Memories of Ice

'Are they guardians as well?' Paran asked as they resumed the descent.

'Not directly. I suffice, mortal. Unwitting servants, perhaps. Your servants.'

'Mine? I don't need servants — I don't want servants. Furthermore, I don't care what the Azath expects of me. The House is mistaken in its faith, Raest, and you can tell it that for me. Tell it to find another … another whatever I am supposed to be.'

'You are the Master of the Deck. Such things cannot be undone.'

'The what? Hood's breath, the Azath had better find a way of undoing that choice, Jaghut,' Paran growled.

'It cannot be undone, as I've already told you. A Master is needed, so here you are.'

'I don't want it!'

'I weep a river of tears for your plight, mortal. Ah, we have arrived.'

They stood on a landing. Paran judged that they had gone down six, perhaps seven levels into the bowels of the earth. The stone walls had disappeared, leaving only gloom, the ground underfoot a mat of snaking roots.

'I can go no further, Master of the Deck,' Raest said. 'Walk into the darkness.'

'And if I refuse?'

'Then I kill you.'

'Unforgiving bastard, this Azath,' Paran muttered.

'I kill you, not for the Azath, but for the wasted effort of this journey. Mortal, you've no sense of humour.'

'And you think you do?' the captain retorted.

'If you refuse to go further, then … nothing. Apart from irritating me, that is. The Azath is patient. You will make the journey eventually, though the privilege of my escort occurs but once, and that once is now.'

'Meaning I won't have your cheery company next time? How will I cope?'

'Miserably, if there was justice in the world.'

Paran faced the darkness. 'And is there?'

'You ask that of a Jaghut? Now, do we stand here for ever?'

'All right, all right,' the captain sighed. 'Pick any direction?'

Raest shrugged. 'They are all one to me.'

Grinning in spite of himself, Paran strode forward. Then he paused and half turned. 'Raest, you said the Azath has need for a Master of the Deck. Why? What's happened?'

The Jaghut bared his tusks. 'A war has begun.'

Paran fought back a sudden shiver. 'A war? Involving the Houses of the Azath?'

'No entity will be spared, mortal. Not the Houses, not the gods. Not you, human, nor a single one of your short-lived, insignificant comrades.'

Paran grimaced. 'I've enough wars to deal with as it is, Raest.'

'They are all one.'

'I don't want to think about any of this.'

'Then don't.'

After a moment, Paran realized his glare was wasted on the Jaghut. He swung about and resumed his journey. With his third step his boot struck flagstone instead of root, and the darkness around him dissolved, revealing, in a faint, dull yellow light, a vast concourse. Its edges, visible a hundred paces or more in every direction, seemed to drift back into gloom. Of Raest and the wooden stairs there was no sign. Paran's attention was drawn to the flagstones beneath him.

Carved into their bleached surfaces were cards of the Deck of Dragons. No, more than just the Deck of Dragons — there's cards here I don't recognize. Lost Houses, and countless forgotten Unaligned. Houses, and … The captain stepped forward, crouched down to study one image. As he focused his attention on it the world around him faded, and he felt himself moving into the carved scene.

A chill wind slid across his face, the air smelling of mud and wet fur. He could feel the earth beneath his boots, chill and yielding. Somewhere in the distance crows cackled. The strange hut he had seen in the carving now stood before him, long and humped, the huge bones and long tusks comprising its framework visible between gaps in the thick, umber fur-skins clothing it. Houses. and Holds, the first efforts at building. People once dwelt within such structures, like living inside the rib-cage of a dragon. Gods, those tusks are huge — whatever beast these bones came from must have been massive.

I can travel at will, it seems. Into each and every card, of every Deck that ever existed. Amidst the surge of wonder and excitement he felt ran an undercurrent of terror. The Deck possessed a host of unpleasant places.

And this one?

A small stone-lined hearth smouldered before the hut's entrance. Wreathed in the smoke was a rack made of branches, on which hung strips of meat. The clearing, Paran now saw, was ringed with weathered skulls — doubtless from the beasts whose bones formed the framework of the hut itself. The skulls faced inward, and he could see by the long, yellowed molars in the jaws that the animals had been eaters of plants, not flesh.

Paran approached the hut's entrance. The skulls of carnivores hung down from the doorway's ivory frame, forcing him to duck as he entered.

Swiftly abandoned, from the looks of it. As if the dwellers just left but moments ago … At the far end sat twin thrones, squat and robust, made entirely of bones, on a raised dais of ochre-stained human skulls — well, close enough to human in any case. More like T'lan Imass…

Knowledge blossomed in his mind. He knew the name of this place, knew it deep in his soul. The Hold of the Beasts. long before the First Throne. this was the heart of the T'lan Imass's power — their spirit world, when they were still flesh and blood, when they still possessed spirits to be worshipped and revered. Long before they initiated the Ritual of Tellann. and so came to outlast their own pantheon …

A realm, then, abandoned. Lost to its makers. What then, is the Warren of Tellann that the T'lan Imass now use? Ah, that warren must have been born from the Ritual itself, a physical manifestation of their Vow of Immortality, perhaps. Aspected, not of life, nor even death. Aspected. of dust.

He stood unmoving for a time, struggling to comprehend the seemingly depthless layers of tragedy that were the burden of the T'lan Imass.

Oh my, they've outlasted their own gods. They exist in a world of dust in truth — memories untethered, an eternal existence … no end in sight. Sorrow flooded him in a profound, heart-rending wave. Beru fend. so alone, now. So alone for so long. yet now they are gathering, coming to the child seeking benediction. and something more …

Paran stepped back — and stood on the flagstones once again. With an effort he pulled his eyes from the carved Hold of Beasts — but why were there two thrones and not just one? — as he now knew the card was called. Another etched stone, a dozen paces to his left, caught his attention. A throbbing, crimson glow suffused the air directly above it.

He walked to it, looked down.

The image of a sleeping woman, as seen from above, dominated the flagstone. Her flesh seemed to spin and swirl. Paran slowly lowered himself into a crouch, his eyes narrowing. Her skin was depthless, revealing ever more detail as the captain's vision was drawn ever closer. Skin, not skin. Forests, sweeps of bedrock, the seething floor of the oceans, fissures in the flesh of the world — she is Burn! She is the Sleeping Goddess.

Then he saw the flaw, the marring a dark, suppurating welt. Waves of nausea swept through Paran, yet he would not look away. There, at the wound's heart, a humped, kneeling, broken figure. Chained. Chained to Burn's own flesh. From the figure, down the length of the chains, poison flowed into the Sleeping Goddess.

She sensed the sickness coming, sinking claws into her. Sensed. and chose to sleep. Less than two thousand years ago, she chose to sleep. She sought to escape the prison of her own flesh, in order to do battle with the one who was killing that flesh. She — oh gods above and below! She made of herself a weapon! Her entire spirit, all its power, into a single forging … a hammer, a hammer capable of breaking. breaking anything. And Burn then found a man to wield it…

Caladan Brood.