The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire) Read online

  THE MALAZAN EMPIRE SERIES

  Ian C. Esslemont

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  NIGHT OF KNIVES

  A NOVEL OF THE MALAZAN EMPIRE

  Ian C. Esslemont

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  This novel is dedicated to

  Steve

  who made the world real

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This work’s long journey from conception to print has been full of aid from many unexpected directions. It grew out of a collaboration of many years’ standing with Steven Erikson that continues to be rich and rewarding, creatively and in friendship. To him must go my greatest thanks for our partnership in creating the world of Malaz. I would also like to thank Simon Taylor for his generosity of spirit, William Thompson for his encouragement and editing skills, my agent, John Jarrold, and Gerri Brightwell for her longstanding support and insightful comments. And finally, extraordinary thanks to Peter Crowther for taking a chance on an unknown.

  INTRODUCTION

  The world of Malaz was born in 1982, and from that moment onward that world’s history slowly took shape. On summer archaeological digs and winters spent in Victoria, B.C., in the midst of degrees in Creative Writing, in Winnipeg and on Saltspring Island – wherever Ian (Cam) Esslemont and I crossed paths for any length of time. We were co-writers on a number of feature film scripts, and it was clear that our individual creativities were complementary, and during our breaks from writing we gamed in the world of Malaz.

  When the notion of writing fiction set in that world was first approached, it seemed obvious that we would divvy up the vast history we had fashioned over the years. And so we did. Since the publication of Gardens of the Moon, I have heard from and read of fans wanting to know about the old empire, the empire of the Emperor, Kellanved, and his cohort, Dancer. And time and again I was asked: will you ever write of those early times in the empire’s history? Or, will you write about The Crimson Guard? And I have always been firm in my reply: no. The reason should now be obvious.

  This is a huge imaginary world, too big for a single writer to manage in a lifetime. But two writers… that’s different. The dedication in Gardens of the Moon was to Ian C. Esslemont. Worlds to conquer, worlds to share. I do not think I could have made my desire, and intent, more clear. Granted, it has taken a while for this, Cam’s first work set in Malaz, to arrive. Our life journeys diverged for a time, and other demands occupied Cam – family, postgraduate studies and so on. But I always had faith, was always aware that a surprise and a treat were on their way, and this novel, Night of Knives, marks the first instalment of this, the shared world that we had both envisioned years ago.

  Night of Knives is not fan fiction. We shaped the world of Malaz through dialogue; our gaming was novelistic and with themes that were, more often than not, brutally tragic. At other times there was comedy, usually of the droll variety. We duelled each other on understatement and absurdity, and we made it a point to confound the genre’s overused tropes. The spirit of that has infused every one of my novels set in the Malazan world. And it infuses Ian Esslemont’s writing in the same imaginary world. That being said, the novel in your hands possesses its own style, its own voice. The entire story takes place in the span of a single day and night, and it is exquisite. Readers of my own work will recognize the world, its atmosphere, its darkness; they will see the characters in Night of Knives as simply more players woven into the same tangled tapestry, they will see the story as one more bloodstained piece of imagined history. And there’s so much more to come.

  To this day, we continue to work on the Malazan world’s history, poring over its details, confirming the sequence of events, discussing the themes, subtext, and ensuring the consistency of cross-over characters. We hammer away at the timeline and the fates of countless characters, many of whom no one else has met yet. And we discuss deviousness, and as the readers of the Malazan Book of the Fallen know, deviousness abounds.

  From the beginning of the Malazan series, I was writing to an audience of one – Cam. And he has reciprocated. Thus, the dialogue continues; only now there are others, and they are listening in. Finally, to both sides of the conversation.

  We hope it proves entertaining.

  Steven Erikson

  Winnipeg, Canada, 2004

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  THE MALAZANS

  Emperor Kellanved, absent ruler of the Malazan Empire

  Dancer, Master-Assassin and bodyguard to Kellanved

  Surly, Mistress of the Imperial assassin corps, the Claw

  Tayschrenn, Imperial High Mage

  Temper, a Malazan soldier

  Corinn, a mage, member of the Bridgeburner Brigade

  Ash, an ex-officer of the Bridgeburner Brigade

  Seal, a one-time Malazan army healer

  Dassem Ultor, Champion and ‘First Sword’ of the Empire

  Chase, an officer of the garrison at Mock’s Hold

  Hattar, bodyguard to Tayschrenn

  Ferrule, member of Dassem’s bodyguard, the Sword

  Possum, an imperial assassin, Claw

  INHABITANTS OF MALAZ ISLE

  Coop, proprietor of the Hanged Man Inn

  Anji, servitor at the Hanged Man Inn

  Kiska, a youth hoping to enter Imperial service

  Lubben, gatekeeper at Mock’s Hold

  Fisherman, a mage of Malaz Isle

  Agayla, spice dealer and mage of Malaz Isle

  Trenech, regular at the Hanged Man Inn

  Faro Balkat, regular at the Hanged Man Inn

  Obo, a mage of Malaz Isle

  OTHERS

  Edgewalker, elder inhabitant of the Shadow Realm

  Jhedel, a prisoner of the Shadow Realm

  Oleg Vikat, a scholar of the Warrens

  Surgen Ress, last Holy City champion

  Pralt, a leader of the shadow cult

  Jhenna, Jaghut guardian of the DeadHouse

  PROLOGUE

  Sea of Storms south of Malaz Isle

  Season of Osserc

  1154th Year of Burn’s Sleep

  96th Year of the Malazan Empire

  Last Year of Emperor Kellanved’s Reign

  The two-masted ra
ider Rheni’s Dream raced northeast under full straining sails. Captain Murl gripped the stern railing and watched the storm close upon his ship. Pushed to its limit, the hull groaned ominously while the ropes skirled high notes Murl had never heard.

  The storm had swelled like a wall of night out of the south, a solid front of billowing black clouds over wind-lashed waves. But it was not the storm that worried Captain Murl, no matter how unnatural its rising; Rheni’s Dream had broached the highest seas known to Jakatan pilots, from the northern Sea of Kalt to the driving trade winds of the Reach south of Stratem. No, what sank fingers of dread into his heart were the azure flashes glinting like shards of ice amid the waves at the base of the churning cloud-front. No one told of seeing them this close. None who returned.

  Riders, Murl and his fellow pilots called them. Sea-demons and Stormriders to others. Beings of sea and ice who claimed this narrow cut as their own and suffered no trespass. Only his Jakatan forbears knew the proper offerings to bribe the swiftest passage south of Malaz Isle. Why then did the Riders pursue? What could entice them this far north?

  Murl turned his back to the punishing wind. His cousin, Lack-eye, fought to control the helm, his legs splayed, arms quivering at the tiller’s broad wheel. As the ship canted forward into a trough, Murl tightened his grip against the fall and booming impact. ‘Did we forget any of the offerings?’ he shouted over the roar of the wind.

  Gaze fixed ahead to the bows, Lack-eye shook his head. ‘None,’ he called. ‘We’ve tried ’em all.’ He glared over his shoulder with a pale blue eye. ‘All save the last.’

  Murl flinched away. He drew himself amidships hand over hand along the guide ropes. Already the deck lay treacherous beneath a sheet of ice. Wind-driven rime as sharp as needles raised blood on his neck and hands. All save the last. But that rite he’d never enact. Why, in Chem’s cold embrace – every soul on the Rheni was blood-kin to him! Murl remembered the one time he’d witnessed that rite: the poor lad’s black-haired head bobbing atop the waves, pale arms clawing desperately at the water. He shuddered from the cold and something worse. No, that he could not bring himself to do.

  Murl crouched next to a slim figure lashed to the mainmast, slumped as if asleep. With a hand numb from the freezing salt-spume, he reached out to caress a pale cheek. Ah Rheni dear, I’m so sorry. It was just too much for you. Who could possibly hope to soothe a storm such as this?

  Ice crackled next to Murl as his first mate, Hoggen, thumped against the mast and wrapped an arm about it. ‘Shall I break out the weapons?’

  Murl choked down a maniacal urge to laugh. He peered keenly at Hoggen to see if the man were serious.

  Sadly, it appeared he was. Frost shone white in his beard and his eyes were flat and dull. It was as if the fellow were already dead. Murl groaned within. ‘Go ahead, if you must.’ He squinted up to the mast top. A shape straddled the crossbar there, at mast and spur. Something glinted over his trousers, shirt, and arms: a layer of entombing ice. ‘And get young Mole down from there.’

  ‘The lad won’t answer. I think the cold’s done for him.’ Murl closed his eyes against the spray, hugged the mast.

  ‘We’re slowing,’ Hoggen observed in a toneless voice. Murl barely heard him through the wind. He could feel his soaked clothes draining the life warmth from him. He shuddered uncontrollably. ‘Ice at the sails. They’ll tear soon.’

  ‘Have to hammer it. Knock it off.’

  ‘Try all you like.’

  Coughing hoarsely, Hoggen laboured to pull away from the mast. Murl held to. It was fitting, he decided, that he should meet his end here, with Rheni, on the ship he’d named in her honour. Why, he was virtually surrounded by family; even loyal plodding Hoggen was related by marriage. Murl glanced down. How he ached to stroke the long black hair that shivered and jingled now like a fistful of icicles.

  ‘Rider hard a-port!’ came a shout. Dazed, Murl was surprised that a crewman remained aware enough to raise the hail. He swung his gaze there, squinting through spume spraying high above the gunwales.

  Waves twice the height of the masts rolled past, foaming with ice and rime. Then Murl saw it, a dazzling sapphire figure breaching the surface: helmed, armoured, a tall lance of jagged ice couched at the hip. Its mount seemed half beast and half roiling wave. He fancied it turned a dark inscrutable gaze his way through cheekguards of frozen scale. Then, just as suddenly, the Rider dived, returning to the churning sea. Murl was reminded of blue gamen whales leaping before the prow. Another broached the surface further out. Then another. They rode the waves abreast of Rheni’s Dream yet seemed oblivious to it. Were they men or the ancient Jaghut race, as some claimed? He watched feeling oddly detached, as if this were all happening to someone else.

  A crewman, Larl, steadied himself at the railing and raised a crossbow at the nearest Rider. The quarrel shot wildly astray. Murl shook his head – what was the use? They were dead already. There was nothing they could do. Then, remembering the sternchaser scorpion, he tore himself from the mast and lurched sternward. Lack-eye still stood rigid at the wheel, arms wide, staring ahead. Murl wrapped one numbed arm around the pedestalled weapon and seized the crank. The iron bit at his flesh as if red-hot, tearing patches of skin from his palm as he fought the mechanism.

  ‘What do they want?’ Murl called to Lack-eye. Tears froze in his eyes, blinding him. The scorpion wouldn’t budge. He pulled his hand free of the searing iron. Blood froze like tatters of red cloth. Lack-eye did not respond; did not even turn. Throwing himself to the wheel, Murl thrust an arm through the spokes.

  Lack-eye would never answer again. Standing rigid at the wheel of Rheni’s Dream, the helmsman stared straight ahead into the gathering night, his one remaining eye white with frost. His shirt and trousers clattered in the wind, frozen as hard as sheets of wood.

  Horrified, Murl stared, and in Lack-eye’s indifferent gaze, directed ahead to unknown distances, he had his answer. The Riders cared nothing for them. They were here for another reason, answering some inhuman summons, heaving themselves northward, an invading army throwing its might against the one thing that had confined them so long to this narrow passage: the island of Malaz.

  The ship groaned like a tortured beast. Its prow heaved, ice-heavy, submerging beneath a wave. The blow shocked Murl from his grip at the wheel. When the spray cleared Lack-eye remained alone to pilot the frozen tomb northwards. Sails fell, stiff, and shattered to the decks. Ice layered the masts and decking, binding the ship like a dark heart within a frozen crag that rushed on groaning and swelling.

  Still the storm coursed northward like a horizon-spanning tidal bore. From its gloom emerged a flotilla of emerald mountains etched by deep crevasses, the snow at their peaks gleaming in the last light.

  Like unstoppable siege engines constructed to humble continents, they surged onward. At their flanks the Riders lunged forward, lances raised, pointing north.

  A PATH WITHIN SHADOW

  A feeble wind moaned over a vast plain of hardpan sands scattered with black volcanic rocks where dust-devils danced and wandered. They raised ochre plumes then faded to nothing only to suddenly swirl into existence elsewhere. Across the plain, all directions stretching to a featureless horizon, identical, monotonous, a figure hitched a cripple’s slow limp.

  Like a playful follower, a whirlwind lurched upon the figure, engulfing it in a swirling winding-sheet of umber dust. The figure walked on without flinching, without raising a hand or turning its head. The dust-dervish spun on and away, scudding an aimless spiral route. The figure tramped a straight path, its twisted right leg gouging the sand with every step.

  It wore the tattered remains of what might have once been thick cloth over armour of leather and scale. Its naked arms hung desiccated and cured to little more than leather-clad bones. Within a bronze and verdigrised helm, its face disclosed only empty pits, nose a gaping cavern, lips dried and withdrawn from caried teeth. A rust-bitten sword hung across its back.

  Far in the distance
a dark smudge appeared, but the figure continued its laboured march, on and on under a sky that remained hazy and dim, where shapes resembling birds swept high into the clouds. Only once did the figure halt. Glancing to one side, it stood for a moment, motionless. Far off, the horizon had altered.

  A pale silver light glowed over darkest blue like the mirage of distant mountains. The figure stared, then moved on.

  The distant smudge became a mound, and the mound a menhir. The figure limped directly to the foot of a blade of granite twice its height and stopped. It waited, facing the menhir while the dust-devils criss-crossed the plain. Vertical striations gouged the stone like the claw marks of some ferocious beast. Spiralling down and around the stone wound silver hair-fine symbols. Stiffly, the figure knelt to peer more closely, not at the glyphs but at a shape of brown and mahogany hunched at the menhir’s base.

  The hump shifted, raised a hairless head of chitinous scales. Almond eyes of burning gold nictitated to life. A broad chest of angular plates swelled with breath.

  ‘Still with us after all, Jhedel,’ observed the crouched figure. Its voice was the dry breath of the tomb. It straightened.

  ‘Nice to see you too, Edgewalker.’

  Edgewalker half turned away, examined the plain through empty sockets, staring out to the silver and blue bruising.

  Jhedel rolled its head, grunted. It stretched out one leg of armoured plates and lethal horned spurs, flexed its broad shoulders. It tensed and heaved to rise, but failed. Its arms disappeared behind its back, sunk up to the wrists in the naked granite of the menhir.

  ‘What brings you round?’