A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

dragged him up, metal scraping, leather catching, up and over the low wall to thump down on the other side.
    The darkness continued its preternatural fall, dulling the sun to a grey, fitfully wavering disc.
    Condors overhead, screaming—
    —and in those screams, raw terror—
    Paran twisted round, looked upon the scene on the parapet. Thirty paces away, on the far edge, crouching, was a figure the captain knew instinctively to be the Seer. Human flesh and skin had sloughed away, revealing a Jaghut, naked, surrounded in misty clouds of ice crystals. Clutched in the Seer's hands, an egg the size of a cusser. At his side, huge and misshapen, a K'Chain Che'Malle – no. The Matron. What flowed from her left Paran horrified and filled with pity. She was mindless, her soul stripped, filled with a pain he knew she could not even feel – the only mercy that remained.
    Two heavily armoured K'ell Hunters had been guarding their mother, but were now moving forward, weapons rising, thumping across the roof as, at a stairwell fifteen paces to Paran's left, two figures appeared. Masked, painted from head to toe in blood, each wielding two swords, clambering free of a passageway strewn with the bodies of Urdomen and Seerdomin.
    'Hood take us!' Quick Ben swore. 'Those are Seguleh!'
    But Paran's attention had already left them, was oblivious of the battle as the K'ell Hunters closed with the Seguleh. The storm-cloud that had towered overhead for so long was still climbing, shredding apart, almost lost in darkness. Something, he realized with a chill, was coming.
    'Captain! Follow me!'
    Quick Ben was edging along the low wall, following its curve towards the harbourside.
    Paran scrambled after the wizard. They halted where they had a full view of the harbour and the bay.
    Far out in the bay, the horizon's line of ice was exploding all along its length, in white, spewing clouds.
    The waters of the harbour had grown glass-smooth beneath the dark, now motionless air. The web of ropes spanning it – with its shacks and dangling lines and withered corpses – suddenly trembled.
    'In Hood's name what's—'
    'Shh! Oh, Abyss! Watch!'
    And he did.
    The glass-smooth waters of the harbour ... shivered ... swelled . . . bulged.
    Then, impossibly, fled on all sides.
    Black, enormous – something – rising from the depths.
    Seas thrashed, a ring of foam racing outward. A sudden push of cold wind hammered the parapet, made the structure sway, then tremble.
    Rock, ragged, scarred – a Hood-damned mountain! – rising from the harbour, lifting the vast net with it.
    And the mountain grew larger, rose higher, darkness bleeding from it in radiating waves.
    'They've unveiled Kurald Galain!' Quick Ben shouted through the roaring wind. ' All of them!'
    Paran stared.
    Moon's Spawn.
    Rising.
    Rake hid it —
    — oh, Abyss below, did Rake hide it!
    Rising, water descending down its battered sides in tumbling falls, into mist that flowed as the edifice climbed ever higher.
    The Cut. Ortnal's Cut – that chasm —
    'Look!' Quick Ben hissed. 'Those cracks...'
    And now he saw the cost of Rake's gambit. Huge fissures scarred the face of Moon's Spawn, fissures from which water still poured in undiminished volume.
    Rising.
    Two-thirds now clear of the churned seas.
    Slowly spinning, bringing into view, high on one side, a ledge—
    Where stood a lone figure.
     
    Memories . . . gone. In their wake, tens of thousands of souls. Silent.
    'To me, then, I will take your pain, now.'
    'You are mortal.'
    'I am mortal.'
    'You cannot carry our pain.'
    'I can.'
    'You cannot deliver it —'
    'I shall.'
    'Itkovian —'
    'Your pain, T'lan Imass. Now.'
    It rose before him, a wave of immeasurable height, rose, towering, then plunged towards him.
    And they saw, one and all.
    They saw Itkovian's welcoming smile.
     
    Moon's Spawn rose, shrouded in darkness, beyond the city. Caladan Brood stared. Cascading clouds of mist, streams of water falling, fading. Dragons, now, wheeling outward, black, one crimson, waves of Kurald Galain, lashing out, incinerating the demonic condors.
    Moon's Spawn, leaning – a massive chunk of midnight stone sloughing from one side, rocking the entire edifice – leaning, sliding, forward, towards the keep—
    On the killing field below, scattered remnants of soldiers – Malazan, Barghast, Grey Swords, Gruntle and the handful of followers that were all that remained of his legion – had one and all crossed the stone bridge and were converging on