Name: Sorrit
Pseudonyms:
Age:...
Race: Eleint
Appearance:
Further Info: dead, killed in Emurlahn by (speculation) Scabandari Bloodeye?
Another enormous chamber, as if the heart of the keep had been carved out. A massive cruciform of bound, black wood filled the cavern, and on it was impaled a dragon. Long dead, once frozen but now rotting. An iron spike as thick around as Mappo's torso had been driven into the dragon's throat, just above the breast bones. Aquamarine blood had seeped down from the wound and still dripped heavy and turgid onto the stone floor in slow, steady, fist-sized drops.
"I know this dragon," Icarium said again. "Sorrit. Its aspect was Serc. The warren of the sky." He lifted both hands to his face. "Dead. Sorrit has been slain.." (BH UKTpb. p.134)
'This leaves naught but Osserc,' Mappo said. 'And should he fall, the warren of Serc shall possess no ruler.'
Mappo : 'Otataral. She was bound by otataral. Yet, she was Elder - she should have been able to defeat that eager entropy. I do not understand this..' (BH UKT pb, p.193)
Mapp : "Who could have managed such a thing? Within the dragon is the heart of the warren itself, its well-fount of power. Yet … someone defeated Sorrit, drove her down into the earth, into this cavern within a sky-keep, and spiked her to Blackwood -- how long ago, do you think? Would we not have felt her death?” With no answers forthcoming from Icarium, Mappo edged closer to the blood pool and peered upward, focusing on that massive iron, rust-streaked spike. “No,” he murmured after a moment, “that is not rust. Otataral. She was bound by Otataral. Yet, she was Elder -- she should have been able to defeat that eager entropy. I do not understand this….”
“Old and new,” Icarium said, his tone twisting the words into a curse. He rose suddenly, his expression ravaged and eyes hard. “Speak to me, Mappo. Tell me what you know of spilled blood.”
He turned away. “Icarium --”
“Mappo, tell me.”
Gaze settling on the aquamarine pool, the Trell was silent as emotions warred within him. Then he sighed. “Who first dipped their hands into this fell stream? Who drank deep and so was transformed, and what effect did those Otataral spikes have upon that transformation? Icarium, this blood is fouled --”
“Mappo.”
“Very well. All blood spilled, my friend, possesses power. Beasts, humans, the smallest bird, blood is the life-force, the soul’s own stream. Within it is locked the time of living, from beginning to end. It is the most sacred force in existence. Murderers with their victim’s blood staining their hands feed from that force, whether they choose to or not. Many are sickened, others find a new hunger within themselves, and so become slaves to the violence of slaying. The risk is this: blood and its power become tainted by such things as fear and pain. The stream, sensing its own demise, grows stressed, and the shock is as a poison.”
“What of fate?” Icarium asked in a heavy voice.
Mappo flinched, his eyes still on the pool. “Yes,” he whispered, “you cut to the matter’s very heart. What does one take upon him or herself when such blood is absorbed, drawn into their own souls? Must violent death be in turn delivered upon them? Is there some overarching law, seeking ever to redress the imbalance? If blood feeds us, what in turn feeds it, and is it bound by immutable rules or is it as capricious as we are? Are we creatures on this earth the only ones free to abuse our possessions?”
“The K’Chain Che’Malle did not kill Sorrit,” Icarium said. “They knew nothing of it.”
“Yet this creature here was frozen, so it must have been encompassed in the Jaghut’s ritual of Omtose Phellack — how could the K’Chain Che’Malle not have known of this? This must have, even if they themselves did not slay Sorrit.”
“No, they are innocent, Mappo. I am certain of it.”
“Then … how?”
“The cruciform, it is Blackwood. From the realm of the Tiste Edur. From the Shadow Realm, Mappo. In that realm, as you know, things can be in two places at once, or begin in but one yet find itself eventually manifesting in another. Shadow wanders, and respects no borders.”
“Ah, then … this … was trapped here, drawn from Shadow —”
“Snared by the Jaghut’s ice magic — yet the spilled blood, and perhaps the Otataral, proved too fierce for Omtose Phellack, thus shattering the Jaghut’s enchantment.”
“Sorrit was murdered in the Shadow Realm. Yes. Now the pattern, Icarium, grows that much clearer.”
Icarium fixed bright, fevered eyes upon the Trell. “Is it? You would blame the Tiste Edur?”
“Who else holds such command of Shadow? Not the Malazan pretender who now sits on the throne!” (BH UKTpb, p.194)
- see Scabandari Bloodeye