And Malowebi could only think, All along … He spoke true.
Implication blew as void through him, opened cavities once shut by ignorance, hollows once choked with hope and conceit and ancient fancy.
Anas?rimbor Kellhus had spoken true.
Now the whole World had be rewritten—beginning with the Satakhan’s eldest son.
How long had it been since Achamian had last seen them? How many centuries past?
Crossing the Leash had been more a matter of poling than paddling, forcing the crude raft he had wrought through the soaked dead. They had turned away from what was deep … what was beneath. It was enough to feel the sponge-sodden carcasses roll like apples beneath their strokes, break like bread. So they had studied different points on the opposite shore as they continued toiling, their gazes fixed, lustreless, the look of souls wandering outside resignation.
Upon reaching the far shore, they had done much the same, cleaving directly north into the lap of the Yimaleti, rather than northeast to the wasted abdomen of Agongorea. At every juncture they encountered, Achamian elected what he deemed the most secretive route, the path that revealed them to no horizons, and so revealed no horizons to them. They had turned away from what was far, what lay in the future, and had looked to their feet, following ravine after ravine, never climbing, never daring any height that might lay their wicked destination plain on the horizon, the dread golden vision … Anochirwa. The Horns of Golgotterath.
And now, at long last, he, Drusas Achamian, stood upon the foot of the Ring Mountains, the Occlusion. Climbing was all that remained, all that lay between him and the dreaded sight.
“Come, Akka,” Mimara said, her gaze worried, searching.
“Yes—yes,” he said, not moving from where he stood.
For all the torment Mandate Schoolmen inherited for reliving Seswatha’s tumultuous and tragic life, there was respite to be found in reliving his frailties and failures. Men are ever stranded with their own cowardice, the implacable facts of their petty schemes and deceptions. They were quick to play the game of silent accusation, of course, to charge others for crimes wholly their own. But for every sentence meted, the implicit measure of their own guilt grew—and with it the terror that only they were so weak. Mandate Schoolmen knew otherwise, thanks to their Dreams, knew that even the greatest heroes among Men harboured terrors all their own …
That courage was the work of flawed tools.
“More rest, little ones,” Mimara murmured to her gold-scaled belly. “Your father’s heart is winded …”
The old Wizard fumed, but remained just as rooted.
“He hauls too much history to climb ways so steep.”
Rather than find passage between the Occlusion’s shattered teeth, Achamian insisted they climb an ancient switchback stair leading to one of the ruined Akeokinoi. Mimara asked for no explanations, even though the climb was far more onerous for her given her condition than for him. Had she asked, he would have muttered something about prudence, of needing to observe the Great Ordeal before daring it, all the while knowing she wouldn’t believe a single mumbled word.
The wind harboured the promise of wider and wilder spaces as they gained the heights. The sky extended its vacant span. The Nonman watchtower was little more than a wrack-strewn podium. The ancient craftsmen had used basalt quarried from elsewhere, a dense black stone that still, after thousands of years, stood in stark contrast to the high-heaped sandstone and granite comprising the Ring Mountains. Evidence of its destruction lay scattered about a shallow peak, as dark as coal in dirty snow.
Pressing hands against knees, Achamian surmounted the final steps, strode gasping into the ancient shell. He saw the Horns immediately, though his soul pretended otherwise for several heartbeats. He stood swaying, blinking away what seemed an immovable stupor.
He could hear Mimara at his side, sobbing, and aye … laughing.
For there they were …
Canted and golden. Opposing swan necks, heads thrust high into the blank.
The old Wizard slumped to the cracked floor. And she was there, Mimara, the image of Esmenet, the Judging Eye of the God, kneeling at his side, clasping him, weeping, laughing …
Gazing at her, he could feel them give way, all the small terrors, and he coughed for violence of passion, blinked hot tears. He could swear he bled, so violent was his smile. He croaked in laughter, a crooning cough that became a lunatic cackle …
For there it was … The dread image. The wicked emblem that had summed Evil for what seemed the entirety of his life. The horror that had supped upon his tender heart, feasted upon his compassion. The malignancy that had corrupted every breath he had ever drawn.
Inc?-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-Skies …
Min-Uroikas, the Pit of Obscenities …
Golgotterath.
Golgotterath! The Fell Stronghold of the Unholy Consult …
Cradle of the No-God.
TELL ME …
Breathlessness seized his heart, tore it from his laughter.
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Mimara slipped his grasp, her look anguished and alarmed. He could see her murmur, Akka?
WHAT AM I?
He had clutched his temples. He had never laughed, it seemed. Only shrieked …
Tsurumah! Mog-Pharau!
But she was clinging to him, shushing, and smoothing, weeping new tears, his tears, knowing, believing, with and for …
Understanding.
And it stilled him like nothing he had ever known, understanding that she understood—and with a profundity that eclipsed his own, for what he had lived as Seswatha, she had apprehended through the Eye. A slackness breathed through him, uncoupling every ligament, every organ, and he slipped into what seemed her cradling even though she huddled within his arms. She drew his right hand to her gold-armoured belly … said nothing.
Hearts beating.
They lay like this among the rounded blocks, he upon his rump, she on her knees, curled into him, like a child’s hand cupped within a father’s callused palm. Breathing. Their unborn gestating between them, their world spinning off into desolate irrelevance far about … and their beauty something essential, another ore.
What was it, this union they had been unearthed between them? Too desperate to be love …
Too near … too profound.
They swooned for a time, dozed beneath the rising spectre of Anochirwa.
Hearts beating.
She was the first to hear it, the faraway voice. He heard it the instant her alarm cracked the bliss between them. The warble of a human crying out, baffled by stone scarps and disembowelled by breezy distance. Leaning each against the other, they stood, gazed once again at Golgotterath. Never had Achamian felt so ancient and so young. Together they hobbled the remaining paces to the lip of the black-stone ruin.
The volume of the voice bloated out of disproportion to their advance. It had resounded all along, the old Wizard realized, ringing through the empty air above them. The bruise of sorcery was plain.