A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

understand women.
    He faced the command tent once more, in time to see the Adjunct emerge, tightening the straps on her gauntlets. She was helmed, the cheek guards locked in place. There was no visor covering her eyes – many fighters found their vision too impaired by the slits – and he watched her pause, lifting her gaze to the morning sky for a moment, before she strode forward.
    He gave her some distance, then followed.
     
    L'oric clawed his way through the swirling shadows, scraped by skeletal branches and stumbling over gnarled roots. He had not expected this. There had to be a path, a way through this blackwood forest.
    That damned goddess was here. Close. She had to be – if he could but find the trail.
    The air was sodden and chill, the boles of the trees leaning this way and that, as if an earthquake had just shaken the ground. Wood creaked overhead to some high wind. And everywhere flitted wraiths, lost shadows, closing on the High Mage then darting away again. Rising from the humus like ghosts, hissing over his head as he staggered on.
    And then, through the trees, the flicker of fire.
    Gasping, L'oric ran towards it.
    It was her. And the flames confirmed his suspicion. An Imass, trailing the chains of Tellann, the Ritual shattered – oh, she has no place here, no place at all.
    Chthonic spirits swarmed her burning body, the accretions of power she had gathered unto herself over hundreds of thousands of years. Hatred and spite had twisted them all into malign, vicious creatures.
    Marsh water and mould had blackened the limbs of the Imass. Moss covered the torso like dangling, knotted fur. Ropes of snarled, grey hair hung down, tangled with burrs. From her scorched eye sockets, living flames licked out. The bones of her cheeks were white, latticed in cracks from the heat.
    Toothless, the heavy lower jaw hanging – barely held
in place by rotting strips of tendon and withered muscle.
    The goddess was keening, a wavering, eerie cry that did not pause for breath, and it seemed to L'oric that she was struggling.
    He drew closer.
    She had stumbled into a web of vines, the twisted ropes entangling her arms and legs, wrapped like serpents about her torso and neck. He wondered that he had not seen them earlier, then realized that they were flickering, one moment there, the other gone – although no less an impediment for their rhythmic disappearance – and they were changing...
    Into chains.
    Suddenly, one snapped. And the goddess howled, redoubled her efforts.
    Another broke, whipping to crack against a tree.
    L'oric edged forward. 'Goddess! Hear me! Sha'ik – she is not strong enough for you!'
    'My – my – my child! Mine! I stole her from the bitch! Mine!'
    The High Mage frowned. Who? What bitch? 'Goddess, listen to me, please! I offer myself in her stead! Do you understand?'
    Another chain broke.
    And a voice spoke low behind L'oric. 'Interfering bastard.'
    He spun, but too late, as a wide-bladed knife was driven deep between his ribs, tearing a savage path to his heart.
    Or where his heart should have been, had L'oric been human.
    The serrated tip missed, sliding in front of the deep-seated organ, then jammed into the side of the sternum.
    L'oric groaned and sagged.
    The killer dragged his knife free, crouched and pulled L'oric's head back by the jaw. Reached down with the blade.
    'Never mind that, fool!' hissed another voice. 'She's breaking the chains!'
    L'oric watched the man hesitate, then growl and move away.
    The High Mage could feel blood filling his chest. He slowly turned onto his side, and could feel the warm flow seep down from the wound. The change in position gave him a mostly unobscured view of the goddess—
    —and the assassins now closing in on her.
    Sorcery streamed from their knives, a skein of death-magics.
    The goddess shrieked as the first knife was driven into her back.
    He watched them kill her. A prolonged, brutal butchering. Korbolo's Talons, his chosen assassins, who had been waiting in ambush, guided here by Febryl – no-one else could have managed that path – and abetted by the sorcerous powers of Kamist Reloe, Henaras and Fayelle. She fought back with a ferocity near to match, and soon three of the four assassins were dead – torn limb from limb. But more chains now ensnared the goddess, dragging her down, and L'oric could see the fires dying in her eye sockets, could see spirits writhe away, suddenly freed and eager to flee. And the last killer darted in,