'Why do you remain?' Crone demanded.
Hurtle chuckled. 'We would determine its course, Crone. Thus far, it seems to travel southward.'
'Very well. Now that that's been confirmed, leave and take the others with you. Return to Moon's Spawn and report to our lord.'
'As you command, Crone.' Hurtle dipped a wing and slid off into darkness. His voice called out and was answered by a chorus.
Crone waited. She wanted to be certain that they had all departed the area before doing some investigating on her own. Was this puppet the thing birthed in the pillar of fire? It didn't seem likely. And what kind of sorcery did it employ that no Great Raven could absorb? There was an Eldering taste about this. Soul-shifting was no simple cantrip, and it had never been common among the wizards even when its techniques were known. Too many tales of madness born within the shifting.
Perhaps this puppet had survived from these times. Crone thought about that. Unlikely.
Magic bloomed on the plain below, then faded. A small magical force scampered from the spot, weaving as it ran. There, thought Crone, there lie the answers to my questions. Destroy my younglings, will you? Would you so easily disdain Crone?
She crooked her wings and dropped. The air whistled around her. She raised a penumbra of protective magic that encapsulated her just as the small figure ceased its march and looked up. Faintly, Crone heard a manic laugh rise up to meet her, then the puppet gestured.
The power that engulfed Crone was immense, far beyond anything she anticipated. Her defences held but she found herself buffeted, as if fists punched her from every direction. She cried out in pain, spinning as she fell. It took all her strength and will to thrust out her battered wings and catch a rising current of air. She voiced an outraged, alarmed shriek as she climbed higher into the night sky. A glance down revealed that the puppet had returned once again to its Warren, for nothing magical was visible.
'Aye.' She sighed. 'What a price to pay for knowledge! Elder Warren indeed, the eldest of them all. Who plays with Chaos? Crone knows naught. All things are gathering, gathering here.' She found another stream of wind and angled south. This was something Anomander Rake must know of, never mind Catadan Brood's instructions that the Tiste Andii lord be kept ignorant of almost everything. Rake was good for more than Brood credited him. 'Destruction, for one.' Crone laughed. 'And death. Good at death!'
She picked up speed, so did not notice the dead smudge on the land below her, nor the woman camped in its centre. There was no magic there to speak of, in any case.
Adjunct Lorn squatted by her bedroll, her eyes scanning the night sky. 'Tool, was all that connected to what we witnessed two nights ago?'
The T'lan Imass shook his head. 'I think not, Adjunct. If anything, this concerns me more. It is sorcery, and it ignores the barrier I have set around us.'
'How?' she asked quietly.
'There is only one possibility, Adjunct. It is Eldering, a lost Warren of ages past, returned to us. Whoever its wielder might be, we must assume it tracks us, with purpose.'
Lorn straightened wearily, then stretched her back, feeling her vertebrae pop. 'Is its flavour Shadowthrone's?'
'No.'
'Then I will not assume it's tracking us, Tool.' She eyed her bedroll.
Tool faced the woman and watched in silence as she prepared to sleep. 'Adjunct,' he said, 'this hunter appears able to penetrate my defences, and thus it may open its Warren's portal directly behind us, once we are found.'
'I've no fear of magic,' Lorn muttered. 'Let me sleep.'
The T'lan Imass fell silent, but he continued staring down at the woman as the hours of night crawled on. Tool moved slightly as dawn lightened the east, then was still again.
Groaning, Lorn rolled on to her back as the sunlight reached her face. She opened her eyes and blinked rapidly, then froze. She slowly raised her head to find the T'lan Imass standing directly above her. And, hovering inches from her throat, was the tip of the warrior's flint sword.
'Success,' Tool said, 'demands discipline, Adjunct. Last night we witnessed an expression of Elder magic, choosing as its target ravens. Ravens, Adjunct, do not fly at night. You might think the combination of my abilities with yours ensures our safety. That is no guarantee, Adjunct.' The T'lan Imass withdrew his weapon and stepped to one side.
Lorn drew a shaky breath. A flaw,' she said, pausing to clear her throat before continuing, 'which I admit to, Tool. Thank you for alerting me to my growing complacency.' She sat up. 'Tell me, doesn't it strike you as odd that this supposedly empty Rhivi Plain should display so much activity?'
'Convergence,' Tool said. 'Power ever draws other power. It is not a complicated thought, yet it escaped us, the Imass.' The ancient warrior swung his head to the Adjunct. 'As it escapes their children. The Jaghut well understood the danger. Thus they avoided one another, abandoned each other to solitude, and left a civilization to crumble into dust. The Forkrul Assail understood as well, though they chose another path. What is odd, Adjunct, is that of these three founding peoples, it is the Imass whose legacy of ignorance survived the ages.'
Lorn stared at Tool. 'Was that an attempt at humour?' she asked.
The T'lan Imass adjusted his helmet. 'That depends on your mood, Adjunct.'
She climbed to her feet and strode to check her horses. 'You're getting stranger every day, Tool,' she said quietly, more to herself than to the Imass. Into her mind returned the first thing she had seen when she'd opened her eyes – that damned creature and his sword. How long had he stood like that? All night?
The Adjunct paused to test her shoulder tentatively. It was healing quickly. Perhaps the injury had not been as severe as she'd first thought.
As she saddled her horse she chanced to glance at Tool. The warrior stood staring at her. What kind of thoughts would occupy someone who'd lived through three hundred thousand years? Or did the Imass live? Before meeting Tool she had generally thought of them as undead, hence without a soul, the flesh alone animated by some external force. But now she wasn't so sure.
'Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'
The Imass shrugged before replying. 'I think of futility, Adjunct.'
'Do all Imass think about futility?'
'No. Few think at all.'
'Why is that?'
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. 'Because, Adjunct, it is futile.'
'Let's get going, Tool. We're wasting time.'
'Yes, Adjunct.'
She climbed into the saddle, wondering how the Imass had meant that.
BOOK FOUR
ASSASSINS
I dreamed a coin
with shifting face –
so many youthful visages
so many costly dreams,
and it rolled and rang
'round the gilded rim
of a chalice made for gems
Life of Dreams
Ilbares the Hag
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The night held close
as I wandered
my spirit unfooted
to either earth or stone
unravelled from tree
undriven by iron nail
but like the night itself
a thing of air
stripped of light
so I came upon them,
those masons who cut and carved
stone in the night
sighting by stars and battered hand.
'What of the sun?' asked I of them.
'Is not its cloak of revelation
the warmth of reason
in your shaping?'
And one among them answered,
'No soul can withstand
the sun's bones of light
and reason dims
when darkness falls –
so we shape barrows in the night
for you and your kin.'
'Forgive my interruption, then,' said I.
'The dead never interrupt,' said the mason,
> 'they but arrive.'
Pauper's Stone
Darujhistan
'Yet another night, yet another dream,' Kruppe moaned, 'with naught but a scant fire to keep this wanderer company.' He held his hands over the flickering, undying hearth that had been stoked by an Elder God. It seemed an odd gift, but he sensed a significance to it. 'Kruppe would understand this meaning, for rare and unwelcome is this frustration.'
The landscape around him was barren; even the ploughed earth was gone, with no sign of habitation in sight. He squatted by the lone fire in a tundra wasteland, and the air had the breath of rotting ice. To the north and to the east the horizon gleamed green, almost luminescent though no moon had risen to challenge the stars. Kruppe had never before seen such a thing, yet it was an image fashioned within his mind. 'Disturbing, indeed, proclaims Kruppe. Are these visions of instinct, then, unfurled in this dream for a purpose? Kruppe knows not, and would return to his warm bed this instant, were the choice his.'
He stared about at the lichen- and moss-covered ground, frowning at the strange bright colours born there. He'd heard tales of Redspire Plain, that land far to the north, beyond the Laederon Plateau. Is this what tundra looked like? He'd always pictured a bleak, colourless world. 'Yet peruse these stars overhead. They glisten with a youthful energy, nay, sparkle as if amused by the one who contemplates them. While the earth itself hints of vast blushes of red, orange and lavender.'
Kruppe rose as low thunder reached him from the west. In the distance moved a massive herd of brown-furred beasts. The steam of their breath gusted silver in the air above and behind them as they ran, turning as one this way and that but ever at a distance. He watched them for some time. When they came closest to him he saw the reddish streaks in their fur, and their horns, sweeping down then up and out. The land shook with their passage.
'Such is the life in this world, Kruppe wonders. Has he travelled back, then, to the very beginning of things?'
'You have,' said a deep voice behind him.
Kruppe turned. 'Ah, come to share my fire, of course.' He saw before him a squat figure, covered in the tanned hides of deer or some such similar animal. Antlers stretched out from a flat skull-cap on the man's head, grey and covered in fuzzy skin. Kruppe bowed. 'You see before you Kruppe, of Darujhistan.'
'I am Pran Chole of Cannig Tol's Clan among the Kron Tlan.' Pran stepped close and crouched before the fire. 'I am also the White Fox, Kruppe, wise in the ways of ice.' He glanced at Kruppe and smiled.
Pran's face was wide, the bones pronounced beneath smooth," gold skin. His eyes were barely visible between tight lids, but what Kruppe saw of them was a startling amber in colour. Pran reached out long, supple hands over the fire. 'Fire is life, and life is fire. The age of ice passes, Kruppe. Long have we lived here, hunting the great herds, gathering to war with the Jaghut in the southlands, birthing and dying with the ebb and flow of the frozen rivers.'
'Kruppe has travelled far, then.'
'To the beginning and to the end. My kind give way to your kind, Kruppe, though the wars do not cease. What we shall give to you is freedom from such wars. The Jaghut dwindle, ever retreat into forbidding places. The Forkrul Assail have vanished, though we never found need to fight them. And the K'chain Che'Malle are no more – the ice spoke to them with words of death.' Pran's gaze swung back to the fire. 'Our hunting has brought death to the great herds, Kruppe. We are driven south, and this must not be. We are the Tlan, but soon the Gathering comes, and so shall be voiced the Rite of Imass and the Choosing of the Bone Casters, and then shall come the sundering of flesh, of time itself. With the Gathering shall be born the T'lan Imass, and the First Empire.'
'Why, Kruppe wonders, is he here?'
Pran Chole shrugged. 'I have come for I have been called. By whom, I know not. Perhaps it is the same with you.'
'But Kruppe is dreaming. This is Kruppe's dream.'
'Then I am honoured.' Pran straightened. 'One of your time comes. Perhaps this one possesses the answers we seek.'
Kruppe followed Pran's gaze to the south. He raised an eyebrow. 'If not mistaken, then Kruppe recognizes her as a Rhivi.'
The woman who approached was perhaps middle-aged, heavy with child. Her dark, round face bore features similar to Pran Chole's, though less pronounced. Fear shone in her eyes, yet there was a grim determination about her as well. She reached the fire and eyed the two men, most of her attention drawing to Pran Chole. 'Tlan,' she said, 'the Tellann Warren of the Imass of our time has birthed a child in a confluence of sorceries. Its soul wanders lost. Its flesh is an abomination. A shifting must take place.' She turned to Kruppe and swept back the thick woven robe she wore, revealing her swelled stomach. The bare, stretched skin had been recently traced in a tattoo. The image was that of a white-haired fox. 'The Elder God walks again, risen from blood spilled on consecrated stone. K'rul came in answer to the child's need and now aids us in our quest. He apologizes to you, Kruppe, for using the world within your dream, but no younger god can influence this place. Somehow you have made your soul immune to them.'
'The rewards of cynicism,' Kruppe said, bowing.
The woman smiled.
'I understand,' Pran Chole said. 'You would make of this child, born of Imass powers, a Soletaken.'
'Yes. It is the best we can manage, Tlan. A shapeshifter – which we too know as Soletaken – must be fashioned.'
Kruppe cleared his throat. 'Excuse Kruppe, please. But are we not missing someone vital to these plans?'
'She strides two worlds,' the Rhivi said. 'K'rul guides her now into yours. She is frightened still. It falls to you, Kruppe, to welcome her.'
Kruppe adjusted the sleeves of his faded, threadbare cloak. 'This should not prove difficult for one of Kruppe's charms.'
'Perhaps,' the Rhivi said, frowning. 'Her flesh is an abomination. You have been warned.'
Kruppe nodded affably, then looked around. 'Will any direction do?'
Pran Chole laughed.
'I suggest south,' the Rhivi said.
He shrugged and, with a bow to the two companions, he headed south. After a few minutes he glanced back, but the fire was nowhere in sight. He was alone in the chill night.
A full moon appeared on the eastern horizon, bathing the land in silver light. Ahead, the tundra rolled on as far as Kruppe could see, flat and featureless. Then he squinted. Something had just appeared, still distant, walking with seeming great difficulty. He watched it fall once, then climb back to its feet. Despite the luminescence, the figure looked black.
Kruppe moved forward. It had yet to see him, and he stopped when he was but thirty feet away. The Rhivi had been right. Kruppe produced his silk handkerchief and wiped the sweat that had sprung across his brow. The figure had been a woman once, tall, with long black hair. But that woman had been long dead. Her flesh had withered and assumed the hue of dark wood. Perhaps the most horrific aspect of her was her limbs, which had been roughly sewn back on to her body. 'Aye,' Kruppe whispered. This woman had been torn apart once.
The woman's head flew up and sightless eyes fixed upon Kruppe. She stopped, her mouth opening but no words coming forth.
Surreptitiously, Kruppe cast a spell upon himself, then looked at her yet again. He frowned. A spell had been woven about the woman, one of preservation. But something had happened to that spell, something had reshaped it. 'Lass!' Kruppe barked. 'I know you can hear me.' He didn't know, but decided to insist in any case. 'Your soul is trapped within a body that is not your own. It does not become you. I am named Kruppe, and I will lead you to succour. Come!' He spun round and began to walk. A moment later he heard a shuffling behind him, and smiled. 'Ah,' he whispered, 'Kruppe has charms indeed. But more, he can be harsh when necessary.'
The fire had returned, a beacon before them, and Kruppe saw the two figures awaiting them. The vestiges of the spell he had cast upon himself made the Tlan and the Rhivi blinding to his eyes, such was their power. Kruppe and the woman arrived.
Pran Cho
le stepped forward. 'Thank you, Kruppe.' He studied the woman and nodded slowly. 'Yes, I see the effects of the Imass upon her. But there is more.' He looked to the Rhivi. 'She was a mage once?'
The Rhivi moved close to the woman. 'Hear me, lost one. Your name is Tattersail, your sorcery is Thyr. The Warren flows within you now, it animates you, protects you.' She opened her robe once more. 'It is time to bring you back into the world.'
Tattersail stepped back in alarm.
'Within you is the past,' Pran said. 'My world. You know the present, and the Rhivi offers you to the future. In this place all is merged. The flesh you wear has upon it a spell of preservation, and in your dying act you opened your Warren within the influence of Tellann. And now you wander within a mortal's dream. Kruppe is the vessel of change. Permit us to aid you.'
With a wordless cry Tattersail staggered into Pran's arms. The Rhivi quickly joined them.
'My,' Kruppe breathed, 'but Kruppe's dreams have taken a strange turn. While his own concerns are ever present, a haunting voice, once again he must set them aside.'
Suddenly K'rul stood beside him. 'Not so. It is not my way to use you without just recompense.'
Kruppe looked up at the Elder God. 'Kruppe asks for nothing. There is a gift in this, and I am glad to be part of its making.'
K'rul nodded. 'Nevertheless. Speak to me of your efforts.'
'Rallick and Murillio seek to right an old wrong,' Kruppe said, with a sigh. 'They think me ignorant of their schemes, but I shall turn such schemes to my purposes. Guilt rides this decision, but they are needed.'
'Understood. And the Coin Bearer?'
'Protection has been set in motion, though its final shaping is yet to come. I know that the Malazan Empire is present in Darujhistan, covertly for the moment. What they seek—'
'Is anything but clear, Kruppe. Even to them. Use this to your advantage when you find them. Allies might come from surprising quarters. I will tell you this: two now approach the city, one is a T'lan Imass, the other a bane to magic. Their purposes are destructive, but already forces are in play attending to them. Seek knowledge of them, but do not openly oppose them. They are dangerous. Power attracts power, Kruppe. Leave them to the consequences of their actions.'