Ulshun Pral smiled.
The man scowled. ‘Quick, this oaf doesn’t understand Malazan.’ He then pointed back towards the rocks. ‘Go there! Onrack and Trull. Go!’
The taller man snorted. ‘Enough, Hedge. That oaf understands you just fine.’
‘Oh, so why ain’t he listening to me?’
‘How should I know?’
Ulshun waited a moment longer, fixing into his memory the faces of these two men, so that death would not take all of them. He hoped they were doing the same with him, although of course they might well not understand the gift, nor even that they had given it.
Imass knew many truths that were lost to those who were, in every sense, their children. This, alas, did not make Imass superior, for most of those truths were unpleasant ones, and these children could not defend themselves against them, and so would be fatally weakened by their recognition.
For example, Ulshun Pral reminded himself, he had been waiting for this time, understanding all that was coming to this moment, all the truths bound within what would happen. Unlike his people, he had not been a ghost memory. He had not lived countless millennia in a haze of self-delusion. Oh, his life had spanned that time, but it had been just that: a life. Drawn out to near immortality, not through any soul-destroying ritual, but because of this realm. This deathless realm.
That was deathless no longer.
He set out, then, leaving these two brave children, and made his way towards the cave.
It might begin here, beneath this empty sky. But it would end, Ulshun Pral knew, before the Gates of Starvald Demelain.
Where a Bentract Bonecaster had failed. Not because the wound proved too virulent, or too vast. But because the Bonecaster had been nothing more than a ghost to begin with. A faded, pallid soul, a thing with barely enough power to hold on to itself.
Ulshun Pral was twenty paces from the entrance to the cave when Onrack the Broken emerged, and in Ulshun’s heart there burgeoned such a welling of pride that tears filled his eyes.
* * *
‘So I take it,’ Hedge said, locking the foot of his crossbow, ‘that what we were both thinking means neither of us is much surprised.’
‘She gave in too easily.’
Hedge nodded. ‘That she did. But I’m still wondering, Quick, why didn’t she grab that damned Finnest a long time ago? Squirrel it away some place where Silchas Ruin would never find it? Answer me that!’
The wizard grunted as he moved out to the crest of the slope. ‘She probably thought she’d done just as you said, Hedge.’
Hedge blinked, then frowned. ‘Huh. Hadn’t thought of that.’
‘That’s because you’re thick, sapper. Now, if this goes the way I want it to, you won’t be needed at all. Keep that in mind, Hedge. I’m begging you.’
‘Oh, just get on with it.’