‘Or you will deal with me later also? When will it end? How many will you kill?’
Behind his full beard Yath smiled and Ho realized that Su had overplayed her hand. He opened his arms, gesturing broadly. ‘No one here is going to die. What do you think I am? We are all civilized people down here — a description I extend even to you, Su. I am merely planning a small demonstration. A little show for our new friends meant to impress upon them the importance of our work.’ Yath glanced about the crowd entreatingly. ‘It is, after all, what they have come for. Is it not?’
From the nods and shouts of agreement, Ho understood that, as Su said, he had been withdrawn from the community for far too long now. How could their small brotherhood of scholars and mages have come to this? Singling out ‘spies’ for punishment; arming themselves; sowing fear? Those who would speak against Yath were obviously too disgusted to even bother coming down.
‘We don't know what might happen, Yath. It's too dangerous.’
‘Silence! You have discredited yourself, Ho. Plotting with your fellow Malazans.’
‘Malazan? I'm from Li Heng, Yath.’
‘Exactly. From the very centre of the Malazan Empire.’ Yath waved the spearmen to move the prisoners forward. Sessin stepped up between Yath and the two, his hands twitching at his sides. Ho could only stare; the ignorance the man's statement revealed was stunning. How can one possibly reason one's way across such a gap?
‘Yath,’ Ho called, following with the crowd, ‘you know about as much about Malaz and Quon Tali as I know about Seven Cities! Many on the continent consider the Malazans occupiers just as you do!’ But the tall Seven Cities priest was no longer listening.
Amid the spearmen, Grief peered back to Ho. ‘What's gonna happen?’
‘Quiet,’ warned a number of the guards. Grief ignored them.
‘They're just going to… show you something. It's nothing physically threatening.’
The man's mouth pulled down as he glanced away, considering. ‘I'm kinda curious myself.’
Su, Ho noted, was watching the two with keen interest, her sharp eyes probing. After a moment she let out a cawing laugh. She edged her head up to Ho and smiled as before, touched the side of her hooked nose, winked.
‘What is it?’ he murmured.
‘Something else I smell. Took me a while to place it. Was a long time ago at the Council of All Clans.’
‘What?’
‘You'll see. You and Yath, I think. Ha!’
Ho snorted. ‘More of your games.’
‘Ha!’
The path led away to a crack in the stone wall of the cavern. Beaten earth steps led down through the narrow gap to another cavern, this one excavated from the layered, seared sedimentary stone that carried the Otataral ore. The spearmen pushed Treat and Grief to the fore where yath and Sessin waited. Beyond them, a walkway of earth climbed the far wall that appeared made of some smooth and glassy rock.
Grief glanced around. ‘This is it?’
Yath had at his mouth a grin of hungry triumph. He urged, ‘Look more closely. Raise the lights!’
Poles were taken down, lamps affixed, and re-straightened. The light blossomed, revealing a wall of dark green stone that held hidden depths where reflections glimmered. Ho watched as, stage by stage, slow realization took hold of Grief. ‘No — it can't be…’ the fellow murmured. His gaze went to the bulge excavated at the base, the slope up to a gaping cave opening, the jutting cliff above this cut off by the roof of the cavern. Of all the forgotten Gods,‘ he said. He looked to Yath, open unguarded wonder upon his dark Napan face. ‘A jade giant… I'd read of them, of course. But this…’ He shook his head, staggered beyond words.
Ho shared the man's astonishment; no matter how often he came down to look it stupefied, and humbled, every time. The oval cave, taller than two men, now transformed itself in his mind's eye to a mouth, yawning — or screaming. The bulge below, the chin. One then scaled this lower half of the face to the upper, then face to head, head to neck, and… and that was as far as Ho's imagination could carry the exercise. It became absurd. Unimaginable. How could such a thing possibly be constructed? Would it not collapse under its own colossal weight?
But of course, they come from elsewhere. Yet would not such a Realm, no matter how alien, possess its own properties, its own set of physical laws which could not be contravened? It was too much for Ho — as it had proved for this entire battalion of professional mages, scholars and theurgical researchers who had made the mystery their primary fixation for the last three decades.
All these revelations were lost on Treat who nudged Grief. ‘What is it?’
Grief just shrugged. ‘A fucking big statue.’
‘Come, come,’ urged Yath, starting up the walkway. ‘Come for a better look.’ He waved Grief to follow. The man's eyes were narrow in open distrust, but he clearly could not turn down such an opportunity.
Grief followed the Seven Cities priest up the walkway of beaten dirt. It ended at the edge of the dark cave, the open gaping mouth. Yath gestured within and backed away. Keeping a wary eye on the priest, Grief leant forward, cast a quick glance in and flinched back, stunned. ‘A throat!’ he called down. ‘They carved a throat!’
Ho, his eyes closed, nodded, almost despairing. Yes, a throat. And none of our sounding stones have yet to reach bottom. There is not enough rope in all the island to descend the innards of this statue. And so the mystery only confounds us further: as there is a throat, what of a stomach? Intestines? Ought one continue deeper into this route of inquiry? Perhaps not. What would a giant statue of jade eat? More reasonably, it would have no need for sustenance. Why then a throat?
‘And what do you hear?’ Yath urged, a hand clutched at his own throat, his eyes feverishly bright.
Grief cocked his head, crouched, silent for a time. Everyone below stilled as well. ‘I hear a breeze… sighing, or whispering… like the wind through a forest in the fall.’
‘He's a strong one,’ Su whispered to Ho. Edging her head sideways, she glanced up. ‘What did you hear?’
‘Screams of the insane. You?’
She dropped her head. ‘Inconsolable weeping.’
Yath now spread both his hands over the carved jade face, his long fingers splayed. He pressed the side of his own face to it, his mouth moving silently.
‘What in Oponn's name is the fool doing now?’ Ho murmured in wonder.
Sensing something, Grief peered up. ‘What?’ He shifted to the lip of the walkway, glanced down to them uncertainly. ‘I am amazed, I'll grant you that. And if we had-’
‘Wait,’ Yath interrupted, moving away from the opening.
Something drew Grief around. Ho felt it as well, in the stirring of his own thin hair, the pressing of the cloth of his shirt against his chest. A hiss of alarm escaped Su's lips.
Roaring burst from the mouth in a rushing torrent. Grief ducked but an explosion of air erupted from the mouth like the giant's own exhalation of breath. It plucked the man from the landing and threw him flying across the cavern. Everyone clapped hands to their heads as their ears popped. Several fell, screaming excruciating pain. A storm of dust roiled about the cavern blocking all vision, while above them Yath laughed and howled like a madman possessed.
As the dust settled Ho found the knot of inmates who had gathered around the fallen Malazan. He pushed his way through; Treat was there, kneeling at the side of his friend, who lay motionless.
‘Bring the next one!’ Yath ordered from the walkway, but no one listened. Everyone was shouting at him at once: when did he discover this capability? Why hadn't he shared his knowledge? How had he come to it? Was it conscious, or merely reflexive? What of the qualities of the air?
Ho stood silent, looking down at the dead man. The fellow had been difficult, brusque, highhanded even, but he had liked him. And none of them had even suspected what Yath had intended. That is, none except Su.
Treat raised a hand and slapped it hard across his dead friend's face. Inmates took hold of the man to pull him away, but Grief coughed, wincing, and covered his face with both hands. He groaned. ‘Hood take me, that hurt.’
Ho gaped — this was impossible! The man flew right over their heads! How… without magic… how? Treat
