Memories of Ice

'She has clawed herself-'

'She cannot lift her arms, friend. And look, the nails are clean. She did not inflict this wound on herself.'

'Then who did? I've been here all this time. Not even the old Rhivi woman has visited since I last looked upon her — and there was no wound then.'

'As I said, there is a mystery here …'

'Coll, I don't like this. Those nightmares — could they be real? Whatever pursues her in her dreams — are they able to physically damage her?'

'We see the evidence-'

'Aye, though I scarce believe my own eyes. Coll, this cannot go on.'

'Agreed, Murillio. First chance in Capustan. '

'The very first. Let's move the wagon to the very front of the line — the sooner we reach the streets the better.'

'As you say.'

CHAPTER TWENTY

It is a most ancient tale. Two gods from before the time of men and women. Longing and love and loss, the beasts doomed to wander through the centuries.

A tale of mores, told with the purpose of no resolution. Its meaning, gentle readers, lies not in a soul- warming conclusion, but in all that is unattainable in this world.

Who then could have imagined such closure?

Winter's Love

Silbaratha

The heart of the vast palace lay buried in the cliff. Seas born to the east of the bay battered the cliff's jagged hooves, lifting spray to darken the rockface. Immediately beyond the broken shore's rough spars, the waters of Coral Bay pitched into inky blackness, fathoms deep. The city's harbour was little more than a narrow, crooked cut on the lee side of the cliff, a depthless fissure that opened a split nearly bisecting the city. It was a harbour without docks. The sheer faces of the sides had been carved into long piers, surmounted by causeways. At high tide level, mooring rings had been driven into the living stone. Broad sweeps of thick netting, twice the height of an ocean trader's masts, spanned the entire breadth of water from the harbour's mouth all the way to its apex. Where no tethered anchor could touch the fjord's bottom, and where the shores themselves offered no strand, no shallows whatsoever, a ship's anchors were drawn upward. The cat-men, as they were called — that strange, almost tribal collection of workers who lived with their wives and children in shacks on the netting and whose sole profession was the winching of anchors and the tethering of sway-lines — had made of the task artistry in motion.

From the wide, sea-facing battlement of the palace, the sealskin-roofed huts and driftwood sheds of the cat-men were like a scattering of brown pebbles and beach detritus, snagged on netting that was thread-like with distance. No figures scampered between the structures. No smoke rose from the angled hood-chimneys. Had he an eagle's eye, Toc the Younger would have had no trouble seeing the salt-dried bodies tangled here and there in the netting; as it was, he could only take the Seerdomin's word for it that those small, bedraggled smudges were indeed corpses.

The trader ships no longer came to Coral. The cat-men had starved. Every man, every woman, every child. A legendary and unique people within the city had become extinct.

The observation had been delivered in a detached tone, but Toc sensed an undercurrent in the nameless warrior-priest's words. The huge man stood close, one hand gripping Toc's left arm above the elbow. To keep him from flinging himself from the cliff. To keep him standing upright. What had begun as one task had quickly become the other. This reprieve from the clutches of the Matron was but temporary. The Malazan's broken body had no strength left within it. Muscles had atrophied. Warped bones and seized joints gave him the flexibility of dry wood. His lungs were filled with fluid, making his drawn breath a wheeze, his exhalation a milky gurgle.

The Seer had wanted him to see. Coral. The palace fortress — often assailed, by Elingarth warships and pirate fleets, never taken. His vast cordon of mages, the thousand or more K'Chain Che'Malle K'ell Hunters, the elite legions of his main army. The defeats to the north meant little to him; indeed, he would yield Setta, Lest and Maurik; he would leave the invaders to their long, exhausting march — through scorched lands that offered no sustenance; where even the wells had been fouled. As for the enemies to the south, there was now a vast stretch of rough sea to impede their progress — a sea the Seer had filled with shattered mountains of ice. There were no boats to be found on the far shore in any case. A journey to the western end of Ortnal Cut would take months. True, the T'lan Imass could cross the water, as wave-borne dust. But it would have to fight the fierce currents the entire way, currents that plunged into the depths on cold streams, that swept in submerged rivers eastward, out into the ocean.

The Seer was well satisfied, said the nameless Seerdomin. Pleased enough to yield Toc this momentary mercy. Out from his Mother's arms.

The chill, salty wind whipped at his face, tugged at his ragged, long, dirty hair. His clothes were little more than crusted strips — the Seerdomin had given him his cloak, which Toc had wrapped about himself like a blanket. It had been this gesture that had hinted to the Malazan that the man at his side still possessed a shred of humanity.

The discovery had brought water to his eyes.

Clarity had been reborn within him, aided by the Seerdomin's detailed account of the battles to the south. Perhaps it was insanity's final, most convincing delusion, but Toc clung to it none the less. He stared southward across the wind-whipped seas. The mountainous shoreline on the far side was barely visible.

They had surely reached it by now. They might well be standing on the beach, staring bleakly towards him, and all that lay in between. Baaljagg would not be discouraged. A goddess hid within her, driving ever onward, ever onward, to find her mate.

The mate who hides within me. We'd travelled, side by side, all unknowing of the secrets within each other. Ah, such brutal irony.

And perhaps Tool would not be daunted. Time and distance meant nothing to the T'lan Imass. The same, no doubt, was true for the three Seguleh — they still had their singular message to deliver, after all. Their people's invitation to war.

But Lady Envy…

Mistress of adventure, seduced by serendipity — true, she was angry, now. That much was clear from the Seerdomin's reportage. Affronted was a better description, Toc corrected. Sufficient to see her temper flare, but that temper was not a driven thing. She was not one to smoulder, not one to kindle deep-bedded fires of vengeance. She existed for distraction, for wayward whims.

Lady Envy, and likely her wounded, hurting dog, Garath, would turn away now, at last. Tired of the hunt, they would not set to themselves the task of pursuit, not across this violent sea with its glowing, awash leviathans of jagged ice.

He told himself not to be disappointed, but a pang of sadness twisted within him at the thought. He missed her, not as a woman — not precisely, in any case. No, the immortal face she presents, I think. Unburdened, a trickster's glint to her millennial regard. I teased her, once. danced around that nature. made her stamp her foot and frown. As only an immortal could do when the unlikely brunt of such mocking. I turned the knife. Gods, did I truly possess such audacity?

Well, dear Lady, I humbly apologize, now. I am not the brave man I once was, if it was indeed bravery and not simple stupidity. Mocking's been taken from my nature. Never to return, and perhaps that's a good thing. Ah, I can see you nod most wholeheartedly at that. Mortals should not mock, for all the obvious reasons. Detachment belongs to gods, because only they can afford its price. So be it.

Thank you, Lady Envy. No recriminations will pursue you. It was well run.

'You should have seen Coral in its day, Malazan.'