The Malazan Empire Read online

  A chill danced up Tattersail’s spine. No one liked having the Claws around. Those Imperial assassins—Laseen’s favored weapon—kept their poisoned daggers sharp for anyone and everyone, Malazans included.

  It seemed Calot was thinking the same thing, for he sat up sharply. “If they’re here for any other reason . . .”

  “They’ll have to come through me first,” Dujek said, his lone hand reaching down to rest on the pommel of his longsword.

  He has an audience, there in the other room. He’s telling the man commanding the Claw how things stand. Shedunul bless him.

  Hairlock spoke. “They’ll go to ground. They’re wizards, not idiots.”

  It was a moment before Tattersail understood the man’s comment. Oh, right. Pale’s wizards.

  Dujek glanced down at Hairlock, gauging, then he nodded. “Two, we’re attacking Moon’s Spawn today.”

  In the other compartment, High Mage Tayschrenn turned at these words and approached slowly. Within his hood a broad smile creased his dark face, a momentary cracking of seamless features. The smile passed quickly, the ageless skin becoming smooth once again. “Hello, my colleagues,” he said, droll and menacing all at once.

  Hairlock snorted. “Keep the melodrama to a minimum, Tayschrenn, and we’ll all be happier.”

  Ignoring Hairlock’s comment, the High Mage continued, “The Empress has lost her patience with Moon’s Spawn—”

  Dujek cocked his head and interrupted, his voice softly grating. “The Empress is scared enough to hit first and hit hard. Tell it plain, Magicker. This is your front line you’re talking to here. Show some respect, dammit.”

  The High Mage shrugged. “Of course, High Fist.” He faced the cadre. “Your group, myself and three other High Mages will strike Moon’s Spawn within the hour. The North Campaign has drawn most of the edifice’s inhabitants away. We believe that the Moon’s lord is alone. For almost three years his mere presence has been enough to hold us in check. This morning, my colleagues, we will test this lord’s mettle.”

  “And hope to Hood he’s been bluffing all this time,” Dujek added, a scowl deepening the lines on his forehead. “Any questions?”

  “How soon can I get a transfer?” Calot asked.

  Tattersail cleared her throat. “What do we know about the Lord of Moon’s Spawn?”

  “Scant little, I’m afraid,” Tayschrenn said, his eyes veiled. “A Tiste Andii, for certain. An archmage.”

  Hairlock leaned forward and deliberately spat at the floor in front of Tayschrenn. “Tiste Andii, High Mage? I think we can be a little more specific than that, don’t you?”

  Tattersail’s migraine worsened. She realized she was holding her breath, slowly forced it out as she gauged Tayschrenn’s reaction—to the man’s words and to the traditional Seven Cities challenge.

  “An archmage,” Tayschrenn repeated. “Perhaps the Archmage of the Tiste Andii. Dear Hairlock,” he added, his voice lowering a notch, “your primitive tribal gestures remain quaint, if somewhat tasteless.”

  Hairlock bared his teeth. “The Tiste Andii are Mother Dark’s first children. You’ve felt the tremors through the Warrens of Sorcery, Tayschrenn. So have I. Ask Dujek about the reports coming down from the North Campaign. Elder magic—Kurald Galain. The Lord of Moon’s Spawn is the Master Archmage—you know his name as well as I do.”

  “I know nothing of the sort,” the High Mage snapped, losing his calm at last. “Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us, Hairlock, and then I can begin inquiries as to your sources.”

  “Ahh!” Hairlock bolted forward in his chair, an eager malice in his taut face. “A threat from the High Mage. Now we’re getting somewhere. Answer me this, then. Why only three other High Mages? We’ve hardly been thinned out that badly. More, why didn’t we do this two years ago?”

  Whatever was building between Hairlock and Tayschrenn was interrupted by Dujek, who growled wordlessly, then said, “We’re desperate, mage. The North Campaign has gone sour. The Fifth is damn near gone, and won’t be getting any reinforcements until next spring. The point is, the Moon’s lord could have his army back any day now. I don’t want to have to send you up against an army of Tiste Andii, and I sure as Hood don’t want the Second having to show two fronts with a relieving force coming down on them. Bad tactics, and whoever this Caladan Brood is, he’s shown himself adept at making us pay for our mistakes.”

  “Caladan Brood,” Calot murmured. “I swear I’ve heard that name somewhere before. Odd that I’ve never given it much thought.”

  Tattersail’s eyes narrowed on Tayschrenn. Calot was right: the name of the man commanding the Tiste Andii alongside the Crimson Guard did sound familiar—but in an old way, echoing ancient legends, perhaps, or some epic poem.

  The High Mage met her gaze, flat and calculating. “The need,” he said, turning to the others, “for justifications has passed. The Empress has commanded, and we must obey.”

  Hairlock snorted a second time. “Speaking of twisting arms,” he sat back, still smiling contemptuously at Tayschrenn, “remember how we played cat and mouse at Aren? This plan has your stink on it. You’ve been itching for a chance like this for a long time.” His grin turned savage. “Who, then, are the other three High Mages? Let me guess—”

  “Enough!” Tayschrenn stepped close to Hairlock, who went very still, eyes glittering.

  The lanterns had dimmed. Calot used the handkerchief in his lap to wipe tears from his cheeks.

  Power, oh, damn, my head feels ready to crack wide open.

  “Very well,” Hairlock whispered, “let’s lay it out on the table. I’m sure the High Fist will appreciate you putting all his suspicions in the proper order. Make it plain, old friend.”

  Tattersail glanced at Dujek. The commander’s face had closed up, his sharp eyes narrow and fixed on Tayschrenn. He was doing some hard thinking.

  Calot leaned against her. “What’s going on, ’Sail?”

  “No idea,” she whispered, “but it’s heating up nicely.” Though she’d made her comment light, her mind was whirling around a cold knot of fear. Hairlock had been with the Empire longer than she had—or Calot. He’d been among the sorcerers who’d fought against the Malazans in Seven Cities, before Aren fell and the Holy Falah’d were scattered, before he’d been given the choice of death or service to the new masters. He’d joined the 2nd’s cadre at Panpot’sun—like Dujek himself he’d been there, with the Emperor’s old guard, when the first vipers of usurpation had stirred, the day the Empire’s First Sword was betrayed and brutally murdered. Hairlock knew something. But what?

  “All right,” Dujek drawled, “we’ve got work to do. Let’s get at it.”

  Tattersail sighed. Old Onearm’s way with words. She swung a look on the man. She knew him well, not as a friend—Dujek didn’t make friends—but as the best military mind left in the Empire. If, as Hairlock had just implied, the High Fist was being betrayed by someone, somewhere, and if Tayschrenn was part of it . . . we’re a bent bough, Calot had once said of Onearm’s Host, and beware the Empire when it breaks. Seven Cities’ soldiery, the closeted ghosts of the conquered but unconquerable . . .

  Tayschrenn gestured to her and to the other mages. Tattersail rose, as did Calot. Hairlock remained seated, eyes closed as if asleep.

  Calot said to Dujek, “About that transfer.”

  “Later,” the High Fist grunted. “Paperwork’s a nightmare when you’ve only got one arm.” He surveyed his cadre and was about to add something but Calot spoke first.

  “Anomandaris.”

  Hairlock’s eyes snapped open, found Tayschrenn with bright pleasure. “Ahhh,” he said, into the silence following Calot’s single pronouncement. “Of course. Three more High Mages? Only three?”

  Tattersail stared at Dujek’s pale, still face. “The poem,” she said quietly. “I remember now.”

  “Caladan Brood, the menhired one,

  winter-bearing, barrowed and sorrowless . . .”

  Calot picked
up the next lines.

  “. . . in a tomb bereaved of words,

  and in his hands that have crushed anvils—”

  Tattersail continued,

  “the hammer of his song—

  he lives asleep, so give silent warning

  to all—wake him not.

  Wake him not.”

  Everyone in the compartment was staring at Tattersail now as her last words fell away. “He’s awake, it seems,” she said, her mouth dry. ‘Anomandaris,’ the epic poem by Fisher kel Tath.”

  “The poem’s not about Caladan Brood,” Dujek said, frowning.

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s mostly about his companion.”

  Hairlock climbed slowly to his feet. He stepped close to Tayschrenn. “Anomander Rake, Lord of the Tiste Andii, who are the souls of Starless Night. Rake, the Mane of Chaos. That’s who the Moon’s lord is, and you’re pitting four High Mages and a single cadre against him.”

  Tayschrenn’s smooth face held the faintest sheen of sweat now. “The Tiste Andii,” he said, in an even voice, “are not like us. To you they may seem unpredictable, but they aren’t. Just different. They have no cause of their own. They simply move from one human drama to the next. Do you actually think Anomander Rake will stay and fight?”

  “Has Caladan Brood backed away?” Hairlock snapped.

  “He is not Tiste Andii, Hairlock. He’s human—some say with Barghast blood, but nonetheless he shares nothing of Elder blood, or its ways.”

  Tattersail said, “You’re counting on Rake betraying Pale’s wizards—betraying the pact made between them.”

  “The risk is not as overreaching as it may seem,” the High Mage said. “Bellurdan has done the research in Genabaris, Sorceress. Some new scrolls of Gothos’ Folly were discovered in a mountain fastness beyond Blackdog Forest. Among the writings are discussions of the Tiste Andii, and other peoples from the Elder Age. And remember, Moon’s Spawn has retreated from a direct confrontation with the Empire before.”

  The waves of fear sweeping through Tattersail made her knees weak. She sat down again, heavily enough to make the camp chair creak. “You’ve condemned us to death,” she said, “if your gamble proves wrong. Not just us, High Mage, all of Onearm’s Host.”

  Tayschrenn swung round slowly, putting his back to Hairlock and the others. “Empress Laseen’s orders,” he said, without turning. “Our colleagues come by Warren. When they arrive, I will detail the positioning. That is all.” He strode into the map room, resumed his original stance.

  Dujek seemed to have aged in front of Tattersail’s eyes. Swiftly she slid her glance from him, too anguished to meet the abandonment in his eyes, and the suspicion curdling beneath its surface. Coward—that’s what you are, woman. A coward.

  Finally the High Fist cleared his throat. “Prepare your Warrens, cadre. As usual, always an even trade.”

  Give the High Mage credit, Tattersail thought. There was Tayschrenn, standing on the first hill, almost inside the Moon’s shadow. They had arrayed themselves into three groups, each taking a hilltop on the plain outside Pale’s walls. The cadre’s was most distant, Tayschrenn’s the closest. On the center hill stood the three other High Mages. Tattersail knew them all. Nightchill, raven-haired, tall, imperious and with a cruel streak the old Emperor used to drool over. At her side her lifelong companion, Bellurdan, skull-crusher, a Thelomen giant who would test his prodigious strength against the Moon’s portal, should it come to that. And A’Karonys, fire-wielder, short and round, his burning staff taller than a spear.

  The 2nd and 6th Armies had formed ranks on the plain, weapons bared and awaiting the call to march on the city when the time came. Seven thousand veterans and four thousand recruits. The Black Moranth legions lined the ridge to the west a quarter-mile distant.

  No wind stirred the midday air. Biting midges roved in visible clouds through the soldiers waiting below. The sky was overcast, the cloud cover thin but absolute.

  Tattersail stood on the hill’s crest, sweat running down under her clothing, and watched the soldiers on the plain before facing her meager cadre. At full strength, six mages should have been arrayed behind her, but there were only two. Off to one side Hairlock waited, wrapped in the dark gray raincloak that was his battle attire—looking smug.

  Calot nudged Tattersail and jerked his head toward Hairlock. “What’s he so happy about?”

  “Hairlock,” Tattersail called. The man swung his head. “Were you right about the three High Mages?”

  He smiled, then turned away again.

  “I hate it when he’s hiding something,” Calot said.

  The sorceress grunted. “He’s added something up, all right. What’s so particular about Nightchill, Bellurdan, and A’Karonys? Why did Tayschrenn pick them and how did Hairlock know he’d pick them?”

  “Questions, questions.” Calot sighed. “All three are old hands at this kind of stuff. Back in the days of the Emperor they each commanded a company of Adepts—when the Empire had enough mages in the ranks to form actual companies. A’Karonys climbed through the ranks in the Falari Campaign, and Bellurdan and Nightchill were from before even then—came down from Fenn on the Quon mainland during the unification wars.”

  “All old hands,” Tattersail mused, “as you said. None have been active lately, have they? Their last campaign was Seven Cities—”

  “Where A’Karonys took a beating in the Panpot’sun Wastes—”

  “He was left hanging—the Emperor had just been assassinated. Everything was chaotic. The T’lan Imass refused to acknowledge the new Empress, marched themselves off into the Jhag Odhan.”

  “Rumor has it they’re back, at half-strength—whatever they ran into out there wasn’t pleasant.”

  Tattersail nodded. “Nightchill and Bellurdan were told to report to Nathilog, left sitting on their hands for the past six, seven years—”

  “Until Tayschrenn sent the Thelomen off to Genabaris, to study a pile of ancient scrolls, of all things.”

  “I’m frightened,” Tattersail admitted. “Very frightened. Did you see Dujek’s face? He knew something—a realization, and it hit him like a dagger in the back.”

  “Time to work,” Hairlock called.

  Calot and Tattersail swung around.

  A shiver ran through her. Moon’s Spawn had been revolving steadily for the last three years. It had just stopped. Near its very top, on the side facing them, was a small ledge, and a shadowed recess had appeared. A portal. No movement showed yet. “He knows,” she whispered.

  “And he isn’t running,” Calot added.

  Down on the first hill, High Mage Tayschrenn rose and lifted his arms out to the sides. A wave of golden flame spanned his hands, then rolled upward, growing as it raced toward Moon’s Spawn. The spell crashed against the black rock, sending chunks hurtling out, then down. A rain of death descended into the city of Pale, and among the Malazan legions waiting in the plain.

  “It’s begun,” Calot breathed.

  Silence answered Tayschrenn’s first attack, save for the faint scatter of rubble on the city’s tiled rooftops and the distant cries of wounded soldiers on the plain. Everyone’s eyes were trained upward.

  The reply was not what anyone expected.

  A black cloud enshrouded Moon’s Spawn, followed by faint shrieking. A moment later the cloud spread out, fragmenting, and Tattersail realized what she was seeing.

  Ravens.

  Thousands upon thousands of Great Ravens. They must have nested among the crags and pocks in the Moon’s surface. Their shrieks grew more defined, a caterwaul of outrage. They wheeled out from the Moon, their fifteen-foot wingspans catching the wind and lifting them high above the city and plain.

  Fear lurched into terror in Tattersail’s heart.

  Hairlock barked a laugh and whirled to them. “These are the Moon’s messengers, colleagues!” Madness glittered in his eyes. “These carrion birds!” He flung back his cloak and raised his arms. “Imagine a lord who’s kept thirty thou
sand Great Ravens well fed!”

  A figure had appeared on the ledge before the portal, its arms upraised, long silver hair blowing from its head.

  Mane of Chaos. Anomander Rake. Lord of the black-skinned Tiste Andii, who has looked down on a hundred thousand winters, who has tasted the blood of dragons, who leads the last of his kind, seated in the Throne of Sorrow and a kingdom tragic and fey—a kingdom with no land to call its own.

  Anomander Rake looked tiny against the backdrop of his edifice, almost insubstantial at this distance. The illusion was about to be shattered. She gasped as the aura of his power bloomed outward—to see it at such a distance . . . “Channel your Warrens,” Tattersail commanded, her voice cracking. “Now!”

  Even as Rake gathered his power, twin balls of blue fire raced upward from the center hill. They struck the Moon near its base and rocked it. Tayschrenn launched another wave of gilden flames, crashing with amber spume and red-tongued smoke.

  The Moon’s lord responded. A black, writhing wave rolled down to the first hill. The High Mage was buffeted to his knees deflecting it, the hilltop around him blighted as the necrous power rolled down the slopes, engulfing nearby ranks of soldiers. Tattersail watched as a midnight flash swallowed the hapless men, followed by a thump that thundered through the earth. When the flash dissipated, the soldiers lay in rotting heaps, mown down like stalks of grain.

  Kurald Galain sorcery. Elder magic, the Breath of Chaos.

  Her breaths coming fast and tight in her chest, Tattersail felt her Thyr Warren flow into her. She shaped it, muttering chain-words under her breath, then unleashed the power. Calot followed, drawing from his Mockra Warren. Hairlock surrounded himself in his own mysterious source, and the cadre entered the fray.

  Everything narrowed down for Tattersail from then on, yet a part of her mind remained distant, held on a leash of terror, observing with a kind of muffled vision all that happened around her.

  The world became a living nightmare, as sorcery flew upward to batter Moon’s Spawn, and sorcery rained downward, indiscriminate and devastating. Earth rose skyward in thundering columns. Rocks ripped through men like hot stones through snow. A downpour of ash descended to cover the living and dead alike. The sky dimmed to pallid rose, the sun a coppery disc behind the haze.