Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

  A sister to Deadhouse in Malaz City. Little different from the one in Darujhistan. All of a kind. All Azath—though where that name came from and how long ago no-one knows or will ever know.

  Mappo spoke in a low voice beside the sapper. 'It's said the Azath bridge the realms—every realm. It's said that even time itself ceases within their walls.'

  'And those doors open to but a few, for reasons unknown.' Fiddler scowled at his own words.

  Apsalar moved to the front, stepping past the sapper.

  Startled, Fiddler grunted. 'In a hurry, lass?'

  She looked back at him. 'The one who possessed me, Fiddler… an Azath welcomed him, once.'

  True enough. And why does that make me so nervous now, and here? 'So, how's it done? Special knock? Key under the loose flagstone?'

  Her answering smile was a balm to his agitation. 'No, something much simpler. Audacity.'

  'Well, we've plenty of that. We're here, aren't we?'

  'Aye, we are.'

  She led the way, and all followed.

  'That conch shell,' Mappo rumbled. 'Immense damage was delivered to the Soletaken and D'ivers, is still being delivered, it seems—for the Azath, it may be proving enough.'

  'And you pray that is so.'

  'Aye, I do.'

  'So why didn't that deathly song destroy us as well?'

  'You are asking me, Fiddler? The gift was given to you, was it not?'

  'Yes. I saved a little girl—kin to the Spiritwalker.'

  'Which Spiritwalker, Fiddler?'

  'Kimloc.'

  The Trell was silent for half a dozen paces, then a frustrated growl rose from him. 'A girl, you said. No matter how close a kin, Kimloc's reward far outweighed your gesture. More, it seemed precisely intended for its use—the sorcery in that song was aspected, Fiddler. Tell me, did Kimloc know you sought Tremorlor?'

  'I certainly didn't tell him as much.'

  'Did he touch you at any time—the brush of a finger against your arm, anything?'

  'He asked to, as I recall. He wanted my story. I declined. But Hood's breath, Mappo, I truly cannot recall if there was some chance contact.'

  'I think there must have been.'

  'If so, I forgive him the indiscretion.'

  'I imagine he anticipated that as well.'

  Even as Tremorlor withstood the assault that raged from all sides, the battles were far from over, and in some places the sound of shattering wood was a seemingly unstoppable progression, coming ever closer.

  Apsalar increased pace as one of those unseen, sundering avalanches drew near the group, driving for the arched gate. A moment later, amidst a rising roar, they all broke into a run.

  'Where?' Fiddler demanded as he scrambled forward, head darting as he searched frantically in all directions. 'Where in Hood's name is it?'

  The answer came in a sudden sleet of ice-cold water from above, the savage opening of a warren. Emerging from within that hovering, strangely suspended spray—not fifty paces behind them—the enormous head and maw of a dhenrabi lunged into view, wreathed in uprooted sea grasses, kelp and strange, skeletal branches.

  A swarm of wasps rose before it and was devoured entire without pause.

  Three more dhenrabi appeared from that torrential portal. The roiling spume of water that held them seemed to burn off wherever it descended upon the roots of the maze, yet the creatures remained suspended, riding the hissing maelstrom.

  Images flashed through Fiddler within the span of a single heartbeat. Kansu Sea. Not a Soletaken after all—not a single beast, but a pack. A D'ivers. And I'm out of cussers—

  A moment later, it became clear just how untested the Hounds of Shadow had been thus far. He felt the power emanate from the five beasts—so similar was it to that of dragons, it rolled like a breath, a surge of raw sorcery that preceded the Hounds as they sprang forward with blurring speed.

  Shan was the first to reach the lead dhenrabi, the first to plunge into its gaping, serrated mouth—and vanish within that yawning darkness. The creature reared back lightning-quick, and if that massive, blunt visage could show surprise, it did so now.

  Gear reached the next one, and the dhenrabi lunged, not to swallow, but to bite down, to flense with the thousand jagged plates of its teeth. The Hound's power buckled under those snapping jaws, but did not shatter. An instant later, Gear was through, past those teeth, burying itself within the creature—where it delivered mayhem.

  The other Hounds made for the remaining two dhenrabi. Only Blind remained with the group.

  The lead dhenrabi began thrashing now, whipping its enormous bulk as the torrent of its warren collapsed around it—crushing flat walls of the maze, where long-imprisoned victims stirred amidst the wreckage, withered limbs reaching skyward through mud-churned water, clutching air. The second dhenrabi fell into the same writhing tumult.

  A hand clutched Fiddler's arm, pulling him hard around. 'Come on,' Crokus hissed. Moby was still clinging to his shirt. 'We've got more company, Fid.'

  And now the sapper saw the object of the Daru's attention—off to his right, almost behind Tremorlor, still a thousand paces distant, yet fast approaching. A swarm like no other. Bloodflies, in a solid black cloud the size of a thunderhead, billowing, surging towards them.

  Leaving the dhenrabi in the throes of violent death behind them, the group sprinted for the House.

  As he passed beneath the leafless arch of vines, the sapper saw Apsalar reach the door, close her hands on the broad, heavy ring-latch and twist it. He saw the muscles rise on her forearms, straining. Straining.

  Then she staggered back a step, as if dismissively, contemptuously shoved. As Fiddler, trailed by Crokus, Mappo with his charge, Apsalar's father, then Pust and Blind, reached the flat, paved landing, he saw her spin round, her expression one of shock and disbelief.

  It won't open. Tremorlor has refused us.

  The sapper skidded to a halt, whirled.

  The sky was black, alive, and coming straight for them.

  At Vathar's sparse, blistered edge, where the basolith of bedrock sank once more beneath its skin of limestone, and the land that stretched southward before and below their vantage point was nothing but studded stones in windswept, parched clay, they came upon the first of the Jaghut tombs.

  Few among the outriders and the column's head paid it much attention. It looked like nothing more than a cairn marker, a huge, elongated slab of stone tilted upward at the southernmost end, as if pointing the way across the Nenoth Odhan to Aren or some other, more recent destination.

  Corporal List had led the historian to it in silence while the others prepared rigging to assist in the task of guiding the wagons down the steep, winding descent to the plain's barren floor.

  'The youngest son,' List said, staring down at the primitive tomb. His face was frightening to look at, for it wore a father's grief, as raw as if the child's death was but yesterday—a grief that had, if anything, grown with the tortured, unfathomable passage of two hundred thousand years.

  He stands guard still, that Jaghut ghost. The statement, a silent utterance that was both simple and obvious, nevertheless took the historian's breath away. How to comprehend this…

  'How old?' Duiker's voice was as parched as the Odhan that awaited them.

  'Five. The T'lan Imass chose this place for him. The effort of killing him would have proved too costly, given that the rest of the family still awaited them. So they dragged the child here—shattered his bones, every one, as many times as they could on so small a frame—then pinned him beneath this rock.'

  Duiker had thought himself beyond shock, beyond even despair, yet his throat closed up at List's toneless words. The historian's imagination was too sharp for this, raising images in his mind that seared him with overwhelming sorrow. He forced himself to look away, watched the activities among the soldiers and Wickans thirty paces distant. He realized that they worked mostly in silence, speaking only as their tasks required, and then in low, strangely subdued t
ones.

  'Yes,' List said. 'The father's emotions are a pall unrelieved by time—so powerful, so rending, those emotions, that even the earth spirits had to flee. It was that or madness. Coltaine should be informed—we must move quickly across this land.'

  'And ahead? On the Nenoth plain?'

  'It gets worse. It was not just the children that the T'lan Imass pinned—still breathing, still aware—beneath rocks.'

  'But why?' The question ripped from Duiker's throat.

  'Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks—all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.'

  'Did the Jaghut seek to reason with them, Corporal?'

  'Many times, among those not thoroughly corrupted by power—the Tyrants—but you see, there was always an arrogance in the Jaghut, and it was a kind that could claw its way up your back when face to face. Each Jaghut's interest was with him or herself. Almost exclusively. They viewed the T'lan Imass no differently from the way they viewed ants underfoot, herds on the grasslands, or indeed the grass itself. Ubiquitous, a feature of the landscape. A powerful, emergent people, such as the T'lan Imass were, could not but be stung—

  'To the point of swearing a deathless vow?'

  'I don't believe that, at first, the T'lan Imass realized how difficult the task of eradication would be. Jaghut were very different in another way—they did not flaunt their power. And many of their efforts in self-defence were… passive. Barriers of ice—glaciers—they swallowed the lands around them, even the seas, swallowed whole continents, making them impassable, unable to support the food the mortal Imass required.'

  'So they created a ritual that would make them immortal—'

  'Free to blow like the dust—and in the age of ice, there was plenty of dust.'

  Duiker's gaze caught Coltaine standing near the edge of the trail. 'How far,' he asked the man beside him, 'until we leave this area of… of sorrow?'

  'Two leagues, no more than that. Beyond are Nenoth's true grasslands, hills… tribes, each one very protective of what little water they possess.'

  'I think I had better speak with Coltaine.'

  'Aye, sir.'

  The Dry March, as it came to be called, was its own testament to sorrow. Three vast, powerful tribes awaited them, two of them, the Tregyn and the Bhilard, striking at the beleaguered column like vipers. With the third, situated at the very western edge of the plains—the Khundryl—there was no immediate contact, though it was felt that that would not last.

  The pathetic herd accompanying the Chain of Dogs died on that march, animals simply collapsing, even as the Wickan cattle-dogs converged with fierce insistence that they rise—dead or no—and resume the journey. When butchered, these carcasses were little more than ropes of leathery flesh.

  Starvation joined the terrible ravaging thirst, for the Wickans refused to slaughter their horses and attended them with eloquent fanaticism that no-one dared challenge. The warriors sacrificed of themselves to keep their mounts alive. One petition from Nethpara's Council, offering to purchase a hundred horses, was returned to the nobleborn leader smeared in human excrement.

  The twin vipers struck again and again, contesting every league, the attacks increasing in ferocity and frequency, until it was clear that a major clash approached, only days away.

  In the column's wake followed Korbolo Dom's army, a force that had grown with the addition of forces from Tarxian and other coastal settlements, and was now at least five times the size of Coltaine's Seventh and his Wickan clans. The renegade commander's measured pursuit—leaving engagement to the wild plains tribes—was ominous in itself.

  He would be there for the imminent battle, without doubt, and was content to wait until then.

  The Chain of Dogs—its numbers swollen by new refugees fleeing Bylan—crawled on, coming within sight of what the maps indicated was the Nenoth Odhan's end, where hills rose in a wall aross the southern horizon. The trader track cut through the only substantial passage, a wide river valley between the Bylan'sh Hills to the east and the Saniphir Hills to the west, the track running for seven leagues, opening out on a plain that faced the ancient tel of Sanimon, then wrapped around it to encompass the Sanith Odhan and, beyond that, the Geleen Plain, the Dojal Odhan—and the city of Aren itself.

  No relief army emerged from Sanimon Valley. A profound sense of isolation descended like a shroud on the train, even as the valley's flanking hills began to reveal, in the day's dying light, twin encampments, both vast, of tribesmen—the main forces of the Tregyn and the Bhilard.

  Here, then, at the mouth of the ancient valley… here it would be.

  'We're dying,' Lull muttered as he came up alongside the historian on his way to the briefing. 'And I don't mean just figuratively, old man. I lost eleven soldiers today. Throats swollen so bad with thirst they couldn't draw breath.' He waved at a fly buzzing his face. 'Hood's breath, I'm swimming in this armour—by the time we're done, we'll all look like T'lan Imass.'

  'I can't say I appreciate the analogy, Captain.'

  'Wasn't expecting you to.'

  'Horse piss. That's what the Wickans are drinking these days.'

  'Aye, same for my crew. They're neighing in their sleep, and more than one's died from it.'

  Three dogs loped past them, the huge one named Bent, a female, and the lapdog scrambling in their wake.

  'They'll outlive us all,' Lull grumbled. 'Those damned beasts!'

  The sky deepened overhead, the first stars pushing through the cerulean gauze.

  'Gods, I'm tired.'

  Duiker nodded. Oh, indeed, we've travelled far, friend, and now stand face to face with Hood. He takes the weary as readily as the defiant. Offers the same welcoming grin.

  'Something in the air tonight, Historian. Can you feel it?'

  'Yes.'

  'Maybe Hood's Warren has drawn closer.'

  'It has that feel, doesn't it?'

  They arrived at the Fist's command tent, entered.

  The usual faces were arrayed before them. Nil and Nether, the last remaining warlocks; Sulmar and Chenned, Bult and Coltaine himself. Each had become a desiccated mockery of the will and strength once present in their varied miens.

  'Where's Bungle?' Lull asked, finding his usual camp-chair.

  'Listening to her sergeant, I'd guess,' Bult said, with a ghost of a grin.

  Coltaine had no time for idle talk. 'Something approaches, this night. The warlocks have sensed it, though that is all they can say. We are faced with preparing for it.'

  Duiker looked to Nether. 'What kind of sense?'

  She shrugged, then sighed. 'Vague. Troubled, even outrage—I don't know, Historian.'

  'Sensed anything like it before? Even remotely?'

  'No.'

  Outrage.

  'Draw the refugees close,' Coltaine commanded the captains. 'Double the pickets—'

  'Fist,' Sulmar said, 'we face a battle tomorrow—'

  'Aye, and rest is needed. I know.' The Wickan began pacing, but it was a slower pace than usual. It had lost its smoothness as well, its ease and elegance. 'And more, we are greatly weakened—the water casks are bone dry.'

  Duiker winced. Battle? No, tomorrow will see a slaughter. Soldiers unable to fight, unable to defend themselves. The historian cleared his throat, made to speak, then stopped. One word, yet even to voice it would be to offer the cruellest illusion. One word.

  Coltaine was staring at him. 'We cannot,' he said softly.

  I know. For the rebellion's warriors as much as for us, the end to this must be with blood.

  'The soldiers are beyond digging trenches,' Lull said into the heavy, all-too-aware silence.

  'Holes, then.'

  'Aye, sir.'

  Holes. To break mounted charges, snap legs, send screaming beasts into the dust.

&
nbsp; The briefing ended then, abruptly, as the air was suddenly charged, and whatever threatened to arrive now announced itself with a brittle crackle, a mist of something oily, like sweat clogging the air.

  Coltaine led the group outside, to find the bristling atmosphere manifested tenfold beneath the night's sparkling canopy. Horses bucked. Cattle-dogs howled.

  Soldiers were rising like spectres. Weapons rustled.

  In the open space just beyond the foremost pickets, the air split asunder with a savage, ripping sound.

  Three pale horses thundered from that rent, followed by three more, then another three, all harnessed, all screaming with terror. Behind them came a massive carriage, a fire-scorched, gaudily painted leviathan riding atop six spoked wheels that were taller than a man. Smoke trailed like thick strands of raw wool from the carriage, from the horses themselves, and from the three figures visible behind the last three chargers.

  The white, screaming train was at full gallop—as if in headlong flight from whatever warren it had come from—and the carriage pitched wildly, alarmingly, as the beasts plunged straight for the pickets.

  Wickans scattered to either side.

  Staring with disbelief, Duiker saw all three figures sawing the reins, bellowing, flinging themselves against the backrest of their tottering perch.

  The horses drove hooves into the earth, biting down on their momentum, the towering carriage slewing behind them, raising a cloud of smoke, dust and an emanation that the historian recognized with a jolt of alarm as outrage. The outrage, he now understood, of a warren—and its god.

  Behind the lead carriage came another, then another, each pitching to one side or the other to avoid collision as they skidded to a halt.

  As soon as the lead carriage ceased its headlong plunge, figures poured from it, armoured men and women, shouting, roaring commands that no-one seemed to pay any attention to, and waving blackened, smeared and dripping weapons.