Toll the Hounds Read online

  The guard had halted, had turned to regard the Trell as he spoke. Just beyond the alley’s mouth was a wall and, to the left, the unlit cave of a tunnel or a gate. After a moment the man grunted, then led Mappo on, into the reeking passageway through the wall, where the Trell warrior was forced to duck.

  ‘You must be a formidable tribe back in your homeland,’ the guard observed, ‘if your kin are as big and broad as you are.’

  ‘Alas, we are, generally, not killers, sir. If we had been, perhaps we would have fared better. As it is, the glory of my people has waned.’ Mappo then halted and looked back at the gate they had just passed through. He could see that the wall was but a fragment, a stretch no more than fifty paces in length. At both ends leaning buildings thrust into the spaces where it should have continued on.

  The guard laughed. ‘Aye, not much left of the Gadrobi Wall. Just this one gate, and it’s used mostly by thieves and the like. Come, not much further.’

  The Temple of Burn had seen better days. Graffiti covered the plain limestone walls, some the blockish list of prayers, others elliptical sigils and obscure local symbols. A few raw curses, or so Mappo suspected from the efforts made to deface the messages. Rubbish clogged the gutter surrounding the foundations, through which rats ambled.

  The guard led him along the wall and to the right, where they came out on to a slightly wider thoroughfare. The temple’s formal entrance was a descending set of stairs, down to a landing that looked ankle deep in rainwater. Mappo regarded it in some dismay.

  The guard seemed to notice. ‘Yes, the cult is fading. She has slept too long, I suppose. I know I have no business asking, but what do you seek here?’

  ‘I am not sure,’ Mappo admitted.

  ‘Ah. Well, Burn’s blessings on you, then.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The guard set out to retrace his route, no doubt returning to the alley with the corpses. The memory of them remained with Mappo, leaving him with a gnawing disquiet. He had glimpsed something of the mysterious wounds on the second body. Brutal indeed. Would there could be an end to such things, yes. A true blessing of peace.

  He made his way down the steps. Splashed through the pool to the doors.

  They opened before he could knock.

  A gaunt, sad-faced man stood before him. ‘You had to know, Mappo Runt of the Trell, that it could not last. You stand before me like a severed limb, and all that you bleed stains the ether, a flow seeming without end.’

  ‘There will be an end,’ Mappo replied. ‘When I have found him once more.’

  ‘He is not here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Would you walk the veins of the earth, Mappo Runt? Is that why you have come to this temple?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You choose a most perilous path. There is poison. There is bitter cold. Ice, stained with foreign blood. There is fire that blinds those who wield it. There is wind that cries out an eternal death cry. There is darkness and it is crowded. There is grief, more than even you can withstand. There is yielding and that which will not yield. Pressures too vast even for one such as you. Will you still walk Burn’s Path, Mappo Runt?’

  ‘I must.’

  The sad face looked even sadder. ‘I thought as much.

  I could have made my list of warnings even longer, you know. We could have stood in our places for the rest of the night, you in that sodden pool, me standing here uttering dire details. And still, at long last, you would say “I must” and we would have wasted all that time. Me hoarse and you asleep on your feet.’

  ‘You sound almost regretful, Priest.’

  ‘Perhaps I am at that. It was a most poetic list.’

  ‘Then by all means record it in full when you write your log of this fell night.’

  ‘I like that notion. Thank you. Now, come inside, and wipe your feet. But hurry – we have been preparing the ritual since your ship docked.’

  ‘The breadth of your knowledge is impressive,’ Mappo said as, ducking, he stepped inside.

  ‘Yes, it is. Now, follow me.’

  A short corridor, ceiling dripping, into a broader transept, across a dingy mosaic floor, down a second corridor, this one lined with niches, each home to a holy object – misshapen chunks of raw ore, crystals of white, rose and purple quartz and amethyst, starstones, amber, copper, flint and petrified wood and bones. At the end of this passage the corridor opened out into a wider colonnaded main chamber, and here, arrayed in two rows, waited acolytes, each wearing brown robes and holding aloft a torch.

  The acolytes chanted in some arcane tongue as the High Priest led Mappo down between the rows.

  Where an altar should have been, at the far end, there was instead a crevasse in the floor, as if the very earth had opened up beneath the altar, swallowing it and the dais it stood on. From the fissure rose bitter, hot smoke.

  The sad-faced High Priest walked up to its very edge then turned to face Mappo. ‘Burn’s Gate awaits you, Trell.’

  Mappo approached and looked down.

  To see molten rock twenty spans below, a seething river sweeping past.

  ‘Of course,’ the High Priest said, ‘what you see is not in this realm. Were it so, Darujhistan would now be a ball of fire bright as a newborn sun. The caverns of gas and all that.’

  ‘If I jump down there,’ Mappo said, ‘I will be roasted to a crisp.’

  ‘Yes. I know what you must be thinking.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Some gate.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Accurate enough.’

  ‘You must be armoured against such forces. This is the ritual I mentioned earlier. Are you ready, Mappo Runt?’

  ‘You wish to cast some sort of protective spell on me?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, with an expression near to weeping, ‘we wish to bathe you in blood.’

  *

  Barathol Mekhar could see the pain in Scillara’s eyes, when they turned inward in a private moment, and he saw how Chaur held himself close to her, protective in some instinctive fashion as might be a dog with a wounded master. When she caught Barathol studying her, she was quick with a broad smile, and each time he felt as if something struck his heart, like a fist against a closed door. She was indeed a most beautiful woman, the kind of beauty that emerged after a second look, or even a third, unfolding like a dark flower in jungle shadows. The pain in those eyes only deepened his anguish.

  Cutter was a damned fool. Yes, there had been another woman – his first love, most likely – but she was gone. Time had come to cut the anchor chain. No one could drown for ever. This was what came of being so young, and deftness with knives was a poor replacement for the skill of surviving everything the world could throw in the way. Longing for what could never be found was pointless, a waste of time.

  Barathol had left his longing behind, somewhere in the sands of Seven Cities. A sprawl of motionless bodies, mocking laughter disguised as unceasing wind, a lizard perched like a gift on a senseless black-crusted hand. Moments of madness – oh, long before the madness of the T’lan Imass in Aren – when he had railed at remorseless time, at how too late was something that could not be changed – not with blood spilled at the foot of a god, not with a knife poised to carve out his own heart. Too late simply grinned at him, lifeless, too poignant for sanity.

  Those two words had begun a chant, then stride by stride a gleeful echo, and they had lifted to a roar in the raiders’ camp, amidst screams and the clash of iron; lifted, yes, into a deafening maelstrom that crashed inside Barathol’s skull, a surging tide with nowhere to go. Too late cannot be escaped. It crooned with every failed parry, every failed dodge from a scything weapon. It exploded in eyes as death hammered home, exploded along with blood and fluids. It lunged in the wake of toppling bodies. It scrawled messages (ever the same message) in the sands dying men crawled across.

  He could have chanted for ever, but he had left no one alive. Oh, a dozen horses that he gave away to a caravan some days later, a gift for taking
in the half-dead warrior, for treating his raging fever, for cleaning his wounds and burning out infection. They would accept no payment for their efforts – they could do nothing for the bleak anguish in his soul, they explained, and so to ask for anything would be dishonourable. Now a gift, well, that was different.

  In the desert nothing disguised time’s cruel face. Its skin was stretched to the bone. Its lone eye burned the sky and its gaping mouth was cold and airless as a mountain peak. The traders understood this. They were as much a tribe of the desert as anyone, after all. They gave him bladders of water – enough to take him to the nearest garrison outpost – ‘Aye, give the Mezla that – they know how to build waystations and equip them well. They turn no one away, friend.’

  They gave him the strongest of the raiders’ horses, a fine saddle, jerked meat and dried fruit. They gave him feed for the mount to last four days and, finally, they showed him the track he would take, the path that cheated death and yes, it was the only one.

  Death stalked him, they said. Waited, for now, out beyond the glare of the dung-fires, but when Barathol finally rode out the reaper with the long legs would set out after him, singing of time, singing of the hunger that never ended, never slowed, never did anything but devour all in its path.

  ‘When longing comes to you, friend, step not into its snare, for longing is the fatal bait – find yourself in its snare and you will be dragged, dragged through all the time allotted you, Barathol Mekhar, and nothing you grasp will remain, all torn from your fingers. All that you see will race past in a blur. All that you taste will be less than a droplet, quickly stripped away. Longing will drag you into the stalker’s bony arms, and you will have but a single, last look back, on to your life – a moment of clarity that can only be some unknown god’s most bitter gift – and you will understand, all at once, all that you have wasted, all that you let escape, all that you might have had.

  ‘Now ride, friend. And ‘ware the traps of your mind.’

  Too late. Those two words haunted him, would perhaps for ever haunt him. The cruel chant had filled his head when he’d looked down upon Chaur’s drowned face. Too late!

  But he’d spat into that gleeful cry. That time, yes, he had. He had said no and he had won.

  Such victories were without measure.

  Enough to hold a man up for a while longer. Enough to give him the courage to meet a woman’s eyes, to meet unflinching what he saw there . . .

  In cavorting, clashing light, faces smeared past as they walked through the crowd. Rollicking songs in the local tongue, jars and flasks thrust at them in drunken generosity. Shouted greetings, strangers in clutches by walls, hands groping beneath disordered clothing. The smell of sex everywhere – Barathol slowed and half turned.

  Scillara was laughing. ‘You lead us into most unusual places, Barathol. This street called out to you, did it?’

  Chaur was staring at the nearest pair, mouth hanging open as his head unconsciously began bobbing in time with their rhythmic thrusts.

  ‘Gods below,’ Barathol muttered. ‘I wasn’t paying much attention.’

  ‘So you say. Of course, you were on that boat for a long time, pretty much alone, I’d wager – unless Spite decided—’

  ‘No,’ he cut in firmly. ‘Spite decided nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Well then, the city beckons with all its carnal delights! This very street, in fact—’

  ‘Enough of that, please.’

  ‘You can’t think I’ll ease up on you, Barathol?’

  Grimacing, he squinted at Chaur. ‘This is disturbing him—’

  ‘It is not! It’s exciting him, and why wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Scillara, he may have a man’s body, but his is a child’s mind.’

  Her smile went away and she nodded thoughtfully. ‘I know. Awkward.’

  ‘Best we leave this,’ Barathol said.

  ‘Right. Let us find somewhere to eat supper – we can make plans there. But the issue won’t go away, I suspect – he’s caught the scent, after all.’

  Moving to either side of Chaur, they turned him about and began guiding him away. He resisted briefly, but then fell in step, joining in with a nearby chorus of singers with loud, wordless sounds not quite matching their somewhat better efforts.

  ‘We really are the lost ones, aren’t we?’ Scillara said. ‘We need to find ourselves a purpose . . . in life. Aye, let’s grasp our biggest, most glaring flaw, shall we? Never mind what to do tomorrow or the day after. What to do with the rest of our lives, now there’s a worthy question.’

  He groaned.

  ‘Seriously. If you could have anything, anything at all, Barathol, what would it be?’

  A second chance. ‘There’s no point in that question, Scillara. I’ll settle for a smithy and a good day’s work, each and every day. I’ll settle for an honest life.’

  ‘Then that’s where we’ll start. A list of necessary tasks. Equipment, location, Guild fees and all that.’

  She was trying hard, he could see. Trying hard to keep her own feelings away from this moment, and each moment to come, for as long as she could.

  I accept no payment, Scillara, but I will take your gift. And give you one in turn. ‘Very well. I can certainly use your help in all that.’

  ‘Good. Look, there’s a crowded courtyard with tables and I see food and people eating. We can stand over a table until the poor fool sitting at it leaves. Shouldn’t take long.’

  Blend withdrew her bared foot from Picker’s crotch and slowly sat straight. ‘Be subtle,’ she murmured, ‘but take a look at the trio that just showed up.’

  Picker scowled. ‘Do you always have to make me uncomfortable in public, Blend?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re positively glowing—’

  ‘With embarrassment, yes! And look at Antsy – his face is like a sun-baked crabshell.’

  ‘It’s always like that,’ Blend said.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Antsy said, licking his lips. ‘I don’t mind at all what you two get up to, in public or in that favourite room you use, the one with the thin walls and creaking floor and ill-fitting door—’

  ‘A door you were supposed to fix,’ snapped Picker, only now half turning to take in the newcomers. She flinched, then huddled down over the table. ‘Gods below. Now, don’t that grizzled one look familiar.’

  ‘I been trying to fix it, honest. I work on it all the time—’

  ‘You work all right, with one eye pressed to the crack,’ Blend said. ‘You think we don’t know you’re there, sweating and grunting as you—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Picker hissed. ‘Didn’t you two hear me? I said—’

  ‘He looks just like Kalam Mekhar, aye,’ Antsy said, poking with his knife at the chicken carcass on the platter in the centre of the table. ‘But he’s not Kalam, is he? Too tall, too big, too friendly-looking.’ He frowned and tugged at his moustache. ‘Who was it said we should eat here tonight?’

  ‘That bard,’ said Picker.

  ‘Our bard?’

  ‘For the rest of the week, aye.’

  ‘He recommended it?’

  ‘He said we should eat here tonight, is what he said. Is that a recommendation? Might be. But maybe not. He’s an odd one. Anyway, he said it would be open till dawn.’

  ‘The chicken was too scrawny. And I don’t know who they got to pluck the damned thing, but I’m still chewing on feathers.’

  ‘You were supposed to avoid the feet, Antsy,’ said Blend. ‘They didn’t even wash those.’

  ‘Of course they did!’ Antsy protested. ‘That was sauce—’

  ‘The sauce was red. The stuff on the feet was dark brown. Want something to get embarrassed about, Picker, just drag Antsy along to supper.’

  ‘The feet was the best part,’ the Falari said.

  ‘He’s Seven Cities for sure,’ Picker noted. ‘All three of them, I’d wager.’

  ‘The fat one likes her rustleaf.’

  ‘If she’s fat, Antsy, then so am I.�
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  Antsy looked away.

  Picker cuffed him on the side of the head.

  ‘Ow, what was that for?’

  ‘I wear armour and quilted underpadding, remember?’

  ‘Well, she’s not, is she?’

  ‘She’s delicious,’ Blend observed. ‘And I bet she don’t get embarrassed by anything much.’

  Picker offered her a sweet smile. ‘Why not go stick your foot in and see?’

  ‘Ooh, jealous.’

  Antsy sat up, suddenly excited. ‘If your legs was long enough, Blend, you could do both! And I could—’

  Two knives slammed point first into the table in front of the ex-sergeant. His bushy brows shot upward, eyes bulging. ‘Just an idea,’ he muttered. ‘No reason to get all uppity, you two.’

  ‘Could be he’s another Kalam,’ Picker said. ‘A Claw.’

  Antsy choked on something, coughed, hacked, then managed a breath. He leaned forward until he was very nearly lying on the table from the chest up. He chewed on his moustache for a moment, eyes darting between Picker and Blend. ‘Listen, if he is, then we should kill him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Could be he’s hunting us, Picker. Could be he’s come to finish off the Bridgeburners once and for all.’

  ‘Why would any of them care?’ Picker asked.

  ‘Maybe the bard set us up, did you think of that?’

  Blend sighed and rose. ‘How about I just go up and ask him?’

  ‘You want to take a grab at a tit,’ Picker said, smiling again. ‘So, go ahead, Blend. Go on. See if she blows you a kiss.’

  Shrugging, Blend set out to where the three newcomers had just acquired a table.

  Antsy choked again, plucked at Picker’s sleeve and gasped, ‘She’s heading straight over!’

  Picker licked her lips. ‘I didn’t really mean—’

  ‘She’s almost there – they seen her – don’t turn round!’

  Barathol saw the Malazan threading her way to where they now sat. By hue of skin, by cast of features, by any obvious measure one might find, there was nothing that differentiated the woman from any local Daru or Genabarii; yet he knew, instantly. A Malazan, and a veteran. A damned marine.

  Scillara noted his attention and half turned in her chair. ‘Good taste, Barathol – and it seems she likes—’