'"Only what is necessary," is her soft reply. I see in her face a great fear as she looks upon me, and I am saddened by it. "Jhag, you must not wander alone."
'Her words seem to call up terrible memories. And images, faces — companions, countless in number. As if I have rarely been alone. Men and women have walked at my side, sometimes singly, sometimes in legion. These memories fill me with grief, as if in some way I have betrayed every one of those companions.' He paused, and Mappo saw his head slowly nod. 'Indeed, I understand this now. They were all guardians, like you, Mappo. And they all failed. Were, perhaps, killed by my own hand.'
He shook himself. 'The priestess sees what lies writ upon my face, for hers becomes its mirror. Then she nods. Her staff blossoms with sorcery … and I wander a lifeless plain, alone. The pain is gone — where it had lodged within me, there is now nothing. And, as I feel my memories drift apart… away … I sense I have but dreamed. And so awaken.' He turned then, offered Mappo a dreadful smile.
Impossible. A twisting of the truth. I saw the slaughter with my own eyes. I spoke with the priestess. You have been visited in your dreams, Icarium, with fickle malice.
Fiddler cleared his throat. 'Looks like they were guarding this entrance. Whatever found them proved too much.'
'They are known on the Jhag Odhan,' Mappo said, 'as the Nameless Ones.'
Icarium's eyes hardened on the Trell.
'That cult,' Apsalar muttered, 'is supposed to be extinct.'
The others looked at her. She shrugged. 'Dancer's knowledge.'
Iskaral sputtered. 'Hood take their rotting souls! Presumptuous bastards one and all — how dare they make such claims?'
'What claims?' Fiddler growled.
The High Priest hugged himself. 'Nothing. Speak nothing of it, yes. Servants of the Azath — pah! Are we naught but pieces on a gameboard? My master scoured them from the Empire, yes. A task for the Talons, as Dancer will tell you. A necessary cleansing, a plucking of a thorn from the Emperor's side. Slaughter and desecration. Merciless. Too many vulnerable secrets — corridors of power — oh, how they resented my master's entry into Deadhouse-'
'Iskaral!' Apsalar snapped.
The priest ducked as if cuffed.
Icarium faced the young woman. 'Who voiced that warning? Through your mouth — who spoke?'
She fixed cool eyes on him. 'Possessing these memories enforces a responsibility, Icarium, just as possessing none exculpates.'
The Jhag flinched.
Crokus had edged forward. 'Apsalar?'
She smiled. 'Or Cotillion? No, it is just me, Crokus. I am afraid I have grown weary of all these suspicions. As if I have no self unstained by the god who once possessed me. I was but a girl when I was taken. A fisherman's daughter. But I am no mere girl any more.'
Her father's sigh was loud. 'Daughter,' he rumbled, 'we ain't none of us what we once were, and there ain't nothing simple in what we've gone through to get here.' He scowled, as if struggling for words. 'But you ordered the High Priest to shut up, to protect secrets that Dancer — Cotillion — would want kept that way. So Icarium's suspicions were natural enough.'
'Yes,' she countered, 'I am not a slave to what I was. I decide what to do with the knowledge I possess. I choose my own causes, Father.'
Icarium spoke. 'I stand chastised, Apsalar.' He faced Mappo again. 'What more do you know of these Nameless Ones, friend?'
Mappo hesitated, then said, 'Our tribe welcomed them as guests, but their visits were rare. I believe, however, that indeed they view themselves as servants of the Azath. If Trell legends hold any truth, then the cult may well date from the time of the First Empire-'
'They have been eradicated!' Iskaral shrieked.
'Within the borders of the Malazan Empire, perhaps,' Mappo conceded.
'My friend,' Icarium said, 'you are withholding truths. I would hear them.'
The Trell sighed. 'They have taken it upon themselves to recruit your guardians, Icarium, and have done so since the beginning.'
'Why?'
'That I do not know. Now that you ask it-' He frowned. 'An interesting question. Dedication to noble vows? Protection of the Azath?' Mappo shrugged.
'Hood's stubby ankles!' Rellock growled. 'Might be guilt, for all we know.'
All eyes swung to him.
After a long, silent moment, Fiddler shook himself. 'Come on, then. Into the maze.'
Arms and limbs. What clawed at the binding roots, what stretched and twisted in a hopeless effort to pull free, what reached out in supplication, in silent appeal and in deadly offer from all sides, was an array of imprisoned life, and few among those horridly animate projections were human in origin.
Fiddler's imagination failed his compulsive desire to fashion likely bodies, heads and faces to such limbs, even as he knew that the reality of what lay hidden within the woven walls would pale his worst nightmares.
Tremorlor's gnarled gaol of roots held demons, ancient Ascendants and such a host of alien creatures that the sapper was left trembling in the realization of his insignificance and that of all his kind. Humans were but one tiny, frail leaf on a tree too massive even to comprehend. The shock of that unmanned him, mocking his audacity with an endless echo of ages and realms trapped within this mad, riotous prison.
They could hear battles raging on all sides, thus far mercifully in other branches of the tortured maze. The Azath was being assailed from all fronts. The sound of snapping, shattering wood cracked through the air. Bestial screams rent the iron-smeared air above them, voices lost from the throats that released them, voices the only thing that could escape this terrifying war.
The crossbow's stock was slick with sweat in Fiddler's hands as he edged forward, keeping to the centre of the path, beyond the reach of those grasping, unhuman hands. A sharp bend lay just ahead. The sapper crouched down, then glanced back at the others.
Only three Hounds remained. Shan and Gear had set off, taking divergent paths. Where they were now and what was happening to them Fiddler had no idea, but Baran, Blind and Rood did not seem perturbed at their absence. The sightless female padded at Icarium's side as if she was nothing more than a well-trained companion to the Jhag. Baran held back as rearguard, while Rood — pale, mottled, a solid mass of muscle — waited not five paces from Fiddler's position, motionless. Its eyes, a dark liquid brown, seemed fixed on the sapper.
He shivered, his gaze flicking once again to Blind. At Icarium's side. . so dose … He understood that proximity all too clearly, as did Mappo. If bargains could be struck with a House of the Azath, then Shadowthrone had managed it. The Hounds would not be taken — as much as Tremorlor would have yearned for such prizes, for the abrupt and absolute removal of these ancient killers — no, the deal involved a much greater prize …
Mappo stood on the Jhag's other side, the burnished long-bone club raised before him. A surge of compassion flooded Fiddler. The Trell was being torn apart from within. He had more than just shapeshifters to guard against — there was, after all, the companion he loved as a brother.
Crokus and Apsalar, the former with his fighting knives out and held in admirably relaxed grips, flanked Servant. Pust slunk along a step behind them.
And this is what we are. This, and no more than this.
He had paused before the bend in response to an instinctive hesitation that seemed to wrap an implacable grip around his spine. Go no farther. Wait. The sapper sighed. Wait for what?
His eyes, still wandering over the group behind him, caught on something, focused.
Rood's hackles had begun a slow rise.
'Hood!''
Movement exploded all around him, a massive shape barrelling into view directly ahead with a roar that turned Fiddler's marrow into spikes of ice. And above, a thudding flapping of leathery wings, huge talons darting down.