'They have been eradicated!' Iskaral shrieked.
'Within the borders of the Malazan Empire, perhaps,' Mappo conceded.
'My friend,' Icarium said, 'you are withholding truths. I would hear them.'
The Trell sighed. 'They have taken it upon themselves to recruit your guardians, Icarium, and have done so since the beginning.'
'Why?'
'That I do not know. Now that you ask it—' He frowned. 'An interesting question. Dedication to noble vows? Protection of the Azath?' Mappo shrugged.
'Hood's stubby ankles!' Rellock growled. 'Might be guilt, for all we know.'
All eyes swung to him.
After a long, silent moment, Fiddler shook himself. 'Come on, then. Into the maze.'
Arms and limbs. What clawed at the binding roots, what stretched and twisted in a hopeless effort to pull free, what reached out in supplication, in silent appeal and in deadly offer from all sides, was an array of imprisoned life, and few among those horridly animate projections were human in origin.
Fiddler's imagination failed his compulsive desire to fashion likely bodies, heads and faces to such limbs, even as he knew that the reality of what lay hidden within the woven walls would pale his worst nightmares.
Tremorlor's gnarled gaol of roots held demons, ancient Ascendants and such a host of alien creatures that the sapper was left trembling in the realization of his insignificance and that of all his kind. Humans were but one tiny, frail leaf on a tree too massive even to comprehend. The shock of that unmanned him, mocking his audacity with an endless echo of ages and realms trapped within this mad, riotous prison.
They could hear battles raging on all sides, thus far mercifully in other branches of the tortured maze. The Azath was being assailed from all fronts. The sound of snapping, shattering wood cracked through the air. Bestial screams rent the iron-smeared air above them, voices lost from the throats that released them, voices the only thing that could escape this terrifying war.
The crossbow's stock was slick with sweat in Fiddler's hands as he edged forward, keeping to the centre of the path, beyond the reach of those grasping, unhuman hands. A sharp bend lay just ahead. The sapper crouched down, then glanced back at the others.
Only three Hounds remained. Shan and Gear had set off, taking divergent paths. Where they were now and what was happening to them Fiddler had no idea, but Baran, Blind and Rood did not seem perturbed at their absence. The sightless female padded at Icarium's side as if she was nothing more than a well-trained companion to the Jhag. Baran held back as rearguard, while Rood – pale, mottled, a solid mass of muscle – waited not five paces from Fiddler's position, motionless. Its eyes, a dark liquid brown, seemed fixed on the sapper.
He shivered, his gaze flicking once again to Blind. At Icarium's side . . . so dose ... He understood that proximity all too clearly, as did Mappo. If bargains could be struck with a House of the Azath, then Shadowthrone had managed it. The Hounds would not be taken – as much as Tremorlor would have yearned for such prizes, for the abrupt and absolute removal of these ancient killers – no, the deal involved a much greater prize ...
Mappo stood on the Jhag's other side, the burnished long-bone club raised before him. A surge of compassion flooded Fiddler. The Trell was being torn apart from within. He had more than just shapeshifters to guard against – there was, after all, the companion he loved as a brother.
Crokus and Apsalar, the former with his fighting knives out and held in admirably relaxed grips, flanked Servant. Pust slunk along a step behind them.
And this is what we are. This, and no more than this.
He had paused before the bend in response to an instinctive hesitation that seemed to wrap an implacable grip around his spine. Go no farther. Wait. The sapper sighed. Wait for what?
His eyes, still wandering over the group behind him, caught on something, focused.
Rood's hackles had begun a slow rise.
'Hood!''
Movement exploded all around him, a massive shape barrelling into view directly ahead with a roar that turned Fiddler's marrow into spikes of ice. And above, a thudding flapping of leathery wings, huge talons darting down.
The charging Soletaken was a brown bear, as big as a noble-born's carriage, both flanks brushing the root walls of the maze, where arms were pulled, stretched, hands closed on thick fur. The sapper saw one unhuman limb torn from the trio of joints that formed its shoulder, spurting old, black blood. Ignoring these desperate efforts as if they were no more than burrs and thorns, the bear lunged forward.
Fiddler dropped to the root-bound floor – the bark hot and greasy with some kind of sweat – sparing no breath to shout even a warning. Not that it was needed.