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

Dust of Dreams (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #9) Page 329

Her brother was beside her now, and one hand rested on her shoulder. ‘Scar Bandaris, the last prince of the Edur. King, I suppose, by then. He saw in us the sins not of the father, but of the mother. He left us and took all the Edur with him. He told us to hold, to ensure his escape. He said it was all we deserved, for we were our mother’s children, and was she not the seducer and the father the seduced?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I wonder if the last of us left set out on his trail with vengeance in mind, or was it because we had nowhere else to go? By then, after all, Shadow had become the battlefield of every Elder force, not just the Tiste-it was being torn apart, with blood-soaked forces dividing every spoil, every territory-what were they called again? Yes, warrens . Every world was made an island, isolated in an ocean of chaos.’

Her eyes felt raw, but not a single tear sprang loose. ‘We could not have survived that,’ she said. ‘That assault you described. You called it a miracle that we survived, but I know how-though I never understood its meaning-not until your words today.’

Yedan said, ‘The Watch commanded the legions, and we held until we were told to withdraw. It’s said there were but a handful of us left by then, elite officers one and all. They were the Watch. The Road was open then-we but marched.’

‘It was open because of Blind Gallan.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because,’ she looked up at him, ‘he was told to save us.’

‘Gallan was a poet-’

‘And Seneschal of the Court of Mages in Kharkanas.’

He chewed on this for a while, glanced away, studying the swirling wall of light and the ceaseless sweep of figures in the depths, faces stretched in muted screams-an entire civilization trapped in eternal torment-but she saw not a flicker of emotion touch his face. ‘A great power, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘There was civil war. Who could have commanded him to do anything?’

‘One possessing the Blood of T’iam, and a prince of Kharkanas.’

She watched his eyes slowly widen, but still he stared at the wall. ‘Now why,’ he asked, ‘would an Andii prince have done that?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s said he strode down to the First Shore, terribly wounded, sheathed in blood. It’s said he looked upon the Shake, at how few of us were left, and at the ruin surrounding us-the death of the forests, the charred wreckage of our homes. He held a broken sword in one hand, a Hust sword, and it was seen to fall from his grip. He left it here.’

‘That’s all? Then how do you know he commanded Gallan to do anything?’

‘When Gallan arrived he told the Twilight-he had torn out his eyes by then and was accompanied by an Andii woman who led him by an arm down from the shattered forest-he came down like a man dying of fever but when he spoke, his voice was clear and pure as music. He said to her these words:

“There is no grief in Darkness.

It has taken to the skies.

It leaves a world of ashes and failure.

It sets out to find new worlds, as grief must.

Winged grief commands me:

Make a road for the survivors on the Shore

To walk the paths of sorrow

And charge them the remembrance

Of this broken day

As it shall one day be seen:

As the birth of worlds unending

Where grief waits for us all

In the soul’s darkness.” ’

She slipped out from the weight of his hand and straightened, brushing bone dust from her knees. ‘He was asked, then, who was this Winged Grief? And Gallan said, “There is but one left who would dare command me. One who would not weep and yet had taken into his soul a people’s sorrow, a realm’s sorrow. His name was Silchas Ruin.” ’

Yedan scanned the beach. ‘What happened to the broken sword?’

She started, recovered. Why, after all this time, could her brother still surprise her? ‘The woman with Gallan picked it up and threw it into the sea.’

His head snapped round. ‘Why would she do that?’

Yan Tovis held up her hands. ‘She never explained.’

Yedan faced the refulgent wall again, as if seeking to pierce its depths, as if looking for the damned sword.

‘It was just a broken sword-’

‘A Hust sword-you said so.’

‘I don’t even know what that means, except it’s the name for Ruin’s weapon.’

He grimaced. ‘It should have healed by now,’ he muttered, walking out on to the strand, eyes scanning the pallid beach. ‘Light would reject it, cast it up.’