The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (96 page)

“Kalam is here for another reason, Commander. He sought only safe passage across the Pan'potsun Odhan. He takes the Book because to do so will ensure that passage. The assassin is heading south. Why? I think that is something the Red Blades—and the Empire—would know. And such knowledge can only be gained while he yet breathes.”

“You have suspicions.”

“Aren.”

Tene Baralta snorted. “To slip a blade between Pormqual's ribs? We would all bless that, Mebra.”

“Kalam cares nothing for the High Fist.”

“Then what does he seek at Aren?”

“I can think of only one thing, Commander. A ship bound for Malaz.” Hunched, his face pulsing with pain, Mebra watched with hooded eyes as his words sank roots into the Red Blade commander's mind.

After a long moment, Tene Baralta asked in a low voice, “What do you plan?”

Although it cost him, Mebra smiled.

 

Like massive limestone slabs each resting against the other, the cliffs rose from the desert floor the height of four hundred arm-spans. Gouged across the weathered face were deep fissures, and tucked inside the largest of these, a hundred and fifty arm-spans above the sands, was a tower. A single arched window showed black against the bricks.

Mappo sighed shakily. “I see no obvious approach, but there must be one.” He shot a glance back at his companion. “You believe it is occupied.”

Icarium rubbed the crusted blood from his brow, then nodded. He half slid the sword from its sheath, frowning at the fragments of flesh still snagged on the notched edge.

The D'ivers had caught them unawares, a dozen leopards the color of sand, streaming from a gully bed less than ten paces to their right as the two travelers prepared to make camp. One of the beasts had leaped onto Mappo's back, jaws closing on the nape of his neck, the fangs punching through the Trell's tough hide. It had attacked him as if he was an antelope, seeking to bite down on his windpipe as it dragged him down, but Mappo was no antelope. Though the canines sank deep, they found only muscle. Enraged, the Trell had reached over his head and torn the animal from his shoulders. Gripping the snarling leopard by its skin at neck and hips, he had slammed it hard against a boulder, shattering its skull.

The other eleven had closed in on Icarium. Even as Mappo flung his attacker's body aside and whirled, he saw four of the beasts lying motionless around the half-blood Jaghut. Fear gripped the Trell suddenly as his gaze fell on Icarium.
How far? How far has the Jhag gone? Beru bless us, please
.

One of the other beasts had wrapped its jaws around Icarium's left thigh and Mappo watched the warrior's ancient sword chop downward, decapitating the leopard. In a macabre detail, the head held on briefly, a blood-gushing lump protruding from the warrior's leg.

The surviving cats circled.

Mappo lunged forward, hands closing on a lashing tail. He bellowed as he swung the squalling creature through the air. Writhing, the leopard sailed seven or eight paces until it struck a rock wall, snapping its spine.

It was already too late for the D'ivers. Realizing its error, it tried to pull away, but Icarium was unrelenting. Giving voice to a keening hum, the Jhag plunged among the five remaining leopards. They scattered but not quickly enough. Blood fountained, sheared flesh thudded into the sand. Within moments five more bodies lay still on the ground.

Icarium whirled, seeking more victims, and the Trell took half a step forward. After a moment Icarium's high-pitched keening fell away and he slowly straightened from his crouch. His stony gaze found the Trell, and he frowned.

Mappo saw the beads of blood on Icarium's brow. The eerie sound was gone.
Not too far. Safe. Gods below, this path…I am a fool to follow. Close, all too close
.

The scent of D'ivers blood so copiously spilled would draw others. The two had quickly repacked their camp gear and set off at a swift pace. Before leaving, Icarium withdrew a single arrow from his quiver, which he stabbed into the sand in full view.

They traveled at a dogtrot through the night. Neither was driven by fear of dying; for both of them, it was killing that brought a greater dread. Mappo prayed that Icarium's arrow would prove sufficient warning.

Dawn brought them to the eastern escarpment. Beyond the cliffs rose the range of weathered mountains that divided Raraku from the Pan'potsun Odhan.

Something had ignored the arrow and was trailing them, perhaps a league behind. The Trell had sensed it an hour earlier, a Soletaken, and the form it had taken was huge.

“Find us the ascent,” Icarium said, stringing his bow. He set out his remaining arrows, squinting back along their trail. After a hundred paces the shimmering heat that rose like a curtain obscured everything beyond. If the Soletaken came into view and charged, the Jhag had time to loose half a dozen arrows. The warrens carved into their shafts could bring down a dragon, but Icarium's expression made it clear he was sickened by the thought.

Mappo probed at the puncture wounds on the back of his neck. The torn flesh was hot, septic and crawling with flies. The muscles ached with a deep throb. He pulled a blade of jegura cactus from his pack and squeezed its juices onto the wounds. Numbness spread, allowing him to move his arms without the stabbing agony that had had him bathed in sweat over the last few hours. The Trell shivered with sudden chill. The cactus juice was so powerful it could be used only once a day, lest the numbing effect spread to the heart and lungs. And if anything, it would make the flies thirstier.

He approached the cleft in the rockface. Trell were plains dwellers. Mappo had no special skill in climbing, and he was not looking forward to the task ahead. The fissure was deep enough to swallow the sun's morning light, and narrow at the base, barely the width of his shoulders. Ducking, he slipped inside, the cool, musty air triggering another wave of shivering. His eyes quickly adjusting, he made out the fissure's back wall six paces away. There were no stairs, no handholds. Tilting his head, he looked up. The cleft widened higher up but was unrelieved until it reached what he took to be the base of the tower. Nothing so simple as a dangling knotted rope. Growling in frustration, Mappo stepped back into the sunlight.

Icarium stood facing their trail with arrow nocked and bow raised. Thirty paces from him was a massive brown bear, down on all fours, swaying, nose lifted and testing the wind. The Soletaken had arrived.

Mappo joined his companion. “This one is known to me,” he said quietly.

The Jhag lowered his weapon, releasing the bowstring's tension. “He is sembling,” he said.

The bear lurched forward.

Mappo blinked against the sudden blurring of his vision. He tasted grit, nostrils twitching at the strong spicy smell that came with the change. He felt an instinctive wave of fear, a dusty dryness making swallowing difficult. A moment later the sembling was complete, and a man now strode toward them, naked and pale under the harsh sunlight.

Mappo slowly shook his head. When masked, the Soletaken was huge, powerful, a mass of muscle—yet now, in his human form, Messremb stood no more than five feet in height, was almost hairless and thin to the point of emaciation, narrow-faced and shovel-toothed. His small eyes, the color of garnet, shone within wrinkled nests of humor that drew his mouth into a grin.

“Mappo Trell, my nose told me it was you!”

“It's been a long time, Messremb.”

The Soletaken was eyeing the Jhag. “Aye, north of Nemil it was.”

“Those unbroken pine forests better suited you, I think,” Mappo said, his memories drawn back to that time for a moment, those freer days of massive Trellish caravans and the great journeys undertaken.

The man's grin fell away. “That it did. And you, sir, must be Icarium, maker of mechanisms and now the bane of D'ivers and Soletaken. Know that I am greatly relieved you have lowered your bow—there was racing thunder in my chest when I watched you take aim.”

Icarium was frowning. “I would be bane to no one, were the choice mine,” he said. “We were attacked without warning,” he added, the words sounding strangely uncertain.

“Meaning you had no chance to warn the hapless creature. Pity the pieces of his soul. I, however, am anything but precipitous. Cursed only with a curious nose. What scent is joined with the Trell's, I wondered, so close to Jaghut blood, yet different? Now that my eyes have given me answer I can resume the Path.”

“Do you know where it takes you?” Mappo asked.

Messremb stiffened. “You have seen the gates?”

“No. What do you expect to find there?”

“Answers, old friend. Now I shall spare you the taste of my veering by putting some distance between us. Do you wish me well, Mappo?”

“I do, Messremb. And add a warning: we crossed paths with Ryllandaras four nights ago. Be careful.”

Something of the savage bear glittered in the Soletaken's eyes. “I shall look out for him.”

Mappo and Icarium watched the man walk away, disappearing behind an outcrop of rock. “Madness lurked within him,” Icarium said.

The Trell flinched at those words. “Within them all,” he sighed. “I've yet to find an ascent, by the way. The cave reveals nothing.”

The sound of shod hooves reached them, slow and plodding. From a trail paralleling the cliff face, a man on a black mule appeared. He sat cross-legged on a high wood saddle, shrouded in a ragged, dirt-stained telaba. His hands, which rested on the ornate saddlehorn, were the color of rust. A hood hid his features. The mule was a strange-looking beast, its muzzle black, the skin of its ears black, as were its eyes. No lightening of its ebon hue was anywhere visible with the exception of dust and spatters of what might have been dried blood.

The man swayed on the saddle as they approached. “No way in,” he hissed, “but the way out. It's not yet the hour. A life given for a life taken, remember those words, remember them. You are wounded. You are bright with infection. My servant will tend to you. A caring man with salty hands, one wrinkled, one pink—do you grasp the significance of that? Not yet. Not yet. So few…guests. But I have been expecting you.”

The mule stopped opposite the cleft, swinging a mournful gaze on the two travelers as its rider struggled to pull his legs from their crossed position. Whimpers of pain accompanied the effort, until his frantic attempts overwhelmed his balance and, with a squeal of dismay, the man toppled, thumping into the dust.

Seeing crimson red bloom through the telaba's weave, Mappo stepped forward. “You bear your own wounds, sir!”

The man writhed on the ground like an upended tortoise, his legs still trapped in their crossed position. His hood fell back, revealing a large hawk nose, tufts of wiry gray beard, a tattooed bald pate and skin like dark honey. A row of perfect white teeth showed in his grimace.

Mappo knelt beside him, squinting to see signs of the wound that had spilled so much blood. A smell of iron was pungent in the Trell's nose. After a moment he reached under the man's cloak and withdrew an unstoppered bladder. Grunting, he glanced over at Icarium. “Not blood. Paint. Red ochre paint.”

“Help me, you oaf!” the man snapped. “My legs!”

Bemused, Mappo helped the man unlock his legs, every move eliciting moans. As soon as they were free the man sat up and started beating his own thighs. “Servant! Wine! Wine, damn your wood-rotted brain!”

“I am not your servant,” Mappo said coolly, stepping back. “Nor do I carry wine when crossing a desert.”

“Not you, barbarian!” The man glared about. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Servant, of course. He thinks carrying me about is his only task—ah, there!”

Following the man's gaze, the Trell frowned. “That is a mule, sir. I doubt he could manage a wineskin well enough to fill a cup.” Mappo grinned at Icarium, but the Jhag was paying no attention to the proceedings: he had unstrung his bow and now sat on a boulder, cleaning his sword.

Still sitting on the ground, the man collected a handful of sand and flung it at the mule. Startled, the beast brayed and bolted toward the cleft, disappearing into the cave. With a grunt the man clambered to his feet and stood wobbling, hands held before him plucking at each other in some kind of nervous tic. “Mostly rude greeting of guests,” he said, attempting a smile. “Most.
Most
rude greeting, was meant. Meaningless apologies and kindly gestures very important. I am so sorry for temporary collapse of hospitality. Oh yes, I am. I would have more practice if I wasn't the master of this temple. An acolyte is obliged to fawn and scrape. Later to mutter and gripe with his comrades in misery. Ah, here comes Servant.”

A wide-shouldered, bow-legged man in black robes had emerged from the cave, carrying a tray bearing a jug and clay cups. He wore a servant's veil over his features, with only a thin slit for his eyes, which were deep brown.

“Lazy fool! Did you see any cobwebs?”

Servant's accent caught Mappo by surprise. It was Malazan. “None, Iskaral.”

“Call me by my title!”

“High Priest—”

“Wrong!”

“High Priest Iskaral Pust of the Tesem Temple of Shadow—”

“Idiot! You are Servant! Which makes me…”

“Master.”

“Indeed.” Iskaral turned to Mappo. “We rarely talk,” he explained.

Icarium joined them. “This is Tesem, then. I was led to believe it was a monastery, sanctified to the Queen of Dreams—”

“They left,” Iskaral snapped. “Took their lanterns with them, leaving only…”

“Shadows.”

“Clever Jhag, but I was warned of that, oh yes. You two are sick as undercooked pigs. Servant has prepared your chambers. And broths of healing herbs, roots, potions and elixirs. White Paralt, emulor, tralb—”

“Those are poisons,” Mappo pointed out.

“Are they? No wonder the pig died. It's almost time, shall we prepare to ascend?”