A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

is it,' Mappo asked, 'that Master Quell seemed indifferent
to unleashing an undead dragon into this world?'
    'Well, hardly indifferent. He said oops! At least, I think
that's what I heard, but perhaps that was but my imagination.
This Trygalle Guild . . . these carriages, they must
be dragging things across realms all the time. Look at yon
walking corpse.'
    They did so, observing in silence as the desiccated figure,
holding a collection of cast-off straps and rope, stood
speculatively eyeing one of the carriage's spoked wheels.
    The wind freshened suddenly, cooler, strangely charged.
    One of the horses shrilled and began stamping the
sand. After a moment the others caught the same feverish
anxiety. The carriage rocked, edged forward. Master Quell
was helping Precious Thimble through the door, hastening
things at the end with a hard shove to her backside.
He then looked round, eyes slightly wild, until he spied
Mappo.
    'Inside you go, good sir! We're about to leave!'
    'Not a moment too soon,' Gruntle said.
    Mappo set out for the carriage, then paused and turned
to Gruntle. 'Please, be careful.'
    'I will, as soon as I figure out what's about to happen.
Quell! What warren are we using now? And hadn't you
better get the way through opened?'
    Quell stared at him. 'Get on the damned carriage!'
    'Fine, but tell me—'
    'You idiot!' shouted Faint from where she sat on the roof.
'Don't you get it?' And she jabbed a finger at the churning
black cloud now almost towering over them. 'That's our
ride!'
    'But – wait – how—'
    'Climb aboard, you oaf, or drown!'
    'Climb aboard,' shrieked Sweetest Sufferance, 'and
maybe drown anyway!'
    Gruntle saw that the corpse had tied itself to the wheel.
    Gods below, what am I doing here?
    A roar exploded on the reef and Gruntle whirled round
to see the gust front's devastating arrival, a wall of thrashing,
spume-crested water, rising, charging, lifting high to
devour the entire island.
    He lunged for the carriage. As he scrambled up the
side and fumbled for the lashing, Reccanto Ilk, squinting,
asked, 'Is it here yet?'
    The horses began screaming in earnest.
    And all at once, the short-sighted idiot had his answer.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    You would call us weak?
Fear talks out of the side of the mouth
Each item in your list is an attack
That turns its stab upon yourself
Displaying the bright terrors
That flaw the potential for wonder
    You drone out your argument
As if stating naught but what is obvious
And so it is but not in the way you think
The pathos revealed is your paucity
Of wisdom disguised as plain speak
From your tower of reason
    As if muscle alone bespoke strength
As if height measures the girth of will
As if the begotten snips thorns from the rose
As if the hearthfire cannot devour a forest
As if courage flows out lost monthly
In wasted streams of dead blood
    Who is this to utter such doubt?
Priest of a cult false in its division
I was there on the day the mob awoke
Storming the temple of quailing half-men
You stood gape-jawed behind them
As your teachings were proved wrong
    Shrink back from true anger
Flee if you can this burgeoning strength
The shape of the rage against your postulated
Justifications is my soldier's discipline
Sure in execution and singular in purpose
Setting your head atop the spike
    Last Day of the Man Sect
Sevelenatha of Genabaris
(cited in 'Treatise on Untenable
Philosophies among Cults'
Genorthu Stulk)
    Many children, early on, acquire a love of places
they have never been. Often, such wonder is summarily
crushed on the crawl through the sludge
of murky, confused adolescence on to the flat, cracked pan
of adulthood with its airless vistas ever lurking beyond the
horizon. Oh, well, sometimes such gifts of curiosity, delight
and adventure do indeed survive the stationary trek, said
victims ending up as artists, scholars, inventors and other
criminals bent on confounding the commonplace and the
platitudes of peaceful living. But never mind them for now,
since, for all their flailing subversions, nothing really ever
changes unless in service to convenience.
    Bainisk was still, in the sheltered core of his being,
a child. Ungainly with growth, yes, awkward in a body
with which he had not yet caught up, but he had yet to
surrender his love of the unknown. And so it should be
wholly understandable that he and young Harllo should
have shared a spark of delight and wonder, the kind that
wove tight between them so that not even the occasional
snarl could truly sever