Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  The others waited for Badalle to find her words.

  Rutt was late in arriving as he had to check on Held and make adjustments to the baby’s wrap. By the time he joined them, Badalle was ready. ‘Hear me, then,’ she said, ‘at Visto’s deading.’

  She blew flies from her lips and then scanned the faces arrayed round her. There was an expression she wanted to find, but couldn’t. Even remembering what it looked like was hard, no, impossible. She’d lost it, truth be told. But wanted it, and she knew she would recognize it as soon as she saw it again. An expression … some kind of expression … what was it? After a moment, she spoke,

  ‘We all come from some place

  And Visto was no different

  He come

  From some

  Place

  And it was different and

  It was the same no different

  If you know what I mean

  And you do

  You have to

  All you standing here

  The point is that Visto

  He couldn’t remember

  Anything about that place

  Except that he come from it

  And that’s like lots of you

  So let’s say now

  He’s gone back there

  To that place

  Where he come from

  And everything he sees

  He remembers

  And everything he remembers

  Is new’

  They always waited, never knowing if she was finished until it became obvious that she was, and in that time Badalle looked down at Visto. The eggs of the Satra Riders clung like crumbs to Visto’s lips, as if he had been gobbling down cake. The adult riders had chewed out through his stomach and no one knew where they went, maybe into the ground—they did all that at night.

  Maybe some of the ribbers had been careless, with their eager jaws and all, which was good since then there’d be fewer of them strong enough to launch attacks on the ribby snake. It wasn’t as bad having them totter along in the distance, keeping pace, getting weaker just as the children did, until they lay down and weren’t trouble any more. You could live with that, no different from the crows and vultures overhead. Animals showed, didn’t they, how to believe in patience.

  She lifted her head and as if that was a signal the others turned away and walked slowly back to the trail where the ones who could were standing, getting ready for the day’s march.

  Rutt said, ‘I liked Visto.’

  ‘We all liked Visto.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because that makes it harder.’

  ‘The Satra Riders liked Visto too, even more than we did.’

  Rutt shifted Held from the crook of his right arm into the crook of his left arm. ‘I’m mad at Visto now.’

  Brayderal, who had showed up to walk at the snake’s head only two days ago—maybe coming from back down the snake’s body, maybe coming from somewhere else—walked out to stand close to them, as if she wanted to be part of something. Something made up of Rutt and Held and Badalle. But whatever that something was, it had no room for Brayderal. Visto’s deading didn’t leave a hole. The space just closed up.

  Besides, something about the tall, bony girl made Badalle uneasy. Her face was too white beneath all this sun. She reminded Badalle of the bone-skins—what were they called again? Quisiters? Quitters? Could be, yes, the Quitters, the bone-skins who stood taller than anyone else and from that height they saw everything and commanded everyone and when they said Starve and die, why, that’s just what everyone did.

  If they knew about the Chal Managal, they would be angry. They might even chase after it and find the head, find Rutt and Badalle, and then do that quitting thing with the hands, the thing that broke the necks of people like Rutt and Badalle.

  ‘We would be … quitted unto deading.’

  ‘Badalle?’

  She looked at Rutt, blew flies from her lips, and then—ignoring Brayderal as if she wasn’t there—set off to rejoin the ribby snake.

  The track stretched westward, straight like an insult to nature, and at the distant end of the stony, lifeless ground, the horizon glittered as if crusted with crushed glass. She heard Rutt’s scrabbling steps coming up behind her, and then veering slightly as he made for the front of the column. She might be his second but Badalle wouldn’t walk with him. Rutt had Held. That was enough for Rutt.

  Badalle had her words, and that was almost too much.

  She saw Brayderal follow Rutt. They were almost the same height, but Rutt looked the weaker, closer to deading than Brayderal, and seeing that, Badalle felt a flash of anger. It should have been the other way round. They needed Rutt. They didn’t need Brayderal.

  Unless she was planning on stepping into Rutt’s place when Rutt finally broke, planning on being the snake’s new head, its slithery tongue, its scaly jaws. Yes, that might be what Badalle was seeing. And Brayderal would take up Held all wrapped tight and safe from the sun, and they’d all set out on another day, with her instead of Rutt leading them.

  That made a kind of sense. No different than with the ribber packs—when the leader got sick or lame or just wasn’t strong enough any more, why, that other ribber that showed up and started trotting alongside it, it was there just for this moment. To take over. To keep things going.

  No different from what sons did to fathers and daughters did to mothers, and princes to kings and princesses to queens.

  Brayderal walked almost at Rutt’s side, up there at the head. Maybe she talked with Rutt, maybe she didn’t. Some things didn’t need talking about, and besides, Rutt wasn’t one to say much anyway.

  ‘I don’t like Brayderal.’

  If anyone nearby heard her, they gave no sign.

  Badalle blew to scatter the flies. They needed to find water. Even half a day without it and the snake would get too ribby, especially in this heat.

  On this morning, she did as she always did. Eating her fill of words, drinking deep the spaces in between, and mad—so mad—that none of it gave her any strength.

  Saddic had been Rutt’s second follower, the first being Held. He now walked among the four or so moving in a loose clump a few paces behind Rutt and the new girl. Badalle was a little way back, in the next clump. Saddic worshipped her, but he would not draw close to her, not yet, because there would be no point. He had few words of his own—he’d lost most of them early on in this journey. So long as he was in hearing range of Badalle, he was content.

  She fed him. With her sayings and her seeings. She kept Saddic alive.

  He thought about what she had said for Visto’s deading. About how some of it wasn’t true, the bit about Visto not remembering anything about where he’d come from. He’d remembered too much, in fact. So, Badalle had knowingly told an untruth about Visto. At his deading. Why had she done that?

  Because Visto was gone. Her words weren’t for him because he was gone. They were for us. She was telling us to give up remembering. Give it up so when we find it again it all feels new. Not the remembering itself but the things we remembered. The cities and villages and the families and the laughing. The water and the food and full stomachs. Is that what she was telling us?

  Well, he had his meal for the day, didn’t he? She was generous that way.

  The feet at the ends of his legs were like wads of leather. They didn’t feel much and that was a relief since the stones on the track were sharp and so many others had bleeding feet making it hard to walk. The ground was even worse to either side of the trail.

  Badalle was smart. She was the brain behind the jaws, the tongue. She took what the snake’s eyes saw. She made sense of what the tongue tasted. She gave names to the things of this new world. The moths that pretended to be leaves and the trees that invited the moths to be leaves so that five trees shared one set of leaves between them, and when the trees got hungry off went the leaves, looking for food. No other tree could do that, and so no oth
er tree lived on the Elan.

  She talked about the jhaval, the carrion birds no bigger than sparrows, that were the first to swarm a body when it fell, using their sharp beaks to stab and drink. Sometimes the jhaval didn’t even wait for the body to fall. Saddic had seen them attacking a wounded ribber, even vultures and crows. Sometimes each other, too, when the frenzy was on them.

  Satra Riders, as what did in poor Visto, and flow-worms that moved in a seething carpet, pushing beneath a corpse to squirm in the shade. They bit and drenched themselves in whatever seeped down and as the ground softened down they went, finally able to pierce the skin of the blistered earth.

  Saddic looked in wonder at this new world, listened in awe as Badalle gave the strange things names and made for them all a new language.

  Close to noon they found a waterhole. The crumbled foundations of makeshift corrals surrounded the shallow, muddy pit.

  The snake halted, and then began a slow, tortured crawl into and out of the churned-up mud. The wait alone killed scores, and even as children emerged from the morass, slathered black, some fell to convulsions, curling round mud-filled guts. Some spilled out their bowels, fouling things for everyone that came after.

  It was another bad day for the Chal Managal.

  Later in the afternoon, during the worst of the heat, they spied a greyish cloud on the horizon ahead. The ribbers began howling, dancing in terror, and as the cloud rushed closer, the dogs finally fled.

  What looked like rain wasn’t rain. What looked like a cloud wasn’t a cloud.

  These were locusts, but not the normal kind of locusts.

  Wings glittering, the swarm filling half the sky, and then all the sky, the sound a clicking roar—the rasp of wings, the snapping open of jaws—each creature a finger long. Out from within the cloud, as it engulfed the column, lunged buzzing knots where the insects massed almost solid. When one of these hammered into a huddle of children, shrieks of pain and horror erupted—the flash of red meat, and then bone—and then the horde swept on, leaving behind clumps of hair and heaps of gleaming bone.

  These locusts ate meat.

  This was the first day of the Shards.

  Chapter Five

  The painter must be mute

  The sculptor deaf

  Talents are passed out

  Singly

  As everyone knows

  Oh let them dabble

  We smile our indulgence

  No end to our talent

  For allowances

  But talents are passed out

  Singly

  We permit you one

  Worth lauding

  The rest may do service

  In serviceable fashion

  But greatness?

  That is a title passed out

  Singly

  Don’t be greedy

  Over trying our indulgence

  Permission

  Belongs to us

  Behind the makeshift wall—

  The bricks of our

  Reasonable scepticism.

  A POEM THAT SERVES

  ASTATTLE POHM

  C

  orporal Tarr’s memory of his father could be entirely summed up inside a single recollected quote, ringing like Talian death bells across the breadth of Tarr’s childhood. A raw, stentorian pronouncement battering down on the flinching son. ‘Sympathy? Aye, I have sympathy—for the dead and no one else! Ain’t nobody in this world deserves sympathy unless they’re dead! You understanding me, son?’

  ‘You understanding me, son?’

  Yes, sir. Good words for making a soldier. Kept the brain from getting too … cluttered. With things that might get in the way of holding his shield just so, stabbing out with his short sword right there. It was a kind of discipline, what others might call obstinate stupidity, but that simply showed that lots of people didn’t understand soldiering.

  Teaching people to be disciplined, he was discovering, wasn’t easy. He walked the length of Letherii soldiers—and aye, that description was a sorry stretch—who stood at what passed for attention for these locals. A row of red faces in the blazing sunlight, dripping like melting wax.

  ‘Harridict Brigade,’ Tarr said in a snarl, ‘what kind of name is that? Who in Hood’s name was Harridict—no, don’t answer me, you damned fool! Some useless general, I’d imagine, or worse, some merchant house happy to kit you all in its house colours. Merchants! Businesses got no place in the military. We built an empire across three continents by keeping ’em outa things! Businesses are the vultures of war, and maybe those beaks look like smiles, but take it from me, they’re just beaks.’

  He halted then, his repertoire of words exhausted, and gestured to Cuttle, who stepped up with a hard grin—the idiot loved this Braven role, as it was being called now (‘Letherii got master sergeants; we Malazans got Braven Sergeants, and say it toothy when you say it, lads, and be sure to keep the joke private’—so said Ruthan Gudd and that, Tarr had decided then and there, was a soldier).

  Cuttle was wide and solid, a perfect fit to the role. Wider than Tarr but shorter by half a head, which meant that Tarr was an even better fit. Not one of these miserable excuses for soldiers could stand toe to toe with either Malazan for anything past twenty heartbeats, and that was the awful truth. They were soft. ‘This brigade,’ Cuttle now said, loud and contemptuous, ‘is a waste of space!’ He paused to glare at the faces, which were slowly hardening under the assault.

  About time. Tarr watched on, thumbs hooked now in his weapon belt.

  ‘Aye,’ Cuttle went on, ‘I’ve listened to your drunken stories—’ and his tone invited them to sit at his table: knowing and wise and damned near … sympathetic. ‘And aye, I’ve seen for myself that raw, ugly pig you call magic hereabouts. Undisciplined—no finesse—brutal power but nothing clever. So, for you lot, battle means eating dirt, and a battlefield is where hundreds die for no good reason. Your mages have made war a miserable, useless joke—’ and he spun round and stepped up to one soldier, nose to nose. ‘You! How many times has this brigade taken fifty per cent or more losses in a single battle?’

  The soldier—and Cuttle had chosen well—almost bared his teeth. ‘Seven times, Braven Sergeant!’

  ‘Seventy-five per cent losses?’

  ‘Four, Braven Sergeant!’

  ‘Losses at ninety?’

  ‘Once, Braven Sergeant, but not ninety—one hundred per cent, Braven Sergeant.’

  Cuttle let his jaw drop. ‘One hundred?’

  ‘Yes, Braven Sergeant!’

  ‘Wiped out to the last soldier?’

  ‘Yes, Braven Sergeant!’

  And Cuttle leaned even closer, his face turning crimson. In a bellowing shout, he said, ‘And has it not once occurred to you—any of you—that you might do better by murdering all your mages at the very start of the battle?’

  ‘Then the other side would—’

  ‘You parley with ’em first, of course—you all agree to butcher the bastards!’ He reeled back and threw up his hands. ‘You don’t fight wars! You don’t fight battles! You just all form up and make new cemeteries!’ He wheeled on them. ‘Are you all idiots?’

  On a balcony overlooking the parade grounds, Brys Beddict winced. Beside him, standing in the shade, Queen Janath grunted and then said, ‘You know, he has a point.’

  ‘It is, for the moment,’ Brys said, ‘almost irrelevant. We have few mages of any stature left, and even those ones have gone to ground—it seems there is a quiet revolution under way, and I suspect that when the dust has settled, the entire discipline of sorcery will be transformed.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘In any case, that wasn’t what alarmed me—listening to that soldier down there. It’s their notion of taking matters into their own hands.’

  ‘An invitation to mutiny,’ Janath was nodding, ‘but you could look at it another way. Their kind of thinking in turn keeps their commanders in check—following orders is one thing, but if those orders are suicidal or just plain stupid …’


  ‘The thought of my soldiers second-guessing me at every turn hardly inspires confidence. I am beginning to regret employing these Malazans in the reshaping of the Letherii military. Perhaps the way they do things works for them, but it does not necessarily follow that it will work for us.’

  ‘You may be right, Brys. There is something unusual about the Malazans. I find them fascinating. Imagine, an entire civilization that does not suffer fools.’

  ‘From what I have heard,’ Brys pointed out, ‘that did not protect them from betrayal—their very own Empress was prepared to sacrifice them all.’

  ‘But they did not kneel to the axe, did they?’

  ‘I see your point.’

  ‘There exists an exchange of trust between the ruler and the ruled. Abuse that from either direction and all mutual agreements are nullified.’

  ‘Civil war.’

  ‘Unless one of the aggrieved parties has the option of simply leaving. Assuming it’s not interested in retribution or vengeance.’

  Brys thought about that for a time, watching the relentless bullying of his Letherii soldiers by those two Bonehunters in the yard below. ‘Perhaps they have things to teach us after all,’ he mused.

  Cuttle stepped close to Tarr and hissed, ‘Gods below, Corporal, they’re worse than sheep!’

  ‘Been thrashed too many times, that’s their problem.’

  ‘So what do we do with them?’

  Tarr shrugged. ‘All I can think of is thrash ’em again.’

  Cuttle’s small eyes narrowed on his corporal. ‘Somehow, that don’t sound right.’

  Grimacing, Tarr looked away. ‘I know. But it’s all I’ve got. If you’ve a better idea, feel free, sapper.’

  ‘I’ll get ’em marching round—that’ll give us time to think.’

  ‘There must be some clever strategy at work down there,’ Brys concluded after a time, and then he turned to the Queen. ‘We should probably attend to Tehol—he said something about a meeting in advance of the meeting with the Adjunct.’

  ‘Actually, that was Bugg. Tehol proposed a meeting to discuss Bugg’s idea of the meeting in advance—oh, listen to me! That man is like an infection! Yes, let us march with solemn purpose upon my husband—your brother—and at least find out whatever needs finding out before the Malazans descend upon us. What must they think? Our King wears a blanket!’