The road they found themselves on was not one of the impressive Malazan feats of engineering linking the major cities, for the direction they had chosen led... nowhere. West, into the Jhag Odhan, the ancient plains that defied the farmer's plough, the mythical conspiracy of land, rain and wind spirits, content only with the deep-rooted natural grasses, eager to wither every planted crop to blackened stalks, the soil blown into the sky. One could tame such land for a generation or two, but in the end the Odhan would reclaim its wild mien, fit for naught but bhederin, jackrabbits, wolves and antelope.
Westward, then, for a half-dozen or so days. Whereupon they would come to a long-dead river-bed wending northwestward, the valley sides cut and gnawed by the seasonal run-off from countless centuries past, gnarled now with sage brush and cacti and grey-oaks. Dark hills on the horizon where the sun set, a sacred place, the oldest maps noted, of some tribe so long extinct their name meant nothing.
Out onto the battered road, then, the city falling away behind them. After a time, Karsa glanced back and bared his teeth at her. 'Listen. That is better, yes?'
'I hear only the wind.'
'Better than ten thousand tireless contrivances.'
He turned back, leaving Samar to mull on his words. Inventions cast moral shadows, she well knew, better than most, in fact. But... could simple convenience prove so perniciously evil? The action of doing things, laborious things, repetitive things, such actions invited ritual, and with ritual came meaning that expanded beyond the accomplishment of the deed itself. From such ritual self-identity emerged, and with it self-worth. Even so, to make life easier must possess some inherent value, mustn't it?
Easier. Nothing earned, the language of recompense fading away until as lost as that ancient tribe's cherished tongue. Worth diminished, value transformed into arbitrariness, oh gods below, and I was so bold as to speak of freedom! She kicked her horse forward until she came alongside the Toblakai. 'But is that all? Karsa Orlong! I ask you, is that all?'
'Among my people,' he said after a moment, 'the day is filled, as is the night.'
'With what? Weaving baskets, trapping fish, sharpening swords, training horses, cooking, eating, sewing, fucking—'
'Telling stories, mocking fools who do and say foolish things, yes, all that. You must have visited there, then?'
'I have not.'
A faint smile, then gone. 'There are things to do. And, always, witch, ways of cheating them. But no-one truly in their lives is naïve.'
'Truly in their lives?'
'Exulting in the moment, witch, does not require wild dancing.'
'And so, without those rituals...'
'The young warriors go looking for war.'
'As you must have done.'
Another two hundred paces passed before he said, 'Three of us, we came to deliver death and blood. Yoked like oxen, we were, to glory. To great deeds and the heavy shackles of vows. We went hunting children, Samar Dev.'
'Children?'
He grimaced. 'Your kind. The small creatures who breed like maggots in rotting meat. We sought — no, I sought — to cleanse the world of you and your kin. You, the cutters of forests, the breakers of earth, the binders of freedom. I was a young warrior, looking for war.'
She studied the escaped slave tattoo on his face. 'You found more than you bargained for.'
'I know all about small worlds. I was born in one.'
'So, experience has now tempered your zeal,' she said, nodding. 'No longer out to cleanse the world of humanity.'
He glanced across and down at her. 'I did not say that.'
'Oh. Hard to manage, I would imagine, for a lone warrior, even a Toblakai warrior. What happened to your companions?'
'Dead. Yes, it is as you say. A lone warrior cannot slay a hundred thousand enemies, even if they are children.'
'A hundred thousand? Oh, Karsa, that's barely the population of two Holy Cities. Your enemy does not number in the hundreds of thousands, it numbers in the tens of millions.'
'That many?'
'Are you reconsidering?'
He shook his head slowly, clearly amused. 'Samar Dev, even tens of millions can die, one city at a time.'
'You will need an army.'
'I have an army. It awaits my return.'
Toblakai. An army of Toblakai, now that would be a sight to loosen the bladder of the Empress herself. 'Needless to say, Karsa Orlong, I hope you never make it home.'
'Hope as you like, Samar Dev. I shall do what needs doing in my own time. None can stop me.'
A statement, not a boast. The witch shivered in the heat.
****
They approached a range of cliffs marking the Turul'a Escarpment, the sheer face of the limestone pocked with countless caves. Cutter watched Heboric Ghost Hands urge his mount into a canter, drawing ahead, then reining in sharply, the reins cutting into his wrists, a flare of greenish fire blossoming at his hands.
'Now what?' the Daru asked under his breath.
Greyfrog bounded forward and halted at the old man's side.
'They sense something,' Felisin Younger said behind Cutter. 'Greyfrog says the Destriant is suddenly fevered, a return of the jade poison.'
'The what?'
'Jade poison, the demon says. I don't know.'
Cutter looked at Scillara, who rode at his side, head lowered, almost sleeping in the saddle. She's getting fat. Gods, on the meals we cook? Incredible.
'His madness returns,' Felisin said, her voice fearful. 'Cutter, I don't like this—'
'The road cuts through, there.' He pointed. 'You can see the notch, beside that tree. We'll camp just up ahead, at the base, and make the climb tomorrow.'
Cutter in the lead, they rode forward until they reached Heboric Ghost Hands. The Destriant was glaring at the cliff rearing before them, muttering and shaking his head. 'Heboric?'
A quick, fevered glance. 'This is the war,' he said. Green flames flickered across his barbed hands. 'The old belong to the ways of blood. The new proclaim their own justice.' The old man's toadlike face stretched into a ghastly-grimace. 'These two cannot — cannot — be reconciled. It is so simple, do you see? So simple.'
'No,' Cutter replied, scowling. 'I do not see. What war are you talking about? The Malazans?'
'The Chained One, perhaps he was once of the old kind. Perhaps, yes, he was that. But now, now he is sanctioned. He is of the pantheon. He is new. But then, what are we? Are we of the blood? Or do we bow to the justice of kings, queens, emperors and empresses? Tell me, Daru, is justice written in blood?'
Scillara asked, 'Are we going to camp or not?'
Cutter looked at her, watched as she pushed rustleaf into the bowl of her pipe. Struck sparks.
'They can talk all they want,' Heboric said. 'Every god must choose. In the war to come. Blood, Daru, burns with fire, yes? Yet... yet, my friend, it tastes of cold iron. You must understand me. I am speaking of what cannot be reconciled. This war — so many lives, lost, all to bury the Elder Gods once and for all. That, my friends, is the heart of this war. The very heart, and all their arguing means nothing. I am done with them. Done with all of you. Treach has chosen. He has chosen. And so must you.'
'I don't like choosing,' Scillara said behind a wreath of smoke. 'As for blood, old man, that's a justice you can never put to sleep. Now, let us find a camp site. I'm hungry, tired and saddlesore.'
Heboric slipped down from his horse, gathered the reins, and made his way towards a side track. 'There's a hollow in the wall,' he said. 'People have camped there for millennia, why not us? One day,' he added as he continued on, 'the jade prison shall shatter, and the fools will stumble out, coughing in the ashes of their convictions. And on that day, they will realize that it's too late. Too late to do a damned thing.'
More sparks and Cutter glanced over to see Felisin Younger lighting her own pipe. The Daru ran a hand through his hair, squinting in the glare of the sun's light reflecting off the cliff-side. He dismounted. 'All right,' he said, leading hi
s horse. 'Let's camp.'
Greyfrog bounded after Heboric, clambering over the rock like a bloated lizard.
'What did he mean?' Felisin asked Cutter as they made their way along the trail. 'Blood and Elder Gods — what are Elder Gods?'
'Old ones, mostly forgotten ones. There's a temple dedicated to one in Darujhistan, must have stood there a thousand years. The god was named K'rul. The worshippers vanished long ago. But maybe that doesn't matter.'
****
Tugging her own horse along in their wake, Scillara stopped listening to Cutter as he went on. Elder gods, new gods, blood and wars, it made little difference to her. She just wanted to rest her legs, ease the aches in her lower back, and eat everything they still had in the saddle-packs.
Heboric Ghost Hands had saved her, drawn her back into life, and that had lodged something like mercy in her heart, stifling her inclination to dismiss the mad old man outright. He was haunted in truth, and such things could drag the sanest mind into chaos. But what value could be found in trying to make sense of all that he said?
The gods, old or new, did not belong to her. Nor did she belong to them. They played their ascendancy games as if the outcome mattered, as if they could change the hue of the sun, the voice of the wind, as if they could make forests grow in deserts and mothers love their children enough to keep them. The rules of mortal flesh were all that mattered, the need to breathe, to eat, drink, to find warmth in the cold of night. And, beyond these struggles, when the last breath had been taken inside, well, she would be in no condition to care about anything, about what happened next, who died, who was born, the cries of starving children and the vicious tyrants who starved them — these were, she understood, the simple legacies of indifference, the consequences of the expedient, and this would go on in the mortal realm until the last spark winked out, gods or no gods.
And she could make peace with that. To do otherwise would be to rail at the inevitable. To do otherwise would be to do as Heboric Ghost Hands did, and look where it took him. Into madness. The truth of futility was the hardest truth of all, and for those clear-eyed enough to see it, there was no escape.
She had been to oblivion, after all, and had returned, and so she knew there was nothing to fear in that dream-thick place.
True to Heboric's words, the rock shelter revealed the signs of countless generations of occupation. Boulder-lined hearths, red ochre paintings on the bleached walls, heaps of broken pottery and fire-split, charred bones. The clay floor of the hollow was packed hard as stone by countless passings. Nearby was the sound of trickling water, and Scillara saw Heboric crouched there, before a spring-fed pool, his glowing hands held over the placid, dark-mirror surface, as if hesitating to plunge them down into the coolness. White-winged butterflies danced in the air around him.
He journeyed with the gift of salvation. Something to do with the green glow of his hands, and the ghosts haunting him. Something to do with his past, and what he saw of the future. But he belonged to Treach now, Tiger of Summer. No reconciliation.
She spied a flat rock and walked over to sit, stretching out her weary legs, noting the bulge of her belly as she leaned back on her hands. Staring down upon it, cruel extrusion on what had once been a lithe form, forcing an expression of disgust on her features.
'Are you with child?'
She glanced up, studied Cutter's face, amused at his dawning revelation as it widened his eyes and filled them with alarm.
'Bad luck happens,' she said. Then, 'I blame the gods.'
Chapter Six
Paint a line with blood and, standing over it, shake a nest of spiders good and hard. They fall to this side of the divide. They fall to that side of the divide. Thus did the gods fall, taut-legged and ready, as the heavens trembled, and in the scattering rain of drifting web — all these dread cut threads of scheming settling down — skirling now in the winds that roared sudden, alive and vengeful, to pronounce in tongues of thunder, the gods were at war.
Slayer of Magic, A history of the Host of Days, Sarathan
Through slitted eyes, in the bar of shadow cast by the great helm's ridged brow, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas studied the woman.
Harried aides and functionaries rushed past her and Leoman of the Flails, like leaves in a torrential flood. And the two, standing there, like stones. Boulders. Like things... rooted, yes, rooted to bedrock. Captain Dunsparrow, now Third Dunsparrow. A Malazan.
A woman, and Leoman... well, Leoman liked women.
So they stood, oh yes, discussing details, finalizing the preparations for the siege to come. The smell of sex a heady smugness enveloping the two like a poisonous fog. He, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas, who had ridden at Leoman's side through battle after battle, who had saved Leoman's life more than once, who had done all that had ever been asked of him, was loyal. But she, she is desirable.
He told himself it made no difference. There had been other women. He'd had a few himself from time to time, although not the same ones as Leoman had known, of course. And, one and all, they had been nothing before the faith, withering into insignificance in the face of hard necessity. The voice of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic overwhelmed with its descending squall of destruction. This was as it should be.
Dunsparrow. Malazan, woman, distraction and possible corrupter. For Leoman of the Flails was hiding something from Corabb, and that had never before happened. Her fault. She was to blame. He would have to do something about her, but what?
He rose from the Falah'd's old throne, that Leoman had so contemptuously discarded, and walked to the wide, arched window overlooking the inner keep compound. More chaotic scurrying below, dust twisting in the sun-speared air. Beyond the palace wall, the bleached rooftops of Y'Ghatan, clothes drying in the sun, awnings rippling in the wind, domes and the cylindrical, flat-topped storage buildings called maethgara that housed in vast containers the olive oil for which the city and its outlying groves were renowned. In the very centre of the city rose the eight-sided, monstrously buttressed Temple of Scalissara, with its inner dome a mottled hump of remnant gold-leaf and green copper tiles liberally painted by bird droppings.
Scalissara, Matron Goddess of Olives, the city's own, cherished protector, now in abject disrepute. Too many conquests she could not withstand, too many gates battered down, walls pounded into rubble. While the city itself seemed capable of ever rising again from the dust of destruction, Scalissara had revealed a more finite number of possible resurrections. And, following the last conquest, she did not return to pre-eminence. Indeed, she did not return at all.
Now, the temple belonged to the Queen of Dreams.
A foreign goddess. Corabb scowled. Well, maybe not entirely foreign, but still...
The great statues of Scalissara that once rose from the corners of the city's outer fortifications, marble arms plump and fleshy, upraised, an uprooted olive tree in one hand, a newborn babe in the other, the umbilical cord wrapped snake-like up her forearm, then across and down, into her womb — the statues were gone. Destroyed in the last conflagration. Now, on three of the four corners, only the pedestal remained, bare feet broken clean above the ankles, and on the fourth even that was gone.
In the days of her supremacy, every foundling child was named after her if female, and, male or female, every abandoned child was taken into the temple to be fed, raised and schooled in the ways of the Cold Dream, a mysterious ritual celebrating a kind of divided spirit or something — the esoterica of cults were not among Corabb's intellectual strengths, but Leoman had been one such foundling child, and had spoken once or twice of such things, when wine and durhang loosened his tongue. Desire and necessity, the war within a mortal's spirit, this was at the heart of the Cold Dream. Corabb did not understand much of that. Leoman had lived but a few years under the guidance of the temple's priestesses, before his wild indulgences saw him expelled into the streets. And from the streets, out into the Odhans, to live among the desert tribes, and so to be forged by the sun and blowing sands of Raraku into
the greatest warrior Seven Cities had ever beheld. At least in Corabb's lifetime. The Fala'dhan of the Holy Cities possessed grand champions in their day, of course, but they were not leaders, they had nothing of the wiles necessary for command. Besides, Dassem Ultor and his First Sword had cut them down, every one of them, and that was that.
Leoman had sealed Y'Ghatan, imprisoning within its new walls an emperor's ransom in olive oil. The maethgara were filled to bursting and the merchants and their guilds were shrieking their outrage, although less publicly since Leoman, in a fit of irritation, had drowned seven representatives in the Grand Maeth attached to the palace. Drowned them in their very own oil. Priests and witches were now petitioning for beakers of that fell amber liquid.
Dunsparrow had been given command of the city garrison, a mob of drunken, lazy thugs. The first tour of the barracks had revealed the military base as little more than a raucous harem, thick with smoke and pool-eyed, prepubescent boys and girls staggering about in a nightmare world of sick abuse and slavery. Thirty officers were executed that first day, the most senior one by Leoman's own hand. The children had been gathered up and redistributed among the temples of the city with the orders to heal the damage and purge what was possible of their memories. The garrison soldiers had been given the task of scouring clean every brick and tile of the barracks, and Dunsparrow had then begun drilling them to counter Malazan siege tactics, with which she seemed suspiciously familiar.
Corabb did not trust her. It was as simple as that. Why would she choose to fight against her own people? Only a criminal, an outlaw, would do that, and how trustworthy was an outlaw? No, there were likely horrific murders and betrayals crowding her sordid past, and now here she was, spreading her legs beneath Falah'd Leoman of the Flails, the known world's most feared warrior. He would have to watch her carefully, hand on the grip of his new cutlass, ready at a moment's notice to cut her clean in half, head to crotch, then across, diagonally, twice — swish swish! — right shoulder to left hip, left shoulder to right hip, and watch her part ways. A duty-bound execution, yes. At the first hint of betrayal.