Dust of Dreams

‘Bad luck, Corabb. No glory for you.’

  ‘Wasn’t looking for any—wasn’t real fighting, Bottle. I don’t see the point in that. They’d only learn anything if we could use our weapons and kill a few hundred of them.’

  ‘Right. That makes sense. Bring it up with Fiddler—’

  ‘I did. Just before he sent me back.’

  ‘He’s getting more unreasonable by the day.’

  ‘Funny,’ Corabb said, ‘that’s exactly what I said to him. Anyway, what’re you doing? This isn’t your bunk.’

  ‘You’re a sharp one all right, Corabb. See, it’s like this. Smiles is trying to murder me.’

  ‘Is she? Why?’

  ‘Women like her don’t need reasons, Corabb. She’s set booby traps. Poison, is my guess. Because I was staying behind, you see? She’s set a trap to kill me.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Corabb. ‘That’s clever.’

  ‘Not clever enough, friend. Because now you’re here.’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  Bottle edged back from the lockbox. ‘It’s unlocked,’ he said, ‘so I want you to lift the lid.’

  Corabb stepped past and flung the lid back.

  After he’d recovered from his flinch, Bottle crawled up for a look inside.

  ‘Now what?’ Corabb asked behind him. ‘Was that practice?’

  ‘Practice?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘No, Corabb—gods, this is strange—look at this gear! Those clothes.’

  ‘Well, what I meant was, do you want me to open Smiles’s box next?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s Cuttle’s. You’re at Cuttle’s bunk, Bottle.’ He pointed. ‘Hers is right there.’

  ‘Well,’ Bottle muttered as he stood up and dropped the lid on the lockbox. ‘That explains the codpiece.’

  ‘Oh . . . does it?’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘So, just how many bastards do you think you’ve sired by now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just say something, Corabb?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Before that.’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Something about bastards.’

  ‘Are you calling me a bastard?’ Corabb demanded, his face darkening.

  ‘No, of course not. How would I know?’

  ‘How—’

  ‘It’s none of my business, right?’ Bottle slapped the man on one solid shoulder and set off to find his boots. ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Thought you were sick.’

  ‘Better now.’

  Once he’d made his escape—in all likelihood narrowly avoiding being beaten to death by the squad’s biggest fist over some pathetic misunderstanding—Bottle glared up at the mid-afternoon sun for a moment, and then set off. All right, you parasite, I’m paying attention now. Where to?

  ‘It’s about time. I was having doubts—’

  Quick Ben! Since when were you playing around with Mockra? And do you have any idea how our skulls will ache by this evening?

  ‘Relax, I got something for that. Bottle, I need you to go to the Old Palace. I’m down in the crypts.’

  Where you belong.

  ‘First time anybody’s expressed that particular sentiment, Bottle. Tell me when you get to the grounds.’

  What are you doing in the crypts, Quick Ben?

  ‘I’m at the Cedance. You need to see this, Bottle.’

  Did you find them, then?

  ‘Who?’

  Sinn and Grub. Heard they went missing.

  ‘No, they’re not here, and no sign that anyone’s been down here in some time. As I’ve already told the Adjunct, the two imps are gone.’

  Gone? Gone where?

  ‘No idea. But they’re gone.’

  Bad news for the Adjunct—she’s losing her mages—

  ‘She’s got me. She doesn’t need anyone else.’

  And all my fears are laid to rest.

  ‘You may not have realized, Bottle, but I was asking you about your furry lover for a reason.’

  Jealousy?

  ‘Hurry up and get here so I can throttle you. No, not jealousy. Although, come to think on it, I can’t even recall the last time—’

  You said you had a reason, Quick Ben. Let’s hear it.

  ‘What’s Deadsmell been telling you?’

  What? Nothing. Well.

  ‘Hah, I knew it! Don’t believe him, Bottle. He hasn’t any idea—any idea at all—about what’s in the works.’

  You know, Quick Ben, oh . . . never mind. So, I’m on the grounds. Where to now?

  ‘Anybody see you?’

  You didn’t tell me to do this sneakily!

  ‘Anybody in sight?’

  Bottle looked round. Wings of the Old Palace were settled deep in mud, plaster cracking or simply gone, to reveal fissured, slumping brick walls. Snarls of grasses swallowed up old flagstone pathways. A plaza of some sort off to his left was now a shallow pond. The air was filled with spinning insects. No.

  ‘Good. Now, follow my instructions precisely, Bottle.’

  You sure? I mean, I was planning on ignoring every third direction you gave me.

  ‘Fiddler needs to have a few words with you, soldier. About rules of conduct when it comes to High Mages.’

  Look, Quick Ben, if you want me to find this Cedance, leave me to it. I have a nose for those kinds of things.

  ‘I knew it!’

  You knew what? I’m just saying—

  ‘She’s been whispering in your ear—’

  Gods below, Quick Ben! The noises she makes aren’t whispers. They’re not even words. I don’t—

  ‘She gives you visions, doesn’t she? Flashes of her own memories. Scenes.’

  How do you know that?

  ‘Tell me some.’

  Why do you think it’s any of your business?

  ‘Choose one, damn you.’

  He slapped at a mosquito. Some would be easier than others, he knew. Easier because they were empty of meaning. Most memories were, he suspected. Frozen scenes. Jungle trails, the bark of four-legged monkeys from cliff-sides. Huddled warmth in the night as hunting beasts coughed in the darkness. But there was one that returned again and again, in innumerable variations.

  The sudden blossoming of blue sky, an opening ahead, the smell of salt. Soft rush of gentle waves on white coral beach. Padding breathless on to the strand in a chorus of excited cries and chatter. Culmination of terrifying journeys overland where it seemed home would never again find them. And then, in sudden gift . . . Shorelines, Quick. Bright sun, hot sand underfoot. Coming home . . . even when the home has never been visited before. And, all at once, they gather to begin building boats.

  ‘Boats?’

  Always boats. Islands. Places where the tawny hunters do not stalk the night. Places, where they can be . . . safe.

  ‘The Eres—’

  Lived for the seas. The oceans. Coming from the great continents, they existed in a state of flight. Shorelines fed them. The vast emptiness beyond the reefs called to them.

  ‘Boats? What kind of boats?’

  It varies—I don’t always travel with the same group. Dug-outs. Reed boats and bamboo rafts. Skins, baskets bridged by saplings—like nests in toppled trees. Quick Ben, the Eres’al—they were smart, smarter than you might think. They weren’t as different from us as they might seem. They conquered the entire world.

  ‘So what happened to them?’

  Bottle shrugged. I don’t know. I think, maybe, we happened to them.

  He had found a sundered doorway. Walking the length of dark, damp corridors and following the narrow staircases spiralling downward to landings ankle-deep in water. Sloshing this way and that, drawing unerringly closer to that pulsing residue of ancient power. Houses, Tiles, Holds, Wandering—that all sounds simple enough, doesn’t it, Quick Ben? Logical. But what about the roads of the sea? Where do they fit in? Or the siren calls of the wind? The point is, we see oursel
ves as the great trekkers, the bold travellers and explorers. But the Eres’al, High Mage, they did it first. There isn’t a place we step anywhere in this world that they haven’t stepped first. Humbling thought, isn’t it? He reached a narrow tunnel with an uneven floor that formed islands between pools. A massive portal with a leaning lintel stone beckoned. He stepped through and saw the causeway, and the broader platform at the end, where stood Quick Ben.

  ‘All right, I’m here, Quick Ben. With soaked feet.’

  The vast chamber was bathed in golden light that rose like mist from the Tiles spreading out from the disc. Quick Ben, head tilted to one side, watched Bottle approach up the causeway, an odd look in his eyes.

  ‘What?’

  He blinked, and then gestured. ‘Look around, Bottle. The Cedance is alive.’

  ‘Signifying what?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me. The magic here should be waning. We’ve unleashed the warrens, after all. We’ve brought the Deck of Dragons. We’ve slammed the door on Chaos. It’s like bringing the wheel to a tribe that has only used sleds and travois—there’s been a revolution among this kingdom’s mages. Even the priests are finding everything upside down—it’d be nice to sneak a spy into the cult of the Errant. Anyway, this place should be dying, Bottle.’

  Bottle looked round. One Tile close by displayed a scatter of bones carved like impressions into the stone surface, impressions that glowed as if filled with embers. Nearby was another showing an empty throne. But the brightest Tile of all lifted its own image above the flat surface, so that it floated, swirling, in three dimensions. A dragon, wings spread wide, jaws open. ‘Hood’s breath,’ he muttered, repressing a shiver.

  ‘Your roads of the sea, Bottle,’ said Quick Ben. ‘They make me think about Mael.’

  ‘Well, hard not to think about Mael in this city, High Mage.’

  ‘You know, then.’

  Bottle nodded.

  ‘That’s not nearly as worrisome as what was happening back in the Malazan Empire. The ascension of Mallick Rel, the Jhistal.’

  Bottle frowned at Quick Ben. ‘How can that be more worrying than finding an Elder God standing next to the Letherii throne?’

  ‘It’s not the throne he’s standing beside. It’s Tehol. From what I gather, that relationship has been there for some time. Mael’s hiding here, trying to keep his head down. But he hasn’t much say when some mortal manages to grasp some of his power, and starts forcing concessions.’

  ‘The Elder God of the Seas,’ said Bottle, ‘was ever a thirsty god. And his daughter isn’t much better.’

  ‘Beru?’

  ‘Who else? The Lady of Fair Seas is an ironic title. It pays,’ he added, eyeing the dragon Tile, ‘not to take things so literally.’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ said Quick Ben, ‘of asking the Adjunct to elevate you to High Mage.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ snapped Bottle. ‘Give me a reason not to. And not one of those pathetic ones about comradeship and how you’re so needed in Fid’s squad.’

  ‘All right. See what you think of this one, then. Keep me where I am . . . as your shaved knuckle in the hole.’

  The High Mage’s glittering eyes narrowed, and then he smiled. ‘I may not like you much, Bottle, but sometimes . . . I like what you say.’

  ‘Lucky you. Now, can we get out of this place?’

  ‘I think it is time,’ she said, ‘for us to leave.’

  Withal squinted at her, and then rubbed at the bristle on his chin. ‘You want better accommodation, love?’

  ‘No, you idiot. I mean leave. The Bonehunters, this city, all of it. You did what you had to do. I did what I had to do—my miserable family of Rake’s runts are gone, now. Nothing holds us here any more. Besides,’ she added, ‘I don’t like where things are going.’

  ‘That reading—’

  ‘Meaningless.’ She fixed a level gaze on him. ‘Do I look like the Queen of High House Dark?’

  Withal hesitated.

  ‘Do you value your life, husband?’

  ‘If you want us to leave, why, I don’t expect anyone will try to stop us. We can book passage . . . somewhere.’ And then he frowned. ‘Hold on, Sand. Where will we go?’

  Scowling, she rose and began pacing round their small, sparsely furnished room. ‘Remember the Shake? On that prison island?’

  ‘Aye. The ones that used old Andii words for some things.’

  ‘Who worship the shore, yes.’

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘Who also seemed to think that the shore was dying.’

  ‘Maybe the one they knew—I mean, there’s always some kind of shore.’

  ‘Rising sea levels.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Those sea levels,’ she continued, now facing the window and looking out over the city, ‘have been kept unnaturally low . . . for a long time.’

  ‘They have?’

  ‘Omtose Phellack. The rituals of ice. The Jaghut and their war with the T’lan Imass. The vast ice fields are melting, Withal.’ She faced him. ‘You’re Meckros—you’ve seen for yourself the storms—we saw it again at Fent Reach—the oceans are in chaos. Seasons are awry. Floods, droughts, infestations. And where does the Adjunct want to take her army? East. To Kolanse. But it’s a common opinion here in Lether that Kolanse is suffering a terrible drought.’ Her dark eyes hardened. ‘Have you ever seen an entire people starving, dying of thirst?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘I am old, husband. I remember the Saelen Gara, an offshoot Andii people in my home world. They lived in the forests. Until the forests died. We begged them, then, to come to Kharkanas. To the cities of the realm. They refused. Their hearts were broken, they said. Their world had died, and so they elected to die with it. Andarist begged . . .’ Her gaze clouded then and she turned away, back to the window. ‘Yes, Withal, to answer you. Yes, I have. And I will not see it again.’

  ‘Very well. Where to, then?’

  ‘We will begin,’ she said, ‘with a visit to the Shake.’

  ‘What have they to tell you, Sand? Garbled memories. Ignorant superstitions.’

  ‘Withal. I fell in battle. We warred with the K’Chain Che’Malle. Until the Tiste Edur betrayed us, slaughtered us. Clearly, they were not as thorough as they perhaps should have been. Some Andii survived. And it seems that there were more than just K’Chain Che’Malle dwelling in that region. There were humans.’

  ‘The Shake.’

  ‘People who would become the Shake, once they took in the surviving Andii. Once the myths and legends of both groups knitted together and became indistinguishable.’ She paused, and then said, ‘But even then, there must have been a schism of some sort. Unless, of course, the Tiste Andii of Bluerose were an earlier population, a migration distinct from our own. But my thinking is this: some of the Shake, with Tiste Andii among them, split away, travelled inland. They were the ones who created Bluerose, a theocracy centred on the worship of the Black-Winged Lord. On Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness.’

  ‘Is it not equally possible,’ ventured Withal, ‘that all the Tiste Andii left? Leaving just the Shake, weakly blood-mixed here and there, perhaps, but otherwise just human, yet now possessing that knitted skein of myths and such?’

  She glanced at him, frowned. ‘That’s a thought, husband. The Tiste Andii survivors used the humans, to begin with, to regain their strength—to stay alive on this unknown world—even to hide them from Edur hunting parties. And then, when at last they judged they were ready, and it was safe, they all left.’

  ‘But wouldn’t the Shake have then rejected them? Their stories? Their words? After all, they certainly didn’t worship the Tiste Andii, did they? They worshipped the shore—and you have to admit, that’s one strange religion they have. Praying to a strip of beach and whatnot.’

  ‘And that is what interests me more than those surviving Tiste Andii. And that is why I wish to speak with their elders, their witches and warlocks.’

  ‘Deadsmell descri
bed the horrid skeletons his squad and Sinn found on the north end of the island. Half reptilian, half human. Misbegotten—’

  ‘That were quickly killed, disposed of. The taint, Withal, of K’Chain Che’Malle. And so, before we Tiste even arrived, they lived in the shadow of the Che’Malle. And it was not in isolation. No, there was some form of contact, some kind of relationship. There must have been.’

  He thought about that, still uncertain as to where her thoughts were taking her. Why it had become so important that she uncover the secrets of the Shake. ‘Sandalath, why did you Tiste war against the K’Chain Che’Malle?’

  She looked startled. ‘Why? Because they were different.’

  ‘I see. And they fought against you in turn. Because you were different, or because you were invading their world?’

  She reached up and closed the shutters, blocking out the cityscape and sky beyond. The sudden gloom was like a shroud on their conversation. ‘I’m going out now,’ she said. ‘Start packing.’

  With delicate precision, Telorast nipped at the eyelid, clasping it and lifting it away from the eye. Curdle leaned in for a closer look, then pulled back, hind claws scrabbling to maintain their grip on the front of Banaschar’s tunic.

  ‘He’s piss drunk, all right. Snuffed candle. Doused fire, gutted lamp, the reeking dead.’

  Telorast released the lid, watched it sink back down. Banaschar sighed wetly, groaned and shifted in the chair, head lolling.

  The two skeletal creatures scrambled down and rendezvoused on the window sill on the other side of the small room. They tilted their heads closer together.

  ‘What now?’ Curdle whispered.

  ‘What kind of question is that? What now? What now? Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘Well, what now, Telorast?’

  ‘How should I know! But listen, we need to do something! That Errant—he’s . . . he’s—well, I hate him, is what! And worse, he’s using Banaschar, our very own ex-priest.’

  ‘Our pet.’

  ‘That’s right. Our pet—not his!’

  ‘We should kill him.’

  ‘Who? Banaschar or the Errant?’

  ‘If we kill Banaschar, then nobody has a pet. If we kill the Errant, then we can keep Banaschar all to ourselves.’

  ‘Right, Curdle,’ Telorast said, nodding, ‘but which one would make the Errant angrier?’