And saw a rider approaching. ‘Company,’ she said, loud enough to catch everyone’s attention. All but Mappo reacted, turning or rising and following her gaze.
From Setoc: ‘I know him! That’s Torrent!’
More lost souls to this pathetic party. Welcome.
A single flickering fire marked the camp, and occasionally a figure passed in front of it. The wind carried no sound from those gathered there. Among the travellers, sorrow and joy, grief and the soft warmth of newborn love. So few mortals, and yet all of life was there, ringing the fire.
Faint jade light limned the broken ground, as if darkness itself could be painted into a mockery of life. The rider who sat upon a motionless, unbreathing horse, was silent, feeling like a creature too vast to approach any shore—he could look on with one dead eye or the other dead eye. He could remember what it was like to be a living thing among other living things.
The heat, the promise, the uncertainties and all the hopes to sweeten the bitterest seas.
But that shore was for ever beyond him now.
They could feel the warmth of that fire. He could not. And never again.
The figure that rose from the dust beside him said nothing for a time, and when she spoke it was in the spirit language—her voice beyond the ears of the living. ‘We all do as we must, Herald.’
‘What you have done, Olar Ethil . . .’
‘It is too easy to forget.’
‘Forget what?’
‘The truth of the T’lan Imass. Did you know, a fool once wept for them?’
‘I was there. I saw the man’s barrow—the gifts . . .’
‘The most horrid of creatures—human and otherwise—are so easily, so carelessly recast. Mad murderers become heroes. The insane wear the crown of geniuses. Fools flower in endless fields, Herald, where history once walked.’
‘What is your point, bonecaster?’
‘The T’lan Imass. Slayers of Children from the very beginning. Too easy to forget. Even the Imass themselves, the First Sword himself, needed reminding. You all needed reminding.’
‘To what end?’
‘Why do you not go to them, Toc the Younger?’
‘I cannot.’
‘No,’ she nodded, ‘you cannot. The pain is too great. The loss you feel.’
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘Nor should they yield love to you, should they? Any of them. The children . . .’
‘They should not, no.’
‘Because, Toc the Younger, you are the brother of Onos T’oolan. His true brother now. And for all the mercy that once dwelt in your mortal heart, only ghosts remain. They must not love you. They must not believe in you. For you are not the man you once were.’
‘Did you think I needed reminding, too, Olar Ethil?’
‘I think . . . yes.’
She was right. He felt inside for the pain he’d thought—he’d believed—he had lived with for so long. As if lived was even the right word. When he found it, he saw at last its terrible truth. A ghost. A memory. I but wore its guise.
The dead have found me.
I have found the dead.
And we are the same.
‘Where will you go now, Toc the Younger?’
He gathered the reins of his horse and looked back at the distant fire. It was a spark. It would not last the night. ‘Away.’
Snow drifted down, the sky was at peace.
The figure on the throne had been frozen, lifeless, for a long, long time.
A fine shedding of dust from the corpse marked that something had changed. Ice then crackled. Steam rose from flesh slowly thickening with life. The hands, gripping the arms of the throne, suddenly twitched, fingers uncurling.
Light flickered in its pitted eyes.
And, looking out from mortal flesh once more, Hood, who had once been the Lord of Death, found arrayed before him fourteen Jaghut warriors. They stood in the midst of frozen corpses, weapons out but lowered or resting across shoulders.
One spoke. ‘What was that war again?’
The others laughed.
The first one continued, ‘Who was that enemy?’
The laughter this time was louder, longer.
‘Who was our commander?’
Heads rocked back and the thirteen roared with mirth.
The first speaker shouted, ‘Does he live? Do we?’
Hood slowly rose from the throne, melted ice streaming down his blackened hide. He stood, and eventually the laughter fell away. He took one step forward, and then another.
The fourteen warriors did not move.
Hood lowered to one knee, head bowing. ‘I seek . . . penance.’
A warrior far to the right said, ‘Gathras, he seeks penance. Do you hear that?’
The first speaker replied. ‘I do, Sanad.’
‘Shall we give it, Gathras?’ another asked.
‘Varandas, I believe we shall.’
‘Gathras.’
‘Yes, Haut?’
‘What was that war again?’
The Jaghut howled.
The Errant was lying on wet stone, on his back, unconscious, the socket of one eye a pool of blood.
Kilmandaros, breathing hard, stepped close to look down upon him. ‘Will he live?’
Sechul Lath was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. ‘Live is such a strange word. We know nothing else, after all. Not truly. Not . . . intimately.’
‘But will he?’
Sechul turned away. ‘I suppose so.’ He halted suddenly, cocked his head and then snorted. ‘Just what he always wanted.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s got an eye on a Gate.’
Her laughter rumbled in the cavern, and when it faded she turned to Sechul and said, ‘I am ready to free the bitch. Beloved son, is it time to end the world?’
Face hidden from her view, Sechul Lath closed his eyes. Then said, ‘Why not?’
This ends the Ninth Tale
of The Malazan
Book of the Fallen
THE CRIPPLED GOD
BOOK TEN OF THE
MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN
STEVEN ERIKSON
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE CRIPPLED GOD: BOOK TEN OF THE MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN
Copyright © 2011 by Steven Erikson
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers
All rights reserved.
Map by Neil Gower
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429969475
Many years ago one man took a chance on an unknown writer and his first fantasy novel – a novel that had already gone the rounds of publishers a few times without any luck. Without him, without his faith and, in the years that followed, his unswerving commitment to this vast undertaking, there would be no ‘Malazan Book of the Fallen.’ It has been my great privilege to work with a single editor from start to finish, and so I humbly dedicate The Crippled God to my editor and friend, Simon Taylor.
Dramatis Personae
In addition to those in Dust of Dreams
The Malazans
Himble Thrup
Sergeant Gaunt-Eye
Corporal Rib
Lap Twirl
Sad
Burnt Rope
The Host
Ganoes Paran, High Fist and Master of the Deck
High Mage Noto Boil
Outrider Hurlochel
Fist Rythe Bude
Captain Sweetcreek
Imperial Artist Ormulogun
Warleader Mathok
Bodyguard T’morol
Gumbl
e
The Khundryl
Widow Jastara
The Snake
Sergeant Cellows
Corporal Nithe
Sharl
The T’lan Imass: The Unbound
Urugal the Woven
Thenik the Shattered
Beroke Soft Voice
Kahlb the Silent Hunter
Halad the Giant
The Tiste Andii
Nimander Golit
Spinnock Durav
Korlat
Skintick
Desra
Dathenar Gowl
Nemanda
The Jaghut: The Fourteen
Gathras
Sanad
Varandas
Haut
Suvalas
Aimanan
Hood
The Forkrul Assail: The Lawful Inquisitors
Reverence
Serenity
Equity
Placid
Diligence
Abide
Aloft
Calm
Belie
Freedom
Grave
The Watered: The Tiers Of Lesser Assail
Amiss
Exigent
Hestand
Festian
Kessgan
Trissin Melest
Haggraf
The Tiste Liosan
Kadagar Fant
Aparal Forge
Iparth Erule
Gaelar Throe
Eldat Pressan
Others
Absi
Spultatha
K’rul
Kaminsod
Munug
Silannah
Apsal’ara
Tulas Shorn
D’rek
Gallimada
Korabas
Book One
‘He Was A Soldier’
I am known
in the religion of age.
Worship me as a pool
of blood in your hands.
Drink me deep.
It’s bitter fury
that boils and burns.
Your knives were small
but they were many.
I am named
in the religion of rage.
Worship me with your
offhand cuts
long after I am dead.
It’s a song of dreams
crumbled to ashes.
Your wants overflowed
but now gape empty.
I am drowned
in the religion of rage.
Worship me unto
death and down
to a pile of bones.
The purest book
is the one never opened.
No needs left unfulfilled
on the cold, sacred day.
I am found
in the religion of rage.
Worship me in a
stream of curses.
This fool had faith
and in dreams he wept.
But we walk a desert
rocked by accusations,
where no man starves
with hate in his bones.
Poet’s Night i.iv
The Malazan Book of the Fallen
Fisher kel Tath
Chapter One
If you never knew
the worlds in my mind
your sense of loss
would be small pity
and we’ll forget this on the trail.
Take what you’re given
and turn away the screwed face.
I do not deserve it,
no matter how narrow the strand
of your private shore.
If you will do your best
I’ll meet your eye.
It’s the clutch of arrows in hand
that I do not trust
bent to the smile hitching my way.
We aren’t meeting in sorrow
or some other suture
bridging scars.
We haven’t danced the same
thin ice
and my sympathy for your troubles
I give freely without thought
of reciprocity or scales on balance.
It’s the decent thing, that’s all.
Even if that thing
is a stranger to so many.
But there will be secrets
you never knew
and I would not choose any other way.
All my arrows are buried and
the sandy reach is broad
and all that’s private
cools pinned on the altar.
Even the drips are gone,
that child of wants
with a mind full of worlds
and his reddened tears.
The days I feel mortal I so hate.
The days in my worlds,
are where I live for ever,
and should dawn ever arrive
I will to its light awaken
as one reborn.
Poet’s Night iii.iv
The Malazan Book of the Fallen
Fisher kel Tath
COTILLION DREW TWO DAGGERS. HIS GAZE FELL TO THE BLADES.
The blackened iron surfaces seemed to swirl, two pewter rivers oozing across pits and gouges, the edges ragged where armour and bone had slowed their thrusts. He studied the sickly sky’s lurid reflections for a moment longer, and then said, ‘I have no intention of explaining a damned thing.’ He looked up, eyes locking. ‘Do you understand me?’
The figure facing him was incapable of expression. The tatters of rotted sinew and strips of skin were motionless upon the bones of temple, cheek and jaw. The eyes held nothing, nothing at all.
Better, Cotillion decided, than jaded scepticism. Oh, how he was sick of that. ‘Tell me,’ he resumed, ‘what do you think you’re seeing here? Desperation? Panic? A failing of will, some inevitable decline crumbling to incompetence? Do you believe in failure, Edgewalker?’
The apparition remained silent for a time, and then spoke in a broken, rasping voice. ‘You cannot be so…audacious.’
‘I asked if you believed in failure. Because I don’t.’
‘Even should you succeed, Cotillion. Beyond all expectation, beyond, even, all desire. They will still speak of your failure.’
He sheathed his daggers. ‘And you know what they can do to themselves.’
The head cocked, strands of hair dangling and drifting. ‘Arrogance?’
‘Competence,’ Cotillion snapped in reply. ‘Doubt me at your peril.’
‘They will not believe you.’
‘I do not care, Edgewalker. This is what it is.’
When he set out, he was not surprised that the deathless guardian followed. We have done this before. Dust and ashes puffed with each step. The wind moaned as if trapped in a crypt. ‘Almost time, Edgewalker.’
‘I know. You cannot win.’
Cotillion paused, half turned. He smiled a ravaged smile. ‘That doesn’t mean I have to lose, does it?’
Dust lifted, twisting, in her wake. From her shoulders trailed dozens of ghastly chains: bones bent and folded into irregular links, ancient bones in a thousand shades between white and deep brown. Scores of individuals made up each chain, malformed skulls matted with hair, fused spines, long bones, clacking and clattering. They drifted out behind her like a tyrant’s legacy and left a tangled skein of furrows in the withered earth that stretched for leagues.
Her pace did not slow, as steady as the sun’s own crawl to the horizon ahead, as inexorable as the darkness overtaking her. She was indifferent to notions of irony, and the bitter taste of irreverent mockery that could so sting the palate. In this there was only necessity, the hungriest of gods. She had known imprisonment. The memories remained fierce, but such recollections were not those of crypt walls and unlit tombs. Darkness, indeed, but also pressure. Terrible, unbearable pressure.
Madness was a demon and it lived in a world of helpless need, a thousand desir
es unanswered, a world without resolution. Madness, yes, she had known that demon. They had bargained with coins of pain, and those coins came from a vault that never emptied. She’d once known such wealth.
And still the darkness pursued.
Walking, a thing of hairless pate, skin the hue of bleached papyrus, elongated limbs that moved with uncanny grace. The landscape surrounding her was empty, flat on all sides but ahead, where a worn-down range of colourless hills ran a wavering claw along the horizon.
She had brought her ancestors with her and they rattled a chaotic chorus. She had not left a single one behind. Every tomb of her line now gaped empty, as hollowed out as the skulls she’d plundered from their sarcophagi. Silence ever spoke of absence. Silence was the enemy of life and she would have none of it. No, they talked in mutters and grating scrapes, her perfect ancestors, and they were the voices of her private song, keeping the demon at bay. She was done with bargains.
Long ago, she knew, the worlds – pallid islands in the Abyss – crawled with creatures. Their thoughts were blunt and simple, and beyond those thoughts there was nothing but murk, an abyss of ignorance and fear. When the first glimmers awakened in that confused gloom, they quickly flickered alight, burning like spot fires. But the mind did not awaken to itself on strains of glory. Not beauty, not even love. It did not stir with laughter or triumph. Those fires, snapping to life, all belonged to one thing and one thing only.
The first word of sentience was justice. A word to feed indignation. A word empowering the will to change the world and all its cruel circumstances, a word to bring righteousness to brutal infamy. Justice, bursting to life in the black soil of indifferent nature. Justice, to bind families, to build cities, to invent and to defend, to fashion laws and prohibitions, to hammer the unruly mettle of gods into religions. All the prescribed beliefs rose out twisting and branching from that single root, losing themselves in the blinding sky.
But she and her kind had stayed wrapped about the base of that vast tree, forgotten, crushed down; and in their place, beneath stones, bound in roots and dark earth, they were witness to the corruption of justice, to its loss of meaning, to its betrayal.
Gods and mortals, twisting truths, had in a host of deeds stained what once had been pure.
Well, the end was coming. The end, dear ones, is coming. There would be no more children, rising from the bones and rubble, to build anew all that had been lost. Was there even one among them, after all, who had not suckled at the teat of corruption? Oh, they fed their inner fires, yet they hoarded the light, the warmth, as if justice belonged to them alone.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 939
