Fiddler cleared his throat. 'Looks like they were guarding this entrance. Whatever found them proved too much.'
'They are known on the Jhag Odhan,' Mappo said, 'as the Nameless Ones.'
Icarium's eyes hardened on the Trell.
'That cult,' Apsalar muttered, 'is supposed to be extinct.'
The others looked at her. She shrugged. 'Dancer's knowledge.'
Iskaral sputtered. 'Hood take their rotting souls! Presumptuous bastards one and all — how dare they make such claims?'
'What claims?' Fiddler growled.
The High Priest hugged himself. 'Nothing. Speak nothing of it, yes. Servants of the Azath — pah! Are we naught but pieces on a gameboard? My master scoured them from the Empire, yes. A task for the Talons, as Dancer will tell you. A necessary cleansing, a plucking of a thorn from the Emperor's side. Slaughter and desecration. Merciless. Too many vulnerable secrets — corridors of power — oh, how they resented my master's entry into Deadhouse-'
'Iskaral!' Apsalar snapped.
The priest ducked as if cuffed.
Icarium faced the young woman. 'Who voiced that warning? Through your mouth — who spoke?'
She fixed cool eyes on him. 'Possessing these memories enforces a responsibility, Icarium, just as possessing none exculpates.'
The Jhag flinched.
Crokus had edged forward. 'Apsalar?'
She smiled. 'Or Cotillion? No, it is just me, Crokus. I am afraid I have grown weary of all these suspicions. As if I have no self unstained by the god who once possessed me. I was but a girl when I was taken. A fisherman's daughter. But I am no mere girl any more.'
Her father's sigh was loud. 'Daughter,' he rumbled, 'we ain't none of us what we once were, and there ain't nothing simple in what we've gone through to get here.' He scowled, as if struggling for words. 'But you ordered the High Priest to shut up, to protect secrets that Dancer — Cotillion — would want kept that way. So Icarium's suspicions were natural enough.'
'Yes,' she countered, 'I am not a slave to what I was. I decide what to do with the knowledge I possess. I choose my own causes, Father.'
Icarium spoke. 'I stand chastised, Apsalar.' He faced Mappo again. 'What more do you know of these Nameless Ones, friend?'
Mappo hesitated, then said, 'Our tribe welcomed them as guests, but their visits were rare. I believe, however, that indeed they view themselves as servants of the Azath. If Trell legends hold any truth, then the cult may well date from the time of the First Empire-'
'They have been eradicated!' Iskaral shrieked.
'Within the borders of the Malazan Empire, perhaps,' Mappo conceded.
'My friend,' Icarium said, 'you are withholding truths. I would hear them.'
The Trell sighed. 'They have taken it upon themselves to recruit your guardians, Icarium, and have done so since the beginning.'
'Why?'
'That I do not know. Now that you ask it-' He frowned. 'An interesting question. Dedication to noble vows? Protection of the Azath?' Mappo shrugged.
'Hood's stubby ankles!' Rellock growled. 'Might be guilt, for all we know.'
All eyes swung to him.
After a long, silent moment, Fiddler shook himself. 'Come on, then. Into the maze.'
Arms and limbs. What clawed at the binding roots, what stretched and twisted in a hopeless effort to pull free, what reached out in supplication, in silent appeal and in deadly offer from all sides, was an array of imprisoned life, and few among those horridly animate projections were human in origin.
Fiddler's imagination failed his compulsive desire to fashion likely bodies, heads and faces to such limbs, even as he knew that the reality of what lay hidden within the woven walls would pale his worst nightmares.
Tremorlor's gnarled gaol of roots held demons, ancient Ascendants and such a host of alien creatures that the sapper was left trembling in the realization of his insignificance and that of all his kind. Humans were but one tiny, frail leaf on a tree too massive even to comprehend. The shock of that unmanned him, mocking his audacity with an endless echo of ages and realms trapped within this mad, riotous prison.
They could hear battles raging on all sides, thus far mercifully in other branches of the tortured maze. The Azath was being assailed from all fronts. The sound of snapping, shattering wood cracked through the air. Bestial screams rent the iron-smeared air above them, voices lost from the throats that released them, voices the only thing that could escape this terrifying war.
The crossbow's stock was slick with sweat in Fiddler's hands as he edged forward, keeping to the centre of the path, beyond the reach of those grasping, unhuman hands. A sharp bend lay just ahead. The sapper crouched down, then glanced back at the others.
