A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

mortal's soul, unless they could bend that
soul to their will, to serve as but one more soldier in their
pointless, self-destructive wars.
    For herself, she was past such thinking. She had found
her own freedom, basking beneath that blessed rain of
indifference. She would do as she willed, and not even the
gods could stop her. It would be the gods themselves, she
vowed, who would come to her. Beseeching, on their knees,
snared in their own game.
    She moved silently, now, deep in the crypts beneath the
Old Palace. I was a slave, once – many believe I still am, yet look at me – I rule this buried realm. I alone know where the hidden chambers reside, I know what awaits me within them. I walk this most fated path, and, when the time is right, I will take the throne.
    The Throne of Oblivion.
    Uruth might well be looking for her right now, the old
hag with all her airs, the smugness of a thousand imagined
secrets, but Feather Witch knew all those secrets. There
was nothing to fear from Uruth Sengar – she had been
usurped by events. By her youngest son, by the other sons
who then betrayed Rhulad. By the conquest itself. The
society of Edur women was now scattered, torn apart; they
went where their husbands were despatched; they had
surrounded themselves in Letherii slaves, fawners and
Indebted. They had ceased to care. In any case, Feather
Witch had had enough of all that. She was in Letheras
once more and like that fool, Udinaas, she was fleeing her
bondage; and here, in the catacombs of the Old Palace,
none would find her.
    Old storage rooms were already well supplied, equipped a
morsel at a time in the days before the long journey across
the oceans. She had fresh water, wine and beer, dried fish
and beef, fired clay jugs with preserved fruits. Bedding,
spare clothes, and over a hundred scrolls stolen from the
Imperial Library. Histories of the Nerek, the Tarthenal,
the Fent and a host of even more obscure peoples the
Letherii had devoured in the last seven or eight centuries –
the Bratha, the Katter, the Dresh and the Shake.
    And here, beneath the Old Palace, Feather Witch had
discovered chambers lined with shelves on which sat
thousands of mouldering scrolls, crumbling clay tablets and
worm-gnawed bound books. Of those she had examined,
the faded script in most of them was written in an arcane
style of Letherii that proved difficult to decipher, but she
was learning, albeit slowly. A handful of old tomes, however,
were penned in a language she had never seen before.
    The First Empire, whence this colony originally came all
those centuries ago, seemed to be a complicated place,
home to countless peoples each with their own languages
and gods. For all the imperial claims to being the birth of
human civilization, it was clear to Feather Witch that no
such claim could be taken seriously. Perhaps the First
Empire marked the initial nation consisting of more than a
single city, probably born out of conquest, one city-state
after another swallowed up by the rampaging founders. Yet
even then, the fabled Seven Cities was an empire bordered
by independent tribes and peoples, and there had been wars
and then treaties. Some were broken, most were not.
Imperial ambitions had been stymied, and it was this fact
that triggered the age of colonization to distant lands.
    The First Empire had met foes who would not bend a
knee. This was, for Feather Witch, the most important
truth of all, one that had been conveniently and deliberately
forgotten. She had gained strength from that, but
such details were themselves but confirmation of discoveries
she had already made – out in the vast world
beyond. There had been clashes, fierce seafarers who took
exception to a foreign fleet's invading their waters. Letherii
and Edur ships had gone down, figures amidst flotsam-filled
waves, arms raised in hopeless supplication – the heave and
swirl of sharks, dhenrabi and other mysterious predators of
the deep – screams, piteous screams, they still echoed in her
head, writhing at the pit of her stomach. Revulsion and
glee both.
    The storms that had battered the fleet, especially west of
the Draconean Sea, had revealed the true immensity of
natural power, its fickle thrashings that swallowed entire
ships – there was delight in being so humbled, coming upon
her with the weight of revelation. The Lether Empire was
puny – like Uruth Sengar, it held to airs of greatness when
it was but one more pathetic hovel of cowering mortals.
    She would