Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #2) 34

Sounds drifted into the glade, echoes of panic and alarm in Korbolo Dom's encampment. Parties of riders set out in all directions, bearing torches. Mages risked their warrens, seeking trails through the now perilous pathways of sorcery.

Thirteen hundred Malazan children had vanished, the liberation unseen by the pickets or the mounted patrols. The X-shaped wooden crosses were bare, with only stains of blood, urine and excrement to show that living beings had once hung from them in agony.

In the darkness the plain was strangely alive with shadows, flowing sourcelessly over the motionless grasses.

Apt strode silently into the glade, her daggerlike fangs gleaming their natural grin. Sweat glistened on her black hide, the thick spiny bristles of her hair wet with dew. She stood erect, her single forelimb clutching the limp body of a young boy. Blood dripped from his hands and feet, and his face had been horribly chewed and pecked, leaving him eyeless and with a gaping red hole where his nose had been. Faint breaths from fevered, shallow lungs showed in misty plumes that drifted forlornly in the clearing.

The demon squatted down on her haunches and waited.

Shadows gathered, pouring like liquid between the trees to hover before the portalway.

Apt cocked her head and spread wide her mouth in something like a canine yawn.

A vague shape took form within the shadows. The glowing eyes of guardian Hounds appeared to flank the figure.

'I thought I had lost you,' Shadowthrone whispered to the demon. 'Snared so long by Sha'ik and her doomed goddess. Yet this night you return, not alone – oh no, not alone, aptorian. You've grown ambitious since you were but a Demon Lord's concubine. Tell me, my dear, what am I to do with over a thousand dying mortals?'

The Hounds were eyeing Apt as if the demon was a potential meal.

'Am I a cutter? A healer?' Shadowthrone's voice was rising, octave by octave. 'Is Cotillion a kindly uncle? Are my Hounds farmyard skulkers and orphans' puppies?' The shadow that was the god flared wildly. 'Have you gone entirely insane?'

Apt spoke in a rapid, rasping series of clicks and hisses.

'Of course Kalam wanted to save them!' Shadowthrone shrieked. 'But he knew it was impossible! Only vengeance was possible! But now! Now I must exhaust my powers healing a thousand maimed children! And for what?'

Apt spoke again.

'Servants? And precisely how big do you think Shadow Keep is, you one-armed imbecile!'

The demon said nothing, her slate-grey multifaceted eye glimmering in the starlight.

Shadowthrone hunched suddenly, his gauzelike cloak wrapping close as he hugged himself. 'An army of servants,' he whispered. 'Servants. Abandoned by the Empire, left to their fates at the hand of Sha'ik's bloodlusted bandits. There will be ... ambivalence ... in their scarred, malleable souls ...' The god glanced up at the demon. 'I see long-term benefits in your precipitous act, demon. Lucky for you!'

Apt hissed and clicked.

'You wish to claim for your own the one in your clutches? And – if indeed you are to resume your guardianship of the Bridgeburner assassin – how precisely will you co-ordinate such conflicting responsibilities?'

The demon replied.

Shadowthrone spluttered. 'Such nerve, you coddled bitch! No wonder you fell from the Aptorian Lord's favour!' He fell silent, then, after a moment, flowed forward. 'Forced healing demands a price,' Shadowthrone murmured. 'The flesh recovers while the mind writhes with the memory of pain, that bludgeon of helplessness.' He raised a sleeve-shrouded hand to the boy's forehead. 'This child who shall ride you shall be ... unpredictable.' He hissed a laugh as the wounds began closing, as new flesh formed on the boy's ravaged face. 'What manner of eyes do you wish him to have, my dear?'

Apt answered.

Shadowthrone seemed to flinch, then he laughed again, harsh and cold this time.' “The eyes are love's prism,” are they now? Will you go hand in hand to the fishmonger's on Market Day, my dear?'

The boy's head jerked back, bones altering shape, the twin gaping orbits merging to form a single larger one above a nose bridge that branched to either side, then ran up the outer edge of the socket in a thin, raised ridge. An eye to match the demon's blurred into existence.

Shadowthrone stepped back to examine his handiwork. 'Aai,' he whispered. 'Who then is it who now looks upon me through such a prism? Abyss Below, answer not!' The god spun abruptly to stare at the portalway. 'Cunning Quick Ben – I know his handiwork. He could have gone far under my patronage...'

The Malazan boy clambered to sit behind Apt's narrow, jutting shoulder blade. His frail body shook with the trauma of forced healing, and an eternity nailed to a cross, but his ghastly face showed a slightly ironic smile in a line that perfectly matched the demon's.