Toll the Hounds

out.’

Raest said, ‘Your suspicion that the K’rul Temple is central to this matter is probably accurate. Determining the specifics, however, would best be served by enlisting the assistance of the Master of the Deck.’

“That’s what we wanted in the first place!’ Antsy shouted.

‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’

Antsy glared up at the infuriating lich, bit down a few retorts that might prove unwise. He drew a deep breath to calm himself, and then said in a nice, quiet tone, ‘So let’s see if we can send him a message, shall we?’

‘Follow me,’ Raest said.

Back into the corridor, turning right, five strides to a narrow door on the left that led into the squat round tower, up the spiral staircase, arriving into the upper level-a circular room with the walls bearing oversized painted renditions of the cards of the Deck of Dragons. Something twisted the eye in this chamber and Picker almost staggered.

‘Gods below,’ muttered Antsy. ‘This place is magicked-makes me sick to the stomach.’

The images swirled, blurred, shifted in rippling waves that crossed from every conceivable direction, a clash of convergences inviting vertigo no matter where the eye turned. Picker found herself gasping. She squeezed shut her eyes, heard Antsy cursing as he backed out of the room.

Raest’s dry voice drifted faintly into her head. ‘The flux has increased. There appears to be some manner of… deterioration. Even so, Corporal Picker, if you focus your mind and concentrate on Ganoes Paran, the efficacy of your will may prove sufficient to anchor in place the Master’s own card, which perhaps will awaken his attention. Unless of course he is otherwise engaged. Should your willpower prove unequal to the task, I am afraid that what remains of your sanity will be torn away. Your mind itself will be shredded by the maelstrom, leaving you a drooling wreck.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Such a state of being may not be desirable. Of course, should you achieve it, you will not care one way or the other, which you may consider a blessing.’

‘Well,’ she replied, ‘that’s just great. Give me a moment, will you?’

She tugged from her memory the captain’s not unpleasant face, sought to fix it before her mind’s eye. Ganoes Varan, pay attention. Captain, wherever you are. This is Corporal Picker, in Darujhistan. Ganoes, I need to talk to you.

She saw him now, framed as would a card be framed in the Deck of Dragons. She saw that he was wearing a uniform, that of the Malazan soldier he had once been-was that her memory, conjuring up her last sight of him? But no, he looked older. He looked beaten down, smeared in dust. Spatters of dried blood on his scarred leather jerkin. The scene behind him was one of smoke and ruination, the blasted remnants of rolling farmland, tracts defined by low stone walls, but noth-ing green in sight. She thought she could see bodies on that dead earth.

Paran’s gaze seemed to sharpen on her. She saw his mouth move but no sound reached her.

Ganoes! Captain-listen, fust concentrate back on me.

‘-not the time, Corporal. We’ve landed in a mess. But listen, if you can get word to them, try. Warn them, Picker. Warn them off.’

Captain-someone’s after the temple-K’rul’s Temple. Someone’s trying to kill us-

‘-jhistan can take care of itself, Pick. Baruk knows what to do-trust him. You need to find out who wants it. Talk to Kruppe. Talk to the Eel. But listen-pass on my warning, please.’

Pass it on to who? Who are you talking about, Captain? And what was that about Kruppe?

The image shredded before her eyes, and she felt something like claws tear into her mind. Screaming, she sought to reel back, pull away. The claws sank deeper, and all at once Picker realized that there was intent, there was malice. Something had arrived, and it wanted her.

Shrieking, she felt herself being dragged forward, into a swirling madness, into the maw of something vast and hungry, something that wanted to feed on her. For a long, long time, until her soul was gone, devoured, until nothing of her was left.

Pressure and darkness on all sides, ripping into her. She could not move.

In the midst of the savage chaos, she felt and heard the arrival of a third presence, a force flowing like a beast to draw up near her-she sensed sudden attention, a cold-eyed regard, and a voice murmured close, ‘Not here. Not now. There were torcs once, that you carried. There was a debt, still unpaid. Not now. Not here,’

The beast pounced.

Whatever had grasped hold of Picker, whatever was now feeding on her, sud-denly roared In pain, in fury, and the claws tore free, slashed against its new at-tiicker.

Snarls, the air trembling to thunder as two leviathans clashed.

Dwarfed, forgotten, small as an ant, Picker crawled away, leaking out her life in a crimson trail. She was weeping, shivering in the aftermath of the thing’s feed-ing. It had been so… intractable, so horribly… indifferent. To who she was, to her right to her own life. My soul… my soul was… food. That’s all. Abyss

She needed to find a way out. All round her chaos swarmed and shivered as the great forces battled on, there in her wake. She needed to tell Antsy things, important things. Kruppe. Baruk. And perhaps the most important detail of all. When they’d walked into the House, she had seen that the two bodies that had been lying on the floor on her last visit were gone. Gone. Two assassins, said Paran.

And one of them was Vorcan. She’s in the city. She’s out there, Antsy-Concentrate! The room. In the tower-find the room-Crawling, weeping. Lost.

Antsy loosed a dozen curses when Raest dragged Picker’s unconscious body on to the landing. ‘What did you do?’

‘Alas,’ the Jaghut said, stepping back as Antsy fell to his knees beside the woman, ‘my warnings of the risk were insufficient.’

As Antsy set his hand upon Picker’s brow he hissed and snatched it back. ‘She’s ice cold!’

‘Yet her heart struggles on,’ Raest said.

‘Will she come back? Raest, you damned lich! Will she come back?’

‘I don’t know. She spoke, for a time, before the situation… changed. Presum-ably, she was speaking to Ganoes Paran.’

‘ ‘What did she say?’

‘Questions, for the most part. I was able, however, to glean a single name. Kruppe.’

Antsy bared his teeth. He set his hand again upon her forehead. Slightly warmer? Possibly, or this time he’d been expecting it, making it less of a shock. Hard to tell which. ‘Help me get her back downstairs,’ he said.

‘Of course. And now, in return for my assistance, I will tell you what I seek from you.’

He glared up at the Jaghut. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘This time, I am, Sergeant Antsy. I wish to have a cat.’

A cult. ‘To eat?’

‘No, as a pet. It will have to be a dead cat, of course. Now, permit me to take her legs, whilst you take her arms. Perhaps some time before the hearth will re-vive her.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘No.’

This had all been his idea, and now look at what had happened. ‘Picker,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘A white one,’ said Raest.

‘What?’

‘A white cat. A dead white cat, Sergeant.’

Oh, aye, Raest. One stuffed lumpy with cussers. Here, catch, you damned bastard.

Shit, we’re down to two now. Down to two…

‘Never bargain with the dead. They want what you have and will give you what they have to get it. Your life for their death. Being dead, of course, whatever life they grab hold of just ends up slipping through their bony fingers. So you both lose.’

‘That is rather generous of you, Hinter,’ said Baruk. ‘In fact, I do not recall you being so loquacious the last time