A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

soft weeping. Sitting up, he had seen Apsalar kneeling beside the still form of her father. There were plenty of footprints on the floor of the shack from the previous evening's random explorations, but Crokus noted one set in particular, prints large and far apart yet far too lightly pressed into the damp sand. A silent arrival in the night just past, crossing the single chamber to stand square-footed beside Rellock. Where it had gone after that left no markings in the sand.
    A shiver rippled through the Daru. It was one thing for an old man to die in his sleep, but it was another for Hood himself – or one of his minions – to physically arrive to collect the man's soul.
    Apsalar's grief was quiet, barely heard above the hiss of waves on the beach, the faint whistle of the wind through the warped slats in the shack's walls. She knelt with bowed head, face hidden beneath her long black hair that hung so appropriately like a shawl. Her hands were closed around her father's right hand.
    Crokus made no move towards her. In the months of their travelling together, he had come, perversely, to know her less and less. Her soul's depths had become unfathomable, and whatever lay at its heart was otherworldly and ... not quite human.
    The god that had possessed her – Cotillion, the Rope, Patron of Assassins within the House of Shadow – had been a mortal man, once, the one known as Dancer who had stood at the Emperor's side, who had purportedly shared Kellanved's fate at Laseen's hands. Of course, neither had died in truth. Instead, they had ascended. Crokus had no idea how such a thing could come to be. Ascendancy was but one of the countless mysteries of the world, a world where uncertainty ruled all – god and mortal alike – and its rules were impenetrable. But, it seemed to
him, to ascend was also to surrender. Embracing what to all intents and purposes could be called immortality, was, he had begun to believe, presaged by a turning away. Was it not a mortal's fate – fate, he knew, was the wrong word, but he could think of no other – was it not a mortal's fate, then, to embrace life itself, as one would a lover? Life, with all its fraught, momentary fragility.
    And could life not be called a mortal's first lover? A lover whose embrace was then rejected in that fiery crucible of ascendancy?
    Crokus wondered how far she had gone down that path – for it was a path she was surely on, this beautiful woman no older than him, who moved in appalling silence, with a killer's terrible grace, this temptress of death.
    The more remote she grew, the more Crokus felt himself drawn forward, to that edge within her. The lure to plunge into that darkness was at times overwhelming, could, at a moment's thought, turn frantic the beat of his heart and fierce the fire of the blood in his veins. What made the silent invitation so terrifying to him was the seeming indifference with which she offered it to him.
    As if the attraction itself was . . . self-evident. Not worth even acknowledging. Did Apsalar want him to walk at her side on this path to ascendancy – if that was what it was? Was it Crokus she wanted, or simply ... somebody, anybody?
    The truth was this: he had grown afraid to look into her eyes.
    He rose from his bedroll and quietly made his way outside. There were fisherboats out on the shoals, white sails taut like enormous shark fins plying the sea beyond the breakers. The Hounds had once torn through this area of the coast, leaving naught but corpses, but people had returned – there if not here. Or perhaps they had been returned, forcibly. The land itself had no difficulty absorbing spilled blood; its thirst was indiscriminate, true to the nature of land everywhere.
    Crokus crouched down and collected a handful of white sand. He studied the coral pebbles as they slipped down between his fingers. The land does its own dying, after all. And yet, these are truths we would escape, should we proceed down this path. I wonder, does fear of dying lie at the root of ascendancy?
    If so, then he would never make it, for, somewhere in all that had occurred, all that he had survived in coming to this place, Crokus had lost that fear.
    He sat down, resting his back against the trunk of a massive cedar that had been thrown up onto this beach – roots and all – and drew out his knives. He practised a sequenced shift of grips, each hand reversing the pattern of the other, and stared down until the weapons – and his fingers