A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

harden yourself.
    'The enemy is evil, Icarium. The face of the world is evil.
And so, friend, your enemy is ...'
    The warrior looked away, and Taralack Veed barely
heard his whispered reply, 'The world.'
    'Yes. Would that I could hide such truth from you, but I
could not claim to be your friend if I did such a thing.'
    'No, that is true. Very well, Taralack Veed, let us as you
say speak more of this whilst we journey north and west. To
the coast opposite the island of Sepik. Yes, I feel ... there
is something there. Awaiting us.'
    'You must needs be ready for it,' the Gral said.
    Icarium nodded. 'And so I shall, my friend.'
     
    Each time, the return journey was harder, more fraught,
and far, far less certain. There were things that would have
made it easier. Knowing where he had been, for one, and
knowing where he must return to, for another. Returning to
... sanity? Perhaps. But Heboric Ghost Hands had no firm
grasp of what sanity was, what it looked like, felt like,
smelled like. It might be that he had never known.
    Rock was bone. Dust was flesh. Water was blood.
Residues settled in multitudes, becoming layers, and upon
those layers yet more, and on and on until a world was
made, until all that death could hold up one's feet where
one stood, and rise to meet every step one took. A solid bed
to lie on. So much for the world. Death holds us up. And
then there were the breaths that filled, that made the air,
the heaving assertions measuring the passing of time, like
notches marking the arc of a life, of every life. How many
of those breaths were last ones? The final expellation of a
beast, an insect, a plant, a human with film covering his or
her fading eyes? And so how, how could one draw such air
into the lungs? Knowing how filled with death it was, how
saturated it was with failure and surrender?
    Such air choked him, burned down his throat, tasting of
the bitterest acid. Dissolving and devouring, until he was
naught but ... residue.
    They were so young, his companions. There was no way
they could understand the filth they walked on, walked in,
walked through. And took into themselves, only to fling
some of it back out again, now flavoured by their own
sordid additions. And when they slept, each night, they
were as empty things. While Heboric fought on against the
knowledge that the world did not breathe, not any more.
No, now, the world drowned.
    And I drown with it. Here in this cursed wasteland. In the sand
and heat and dust. I am drowning. Every night. Drowning.
    What could Treach give him? This savage god with its
overwhelming hungers, desires, needs. Its mindless ferocity,
as if it could pull back and reclaim every breath it drew into
its bestial lungs, and so defy the world, the ageing world
and its deluge of death. He was wrongly chosen, so every
ghost told him, perhaps not in words, but in their constant
crowding him, rising up, overwhelming him with their
silent, accusatory regard.
    And there was more. The whisperings in his dreams,
voices emerging from a sea of jade, beseeching. He was the
stranger who had come among them; he had done what
none other had done: he had reached through the green
prison. And they prayed to him, begging for his return.
Why? What did they want?
    No, he did not want answers to such questions. He would
return this cursed gift of jade, this alien power. He
would cast it back into the void and be done with it.
    Holding to that, clinging to that, was keeping him sane.
If this torment of living could be called sane. Drowning, I
am drowning, and yet ... these damned feline gifts, this welter
of senses, so sweet, so rich, I can feel them, seeking to seduce
me. Back into this momentary world.
    In the east the sun was clawing its way back into the sky,
the edge of some vast iron blade, just pulled from the forge.
He watched the red glow cutting the darkness, and
wondered at this strange sense of imminence that so stilled
the dawn air.
    A groan from the bundle of blankets where Scillara slept,
then: 'So much for the blissful poison.'
    Heboric flinched, then drew a deep breath, released a
slow sigh. 'Which blissful poison would that be, Scillara?'
    Another groan, as she worked her way into a sitting
position. 'I ache, old man. My back, my hips, everywhere.
And I get no sleep – no position is comfortable and I
have to pee all the time. This, this is awful. Gods, why do
women do it? Again and again and again – are they all
mad?'
    'You'd know better than I,' Heboric said. 'But I tell