“So Kellhus did this?”
The old Wizard spouts curses rather than reply—speaking some language she cannot fathom, and sounding all the more foul-humoured for it. He begins waving his arms and pacing as he shouts.
She spins on her heel to consider the ruined fortress in a single look …
Everything Achamian said bore the ring of truth, so why does she disagree?
She turns to encircling mountains, imagines what it would look like, seeing her stepfather stride across the bleached heavens, bearing light and fury. She can almost hear his voice crack across the firmament, calling on his D?nyain brothers …
She looks back to the razed foundations—to Ishu?l.
Spite, she realizes. Brute hatred destroyed this place.
The old Wizard has fallen silent behind her. She turns, sees him sitting with his back against a great block of stone, staring at nothing, clutching at his forehead, combing his scalp with his fingers. And somehow she knows: Anas?rimbor Kellhus has long ceased being a man for Drusas Achamian—or even a devil for that matter. He has become a labyrinth, something that misleads every breath, mazes every direction. Something that can never be escaped.
But there are other powers. Spiteful powers.
She smells it first … the ghost of rot. A waist-high section of wall conceals it, though she realizes she has seen it all along in the wandering arc of ruin heaped about its rim. A strange kind of astonishment trills through her, like finding a horrible scar on a new lover.
“Akka …” she calls weakly.
The old Wizard glances up in alarm. She expects him to either ignore or rebuke her, but something in her tone, perhaps, hooks his concern.
“What is it?”
“Come … Look …”
He is quick in trotting to her side—almost too quick. She has never grown accustomed to the nimble alacrity that the Qirri has lent his old bones. All such reminders trouble her … in a vague way.
So reckless with his heart, little one.
They stand side-by-side, gazing into the maw of a great pit.
The hole falls at a steep angle rather than straight down, with the ruin piled like a cowl about its ceiling edge, and the floor descending like a tongue opposite. It resembles a gigantic burrow, not unlike the one leading to the Coffers in the Library. Blackness fills its throat, almost tangible for the surrounding brightness, viscous with threat.
Achamian stands stupefied. She is not sure what draws her to climb the far side. Perhaps she has lost her stomach for deep and dark places. Regardless, she picks her way to the crest, which overlooks the far limit of the fortress, and finds herself staring down a vast incline of branches—only they are not branches …
Bones, she realizes.
Sranc bones.
Innumerable. So many that their sum has eclipsed the scale of manufactured things and become one with the mountain’s foundations. An enormous ramp, broad and shallow enough to bear a wain near the peak, dropping scores of feet, flaring out like a skirt, spilling into the forests.
She turns voiceless to the old Wizard, who scrambles to join her on the summit of the pitch.
He stares as she stares, trying to comprehend …
The mountain wind tousles his beard and hair, twisting and wagging its iron-grey tails.
“The Consult,” he murmurs from her side, his voice thin with dread. “The Consult did this.”
What was going on?
“This was where they pitched the fallen …” he continues.
In her soul’s eye she sees Ishu?l as it must have been: cold walls climbing from vast heaps of dead. But even as the image rises, she dismisses it as impossible. They found no bones among the ruined fortifications, which suggests the walls were destroyed before any mass assault.
She looks at him sharply. “And the battle?” Even as she speaks, her fingers are working to release the pouch from her belt …
Qirri … Yes-yes.
The Wizard glances toward the great pit, shrugs without sincerity.
“Beneath our feet.”
She has the premonition of rotted ground, and a dread fills her. The ruined fortress merely barks the surface, she realizes. The tracts buried beneath are riddled with far-flung veins and hollows, like termite-infested wood.
The hole runs deep, she realizes. Cil-Aujas deep.
A shudder rocks her balance from her. She stumbles, catches herself.
“Ishu?l …” she begins, only to trail in indecision.
“Is but the gate,” the old Wizard says, his eagerness outrunning his apprehension.
She turns to him with a beseeching look, but he is already clambering back the way he came, his eyes bright with rekindled hope.
“Of course …” he mutters. “Of course! This is a D?nyain stronghold!”
“So?” she calls down, standing welded upon the heaped rubble.
“So nothing is what it appears to be! Nothing!”