Malazan 9 - Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson

Author:Steven Erikson [Erikson, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-04-27T19:37:45+00:00

Grub stared at her, not knowing whether he wanted to hug her or hit her. 'You were born to a mother, just like I was.'

'Then why are we so different?'

Moths fled at her shout, and sounds fell away on all sides.

'I don't know,' he replied in a soft voice. 'Maybe . . . maybe you did tind something in Y'Ghatan. But nothing like that ever happened to me—'

'Malaz City. You jumped ship. You went to find the Nachts. Why?'

'I don't know!'

She leapt away from him, rushed off into the wood. In moments he had lost sight of her.

'Sinn? What are you doing? Where are you going?'

The gloom vanished. Fifty paces away a seething sphere of flames blossomed. Trees exploded in its path as it rolled straight towards Grub.

He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged.

The blistering ball of fire heaved closer, huge, bristling—

Grub gestured. The ground lifted suddenly into the fire's path, in a mass of roots, humus and mud, surging upward, toppling trees to the sides. A thousand twisted brown arms snaked out from the churning earth. The writhing wall engulfed the rolling sphere of fire, slapped it down as would a booted heel crush the life from a wayward ember. Thunder shook. The earth subsided, the arms vanishing, leaving nothing more than a slowly settling, chewed-up mound.

Clouds of steam billowed and then drifted, thinning as the darkness returned once more.

He saw her walking calmly towards him, stepping over shattered trunks, brushing dirt from her plain tunic.

Sinn halted directly before him. 'It doesn't matter, Grub,' she said. 'You and me - we're different?

She set off, and after a moment he stumbled after her.

Never argue with a girl.

It was a day for strangers. One was beyond his reach, the other he knew well. Taxilian and Rautos had prised loose a panel to reveal a confused mass of metal coils, tubes and wire-wrapped cables. Muttering about finding the necessary hinge spells needed to unleash sorcerous power, thus awakening the city's brain, Taxilian began poking and prodding the workings. Crowding behind him, sweat beading his brow, Rautos ran through a litany of cautions, none of which Taxilian heeded.

Last had devised a trap for the lizard-rats - the orthen - and had headed off to check it, Asane accompanying him.

At the top of a ramp and in a long but shallow antechamber, Nappet and Sheb had found a sealed door and were pounding at it with iron-headed sledges, each blow ringing like a tortured bell. Most of the damage they likely inflicted was to their ears, but since neither had anything to say to the other, they'd yet to discover it.

Breath was exploring the Nest itself, the now empty, abandoned a bode of the Matron, finding nothing of interest, although unbeknownst to her residual flavours flowed in through her lungs and formed glistening minute droplets on her exposed skin. Vague dreams of producing children dogged her, successive scenes of labour and birth, tumbling one upon the next like a runaway nightmare. What had begun as a diffuse irritation was quickly building to an indefinable rage.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.