Deadhouse Gates Read online

  He rode hard in pursuit, noting belatedly that the gelding was responding to his every touch. The horse knew he was no Gral, but it'd evidently decided he was behaving in an approved manner, well enough to accord him some respect. It was, he reflected, this day's lone victory.

  G'danisban's central square was the site of past slaughter. Fiddler caught up with his companions when they had just begun walking their horses through the horrific scene. They both turned upon hearing his approach, and Fiddler could only nod at the relief in their faces when they recognized him.

  Even the Gral gelding hesitated at the square's edge. The bodies covering the cobbles numbered several hundred. Old men and old women, and children, for the most part. They had all been savagely cut to pieces or, in some cases, burned alive. The stench of sun-warmed blood, bile and seared flesh hung thick in the square.

  Fiddler swallowed back his revulsion, cleared his throat. 'Beyond this square,' he said, 'all pretences of control cease.'

  Crokus gestured shakily. 'These are Malazan?'

  'Aye, lad.'

  'During the conquest, did the Malazan armies do the same to the locals here?'

  'You mean, is this just reprisal?'

  Apsalar spoke with an almost personal vehemence. 'The Emperor warred against armies, not civilians—

  'Except at Aren,' Fiddler sardonically interjected, recalling his words with the Tanno Spiritwalker. 'When the T'lan Imass rose in the city—'

  'Not by Kellanved's command!' she retorted. 'Who ordered the T'lan Imass into Aren? I shall tell you. Surly, the commander of the Claw, the woman who took upon herself a new name—'

  'Laseen.' Fiddler eyed the young woman quizzically. 'I have never before heard that assertion, Apsalar. There were no written orders—none found, in any case—'

  'I should have killed her there and then,' Apsalar muttered.

  Astonished, Fiddler glanced at Crokus. The Daru shook his head.

  'Apsalar,' the sapper said slowly, 'you were but a child when Aren rebelled then fell to the T'lan Imass.'

  'I know that,' she replied. 'Yet these memories… they are so clear. I was… sent to Aren… to see the slaughter. To find out what happened. I… I argued with Surly. No-one else was in the room. Just Surly and… and me.'

  They reached the other end of the square. Fiddler reined in and regarded Apsalar for a long moment.

  Crokus said, 'It was the Rope, the patron god of assassins, who possessed you. Yet your memories are—'

  'Dancer's.' As soon as he said it, Fiddler knew it was true. 'The Rope has another name. Cotillion. Hood's breath, so obvious! No-one doubted that the assassinations occurred. Both Dancer and the Emperor… murdered by Laseen and her chosen Clawmasters. What did Laseen do with the bodies? No-one knows.'

  'So Dancer lived," Crokus said with a frown. 'And ascended. Became a patron god in the Warren of Shadow.'

  Apsalar said nothing, watching and listening with a carefully controlled absence of expression on her face.

  Fiddler was cursing himself for a blind idiot. 'What House appeared in the Deck of Dragons shortly afterward? Shadow. Two new Ascendants. Cotillion… and Shadowthrone…'

  Crokus's eyes widened. 'Shadowthrone is Kellanved,' he said. 'They weren't assassinated—either of them. They escaped by ascending.'

  'Into the Shadow Realm.' Fiddler smiled wryly. 'To nurse their thoughts of vengeance, leading eventually to Cotillion possessing a young fishergirl in Itko Kan, to begin what would be a long, devious path to Laseen. Which failed. Apsalar?'

  'Your words are true,' she said without inflection.

  'Then why,' the sapper demanded, 'didn't Cotillion reveal himself to us? To Whiskeyjack, to Kalam? To Dujek? Dammit, Dancer knew us all—and if that bastard understood the notion of friendship at all, then those I've just mentioned were his friends—'

  Apsalar's sudden laugh rattled both men. 'I could lie and say he sought to protect you all. Do you really wish the truth, Bridgeburner?'

  Fiddler felt himself flushing. 'I do,' he growled.

  'Dancer trusted but two men. One was Kellanved. The other was Dassem Ultor, the First Sword. Dassem is dead. I am sorry if this offends you, Fiddler. Thinking on it, I would suggest that Cotillion trusts no-one. Not even Shadowthrone. Emperor Kellanved… well enough. Ascendant Kellanved—Shadowthrone—ah, that is something wholly different.'

  'He was a fool,' Fiddler pronounced, gathering up his reins.

  Apsalar's smile was strangely wistful.

  'Enough words,' Crokus said. 'Let's get out of this damned city.'

  'Aye.'

  The short journey from the square to the south gate was surprisingly uneventful, for all the commander's warnings. Dusk shrouded the streets and smoke from a burning tenement block spread an acrid haze that made breathing tortured. They rode through the silent aftermath of slaughter, when the rage has passed and awareness returns with shock and shame.

  The moment was a single indrawn breath in what Fiddler knew would be an ever-burgeoning wildfire. If the Malazan legions had not been withdrawn from nearby Pan'potsun, there would have been the chance of crushing the life from this first spark, with a brutality to match the renegades'. When slaughter is flung back on the perpetrators, the thirst for blood is quickly quenched.

  The Emperor would have acted swiftly, decisively. Hood's breath, he would never have let it slide this far.

  Less than a tenth of a bell after leaving the square they passed beneath the smoke-blackened arch of an unguarded south gate. Beyond stretched the Pan'potsun Odhan, flanked to the west by the ridge that divided the Odhan from the Holy Desert Raraku. The night's first stars flickered alight overhead.

  Fiddler broke the long silence. 'There is a village a little over two leagues to the south. With luck it won't be a carrion feast. Not yet, anyway.'

  Crokus cleared his throat. 'Fiddler, if Kalam had known… about Dancer, I mean, Cotillion…'

  The sapper grimaced, glanced at Apsalar. 'She'd be with him right now.'

  Whatever response Crokus intended was interrupted by a squealing, flapping shape that dropped down out of the darkness to collide with the lad's back. Crokus let out a shout of alarm as the creature gripped his hair and clambered onto his head.

  'It's just Moby,' Fiddler said, trying to shake off the jitters the familiar's arrival had elicited. He squinted. 'Looks like he's been in a scrap,' he observed.

  Crokus pulled Moby down into his arms. 'He's bleeding everywhere!'

  'Nothing serious, I'd guess,' Fiddler said.

  'What makes you so sure?'

  The sapper grinned. 'Ever seen bhok'arala mate?'

  'Fiddler,' Apsalar's tone was tight. 'We are pursued.'

  Reining in, Fiddler rose in the stirrups and twisted around. In the distant gloom was a cloud of dust. He hissed a curse. 'The Gral clan.'

  'We ride weary mounts,' Apsalar said.

  'Aye. Queen grant us there's fresh horses to be had in New Velar.'

  At the base of three converging gorges, Kalam left the false path and carefully guided his horse through a narrow drainage channel. The old memories of the ways into Raraku felt heavy in his bones. Everything's changed, yet nothing has changed.

  Of the countless trails that passed through the hills, all but a few led only to death. The false routes were cleverly directed away from the few waterholes and springs. Without water, Raraku's sun was a fatal companion. Kalam knew the Holy Desert, the map within his head—decades old—was seared anew with every landmark he recognized. Pinnacles, tilted rocks, the wend of a flood channel—he felt as if he had never left, for all his new loyalties, his conflicting allegiances. Once more, a child of this desert. Once more, servant to its sacred need.

  As the wind and sun did to the sand and stone, Raraku shaped all who had known it. Crossing it had etched the souls of the three companies that would come to be called the Bridgeburners. We could imagine no other name. Raraku burned our pasts away, making all that came before a trail of ashes.

 
He swung the stallion onto a scree, rocks and sand skittering and tumbling as the beast scrambled up the slope, regaining the true path along the ridge line that would run in a slow descent westward to Raraku's floor.

  Stars glittered like knife-points overhead. The bleached limestone crags shone silver in the faint moonlight, as if reflecting back memories of the day just past.

  The assassin led his horse between the crumbled foundations of two watchtowers. Potsherds and fractured brick crunched under the stallion's hooves. Rhizan darted from his path with a soft flit of wings. Kalam felt he had returned home.

  'No farther,' a rasping voice warned.

  Smiling, Kalam reined in.

  'A bold announcement,' the voice continued. 'A stallion the colour of sand, red telaba…'

  'I announce what I am,' Kalam replied casually. He had pinpointed the source of the voice, in the deep shadows of a sinkhole just beyond the left-hand watchtower. There was a crossbow trained on the assassin, but Kalam knew he could dodge the quarrel, rolling from the saddle with the stallion between him and the stranger. Two well-thrown knives into the darker shape amidst the shadows would punctuate the exchange. He felt at ease.

  'Disarm him,' the voice drawled.

  Two massive hands closed on his wrists from behind and savagely pulled both his arms back, until he was dragged, cursing with rage, over the stallion's rump. As soon as he cleared the beast, the hands twisted his body around and drove him hard, face first, into the stony ground. The air knocked from his lungs, Kalam was helpless.

  He heard the one who'd spoken rise up from the sinkhole and approach. The stallion snapped his teeth but was swiftly calmed at a soft word from the stranger. The assassin listened as the saddlebags were lifted away and set on the ground. Flaps opened. 'Ah, he's the one, then.'

  The hands released Kalam. Groaning, the assassin managed to roll over. A giant of a man stood over him, his face tattooed like shattered glass. A long single braid hung down the left side of his chest. The man wore a cloak of bhederin hide over a vest of armour that seemed made of clam shells. The wooden handle and stone pommel of a bladed weapon of some kind jutted from just under his left arm. The broad belt over the man's loincloth was oddly decorated with what looked to Kalam like dried mushroom caps of various sizes. He was over seven foot tall, yet muscled enough to seem wide, and his flat, broad face gazed down without expression.

  Regaining his breath, the assassin sat up. 'A sorcerous silence,' he muttered, mostly to himself.

  The man who now held the Book of the Apocalypse heard the gruff whisper and snorted. 'You fancy no mortal could get that close to you without your hearing him. You tell yourself it must have involved magic. You are wrong. My companion is Toblakai, an escaped slave from the Laederon Plateau of Genabackis. He's seen seventeen summers and has personally killed forty-one enemies. Those are their ears on his belt.' The man rose, offering Kalam his hand. 'You are most welcome to Raraku, Deliverer. Our long vigil is ended.'

  Grimacing, Kalam accepted the man's hand and felt himself pulled effortlessly to his feet. The assassin brushed the dust from his clothes. 'You are not bandits, then.'

  The stranger barked a laugh. 'No, we are not. I am Leoman, Captain of Sha'ik's Bodyguard. My companion refuses his name to strangers, and we shall leave it at that. We are the two she chose.'

  'I must deliver the Book into Sha'ik's hands,' Kalam said. 'Not yours, Leoman.'

  The squat warrior—by his colour and clothing a child of this desert—held out the Book. 'By all means.'

  Cautiously, the assassin retrieved the heavy, battered tome.

  A woman spoke behind him. 'You may now give it to me, Deliverer.'

  Kalam slowly closed his eyes, struggling to gather the frayed ends of his nerves. He turned.

  There could be no doubting. The small, honey-skinned woman standing before him radiated power in waves, the smell of dust and sand whipped by winds, the taste of salt and blood. Her rather plain face was deeply lined, giving her an appearance of being around forty years old, though Kalam suspected she was younger—Raraku was a harsh home.

  Involuntarily, Kalam dropped to one knee. He held out the Book. 'I deliver unto you, Sha'ik, the Apocalypse.' And with it, a sea of blood—how many innocent lives shattered, to bring Laseen down? Hood take me, what have I done?

  The Book's weight left his hands as she accepted it. 'It is damaged.'

  The assassin looked up, slowly rose.

  Sha'ik was frowning, one finger tracing a torn corner of the leather cover. 'Well, one should not be surprised, given that it is a thousand years old. I thank you, Deliverer. Will you now join my band of soldiers? I sense great talents in you.'

  Kalam bowed. 'I cannot. My destiny lies elsewhere.' Flee, Kalam, before you test the skills of these bodyguards. Flee, before uncertainty kills you.

  Her dark eyes narrowed on his searchingly, then widened. 'I sense something of your desire, though you shield it well. Ride on, then, the way south is open to you. More, you shall have an escort—

  'I need no escort, Seer—'

  'But you shall have one in any case." She gestured and a bulky, ungainly shape appeared from the gloom.

  'Holy One,' Leoman hissed warningly.

  'You question me?' Sha'ik snapped.

  'The Toblakai is as an army, nor are my skills lacking, Holy One, yet—'

  'Since I was a child,' Sha'ik cut in, her voice brittle, 'one vision has possessed me above all others. I have seen this moment, Leoman, a thousand times. At dawn I shall open the Book, and the Whirlwind shall rise, and I shall emerge from it… renewed. "Blades in hands and unhanded in wisdom," such are the wind's words. Young, yet old. One life whole, another incomplete. I have seen, Leoman!' She paused, drew a breath. 'I see no other future but this one. We are safe.' Sha'ik faced Kalam again. 'I acquired a… a pet recently, which I now send with you, for I sense… possibilities in you, Deliverer.' She gestured again.

  The huge, ungainly shape moved closer and Kalam took an involuntary step backward. His stallion voiced a soft squeal and stood trembling.

  Leoman spoke. 'An aptorian, Deliverer, from the realm of Shadow. Sent into Raraku by Shadowthrone… to spy. It belongs to Sha'ik now.'

  The beast was a nightmare, close to nine feet tall, crouching on two thin hind limbs. A lone foreleg, long and multijointed, jutted down from its strangely bifurcated chest. From a hunched, angular shoulder blade, the demon's sinuous neck rose to a flat, elongated head. Needle fangs ridged its jawline, which was swept back and naturally grinning like a dolphin's.

  Head, neck and limbs were black, while its torso was a dun grey. A single, flat black eye regarded Kalam with appalling awareness.

  The assassin saw barely healed scarring on the demon. 'It's been in a fight?'

  Sha'ik scowled. 'A D'ivers. Desert wolves. She drove them off—'

  'More like a tactical withdrawal,' Leoman added dryly. 'The beast does not eat or drink, so far as we've seen. And though the Holy One believes otherwise, it appears to be entirely brainless—that look in its eye is likely a mask hiding very little.'

  'Leoman plagues me with doubts,' Sha'ik said. 'It is his chosen task and I grow increasingly weary of it.'

  'Doubts are healthy,' Kalam said, then snapped his mouth shut.

  The Holy One only smiled. 'I sensed you two were alike. Leave us, then. The Seven Holies know, one Leoman is enough.'

  With a final glance at the young Toblakai, the assassin vaulted back into the saddle, swung the stallion to the south trail and nudged him into a trot.

  The aptorian evidently preferred some distance between them; it moved parallel to Kalam at over twenty paces away, a darker stain in the night, striding awkwardly yet silently on its three bony legs.

  After ten minutes of riding at a fast trot, the assassin slowed the stallion to a walk. He had delivered the Book, personally seen to the rise of the Whirlwind. Answered his blood's call, no matter how stained the motivation.

  The demands of his other life
lay ahead. He would kill the Empress, to save the Empire. If he succeeded, Sha'ik's rebellion was doomed. Control would be restored. And if I fail, they will bleed each other to exhaustion, Sha'ik and Laseen, two women of the same cloth—Hood, they even looked alike. It was not a far reach, then, for Kalam to see in his shadow a hundred thousand deaths. And he wondered if, throughout Seven Cities, readers of the Deck of Dragons now held a newly awakened Herald of Death in their trembling hands. Queen's blessing, it's done.

  Minutes before dawn, Sha'ik sat down cross-legged before the Book of the Apocalypse. Her two guards flanked her, each in the ruins of a watchtower. The Toblakai youth leaned on his two-handed ironwood sword. A battered bronze helmet missing a cheek-guard was on his head, his eyes hidden in the shadow of a slitted half-visor. His companion's arms were crossed. A crossbow leaned against one hide-wrapped leg. Two one-handed morning stars were thrust through his broad leather belt. He wore a colourless telaba scarf over a peaked iron helm. Below it, his smooth-shaven face showed, latticed by thirty years of sun and wind. His light-blue eyes were ever restless.

  The dawn's rays swept over Sha'ik. The Holy One reached down and opened the Book.

  The quarrel struck her forehead an inch above her left eye. The iron head shattered the bone, plunging inward a moment before the spring-driven barbs opened like a deadly flower inside her brain. The quarrel's head then struck the inside of the back of her skull, exiting explosively.

  Sha'ik toppled.

  Tene Baralta bellowed and watched with satisfaction as Aralt Arpat and Lostara Yil led the twelve Red Blades in a charge towards the two hapless bodyguards.

  The desert warrior had dropped and rolled a moment after Sha'ik's death. The crossbow now in his hands bucked. Aralt Arpat's chest visibly caved inward as the quarrel drove through his breastbone. The tall sergeant was knocked backward, sprawling in the dust.