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Hairlock’s an warren Where I lingered I think Hood take ain Get your hearings Do nothing precipitous Think about survival, here in this strange, unwelcome place …
He resuently sloped, it was at least thrice the height of a h worsened as he scrambled up its side
The effort was rewarded On the su of lesser to’s edge yet alrey-cloaked hills Closer and to his left were the ruins of a stone tower The sky behind it glowed a sickly red colour
Toc glanced up at the sun When he’d awoken, it had been at little more than three-quarters of the wheel; now it stood directly above him He was able to orientate himself The hill lay to the northwest, the tower a few points north of due west
His gaze was pulled back to the reddish welt in the sky beyond the tower Yes, it pulsed, as regular as a heart He scratched at the scar tissue covering his left eye-socket, winced at the answering bloo hisa deep hatred of sorcery
A moment later, more immediate details drew his attention The north slope of the central barroasA tu the stains of red paint -- crowded the base The crater, he slowly realized, was not the work of looters Whatever had made it had pushed up from the tomb, violently In this place, it seems that even the dead do not sleep eternal A ed it off with a soft curse You’ve knoorse, soldier Remember that T’lan Imass who’d joined up with the Adjunct Laconic desiccation on two legs, Beru fend us all Hooded eye-sockets with not a glihast like a Rhivi a plains boar
Eye still studying the crater in the hts reht to free such a restless creature, to loose a wild, vicious power upon the land He wondered if they’d succeeded The prisoner of the tomb he now stood upon had faced a dreadful task, without question -- wards, solid walls, and ariven the alternatives, I iine I would have been as desperate and as deternly twisted the ering another harsh cough There were mysteries in the world, few of them pleasant
He skirted the pit on his descent and ht it unlikely that the occupant of the to in the area I would have wanted to get as far away from here and as fast as was hu how much tiut told hiely unafraid in any case, despite the inhospitable surroundings and all the secrets beneath the land’s ravaged surface Whatever threat this place had held seeone
Forty paces from the tower he alhly disguised its presence, and that dust, now disturbed by Toc’s efforts to step clear, rose in a cloud Cursing, the Malazan spat grit fro haze, he saw that the bones belonged to a human Granted, a squat, heavy-boned one Sinews had dried nut-brown, and the furs and skins partially clothing it had rotted to mere strips A bone helm sat on the corpse’s head, fashioned from the frontal cap of a horned beast One horn had snapped off some time in the distant past A dust-sheathed two-handed sword lay nearby Speaking of Hood’s skull …
Toc the Younger scowled down at the figure ’What are you doing here?’ he de,’ the T’lan Imass replied in a leather-rasp voice
Toc searched his memory for the name of this undead warrior ’Onos T’oolan,’ he said, pleased with himself ’Of the Tarad Clan-’