House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Aye. Again.’

  ‘You don’t seem much like a god at all, Cotillion.’

  ‘I’m not a god in the traditional fashion, I am a patron. Patrons have responsibilities. Granted, I rarely have the opportunity to exercise them.’

  ‘Meaning they are not yet burdensome.’

  His smile broadened, and it was a lovely smile. ‘You are worth far more for your lack of innocence, Apsalar. I will see you again soon.’ He stepped back into the shadows of the chamber.

  ‘Cotillion.’

  He paused, arms half raised. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. And take care of Cutter. Please.’

  ‘I will, as if he were my own son, Apsalar. I will.’

  She nodded, and then he was gone.

  And, a short while later, so was she.

  There were snakes in this forest of stone. Fortunately for Kalam Mekhar, they seemed to lack the natural belligerence of their kind. He was lying in shadows amidst the dusty, shattered fragments of a toppled tree, motionless as serpents slithered around him and over him. The stone was losing its chill from the night just past, a hot wind drifting in from the desert beyond.

  He had seen no sign of patrols, and little in the way of well-trod trails. None the less, he sensed a presence in this petrified forest, hinting of power that did not belong on this world. Though he could not be certain, he sensed something demonic about that power.

  Sufficient cause for unease. Sha’ik might well have placed guardians, and he would have to get past those.

  The assassin lifted a flare-neck to one side then drew his two long-knives. He examined the grips, ensuring that the leather bindings were tight. He checked the fittings of the hilts and pommels. The edge of the otataral long-knife’s blade was slightly rough—otataral was not an ideal metal for weapons. It cut ragged and needed constant sharpening, even when it had seen no use, and the iron had a tendency to grow brittle over time. Before the Malazan conquest, otataral had been employed by the highborn of Seven Cities in their armour for the most part. Its availability had been tightly regulated, although less so than when under imperial control.

  Few knew the full extent of its properties. When absorbed through the skin or breathed into the lungs for long periods, its effects were varied and unpredictable. It often failed in the face of Elder magic, and there was another characteristic that Kalam suspected few were aware of—a discovery made entirely by accident during a battle outside Y’Ghatan. Only a handful of witnesses survived the incident, Kalam and Quick Ben among them, and all had agreed afterwards that their reports to their officers would be deliberately vague, questions answered by shrugs and shakes of the head.

  Otataral, it seemed, did not go well with Moranth munitions, particularly burners and flamers. Or, to put it another way, it doesn’t like getting hot. He knew that weapons were quenched in otataral dust at a late stage in their forging. When the iron had lost its glow, in fact. Likely, blacksmiths had arrived at that conclusion the hard way. But even that was not the whole secret. It’s what happens to hot otataral . . . when you throw magic at it.

  He slowly resheathed the weapon, then focused his attention on the other. Here, the edge was smooth, slightly wavy as often occurred with rolled, multi-layered blades. The water etching was barely visible on this gleaming, black surface, the silver inlay fine as thread. Between the two long-knives, he favoured this one, for its weight and balance.

  Something struck the ground beside him, bouncing with a pinging sound off a fragment of tree trunk, then rattling to a stop down beside his right knee.

  Kalam stared at the small object for a moment. He then looked up at the tree looming over him. He smiled. ‘Ah, an oak,’ he murmured. ‘Let it not be said I don’t appreciate the humour of the gesture.’ He sat up and reached down to collect the acorn. Then leaned back once more. ‘Just like old times . . . glad, as always, that we don’t do this sort of thing any more . . .’

  Plains to savanna, then, finally, jungle. They had arrived in the wet season, and the morning suffered beneath a torrential deluge before, just past noon, the sun burned through to lade the air with steam as the three T’lan Imass and one Tiste Edur trudged through the thick, verdant undergrowth.

  Unseen animals fled their onward march, thrashing heavily through the brush on all sides. Eventually, they stumbled onto a game trail that led in the direction they sought, and their pace increased.

  ‘This is not your natural territory, is it, Onrack?’ Trull Sengar asked between gasps of the humid, rank air. ‘Given all the furs your kind wear . . .’

  ‘True,’ the T’lan Imass replied. ‘We are a cold weather people. But this region exists within our memories. Before the Imass, there was another people, older, wilder. They dwelt where it was warm, and they were tall, their dark skins covered in fine hair. These we knew as the Eres. Enclaves survived into our time—the time captured within this warren.’

  ‘And they lived in jungles like this one?’

  ‘Its verges, occasionally, but more often the surrounding savannas. They worked in stone, but with less skill than us.’

  ‘Were there bonecasters among them?’

  Monok Ochem answered from behind them. ‘All Eres were bone-casters, Trull Sengar. For they were the first to carry the spark of awareness, the first so gifted by the spirits.’

  ‘And are they now gone, Monok Ochem?’

  ‘They are.’

  Onrack added nothing to that. After all, if Monok Ochem found reasons to deceive, Onrack could find none to contradict the bone-caster. It did not matter in any case. No Eres had ever been discovered in the Warren of Tellann.

  After a moment, Trull Sengar asked, ‘Are we close, Onrack?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘And will we then return to our own world?’

  ‘We shall. The First Throne lies at the base of a crevasse, beneath a city—’

  ‘The Tiste Edur,’ Monok Ochem cut in, ‘has no need for learning the name of that city, Onrack the Broken. He already knows too much of our people.’

  ‘What I know of you T’lan Imass hardly qualifies as secrets,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘You prefer killing to negotiation. You do not hesitate to murder gods when the opportunity arises. And you prefer to clean up your own messes—laudable, this last one. Unfortunately, this particular mess is too big, though I suspect you are still too proud to admit to that. As for your First Throne, I am not interested in discovering its precise location. Besides, I’m not likely to survive the clash with your renegade kin.’

  ‘That is true,’ Monok Ochem agreed.

  ‘You will likely make sure of it,’ Trull Sengar added.

  The bonecaster said nothing.

  There was no need to, Onrack reflected. But I shall defend him. Perhaps Monok and Ibra understand this, and so they will strike at me first. It is what I would do, were I in their place. Which, oddly enough, I am.

  The trail opened suddenly into a clearing filled with bones. Countless beasts of the jungle and savanna had been dragged here by, Onrack surmised, leopards or hyenas. The longbones he noted were all gnawed and split open by powerful jaws. The air reeked of rotted flesh and flies swarmed in the thousands.

  ‘The Eres did not fashion holy sites of their own,’ Monok Ochem said, ‘but they understood that there were places where death gathered, where life was naught but memories, drifting lost and bemused. And, to such places, they would often bring their own dead. Power gathers in layers—this is the birthplace of the sacred.’

  ‘And so you have transformed it into a gate,’ Trull Sengar said.

  ‘Yes,’ the bonecaster replied.

  ‘You are too eager to credit the Imass, Monok Ochem,’ Onrack said. He faced the Tiste Edur. ‘Eres holy sites burned through the barriers of Tellann. They are too old to be resisted.’

  ‘You said their sanctity was born of death. Are they Hood’s, then?’

  ‘No. Hood did not exist when these were fashioned, Trull Sengar. Nor a
re they strictly death-aspected. Their power comes, as Monok Ochem said, from layers. Stone shaped into tools and weapons. Air shaped by throats. Minds that discovered, faint as flickering fires in the sky, the recognition of oblivion, of an end . . . to life, to love. Eyes that witnessed the struggle to survive, and saw with wonder its inevitable failure. To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.’

  ‘It seems, then,’ Trull Sengar muttered, ‘that you Imass have broken the oldest laws of all, with your Vow.’

  ‘Neither Monok Ochem nor Ibra Gholan will speak in answer to that truth,’ Onrack said. ‘You are right, however. We are the first lawbreakers, and that we have survived this long is fit punishment. And so, it remains our hope that the Summoner will grant us absolution.’

  ‘Faith is a dangerous thing,’ Trull Sengar sighed. ‘Well, shall we make use of this gate?’

  Monok Ochem gestured, and the scene around them blurred, the light fading.

  A moment before the darkness became absolute, a faint shout from the Tiste Edur drew Onrack’s attention. The warrior turned, in time to see a figure standing a dozen paces away. Tall, lithely muscled, with a fine umber-hued pelt and long, shaggy hair reaching down past the shoulders. A woman. Her breasts were large and pendulous, her hips wide and full. Prominent, flaring cheekbones, a broad, full-lipped mouth. All this registered in an instant, even as the woman’s dark brown eyes, shadowed beneath a solid brow, scanned across the three T’lan Imass before fixing on Trull Sengar.

  She took a step towards the Tiste Edur, the movement graceful as a deer’s—

  Then the light vanished entirely.

  Onrack heard another surprised shout from Trull Sengar. The T’lan Imass strode towards the sound, then halted, thoughts suddenly scattering, a flash of images cascading through the warrior’s mind. Time folding in on itself, sinking away, then rising once more—

  Sparks danced low to the ground, tinder caught, flames flickering.

  They were in the crevasse, standing on its littered floor. Onrack looked for Trull Sengar, found the Tiste Edur lying prone on the damp rock a half-dozen paces away.

  The T’lan Imass approached.

  The mortal was unconscious. There was blood smearing his lap, pooling beneath his crotch, and Onrack could see it cooling, suggesting that it did not belong to Trull Sengar, but to the Eres woman who had . . . taken his seed.

  His first seed. But there had been nothing to her appearance suggesting virginity. Her breasts had swollen with milk in the past; her nipples had known the pressure of a pup’s hunger. The blood, then, made no sense.

  Onrack crouched beside Trull Sengar.

  And saw the fresh wound of scarification beneath his belly button. Three parallel cuts, drawn across diagonally, and the stained imprints of three more—likely those the woman had cut across her own belly—running in the opposite direction.

  ‘The Eres witch has stolen his seed,’ Monok Ochem said from two paces away.

  ‘Why?’ Onrack asked.

  ‘I do not know, Onrack the Broken. The Eres have the minds of beasts—’

  ‘Not to the exclusion of all else,’ Onrack replied, ‘as you well know.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Clearly, this one had intent.’

  Monok Ochem nodded. ‘So it would seem. Why does the Tiste Edur remain unconscious?’

  ‘His mind is elsewhere—’

  The bonecaster cocked its head. ‘Yes, that is the definition of unconscious—’

  ‘No, it is elsewhere. When I stepped close, I came into contact with sorcery. That which the Eres projected. For lack of any other term, it was a warren, barely formed, on the very edge of oblivion. It was,’ Onrack paused, then continued, ‘like the Eres themselves. A glimmer of light behind the eyes.’

  Ibra Gholan suddenly drew his weapon.

  Onrack straightened.

  There were sounds, now, beyond the fire’s light, and the T’lan Imass could see the glow of flesh and blood bodies, a dozen, then a score. Something else approached, the footfalls uneven and shambling.

  A moment later, an aptorian demon loomed into the light, a shape unfolding like black silk. And riding its humped, singular shoulder, a youth. Its body was human, yet its face held the features of the aptorian—a massive, lone eye, glistening and patterned like honeycomb. A large mouth, now opening to reveal needle fangs that seemed capable of retracting, all but their tips vanishing from sight. The rider wore black leather armour, shaped like scales and overlapping. A chest harness bore at least a dozen weapons, ranging from long-knives to throwing darts. Affixed to the youth’s belt were two single-hand crossbows, their grips fashioned from the base shafts of antlers.

  The rider leaned forward over the spiny, humped shoulder. Then spoke in a low, rasping voice. ‘Is this all that Logros can spare?’

  ‘You,’ Monok Ochem said, ‘are not welcome.’

  ‘Too bad, Bonecaster, for we are here. To guard the First Throne.’

  Onrack asked, ‘Who are you, and who has sent you here?’

  ‘I am Panek, son of Apt. It is not for me to answer your other question, T’lan Imass. I but guard the outer ward. The chamber that is home to the First Throne possesses an inner warden—the one who commands us. Perhaps she can answer you. Perhaps, even, she will.’

  Onrack picked up Trull Sengar. ‘We would speak with her, then.’

  Panek smiled, revealing the crowded row of fangs. ‘As I said, the Throne Room. No doubt,’ he added, smile broadening, ‘you know the way.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In the oldest, most fragmentary of texts, will be found obscure mention of the Eres’al, a name that seems to refer to those most ancient of spirits that are the essence of the physical world. There is, of course, no empirical means of determining whether the attribution of meaning—the power inherent in making symbols of the inanimate—was causative, in essence the creative force behind the Eres’al; or if some other mysterious power was involved, inviting the accretion of meaning and significance by intelligent forms of life at some later date.

  In either case, what cannot be refuted is the rarely acknowledged but formidable power that exists like subterranean layers in notable features of the land; nor that such power is manifested with subtle yet profound efficacy, even so much as to twist the stride of gods—indeed, occasionally sufficient to bring them down with finality . . .

  Preface to the Compendium of Maps

  Kellarstellis of Li Heng

  THE VAST SHELVES AND RIDGES OF CORAL HAD BEEN WORN INTO flat-topped islands by millennia of drifting sand and wind. Their flanks were ragged and rotted, pitted and undercut, the low ground in between them narrow, twisting and filled with sharp-edged rubble. To Gamet’s eye, the gods could not have chosen a less suitable place to encamp an army.

  Yet there seemed little choice. Nowhere else offered an approach onto the field of battle, and, as quickly became evident, the position, once taken, was as defensible as the remotest mountain keep: a lone saving grace.

  Tavore’s headlong approach into the maw of the enemy, to the battleground of their choosing, was, the Fist suspected, the primary source of the unease and vague confusion afflicting the legions. He watched the soldiers proceeding, in units of a hundred, on their way to taking and holding various coral islands overlooking the basin. Once in place, they would then construct from the rubble defensive barriers and low walls, followed by ramps on the south sides.

  Captain Keneb shifted nervously on his saddle beside the Fist as they watched the first squads of their own legion set out towards a large, bone-white island on the westernmost edge of the basin. ‘They won’t try to dislodge us from these islands,’ he said. ‘Why bother, since it’s obvious the Adjunct intends to march us right into their laps?’

  Gamet was not deaf to the criticisms and doubt hidden beneath Keneb’s words, and he wished he could say something to encourage the ma
n, to bolster faith in Tavore’s ability to formulate and progress sound tactics. But even the Fist was unsure. There had been no sudden revelation of genius during the march from Aren. They had, in truth, walked straight as a lance northward. Suggesting what, exactly? A singlemindedness worthy of imitation, or a failure of imagination? Are the two so different, or merely alternate approaches to the same thing? And now they were being arrayed, as stolid as ever, to advance—probably at dawn the next day—towards the enemy and their entrenched fortifications. An enemy clever enough to create singular and difficult approaches to their positions.

  ‘Those ramps will see the death of us all,’ Keneb muttered. ‘Korbolo Dom’s prepared for this, as any competent, Malazan-trained commander would. He wants us crowded and struggling uphill, beneath an endless hail of arrows, quarrels and ballista, not to mention sorcery. Look at how smooth he’s made those ramp surfaces, Fist. The cobbles, when slick with streaming blood, will be like grease underfoot. We’ll find no purchase—’

  ‘I am not blind,’ Gamet growled. ‘Nor, we must assume, is the Adjunct.’

  Keneb shot the older man a look. ‘It would help to have some reassurance of that, Fist.’

  ‘There shall be a meeting of officers tonight,’ Gamet replied. ‘And again a bell before dawn.’

  ‘She’s already decided the disposition of our legion,’ Keneb grated, leaning on his saddle and spitting in the local fashion.

  ‘Aye, she has, Captain.’ They were to guard avenues of retreat, not for their own forces, but those the enemy might employ. A premature assumption of victory that whispered of madness. They were outnumbered. Every advantage was with Sha’ik, yet almost one-third of the Adjunct’s army would not participate in the battle. ‘And the Adjunct expects us to comply with professional competence,’ Gamet added.

  ‘As she commands,’ Keneb growled.

  Dust was rising as the sappers and engineers worked on the fortifications and ramps. The day was blisteringly hot, the wind barely a desultory breath. The Khundryl, Seti and Wickan horse warriors remained south of the coral islands, awaiting the construction of a road that would give them egress to the basin. Even then, there would be scant room to manoeuvre. Gamet suspected that Tavore would hold most of them back—the basin was not large enough for massed cavalry charges, for either side. Sha’ik’s own desert warriors would most likely be held in reserve, a fresh force to pursue the Malazans should they be broken. And, in turn, the Khundryl can cover such a retreat . . . or rout. A rather ignoble conclusion, the remnants of the Malazan army riding double on Khundryl horses—the Fist grimaced at the image and angrily swept it from his mind. ‘The Adjunct knows what she is doing,’ he asserted.