A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

renewed,
when Lady Envy returned home. She had walked in the
midst of thousands, out to a barrow. She had watched, as
had all the others, as if a stranger to the one fallen. But she
was not that.
    She found a delicate decanter of the thinnest Nathii
greenglass, filled with amber wine, and collected two
goblets, and walked out to join the bard. He rose from the
bench he had been sitting on and would have taken a step
closer to her, but then he saw her expression.
    The bard was wise enough to hide his sigh of relief.
He watched her fill both goblets to the brim. 'What
happened?' he asked.
    She would not speak of her time at the barrow. She
would, in fact, never speak of it. Not to this man, not to
anyone. 'Caladan Brood,' she replied, 'that's what happened.
And there's more.'
    'What?'
    She faced him, and then drained her goblet. 'My father. He's back.'
    Oh frail city . . .
    An empty plain it was, beneath an empty sky. Weak,
flickering fire nested deep in its ring of charred stones, now
little more than ebbing coals. A night, a hearth, and a tale
now spun, spun out.
    'Has thou ever seen Kruppe dance?'
    'No. I think not. Not by limb, not by word.'
    'Then, my friends, settle yourselves for this night. And
witness . . .'
    And so they did. Bard and Elder God, and oh how
Kruppe danced. Blind to the threat of frowns, blind to
dismay, rolling eyes, blind even to contempt – although
none of these things came from these two witnesses. But
beyond this frail ring of warm light, out in that vast world
so discordant, so filled with tumult, judgement harsh and
gleeful in cruelty, there can be no knowing the cast of
arrayed faces.
    No matter.
    One must dance, and dance did Kruppe, oh, yes, he did
dance.
    The night draws to an end, the dream dims in the pale
silver of awakening. Kruppe ceases, weary beyond reason.
Sweat drips down the length of his ratty beard, his latest
affectation.
    A bard sits, head bowed, and in a short time he will say thank you . But for now he must remain silent, and as for
the other things he would say, they are between him and
Kruppe and none other. Fisher sits, head bowed. While an
Elder God weeps.
    The tale is spun. Spun out.
    Dance by limb, dance by word. Witness!
    This ends the Eighth Tale of the
Malazan Book of the Fallen

STEVEN ERIKSON'S THE MAZALAN
BOOK OF THE FALLEN CONTINUES IN
Dust of Dreams
    Here's the Prologue as a taster . . .

PROLOGUE
    Elan Plain, west of Kolanse
    There was light, and then there was heat.
    He knelt, carefully taking each brittle fold in his
hands, ensuring that every crease was perfect, that
nothing of the baby was exposed to the sun. He drew the
hood in until little more than a fist-sized hole was left for
her face, her features grey smudges in the darkness, and
then he gently picked her up and settled her into the fold
of his left arm. There was no hardship in this.
    They'd camped near the only tree in any direction, but
not under it. The tree was a gamleh tree and the gamlehs
were angry with people. In the dusk of the night before,
its branches had been thick with fluttering masses of grey
leaves, at least until they drew closer. This morning the
branches were bare.
    Facing west, Rutt stood holding the baby he had named
Held. The grasses were colourless. In places they had been
scoured away by the dry wind, wind that had then carved
the dust out round their roots to expose the pale bulbs so
the plants withered and died. After the dust and bulbs
had gone, sometimes gravel was left. Other times it was
just bedrock, black and gnarled. Elan Plain was losing its
hair, but that was something Badalle might say, her green
eyes fixed on the words in her head. There was no question
she had a gift, but some gifts, Rutt knew, were curses in
disguise.
    Badalle walked up to him now, her sun-charred arms
thin as stork necks, the hands hanging at her sides coated
in dust and looking oversized beside her skinny thighs. She
blew to scatter the flies crusting her mouth and intoned:
    'Rutt he holds Held
Wraps her good
In the morning
And then up he stands . . .'
    'Badalle,' he said, knowing she was not finished with her
poem but knowing, as well, that she would not be rushed,
'we still live.'
    She nodded.
    These few words of his had become a ritual between
them, although the ritual never lost its taint of surprise,
its faint disbelief. The ribbers had been especially hard on
them last night, but the good news was that maybe they
had finally left the Fathers behind.
    Rutt adjusted the baby