A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

sand, he
didn't know, but to see was to feel pain. To see her was ...
terrible.
    No, Sha'ik, please. This must end, it must all end. We have
had our fill of holy wars – how much blood can this sand absorb?
When will your thirst end?
    She came closer. And the closer she drew to where
he was standing, the more his eyes failed him, and when he
heard her halt before him, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas was
blind.
    Yet not deaf, as she whispered, 'Help me.'
     
    'Open your eyes, friend.'
    But he didn't want to. Everybody demanded decisions.
    From him, all the time, and he didn't want to make any
more. Never again. The way it was now was perfect. This
slow sinking away, the whisperings that meant nothing,
that weren't even words. He desired nothing more,
nothing else.
    'Wake up, Fiddler. One last time, so we can talk. We
need to talk, friend.'
    All right. He opened his eyes, blinked to clear the mists –
but they didn't clear – in fact, the face looking down at him
seemed to be made of those mists. 'Hedge. What do you
want?'
    The sapper grinned. 'I bet you think you're dead, don't
you? That you're back with all your old buddies. A
Bridgeburner, where the Bridgeburners never die. The
deathless army – oh, we cheated Hood, didn't we just. Hah!
That's what you're thinking, yeah? Okay, then, so where's
Trotts? Where are all the others?'
    'You tell me.'
    'I will. You ain't dead. Not yet, maybe not for a while
either. And that's my point. That's why I'm here. You need
a kicking awake, Fid, else Hood'll find you and you won't
see none of us ever again. The world's been burned
through, where you are right now. Burned through, realm
after realm, warren after warren. It ain't a place anybody
can claim. Not for a long time. Dead, burned down straight
to the Abyss.'
    'You're a ghost, Hedge. What do you want with me?
From me?'
    'You got to keep going, Fid. You got to take us with you,
right to the end—'
    'What end?'
    'The end and that's all I can say—'
    'Why?'
    "Cause it ain't happened yet, you idiot! How am I
supposed to know? It's the future and I can't see no future.
Gods, you're so thick, Fid. You always were.'
    'Me? I didn't blow myself up, Hedge.'
    'So? You're lying on a bunch of urns and bleeding out –
that's better? Messing up all that sweet honey with your
blood—'
    'What honey? What are you talking about?'
    'You better get going, you're running outa time.'
    'Where are we?'
    'No place, and that's the problem. Maybe Hood'll find
you, maybe no-one will. The ghosts of Y'Ghatan – they all
burned. Into nothing. Destroyed, all those locked
memories, thousands and thousands. Thousands of years
... gone, now. You've no idea the loss ...'
    'Be quiet. You're sounding like a ghost.'
    'Time to wake up, Fid. Wake up, now. Go on ...'
     
    Wildfires had torn across the grasslands, and Bottle found
himself lying on blackened stubble. Nearby lay a charred
carcass. Some kind of four-legged grass-eater – and around
it had gathered a half-dozen human-like figures, fine-furred
and naked. They held sharp-edged stones and were cutting
into the burnt flesh.
    Two stood as sentinels, scanning the horizons. One of
them was ... her.
    My female. Heavy with child, so heavy now. She saw him
and came over. He could not look away from her eyes, from
that regal serenity in her gaze.
    There had been wild apes on Malaz Island once. He
remembered, in Jakatakan, when he was maybe seven years
old, seeing a cage in the market, the last island ape left,
captured in the hardwood forests on the north coast. It had
wandered down into a village, a young male seeking a mate
– but there were no mates left. Half-starved and terrified, it
had been cornered in a stable, clubbed unconscious, and
now it crouched in a filthy bamboo cage at the dockside
market in Jakatakan.
    The seven-year-old boy had stood before it, his eyes level
with that black-furred, heavy-browed beast's own eyes, and
there had been a moment, a single moment, when their
gazes locked. A single moment that broke Bottle's heart.
He'd seen misery, he'd seen awareness – the glint that knew
itself, yet did not comprehend what it had done wrong,
what had earned it the loss of its freedom. It could not have
known, of course, that it was now alone in the world. The
last of its kind. And that somehow, in some exclusively
human way, that was its crime.
    Just as the child could not have known that the ape, too,
was aged seven.
    Yet both saw, both knew in their souls – those darkly
flickering shapings,