As the echoes of that shriek rebounded in the throne room, reluctant to fade, neither Uruth nor Tomad seemed able to speak. Their grey faces were the colour of ash.
Triban Gnol, standing a few paces behind and to the right of the two Edur, looked like a penitent priest, his eyes down on the floor. But the Errant, whose senses could reach out with a sensitivity that far surpassed that of any mortal, could hear the hammering of that old man’s wretched heart; could almost smell the dark glee concealed behind his benign, vaguely rueful expression.
Uruth seemed to shake herself then, slowly straightening. ‘Emperor,’ she said, ‘we cannot know your will when we are barred from seeing you. Is it the Chancellor’s privilege to deny the Emperor’s own parents? The Emperor’s own blood? And what of all the other Tiste Edur? Emperor, a wall has been raised around you. A Letherii wall.’
The Errant heard Triban Gnol’s heart stutter in its cage. ‘Majesty!’ the Chancellor cried in indignation. ‘No such wall exists! You are protected, yes. Indeed. From all who would harm you—’
‘Harm him?’ Tomad shouted, wheeling on the Chancellor. ‘He is our son!’
‘Assuredly not you, Tomad Sengar. Nor you, Uruth. Perhaps the protection necessary around a ruler might seem to you a wall, but—’
‘We would speak to him!’
‘From you,’ Rhulad said in a dreadful rasp, ‘I would hear nothing. Your words are naught but lies. You both lie to me, as Hannan Mosag lies, as every one of my fellow Tiste Edur lies. Do you imagine I cannot smell the stench of your fear? Your hatred? No, I will hear neither of you. However, you shall hear me.’
The Emperor slowly leaned back in his throne, his eyes hard. ‘Our kin will be set free. This I command. They will be set free. For you, my dear parents, it seems a lesson is required. You left them to rot in darkness. In the ships. In the trench-pits. From these egregious acts, I can only assume that you do not possess any comprehension of the horror of such ordeals. Therefore it is my judgement that you must taste something of what you inflicted upon our kin. You will both spend two months interred in the dungeon crypts of the Fifth Wing. You will live in darkness, fed once a day through chutes in the ceilings of your cells. You will have no-one but each other with whom to speak. You will be shackled. In darkness – do you understand, Uruth? True darkness. No shadows for you to manipulate, no power to whisper in your ear. In that time, I suggest you both think long of what Guest Gift means to a Tiste Edur, of honouring our kin no matter how far they have fallen. Of what it truly means to liberate.’ Rhulad waved his free hand. ‘Send them away, Chancellor. I am made ill by their betrayal of our own kin.’
The Errant, very nearly as stunned as were Tomad and Uruth, missed whatever gesture Triban Gnol used to summon forth the Letherii guards. They appeared quickly, as if conjured from thin air, and closed round Tomad and Uruth.
Letherii hands, iron-scaled and implacable, closed about Tiste Edur arms.
And the Errant knew that the end had begun.
Samar Dev’s hope of ending things before they began did not last long. She was still four strides from Karsa Orlong when he reached Icarium and Taralack Veed. The Toblakai had approached from the side, almost behind the Jhag – who had turned to contemplate the canal’s murky waters – and she watched as the huge warrior reached out one hand, grasped Icarium by an upper arm, and swung him round.
Taralack Veed lunged to break that grip and his head was snapped by a punch that seemed almost casual. The Gral collapsed onto the pavestones and did not move.
Icarium was staring down at the hand clutching his left arm, his expression vaguely perturbed.
‘Karsa!’ Samar Dev shouted, as heads turned and citizens – those who had witnessed Taralack Veed’s fate – moved away. ‘If you’ve killed the Gral—’
‘He is nothing,’ Karsa said in a growl, his eyes fixed on Icarium. ‘Your last minder, Jhag, was far more formidable. Now you stand here with no-one to attack me from behind.’
‘Karsa, he is unarmed.’
‘But I am not.’
Icarium was still studying that battered hand gripping his arm – the red weals of scarring left by shackles encircling the thick wrist, the dots and dashes of old tattoos – as if the Jhag was unable to comprehend its function. Then he glanced over at Samar Dev, and his face brightened in a warm smile. ‘Ah, witch. Both Taxilian and Varat Taun have spoken highly of you. Would that we had met earlier – although I have seen you from across the compound—’
‘She is not your problem,’ Karsa said. ‘I am your problem.’
Icarium slowly turned and met the Toblakai’s eyes. ‘You are Karsa Orlong, who does not understand what it means to spar. How many comrades have you crippled?’
‘They are not comrades. Nor are you.’
‘What about me?’ Samar Dev demanded. ‘Am I not a comrade of yours, Karsa?’
He scowled. ‘What of it?’
‘Icarium is unarmed. If you kill him here you will not face the Emperor. No, you will find yourself in chains. At least until your head gets lopped off.’
‘I have told you before, witch. Chains do not hold me.’
‘You want to face the Emperor, don’t you?’
‘And if this one kills him first?’ Karsa demanded, giving the arm a shake that clearly startled Icarium.
‘Is that the problem?’ Samar Dev asked. And is that why you’re crippling other champions? Not that any will play with you any more, you brainless bully.
‘You wish to face Emperor Rhulad before I do?’ Icarium inquired.
‘I do not ask for your permission, Jhag.’
‘Yet I give it nonetheless, Karsa Orlong. You are welcome to Rhulad.’
Karsa glared at Icarium who, though not as tall, somehow still seemed able to meet the Toblakai eye to eye without lifting his head.
Then something odd occurred. Samar Dev saw a slight widening of Karsa’s eyes as he studied Icarium’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said in a gruff voice. ‘I see it now.’
‘I am pleased,’ replied Icarium.
‘See what?’ Samar Dev demanded.
On the ground behind her Taralack Veed groaned, coughed, then rolled onto his side and was sick.
Karsa released the Jhag’s arm and stepped back. ‘You are good to your word?’
Icarium bowed slightly then said, ‘How could I not be?’
‘That is true. Icarium, I witness.’
The Jhag bowed a second time.
‘Keep your hands away from that sword!’
This shout brought them all round, to see a half-dozen Letherii guards edging closer, their weapons unsheathed.
Karsa sneered at them. ‘I am returning to the compound, children. Get out of my way.’
They parted like reeds before a canoe’s prow as the Toblakai marched forward, then moved into his wake, hurrying to keep up with Karsa’s long strides.
Samar Dev stared after them, then loosed a sudden yelp, before clapping her hands to her mouth.
‘You remind me of Senior Assessor, doing that,’ Icarium observed with another smile. His gaze lifted past her. ‘And yes, there he remains, my very own personal vulture. If I gesture him to us, do you think he will come, witch?’
She shook her head, still struggling with an overwhelming flood of relief and the aftermath of terror’s cold clutch that even now made her hands tremble. ‘No, he prefers to worship from a distance.’
‘Worship? The man is deluded. Samar Dev, will you inform him of that?’
‘As you like, but it won’t matter, Icarium. His people, you see, they remember you.’
‘Do they now.’ Icarium’s eyes narrowed slightly on the Senior Assessor, who had begun to cringe from the singular attention of his god.
Spirits below, why was I interested in this monk in the first place? There is no lure to the glow of fanatical worship. There is only smug intransigence and the hidden knives of sharp judgement.
‘Perhaps,’ said Icarium, ‘I must speak to him after all.’
r /> ‘He’ll run away.’
‘In the compound, then—’
‘Where you can corner him?’
The Jhag smiled. ‘Proof of my omnipotence.’
Sirryn Kanar’s exultation was like a cauldron on the boil, the heavy lid moments from stuttering loose, yet he had held himself down on the long walk into the crypts of the Fifth Wing, where the air was wet enough to taste, where mould skidded beneath their boots and the dank chill reached tendrils to their very bones.
This, then, would be the home of Tomad and Uruth Sengar for the next two months, and Sirryn could not be more pleased. In the light of the lanterns the guards carried he saw, with immense satisfaction, that certain look on the Edur faces, the one that settled upon the expression of every prisoner: the numbed disbelief, the shock and fear stirring in the eyes every now and then, until they were once more overwhelmed by that stupid refusal to accept reality.
He would take sexual pleasure this night, he knew, as if this moment now was but one half of desire’s dialogue. He would sleep satiated, content with the world. His world.
They walked the length of the lowest corridor until reaching the very end. Sirryn gestured that Tomad be taken to the cell on the left; Uruth into the one opposite. He watched as the Edur woman, with a last glance back at her husband, turned and accompanied her three Letherii guards. A moment later Sirryn followed.
‘I know that you are the more dangerous,’ he said to her as one of his guards bent to fix the shackle onto her right ankle. ‘There are shadows here, so long as we remain.’
‘I leave your fate to others,’ she replied.
He studied her for a moment. ‘You shall be forbidden visitors.’
‘Yes.’
‘The shock goes away.’
She looked at him, and he saw in her eyes raw contempt.
‘In its place,’ he continued, ‘comes despair.’
‘Begone, you wretched man.’
Sirryn smiled. ‘Take her cloak. Why should Tomad be the only one to suffer the chill?’
She pushed the guard’s hand away and unlocked the clasp herself.
‘You were foolish enough to refuse the Edur Gift,’ he said, ‘so now you receive’ – he waved at the tiny cell with its dripping ceiling, its streaming walls – ‘the Letherii gift. Granted with pleasure.’
When she made no reply, Sirryn turned about. ‘Come,’ he said to his guards, ‘let us leave them to their darkness.’
As the last echoes of their footfalls faded, Feather Witch moved out from the cell in which she had been hiding. Guests had arrived in her private world. Unwelcome. These were her corridors; the uneven stones beneath her feet, the slick, slimy walls within her reach, the sodden air, the reek of rot, the very darkness itself – these all belonged to her.
Tomad and Uruth Sengar. Uruth, who had once owned Feather Witch. Well, there was justice in that. Feather Witch was Letherii, after all, and who could now doubt that the grey tide had turned?
She crept out into the corridor, her moccasin-clad feet noiseless on the slumped floor, then hesitated. Did she wish to look upon them? To voice her mockery of their plight? The temptation was strong. But no, better to remain unseen, unknown to them.
And they were now speaking to each other. She drew closer to listen.
‘. . . not long,’ Tomad was saying. ‘This, more than anything else, wife, forces our hand. Hannan Mosag will approach the women and an alliance will be forged—’ ‘Do not be so sure of that,’ Uruth replied. ‘We have not forgotten the truth of the Warlock King’s ambition. This is of his making—’
‘Move past that – there is no choice.’
‘Perhaps. But concessions will be necessary and that will be difficult, for we do not trust him. Oh, he will give his word, no doubt. As you say, there is no choice. But what value Hannan Mosag’s word? His soul is poisoned. He still lusts for that sword, for the power it holds. And that we will not give him. Never within his reach. Never!’
There was a rustle of chains, then Tomad spoke: ‘He did not sound mad, Uruth.’
‘No,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘He did not.’
‘He was right in his outrage.’
‘Yes.’
‘As were we, on Sepik, when we saw how far our kin had fallen. Their misery, their surrender of all will, all pride, all identity. They were once Tiste Edur! Had we known that from the first—’
‘We would have left them, husband?’
Silence, then: ‘No. Vengeance against the Malazans was necessary. But for our sake, not that of our kin. Rhulad misunderstood that.’
‘He did not. Tomad, those kin suffered the holds of the fleet. They suffered the pits. Rhulad did not misunderstand. We were punishing them for their failure. That, too, was vengeance. Against our very own blood.’
Bitterness now in Tomad’s voice: ‘You said nothing when judgement was cast, wife. Please yourself with this false wisdom if you like. If it is what I must hear from you, then I’d rather silence.’
‘Then, husband, you shall have it.’
Feather Witch eased back. Yes, Hannan Mosag would be told. And what would he then do? Seek out the Edur women? She hoped not. If Feather Witch possessed a true enemy, it was they. Was the Warlock King their match? In deceit, most certainly. But in power? Not any more. Unless, of course, he had hidden allies.
She would need to speak with the Errant. With her god.
She would need to force some . . . concessions.
Smiling, Feather Witch slipped her way up the corridor.
The fate of Tomad and Uruth Sengar drifted through her mind, then passed on, leaving scarce a ripple.
One subterranean tunnel of the Old Palace stretched inland almost to the junction of the Main Canal and Creeper Canal. This passage had been bricked in at three separate locations, and these barriers Hannan Mosag had left in place, twisting reality with Kurald Emurlahn in order to pass through them, as he had done this time with Bruthen Trana in tow.
The Warlock King’s followers had kept the warrior hidden for some time now, whilst Hannan Mosag worked his preparations, and this had not been an easy task. It was not as if the palace was astir with search parties and the like – the fever of confusion and fear was endemic these days, after all. People vanished with disturbing regularity, especially among the Tiste Edur. No, the difficulty resided with Bruthen Trana himself.
A strong-willed man. But this will do us well, provided I can pound into his skull the fact that impatience is a weakness. A warrior needed resolve, true enough, but there was a time and there was a place, and both had yet to arrive.
Hannan Mosag had led Bruthen to the chamber at the very end of the tunnel, an octagonal room of ill-fitted stones. The angular domed ceiling overhead, tiled in once bright but now black copper, was so low the room felt like a hut.
When the Warlock King had first found this chamber, it and at least forty paces of the tunnel had been under water, the depth following the downward gradient until the black, murky sludge very nearly brushed the chamber’s ceiling.
Hannan Mosag had drained the water through a modest rent that led into the realm of the Nascent, which he then closed, moving quickly in his crab-like scrabble to drag seven bundled arm-length shafts of Blackwood down the slimy corridor and into the chamber. It had begun refilling, of course, and the Warlock King sloshed his way to the centre, where he untied the bundle, then began constructing an octagonal fence, each stick a hand’s width in from the walls, two to each side, held mostly upright in the thick sludge covering the floor. When he had completed this task, he called upon his fullest unveiling of Kurald Emurlahn.
At a dreadful cost. Seeking to purge the power of all chaos, of the poisonous breath of the Crippled God, he was almost unequal to the task. His malformed flesh, his twisted bones, the thin, blackened blood in his veins and arteries; these now served the malign world of the Fallen One, forming a symbiosis of life and power. It had been so long since he had last felt – truly felt – the purity of
Kurald Emurlahn that, even in its fragmented, weakened state, he very nearly recoiled at its burning touch.
With the air reeking of scorched flesh and singed hair, Hannan Mosag sought to force sanctification upon the chamber. Trapping the power of Shadow in this, his new, private temple. An entire night of struggle, the cold water ever rising, his legs numb, he began to feel his concentration tearing apart. In desperation – feeling it all slipping away – he called upon Father Shadow.
Scabandari.
Despairing, knowing that he had failed—
And sudden power, pure and resolute, burgeoned in the chamber. Boiling away the water in roiling gusts of steam, until oven-dry heat crackled from the stone walls. The mud on the floor hardened, cementing the Blackwood shafts.
That heat reached into Hannan Mosag’s flesh, down to grip his very bones. He had shrieked in agony, even as a new kind of life spread through him.
It had not healed him; had done nothing to straighten his bones or unclench scarred tissue.
No, it had been more like a promise, a whispering invitation to some blessed future. Fading in a dozen heartbeats, yet the memory of that promise remained with Hannan Mosag.
Scabandari, Father Shadow, still lived. Torn from bone and flesh, true, but the spirit remained. Answering his desperate prayer, gifting this place with sanctity.
I have found the path. I can see the end.
Now he crouched on the hard, desiccated ground and Bruthen Trana – forced to hunch slightly because of the low ceiling – stood at his side. The Warlock King gestured to the centre of the chamber. ‘There, warrior. You must lie down. The ritual is readied, but I warn you, the journey will be long and difficult.’
‘I do not understand this, Warlock King. This . . . this temple. It is true Kurald Emurlahn.’
‘Yes, Bruthen Trana. Blessed by the power of Father Shadow himself. Warrior, your journey itself is so blessed. Does this not tell you that we are on the right path?’
Bruthen Trana stared down at him, was silent for a half-dozen heartbeats, then said, ‘You, among all others, should have been turned away. By Father Shadow. Your betrayal—’