The wolf opened one eye to look upon him.
'You're supposed to be extinct,' Toc murmured. 'Vanished from the world for a hundred thousand years. What are you doing here?'
The ay was the scout's only company, for the moment. Lady Envy had elected to make a detour through her warren, northwestward a hundred and twenty leagues to the city of Callows, to replenish her supplies. Supplies of what? Bath oil? He was unconvinced of the justification, but even his suspicious nature yielded him no clue as to her real reasons. She had taken the dog, Garath, with her, as well as Mok. Safe enough to leave Senu and Thurule, I suppose. Tool dropped them both, after all. Still, what was important enough to make Envy break her own rule of a minimum of three servants?
Tool had vanished into a dusty swirl a half-bell earlier, off on another hunt. The remaining two Seguleh weren't in a generous mood, not deigning to engage the unranked Malazan in conversation. They stood off to one side. Watching the sunset? Relaxing at ramrod attention?
He wondered what was happening far to the north. Dujek had chosen to march on the Pannion Domin. A new war, against an unknown foe. Onearm's Host was Toc's family, or at least what passed for family for a child born to an army. The only world he knew, after all. A family pursued by jackals of attrition. What kind of war were they heading into? Vast, sweeping battles, or the crawling pace of contested forests, jagged ranges and sieges? He fought back another surge of impatience, a tide that had been building within him day after day on this endless plain, building and threatening to escape the barriers he'd raised in his mind.
Damn you, Hemlock, for sending me so far away. All right, so that warren was chaotic — so was the puppet that used it on me. But why did it spit me out at Morn? And where did all those months go, anyway? He had begun to mistrust his belief in happenstance, and the crumbling of that belief left him feeling on shaky ground. To Mom and its wounded warren. to Morn, where a renegade T'lan Imass lay in the black dust, waiting — not for me, he said, but for Lady Envy. Not any old renegade T'lan Imass, either. One I've met before. The only one I've met before. And then there's Lady Envy herself, and her damned Seguleh servants and four-legged companions — uh, don't go there, Toc …
Anyway. Now we're travelling together. North, to where each of us wants to be. What luck. What happy coincidence!
Toc disliked the notion of being used, of being manipulated. He'd seen what that had cost his friend, Captain Paran. Paran was tougher than me — I saw that from the start. He'd take the hits, blink, then just keep going. He'd some kind of hidden armour, something inside him that kept him sane.
Not me, alas. Things get tough, and I'm liable to curl up and start whimpering.
He glanced over at the two Seguleh. It seemed they were as loth to talk to each other as they were to anyone else. Strong, silent types. I hate those. I didn't before. I do, now.
So. here I am, in the middle of nowhere, and the only truly sane creature in my company is an extinct wolf. His gaze returned once more to Baaljagg. 'And where's your family, beastie?' he asked softly, meeting the ay's soft, brown gaze.
The answer came, a sudden explosion of swirling colours directly behind the socket of his lost eye — colours that settled into an image. Kin assailing three musk oxen, hunters and hunted mired deep in mud, trapped, doomed to die. The point of view was low, from just beyond the sinkhole, circling, ever circling. Whimpering filled Toc's mind. Desperate love unanswered. Panic, filling the cold air.
A pup's confusion.
Fleeing. Wandering mudflats and sandbanks, across a dying sea.
Hunger.
Then, standing before her, a figure. Cowled, swathed in roughly woven black wool, a hand — wrapped in leather straps, down to the very fingers — reaching out. Warmth. Welcome. A palpable compassion, a single touch to the creature's lowered forehead. The touch, Toc realized, of an Elder God. And a voice: You are the last, now. The very last, and there will be need for you. In time …
Thus, I promise that I shall bring to you … a lost spirit. Tom from its flesh. A suitable one, of course. For that reason, my search may be a long one. Patience, little one. and in the meantime, this gift…
The pup closed her eyes, sank into instant sleep — and found herself no longer alone. Loping across vast tundras, in the company of her own kind. An eternity of loving dreams, secured with joy, a gift made bitter only by waking hours, waking years, centuries, millennia spent. alone.
Baaljagg, unchallenged among the dreamworld's ay, ruling mother of countless children in a timeless land. No lack of quarry, no lean times. Upright figures on distant horizons, seen but rarely, and never approached. Cousins to come across every now and then. Forest-dwelling agkor, white bendal, yellow' haired ay'tog of the far south — names that had sunk their meaning into Baaljagg's immortal mind. eternal whisperings from those ay that had joined the T'lan Imass, there, then, at the time of the Gathering. A whole other kind of immortality …
