‘Relieved to hear some things remain so, truth be told.’
‘Ghost Hands. Get Felisin away from this place. Greyfrog here will accompany you.’
‘And you?’
‘I must go to Sha’ik. No, say nothing until I finish. I know that you and she were once close-perhaps not in a pleasing manner, but close none the less. But that mortal child is soon to be no more. The goddess is about to devour her soul even as we speak-and once that is done, there shall be no return. The young Malazan girl you once knew will have ceased to exist. Thus, when I go to Sha’ik, I go not to the child, but to the goddess.’
‘But why? Are you truly loyal to the notion of apocalypse? Of chaos and destruction?’
‘No. I have something else in mind. I must speak with the goddess-before she takes Sha’ik’s soul.’
Heboric stared at the High Mage for a long time, seeking to discern what L’oric sought from that vengeful, insane goddess.
‘There are two Felisins,’ L’oric then murmured, eyes half veiled. ‘Save the one you can, Heboric Light Touch.’
‘One day, L’oric,’ Heboric growled, ‘I will discover who you truly are.’
The High Mage smiled. ‘You will find this simple truth-I am a son who lives without hope of ever matching my father’s stride. That alone, in time, will explain all you need know of me. Go, Destriant. Guard her well.’
Ghosts pivoted, armour shedding red dust, and saluted as Karsa Orlong limped past. At least these ones, he reflected dully, weren’t shackled in chains.
The blood trail had led him into a maze of ruins, an unused section of the city notorious for its cellars and pitfalls and precariously leaning walls. He could smell the beast. It was close and, he suspected, cornered.
Or, more likely, it had decided to make a stand, in a place perfectly suited for an ambush.
If only the slow, steady patter of dripping blood had not given away its hiding place.
Karsa kept his gaze averted from that alleyway of inky shadows five paces ahead and to his right. He made his steps uncertain, uneven with pain and hesitation, not all of it feigned. The blood between his hands and the sword’s grip had grown sticky, but still threatened to betray his grasp on the weapon.
Shadows were shredding the darkness, as if the two elemental forces were at war, with the latter being driven back. Dawn, Karsa realized, was approaching.
He came opposite the alley.
And the hound charged.
Karsa leapt forward, twisting in mid-air to slash his sword two-handed, cleaving an arc into his wake.
The tip slashed hide, but the beast’s attack had already carried it past. It landed on one foreleg, which skidded out from under it. The hound fell onto one shoulder, then rolled right over.
Karsa scrambled back to his feet to face it.
The beast crouched, preparing to charge once again.
The horse that burst out of a side alley caught both hound and Toblakai by surprise. That the panicked animal had been galloping blind was made obvious as it collided with the hound.
There had been two riders on the horse. And both were thrown from the saddle, straight over the hound.
The impact had driven the hound down beneath the wildly stamping hoofs. Somehow, the horse stayed upright, staggering clear with heavy snorts as if seeking to draw breath into stunned lungs. Behind it, the hound’s claws gouged the cobbles as it struggled to right itself.
Snarling, Karsa lunged forward and plunged the sword’s point into the beast’s neck.
It shrieked, surged towards the Toblakai.
Karsa leapt away, dragging his sword after him.
Blood gushing from the puncture in its throat, the hound rose up on its three legs, weaving, head swaying as it coughed red spume onto the stones.
A figure darted out from the shadows. The spiked ball at the end of a flail hissed through the air, and thundered into the hound’s head. A second followed, hammering down from above to audibly crack the beast’s thick skull.
Karsa stepped forward. An overhead two-handed swing finally drove the hound from its wobbling legs.
Side by side, Leoman and Karsa closed in to finish it. A dozen blows later and the hound was dead.
Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas then stumbled into view, a broken sword in his hand.
Karsa wiped the gore from his blade then glared at Leoman. ‘I did not need your help,’ he growled.
Leoman grinned. ‘But I need yours.’
Pearl staggered from the trench, clambering over sprawled corpses. Since his rather elegant assassination of Henaras, things had gone decidedly downhill-steeper than that trench behind me. Countless guards, then the ghostly army whose weapons were anything but illusory. His head still ached from Lostara’s kiss-damned woman, just when I thought I’d figured her out…
He’d been cut and slashed at all the way through that damned camp, and now stumbled half blind towards the ruins.
The darkness was being torn apart on all sides. Kurald Emurlahn was opening like death’s own flower, with the oasis at its dark heart. Beneath the sorcerous pressure of that manifestation, it was all he could do to pitch headlong down the trail.
So long as Lostara stayed put, they might well salvage something out of all this.
He came to the edge and paused, studying the pit where he’d left her. No movement. She was either staying low or had left. He padded forward.
I despise nights like these. Nothing goes as planned-
Something hard struck him in the side of his head. Stunned, he fell and lay unmoving, his face pressed against the cold, gritty ground.
A voice rumbled above him. ‘That was for Malaz City. Even so, you still owe me one.’
‘After Henaras?’ Pearl mumbled, his words puffing up tiny clouds of dust. ‘You should be owing me one.’
‘Her? Not worth counting.’
Something thumped heavily to the ground beside Pearl. That then groaned.
‘All right,’ the Claw sighed-more dust, a miniature Whirlwind-‘I owe you one, then.’
‘Glad we’re agreed. Now, make some more noises. Your lass over there’s bound to take a look… eventually.’
Pearl listened to the footfalls pad away. Two sets. The wizard was in no mood to talk, I suppose.
To me, that is.
I believe I am sorely humbled.
Beside him, the trussed shape groaned again.
Despite himself, Pearl smiled.
To the east, the sky paled.
And this night was done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On this day, Raraku rises.
xxxiv.II.1.81 ‘Words of the Prophecy’
THE WHIRLWIND GODDESS HAD ONCE BEEN A RAGING STORM OF WIND and sand. A wall surrounding the young woman who had once been Felisin of House Paran, and who had become Sha’ik, Chosen One and supreme ruler of the Army of the Apocalypse.
Felisin had been her mother’s name. She had then made it her adopted daughter’s name. Yet she herself had lost it. Occasionally, however, in the deepest hours of night, in the heart of an impenetrable silence of her own making, she caught a glimpse of that girl. As she once had been, the smeared reflection from a polished mirror. Round-cheeked and flushed, a wide smile and bright eyes. A child with a brother who adored her, who would toss her about on one knee as if it was a bucking horse, and her squeals of fear and delight would fill the chamber.
Her mother had been gifted with visions. This was well known. A respected truth. And that mother’s youngest daughter had dreamed that one day she too would find that talent within her.
But that gift only came with the goddess, with this spiteful, horrific creature whose soul was far more parched and withered than any desert. And the visions that assailed Sha’ik were murky, fraught things. They were, she had come to realize, not born of any talent or gift. They were the conjurings of fear.