The King-of-Tribes would be pleased.
As a memorialist, he knew well the lore surrounding this place. He had always believed in Lokung, had always assumed that Shaita’anairull was real. What shocked him was how much his belief depended on the unreality of the thing. For when he set living eye upon the Grave-that-is-Golden, he quailed rather than rejoiced, felt his innards spoil for apprehension. And how could he not gaze upon it, when it proved the horror was real, that he had truly worshipped murder all along? At last he dozed, his dreams troubled by the terrors that steamed up from the rocks …
Lokung had not died easily.
He jerked awake sputtering, wincing, rubbing his brow above his left eye. Something, a stone, had struck him while— He sat blinking in supernatural dread …
A little boy crouched at his feet, flaxen hair shining white beneath the Nail of Heaven.
“Are you Scylvendi?”
Migagurit smiled harmlessly, then made to seize the apparition. The child vanished. The memorialist rolled to his feet and whirled, his senses afire. He clutched at his knife only to find it missing— He fell grunting, his calves flexed into unanchored balls in the crotch of either knee. A warmth in his heels bloomed into agony. He knew he was dead, but his body thought him a fool: everything became grunting panic. He dragged himself back on his elbows. His legs didn’t seem real. The child bounced as a shadow upon a string. Cuts fell as visceral pricks through a fog of bestial misery. Migagurit thrashed and convulsed, wagging hands and crossing forearms that only served to spark more musical laughter. His will finally stranded him upon the scarp’s edge, his back bent across the hump of a downward leaning rock, gasping in immobility.
The blond child paused to regard him, smeared blood across his cheek for wiping his nose.
“An-Anas—!” Migagurit sputtered through blood. “Anas?rimbor!”
He could feel the fall pulling at him. He knew that blood drained about his head and shoulders, glazing the nub of the boulder … greasing his way …
The boy leapt upon his chest, where he crouched like a monkey, peering into his eyes. The plummet pulled upon the tonguewalker’s bulk, threatened to peel him from his every point of earthly contact.
“Where do Scylvendi go?” the boy asked with insouciant curiosity. The Nail of Heaven conjured a silver nimbus about his head.
Migagurit croaked and blubbered. With belief, came terror.
The boy nodded. “Somewhere scary …” he said musing.
“Like everyone else, then.”
The man tried to cry out, but the boy had crushed all breath remaining. The fall continued clawing at him.
“Leave him,” a feminine voice called from somewhere above.
A rib popped in the meat of him, so violently did the boy leap in reaction.
Outrageous agony, but mealy with the promise of respite. Migagurit somehow drew his head up from his paralytic misery. He saw the boy, knife brandished, his stance wide and wary, standing before a figure garbed all in black. A once-beautiful woman growing long in her years …
The Empress?
The drop clutched at him, fumbled for some purchase …
“You’re not my mother,” the boy declared.
A cross smile.
“I can be whatever you need me to be.”
The woman reached out her hand … a man’s hand.
The plummet firmed its grip, then yanked the Son of hard-hearted Shanyorta over the edge.
The Men of the Ordeal traded tales and rumours, as all soldiers are prone. Fire was forbidden everyone save the Great, so they congregated in the pallid illumination of the Nail, each absorbed in some point of maintenance as they spoke—be it sharpening an edge, binding a seam, or rubbing some tarnished sheen. They sat in intimate proximity, their voices hushed out of some nameless reverence for the moment. And as was so often the case, the fact of telling proved far more significant than the facts told. The wits sought only to contribute, never to disrupt. Those who stammered found their voices unstopped, bold and clear. Those who loathed communal scrutiny found themselves speaking feckless, their hearts bare. And even when a man faltered, he received only encouragement, the wry hectoring of elder brothers, a hand upon the shoulder, or the scalp, mussing hair. For in the many trials of their affliction, they discovered abundance, and so destitute, denied everything but the least hope of redemption, they found occasion to give.
Ordealmen of all nations spoke of their wives and their children at some point. Reminiscence stole across the camp in stages, the reverence of Men recalling sunlit mornings, their eyes lost in recollection, hearing the trill of feminine voices, glimpsing faces floating bright and joyous about all that was needed. They laughed at the excesses of the wee ones, the temper and tenderness of their wives. Gales of lustrous laughter blew through the sagging dark, sparking here and there across the encampment. Men held out their hands to empty space, recalling the heft and wriggle of young sons, or the trembling compliance of lovers. They confessed a longing that made many listeners weep. They made heart-cracking resolutions, swore public oaths of damnation.
And so, one by one, did they commit their eternal souls to the morrow—to the destruction of foul Golgotterath.
They pondered the nocturnal burnish on the rim of the Horns, the void recapitulated in mountainous reflection. They groused about their night terrors, for Shigogli troubled the sleep of all.
Not one soul dared mention their hunger.
And so it was they regained their fellowship that night, the memory that was camaraderie, a forgiving look, a teasing grin. They had become far more than mere companions in strife and carnage. Sin had conjoined them in a manner more profound than faith: they need only commute the judgment they had passed upon themselves to recover one another.
To become brothers once again.
They were sinners … responsible for horrid, degenerate acts, obscenities they could scarce credit, let alone fathom. Guilt had become their yoke, shame their lash. Crime had become their communion, sin and damnation. And like all Men wrecked by criminal burdens, they had seized upon the way offered, the track that would redeem, not their souls, but all they had taken. They would make a gift of their courage, their lives, their fury—they would render their final heartbeat, yield their ultimate breath. They would give, not for the sake of some arcane exchange, but for the sake of giving …
For the love of their brothers.