To the north, cutting a path down along the side of a distant valley, then through distant hills, a narrow, steaming crack was visible, a fissure in the earth that seemed depthless.
Whiskeyjack painfully pulled himself clear of the rubble, slowly straightened.
He saw Caladan Brood, hammer hanging down from his hands, motionless… and standing before the warlord, on an island of his own, was Kruppe. Brushing dust from his clothes. The crack that had been born where the hammer had struck the earth, parted neatly around the short, fat Daru, joining again just behind him.
Whiskeyjack struggled to hold back a laugh, knowing how desperate, how jarring it would sound. So, we have seen Brood's fury. And Kruppe, that preposterous little man, has stood it down. Well, if proof was ever needed that the Daru was not as he appeared to be… He then frowned. A demonstration indeed—directed towards whom, I wonder?
A cry of dismay cut through his thoughts.
Korlat. She faced north, her posture somehow contracted, drawn in on itself.
The fissure, Whiskeyjack now saw—all amusement gone—was filling with blood.
Fouled blood, rotten blood. Beru fend, the Sleeping Goddess… Burn sleeps the sleep of the dying, the poisoned. And this, he realized, was the day's final, most terrible revelation. Diseased… the hidden hand of the Crippled God…
The Mhybe's eyes snapped open. The wagon rocked and pitched. Thunder shook the ground. The shouts of Rhivi were on all sides, a wailing chorus of alarm and consternation. Her bones and muscles protested as she was thrown about in the cataclysm, but she would not cry out. She wanted only to hide.
The rumbling faded, replaced by the distant lowing of the bhederin and, closer by, the soft footpads of her kin as they rushed past the wagon. The herd was close to panic, and a stampede was imminent.
Bringing ruin to us all. Yet that would be a mercy. An end to the pain, to my nightmares…
In her dreams she was young once more, but those dreams held no joy. Strangers walked the tundra landscape where she invariably found herself. They approached. She fled. Darting like a snow hare. Running, always running.
Strangers. She did not know what they wanted, but they were seeking her—that much was clear. Tracking her, like hunters their quarry. To sleep was to awaken exhausted, limbs trembling, chest heaving with agonized breaths.
She had been saved from the Abyss, from those countless tattered souls lost in eternal, desperate hunger. Saved, by a dragon. To what end? Leaving me in a place where I am hunted, pursued without surcease?
Time passed, punctuated by the herders' calming words to the frightened bhederin. There would be no stampede after all. Rumbles still trembled through the earth, in diminishing ripples that grew ever farther apart.
The Mhybe moaned softly to herself as the wagon rocked once more, this time to the arrival of the two Daru, Coll and Murillio.
'You've awakened,' the councillor noted. 'It's no surprise.'
'Leave me be,' she said, drawing the hides around her shivering body and curling away from the two men. It's so cold…
'Any idea what's happened up ahead?' Murillio asked Coll.
'Seems Brood lost his temper.'
'Gods! With whom? Kallor? That bastard deserves—'
'Not Kallor, friend,' Coll growled. 'Make another guess—shouldn't take you long.'
Murillio groaned. 'Kruppe.'
'Hood knows he's stretched the patience of all of us at one time or another… only none of us was capable of splitting apart half the world and throwing new mountains skyward.'
'Did the little runt get himself killed? I can't believe—'
'Word is, he's come out unscathed. Typically. Complaining of the dust. No-one else was injured, either, though the warlord himself almost got his head kicked in by an angry mule.'
'Kruppe's mule? The one that sleeps when it walks?'
'Aye, the very one.'
Sleeps. Dreams of being a horse, no doubt. Magnificent, tall, fierce…
'That beast is a strange one, indeed. Never seen a mule so… so watchful. Of everything. Queen of Dreams, that's the oddest looking range of mountains I've ever seen!'
'Aye, Murillio, it does look bigger than it really is. Twists the eye. A broken spine, like something you'd see at the very horizon, yet there it is, not half a league from us. Doesn't bear thinking about, if you ask me…'
Nothing bears thinking about. Not mountains, not mules, not Brood's temper. Souls crowd my daughter, there, within her. Two women, and a Thelomen named Skullcrusher. Two women and a man whom I've never met… yet I carried that child within me. I, a Rhivi, young,'in the bloom of my life, drawn into a dream then the dream made real. Yet where, within my daughter, am I? Where is the blood, the heart, of the Rhivi?
She has nothing of me, nothing at all. Naught but a vessel in truth—that is all I was—a vessel to hold then birth into the world a stranger.
She has no reason to see me, to visit, to take my hand and offer me comfort. My purpose is done, over. And here I lie, a discarded thing. Forgotten. A mhybe.
A hand settled gently on her shoulder.
Murillio spoke. 'I think she sleeps once more.'
'For the best,' Coll murmured.
'I remember my own youth,' the Daru went on in a quiet, introspective tone.
'I remember your own youth, too, Murillio.'
'Wild and wasteful—'
'A different widow every night, as I recall.'
'I was a lodestone indeed, and, you know, it was all so effortless—'
'We'd noticed.'
The man sighed. 'But no longer. I've aged, paid the price for my younger days—'
'Nights, you mean.'
'Whatever. New rivals have arrived. Young bloods. Marak of Paxto, tall and lithe and turning heads wherever he saunters. The smug bastard. Then there's Perryl of M'necrae—'
'Oh, really, Murillio, spare me all this.'
'The point is, it was all a stretch of years. Full years. Pleasurable ones. And, for all that I'm on the wane, at least I can look back and recall my days—all right, my nights—of glory. But here, with this poor woman…'
'Aye, I hear you. Ever notice those copper ornaments she's wearing—there, you can see the pair on her wrist. Kruppe's gifts, from Darujhistan.'
'What about them?'
'Well, as I was saying. Ever noticed them? It's a strange thing. They get brighter, shinier, when she's sleeping.'
'Do they?'
'I'd swear it on a stack of Kruppe's handkerchiefs.'
'How odd.'
'They're kind of dull right now, though…'
There was silence from the two men crouched above her. After a long moment the hand resting on her shoulder squeezed slightly.
'Ah, my dear,' Murillio whispered, 'would that I could take back my words…'
Why? They were truth. Words from your heart, and it is a generous one for all your irresponsible youth. You've given voice to my curse. That changes nothing. Am I to be pitied? Only when I'm asleep, it seems. To my face, you say nothing, and consider your silence a kindness. But it mocks me, for it arrives as indifference.
And this silence of mine? To these two kind men looking down on me right now? Which of my countless flaws does this reveal?
Your pity, it seems, is no match for my own.
Her thoughts trailed away, then. The treeless, ochre wasteland of her dreamworld appeared. And she within it.
She began running.
Dujek flung his gauntlets against the tent wall as he entered, his face dark with fury.
Whiskeyjack unstoppered the jug of ale and filled the two goblets waiting on the small camp table before him. Both men were smeared in sweaty dust.
'What madness is this?' the High Fist rasped, pausing only long enough to snatch up one of the goblets before beginning to pace.
Whiskeyjack stretched his battered legs out, the chair creaking beneath him. He swallowed a long draught of ale, sighed and said, 'Which madness are you referring to, Dujek?
'
'Aye, the list is getting damned long. The Crippled God! The ugliest legends belong to that broken bastard—'
'Fisher Kel Tath's poem on the Chaining—'
'I'm not one for reading poetry, but Hood knows, I've heard bits of it spoken by tavern bards and the like. Fener's balls, this isn't the war I signed on to fight.'
Whiskeyjack's eyes narrowed on the High Fist. 'Then don't.'
Dujek stopped pacing, faced his second. 'Go on,' he said after a moment.
'Brood already knew,' he replied with a shrug that made him wince. As did Korlat. 'With him, you could reasonably include Anomander Rake. And Kallor—though I liked not the avid glint in that man's eye. So, two ascendants and one would-be ascendant. The Crippled God is too powerful for people like you and me to deal with, High Fist. Leave it to them, and to the gods. Both Rake and Brood were there at the Chaining, after all.'
'Meaning it's their mess.'
'Bluntly, yes it is.'
'For which we're all paying, and might well pay the ultimate price before too long. I'll not see my army used as fodder in that particular game, Whiskeyjack. We were marching to crush the Pannion Domin, a mortal empire—as far as we could determine.'
'Manipulation seems to be going on on both sides, Dujek.'
'And I am to be comforted by that?' The High Fist's glare was fierce. He held it on his second for another moment, then quaffed his ale. He thrust the empty goblet out.
Whiskeyjack refilled it. 'We're hardly ones to complain of manipulation,' he rumbled, 'are we, friend?' Dujek paused, then grunted.
Indeed. Calm yourself, High Fist. Think clear thoughts. 'Besides,' Whiskeyjack continued, 'I have faith.'
'In what?' his commander snapped. 'In whom? Pray, tell me!'
'In a certain short, corpulent, odious little man—'
'Kruppe! Have you lost your mind?'
Whiskeyjack smiled. 'Old friend, look upon your own seething anger. Your rage at this sense of being manipulated. Used. Possibly deceived. Now consider how an ascendant like Caladan Brood would feel, upon the realization that he is being manipulated? Enough to shatter the control of his temper? Enough to see him unlimber his hammer and seek to obliterate that smug, pompous puppet-master.'
Dujek stood unmoving for a long time, then a grin curved his lips. 'In other words, he took Kruppe seriously…'
'Darujhistan,' Whiskeyjack said. 'Our grand failure. Through it all, I had the sense that someone, somewhere, was orchestrating the whole damned thing. Not Anomander Rake. Not the Cabal. Not Vorcan and her assassins. Someone else. Someone so cleverly hidden, so appallingly… capable… that we were helpless, utterly helpless.
'And then, at the parley, we all discover who was responsible for Tattersail's rebirth. As Silverfox, a child of a Rhivi woman, the seed planted and the birth managed within an unknown warren. The drawing together of threads—Nightchill, Bellurdan, Tattersail herself. And, it now appears, an Elder God, returned to the mortal realm. And, finally and most remarkably, the T'lan Imass. So, Tattersail, Nightchill and Bellurdan—all of the Malazan Empire—reborn to a Rhivi woman, of Brood's army… with a parley looming, the potential of a grand alliance… how Hood-damned convenient that a child should so bridge the camps—'
'Barring Kallor,' Dujek pointed out.
Whiskeyjack slowly nodded. 'And Kallor's just been reminded of Brood's power—hopefully sufficiently to keep him in line.'
'Is that what all that was about?'
'Maybe. He demanded a demonstration, did he not? What Kruppe manipulates is circumstance. Somehow. I don't feel we are fated to dance as he wills. There is an Elder God behind the Daru, but even there, I think it's more an alliance of… mutual benefit, almost between equals. A partnership, if you will. Now, I'll grant you, all this is speculation on my part, but I'll tell you this: I have been manipulated before, as have you. But this time it feels different. Less inimical. Dujek, I sense compassion this time.'
'An alliance of equals,' the High Fist muttered, then he shook his head. 'What, then, does that make this Kruppe? Is he some god in disguise? A wizard of magnitude, an archmage?'
Whiskeyjack shrugged. 'My best guess. Kruppe is a mortal man. But gifted with an intelligence that is singular in its prowess. And I mean that most literally. Singular, Dujek. If an Elder God was suddenly flung back into this realm, would he not seek out as his first ally the greatest of minds?'
Dujek's face revealed disbelieving wonder. 'But, Whiskeyjack… Kruppe?'
'Kruppe. Who gave us the Trygalle Trade Guild, the only traders capable of supplying us on the route we chose to march. Kruppe, who brought to the Mhybe the surviving possessions of the First Rhivi, for her to wear and so diminish the pain she feels, and those ornaments are, I suspect, yet to fully flower. Kruppe, the only one Silverfox will speak with, now that Paran is gone. And, finally, Kruppe, who has set himself in the Crippled God's path.'
'If just a mortal, then how did he survive Brood's wrath?'
'Well, I expect his ally the Elder God would not wish to see the Daru killed. I'd guess there was intervention, then. What else could it have been?'
Dujek emptied his goblet. 'Damn,' he sighed. 'All right. We ignore, as best we can, the Crippled God. We remain focused on the Pannion Domin. Still, my friend, I mislike it. I can't help but be nervous in that we are not actively engaged in considering this new enemy…'
'I don't think we are, High Fist.'
Dujek's glance was sharp, searching, then his face twisted. 'Quick Ben.'
Whiskeyjack slowly nodded. 'I think so. I'm not certain—Hood, I don't even know if he's still alive, but knowing Quick, he is. Very much alive. And, given his agitation the last time I saw him, he's without illusions, and anything but ignorant.'
'And he's all we've got? To outwit the Crippled God?'
'High Fist, if Kruppe is this world's foremost genius, then Quick Ben's but a step behind him. A very short step.'
They heard shouts outside the tent, then booted feet. A moment later the standard-bearer Artanthos pulled aside the flap and entered. 'Sirs, a lone Moranth has been spotted. Flying in from the northeast. It's Twist.'
Whiskeyjack rose, grunting at the cascade of aches and twinges the motion triggered. 'Queen of Dreams, we're about to receive some news.'
'Let's hope it's cheering news,' Dujek growled. 'I could do with some.'
Her face was pressed against the lichen-skinned stones, the roughness fading as her sweat soaked the ragged plant. Heart pounding, breaths coming in gasps, she lay whimpering, too tired to keep running, too tired to even so much as raise her head.
The tundra of her dreams had revealed new enemies. Not the band of strangers pursuing her this time.
This time, she had been found by wolves. Huge, gaunt creatures, bigger than any she had ever seen in her waking life. They had loped into view on a ridge marking the skyline to the north. Eight long-legged, shoulder-hunched beasts, their fur sharing the muted shades of the landscape. The one in the lead had turned, as if catching her scent on the dry, cold wind.
And the chase had begun.
At first the Mhybe had revelled in the fleetness of her young, lithe legs. Swift as an antelope—faster than anything a mortal human could achieve—she had fled across the barren land.
The wolves kept pace, tireless, the pack ranging out to the sides, one occasionally sprinting, darting in from one side or the other, forcing her to turn.
Again and again, when she sought to remain between hills, on level land, the creatures somehow managed to drive her up-slope. And she began to tire.
The pressure never relented. Into her thoughts, amidst the burgeoning pain in her legs, the fire in her chest and the dry, sharp agony of her throat, came the horrifying realization that escape was impossible. That she was going to die. Pulled down like any other animal doomed to become a victim of the wolves' hunger.
For them, she knew, the sea of her mind, whipped now to a frenzied storm of panic and despair, meant nothing. They were hunte
rs, and what resided within the soul of their quarry had no relevance. As with the antelope, the bhederin calf, the ranag, grace and wonder, promise and potential—reduced one and all to meat.
Life's final lesson, the only truthful one buried beneath a layered skein of delusions.
Sooner or later, she now understood, we are all naught but food. Wolves or worms, the end abrupt or lingering, it mattered not in the least.
Whimpering, half blind, she staggered up yet another hillside. They were closer. She could hear their paws crunching through wind-dried lichen and moss. To her right, to her left, closing, edging slightly ahead.
Crying out, the Mhybe stumbled, fell face first onto the rocky summit. She closed her eyes, waited for the first explosion of pain as teeth ripped into her flesh.
The wolves circled. She listened to them. Circled, then began spiralling in, closer, closer.
A hot breath gusted against the back of her neck.
The Mhybe screamed.
And awoke. Above her, a fading blue sky, a passing hawk. Haze of dust from the herd, drifting. In the air, distant voices and, much closer, the ragged, rattling sound of her own breathing.
The wagon had stopped moving. The army was settling in for the night.
She lay huddled, motionless beneath the furs and hides. A pair of voices were murmuring nearby. She smelled the smoke of a dung cook-fire, smelled a herbal, meaty broth—sage, a hint of goat. A third voice arrived, was greeted by the first two—all strangely indistinct, beyond her ability to identify. And not worth the effort. My watchers. My jailers.
The wagon creaked. Someone crouched beside her. 'Sleep should not leave you so exhausted.'
'No, Korlat, it should not. Please, now, let me end this myself—'
'No. Here, Coll has made a stew.'
'I've no teeth left with which to chew.'
'Just slivers of meat, easily swallowed. Mostly broth.'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Nevertheless. Shall I help you sit up?'
'Hood take you, Korlat. You and the rest. Every one of you.'
'Here, I will help you.'
'Your good intentions are killing me. No, not killing. That's just it, isn't it—' She grunted, feebly trying to twist away from Korlat's hands as the Tiste Andü lifted her effortlessly into a sitting position. 'Torturing me. Your mercy. Which is anything but. No, look not at my face, Korlat.' She drew her hood tighter. 'Lest I grow avid for the pity in your eyes. Where is this bowl? I will eat. Leave me.'