A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

vigorous
hunt, and the notion of an agency of such diabolical
purpose – one, he was forced to admit, guided by the most
subtle genius – should have enlivened the game until its
pursuit acquired the power of obsession.
    Instead, Rautos Hivanar found himself seeking notations
among the dusty ledgers for evidence of past floodings,
pursuing an altogether more mundane mystery that would
interest but a handful of muttering academics. And that, he
admitted often to himself, was odd. Nonetheless, the compulsion
gathered strength, and at night he would lie beside
the recumbent, sweat-sheathed mass that was his wife of
thirty-three years and find his thoughts working ceaselessly,
struggling against the currents of time's cyclical flow, seeking
to clamber his way back, with all his sensibilities, into past
ages. Looking. Looking for something . . .
    Sighing, Rautos set down the empty cup, then rose.
    As he walked to the door, Venitt Sathad – whose family
line had been Indebted to the Hivanars for six generations
now – stepped forward to retrieve the fragile cup, then set
off in his master's wake.
    Out onto the waterfront enclosure, across the mosaic
portraying the investiture of Skoval Hivanar as Imperial
Ceda three centuries past, then down the shallow stone
stairs to what, in drier times, was the lower terrace garden.
But the river's currents had swirled in here, stealing away
soil and plants, exposing a most peculiar arrangement of
boulders set like a cobbled street, framed in wooden posts
arranged in a rectangle, the posts little more than rotted
stumps now, rising from the flood's remnant pools.
    At the edge of the upper level, workers, under Rautos's
direction, had used wood bulwarks to keep it from collapsing,
and to one side sat a wheelbarrow filled with the
multitude of curious objects that had been exposed by the
floodwaters. These items had littered the cobbled floor.
    In all, Rautos mused, a mystery. There was no record
whatsoever of the lower terrace garden's being anything but
what it was, and the notations from the garden's designer –
from shortly after the completion of the estate's main buildings
– indicated the bank at that level was nothing more
than ancient flood silts.
    The clay had preserved the wood, at least until recently,
so there was no telling how long ago the strange construct
had been built. The only indication of its antiquity rested
with the objects, all of which were either bronze or copper.
Not weapons, as one might find associated with a barrow,
and if tools, then they were for activities long forgotten,
since not a single worker Rautos had brought to this place
was able to fathom the function of these items – they
resembled no known tools, not for stone working, nor
wood, nor the processing of foodstuffs.
    Rautos collected one and examined it, for at least the
hundredth time. Bronze, clay-cast – the flange was clearly
visible – the item was long, roundish, yet bent at almost
right angles. Incisions formed a cross-hatched pattern
about the elbow. Neither end displayed any means of
attachment – not intended, therefore, as part of some larger
mechanism. He hefted its considerable weight in his hand.
There was something imbalanced about it, despite the
centrally placed bend. He set it down and drew out a
circular sheet of copper, thinner than the wax layer on
a scrier's tablet. Blackened by contact with the clays, yet
only now the edges showing signs of verdigris. Countless
holes had been punched through the sheet, in no particular
pattern, yet each hole was perfectly uniform, perfectly
round, with no lip to indicate from which side it had been
punched.
    'Venitt,' he said, 'have we a map recording the precise
locations of these objects when they were originally found?'
    'Indeed, Master, with but a few exceptions. You
examined it a week past.'
    'I did? Very well. Set it out once more on the table in the
library, this afternoon.'
    Both men turned as the gate watcher appeared from