Erikson, Steven - Malazan 05 by Erikson Steven

Author:Erikson, Steven
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER

Out of the white Out of the sun’s brittle dismay We are the grim shapes Who haunt all fate Out of the white Out of the wind’s hoarse bray We are the dark ghosts Who haunt all fate Out of the white Out of the snow’s worldly fray We are the sword’s wolves Who haunt all fate

Jheck Marching Chant

FIFTEEN PACES, NO MORE THAN THAT. BETWEEN EMPEROR AND SLAVE. A stretch of Letherü rugs, booty from some raid a century or more past, on which paths were worn deep, a pattern of stolen colour mapping stunted roads across heroic scenes. Kings crowned. Champions triumphant. Images of history the Edur had walked on, indifferent and intent on their small journeys in this chamber.

Udinaas wasn’t prepared to ascribe any significance to these details. He had come to his own pattern, a gaze unwavering and precise, the mind behind it disconnected, its surface devoid of ripples and its depths motionless.

It was safer that way. He could stand here, equidistant between two torch sconces and so bathed by the light of neither, and in this

indeterminate centre he looked on, silently watching as Rhulad discarded his bearskin, to stand naked before his new wife.

Udinaas might have been amused, had he permitted the emotion, to see the coins burned into the emperor’s penis pop off, one, two, two more, then four, as Rhulad’s desire became apparent. Coins thumping to the rug-strewn floor, a few bouncing and managing modest rolls before settling. He might have been horrified at the look in the emperor’s red-rimmed eyes as he reached out, beckoning Mayen closer. Waves of sympathy for the hapless young woman were possible, but only in the abstract.

Witnessing this macabre, strangely comic moment, the slave remained motionless, without and within, and the bizarre reality of this world played itself out without comment.

Her self-control was, at first, absolute. He took her hand and drew it down, pulling her closer. ‘Mayen,’ the emperor said in a rasp, in a voice that reached for tenderness and achieved little more than rough lust.

‘Should I reveal to you that I have dreamed of this moment?’ A harsh laugh. ‘Not quite. Not like this.

Not… in so much… detail.’ ‘You made your desires known, Rhulad. Before… this.’ ‘Yes, call me Rhulad.

As you did before. Between us, nothing need change.’

‘Yet I am your empress.’ ‘My wife.’

‘We cannot speak as if nothing has changed.’ ‘I will teach you, Mayen. I am still Rhulad.’

He embraced her then, an awkward, child-like encirclement in gold. ‘You need not think of Fear,’ he said.

‘Mayen, you are his gift to me. His proof of loyalty. He did as a brother should.’ ‘I was betrothed—’

‘And I am emperor! I can break the rules that would bind the Edur. The past is dead, Mayen, and it is I who shall forge the future! With you at my side. I saw you looking upon me, day after day, and I could see the desire in your eyes. Oh, we both knew that Fear would have you in the end.

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