He glimpsed the dust-chalked hand waving from the crotch of two great stones below. Horns creased the ragged air with alarm—battlehorns …
And he was running once again, his feet flying upon a ground that was a drum, dashing through rings of glory and ruin. Smoke hung as thick as the cries in the air. Some halls were wrecked, the marble facings cracked, or shed altogether, the floors buckled or buried under shattered masonry. The Ministerial Gallery was impassable, receiving, as it had, a good portion of the Sea Beacon, which had imploded upon its foundations. Others ran, but they were as irrelevant to him as he was to them. Some milled in a stupor, blooded, or chalked colourless. Some shouted for help as they heaved at rubble, others rocked, wailing over inert bodies. Only the dead possessed decorum.
He paused for a train of slaves and functionaries bearing an enormous body grey for dust, black for bleeding. As they passed he recognized the bulk as Ngarau, strings of blood swinging from his slack lips. The little Prince-Imperial stood agog, ignoring the bearers and their concern. A slave boy no older than he trailed in their wake, staring at him with wide, questioning eyes. Glimpsing movement past his bloodied cheek, Kelmomas saw Issiral crossing the next juncture down the hall—a form shadowy not for garb or speed, but for unnatural intent …
He stood motionless, tingling, staring at the now vacant intersection. Several heartbeats passed before he could dare think what was manifest—the Truth that pricked for being so plain …
So laden with dread portent.
The Four-Horned Brother wasn’t finished with the Anas?rimbor.
Strange, the ways of the Soul.
How it kicks when it should be still.
How it resigns when it should roar and spit and grapple.
The Chalice crumbled beneath the luminous ferocity of the Water. Malowebi spat blood, his face numb for the Aspect-Emperor’s blow. The fetish kicked and burned like saltpetre in his fist, but he did not release it. The great strength of the Iswazi was the way it drew on the will that bound the fetish. Rather, he raised himself to his knees, held out his fire-spitting fist, swayed against the calamitous demonstration of the Ps?khe.
He thought he could hear Meppa screaming … somewhere.
Or maybe it was him.
Metagnostic singing clambered up out of the being of things once again, and the brilliant cataract winked into nothingness. Ps?khic thunder trailed into roaring Metagnostic winds. Malowebi pitched forward, cradled the agony of his ruined hand. Grit lashed him as the remnants of the Muzz? Chalice melted away. He huddled wincing against the root of the sorcerous cyclone. Furnishings whooshed overhead, whipping around, as did sections of the pavilion itself, flapping as rapid as bat-wings across the sun. He could no longer sense the Chorae floating about the whirlwind’s circuit: it seemed the desert warriors had fled with the arrival of Meppa …
And word that Fanayal ab Kascamandri was truly dead.
The black gauze had made shadows of what was flesh and flesh of what was light. Hunched against the tempest, the Mbimayu Schoolman watched mouth agape. Meppa hung on high as before, releasing cascades of scalding light. The Aspect-Emperor stood painted lightning-white below, Fanayal’s chalk corpse not more than two paces distant. A mosaic of angular planes sheared into the Waterbearer’s deluge mere cubits above them, refracting the concussive glare across an arc that impaled the heights.
“You shall bear me, Demon!” the Last Cishaurim raged from on high. “For I am drawn from your accursed wheel! Your oven!”
Malowebi tore his omba away—gazed upon the Water with his naked eye.
“An outcast Son of Shimeh!”
The man’s cheeks glowed beneath the spiralling radiance, wetted with tears beneath his silver visor. The asp coiled about his neck seemed to hang him as a noose from the sky. His power was its own ground.
“The Cant that murdered my family, I took as my name!”
And as his rage waxed, so too did the brilliance of his Water …
“And I swore I would come upon thee! Come upon thee as a flood!”
And the hanging Abstractions cast his light upon an ever more profound convexity, a scythe that could surmount mountains.
“That I would deliver such Water!” Meppa screamed.
All existence hissed as if it were sand and some kind of surf heaved through it.
“As to strike thee to ash!”
Meppa howled, maddened unto berserker frenzy. The world was darkened for the sun brilliance of his Expression. Jetting light dazzled his silhouette.
All this while the Aspect-Emperor continued singing, so bleached for the glare as to appear something sketched in char. The Metagnostic planes above him had long since vanished into the roiling glare … but they miraculously cast back the Water nonetheless. And for a heartbeat, the Mbimayu Schoolman understood that this was his moment to seize. The future came to him as a crushing encumbrance, for he saw that he was the balance, the very grain that could tip the balance of empires and civilizations. All he need do was sing with Meppa …