‘Not to Jakal Viharn?’
‘No. Never been.’
The news startled Shimmer so much that she had a hard time comprehending it. She felt that it ought to alarm her, but for some reason all she could summon was a vague unease. ‘You haven’t … But I thought … I’m sorry. I thought you had.’
‘Skinner has.’ Then Gwynn ran a hand over his sweat-matted pale hair and frowned as if chasing after a thought. ‘At least he was gone for much of the time … We simply assumed he was with her.’
‘You never asked him about it – about the city?’
‘No.’
Shimmer found that difficult to believe. ‘Really? No one asked about Jakal Viharn? Not even once?’
Gwynn cocked his head, the edge of his mouth quirking up. ‘One does not ask personal questions of Skinner.’
Ah. There is that. She knew that some people were just naturally less forthcoming or prone to talk about themselves than others. And Skinner even less so than most. He’d always been silent regarding anything other than the business at hand. He’d become utterly closed to her before the end.
Now Shimmer frowned, thinking, for it seemed so very difficult in this choking thick air. ‘Well, then, why don’t we travel by Warren?’
Gwynn rubbed a finger along the knife-edge bridge of his great hooked nose. ‘Jakal cannot be found via the Warrens. Ardata has seen to that. She allows you to enter. This time she sent a boat.’
‘Why?’
‘I do not know. A demonstration, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’ Shimmer tried to think through to the hidden motive behind the choice but couldn’t come up with any definitive possibility, and so instead she let it lie to be answered later and returned to watching the thick reddish-brown flow coiling and ribboning beneath them.
What she did come to understand was the spell, or sensation, she and her brother and sister Avowed were experiencing. She wasn’t certain where the answer came from; perhaps from a waking dream she had when the deck appeared populated by all the fallen Avowed brethren interspersed with the living, all journeying to their unknown destination on the river. And it struck her that this timelessness was a sensation she’d known before. Over these last few years it had been growing, ebbing and waning, yet always abiding just beneath the surface of her awareness. It was – perhaps – an artefact of the Vow they had all sworn together.
And now this land, Jacuruku, seemed to somehow intensify it … or perhaps the word she was looking for was exacerbate. Or aggravate? In any case, it was not entirely imposed from without and so she tried to let slip away her almost constant state of heightened anxiety.
She was, unfortunately, premature in that choice.
It began as a noise, a loud thrumming or hissing. It seemed to be coming from all around. Rutana, Shimmer noted, ran to the bow to stand tall, peering to the right and left.
‘What is it?’ K’azz called to the woman.
She shook her head. ‘I cannot be sure…’
‘Look there,’ Amatt called, pointing ahead upriver.
A cloud was approaching, skimming the dark bronze surface of the river, stretching from one shore to the other. Within the haze of the cloud a blinding iridescent storm of colours flashed and glimmered. Shimmer winced, shading her gaze. ‘What is it?’ she called to Rutana, just as K’azz had.
The woman just shook her head as she stepped down from the railing as if retreating. ‘I do not know.’
The cloud engulfed them, flowing around the vessel. Her vision of either shore was lost in a hurricane of lustrous rainbow-like flashing. Blinking, Shimmer was astonished to find herself surrounded by hundreds of darting and rushing hummingbirds. The blinding colours came from their feathers, which held a metallic iridescence of every hue.
They hove in close to her face as if inspecting her. Their wings churned as near invisible blurs. She didn’t like the glow of their tiny red eyes and she gently waved them aside. ‘What is this?’ she called to Rutana. She had to shout to be heard above the combined roaring of the thousands of whirring wings.
The woman might have answered but Shimmer did not hear as one of the hummingbirds suddenly darted forward and thrust its long needle-like beak into her neck. She flinched and reflexively grabbed hold of the tiny bundle of feathers and threw it to the deck. ‘The damned thing stabbed me!’ she yelled, more surprised than hurt.
Grunts of shock and annoyance sounded all around as the Avowed waved their arms through the eddying clouds of birds. Then, all at once, as if at a given order, the birds crowded close all about Shimmer, jamming so tight they blotted out the day. Stiletto beaks thrust for her eyes, her neck, and clawed feet scratched for purchase on her ears. She covered her face to spin left and right but the mass of birds followed, stabbing her. She ran into someone, his face a steaming wet mask of blood, who howled. A scream sounded and a splash as someone fell or jumped into the river. She heard Nagal’s bull voice shouting in that strange language, then K’azz bellowing: ‘Gwynn!’
An eruption of power swiped her to the slick decking where she slammed into the side. Groggy, she fumbled for a grip to pull herself up. The hummingbirds were gone, as was what was left of the sails, and even the upper masts had been sheared away. On the deck only Gwynn and Nagal remained standing; all others had been pushed to the sides in a circle outwards from the mage in black. Something hit the deck at Shimmer’s feet. A dead hummingbird. It lay dull and lustreless now, so tiny. She peered up. Others fell all about. A pattering rainbow deluge of dead birds. Most struck the river, slightly behind, as the vessel continued its unhurried advance. She limped to where Rutana was straightening to her feet.
‘And just what in the name of Hood was that?’ she snarled.
The woman gave another of her uncaring shrugs. Shimmer noted that she was completely untouched; not one cut or jab marked her face or hands. ‘An inhabitant of Himatan, like any other.’
‘D’ivers?’
Again the indifferent shrug. ‘Of a kind. The forest is full of many such creatures. Here you will find all the old things that once walked the earth before you humans came.’
‘Well … you could have warned us.’
She laughed, waving a hand to dismiss her. ‘Even I have seen only a fraction of that which exists within these leagues,’ she said, and walked away.
Shimmer cast about for K’azz, to find him at the stern where he and others had thrown a rope to Cole, who had jumped overboard and now swam after the lumbering ship. Beneath the tiller arm lay the captain, dead, his eye sockets bloody and empty, his throat a torn gaping wound.
K’azz joined her to regard the captain. He motioned to Turgal nearby. ‘Find some cloth.’ He saluted and headed for the companionway.
Sighing, Shimmer raised her gaze to the shore. Hidden animals still roared and hooted in the distance in answer to Gwynn’s great blast of power. Masses of strange birds churned, flapping their huge ungainly wings over the ragged treetops. You humans, the woman had said. You humans.
Shimmer drew a hand down her slick hot face; it came away wet with blood that dripped from her palm to the decking. She felt a terrible foreboding that somehow they were never going to get out of this jungle.
* * *
Of course a Hood-damned storm would gather as he and Sour unravelled the last of the chains coupled to their dolmen anchors. Only four now remained, each at a compass point, and beneath the centre of the plaza the thing this entire installation was constructed to contain jerked and struggled like a gaffed dhenrabi the size of a war galley. Murk gestured his disgust to the massed black clouds blotting the night sky as the wind, the discharge of thunder, and the combers crashing into the shore made conversation almost impossible. From where he crouched next to the dolmen, Sour caught the wave and answered with the expression he was named for. Rain pelted down but at least it was warm rain, not like the freezing sleet of north Genabackis. Yusen emerged from the sheets to lean close to Murk.
‘Now?’ he asked.
&n
bsp; Murk nodded and raised a hand in the mount up sign. Yusen gave a curt jerk of his head and went to his men, signing orders. Murk found Sour’s squinted gaze and they turned to where Spite sat cross-legged facing the plaza, her back blade-rigid. Sour gestured him over and now Murk gave a sour look, but he went.
Kneeling next to the woman the first thing he noticed was the heat. The great fat raindrops actually hissed to steam as they touched her shoulders and hair. Her gaze was locked ahead, the eyes an eerie all-carmine that churned like flame. ‘Which one next?’ he shouted.
The eyes did not shift, did not so much as blink while Murk waited. Silent, the woman extended an arm to point opposite. Murk grunted his understanding and retreated to Sour.
‘Across the way,’ he told Sour, then signed to Yusen.
Sour packed up his sodden leather satchel of shells, bits of wood, and other found bric-a-brac that he used to somehow ‘read’ the maze they faced. A team of five mercenaries led by the three big swordsmen Ostler, Tanner and Dee jogged up to join them, plus the silent scout Sweetly and the lieutenant, a Seven Cities native, to judge by her sharp coffee-hued features beneath a bright domed helmet woven round by a cord of yellow silk.
He and Sour started tracing the border of the plaza. The team spread out round them. When they reached the dolmen Sour clambered down into the excavation pit and laid out his satchel. Murk crouched, peering down. The rain dripped from his nose and snaked down his ankles. The squat little fellow studied the base of the dolmen for a time. He picked up the bits and pieces he’d gathered together and let them fall on the soaked leather. This pattern he studied for a while. Then, as before, he raised his Thyr Warren and reached in towards the pulsing cable of power wound about the stone to manipulate it as one might a knot or trick puzzle. Murk had no idea how the unimpressive fellow managed it. He definitely was no bright spark; wordplay blew right past him; and he could be as slow as the son of the village idiot. It must be instinctive – that was the only explanation Murk could think of. A freak talent like that old man he’d heard tell of that the prince of Anklos kept in his court who could give you the day’s date in any calendrical system you would care to mention.
Murk had his own Warren at his fingertips and so he saw when the bound energies tore free of the dolmen like a whip and snapped Sour backwards with a crack that echoed from every stone. He ran to where the fellow lay immobile, his chest steaming in the rain, and tapped one unshaven cheek with the back of a hand. ‘Sour? You with us?’
The fellow coughed and Murk caught a whiff of rotten breath and turned his head aside. He stood and prodded the man with a toe. ‘You all right?’
Sour nodded, blinking as the rain pattered down into his eyes. ‘Got a kick like a mule.’
‘Yeah, well. You should stop getting intimate with them.’
The fellow peered around confused then screwed up his eyes to squint. ‘But I never have…’
‘Never mind.’ He reached out a hand and Sour took it. Murk pulled him upright. ‘Last one.’
Sour frowned, then brightened. ‘Oh, yeah.’
Murk signed to their bodyguard mercs. Sour went to collect his gear.
This time either Sour got it just right, or was more careful. In any case the sizzling band of power slipped away as easily as a released fishing line and he grinned up at his partner like the naughty boy who’d let it go. ‘Damn good,’ Murk said, hands on his knees. ‘Let’s see Miss Nibs.’
Spite was standing when they found her in the sleeting rain. A steady pounding announced the surf crashing on to the nearby strand. Something seemed to echo that pulse from within the roiling gravel of the plaza. ‘You will aid me,’ she told them without so much as turning her head.
‘Yes,’ Murk answered – though he didn’t think they could contribute much of anything.
Spite simply stepped forward to sink straight down into the gravel as if it were a pool. In a panic, Murk struggled to follow her through his Warren. He found her approaching the small object at the centre of the installation where it jumped and kicked very much like that proverbial hooked fish; except that the power this captive bled would’ve boiled off any lake. Held only by the remaining two chains of woven potency it swung wildly now, hissing through the gravel as if the tons of stone did not exist. Spite closed warily, her hands raised.
Murk had no idea what her plan was – but he most certainly did not expect her to simply snatch out and grab hold of the thing as it swung by. The resulting explosion of energy tore through the plaza. In that curious double image available to a mage viewing a scene through both his Warren and his mundane vision, Murk watched the underside of the gravel plaza sear and boil even as the surface erupted upwards, sending the mercenaries running and ducking under their shields.
Murk reduced his Warren-sensitivity against the roaring forge-like energies. He saw that whereas Sour had applied an uncanny delicacy of manipulation to undoing the bonds, Spite was all pure force and overwhelming power. Spite, it seemed, possessed no subtlety whatsoever. The rock-grinding might being brought to bear made Murk’s teeth ache.
‘Like some damned Ascendant!’ Sour yelled next to his ear. Murk nodded his appalled agreement. ‘Ever hear of any one of these Chainings being broken?’ Murk shook his head.
Then with a crack as of a stone cleaving, it was done. The two remaining bonds sizzled, swinging and snapping loose like whips. Spite weakly churned a path through the gravel, making for them. She held something that was painful to look at through his Warren.
An arm broached the surface of the heated stones where the rain hissed and misted, then a head. Spite drew back her arm and heaved something towards them. Appalled, Murk watched it arc through the air. Shit, was all he could think. ‘Don’t touch it!’ he bellowed.
But everyone was half deaf from the cracks of thunder, the pounding rain and the blasts of power. One of the mercenaries reached for the object, and screamed – briefly. Murk and Sour ran for the fellow. They pushed through the gathered bodyguards to find a blackened corpse, ribcage curving up through crisped flesh, arms ending in white sintered bones, yet head and face completely unmarred. The moustached fellow looked as if he’d merely closed his eyes in sleep. The object lay within the seared carcass: a smoking casket of black stone, chased and edged in silver, like a lady’s jewellery box.
‘Get a pack,’ Sour ordered.
Two mercenaries ran to obey. Murk noted that the man’s armour was torn. Consumed the flesh only. Gods, man, will it even be safe to carry? How to touch it? ‘Get some sticks,’ he told Sweetly, who nodded.
‘Murk!’ Sour called from the plaza.
Standing, he told the female mercenary: ‘Make a stretcher!’ In the panic of the moment the woman gave a quick Malazan salute. Murk ran to his partner.
Spite lay hugging the stone lip, only her head and shoulders above the gravel. Sour knelt next to her but wasn’t helping. There was something in his gaze – wonder and perhaps even a wide-eyed dread. The woman fairly glowed with power, her flesh steaming and hissing. Murk thought he caught a glimpse of rough dark-scaled features, and hands misshapen taloned claws. The eyes burned like pits of melted stone. ‘You have it?’ she grated.
‘Yes.’
‘Get me up.’
Murk held up his hands. ‘We can’t touch you yet…’
‘Oh, for the love of Night! Get a sword or something!’
‘Right.’
Spite jerked then, sinking to her open, surprised lips. For an instant those formidable eyes, so superior, so scornful, widened in unguarded panic. ‘Oh, no…’ she whispered, and then she disappeared as if snatched back by some giant.
Murk switched to Meanas to see what was going on. The chains of puissance, loose and unbounded, had flailed about seeking something to latch on to, anything, and had found Spite. She fought now, caught between the two lashing tendrils of punishing powers. Even as Murk watched, she was weakening. She kicked ineffectually and struggled to summon the streams of her own Warren-energie
s. But she was already exhausted and now she hung limp, her arms loose and drifting.
‘Overcome,’ Sour murmured, awed. ‘What’re we gonna do?’
‘You’re going to untie those last two bonds! Let’s go!’
‘Can’t … she’d just fall into the Abyss and that’ll be the end of her.’
‘Well, then – we’ll pull her up!’
‘Can’t yank on those chains, man. Use your head.’
Yusen came to their side. ‘What happened?’
‘Trap’s closed on her,’ Sour answered.
The man wiped the rain from his face, scowling. His disgusted expression seemed to wonder why nothing ever went right. ‘Can’t hang around here. We have to disappear.’
‘The captain’s right,’ Sour told Murk. ‘You have any idea what’s on its way right now?’
‘I know, I know,’ he answered, thinking furiously. ‘Is the stretcher made?’
‘Yes. But we haven’t touched the … thing.’
‘All right. Let’s pack up. Come back later once the dust has settled out.’
‘Right.’ Yusen jogged off. Murk waved for Sour to follow him to the body. Here their escort waited while through the rain the rest of the troop could be glimpsed withdrawing to the coast between the dolmens. Murk motioned Sour to the pack laid next to the corpse. Sweetly tossed down two broken sticks. Murk took them up and bent over the body.
‘Poor Crazy-eye,’ one of the mercs said, and he made a sign to D’rek, goddess of rot and rejuvenation.
‘Always actin’ before thinkin’,’ added another.
Murk, who had been bent over the seared torso, now leaned back to blink up at them. ‘You finished?’
They frowned down at him, puzzled, drops falling from the rims of their helmets. ‘Yeah,’ one said, shrugging. ‘I s’pose so.’
‘Fine. Thank you.’
Sour laid out a sodden blanket. ‘Put it on this. We’ll wrap it.’
‘I’ll try.’
He used the sticks to feel about. He dug against the curve of the blackened pelvic bone. Turning the box vertical he managed to get a good grip and he lifted it from the still-smoking cavity that once held Crazy-eye’s viscera. He laid it on the blanket and used the sticks to roll it over and over, then picked it up and slipped it into the pack which Sour was holding open.
The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire) Page 274
