The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (580 page)

‘Oh, my head hurts,' he mumbled, hands up over his eyes, the fingers reaching into his hair, then clenching as if to begin tearing it out. ‘How – no, I don't want to know. It doesn't matter. I don't care.'

‘So where is she now?'

‘No more.'

Scillara subsided. She pulled out a narrow-bladed knife and began cleaning her pipe.

He suddenly rose. ‘I'll start on breakfast.'

A sweet boy, she decided. Like damp clay in a woman's hands. A woman who knew what she was doing, that is.
Now the question is, should I be doing this?
Felisin adored Cutter, after all.
Then again, we could always share.

‘Smirking observation. Soft-curved, large-breasted woman wants to press flesh with Cutter.
'

Not now, Greyfrog
, he replied without speaking aloud as he removed food from the pack.

‘
Alarm. No, not now indeed. The others are wakening from their uneasy dreams. Awkward and dismay to follow, especially with Felisin Younger.
'

Cutter paused.
What? Why – but she's barely of age! No, this can't be. Talk her out of it, Greyfrog!

‘
Greyfrog's own advances unwelcome. Despondent sulk. You, Cutter, of seed-issuing capacity, capable of effecting beget. Past revelation. Human women carry breeding pond in bellies. But one egg survives, only one. Terrible risk! You must fill pond as quickly as possible, before rival male appears to steal your destiny. Greyfrog will defend your claim. Brave self-sacrifice, such as Sentinel Circlers among own kind. Altruistic enlightenment of reciprocity and protracted slant reward once or even many times removed. Signifier of higher intelligence, acknowledgement of community interests. Greyfrog is already Sentinel Circler to soft-curved, large-breasted goddess-human.
'

Goddess? What do you mean, goddess?

‘
Lustful sigh, is worthy of worship. Value signifiers in male human clouding the pond's waters in Greyfrog's mind. Too long association. Happily. Sexual desires long withheld. Unhealthy.
'

Cutter set a pot of water on the fire and tossed in a handful of herbs.
What did you say earlier about uneasy dreams, Greyfrog?

‘
Observation, skimming the mind ponds. Troubled. Approaching danger. There are warning signs
.'

What warning signs?

‘
Obvious. Uneasy dreams. Sufficient unto themselves
.'

Not always, Greyfrog. Sometimes it's things from the past that haunt us. That's all.

‘
Ah. Greyfrog will think on this. But first, pangs. Greyfrog is hungry
.'

 

The grey haze of the heat and the dust made the distant walls barely visible. Leoman of the Flails rode at the head of the ragged column, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas at his side, as a company of riders approached from Y'Ghatan's gates.

‘There,' Corabb said, ‘front rider on the right of the standard-bearer, that is Falah'd Vedor. He looks…unhappy.'

‘He'd best begin making peace with that sentiment,' Leoman said in a growl. He raised a gloved hand and the column behind him slowed to a halt.

They watched the company close.

‘Commander, shall you and I meet them halfway?' Corabb asked.

‘Of course not,' Leoman snapped.

Corabb said nothing more. His leader was in a dark mood. A third of his warriors were riding double. A much-loved old healer witch had died this very morning, and they'd pinned her corpse beneath a slab of stone lest some wandering spirit find her. Leoman himself had spat in the eight directions to hallow the ground, and spilled drops of his own blood from a slash he opened on his left hand onto the dusted stone, voicing the blessing in the name of the Apocalyptic. Then he had wept. In front of all his warriors, who had stood silent, awestruck by the grief and the love for his followers Leoman had revealed in that moment.

The Falah'd and his soldiers approached, then drew to a halt five paces in front of Leoman and Corabb.

Corabb studied Vedor's sallow, sunken face, murky eyes, and knew him for an addict of d'bayang poppy. His thick-veined hands trembled on the saddle horn, and, when it became evident that Leoman would not be the first to speak, he scowled and said, ‘I, Falah'd Vedor of Y'Ghatan, the First Holy City, do hereby welcome you, Leoman of the Flails, refugee of Sha'ik's Fall in Raraku, and your broken followers. We have prepared secure barracks for your warriors, and the tables wait, heaped with food and wine. You, Leoman, and your remaining officers shall be the Falah'd's guests in the palace, for as long as required for you to reprovision your army and recover from your flight. Inform us of your final destination and we shall send envoys in advance to proclaim your coming to each and every village, town and city on your route.'

Corabb found he was holding his breath. He watched as Leoman nudged his horse forward, until he was positioned side by side with the Falah'd.

‘We have come to Y'Ghatan,' Leoman said, in a low voice, ‘and it is in Y'Ghatan that we shall stay. To await the coming of the Malazans.'

Vedor's stained mouth worked for a moment without any sound issuing forth, then he managed a hacking laugh. ‘Like a knife's edge, your sense of humour, Leoman of the Flails! It is as your legend proclaims!'

‘My legend? Then this, too, will not surprise you.' The kethra knife was a blinding flash, sweeping to caress Vedor's throat. Blood spurted, and the Falah'd's head rolled back, thumped on the rump of the startled horse, then down to bounce and roll in the dust of the road. Leoman reached out to steady the headless corpse still seated in the saddle, and wiped the blade on the silken robes.

From the company of city soldiers, not a sound, not a single motion. The standard-bearer, a youth of perhaps fifteen years, stared open-mouthed at the headless body beside him.

‘In the name of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic,' Leoman said, ‘I now rule the First Holy City of Y'Ghatan. Who is the ranking officer here?'

A woman pushed her horse forward. ‘I am. Captain Dunsparrow.'

Corabb squinted at her. Solid features, sun-darkened, light grey eyes. Twenty-five years of age, perhaps. The glint of a chain vest was just visible beneath her plain telaba. ‘You,' Corabb said, ‘are Malazan.'

The cool eyes fixed on him. ‘What of it?'

‘Captain,' Leoman said, ‘your troop will precede us. Clear the way to the palace for me and my warriors. The secure barracks spoken of by the late Falah'd will be used to house those soldiers in the city garrison and from the palace who might be disinclined to follow my orders. Please ensure that they are indeed secured. Once you have done these things, report to me in the palace for further orders.'

‘Sir,' the woman said, ‘I am of insufficient rank to do as you ask—'

‘No longer. You are now my Third, behind Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas.'

Her gaze briefly flicked back to Corabb, revealing nothing. ‘As you command, Leoman of the Flails, Falah'd of Y'Ghatan.'

Dunsparrow twisted in her saddle and bellowed out to her troops, ‘About face! Smartly now, you damned pig-herders! We advance the arrival of the new Falah'd!'

Vedor's horse turned along with all the others, and began trotting, the headless body pitching about in its saddle.

Corabb watched as, twenty paces along, the dead Falah'd's mount came up alongside the captain. She noted it and with a single straight-armed shove sent the corpse toppling.

Leoman grunted. ‘Yes. She is perfect.'

A Malazan
. ‘I have misgivings, Commander.'

‘Of course you have. It's why I keep you at my side.' He glanced over. ‘That, and the Lady's tug. Come now, ride with me into our new city.'

They kicked their horses into motion. Behind them followed the others.

‘Our new city,' Corabb said, grinning. ‘We shall defend it with our lives.'

Leoman shot him an odd look, but said nothing.

Corabb thought about that.
Commander, I have more misgivings
…

‘Put that down,' Samar Dev said wearily from where she sat near the window.

‘Thought you were asleep,' Karsa Orlong said. He returned the object to the tabletop. ‘What is it?'

‘Two functions. The upper beaker contains filters for the water, removing all impurities. The water gathering in the lower beaker is flanked by strips of copper, which livens the water itself through a complicated and mysterious process. A particular ethereal gas is released, thus altering the air pressure above the water, which in turn—'

‘But what do you use it for?'

Samar's eyes narrowed. ‘Nothing in particular.'

He moved away from the table, approached the work benches and shelves. She watched him examining the various mechanisms she had invented, and the long-term experiments, many of which showed no evident alteration of conditions. He poked. Sniffed, and even sought to taste one dish filled with gelatinous fluid. She thought to stop him, then decided to remain quiet. The warrior's wounds had healed with appalling swiftness, with no signs of infection. The thick liquid he was licking from his finger wasn't particularly healthy to ingest, but not fatal. Usually.

He made a face. ‘This is terrible.'

‘I am not surprised.'

‘What do you use it for?'

‘What do you think?'

‘Rub it into saddles. Leather.'

‘Saddles? Indirectly, I suppose. It is an ointment, for the suppurating wounds that sometimes arise on the lining of the anus—'

He grunted loudly, then said, ‘No wonder it tasted awful,' and resumed his examination of the room's contents.

She regarded him thoughtfully. Then said, ‘The Falah'd sent soldiers into the keep. They found signs of past slaughter – as you said, not one Malazan left alive. They also found a demon. Or, rather, the corpse of a demon, freshly killed. They have asked me to examine it, for I possess a little knowledge of anatomy and other, related subjects.'

He made no reply, peering into the wrong end of a spyglass.

‘If you come to the window, and look through the other end, Karsa, you will see things far away drawn closer.'

He scowled at her, and set the instrument down. ‘If something is far away, I simply ride closer.'

‘And if it is at the top of a cliff? Or a distant enemy encampment and you want to determine the picket lines?'

He retrieved the spyglass and walked over. She moved her chair to one side to give him room. ‘There is a falcon's nest on the ledge of that tower, the copper-sheathed one.'

He held up the glass. Searched until he found the nest. ‘That is no falcon.'

‘You are right. It's a bokh'aral that found the abandoned nest to its liking. It carries up armfuls of rotting fruit and it spends the morning dropping them on people in the streets below.'

‘It appears to be snarling…'

‘That would be laughter. It is forever driven to bouts of hilarity.'

‘Ah – no, that wasn't fruit. It was a brick.'

‘Oh, unfortunate. Someone will be sent to kill it, now. After all, only people are allowed to throw bricks at people.'

He lowered the spyglass and studied her. ‘That is madness. What manner of laws do you possess, to permit such a thing?'

‘Which thing? Stoning people or killing bokh'arala?'

‘You are strange, Samar Dev. But then, you are a witch, and a maker of useless objects—'

‘Is that spyglass useless?'

‘No, I now understand its value. Yet it was lying on a shelf…'

She leaned back. ‘I have invented countless things that would prove of great value to many people. And that presents me with a dilemma. I must ask myself, with each invention, what possible abuses await such an object? More often than not, I conclude that those abuses outweigh the value of the invention. I call this Dev's First Law of Invention.'

‘You are obsessed with laws.'

‘Perhaps. In any case, the law is simple, as all true laws must be—'

‘You have a law for that, too?'

‘Founding principle, rather than law. In any case, ethics are the first consideration of an inventor following a particular invention.'

‘You call that simple?'

‘The statement is, the consideration is not.'

‘Now that sounds more like a true law.'

She closed her mouth after a moment, then rose and walked over to the scriber's desk, sat and collected a stylus and a wax tablet. ‘I distrust philosophy,' she said as she wrote. ‘Even so, I will not turn away from the subject…when it slaps me in the face. Nor am I particularly eloquent as a writer. I am better suited to manipulating objects than words. You, on the other hand, seem to possess an unexpected talent for…uh…cogent brevity.'

‘You talk too much.'

‘No doubt.' She finished recording her own unexpectedly profound words – profound only in that Karsa Orlong had recognized a far vaster application than she had intended. She paused, wanting to dismiss his genius as blind chance, or even the preening false wisdom of savage nobility. But something whispered to her that Karsa Orlong had been underestimated before, and she vowed not to leap into the same pit. Setting the stylus down, she rose to her feet. ‘I am off to examine the demon you killed. Will you accompany me?'

‘No, I had a close enough examination the first time.'

She collected the leather satchel containing her surgical instruments. ‘Stay inside, please, and try not to break anything.'

‘How can you call yourself an inventor if you dislike breaking things?'

At the door, she paused and glanced back at him. His head was brushing the ceiling in this, the highest chamber in her tower. There was something…there in his eyes. ‘Try not to break any of
my
things.'

‘Very well. But I am hungry. Bring more food.'

 

The reptilian corpse was lying on the floor of one of the torture chambers situated in the palace crypts. A retired Avower had been given the task of standing guard. Samar Dev found him asleep in one corner of the room. Leaving him to his snores, she stationed around the huge demon's body the four lit lanterns she had brought down from above, then settled onto her knees and untied the flap of her satchel, withdrawing a variety of polished surgical instruments. And, finally, her preparations complete, she swung her attention to the corpse.

Teeth, jaws, forward-facing eyes, all the makings of a superior carnivore, likely an ambush hunter. Yet, this was no simple river lizard. Behind the orbital ridges the skull swept out broad and long, with massive occipital bulges, the sheer mass of the cranial region implying intelligence. Unless, of course, the bone was absurdly thick.

She cut away the torn and bruised skin to reveal broken fragments of that skull. Not so thick, then. Indentations made it obvious that Karsa Orlong had used his fists. In which, it was clear, there was astonishing strength, and an equally astonishing will. The brain beneath, marred with broken vessels and blood leakage and pulped in places by the skull pieces, was indeed large, although arranged in a markedly different manner from a human's. There were more lobes, for one thing. Six more, in all, positioned beneath heavy ridged projections out to the sides, including two extra vessel-packed masses connected by tissue to the eyes. Suggesting these demons saw a different world, a more complete one, perhaps.

Samar extracted one mangled eye and was surprised to find two lenses, one concave, the other convex. She set those aside for later examination.

Cutting through the tough, scaled hide, she opened the neck regions, confirming the oversized veins and arteries necessary to feed an active brain, then continued on to reveal the chest region. Many of the ribs were already broken. She counted four lungs and two proto-lungs attached beneath them, these latter ones saturated with blood.

She cut through the lining of the first of three stomachs, then moved quickly back as the acids poured out. The blade of her knife sizzled and she watched as pitting etched into the iron surface. More hissing sounds, from the stone floor. Her eyes began watering.

Movement from the stomach, and Samar rose and took a step back. Worms were crawling out. A score, wriggling then dropping to the muddy stone. The colour of blued iron, segmented, each as long as an index finger. She glanced down at the crumbling knife in her hand and dropped the instrument, then collected wooden tongs from her satchel, moved to the edge of the acid pool, reached down and retrieved one of the worms.

Not a worm. Hundreds of legs, strangely finned, and, even more surprising, the creatures were mechanisms. Not living at all, the metal of their bodies somehow impervious to the acids. The thing twisted about in the grip of the tongs, then stopped moving. She shook it, but it had gone immobile, like a crooked nail. An infestation? She did not think so. No, there were many creatures that worked in concert. The pond of stomach acid had been home to these mechanisms, and they in turn worked in some fashion to the demon's benefit.

A hacking cough startled her, and she turned to see the Avower stumble to his feet. Hunched, twisted with arthritis, he shambled over. ‘Samar Dev, the witch! What's that smell? Not you, I hope. You and me, we're the same sort, aren't we just?'

‘We are?'

‘Oh yes, Samar Dev.' He scratched at his crotch. ‘We strip the layers of humanity, down to the very bones, but where does humanity end and animal begin? When does pain defeat reason? Where hides the soul and to where does it flee when all hope in the flesh is lost? Questions to ponder, for such as you and me. Oh how I have longed to meet you, to share knowledge—'

‘You're a torturer.'

‘Someone has to be,' he said, offended. ‘In a culture that admits the need for torture, there must perforce be a torturer. A culture, Samar Dev, that values the acquisition of truths more than it does any single human life. Do you see? Oh,' he added, edging closer to frown down at the demon's corpse, ‘the justifications are always the same. To save many more lives, this one must be surrendered. Sacrificed. Even the words used disguise the brutality. Why are torture chambers in the crypts? To mask the screams? True enough, but there's more. This,' he said, waving one gnarled hand, ‘is the nether realm of humanity, the rotted heart of unpleasantness.'

‘I am seeking answers from something already dead. It is not the same—'

‘Details. We are questioners, you and I. We slice back the armour to uncover the hidden truth. Besides, I'm retired. They want me to train another, you know, now that the Malazan laws have been struck down and torture's popular once more. But, the fools they send me! Ah, what is the point? Now, Falah'd Krithasanan, now he was something – you were likely just a child, then, or younger even. My, how he liked torturing people. Not for truths – he well understood that facile rubbish for what it was – facile rubbish. No, the greater questions interested him. How far along can a soul be dragged, trapped still within its broken body, how far? How far until it can no longer crawl back? This was my challenge, and oh how he appreciated my artistry!'

Samar Dev looked down to see that the rest of the mechanisms had all ceased to function. She placed the one she had retrieved in a small leather pouch, then repacked her kit, making sure to include the eye lenses. She'd get them to burn the rest of the body – well away from the city, and upwind.

‘Will you not dine with me?'

‘Alas, I cannot. I have work to do.'

‘If only they'd bring your guest down here. Toblakai. Oh, he would be fun, wouldn't he?'

She paused. ‘I doubt I could talk him into it, Avower.'

‘The Falah'd has been considering it, you know.'

‘No, I didn't know. I think it would be a mistake.'

‘Well,
those
things are not for us to question, are they?'

‘Something tells me Toblakai would be delighted to meet you, Avower. Although it would be a short acquaintance.'

‘Not if I have my way, Samar Dev!'

‘Around Karsa Orlong, I suspect, only Karsa Orlong has his way.'

 

She returned to find the Teblor warrior poring over her collection of maps, which he'd laid out on the floor in the hallway. He had brought in a dozen votive candles, now lit and set out around him. He held one close as he perused the precious parchments. Without looking up, he said, ‘This one here, witch. The lands and coast west and north…I was led to believe the Jhag Odhan was unbroken, that the plains ran all the way to the far-lands of Nemil and the Trell, yet here, this shows something different.'

‘If you burn holes in my maps,' Samar Dev said, ‘I will curse you and your bloodline for all eternity.'

‘The Odhan sweeps westward, it seems, but only in the south. There are places of ice marked here. This continent looks too vast. There has been a mistake.'

‘Possibly,' she conceded. ‘Since that is the one direction I have not travelled, I can make no claim as to the map's accuracy. Mind you, that one was etched by Othun Dela Farat, a century ago. He was reputed to be reliable.'