A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

the legs.'
    'He'd earn a kiss from me if he did that,' Minala said.
    'You're too harsh,' Trull said. 'I feel sorry for Cotillion.'
    'Then you're an idiot, but of course I've known the truth
of that for months.'
    He smiled across at her, said nothing.
    Minala now eyed the uneven entrance to the chamber of
the First Throne. 'What are they doing in there? They
never go in there.'
    'Considering implications, I suppose,' Trull said.
    'And where's Shadowthrone? He's supposed to be here
by now. If we get attacked right now ...'
    We're dead. Trull leaned more heavily on the spear, to
ease the weight on his left leg, which was hurting more –
marginally – than his right. Or at least I am. But that's likely
whether or not I get healed, once my kin decide to take this
seriously. He did not understand their half-hearted
skirmishing, the tentative probing by the Den-Ratha. And
why were they bothering at all? If they hungered for a
throne, it would be that of Shadow, not this petrified bone
monstrosity they call the First Throne. But, dunking on it,
maybe this does indeed make sense. They have allied themselves
with the Crippled God, and with the Unbound T'lan Imass who
now serve the Chained One. But my Tiste Edur place little
weight on alliances with non-Edur. Maybe that's why all they've
done thus far is token blood-letting. A single warlock and
veteran warriors and this little fête would be over.
    And they would come – they will come, once I am
recognized. Yet he could not hide himself from their eyes; he
could not stand back whilst they slaughtered these young
humans who knew nothing of life, who were soldiers in
name only. These lessons of cruelty and brutality did not
belong in what a child needed to learn, in what a child should learn. And a world in which children were subjected
to such things was a world in which compassion was a
hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold
contempt.
    Four skirmishes. Four, and Minala was now mother to
seven hundred destroyed lives, almost half of them facing
the mercy of death ... until Shadowthrone appears, with his
edged gift, in itself cold and heartless.
    'Your face betrays you, Trull Sengar. You are driven to
weeping yet again.'
    The Edur looked across at Onrack, then over to where
Minala now stood with Panek. 'Her rage is her armour,
friend. And that is my greatest weakness, that I cannot
conjure the same within myself. Instead, I stand here, waiting.
For the next attack, for the return of the terrible music
– the screams, the pain and the dying, the deafening roar of
the futility our battle-lust creates ... with every clash
of sword and spear.'
    'Yet, you do not surrender,' the T'lan Imass said.
    'I cannot.'
    'The music you hear in battle is incomplete, Trull Sengar.'
    'What do you mean?'
    'Even as I stand at your side, I can hear Minala's prayers,
whether she is near us or not. Even when she drags
wounded and dying children back, away from danger, I hear
her. She prays, Trull Sengar, that you do not fall. That
you fight on, that the miracle that is you and the spear you
wield shall never fail her. Never fail her and her children.'
    Trull Sengar turned away.
    'Ah,' Onrack said, 'with your tears suddenly loosed,
friend, I see my error. Where I sought by my words to instil
pride in you, I defeat your own armour and wound you
deeply. With despair. I am sorry. There remains so much of
what it is to live that I have forgotten.' The battered
warrior regarded Trull in silence for a moment, then added,
'Perhaps I can give you something else, something more ...
hopeful.'
    'Please try,' Trull said in a whisper.
    'At times, down in this chasm, I smell something, a
presence. It is faint, animal. It ... comforts me, although I
do not know why, for I cannot comprehend its source. In
those times, Trull Sengar, I feel as if we are being observed.
We are being watched by unseen eyes, and in those eyes
there is vast compassion.'
    'Do you say this only to ease my pain, Onrack?'
    'No, I would not so deceive you.'
    'What – who does it come from?'
    'I do not know – but I have seen that it affects Monok
Ochem. Even Ibra Gholan. I sense their disquiet, and this,
too, comforts me.'
    'Well,' rasped a voice beside them, 'it isn't me.' Shadows
coalescing, creating a hunched, hooded shape, wavering
indistinct, as if reluctant to commit itself to any particular
existence, any single reality.
    'Shadowthrone.'
    'Healing, yes? Very well. But I have little time. We must
hurry, do you