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

Nimander glanced across at Skintick. His cousin shrugged; then, eyes narrowing, he suddenly smiled.

‘Your god, Nimander?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not likely to die any time soon, then.’

‘No, never that.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Clip demanded, then, dismissing any possible reply, he faced the window once more. ‘A dying god needs to die sometime.’

‘Notions of mercy, Great One?’ Skintick asked.

‘Not where you are concerned.’

‘Just as well, since I could never suffer the gratitude.’

Nimander watched as Desra glided up to stand beside Clip. They stood looking out through the pane, like husband and wife, like allies against the world. Her left arm almost touching him, up near her elbow, but she would not draw any closer. The spinning rings prevented that, whirling a metal barrier.

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Nimander glanced across at Skintick. His cousin shrugged; then, eyes narrowing, he suddenly smiled.

‘Your god, Nimander?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not likely to die any time soon, then.’

‘No, never that.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Clip demanded, then, dismissing any possible reply, he faced the window once more. ‘A dying god needs to die sometime.’

‘Notions of mercy, Great One?’ Skintick asked.

‘Not where you are concerned.’

‘Just as well, since I could never suffer the gratitude.’

Nimander watched as Desra glided up to stand beside Clip. They stood looking out through the pane, like husband and wife, like allies against the world. Her left arm almost touching him, up near her elbow, but she would not draw any closer. The spinning rings prevented that, whirling a metal barrier.

‘Tonight,’ Clip said loudly, ‘no one drinks.’

Nimander thought back to those black-stained mouths and the ravaged eyes above them, and he shivered.

Mist drifted down from the parklike forest north of the Great Barrow, merging with the smoke of cookfires from the pilgrims encamped like an army around the enormous, circular mound. Dawn was paling the sky, seeming to push against the unnatural darkness to the south, but this was a war the sun could not win.

From the city gate the cobbled road ran between lesser barrows where hundreds of corpses had been interred following the conquest. Malazans, Grey Swords, Rhivi, Tiste Andii and K’Chain Che’Malle. Farther to the west rose longer barrows, final home to the fallen citizens and soldiers of the city.

Seerdomin walked the road through the gloom. A path through ghosts-too many to even comprehend-but he thought he could hear the echoes of their death-cries, their voices of pain, their desperate pleas for mothers and loved ones. Once he was past this place, who was there to hear those echoes? No one, and it was this truth that struck him the hardest. They would entwine with naught hut themselves, falling unheeded to the dew-flattened grass.

He emerged into morning light, like passing through a curtain, suddenly brushed with warmth, and made his way up the slope towards the sprawled encampment. For this, he wore his old uniform, a kind of penance, a kind of self-flagellation. There was need, in his mind, to bear his guilt openly, brazenly, to leave himself undefended and indefensible. This was how he saw his daily pilgrimage to the Great Barrow, although he well knew that some things could never be purged, and that redemption was a dream of the deluded.

Eyes fixed on him from the camps to either side as he continued on towards that massive heap of treasure-wealth of such measure that it could only belong to a dead man, who could not cast covetous eyes upon his hoard, who would not feel its immense weight night and day, who would not suffer beneath its terrible curse. He was tracked, then, by no doubt hardening eyes, the fixation of hatred, contempt, perhaps even the desire of murder. No matter. He understood such sentiments, the purity of such desires.

Armour clanking, chain rustling across the fronts of his thighs as he drew ever closer. •

The greater vastness of wealth now lay buried beneath more mundane trinkets, yet it was these meagre offerings that seemed most potent in their significance to Seerdomin. Their comparative value was so much greater, after all. Sacrifice must be weighed by the pain of what is surrendered, and this alone was the true measure of a virtue’s worth.

He saw now the glitter of sunlight in the dew clinging to copper coins, the slick glimmer on sea-polished stones in an array of muted colours and patterns. The fragments of glazed ceramics from some past golden age of high culture. Feathers now bedraggled, knotted strips of leather from which dangled fetishes, gourd rattles to bless newborn babes and sick children. And now, here and there, the picked-clean skulls of the recent dead-a subcult, he had learned, centred on the T’lan Imass, who knelt before the Redeemer and so made themselves his immortal servants. Seerdomin knew that the truth was more profound than that, more breathtaking, and that servitude was not a vow T’lan Imass could make, not to anyone but the woman known as Silverfox. No, they had knelt in gratitude. ‘

That notion could still leave him chilled, wonder awakened in his heart like a gust of surprised breath.

Still, these staring skulls seemed almost profane.

He stepped into the slightly rutted avenue and drew closer. Other pilgrims were placing their offerings ahead, then turning about and making their way back, edging round him with furtive glances. Seerdomin heard more in his wake, a susurration of whispered prayers and low chanting that seemed like a gentle wave carrying him forward.