A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

happen remained clouded, as if time itself had
been twisted within that once-floating fortress. There was
outrage locked in the very bedrock, and now, a most
peculiar imposition of ... order.
    She wished for companions here, at her side. Cynnigig,
especially. And Phyrlis. As it was, in this place, alone as she
was, she felt oddly vulnerable.
    Perhaps most of all, would that Ganoes Paran, Master of the
Deck, was with me. A surprisingly formidable human. A
little too prone to take risks, however, and there was something
here that invited a certain caution. She would need
to heal this – there could be no doubt of that. Still ...
    Ganath pulled her unhuman gaze from the dark fissure –
in time to see, flowing across the flat rock to either side,
and behind her, a swarm of shadows – and now figures,
huge, reptilian, all closing in on where she stood.
    She cried out, her warren of Omtose Phellack rising
within her, an instinctive response to panic, as the
creatures closed.
    There was no escape – no time—
    Heavy mattocks slashed down, chopping through flesh,
then bone. The blows drove her to the ground amidst
gushes of her own blood. She saw before her the edge of the
chasm, sought to reach out towards it. To drag herself over
it, and fall – a better death—
    Massive clawed feet, scaled, wrapped in strips of thick
hide, kicking up dust close to her face. Unable to move,
feeling her life drain away, she watched as that dust settled
in a dull patina over the pool of her blood, coating it like
the thinnest skin. Too much dirt, the blood wouldn't
like that, it would sicken with all that dirt.
    She needed to clean it. She needed to gather it up, somehow
pour it back into her body, back in through these
gaping wounds, and hope that her heart would burn clean
every drop.
    But now even her heart was failing, and blood was
sputtering, filled with froth, from her nose and mouth.
    She understood, suddenly, that strange sense of order.
K'Chain Che'Malle, a recollection stirred to life once
more, after all this time. They had returned, then. But not
the truly chaotic ones. No, not the Long-Tails. These
were the others, servants of machines, of order in all its brutality. Nah'Ruk.
    They had returned. Why?
    The pool of blood was sinking down into the white,
chalky dust where furrows had been carved by talons, and
into these furrows the rest of the blood drained in turgid
rivulets. The inexorable laws of erosion, writ small, and yet
... yes, I suppose, most poignant.
    She was cold, and that felt good. Comforting. She was,
after all, a Jaghut.
    And now I leave.
     
    The woman stood facing landwards, strangely alert. Mappo
Runt rubbed at his face, driven to exhaustion by Iskaral
Pust's manic tirade at the crew of the broad-beamed caravel
as they scurried about with what seemed a complete
absence of reason: through the rigging, bounding wild over
the deck and clinging – with frantic screams – to various
precarious perches here and there. Yet somehow the small
but seaworthy trader craft was full before the wind, cutting
clean on a northeasterly course.
    A crew – an entire crew – of bhok'arala. It should have
been impossible. It most certainly was absurd. Yet these
creatures had been awaiting them in their no-doubt
purloined craft, anchored offshore, when Mappo, Iskaral,
his mule, and the woman named Spite pushed through the
last of the brush and reached the broken rocks of the coast.
    And not just some random collection of the ape-like,
pointy-eared beasts, but – as Iskaral's shriek of fury
announced – the High Priest's very own menagerie, the
once-residents of his cliff-side fastness league upon league
eastward, at the rim of the distant Raraku Sea. How they
had come to be here, with this caravel, was a mystery, and
one unlikely to be resolved any time soon.
    Heaps of fruit and shellfish had crowded the midship deck,
fussed over like votive offerings when the three travellers
drew the dinghy – rowed ashore to greet them by a half-dozen
bhok'arala – alongside the ship and clambered aboard. To
find – adding to Mappo's bemusement – that Iskaral Pust's
black-eyed mule had somehow preceded them.
    Since then there had been chaos.
    If bhok'arala could possess faith in a god, then their god
had just arrived, in the dubious personage of Iskaral Pust,
and the endless mewling, chittering, dancing about the
High Priest was clearly driving Pust mad. Or, madder than
he already was.
    Spite had watched in amusement for a time,