A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

not yet solidly formed – that, for this
one time, they were each looking upon a brother.
    Breaking his heart.
    Breaking the ape's heart, too – but maybe, he'd thought
since, maybe he just needed to believe that, a kind of
flagellation in recompense. For being the one outside the
cage, for knowing that there was blood on the hands of
himself and his kind.
    Bottle's soul, broken away ... and so freed, gifted or
cursed with the ability to travel, to seek those duller lifesparks
and to find that, in truth, they were not dull at all,
that the failure in fully seeing belonged to himself.
    Compassion existed when and only when one could step
outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the
cage.
    Years later, Bottle had tracked down the fate of that last
island ape. Purchased by a scholar who lived in a solitary
tower on the wild, unsettled coast of Geni, where there
dwelt, in the forests inland, bands of apes little different
from the one he had seen; and he liked to believe, now,
that that scholar's heart had known compassion; and that
those foreign apes had not rejected this strange, shy cousin.
His hope: that there had been a reprieve, for that one,
solitary life.
    His fear was that the creature's wired skeleton stood in
one of the tower's dingy rooms, a trophy of uniqueness.
    Amidst the smell of ash and charred flesh, the female
crouched down before him, reached out to brush hard
finger pads across his forehead.
    Then that hand made a fist, lifting high, then flashing
down—
     
    He flinched, eyes snapping open and seeing naught but
darkness. Hard rims and shards digging into his back – the
chamber, the honey, oh gods my head aches ... Groaning,
Bottle rolled over, the shard fragments cutting and crunching
beneath him. He was in the room beyond the one
containing the urns, although at least one had followed
him to shatter on the cold stone floor. He groaned again.
Smeared in sticky honey, aches all over him ... but the
burns, the pain – gone. He drew a deep breath, then
coughed. The air was foul. He needed to get everyone going
– he needed—
    'Bottle? That you?'
    Cuttle, lying nearby. 'Aye,' said Bottle. 'That honey—'
    'Kicked hard, didn't it just. I dreamed ... a tiger, it had
died – cut to pieces, in fact, by these giant undead lizards
that ran on two feet. Died, yet ascended, only it was the
death part it was telling me about. The dying part – I don't
understand. Treach had to die, I think, to arrive. The dying
part was important – I'm sure of it, only ... gods below,
listen to me. This air's rotten – we got to get moving.'
    Yes. But he'd lost the rat, he remembered that, he'd lost
her. Filled with despair, Bottle sought out the creature—
    —and found her. Awakened by his touch, resisting not at
all as he captured her soul once more, and, seeing through
her eyes, he led the rat back into the room.
    'Wake the others, Cuttle. It's time.'
     
    Shouting, getting louder, and Gesler awoke soaked in
sweat. That, he decided, was a dream he would never, ever
revisit. Given the choice. Fire, of course, so much fire.
Shadowy figures dancing on all sides, dancing around him,
in fact. Night, snapped at by flames, the drumming of feet,
voices chanting in some barbaric, unknown language, and
he could feel his soul responding, flaring, burgeoning as if
summoned by some ritual.
    At which point Gesler realized. They were dancing
round a hearth. And he was looking out at them – from the
very flame itself. No, he was the flame.
    Oh Truth, you went and killed yourself. Damned fool.
    Soldiers were awakening on all sides of the chamber –
shouts and moans and a chorus of clunking urns.
    This journey was not yet done. They would go on, and
on, deeper and deeper, until the passage dead-ended, until
the air ran out, until a mass of rubble shook loose and
crushed them all.
    Any way at all, please, except fire.
     
    How long had they been down here? Bottle had no idea.
Memories of open sky, of sunlight and the wind, were
invitations to madness, so fierce was the torture of recalling
all those things one took for granted. Now, the world was
reduced to sharp fragments of brick, dust, cobwebs and darkness.
Passages that twisted, climbed, dropped away. His hands
were a battered, bloody mess from clawing through packed
rubble.
    And now, on a sharp down-slope, he had reached a place
too small to get through. Feeling with his half-numbed
hands, he tracked the edges. Some kind of cut cornerstone
had sagged down at