Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

'Gods! With whom? Kallor? That bastard deserves-'

'Not Kallor, friend,' Coll growled. 'Make another guess — shouldn't take you long.'

Murillio groaned. 'Kruppe.'

'Hood knows he's stretched the patience of all of us at one time or another. only none of us was capable of splitting apart half the world and throwing new mountains skyward.'

'Did the little runt get himself killed? I can't believe-'

'Word is, he's come out unscathed. Typically. Complaining of the dust. No-one else was injured, either, though the warlord himself almost got his head kicked in by an angry mule.'

'Kruppe's mule? The one that sleeps when it walks?'

'Aye, the very one.'

Sleeps. Dreams of being a horse, no doubt. Magnificent, tall, fierce.

'That beast is a strange one, indeed. Never seen a mule so … so watchful. Of everything. Queen of Dreams, that's the oddest looking range of mountains I've ever seen!'

'Aye, Murillio, it does look bigger than it really is. Twists the eye. A broken spine, like something you'd see at the very horizon, yet there it is, not half a league from us. Doesn't bear thinking about, if you ask me …'

Nothing bears thinking about. Not mountains, not mules, not Brood's temper. Souls crowd my daughter, there, within her. Two women, and a Thelomen named Skullcrusher. Two women and a man whom I've never met. yet I carried that child within me. I, a Rhivi, young, in the bloom of my life, drawn into a dream then the dream made real. Yet where, within my daughter, am 1? Where is the blood, the heart, of the Rhivi?

She has nothing of me, nothing at all. Naught but a vessel in truth — that is all I was — a vessel to hold then birth into the world a stranger.

She has no reason to see me, to visit, to take my hand and offer me comfort. My purpose is done, over. And here I lie, a discarded thing. Forgotten. A mhybe.

A hand settled gently on her shoulder.

Murillio spoke. 'I think she sleeps once more.'

'For the best,' Coll murmured.

'I remember my own youth,' the Daru went on in a quiet, introspective tone.

'I remember your own youth, too, Murillio.'

'Wild and wasteful-'

'A different widow every night, as I recall.'

'I was a lodestone indeed, and, you know, it was all so effortless-'

'We'd noticed.'

The man sighed. 'But no longer. I've aged, paid the price for my younger days-'

'Nights, you mean.'

'Whatever. New rivals have arrived. Young bloods. Marak of Paxto, tall and lithe and turning heads wherever he saunters. The smug bastard. Then there's Perryl of M'necrae-'

'Oh, really, Murillio, spare me all this.'

'The point is, it was all a stretch of years. Full years. Pleasurable ones. And, for all that I'm on the wane, at least I can look back and recall my days — all right, my nights — of glory. But here, with this poor woman…'

'Aye, I hear you. Ever notice those copper ornaments she's wearing — there, you can see the pair on her wrist. Kruppe's gifts, from Darujhistan.'

'What about them?'

'Well, as I was saying. Ever noticed them? It's a strange thing. They get brighter, shinier, when she's sleeping.'

'Do they?'

'I'd swear it on a stack of Kruppe's handkerchiefs.'

'How odd.'

'They're kind of dull right now, though…'

There was silence from the two men crouched above her. After a long moment the hand resting on her shoulder squeezed slightly.

'Ah, my dear,' Murillio whispered, 'would that I could take back my words …'

Why? They were truth. Words from your heart, and it is a generous one for all your irresponsible youth. You've given voice to my curse. That changes nothing. Am I to be pitied? Only when I'm asleep, it seems. To my face, you say nothing, and consider your silence a kindness. But it mocks me, for it arrives as indifference.

And this silence of mine? To these two kind men looking down on me right now? Which of my countless flaws does this reveal?

Your pity, it seems, is no match for my own.

Her thoughts trailed away, then. The treeless, ochre wasteland of her dreamworld appeared. And she within it.

She began running.

Dujek flung his gauntlets against the tent wall as he entered, his face dark with fury.

Whiskeyjack unstoppered the jug of ale and filled the two goblets waiting on the small camp table before him. Both men were smeared in sweaty dust.

'What madness is this?' the High Fist rasped, pausing only long enough to snatch up one of the goblets before beginning to pace.

Whiskeyjack stretched his battered legs out, the chair creaking beneath him. He swallowed a long draught of ale, sighed and said, 'Which madness are you referring to, Dujek?'

'Aye, the list is getting damned long. The Crippled God! The ugliest legends belong to that broken bastard-'

'Fisher Kel Tath's poem on the Chaining-'

'I'm not one for reading poetry, but Hood knows, I've heard bits of it spoken by tavern bards and the like. Fener's balls, this isn't the war I signed on to fight.'

Whiskeyjack's eyes narrowed on the High Fist. 'Then don't.'

Dujek stopped pacing, faced his second. 'Go on,' he said after a moment.

'Brood already knew,' he replied with a shrug that made him wince. As did Korlat. 'With him, you could reasonably include Anomander Rake. And Kallor — though I liked not the avid glint in that man's eye. So, two ascendants and one would-be ascendant. The Crippled God is too powerful for people like you and me to deal with, High Fist. Leave it to them, and to the gods. Both Rake and Brood were there at the Chaining, after all.'

'Meaning it's their mess.'

'Bluntly, yes it is.'

'For which we're all paying, and might well pay the ultimate price before too long. I'll not see my army used as fodder in that particular game, Whiskeyjack. We were marching to crush the Pannion Domin, a mortal empire — as far as we could determine.'

'Manipulation seems to be going on on both sides, Dujek.'

'And I am to be comforted by that?' The High Fist's glare was fierce. He held it on his second for another moment, then quaffed his ale. He thrust the empty goblet out.

Whiskeyjack refilled it. 'We're hardly ones to complain of manipulation,' he rumbled, 'are we, friend?'

Dujek paused, then grunted.

Indeed. Calm yourself, High Fist. Think clear thoughts. 'Besides,' Whiskeyjack continued, 'I have faith.'

'In what?' his commander snapped. 'In whom? Pray, tell me!'

'In a certain short, corpulent, odious little man-'

'Kruppe! Have you lost your mind?'

Whiskeyjack smiled. 'Old friend, look upon your own seething anger. Your rage at this sense of being manipulated. Used. Possibly deceived. Now consider how an ascendant like Caladan Brood would feel, upon the realization that he is being manipulated? Enough to shatter the control of his temper? Enough to see him unlimber his hammer and seek to obliterate that smug, pompous puppet-master.'

Dujek stood unmoving for a long time, then a grin curved his lips. 'In other words, he took Krupp seriously …'

'Darujhistan,' Whiskeyjack said. 'Our grand failure. Through it all, I had the sense that someone, somewhere, was orchestrating the whole damned thing. Not Anomander Rake. Not the Cabal. Not Vorcan and her assassins. Someone else. Someone so cleverly hidden, so appallingly … capable … that we were helpless, utterly helpless.

'And then, at the parley, we all discover who was responsible for Tattersail's rebirth. As Silverfox, a child of a Rhivi woman, the seed planted and the birth managed within an unknown warren. The drawing together of threads — Nightchill, Bellurdan, Tattersail herself. And, it now appears, an Elder God, returned to the mortal realm. And, finally and most remarkably, the T'lan Imass. So, Tattersail, Nightchill and Bellurdan — all of the Malazan Empire — reborn to a Rhivi woman, of Brood's army … with a parley looming, the potential of a grand alliance … how Hood-damned convenient that a child should so bridge the camps-'