A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

demanded.
    Boatfinder sat down in the damp mulch, began rocking
back and forth.
     
    Samar Dev was just completing her second burial when
Karsa Orlong returned. He walkéd up to the hearth she had
lit earlier and beside which Boatfinder sat hunched over
and swathed in furs, voicing a low moaning sound of
intractable sorrow. The Toblakai set his sword down.
    'Did you kill it?' she asked. 'Did you cut its paws off, skin
it alive, add its ears to your belt and crush its chest in with
your embrace?'
    'Escaped,' he said in a grunt.
    'Probably halfway to Ehrlitan by now.'
    'No, it is hungry. It will return, but not before we have
moved on.' He gestured to the remaining bodies. 'There is
no point – it will dig them up.'
    'Hungry, you said.'
    'Starving. It is not from this world. And this land here,
it offers little – the beast would do better on the plains to
the south.'
    'The map calls this the Olphara Mountains. Many lakes
are marked, and I believe the small one before us is joined
to others, further north, by a river.'
    'These are not mountains.'
    They once were, millennia past. They have been worn
down. We are on a much higher elevation than we were
just south of here.'
    'Nothing can gnaw mountains down to mere stubs,
witch.'
    'Nonetheless. We should see if we can repair these
canoes – it would be much easier—'
    'I shall not abandon Havok.'
    'Then we will never catch up with our quarry, Karsa
Orlong.'
    'They are not fleeing. They are exploring. Searching.'
    'For what?'
    The Toblakai did not answer.
    Samar Dev wiped dirt from her hands, then walked over
to the hearth. 'I think this hunt we are on is a mistake. The
Anibar should simply flee, leave this broken land, at least
until the intruders have left.'
    'You are a strange woman,' Karsa pronounced. 'You
wished to explore this land, yet find yourself made helpless
by it.'
    She started. 'Why do you say that?'
    'Here, one must be as an animal. Passing through, quiet,
for this is a place that yields little and speaks in silence.
Thrice in our journey we have been tracked by a bear, silent
as a ghost on this bedrock. Crossing and re-crossing our
trail. You would think such a large beast would be easy to
see, but it is not. There are omens here, Samar Dev, more
than I have ever seen before in any place, even my homeland.
Hawks circle overhead. Owls watch us pass from
hollows in dead trees. Tell me, witch, what is happening to
the moon?'
    She stared into the fire. 'I don't know. It seems to be
breaking up. Crumbling. There is no record of anything
like that happening before, neither the way it has grown
larger, nor the strange corona surrounding it.' She shook
her head. 'If it is an omen, it is one all the world can see.'
    'The desert folk believe gods dwell there. Perhaps they
wage war among themselves.'
    'Superstitious nonsense,' she said. 'The moon is this
world's child, the last child, for there were others, once.'
She hesitated. 'It may be that two have collided, but it is
difficult to be sure – the others were never very visible,
even in the best of times. Dark, smudged, distant, always in
the shadow cast by this world, or that of the largest moon
– the one we see most clearly. Of late, there has been much
dust in the air.'
    'There are more fireswords in the sky,' Karsa said. 'Just
before dawn, you may see ten in the span of three breaths,
each slashing down through the dark. Every night.'
    'We may learn more when we reach the coast, for the
tides will have changed.'
    'Changed, how?'
    'The moon's own breath,' she replied. 'We can measure
that breath ... in the ebb and flood of the tides. Such are
the laws of existence.'
    The Toblakai snorted. 'Laws are broken. Existence holds
to no laws. Existence is what persists, and to persist is to
struggle. In the end, the struggle fails.' He was removing
strips of smoked bhederin meat from his pack. 'That is the
only law worthy of the name.'
    She studied him. 'Is that what the Teblor believe?'
    He bared his teeth. 'One day I will return to my people.
And I will shatter all that they believe. And I will say to my
father, "Forgive me. You were right to disbelieve. You were right
to despise the laws that chained us." And to my grandfather, I
shall say nothing at all.'
    'Have you a wife in your tribe?'
    'I have victims, no wives.'
    A brutal admission, she reflected. 'Do you intend
reparation, Karsa Orlong?'
    'That would be seen as weakness.'
    'Then the chains still bind you.'
    'There was a Nathii settlement, beside a lake,