Who will deny that it is our nature to believe the very

worse in our fellow kind? Even as cults rose and indeed

coalesced into a patronomic worship -- not just of

Coltaine, the Winged One, the Black Feather, but too

of the Chain of Dogs itself -- throughout Seven Cities,

with shrines seeming to grow from the very wastes

along that ill-fated trail, shrines in propitiation to one

dead hero after another: Bult, Lull, Mincer, Sormo E’nath,

even Baria and Mesker Setral of the Red Blades; and to

the Foolish Dog clan, the Weasel clan and of course the

Crow and the Seventh Army itself; while at Gelor Ridge,

in an ancient monastery overlooking the old battle

site, a new cult centred on horses was born -- even as

this vast fever of veneration gripped Seven Cities,

so certain agents in the heart of the Malazan Empire

set loose, among the commonry, tales purporting the

very opposite; that Coltaine had betrayed the empire;

that he had been a renegade, secretly allied with Sha’ik.

After all, had the countless refugees simply stayed in

their cities, accepting the rebellion’s dominion; had they

not been dragged out by Coltaine and his bloodthirsty

Wickans; and had the Seventh’s Mage Cadre leader,

Kulp, not so mysteriously disappeared, thus leaving

the Malazan Army vulnerable to the sorcerous machi-

nations and indeed, manipulations, of the Wickan

witches and warlocks -- had not all this occurred, there

would have been no slaughter, no terrible ordeal of

crossing half a continent exposed to every predating

half-wild tribe in the wastes. And, most heinous of all,

Coltaine had then, in league with the traitorous Imperial

Historian, Duiker, connived to effect the subsequent

betrayal and annihilation of the Aren Army, led by the

naïve High Fist Pormqual who was the first victim of

that dread betrayal. Why else, after all, would those very

rebels of Seven Cities take to the worship of such figures,

if not seeing in Coltaine and the rest heroic allies….

… In any case, whether officially approved or otherwise,

the persecution of Wickans within the empire flared hot

and all-consuming, given such ample fuel….

The Year of Ten Thousand Lies

Kayessan

(BH)

Truth is a pressure, and I see us all shying away.

But, my friends, from truth there can be no escape.

The Year of Ten Thousand Lies

Kayessan

(BH)

Who are these strangers, then, with their familiar faces?

Emerging from the crowd with those indifferent eyes,

and the blood streaming down from their hands.

It is what was hidden before, masked by the common

and the harmless, now wrenching features revealed

in a conflagration of hate and victims tumble underfoot

Who led and who followed and why do flames thrive

in darkness and all gaze, insensate and uncomprehending,

come the morning light, upon the legacy of unleashed

spite? I am not fooled by wails of horror. I am not moved

by expostulations of grief. For I remember the lurid night,

the visage flashing in firelit puddles of blood was my own.

Who was this stranger, then, with that familiar face?

Melting into the crowd in the fraught, chaotic heave,

and the blood raging in the storm of my skull boils frantic

as I plunge down and lay waste all these innocent lives,

my hate at their weakness a cauldron overturned, whilst

drowning in my own, this stranger, this stranger….

On the Dawn I Take My Life

The Wickan Pogrom

Kayessan

(BH)