A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

unravelled folds of canvas, Chaur was
sinking, arms out to the sides, his eyes closed, his mouth ...
open.
    No! No, no!
    From the pulsing glow, heat – such heat – Barathol
fought closer, his chest ready to explode – and reached
down, down—
     
    A section of the aft deck floated free from what was now
little more than pummelled wreckage. The firestones tore
down on all sides as Cutter struggled to help Scillara
clamber onto the pitching fragment. Those firestones –
they were smaller than pebbles, despite the fist-sized
holes they had punched through the Grief. Smaller than
pebbles – more like grains of sand, glowing bright green,
like spatters of glass, their colour changing, almost
instantly, into rust red as they plummeted into the depths.
    Scillara cried out.
    'Are you hit? Oh, gods – no—'
    She twisted round. 'Look! Hood take us – look!' And she
lifted an arm, pointed as a swelling wave lifted them –
pointed eastward—
    Towards Otataral Island.
    It had ... ignited. Jade green, a glowing dome that might
have spanned the entire island, writhing, lifting skyward,
and, rising up through it ... hands. Of jade. like ... like
Heboric's. Rising, like trees. Arms – huge – dozens of them – rising, fingers spreading, green light spiralling out – from
their upturned palms, from the fingers, from the veins and
arteries cabling their muscled lengths – green light, slashing
into the heavens like sword-blades. Those arms were
too big to comprehend, reaching upward like pillars
through the dome—
    —as the fires filling the sky seemed to flinch ... tremble
... and then began to converge.
    Above the island, above the hands of jade reaching up,
through the billowing green light.
    The first falling sun struck the glowing dome.
    The sound was like a drum beat, on a scale to deafen the
gods. Its pulse rippled through the dome's burgeoning
flanks, racing outward and seeming to strip the surface of
the sea, shivering through Cutter's bones, a concussion that
triggered bursting agony in his ears – then another, and
another as sun after sun plunged into that buckling, pocked
dome. He was screaming, yet unable to hear himself. Red
mist filled his eyes – he felt himself sliding from the raft,
down into the foam-laden waves—
    Even as an enormous clawed foot reached down, spread
wide over Cutter – and Scillara, who was grasping him by
an arm, seeking to drag him back onto the raft – and talons
the size of scimitars closed round them both. They were
lifted from the thrashing water, upward, up—
     
    Reaching ... yes. For me, closer, closer.
    Never mind the pain.
    It will not last. I promise. I know, because I remember.
    No, I cannot be forgiven.
    But maybe you can, maybe I can do that, if you feel it's needed
– I don't know – I was the wrong one, to have touched ... there
in that desert. I didn't understand, and Baudin could never have
guessed what would happen, how I would be marked.
    Marked, yes, I see now, for this, this need.
    Can you hear me? Closer – do you see the darkness? There,
that is where I am.
    Millions of voices, weeping, crying out, voices, filled
with yearning – he could hear them—
    Ah gods, who am 1? I cannot remember.
    Only this. The darkness that surrounds me. We, yes, all of
you – we can all wait here, in this darkness.
    Never mind the pain.
    Wait with me. In this darkness.
    And the voices, in their millions, in their vast, unbearable
need, rushed towards him.
    Shield Anvil, who would take their pain, for he could
remember such pain.
    The darkness took them, and it was then that Heboric
Ghost Hands, Shield Anvil, realized a most terrible truth.
    One cannot, in any real measure, remember pain.
     
    Two bodies tumbling like broken dolls onto the deck.
Mappo struggled towards them, even as Spite wheeled away
one more time – he could feel the dragon's agony with
every ragged breath she drew, and the air was foul with the
reek of scorched scales and flesh.
    The rain of fire had descended in a torrent all round
them, wild as a hailstorm and far deadlier; yet not one
particle had struck their ship – protection gifted, Mappo
realized, not by Spite, nor indeed by Iskaral Pust or Mogora.
No, as the High Priest's fawning, wet kisses gave proof,
some power born in that damned black-eyed mule was
responsible. Somehow.
    The beast simply stood, unmoving and seemingly
indifferent, tail flicking the absence of flies. Slowly
blinking, as if half-asleep, its lips twitching every now