The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (918 page)

Antsy hissed.

Picker looked up, met his eyes. She signalled with one hand, six gestures, and he nodded, answering with two.

Dripping ale and blood, a few soft groans here and there.

Soft footfalls on the landing at the top of the stairs.

Antsy set down his sword, drew out a sharper and showed it to Picker, who nodded and then quietly moved round, using the wreckage of the table for cover, and trained her crossbow on the stairs.

When he saw she was ready, Antsy lifted his makeshift shield to cover shoulder and head, then quickly stepped round to the foot of the stairs. And threw the grenado upward.

Two quarrels clanged off the cauldron lid, with enough force to knock it from his hand. At the same moment an assassin, having launched herself from halfway down the stairs, sailed down towards him.

Picker's quarrel caught the attacker somewhere in the midsection, convulsing her in mid-flight. She crashed down just as the sharper detonated near the landing.

And then Antsy, sword in hand once more, was rushing up those steps. Picker raced into his wake, drawing out her own sword. ‘Get outa the way with that pigsticker!' she snarled. ‘Cover me in close!' She pulled him back and round by one shoulder and pushed past.

Limbs twitching from a heap of bodies on the landing, and splashed blood on the walls – and movement beyond, somewhere in the corridor.

She scrambled over the dead and dying on the landing, pitched into the corridor and, seeing three assassins slowly picking themselves up from the floor, charged forward.

Short work cutting down the stunned attackers, with Antsy guarding her back.

 

Blend opened her eyes and wondered why she was lying on the floor. She attempted to lift her left arm and gasped as pain blossomed red and hot, leaving her half blind in its aftermath. Oh, now she remembered. With a low moan, she rolled on to her good side and worked herself into a sitting position, blinking sweat and worse from her eyes.

The bar door was open, one of the hinges broken.

In the street beyond, she saw at least a half-dozen cloaked figures, gathered and creeping closer.

Shit.

Desperate, she looked round for the nearest discarded weapon. Knowing she wouldn't have time, knowing they were going to cut her down once and for all. Still – she saw a knife and reached out for it.

The six assassins came at a sprint.

Someone slammed into them from one side, loosing a bellowing bawl like a wounded bull, and Blend stared as the huge man –
Chaur
– swung his enormous fists. Heads snapped back on broken necks, faces crumpled in sprays of blood—

And then Barathol was there, with nothing more than a knife, slashing into the reeling assassins, and Blend could see the fear in the blacksmith's eyes – fear for Chaur, dread for what might happen if the assassins recovered—

As they were now doing.

Blend pushed herself to her feet, collecting the dagger from the floor as she staggered forward—

And was shoved aside by Antsy. Hacking at the nearest assassin with his shortsword, a dented cauldron lid shielding his left side.

Chaur, his forearms slashed by desperate daggers, picked up an assassin and threw him down on to the cobbles. Bones snapped. Still bawling, he picked the broken form up by an ankle and swung him into the air, round, then loose – to collide with another assassin, and both went down. Barathol was suddenly above the first man, driving his boot heel down on his temple. Limbs spasmed.

Antsy pulled his sword from an assassin's chest and readied himself for his next target, then slowly straightened.

Leaning against the doorframe, Blend spat and said, ‘All down, Sergeant.'

Barathol wrapped Chaur in a hug to calm the man down. Tears streaked Chaur's broad cheeks, and his fists were still closed, like massive bloody mauls at the ends of his arms. He had wet himself.

Blend and Antsy watched as the blacksmith hugged his friend tightly, with need and with raw relief, so exposed that both Malazans had to look away.

Picker came up behind Blend. ‘You gonna live?' she asked.

‘Good as new, as soon as Mallet—'

‘No. Not Mallet, love.'

Blend squeezed shut her eyes. ‘They caught us, Pick,' she said. ‘They caught us good.'

‘Aye.'

She glanced over. ‘You got 'em all in the taproom? Damned impressive—'

‘No, I didn't, but they're all down. Four of 'em, right at the foot of the stage. Looked like they rushed it.'

Rushed it? But who was up there…
‘We lose our bard, then?'

‘Don't know,' Picker said. ‘Didn't see him.'

Rushed the stage…

‘We lost Bluepearl, too.'

Blend slowly closed her eyes a second time. Oh, she was hurting, and a lot of that hurt couldn't get sewn up.
They caught us.
‘Picker.'

‘They slaughtered everyone, Blend. People with nothing but bad luck being here tonight. Skevos. Hedry, Larmas, little Boothal. All to take us down.'

From up the street came a squad of City Guard, lanterns swinging.

For a scene such as Blend was looking out on right now, there should be a crowd of onlookers, the ones hungry to see injured, dying people, the ones who fed on such things. But there was no one.

Because this was Guild work.

‘Some of us are still breathing,' Blend said. ‘It's not good to do that. Leave some marines still breathing.'

‘No, it's not good at all.'

Blend knew that tone. Still, she wondered.
Are we enough? Is there enough in us to do this? Do we still have what's needed?
They'd lost a healer and a mage this night. They'd lost the best of them.
Because we were careless.

Antsy joined them as the guards closed in round Barathol and Chaur. ‘Pick, Blend,' he said, ‘I don't know about you two, but right now, gods below, I'm feeling old.'

A sergeant of the guard approached. ‘How bad is it inside?'

No one seemed eager to reply.

 

Six streets away, a world away, Cutter stood in the front yard of a store selling headstones and crypt façades. An array of stylized deities, none of them temple-sanctioned as yet, beseeching blessings upon the future dead. Beru and Burn, Soliel and Nerruse, Treach and the Fallen One, Hood and Fanderay, Hound and tiger, boar and worm. The shop was closed and he looked upon stones still uncarved, awaiting names of loved ones. Against one of the low yard walls stood a row of marble sarcophagi, and against the wall opposite there were tall urns with their flared mouths, narrow necks and swollen bellies, reminding him of pregnant women…birth into death, wombs to hold all that remained of mortal flesh, homes to those who would answer the final question, the last question:
what lies beyond? What awaits us all? What shape the gate before me?
There were plenty of ways of asking it, but they all meant the same thing, and all sought the one answer.

One spoke of death often. The death of a friendship. The death of love. Each echoed with the finality that waited at the very end, but they were faint echoes, ghostly, acting out scenes in puppet shows swallowed in flickering shadows.
Kill a love. What lies beyond? Emptiness, cold, drifting ashes, yet does it not prove fertile? A place where a new seed is planted, finding life, growing into itself? Is this how true death is, as well?

From the dust, a new seed…

A pleasing thought. A comforting thought.

The street behind him was modestly crowded, the last of the late night shoppers reluctant to close out this day. Maybe they had nothing to go home to. Maybe they hungered for one more purchase, in the forlorn hope that it would fill whatever emptiness gnawed deep inside.

None wandered into this yard, none wanted the reminder of what waited for them all. Why, then, had he found himself here? Was he seeking some kind of comfort, some reminder that for each and every person, no matter where, the same conclusion was on its way? One could walk, one could crawl, one could run headlong, but one could never turn round and head the other way, could never escape. Even with the truism that all grief belonged to the living, the ones left behind – facing empty spaces where someone once stood – there could be found a kind of calm repose.
We walk the same path, some farther along, some farther back, but still and for ever more the same path.

There was, then, the death of love.

And there was, alas, its murder.

‘Crokus Younghand.'

He slowly turned round. A woman stood before him, exquisitely dressed, a cloak of ermine about her shoulders. A heart-shaped face, languid eyes, painted lips, and yes, he knew this face. Had known it, a younger version, a child's version, perhaps, but now there was nothing of that child – not in the eyes, not even in the sad smile on those full lips. ‘Challice D'Arle.'

Later, he would look back on this moment, on the dark warning contained in the fact that, when he spoke her name of old, she did not correct him.

Would such percipience have changed things? All that was to come?

Death and murder, seeds in the ashes, one does as one does. Sarcophagi gaped. Urns echoed hollow and dark. Stone faces awaited names, grief crouching at the gate.

Such was this night in the city of Darujhistan.

Such is this night,
everywhere
.

The stately trees with their black trunks and midnight leaves formed a rough ring encircling Suruth Common. From the centre of the vast clearing, one could, upon facing north, see the towers of the Citadel, their slim lines echoing these sacred trees. Autumn had arrived, and the air was filled with the drifting filaments from the blackwood.

The great forges to the west lit crimson the foul clouds hanging over them, so that it seemed that one side of Kharkanas was ablaze. An eternal rain of ash plagued the massive, sprawling factories, nothing as sweet as the curled filaments to mark the coming of the cold season.

Within the refuge of Suruth Common, the blasted realm of the factories seemed worlds away. Thick beds of moss cloaked the pavestones of the clearing, muting Endest Silann's boots as he walked to the concave altar stone at the very heart. He could see no one else about – this was not the season for festivity. This was not a time for celebration of any sort. He wondered if the trees sensed him, if they were capable of focusing some kind of attention upon him, made aware by the eddies of air, the exudation of heat and breath.

He had read once a scholar's treatise describing the chemical relationship between plants and animals. The language had been clinical in the fashion of such academic efforts, and yet Endest recalled closing the book and sitting back in his chair. The notion that he could walk up to a plant, a tree, even a blackwood, and bless it with his own breath – a gift of lung-soured air that could enliven that tree, that could in truth deliver health and vigour, deliver life itself…ah, but that was a wonder indeed, one that, for a time, calmed the churning maelstrom that was a young man's soul.

So long ago, now, and he felt, at times, that he was done with giving gifts.

He stood alone in front of the ancient altar. The past night's modest rain had formed a shallow pool in the cup of the basalt. It was said the Andii came from the forests and their natural clearings, born to give breath to the sacred wood, and that the first fall of his people occurred the moment they walked out, to set down the first shaped stone of this city.

How many failings had there been since? Suruth Common was the last fragment of the old forest left in all Kharkanas. Blackwood itself had fed the great forges.

He had no desire to look westward. More than the fiery glow disturbed him. The frenzy in those factories – they were making weapons. Armour. They were readying for war.

He had been sent here by the High Priestess. ‘
Witness
,' she had said. And so he would. The eyes of the Temple, the priesthood, must remain open, aware, missing nothing in these fraught times. That she had chosen him over others – or even herself – was not a measure of respect. His presence was political, his modest rank a deliberate expression of the Temple's contempt.

‘
Witness, Endest Silann. But remain silent. You are a
presence,
do you understand?
'

He did.

They appeared almost simultaneously, one from the north, one from the east and one from the south. Three brothers. Three sons. This was to be a meeting of blood and yes, they would resent him, for he did not belong. Indeed, the Temple did not belong. Would they send him away?

The trees wept their promise of a new season of life – a season that would never come, for there was nowhere left for the filaments to take root – not for scores of leagues in any direction. The river would take millions, but even those fine black threads could not float on its waters, and so what the river took the river kept, buried in the dead silts of Dorssan Ryl.
Our breath was meant to give life, not take it away. Our breath was a gift, and in that gift the blackwood found betrayal.

This was and is our crime, and it was and remains unforgivable.

‘Good evening, priest,' said Andarist, who then added, ‘Anomander, it seems you were right.'

‘An easy prediction,' Anomander replied. ‘The Temple watches me the way a rove of rhotes watch a dying ginaf.'

Endest blinked. The last wild ginaf had vanished a century past and no longer did the silver-backed herds thunder across the south plains; and these days roves of rhotes winged above battlefields and nowhere else – and no, they did not starve.
Are you the last, Lord? Is this what you are saying? Mother bless me, I never know what you are saying. No one does. We share language but not meaning.

The third brother was silent, his red eyes fixed upon the forges beneath the western sky.

‘The clash between Drethdenan and Vanut Degalla draws to an end,' said Andarist. ‘It may be time—'

‘Should we be speaking of this?' Silchas Ruin cut in, finally turning to face Endest Silann. ‘None of this is for the Temple. Especially not some pathetic third level acolyte.'

Anomander seemed uninterested in settling his attention upon Endest Silann. In the face of his brother's belligerence, he shrugged. ‘This way, Silchas, perhaps we can ensure the Temple remains…neutral.'

‘By unveiling to it all that we intend? Why should the Temple hold to any particular faith in us? What makes the three of us more worthy of trust than, say, Manalle, or Hish Tulla?'

‘There is an obvious answer to that,' said Andarist. ‘Priest?'

He could refuse a reply. He could feign ignorance. He was naught but a third level acolyte, after all. Instead, he said, ‘You three are not standing here trying to kill each other.'

Andarist smiled at Silchas Ruin.

Who scowled and looked away once again.

‘We have things to discuss,' said Anomander. ‘Andarist?'

‘I have already sent representatives to both camps. An offer to mediate. Veiled hints of potential alliances against the rest of you. The key will be in getting Drethdenan and Vanut into the same room, weapons sheathed.'

‘Silchas?'

‘Both Hish and Manalle have agreed to our pact. Manalle still worries me, brothers. She is no fool—'

‘And Hish is?' laughed Andarist – a maddeningly easy laugh, given the treachery they were discussing.

‘Hish Tulla is not subtle. Her desires are plain. It is as they all say: she does not lie. No, Manalle is suspicious. After all, I am speaking of the greatest crime of all, the spilling of kin's blood.' He paused, then faced Anomander, and suddenly his expression was transformed. Unease, something bewildered and lit with horror. ‘Anomander,' he whispered, ‘what are we doing?'

Anomander's features hardened. ‘We are strong enough to survive this. You will see.' Then he looked at Andarist. ‘The one who will break our hearts stands before us. Andarist, who chooses to turn away.'

‘A choice, was it?' At the heavy silence that followed, he laughed again. ‘Yes, it was. One of us…it must be, at least one of us, and I have no desire to walk your path. I have not the courage for such a thing. The courage, and the…cruel madness. No, brothers, mine is the easiest task – I am to do
nothing
.'

‘Until I betray you,' said Silchas, and Endest was shocked to see the white-skinned Lord's wet eyes.

‘There is no other way through,' said Andarist.

Centuries into millennia, Endest Silann would wonder – and never truly know – if all that followed was as these three had planned. Courage, Andarist had called it. And…cruel madness – by the Mother, yes – such destruction, the sheer audacity of the treachery – could they have
meant
all of that?

The next time Anomander had met Endest Silann had been on the bridge at the foot of the Citadel, and in his words he made it clear that he had not recognized him as the same man as the one sent to witness his meeting with his brothers. A strange carelessness for one such as Anomander. Although, unquestionably, the Lord had other things on his mind at that moment.

Endest Silann had delivered to the High Priestess his account of that fell meeting. And in relating the details of the betrayal, such as could be culled from what he had heard – all the implications – he had expected to see outrage in her face. Instead – and, he would think later, with prescient symbolism – she had but turned away.

There had been no storms in the sky then. Nothing to hint of what would come. The blackwood trees of Suruth Common had lived for two millennia, maybe longer, and each season they shed their elongated seeds to the wind. Yet, when next he looked upon those stately trees, they would be on fire.

 

‘You have grown far too quiet, old friend.'

Endest Silann looked up from the dying flames. Dawn was fast approaching. ‘I was reminded…the way that wood crumbles into dissolution.'

‘The release of energy. Perhaps a better way of seeing it.'

‘Such release is ever fatal.'

‘Among plants, yes,' said Caladan Brood.

Among plants…
‘I think of the breath we give them – our gift.'

‘And the breath they give back,' said the warlord, ‘that burns if touched. I am fortunate, I think,' he continued, ‘that I have no appreciation of irony.'

‘It is a false gift, for with it we claim ownership. Like crooked merchants, every one of us. We give so that we can then justify taking it back. I have come to believe that this exchange is the central tenet of our relationship…with everything in the world. Any world. Human, Andii, Edur, Liosan. Imass, Barghast, Jaghut—'

‘Not Jaghut,' cut in Caladan Brood.

‘Ah,' said Endest Silann. ‘I know little of them, in truth. What then was their bargain?'

‘Between them and the world? I don't even know if an explanation is possible, or at least within the limits of my sorry wit. Until the forging of the ice – defending against the Imass – the Jaghut gave far more than they took. Excepting the Tyrants, of course, which is what made such tyranny all the more reprehensible in the eyes of other Jaghut.'

‘So, they were stewards.'

‘No. The notion of stewardship implies superiority. A certain arrogance.'

‘An earned one, surely, since the power to destroy exists.'

‘Well, the illusion of power, I would say, Endest. After all, if you destroy the things around you, eventually you destroy yourself. It is arrogance that asserts a kind of separation, and from that the notion that we can shape and reshape the world to suit our purposes, and that we can
use
it, as if it was no more than a living tool composed of a million parts.' He paused and shook his head. ‘See? Already my skull aches.'

‘Only with the truth, I think,' said Endest Silann. ‘So, the Jaghut did not think of themselves as stewards. Nor as parasites. They were without arrogance? I find that an extraordinary thing, Warlord. Beyond comprehension, in fact.'

‘They shared this world with the Forkrul Assail, who were their opposites. They were witnesses to the purest manifestation of arrogance and separation.'

‘Was there war?'

Caladan Brood was silent for so long that Endest began to believe that no answer was forthcoming, and then he glanced up with his bestial eyes glittering in the ebbing flames of the hearth. ‘“Was”?'

Endest Silann stared across at his old friend, and the breath slowly hissed from him. ‘Gods below, Caladan. No war can last that long.'

‘It can, when the face of the army is without relevance.'

The revelation was…monstrous. Insane. ‘Where?'

The warlord's smile was without humour. ‘Far away from here, friend, which is well. Imagine what your Lord might elect to do, if it was otherwise.'

He would intervene. He would not be able to stop himself.

Caladan Brood rose then. ‘We have company.'

A moment later the heavy thud of wings sounded in the fading darkness above them, and Endest Silann looked up to see Crone, wings crooked now, riding shifting currents of air as she descended, landing with a scatter of stones just beyond the edge of firelight.

‘I smell fish!'

‘Wasn't aware your kind could smell at all,' Caladan Brood said.

‘Funny oaf, although it must be acknowledged that our eyes are the true gift of perfection – among many, of course. Why, Great Ravens are plagued with excellence – and do I see picked bones? I do, with despondent certainty – you rude creatures have left me nothing!'

She hopped closer, regarding the two men with first one eye and then the other. ‘Grim conversation? Glad I interrupted. Endest Silann, your Lord summons you. Caladan Brood, not you. There, messages delivered! Now I want food!'

 

Harak fled through Night. Old tumbled streets, the wreckage of the siege picked clean save for shattered blocks of quarried stone; into narrow, tortured alleys where the garbage was heaped knee-high; across collapsed buildings, scrambling like a spider. He knew Thove was dead. He knew Bucch was dead, and a half-dozen other conspirators. All dead. Killers had pounced. Tiste Andii, he suspected, some kind of secret police, penetrating the cells and now slaughtering every liberator they could hunt down.