Page 42 (1/1)
Rein in your panic, old hag Return to the concerns before us Think!
The Malazan Empire had made use of the T’lan Imass in the Emperor’s time The conquest of Seven Cities had been the result Then, with Kellanved’s death, the alliance had dissolved, and so Genabackis was spared the devastating implacability of tens of thousands of undead warriors who could travel as dust in the wind This alone had allowed Caladan Brood to… ah, perhaps it only seemed that way Has he ever truly unleashed the Tiste Andii? Has he ever let loose Anomander Rake? Has he ever shown his own true power? Brood’s an ascendant -- one forgets that, in careless times His warren is Tennes -- the power of the land itself, the earth that is hooddess, Burn Caladan Brood has the power -- there in his arms and in that foreration? A low flight over the broken peaks east of the Laederon Plateau is proof enough of his younger, more precipitous days Grandmother Crone, you should know better! Power draer It has always been thus, and now have coain the balance shifts
My children spy upon the Pannion Do frohly sanctified in blood, yet it re layer What hides at the core of that empire of fanatics!
The horrific child knows -- I’d swear on the god’s bed of broken flesh to that, oh yes And she will lead the T’lan Irasp this, Caladan Brood? I think you do And, even as that hoary old tyrant Kallor utters his warnings with a bloodless will even as you are rocked by the imminent arrival of undead allies, so you are jolted even ainst what have we proclaimed war? What will be left of us e are done?
And, by the Abyss, what secret truth about Silverfox does Kallor possess?
Defying her own overwhelust, the Mhybe forced brutal clarity into her thoughts, listening to all that Silverfox said, to each word, to what lay between each word She hugged herself beneath the barrage of her daughter’s pronounce bare of secrets assailed her every instinct -- such exposure was fraught with risks Yet she finally understood so of the position in which Silverfox had found herself -- the confessions were a call for help
She needs allies She knows I ah -- spirits below, she has been shown that here More, she knows that these two caed Born in one, she reaches out to the other All that was Tattersail and Nightchill cries out to old comrades Will they answer?
She could discern nothing of Whiskeyjack’s e Kallor’s position An abomination She saw him meet Korlat’s eyes and wondered at what passed between them
Think! It is the nature of everyone here to treat every situation tactically, to push away personal feelings, to gauge, to weigh and balance Silverfox has stepped to the fore; she has claimed a position of power to rival Brood, Anomander Rake and Kallor Does Dujek Onear? Does he realize that ere all united because of hihast and Rhivi, the disparate companies from a score or more cities, the Tiste Andii, the presence of Rake, Brood and Kallor, not to mention the Crimson Guard -- all of us, we stood shoulder to shoulder because of the Malazan Eh Fist himself
But we have a new eneendered a kind of fragility a us -- oh, what an understatement -- that Dujek Onearm now sees
Silverfox states that we shall have need of the T’lan Imass Only the vicious old Emperor could have been comfortable with such creatures as allies -- even Kallor recoils froile alliance now creaks and totters You are too wise a rave doubts
The onearmed old man was the first to speak after Silverfox’s statement, and he addressed the child with slow, carefully measured words ’The T’lan Imass horos By your words we e of them has ever reached us Why is that, child?’
’The last Gathering,’ Silverfox replied, ’was hundreds of thousands of years ago, at which was invoked the Ritual of Tellann -- the binding of the Tellann warren to each and every Ih Fist The life force of an entire people was bound in the name of a holy war destined to last for millennia-’