A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

Karos
Invictad is the monster – he has twisted me, he has made
me into what I am. But Karos Invictad is not a god. Not
immortal. Not . . . infallible. As we shall all discover. He
thinks I want her, that whore of the Emperor's – that dirty,
fallen bitch. He could not be more wrong. Oh, there's so
much to do now, but I promise I won't be gone long. You'll
see, my love . . .'
    She awoke to the sound of his footfalls, dwindling, then
lost to the trickle and drip of water. It was dark, and cold,
colder than it had ever been before – she was somewhere
else now, some other crypt, but the same nightmare .
    She lifted a hand – as best she could – and wiped at her
face. Her hand came away slick with slime. Yet . . . the chains, they're gone . She struggled to draw her limbs inward,
then almost immediately heard the rattle of iron links
snaking across stone. Ah, not completely.
    And now pain arrived, in every joint, piercing fire.
Ligaments and tendons, stretched for so long, now began
contracting like burning ropes – oh, Errant take me —
    Her eyes flickered open once more, and with returning
consciousness she became aware of savage hunger, coiling
in her shrunken stomach. Watery waste trickled loose.
    There was no point in weeping. No point in wondering
which of them was madder – him for his base appetites and
senseless cruelty, or her for clinging so to this remnant of a
life. A battle of wills, yet profoundly unequal – she knew
that in her heart, had known it all along.
    The succession of grand lectures she had devised in her
mind all proved hollow conceits, their taste too bitter to
bear. He had defeated her, because his were weapons without
reason – and so I answered with my own madness. I thought it would work. Instead, I ended up surrendering all that I had that was of any worth.
    And so now, the cold of death stealing over me, I can only dream of becoming a vengeful ghost, eager to torment the one who tormented me, eager to be to him as he was to me. Believing that such a balance was just, was righteous.
    Madness. To give in kind is to be in kind.
    So now, let me leave here, for ever gone —
    And she felt that madness reach out to her, an embrace
that would sweep away her sense of self, her knowledge of
who she had been, once, that proud, smug academic with
her pristine intellect ordering and reordering the world.
Until even practicality was a quaint notion, not even
worthy of discourse, because the world outside wasn't worth
reaching out to, not really – besides, it was sullied, wasn't
it? By men like Tanal Yathvanar and Karos Invictad – the
ones who revelled in the filth they made, because only
the stench of excess could reach through to their numbed
senses—
    — as it reaches through to mine. Listen! He returns, step by hesitant step —
    A calloused hand settled on her brow.
    Janath Anar opened her eyes.
    Faint light, coming from every direction. Warm light,
gentle as a breath. Looming above her was a face. Old,
lined and weathered, with eyes deep as the seas, even as
tears made them glisten.
    She felt the chain being dragged close. Then the old
man tugged with one hand and the links parted like rotted
reeds. He reached down, then, and lifted her effortlessly.
    Abyss, yours is such a gentle face . . .
    Darkness, once more.
    Beneath the bed of the river, below silts almost a storey
thick, rested the remains of almost sixteen thousand
citizens of Letheras. Their bones filled ancient wells that
had been drilled before the river's arrival – before the
drainage course from the far eastern mountains changed
cataclysmically, making the serpent lash its tail, the torrent
carving a new channel, one that inundated a nascent city
countless millennia ago.
    Letherii engineers centuries past had stumbled upon
these submerged constructs, wondering at the humped
corridors and the domed chambers, wondering at the huge,
deep wells with their clear, cold water. And baffled to
explain how such tunnels remained more or less dry, the cut
channels seeming to absorb water like runners of sponge.
    No records existed any more recounting these discoveries
– the tunnels and chambers and wells were lost
knowledge to all but a chosen few. And of the existence of
parallel passages, the hidden doors in the walls of corridors,
and the hundreds of lesser tombs, not even those few were
aware. Certain secrets belonged exclusively to the gods.
    The Elder God carried the starved, brutalized woman into
one of those side