Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(196)

She knew she was drifting … delaying.

‘Summoner,’ Pran began, and he always used this form of address when he wished to be stern with her. She could almost hear him clearing his throat, had he breath to do so. ‘We cannot delay any longer. We must confront them.’

No. We mustn’t. She had made her decision. ‘This time you must remain behind.’

If a desiccated mien of bared grinning teeth could express surprise and dismay, Pran’s features came closest. ‘Summoner …’ his breathless voice whispered. ‘Do not cast us off.’

‘I alone must speak to them. You have brought me this far and for that I thank you. Now you must remain. I’ll won’t—’ She stopped herself. ‘That is, I cannot risk losing any of you.’

‘And what of you?’

‘You know I will be safe. Fetch my horse.’

He inclined his head until the empty sockets of the beast skull seemed to stare at her in direct remonstration. ‘As you order, Summoner,’ he murmured in his sad dry voice.

He shuffled off and she went to talk to Kilava. A cold wind buffeted them all, slicing down out of the mountain heights. The beaded laces of her shirt rattled and her long tangled grey hair tossed about her face. She drew it aside. She sensed something, far in the heights behind the dense cloud cover. But just what it was she couldn’t be certain. Oddly enough, she had no interest in the Jaghut themselves, or their sorcery. Her purpose was not to prosecute the Jaghut; her purpose was to bring an end to the ritual of Tellann. No doubt, however, it was this stirring that had so distracted Kilava these last two days.

She stopped next to the squat muscular woman whose midnight black hair, being even longer than hers, lashed violently in the gusting wind as if reflecting her angry thoughts. She stared north for a time, trying to see what this elder Imass Bonecaster might be seeing.

‘You have not seen a Jaghut refugium before, have you?’ Kilava asked.

She shook her head. ‘I am a child of the warm prairie.’ She might not have seen one, but in response to the Bonecaster’s question there came a cascade of images provided by the three awarenesses that shared her being: Nightchill, crossing one such windswept waste beneath hanging curtains of flickering lights tinged pink at their frills; Tattersail, sailing past gleaming cerulean cliffs of ice far taller than those they glimpsed just to the south; even Bellurdan, sharing a fire with a Jaghut elder within one of these remaining enclaves.

‘I see them through other eyes,’ she said.

Kilava nodded her understanding. ‘What I see troubles me. It has been a long time …’ she glanced to her, ‘an unimaginably long time – but what I sense hidden there reminds me …’ She frowned then, losing whatever memory it was she hunted. ‘Well, perhaps we will have to chase the Kerluhm even there.’

‘I hope it will not come to that.’

The Bonecaster turned to Pran, Tolb, and the waiting T’lan. Silverfox looked as well. How painfully few this remaining handful, some thirty only. Yet incalculably precious to her.

‘You have hurt Pran’s feelings,’ Kilava observed.

‘They have no feelings.’

Kilava raised one silken black brow. ‘You know that is not so.’

‘Yes,’ she sighed, exhausted. She was just so tired of their company. Their rigidity. Their silence. Their unrelenting … alienness. ‘Yes,’ she sighed again. ‘They feel twice with their spirits what they can no longer feel with their flesh. I know this.’

‘Do not forget it. It is too easy to forget.’

Pran arrived, leading the watered and rested mount. Tolb followed, his withered hands clasped at his ragged belt. ‘We are to remain behind,’ Pran told Kilava.

The Bonecaster eyed him. ‘I see. Yet why should the Kerluhm listen to her now?’

Silverfox stroked the bay’s neck, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’m not going to ask this time.’

‘Then perhaps I should follow at a distance,’ Kilava offered.

Silverfox felt her brows rising. This was a day of days. The legendary Kilava being obliging. ‘There is no need.’ She added, mounting: ‘You would be too far away to intercede in any case.’

But the three Bonecasters were paying her no attention. All three had turned to the north, as had the faces of the rest of the Imass. She glanced that way, shading her eyes. What was it? She sensed there, behind the bunched soot-black clouds, the stirring of Omtose – was that it?

Then she saw it. Through her own Bonecaster’s vision she glimpsed a kind of wave descending the upper slopes. Invisible, yet visible by the disturbance it evoked as it came, like a wave through water. It came on, descending the slopes at astounding speed.

Kilava spun to her. ‘Protect yourself!’ she ordered.

She could only gape. What was this thing?

Then a hammer struck her across the head and she tumbled sideways off the horse to land numb with the shock of it. Pink coloured the swirling visions that assaulted her. She sensed her awarenesses, like survivors lashed to a raft, battling to remain afloat. The most potent of them, Nightchill, appeared to swim before her. Not in ten thousand years have they dared! she snarled, enraged. Bizarrely, behind the cracks widening between her shared essences, came the bellowed joy of Bellurdan as the giant gloried in the unleashed puissance washing over them. Darkness took her then.