A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

children enough to
keep them. The rules of mortal flesh were all that mattered,
the need to breathe, to eat, drink, to find warmth in the
cold of night. And, beyond these struggles, when the last
breath had been taken inside, well, she would be in no
condition to care about anything, about what happened
next, who died, who was born, the cries of starving children
and the vicious tyrants who starved them – these were, she
understood, the simple legacies of indifference, the consequences
of the expedient, and this would go on in the
mortal realm until the last spark winked out, gods or no
gods.
    And she could make peace with that. To do otherwise
would be to rail at the inevitable. To do otherwise would be
to do as Heboric Ghost Hands did, and look where it took
him. Into madness. The truth of futility was the hardest
truth of all, and for those clear-eyed enough to see it, there
was no escape.
    She had been to oblivion, after all, and had returned,
and so she knew there was nothing to fear in that dreamthick
place.
    True to Heboric's words, the rock shelter revealed the
signs of countless generations of occupation. Boulder-lined
hearths, red ochre paintings on the bleached walls, heaps of
broken pottery and fire-split, charred bones. The clay floor
of the hollow was packed hard as stone by countless passings.
Nearby was the sound of trickling water, and Scillara
saw Heboric crouched there, before a spring-fed pool, his
glowing hands held over the placid, dark-mirror surface, as
if hesitating to plunge them down into the coolness.
White-winged butterflies danced in the air around him.
    He journeyed with the gift of salvation. Something to do
with the green glow of his hands, and the ghosts haunting
him. Something to do with his past, and what he saw of the
future. But he belonged to Treach now, Tiger of Summer. No reconciliation.
    She spied a flat rock and walked over to sit, stretching
out her weary legs, noting the bulge of her belly as she
leaned back on her hands. Staring down upon it, cruel
extrusion on what had once been a lithe form, forcing an
expression of disgust on her features.
    'Are you with child?'
    She glanced up, studied Cutter's face, amused at his
dawning revelation as it widened his eyes and filled them
with alarm.
    'Bad luck happens,' she said. Then, 'I blame the gods.'

CHAPTER SIX
    Paint a line with blood and, standing over it, shake a
nest of spiders good and hard. They fall to this side of
the divide. They fall to that side of the divide. Thus did
the gods fall, taut-legged and ready, as the heavens
trembled, and in the scattering rain of drifting web – all
these dread cut threads of scheming settling down –
skirling now in the winds that roared sudden, alive and
vengeful, to pronounce in tongues of thunder, the gods
were at war.
    Slayer of Magic
A history of the Host of Days
Sarathan
     
    T hrough slitted eyes, in the bar of shadow cast by the
great helm's ridged brow, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas
studied the woman.
    Harried aides and functionaries rushed past her and
Leoman of the Flails, like leaves in a torrential flood. And
the two, standing there, like stones. Boulders. Like things ...
rooted, yes, rooted to bedrock. Captain Dunsparrow, now
Third Dunsparrow. A Malazan.
    A woman, and Leoman ... well, Leoman liked women.
    So they stood, oh yes, discussing details, finalizing the
preparations for the siege to come. The smell of sex a heady
smugness enveloping the two like a poisonous fog. He,
Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas, who had ridden at Leoman's
side through battle after battle, who had saved Leoman's life
more than once, who had done all that had ever been asked
of him, was loyal. But she, she is desirable.
    He told himself it made no difference. There had been
other women. He'd had a few himself from time to time,
although not the same ones as Leoman had known, of
course. And, one and all, they had been nothing before the
faith, withering into insignificance in the face of hard
necessity. The voice of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic overwhelmed
with its descending squall of destruction. This
was as it should be.
    Dunsparrow. Malazan, woman, distraction and possible
corrupter. For Leoman of the Rails was hiding something
from Corabb, and that had never before happened. Her
fault. She was to blame. He would have to do something
about her, but what?
    He rose from the Falah'd's old throne, that Leoman had
so contemptuously discarded, and walked to the wide,
arched window overlooking the inner keep