'...shapeless beneath an oversized silk telaba, its hood opened wide like the neck of a desert snake, tiny black eyes glittering out from its shadow. Beneath those eyes gleamed twin fangs of gold, capping his upper canines. They were said to hold Emulor, a poison rendered from a certain cactus that gifted not death, but permanent dementia.' (HoC, UK trade, p.261-2)
Previously was the High Mage Iltara :-
Febryl’s loss of faith had come in the interval, and it had left him a broken man. In following Enqura’s commands, he had so outraged his mother and father – both learned nobles in their own right – that they
had disowned him to his face. And Febryl had lost his mind that night, recovering his sanity with dawn staining the horizon, to find that he had murdered his parents. And their servants. That he had unleashed
sorcery to flay the flesh from the guards. That such power had poured through him as to leave him old beyond his years, wrinkled andwithered, his bones brittle and bent.
She knew his every secret. It had not been enough to change his name; not enough that he had the appearance ofan old man, when the High Mage Iltara, most trusted servant to Enqura, had been young, tall and lusted after by both men and women?
Sha'ik Reborn : 'Febryl, the most craven and conniving of my High Mages. Thrice you sought to poison
me, and thrice Dryjhna’s power burned the poison from my veins – yet not once did I condemn you. Did you believe me ignorant of your efforts? And your most ancient secret – your flight from Dassem Ultor before the final battle, your betrayal of the cause – did you think I knew nothing of this?' (DG UKTpb, p.541)
Enqura had well understood the Mezla thirst for knowledge, the Emperor’s lust for foreign secrets, and the city’s Holy Protector would give them nothing. Instead, he had commanded Febryl, a week before the arrival of the Malazan armies, to shut down the schools, to confiscate the hundred thousand scrolls and bound volumes, the ancient relics of the First Empire, and the teachers and scholars themselves. By the Protector’s decree, Ugarat’s coliseum became the site of a vast conflagration, as everything was burned, destroyed. The scholars were crucified – those that did not fling themselves on the pyre in a fit of madness and grief – and their bodies dumped into the pits containing the smashed relics just outside the city wall.
Febryl had done as he had been commanded. His last gesture of loyalty, of pure, unsullied courage. The terrible act was necessary.
Enqura’s denial was perhaps the greatest defiance in the entire war. One for which the Holy Protector paid with his life, when the horror that was said to have struck Dassem Ultor upon hearing of the deed transformed into rage.
