Again the Spearman struck. The air crackled for errant discharges. The interplay of convexities waxed brighter, reducing the Holy Aspect-Emperor to a penitent silhouette.
And another pulse, this one obscuring him altogether. The Wards now hung glaring, an ethereal object that jarred the intellect as much as the eyes.
Only those gazing up at the dizzying immensity of the Horn saw the luminous point appear on the tubular heights …
Another crimson pulse.
The Wards crumbled into smoke about the point of impact, entropy cascading outward, through all the incandescent reticulations, spinning into spaces more profound than empty air. And the Great Ordeal cried out for terror, save for those few peering upward, who first gasped for wonder, then cried out in delirious triumph.
For they saw their Holy Aspect-Emperor step from the ether above the Spearman, standing upon the platform’s slim echo, bellowing his Metagnostic song. They saw the rain of catastrophic Abstractions, the cracking flare and shimmering implosion of the Erratic’s Wards. And they saw their Saviour fall as vengeance upon him, cast him shrieking from the impossible heights …
They watched their Holy Aspect-Emperor take up the Spear.
The Soldiers of the Circumfix boomed in triumph. Across the Oblitus and the captive walls, Men fell to their knees and gave praise. They cried out the hallowed name of Anas?rimbor Kellhus, their all-conquering Lord-and-Prophet.
The triumphant shout shrugged aside the caterwaul of the Horde, resounded deep into the shattered halls of the High Cwol, where it further inflamed the heart of Mirshoa and his Kishyati kinsmen. They hacked and hammered at the raving, Ursranc throngs, until their white-painted faces were all but violet for their foe’s blood. They battled down corridors narrow and wide, pressing ever closer to the Intrinsic Gate. Like all warriors alive in the moment, they could feel it, the leakage of their enemy’s resolve. And this incited them even more, until Mirshoa and his kin laughed and roared like gods having lethal sport.
Tumult had engulfed all that was visible. The Horde crashed upon the westward ramparts of Golgotterath, bearing south. Vast legions of Yimaleti Sranc encompassed all the western tracts of Shigogli, churning up vast curtains of dust, screens woven into the impenetrable obscurity of the Shroud. To the east, the encampment burned, and divisions of Scylvendi horsemen had formed across the outskirts—what looked to be thousands of them. Within Golgotterath, Men ran from all quarters, scrambling to seize and secure the outer walls.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor raised the Spear … cast it.
Greater and greater it loomed, a vista of ruined ramparts and smoking sockets beneath the surreal enormity of the Horns.
“Fleeing!” the old Wizard cried out in dismayed indignation. “Fleeing to Golgotterath!”
For madness it was. They hobbled across the waste with Mimara braced between them, in the Throes or between Throes—he did not know, for the Qirri had afforded her a vitality all her own. Golgotterath loomed nightmarishly before them, the Horns reaching, burnished unto blinding in the direct sunlight, the Shroud engulfing ever more of the skies beyond. Incredulity numbed him to the pit—to simply witness the image let alone scramble into it. For they desperately needed to reach the gold-fanged bulwarks and the security of the Great Ordeal. Achamian suffered a clutch of panic each time he made note of the Shroud’s progress. Even with the blessed ash, even with the cannibal vitality quickening his limbs, they had no hope of beating the Horde to the breach where ancient Corrunc had once stood.
They were too late. He could feel it in his bones.
They could have walked the sky, had Mimara been willing to relinquish her accursed Chorae. But she insisted that she needed them. He had relented without protest: the Scylvendi were already burning pavilions by that point, and his greatest concern was to slip from the encampment unnoticed.
But very soon now, she would have no choice.
Very soon.
“Someone pursues us!” Esmenet cried over the growing howl.
The old Wizard followed her terrified gaze. At first all he could see was contradiction, the contrast of the lean vista they fled from with the black and brooding turmoil they fled to. Then he saw the far precincts of the encampment burning, the Scylvendi myriads fanning through the whorls and clots of canvas hovels as though flushing game from a meadow …
And closer still, a war-party numbering in the hundreds, galloping hard on their trail.
“Move! Move!” he exclaimed.
Mimara cried out for anguish, and somehow they managed to quicken their pace. But a shambling, stumbling trot was not going to save them. Within heartbeats, the People of War had gained enough ground to begin testing their bows. A shaft sunk into the ash to the right of them—then another just behind. The third glanced his Wards, skidded burning. Then a continuous hail of archery began flashing across the back of his Gnostic defenses …
It was time.
“Cast aside your Chorae, Mim!”
“No!” she barked savagely.
“Stubborn wench!” the old Wizard cried, fairly tripping for disbelief. “Yield them or die! It is that sim—!”
“Wait!” Esmenet hollered, looking over her shoulder as she hustled. “They’re turning about! They’re … The—!”
“Look!” Mimara croaked on a hook of agony.
Achamian had already turned, his gaze compelled by a crimson dazzle across his periphery.
Even though leagues distant, the Horns of Golgotterath nonetheless loomed, impossibly monstrous. The Great Ordeal had overrun the fell stair of the Oblitus—a sight that was itself breathtaking—and was even now assailing the High Cwol—the great citadel of the Intrinsic Gate! And there it was: a glittering bloodred line, conjoining a point low on the profile of the High Horn with what had been a Schoolman. A light miraculously unpolluted by sorcery’s Mark … a killing light.
Tekne.
“What is it?” Mimara cried. “The Heron Spear?”
Could it be? No. The Heron Spear had frequented too many Dreams for him to mistake it.
“The colour is wrong …”
A different Inchoroi weapon of light? A different Spear?
Speechless, they limped and raced across Shigogli’s desolate beam. The Spear flashed and flashed again, counting out their progress with burning Schoolmen …
Until Kellhus at last appeared.
Suspended high, a thread of ruby brilliance pulled perfectly taut … striking not the lurid convolutions of the Horde, nor the turrets of the High Cwol, but the inner thigh of the Canted Horn—where the golden shell was most decrepit.
A crack slit the sky’s throat. The echo rumbled like Fanim drums-of-war.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor cast the Spear again.
And again.