Deadhouse Gates Page 39

  Behind Duiker, the ice erupted with an explosive roar. Cold crimson rain struck the historian in a rolling wall, staggering him.

  A savage shriek sounded behind him.

  The spirits of the land bolted forward, spinning and tumbling past Duiker. He whirled in time to see a figure—flesh rotted black, arms long as an ape's—clawing its way out of the dirty, steaming slush.

  The spirits reached it, swarming over the figure. It managed a single, piercing shriek before it was torn to pieces.

  The eastern horizon was a streak of red when they returned to the killing strip. The camp was already awakening, the demands of existence pressing once more upon ragged, weary souls. Wagon-mounted forges were being stoked, fresh hides scraped, leather stretched and punched or boiled in huge blackened pots. Despite a lifetime spent in cities, the Malazan refugees were learning to carry their city with them—or at least those meagre remnants vital to survival.

  Duiker and the three warlocks were sodden with old blood and clinging fragments of flesh. Their reappearance on the plain was enough to announce their success and the Wickans raised a wail that ran through each clan's encampment, the sound as much sorrowful as triumphant, a fitting dirge to announce the fall of a god.

  From the distant Semk camps to the north, the rituals of mourning had fallen off, leaving naught but ominous silence.

  Dew steamed from the earth, and the historian could feel—as he crossed the killing strip back towards the Wickan encampment—a darker reverberation to the power of the spirits of the land. The three warlocks parted from him as they approached the camp's edge.

  The reverberating power found a voice only moments later, as every dog in the vast camp began howling. The cries were strangely lifeless and cold as iron, filling the air like a promise.

  Duiker slowed his walk. A promise. An age of devouring ice—

  'Historian!'

  He looked up to see three men approach. He recognized two of them, Nethpara and Tumlit. The fellow nobleman accompanying them was short and round, burdened beneath a gold-brocaded cloak that would have looked imposing on a man twice his height and half his girth. As it was, the effect held more pathos than anything else.

  Nethpara was breathless as he hurried up, his slack folds of flesh quivering and mud-spattered. 'Imperial Historian Duiker, we wish to speak with you.'

  Lack of sleep—and a host of other things—had drawn Duiker's tolerance short, but he managed to keep his tone calm. 'I suggest another time—'

  'Quite impossible!' snapped the third nobleman. The Council is not to be brushed off yet again. Coltaine holds the sword and so may keep us at bay with his barbaric indifference, but we will have our petition delivered one way or the other!'

  Duiker blinked at the man.

  Tumlit cleared his throat apologetically and dabbed his watering eyes. 'Historian, permit me to introduce the Highborn Lenestro, recent resident of Sialk—'

  'No mere resident!' Lenestro squealed. 'Sole representative of the Kanese family of the same name, in all Seven Cities. Factor in the largest trade enterprise exporting the finest tanned camel hide. I am chief within the Guild, granted the honour of First Potency in Sialk. More than one Fist has bowed before me, yet here I stand, reduced to demanding audience with a foul-bespattered scholar—'

  'Lenestro, please!' Tumlit said in exasperation. 'You do your cause little good!'

  'Slapped across the face by a lard-smeared savage the Empress should have had spiked on a wall years ago! I warrant she will regret her mercy when news of this horror reaches her!'

  'Which horror would that be, Lenestro?' Duiker quietly asked.

  The question made Lenestro gape and sputter, his face reddening.

  Nethpara elected to answer. 'Historian, Coltaine conscripted our servants. It was not even a request. His Wickan dogs simply collected them—indeed, when one of our honoured colleagues protested, he was struck upon his person and knocked to the ground. Have our servants been returned? They have not. Are they even alive? What horrible suicide stand was left to them? We have no answers, Historian.'

  'Your concern is for the welfare of your servants?' Duiker asked.

  'Who shall prepare our meals?' Lenestro demanded. 'Mend our clothes and raise our tents and heat the water for our baths? This is an outrage!'

  'Their welfare is uppermost in my mind,' Tumlit said, offering a sad smile.

  Duiker believed the man. 'I shall enquire on your behalf, then.'

  'Of course you shall!' Lenestro snapped. 'Immediately.'

  'When you can,' Tumlit said.

  Duiker nodded, turned away.

  'We are not yet done with you!' Lenestro shouted.

  'We are,' Duiker heard Tumlit say.

  'Someone must silence these dogs! Their howling has no end!'

  Better howling than snapping at the heel. He walked on. His desire to wash himself was becoming desperate. The residue of blood and flesh had begun to dry on his clothes and on his skin. He was attracting attention as he shuffled down the aisle between the tents. Warding gestures were being made as he passed. Duiker feared he had inadvertently become a harbinger, and the fate he promised was as chilling as the soulless howls of the camp dogs.

  Ahead, the morning's light bled across the sky.

  Book Three

  Chain Of Dogs

  When the sands Danced blind, She emerged from the face Of a raging goddess

  S,'w'ifc Bidithal

  Chapter Eleven

  If you seek the crumbled bones of the T'lan Imass, gather into one hand the sands of Raraku

  The Holy Desert

  Anonymous

  Kulp felt like a rat in a vast chamber crowded with ogres, caged in by shadows and but moments away from being crushed underfoot. Never before when entering the Meanas Warren had it felt so… fraught.

  There were strangers here, intruders, forces so inimical to the realm that the very atmosphere bridled. The essence of himself that had slipped through the fabric was reduced to a crouching, cowering creature. And yet, all he could feel was a series of fell passages, the spun wakes that marked the paths the unwelcome had taken. His senses shouted at him that—for the moment at least—he was alone, the dun sprawled-out landscape devoid of all life.

  Still he trembled with terror.

  Within his mind he reached back a ghostly hand, finding the tactile reassurance of the place where his body existed, the heave and slush of blood in his veins, the solid weight of flesh and bone. He sat cross-legged in the captain's cabin of the Silanda, watched over by a wary, restless Heboric, while the others waited on the deck, ever scanning the unbroken, remorselessly flat horizon on all sides.

  They needed a way out. The entire Elder Warren they'd found themselves in was flooded, a soupy, shallow sea. The oarsmen could propel Silanda onward for a thousand years, until the wood rotted in their dead hands, the shafts snapping, until the ship began to disintegrate around them, still the drum would beat and the backs would bend. And we'd be long dead by then, nothing but mouldering dust. To escape, they must find a means of shifting warrens.

  Kulp cursed his own limitations. Had he been a practitioner of Sere, or Denul or D'riss or indeed virtually any of the other warrens accessible to humans, he would find what they needed. But not Meanas. No seas, no rivers, not even a Hood-damned puddle. From within his warren, Kulp was seeking to effect a passage through to the mortal world… and it was proving problematic.

  They were bound by peculiar laws, by rules of nature that seemed to play games with the principles of cause and effect. Had they been riding a wagon, the passage through the warrens would unerringly have taken them on a dry path. The primordial elements asserted an intractable consistency across all warrens. Land to land, air to air, water to water.

  Kulp had heard of High Mages who—it was rumoured—had found ways to cheat those illimitable laws, and perhaps the gods and other Ascendants possessed such knowledge as well. But they were as beyond a lowly cadre mage as the tools of an ogre's smit
hy to a cowering rat.

  His other concern was the vastness of the task itself. Pulling a handful of companions through his warren was difficult, but manageable. But an entire ship! He'd hoped he would find inspiration once within the Meanas Warren, some thunderbolt delivering a simple, elegant solution. With all the grace of poetry. Was it not Fisher Kel'Tath himself who once said poetry and sorcery were the twin edges to the knife in every man's heart? Where then are my magic cants?

  Kulp sourly admitted that he felt as stupid within Meanas as he did sitting in the captain's cabin. The art of illusion is grace itself. There must be a way to… to trick our way through. What is real versus what isn't is the synergy within a mortal's mind. And greater forces? Can reality itself be fooled into asserting or unreality?

  His shouting senses changed pitch. Kulp was no longer alone. The thick, turgid air of the Meanas Warren—where shadows were textured like ground glass and to slip througt them was to feel a shivering ecstasy—had begun to bulge, then bow, as if something huge approached, pushing the air before it. And whatever it was, it was coming fast.

  A sudden thought flooded the mage's mind. And moreover it possessed… elegance. Togg's toes, can I do this? Building pressure, then vacuous wake, a certain current, a certain flow Hood, it ain't water, but close enough.

  I hope.

  He saw Heboric jump back in alarm, striking his head on a low crossbeam in the cabin. Kulp slipped back into his body and loosed a rasping gasp. 'We're about to go, Heboric. Get everyone ready!'

  The old man was rubbing a stump against the back of his head. 'Ready for what, Mage?'

  'Anything.'

  Kulp slid back out, mentally clambering back over his anchor within Meanas.

  The Unwelcome was coming, a force of such power as to make the febrile atmosphere shiver. The mage saw nearby shadows vibrate into dissolution. He felt outrage building in the air, in the loamy earth underfoot. Whatever was passing through this warren had drawn the attention of… of whatever—Shadowthrone, the Hounds—or perhaps warrens truly are alive. In any case, on it came, in arrogant disregard.

  Kulp suddenly thought back to Sormo's ritual that had drawn them into the T'lan Imass warren outside Hissar. Oh, Hood, Soletaken or D'ivers… but such power! Who in the Abyss has such power? He could think of but two: Anomander Rake, the Son of Darkness, and Osric. Both Soletaken, both supremely arrogant. If there were others, the tales of their activities would have reached him, he was certain. Warriors talk about heroes. Mages talk about Ascendants. He would have heard.

  Rake was on Genabackis, and Osric was reputed to have journeyed to a continent far to the south a century or so back. Well, maybe the cold-eyed bastard's back. Either way, he was about to find out.

  The presence arrived. His spiritual belly flat on the soft ground, Kulp craned his head skyward.

  The dragon came low to the earth. It defied every image of a draconian being Kulp had ever seen. Not Rake, not Osric. Hugely boned, with skin like dry shark hide, its wing-span dwarfed even that of the Son of Darkness—who has within him the blood of the draconian goddess—and the wings had nothing of the smooth, curving grace; the bones were multi-jointed in a crazed pattern, like that of a crushed bat wing, each knobbed joint prominent beneath taut, cracked skin. The dragon's head was as wide as it was long, like a viper's, the eyes high on its skull. There was no ridged forehead, instead the skull sloped back to a basal serration almost buried in neck and jaw muscles.

  A dragon roughly cast, a creature exhaling an aura of primordial antiquity. And, Kulp realized with a breathless start as his senses devoured all that the creature projected, it was undead.

  The mage felt it become aware of him as it sailed in a whisper twenty arm-spans overhead. A sudden sharpening of intensity that quickly passed into indifference.

  As the dragon's wake arrived with a piercing wind, Kulp rolled onto his back and hissed the few words of High Meanas he possessed. The warren's fabric parted, a tear barely large enough to allow the passage of a horse. But it opened onto a vacuum, and the shrieking wind became a roar.

  Still hovering between realms, Kulp watched in awe as Silanda's mud-crusted, battered prow filled the rent. The fabric split wider, then yet wider. Suddenly, the ship's beam seemed appallingly broad. The mage's awe turned to fear, then terror. Oh no, I've really done it now.

  Milky, foaming water gushed in around the ship's hull. The portalway was tearing wider on all sides, uncontrolled, as the weight of a sea began to rush through.

  A wall of water descended on Kulp and a moment later it struck, destroying his anchor, his spiritual presence. He was back in the pitching, groaning captain's cabin. Heboric was half in and half out of the cabin doorway, scrambling to find purchase as Silanda rode the wave.

  The ex-priest shot Kulp a glare when he saw the mage clamber upright. 'Tell me you planned this! Tell me you've got it all under control, Mage!'

  'Of course, you idiot! Can't you tell?' He climbed his way round the bolted-down furniture to the passage, stepping over Heboric as he went. 'Hold the fort, old man, we're counting on you!'

  Heboric snarled a few choice words after him as Kulp made his way to the main deck.

  If the Unwelcome's passage was to be bitterly tolerated and not directly opposed by the powers within Meanas, the rending of the warren obliterated the option of restraint. This was damage on a cosmic scale, a wounding quite possibly beyond repair.

  I may just have destroyed my own warren. If reality can't be fooled. Of course it can be fooled—I do it all the time!

  Kulp scrambled onto the main deck and hurried to the sterncastle. Gesler and Stormy were at the steering oar, both men grinning like demented fools as they struggled to stay the course. Gesler pointed forward and Kulp turned to see the vague, ghostlike apparition of the dragon, its narrow, bony tail waving in side-to-side rhythm like a snake crossing sand. As he watched, the creature's wedge-shaped head appeared as it twisted to cast its dead, black eye sockets in their direction.

  Gesler waved.

  Shaking himself, Kulp forced his way into the wind, coming to the stern rail which he gripped with both hands. The rent was already far away—yet still visible, meaning it must be… oh, Hood! Water gushed in a tumbling torrent within the wake left by the Soletaken dragon. That it did not spread out to all sides was due entirely to the mass of shadows Kulp saw assailing its edges—and being destroyed in the effort. Yet still more arrived. The task of healing the breach was so overwhelming as to deny any opportunity of approaching the rent, of sealing the wound itself.

  Shadowthrone! And every other hoary Ascendant bastard within hearing! Maybe I've got no faith in any of you, but you'd better acquire a faith in me. And fast! Illusion's my gift, here and now. Believe! Eyes on the rent, Kulp braced his legs wide, then released the stern rail and raised high both arms.

  It shall close… it shall heal! The scene before him wavered, the tear sealing, stitching together the edges. The water slowed. He pushed harder, willing the illusion to become real. His limbs shook. Sweat sprang out on his skin, soaked his clothing.

  Reality pushed back. The illusion blurred. Kulp's knees buckled. He gripped the railing to keep himself upright. He was failing. No strength left. Failing. Dying…

  The force that struck him from behind was like a physical blow to the back of his head. Stars spasmed across his vision. An alien power swept through him, flinging his body back upright. Spread-eagled, he felt his feet leave the tilted deck. The power held him, hovering in place, a will as cold as ice flooding his flesh.

  The power was undead. The will that gripped him was a dragon's. Tinged with irritation, reluctant to act, it nevertheless grasped the illogic of Kulp's sorcerous effort… and gave it all the force it needed. Then more.

  He screamed, pain lancing through him with glacial fire.

  Undead cared nothing for the limits of mortal flesh, a lesson now burning in his bones.

  The distant rent closed. All at once other powers were channelling
through the mage. Ascendants, grasping Kulp's outrageous intent, swept in to join the game with dark glee. Always a game. Damn you bastards one and all! I take back my prayers! Hear me? Hood take you all!

  He realized the pain was gone, the Soletaken dragon withdrawing its attention as soon as other forces arrived to take its place. He remained hovering a few feet above the deck, however, his limbs twitching as the powers using him playfully plucked at his mortality. Not the indifference of an undead, but malice. Kulp began to yearn for the former.

  He fell suddenly, cracking both knees on the dirt-smeared deck. Tool done with, now discarded…

  Stormy was at his side, waving a wineskin before the mage's face. Kulp grasped it and poured until his mouth was full of the tart liquid.

  'We ride the dragon's wake,' the soldier said. 'Though not on water any more. That gush has closed up tight as a sapper's arse. Whatever you did, Mage, it worked.'

  'Not over yet,' Kulp muttered, trying to still his trembling limbs. He swallowed more wine.

  'Watch yourself with that, then,' Stormy said with a grin. 'It packs a punch, right to the back of the head—

  'I won't notice the difference—my skull's already full of pulp.'

  'You lit up with blue fire, Mage. Never seen anything like it. Make a damned good tavern tale.'

  'Ah, I've achieved immortality at last. Take that, Hood!'

  'Well enough to stand?'

  Kulp was not too proud to accept the soldier's arm as he tottered to his feet. 'Give me a few moments,' he said, 'then I'll try to slip us from the warren… back to our realm.'

  'Will the ride be as rough, Mage?'

  'I hope not.'

  Felisin stood on the forecastle deck, watching the mage and Stormy passing the wineskin between them. She had felt the presence of the Ascendants, the cold, bloodless attention plucking and prodding at the ship and all who were upon it. The dragon was the worst of them all, gelid and remote. Like fleas on its hide, that's all we were to it.