The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (943 page)

‘Master,' he now said, ‘I have heard of an exercise involving suspended rings. To achieve the perfect lunge, piercing the hole and making no contact with the ring itself—'

Murillio snorted. ‘Yes. Useful if you happen to be in a travelling fair or a circus. Oh, for certain, Bellam, point control is essential in fencing with the rapier – I wouldn't suggest otherwise. But as an exercise, I am afraid its value is limited.'

‘Why?'

Murillio eyed the young man for a moment, and then sighed. ‘Very well. The exercise requires too many constraints, few of which ever occur in the course of a real fight. You achieve point control – useful point control, I mean – when it's made integral to other exercises. When it's combined with footwork, distance, timing and the full range of defence and offence demanded when facing a real, living opponent. Spearing rings is all very impressive, but the form of concentration it demands is fundamentally
different
from the concentration necessary in a duel. In any case, you can spend the next two months mastering the art of spearing a ring, or two months mastering the art of staying alive against a skilled enemy, and not just staying alive, but presenting a true threat to that enemy, in turn.' He shrugged. ‘Your choice, of course.'

Bellam Nom grinned suddenly and Murillio saw at once how much he looked like his oh-so-distant cousin. ‘I still might try it – in my own time, of course.'

‘Tell you what,' Murillio said. ‘Master spearing a suspended ring at the close of a mistimed lunge, an off-balance recovery to your unarmed side, two desperate parries, a toe-stab to your opponent's lead foot to keep him or her from closing, and a frantic stop-thrust in the midst of a back-pedalling retreat. Do that, and I will give you my second best rapier.'

‘How long do I have?'

‘As long as you like, Bellam.'

‘Extra time with an instructor,' said a voice from the shaded colonnade to one side, ‘is not free.'

Murillio turned and bowed to Stonny Menackis. ‘Mistress, we were but conversing—'

‘You were giving advice,' she cut in, ‘and presenting this student with a challenge. The first point qualifies as instruction. The second is an implicit agreement to extracurricular efforts on your part at some time in the future.'

Bellam's grin had broadened. ‘My father, Mistress, will not hesitate to meet any extra expense, I assure you.'

She snorted, stepping out from the gloom. ‘Any?'

‘Within reason, yes.'

She looked terrible. Worn, old, her clothes dishevelled. If Murillio had not known better, he would judge her as being hungover, a condition of temporary, infrequent sobriety to mark an alcoholic slide into fatal oblivion. Yet he knew she was afflicted with something far more tragic. Guilt and shame, self-hatred and grief. The son she didn't want had been taken from her – to imagine that such a thing could leave her indifferent was not to understand anything at all.

Murillio said to Bellam, ‘You'd best go now.'

They watched him walk away.

‘Look at him,' Stonny muttered as he reached the gate, ‘all elbows and knees.'

‘That'll pass,' he said.

‘A stage, is it?'

‘Yes.' And of course he knew this particular game, the way she spoke of Harllo by not speaking of him, of the life that might await him, or the future taken away from him, stolen by her cruel denial. She would inflict this on herself again and again, at every opportunity. Seemingly innocent observations, each one a masochistic flagellation. For this to work, she required someone like Murillio, who would stand and listen and speak and pretend that all this was normal – the back and forth and give and take, the blood pooling round her boots. She had trapped him in this role – using the fact of his adoration, his love for her – and he was no longer certain that his love could survive such abuse.

The world is small. And getting smaller.

He had walked the pauper pits south of the city, just outside the wall between the two main trader gates. He had looked upon scores of recent unclaimed dead. It was, in fact, becoming something of a ritual for him, and though he had only second-hand descriptions of Harllo, he did his best, since no one who knew the boy would accompany him. Not Stonny, not Myrla nor Bedek. On occasion, Murillio had been forced to descend into one of the pits to make closer examination of some small body, a soft, lime-dusted face, eyes lidded shut as if in sleep or, on occasion, scrunched in some last moment of pain, and these mute, motionless faces now paraded in his dreams at night, a procession of such sorrow that he awoke with tears streaming from his eyes.

He told Stonny none of this. He'd said nothing of how his and Kruppe's enquiries among the sailors and fisherfolk had failed to find any evidence of someone press-ganging a five-year-old boy. And that every other possible trail thus far had turned up nothing, not even a hint or remote possibility, leaving at last the grim likelihood of some fell mishap, unreported, uninvestigated – just another dead child abandoned long before death's arrival, known only in the records of found corpses as the ‘twice-dead'.

‘I am thinking of signing over my stakes in this school,' Stonny now said. ‘To you.'

Startled, he turned to stare at her. ‘I won't accept.'

‘Then you'd be a fool – as if I didn't already know that. You're better suited. You're a better teacher. I barely managed any interest in this from the very start – it was always the coin – and now I find I could not care less. About the school, the students – even promising ones like Nom there. I don't care about anything, in fact.'

Including you, Murillio.
Yes, he heard that unspoken addition without the need for her to actually say it aloud. Well, she would of course want to push him away. Much as she needed him to play those self-wounding games with her, she needed even more the solitude necessary for complete self-destruction. Isolation was more than a simple defence mechanism; it also served to prepare one for more severe punishments, possibly culminating in suicide. On another level, she would view her desire to drive him off as an act of mercy on her part. But that was a most irritating form of self-pity.

He had given his heart to the wrong woman.
Timing, Bellam Nom, is everything. With sword in hand.

With love in hand.

Oh, well. I'd figured it out with a rapier, at least.

‘Don't make that decision just yet,' he said. ‘I have one more thing I can try.'
It won't be pleasant, but you don't need to know that.

Stonny simply turned away. ‘I'll see you tomorrow, then.'

 

Many adults, in the indurated immobility of years, acquire a fear of places they have never been, even as they long for something different in their lives, something new. But this new thing is a world of the fantastical, formless in answer to vague longings, and is as much defined by absence as presence. It is a conjuration of emotions and wishful imaginings, which may or may not possess a specific geography. Achieving such a place demands a succession of breaks with one's present situation, always a traumatic endeavour, and upon completion, why, sudden comes the fear.

Some do not choose the changes in their lives. Some changes no one in their right mind would ever choose. In K'rul's Bar, a once-soldier of the Malazan Empire stands tottering over the unconscious form of her lover, whilst behind her paces Antsy, muttering self-recriminations under his breath, interrupted every now and then with a stream of curses in a half-dozen languages.

Blend understood all that had motivated Picker to attempt what she had done. This did little to assuage her fury. The very same High Denul healer who had just attended to her had set to a thorough examination of Picker as soon as Antsy had returned with his charge lying in the bed of a hired oxcart, only to pronounce that there was nothing to be done. Either Picker would awaken or she wouldn't. Her spirit had been torn loose and now wandered lost.

The healer had left. In the main room below, Duiker and Scillara sat in the company of ghosts and not much else.

Although still weak, Blend set out to collect her weapons and armour. Antsy followed her into the corridor.

‘What're you planning?' he demanded, almost on her heels as she went into her own room.

‘I'm not sure,' she replied, laying out her chain hauberk on the bed, then pulling off her shirt to find the padded undergarment.

Antsy's eyes bugged slightly as he stared at her breasts, the faint bulge of her belly, the sweet—

Blend tugged on the quilted shirt and then returned to the hauberk. ‘You'll need to wrap me,' she said.

‘Huh? Oh, aye. Right. But what about me?'

She regarded him for a moment. ‘You want to help?'

He half snarled in reply.

‘All right,' she said. ‘Go find a couple of crossbows and plenty of quarrels. You're going to cover me, for as long as that's possible. We don't walk together.'

‘Aye, Blend.'

She worked the hauberk over her head and pushed her arms through the heavy sleeves.

Antsy went to the equipment trunk at the foot of the bed and began rummaging through its contents, looking for the swaths of black cloth to bind the armour close and noiseless about Blend's body. ‘Gods below, woman, what do you need all these clothes for?'

‘Banquets and soirées, of course.'

‘You ain't never been to one in your life, woman.'

‘The possibility always exists, Antsy. Yes, those ones, but make sure the drawstrings are still in them.'

‘How do you expect to find the nest?'

‘Simple,' she said. ‘Don't know why we didn't think of it before. The name Picker said, the one that Jaghut heard.' She selected a matched pair of Wickan longknives from her store of weapons and strapped the belt on, low on her hips, offered Antsy a hard grin. ‘I'm going to ask the Eel.'

There was no breath to speak of. Rather, what awoke him was the smell of death, dry, an echo of pungent decay that might belong to the carcass of a beast left in the high grasses, desiccated yet holding its reek about itself, close and suffocating as a cloak. Opening his eyes, Kallor found himself staring up at the enormous, rotted head of a dragon, its massive fangs and shredded gums almost within reach.

The morning light was blotted out and it seemed the shade cast by the dragon roiled with all its centuries of forgotten breath.

As the savage thunder of Kallor's heartbeat eased, he slowly edged to one side – the dragon's viper head tilting to track his movement – and carefully stood, keeping his hands well away from the scabbarded sword lying on the ground beside his bedroll. ‘I did not,' he said, scowling, ‘ask for company.'

The dragon withdrew its head in a crackling of dried scales along the length of its serpent neck; settled back between the twin cowls of its folded wings.

He could see runnels of dirt trickling down from creases and joins on the creature's body. One gaunt forelimb bore the tracery of fine roots in a colourless mockery of blood vessels. From the shadowed pits beneath the gnarled brow ridges there was the hint of withered eyes, a mottling of grey and black that could hold no display of desire or intent; and yet Kallor felt that regard raw as sharkskin against his own eyes as he stared up at the undead dragon.

‘You have come,' he said, ‘a long way, I suspect. But I am not for you. I can give you nothing, assuming I wanted to, which I do not. And do not imagine,' he added, ‘that I will bargain with you, whatever hungers you may still possess.'

He looked about his makeshift camp, saw that the modest hearth with its fistful of coals still smouldered from the previous night's fire. ‘I am hungry, and thirsty,' he said. ‘You can leave whenever it pleases you.'

The dragon's sibilant voice spoke in Kallor's skull. ‘
You cannot know my pain
.'

He grunted. ‘You cannot
feel
pain. You're dead, and you have the look of having been buried. For a long time.'

‘
The soul writhes. There is anguish. I am broken
.'

He fed a few clumps of dried bhederin dung on to the coals, and then glanced over. ‘I can do nothing about that.'

‘
I have dreamt of a throne
.'

Kallor's attention sharpened with speculation. ‘You would choose a master? That is unlike your kind.' He shook his head. ‘I scarcely believe it.'

‘
Because you do not understand. None of you understand. So much is beyond you. You think to make yourself the King in Chains. Do not mock my seeking a master, High King Kallor
.'

‘The Crippled God's days are numbered, Eleint,' said Kallor. ‘Yet the throne shall remain, long after the chains have rusted to dust.'

There was silence between them then, for a time. The morning sky was clear, tinted faintly red with the pollen and dust that seemed to seethe up from this land. Kallor watched the hearth finally lick into flames, and he reached for the small, battered, blackened pot. Poured the last of his water into it and set the pot on the tripod perched above the fire. Swarms of suicidal insects darted into the flames, igniting in sparks, and Kallor wondered at this penchant for seeking death, as if the lure for an end was irresistible. Not a trait he shared, however.

‘
I remember my death
,' the dragon said.

‘And that's worth remembering?'

‘
The Jaghut were a stubborn people. So many saw naught but the coldness in their hearts—
'

‘Misunderstood, were they?'

‘
They mocked your empire, High King. They answered you with scorn. It seems the wounds have not healed
.'

‘A recent reminder, that's all,' Kallor replied, watching the water slowly awaken. He tossed in a handful of herbs. ‘Very well, tell me your tale. I welcome the amusement.'

The dragon lifted its head and seemed to study the eastern horizon.

‘Never wise to stare into the sun,' Kallor observed. ‘You might burn your eyes.'

‘
It was brighter then – do you recall?
'

‘Perturbations of orbit, or so believed the K'Chain Che'Malle.'

‘
So too the Jaghut, who were most diligent in their observations of the world. Tell me, High King, did you know they broke peace only once? In all their existence – no, not the T'lan Imass – that war belonged to those savages and the Jaghut were a most reluctant foe
.'

‘They should have turned on the Imass,' Kallor said. ‘They should have annihilated the vermin.'

‘
Perhaps, but I was speaking of an earlier war – the war that destroyed the Jaghut long before the coming of the T'lan Imass. The war that shattered their unity, that made of their lives a moribund flight from an implacable enemy – yes, long before and long after the T'lan Imass
.'

Kallor considered that for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I am not well versed in Jaghut history. What war was this? The K'Chain Che'Malle? The Forkrul Assail?' He squinted at the dragon. ‘Or, perhaps, you Eleint?'

There was sorrow in its tone as the dragon replied, ‘
No. There were some among us who chose to join in this war, to fight alongside the Jaghut armies—
'

‘Armies?
Jaghut
armies?'

‘
Yes, an entire people gathered, a host of singular will. Legions uncountable. Their standard was rage, their clarion call injustice. When they marched, swords beating on shields, time itself found measure, a hundred million hearts of edged iron. Not even you, High King, could imagine such a sight – your empire was less than a squall to that terrible storm
.'

For once, Kallor had nothing to say. No snide comment to voice, no scoffing refutation. In his mind he saw the scene the dragon had described, and was struck mute. To have witnessed such a thing!

The dragon seemed to comprehend his awe. ‘
Yes again, High King. When you forged your empire, it was on the dust of that time, that grand contest, that most bold assault. We fought. We refused to retreat. We failed. We fell. So many of us fell – should we have believed otherwise? Should we have held to our faith in the righteousness of our cause, even as we came to believe that we were doomed?
'

Kallor stared across at the dragon, the tea in the pot steaming away. He could almost hear the echoes of tens of millions, hundreds of millions, dying on a plain so vast even the horizons could not close it in. He saw flames, rivers of blood, a sky solid with ash. In creating this image, he had only to draw upon his own fury of destruction, then multiply it a thousandfold. The notion took his breath, snatched it from his lungs, and his chest filled with pain. ‘What,' he managed, ‘who? What enemy could vanquish such a force?'

‘
Grieve for the Jaghut, High King, when at last you sit on that throne. Grieve for the chains that bind all life, that you can never break. Weep, for me and my fallen kin – who did not hesitate to join a war that could not be won. Know, for ever in your soul, Kallor Eidorann, that the Jaghut fought the war no other has dared to fight
.'

‘Eleint…'

‘
Think of these people. Think of them, High King. The sacrifice they made for us all. Think of the Jaghut, and an impossible victory won in the heart of defeat. Think, and then you will come to understand all that is to come. Perhaps, then, you alone will know enough to honour their memory, the sacrifice they made for us all.

‘
High King, the Jaghut's only war, their greatest war, was against Death itself
.'

The dragon turned away then, spreading its tattered wings. Sorcery blossomed round the huge creature, and it lifted into the air.

Kallor stood, watching the Eleint rise into the cinnamon sky. A nameless dead dragon, that had fallen in the realm of Death, that had fallen and in dying had simply…
switched sides
. No, there could be no winning such a war. ‘You damned fool,' he whispered at the fast receding Eleint. ‘All of you, damned fools.'
Bless you, bless you all.

Gothos, when next we meet, this High King owes you an apology.

On withered cheeks that seemed cursed to eternal dryness, tears now trickled down. He would think long and think hard, now, and he would come to feelings that he'd not felt in a long time, so long that they seemed foreign, dangerous to harbour in his soul.

And he would wonder, with growing unease, at the dead Eleint who, upon escaping the realm of Death, would now choose the Crippled God as its new master.

A throne
, Emperor Kellanved once said,
is made of many parts.
And then he had added,
any one of which can break, to the king's eternal discomfort.
No, it did no good to simply sit on a throne, deluding oneself of its eternal solidity. He had known that long before Kellanved ever cast an acquisitive eye on empire. But he was not one for resonant quotations.

Well, everyone has a few flaws.

 

In a dark pool a score of boulders rise clear of the lightless, seemingly lifeless surface. They appear as islands, no two connected in any obvious way, no chain of uplifted progression to hint at some mostly submerged range of mountains, no half-curl to mark a flooded caldera. Each stands alone, a bold proclamation.

Is this how it was at the very beginning? Countless scholars struggled to make sense of it, the distinct existences, the imposition of order in myriad comprehensions. Lines were drawn, flags splashed with colours, faces blended into singular philosophies and attitudes and aspects.
Here there is Darkness, and here there is Life. Light, Earth, Fire, Shadow, Air, Water. And Death.
As if such aspects began as pure entities, unstained by contact with any of the others. And as if
time
was the enemy, forcing the inevitable infections from one to another.

Whenever Endest Silann thought about these things, he found himself trapped in a prickly, uneasy suspicion. In his experience, purity was an unpleasant concept, and to imagine worlds defined by purity filled him with fear. An existence held to be pure was but the physical corollary of a point of view bound in certainty. Cruelty could thrive unfettered by compassion. The pure could see no value among the impure, after all. Justifying annihilation wasn't even necessary, since the inferiority was ever self-evident.

Howsoever all creation had begun, he now believed, those pure forms existed as nothing more than the raw materials for more worthy elaborations. As any alchemist knew, transformation was only possible as a result of admixture. For creation to thrive, there must be an endless succession of catalysts.

His Lord had understood that. Indeed, he had been driven to do all that he had done by that very comprehension. And change was, for so many, terrifying. For so much of existence, Anomander Rake had fought virtually alone. Even his brothers had but fallen, bound by the ties of blood, into the chaos that followed.

Was Kharkanas truly the first city? The first, proudest salutation to order in the cosmos? Was it in fact even true that Darkness preceded all else? What of the other worlds, the rival realms? And, if one thought carefully about that nascent age of creation, had not the admixture already begun? Was there not Death in the realms of Darkness, Light, Fire and all the rest? Indeed, how could Life and Death exist in any form of distinction without the other?

No, he now believed that the Age of Purity was but a mythical invention, a convenient separation of all the forces necessary for all existence. Yet was he not witness to the Coming of Light? To Mother Dark's wilful rejection of eternal stasis? Did he not with his own eyes see the birth of a sun over his blessed, precious city? How could he not have understood, at that moment, how all else would follow, inevitably, inexorably? That fire would awaken, that raging winds would howl, that waters would rise and the earth crack open? That death would flood into their world in a brutal torrent of violence? That Shadow would slide between things, whispering sly subversions of all those pristine absolutes?

He sat alone in his room, in the manner of all old men when the last witness has wandered off, when nothing but stone walls and insensate furniture gathered close to mock his last few aspirations, his last dwindling reasons for living. In his mind he witnessed yet again, in a vision still sharp, still devastating, Andarist staggering into view. Blood on his hands. Blood painted in the image of a shattered tree upon his grief-wracked face – oh, the horror in his eyes could still make Endest Silann reel back, wanting none of this, this curse of witnessing—