House of Chains

To that, Onrack made no reply. He faced the massive statue once more, head tilting as his gaze travelled upward, ever upward. To those gleaming, amber eyes.

‘There will be a gate,’ Trull Sengar persisted behind him. ‘A means of leaving this world. Why do you hesitate, T’lan Imass?’

‘I hesitate in the face of what you cannot see,’ Onrack replied. ‘There are seven, yes. But two of them are… alive.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘And this is one of them.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

An army that waits is soon an army at war with itself.

Kellanved

THE WORLD WAS ENCIRCLED IN RED. THE HUE OF OLD BLOOD, OF IRON rusting on a battlefield. It rose in a wall like a river turned on its side, crashing confused and uncertain against the rough cliffs that rose broken- toothed around the rim of Raraku. The Holy Desert’s most ancient guardians, those bleached limestone crags, now withering beneath the ceaseless storm of the Whirlwind, the raging goddess who could countenance no rival to her dominion. Who would devour the cliffs themselves in her fury.

Whilst the illusion of calm lay within her heart. The old man who had come to be known as Ghost Hands slowly clambered his way up the slope. His ageing skin was deep bronze, his tattooed, blunt and wide face as creased as a wind-clawed boulder. Small yellow flowers cloaked the ridge above him, a rare blossoming of the low- growing desert plant the local tribes called hen’bara. When dried, the flowers made a heady tea, mender of grief, balm against pain in a mortal soul. The old man scrabbled and scraped his way up the slope with something like desperation.

No life’s path is bloodless. Spill that of those blocking your path. Spill your own. Struggle on, wade the growing torrent with all the frenzy that is the brutal unveiling of self-preservation. The macabre dance in the tugging currents held no artistry, and to pretend otherwise was to sink into delusion.

Delusions. Heboric Light Touch, once priest of Fener, possessed no more delusions. He had drowned them one by one with his own hands long ago. His hands-his Ghost Hands-had proved particularly capable of such tasks. Whisperers of unseen powers, guided by a mysterious, implacable will. He knew that he had no control over them and so held no delusions. How could he?

Behind him, in the vast flat where tens of thousands of warriors and their followers were encamped amidst a city’s ruins, such clear-eyed vision was absent. The army was the strong hands, now at rest but soon to raise weapons, guided by a will that was anything but implacable, a will that was drowning in delusions. Heboric was not only different from all those below-he was their very opposite, a sordid reflection in a mangled mirror.

Hen’bara’s gift was dreamless sleep at night. The solace of oblivion.

He reached the ridge, breathing hard from the exertion, and settled down among the flowers for a moment to rest. Ghostly hands were as deft as real ones, though he could not see them-not even as the faint, mottled glow that others saw. Indeed, his vision was failing him in all things. It was an old man’s curse, he believed, to witness the horizons on all sides drawing ever closer. Even so, while the carpet of yellow surrounding him was little more than a blur to his eyes, the spicy fragrance filled his nostrils and left a palpable taste on his tongue.

The desert sun’s heat was bludgeoning, oppressive. It had a power of its own, transforming the Holy Desert into a prison, pervasive and relentless. Heboric had grown to despise that heat, to curse Seven Cities, to cultivate an abiding hatred for its people. And he was trapped among them, now. The Whirlwind’s barrier was indiscriminate, impassable both to those on the outside and those within-at the discretion of the Chosen One.

Movement to one side, the blur of a slight, dark-haired figure. Who then settled down beside him.

Heboric smiled. ‘I thought I was alone.’

‘We are both alone, Ghost Hands.’

‘Of that, Felisin, neither of us needs reminding.’ Felisin Younger, but that is a name I cannot speak out loud. The mother who adopted you, lass, has her own secrets. ‘What is that you have in your hands?’

‘Scrolls,’ the girl replied. ‘From Mother. She has, it seems, rediscovered her hunger for writing poetry.’

The tattooed ex-priest grunted, ‘I thought it was a love, not a hunger.’

‘You are not a poet,’ she said. ‘In any case, to speak plainly is a true talent; to bury beneath obfuscation is a poet’s calling these days.’

‘You are a brutal critic, lass,’ Heboric observed.

‘Call to Shadow, she has called it. Or, rather, she continues a poem her own mother began.’

‘Ah, well, Shadow is a murky realm. Clearly she has chosen a style to match the subject, perhaps to match that of her own mother.’

‘Too convenient, Ghost Hands. Now, consider the name by which Korbolo Dom’s army is now called. Dogslayers. That, old man, is poetic. A name fraught with diffidence behind its proud bluster. A name to match Korbolo Dom himself, who stands square-footed in his terror.’ Heboric reached out and plucked the first flower head. He held it to his nose a moment before dropping it into the leather bag at his belt. ‘ “Square-footed in his terror.” An arresting image, lass. But I see no fear in the Napan. The Malazan army mustering in Aren is nothing but three paltry legions of recruits. Commanded by a woman devoid of any relevant experience. Korbolo Dom has no reason to be afraid.’

The young girl’s laugh was a trill that seemed to cut an icy path through the air. ‘No reason, Ghost Hands? Many reasons, in fact. Shall I list them? Leoman. Toblakai. Bidithal. L’oric. Mathok. And, the one he finds most terrifying of all: Sha’ik. My mother. The camp is a snake-pit, seething with dissent. You have missed the last spitting frenzy. Mother has banished Mallick Rel and Pullyk Alar. Cast them out. Korbolo Dom loses two more allies in the power struggle-’

‘There is no power struggle,’ Heboric growled, tugging at a handful of flowers. ‘They are fools to believe that one is possible. Sha’ik has thrown those two out because treachery flows in their veins. She is indifferent to Korbolo Dom’s feelings about it.’

‘He believes otherwise, and that conviction is more important than what might or might not be true. And how does Mother respond to the aftermath of her pronouncements?’ Felisin swiped the plants before her with the scrolls. ‘With poetry.’

‘The gift of knowledge,’ Heboric muttered. ‘The Whirlwind Goddess whispers in the Chosen One’s ear. There are secrets within the Warren of Shadow, secrets containing truths that are relevant to the Whirlwind itself.’

‘What do you mean?’

Heboric shrugged. His bag was nearly full. ‘Alas, I possess my own prescient knowledge.’ And little good it does me. ‘The sundering of an ancient warren scattered fragments throughout the realms. The Whirlwind Goddess possesses power, but it was not her own, not at first. Just one more fragment, wandering lost and in pain. What was the goddess, I wonder, when she first stumbled onto the Whirlwind? Some desert tribe’s minor deity, I suspect. A spirit of the summer wind, protector of some whirlpool spring, possibly. One among many, without question. Of course, once she made that fragment her own, it did not take long for her to destroy her old rivals, to assert complete, ruthless domination over the Holy Desert.’

‘A quaint theory, Ghost Hands,’ Felisin drawled. ‘But it speaks nothing of the Seven Holy Cities, the Seven Holy Books, the prophecy of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic.’

Heboric snorted. ‘Cults feed upon one another, lass. Whole myths are co-opted to fuel the faith. Seven Cities was born of nomadic tribes, yet the legacy preceding them was that of an ancient civilization, which in turn rested uneasy on the foundations of a still older empire-the First Empire of the T’lan Imass. That which survives in memory or falters and fades away is but chance and circumstance.’

‘Poets may know hunger,’ she commented drily, ‘but historians devour. And devouring murders language, makes of it a dead thing.’