A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

tasting the flat grit
of the silts. Hunger's nest in his belly was now filled with
broken eggs, and tiny claws and beaks nipped at his insides.
    A long, exhausting journey brought him outside, blinking
in the harsh sunlight – so harsh and bright he could not
see. There were voices all around him, filling the street,
floating down from the roofs, high-pitched and in a
language he had never heard before. Laughter, excitement,
yet these sounds chilled him.
    He needed more water. He needed to defeat this brightness,
so that he could see once more. Discover the source of
these carnival sounds – had a caravan arrived in the
village? A troop of actors, singers and musicians?
    Did no-one see him? Here on his hands and knees, the
fever gone, his life returned to him?
    He was nudged on one side and his groping hand reached
out and found the shoulder and nape of a dog. The animal's
wet nose slipped along his upper arm. This was one of the
healthier dogs, he judged, his hand finding a thick layer of
fat over the muscle of the shoulder, then, moving down,
the huge swell of the beast's belly. He now heard other
dogs, gathering, pressing close, squirming with pleasure at
the touch of his hands. They were all fat. Had there been a
feast? The slaughter of a herd?
    Vision returned, with a clarity he had never before
experienced. Lifting his head, he looked round.
    The chorus of voices came from birds. Rooks, pigeons,
vultures bounding down the dusty street, screeching at the
bluff rushes from the village's dogs, who remained
possessive of the remains of bodies here and there, mostly
little more than bones and sun-blackened tendons, skulls
broken open by canine jaws, the insides licked clean.
    The boy rose to his feet, tottering with sudden dizziness
that was a long time in passing. Eventually, he was able to
turn and look back at his family's house, trying to recall
what he had seen when crawling through the rooms.
Nothing. No-one.
    The dogs circled him, all seeming desperate to make him
their master, tails wagging, stepping side to side as their
spines twisted back and forth, ears flicking up at his every
gesture, noses prodding his hands. They were fat, the boy
realized, because they had eaten everyone.
    For they had died. His mother, his father, his sisters,
everyone else in the village. The dogs, owned by all and by
none and living a life of suffering, of vicious hunger and
rivalries, had all fed unto indolence. Their joy came from
full bellies, all rivalry forgotten now. The boy understood in
this something profound. A child's delusions stripped back,
revealing the truths of the world.
    He began wandering.
    Some time later he found himself at the crossroads
just beyond the northernmost homestead, standing in the
midst of his newly adopted pets. A cairn of stones had
been raised in the very centre of the conjoined roads and
tracks.
    His hunger had passed. Looking down at himself, he saw
how thin he had become, and saw too the strange purplish
nodules thickening his joints, wrist, elbow, knee and ankle,
not in the least painful. Repositories, it seemed, for some
other strength.
    The cairn's message was plain to him, for it had been
raised by a shepherd and he had tended enough flocks in
his day. It told him to go north, up into the hills. It told him
that sanctuary awaited him there. There had been
survivors, then. That they had left him behind was understandable
– against the bluetongue fever nothing could be
done. A soul lived or a soul died of its own resolve, or lack
thereof.
    The boy saw that no herds remained on the hillsides.
Wolves had come down, perhaps, uncontested; or the other
villagers had driven the beasts with them. After all, a
sanctuary would have such needs as food and water, milk
and cheese.
    He set off on the north trail, the dogs accompanying
him.
    They were happy, he saw. Pleased that he now led them.
    And the sun overhead, that had been blinding, was
blinding no longer. The boy had come to and now crossed
a threshold, into the fourth and final time. He knew not
when it would end.
     
    With languid eyes, Felisin Younger stared at the scrawny
youth who had been brought in by the Unmanned
Acolytes. Just one more lost survivor looking to her for
meaning, guidance, for something to believe in that could
not be crushed down and swept away by ill winds.
    He was a Carrier – the swellings at his joints told her
that. Likely, he had infected the rest of his village. The
nodes had suppurated, poisoning the air,