The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (875 page)

‘Your temple, is it?' Iskaral Pust sniggered. ‘Not for long, but say nothing at the moment. Leave her such pathetic delusions. Smile, yes, and nod – and how in the Abyss did
they
get inside?'

The bhokarala were now crowding behind the High Priestess, heads bobbing.

She swung about. ‘I don't know. There are wards…should be impossible. Most disturbing indeed.'

‘Never mind,' Iskaral Pust said. ‘Lead on, underling.'

One fine eyebrow lifted. ‘You claim to be the Magus of High House Shadow – that is quite an assertion. Have you proof?'

‘Proof? I am what I am and that is that. Pray, pray. Pray, I mean, do pray and perchance all manner of revelation will afflict you, humble you, reduce you to wondering adoration. Oh,' he added, ‘wait until she does just that! Oh, the song will change then, won't it just! Never mind servants servicing my whim, it will be this glorious woman!'

She stared at him a moment longer, then, in a whirl of robes, swung about and gestured that he follow. The grace she no doubt sought was fouled almost immediately as she had to kick and stumble her way through the squall of bhokarala, each of which bared teeth in rollicking but silent laughter. She shot a glance back at Iskaral Pust, but not, he was certain, in time to see his noiseless laugh.

Into the sanctum they went.

‘Not long,' Iskaral Pust whispered. ‘Those doors need paint, yes. Not long now at all…'

 

‘Gods below,' the guard gasped, ‘you're bigger than a Barghast!'

Mappo Runt ducked his head, embarrassed that he had so shocked this passing watchman. The guard had staggered back, clutching momentarily at his chest – yes, he was past his prime, but it seemed that the gesture had been just that, a gesture, and the Trell's sudden dread that he had inadvertently sent the first citizen he met stumbling through Hood's Gate slowly gave way to shame. ‘I am sorry, sir,' he now said. ‘I thought to ask you a question – nothing more.'

The guard lifted his lantern higher between them. ‘Are you a demon, then?'

‘You regularly encounter demons on your patrols? A truly extraordinary city.'

‘Of course not. I mean, it's rare.'

‘Ah. I am a Trell, from the plains and hills east of Nemil, which lies west of the Jhag Odhan in Seven Cities.'

‘What, then, was your question?'

‘I seek the Temple of Burn, sir.'

‘I think it best that I escort you there, Trell. You have been keeping to the alleys this night, haven't you?'

‘I thought it best.'

‘Rightly so. And you and I shall do the same. In any case, you are in the Gadrobi District, while the temple you want is in the Daru District. We have some way to go.'

‘You are very generous with your time, sir.'

The guard smiled. ‘Trell, you plunging into any crowded street is likely to cause a riot. By taking charge of you, I hope to prevent that. Thus, not generous. Simply doing my duty.'

Mappo bowed again. ‘I thank you even so.'

‘A moment, while I douse this light, then follow me – closely, please.'

The fete's celebrants in this quarter seemed to be concentrated in the main streets, bathed in the blue glow of the gas lamps. It was not difficult to avoid such places with the watchman guiding him down narrow, twisting and turning alleys and lanes. And those few figures they encountered quickly slunk away upon seeing the guard's uniform (and, perhaps, Mappo's massive bulk).

Until, behind a decrepit tavern of some sort, they came upon two corpses. Swearing under his breath, the guard crouched down beside one, fumbling to relight his lantern. ‘This is becoming a problem,' he muttered, as he cranked the wick high and a golden glow filled the area, revealing filth-smeared cobblestones and the gleam of pooled blood. Mappo watched as he rolled over the first body. ‘This one's a plain beating. Fists and boots – I knew him, poor man. Losing a battle with spirits…well, the battle's over now, Beru bless his soul.' He moved on to the next one. ‘Ah, yes. Hood take the one that did this – four others just the same. That we know of. We still cannot fathom the weapon he uses…perhaps a shovel handle. Gods, but it's brutal.'

‘Sir,' ventured Mappo, ‘it seems you have more pressing tasks this night. Directions—'

‘No, I will take you, Trell. Both have been dead for a couple of bells now – a little longer won't matter. I think it's time,' he added, straightening, ‘for a mage or a priest to be brought into this.'

‘I wish you success,' Mappo said.

‘I can never figure it,' the guard said as he led the Trell onward. ‘It's as if peace is not good enough – someone needs to crawl out of the pit with blood dripping from his hands. Delivering strife. Misery.' He shook his head. ‘Could I but shake reason into such abominations. There's no need. No one wants them and no one wants what they do. What's needed? That's what I wish I knew. For them, I mean. What do they need, what do they want? Is it just that sweet sip of power? Domination? The sense of control, over who lives and who dies? Gods, I wish I knew what fills their brains.'

‘No, sir,' said Mappo, ‘be glad you do not. Even the beasts succumb to such aggression. Killers among your kind, among my kind, are just that – the savagery of beasts mated with intelligence, or what passes for intelligence. They dwell in a murky world, sir, confused and fearful, stained dark with envy and malice. And in the end, they die as they lived. Frightened and alone, with every memory of power revealed as illusion, as farce.'

The guard had halted, had turned to regard the Trell as he spoke. Just beyond the alley's mouth was a wall and, to the left, the unlit cave of a tunnel or a gate. After a moment the man grunted, then led Mappo on, into the reeking passageway through the wall, where the Trell warrior was forced to duck.

‘You must be a formidable tribe back in your homeland,' the guard observed, ‘if your kin are as big and broad as you are.'

‘Alas, we are, generally, not killers, sir. If we had been, perhaps we would have fared better. As it is, the glory of my people has waned.' Mappo then halted and looked back at the gate they had just passed through. He could see that the wall was but a fragment, a stretch no more than fifty paces in length. At both ends leaning buildings thrust into the spaces where it should have continued on.

The guard laughed. ‘Aye, not much left of the Gadrobi Wall. Just this one gate, and it's used mostly by thieves and the like. Come, not much further.'

The Temple of Burn had seen better days. Graffiti covered the plain limestone walls, some the blockish list of prayers, others elliptical sigils and obscure local symbols. A few raw curses, or so Mappo suspected from the efforts made to deface the messages. Rubbish clogged the gutter surrounding the foundations, through which rats ambled.

The guard led him along the wall and to the right, where they came out on to a slightly wider thoroughfare. The temple's formal entrance was a descending set of stairs, down to a landing that looked ankle deep in rainwater. Mappo regarded it in some dismay.

The guard seemed to notice. ‘Yes, the cult is fading. She has slept too long, I suppose. I know I have no business asking, but what do you seek here?'

‘I am not sure,' Mappo admitted.

‘Ah. Well, Burn's blessings on you, then.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

The guard set out to retrace his route, no doubt returning to the alley with the corpses. The memory of them remained with Mappo, leaving him with a gnawing disquiet. He had glimpsed something of the mysterious wounds on the second body. Brutal indeed. Would there could be an end to such things, yes. A true blessing of peace.

He made his way down the steps. Splashed through the pool to the doors.

They opened before he could knock.

A gaunt, sad-faced man stood before him. ‘You had to know, Mappo Runt of the Trell, that it could not last. You stand before me like a severed limb, and all that you bleed stains the ether, a flow seeming without end.'

‘There will be an end,' Mappo replied. ‘When I have found him once more.'

‘He is not here.'

‘I know.'

‘Would you walk the veins of the earth, Mappo Runt? Is that why you have come to this temple?'

‘Yes.'

‘You choose a most perilous path. There is poison. There is bitter cold. Ice, stained with foreign blood. There is fire that blinds those who wield it. There is wind that cries out an eternal death cry. There is darkness and it is crowded. There is grief, more than even you can withstand. There is yielding and that which will not yield. Pressures too vast even for one such as you. Will you still walk Burn's Path, Mappo Runt?'

‘I must.'

The sad face looked even sadder. ‘I thought as much. I could have made my list of warnings even longer, you know. We could have stood in our places for the rest of the night, you in that sodden pool, me standing here uttering dire details. And still, at long last, you would say “I must” and we would have wasted all that time. Me hoarse and you asleep on your feet.'

‘You sound almost regretful, Priest.'

‘Perhaps I am at that. It was a most poetic list.'

‘Then by all means record it in full when you write your log of this fell night.'

‘I like that notion. Thank you. Now, come inside, and wipe your feet. But hurry – we have been preparing the ritual since your ship docked.'

‘The breadth of your knowledge is impressive,' Mappo said as, ducking, he stepped inside.

‘Yes, it is. Now, follow me.'

A short corridor, ceiling dripping, into a broader transept, across a dingy mosaic floor, down a second corridor, this one lined with niches, each home to a holy object – misshapen chunks of raw ore, crystals of white, rose and purple quartz and amethyst, starstones, amber, copper, flint and petrified wood and bones. At the end of this passage the corridor opened out into a wider colonnaded main chamber, and here, arrayed in two rows, waited acolytes, each wearing brown robes and holding aloft a torch.

The acolytes chanted in some arcane tongue as the High Priest led Mappo down between the rows.

Where an altar should have been, at the far end, there was instead a crevasse in the floor, as if the very earth had opened up beneath the altar, swallowing it and the dais it stood on. From the fissure rose bitter, hot smoke.

The sad-faced High Priest walked up to its very edge then turned to face Mappo. ‘Burn's Gate awaits you, Trell.'

Mappo approached and looked down.

To see molten rock twenty spans below, a seething river sweeping past.

‘Of course,' the High Priest said, ‘what you see is not in this realm. Were it so, Darujhistan would now be a ball of fire bright as a newborn sun. The caverns of gas and all that.'

‘If I jump down there,' Mappo said, ‘I will be roasted to a crisp.'

‘Yes. I know what you must be thinking.'

‘Oh?'

‘Some gate.'

‘Ah, yes. Accurate enough.'

‘You must be armoured against such forces. This is the ritual I mentioned earlier. Are you ready, Mappo Runt?'

‘You wish to cast some sort of protective spell on me?'

‘No,' he replied, with an expression near to weeping, ‘we wish to bathe you in blood.'

Barathol Mekhar could see the pain in Scillara's eyes, when they turned inward in a private moment, and he saw how Chaur held himself close to her, protective in some instinctive fashion as might be a dog with a wounded master. When she caught Barathol studying her, she was quick with a broad smile, and each time he felt as if something struck his heart, like a fist against a closed door. She was indeed a most beautiful woman, the kind of beauty that emerged after a second look, or even a third, unfolding like a dark flower in jungle shadows. The pain in those eyes only deepened his anguish.

Cutter was a damned fool. Yes, there had been another woman – his first love, most likely – but she was gone. Time had come to cut the anchor chain. No one could drown for ever. This was what came of being so young, and deftness with knives was a poor replacement for the skill of surviving everything the world could throw in the way. Longing for what could never be found was pointless, a waste of time.

Barathol had left his longing behind, somewhere in the sands of Seven Cities. A sprawl of motionless bodies, mocking laughter disguised as unceasing wind, a lizard perched like a gift on a senseless black-crusted hand. Moments of madness – oh, long before the madness of the T'lan Imass in Aren – when he had railed at remorseless time, at how
too late
was something that could not be changed – not with blood spilled at the foot of a god, not with a knife poised to carve out his own heart.
Too late
simply grinned at him, lifeless, too poignant for sanity.

Those two words had begun a chant, then stride by stride a gleeful echo, and they had lifted to a roar in the raiders' camp, amidst screams and the clash of iron; lifted, yes, into a deafening maelstrom that crashed inside Barathol's skull, a surging tide with nowhere to go.
Too late
cannot be escaped. It crooned with every failed parry, every failed dodge from a scything weapon. It exploded in eyes as death hammered home, exploded along with blood and fluids. It lunged in the wake of toppling bodies. It scrawled messages (ever the same message) in the sands dying men crawled across.