The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(81)

Anas?rimbor Celmomas II, the White-Lord of Trys?, the Last High-King of K?niüri, staggered as though struck by some great blow.

Achamian fell to his knees …

WHAT AM I?

Through the din, he could hear the consternation behind him, the cries of incredulity, the calls to withdraw, abscond with their High-King. “The fields are lost!” a voice bellowed from behind him. “Lost! All is lost!” Someone seized his shoulder, tried to haul him back, away from his dread wages. He threw off the hand, ran toward the massacre instead …

There was nothing to do but die.

His had always been a heroic soul. Many times had he rushed ahead of his royal household, to buttress some failing point in the lines, to shatter a wavering foe.

But this was no act of heroism.

The flurries of Men running toward him could not be rallied, so profound was their panic. They were but the human crest of an inhuman wave, an onrush of innumerable, fish-skinned beasts, their faces crushed into expressions of exaltation and fury. The first of his kinsmen flew past the High-King bereft of shield or weapons, tearing at the harnesses of their scale hauberks. The runners behind them vanished beneath the hacking onslaught.

Still sprinting, Anas?rimbor Celmomas cast his first javelin into the vicious flood, loosed his great, ensorcelled blade, Glimir, and leapt into the slavering rush alone …

Where he delivered scything death, his famed blade’s edge not so much hewing as passing through, parting flesh and lacquered hides as if they were smoke. Again and again he shouted his beloved son’s name. Again and again he threw his heartbreak into Glimir’s great swing. The Sranc fell as his harvest, collapsed into slop and twitching portions. The ground wheezed and twitched about him. And for a moment, it seemed he had stemmed the inhuman rush, that he had rallied Fate, if not his men. Sranc skidding, falling, flying apart like rotted fruit. The Last High-King grinned for the simplicity, for the purity and the futility.

This was how he died. This! This! A pious Son of Gilga?l to the last …

It happened, as it always happened, too fast to be truly perceived. The glimpse of the Sranc chieftain vaulting from the backs of the fallen, over Glimir’s fatal arc, knees rising as its hammer descended …

The helm was struck from his head. Anas?rimbor Celmomas dropped back into harems of dead, not so much senseless as heartbeats behind his awareness. He watched, with eyes hooked to the edge of oblivion, as lines of burning lights caught the Sranc chieftain’s second blow, transformed the beast into a wagging, squealing shadow. The High-King heard the mutter of Gnostic sorceries, and the resounding “Life and light!” war-cry of the Knights of Trys? …

And the Whirlwind.

WHAT …

The play of line and blur, the shadows of Men, incandescences blooming out of the deep …

AM …

Hands hooking his armpits, and the sense of rising buoyant above the grit and intricacy.

I …

The taste of blood and char on his own lips.

Seswatha’s face bounced across the sky’s corners, grave with horror, drawn with exertion.

He was being drawn to safety—he knew as much, and he mourned.

“Leave me,” Achamian gasped, and though his eyes peered up at his old friend, they somehow saw around and behind him.

“No,” Seswatha replied. “If you die, Celmomas, everything is lost.”

How strange it all looked, the last moments of the World. So trivial—so small … Even his friend, the famed Grandmaster of the Sohonc, his snub nose at odds with his long jaw, his beard adolescent-thin, hermit-white. He seemed an imposter, a Bardic fool, dressed to mock the might and gravity of his patrons …

TELL ME.

The peal of faraway horns scored the thunder of the Whirlwind.

Celmomas smiled blood. “Do you see the sun? Do you see it flare, Seswatha?”

“The sun sets,” the Grandmaster replied.

“Yes! Yes. The darkness of the No-God is not all-encompassing. The Gods see us yet, dear friend. They are distant, but I can hear them galloping across the skies. I can hear them cry out to me. You cannot die, Celmomas! You must not die!”

And Achamian heard the words without hearing, the breath-warble of unvoiced words.

Brave King …

“They call to me. They say that my end is not the world’s end. That burden, they say, is yours. Yours, Seswatha.”

“No,” the Grandmaster whispered.

And the crack in the heavens opened, the clouds blown down and away like smoke from an incense-bowl. Light showered the ground, whitening, gleaming, rimming the edges of the surrounding tumult.

Light showered through …

“The sun! Can you see the sun? Feel it upon your cheek? Such revelations are hidden in such simple things. I see! I see so clearly what a bitter, stubborn fool I have been …”

For there it was, as obvious as vision, the catalogue of his folly, the thousand scorned insights, the revelations condemned as delusion. Celmomas reached through it, clutched the shadow of the Grandmaster’s hand.

“And to you, you most of all, have I been unjust. Can you forgive an old man? Can you forgive a foolish old man?”

Seswatha lowered his forehead to his royal rings, kissed his numb fingertips.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Celmomas. You’ve lost much, suffered much.”