Toll the Hounds

by Steven Erikson

  The dead raiders, he noted as his companion went in search among the camp’s wreckage for a worthy saddle, had indeed been cut to pieces. Although the work of the scavengers had reduced most of the corpses to tufts of hair, torn sinew and broken bones, there was enough evidence of severed limbs and decapitations to suggest some massive edged weapon at work. Where bones had been sliced through, the cut was sharp with no sign of crushing.

  The father brought over the best of the tack, and Traveller saw with surprise that it was a Seven Cities saddle, with Malazan military brands on the leather girth-straps.

  He was just finishing cinching the straps tight – after the gelding could hold its breath no longer – when he heard shouting from the Kindaru camp, and both he and the father turned.

  A rider had appeared on the same ridge that Traveller had come to yesterday, pausing for but a moment before guiding the mount down into the camp.

  Traveller swung himself on to his horse and gathered the reins.

  ‘See the beast she rides!’ gasped the man beside him. ‘It is a Jhag’athend! We are blessed! Blessed!’ And all at once he was running back to the camp.

  Traveller set heels to his gelding and rode after the man.

  The rider was indeed a woman, and Traveller saw almost immediately that she was of Seven Cities stock. She looked harried, threadbare and worn, but a ferocious fire blazed in her eyes when they fell upon Traveller as he rode into the camp.

  ‘Is there anywhere in the world where I won’t run into damned Malazans?’ she demanded.

  Traveller shrugged. ‘And I hardly expected to encounter an Ugari woman on the back of a Jhag stallion here on the Lamatath Plain.’

  Her scowl deepened. ‘I am told there’s a demon travelling through here, heading north. Killing everyone in his path and no doubt enjoying every moment of it.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Good,’ snapped the woman.

  ‘Why?’ Traveller asked.

  She scowled. ‘So I can give him his damned horse back, that’s why!’

  BOOK TWO - COLD-EYED VIRTUES

  From her ribs and from the hair of women

  Seen swimming sun-warmed rivers in summer’s light,

  From untroubled brows and eyes clear and driven

  Gazing out from tower windows when falls the night

  From hands cupped round pipe bowls alabaster carved

  When veiled invitations coy as blossoms under shade

  Invite a virgin’s dance a rose-dappled love so starved

  Where seen a coarse matron not yet ready to fade

  And the tall bones of legs ‘neath rounded vessels perched

  Swaying lusty as a tropical storm above white coral sands

  Where in all these gathered recollections I have searched

  To fashion this love anew from soil worked well

  by my hands

  And into the bower garland-woven petals fluttering down

  Hovers the newfound woman’s familiar unknown face

  For on this earth no solitude is welcomed when found

  And she who is gone must be in turn replaced

  And by the look in her eye I am a composite man

  Assembled alike from stone, twig and stirred sediments

  Lovers lost and all those who might have been

  We neither should rail nor stoke searing resentments

  For all the rivers this world over do flow in but one

  Direction

  Love of the Broken

  Breneth

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘I can see your reasons, my love. But won’t you get thirsty?’

  Inscription found beneath

  capstone of household well,

  Lakefront District, Darujhistan

  As fast as his small feet could carry him, the small boy rushed through Two-Ox Gate and out on to the raised cobble road that, if he elected to simply hurry on, and on, would take him to the very edge of the world, where he could stand on the shore staring out upon a trackless ocean, so vast it swallowed the sun every night. Alas, he wasn’t going that far. Out to the hills just past the shanty town to collect dung, a bag full, as much as he could carry balanced on his head.

  It is said by wise and sentimental poets that a child’s eyes see farther than an adult’s, and who would – with even less than a moment’s thought – claim otherwise? Beyond the ridge awaits a vista crowded with possibilities, each one deemed more improbable than the last by teeth-grinding codgers eager to assert a litany of personal failures should anyone care to hear, but no one does and if that isn’t proof the world’s gone to ruin then what is? But improbabilities is a word few children know, and even if they did, why, they would dismiss the notion with a single hand fluttering overhead as they danced to the horizon. Because it will not do to creep timorously into the future, no, one should leap, sail singing through the air, and who can say where one’s feet will finally set down on this solid, unknown land?

  The boy hurried on, tracked by the dull eyes of the lepers in front of their hovels, squatting forlorn and forgotten each in a nest of flies when flies with singular poignancy expound the proof of cold-legged indifference. And the scrawny half-wild dogs crept out to follow him for a time, gauging with animal hunger if this one might be weakened, a thing to be taken down. But the boy collected rocks and when a dog drew too close he let fly. Ducked tails and startled yelps and now the dogs vanished like ghosts beneath stilted shacks and down narrow, twisting lanes off the main road.

  Overhead, the sun regarded all with its unblinking omnipotence, and went on stealing moisture from every surface to feed its unquenchable thirst. And there were long-legged birds prancing on the sewage flats just past Brownrun Bay, beaks darting down to snatch up fleas and whatnot, while lizard-ducks nested on floating shit islands further out, calling to one another their hissing announcement of each bell in perfect cadence with the city’s water clocks and those sonorous chimes drifting out over the lake, although why lizard-ducks were obsessed with such artificial segmentation of time was a question as yet unanswered even after centuries of scholarly pursuit – not that the foul-smelling creatures gave a whit for the careers they had spawned, more concerned as they were with enticing up from the soupy water eels that would swallow their eggs, only to find the shells impervious to all forms of digestion, whilst the scaled monstrosities within prepared to peck their way free and then feed on eel insides unto gluttony.

  What significance, then, such details of the natural world, when the boy simply walked on, his long hair bleached by the sun and stirred like a mane by the freshening breeze? Why, none other than the value of indifference, beneath which a child may pass unnoticed, may pass by free as a fluffed seed on the warm currents of summer air. With only a faint memory of his dream the night before (and yes, the one before that, too, and so on) of that face so vicious and the eyes so caustic as to burn him with their dark intentions, the face that might pursue him through each day with the very opposite of indifference, and see how deadly that forgetfulness might be for the child who hurried on, now on a dirt track winding its way up into the modest hills where baleful goats gathered beneath the occasional tree.

  For the blessing of indifference might be spun on end, momentarily offering the grim option of curse, because one child’s gift can well be another’s hurt. Spare then a moment for the frightened beast named Snell, and all the cruel urges driving him to lash out, to torment the brother he never wanted. He too thrives on indifference, this squat, round-shouldered, swaggering tyrant before whom the wild dogs in the shanty town cowered in instinctive recognition that he was one of their own, and the meanest of the lot besides; while the boy, chest swelled with power, continued on, trailing his intended victim with something in his soul that went far beyond a simple beating this time, oh, yes. The thing inside, it spread black, hairy legs like a spider, his hands transformed there at the end of his wrists, oh, spiders, yes, hook-taloned and fanged and onyx-eyed, and they could close into bony f
ists if they so desired, or they could stab with venom – why not both?

  He carried rocks as well. To wing at the lepers he passed, then laugh as they flinched or cried out in pain, and he rode their ineffectual curses all the way up the road.

  While, all along the hillside, the sun had done its work, and the boy filled his bag with tinder-dry dung for this night’s hearthfire. Bent over like an old man, he roved this way and that. This bounty would please the woman-who-was-not-his-mother, who mothered him as a mother should – although, it must be said, lacking something essential, some maternal instinct to awaken cogent realization that her adopted son lived in grave danger – and as the sack bulked in his grip, he thought to pause and rest for a time, there, up on the summit of the hill. So that he could look out over the lake, watch the beautiful sails of the feluccas and fisher boats.

  Set free his mind to wander – oh, memories are made of moments such as this one.

  And, alas, of the one soon to come.

  But give him these moments of freedom, so precious for their rarity. Begrudge not this gift of indifference.

  It could, after all, very well be his last day of such freedom.

  Down on the track at the base of the hill, Snell has spied his quarry. The spiders at the ends of his wrists opened and closed their terrible black legs. And like a monster that wrings goats’ necks for the pleasure of it, he clambers upward, eyes fixed on that small back and tousled head there at the edge of the ridge.

  In a temple slowly drowning there sat a Trell entirely covered in drying, blackening blood, and in his soul there was enough compassion to encompass an entire world, yet he sat with eyes of stone. When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease.

  Beneath the blood, faint traceries of spider’s web tattooing etched his dark brown hide. These stung like hot wires wrapped about his body, his limbs; wrapped everywhere and seeming to tighten incrementally with every shiver that took him.

  Three times now he had been painted in the blood of Burn, the Sleeping Goddess. The web was proving a skein of resistance, a net trapping him on the inside, and keeping out the blessed gift of the goddess.

  He would pass through Burn’s Gate, into the molten fires of the underworld, and the priests had prepared for that, yet now it seemed they would fail in fashioning a means of protecting his mortal flesh. What then could he do?

  Well, he could walk away from this place and its huddled, doleful priests. Find another way to cross a continent, and then an ocean. He could perhaps try another temple, try to bargain with another god or goddess. He could—

  ‘We have failed you, Mappo Runt.’

  He glanced over to meet the anguished eyes of the High Priest.

  ‘I am sorry,’ the old man went on. ‘The web that once healed you is proving most . . . selfish. Claiming you for its own – Ardatha never yields her prizes. She has snared you, for purposes unknown to any but her. She is most hateful, I think.’

  ‘Then I will wash this off,’ Mappo said, climbing to his feet, feeling the blood crack, pluck hairs from his skin. The web sang agony through him. ‘The one who healed me in Ardatha’s name is here in the city – I think I had better seek her out. Perhaps I can glean from her the spider goddess’s intent – what it is she would have me do.’

  ‘I would not recommend that,’ the High Priest said. ‘In fact, Mappo, I would run away. Soon as you can. For now, at least, Ardatha’s web does not seek to hold you back from the path you have chosen. Why risk a confrontation with her? No, you must find another way, and quickly.’

  Mappo considered this advice for a time, then grunted and said, ‘I see the wisdom in your words; thank you. Have you any suggestions?’

  The expression drooped. ‘Unfortunately, I have.’ He gestured and three young acolytes crept forward. ‘These ones will assist in scrubbing the blood from you. In the meantime, I will send a runner and, perchance, an arrangement can be fashioned. Tell me, Mappo Runt, are you rich?’

  *

  Sweetest Sufferance, who had been so named by a mother either resigned to the rigours of motherhood or, conversely, poisoned by irony, blinked rapidly as she was wont to do when returning to reality. She looked round bemusedly, saw her fellow survivors seated with her, the table in their midst a chaotic clutter of cups, tankards, plates, utensils and the remnants of at least three meals. Her soft brown eyes flicked from one item to the next, then slowly lifted, out past the blank-eyed faces of her companions, and took in the taproom of Quip’s Bar.

  Quip Younger was barely visible on the counter, sprawled across it with his upper body and head resting on one forearm.

  He slept with his mouth hanging open and slick with drool. Almost within reach of the man there squatted a rat on the counter, one front paw lifting every now and then as it seemed to study the face opposite and especially the gaping dark hole of Quip Younger’s mouth.

  A drunk was lying just inside the door, passed out or dead, the only other patron present this early in the morning (excepting the rat).

  When she finally brought her attention back to her companions, she saw Faint studying her, one brow lifting.

  Sweetest Sufferance rubbed at her round face, her cheeks reminding her, oddly enough, of the dough her mother used to knead just before the harvest festival, those big round cakes all glittering with painted honey that used to trap ants and it was her task to pick them off but that was all right because they tasted wonderful.

  ‘Hungry again, aren’t ya?’

  ‘You can always tell,’ Sweetest Sufferance replied.

  ‘When you rub your cheeks, there’s a look comes into your eyes, Sweetie.’

  Faint watched as Master Quell hissed awake with a sound no different from the noise an alligator might make when one stepped too close. And glared round a moment before relaxing into a relieved slump. ‘I was dreaming—’

  ‘Yah,’ cut in Faint, ‘you’re always dreaming, and when you ain’t dreaming, you’re doing, and now if only those two things were any different from each other, why, you’d actually get some rest, Master. Which we’d like to see, wouldn’t we just.’

  ‘Got you through, didn’t I?’

  ‘Losing five shareholders in the process.’

  ‘That’s the risks y’take,’ Quell said, grimacing. ‘Hey, who’s paying for all this?’

  ‘You might’ve asked that once before. You are, of course.’

  ‘How long we been here? Gods, my bladder feels like I’m about to pass a papaya.’ And with that he reeled – wincing – upright, and tottered for the closet behind the bar.

  The rat watched him pass with suspicious eyes, then crept a few waddles closer to Quip Younger’s mouth.

  Glanno Tarp jerked alive in his chair. ‘No more bargains!’ he snarled. ‘Oh,’ he then said, slouching back down. ‘Somebody stopped bringing beer – can they do that? Sweetest, darling, I dreamt we was making love—’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Only it wasn’t a dream.’

  Glanno’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’

  ‘No, it was a nightmare. If you want another round, you’ll have t’wake up Quip Younger.’

  Glanno squinted over. ‘He’ll wake up when he can’t breathe, soon as the rat goes for it. A silver council says he swallows instead of spitting out.’

  At the voicing of a wager Reccanto Ilk’s watery grey eyes sharpened and he said, ‘I’ll take that one. Only what if he does both? Swallows then chokes and spits out? When you say “swallows” you got to mean he chews if he has to.’

  ‘Now that’s quibblering again and when you never done that, Ilk? It’s pointless you saying you want to wager when you keep rectivifying things.’

  ‘The point is you’re always too vague, Glanno, with these bets of yours. Y’need precision—’

  ‘What I need is . . . well, I don’t know what I need, but whatever it is you ain’t got it.’

  ‘I got it but I ain’t giving it,’ said Sweetest Sufferance. ‘Not to
none of you, anyhow. There’s a man out there, oh, yes, and I’ll find him one day and I’ll put him in shackles and lock him in my room and I’ll reduce him to a pathetic wreck. Then we’ll get married.’

  ‘The marriage prediceeds the wrecking,’ Glanno said. ‘So I might dream of you, darling, but that’s as far as it’ll ever go. That’s called self-prevarication.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Faint asked him, then, as the front door squealed open, she turned in her chair. An adolescent boy in a voluminous brown robe edged in warily, eyes like freshly laid turtle eggs. Lifting the robe he stepped gingerly over the drunk and padded across to their table and if he had a tail, why, Faint told herself, it’d be half wagging half slipping down between his legs.

  ‘Mmm. Mmmm.’

  ‘Would that be “Master”?’ Faint asked.

  The youth nodded, drew a deep breath, and tried again. ‘Negotiation, for a delivery, yes?’

  ‘Master Quell is peremptorily predispossessed,’ Glanno Tarp said.

  ‘Predisposed, he means,’ Faint explained. ‘What needs delivering, and where?’

  ‘Not what. Who. Don’t know where.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Faint said, ‘go get the who and bring him or her here and we’ll take it from there, all right? There now, watch your step on your way out.’

  Bobbing head, hurried departure.

  ‘Since when you did the negotiating?’ Reccanto asked her, squinting.

  ‘You know,’ Faint observed, ‘any half-decent Denul healer could fix your bad eyes, Ilk.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘What it is to me is you nearly lopped my head off, you damned blind idiot – do I look like a snarling corpse?’

  ‘Sometimes. Anyway, I figured it out at the last moment—’

  ‘After I ducked and kicked you between the legs.’

  ‘Right, corpses ain’t that smart, so now that’s settled. I was asking you a question.’