A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

shore. Artifice and
secular ambition, withholding sacred knowledge from those
never to be initiated – these were not the shore's will. No, only what the warlocks and witches wanted.
    Taloned hands and feet have proved iconic indeed.
    But power came with demonic blood. And so long as
every child born with such power and allowed to survive
was initiated into the coven, then that power remained
exclusive.
    The Letherii in their conquest of the Shake had conducted
a pogrom against the coven.
    And had failed.
    With all her being, Yan Tovis wished they had
succeeded.
    The Shake were gone as a people. Even the soldiers of
her company – each one carefully selected over the years
on the basis of Shake remnants in their blood – were in
truth more Letherii than Shake. She had done little, after
all, to awaken their heritage.
    Yet I chose them, did I not? I wanted their loyalty, beyond that of a Letherii soldier for his or her Atri-Preda.
    Admit it, Twilight. You are a queen now, and these soldiers – these Shake – know it. And it is what you sought in the depths of your own ambition. And now, it seemed, she would have
to face the truth of that ambition, the stirring of her noble
blood – seeking its proper pre-eminence, its right .
    What has brought my half-brother to the shore? Did he ride as a Shake, or a Letherii Master at Arms for a Dresh-Preda? But
she found she could not believe her own question. She
knew the answer, quivering like a knife in her soul. The shore is blind . . .
    They rode on in the dark.
    We were never as the Nerek, the Tarthenal and the others. We could raise no army against the invaders. Our belief in the shore held no vast power, for it is a belief in the mutable, in transformation. A god with no face but every face. Our temple is the strand where the eternal war between land and sea is waged, a temple that rises only to crumble yet again. Temple of sound, of smell, taste and tears upon every fingertip.
    Our coven healed wounds, scoured away diseases, and murdered babies.
    The Tarthenal viewed us with horror. The Nerek hunted our folk in the forests. For the Faered, we were child-snatchers in the night. They would leave us husks of bread on tree stumps, as if we were no better than malignant crows.
    Of these people, these Shake, I am now Queen.
    And a man who would be her husband awaited her. On
the Isle.
    Errant take me, I am too tired for this.
    Horse-hoofs splashing through puddles where the old
road dipped – they were nearing the shore. Ahead, the land
rose again – some long-ago high tide mark, a broad ridge of
smoothed stones and cobbles bedded in sandy clay – the
kind of clay that became shale beneath the weight of time,
pocked by the restless stones. In that shale one could find
embedded shells, mollusc fragments, proof of the sea's many
victories.
    The trees were sparser here, bent down by the wind that
she could not yet feel on her face – a calm that surprised
her, given the season. The smell of the shore was heavy in
the air, motionless and fetid.
    They slowed their mounts. From the as yet unseen sea
there was no sound, not even the whisper of gentle waves.
As if the world on the other side of the ridge had vanished.
    'Tracks here, sir,' one of her soldiers said as they drew to
a halt close to the slope. 'Riders, skirting the bank, north
and south both.'
    'As if they were hunting someone,' another observed.
    Yan Tovis held up a gauntleted hand.
    Horses to the north, riding at the canter, approaching.
    Struck by a sudden, almost superstitious fear, Yan Tovis
made a gesture, and her soldiers drew their swords. She
reached for her own.
    The first of the riders appeared.
    Letherii.
    Relaxing, Yan Tovis released her breath. 'Hold, soldier!'
    The sudden command clearly startled the figure and the
three other riders behind it. Hoofs skidding on loose
pebbles.
    Armoured as if for battle – chain hauberks, the blackened
rings glistening, visors drawn down on their helms.
The lead rider held a long-handled single-bladed axe in his
right hand; those behind him wielded lances, the heads
wide and barbed as if the troop had been hunting boar.
    Yan Tovis nudged her horse round and guided it a few
steps closer. 'I am Atri-Preda Yan Tovis,' she said.
    A tilt of the helmed head from the lead man. 'Yedan
Derryg,' he said in a low voice, 'Master at Arms, Boaral
Keep.'
    She hesitated, then said, 'The Watch.'
    'Twilight,' he replied. 'Even in this gloom, I can see it is
you.'
    'I find that