Toll the Hounds

by Steven Erikson

  He had read once a scholar’s treatise describing the chemical relationship between plants and animals. The language had been clinical in the fashion of such academic efforts, and yet Endest recalled closing the book and sitting back in his chair. The notion that he could walk up to a plant, a tree, even a blackwood, and bless it with his own breath – a gift of lung-soured air that could enliven that tree, that could in truth deliver health and vigour, deliver life itself . . . ah, but that was a wonder indeed, one that, for a time, calmed the churning maelstrom that was a young man’s soul.

  So long ago, now, and he felt, at times, that he was done with giving gifts.

  He stood alone in front of the ancient altar. The past night’s modest rain had formed a shallow pool in the cup of the basalt. It was said the Andii came from the forests and their natural clearings, born to give breath to the sacred wood, and that the first fall of his people occurred the moment they walked out, to set down the first shaped stone of this city.

  How many failings had there been since? Suruth Common was the last fragment of the old forest left in all Kharkanas. Blackwood itself had fed the great forges.

  He had no desire to look westward. More than the fiery glow disturbed him. The frenzy in those factories – they were making weapons. Armour. They were readying for war.

  He had been sent here by the High Priestess. ‘Witness,’ she had said. And so he would. The eyes of the Temple, the priesthood, must remain open, aware, missing nothing in these fraught times. That she had chosen him over others – or even herself – was not a measure of respect. His presence was political, his modest rank a deliberate expression of the Temple’s contempt.

  ‘Witness, Endest Silann. But remain silent. You are a presence, do you understand?’

  He did.

  They appeared almost simultaneously, one from the north, one from the east and one from the south. Three brothers. Three sons. This was to be a meeting of blood and yes, they would resent him, for he did not belong. Indeed, the Temple did not belong. Would they send him away?

  The trees wept their promise of a new season of life – a season that would never come, for there was nowhere left for the filaments to take root – not for scores of leagues in any direction. The river would take millions, but even those fine black threads could not float on its waters, and so what the river took the river kept, buried in the dead silts of Dorssan Ryl. Our breath was meant to give life, not take it away. Our breath was a gift, and in that gift the blackwood found betrayal.

  This was and is our crime, and it was and remains unforgivable.

  ‘Good evening, priest,’ said Andarist, who then added, ‘Anomander, it seems you were right.’

  ‘An easy prediction,’ Anomander replied. ‘The Temple watches me the way a rove of rhotes watch a dying ginaf.’

  Endest blinked. The last wild ginaf had vanished a century past and no longer did the silver-backed herds thunder across the south plains; and these days roves of rhotes winged above battlefields and nowhere else – and no, they did not starve. Are you the last, Lord? Is this what you are saying? Mother bless me, I never know what you are saying. No one does. We share language but not meaning.

  The third brother was silent, his red eyes fixed upon the forges beneath the western sky.

  ‘The clash between Drethdenan and Vanut Degalla draws to an end,’ said Andarist. ‘It may be time—’

  ‘Should we be speaking of this?’ Silchas Ruin cut in, finally turning to face Endest Silann. ‘None of this is for the Temple. Especially not some pathetic third level acolyte.’

  Anomander seemed uninterested in settling his attention upon Endest Silann. In the face of his brother’s belligerence, he shrugged. ‘This way, Silchas, perhaps we can ensure the Temple remains . . . neutral.’

  ‘By unveiling to it all that we intend? Why should the Temple hold to any particular faith in us? What makes the three of us more worthy of trust than, say, Manalle, or Hish Tulla?’

  ‘There is an obvious answer to that,’ said Andarist. ‘Priest?’

  He could refuse a reply. He could feign ignorance. He was naught but a third level acolyte, after all. Instead, he said, ‘You three are not standing here trying to kill each other.’

  Andarist smiled at Silchas Ruin.

  Who scowled and looked away once again.

  ‘We have things to discuss,’ said Anomander. ‘Andarist?’

  ‘I have already sent representatives to both camps. An offer to mediate. Veiled hints of potential alliances against the rest of you. The key will be in getting Drethdenan and Vanut into the same room, weapons sheathed.’

  ‘Silchas?’

  ‘Both Hish and Manalle have agreed to our pact. Manalle still worries me, brothers. She is no fool—’

  ‘And Hish is?’ laughed Andarist – a maddeningly easy laugh, given the treachery they were discussing.

  ‘Hish Tulla is not subtle. Her desires are plain. It is as they all say: she does not lie. No, Manalle is suspicious. After all, I am speaking of the greatest crime of all, the spilling of kin’s blood.’ He paused, then faced Anomander, and suddenly his expression was transformed. Unease, something bewildered and lit with horror. ‘Anomander,’ he whispered, ‘what are we doing?’

  Anomander’s features hardened. ‘We are strong enough to survive this. You will see.’ Then he looked at Andarist. ‘The one who will break our hearts stands before us. Andarist, who chooses to turn away.’

  ‘A choice, was it?’ At the heavy silence that followed, he laughed again. ‘Yes, it was. One of us . . . it must be, at least one of us, and I have no desire to walk your path. I have not the courage for such a thing. The courage, and the . . . cruel madness. No, brothers, mine is the easiest task – I am to do nothing.’

  ‘Until I betray you,’ said Silchas, and Endest was shocked to see the white-skinned Lord’s wet eyes.

  ‘There is no other way through,’ said Andarist.

  Centuries into millennia, Endest Silann would wonder – and never truly know – if all that followed was as these three had planned. Courage, Andarist had called it. And . . . cruel madness – by the Mother, yes – such destruction, the sheer audacity of the treachery – could they have meant all of that?

  The next time Anomander had met Endest Silann had been on the bridge at the foot of the Citadel, and in his words he made it clear that he had not recognized him as the same man as the one sent to witness his meeting with his brothers. A strange carelessness for one such as Anomander. Although, unquestionably, the Lord had other things on his mind at that moment.

  Endest Silann had delivered to the High Priestess his account of that fell meeting. And in relating the details of the betrayal, such as could be culled from what he had heard – all the implications – he had expected to see outrage in her face. Instead – and, he would think later, with prescient symbolism – she had but turned away.

  There had been no storms in the sky then. Nothing to hint of what would come. The blackwood trees of Suruth Common had lived for two millennia, maybe longer, and each season they shed their elongated seeds to the wind. Yet, when next he looked upon those stately trees, they would be on fire.

  ‘You have grown far too quiet, old friend.’

  Endest Silann looked up from the dying flames. Dawn was fast approaching. ‘I was reminded . . . the way that wood crumbles into dissolution.’

  ‘The release of energy. Perhaps a better way of seeing it.’

  ‘Such release is ever fatal.’

  ‘Among plants, yes,’ said Caladan Brood.

  Among plants . . . ‘I think of the breath we give them – our gift.’

  ‘And the breath they give back,’ said the warlord, ‘that burns if touched. I am fortunate, I think,’ he continued, ‘that I have no appreciation of irony.’

  ‘It is a false gift, for with it we claim ownership. Like crooked merchants, every one of us. We give so that we can then justify taking it back. I have come to believe that this exchange is the central tenet
of our relationship . . . with everything in the world. Any world. Human, Andii, Edur, Liosan. Imass, Barghast, Jaghut—’

  ‘Not Jaghut,’ cut in Caladan Brood.

  ‘Ah,’ said Endest Silann. ‘I know little of them, in truth. What then was their bargain?’

  ‘Between them and the world? I don’t even know if an explanation is possible, or at least within the limits of my sorry wit. Until the forging of the ice – defending against the Imass – the Jaghut gave far more than they took. Excepting the Tyrants, of course, which is what made such tyranny all the more reprehensible in the eyes of other Jaghut.’

  ‘So, they were stewards.’

  ‘No. The notion of stewardship implies superiority. A certain arrogance.’

  ‘An earned one, surely, since the power to destroy exists.’

  ‘Well, the illusion of power, I would say, Endest. After all, if you destroy the things around you, eventually you destroy yourself. It is arrogance that asserts a kind of separation, and from that the notion that we can shape and reshape the world to suit our purposes, and that we can use it, as if it was no more than a living tool composed of a million parts.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘See? Already my skull aches.’

  ‘Only with the truth, I think,’ said Endest Silann. ‘So, the Jaghut did not think of themselves as stewards. Nor as parasites. They were without arrogance? I find that an extraordinary thing, Warlord. Beyond comprehension, in fact.’

  ‘They shared this world with the Forkrul Assail, who were their opposites. They were witnesses to the purest manifestation of arrogance and separation.’

  ‘Was there war?’

  Caladan Brood was silent for so long that Endest began to believe that no answer was forthcoming, and then he glanced up with his bestial eyes glittering in the ebbing flames of the hearth. ‘“Was”?’

  Endest Silann stared across at his old friend, and the breath slowly hissed from him. ‘Gods below, Caladan. No war can last that long.’

  ‘It can, when the face of the army is without relevance.’

  The revelation was . . . monstrous. Insane. ‘Where?’

  The warlord’s smile was without humour. ‘Far away from here, friend, which is well. Imagine what your Lord might elect to do, if it was otherwise.’

  He would intervene. He would not be able to stop himself.

  Caladan Brood rose then. ‘We have company.’

  A moment later the heavy thud of wings sounded in the fading darkness above them, and Endest Silann looked up to see Crone, wings crooked now, riding shifting currents of air as she descended, landing with a scatter of stones just beyond the edge of firelight.

  ‘I smell fish!’

  ‘Wasn’t aware your kind could smell at all,’ Caladan Brood said.

  ‘Funny oaf, although it must be acknowledged that our eyes are the true gift of perfection – among many, of course. Why, Great Ravens are plagued with excellence – and do I see picked bones? I do, with despondent certainty – you rude creatures have left me nothing!’

  She hopped closer, regarding the two men with first one eye and then the other. ‘Grim conversation? Glad I interrupted. Endest Silann, your Lord summons you. Caladan Brood, not you. There, messages delivered! Now I want food!’

  Harak fled through Night. Old tumbled streets, the wreckage of the siege picked clean save for shattered blocks of quarried stone; into narrow, tortured alleys where the garbage was heaped knee-high; across collapsed buildings, scrambling like a spider. He knew Thove was dead. He knew Bucch was dead, and a half-dozen other conspirators. All dead. Killers had pounced. Tiste Andii, he suspected, some kind of secret police, penetrating the cells and now slaughtering every liberator they could hunt down.

  He’d always known that the unhuman demon-spawn were far from the innocent, benign occupiers they played at being, oh, yes, they were rife with deadly secrets. Plans of slavery and oppression, of tyranny, not just over Black Coral, but beyond, out to the nearby cities – wherever humans could be found, the Tiste Andii cast covetous eyes. And now he had proof.

  Someone was after him, tracking with all the deliberate malice of a hunting cat – he’d yet to spy that murderer, but in a world such as Night that was not surprising. The Tiste Andii were skilled in their realm of Darkness, deadly as serpents.

  He needed to reach the barrow. He needed to get to Gradithan. Once there, Harak knew he would be safe. They had to be warned, and new plans would have to be made. Harak knew that he might well be the last one left in Black Coral.

  He stayed in the most ruined areas of the city, seeking to circle round or, failing that, get out through the inland gate that led into the forested hills – where the cursed Bridgeburners had made a stand, killing thousands with foul sorcery and Moranth munitions – why, the entire slope was still nothing more than shattered, charred trees, fragments of mangled armour, the occasional leather boot and, here and there in the dead soil, jutting bones. Could he reach that, he could find a path leading into Daylight and then, finally, he would be safe.

  This latter option became ever more inviting – he was not too far from the gate, and these infernal shadows and the endless gloom here were of no help to him – the Tiste Andii could see in this darkness, after all, whilst he stumbled about half blind.

  He heard a rock shift in the rubble behind him, not thirty paces away. Heart pounding, Harak set his eyes upon the gate. Smashed down in the siege, but a path of sorts had been cleared through it, leading out to the raised road that encircled the inland side of the city. Squinting, he could make out no figures lingering near that gate.

  Twenty paces away now. He picked up his pace and, once on to the cleared avenue, sprinted for the opening in the wall.

  Were those footfalls behind him? He dared not turn.

  Run! Damn my legs – run!

  On to the path, threading between heaps of broken masonry, and outside the city!

  Onward, up the slope to the raised road, a quick, frantic scamper across it, and down into the tumbled rocks at the base of the ruined slope. Battered earth, makeshift gravemounds, tangled roots and dead branches. Whimpering, he clambered on, torn and scratched, coughing in the dust of dead pine bark.

  And there, near the summit, was that sunlight? Yes. It was near dawn, after all. Sun – blessed light!

  A quick glance back revealed nothing – he couldn’t make out what might be whispering through the wreckage below.

  He was going to make it.

  Harak scrambled the last few strides, plunged into cool morning air, shafts of golden rays – and a figure rose into his path. A tulwar lashed out. Harak’s face bore an expression of astonishment, frozen there as his head rolled from his shoulders, bounced and pitched back down the slope, where it lodged near a heap of bleached, fractured bones. The body sank down on to its knees, at the very edge of the old trench excavated by the Bridgeburners, and there it stayed.

  Seerdomin wiped clean his blade and sheathed the weapon. Was this the last of them? He believed that it was. The city . . . cleansed. Leaving only those out at the barrow. Those ones would persist for a time, in ignorance that everything in Black Coral had changed.

  He was weary – the hunt had taken longer than he had expected. Yes, he would rest now. Seerdomin looked about, studied the rumpled trenchwork the sappers had managed with little more than folding shovels. And he was impressed. A different kind of soldier, these Malazans.

  But even this the forest was slowly reclaiming.

  He sat down a few paces from the kneeling corpse and settled his head into his gloved hands. He could smell leather, and sweat, and old blood. The smells of his past, and now they had returned. In his mind he could hear echoes, the rustle of armour and scabbards brushing thighs. Urdomen marching in ranks, the visors on their great helms dropped down to hide their fevered eyes. Squares of Betaklites forming up outside the city, preparing to strike northward. Scalandi skirmishers and Tenescowri – the starving multitudes, desperate as bared teeth. He recalled their mass,
shifting in vast heaves, ripples and rushes on the plain, the way each wave left bodies behind – the weakest ones, the dying ones – and how eddies would form round them, as those closest swung back to then descend on their hapless comrades.

  When there was no one else, the army ate itself. And he had simply looked on, expressionless, wrapped in his armour, smelling iron, leather, sweat and blood.

  Soldiers who had fought in a just war – a war they could see as just, anyway – could hold on to a sense of pride, every sacrifice a worthy one. And so fortified, they could leave it behind, finding a new life, a different life. And no matter how grotesque the injustices of the world around them, the world of the present, that veteran could hold on to the sanctity of what he or she had lived through.

  But fighting an unjust war . . . that was different. If one had any conscience at all, there was no escaping the crimes committed, the blood on the hands, the sheer insanity of that time – when honour was a lie, duty a weapon that silenced, and courage itself was stained and foul. Suddenly, then, there was no defence against injustice, no sanctuary to be found in memories of a righteous time. And so anger seethed upward, filling every crack, building into rage. There was no way to give it a voice, no means of releasing it, and so the pressure built. When it finally overwhelmed, then suicide seemed the easiest option, the only true escape.

  Seerdomin could see the logic of that, but logic was not enough. Anyone could reason themselves into a corner, and so justify surrender. It was even easier when courage itself was vulnerable to abuse and sordid mockery. Because, after all, to persist, to live on, demanded courage, and that was only possible when the virtue remained worthy of respect.