Whether the voice was his own or belonged to the Aspect-Emperor, he did not know, but it bent the arrow of his attention as if it were his own …
Away from the uncanny flames and across the mirror blackness of the floors to the spectre of a throne arising out of a massive array of horned cylinders and convoluted nodes and grills. The Chair-of-Hooks, he realized, the wicked Throne of Sil. It fluted out upon a myriad of angles, flaring into preposterous dimensions as it bulged into cavernous murk. The floors, he suddenly realized, ended just beyond the great seat, dropping into spaces too vast to be hidden from heaven. Gleams inhabited the abyss, etching the back of shadow with the intimation of staggering structure. Old Zabwiri had shown him the inner workings of a water-clock once, and Malowebi suffered that selfsame sense of peering into an unfathomable mechanism now, of seeing what had to be the joints and conduits of mundane force without the least inkling of what those forces might be …
Aside from unimaginably vast.
And the captive Zeumi Emmisary found himself wondering about the ancient Ishroi of Viri, mulling whether something similar had passed through Nin-janjin’s ghoulish veins upon first witnessing the wonders of the dread Ark. Had he experienced the selfsame awe? The same speechless incredulity? For this was the Tekne, the mundane mechanics that Malowebi and his ilk regarded with such contempt, only refined to pitches that beggared the intellect, made crude barbarity of their sorcerous barks. The dread Ark, he realized, was a water-clock of unimaginable subtlety, a titanic contrivance driven by its own principle of animation, causes tyrannizing effects, energies hounded through labyrinths, all arranged … just … so …
What fools they were! Malowebi could even see them cavorting in the Palace of Plumes, the Satakhan sorting nuts in his palm, Likaro decanting the poison he called wisdom at his side, and the rest of his cousin’s festooned inner circle, drinking themselves into oblivion, trading slanders in the pursuit of petty grudges—growing even more fat and stupid, all the while utterly convinced that they decided the fate of the World. Such idiot arrogance! Such conceit! Layabout, ingratiating souls, anchored to thighs and pillows, addled with wine and hashish, courting favour by calling out ribald condemnations of the Aspect-Emperor—by cursing their Saviour!
What shame! What disgrace they had called down upon High Holy Zeum! This was why he hung from the hip of the Anas?rimbor—why he was doomed! This was why Zsoronga was dead …
He gazed upon the dread ligaments from within. And his revelation upon witnessing the Inc?-Holoinas from the promontory stood revealed as half-hearted, the skin of something far deeper. The “world” was murdered and the World rose up in its place, a new, deeper ground of believing. Unknown. Terrifying. Sharp where there had been murk, and impenetrable where there had been flattering phantasm. At last he understood what it was the preachers his cousin executed had experienced: the becoming myth of what had been scripture, and the becoming question of what had been myth.
What were the Inchoroi? The Nonmen said they descended from the Void, that they sculpted their flesh the way potters fashion clay. But what did that mean? What could it mean? Were they truly older than humanity?
And what was the Ark? A ship for sailing … between stars?
It was too much … Too much too fast.
This was why the last thing the Second Negotiant discerned in the gloom was what should have been the first: a ghost-white face peering from the hooded confines of the wicked Chair …
A hand floated up with a poet’s fey sloth, obscured the brow.
Mekeritrig, saying, “It was Sil who fashioned this place.”
The Grandmaster of the Imperial Mandate had no choice but to call on the Exalt-General—for he was at a loss as to how he and his Schoolmen might overcome the Intrinsic Gate. They began by attempting to clear the Wards on the bridge, only to watch it slump into the void of the chasm. Then they set upon foul Obmaw itself, wracking it and the adjacent stonework with a catastrophic array of sorceries. They battered the masonry into avalanches of debris, casting the ruin so as to choke upon a narrows in the chasm. The edges were cudgelled down. Wrack was blown as leaves, as the most powerful continued blasting the ensorcelled iron of the portal itself, Abstraction after battering Abstraction, until it too finally sloughed into the choked crevice, leaving only a gaping void where Sikswar? Marag?l had once barred their way …
The Ark had been pried open.
And so, deep in the husk of the High Cwol, the Men of the Three Seas boomed celebration, save that the stench surpassed description; it bloomed through the chamber like a fog of rotten grease, silenced the cheer. Violent retching could be heard over the eerie resonance of the Horde.
The one hundred and fourteen surviving Schoolmen of the Imperial Mandate arrayed themselves, billows bound, in an intricate formation, facing the soaring golden wall above the chasm’s edge. The rent in the Ark emanated darkness as much as inhuman reek.
A causeway dropped from the footings of the hole, then climbed on a steep saddleback to the High Cwol. Five triunes advanced upon the black hole of the Obmaw, walking the arcane echo of the ridge of debris. They sang as they approached, layering their Gnostic Wards, for they knew that a mighty Wracu kept the gate. The breadth of the rupture was such that only one triune at a time could pass. The glory of the van was accorded to the triune of I?rus Ilimenni, a childhood prodigy who had recently become the youngest member of the Quorum. The remaining Mandati watched as the triunes passed as threaded pearls into the mouth and throat of the Intrinsic Gate. Sorcerous chanting hung upon the empty air, resonating, in its peculiar way, inward rather than out …
Brilliance flared from the Obmaw, followed by a breath-stealing whoosh. Shrieks pealed through the opening, cut short on some thunderous impact. “Hold!” Saccarees cried to keep the more impetuous in check. All present stood transfixed, anxiously peering …
A solitary Schoolman materialized from the blackness, running across mundane ground, arms flailing, billows ablaze. He staggered ten paces out upon the causeway then collapsed in an inert heap. Heedless of his own safety Saccarees raced out to attend to the man: Teüs Eskeles, who had been one of Ilimenni’s triunaries …
“Skuthula!” the man gasped, raising a hand that had been salted to the pith.
Death came swirling down.
Death lay heaped as midden throughout the Canal.