Everything lay in the chill shadow of the Scab. Circumfix devices hung slack in the evening lull. Only the Men working the hoists stood and toiled—for their sakes, no less. Otherwise, a field of prostrate Men extended from his feet, radiated out to encompass the whole of the terrace. Shields and backs and bowed heads clotted his every glance. Believer-Kings beside Schoolmen. Caste-nobles wedged between menials.
A recess scalloped the black scarp that loomed over the uppermost tier, the Ninth, creating the likeness of hands cupped about something that might cut or burn. A great shard leaned out from the hollow …
His rostrum.
There He stood.
There He stood, his smile canny, staring directly at him.
Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas.
Lord of Golgotterath …
His image fairly dazzled, cast tangles of gold across innumerable obsidian fractures, glimmered over myriad surfaces of metal and enamel.
It bore no Mark.
The old Wizard coughed to breathe … to sob. Hot tears flooded his cheeks.
He had been … cleansed …
Saved.
Achamian started at the small, warm hand that clasped his own. He tore his gaze from Kellhus, expecting to see Mimara, but found Esmenet instead, his son in her arms, her eyes wondrous … avid with the revelation they all shared. Tears coursed her cheeks, leaving lines that refracted the Holy Aspect-Emperor’s otherworldly light.
Something stepped through him—something greater than thought.
Could it be?
Could it be that all he had lost, all he had lamented … begrudged …
His School … His cause … His student …
His wife!
Had his throttling sacrifice … his heartbreak …
Had it saved the World?
He spoke true …
Drusas Achamian trembled as he had never trembled before.
It’s over …
The Holy Aspect-Emperor inclined his head to the two of them—a look that was an impossible blessing—then swept his cerulean gaze out over the assembled …
His will has been done.
The voice of Anas?rimbor Kellhus fell as warm rain, bracing even as it soothed …
“Man …”
It hummed across the mountainous nethers of the Horn, made warm what was vast and empty …
“… would sooner weep before God than his brother.”
Achamian made to join the impossible congregation, only to teeter. Esmenet caught him, helped him ease to his knees, then joined him. That was when Mimara staggered past, her look plundered. He reached out to clasp her sleeve, but his fingers fell short. Swaying for the rigours of her travail, she picked her way forward between the prone Men of the Ordeal.
“He cowers beneath the rod that never falls …”
Her babe gurgled in her mother’s arms.
“To better convict his brother of pride …”
Blood flushed the backside of her borrowed gown.
“To better beat him into submission.”
Her feet are bare …
It does not matter.
She lurches past Akka and her mother …
It does not matter.
She sees her brother approach from the High Cwol bearing her sister’s blasted body in his arms …
It does not matter.
The Judging Eye is open.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor speaks from a black dais …
Anas?rimbor Mimara advances through the kneelers, stumbling onto the backs of some, hauling herself onward without acknowledgement, let alone apology.
They do not matter.
At last the soles of her feet scuff across the inexplicable line where no soul dares approach further … no soul save her own. She cannot breathe. Heat drops through her, slipping like sheeted water from her crown to her toes. A hand clutches her elbow, tries to pull her about, but the gaze is unbreakable, as implacable as the sun …
So the old Wizard hobbles to her side instead, looks to the Most Holy Aspect-Emperor frowning down at them from above …
All the World has fallen silent.
“Mim …”
“Akka …” she replies, still staring into the golden regard of Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
A sob kicks through her, makes ropes of her bones. The old Wizard steadies her, turns her body about, though her eyes remain soldered to the image of her stepfather.
The assembled nations of E?rwa watch in wonder, the mightiest Sons of the Tusk.
“He spoke true, Mim …” Achamian murmurs. He slaps astounded hands to his wild hermit hair. He cackles for incredulous joy, cries, “The Consult has been destroyed!”
A ragged cheer erupts from the Soldiers and Schoolmen of the Circumfix. The Zaudunyani upon the debris heaped about the High Cwol, along the lip of the Scab some thirty cubits above, cry out.
“No …” she says.
But a crazed elation seizes the Host of Hosts, one that sends brutalized thousands to their knees, sobbing, reaching for the shining image of their Lord-and-Prophet, their all-conquering Holy Aspect-Emperor.
“Nooooooo!”
Achamian clutches her hand, his flush draining into pallor. “Mimara?”
“Can’t you see?” she screeches. “Looook!”
Her tone is so wild, so stricken, that it claws the fabric of every soul in earshot. The cheer cracks and dissolves into bewildered peering. Achamian might have been toothless for the way he gaped.
The Most Holy Aspect-Emperor stands luminous in the sunshine of a different day, a different World. He nods in forbearance.
“Daughter?” he calls on a smile.
And she blinks and she blinks and yet still it hangs there … scarab shining …
“What is it?” Anas?rimbor Kellhus says, though he is nowhere to be seen. “What ails thee, Mimara?”
A sarcophagus, iridescent black, hovering where her stepfather stands robed in shining white …
His leonine image smiling …
Forgiving …
Saying …
“Tell me …”
The Upright Horn groans with cataclysmic power. The first gust falls upon a vast and chilling gyre.
“What do you see?”
Skirts of dust leap and skid across the Shigogli.
The old Wizard lets slip her hand for trembling.
WHAT AM I?
CHAPTER
TWENTY
The Furnace Plain
Twas words that packed the earth.
Twas words that flung the sky.
Twas words that made us beautiful,
ere our Faith became our lie.
Twill be words that crack the earth.
Twill be words that low the sky.
Twill be words you hear us wailing,
ere the day we die.
—The Heaver’s Song
Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Golgotterath.
Ever does oblivion whisper deceit to time, flattening afternoons into heartbeats, stretching blinks into mornings. Malowebi awoke as from death. It felt like watches had passed, or even more, the rolling of the days, the tumble of years. But mere instants had passed in sooth.
He hung as before, his hair bound to a warrior’s girdle. He could see his crazed prison mirrored in the soggomant as before, the ovoid smears of the Decapitants strung from the hip of a …
A statue?
Tall before the black depths. Bearded in the antique manner. Helmless, with hair braided across his nape, wearing what seemed an elaborate robe …
The pillar of salt that was the Aspect-Emperor.
Anas?rimbor Kellhus.