They passed through the murk of a narrow, defensive passageway. The shadow of the mountain fell away, and they found themselves on a balcony wrought from black iron, set on the waist of an enormous, globular hollow, a chamber great enough to house the Blackwall Citadel entire.
He stood upon the Oratorium, he realized, in the legendary audience chamber called the Concavity, the bastion that Nil’giccas had raised against madness and forgetting. A dozen peerings flared from points about the interior equator, anchoring ethereal and overlapping spheres of illumination. The iron platform hung over the curved plummet, as long and broad as a warship’s deck. Dozens of Ishroi watched his entrance from points across its grilled expanse, pale and hairless as marble, nude beneath gowns of resplendent nimil chain. But the approach of the Exalted Bark, the famed floating dais of the Nonman King, had seized the youth’s dazzled attention.
As he watched, it levitated across the vacant heart of the Concavity, rotating as though on a gentle breeze. It was about the size of a river scow, a gilded counterpart to the Oratorium platform. The sacred Aeviternal Seal, the Shield-of-the-Mountain, bisected it, a great coin fraught with icon and imagery rising about the Black Iron Seat, the legendary throne of Ishterebinth.
The Exalted Bark descended as if turning upon an ethereal screw, revealing the figure ensconced within the eruption of horns and quills comprising the Black Iron Seat. The young king of the Lonely City set eyes upon Nil’giccas, the Great King-upon-the-Summit, gowned in scales of gold, dripping as if pulled from some pool, and regarding him with marmoreal inscrutability.
The youth returned his scrutiny, numbed by a dawning realization …
The Bark slowed as it closed the interval between it and the Oratorium. The sound of hidden linkages scraped the air. The grilled floor shuddered beneath his feet.
The ghoul upon the Black Seat … Somehow he knew it was not Nil’giccas.
But how could that be when they were entirely indistinguishable from one another—or Sranc for that matter?
The Ishroi surrounding him and his keepers crouched in unison, pressed their faces against their knees. Left to stand on his own, Sorweel wobbled, found that he also recognized many of the illustrious court about him. The radiant Cilc?liccas, named the Lord of Swans for his preposterous luck. The crimson armoured S?jara-nin, the Farthrown, a Dispossessed Son of Si?l. Cu’mimiral Dragon-gored, who was called Lord Limper …
How? How could he know souls—inhuman souls—he had never seen before?
He turned to peer at the Nonman King, who now stood before the Seal-and-Seat, doused and gold-gleaming before all … and found that he knew him as well.
Nin’ciljiras, Son of Ninar, Son of Nin’janjin.
How could he know this Nonman at all?
Let alone hate him.
“We are the dwindling light …” the Nonman King called in ritual invocation. “The darkling soul …”
Unnerved by the passions Nin’ciljiras provoked, Sorweel cast his look to the text and imagery hewn from the Concavity’s walls … and was stunned. He could read the text … recognize the images …
“Walkers of the Ways Beneath.”
Nin’ciljiras turned to a black basin set upon a pedestal just to the right of the Black Iron Seat. He raised a bowl that trailed threads too viscous to be water. Facing the crouched assembly, he doused himself in shining oil. The liquid pulsed in a sheet across his face, cracking into rivulets about the seams of his golden hauberk.
“Beseechers of Wisdom.”
For the first time Sorweel noticed the naked little Emwama child at the foot of the lunatic throne, gazing out with the same too-wide eyes that had repulsed the youth at the Gates of Ishterebinth, cringing beneath the wicked profusion of iron spines.
“Haters of Heaven …”
His voice hung but for a heartbeat, then the congregated Ishroi spake,
“SONS OF FIRST MORNING …”
in reverberating unison.
“ORPHANS OF LAST LIGHT.”
The Nonman King made an absent gesture, then, trailing a skirt of droplets, returned to the Black Iron Seat, where he became surreal for the contrast. The ghouls who had born Sorweel through the Mountain now hoisted him upright, dragged him beneath the gold-glistening aspect. The Emwama child retreated like an oft-struck cat, crouched shivering no more than a length away.
The Nonman King gazed upon him with what seemed bewildered contempt. A ghoul dressed in a welter of black silks knelt to the right of the Seat, began whispering into his ear. It was Harapior, the youth realized in dismay, his necklace of human scalps bunched as feathers about his cheeks. Listening to him, Nin’ciljiras raised his gaze to the similarly dressed ghoul standing on Sorweel’s immediate right: the Asker, his interrogator from the Thresholds …
Oinaral Lastborn.
“The Assay has been completed?” Nin’ciljiras asked Oinaral in a brass voice.
The Nonman lowered his face. “The Niom has been honoured, Tsonos. The manling has sworn to murder the Aspect-Emperor.”
The King’s gleaming brow furrowed.
“Harapior says he is more. More than an Enemy.”
A pause that seemed to lean against all hearts.