A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

ritual?'
    'It's already begun.'
    She glanced away. 'You are a strange god. Riding a
miserable creature that dreams of killing you. Building
a fire with which to cook food. Tell me, in this new world,
are all gods such as you?'
    'I'm not a god,' Paran said. 'In place of the ancient Tiles
of the Holds – and I'll grant you I'm not sure that's what
they were called – in any case, there is now the Deck of
Dragons, a fatid containing the High Houses. I am the
Master of that Deck—'
    'A Master, in the same manner as the Errant?'
    'Who?'
    'The Master of the Holds in my time,' she replied.
    'I suppose so, then.'
    'He was an ascendant, Ganoes Paran. Worshipped as a
god by enclaves of Imass, Barghast and Trell. They kept his
mouth filled with blood. He never knew thirst. Nor peace.
I wonder how he fell.'
    'I think I'd like to know that detail myself,' Paran said,
shaken by the Jaghut's words. 'No-one worships me,
Ganath.'
    'They will. You are newly ascended. Even in this world of
yours, I am certain that there is no shortage of followers, of
those who are desperate to believe. And they will hunt
down others and make of them victims. They will cut them
and fill bowls with their innocent blood, in your name,
Ganoes Paran, and so beseech your intercession, your
adherence to whatever cause they righteously fashion. The
Errant thought to defeat them, as you might well seek to
do, and so he became the god of change. He walked the
path of neutrality, yet flavoured it with a pleasure taken in
impermanence. The Errant's enemy was ennui, stagnation.
This is why the Forkrul Assail sought to annihilate him.
And all his mortal followers.' She paused, then added,
'Perhaps they succeeded. The Assail were never easily
diverted from their chosen course.'
    Paran said nothing. There were truths in her words that
even he recognized, and they now weighed upon him,
settling heavy and imponderable upon his spirit. Burdens
were born from the loss of innocence. Naïveté. While the
innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had
already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief
in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of
truths was possible. He sensed the completion of an internal
journey, and Paran found he did not appreciate recognizing
that fact, nor the place where he now found himself. It did
not suit him that ignorance remained inextricably bound
to innocence, and the loss of one meant the loss of the
other.
    'I have troubled your mind, Ganoes Paran.'
    He glanced up, then shrugged. 'You have been ...
timely. Much to my regret, yet still,' he shrugged again,
'perhaps all for the best.'
    She faced the sea again and he followed her gaze. A
sudden calm upon the modest bay before them, whilst
white-caps continued to chop the waters beyond. 'What is
happening?' she asked.
    'They're coming.'
    Some distant clamour, now, rising as if from a deep
cavern, and the sunset seemed to have grown sickly, its very
fires slave to a chaotic tumult, as if the shades of a hundred
thousand sunsets and sunrises now waged celestial war.
    Whilst the horizons closed in, flickering with darkness,
smoke and racing storms of sand and dust.
    A stirring upon the pellucid waters of the bay, silt clouds
rising from beneath, and the calm was spreading outward
now, south, stilling the sea's wildness.
    Ganath stepped back. 'What have you done?'
    Muted but growing, the scuffle and rumble, the clangour
and throat-hum, the sound of marching armies, the echoing
of locked shields, the tympanous beat of iron and
bronze weapons upon battered rims, of wagons creaking
and churning rutted roads, and now the susurration,
thrumming collisions, walls of horseflesh hammering into
rows of raised pikes, the animal screams filling the air, then
fading, only for the collision to repeat, louder this time,
closer, and there was a violent patter cutting a swath across
the bay, leaving a pale, muddy red road in its wake that bled
outward, edges tearing, even as it sank down into the
depths. Voices, now, crying out, bellowing, piteous and
enraged, a cacophony of enmeshed lives, each one seeking
to separate itself, seeking to claim its own existence,
unique, a thing with eyes and voice. Fraught minds clutching
at memories that tore away like shredded banners, with
every gush of lost blood, with every crushing failure –
soldiers, dying, ever dying—
    Paran and Ganath watched, as colourless, sodden
standards pierced the surface of the water, the spears lifting
into the