The Pannion Seer, a Prophet Tyrant ruling the Pannion Domin

Gardens of the Moon

Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.

These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,

a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth

has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories

against dimming eyes – what cast my mind, what hue my

thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen

and breathe deep the scent of history?

Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.

These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.

We are history relived and that is aft, without end that is all.

The Emperor is dead!

So too his right hand – now cold, now severed!

But mark these dying shadows,

twinned and flowing bloody and beaten,

down and away from mortal sight...

From sceptre's rule dismissed,

from gild candelabra the light now fled,

from a hearth ringed in hard jewels,

seven years this warmth has bled ...

The Emperor is dead.

So too his master'd companion, the rope cut clean.

But mark this burgeoning return –

faltering dark, the tattered shroud –

embracing children in Empire's dying light.

Hear now the dirge faint reprised,

before the sun's fall, this day spills red

on buckled earth, and in obsidian eyes

vengeance chimes seven times ...

Call to Shadow (I.i. 1-18)

Felisin(b.ll46)

Prologue

1154th Year of Burn's Sleep

96th Year of the Malazan Empire

The Last Year of Emperor Kellanved's Reign

The stains of rust seemed to map blood seas on the black, pocked surface of Mock's Vane. A century old, it squatted on the point of an old pike that had been bolted to the outer top of the Hold's wall. Monstrous and misshapen, it had been cold-hammered into the form of a winged demon, teeth bared in a leering grin, and was tugged and buffeted in squealing protest with every gust of wind.

The winds were contrary the day columns of smoke rose over the Mouse Quarter of Malaz City. The Vane's silence announced the sudden falling-off of the sea breeze that came clambering over the ragged walls of Mock's Hold, then it creaked back into life as the hot, spark-scattered and smoke-filled breath of the Mouse Quarter reached across the city to sweep the promontory's heights.

Ganoes Stabro Paran of the House of Paran stood on tiptoe to see over the merlon. Behind him rose Mock's Hold, once capital of the Empire but now, since the mainland had been conquered, relegated once more to a Fist's holding. To his left rose the pike and its wayward trophy.

For Ganoes, the ancient fortification overlooking the city was too familiar to be of interest. This visit was his third in as many years; he'd long ago explored the courtyard with its heaved cobblestones, the Old Keep – now a stable, its upper floor home to pigeons and swallows and bats – and the citadel where even now his father negotiated the island export tithe with the harbour officials. In the last instance, of course, a goodly portion was out of bounds, even for a son of a noble house; for it was in the citadel that the Fist had his residence, and in the inner chambers that such affairs of the Empire as concerned this island were conducted.