“I was a child when the Second Watch was disbanded,” Oinaral explained. “I remember seeing him, Nin’janjin, the Most-Accursed Son, standing as a brother beside Cu’jara Cinmoi in the glory of the Si?lan Mall. I alone recall the terms of our wicked capitulation!”
So Oinaral could only watch in horror as Nin’ciljiras, Scion of Nin’janjin, was bled as Nil’giccas was once bled upon the Holy Seal of Ishori?l, and so became the King of the Exalted Stronghold. And he knew with a certainty that was a sickness in his gut what would follow, how Min-Uroikas would figure ever more in the usurper’s discourse and declaration, how possibilities mentioned would become, in the fullness of months and years, promises sworn.
How Ishterebinth would one day awaken a fief of Golgotterath …
Sorweel had fairly swooned for incredulity, listening as he did with a composite soul. What disaster? What catastrophe could warrant degradation so outrageous as this? To beg scraps from the palm of the Vile! Lick the hands that had tortured and murdered their wives! Their daughters! To fall as cannibals upon honour and glory!
“Outrage!” he barked from hunched shoulders. “They are the Vile!”
Oinaral seized his shoulder, drew him to a halt. “Name yourself, Son of Harweel … Take possession of what you think.”
“They are the Vile,” the Horse-King cried. “How? How could any forgetting be so profound?”
“All forgetting is so profound,” the Siqu replied.
They passed from the Observances into the Pith proper, where the corridors were expansive and the ceilings oppressive. The peerings were few and far between, but for some reason the gloom embalmed more than it exposed. Guttural hymns floated from the galleries about them, a solemn chorus singing from the Holy Juürl. The stone seemed dulcet, as bright as teeth for the polish of trailing hands. Bestiaries adorned the walls, ancient totems from days even the Great Pit of Years could not reckon. The engravings were more shallow, the figures rendered as large as the surfaces that bore them—a welcome reprieve from the incessant assault of detail. Sorweel could recognize the creatures easily enough—bear, mastodon, eagle, lion—but each had been rendered as if occupying all positions at once—crouching, leaping, running—so that they seemed curious kinds of suns, their torsos become discs, their many limbs the emanations of light.
“Serwa … Mo?nghus … What will happen to them?”
It frightened him, the way her name pinched his throat for speaking.
“They will be Apportioned.”
Somehow he knew what this meant. “Divided as spoils …”
“Yes.”
“To be loved …” the youth said, at once horrified and unsurprised. “Then murdered.”
“Yes.”
“You must do something!”
“The Aged coddle me,” Oinaral said, “make grand gesture of all the strife I am spared. At least some ember of them, they proclaim, shall glow long into the black. But for all their fatuous celebration, I am despised just the same. Thus the bitter irony of my curse, Son of Harweel. I am the greatest shame my Kinning has known, a reclusive Scribe among grasping Heroes, and yet only I recall the distinction between honour and corruption …”
The Injori Ishroi rolled his head about his chin as if facts could seize throats.
“Only I can remember what shame is!”
And it amazed Sorweel that this underworld could be so similar to his own. Men forever ornamented their words with more words, claiming to be moved by compassion, eloquence, and reason, when in sooth the station of the speaker was their only care. If anything rendered the Nonmen “false,” he decided, it was their nobility, their solidarity, their steadfast refusal to contravene the claims of their fathers …
Their utter contempt for things convenient.
“This is why you need me to overthrow Nin’ciljiras?” the young Believer-King asked. “The bigotry of the Aged?”
Oinaral stared forward, his marmoreal profile expressionless. “Yes.”
“But if your word counts for nothing, what could the word of Men do?”
“I do not need you to speak, Son of Harweel.”
“Then what do you need me for?”
The Siqu refused to meet his gaze, gesturing instead to a great stair that plummeted into blackness and living rock to their right—the Inward Stair, Sorweel realized. Light flared at the terminus below, but nowhere along the passage.
“To survive,” Oinaral replied.
“I don’t understand,” Sorweel said as they descended into the gloom. The wondrous bestiary ornamenting the halls above had yielded to the same crammed welter of history. But where the miniature dioramas stood a fair cubit and were stacked parallel to the floors elsewhere, these issued at an angle upon every step, ribbing the ceiling with epic scenes of strife and glory.
“You are God-entangled.”
Sorweel could scarcely feel his own frown. “I fear my doom lies in a different direction, Oinaral.”
“Doom has no direction, Son of Harweel. The time and place of your death has been assigned, no matter when or where you find yourself.”
The thought unnerved the youth, despite all the months he’d squandered mulling it.
“So?” he asked on a thin voice.