Bhok'arala seem to have originated in the wastes of Raraku. Before long, these social creatures spread outward and were soon seen throughout Seven Cities. As efficacious rat control in settlements, the bhok'arala were not only tolerated, but often encouraged. It was not long before a lively trade in domesticated breeds became a major export...

The usage and demonic investment of this species among mages and alchemists is a matter for discussion within treatises more specific than this one. Bank's Three Hundred and Twenty-first Treatise offers a succinct analysis for interested scholars ...

Denizens of Raraku
Imrygyn Tallobant

 

With the exception of the sandstorm – which they had waited out in Trob – and the unsettling news of a massacre at Ladro Keep, told to them by an outrider from a well-guarded caravan bound for Ehrlitan, the journey to within sight of G'danisban had proved uneventful for Fiddler, Crokus and Apsalar.

Although Fiddler knew that the risks that lay ahead, south of the small city out in the Pan'potsun Odhan, were severe enough to eat holes in his stomach, he had anticipated a lull in the final approach to G'danisban. What he had not expected to find was a ragtag renegade army encamped outside the city walls.

The army's main force straddled the road but was shielded by a dun line of hills on the north side. The canal road led the three unsuspecting travellers into the camp's perimeter lines. There had been no warning.

A company of footmen commanded the rosad from flanking hills and oversaw diligent questioning of all who sought entry to the city. The company was supported by a score of Arak tribal horsewarriors who were evidently entrusted with riding down any traveller inclined to flee the approach to the makeshift barricade.

Fiddler and his charges would have to ride on through and trust to their disguises. The sapper was anything but confident, although this lent a typically Gral scowl to his narrow features which elicited a wholly proper wariness in two of the three guards who stepped forward to intercept them at the barricade.

'The city is closed,' the unimpressed guard nearest them said, punctuating his words by spitting between the hooves of Fiddler's mount.

It would later be said that even a Gral's horse knew an insult when it saw one. Before Fiddler could react, his mount's head snapped forward, stripping the reins from the sapper's hands, and bit the guardsman in the face. The horse had twisted its head so that the jaws closed round the man's cheeks and tore into cheeks, upper lip and nose. Blood gushed. The guardsman dropped like a sack of stones, a piercing, keening sound rising from him.

For lack of anything else to grip, Fiddler snagged the gelding's ears and pulled hard, backing the beast away even as it prepared to stomp on the guard's huddled form. Hiding his shock behind an even fiercer frown, the sapper unleashed a stream of Gral curses at the two remaining men, who had both backed frantically clear before lowering their pikes. 'Foul snot of rabid dogs! Anal crust of dysenteried goats! Such a sight for two young newlyweds to witness! Will you curse their marriage but two weeks since the blessed day? Shall I loose the fleas on my head to rend your worthless flesh from your jellied bones?'

As Fiddler roared every Gral utterance of disgust he could recall in an effort to keep the guards unbalanced, a troop of the Arak horsewarriors rode up with savage haste.

'Gral! Ten jakatas for your horse!'

'Twelve, Gral! To me!'

'Fifteen and my youngest daughter!'

'Five jakatas for three tail hairs!'

Fiddler turned his fiercest frown on the riders. 'Not one of you is fit to smell my horse's farts!' But he grinned, unstrapping a beer-filled bladder and tossing it one-handed to the nearest Arak. 'But let us camp with your troop this night and for a sliver you may feel its heat with your palms – once only! For more you must pay!'

With wild grins, the Araks passed the skin between them, each taking deep swigs to finalize the ritual exchange. By sharing beer, Fiddler had granted them status as equals, the gesture stripping the cutting barb from the insult he had thrown their way.

Fiddler glanced back at Crokus and Apsalar. They looked properly shaken. Biting back his own nausea, the sapper winked.

The guards had recovered but before they could close in, the tribesmen drove their mounts to block them.

'Ride with us!' one of the Araks shouted to Fiddler. As one, the troop wheeled about. Regaining the reins, Fiddler spurred the gelding after them, sighing when he heard behind him the newlyweds following suit.

It was to be a race to the Arak camp, and, true to its sudden legendary status, the Gral horse was determined to burst every muscle in its body to win. Fiddler had never before ridden such a game beast, and he found himself grinning in spite of himself, even as the image of the guardsman's ravaged face remained like a chill knot in the pit of his stomach.

The Arak tipis lined the edges of a nearby hill's windswept summit, each set wide apart so that no shade from a neighbour's could cast insult. Women and children came to the crest to watch the race, screaming as Fiddler's mount burst through the leading line, swerving to throw a shoulder into the fastest competitor. That horse stumbled, almost pitching its rider from his wood and felt saddle, then righted itself with a furious scream at being driven from the race.

Unimpeded, Fiddler leaned forward as his horse reached the slope and surged up its grassy side. The line of watchers parted as he reached the crest and reined in amidst the tipis.

As any plains tribe would, the Arak chose hilltops rather than valley floors for their camps. The winds kept the insects to a minimum – boulders held down the tipi edges to prevent the hide tents from blowing away – and the rising and setting of the sun could be witnessed to mark ritual thanksgiving.

The camp's layout was a familiar one to Fiddler, who had ridden with Wickan scouts over these lands during the Emperor's campaigns. Marking the centre of the ring of tipis was a stone-lined hearth. Four wooden posts off to one side, between two tipis, and joined together with a single hemp rope, provided the corral for the horses. Bundles of rolled felt lay drying nearby, along with tripods bearing stretched hides and strips of meat.

The dozen or so camp dogs surrounded the snapping gelding as Fiddler paused in the saddle to take his bearings. The scrawny, yipping mongrels might prove a problem, he realized, but he hoped that their suspicions would apply to all strangers, Gral included. If not, then his disguise was over.

The troop arrived moments later, the horsewarriors shouting and laughing as they reined in and threw themselves from their saddles. Appearing last on the summit's crest were Crokus and Apsalar, neither of whom seemed ready to share in the good humour.

Seeing their faces reminded Fiddler of the mangled guardsman on the road below. He regained his scowl and slipped from the saddle. 'The city is closed?' he shouted. 'Another Mezla folly!'

The Arak rider who'd spoken before strode up, a fierce grin on his lean face. 'Not Mezla! G'danisban has been liberated! The southern hares have fled the Whirlwind's promise.'

'Then why was the city closed to us? Are we Mezla?'

'A cleansing, Gral! Mezla merchants and nobles infest G'danisban. They were arrested yesterday and this day they are being executed. Tomorrow morning you shall lead your blessed couple into a free city. Come, this night we celebrate!'

Fiddler squatted in Gral fashion. 'Has Sha'ik raised the Whirlwind, then?' He glanced back at Crokus and Apsalar, as if suddenly regretting having taken on the responsibility. 'Has the war begun, Arak?'

'Soon,' he said. 'We were cursed with impatience,' he added with a smirk.

Crokus and Apsalar approached. The Arak went off to assist in the preparations for the night's festivities. Coins were flung at the gelding's hooves and hands cautiously reached out to rest lightly on the animal's neck and flanks. For the moment the three travellers were alone.

'That was a sight I will never forget,' Crokus said, 'though I wish to Hood I could. Will the poor man live?'

Fiddler shrugged. 'If he chooses to.'

'We're camping here tonight?' Apsalar asked, looking around.

'Either that or insult these Arak and risk disembowelling.'

'We will not fool them for much longer,' Apsalar said. 'Crokus doesn't speak a word of this land's tongue, and mine is a Malazan's accent.'

'That soldier was my age,' the Daru thief muttered.

Frowning, the sapper said, 'Our only other choice is to ride into G'danisban, so that we may witness the Whirlwind's vengeance.'

'Another celebration of what's to come?' Crokus demanded. 'This damned Apocalypse you're always talking about? I get the feeling that this land's people do nothing but talk.'

Fiddler cleared his throat. 'Tonight's celebration in G'danisban,' he said slowly, 'will be the flaying alive of a few hundred Malazans, Crokus. If we show eagerness to witness such an event, these Arak may not be offended by our leaving early.'

Apsalar turned to watch half a dozen tribesmen approach. 'Try it, Fiddler,' she said.

The sapper came close to saluting. He hissed a curse. 'You giving me orders, Recruit?'

She blinked. 'I think I was giving orders . .. when you were still clutching the hem of your mother's dress, Fiddler. I know – the one who possessed me. It's his instincts that are ringing like steel on stone right now. Do as I say.'

The chance for a retort vanished as the Arak arrived. 'You are blessed, Gral!' one of them said. 'A Gral clan is on its way to join the Apocalypse! Let us hope that like you they bring their own beer!'

Fiddler made a kin gesture, then soberly shook his head. 'It cannot be,' he said, mentally holding his breath. 'I am outcast. More, these newlyweds insist we enter the city ... to witness the executions in further blessing of their binding. I am their escort, and so must obey their commands.'

Apsalar stepped forward and bowed. 'We wish no offence,' she said.

It wasn't going well. The Arak faces arrayed before them had darkened. 'Outcast? No kin to honour your trail, Gral? Perhaps we shall hold you for your brothers' vengeance, and in exchange they leave us your horse.'

With exquisite perfection, Apsalar stamped one foot to announce the rage of a pampered daughter and new wife. 'I am with child! Defy me and be cursed! We go to the city! Now!'

'Hire one of us for the rest of your journey, blessed lady! But leave the riven Gral! He is not fit to serve you!'

Trembling, Apsalar prepared to lift her veil, announcing the intention to voice her curse.

The Araks flinched back.

'You covet the gelding! This is nothing more than greed! I shall now curse you all—'

'Forgive!' 'We bow down, blessed lady!' 'Touch not your veil!' 'Ride on, then! To the city below! Ride on!'

Apsalar hesitated. For a moment Fiddler thought she would curse them anyway. Instead she spun about. 'Escort us once more, Gral,' she said.

Surrounded by worried, frightened faces, the three mounted up.

An Arak who had spoken earlier now stepped close to the sapper. 'Stay only the night, then ride on hard, Gral. Your kin will pursue you.'

'Tell them,' Fiddler said, 'I won the horse in a fair fight. Tell them that.'

The Arak frowned. 'Will they know the story?'

'Which clan?'

'Sebark.'

The sapper shook his head.

'Then they shall ride you down for the pleasure of it. But I shall tell them your words, anyway. Indeed, your horse was worth killing for.'

Fiddler thought back to the drunken Gral he'd bought the gelding from in Ehrlitan. Three jakata. The tribesmen who moved into the cities lost much. 'Drink my beer this night, Arak?'

'We shall. Before the Gral arrive. Ride on.'

 

As they rode onto the road and approached G'danisban's north gate, Apsalar said to him, 'We are in trouble now, aren't we?'

'Is that what your instincts tell you, lass?'

She grimaced.

'Aye,' Fiddler sighed. 'That we are. I made a mistake with that outcast story. I think now, given your performance back there, that the threat of your curse would have sufficed.'

'Probably.'

Crokus cleared his throat. 'Are we going to actually watch these executions, Fid?'

The sapper shook his head. 'Not a chance. We're riding straight through, if we can.' He glanced at Apsalar. 'Let your courage falter, lass. Another temper tantrum and the citizens will rush you out the south gate on a bed of gold.'

She acknowledged him with a wry smile.

Don't fall in love with this woman, Fid, old friend, else you loosen your guard of the lad's life, and call it an accident of fate ...

 

Spilled blood stained the worn cobbles under the arched north gate and a scatter of wooden toys lay broken and crushed to either side of the causeway. From somewhere close came the screams of children dying.

'We can't do this,' Crokus said, all the colour gone from his face. He rode at Fiddler's side, Apsalar holding her mount close behind them. Looters and armed men appeared now and then farther down the street, but the way into the city seemed strangely open. A haze of smoke hung over everything, and the burnt-out shells of merchant stores and residences gaped desolation on all sides.

They rode amidst scorched furniture, shattered pottery and ceramics, and bodies twisted in postures of violent death. The children's dying screams, off to their right, had mercifully stopped, but other, more distant screams rose eerily from G'danisban's heart.

They were startled by a figure darting across their paths, a young girl, naked and bruised. She ran as if oblivious to them, and clambered under a broken-wheeled cart not fifteen paces from Fiddler and his party. They watched her scramble under cover.

Six armed men approached from a side street. Their weapons were haphazard, and none wore armour. Blackened blood stained their ragged telaban. One spoke. 'Gral! You see a girl? We're not done with her.'

Even as he asked his question, another of them grinned and gestured to the cart. The girl's knees and feet were clearly visible.

'A Mezla?' Fiddler asked.

The group's leader shrugged. 'Well enough. Fear not, Gral, we'll share.'

The sapper heard Apsalar draw a long, slow breath. He eased back in his saddle.

The group split in passing around Fiddler, Crokus and Apsalar. The sapper casually leaned after the nearest man and thrust the point of his long-knife into the base of his skull. The Gral gelding pivoted beneath Fiddler and kicked out with both rear hooves, shattering another man's chest and propelling him backward, sprawling on the cobbles.

Regaining control of the gelding, Fiddler drove his heels into its flanks. They bolted forward, savagely riding down the group's generous leader. From under the horse's stamping hooves came the sound of snapping bones and the sickening crushing of his skull. Fiddler twisted in the saddle to find the remaining three men.

Two of them writhed in keening pain near Apsalar, who sat calm in the saddle, a thick-bladed kethra knife in each gloved hand.

Crokus had dismounted and was now crouching over the last body, removing a throwing knife from a blood-drenched throat.

They all turned at a grinding of potsherds to see the girl claw her way clear of the cart, scramble to her feet, then race into the shadows of an alley, disappearing from view.

The sound of horsemen coming from the north gate reached them.

'Ride on!' Fiddler snapped.

Crokus leapt onto his mount's back. Apsalar sheathed her blades and gave the sapper a nod as she gathered up the reins.

'Ride through – to the south gate!'

Fiddler watched the two of them gallop on, then he slipped from the gelding's back and approached the two men Apsalar had wounded. 'Ah,' he breathed when he came close and saw their slashed-open crotches, 'that's the lass I know.'

The troop of horsemen arrived. They all wore ochre sashes diagonally across their chain-covered chests. Their commander opened his mouth to speak but Fiddler was first.

'Is no man's daughter safe in this seven-cursed city? She was no Mezla, by my ancestors! Is this your Apocalypse? Then I pray the pit of snakes awaits you in the Seven Hells!'

The commander was frowning. 'Gral, you say these men were rapists?'

'A Mezla slut gets what she deserves, but the girl was no Mezla.'

'So you killed these men. All six of them.'

'Aye.'

'Who were the other two riders with you?'

'The pilgrims I am sworn to protect.'

'And yet they ride into the city's heart... without you at their side.'

Fiddler scowled.

The commander scanned the victims. 'Two yet live.'

'May they be cursed with a hundred thousand more breaths before Hood takes them.'

The commander leaned on his saddlehorn and was silent a moment. 'Rejoin your pilgrims, Gral. They have need of your services.'

Growling, Fiddler remounted. 'Who rules G'danisban now?'

'None. The army of the Apocalypse holds but two districts. We shall have the others by the morrow.'

Fiddler pulled the horse around and kicked it into a canter. The troop did not follow. The sapper swore under his breath – the commander was right, he should not have sent Crokus and Apsalar on. He knew himself lucky in that his remaining with the rapists could so easily be construed as typically Gral – the opportunity to brag to the red-swathed riders, the chance to voice curses and display a tribesman's unassailable arrogance – but it risked offering up to contempt his vow to protect his charges. He'd seen the mild disgust in the commander's eyes. In all, he'd been too much of a Gral horsewarrior. If not for Apsalar's frightening talents, those two would now be in serious trouble.

He rode hard in pursuit, noting belatedly that the gelding was responding to his every touch. The horse knew he was no Gral, but it'd evidently decided he was behaving in an approved manner, well enough to accord him some respect. It was, he reflected, this day's lone victory.

 

G'danisban's central square was the site of past slaughter. Fiddler caught up with his companions when they had just begun walking their horses through the horrific scene. They both turned upon hearing his approach, and Fiddler could only nod at the relief in their faces when they recognized him.

Even the Gral gelding hesitated at the square's edge. The bodies covering the cobbles numbered several hundred. Old men and old women, and children, for the most part. They had all been savagely cut to pieces or, in some cases, burned alive. The stench of sun-warmed blood, bile and seared flesh hung thick in the square.

Fiddler swallowed back his revulsion, cleared his throat. 'Beyond this square,' he said, 'all pretences of control cease.'

Crokus gestured shakily. 'These are Malazan?'

'Aye, lad.'

'During the conquest, did the Malazan armies do the same to the locals here?'

'You mean, is this just reprisal?'

Apsalar spoke with an almost personal vehemence. 'The Emperor warred against armies, not civilians—'

'Except at Aren,' Fiddler sardonically interjected, recalling his words with the Tanno Spiritwalker. 'When the T'lan Imass rose in the city—'

'Not by Kellanved's command!' she retorted. 'Who ordered the T'lan Imass into Aren? I shall tell you. Surly, the commander of the Claw, the woman who took upon herself a new name—'

'Laseen.' Fiddler eyed the young woman quizzically. 'I have never before heard that assertion, Apsalar. There were no written orders – none found, in any case—'

'I should have killed her there and then,' Apsalar muttered.

Astonished, Fiddler glanced at Crokus. The Daru shook his head.

'Apsalar,' the sapper said slowly, 'you were but a child when Aren rebelled then fell to the T'lan Imass.'

'I know that,' she replied. 'Yet these memories... they are so clear. I was... sent to Aren ... to see the slaughter. To find out what happened. I... I argued with Surly. No-one else was in the room. Just Surly and ... and me.'

They reached the other end of the square. Fiddler reined in and regarded Apsalar for a long moment.

Crokus said, 'It was the Rope, the patron god of assassins, who possessed you. Yet your memories are—'

'Dancer's.' As soon as he said it, Fiddler knew it was true. 'The Rope has another name. Cotillion. Hood's breath, so obvious! No-one doubted that the assassinations occurred. Both Dancer and the Emperor ... murdered by Laseen and her chosen Clawmasters. What did Laseen do with the bodies? No-one knows.'

'So Dancer lived,' Crokus said with a frown. 'And ascended. Became a patron god in the Warren of Shadow.'

Apsalar said nothing, watching and listening with a carefully controlled absence of expression on her face.

Fiddler was cursing himself for a blind idiot. 'What House appeared in the Deck of Dragons shortly afterward? Shadow. Two new Ascendants. Cotillion ... and Shadowthrone ...'

Crokus's eyes widened. 'Shadowthrone is Kellanved,' he said. 'They weren't assassinated – either of them. They escaped by ascending.'

'Into the Shadow Realm.' Fiddler smiled wryly. 'To nurse their thoughts of vengeance, leading eventually to Cotillion possessing a young fishergirl in Itko Kan, to begin what would be a long, devious path to Laseen. Which failed. Apsalar?'

'Your words are true,' she said without inflection.

'Then why,' the sapper demanded, 'didn't Cotillion reveal himself to us? To Whiskeyjack, to Kalam? To Dujek? Dammit, Dancer knew us all – and if that bastard understood the notion of friendship at all, then those I've just mentioned were his friends—'

Apsalar's sudden laugh rattled both men. 'I could lie and say he sought to protect you all. Do you really wish the truth, Bridgeburner?'

Fiddler felt himself flushing. 'I do,' he growled.

'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 ...'

'I announce what I am,' Kalam replied casually. He had pinpointed the source of the voice, in the deep shadows of a sinkhole just beyond the left-hand watchtower. There was a crossbow trained on the assassin, but Kalam knew he could dodge the quarrel, rolling from the saddle with the stallion between him and the stranger. Two well-thrown knives into the darker shape amidst the shadows would punctuate the exchange. He felt at ease.

'Disarm him,' the voice drawled.

Two massive hands closed on his wrists from behind and savagely pulled both his arms back, until he was dragged, cursing with rage, over the stallion's rump. As soon as he cleared the beast, the hands twisted his body around and drove him hard, face first, into the stony ground. The air knocked from his lungs, Kalam was helpless.

He heard the one who'd spoken rise up from the sinkhole and approach. The stallion snapped his teeth but was swiftly calmed at a soft word from the stranger. The assassin listened as the saddlebags were lifted away and set on the ground. Flaps opened. 'Ah, he's the one, then.'

The hands released Kalam. Groaning, the assassin managed to roll over. A giant of a man stood over him, his face tattooed like shattered glass. A long single braid hung down the left side of his chest. The man wore a cloak of bhederin hide over a vest of armour that seemed made of clam shells. The wooden handle and stone pommel of a bladed weapon of some kind jutted from just under his left arm. The broad belt over the man's loincloth was oddly decorated with what looked to Kalam like dried mushroom caps of various sizes. He was over seven foot tall, yet muscled enough to seem wide, and his flat, broad face gazed down without expression.

Regaining his breath, the assassin sat up. 'A sorcerous silence,' he muttered, mostly to himself.

The man who now held the Book of the Apocalypse heard the gruff whisper and snorted. 'You fancy no mortal could get that close to you without your hearing him. You tell yourself it must have involved magic. You are wrong. My companion is Toblakai, an escaped slave from the Laederon Plateau of Genabackis. He's seen seventeen summers and has personally killed forty-one enemies. Those are their ears on his belt.' The man rose, offering Kalam his hand. 'You are most welcome to Raraku, Deliverer. Our long vigil is ended.'

Grimacing, Kalam accepted the man's hand and felt himself pulled effortlessly to his feet. The assassin brushed the dust from his clothes. 'You are not bandits, then.'

The stranger barked a laugh. 'No, we are not. I am Leoman, Captain of Sha'ik's Bodyguard. My companion refuses his name to strangers, and we shall leave it at that. We are the two she chose.'

'I must deliver the Book into Sha'ik's hands,' Kalam said. 'Not yours, Leoman.'

The squat warrior – by his colour and clothing a child of this desert – held out the Book. 'By all means.'

Cautiously, the assassin retrieved the heavy, battered tome.

A woman spoke behind him. 'You may now give it to me, Deliverer.'

Kalam slowly closed his eyes, struggling to gather the frayed ends of his nerves. He turned.

There could be no doubting. The small, honey-skinned woman standing before him radiated power in waves, the smell of dust and sand whipped by winds, the taste of salt and blood. Her rather plain face was deeply lined, giving her an appearance of being around forty years old, though Kalam suspected she was younger – Raraku was a harsh home.

Involuntarily, Kalam dropped to one knee. He held out the Book. 'I deliver unto you, Sha'ik, the Apocalypse.' And with it, a sea of blood – how many innocent lives shattered, to bring hasten down? Hood take me, what have I done?

The Book's weight left his hands as she accepted it. 'It is damaged.'

The assassin looked up, slowly rose.

Sha'ik was frowning, one finger tracing a torn corner of the leather cover. 'Well, one should not be surprised, given that it is a thousand years old. I thank you, Deliverer. Will you now join my band of soldiers? I sense great talents in you.'

Kalam bowed. 'I cannot. My destiny lies elsewhere.' Flee, Kalam, before you test the skills of these bodyguards. Flee, before uncertainty kills you.

Her dark eyes narrowed on his searchingly, then widened. 'I sense something of your desire, though you shield it well. Ride on, then, the way south is open to you. More, you shall have an escort—'

'I need no escort, Seer—'

'But you shall have one in any case.' She gestured and a bulky, ungainly shape appeared from the gloom.

'Holy One,' Leoman hissed warningly.

'You question me?' Sha'ik snapped.

'The Toblakai is as an army, nor are my skills lacking, Holy One, yet—'

'Since I was a child,' Sha'ik cut in, her voice brittle, 'one vision has possessed me above all others. I have seen this moment, Leoman, a thousand times. At dawn I shall open the Book, and the Whirlwind shall rise, and I shall emerge from it ... renewed. "Blades in hands and unhanded in wisdom," such are the wind's words. Young, yet old. One life whole, another incomplete. I have seen, Leoman!' She paused, drew a breath. 'I see no other future but this one. We are safe.' Sha'ik faced Kalam again. 'I acquired a ... a pet recently, which I now send with you, for I sense ... possibilities in you, Deliverer.' She gestured again.

The huge, ungainly shape moved closer and Kalam took an involuntary step backward. His stallion voiced a soft squeal and stood trembling.

Leoman spoke. 'An aptorian, Deliverer, from the realm of Shadow. Sent into Raraku by Shadowthrone ... to spy. It belongs to Sha'ik now.'

The beast was a nightmare, close to nine feet tall, crouching on two thin hind limbs. A lone foreleg, long and multijointed, jutted down from its strangely bifurcated chest. From a hunched, angular shoulder blade, the demon's sinuous neck rose to a flat, elongated head. Needle fangs ridged its jawline, which was swept back and naturally grinning like a dolphin's. Head, neck and limbs were black, while its torso was a dun grey. A single, flat black eye regarded Kalam with appalling awareness.

The assassin saw barely healed scarring on the demon. 'It's been in a fight?'

Sha'ik scowled. 'A D'ivers. Desert wolves. She drove them off—'

'More like a tactical withdrawal,' Leoman added dryly. 'The beast does not eat or drink, so far as we've seen. And though the Holy One believes otherwise, it appears to be entirely brainless – that look in its eye is likely a mask hiding very little.'

'Leoman plagues me with doubts,' Sha'ik said. 'It is his chosen task and I grow increasingly weary of it.'

'Doubts are healthy,' Kalam said, then snapped his mouth shut.

The Holy One only smiled. 'I sensed you two were alike. Leave us, then. The Seven Holies know, one Leoman is enough.'

With a final glance at the young Toblakai, the assassin vaulted back into the saddle, swung the stallion to the south trail and nudged him into a trot.

The aptorian evidently preferred some distance between them; it moved parallel to Kalam at over twenty paces away, a darker stain in the night, striding awkwardly yet silently on its three bony legs.

After ten minutes of riding at a fast trot, the assassin slowed the stallion to a walk. He had delivered the Book, personally seen to the rise of the Whirlwind. Answered his blood's call, no matter how stained the motivation.

The demands of his other life lay ahead. He would kill the Empress, to save the Empire. If he succeeded, Sha'ik's rebellion was doomed. Control would be restored. And if I fail, they will bleed each other to exhaustion, Sha'ik and Laseen, two women of the same cloth – Hood, they even looked alike. It was not a far reach, then, for Kalam to see in his shadow a hundred thousand deaths. And he wondered if, throughout Seven Cities, readers of the Deck of Dragons now held a newly awakened Herald of Death in their trembling hands.

Queen's blessing, it's done.

 

Minutes before dawn, Sha'ik sat down cross-legged before the Book of the Apocalypse. Her two guards flanked her, each in the ruins of a watchtower. The Toblakai youth leaned on his two-handed ironwood sword. A battered bronze helmet missing a cheek-guard was on his head, his eyes hidden in the shadow of a slitted half-visor. His companion's arms were crossed. A crossbow leaned against one hide-wrapped leg. Two one-handed morning stars were thrust through his broad leather belt. He wore a colourless telaba scarf over a peaked iron helm. Below it, his smooth-shaven face showed, latticed by thirty years of sun and wind. His light-blue eyes were ever restless.

The dawn's rays swept over Sha'ik. The Holy One reached down and opened the Book.

The quarrel struck her forehead an inch above her left eye. The iron head shattered the bone, plunging inward a moment before the spring-driven barbs opened like a deadly flower inside her brain. The quarrel's head then struck the inside of the back of her skull, exiting explosively.

Sha'ik toppled.

Tene Baralta bellowed and watched with satisfaction as Aralt Arpat and Lostara Yil led the twelve Red Blades in a charge towards the two hapless bodyguards.

The desert warrior had dropped and rolled a moment after Sha'ik's death. The crossbow now in his hands bucked. Aralt Arpat's chest visibly caved inward as the quarrel drove through his breastbone. The tall sergeant was knocked backward, sprawling in the dust.

The commander bellowed in fury, drew his tulwars and joined the attack.

Lostara's squad threw lances in staggered succession when but fifteen paces from the Toblakai.

Tene Baralta's eyes widened in astonishment as not one of the six lances struck home. Impossibly lithe for one of such bulk, the Toblakai seemed to simply step through them, shifting weight and dipping a shoulder before springing to close, his archaic wooden sword sweeping across in a backswing that connected with the leading Red Blade's knees. The man went down in a cloud of dust, both legs shattered.

Then the Toblakai was in the squad's midst. As Tene Baralta sprinted to reach them, he saw Lostara Yil reel back, blood spraying from her head, her helmet spinning away to bounce across the potsherd gravel. A second soldier fell, his throat crushed by a thrust from the wooden sword.

Arpat's squad attacked the desert warrior. Chains snapped as the morning stars lashed out and struck with deadly accuracy. There was no more difficult a weapon to parry than a morning star – the chain wrapped over any block, sending the iron ball unimpeded to its target. The weapon's greatest drawback was that it was slow to recover, but in the instant that Tene Baralta glanced over to gauge the battle, he saw that the desert warrior fought equally well with either hand, and was staggering his attacks, resulting in a perpetual sequence of blows that none of the soldiers facing him could penetrate. A helmed head crumpled under the impact in the momentary span of the commander's glance.

In an instant Tene Baralta's tactics shifted. Sha'ik was dead. The mission was a success – there would be no Whirlwind. It was pointless throwing lives away against these two appalling executioners – who had, after all, failed in guarding Sha'ik's life and now sought naught but vengeance. He barked out the recall, and watched as his soldiers battled to extricate themselves from the two men. The effort proved costly, as three more fell before the remaining fighters cleared a space in which to turn and run.

Two of Lostara Yil's soldiers were loyal enough to drag the dazed sergeant with them in their retreat.

Bristling at the sight of the routed Red Blades, Tene Baralta swallowed down a stream of bitter curses. Tulwars held out, he shielded the soldiers' withdrawal, his nerves on fire at the thought of either bodyguard accepting the challenge.

But the two men did not pursue, resuming their positions at the watchtowers. The desert warrior crouched to reload his crossbow.

The sight of the weapon readied was the last Tene Baralta had of the two killers, as the commander then ducked out of sight and jogged with his soldiers back to the small canyon where the horses were tethered.

In the high-walled arroyo, the Red Blades stationed their lone surviving crossbowman on the south-facing crest, then paused to staunch wounds and regain their breaths. Behind them, their horses nickered at the smell of blood. A soldier splashed water on Lostara's red-smeared face. She blinked, awareness slowly returning to her eyes.

Tene Baralta scowled down at her. 'Recover yourself, Sergeant,' he growled. 'You are to regain Kalam's trail – at a safe distance.'

She nodded, reaching up to probe the gash on her forehead. 'That sword was wood.'

'Yet as hard as steel, aye. Hood take the Toblakai – and the other one at that. We'll leave them be.'

A slightly wry expression coming to her face, Lostara Yil simply nodded again.

Tene reached down a gauntleted hand and pulled the sergeant to her feet. 'A fine shot, Lostara Yil. You killed the god-cursed witch and all that went with her. The Empress shall be pleased. More than pleased.'

Weaving slightly, Lostara went to her horse, pulled herself into the saddle.

'We ride to Pan'potsun,' Tene Baralta told her. 'To spread the word,' he added with a dark grin. 'Do not lose Kalam, Sergeant.'

'I've yet to fail in that,' she said.

You know I'll count these losses as yours, don't you! Too clever, lass.

He watched her ride away, then swung his glare on his remaining soldiers. 'Cowards! Lucky for you that I guarded your retreat. Mount up.'

 

Leoman laid out the blanket on the flat ground between the two watchtower foundations, and rolled Sha'ik's linen-wrapped body onto it. He knelt beside it a moment, motionless, then wiped grimy sweat from his brow.

The Toblakai stood nearby. 'She is dead.'

'I see that,' Leoman said dryly, reaching to collect the blood-spattered Book, which he slowly rewrapped in cloth.

'What do we do now?'

'She opened the Book. It was dawn.'

'Nothing happened, except a quarrel going through her head.'

'Damn you, I know!'

The Toblakai crossed his massive arms, fell silent.

'The prophecy was certain,' Leoman said after a few minutes. He rose, wincing at his battle-stiffened muscles.

'What do we do now?' the young giant asked again.

'She said she would be ... renewed ...' He sighed, the Book heavy in his hands. 'We wait.'

The Toblakai raised his head, sniffed. 'There's a storm coming.'