Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,208

eleven islands scattered in the vast oceans, ruins and riches discovered, ancient sorceries and fierce, ignorant tribes encountered. Other peoples, not human, all of whom bled easily enough. Barghast, Trell, Tartheno, Fenn, Mare, Jhag, Krinn, Jheck ... Colonies had been established on foreign coasts. Wars and conquests, always conquests. Until ... all was brought down, all was destroyed. The First Empire collapsed in upon itself. Beasts rose in the midst of its cities, a nightmare burgeoning like plague.

The Emperor who was One was now Seven, and the Seven were scattered, lost in madness. The great cities burned. And people died in the millions.

The nightmare had a name, and that name was T'lan Imass.

Two words, inspiring hatred and terror. But, beyond those two words, there was nothing. All memory of who or what the T'lan Imass had been was lost in the chaos that followed.

Few Letherii remained who were aware of even that much. True, they knew the name 'First Empire'. And they knew of the fall of that glorious civilization of so long ago, a civilization that was their legacy. And little else, barring the prophecy of rebirth.

Udinaas could no longer make that claim of blissful ignorance for himself. Within the world of ghosts and shades, the past lived on, breathed like a thing alive and ever restive. And voices haunted him, long dead voices. The Tiste Andii shade, Wither, was indifferent to the Letherii slave's own desires, his pleading for silence, for an end to the grisly cacophony of regrets which seemed to be all that held ghosts together.

Udinaas knew enough horror, here among the living. And the distilling of old truths was, as far as he was concerned, not worth it.

T'lan Imass.

T'lan Imass...

What did he care about some ancient nemesis?

Because the dust of over four thousand of them was beneath their feet at this moment. A truth riding Wither's raspy laughter.

'And that dust has eyes, slave. Should you fear? Probably

not. They're not interested. Much. Not enough to rise up and slaughter you all, which they might not succeed in doing anyway. But, I tell you this, Udinaas, they would give it a good try.'

'If they are dust,' Udinaas muttered, 'they cannot slaughter anyone.'

It was night. He sat with his back to a sloping rock face, on a ledge perched above the massive Edur encampment. The emperor had sent him off a short while ago. The hulking, gold-smeared bastard was in a foul mood. Wearied from dragging his bulk around, arguments with Hannan Mosag, the endless logistics of moving an army tens of thousands strong, families in tow. Not all was glory.

'The dust can rise, Udinaas. Can take shape. Warriors of bone and withered flesh, with swords of stone. Where are these ones from? Which warleader sent them here? They do not answer our questions. They never do. There are no bonecasters among them. They are, like us, lost.'

Udinaas was tired of listening. The wraith was worse than a burrowing tick, buried deep in his brain. He had begun to doubt its existence. More likely the product of madness, a persona invented in his own mind. An inventor of secrets, seeding armies of ghosts to explain the countless voices whispering in his skull. Of course, it would insist otherwise. It might even flit across his vision, creeping disembodied, the sourceless, inexplicably moving shadow where none belonged. But the slave knew his eyes could be deceived. All part of the same corrupted perception.

The wraith hides in the blood of the Wyval. The Wyval hides in the shadow of the wraith. A game of mutual negation. The emperor sensed nothing. Hannan Mosag and his K'risnan sensed nothing. Feather Witch, Mayen, Uruth, the host of bound wraiths, the hunting dogs, the birds and the buzzing insects – all sensed nothing.

And that was absurd.

As far as Udinaas was concerned, in any case – the judgement conjured by some rational, sceptical part of his brain, that knot of consciousness the wraith endlessly sought to unravel – Wither was not real.

Wyval blood. Sister of Dawn, the sword-wielding mistress known to the Edur as Menandore – her and the hungry place between her legs. Infection and something like rape. He thought he understood the connection now. He was indeed infected, and true to Feather Witch's prediction, that un-human blood was driving him mad. There had been no blazing white bitch who stole his seed. Fevered delusions, visions of self-aggrandizement, followed by the paranoid suspicion that the promised glory had been stolen from him.

Thus explaining his sordid