The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (896 page)

But he didn't mean this one.
Spinnock sat up, reached down to the floor where his clothes were lying. ‘High Priestess,' he said, ‘what can you tell me of the Cult of the Redeemer?'

‘What?'

He looked up, wondered at the alarm in her eyes. After a moment he shook his head. ‘No, I am not interested in forgiveness. Embracing the T'lan Imass killed the man – what would embracing us do to his soul?'

‘I care not to think, Spin. Oh, he was glorious in his way – for all the blood that was needlessly spilled because of it – still…glorious. If you speak not of our burdens, then I do not understand your question.'

‘It is newborn, this cult. What shape will it take?'

She sighed again – most extraordinary and further proof of her exhaustion. ‘As you say, very young indeed. And like all religions, its shape – its future – will be found in what happens now, in these first moments. And that is a cause for concern, for although pilgrims gather and give gifts and pray, no organization exists. Nothing has been formulated – no doctrine – and all religions need such things.'

He rubbed at his jaw, considering, and then nodded.

‘Why does this interest you?' she asked.

‘I'm not sure, but I appreciate your expertise.' He paused, stared down at the clothes in his hands. He had forgotten something, something important – what might it be?

‘I was not wrong,' she observed, still watching him. ‘You are not yourself, Spin. Have you finally come to resent your Lord's demands?'

‘No.'
Perhaps, but that is not worthy of consideration – the flaw would be mine, after all.
‘I am fine, High Priestess.'

She snorted. ‘None of us are that, Spin,' she said as she turned away.

As his gaze dropped he saw his sword and belt lying on the floor. Of course – he had forgotten his ritual. He collected the weapon and, as the High Priestess threw on her robes, carried it over to the table and set it down. From the belt's stiff leather pouch he removed a small sponge, a metal flask of eel oil, and a much-stained pad of sharkskin.

‘Ah,' said the High Priestess from the doorway, ‘all is right with the world again. Later, Spin.'

‘Yes, High Priestess,' he replied, electing to ignore her sarcasm. And the need it so poorly disguised.

 

Rain had rushed in from the sea, turning the paths into rivers of mud. Salind sat in the makeshift shed, legs curled up beneath her, shivering as water dripped down through holes in the roof. More people had come scratching at her door, but she had turned them all away.

She'd had enough of being a High Priestess. All her heightened sensitivities to the whims of the Redeemer were proving little more than a curse. What matter all these vague emotions she sensed from the god? She could do nothing for him.

This should not have surprised her, and she told herself that what she was feeling wasn't hurt, but something else, something more impersonal. Perhaps it was her grieving for the growing list of victims as Gradithan and his sadistic mob continued to terrorize the camp – so much so that some were planning to leave as soon as the road dried out. Or her failure with the Benighted. The expectations settling upon her, in the eyes of so many people, were too vast, too crushing. She could not hope to answer them all. And she was finding that, in truth, she could answer none of them.

Words were empty in the face of brutal will. They were helpless to defend whatever sanctity might be claimed, for a person's self, for their freedom to choose how they would live, and with whom. Empathy haunted her. Compassion opened wounds which only a hardening of the soul could in the future prevent, and this she did not want – she had seen too many faces, looked into too many eyes, and recoiled from their coldness, their delight in vicious judgement.

The righteous will claim sole domain on judgement. The righteous are the first to make hands into fists, the first to shout down dissenters, the first to bully others into compliance.

I live in a village of the meek, and I am the meekest of them all. There is no glory in being helpless. Nor is there hope.

Rain lashing down, a drumming roar on the slatted, angled roof, the sound of a deluge that filled her skull.
That the Redeemer will embrace is neither just nor unjust. No mortal can sanction their behaviour in the Redeemer's name. How dare they so presume?
Miserable faces marching past, peering in through the cracks in her door. And she wanted to rail at them all.
You damned fools. Absolution is not enough!
But they would then look upon her, moon-eyed and doleful, desperate that every question yield an answer, clinging to the notion that one suffered for a reason and knowledge of that reason would ease the suffering.

Knowledge, Salind told herself, eases nothing. It just fills spaces that might otherwise flood with despair.

Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

‘I am no High Priestess,' she croaked, as water trickled down her face.

Heavy boots splashing in the mud outside. The door was tugged back and a dark shape blotted out the pale grey light. ‘Salind.'

She blinked, trying to discern who so spoke to her with such…such compassion. ‘Ask me nothing,' she said. ‘Tell me less.'

The figure moved, closing the door in a scrape of sodden grit that filled the shed with gloom once more. Pausing, standing, water dripping from a long leather cloak. ‘This will not do.'

‘Whoever you are,' Salind said, ‘I did not invite you in. This is my home.'

‘My apologies, High Priestess.'

‘You smell of sex.'

‘Yes, I imagine so.'

‘Do not touch me. I am poison.'

‘I – I have no desire to…touch you, High Priestess. I have walked this village – the conditions are deplorable. The Son of Darkness, I well know, will not long abide such poverty.'

She squinted up at him. ‘You are the Benighted's friend. The only Tiste Andii for whom humans are not beneath notice.'

‘Is this what you believe of us, then? That is…unfortunate.'

‘I am ill. Please go away, sir.'

‘My name is Spinnock Durav. I might have told you that when last we met – I do not recall and clearly neither do you. You…challenged me, High Priestess.'

‘No, I rejected you, Spinnock Durav.'

There might have been something like wry amusement in his tone as he replied, ‘Perhaps the two are one and the same.'

She snorted. ‘Oh, no, a perennial optimist.'

He reached down suddenly and his warm palm pressed against her forehead. She jerked back. Straightening, he said, ‘You are fevered.'

‘Just go.'

‘I will, but I intend to take you with me—'

‘And what of everyone else so afflicted in this camp? Will you carry them all out? Or just me, just the one upon whom you take pity? Unless it is not pity that drives you.'

‘I will have healers attend the camp—'

‘Do that, yes. I can wait with the others.'

‘Salind—'

‘That's not my name.'

‘It isn't? But I was—'

‘I simply chose it. I had no name. Not as a child, not until just a few months ago. I had no name at all, Spinnock Durav. Do you know why I haven't been raped yet? Most of the other women have. Most of the children, too. But not me. Am I so ugly? No, not in the flesh – even I know that. It's because I was a Child of the Dead Seed – do you know the meaning of that, Tiste Andii? My mother crawled half-mad on a battlefield, reaching beneath the jerkins of dead soldiers until she found a member solid and hard. Then she took it into herself and, if she were blessed, it would spill into her. A dead man's seed. I had plenty of brothers and sisters, a family of aunts and a mother who in the end rotted with some terrible disease that ate her flesh – her brain was long gone by then. I have not been raped, because I am untouchable.'

He stared down at her, evidently shocked, horrified into dumb silence.

She coughed, wishing she did not get sick so often – but it had always been this way. ‘You can go now, Spinnock Durav.'

‘This place festers.' And he moved forward to pick her up.

She recoiled. ‘You don't understand! I'm sick because
he's
sick!'

He halted and she finally could make out his eyes, forest green and tilted at the corners, and far too much compassion gleamed in that regard. ‘The Redeemer? Yes, I imagine he is. Come,' and he took her up, effortlessly, and she should have struggled – should have been free to choose – but she was too weak. Pushing him away with her hands was a gesture, a desire, transformed into clutching helplessly at his cloak. Like a child.

A child.

‘When the rains stop,' he murmured, his breath no doubt warm but scalding against her fevered cheek, ‘we shall rebuild. Make all this new. Dry, warm.'

‘Do not rape me.'

‘No more talk of rape. Fever will awaken many terrors. Rest now.'

I will not judge. Not even this life of mine. I will not – there is weakness in the world. Of all sorts. All sorts…

Stepping outside with the now unconscious woman in his arms, Spinnock Durav looked round. Figures on all sides, both hooded and bare-headed in the rain, water streaming down.

‘She is sick,' he said to them. ‘She needs healing.'

No one spoke in reply.

He hesitated, then said, ‘The Son of Darkness will be informed of your…difficulties.'

They began turning away, melting into the grey sheets. In moments Spinnock found himself alone.

He set out for the city.

The Son of Darkness will be informed…but he knows already, doesn't he? He knows, but leaves it all to…to whom? Me? Seerdomin? The Redeemer himself?

‘
Give my regards to the priestess.
'

Her, then, this frail thing in my arms. I will attend to her, because within her lies the answer.

Gods, the answer to what?

Boots uncertain in the slime and mud, he made his careful way back. Night awaited.

And, rising up from the depths of his memories, the fragment of some old poem, ‘
The moon does not rain, but it weeps.
' A fragment, yes, it must be that. Alas, he could not recall the rest and so he would have to settle with the phrase – although in truth it was anything but settling.

I could ask Endest – ah, no, he is gone from us for the time being. The High Priestess, perhaps. She knows every Tiste Andii poem ever written, for the sole purpose of sneering at every one of them. Still.

The words haunted him, mocked him with their ambiguity. He preferred things simple and straightforward. Solid like heroic sculpture – those marble and alabaster monuments to some great person who, if truth be known, was nowhere near as great as believed or proclaimed, and indeed looked nothing like the white polished face above the godlike body –
oh, Abyss take me, enough of this!

In the camp, in the wake of the Tiste Andii's departure with the High Priestess half dead in his arms, the bald priest, short and bandy-legged and sodden under rain-soaked woollen robes, hobbled up to Gradithan. ‘You saw?'

The ex-soldier grunted. ‘I was tempted, you know. A sword point, right up back of his skull. Shit-spawned Tiste Andii bastard, what in Hood's name did he think, comin' here?'

The priest – a priest of some unknown god somewhere to the south, Bastion, perhaps – made tsk-tsking sounds, then said, ‘The point is, Urdo—'

‘Shut that mouth of yours! That rank ain't for nobody no more, you understand? Never mind the arsehole thinkin' he's the only one left, so's he can use it like it was his damned name or something. Never mind, cos he'll pay for that soon enough.'