A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

I cannot anticipate his disposition.' She turned away, began walking towards the gate.
    Brood called after her.
    Not yet.
    She continued on, beneath the gate's arch, her eyes fixing on the hilltop beyond the shattered corpses carpeting the killing field. Where I will find him. All that is left. His face, gift of memories, now grown cold. I saw the life flee his eyes. That moment of death, of dying. Withdrawing, away from those eyes, withdrawing, back and away. Leaving, leaving me.
    Her steps slowed, the pain of loss threatening to overwhelm her.
    Dear Mother Dark, do you look down upon me, now? Do you see me, your child? Do you smile, to see me so broken? I have, after all, repeated your fatal errors of old. Yielding my heart, succumbing to the foolish dream – Light's dance, you longed for that embrace, didn't you?
    And were betrayed.
    You left us, Mother . . . to eternal silence.
    Yet. . .
    Mother Dark, with this unveiling, I feel you close. Was it grief that sent you away, sent you so far from your children? When, in our deadly, young way – our appalling insensitivity – we cursed you. Added another layer to your pain.
    These steps . . . you walked them once.
    How can you help but smile?
    Rain struck her brow, stung the ragged, open gash of her wound. She halted, looked up, to see Moon's Spawn directly overhead ... weeping down upon her ...
    ... and upon the field of corpses surrounding her, and, beyond and to the right, upon thousands of kneeling T'lan Imass. The dead, the abandoned, a wash of deepening colours, as if in the rain the scene, so softly saturated, was growing more solid, more real. No longer the faded tableau of a Tiste Andii's regard. Life, drawn short, to sharpen every detail, flush every colour, to make every moment an ache.
    And she could hold back no longer. Whiskeyjack. My love.
    Moments later, her own tears joined the salt-laden water running down her face.
     
    In the gate's gloom, Caladan Brood stared out, across the stone bridge, over the mangled plain to where Korlat stood halfway to the hill, surrounded by corpses and shattered K'Chain Che'Malle. Watched as her head tilted back, face slowly lifting to the grey shroud of the rain. The black mountain, fissures widening, groans issuing from the dying edifice, seemed to pause directly over her. A heart, once of stone, made mortal once more.
    This image – what he now saw – he knew, with bleak certainty, would never leave him.
     
    Silverfox had walked for what seemed a long time, heedless of direction, insensate to all that surrounded her, until distant movement caught her attention. She now stood on the barren tundra, beneath solid white overcast, and watched the approach of the Rhivi spirits.
    A small band, pitifully small, less than forty individuals, insignificant in the distance, almost swallowed by the immense landscape, the sky, this damp air with its unforgiving chill that had settled into her bones like the blood of failure.
    Events had occurred. Elsewhere in this nascent realm. She could sense that much – the hail, deluge of memories, born from she knew not where. And though they had struck her with the same indiscriminate randomness as they struck the ground on all sides, she had felt but the faintest hint of all that they had contained.
    If a gift, then a bitter one.
    If a curse, then so too is life itself a curse. For there were lives within that frozen rain. Entire lives, sent down to strike the flesh of this world, to seep down, to thaw the soil with its fecundity.
    But it has nothing to do with me.
    None of this. All that I sought to fashion . . . destroyed. This dreamworld was itself a memory. Ghostworld of Tellann, remembrance of my own world, from long, long ago. Remembrances, taken from the Bonecaster who was there in my refashioning, taken from the Rhivi spirits, the First Clan, taken from K'rul, from Kruppe. Taken from the slumbering land itself – Burn's own flesh.
    I myself. . . possessed nothing. I simply stole.
    To fashion a world for my mother, a world where she could be young once more, where she could live out a normal life, growing old through the normal span of seasons.
    All that I stole from her, I would give back.
    Bitterness filled Silverfox. It had begun with that first barrow, outside Pale. This belief in the righteousness, the efficacy, of theft. Justified by the worthiest of ends.
    But ownership bereft of propriety was a lie. All that she hoarded was in turn stripped of value. Memories, dreams,