Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

  'The killer has arrived,' the newcomer growled.

  'I am about to pluck Topper's strand—'

  'Good, it's time he understood.'

  'What—'

  Both of the leader's companions fell to the cobbles. An enormous fist connected with the leader's face. Bone and cartilage crunched. The leader blinked unseeing eyes that filled with blood. With septum lodged in his forebrain, he crumpled.

  Kalam crouched down to whisper in the dead man's ear. 'I know you can hear me, Topper. Two Hands left. Run and hide—I'll still find you.'

  He straightened, retrieved his weapons.

  The corpse at his feet gurgled a wet laugh and the assassin looked down as a spectral voice emerged from the dead man's lips. 'Welcome back, Kalam. Two Hands, you said? Not any more, old friend—'

  'Scared you, did I?'

  'Salk Elan appears to have let you off too easily. I shall not be as kind, I'm afraid—'

  'I know where you are, Topper, and I'm coming for you.' There was a long silence, then the corpse spoke one last time. 'By all means, my friend.'

  The Imperial Warren was holed like cheesecloth that night, as Hand after Hand of Claw pushed through into the city. One such portal opened directly in a lone man's path—and the five figures announced their arrival with gasping breaths and splashed blood, the swift and as swiftly done noises of dying. Not one had managed more than a step onto the slick cobbles of Malaz City before their flesh began cooling in the gentle night.

  Screams echoed down streets and alleys as denizens foolish enough to brave the open paid for their temerity with their lives. The Claw took no more chances.

  The game that Kalam had turned, turned yet again.

  The mosaic at their feet was endless, the multicoloured stones creating a pattern that defied comprehension, the strange floor stretching away to every horizon. The echo of their boots was muted and faintly sonorous.

  Fiddler hitched his crossbow over one shoulder, with a shrug. 'We'd see trouble from a league away,' he said.

  'You are all betraying the Azath,' Iskaral Pust hissed, pacing in circles around the group. 'The Jhag belongs beneath a root-webbed mound. That was the deal, the agreement, the scheme…' His voice fell away briefly, then resumed in a different tone. 'What agreement? Did Shadowthrone receive any answers to his query? Did the Azath reveal its ancient, stony face? No. Silence was the reply—to all. My master could have pronounced his intention to defecate on the House's portal and still the reply would not have changed. Silence.

  'Well, it certainly seemed there was a consensus. No objections were voiced, were they? No, not at all. Certain assumptions were necessary, oh yes, very necessary. And in the end, there was a sort of victory, was there not? All but for that Jhag there in the Trell's arms.' He stopped, panting as he regained his breath. 'Gods, we are walking for ever!'

  'We should begin our journey,' Apsalar said.

  'I'm for that,' Fiddler muttered. 'Only, which direction?'

  Rellock had knelt down to study the mosaic tiles. They were the only source of light—overhead was pitch black. Each tile was no larger than a hand's width. The glow they cast pulsed in a slow but steady rhythm. The old fisherman now grunted.

  'Father?'

  'The pattern here—' He pointed to one tile in particular. 'That mottled line…"

  Fiddler crouched down and studied the floor. 'If that's a track or something, it's a crooked one.'

  'A track?" The fisherman looked up. 'No, here, along this side. That's the Kanese coastline.'

  'What?'

  The man ran one blunt fingertip down the ragged line. 'Starts on the Quon coast, down to Kan, then up to Cawn Vor—and there, that's Kartool Island, and southeast, there, in the tile's centre, that's Malaz Island.'

  'You're trying to tell me that here, on this one tile at our feet, is mapped most of the Quon Tali continent?' Yet even as he asked, the pattern resolved itself, and before him was indeed what Apsalar's father had claimed. 'Then what,' he asked softly, 'is on the rest of them?'

  'Well, they ain't consistent, if that's what you're wondering. There's breaks—other maps of other places, I guess. It's all jumbled, but I'd say the scale was the same on all of them.'

  Fiddler slowly straightened. 'But that means…' His voice trailed into silence, as he looked out upon this endless floor, stretching for leagues in every direction. Every god in the Abyss! Are these all the realms? Every world—every place home to a House of the Azath? Queen of Dreams, what power is this?

  'Within the warren of the Azath,' Mappo said, his tone one of awe, 'you could go… anywhere.'

  'Are you sure of that?' Crokus asked. 'Here are the maps, yes, but—' he pointed down at the tile displaying the continent of Quon Tali—'where's the gate? The way in?'

  No-one spoke for a long moment, then Fiddler cleared his throat. 'You got an idea, lad?'

  The Daru shrugged. 'Maps are maps—this one could be sitting on a tabletop, if you see my point.'

  'So what do you suggest?'

  'Ignore it. The only thing these tiles signify is that every House, in every place, is part of a pattern, a grand design. But even knowing that doesn't mean we can actually make sense of it. The Azath is beyond even the gods. We can end up getting lost in suppositions, in a mental game that takes us nowhere.'

  'That's true enough,' the sapper grunted. 'And we're nowhere closer to figuring out which direction to walk in.'

  'Perhaps Iskaral Pust has the right idea,' Apsalar said. Her boots grated on the tiles as she turned. 'Alas, he seems to have disappeared.'

  Crokus spun around. 'Damn that bastard!'

  The High Priest of Shadow, who had been ceaselessly circling them, was indeed nowhere to be seen. Fiddler grimaced. 'So he figured it out and didn't bother explaining before taking his leave—'

  'Wait!' Mappo said. He set Icarium down, then took a dozen paces. 'Here,' he said. 'Hard to make out at first but now I see it clearly.'

  The Trell seemed to be staring at something at his feet. 'What have you found?' Fiddler asked.

  'Come closer—almost impossible to see otherwise, though that makes little sense…'

  The others approached.

  A gaping hole yawned, a ragged gap where Iskaral Pust had simply fallen through and vanished. Fiddler knelt, edging closer to the hole. 'Hood's breath!' he groaned. The tiles were no more than an inch thick. Beneath them was not solid ground. Beneath them there was… nothing.

  'Is that the way out, do you think?' Mappo asked behind him.

  The sapper edged back, the slick tiles suddenly feeling like the thinnest ice. 'Damned if I know, but I don't plan on jumping in and finding out.'

  'I share your caution,' the Trell rumbled. He turned back to where Icarium lay and gathered his companion once again in his arms.

  'That hole might spread,' Crokus said. 'I suggest we get moving. Any direction, just away from here.'

  Apsalar hesitated. 'And Iskaral Pust? Perhaps he's lying unconscious on a ledge or something?'

  'Not a chance,' Fiddler replied. 'From what I saw, the poor man's still falling. One look and every bone in me screamed oblivion. I think I'll trust my instincts on this one, lass.'

  'A sad demise,' she said. 'I had grown almost fond of him.'

  Fiddler nodded. 'Our very own pet scorpion, aye.'

  Crokus took the lead as they moved away from the hole. Had they waited a few minutes longer, they would have seen a dull yellow mist rise from the gaping darkness, thickening until it was opaque. The mist remained for a time, then it began to dissipate, and when it finally vanished, so too had the hole—as if it had never been. The mosaic was complete once more.

  Deadhouse. Malaz City, the heart of the Malazan Empire. There is nothing for us there. More, an explanation that made sense would challenge even my experienced inventiveness. We must, I fear, take our leave.

  Somehow.

  But this is far beyond me—this warren—and worse, my crimes are like wounds that refuse to close. I cannot esc
ape my cowardice. In the end—and all here know it, though they do not speak of it—my selfish desires made a mockery of my integrity, my vows. I had a chance to see the threat ended, ended for ever.

  How can friendship defeat such an opportunity? How can the comfort of familiarity rise up like a god, as if change itself had become something demonic? I am a coward—the offer of freedom, the sighing end to a lifetime's vow, proved the greatest terror of all.

  And so, the simple truth… the tracks we have walked in for so long become our lives, in themselves a prison—

  Apsalar leapt forward, her fingertips touching shoulder, then braids, then nothing. Her momentum took her forward, into the place where Mappo and Icarium had been a moment earlier. She fell towards a yawning darkness.

  Crying out, Crokus grasped her ankles. He was pulled momentarily along the tiles towards the gaping hole before a fisherman's strong hands closed on him and anchored him down.

  Together, the two men dragged Apsalar from the pit's edge. A dozen paces beyond it stood Fiddler—the Daru's cry had been the first intimation of trouble.

  'They're gone!' Crokus shouted. 'They fell through—there was no warning, Fid! Nothing at all!'

  The sapper softly cursed, lowering himself into an uneasy crouch. We're intruders here… He'd heard rumours of warrens that were airless, that were instant death to mortals who dared enter them. There was an arrogance in assuming that every realm in existence bowed to human needs. Intruders—this place cares nothing for us, nor are there any laws demanding that it accommodate us.

  Mind you, the same could be said for any world.

  He hissed, slowly straightened, fighting against the sudden welling of grief at the loss of two men he had come to consider friends. And which of us is next? 'To me,' he growled. 'All three of you—carefully.' He unslung his pack, set it down and rummaged inside until he found a coiled length of rope. 'We're tying ourselves together—if one goes, either we save him or her, or we all go. Agreed?'

  Relieved nods answered him.

  Aye, the thought of wandering alone in this warren is not a pleasant one.

  They quickly attached the rope between them.

  The four travellers had walked another thousand paces when the air stirred—the first wind they had felt since entering the warren—and they ducked as one beneath the passage of something enormous directly overhead.

  Scrabbling for his crossbow, Fiddler twisted around to look skyward. 'Hood's breath!'

  But the three dragons were already past, ignoring the humans entirely. They flew in triangular formation like a flight of geese, and were of a kind, ochre-scaled, their wing-spans as far across as five wagons end to end. Long, sinuous tails stretched back behind them.

  'Foolish to think,' Apsalar muttered, 'that we're the only ones to make use of this realm.'

  Crokus grunted. 'I've seen bigger…'

  A faint grin cracked Fiddler's features. 'Aye, lad, I know you have.'

  The dragons were almost at the edge of their vision when they banked as one, plunged down towards the ground and broke through the tiles, vanishing from sight.

  No-one spoke for a long minute, then Apsalar's father cleared his throat and said, 'I think that just told us something.'

  The sapper nodded. 'Aye.' You go through when you get to where you're going—even if you don't exactly plan on it. He thought back to Mappo and Icarium. The Trell would have had no reason to accompany them all the way to Malaz City. After all, Mappo had a friend to heal, to coax back to consciousness. He'd be looking for a safe place to do that. As for Iskaral Pust… Probably at the cliffs foot right now, screaming up at the bhok'arala for a rope…

  'All right,' Fiddler said, straightening. 'Seems we've just got to keep moving… until the time and place arrives.'

  'Mappo and Icarium are not lost, not dead,' Crokus said in obvious relief as they began walking again.

  'Nor is the High Priest,' Apsalar added.

  'Well,' the Daru muttered, 'I suppose we have to take the bad with the good.'

  Fiddler briefly wondered about those three dragons—where they had gone, what tasks awaited them—then he shrugged. Their appearance, their departure and, in between and most importantly, their indifference to the four mortals below was a sobering reminder that the world was far bigger than that defined by their own lives, their own desires and goals. The seemingly headlong plunge this journey had become was in truth but the smallest succession of steps, of no greater import than the struggles of a termite.

  The worlds live on, beyond us, countless unravelling tales.

  In his mind's eye he saw his horizons stretch out on all sides, and as they grew ever vaster he in turn saw himself as ever smaller, ever more insignificant.

  We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again…

  Korbolo Dom's warriors celebrated their triumph through the hours of darkness after the Fall of Coltaine. The sounds of that revelry drifted over Aren's walls and brought a coldness to the air that had little to do with the physical reality of the sultry night.

  Within the city, facing the north gates, was a broad concourse, generally used as a caravan staging area. This open space was now packed with refugees. The task of billeting would have to await the more pressing needs of food, water and medical attention.

  Commander Blistig had set his garrison to those efforts, and his soldiers worked tirelessly, displaying extraordinary compassion, as if answering their own need to respond to the enemy's triumph beyond the walls. Coltaine, his Wickans and the Seventh had given their lives for those the guard now tended. Solicitude was fast becoming an overwhelming gesture.

  Yet other tensions rode the air.

  The final sacrifice was unnecessary. We could have saved them, if not for the coward commanding us. Two powerful honours had clashed—the raw duty to save the lives of fellow soldiers, and the discipline of the Malazan command structure—and from that collision ten thousand living, breathing, highly trained soldiers now stood broken.

  Down in the concourse, Duiker wandered aimlessly through the crowds. Figures loomed before him every now and then, blurred faces murmuring meaningless words, offering information that they each believed—hoped—would soothe him. The Wickan youths had claimed Nil and Nether and now protected them with a fierceness that none dared challenge. Countless refugees had been retrieved from the very edge of Hood's Gates, each one a source of savage defiance—a pleasure revealed in glittering eyes and bared teeth. Those few for whom the final flight—and perhaps the release of salvation itself—had proved too much for their broken, riven flesh, were fought for in unyielding desperation. Hood had to reach for those failing souls, reach for, grasp and drag them into oblivion, with the healers employing every skill they possessed to defeat the effort.

  Duiker had found his own oblivion deep inside himself, and he had no desire to leave its numbing comfort. Within that place, pain could do naught but gnaw at the very edges, and those edges seemed to be growing ever more distant.

  Words occasionally seeped through, as various officers and soldiers delivered details of things they clearly felt the historian should know. The caution in their voices was not necessary, for the information was absorbed stripped of feeling. Duiker was beyond hurting.

  The Silanda, with its load of wounded soldiers, had not arrived, he learned from a Wickan youth named Temul. Adjunct Tavore's fleet was less than a week away. Korbolo Dom was likely to begin a siege, for Sha'ik was on her way from Raraku, leading an army twice the size of the renegade Fist's own force. Mallick Rel had led High Fist Pormqual back to the palace. A plan was now in the air, a plan to reap vengeance, and it was but hours away—

  Blinking, Duiker tried to focus on the face before him, the face telling him this news in an urgent tone. But the first brush of recognition sent the historian reeling back in his mind. Too much pain was embedded in the memories that were so
closely chained to that recognition. He stepped back.

  The figure reached out a strong hand that closed on Duiker's ragged shirt and pulled the historian closer once again. The bearded mouth was moving, shaping words, demanding, angry words.

  '—through to you, Historian! It's the assumptions, don't you see? Our only reports have come from that nobleman, Nethpara. But we need a soldier's assessment—do you understand? Damn you, it's almost dawn!'

  'What? What are you talking about?'

  Blistig's face twisted. 'Mallick Rel has got through to Pormqual. Hood knows how, but he has! We're going to strike Korbolo's army—in less than an hour's time, when they're still drunk, still exhausted. We're marching out, Duiker! Do you understand me?'

  Cruel… so cruel—

  'How many are out there? We need reliable estimates—'

  'Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds—'

  'Think, damn you! If we can knock these bastards out… before Sha'ik arrives—'

  'I don't know, Blistig! That army grew with every Hood-cursed league!'

  'Nethpara judges just under ten thousand—'

  The man's a fool.'

  'He's also laying the deaths of thousands of innocent refugees at Coltaine's feet—'

  'W—What?' The historian staggered, and if not for Blistig's grip would have fallen.

  'Don't you see? Without you, Duiker, that version of what happened out there will win the day. It's already spread through the ranks and it's damned troubling. Certainty's crumbling—the desire for vengeance is weakening—'

  It was enough. The historian felt a jolt. Eyes widening, he straightened. 'Where is he? Nethpara! Where—'

  'He's been in with Pormqual and Mallick Rel for the past two bells.'

  'Take me there.'

  A succession of horns echoed behind them, the call for assembly. Duiker's gaze swept past the commander to the ranks contracting into formation. He stared skyward, saw the stars dimming in a lightening sky.

  'Fener's tusk,' Blistig growled. 'It might be too late—'

  Take me to Pormqual—to Mallick Rel—'