A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

of this moment.
    The head came away with a sobbing sound. Baudin's teeth glimmered as he stared at the crowd. 'We had a deal,' he grated. 'Here's what you want, something to remember this day by.' He flung Lady Gaesen's head into the mob, a whirl of hair and threads of blood. Screams answered its unseen landing.
    More soldiers appeared – backed by the Red Swords – moving slowly, pushing at the still-silent onlookers. Peace was being restored, all along the line – in all places but this one violently, without quarter. As people began to die under sword strokes, the rest fled.
    The prisoners who had filed out of the arena had numbered around three hundred. Felisin, looking up the line, had her first sight of what remained. Some shackles held only forearms, others were completely empty. Under a hundred prisoners remained on their feet. Many on the paving stones writhed, screaming in pain; the rest did not move at all.
    Baudin glared at the nearest knot of soldiers. 'Likely timing, tin-heads.'
    Heboric spat heavily, his face twisting as he glared at the thug. 'Imagined you'd buy your way out, did you, Baudin? Give them what they want. But it was wasted, wasn't it? The soldiers were coming. She could have lived—'
    Baudin slowly turned, his face a sheet of blood. 'To what end, priest?'
    'Was that your line of reasoning? She would've died in the hold anyway?'
    Baudin showed his teeth and said slowly, 'I just hate making deals with bastards.'
    Felisin stared at the three-foot length of chain between herself and Baudin. A thousand thoughts could have followed, link by link – what she had been, what she was now; the prison she'd discovered, inside and out, merged as vivid memory – but all she thought, all she said, was this: 'Don't make any more deals, Baudin.'
    His eyes narrowed on her, her words and tone reaching him, somehow, some way.
    Heboric straightened, a hard look in his eyes as he studied her. Felisin turned away, half in defiance, half in shame.
    A moment later the soldiers – having cleared the line of the dead – pushed them along, out through the gate, onto the East Road towards the pier town called Luckless. Where Adjunct Tavore and her retinue waited, as did the slave ships of Aren.
    Farmers and peasants lined the road, displaying nothing of the frenzy that had gripped their cousins in the city. Felisin saw in their faces a dull sorrow, a passion born of different scars. She could not understand where it came from, and she knew that her ignorance was the difference between her and them. She also knew, in her bruises, scratches and helpless nakedness, that her lessons had begun.

BOOK ONE

RARAKU
     
    He swam at my feet,
Powerful arms in broad strokes
Sweeping the sand.
So I asked this man,
What seas do you swim?
And to this he answered,
'I have seen shells and the like
On this desert floor,
So I swim this land's memory
Thus honouring its past,'
Is the journey far, queried I.
'I cannot say,' he replied,
'For I shall drown long before
I am done.'
    Sayings of the Fool
Thenys Bule

CHAPTER ONE
    And all came to imprint
Their passage
On the path,
To scent the dry winds
Their cloying claim
To ascendancy
    The Path of Hands
Messremb
     
    1164th Year of Burn's Sleep
Tenth Year of the Rule of Empress Laseen
The Sixth in the Seven Years of Dryjhna, the Apocalyptic
    A corkscrew plume of dust raced across the basin, heading deeper into the trackless desert of the Pan'potsun Odhan. Though less than two thousand paces away, it seemed a plume born of nothing.
    From his perch on the mesa's wind-scarred edge, Mappo Runt followed it with relentless eyes the colour of sand, eyes set deep in a robustly boned, pallid face. He held a wedge of emrag cactus in his bristle-backed hand, unmindful of the envenomed spikes as he bit into it. Juices dribbled down his chin, staining it blue. He chewed slowly, thoughtfully.
    Beside him Icarium flicked a pebble over the cliff edge. It clicked and clattered on its way down to the boulder-strewn base. Under the ragged Spiritwalker robe – its orange faded to dusty rust beneath the endless sun – his grey skin had darkened into olive green, as if his father's blood had answered this wasteland's ancient call. His long, braided black hair dripped black sweat onto the bleached rock.
    Mappo pulled a mangled thorn from between his front teeth. 'Your dye's running,' he observed, eyeing the cactus blade a moment before taking another bite.
    Icarium shrugged. 'Doesn't matter any more. Not