A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

everyone in the entire extended family. Fortytwo,
if one counted four-month-old Minarala – and he had,
the little bastard. A madness less imaginative might have
settled for a host of horrid dolls, upon which he could
deliver minor but chronic torment to feed his insatiable
evil, but not her brother, who clearly believed himself
destined for vast infamy. Not content with dolls fashioned
in likenesses, he had constructed, from twine, sticks, straw,
wool and horn, a tiny flock of forty-two sheep. Penned in a
kraal of sticks assembled on the floor of the estate's attic.
Then, from one of his own milk teeth, newly plucked from
his mouth, he made for himself the likeness of a wolf fang
and then, with tatters of fur, the wolf to which it belonged,
of a scale to permit it to devour a sheep-doll in a single
gulp.
    In skeins of demented magic, he had set his wolf among
the flock.
    Screams and wails in the night, in household after
household, unleashed from terrifying nightmares steeped in
the reek of panic and lanolin, of clopping hoofs and surges
of desperate, hopeless flight. Nips and buffets from the huge
roaring wolf, the beast toying with every one of them – oh,
she would remember the torment for a long, long time.
    In the course of the following day, as uncles, aunts,
nephews and the like gathered, all pale and trembling, and
as the revelation arrived that one and all had shared their
night of terror, few were slow in realizing the source of
their nightmares – of course he had already lit out, off to
one of his countless bolt-holes in the city. Where he would
hide until such time as the fury and outrage should pass.
    For the crimes committed by children, all fugue eventually
faded, as concern rose in its stead. For most children,
normal children; but not for Ben Adaephon Delat, who
had gone too far. Again.
    And so Torahaval Delat had been dispatched to track
down her brother, and to deliver upon him an appropriate
punishment. Such as, she had considered at the time, flaying
him alive. Sheep, were they? Well, she carried in her
pack the wolf doll, and with that she intended most dreadful
torture. Though nowhere near as talented as her
younger brother, and admittedly far less imaginative, she
had managed to fashion a leash of sorts for the creature, and
now, no matter where her brother went, she could follow.
    He was able to stay ahead of her for most of a day and the
following night, until a bell before dawn when, on a rooftop
in the Prelid Quarter of Aren, she caught up with him,
holding in her hands the wolf doll, gripping the back legs
and pulling them wide.
    The boy, running flat out one moment, flat on his face
the next. Squealing and laughing, and, even as she
stumbled, that laughter stung so that she gave those legs an
extra twist.
    And, screaming, fell onto the pebbled roof, her hips
filling with agony.
    Her brother shrieked as well, yet could not stop laughing.
    She had not looked too closely at the wolf doll, and now,
    gasping and wincing, she sought to do so. The gloom was reluctant to yield,
    but at last she made out the beast's bound-up body beneath the tatter of fur
    – her underclothes – the ones that had disappeared from the clothesline
    a week earlier – knotted and wrapped tight around some solid core, the
    nature of which she chose not to deliberate overmuch.
    He'd known she would come after him. Had known
she'd find his stash of dolls in the attic. Had known she
would make use of the wolf doll, his own anima that he had
so carelessly left behind. He'd known ... everything.
    That night, in the darkness before dawn, Torahaval
decided that she would hate him, for ever more. Passionately,
a hatred fierce enough to scour the earth in its entirety.
    It's easy to hate the clever ones, even if they happen to
be kin. Perhaps especially then.
    There was no clear path from that recollection to her life
now, to this moment, with the singular exception of the
sensation that she was trapped inside a nightmare; one
from which, unlike that other nightmare all those years
ago, she would never awaken.
    Her brother was not there, laughing and gasping, then
finally, convulsed with glee on the rooftop, releasing the
sorcery within the wolf doll. Making the pain go away. Her
brother, dead or alive – by now more probably dead – was
very far away. And she wished, with all her heart, that it
wasn't so.
    Mumbling like a drunk beggar, Bridthok sat before the
stained granite-topped table to her right, his