A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

attacked, I thought it was the White Crow. But don't you see? White, the face of Menandore, of Dawn. That is what the Fulcra were showing us.'
    'I will not be devoured by your madness, Debtor.'
    'You asked me to lie to Uruth and the other Edur. I did as you asked, Feather Witch.'
    'But now the Wyval has taken you. And soon it will kill you, and even the Edur can do nothing. As soon as they realize that you are indeed poisoned, they will cut out your heart.'
    'Do you fear that I will become a Wyval? Is that my fate?'
    She shook her head. 'This is not the kiss of a Soletaken, Udinaas. It is a disease that attacks your brain. Poisons the clear blood of your thoughts.'
    'Are you truly here, Feather Witch? Here, in my dream?'
    With the question her form grew translucent, wavered, then scattered like windblown sand.
    He was alone once more.
    Will I never awaken?
    Motion in the sky to his right drew him round.
    Dragons. A score of the creatures, riding distant currents just above the uncertain horizon. Around them swarmed Wyval, like gnats.
    And Udinaas suddenly understood something.
    They are going to war.
    Morok leaves covered the corpse. Over the next few days, those leaves would begin to rot, leaching into the amber wax a bluish stain, until the coin-sheathed body beneath became a blurred shape, as if encased in ice.
    The shadow in the wax, enclosing the Beneda warrior for all time. A haven for wandering wraiths, there within the hollowed log.
    Trull stood beside the corpse. The Blackwood bole was still being prepared in an unlit building to one side of the citadel. Living wood resisted the hands that would alter its shape. But it loved death and so could be cajoled.
    Distant cries in the village as voices lifted in a final prayer to Daughter Dusk. Night was moments from arriving. The empty hours, when even faith itself must be held quiescent, lay ahead. Night belonged to the Betrayer. Who sought to murder Father Shadow at their very moment of triumph, and who very nearly succeeded.
    There were prohibitions against serious discourse during this passage of time. In darkness prowled deceit, an unseen breath that any could draw in, and so become infected.
    No swords were buried beneath the threshold of homes wherein maidens dwelt. To seal marriage now would be to doom its fate. A child delivered was put to death. Lovers did not touch one another. The day was dead.
    Soon, however, the moon would rise and shadows would return once more. Just as Scabandari Bloodeye emerged from the darkness, so too did the world. Failure awaits the Betrayer. It could not be otherwise, lest the realms descend into chaos.
    He stared down at the mound of leaves beneath which lay the body of the warrior. He had volunteered to stand guard this first night. No Edur corpse was ever left unattended when darkness prowled, for it cared naught whether its breath flowed into warm flesh or cold. A corpse could unleash dire events as easily as the acts of someone alive. It had no need for a voice or gestures of its own. Others were ever eager to speak for it, to draw blade or dagger.
    Hannan Mosag had proclaimed this the greatest flaw among the Edur. Old men and the dead were the first whisperers of the word vengeance. Old men and the dead stood at the same wall, and while the dead faced it, old men held their backs to it. Beyond that wall was oblivion. They spoke from the end times, and both knew a need to lead the young onto identical paths, if only to give meaning to all they had known and all they had done.
    Feuds were now forbidden. Crimes of vengeance sentenced an entire bloodline to disgraced execution.
    Trull Sengar had watched, from where he stood in the gloom beneath a tree – the body before him – had watched his brother Rhulad walk out into the forest. In these, the dark hours, he had been furtive in his movement, stealing like a wraith from the village edge.
    Into the forest, onto the north trail.
    That led to the cemetery that had been chosen for the Beneda warrior's interment.
    Where a lone woman stood vigil against the night.
    It may be an attempt ... that will fail. Or it is a repetition of meetings that have occurred before, many times. She is unknowable. As all women are unknowable. But he isn't. He was too late to the war and so his belt is bare. He would draw blood another way.
    Because Rhulad must win. In everything, he must win. That is the cliff-edge of his life, the narrow strand he himself fashions, with every slight observed