Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

  'Aye.'

  'I ain't misheard, then."

  Kulp shook his head. 'Someone took the ship, beheaded everyone aboard… then put them to work.'

  'In that order.'

  'In that order.'

  'How long ago?'

  'Years. Decades. We're in a warren, Corporal. No telling how time works here.'

  Gesler grunted. 'What say we check the captain's cabin? There might be a log.'

  'And a "take to the oars" whistle.'

  'Yeah. You know, if we hide that drum-beater, I could send Stormy down here to beat the time.'

  'You've a wicked sense of humour, Gesler.'

  'Aye. Thing is, Stormy tells the world's most boring sea tales. It'd do a favour to anyone he meets from now on to spice things up a little.'

  'Don't tell me you're serious.'

  The corporal sighed. 'No,' he said after a moment. 'I won't invite madness on anyone, Mage.'

  They returned to the main deck. The others stared at them. Gesler shrugged. 'What you'd expect,' he said, 'if you was completely insane, that is.'

  'Well,' Felisin replied, 'you're talking to the right crowd.'

  Kulp strode towards the cabin hatch. The corporal sheathed his sword and then followed. The hatch descended two steps, then opened out into a galley. A large wooden table commanded the centre. Opposite them was a second hatch, leading to a narrow walkway with berths on either side. At the far end was the door to the captain's cabin.

  No-one occupied the berths, but there was gear aplenty, all waiting for owners who no longer needed it.

  The cabin door opened with a loud squeal.

  Even with all they had seen thus far, the interior was a scene of horror. Four bodies were immediately visible, three of them twisted grotesquely in postures of sudden death. There was no evidence of decay, but no blood was visible. Whatever had killed them had crushed them thoroughly without once breaking skin. The exception sat in the captain's chair at the end of a map table, as if presiding over Hood's own stage. A spear jutted from his chest, and had been pushed through to the chair, then beyond. Blood glistened down the front of the figure's body, pooled in his lap. It had stopped flowing, yet looked still wet.

  'Tiste Andü?' Gesler asked in a whisper.

  'They have that look,' Kulp replied softly, 'but not quite.' He stepped into the cabin. 'Their skins are grey, not black. Nor do they look very… refined.'

  'The Tiste Andü of Drift Avalü were said to be pretty barbaric—not that anyone living has visited the isle."

  'None returned, in any case,' Kulp conceded. 'But these are wearing skins—barely cured. And look at their jewellery…' The four bodies were adorned in bone fetishes, claws, the canines of beasts, and polished seashells. There was none of the fine Tiste Andü craftwork that Kulp had had occasion to see in the past. Moreover, all four were brown-haired, the hair hanging loose and uncombed, stringy with grease. Tiste Andü hair was either silver-white or midnight black.

  'What in Hood's name are we seeing?' Gesler asked.

  'The killers of the Quon sailors and the Tiste Andü, is my guess,' Kulp said. 'They then sailed into this warren, maybe by choice, maybe not. And ran into something nastier than them.'

  'You think the rest of the crew escaped?'

  Kulp shrugged. 'If you've got the sorcery to command headless corpses, who needs a bigger crew than the one we're looking at right here?'

  'They still look like Tiste Andü,' the corporal said, peering closely at the man in the chair.

  'We should get Heboric in here,' Kulp said. 'Maybe he's read something somewhere that'll bring light to all this.'

  'Wait here,' Gesler said.

  The ship was creaking now as the rest of the group began moving around on the main deck. Kulp listened to the corporal's footsteps recede up the walkway. The mage leaned both hands on the table, scanning the charts splayed out on its surface. There was a map there, showing a land he could not recognize: a ragged coastline of fjords studded with cursory sketches of pine trees. Inland was a faint whitewash, as of ice or snow. A course had been plotted, striking east from the jagged shoreline, then southward across a vast ocean. The Malazan Empire purported to have world maps, but they showed nothing like the land he saw here. The Empire's claim to dominance suddenly seemed pathetic.

  Heboric stepped into the cabin behind him. Kulp did not turn from his study of the chart. 'Give them a close look,' the mage said.

  The old man moved past Kulp, crouching down to frown at the captain's face. The high cheekbones and angular eye sockets looked Tiste Andü, as did the man's evident height. Heboric reached out tentatively—

  'Wait,' Kulp growled. 'Be careful what you touch. And which arm you use.'

  Heboric hissed in exasperation and dropped his arm. After a moment, he straightened. 'I can only think of one thing. Tiste Edur.'

  'Who?'

  'Gothos's Folly. There's mention of three Tiste peoples arriving from another realm. Of course the only one that's known to us is the Tiste Andü, and Gothos only names one of the other groups—Tiste Edur. Grey-skinned, not black. Children of the unwelcome union of Mother Dark with the Light.'

  'Unwelcome?'

  Heboric grimaced. 'The Tiste Andü considered it a degradation of pure Dark, and the source of all their subsequent ills. Anyway, Gothos's Folly is the only tome where you'll find mention of them. It also happens to be the oldest.'

  'Gothos was Jaghut, correct?'

  'Aye, and as sour-tempered a writer as I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Tell me, Kulp, what does your warren reveal?'

  'Nothing.'

  Heboric glanced over in surprise. 'Nothing at all?'

  'No.'

  'But they look to be in stasis—this blood's still wet.'

  'I know.'

  Heboric gestured at something around the captain's neck. 'There's your whistle, assuming we're going to make use of what's below decks.'

  'Either that or we sit here and starve.' Kulp stepped closer to the captain's corpse. A long bone whistle hung from a leather thong, resting alongside the spear's shaft. 'I sense nothing from that bone tube either. It may not even work.'

  Heboric shrugged. 'I'm going back up for what passes for fresh air. That spear's Barghast, by the way.'

  'It's too damned big,' Kulp countered.

  'I know, but that's what it looks like to me.'

  'It's too big.'

  Heboric made no reply, disappearing up the walkway. Kulp glared at the spear. It's too big. After a moment he reached out and gingerly removed the whistle from around the corpse's neck.

  Emerging onto the main deck, the mage glanced again at the whistle. He grunted. It was alive with sorcery now. The breath of Otataral's in that cabin. No wonder their sorcery couldn't defend them. He looked around. Stormy had positioned himself at the prow, his ever-present crossbow strapped to his back. Baudin stood near him, cradling his bandaged hand. Felisin leaned against the railing near the main mast, arms crossed, appallingly cool with a pyramid of severed heads almost at her feet. Heboric was nowhere to be seen.

  Gesler approached. 'Truth is heading up to the crow's nest,' he said. 'You got the whistle?'

  Kulp tossed it over. 'Chosen a course yet?'

  'Truth will see what he sees, then we'll decide.'

  The mage craned his head, eyes narrowing on the lad as he lithely scrambled up the rigging. Five breaths later Truth clambered into the crow's nest and vanished from sight.

  'Fener's hoof!' The curse drifted down, snared everyone's attention.

  Truth!'

  'Three pegs to port! Storm sails!'

  Gesler and Kulp rushed to the starboard railing. A smudge marred the formless horizon, flickering with lightning. Kulp hissed. 'That Hood-damned wizard's followed us!'

  The corporal spun around. 'Stormy! Check what's left of these sails.' Without pause he put the whistle to his lips and blew. The sound was a chorus of voices, keening tonelessly. It chilled the air, the wail of souls twisted past torture,
transforming pain into sound, fading with reluctance as Gesler pulled the whistle away.

  Wood thumped on either side as oars were readied. Heboric stumbled from the hold hatch, his tattoos glowing like phosphor, his eyes wide as he swung to Gesler. 'You've got your crew, Corporal.'

  'Awake,' Felisin muttered, stepping away from the main mast.

  Kulp saw what she had seen. The severed heads had opened their eyes, swiveling to fix on Gesler as if driven by a single ghastly mechanism.

  The corporal seemed to flinch, then he shook it off. 'Could've used one of these when I was a drill sergeant,' he said with a tight grin.

  'Your drummer's ready down below,' Heboric said from where he stood peering down into the rowers' pit.

  'Forget the sails,' Stormy said. 'Rotted through.'

  'Man the steering oar,' Gesler ordered him. 'Three pegs to port—we can't do nothing but run.' He raised the whistle again and blew a rapid sequence. The drum started booming in time. The oars swung, blades flipping from horizontal to vertical, then dipped down into the sluggish water and pulled.

  The ship groaned, crunching through the meniscus of crust that had clung to the hull. The Silanda lurched into motion and slowly eased round until the rapidly approaching storm cloud was directly astern. The oars pushed slimy water with relentless precision.

  Gesler looped the whistle's thong around his neck. 'Wouldn't the old Emperor have loved this old lady, Kulp, eh?'

  'Your excitement's nauseating, Corporal.'

  The man barked a laugh.

  The twin banks of oars lifted the Silanda into a ramming pace and stayed there. The cadence of the drum was a too swift heartbeat. It reverberated in Kulp's bones with a resonance that etched his nerves with pain. He did not need to descend into the pit to affirm his vision of that thick-muscled, headless corpse pounding the gourds against the skin, the relentless heave and pull of the rowers, the searing play of Hood-bound sorcery in the stifling atmosphere. His eyes went in search of Gesler, and found him standing at the sterncastle alongside Stormy. These were hard men, harder than he could fathom. They'd taken the grim black humour of the soldier further than he'd thought possible, cold as the sunless core of a glacier. Bloody-minded confidence … or fatalism? Never knew Fener's bristles could be so black.

  The mad sorcerer's storm still gained on them, slower than before, yet an undeniable threat nonetheless. The mage strode to Heboric's side.

  'Is this your god's warren?'

  The old man scowled. 'Not my god. Not his warren. Hood knows where in the Abyss we are, and it seems there's no easy wakening from this nightmare.'

  'You drove the god-touched hand into Stormy's wound.'

  'Aye. Nothing but chance. Could have as easily been the other one.'

  'What did you feel?'

  Heboric shrugged. 'Something passing through. You'd guessed as much, didn't you?'

  Kulp nodded.

  'Was it Fener himself?'

  'I don't know. I don't think so. I'm not an expert in matters religious. Doesn't seem to have affected Stormy… apart from the healing. I didn't know Fener granted such boons.'

  'He doesn't,' the ex-priest muttered, eyes clouding as he looked back at the two marines. 'Not without a price, anyway.'

  Felisin sat apart from the others, her closest company the pyramid of staring heads. They didn't bother her much, since their attention remained on Gesler, on the man with the siren whistle of bone dangling on his chest. She thought back to the round in Unta, to the priest of flies. That had been the first time sorcery had been visited upon her. For all the stories of magic and wild wizards, of sorcerous conflagrations engulfing cities in wars at the very edges of the Empire, Felisin had never before witnessed such forces. It was never as common as the tales purported it to be. And the witnessing of magic left scars, a feeling of overwhelming vulnerability in the face of something beyond one's control. It made the world suddenly fey, deadly, frightening and bleak. That day in Unta had shifted her place in the world, or at least her sense of it. And she'd felt off-balance ever since.

  But maybe it wasn't that. Not that at all. Maybe it was what I lived through on the march to the galleys, maybe it was that sea of faces, the storm of hate and mindless fury, of the freedom and hunger to deliver pain writ so plain in all those so very normal faces. Maybe it was the people that sent me reeling.

  She looked over at the severed heads. The eyes did not blink. They were drying, crackling like egg white splashed on hot cobblestones. Like mine. Too much has been seen. Far too much. If demons rose out of the waters around them right now she would feel no shock, only a wonder that they had taken so long to appear and could you be swift in ending it all, now? Please.

  Like a long-limbed ape, Truth came scrambling down from the rigging, landing lightly on the deck and pausing close to her as he brushed dusty rope fibres from his clothes. He had a couple of years on her, yet looked much younger to her eyes. Unpacked, smooth skin. The wisps of beard, all too clear eyes. No gallons of wine, no clouds of durhang smoke, no weighty bodies taking turns to push inside, into a place that had started out vulnerable yet was soon walled off from anything real, anything that mattered. I only gave them the illusion of getting inside me, a deadend pocket. Can you grasp what I'm talking about, Truth?

  He noted her attention, gave her a shy smile. 'He's in the clouds,' he said, his voice hoarse with adolescence.

  'Who is?'

  'The sorcerer. Like an untethered kite, this way and that, trailing streamers of blood.'

  'How poetic, Truth. Go back to being a marine.'

  He reddened, turned away.

  Baudin spoke behind her. 'The lad's too good for you and that's what makes you mean.'

  'What would you know?' she sneered without turning.

  'I can't scry you much, lass,' he admitted. 'But I can scry you some.'

  'So you'd like to believe. Let me know when that hand starts rotting—I want to be there when it's cut off.'

  The oars clacked in counterpoint to the thundering drum. The wind arrived like a gasping exhalation, and the sorcerer's storm was upon them.

  Something ragged across his brow awoke Fiddler. He opened his eyes to a mass of bristle ends that suddenly lifted clear to reveal a wizened black face peering critically down. The face concluded its examination with an expression of distaste.

  'Spiders in your beard… or worse. Can't see them, but I know they're there.'

  The sapper drew a deep breath and winced at the throbbing protest from his broken ribs. 'Get away from me!' he growled. Stinging pain wrapped his thighs, reminders of the gouging claws that had raked them. His left ankle was heavily bandaged—the numbness from his foot was worrying.

  'Can't,' the old man replied. 'No escape is possible. Bargains were sealed, arrangements made. The Deck speaks plain in this. A life given for a life taken, and more besides.'

  'You're Dal Honese,' Fiddler said. 'Where am I?'

  The face split into a wide grin. 'In Shadow. Hee hee.'

  A new voice spoke from behind the strange old man. 'He wakens and you torment him, High Priest. Move aside, the soldier needs air, not airs.'

  'It's a matter of justice,' the High Priest retorted, though he pulled back. 'Your tempered companion kneels before that altar, does he not? These details are vital to understanding.' He took another step back as the massive form of the other speaker moved into view.

  'Ah,' Fiddler sighed. 'The Trell. Memory returns. And your companion… the Jhag?'

  'He entertains your companions,' the Trell said. 'Feebly, I admit. For all his years, Icarium has never mastered the social grace necessary to put others at ease.'

  'Icarium, the Jhag by that name. The maker of machines, the chaser of time—'

  The Trell showed his canines in a wide, wry smile. 'Aye, lord of the sand grains—though that poetic allusion's lost on most and awkward besides.'

  'Mappo.'

  'Aye again. And your friends name you Fiddler, relieving you of the guise of a Gral ho
rsewarrior.'

  'Hardly matters that I awoke out of character, then,' Fiddler said.

  'There's no punishment awaiting the lapse, soldier. Thirsty? Hungry?'

  'Good, yes and yes. But first, where are we?'

  'In a temple carved into a cliff. Out of the Whirlwind. Guests of a High Priest of Shadow—whom you've met. Iskaral Pust.'

  'Pust?'

  'Even so.'

  The Dal Honese High Priest pushed into view again, scowling. 'You mock my name, soldier?'

  'Not I, High Priest.'

  The old man grunted, adjusted his grip on the broom, then scampered from the room.

  Fiddler sat up gingerly, moving like an ancient. He was tempted to ask Mappo for an assessment of the damage, especially his ankle, but decided to hold off hearing the likely bad news a while longer. 'What's that man's story?'

  'I doubt even he knows.'

  'I awoke when he was sweeping my head.'

  'Not surprising.'

  There was an ease to the Trell's presence that relaxed Fiddler. Until he recalled the warrior's name. Mappo, a name ever chained to another's. And enough rumours to fill a tome. If any were true… 'Icarium scared off the D'ivers.'

  'His reputation carries weight.'

  'Is it earned, Mappo?' Even as he asked, Fiddler knew he should have bitten back the question.

  The Trell winced, withdrew slightly. 'I shall get you food and drink, then.'

  Mappo left the small room, moving silently despite his considerable bulk, the combination raising an echo that brought Kalam to mind. Did you outrun the storm, old friend?

  Iskaral Pust eased back into the chamber. 'Why are you here?' he whispered. 'Do you know why? You don't, but I'll tell you. You and no-one else.' He leaned close, plucking at his spiral wisps of hair with both hands. 'Tremorlor!'

  Laughing at Fiddler's expression, he spun about in wild, capering steps before settling once more in front of the sapper, their faces inches apart. 'The rumour of a path, a way home. A small wriggling worm of a rumour, even less, a grub, smaller than a nail clipping, the compacted and knotted mess wrapped around something that might be a truth. Or not. Hee hee!'

  Fiddler had had enough. Grimacing through the pain, he grabbed the man's collar and shook. Spittle struck his face, the High Priest's eyes rolled about like marbles in a cup.