Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  Abrastal remained sitting through this, only to rise once more when he paused. She held out her empty goblet and Gaedis poured again. ‘Elite, then, specially chosen—how many of these Adjuncts did this Empress have at any one time?’

  Spax frowned. ‘I think … one.’

  The Queen halted. ‘And this Malazan Empire—it spans three continents?’

  ‘And more, Highness.’

  ‘Yet Tavore is a renegade. The measure of that betrayal …’ she slowly shook her head. ‘How can one trust this Adjunct? It is impossible. I wonder, did this Tavore attempt to usurp her Empress? Is she even now being pursued? Will the enemy they find be none other than her Malazan hunters?’

  Spax shrugged. ‘I doubt the Grey Helms would care much either way. It’s a war. As you said, any face will serve. As for the Khundryl, well, they’re sworn to the Adjunct personally, so they will follow her anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, and why would they do that to a betrayer?’

  ‘Highness, this is none of our concern,’ said Spax. ‘As much as my warriors lust for a fight, we have put ourselves at a tactical disadvantage—after all, it would have been better to deal with the Khundryl and the Perish back in Bolkando, and then take on the Bonehunters later. Mind you, it’s still possible. A secret emissary to the Saphii, a few tens of thousands of coins—we could catch them by surprise—’

  ‘No. After all, Spax, if it truly is none of our concern as you say, why attack them at all?’

  ‘Just my point, Highness. I was simply observing that our opportunity for a tactical advantage is fast disappearing, assuming we had cause, which we haven’t.’

  ‘I’m not prepared to make any such assumption, Warchief. Thus my dilemma. It is as you describe. None of the three foreign armies still poses us any threat. They have made plain their desire to vanish into the east. Is it time to dust off our hands and return to our beloved homeland?’

  ‘It might be, Highness.’

  ‘But then,’ and her frown deepened. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I have sent a daughter eastward, by sea, Spax. A most precious daughter. It seems you and I share the same curse: curiosity. Kolanse has fallen silent. Our trader ships find nothing but empty ports, abandoned villages. The Pelasiar Sea is empty of traffic. Even the great net-ships have vanished. And yet … and yet … something is there, perhaps deep inland. A power, and it’s growing.’

  Spax studied the Queen. She was not dissembling. He saw her fear for her daughter (gods, woman, you got enough of them, what’s the loss of one?) and it was genuine. Your heiress? Does it work that way in Bolkando? How should I know, when I don’t even care? ‘Summon her to return, Highness.’

  ‘Too late, Spax. Too late.’

  ‘Highness,’ said the Warchief, ‘do you mean to tell me we’re going with the foreigners? Across the Wastelands?’

  Gaedis had frozen in place, two strides to one side where he had been about to open another jug. The lieutenant’s eyes were on his Queen.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Abrastal said, eventually. ‘No, in fact—we are not equipped for such a venture, nor, I imagine, would they even welcome us. Nonetheless … I will see this Adjunct.’ She fixed Spax with a look that told him her tolerance was at an end, and she said, ‘Chew on what you’ve heard this night, Warchief, and if your stomach still growls, do not bring your complaints to my tent.’

  Spax dipped his head and then handed his goblet to Gaedis. ‘I hear your maids readying that bath, Highness. A most restorative conclusion to this night, I’m sure. Good night to you, Highness, Lieutenant.’

  Once outside, he set out, not back to his clans, but to the encampments of the Burned Tears. It had occurred to him, when envisioning the grand parley to come, that he and Gall would, in all likelihood, be the only men present. An exciting notion. He wasn’t sure Gall would see it that way, of course, if the rumours he’d picked up were true, but there was another rumour that, if accurate, could offer a common rug for them both. Not a drinker of fancy wines, this Gall. No, the man likes his beer, and if manhood has any measure, it’s that.

  Just my opinion, mind. Now, let’s see, Warleader Gall, if you share it.

  Stepping beyond the legion’s last row of tents, Spax paused. He spat to get that foul taste from his mouth. Wine’s for women. Gaedis, I bet that trick with the cork has spread a thousand soft thighs. You’ll have to teach it to me one day.

  She might as well have tied a cask of ale to her belly. Her lower back was bowed, and every shift of weight made the bones creak. Muscles quivered, others were prostrate with exhaustion. Her breasts, which had never been modest or spry, now sat resting uneasy on the swell of that damned cask. Everything was swollen and too big—how was it that she kept forgetting? Of course, amidst all these groans and shuffles and grunts, her thoughts swam through honey. So sweet, this drowning. The world glowed. Life shouted. Sang.

  ‘Hoary witches of old,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘you’ve a lot to answer for.’ There was no possible position in which to sit in comfort, so Hanavat, wife to Gall, had taken to walking through the camp each night. She was the wandering moon of her people’s legends, in the ages before her sister moon’s betrayal, when love was still pure and Night lay down in the arms of Darkness—oh, the legends were quaint, if ever tainted with sorrow, that inevitable fall from grace. She wondered if such creations—those tales of times lost—were nothing more than a broken soul’s embrace of regret. The fall was in sensibility’s wake, too late to do anything about, but this—look around!—this is what it made of us.

  The moon had ceased to wander. Snared in the webs of deceit, it could only slide round and round the world it loved—never to touch, doomed to tug at its lover’s tears, that and nothing more. Until, in some distant future, love died and with it all the pale fires of its wonder, and at last Night found her lover and in turn Darkness swallowed her whole. And that was the end of all existence.

  Hanavat could look up now and see a vision that did not fit with the legend’s prophecy. No, the moon had been struck a mortal blow. She was dying. And still the web would not release her, whilst, ever cool, ever faint, her sister moon watched on. Had she murdered her rival? Was she pleased to witness her sister’s death throes? Hanavat’s gaze strayed southward to the jade lances arcing ever closer. The heavens were indeed at war.

  ‘Tea, Hanavat?’

  Her attention, drawn down from the skies, found the shapes of two women seated round a small fire banked against a steaming pot. ‘Shelemasa. Rafala.’

  Rafala, who’d been the one voicing the offer, now lifted into view a third cup. ‘We see you pass each night, Mahib. Your discomfort is plain to our eyes. Will you join us? Rest your feet.’

  ‘I was fleeing the midwives,’ Hanavat said. She hesitated, and then waddled over. ‘The Seed Wakeners are cruel—what’s wrong with just an egg? We could manage one, I think, about the size of a palm nut.’

  Shelemasa’s laugh was low and wry. ‘But not as hard, I’d hope.’

  ‘Or as hairy,’ Rafala added.

  The two warrior women laughed.

  Grunting, moving slowly, Hanavat sat down, forming the third point to this triangle surrounding the fire. She accepted the cup, studied it in the soft light. Pewter. Bolkando. ‘So, you didn’t sell everything back to them, I see.’

  ‘Only the useless things,’ Rafala said. ‘They had plenty of those.’

  ‘It’s what makes us so different from them,’ observed Shelemasa. ‘We don’t invent useless things, or make up needs that don’t exist. If civilization—as they call it—has a true definition, then that must be it. Don’t you think, Mahib?’

  The ancient honorific for a pregnant woman pleased Hanavat. Though these two were young, they remembered the old ways and all the respect those ways accorded people. ‘You may be right in that, Shelemasa. But I wonder, perhaps it’s not the objects that so define a civilization—perhaps it’s the attitudes that give rise to them, and to the strangely overwrought value attached to them. The priv
ilege of making useless things is the important thing, since it implies wealth and abundance, leisure and all the rest.’

  ‘Wise words,’ murmured Rafala.

  ‘The tea is sweet enough,’ replied Hanavat.

  The younger woman smiled, accepting the faint admonishment with good grace.

  ‘The child kicks,’ said Hanavat, ‘and so promises me the truth of the years awaiting us. I must have been mad.’ She sipped tea. ‘What brew is this?’

  ‘Saphii,’ answered Shelemasa. ‘It’s said to calm the stomach, and with the foreign food we’ve been eating of late, such calm will be a welcome respite.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ added Rafala, ‘it will soothe the child as well.’

  ‘Or kill it outright. At this point I don’t really care which. Heed this miserable Mahib’s warning: do this once to know what it means, but leave it at that. Don’t let the dream serpents back into your thoughts, whispering to you of pregnancy’s bliss. The snake lies to soften your memories. Until there is nothing but clouds and the scent of blossoms in your skull, and before you know it, you’ve gone and done it again.’

  ‘Why would the serpents lie, Mahib? Are not children women’s greatest gift?’

  ‘So we keep telling ourselves, and each other.’ She sipped more tea. Her tongue tingled as if she’d licked a bell of pepper. ‘But not long ago my husband and I invited our children to a family feast, and my how we did feast. Like starving wolves trying to decide which among us was the stranded bhederin calf. All night our children flung that bloody hide back and forth, each of them cursed to wear it at least once, and finally they all decided to drape the two of us in that foul skin. It was, in short, a most memorable reunion.’

  The two younger women said nothing.

  ‘Parents,’ resumed Hanavat, ‘may choose to have children, but they do not choose their children. Nor can children choose their parents. And so there is love, yes, but there is also war. There is sympathy and there is the poison of envy. There is peace and that peace is the exhausted calm between struggles for power. There is, on rare occasions, true joy, but each time that precious, startling moment then dwindles, and in each face you see a hint of sorrow—as if what was just found will now be for ever remembered as a thing lost. Can you be nostalgic for the instant just past? Oh yes, and it’s a bittersweet taste.’ She finished her tea. ‘That whispering serpent—it’s whispered its last lie in me. I strangled the bitch. I tied it neck and tail to two horses. I collected every knuckled bone and crushed it to dust, then blew that dust to contrary winds. I took its skin and made it into a codpiece for the ugliest dog in the camp. I then took that dog—’

  Rafala and Shelemasa were laughing, their laughs getting louder with each antic of vengeance Hanavat described.

  Other warriors, round other small fires, were all looking over now, smiling to see old pregnant Hanavat regaling two younger women. And among the men there were stirrings of curiosity and perhaps a little unease, for women possessed powerful secrets, and none more powerful than those possessed by a pregnant woman—one need only to look into the face of a mahib to know that. The women, watching on but like their male companions too distant to hear Hanavat’s words, also smiled. Was that to soothe the men in their company? Possibly, but if so the expression was instinctive, a dissembling born of habit.

  No, they smiled as the urgent whispers of their dream serpents filled their heads. The child within. Such joy! Such pleasure! Put away the swords, O creature of beauty—instead sing to the Seed Wakeners! Catch his eye and watch him fall in—the darkness beckons and the night is warm!

  Was a scent released upon the air? Did it drift through the entire camp of the Khundryl Burned Tears?

  In the Warleader’s campaign tent, Gall sat with a bellyful of ale heavy as a cask leaning on his belt, and eyed with gauging regard the tall iron-haired woman pacing in front of him. Off to one side sat the Gilk Barghast, Spax, even drunker than Gall, his own red-shot, bleary gaze tracking the Mortal Sword as she sought to prise from Gall every last detail regarding the Malazans. Where had this sudden uncertainty come from? Had not the Perish sworn to serve the Adjunct? Oh, if Queen Abrastal could witness what he was witnessing! But then she’d be interested in all the unimportant matters, wouldn’t she? Eager to determine if the great alliance was weakening … and all that.

  All the while missing the point, the matters that were truly interesting and so sharply relevant to this scene before him.

  The Warleader’s wife was nowhere to be seen, and it had already occurred to Spax that he should probably leave. Who knew if or when Krughava would finally take note of the look in Gall’s eyes—and what might she do then? Instead, Spax sat sprawled in the leather sling of the three-legged chair, too comfortable to move and, it had to be admitted, too fascinated as she fired question after question into the increasingly senseless arrow butt that was Gall. When would she realize that the man had stopped answering? That while she went on attacking and attacking, he’d stopped defending long ago? He so wanted to see that moment—her expression, yes, one he could take away with him and remember for evermore.

  What would it take for her to notice? If he pulled out his gooseneck and took aim? Would that do it? Or just wrestled his way out of his clothes? Gods below, the drooling’s not done it.

  He should leave. But they’d have to drag him out of this tent. Come on, Krughava, you can do it. I know you can. Take a second look, woman, at the man you’re talking to. No, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Ah, but this was a most agitated woman. Something about a weakening resolve, or was it a failure of confidence—a sudden threat from within the ranks of the Grey Helms themselves. Someone missing in the command structure, the necessary balance all awry. A young man of frightening ambitions—oh, swamp spirits be damned! He was too drunk to make sense of any of this!

  Why am I sitting here?

  What is she saying? Pay attention, Krughava! Never mind him—can’t you see this bulge? No one wants the goose to honk, come and strangle it, woman! I’ll solve your agitation. Yes, if only you women understood that. Your every answer, right here between my legs.

  Half the world’s mired in ignorance!

  Half the world …

  Gooseneck.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Listen then these are the charms

  And will I see your pleasure stretched

  An even dozen they crowd the tomb

  You can read the dead in twelve faces

  And the winter months are long

  The shields are hammered into splinters

  Beating war’s time will never ring true

  Fools stir in the crypt counting notches

  And the snow settles burying all traces

  Crows spill the sky knocked like ink

  Babies crawl to the front line

  Plump arms shouting proof ’gainst harm

  The helms rock askew in pitching tumult

  And the brightest blood is the freshest

  Round the well charged and spatted

  Cadavers cherish company’s lonely vigil

  The tomb’s walls trumpet failures

  Dressed as triumphs and glory’s trains

  And the fallen are bundled lying under foot

  Each year Spring dies still newborn

  Listen then these are the charms

  History is written for the crows

  By children with red lips and eyes blinking

  On the cocked ends of their tongues

  And it seems summer will never end

  HAIL THE SEASON OF WAR

  GALLAN

  C

  ity of darkness, see how that darkness hides your ugly face.

  They were on the bridge. She was leaning heavily on her husband’s shoulder, both relieved and irritated by his stolid strength. ‘But you don’t see, do you?’

  ‘Sand?’

  She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter. The air is alive. Can you feel that? Withal, can you feel that much at least?’r />
  ‘Your goddess,’ he said. ‘Alive, aye, alive with tears.’

  That was true. Mother Dark had returned with sorrow knotted into grief. Darkness made helpless fists, like a widow trying to hold on to all she had lost. Lost, yes, something has been lost. She is no longer turned away, but in mourning. Her eyes are averted, downcast. She is here, yet behind a veil. Mother, you make this a most bitter gift.

  Her strength was slow in returning. Memories like wolves, snapping on all sides. Kharkanas. Sandalath clutched Withal’s right arm, feeling the thick muscles, the cables of his will. He was one of those men who were like a finely made sword, sheathed in a hard skin, hiding a core that could bend when it had to. She didn’t deserve him. That was brutally clear. Take me hostage, husband. That much I will understand. That much I know how to live with. Even though it too will break in the end—no, stop thinking that way. It’s a memory no one here deserves.

  ‘There are fires in the city.’

  ‘Yes. It is … occupied.’

  ‘Savages in the ruins?’

  ‘Of course not. These are the Shake. We’ve found them.’

  ‘So they made it, then.’

  She nodded.

  He drew her to a halt ten steps from the bridge’s end. ‘Sand. Tell me again why you wanted to find them. You wanted to warn them, isn’t that right? Against what?’

  ‘Too late for that. Gallan sent them out, and now his ghost pulls them back. He cursed them. He said they could leave, but then he made them remember enough—just enough—to force them to return.’

  Withal sighed, his expression showing he was unconvinced. ‘People need to know where they came from, Sand. Especially if they’ve lived generations not knowing. They were a restless people, weren’t they? What do you think made them restless?’

  ‘Then we’re all restless, Withal, because at the very heart, none of us know where we came from. Or where we’re going.’

  He made a face. ‘Mostly, nobody much cares. Very well, have it your way. These Shake were cursed. You didn’t reach them in time. Now what?’