The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(6)
Days later, they hear cries filtering through the forest gloom, and Achamian spies the Stone Hags caught upon a distant ridge battling more Sranc than they can hope to overcome. Later that night, the survivors come upon the Skin Eaters. Chaos and conflict rule, then the skinnies come shrieking out of the forest blackness. Mimara finds herself apart from the others, almost certainly doomed, but Somandutta appears before her, and in an inhuman display of skill, handily slays the Sranc assailing her. Soma is a skin-spy, she realizes, but their straits are such that she waits until they reach the relative safety of Fatwall, an Imperial outpost they find abandoned and burning, before telling Achamian. The old Wizard confronts the Nilnameshi caste-noble, who flees the ruined fortress rather than parlay. Vast numbers of Sranc descend upon the ruined tower they take as their citadel, and the Skin Eaters endure a night of gibbering slaughter.
The subsequent days see them travel fast through the foliated underworld of the Mop, thanks to the way the Qirri quickens their limbs—fast enough to break the body and spirit of those surviving Stone Hags who have joined them. Mimara shares stories of her life upon the Andiamine Heights with Achamian, and the two outcasts come to an unspoken accord, an affection borne of trial and shared affliction. But Mimara is not long in violating this trust. The thing called Soma has been tracking them all along. It surprises her alone in the gloom, tells her she must murder the Captain to prevent Cleric from killing them. It also tells her that she is pregnant. Overlooking the ruins of ancient Kelmeol, the thing encounters its Consult master, who bids it to continue tracking the scalper company, and to continue protecting Mimara—all the way to Golgotterath if need be. “All the prophecies must be respected,” the Synthese says, “the false as much as the true.”
The Mop behind them, the scalpers begin the long, arid trek across the Istyuli Plains. The days become more feverish, the nights more crazed, and it seems to Mimara that she alone is aware of the madness slowly consuming them. Cleric’s ritual dispensation of the Qirri has become a raucous, even rapturous affair, far more religious than medicinal. The Nonman’s sermons have become both more ominous and profound. Despite her reluctance, Mimara presses Achamian on the issue, begs him to abandon the Skin Eaters, to flee as far from Cleric and his Qirri as they can, only to sob with relief when he argues why they must stay. They march into the very wake of the Great Ordeal, encounter a supply company—Men they murder to pass undetected.
Not long afterward, Mimara meets with the thing called Soma once again, though now it has taken her own form. She demands that it tell her what is happening; it presses her to ask Cleric about the Qirri, to discover what it is. Before she can ask the thing why, Achamian appears, and the skin-spy flees leaping into the night, pursued by the Wizard and his sorcerous might. Achamian is furious, convinced the creature meant to replace her. She lies to him, tells him nothing about her previous encounters with the thing.
More and more she can feel the unborn child within her, and its presence seems to fortify her against whatever consumes the others. She dares question the company’s Sergeant, Sarl, whose sanity was snapped in twain in the depths of Cil-Aujas. He tells her nothing of Cleric, but he does reveal that the Captain somehow knows her true identity. There can no longer be any doubt: the Skin Eaters are an instrument of the Holy Aspect-Emperor.
When the scalpers congregate to receive their Qirri the following night, she astounds them all by refusing her portion. Nothing is made of it, but in the pitch of night she awakens to find Cleric gazing down at her. She asks what the Qirri is, and he tells her that it’s the ashes of some long-dead Nonman hero. When she asks who, he bids her taste to see. And so she succumbs to the drug once again—and in doing so discovers what they have been consuming for the length of their mad and onerous quest …
The ashes of Cu’jara Cinmoi.
As the Captain leads them ever deeper into the dead North, they finally come upon the trail of the Great Ordeal: field upon field of burnt and hewn Sranc. Mimara asks Achamian how he could still doubt Kellhus. Was this not proof that he waged war against Golgotterath? This, combined with the truth of the Qirri, proves too much for the old Wizard, and that evening he denies Cleric’s dispensation of the cannibal ash. Mimara awakens to cries in the night, finds the Captain and the Nonman binding and gagging the Wizard. She throws herself at them, only to be seized by Galian and the others, who immediately set about stripping her clothes. The Captain falls upon them in a fury, killing one, raging at the others, telling them that damnation awaits any who harm her. The Judging Eye opens, and she sees what sin has made of Lord Kosoter, something infernal for the numberless atrocities he has committed. So it seems that a wheezing demon falls to its knees at her feet, calling her Princess-Imperial, and imploring that she save them from damnation.
The Captain is not simply a Zaudunyani fanatic, he is an agent of the Aspect-Emperor, one of her stepfather’s countless slaves. But as inclined as he is to worship her, he possesses no inclination to heed her. He refuses to release Achamian—or to reveal the nature of his mission. All she knows is that it involves following through on Achamian’s quest. Even with the old Wizard bound and gagged, they continue the trek to the Library of Sauglish and the legendary Coffers.
The surviving Skin Eaters find themselves divided along the line of this revelation. Galian and his cohorts—those who care nothing for matters of faith—become more and more mutinous. Only their awe of Cleric—and craving for Qirri—seem to constrain them. They make no secret of their carnal designs. With Achamian incapacitated, the crazed Captain has become her sole refuge. So she plies the man as they march ever nearer the ancient Library, searching for some weakness, something she can use to win Achamian’s freedom. When the man proves immovable, she turns to Cleric, going so far as to shave her hair in an attempt to seduce him—anything that might change their dismal fortunes.