who offers a song of power that may grant ascension to the Bridgeburners, whom he believes fought honorably in their empire's dishonorable war to take the Seven Cities. Kalam, a native of the Seven Cities, makes contact with the lingering resistance to Malazan rule, and agrees to deliver Dryjhna's Holy Book, which will unleash the rebellion's Apocalypse, to Sha’ik in Raraku. Kalam is tailed by a Red Blade loyalist captain, Lostara Yil, who uncovers his mission. Yil follows Kalam to Sha’ik, watches him deliver the Book of the Apocalypse to her and receive the gift of an aptorian demon bodyguard, and kills her after Kalam departs, despite Sha’ik's guardians Leoman of the Flails and Toblakai. As Fiddler, Crokus, and Apsalar travel separately through Raraku, Apsalar's memories gradually confirm that the Rope, the patron god of assassins, who possessed her as Sorry, was the previous Emperor Kellenvad's assassin Dancer, and that Kellenvad and Dancer must have escaped Laseen's assassination efforts by ascending to godhood over the new Warren and House of Shadow. Whirlwind Baudin and Heboric arrange, with Duiker's help, to escape from the mines during a slave mutiny and give Felisin the chance to go with them, and she agrees. En route to the coast, Heboric finds an enormous jade pillar that turns out to be merely the finger of an enormous figure, and touches it with his stumps of hands, which draws his god Fener into the mortal realm. Fener flees and Heboric's hands become tangible, mixing his Denul warren with the magic-deadening properties of otataral. Duiker sends the mage Kulp on a Malazan boat to retrieve the trio from the otataral island, but the company is drawn into a mad mage's watery warren where they board the Silanda, on which they find headless Tiste Andii oarsmen still capable of accepting commands and probable Tiste Edur corpses in the captain's cabin. Soon they encounter Logros T’lan Imass warriors under Bonecaster Hentos Ilm pursuing an unnamed quarry, who inform the humans that they are in Kurald Emurlahn, the Tiste Edur Elder Warren. One of the T’lan Imass sacrifices himself to heal the breach in the warren, and the Imass take one of the heads, but they leave the humans behind to find their own way out. Pust tells Icarium and Mappo that Sha’ik will be resurrected, as an enormous wall of deadly whirling sand surrounds Raraku and the winds within