Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

It's the blood of the Hound, coursing undiminished within me. It must be.

He had tried to tell himself more than once that the Shadow Hound's blood was also the source of his paranoia. The thought elicited a sour grin. Untrue. What I fear is all too real. Worse, this vast sense of loss. without the ability to trust — anyone. Without that, what do I see in the life awaiting me? Naught but solitude, and thus, nothing of value. And now, all these voices. whispering of escape. Escape.

He shook himself, spat to clear the sour phlegm in his throat. Think of that other thing, that other scene. Solitary. Baffling. Remember, Paran, the voice you heard. It was Tattersail's — you did not doubt it then, why do so now? She lives. Somehow, some way, the sorceress lives.

Ahh, the pain! A child screaming in darkness, a Hound howling lost in sorrow. A soul nailed to the heart of a wound. and I think myself alone! Gods, I wish I were!

Whiskeyjack entered the gatehouse, closed the door behind him and strode over to the scribe's table. He leaned against it, stretched out his aching leg. His sigh was like the easing of endless knots, and when it was done he was trembling.

After a moment the door opened.

Straightening, Whiskeyjack scowled at Mallet. 'I thought your captain'd called for an assembly, Healer-'

'Paran's in worse shape than even you, sir.'

'We've covered this. Guard the lad's back — you having second thoughts, Mallet?'

'You misunderstand. I just quested in his direction — my Denul warren recoiled, Commander.'

Whiskeyjack only now noted the pallid cast of the healer's round face. 'Recoiled?'

'Aye. That's never happened before. The captain's sick .'

'Tumours? Cancers? Be specific, damn it!'

'Nothing like that, sir. Not yet, but they'll come. He's eaten a hole in his own gut. All that he's holding in, I guess. But there's more — we need Quick Ben. Paran's got sorceries running through him like fireweed roots.'

'Oponn-'

'No, the Twin Jesters are long gone. Paran's journey to Darujhistan — something happened to him on the way. No, not something. Lots of things. Anyway, he's fighting those sorceries, and that's what's killing him. I could be wrong in that, sir. We need Quick Ben-'

'I hear you. Get him on it when we get to Pale. But make sure he's subtle. No point in adding to the captain's unease.'

Mallet's frown deepened. 'Sir, it's just… Is he in any shape to take command of the Bridgeburners?'

'You're asking me? If you want to talk to Dujek about your concerns, that's your prerogative, Healer. If you think Paran's unfit for duty — do you, Mallet?'

After a long moment, the man sighed. 'Not yet, I suppose. He's as stubborn as you are … sir. Hood, you sure you two aren't related?'

'Damned sure,' Whiskeyjack growled. 'Your average camp dog has purer blood than what's in my family line. Let it rest for now, then. Talk to Quick and Spindle. See what you can find out about those hidden sorceries — if gods are plucking Paran's strings again, I want to know who, and then we can mull on why.'

Mallet's eyes thinned as he studied the commander. 'Sir, what are we heading into?'

'I'm not sure, Healer,' Whiskeyjack admitted with a grimace. Grunting, he shifted weight off his bad leg. 'With Oponn's luck I won't have to pull a sword — commanders usually don't, do they?'

'If you gave me the time, sir-'

'Later, Mallet. Right now I've got a parley to think about. Brood and his army's arrived outside Pale.'

'Aye.'

'And your captain's probably wondering where in Hood's name you've disappeared to. Get out of here, Mallet. I'll see you again after the parley.'

'Yes, sir.'

Dujek Onearm and his army awaited the arrival of Caladan Brood and his allies: the fell Tiste Andii, Barghast clans from the far north, a half-score mercenary contingents, and the plains-dwelling Rhivi. There, on the still raw killing ground outside the city of Pale, the two forces would meet. Not to wage war, but to carve from bitter history, peace. Neither Dujek nor Brood, nor anyone else among their legendary company, could have anticipated the ensuing clash — not of swords, but of worlds …

Confessions of Artanthos

Shallow ridges ribboned the hillsides a league north of Pale, barely healed scars of a time when the city's presumptions reached out to devour the steppes bordering the Rhivi Plain. Since memories began the hills had been sacred to the Rhivi. Pale's farmers had paid for their temerity with blood.

Yet the land was slow to heal; few of the ancient menhirs, boulder rings and flat-stone crypts remained in place. The stones were now haphazardly piled into meaningless cairns alongside what used to be terraced fields of maize. All that was sacred in these hills was held so only within the minds of the Rhivi.

As in faith, so we are in truth. The Mhybe drew the antelope hide closer about her thin, bony shoulders. A new array of pains and aches mapped her frame this morning, evidence that the child had drawn more from her in the night just past. The old woman told herself she felt no resentment — such needs could not be circumvented, and there was little in the child that was natural in any case. Vast, cold-hearted spirits and the blind spells of sorcery had conspired to carve into being something new, unique.

And time was growing short, so very short.

The Mhybe's dark eyes glittered within their nests of wrinkles as she watched the child scampering over the weathered terraces. A mother's instincts ever abided. It was not right to curse them, to lash out at the bindings of love that came in the division of flesh. For all the flaws raging within her, and for all the twisted demands woven into her daughter, the Mhybe could not — would not — spin webs of hate.

None the less, the withering of her body weakened the gifts of the heart to which she so desperately clung. Less than a season past, the Mhybe had been a young woman, not yet wedded. She had been proud, unwilling to accept the half-braids of grass that numerous young, virile men had set down before the entrance to her tent — not yet ready to entwine her own braid and thus bind herself to marriage.

The Rhivi were a damaged people — how could one think of husband and family in this time of endless, devastating war? She was not as blind as her sister-kin; she did not embrace the supposed spirit-blessed duty to produce sons to feed into the ground before the Reaper's Plough. Her mother had been a reader of bones, gifted with the ability to hold the people's entire repository of memories — every lineage, reaching back to the Dying Spirit's Tear. And her father had held the Spear of War, first against the White Face Barghast, then against the Malazan Empire.

She missed them both, deeply, yet understood how their deaths, and her own defiance of accepting a man's touch, had together conspired to make her the ideal choice in the eyes of the host of spirits. An untethered vessel, a vessel in which to place two shattered souls — one beyond death and the other held back from death through ancient sorceries, two identities braided together — a vessel that would be used to feed the unnatural child thus created.

Among the Rhivi, who travelled with the herds and raised no walls of stone or brick, such a container, intended for a singular use after which it would be discarded, was called a mhybe, and so she had found herself a new name, and now every truth of her life was held within it.

Old without wisdom, weathered without the gift of years, yet I am expected to guide this child — this creature — who gains a season with every one I lose, for whom weaning will mean my death. Look at her now, playing the games a child would play; she smiles all unknowing of the price her existence, her growth, demands of me.