The new fist that arrived hammered like a maul against the side of the Errant’s head, snapping it far over. The gleaming eye seemed to wink out and the god crumpled, vanishing from Brys’s dwindling vision.
All at once the coils weakened, and then frayed into dissolving threads.
Brys drew a ragged, delicious breath of chill night air.
He heard horse hoofs, a half dozen beasts, maybe more, approaching at a canter from up the street. Blinking sweat from his eyes, Brys rolled on to his stomach and then forced himself to his knees.
A hand closed on his harness and lifted him to his feet.
He found himself staring up at a Tarthenal-a familiar face, the heavy, robust features knotted absurdly into a fierce frown.
‘I got a question for you. It was for your brother and I was on my way but then I saw you.’
The riders arrived, horses skidding on the dew-slick cobbles-a Malazan troop, Brys saw, weapons unsheathed. One of them, a dark-skinned woman, pointed with a sword. ‘He crawled into that alley-come on, let’s chop the bastard into stewing meat!’ She made to dismount and then seemed to sag and an instant later she collapsed on to the street, weapon clattering.
Other soldiers dropped down from their mounts. Three of them converged on the unconscious woman, while the others fanned out and advanced into the alley.
Brys was still having difficulty staying upright. He found himself leaning with one forearm against the Tarthenal. ‘Ublala Pung,’ he sighed, ‘thank you.’
‘I got a question.’
Brys nodded. ‘All right, let’s hear it.’
‘But that’s the problem. I forgot what it was.’
One of the Malazans crowded round the woman now straightened and faced them. ‘Sinter said there was trouble,’ he said in heavily accented trader tongue. ‘Said we needed to hurry-to here, to save someone.’
‘I believe,’ Brys said, ‘the danger has passed. Is she all right, sir?’
‘I’m a sergeant-people don’t “sir” me… sir. She’s just done in. Both her and her sister.’ He scowled. ‘But we’ll escort you just the same, sir-she’d never forgive us if something happened to you now. So, wherever you’re going…’
The other soldiers emerged from the alley, and one said something in Malazan, although Brys needed no translation to understand that they’d found no one-the Errant’s survival instincts were ever strong, even when he’d been knocked silly by a Tarthenal’s fist.
‘It seems,’ Brys said, ‘I shall have an escort after all.’
‘It is not an offer you can refuse, sir,’ said the sergeant.
Nor will I. Lesson learned, Adjunct.
The soldiers were attempting to heave the woman named Sinter back into her saddle. Ublala Pung stepped up to them. ‘I will carry her,’ he said. ‘She’s pretty.’
‘Do as the Toblakai says,’ said the sergeant.
‘She’s pretty,’ Ublala Pung said again, as he took her limp form in his arms. ‘Pretty smelly, too, but that’s okay.’
‘Perimeter escort,’ snapped the sergeant, ‘crossbows cocked. Anybody steps out, nail ’em.’
Brys prayed there would be no early risers between here and the palace. ‘Best we hurry,’ he ventured.
On a rooftop not far away, Quick Ben sighed and then relaxed.
‘What was all that about?’ Hedge asked beside him.
‘Damned Toblakai… but that’s not the interesting bit, though, is it? No, it’s that Dal Honese woman. Well, that can all wait.’
‘You’re babbling, wizard.’
Magus of Dark. Gods below.
Alone in the cellar beneath the dormitories, Fiddler stared down at the card in his hand. The lacquered wood glistened, dripped as if slick with sweat. The smell rising from it was of humus, rich and dark, a scent of the raw earth.
‘Tartheno Toblakai,’ he whispered.
Herald of Life.
Well, just so.
He set it down and then squinted at the second card he had withdrawn to close this dread night. Unaligned. Chain. Aye, we all know about those, my dear. Fret naught, it’s the price of living.
Now, if only you weren’t so… strong. If only you were weaker. If only your chains didn’t reach right into the heart of the Bonehunters-if only I knew who was dragging who, why, I might have reason to hope.
But he didn’t, and so there wasn’t.
Chapter Four
Behold these joyful devourers
The land laid out skewered in silver
Candlesticks of softest pewter
Rolling the logs down cut on end
To make roads through the forest
That once was-before the logs
(Were rolled down cut on end)-
We called it stump road and we
Called it forest road when
Our imaginations starved
You can make fans with ribs
Of sheep and pouches for baubles
By pounding flat the ears
Of old women and old men-
Older is best for the ear grows
For ever it’s said, even when
There’s not a scrap anywhere to eat
So we carried our wealth
In pendulum pouches wrinkled
And hairy, diamonds and gems
Enough to buy a forest or a road
But maybe not both
Enough even for slippers of
Supplest skin feathered in down
Like a baby’s cheek
There is a secret we know
When nothing else is left
And the sky stops its tears
A belly can bulge full
On diamonds and gems
And a forest can make a road
Through what once was
You just won’t find any shade
To journey into the other worlds, a shaman or witch of the Elan would ride the Spotted Horse. Seven herbs, softened with beeswax and rolled into a ball and then flattened into an oblong disc that was taken into the mouth and held between lip and gum. Coolness slowly numbing and saliva rising as if the throat was the mouth of a spring, a tingling sensation lifting to gather behind the eyes in coalescing colours and then, in a blinding flash, the veil between worlds vanished. Patterns swirled in the air; complex geometries played across the landscape-a landscape that could be the limitless wall of a hide tent, or the rolling plains of a cave wall where ran the beasts-until the heart-stains emerged, pulsing, blotting the scene in undulating rows, sweet as waves and tasting of mother’s milk.
So arrived the Spotted Horse, a cascade of heart-stains rippling across the beast, down its long neck, sweeping along its withers, flowing like seed-heads from its mane and tail.
Ride into the alien world. Ride among the ancestors and the not-yet-born, among the tall men with their eternally swollen members, the women with their forever-filled wombs. Through forests of black threads, the touch or brush of any one of them an invitation to endless torment, for this was the path of return for all life, and to be born was to pass through and find the soul’s fated thread-the tale of a future death that could not be escaped. To ride the other way, however, demanded a supple traverse, evading such threads, lest one’s own birth-fate become entangled, knotted, and so doom the soul to eternal prison, snared within the web of conflicted fates.
Prophecies could be found among the black threads, but the world beyond that forest was the greatest gift. Timeless, home to all the souls that ever existed; this was where grief was shed, where sorrow dried up and blew away like dust, where scars vanished. To journey into this realm was to be cleansed, made whole, purged of all regrets and dark desires.
Riding the Spotted Horse and then returning was to be reborn, guiltless, guileless.
Kalyth knew all this, but only second-hand. The riders among her people passed on the truths, generation upon generation. Any one of the seven herbs, if taken alone, would kill. The seven mixed in wrong proportions delivered madness. And, finally, only those chosen as worthy by the shamans and witches would ever know the gift of the journey.