A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

limbs.
    Grainy with flies and thundering pain – a momentary
scene played out before the demon's eyes. Broad, bestial,
clad in furs, a creature of little more than skin and bone,
stepping placidly over Greyfrog's back leg, which was lying
five paces distant, kicking all by itself. Stepping into the
black cloud.
    Dismay. I can hop no more.
     
    Even as he had leapt from the back of his horse, two flint
swords had caught him, one slashing through muscle and
bone, severing an arm, the other thrusting point first into,
then through, his chest. Heboric, throat filled with animal
snarls, twisted in mid-air in a desperate effort to pull himself
free of the impaling weapon. Yet it followed, tearing
downward – snapping ribs, cleaving through lung, then
liver – and finally ripping out from his side in an explosion
of bone shards, meat and blood.
    The Destriant's mouth filled with hot liquid, spraying as
he struck the ground, rolled, then came to a stop.
    Both T'lan Imass walked to where he lay sprawled in the
dust, stone weapons slick with gore.
    Heboric stared up at those empty, lifeless eyes, watched as
the tattered, desiccated warriors stabbed down, rippled points
punching into his body again and again. He watched as one
flashed towards his face, then shot down into his neck—
    Voices, beseeching, a distant chorus of dismay and
despair – he could reach them no longer – those lost souls
in their jade-swallowed torment, growing fainter, farther
and farther away – I told you, look not to me, poor creatures.
Do you see, finally, how easy it was to fail you?
    I have heard the dead, but I could not serve them. Just as I
have lived, yet created nothing.
    He remembered clearly now, in a single dread moment
that seemed unending, timeless, a thousand images – so
many pointless acts, empty deeds, so many faces – all those
for whom he did nothing. Baudin, Kulp, Felisin Paran,
L'oric, Scillara ... Wandering lost in this foreign land, this
tired desert and the dust of gardens filling brutal, sunscorched
air – better had he died in the otataral mines of
Skullcup. Then, there would have been no betrayals. Fener
would hold his throne. The despair of the souls in their vast
jade prisons, spinning unchecked through the Abyss, that
terrible despair – it could have remained unheard, unwitnessed,
and so there would have been no false promises
of salvation.
    Baudin would not have been so slowed down in his flight
with Felisin Paran – oh, I have done nothing worthwhile in this
all-too-long life. These ghost hands, they have proved the illusion
of their touch – no benediction, no salvation, not for anyone
they dared touch. And these reborn eyes, with all their feline
acuity, they fade now into their senseless stare, a look every
hunter yearns for in the eyes of their fallen foe.
    So many warriors, great heroes – in their own eyes at
least – so many had set off in pursuit of the giant tiger that
was Treach – knowing nothing of the beast's true identity.
Seeking to defeat him, to stand over his stilled corpse, and
look down into his blank eyes, yearning to capture something,
anything, of majesty and exaltation and take it
within themselves.
    But truths are never found when the one seeking them is
lost, spiritually, morally. And nobility and glory cannot be
stolen, cannot be earned in the violent rape of a life. Gods,
such pathetic, flailing, brutally stupid conceit ... it was good,
then, that Treach killed every damned one of them.
Dispassionately. Ah, such a telling message in that.
    Yet he knew. The T'lan Imass who had killed him cared
nothing for all of that. They had acted out of exigency.
Perhaps somewhere in their ancient memories, of the time
when they were mortal, they too had sought to steal what
they themselves could never possess. But such pointless
pursuits no longer mattered to them.
    Heboric would be no trophy.
    And that was well.
    And in this final failure, it seemed there would be no
other survivors, and in some ways that was well, too.
Appropriate. So much for glory found within his final
thoughts.
    And is that not fitting? In this last thought, I fail even myself.
    He found himself reaching ... for something. Reaching,
but nothing answered his touch. Nothing at all.

BOOK THREE

SHADOWS OF THE KING

Who can say where divides truth and the host of desires
that, together, give shape to memories? There are deep
folds in every legend, and the visible, outward pattern
presents a false unity of form and