A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

slowly twisted in his saddle, studied the woman
across from him. Some unconscious message told the
gelding to halt.
    Samar's Jhag horse continued on for a few steps, then she
reined it in and turned to meet Traveller's eyes. 'I believe, if
Icarium had met the Emperor, well, the dying would still be
going on, spreading like a wildfire. An entire continent . . .
pretty much incinerated. Who knows, perhaps the entire
world.'
    He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
    'Instead,' Samar Dev said, 'Karsa was sent for first.'
    'What happened?'
    Her smile was sad. 'They fought.'
    'Samar Dev,' Traveller said, 'that makes no sense. The
Toblakai still lives.'
    'Karsa killed the Emperor. With finality.'
    'How?'
    'I have some suspicions. I believe that, somewhere,
somehow, Karsa Orlong spoke with the Crippled God – not
a pleasant conversation, I'm sure. Karsa rarely has those.'
    'Then the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths—'
'Gone, delivered unto a final death. I like to believe
Rhulad thanked Karsa with his last breath.'
    If there was need for such a thought she was welcome to
it. 'And the sword? Does the Toblakai now carry it as his
own?'
    She collected her reins and nudged her mount onward.
'I don't know,' she said. 'Another reason why I have to find
him.'
    You are not alone in that, woman. 'He bargained with the
Crippled God. He replaced the Emperor.'
    'Did he?'
    He urged his horse forward, came up alongside her once
more. 'What other possibility is there?'
    And to that she grinned. 'Ah, but that is where I know
something you don't, Traveller. I know Karsa Orlong.'
    'What does that mean?'
    'It's his favourite game, you see, pretending to be so
. . . obvious. Blunt, lacking all subtlety, all decorum. Just
a savage, after all. The only possibility is the obvious one,
isn't it? That's why I don't believe that's what he's done.'
    'You don't wish to believe, you mean. Now I will speak
plain, Samar Dev. If your Toblakai wields the sword of the
Crippled God, he shall have to either yield it or draw it
against me. Such a weapon must be destroyed.'
    'You set yourself as an enemy of the Crippled God? Well,
you're hardly alone in that, are you?'
    He frowned. 'I did not then,' he said, 'nor do I desire to
do so now. But he goes too far.'
    'Who are you, Traveller?'
    'I played the game of civilization, once, Samar Dev. But
in the end I remain as I am, a savage.'
    'Too many have put themselves into Karsa Orlong's
path,' she said. 'They do not stand there long.' A pause,
and then, 'Civilized or barbarian – those are but words
– the cruel killer can wear all the costumes he wants, can
pretend to great causes and hard necessities. Gods below, it
all sickens me, the way you fools carry on. Over the whole
damned world it's ever the same.'
    He answered this rant with silence, for he believed it was ever the same, and that it would never change. Animals remained
just that, whether sentient or not, and they fought,
they killed, they died. Life was suffered until it was over,
and then . . . then what?
    An end. It had to be that. It must be that.
    Riding on, now, no words between them. Already past
the telling of stories, the recounting of adventures. All that
mattered, for each of them, was what lay ahead.
    With the Toblakai named Karsa Orlong.
    Some time in his past, the man known as the Captain
had been a prisoner to someone. At some point he had
outlived his usefulness and had been staked out on the
plain, wooden spikes driven through his hands, his feet,
hammered to the hard earth to feed the ants, to feed all the
carrion hunters of Lamatath. But he'd not been ready to die
just then. He had pulled his hands through the spikes, had
worked his feet free, and had crawled on elbows and knees
half a league, down into a valley where a once-mighty river
had dwindled to a stream fringed by cottonwoods.
    His hands were ruined. His feet could not bear his
weight. And, he was convinced, the ants that had crawled
into his ears had never left, trapped in the tunnels of his
skull, making of his brain a veritable nest – he could taste
their acidic exudations on his swollen, blackened tongue.
    If the legend was true, and it was, hoary long-forgotten
river spirits had squirmed up from the mud beneath the
exposed bank's cracked skin, clawing like vermin to
where he huddled fevered and shivering. To give life was
no gift for such creatures; no, to give was in turn to take.
As the king feeds his heir all he needs to survive, so the
heir feeds the king with the