Orb, Sceptre, Throne

CHAPTER III

As was his habit, scholar Ebbin Rose early and was the first to have tea. He found that the old hag was three times as sullen as before now that she had to cook for three times the men. One of Humble’s new guards was also up, pacing over the beaten dusty ground of the Dwelling Plain, a cloak wrapped tightly about him. The two guards Ebbin had hired weeks ago lay snoring next to the smouldering remains of a bonfire. He sighed.

Still, somehow he’d felt safer with just those two incompetents watching camp. Captain — and he doubted the man really was a captain — Drin had made it very clear that he worked for Humble Measure, just as did he, Ebbin. This uncomfortable truth rankled as he’d always thought of himself as a free hand, more independent iconoclast than employee.

Also, from time to time he’d seen the guards watching inwards towards camp as much as outwards towards any potential thieves or marauders. Sometimes Ebbin felt more like a prisoner than a client. Shrugging, he tossed away the rest of his tea and went to collect his equipment and to wake the two Gadrobi youths.

At the well, he unlocked the cover and shoved it aside. Captain Drin was there with his four men. Ebbin’s two guards had also tagged along uninvited. Ebbin almost laughed. Seven guards! For what? A few potsherds. A handful of votive funerary offerings. Nothing of any true monetary worth. Some silver perhaps, but little gold. It was the artistic style and the subject matter that would be explosive. Potential proof of an erased, or systematically suppressed, Darujhistani Imperial Age.

The captain peered down into the dark pit. He motioned to his men. ‘Strap your gear.’

Ebbin eyed the man while he secured his helmet and tied his shield to his back. ‘Ah … Captain. Only I need go down.’

‘No longer.’

An almost speechless panic gripped Ebbin. He wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs. ‘It’s dangerous — the rope. The youths are not strong enough …’

The captain yanked on the rope, grunted his satisfaction. He pointed to Ebbin’s guards. ‘You two — you can man the winch.’

Ebbin’s panic turned to a sudden possessive anger. He stepped up before the hired sword. ‘My find, Captain,’ he said, low and firm. ‘There’s no need for you or your men. You’ll only get in the way. You’ll unknowingly damage or trample precious artefacts. You would be interfering in a delicate excavation.’

A lazy smile crooked up behind the man’s beard. He touched a finger to the point of a long iron chisel protruding from Ebbin’s shoulder bag. ‘Delicate. Right.’ The man was peering down with oddly veiled eyes, as if he were not really seeing him at all. ‘It’s settled, scholar. Humble Measure’s orders. We come along to oversee his interests. Whatever you find — it’s his.’ He motioned to the sling seat. ‘Now, if you please … you first.’

Down in the tunnel opening Ebbin crouched, lit lantern in hand, awaiting the captain. His dread was now like a caged rabid animal racing round and round his skull. What of … it? The figure? What if they … disturbed it? Yet what if they did? Gold held no fascination for him. Humble Measure was welcome to all the loot he wanted. Why should this alarm him?

Yet it did. He felt an unreasoning dread of that supine waiting figure. So exposed, so … inviting. He wanted to cringe from it in terror.

When the captain arrived Ebbin helped him find his footing in the tunnel, then backed up a little to make room for the others. Drin had picked two of his men to accompany him, leaving two at the well-top — along with Ebbin’s men, of course.

‘Captain,’ he said, whispering in the dark, ‘there’s a figure in the tomb … I don’t want you or your men touching it … disturbing it. Do I have your word?’

The man squinted at him, his face wrinkling up in scepticism. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘A body, lying on a plinth. It’s not to be disturbed.’

‘Whatever you say, scholar.’

Somehow Ebbin was not reassured.

When the next two had entered the tunnel, Drin motioned for Ebbin to go on. Lantern raised high before him, the scholar edged his way forward on hand and knees. Once within the large round burial chamber the three guards stood stock still for a long time, hands on strapped sword hilts, their eyes bright and big in the gloom. Eventually their gazes found the figure lying exactly as before, at the very centre of the chamber, within the arches that resembled two large rings carved of stone. The beaten gold mask gleamed in the lantern light. The graven smile seemed to welcome them. Their gazes rarely left the figure as Ebbin led them to the remaining sealed side-niche. He set down his shoulder bag, began getting out his tools.

‘Since your men are here, Captain,’ he said, ‘I could use some help.’

Peering back over his shoulder at the figure, Drin grunted his agreement. He motioned to one of his men. Ebbin handed the guard one of the special alloy chisels supplied by Aman. ‘If you’ll hold this steady …’ He showed the man where he wanted the chisel on the door slab, then raised the hammer he’d carried down the tunnel.

While Ebbin carefully tapped, the captain stood behind, watching. ‘Twelve,’ Drin mused, sounding much more subdued now in the dark confines of the tomb. ‘Like the stories my old grandpa used to tell. The Twelve Fiends …’ He shook his head in remembrance. ‘“Be good”, the old guy used to warn, “or they’ll come steal ya away.”’

‘This one’s still sealed,’ Ebbin said, and he blew on the scarring now visible on the face of the slab.

‘Aye. The others all looted. But not this one … nor him,’ and he jerked a thumb to the chamber’s centre. ‘Like they was interrupted, maybe.’

Ebbin swept at the face of the slab with a fine horsehair brush. It looked as if a crack was developing. ‘Perhaps they meant to return to finish the job — but never made it back.’

‘Maybe.’ The captain sounded unconvinced.

A desperate urge to hurry was on Ebbin, yet at the same time he was painfully aware that this was his one chance, his gods’ sent opportunity to salvage his reputation. To make a name for himself and overturn many past insults. And so he took his time despite the guard’s wandering attention and the heat that gathered in the confines of the tomb sending drops of sweat down his nose and neck, and making his hands slick.

Boredom had driven the captain and the second guard from his side. They poked through the other chambers only to report them all empty, as Ebbin knew.

A crack now ran horizontally across the slab, close to the top. He planned to take off the upper section, then reach behind to pull or strike the rest outward, thereby avoiding damaging any artefacts which might lie near the entrance. He grunted his frustration as a few shards fell within. The guard with him could not suppress a flinching retreat as the seal was broken. ‘It’s okay,’ Ebbin murmured. He raised the lantern to peer within, but couldn’t make out anything defining. The niche appeared no different from the eleven others. ‘Could you …’ He mimicked a yank on the remaining section of stone slab.

The guard reluctantly put down the chisel. Behind, the captain came from where he’d been leaning against one of the stone arches, staring at the figure on its black onyx plinth.

‘Go ahead,’ Drin said to his man. The fellow took hold and pulled. The stone ground and scraped. The man tried again, jerking, pushing against the wall with one booted foot. He grunted, cursing, but the slab would not budge.

‘Let me.’ Drin pushed the man aside and took hold, tensing. Ebbin was impressed by the breadth of his bunched shoulders, his thick roped forearms. The man snarled, his breath hissing from him as he pulled. A crack shot through the slab like the strike of a slingstone. Dust billowed from the seal round its edges, then it juddered outwards to fall crashing to their feet.

Studying the fallen rock, Ebbin suddenly recognized the pattern. All the other niches shared it. All their doors had been pulled outwards to fall into the chamber. Pulled out … or pushed. Sudden renewed panic clenched his throat. He could not swallow; his heart seemed to be bashing against his ribs. He raised the lantern to reveal something lying on the plinth within. A corpse.

It was nothing like the figure behind them. This thing was quite obviously dead. And not human. It was massive, its bones far thicker and more robust than those of any human. Its desiccated fingers ended in bear-like yellowed talons, as did the toes of its naked feet.

‘Demon,’ Captain Drin breathed.

Ebbin stepped within for a closer look. He was confused. This was not what he’d expected. Not at all. Where was the artwork? The funerary offerings?

Something caught his eye: a cold white gleam shone from deep within the cadaver’s hollow chest cavity. Ebbin bent closer. It was a pale stone bearing the oily shimmer of the insides of shells. Perhaps it was a pearl itself. Ebbin reached for it.

‘Find something?’ the captain warned, his voice suddenly tense.

Startled, Ebbin snatched his hand away, glanced over. ‘I’m sorry …?’

Drin was reaching out one hand while his other held his drawn weapon. ‘No, scholar. It’s me that’s sorry. Measure’s orders, y’see …’

A yell of warning from behind snapped the man’s attention round. He gaped, cried ‘Shit!’ and ran.

Ebbin ducked from the niche to see the two guards struggling with the figure from the plinth beneath the spans of the arches. The two mouthed yells and screams yet no sound reached Ebbin. The captain was running for them.

Ebbin shouted, but too late. The captain swung a great two-handed blow that hammered home, yet appeared to have no effect on the cloaked and masked figure, which had lashed out and caught one of the guards. While Ebbin watched, petrified, it gripped the man’s neck with one hand and with the other pulled the gold mask from its own face. Ebbin glimpsed a ruin of sinew and rotted flesh over bone, and stood rooted to the ground in horror as the fiend ignored the increasingly frenzied attacks of Drin and the other guard and slowly, inexorably, pressed the mask to its victim’s face.

The guard fell to his knees, pulling frantically at the mask, but he was unable to move it. Transfixed, Ebbin watched as the cloaked figure disappeared in a great swirling cloud of dust and the dark cloak fell empty to the floor.

The captain and remaining guard now beat at some sort of invisible barrier beneath the intersecting arches. They screamed unheard commands at Ebbin, who could only shake his head in mute appalled terror while behind the two men the corpse of their fellow climbed to his feet. The gold mask shimmered brightly in the lantern light, its mysterious graven smile now horrifying in its promise. Ebbin pointed, his other hand covering his mouth.

The two men turned. It seemed to Ebbin they both leapt in shock, dismay and terror as they realized what awaited each in turn. The captain swung a huge two-handed blow at his ex-guard’s neck but the corpse took it on an arm. Though the strike slashed along the bone, flensing that arm, no blood flowed, and the revenant was not slowed.

The captain danced away out of reach. The remaining guard punched at whatever barrier it was that held him captive. Falling to his knees he held out his arms to Ebbin, pleading, begging, as if this were somehow all the scholar’s doing. From behind, his dead companion wrapped an arm round his neck, and tearing the mask from his head — in the process pulling away the flesh, which brought up Ebbin’s gorge in a gasping heave of vomit — clamped the mask over the other’s face.

When Ebbin looked up, wiping his mouth, coughing, only two figures remained within the arches. The captain and his last guard. Drin was retreating round and round the onyx plinth, always giving ground before the slow relentless advance of the masked fiend.

Ebbin could only sit and watch, fascinated, helpless. As time passed he decided that there must have been good reasons why this man Drin was a captain. How long had he held out? How many hours caught there in the confines of his inescapable prison, avoiding his unkillable foe? He himself would not have lasted more than the first minute. Yet for what seemed half a day this man had ducked and flinched aside, postponing his end. Occasionally he would dash in to aim a blow at his enemy’s neck, perhaps in the hope that decapitation would end the curse. But Drin faced something extraordinary — blades damaged it, but it seemed that none could bring it down. No blow could dismember it, or slow it.

Finally, after hours of that macabre dance around the raised plinth, Captain Drin turned his strained, sweat-sheathed face to Ebbin. He mouthed something, perhaps ‘Remember me’. Ebbin wasn’t sure. And though no soldier, he roused himself to salute the man.

The captain nodded in bleak acknowledgement and then, throwing aside his sword, launched himself upon the creature. Legs clamped around the revenant’s waist, he clasped both hands on the mask and worked to yank it free. Ebbin’s heart leapt in admiration: Yes! If he can dislodge the mask before it is set upon his face! Perhaps then this curse will somehow be broken …

Though a bear of a man, Drin was no match for the fiend. One by one, his fingers were prised from their grip on the gold, and the fiend took hold of the mask himself.

Ebbin looked away. Gods! Was there no escape for anyone? Was this to be his end as well?

After waiting a time, his limbs twitching in dread, he could not help but glance up.

All was as it had been before under the arches. A figure lay upon the black stone plinth, dark cloak wrapped tight, gold mask covering its face. But Ebbin knew that Captain Drin, or at least his body, now bore that mask. As for the others, all the countless others who preceded him, well, there was plenty of dust on the floor of the chamber.

The scholar staggered to his feet, gathered up his shoulder bag. There was nothing here. This whole tomb was just one gruesome trap. A trap for those foolish enough to come digging up the past. Everything he had ever hoped for was now shattered. He stumbled for the exit. On the way he froze and his gorge rose again in a wrenching dry heave.

Set in the stone floor of the chamber lay three fresh skulls. The bare bone of two still gleamed wet with gore.

After the guards descended, Scorch and Leff peered down into the darkness of the well for a time before wandering over to the shade of a lean-to to return to teaching the two Gadrobi youths how to play troughs. The boys didn’t seem able to grasp the basic arithmetic; or perhaps the problem was their own disagreements over the rules. Humble’s two guards sat down to lean against the stone lip of the well.

Leff tucked an arm under his head, sighed, ‘If only we were still with Her Ladyship, hey? Too bad …’

Scorch threw the carved knuckle dice so hard they bounced from the board to disappear into the dirt. The two youths hunted for them. ‘What was that?’ he answered, his voice low.

‘What was what?’

‘Was that an impercation? ’Cause it sounded like maybe you was makin’ an impercation!’

Leff pushed himself up on his elbows, rolled his eyes. ‘Gettin’ all huffy won’t change the facts, Scorch.’

‘Facts? And just what facts might those be?’

‘That it was you that lost us the job with Lady Varada.’

‘I did not-’ Scorch threw up his arms. ‘Tor explained it. The lady didn’t want so many guards no more. So who gets the axe? Why, us outside guards, right? Plain and simple. That hierarchy thing, right?’

Leff waved that aside. ‘Didn’t you see through all that bullcrap? I did. Tor was just coverin’ up the truth. Sparin’ our feelings.’

His shoulders falling, Scorch frowned, uncertain. ‘Really? Then … what was he really sayin’?’

‘That it was you lost us the job.’

Scorch threw himself aside to sit facing the opposite direction.

Towards noon the old hag came limping up to the lean-to. She shooed the youths away, gabbling in Gadrobi, then turned on Scorch and Leff. ‘You two, get out!’ she spat. ‘You go! Bad things come. I see in the sands. In smoke!’

Scorch and Leff shared a knowing look. ‘Better stay off that fermented goat’s milk,’ Leff said. ‘That kefir can sneak up on ya.’

The old woman waved an angry dismissal. ‘Die then … Daru dogs!’ And she scuttled off.

Leff stretched out, yawning. ‘Keep a watch, Scorch,’ he said, and closed his eyes.

Around mid-afternoon Leff awoke to the screeching of the winch. The guards were raising it. He and Scorch wandered over. It was the scholar, Ebbin. Scorch leaned over to help him out, then lurched as the man seemed to fall into his arms. Leff helped to yank him over the lip of the well and set him down in the dirt where he lay panting, his face gleaming pale as milk.

‘Where’s the captain?’ one of the guards asked.

‘Water,’ Ebbin gasped, and Leff helped him to sit up while Scorch went to fetch a skin. The scholar took a long drink, then splashed his face and pulled out a cloth to wipe it dry. ‘Down below,’ he breathed, hoarse. ‘A trap. They were taken.’

‘Taken?’ the guard echoed.

Ebbin nodded. He appeared on the verge of tears.

‘Show us,’ the guard said.

Ebbin gaped up at him. ‘What?’

The guard stepped back and drew his longsword. Scorch and Leff eyed one another, set their hands on the grips of their shortswords. Ebbin struggled to his feet. ‘Show you?’ He laughed. Rather unnervingly, Leff thought. ‘You have no idea-’

The second guard raised a cocked crossbow. ‘You show us, old man. Or die now.’

Ebbin looked from one to the other, pressed his hands to his face and moaned from behind his fingers: ‘Gods forgive me …’ Then he brushed Scorch’s hand from his weapon. ‘You wish to see?’ he asked the guard. ‘Truly see?’

The man gestured to the well with his longsword. ‘You first.’

‘If you must.’ Ebbin looked at Scorch and Leff. ‘You two. Lower us.’

Leff scratched his cheek, bemused. ‘Well — if you say so, scholar.’

‘Those are my orders.’ He swung his feet up over the stone lip of the well, began readying the sling seat.

‘We come back up first,’ the guard warned.

Ebbin gave a long slow nod. ‘Yes. You first.’

It seemed to Leff that no sooner had the second guard descended than the rope shook with a signal to be raised. He and Scorch rewound the barrel winch to bring it back up and were surprised to see that the occupant of the sling seat was Ebbin. Scorch helped him out.

‘And the guards, sir?’ Leff asked. ‘They saw?’

The scholar was sickly pale and panting once again. He drew a cloth and wiped at his sweaty face. He nodded. ‘Oh yes. They found out what happened to their captain.’

‘So …’ Scorch began, ‘we wait for ’em?’

‘No. They won’t be coming back up.’ Ebbin held his brow, looking faint.

‘You all right, sir?’ Leff asked.

‘No. I … I don’t feel well. I need to get back to Darujhistan.’ He nodded with sudden vigour. ‘Yes. That’s right. I must go to Darujhistan.’

‘We’ll pack up the camp then,’ Leff said.

‘No! You two wait here. Guard the camp. Wait for me. Yes?’

Leff frowned, doubtful. ‘Well … if you say so.’

Ebbin took his forearm. ‘Excellent. Thank you.’ He paused, blinking, then glanced about as if confused. ‘Now, you’ll close up here, yes? You won’t go down?’

Scorch and Leff eyed one another: the man’s mad! ‘No, sir. You don’t have to worry about that. We ain’t goin’ down there.’

‘Good! Good. I knew I could trust you. Now, I must go.’

‘Go? Now?’ Leff raised a brow. ‘Night’s comin’, sir. We really shouldn’t let you go all alone. Can’t you wait till tomorrow?’

Ebbin jerked as if stung. ‘No! I must go! It is important … I feel it.’

Scorch and Leff exchanged looks. Scorch inclined his head, indicating that Leff should accompany the scholar. Leff flinched, offended, and pointed back. Scorch gestured angrily that Leff should go. Leff’s hand went to his sword grip and he glared his defiance.

‘Uncle!’ a voice called from the gathering dusk and both guards spun, hands at weapons.

A slim girl was suddenly quite close. She wore loose white robes that rippled in the weak evening wind. Her feet were bare. Rings glinted gold on her toes.

Ebbin stared at the girl in utter incomprehension. ‘Uncle?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, smiling. She took the man’s arm, leaning against him. ‘May I call you that? I feel there is some sort of connection between us, yes? You feel it too?’

Scorch cleared his throat. ‘Ah, miss? You lost?’

She ignored him so completely it was as if he hadn’t spoken. She whispered something into Ebbin’s ear and the scholar’s brows rose. ‘Really? From him?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘Oh yes! And he is ever so keen to hear what you have found.’

Ebbin passed a hand over his eyes. ‘Gods! What I have found! Yes. Of course.’ He turned to Scorch and Leff and rubbed his eyes, squinting, as if trying to focus on them. ‘Ah, you two. I will go with this girl here. You two stay.’

The guards shared another look. ‘I think,’ Scorch began respectfully, ‘you should both come back to camp with-’ He stopped because the girl had flicked out an arm and a knife blade appeared in her hand. Its razor tip hovered a finger’s width from his throat.

‘You have seen and heard enough,’ she said.

‘No!’ Ebbin shouted, rousing himself. ‘Ignore them. They have no idea …’

The girl’s kohl-ringed eyes, now touched by a deep smouldering crimson, slid to the scholar. The arm flexed and the blade disappeared. She bowed her head. ‘As you command, Uncle.’

But Ebbin had staggered off. ‘Darujhistan,’ he was muttering. ‘There’s something …’

The girl remained a moment, eyeing the two men. A smile played about her full lips as she enjoyed their extreme discomfort. Then she winked and blew a kiss at each, and sauntered off after Ebbin.

Leff let go a long tensed breath.

‘Gods below,’ Scorch murmured.

‘Reminds me of the Mistress.’

Scorch cocked his head. ‘Yeah. Don’t she just. Now what?’

‘Now?’ Leff kicked at the lid of the well. ‘Now I’d say we’re out of work again.’

‘Shit.’

Lying flat on the crest of one of the low rises of the Dwelling Plain, Picker watched the white-robed girl escort the old man north. If they kept going in that direction they’d make the trader road to Raven Town, then on to Darujhistan. A long hike, but if they didn’t stop at an inn they’d make Darujhistan near dawn.

A noise from the dark behind her announced Spindle’s presence and she slid backwards down behind the rise.

‘See that?’ Spindle hissed from the dark.

‘Yeah,’ she answered drily. ‘I was watchin’.’ Struck by a thought she raised her chin to the north, asking, ‘What does your mum say about that girl?’

Spindle reflexively rubbed his shirt. ‘My mum tells me to watch out for girls like that.’

Picker grunted her agreement. ‘Well … she was right.’

‘’Course she’s right! She’s a witch!’

Picker paid no attention to the tense in that statement since the man’s shirt was woven from his mother’s hair, and that shirt was the main reason he was still alive.

‘Now what?’

‘Now?’ Picker gave a slow shrug in the dark. ‘Maybe we should eyeball that well.’

‘Hunh. Well, I ain’t goin’ down.’

She raised a hand as if to slap him. ‘’Course no one’s goin’ down! Six go down. One comes up! They ain’t payin’ us enough for that!’

‘Where’s Blend anyway?’

‘She’s around. C’mon. Let’s see if those two guards are gone yet.’

~

Blend joined them at the well. She just appeared out of the dark, as was her way. Picker examined the wooden lid and the lock. ‘All back like nothin’ happened.’

‘Mark it,’ Blend said. ‘We may have to describe its location.’

Picker used a rock to scrape the side — a mark that would only mean something to a Malazan marine.

Spindle had been standing motionless as if listening, and now he raised a hand for silence. He pointed frantically to the well. Picker stilled, listening. A blow from down below. Falling stones, rubble. A muted splash. Another strike, like a punch. Closer. She raised her stunned gaze to Spindle, who was now backing away, a hand pressed to his chest over his shirt. Picker signed a retreat and scrambled for cover.

Moments later some sort of blast sent the wooden lid erupting into the night sky, where it turned over and over, hung for a moment, then fell with a crash.

A figure climbed from the well. He wore a long dark cloak and a mask. The mask caught the moonlight and for an instant it glowed like a moon in miniature. Then the man turned away to walk off north, calmly and regally, as if out for a stroll in his own pleasure garden.

‘Did you see that?’ Picker breathed. She eyed Spindle behind their pile of stones. ‘What does your mum say about him?’

‘I think she would’ve shat herself.’

‘Well, I nearly did.’

Spindle drew his crossbow from beneath his cloak. ‘I say we give him lots of room.’

Picker nodded. ‘Oh yeah. Plenty.’

It was all very confusing for Ebbin. He knew that he had to get back to Darujhistan — though why, he didn’t really know. It was some sort of instinct, or overwhelming certainty. Then a girl appeared in the middle of the plain and claimed to have been sent by Aman. Even more strangely, somehow he recognized her, though he was sure he’d never seen her before in his life.

Then they set out on a damnably trying walk. His legs ached beyond anything he’d ever experienced. The soles of his feet felt as if they’d been hammered all over by truncheons. And he was having hallucinations. Sometimes it seemed as if the entire Dwelling Plain was one huge urban conglomeration of square flat-roofed mud buildings all jammed together. Smoke from countless hearth fires rose into the night sky while he and Taya walked the giant city’s narrow crooked ways.

Of course, Ebbin realized … the Dwelling Plain!

Far ahead, glimpsed through the narrow gaps in the tall mud walls, there sometimes reared some sort of domed edifice like a monument, or immense temple. Its pallid stone glowed with a pale blue luminescence that seemed somehow familiar. At other times the great urban sprawl lay smashed in flaming ruins all around, the victim of some sort of titanic upheaval.

When they entered Raven Town he was desperate for a rest, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to demand that they stop. And the girl, Taya, was pushing him along like some sort of draught animal and constantly shooting quick looks behind. It seemed as if she was actually frightened of something.

Could it be … him? No, that would be too terrible to imagine. Too awful.

And there, on the main street through town, within sight of the closed city gate, who should stand waiting wrapped in a shabby cloak but Aman himself? Ebbin stared — he’d never seen the man stick his head outside his shop, let alone leave it.

Aman waved Taya onward then wrapped one crooked arm round Ebbin as if supporting him. Ebbin tried to tell him what he’d seen, all the horrors, but somehow he couldn’t force the words past his throat. Aman started force-marching him along in his own slow crablike limp. Ebbin glared ferociously at him as if he could somehow send his thoughts to him but the man just patted his arm. ‘There, there, good friend. It’ll all be over soon enough.’

What would be over? This nightmare of a night? Or far more than that? Ebbin dreaded the answer. As they closed on the gates the great iron-bound leaves improbably swung open to greet them, and there was Taya. She waved them in.

Aman frog-marched him onward. Like Taya, he too was glancing behind, squinting with one eye, then the other. What was back there? Ebbin tried to look but the shopkeeper forced him on. They passed through mostly empty streets. In one of the market squares the early-morning vendors were busy setting up their stalls and arranging their goods. Ebbin and Aman marched through with no one paying them any particular attention. Taya was still with them. Sometimes she shadowed them closely and Ebbin caught sight of her glowing white robes. At other times she was nowhere to be seen.

They reached the main east-west thoroughfare that ran alongside the Second Tier Wall. Aman hugged Ebbin closely, as if afraid he would run off, but the scholar was too confused to muster any sort of resolution. At times he didn’t recognize any of the streets they walked. Tall white-stone buildings faced the roads, great estates, their facades richly decorated with scrollwork. Fanciful miniature creatures, some winged, peeped out amid the scrolls and stone forests.

And Ebbin recognized the style. It was the fabled Darujhistani Imperial baroque.

But perhaps this was all nothing more than his own deluded wish fulfilment. He wondered, terrified, whether the horrific events in the mausoleum had finally driven him over the edge. Perhaps he was mad. His peers, the scholars and researchers of the Philosophical Society, had already dismissed him as such.

He remembered a chilling definition of insanity he’d read in some wry old commentator’s compendium: when you think everyone around you is mad, that’s when you should start to suspect it’s actually you.

They reached the ruined old gates to the estate district and here another figure awaited them. This one appeared to be no more than a dark shadow, a tall man in tattered clothes, a ghost. Ebbin flinched away but Aman marched him right up to the wavering, translucent shade.

Taya, now with them, curtsied to the ghost. ‘Uncle,’ she murmured.

Aman bowed mockingly. ‘Well met, Hinter.’

The shade arched a brow in lofty disparagement. ‘Aman. We’d thought you dead.’

The hunched shopkeeper waved to indicate his bent body. ‘Who could have survived, yes?’

‘Indeed.’

‘All is in readiness?’ Aman enquired.

‘All is ready,’ the shade responded tartly, ‘since I am left with no alternative. He comes?’

Aman shook Ebbin by his shoulders. ‘Oh yes. He comes. Always a way, scholar. There is always a way. If it is nearly impossible to break in — then perhaps one must reverse one’s thinking, yes? I am sorry, scholar. But no one has ever escaped him.’

The shade turned away. ‘Not true,’ it murmured. ‘One did.’

Aman sniffed and rubbed his lopsided face. ‘Him. I never did believe that.’

Spindle and Picker followed the masked man up the Raven Town trader road, all the way into town. It was eerie the way no one was about. Dogs ran before it. Early-morning merchants and farmers turned sharply to take side streets, or quickly entered shops and buildings lining the way. The man had the entire road to himself. Picker passed men and women crouched in the dirt beside it, hands covering their faces, shuddering. Picker yanked a hand away from the face of one old farmer only to provoke gabbled terror and tears.

The fellow strode majestically along right up to and through the open Raven Town gate. A city gate that should not be open. Picker signed to Spindle to check out the west gatehouse, then slipped into the east. Blend, she knew, would keep tabs on their friend. Inside she found the guards dead, thrust through with swift professional cuts. Their young little sprite? Or another? An organization? Their guild friends?

She exited to see Spindle, who signed that on his side all were dead. She answered in kind. Together they trotted on after Blend. They found early risers in the streets but all were silent, all turned to face the walls. Picker pulled one burly labourer round only to find him weeping, his eyes screwed shut.

At the spice-sellers’ square they found the morning market already set up in a maze of carts, mats laid out and stalls unfolded, but utterly silent and still. People crouched, hiding their faces, or lay on their sides as if asleep. Picker swallowed to wet her throat, tightened her sweaty grip on her long-knife. Then Spindle touched her shoulder and pointed up to the paling clear night sky.

‘Would ya look at that.’

Ambassador Aragan awoke with a start and a curse. He flailed about, searching for a weapon.

‘It’s all right, sir!’ a familiar voice yelped, alarmed. ‘It’s me sir!’

Aragan sat up, blinking in the dark. ‘Burn’s teats, man! What hour is it?’

‘Just dawn, sir.’

‘This better be good, Captain.’

‘Yes, sir. It’s the Moranth mission, sir. They’re fleeing the city.’

Aragan gaped at the captain, then shut his mouth. ‘What?’ He threw himself from his bed, searched the floor. Captain Dreshen held out his dressing gown.

‘This way, sir.’

Dreshen led him to what had originally been a front guest bedroom but was now an office of trade relations. Here night staff crowded the windows looking over the city. Aragan pushed his way through to the front. The pre-dawn was a paling violet in the east, the brightest stars still blazing above. His heart sinking, Aragan saw the obscene green streak over the setting, mottled moon. He made a sign against evil, though he knew the gesture was meaningless. After all, every escaped cow and dead chicken was blamed on the damned thing, so there was no way of knowing what influence, if any, it might be exerting on anyone’s life.

Movement caught his eye. Winking, glimmering, flashing high over the city. Quorl wings — a flight of the giant dragonfly-like creatures taking their Moranth masters west, to the Mountains of Mist, which some called Cloud Forest. Aragan was reminded of the Free Cities campaign to the north and similar night flights and drops over Pale and Cat.

Even as he watched, another wing took flight, heaving up from rooftops around the quarters of the Moranth embassy. The quorls turned through the air, wings scintillating like jewels in the pre-dawn light, and arced to the west. Aragan watched them go, feeling both terrified and exhilarated. He pushed away from the window, faced his aide. ‘Rouse the garrison, Captain. Order full alert.’

The aide saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And fetch my armour.’

Picker ducked reflexively as quorls swooped overhead, sending stalls toppling and garments and powdered spice flying.

‘Dammit to dead Hood!’ Spindle swore. ‘Is it a drop?’

Picker covered her eyes from the stinging spice. ‘No. A pick-up. They’re runnin’.’

‘Fanderay … maybe we should too.’

‘Not yet. We’ve been hired to recon. So-’ She broke off as a whistle sounded. ‘That’s Blend. This way, c’mon.’

They halted at the corner of a wide boulevard. Blend stepped out of shadows to meet them. ‘You lose him?’ Picker asked.

‘Hood, no. Walkin’ right up aside the Second Tier Wall, plain as day. Headed for the estate district.’

‘You see them quorls?’ Spindle asked.

Blend eyed him as if he were demented. ‘You two hang back. I’ll tag along.’

Picker nodded. ‘Right.’

Spindle handed over a satchel. ‘Take this … insurance.’

She held the bag away from herself. ‘This what I think it is?’

‘Yeah.’

She shot him a dark look. ‘Been holding out on us?’

‘No more than anyone else.’

‘That’s not an answer,’ Blend growled.

‘I know.’

An old woman was shouting herself hoarse in the narrow crooked paths through the Maiten shanty town west of Darujhistan: ‘Pretty birdies! Pretty birdies! Look all at the pretties!’ In the twilight before dawn the garbage-sorters, beggars and labourers groaned and pressed their thread-thin blankets to their heads.

‘For the love of Burn, shut up!’ one fellow bellowed.

The women, already up preparing the meals for the day, fanned their cook-fires and watched the old woman pointing to the lightening sky as she staggered up and down the alleys. They looked at one another and shook their heads. There she went again. That crazy old woman — proving all the cliches their men kept mouthing about old women who lived in the most rundown huts at the edges of towns. Someone should let her know what an embarrassment she was.

And where did she come by all that smoke, anyway?

‘Almost now! Almost!’ the old woman shouted. Then she fell to her knees in the mud and streams of excrement and loudly retched up the contents of her stomach.

The women pursed their lips. Gods, the menfolk would never let them live this one down! Someone ought to guide her to the lake and set her on a long walk up a short pier.

Problem was — the women knew she really was a witch.

The fat demon, who was about the size of a medium breed of dog, sat dozing amid the tumbled broken rock of the ancient ruins. Grunting, it coughed, then choked in earnest, flailing. Clawed fingers thrust their way into his mouth, seeking, then withdrew holding a long pale fishbone.

The demon sighed its relief, adjusted its buttocks on the rocks and cast a cursory glance to the stone arch opposite. It froze.

Oh no. Nononononono. Not again!

It launched itself into the air. Its tiny wings struggled to gain purchase, failed. It bounced tumbling downhill, gained momentum, succeeded in lifting its dragging feet from the weeds and took off slowly and heavily across the city like an obscene bumblebee.

Once more it had that word for its master. That most unwelcome word.

She’d been irritable of late. Distracted. Short-tempered. If Rallick were the type of man to be dismissive of women he might’ve characterized her as catty. Not that he would dare intimate such a thing to Vorcan Radok, once mistress of Darujhistan’s assassins. And so it was some time before he finally worked up the determination to mention the topic of the professional killings in the Gadrobi district. He alluded to it over dinner. Her gaze in response had been withering. She sipped her wine.

‘And you think I’m responsible? Taken work on the side?’

‘I don’t know who did it,’ he responded, honestly enough.

But that had been enough to break the spell between them. She retired alone and he sat up late into the night in turn damning her as an unreasonable prickly woman and damning himself for allowing anything to come between them. When he finally lay down she was asleep — or pretending to be.

She’d been sleeping poorly lately. Tonight she tossed and turned, even murmured in a language he’d never heard before. So he was not surprised when she rose naked and padded across to the open terrace doors to stare into the blue radiance that glowed over Darujhistan. He came up behind her, set his hands on her shoulders. ‘What is it?’

‘Something …’ she breathed, head cocked as if listening to the night.

‘Should I-’ She lifted a hand for silence. He stilled, trusting her instincts.

Then, astonishingly, the skin beneath his fingers flashed almost unbearably hot. For an instant it was as if he held the spiny, gnarled back of a boar, or a bull bhederin, and Vorcan flinched backwards, brushing him aside like a child. ‘No!’ she ground out. ‘How could …’

She went to the bed, began throwing on clothes.

‘What is it?’

Dressed, she stopped before him. Something new was in her dark eyes. Something that stole his breath, for real fear swam in those deep pools. ‘Leave the estate now,’ she told him. ‘Do not return. Do not try to contact me. Go.’

‘Tell me what it is. I’ll-’

‘No! You will do nothing.’ She pressed a smooth dry palm to the side of his face. ‘Promise me, Rallick. No matter what happens, what comes, you will not act. No contracts, no … attempts.’ She rose on her toes to brush her dry hot lips to his. ‘Please,’ she whispered.

He nodded, swallowing. ‘If you insist.’

She backed away from him into the darker gloom of the bed-chamber, those dark eyes holding his. He dressed quietly while listening to the night, trying to hear what she might’ve heard. But he detected nothing — as far as he could tell it was merely an unusually still and quiet night.

Downstairs, Vorcan’s one servant, the butler-cum-castellan Studlock, who never seemed to be off duty, let him out. Rallick listened to the many locks being ratcheted back into place behind him, then set out into the night.

In the tallest tower of his grounds, Baruk stood looking out over the estate district of Darujhistan. For a moment he looked not upon the night-sleeping buildings as they lay now but upon another city, one of a profusion of towers much like his, all aglow with a flickering ghostly blue illumination. And amidst all the towers, rearing far more immense, a great dome encompassing Majesty Hill. Then he passed a shaking hand before his eyes and glanced aside, down to where a shivering, whimpering Chillbais crouched, terrified, but not quite so terrified as to not be chewing on a loaf of old bread.

‘Was he waiting?’ Baruk mused. ‘Waiting for Anomander to be gone?’ He drew his hand down his chin. ‘I wonder.’ He went to the door, turned as a final thought struck him. ‘You are free to go, Chillbais. Your service is done.’ He pulled the door shut behind him.

Fat loaf of bread jammed in his mouth, the demon peered about the empty room. Free? Free to go where? Free to do what? Oh dear, oh dear. Free perhaps to be enslaved by something far worse? No, no, no. Not I.

Chillbais waddled to a clothes chest, struggled up over the side to tumble in, then pulled the top closed.

Aman dragged Ebbin to the ruins atop Despot’s Barbican. Here, he turned to face the way they’d come, a fist tight on Ebbin’s shirt.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Ebbin asked in a plaintive whisper.

Aman slapped him. ‘Quiet. Your turn will come.’

‘He is near,’ the shade of Hinter said.

Aman tilted his crooked head in order to look skywards. ‘The moon is not right,’ he warned.

‘Soon,’ answered the shade.

Taya ran up. Her gossamer silks blew behind her like white flames. ‘He is here.’

Aman pushed Ebbin to his knees, then lowered himself on to one knee. He shook Ebbin, snarling, ‘Bow your head, slave.’

Ebbin could not have kept his head erect if he tried; something was hammering him down. Some unbearable pressure like the hand of a giant was squashing him as if he were an insect. A whimper slipped from him as he glimpsed the dirty bottom edge of a dark cloak before him.

‘Father,’ Aman murmured. ‘We remain your faithful servants.’

Ebbin whimpered, shaking. This was not for him. Such scenes were not to be witnessed by such as he. The pressure — the iron hand grinding him into the dirt — eased, and he caught his breath.

Aman straightened, yanked him up. ‘Stand now.’

He complied, but would not raise his gaze beyond the mud-spattered edge of the cloak. So, now it was his turn. A hand would clasp his arm or shoulder and the mask would be pressed to his face. He would be blind behind it, unable to breathe. He would die choking. And then … and then … what? What was this thing before him? Would he then become … it?

Some force compelled Ebbin’s gaze upwards. His eyes climbed to the oval gold mask, now a glowing circle of reflected light. The mysterious mocking smile engraved there was sly now, as if he and it shared some hidden knowledge unguessed at even by those surrounding them.

The cloaked figure raised a hand, gesturing, and Aman bowed again. ‘Yes. Spread out. Guard all approaches. Let none interfere.’

Ebbin was left alone with the creature. What had they named it? Father? In truth? Perhaps the title was merely honorific. Now would it do it? Take him? His knees lost their strength and he fell to the ground. Gods! Why this agonizing delay? Won’t it just end things?

Standing above him the creature held out its right hand, pointed to Ebbin’s. Mystified, Ebbin looked at his own right hand. It was fisted, the knuckles white with pressure. When did … His breath caught. He remembered the tomb. He remembered reaching …

Oh no. Please, no …

Something was in his fist. It was hard and round. Ebbin’s heart lurched, skipping and tripping, refusing to beat.

Oh no. Oh no, no. Please no.

He held out his hand. It was oddly numb, as if it were someone else’s. He unclenched his fingers and there on his palm rested the gleaming white pearl from the last niche of the sepulchre. Moonlight shone from it like molten silver.

Please! I beg of you … do not make me do what I think you will demand. Please! Spare me!

The creature raised its head to the night sky, and for an instant Ebbin had the dizzying sense that the moon was no longer in the sky but on the mask before him.

A pale circle. A pearl … of course! It was so obvious. He would have to warn everyone! He-

The creature raised a hand above that smiling uplifted mouth. The fingers were pinched together as if holding some delicacy, a grape or a sweet, then opened there above the mouth. The moon lowered to regard him. Its enigmatic smile was now one of triumph.

Oh no.

At Lady Varada’s estate its two remaining guards, Madrun and Lazan Door, were engaged in their timeless ritual of tossing dice against a wall when one bone die refused to stop spinning. Both watched it, wonder-struck, as it turned and turned before them.

Then screaming erupted from the estate. They ran for the main hall. Here they found the castellan, Studlock, in his layered cloths as if wrapped in rags, blocking the way down to the rooms below. The continuous howling was not just one of fear. It sounded as if a woman was having her hands and feet sawn off.

Studlock raised open hands. ‘M’lady gave commands not to be disturbed.’

The two guards peered in past the castellan. ‘Would you listen!’ said Madrun. ‘Someone’s got her.’

‘Not at all,’ soothed Studlock. ‘M’lady is experiencing an illness. Nothing more. You may characterize it as something like withdrawal. I will prepare suitable medicines this moment — if I have your word not to go below! M’lady values her privacy.’

Madrun and Lazan winced at a particularly terrifying scream. ‘But …’

Studlock shook a crooked finger. ‘Your devotion is commendable, I assure you. However, all is in hand. Oil of d’bayang, I believe, is called for. And alcohol. A great deal of alcohol.’ The castellan shuddered within his strips of cloth. ‘Though how anyone could consume such poison is beyond me.’

Lazan stroked his face and jerked as if surprised when his fingers touched his flesh. He tapped his partner on the shoulder and the two reluctantly withdrew.

Behind them the tormented howling continued throughout the night.

In the deepest donjon beneath his estate High Alchemist Baruk knelt before a large diagram cut into the stone floor and inscribed in poured bronze, silver and iron. In one hand he held out a smoking taper with which he drew symbols in the air, while with the other he flicked drops of blood from a cut across the meat of his thumb.

In mid-ceremony the locked, warded and sealed iron-bound door to the chamber crashed open and a gust of wind blew out the taper and brushed aside the intricate forest of symbols lingering in the air.

Baruk’s shoulders fell. ‘Blast.’

He lunged for the middle of the concentric rings of wards but something seemed to yank on his feet and he fell short. His arms, which crossed the rings of engraved metal, burst into flames. The robes fell to ash, revealing black armoured limbs twisted in sinew. His hands glowed, smoking, becoming toughened claws. The yanking continued. He scrabbled at the stone floor, gouging the rock and the metal bands.

‘No!’

He flew backwards, stopped only by his clawed hands grasping the stone door jamb. He hung there, snarling, while the stone fractured and ground beneath his amber talons. The stones exploded in an eruption of dust and shards and he was whipped away up the hall to disappear.

Rallick entered the Phoenix Inn to find the common room uncharacteristically subdued. The crowd was quiet, the talk a low murmur, tense and guarded. He nodded to Scurve, the barkeeper, as he crossed to the back. Here Kruppe sat at his usual table. A dusty dark bottle stood before him, unopened. Rallick pulled up a chair and sat, noted the two glasses.

‘What are you celebrating?’

The fat man roused himself, blinking as if returning from some trance. ‘I? Celebrating? Neither. I invite you to join me in giving witness. We shall drink to the inevitable. The unavoidable. The relentless turning of the celestial globes in which all that was before shall be again. As it must.’ He took up the bottle and began picking at its seal.

‘What are you going on about?’

Tongue pressed firmly between his teeth, Kruppe answered, ‘Nothing. And everything. Chance versus inevitability. How those two war. Their eternal battle is what we call our lives, my friend! Which shall win? We shall see … as we saw before.’

For a time Rallick watched his friend wrestling with the bottle, then, sighing his impatience, snatched it from him and began picking with his knife at the tar-like substance hardened around the neck. ‘What drink is this?’ he asked. ‘I’ve not seen the like. Is it foreign? Malazan?’

‘No. No foreign distillation is that. It is sadly entirely of our own making. And very sour it is too. It was set aside long ago for just this foreseen occasion.’

‘And the occasion?’ Rallick managed to remove the last of the old wax.

Kruppe reached for the bottle but Rallick jammed his blade into the cork and twisted. The fat man winced, yanking back his hand. He studied his fingertips as if burned. ‘Nothing important,’ he murmured. ‘Everything is connected to everything else. Nothing is of more significance than any other thing.’

Twisting and twisting, Rallick drew out the cork. He handed back the bottle. Kruppe took it, gingerly.

‘So we’re celebrating nothing?’ Rallick said, arching a brow.

Kruppe raised the bottle. ‘You are most correct. This is nothing to celebrate.’ He tilted the bottle to pour. Nothing appeared. He tilted the bottle even further. Still nothing emerged. He held the bottle upside down over the glass, shook it, and not one drop fell. Rallick took it from him and held it up to one eye. He handed it back.

‘Empty. Empty as death’s mercy. What kind of joke is this, Kruppe?’

Kruppe frowned at the bottle. ‘An entirely surprising one, I assure you, dear friend.’

Rallick raised a hand to Jess. ‘If you’re too tight-fisted to spring for a bottle you just have to say so, Kruppe. No need for cheap conjuror’s tricks.’

The squat man suddenly grinned like a cherub, his cheeks bunching. He raised a finger. ‘Ahh! Now I have the way of it. The bottle was not empty at all!’

Rallick grimaced his incomprehension. ‘What?’

‘No. Not at all, dear friend. What you must consider, my dear Rallick, was that perhaps it was never full to begin with!’

Rallick just signalled all the more impatiently for Jess.

In the slums west of Maiten the old woman sat slouched in the dirt before her shack and inhaled savagely on a clay pipe. The embers blazed, threatening to ignite the tangled nest of hair that hung down over her face. She sucked again, gasping, her face reddening, and held the smoke far down in her lungs, her eyes watering, before releasing the cloud in a fit of coughing. She wiped her wet lips with a dirty sleeve and staggered uncertainly to her feet.

‘Now is the time,’ she murmured to no one. ‘Now it is.’ She reached for the open doorway to her shack, tottering. She managed to hook a hand on either side of the ramshackle wattle-and-daub edge to heave herself inside, then fell, fighting down vomit.

She felt about in the dirt until one hand found a bag, which she clutched to herself and curled around, sometimes giggling and sometimes weeping. The weeping became a sad song crooned hoarsely in a language none around her understood. She lay cradling the bag for some time.

Atop Despot’s Barbican, Aman, Taya and the shade of Hinter made their way through the maze of ruined foundations to return to their master’s side. Aman fell to his knees in obeisance, saying, ‘Yes, Father?’

Hinter bowed, as did Taya. Her eyes shone with wild exhilaration as she peered up at the masked figure. She noted the body of the scholar lying nearby and kicked it. The man grunted, stirring. ‘This one lives?’ she asked aloud.

The masked creature gestured. Aman grunted his understanding. ‘He will speak the Father’s will.’

The girl sneered. ‘This one? Him? He is nothing.’

‘Exactly,’ Hinter said. ‘A slave. He will never be a threat.’

‘And speaking of slaves!’ Aman suddenly crowed, peering down the hill.

Among the ruins some thing was clawing its way to them. Blackened, smoking, it made its agonized crippled slither all the way up to the mud-smeared edge of the masked creature’s cloak. There it lay, face pressed to the dirt. Aman cackled his enjoyment of the sight. Hinter merely shook his head. Taya’s face lit up with avid glee. She knelt to prod the sizzling body, raw and crimson where cracks revealed deeper flesh. ‘Is this … her?’

‘No,’ said Hinter. ‘It is Barukanal.’

The grin inverted to a pout. She searched the hillside. ‘No others?’

‘They appear to have eluded the Call,’ Hinter mused, thoughtful. ‘For the moment.’

Taya straightened from the smoking body. ‘What is to become of him then?’

‘He is to be punished,’ came a new voice and the three turned to regard Scholar Ebbin, who was now sitting up, a hand over his stomach, the other over his mouth, horrified shock on his face.

After a moment of silence, the city eerily still beneath them, Taya cleared her throat. ‘So,’ she asked Aman, ‘is that it? Is it done?’

‘It has merely begun,’ Hinter said. And he pointed an ethereal arm to the sky.

Taya looked up and her face lit with child-like pleasure. ‘Ohhh … Beautiful!’

At first Jan thought he dreamt. A voice was calling him. Distant at first, it seemed faint, gentle even. He saw his old master, the last First, sitting cross-legged before him. On his face was not the pale oval mask of all other Seguleh, painted or not. Instead he wore coarse wood, unpolished and gouged, worn to remind its bearer of the imperfection and shame of his people.

As always, the dark sharp eyes behind the mask studied and weighed him. Then, alarmingly, the mask tilted downwards as if in apology. I am so sorry, the wiry old man seemed to say.

Then the image exploded into smoke and a far more distant figure now stood in the darkness, cloaked, tall and commanding. Upon his face was not the child’s crude wooden mask, but a beaten golden oval that shone cold and bright, like the moon. And in his dream Jan bowed to the mask.

Yet it was not the bended knee and lowered head of devotion freely given to his old master. In his dream Jan was sickened to find that he had no choice.

He awoke, his body shivering in a cold sweat. A light tap at his door sounded again. He reached out and drew on his mask. Rising, he picked up the sword that lay next to his bedding and crossed to the door. A servant was waiting, head lowered.

‘Yes?’

‘The Third and Fourth await without, sir. And … others.’

‘Thank you.’

Jan slid the door shut and threw on a shirt, trousers and sash. He went to the front. There in the night, their servants holding torches aloft, waited his fellows of the Ten, the ruling Eldrii. They bowed.

‘You felt it?’ Jan asked.

Six masks inclined their assent.

Jan answered their bow. ‘We are called, my friends. As was promised us so long ago. Ready the ships.’

And they bowed once more.