Prayed the goddess would deign to hear his words, his warning, and, finally, his offer.
All hovered on the cusp. Darkness had been defeated… somehow. He wondered at that, but not for long- there was no time for such idle musings. This tortured fragment of Kurald Emurlahn was awakening, and the goddess was about to arrive, to claim it for herself. To fashion a throne.
Ghosts still swirled in the shadows, warriors and soldiers from scores of long-dead civilizations. Wielding strange weapons, their bodies hidden beneath strange armour, their faces mercifully covered by ornate visors. They were singing, although that Tanno song had grown pensive, mournful, sighing soft as the wind. It had begun to rise and fall, a sussuration that chilled L’oric.
The song belonged to the Bridgeburners. Yet it seemed the Holy Desert itself had claimed it, had taken that multitude of ethereal voices for itself. And every soul that had fallen in battle in the desert’s immense history was now gathered in this place.
He came to the base of the trail leading up to Sha’ik’s hill. There were desert warriors huddled here and there, wrapped in their ochre telabas, spears thrust upright, iron points glistening with dew as the sun’s fire broke on the east horizon. Companies of Mathok’s light cavalry were forming up on the flats to L’oric’s right. The horses were jittery, the rows shifting uneven and restless. The High Mage could not see Mathok anywhere among them- nor, he realized with a chill, could he see the standards of the warleader’s own tribe.
He heard horses approach from behind and turned to see Leoman, one of his officers, and Toblakai riding up towards him.
The Toblakai’s horse was a Jhag, L’oric saw, huge and magnificent in its primal savagery, loping collected and perfectly proportionate to the giant astride its shoulders.
And that giant was a mess. Preternatural healing had yet to fully repair the terrible wounds on him. His hands were a crimson ruin. One leg had been chewed by vicious, oversized jaws.
Toblakai and his horse were dragging a pair of objects that bounced and rolled on the ends of chains, and L’oric’s eyes went wide upon seeing what they were.
‘L’oric!’ Leoman rasped as he drew rein before him. ‘Is she above?’
‘I don’t know, Leoman of the Flails.’
All three dismounted, and L’oric saw Toblakai favouring his mangled leg.
‘Where is Febryl hiding?’ Leoman asked as the four of them began the ascent.
Toblakai answered. ‘Dead. I forgot to tell you some things. I killed him. And I killed Bidithal. I would have killed Ghost Hands and Korbolo Dom, but I could not find them.’
L’oric rubbed a hand across his brow, and it came away wet and oily. Yet he could still see his breath.
Toblakai went on, inexorably. ‘And when I went into Korbolo’s tent, I found Kamist Reloe. He’d been assassinated. So had Henaras.’
L’oric shook himself and said to Leoman, ‘Did you receive Sha’ik’s last commands? Shouldn’t you be with the Dogslayers?’
The warrior grunted. ‘Probably. We’ve just come from there.’
‘They’re all dead,’ Toblakai said. ‘Slaughtered in the night. The ghosts of Raraku were busy-though none dared oppose me.’ He barked a laugh. ‘As Ghost Hands could tell you, I have ghosts of my own.’
L’oric stumbled on the trail. He reached up and gripped Leoman’s arm. ‘Slaughtered?
‘Yes, High Mage. I’m surprised you didn’t know. We still have the desert warriors. We can still win this, just not here and not now. Thus, we need to convince Sha’ik to leave-’
‘That won’t be possible,’ L’oric cut in. ‘The goddess is coming, is almost here. It’s too late for that, Leoman. Moments from being too late for everything-’
They clambered over the crest.
And there stood Sha’ik.
Helmed and armoured, her back to them as she stared southward.
L’oric wanted to cry out. For he saw what his companions could not see.
The goddess had not lost her memories. Indeed, rage had carved their likenesses, every detail, as mockingly solid and real-seeming as those carved trees in the forest of stone. And she could caress them, crooning her hatred like a lover’s song, lingering with a touch promising murder, though the one who had wronged her was, if not dead, then in a place that no longer mattered.
The hate was all that mattered now. Her fury at his weaknesses. Oh, others in the tribe played those games often enough. Bodies slipped through the furs from hut to hut when the stars fell into their summer alignment, and she herself had more than once spread her legs to another woman’s husband, or an eager, clumsy youth.
But her heart had been given to the one man with whom she lived. That law was sacrosanct.
Oh, but he’d been so sensitive. His hands following his eyes in the fashioning of forbidden images of that other woman, there in the hidden places. He’d used those hands to close about his own heart, to give it to another-without a thought as to who had once held it for herself.
Another, who would not even give her heart in return-she had seen to that, with vicious words and challenging accusations. Enough to encourage the others to banish her for ever.
But not before the bitch killed all but one of her kin.
Foolish, stupid man, to have given his love to that woman.
Her rage had not died with the Ritual, had not died when she herself-too shattered to walk-had been severed from the Vow and left in a place of eternal darkness. And every curious spirit that had heard her weeping, that had drawn close in sympathy-well, they had fed her hungers, and she had taken their powers. Layer upon layer. For they too had been foolish and stupid, wayward and inclined to squander those powers on meaningless things. But she had a purpose.
The children swarmed the surface of the world. And who was their mother? None other than the bitch who had been banished.
And their father?
Oh yes, she went to him. On that last night. She did. He reeked of her when they dragged him into the light the following morning. Reeked of her. The truth was there in his eyes.
A look she would-could-never forget.
Vengeance was a beast long straining at its chains. Vengeance was all she had ever wanted.
Vengeance was about to be unleashed.
And even Raraku could not stop it. The children would die.
She could see the path opening, the way ahead clear and inviting. A tunnel walled in spinning, writhing shadows.
It would be good to walk again.
To feel warm flesh and the heat of blood.
To taste water. Food.
To breathe.
To kill.
Unmindful and unhearing, Sha’ik made her way down the slope. The basin awaited her, that field of battle. She saw Malazan scouts on the ridge opposite, one riding back to the encampment, the others simply
