Deadhouse Gates

by Steven Erikson

  'We did not anticipate this warren would be flooded,' the female said.

  'It's said you can cross oceans,' the mage muttered, frowning.

  Felisin could see he was having trouble following the T'lan Imass's statements. So was she.

  'We can cross bodies of water," the female acknowledged.

  'But we can only find our shapes on land.'

  'So, like us, you came to this ship to get your feet dry—'

  'And complete our task. We pursue renegade kin.'

  'If they were here, they've since left,' Kulp said. 'Before we arrived. You are a Bonecaster.'

  The female inclined her head. 'Hentos Ilm, of Logros T'lann Imass.'

  'And the Logros no longer serve the Malazan Empire. Glad to see you're staying busy.'

  'Why?'

  'Never mind.' Kulp looked skyward. 'He's eased up some.'

  'He senses us,' Hentos Ilm said. She faced Heboric again.

  'Your left hand is in balance, it is true. Otataral and a power unknown to me. If the mage in the storm continues to grow in power, the Otataral shall prevail, and you too shall know its madness.'

  'I want it gone from me,' Heboric growled. 'Please.' Hentos Ilm shrugged, and approached the ex-priest. 'We must destroy the one in the skies. Then we must seal the warren's wound.'

  'In other words,' Felisin said, 'you're probably not worth the trouble, old man.'

  'Bonecaster,' Kulp said. 'What warren is this?'

  Hentos Ilm paused, attention still on Heboric. 'Elder. Kurald Emurlahn.'

  'I've heard of Kurald Galain—the Tiste Andü warren.'

  'This is Tiste Edur. You surprise me, Mage. You are Meanas Rashan, which is the branch of Kurald Emurlahn accessible to mortal humans. The warren you use is the child of this place.'

  Kulp was scowling at the Bonecaster's back. 'This makes no sense. Meanas Rashan is the warren of Shadow. Of Ammanas and Cotillion, and the Hounds.'

  'Before Shadowthrone and Cotillion,' Hentos Ilm said, 'there were Tiste Edur.' The Bonecaster reached towards Heboric. 'I would touch you.'

  'Be my guest,' he said.

  Felisin watched her place the palm of one withered hand against the old man's chest. After a moment she stepped back and turned away as if dismissing him. She addressed the bear-furred T'lan Imass who'd spoken earlier. 'You are clanless, Legana Breed.'

  'I am clanless,' he agreed.

  She pointed at Kulp. 'Mage. Do nothing.'

  'Wait!' Heboric said. 'What did you sense in me?'

  'You are shorn from your god, though he continues to make use of you. I see no other purpose in your existence.'

  Felisin bit back a nasty comment. Not this one. She could see Heboric's shoulders slowly sag, as if some vital essence had been pulled, pulped and dripping blood, from his chest. He'd clung hard to something, and the Bonecaster had just pronounced it dead. I'm running out of things to wound in him. Maybe that'll keep me from trying.

  Hentos Ilm tilted her head back, then began dissolving, the dust of her being spinning in place. A moment later it spiralled upward, swiftly vanishing in the low clouds boiling overhead.

  Lightning cracked, a rap of pain in Felisin's ears. Crying out, she fell to her knees. The others suffered in like manner, with the exception of the remaining T'lan Imass, who stood in motionless indifference. The Silanda bucked. The mud-smeared pyramid of severed heads around the main mast collapsed. Heads tumbled and bounced heavily on the deck.

  The T'lan Imass spun at that, weapons suddenly out.

  Thunder bellowed in the roiling stormclouds. The air shivered again.

  The one named Legana Breed reached down and lifted one head by its long, black hair. It was Tiste Andü, a woman. 'She still lives,' the undead warrior said, revealing a muted hint of surprise. 'Kurald Emurlahn, the sorcery has locked their souls to their flesh.'

  A faint shriek bounced down through the clouds, a sound filled with despair and—jarringly—release. The clouds spilled out in every direction, tearing into thin wisps. A pale amber sky burned through. The storm was gone, and so too was the mad sorcerer.

  Felisin ducked as something winged past her, leaving in its wake a musty, dead smell. When she looked up Hentos Ilm stood once again on the main deck, facing Legana Breed. Neither moved, suggesting a silent conversation was underway.

  'Hood's breath,' Kulp breathed beside Felisin. She glanced over. He was staring into the sky, his face pale. She followed his gaze.

  A vast, black lesion, rimmed in fiery red and as large as a full moon, marred the amber sky. Whatever leaked from it seemed to steal into Felisin through her eyes, as if the act of simply seeing it was capable of transmitting an infection, a disease that would spread through her flesh. Like the poison of a bloodfly. A small whimper escaped her throat, then she desperately pulled her eyes away.

  Kulp still stared, his face getting whiter, his mouth hanging listlessly. Felisin nudged him. 'Kulp!' He did not respond. She struck him.

  Gesler was suddenly beside them, wrapping an arm around Kulp's eyes. 'Dammit, Mage, snap out of it!"

  Kulp struggled, then relaxed. She saw him nod. 'Let him go now,' she said to the corporal.

  As soon as Gesler relinquished his hold, the mage rounded on Hentos Ilm. His voice was a shaken rasp. 'That's the wound you mentioned, isn't it? It's spreading—I can feel it, like a cancer—

  'A soul must bridge it,' the Bonecaster said.

  Legana Breed was on the move. All eyes followed him as he strode to the sterncastle steps, ascended and stood before Stormy. The scarred veteran did not recoil.

  'Well,' the marine muttered, 'this is as close as I've ever been.' His grin was sickly. 'Once is enough.'

  The T'lan Imass raised his grey flint sword.

  'Hold it," Gesler growled. 'If you need a soul to stopper that wound… use mine.'

  Legana Breed's head pivoted.

  Gesler's jaw clenched. He nodded.

  'Insufficient,' Hentos Ilm pronounced.

  Legana Breed faced Stormy again. 'I am the last of my clan,' he rumbled. 'L'echae Shayn shall end. This weapon is our memory. Carry it, mortal. Learn its weight. Stone ever thirsts for blood.' He offered the marine the four-foot-long sword.

  Face blank, Stormy accepted it. Felisin saw the muscles of his forearms stiffen as they took the weight and held it.

  'Now,' Hentos Ilm said.

  Legana Breed stepped back and collapsed in a column of dust. The column twisted, spinning in on itself. The air on all sides stirred, then swept inward, pulled to the whirling emanation. A moment later the wind fell away and Legana Breed was gone. The remaining T'lan Imass turned and lifted their gazes skyward.

  Felisin was never certain whether she only imagined seeing the T'lan Imass reassume his form upon striking the heart of that wound, a tiny, seemingly insignificant splayed figure that was quickly swallowed in the inky darkness. A moment later the wound's edges seemed to flinch, faint waves rippling outward. Then the lesion began folding in on itself.

  Hentos Ilm continued staring upward. Finally she nodded. 'Sufficient. The wound is bridged.'

  Stormy slowly lowered the flint sword's point until it rested on the deck.

  Abeat-up old veteran, knocked down cynical, just another of the Empire's cast-offs. He was clearly overwhelmed. Insufficient, she said. Indeed.

  'We shall go now,' Hentos Ilm said.

  Stormy shook himself. 'Bonecaster!'

  There was obvious disdain in her tone as she said, 'Legana Breed claimed his right.'

  The marine did not relent. This "bridging"… tell me, is it a thing of pain?'

  Hentos Ilm's shrug was an audible grate of bones, her only answer.

  'Stormy—' Gesler warned, but his companion shook his head, descended to the main deck. As he approached the Bonecaster, another T'lan Imass stepped forward to block him.

  'Soldier!' Gesler snapped. 'Stand off!'

  But Stormy only moved back to clear space as he raised the flint sword.

  The T'lan
Imass facing him closed again, the motion a blur, one arm shooting out, the hand closing on Stormy's neck.

  Cursing, Gesler pushed past Felisin, his own hand finding the sword's grip at his side. The corporal slowed when it became obvious that the T'lan Imass was simply holding Stormy. And the marine himself had gone perfectly still. Quiet words slipped between them. Then the undead warrior released his grip and stepped back. Stormy's anger had vanished. Something in the set of his shoulders reminded Felisin of Heboric.

  All five T'lan Imass began to dissolve.

  'Wait!' the mage shouted, rushing forward. 'How in Hood's name do we get out of here?'

  It was too late. The creatures were gone.

  Gesler rounded on Stormy. 'What did that bastard tell you?' he demanded.

  The soldier's eyes were wet—shocking Felisin—as he turned to his corporal.

  Gesler whispered, 'Stormy…'

  'He said there was great pain,' the man muttered. 'I asked How long? He said For ever. The wound heals around him, you see. She couldn't command, you see. Not for something like that. He volunteered—' The man's throat closed up, then. He spun away, bolted through the gangway and out of sight.

  'Clanless,' Heboric said from the forecastle. 'As good as useless. Existence without meaning…'

  Gesler kicked one of the severed heads across the deck. Its uneven thumping was loud in the still air. 'Who still wants to live for ever?" he growled, then spat.

  Truth spoke, his voice quavering. 'Didn't anybody else see?' he asked. 'The Bonecaster didn't—I'm sure of it, she didn't…'

  'What're you going on about, lad?' Gesler demanded.

  'That T'lan Imass. He tied it to his belt. By the hair. His bear cloak hid it.'

  'What?'

  'He took one of the heads. Didn't anybody else see?'

  Heboric was the first to react. With a wild grin he leapt down to the main deck, making for the galley. Even as he plunged through the doorway Kulp was clambering down to the first oar deck. He disappeared from view.

  Minutes passed.

  Gesler, still frowning, went to join Stormy and the ex-priest.

  Kulp returned. 'One of them's dead as a post,' he said.

  Felisin thought to ask him what it all meant, but a sudden exhaustion swept the impulse away. She looked around until she saw Baudin. He was at the prow, his back to everything… to everyone. She wondered at his indifference. Lack of imagination, she concluded after a moment, the thought bringing a sneer to her lips. She made her way to him.

  'All too much for you, eh, Baudin?' she asked, leaning beside him on the arching rail.

  'T'lan Imass were never nothing but trouble,' he said. 'Always two sides to whatever they did, maybe more than two. Maybe hundreds.'

  'A thug with opinions.'

  'You set your every notion in stone, lass. No wonder people always surprise you.'

  'Surprise? I'm way past surprise, thug. We're in something, every one of us. There's more to come, so you can forget about thinking of a way out. There isn't one.'

  He grunted. 'Wise words for a change.'

  'Don't soften up on me,' Felisin said. 'I'm just too tired to be cruel. Give me a few hours' sleep and I'll be back to my old self.'

  'Planning ways to murder me, you mean.'

  'Keeps me amused.'

  He was silent a long moment, eyes on the meaningless horizon ahead, then he turned to her. 'You ever think that maybe what you are is what's trapping you inside whatever it is you're trapped inside?'

  She blinked. There was a glint of sardonic judgement in his small, beastlike eyes. 'I'm not following you, Baudin.'

  He smiled. 'Oh yes, you are, lass.'

  Chapter Ten

  It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.

  Life of Dassem Ultor

  Duiker

  It had been a week since Duiker came upon the trail left by the refugees from Caron Tepasi. They had obviously been driven south to place further strain on Coltaine's stumbling city in motion, the historian thought. There was nothing else in this ceaseless wasted land. The dry season had taken hold, the sun in the barren sky scorching the grasses until they looked and felt like brittle wire.

  Day after day had rolled by, yet Duiker still could not catch up with the Fist and his train. The few times he had come within sight of the massive dust cloud, Reloe's Tithansi outriders had prevented the historian from getting any closer.

  Somehow, Coltaine kept his forces moving, endlessly moving, driving for the Sekala River. And from there? Does he make a stand, his back to the ancient ford?

  So Duiker rode in the train's wake. The detritus from the refugees diminished, yet grew more poignant. Tiny graves humped the old encampments; the short-bones of horses and cattle lay scattered about; an oft-repaired but finally abandoned wagon axle marked one departure point, the rest of the wagon dismantled and taken for spares. The latrine trenches reeked beneath clouds of flies.

  Places where skirmishing had occurred revealed another story. Amidst the naked, unrecovered bodies of Tithansi horse-warriors were shattered Wickan lances, the heads removed. Everything that could be reused had been stripped from the Tithansi bodies: leather thongs and straps, leggings and belts, weapons, even braids of hair. Dead horses were dragged away entire, leaving swathes of blood-matted grass in their wake.

  Duiker was well past astonishment at anything he saw. Like the Tithansi tribesmen he'd occasionally exchanged words with, he'd begun to believe that Coltaine was something other than human, that he had carved his soldiers and every refugee into unyielding avatars of the impossible. Yet for all that, there was no hope for victory. Kamist Reloe's Apocalypse consisted of the armies of four cities and a dozen towns, countless tribes and a peasant horde as vast as an inland sea. And it was closing in, content for the moment simply to escort Coltaine to the Sekala River. Every current was drawing to that place. A battle was taking shape, an annihilation.

  Duiker rode through the day, parched, hungry, wind-burned, his clothes reduced to rags. A straggler from the peasant army, an old man determined to join the last struggle. Tithansi riders knew him on sight and paid him little heed apart from a distant wave. Every two or three days a troop would join him, pass him bundles of food, water and feed for the horse. In some ways, he had become their icon, his journey symbolic, burdened with unasked-for significance. The historian felt pangs of guilt at that, yet accepted the gifts with genuine gratitude—they kept him and his horse alive.

  Nonetheless, his faithful mount was wearing down. More and more each day Duiker led the animal by the reins.

  Dusk approached. The distant dust cloud continued to march on, until the historian was certain that Coltaine's vanguard had reached the river. The Fist would insist that the entire train drive on through the night to the encampment that the vanguard was even now preparing. If Duiker was to have any chance of rejoining them, it would have to be this night.

  He knew of the ford only from maps, and his recollection was frustratingly vague. The Sekala River averaged five hundred paces in width, flowing north to the Karas Sea. A small village squatted in the crook of two hills a few hundred paces south of the ford itself. He seemed to remember something about an old oxbow, as well.

  The dying day spread shadows across the land. The brightest of the night's stars glittered in the sky's deepening blue. Wings of capemoths rose with the heat that fled the parched ground, like black flakes of ash.

  Duiker climbed back into the saddle. A small band of Tithansi outriders rode a ridge half a mile to the north. Duiker judged that he was at least a league from the river. The patrols of horsewarriors would increase the closer he approached. He had no plan for dealing with them.

  The historian had walked his mount for most of the day, preparing for a hard ride into the night. He would need all that the beast could give him, and was afraid that it would not be enough. He nudged the mare into a trot.

  The distant Tithan
si paid him no attention, and soon rode out of sight. Heart thumping, Duiker urged his horse into a canter.

  A wind brushed his face. The historian hissed a blessing to whatever god was responsible. The hanging dust cloud ahead began to edge his way.

  The sky darkened.

  A voice shouted a few hundred paces to his left. A dozen horsemen, strips of fur trailing from their lances. Tithansi. Duiker saluted them with a raised fist.

  'With the dawn, old man!' one of them bellowed. 'It is suicide to attack now!'

  'Ride to Reloe's camp!' another yelled. 'Northwest, old man—you are heading for the enemy lines!'

  Duiker waved their words away, gesturing like a madman. He rose slightly in the saddle, whispered into the mare's ear, squeezed gently with his knees. The animal's head ducked forward, the strides lengthened.

  Reaching the crest of a low hill, the historian finally saw what was arrayed before him. The encampment of the Tithansi lancers lay ahead and to his right, a thousand or more hide tents, the gleam of cooking fires. Mounted patrols moved in a restless line beyond the tents, protecting the camp from the enemy forces dug in at the ford. To the left of the Tithansi camp spread a score thousand makeshift tents—the peasant army. Smoke hung like an ash-stained cloak over the sprawling tattered shanty town. Meals were being cooked. Outlying pickets consisted of entrenchments, again facing the river. Between the two encampments there was a corridor, no more than two wagons wide, running down the sloping floodplain to meet Coltaine's earthen defences.

  Duiker angled his horse down the corridor, riding at full gallop. The Tithansi outriders behind him had not pursued, though the warriors patrolling the encampment now watched him, converging but without obvious concern… yet.

  As he cleared the inside edge of the tribe's camp on his right, then the peasants' sea of tents on his left, he saw raised earthworks, orderly rows of tents, solidly manned pickets—the horde had additional protection. The historian saw two banners, Sialk and Hissar—regular infantry. Helmed heads had turned, eyes drawn to the sound of his horse's hooves and now the alarmed shouts of the Tithansi riders.