Memories of Ice & House of Chains - By Steven Erikson Page 0,570

Ritual. Mundane senses had for the most part withered along with flesh. Through the shadowed orbits of his eyes, for example, the world was a complex collage of dull colours, heat and cold and often measured by an unerring sensitivity to motion. Spoken words swirled in mercurial clouds of breath – if the speaker lived, that is. If not, then it was the sound itself that was detectable, shivering its way through the air. Onrack sensed sound as much by sight as by hearing.

And so it was that he became aware of a warm-blooded shape lying a short distance ahead. The wall here was slowly failing. Water spouted in streams from fissures between the bulging stones. Before long, it would give way entirely.

The shape did not move. It had been chained in place.

Another fifty paces and Onrack reached it.

The stench of Kurald Emurlahn was overpowering, faintly visible like a pool enclosing the supine figure, its surface rippling as if beneath a steady but thin rain. A deep ragged scar marred the prisoner's broad brow beneath a hairless pate, the wound glowing with sorcery. There had been a metal tongue to hold down the man's tongue, but that had dislodged, as had the straps wound round the figure's head.

Slate-grey eyes stared up, unblinking, at the T'lan Imass.

Onrack studied the Tiste Edur for a moment longer, then he stepped over the man and continued on.

A ragged, withered voice rose in his wake. 'Wait.'

The undead warrior paused and glanced back.

'I – I would bargain. For my freedom.'

'I am not interested in bargains,' Onrack replied in the Edur language.

'Is there nothing you desire, warrior?'

'Nothing you can give me.'

'Do you challenge me, then?'

Tendons creaking, Onrack tilted his head. 'This section of the wall is about to collapse. I have no wish to be here when it does.'

'And you imagine that I do?'

'Considering your sentiments on the matter is a pointless effort on my part, Edur. I have no interest in imagining myself in your place. Why would I? You are about to drown.'

'Break my chains, and we can continue this discussion in a safer place.'

'The quality of this discussion has not earned such an exercise,' Onrack replied.

'I would improve it, given the time.'

'This seems unlikely.' Onrack turned away.

'Wait! I can tell you of your enemies!'

Slowly, the T'lan Imass swung round once more. 'My enemies? I do not recall saying that I had any, Edur.'

'Oh, but you do. I should know. I was once one of them, and indeed that is why you find me here, for I am your enemy no longer.'

'You are now a renegade among your own kind, then,' Onrack observed. 'I have no faith in traitors.'

'To my own kind, T'lan Imass, I am not the traitor. That epithet belongs to the one who chained me here. In any case, the question of faith cannot be answered through negotiation.'

'Should you have made that admission, Edur?'

The man grimaced. 'Why not? I would not deceive you.'

Now, Onrack was truly curious. 'Why would you not deceive me?'

'For the very cause that has seen me Shorn,' the Edur replied. 'I am plagued by the need to be truthful.'

'That is a dreadful curse,' the T'lan Imass said.

'Yes.'

Onrack lifted his sword. 'In this case, I admit to possessing a curse of my own. Curiosity.'

'I weep for you.'

'I see no tears.'

'In my heart, T'lan Imass.'

A single blow shattered the chains. With his free right hand, Onrack reached down and clutched one of the Edur's ankles. He dragged the man after him along the top of the wall.

'I would rail at the indignity of this,' the Tiste Edur said as he was pulled onward, step by scuffing step, 'had I the strength to do so.'

Onrack made no reply. Dragging the man with one hand, his sword with the other, he trudged forward, his progress eventually taking them past the area of weakness on the wall.

'You can release me now,' the Tiste Edur gasped.

'Can you walk?'

'No, but—'

'Then we shall continue like this.'

'Where are you going, then, that you cannot afford to wait for me to regain my strength?'

'Along this wall,' the T'lan Imass replied.

There was silence between them for a time, apart from the creaks from Onrack's bones, the rasp of his hide-wrapped feet, and the hiss and thump of the Tiste Edur's body and limbs across the mud-layered stones. The detritus-filled sea remained unbroken on their left, a festering marshland on their right. They passed between and around another dozen catfish, these ones not quite as large yet fully as limbed