A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

talespinner would grin then, and make
odd motions with his hands. 'Perspective,' he'd say. 'You
see? The world changes according to where you stand. So
choose, my children, choose and choose again, where you
will make your stand . . .'
    Where you will make your stand. The world changes.
    The world changes.
    Yes, he had held back the sea. He had made Moon's
Spawn into a single held breath that had lasted months.
    But now, ah, now , his Lord had asked him to hold back
Light itself.
    To save not a fortress, but a city. Not a single breath to
hold, but the breath of Kurald Galain, an Elder Warren.
    But he was old, and he did not know . . . he did not
know . . .
    Standing twenty paces away, in a niche of the wall, the
High Priestess watched. Seeing him struggle, seeing him
call upon whatever reserves he had left. Seeing him slowly,
inexorably, fail.
    And she could do nothing.
    Light besieged Dark in the sky overhead. A god in love
with dying besieged a child of redemption, and would
use that child's innocence to usurp this weakened island
of Kurald Galain – to claim for itself the very Throne of
Darkness.
    For she has turned away.
    Against all this, a lone, ancient, broken warlock.
    It was not fair.
    Time was the enemy. But then, she told herself with wry
bitterness, time was always the enemy.
    Endest Silann could not drive back every breach. She
had begun to feel the damage being wrought upon Night,
upon the Tiste Andii in this city. It arrived like a sickness,
a failing of internal balances. She was weakening.
    We are all weakening.
    An old, broken man. He was not enough, and they had
all known – everyone except the one who mattered the
most. Lord Rake, your faith blinded you. See him, kneeling
there – there, my Lord, is your fatal error in judgement.
    And without him – without the power here and now to keep
everything away – without that, your grand design will collapse
into ruin.
    Taking us with it.
    By the Abyss, taking us all.
    It seemed so obvious now. To stand in Rake's presence
was to feel a vast, unassailable confidence. That he could
gauge all things with such precision as to leave one in awe,
in disbelief and in wonder.
    The plans of the Son of Darkness never went awry. Hold
to faith in him, and all shall settle into place.
    But how many plans worked out precisely because of our
faith in him? How many times did we – did people like Endest
Silann and Spinnock Durav – do things beyond their capability,
simply to ensure that Rake's vision would prove true? And how
many times can he ask that of them, of us?
    Anomander Rake wasn't here.
    No, he was gone.
    For ever gone.
    Where then was that solid core of confidence, which
they might now grasp tight? In desperation, in pathetic
need?
    You should never have left this to us. To him.
    The sickness in her soul was spreading. And when she
succumbed, the last bulwark protecting every Tiste Andii
in Black Coral would give way.
    And they would all die. For they were the flesh of Kurald
Galain.
    Our enemies feed on flesh.
    Lord Anomander Rake, you have abandoned us.
    She stood in the niche as if it was a sarcophagus. Fevered,
watching Endest Silann slowly crumple there in the centre
of that proud, diffident mosaic spanning the floor.
    You failed us.
    And now we fail you.
    With a gasp of agony, Apsal'ara lunged backward along the
beam. The skin of her hands and forearms had blackened.
She kicked in desperate need, pushing herself still farther
from that swirling vortex of darkness. Sliding on her back,
over the grease of sweat, bile and blood. Steam rose from
her arms. Her fingers were twisted like roots—
    The pain was so vast it was almost exquisite. She writhed,
twisted in its grip, and then pitched down from the beam.
Chains rapped against the sodden wood. Her weight pulled
them down in a rattle and she heard something break.
    Thumping on to ash-smeared clay.
    Staring as she held up her hands. Seeing frost-rimed
shackles, and, beneath them, broken links.
    She had felt the wagon rocking its way back round. Horror
and disbelief had filled her soul, and the need to do
something had overwhelmed her, trampling all caution,
trampling sanity itself.
    And now, lying on the cold, gritty mud, she thought to
laugh.
    Free.
    Free with nowhere to run. With possibly dead hands
– and what good was a thief with dead, rotting hands?
She struggled to uncurl her fingers. Watched the
knuckles crack open like charred meat. Red fissures gaped.
And, as she stared, she saw the