‘Meaning she owns you.’
His greying goatee writhed as he scowled his irritation. ‘Be the stubborn fool then. I never liked you.’
‘I’m relieved to hear that.’
He launched himself upon her. Their arms met in an eruption of power that shook the stones beneath their feet. Rocks tumbled down some ten fathoms to the blue-black waters of the Hole below. The gargantuan chain rattled and clacked to vibrate in a frothing line across the gap. The flesh of Sister Gosh’s hands wrinkled and cracked as if desiccated. She snarled, bearing down further, her face darkening in effort. A satisfied smile crept up behind Totsin’s goatee.
Like an explosion a crack shot through the chiselled stone beside them anchoring the chain. Snarling, Totsin twisted to heave Sister Gosh out over the Hole. Black tendrils like ribbons snapped out around him, yanking him backwards, and the two released their mutual grip with a great thunderclap of energy.
A new figure now stood upon the narrow stone perch, tall, emaciated, dressed all in black, his black hair a wild mass. ‘I have come back!’ he announced.
Edging round to face both, Totsin nodded to the newcomer: ‘Carfin. I am surprised to see you again.’
‘The truth at last, Totsin. The truth at last.’
A rumbling swelled in the distance as of a thunderstorm, though only high clouds obscured the sky. Sister Gosh and Carfin shared alarmed glances.
Totsin laughed. ‘Too late!’
‘Not yet,’ Sister Gosh snarled, and she threw everything she had at him.
The blast of energies surprised Totsin, throwing him back a step. Carfin levelled his Warren as well. The coursing power revealed far more potency than even Sister Gosh suspected of him — it seemed his sojourn within his Warren had granted him much greater confidence in his abilities. Totsin flailed beneath the cataract streams coursing upon him then, grimacing, leaned forward, edging in upon them. Carfin gestured again and a cowl of black snapped over the man’s face. His hands leapt to the hood, grasping, tearing it into shreds. Sister Gosh yelled as she drew up a great coil of might that she snapped out upon Totsin. He flinched back, crying aloud, and stumbled off the lip. Sister Gosh kept her punishment centred upon him all the way down, and, though she could not be sure, she believed he struck the water far below.
‘Thank you,’ she gasped to Carfin.
‘It was nothing.’
She turned to the anchor stone and the chain. ‘Quickly now.’
Each pressed hands to the final link, stressing, heating, searching for weaknesses. The water, she noted, now ran far higher on the chain than it had before. Thunder rising in pitch announced the approach of something enormous emerging from Bleeder’s Cut.
‘What was it like?’ she asked while they worked.
‘What was what like?’
‘Your Warren. Darkness. Rashan.’
‘I don’t know,’ Carfin answered, straight-faced. ‘It was dark.’
The metal glowed yellow now beneath Sister Gosh’s hands. Drips of molten metal ran down the sides. ‘You mean like that slimy cave you live in?’
Carfin clapped his hands and the metal of the link suddenly darkened to black beneath a coating of frost. It burst in an explosion of metal shards, Sister Gosh yanking her hands away. Screeching, grinding, the immense length of iron dragged itself down the lip of the cliff to flick from sight. Away across the gap water foamed and settled over its length as it sank.
‘It is not a cave,’ Carfin told Gosh. ‘It is a subterranean domicile.’
The ridge of solid rock they stood upon shook then, rolling and heaving. A titanic bulge of water came coursing over the bay created where Bleeder’s Cut met Flow Strait. The wave, more a wall of water, flowed over the Hole and with it went swift glimmering flashes of mother-of-pearl and brilliant sapphire.
Sister Gosh and Carfin sat on the lip of the stone. These flashes of light sank within the nearly black waters of the Hole. They seemed to descend for a long time. Then eruptions frothed the surface, greenish light flashing, coruscating from the depths. Over the Hole the surface bulged alarmingly, as from the pressures of an immense explosion. Then they hissed, steaming and frothing anew. Fog obscured the pit of the Ring, hanging in thick scarves.
The afternoon faded towards evening. Sister Gosh watched the undersides of the clouds painted in deep mauve and pink. More shapes came flashing through the waters to descend into the Hole. She fancied she saw the shells of their armour opalescent in emerald and gold. Reinforcements?
Whatever was down there was a long time in dying. Eruptions blistered the surface anew. Lights flickered like undersea flames. It seemed a full-blown war somewhere far beyond the ken of humankind.
Slowly, by degrees, the ferocity of the struggle in the depths appeared to wane. Evening darkened into twilight. Carfin amused himself making shapes of darkness dance upon the stones. Seeing this, Sister Gosh growled far down in her throat. The shapes bowed to her, then diffused into nothingness. Carfin sighed and shifted his skinny haunches. ‘Now what?’
‘Now everyone and their dog will be a hedge-wizard or sea-soother.’
Carfin wrinkled his nose. ‘Gods. It’ll be awful.’ He rose, dusted off his trousers. ‘I’ll stay in my cave — that is, my domicile.’
‘Good riddance.’
‘And to you.’ He stepped into darkness and disappeared.
Now that’s just plain showing off.
Below, swift shapes passed beneath the soles of her mud-covered, tattered shoes, coursing out into the bay. Far fewer than had entered, that was for sure. So it was over, here at least. What of elsewhere? Did the Riders fare as well against their other targets? Who knew? She was dog-tired. So tired she wondered whether there was a boat somewhere on this damned island.
Suth and Corbin followed Keri through the tunnels. They stayed close as the woman showed an alarming willingness to throw her Moranth munitions wherever she wished, and at the least hint of danger.
Almost hugging her back, Suth asked, ‘Did the old man send you to help us?’
She sent him an irritated glare over her shoulder. ‘What old man?’
‘Never mind. So, they sent you to find us? All alone?’
She stopped in the dimness of a tunnel, turned on him, an explosive shrapnel munition called a sharper in one fist. ‘Listen, Dal Hon. Alone is better, right? That way I can throw these without having to worry about your sorry arses, right?’
Suth raised his hands in surrender. ‘Yes, okay! Whatever you say.’
‘Damned straight.’
Corbin raised the lamp. ‘What’s the hold-up?’
‘Numbnuts here,’ Keri muttered. Corbin and Suth shared commiserating looks. ‘This way,’ Keri ordered, and headed off.
Suth expected Stormguard to jump out from every corner. He was shaken by their ruthless competence. They were ferocious opponents. Of their separated party only he and Corbin remained on their feet. Both squads had been ravaged, and Suth frankly doubted any of them would live to see the light of day again.
Keri led them through sections of half-collapsed tunnels, the scenes of confrontations where the dead lay where they fell, Stormguard and Malazan alike. Suth recognized the body of Sergeant Twofoot, nearly hacked to pieces. A faint yellowish glow ahead signalled a light source and Keri halted. She made a tapping noise, some sort of signal. It was answered differently but apparently correctly for she straightened, waving them on.
They entered a guarded chamber holding all that was left of the team: Fist Rillish, bearing many cuts, the Adjunct Kyle, Captain Peles, her armour gashed and helm dented, the squat priest, Sergeant Goss, Wess, and a few of Twofoot’s squad.
Goss squeezed Suth’s shoulder. ‘The others?’
‘Too wounded.’ The priest, Ipshank, straightened from where he’d been sitting. ‘Manask…’