The bastard knows! He understands the game we’re playing! It was a struggle not to betray everything with a glance to Kilmandaros. Seeing the quiet knowledge in Mael’s eyes chilled him.
Olar Ethil bestowed on them a third cackle, a gift no one welcomed.
Errastas was no fool. Suspicion glittered from his eye as he studied Sechul Lath. ‘Well now,’ he said in a low tone, ‘all those nights tossing the bones for Kilmandaros here… I suppose you found plenty of things to talk about, killing time as it were. Some plans , perhaps, Setch? Foolish of me, I see now, to imagine you were content with simply wasting away, leaving it all behind. It seems,’ and the smile he gave was dangerous, ‘you played me. Using all of your most impressive talents.’
‘This meeting,’ drawled Mael, ‘was premature. Errant, consider yourself banished from Letheras. If I sense your return, I will hunt you down and drown you as easily as you did Feather Witch.’
He walked to the spring, descended into the sinkhole and vanished from sight.
Olar Ethil pointed a finger at Kilmandaros, waggled it warningly, and then set off, northward. A miserable collection of skin and bones. The three remaining Elder Gods watched her walk away. When the T’lan Imass was perhaps fifty paces distant, she veered into her draconic form, dust billowing, and then lifted skyward.
A low growl came from Kilmandaros.
Sechul Lath rubbed at his face. He sighed. ‘The power you seek to bleed dry, Errastas,’ he said, facing the Errant, ‘well, it turns out we were all working to similar ends.’
‘You anticipated me.’
Sechul shrugged. ‘We had no expectation that you would just show up at the door.’
‘I do not appreciate being played, Setch. Do you see no value to my alliance?’
‘You have irrevocably altered the strategy. As Mael pointed out, though perhaps for different reasons, this meeting was premature. Now our enemies are awakened to us.’ He sighed again. ‘Had you stayed away, stayed quiet, why, Mother and I-we’d have stolen that power from beneath their very noses.’
‘To share solely between the two of you.’
‘To the victors the spoils.’ But none of this mad usurpation, this desire to return to what once was. ‘But, I dare say, had you come begging, we might well have proved magnanimous… for old times’ sake.’
‘I see.’
Kilmandaros faced him. ‘Do you, Master of the Holds? You summoned us here, only to find that you are the weakest, the most ignorant among us. You forced us all-Sechul, Mael, Olar Ethil, to put you in your place. To make you realize that you alone have been wallowing in self-pity and wasting away doing nothing. Perhaps Mael thinks our time is done, but then, why has he ensured that his worship is on the ascent? That a Jhistal Priest of Mael now rises to take the throne of the most powerful empire this world has seen since the time of Kallor and Dessimbelackis? Who among us has proved the witless one this day?’
With a snarl, Errastas swung away from them.
Sechul turned to his mother. ‘Mael was warning us, I think. This Adjunct Tavore he spoke of. These infernal Malazans.’
‘And the children of the gods. Yes, many warnings, Sechul. From Olar Ethil as well. Jaghut, T’lan Imass, Tiste Andii-bah!’
‘All subtlety is lost,’ agreed Sechul Lath. ‘Errastas, return to us, we have much to discuss. Come now, I will tell you of the path we have already prepared. I will tell you just how close we are to achieving all that we desire. And you, in turn, can tell us how you intend to release the Otataral Eleint. Such exchanges are the heart of an alliance, yes?’
His poor friend had been humiliated. Well, there was value in lessons. So long as it’s someone else receiving them.
Kilmandaros spoke: ‘Time has come to build anew the bridge, Errastas. Let us ensure that it is strong, immune to fire and all manner of threat. Tell me of how I will kill the Otataral Eleint-for that promise alone I will stand with you.’
He returned to them, eventually, as they had known he would.
‘They never burned the bridge behind them before finishing the one in front of them. But there then came a day when the bridges ran out. Nowhere ahead. The road’s end.’ Cuttle reached out and a clay jug was pressed into his hand. He drank down another mouthful, and would not look at the young soldiers with whom he shared the brazier. The rush of water under the flat-bottomed hull was an incessant wet scrape, far too close beneath the sapper for his liking. Silly, he reflected, being a marine who hated water. Rivers, lakes, seas and rain, he despised them all.
