Delusions. Heboric Light Touch, once priest of Fener, possessed no more delusions. He had drowned them one by one with his own hands long ago. His hands—his Ghost Hands—had proved particularly capable of such tasks. Whisperers of unseen powers, guided by a mysterious, implacable will. He knew that he had no control over them, and so held no delusions. How could he?
Behind him, in the vast flat where tens of thousands of warriors and their followers were encamped amidst a city’s ruins, such clear-eyed vision was absent. The army was the strong hands, now at rest but soon to raise weapons, guided by a will that was anything but implacable, a will that was drowning in delusions. Heboric was not only different from all those below—he was their very opposite, a sordid reflection in a mangled mirror.
Hen’bara’s gift was dreamless sleep at night. The solace of oblivion.
He reached the ridge, breathing hard from the exertion, and settled down among the flowers for a moment to rest. Ghostly hands were as deft as real ones, though he could not see them—not even as the faint, mottled glow that others saw. Indeed, his vision was failing him in all things. It was an old man’s curse, he believed, to witness the horizons on all sides drawing ever closer. Even so, while the carpet of yellow surrounding him was little more than a blur to his eyes, the spicy fragrance filled his nostrils and left a palpable taste on his tongue.
The desert sun’s heat was bludgeoning, oppressive. It had a power of its own, transforming the Holy Desert into a prison, pervasive and relentless. Heboric had grown to despise that heat, to curse Seven Cities, to cultivate an abiding hatred for its people. And he was trapped among them, now. The Whirlwind’s barrier was indiscriminate, impassable both to those on the outside and those within—at the discretion of the Chosen One.
Movement to one side, the blur of a slight, dark-haired figure. Who then settled down beside him.
Heboric smiled. ‘I thought I was alone.’
‘We are both alone, Ghost Hands.’
‘Of that, Felisin, neither of us needs reminding.’ Felisin Younger, but that is a name I cannot speak out loud. The mother who adopted you, lass, has her own secrets. ‘What is that you have in your hands?’
‘Scrolls,’ the girl replied. ‘From Mother. She has, it seems, rediscovered her hunger for writing poetry.’
The tattooed ex-priest grunted, ‘I thought it was a love, not a hunger.’
‘You are not a poet,’ she said. ‘In any case, to speak plainly is a true talent; to bury beneath obfuscation is a poet’s calling these days.’
‘You are a brutal critic, lass,’ Heboric observed.
‘Call to Shadow, she has called it. Or, rather, she continues a poem her own mother began.’
‘Ah, well, Shadow is a murky realm. Clearly she has chosen a style to match the subject, perhaps to match that of her own mother.’
‘Too convenient, Ghost Hands. Now, consider the name by which Korbolo Dom’s army is now called. Dogslayers. That, old man, is poetic. A name fraught with diffidence behind its proud bluster. A name to match Korbolo Dom himself, who stands square-footed in his terror.’
Heboric reached out and plucked the first flower head. He held it to his nose a moment before dropping it into the leather bag at his belt. ‘“Square-footed in his terror.” An arresting image, lass. But I see no fear in the Napan. The Malazan army mustering in Aren is nothing but three paltry legions of recruits. Commanded by a woman devoid of any relevant experience. Korbolo Dom has no reason to be afraid.’
The young girl’s laugh was a trill that seemed to cut an icy path through the air. ‘No reason, Ghost Hands? Many reasons, in fact. Shall I list them? Leoman. Toblakai. Bidithal. L’oric. Mathok. And, the one he finds most terrifying of all: Sha’ik. My mother. The camp is a snake-pit, seething with dissent. You have missed the last spitting frenzy. Mother has banished Mallick Rel and Pullyk Alar. Cast them out. Korbolo Dom loses two more allies in the power struggle—’
‘There is no power struggle,’ Heboric growled, tugging at a handful of flowers. ‘They are fools to believe that one is possible. Sha’ik has thrown those two out because treachery flows in their veins. She is indifferent to Korbolo Dom’s feelings about it.’
‘He believes otherwise, and that conviction is more important than what might or might not be true. And how does Mother respond to the aftermath of her pronouncements?’ Felisin swiped the plants before her with the scrolls. ‘With poetry.’
‘The gift of knowledge,’ Heboric muttered. ‘The Whirlwind Goddess whispers in the Chosen One’s ear. There are secrets within the Warren of Shadow, secrets containing truths that are relevant to the Whirlwind itself.’
‘What do you mean?’
Heboric shrugged. His bag was nearly full. ‘Alas, I possess my own prescient knowledge.’ And little good it does me. ‘The sundering of an ancient warren scattered fragments throughout the realms. The Whirlwind Goddess possesses power, but it was not her own, not at first. Just one more fragment, wandering lost and in pain. What was the goddess, I wonder, when she first stumbled onto the Whirlwind? Some desert tribe’s minor deity, I suspect. A spirit of the summer wind, protector of some whirlpool spring, possibly. One among many, without question. Of course, once she made that fragment her own, it did not take long for her to destroy her old rivals, to assert complete, ruthless domination over the Holy Desert.’
‘A quaint theory, Ghost Hands,’ Felisin drawled. ‘But it speaks nothing of the Seven Holy Cities, the Seven Holy Books, the prophecy of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic.’
Heboric snorted. ‘Cults feed upon one another, lass. Whole myths are co-opted to fuel the faith. Seven Cities was born of nomadic tribes, yet the legacy preceding them was that of an ancient civilization, which in turn rested uneasy on the foundations of a still older empire—the First Empire of the T’lan Imass. That which survives in memory or falters and fades away is but chance and circumstance.’
‘Poets may know hunger,’ she commented drily, ‘but historians devour. And devouring murders language, makes of it a dead thing.’
‘Not the historian’s crime, lass, but the critic’s.’
‘Why quibble? Scholars, then.’
‘Are you complaining that my explanation destroys the mysteries of the pantheon? Felisin, there are more worthy things to wonder at in this world. Leave the gods and goddesses to their own sickly obsessions.’
Her laugh struck through him again. ‘Oh, you are amusing company, old man! A priest cast out by his god. An historian once gaoled for his theories. A thief with nothing left worth stealing. I am not the one in need of wonder.’
He heard her climb to her feet. ‘In any case,’ she continued, ‘I was sent to find you.’
‘Oh? Sha’ik seeks more advice that she will no doubt ignore?’
‘Not this time. Leoman.’
Heboric scowled. And where Leoman is, so too will be Toblakai. The slayer’s only quality his holding to his vow to never again speak to me. Still, I will feel his eyes upon me. His killer’s eyes. If there’s anyone in the camp who should be banished…He slowly clambered upright. ‘Where will I find him?’
‘In the pit temple,’ she replied.
Of course. And what, dear lass, were you doing in Leoman’s company?
‘I would take you by hand,’ Felisin added, ‘but I find their touch far too poetic.’
She walked at his side, back down the slope, between the two vast kraals which were empty at the moment—the goats and sheep driven to the pastures east of the ruins for the day. They passed through a wide breach in the dead city’s wall, intersecting one of the main avenues that led to the jumble of sprawling, massive buildings of which only foundations and half-walls remained, that had come to be called the Circle of Temples.
Adobe huts, yurts and hide tents fashioned a modern city on the ruins. Neighbourhood markets bustled beneath wide, street-length awnings, filling the hot air with countless voices and the redolent aromas of cooking. Local tribes, those that followed their own war chief, Mathok—who held a
position comparable to general in Sha’ik’s command—mingled with Dogslayers, with motley bands of renegades from cities, with cut-throat bandits and freed criminals from countless Malazan garrison gaols. The army’s camp followers were equally disparate, a bizarre self-contained tribe that seemed to wander a nomadic round within the makeshift city, driven to move at the behest of hidden vagaries no doubt political in nature. At the moment, some unseen defeat had them more furtive than usual—old whores leading scores of mostly naked, thin children, weapon smiths and tack menders and cooks and latrine diggers, widows and wives and a few husbands and fewer still fathers and mothers…threads linked most of them to the warriors in Sha’ik’s army, but they were tenuous at best, easily severed, often tangled into a web of adultery and bastardy.
The city was a microcosm of Seven Cities, in Heboric’s opinion. Proof of all the ills the Malazan Empire had set out to cure as conquerors then occupiers. There seemed few virtues to the freedoms to which the ex-priest had been witness, here in this place. Yet he suspected he was alone in his traitorous thoughts. The empire sentenced me a criminal, yet I remain Malazan none the less. A child of the empire, a reawakened devotee to the old emperor’s ‘peace by the sword’. So, dear Tavore, lead your army to this heart of rebellion, and cut it dead. I’ll not weep for the loss.
The Circle of Temples was virtually abandoned compared to the teeming streets the two had just passed through. The home of old gods, forgotten deities once worshipped by a forgotten people who left little behind apart from crumbling ruins and pathways ankle-deep in dusty potsherds. Yet something of the sacred still lingered for some, it seemed, for it was here where the most decrepit of the lost found meagre refuge.
A scattering of minor healers moved among these destitute few—the old widows who’d found no refuge as a third or even fourth wife to a warrior or merchant, fighters who’d lost limbs, lepers and other diseased victims who could not afford the healing powers of High Denul. There had once numbered among these people abandoned children, but Sha’ik had seen to an end to that. Beginning with Felisin, she had adopted them all—her private retinue, the Whirlwind cult’s own acolytes. By Heboric’s last cursory measure, a week past, they had numbered over three thousand, in ages ranging from newly weaned to Felisin’s age—close to Sha’ik’s own, true age. To all of them, she was Mother.
It had not been a popular gesture. The pimps had lost their lambs.
In the centre of the Circle of Temples was a broad, octagonal pit, sunk deep into the layered limestone, its floor never touched by the sun, cleared out now of its resident snakes, scorpions and spiders and reoccupied by Leoman of the Flails. Leoman, who had once been Elder Sha’ik’s most trusted bodyguard. But the reborn Sha’ik had delved deep into the man’s soul, and found it empty, bereft of faith, by some flaw of nature inclined to disavow all forms of certainty. The new Chosen One had decided she could not trust this man—not at her side, at any rate. He had been seconded to Mathok, though it seemed that the position involved few responsibilities. While Toblakai remained as Sha’ik’s personal guardian, the giant with the shattered tattoo on his face had not relinquished his friendship with Leoman and was often in the man’s sour company.
There was history between the two warriors, of which Heboric was certain he sensed but a fraction. They had once shared a chain as prisoners of the Malazans, it was rumoured. Heboric wished the Malazans had shown less mercy in Toblakai’s case.
‘I will leave you now,’ Felisin said at the pit’s brick-lined edge. ‘When next I desire to clash views with you, I will seek you out.’
Grimacing, Heboric nodded and began making his way down the ladder. The air around him grew cooler in layers as he descended into the gloom. The smell of durhang was sweet and heavy—one of Leoman’s affectations, leading the ex-priest to wonder if young Felisin was following her mother’s path more closely than he had suspected.
The limestone floor was layered in rugs now. Ornate furniture—the portable kind wealthy travelling merchants used—made the spacious chamber seem crowded. Wood-framed screens stood against the walls here and there, the stretched fabric of their panels displaying woven scenes from tribal mythology. Where the walls were exposed, black and red ochre paintings from some ancient artist transformed the smooth, rippled stone into multi-layered vistas—savannas where transparent beasts roamed. For some reason these images remained clear and sharp to Heboric’s eyes, whispering memories of movement ever on the edges of his vision.
Old spirits wandered this pit, trapped for eternity by its high, sheer walls. Heboric hated this place, with all its spectral laminations of failure, of worlds long extinct.
Toblakai sat on a backless divan, rubbing oil into the blade of his wooden sword, not bothering to look up as Heboric reached the base of the ladder. Leoman lay sprawled among cushions near the wall opposite.
‘Ghost Hands,’ the desert warrior called in greeting. ‘You have hen’bara? Come, there is a brazier here, and water—’
‘I reserve that tea for just before I go to bed,’ Heboric replied, striding over. ‘You would speak with me, Leoman?’
‘Always, friend. Did not the Chosen One call us her sacred triangle? We three, here in this forgotten pit? Or perhaps I have jumbled my words, and should reverse my usage of “sacred” and “forgotten”? Come, sit. I have herbal tea, the kind that makes one wakeful.’
Heboric sat down on a cushion. ‘And what need have we to be wakeful?’
Leoman’s smile was loose, telling Heboric that durhang had swept away his usual reticence. ‘Dear Ghost Hands,’ the warrior murmured, ‘it is the need of the hunted. It is the gazelle with its nose to the ground that the lion sups with, after all.’
The ex-priest’s brows rose. ‘And who is stalking us now, Leoman?’
Leaning back, Leoman replied, ‘Why, the Malazans, of course. Who other?’
‘Why, most certainly then we must talk,’ Heboric said in mock earnestness. ‘I had no idea, after all, that the Malazans were planning on doing us harm. Are you certain of your information?’
Toblakai spoke to Leoman. ‘As I have told you before, this old man should be killed.’
Leoman laughed. ‘Ah, my friend, now that you are the only one of us three who still has the Chosen One’s ear…as it were…I would suggest you relinquish that subject. She has forbidden it and that is that. Nor am I inclined to agree with you in any case. It is an old refrain that needs burying.’
‘Toblakai hates me because I see too clearly what haunts his soul,’ Heboric said. ‘And, given his vow to not speak to me, his options for dialogue are sadly limited.’
‘I applaud your empathy, Ghost Hands.’
Heboric snorted. ‘If there is to be subject to this meeting, Leoman, let’s hear it. Else I’ll make my way back to the light.’
‘That would prove a long journey,’ the warrior chuckled. ‘Very well. Bidithal is back to his old ways.’
‘Bidithal, the High Mage? What “old ways”?’
‘His ways with children, Heboric. Girls. His unpleasant…hungers. Sha’ik is not all-knowing, alas. Oh, she knows Bidithal’s old predilections—she experienced them firsthand when she was Sha’ik Elder, after all. But there are close to a hundred thousand people in this city, now. A few children vanishing every week…easily passing virtually unnoticed. Mathok’s people, however, are by nature watchful.’
Heboric scowled. ‘And what would you have me do about it?’
‘Are you disinterested?’
‘Of course not. But I am one man, without, as you say, a voice. While Bidithal is one of the three sworn to Sha’ik, one of her most powerful High Mages.’
Leoman began making tea. ‘We share a certain loyalty, friend,’ he murmured, ‘the three of us here. With a certain child.’ He looked up then, leaning close as he set the pot of water on the brazier’s grate, his veiled blue eyes fixing on Heboric. ‘Who has caught Bidithal’s eye. But that attention is more than simply sexual. Felisin is Sha’ik’s chose
n heir—we can all see that, yes? Bidithal believes she must be shaped in a manner identical to her mother—when her mother was Sha’ik Elder, that is. The child must follow the mother’s path, Bidithal believes. As the mother was broken inside, so too must the child be broken inside.’
Cold horror filled Heboric at Leoman’s words. He snapped a glare at Toblakai. ‘Sha’ik must be told of this!’
‘She has,’ Leoman said. ‘But she needs Bidithal, if only to balance the schemes of Febryl and L’oric. The three despise each other, naturally. She has been told, Ghost Hands, and so she tasks us three in turn to be…watchful.’
‘How in Hood’s name am I supposed to be watchful?’ Heboric snapped. ‘I am damned near blind! Toblakai! Tell Sha’ik to take that wrinkled bastard and flay him alive, never mind Febryl and L’oric!’
The huge savage bared his teeth at Leoman. ‘I hear a lizard hissing from under its rock, Leoman of the Flails. Such bravado is quickly ended with the heel of a boot.’
‘Ah,’ Leoman sighed to Heboric, ‘alas, Bidithal is not the problem. Indeed, he may prove Sha’ik’s saviour. Febryl schemes betrayal, friend. Who are his co-conspirators? Unknown. Not L’oric, that’s for certain—L’oric is by far the most cunning of the three, and so not a fool by any measure. Yet Febryl needs allies among the powerful. Is Korbolo Dom in league with the bastard? We don’t know. Kamist Reloe? His two lieutenant mages, Henaras and Fayelle? Even if they all were, Febryl would still need Bidithal—either to stand aside and do nothing, or to join.’
‘Yet,’ Toblakai growled, ‘Bidithal is loyal.’
‘In his own way,’ Leoman agreed. ‘And he knows that Febryl is planning treachery, and now but awaits the invitation. Whereupon he will tell Sha’ik.’
‘And all the conspirators will then die,’ Toblakai said.
Heboric shook his head. ‘And what if those conspirators comprise her entire command?’
Leoman shrugged, then began pouring tea. ‘Sha’ik has the Whirlwind, friend. To lead the armies? She has Mathok. And me. And L’oric will remain, that is certain. Seven take us, Korbolo Dom is a liability in any case.’
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 302
