Yeull looked up from studying the empty glass. ‘What? Someone calling me? Who?’
‘The prisoner,’ Borun said, his voice a coarse growl.
Yeull set down the glass carefully, straightened in his seat. ‘Ah. Him. What does he want?’
‘He must have news for us, High Fist. Something to offer, in any case.’
‘It is cold — I swear it is cold.’ Yeull turned aside. ‘More wood for the fire.’
Ussu turned a quick look to Borun but could see nothing within the vision slit of his lowered visor. These Moranth and their armour! The man must be sweltering.
‘So?’ Yeull demanded. ‘Why are you here speaking to me then? Speak to him.’
‘He will only talk to you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, High Fist.’
‘Out of the question.’ The High Fist drew the bearhide cloak tighter about his shoulders.
Ussu suppressed his irritation. ‘We have been through this before, High Fist. It must be you. None other.’
The man was looking aside, his gaze distant, almost empty. ‘It will be cold down there. So far below.’
‘We will bring torches.’
‘What’s that? Torches? Yes. Fire. We must bring fire.’
They walked the dark empty halls of Fortress Paliss. Guards — all Malazan regulars — saluted and unlocked doors to the deeper passageways. Ussu noted the many grey beards among them. They were none of them getting any younger, including himself. Who would carry on? They had trained and recruited thousands of soldiers from among the Rool and Skolati citizens, organized an army of over seventy thousand, but hardly any of the locals held a rank above captain.
Original Malazan officers constituted the ruling body. It was, in effect, the permanent rule of an occupying military elite. Yet their generation was passing away. Who would take up the sceptre — or the mace, in this instance — of rulership? Most had children, grown to men and women now, but these formed the new pampered aristocracy, not the least interested in service, or the world beyond their own sprawling estates. No, it seemed to Ussu more surely with every passing year that the local Fistian and Korelri policy was simply to ignore these invaders until they faded away. As surely they would, soldier by soldier, until nothing was left but for mouldering armour and dusty pennants from forgotten distant lands high on a wall.
The stalemate of initial invasion had ossified into formalized relations. It seemed that as far as the Korelri were concerned the Malazans simply ran the island of Fist now, as had the last Roolian dynasty before them. A mere change in administration. Frustration was not the word. Failure, perhaps, came closer to describing the acid bite in Ussu’s stomach and soul whenever his thoughts turned to it. He had failed his superiors, each commander in turn, failed in attaining his one assigned task: achieving Malazan domination in this theatre. Decades ago, before the invasion fleet left Unta, Kellanved himself had set the task upon him.
He remembered his surprise and terror that day, so long ago now, when the old ogre had taken his arm and walked him out along Unta’s harbour mole. Dancer had followed; how the man’s gaze had tracked their every move! ‘Ussu,’ Kellanved had said, ‘I will tell you this: in the end conquering is not about what territory or resources you control… it is about recasting the deck entirely.’
And he had mouthed something insipid about certainly meaning to and the Emperor had pulled his arm free to jab his walking stick impatiently to the south. ‘Everywhere, for every region — for every person — hands are dealt from the Dragons deck. To create true fundamental change you must force a complete reshuffling and recasting of all hands. Turn your thoughts to that.’ And the man had smiled slyly then, leaning on the silver hound’s head walking stick, staring out over the water and Ussu remembered thinking: As you have, wherever you have gone.
They reached the lowest levels of construction. A locked iron door barred entrance to deeper tunnels carved from the native rock. Here Ussu used a key from his own belt to unlock the portal; no guards remained. Beyond, Borun and Yeull lit torches from lanterns and continued; Ussu locked the door behind them.
He believed these rough winding ways dated back to before the establishment of Paliss itself as a state capital, or even as a settlement. It seemed to him the dust their footfalls kicked up carried with it a tang of smoke and sulphur. Perhaps a remnant of the immense crater lake that dominated the big island.
The torch Yeull carried spluttered and hissed as the man shivered ahead of Ussu, muttering beneath his breath as if in conversation with himself. Ussu wondered, not for the first time, just when a new overlord might be necessary. Not he or Borun; both had found their place. One of the remaining division commanders perhaps, Genarin, or Tesh kel. Yeull had never been popular with the men, given as he was to brooding. But he’d been getting less and less reliable of late.
Borun led the way into a chamber carved from stone. Along one side stood a row of smaller alcoves, each barred. Cells. And around the main room instruments of… punishment and persuasion.
Just as Ussu had found them so long ago when the fortress fell. Very bloodthirsty, that last Roolian dynasty. And forgotten in the most distant pit, enduring, perhaps older even than that generation itself, the last occupant. Had he been overlooked during those last days of panic as the Malazan fist closed? Or had he already been forgotten — slipping from the living memory of humanity as dynasty followed dynasty in their cycles of rebellion and decline? Who was to say? He himself refused to enlighten them.
Borun stopped at a great iron sarcophagus some three paces in length lying within a metal framework upon the bare stone. He set his torch in a brazier, then took hold of a tall iron wheel next to the frame. This he ratcheted, his breath harsh with effort. As the wheel turned long iron spikes slowly withdrew from holes set all down the sides of the sarcophagus, and in rows across its front.
When the ends of these countless iron spikes emerged from within the stained openings a thick black fluid, blood of a kind, dripped viscous and thick from their needle tips. A slow rumbling exhalation of breath sounded then. It stirred the dust surrounding the sarcophagus.
Ussu bent over the coffin. ‘Cherghem? You can hear me?’
A voice no more substantial than that breath sounded from within. I hear you.
‘You say you have information for us? You sense something?’
Food. Water.
‘Not until you speak.’
Water.
Ussu took a ladle from a nearby bucket and dashed its contents across the spike holes in the iron masking the head of the casket. ‘There. You have water. Now speak!’
And the Overlord? He is here?
‘Yes.’ Ussu gestured Yeull forward.
But the Overlord would not move; he stood immobile, staring, one hand clenching the fur hide at his neck, the other white upon the haft of a torch held so close as to nearly set his hair aflame. His face appeared drained of all blood, its skein of scars livid.
‘High Fist…’ Ussu began, coaxing, ‘you must speak.’
The mouth opened but no sound emerged.
I sense him there, his heart pounding like a star in the night. Overlord, I have news for you.
‘Yes? News?’ the man croaked, stricken. ‘What news?’
They are coming for you, Yeull.
‘What’s that? Who?’
Ussu cast an uncertain glance across the sarcophagus to Borun who had cocked his armoured head aside, gauntlets clenching.
You did not think they would allow you your own personal fiefdom, did you? Your superiors, far to the north, they are coming to reassert control of their territory. No doubt you will hang as a usurper.
‘How can you know this?’ Ussu demanded.
I sense their approach.
‘From whence will they come? The west or the east?’
The east.
Ussu did not think it possible for the High Fist to pale any further, yet he did. ‘High Fist… we cannot be sure…’