A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

the horses. 'How long do we stay here, then?'
    'Until this evening passes. With tomorrow's dawn I will open the way, Adjunct.'
    Faintly from above came the cries of ravens. Lorn lifted her head and gazed at the specks wheeling high over them. They'd been with them for days. Was that unusual? She didn't know. Shrugging, she unsaddled the horses.
    The Imass remained motionless, his gaze seeming fixed on the stone marker.
    Lorn went about preparing her camp. Among the scrub oaks she found wood for a small cooking fire. It was dry, weathered and likely to yield little smoke. Though she did not anticipate company, caution had become her habit. Before dusk arrived she found a nearby hill higher than those around it, and ascended to its summit. From this position she commanded a view that encompassed leagues on all sides. The hills continued their roll southward, sinking to steppes to the southeast. Due east of them stretched Catlin Plain, empty of life as far as she could see.
    Lorn turned to the north. The forest they had travelled round a few days ago was still visible, a dark line thickening as it swept westward to the Tahlyn Mountains. She sat down and waited for night to fall. It was then that she'd be able to spot any campfires.
    Even as night fell, the heat remained oppressive. Lorn walked around the hill's summit to stretch her legs. She found evidence of past excavations, scars that dug into the shale. And evidence of the Gadrobi herders remained, from as far back as when they fashioned stone tools. Against the south side of the hill the ground had been carved out, not in search of a barrow but as a stone quarry. It appeared that beneath the shale was flint, chocolate brown, sharp-edged and crusted in white chalk.
    Curious, Lorn investigated further, scrambling down into the cavity. Stone flakes carpeted the pit's base. She crouched and picked up a piece of flint. It was the tip of a spear point, expertly shaped.
    The echo of this technology was found in Tool's chalcedony sword. She needed no further proof of the Imass's assertions. Humans had indeed come from them, had indeed inherited a world.
    Empire was a part of them, a legacy flowing like blood through human muscle, bone and brain. But such a thing could easily be seen as a curse. Were they destined one day to become human versions of the T'lan Imass? Was war all there was? Would they bow to it in immortal servitude, no more than deliverers of death?
    Lorn sat down in the quarry and leaned against the chiselled, weathered stone. The Imass had conducted a war of extermination lasting hundreds of thousands of years. Who or what had the Jaghut been? According to Tool, they'd abandoned the concept of government, and turned their backs on empires, on armies, on the cycles of rise and fall, fire and rebirth. They'd walked alone, disdainful of their own kind, dismissive of community, of purposes greater than themselves.
    They would not, she realized, have started a war.
    'Oh, Laseen,' she murmured, tears welling in her eyes, 'I know why we fear this Jaghut Tyrant. Because he became human, he became like us, he enslaved, he destroyed, and he did it better than we could.' She lowered her head into her hands. 'That's why we fear.'
    She fell silent then, letting the tears roll down her cheeks, seep between her fingers, trickle along her wrists. Who wept from her eyes? she wondered. Was it Lorn, or Laseen? Or was it for our kind? What did it matter? Such tears had been shed before, and would be again – by others like her and yet unlike her. And the winds would dry them all.
     
    Captain Paran glanced at his companion. 'You've got a theory about all this?' he asked.
    Toc the Younger scratched his scar. 'Damned if I know, Captain.' He stared down at the black, burned, crusted raven lying on the ground in front of them. 'I've been counting, though. That's the eleventh roasted bird in the last three hours. And, unless they're covering the Rhivi Plain like some bloody carpet, it seems we're on somebody's trail.'
    Paran grunted, then kicked his horse forward.
    Toc followed. 'And it's a nasty somebody,' he continued. 'Those ravens look like they was blasted from the inside out. Hell, even the flies avoid them.'
    'In other words,' Paran grated, 'sorcery.'
    Toc squinted at the hills south of them. They'd found a woodcutter's trail through the Tahlyn Forest, shaving days off their journey. As soon as they'd returned to the Rhivi traders' track, however, they'd found the ravens,