The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(162)
She stood … while the World about her fell shaking.
The ground bucked, swatted the soles of her sandals, and yet she stood as if bound to some unseen rigging. For all his poise, General Iskaul was pitched like a toddler to his rump. Phinersa fell to his knees, then to his face for throwing out the arm he no longer possessed. Her Exalt-Captain, Saxillas, made as though to steady her, but simply floated past her toppling instead …
Beyond, she saw whole swathes of her city slump into the smoke of their implosion; distant edifices, brute faces she knew so well—like the Tower of Ziek—slouched into haze and debris, disintegrating across slopes, exploding in streets. Afterward, she would scarcely believe that so much could be seen, that a disaster so monumental could be laid out for the count of a single mortal. She even saw the most catastrophic collapse of all, the one that betokened the far greater calamity to come …
The monstrous, square shoulders of the Maumurine Gate crashing into plumes …
The roaring trailed, and there was a lull in the shouting. The accursed throb of the Fanim drums had vanished. For an instant, the tinkle and clatter of belated debris was all that could be heard. She thought it the wind at first, so diffuse was the howl when it began. But it swelled in resonance, rose into something at once raw and human and horrific …
Her beloved city … Momemn …
Momemn was screaming.
“We must evacuate the palace,” Saxillas urged at her side. “My Glory!”
She tossed him a vacant glance. It was a marvel that he could speak with the same ragged calm as before.
“I survived a quaking like this as a child,” he pressed. “It came as waves, my Glory. We must get you someplace safe, lest the very Andiamine Heights fall!”
She turned blinking, not so much to him as to her home, which loomed impossibly intact against the bright day, marred by nothing more than cracks and missing marble casements. She glanced across the Terrace, at the members of her household and her entourage, collecting themselves from the tilted ground. General Iskaul watched her intently. Phinersa was on one knee, the clipped sleeve of his tunic hanging loose, blood streaming from his nose. She looked back to her Exalt-Captain.
“My Glory … Please!”
The Gods, she realized numbly … The Hundred had done this!
“Muster every man you can, Saxillas.”
The Gods hunted her family.
“We must get you to the Scuari Campus fir—”
“If you care at all about my safety,” she snapped, “you will muster every man you can!”
She raised a finger to the gouged view beyond the Postern Terrace. Dust fogged the whole of it, as if the city were a vast plate of shaken sand. The great domes of Xothei still stood in the nearer distance, as did a large number of other structures, some solitary, others clumped together, all surrounded by tracts of tossed ruin. She looked back to her peering Exalt-Captain, saw the caste-noble blanch for horror as he realized.
“The blasted walls …” General Iskaul muttered from her side. Even as he peered, he scooped his hair and bound it into a warknot.
“Our foe will soon be upon us!” the Blessed Empress yelled across the canted verandah. “We have rehearsed this—we all know our stations! Do what it is you must do! Be ruthless. Be cunning. And above all, be brave! Burn as a lantern for your Most Holy Aspect-Emperor! Be a beacon unto those who waver!”
Her voice hung but a heartbeat upon the lamentations welling from below. Ruin, ruin, and more ruin.
Kel …
The towering Agmundrman fell to his knees. “My Glory …”
“The Field is now yours, General,” she said. She looked to the battery of eyes upon her, some round with incredulity and horror, others already gathering the hatred they would need. “Kill the jackals!”
The Men broke into a cheer that was both fierce and ragged, but someone began crying, “Look! Looook!” in a tone too urgent to be denied. And at the behest of someone she could not see, all eyes turned to the autumn-arid southern hills, some holding out hands to block the glare of the sun climbing high above the Meneanor. The first dark clots of horsemen had begun clotting across the rim …
Hundreds merely, soon to become thousands.
“Iskaul,” she said tightly.
“Move!” the General bellowed in a voice trained to crack the din of any battle.
Every soldier present made for the gloomy mouth of the Imperial Audience Hall, clearing a berth for Iskaul, who trotted to the lead. The other Apparati followed suit, a migration of shining hauberks and official gowns that left only some twelve slaves kneeling a double rank on the floor before her, their foreheads to the ceramic tile. Where was Thelli?
She stood over them, waiting for the Terrace to clear. The rising sun threw her shadow across the backs of four slaves, three clothed, one bare.
Then she let the second quake loose within her. She turned to her city, her eyes horrified rims, doubled over the sob that stomped her gut. Momemn! The brisk, Meneanorean wind had cleared the dust roiling about the black-basalt heights of Xothei and had exposed the smashed carapaces of the lesser temples surrounding. Thelli? What delayed her so? Gusts rolled back the veil from the farther tracts of destruction, revealing fins and heaps of ruin inked in morning shadow, landscapes as bewildered as the racket of battle—and as mad, given the senseless welter of buildings spared. Momemn!