The Rite (16 page)

Once the procession reached the broad, straight central avenue running the length of the complex, Will perceived a resemblance to places he’d visited before. To all appearances, the servants of various gods had built their temples in proximity to one another, as a lure to crowds of pilgrims who wanted to sacrifice to multiple deities, or consult more than one soothsayer.

But the shrines honored deities no hailing or human would choose to venerate. Misshapen idols crouched as, if to spring, brandished severed heads, sank their fangs into hearts torn from their enemies’ breasts, or committed carnal atrocities on the bound and crippled bodies of their prisoners. Hideous faces sneered from friezes, cornices, and entablatures. Will recognized sonic of the deities so memorialized, including one-eyed Gruumsh, chief god of the orcs, Yurtrus of the pallid hands, their ruling power of suffering and death, and Vaprak, the ogres’ own ferocious patron.

All the stonework, though worn by wind and crumbling under the weight of time, was exquisite, and Will found himself more inclined to credit Yagoth’s claim that Thar had once been a kingdom worthy of the name. The skill manifest in the carving, however, did nothing to render the subject matter any more palatable. indeed, to civilized eyes, it was uniquely disturbing to see exceptional craft employed to celebrate vileness and obscenity.

“This place is big,” one of the ogre females grumbled. “Where do we start?”

Pavel pointed down the avenue to the huge structure at its terminus. The building was square and black, already almost featureless in the failing light.

“In the largest and no doubt most prestigious temple of all,” he said. “If you noticed when we were looking down on it, it’s the focal point for the entire complex.”

Yagoth said, “Good, little sun priest. Find the magic. Make me happy.”

Malazan watched with mounting impatience as her minions explored the monastery grounds. The dragons stalked the battlements with surefooted grace, crouched on their bellies to peer into the doorways of the outbuildings, reared on their hind legs to peek into upper-story windows, and prowled through gardens and greenhouses sniffing for the scent of their vanished prey, treading rows of blueberry bushes and beds of yellow rosebuds beneath their feet.

Soon the gigantic red wearied of their foolishness. She roared, the bellow echoing off the castle walls and the mountains beyond, and the lesser wyrms came scrambling to attend her. She jerked her head to indicate the immense white central keep, a bewildering tangle of spires and galleries that somehow resolved itself into architectural harmony.

“Are you all idiots?’ she demanded. “You won’t find any prey out here. The monks have shut themselves away in there.”

“I agree,” said Ishenalyr. “This is how human defenders fight a siege. When they can’t hold their outermost defenses any longer, they fall back to the next ones in.”

Malazan felt a pang of annoyance that the hidecarved had presumed to explain what she could just as easily have elucidated herself. It felt like another subtle challenge to her authority. Reminding herself once again that Ishenalyr was too useful a weapon to break prematurely, she swallowed down the fire seething in her gullet.

“it seems the monks have decided to die like rats cowering in a hole. That’s fine,” she said as she swung around toward the largest set of double doors opening into the keep, a portal high and wide enough to accommodate dragons. “Somebody, open that.”

A fang dragon laughed, and like a bony-plated gray-brown battering ram, his forked tail flying out behind him, hurled himself at the doors. He rebounded with a crash and an look of surprise.

“They’re enchanted,” Ishenalyr said, “but I can wipe away the spell.”

“Don’t bother,” Malazan said.

She hurled herself at the leaves, massive constructions of hardwood reinforced with bronze and steel just as the fang had done. But she was bigger, heavier, and immeasurably stronger, and neither the ancient timbers nor the magic buttressing them could withstand her. The doors flew inward, shattered, torn from their hinges.

On the other side was an immense temple adorned with sculpture, frescos, and stained glass windows celebrating’ the deeds and dominion of Ilmater. Even the high, vaulted ceiling bore paintings. All the art was masterfully rendered, and despite the adoration of the god of the weak and defeated that constituted its pathetic theme, Malazan coveted it as she coveted all treasure. After she became a dracolich, she’d carry it to her lair—or leave it where it was and lay claim to the monastery to be her new palace. The notion of a red dragon occupying Ilmater’s house tickled her. That would really give the Crying God something to weep about.

But it was a pleasure for another hour. At the moment, she had monks to butcher and libraries to burn. She stalked forward down the center aisle, peering, listening, sniffing for prey, while her followers filed in behind her.

Rising from the marble floor almost to the ceiling, columns of soft white light shimmered into existence to bar the dragons’ path. In a moment or two, they resolved themselves into giants aglow with their own inner radiance. Some resembled human females in every respect except their stature and the flawless perfection of their beauty. Others were male, with feathery wings sprouting from their shoulder blades. Still others walked on two legs, gripped their swords with fingers and thumbs, but sported the heads of bears or wolves. They all regarded the wyrms with a sort of calm, cold ferocity.

“Leave this place,” said the winged colossus standing directly in front of Malazan, extending his blade of glittering diamond at her head. “llmater commands it.”

Without turning her head, Malazan could sense her minions hesitating. Because to all appearances, the creatures before them were archons, celestial champions of the princes of light, and huge enough to dwarf even a dragon.

Still, Malazan herself laughed. Because she could neither smell the archons, hear hearts beating and lungs pumping in their chests, nor feel any palpable force of holiness radiating from inside them. She snarled a counterspell and smeared the illusory figures into nothingness like doodles scratched in sand.

When the glamour dissolved, it revealed the monastery’s true defenders, standing in ranks at the far end of the temple. Most were monks, supported by priests and wizards who likewise served Ilmater, but the copper wyrm and the song dragon, along with the dwarf and half-golem who’d ridden them, waited there too.

Malazan still didn’t understand how that peculiar foursome had slipped into the fortress, and that irked her. But once they were dead, their trickery wouldn’t matter anymore.

As she chose a spell to soften the defenders up, Ishenalyr strode up beside her.

“Go easy,” he said.

“Are you stupid, or a coward?” she snapped. “That’s the greater part of our enemy’s strength arrayed down there, and I mean to kill them fast, before any of them has a chance to flee.”

The green hitched his wings in a shrug and said, “Very well. As you command.”

Malazan seared the defenders with a rain of conjured acid. Her followers blasted them with shadow and ice. Humans dropped, seared, withered, or shattered. Even the song drake and the copper reeled beneath the punishment.

Her scales sweating blood, Malazan charged, and her warriors plunged after her. She spat her flame, and more humans dropped, including the hulk with the iron limbs. She raced on, seized the song dragon’s neck in her jaws, and that was when she knew

The second illusion was far more convincing than the archons had been. The monks and their allies made all the noises and gave off all the odors they should, with even the mouthwatering aromas of seared flesh and spilt blood arising at precisely the right moment. Yet now Malazan recognized that they too were merely phantoms, because the song wyrm’s crystal-blue neck was as light and insubstantial as cobwebs between her fangs.

“Watch out!” a red male cried.

Several of the columns supporting the transverse arches which in turn bore the weight of the ceiling turned brown, sagged, and flowed. The monastery’s actual spellcasters, plainly lurking somewhere close at hand, had transformed them from marble to mud. At the same time, some other mage or cleric conjured a miniature earthquake. Waves lifted the floor as if it were the surface of the sea. A chunk of painted stone plummeted from overhead to punch a hole in Malazan’s wing.

She realized the whole ceiling was going to fall. “Back!” she bellowed. ‘Back!”

Her followers wheeled and bolted toward the door, trampling and tearing at each other in their desperation to scramble through. She didn’t see Ishenalyr. Evidently he’d hung back when the others charged, and it had enabled him to be the first to bolt to safety.

Conversely, Malazan, who’d led the advance, had the farthest to run. A prodigious quantity of sculpted rock fell on her, one chunk bashing her spine, another shattering against the top of her skull, shards stinging and blinding her eyes.

It only seemed to take an instant for her to recover from the shock of it, but when she did, she didn’t see living dragons in front of her anymore, just a grinding, crashing chaos of disintegrating stonework. She drove forward, over the flattened, twisted body of a fang wyrm crushed under blocks of debris. Chunks of the ceiling hammered her over and over again.

But she was too angry for the punishment to stop her. As she neared the door, enough stone fell all at once to bury her entirely. Though the impact was excruciating, the weight enough to immobilize any lesser creature, she roared, heaved, lashed her wings, and exploded up out of the pile. A final spring carried her out into sunlight and safety.

Her followers gawked at her with manifest awe at her survival. Well, some of them. Though he didn’t permit it to show in his manner, she suspected Ishenalyr was regretting her escape, and taking what solace he could in the countless wounds marring her scales.

“You,” she growled to him. “You knew it was a snare, but you let me rush into it anyway.”

“I simply had a feeling something was amiss,” the green replied. “I didn’t know what, and when I tried to suggest we proceed cautiously, you rebuffed me.”

She realized it was so, but it failed to mollify her. He would have tried harder to warn her if he’d really meant to save her.

Well, it was one more offense for which he would atone in agony when the time came. At the moment, much as she loathed him, she hated the monks and their allies even more, for they were the ones who’d tricked and hurt her.

“Find another way in!” she screamed to her minions. “Fast!”

Will held forth the “torch” Pavel had made for him by kindling a magical light at the end of the stick. The warm golden glow was steadier than the wavering sheen of fire, an advantage when a thief was looking for tiny telltale signs of hidden snares and doorways.

At the moment, the light revealed a long, broad stretch of corridor leading up to an imposing stone door framed by twin statues of Vaprak of the Claws, bestial god of the ogres, brandishing his greatclub. The black and bone-colored tiles on the floor, laid out in a subtly irregular pattern, each bore an inlaid ivory rune at the center, though it was hard to make out the symbols where white lay on white.

Will turned to Pavel and Yagoth. “Can either of you read those signs?” the halfling asked.

“I believe,” Pavel said, frowning, “they represent various entities and principles of light. The idea is that we have to trample that which is good to demonstrate our fitness to enter deeper into the heart of evil.”

Some of the ogres at the rear of the process growled at the scorn in the cleric’s voice and Yagoth snarled, “That’s a weakling’s way of thinking about the gods . but you might be right.”

“The point is,” said Will, “do you read anything that suggests which symbols are safe to tread on?”

The human priest and ogre shaman pondered the question for a time.

“No,” Pavel admitted at last.

Will snorted. “Why did I even bother asking? I’ve had to do all the work so far.” As far as he was concerned, it was a fair statement, for it was he who’d discovered the hidden stairs to the crypts below the temple, and defeated the mantraps designed to kill intruders. “No point expecting either of you to prove useful at this late date.”

“Maybe,” said Yagoth, “we’ve passed the last of the traps already.”

“Or maybe,” said Will, “if you step in the wrong spot, something will pop or spray out of one of those concealed notches along the walls and kill you.” He pointed with his torch to indicate the grooves, but suspected his companions didn’t really see them even then. It needed a burglar’s eye. “You can stroll on out there and put it to the test.”

Yagoth scowled, his crimson eye glaring. “Maybe I’ll just toss you and see what happens.”

“A brilliant idea, considering you need me to find the way through.”

The shaman spat, “Be quick about it, then.”

Will squatted down and peered out across the tiles, looking for the signs of wear that would identify a true stepping stone, and the minute deviation in height, slant, or wider separation from its fellows that could betray a false one. Gradually, he distinguished the former from the latter through the first few rows, and that was enough to reveal the overall pattern.

“Your forefathers lacked subtlety,” he told Yagoth, straightening up. “They left too many triggers embedded in the floor. A truly cunning trapper wouldn’t have bothered building so many. He would have known where to lay a smaller number so they’d still catch any dunce who blundered through.”

“How do we get by?” Yagoth growled.

Will used his torch to point at a white square marked with a sigil resembling a curved trident with an axe blade mounted on the butt.

“You tread on these,” said the halfling, “and these alone.”

“Prove it,” the ogre said.

“As you wish.”

Will walked out onto the tiles.

At first Yagoth was happy to let him lead, but after a few paces, tramped out ahead of him. Maybe he thought the display of boldness necessary to safeguard his position among his fellows.