Steven Erikson - The Crippled God

Are you alone once more, Korabas?

If to draw close to you would not kill me — if I could have helped you in those blood-filled skies, upon that death-strewn road — I would join you now. To bring to an end your loneliness .

But all I can do is circle these skies. Above the ones who summoned you, who fought to free a god, and to save your own life .

Those ones, too, I do not understand .

These humans have much to teach the K’Chain Che’Malle .

I, Gu’Rull, Shi’gal Assassin of Gunth’an Wandering, am humbled by all that I have witnessed. And this feeling, so strange, so new, now comes to me in the sweetest flavours imaginable .

I did not know .

Settling the last stone down on the elongated pile, Icarium brushed dust from his hands and slowly straightened.

Ublala — with Ralata sitting nearby — watched the warrior walk to the edge of the hill, watched as Icarium dislodged a small rock and sent it rolling down the slope. And then he looked back at the barrow, and then at Ublala. The morning was bright but there were clouds building to the east and the wind carried the promise of rain.

‘It is as you said, friend?’

Ublala nodded.

Icarium wiped at the tears still streaming down his face from when he’d wept over the grave. But the look on his face wasn’t filled with grief any more. Just empty now. Lost. ‘Ublala, is this all there is of me?’ He gestured vaguely. ‘Is this all there is to any of us?’

The Toblakai shrugged. ‘I am Ublala Pung and that is all I ever am, or was. I don’t know if there’s more. I never do.’

Icarium studied the grave again. ‘He died defending me.’

‘Yes.’

‘But I don’t know who he was!’

Ublala shrugged again. There was no shame in weeping for the death of a stranger. Ublala had done it many times. He reached down, picked up a potsherd, examined the sky-blue glaze. ‘Pretty,’ he said under his breath, tucking it behind his belt.

Icarium collected up his weapons, and then faced north. ‘I feel close this time, Ublala.’

Ublala thought to ask close to what, but already he was confused, and so he put the question away. He didn’t think he’d ever go back to find it. It was where all the other troubling things went, never to be gone back to, ever.

‘I am glad you found a woman to love, friend,’ Icarium said.

The giant warrior smiled over at Ralata and received a stony stare in return, reminding him how she’d said she liked it better when it was just the two of them. But she was a woman and once he sexed her again, everything would be all right. That’s how it worked.

When Icarium set out, Ublala collected up the useful sack he’d found, shouldered it, and went to join the warrior.

Ralata caught up a short time later, just before Icarium happened to glance at the pottery fragment Ublala had taken out to admire again, and then halted to face one last time the low hill they’d left behind. Icarium frowned and was silent.

Ublala was ready to turn away when Icarium said, ‘Friend, I have remembered something.’

This had, in the end, been a war of liberation. Kolansii citizens had emerged from the city, and after five days of hard labour the vast trenches, revetments and redoubts had been transformed into long barrows. Three such barrows now stood to mark the Battle of Blessed Gift, where the Letherii, Bolkando, Gilk and Teblor had fought the army of Brother Diligence; and at the foot of the fissured ruin of the Spire, three large barrows of raw earth rose to commemorate the fallen Imass, Jaghut, K’Chain Che’Malle and Kolansii, with one smaller mound holding the remains of two Malazans. And it was at this last place that figures now gathered.