The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (438 page)

Strangest of all, she had come, over time, to despise her competence, her deadly skills. They had been imposed upon her, forced into her bones and mus
cles. They had imprisoned her in blinding, gelid armour. And so, despite the god's absence, she still felt as if she was two women, not one.

Leading her to wonder with which woman Crokus had fallen in love.

But no, there was no mystery there. He had assumed the guise of a killer, hadn't he? The young wide-eyed thief from Darujhistan had fashioned of himself a dire reflection—not of Apsalar the fisher-girl, but of Apsalar the assassin, the cold murderer. In the belief that likeness would forge the deepest bond of all. Perhaps that would have succeeded, had she
liked
her profession, had she not found it sordid and reprehensible. Had it not felt like chains wrapped tight about her soul.

She was not comforted by company within her prison. His love was for the wrong woman, the wrong Apsalar. And hers was for Crokus, not Cutter. And so they were together, yet apart, intimate yet strangers, and it seemed there was nothing they could do about it.

The assassin within her preferred solitude, and the fisher-girl had, from an entirely different path, come into a similar comfort. The former could not afford to love. The latter knew she had never been loved. Like Crokus, she stood in a killer's shadow.

There was no point in railing against that. The fisher-girl had no life-skills of a breadth and stature to challenge the assassin's implacable will. Probably, Crokus had similarly succumbed to Cutter.

She sensed a presence close by her side, and murmured, ‘Would that you had taken all with you when you departed.'

‘You'd rather I left you bereft?'

‘Bereft, Cotillion? No. Innocent.'

‘Innocence is only a virtue, lass, when it is temporary. You must pass from it to look back and recognize its unsullied purity. To remain innocent is to twist beneath invisible and unfathomable forces all your life, until one day you realize that you no longer recognize yourself, and it comes to you that innocence was a curse that had shackled you, stunted you, defeated your every expression of living.'

She smiled in the darkness. ‘But, Cotillion, it is knowledge that makes one aware of his or her own chains.'

‘Knowledge only makes the eyes see what was there all along, Apsalar. You are in possession of formidable skills. They gift you with power, a truth there is little point in denying. You cannot unmake yourself.'

‘But I can cease walking this singular path.'

‘You can,' he acknowledged after a moment. ‘You can choose others, but even the privilege of choice was won by virtue of what you were—'

‘What
you
were.'

‘Nor can that be changed. I walked in your bones, your flesh, Apsalar. The fisher-girl who became a woman—we stood in each other's shadow.'

‘And did you enjoy that, Cotillion?'

‘Not particularly. It was difficult to remain mindful of my purpose. We were in worthy company for most of that time—Whiskeyjack, Mallet, Fiddler, Kalam…
a squad that, given the choice, would have welcomed you. But I prevented them from doing so. Necessary, but not fair to you or them.' He sighed, then continued, ‘I could speak endlessly of regrets, lass, but I see dawn stealing the darkness, and I must have your decision.'

‘My decision? Regarding what?'

‘Cutter.'

She studied the desert, found herself blinking back tears. ‘I would take him from you, Cotillion. I would prevent you doing to him what you did to me.'

‘He is that important to you?'

‘He is. Not to the assassin within me, but to the fisher-girl…whom he does not love.'

‘Doesn't he?'

‘He loves the assassin, and so chooses to be like her.'

‘I understand now the struggle within you.'

‘Indeed? Then you must understand why I will not let you have him.'

‘But you are wrong, Apsalar. Cutter does not love the assassin within you. It attracts him, no doubt, because power does that…to us all. And you possess power, and that implicitly includes the option of not using it. All very enticing, alluring. He is drawn to emulate what he sees as your hard-won freedom. But his love? Resurrect our shared memories, lass. Of Darujhistan, of our first brush with the thief, Crokus. He saw that we had committed murder, and knew that discovery made his life forfeit in our eyes. Did he love you then? No, that came later, in the hills east of the city—when I no longer possessed you.'

‘Love changes with time—'

‘Aye, it does, but not like a capemoth flitting from corpse to corpse on a battlefield.' He cleared his throat. ‘Very well, a poor choice of analogy. Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything—love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.'

She had drawn her arms tight about herself with his words. ‘There are two women within me—'

‘Two? There are multitudes, lass, and Cutter loves them all.'

‘I don't want him to die!'

‘Is that your decision?'

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The sky was lightening, transforming into a vast, empty space above a dead, battered landscape. She saw birds climb the winds into its expanse.

Cotillion persisted, ‘Do you know, then, what you must do?'

Once again, Apsalar nodded.

‘I am…pleased.'

Her head snapped round, and she stared into his face, seeing it fully, she realized, for the first time. The lines bracketing the calm, soft eyes, the even features, the strange hatch pattern of scars beneath his right eye. ‘Pleased,' she whispered, studying him. ‘Why?'

‘Because,' he answered with a faint smile, ‘I like the lad, too.'

‘How brave do you think I am?'

‘As brave as is necessary.'

‘Again.'

‘Aye. Again.'

‘You don't seem much like a god at all, Cotillion.'

‘I'm not a god in the traditional fashion, I am a patron. Patrons have responsibilities. Granted, I rarely have the opportunity to exercise them.'

‘Meaning they are not yet burdensome.'

His smile broadened, and it was a lovely smile. ‘You are worth far more for your lack of innocence, Apsalar. I will see you again soon.' He stepped back into the shadows of the chamber.

‘Cotillion.'

He paused, arms half raised. ‘Yes.'

‘Thank you. And take care of Cutter. Please.'

‘I will, as if he were my own son, Apsalar. I will.'

She nodded, and then he was gone.

And, a short while later, so was she.

 

There were snakes in this forest of stone. Fortunately for Kalam Mekhar, they seemed to lack the natural belligerence of their kind. He was lying in shadows amidst the dusty, shattered fragments of a toppled tree, motionless as serpents slithered around him and over him. The stone was losing its chill from the night just past, a hot wind drifting in from the desert beyond.

He had seen no sign of patrols, and little in the way of well-trod trails. None the less, he sensed a presence in this petrified forest, hinting of power that did not belong on this world. Though he could not be certain, he sensed something demonic about that power.

Sufficient cause for unease. Sha'ik might well have placed guardians, and he would have to get past those.

The assassin lifted a flare-neck to one side then drew his two long-knives. He examined the grips, ensuring that the leather bindings were tight. He checked the fittings of the hilts and pommels. The edge of the otataral long-knife's blade was slightly rough—otataral was not an ideal metal for weapons. It cut ragged and needed constant sharpening, even when it had seen no use, and the iron had a tendency to grow brittle over time. Before the Malazan conquest, otataral had been employed by the highborn of Seven Cities in their armour for the most part. Its availability had been tightly regulated, although less so than when under imperial control.

Few knew the full extent of its properties. When absorbed through the skin or breathed into the lungs for long periods, its effects were varied and unpredictable. It often failed in the face of Elder magic, and there was another characteristic that Kalam suspected few were aware of—a discovery made entirely by accident during a battle outside Y'Ghatan. Only a handful of witnesses survived the incident, Kalam and Quick Ben among them, and all had agreed afterwards that their re
ports to their officers would be deliberately vague, questions answered by shrugs and shakes of the head.

Otataral, it seemed, did not go well with Moranth munitions, particularly burners and flamers.
Or, to put it another way, it doesn't like getting hot
. He knew that weapons were quenched in otataral dust at a late stage in their forging. When the iron had lost its glow, in fact. Likely, blacksmiths had arrived at that conclusion the hard way. But even that was not the whole secret.
It's what happens to hot otataral…when you throw magic at it
.

He slowly resheathed the weapon, then focused his attention on the other. Here, the edge was smooth, slightly wavy as often occurred with rolled, multilayered blades. The water etching was barely visible on this gleaming, black surface, the silver inlay fine as thread. Between the two long-knives, he favoured this one, for its weight and balance.

Something struck the ground beside him, bouncing with a pinging sound off a fragment of tree trunk, then rattling to a stop down beside his right knee.

Kalam stared at the small object for a moment. He then looked up at the tree looming over him. He smiled. ‘Ah, an oak,' he murmured. ‘Let it not be said I don't appreciate the humour of the gesture.' He sat up and reached down to collect the acorn. Then leaned back once more. ‘Just like old times…glad, as always, that we don't do this sort of thing any more…'

 

Plains to savanna, then, finally, jungle. They had arrived in the wet season, and the morning suffered beneath a torrential deluge before, just past noon, the sun burned through to lade the air with steam as the three T'lan Imass and one Tiste Edur trudged through the thick, verdant undergrowth.

Unseen animals fled their onward march, thrashing heavily through the brush on all sides. Eventually, they stumbled onto a game trail that led in the direction they sought, and their pace increased.

‘This is not your natural territory, is it, Onrack?' Trull Sengar asked between gasps of the humid, rank air. ‘Given all the furs your kind wear…'

‘True,' the T'lan Imass replied. ‘We are a cold weather people. But this region exists within our memories. Before the Imass, there was another people, older, wilder. They dwelt where it was warm, and they were tall, their dark skins covered in fine hair. These we knew as the Eres. Enclaves survived into our time—the time captured within this warren.'

‘And they lived in jungles like this one?'

‘Its verges, occasionally, but more often the surrounding savannas. They worked in stone, but with less skill than us.'

‘Were there bonecasters among them?'

Monok Ochem answered from behind them. ‘All Eres were bonecasters, Trull Sengar. For they were the first to carry the spark of awareness, the first so gifted by the spirits.'

‘And are they now gone, Monok Ochem?'

‘They are.'

Onrack added nothing to that. After all, if Monok Ochem found reasons to deceive, Onrack could find none to contradict the bonecaster. It did not matter in any case. No Eres had ever been discovered in the Warren of Tellann.

After a moment, Trull Sengar asked, ‘Are we close, Onrack?'

‘We are.'

‘And will we then return to our own world?'

‘We shall. The First Throne lies at the base of a crevasse, beneath a city—'

‘The Tiste Edur,' Monok Ochem cut in, ‘has no need for learning the name of that city, Onrack the Broken. He already knows too much of our people.'

‘What I know of you T'lan Imass hardly qualifies as secrets,' Trull Sengar said. ‘You prefer killing to negotiation. You do not hesitate to murder gods when the opportunity arises. And you prefer to clean up your own messes—laudable, this last one. Unfortunately, this particular mess is too big, though I suspect you are still too proud to admit to that. As for your First Throne, I am not interested in discovering its precise location. Besides, I'm not likely to survive the clash with your renegade kin.'

‘That is true,' Monok Ochem agreed.

‘You will likely make sure of it,' Trull Sengar added.

The bonecaster said nothing.

There was no need to, Onrack reflected.
But I shall defend him. Perhaps Monok and Ibra understand this, and so they will strike at me first. It is what I would do, were I in their place. Which, oddly enough, I am.

The trail opened suddenly into a clearing filled with bones. Countless beasts of the jungle and savanna had been dragged here by, Onrack surmised, leopards or hyenas. The longbones he noted were all gnawed and split open by powerful jaws. The air reeked of rotted flesh and flies swarmed in the thousands.

‘The Eres did not fashion holy sites of their own,' Monok Ochem said, ‘but they understood that there were places where death gathered, where life was naught but memories, drifting lost and bemused. And, to such places, they would often bring their own dead. Power gathers in layers—this is the birthplace of the sacred.'

‘And so you have transformed it into a gate,' Trull Sengar said.

‘Yes,' the bonecaster replied.

‘You are too eager to credit the Imass, Monok Ochem,' Onrack said. He faced the Tiste Edur. ‘Eres holy sites burned through the barriers of Tellann. They are too old to be resisted.'

‘You said their sanctity was born of death. Are they Hood's, then?'

‘No. Hood did not exist when these were fashioned, Trull Sengar. Nor are they strictly death-aspected. Their power comes, as Monok Ochem said, from layers. Stone shaped into tools and weapons. Air shaped by throats. Minds that discovered, faint as flickering fires in the sky, the recognition of oblivion, of an
end
…to life, to love. Eyes that witnessed the struggle to survive, and saw with wonder its inevitable failure. To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.'