Deadhouse Gates

Bult glared about until he found Gesler. 'Ready your ship, Captain.'

'Aye, sir.'

Stormy muttered beside the historian, 'None of this smells right, sir.'

Duiker slowly nodded.

Leoman led them unerringly across the clay plain, through impenetrable darkness, to another cache of supplies, this one stored beneath a lone slab of limestone. As he unwrapped the hardbread, dried meat and fruits, Felisin sat down on the cool ground and wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to stop shivering.

Heboric sat beside her. 'Still no sign of the Toblakai. With Oponn's luck bits of him are souring that Soletaken's stomach.'

'He fights like no other,' Leoman said, sharing out the food. 'And that is why Sha'ik chose him-'

'An obvious miscalculation,' the ex-priest said. 'The woman's dead.'

'Her third guardian would have prevented that, but Sha'ik relinquished its binding. I sought to change her mind, but failed. All foreseen, each of us trapped within our roles.'

'Convenient, that. Tell me, is the prophecy as clear on the rebellion's end? Do we now face a triumphant age of Apocalypse unending? Granted, there's an inherent contradiction, but never mind that.'

'Raraku and Dryjhna are one,' Leoman said. 'As eternal as chaos and death. Your Malazan Empire is but a brief flare, already fading. We are born from darkness and to darkness we return. These are the truths you so fear, and in your fear discount.'

'I am no-one's marionette,' Felisin snapped.

Leoman's only reply to that was a soft laugh.

'If this is what becoming Sha'ik demands, then you'd better go back to that withered corpse at the gate and wait for someone else to show up.'

'Becoming Sha'ik shall not shatter your delusions of independence,' Leoman said, 'unless, of course, you will it.'

Listen to us. Too dark to see a thing. We are naught but three disembodied voices in futile counterpoint, here on this desert stage. Holy Raraku mocks our flesh, makes of us no more than sounds at war with a vast silence.

Soft footfalls approached.

'Come and eat,' Leoman called out.

Something slapped wetly to the ground close to Felisin. The stench of raw meat wafted over her.

'A bear with white fur,' the Toblakai rumbled. 'For a moment, I dreamed I had returned to my home in Laederon. Nethaur, we call such beasts. But we fought on sand and rock, not snow and ice. I have brought its skin and its head and its claws, for the beast was twice as large as any I'd seen before.'

'Oh, I just can't wait for daylight,' Heboric said.

'The next dawn is the last before the oasis,' the giant savage said to Leoman. 'She must undertake the ritual.'

There was silence.

Heboric cleared his throat. 'Felisin-'

'Four voices,' she whispered. 'No bone, no flesh, just these feeble noises that claim their selves. Four points of view. The Toblakai is pure faith, yet he shall one day lose it all-'

'It has begun,' Leoman murmured.

'And Heboric, the rendered priest without faith, who shall one day discover it anew. Leoman, the master deceiver, who sees the world with eyes more cynical than Heboric in his fitting blindness, yet is ever searching the darkness … for hope.

'And finally, Felisin. Ah, now who is this woman in a child's raiment? Pleasures of the flesh devoid of pleasure. Selves surrendered one after another. Kindness yearned for behind every cruel word she utters. She believes in nothing. A crucible fired clean, empty. Heboric possesses hands unseen and what they now grasp is a power and a truth that he cannot yet sense. Felisin's hands … ah, they have grasped and touched, they have been slick and they have been soiled, and yet have held nothing. Life slips through them like a ghost.

'All was incomplete, Leoman, until Heboric and I came to you. You and your tragic child companion. The Book, Leoman.'

She heard him remove the clasps, heard the tome pulled free of its hide wrapping. 'Open it,' she told him.

'You must open it — nor is it dawn! The ritual-'

'Open it.'

'You-'

'Where is your faith, Leoman? You do not understand, do you? The test is not mine alone. The test is for each of us. Here. Now. Open the Book, Leoman.'

She heard his harsh breathing, heard it slow, heard it gentled by a fierce will. The skin cover crackled softly.

'What do you see, Leoman?'

He grunted. 'Nothing, of course. There is no light to see by.'

'Look again.'

She heard him and the others gasp. A glow the colour of spun gold had begun emanating from the Book of Dryjhna. On all sides came a distant whisper, then a roar. 'The Whirlwind awakens — but not here, not in the heart of Raraku. The Book, Leoman, what do you see?'

He reached down to touch the first page, peeled it back, then the next, then the one after that. 'But this is not possible — it is blank! Every page!'

'You see what you see, Leoman. Close the Book, give it to the Toblakai, now.'

The giant edged forward and crouched down, his massive, bloodstained hands accepting the Book. He did not hesitate.

A warm light bathed his face as he stared down at the first page. She saw tears fill his eyes and run crooked tracks down his scarred cheeks.

'Such beauty,' she whispered to him. 'And beauty makes you weep. Do you know why you feel such sorrow? No, not yet. One day… Close the Book, Toblakai.

'Heboric-'

'No.'

Leoman slid a dagger free, but was stilled by Felisin's hand.

'No,' the ex-priest repeated. 'My touch-'

'Aye,' she said. 'Your touch.'

'No.'

'You were tested before, Heboric, and you failed. Oh, how you failed. You fear you will fail again-'

'I do not, Felisin,' Heboric's tone was sharp, certain. 'That least of all. I shall not be part of this ritual, nor shall I risk laying hands on that cursed Book.'

'What matter if he opens the Book?' the Toblakai growled. 'He's as blind as an enkar'al. Let me kill him, Sha'ik Reborn. Let his blood seal this ritual.'

'Do it.'

The Toblakai moved in a blur, the wooden sword almost unseen as it slashed for Heboric's head. Had it struck it would have shattered the old man's skull, spraying bits of it for ten paces or more. Instead, Heboric's hands flared, one the hue of dried blood, the other bestial and fur-backed. They shot up to intercept the swing, each closing on one of the giant's wrists — and stopping the swing dead. The wooden sword flew out of the Toblakai's hands, vanishing into the darkness beyond the Book's pale glow.

The giant grunted in pain.

Heboric released the Toblakai's wrists, grasped the giant by his neck and belt, then, in a surge, threw him out into the darkness. There was a thud as he struck and the clay trembled beneath their feet.

Heboric staggered back, his face twisted in shock, and the blazing rage that entwined his hands winked out.

'We could see, then,' Felisin told him. 'Your hands. You were never forsaken, Heboric, no matter what the priests may have believed when they did what they did. You were simply being