Esmenet!
The sensation of falling plagued the old Wizard’s nocturnal trek to the Umbilicus. Neither he nor Mimara had known what they would do upon reaching the Great Ordeal. Achamian had gone to Saccarees primarily out of what seemed an absence of alternatives but could have been a simple matter of self-preservation. It was only while imploring Saccarees that he understood the deranged extent of his fear, how the years of obsessive pondering had rendered Anas?rimbor Kellhus the sum of all horror.
He had imagined their arrival often enough, but in the vague way of hopes not quite believed. In his soul’s fancy, he always stood beside Mimara as she delivered the Judgment of the Eye, the Holy Aspect-Emperor and his Imperial Court looking on … and …
What a fool he had been!
The fact of Proyas howled as much, but heartbreak had stoppered his ears, allowed him to prolong his daft sense of impunity. They had the Eye. The Whore herself was bound to what was about to happen here! Or so they had assumed in their exhausted fancies. Despite everything, Achamian had assumed the simplicity of conclusions, the clarity of scripture and myth, would occasion their arrival. Fate awaited them!
But Fate, as Protathis so famously declared, relieved only the augur’s toil. It was a slaver’s chain, not a king’s litter—at least for the likes of him and Mimara. Fortune only sneered at souls such their own.
And what was more, Anas?rimbor Kellhus was D?nyain. Complication was his accursed birthright. Of course the Great Ordeal was naught but a crossroad, a turn to a far more lethal and onerous toil. They tarried upon the very threshold of Golgotterath …
Of course they lay in the jaws of mortal peril!
Of course no one would believe them, no matter what Judgment the Eye rendered …
So Drusas Achamian walked, fulminating and cursing in the old way, as honestly perplexed by his oversights and failures now as he had been as a young man. He knew not what to do, only that he loved, and he was wise enough to take this as cause for terror instead of hope.
Question crowded upon question …
“We have come to judge him, Mother. Kellhus.”
Esmenet gazed incredulous.
“We?”
“Akka and I.”
They sat upon the matted floor, knee to knee, each slicked in contrasts of light and dark. Mimara had supped on water and roasted horse while Esmenet related all that had happened in Momemn since her flight, a tale that quickly turned into a hollow recounting of Kelmomas’s horrific crimes and machinations. She had taken care with the words and the details, fearing they might trigger more paroxysms of grief and outrage. But like footsteps, they had borne her away instead, wandering from the walls and gutters and temples of the Capital to the wondrous fact of her eldest daughter. Alive!
It had wracked her, her sorcerous flight with her husband and her monstrous son across the Wild. The misery of it blotted any suffering she had known, and she had welcomed it. Losses were no different than luxuries. Heap them upon any one soul long enough, and that soul will come to see them as wages earned—aye, even as justice.
And then … Mimara. This unaccountable gift, taken then returned …
Herself a mother! Or almost one … Bearing word not of losses, but gifts …
That were also losses.
“You carry …” Esmenet said over the buzzing in her ears. “You carry Akka’s child?”
Downcast eyes, but no remorse or repentance whatsoever.
“I was the one,” her daughter said to her thumbs. “I-I … seduced him … I wanted him to tea—!”
“Seduced?” the Blessed Empress heard herself snap. “So he is that simple? Or did you hold a knife to his throat? Coerce his seed?”
An angry glare, one that seemed to collapse the interval of unfamiliarity between them. All the old feuds had been renewed.
No-no-no-no …
“Perhaps I did,” Mimara said coldly.
“Perhaps you did what?”
“Bully his seed!”
“So you did use a knife then?”
No-no-no-no …
“Yes!” her daughter cried on a hot gasp. “You! You were my knife! I used my resemblance to you to seduce him!” She even leaned forward, smiled as if warming to her old facility for cruel and cutting claims.
“He even cried your name!”
Too much. Too many insults. Too many hopes broken. The Blessed Empress was on her feet, barging past flaps, reeling through the leather-panelled gloom, glaring murder at any who dared accost her.
Too much. Too much. Enclosed spaces. Seams like stitched veins. The cloying regalia of an Empire crashing into ruin a world away. She fairly shrieked at the Pillarians who made to block her passage. Then she was out, free of the Umbilicus, stumbling to her knees beneath the vacant bowl of the night. At last!
Free—
The sight did not arrest her all at once. She became stationary in sliding, jarring pieces, it seemed. First her hands, drawn up, then her spine, arched back. It cut the strings of her expression, hooked her eyes, then pinioned everything else—thought, breath, heartbeat—against the granitic immobility of her form.
The black shadow of Golgotterath, rising serene and cancerous from the great grey bowl of the Occlusion.
She hung for what seemed a desolate season, thinking, Is this what it feels like?
She convulsed about a scraping inhalation.
Is this how it happens?
The end of the World.
The Ordeal barnacled the intervening terrain, canvas shanties clustered about the Occlusion’s roots, fanning like spackle out across the flat tracts of the Shigogli. She could see Schoolmen stalk the heights about the perimeter. Across the desolation beyond, she could see the plumes of war-parties encircling the monstrous fortifications …
And the Horns … She could see the Horns … the eldritch gleam.
Just as she had read.
“We have come to judge him, Mother.”
Initially, she overlooked the figure stumping up through the dark below the malevolent vista. She instantly recognized him when she did spy him, though heartbeats would pass before she could countenance her recognition.
He had grown old and skinny after all. So very different from the plump fool she had loved.
He recognized her as well, slowing. He stumbled as if besotted.
The smile came unbidden, like something older and wiser. She came to her feet, brushed her gown out of some numb need for dignity. She wiped her eyes out of fury.
He advanced, but slowly, as if dreading the detail the Nail of Heaven would add to his wild outline. With every step, he more resembled the madman her spies had described to her.
Drusas Achamian …
The Wizard.