A terror, so profound, so abiding—and, yes, pure—that all other fears guttered into nothingness for lack of air. A terror that was a gift … such was the peace and certainty that followed upon it.
They had conjectured, the Mangaecca. They had experimented. They had taken captives and inflicted every possible agony simultaneously all in the name of some flimsy purchase, some scant knowledge of Hell. Drawing toenails, while crushing genitals, while setting afire, while murdering children, raping wives, strangling mothers, blinding fathers … They had visited lunatic misery on innocents, and they had found themselves utterly impervious, immune to the least remorse. Some of them had even laughed.
What was earthly anguish compared to what awaited them? Singular. Ephemeral. Little more than a bauble laid upon the monumental steps of the wretchedness to come. They were deluded fools, the Schoolmen of the Sohonc. Every one of them lived making belief—even more, making witless and numb—when it came to their Voices. It was sorcery they coveted, the lure of the power—such potency! The Voice had a way of walling off the future when power was at hand.
All Men wailed. All Men burned all the time. They need only die to realize it.
“So that is the source of your madness,” Titirga said. “The Inverse Fire.”
Shae?nanra closed his eyes against a shudder. “So you know of it …” he said on a long intake of breath.
“Nil’giccas told me. Yes.”
“He told you of the Three? The Three who entered the Golden Court of Sil during the Scourging of the Ark.”
“Upon the Upright Horn … Yes.”
“So you know what happened.”
A draft whisked through the chamber, the kind that washes over a floor of cloistered air in a flood. The golden infant skull braided into the Hero-Mage’s beard seemed to laugh for the to-and-fro sway of the fires potted upon the bronze tripods. It struck Shae?nanra that Titirga had stood absolutely motionless ever since setting foot in the Asinna. He seemed hewn of heavy oak as it was, but standing as he did, glaring from Man to Inchoroi to Man again, he almost seemed a thing of stone. Indestructible.
“Min-Uroikas had fallen,” the Hero-Mage replied. “The Ishroi laboured in vain to destroy the Ark, as did the Quya. They knew of the Golden Court, the Inver—”
“From Nin-janjin,” Shae?nanra found himself interrupting. Why? Why did they insist on repeating its name? A thing need not be named to be spoken of …
“Yes … From Nin-janjin,” Titirga repeated, something not quite identifiable sparking in his eyes. “And because they knew, Nil’giccas chose the Three to enter it. Two Ishroi, renowned for their valour—Misariccas and Runidil—and one Quya …” He paused as though to set his teeth against his hatred. “Cet’ingira.”
Shae?nanra found himself turning to the Inchoroi, cackling, crying, “He knows!” in a voice too maniacal to be his own. “He knows!”
“I know only what Nil’giccas told me. That Misariccas and Runidil returned shrieking—”
Yes. Shae?nanra had also shrieked … for a time. And wept.
“—and that Cet’ingira counselled his King to have them killed.”
A barking laugh. “And did he tell you why?”
A moment of fierce scrutiny.
“Because they could not be trusted. Because they had been ensorcelled … Possessed.”
“No!” Shae?nanra heard himself cry. “No!” Could this be him, wagging his head like a fly-maddened ox, gesticulating like an old hag at a funeral? “Because they had seen the Truth!”
Titirga gazed with undisguised distaste. “Such is the form of all possession. You know as mu—”
“Nooo!” Shae?nanra cried. “Nil’giccas lied to you! What else could he do? Think! Think of the war they had just won—think of the toll! The Nonmen had sacrificed everything, their wives, their daughters, to triumph over the Inchoroi. And now they discover that all along the Truth belonged to their foe?”
The Archidemu Mangaeccu began berating himself even before he finished, such was the unmanly violence of his expression. He had to recollect himself … Recall! He had to own what happened here, not for the sake of Men—for none would ever know—but for the sake of his immortal Voice.
“Nil’giccas lied to his Ishroi,” he continued, speaking on a long drawn breath, “just as he deceived you. He lied because he had to!”
Titirga stood watching him, his fulsome lips hanging open in hesitation. And Shae?nanra rejoiced, knowing even the mighty Hero-Mage had his doubts. That the Mangaecca could be seduced was no surprise, for they had always placed knowledge before honour. But Cet’ingira? The most famed of the Siqu? For that matter, how could any Nonman enter into a pact with Inchoroi?
Unless …
Shae?nanra cackled, feeling a new deliberation sop the wildness from his bones.
“Horrifying, isn’t it? Titirga. Hero of ?merau. Disciple of Noshainrau. To think that everything you have believed, you have believed for naught. A whole life expended, toiling, condemning, murdering, all in the name of misapprehension!”
The gaze of an old and undefeated chieftain.
“What has become of you, old friend.”
Shae?nanra had expected many things from this visit, but never that it would become so quaint.
“Yes,” he said on a sigh. “You did know me before. You knew many of us.10 You knew how fractious we were, how given to mercenary pursuits, all the Mannish flaws that you Sohonc used to evidence your superiority. You remember when gold was all that you needed to induce treason …”
He raised a hectoring fist, one Royal Umeri to another. “And now you hear the whispers … the rumours …” He drew his hand out to embellish the sarcasm. “Your torturers shake, so deep they must reach!”
He had stepped forward as he spoke, coming to a halt directly before the Hero-Mage and his legendary wrath. Something in the man’s height and proportion made him think of the Nonmen heroes, and how they never ceased growing.
“Possessed, you tell yourselves. Possessed! We are different because we are no longer ourselves. You counsel the All-King to crack our Seal, destroy us and all we have toiled to achieve. Our Voices are polluted, unclean!” He threw his back in Feal laughter, cackled with spite and glee. “So tell me, if we are possessed, who is our new owner?”
“The Tekne,” the Archidemu Sohoncu said with grim confidence. “The Mangaecca have been enslaved. You have been enslaved.”
Shae?nanra blinked. Of course the fool was unmoved. Of course he had his reasons. No matter. This was indulgence, arguing like this, availing reason.
He warred with his expression—something between a grimace and a grin. “Yes … But who is our new master?”
A peculiar weariness haunted Titirga as he shook his maned head: one not so much of as for.
Feal, something whispered from his gaze.