The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (822 page)

‘As if you didn't already know that, Hedge – and no, wipe that innocent look off your face. It's not dark enough and you know that so that look is for me and it's a damned lie so get rid of it.'

‘Ouch, the wizard's nerves are singing!'

‘This is why I liked you least of all, Hedge.'

‘I remember once you being scared witless of a recruit named Sorry, because she was possessed by a god. And now here you are, working for that god. Amazing, how things can turn right round in ways you'd never expect nor even predict.'

The wizard stared long and hard at the sapper. Then he said, ‘Now hold on, Hedge.'

‘You really think Sorry was there to get at the Empress, Quick? Some sordid plan for vengeance against Laseen? Why, that would be…insane.'

‘What are you getting at?'

‘Just wondering if you should be as sure of the ones you're working for as you think you are. Because, and it only seems this way to me, all this confusion you're feeling about the Adjunct might just be coming from some wrong-footed, uh, misapprehensions about the two gods crouching in your shadow.'

‘Is all this just another one of your feelings?'

‘I ain't Fiddler.'

‘No, but you've been so close to him – in his damned shadow – you're picking up all his uncanny, whispered suspicions, and don't even try to deny it, Hedge. So now I better hear it straight from you. You and me, are we fighting on the same side, or not?'

Hedge grinned up at him. ‘Maybe not. But, just maybe, more than you know, wizard.'

Quick Ben had selected out a half-dozen water-worn pebbles. Now he flung the rest away. ‘That answer was supposed to make me feel better?'

‘How do you think I feel?' Hedge demanded. ‘Been at your damned side, Quick, since Raraku! And I still don't know who or even
what
you are!'

‘What's your point?'

‘It's this. I'm beginning to suspect that even Cotillion – and Shadowthrone – don't know you half as well as they might think. Which is why they're now keeping you close. And which is why, too, they maybe made sure you ended up without Kalam right there guarding your back.'

‘If you're right – about Kalam – there's going to be trouble.'

Hedge shrugged. ‘All I'm saying is, maybe the plan was for Sorry to be right there, right now, beside Fiddler.'

‘The Adjunct didn't even have an army then, Hedge. What you're suggesting is impossible.'

‘Depends on how much Kellanved and Dancer saw – and came to understand – when they left their empire and went in search of ascendancy.' The sapper paused, then said, ‘They walked the paths of the Azath, didn't they?'

‘Almost no-one knows that, Hedge. You sure didn't…before you died. Which brings us back to the path you ended up walking, after you'd gone and blown yourself up in Black Coral.'

‘You mean, after I did my own ascending?'

‘Yes.'

‘I already told you most of it. The Bridgeburners ascended. Blame some Spiritwalker.'

‘And now there's more of you damned fools wandering around. Hood take you all, Hedge, there were some real nasty people in the Bridgeburners. Brutal and vicious and outright evil—'

‘Rubbish. And I'll tell you a secret and maybe one day it'll do you good, too. Dying humbles ya.'

‘I don't need any humbling, Hedge, which is fine since I don't plan on dying any time soon.'

‘Best stay light on your toes, then.'

‘You guarding my back, Hedge?'

‘I ain't no Kalam, but aye, I am.'

‘For now.'

‘For now.'

‘That will have to do, I suppose—'

‘Mind you, only if you're guarding mine, Quick.'

‘Of course. Loyalty to the old squad and all that.'

‘So what are damned pebbles for? As if I couldn't guess.'

‘We're heading into an ugly scrap, Hedge.' He rounded on the sapper. ‘And listen, about those damned cussers – if you blow me into tiny pieces I
will
come back for you, Hedge. That's a vow, sworn by every damned soul in me.'

‘Now that raises a question, don't it? Just how long do all of those souls plan on hiding in there, Ben Adaephon Delat?'

The wizard eyed him, and, predictably, said nothing.

 

Trull Sengar stood at the very edge of the fire's light, beyond the gathered Imass. The women's song had sunk into a series of sounds that a mother might make to her babe, soft sounds of comfort, and Onrack had explained how this Eres'al song was in fact a kind of traverse, back into the roots of language, beginning with the bizarre yet clearly complex adult Eres language with its odd clicks and stops and all the gestures that provided punctuation, then working backward and growing ever more simplified even as it became more musical. The effect was eerie and strangely disturbing to the Tiste Edur.

Music and song among his people was a static thing, fixated within ritual. If the ancient tales were true, there had once been a plethora of instruments in use among the Tiste Edur, but most of these were now unknown, beyond the names given them. Voice now stood in their stead and Trull began to sense that, perhaps, something had been lost.

The gestures among the women had transformed into dance, sinuous and swaying and now, suddenly, sexual.

A low voice beside him said, ‘Before the child, there is passion.'

Trull glanced over and was surprised to see one of the T'lan, the clan chief, Hostille Rator.

An array of calcified bones were knotted in the filthy long hair dangling from the warrior's mottled, scarred pate. His brow ridge dominated the entire face, burying the eyes in darkness. Even clothed in the flesh of life, Hostille Rator seemed deathly.

‘Passion begets the child, Tiste Edur. Do you see?'

Trull nodded. ‘Yes. I think so.'

‘So it was, long ago, at the Ritual.'

Ah.

‘The child, alas,' the clan chief continued, ‘grows up. And what was once passion is now…'

Nothing
.

Hostille Rator resumed. ‘There was a Bonecaster here, among these clans. She saw, clearly, the illusion of this realm. And saw, too, that it was dying. She sought to halt the bleeding away, by sacrificing herself. But she is failing – her spirit and her will, they are failing.'

Trull frowned at Hostille Rator. ‘How did you come to know of this place?'

‘She gave voice to her pain, her anguish.' The T'lan was silent a moment, then he added, ‘It was our intention to answer the call of the Gathering – but the need in her voice was undeniable. We could not turn aside, even when what we surrendered was – possibly – our final rest.'

‘So now you are here, Hostille Rator. Onrack believes you would usurp Ulshun Pral, but for Rud Elalle's presence – the threat he poses you.'

A glitter from the darkness beneath those brow ridges. ‘You do not even whisper these things, Edur. Would you see weapons drawn this night, even after the gift of the First Song?'

‘No. Yet, perhaps, better now than later.'

Trull now saw that the two T'lan Bonecasters had moved up behind Hostille Rator. The singing from the women had ceased – had it been an abrupt end? Trull could not recall. In any case, it was clear that all those present were now listening to this conversation. He saw Onrack emerge from the crowd, saw his friend's stone sword gripped in both hands.

Trull addressed Hostille Rator once more, his tone even and calm. ‘You three have stood witness to all that you once were—'

‘It will not survive,' the clan chief cut in. ‘How can we embrace this illusion when, upon its fading, we must return to what we truly are?'

From the crowd Rud Elalle spoke, ‘No harm shall befall my people – not by your hand, Hostille Rator, nor that of your Bonecasters. Nor,' he added, ‘that of those who are coming here. I intend to lead the clans away – to safety.'

‘There is no safety,' Hostille Rator said. ‘This realm dies, and so too will all that is within it. And there can be no escape. Rud Elalle, without this realm, your clans do not even exist.'

Onrack said, ‘I am T'lan, like you. Feel the flesh that now clothes you. The muscle, the heat of blood. Feel the breath in your lungs, Hostille Rator. I have looked into your eyes – each of you three – and I see what no doubt resides in mine. The wonder. The
remembering
.'

‘We cannot permit it,' said the Bonecaster named Til'aras Benok. ‘For when we leave this place, Onrack…'

‘Yes,' Trull's friend whispered. ‘It will be…too much. To bear.'

‘There was passion once,' Hostille Rator said. ‘For us. It can never return. We are children no longer.'

‘None of you understand!'

Rud Elalle's sudden shriek startled everyone, and Trull saw Ulshun Pral – on his face an expression of distress – reach out a hand to his adopted son, who angrily brushed it away as he stepped forward, the fire in his eyes as fierce as that in the hearth beyond. ‘Stone, earth, trees and grasses. Beasts. The sky and the stars! None of this is an illusion!'

‘A trapped memory—'

‘No, Bonecaster, you are wrong.' He struggled to hold back his anger, and spun to face Onrack. ‘I see your heart, Onrack the Broken. I know, you will stand with me – in the time that comes. You will!'

‘Yes, Rud Elalle.'

‘Then you believe!'

Onrack was silent.

Hostille Rator's laugh was a soft, bitter rasp. ‘It is this, Rud Elalle. Onrack of the Logros T'lan Imass chooses to fight at your side, chooses to fight for these Bentract, because he cannot abide the thought of returning to what he once was, and so he would rather die here. And death is what Onrack the Broken anticipates – indeed, what he now yearns for.'

Trull studied his friend, and saw on Onrack's firelit face the veracity of Hostille Rator's words.

The Tiste Edur did not hesitate. ‘Onrack will not stand alone,' he said.

Til'aras Benok faced Trull. ‘You surrender your life, Edur, to defend an illusion?'

‘That, Bonecaster, is what we mortals delight in doing. You bind yourself to a clan, to a tribe, to a nation or an empire, but to give force to the illusion of a common bond, you must feed its opposite – that all those not of your clan, or tribe, or empire, do not share that bond. I have seen Onrack the Broken, a T'lan Imass. And now I have seen him, mortal once again. To the joy and the life in the eyes of my friend, I will fight all those who deem him their enemy. For the bond between us is one of friendship, and that, Til'aras Benok, is
not
an illusion.'

Hostille Rator asked Onrack, ‘In your mercy, as you have now found it alive once more in your soul, will you now reject Trull Sengar of the Tiste Edur?'

And the warrior bowed his head and said, ‘I cannot.'

‘Then, Onrack the Broken, your soul shall never find peace.'

‘I know.'

Trull felt as if he had been punched in the chest. It was all very well to make his bold claims, in ferocious sincerity that could only come of true friendship. It was yet another thing to discover the price it demanded in the soul of the one he called friend. ‘Onrack,' he whispered in sudden anguish.

But this moment would not await all that might have been said, all that needed to be said, for Hostille Rator had turned to face his Bonecasters, and whatever silent communication passed among these three was quick, decisive, for the clan chief swung round and walked towards Ulshun Pral. Whereupon he fell to one knee and bowed his head. ‘We are humbled, Ulshun Pral. We are shamed by these two strangers. You are the Bentract. As were we, once, long ago. We now choose to remember. We now choose to fight in your name. In our deaths there will be naught but honour, this we vow.' He then rose and faced Rud Elalle. ‘Soletaken, will you accept us as your soldiers?'

‘As soldiers? No. As friends, as Bentract, yes.'

The three T'lan bowed to him.

All of this passed in a blur before Trull Sengar's eyes. Since Onrack the Broken's admission, it seemed as if Trull's entire world had, with grinding, stone-crushing irresistibility, turned on some vast, unimagined axis – yet he was drawn round again by a hand on his shoulder, and Onrack, now standing before him.

‘There is no need,' the Imass warrior said. ‘I know something even Rud Elalle does not, and I tell you this, Trull Sengar, there is no need. Not for grief. Nor regret. My friend, listen to me.
This world will not die.
'

And Trull found no will within him to challenge that assertion, to drive doubt into his friend's earnest gaze. After a moment, then, he simply sighed and nodded. ‘So be it, Onrack.'

‘And, if we are careful,' Onrack continued, ‘neither shall we.'

‘As you say, friend.'

 

Thirty paces away in the darkness, Hedge turned to Quick Ben and hissed, ‘What do you make of all that, wizard?'

Quick Ben shrugged. ‘Seems the confrontation has been averted, if Hostille Rator's kneeling before Ulshun Pral didn't involve picking up a dropped fang or something.'

‘A dropped – what?'

‘Never mind. That's not the point at all, anyway. But I now know I am right in one thing and don't ask me how I know. I just do. Suspicion into certainty.'

‘Well, go on, damn you.'

‘Just this, Hedge. The Finnest. Of Scabandari Bloodeye. It's here.'

‘Here? What do you mean, here?'

‘
Here
, sapper.
Right here
.'

 

The gate was a shattered mess on one side. The huge cyclopean stones that had once formed an enormous arch easily five storeys high had the appearance of having been blasted apart by multiple impacts, flinging some of the shaped blocks a hundred paces or more from the entranceway. The platform the arch had once spanned was heaved and buckled as if some earthquake had rippled through the solid bedrock beneath the pavestones. The other side was dominated by a tower of still standing blocks, corkscrew-twisted and seemingly precariously balanced.