A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

they needed. But not Meanas. No seas, no rivers, not even a Hood-damned puddle. From within his warren, Kulp was seeking to effect a passage through to the mortal world . . . and it was proving problematic.
    They were bound by peculiar laws, by rules of nature that seemed to play games with the principles of cause and effect. Had they been riding a wagon, the passage through the warrens would unerringly have taken them on a dry path. The primordial elements asserted an intractable consistency across all warrens. Land to land, air to air, water to water.
    Kulp had heard of High Mages who – it was rumoured – had found ways to cheat those illimitable laws, and perhaps the gods and other Ascendants possessed such knowledge as well. But they were as beyond a lowly cadre mage as the tools of an ogre's smithy to a cowering rat.
    His other concern was the vastness of the task itself. Pulling a handful of companions through his warren was difficult, but manageable. But an entire ship! He'd hoped he would find inspiration once within the Meanas Warren, some thunderbolt delivering a simple, elegant solution. With all the grace of poetry. Was it not Fisher Kel'Tath himself who once said poetry and sorcery were the twin edges to the knife in every man's heart? Where then are my magic cants?
    Kulp sourly admitted that he felt as stupid within Meanas as he did sitting in the captain's cabin. The art of illusion is grace itself. There must be a way to ... to trick our way through. What's real versus what isn't is the synergy within a mortal's mind. And greater forces? Can reality itself be fooled into asserting an unreality?
    His shouting senses changed pitch. Kulp was no longer alone. The thick, turgid air of the Meanas Warren – where shadows were textured like ground glass and to slip through them was to feel a shivering ecstasy – had begun to bulge, then bow, as if something huge approached, pushing the air before it. And whatever it was, it was coming fast.
    A sudden thought flooded the mage's mind. And moreover, it possessed ... elegance. Togg's toes, can I do this? Building pressure, then vacuous wake, a certain current, a certain flow. Hood, it ain't water, but close enough.
    I hope.
    He saw Heboric jump back in alarm, striking his head on a low crossbeam in the cabin. Kulp slipped back into his body and loosed a rasping gasp. 'We're about to go, Heboric. Get everyone ready!'
    The old man was rubbing a stump against the back of his head. 'Ready for what, Mage?'
    'Anything.'
    Kulp slid back out, mentally clambering back over his anchor within Meanas.
    The Unwelcome was coming, a force of such power as to make the febrile atmosphere shiver. The mage saw nearby shadows vibrate into dissolution. He felt outrage building in the air, in the loamy earth underfoot. Whatever was passing through this warren had drawn the attention of... of whatever – Shadowthrone, the Hounds – or perhaps warrens truly are alive. In any case, on it came, in arrogant disregard.
    Kulp suddenly thought back to Sormo's ritual that had drawn them into the T'lan Imass warren outside Hissar. Oh, Hood, Soletaken or D'ivers ... but such power! Who in the Abyss has such power? He could think of but two: Anomander Rake, the Son of Darkness, and Osric. Both Soletaken, both supremely arrogant. If there were others, the tales of their activities would have reached him, he was certain. Warriors talk about heroes. Mages talk about Ascendants. He would have heard.
    Rake was on Genabackis, and Osric was reputed to have journeyed to a continent far to the south a century or so back. Well, maybe the cold-eyed bastard's back. Either way, he was about to find out.
    The presence arrived. His spiritual belly flat on the soft ground, Kulp craned his head skyward.
    The dragon came low to the earth. It defied every image of a draconian being Kulp had ever seen. Not Rake, not Osric. Hugely boned, with skin like dry shark hide, its wing-span dwarfed even that of the Son of Darkness – who has within him the blood of the draconian goddess – and the wings had nothing of the smooth, curving grace; the bones were multi-jointed in a crazed pattern, like that of a crushed bat wing, each knobbed joint prominent beneath taut, cracked skin. The dragon's head was as wide as it was long, like a viper's, the eyes high on its skull. There was no ridged forehead, instead the skull sloped back to a basal serration almost buried in neck and jaw muscles.
    A dragon roughly cast, a