A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

with every breath she took.
    She realized that she could not continue. She would have to enter the physical world and find rest. Once again she cursed her own carelessness. She had forgotten her Deck of Dragons. With them she would have known what to expect. She entertained once again the suspicion that an outside force had acted upon her, severing her from the Deck. The first distraction had come from Captain Paran, and while it had been pleasant, she reminded herself that Paran belonged to Oponn. After that, she'd experienced an unaccountable urgency to be on her way, so much so that she'd left everything behind.
    Bereft of her Warren, she would find herself alone on the Rhivi Plain, without food, without even a bedroll. The mindless need for haste she'd experienced ran contrary to her every instinct. She was growing certain that it had been imposed upon her, that somehow she'd let her defences down, left herself exposed to such manipulations. And that returned her thoughts to Captain Paran, to the servant of Oponn's will.
    Finally, she could go no further. She began to withdraw her strained power, collapsing the Warren layer by layer about her. The ground beneath her boots became solid, cloaked in spar yellow grass, and the air around her shifted into the dull lavender of dusk. A wind brushed her face smelling of soil. The horizon steadied itself on all sides – far off to her right the sun still bathed the Talhyn Mountains, the peaks glittering like gold – and immediately ahead rose an enormous silhouetted figure, turning to face her and voicing a surprised grunt.
    Tattersail stepped back in alarm, and the voice that emerged from the figure pushed the air from her lungs in a whooshing breath of relief, then terror.
    'Tattersail,' Bellurdan said sadly, 'Tayschrenn did not expect you'd manage to come this far. Thus, I was anticipating detecting you from a distance.' The Thelomen giant lifted his arms in an expansive, child-like shrug. At his feet was a familiar burlap sack, though the body within had shrunk since she'd last seen it.
    'How has the High Mage managed to deny my Warren?' she asked. On the heels of her terror had come weariness, almost resignation.
    'He could not do that,' Bellurdan answered. 'He simply anticipated that you would attempt to travel to Darujhistan, and as your Thyr Warren cannot function over water, he concluded you would take this path.'
     
    'Then what happened with my Warren?'
    Bellurdan grunted distastefully. 'The T'lan Imass who accompanies the Adjunct has created around them a dead space. Our sorcery is devoured by the warrior's Eldering powers. The effect is cumulative. If you were to open your Warren entirely, you would be consumed utterly, Tattersail.' The Thelomen stepped forward. 'The High Mage has instructed me to arrest you and return you to him.'
    'And if I resist?'
    Bellurdan answered, in a tone filled with sorrow, 'Then I am to kill you.'
    'I see.' Tattersail thought for a time. Her world seemed to have closed in now, her every memory irrelevant and discarded. Her heart pounded like a thundering drum in her chest. All that remained of her past, and her only true sense of her life, was regret – an unspecified, yet overwhelming regret. She looked up at the Thelomen, compassion brimming in her eyes. 'So where are this T'lan and the Adjunct, then?'
    'Perhaps eight hours to the east. The Imass is not even aware of us. The time for conversation is ended, Tattersail. Will you accompany me?'
    Her mouth dry, she said, 'I did not think you one to betray a long-standing friend.'
    Bellurdan spread his hands wider and said, in a pained voice, 'I will never betray you, Tattersail. The High Mage commands both of us. How can there be betrayal?'
    'Not that,' Tattersail replied quickly. 'I once asked if I could speak with you at length. Remember? You said yes, Bellurdan. Yet now you tell me conversation is ended. I had not imagined your word to be so worthless.'
    In the dying light it was impossible to see the Thelomen's face, but the anguish in his tone was plain. 'I am sorry, Tattersail. You are correct. I gave you my word that we would speak again. Can we not do this while we return to Pale?'
    'No,' Tattersail snapped. 'I wish it now.'
    Bellurdan bowed his head. 'Very well.'
    Tattersail forced the tension from her shoulders and neck. 'I have some questions,' she said. 'First, Tayschrenn sent you to Genabaris for a time, didn't he? You were searching through some scrolls for