A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

suppressed it within ourselves for so long
now—'
    Because Andarist told us to!
    'Because Andarist told us to. Because he was bitter. And
hurting. He thought he could take his brother's children and
make them his own, more his own than Rake's.'
    Nenanda—
    'Had the thinnest blood of all. We knew that. You knew
it, too. It made him too predictable. It's probably killed him.
Brother, father, son – these layers are so precious, aren't they?
Look on them again, my lover, my killer, but this time . . . with
a dragon's eyes.'
    But, Phaed, I don't know how! How do I do that?
    She had no answer. No, it would never be that simple,
would it? Phaed was not an easy memory, not a gentle
ghost. Nor his wise conscience. She was none of that.
    Just one more kin whose blood stained Nimander's
hands.
    He had stopped walking. He stood now, surrounded by
oblivion.
    'My hands,' he whispered. And then slowly lifted them.
'Stained,' he said. 'Yes, stained.'
    The blood of kin. The blood of Tiste Andii. The blood
of dragons.
    That shines like beacons. That call, summon, can cast
outward until—
    A woman's hand reached out as if from nowhere, closing
round one of his own in a cold grip.
    And all at once she was before him, her eyes like twin
veils, parting to reveal a depthless, breathtaking love.
    He gasped, vertiginous, and almost reeled. 'Aranatha.'
    She said, 'There is little time, brother. We must hurry.'
    Still holding his hand, she set off, pulling him along as
she might a child.
    But Nimander was of no mind to complain.
    He had looked into her eyes. He had seen it. That love.
    He had seen it.
    And more, he had understood.
    The Dying God, he was coming. Pure as music, bright as
truth, solid as certainty. A fist of power, driving onward,
smashing everything in its path, until that fist uncurled
and the hand opened, to close round the soul of the
Redeemer. A weaker god, a god lost in its own confusion.
    Salind would be that fist, she would be that hand.
Delivering a gift, from which a true and perfect faith would
emerge. This is the blood of redemption. You will understand,
Redeemer. Drink deep the blood of redemption, and dance.
    The song is glory, and glory is a world we need never leave.
And so, my beloved Itkovian, dance with me. Here, see me
reaching for you—
    Supine on the muddy floor of Gradithan's hut, Salind
leaked thick black mucus from her mouth and nose, from
the tear ducts of her eyes. Her fingernails were black, and
more inky fluid oozed out of them. She was naked, and as
he knelt beside her Gradithan had paused, breathing hard,
his eyes fixed on the black milk trickling down from the
woman's nipples.
    Standing wrapped in his raincape close to the doorway,
Monkrat looked on with flat eyes, his face devoid of
expression. He could see how Gradithan struggled against
the sudden thirst, the desire that was half childlike and
half sexual, as he stared down at those leaking breasts.
The bastard had already raped her, in some twisted
consummation, a sacrifice of her virginity, so the only
thing that must have been holding the man back was some
kind of overriding imperative. Monkrat was not happy
thinking about that.
    Gradithan lifted Salind's head with one hand and
tugged open her mouth with the other. He reached for the
jug of saemankelyk. 'Time,' he muttered, 'and time, time,
time, the time. Is now.' He tipped the jug and the black
juice poured into Salind's gaping, stained mouth.
    She swallowed, and swallowed, and it seemed she would
never stop, that her body was depthless, a vessel with no
bottom. She drank down her need, and that need could
never find satiation.
    Monkrat grunted. He'd known plenty of people like that.
It was a secret poorly kept once you knew what to look for,
there in their eyes. Hope and expectation and hunger and
the hint of spiteful rage should a single demand be denied.
They had a way of appearing, and then never leaving. Yes,
he'd known people like that.
    And, well, here was their god, shining from Salind's eyes.
Everyone needed a god. Slapped together and shaped with
frantic hands, a thing of clay and sticks. Built up of wants
and all those unanswerable questions that plagued the
mortal soul. Neuroses carved in stone. Malign obsessions
given a hard, judgemental face – he had seen them, all the
variations, in city after city, on the long campaigns of the
Malazan Empire. They lined the friezes in temples; they
leered down from balustrades. Ten thousand gods, one for
every damned mood, it seemed.