A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

dragging by an ankle the corpse of his
wife – just one in a countless succession – her arms trailing
behind her limp as dead snakes, their throats slashed open.
There had been no warning, no patina of dust covering her
eyes when she fixed him with their regard that morning,
as he sat ordering the Century Candles in a row on the
table between them. As he invited her into a life stretched
out, the promise of devouring for ever – no end to the feast
awaiting them, no need ever to exercise anything like restraint.
They would speak and live the language of excess.
They would mark out the maps of interminable expansion,
etching the ambitions they could now entertain. Nothing
could stop them, not even death itself.
    Some madness had afflicted her, like the spurt and gush
of a nicked artery – there could be no other cause. Madness
it had been. Insanity, to have flung away so much. Of what
he offered her. So much, yes, of him. Or so he had told
himself at the time, and for decades thereafter. It had been
easier that way.
    He knew now why she had taken her own life. To be
offered everything was to be shown what she herself was
capable of – the depthless reach of her potential depravity,
the horrors she would entertain, the plucking away of every
last filament of sensitivity, leaving her conscience smooth,
cool to the touch, a thing maybe alive, maybe not, a thing
nothing could prod awake. She had seen, yes, just how far
she might take herself . . . and had then said no.
    Another sweet packet, unfolding with the scent of flowers.
He knelt beside Vaderon, his war horse, as the animal
bled out red foam, its one visible eye fixed on him, as if
wanting to know: was it all worth this? What has my life
purchased you, my blood, the end of my days?
    A battlefield spread out on all sides. Heaps of the dead
and the dying, human and beast, Jheck and Tartheno
Toblakai, a scattering of Forkrul Assail each one
surrounded by hundreds of the fallen, the ones protecting
their warleaders, the ones who failed in taking the demons
down. And there was no dry ground, the blood was a
shallow sea thickening in the heat, and more eyes looked
upon nothing than scanned the nightmare seeking friends
and kin.
    Voices cried, but they seemed distant – leagues away
from Kallor where he knelt beside Vaderon, unable to
pull his gaze from that one fixating eye. Promises of
brotherhood, flung into the crimson mud. Silent vows of
honour, courage, service and reward, all streaming down
the broken spear shaft jutting from the animal's massive,
broad chest. And yes, Vaderon had reared to take that
thrust, a thrust aimed at Kallor himself, because this horse
was too stupid to understand anything.
    That Kallor had begun this war, had welcomed the
slaughter, the mayhem.
    That Kallor, this master now kneeling at its side, was
in truth a brutal, despicable man, a bag of skin filled with
venom and spite, with envy and a child's selfish snarl that
in losing took the same from everyone else.
    Vaderon, dying. Kallor, dry-eyed and damning himself for
his inability to weep. To feel regret, to sow self-recrimination,
to make promises to do better the next time round.
    I am as humankind, he often told himself. Impervious
to lessons. Pitiful in loss and defeat, vengeful in victory.
With every possible virtue vulnerable to exploitation and
abuse by others, could they claim dominion, until such
virtues became hollow things, sweating beads of poison. I
hold forth goodness and see it made vile, and do nothing,
voice no complaint, utter no disavowal. The world I make I
have made for one single purpose – to chew me up, me and
everyone else. Do not believe this bewildered expression. I
am bemused only through stupidity, but the clever among
me know better, oh, yes they do, even as they lie through
my teeth, to you and to themselves.
    Kallor walked, over one shoulder a burlap sack ten
thousand leagues long and bulging with folded packets. So
different from everyone else. Ghost horses run at his side.
Wrist-slashed women show bloodless smiles, dancing round
the rim of deadened lips. And where dying men cry, see his
shadow slide past.
    'I want things plain,' said Nenanda. 'I don't want to have
to work.' And then he looked up, belligerent, quick to take
affront.
    Skintick was bending twigs to make a stick figure. 'But
things aren't plain, Nenanda. They never are.'
    'I know that, just say it straight, that's all.'
    'You don't want your confusion all stirred up,