The fire-making kit was from Darujhistan, and consisted of flint and iron bar, wick-sticks, igniting powder, the fibrous inner lining from tree bark, and a long-burning gel the city’s alchemists rendered from the gas-filled caverns beneath the city. Sparks flashed three times before the powder caught with a hiss and flare of flame. The bark lining followed, then, dipping a wick-stick into the gel, Cutter set it alight. He then transferred the flame to the lantern.
A sphere of light burgeoned in the chamber, revealing the crushed wreckage of the runner, rough-hewn stone walls and vaulted ceiling. Apsalar was still seated near the splintered shaft of the tiller, barely illumined by the lantern’s light. More like an apparition than a flesh and blood person.
‘I see a doorway beyond,’ she said.
He swung about, lifting the lantern. ‘All right, at least we’re not in a tomb, then. More like some kind of storage room.’
‘I smell dust… and sand.’
He slowly nodded, then scowled in sudden suspicion. ‘Let’s do some exploring,’ he grated as he began collecting his gear, including the bow. He froze at a chittering sound from the doorway, looked up to see a score of eyes, gleaming with the lantern’s reflected light. Close-set but framing the doorway on all sides, including the arch where, Cutter suspected, they were hanging upside down.
‘Bhok’arala,’ Apsalar said. ‘We’ve returned to Seven Cities.’
‘I know,’ the Daru replied, wanting to spit. ‘We spent most of last year trudging across that damned wasteland, and now we’re back where we started.’
‘So it would seem. So, Crokus, are you enjoying being the plaything of a god?’
He saw little value in replying to that question, and chose instead to clamber down to the puddled floor and approach the doorway.
The bhok’arala scampered with tiny shrieks, vanishing into the darkness of the hallway beyond. Cutter paused at the threshold and glanced back. ‘Coming?’
Apsalar shrugged in the gloom, then made her way forward.
The corridor ran straight and level for twenty paces, then twisted to the right, the floor forming an uneven, runnelled ramp that led upward to the next level. There were no side chambers or passages until they reached a circular room, where sealed doorways lining the circumference hinted at entrances to tombs. In one curved wall, between two such doorways, there was an alcove in which stairs were visible.
And crouched at the base of those stairs was a familiar figure, teeth gleaming in a wide smile.
‘Iskaral Pust!’
‘Missed me, didn’t you, lad?’ He edged forward like a crab, then cocked his head. ‘I should soothe him now-both of them, yes. Welcoming words, a wide embrace, old friends, yes, reunited in a great cause once more. Never mind the extremity of what will be demanded of us in the days and nights to come. As if I need help-Iskaral Pust requires the assistance of no-one. Oh, she might be useful, but she hardly looks inclined, does she? Miserable with knowledge, is my dear lass.’ He straightened, managing something between an upright stance and a crouch. His smile suddenly broadened. ‘Welcome! My friends!’
Cutter advanced on him. ‘I’ve no time for any of this, you damned weasel-’
‘No time? Of course you have, lad! There’s much to be done, and much time in which to do it! Doesn’t that make for a change? Rush about? Not us. No, we can dawdle. Isn’t that wonderful?’
‘What does Cotillion want of us?’ Cutter demanded, forcing his fists to unclench.
‘You are asking me what Cotillion wants of you? How should I know?’ He ducked down. ‘Does he believe me?’
‘No.’
‘No what? Have you lost your mind, lad? You won’t find it here! Although my wife might-she’s ever cleaning and clearing up-at least, I think she is. Though she refuses to touch the offerings-my little bhok’arala children leave them everywhere I go, of course. I’ve become used to the smell. Now, where was I? Oh yes, dearest Apsalar-should you and I flirt? Won’t that make the witch spit and hiss! Hee hee!’
‘I’d rather flirt with a bhok’aral,’ she replied.
‘That too-I’m not the jealous type, you’ll be relieved to hear, lass. Plenty of ’em about for you to choose from, in any case. Now, are you hungry? Thirsty? Hope you brought your own supplies. Just head on up these stairs, and when she asks, you haven’t seen me.’
Iskaral Pust stepped back and vanished.
Apsalar sighed. ‘Perhaps his… wife will prove a more reasonable host.’
Cutter glanced back at her. Somehow I doubt it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘There is no death in light.’
Anarmann,
‘MEZLA ONE AND ALL,’ FEBRYL MUTTERED AS HE HOBBLED along the worn, dusty path, his breath growing harsher. There was little in this world that much pleased him any more. Malazans. His failing body. The blind insanity of power so brutally evinced in the Whirlwind Goddess. In his mind, the world was plunging into chaos, and all that it had been-all that he had been-was trapped in the past.
But the past was not dead. It merely slept. The perfect, measured resurrection of old patterns could achieve a rebirth. Not a rebirth such as had taken Sha’ik-that had been nothing more than the discarding of one, badly worn vessel for a new one not nearly so battered. No, the rebirth Febryl imagined was far more profound.
He had once served the Holy Falah’d Enqura. The Holy City of Ugarat and its host of tributary cities had been in the midst of a renaissance. Eleven great schools of learning were thriving in Ugarat. Knowledge long lost was being rediscovered. The flower of a great civilization had turned to face the sun, had begun to open.
The Mezla and their implacable legions had destroyed… everything. Ugarat had fallen to Dassem Ultor. The schools were assailed by soldiers, only to discover, to their fury, that their many riches and texts had, along with philosophers and academics, vanished. Enqura had well understood the Mezla thirst for knowledge, the Emperor’s lust for foreign secrets, and the city’s Holy Protector would give them nothing. Instead, he had commanded Febryl, a week before the arrival of the Malazan armies, to shut down the schools, to confiscate the hundred thousand scrolls and bound volumes, the ancient relics of the First Empire, and the teachers and scholars themselves. By the Protector’s decree, Ugarat’s coliseum became the site of a vast conflagration, as everything was burned, destroyed. The scholars were crucified-those that did not fling themselves on the pyre in a fit of madness and grief-and their bodies dumped into the pits containing the smashed relics just outside the city wall.
Febryl had done as he had been commanded. His last gesture of loyalty, of pure, unsullied courage. The terrible act was necessary. Enqura’s denial was perhaps the greatest defiance in the entire war. One for which the Holy Protector paid with his life, when the horror that was said to have struck Dassem Ultor upon hearing of the deed transformed into rage.
Febryl’s loss of faith had come in the interval, and it had left him a broken man. In following Enqura’s commands, he had so outraged his mother and father-both learned nobles in their own right-that they had disowned him to his face. And Febryl had lost his mind that night, recovering his sanity with dawn staining the horizon, to find that he had murdered his parents. And their servants. That he had unleashed sorcery to flay the flesh from the guards. That such power had poured through him as to leave him old beyond his years, wrinkled and withered, his bones brittle and bent.
The old man hobbling out through the city gate that day was beneath notice. Enqura searched for him, but Febryl succeeded in evading the Holy Protector, in leaving the man to his fate.
Unforgivable.
A hard word, a truth harder than stone. But Febryl was never able to decide to which crime it applied. Three betrayals, or two? Was the destruction of all that knowledge-the slaying of all those scholars and teachers-was it, as the Mezla and other Falad’han later pronounced-the foulest deed of all? Fouler even than the T’lan Imass rising to slaughter the citizens of Aren? So much so that Enqura’s name has become a curse for Mezla and natives of Seven Cities alike? Three, not two?