The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (786 page)

The Worm of Autumn stirred in his gut; an immortal parasite and he its mortal host. The goddess was within him once more, after all these years. Again, no surprise.
After all, I'm the only one left.
Yet D'rek remained as no more than a presence, a faint taste on his tongue. There had been no battle of wills; but he knew it would come. The goddess needed him and sooner or later she would reach out and close a cold fist about his soul.

This was no way to be called by one's god.

He heard skittering noises behind him and slowly closed his eyes.

‘Smells. Smells, smells, smells.'

The words were a whining whisper in Banaschar's head.

‘That's the problem, Telorast. With this island. With this entire continent! Oh, why did we come here? We should have stolen the bodies of two gulls, never mind these rotting stick-things with empty bellies we can't never fill! How many rats have we killed, Telorast? Answer me!'

‘So we couldn't eat them,' muttered Telorast. ‘Killing them was fun, wasn't it? Cleanest ships in the world. Enough of your complaining, Curdle. Can't you feel how close we are?'

‘She's walked here!' Now there was terror in Curdle's voice.
‘What are we doing in this place?'

Banaschar turned. The two knee-high skeletal reptiles were pacing back and forth the length of the cot, clambering awkwardly amidst the dishevelled folds of bedding. ‘A good question,' he said. ‘What
are
you doing here? In my room? And who is “she”?'

Curdle's head bobbed, jaws clacking. ‘Not-Not-Apsalar drove us away. But we need to tell someone!'

‘Anyone!' chimed Telorast. ‘Even you!'

‘Her name is Lostara Yil,' Banaschar said. ‘Not Not-Not-Apsalar – gods, did I just say that?'

‘“She”,' Curdle said, tail whipping, ‘is the one who walked here. Long ago. More long ago than you could even think of, that long ago. Telorast is mad. She's excited, but how can anyone be excited when we're so close to
her
? Madness!'

‘Just because she walked here,' Telorast said, ‘doesn't mean she's still hanging around. Got no big skulls to push her fist through, not for a long time, right? And look at us, Curdle. We could dance in the palm of her hand. Either one. Or both, one for me and one for you – and she wouldn't be able to tell anything about us, not anything.' The creature swung to face Banaschar again. ‘So there's no reason to panic, and that's what you need to tell Curdle, Wormfood. So, go on, tell her.'

Banaschar slowly blinked, then said, ‘There's nothing to worry about, Curdle. Now, will you two leave? I have more brooding to do and half the night's gone.'

Telorast's razor-beaked head swung to Curdle. ‘See? Everything's fine. We're close because we have to be. Because it's where Edgewalker wants—'

‘Quiet!' Curdle hissed.

Telorast ducked. ‘Oh. We have to kill him now, don't we?'

‘No, that would be messy. We just have to hope for a terrible accident. Quick, Telorast, think of a terrible accident!'

‘I've never heard of Edgewalker,' Banaschar said. ‘Relax and go away and forget thinking about killing me. Unless you want to awaken D'rek, that is. The goddess might well know who this Edgewalker is, and from that might be able to glean something of your deadly secret mission, and from that she might decide it would be better if you two were crushed into dust.'

Curdle leapt down from the cot, crept closer to Banaschar, then began to grovel. ‘We didn't mean anything by any of that. We never mean anything, do we, Telorast? We're most useless and tiny besides.'

‘We can smell the Worm all right,' Telorast said, head bobbing. ‘On you. In you. Just one more dread smell hereabouts. We don't like it at all. Let's go, Curdle. He's not the one we should be talking to. Not as dangerous as Not-Apsalar, but just as scary. Open those shutters, Wormfood; we'll go out that way.'

‘Easy for you,' Banaschar muttered, turning back to pull the slatted barriers aside. The wind gusted in like Hood's own breath, and the reborn priest shivered.

In a flash the two reptiles were perched on the sill.

‘Look, Telorast, pigeon poo.'

Then the two creatures leapt from sight. After a moment, Banaschar closed the shutters once more. Making right his vision of the world. His world, at least.

‘For Hood's sake, Crump, stop that damned singing!'

The gangly sapper straightened, stared with mouth agape, then ducked down once more and resumed digging the pit. Under his breath he began humming his mad, endless swamp song.

Corporal Shard watched the dirt flying out, caught by the whipping wind in wild swirls, for a moment longer. Twenty paces beyond the deep hole and Crump's flashing shovel squatted the low-walled stone enclosure where the squad had stashed their gear, and where now crouched Sergeant Cord, Masan Gilani, Limp and Ebron, taking shelter from the blustery wind. In a short while, Cord would call everyone to their feet, and the patrol of this part of the coast would begin.

In the meantime, Crump was digging a pit. A deep pit, just like the sergeant ordered. Just like the sergeant had been ordering every day for nearly a week now.

Shard rubbed at his numbed face, sick with worry over his sister. The Sinn he knew was gone and no sign of her remained. She'd found her power, creating something avid, almost lurid, in her dark eyes. He was frightened of her and he was not alone in that. Limp's bad knees knocked together whenever she came too close, and Ebron made what he thought were subtle, unseen gestures of warding behind her back. Masan Gilani seemed unaffected – that at least was something, maybe a woman thing at that, since Faradan Sort had been pretty much the same.

That simple? Terrifying to men but not women? But why would that be the case?

He had no answer for that.

Crump's humming was getting louder, drawing Shard's attention once again. Loud enough to very nearly overwhelm the distant groans of dying ice from the other side of the strait. Worth yelling at the fool again? Maybe not.

Dirt flying out, skirling skyward then racing out on the wave of the gelid wind.

There were holes dotted along half a league of this island's north coast. Crump was proud of his achievement, and would go on being proud, probably for ever. Finest holes ever dug. Ten, fifty, a hundred, however many the sergeant wanted, yes sir.

Shard believed that Cord's fervent hope that one such pit would collapse, burying the damned idiot once and for all, was little more than wishful thinking.

After all, Crump digs great holes.

He heard a piping shriek from some way behind him and turned. And there she was. Sinn, the girl he used to throw onto a shoulder like a sack of tubers – a giggling sack – and rush with through room after room as her laughter turned to squeals and her legs started kicking. Straggly black hair whipping about, a bone flute in her hands, its music flung out into the bitter tumult like inky strands, as she cavorted in the face of the weather as if spider-bitten.

Sinn, the child witch. The High Mage with a thirst for blood.

Child of the rebellion. Stolen from the life she should have lived, fashioned by horror into something new. Child of Seven Cities, of the Apocalyptic, oh yes. Dryjhna's blessed spawn.

He wondered how many such creatures were out there, stumbling through the ruins like starved dogs. Uprising, grand failure, then plague: how many scars could a young soul carry? Before it twisted into something unrecognizable, something barely human?

Did Sinn find salvation in sorcery? Shard held no faith that such salvation was in truth benign. A weapon for her will, and how far could a mortal go with such a weapon in their hands? How vast the weight of their will, unbound and unleashed?

They were right to fear. So very right.

A gruff command from Sergeant Cord and it was time to begin the patrol. A league's worth of blasted, wind-torn coastline. Crump climbed out of the pit and dusted his palms, his face shining as he looked down on his handiwork.

‘Isn't she fine, Corporal? A hole dug by a High Marshal of Mott Wood, and we know how to dig 'em, don't we just. Why, I think it might be the best one yet! Especially with all the baby skulls on the bottom, like cobbles they are, though they break too easy – need to step light! Step light!'

Suddenly chilled in a place far deeper than any wind could reach, Shard walked to the edge of the pit and looked down. Moments later the rest of the squad joined him.

In the gloom almost a man's height down, the glimmer of rounded shapes.
Like cobbles they are.

And they were
stirring
.

A hiss from Ebron and he glared across at Sinn, whose music and dancing had reached a frenzied pitch. ‘Gods below! Sergeant—'

‘Grab that shovel again,' Cord growled to Crump. ‘Fill it in, you fool! Fill it in! Fill them all in!'

Crump blinked, then collected up his shovel and began pushing the dry soil back into the hole. ‘Best hole-fillers t'be found anywhere! You'll see, Sergeant! Why, you won't never see holes filled so good as them's done by a High Marshal of Mott Wood!'

‘Hurry up, you damned fool!'

‘Yes sir, hurry up. Crump can do that!'

After a moment, the sapper began singing.

Nimander Golit, wrapped in a heavy dark blue woollen cloak, stood at one end of the winding street. Decrepit harbour buildings leaned and sagged, a brick grimace curling down to the waterfront that glittered a hundred paces distant. Shreds of cloud scudded beneath a night sky of bleary stars, rushing southward like advance runners of snow and ice.

Tiste Andii, sentinel to the dark; he would have liked such grand notions wrapped about him as tightly as this cloak. A mythic stance, heavy with…with something. And the sword at his side, a weapon of heroic will, which he could draw forth when dread fate arrived with its banshee wail, and use with a skill that could astound – like the great ones of old, a consummate icon of power unveiled in Mother Dark's name.

But it was all a dream. His skill with the sword was middling, a symbol of mediocrity as muddied as his own bloodline. He was no soldier of darkness, just a young man standing lost in a strange street, a man with nowhere to go – yet driven, driven on at this very moment – to go
somewhere
.

No, even that was untrue. He stood in the night because of a need to escape. Phaed's malice had become rabid, and Nimander was the one in whom she had chosen to confide. Would she murder Sandalath Drukorlat here in this port city, as she had vowed? More to the point, was he, Nimander, going to permit it? Did he even have the courage to betray Phaed – knowing how swiftly she would turn, and how deadly her venom?

Anomander Rake would not hesitate. No, he would kick down the door to Phaed's room and drag the squealing little stoat out by her neck. And he'd then shake the life from her. He'd have no choice, would he? One look into Phaed's eyes and the secret would be revealed. The secret of the vast empty space within her, where her conscience should be. He would see it plain, and then into her eyes would come the horror of exposure
– moments before her neck snapped.

Mother Dark would wait for Phaed's soul, then, for its shrieking delivery, the malign birth of just execution, of choices that were not choices at all. Why?
Because nothing else can be done. Not for one such as her.

And Rake would accept the blood on his hands. He would accept that terrible burden as but one more amidst countless others he carried across a hundred thousand years. Childslayer. A child of one's own blood.

The courage of one with power. And that was Nimander's very own yawning emptiness in the heart of his soul.
We may be his children, his grandchildren, we may be of his blood, but we are each incomplete. Phaed and her wicked moral void. Nenanda and his unreasoning rage. Aranatha with her foolish hopes. Kedeviss who screams herself awake every morning. Skintick for whom all of existence is a joke. Desra who would spread her legs for any man if it could boost her up one more rung on the ladder towards whatever great glory she imagines she deserves. And Nimander, who imagines himself the leader of this fell family of would-be heroes, who will seek out the ends of the earth in his hunt for…for courage, for conviction, for a reason to do, to feel
anything.

Oh, for Nimander, then, an empty street in the dead of night. With the denizens lost in their fitful, pathetic sleep – as if oblivion offered any escape, any escape at all. For Nimander, these interminable moments in which he could contemplate actually making a decision, actually stepping between an innocent elder Tiste Andii and Nimander's own murderous little sister. To say
No, Phaed. You will not have this. No more. You shall be a secret no longer. You shall be known.

If he could do that. If he could but do that.

He heard a sound. Spinning, the whisper of fine chain cutting a path through the air – close, so close that Nimander spun round – but there was no-one. He was alone.
Spinning, twirling, a hiss
– then a sudden snap, two distinct, soft clicks as of two tiny objects held out at each end of that fine chain –
yes, this sound, the prophecy – Mother fend, is this the prophecy?