The vista seemed colder than he had remembered—in his Dreams at least.
No matter how carefully wrought, maps always misled. So on surviving maps of the Ancient North in the Three Seas, the estuary Achamian and Mimara peered across was invariably called the “Straits of A?gus,” a title befitting the dignity of the names surrounding. But outside those schooled in the cartographic traditions of Sauglish, no High Norsirai of Seswatha’s day had called the waters thus. They called it, rather, Ogni, a Condic slang term for “Leash.”
The great estuary heaved chill and black before them, crashed into foam along the stunted shore. Gulls, terns, and a great many other birds seemed to have gone mad for the waters, some hanging upon unseen sheets of breeze, others buzzing the surface, descending in constellations, spooking in flurries. Scavenging cries harrowed the wind, pricked the autumnal emptiness ever deeper as Mimara and the old Wizard laboured near, becoming a shrill racket.
Scalloped for exhaustion, the companions wondered at the avian horde without any will to puzzle or resolve. Wind runnelled the grasses about them, flapped scrub and sumac like blankets.
Achamian was the first to cry out, for once his eye registered them, he saw them everywhere, congesting the straits. Sranc. Innumerable carcasses tangled the shallows, putrid rafts bending about swells, larding the waters with corruption. On and on the mass extended, out across the deeps, drawn into eddies the size of cities, monstrous wheels of sodden and blasted meat.
The old Wizard tripped back onto his rump, eyes fluttering. Mimara was slow to kneel at his side. Even hovering over him, her gaze lingered upon the spectacle. An errant cloud smothered the sun, and a sudden translucence revealed the tattered face of the drowning, as well as the rare Men bobbing among the fish-white masses, their limbs clothed, their jaws bearded.
Achamian gawked at the girl, stammering, “Kellhus … he … he found a way … a way to destroy the Horde.” He combed his scalp, his eyes darting. “At-at Dagliash … Yes-yes! Remember that black cloud we spied on the horizon leaving Ishual? That could have been Dagliash … the cause of this.”
She blinked, finally focussing. “I don’t understand.”
The old cogitations came to him quickly. “The River Sursa empties on the north shore of the Misty Sea … It would catch the Sranc as the Ordeal marched on Dagliash. Kellhus would have no choice but to grapple with the Horde in its entirety … to somehow overcome it!”
Mimara looked back to the carrion expanse. At some point she had started clicking the scales of her She?ra hauberk with her fingertips when rubbing her belly.
“So this is the Horde …”
“What else could it be?”
She regarded him more narrowly than he liked.
“So my stepfather already marches on Golgotterath.”
Teeth set, he nodded. They needed Qirri, he thought. Haste.
The World was ending.
“I can carry you across …” he said with the tentative air of broaching old and unresolved feuds. He could weep for the sight of her, gowned in rotted hides and cloth, her cropped hair matted, her eyes shining mad from the stained oval of her face …
Immense with child—his child!
“But you must relinquish your accursed Trinkets.”
The injury these words occasioned shocked him.
“They only appear such,” she said, “because you are accursed.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Agongorea
Men are ever the edge of Men, the plummet most near, and the fall most fatal. Rhetoric consists in the artful use of ropes and ladders.
—The First Analytic of Men, AJENCIS
As flint they fracture,
As flint they sharpen,
Men only cut for breaking.
—Scalper shanty
Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Golgotterath.
Four hundred horses were butchered, many of them cruelly, so that for watch after watch, equine screams lacerated the night. Many Men danced besotted, mimicked the screams in grotesque parody, especially those that had sacrificed their own steed. Sorcerous fire alone burned that night, for even as fratricide passed unmentioned, the burning of belongings had been forbidden. The Judges stamped through their midst, demanding worship, urging celebration. The Horns lay on the horizon, an evil Nail bent and jutting into E?rwa’s scarred bosom, the thorn infecting the whole of history and legend—and what they themselves must draw. But for all their fanatic ardour, the Judges themselves seemed half-hearted—even false. The horseflesh provided no sustenance, tasted cold even when sizzling, and swallowed like clay. Stomachs cramped for outrage. Throughout the night thousands arose to vomit their repast, all in terror of those who observed.
But few would be assaulted that night. Though the dark hungers of the Ordealmen had waxed more keenly if anything, they had become more difficult to aim. Even as the watches dwindled, so their yearning to consume came to blot the greater host of wicked desire. The recitals and ceremonial rites crumbled as bread, dissolved as sand. Sickened for horseflesh, the greater number of Ordealmen retired rather than pursue congress, huddled riven in the black, oppressed by growling, rending thoughts of the Meat, reliving the ecstasy, the horror …
The Nail of Heaven gleamed in the clarion void above them, wetting their ruined tents and pavilions with luminance, a gloaming across the endless crypt that was the Field Appalling.
The Horns flashed mercurial on the darkling horizon, the hook upon which all lines converged.
Shimmered as an earthbound twin.
“Can’t you see, Uncle? This hunger is naught but the Shortest Path …”
The Exalt-General stared up at Kay?tas, stunned. The scriptural panels hung indistinct in the shadows about the man, a congregation of spies. When had the gardened, sanctuary air of his Lord-and-Prophet succumb to the reek and lather of a catamite lair?
“Why do we trade gods as we trade spices?” the Prince-Imperial pressed. “Why do philosophers endlessly dispute the abstract? The flesh, Uncle”—he spanked his bare thigh—“meat anchors our every measure. The bliss that indulges versus the bliss that denies—both reside within the flesh! Don’t you see? The hermit is naught but an insane libertine, a soul that has confused war for empire, and so must twist its way to dominion.”
The things … the things he had witnessed, the bloody harems, strung in grinding tangles throughout the encampment, blood-slicked beauty convulsing in the pit of each.
He had fractured at some point, become someone who watched without touching as the Greater Proyas seethed unbridled … romped unchecked. It had occurred to him that perhaps he held his face pressed into some higher flame, that he merely watched in a manner more profound, more entrenched—that life was nothing more than grovelling in flame. Either way, the moments where he watched and lived as one were becoming progressively more rare …
And unendurable.
“Enough!” he erupted. “What are you saying?”
He was missing something. There was more to this …