A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

age, bilious with malice. And whatever fuelled it bore the sour taste of betrayal. A heart-piercing, very personal betrayal. Something that should have healed, that should have numbed beneath thick, tough scar tissue. Spiteful pleasure had kept the wound open, had fed its festering heat, until hate was all that was left. Hate for ... someone, a hate so ancient it no longer possessed a face.
    In moments of cold reason, Sha'ik saw it for what it was. Insane, raised to such extremity that she understood that whatever had been the crime against the goddess, whatever the source of the betrayal, it had not earned such a brutal reaction. The proportions had begun wrong. From the very start. Leading her to suspect that the proclivity for madness had already existed, dark flaws marring the soul that would one day claw its way into ascendancy.
    Step by step, we walk the most horrendous paths. Stride tottering along the edge of an unsuspected abyss. Companions see nothing amiss. The world seems a normal place. Step by step, no different from anyone else – not from the outside. Not even from the inside. Apart from that tautness, that whisper of panic. The vague confusion that threatens your balance.
    Felisin, who was Sha'ik, had come to comprehend this.
    For she had walked that same path.
    Hatred, sweet as nectar.
    I have walked into the abyss.
    I am as mad as that goddess. And this is why she chose me, for we are kindred souls . . .
    Then what is this ledge to which I still cling so desperately? Why do I persist in my belief that I can save myself? That I can return . . . find once mare the place where madness cannot be found, where confusion does not exist.
    The place . . . of childhood.
    She stood in the main chamber, the chair that would be a throne behind her, its cushions cool, its armrests dry. She stood, imprisoned in a stranger's armour. She could almost feel the goddess reaching out to engulf her on all sides – not a mother's embrace, no, nothing like that at all. This one would suffocate her utterly, would drown out all light, every glimmer of self-awareness.
    Her ego is armoured in hatred. She cannot look in, she can barely see out. Her walk is a shamble, cramped and stiff, a song of rusty fittings and creaking straps. Her teeth gleam in the shadows, but it is a rictus grin.
    Felisin Paran, hold up this mirror at your peril.
    Outside stole the first light of dawn.
    And Sha'ik reached for her helm.
     
    L'oric could just make out the Dogslayer positions at the tops of the cobbled ramps. There was no movement over there in the grey light of dawn. It was strange, but not surprising. The night just done would make even the hardest soldier hesitant to raise a gaze skyward, to straighten from a place of hiding to begin the mundane tasks that marked the start of a new day.
    Even so, there was something strange about those trenches.
    He strode along the ridge towards the hilltop where Sha'ik had established her forward post to observe the battle to come. The High Mage ached in every bone. His muscles shouted pain with every step he took.
    He prayed she was there.
    Prayed the goddess would deign to hear his words, his warning, and, finally, his offer.
    All hovered on the cusp. Darkness had been defeated ... somehow. He wondered at that, but not for long – there was no time for such idle musings. This tortured fragment
of Kurald Emurlahn was awakening, and the goddess was about to arrive, to claim it for herself. To fashion a throne. To devour Raraku.
    Ghosts still swirled in the shadows, warriors and soldiers from scores of long-dead civilizations. Wielding strange weapons, their bodies hidden beneath strange armour, their faces mercifully covered by ornate visors. They were singing, although that Tanno song had grown pensive, mournful, sighing soft as the wind. It had begun to rise and fall, a sussuration that chilled L'oric.
    Who will they fight for? Why are they here at all? What do they want?
    The song belonged to the Bridgeburners. Yet it seemed the Holy Desert itself had claimed it, had taken that multitude of ethereal voices for itself. And every soul that had fallen in battle in the desert's immense history was now gathered in this place.
    The cusp.
    He came to the base of the trail leading up to Sha'ik's hill. There were desert warriors huddled here and there, wrapped in their ochre telabas, spears thrust upright, iron points glistening with dew as the sun's fire broke on the east horizon. Companies of