In a crowded room on the top floor of an inn, a flurry of once-dead beasts now scampered, snarled and snapped jaws. The black-furred rat, trailing entrails, had suddenly fallen upward to land on the ceiling, claws digging into the plaster, intestines dangling like tiny sausages in a smoke-house. The blue bat-turtle had bitten off the iguana’s tail and that creature escaped in a slithering dash and was now butting at the window’s shutters as if desperate to get out. The flicker bird, shedding oily feathers, flapped in frantic circles over the heads of everyone-none of whom had time to notice, as bottles smashed down, wine spilling like thinned blood, and the barely begun carving of riders on charging horses now writhed and reared on Crump’s lap, whilst he stared bug-eyed, mouth gaping-and moments later the first tiny horse dragged itself free and leapt down from the sapper’s thigh, wooden hoofs clopping across the floor, misshapen lump of rider waving a splinter.
Bellowing, shouts, shrieks-Ebron vomited violently, and, ducking to avoid that gush, Limp slipped in a puddle of wine and shattered his left knee. He howled.
Deadsmell started crawling for a corner. He saw Masan Gilani roll under the fancy bed as the flicker bird cracked headlong into a bedpost, exploding in a cloud of rank feathers.
Smart woman. Now, if only there was room under there for me, too.
In another section of the city, witnesses would swear in the Errant’s name, swear indeed on the Empty Throne and on the graves of loved ones, that two dragons burst from the heart of an inn, wreckage sailing out in a deadly rain of bricks, splinters, dust and fragments of sundered bodies that cascaded down into streets as far as fifty paces away-and even in the aftermath the next morning no other possible explanation sufficed to justify that shattered ruin of an entire building, from which no survivors were pulled.
The entire room trembled, and even as Hellian drove her elbow into a bearded face and heard a satisfying crunch, the wall opposite her cracked like fine glass and then toppled into the room, burying the figures thrashing about in pointless clinches on the floor. Women screamed-well, the fat one did, and she was loud enough and repetitive enough in those shrieks to fill in for everyone else-all of whom were too busy scrabbling out from the wreckage.
Hellian staggered back a step, and then, as the floor suddenly heaved, she found herself running although she could not be sure of her precise direction, but it seemed wise to find the door wherever that might be.
When she found it, she frowned, since it was lying flat on the floor, and so she paused and stared down for a time.
Until Urb stumbled into her. ‘Something just went up across the street!’ he gasped, spitting blood. ‘We got to get out of here-’
‘Where’s my corporal?’
‘Already down the stairs-let’s go!’But, no, it was time for a drink-
‘Hellian! Not now!’
‘Gare away! If not now, when?’
‘Spinner of Death, Knight of Shadow, Master of the Deck.’ Fiddler’s voice was a cold, almost inhuman growl. ‘Table holds them, but not the rest.’ And he started flinging cards, and each one he threw shot like a plate of iron to a lodestone, striking one person after another-hard against their chests, staggering them back a step, and with each impact-as Brys stared in horror-the victim was lifted off the floor, chair tumbling away, and slammed against the wall behind them no matter the distance.
The collisions cracked bones. Backs of heads crunched bloodily on the walls.
It was all happening too fast, with Fiddler standing as if in the heart of a maelstrom, solid as a deep-rooted tree.
The first struck was the girl, Sinn. ‘Virgin of Death.’ As the card smacked into her chest it heaved her, limbs flailing, up to a section of wall just beneath the ceiling. The sound she made when she hit was sickening, and she went limp, hanging like a spiked rag doll.
‘Sceptre.’
Grub shrieked, seeking to fling himself to one side, and the card deftly slid beneath him, fixing on to his chest and shoving him bodily across the floor, up against the wall just left of the door.
Quick Ben’s expression was one of stunned disbelief as Fiddler’s third card slapped against his sternum. ‘Magus of Dark.’ He was thrown into the wall behind him with enough force to send cracks through the plaster and he hung there, motionless as a corpse on a spike.
‘Mason of Death.’ Hedge bleated and made the mistake of turning round. The card struck his back and hammered him face first into the wall, whereupon the card began pushing him upward, leaving a red streak below the unconscious man.
The others followed, quick as a handful of flung stones. In each, the effect was the same. Violent impact, walls that shook. Sandalath Drukorlat, Queen of Dark. Lostara Yil, Champion of Life.
‘Obelisk.’ Bottle.
Gesler, Orb.
Stormy, Throne.
And then Fiddler faced Brys. ‘King of Life.’
The card flashed out from his hand, glittering like a dagger, and Brys snatched a breath the instant before it struck, eyes closing-he felt the blow, but nowhere near as viciously as had the others, and nothing touched his breast. He opened his eyes to see the card hovering, shivering, in the air before him.
Above it, he met Fiddler’s flat eyes.
The sapper nodded. ‘You’re needed.’
What?
Two remained untouched, and Fiddler turned to the first and nearest of these. ‘Banaschar,’ he said. ‘You keep poor company. Fool in Chains.’ He drew a card and snapped out his hand. The ex-priest grunted and was flung back over his chair, whereupon he shot upward to the domed ceiling. Dust engulfed the man at the impact.
Fiddler now faced the Adjunct. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
Staring, pale as snow, she said nothing.
‘For you, Tavore Paran… nothing.’
She flinched.
The door suddenly opened, hinges squealing in the frozen silence.
Turudal Brizad stepped into the chamber and then halted. Turudal… no, of course not. The Errant. Who stands unseen behind the Empty Throne. I wondered when you would show yourself. Brys realized he had drawn his sword; realized, too, that the Errant was here to kill him-a deed without reason, a desire without motive-at least none fathomable to anyone but the Errant himself.
He will kill me.
And then Fiddler-for his audacity.
And then everyone else here, so that there be no witnesses.
Fiddler slowly turned to study the Errant. The Malazan’s smile was chilling. ‘If that card was for you,’ he said, ‘it would have left the table the moment you opened the door. I know, you think it belongs to you. You think it’s yours. You are wrong.’
The Errant’s lone eye seemed to flare. ‘I am the Master of the Tiles-’
‘And I don’t care. Go on then. Play with your tiles, Elder. You cannot stand against the Master of the Deck-your time, Errant, is past.’
‘I have returned!’
As the Errant, raw power building round him, took another stride into the chamber, Fiddler’s low words cut into his path. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
The Elder God sneered. ‘Do you think Brys Beddict can stop me? Can stop what I intend here?’
Fiddler’s brows lifted. ‘I have no idea. But if you take one more step, Errant, the Master of the Deck will come through. Here, now. Will you face him? Are you ready for that?’
And Brys glanced to that card lying on the table. Inanimate, motionless. It seemed to yawn like the mouth of the Abyss itself, and he suddenly shivered.
Fiddler’s quiet challenge had halted the Errant, and Brys saw uncertainty stirred to life on the once-handsome features of Turudal Brizad.