The Malazan Empire Page 35

  The landscape around him was barren; even the plowed earth was gone, with no sign of habitation in sight. He squatted by the lone fire in a tundra wasteland, and the air had the breath of rotting ice. To the north and to the east the horizon gleamed green, almost luminescent though no moon had risen to challenge the stars. Kruppe had never before seen such a thing, yet it was an image fashioned within his mind. “Disturbing, indeed, proclaims Kruppe. Are these visions of instinct, then, unfurled in this dream for a purpose? Kruppe knows not, and would return to his warm bed this instant, were the choice his.”

  He stared about at the lichen- and moss-covered ground, frowning at the strange bright colors born there. He’d heard tales of Redspire Plain, that land far to the north, beyond the Laederon Plateau. Is this what tundra looked like? He’d always pictured a bleak, colorless world. “Yet peruse these stars overhead. They glisten with a youthful energy, nay, sparkle as if amused by the one who contemplates them. While the earth itself hints of vast blushes of red, orange, and lavender.”

  Kruppe rose as low thunder reached him from the west. In the distance moved a massive herd of brown-furred beasts. The steam of their breath gusted silver in the air above and behind them as they ran, turning as one this way and that but ever at a distance. He watched them for some time. When they came closest to him he saw the reddish streaks in their fur, and their horns, sweeping down then up and out. The land shook with their passage.

  “Such is the life in this world, Kruppe wonders. Has he traveled back, then, to the very beginning of things?”

  “You have,” said a deep voice behind him.

  Kruppe turned. “Ah, come to share my fire, of course.” He saw before him a squat figure, covered in the tanned hides of deer or some such similar animal. Antlers stretched out from a flat skullcap on the man’s head, gray and covered in fuzzy skin. Kruppe bowed. “You see before you Kruppe, of Darujhistan.”

  “I am Pran Chole of Cannig Tol’s Clan among the Kron Tlan.” Pran stepped close and crouched before the fire. “I am also the White Fox, Kruppe, wise in the ways of ice.” He glanced at Kruppe and smiled.

  Pran’s face was wide, the bones pronounced beneath smooth, gold skin. His eyes were barely visible between tight lids, but what Kruppe saw of them was a startling amber in color. Pran reached out long, supple hands over the fire. “Fire is life, and life is fire. The age of ice passes, Kruppe. Long have we lived here, hunting the great herds, gathering to war with the Jaghut in the southlands, birthing and dying with the ebb and flow of the frozen rivers.”

  “Kruppe has traveled far, then.”

  “To the beginning and to the end. My kind give way to your kind, Kruppe, though the wars do not cease. What we shall give to you is freedom from such wars. The Jaghut dwindle, ever retreat into forbidding places. The Forkrul Assail have vanished, though we never found need to fight them. And the K’chain Che’Malle are no more—the ice spoke to them with words of death.” Pran’s gaze swung back to the fire. “Our hunting has brought death to the great herds, Kruppe. We are driven south, and this must not be. We are the Tlan, but soon the Gathering comes, and so shall be voiced the Rite of Imass and the Choosing of the Bonecasters, and then shall come the sundering of flesh, of time itself. With the Gathering shall be born the T’lan Imass, and the First Empire.”

  “Why, Kruppe wonders, is he here?”

  Pran Chole shrugged. “I have come for I have been called. By whom, I know not. Perhaps it is the same with you.”

  “But Kruppe is dreaming. This is Kruppe’s dream.”

  “Then I am honored.” Pran straightened. “One of your time comes. Perhaps this one possesses the answers we seek.”

  Kruppe followed Pran’s gaze to the south. He raised an eyebrow. “If not mistaken, then Kruppe recognizes her as a Rhivi.”

  The woman who approached was perhaps middle-aged, heavy with child. Her dark, round face bore features similar to Pran Chole’s, though less pronounced. Fear shone in her eyes, yet there was a grim determination about her as well. She reached the fire and eyed the two men, most of her attention drawing to Pran Chole. “Tlan,” she said, “the Tellann Warren of the Imass of our time has birthed a child in a confluence of sorceries. Its soul wanders lost. Its flesh is an abomination. A shifting must take place.” She turned to Kruppe and swept back the thick woven robe she wore, revealing her swelled stomach. The bare, stretched skin had been recently traced in a tattoo. The image was that of a white-haired fox. “The Elder God walks again, risen from blood spilled on consecrated stone. K’rul came in answer to the child’s need and now aids us in our quest. He apologizes to you, Kruppe, for using the world within your dream, but no younger god can influence this place. Somehow you have made your soul immune to them.”

  “The rewards of cynicism,” Kruppe said, bowing.

  The woman smiled.

  “I understand,” Pran Chole said. “You would make of this child, born of Imass powers, a Soletaken.”

  “Yes. It is the best we can manage, Tlan. A shapeshifter—which we too know as Soletaken—must be fashioned.”

  Kruppe cleared his throat. “Excuse Kruppe, please. But are we not missing someone vital to these plans?”

  “She strides two worlds,” the Rhivi said. “K’rul guides her now into yours. She is frightened still. It falls to you, Kruppe, to welcome her.”

  Kruppe adjusted the sleeves of his faded, threadbare cloak. “This should not prove difficult for one of Kruppe’s charms.”

  “Perhaps,” the Rhivi said, frowning. “Her flesh is an abomination. You have been warned.”

  Kruppe nodded affably, then looked around. “Will any direction do?”

  Pran Chole laughed.

  “I suggest south,” the Rhivi said.

  He shrugged and, with a bow to the two companions, he headed south. After a few minutes he glanced back, but the fire was nowhere in sight. He was alone in the chill night.

  A full moon appeared on the eastern horizon, bathing the land in silver light. Ahead, the tundra rolled on as far as Kruppe could see, flat and featureless. Then he squinted. Something had just appeared, still distant, walking with seeming great difficulty. He watched it fall once, then climb back to its feet. Despite the luminescence, the figure looked black.

  Kruppe moved forward. It had yet to see him, and he stopped when he was but thirty feet away. The Rhivi had been right. Kruppe produced his silk handkerchief and wiped the sweat that had sprung across his brow. The figure had been a woman once, tall, with long black hair. But that woman had been long dead. Her flesh had withered and assumed the hue of dark wood. Perhaps the most horrific aspect of her was her limbs, which had been roughly sewn back onto her body. “Aye,” Kruppe whispered. This woman had been torn apart once.

  The woman’s head flew up and sightless eyes fixed upon Kruppe. She stopped, her mouth opening but no words coming forth.

  Surreptitiously, Kruppe cast a spell upon himself, then looked at her yet again. He frowned. A spell had been woven about the woman, one of preservation. But something had happened to that spell, something had reshaped it. “Lass!” Kruppe barked. “I know you can hear me.” He didn’t know, but decided to insist in any case. “Your soul is trapped within a body that is not your own. It does not become you. I am named Kruppe, and I will lead you to succour. Come!” He spun round and began to walk. A moment later he heard a shuffling behind him, and smiled. “Ah,” he whispered, “Kruppe has charms indeed. But more, he can be harsh when necessary.”

  The fire had returned, a beacon before them, and Kruppe saw the two figures awaiting them. The vestiges of the spell he had cast upon himself made the Tlan and the Rhivi blinding to his eyes, such was their power. Kruppe and the woman arrived.

  Pran Chole stepped forward. “Thank you, Kruppe.” He studied the woman and nodded slowly. “Yes, I see the effects of the Imass upon her. But there is more.” He looked to the Rhivi. “She was a mage once?”

  The Rhivi moved close to the woman. “Hear me, lost one. Your
name is Tattersail, your sorcery is Thyr. The Warren flows within you now, it animates you, protects you.” She opened her robe once more. “It is time to bring you back into the world.”

  Tattersail stepped back in alarm.

  “Within you is the past,” Pran said. “My world. You know the present, and the Rhivi offers you to the future. In this place all is merged. The flesh you wear has upon it a spell of preservation, and in your dying act you opened your Warren within the influence of Tellann. And now you wander within a mortal’s dream. Kruppe is the vessel of change. Permit us to aid you.”

  With a wordless cry Tattersail staggered into Pran’s arms. The Rhivi quickly joined them.

  “My,” Kruppe breathed, “but Kruppe’s dreams have taken a strange turn. While his own concerns are ever present, a haunting voice, once again he must set them aside.”

  Suddenly K’rul stood beside him. “Not so. It is not my way to use you without just recompense.”

  Kruppe looked up at the Elder God. “Kruppe asks for nothing. There is a gift in this, and I am glad to be part of its making.”

  K’rul nodded. “Nevertheless. Speak to me of your efforts.”

  “Rallick and Murillio seek to right an old wrong,” Kruppe said, with a sigh. “They think me ignorant of their schemes, but I shall turn such schemes to my purposes. Guilt rides this decision, but they are needed.”

  “Understood. And the Coin Bearer?”

  “Protection has been set in motion, though its final shaping is yet to come. I know that the Malazan Empire is present in Darujhistan, covertly for the moment. What they seek—”

  “Is anything but clear, Kruppe. Even to them. Use this to your advantage when you find them. Allies might come from surprising quarters. I will tell you this: two now approach the city, one is a T’lan Imass, the other a bane to magic. Their purposes are destructive, but already forces are in play attending to them. Seek knowledge of them, but do not openly oppose them. They are dangerous. Power attracts power, Kruppe. Leave them to the consequences of their actions.”

  Kruppe nodded. “Kruppe is no fool, K’rul. He openly opposes no one, and he finds power a thing to be avoided at all costs.”

  As they spoke the Rhivi woman had taken Tattersail in her arms. Pran Chole squatted nearby, his eyes closed and his lips forming silent words. The Rhivi woman rocked the desiccated body in rhythmic motion, chanting softly. Water stained the Rhivi’s thighs.

  “Aye,” Kruppe whispered. “She prepares to give birth in truth.”

  Abruptly the Rhivi tossed away the body. It crumpled in a lifeless heap.

  The Moon now hung immediately overhead, so bright that Kruppe found he could not look at it directly.

  The Rhivi had assumed a squatting position, moving with the rhythm of labor, her face sheathed in sweat. Pran Chole remained immobile, though his body was racked in shivering bouts that twisted his face with pain. His eyes opened wide, glowing bright amber, and fixed on the Moon.

  “Elder God,” Kruppe said quietly, “how much will this Tattersail remember of her former life?”

  “Unknown,” K’rul replied. “Soul-shifting is a delicate thing. The woman was consumed in a conflagration. Her soul’s first flight was carried on wings of pain and violence. More, she entered another ravaged body, bearing its own traumas. The child that is born will be like no other ever seen. Its life is a mystery, Kruppe.”

  Kruppe grunted. “Considering her parents, she will indeed be exceptional.” A thought came to him and he frowned. “K’rul, what of the first child within the Rhivi?”

  “There was none, Kruppe. The Rhivi woman was prepared in a manner unknown to any man.” He chuckled. “Including myself.” He raised his head. “This sorcery belongs to the Moon, Kruppe.”

  They continued watching the labors of birth. To Kruppe it seemed they waited more hours in the darkness than any normal night could hold. The Moon remained overhead, as if it found its position to its liking—or, he reconsidered, as if it stood guard over them.

  Then a small cry rose into the still air, and the Rhivi lifted in her arms a child furred in silver.

  Even as Kruppe watched, the fur sloughed away. The Rhivi turned the child and placed her mouth against its belly. Her jaws bunched and the remaining length of umbilical cord fell away.

  Pran Chole strode to stand beside Kruppe and the Elder God. The T’lan looked exhausted. “The child drew from me power beyond my control,” he said softly.

  As the Rhivi squatted again in afterbirth, holding the child against her chest, Kruppe’s eyes widened. The mother’s belly was smooth, the white fox tattoo was gone.

  “I am saddened,” Pran said, “that I may not return in twenty years to see the woman this child shall become.”

  “You shall,” K’rul said in a low tone, “but not as a T’lan. As a T’lan Imass Bonecaster.”

  The breath hissed between Pran’s teeth. “How long?” he asked.

  “Three hundred thousand years, Pran Chole of Cannig Tol’s Clan.”

  Kruppe laid a hand on Pran’s arm. “You’ve something to look forward to,” he said.

  The T’lan stared at Kruppe a moment, then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  The hours before Kruppe’s dream had proved eventful, beginning with his meeting with Baruk that permitted the revelation of the Coin Bearer punctuated with the clever if slightly dramatic suspension of the coin’s wax impression—a cantrip that had gone strangely awry.

  But soon after the meeting, droplets of now-hardened wax pebbling the breast and arms of his coat, Kruppe paused just outside the alchemist’s door. Roald was nowhere to be seen. “Oh, my,” Kruppe breathed as he wiped sweat from his forehead. “Why should Master Baruk find Crokus’s name familiar? Ah, stupid Kruppe! Uncle Mammot, of course. Oh dear, that was close—all could well have been lost!” He continued on down the hall to the stairs.

  For a time there, Oponn’s power had waxed considerably. Kruppe smiled at his pun, but it was a distracted smile. He would do well to avoid such contacts. Power had a habit of triggering his own talents; already he felt the urgings of the Deck of Dragons within his head.

  He hurried down the stairs and crossed the main hall to the doors. Roald was just entering, burdened beneath mundane supplies. Kruppe noted the dust covering the old man’s clothing. “Dear Roald, you look as if you’ve just weathered a sandstorm! Do you require Kruppe’s assistance?”

  “No,” Roald grunted. “Thank you, Kruppe. I can manage. Will you be so kind as to close the doors on your way out?”

  “Of course, kind Roald!” Kruppe patted the man’s arm and strode out into the courtyard. The gates leading to the street had been left open, and beyond was a swirling cloud of dust. “Ah, yes, the road repairs,” Kruppe muttered.

  A headache had burgeoned behind his eyes, and the bright sun overhead wasn’t helping matters any. He was halfway to the gates when he stopped. “The doors! Kruppe has forgotten to close the doors!” He spun round and returned to the estate entrance, sighing as the doors closed with a satisfying click. As he turned away a second time someone shouted in the street beyond. There followed a loud crash, but this latter sound was lost on Kruppe.

  With that bellowed curse a sorcerous storm roared into his head. He fell to his knees, then his head snapped up, eyes widening. “That,” he whispered, “was indeed a Malazan curse. Then why does House Shadow’s image burn like fire in Kruppe’s skull? Who now walks the streets of Darujhistan?” A count of knots unending . . . “Mysteries solved, more mysteries created.”

  The pain had passed. Kruppe climbed to his feet and brushed the dust from his clothing. “Good that said affliction occurred beyond the eyes of suspicious beings, Kruppe notes with relief. All upon a promise made to friend Roald. Wise old friend Roald. Oponn’s breath is this time welcome, though begrudgingly so.”

  He strode to the gates and peered into the street. A cart filled with shattered cobbles had toppled. Two men argued incessantly as to whose fault it was
while they righted the cart and proceeded to refill it. Kruppe studied them. They spoke well the Daru tongue, but to one who listened carefully there was the hint of an accent—an accent that did not belong. “Oh, my,” Kruppe said, stepping back. He adjusted his coat, took a deep breath, then opened the gate and walked into the street.

  The fat little man with the flopping sleeves walked from the house’s gate and turned left. He seemed in a hurry.

  Sergeant Whiskeyjack wiped the sweat from his brow with a scarred forearm, his eyes slits against the bright sunlight.

  “That is the one, Sergeant,” Sorry said, beside him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Whiskeyjack watched the man winding through the crowd. “What’s so important about him?” he asked.

  “I admit,” Sorry replied, “to some uncertainty as to his significance. But he is vital, Sergeant.”

  Whiskeyjack chewed his lip, then turned to the wagon bed where a city map had been laid flat, its corners anchored down by chunks of rock. “Who lives in that estate?”

  “A man named Baruk,” Sorry answered. “An alchemist.”

  He scowled. How did she know that? “Are you saying that fat little man is this Baruk?”

  “No. He works for the alchemist. Not a servant. A spy, perhaps. His skills involve thievery, and he possesses . . . talent.”

  Whiskeyjack looked up. “A Seer?”

  For some reason Sorry winced. The sergeant watched, bemused, as Sorry’s face paled. Damn, he wondered, what on earth is going on with this girl?

  “I believe so,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Whiskeyjack straightened. “All right. Follow him.”

  She nodded shakily, then slipped into the crowd.

  The sergeant rested his back against the wagon’s sidewall. His expression soured as he studied his squad. Trotts was swinging his pick as if on a battlefield. Stones flew everywhere. Passersby ducked, and cursed when ducking failed. Hedge and Fiddler crouched behind a wheelbarrow, flinching each time the Barghast’s pick struck the street. Mallet stood a short distance away, directing pedestrians to the other pavement. He no longer bellowed at the people, having lost his voice arguing with an old man with a donkey wobbling under an enormous basket of firewood. The bundles now lay scattered across the street—the old man and the donkey nowhere to be seen—providing an effective barrier to wheeled vehicles.