A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 2

moment, K'rul and his brother turned to their sister.
    She shrugged. 'I shall endeavour to guard myself. When my destruction comes, it will be through betrayal and naught else. There can be no precaution against such a thing, lest my life become its own nightmare of suspicion and mistrust. To this, I shall not surrender. Until that moment, I shall continue to play the mortal game.'
    'Careful, then,' K'rul murmured, 'whom you choose to fight for.'
    'Find a companion,' Draconus advised. 'A worthy one.'
    'Wise words from you both. I thank you.'
    There was nothing more to be said. The three had come together, with an intent they had now achieved. Perhaps not in the manner they would have wished, but it was done. And the price had been paid. Willingly. Three lives and one, each destroyed. For the one, the beginning of eternal hatred. For the three, a fair exchange.
    Elder Gods, it has been said, embodied a host of unpleasantries.
     
    In the distance, the beast watched the three figures part ways. Riven with pain, white fur stained and dripping blood, the gouged pit of its lost eye glittering wet, it held its hulking mass on trembling legs. It longed for death, but death would not come. It longed for vengeance, but those who had wounded it were dead. There but remained the man seated on the throne, who had laid waste to the beast's home.
    Time enough would come for the settling of that score.
    A final longing filled the creature's ravaged soul. Somewhere, amidst the conflagration of the Fall and the chaos that followed, it had lost its mate, and was now alone. Perhaps she still lived. Perhaps she wandered, wounded as he was, searching the broken wastes for sign of him.
    Or perhaps she had fled, in pain and terror, to the warren that had given fire to her spirit.
    Wherever she had gone – assuming she still lived – he would find her.
    The three distant figures unveiled warrens, each vanishing into their Elder realms.
    The beast elected to follow none of them. They were young entities as far as he and his mate were concerned, and the warren she might have fled to was, in comparison to those of the Elder Gods, ancient.
    The path that awaited him was perilous, and he knew fear in his labouring heart.
    The portal that opened before him revealed a grey-streaked, swirling storm of power. The beast hesitated, then strode into it.
    And was gone.

BOOK ONE

THE SPARK AND THE
ASHES

Five mages, an Adjunct, countless Imperial
Demons, and the debacle that was Darujhistan,
all served to publicly justify the outlawry proclaimed by
the Empress on Dujek Onearm and his battered legions.
That this freed Onearm and his Host to launch a new
campaign, this time as an independent military
force, to fashion his own unholy alliances which
were destined to result in a continuation of the
dreadful Sorcery Enfilade on Genabackis, is,
one might argue, incidental. Granted, the countless
victims of that devastating time might, should Hood
grant them the privilege, voice an entirely different
opinion. Perhaps the most poetic detail of what
would come to be called the Pannion Wars was
in fact a precursor to the entire campaign: the casual,
indifferent destruction of a lone, stone bridge,
by the Jaghut Tyrant on his ill-fated march to
Darujhistan . . .
    Imperial Campaigns (The Pannion War) 1194–1195, Volume N, Genabackis Imrygyn Tallobant (b. 1151)

CHAPTER ONE
    Memories are woven tapestries hiding hard walls—tell me, my friends, what hue your favoured thread, and I in turn, will tell the cast of your soul . . .
    Life of Dreams
Ilbares the Hag
     
    1164th Year of Burn's Sleep (two months after the Darujhistan Fete) 4th Year of the Pannion Domin Tellann Year of the Second Gathering
     
    The bridge's Gadrobi limestone blocks lay scattered, scorched and broken in the bank's churned mud, as if a god's hand had swept down to shatter the stone span in a single, petty gesture of contempt. And that, Gruntle suspected, was but a half-step from the truth.
    The news had trickled back into Darujhistan less than a week after the destruction, as the first eastward-bound caravans this side of the river reached the crossing, to find that where once stood a serviceable bridge was now nothing but rubble. Rumours whispered of an ancient demon, unleashed by agents of the Malazan Empire, striding down out of the Gadrobi Hills bent on the annihilation of Darujhistan itself.
    Gruntle spat into the blackened grasses beside the carriage. He had his doubts