The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(54)
“A marvel …” one of the wretches croaked, a momentary light flaring and fading in his eyes.
“Is it not?”
They ascended what Siqu called the Abskinis, the Groundless Grave … “The Iyisk? …”
“They made this …”
“To be their …”
“Sssshurrogate world …”
The vast well that plumbed Golgotterath’s Upright Horn.
“Now … now …”
“It belongs to me …”
They climbed to the world’s most wicked summit, where none but the dead and the damned descended.
“The very …”
“Stronghold …”
“Of ssssalvation!”
Rage, delirious and titanic, seized the old Wizard’s limbs and voice. He howled. He cast his naked body whole, wrenched and heaved with the strength that had made him unconquerable on so many fields of battle.
But the Wretches only drooled and laughed, one after the other.
“Nau-Cay?ti …”
He drew his feet beneath him, squatted, strained roaring, until his limbs flushed and quivered. He hurled all his being …
“Thief …”
The iron links creaked, but did not yield.
“You hath returned …”
“To the house …”
“From which you hath stolen …”
He slumped in dismay, gazed sneering at the wretches. Different faces worn into the same face by decrepitude. Different voices throttled into the same voice by senescence and age-old hatred. Ten Wretches, one ancient and malevolent soul.
“Damnation awaits you!” the Great Prince roared. “Eternal torment!”
“Your pride …”
“Your strength …”
“Are naught but kindling …”
“For the Lust …”
“Of the Derived …”
The Great Prince’s thoughts raced through the old Wizard’s soul.
“They shall glory …”
“In your misery …”
Rising … rising through stench and darkness. A vast throat, ribbed in gold, descending. “Damnation!” Nau-Cay?ti bellowed. “How long can you cling, wicked old fool?”
“Your eyes …”
“Shall be put out …”
“Your manhood …”
“Shall be cut from you …”
“And I shall give you over …”
“To my children …”
“To their rutting fervour …”
And Nau-Cay?ti laughed, for fear was all but unknown to him. “How long before Hell has its say?”
“You will be shattered …”
“Beaten and degraded …”
“Your wounds will bleed …”
“The black of my children’s seed …”
“Your honour will be cast …”
“As ash …”
“To the high winds …”
“Where the Gods shall gather it!” the Great Prince boomed. “The very Gods you flee!”
“And you will weep …”
“At the last …”
The Shield of Sil climbed high into the dark, toward a gold-shining aperture. Chained within a mightier frame, the old Wizard screamed with lunatic defiance, roared with a strength not his own.
“And when all is done …”
“You will tell me …”
“Where your accurshed tutor …”
“Has concealed …”
“The Heron Spe—”
Then brightness, blinking and chill.
The cough of too-cold air too sharply drawn.
Night had fallen quickly once they had descended the far side of the glacier, forcing them to camp just below the frosted heights. They had settled upon a ledge that was lifeless save for the tattooing of lichens across the sunward faces. They had fallen asleep clutching each other—for hope as much as for warmth.
Now, rubbing his eyes, the old Wizard saw Mimara hugging her knees on the mounded lip, staring out across the distance, toward the ruined talisman of Ishu?l. She was draped in rotted furs, the same as he, but where he had elected to wear his looted nimil corselet beneath his pelts, she wore the gold-scaled hauberk she had retrieved from the Coffers over hers. She spared him a curious glance, nothing more. She looked boyish for her hair, he thought.
“I dr-dreamed …” he said, hugging his arms against a shiver. “Dreamed of him.”
“Him?”
“Shauriatas.”
He had no need of explanations. Shauriatas was the curse-name of Shae?nanra, the cunning Grandmaster of the Mangaecca, the intellect who discovered the last surviving Inchoroi and resurrected their World-breaking design.
Shauriatas. The Lord of the Unholy Consult.
The surprise in her eyes was fleeting. “How’s he doing?”
The old Wizard screwed his face into a scowl, then coughed in laughter.
“Not quite himself.”
The vale plummeted and piled across the morning distance, gullies and ravines pinned one to the other on tumbling angles, ramps matted with conifers, shouldering scarps that climbed to the clouds.