The Crippled God

But they are not done with us



There is no air left



In this closed fist



The last breath has been taken



And now awaits release



Where the children sit waiting



For the legacy of waste



Buried in the gifts we made



I have seen a better place



I have known peace like sleep



It lies at road’s end



Where the silts have gathered



And voices moan like music



In this moment of reaching



The stone took my flesh



And held me fast



With eyes unseeing



Breath bound within



A fist closed on darkness



A hand outstretched



And now you march past



Tossing coins at my feet



In my story I sought a better place



And yearned so for peace



But it is a tale untold



And a life unfinished



Wood-Cutters Tablet IV Hethra of Aren

CHAPTER ELEVEN



On that day I watched them lift high



In the tallness of being they shouldered years



And stood as who they would become



There was sweat on their arms and mad jackals



Went slinking from their bright eyes



I see a knowledge sliding beneath this door



Where I lean barred and gasping in horror



And for all that I have flung my back against it



They are the milling proofs of revelation



Crowding the street beyond like roosting prophets



And as the children wandered off in the way of gods



The small shape was unmoving at suffering’s end



On this day I watched them lift high



Tomorrow’s wretched pantheon around stains



On the stone where a lame dog had been trapped



In a forest of thin legs and the sticks and bricks



Went up and down like builders of monuments



Where the bowls are bronze and overflowing



And marble statues brood like pigeons



Have you seen all these faces of God?



Lifted so high to show us the perfection



Of our own holy faces but their hands are empty



Of bricks and sticks now that they’re grown



Is there no faith to scour away the cruelty of children?



Will no god shield the crying dog on the stone



From his lesser versions caging the helpless



And the lame? If we are made as we would be



Then the makers are us. And if there stands



A god moulding all he is in what we are



Then we are that god and the children



Beating to death a small dog outside my door



Are the small measures of his will considered



And in tasting either spat out or consumed



In the ecstasy of the omnipotent



Children Like Gods Fisher kel Tath

THE RAMPS HAD BEEN LAID OUT, THE CREWS SINGING AS THEY HEAVED on the ropes. Columns of black marble, rising in a ring around the glittering mound. The dust in Spindle’s mouth tasted like hope, the ache in his shoulders and lower back felt like the promise of salvation .



He had seen her this day and she had been … better. Still a child, really, a sorely used one, and only a bastard would say it had all been for the good. That the finding of faith could only come from terrible suffering. That wisdom was borne on scars. Just a child, dammit, scoured clean of foul addictions, but that look remained, there in her ancient eyes. Knowledge of deadly flavours, a recognition of the self, lying trapped in chains of weakness and desire .



She was the Redeemer’s High Priestess. He had taken her in his embrace, and she was the last ever to have known that gift .



The digging around the mound had scurried up offerings by the bucketload. T’lan Imass, mostly. Bits of polished bone, shells and amber beads had a way of wandering down the sides of the barrow. The great plaster friezes they were working on in Coral now held those quaint, curious gifts, there in the elaborate borders surrounding the Nine Sacred Scenes .



Spindle leaned against the water wagon, awaiting his turn with a battered tin cup in one cracked, calloused hand .



He’d been a marine once. A Bridgeburner. He’d trained in military engineering, as much as any Malazan marine had. And now, three months since his return from Darujhistan (and what a mess that had been!) he’d been made a pit captain, but as in his soldiering days he wasn’t one to sit back and let everyone else do all the hard work. No, all of this felt … good. Honest .



He’d not had a murderous thought in weeks. Well, days then .



The sun was bright, blistering down on the flood plain. On the west road huge wagons were wending up and down from the quarries. And as for the city to the south … he turned, squinted. Glorious light. Kurald Galain was gone. Black Coral was black no longer .