‘Does he know how you feel about him?’
She shot him a look, and then snorted. ‘He may think he does but the truth is I don’t know how I feel about him, so whatever he’s thinking it’s bound to be wrong. Now that we’re closing in, I’m the one getting more nervous. It’s ridiculous, I know.’
‘It seems your examination of those two women has soured your mood. Why?’
‘I don’t know what you wanted me to do about them. They were pregnant, not in labour. They looked hale enough, better than I expected in fact. They didn’t need me poking and prodding. The babies will be born and they will live or they will die. Same for the mothers. It’s just how things are.’
‘My apologies, Samar Dev. I should not have so ordered you about. Were I in your place, I too would have been offended by the presumption.’
Was that what had annoyed her? Possibly. Equally likely, her mute acquiescence, the doe-eyed ease with which she had fallen into that subservient role. As when I was with Karsa Orlong. Oh, I think I now step on to the thinnest crust of sand above some bottomless pit. Samar Dev discovers her very own secret weaknesses. Was she foul of mood earlier? See her now.
A talent, a sensitivity – something – clearly told Traveller to say nothing more.
They rode on, the horses’ hoofs thumping the taut drum of the earth. The warm wind slid dry as sand. In a low, broad depression on their left stood six pronghorn antelope, watching them pass. Rust-red slabs of flat rock tilted up through the thin ground along the spines of hills. Long-billed birds of some kind perched on them, their plumage the same mix of hues. ‘It is all the same,’ she murmured.
‘Samar Dev? Did you speak?’
She shrugged. ‘The way so many animals are made to match their surroundings. I wonder, if all this grass suddenly grew blood red, how long before the markings on those antelope shift into patterns of red? You’d think it could never be the other way round, but you would be wrong. See those flowers – the bright colours to attract the right insects. If the right insects don’t come to collect the pollen the flower dies. So, brighter is better. Plants and animals, it goes back and forth, the whole thing inseparable and dependent. Despite this, nothing stays the same.’
‘True, nothing ever stays the same.’
‘Those women back there . . .’
‘Gandaru. Kin to the Kindaru and Sinbarl – so the men explained.’
‘Not true humans.’
‘No.’
‘Yet true to themselves none the less.’
‘I imagine so, Samar Dev.’
‘They broke my heart, Traveller. Against us, they don’t stand a chance.’
He glanced across at her. ‘That is quite a presumption.’
‘It is?’
‘We are riding towards a Tartheno Toblakai, belonging to a remnant tribe isolated somewhere in northern Genabackis. You tell me that Karsa Orlong intends to deliver destruction to all the “children” of the world – to us, in other words. When you speak of this, I see fear in your eyes. A conviction that he will succeed. So now, tell me, against one such as Karsa Orlong and his kind, do we stand a chance?’
‘Of course we do, because we can fight back. What can these gentle Gandaru manage? Nothing. They can hide, and when that fails they are killed, or enslaved. Those two women were probably raped. Used. Vessels for human seed.’
‘Barring the rape, every animal we hunt for food possesses the same few choices. Hide or flee.’
‘Until there is no place left to hide.’
‘And when the animals go, so too will we.’
She barked a laugh. ‘You might believe so, Traveller. No, we won’t go that way. We’ll just fill the empty lands with cattle, with sheep and goats. Or break up the ground and plant corn. There is no stopping us.’
‘Except, perhaps, for Karsa Orlong.’
And there, then, was the truth of all this. Karsa Orlong pronounced a future of destruction, extinction. And she wished him well. ‘There,’ Traveller said in a different voice, and he rose in his stirrups. ‘He didn’t travel too far after all—’ From Havok’s saddle, Samar Dev could now see him. He had halted and was facing them, a thousand paces distant. Two horses stood near him, and there were humps in the grass of the knoll, scattered like ant hills or boulders but, she knew, neither of those. ‘He was attacked,’ she said. ‘The idiots should have left well enough alone.’
‘I’m sure their ghosts concur,’ Traveller said.
They cantered closer.
The Toblakai looked no different from the last time she had seen him – there on the sands of the arena in Letheras. As sure, as solid, as undeniable as ever. ‘I shall kill him . . . once.’ And so he did. Defying . . . everything. Oh, he was looking at her now, and at Havok, with the air of a master summoning his favourite hunting dog.
And suddenly she was furious. ‘This wasn’t obligation!’ she snapped, savagely reining in directly in front of him. ‘You abandoned us – there in that damned foreign city! “Do this when the time is right”, and so I did! Where the Hood did you go? And—’
And then she yelped, as the huge warrior swept her off the saddle with one massive arm, and closed her in a suffocating embrace, and the bastard was laughing and even Traveller – curse the fool – was grinning, although to be sure it was a hard grin, mindful as he clearly was of the half-dozen bodies lying amidst blood and entrails in the grasses.
‘Witch!’
‘Set me down!’
‘I am amazed,’ he bellowed, ‘that Havok suffered you all this way!’
‘Down!’
So he dropped her. Jarring her knees, sending her down with a thump on her backside, every bone rattled. She glared up at him.
But Karsa Orlong had already turned away and was eyeing Traveller, who remained on his horse. ‘You – are you her husband then? She must have had one somewhere – no other reason for her forever refusing me. Very well, we shall fight for her, you and me—’
‘Be quiet, Karsa! He’s not my husband and no one’s fighting for me. Because I belong to no one but me! Do you understand? Will you ever understand?’
‘Samar Dev has spoken,’ said Traveller. ‘We met not long ago, both journeying on this plain. We chose to ride as companions. I am from Dal Hon, on the continent of Quon Tali—’
Karsa grunted. ‘Malazan.’
An answering nod. ‘I am called Traveller.’
‘You hide your name.’
‘What I hide merely begins with my name, Karsa Orlong.’
The Toblakai’s eyes thinned at that.
‘You bear the tattoos,’ Traveller went on, ‘of an escaped slave of Seven Cities. Or, rather, a recaptured one. Clearly, the chains did not hold you for long.’
Samar Dev had picked herself up and was now brushing the dust from her clothes. ‘Are these Skathandi?’ she asked, gesturing at the bodies. ‘Karsa?’
The giant turned away from his study of the Malazan. ‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘Seeking vengeance for the dead king – as if I killed him.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least now I will have a horse of my own.’
Karsa walked over to Havok and settled a hand on his neck. The beast’s nostrils flared and the lips peeled back to reveal the overlong fangs. Karsa laughed. ‘Yes, old friend, I smell of death. When was it never thus?’ And he laughed again.
‘Hood take you, Karsa Orlong – what happened?’
He frowned at her. ‘What do you mean, witch?’
‘You killed the Emperor.’
‘I said I would, and so I did.’ He paused, and then said, ‘And now this Malazan speaks as if he would make me a slave once more.’
‘Not at all,’ said Traveller. ‘It just seems as if you have lived an eventful life, Toblakai. I only regret that I will probably never hear your tale, for I gather that you are not the talkative type.’
Karsa Orlong bared his teeth, and then swung up into the saddle. ‘I am riding no
rth,’ he said.
‘As am I,’ replied Traveller.
Samar Dev collected both horses and tied a long lead to the one she decided she would not ride, then climbed into the saddle of the other – a russet gelding with a broad back and disinterested eyes. ‘I think I want to go home,’ she pronounced. ‘Meaning I need to find a port, presumably on the western coast of this continent.’
Traveller said, ‘I ride to Darujhistan. Ships ply the lake and the river that flows to the coast you seek. I would welcome the company, Samar Dev.’
‘Darujhistan,’ said Karsa Orlong. ‘I have heard of that city. Defied the Malazan Empire and so still free. I will see it for myself.’
‘Fine then,’ Samar Dev snapped. ‘Let’s ride on, to the next pile of corpses – and with you for company, Karsa Orlong, that shouldn’t be long – and then we’ll ride to the next one and so on, right across this entire continent. To Darujhistan! Wherever in Hood’s name that is.’
‘I will see it,’ Karsa said again. ‘But I will not stay long.’ And he looked at her with suddenly fierce eyes. ‘I am returning home, witch.’
‘To forge your army,’ she said, nodding, sudden nerves tingling in her gut.
‘And then the world shall witness.’
‘Yes.’
After a moment, the three set out, Karsa Orlong on her left, Traveller on her right, neither speaking, yet they were histories, tomes of past, present and future. Between them, she felt like a crumpled page of parchment, her life a minor scrawl.
High, high above them, a Great Raven fixed preternatural eyes upon the three figures far below, and loosed a piercing cry, then tilted its broad black-sail wings and raced on a current of chill wind, rushing east.
She thought she might be dead. Every step she took was effortless, a product of will and nothing else – no shifting of weight, no swing of legs nor flexing of knees. Will carried her where she sought to go, to that place of formless light where the white sand glowed blindingly bright beneath her, at the proper distance had she been standing. Yet, looking down, she saw nothing of her own body. No limbs, no torso, and nowhere to any side could she see her shadow.
Voices droned somewhere ahead, but she was not yet ready for them, so she remained where she was, surrounded in warmth and light.
Pulses, as from torches flaring through thick mist, slowly approached, disconnected from the droning voices, and she now saw a line of figures drawing towards her. Women, heads tilted down, long hair over their faces, naked, each one heavy with pregnancy. The torch fires hovered over each one, fist-sized suns in which rainbow flames flickered and spun.
Salind wanted to recoil. She was a Child of a Dead Seed, after all. Born from a womb of madness. She had nothing for these women. She was no longer a priestess, no longer able to confer the blessing of anyone, no god and least of all herself, upon any child waiting to tumble into the world.
Yet those seething orbs of flame – she knew they were the souls of the unborn, the not-yet-born, and these mothers were walking towards her, with purpose, with need.
I can give you nothing! Go away!
Still they came on, faces lifting, revealing eyes dark and empty, and seemed not to see her even as, one by one, they walked through Salind.
Gods, some of these women were not even human.
And as each one passed through her, she felt the life of the child within. She saw the birth unfolding, saw the small creature with those strangely wise eyes that seemed to belong to every newborn (except, perhaps, her own). And then the years rushing on, the child growing, faces taking the shape they would carry into old age—
But not all. As mother after mother stepped through her, futures flashed bright, and some died quickly indeed. Fraught, flickering sparks, ebbing, winking out, darkness rushing in. And at these she cried out, filled with anguish even as she understood that souls travelled countless journeys, of which only one could be known by a mortal – so many, in countless perturbations – and that the loss belonged only to others, never to the child itself, for in its inarticulate, ineffable wisdom, understanding was absolute; the passage of life that seemed tragically short could well be the perfect duration, the experience complete—
Others, however, died in violence, and this was a crime, an outrage against life itself. Here, among these souls, there was fury, shock, denial. There was railing, struggling, bitter defiance. No, some deaths were as they should be, but others were not. From somewhere a woman’s voice began speaking.
‘Bless them, that they not be taken.
‘Bless them, that they begin in their time and that they end in its fullness.
‘Bless them, in the name of the Redeemer, against the cruel harvesters of souls, the takers of life.
‘Bless them, Daughter of Death, that each life shall be as it is written, for peace is born of completion, and completion denied – completion of all potential, all promised in life – is a crime, a sin, a consignation to eternal damnation. Beware the takers, the users! The blight of killers!
‘They are coming! Again and again, they harvest the souls—’
That strange voice was shrieking now, and Salind sought to flee but all will had vanished. She was trapped in this one place, as mother after mother plunged into her, eyes black and wide, mouths gaping in a chorus of screams, wailing terror, heart-crushing fear for their unborn children—
All at once she heard the droning voices again, summoning her, inviting her into . . . into what?
Sanctuary.
With a cry tearing loose from her throat, Salind pulled away, raced towards those voices—
And opened her eyes. Low candlelight surrounded her. She was lying on a bed. The voices embraced her from all sides and, blinking, she sought to sit up.
So weak—
An arm slipped behind her shoulders, helped her rise as pillows were pushed underneath. She stared up at a familiar, alien face. ‘Spinnock Durav.’
He nodded.
Others were rising into view now. Tiste Andii women, all in dark shapeless robes, eyes averted as they began filing out of the chamber, taking their chanting song with them.
Those voices – so heavy, so solid – they truly belonged to these women? She was astonished, half disbelieving, and yet . . .
‘You almost died,’ Spinnock Durav said. ‘The healers called you back – the priestesses.’
‘But – why?’
His smile was wry. ‘I called in a favour or two. But I think, once they attended you, there was more to it. An obligation, perhaps. You are, after all, a sister priestess – oh, betrothed to a different ascendant, true enough, but that did not matter. Or,’ and he smiled again, ‘so it turned out.’
Yes, but why? Why did you bring me back? I don’t want— oh, she could not complete that thought. Understanding now, at last, how vast the sin of suicide – of course, it would not have been that, would it? To have simply slipped away, taken by whatever sickness afflicted her. Was it not a kind of wisdom to surrender?
‘No,’ she mumbled, ‘it isn’t.’
‘Salind?’
‘To bless,’ she said, ‘is to confer a hope. Is that enough? To make sacred the wish for good fortune, a fulfilled life? What can it achieve?’
He was studying her face. ‘High Priestess,’ he now said, haltingly, as if truly attempting an answer, ‘in blessing, you purchase a moment of peace, in the one being blessed, in the one for whom blessing is asked. Perhaps it does not last, but the gift you provide, well, its value never fades.’
She turned her head, looked away. Beyond the candles, she saw a wall crowded with Andiian hieroglyphs and a procession of painted figures, all facing one way, to where stood the image of a woman whose back was turned, denying all those beseeching her. A mother rejecting her children – she could see how the artist had struggled with all those upturned faces, the despair and anguish twisting them – painted in tears, yes.
‘I must go back,’ she said.
‘Back? Where?’
??
?The camp, the place of the pilgrims.’
‘You are not yet strong enough, High Priestess.’
Her words to him had stripped away his using her chosen name. He was seeing her now as a High Priestess. She felt a twinge of loss at that. But now was not the time to contemplate the significance of such things. Spinnock Durav was right – she was too weak. Even these thoughts exhausted her. ‘As soon as I can,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
‘They are in danger.’
‘What would you have me do?’
She finally looked back at him. ‘Nothing. This belongs to me. And Seerdomin.’
At the mention of that name the Tiste Andii winced. ‘High Priestess—’ ‘He will not reject me again.’
‘He is missing.’
‘What?’
‘I cannot find him. I am sorry, but I am fairly certain he is no longer in Black Coral.’
‘No matter,’ she said, struggling to believe her own words. ‘No matter. He will come when he is needed.’ She could see that Spinnock Durav was sceptical, but she would not berate him for that. ‘The Redeemer brought me to the edge of death,’ she said, ‘to show me what was needed. To show me why I was needed.’ She paused. ‘Does that sound arrogant? It does, doesn’t it?’
His sigh was ragged. He stood. ‘I will return to check on you, High Priestess. For now, sleep.’
Oh, she had offended him, but how? ‘Wait, Spinnock Durav—’
‘It is all right,’ he said. ‘You have misread me. Well, perhaps not entirely. You spoke of your god showing you what was needed – something we Tiste Andii ever yearn for but will not ever achieve. Then you doubt yourself. Arrogance? Abyss below, High Priestess. Is this how you feel when the Redeemer blesses you?’
Then she was alone in the chamber. Candle flames wavering in the wake of Spinnock Durav’s departure, the agitated light making the figures writhe on the walls.
Still the mother stood, turned away.
Salind felt a twist of anger. Bless your children, Mother Dark. They have suffered long enough. I say this in gratitude to your own priestesses, who have given me back my life. I say it in the name of redemption. Bless your children, woman.