“Like us,” Gall rumbled. “Your army is lost.”
Gamet glanced over at Tavore, but there was no reaction for him to gauge. He drew a breath, then faced the Khundryl. “We are yet to fight a major battle, Warchief. Thus, we do not yet know ourselves. That is all. We are not lost — ”
“Just not yet found,” Gall finished, baring his teeth. He took a long swallow from his jug.
“Do you regret your decision to join us, then?” Gamet asked.
“Not at all, Fist. My shamans have read the sands. They have learned much of your future. The Fourteenth Army shall know a long live, but it shall be a restless life. You are doomed to search, destined to ever hunt … for what even you do not know, nor, perhaps, shall you ever know. Like the sands themselves, wandering for eternity.”
Gamet was scowling. “I do not wish to offend, Warchief, but I hold little faith in divination. No mortal — no god — can say we are doomed, or destined. The future remains unknown, the one thing we cannot force a pattern upon.”
The Khundryl grunted. “Patterns, the lifeblood of the shamans. But not them alone, yes? The Deck of Dragons — are they not used for divination?”
Gamet shrugged. “There are some who hold much store in the Deck, but I am not one of them.”
“Do you not see patterns in history, Fist? Are you blind to the cycles we all suffer through? Look upon this desert, this wasteland you cross. Yours is not the first empire that would claim it. And what of the tribes? Before the Khundryl, before the Kherahn Dhobri and the Tregyn, there were the Sanid, and the Oruth, and before them there were others whose names have vanished. Look upon the ruined cities, the old roads. The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet, even as the stars above reveal their own patterns — for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past.” He raised the jug again and studied it for a moment. “Thus, the past lies beneath and above the present, Fist. This is the truth my shamans embrace, the bones upon which the future clings like muscle.”
- House of Chains, Malazan Book of the Fallen 4
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