Toc feared her more than anyone else, more than Anaster and his random cruelty, more than the Seer. Something demonic lit her eyes from within. She had been the first to mount a dying man, screaming the Night Vows of a married couple's first night, then wailing in the manner of a village widow when the man died beneath her. A tale oft repeated. A multitude of witnesses. Other women of the Tenescowri flocked to her. Perhaps it was her act of power over helpless men; perhaps it was her brazen theft of their involuntarily spilled seed; perhaps the madness simply spread from one to the next.
On their march from Bastion, the army had come upon a village that had defied the Embrace. Toc had watched as Anaster released his mother and her followers, watched as they took men and young boys alike, their knives driving mortal blows, swarming over the bodies in a manner that the foulest beast could not match. And the thoughts he had felt then were now carved deep in his soul. They were human once, these women. They lived in villages and towns no different from this one. They were wives and mothers, tending their homes and yard animals. They danced, and they wept, they were pious and respectful in propitiating the old gods. They lived normal lives.
There was a poison within the Pannion Seer and whatever god spoke through him. A poison that seemed born of familial memories. Memories powerful enough to dismember those most ancient of bonds. A child betrayed, perhaps. A child led by the hand… into terror and pain. This is how it feels—all that I see around me. Anaster's mother, reshaped malign, rack-born to a nightmarish role. A mother not a mother, a wife not a wife, a woman not a woman.
Shouts rose to announce the appearance of a group of riders, emerging from the ramp gate of Outlook's outer wall. Toc swung his head, studied the visitors as they rode closer through the deepening gloom. Armoured. An Urdo commander, flanked by a pair of Seerdomin, the troop of Urdomen three abreast and seven deep riding in their wake.
Behind the troop, a K'ell Hunter.
A gesture from Anaster drew his lieutenants towards the low hill he had chosen as his headquarters, Toc the Younger among them.
The white of the First's eyes was the colour of honey, his pupils a murky, slate grey. Torchlight illuminated his alabaster-hued face, made his full lips strangely red. He'd remounted and now sat bareback on the huge, weary horse, slumped as he studied his chosen officers. 'News comes,' he rasped.
Toc had never heard him speak louder. Perhaps the lad could not, born with a defect of the throat or tongue. Perhaps he'd never found the need.
'The Seer and I have spoken within our minds, and now I know more than even the courtiers within Outlook's holy walls. Septarch Ultentha of Coral has been called to the Seer, leading to much speculation.'
'What news,' one of the lieutenants asked, 'from the north border, Glorious First?'
'The investment is nearly complete. I fear, my children, that we will come too late to partake of the siege.'
Breaths hissed on all sides.
I fear our hunger will not end. This was the true meaning of Anaster's words.
'It's said that Kaimerlor, a large village to the east, has refused the Embrace,' another officer said. 'Perhaps, Glorious First—'
'No,' Anaster grated. 'Beyond Capustan await the Barghast. In their hundreds of thousands, it is said. Divided amongst themselves. Weak of faith. We shall find all we need, my children.'
We'll not make it. Toc knew this for a certainty, as did the others. There was silence.
Anaster's eyes were on the approaching soldiers. 'The Seer,' he said, 'has prepared for us a gift in the meantime. He recognizes our need for sustenance. It seems,' he continued relentlessly, 'that the citizens of Coral have been found… wanting. This is the truth behind the speculation. We need only cross the calm waters of Ortnal Cut to fill our bellies, and the Urdo who now comes will deliver to us the news that launches await us—sufficient to carry us all.'
'Then,' a lieutenant growled, 'we shall feast.'
Anaster smiled.
Feast. Hood take me, please… Toc could feel the desire rising within him, a palpable demand that he realized would defeat him, shatter his defences. A feast—gods, how I hunger!
'I am not done with news,' the First said after a moment. 'The Urdo has a second mission.' The youth's sickly eyes fell on Toc the Younger. 'The Seer requests the presence of the Defier, he of the lone eye—an eye that, night by night, has slowly changed on our journey from Bastion, though I imagine that he knows it not. The Defier shall be the Seer's guest. The Defier, with his wolf's eye that so gleams in the dark. He will have no need for those extraordinary stone weapons—I shall personally keep them safe.'
Toc's obsidian-tipped arrows and the dagger were quickly removed, handed up to Anaster.
The soldiers arrived.
Toc strode to them, fell to his knees before the Urdo's horse.
'He is honoured,' Anaster said. 'Take him.'
And Toc's gratitude was real, a flood of relief rushing through his thinned veins. He would not see Coral's walls, would not see the citizens in their tens of thousands torn to pieces, would not see the rapes, would not see himself among the crowds, rushing to the flesh that was their righteous reward…
The workers swarmed over the nascent battlements of the approach, dust- and dirt-smeared figures lit demonic in the firelight. Stumbling in the wake of the Urdo's warhorse, Toc studied their frenzied efforts with jaded detachment. Stone, earth and wood were meagre obstacles to Lady Envy's sorcery, which he'd seen unleashed at Bastion. As in legends of old, hers was a power that rolled in broad waves, stripping the life from all it swept over, devouring rank upon rank, street by street, leaving bodies piled in their hundreds. She was, he reminded himself with something like fierce pride, the daughter of Draconus—an Elder God.
The Pannion Seer had thrown sorcerers in her path, he'd heard since, yet they fared little better. She shrugged aside their efforts, decimated their powers, then left them to Garath or Baaljagg. K'Chain Che'Malle sought to reach her, only to wither beneath an onslaught of sorcery. The dog that was Garath made sport of those that eluded Lady Envy, usually working alone but sometimes in tandem with Baaljagg. Both were quicker than the undead hunters, it was said, and far smarter. Three pitched battles had occurred, in which legions of Pannion Betaklites, supported by the mounted Betakullid and by Scalandi skirmishers, as well as the Domin equivalent of Mage Cadres, had engaged their handful of enemies as they would an opposing army. From these battles arose the whispered tales of the T'lan Imass—a creature of which the Pannions had no knowledge and had come to call Stonesword—and the Seguleh, two in the first two battles, but a third appearing for the last one. Stonesword would hold one flank, the Seguleh the opposite flank. Lady Envy stood at the centre, whilst Garath and Baaljagg flowed like ragged capes of darkness wheresoever they pleased.
Three engagements, three broken armies, thousands dead, the rest attempting to flee but always caught by Lady Envy's relentless wrath.
As terrible as the Pannion, my sweet-faced friend. As terrible… and as terrifying. Tool and the Seguleh honour the retreat of those who oppose them; they are content to claim the field and no more than that. Even the wolf and the dog cut short their pursuit. But not Envy. An unwise tactic—now that the enemy knows that retreat is impossible, they will stand and fight. The Seguleh do not escape wounds; nor do Garath and Baaljagg. Even Tool has been buried beneath enraged swordsmen, though he simply dissolves into dust and reappears elsewhere. One charge of lancers came to within a dozen paces of Lady Envy herself. The next well-flung javelin…
He had no regrets about leaving them. He would not have survived their company.
As they approached the outer gate fortification, Toc saw Seerdomin among the battlements, hulking and silent. Formidable as squads numbering a half-dozen, here they were scores. They might do more than slow the Seguleh. They might stop them in their tracks. This is the Seer's final line of defence…
A single ramp led up to Outlook's inner gate, steep and sheer-sided. Human bones li
ttered the trenches to either side. They ascended. One hundred paces later, they passed beneath the gate's arch. The Urdo detached his troop to stable their horses, then dismounted. Flanked by Seerdomin, Toc watched the K'ell Hunter thump through the gateway, bladed arms hanging low. It swung lifeless eyes on the Malazan for a moment, then padded off down an unlit roofed corridor running parallel to the wall.
The Urdo raised the visor of his helm. 'Defier, to your left is the entrance to the Seer's tower. He awaits you within. Go.'
Perhaps not a prisoner. Perhaps no more than a curiosity. Toc bowed to the officer, then stumbled wearily to the gaping doorway. More likely the Seer knows he has nothing to fear from me. I'm already in Hood's shadow. Not much longer, now.
A high-vaulted chamber occupied the tower's entire main floor, the ceiling a chaotic inverted maze of buttresses, spans, arches and false arches. Reaching down from the centre to hover a hand's width above the floor was a skeletal circular staircase of bronze that swung in a slow, creaking circle. Lit by a single brazier near the wall opposite the entrance, the chamber was shrouded in gloom, though Toc had no difficulty discerning the unadorned stone blocks that were the walls, and the complete absence of furniture that left echoes dancing all around him as he crossed the flagstoned floor, scuffing through shallow puddles.
He set a hand on the staircase's lowest railing. The massive, depending structure pulled him inexorably to one side as it continued its rotation, causing him to stagger. Grimacing, he pulled himself onto the first step. The bastard's at the top, I'd wager, in a swaying room. My heart's likely to give out halfway up. He'll sit up there, waiting for an audience that will never happen. Now there's a Hood-grinning joke for you. He began climbing.
Forty-two steps brought him to the next level. Toc sank down onto the cold bronze of the landing, his limbs on fire, the world wavering drunken and sickly before him. He rested sweat-slick hands on the gritty, pebbled surface of the metal sheet, blinking as he attempted to focus.
The room surrounding him was unlit, yet his lone eye could discern every detail, the open racks crowded with instruments of torture, the low beds of stained wood, the bundle of dark, stiff rags against one wall, and, covering those walls like a mad artisan's tapestries, the skins of humans. Complete down to the fingertips and nails, stretched out into a ghastly, oversized approximation of the human form, the faces flattened with only the rough stone of the wall showing where the eyes had once been. Nostrils and mouths sewn shut, hair pulled to one side and loosely knotted.
Waves of revulsion swept through Toc, shuddering, debilitating waves. He wanted to scream, to release horror's pressure, but could only gasp. Trembling, he pulled himself upright, stared up the spiralling steps, began dragging himself higher once more.
Chambers marched by, scenes that swam with grainy uncertainty, as he climbed the seemingly endless stairs. Time was lost to him. The tower, now creaking and groaning on all sides—pitching in the wind—had become the ascent of his entire life, what he had been born to, a mortal's solitary task. Cold metal, stone, faintly lit rooms rising then falling like the passage of weak suns, the traverse of aeons, civilizations born, then dying, and all that lay between was naught but the illusion of glory.
Fevered, his mind leapt off precipices, one after another, tumbling ever deeper into the well of madness even as his body clawed upward, step by step. Dear Hood, come find me. I beg you. Take me from this god's diseased feet, end this shameful debasement—when I face him at last, I will be nothing—
'The stairs have ended,' an ancient, high-pitched and quavering voice called to him. 'Lift your head, I would look upon this alarming countenance of yours. You have no strength? Allow me.'
A will seeped into Toc's flesh, a stranger's vigour imbuing health and strength in each muscle. None the less, its taste was foul, insipid. Toc moaned, struggled against it, but defiance failed him. Breath steadying, heart slowing, he lifted his head. He was kneeling on the last platform of hammered bronze.
Sitting hunched and twisted on a wooden chair was the wrinkled carcass of an old man, his eyes lit flaring as if their surface was no more than the thin film of two paper lanterns, stained and torn. The Pannion Seer was a corpse, yet a creature dwelt within the husk, animating it, a creature visible to Toc as a ghostly, vaguely man-shaped exhalation of power.
'Ah, now I see,' the voice said, though the mouth did not move. 'Indeed, that is not a human's eye. A wolf's in truth. Extraordinary. It is said you do not speak. Will you do so now?'
'If you wish,' Toc said, his voice rough with disuse, a shock to his own ears.
'I am pleased. I so tire of listening to myself. Your accent is unfamiliar to me. You are most certainly not a citizen of Bastion.'
'Malazan.'
The corpse creaked as it leaned forward, the eyes flaring brighter. 'Indeed. A child of that distant, formidable empire. Yet you have come from the south, whereas my spies inform me that your kin's army marches from Pale. How, then, did you become so lost?'
'I know nothing of that army, Seer,' Toc said. 'I am now a Tenescowri, and that is all that matters.'
'A bold claim. What is your name?'
'Toc the Younger.'
'Let us leave the matter of the Malazan army for a moment, shall we? The south has, until recently, been a place devoid of threat to my nation. But that has changed. I find myself irritated by a new, stubborn threat. These… Seguleh… and a disturbing, if mercifully small, collection of allies. Are these your friends, then, Toc the Younger?'
'I am without friends, Seer.'
'Not even your fellow Tenescowri? What of Anaster, the First Child who shall one day lead an entire army of Children of the Dead Seed? He noted you as… unique. And what of me? Am I not your Lord? Was it not I who embraced you?'
'I cannot be certain,' Toc said dully, 'which of you it was who embraced me.'
Entity and corpse both flinched back at his words, a blurring of shapes that hurt Toc's eye. Two beings, the living hiding behind the dead. Power waxed until it seemed the ancient's body would simply disintegrate. The limbs twitched spasmodically. After a moment, the furious emanation diminished, and the body fell still once more. 'More than a wolf's eye, that you should see so clearly what no-one else has been able to descry. Oh, sorcerers have looked upon me, brimming with their vaunted warrens, and seen nothing awry. My deception knew no challenge. Yet you…'
Toc shrugged. 'I see what I see.'
'With which eye?'
He shrugged again. To that, he had no answer.
'But we were speaking of friends, Toc the Younger. Within my holy embrace, a mortal does not feel alone. Anaster, I see now, was deceived.'
'I did not say I felt alone, Seer. I said I am without friends. Among the Tenescowri, I am one with your holy will. Yet, consider the woman who walks at my side, or the weary child whom I carry, or the men all around me… should they die, I will devour them. There can be no friendship in such company, Seer. There is only potential food.'
'Yet you would not eat.'
Toc said nothing.
The Seer leaned forward once again. 'You would now, wouldn't you?'
And so madness steals upon me like the warmest cloak. 'If I am to live.'
'And is living important to you, Toc the Younger?'
'I do not know, Seer.'
'Let us see then, shall we?' A withered arm lifted. Sorcery rippled the air before Toc. A small table took form in front of the Malazan, heaped with steaming chunks of boiled meat. 'Here, then,' the Seer said, 'is the sustenance you require. Sweet flesh; it is an acquired taste, or so I am told. Ah, I see the hunger flare in your wolf's eye. There is indeed a beast within you—what does it care of its meal's provenance? None the less, I caution you to proceed slowly, lest your shrunken stomach reject all that you feed it.'
With a soft moan, Toc stumbled to his knees before the table, hands reaching out. His teeth ached as he began chewing, adding his own blood to the meat's juices. He swallowed, felt his gut clench aroun
d the morsel. He forced himself to stop, to wait.
The Seer rose from the chair, walked stiffly to a window. 'I have learned,' the ancient creature said, 'that mortal armies are insufficient to the task of defeating this threat that approaches from the south. Accordingly, I have withdrawn my forces, and will now dismiss the enemy with my own hand.' The Seer swung about and studied Toc. 'It is said wolves avoid human flesh, given the choice. Do not believe me without mercy, Toc the Younger. The meat before you is venison.'
I know, you bastard. It seems I've more than a wolf's eye—I've its sense of smell as well. He picked up another chunk. 'It no longer matters, Seer.'
'I am pleased. Do you feel strength returning to your body? I have taken the liberty of healing you—slowly, so as to diminish the trauma of the spirit. I like you, Toc the Younger. Though few know it, I can be the kindliest of masters.' The old man faced the window once more.
Toc continued eating, feeling the life flow back into him, his lone eye fixed on the Seer, narrrowing at the power that had begun building around the old man's animated corpse. Cold, that sorcery. The smell of ice on the wind—here are memories, ancient memories—whose?
The room blurred, dissolved before his vision. Baaljagg… A steady padding forward, an eye that swung to the left to see Lady Envy striding a dozen paces away. Beyond her loped Garath, massive, flanks crisscrossed in scars that still leaked seething, virulent blood—the blood of chaos. To Garath's left walked Tool. Swords had carved a new map on the T'lan Imass's body, splintering bones, splitting withered skin and muscle—Toc had never before seen a T'lan Imass so badly damaged. It seemed impossible that Tool could stand, much less walk.
Baaljagg's head did not turn to survey the Seguleh marching on his right, yet Toc knew that they were there, Mok included. The ay, like Toc himself, was gripped in memories sprung to life by the scent on that new, chill wind coming down from the north—memories that drew their twinned attention to Tool.
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