A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

muttered.
    Mappo strode to the door. 'I shall take the short route, then.'
    'If you must,' the High Priest growled as he bent to close examination of the broom's ragged end.
     
    The breach of etiquette was explained when, upon entering the library, Mappo saw that the squat chamber also served as kitchen. Icarium sat at a robust black-stained table a few paces to the Trell's right, while Servant hunched over a cauldron suspended by chain over a hearth a pace to Mappo's left. Servant's head was almost invisible inside a cloud of steam, drenched in condensation and dripping into the cauldron as he worked a wooden ladle in slow, turgid circles.
    'I shall pass on the soup, I think,' Mappo said to the man.
    'These books are rotting,' Icarium said, leaning back and eyeing Mappo. 'You are recovered?'
    'So it seems.'
    Still studying the Trell, Icarium frowned. 'Soup? Ah,' his expression cleared, 'not soup. Laundry. You'll find more palatable fare on the carving table.' He gestured to the wall behind Servant, then returned to the mouldering pages of an ancient book opened before him. 'This is astonishing, Mappo...'
    'Given how isolated those nuns were,' Mappo said as he approached the carving table, 'I'm surprised you're astonished.'
    'Not those books, friend. Iskaral's own. There are works here whose existence was but the faintest rumour. And some – like this one – that I have never heard of before. A Treatise on Irrigation Planning in the Fifth Millennium of Ararkal, by no fewer than four authors.'
    Returning to the library table with a pewter plate piled high with bread and cheese, Mappo leant over his friend's shoulder to examine the detailed drawings on the book's vellum pages, then the strange, braided script. The Trell grunted. Mouth suddenly dry, he managed to mutter, 'What is so astonishing about that?'
    Icarium leaned back. 'The sheer ... frivolity, Mappo. The materials alone for this tome are a craftsman's annual wage. No scholar in their right mind would waste such resources – never mind their time – on such a pointless, trite subject. And this is not the only example. Look, Seed Dispersal Patterns of the Purille Flower on the Skar Archipelago, and here, Diseases of White' Rimmed Clams of Lekoor Bay. And I am convinced that these works are thousands of years old. Thousands.'
    And in a language I never knew you would recognize, much less understand. He recalled when he'd last seen such a script, beneath a hide canopy on a hill that marked his tribe's northernmost border. He'd been among a handful of guards escorting the tribe's elders to what would prove a fateful summons.
    Autumn rains drumming overhead, they had squatted in a half-circle, facing north, and watched as seven robed and hooded figures approached. Each held a staff, and as they strode beneath the canopy and stood in silence before the elders, Mappo saw, with a shiver, how those staves seemed to writhe before his eyes, the wood like serpentine roots, or perhaps those parasitic trees that entwined the boles of others, choking the life from them. Then he realized that the twisted madness of the shafts was in fact runic etching, ever changing, as if unseen hands continually carved words anew with every breath's span.
    Then one among them withdrew its hood, and so began the moment that would change Mappo's future path. His thoughts jerked away from the memory.
    Trembling, the Trell sat down, clearing a space for his plate. 'Is all this important, Icarium?'
    'Significant, Mappo. The civilization that brought forth these works must have been appallingly rich. The language is clearly related to modern Seven Cities dialects, although in some ways more sophisticated. And see this symbol, here in the spine of each such tome? A twisted staff. I have seen that symbol before, friend. I am certain of it.'
    'Rich, you said?' The Trell struggled to drag the conversation away from what he knew to be a looming precipice. 'More like mired in minutiae. Probably explains why it's dust and ashes. Arguing over seeds in the wind while barbarians batter down the gates. Indolence takes many forms, but it comes to every civilization that has outlived its will. You know that as well as I. In this case it was an indolence characterized by a pursuit of knowledge, a frenzied search for answers to everything, no matter the value of such answers. A civilization can as easily drown in what it knows as in what it doesn't know. Consider,' he continued, 'Gothos's Folly. Gothos's