“Yes,” the Holy Aspect-Emperor had conceded.
“So they will discover the Niom has been betrayed, and all our lives will be forfeit.”
“That is why you must teach him to hate the Anas?rimbor.”
“How?”
“I murdered his father. And you, little Witch, have conquered his heart.”
“I have conquered nothing.”
Scrutiny, so piercing as to make the night moan.
“And yet, hate will come easy to him.”
“I am not for Golgotterath!”
Sorweel raced after Oinaral into the baroque chill of the Apiary. He as yet had no idea what the Nonman intended—the ghoul had hustled him out of his chambers without explanation.
“Then who are you for?” the Nonman asked.
“My line … My nation!”
Oinaral cut an imposing figure: his shield slung across his back, a hauberk over his chain gown, and a padded harness—fur pounded into felt—about his shoulders and chest. Holol hung in its scabbard from his hip, its haft propping the palm of his right hand. He appeared both fearsome for his resemblance to Sranc, and proper—for reasons Sorweel could only attribute to the Amiolas. An Injori Ishroi of yore.
“Then you are for the Anas?rimbor,” he declared.
“No! I am destined to be his assassin!”
“Then you would doom your line, your nation.”
“How? How could you know this?”
This earned a scowling glance. “How could I not know this, Manling? I was there. I was Siqu ere the heartbreak of Elene?t. I saw the Whirlwind walk with mine own eyes—the Sranc move of one dread will! I saw the smoke of Sauglish on the horizon, watched the fires of mighty Trys? reflected in the waters of Aumris. I saw it all … the thousands shrieking upon the piers, the raving onslaught, the mothers casting their babes against stone …”
His voice had grown wan as he spoke; how paling before the ferocity of what.
“Everyone knows of the Great Ruiner,” Sorweel retorted. “The question is how could you know he returns? Or that the Anas?rimbor alone can forestall him?”
“It has been prophe—”
“I have been prophecied!”
A vague apprehension slackened the inhuman gaze.
“These are difficult matters for any Man … let alone one so young as you.”
“You forget. My soul is neither young nor human so long I wear this accursed thing on my head.”
Oinaral strolled in silent meditation, looking, for all his warlike accoutrements, the meticulous sage his brothers had condemned him to be. Sorweel understood then how much he could trust the Son of Oir?nas. Ever is manner the oracle of the man. Ever does our carriage betray our souls. The Lastborn did not steer or cozen, he assayed tragic alternatives, grappled with uncertainties entirely his own. Different ignorances.
What Sorweel felt was too numb to count as hope. Oinaral was not steeped in the ancients—he was one. His questions stood upon floors planked in countless answers.
This, the youth realized, was what the Nonmen had always been to Men … Guides …
Fathers.
“Emilidis abhorred all his miraculous works,” the Nonman finally said, “but none so much as the Amiolas. He made certain that no one could forget its nature.”
“But why?” Sorweel cried. “Why should I believe your myth over the living decree of Yatwer? Why should I doubt the Almighty Goddess that stalks me daily, raises me up, shelters me from evil? You heard my confession: her spit has baffled his eye, allowed me to sow lies where all other men stand exposed! And yet you claim that he, my father’s murderer has the truer vision?”
Oinaral held him in his sour regard. “If I were tell you,” he began, “that your mother had taken a lover before your birth, and that this lover was your true father, what would you te—?”
“Impossible!” Sorweel coughed in disbelief. “Outrageous!”
“Exactly,” Oinaral said, speaking with the intensity of insight. “The possibility is unthinkable.”
“I ask for explanations, and you besmirch my paternity?”
“I say this because the No-God is just such a possibility for your Goddess, your Mother of Birth. The No-God is a prospect She cannot think, cannot know, cannot discern, no matter how violently it remakes the World. To exist across all times is to be oblivious to the Eschaton, the limit of those times, and Mog-Pharau is that limit. The Eschaton.”
He glanced at the frowning youth, then gestured to one panel among the many that fretted the walls, to a scene where Ishroi threw down Bashrag and Sranc before the Horns of Golgotterath—but was it Pir Pahal or Pir Minginnial?