A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

dead were gone through Hood's Gate. The living were left with the pain of their passage. Duiker had seen many peoples as Imperial Historian, yet among them not one in his recollection did not possess a ritual of grief. For all our personal gods, Hood alone embraces us all, in a thousand guises. When the breath from his gates brushes close, we ever give voice to drive back that eternal silence. Tonight, we hear the Semk. And the Tithansi. Uncluttered rituals. Who needs temples and priests to chain and guide the expression of loss and dismay – when all is sacred?
    'Nether, why do the Wickans not grieve this night?'
    She half turned as she continued walking. 'Coltaine forbids it.'
    'Why?'
    'For that answer you must ask him. We have not mourned our losses since this journey began.'
    Duiker was silent for a long moment, then he said, 'And how do you and the others in the three clans feel about that, Nether?'
    'Coltaine commands. We obey.'
    They came to the edge of the Wickan encampment. Beyond the last tent stretched a flat killing strip, perhaps twenty paces wide, then the freshly raised wicker walls of the pickets, with their long bamboo spikes thrust through them, the points outward and at the height of a horse's chest. Mounted warriors of the Weasel Clan patrolled along them, eyes on the dark, stone-studded plain beyond.
    In the killing strip stood two figures, one tall, the other short, both lean as spectres. Nether led Duiker up to them
    Sormo. Nil. 'Are you,' the historian asked the tall warlock, 'all that remain? You told Coltaine you lost but two yesterday.'
    Sormo E'nath nodded. 'The others rest their young flesh. A dozen horsewives tend to the mounts and a handful of healers tend to wounded soldiers. We three are the strongest, thus we are here.' The warlock stepped forward. There was a febrile air about him, and in his voice was a tone that asked for something more than the historian could give. 'Duiker, whose eyes met mine across the Whirlwind ghosts in the trader camp, listen to my words. You will hear the fear – every solemn chime. You are no stranger to that dark chorus. Know, then, that this night I had doubts.'
    'Warlock,' Duiker said quietly, as Nether stepped forward to take position on Sormo's right – turning so that all three now faced the historian – 'what is happening here?'
    In answer Sormo E'nath raised his hands.
    The scene shifted around them. He saw moraines and scree slopes rising behind the three warlocks, the dark sky seeming to throb its blackness overhead. The ground was wet and cold beneath Duiker's moccasins. He looked down to see glittering sheets of brittle ice covering puddles of muddy water. The crazed patterns in the ice reflected myriad colours from a sourceless light.
    A breath of cold wind made him turn around. A guttural bark of surprise was loosed from his throat. The historian stepped back, his being filling with horror. Rotten, blood-smeared ice formed a shattered cliff before him, the tumbled, jagged blocks at its foot less than ten paces away. The cliff rose, sloping back until the streaked face vanished within mists.
    The ice was full of bodies, human-shaped figures, twisted and flesh-torn. Organs and entrails were spilled out at the base as if from a giant abattoir. Slowly melting chunks of blood-soaked ice created a lake from which the body parts jutted or rose in islands humped and slick.
    Exposed flesh had begun to putrefy into misshapen gelatinous mounds, through which bones could faintly be seen.
    Sormo spoke behind him. 'He is within it, but close.'
    'Who?'
    'The Semk god. An Ascendant from long ago. Unable to challenge the sorcery, he was devoured with the others. Yet he did not die. Can you feel his anger, Historian?'
    'I think I'm beyond feeling. What sorcery did this?'
    'Jaghut. To stem the tides of invading humans, they raised ice. Sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, as their strategy dictated. In places it swallowed entire continents, obliterating all that once stood upon them. Forkrul Assail civilizations, the vast mechanisms and edifices of the K'Chain Che'Malle, and of course the squalid huts of those who would one day inherit the world. The highest of Omtose Phellack, these rituals never die, Historian. They rise, subside, and rise yet again. Even now, one is born anew on a distant land, and those rivers of ice fill my dreams, for they are destined to create vast upheaval, and death in numbers unimaginable.'
    Sormo's words held a timbre of