Fire awoke in the muscles of his arms. In his shoulders. His neck. His legs shook beneath him, because he needed to stand on his toes-if he tried to move his arms further down to well below his brother’s knees, then his brother simply bent those knees and started choking again.
Fire everywhere, fire right through Beak’s body.
His legs were failing. His arms were failing. And as they failed his brother choked. Pee ran down to burn against Beak’s wrists and his face. The air was suddenly thick with worse smells and his brother never did things like this- all this mess, the terrible mistake with the rope.
Beak could not hold on, and this was the problem with being a younger brother, with being as he was. And the kicking finally stilled, the muscles of his brother’s legs becoming soft, loose. Two fingertips from one of his brother’s hands lightly brushed Beak’s hair, but they only moved when Beak himself moved, so those fingers were as still as the legs.
It was good that his brother wasn’t fighting any more. He must have loosened the rope from round his neck and was now just resting. And that was good because Beak was now on his knees, arms wrapped tight about his brother’s feet.
And there he stayed.
Until, three bells after dusk, one of the stable hands from the search party came into the barn with a lantern.
By then, the sun’s heat earlier that afternoon had ruined all his villagers, had drawn down their faces into expressions of grief, and Beak did not come back to collect them up, did not reshape them into nicer faces. Those lumps remained on the border stone that meant nothing any more, sinking down in the day after day sun.
After that last day with his brother, there was trouble aplenty in the household. But it did not last long, not long at all.
He did not know why he was thinking about his brother now, as he set ablaze every candle within him to make the world bright and to save all his friends. And before long he no longer sensed anyone else, barring the faint smudges they had become. The captain, the Fist, all the soldiers who were his friends, he let his light unfold to embrace them all, to keep them safe from that frightening, dark magic so eager to rush down upon them.
It had grown too powerful for those seven mages to contain. They had created something that would now destroy them, but Beak would not let it hurt his friends. And so he made his light burn yet brighter. He made of it a solid thing. Would it be enough? He did not know, but it had to be, for without friends there was nothing, no- one.
Brighter, hotter, so hot the wax of the candles burst into clouds of droplets, flaring bright as the sun, one after another. And, when every coloured candle was lit, why, there was white.
And yet more, for as each joined the torrent emanating from him, he felt in himself a cleansing, a scouring away, what priests called purification only they really knew nothing about purification because it had nothing to do with offerings of blood or coin and nothing to do with starving yourself and whipping your own back or endlessly chanting until the brain goes numb. Nothing like any of that. Purification, Beak now understood, was final.
Everything glowed, as if lit from fires within. The once-black stubble of crops blazed back into fierce life. Stones shone like precious gems. Incandescence raged on all sides. Fiddler saw his soldiers and he could see through, in pulsing flashes, to their very bones, the organs huddled within their cages. He saw, along one entire side of Koryk, old fractures on the ribs, the left arm, the shoulder blade, the hip. He saw three knuckle-sized dents on Cuttle’s skull beneath the now translucent helm-a rap he had taken when still a babe, soft-boned and vulnerable. He saw the damage between Smiles’s legs from all the times she savaged herself. He saw in Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas the coursing blood that held in it the power to destroy every cancer that struck him, and he was a man under siege from that disease, but it would never kill. Would not even sicken him.
He saw in Bottle coruscating waves of raw power, a refulgence devoid of all control-but that would come. It will come.
Corporal Tarr crouched down in the hole he’d dug, and the light emanating from him looked solid as iron.
Among the others he saw more than any mortal would want to see, yet he could hot close his eyes, could not look away.
Gesler and Stormy were lit in gold fire. Even Stormy’s beard and hair-all spun gold now-a brutal beauty cascading round his face, and the damned fool was laughing.
The world beyond had vanished behind an opaque, curved wall of silver fire. Vague shapes on the other side- yes, he’d seen the Tiste Edur approaching, seeking some kind of shelter.
Fiddler found he was standing, facing that wall, and now he was walking forward. Because some things matter more than others. Stepping into that silver fire, feeling it lance through his entire body, neither hot nor cold, neither pain nor joy.
He staggered suddenly, blinking, and not fifteen paces from him crouched hundreds of Tiste Edur. Waiting to die. * * *
Hanradi knelt with his gaze fixed on the sky, half of which had vanished behind a blackened wall of writhing madness. The crest had begun its toppling advance.
Sudden motion drew his eyes down.
To see a Malazan-now transformed into an apparition of white-beard, hair-the dangling finger bones were now polished, luminous, as was his armour, his weapons. Scoured, polished, even the leather of his harness looked new, supple.
The Malazan met his gaze with silver eyes, then he lifted one perfect hand, and waved them all forward.
Hanradi rose, flinging his sword aside.
His warriors saw. His warriors did the same, and as they all moved forward, the dome of silver fire all at once rushed towards them.
A piercing shriek and Hanradi turned to see his last K’risnan burst into flames-a single blinding instant, then the hapless warlock was simply ash, settling onto the ground-
Beak was happy to save them. He had understood that old sergeant. The twisted mage, alas, could not embrace such purification. Too much of his soul had been surrendered. The others-oh, they were wounded, filled with bitterness that he needed to sweep away, and so he did. Nothing was difficult any more. Nothing-At that moment, the wave of Letherii magic descended.
The Letherii commander could not see the killing field, could indeed see nothing but that swirling, burgeoning wall of eager sorcery. Its cruel hunger poured down in hissing clouds.
When it heaved forward, all illusion of control vanished.
The commander, with Sirryn Kanar cowering beside him, saw all seven of his mages plucked from the ground, dragged up into the air, into the wake of that charging wall. Screaming, flailing, then streaks of whipping blood as they were torn apart moments before vanishing into the dark storm.
The sorcery lurched, then plunged down upon the killing field.
Detonation.
Soldiers were thrown from their feet. Horses were flung onto their sides, riders tumbling or pinned as the terrified beasts rolled onto their backs. The entire ridge seemed to ripple, then buckle, and sudden slumping pulled soldiers from the edge, burying them in slides racing for the field below. Mouths were open, screams unleashed in seeming silence, the horror in so many eyes-
The collapsing wave blew apart-
Beak was driven down by the immense weight, the horrible hunger. Yet he would not retreat. Instead, he let the fire within him lash out, devouring every candle, igniting everything.
His friends, yes, the only ones he had ever known.
Survival, he realized, could only be found through purity. Of his love for them all-how so many of them had smiled at him, laughed with him. How hands clapped him on the shoulder and even, now and then, tousled his hair.
He would have liked to see the captain one last time, and maybe even kiss her. On the cheek, although of course he would have liked something far more… brave. But he was Beak, after all, and he could hold on to but one thing at a time.
Arms wrapped tight, even as the fire began to burn the muscles of his arms. His shoulders and neck. His legs.
