A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

imagined from
the start. But I will avoid that trap. I will not suffer deadly lapses, such as has happened to Bidithal, since they lead to complications – although his failings will lead him into my hands, so I suppose I should not complain too much.
    'The sun's light folds over darkness.'
    He started, twisted around. 'Chosen One!'
    'Deep breaths, old man, will ease your hammering heart. I can wait a moment, for I am patient.'
    She stood almost at his side – of course he had seen no shadow, for the sun was before him. But how had she come with such silence? How long had she been standing there? 'Chosen One, have you come to join me in greeting the dawn?'
    'Is that what you do, when you come here at the beginning of each day? I'd wondered.'
    'I am a man of humble habits, mistress.'
    'Indeed. A certain bluntness that affects a quality of simplicity. As if by adhering to simple habits in the flesh and bone, your mind will in turn strive towards the same perfection.'
    He said nothing, though his heart had anything but slowed its thundering pace.
    Sha'ik then sighed. 'Did I say perfection? Perhaps I should tell you something, then, to aid you in your quest.'
    'Please,' he gasped softly.
    'The Whirlwind Wall is virtually opaque, barring that diffuse sunlight. And so I am afraid I must correct you, Febryl. You are facing northeast, alas.' She pointed. 'The sun is actually over there, High Mage. Do not fret so – you have at least been consistent. Oh, and there is another matter that I believe must be clarified. Few would argue that my goddess is consumed by anger, and so consumes in turn. But what you might see as the loss of many to feed a singular hunger is in truth worthy of an entirely different analogy.'
    'Oh?'
    'Yes. She does not strictly feed on the energies of her
followers, so much as provide for them a certain focus. Little different, in fact, from that Whirlwind Wall out there, which, while seeming to diffuse the light of the sun, in fact acts to trap it. Have you ever sought to pass through that wall, Febryl? Particularly at dusk, when the day's heat has most fully been absorbed? It would burn you down to bone, High Mage, in an instant. So, you see how something that appears one way is in truth the very opposite way? Burnt crisp – a horrible image, isn't it? One would need to be desert-born, or possess powerful sorcery to defy that. Or very deep shadows ...'
    Living simply, Febryl belatedly considered, should not be made synonymous with seeing simply, since the former was both noble and laudable, whilst the latter was a flaw most deadly. A careless error, and, alas, he had made it.
    And now, he concluded, it was too late.
    And as for altering the plans, oh, it was too late for that as well.
    Somehow, the newly arriving day had lost its glamour.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
    It was said the captain's adopted child – who at that time was known by the unfortunate name of Grub – refused the wagon on the march. That he walked the entire way, even as, in the first week beneath the year's hottest sun, fit and hale soldiers stumbled and fell.
    This is perhaps invention, for by all accounts he was at that time no more than five years of age. And the captain himself, from whose journals much of that journey and the clash in which it culminated is related in detail, writes very little of Grub, more concerned as he was with the rigours of command. As a result, of the future First Sword of the Late Empire period, scant details, beyond the legendary and probably fictitious, are known.
    Lives of the Three
Moragalle
     
    The sound of flies and wasps was a solid, buzzing hum in the hot air of the gorge, and already the stench had grown overpowering. Fist Gamet loosened the clasp on the buckle and lifted the battered iron helmet from his head. The felt liner was sodden with sweat, itching against his scalp, but, as the flies swarmed him, he did not remove it.
    He continued watching from the slight rise at the south end of the gorge as the Adjunct walked her horse through the carnage below.
    Three hundred Seti and over a hundred horses lay dead,
mostly from arrows, in the steep-sided ravine they had been led into. It could not have taken long, even including rounding up and leading off the surviving mounts. There had been less than a bell between the advance Seti riders and the Khundryl, and had Temul not ordered his Wickans back to cover the main army ... well, we would have lost them as well.
    As it was, those Wickans had