Malowebi looked to the diminishing line of the Mutilated reflected across the fore of the soggomantic fin, then to the assembly of gulping, gripping faces reflected across the rear.
“I bore word of the temporal to the divine,” the Aspect-Emperor said. “You aren’t so hidden as you think.”
The burnt D?nyain swept his hand high on a graceful arc. Sudden light flared from what seemed a thousand points scattered across the cavernous deeps, revealing leagues of arcane mechanism, shapes so intricate as to be an alien language to the Mbimayu Schoolman. “You would compare your burnt brick temples to a cathedral such as this?”
“The Ark is our argument, Brother,” the lone unscathed monk said. “Would you deny the material incarnation of Logos?”
The Holy Aspect-Emperor did not so much as glance at the gulfs of golden reticulation. “And if the Logos no longer moves me …” he said, his greasy resemblance at last turning to survey the skin-spies assembled across the margins of the Golden Room. “What is your contingency then?”
The great frame of lights fell dark, and the gold was muted to gleam, threads in abyssal blackness. For the first time, Malowebi found his gaze hooked on the other diabolical head hanging with him against the Aspect-Emperor’s thigh—the other Decapitant. For the first time, he noticed the same obscuring distortion that marred the Anas?rimbor—like globules of ink hanging in quicksilver—marring it.
What he saw stopped his ethereal heart …
“Coercion, of course,” the teeth-baring D?nyain replied.
Gibbering, hitching terror.
“You are utterly overmatched, Anas?rimbor,” his one-eyed brother said.
Antlers, savage and knuckled, rising mangled as if scribbled by a drunk or a child. Four of them …
No …
“And yet you forget,” Anas?rimbor Kellhus replied, grinning.
His reflection raised a knee, stamped a sandalled heel down …
A cataclysmic thump, mazing the obsidian polish with concentric fractures, resounding through the mountainous bones of the structure, where it reverberated and returned to rock them all …
Without uttering a word of sorcery.
“I am Master here.”
Terror kicking like a frenzied mule.
Second Negotiant Malowebi wailed, his repentance unheard …
Forgave Likaro all his countless flaws and sins.
The very World had become as a mill about her, every city, every soul wheels spinning within wheels, murmuring in places, groaning throughout. And in all creation Golgotterath was the most violent grinding gear.
The place most unpredictable.
“Now, Kay?tas!”
She sensed it even as she shouted, the prick of oblivion, no more than two paces to her right, just appearing as if drawn from a pocket …
She did not need to hear the click.
The quarrel barely stubbed her knuckle, and yet it was enough—more than enough.
The ancient Cindersword did not so much fall from her hand as with …
The Princess-Imperial slumped to her knees, cradling her stumped right forearm. Blood welled, melting salt as snow.
One hundred, she thought, looking up to the rising menace of Skuthula, the fire-spitting grin …
One hundred stones.
She knelt on the ashen edge, crouched over her arm. The great serpent hung above her, its elephantine skull declined, the spines on its crest clattering for jubilation. Slather fell in blazing strings from its maw. The globed emerald of its eyes burnt for admiration.
“Long has it been,” the legendary Wracu croaked, “since we supped upon a hero such as you …”
The Princess-Imperial drew upright on her knees, matched its baleful gaze.
“I’m a witch.”
The strands of her thought parted. Meaning made black shadow of her skull.
In a single motion, she retrieved Isiram?lis with her left hand.
Skuthula the Black vomited Hell.
Singing into the furnace, she raked lines of mercurial brilliance across the region before her.
She felt a sound with her heart, an impact that transcended the scale of hearing.
Then she was falling, tumbling with cracked ruin toward the trough.
Everything was falling, everything slung or mortared across the skewed frame of the Ark, the dross of ages of inhuman squalor, the encrustations of millennia raining down the massive shaft of the Atrium. She glimpsed it as she toppled, the plummet of tremendous curtains beyond the gallery, heaps bearing the roaring Dragon-Prince down, more carrion for the false earth, before crashing into the slot above, a galloping surge of debris, coming down as an avalanche upon her—
Father!
The Sranc exploded from the breach as hard-pent waters, leapt hacking and stabbing into the astonished Tydonni thanes. Cleavers made clay of faces. Stone cudgels made bread of bones.
The Sons of Plaide?l were as stalwart as any soul in the Host of Hosts, but the alchemy of events had plotted their undoing. The suddenness of the collapse. The disorder of the Mysunsai. The baffling terror of the Red Ghoul. These would have sapped the resolve of any soul whatever their mettle. The forward ranks dissolved in the threshing torrent of skinnies. Thane after thane fell in the frenzied heave: Lord Emburalk, famed for his monstrous stature, and for wielding a cudgel other Men could scarce heft, let alone handle; the fanatic Lord Byrikki, called the “Candlemaker” for all the Orthodox he had burned for heresy during the Unification; and many others lesser known. Plaide?lmen, however, were a vengeful folk, more incited to outrage than terror by the fact of grievous losses. They would have rallied about their fallen kinsmen …
Had not their legendary Earl stood at their fore. For all his storied feats in the First Holy War, Werijen Greatheart was no match for the rigours of the Horde. The tribulations of the Great Ordeal had whittled his age into doddering frailty, and like many warlike souls who had outlived their strength and glory, he yearned only for death in battle—verily, this was the reason Anas?rimbor Kay?tas had stationed him in reserve. He found gratification in the first moments of the onslaught, toppling beneath a Sranc who had vaulted upon his shoulders. The bestial creature made a soup bowl of his skull ere his bereaved householders killed it.
Death came swirling down … bore him as another wailing prize to the gluttony of the Pit.
So the ancient House of Rilding vanished forever, and the Red Sword standard of Plaide?l dropped to the carcass mats. Like cream spilled, hope is almost impossible to retrieve in the turmoil of battle. Loss begets loss begets loss. Terror is compounded. The resolve of the whole sags, slumps, then unravels into countless mortal coincidences. So did the long-bearded thanes waver upon the vestiges of their hatred before dissolving into horror and dismay.
The vile surge consumed their floundering ranks, overran the Sons of Plaide?l entirely.
The raving multitudes sluiced crashing into the Canal, fell upon the Sons of Ingraul, frantically forming ranks behind the shattered hulk of Gwergiruh …