Night of Knives_ A Novel of the Malazan Empire - By Ian C. Esslemont Page 0,88

perhaps—’

Obo snorted again.

Agayla merely massaged her fingers across her brow. ‘Really, Tay. You, above all, should know there are ancient powers, those that see past your and Kellanved’s empire-building as just another pass of season. The paths to Ascendancy are far more varied than you imagine.’ Sighing, Agayla straightened. ‘But now is not the time for that. Surly’s campaign against magery had left him sorely diminished. A fraction of talent remained to draw upon and so he was overwhelmed.’

‘She had no way of foreseeing the deeper consequences of her actions.’

‘You did.’

Obo spun around. 7s that so?’

His face a mask, Tayschrenn clasped his hands at his knees. ‘I did have some presentiment of it, yes. Unease at the alteration of such an age-old balance of power.’ He met Obo’s glare. ‘But I swear upon the Nameless Ones I had no suspicion of anything this profound . . . this . . . perilous.’

Looking at Agayla, Obo spat. ‘And this is the one you would approach.’

The strength of the anger that clutched Tayschrenn’s chest in response to Obo’s scorn surprised him; no one treated him in this manner. He had tolerated Kellanved’s mockery and now ignored Surly’s mistaken rivalry, but no one ever spurned him with contempt. From a pocket in the lining of his cloak he drew out a pair of wet kidskin gloves and struggled to slip them over his hands. Clenching and unclenching his fingers, he reflected that Obo was, after all, Obo. The man would slam a door in the face of Hood himself.

Agayla merely watched, her gaze weighing. Tayschrenn shook the uncomfortable sensation of being judged – and found wanting.

‘Yet you allowed it,’ Agayla observed, speculatively.

Tayschrenn accepted the opening to explain. ‘To have opposed Surly’s orders would have aroused unnecessary suspicion.’

‘Suspicion of . . .?’

‘Collusion, communication, sympathizing with him.’

‘Ah. I see.’ She pushed the strands of wet hair from her face, wiped a hand over her brow. Tayschrenn would have offered a cloth had he anything not already sodden. She sighed, peered up at him. ‘Poor Tayschrenn. One day you will wake up and abandon this petty politicking and manoeuvring. It will burn you so many times, and you will scald so many others before you discover wisdom.’ The woman’s dark eyes probed his awareness. She whispered, ‘You have not yet even journeyed far enough to wonder on the cost, have you?’

Tayshcrenn stared – never, not since his training in the temple, had anyone brushed aside his defences with such ease. He shook himself. ‘Do you wish my aid or not?’

‘That is just it, you see. We may not want your aid.’

Staggered, Tayschrenn wiped a hand across his mouth. Here stood two powers – yes, he could admit to that, powers – facing annihilation under the heels of an enemy of incalculable might, and they would reject his aid?

‘But, the island . . . thousands of souls.’

‘Oh, come. More died at the fall of Unta alone. Do not pretend their fate concerns you. No, if we fall then you will have to commit yourself, won’t you?’

‘Would I? You say I care nothing for these lives, yet I would commit myself to their defence? I am sorry to disappoint you Agayla. I would stand aside.’

Obo, silent for so long, snorted his derision at that.

‘Oh?’ Agayla breathed, turning her face to the south. ’Would you?’

Her gaze drew Tayschrenn’s own. What he saw drove all conscious thought from his mind, as if a veil had been ripped aside, and now he saw for the first time the appalling truth of what, to normal senses, resembled a storm-front of unprecedented scale. The weather was the mere side effect of a much more profound battle between contending Realms. Summoning his Thyr Warren, he probed the work of the Stormriders’ mysterious sorcerers, the Wandwielders. It appeared like a curtain of energy, a replica of the shimmering light that sometimes played above the northern night sky. Streaming down from the heights of the atmosphere, it cut a dividing line that, unlike most human theurgical manipulations, did not end at the water but plunged downward through it. With his inner-eye, Tayschrenn followed its dizzying descent and was horrified to see it continue unbroken, down through the depths of the cut into unplumbed crevasses, where he glimpsed a glowing heart of otherworldly ice. A heart that, as he watched, throbbed and swelled. He broke away, dazed by a vertiginous sense of power such as he had known only once before – as a supplicant before his