Pores whirled and ran.
A thousand or so angry black wasps provided escort.
Six stings could drop a horse. He shrieked as a fire ignited on the back of his neck. And then again, as another stinger stabbed, this time on his right ear.
He whirled his arms. There was a canal somewhere ahead-they’d crossed a bridge, he recalled, off to the left.
Another explosion of agony, this time on the back of his right hand.
Never mind the canal! I need a healer-fast!
He could no longer hear any buzzing, but the scene before him had begun to tilt, darkness bleeding out from the shadows, and the lights of lanterns through windows blurred, lurid and painful in his eyes. His legs weren’t working too well, either.
There, the Malazan Barracks.
Deadsmell. Or Ebron.
Staggering now, struggling to fix his gaze on the compound gate-trying to shout to the two soldiers standing guard, but his tongue was swelling up, filling his mouth. He was having trouble breathing. Running…
Running out of time-
‘Who was that?’
Grub came back from the hallway and shook his head. ‘Someone. Woke up the wasps.’
‘Glad they didn’t come in here.’
They were standing in a main chamber of some sort, a stone fireplace dominating one wall, framed by two deep-cushioned chairs. Trunks and chests squatted against two other walls, and in front of the last one, opposite the cold hearth, there was an ornate couch, above it a large faded tapestry. All were little more than vague, grainy shapes in the gloom.
‘We need a candle or a lantern,’ said Sinn. ‘Since,’ she added with an edge to her tone, ‘I can’t use sorcery-’
‘You probably can,’ said Grub, ‘now that we’re nowhere near the yard. There’s no one here, no, um, presence, I mean. It really is dead.’
With a triumphant gesture Sinn awakened the coals in the fireplace, although the flames flaring to life there were strangely lurid, spun through with green and blue tendrils.
‘That’s too easy for you,’ Grub said. ‘I didn’t even feel a warren.’
She said nothing, walking up to study the tapestry.
Grub followed.
A battle scene was depicted, which for such things was typical enough. It seemed heroes only existed in the midst of death. Barely discernible in the faded weave, armoured reptiles of some sort warred with Tiste Edur and Tiste Andii. The smoke-shrouded sky overhead was crowded with both floating mountains-most of them burning-and dragons, and some of these dragons seemed enormous, five, six times the size of the others even though they were clearly more distant. Fire wreathed the scene, as fragments of the aerial fortresses broke apart and plunged down into the midst of the warring factions. Everywhere was slaughter and harrowing destruction.
‘Pretty,’ murmured Sinn.
‘Let’s check the tower,’ said Grub. All the fires in the scene reminded him of Y’Ghatan, and his vision of Sinn, marching through the flames-she could have walked into this ancient battle. He feared that if he looked closely enough he’d see her, among the hundreds of seething figures, a contented expression on her round-cheeked face, her dark eyes satiated and shining.
They set off for the square tower.
Into the gloom of the corridor once more, where Grub paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust. A moment later green flames licked out from the chamber they had just quit, slithering across the stone floor, drawing closer.
In the ghoulish glow, Sinn smiled.
The fire followed them up the saddled stairs to the upper landing, which was bare of all furnishings. Beneath a shuttered, web-slung window was slumped a desiccated corpse. Leathery strips of skin here and there were all that held the carcass together, and Grub could see the oddity of the thing’s limbs, the extra joints at knee, elbow, wrist and ankle. The very sternum seemed horizontally hinged midway down, as were the prominent, birdlike collarbones.
He crept forward for a closer look. The face was frontally flattened, sharpening the angle where the cheekbones swept back, almost all the way to the ear-holes. Every bone he could see seemed designed to fold or collapse-not just the cheeks but the mandibles and brow-ridges as well. It was a face that in life, Grub suspected, could manage a bizarre array of expressions-far beyond what a human face could achieve.
The skin was bleached white, hairless, and Grub knew that if he so much as touched the corpse, it would fall to dust.
‘Forkrul Assail,’ he whispered.
Sinn rounded on him. ‘How do you know that? How do you know anything about anything?’
‘On the tapestry below,’ he said, ‘those lizards. I think they were K’Chain Che’Malle.’ He glanced at her, and then shrugged. ‘This Azath House didn’t die,’ he said. ‘It just… left.’
‘Left? How?’
‘I think it just walked out of here, that’s what I think.’
‘But you don’t know anything! How can you say things like that?’
‘I bet Quick Ben knows, too.’
‘Knows what?’ she hissed in exasperation.
‘This. The truth of it all.’
‘Grub-’
He met her gaze, studied the fury in her eyes. ‘You, me, the Azath. It’s all changing, Sinn. Everything-it’s all changing.’
Her small hands made fists at her sides. The flames dancing from the stone floor climbed the frame of the chamber’s entranceway, snapping and sparking.
Grub snorted, ‘The way you make it talk…’
‘It can shout, too, Grub.’
He nodded. ‘Loud enough to break the world, Sinn.’
‘I would, you know,’ she said with sudden vehemence, ‘just to see what it can do. What I can do.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
She grimaced as she turned away. ‘You might shout back.’
Tehol the Only, King of Lether, stepped into the room and, arms out to the sides, spun in a circle. Then beamed at Bugg. ‘What do you think?’
The manservant held a bronze pot in his battered, blunt hands. ‘You’ve had dancing lessons?’
‘No, look at my blanket! My beloved wife has begun embroidering it-see, there at the hem, above my left knee.’
Bugg leaned forward slightly. ‘Ah, I see. Very nice.’
‘Very nice?’
‘Well, I can’t quite make out what it’s supposed to be.’
‘Me neither.’ He paused. ‘She’s not very good, is she?’
‘No, she’s terrible. Of course, she’s an academic.’
‘Precisely,’ Tehol agreed.
‘After all,’ said Bugg, ‘if she had any skill at sewing and the like-’
‘She’d never have settled for the scholarly route?’
‘Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics.’
‘My thoughts inexactly, Bugg. Now, I must ask, what’s wrong?’
‘Wrong?’
‘We’ve known each other for a long time,’ said Tehol. ‘My senses are exquisitely honed for reading the finest nuances in your mood. I have few talents but I do assert, howsoever immodestly, that I possess exceptional ability in taking your measure.’
‘Well,’ sighed Bugg, ‘I am impressed. How could you tell I’m upset?’
‘Apart from besmirching my wife, you mean?’
‘Yes, apart from that.’
Tehol nodded towards the pot Bugg was holding, and so he looked down, only to discover that it was no longer a pot, but a mangled heap of tortured metal. Sighing again, he let it drop to the floor. The thud echoed in the chamber.
‘It’s the subtle details,’ said Tehol, smoothing out the creases in his Royal Blanket. ‘Something worth saying to my wife… casually, of course, in passing. Swift passing, as in headlong flight, since she’ll be armed with vicious fishbone needles.’
‘The Malazans,’ said Bugg. ‘Or, rather, one Malazan. With a version of the Tiles in his sweaty hands. A potent version, and this man is no charlatan. He’s an adept. Terrifyingly so.’
‘And he’s about to cast the Tiles?’
‘Wooden cards. The rest of the world’s moved on from Tiles, sire. They call it the Deck of Dragons.’