The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (577 page)

The rider lifted the spear high. ‘Treach made a mistake, I see, but I must salute you nonetheless.'

Heboric halted. ‘A mistake, Soldier? Yes, I agree, but there is little I can do about it. I acknowledge your reluctant salute. What brings you here?'

‘Ask Hood if you want the answer to that!' He upended the spear and drove it point first into the ground, then swung down from the saddle, more fragments of the rotting armour falling away. ‘I expect I must look around, as if I cannot already see all there is to see. The pantheon is riven asunder, what of it?'

Heboric pulled the nervous horses towards the trough, giving the warrior a wide berth. As he approached Cutter he shrugged. ‘The Soldier of Hood, High House Death. He'll not trouble us, I think.'

‘He spoke to me in Daru,' Cutter said. ‘At first. And Malazan with you.'

‘Yes.'

The Soldier was tall, and Cutter now saw something hanging from a knife-studded belt. An enamel mask, cracked, smudged, with a single streak of red paint along one cheek. The Daru's eyes widened. ‘Beru fend,' he whispered. ‘A Seguleh!'

At that the Soldier turned, then walked closer. ‘Daru, you are far from home! Tell me, do the Tyrant's children still rule Darujhistan?'

Cutter shook his head.

‘You look crazed, mortal, what ails you?'

‘I – I'd heard, I mean – Seguleh usually say nothing – to anyone. Yet you…'

‘The fever zeal still grips my mortal kin, does it? Idiots! The Tyrant's army still holds sway in the city, then?'

‘Who? What? Darujhistan is ruled by a council. We have no army—'

‘Brilliant insanity! No Seguleh in the city?'

‘No! Just…stories. Legends, I mean.'

‘So where are my masked stick-pivoting compatriots hiding?'

‘An island, it's said, far to the south, off the coast, beyond Morn—'

‘Morn! Now the sense of it comes to me. They are being held in readiness. Darujhistan's council – mages one and all, yes? Undying, secretive, paranoid mages! Crouching low, lest the Tyrant returns, as one day he must! Returns, looking for his army! Hah, a council!'

‘That's not the council, sir,' Cutter said. ‘If you are speaking of mages, that would be the T'orrud Cabal—'

‘T'orrud! Yes, clever. Outrageous! Barukanal, Derudanith, Travalegrah, Mammoltenan? These names strike your soul, yes? I see it.'

‘Mammot was my uncle—'

‘Uncle! Hah! Absurd!' He spun round. ‘I have seen enough! Hood! I am leaving! She's made her position clear as ice, hasn't she? Hood, you damned fool, you didn't need me for this! Now I must seek out his trail all over again, damn your hoary bones!' He swung back onto the undead horse.

Heboric called out from where he stood by the trough, ‘Soldier! May I ask – who do you hunt?'

The sharpened teeth lifted and lowered in a silent laugh. ‘Hunt? Oh yes, we all hunt, but I was closest! Piss on Hood's bony feet! Pluck out the hairs of his nose and kick his teeth in! Drive a spear up his puckered behind and set him on a windy mountain top! Oh, I'll find him a wife some day, lay coin on it! But first, I hunt!'

He collected the reins, pulled the horse round. The portal opened. ‘
Skinner! Hear me, you damned Avowed! Cheater of death! I am coming for you! Now!
' Horse and rider plunged into the rent, vanished, and a moment later the gate disappeared as well.

The sudden silence rang like a dirge in Cutter's head. He took a ragged breath, then shook himself. ‘Beru fend,' he whispered again. ‘He was my uncle…'

‘I will feed the horses, lad,' Heboric said. ‘Go out to the women. They've likely been hearing shouting and don't know what's going on. Go on, Cutter.'

Nodding, the Daru began walking.
Barukanal. Mammoltenan
…What had the Soldier revealed? What ghastly secret hid in the apparition's words?
What do Baruk and the others have to do with the Tyrant? And the Seguleh? The Tyrant is returning?
‘Gods, I've got to get home.'

Outside the gates, Felisin and Scillara were seated on the track. Both puffing rustleaf, and although Felisin looked sickly, there was a determined, defiant look in her eyes.

‘Relax,' Scillara said. ‘She's not inhaling.'

‘I'm not?' Felisin asked her. ‘How do you do that?'

‘Don't you have any questions?' Cutter demanded.

They looked at him. ‘About what?' Scillara asked.

‘Didn't you hear?'

‘Hear what?'

They didn't hear. They weren't meant to. But we were. Why?
Had the Soldier been mistaken in his assumptions? Sent by Hood, not to see the dead priests and priestesses of D'rek…
but to speak with us
.

The Tyrant shall return. This, to a son of Darujhistan. ‘Gods,' he whispered again, ‘I've got to get home.'

Greyfrog's voice shouted in his skull, ‘
Friend Cutter! Surprise and alarm!
'

‘What now?' he asked, turning to see the demon bounding into view.

‘
The Soldier of Death. Wondrous. He left his spear!
'

Cutter stared, with sinking heart, at the weapon clutched between the demon's teeth. ‘Good thing you don't need your mouth to talk.'

‘
Solemn agreement, friend Cutter! Query. Do you like these silks?
'

 

The portal into the sky keep required a short climb. Mappo and Icarium stood on the threshold, staring into a cavernous chamber. The floor was almost level. A faint light seemed to emanate from the walls of stone. ‘We can camp here,' the Trell said.

‘Yes,' Icarium agreed. ‘But first, shall we explore?'

‘Of course.'

The chamber housed three additional mechanisms, identical to the one submerged in the lake, each positioned on trestles like ships in dry-dock. The hatches yawned open, revealing the padded seats within. Icarium walked to the nearest one and began examining its interior.

Mappo untied the pouch at his belt and began removing the larger one within. A short time later he laid out the bedrolls, food and wine. Then he drew out from his pack an iron-banded mace, not his favourite one, but another, expendable since it possessed no sorcerous virtues.

Icarium returned to his side. ‘They are lifeless,' he said. ‘Whatever energy was originally imbued within the machinery has ebbed away, and I see no means of restoring it.'

‘That is not too surprising, is it? I suspect this keep has been here a long time.'

‘True enough, Mappo. But imagine, were we able to enliven one of these mechanisms! We could travel at great speed and in comfort! One for you and one for me, ah, this is tragic. But look, there is a passageway. Let us delve into the greater mystery this keep offers.'

Carrying only his mace, Mappo followed Icarium into the broad corridor.

Storage rooms lined the passage, whatever they had once held now nothing more than heaps of undisturbed dust.

Sixty paces in, they reached an intersection. An arched barrier was before them, shimmering like a vertical pool of quicksilver. Corridors went to the right and left, both appearing to curve inward in the distance.

Icarium drew out a coin from the pouch at his belt, and Mappo was amused to see that it was of a vintage five centuries old.

‘You are the world's greatest miser, Icarium.'

The Jhag smiled, then shrugged. ‘I seem to recall that no-one ever accepts payment from us, no matter how egregious the expense of the service provided. Is that an accurate memory, Mappo?'

‘It is.'

‘Well, then, how can you accuse me of being niggardly?' He tossed the coin at the silver barrier. It vanished. Ripples rolled outward, went beyond the stone frame, then returned.

‘This is a passive manifestation,' Icarium said. ‘Tell me, did you hear the coin strike anything beyond?'

‘No, nor did it make a sound upon entering the…uh, the door.'

‘I am tempted to pass through.'

‘That might prove unhealthy.'

Icarium hesitated, then drew a skinning-knife and inserted the blade into the barrier. Gentler ripples. He pulled it out. The blade looked intact. None of the substance had adhered to it. Icarium ran a fingertip along the iron. ‘No change in temperature,' he observed.

‘Shall I try a finger I won't miss much?' Mappo asked, holding up his left hand.

‘And which one would that be, friend?'

‘I don't know. I expect I'd miss any of them.'

‘The tip?'

‘Sound caution.' Making a fist, barring the last, smallest finger, Mappo stepped close, then dipped the finger up to the first knuckle into the shimmering door. ‘No pain, at least. It is, I think, very thin.' He drew his hand back and examined the digit. ‘Hale.'

‘With the condition of your fingers, Mappo, how can you tell?'

‘Ah, I see a change. No dirt left, not even crusted under the nail.'

‘To pass through is to be cleansed. Do you think?'

Mappo reached in with his whole hand. ‘I feel air beyond. Cooler, damper.' He withdrew his hand and peered at it. ‘Clean. Too clean. I am alarmed.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it makes me realize how filthy I've become, that's why.'

‘I wonder, will it do the same with our clothes?'

‘That would be nice, although it may possess some sort of threshold. Too filthy, and it simply annihilates the offending material. We might emerge on the other side naked.'

‘Now I am alarmed, friend.'

‘Yes. Well, what shall we do, Icarium?'

‘Do we have any choice?' With that, the Jhag strode through the barrier.

Mappo sighed, then followed.

Only to be clutched at the shoulder and pulled back from a second step – which, he saw, would have been into empty air.

The cavern before them was vast. A bridge had once connected the ledge they stood on to an enormous, towering fortress floating in space, a hundred or more paces opposite them. Sections of that stone span remained, seemingly unsupported, but others had broken away and now floated, motionless, in the air.

Far below, dizzyingly far, the cavern was swallowed in darkness. Above them, a faintly glittering dome of black rough-hewn stone, like a night sky. Tiered buildings rose along the inner walls, rows of dark windows but no balconies. Dust and rubble clouded the air, none of it moving. Mappo said nothing, he was too stunned by the vista before them.

Icarium touched his shoulder, then pointed to something small hovering directly before them. The coin, but not motionless as it had first seemed. It was drifting away, slowly. The Jhag reached out and retrieved it, returning it to the pouch at his waist. ‘A worthy return on my investment,' he murmured. ‘Since there is momentum, we should be able to travel. Launch ourselves from this ledge. Over to the fortress.'

‘Sound plan,' Mappo said, ‘but for all the obstacles in between.'

‘Ah, good point.'

‘There may be an intact bridge, on the opposite side. We could take one of the side passages behind us. If such a bridge exists, likely it will be marked with a silver barrier as this one was.'

‘Have you never wished you could fly, Mappo?'

‘As a child, perhaps, I am sure I did.'

‘Only as a child?'

‘It is where dreams of flight belong, Icarium. Shall we explore one of the corridors behind us?'

‘Very well, although I admit I hope we fail in finding a bridge.'

 

Countless rooms, passages and alcoves along the wide, arched corridor, the floors thick with dust, odd, faded symbols etched above doorways, possibly a numerical system of some sort. The air was stagnant, faintly acrid. No furnishings remained in the adjoining chambers. Nor, Mappo realized, any corpses such as the one Icarium had discovered in the mechanism resting on the lake-bed. An orderly evacuation? If so, where had the Short-Tails gone?

Eventually, they came upon another silver door. Cautiously passing through it, they found themselves standing on the threshold of a narrow bridge. Intact, leading across to the floating fortress, which hovered much closer on this, the opposite side from whence they had first seen it. The back wall of the island keep was much rougher, the windows vertical slashes positioned seemingly haphazardly on the misshapen projections, crooked insets and twisted towers.

‘Extraordinary,' Icarium said in a low voice. ‘What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'Malle?'

‘A certain tension, perhaps?'

‘Tension?'

‘Between,' Mappo said, ‘order and chaos. An inner dichotomy, conflicting impulses…'

‘The contradictions evident in all intelligent life,' Icarium said, nodding. He stepped onto the span, then, arms wheeling, began drifting away.

Mappo reached out and just managed to grasp the Jhag's flailing foot. He pulled Icarium back down onto the threshold. ‘Well,' he said, grunting, ‘that was interesting. You weighed nothing, when I had you in my grip. As light as a mote of dust.'

Slowly, tentatively, the Jhag clambered upright once more. ‘That was most alarming. It seems we may have to fly after all.'

‘Then why build bridges?'

‘I have no idea. Unless,' he added, ‘whatever mechanism invokes this weightlessness is breaking down, losing its precision.'

‘So the bridges should have been exempted? Possibly. In any case, see the railings, projecting not up but out to either side? Modest, but sufficient for handholds, were one to crawl.'

‘Yes. Shall we?'

The sensation, Mappo decided as he reached the midway point, Icarium edging along ahead of him, was not a pleasant one. Nausea, vertigo, a strange urge to pull one's grip loose due to the momentum provided by one's own muscles. All sense of up and down had vanished, and at times Mappo was convinced they were climbing a ladder, rather than snaking more or less horizontally across the span of the bridge.