The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(145)

Since more than a watch remained before nightfall, the pregnant woman demanded—through Achamian—that the Survivor run down one of the mountain goats they had spied on the broken slopes below. This had already become a custom of hers, making demands of the two D?nyain.

He killed the animal with a single stone.

When he returned he found the boy plying the old man with questions while Mimara watched uncomprehending. She was troubled, the Survivor could see, by the ease with which the boy had donned and doffed the terror he had feigned the previous day. When privacy afforded, he would remind him not to exchange his tools so quickly.

They sat on the hunched spine of the World, watching the flames slick the carcass with grease and sizzle. The discomfort of the woman and the old man was palpable, such was the madness of sharing fire and dinner with those they would murder. Their quest had been long, fraught with death and deprivation, and they had yet to realize what their losses demanded of them, let alone the significance of their present situation. Possibilities besieged them. The Survivor could see them flinching from errant thoughts—misgivings, horrors. They lacked the insight to clearly distinguish between various courses of action, let alone the foresight to map them into the future. They lacked the discipline to resist seizing upon whatever fragments the darkness of their greater souls offered up to them. The Survivor realized that he could, given time, make these decisions for them.

They were that frail.

But his study was far from complete. He remained ignorant of all save the grossest details regarding their lives, let alone the world from which they hailed. What was more, the Logos that bound and articulated their thoughts yet eluded him. Associations, he had come to realize, determined the movements of their souls. Relations of resemblance in place of reasons. Until he learned the inner language that drove the outer—the grammar and the lexicon of their souls—he could do little more than shove their thoughts in brute directions.

Perhaps that was all that he needed—at this juncture at least.

He turned to the old man. “Have you discov—?”

“Thiviso kou’pheri,” the pregnant woman interrupted. She often watched him with predatory distrust, so perhaps this was why he had overlooked the transformation that had crawled into her face.

The old man turned to her, his frown of disapproval vanishing into anxious recognition—an expression he had come to know well. Achamian did not so much fear the woman, the Survivor realized, as he feared her knowledge …

Or was it the source?

The old Wizard turned back, his heart racing against the blankness of his face. “She says that she sees the Truth of you,” he said, licking his lips.

He could hear sparrow-thrum of his old-man heart, smell the pinch of his sudden, old-man apprehension.

“And what is that?”

Numb, the Survivor realized. His lips were numb.

“Evil.”

“She is misled by my skin,” the Survivor replied, assuming that for souls so primitive, visual abomination would imply spiritual. But he saw his error even before the old man shook his head.

The sorcerer turned to her, translated.

The hilarity in her eyes was genuine but momentary. She did not even trust his ignorance, her suspicion of him and the boy ran so deep. But there was something else as well, crabbing her expression, throttling her thought … a visceral reaction to what she saw, what had fooled him into thinking she found his aspect revolting.

“Spira,” she said. “Spira phagri’na.”

He required no interpretation.

Look. Look into my face.

“She wants you to gaze into her face,” the old Wizard said, a sudden fascination hooking his voice. The Survivor regarded him for one heartbeat, two … and understood that for Drusas Achamian a great contest was about to waged, a pitting of principle against principle, horror against horror, trust against hope.

The pregnant woman did not so much stare at as regard him, her expression now raw with inexplicability. Absence gutted the pitch and summit of the distance gloaming beyond her. Against such vacancy, she could only seem too near—so perilously close.

“Spira phagri’na.”

And the Survivor could see it all, the legionary welter that was the Cause-within. The fraction that spoke, uncomprehending. The fraction that heard this speaking and made it her own. The fractions that bring forth. The fractions that consume …

Look into my face.

And he could see it nowhere … the origin of her assurance … the Cause.

Madness, just as he had presumed.

“Pilubra ka—”

Can you see it? Reflected in my eyes—can you see it?

The question bobbed through him. He caught it in the nets of his face.

Her smile could have been D?nyain so devoid was it of anything outside the ruthless fact of observation.

“Tau ikruset.”

Your damnation.

She was defective—but in some profound and obscure way. Something buried deep, a fraction that feared, had seized the fractions that saw, producing hallucinations that seized the fractions that spoke and reasoned–undeniable visions. She would be far more difficult to solve than he had initially anticipated, the Survivor realized. So much so, he would have relegated the task … had she not possessed such a hold on Drusas Achamian.

Wind braided the fire, combed sparks from its extremities. Her face pulsed orange. “Dihunu,” she said smiling, “varo sirmu’tamna al’abatu so kaman.”