Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson

Author:Steven Erikson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780765324221
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2009-09-13T20:00:00+00:00

EMANCIPOR REESE OPENED HIS EYES AND FOUND himself staring up at the horrid, desiccated visage of an ancient, toothless, nearly skinless woman.

“Aunt Nupsy?”

From somewhere nearby a thin voice cackled, then said in a rasping tone, “I have you now, demon. Slit your throat. Cut out your tongue. Twist your nose. Pluck your brows. Oh, pain delivered to start tears in your eyes and blood everywhere else! Agony and nerves afire! Who’s Aunt Nupsy?”

Emancipor set his hand against the dead face hovering in front of him and pushed the corpse away. It toppled to one side, folding in a clatter against a wicker wall.

“I’ll get you for that! See this knife? An engagement with your navel! Hard about and cut your sheets, snip at the wrists and over the side—all hands on deck! Husbands are a waste of time so don’t even think it! I bet she hated you.”

Bruises, knobby bumps on the brow, gritty blood on the tongue, maybe a bruised rib or three, throbbing nose. Emancipor Reese tried to recall what had happened, tried to figure out where he was. Darkness above, a faint ethereal glow from the grey-haired corpse, swaying, creaking sounds on all sides, the moan of the wind. And someone talking. He twisted round onto one elbow.

A scrawny wide-eyed child huddled against a curved wicker wall, clutching a knife in her small, chapped hands. “Don’t hurt me,” she said in a mousy squeak. Then added, in that wise rasp he’d heard earlier, “She’s not for you, oh no, demon! My teeth will leap at your throat! One by one! See that knife in my daughter‘s hands? It has drunk the life from a thousand foes!”

There was a rope tied round one of his ankles, the skin beneath terribly abraded. All his joints ached, leading him to a certain theory of what had occurred. “I’m in the damned crow’s nest. They strung me up, the bastards.” He squinted across at the girl. “You’re Bena Younger.”

She flinched back.

“Easy there, I won’t be hurtin’ you. I’m Emancipor Reese—”

“Mancy the Luckless.”

“Some things a man can’t live down, no matter how lucky he is.”

A cackle. “Lucky?”

“Gainfully employed, aye. Secure income, civil masters—why, my wife must be dancing on the mound in our backyard, back in Lamentable Moll. My children worm-free at last and with clean, evenly waxed teeth and all the other modern conveniences. Aye, my ill-luck is long past, as dead as most of the people I knew back then. Why—”

“Shut up. The nails, fool, have twisted free. Spirits unleashed, wailing spectres and wraiths, yet one has risen, yes, above all the others. Clawed hands snatching. Souls grasped—oh hear their shrieks in the ether! Grasped, devoured, and the one grows. Power folded in, and in, layer upon layer, grim armour defying banishment—sweet in its multitude of nostrils the scent of mortal life, oh how it now hunts, to take all into its fang-filled, slavering, black-gummed and unpleasantly-smelling mouth! Lo, I hear skull bones crunching, even now!”

“You addled, child? What is this old hag’s voice that comes so wrongly from your young lips?”

Bena Younger blinked.

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