Deadhouse Gates полностью

'Dancer trusted but two men. One was Kellanved. The other was Dassem Ultor, the First Sword. Dassem is dead. I am sorry if this offends you, Fiddler. Thinking on it, I would suggest that Cotillion trusts no-one. Not even Shadowthrone. Emperor Kellanved … well enough. Ascendant Kellanved — Shadowthrone — ah, that is something wholly different.'

'He was a fool,' Fiddler pronounced, gathering up his reins.

Apsalar's smile was strangely wistful.

'Enough words,' Crokus said. 'Let's get out of this damned city.'

'Aye.'

The short journey from the square to the south gate was surprisingly uneventful, for all the commander's warnings. Dusk shrouded the streets and smoke from a burning tenement block spread an acrid haze that made breathing tortured. They rode through the silent aftermath of slaughter, when the rage has passed and awareness returns with shock and shame.

The moment was a single indrawn breath in what Fiddler knew would be an ever-burgeoning wildfire. If the Malazan legions had not been withdrawn from nearby Pan'potsun, there would have been the chance of crushing the life from this first spark, with a brutality to match the renegades'. When slaughter is flung back on the perpetrators, the thirst for blood is quickly quenched.

The Emperor would have acted swiftly, decisively. Hood's breath, he would never have let it slide this far.

Less than a tenth of a bell after leaving the square they passed beneath the smoke-blackened arch of an unguarded south gate. Beyond stretched the Pan'potsun Odhan, flanked to the west by the ridge that divided the Odhan from the Holy Desert Raraku. The night's first stars flickered alight overhead.

Fiddler broke the long silence. 'There is a village a little over two leagues to the south. With luck it won't be a carrion feast. Not yet, anyway.'

Crokus cleared his throat. 'Fiddler, if Kalam had known … about Dancer, I mean, Cotillion …'

The sapper grimaced, glanced at Apsalar. 'She'd be with him right now.'

Whatever response Crokus intended was interrupted by a squealing, flapping shape that dropped down out of the darkness to collide with the lad's back. Crokus let out a shout of alarm as the creature gripped his hair and clambered onto his head.

'It's just Moby,' Fiddler said, trying to shake off the jitters the familiar's arrival had elicited. He squinted. 'Looks like he's been in a scrap,' he observed.

Crokus pulled Moby down into his arms. 'He's bleeding everywhere!'

'Nothing serious, I'd guess,' Fiddler said.

'What makes you so sure?'

The sapper grinned. 'Ever seen bhok'arala mate?'

'Fiddler,' Apsalar's tone was tight. 'We are pursued.'

Reining in, Fiddler rose in the stirrups and twisted around. In the distant gloom was a cloud of dust. He hissed a curse. 'The Gral clan.'

'We ride weary mounts,' Apsalar said.

'Aye. Queen grant us there's fresh horses to be had in New Velar.'

At the base of three converging gorges, Kalam left the false path and carefully guided his horse through a narrow drainage channel. The old memories of the ways into Raraku felt heavy in his bones. Everything's changed, yet nothing has changed.

Of the countless trails that passed through the hills, all but a few led only to death. The false routes were cleverly directed away from the few waterholes and springs. Without water, Raraku's sun was a fatal companion. Kalam knew the Holy Desert, the map within his head — decades old — was seared anew with every landmark he recognized. Pinnacles, tilted rocks, the wend of a flood channel — he felt as if he had never left, for all his new loyalties, his conflicting allegiances. Once more, a child of this desert. Once more, servant to its sacred need.

As the wind and sun did to the sand and stone, Raraku shaped all who had known it. Crossing it had etched the souls of the three companies that would come to be called the Bridgeburners. We could imagine no other name. Raraku burned our pasts away, making all that came before a trail of ashes.

He swung the stallion onto a scree, rocks and sand skittering and tumbling as the beast scrambled up the slope, regaining the true path along the ridge line that would run in a slow descent westward to Raraku's floor.

Stars glittered like knife-points overhead. The bleached limestone crags shone silver in the faint moonlight, as if reflecting back memories of the day just past.

The assassin led his horse between the crumbled foundations of two watchtowers. Potsherds and fractured brick crunched under the stallion's hooves. Rhizan darted from his path with a soft flit of wings. Kalam felt he had returned home.

'No farther,' a rasping voice warned.

Smiling, Kalam reined in.

'A bold announcement,' the voice continued. 'A stallion the colour of sand, red telaba …'