House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  Karsa scowled at her, then his gaze shifted to the other woman. ‘Has the night stolen your tongue as well?’

  ‘No. Yes. No, clearly it hasn’t. I believe we were under sorcerous attack. But we are now recovering, Toblakai. You have been gone long.’

  ‘And I am now returned. Where is Leoman? Bidithal? Febryl? Korbolo Dom? Kamist Reloe? Heboric Ghost Hands?’

  ‘An impressive list—you’ve a busy night ahead, I think. Find them where you will, Toblakai. The night awaits you.’

  Felisin drew a shaky breath, wrapping her arms about herself as she stared up at the terrible warrior. He had just killed five assassins with five sweeping, almost poetic passes of that enormous sword. The very ease of it horrified her. True, the assassins had intended the same for her and Scillara.

  Karsa loosened his shoulders with a shrug, then strode towards the path leading to the city. In moments he was gone.

  Scillara moved closer to Felisin and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Death is always a shock,’ she said. ‘The numbness will pass. I promise.’

  But Felisin shook her head. ‘Except for Leoman,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those he named. He is going to kill them all. Except for Leoman.’

  Scillara slowly turned to face the trail, a cool, speculative look stealing across her face.

  The last two had taken down four warriors and come within thirty paces of his tent before finally falling. Scowling, Mathok stared down at the arrow-studded, sword-slashed corpses. Six attempted assassinations this night alone, and the first bell had yet to sound.

  Enough.

  ‘T’morol, gather my clan.’

  The burly warrior grunted assent and strode off. Mathok drew his furs tighter about himself and returned to his tent.

  Within its modest confines, he paused for a long moment, deep in thought. Then he shook himself and walked over to a hide-covered chest near his cot. He crouched, swept aside the covering, and lifted the ornate lid.

  The Book of Dryjhna resided within.

  Sha’ik had given it into his keeping.

  To safeguard.

  He closed the lid and locked it, then picked up the chest and made his way outside. He could hear his warriors breaking camp in the darkness beyond. ‘T’morol.’

  ‘Warchief.’

  ‘We ride to join Leoman of the Flails. The remaining clans are to guard Sha’ik, though I am confident she is not at risk—she may have need for them in the morning.’

  T’morol’s dark eyes were fixed on Mathok, cold and impervious to surprise. ‘We are to ride from this battle, Warchief?’

  ‘To preserve the Holy Book, such flight may be a necessity, old friend. Come the dawn, we hover . . . on the very cusp.’

  ‘To gauge the wind.’

  ‘Yes, T’morol, to gauge the wind.’

  The bearded warrior nodded. ‘The horses are being saddled. I will hasten the preparations.’

  Heboric listened to the silence. Only his bones could feel the tingling hum of a sorcerous web spanning the entire oasis and its ruined city, the taut vibrations rising and falling as disparate forces began to move across it, then, with savage disregard, tore through it.

  He stirred from the cot, groaning with the stab of force-healed wounds, and climbed shakily to his feet. The coals had died in their braziers. The gloom felt solid, reluctant to yield as he made his way to the doorway. Heboric bared his teeth. His taloned hands twitched.

  Ghosts stalked the dead city. Even the gods felt close, drawn to witness all that was to come. Witness, or to seize the moment and act directly. A nudge here, a tug there, if only to appease their egos . . . if only to see what happens. These were the games he despised, source of his fiercest defiance all those years ago. The shape of his crime, if crime it was. And so they took my hands. Until another god gave them back.

  He was, he realized, indifferent to Treach. A reluctant Destriant to the new god of war, despite the gifts. Nor had his desires changed. Otataral Island, and the giant of jade—that is what awaits me. The returning of power. Even as those last words tracked across his mind, he knew that a deceit rode among them. A secret he knew but to which he would fashion no shape. Not yet, perhaps not until he found himself standing in the wasteland, beneath the shadow of that crooked spire.

  But first, I must meet a more immediate challenge—getting out of this camp alive.

  He hesitated another moment at the doorway, reaching out into the darkness beyond with all his senses. Finding the path clear—his next twenty strides at least—he darted forward.

  Rolling the acorn in his fingers one last time, he tucked it into a fold in his sash and eased snake-like from the crack.

  ‘Oh, Hood’s heartless hands . . .’

  The song was a distant thunder trembling along his bones, and he didn’t like it. Worse yet, there were powers awakened in the oasis ahead that even he, a non-practitioner of sorcery, could feel like fire in his blood.

  Kalam Mekhar checked his long-knives yet again, then resheathed them. The temptation was great to keep the otataral weapon out, and so deny any magic sent his way. But that goes both ways, doesn’t it?

  He studied the way ahead. The starlight seemed strangely muted. He drew from memory as best he could, from what he had seen from his hiding place during the day. Palms, their boles spectral as they rose above tumbled mudbricks and cut stone. The remnants of corrals, pens and shepherds’ huts. Stretches of sandy ground littered with brittle fronds and husks. There were no new silhouettes awaiting him.

  Kalam set forth.

  He could see the angular lines of buildings ahead, all low to the ground, suggesting little more than stretches of mudbrick foundations from which canvas, wicker and rattan walls rose. Occupied residences, then.

  Far off to Kalam’s right was the grey smudge of that strange forest of stone trees. He had considered making his approach through it, but there was something uncanny and unwelcoming about that place, and he suspected it was not as empty as it appeared.

  Approaching what seemed to be a well-trod avenue between huts, he caught a flash of movement, darting from left to right across the aisle. Kalam dropped lower and froze. A second figure followed, then a third, fourth and fifth.

  A hand. Now, who in this camp would organize their assassins into hands? He waited another half-dozen heartbeats, then set off. He came opposite the route the killers had taken and slipped into their wake. The five were moving at seven paces apart, two paces more than would a Claw. Damn, did Cotillion suspect? Is this what he wanted me to confirm?

  These are Talons.

  Seven or five, it made little difference to Kalam.

  He came within sight of the trailing assassin. The figure bore magically invested items, making his form blurry, wavering. He was wearing dark grey, tight-fitting clothes, moccasined, gloved and hooded. Blackened daggers gleamed in his hands.

  Not just patrolling, then, but hunting.

  Kalam padded to within five paces of the man, then darted forward.

  His right hand reached around to clamp hard across the man’s mouth and jaw, his left hand simultaneously closing on the head’s opposite side. A savage twist snapped the killer’s neck.

  Vomit spurted against Kalam’s leather-sheathed palm, but he held on to his grip, guiding the corpse to the ground. Straddling the body, he released his grip, wiped his hand dry against the grey shirt, then moved on.

  Two hundred heartbeats later and there were but two left. Their route had taken them, via a twisting, roundabout path, towards a district marked by the ruins of what had once been grand temples. They were drawn up at the edge of a broad concourse, awaiting their comrades, no doubt.

  Kalam approached them as would the third hunter in the line. Neither was paying attention, their gazes fixed on a building on the other side of the concourse. At the last moment Kalam drew both long-knives and thrust them into the backs of the two assassins.

  Soft grunts, and both men sank to the dusty flag
stones. The blow to the leader of the Talon’s hand was instantly fatal, but Kalam had twisted the other thrust slightly to one side, and he now crouched down beside the dying man. ‘If your masters are listening,’ he murmured, ‘and they should be. Compliments of the Claw. See you soon . . .’

  He tugged the two knives free, cleaned the blades and sheathed them.

  The hunters’ target was, he assumed, within the ruined building that had been the sole focus of their attention. Well enough—Kalam had no friends in this damned camp.

  He set out along the edge of the concourse.

  At the mouth of another alley he found three corpses, all young girls. The blood and knife-wounds indicated they had put up a fierce fight, and two spattered trails led away, in the direction of the temple.

  Kalam tracked them until he was certain that they led through the half-ruined structure’s gaping doorway, then he halted.

  The bitter reek of sorcery wafted from the broad entrance. Damn, this place has been newly sanctified.

  There was no sound from within. He edged forward until he came to one side of the doorway.

  A body lay just inside, grey-swathed, fixed in a contortion of limbs, evincing that he had died beneath a wave of magic. Shadows were flowing in the darkness beyond.

  Kalam drew his otataral long-knife, crept in through the doorway.

  The shadowy wraiths flinched back.

  The floor had collapsed long ago, leaving a vast pit. Five paces ahead, at the base of a rubble-strewn ramp, a young girl sat amidst the blood and entrails of three more corpses. She was streaked with gore, her eyes darkly luminous as she looked up at Kalam. ‘Do you remember the dark?’ she asked.

  Ignoring her question, he stepped past at a safe distance. ‘Make no move, lass, and you’ll survive my visit.’

  A thin voice chuckled from the gloom at the far end of the pit. ‘Her mind is gone, Claw. No time, alas, to fully harden my subjects to the horrors of modern life, try though I might. In any case, you should know that I am not your enemy. Indeed, the one who seeks to kill me this night is none other than the Malazan renegade, Korbolo Dom. And, of course, Kamist Reloe. Shall I give you directions to their abode?’

  ‘I’ll find it in due course,’ Kalam murmured.

  ‘Do you think your otataral blade sufficient, Claw? Here, in my temple? Do you understand the nature of this place? I imagine you believe you do, but I am afraid you are in error. Slavemaster, offer our guest some wine from that jug.’

  A misshapen figure squirmed wetly across the rubble from Kalam’s left. No hands or feet. A mass of suppurating sores and the mangled rot of leprosy. With horrible absurdity, a silver tray had been strapped to the creature’s back, on which sat a squat, fired clay jug.

  ‘He is rather slow, I’m afraid. But I assure you, the wine is so exquisite that you will agree it is worth the wait. Assassin, you are in the presence of Bidithal, archpriest of all that is sundered, broken, wounded and suffering. My own . . . awakening proved both long and torturous, I admit. I had fashioned, in my own mind, every detail of the cult I would lead. All the while unaware that the shaping was being . . . guided.

  ‘Blindness, wilful and, indeed, spiteful. Even when the fated new House was laid out before me, I did not realize the truth. This shattered fragment of Kurald Emurlahn, Claw, shall not be the plaything of a desert goddess. Nor of the Empress. None of you shall have it, for it shall become the heart of the new House of Chains. Tell your empress to stand aside, assassin. We are indifferent to who would rule the land beyond the Holy Desert. She can have it.’

  ‘And Sha’ik?’

  ‘You can have her as well. Marched back to Unta in chains—and that is far more poetic than you will ever know.’

  The shadow-wraiths—torn souls from Kurald Emurlahn—were drawing closer round Kalam, and he realized, with a chill, that his otataral long-knife might well prove insufficient. ‘An interesting offer,’ he rumbled. ‘But something tells me there are more lies than truths within it, Bidithal.’

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ the archpriest sighed. ‘I need Sha’ik, for this night and the morrow at least. Febryl and Korbolo Dom must be thwarted, but I assure you, you and I can work together towards such an end, since it benefits us both. Korbolo Dom calls himself Master of the Talon. Yes, he would return to Laseen’s embrace, more or less, and use Sha’ik to bargain for his own position. As for Febryl, well, I assure you, what he awaits no-one but he is mad enough to desire.’

  ‘Why do you bother with all this, Bidithal? You’ve no intention of letting me leave here alive. And here’s another thing. A pair of beasts are coming—hounds, not of Shadow, but something else. Did you summon them, Bidithal? Do you, or your Crippled God, truly believe you can control them? If so, then it is you two who are mad.’

  Bidithal leaned forward. ‘They seek a master!’ he hissed.

  Ah, so Cotillion was right about the Chained One. ‘One who is worthy,’ Kalam replied. ‘In other words, one who is meaner and tougher than they are. And in this oasis, they will find no such individual. And so, I fear, they will kill everyone.’

  ‘You know nothing of this, assassin,’ Bidithal murmured, leaning back. ‘Nor of the power I now possess. As for not permitting you to leave here alive . . . true enough, I suppose. You’ve revealed too much knowledge, and you are proving far less enthusiastic to my proposals than I would have hoped. An unfortunate revelation, but it no longer matters. My servants were scattered about earlier, you see, defending every approach, requiring time to draw them in, to arrange them between us. Ah, Slavemaster has arrived. By all means, have some wine. I am prepared to linger here for that. Once you are done, however, I must take my leave. I made a promise to Sha’ik, after all, and I mean to keep it. Should you, by some strange miracle, escape here alive, know that I will not oppose your efforts against Korbolo Dom and his cadre. You will have earned that much, at least.’

  ‘Best leave now, then, Bidithal. I have no interest in wine this night.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Darkness swept in to engulf the archpriest, and Kalam shivered at the uncanny familiarity of the sorcerous departure.

  The wraiths attacked.

  Both knives slashed out, and inhuman screams filled the chamber. As it turned out, his otataral weapon proved sufficient after all. That, and the timely arrival of a god.

  Korbolo Dom seemed to have unleashed an army upon his own allies this night. Again and again, Karsa Orlong found his path blocked by eager killers. Their corpses were strewn in his wake. He had taken a few minor wounds from knives invested with sorcery, but most of the blood dripping from the giant warrior belonged to his victims.

  He strode with his sword in both hands now, tip lowered and to one side. There had been four assassins hiding outside Heboric Ghost Hands’ dwelling. After killing them, Karsa slashed a new doorway in the tent wall and entered, only to find the abode empty. Frustrated, he set out for the temple round. Leoman’s pit was unoccupied as well, and appeared to have been so for some time.

  Approaching Bidithal’s temple, Karsa slowed his steps as he heard fierce fighting within. Shrill screams echoed. Raising his weapon, the Toblakai edged forward.

  A figure was crawling out from the doorway on its belly, gibbering to itself. A moment later Karsa recognized the man. He waited until Slavemaster’s desperate efforts brought him up against the Toblakai’s feet. A disease-ravaged face twisted into view.

  ‘He fights like a demon!’ Silgar rasped. ‘Both blades cut through the wraiths and leave them writhing in pieces! A god stands at his shoulder. Kill them, Teblor! Kill them both!’

  Karsa sneered. ‘I take no commands from you, Slavemaster, or have you forgotten that?’

  ‘Fool!’ Silgar spat. ‘We are brothers in the House now, you and I. You are the Knight of Chains, and I am the Leper. The Crippled God has chosen us! And Bidithal, he has become the Magi—’

  ‘Yes, Bidithal. He hides within?’

  ‘No—he wisely fled, as I
am doing. The Claw and his patron god are even now slaying the last of his shadow servants. You are the Knight—you possess your own patron, Karsa Orlong of the Teblor. Kill the enemy—it is what you must do—’

  Karsa smiled. ‘And so I shall.’ He reversed his grip on his sword and drove the point down between Silgar’s shoulder blades, severing the spine then punching out through the sternum to bury itself a hand’s width deep between two flagstones.

  Vile fluids poured from the Slavemaster. His head cracked down on the stone, and his life was done. Leoman was right, long ago—a quick death would have been the better choice.

  Karsa pulled the sword free. ‘I follow no patron god,’ he growled. He turned from the temple entrance. Bidithal would have used sorcery to escape, drawing shadows about himself in an effort to remain unseen. Yet his passage would leave footprints in the dust.

  The Toblakai stepped past the body of Silgar, the man who had once sought to enslave him, and began searching.

  Twenty of Mathok’s clan warriors accompanied Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas on his return to Leoman’s encampment. Their journey was unopposed, although Corabb was certain hidden eyes followed their progress.

  They rode up the slope to the hill’s summit and were challenged by sentinels. A more welcoming sound Corabb could not imagine. Familiar voices, warriors he had fought alongside against the Malazans.

  ‘It is Corabb!’ He had been given a hook-bladed sword drawn from the Chosen One’s armoury, and he now raised it high in salute as the picket guards emerged from their places of hiding. ‘I must speak with Leoman! Where is he?’

  ‘Asleep,’ one of the sentinels growled. ‘If you’re lucky, Bhilan, your arrival, loud as it was, has awakened him. Ride to the centre of the summit, but leave your escort here.’

  That brought Corabb up short. ‘They are Mathok’s own—’

  ‘Leoman’s orders. No-one from the oasis is allowed to enter our camp.’

  Scowling, Corabb nodded and waved back his fellow horse warriors. ‘Take no offence, friends,’ he called, ‘I beg you.’ Without waiting to gauge their reaction, he dismounted and hurried to Leoman’s tent.