Toll the Hounds Read online

‘Oh?’

  The bard set the tankard to one side and slowly leaned forward, fixing the historian with grey eyes. ‘Because, sir, you see their faces.’

  Anguish welled up inside Duiker and he looked away, hiding his suddenly trembling hands. ‘You don’t know me well enough for such matters,’ he said in a rasp.

  ‘Rubbish. This isn’t a personal theme here, historian. It’s two professionals discussing their craft. It’s me, a humble bard, offering my skills to unlock your soul and all it contains – everything that’s killing it, moment by moment. You can’t find your voice for this. Use mine.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’ Duiker asked. ‘Like some vulture eager to lap up my tears?’

  Brows lifted. ‘You are an accident. My reasons for being here lie . . . elsewhere. Even if I could explain more, I would not. I cannot. In the meantime, Duiker, let us fashion an epic to crush the hearts of a thousand generations.’

  And now, yes, tears rolled down the lined tracks of the historian’s face. And it took all the courage he still possessed to then nod.

  The bard leaned back, retrieving his tankard. ‘It begins with you,’ he said. ‘And it ends with you. Your eyes to witness, your thoughts alone. Tell me of no one’s mind, presume nothing of their workings. You and I, we tell nothing, we but show.’

  ‘Yes.’ Duiker looked up, back into those eyes that seemed to contain – and hold sure – the grief of the world. ‘What’s your name, bard?’

  ‘Call me Fisher.’

  Chaur was curled up at the foot of the bed, snoring, twitching like a dreaming dog. Picker observed him for a moment before settling back on the mattress. How had she got here? Was that raw tenderness between her legs what she thought it was and if so then did Barathol remember as little of it as she did? Oh, too complicated to work out. She wasn’t ready to be thinking of all those things, she wasn’t ready to be thinking at all.

  She heard someone moving down the hall. Then a muted conversation, punctuated by a throaty laugh that did not belong to Blend or anyone else Picker knew, meaning it was probably that woman, Scillara. Picker gasped slightly at a sudden recollection of holding the woman’s breasts in her hands and hearing that laugh but up close and a lot more triumphant.

  Gods, did I sleep with them all? Damn that Quorl Milk!

  A wheeze from Chaur and she started guiltily – but no, she’d not do any such thing to an innocent like him. There were limits – there had to be limits.

  A muffled knock on the door.

  ‘Oh, come in, Blend.’

  And in she came, light-footed as a cat, and her expression seemed filled up with something, on the verge of bursting.

  No, not tears, please. ‘I don’t remember nothing, Blend, so don’t start on me.’

  Blend held back a moment longer, then erupted.

  In howling laughter, bending over in convulsions.

  Chaur sat up on the floor, blinking and smiling, then he too was laughing.

  Picker glared at Blend, wanting to kill her. ‘What’s so damned funny?’

  Blend managed to regain control over herself. ‘They pretty much carried us all the way back. But then we woke up and we all had one thing and one thing only on our minds. They didn’t stand a chance!’

  ‘Gods below.’ Then she stiffened. ‘Not Chaur—’

  ‘No, Scillara got him in here first.’

  Chaur was still laughing, tears rolling down his face. He seemed to be losing control and all at once Picker felt alarmed. ‘Stop now, Chaur! Stop!’

  The wide empty eyes fixed on her, and all mirth vanished.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. Go down to the kitchen and get something to eat, Chaur, there’s a lad.’

  He rose, stretched, scratched himself, then left the room. He barked one last laugh somewhere near the stairs.

  Picker rubbed at her face. ‘Not Antsy, too. Don’t tell me . . .’

  Blend shrugged. ‘Lust is blind, I suppose. And let’s hope all memory of it stays that way. I fear all his fantasies came true last night . . . only he can’t remember any of it!’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘Oh, relax, it’s what all those parts are made for, after all.’

  ‘Where is Barathol?’

  ‘Went out early. With Mallet for company. Looking for the Blacksmiths’ Guild. You must remember his big, er, hands.’

  ‘My kitten remembers, all right.’

  Another snort from Blend. ‘Meow.’

  The grey gloom of the cellar seemed to defy the lantern’s light, but Bluepearl was used to that, and he was only marginally surprised when the ghost shuffled out from the wall at the far end where rested a half-dozen casks still sealed by the monks’ sigil. Sunk to his hips in the floor, the ghost paused and looked round, finally spying the Malazan standing near the steep stone steps.

  The ghost waded closer. ‘Is that you, Fellurkanath?’

  ‘Fella what? You’re dead, monk, and you’ve been dead for some time, I’d wager – who wears tri-cornered hats these days?’

  ‘Oh,’ the ghost moaned, clutching his face, ‘K’rul has coughed me out. Why? Why now? I’ve nothing useful to tell, especially not to any foreigner. But he’s stirring below, isn’t he? Is that why? Am I to be the voice of dire warning? What do you care? It’s already too late anyway.’

  ‘Someone’s trying to murder us.’

  ‘Of course they are. You’re squatting and they don’t want company. You should broach a cask, one of these. That will tell you everything you need to know.’

  ‘Oh, really now. Go away.’

  ‘Who raised the floor and why? And look at this.’ The ghost pushed his head back to reveal that his throat had been sliced open, all the way back to his spine. Gory, bloodless flesh and slashed veins and arteries vaguely silver in the dim light. ‘Was this the ultimate sacrifice? Little do you know.’

  ‘Do I need to get a necromancer down here?’ Bluepearl demanded. ‘Go away!’ ‘The living never heed the dead,’ muttered the ghost, lowering his head and turning round to walk back towards the far wall. ‘And that’s just it. If we didn’t know better, why, we’d be still alive. Think about that, if you dare.’

  Vanishing into the heavy stones, and gone.

  Bluepearl sighed, looked round until he found the bottle he was looking for. ‘Hah, I knew we had one. Quorl Milk. Why should they get all the fun?’

  The two men trundled just behind the woman, so eager they trod on her heels as they fought for some imagined dominant position. Faint had never seen anything so pathetic, and the way the witch played all innocent, even when she worked her two men just to keep trouble stirred up – all of it seemingly accidental, of course, but it wasn’t accidental because Precious Thimble knew precisely what she was up to and as far as Faint was concerned that was cruel beyond all reason.

  It didn’t help, either, that the two men – evidently brothers – looked so much alike. With the same way of walking, the same facial expressions, the same tone of voice. If they were no different from each other, then why not just choose one and be done with it?

  Well, she didn’t expect any of them to last very long in any case. For most shareholders, the first trip was the deadliest one. It came with not knowing what to expect, with not reacting fast enough or just the right way. The first journey into the warrens killed over half first-timers.

  Which meant that Precious Thimble (who struck Faint as a survivor) might well have her choice taken from her, when either Jula or Amby Bole went down somewhere on the trail.

  As they rounded the corner and came within sight of the carriage, Faint saw that Glanno Tarp was already seated up top. Various rituals had been triggered to effect repairs to the huge conveyance; the horses looked restless and eager to be away – as mad as the rest of them, they were. Off to one side and now watching Faint, Quell and their new shareholders approaching, stood Reccanto Ilk and Sweetest Sufferance, and a third man – huge, round-shouldered, and tattooed in a pattern of—

&nb
sp; ‘Uh oh,’ said Master Quell.

  That’s the one, isn’t it? The caravan guard, the one who survived the Siege of Capustan. What was his name again?

  ‘This is not for you, Gruntle,’ Master Quell said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve got some damned good reasons for saying no to you, and if you just give me a moment I’ll come up with them.’

  The man’s feral smile revealed elongated canines.

  ‘The Trell is inside,’ Reccanto said. ‘Want me to get him, Quell? We should get going, right?’

  ‘Gruntle—’

  ‘I’d like to sign on,’ the caravan guard said, ‘as a shareholder. Just like those recruits there behind you. Same stakes. Same rules.’

  ‘When did you last take an order, Gruntle? You’ve been commanding guards for years now. You really think I want arguments with everything I say?’

  ‘No arguments. I’m not interested in second-guessing you. As a shareholder, just another shareholder.’

  The tavern door opened then and out walked Mappo Runt.

  His glance slipped past Gruntle then swung back, eyes narrowing. Then he faced Master Quell. ‘Is this one accompanying us? Good.’

  ‘Well—’

  The Trell moved up to the wagon and clambered up its side in a racket of squealing springs to take position behind Glanno Tarp. He looked back down. ‘We’ll probably need someone like him.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked the witch, Precious Thimble.

  ‘Soletaken,’ Mappo replied, shrugging.

  ‘It’s not quite like that,’ Gruntle said quietly as he moved to join Mappo atop the carriage.

  Master Quell stared after him, then, shaking himself, said, ‘Everyone get aboard, then. You two Boles, you’re facing astern. Witch, inside with me, where we can have ourselves a conversation. And you too, Mappo. We don’t put passengers up top. Too risky.’

  Faint swung herself up to sit beside Glanno Tarp.

  Brakes were released. Glanno glanced back to scan the crowd clinging to various handholds on the roof behind him. Grinned, then snapped the reins.

  The horses screamed, lunged.

  The world exploded around them.

  Blaze down, blessed sun, on this city of wonders where all is of consequence. Cast your fiery eye on the crowds, the multitudes moving to and fro on their ways of life. Flow warmth into the rising miasma of dreams, hopes, fears and loves that ever seethe skyward, rising in the breaths expelled, the sighs released, reflected from restive glances and sidelong regard, echoing eternal from voices in clamour.

  See then this street where walks a man who had been young the last time he walked this street. He is young no longer, oh, no. And there in the next street, wandering a line of market stalls crowded with icons, figurines and fetishes from a thousand cults – most of them long extinct – walks a woman whose path had, years ago now, crossed that of the man. She too no longer feels young, and if desire possessed tendrils that could pass through stone and brick, that could wend through mobs of senseless people, why, might they then meet in some fateful place and there intertwine, weaving something new and precious as a deadly flower? In another quarter of the city strides a foreigner, an impressive creature, tall and prominently muscled, very nearly sculpted, aye, with skin the perfect hue of polished onyx and eyes in which glitter flecks of hazel and gold, and many were the glances sliding over him as he passed. But he was not mindful of such things, for he was looking for a new life and might well find it here in this glorious, exotic city.

  In a poor stretch of the Gadrobi District a withered, weathered woman, tall and thin, knelt in her narrow strip of garden and began placing flatstones into a pattern in the dark earth. So much of what the soil could give must first be prepared, and these ways were most arcane and mysterious, and she worked as if in a dream, while in the small house behind her still slept her husband, a knuckled monster filled with fear and hate, and his dreams were dark indeed for the sun could not reach the places in his soul.

  A woman lounged on the deck of a moored ship in the harbour. Sensing fell kin somewhere in the city and, annoyed, giving much thought to what she would do about it. If anything, anything at all. Something was coming, however, and was she not cursed with curiosity?

  An ironmonger held a conversation with his latest investor, who was none other than a noble Councillor and reputedly the finest duellist in all Darujhistan, and therein it was decided that young and most ambitious Gorlas Vidikas would take charge of the iron mines six leagues to the west of the city.

  A rickety wagon rocked along the road well past Maiten yet still skirting the lake, and in its bed amidst filthy blankets was the small battered form of a child, still unconscious but judged, rightly so, that he would live. The poor thing.

  This track, you see, led to but one place, one fate. The old shepherd had done well and had already buried his cache of coins beneath the stoop behind the shack where he lived with his sickly wife, who had been worn out by seven failed pregnancies, and if there was bitter spite in the eyes she fixed upon the world is it any wonder? But he would do good by her in these last tired years, yes, he would, and he set to one side one copper coin that he would fling to the lake spirits at dusk – an ancient, black-stained coin bearing the head of a man the shepherd didn’t recognize – not that he would, for that face belonged to the last Tyrant of Darujhistan.

  The wagon rolled on, on its way to the mines.

  Harllo, who so loved the sun, was destined to wake in darkness, and mayhap he was never again to see the day’s blessed light.

  Out on the lake the water glittered with golden tears.

  As if the sun might relinquish its hard glare and, for just this one moment, weep for the fate of a child.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When can he not stand alone

  Where in darkness no shadows are cast

  Whose most precious selves deny the throne

  While nothing held in life will last a moment longer

  Than what’s carved into the very bones

  But this is where you would stand

  In his place and see all bleak and bridled

  An array of weapons each one forged

  For violence

  When can he not stand alone

  Where darkness bleeds into the abyss so vast

  Whose every yearning seeks a new home

  While each struggle leaves the meek to the stronger

  And the fallen lie scattered like stones

  But this is the life you would take in hand

  To guide him ‘cross the path so broken so riddled

  Like the weapon of your will now charged

  In cold balance

  When can he not stand alone

  Where in darkness every shadow is lost

  Whose weary selves cut away and will roam

  While nothing is left but this shielded stranger

  Standing against the wind’s eternal moans

  But this is your hero who must stand

  Guarding your broken desires the ragged flag unfurled

  Rising above the bastion to see your spite purged

  In his silence

  Anomandaris, Book III, verses 7–10

  Fisher kel Tath

  The swath of ground where all the grasses had been worn away might have marked the passing of a herd of bhederin, if not for the impossibly wide ruts left behind by the enormous studded wheels of a wagon, and the rubbish and occasional withered corpse scattered to either side. Vultures and crows danced among the detritus.

  Traveller sat slouched in the Seven Cities saddle atop the piebald gelding. Nearby, at the minimum distance that his horse would accept, was the witch, Samar Dev, perched like a child above the long-legged, gaunt and fierce Jhag horse whose name was, she had said, Havok. The beast’s true owner was somewhere ahead, perhaps behind the Skathandi and the Captain’s monstrous carriage, or beyond it. Either way, she was certain a clash was imminent.

  ‘He dislikes slavers,’ she
had said earlier, as if this explained everything.

  No demon, then, but a Toblakai of true blood, a detail that sent pangs of regret and pain through Traveller, for reasons he kept to himself – and though she had seen something of that anguish in his face it appeared she would respect his privacy. Or perhaps feared its surrender, for Samar Dev was a woman, he suspected, prone to plunging into vast depths of emotion.

  She had, after all, travelled through warrens to find the trail of the one ahead of them on this plain, and such an undertaking was not embraced on a whim. All to deliver a horse. He knew enough to leave it at that, poor as it might be as justification for such extremity. The Kindaru had accepted the reason with sage nods, seeing nothing at all unusual in any of it – the horse was a sacred beast, after all, a Jhag, brother to their cherished horses-of-the-rock. They possessed legends with similar themes, and indeed they had spent half the night recounting many of them – and now they had found themselves a new one. Master of the Wolf-Horses met a woman so driven as to be his own reflection, and together they rode into the north, having drawn their threads through the last camp of the Kindaru, and were now entwined each with the other and both with the Kindaru, and though this was a tale not yet done it would nevertheless live on, for as long as lived the Kindaru themselves.

  He had noted the grief in Samar Dev’s weary, weathered face, as the many wounds delivered – in all innocence – by the Kindaru slowly sank deeper, piercing her heart, and now compassion swirled dark and raw in her eyes, although the Kindaru were far behind them now. It was clear, brutally so, that both she and Traveller had collected a new thread to twist into their lives.

  ‘How far ahead?’ she asked.

  ‘Two days at the most.’

  ‘Then he might have found them by now, or they him.’

  ‘Yes, it’s possible. If this Skathandi Captain has an army, well, even a Toblakai can die.’

  ‘I know that,’ she replied. Then added, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And there are but two of us, Samar Dev.’

  ‘If you’d rather cut away from this trail, Traveller, I will not question your decision. But I need to find him.’