‘And he has done that, has he not, Grub? Oh, he has done that.’
The Errant stepped into the vast, impossible chamber. Gone now the leisure of reminiscences, the satisfied stirring of brighter days long since withered colourless, almost dead. Knuckles trailed a step behind him, as befitted his role of old and his role to come.
She was awake, hunched over a scattering of bones. Trapped in games of chance and mischance, the brilliant, confounding offerings of Sechul Lath, Lord of the Hold of Chance-the Toppler, the Conniver, the Wastrel of Ruin. Too foolish to realize that she was challenging, in the Lord’s cast, the very laws of the universe which were, in truth, far less predictable than any mortal might believe.
The Errant walked up and with one boot kicked the ineffable pattern aside.
Her face stretched into a mask of rage. She reared, hands lifting-and then froze as she fixed her eyes upon the Errant.
‘Kilmandaros.’
He saw the flicker of fear in her gaze.
‘I have come,’ he said to her, ‘to speak of dragons.’
Chapter Eight
In my lifelong study of the scores of species of ants to be found in the tropical forests of Dal Hon, I am led to the conviction that all forms of life are engaged in a struggle to survive, and that within each species there exists a range of natural but variable proclivities, of physical condition and of behaviour, which in turn weighs for or against in the battle to survive and procreate. Further, it is my suspicion that in the act of procreation, such traits are passed on. By extension, one can see that ill traits reduce the likelihood of both survival and procreation. On the basis of these notions, I wish to propose to my fellow scholars at this noble gathering a law of survival that pertains to all forms of life. But before I do so, I must add one more caveat, drawn from the undeniable behavioural characteristics of, in my instance of speciality, ants. To whit, success of one form of life more often than not initiates devastating population collapse among competitors, and indeed, sometimes outright extinction. And that such annihilation of rivals may in fact be a defining feature of success.
Thus, my colleagues, I wish to propose a mode of operation among all forms of life, which I humbly call-in my four-volume treatise-‘The Betrayal of the Fittest’.
Obsessional S Crolls, s ixth d ay p roceedings address of Skavat Gill Unta, Malazan Empire, 1097 Burn’s Sleep
A s if riding a scent on the wind; or through the tremble in the ground underfoot; or perhaps the air itself carried alien thoughts, thoughts angry, malign-whatever the cause, the K’Chain Che’Malle knew they were now being hunted. They had no patience for Kalyth and her paltry pace, and it was Gunth Mach whose posture slowly shifted, spine drawing almost horizontal to the ground-as if in the course of a single morning some force reshaped her skeleton, muscles and joints-and before the sun stood high she had gathered up the Destriant and set her down behind the humped shoulder-blades, where the dorsal spikes had flattened and where the thick hide had formed something like a saddle seat. And Kalyth found herself riding a K’Chain Che’Malle, the sensation far more fluid than that she recalled of sitting on the back of a horse, so that it seemed they flowed over the broken scrubland, at a speed somewhere between a canter and a gallop. Gunth Mach made use of her forelimbs only as they skirted slopes or ascended the occasional low hill; mostly the scarred, scale-armoured arms remained drawn up like the pincers of a mantis.
The K’ell Hunters Rythok and Kor Thuran flanked her, with Sag’Churok almost a third of a league ahead-even from her vantage point atop Gunth Mach, Kalyth rarely caught sight of the huge creature, a speck of motion betrayed only by its shadow. All of the K’Chain Che’Malle now bore on their scaled hides the mottled hues of the ground and its scant plant cover.
And yet… and yet… they were afraid.
Not of those human warriors who pursued them-that was little more than an inconvenience, an obstacle to their mission. No, instead, the fear within these terrible demons was deeper, visceral. It rode out from Gunth’an Acyl, the Matron, in ice-laden ripples, crowding up against each and every one of her children. The pressure built, grinding, thunderous.
A war is coming. We all know this. But as to the face of this enemy, I alone am blind.
Destriant-what does it mean to be one? To these creatures? What faith am I supposed to shape? I have no history to draw from, no knowledge of K’Chain Che’Malle legends or myths-assuming they have any. Gunth’an Acyl has fixed her eyes upon humankind. She would pillage the beliefs of my kind.
She is indeed mad! I can give them nothing!
She would pluck not a single fragment from her own people. They were all dead, after all. Betrayed by their own faiths-that the rains would always come; that the land would ever provide; that children would be born and mothers and aunts would raise them; that there would be campfires and singing and dancing and loves and passions and laughter. All lies, delusions, false hopes-there was no point in stirring those ashes.