A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

cast her
dagger, to affect, as best she could, a host of destinies.
    She assumed Cotillion would understand all of this. That
he would trust her instincts, even if she was, ultimately,
unable to explain them.
    She must ... hurry.
    A moment's concentration. And the scene before her
was transformed. The cliff now a slope, crowded with
collapsed trees, firs, cedars, their roots torn loose from dark
earth, the boles flattened as if the entire hillside had been
struck by some unimaginable wind. Beneath a leaden sky, a
vast forested valley clothed in mist stretched out across
what had moments before been the waters of the
strait.
    The two skeletons pattered up to crowd her feet, heads
darting.
    'I told you there'd be a forest,' Telorast said.
    Apsalar gestured at the wreckage on the slope immediately
before them. 'What happened here?'
    'Sorcery,' Curdle said. 'Dragons.'
    'Not dragons.'
    'No, not dragons. Telorast is right. Not dragons.'
    'Demons.'
    'Yes, terrible demons whose very breath is a warren's
gate, oh, don't jump down those throats!'
    'No breath, Curdle,' Telorast said. 'Just demons. Small
ones. But lots of them. Pushing trees down, one by one,
because they're mean and inclined to senseless acts of
destruction.'
    'Like children.'
    'Right, as Curdle says, like children. Children demons.
But strong. Very strong. Huge, muscled arms.'
    'So,' Apsalar said, 'dragons fought here.'
    'Yes,' Telorast said.
    'In the Shadow Realm.'
    'Yes.'
    'Presumably, the same dragons that are now imprisoned
within the stone circle.'
    'Yes.'
    Apsalar nodded, then began making her way down. 'This
will be hard going. I wonder if I will save much time
traversing the forest.'
    'Tiste Edur forest,' Curdle said, scampering ahead. 'They
like their forests.'
    'All those natural shadows,' Telorast added. 'Power in
permanence. Blackwood, bloodwood, all sorts of terrible
things. The Eres were right to fear.'
    In the distance a strange darkness was sliding across the
treetops. Apsalar studied it. The carrack, casting an ethereal
presence into this realm. She was seeing both worlds, a
common enough occurrence. Yet, even so ... someone is on
that carrack. And that someone is important ...
     
    T'rolbarahl, ancient creature of the First Empire of
Dessimbelackis, Dejim Nebrahl crouched at the base of a
dead tree, or, rather, flowed like a serpent round the
bleached, exposed roots, seven-headed, seven-bodied and
mottled with the colours of the ground, the wood and the
rocks. Fresh blood, slowly losing its heat, filled the D'ivers'
stomachs. There had been no shortage of victims, even in
this wasteland. Herders, salt-miners, bandits, desert wolves,
Dejim Nebrahl had fed continuously on this journey to the
place of ambush.
    The tree, thick-boled, squat, with only a few twisted
branches surviving the centuries since it had died, rose
from a crack in the rock between a flat stretch that marked
the trail and an upthrust tower of pitted, wind-worn stone.
The trail twisted at this point, skirting the edge of a cliff,
the drop below ten or more man-heights to boulders and
jagged rubble.
    On the other side of the trail, more rocks rose, heaped,
the stone cracked and shelved.
    The D'ivers would strike here, from both sides, lifting
free of the shadows.
    Dejim Nebrahl was content. Patience easily purchased
by fresh meat, the echoing screams of death, and now it
need but await the coming of the victims, the ones the
Nameless Ones had chosen.
    Soon, then.
     
    Plenty of room between the trees, a cathedral of shadows
and heavy gloom, the flow of damp air like water against
her face as Apsalar jogged onward, flanked by the darting
forms of Telorast and Curdle. To her surprise, she was
indeed making good time. The ground was surprisingly
level and tree-falls seemed nonexistent, as if no tree in this
expanse of forest ever died. She had seen no wildlife, had
come upon no obvious game trail, yet there had been
glades, circular sweeps of moss tightly ringed by evenly
spaced cedars, or, if not cedar, then something much like it,
the bark rough, shaggy, black as tar. The circles were too
perfect to be natural, although no other evidence of intent
or design was visible. In these places, the power of shadow
was, as Telorast had said, fierce.
    Tiste Edur, Kurald Emurlahn, their presence lingered,
but only in the same manner as memories clung to graveyards,
tombs and barrows. Old dreams snarled and fading in
the grasses, in the twist of wood and the crystal latticework
of stone.