Dust of Dreams

could feel his will, closing like a fist about her. We had our chance-before this. We could have drifted away. He gave us that. But not one T’lan Imass had done any such thing. Instead, we fell inside ourselves, ever deeper, that endless eating and spitting out and eating all we spat out-this is the seductive sustenance of hatred and spite, of rage and vengeance.

He could have led us off a cliff and we would not have noticed.

The three Orshayn bonecasters stepped forward. Ulag Togtil spoke. ‘First Sword, we await your command.’

Onos T’oolan slowly faced south, where the sky above the horizon seemed to boil like pitch. And then he swung north, where a distant cloud caught the sun’s dying light. ‘We go no farther,’ the First Sword said. ‘We shall be dust.’

And what of our dark dreams, First Sword?

Such was his power that he heard her thought and so turned to her. ‘Nom Kala, hold fast to your dreams. There will be an answer. T’lan Imass, we are upon a time of killing.’

The statues shifted. Some straightened. Some hunched down as if beneath terrible burdens. The statues-my kin. My sisters, my brothers. There are none to look upon us now, none to see us, none to wonder at who we once were, at who shaped us with such… loving hands. As she watched, they began, one by one, falling into dust.

None to witness. Dust of dreams, dust of all that we never achieved. Dust of what we might have been and what we cannot help but be.

Statues are never mute. Their silence is a roar of words. Will you hear? Will you listen?

She was the last, alone with Onos T’oolan himself.

‘You possess no rage, Nom Kala.’

‘No, First Sword, I do not.’

‘What might you find to serve in its place?’

‘I do not know. The humans defeated us. They were better than we were, it is as simple as that. I feel only grief, First Sword.’

‘And is there no anger in grief, Nom Kala?’

Yes. It may be that there is. But if I must search for it-

‘There is time,’ said Onos T’oolan.

She bowed to him, and released herself.

Onos T’oolan watched as Nom Kala fell in a gusting cloud. In his mind a figure was approaching, hands held out as if beseeching. He knew that harrowed face, that lone glittering eye. What could he say to this stranger he had once known? He too was a stranger, after all. Yes, they had once known each other. But now look at us, both so intimate with dust.

Nom Kala’s anguish returned to him. Her thoughts had bled with dread power-she was young. She was, he realized, what the Imass might have become, had the Ritual not taken them, had it not stolen their future. A future of pathos. Sordid surrender. The loss of dignity, a slow, slow death.

No, Toc the Younger. I give you nothing but silence. And its torrid roar.

Will you hear? Will you listen?

Any of you?

She had dwelt like a parasite deep in its entrails. She had seen, all around her, the broken remnants of some long abandoned promise, the broken clutter, the spilled fluids. But there had been heat, and a pulsing presence as if the very stone was alive-she should have understood the significance of such things, but her mind had been wallowing in its own darkness, a lifeless place of pointless regrets.

Standing not six paces from the two gold-skinned foreigners, she had turned and, like them, looked with wonder, disbelieving.

Ampelas Rooted.

Ampelas Uprooted. The entire city, its massive, mountainous bulk, filled the northern sky. Its underside was a forest of twisted metal roots, from which drained rainbow rain as if even in pain it could bleed nothing but gifts. Yet, Kalyth could see its agony. It was canted to one side. It was surrounded by smoke and dust. Fissures rose from its base, like the broken knuckles of a god only moments from once again hammering the earth.

She could feel… something, a bristling core of will knotted in breathless pain. The Matron’s? Could it be anyone else? Her blood flowed through the rock. Her lungs howled, winds shrieking between caverns. Her sweat glistened and ran like tears. She bled in a thousand places, bones splintering to vast, ever growing pressures.

The Matron, yes, but… there was no mind left inside that nightmare of oozing flesh.

Uprooted, this long-dead thing. Uprooted, a thousand upon a thousand generations of belief, faith, the solid iron of once immutable laws.

She defies every truth. She wills life into a corpse, and now it staggers across the sky.

‘A sky keep,’ said the one named Gesler. ‘Moon’s Spawn-’

‘But this one is bigger,’ said Stormy, clawing at his beard. ‘If Tayschrenn could see this-’

‘If Rake had been commanding one of these-’

Stormy grunted. ‘Aye. He’d have flattened the High Mage like a cockroach under a thumb. And then he’d have done the same to the whole Hood-damned Malazan Empire.’

‘But look,’ said Gesler. ‘It’s in rough shape-not as ugly as Rake’s rock, but it looks like it could come down at any time.’

Kalyth could now see the Furies marching beneath the Dragon Tower-the sky keep, yes, that is well named. Ve’Gath Soldiers in their thousands. K’ell Hunters well in advance of the legions and ranging out to the sides in looser formations. Behind the ranks of the Furies, drones struggled to pull enormous wagons groaning beneath towering loads.

‘Look at the big ones,’ Gesler said. ‘The heavies-gods below, one of those could rip a Kenyll’rah demon in half.’

Kalyth spoke. ‘Mortal Sword, they are Ve’Gath, the soldiers of the K’Chain Che’Malle. No Matron has ever birthed so many. A hundred was deemed sufficient. Gunth’an Acyl has birthed more than fifteen thousand.’

The man’s amber eyes fixed on her. ‘If Matrons could do that, why didn’t they? They could be ruling this world right now.’

‘There was terrible… pain.’ She hesitated, and then said. ‘Sanity was lost.’

‘Soldiers like those,’ Stormy muttered, ‘what ruler needs to be sane?’

Kalyth grimaced. These two men were irreverent. They seemed to be fearless. They are the ones. But nothing insisted I must like them, or even understand them. No, they frighten me as much as the K’Chain Che’Malle do. ‘She is dying.’

Gesler rubbed at his face. ‘No heir?’

‘Yes. One waits.’ She pointed. ‘There, the two now drawing close. Gunth Mach, the One Daughter. Sag’Churok, her K’ell guardian.’ Then her breath caught as she saw the one trailing them, its motions smooth as oil. ‘The one beyond, that is Bre’nigan, the Matron’s own J’an Sentinel-something is wrong-he should not be here, he should be at her side.’

‘What about those Assassins?’ Stormy asked, squinting skyward. ‘Why ain’t they showed-the one that snatched us-’

‘I do not know, Shield Anvil.’ Something is wrong.

The two foreigners-they called themselves Malazans-backed away as Gunth Mach and Sag’Churok drew closer. ‘Ges, what if they don’t like the look of us?’

‘What do you think?’ Gesler snapped. ‘We’re dead, that’s what.’

‘There is no danger,’ Kalyth assured them. Of course, I am sure Redmask believed the same.

Sag’Churok spoke in her mind. ‘Destriant. The Matron is chained.’

What?

‘The two Shi’gal who remained in the Nest forged an alliance. They have eaten her forebrain and now command what remains of her. Through her body, they have uprooted Ampelas. But her flesh weakens-soon Ampelas will fail. We must find the enemy. We must find our war.’

Kalyth looked to Gunth Mach. ‘Is she safe?’

‘She is.’

‘But… why?’

‘The Shi’gal see no future. The battle is the end. No future. The One Daughter is irrelevant.’

‘And Gu’Rull?’

‘Outlawed. Missing. Possibly dead-he sought to return, sought to defy, but was driven away. Bearing wounds.’

Gesler cut in: ‘You’re speaking with this thing, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I am sorry. There are powers awake in me… flavours. The One Daughter… it is a gift.’

Stormy said, ‘If we’re to lead this army of elephant-rapers-’

‘Stormy-hold on!’ Gesler advanced on his companion, falling into their foreign language as he continued with a barrage of protestations.

Kalyth did not need to understand the words, as Stormy visibly set his heels, face flushing as if in deadly warning. This was a stubborn man, she could see, far more so than the Mortal Sword. Gesler railed at his friend, but nothing he said altered Stormy’s stance. He said he had dreams. He has accepted this. ‘She will share the flavours,’ Kalyth said to them. ‘It is necessary-’

Stormy faced her. ‘Those Ve’Gath, how fast are they? How smart? Can they answer to commands? Discipline? What sort of signalling do they heed? And who in Hood’s name is the enemy?’

To these questions, Kalyth shook her head. ‘I have no answers. No knowledge. I can say nothing.’

‘Who can?’

‘Damn you, Stormy!’