A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

of
its helplessness – oh, was that not cruel beyond all reason?
Was that not its own invitation into insanity?
    Kadaspala, you have but made versions of yourself. You
couldn't help it – yes, I see that.
    But, damn you, my flesh belonged to me. Not you.
    Damn you—
    But curses meant nothing now. Every fate was now
converging. Hah hah, take that, you pious posers, and you
arrogant shits, and all you whining victims – see what comes!
It's all the same, this end, all the same!
    And here he was, trapped in the greater scheme. His
skin a piece of a tapestry. And its grand scene? A pattern
he could never read.
    The demon Pearl stood wearing bodies from which a
forest of iron roots swept down in loops and coils. It could
carry no more, and so it stood, softly weeping, its legs like
two failing trunks that shook and trembled. It had long
since weighed the value of hatred. For the High Mage
Tayschrenn, who first summoned it and bound it to his
will. For Ben Adaephon Delat, who unleashed it against
the Son of Darkness; and for Anomander Rake himself,
whose sword bit deep. But the value was an illusion. Hate
was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of
satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate.
Life was a negotiation between the expected and the
unexpected. One made do.
    Draconus staggered up. 'Pearl, my friend, I have come to
say goodbye. And to tell you I am sorry.'
    'What saddens you?' the demon asked.
    'I am sorry, Pearl, for all of this. For Dragnipur. For
the horror forged by my own hands. It was fitting, was
it not, that the weapon claimed its maker? I think, yes,
it was. It was.' He paused, and then brought both hands
up to his face. For a moment it seemed he would begin
clawing his beard from the skin beneath it. Instead, the
shackled hands fell away, down, dragged by the weight of
the chains.
    'I too am sorry,' said Pearl. 'To see the end of this.'
    'What?'
    'So many enemies, all here and not one by choice.
Enemies, and yet working together for so long. It was a
wondrous thing, was it not, Draconus? When necessity
forced each hand to clasp, to work as one. A wondrous
thing.'
    The warrior stared at the demon. He seemed unable to
speak.
    Apsal'ara worked her way along the top of the beam. It was
hard to hold on, the wagon pitching and rocking so with
one last, useless surge forward, and the beam itself thick
with the slime of sweat, blood and runny mucus. But something
was happening at the portal, that black, icy stain
beneath the very centre of the wagon.
    A strange stream was flowing into the Gate, an intricate
pattern ebbing down through the fetid air from the underside
of the wagon's bed. Each tendril was inky black, the
space around it ignited by a sickly glow that pulsed slower
than any mortal heart.
    Was it Kadaspala's pathetic god? Seeking to use the
tattooist's insane masterpiece as if it was a latticework, a
mass of rungs, down which it could clamber and so plunge
through the Gate? Seeking to escape ?
    If so, then she intended to make use of it first.
    Let the cold burn her flesh. Let pieces of her simply fall
away. It was a better end than some snarling manifestation
of chaos ripping out her throat.
    She struggled ever closer, her breath sleeting out in
crackling plumes that sank down in sparkling ice crystals.
It reminded her of her youth, the nights out on the tundra,
when the first snows came, when clouds shivered and
shed their diamond skins and the world grew so still, so
breathless and perfect, that she felt that time itself was but
moments from freezing solid – to hold her for ever in that
place, hold her youth, hold tight her dreams and ambitions,
her memories of the faces she loved – her mother, her
father, her kin, her lovers. No one would grow old, no one
would die and fall away from the path, and the path itself,
why, it would never end.
    Leave me in mid-step. My foot never to settle, never to edge
me forward that much closer to the end of things. Yes, leave me
here. At the very heart of possibilities, not one of which will
crash down. No failures to come, no losses, no regrets to kiss
upon the lips – I will not feel the cold.
    I will not feel the cold—
    She cried out in the frigid, deathly air. Such pain – how
could she ever get close enough?
    Apsal'ara drew herself up, knees beneath her. And eyed
that pattern, just there, a body's length away and still
streaming down. If she launched herself from this place,
simply threw herself forward, would