Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  ‘It was neither. It was Icarium Lifestealer. He was here, waiting in line to cross blades with the Emperor, but he never got to him, because of that Toblakai—who was none other than Leoman of the Flails’ old friend back in Raraku, by the way. Anyway, Icarium did something, right here in Letheras.’ Bottle paused and eyed Ebron. ‘What are you getting when you awaken your warren?’

  ‘Confusion, powers spitting at each other, nothing you can grasp tight, nothing you can use.’

  ‘And it’s got worse since the reading, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It has,’ confirmed Deadsmell. ‘Ebron will tell you about the mad house we unleashed the night of the reading—I could have sworn Hood stepped right into our room. But the truth was, the Reaper was nowhere even close. If anything, he was sent sprawling the other way. And now, it’s all … jumpy, twisty. You take hold and everything shudders until it squirms loose.’

  Bottle was nodding. ‘That’s the real reason Fid was so reluctant. His reading fed into what Icarium made here all those months back.’

  ‘Made?’ Ebron demanded. ‘Made what?’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘No, Ebron, I’m really not sure … but I have an idea. Do you want to hear it or not?’

  ‘No, yes. Go on, I need to finish my list of reasons to commit suicide.’

  A server arrived, a man older than a Jaghut’s stockings, and the next few moments were spent shouting at the deaf codger—fruitlessly—until Ebron stumbled on to the bright notion of pointing at Deadsmell’s plate and goblet and showing two fingers.

  As the man set off, wilful as a snail, Bottle said, ‘It might not be that bad, Ebron. I think what we’re dealing with here is the imposition of a new pattern on to the old, familiar one.’

  ‘Pattern? What pattern?’

  ‘The warrens. That pattern.’

  Deadsmell dropped his last skewer—scraped clean—on the plate and leaned forward. ‘You’re saying Icarium went and made a new set of warrens?’

  ‘Swallow what’s in your mouth before you gape, please. Yes, that’s my idea. I’m telling you, Fiddler’s game was insane with power. Almost as bad as if someone tried a reading while sitting in K’rul’s lap. Well, not quite, since this new pattern is young, the blood still fresh—’

  ‘Blood?’ demanded Ebron. ‘What blood?’

  ‘Icarium’s blood,’ Bottle said.

  ‘Is he dead then?’

  ‘Is he? How should I know? Is K’rul dead?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Deadsmell answered. ‘If he was, the warrens would have died—that’s assuming all your theories about K’rul and the warrens are even true—’

  ‘They are. It was blood magic. That’s how the Elder Gods did things—when we use sorcery we’re feeding on K’rul’s blood.’

  No one spoke for a time. The server approached with a heavy tray. It was like watching the tide come in.

  ‘So,’ ventured Ebron once the tray clunked down and the plates and wine and goblets were randomly arrayed on the table by a quivering hand, ‘are things going to settle out, Bottle?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, pouring out some wine as the waiter shuffled away. ‘We may have to do some exploring.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The new warrens, of course.’

  ‘How can they be any different?’ Ebron asked. ‘It’s the fact that they’re mostly the same that’s got things confused—has to be. If they were completely different, there wouldn’t be this kind of trouble.’

  ‘Good point. Well, we should see if we can nudge things together, until the overlap is precise.’

  Deadsmell snorted. ‘Bottle, we’re squad mages, for Hood’s sake. We’re like midges feeding on a herd of bhederin—and here you’re suggesting we try and drive that herd. It’s not going to happen. We haven’t the power—even if we put ourselves together on this.’

  ‘That’s why I’m thinking we should involve Quick Ben, maybe even Sinn—’

  ‘Don’t even think that,’ Ebron said, eyes wide. ‘You don’t want her anywhere close, Bottle. I still can’t believe the Adjunct made her High Mage—’

  ‘Well,’ cut in Deadsmell, ‘since she’s mute she’ll be the only High Mage in history who never complains.’

  ‘Just Quick Ben, then.’

  ‘He’ll complain enough for both of them,’ Deadsmell nodded.

  ‘Just how nasty is he?’ Ebron asked Bottle.

  ‘Quick? Well, he gave a dragon a bloody nose.’

  ‘A real dragon or a Soletaken dragon?’

  ‘It makes no difference, Ebron—you pretty much can’t tell just from looking at them. You’ll only know a Soletaken when it veers. Anyway, don’t forget, he faced down the Edur mages once we quit Seven Cities.’

  ‘That was illusion.’

  ‘Ebron, I was in on that—a lot closer than you. Sure, maybe it was illusion, but maybe not.’ He paused, then said, ‘That’s another thing to consider. The local mages. They used raw sorcery, pretty much Chaotic and nothing else. No warrens. But now there’s warrens here. The local mages are in worse shape than we are.’

  ‘I still don’t like the idea of some kind of collective ritual,’ Deadsmell said. ‘When you’re under siege you don’t pop your head up over the parapet, do you? Unless you want feather eyelashes.’

  ‘Well, Fiddler went and did just that with the reading, didn’t he? Nobody died—’

  ‘Rubbish. A whole building went crashing down!’

  ‘Nothing new there, Ebron. This whole city is on shaky ground.’

  ‘People died, is what I’m telling you, Bottle. And if that’s not bad enough, there were plenty of witnesses claiming to see two dragons rise out of the rubble.’ He ducked his head and looked round. ‘I don’t like dragons. I don’t like places where dragons show up all the time. Say we try some ritual—what if fifty dragons come blasting down out of the sky, splatting right on top of us? What then, hey?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Ebron. It depends. I mean, are they real or Soletaken?’

  Sinn held Grub’s hand in a tight, sweaty grip. They were edging once more on to the grounds of the old Azath tower. The day was hot, steamy, the air above the tortured mounds glittering with whirling insects. ‘Can you smell it?’ she asked.

  He didn’t want to reply.

  She shot him a wild look, and then tugged him on to the winding stone path. ‘It’s all new, Grub. You can drink it like water. It tastes sweet—’

  ‘It tastes dangerous, Sinn.’

  ‘I can almost see it. New patterns, getting stronger—it’s running roots right through this place. This is all new,’ she said again, almost breathless. ‘Just like us—you and me, Grub, we’re going to leave all the old people behind. Feel this power! With it we can do anything! We can knock down gods!’

  ‘I don’t want to knock anything down, especially gods!’

  ‘You didn’t have to listen to Tavore, Grub. And Quick Ben.’

  ‘We can’t just play with this stuff, Sinn.’

  ‘Why not? No one else is.’

  ‘Because it’s broken, that’s why. It doesn’t feel right at all—these new warrens, they feel wrong, Sinn. The pattern is broken.’

  They halted just outside the tower’s now gaping doorway and its seemingly lifeless wasp nest. She faced him, eyes bright. ‘So let’s fix it.’

  He stared at her. ‘How?’

  ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling him into the gloom of the Azath tower.

  Feet crunching on dead wasps, she led him without hesitation to the stairs. They climbed to the empty chamber that had once been the nexus of the Azath’s power.

  It was empty no longer.

  Blood-red threads sizzled within, forming a knotted, chaotic web that spanned the entire chamber. The air tasted metallic, bitter.

  They stood side by side at the threshold.

  ‘It uses what it finds,’ Sinn whispered.

  ‘So now what?’

  ‘Now, we st
ep inside.’

  ‘They march in circles any longer and they’ll drop.’

  Corporal Tarr squinted at the gasping, foot-dragging soldiers. ‘They’re out of shape, all right. Pathetic. Of course, we were supposed to think of something.’

  Cuttle scratched at his jaw. ‘So we ended up thrashing them after all. Look, here comes Fid, thank the gods.’

  The sergeant scowled upon seeing his two soldiers and almost turned round before Cuttle’s frantic beckoning beat down his defences, or at least elicited the man’s pity. Raking fingers through his red and grey beard, he walked over. ‘What are you two doing to those poor bastards?’

  ‘We run out of things to make them do,’ Cuttle said.

  ‘Well, stumbling round inside a compound only takes it so far. You need to get them out of the city. Get them practising entrenchments, redoubts and berms. You need to turn their penchant for wholesale rout into something like an organized withdrawal. You need to stretch their chain of command and see who’s got the guts to step up when it snaps. You need to make those ones squad-leaders. War games, too—set them against one of the other brigades or battalions being trained by our marines. They need to win a few times before they can learn how to avoid losing. Now, if Hedge comes by, you ain’t seen me, right?’

  They watched him head off down the length of the colonnade.

  ‘That’s depressing,’ Cuttle muttered.

  ‘I’ll never make sergeant,’ Tarr said, ‘not in a thousand years. Damn.’

  ‘Good point, you just lifted my mood, Corporal. Thanks.’

  Hedge pounced on his old friend at the end of the colonnade. ‘What’re you bothering with them for, Fid? These Bonehunters ain’t Bridgeburners and those Letherii ain’t soldiers. You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘Gods below, stop stalking me!’

  Hedge’s expression fell. ‘It’s not that, Fid. Only, we were friends—’

  ‘And then you died. So I went and got over you. And now you show up all over again. If you were just a ghost then maybe I could deal with it—aye, I know you whispered in my ear every now and then, and saved my skin and all that and it’s not that I ain’t grateful either. But … well, we ain’t squad mates any more, are we? You came back when you weren’t supposed to, and in your head you’re still a Bridgeburner and you think the same of me. Which is why you keep slagging off these Bonehunters, like it was some rival division. But it isn’t, because the Bridgeburners are finished, Hedge. Dust and ashes. Gone.’

  ‘All right all right! So maybe I need to make some adjustments, too. I can do that! Easy. Watch me! First thing—I’ll get the captain to give me a squad—’

  ‘What makes you think you deserve to lead a squad?’

  ‘Because I was a—’

  ‘Exactly. A damned Bridgeburner! Hedge, you’re a sapper—’

  ‘So are you!’

  ‘Mostly I leave that to Cuttle these days—’

  ‘You did the drum! Without me!’

  ‘You weren’t there—’

  ‘That makes no difference!’

  ‘How can it not make a difference?’

  ‘Let me work on that. The point is, you were doing sapping stuff, Fid. In fact, the point is, you and me need to get drunk and find us some whores—’

  ‘Only works the other way round, Hedge.’

  ‘Now you’re talking! And listen, I’ll get a finger-bone nose-ring so I can fit right in with these bloodthirsty Bonehunters you’re so proud of, how does that sound?’

  Fiddler stared at the man. His ridiculous leather cap with its earflaps, his hopeful grin. ‘Get a nose-ring and I’ll kill you myself, Hedge. Fine, then, let’s stir things up. Just don’t even think about asking for a squad, all right?’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do instead?’

  ‘Tag along with Gesler’s squad—I think it’s short of a body.’ And then he snorted a laugh. ‘A body. You. Good one.’

  ‘I told you I wasn’t dead no more, Fid.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Lieutenant Pores sat in the captain’s chair behind the captain’s desk, and held his hands folded together on the surface before him as he regarded the two women who had, until recently, been rotting in cells in some Letherii fort. ‘Sisters, right?’

  When neither replied, Pores nodded. ‘Some advice, then. Should either of you one day achieve higher rank—say, captain—you too will learn the art of stating the obvious. In the meantime, you are stuck with the absurd requirement of answering stupid questions with honest answers, all the while keeping a straight face. You will need to do a lot of this with me.’

  The woman on the right said, ‘Aye, sir, we’re sisters.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant Sinter. Wasn’t that satisfying? I’m sure it was. What I will find even more satisfying is watching you two washing down the barracks’ latrines for the next two weeks. Consider it your reward for being so incompetent as to be captured by these local fools. And then failing to escape.’ He scowled. ‘Look at you two—nothing but skin and bones! Those uniforms look like shrouds. I order you to regain your lost weight, in all the right places, within the same fortnight. Failure to do will result in a month on half-rations. Furthermore, I want you both to get your hair cut, down to the scalp, and to deposit said sheared hair on this desk precisely at the eighth bell this evening. Not earlier, not later. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ barked Sergeant Sinter.

  ‘Very good,’ nodded Pores. ‘Now get out of here, and if you see Lieutenant Pores in the corridor remind him that he has been ordered to a posting on Second Maiden Fort, and the damned idiot should be on his way by now. Dismissed!’

  As soon as the two women were gone, Pores leapt up from behind the captain’s desk, scanned the surface to ensure nothing had been knocked askew, and then carefully repositioned the chair just so. With a nervous glance out the window, he hurried out into the reception room and sat down behind his own, much smaller desk. Hearing heavy boots in the corridor he began shuffling the scrolls and wax tablets on the surface in front of him, planting a studious frown on his features in time for his captain’s portentous arrival.

  As soon as the door opened, Pores leapt to attention. ‘Good morning, sir!’

  ‘It’s mid-afternoon, Lieutenant. Those wasp stings clearly rotted what’s left of your brain.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Have those two Dal Honese sisters reported yet?’

  ‘No, sir, not hide nor … hair, sir. We should be seeing one or both any time now—’

  ‘Oh, and is that because you intend to physically hunt them down, Lieutenant?’

  ‘As soon as I’ve done this paperwork, sir, I will do just that, even if it takes me all the way to Second Maiden Fort, sir.’

  Kindly scowled. ‘What paperwork?’

  ‘Why, sir,’ Pores gestured, ‘this paperwork, sir.’

  ‘Well, don’t dally, Lieutenant. As you know, I need to attend a briefing at half seventh bell, and I want them in my office before then.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Kindly walked past and went inside. Where, Pores imagined, he would spend the rest of the afternoon looking at his collection of combs.

  ‘Everyone’s right,’ Kisswhere muttered as she and her sister made their back to the dormitory, ‘Captain Kindly is not only a bastard, but insane. What was all that about our hair?’

  Sinter shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Well, there’s no regulations about our hair. We can complain to the Fist—’

  ‘No we won’t,’ Sinter cut in. ‘Kindly wants hair on his desk, we give him hair on his desk.’

  ‘Not mine!’

  ‘Nor mine, Kisswhere, nor mine.’

  ‘Then whose?’

  ‘Not whose. What’s.’

  Corporal Pravalak Rim was waiting at the entrance. ‘Did you get commendations then?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh love,’ said Kisswhere, ‘Kindly doesn’t give out commendations. Just punishments.’

  ‘Wha
t?’

  Sinter said, ‘The captain ordered us to put on weight,’ and then she stepped past him, ‘among other things.’ And then she paused and turned back to Pravalak. ‘Corporal, find us some shears, and a large burlap sack.’

  ‘Aye, Sergeant. Shears—how big?’

  ‘I don’t care, just find some.’

  Kisswhere offered the young man a broad smile as he hurried off, and then she went inside, marching halfway down the length of the dormitory. She halted at the foot of a cot where the bedding had been twisted into something resembling a nest. Squatting in the centre of this nest was a wrinkled, scarified, tattooed bad dream with small glittering eyes. ‘Nep Furrow, I need a curse.’

  ‘Eh? Geen way! Groblet! Coo!’

  ‘Captain Kindly. I was thinking hives, the real itchy kind. No, wait, that’ll just make him even meaner. Make him cross-eyed—but not so he notices, just everyone else. Can you do that, Nep?’

  ‘War butt wod i’meen, eh?’

  ‘How about a massage?’

  ‘Kissands?’

  ‘My very own, yes.’

  ‘Urble ong eh? Urble ong?’

  ‘Bell to bell, Nep.’

  ‘Nikked?’

  ‘Who, you or me?’

  ‘Bat!’

  ‘Fine, but we’ll need to rent a room, unless of course you want an audience?’

  Nep Furrow was getting excited, in all the wrong ways, she saw. He jumped round, squirmed, his skin glistening with sweat. ‘Blether squids, Kiss, blether squids!’

  ‘With the door barred,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any strangers walking in.’

  ‘Hep haw! Curseed?’

  ‘Aye, cross-eyed, but he can’t know it—’

  ‘Impable, lees in glusion.’

  ‘Illusion? A glamour? Oh, that’s very good. Get on it, then, thanks.’

  Badan Gruk rubbed at his face as Sinter collapsed on to the cot beside him. ‘What in Hood’s name are we doing here?’ he asked.

  Her dark eyes flicked to his—the momentary contact sweet as a caress—and then she looked away. ‘You’re the only kind of soldier a body can trust, Badan, did you know that?’

  ‘What? No, I—’

  ‘You’re reluctant. You’re not cut out for violence and so you don’t go looking for it. You use your wits first and that silly bonekisser as a last resort. The dangerous ones do it the other way round and that costs lives every time. Every time.’ She paused. ‘Did I hear right? Some drunk marine sergeant crossed this damned empire from tavern to tavern?’