The effort left K'rul broken, bearing wounds he knew he would carry for all his existence. More, he could already feel the twilight of his worship, the blight of Kallor's curse. To his surprise, the loss pained him less than he would have imagined.
The three stood at the portal of the nascent, lifeless realm, and looked long upon their handiwork.
Then Draconus spoke, 'Since the time of All Darkness, I have been forging a sword.'
Both K'rul and the Sister of Cold Nights turned at this, for they had known nothing of it.
Draconus continued. 'The forging has taken … a long time, but I am now nearing completion. The power invested within the sword possesses a … a finality.'
'Then,' K'rul whispered after a moment's consideration, 'you must make alterations in the final shaping.'
'So it seems. I shall need to think long on this.'
After a long moment, K'rul and his brother turned to their sister.
She shrugged. 'I shall endeavour to guard myself. When my destruction comes, it will be through betrayal and naught else. There can be no precaution against such a thing, lest my life become its own nightmare of suspicion and mistrust. To this, I shall not surrender. Until that moment, I shall continue to play the mortal game.'
'Careful, then,' K'rul murmured, 'whom you choose to fight for.'
'Find a companion,' Draconus advised. 'A worthy one.'
'Wise words from you both. I thank you.'
There was nothing more to be said. The three had come together, with an intent they had now achieved. Perhaps not in the manner they would have wished, but it was done. And the price had been paid. Willingly. Three lives and one, each destroyed. For the one, the beginning of eternal hatred. For the three, a fair exchange.
Elder Gods, it has been said, embodied a host of unpleasantries.
In the distance, the beast watched the three figures part ways. Riven with pain, white fur stained and dripping blood, the gouged pit of its lost eye glittering wet, it held its hulking mass on trembling legs. It longed for death, but death would not come. It longed for vengeance, but those who had wounded it were dead. There but remained the man seated on the throne, who had laid waste to the beast's home.
Time enough would come for the settling of that score.
A final longing filled the creature's ravaged soul. Somewhere, amidst the conflagration of the Fall and the chaos that followed, it had lost its mate, and was now alone. Perhaps she still lived. Perhaps she wandered, wounded as he was, searching the broken wastes for sign of him.
Or perhaps she had fled, in pain and terror, to the warren that had given fire to her spirit.
Wherever she had gone — assuming she still lived — he would find her.
The three distant figures unveiled warrens, each vanishing into their Elder realms.
The beast elected to follow none of them. They were young entities as far as he and his mate were concerned, and the warren she might have fled to was, in comparison to those of the Elder Gods, ancient.
The path that awaited him was perilous, and he knew fear in his labouring heart.
The portal that opened before him revealed a grey-streaked, swirling storm of power. The beast hesitated, then strode into it.
And was gone.
BOOK ONE
Five mages, an Adjunct, countless Imperial Demons, and the debacle that was Darujhistan, all served to publicly justify the outlawry proclaimed by the Empress on Dujek Onearm and his battered legions. That this freed Onearm and his Host to launch a new campaign, this time as an independent military force, to fashion his own unholy alliances which were destined to result in a continuation of the dreadful Sorcery Enfilade on Genabackis, is, one might argue, incidental. Granted, the countless victims of that devastating time might, should Hood grant them the privilege, voice an entirely different opinion. Perhaps the most poetic detail of what would come to be called the Pannion Wars was in fact a precursor to the entire campaign: the casual, indifferent destruction of a lone, stone bridge, by the Jaghut Tyrant on his ill-fated march to Darujhistan.
Imperial Campaigns (The Pannion War) 1194–1195, Volume N, Genabackis Imrygyn Tallobant (b. 1151)
CHAPTER ONE
Memories are woven tapestries hiding hard walls-tell me, my friends, what hue your favoured thread, and I in turn, will tell the cast of your soul.
Life of Dreams
Ilbares the Hag
1164th Year of Burn's Sleep (two months after the Darujhistan Fete)
4th Year of the Pannion Domin Tellann Year of the Second Gathering
The bridge's Gadrobi limestone blocks lay scattered, scorched and broken in the bank's churned mud, as if a god's hand had swept down to shatter the stone span in a single, petty gesture of contempt. And that, Gruntle suspected, was but a half-step from the truth.
The news had trickled back into Darujhistan less than a week after the destruction, as the first eastward-bound caravans this side of the river reached the crossing, to find that where once stood a serviceable bridge was now nothing but rubble. Rumours whispered of an ancient demon, unleashed by agents of the Malazan Empire, striding down out of the Gadrobi Hills bent on the annihilation of Darujhistan itself.
Gruntle spat into the blackened grasses beside the carriage. He had his doubts about that tale. Granted, there'd been strange goings on the night of the city's Fete two months back — not that he'd been sober enough to notice much of anything — and sufficient witnesses to give credence to the sightings of dragons, demons and the terrifying descent of Moon's Spawn, but any conjuring with the power to lay waste to an entire countryside would have reached Darujhistan. And, since the city was not a smouldering heap — or no more than was usual after a city-wide celebration — clearly nothing did.
No, far more likely a god's hand, or possibly an earthquake — though the Gadrobi Hills were not known to be restless. Perhaps Burn had shifted uneasy in her eternal sleep.
In any case, the truth of things now stood before him. Or, rather, did not stand, but lay scattered to Hood's gate and beyond. And the fact remained, whatever games the gods played, it was hard-working dirt-poor bastards like him who suffered for it.
The old ford was back in use, thirty paces upriver from where the bridge had been built. It hadn't seen traffic in centuries, and with a week of unseasonal rains both banks had become a morass. Caravan trains crowded the crossing, the ones on what used to be ramps and the ones out in the swollen river hopelessly mired down; while dozens more waited on the trails, with the tempers of merchants, guards and beasts climbing by the hour.
Two days now, waiting to cross, and Gruntle was pleased with his meagre troop. Islands of calm, they were. Harllo had waded out to a remnant of the bridge's nearside pile, and now sat atop it, fishing pole in hand. Stonny Menackis had led a ragged band of fellow caravan guards to Storby's wagon, and Storby wasn't too displeased to be selling Gredfallan ale by the mug at exorbitant prices. That the ale casks were destined for a wayside inn outside Saltoan was just too bad for the expectant innkeeper. If things continued as they did, there'd be a market growing up here, then a Hood-damned town. Eventually, some officious planner in Darujhistan would conclude that it'd be a good thing to rebuild the bridge, and in ten or so years it would finally get done. Unless, of course, the town had become a going concern, in which case they'd send a tax collector.