Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen 8)

When great powerrs strode on to the field of battle, things had a way of getting out of hand,

Had it been Cowl who first blinked? Bowing out, yielding ground, fleeing?

Of had it been the Son of Darkness

Spinnock doubted be would ever find out. Such questions were not asked of Anomander Rake. Some time later, it was discovered by the Tiste Andii, Cowl had resurfaced, this time in Darujhistan. Causing more trouble. His stay there had been blessedly brief.

Another vision of Silanah, laying the trap for the Jaghut Tyrant in the Gadrobi Hillss. More wounds, more ferocious magic. Wheeling over the ravaged plain. Five Soletaken Tiste Andii whirling round her like crows escorting an eagle.

Perhaps he was alone,’ Spinnock reflected, in his unease with the alliance between the Tiste Andii and the Eleint. There had been a time, after all, when Anomander Rake had warred against the pureblood dragons. When such crea¬tures broke loose from their long-standing servitude to K’rul; when they had sought to grasp power for themselves. The motivation for Rake’s opposition to them was, typically, obscure. Silanah’s arrival-much later-was yet another event shrouded in mystery.

No, Spinnock Durav was far from thrilled by Silanah’s bloodless regard.

He approached the arched entrance to the New Palace, ascending the flagstone ramp. There were no guards standing outside. There never were. Pushing open one of the twin doors, he strode inside. Before him, a buttressed corridor that humans would find unnaturally narrow. Twenty paces in, another archway, opening out into a spacious domed chamber with a floor of polished blackwood inset with the twenty-eight spiralling teiondai of Mother Dark, all in black silver. The inside of the dome overhead was a mirror image. This homage to the goddess who had turned away was, to Spinnock’s mind, extraordinary; appallingly out of place.

Oh, sages might well debate who had done the turning away back then, but none would dismiss the terrible vastness of the schism. Was this some belated effort at healing the ancient wound? Spinnock found that notion unfathomable. And yet, Anomander Rake himself had commissioned the teiondai, the Invisible Sun and its whirling, wild rays of onyx flame.

If Kurald Galain had a heart in this realm’s manifestation of the warren, it was here, in this chamber. Yet he felt no presence, no ghostly breath of power, as he made his way across the floor to the curling bone-white staircase, fust beyond the turn above wavered a pool of lantern light.

Two human servants were scrubbing the alabaster steps. At his arrival they ducked away.

‘Mind the wet,’ one muttered.

‘I’m surprised,’ Spinnock said as he edged past, ‘there’s need to clean these at all. There are all of fifteen people living in this palace.’

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When great powerrs strode on to the field of battle, things had a way of getting out of hand,

Had it been Cowl who first blinked? Bowing out, yielding ground, fleeing?

Of had it been the Son of Darkness

Spinnock doubted be would ever find out. Such questions were not asked of Anomander Rake. Some time later, it was discovered by the Tiste Andii, Cowl had resurfaced, this time in Darujhistan. Causing more trouble. His stay there had been blessedly brief.

Another vision of Silanah, laying the trap for the Jaghut Tyrant in the Gadrobi Hillss. More wounds, more ferocious magic. Wheeling over the ravaged plain. Five Soletaken Tiste Andii whirling round her like crows escorting an eagle.

Perhaps he was alone,’ Spinnock reflected, in his unease with the alliance between the Tiste Andii and the Eleint. There had been a time, after all, when Anomander Rake had warred against the pureblood dragons. When such crea¬tures broke loose from their long-standing servitude to K’rul; when they had sought to grasp power for themselves. The motivation for Rake’s opposition to them was, typically, obscure. Silanah’s arrival-much later-was yet another event shrouded in mystery.

No, Spinnock Durav was far from thrilled by Silanah’s bloodless regard.

He approached the arched entrance to the New Palace, ascending the flagstone ramp. There were no guards standing outside. There never were. Pushing open one of the twin doors, he strode inside. Before him, a buttressed corridor that humans would find unnaturally narrow. Twenty paces in, another archway, opening out into a spacious domed chamber with a floor of polished blackwood inset with the twenty-eight spiralling teiondai of Mother Dark, all in black silver. The inside of the dome overhead was a mirror image. This homage to the goddess who had turned away was, to Spinnock’s mind, extraordinary; appallingly out of place.

Oh, sages might well debate who had done the turning away back then, but none would dismiss the terrible vastness of the schism. Was this some belated effort at healing the ancient wound? Spinnock found that notion unfathomable. And yet, Anomander Rake himself had commissioned the teiondai, the Invisible Sun and its whirling, wild rays of onyx flame.

If Kurald Galain had a heart in this realm’s manifestation of the warren, it was here, in this chamber. Yet he felt no presence, no ghostly breath of power, as he made his way across the floor to the curling bone-white staircase, fust beyond the turn above wavered a pool of lantern light.

Two human servants were scrubbing the alabaster steps. At his arrival they ducked away.

‘Mind the wet,’ one muttered.

‘I’m surprised,’ Spinnock said as he edged past, ‘there’s need to clean these at all. There are all of fifteen people living in this palace.’

‘You’ve that, sir,’ the man replied, nodding.

The Tiste Andii paused and glanced back. ‘Then why are you bothering? I can hardly believe the castellan set you upon this task.’

‘No sir, he never did. We was just, cr, bored.’’

After a bemused moment, Spinnock resumed his ascent. These short-lived creatures baffled him.

The journey to the chambers where dwelt the Son of Darkness was a lengthy traverse made in solitude. Echoing corridors, unlocked, unguarded doors. The castellan’s modest collection of scribes and sundry bureaucrats worked in offices on the main floor; kitchen staff, clothes-scrubbers and wringers, hearth-keepers and taper-lighters, all lived and worked in the lower levels. Here, on the higher floors, darkness ruled a realm virtually unoccupied.

Reaching the elongated room that faced the Nightwater, Spinnock Durav found his lord.

Facing the crystal window that ran the entire length of the Nightwater wall, his long silver-white hair faintly luminous in the muted, refracted light cast into the room by the faceted quartz. The sword Dragnipur was nowhere in sight.

Three steps into the chamber and Spinnock halted.

Without turning, Anomander Rake said, ‘The game, Spinnock?’

‘You won again, Lord. But it was close.’

‘The Gate?’

Spinnock smiled wryly. ‘When all else seems lost…’ Perhaps Anomander Rake nodded at that, or his gaze, fixed somewhere out on the waves of Nightwater, shifted downward to something closer by. A fisher boat, or the crest of some leviathan rising momentarily from the abyss. Either way, the sigh that followed was audible. ‘Spinnock, old friend, it is good that you have returned.’

‘Thank you, Lord. I, too, am pleased to see an end to my wandering.’

‘Wandering? Yes, I imagine you might have seen it that way.’

‘You sent me to a continent, Lord. Discovering the myriad truths upon it necessitated… fair wandering.’