The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (97 page)

“Lead the way,” Icarium invited.

“A life given for a life taken. Follow me. None can outwit Iskaral Pust.” The High Priest faced the cleft with a fierce squint.

They waited, for what Mappo had no idea. After a few minutes the Trell cleared his throat. “Will your acolytes send down a ladder?”

“Acolytes? I have no acolytes. No opportunity for tyranny. Very sad, no muttering and grumbling behind my back, few satisfying rewards for this High Priest. If not for my god's whispering, I wouldn't bother, be assured of that, and I trust you will take that into account with all I have done and am about to do.”

“I see movement in the fissure,” Icarium said.

Iskaral grunted. “Bhok'arala, they nest on this cliffside. Foul mewling beasts, always interfering, sniffing at this and that, pissing on the altar, defecating on my pillow. They are my plague, they have singled me out, and why? I've not skinned a single one, nor cooked their brains to scoop out of their skulls in civilized repast. No snares, no traps, no poison, yet still they pursue me. There is no answer to this. I despair.”

As the sun sank further the bhok'arala grew bolder, flapping from perch to perch high on the cliff wall, scampering with their hands and feet along cracks in the stone, seeking the rhizan as the small flying lizards emerged for their night-feeding. Small and simian, the bhok'arala were winged like bats, tailless with hides mottled tan and brown. Apart from long canines, their faces were remarkably human.

From the tower's lone window a knotted rope tumbled down. A tiny round head poked out to peer down at them.

“Of course,” Iskaral added, “a few of them have proved useful.”

Mappo sighed. He'd been hoping for some sorcerous means of ascent to appear, something worthy of a High Priest of Shadow. “So now we climb.”

“Most certainly not,” Iskaral replied with indignation. “Servant climbs, then pulls us up.”

“He would be a man of formidable strength to manage me,” the Trell said. “And Icarium, too.”

Servant set down the tray he had been holding, spat on his hands and walked over to the rope. He launched himself upward with surprising agility. Iskaral crouched by the tray and poured wine into the three cups.

“Servant's half bhokar'al. Long arms. Muscles like iron. Makes friends with them, probable source of all my ills.” Iskaral collected a cup for himself and gestured down at the tray as he straightened. “Fortunate for Servant I am such a gentle and patient master.” He swung to check on the man's climb. “Hurry, you snub-tailed dog!”

Servant had already reached the window and was now clambering through it and out of sight.

“Ammanas's gift, is Servant. A life given for a life taken. One hand old, one hand new. This is true remorse. You'll see.”

The rope twitched. The High Priest quaffed down the last of his wine, flung the cup away and scrambled toward the rope. “Too long exposed! Vulnerable. Quickly now!” He wrapped his hands around a knot, set his feet atop another. “Pull! Are you deaf? Pull!”

Iskaral shot upward.

“Pulleys,” Icarium said. “Too fast to be otherwise.”

The pain returning to his shoulders, Mappo winced, then said, “Not what you were expecting, I take it.”

“Tesem,” Icarium said, watching the priest vanish through the window. “A place of healing. Solitary reflection, repository of scrolls and tomes, and insatiable nuns…”

“Insatiable?”

The Jhag glanced at his friend, an eyebrow rising. “Indeed.”

“Oh, sad demise.”

“Very.”

“In this instance,” Mappo said as the rope tumbled back down, “I think solitary reflection has addled a brain. Battling wits with bhok'arala and the whisperings of a god most hold as himself insane…”

“Yet there is power here, Mappo,” Icarium said in a low voice.

“Aye,” the Trell agreed as he approached the rope. “A warren opened in the cave when the mule entered.”

“Then why does the High Priest not use it?”

“I doubt we'll find easy answers to Iskaral Pust, friend.”

“Best hold tight, Mappo.”

“Aye.”

Icarium reached out suddenly, rested a hand on Mappo's shoulder. “Friend.”

“Aye?”

The Jhag was frowning. “I am missing an arrow, Mappo. More, there is blood on my sword, and I see upon you dreadful wounds. Tell me, did we fight? I recall…nothing.”

The Trell was silent a long moment, then he said, “I was beset by a leopard while you slept, Icarium. Made some use of your weapons. I did not think it worthy of mention.”

Icarium's frown deepened. “Once again,” he slowly whispered, “I have lost time.”

“Nothing of worth, friend.”

“You would tell me otherwise?” There was a look of desperate pleading in the Jhag's gray eyes.

“Why would I not, Icarium?”

Felisin lay unmoving beneath Beneth until, with a final shudder, he was done. He pushed himself off and grabbed a handful of her hair. His face was flushed under the grime and his eyes gleamed in the lamp glow. “You'll learn to like it, girl,” he said.

The edge of something savage always rose closer to the surface immediately after he'd lain with her. She knew it would pass. “I will,” she said. “Does he get a day of rest?”

Beneth's grip tightened momentarily, then relaxed. “Aye, he does.” He moved away, began tying up his breeches. “Though I don't much see the point. The old man won't last another month.” He paused, his breath harsh as he studied her. “Hood's breath, girl, but you're beautiful. Show me some life next time. I'll treat you right. Get you soap, a new comb, lousebane. You'll work here in Twistings, that's a promise. Show pleasure, girl, that's all I ask.”

“Soon,” she said. “Once it stops hurting.”

The day's eleventh bell had sounded. They were in the third reach off Twistings Far shaft. The reach had been gouged out by the Rotlegs and was barely high enough to crawl for most of its quarter-mile length. The air was close and stank of Otataral dust and sweating rock.

Virtually everyone else would have reached Nearlight by now, but Beneth moved in Captain Sawark's shadow and could do as he pleased. He had claimed the abandoned reach as his own. It was Felisin's third visit. The first time had been the hardest. Beneth had picked her within hours of her arrival at Skullcup, the mining camp in the Dosin Pit. He was a big man, bigger than Baudin and though a slave himself he was master of every other slave, the guards' inside man, cruel and dangerous. He was also astonishingly handsome.

Felisin had learned fast on the slave ship. She had nothing but her body to sell, but it had proved a valuable currency. Giving herself to the ship guards had been repaid with more food for herself, Heboric and Baudin. By opening her legs to the right men she had managed to get herself and her two companions chained on the keel ramp rather than in the sewage-filled water that sloshed shin-deep beneath the hold's walkway. Others had rotted in that water. Some had drowned when starvation and sickness so weakened them that they could not stay above it.

Heboric's grief and anger at the price she paid had at first been difficult to ignore, filling her with shame. But it had paid for their lives, and that was a truth that could not be questioned. Baudin's only reaction had been—and continued to be—a regard without expression. He watched her as would a stranger unable to decide who or what she was. Yet he had held to her side, and now stood close to Beneth as well. Some kind of arrangement had been made between them. When Beneth was not there to protect her, Baudin was.

On the ship she had learned well the tastes of men, as well as those of the few women guards who'd taken her to their bunks. She'd thought she'd be prepared for Beneth, and in most ways she was.
Everything but his size
.

Wincing, Felisin pulled on her slave tunic.

Beneth watched her, his high cheekbones harsh ridges beneath his eyes, his long, curly black hair glistening with whale oil. “I'll give the old man Deepsoil if you like,” he said.

“You'd do that?”

He nodded. “For you I'll change things. I won't take any other woman. I'm king of Skullcup, you'll be my queen. Baudin will be your personal guard—I trust him.”

“And Heboric?”

Beneth shrugged. “Him I don't trust. And he's not much use. Pulling the carts is about all he can do. The carts, or a plow at Deepsoil.” His gaze flickered at her. “But he's your friend, so I'll find something for him.”

Felisin dragged her fingers through her hair. “It's the carts that are killing him. If you've sent him to Deepsoil just to pull a plow, it's not much of a favor—”

Beneth's scowl made her wonder if she'd pushed too far. “You've never pulled a cart full of stone, girl. Pulled one of those up through half a league of tunnels, then going back down and pulling another one, three, four times a day. Compare that to dragging a plow through soft, broken soil? Dammit, girl, if I'm to move the man off the carts, I've got to justify it. Everyone works in Skullcup.”

“That's not the whole story, is it?”

He turned his back on her in answer, and began crawling up the reach. “I've Kanese wine awaiting us, and fresh bread and cheese. Bula's made a stew for the guards and we've got a bowl each.”

Felisin followed. The thought of food made her mouth water. If there was enough cheese and bread she could save some for Heboric, though he insisted that it was fruit and meat that was needed. But both were worth their weight in gold, and just as rare in Skullcup. He'd be grateful enough for what she brought him, she knew.

It was clear that Sawark had received orders to see the historian dead. Nothing so overt as murder—the political risks were too great for that—rather, the slow, wasting death of poor diet and overwork. That he had no hands gave the Pit Captain sufficient reason to assign Heboric to the carts. Daily he struggled at his harness, hauling hundreds of pounds of broken rock up the Deep Mine to the shaft's Nearlight. In ever other harness was an ox. The beasts each hauled three carts, while Heboric pulled but one: the only acknowledgment the guards made to his humanity.

Beneth was aware of Sawark's instructions, Felisin was certain of that. The “king” of Skullcup had limits to his power, for all his claims otherwise.

Once they reached the main shaft, it was four hundred paces to Twistings' Nearlight. Unlike Deep Mine, with its thick, rich and straight vein of Otataral running far under the hills, Twistings followed a folded vein, rising and diving, buckling and turning through the limestone.

Unlike the iron mines on the mainland, Otataral never ran down into true bedrock. Found only in limestone, the veins ran shallow and long, like rivers of rust between compacted beds filled with fossil plants and shellfish.

Limestone is just the bones of things once living
, Heboric had said their second night in the hovel they'd claimed off Spit Row—before Beneth had moved them to the more privileged neighborhood behind Bula's Inn.
I'd read that theory before and am now myself convinced. So now I'm led to believe that Otataral is not a natural ore
.

That's important?
Baudin had asked.

If not natural, then what?
Heboric grinned.
Otataral, the bane of magic, was born of magic. If I was less scrupulous a scholar, I'd write a treatise on that
.

What do you mean?
Felisin asked.

He means
, Baudin said,
he'd be inviting alchemists and mages to experiment in making their own Otataral
.

Is that a problem?

Those veins we dig
, Heboric explained,
they're like a layer of once melted fat, a deep river of it sandwiched between layers of limestone. This whole island had to melt to make those veins. Whatever sorcery created Otataral proved beyond controlling. I would not want to be responsible for unleashing such an event all over again
.

A single Malazan guard waited at Nearlight's gate. Beyond him stretched the raised road that led into the pit town. At the far end, the sun was just setting beyond the pit's ridge line, leaving Skullcup in its early shadow, a pocket of gloom that brought blessed relief from the day's heat.

The guard was young, resting his vambraced forearms on the cross blades of his pike.

Beneth grunted. “Where's your mate, Pella?”

“The Dosii pig wandered off, Beneth. Maybe you can tune Sawark's ear—Hood knows he's not hearing us. The Dosii regulars have lost all discipline. They ignore the duty rosters, spend all their time tossing coins at Bula's. There's seventy-five of us and over two hundred of them, Beneth, and all this talk of rebellion…explain it to Sawark—”

“You don't know your history,” Beneth said. “The Dosii have been on their knees for three hundred years. They don't know any other way to live. First it was mainlanders, then Falari colonists, now you Malazans. Calm yourself, boy, before you lose face.”

“ ‘History comforts the dull-witted,' ” the young Malazan said.

Beneth barked a laugh as he reached the gate. “And whose words are those, Pella? Not yours.”

The guard's brows rose, then he shrugged. “I forget you're Korelri sometimes, Beneth. Those words? Emperor Kellanved.” Pella's gaze slid to Felisin with a hint of sharpness. “Duiker's
Imperial Campaigns, Volume One
. You're Malazan, Felisin, do you recall what comes next?”

She shook her head, bemused by the young man's veiled intensity.
I've learned to read faces—Beneth senses nothing
. “I'm not that familiar with Duiker's works, Pella.”

“Worth learning,” the guard said with a smile.

Sensing Beneth's growing impatience at the gate, Felisin stepped past Pella. “I doubt there's a single scroll in Skullcup,” she said.

“Maybe you'll find someone's memory worth dragging a net through, eh?”

Felisin glanced back with a frown.

“The boy flirting with you?” Beneth asked from the ramp. “Be gentle, girl.”

“I'll think on that,” Felisin told Pella in a low voice before resuming her walk through the Twistings Gate. Joining Beneth on the raised road, she smiled up at him. “I don't like nervous types.”

He laughed. “That puts me at ease.”

Blessed Queen of Dreams, make that true
.

Rubble-filled pits lined the raised road until it joined the other two roads at the Three Fates crossing, a broad fork that was flanked by two squat Dosii guardhouses. North of Twistings Road, and on their right as they approached the forks, was Deep Mine Road; to the south and on their left ran Shaft Road, leading to a worked-out mine where the dead were disposed of each dusk.

The body wagon was nowhere to be seen, meaning it had been held up on its route through the pit town, with more than the usual number of bodies being brought out and tossed onto its bed.

They crossed the fork and continued on to Work Road. Past the north Dosii guardhouse was Sinker Lake, a deep pool of turquoise-colored water stretching all the way to the north pit wall. It was said the water was cursed and to dive into it was to disappear. Some believed a demon lived in its depths. Heboric asserted that the lack of buoyancy was a quality of the lime-saturated water itself. In any case, few slaves were foolish enough to try an escape in that direction, for the pit wall was as sheer on the north side as it was on the others, forever weeping water over a skin of deposits that glimmered like wet, polished bone.

Heboric had asked Felisin to keep an eye on Sinker Lake's water level in any case, now that the dry season had come, and as they walked Work Road, she studied the far side as best she could in the dim light. A line of crust was visible a hand's span above the surface. The news would please him, though she had no idea why. The notion of escape was absurd. Beyond the pit was lifeless desert and withered rock, with no drinkable water in any direction for days. Those slaves who somehow made it up to the pit edge, and then eluded the patrols on Beetle Road, the track that surrounded the pit, had left their bones in the desert's red sands. Few got that far, and the spikes named Salvation Row on the sheer wall of the Tower at Rust Ramp displayed their failure for all to see. Not a week went past without a new victim appearing on the Tower wall. Most died before the first day was through, but some lingered longer.

Work Road ran its worn cobbles past Bula's Inn on the right and the row of brothels on the left before opening out into Rathole Round. In the round's center rose Sawark's Keep, a hexagonal tower of cut limestone three stories high. Only Beneth among all the slaves had ever been inside.

Twelve thousand slaves lived in Skullcup, the vast mining pit thirty leagues north of the island's lone city on the south coast, Dosin Pali. In addition to them and the three hundred guards there were locals: prostitutes for the brothels, serving staff for Bula's Inn and the gambling halls, a caste of servants who had bound their lives and the lives of their families to the Malazan soldiery, hawkers for the struggling market that filled Rathole Round on Rest Day, and a scattering of the banished, the destitute and the lost who'd chosen a pit town over the rotting alleyways of Dosin Pali.

“The stew will be cold,” Beneth muttered as they approached Bula's Inn.

Felisin wiped sweat from her brow. “That will be a relief.”

“You're not yet used to the heat. In a month or two you'll feel the chill of night just like everyone else.”

“These early hours still hold the day's memory. I feel the cold of midnight and the hours beyond, Beneth.”

“Move in with me, girl. I'll keep you warm enough.”

He was already on the edge of one of his sudden dark moods. She said nothing, hoping he would let it go for the moment.

“Be careful of what you refuse,” Beneth rumbled.

“Bula would take me to her bed,” she said. “You could watch, perhaps join in. She'd be sure to warm the bowls for us. Even second helpings.”

“She's old enough to be your mother,” Beneth growled.

And you my father
. But she heard his breathing change. “She's round and soft and warm, Beneth. Think on that.”

She knew he would, and the subject of moving in with him would drift away.
For this night, at least. Heboric's wrong. There's no point in thinking about tomorrow. Just the next hour, each hour. Stay alive, Felisin, and live well if you can. One day you'll find yourself face to face with your sister, and an ocean of blood pouring from Tavore's veins won't be enough, though all they hold will suffice. Stay alive, girl, that's all you must do. Survive each hour, the next hour…