The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(77)
“Y-yes,” Nin’ciljiras said, scowling for confusion. “We are one Mansion! What better sentiment with which to conclude?”
“But the matter of this mortal and Fertility remains unresolved,” Cilc?liccas said to the Nonman King.
Nin’ciljiras squinted at the Lord of Swans, scowled as if the matter were inconsequential. He angrily waved away Harapior’s attempt to intervene.
“Yes-yes-yes …” he said with an air of phony impatience.
And Sorweel realized that the Nonman King could not remember … that he attempted to disguise this fact in a more general contempt for details.
“So we are agreed then?” Cilc?liccas said.
“Yes … Of course.”
The resplendent Quya stood, nodding as if in acquiescence as he did so. “O’ Tsonos, your wisdom is ever our beacon. If war has overthrown the Niom, how are we to treat this Son of Men? How should we protect our Mountain from the wrath of the Hundred?”
Oinaral kept his eyes fixed upon the floor throughout this exchange. Sorweel could not help but notice the way Cilc?liccas continued squeezing his shoulder in reassurance with his large, pale hand.
“Yes! Yes! He is a Blessed Ward of Ishterebinth,” Nin’ciljiras declared.
“A King of Men, and a God-entangled enemy of our enemy … He is not to be obstructed.”
Sorweel fairly snorted aloud, given that his arms remained bound about a pole wedged behind his back.
The Lord of Swans stood, his silk bolt wrapped as blood around him, beaming with insincere admiration. The peerings glinted across his nimil gown, shattered by thousands of miniature swans.
“You are most wise, Tsonos. He will, of course, require a Siqu …”
Why did he feel that somewhere unseen and unknown, he burned?
What had these creatures done to him?
Sorweel watched the alabaster lips of Harapior hanging at Nin’ciljiras’ ear, snipping off one inaudible—and sinister, he could not but think—fact after another. The Concavity, he realized, was not so different from any Mannish court, riven with subterranean conflict and intrigue, games of influence and power. Oinaral had played not so much to preserve an overwrought dignity as to lay his King’s incompetence bare—and for stakes greater than the single coin that was his life. The confederacy of Lord Cilc?liccas proved that some kind of conspiracy was afoot.
Any hope of saving Serwa, the youth realized, lay with these two ghouls.
They cut his bounds while the Nonman King sat fungal upon the Black Iron Seat, watching bloodless. Sorweel stood plagued with the same disorientation as earlier, testing his joints, swinging sensation back into his hands. The congregated Ishroi and Quya stared without the least scruple, their black eyes glittering, their obscene gowns scintillant in the sorcerous light. The sameness of their faces lent insanity to the spectacle. And yet Sorweel found he could recognize others: Vippol the Elder, another Si?lan refugee and most gifted of the surviving Quya. Moimoriccas, long-called Earth-Eater for his ensorcelled cudgel, Gimimra, the famed “Graver”, which struck the very ground from beneath his foe’s feet. He recognized others as well, somehow distinct even though their pallor and beauty rendered them identical—and to more than just one another. Even as a fraction of his soul recognized individuals, another fraction insisted they were just another breed of Sranc—one framed, not as apes or dogs, but as strapping, catamite Men.
For a Son of Sakarpus—a true child of the Pale no less—they could be nothing else.
Without warning, the shining assembly fell as one to one knee …
“Our House embraces thee, Sorweel, Son of Harweel,” the chorus intoned.
The youth found he simply knew the ritual reply … somehow.
“Let all … grace …”
He fairly coughed for the alien workings of his mouth and throat—for abusing the apparatus of speech, he numbly realized, speaking their blasphemous tongue … Horror clenched the moment in a suffocating fist.
“Find all … all honour …”
What was happening here?
He turned to Oinaral, his Siqu, frantically seeking guidance now that bondage and coercion had retired from the mad field. But the Lord of Swans had already secured the man’s attention, holding hands to his womanish cheeks, as a man might a beloved child. Even as the condescension repelled the youth, a deeper inkling approved, knowing how such intimacies of rank conserved the sacred hierarchies.
“Recall what happened …” Cilc?liccas murmured to his ward.
Oinaral acknowledged the High Quya with a lingering look, then, clasping Sorweel’s arm, he quickly drew the youth from the ghoulish regard of the Nonman King and his underworld court. A thin barrage of entreaties followed in their wake, some strident, others pathetic for being so tremulous.
“Cu’cirrurn!”
“Gangini—!”
“Aurili—!”
Names, he realized. They called out names as invitations.
“Say nothing …” Oinaral muttered as he hustled him into the murk of the exit. “It will only inflame them.” What had been a cavernous immensity was suddenly low and looming, ceilings pitted with images of love and outrage.
“Inflame?” the youth managed.
“Aye,” Oinaral said, his eyes fixed forward, his stride brisk, yet unalarmed. “Those who teeter upon the Dolour, especially. You must avoid speaking to my brothers.”