A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

shrieked, surged towards the Toblakai.
    Karsa leapt away, dragging his sword after him.
    Blood gushing from the puncture in its throat, the hound rose up on its three legs, weaving, head swaying as it coughed red spume onto the stones.
    A figure darted out from the shadows. The spiked ball at the end of a flail hissed through the air, and thundered into the hound's head. A second followed, hammering down from above to audibly crack the beast's thick skull.
    Karsa stepped forward. An overhead two-handed swing finally drove the hound from its wobbling legs.
    Side by side, Leoman and Karsa closed in to finish it. A dozen blows later and the hound was dead.
    Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas then stumbled into view, a broken sword in his hand.
    Karsa wiped the gore from his blade then glared at Leoman. 'I did not need your help,' he growled.
    Leoman grinned. 'But I need yours.'
     
    Pearl staggered from the trench, clambering over sprawled corpses. Since his rather elegant assassination of Henaras, things had gone decidedly downhill – steeper than that trench behind me. Countless guards, then the ghostly army whose weapons were anything but illusory. His head still ached from Lostara's kiss – damned woman, just when I thought I'd figured her out . . .
    He'd been cut and slashed at all the way through that damned camp, and now stumbled half blind towards the ruins.
    The darkness was being torn apart on all sides. Kurald Emurlahn was opening like death's own flower, with the oasis at its dark heart. Beneath the sorcerous pressure of that manifestation, it was all he could do to pitch headlong down the trail.
    So long as Lostara stayed put, they might well salvage something out of all this.
    He came to the edge and paused, studying the pit where he'd left her. No movement. She was either staying low or had left. He padded forward.
    I despise nights like these. Nothing goes as planned —
    Something hard struck him in the side of his head. Stunned, he fell and lay unmoving, his face pressed against the cold, gritty ground.
    A voice rumbled above him. 'That was for Malaz City. Even so, you still owe me one.'
    'After Henaras?' Pearl mumbled, his words puffing up tiny clouds of dust. 'You should be owing me one.'
    'Her? Not worth counting.'
    Something thumped heavily to the ground beside Pearl. That then groaned.
    'All right,' the Claw sighed – more dust, a miniature Whirlwind – 'I owe you one, then.'
    'Glad we're agreed. Now, make some more noises. Your lass over there's bound to take a look ... eventually.'
    Pearl listened to the footfalls pad away. Two sets. The wizard was in no mood to talk, I suppose.
    To me, that is.
    I believe I am sorely humbled.
    Beside him, the trussed shape groaned again.
    Despite himself, Pearl smiled.
    To the east, the sky paled.
    And this night was done.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    On this day, Raraku rises.
    xxxiv.II.l.81 'Words of the Prophecy'
The Book of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic
     
    The whirlwind goddess had once been a raging storm of wind and sand. A wall surrounding the young woman who had once been Felisin of House Paran, and who had become Sha'ik, Chosen One and supreme ruler of the Army of the Apocalypse.
    Felisin had been her mother's name. She had then made it her adopted daughter's name. Yet she herself had lost it. Occasionally, however, in the deepest hours of night, in the heart of an impenetrable silence of her own making, she caught a glimpse of that girl. As she once had been, the smeared reflection from a polished mirror. Round-cheeked and flushed, a wide smile and bright eyes. A child with a brother who adored her, who would toss her about on one knee as if it was a bucking horse, and her squeals of fear and delight would fill the chamber.
    Her mother had been gifted with visions. This was well known. A respected truth. And that mother's youngest daughter had dreamed that one day she too would find that talent within her.
    But that gift only came with the goddess, with this spiteful, horrific creature whose soul was far more parched and withered than any desert. And the visions that assailed Sha'ik were murky, fraught things. They were, she had
come to realize, not born of any talent or gift. They were the conjurings of fear.
    A goddess's fear.
    And now the Whirlwind Wall had closed, retracted, had drawn in from the outside world to rage beneath Sha'ik's sun-darkened skin, along her veins and arteries, careening wild and deafening in her mind.
    Oh, there was power there. Bitter with