A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

a long time, so long that they seemed foreign,
dangerous to harbour in his soul.
    And he would wonder, with growing unease, at the dead
Eleint who, upon escaping the realm of Death, would now
choose the Crippled God as its new master.
    A throne , Emperor Kellanved once said, is made of many
parts. And then he had added, any one of which can break,
to the king's eternal discomfort. No, it did no good to simply
sit on a throne, deluding oneself of its eternal solidity. He
had known that long before Kellanved ever cast an acquisitive
eye on empire. But he was not one for resonant quotations.
    Well, everyone has a few flaws.
    In a dark pool a score of boulders rise clear of the lightless,
seemingly lifeless surface. They appear as islands, no
two connected in any obvious way, no chain of uplifted
progression to hint at some mostly submerged range of
mountains, no half-curl to mark a flooded caldera. Each
stands alone, a bold proclamation.
    Is this how it was at the very beginning? Countless
scholars struggled to make sense of it, the distinct existences,
the imposition of order in myriad comprehensions. Lines
were drawn, flags splashed with colours, faces blended into
singular philosophies and attitudes and aspects. Here there
is Darkness, and here there is Life. Light, Earth, Fire, Shadow,
Air, Water. And Death. As if such aspects began as pure
entities, unstained by contact with any of the others. And
as if time was the enemy, forcing the inevitable infections
from one to another.
    Whenever Endest Silann thought about these things,
he found himself trapped in a prickly, uneasy suspicion. In
his experience, purity was an unpleasant concept, and to
imagine worlds defined by purity filled him with fear. An
existence held to be pure was but the physical corollary of a
point of view bound in certainty. Cruelty could thrive unfettered
by compassion. The pure could see no value among
the impure, after all. Justifying annihilation wasn't even
necessary, since the inferiority was ever self-evident.
    Howsoever all creation had begun, he now believed,
those pure forms existed as nothing more than the raw
materials for more worthy elaborations. As any alchemist
knew, transformation was only possible as a result of
admixture. For creation to thrive, there must be an endless
succession of catalysts.
    His Lord had understood that. Indeed, he had been
driven to do all that he had done by that very comprehension.
And change was, for so many, terrifying. For so
much of existence, Anomander Rake had fought virtually
alone. Even his brothers had but fallen, bound by the ties
of blood, into the chaos that followed.
    Was Kharkanas truly the first city? The first, proudest
salutation to order in the cosmos? Was it in fact even true
that Darkness preceded all else? What of the other worlds,
the rival realms? And, if one thought carefully about that
nascent age of creation, had not the admixture already
begun? Was there not Death in the realms of Darkness,
Light, Fire and all the rest? Indeed, how could Life and
Death exist in any form of distinction without the other?
    No, he now believed that the Age of Purity was but a
mythical invention, a convenient separation of all the
forces necessary for all existence. Yet was he not witness
to the Coming of Light? To Mother Dark's wilful rejection
of eternal stasis? Did he not with his own eyes see the
birth of a sun over his blessed, precious city? How could he
not have understood, at that moment, how all else would
follow, inevitably, inexorably? That fire would awaken, that
raging winds would howl, that waters would rise and the
earth crack open? That death would flood into their world
in a brutal torrent of violence? That Shadow would slide
between things, whispering sly subversions of all those
pristine absolutes?
    He sat alone in his room, in the manner of all old men
when the last witness has wandered off, when nothing but
stone walls and insensate furniture gathered close to mock
his last few aspirations, his last dwindling reasons for living.
In his mind he witnessed yet again, in a vision still sharp,
still devastating, Andarist staggering into view. Blood on
his hands. Blood painted in the image of a shattered tree
upon his grief-wracked face – oh, the horror in his eyes
could still make Endest Silann reel back, wanting none of
this, this curse of witnessing—
    No, better stone walls and insensate furniture. All the
errors in Andarist's life, now crowding with jabbering madness
in those