The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(41)
She saw the nameless Waterbearer—the Cishaurim!—rise up to meet the decrepit Grand Vizier. She saw the black asp that was his eye hook from his collar, gleaming like oiled iron.
Her slippers skidded on blood, yet she managed to find her feet.
She felt no fear.
Lightning leapt between Schoolman and Cishaurim, a brilliance that bleached the ramparts white. Hair lifted across her body.
The Indara-Kishauri hung impassive, watching the brilliant onslaught as if through some kind of window … He leapt skyward as if yanked, swung about …
He wasn’t simply any Cishaurim, she realized. He was a Primary …
Which meant that Vem-Mithriti was dead …
Her stubbornness had killed them all!
She drew her own ceremonial knife, began hacking at the coats of her bodice. Heartbeats passed before she even realized what she was doing. One of the officers cowering behind her leapt forward to seize her wrist, but she twisted free, brandished her knife, resumed sawing through the accursed fabric, pricking and cutting herself time and again for panicked haste.
Casting a luminous glance back toward her, the old sorcerer stepped about to keep himself between her and the Cishaurim. The old fool! His singing stammered about a wheezing cough …
A great Dragonshead reared from his outstretched hands, ethereal scales gleaming in the sun …
Esmenet could scarcely see, but she was sure the Waterbearer advanced on the old man from on high. At last she hooked a crimson finger about the leather cord she wore against her naked waist—she fairly cried out for relief.
She glimpsed their nameless assailant above Vem-Mithriti’s shoulder. Sunlight flashed along the silvered curve of his visor. The asp was black as ink, a cursive slip of the quill. A shower of archery deflected about him. He did not so much as flinch as the Dragonshead dipped toward him …
Cataract, as brilliant as the sun.
She cut the cord, yanked it hard enough to lacerate skin. She felt the heat of it slip from her navel.
It swung as a stone in a sling … the Chorae.
So very few remained in the Three Seas. She nearly shrieked for realizing she had to cut it free, glanced up …
The Indara-Kishauri simply walked through the old sorcerer’s inferno, his visor mirroring crimson and gold …
Esmenet pricked her finger to the bone. The Chorae slipped to the ground.
The Waterbearer closed on the howling Anagogic sorcerer, threw up his hands as if to grapple …
The Blessed Empress bent at the waist, scooped the thing into her palm …
Looked up.
Saw her ancient Grand Vizier hanging upon the void immediately before her, his Wards sloughing into oblivion, his howling song cut short, spears of incandescent Water erupting from points across his skull and gown, then slumping like something too rotted to hang, dropping away from the enigmatic Cishaurim, who simply stepped through everything the old man had been, to set foot on the shattered parapet before her …
She cast the Chorae.
Glimpsed her reflection in the silver visor, broken across the graven water …
Saw the iron sphere sail past his cheek, drop into the void beyond his right shoulder.
And she smiled for dying in such a way. Debacle for debacle.
But the Cishaurim jerked—a shaft with Imperial fletching had materialized from his left breast. The asp flailed like a black rope.
Two more arrows chipped across the golden hauberk in rapid succession.
Then another appeared from his right arm.
The force pulled him backward. He tripped over debris, vanished over the edge …
Only to fall outward, away from them, on an arc that bellied low over ground strewn with the Fanim who had failed to beat their horses clear her archers’ range.
The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas stood gazing after him, wind-swept and astounded.
“Our Mother!” Theliopa was crying, her voice piping high and shrill. “Our Mother has saved us!”
The table stood untouched some twenty paces below. The wind dandled the embroidered tassels beneath the rim, yanked them inland, toward steppe and desert, away from the eternal sea.
The drums of her enemy beat across the horizon.
CHAPTER FOUR
A?rsi
Thieve wearing one mask, murder wearing another; the face beneath will be forgotten.
—AINONI PROVERB
Faith is the name we give to our determination.
A search for things better known whilst weeping,
And understood not at all.
—The Goat’s Heart, PROTATHIS
Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), the northeast shore of the Nele?st
Dreams came, dark tunnels beneath weary earth …
A ridge against the night sky, curved like a sleeping woman’s hip.
And upon it two silhouettes, black against clouds of stars, impossibly bright.
The figure of a man seated, crouched like an ape, legs crossed like a priest.
And a tree, branches swept up and out, vein-forking across the bowl of the night.
And the stars revolve about the Nail of Heaven like clouds hurried across winter skies.
And the Holy Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas stares at the figure, stares at the tree, but cannot move. The firmament cycles like the wheel of an upturned cart.
The figure seems to perpetually sink for the constellations rising about him. He speaks, but his face cannot be seen.