Hood take me, maybe we all are.
The long descent of the ice field stretched out before them, studded with the rubble and detritus that was all that remained of the Age of the Jaghut. They stood side by side, a body without a soul and a soul without a body, and Hedge wished he could be more mindful of that delicious irony, hut as long as he could not decide which of them was more lost, the cool pleasure of that recognition evaded his grasp.
Beyond the ice field’s ragged demise two thousand paces distant, copses of deciduous trees rose in defiant exuberance, broken here and there by glades green with chest-high grasses. This patchwork landscape extended onward, climbing modest hills until those hills lifted higher, steeper, and the forest canopy, unbroken now, was thie darker green of conifers.
‘I admit,’ Hedge said, finally breaking the silence between them, ‘I didn’t expect anything like this. Broken tundra, maybe. Heaps of gravel, those dry dusty dunes stirred round by the winds. Mostly lifeless. Struggling, in other words.’
‘Yes,’ Emroth said in her rasping voice. ‘Unexpected, this close to the Throne of Ice.’
They set out down the slope.
‘I think,’ Hedge ventured after a time, ‘we should probably get around to discussing our respective, uh, destinations.’
The T’lan Imass regarded him with her empty, carved-out eyes. ‘We have travelled together, Ghost. Beyond that, nothing exists to bind you to me. I am a Broken, an Unbound, and I have knelt before a god. My path is so ordained, and all that would oppose me will be destroyed by my hand.’
‘And how, precisely, do you plan on destroying me, Emroth?’ Hedge asked..’I’m a Hood-forsaken ghost, after all.’
‘My inability to solve that dilemma, Ghost, is the only reason you are still with me. That, and my curiosity. I now believe you intend something inimical to my master-perhaps, indeed, your task is to thwart me. And yet, as a ghost, you can do nothing-’
‘Are you so sure?’
She did not reply. They reached to within thirty or so paces from the edge of the ice, where they halted again and the T’lan Imass shifted round to study him.
‘Manifestation of the will,’ Hedge said, smiling as he crossed his arms. ‘Took me a long time to come up with that phrase, and the idea behind it. Aye, I am a ghost, but obviously not your usual kind of ghost. I persist, even unto fashioning this seemingly solid flesh and bone-where does such power come from? That’s the question. I’ve chewed on this for a long time. In fact, ever since I opened my nonexistent eyes and realized I wasn’t in Coral any longer. I was someplace else. And then, when I found myself in, uh, familiar company, well, things got even more mysterious.’ He paused, then winked. ‘Don’t mind me talking now, Emroth?’
‘Go on,’ she said.
Hedge’s smile broadened, then he nodded and said, ‘The Bridgeburners, Emroth. That’s what we were called. An elite division in the Malazan Army. Pretty much annihilated at Coral-our last official engagement, I suppose. And that should have been that.
‘But it wasn’t. No. Some Tanno Spiritwalker gave us a song, and it was a very powerful song. The Bridgeburners, Emroth-the dead ones, that is; couldn’t say either way for the few still alive-us dead ones, we ascended.
‘Manifestation of the will, T’lan Imass. I’d hazard you understand that notion, probably better than I do. But such power didn’t end with your cursed Ritual. No, maybe you just set the precedent.’
‘You are not flesh without soul.’
‘No, I’m more like your reflection. Sort of inverted, aye?’
‘I sense no power from you,’ Emroth said, head tilting a fraction. ‘Nothing. You are not even here.’
Hedge smiled again, and slowly withdrew a cusser from beneath his raincape. He held it up between them. ‘Is this, Emroth?’
‘I do not know what that is.’
‘Aye, but is it even here?’
‘No. Like you it is an illusion.’
‘An illusion, or a manifestation of the will? My will?’
‘There is no value in the distinction,’ the T’lan Imass asserted.
You cannot see the truth within me, for the vision you’d need to see it is not within you. You threw it away, at the Ritual. You wilfully blinded yourselves to the one thing that can destroy you. That is, perhaps, destroying your kind even now-some trouble on the continent of Assail, yes? I have vague recollections of somebody hearing something… well, never mind that. The point here, Emroth, is this: you cannot understand me because you cannot see me. Beyond, that is, what I have willed into existence-this body, this cusser, this face-’
‘In which,’ Emroth said, ‘I now see my destruction.’
‘Not necessarily. A lot depends on our little conversation here. You say you have knelt before a god-no, it’s all right, I’ve already worked out who, Emroth. And you’re now doing its bidding.’ Hedge eyed the cusser in his hand. Its weight felt just right. It’s here, just like back at the Deragoth statues. No different at all. ‘I’ve walked a long way,’ he resumed, ‘starting out in the Jaghut underworld. I don’t recall crossing any obvious borders, or stepping through any gates. And the ice fields we’ve been crossing for what must have been weeks, well, that made sense, too. In fact, I’m not even much surprised we found the Ice Throne-after all, where else would it be?’ With his free hand he gestured at the forest-clad expanse before them. ‘But this…’
‘Yes,’ said the T’lan Imass. ‘You held to the notion of distinction, as do all your kind. The warrens. As if each was separate-’
‘But they are,’ Hedge insisted. ‘I’m not a mage, but I knew one. A very good one, with more than a few warrens at his disposal. Each one is an aspect of power. There are barriers between them. And chaos at their roots, and threading in between.’
‘Then what do you see here, Ghost?’
‘I don’t know, but it isn’t Jaghut. Yet now, well, I’m thinking it’s Elder, just like Jaghut. An Elder Warren. Which doesn’t leave many options, does it? Especially since this is your destination.’
‘In that you would be wrong,’ Emroth replied.
‘But you recognize it.’
‘Of course. It is Tellann. Home.’
‘Yet it’s here, trapped in the Jaghut underworld, Emroth. How can that be?’
‘I do not know.’
‘If it’s not your destination, then, I think I need to know if our finding it changes anything. For you, I mean.’
The head cocked yet further. ‘And upon my answer hangs my fate, Ghost?’
Hedge shrugged. The cusser was too real all right: his arm had begun to ache.
‘I have no answer for you,’ Emroth said, and Hedge might have heard something like regret in the creature’s voice, although more likely that was just his imagination. ‘Perhaps, Ghost,’ she continued after a moment, ‘what we see here is an example of this manifestation of the will.’
The sapper’s eyes widened. ‘Whose?’
‘In the Jaghut Wars, many T’lan Imass fell. Those who could not flee what remained of their bodies were left where they fell, for they had failed. On rare occasions, a Fallen would be gifted, so that its eternal vision looked out upon a vista rather than a stretch of ground or the darkness of earth. The T’lan Imass who were more thoroughly destroyed were believed to have found oblivion. True nonexistence, which we came to hold as the greatest gift of all.’
Hedge glanced away. These damned T’lan Imass were heartbreakers, in every sense of the term.
‘Perhaps,’ Emroth continued, ‘for some, oblivion was not what they found. Dragged down into the Jaghut underworld, the Jaghut realm of death. A place without the war, without, perhaps, the Ritual itself.’
‘Without the war? This is the Jaghut underworld-shouldn’t it be filled with Jaghut? Their souls? Their spirits?’
‘The Jaghut do not believe in souls, Ghost.’
Hedge stared, dumbfounded. ‘But… that’s ridiculous. If no souls, then how in Hood’s name am I here?’