House of Chains

‘Yes, High Mage. I’m surprised you didn’t know. We still have the desert warriors. We can still win this, just not here and not now. Thus, we need to convince Sha’ik to leave-’

‘That won’t be possible,’ L’oric cut in. ‘The goddess is coming, is almost here. It’s too late for that, Leoman. Moments from being too late for everything-’

They clambered over the crest.

And there stood Sha’ik.

Helmed and armoured, her back to them as she stared southward.

L’oric wanted to cry out. For he saw what his companions could not see. I’m not in time. Oh, gods below -And then he leapt forward, his warren’s portal flaring around him-and was gone.

The goddess had not lost her memories. Indeed, rage had carved their likenesses, every detail, as mockingly solid and real-seeming as those carved trees in the forest of stone. And she could caress them, crooning her hatred like a lover’s song, lingering with a touch promising murder, though the one who had wronged her was, if not dead, then in a place that no longer mattered.

The hate was all that mattered now. Her fury at his weaknesses. Oh, others in the tribe played those games often enough. Bodies slipped through the furs from hut to hut when the stars fell into their summer alignment, and she herself had more than once spread her legs to another woman’s husband, or an eager, clumsy youth.

But her heart had been given to the one man with whom she lived. That law was sacrosanct.

Oh, but he’d been so sensitive. His hands following his eyes in the fashioning of forbidden images of that other woman, there in the hidden places. He’d used those hands to close about his own heart, to give it to another-without a thought as to who had once held it for herself.

Another, who would not even give her heart in return-she had seen to that, with vicious words and challenging accusations. Enough to encourage the others to banish her for ever.

But not before the bitch killed all but one of her kin.

Foolish, stupid man, to have given his love to that woman.

Her rage had not died with the Ritual, had not died when she herself-too shattered to walk-had been severed from the Vow and left in a place of eternal darkness. And every curious spirit that had heard her weeping, that had drawn close in sympathy-well, they had fed her hungers, and she had taken their powers. Layer upon layer. For they too had been foolish and stupid, wayward and inclined to squander those powers on meaningless things. But she had a purpose.

The children swarmed the surface of the world. And who was their mother? None other than the bitch who had been banished.

And their father?

Oh yes, she went to him. On that last night. She did. He reeked of her when they dragged him into the light the following morning. Reeked of her. The truth was there in his eyes.

A look she would-could-never forget.

Vengeance was a beast long straining at its chains. Vengeance was all she had ever wanted.

Vengeance was about to be unleashed.

And even Raraku could not stop it. The children would die.

The children will die. I will cleanse the world of their beget, the proud-eyed vermin born, one and all, of that single mother. Of course she could not join the Ritual. A new world waited within her.

And now, at last, I shall rise again. Clothed in the flesh of one such child, I shall kill that world.

She could see the path opening, the way ahead clear and inviting. A tunnel walled in spinning, writhing shadows.

It would be good to walk again.

To feel warm flesh and the heat of blood.

To taste water. Food.

To breathe.

To kill.

Unmindful and unhearing, Sha’ik made her way down the slope. The basin awaited her, that field of battle. She saw Malazan scouts on the ridge opposite, one riding back to the encampment, the others simply watching.

It was understood, then. As she had known it would be.

Vague, distant shouts behind her. She smiled. Of course, in the end, it is the two warriors who first found me. I was foolish to have doubted them. And I know, either one would stand in my stead .

But they cannot.

This fight belongs to me. And the goddess.

‘Enter.’

Captain Keneb paused for a moment, seeking to collect himself, then he strode into the command tent.

She was donning her armour. A mundane task that would have been easier with a servant at hand, but that, of course, was not Tavore’s way.

Although, perhaps, that was not quite the truth. ‘Adjunct.’

‘What is it, Captain?’

‘I have just come from the Fist’s tent. A cutter and a healer were summoned at once, but it was far too late. Adjunct Tavore, Gamet died last night. A blood vessel burst in his brain-the cutter believes it was a clot, and that it was born the night he was thrown from his horse. I am… sorry.’