paran reached out, ran his fingers along the animal’s hide.
See what the desire for murder gets you? Hood’s Breath, but you were a beautiful beast
. His fingertips brushed blood. The captain recoiled at the contact, but it was too late. Something rippled up his arm, swept through him. He fell back into darkness, the sound of chains rattling taut.

Paran found himself walking and he was not alone. Through the gloom he could make out figures on all sides, each shackled with long iron chains, leaning forward as if pulling at an immense weight. The ground underfoot was barren, lifeless. Overhead there was nothing but darkness. Beneath the constant creak of
the chains was a heavier sound that Paran could feel through the soles of his boots. Alone unchained, he fell back toward the source of that sound, passing chained figures, many of them not human. A shape appeared, hulking, pitching. A wagon, impossibly huge, its wooden wheels taller than a man. Driven by an insatiable desire to discover what it carried, Paran moved closer.

A chain ripped across his chest, throwing him from his feet. An ear-piercing howl sounded directly above him. Claws gouged his left arm, pinning it to the ground. A chain rippled under his back. He struggled as a cold wet nose and savage teeth pushed under his chin. The jaws opened, slipped around his neck, then tightened.

Paran lay perfectly still, waiting for the fatal clenching of those jaws. Instead, they pulled away. He found himself staring up into the Hound’s eyes, one blue, one brown. A massive collar of iron circled its neck. The beast lunged away. The chain under him snapped taut, flinging Paran into the air. He felt more than heard the wagon groan sideways, even as he landed sprawling into the path of one of the wooden wheels.

A hand grasped the collar of his cloak and dragged him clear. The captain scrambled to his feet.

A voice beside him spoke. “Any man who has earned mercy from Hounds and walks here unchained is a man worth talking to. Walk with me.”

The shadow of a cowl hid the stranger’s features. The man was big, dressed in rags. After releasing Paran he resumed straining on his chain. “Never before,” he grunted, “has this prison been so tested.” He hissed as the wagon lurched yet again to the Hounds’ frantic attempts to escape. “I fear this will overturn.”

“And if it does?”

The face swung to him briefly and in the darkness Paran saw the flash of teeth. “The pulling will get harder.”

“Where are we?”

“The Warren within the Sword. Did not Dragnipur take your life, too?”

“If it had, would I not be chained as well?”

“True enough. What then are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Paran admitted. “I saw the Hounds killed by Rake’s sword. Then I touched the blood of one of the slain beasts.”

“That explains their confusion. They thought you one of their own . . . at first. You were wise to submit to that Hound’s challenge.”

“Too frightened to move, you mean.”

The stranger laughed. “Even so.”

“What is your name?”

“Names are meaningless. Rake killed me. Long ago. That is enough.”

Paran fell silent.
Eternity, chained here, forever pulling. And I ask for the man’s name. Would any apology suffice?

The wagon bucked savagely, earth ripped from under its wheels. Figures fell, wailing. The Hounds howled their fury.

“Gethol’s Breath,” the stranger gasped. “Will they never cease?”

“I don’t think they will,” Paran said. “Can those chains be broken?”

“No. None have managed it yet, that is, and there are dragons among us. But these Hounds . . .” He sighed. “It is astonishing, but already I long for the peace their arrival has shattered.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

The stranger barked a laugh. “By all means, try.”

Paran moved away, heading toward the Hounds. He had no plan in mind.
But I alone am unchained
. The thought stopped him and he smiled.
Unchained. No one’s tool
. He continued on, wondering. He passed figures straining step by step, some silent, some muttering in madness. None raised its head to glance as he passed. The sound of bestial gasping reached him. “Hounds!” Paran called. “I would help!”

After a time, they appeared from the gloom. Blood sheathed their shoulders and chests, the flesh torn and mangled by the collars. The Hounds trembled, muscles jumping along their flanks. Their eyes, level with Paran’s own, met his with such numbed, helpless misery that his heart lurched. He reached out to the odd-eyed one. “I would examine your collars, your chains, seeking a flaw.”

The beast walked alongside him—they were ever moving forward, the wagon unceasing in its roll. Paran bent close, running his hands on the collar, seeking a join. There was none. Where the chain attached, the link and the collar seemed of one solid piece. Though he knew little of smithing, he believed this attachment would prove the weakest element and should already show signs of strain. But his fingertips told him otherwise. The iron was not even scratched.

Paran ran his hand along the chain, leaving the Hound’s side. He paused, noticing the other beast watching his every move, then continued on. From the animal to the wagon, over seventy armspans of length, he ran his hands from link to link, seeking a change in the feel of the iron, seeking heat, gouges.
Nothing
. He arrived alongside the wagon. The wheel he walked behind was solid wood, a span in width, nicked and gouged but otherwise featureless. The wall of the bed was twenty or more feet high. The slatted sideboards of withered, bone-gray wood showed spaces a finger’s width between. Paran flinched back on seeing skeletal fingers crowding the cracks, wriggling helplessly.

The wagon’s frame beneath the sideboards drew his attention. Here the wood was black, glistening with pitch. Chain-ends entered it, countless in number, sinking seamlessly into the wood. Under his touch the frame seemed solid, yet it was as if the chain links passed through it—whatever held them, then, was beyond the wagon’s frame. Paran drew a deep breath of the cool, stale air, then ducked under the bed.

The frame’s beam was a dozen spans thick, condensation dripping down from its pitched underside in endless rain. At the inside edge Paran found once again the chains, continuing on farther under the wagon. Grasping one, he followed it inward. The links grew colder as did the air around him. Before long he was forced to release the chain, his hands burned by the cold. The rain from the underside of the wagon came down as slivers of ice. Two paces ahead, the chains converged, swallowed by a suspended pool of absolute darkness. Cold poured from it in pulsing waves. Paran could get no closer.

He hissed in frustration as he scrambled along opposite the dark hole, wondering what to do next. Even if he managed to break a chain, he had no idea which ones belonged to the Hounds. As for the others . . . Anomander Rake seemed a creature of clear—if cold—justice. To break a chain could unleash ancient horrors upon the realms of the living. Even the stranger he’d spoken with could once have been a Tyrant, a horrible dominator.

Paran unsheathed Chance. As the blade leaped free of the scabbard it bucked wildly in his hands. The captain grinned even as tremors of terror reached through his hands from the sword. “Oponn! Dear Twins, I call on you!
Now!
”

The air groaned. Paran stumbled over someone, who loosed a stream of curses. Sheathing his sword, he reached down, hand closing on brocaded cloth. He pulled the god to his feet. “Why you?” Paran demanded. “I wanted your sister.”

“Madness, mortal!” the male Twin snapped. “To call me here! So close to the Queen of Darkness—
here, within a god-slaying sword!
”

Paran shook him. Filled with a mindless, bestial rage, the captain
shook
the god. He heard the Hounds howl, and fought back a sudden desire to join his voice to their cries.

The Twin, terror in his bright eyes, clawed at Paran. “What—what are you doing?”

Paran stopped, his attention drawn to two chains that had gone slack. “They’re coming.”

The wagon seemed to leap upward, rocked as it had never been before. The thunder of the impact filled the air, wood and ice cascading down.

“They have your scent, Twin.”

The god shrieked, battered his fists into Paran’s face, scratching, kicking, but the captain held on. “Not the luck that pulls.” He spat blood. “The luck . . . that pushes—”

The wagon was hammered again, its wheels bucking into the air to come down with a splintering, echoing concussion. Paran had no time to wonder at the savage strength that coursed through him, a strength sufficient to hold down a god gripped in panic. He simply held on.

“Please!” the Twin begged. “Anything! Just ask it! Anything within my powers.”

“The Hounds’ chains,” Paran said. “Break them.”

“I—I cannot!”

The wagon shuddered sickeningly, distant wood splintering. Paran dragged the Twin a pace as it rolled forward again. “Think of a way,” he said. “Or the Hounds will have you.”

“I—I cannot be sure, Paran.”

“What? You can’t be sure of what?”

The Twin gestured toward the blackness. “In there. The chains are held in place within it—within the Warren of Darkness, within Kurald Galain. Should they enter . . . I do not know—I cannot be certain, but the chains may disappear.”

“How can they enter?”

“They could be leaving one nightmare only to enter another.”

“It cannot be worse, Twin. I asked you, how?”

“Bait.”

“What?”

The Twin smiled shakily. “As you said, they’re coming. But, Paran, you must release me. By all means, hold me before the portal, but please, at the last moment . . .”

“I release my hold on you.”

The god nodded.

“Very well.”

The Hounds struck the wagon again, and this time they broke through. Clutching the Twin, Paran spun round to see the beasts charging out of the gloom. His captive shrieked.

The Hounds leaped.

Paran released the god, dropping flat to the ground as the Hounds passed through the air above. The Twin vanished. The Hounds flashed past, disappeared into the portal in silence, and were gone.

Paran rolled to his feet, even as darkness reached out for him, not with the cold of oblivion but with a breath like warm, sighing wind.