The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(57)

For the old Wizard knew nothing of the future, save that he feared.

When she paused to recollect their long-suffering journey, it seemed she possessed two sets of memories: the one embodied, where she had thrown heart and limbs at the world, and the other disembodied, where everything happened, not out of desperation or heroic effort, but out of necessity. She wondered that the same thing could possess such contradictory appearances. And with a kind of dismay, she realized that between the two, her experience of striving and overcoming were the more false.

Fate had her—had them. Anagk?, the Whore, would midwife her child …

She fairly weeps for thinking it.

No matter how fierce or cunning or deliberate her struggles, no matter how much it seems she cut trails of her own making, she follows tracks laid at the founding of the World … There can be no denying it.

One can sooner climb free the air than escape Fate.

And with this realization comes a peculiar kind of melancholy, a resignation that was at once a commission, a willingness to be used that troubled her with memories of the brothel. Everything, the prick at the bottom of her lungs, the mandible of mountains fencing the near distance, even the character of the light, carries the numb pinch of eternity. She would strive. She would spit and strain and fight … and she would know it was nothing more than a gratifying illusion. She would cast herself into the belly of her own inevitability.

What else is there?

Fight, little one, she whispers to the miracle that is her belly. Fight for me.

Breathless, wordless, they pick their way over a destroyed segment of wall. They pause, winded by things more profound than mourning or exhaustion. The old Wizard slumps to his knees.

The sanctuary had been all but razed. Berms of rubble are all that remain of the walls. Masonry ramps and carpets the interior, thrown like wrack by some surging sea. Even still, it seems she can see the place: the cyclopean scale in the width of the foundations, the craftsmanship in the polished faces, the design in the lay of the wreckage.

Citadel. Assembly yard. Dormitories. Even a grove of some kind.

The fractured stone is pale, almost white, throwing the black of soot and scorching into sharp relief. Pockets weeping ash. Surfaces scaled in charcoal. The itch of sorcerous residue stains everything in tones that cannot be seen—colours both impossible and foul.

“How?” she finally dares ask. “Do you think—”

She catches herself, suddenly hesitant to voice her wondering. She doesn’t so much distrust Achamian himself as his heartbreak.

Your father is reckless …

The wind whisks across the ruined expanses, pricks cheeks for grit.

The old Wizard hauls himself to his feet, totters for a moment. “I’m a fool …” he croaks.

He says that too often to mean it. You’ll learn.

Achamian curses and wipes at his eyes, tugs on his beard—more in fury than reflection. “He’s been one step ahead of me all along!” he cries. “Kellhus!” He claps his head, wags his beard in incredulity. “He wanted me here … He wanted me to see this!”

She scowls.

“Think, ” he grates. “Kosoter. The Skin Eaters. He had to know, Mimara! He’s been leading me all along!”

“Akka, come,” she says. “How could such a thing be possible?”

For the first time she hears it in her voice, the tones of a mother—the mother she will soon be.

“My notes!” he cries in dawning horror. “The tower! He came to my tower! He read my notes, discovered I was hunting Ishu?l in my Dreams!”

She looks away, repelled by the violence of his self-pity, and resumes wandering between the mounds. She ponders the growth thronging from the ruin’s every seam: weeds drying with the season, scrub like wicker, even small twisted pines. How many years since ruin had come and gone? she wonders. Three? More?

“Are you saying he came here?” she called to the watching Wizard. “Destroyed his birthpla—?”

“Of course he did!” he snaps. “Of-course-of-course-of-course! To cover his tracks. To prevent me from discovering his origin—perhaps … But think. How could he rule in utter security so long as the D?nyain still lived? He had to destroy Ishu?l, girl. He had to kick away the ladder that had raised him so high!”

She isn’t so sure. But then she never is.

“So Kellhus did this?”

The old Wizard spouts curses rather than reply—speaking some language she cannot fathom, and sounding all the more foul-humoured for it. He begins waving his arms and pacing as he shouts.

She spins on her heel to consider the ruined fortress in a single look …

Everything Achamian said bore the ring of truth, so why does she disagree?

She turns to encircling mountains, imagines what it would look like, seeing her stepfather stride across the bleached heavens, bearing light and fury. She can almost hear his voice crack across the firmament, calling on his D?nyain brothers …

She looks back to the razed foundations—to Ishu?l.

Spite, she realizes. Brute hatred destroyed this place.

The old Wizard has fallen silent behind her. She turns, sees him sitting with his back against a great block of stone, staring at nothing, clutching at his forehead, combing his scalp with his fingers. And somehow she knows: Anas?rimbor Kellhus has long ceased being a man for Drusas Achamian—or even a devil for that matter. He has become a labyrinth, something that misleads every breath, mazes every direction. Something that can never be escaped.