A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

ruins. Shattered domes, most of them
elliptical in shape, lined the stepped tiers like broken teeth.
Low walls linked them, although these too had collapsed
in places, where run-off from the snow-clad peaks had cut
trenches and gullies like gouges down the faces, as if the
mountains themselves were eager to wash away the last
remnants of the long dead civilization.
    Water and earth will heal what needs healing. Water
and earth, sun and wind, these will take away every sign
of wilful assertion, of cogent imposition. Brick crumbles
to rubble, mortar drifts away as grit on the breeze. These
mountains, Kedeviss knew, will wash it all away.
    The notion pleased her, and in these sentiments she
was little different from most Tiste Andii – at least those
she knew and had known. There was a secret delight in
impermanence, in seeing arrogance taken down, whether
in a single person or in a bold, proud civilization. Darkness
was ever the last thing to remain, in the final closing of
eyelids, in the unlit depths of empty buildings, godless
temples. When a people vanished, their every home, from
the dishevelled hovel of the destitute to the palaces of kings
and queens, became nothing but a sepulchre, a tomb host
to nothing but memories, and even these quickly faded.
    She suspected that the dwellers of the village, there at
the foot of the nearest mountain, on the edge of a lake in
headlong retreat, knew nothing about the sprawling city
whose ruins loomed above them. A convenient source of
cut stone and oddly glazed bricks and nothing more. And
of course, whatever little knowledge they had possessed,
they had surrendered it all to saemankelyk, for it was clear
as the troupe drew closer that the village was lifeless,
abandoned.
    Against the backdrop of the mountains, the figure of
Clip – striding well ahead of the rest of them – looked
appropriately diminished, like an ant about to tackle a hillside.
Despite this, Kedeviss found her gaze drawn to him
again and again. I'm not sure. Not sure about him. Distrust
came easy, and even had Clip been all smiles and eager
generosity, still she would have her suspicions. They'd not
done well with strangers, after all.
    'I have never,' said Nimander as he walked at her side,
'seen a city like that.'
    'They certainly had a thing about domes,' observed
Skintick behind them. 'But let's hope that some of those
channels still run with fresh water. I feel salted as a lump
of bacon.'
    Crossing the dead lake had been an education in
human failure. Long lost nets tangled on deadheads,
harpoons, anchors, gaffs and more shipwrecks than seemed
reasonable. The lake's death had revealed its treachery in
spiny ridges and shoals, in scores of mineralized tree trunks,
still standing from the day some dam high in the mountains
broke to send a deluge sweeping down into a forested
valley. Fisher boats and merchant scows, towed barges and
a few sleek galleys attesting to past military disputes, the
rusted hulks of armour and other things less identifiable
– the lake bed seemed a kind of concentrated lesson on
bodies of water and the fools who dared to navigate them.
Kedeviss imagined that, should a sea or an ocean suddenly
drain away to nothing, she would see the same writ large,
a clutter of loss so vast as to take one's breath away. What
meaning could one pluck free from broken ambition? Avoid
the sea. Avoid risks. Take no chances. Dream of nothing, want
less. An Andiian response, assuredly. Humans, no doubt,
would draw down into thoughtful silence, thinking of ways
to improve the odds, of turning the battle and so winning
the war. For them, after all, failure was temporary, as
befitted a short-lived species that didn't know any better.
    'I guess we won't be camping in the village,' Skintick
said, and they could see that Clip had simply marched
through the scatter of squatting huts, and was now attacking
the slope.
    'He can walk all night if he likes,' Nimander said. 'We're
stopping. We need the rest. Water, a damned bath. We
need to redistribute our supplies, since there's no way we
can take the cart up and over the mountains. Let's hope
the locals just dropped everything like all the others did.'
    A bath. Yes. But it won't help. We cannot clean our hands,
not this time.
    They passed between sagging jetties, on to the old shore
by way of a boat-launch ramp of reused quarry stones, many
of which had been carved with strange symbols. The huts
rested on solid, oversized foundations, the contrast