The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(80)

Perhaps it was the exhaustion. Perhaps it was the simple sum of his loss. Regardless, a child within kicked at his lungs, his heart. A sob welled up, a battering grief … and caught somewhere short of expression—somewhere short of the lips he could not feel. He convulsed about the absence of air.

Suffocation. The story-braided walls curled into blackness. He was dimly aware of falling to his knees once again …

Oinaral Lastborn was kneeling before him, darkling eyes bright with concern.

“You must never weep, Son of Harweel. The Amiolas would sooner die than weep.”

But … but …

“You wear a prisonhouse upon your head, Manling, an arcane dungeon for one of the proudest, most reckless souls in the history of my Race. Immiriccas Cinialrig, the Goad, the Malcontent, great among the Injori Ishroi. He was sentenced to death by Cu’jara Cinmoi during our feud with the Vile—a sentence commuted by Nil’giccas. His was our most ruthless soul, Son of Harweel. And aside from the Inchoroi, he punished none with such cruelty as himself.”

But the vertiginous gyre had returned, engulfing him in its dread turn. The youth looked up from the dragging blackness, saw Oinaral Lastborn drain as milk into spinning clamour.

“I—!” Sorweel cried.

I must—



Harapior could not bear to gag her. She sang as his wife once sang from dishevelled pillows, contemplating love and sorrow, a voice like a breath clad in light, near enough to tickle, far enough to pretend to sleep.

She sang to what was naked and weak.

Anas?rimbor Serwa was too real to suffer such as him. His shadow laboured on the horizon of what she willed, toiled astounded, for he had thought her body his implement, the lever he would use to overturn her soul. But he could find no skin to break, no need to starve, no gaze to dim. He could find no strings! She was chained abject before him, yet she was nowhere to be found.

Her words fell as a patter of acid upon his heart.

Lilting was her heart,

turbulent was her soul,

moon upon silk upon waters





She sang not to him but to what made him. She sang to the darting eye, the trembling hand, the taut lip. She beckoned to them, and they heeded her song, twisted and yawned like lazy weeds.

Bloomed.

he raised her as fire,

lowered her as snow,

lay cheek against her cheek,

lips not quite

touching,





For even the stoniest of Nonman had long been broken into sand and loam.

drawing two breaths,





She poured her voice in pitchers, sang to what was sodden.

exhaling one.





She laid her hoe to his ground, and set her seed deep.





CHAPTER EIGHT


Ishu?l


No matter the insanity, tomorrow always has a hand.

—NILNAMESHI SAYING

Better blind in Hell than speechless in Heaven.

—ZARATHINIUS, A Defence of the Arcane Arts





Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), the ruins of Ishu?l

Another dream drawn from the sheath.

The sea rises up, chokes us into oblivion. The earth cracks, crushes our bones. The forests burn, suck the screams from our throats. Men are bred for the small, so when great things happen, transcendent things, they have naught but stupor and awe to keep them—which is to say, nothing at all. Even the will to pray fails them, and they can only gawk at the murderous immensity—gape.

No-no-no-no-no …

Drusus Achamian stood rapt, staring with eyes that burned for the lack of blinking. Shame had rooted him, horror without compare. He stood pinned to what he was, to treacheries committed and obligations failed. The Fields of Elene?t reached out beneath black skies, churning with threshing limbs, the flash of bronze arms and armour. The Sohonc, who were to be their grace, their salvation, fended the hooking flight of dragons. Gnostic lights limned and parsed the heights below the pall of clouds. Wracu fell screaming from the black, disgorging geysers of shining fire. Sranc teemed and thronged, assailed the K?niüri shield-walls, not according to their former nature, but with a new and devious cunning, sacrificing themselves with insect incomprehension, building ramps and promontories with the piling of their own carcasses, and racing over these to spear deep into the fracturing ranks of Men. Bashrag tossed bodies like so many rags.

Everywhere he looked, disaster stung the old Wizard’s eyes. Men falling, curling about entrails. Men shrinking into howling, battling clots. Men running in panicked waves, knocked face-first to the turf, hacked and speared by the white-skinned rush behind them. Standards dragged down, gonfanons that mapped clans within tribes, tribes within nations. The Knights-Chieftain overrun. Proud Lord Amak?nir. Clever Prince Weodwa. The might and glory of the High Norsirai, the arrogant panoply, everywhere broken, everywhere collapsing, fleeing.

And roping fat and black across the horizon, roaring, the Whirlwind …

Mog-Pharau. Tsuramah.

Speaking, roaring through a thousand thousand throats, innumerable screams bound to a singular will, a chorus all the more obscene for its inexplicability.

TELL ME …

A sob kicked its way between the High-King’s teeth. It was happening …

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Exactly as Seswatha had said.