Silverfox stood motionless, cold with shock.
Kallor's brutal attack had revealed yet another truth — the T'lan Ay had abandoned her. A loss that twisted a knife blade into her soul.
Once more, betrayal, the dark-hearted slayer of faith. Nightchill's ancient legacy. Tattersail and Bellurdan Skullcrusher both — killed by the machinations of Tayschrenn, the hand of the Empress. And now. Whiskeyjack. The two marines, my twin shadows for so long. Murdered.
Beyond the kneeling T'lan Imass waited the K'Chain Che'Malle undead. The huge creatures made no move towards the T'lan Imass — yet. They need only wade into the ranks, blades chopping down, and begin destroying. My children are beyond resistance. Beyond caring. Oh, ltkovian, you noble fool.
And this mortal army — she saw the Grey Swords down below, readying lassos, lances and shields — preparing to charge the K'Chain Che'Malle. Dujek's army was being destroyed within the city — the north gate had to be breached. She saw Gruntle, Trake's Mortal Sword, leading his motley legion down to join the Grey Swords. She saw officers riding before the wavering line of Malazans, rallying the heartbroken soldiers. She saw Artanthos — Tayschrenn — preparing to unleash his warren. Caladan Brood knelt beside Korlat, High Denul sorcery enwreathing the Tiste Andii woman. Orfantal stood behind the warlord — she felt the dragon in his blood, icy hunger, eager to return.
All for naught. The Seer and his demonic condors. and the K'Chain Che'Malle. will kill them all.
She had no choice. She would have to begin. Defy the despair, begin all that she had set in motion so long ago. Without hope, she would take the first step on the path.
Silverfox opened the Warren of Tellann.
Vanished within.
A mother's love abides.
But I was never meant to be a mother. I wasn't ready. I was unprepared to give so much of myself. A self I had only begun to unveil.
The Mhybe could have turned away. At the very beginning. She could have defied Kruppe, defied the Elder God, the Imass — what were these lost souls to her? Malazans, one and all. The enemy. Dire in the ways of magic. All with the blood of Rhivi staining their hands.
Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love, all manner of sacrifice could be borne.
Is it enough that the child issued from my flesh? Arrived in this world in the way of all children? Is the simple pain of birth the wellspring of love? Everyone else believed so. They took the bond of mother and child as given, a natural consequence of the birth itself.
They should not have done that.
My child was not innocent.
Conceived out of pity, not love; conceived with dread purpose — to take command of the T'lan Imass, to draw them into yet another war — to betray them.
And now, the Mhybe was trapped. Lost in a dreamworld too vast to comprehend, where forces were colliding, demanding that she act, that she do … something.
Ancient gods, bestial spirits, a man imprisoned in pain, in a broken, twisted body. This cage of ribs before me — is it his? The one I spoke with, so long ago? The one writhing so in a mother's embrace? Are we as kin, he and I? Both trapped in ravaged bodies, both doomed to slide ever deeper into this torment of pain?
The beast waits for me — the man waits for me. We must reach out to each other. To touch, to give proof to both of us that we are not alone.
Is this what awaits us?
The cage of ribs, the prison, must be broken from the outside.
Daughter, you may have forsaken me. But this man, this brother of mine, him I shall not forsake.
She could not be entirely sure, but she believed that she started crawling once more.
The beast howled in her mind, a voice raw with agony.
She would have to free it, if she could. Such was pity's demand.
Not love.
Ah, now I see.
Thus.
He would embrace them. He would take their pain. In this world, where all had been taken from him, where he walked without purpose, burdened with the lives and deaths of tens of thousands of mortal souls — unable to grant them peace, unable — unwilling — to simply cast them off, he was not yet done.
He would embrace them. These T'lan Imass, who had twisted all the powers of the Warren of Tellann into a ritual that devoured their souls. A ritual that had left them — in the eyes of all others — as little more than husks, animated by a purpose they had set outside themselves, yet were chained to — for eternity.
Husks, yet… anything but.
And that was a truth Itkovian had not expected, had no way to prepare for.
Insharak Ulan, who was born third to Inal Thoom and Sultha A'rad of the Nashar Clan that would come to be Kron's own, in the spring of the Year of Blighted Moss, below the Land of Raw Copper, and I remember-I remember-
A snow hare, trembling, no more than a dusk-shadow's length from my reach, my child's arm and hand stretching. Streaks in the white, the promise of summer. Trembling hand, trembling hare, born together in the snows just past. Reaching out. Lives touching — small-heart-patter, slow-drum-hunger my chest's answer to the world's hidden music — I remember-Kalas Agkor — my arms wrapped about little Jala, little sister, hot with fever but the fire grew too hot, and so, in my arms, her flesh cooled to dawn-stone, mother keening — Jala was the ember now lifeless, and from that day, in mother's eyes, I became naught but its bed of ash-Ulthan Arlad herd-tracks in the snow, tufts of moult, ay on the flanks, we were hungry in that year yet held to the trail, old as it was-Karas Av riding Bonecaster Thai's son in the Valley of Deep Moss, beneath the sun we were breaking the ancient law — I was breaking the ancient law, I, mate to Ibinahl Chode, made the boy a man before his circle was knotted-in the Year of the Broken Antler, we found wolf cubs-
— I dreamed I said no to the Ritual, I dreamed I strode to Onos T'oolan's side-
— a face streaming tears — my tears-
— Chode, who watched my mate lead the boy into the valley, and knew the child would be remade into a man — knew that he was in the gentlest of hands-the grasslands were burning-
— ranag in the Homed Circle-
— I loved her so-
Voices, a flood, memories — these warriors had not lost them. They had known them as living things — within their own dead bodies.
Known them.
For almost three hundred thousand years.
— friend to Onrack of the Logros, I last saw him kneeling amidst the corpses of his clan. All slain in the street, yet the Soletaken were finally broken. Ah, at such a cost-oh, heart laid at his feet, dear Legana Breed. So clever, sharpest of wit, oh how he made me laugh-
— our eyes met, Maenas Lot and I, even as the Ritual began its demand, and we saw the fear in each other's eyes — our love, our dreams of more children, to fill the spaces of those we had lost out on the ice, our lives of mingled shadows — our love, that must now be surrendered-I, Cannig Tol, watched as my hunters hurled their spears. She fell without making a sound, the last of her kind on this continent, and had I a heart, it would have burst, then. There was no justice in this war. We'd left our gods behind, and knelt only before an altar of brutality. Truth. And I, Cannig Tol, shall not turn away from truth-Itkovian's mind reeled back, sought to fend off the diluvial tide, to fight himself clear of his own soul's answering cry of sorrow, the torrent of truths shattering his heart, the secrets of the T'lan Imass — no, the Ritual — how — Fener's Tusks, how could you have done that to yourselves?