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Malazan Books of the Fallen quotes

Started by Cain, April 05, 2012, 03:52:44 PM

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Cainad (dec.)

Quote from: Cain on April 06, 2012, 12:53:16 PM
Coyote, you are more than welcome to read the 10,000 bajillion or so pages that make up the series.  Trust me, as numerous as these seem, this is nothing compared to the books themselves.

Cainad, yes, agreed, although the fact every book could be used to bludgeon Afghan detainees to death, and it's a 10 book series (with another seven spinoffs) does explain why quotes are easy to find.

Sweet merciful fuck; I've seen how thick they are, too. And I though the Taltos Cycle by Steven Brust, at 18 (much smaller) books, was huge. :eek:

Cainad (dec.)

BUMP

Keeping it near the top for easy findings.

Cain

Ah, yeah, I should probably do the second half of this, shouldn't I?

Alright then, Book Seven, Reaper's Gale:

QuoteThis was a detail Tanal had come to appreciate, one of Karos Invictad's perfect laws of compulsion and control, emphasized again and again in the vast treatise the Invigilator was penning on the subject most dear to his heart. Take any segment of population, impose strict yet clear definitions on their particular characteristics, then target them for compliance. Bribe the weak to expose the strong. Kill the strong, and the rest are yours. Move on to the next segment.

Quote'Tanal, our guest is being most insistent with respect to his suspicions. Sufficient to convince me that we must devote considerable attention to finding the source of the threat.'

'Invigilator, is the intent sedition or treason, or are we dealing with a thief?'

'A thief, I should think,' Karos replied, glancing over at Rautos Hivanar. The man's cheeks bulged, before he released a slow sigh.

'I am not so sure. On the surface, we appear to be facing an obsessive individual, consumed by greed and, accordingly, hoarding wealth. But only as actual coin, and this is why it is proving so difficult to find a trail. No properties, no ostentation, no flouting of privilege. Now, as subtle consequence, the shortage of coin is finally noticeable. True, no actual damage to the empire's financial structure has occurred. Yet. But, if the depletion continues,' he shook his head, 'we will begin to feel the strain.'

QuoteTanal Yathvanar snorted softly. 'Hear him. Such naivety.'

Karos Invictad, standing beside him on the balcony, gave him a sharp look. 'You foolish man, Tanal Yathvanar.'

'Invigilator?' Karos Invictad leaned his forearms on the railing and squinted down at the prisoner. Fingers like bloated riverworms slowly entwined. From somewhere overhead a gull was laughing. 'Who poses the greatest threat to the empire, Yathvanar?'

'Fanatics,' Tanal replied after a moment. 'Like that one below.'

'Incorrect. Listen to his words. He is possessed of certainty. He holds to a secure vision of the world, a man with the correct answers – that the prerequisite questions were themselves the correct ones goes without saying. A citizen with certainty, Yathvanar, can be swayed, turned, can be made into a most diligent ally. All one needs to do is find what threatens them the most. Ignite their fear, burn to cinders the foundations of their certainty, then offer an equally certain alternate way of thinking, of seeing the world. They will reach across, no matter how wide the gulf, and grasp and hold on to you with all their strength. No, the certain are not our enemies. Presently misguided, as in the case of the man below, but always most vulnerable to fear. Take away the comfort of their convictions, then coax them with seemingly cogent and reasonable convictions of our own making. Their eventual embrace is assured.'

'I see.'

'Tanal Yathvanar, our greatest enemies are those who are without certainty. The ones with questions, the ones who regard our tidy answers with unquenchable scepticism. Those questions assail us, undermine us. They . . . agitate. Understand, these dangerous citizens understand that nothing is simple; their stance is the very opposite of naivety. They are humbled by the ambivalence to which they are witness, and they defy our simple, comforting assertions of clarity, of a black and white world. Yathvanar, when you wish to deliver the gravest insult to such a citizen, call them naive. You will leave them incensed; indeed, virtually speechless . . . until you watch their minds back-tracking, revealed by a cascade of expressions, as they ask themselves: who is it that would call me naive? Well, comes the answer, clearly a person possessing certainty, with all the arrogance and pretension that position entails; a confidence, then, that permits the offhand judgement, the derisive dismissal uttered from a most lofty height. And from all this, into your victim's eyes will come the light of recognition – in you he faces his enemy, his truest enemy. And he will know fear. Indeed, terror.'

'You invite the question, then, Invigilator . . .' Karos Invictad smiled. 'Do I possess certainty? Or am I in fact plagued by questions, doubts, do I flounder in the wild currents of complexity?' He was silent for a moment, then he said, 'I hold to but one certainty. Power shapes the face of the world. In itself, it is neither benign nor malicious, it is simply the tool by which its wielder reshapes all that is around him or herself, reshapes it to suit his or her own . . . comforts. Of course, to express power is to enact tyranny, which can be most subtle and soft, or cruel and hard. Implicit in power – political, familial, as you like – is the threat of coercion. Against all who choose to resist. And know this: if coercion is available, it will be used.' He gestured. 'Listen to that man. He does my work for me. Down in the dungeons, his cellmates hear his ravings, and some among them join in chorus – the guards take note of who, and that is a list of names I peruse daily, for they are the ones I can win over. The ones who say nothing, or turn away, now that is the list of those who must die.'

'So,' said Tanal, 'we let him scream.'

'Yes. The irony is, he truly is naive, although not of course as you originally meant. It is his very certainty that reveals his blithe ignorance. It is a further irony that both extremes of the political spectrum reveal a convergence of the means and methods and indeed the very attitudes of the believers – their ferocity against naysayers, the blood they willingly spill for their cause, defending their version of reality. The hatred they reveal for those who voice doubts. Scepticism disguises contempt, after all, and to be held in contempt by one who holds to nothing is to feel the deepest, most cutting wound. And so we who hold to certainty, Yathvanar, soon find it our mission to root out and annihilate the questioners. And my, the pleasure we derive from that . . .'

Tanal Yathvanar said nothing, inundated with a storm of suspicions, none of which he could isolate, chase down. Karos Invictad said, 'You were so quick to judge, weren't you? Ah, you revealed so much with that contemptuous utterance. And I admit to being amused at my own instinctive response to your words. Naive. Errant take me, I wanted to rip your head from your body, like decapitating a swamp-fly. I wanted to show you true contempt. Mine. For you and your kind. I wanted to take that dismissive expression on your face and push it through an offal grinder. You think you have all the answers? You must, given the ease of your voiced judgement. Well, you pathetic little creature, one day uncertainty will come to your door, will clamber down your throat, and it will be a race to see which arrives first, humility or death. Either way, I will spare you a moment's compassion, which is what sets you and me apart, isn't it?

QuoteOne of the first victims in this new regime had been the Rat Catchers' Guild. Karos Invictad, the Invigilator of the Patriotists, had acted on his first day of officialdom, despatching fully a hundred agents to Scale House, the modest Guild headquarters, whereupon they effected arrests on scores of Rat Catchers, all of whom, it later turned out, were illusions – a detail unadvertised, of course, lest the dread Patriotists announce their arrival to cries of ridicule. Which would not do. After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance. Accordingly, it presents an almost overwhelming temptation – how can I not be excused the occasional mockery? Alas, the Patriotists lacked flexibility in such matters – the deadliest weapon against them was derisive laughter, and they knew it.

QuoteFaces stared up at Redmask. Not a single warrior among them seemed bold enough to venture closer. The dogs were less cowed by the presence of a lone warrior. Growling, hackles raised, they crept in a half-circle towards him. Then, catching an unexpected scent, the beasts suddenly shrank back, tails dipping, thin whines coming from their throats. Finally, one young warrior edged forward a step. 'You cannot be him,' he said.

Redmask sighed. 'Where is your war leader?' he demanded. The youth filled his chest and straightened. 'I am this clan's war leader. Masarch, son of Nayrud.'

'When was your death night?'

'Those are the old ways,' Masarch said, baring his teeth in a snarl. 'We have abandoned such foolishness.' Another spoke up behind the war leader. 'The old ways have failed us! We have cast them out!'

Masarch said, 'Remove that mask; it is not for you. You seek to deceive us. You ride a Letherii horse – you are one of the Factor's spies.'

Redmask made no immediate reply. His gaze slid past the war leader and his followers, fixing once more on the camp below. A crowd was gathering at the near edge, watching.

He was silent for another twenty heartbeats, then he said, 'You have set out no pickets. A Letherii troop could line this ridge and plunge down into your midst, and you would not be prepared. Your women cry out their distress, a sound that can be heard for leagues on a still night like this. Your people are starving, war leader, yet they light an excess of fires, enough to make above you a cloud of smoke that will not move, and reflects the light from below. You have been culling the newborn rodara and myrid, instead of butchering the ageing males and females past bearing. You must have no shouldermen, for if you did, they would bury you in the earth and force upon you the death night, so that you might emerge, born anew and, hopefully, gifted with new wisdom – wisdom you clearly lack.'

Quote'You should choose a better god to worship, Ventrala. Tortured spirits like company, even a god's.' He paused, then said, 'Then again, perhaps it is the likes of you who have in turn shaped the Crippled God. Perhaps, without his broken, malformed worshippers, he would have healed long ago.'

QuoteThe Jaghut had come to comprehend the nature of futility, inspiring the Errant to a certain modicum of empathy for those most tragic of people. Where was Gothos now, he wondered. Probably long dead, all things considered. He had written a multiple-volumed suicide note – his Folly – that presumably concluded at some point, although the Errant had neither seen nor heard that such a conclusion existed. Perhaps, he considered with sudden suspicion, there was some hidden message in a suicidal testimonial without end, but if so, such meaning was too obscure for the mind of anyone but a Jaghut.

Quote'You two,' Hood said, turning away, 'are worse than advocates. And you don't want to know what I do with the souls of advocates.' A heartbeat later and the Lord of Death was gone.

Menandore frowned. 'Shadowthrone, what are advocates?'

'A profession devoted to the subversion of laws for profit,' he replied, his cane inexplicably tapping as he shuffled back into the woods. 'When I was Emperor, I considered butchering them all.'

'So why didn't you?' she asked as he began to fade into a miasma of gloom beneath the trees.

Faintly came the reply, 'The Royal Advocate said it'd be a terrible mistake.'

Quote'Give me my throne. You promised.'

'Is it worth it?'

'I beg you—'

'They all beg me, and call it prayer. What sour benediction must I swallow from this eternal fount of dread and spite and bald greed? Will you never see? Never understand? I must find the broken ones, just do not expect my reach, my touch. No-one understands, how the gods fear freedom. No-one.'

'You have lied to me.'

'You have lied to yourself. You all do, and call it faith. I am your god. I am what you made me. You all decry my indifference, but I assure you, you would greater decry my attention. No, make no proclamations otherwise. I know what you claim to do in my name. I know your greatest fear is that I will one day call you on it – and that is the real game here, this knuckles of the soul. Watch me, mortal, watch me call you on it. Every one of you.'

'My god is mad.'

'As you would have me, so I am.'

'I want my throne.'

'You always want.'

'Why won't you give it to me?'

'I answer as a god: if I give you what you want, we all die. Hah, I know – you don't care! Oh, you humans, you are something else. You make my every breath agony. And my every convulsion is your ecstasy. Very well, mortal, I will answer your prayers. I promise. Just do not ever say I didn't warn you. Do not. Ever.'

QuoteThe argument was this: a civilization shackled to the strictures of excessive control on its populace, from choice of religion through to the production of goods, will sap the will and the ingenuity of its people – for whom such qualities are no longer given sufficient incentive or reward. At face value, this is accurate enough. Trouble arrives when the opponents to such a system institute its extreme opposite, where individualism becomes godlike and sacrosanct, and no greater service to any other ideal (including community) is possible. In such a system rapacious greed thrives behind the guise of freedom, and the worst aspects of human nature come to the fore, a kind of intransigence as fierce and nonsensical as its maternalistic counterpart. And so, in the clash of these two extreme systems, one is witness to brute stupidity and blood-splashed insensitivity; two belligerent faces glowering at each other across the unfathomed distance, and yet, in deed and in fanatic regard, they are but mirror reflections. This would be amusing if it weren't so pathetically idiotic . . .

In Defence of Compassion, Denabaris of Letheras, 4th century

Quote
The Elder God carried the starved, brutalized woman into one of those side passages, the cantilevered door swinging shut noiselessly behind him. In his mind there was recrimination, a seething torrent of anger at himself. He had not imagined the full extent of depravity and slaughter conducted by the Patriotists, and he was sorely tempted to awaken himself, unleashing his fullest wrath upon these unmitigated sadists. Of course, that would lead to unwarranted attention, which would no doubt result in yet greater slaughter, and one that made no distinction between those who deserved death and those who did not. This was the curse of power, after all.

Quote'It suits your grand quest, for the moment at least, doesn't it? Into the viper's den – every hero needs to do that, right? And moments before your doom arrives, out hisses your enchanted sword and evil minions die by the score. Ever wondered what the aftermath of such slaughter must be? Dread depopulation, shattered families, wailing babes – and should that crucial threshold be crossed, then inevitable extinction is assured, hovering before them like a grisly spectre. Oh yes, I heard my share when I was a child, of epic tales and poems and all the rest. But I always started worrying . . . about those evil minions, the victims of those bright heroes and their intractable righteousness. I mean, someone invades your hide-out, your cherished home, and of course you try to kill and eat them. Who wouldn't? There they were, nominally ugly and shifty-looking, busy with their own little lives, plaiting nooses or some such thing. Then shock! The alarms are raised! The intruders have somehow slipped their chains and death is a whirlwind in every corridor!'

Quote'All right,' Udinaas said, sighing, 'let me ask you this. Why wasn't that sword offered to some Letherii – a brilliant officer of an army, a cold-blooded merchant prince? Why not Ezgara himself? Or better still, his son, Quillas? Now there was ambition and stupidity in perfect balance. And if not a Letherii, then why not a Nerek shaman? Or a Fent or a Tarthenal? Of course, all those others, well, those tribes were mostly obliterated – at least, all the taboos, traditions and rules of every sort that kept people in line – all gone, thanks to the Letherii.'

'Very well,' Seren Pedac said, 'why not a Letherii?'

Udinaas shrugged. 'The wrong fatal flaws, obviously. The Chained One recognized the absolute perfection of the Tiste Edur – their politics, their history, their culture and their political situation.'

'Now I understand,' Fear murmured, his arms crossed.

'Understand what?'

'Why Rhulad so valued you, Udinaas. You were wasted scraping fish scales all day when by the measure of your intelligence and your vision, you could sit tall on any kingdom's throne.'

The slave's grin was hard with malice. 'Damn you, Fear Sengar.'

'How did that offend you?'

'You just stated the central argument – both for and against the institution of slavery. I was wasted, was I? Or of necessity kept under firm heel. Too many people like me on the loose and no ruler, tyrant or otherwise, could sit assured on a throne. We would stir things up, again and again. We would challenge, we would protest, we would defy. By being enlightened, we would cause utter mayhem. So, Fear, kick another basket of fish over here, it's better for everyone.'

'Except you.'

'No, even me. This way, all my brilliance remains ineffectual, harmless to anyone and therefore especially to myself, lest my lofty ideas loose a torrent of blood.'

Seren Pedac grunted, 'You are frightened by your own ideas, Udinaas?'

'All the time, Acquitor. Aren't you?'

Quote'Togg's teats, Redmask, that's a long speech coming from you.'

'I hold words in contempt, Anaster Toc. What do you mean when you say "Togg's teats"?'

'Togg's a god.'

'Not a goddess?'

'No.'

'Then its teats are—'

'Useless. Precisely.'

'What of the others? "Hood's Breath"?'

'Hood is the Lord of Death.'

'Thus . . . no breath.'

'Correct.'

'Beru's mercy?'

'She has no mercy.'

'Mowri fend?'

'The Lady of the Poor fends off nothing.'

Redmask regarded the foreigner. 'Your people have a strange relationship with your gods.'

'I suppose we do. Some decry it as cynical and they may have a point. It's all to do with power, Redmask, and what it does to those who possess it. Gods not excepted.'

'If they are so unhelpful, why do you worship them?'

'Imagine how much more unhelpful they'd be if we didn't.'


Cain

QuoteThe Errant gestured, and flames rose once more from the clamshell niches low on the dome's ring-wall, casting wavering shadows across the mosaic floor. A sledgehammer had been taken to the altar on its raised dais. The shattered stones seemed to bleed recrimination still in the Errant's eyes. Who served whom, damn you? I went out, among you, to make a difference – so that I could deliver wisdom, whatever wisdom I possessed. I thought – I thought you would be grateful. But you preferred shedding blood in my name. My words just got in your way, my cries for mercy for your fellow citizens – oh, how that enraged you.

QuoteTehol stared down through the roof hatch in unmitigated horror. 'That was a mistake,' he said.

Leaning beside him, also looking down, Bugg nodded. 'It was an act of mercy, Master. Twelve hens in a sack, half crushing each other, jostled about in fetid darkness. There was the risk of suffocation.'

'Precisely! Peaceful demise, remote, unseen. No wringing of necks required! But now look at them! They've taken over our room! My house. My abode, my very hearth—'

'About that – seems one of them has caught fire, Master.'

'It's smouldering, and too brainless to care. If we wait we can dine on roast chicken for breakfast. And which one laid that egg?'

'Hmm, a most gravid mystery indeed.'

'You may find this amusing right now, Bugg, but you are the one who will be sleeping down there. They'll peck your eyes out, you know. Evil has been bred into them, generation after generation, until their tiny black bean brains are condensed knots of malice—'

Quote'My friends, welcome. Two matters on the agenda. We will first address the one that I suspect is foremost in your minds at the moment. We have reached a state of crisis – the dearth of hard coin, of silver, of gold, of cut gems and indeed of copper bars, is now acute. Someone is actively sabotaging our empire's economy—'

'We knew this was coming,' interrupted Uster Taran. 'Yet what measures were taken by the Consign? As far as I can see, none. Rautos Hivanar, as much on the minds of those assembled here is the question of your continued position as Master.'

'I see. Very well, present to me your list of concerns in that regard.'

Uster's craggy face reddened. 'List? Concerns? Errant take us, Rautos, have you not even set the Patriotists on the trail of this mad creature? Or creatures? Could this not be an effort from the outside – from one of the border kingdoms – to destabilize us prior to invasion? News of this Bolkando Conspiracy should have—'

'A moment, please. One issue at a time, Uster. The Patriotists are indeed pursuing an investigation, without result to date. A general announcement to that effect, while potentially alleviating your anxieties, would have been, in my judgement, equally likely to trigger panic. Accordingly, I chose to keep the matter private. My own inquiries, in the meantime, have led me to eliminate external sources to this financial assault. The source, my friends, is here in Letheras—'

'Then why haven't we caught the bastard?' demanded Druz Thennict, his head seeming to bob atop its long, thin neck.

'The trails are most cleverly obscured, good Druz,' said Rautos. 'Quite simply, we are at war with a genius.'

From the far end of the table, Horul Rinnesict snorted, then said, 'Why not just mint more coins and take the pressure off?'

'We could,' Rautos replied, 'although it would not be easy. There is a fixed yield from the Imperial Mines and it is, of necessity, modest. And, unfortunately, rather inflexible. Beyond that concern, you might ask yourself: what would I do then, were I this saboteur? A sudden influx of new coin? If you sought to create chaos in the economy, what would you do?'

'Release my hoard,' Barrakta Ilk said in a growl, 'setting off runaway inflation. We'd be drowning in worthless coin.'

QuoteThe One God strode out – a puppet trailing severed strings – from the conflagration. Another city destroyed, another people cut down in their tens of thousands. Who among us, witnessing his emergence, could not but conclude that madness had taken him? For all the power of creation he possessed, he delivered naught but death and destruction. Stealer of Life, Slayer and Reaper, in his eyes where moments earlier there had been the blaze of unreasoning rage, now there was calm. He knew nothing. He could not resolve the blood on his own hands. He begged us for answers, but we could say nothing. We could weep. We could laugh. We chose laughter.

Creed of the Mockers Cabal

QuoteThe eastern wastelands. A typical description for a place the name-givers found inhospitable or unconquerable. We can't claim it so it is worthless, a wasted land, a wasteland. Hah, and you thought us without imaginations! Haunted by ghosts, or demons, the earth blasted, where every blade of grass clings to a neighbour in abject terror. The sun's light is darker, its warmth colder. Shadows are smudged. Water brackish and quite possibly poisonous. Two-headed babies are common. Every tribe needed such a place. For heroic war leaders to wander into on some fraught quest rife with obscure motivations that could easily be bludgeoned into morality tales. And, alas, this particular tale is far from done. The hero needs to return, to deliver his people. Or annihilate them.

Quote'You are dangerous, Karsa Orlong. Your will, your strength, your . . . disregard. You present the quaint and appalling argument that through wilful ignorance of the laws and rules of the universe you cannot suffer their influence. As you might imagine, your very success poses evidence of that tenet, and it is one I cannot reconcile, since it runs contrary to a lifetime of observation.'

Quote'In the civil war on Theft, a warlord who captured a rival's army then destroyed them – not by slaughter; no, he simply gave the order that each soldier's weapon hand lose its index finger. The maimed soldiers were then sent back to the warlord's rival. Twelve thousand useless men and women. To feed, to send home, to swallow the bitter taste of defeat.'

QuoteBut Captain Faradan Sort laid a hand on his shoulder. 'No need, Beak. These bodies – Jaghut?'

'No. Forkrul Assail and Tiste Liosan. They fought on the ruins. During what they called the Just Wars. Here, it was only a skirmish, but nobody survived. They killed each other, and the last warrior standing had a hole in her throat and she bled out right where the Fist is standing. She was Forkrul Assail, and her last thought was about how victory proved they were right and the enemy was wrong. Then she died.'

'It's the only dry land anywhere in sight,' Fist Keneb said. 'Can any mage here banish the ghosts? No? Hood's breath. Beak, what are they capable of doing to us anyway?'

'They'll eat into our brains and make us think terrible things, so that we all end up killing each other. That's the thing with the Just Wars – they never end and never will because Justice is a weak god with too many names. The Liosan called it Serkanos and the Assail called it Rynthan. Anyway, no matter what language it spoke, its followers could not understand it. A mystery language, which is why it has no power because all its followers believe the wrong things – things they just make up and nobody can agree and that's why the wars never end.'

Quote'Brooding's different,' he muttered to the empty chair across from him. 'Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods – no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes . . . I don't think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.' He fell silent. Scowling.

Quote'Think we're the first to draw blood?' Tavos Pond asked, crouching to clean the blade of his sword on the cloak of the older Edur.

'Big fat war, Tavos Pond. That's what we got ourselves here.'

'They weren't so hard, Sergeant.'

'Wasn't expecting nothing either, were they? You think we can just ambush our way all the way to Letheras? Think again.' She drank a couple more mouthfuls, then sighed and glowered over at Urb. 'How soon before they're the ones doing the ambushin'? That's why I mean for us to ride – we're gonna stay ahead of the bad news 's long as we can. That way we can be the bad news, right? The way it's s'posed t'be.'

Quote'Come on, it's time to ride.'

'And if we run into a troop of Letherii?' Hellian frowned.

'Then we do as Keneb told us. We talk to 'em.'

'And if they don't like what we say?'

'Then we kill 'em, of course.'

'And we're riding for Letheras?'

She smiled at Urb. Then tapped the side of her slightly numb head with one finger. 'I memmored th'map – ized, memmized the map. There's towns, Urb. An' the closer we get t'Letheras, the more of them. Wha's in towns, Urb? Taverns. Bars. So, we're not takin' a straight, pre-dic-table route.'

'We're invading Lether from tavern to tavern?'

'Aye.'

'Hellian, I hate to say this, but that's kind of clever.'

'Aye. And that way we can eat real cooked food, too. It's the civilized way of conductin' war. Hellian's way.'

QuoteThe father of the man named Throatslitter used to tell stories of the Emperor's conquest of Li Heng, long before Kellanved was emperor of anywhere. True, he'd usurped Mock on Malaz Island and had proclaimed himself the island's ruler, but since when was Malaz Island anything but a squalid haven for pirates? Few on the mainland took much notice of such things. A new tyrannical criminal in place of the old tyrannical criminal.

The conquest of Li Heng changed all that.

There'd been no fleet of ships crowding the river mouth to the south and east of the city; nothing, in fact, to announce the assault. Instead, on a fine spring morning no different from countless other such mornings, Throatslitter's father, along with thousands of other doughty citizens, had, upon a casual glance towards the Inner Focus where stood the Palace of the Protectress, noted the sudden inexplicable presence of strange figures on the walls and battlements. Squat, wide, wearing furs and wielding misshapen swords and axes. Helmed in bone.

What had happened to the vaunted Guard? And why were tendrils of smoke rising from the barracks of the courtyard and parade ground? And was it – was it truly – the Protectress herself who had been seen plunging from the High Tower beside the City Temple at the heart of the cynosure?

Someone had cut off Li Heng's head in the Palace. Undead warriors stood sentinel on the walls and, a short time later, emerged in their thousands from the Inner Focus Gate to occupy the city. Li Heng's standing army – after a half-dozen suicidal skirmishes – capitulated that same day. Kellanved now ruled the city-state, and officers and nobles of the high court knelt in fealty, and the reverberations of this conquest rattled the windows of palaces across the entire mainland of Quon Tali.

'This, son, was the awakening of the Logros T'lan Imass. The Emperor's undead army. I was there, on the streets, and saw with my own eyes those terrible warriors with their pitted eyeholes, the stretched, torn skin, the wisps of hair bleached of all colour. They say, son, that the Logros were always there, below Reacher's Falls. Maybe in the Crevasse, maybe not. Maybe just the very dust that blew in from the west every damned day and night – who can say? But he woke them, he commanded them, and I tell you after that day every ruler on Quon Tali saw a skull's face in their silver mirror, aye.

'The fleet of ships came later, under the command of three madmen – Crust, Urko and Nok – but first to step ashore was none other than Surly and you know who she'd become, don't you?' Didn't he just.

Command of the T'lan Imass didn't stop the knife in the back, did it? This detail was the defining revelation of Throatslitter's life. Command thousands, tens of thousands. Command sorcerors and imperial fleets. Hold in your hand the lives of a million citizens. The real power was none of this. The real power was the knife in the hand, the hand at a fool's neck.

QuoteThe lie of simplicity. Rhulad still believed it. In that he was no different from every other ruler, through every age, in every place where people gathered to fashion a common, the weal of community with its necessity for organization and division.

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things – once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

And the Errant was tired of it. All of it. Mael once said there was no answer. For any of this. He said it was the way of things and always would be, and the only redemption that could be found was that all power, no matter how vast, how centralized, no matter how dominant, will destroy itself in the end. What entertained then was witnessing all those expressions of surprise on the faces of the wielders.

This seemed a far too bitter reward, as far as the Errant was concerned. I have naught of Mael's capacity for cold, depthless regard. Nor his legendary patience. Nor, for that matter, his temper. No Elder God was blind to the folly of those who would reign in the many worlds. Assuming it was able to think at all, of course, and for some that was in no way a certain thing.

Anomander Rake saw it clearly enough, and so he turned away from its vastness, instead choosing to concentrate on specific, minor conflicts. And he denied his worshippers, a crime so profound to them that they simply rejected it out of hand. Osserc, on the other hand, voiced his own refusal – of the hopeless truth – and so tried again and again and failed every time. For Osserc, Anomander Rake's very existence became an unconscionable insult.


Cain

Quote'Because, regardless of how we've insinuated ourselves in the machinery of Lether's vast commerce, the most bitter truth is that the causes behind this impending chaos are in fact systemic. Granted, we're hastening things somewhat, but dissolution – in its truest sense – is an integral flaw in the system itself. It may well view itself as immortal, eminently adaptable and all that, but that's all both illusional and delusional. Resources are never infinite, though they might seem that way. And those resources include more than just the raw product of earth and sea. They also include labour, and the manifest conceit of a monetary system with its arbitrary notions of value – the two forces we set our sights on, by the way. Shipping out the lowest classes – the dispossessed – to pressure the infrastructure, and then stripping away hard currency to escalate a recession – why are you two staring at me like that?'

QuoteThere is no lure to the glow of fanatical worship. There is only smug intransigence and the hidden knives of sharp judgement.

QuoteThe army set out, all mounted for the moment – including the dog-masters – but that would not last.

Nor, Toc suspected, would the force remain united. Redmask saw no battle as a singular event. Rather, he saw a collection of clashes, an engagement of wills; where one was blunted he would shift his attention to resume the sparring elsewhere, and it was in the orchestration of these numerous meetings that a battle was won or lost. Flanking elements would spin off from the main column. More than one attack, more than one objective.

Toc understood this well enough. It was, he suspected, the essence of tactics among successful commanders the world over. Certainly the Malazans had fought that way, with great success. Eschewing the notion of feints, every engagement was deliberate and deliberately intended to lock an enemy down, into fierce, desperate combat.

'Leave feints to the nobility,' Kellanved had once said. 'And they can take their clever elegance to the barrow.' That had been while he and Dassem Ultor had observed the Untan knights on the field of battle east of Jurda. Riding back and forth, back and forth. Tiring their burdened warhorses, sowing confusion in the dust-clouds engulfing their own ranks. Feint and blind.

Dassem had ignored the pureblood fools, and before the day's battle was done he had shattered the entire Untan army, including those vaunted, once-feared knights.

QuotePerhaps, if seen from the outside, from some borderland where real power was as ephemeral, as elusive, as a cloud on the face of the moon, there would be a sense of astonishment and, indeed, disbelief. That the mortal woman commanding the most powerful empire in the world could find herself so . . . helpless. So bound to the ambitions and lusts of the faceless players behind the tapestries.

Folk blissfully unaware of the machinations of politics might well believe that someone like Empress Laseen was omnipotent, that she could do entirely as she pleased. And that a High Mage, such as Tayschrenn, was likewise free, unconstrained in his ambitions. For people with such simplistic world views, Banaschar knew, catastrophes were disconnected things, isolated in and of themselves. There was no sense of cause and effect beyond the immediate, beyond the directly observable. A cliff collapses onto a village, killing hundreds. The effect: death. The cause: the cliff 's collapse.

Of course, if one were to then speak of cutting down every tree within sight, including those above that cliff, as the true cause of the disaster – a cause that, in its essence, lay at the feet of the very victims, then fierce denial was the response; or, even more pathetic, blank confusion. And if one were to then elaborate on the economic pressures that demanded such rapacious deforestation, ranging from the need for firewood among the locals and the desire to clear land for pasture to increase herds all the way to the hunger for wood to meet the shipbuilding needs of a port city leagues distant, in order to go to war with a neighbouring kingdom over contested fishing areas – contested because the shoals were vanishing, leading to the threat of starvation in both kingdoms, which in turn might destabilize the ruling families, thus raising the spectre of civil war . . . well, then, the entire notion of cause and effect, suddenly revealing its true level of complexity, simply overwhelmed.

Rebellion in Seven Cities, followed by terrible plague, and suddenly the heart of the Malazan Empire – Quon Tali – was faced with a shortage of grain. But no, Banaschar knew, one could go yet further back. Why did the rebellion occur at all? Never mind the convenient prophecies of apocalypse. The crisis was born in the aftermath of Laseen's coup, when virtually all of Kellanved's commanders vanished – drowned, as the grisly joke went. She sat herself down on the throne, only to find her most able governors and military leaders gone.

And into the vacuum of their departure came far less capable and far less reliable people. She should not have been surprised at their avarice and corruption – for the chapter she had begun in the history of the empire had been announced with betrayal and blood. Cast bitter seeds yield bitter fruit, as the saying went. Corruption and incompetence. These were rebellion's sparks. Born in the imperial palace in Unta, only to return with a vengeance. Laseen had used the Claw to achieve her coup. In her arrogance she clearly imagined no-one could do the same; could infiltrate her deadly cadre of assassins. Yet, Banaschar now believed, that is what had happened.

And so the most powerful mortal woman in the world had suddenly found herself emasculated, indeed trapped by a host of exigencies, unbearable pressures, inescapable demands. And her most deadly weapon of internal control had been irrevocably compromised. There had been no civil war – the Adjunct had seen to that – yet the enfilade at Malaz City might well have driven the final spike into the labouring heart of Laseen's rule. The Claw had been decimated, perhaps so much so that no-one could use it for years to come. The Claw had declared war on the wrong people.

And so, at long last, Cotillion – who had once been Dancer – had his revenge on the organization that had destroyed his own Talon and then lifted Laseen onto the throne. For, that night in Malaz City, there had been a Shadow Dance. Causes and effects, they were like the gossamer strands spanning the towers of Kartool City, a deadly web, a skein tethered to a thousand places. And to imagine that things were simple was to be naive, often fatally so.

QuoteBanaschar slowly blinked, then said, 'There's nothing to worry about, Curdle. Now, will you two leave? I have more brooding to do and half the night's gone.'

Telorast's razor-beaked head swung to Curdle. 'See? Everything's fine. We're close because we have to be. Because it's where Edgewalker wants—'

'Quiet!' Curdle hissed.

Telorast ducked. 'Oh. We have to kill him now, don't we?'

'No, that would be messy. We just have to hope for a terrible accident. Quick, Telorast, think of a terrible accident!'

Quote'The Letherii will drown nonetheless.'

'Those tarps, Torrent, will not stay dry for long. And then there are the mages.'

'Redmask has his Guardians for those cowards.'

'Cowards?' Toc asked, amused. 'Because they wield sorcery instead of swords?'

'And hide behind rows of soldiers, yes. They care nothing for glory. For honour.'

'True: the only thing they care about is winning. Leaving them free to talk about honour and glory afterwards. The chief spoil of the victors, that privilege.'

Quote'I do not understand your sarcasm, Errant. Nothing has gone astray. Our cult grows day by day, among the Letherii slaves, and now the Indebted—'

'The disaffected, you mean. And what is it you are promising them, Feather Witch? In my name?'

'The golden age of the past. When you stood ascendant among all other gods. When yours was the worship of all the Letherii. Our glory was long ago, and to that we must return.'

'There was never a golden age. Worship of me to the exclusion of all other gods has never existed among the Letherii. The time you speak of was an age of plurality, of tolerance, a culture flowering—'

'Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.'

He had laughed then. 'The High Priestess stumbles upon a vast wisdom. Yes, gather your disaffected, ignorant fools, then. Fill their heads with the noble glory of a non-existent past, then send them out with their eyes blazing in stupid – but comforting – fervour. And this will begin our new golden age, an exultation in the pleasures of repression and tyrannical control over the lives of everyone. Hail the mighty Errant, the god who brooks no dissent.'

QuoteHellian was never drinking that stuff again. Imagine, sick, still drunk, thirsty and hallucinating all at once. Almost as bad as that night of the Paralt Festival in Kartool, with all those people wearing giant spider costumes and Hellian, in a screaming frenzy, trying to stamp on all of them.

Quote'Why so impatient?'

'I expect he wants to tie up in Letheras well before this army arrives. And take on panicky nobles with all their worldly goods. Then we head back out before the Malazan storm, dump the nobles over the side and share out the spoils.'

'As any proper pirate would do.'

'Precisely.'

'Do you enjoy your profession, Captain? Does it not get stale after a time?'

'No, that's me who gets stale after a time. As for the profession, why yes, I do enjoy it, Withal.'

'Even throwing nobles overboard?'

'With all that money they should have paid for swimming lessons.'

'Belated financial advice.'

Cain

Book Eight, Toll the Hounds

QuoteRubbing his eyes, High Alchemist Baruk leaned back. The original version of this, he suspected, was not the mannered shambles he had just read through. Those quaint but overused phrases belonged to an interim age when the style among historians sought to resurrect some oral legacy in an effort to reinforce the veracity of eyewitnesses to the events described. The result had given him a headache. He had never heard of the Thousand Gods, and this pantheon could not be found in any other compendium but Dillat's Dark and Light. Baruk suspected Dillat had simply made them up, which prompted the question: how much else did she invent?

QuoteSkintick snorted. 'Necessity, now there's a word to feed every outrage on decency.'

QuoteYouth was a time for harsh judgement. Such fires ebbed with age. Certainty itself withered. Dreams of salvation died on the vine and who could challenge that blighted truth? They had walked through a citadel peopled by the dead, the broken open, the spilled out. Like the violent opening of bodies, the tensions, rivalries and feuds could no longer be contained. Chaos delivered in a raw and bloody birth, and now the child squatted amidst its mangled playthings, with eyes that burned.

QuoteToo much weight was given to history, as far as Kallor was concerned. One's own history; that of peoples, cultures, landscapes. What value peering at past errors in judgement, at mischance and carelessness, when the only reward after all that effort was regret? Bah! Regret was the refuge of fools, and Kallor was no fool. He had lived out his every ambition, after all, lived each one out until all colour was drained away, leaving a bleached, wan knowledge that there wasn't much in life truly worth the effort to achieve it. That the rewards proved ephemeral; nay, worthless.

Every emperor in every realm, through all of time itself, soon found that the lofty title and all its power was an existence devoid of humour. Even excess and indulgences palled, eventually. And the faces of the dying, the tortured, well, they were all the same, and not one of those twisted expressions vouchsafed a glimmer of revelation, the discovery of some profound, last-breath secret that answered all the great questions. No, every face simply pulled into itself, shrank and recoiled even as agony tugged and stretched, and whatever the bulging eyes saw at the last moment was, Kallor now understood, something utterly . . . banal.

Now there was an enemy – banality. The demesne of the witless, the proud tower of the stupid. One did not need to be an emperor to witness it – scan the faces of people encircling an overturned carriage, the gleam of their eyes as they strain and stretch to catch a glimpse of blood, of broken limbs, relishing some pointless tragedy that tops up their murky inkwells of life. Watch, yes, those vultures of grief, and then speak of noble humanity, so wise and so virtuous.

QuoteWas this the driving force behind the quest for power? To tear away anonymity, to raise fame and infamy up like a blazing shield and shining sword? To voice a cry that would be heard beyond the gates of one's own life? But oh, Duiker had heard enough such cries. He had stood, cowering, in the midst of howls of defiance and triumph, all turning sour with despair, with senseless rage. The echoes of power were uniform, yes, in their essential emptiness. Any historian worthy of the title could see that. No, there was no value in writing. No more effect than a babe's fists battering at the silence that ignored every cry. History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. No more than that. As for the rest, kick through the bones and wreckage for they are what remain, what lasts until all turns to dust.

QuoteSordiko Qualm shut the door and locked it. 'Now, you claim to be a High Priest. From where?'

'Seven Cities, the secret monastery.'

'What monastery?'

'The one that's a secret, of course. You don't need to know and I don't need to tell you. Show me to my chambers, I'm tired. And hungry. I want a seven-course supper, plenty of expensive, suitably delicate wine, and nubile female servants eager to appease my delighted whim.'

'I cannot, alas, think of a single servant here who would touch your whim, as you so quaintly call it.'

QuoteClearing her throat, Blend said, 'They just won the war, didn't they?' Picker looked at her.

'A damned slaughter, too.' Antsy moaned. 'We got to drink it, don't we?' The two women nodded.

'Well,' he said, 'I once plunged straight into a squad of Crimson Guard—'

'You fell out of the tree—'

'—and made it out alive. And I once stood down a charging wild boar—'

'Wasn't wild, Antsy. It was Trotts's pet, and you made a grunt that sounded just like a sow.'

'—and at the last moment I jumped right over it—'

'It threw you into a wall.'

'—so if anyone here's got the guts to start, it's me.'

And with that he reached for the bottle of Quorl Milk. Paused to study the sigil on the stopper. 'Green Moranth. The cheap brand. Figures.' The normal dosage was a thimbleful. Sold exclusively to women who wanted to get pregnant. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't. Maybe all it did was shock the body into pregnancy – anything to avoid another taste of that stuff.

QuoteLowering the stick, she sighed. 'Torvald Nom. You're late.'

'Sorry, love,' he replied. 'I got waylaid. Slavers. Ocean voyages. Toblakai, dhenrabi, torture and crucifixion, a sinking ship.'

'I had no idea going out for a loaf of bread could be so dangerous.'

Quote'The miracle of hindsight is how it transforms great military geniuses of the past into incompetent idiots, and incompetent idiots of the present into great military geniuses. There is the door, and be sure to take all your pompous second-guessing delusions with you . . .'

Emperor Kellanved, On the occasion of the conquest of Falari's Grand Council (the Trial of Crust)

QuoteConspiracies are the way of the civilized world, both those real and those imagined, and in all the perambulations of move and countermove, why, the veracity of such schemes is irrelevant.

Quote'I admit, I have some serious difficulties with this cult's root tenets – oh, as I said, I greatly admired Itkovian, the Shield Anvil of the Grey Swords. I even understand, to some extent, his gesture with the Kron T'lan Imass. As the Redeemer, however . . . I cannot but wonder at a god so willing to assume the crimes and moral flaws of its followers, while in turn demanding nothing – no expectation of a change in behaviour, no threat of punishment should they continue to transgress. Absolution – yes, I grasp the notion, but absolution is not the same as redemption, is it? The former is passive. The latter demands an effort, one with implicit sacrifice and hardship, one demanding all the higher qualities of what we call virtues.'

'Yet he is called the Redeemer.'

'Because he takes on the task of redemption for all who come to him, all who pray to him. And yes, it is an act of profound courage. But he does not expect the same of his people – he appears to possess no expectations whatsoever.'

This was most loquacious of his Lord, evidence of a long, careful condensation of thought, of considerable energy devoted to the nature of the cult clinging to the very edge of Black Coral and Night, all of which seemed . . . unusual.

'He leads by example, then.'

QuoteChildren made perfect soldiers, perfect killers. They had no sense of mortality. They did not fear death. They took bright pleasure in destruction, even when that destruction involved taking a life. They played with cruelty to watch the results. They understood the simplicity of power found there in the weapon held in the hand.

QuoteOnce, long ago it seemed now, he had set out to find glory, only to discover that it was nothing like what he had imagined it to be. It was a brutal truth that his companions then had understood so much better than he had, despite his being War Leader. Nevertheless, they had let themselves be pulled into his wake, and for this they had died. The power of Karsa's own will had overwhelmed them. What could be learned from that? Followers will follow, even unto their own deaths. There was a flaw to such people – the willingness to override one's own instinct for self-preservation. And this flaw invited exploitation, perhaps even required it. Confusion and uncertainty surrendered to simplicity, so comforting, so deadly. Without followers this Captain would have achieved nothing. The same the world over. Wars would disintegrate into the chaos of raids, skirmishes, massacres of the innocent, the vendetta of blood-feuds, and little else. Monuments would never be raised. No temples, no streets and roads, no cities. No ships, no bridges. Every patch of ploughed land would shrink to what a few could manage. Without followers, civilization would never have been born. He would tell his people all this. He would make them not his followers, but his companions. And together they would bring civilization to ruin, whenever and wherever they found it. Because, for all the good it created, its sole purpose was to breed followers – enough to heave into motion forces of destruction, spreading a tide of blood at the whim of those few cynical tyrants born to lead. Lead, yes, with lies, with iron words – duty, honour, patriotism, freedom – that fed the wilfully stupid with grand purpose, with reason for misery and delivering misery in kind. He had seen the enemy's face, its twin masks of abject self-sacrifice and cold-eyed command.

Quote'And yet, destitution results, with all its misery, its stresses and anxieties, its foul vapours of the soul. It can be said that the wealthy grain merchant wages subtle war.' Kruppe studied the wine through the crystal. 'And so the poor remain poor and, mayhap, even poorer. The employed but scarcely getting by cling all the harder to their jobs, even unto accepting despicable working conditions – which in turn permits the employers to fill their purses unto bulging, thus satisfying whatever hidden pathetic inadequacies they harbour. A balance can be said to exist, one never iterated, whereby the eternal war is held in check, so as to avoid anarchy. Should the grain merchant charge too high, then revolution may well explode into life.'

'Whereupon everyone loses.'

'For a time. Until the new generation of the wealthy emerge, to begin once again their predations on the poor. Balance is framed by imbalances and so it seems such things might persist for all eternity. Alas, in any long view, one sees that this is not so. The structure of society is far more fragile than most believe. To set too much faith in its resilience is to know a moment of pristine astonishment at the instant of its utter collapse – before the wolves close in.'

QuoteAmong plants . . . 'I think of the breath we give them – our gift.'

'And the breath they give back,' said the warlord, 'that burns if touched. I am fortunate, I think,' he continued, 'that I have no appreciation of irony.'

'It is a false gift, for with it we claim ownership. Like crooked merchants, every one of us. We give so that we can then justify taking it back. I have come to believe that this exchange is the central tenet of our relationship . . . with everything in the world. Any world. Human, Andii, Edur, Liosan. Imass, Barghast, Jaghut—'

'Not Jaghut,' cut in Caladan Brood.

'Ah,' said Endest Silann. 'I know little of them, in truth. What then was their bargain?'

'Between them and the world? I don't even know if an explanation is possible, or at least within the limits of my sorry wit. Until the forging of the ice – defending against the Imass – the Jaghut gave far more than they took. Excepting the Tyrants, of course, which is what made such tyranny all the more reprehensible in the eyes of other Jaghut.'

'So, they were stewards.' 'No. The notion of stewardship implies superiority. A certain arrogance.'

'An earned one, surely, since the power to destroy exists.'

'Well, the illusion of power, I would say, Endest. After all, if you destroy the things around you, eventually you destroy yourself. It is arrogance that asserts a kind of separation, and from that the notion that we can shape and reshape the world to suit our purposes, and that we can use it, as if it was no more than a living tool composed of a million parts.'


Cain

Quote'Few recall,' Traveller was saying, 'the chaos of the Malazan Empire in those early days. The madness only began with Kellanved, the Emperor. His first cadre of lieutenants were all Napan, each one secretly sworn to a young woman named Surly, who was heiress to the crown of the Nap Isles – in hiding ever since the Untan conquest.'

He paused. 'Or so goes the tale. Was it true? Was Surly truly the last of the Napan royal line? Who can say, but it came in handy when she changed her name to Laseen and attained the throne of the Empire. In any case, those lieutenants were crocked, every one of them. Urko, Crust, Nok, all of them. Quick to fanaticism, willing to do anything and everything to advance the Empire.'

'The Empire, or Surly?' asked Karsa Orlong. 'Does it not seem just as likely that they were simply using Kellanved?'

'A fair suspicion, except that only Nok remained once Laseen became Empress. The others each . . . drowned.'

'Drowned?'

'Officially. That cause of death quickly became euphemistic. Put it this way. They disappeared.'

'There was someone else,' Samar Dev said.

'Dancer—'

'Not him, Traveller. There was the First Sword. There was Dassem Ultor, commander of all the Emperor's armies. He was not Napan. He was Dal Honese.'

Traveller glanced across at her. 'He fell in Seven Cities, shortly before Laseen took power.'

'Surly had him assassinated,' said Samar Dev.

Karsa Orlong grunted. 'Eliminating potential rivals – she needed to clear the path. That, witch, is neither savage nor civilized. You will see such things in dirt-nosed tribes and in empires both. This truth belongs to power.'

'I would not dispute your words, Toblakai. Do you want to know what happened after you killed Emperor Rhulad?'

'The Tiste Edur quit the Empire.'

'How – how did you know that?'

He bared his teeth. 'I guessed, witch.'

'Just like that?'

'Yes. They did not want to be there.'

Traveller said, 'I expect the Tiste Edur discovered rather quickly the curse of occupation. It acts like a newly opened wound, infecting and poisoning both the oppressors and the oppressed. Both cultures become malformed, bitter with extremes. Hatred, fear, greed, betrayal, paranoia, and appalling indifference to suffering.'

'Yet the Malazans occupied Seven Cities—'

'No, Samar Dev. The Malazans conquered Seven Cities. That is different. Kellanved understood that much. If one must grip hard in enemy territory, then that grip must be hidden – at the very cusp of local power. And so no more than a handful is being strictly controlled – everyone else, merchants and herders and farmers and tradefolk – everyone – is to be shown better circumstances, as quickly as possible.
"Conquer as a rogue wave, rule in quiet ripples." The Emperor's own words.'

'This is what the Claw did, isn't it? Infiltrate and paralyse the rulers—'

'The less blood spilled, the better.'

Quote'I have looked upon the face of civilization, and I am not impressed.'

'There is no flaw in being critical.'

'He's not just being critical,' said Samar Dev. 'He intends to destroy it. Civilization, I mean. The whole thing, from sea to sea. When Karsa Orlong is done, not a single city in the world will remain standing, isn't that right, Toblakai?'

'I see no value in modest ambitions, witch.'

Quote"The first law of the multitude is conformity. Civilization is the mechanism of controlling and maintaining that multitude. The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny."

'More of Kellanved?' Samar Dev asked.

Traveller snorted. 'Hardly. That was Duiker, the Imperial Historian.'

QuoteThe gods are fools, alas, in believing every piece in the game is known. That the rules are fixed and accepted by all; that every wager is counted and marked, exposed and glittering on the table. The gods lay out their perfect paths to the perfect thrones, each one representing perfect power. The gods are fools because it never occurs to them that not everyone uses paths.

QuoteA throne, Emperor Kellanved once said, is made of many parts. And then he had added, any one of which can break, to the king's eternal discomfort. No, it did no good to simply sit on a throne, deluding oneself of its eternal solidity. He had known that long before Kellanved ever cast an acquisitive eye on empire. But he was not one for resonant quotations.

QuoteBullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures. The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domain where propriety and vengeance become confused, almost indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the bully's soul remains unchanged. It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved down the throat. If only it could.

Quote'I am of a mind to test you,' said Tulas Shorn after a moment.

'You want the Throne of Shadow, do you?'

'My first rule was cut short. I have learned since—'

'Hardly. You died.' Shadowthrone waved one ephemeral hand. 'Whatever you learned, you did not learn well enough. Obviously.'

'You seem certain of that.'

'He is,' said Cotillion.

'Is it simply megalomania, then, that so afflicts him?'

'Well, yes, but that's beside the point.'

'And what is the point?'

'That you clearly have not learned anything worthwhile.'

'And why do you say that?'

'Because you've just said that you were of a mind to test us.'

QuoteSeerdomin bared his teeth. 'Don't you start with me, Redeemer. The enemy never questions motivations – the enemy doesn't chew the ground out beneath its own feet.'

He jabbed a finger back at the woman kneeling in the basin. 'She has no questions. No doubts. What she has instead is strength. Power.'

'That is true,' said the Redeemer. 'All of it. It is why those haunted by uncertainty must ever retreat. They cannot stand before the self-righteous. Instead, they must slink away, they must hide, they must slip behind the enemy's lines—'

'Where every damned one of them is hunted down and silenced – no, Redeemer, you forget, I lived in a tyranny. I kicked in doors. I dragged people away. Do you truly believe unbelievers will be tolerated? Scepticism is a criminal act. Wave the standard or someone else will, and they'll be coming for you. Redeemer, I have looked in the eyes of my enemy, and they are hard, cold, emptied of everything but hate. I have, yes, seen my own reflection – it haunts me still.'

QuoteToo often scholars and historians saw the principle of convergence with narrow, truncated focus. In terms of ascendants and gods and great powers. But Kallor understood that the events they described and pored over after the fact were but concentrated expressions of something far vaster. Entire ages converged, in chaos and tumult, in the anarchy of Nature itself. And more often than not, very few comprehended the disaster erupting all around them. No, they simply went on day after day with their pathetic tasks, eyes to the ground, pretending that everything was just fine. Nature wasn't interested in clutching their collars and giving them a rattling shake, forcing their eyes open. No, Nature just wiped them off the board.

QuoteEveryone needed a god. Slapped together and shaped with frantic hands, a thing of clay and sticks. Built up of wants and all those unanswerable questions that plagued the mortal soul. Neuroses carved in stone. Malign obsessions given a hard, judgemental face – he had seen them, all the variations, in city after city, on the long campaigns of the Malazan Empire. They lined the friezes in temples; they leered down from balustrades. Ten thousand gods, one for every damned mood, it seemed. A pantheon of exaggerated flaws.

Cain

Book Nine, The Dust of Dreams

QuoteA final war had begun. Facing an enemy against whom no defence was possible. Neither words nor deeds could fool this clear-eyed arbiter. Immune to lies, indifferent to excuses and vapid discourses on necessity, on the weighing of two evils and the facile righteousness of choosing the lesser one—and yes, these were the arguments he was hearing, empty as the ether they travelled. We stood tall in paradise. And then called forth the gods of war, to bring destruction down upon ourselves, our world, the very earth, its air, its water, its myriad life. No, show me no surprise, no innocent bewilderment. I see now with the eyes of the Abyss. I see now with my enemy's eyes, and so I shall speak with its voice. Behold, my friends, I am justice.

Quote'You might know the answer to this,' said Banaschar. 'Listen, if life is a joke, what kind of joke? The funny ha ha kind? Or the "I'm going to puke" kind? Is it a clever joke or a stupid one that's repeated over and over again so that even if it was funny to begin with it's not funny any more? Is it the kind of joke to make you laugh or make you cry? How many other ways can I ask this simple question?'

QuoteThe matted wicker bars of the pen wall between them, Captain Kindly and the Wickan cattle-dog Bent glared at each other with bared teeth. 'Listen to me, dog,' said Kindly, 'I want you to find Sinn, and Grub. Any funny business, like trying to rip out my throat, and I'll stick you. Mouth to butt, straight through. Then I'll saw off your head and sink it in the river. I'll chop off your paws and sell 'em to ugly witches. I'll strip your hide and get it cut up and made into codpieces for penitent sex-addicts-turned-priests, the ones with certain items hidden under their cots. And I'll do all this while you're still alive. Am I understood?'

Quote'People do not understand power. They view it exclusively as a contest, this against that; which is the greater? Which wins, which fails? Power is less about actual conflict—recognizing as it does the mutual damage conflict entails, with such damage making one vulnerable—less about actual conflict, then, than it is about statements. Presence, Acquitor, is power's truest expression. And presence is, at its core, the occupation of space. An assertion, if you will. One that must be acknowledged by other powers, lesser or greater, it matters not.'

QuoteSo much gnawed at him at the moment, however, that he was anxious and wary about doing much of anything. The caster had been... frightening. The ones who were made miserable by the use of their own power ever disturbed the Errant, for he could not fathom such creatures, did not understand their reluctance, the self-imposed rules governing their behaviour. Motives were essential—one could not understand one's enemy without a sense of what they wanted, what they hungered for. But that caster, all he had hungered for was to be left alone. Perhaps that in itself could be exploited. Except that, clearly, when the caster was pushed, he did not hesitate to push back. Unblinking, smiling, appallingly confident.

QuoteInvaders did not stay invaders for ever. Eventually, they became no different from every other tribe or people in a land. Languages muddied, blended, surrendered. Habits were exchanged like currency, and before too long everyone saw the world the same way as everyone else. And if that way was wrong, then misery was assured, for virtually everyone, for virtually ever.

QuoteThe Awl should have bowed to the Letherii. They would be alive now, instead of lying in jumbled heaps of mouldering bones in the mud of a dead sea. Redmask had sought to stop time itself. Of course he failed. Sometimes, belief was suicide.

Quote'Aye,' Cuttle went on, 'I've listened to your drunken stories—' and his tone invited them to sit at his table: knowing and wise and damned near... sympathetic. 'And aye, I've seen for myself that raw, ugly pig you call magic hereabouts. Undisciplined—no finesse—brutal power but nothing clever. So, for you lot, battle means eating dirt, and a battlefield is where hundreds die for no good reason. Your mages have made war a miserable, useless joke—' and he spun round and stepped up to one soldier, nose to nose. 'You! How many times has this brigade taken fifty per cent or more losses in a single battle?'

The soldier—and Cuttle had chosen well—almost bared his teeth. 'Seven times, Braven Sergeant!'

'Seventy-five per cent losses?'

'Four, Braven Sergeant!'

'Losses at ninety?'

'Once, Braven Sergeant, but not ninety—one hundred per cent, Braven Sergeant.'

Cuttle let his jaw drop. 'One hundred?'

'Yes, Braven Sergeant!'

'Wiped out to the last soldier?'

'Yes, Braven Sergeant!' And Cuttle leaned even closer, his face turning crimson. In a bellowing shout, he said, 'And has it not once occurred to you—any of you—that you might do better by murdering all your mages at the very start of the battle?'

'Then the other side would—'

'You parley with 'em first, of course—you all agree to butcher the bastards!' He reeled back and threw up his hands. 'You don't fight wars! You don't fight battles! You just all form up and make new cemeteries!' He wheeled on them. 'Are you all idiots?'

QuoteCuttle stepped close to Tarr and hissed, 'Gods below, Corporal, they're worse than sheep!'

'Been thrashed too many times, that's their problem.'

'So what do we do with them?'

Tarr shrugged. 'All I can think of is thrash 'em again.'

Cuttle's small eyes narrowed on his corporal. 'Somehow, that don't sound right.'

QuoteThe look he shot her was bleak, wretched. 'Justice is a sweet notion. Too bad its practice ends up awash in innocent blood. Honest judgement is cruel, Adjunct, so very cruel. And what makes it a disaster is the way it spreads outward, swallowing everything in its path. Allow me to quote Imperial Historian Duiker: "The object of justice is to drain the world of colour." '

Quote'Are the gods united on this?'

'Of course not—excuse me, Adjunct. Rather, the gods are never united, even when in agreement. Betrayals are virtually guaranteed—which is why I cannot fathom Shadowthrone's thinking. He's not that stupid—he can't be that stupid—'

'He has outwitted you,' Tavore said. 'You "cannot fathom" his innermost intentions. High Mage, the first god you have mentioned here is one that most of us wouldn't expect to be at the forefront of all of this. Hood, yes. Togg, Fanderay—even Fener. Or Oponn. And what of the Elder Gods? Mael, K'rul, Kilmandaros. No. Instead, you speak of Shadowthrone, the upstart—'

'The once Emperor of the Malazan Empire,' cut in Keneb.

Quick Ben scowled. 'Aye, even back then—and it's not easy to admit this—he was a wily bastard. The times I thought I'd worked round him, beat him clean, it turned out he had been playing me all along. He was the ruler of shadows long before he even ascended to that title. Dancer gave him the civilized face, that mask of honest morality—just as Cotillion does now. But don't be fooled, those two are ruthless—none of us mortals are worth a damned thing, except as a means to an end—'

'And what, High Mage, would that end be?'

Quick Ben threw up his hands and leaned back. 'I have little more than rude guesses, Adjunct.'

But Lostara saw something shining in the wizard's eyes, as if he had been stirred into wakefulness from a long, long sleep. She wondered if this was how he had been with Whiskeyjack, with Dujek Onearm. No wonder they saw him as their shaved knuckle in the hole.

'I would hear those guesses,' the Adjunct said.

'The pantheon comes crashing down—and what emerges from the dust and ashes is almost unrecognizable. The same for sorcery—the warrens—the realm of K'rul. All fundamentally changed.'

'Yet, one assumes, at the pinnacle... Shadowthrone and Cotillion.'

'A safe assumption,' Quick Ben admitted, 'which is why I don't trust it.'

Tavore looked startled. 'Altruism from those two?'

'I don't even believe in altruism, Adjunct.'

'Thus,' she observed, 'your confusion.'

QuoteEven common sense was an enemy to the harvesters of the future. The beast that was civilization ever faced forward, and in making its present world it devoured the world to come. It was an appalling truth that one's own children could be so callously sacrificed to immediate comforts, yet this was so and it had always been so.

Quote'What now?' Curdle whispered.

'What kind of question is that? What now? What now? Have you lost your mind?'

'Well, what now, Telorast?'

'How should I know! But listen, we need to do something! That Errant—he's... he's—well, I hate him, is what! And worse, he's using Banaschar, our very own ex-priest.'

'Our pet.'

'That's right. Our pet—not his!'

'We should kill him.'

'Who? Banaschar or the Errant?'

'If we kill Banaschar, then nobody has a pet. If we kill the Errant, then we can keep Banaschar all to ourselves.'

'Right, Curdle,' Telorast said, nodding, 'but which one would make the Errant angrier?'

'Good question. We need something to make him go mad, completely mad—that's the best revenge for stealing our pet.'

'And then we kill him.'

'Who?'

'It doesn't matter! Why are you being so thick? Oh, what a ridiculous question! Listen, Curdle, now we got ourselves a plan and that's good. It's a start. So let's think some more. Vengeance against the Errant.'

'The Elder God.'

'Right.'

'Who's still around.'

'Right.'

'Stealing pets.'

'Curdle—'

'I'm just thinking out loud, that's all!'

'You call that thinking? No wonder we ended up torn to pieces and dead and worse than dead!'

'Oh, and what are you thinking, then?'

'I didn't have any time to, since I had to answer all your questions!'

'You always got an excuse, Telorast, did you know that? Always.'

'And you're it, Curdle, did you know that?'

QuoteIt wasn't that the Letherii scouts were especially bad. It was more the case that their tradition of warfare kept them trapped in the idea of huge armies clashing on open fields. Where scouts were employed simply to find the enemy encampments. The notion of a foe that could melt into the landscape the way the Malazans could, or even the idea that the enemy might split its forces, avoid direct clashes, and whittle the Letherii down with raids, ambushes and disrupted supply lines—none of that was part of their military thinking. The Tiste Edur had been tougher by far. Their fighting style was much closer to the Malazan one, which probably explained why the Edur conquered the Letherii the first time round. Of course, the Malazans could stand firm in a big scrap, but it made sense to have spent some time demoralizing and weakening their foe beforehand.

Quote'There is no single god. There can never be a single god. For there to be one face, there must be another. The Nah'ruk did not see it in such terms, of course. They spoke of forces in opposition, of the necessity of tension. All that binds must be bound to two foci, at the minimum. Even should a god exist alone, isolated in its perfection, it will come to comprehend the need for a force outside itself, beyond its omniscience. If all remains within, Destriant—exclusively within, that is—then there is no reason for anything to exist, no reason for creation itself. If all is ordered, untouched by chaos, then the universe that was, is and will ever be, is without meaning. Without value. The god would quickly comprehend, then, that its own existence is also without meaning, and so it would cease. It would succumb to the logic of despair.'

Quote'This is a court, sire. The court plots and schemes with the same need that we—uh, you—breathe. A necessity. It's healthy, in fact.'

'Oh now, really.'

'All right, not healthy, unless of course one can achieve a perfect equilibrium, each faction played off against the others. The true measure of success for a king's Intelligence Wing.'

Tehol frowned. 'Who's flapping that, by the way?'

'Your Intelligence Wing?'

'That's the one.'

'I am.'

'Oh. How goes it?'

'I fly in circles, sire.'

'Lame, Bugg.'

'As it must be.'

'We need to invent another wing, I think.'

'Do we now?'

Tehol nodded, plucking another fruit and studying it contemplatively. 'To fly true, yes. A counter-balance. We could call it the King's Stupidity Wing.'

QuoteBlackdog. Still a name that could send chills through a Malazan soldier, whether they'd been in it or not. Cuttle wondered how a place—a happening now years and years old—could sink into a people, like scars passed from parents to child. Scars, aye, and stains, and the sour taste of horror and misery—was it even possible? Or was it the stories—stories like the one Fiddler just told? Not even a story, was it? Just a detail. Exaggerated, aye, but still a detail. Enough details, muttered here and there, every now and then, and something started clumping up inside, like a ball of wet clay, smearing everything. And before too long, there it is, compacted and hard as a damned rock, perfect to rattle around inside a man's head, knocking about his thoughts and confusing him. And confusion was what hid behind fear, after all. Every soldier knew it, and knew how deadly it could be, especially in the storm of battle. Confusion led to mistakes, bad judgements, and sure enough, blind panic was the first stinking flower confusion plucked when it was time to dance in the fields.

QuoteHe coughed and turned to study all the other recruits. 'Running from debt I understand,' he said. 'Same for armies the world over. Indebted, criminal, misfit, pervert, patriot and insane, and that list's from my very own military application. And look at me, promoted up to Lieutenant and sideways to Master Sergeant. So, dear recruits,' and Pores slapped on a broad smile, which was answered by everyone in the line, 'nobody knows better where you're coming from, and nobody knows better where you're going to end up, which is probably in either the infirmary or the stockade. And I mean to get you there in no time flat!'

QuoteFiddler snorted. 'Sapper, listen to me. It's easy to listen and even easier to hear wrongly, so pay attention. I'm no wise man, but in my life I've learned that knowing something—seeing it clearly—offers no real excuse for giving up on it. And when you put what you see into words, give 'em to somebody else, that ain't no invitation neither. Being optimistic's worthless if it means ignoring the suffering of this world. Worse than worthless. It's bloody evil. And being pessimistic, well, that's just the first step on the path, and it's a path that might take you down Hood's road, or it takes you to a place where you can settle into doing what you can, hold fast in your fight against that suffering. And that's an honest place, Cuttle.'

Quote
Is there anything more worthless than excuses?

- Kellanved

Quote'Is there precedent for our assistance in such conflicts?' Tehol asked, settling his chin in one hand.

'There is. We ask, you say "no", and we go home. Sometimes,' he added, 'you say, "Of course, but first let us have half a thousand brokes of pasture land and twenty ranks of tanned hides, oh, and renounce sovereignty of the Kryn Freetrade Lands and maybe a royal hostage or two." To which we make a rude gesture and march home.'

QuoteUnder normal circumstances, it was easy to hide in an army, even as an officer. Volunteer for nothing, offer no suggestions, stay in the back at briefings, or better still, miss them altogether. Most command structures made allowances for useless officers—no different from the allowances made for useless soldiers in the field.

'Take a thousand soldiers. Four hundred will stand in a fight but do nothing. Two hundred will run given the chance. Another hundred will get confused. That leaves three hundred you can count on. Your task in commanding that thousand is all down to knowing where to put that three hundred.'

Not Malazan doctrine, that. Some Theftian general, he suspected. Not Korelri, that was certain. Korelri would just keep the three hundred and execute the rest.

QuoteFiddler shrugged. 'I wasn't a sergeant back then, so I really can't say. But something tells me they did plenty of chewing. Don't forget from about Blackdog all the way down to Darujhistan somebody in the empire wanted them dead. Now, maybe they never had much to complain about when it came to Dujek Onearm, but at the same time it's not like they knew what their High Fist was up to—it wasn't their business.'

'Even when that business killed soldiers?' Sinter asked.

Fiddler's laugh was harsh and cutting. 'If that isn't a commander's business, what is? The Adjunct's not our Hood-damned mother, Sinter. She's the will behind the fist and we're the fist. And sometimes we get bloodied, but that's what comes when you're hammering an enemy in the face.'

Cain

Quote'Enough wasting our time. Face me, Onos T'oolan—I challenge your right to lead the White Face Barghast!'

Tool sighed. 'Use your eyes, Riggis. What shifting of the earth leaves no cracks? Pushes to one side hilltops without touching their roots? Drives three—possibly more—furrows across the plain, each one converging on this valley, each one striking for the heart of the Snakehunter camp?'

He pointed to the north channel of the valley. 'What earthquake cuts down fleeing Barghast in the hundreds? See them, Riggis—that road of bones?'

'Akryn raiders, taking advantage of the broken state of the survivors. Answer my challenge, coward!'

Tool studied the enormous warrior. Not yet thirty, his belt crowded with trophies. He turned to the others and raised his voice, 'Do any of you challenge Riggis and his desire to be Warleader of the White Face Barghast?'

'He is not yet Warleader,' growled Bakal.

Tool nodded. 'And should I kill Riggis here, now, will you draw your weapon and voice your challenge to me, Bakal?' He scanned the others. 'How many of you will seek the same? Shall we stand here over the broken graveyard of the Snakehunter clan and spill yet more Barghast blood? Is this how you will honour your fallen White Faces?'

'They will not follow you,' Riggis said, his eyes bright. 'Unless you answer my challenge.'

'Ah, and so, if I do answer you, Riggis, they will then follow me?'

The Senan warrior's laugh was derisive. 'I am not yet ready to speak for them—'

'You just did.'

'Spar no more with empty words, Onos Toolan.' He widened his stance and readied his heavy-bladed weapon, teeth gleaming amidst his braided beard.

'Were you Warleader, Riggis,' Tool said, still standing relaxed, hands at his sides, 'would you slay your best warriors simply to prove your right to rule?'

'Any who dared oppose me, yes!'

'Then, you would command out of a lust for power, not out of a duty to your people.'

'My finest warriors,' Riggis replied, 'would find no cause to challenge me in the first place.'

'They would, as soon as they decided to disagree with you, Riggis. And this would haunt you, in the back of your mind. With every decision you made, you would find yourself weighing the risks, and before long you would gather to yourself an entourage of cohorts—the ones whose loyalty you have purchased with favours—and you would sit like a spider in the centre of your web, starting at every tremble of the silk. How well can you trust your friends, knowing how you yourself bought them? How soon before you find yourself swaying to every gust of desire among your people? Suddenly, that power you so hungered for proves to be a prison. You seek to please everyone and so please no one. You search the eyes of those closest to you, wondering if you can trust them, wondering if their smiles are but lying masks, wondering what they say behind your back—'

'Enough!' Riggis roared, and then charged.

The flint sword appeared as if conjured in Tool's hands. It seemed to flicker. Riggis staggered to one side, down on to one knee. His broken tulwar thumped to the ground four paces away, the warrior's hand still wrapped tight about the grip. He blinked down at his own chest, as if looking for something, and blood ran from the stump of his wrist—ran, but the flow was ebbing. With his remaining hand he reached up to touch an elongated slit in his boiled-leather hauberk, from which the faint glisten of blood slowly welled. A slit directly above his heart.

He looked up at Tool, perplexed, and then sat back. A moment later, Riggis fell on to his side, and no further movement came from him.

QuoteThe swordswoman continued. 'Human, you keep strange company. They will teach you nothing of value, these Che'Malle. It is their curse to repeat their mistakes, again and again, until they have destroyed themselves and everyone else. They have no gifts for you.'

'It seems,' said Kalyth of the Elan, 'we humans have already learned all they could teach us, whether we ever knew it or not.'

Quote'Stupid Bolkando. What value fielding an army that crawls like a bhederin with its legs cut off? We could dance round it and strike straight for the capital. I could drag that King off his throne and plant myself in it sloppy as a drunk, and that would be that.'

He snorted. 'Generals and commanders understand nothing. They think a battle answers everything, like fists in an alley. Coltaine knew better—war is the means, not the end—the goal is not to wage slaughter—it is to achieve domination in the bargaining that follows.'

Quote'That's what the Malazans have taught us, if they've taught us anything. A smith's hammer in the hand, or a sword—it's all business, and each and every one of us is in it. The side with the most people using their brains is the side that wins.'

QuoteThe track lifted and then wound down over the ridge to converge with a broad cobbled road. At the junction three squat, square granaries plumed columns of black smoke. A waste—the locals had lit their own harvest rather than yield it to the Khundryl.

Pernicious attitudes annoyed Gall, as if war was an excuse for anything. He recalled a story he'd heard from a Malazan—Fist Keneb, he believed—about a company of royal guard in the city of Bloor on Quon Tali, who, surrounded in a square, had used children as shields against the Emperor's archers. Dassem Ultor's face had darkened with disgust, and he'd had siege weapons brought in to fling nets instead of bolts, and once all the soldiers were tangled and brought down, the First Sword had sent in troops to extricate the children from their clutches.

Among all the enemies of the Empire during Dassem Ultor's command, those guards had been the only ones ever impaled and left to die slowly, in terrible agony. Some things were inexcusable. Gall would have skinned the bastards first. 

Destroying perfectly good food wasn't quite as atrocious, but the sentiment behind the gesture was little different from that of those Bloorian guards, as far as he was concerned. Without the crimes that had launched this war, the Khundryl would have paid good gold for that grain. This was how things fell apart when stupidity stole the crown. War was the ultimate disintegration of civility, and, for that matter, simple logic.

QuoteThe Barghast were presented on the left flank, as Yelk had noted. The ranks were uneven, with some of the mercenaries sitting, helms doffed and shields down. The tall standards rising above their companies were all adorned with human skulls and braids of hair. Right of the centre legion earthworks mottled the crest and slope of the hills, and pikes were visible jutting above the trenches. Probably regulars, Gall surmised. Slippery discipline, ill-trained, but in numbers sufficient to fix any enemy they faced, long enough for the centre and left to wheel round after breaking whatever charge Gall might throw at them. Behind all three elements and spilling out to the wings were archers and skirmishers.

'Yelk, tell me how you would engage what you see here.'

'I wouldn't, Warleader.'

Gall glanced over, his eyes brightening. 'Go on. Would you flap your tail in flight? Surrender? Cower in bulging breeches and sue for peace? Spill out endless concessions until the shackles close round the ankles of every living Khundryl?'

'I'd present our own wings and face them for most of a day, Warleader.'

'And then?'

'With dusk, we would retire from the field. Wait until the sun was fully down, and then peel out to either side and ride round the enemy army. We'd strike just before dawn, from behind, with flaming arrows and madness. We'd burn their baggage camp, scatter their archers, and then chew up the backsides of the legions. We'd attack in waves, with half a bell between them. By noon we would be gone.'

'Leaving them to crawl bloodied back to their city—'

'We would hit them again and again on that retreat—'

'And use up all your arrows?'

'Yes. As if we had millions of them, Warleader, an unending supply. And once we've chased them through the city gate, they would be ready to beg for peace.'

QuoteThey did not choose their parents—who does? They're just... unlucky. But that is the way of the world. Spawn of rulers inherit more than power—they inherit what happens when that power collapses.

Quote'This is already unravelling, Errant. War is like that—all the players lose control. "Chaos takes the sword.'"

Quote'Histories, they're just what's survived. But they're not the whole story, because the whole story can never be known. Think of all the histories we've gone and lost. Not just kingdoms and empires, but the histories inside every one of us, every person who ever lived

QuoteThere'd be a few flick-blade duels this night, she expected. There always were, night before battle. Stupid, of course. Pointless. But, as Onos Toolan might say, the real meaning of 'tradition' was... what had he called it? 'Stupidity on purpose', that's what he said.

QuoteHis bleary, raw eyes settled on the battleaxe and he scowled. It wasn't even pretty, was it.

'Smash,' he mumbled. 'Crush. Its name is Rilk, but it never says anything. How'd it tell anybody its name? I'm alone. Everybody must be dead. Sorry, crow, you were last other thing left alive! In the whole world! And I killed you!'

'Sorry I missed it,' said a voice behind him. Ublala Pung climbed to his feet and turned round.

'Life!'

'I share your exultation, friend.'

'It's all cold around you,' Ublala said.

'That will pass.'

'Are you a god?'

'More or less, Toblakai. Does that frighten you?'

Ublala Pung shook his head. 'I've met gods before. They collect chickens.'

'We possess mysterious ways indeed.'

QuoteWhat must be understood is this: attackers attack as a form of defence. It is their instinctive response to threat, real or perceived. It maybe desperate or it may be habit, or both, when desperation becomes a way of life. Behind the assault hides a fragile person.' He was silent then, and Ryadd understood that Silchas sought to invite some contemplation of the things just said.

Weighing of self-judgement, perhaps. Was he an attacker or a defender? He had done both, he knew, and there had been times when he had attacked when he should have defended, and so too the other way round. I do not know which of the two I am. Not yet. But, I think, I know this much: when I feel threatened, I attack.

'Cultures tend to invite the dominance of one over the other, as a means by which an individual succeeds and advances or, conversely, fails and falls. A culture dominated by attackers—and one in which the qualities of attacking are admired, often overtly encouraged—tends to breed people with a thick skin, which nonetheless still serves to protect a most brittle self. Thus the wounds bleed but stay well hidden beneath the surface. Cultures favouring the defender promote thin skin and quickness to take offence—its own kind of aggression, I am sure you see. The culture of attackers seeks submission and demands evidence of that submission as proof of superiority over the subdued. The culture of defenders seeks compliance through conformity, punishing dissenters and so gaining the smug superiority of enforcing silence, and from silence, complicity.'

Quote'Toc bears a wolf's eye.'

'Because he is the Herald of War.'

The title chilled her. 'Then why is his other eye not a wolf's eye, too?'

'It was human, I'm sure.'

'Exactly. Why?'

Cartographer made the mistake of scratching his temple, and came away with a swath of crinkled skin impaled on his fingernails. He fluttered his fingers to send it drifting away into the night. 'Because, I imagine, humans are the true heralds of war, don't you think?'

Quote'You're trying to keep me awake, aren't you?'

'You landed on your head, Faint. For a time there, you spoke in tongues.'

'I did what?'

'Well, it was a mix of languages, sixteen that I could identify, and some others I could not. An extraordinary display, Faint. There is a scholar who states that we possess every language, deep within our minds, and that the potential exists for perhaps ten thousand languages in all. She would have delighted in witnessing your feat. Then there is a dystigier, a dissector of human corpses, living in Ehrlitan, who claims that the brain is nothing more than a clumped mass of snarled chains. Most links are fused, but some are not. Some can be prised open and fitted anew. Any major head injury, he says, can result in a link breaking. This is usually permanent, but on rare occasions a new link is forged. Chains, Faint, packed inside our skull.'

'Only they don't look like chains, do they?'

'No, alas, they don't. It is the curse of theory disconnected from physical observation. Of course, Icarium would argue that one should not always test theory solely on the basis of pragmatic observation. Sometimes, he would say, theory needs to be interpreted more poetically, as metaphor, perhaps.'

'I have a metaphor for you, Mappo.'

'Oh?'

'A woman lies on the ground, brain addled, listening to a hairy Trell with tusks discussing possible interpretations of theory. What does this mean?'

'I don't know, but whatever it may be, I doubt it would qualify as a metaphor.'

'I'm sure you're right, since I don't even know what a metaphor is, truth be told.'


Cain

Quote'I doubt my Queen would take kindly to one of her court lieutenants shucking all this to wear turtle shells and dance naked under the moon.'

Spax smiled. 'Saw that, did you?' Gaedis nodded. 'It was a show, you understand. Don't you?'

'Warchief?'

'The Queen's clutch of scholars—we made something up to give them something to write about and then ponder its meaning for the rest of their dull, useless lives. Spirits below, a man's grapes get tiny in the cold night—why'd you think we kept jumping over the fire?'

Quote'It's what makes us so different from them,' observed Shelemasa. 'We don't invent useless things, or make up needs that don't exist. If civilization—as they call it—has a true definition, then that must be it. Don't you think, Mahib?'

The ancient honorific for a pregnant woman pleased Hanavat. Though these two were young, they remembered the old ways and all the respect those ways accorded people.

'You may be right in that, Shelemasa. But I wonder, perhaps it's not the objects that so define a civilization—perhaps it's the attitudes that give rise to them, and to the strangely overwrought value attached to them. The privilege of making useless things is the important thing, since it implies wealth and abundance, leisure and all the rest.'

QuoteSechul Lath was the arbiter of all they sought. 'Save me.' 'Save us.' 'Make us rich.' 'Make us fruitful.' The gods never even heard such supplications from their followers. The need, the desire, snared each prayer, spun them swirling into Sechul's domain. He could open himself, even now, to the cries of mortals beyond counting, each and every one begging for an instant of his time, his regard. His blessing.

But he'd stopped listening long ago. He'd spawned the Twins and left them to inherit the pathetic game. How could one not grow weary of that litany of prayers? Each and every desire, so heartfelt, invariably reduced to a knot of sordidness. To gain for oneself, someone else must lose. Joy was purchased in reams of sorrow. Triumphs stood tall on heaps of bones. Save my child? Another must die. Balance! All must balance! Can existence be any crueller than that? Can justice be any emptier? To bless you with chance, I must curse another with mischance. To this law even the gods must bow. Creation, destruction, life, death—no, I am done with it! Done with it all!

QuoteA city of stone, built upward instead of outward—what was the point of that? Well. Self defence. But we've already seen how that didn't work. And what if some lower section caught fire? There'd be no escape for everyone trapped above. No, these were the constructs of idiots, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

What's wrong with a hut? A hooped tent of hides—you can pick it up and carry it anywhere you want to go. Leaving nothing behind. Rest lightly on the soil—so the elders always said. But why did they say that? Because it made running away easier. Until we ran out of places to run.

If we'd built cities, just like the Letherii, why, they would have had to respect us and our claim to the lands we lived on. We would have had rights. But with those huts, with all that resting lightly, they never had to take us seriously, and that made killing us all that much easier.

Quote'Great One, we are abject. We grovel in servitude—'

The other cut in, 'Does she believe all that? Keep trying!'

'Be quiet, Telorast! How can I concentrate on lying with you barging in all the time! Now shhh! Oh, never mind, it's too late—look at them, they can both hear us. You, especially.'

The creature named Telorast had crept closer to Olar Ethil, almost on all fours. 'Servitude! As my sister said. Not a real lie. Just a... a... a temporary truth! Allegiance of convenience, so long as it's convenient. What could be more honest?'

Olar Ethil grunted and then said, 'I have no need of allies among the Eleint.'

'Not true!' cried Telorast.

'Calm down,' hissed the other one. 'This is called bargaining. She says we're useless. We say we don't really need her help. She says—well, something. Let's wait to hear what she says, and then we say something back. Eventually, we strike a deal. You see? It's simple.'

'I can't think!' complained Telorast. 'I'm too terrified! Curdle, take over—before my bones fall apart!'

The one named Curdle snapped its head back and forth, as if seeking somewhere to hide.

'You don't fool me,' said Olar Ethil. 'You two almost won the Throne of Shadow. You killed a dozen of your kin to get there. Who stopped you? Was it Anomander Rake? Edgewalker? Kilmandaros?' At each name the two skeletons cringed.

'What is it you seek now?' the bonecaster asked.

'Power,' said Telorast.

'Wealth,' said Curdle.

'Survival,' said Telorast.

Curdle nodded, head bobbing. 'Terrible times. Things will die.'

'Lots of things,' added Telorast. 'But it will be safe in your shadow, Great One.'

'Yes,' said Curdle. 'Safe!'

'In turn, we will guard your back.'

'Yes! That's it exactly!'

'Until,' said Olar Ethil, 'you find it expedient to betray me. You see my dilemma. You guard my back from other threats, but who will guard my back from you two?'

'Curdle can't be trusted,' said Telorast. 'I'll protect you from her, I swear it!'

'As will I from my sister!' Curdle spun to face Telorast and snapped her tiny jaws. Clack clack clack! Telorast hissed in reply.

Olar Ethil turned to Torrent. 'Eleint,' she said.

Eleint? Dragons? These two? 'I always imagined they'd be bigger.'

QuoteBlistig needed to be pushed aside. He could think of a number of officers sharp enough to take on the role of Fist. Faradan Sort, Raband, Ruthan Gudd. Kindly. Kindly, now there's an idea. Has seniority. Instils a healthy dose of terror in his soldiers. Brilliantly unreasonable.

Quote'Wait,' said Quick Ben. 'Who said anything about T'lan Imass?'

'I did,' Bottle replied. 'You were the one talking about winged K'Chain Che'Malle.'

Fiddler snorted. 'No doubt the Adjunct will talk to us about the fucking Forkrul Assail. Who's left? Oh, the Jaghut—'

'Still days away—' said Bottle and Quick Ben in unison, and then glared at each other.

Fiddler's face reddened. 'You bastards,' he hissed under his breath.

Quote'It concerns a squad in one of my companies, Blistig. Do me a favour, ride the fuck back to your Legion and get them in order. If new commands are going to come down, leave it to the Adjunct's staff. If she wanted you she'd have invited you.'

The man's face darkened. 'You've turned into a real shit, Keneb. Don't settle in Letheras—the city ain't big enough for both of us.'

'Go away, Blistig.'

'Once we're disbanded, I'm coming looking for you, Keneb.'

'The day that happens, Blistig, you won't make it out of your Legion's camp. They'll cut you down not two steps from your tent.'

QuoteHe'd been thinking about Leoman lately. No real reason, as far as he could tell, except maybe it was the way Leoman had managed to lead soldiers, turn them into fanatical followers, in fact. He'd once believed that was a gift, a talent. But now he was no longer so sure. In some ways, that gift was the kind that made a man dangerous. Being a follower was risky. Especially when the truth showed up, that truth being that the one doing the leading didn't really care a whit for any of them. Leoman and people like him collected fanatics the way a rich merchant collected coins, and then he spent them without a moment's thought. No, the Adjunct was better, no matter what everyone said. They talked as if they wanted a Leoman, but Corabb knew how that was. They didn't. If they got a Leoman, every one of them would end up getting killed. He believed the Adjunct cared about them, maybe even too much. But between the two, he'd stay with her every time.

Quote'Scam,' said Drawfirst. 'Lookback, we all been taken.'

'What's new about that? Marines never play fair—'

'They just play to win,' Drawfirst finished, scowling at the old Bridgeburner adage.

QuoteStormy's eyes flashed. 'What did I tell you, Gesler! My dreams! I saw—'

'What you said you saw made no sense. Still doesn't! The point is, this woman here calls herself the Destriant to the K'Chain Che'Malle, and if that's not dumb enough, she's calling me the Mortal Sword and you the Shield Anvil.'

Stormy flinched, hands up covering his face. He spoke behind his palms. 'Where's my sword? Where's my boots? Where the fuck is breakfast?'

'Didn't you hear me?'

'I heard you, Gesler. Dreams. It was those damned scaled rats. Every time I saw one on the trail I got the shivers.'

'Rats ain't K'Chain Che'Malle. You know, if you had even half a brain maybe you could've figured out your dreams, and maybe we wouldn't be in this mess!'

Stormy dropped his hands, swung his shaggy head to regard Kalyth. 'Look at her,' he muttered.

'What about her?'

'Reminds me of my mother.'

Gesler's hands twitched, closed into fists. 'Don't even think it, Stormy.'

'Can't help it. She does—'

'No, she doesn't. Your mother had red hair—'

'Not the point. Around her eyes, see it? You should know, Ges, you went and bedded her enough times—'

'That was an accident—'

'A what?'

'I mean, how did I know she went around seducing your friends?'

'She didn't. Just you.'

'But you said—'

'So I lied! I was just trying to make you feel better! No, fuck that, I was trying to make you feel that you're nobody important—your head's swelled up bad enough as it is. Anyway, it don't matter any more, does it? Forget it. I forgave you, remember—'

'You were drunk and we'd just trashed an alley trying to kill each other—'

'Then I forgave you. Forget it, I said.'

'I wish I could! Now you go and say this one looks like—'

'But she does!'

'I know she does! Now just shut the fuck up! We ain't—we ain't—'

'Yes, we are. You know it, Ges. You don't like it, but you know it. We been cut loose. We got us a destiny. Right here. Right now. She's Destriant and you're Shield Anvil and I'm Mortal Sword—'

'Wrong way round,' Gesler snarled. 'I'm the Mortal Sword—'

'Good. Glad we got that settled. Now get her to cook us something—'

'Oh, is that what Destriants do, then? Cook for us?'

'I'm hungry and I got no food!'

'Then ask her. Politely.'

Cain

Book Ten, The Crippled God

QuoteThe voice of K'rul, Elder God of the Warrens, drifted out from within his hood. 'If all existence is a dialogue, how is it there is still so much left unsaid?'

Mael scratched the stubble on his jaw. 'Me with mine, you with yours, him with his, and yet still we fail to convince the world of its inherent absurdity.'

Quote'Mael, do they truly have a chance?'

He looked down at K'rul. 'The Malazan Empire conjured them out of nothing. Dassem's First Sword, the Bridgeburners, and now the Bonehunters. What can I tell you? It is as if they were born of another age, a golden age lost to the past, and the thing of it is: they don't even know it. Perhaps that is why she wishes them to remain unwitnessed in all that they do.'

'What do you mean?'

'She doesn't want the rest of the world to be reminded of what they once were.'

Quote'Not even you can breach the power surrounding this keep,' the god said. 'You have blinded yourself. Open your gate again, Ganoes Paran, find somewhere else to lodge your army. This is pointless.' He flung the web away and gestured with the head of his cane. 'You cannot defeat those two, we both know that.'

'But they don't, do they?'

Quote'So what brought the Adjudicators to the place,' Gesler wondered, 'if it was already suffering?'

'Weakness,' said Stormy. 'Take any starving land, and you'll find a fat king. Nobody'd weep at that slaughter in the throne room. Priests blathering on about justice. Must have sounded sweet, at least to start with.'

QuoteSo many lusted after power. It was the crushing step of history, in every civilization that had ever existed. Gu'Rull had no taste for it. Better that more of his kind existed, behind every throne, to cut the throat at the first hint of mad ambition. Enough heads rolling down the ages and perhaps the lesson would finally be learned, though he doubted it.

The assassin must never die. The shadows must ever remain. We hold the world in check. We are the arbiters of reason. It is our duty, our purpose. I have seen them. I have seen what they can do, and the joy in their eyes at the devastation they can unleash. But their throats are soft. If I must, I will rid the world of them.

The power was sickly, a swathe of something vile. It leaked from their indifferent minds and fouled the sweet scents of his kin – their joy at victory, their gratitude to the Mortal Sword and the Shield Anvil, their love for Kalyth, the Destriant of the K'Chain Che'Malle. Their faith in a new future. But these children. They need to die. Soon.

Quote'Get the Matron to order that assassin down here.'

'I will.'

'When?'

'When I feel like it.'

Stormy's face reddened. 'You're still a Hood-shitting sergeant, you know that? Mortal Sword? Mortal Bunghole is more like it! Gods, to think I been taking orders from you for how long?'

'Well, who's a better Shield Anvil than a man with an anvil for a head?'

Stormy grunted, and then said, 'I'm hungry.'

'Aye,' said Gesler. 'Let's go and eat.' They set out for the feeding area.

'Do you remember, when we were young – too young? That cliff—'

'Don't go on about that damned cliff, Stormy. I still get nightmares about it.'

'It's guilt you're feeling.' Gesler

halted. 'Guilt? You damned fool. I saved your life up there!'

'After nearly killing me! If that rock coming down had hit me in the head—'

'But it didn't, did it? No, just your shoulder. A tap, a bit of dust, and then I—'

'The point is,' Stormy interrupted, 'we did stupid things back then. We should've learned, only it's turning out we never learned a damned thing.'

'That's not the problem,' Gesler retorted. 'We got busted down all those times for good reason. We can't handle responsibilities, that's our problem. We start bickering – you start thinking and that's as bad as bad can get. Stop thinking, Stormy, and that's an order.'

'You can't order me, I'm the Shield Anvil, and if I want to think, that's damn well what I'll do.'

Gesler set out again. 'Be sure to let me know when you start. In the meantime, stop moaning about everything. It's tiresome.'

Quote'Something hides. It's all around us, subtle as smoke. It has manifested only once thus far, and that was at the battle, among the Malazans – at the place where the Adjunct fell unconscious. There is a hidden hand in all of this, Brys, and I don't trust it.'

'Where the Adjunct fell? But Aranict, what happened there saved Tavore's life, and quite possibly the lives of the rest of the Bonehunters. The Nah'ruk reeled from that place.'

'Yet still I fear it,' she insisted, plucking out another rustleaf stick. 'Allies should show themselves.' She drew out the small silver box containing the resin sparker. The night wind defeated her efforts to scrape a flame to life, so she stepped close against Brys and tried again.

'Allies,' he said, 'have their own enemies. Showing themselves imposes a risk, I imagine.'

QuoteSkanarow looked away guiltily, but Sort's eyes hardened to flint. 'Your own soldiers are close to mutiny, Kindly – I can't believe you ordered—'

'A kit inspection? Why not? Forced them all to scrape the shit out of their breeches, a bit of tidying that was long overdue.'

Faradan Sort was studying him. 'It's not an act, is it?'

'Some advice,' Kindly said. 'The keep is on fire, the black stomach plague is killing the kitchen staff, the rats won't eat your supper and hearing the circus is in the yard your wife has oiled the hinges on the bedroom door. So I walk in and blister your ear about your scuffy boots. When I leave, what are you thinking about?'

Skanarow answered. 'I'm thinking up inventive ways to kill you, sir.'

Kindly adjusted his weapon belt. 'The sun has cracked the sky, my dears. Time for my constitutional morning walk.'

'Want a few bodyguards, sir?'

'Generous offer, Captain, but I will be fine.'

QuoteWatching him walk off, Faradan Sort sighed and rubbed at her face. 'All right,' she muttered, 'the bastard has a point.'

'That's why he's a bastard, sir.'

Sort glanced over. 'Are you impugning a Fist's reputation, Captain?'

Skanarow straightened. 'Absolutely not, Fist. I was stating a fact. Fist Kindly is a bastard, sir. He was one when he was captain, lieutenant, corporal, and seven-year-old bully. Sir.'

QuoteBerrach was frowning. 'Do we not honour their memories, sir?'

Hedge bared his teeth in anything but a smile. 'Honour whoever you want in your spare time, Captain, only you ain't got any spare time any more, because you're now a Bridgeburner, and us Bridgeburners honour only one thing.'

'And that is, sir?'

'Killing the enemy, Captain.'

QuoteWhat do you think makes criminals in the first place?'

'Stupidity and greed.'

'Besides those? I'll tell you. It's looking around, real carefully. It's seeing what's really there, and who wins every time, and it's deciding that despair tastes like shit. It's deciding to do whatever it takes to sneak through, to win what you can for yourself. It's also condemning your fellow humans to whatever misery finds them – even if that misery is by your own hand. To hurt another human being is to announce your hatred of humanity – but mostly your thinking is about hating back what already hates you. A thief steals telling herself she's evening out crooked scales. That's how we sleep at night, y'see.'

QuoteBut there was betrayal, long ago. How could the Liosan forget? How could they set it aside? Judgement, the coarse, thorn-studded brambles of retribution, they could snag an entire people, and as the blood streamed down each body was lifted higher, lifted from the ground. The vicious snare carried them into the righteous sky. Reason could not reach that high, and in the heavens madness spun untamed.

QuoteChance is a miserable bitch, a hard bastard. It shows a smile, but it is a wolf's smile. What is learned? Only that every ambition must kneel to that which cannot be anticipated. And you can duck and dodge for only so long. It'll take you down in the end. A man slips the noose. A civilization steps from the path of its own hubris. Once. Twice. Thrice even. But what of the twentieth time? The fiftieth? Triumph falters. It always does. There was never a balance.

Quote'Mortal Sword, do not think I do not love my brothers and sisters. Do not think I would stand here and lie. I am the Shield Anvil, and for all Run'Thurvian's doubts – for all your doubts, Krughava – I hold to my duty. We are divided, yes. But what divides us is so fundamental that to put it into words could strike one as absurd. Upon the side of the Adjunct, we are offered a place among mortals, among humans – flawed, weak, uncertain in their cause. Upon the other side, our covenant of faith. The Wolves of Winter, the Wolves of War. The Lord and the Lady of the Beast Hold. And in this faith we choose to stand alongside the beasts. We avow our swords in the name of their freedom, their right to live, to share this and every other world.

The question – so absurd – is this: are we to be human, or are we to be humanity's slayers? And if the latter, then what will come of us should we win? Should we somehow lead a rebellion of the wilds, and so destroy every last human on this world? Must we then fall upon our own swords?'

He paused then, suddenly drained, and met Krughava's eyes. 'Run'Thurvian was right. There will be betrayal. In fact, in choosing one side, we cannot but betray the other. Mortal Sword, you set your sword down before the Adjunct. But long before that moment you pledged that selfsame weapon in the name of our gods. No matter how strong the sword's forging,' he said, 'no weapon can long withstand contrary pressures. It weakens. It shatters. No weapon has ever bridged a divide, and once drawn, a sword can only cut. For all the virtues of iron, Mortal Sword, we are flesh and blood. What awaits us, Krughava? Which path shall you lead us upon? Shall it be to your personal glory, there at the Adjunct's side? Or shall it be in the name of the gods we are sworn to serve?'

Quote'Write the following: "Private missive, from Lieutenant Master-Sergeant Field Quartermaster Pores, to Fist Kindly. Warmest salutations and congratulations on your promotion, sir. As one might observe from your advancement and, indeed, mine, cream doth rise, etc. In as much as I am ever delighted in corresponding with you, discussing all manner of subjects in all possible idioms, alas, this subject is rather more official in nature. In short, we are faced with a crisis of the highest order. Accordingly, I humbly seek your advice and would suggest we arrange a most private meeting at the earliest convenience. Yours affectionately, Pores." Got that, Himble?'

'Yes sir.'

'Please read it back to me.'

Himble cleared his throat, squinted at the tablet. '"Pores to Kindly meet in secret when?"'

'Excellent. Dispatch that at once.'

Quote'How stands the rank and file, soldier?'

'Standin' true, Fist.' 'Do the enlisted say much about the Adjunct, soldier? Off the record here.'

The watery eyes flicked momentarily to her, then away again.

'Occasionally, sir.'

'And what do they say?'

'Not much, sir. Mostly, it's all them rumours.'

'You discuss them.' 'No sir. We chew 'em up till there's nothing left. And then invent new ones, sir.'

'To sow dissension?'

Brows lifted beneath the rim of the helm. 'No, Fist. It's ... er ... entertainment. Beats boredom, sir. Boredom leads to laziness, sir, and laziness can get a soldier up and killt. Or the one beside 'im, which is e'en worse. We hate being bored, sir, that's all.'

Quote'Skulldeath.'

'What about him?'

'Why's he so girly, for one?'

'He's a prince, Sergeant. From some tribe in Seven Cities. He's the heir, in fact—'

'Then what in Hood's name is he doing here?'

She shrugged. 'They sent him to grow up somewhere else. With us. T'see the world and all that.'

Gaunt-Eye bared crooked teeth. 'Bet he's regretting that.'

'No reason why,' Flashwit said. 'Not yet, anyway.'

'So, he grew up all pampered and perfumed, then.'

'I suppose.'

'So how did he get that stupid name?'

Flashwit squinted at the sergeant. 'Beggin' yer pardon, Sergeant, but where was you and your squad? Back at the Trench, I mean.'

He shot her a vicious look. 'What difference does that make?'

'Well, you couldn't have not seen him then. Skulldeath. He jumps high, y'see. He was the only one of us cutting Nah'ruk throats, right? Jumps high, like I said. See those eight notches on his left wrist?'

'Those burns?'

'Aye. One for each Nah'ruk he personally throat-cut.'

Gaunt-Eye snorted. 'A liar, too, then. About what I figured.'

'But he never counted, Sergeant. Never does. Eight is what we saw him do, those who saw him at all, I mean. We talked about it, comparing and all that. Eight. So we told him and he burned those marks on his wrist. When we asked him how many he gutted, he said he didn't know. When we asked him how many he hamstrung, he didn't know that either. The rest of us couldn't come up with numbers on those. Lot more than eight, though. But since we seen him burn himself, we decided not to tell him how many. He'd be one big burn now, right? And since he's so pretty, well, that'd be a shame.'

QuoteThey were stacking Liosan corpses, making a wall across the breach. The contempt of that gesture was as calculated as everything else Yedan did. Rage is the enemy. Beware that, Liosan. He will make your rage your downfall, if he can. You cannot make my brother angry. He's not like you. He's not like any of us. And his army will follow his lead. They will look to him and take inside what he gives. It's cold. Lifeless. They'll take it in and it will change them all.

Quote'Captain, the Liosan are no different. Helmed and armed doesn't make an army. They are conscripts – I could see as much the first time.' He chewed on the thought and then added, 'Soft.'

'You saying they don't want any of this?'

'Like us,' he replied, 'they have no choice. We're in a war that began long ago, and it has never ended, Captain.'

'Pithy says they look no different from the Tiste Andii, barring their snowy skin.' He shrugged.

'Why should that matter? It's all down to disagreeing about how things should be.'

'We can't win, can we?' He glanced at her.

'Among mortals, every victory is temporary. In the end, we all lose.' She spat on to the white sand.

'You ain't cheering me at all, sir. If we ain't got no hope of winning against 'em, what's the point?'

'Ever won a scrap, Captain? Ever stood over the corpses of your enemy? No? When you do, come find me. Come tell me how sweet victory tastes.' He lifted the sword and pointed down to the breach. 'You can win even when you lose. Because, even in losing, you might still succeed in making your point. In saying that you refuse the way they want it.'

'Well now, that makes me feel better.'

'I can't do the rousing speeches, Captain.'

'I noticed.'

Quote'The Empty Hold is awake once more,' Aranict replied. 'It is the Hold of the Unseen, the realms of the mind. Perception, knowledge, illusion, delusion. Faith, despair, curiosity, fear. Its weapon is the false belief in chance, in random fate.'

Precious was shaking her head. 'Listen. Chance is real. You can't say it isn't. And mischance, too. You said your army got caught in a fight nobody was looking for – what was that?'

'I dread to think,' Aranict replied. 'But I assure you it was not blind chance. In any case, your vocabulary has improved dramatically. Your comprehension is sound—'

'So you can stop shoving stuff in, right?'

Aranict nodded. 'Drink. Rest now.'

'I have too many questions for that, Atri-Ceda. Why is the Hold empty?'

'Because it is home to all which cannot be possessed, cannot be owned. And so too is the throne within the Hold empty, left eternally vacant. Because the very nature of rule is itself an illusion, a conceit and the product of a grand conspiracy. To have a ruler one must choose to be ruled over, and that forces notions of inequity to the fore, until they become, well, formalized. Made central to education, made essential as a binding force in society, until everything exists to prop up those in power. The Empty Throne reminds us of all that. Well, some of us, anyway.'


Cain

QuotePrecious sat back on her haunches. 'I am from One-Eye Cat, a city of Genabackis. We were conquered by the Malazans. Winning is all that matters to them, Atri-Ceda. They will lie. They will backstab. Whatever you see on the surface, don't believe it. Don't. With them, nothing is as it seems, not ever.'

'They are a complicated people—'

Precious snorted. 'Their first emperor was where it all started. The sleight of hand, the deadly misdirection – everything the Malazan Empire became infamous for started with him. And though he's now dead and gone, nothing has changed. Tell your commander, Aranict. Tell him. The Malazans – they'll betray you. They'll betray you.'

Quote'What do your shamans tell you, Spax, about your Barghast gods?'

He blinked. 'Why, nothing, Firehair. Why should they? I'm the Warchief. I deal in matters of war. All that other rubbish is for them to worry over.'

'And are they?'

'Are they what?'

'Worried.'

'They're warlocks, they're always worried.'

'Spax.' He grimaced.

'The Barghast gods are idiots. Like sixteen children locked in a small room. For days. They'll start eating each other next.'

'So there are sixteen of them?'

'What? No. That was a just a number I threw out – spirits below, Firehair, you keep taking me literally – I'm Spax, remember? I make things up, to entertain myself. You want me to talk about my gods? Well, they're worse than me. They probably made themselves up.'

'What do your shamans say?'

Spax scowled. 'I don't care what they say!'

'Is it that bad?'

He shrugged. 'Could be our gods suddenly get smart. Could be they realize that their best chance of surviving what's to come is to keep their heads down. Could be they can cure the world's ills with one sweet kiss, too.' He held up his knives. 'But I ain't holding my breath.'

Quote'I have had visions of the future, and each and every one of them ends up in the same place. Don't ask me what it means. I already know. That's the problem with visions of the future.' Emperor Kellanved

QuoteWhen the wound was breached, the Eleint would enter this world. There was no hope of stopping them. T'iam could not be denied, not with what was coming. The only unknown, to her mind, was the Crippled God. The Forkrul Assail were simple enough, as bound to the insanity of final arguments as were the Tiste Liosan. Kin in spirit, those two. And she believed she knew what her brother intended to do, and she would leave him to it, and if her blessing meant anything, well then he had it, with all her heart. No, the Crippled God was the only force that troubled her. She remembered the earth's pain when he was brought down from the sky. She remembered his fury and his agony when first he was chained. But the gods were hardly done with him. They returned again and again, crushing him down, destroying his every attempt to find a place for himself. If he cried out for justice, no one was interested in listening. If he howled in wretched suffering, they but turned away. But the Crippled God was not alone in that neglect. The mortal realm was crowded with those who were just as wounded, just as broken, just as forgotten. In this way, all that he had become – his very place in the pantheon – had been forged by the gods themselves. And now they feared him. Now, they meant to kill him. 'Because the gods will not answer mortal suffering. It is too much ... work.'

Quote'Ryadd Eleis, there is a kind of fish, living in rivers, that when in small numbers – two or perhaps three – is peaceful enough. But when the school grows, when a certain threshold is reached, these fish go mad. They tear things apart. They can devour the life in a river for a league's length, and only when their bellies start bursting do they finally scatter.'

'What has that to do with anything?' Ryadd turned to glare at Silchas Ruin.

The Tiste Andii sighed. 'When the gate of Starvald Demelain opens, the Eleint will come through in vast numbers. Most will be young, by themselves little threat, but among them there will be the last of the Ancients. Leviathans of appalling power – but they are incomplete. They will arrive hunting their kin. Ryadd, if you and I had remained, seeking to oppose the opening of that gate, we would lose our minds. We would in mindless desire join the Storm of the Eleint. We would follow the Ancients – have you never wondered why, in all the realms but Starvald Demelain itself, one will never find more than five or six dragons in one place? Even that many demands the mastery of at least one Ancient. Indeed, to be safe, Eleint tend to travel in threes.' Silchas Ruin walked up to stand beside Ryadd, and stared out at the vista. 'We are the blood of chaos, Ryadd Eleis, and when too many of us gather in one place, the blood boils.'

QuoteThe simple act of setting eyes upon a T'lan Imass depressed Ruthan Gudd. There was shame in making the wrong choice – only a fool would deny that. And just as one had to live with the choice, so too was one forced to live with the shame. Well, perhaps live wasn't the right word, not with the T'lan Imass. Poor fools. Make yourselves the servants of war. Surrender everything else. Bury your memories. Pretend that the choice was a noble one, and that this wretched existence is good enough. Since when did vengeance answer anything? Anything of worth? I know all about punishment. Retribution. Wish I didn't but I do. It all comes down to eliminating that which offends. As if one could empty the world of bastards, or scour it clean of evil acts. Well, that would be nice. Too bad it never works. And all that satisfaction, well, it proves short-lived. Tasting like ... dust. No poet could find a more powerful symbol of futility than the T'lan Imass. Futility and obstinate stupidity. In war you need something to fight for. But you took that away, didn't you? All that you fought to preserve had ceased to exist. You condemned your entire world to oblivion, extinction. Leaving what? What shining purpose to drive you on and on? Oh yes, I remember now. Vengeance.

QuotePores scratched something on his wax ledger, read over what he'd written and then nodded. 'The real mutiny is brewing with the haul teams. That food is killing us. Sure, chewing on dried meat works up some juices, but it's like swallowing a bhederin cow's afterbirth after it's been ten days in the sun.'

Faradan Sort made a choking sound. 'Wall's foot, Pores, couldn't you paint a nicer picture?'

Pores raised his eyebrows. 'But Fist, I worked on that one all day.'

QuoteIf Kadagar Fant stood alone at the end of all this; if he sat in the gloom of an empty throne room in an empty palace, in an empty city, he would still count it a triumph. Winning Kharkanas was meaningless; what mattered to the Lord of Light was the absolute annihilation of those who opposed him. On both sides of the breach.

Quote'There is little time left! Gruntle, do not challenge this!'

She lifted her arms out to the sides. 'Look at me! I am Kilava Onass, a Bonecaster of the Imass. I defied the Ritual of Tellann, and my power beggars that of your human gods. What will occur here not even I can prevent – do you understand me? It is ... necessary ...' He had expected such words, but still his hackles rose. It's what we always hear, isn't it? From generals and warlords and miserable tyrants. Justifying yet another nightmare epoch of slaughter. Of suffering, misery and despair. And what do we all do? We duck down and weather it. We tell ourselves that this is how it must be – I stood on the roof of a building, and all around me people were dying. And by my hand – gods! That building wept blood! For what? They all died – the whole fucking city – all those people – they just died anyway! I told Trake he chose wrongly. I was never a soldier – I despise war. I detest all the sordid lies about glory and honour – you, Kilava, if you have lived as long as you say you have, if Trake is your get, then you have seen a child of yours kneel to war – as if war itself was a damned god! But still, you want him to live – you want your child-god, your First fucking Hero, to go on, and on. Wars without end. And the sword shall swing down and they shall fall – for ever more!

'Gruntle, why are you here?' He advanced, feeling the blood within him rise to a boil.

Haven't you guessed? I'm going to fight. I'm going to bring your son down – here and now. I'm going to kill the bastard. An end to the god of slaughter, of horror, of rape— Kilava howled in sudden rage, vanished inside a blur of darkness. Veered into a panther as huge as Gruntle himself, she coiled to spring. In his mind, he saw a single, quick nod. Yes. Baring his fangs, Gruntle lunged to meet her.

Quote'How would the Bridgeburners have handled this, sir? Back in the day?'

'Simple. Sniff out the yappers and kill 'em. It's the ones who can't stop bitching, talking it up, egging on the stupider ones to do something stupid. Hoping it all busts out. Me' – he nodded to the column walking beside them – 'I'd jump Blistig and drag him off into the desert – and for a whole damned day nobody'd be sleeping, 'cause of all the screaming.'

'No wonder you all got outlawed,' Bavedict muttered.

Quote'No spiders,' said Hellian, settling her head back on the bedroll. 'This is the best there is. This desert, it's paradise. Let the flies and capemoths take my corpse. Even those damned meat-eating locusts. You won't find a spider making a nest in my skull's eye sockets – what could be better than that?'

'What got you so scared of 'em, Sergeant?'

She thought about that. But then her mind wandered away, and she saw heaps of skulls, all of them smiling. And why not? Oh, yes, no spiders. 'My father tells a story, especially when he's drunk. He thinks it's damned funny, that story. Oh, wait, is that my father? Could be my uncle. Or even my stepfather. Might even be my brother's father, who lives down the lane. Anyway, it was a story and how he laughed. You got to know Kartool, Maybe. Spiders big enough to eat gulls, right?'

'Been there once, aye, Sergeant. Creepy place.'

'The redbacks are the worst. Not big, not much poisonous by themselves. One at a time, I mean. Thing is, when they hatch, there's thousands, and they stick together for days, so they can kill big prey and all of them feed on it, right? And the egg-sacs, why, they can be hidden anywhere. 'So, I was maybe two. Spent all day in a crib, every day, since my mother had another baby on the way only she kept getting fevers and eventually she went and lost it, which was stupid, since we had a good healer down the street, but Father drank up all the coin he made. Anyway. I had this doll—'

'Oh gods, Sergeant—'

'Aye, they came out of its head. Ate right through the stuffing, and then out through the eyes and the mouth and everywhere else. And there I was: food. It was my half-brother who came in and found me. My head was swollen to twice its size – couldn't even see my eyes – and I was choking. Counted two hundred bites, maybe more, since they were mostly in my hair. Now, as far as prey goes, I was too big even for a thousand redback babies. But they tried damned hard.'

'And that story made him laugh? What kind of fucked-up—'

'Watch it, that's my father you're talking about there. Or uncle, or stepfather, or the guy down the lane.'

'Now I see it, Sergeant,' said Touchy. 'It's all right. I see it. That'd scar anyone for life.'

'The story ain't finished, Corporal. I ain't got to the whole point of it. Y'see, I was eating them damned spiders. Eating 'em like candy. They said my belly was more swollen than my head, and that's why I was choking so bad – they were biting me all the way down. So they brought in the healer, and she conjured up big chunks of ice. Into my mouth. Back of the throat. And all around my neck, too. Story goes that I had a stroke, from all that ice. Killed the part of my brain that knows when it's time to stop.'

She stared up at the brightening sky. 'They say I stole my first jug from my father's stash when I was six. Got so drunk they needed to bring the healer back a second time. And that's when she scried me inside and said I was in for a life of trouble.' A hand brushed her upper arm.

'That's a heartbreaking tale, Sergeant.'

'Is it?' I suppose it is. Of course, I just made it up. Tug those heartstrings, see all that sweet sympathy in their sweet little faces. They'll forgive me anything now. Why do I hate spiders? Gods, who doesn't? What a stupid question.


Cain

Quote'Well, it sounds as if you feel a need to justify killing us, and while you have pity for the lesser beasts of this world, your definition of "lesser beasts" does not include humans. Yet, ironically, your justification is predicated on the very same notion of arrogant superiority that you found so reprehensible in the Kolanse royal family. The beast that knows no better can be slain with impunity. Of course, there is no logic to that notion at all, is there?'

Sister Belie sighed. 'That was most enjoyable. Now I need you to take your own life, so that we may end this pointless battle. I would like to be able to tell you that your army will be well treated, and so on. But the truth is, I will command them – just as I command the Shriven. And with the power of my voice I will set them against my enemies, whoever they may be, and they will fight without fear. They will fight with a ferocity the like of which has never been seen among your kind, because I intend to use them, the way you use horses, or war dogs. In other words, like well-trained beasts.'

'What a depressing notion, Forkrul Assail. Those pathetic needs I talked about? They all come down to power. The king killed those animals because he had the power to do so, and expressing that power made him feel good. But it never lasts long, so out he goes to kill some more. I find it pathetic. And all that you have just said to me here, well, it's really the same old shit. By your voice and the sorcery of Akhrast Korvalain you will seek to fill that void in your soul, the void that is the hunger for control, when the bitter truth is, you really control nothing, and the universe is destined to swallow you up just as it does everything else.'

'You do not believe in the power to do good? To do what is right?'

'The Hold of the Beasts wants vengeance. It wants to redress the balance of slaughter. Messy as that would be, at least I see the logic of it. But I fear it's too late. Their age is past, for now.'

'We will prove the lie of your words, human.'

'No, you won't. Because, Forkrul Assail, you are going to fail, and in failing you fail your allies as well, and for them the misery simply goes on and on. The only end to the tragedy of the beasts will come at the hands of humans – and to the Wolves I would advise patience. They need do nothing more, because we humans will destroy ourselves. It may take a while, because there's lots of us, but we'll do it in the end, because we are nothing if not thorough. As for you and your kind – you're not even relevant.'

Quote'The sheer scale of contingencies ... well, for all his peculiarities, let no one accuse Shadowthrone of failings in the matter of intelligence. The same can be said for Cotillion, for the patron of assassins well comprehended that just as certain individuals deserve a knife through the heart, so too do certain ... ideas.'

QuoteThose dark eyes fixed on Faint's. 'What do you know of the Forkrul Assail?'

'Not much,' she admitted. 'An ancient race – back in Darujhistan, where I come from, most people think of them as, well, mythical. Ruling in an age when justice prevailed over all the world. We've long since fallen from that age, of course, and much as people might bemoan our state no one wants it back, if you know what I mean.'

'Why not?'

'Because then we'd actually be taken to task for all the terrible stuff we do. Besides, being fallen excuses our worst traits. We're not what we once were, too bad, but that's just how it is.'

QuoteFaint frowned, and then shook her head. 'Then why fight the Forkrul Assail?'

'Because the Forkrul Assail have judged us – they came among my people, so this I know all too well. And in that judgement, they have decided that we must all die. Not just in Kolanse, not just on the Plains of Elan. But everywhere.'

'Given our history, that's not too surprising.'

'But, Faint of the Trygalle Trade Guild, the Forkrul Assail are in no position to judge. I have tasted the ancient flavours of the K'Chain Che'Malle, and it is as if that history was now my own. The Age of Justice – and the time of the Forkrul Assail – ended not at the hand of enemies, or foreign races, but at the hands of the Forkrul Assail themselves.'

'How?'

'They judged their own god, and found him wanting. And for his imperfections, they finally killed him.'

QuoteAnd the day Grunter got killed, well, he should've known better than trying to slide all the way under that wagon, and Corabb's kicking him in the head a few times had nothing to do with his tragic end. Nobody liked Grunter anyway, though Corabb probably shouldn't have used that for his defence at the trial.

Quote'Karsa Orlong, where are all the gods of peace?'

He stepped outside, straightening. 'I know not.'

Picker turned to face the city. Many troubles there. Perhaps at last they had begun to settle. But ... all that boiled beneath the surface, well, that never went away.

'Do you know how to get there?' He eyed her.

'I know how to get there.' She drew a deep breath – she could hear movement inside the hut behind the giant. Picker lifted her gaze until it locked with the Toblakai's. 'I call upon the vow you made long ago, Karsa Orlong of the Teblor. When you walk to where you must go, a crippled priest will find you. In the street, a broken man, a beggar, and he will speak to you. And by his words, you shall understand.'

'I already understand, Malazan.'

'Karsa—'

'There are too many gods of war.' And then he took up his sword, and inside the hut a woman began weeping. 'And not one of them understands the truth.'

'Karsa—'

His teeth were bared as he said, 'When it comes to war, woman, who needs gods?'

Quote'The Fallen God has forced their hand, Sister Reverence. We cannot determine precisely how, chained and weakened as he is, but I remain convinced that he is behind this gambit.'

'Perhaps that is as it should be,' she mused. 'After all, is not his creed the very antithesis of our own? The flawed, the helpless and the hopeless ... daring to stand before holy perfection. The weak of spirit against the indomitable of spirit, the broken against the complete. What astonishes me, Brother Diligence, is their audacity in thinking they could defeat us! Before they even arrive, why, by their very doubts and mutual mistrust, they are already lost.'

Diligence's gaunt face pinched into a faint smile. '"In a war between fanatics and sceptics, the fanatics win every time."' At her frown he shrugged. 'In the vaults of the palace, Sister, our archivists came upon some ancient Jaghut scrolls. Gothos' Folly. I have been acquainting myself with its peculiar perspective.'

She grimaced. 'Fanaticism, Brother Diligence, is the harbour of delusions. While to others we may appear no different from fanatics, we are. Fundamentally different, for our cause is a justice beyond our own selves, beyond even our kind. And for all that we Forkrul Assail can but aspire to true perfection, justice stands outside and its state of perfection cannot be questioned.' '"When wisdom drips blood fools stand triumphant."'

Reverence shot him a look. 'Have those scrolls burned, Brother Diligence. That is a command, not a request.'

QuoteAre you done with your moment of doubt?' Shadowthrone asked. 'Good. It ill-suited you. Listen, she's a woman, and that alone makes her the most terrifying force in all the realms.'

'Yes,' Cotillion said, 'I am well aware of your long-standing fear of the swaying sex.'

'I blame my mother.'

'Convenient.'

'I don't know which of us dreads more our visits.'

'She's still alive? Don't be ridiculous, Ammanas.'

'Listen, I wasn't always this old, you know. In any case, every time we end up in the same room I can see the disappointment in her eyes, and hear it in her voice. "Emperor? Oh, that empire. So now you're a god? Oh dear, not Shadow? Isn't it broken? Why did you have to pick a broken realm to rule? When your father was your age ..." Aagh, and on and on it goes! I've been on the run since I was nine years old, and is it any wonder?'

Quote'Children who can't be touched end up getting away with murder.'

'That's your last word to them? It doesn't make any sense, Shadowthrone.'

'But it does. The Elder Gods were like spoiled children, with no one to watch over them. The only nonsensical thing about them was that they weren't all killed off long ago. Just how much can any of us tolerate? That's the question, the only question, in fact.' He gestured with the cane. 'There's one man's answer.'

QuoteParan sighed. 'Togg and Fanderay. Now that complicates things.'

'Why should it complicate things?' Noto Boil demanded, withdrawing the fish spine from his mouth and studying its red tip. 'There's nothing complicated about any of this, right, High Fist? I mean, we're marching double-quick for who knows where but wherever it is it won't be pretty, and once we get there we're aiming to link forces with someone who might not even be there, to fight a war against an Elder race and their human slaves for no particular reason except that they're damned ugly. Complicated? Nonsense. Now Seven Cities ... that was complicated.'

'Are you done, Boil?'

'Noto Boil, sir, if you please. And yes, I am. For now.'

QuoteThey had drawn closer to the centre – to where the T'lan Imass still pushed forward, their tireless arms rising and descending. Never before had Gesler been so close to the ancient undead warriors in the midst of battle, witness to this devastating ... implacability. And the Emperor had almost twenty thousand of them at his command. He could have conquered the world. He could have delivered such slaughter as to break every kingdom, every empire in his path. But he barely used them at all. Kellanved – is it possible? Did even you quail at the carnage these creatures promised? Did you see for yourself how victory could destroy you, destroy the entire Malazan Empire? Gods below, I think you did. You took command of the T'lan Imass – to keep them off the field of battle, to keep them out of human wars. And now I see why.

Quote'Now, from what we are able to glean from Sister Reverence and Brother Diligence, at the Spire, two distinct elements have engaged us from the south. And we of course now march to block an incursion from the west. For all we know, a foreign fleet is even now entering Kolanse Bay.' He surveyed the expressions before him and slowly nodded. 'This was well planned, do you not agree? Its principal aim, to draw apart our active armies, has already succeeded. In each instance, we are forced to react rather than initiate.'

'A proficient high command, then,' said Sister Freedom, nodding.

But Aloft shook his head. 'In truth, this has the feel of a grand strategy, and just as your instincts speak with vehemence to you about the matter of the smaller force, Sister Freedom, so now my instincts have been shouting that this invasion – this strategy and each and every tactical engagement – is in fact the product of a single individual's will.'

Quote'I will kill you if you continue to stand in my way,' she said. 'I understand, Trell. You are his latest protector – but you lost him. All the ones before you – and there were many – they all lost him, eventually, and then they died.

'But none of you ever understood. The Nameless Ones weren't interested in Icarium. Each time, the one they chose – that one was the real danger. A warleader who threatened their hidden alliances. A rebel of terrible potential. Each time, for nothing more than squalid, immediate necessities – political expediency – they snatched away the maker of trouble, gave to him or her a task impossible to achieve, and a lifetime chained to it.'

QuoteAnd from the army still surrounding them, down on the lower ground, nothing more than a sullen mutter of sound – soldiers resting, checking weapons and armour. Readying for the next assault. The last assault. Twenty-odd soldiers cannot stop an army. Even these soldiers. Someone coughed nearby, from some huddle of stones, and then spoke. 'So, who are we fighting for again?' Fiddler could not place the voice.

Nor the one that replied, 'Everyone.'

A long pause, and then, 'No wonder we're losing.

QuoteShadowthrone thumped his cane on the ground. 'Among all the gods,' he said, 'who do you think now hates us the most?'

'The ones still alive, I should imagine.'

'We're not done with them either.'

Cotillion nodded towards the barrow. 'They were something, weren't they?'

'With them we won an empire.'

'I sometimes wonder if we should ever have given it up.'

'Bloody idealist. We needed to walk away. Sooner or later, no matter how much you put into what you've made, you have to turn and walk away.'

'Shall we, then?' And the two gods set out, fading shadows as the dawn began to awaken.

QuoteYou won't catch any fish ever.' And he waited, to gauge the effect of his words.

'Who said I was after fish?' the old man asked, offering up an exaggeratedly sly expression.

'What, crabs? Wrong pier. It's too deep here. It just goes down and down and for ever down!'

'Aye, and what's down there, at the very bottom? You ever hear that story?'

The boy was incredulous and more than a little offended. 'Do I look two years old? That demon, the old emperor's demon! But you can't fish for it!'

'Why not?'

'Well – well, your rod would break! Look at it!'

'Looks can be deceiving, lad. Remember that.'

The boy snorted. He was always getting advice. 'I won't be like you, old man. I'm going to be a soldier when I grow up. I'm going to leave this place. For ever. A soldier, fighting wars and getting rich and fighting and saving people and all that!'

The old man seemed about to say one thing, stopped, and instead said, 'Well, the world always needs more soldiers.' The boy counted this as a victory, the first of what he knew would be a lifetime of victories. When he was grown up. And famous.

'That demon bites and it'll eat you up. And even if you catch it and drag it up, how will you kill it? Nobody can kill it!'

'Never said anything about killing it,' the old man replied. 'Just been a while since we last talked.'