Chapter 1
Through driving snow a lone figure walked hunched. A long cloth-wrapped bundle just as tall as he was hung cumbrously across his back. He paused occasionally, to adjust this burden, and to shade his eyes against the howling winds to scan the white wastes surrounding him. During one such pause a great fit of coughing wrenched him and he bent even further to spit into the snow, leaving a red blossom of slush. Yet his gaze was drawn ever onwards to a single mountain crag that dominated the western horizon.
After many days the traveller reached the foothills of this lone peak – fields of naked broken rock amid the snow. Selecting one depression reasonably sheltered from the driving winds, he sat against a boulder and drew his long burden from his back. Unwrapped, it was revealed as some sort of musical instrument, a huge horn perhaps, carved from a single gigantic piece of ivory or bone. This he pressed to his lips to blow a few experimental notes, then set aside and tilted his head, as if listening for the winds to respond. With no such response forthcoming, he shrugged, held the instrument to his chest, and closed his eyes to sleep.
So did it go day after day, week after week, and month after month. The seasons did not change; no spring came to lessen the blasts of snow, for the mountain sat at the centre of a vast wasteland of icefields countless leagues across. Thus no beasts accosted the musician, and no fellow travellers appeared. Birds, however, did pass far overhead and these he watched from the corner of his eye, a humourless smile sometimes stretching his cracked lips across his large, upthrusting canines.
But then he would return to his music. And such eerie inhuman music it was – if it may be named such at all. Deep rumbling basso passages too low for any normal ear, or high trilling keening; all mixed together in constantly altering rhythms, beats and progressions. On and on, looping, rolling, changing in pitch and speed, then even repeating for a time.
And always the musician would pause to listen, as if expecting the winds to answer.
As, eventually, they did.
Something far too low for a human ear washed over the piper, making the small stones lying all about him vibrate and jump. The musician perked up, straightened, and repeated his last passage.
The answer repeated itself as well.
Now the musician clambered to his feet. Taking a huge breath, he blew a deep blast upon the instrument that went on and on, for far longer than any human lungs could possibly encompass. Finishing in a flourish, he raised his head to listen. He waited. And he waited, head cocked. After a time he frowned then critically studied the horn.
An immense concussion rocked him backwards on his feet, sent the snow all driving away, and he hunched, wincing and shaking his head. Then he slipped the instrument onto his back and set out to climb the mountain’s lower slopes.
He was searching for something, and, eventually, he found it. Through the gusting snow he spotted thin wisps of fog, or a plume of mist, high up one ice-encrusted face of the mountain. This he struggled towards, and, after a time, he reached.
A fresh crack of broken rock it was. A crevasse in the sheath of ice. Steam roiled from far within. At its edge the musician paused, raised a thumb to one up-thrusting canine to scratch it thoughtfully, and smiled, nodding to himself.
Then he slipped within, amid the billowing steam, to disappear.
* * *
Towards the end of the pacification of the northern wilds of Nom Purge, the roving Malazan Imperial Seat settled in next to the confluence of two unnamed rivers to remain stationary for an astonishing fifteen days.
A tent city quickly developed as daily more and more Malazan cohorts arrived to guard the Emperor and his – some said bodyguard, some assassin, while others whispered him to be the true cunning and driving force behind the pair’s astonishing rise to power – Dancer.
On the fifteenth day the general of the West, Fist Choss, arrived accompanied by his staff and personal guard. Throwing the reins of his mount to a groom, he stomped into the imperial command tent to find the Emperor, Kellanved, sitting at a table heaped with a mess of maps, lists and accounts. Dancer sat aside in a camp chair, arms crossed, his legs straight out before him.
The Fist went to a side-table set with cold meats, breads and fruits. He tucked his gauntlets into his belt and nodded a greeting to Kellanved. Selecting a poultry leg, he took a bite. Round the mouthful, he demanded, ‘What’s this about you ordering Korelan relief forces north, here, to you?’
The wrinkled, aged Dal Hon mage exchanged a glance with his cohort, who tucked his hands up under his arms. ‘I’m redeploying them,’ he explained.
Choss coughed on his poultry, wiped the grease from his tangled beard. ‘Really?’ he answered, incredulous. ‘That force is badly needed to relieve those troops. They are hard-pressed, surrounded. All Korel has risen against them.’
Kellanved gave a curt wave. ‘Exactly. A lost cause. We miscalculated there. I’ll not pour more resources down that hole.’
Choss stared, his outrage obvious. ‘But the remaining troops, man! What of them?’
‘Word has been sent. They may withdraw.’
‘If they can,’ the general muttered, darkly. ‘And regardless, we can use those forces here. Dujek is still stamping out insurrections in the east, and I’m still trying to pacify the west coast. Surly is camped in Unta to keep it quiet and all the while Dal Hon threatens to explode. Not a good time to start yet another front.’
‘Dassem remains in Li Heng,’ Dancer put in, speaking softly.
Choss grunted at that, half-placated.
While they had been talking, youths in travel-stained leathers, or hooded in grey robes, silently came and went, whispering with Kellanved, sometimes delivering scrolls. They entered from a rear chamber set off by hangings – a room Choss knew possessed no other exit.
‘And where, may I ask,’ he said, ‘will this new strike force be headed?’
As Kellanved was conferring with a woman whose robes seemed to actually be smoking, Dancer answered: ‘Falar.’
The general’s thick brows rose in disbelief. He threw the half-eaten leg to the table. ‘Falar … Really? Why not fabled Jacuruku while you’re at it, hey?’
‘Falar is no fable,’ Dancer observed, calmly and quietly.
But the Fist was shaking his head, hands on belt. ‘No. This is madness. We’re still not completely consolidated …’
‘We will never be completely consolidated,’ Dancer answered. ‘We must push on. Expand. Expand or die. It’s the nature of the beast.’
‘Is Surly for this?’ Choss asked, pulling a hand down his beard. The two rulers exchanged another silent glance to which the general nodded. ‘Thought not. Then I demand a full council meeting to review this.’
Kellanved flapped his hands in frustration. ‘A full meeting? Do you have any idea how long it would take to assemble everyone?’
Choss gestured without. ‘Your troops are still arriving. We have time.’
The Dal Hon mage raised his chin, half turning away, huffing, ‘I’ll have you know I don’t need anyone’s permission.’
The Fist nodded his agreement. ‘True. However, as we have all seen over the years, everything goes so very much smoother with everyone’s cooperation.’
Kellanved wrinkled up his dark face in distaste. He glanced to Dancer. ‘What say you?’
Dancer echoed Choss’s nod. ‘I agree. We have to have everyone on board.’
The Emperor pressed his hands to his forehead, sighing. ‘Oh, very well! If you must!’ He waved the Fist out – who bowed and exited. Kellanved then snapped his fingers and a leather-clad messenger, a slim woman, emerged from the rear room. ‘Send word to everyone,’ he told her, ‘we assemble here for a full Imperial Council meet.’ The woman bowed and ducked from view. Kellanved continued to massage his forehead.
Dancer was studying the tops of his soft leather shoes. ‘Told you so,’ he murmured.
The Emperor looked to the tent ceiling, sighing anew. ‘Oh, please …’
* * *
A bird winging its way northwards on the updraughts over the Great Fenn Range eventually came to the flat horizon of a continental ice sheet stretching as far as can be seen – even from such a great height.
All was not a wasteland of ice, however. Emerging here and there amid the plain of blowing snow rose islands of heat: fumaroles roiled out great gouts of steam and pits of mud and upwellings of boiling water bubbled. Here lay stone, soil, grasses and low scrub brush. And here could be found game: mice, hares, deer, and the lynx and bears and wolves that preyed upon them.
Impelled onwards, the bird wafted over one such island of life, riding its thermals, to find below huts of hide held down against the constant wind by rings of stones. At the centre of this gathering of huts rose a huge edifice like an upturned ship’s hull, with a broad opening at its highest point. And from this maw came and went a veritable storm of birds of all sizes, shadings and kinds. Here the bird flitted within, selected a perch amid the many rafters and hangers, and promptly set to preening its feathers.
* * *
The High Priestess of the Great Assembled Clans of the Jhek lowered her face from the opening high above her seat to regard the crowded and this day uneasy court. She wore a scarf of cloth across her eyes yet seemed to peer everywhere and see every shift of stance, every murmur and every furtive glance.
Around her seat perched a multitude of birds of prey: kestrels, falcons, red hawks, and even two of the Great Eagles of the Fenn Range, each as tall as a boy. Their keen gazes darted all about, as sharp as their hooked razor beaks.
Today the Priestess too was nervous, though she strove to hide it. And she may have been able to disguise her emotions from her court, but she could not screen them from her pets, so deep and personal was her connection with them. Her unease spread to the birds and they loosed more shrill calls than usual, half rose from their perches, and shook their wings as if eager to hunt.
Reflexively, she reached out to smooth the plumage of the nearest. All here knew her as ‘the Great High Priestess’, or ‘Bird Mother’, but she thought of herself by another name, a name none among her adopted people knew. She also thought of herself as young still, though carrying an ageing frame and iron-grey hair.
And perhaps these differences from her predecessors was why she, inheritor of a near timeless line of priests and priestesses stretching back millennia, had been the first to break with an equally long tradition of warfare and hostility and call a truce with the Jhek’s blood-enemy, the giant Thelomen of Fenn.
Now, after a decade of hard-won peace and mutual disregard, they wished to speak. Why? Whatever for? They seemed to need nothing and be content in their isolation.
No, the problem lay among her shapeshifting, Soletaken clans. And she focused upon a group of tall and ropy Jhek warriors among the crowd of her court. The wolf-warriors – most resentful of her peace, and most eager to return to hunting their traditional enemy. Epitomized by their clan leader – white-haired, lean, and ever with a hungry sharp-toothed smile – Looris.
Wiry wolf-soldier scouts came bursting into the longhouse, half loping, wearing loincloths only despite the cold. Her guard of bear-clan soldiers straightened before her, some growling.
‘They come, Great Mother!’ one scout panted.
She waved them down. ‘Very good.’ She turned to Looris. ‘They come openly, in peace … remember that.’
Looris bowed his long and lean head.
The double-door entrance darkened then as huge figures ducked within. Four of the Thelomen, coming through single-file. Shaggy, in ragged hides, but not dull-witted or slow, no, bright and keen, peering all about and grinning as if in jest.
They bowed to her, rumbling, ‘Bird Priestess.’
She answered the bow. ‘You are well come. To what do we owe this honour?’
One stepped forward, eliciting warning growls from her assembled bear-warriors. This one bowed anew, and even offered a wink; she focused all her sharp eyes upon him to see the dark designs of jagged tattooing thick upon his features, and she thought him strangely familiar.
‘We are come, Bird Priestess,’ he began, ‘because we are troubled.’
‘Troubled?’ She made a show of glancing about her court. ‘Not by anything we have done, I trust.’
‘No. Not you or yours. Though we believe you share our disquiet.’
She had indeed been troubled for some time, yet she did not answer. She had kept her unease from her adopted people because, frankly, she was afraid. Afraid of what her suspicions might mean for them. ‘Go on,’ she invited, her voice a touch fainter.
The giant inclined his head and said, ‘No doubt you have heard the strange sounds coming amid the winds from the north. Smelled strange new scents upon the air. Felt the quakes and rumblings beneath your feet.’
She nodded. ‘Indeed … And what, then, does this portend?’
‘That is the question, is it not? We propose an expedition to discover the truth of this. A shared one.’
Copyright © 2023 by Ian Cameron Esslemont
