A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

no-one. No
warning—'
    'That is correct.'
    'Who else might suspect – your ancient histories of the
First Empire. Your scholars—'
    'I don't know about that. There is one, and if I am able
he will be coming with us.' That damned monk. It should be simple enough. The Cabal priests misunderstood. Sent us an ambassador, not a champion. No value in killing him – the poor fool cannot fight – imagine Rhulad's rage at wasting his time . . . yes, that should do it.
    'No scholars . . .'
    She grimaced and said, 'Dead, or in prison.' She glared
across at the Gral. 'What of you? Will you flee with us?'
    'You know I cannot – I am to share Icarium's fate. More
than any of them realize. No, Atri-Preda, I will not leave
this city.'
    'Was this your task, Taralack Veed? To deliver Icarium
here?'
    He would not meet her eyes.
    'Who sent you?' she demanded.
    'Does it matter? We are here. Listen to me, Twilight, your
Emperor is being sorely used. There is war among the gods,
and we are as nothing – not you, not me, not Rhulad
Sengar. So ride, yes, as far away as you can. And take this
brave warrior with you. Do this, and I will die empty of
sorrow—'
    'And what of regrets?'
    He spat on the floor. His only answer, but she understood
him well enough.
    Sealed by a massive, thick wall of cut limestone at the end
of a long-abandoned corridor in a forgotten passage of the
Old Palace, the ancient Temple of the Errant no longer
existed in the collective memory of the citizens of Letheras.
Its beehive-domed central chamber would have remained
unlit, its air still and motionless, for over four centuries,
and the spoked branches leading off to lesser rooms would
have last echoed to footfalls almost a hundred years earlier.
    The Errant had walked out into the world, after all. The
altar stood cold and dead and probably destroyed. The last
priests and priestesses – titles held in secret against the
plague of pogroms – had taken their gnostic traditions to
their graves, with no followers left to replace them.
    The Master of the Holds has walked out into the world. He is now among us. There can be no worship now – no priests, no temples. The only blood the Errant will taste from now on is his own. He has betrayed us.
    Betrayed us all.
    And yet the whispers never went away. They echoed like
ghost-winds in the god's mind. With each utterance of his
name, as prayer, as curse, he could feel that tremble of
power – mocking all that he had once held in his hands,
mocking the raging fires of blood sacrifice, of fervent,
fearful faith. There were times, he admitted, that he knew
regret. For all that he had so willingly surrendered.
    Master of the Tiles, the Walker Among the Holds. But the Holds have waned, their power forgotten, buried by the passing of age upon age. And I too have faded, trapped in this fragment of land, this pathetic empire in a corner of a continent. I walked into the world . . . but the world has grown old.
    He stood now facing the stone wall at the end of the
corridor. Another half-dozen heartbeats of indecision, then
he stepped through.
    And found himself in darkness, the air stale and dry in
his throat. Once, long ago, he had needed tiles to manage
such a thing as walking through a solid stone wall. Once,
his powers had seemed new, brimming with possibilities;
once, it had seemed he could shape and reshape the world.
Such arrogance. It had defied every assault of reality – for a
time.
    He still persisted in his conceit, he well knew – a curse
among all gods. And he would amuse himself, a nudge here,
a tug there, to then stand back and see how the skein of
fates reconfigured itself, each strand humming with his
intrusion. But it was getting harder. The world resisted him. Because I am the last, I am myself the last thread reaching back to the Holds. And if that thread was severed, the tension
suddenly snapping, flinging him loose, stumbling forward
into the day's light . . . what then?
    The Errant gestured, and flames rose once more from the
clamshell niches low on the dome's ring-wall, casting
wavering shadows across the mosaic floor. A sledgehammer
had been taken to the altar on its raised dais. The shattered
stones seemed to bleed recrimination still in the Errant's
eyes. Who served whom, damn you? I went out, among you, to make a difference – so that I could deliver wisdom, whatever wisdom I possessed. I thought – I thought you would be grateful.
    But you preferred shedding blood in my name. My words just