CHAPTER II
HER LIFE, SHE decided, has been nothing more than a string of failures. Wretched failures. One piled on to the other. And all after so many had sacrificed so much to bring her into her birthright; her mother, the Rhivi tribes, Malazan marines, citizens of Darujhistan – honourable and not so honourable – had striven heroically to help her become what she was fated to become: Silverfox, Summoner to the ancient undying self-accursed T’lan Imass.
Her mother had given up her own life to nourish her. The Rhivi had endured privation and the loss of many in their migrations; one of the most beloved Malazan officers had given his life championing her; and now, after she had been named the T’lan Imass Summoner come again, it was the Imass themselves who threatened to destroy her.
She had been born to unite the many T’lan Imass clans in one gathering dedicated to the dismissal of the Tellann ritual that bound them through life and death to their relentless pursuit of the Jaghut. A war that had dissolved into irrelevance countless millennia ago as that alien race faded away into isolated individuals who retained no interest in Imass or human affairs.
Yet not all the Imass considered the war over. Here in Assail there remained one last vestige of that conflict. A soul-wrenching legacy that threatened even her sympathies for these ancient people.
Now she spent her days and nights keeping watch on the coast where the Warren, or Realm, of Tellann tended to draw those Imass guided by this lingering presence. Here they found her, and something else. Something none of them had ever anticipated, nor even imagined.
*
When she was at her very lowest Pran Chole would come to spend time with her – or perhaps to watch over her should she consider some sort of sudden drastic action to end her misery. She had yet to decide whether his silent company was a consolation or an aggravation. In the past, he’d once offered himself up as the defenceless target and recipient of her anger, her fury, and her outrage at the injustice of her fate. And she had beaten upon him the way a smith punishes his anvil. Yet she’d seen since how he had done it as a gift to her, out of love. That she should turn her fury upon him rather than herself.
Now she was not certain what her feelings were for the ancient Bonecaster – the closest thing to a father she could claim to have had. When she was at her lowest he could somehow sense it. He would come to her tent among the dunes, entering just as any living being would through the loose front flap, ducking his head bearing its broken-antlered headdress, to stand silent and watchful. Offering the last thing that remained to him to try to ease her mind: his company.
Sometimes, on nights like these, when the wind howled off the coast and the waves pummelled the beach as if meaning to wash it from existence utterly, she would sit cross-legged next to her small fire while her hide tent shuddered and jerked about her, and he would come to stand just inside the opening as if uncertain of his welcome. She was not uncomfortable in his presence; and indeed, his attention wasn’t upon her at all. The dark empty pits of his sockets gazed steadily aside, towards the coast, ever sensing for newcomers.
Of course he need not have bothered with this awkward gesture of companionship. She of all people, Silverfox, was never alone. It was what she was. How she had been created. And she considered it her curse. Four entities resided within her. Pran Chole himself, among others, had pulled the four together to create what he hoped would become the first living T’lan Imass Bonecaster and Summoner in many millennia. And he had succeeded. Powerful beings, dead and dying, had been lashed to her soul as if by bloody sinew and dried roots: Tattersail, powerful Malazan cadre mage, indeed potent enough to be considered a potential High Mage; Bellurdan, a Thelomen giant in life and huge in soul in death; and most closed to her of all, Nightchill, a sorceress of the Malazan Empire. In life, for a time, they had served Kellanved, the first emperor. But in death they agreed to serve the child Silverfox – destined to release the T’lan Imass from their self-inflicted bondage.
And when she was at her very nadir, as on this night, she could not help but note her hands as she prodded the dying embers of the fire; their wasted bird-like lines, all sinew and bone, the skin blotched by age-spots. Not the hands of the youth she was – at least in years. By the number of seasons she had seen she should be an adolescent. Yet her purpose, what she was formed to do, arrived early. And so was she quickened to meet it. The cost had been terrible, and not just to her. The need had consumed her mother first. It had taken the many potential decades of her life. And now it was overwhelming hers.
She flexed her hands to warm them then returned to stirring the embers with a stick of broken brittle driftwood. All this Pran Chole witnessed. The low fire cast a bronze glow across his dry withered face, though the empty sockets of his eyes remained hidden in darkness beneath his headdress of weathered, broken antlers. How many such scenes had this Imass seen? The fire’s flush suited him, she decided.
Her thoughts turned then to another Imass, one who had shared many similar nights across the sea in Genabackis, and had become what Silverfox considered the closest thing to a friend among them: Lanas Tog of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass. The warrior who came bearing the message of war in Assail.
She sighed then, examining her limp useless hands, and Pran Chole, who knew her so well, broke his silence. His voice was the brushing of sand across the dunes: ‘She did what she thought she had to do, child.’
That she should be so transparent irked her and she growled, ‘She should not have lied.’
‘She did not lie. You could say she told a half-truth. What she imagined would bring us to this land.’
‘She must’ve known we would not join her.’
The ancient undying warrior offered the answer of his accumulated millennia of wisdom: he lifted his bony shoulders in a small shrug. ‘She guessed some would.’
Silverfox felt a fury mounting at that betrayal. Within her, the mountain-shaking ire of Bellurdan bellowed anew at those who had defied her command, while an icy vow from Nightchill whispered: never forget nor forgive. Yet she and Tattersail still could not believe that there would be those who would put their ancient enmity first – even after the lessons of Genabackis and the benediction of the Redeemer who had granted the T’lan Imass the possibility for hope once more. This clinging to the past troubled her young soul the most. ‘It is so utterly needless,’ she murmured, watching the embers burn themselves out.
Pran Chole did not answer. After a moment she glanced up to see that she was alone.
Certainty chilled her spine then. Gods, no. Not again. I can’t go. Can’t bear to witness it all again. It tore her apart to see it. But she should; if her words could sway just one …
She threw open the loose hide flap and ran for the breakers crashing beyond the intervening high dunes.
She found Pran Chole standing knee high in the foaming surf, facing the empty ocean. ‘Who comes!’ she shouted over the wind and the surge of waves.
‘I know not,’ he answered, as phlegmatic as ever.
She scanned the water, dark and webbed beneath the chill stars and passing courses of clouds. Her hides, sodden from her thighs, pulled upon her, heavy and clinging. Then darker shapes came emerging from the trough and fall of the waves: ravaged skulls, broken caps of bone and cured leather; the jagged stone tips of spears; the humped shoulders of animal hides. T’lan Imass strode forward from the surf, some dozen or more.
‘They are of the Kerluhm,’ Pran Chole murmured tonelessly. He pushed into the waves.
Though she was dreading it, the news still made her clench her fists and press one to her breast. Gods, no! More of them. Will they not stop coming? Why not others?
Pran Chole raised a hand of bone and cured leathery skin. ‘Greetings, Kerluhm,’ he called. ‘I am Pran Chole of the Kron. We honour you.’
‘I am Othut K’ho,’ one answered. ‘We honour the Kron.’ A ragged cape of sewn animal skins hung from this one’s bare bone shoulders. He turned to Silverfox and lowered himself to one knee in the surf. The others of his band joined him. ‘Summoner,’ he murmured as softly as Pran. ‘We honour you as well.’
She raised a hand for pause. Now, she knew, she had to command when her every instinct urged her to plead. ‘My thanks, Othut. If you honour me I must ask you agree to forestall any action until I have explained fully.’
His battered mien wrinkled up even more as his mostly fleshless brow crinkled. ‘Explain?’ he breathed. His empty sockets edged to the north and he murmured, ‘We are newly reawakened to the world, true. We were caught crossing the Agadal and the ice took us. It seems we slept for ages. And while we slumbered, interned, that river of ice carried us far afield indeed. I awoke on the shore of an unknown sea and freed what companions I could find. Then we heard the Call …’
‘Listen to me, Othut,’ she interjected, speaking with all her power over the roar of the surf. ‘If you honour me you must follow my command. And I command an end to the war, Othut. It is over. No more hostilities. We gather here and I will release you all. Is this understood, Othut? Are you listening?’
The Kerluhm’s rotted head, its tannin-stained skull peeking from behind the mummified flesh, had edged aside to Pran, and it raised a bone-thin arm to point to the north. ‘Is what I sense true?’ it asked, and Silverfox heard the familiar stunned amazement in his words.
Pran answered in a slow firm nod. ‘It is so. And we of the Kron name them beyond the boundary of the Ritual.’
Silverfox stood frozen, fists clenched at her sides, fairly quivering in dread. Now would come the answer, she knew. The T’lan did not dissemble. Nor hide their intent. It would happen now.
‘We Kerluhm,’ Othet answered, his voice even more raw and jagged, ‘do not.’
‘No!’ she cried once more – as she always did – but to no effect. The waves boiled about her as Kron warriors surged through the surface and they and the Kerluhm locked blades that clashed and grated. Pran shifted to stand protectively before her, though never in all the battles played out here on these beaches did one Imass ever move to threaten her.
She fell to her knees, the water at her breast, her face in her hands. Failure! Utter wretched failure once more! The cold waves splashed over her. The surge of bodies fighting around her died away.
‘It is over,’ Pran Chole said unnecessarily. ‘They have fled. My warriors pursue.’
She raised her face. Her tears felt hot on her chilled wet cheeks. ‘Your numbers are diminishing, Pran. Some time soon too many will arrive and you will be overrun. What then?’ she yelled. ‘What then!’
‘You will not be harmed.’
She lunged to her feet. Her wet hides slapped about her, almost pulling her over. She threw up a hand as if to strike his stone-hard face. ‘I do not speak of myself!’ She jabbed a finger to the north. ‘I speak of them! Them! What will happen to all those thousands … so many. A crime beyond imagining, Pran! And you Imass the perpetrators. Mass murderers …’ The enormity of it made her dizzy and she could not continue.
‘Omtose Phellack remains active in the north. It protects them yet.
‘For how long!’ she threw back at him. ‘It is weakening. You know this! In the little time we’ve been here I have felt it weakening.’
To this Pran could only offer the wordless gesture of those who live long enough in the indifferent world: the subtle lift of the shoulders that says, who is to know?