Title: Toll the Hounds
Author(s): Steven Erikson
Release year: 2008
Publisher: Bantam Books
Why in Database: The eighth volume of the Malazan Book of the Fallen have three turtle fragments, we quote all of them below:
‘Eat,’ said the son. ‘The meat is from a turtle that tunnels, very tender. The miska milk softens it and removes the poison. One generally does not drink the miska, as it can send the mind travelling so far that it never returns. Too much and it will eat holes in your stomach and you will die in great pain.’
‘Ah. You could have mentioned that earlier.’ Traveller took the meat from the child. He was about to plop it into his mouth when he paused. ‘Anything else I should know before I begin chewing?’
‘No. You will dream tonight of tunnelling through earth. Harmless enough. All food has memory, so the miska proves – we cook everything in it, else we taste the bitterness of death.’
Faint asked him, then, as the front door squealed open, she turned in her chair. An adolescent boy in a voluminous brown robe edged in warily, eyes like freshly laid turtle eggs.
It was morning, when they did their best thinking, but that had a way of dying quick, so that by late afternoon they would find themselves sitting somewhere, sluggish as tortoises in a hailstorm, arguing about nothing in particular with monosyllabic brevity and getting angrier by the moment.
