One Horn.
The School of Mandate had made fetishes of many things, for theirs had always been a desperate cause, and the desperate were forever bent on anchoring their preposterous hopes with more tangible items. But the Horns of Golgotterath had been their one and only idol, the image they had perpetually prayed against. For it was always there, a shadow thrown across the curve of the entire World, lingering on the extremis of every glance, every gaze, no matter how trivial or epic the occasion, a memory of horror that had become horror, a leering token of itself.
A symbol of terror that was terror, distilled and embodied.
And it had been broken …
The sight stole his breath. The Canted Horn lay strewn into a mountain chain of barrelled ruin, shining golden in the sunlight, like a brace of ceremonial armbands spilled and trampled across the dirt. A stinging seized his eyes—sand. A peculiar vertigo reeled through him, an impulse to repair what he saw via some adjustment of vantage, as if a tilt of his head or gain in elevation might somehow bring the two Horns back together.
Esmenet was clutching his hand, shushing reassurance. Mimara smoothed his shoulder and back.
He couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe? He thought of how the God-Kings of ?merau would execute criminals by ratcheting hoops of bronze about their breasts tighter and tighter. He heard the dry sobbing of someone old.
“We—” he began, only to feel an infant’s hand clench the cords of his voice.
No matter how violently he blinked the grit remained.
Mimara cried out, folded about her great abdomen. He heard the roaring of thousands upon thousands of human throats—the Great Ordeal howling in triumph.
“Come!” Esmenet was calling into his ear, compassion belied by urgency. “We need to keep moving.”
But she was already too late.
More than Sranc had been killed by the cyclopean collapse. None of the Shigeki or Saik Schoolmen on Golgotterath’s southern ramparts had known of the Spear or the turmoil it had caused across the Oblitus. The bulk of the Canted Horn, hanging like a mountain above them, had occluded all. Only when the Holy Aspect-Emperor began using the ancient Inchoroi artifact did they turn from the dire spectacle of the streaming Horde and gaze up toward the crack and thrum of the vast forces suspended above. General Rash Soptet had stood with Grandmaster Temus Enhor? atop the ninth tower, straining to shout over the swelling howl of their foe. Together, they turned squinting, for the high sun blazed across the rim of the Horn’s immense belly. They felt the ground fly up toward it, so massive was the structure. The old Grandmaster screamed some kind of Ward, but it availed him no more than the General’s outflung arms. The golden ground clapped down, folding all life and light in infinite gloom.
Grandmaster Ussiliar had been locked in a vicious melee deep in the bowel of the fifth tower when the Canted Horn smote the floor of the World. Walls buckled. Dust and debris rained from the ceilings. Even jammed shoulder to shield, the Shrial Knights were knocked from their feet. The Ursranc were quicker to recover, as the Whore would have it, and they worked a terrible slaughter before the Men regained their wits and ferocity. A slavering chieftain, nearly as tall as a Man and draped in a coat of iron chains, fetters that had been soldered into a crude hauberk, assailed the disoriented Ussiliar, goring him in the thigh before the Shrial Grandmaster finally stoved the obscenity’s skull.
“To the parapets,” he commanded the Knights who propped him in the battle’s aftermath.
With no little dread, he ascended the stair, climbed into dust-filtered sunlight. The vast cylinder of the Horn lay bellied across the Scab, looming mountainous over the shattered walls, and strewn into a vast, golden cordillera across the plate of Shigogli. One of his retinue cried out at the sight of the naked woman curled in the southeast corner of the tower, still breathing despite the horrific burns that ulcerated her skin. The Men gathered incredulous about her. Lord Ussiliar was the first to fall to his knees.
“Princess Imperial,” he called, daring to reach for an alabaster shoulder. “Exalt-Magus …”
Anas?rimbor Serwa seized the Shrial Grandmaster’s wrist, then floated to her feet as if thrown by hands. She peered at the contortions of gold towering above, then swept her gaze out across the tortured distance, the numberless white-skinned wretches. Incredulity passed into assurance without residue. The Shrial Knights fell to their knees, pressed their faces to the stone as much out of horror as respect, for she was clothed only in anguish. Her once-luxurious hair had been burnt to shags. Her right arm was greased in weeping ulcers from shoulder to fingertip. The intact portions of her face, once the image of aquiline perfection, formed the outline of a hand about her eyes and nose. Everything else, her brow, her cheek, had been cracked and welted, including her mouth. Only her shanks and the downy curse of her sex had been entirely spared.
“Lord Ussiliar,” she said, her voice somehow untouched by the rising clamour. “Recruit every soul still breathing. Leave the walls to the wounded. Defend the ruin with the hale … Make sure nothing passes through the wreckage of the Horn!” She leapt upon the battlements with feline ease. “Quickly!” she barked in sudden anger. “While your voice can still be heard!”
And with that her eyes and ruined mouth flared brilliance, and the Exalt-Magus of the Great Ordeal strode out across empty air.