‘More or less.’
‘And what awaits us there?’
‘Chaos and bloodshed.’
A barked laugh. ‘You were just there, weren’t you?’
His vision adjusting, Ivanr made out three occupants. The speaker was middle-aged, bearded, well dressed in a tailored shirt and jacket of the kind once fashionable in the Jourilan courts. That and his accent placed him as a Jourilan aristocrat. The second occupant was a woman, thick-boned, dressed in a battered plain coat such as might also serve as underpadding for heavy armour. Her hair was hacked short, touched with grey, and her nose was flattened and canted aside, crushed long ago by some fearsome blow. He could not place her background — Katakan, perhaps. The last occupant was farther into shadows, a hump of piled blankets topped by an old man’s bald gleaming head, a cloth wrapped round the eyes. ‘What do you want with me?’ Ivanr asked. ‘I’m just a refugee.’
The old man’s face drew up in a wrinkled smile. ‘Greetings, refugee.’ He cocked his head to one side and raised it as if looking off just above Ivanr. ‘My name is Beneth. Describe him, Hegil.’
‘He’s the closest to a full-breed Thel that I’ve ever seen,’ said the bearded man. ‘Was once better fed but has lost weight recently. Carries himself like a soldier — is probably a veteran. And rides a horse recently stolen from the army.’
‘What do you say to that, Thel?’
‘I’d say your friend’s right — and that he’s been in the army too.’
The old man — blind for some time, Ivanr decided — seemed to wink behind the cloth wrap. ‘You are both correct, of course. I would hazard the guess that you are Ivanr. Welcome to our camp.’
Ivanr couldn’t help starting, amazed. ‘How did-’
‘Ivanr the Grand Champion?’ said Hegil, equally amazed.
The blind old man’s expression was unchanged, maddeningly secretive, almost mischievous. ‘As a soothsayer might say, I saw it in a dream. Now come. We have tea, and meat.’
Ivanr did not object when trenchers of food were passed round: goat on skewers, yoghurt, and freshly baked flatbread.
‘So someone here knows me,’ he said to the old man.
Beneth was chewing thoughtfully on his bread. ‘Not that I know of. Do you know him, Hegil?’
Hegil, obviously once a Jourilan officer, was now eyeing Ivanr with open hostility. ‘Only by reputation.’
Beneth nodded. ‘There you are. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. I guessed correctly because I was forewarned you might come to us.’
‘Forewarned by whom?’
‘By the Priestess.’
Ivanr almost choked on the goat. ‘Is she here?’
Again the knowing smile. ‘I hear in your voice that you’ve met her. No, she is not, but many of those gathered here are adherents of hers. They passed along the information. In any case, as I said, let us not get ahead of ourselves. Introductions first.’ He motioned to his left, where the woman in the functional-looking coat sat. ‘This is Martal, of Katakan.’ She inclined her chin in wary greeting. ‘Martal is in charge of organizing our forces.’
Best of luck to you, Martal.
‘Hegil is the commander of our cavalry.’
Ivanr nodded to the aristocrat. An odd arrangement — just who was in charge then? Hegil or the woman? He shifted uncomfortably and stretched a leg that threatened to seize in a knot. ‘Well, thank you for the meal and I wish you well, but I must be getting on. I’m sure you have better intelligence than I can provide.’
Beneth again cocked his head in thought, as if listening to distant voices only he could hear. ‘May I ask where you might be getting on to, Ivanr? Have you given any thought to where you might be headed?’
Ivanr chewed a mouthful of flatbread. He shrugged. ‘Well, no offence, but I would hardly tell you that, would I?’
The old man nodded at such prudence. ‘True. But let me guess. You were thinking of heading across the inland sea to the Blight Plains, and perhaps continuing east to the coast to take ship to other lands where the name of Ivanr is not known.’
Ivanr coughed on his flatbread, washed it down with a mouthful of goat’s milk. He glowered at the innocently beaming fellow. ‘Your point, old man?’
‘My point is that everyone here was drawn to this place for a reason. We are assembled here and in other locations for a purpose. What that purpose is I cannot say exactly. I can only perceive its vague outlines. But I do assure you this — it is a far greater end than that which any of us could achieve in the pursuit of our own individual goals.’
Ivanr stared at the blind old fellow. Delusional. And a demagogue. The two tended to go hand in hand. Prosecute someone, chase them into the wasteland, and they can’t help but be driven to the conclusion that it’s all for some sort of higher good — after all, the alternative would just be too crushing. It takes an unusually philosophic mind to accept that all one’s suffering might be to no end, really, in the larger scheme of things.
After a long thoughtful sip of goat’s milk, Ivanr raised and lowered his shoulders. ‘I can assure you that I was not drawn here.’
Beneth appeared untroubled. He waved a quavering, age-spotted hand. ‘A poor analogy maybe. Guided. Spurred along by events, perhaps.’
Scowling at his own foolishness in actually attempting to debate with the old hermit, Ivanr shrugged. He would get nowhere in this. ‘Well, again, thank you for the meal. Am I to assume that I am your prisoner? After all, you could hardly allow me to leave and possibly reveal your presence here in the hills.’
‘They know we’re here,’ said Hegil.
‘They’ve placed spies among us,’ added Martal, speaking for the first time.
Ivanr found it hard to penetrate her accent. ‘Really? Why don’t you get rid of them?’
The old man’s mouth crooked up. ‘Better that we know who the spies are than not. And we can use them to send along the information we want sent.’
Not quite so otherworldly, are you, holy man? Ivanr could not deny feeling a certain degree of admiration for such subtlety in thinking and tactics.
‘In any case,’ Beneth continued, ‘we could hardly deter Grand Champion Ivanr from leaving our modest camp, should he choose to. Yes?’
Ivanr merely raised an eyebrow. You damned well know you could should you choose to. About ten spearmen who knew what they were doing ought to take care of that.
‘But before we retire why don’t I tell you a story? My story, to be exact. One that I hope might shed some light on why we are here, and what we hope to accomplish. I am old, as you see. Very old. I was born long before the Malazans came to our shores with their foreign ways and foreign gods. I was also born different. All my life I could see things other people could not. Shadows of other things. These shadows spoke to me, showed me strange visions. When I spoke of these things to my parents, I was beaten and told never to entertain such evil again. For such is how all those born different are treated here among the Korelri and Roolians — all those you Thel name invaders.
‘Foolishly though, or stubbornly, I persisted in indulging my gifts, for they were my solace, my company, the only thing I had left after I had been named touched. And so one day representatives of the priesthood, the Lady’s examiners, came for me. Since you persist in your evil visions, they said, we will put a permanent end to your perverted ways. And they heated irons and put out my eyes. I was but fourteen years of age at the time.’
The old man cleared his throat. Martal pressed a skin of water into one of his hands, which he took and drank. ‘I was left to starve, blind, in the foothills of the mountains south of Stygg. The Ebon range. But I did not die. When I awoke I found that I possessed another kind of vision. The vision of a land like this but subtly different — a kind of shadow version. I wandered the wilderness, the ice wastes, the snow-topped Iceback range. There I was shown images of the past and present that lacerated my spirit, horrified me beyond recounting. I was shown that these lands are in the grip of a great evil, a monstrous deformation of life that has persisted, entwining itself into our ways here in these lands for thousands of years. One that must be rooted out and cleansed. And to that end we are all of us gathered here.’