A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

bell had yet to sound.
    Enough.
    'T'morol, gather my clan.'
    The burly warrior grunted assent and strode off. Mathok drew his furs tighter about himself and returned to his tent.
    Within its modest confines, he paused for a long moment, deep in thought. Then he shook himself and walked over to a hide-covered chest near his cot. He crouched, swept aside the covering, and lifted the ornate lid.
    The Book of Dryjhna resided within.
    Sha'ik had given it into his keeping.
    To safeguard.
    He closed the lid and locked it, then picked up the chest and made his way outside. He could hear his warriors breaking camp in the darkness beyond. 'T'morol.'
    'Warchief.'
    'We ride to join Leoman of the Flails. The remaining clans are to guard Sha'ik, though I am confident she is not at risk – she may have need for them in the morning.'
    T'morol's dark eyes were fixed on Mathok, cold and impervious to surprise. 'We are to ride from this battle, Warchief?'
    'To preserve the Holy Book, such flight may be a necessity, old friend. Come the dawn, we hover ... on the very cusp.'
    'To gauge the wind.'
    'Yes, T'morol, to gauge the wind.'
    The bearded warrior nodded. 'The horses are being saddled. I will hasten the preparations.'
     
    Heboric listened to the silence. Only his bones could feel the tingling hum of a sorcerous web spanning the entire oasis and its ruined city, the taut vibrations rising and falling as disparate forces began to move across it, then, with savage disregard, tore through it.
    He stirred from the cot, groaning with the stab of force-healed wounds, and climbed shakily to his feet. The coals had died in their braziers. The gloom felt solid, reluctant to yield as he made his way to the doorway. Heboric bared his teeth. His taloned hands twitched.
    Ghosts stalked the dead city. Even the gods felt close, drawn to witness all that was to come. Witness, or to seize the moment and act directly. A nudge here, a tug there, if only to appease their egos . . . if only to see what happens. These were the games he despised, source of his fiercest defiance all those years ago. The shape of his crime, if crime it was.
    And so they took my hands.
    Until another god gave them back.
    He was, he realized, indifferent to Treach. A reluctant Destriant to the new god of war, despite the gifts. Nor had his desires changed. Otataral Island, and the giant of jade — that is what awaits me. The returning of power. Even as those last words tracked across his mind, he knew that a deceit rode among them. A secret he knew but to which he would fashion no shape. Not yet, perhaps not until he found himself standing in the wasteland, beneath the shadow of that crooked spire.
    But first, I must meet a more immediate challenge – getting out of this camp alive.
    He hesitated another moment at the doorway, reaching out into the darkness beyond with all his senses. Finding the path clear – his next twenty strides at least – he darted forward.
     
    Rolling the acorn in his fingers one last time, he tucked it into a fold in his sash and eased snake-like from the crack.
    'Oh, Hood's heartless hands . . .'
    The song was a distant thunder trembling along his bones, and he didn't like it. Worse yet, there were powers awakened in the oasis ahead that even he, a non-practitioner of sorcery, could feel like fire in his blood.
    Kalam Mekhar checked his long-knives yet again, then resheathed them. The temptation was great to keep the otataral weapon out, and so deny any magic sent his way. But that goes both ways, doesn't it?
    He studied the way ahead. The starlight seemed strangely muted. He drew from memory as best he could,
from what he had seen from his hiding place during the day. Palms, their boles spectral as they rose above tumbled mudbricks and cut stone. The remnants of corrals, pens and shepherds' huts. Stretches of sandy ground littered with brittle fronds and husks. There were no new silhouettes awaiting him.
    Kalam set forth.
    He could see the angular lines of buildings ahead, all low to the ground, suggesting little more than stretches of mud-brick foundations from which canvas, wicker and rattan walls rose. Occupied residences, then.
    Far off to Kalam's right was the grey smudge of that strange forest of stone trees. He had considered making his approach through it, but there was something uncanny and unwelcoming about that place, and he suspected it was not as empty as it appeared.
    Approaching what seemed to be a well-trod avenue between