“Tell me,” Cnaiür repeats, raising his fluted face.
She tries to match the glacial intensity of his gaze. Turquoise set in sclera shot with murderous memory. Something pricks, and though the very God of the Gods steeps her, her look falters, falls to her hands where they strain finger against finger on her lap.
“I have never seen …” she murmurs.
“What?” A voice like a father’s swat.
“I-I have never seen one-one … so … so damned …”
The black-maned head lowers in contemplation once again, like a stone sagging upon a stalk of clay. Mimara isn’t sure what her words should have provoked. The man is too mercurial and far too canny for her to trust any assumption. But she expected some kind of reaction—for when all was said and done, he remains a mortal man—a soul. He might as well have been a Sempis crocodile.
She looks to Achamian, who spares her no more than a resigned and be-seeching glance. If they survive, a petulant part of her notes, she will never hear the end of this night. He will curse her for her honesty, she knows. And who could blame him?
The thing-called-Serw? has been watching her this entire time on a tangent to the flames, a vision that lulls as much as warns for its beauty.
“Seeeee …” it coos to its Scylvendi lover. “Salvation … This is the dowry that only my father can off—”
“Stop your tongue, abomination!” Achamian cries.
But the King-of-Tribes looks to Mimara alone.
“And when you looked upon Ishu?l with the Eye, what did you see?”
Inhaling hurts.
“Crimes. Unthinkable and innumerable.”
A longing creeps into the brutal visage. A desire to burn … He even turns his gaze back to the fire, as though he casts images behind his eyes to the flame. His voice surprises her, so intent is he upon the wax and shimmer of the fire.
“And the boy, here … You took him as your hostage?”
The old Wizard hesitates. She hears her voice leap into the silence—quite against her resolution.
“He is a refugee …”
The Scylvendi King-of-Tribes glares like someone slapped clear of delirium. His scowl is instant, the glove most worn by his face. The boy, she realizes, sensing the child’s immobile presence on her left—the boy has been the mad Scylvendi’s motivating concern since the episode beneath the bonfire … when he had glimpsed the child’s resemblance to his Holy Grandfather—Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
“Refugee …” For the first time the cruel eyes slacken. “You mean Ishu?l … has fallen?”
This time they both remain silent.
“N-no,” Achamian begins. “The boy merely sought asylum fro—”
“Silence!” Cnaiür urs Ski?tha screams at the old Wizard. “Ketyai scum!” he says, spitting. The flames hiss like a cat. “Always you seek advantage! Always conniving—worse than greedy wives!”
He draws a knife from his girdle—whips it with an outward arc. Mimara can scarcely blink, let alone raise warding arms …
But the knife zips past her cheek. She does not quite see, so quick is the shining passage, but she knows the boy has batted the blade to the side with his hale hand.
The barbarian now glares at the sorcerer, and for an instant, Mimara glimpses him, her terrible stepfather, Anas?rimbor Kellhus, sitting impervious in the interval between these disfigured souls. The spectre … the curse … that shackled them, these two most unlikely of Men.
She does not like the involuntary way Achamian’s jaw works. She likes the tendons finning the Scylvendi’s neck even less. “You know me!” the Barbarian King booms. “You know my cruelty knows no bounds! Tell me the truth, sorcerer! Tell me, lest I pluck your precious Eye!”
The thing-called-Serw? smiles at her from across the flames, glances toward the boy.
Achamian looks down to his hands, though out of cowardice or calculation she cannot tell.
“We found Ishu?l ruined.”
“Ruined?” The barbarian is shocked. “What? By him? By Kellhus?”
She glances at the boy, who for some prescient reason seems to be awaiting her look. She wants to cry out to him, tell him to run, for she knows, even though the thought has yet to occur to her. She knows that she and Achamian might pray to escape, but not the boy, not the orphaned seed of Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
“No…” Achamian says. “By the Consult.”
“More lies!”
“No! We-we found tunnels beneath the fortress. A labyrinth filled with the bones of Sranc!”
Run! she wanted to cry. Flee! But her voice is stilled. The golden blur in her periphery, the thing-called-Serw?, watches with bottomless black eyes, poised in soulless fixation.
“How long ago was it destroyed?” Cnaiür urs Ski?tha barks.
“I-I don’t know …”
“How long?” the barbarian repeats, his voice more hollow …