A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

he would present to us all– the drifting layers of smoke in his pit, the sleepy look in his eyes, the slurred words . . . ah, but Leoman, I have never witnessed you actually partake of the drug. Only its apparent aftermath, the evidence scattered all about, and the descent into sleep that seems perfectly timed whenever you wish to close a conversation, end a certain discourse ...
    Like him, Karsa suspected, Leoman was biding his time.
    Raraku waited with them. Perhaps, for them. The Holy Desert possessed a gift, yet it was one that few had ever recognized, much less accepted. A gift that would arrive unseen, unnoticed at first, a gift too old to find shape in words, too formless to grasp in the hands as one would a sword.
    Toblakai, once a warrior of forest-cloaked mountains, had grown to love this desert. The endless tones of fire painted on stone and sand, the bitter-needled plants and the countless creatures that crawled, slithered or scampered, or slipped through night-air on silent wings. He loved the hungry ferocity of these creatures, their dancing as prey and predator a perpetual cycle inscribed on the sand and beneath the rocks. And the desert in turn had reshaped Karsa, weathered his skin dark, stretched taut and lean his muscles, thinned his eyes to slits.
    Leoman had told him much of this place, secrets that only a true inhabitant would know. The ring of ruined cities, harbours one and all, the old beach ridges with their natural barrows running for league upon league. Shells that had turned hard as stone and would sing low and mournful in the wind – Leoman had presented him with a gift of these, a vest of hide on which such shells had been affixed, armour that moaned in the endless, ever-dry winds. There were hidden springs in the wasteland, cairns and caves where an ancient sea-god had been worshipped. Remote basins that would, every few years, be stripped of sand to
reveal long, high-prowed ships of petrified wood that was crowded with carvings – a long-dead fleet revealed beneath starlight only to be buried once more the following day. In other places, often behind the beach ridges, the forgotten mariners had placed cemeteries, using hollowed-out cedar trunks to hold their dead kin – all turned to stone, now, claimed by the implacable power of Raraku.
    Layer upon countless layer, the secrets were unveiled by the winds. Sheer cliffs rising like ramps, in which the fossil skeletons of enormous creatures could be seen. The stumps of cleared forests, hinting of trees as large as any Karsa had known from his homeland. The columnar pilings of docks and piers, anchor-stones and the open cavities of tin mines, flint quarries and arrow-straight raised roads, trees that grew entirely underground, a mass of roots stretching out for leagues, from which the ironwood of Karsa's new sword had been carved – his bloodsword having cracked long ago.
    Raraku had known Apocalypse first-hand, millennia past, and Toblakai wondered if it truly welcomed its return. Sha'ik's goddess stalked the desert, her mindless rage the shriek of unceasing wind along its borders, but Karsa wondered at the Whirlwind's manifestation – just whose was it? Cold, disconnected rage, or a savage, unbridled argument?
    Did the goddess war with the desert?
    Whilst, far to the south in this treacherous land, the Malazan army prepared to march.
    As he approached the heart of the grove – where a low altar of flatstones occupied a small clearing – he saw a slight, long-haired figure, seated on the altar as if it was no more than a bench in an abandoned garden. A book was in her lap, its cracked skin cover familiar to Toblakai's eyes.
    She spoke without turning round. 'I have seen your tracks in this place, Toblakai.'
    'And I yours, Chosen One.'
    'I come here to wonder,' she said as he walked into view around the altar to stand facing her.
    As do I.
    'Can you guess what it is I wonder about?' she asked.
    'No.'
    The almost-faded pocks of bloodfly scars only showed themselves when she smiled. 'The gift of the goddess ...' the smile grew strained, 'offers only destruction.'
    He glanced away, studied the nearby trees. 'This grove will resist in the way of Raraku,' he rumbled. 'It is stone. And stone holds fast.'
    'For a while,' she muttered, her smile falling away. 'But there remains that within me that urges ... creation.'
    'Have a baby.'
    Her laugh was almost a yelp. 'Oh, you hulking fool, Toblakai. I should welcome your company more