A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

existed
before. Creation from nothing. Awakening from absence of
self. And what is the word the beautiful word the precious
word and the perfect word that starts the game starts
everything everything everything?
    Why, the word is birth.
    Bodies of text, all these bodies, all this flesh and the
ink and the words and the words oh the words. Bodies and
bodies, patterns inside patterns, lives and lives and lives all
dreaming . . . all dreaming one dream.
    One dream. One dream one dream one one one dream.
    One.
    A dream of justice.
    'Let the cosmos quake,' Kadaspala whispered as he
etched sigil inside sigil inside sigil, as he wove language and
meaning, as the ink rode the piercing and flowed beneath
skin pocket by pocket. 'Quake and quiver, whimper and
quaver. A god oh a god yes a god now a god soon a god
a god awakens. Lives and lives cut down one and all, cut
down, yes, by judgement's sharp edge – did we deserve it?
Did we earn the punishment? Are any of us innocent, any
of us at all? Not likely not likely not likely. So, lives and
lives and none none none of us did not receive precisely
what we deserved.
    'Do you understand? Godling, to you I speak. Listen
listen listen well. We are what you come from. The
punished, the punished, the victims of justice, the victims
of our own stupidity, yes, and who could say that none of
us has learned our lesson? Who can say that? Look oh look
oh look where we are! Godling, here is your soul, writ in
flesh, in flesh, writ here by Kadaspala, who was once blind
though he could see and now can see though he is blind.
And am I not the very definition of sentience? Blind in life,
I can see in death – the definition of mortality, my darling
child, heed it and heed it come the moment you must act
and decide and stand and sit in judgement. Heed and heed,
godling, this eternal flaw.
    'And what, you will wonder, is written upon your soul?
What is written here? Here upon the flesh of your soul?
Ah, but that is the journey of your life, godling, to learn
the language of your soul, to learn it to learn it even as you
live it.
    'Soon, birth arrives. Soon, life awakens.
    'Soon, I make a god.'
    And even now, the god dreams of justice. For, unlike
Ditch, Kadaspala is indeed mad. His code struck to flesh is
a code of laws. The laws from which the god shall be born.
Consider that, consider that well.
    In the context of, say, mercy . . .
    She was out there, down in the basin, on her knees, head
hanging, her torso weaving back and forth to some inner
rhythm. After studying her yet again, Seerdomin, with a
faint gasp, tore his gaze away – something it was getting
ever harder to manage, for she was mesmerizing, this childwoman,
this fount of corruption, and the notion that a
woman's fall could be so alluring, so perfectly sexual, left
him horrified. By this language of invitation. By his own
darkness.
    Behind him, the Redeemer murmured, 'Her power
grows. Her power over you, Segda Travos.'
    'I do not want to be where she is.'
    'Don't you?'
    Seerdomin turned and eyed the god. 'Self-awareness can
be a curse.'
    'A necessary one.'
    'I suppose so,' he conceded.
    'Will you still fight her, Segda Travos?'
    'I think so, yes.'
    'Why?'
    Seerdomin bared his teeth. 'Don't you start with me,
Redeemer. The enemy never questions motivations – the
enemy doesn't chew the ground out beneath its own feet.'
He jabbed a finger back at the woman kneeling in the
basin. 'She has no questions. No doubts. What she has
instead is strength. Power.'
    'That is true,' said the Redeemer. 'All of it. It is why
those haunted by uncertainty must ever retreat. They cannot
stand before the self-righteous. Instead, they must slink
away, they must hide, they must slip behind the enemy's
lines—'
'Where every damned one of them is hunted down and
silenced – no, Redeemer, you forget, I lived in a tyranny. I
kicked in doors. I dragged people away. Do you truly believe
unbelievers will be tolerated? Scepticism is a criminal act.
    Wave the standard or someone else will, and they'll be
coming for you. Redeemer, I have looked in the eyes of my
enemy, and they are hard, cold, emptied of everything but
hate. I have, yes, seen my own reflection – it haunts me
still.'
    No further words were exchanged then. Seerdomin
looked back down to that woman, the High Priestess who
had once been Salind. She was naught but a tool, now, a
weapon of some greater force's will, its hunger. The same
force, he now suspected, that drove nations to war,