“No,” Achamian replies. “To pass judgment, not-not … execute it.”
She sees the hard ways of the People, the criminality of being Scylvendi, a nation born into damnation, and all the lunatic savagery that throngs between. She sees the hand drift between the shadow of opposing thighs …
The demon snorts. “Still a philosopher! Still using your mouth to recover what your hands have given.”
And hatred, unlike any she had ever witnessed, dwarfing even that of Lord Kosoter, who never heard the anguish of those he killed.
“I know only,” Achamian said evenly, “that the World is about to end …”
Cnaiür urs Ski?tha was the murderer who cast himself into his victims, who choked and shrieked with them …
“That the Second Apocalypse is upon us!”
To better suckle upon the fact of his own dread power …
The Scylvendi King-of-Tribes laughs and sneers. “And you fear the Anas?rimbor truly is your Saviour! That his Ordeal might save the World!”
To make the World’s throat a surrogate for his own…
“I have to know for certain … I cannot risk … risk …”
“Liar! You would be his assassin! You lay breath upon the altar of your scrolls, but you stink of vengeance, sorcerer. You reek of it! You would put out his eyes—no different than I!”
The old Wizard stands thunderstruck, alarm grappling with incredulity. The bonfire whirls and cackles, coals popping deep, like bones breaking, bone buried in meat.
“So you have answered Golgotterath’s summons?” Achamian asks. “You march for the Consult?”
The King-of-Tribes turns to the noisome flames, and Mimara at last sees his face as the mundane World would have her see it. High-cheeked, broad of jaw and heavy of brow, scars like coagulations of skin. He was as old as Achamian, but harder by far, as if too jealous of his strength, too indomitable of will to relinquish anything but the superfluities of youth—the weaknesses.
He spits toward the bonfire, where his eyes linger as if upon a virgin’s thighs.
“Let it all burn.”
“And you actually believe you will survive?” Achamian cries at his profile. “Fool! You imagine the Consult will suffer the Scylven—?”
The backhand is both abrupt and fluid. Achamian drops into the blackness like a crashing kite.
“You think this a reunion?” Cnaiür urs Ski?tha screams down at him. “A meeting of old friends?” Mimara feels more than sees the kick to Achamian’s face. Terror flushes through her. “This is not another favour from your Whore, Fortune! You are not of the People!”
The King-of-Tribes yanks the old Wizard from the indigo black, and she sees them …
The swazond.
He suspends as much as holds the sorcerer upright, raises his opposite hand high. “Why? Why have you come, Drusas Achamian? Why have you dragged your bitch across a thousand screaming, rutting leagues? Tell me, what moves a man to cast number-sticks across his woman’s womb?”
Scars—more than the Survivor—only ritual, cut with manic care, and in the Eye …
“To learn the truth!” the bloodied Wizard shouts.
Smoking.
“Truth?” A sneering grin. “Truth? Which one? The one that makes toys out of Nations and Schools? The one that fucks your wife breathless?”
“No!”
Cnaiür cackles. “Even after so many lean years, he keeps you like a mouse in his pocket!”
“No!”
Smoking, the beaded tissue shining with orange-glowering coals …
“Hatred … Aye … You cannot see this because you are weak. You cannot see this because you dwell”—he raised two thick fingers to his temple—“here … Your own eye escapes you, and so you weave excuses, plead ignorance, tell tales! You hide from your truth in the sound of your voice, foul the very spigot you would clear! But I see it plainly—as plainly as a D?nyain. Hatred, Mandati! Hatred has brought you here!”
Smoking … anguish and shrieks, the residue of innumerable battles, coiling into the blackness of the greater night, a mantle of stolen souls.
“I do hate!” Achamian cries, his voice blood-raw. “I don’t deny this! Hatred of Kellhus, yes! But hatred of the Consult more!”
The Barbarian King grimaces, releases the Wizard.
“What of your grudge against them?” Achamian presses. “What of Sarcellus? The skin-spy who murdered Serw?! Your concubine! Your prize!”
These words seem to unnerve the barbarian, physically, like a stab in his throat.
“Who’s the mouse in whose pocket?” Achamian continues with scathing fury. Blood runs freely from his nose, clotting the tangle of his beard. “Who’s the gull?”
The great black figure regards him, horned and smoking, living and yet already a Prince of Hell.