A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

every time you defeated me
on our tiny field of battle, there on the stained table in that
damp, miserable tavern.
    You did not imagine how I struggled to hold on to that pride,
defeat after defeat, crushing loss after crushing loss.
    So now, let us cast aside our bland masks. Laugh, Spinnock
Durav, as you watch me lose yet again.
    He had not even slowed her down. Blades smashed into
him from all sides, three, four at a time. His broken body
did not even know where to fall – her attacks were all that
kept him standing.
    He'd lost his sword.
    He might even have lost the arm and hand that had
been wielding it. There was no telling. He had no sense
beyond this knot of mocking knowledge. This lone inner
eye unblinkingly fixed on its pathetic self.
    And now, at last, she must have flung away all her
weapons, for her hands closed round his throat.
    He forced his eyes open, stared into her laughing face—
    Oh.
    I understand now. It was you laughing.
    You, not me. You I was hearing. Yes, I understand now—
    That meant that he, why, he'd been weeping. So much
for mockery. The truth was, there was nothing left in him
but self-pity. Spinnock Durav, look away now. Please, look
away.
    Her hands tightening round his throat, she lifted him
from the ground, held him high. So she could watch his
face as she choked the last life from him. Watch, and laugh
in his face of tears.
    The High Priestess stood with hands to her mouth, too
frightened to move, watching the Dying God destroy
Endest Silann. He should have crumbled by now, he should
have melted beneath that onslaught. And indeed it had
begun. Yet, somehow, unbelievably, he still held on.
    Making of himself a final, frail barrier between the Tiste
Andii and this horrendous, insane god. She cowered in its
shadow. It had been hubris, mad hubris, to have believed
they could withstand this abomination. Without Anomander
Rake, without even Spinnock Durav. And now
she sensed every one of her kin being driven down, unable
to lift a hand in self-defence, lying with throats exposed,
as the poison rain flooded the streets, bubbled in beneath
doors, through windows, eating the tiles of roofs as if it was
acid, to stream down beams and paint brown every wall.
Her kin had begun to feel the thirst, had begun to desire
that deadly first sip – as she had.
    And Endest Silann held the enemy back.
    Another moment.
    And then yet another—
    In the realm of Dragnipur, every force had ceased fighting.
Every force, every face – Draconus, Hood, Iskar Jarak, the
Chained, the burning eyes of the soldiers of chaos – all
turned to stare at the sky above the wagon.
    And at the lone figure standing tall on the mound of
bodies.
    Where something extraordinary had begun.
    The tattooed pattern had lifted free of the tumbled,
wrinkled canvas of skins – as if the layer that had existed
for all to see was now revealed as but one side, one facet,
one single dimension, of a far greater manifestation. Which
now rose, unfolding, intricate as a perfect cage, a web of
gossamer, glistening like wet strokes of ink suspended in
the air around Anomander Rake.
    He slowly raised his arms.
    Lying almost at Rake's feet, Kadaspala twisted in a frenzy of
joy. Revenge and revenge and yes, revenge.
    Stab! Dear child! Now stab, yes and stab and stab—
    Ditch, all that remained of him, stared with one eye. He
saw an elongated, tattoo-swarmed arm lifting clear, saw the
knife in its hand, hovering like a rearing serpent behind
Rake's back. And none of this surprised him.
    The child-god's one purpose. The child-god's reason to
exist.
    And he was its eye. There to look upon its soul inward
and outward. To feel its heart, and that heart overflowed
with life, with exultation. To be born and to live was such
a gift! To see the sole purpose, to hold and drive the knife
deep—
    And then?
    And then . . . it all ends.
    Everything here. All of them. These bodies so warm against
me. All, betrayed by the one their very lives have fed. Precious
memories, host of purest regrets – but what, above all else,
must always be chained to each and every soul? Why, regrets,
of course. For ever chained to one's own history, one's own life
story, for ever dragging that creaking, tottering burden . . .
    To win free of those chains of regret is to shake free of
humanity itself. And so become a monster.
    Sweet child god, will you regret this?
    'No.'
    Why not?
    'There . . . there will be no time.'
    Yes, no time. For anyone. Anything. This is your