A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

suitably impressed wife. Think of nothing but that and
that alone and be on your way!
    A guard with occasional chest pains is questioning
patrons of a bar, seeking witnesses who might have seen
someone set out to follow that local man into the alley in
order to beat him to death and would no one step forward
on behalf of that hapless victim? Might do, aye, if'n any of
us liked him, y'see . . .
    In a crypt (irrationally well lit, of course) sits a man
plotting the downfall of the city, starting with a handful
of Malazans, and he sits most contented in the absence of
shadows or any other ambivalence imposed upon reality.
    Out in Chuffs, as moles sleep in their tiny cots, Bainisk
sits down beside Harllo's bed to hear more stories about
Darujhistan, for Bainisk was born in Chuffs and has never
left it, you see, and his eyes glow as Harllo whispers about
riches and all sorts of wonderful foods and great monuments
and statues and blue fire everywhere and before long
both are asleep, Harllo in his lumpy bed and Bainisk on
the floor beside it, and across the way Venaz sees this and
sneers to display his hatred of both Bainisk and Bainisk's
new favourite when Venaz used to be his best, but Bainisk
was a betrayer, a liar and worse and someday Harllo would
pay for that—
    Because Harllo was right. He was a boy who drew bullies
like a lodestone and this was a cruel fact and his kind were
legion and it was a godly blessing how so many survived
and grew up to wreak vengeance upon all those people not
as smart as they were, but even that is a bitter reward and
never quite as satisfying as it might be.
    Back to Darujhistan, with relief, as a Great Raven
launches herself skyward from the tower of Baruk's estate,
watched with evil satisfaction by a squat, overweight
demon staring out from a spark-spitting chimney mouth.
    And this was a night like any other, a skein of expectations
and anticipations, revelations and perturbations. Look
around. Look around! On all sides, day and night, light and
dark! Every step taken with the firm resolve to believe in the
solid ground awaiting it. Every step, one after another, again
and again, and no perilous ledge yawns ahead, oh no.
    Step and step, now, step and step—

CHAPTER TEN
    Will you come and tell me when the music ends
When the musicians are swallowed in flames
Every instrument blackening and crumbling to ash
When the dancers stumble and sprawl their diseased limbs
rotting off and twitching the skin sloughing away
    Will you come and tell me when the music ends
When the stars we pushed into the sky loose their roars
And the clouds we built into visible rage do now explode
When the bright princes of privilege march past with
dead smiles
falling from their faces a host of deceiving masks
    Will you come and tell me when the music ends
When reason sinks into the morass of superstition
Waging a war of ten thousand armies stung to the lash
When we stop looking up even as we begin our mad running
into stupidity's nothingness with heavenly choirs screaming
    Will you come and tell me when the music ends
When the musicians are no more than black grinning sticks
Every instrument wailing its frantic death cry down the road
When the ones left standing have had their mouths cut off
leaving holes from which a charnel wind eternally blows
Will you come and tell me when the music ends
The fire is eating my breath and agony fills this song
When my fingers crack on the strings and fall from my hands
And this dance twists every muscle like burning rope
while your laughter follows down my crumpling corpse
    Won't you come and tell me when the music ends
When I can leap away and face one god or a thousand
Or nothing at all into this blessed bliss of oblivion
When I can prise open this box and release cruel and
bitter fury
at all the mad fools crowding the door in panicked flight
    Watch me and watch me with eyes wide and shocked
With disbelief with horror with indignant umbrage to upbraid
And the shouted Nays are like drumbeats announcing a truth
The music ends my friends, my vile, despicable friends, and see me –
see me slam the door slam it hard – in all your faces!
    The Music Ends
Fisher kel Tath
    His boots crunched on water-worn stones slick with
mist as he made his way to the water's edge. The
steep slopes of the surrounding mountainsides
were verdant, thick rainforest, crimson-barked trees towering
high, beards of moss hanging from toppled trunks.
    Endest Silann leaned on his stolid walking stick,