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B'ridys

B'ridys was an old mountain fortress near Raraku south of G'danisban, that had once been a monastery for the cult of the Nameless Ones.[1][2]

"B'ridys had been carved into a cliffside, a longstanding tradition in the odhans surrounding the Holy Desert. There was no formal, constructed approach - not even steps, nor handholds, cut into the stone — and the tunnels behind the fortifications reached deep. Within those tunnels, springs supplied water. Kalam had only seen B'ridys from the outside, long abandoned by its original inhabitants, suggesting that the springs had dried up. And while such strongholds contained vast storage chambers, there was little chance that the Malazans who'd fled to it had found those chambers supplied."
―Description of B'ridys[src]

The fortress' only seeming entrance was through a narrow doorway atop a high ledge.[3]

In House of Chains

During the Whirlwind rebellion, a few hundred Malazans had retreated to the safety of the fortress from their strongholds in Ehrlitan, G'danisban, and Pan'potsun.[1]

Kalam came upon a group of five hundred rebels from the local Malazan garrisons led by renegade "Captain" Irriz who had laid siege to the fortress. Irriz, a former member of the Ashok Regiment, thought he had members of the 2nd Company of his old regiment cornered, along with Captain Kindly.[4] Kalam unleashed an Azalan demon to kill the besiegers and capture Irriz. Then he climbed to the fortress entrance to join the Ashok Regiment.

Inside the fortress was a well, at the bottom of which was a huge, glowing, armoured figure, held beneath the rushing water by chains of Elder sorcery. The figure was at least three times a man's height.[5] Kindly and Pores had disappeared while investigating the strange sight and were thought to have drowned.[6]

When Kalam tried a closer look, he was pulled down the well into the freezing water by the creature, which admitted Kindly and Pores had eluded it. Kalam drove both his long-knives into the creature's chest and was expelled from the well by a geyser of freezing water. The B'ridys demon had been imprisoned in the well for thousands of years, long before the Nameless Ones had founded their monastery in the ancient fortress whose true builders had long been forgotten.[7]

Kalam's action freed the creature to possess the body of any who drank the water tainted by its blood. In a hurry to depart before the demon sought revenge, the Bridgeburner assassin convinced the members of the Ashok Regiment to slip down the narrow fissure that served as the fortress' secret escape route. From there, the Regiment travelled south to join Adjunct Tavore Paran's Malaz 14th Army while Kalam journeyed into Raraku with the demon following.[8]

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 House of Chains, Chapter 9, US SFBC p.347
  2. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 12, US SFBC p.451
  3. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 9, US SFBC p.350
  4. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 9, US SFBC p.349/351
  5. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 12, US SFBC p.448/450
  6. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 9, US SFBC p.360
  7. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 12, US SFBC p.448-451/455-456
  8. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 12, US SFBC p.451-457
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