The movements subsided with a diminishing of the landslide roaring accompanying it. Ussu returned his attention to the subject, dismissing the event. He’d entered high on the torso as he’d decided to come in above and between the lungs. The subject had stopped writhing, as even the slightest motion now induced waves of intense agony — or so he intuited. The gap large enough, he wiped his hand on the side of his robes, then, keeping it flat, like a knife-edge, worked it down into the blood-filled cavity.
The subject convulsed as if axe-struck, bellowing fury and anguish in a storm of mouthings and roaring. Ussu rode out the convulsion, hand up to his second knuckle in the man’s chest. After the waves of twitching passed, Ussu carefully began edging aside organs and pushing down through films of tissue to reach the heart, cradled as it was in its protective pocket of fat and muscle.
Incredibly, the subject was still conscious. Just half an arm’s length away the eyes blazed at him like promises of Hood’s own vengeance. Ussu pulled his gaze away: he’d brushed the heart. It was time to summon his Warren. He reached out, mentally, opening himself to the wash of energies, and was seized by a torrent that nearly threw him off the body. Gods! What lay behind such might? There was something here — some mystery beyond this Crimson Guard. They’d touched something. Something dormant, or hidden, with this vow of theirs.
No matter. There lay future researches. For now, the task at hand. Ha! At hand! In hand, perhaps. Where was Greymane — the Betrayer — Stonewielder?
He reached out, seeking him. The extraordinary might available to him drove Ussu’s consciousness far to the west, and there he found his man. An aura shone about him like a sky-gouging pillar, and the grey stone blade he carried in his hands streamed a molten puissance Ussu’s Warren interpreted as a blinding sun-flare. The earth rolled about the man as if it were a cloth, shaken, and the merest echo of that release cast Ussu away from the body like a blow. He struck the stone wall and slid down, stunned.
His aides shook him awake. Coming to, he flailed, groggy. Then he stood, worked to catch his breath. He grasped one’s shirt. ‘The Lord Protector! Where is he! I must speak to him!’
The aides, Theftian labourers, merely gazed at one another, baffled. Snarling, Ussu thrust them aside to stagger for the stairs. ‘Stay here! Watch him!’
Hiam was with Master Engineer Stimins discussing the potential damage from the tremor when the Overlord’s adviser, Ussu, burst in among them. Blood stained his robes, hands and arms, as if he’d been groping his way through a slaughterhouse. Two nearby Chosen drew blades on him. Hiam took one look at the man’s stricken gaze and waved the guards aside.
‘Lady forefend, man, what is it? What’s happened?’
‘Who named him Stonewielder?’ the Malazan demanded, almost frenzied.
Hiam felt his jaws clenching. ‘We do not discuss that,’ he ground out.
‘Who! Dammit, I must know.’
Master Engineer Stimins caught Hiam’s gaze, cocked a brow. Hiam gave him curt assent. ‘There are locals on these islands. Indigenous tribals who survive here and there, such as in the Screaming range. They first named him Stonewielder. There are long-standing predictions of the wall’s destruction. As old as the wall itself. They claimed he fit them. The stone’s revenge against the wall — that sort of nonsense.’
The Malazan mage had been nodding his agreement, as if in confirmation. ‘Yes. You here in Korel dismiss the Warrens — but they are real. One is named D’riss. The Warren of the Earth. The very ground beneath our feet. This… weapon… many claimed Greymane carries. Just now I found him, and it. It channels D’riss directly, Lord Protector. The might of the earth. And it has just been unsheathed against the wall. I felt it. Far to the west the Stormwall is being shaken to its roots. You felt the tremor, didn’t you? There is worse to come at any moment.’
Hiam met Stimins’ gaze. Poor man. Driven mad by the Lady. Yet… the old predictions. The land throwing off the wall, and the old Lord Protector Ruel’s vision: the wall collapsing in a great shuddering of the earth, the Riders pouring through to cover the land…
‘Calm yourself, Adviser-’ he began.
‘Calm myself?’ the man fairly choked. ‘The end is coming. I go to prepare for it. I suggest you do as well.’ And he lurched away.
The Chosen guards looked to Hiam for orders to pursue him, but he shook his head.
‘I don’t like this mention of the west,’ Stimins breathed, his voice low. ‘I’d have preferred it if he’d claimed it was here — overtopping. But not out there, to the west. Not an undermining… Send a message,’ he suggested. ‘Status report.’
Hiam gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Yes. There’s been a tremor, after all.’ His nod gathered conviction. ‘Yes. I’ll be up top. See to the repairs.’
Stimins snorted. ‘Wouldn’t be anywhere else, would I?’
Esslemont, Ian Cameron
Stonewielder
CHAPTER XII
We cannot learn without pain.
The first sign Stall had of trouble was members of the work gang standing up from their hammering to stare southwards. Stall pushed himself from the rock he’d been leaning against and, taking up his spear, drew his cloak tighter about himself. Evessa straightened as well, sent him a questioning look. He motioned to the rock field far below, where a lone figure climbed the rugged slope that sprawled down from the rear of the Stormwall. Taking up her spear, Evessa waved to Stall and the two took their time picking their way down to the man.
Closer, Stall saw him to be a bull of a fellow, apparently unarmed, full helm under an arm. Against the cold he wore a plain cloak and thick robes in layers over his armour. He and Evessa spread out to stand ahead of the fellow, to either side.
Stall planted his spear, called, ‘Who are you? Name yourself!’
The man did not answer immediately. He peered up past them to the slope where the rear of this section of the curved curtain wall soared like a fortress. The gang peered down from among the rocks where they worked on the buttressing ordered by Master Engineer Stimins.
The stranger nodded to himself, took a deep breath, and drew on his helm. ‘I suggest you go now,’ he told them in accented Korelri.
Stall lowered his spear. ‘You’ll have to come with us for questioning…’
Kneeling, the man pressed a gauntleted hand to the bare stony ground. Stall and Evessa shared a look — was the fellow touched? Stall began: ‘Don’t give us any…’
The ground shook. Rocks clattered, falling. Grating and roaring, the larger boulders shifted. Evessa cried out and had to jump when the huge rocks she stood upon ground together. The reverberation fanned out around them into the distance, from where the echoes of scraping and shifting returned ever more faintly. The workers cried out, scattering, clambering among the rocks.
Stall returned his attention to the stranger to see that he now carried a sword: a great two-handed length of dull grey. The man’s eyes glared a bright pale blue from the darkness of his helm. ‘Go now!’ he commanded. ‘Warn everyone to flee!’
Stall looked to Evessa, cocked a brow. The Jourilan woman inclined her head; Stall nodded. The two backed away. The man was clearing stones from the ground before him. Stall and Evessa picked up their pace, waving away the remaining workers watching them, uncertain.
‘Run, you damned fools!’ Stall yelled.
*
So which would it be? Greymane wondered while he stood waiting to give everyone time to put more room between he and they. The greatest mass-murderer of the region? Or a semi-mythical deliverer?