A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

vast chambers of silent,
frozen machines, evading the pits in the floors over which
flagstones had never been installed, and staying clear of
the chaos of metal and cables spilling out from un-paneled
walls – no, she knew her way round, now, after months of
wandering. This curse of helpless, hopeless bewilderment
belonged to her spirit. She was not who they wanted her to
be, and nothing she said could convince them of that.
    She had been born into a tribe on the Elan Plain. She
had grown into adulthood there, from child to girl, from
girl to woman, and there had been nothing to set her
apart, nothing to reveal her as unique, or gifted with
unexpected talents. She had married a month after her
first blooding. She had borne three children. She had
almost loved her husband, and had learned to live with
his faint disappointment in her, as her youthful beauty
gave way to weary motherhood. She had, in truth, lived a
life no different from that of her own mother, and so had
seen clearly – without any special talent – the path of her
life ahead, year after year, the slow decay of her body, the
loss of suppleness, deepening lines upon her face, the sag of
her breasts, the miserable weakening of her bladder. And
one day, she would find herself unable to walk, and the
tribe would leave her where she was. To die in solitude, as
dying was always a thing of solitude, as it must ever be. For
the Elan knew better than the settled peoples of Kolanse,
with their crypts and treasure troves for the dead, with the
family servants and advisors, all throat-cut and packed in
the corridor to the sepulcher, servants beyond life itself,
servants forever.
    Everyone died in solitude, after all. A simple enough
truth. A truth no-one need fear. The spirits waited before
they cast judgement upon a soul, waited for that soul – in
its dying isolation – to set judgement upon itself, upon
the life it had lived, and if peace came of that, then the
spirits would show mercy. If torment rode the Wild Mare,
why, then, the spirits knew to match it. When the soul
faced itself, after all, it was impossible to lie. Deceiving
arguments rang loud with falsehood, their facile weakness
too obvious to ignore.
    It had been a life. Far from perfect, but only vaguely
unhappy. A life one could whittle down into something
like contentment, even should the result prove shapeless,
devoid of meaning.
    She had been no witch. She had not possessed the
breath of a shaman, and so would never be a Rider of the
Spotted Horse. And when the end of that life had come for
her and her people, on a morning of horror and violence,
all that she had revealed then was a damning selfishness
– in refusing to die, in fleeing all that she had known.
    These were not virtues.
    She possessed no virtues.
    Reaching the central, spiral staircase – each step too
shallow, too broad for human strides – she set off, her
gasps becoming shallower and quicker with the exertion
as she ascended level after level, up and out from Root,
into the lower chambers of Feed, where she made use
of the counterweighted ramp that lifted her by way of a
vertical shaft past the seething vats of fungi, the stacked
pens of orthen and grishol, drawing to a grating, shivering
halt on the base level of Womb. Here, the cacophony of
the young assailed her, the hissing shrieks of pain as the
dread surgeries were performed – as destinies were decreed
in bitter flavours – and, having regained some measure of
her wind, she hastened to ascend past the levels of terrible
outrage, the stench of wastes and panic that shone like oil
on soft hides among shapes writhing on all sides – shapes
she was careful to avoid with her eyes, hurrying with her
hands clapped over her ears.
    From Womb to Heart, where she now passed among
towering figures that paid her no heed, and from whose
paths she had to duck and dodge lest they simply trample
her underclaw. Ve'Gath Soldiers stood flanking the
central ramp, twice her height and in their arcane armour
resembling the vast machinery of Root far below. Ornate
grilled visors hid their faces save their fanged snouts, and
the line of their jaws gave them ghastly grins, as if the
implicit purpose of their breed delighted them. More so
than the J'an or the K'ell, the true soldiers of the K'Chain
Che'Malle frightened Kalyth to the very core of her being.
The Matron was producing them in vast numbers.
    No further proof was needed – war was coming.
    That the Ve'Gath gave the Matron