A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

Aranatha faced
Nimander. 'Here is your Dying God.'
    Around them the scene began dissolving, crumbling
away.
    'He does not speak,' Nimander said, eyeing the mangled
puppet.
    'No,' she said. 'Curious.'
    'Are you certain you have him, Aranatha?'
    She met his eyes, and then shrugged.
    'What did he mean, that he knew you? And how – how
did you know his name?'
    She blinked, and then frowned down at the puppet she
still held out in one hand. 'Nimander,' she whispered in a
small voice, 'so much blood . . .'
    Reaching out to Clip, Skintick dragged the man close,
studied the face, the staring eyes, and saw something
flicker to life. 'Clip?'
    The warrior shifted his gaze, struggling to focus, and
then he scowled. His words came out in an ugly croak.
'Fuck. What do you want?'
    Sounds, motion, and then Nimander was there, kneeling
on the other side of Clip. 'We seem,' he said, 'to have
succeeded.'
    'How?'
    'I don't know, Skin. Right now, I don't know anything.'
    Skintick saw Aranatha standing just near a massive
block of stone – the altar. She was holding a doll or puppet
of some sort. 'Where's Desra?' he suddenly asked, looking
round.
    'Over here.'
    The foul smoke was clearing. Skintick lifted himself into
a sitting position and squinted in the direction of the voice.
In the wall behind the altar and to the left, almost hidden
between columns, there was a narrow door, through which
Desra now emerged. She was soaked in blood, although by
the way she moved, none of it was her own. 'Some sort of
High Priest, I suppose,' she said. 'Trying to protect a corpse,
or what I think is a corpse.' She paused, and then spat on to
the floor. 'Strung up like one of those scarecrows, but the
body parts . . . all wrong, all sewn together—'
    'The Dying God,' said Aranatha, 'sent visions of what he
wanted. Flawed. But what leaked out tasted sweet.'
    From the corridor Kedeviss and Nenanda arrived. They
both looked round, their faces flat, their eyes bludgeoned.
    'I think we killed them all,' said Kedeviss. 'Or the rest
fled. This wasn't a fight – this was a slaughter. It made no
sense—'
    'Blood,' said Nimander, studying Clip – who remained
lying before him – with something like suspicion. 'You are
back with us?'
    Clip swung his scowl on to Nimander. 'Where are we?'
    'A city called Bastion.'
    A strange silence followed, but it was one that Skintick
understood. The wake of our horror. It settles, thickens, forms
a hard skin – something lifeless, smooth. We're waiting for it to
finish all of that, until it can take our weight once more.
    And then we leave here.
    'We still have far to go,' said Nimander, straightening.
    In Skintick's eyes, his kin – his friend – looked aged,
ravaged, his eyes haunted and bleak. The others were no
better. None of them had wanted this. And what they had
done here . . . it had all been for Clip.
    'Blood,' said Clip, echoing Nimander, and he slowly
climbed to his feet. He glared at the others. 'Look at you.
By Mother Dark, I'd swear you've been rolling in the waste
pits of some abattoir. Get cleaned up or you won't have my
company for much longer.' He paused, and his glare hardened
into something crueller. 'I smell murder. Human cults
are pathetic things. From now on, spare me your lust for
killing innocents. I'd rather not be reminded of whatever
crimes you committed in the name of the Son of Darkness.
Yes,' he added, baring his teeth, 'he has so much to answer
for.'
    Standing over him, weapons whirling, spinning. Seerdomin
watched her with his one remaining eye, waiting for the
end to all of this, an end he only faintly regretted. The
failure, his failure, yes, that deserved some regret. But then,
had he truly believed he could stop this apparition?
    He said I was dying.
    I'm dying again.
    All at once, she was still. Her eyes like hooded lanterns,
her arms settling as if the dance had danced its way right
out of her and now spun somewhere unseen. She stared
down at him without recognition, and then she turned
away.
    He heard her stumbling back the way she had come.
    'That was long enough.'
    Seerdomin turned his head, saw the Redeemer standing
close. Not a large man. Not in any way particularly impressive.
Hard enough, to be sure, revealing his profession as a
soldier, but otherwise unremarkable. 'What made you what
you are?' he asked – or tried to – his mouth filled with
blood that frothed and spattered with every word.
    The Redeemer understood him none the less. 'I don't
know. We may possess