Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,227

down to the beach. The sun was high and hot overhead. I must wash. Get clean. The sea...

Iron Bars followed, in one hand the encrusted object where the spirit of a Tiste Andii woman now resided.

She strode into the water, the foaming waves thrashing round her shins.

The Avowed flung the object past her – a small splash not far ahead.

Thighs, then hips.

Clean. Get clean.

To her chest. A wave rolled, lifted her from the bottom, spun and flung her towards the shore. She clawed herself round until she could push forward once again. Cold salty water rising over her face. Bright, sunlit, silty water, washing sight from her eyes. Water biting at scabbed wounds, stinging her broken lips, water filling her mouth and begging to be drawn inside.

Like this.

Hands grasped her, pulled her back. She fought, but could not break loose.

Clean!

Her face swept by cold wind, eyes blinking in painful light. Coughing, weeping, she struggled, but the hands dragged her remorselessly onto the beach, flung her onto the sand. Then, as she tried to claw free, arms wrapped tight about her, pinning her own arms, and a voice gasped close to her ear, 'I know, lass. I know what it's about. But it ain't the way.'

Heaving, helpless sobs, now.

And he held her still.

'Heal her, Corlo.'

'I'm damn near done—'

'Now. And sleep. Make her sleep—'

No, you can't die. Not again. I have need of you.

So many layers, pressing down upon these indurative remnants, a moment of vast pressure, the thick, so thick skin tracing innumerable small deaths. And life was voice, not words, but sound, motion. Where all else was still, silent. Oblivion waited when the last echo faded.

Dying the first time should have been enough. This world was foreign, after all. The gate sealed, swept away. Her husband – if he still lived – was long past his grief. Her daughter, perhaps a mother herself by now, a grandmother. She had fed on draconic blood, there in the wake of Anomander. Somewhere, she persisted, and lived free of sorrow.

It had been important to think that way. Her only weapon against insanity.

No gifts in death but one.

But something held her back.

Something with a voice. These are restless seas indeed. I had not thought my questing would prove so ... easy. True, you are not human, but you will do. You will do.

These remnants, suddenly in motion, grating motion. Fragments, particles too small to see, drawing together. As if remembering to what they had once belonged. And, within the sea, within the silts, waited all that was needed. For flesh, for bone and blood. All these echoes, resurrected, finding shape. She looked on in horror.

Watched, as the body – so familiar, so strange – clawed its way upward through the silts. Silts that lightened, thinned, then burst into a plume that swirled in the currents. Arms reaching upward, a body heaving into view.

She hovered near, compelled to close, to enter, but knowing it was too soon.

Her body, which she had left so long ago. It was not right. Not fair.

Scrambling mindlessly along the sea bottom. Finned creatures darting in and out of sight, drawn to the stirred-up sediments, frightened away by the flailing figure. Multi-legged shapes scrabbling from its path.

A strange blurring, passed through, and then sunlight glittered close overhead. Hands broke the surface, firm sand underfoot, sloping upward.

Face in the air.

And she swept forward, plunged into the body, raced like fire within muscle and bone.

Sensations. Cold, a wind, the smell of salt and a shore-line's decay.

Mother Dark, I am ... alive.

The voice of return came not in laughter, but in screams.

All had gathered as word of the emperor's death spread. The city was taken, but Rhulad Sengar had been killed. Neck snapped like a sapling. His body lay where it fell, with the slave Udinaas standing guard, a macabre sentinel who did not acknowledge anyone, but simply stared down at the coin-clad corpse.

Hannan Mosag. Mayen with Feather Witch trailing. Midik Buhn, now blooded and a warrior in truth. Hundreds of Edur warriors, blood-spattered with glory and slaughter. Silent, pale citizens, terrified of the taut expectancy in the smoky air.

All witness to the body's sudden convulsions, its piercing screams. For a ghastly moment, Rhulad's neck remained broken, rocking his head in impossible angles as he staggered to his feet. Then the bone mended, and the head righted itself, sudden light in the hooded eyes.

More screams, from Letherii now. Figures fleeing.

Rhulad's ragged shrieks died and he stood, wavering, the sword trembling in his hands.

Udinaas spoke.