Dust of Dreams (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #9)

Dust of Dreams (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #9) Page 128

What else was left to her, then, to make this glorious new religion? When countless thousands of lizard eyes fixed unblinking on her, what could she offer them?

They had travelled east for the morning but were now angling southward once more, and Kalyth sensed a gradual slowing of pace, and as they slipped over a low rise she caught sight of Sag’Churok, stationary and apparently watching their approach.

Something had happened. Something had changed.

A gleam of weathered white-the trunk of a fallen tree? — amidst the low grasses directly ahead, and for the first time Kalyth was jolted as Gunth Mach leapt to one side to avoid it. As they passed the object, the Destriant saw that it was a long bone. Whatever it had belonged to, she realized, must have been enormous.

The other K’Chain Che’Malle were reacting in a like manner as each came upon another skeletal remnant, dancing away as if the splintered bones exuded some poison aura that assailed their senses. Kalyth saw that the K’ell’s flanks glistened, dripping with oil from their glands, and so she knew that they were all afflicted by an extremity of emotion-terror, rage? She had no means of reading such things.

Was this yet another killing field? She wasn’t sure, but something whispered to her that all of these broken bones belonged to a single, gargantuan beast. A dragon? Think of the Nests, the Rooted. Carved in the likeness of dragons… dawn’s breath, can this be the religion of the K’Chain Che’Malle? The worship of dragons?

It made a kind of sense-were these reptiles not physically similar to such mythical beasts? Though she had never seen a dragon, even among her own people there were legends, and in fact she recalled one tale told to her as a child-a fragmented, confused story, which made its recounting rare since it possessed little entertainment value. ‘Dragons swim the sky. Fangs slash and blood rains down. The dragons warred with one another, scores upon scores, and the earth below, and all things that dwelt upon it, could do naught but cower. The breath of the dragons made a conflagration of the sky…’

They arrived where waited Sag’Churok. As soon as Gunth Mach halted, Kalyth slipped down, her legs almost folding under her. Righting herself, she looked around.

Skull fragments. Massive fangs chipped and split. It was as if the creature had simply blown apart.

Kalyth looked upward and saw, directly overhead, a dark speck, wheeling, circling. He shows himself. This, here, this is important. She finally understood what had so agitated the K’Chain Che’Malle. Not fear. Not rage. Anticipation. They expect something from me.

She fought down a moment of panic. Mouth dry, feeling strangely displaced inside her own body, she wandered into the midst of the bone-field. There were gouges scored into the shattered plates of the dragon’s skull, the tracks of bites or talons. She found a dislodged tooth and pulled it up from its web of grasses, heavy as a club in her hands. Sun-bleached and polished on one side, pitted and stained amber on the other. She thought she might laugh-a part of her had never even believed in dragons.

The K’Chain Che’Malle remained at a respectful distance, watching her. What do you want of me? Should I pray? Raise a cairn from these bones? Let blood? Her searching gaze caught something-a large fragment of the back of the skull, and embedded in it… she walked closer, crouched down.

A fang, much like the one she still carried, only larger, and strangely discoloured. The sun had failed to bleach this one. The wind and the grit it carried had not pitted its enamel. The rain had not polished its surface. It had been torn from its root, so deeply had it impaled the dragon’s skull. And it was the hue of rust.

She set down the tooth she had brought over, and knelt. Reaching out, she ran her fingers along the reddish fang. Cold as metal, a chill defying the sun and its blistering heat. Its texture reminded Kalyth of petrified wood. She wondered what creature this could have belonged to- an iron dragon? But how can that be? She attempted to remove the tooth, but it would not budge.

Sag’Churok spoke in her mind, in a voice strangely faint. ‘ Destriant, in this place it is difficult to reach you. Your mind. The otataral would deny us .’

‘The what?’

‘ There is no single god. There can never be a single god. For there to be one face, there must be another. The Nah’ruk did not see it in such terms, of course. They spoke of forces in opposition, of the necessity of tension. All that binds must be bound to two foci, at the minimum. Even should a god exist alone, isolated in its perfection, it will come to comprehend the need for a force outside itself, beyond its omniscience. If all remains within, Destriant-exclusively within, that is-then there is no reason for anything to exist, no reason for creation itself. If all is ordered, untouched by chaos, then the universe that was, is and will ever be, is without meaning. Without value. The god would quickly comprehend, then, that its own existence is also without meaning, and so it would cease. It would succumb to the logic of despair .’