The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (785 page)

‘All who dwelt within the Andara,' Silchas Ruin replied, ‘are dead. Slaughtered by Letherii soldiers and mages. Clip is the Mortal Sword of Darkness. Had he been there, they would now still be alive – his kin. And the bodies lying motionless in the darkness would be Letherii. He wonders if he has not made a terrible mistake.'

‘That thought,' the young Tiste Andii said, ‘was fleeting. They were hunting for you, Fear Sengar. And you, Udinaas.' He turned, his face appalling in its calm repose. The chains spun out, snapped in the cold air, then whirled back inward again. ‘My kin would have made certain there would remain no evidence that you were there. Nor were the Letherii mages powerful enough – nor clever enough – to desecrate the altar, although they tried.' He smiled. ‘They brought their lanterns with them, you see.'

‘The gate didn't stay there long enough anyway,' Udinaas said in a cracking voice.

Clip's hard eyes fixed on the ex-slave. ‘You know nothing.'

‘I know what's spinning from your finger, Clip. You showed us once before, after all.'

Silchas Ruin, finished with the second sword, now sheathed it and rose. ‘Udinaas,' he said to Clip, ‘is as much a mystery as the Acquitor here. Knowledge and power, the hand and the gauntlet. We should move on. Unless,' he paused, facing Clip, ‘it is time.'

Time? Time for what?

‘It is,' Udinaas said, using the Imass spear to get to his feet. ‘They knew they were going to die. Hiding in that deep pit took them nowhere. Fewer young, ever weaker blood. But that blood, well, spill enough of it…'

Clip advanced on the ex-slave.

‘No,' Silchas Ruin said.

The Mortal Sword stopped, seemed to hesitate, then shrugged and turned away. Chain spinning.

‘Mother Dark,' Udinaas resumed with a tight smile. ‘Open your damned gate, Clip, it's been paid for.'

And the spinning chain snapped taut. Horizontally. At each end a ring, balanced as if on end. Within the band closest to them there was…darkness.

Seren Pedac stared, as that sphere of black began growing, spilling out from the ring.

‘She has this thing,' Udinaas muttered, ‘about birth canals.'

Silchas Ruin walked into the Dark and vanished. A moment later there was a ghostly flit as Wither raced into the gate. Kettle took Udinaas's hand and led him through.

Seren glanced over at Fear.
We leave your world behind, Tiste Edur. And yet, I can see the realization awaken in your eyes. Beyond. Through that gate, Fear Sengar, waits the soul of Scabandari.

He settled a hand on his sword, then strode forward.

As Seren Pedac followed, she looked at Clip, met his eyes as he stood there, waiting, the one hand raised, the gate forming a spiralling tunnel out from the nearest ring. In some other world, she imagined, the gate emerged from the other ring.
He's carried it with him. Our way through to where we needed to go. All this time.

Clip winked.

Chilled by that gesture, the Acquitor stepped forward and plunged into darkness.

 

Third Maiden Isle was dead astern, rising into view on the swells then falling away again in the troughs. The ferry groaned like a floundering beast, twisting beneath its forest of masts and their makeshift sails, and the mass of Shake huddled sick and terrified on the deck. Witches and warlocks, on their knees, wailed their prayers to be heard above the gale's swollen fury, but the shore was far away now and they were lost.

Yedan Derryg, drenched by the spume that periodically thrashed over the low gunnels with what seemed demonic glee, was making his way towards Yan Tovis, who stood beside the four men on the steering oar. She was holding on to a pair of thick ratlines, legs set wide to take the pitch and yawl, and as she studied her half-brother's face as he drew nearer, she saw what she already knew to be truth.

We're not going to make it.

Cleaving the lines once past the salt marsh, then up, rounding the peninsula and out along the north edge of the reefs, a journey of three days and two nights before they could tie up in one of the small coves on the lee side of Third Maiden Isle. The weather had held, and at dawn this day all had seemed possible.

‘The seams, Twilight,' Yedan Derryg said upon reaching her. ‘These waves are hammering 'em wide open. We're going down—' He barked a savage laugh. ‘Beyond the shore, be well as they say! More bones to the deep!'

He was pale – as pale as she no doubt was – yet in his eyes there was a dark fury. ‘Tour's Spit lies two pegs off the line, and there're shoals, but, sister, it's the only dry land we might reach.'

‘Oh, and how many on the deck there know how to swim? Any?' She shook her head, blinking salty spray from her eyes. ‘What would you have us do, crash this damned thing onto the strand? Pray to the shore that we can slip through the shoals untouched? Dear Watch, would you curl up in the lap of the gods?'

Bearded jaw bunched, cabled muscles growing so tight she waited to hear bone or teeth crack, then he looked away. ‘What would
you
have us do, then?'

‘Get the damned fools to bail, Yedan. We get any lower and the next wave'll roll us right over.'

Yet she knew it was too late. Whatever grand schemes of survival for her people she had nurtured, deep in her heart, had come untethered. By this one storm. It had been madness, flinging this coast-creeping ferry out beyond the shore, even though the only truly dangerous stretch had been…
this one, here, north from Third Maiden Isle to the lee of Spyrock Island. The only stretch truly open to the western ocean
.

The gale lifted loose suddenly, slammed a fist into the port side of the craft. A mast splintered, the sail billowing round, sheets snapping, and like a huge wing the sail tore itself loose, carrying the mast with it. Rigging snatched up hapless figures from the deck and flung them skyward. A second mast toppled, this one heavy enough to tug its sail downward. Yet more tinny screams reaching through the howl.

The ferry seemed to slump, as if moments from plunging into the deep. Yan Tovis found herself gripping the lines as if they could pull her loose, into the sky – as if they could take her from all of this.
The Queen commands. Her people die.

At least I will join—

A shout from Yedan Derryg, who had gone forward into the chaos of the deck, a shout that reached her.

And now she saw. Two enormous ships had come upon them from astern, one to each side, heaving like hunting behemoths, their sails alone dwarfing the ferry pitching in their midst. The one to port stole the gale's fierce breath and all at once the ferry righted itself amidst choppy waves.

Yan Tovis stared across, saw figures scrambling about side-mounted ballistae, saw others moving to the rail beneath huge coils of rope.

Pirates? Now?

The crew of the ship to starboard, she saw with growing alarm, was doing much the same.

Yet it was the ships that most frightened her. For she recognized them.

Perish. What were they called? Yes, Thrones of War.
She well remembered that battle, the lash of sorceries ripping the crests of waves, the detonations as Edur galleys disintegrated before her very eyes. The cries of drowning warriors—

Ballistae loosed their robust quarrels, yet the missiles arced high, clearing the deck by two or more man-heights. And from them snaked out ropes. The launching had been virtually simultaneous from both ships. She saw those quarrels rip through the flimsy sails, slice past rigging, then the heavy-headed missiles dipped down to the seas in between.

She saw as the ropes were hauled taut. She felt the crunching bite of the quarrels as they lifted back clear of the water and anchored barbs deep into the gunnels of the ferry.

And, as the wind pushed them all onward now, the Thrones of War drew closer.

Massive fends of bundled seaweed swung down to cushion the contact of the hulls.

Sailors from the Perish ships scrambled along the lines, many of them standing upright as they did so – impossibly balanced despite the pitching seas – and dropped down onto the ferry deck with ropes and an assortment of tools.

The ropes were cleated to stanchions and pills on the ferry.

An armoured Perish emerged from the mass of humanity on the main deck and climbed her way to where stood Yan Tovis.

In the language of the trader's tongue, the woman said, ‘Your craft is sinking, Captain. We must evacuate your passengers.'

Numbed, Yan Tovis nodded.

‘We are sailing,' said the Perish, ‘for Second Maiden Isle.'

‘As were we,' Yan Tovis responded.

A sudden smile, as welcome to Yan Tovis's eyes as dawn after a long night. ‘Then we are most well met.'

Well met, yes. And well answered. Second Maiden Fort. The silent Isle has been conquered. Not just the Malazans then. The Perish. Oh, look what we have awakened.

 

He'd had months to think things over, and in the end very little of what had happened back in the Malazan Empire surprised Banaschar, once Demidrek of the Worm of Autumn. Perhaps, if seen from the outside, from some borderland where real power was as ephemeral, as elusive, as a cloud on the face of the moon, there would be a sense of astonishment and, indeed, disbelief. That the mortal woman commanding the most powerful empire in the world could find herself so…helpless. So bound to the ambitions and lusts of the faceless players behind the tapestries. Folk blissfully unaware of the machinations of politics might well believe that someone like Empress Laseen was omnipotent, that she could do entirely as she pleased. And that a High Mage, such as Tayschrenn, was likewise free, unconstrained in his ambitions.

For people with such simplistic world views, Banaschar knew, catastrophes were disconnected things, isolated in and of themselves. There was no sense of cause and effect beyond the immediate, beyond the directly observable. A cliff collapses onto a village, killing hundreds. The effect: death. The cause: the cliff's collapse. Of course, if one were to then speak of cutting down every tree within sight, including those above that cliff, as the true cause of the disaster – a cause that, in its essence, lay at the feet ofthe very victims, then fierce denial was the response; or, even more pathetic, blank confusion. And if one were to then elaborate on the economic pressures that demanded such rapacious deforestation, ranging from the need for firewood among the locals and the desire to clear land for pasture to increase herds all the way to the hunger for wood to meet the shipbuilding needs of a port city leagues distant, in order to go to war with a neighbouring kingdom over contested fishing areas – contested because the shoals were vanishing, leading to the threat of starvation in both kingdoms, which in turn might destabilize the ruling families, thus raising the spectre of civil war…well, then, the entire notion of cause and effect, suddenly revealing its true level of complexity, simply overwhelmed.

Rebellion in Seven Cities, followed by terrible plague, and suddenly the heart of the Malazan Empire – Quon Tali – was faced with a shortage of grain. But no, Banaschar knew, one could go yet further back. Why did the rebellion occur at all? Never mind the convenient prophecies of apocalypse. The crisis was born in the aftermath of Laseen's coup, when virtually all of Kellanved's commanders vanished – drowned, as the grisly joke went. She sat herself down on the throne, only to find her most able governors and military leaders gone. And into the vacuum of their departure came far less capable and far less reliable people. She should not have been surprised at their avarice and corruption – for the chapter she had begun in the history of the empire had been announced with betrayal and blood.
Cast bitter seeds yield bitter fruit
, as the saying went.

Corruption and incompetence. These were rebellion's sparks. Born in the imperial palace in Unta, only to return with a vengeance.

Laseen had used the Claw to achieve her coup. In her arrogance she clearly imagined no-one could do the same; could infiltrate her deadly cadre of assassins. Yet, Banaschar now believed, that is what had happened. And so the most powerful mortal woman in the world had suddenly found herself emasculated, indeed trapped by a host of exigencies, unbearable pressures, inescapable demands. And her most deadly weapon of internal control had been irrevocably compromised.

There had been no civil war – the
Adjunct
had seen to that – yet the enfilade at Malaz City might well have driven the final spike into the labouring heart of Laseen's rule. The Claw had been decimated, perhaps so much so that
no-one
could use it for years to come.

The Claw had declared war on the wrong people. And so, at long last, Cotillion – who had once been Dancer – had his revenge on the organization that had destroyed his own Talon and then lifted Laseen onto the throne. For, that night in Malaz City, there had been a Shadow Dance.

Causes and effects, they were like the gossamer strands spanning the towers of Kartool City, a deadly web, a skein tethered to a thousand places. And to imagine that things were simple was to be naive, often fatally so.

A crime that he himself had been guilty of, Banaschar now understood. D'rek's rage against her worshippers had not been an isolated, internal event. It belonged to a vast war, and in war people died. Perhaps, unlike Banaschar, Tayschrenn had not been greatly affected by the tragedy. Perhaps, indeed, the Imperial High Mage had known all along.

Such unpleasant thoughts were in the habit of wandering into his mind when the sun had long fled the sky, when he should have been asleep – plummeted into the drunken stupor of oblivion here in the decrepit room he had rented opposite the Harridict Tavern on this damned island. Instead he stood by the window, wide awake, listening to the cold wind creak its way through the shutters. And even if it had been a warm night, he doubted he would have opened those shutters. Better to see nothing but those weathered slats; better to be reminded that there was no way out.