A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

that
drove husbands to kill wives and wives to kill husbands.
That could take even the soul of a god and crush it into
subservience.
    When will you rise, Salind? When will you come for me?
    This was not the afterlife he had imagined. My fighting
should be over. My every need made meaningless, the pain of
thoughts for ever silenced.
    Is not death's gift indifference? Blissful, perfect indifference?
    She swayed back and forth, gathering strength as only
the surrendered could do.
    Monkrat walked through the pilgrim camp. Dishevelled as
it had once been, now it looked as if a tornado had ripped
through it. Tents had sagged; shacks leaned perilously
close to collapse. There was rubbish everywhere. The few
children still alive after being so long abandoned watched
him walk past with haunted eyes peering out from filth-streaked
faces. Sores ate into their drawn lips. Their bellies
were swollen under the rags. There was nothing to be done
for them, and even if there was, Monkrat was not the man
to do it. In his mind he had left humanity behind long
ago. There was no kinship to nip at his heart. Every fool
the world over was on his or her own, or they were slaves.
These were the only two states of being – every other one
was a lie. And Monkrat had no desire to become a slave, as
much as Gradithan or saemankelyk might want that.
    No, he would remain his own world. It was easier that
way. Ease was important. Ease was all that mattered.
    Soon, he knew, he would have to escape this madness.
Gradithan's ambitions had lost all perspective – the
curse of kelyk. He talked now incessantly of the coming
of the Dying God, the imminent end of all things and
the glorious rebirth to follow. People talking like that
disgusted Monkrat. They repeated themselves so often it
soon became grossly obvious that their words were wishes
and the wish was that their words might prove true.
Round and round, all that wasted breath. The mind so
liked to go round and round, so liked that familiar track,
the familiarity of it. Round and round, and each time
round the mind was just that much stupider. Increment
by increment, the range of thoughts narrower, the path
underfoot more deeply trenched – he had even noted how
the vocabulary diminished, as uneasy notions were cast
away and all the words associated with them, too. The
circular track became a mantra, the mantra a proclamation
of stupid wishes that things could be as they wanted them,
that in fact they were as they wanted them.
    Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for
that, didn't there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking,
some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy. Well, Monkrat
trusted none of that. He knew how to think for himself and
that was all he knew so why give it up? He'd yet to hear an
argument that could convince him – but of course, fanatics
didn't use arguments, did they? No, just that fixed gaze, the
threat, the reason to fear.
    Aye, he'd had enough. Gods below, he was actually
longing for the city where he had been born. There in
the shadow of Mock's Hold, and that blackwater bay of
the harbour where slept a demon, half buried in mud and
tumbled ballast stones. And who knew, maybe there was
no one left there to recognize him – and why would they in
any case? His old name was on the toll of the fallen, after
all, and beside it was Blackdog Wood, 1159 Burn's Sleep. The
Bridgeburners were gone, dead, destroyed in Pale with the
remnants mopped up here at Black Coral. But he'd been
a casualty long before then, and the years since then had
been damned hard – no, it wasn't likely that he'd be recognized.
    Yes, Malaz City sounded sweet now, as he walked this
wretched camp's main street, the squalling of gulls loud in
his ears.
    Gradithan, you've lost it.
    There won't be any vengeance on the Tiste Andii. Not for
me, not for you. It was a stupid idea and now it's gone too far.
    History wasn't worth reliving. He understood that now.
But people never learned that – they never fucking learned
that, did they? Round and round.
    A fallen pilgrim stumbled out from between two hovels,
brown-smeared chin and murky eyes swimming in some
dubious rapture painting its lie behind them. He wanted
to kick the brainless idiot between the legs. He wanted to
stomp on the fool's skull and see the shit-coloured sludge
spill out. He wanted every child to watch him do it, too, so
they'd realize, so they'd run for their lives.
    Not that he cared.
    'High Priestess.'
    She looked up, then