Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(15)

*

When she was at her very lowest Pran Chole would come to spend time with her – or perhaps to watch over her should she consider some sort of sudden drastic action to end her misery. She had yet to decide whether his silent company was a consolation or an aggravation. In the past, he’d once offered himself up as the defenceless target and recipient of her anger, her fury, and her outrage at the injustice of her fate. And she had beaten upon him the way a smith punishes his anvil. Yet she’d seen since how he had done it as a gift to her, out of love. That she should turn her fury upon him rather than herself.

Now she was not certain what her feelings were for the ancient Bonecaster – the closest thing to a father she could claim to have had. When she was at her lowest he could somehow sense it. He would come to her tent among the dunes, entering just as any living being would through the loose front flap, ducking his head bearing its broken-antlered headdress, to stand silent and watchful. Offering the last thing that remained to him to try to ease her mind: his company.

Sometimes, on nights like these, when the wind howled off the coast and the waves pummelled the beach as if meaning to wash it from existence utterly, she would sit cross-legged next to her small fire while her hide tent shuddered and jerked about her, and he would come to stand just inside the opening as if uncertain of his welcome. She was not uncomfortable in his presence; and indeed, his attention wasn’t upon her at all. The dark empty pits of his sockets gazed steadily aside, towards the coast, ever sensing for newcomers.

Of course he need not have bothered with this awkward gesture of companionship. She of all people, Silverfox, was never alone. It was what she was. How she had been created. And she considered it her curse. Four entities resided within her. Pran Chole himself, among others, had pulled the four together to create what he hoped would become the first living T’lan Imass Bonecaster and Summoner in many millennia. And he had succeeded. Powerful beings, dead and dying, had been lashed to her soul as if by bloody sinew and dried roots: Tattersail, powerful Malazan cadre mage, indeed potent enough to be considered a potential High Mage; Bellurdan, a Thelomen giant in life and huge in soul in death; and most closed to her of all, Nightchill, a sorceress of the Malazan Empire. In life, for a time, they had served Kellanved, the first emperor. But in death they agreed to serve the child Silverfox – destined to release the T’lan Imass from their self-inflicted bondage.

And when she was at her very nadir, as on this night, she could not help but note her hands as she prodded the dying embers of the fire; their wasted bird-like lines, all sinew and bone, the skin blotched by age-spots. Not the hands of the youth she was – at least in years. By the number of seasons she had seen she should be an adolescent. Yet her purpose, what she was formed to do, arrived early. And so was she quickened to meet it. The cost had been terrible, and not just to her. The need had consumed her mother first. It had taken the many potential decades of her life. And now it was overwhelming hers.

She flexed her hands to warm them then returned to stirring the embers with a stick of broken brittle driftwood. All this Pran Chole witnessed. The low fire cast a bronze glow across his dry withered face, though the empty sockets of his eyes remained hidden in darkness beneath his headdress of weathered, broken antlers. How many such scenes had this Imass seen? The fire’s flush suited him, she decided.

Her thoughts turned then to another Imass, one who had shared many similar nights across the sea in Genabackis, and had become what Silverfox considered the closest thing to a friend among them: Lanas Tog of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass. The warrior who came bearing the message of war in Assail.

She sighed then, examining her limp useless hands, and Pran Chole, who knew her so well, broke his silence. His voice was the brushing of sand across the dunes: ‘She did what she thought she had to do, child.’

That she should be so transparent irked her and she growled, ‘She should not have lied.’

‘She did not lie. You could say she told a half-truth. What she imagined would bring us to this land.’

‘She must’ve known we would not join her.’

The ancient undying warrior offered the answer of his accumulated millennia of wisdom: he lifted his bony shoulders in a small shrug. ‘She guessed some would.’

Silverfox felt a fury mounting at that betrayal. Within her, the mountain-shaking ire of Bellurdan bellowed anew at those who had defied her command, while an icy vow from Nightchill whispered: never forget nor forgive. Yet she and Tattersail still could not believe that there would be those who would put their ancient enmity first – even after the lessons of Genabackis and the benediction of the Redeemer who had granted the T’lan Imass the possibility for hope once more. This clinging to the past troubled her young soul the most. ‘It is so utterly needless,’ she murmured, watching the embers burn themselves out.

Pran Chole did not answer. After a moment she glanced up to see that she was alone.

Certainty chilled her spine then. Gods, no. Not again. I can’t go. Can’t bear to witness it all again. It tore her apart to see it. But she should; if her words could sway just one …

She threw open the loose hide flap and ran for the breakers crashing beyond the intervening high dunes.

She found Pran Chole standing knee high in the foaming surf, facing the empty ocean. ‘Who comes!’ she shouted over the wind and the surge of waves.

‘I know not,’ he answered, as phlegmatic as ever.