The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(89)

Both matched his gaze with the selflessness of dogs pricked to the possibility of scraps. They seemed forlorn, pathetic, a scarred monstrosity and a crippled boy stranded on the wilder limits of the World … Enough to stir a sense of shuffling compassion.

He says … says such sweet things to give me comfort …

This was deliberate, the old Wizard knew. Their posture and demeanour could be nothing other than deliberate ploys, chosen to maximize their chances for survival—and domination.

He says that one of my seed will return, Seswatha—an Anas?rimbor will return …

Could it be mere coincidence? To dream of the Prophecy on the eve of coming to Ishu?l would have been significant enough, but to do so from the High-King’s eyes? And on the morn where he must decide the fate of an Anas?rimbor—the full-blooded D?nyain son of Kellhus no less!

“What does it matter?” Mimara cried in impatience. “When the very World is at stake, what does it matter, two—two!—meagre heartbeats? What does it matter if you send them to their damnation?”

The old Wizard snapped his attention back, glared at her …

He had heard these words before. He lowered his gaze, pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. It seemed he could see Nautzera, stern and frail and scathing in the gloom of Atyersus, saying, “I guess, then, you would say that a possibility, that we’re witnessing the first signs of the No-God’s return, is outweighed by an actuality, the life of a defector—that rolling the dice of apocalypse is worth the pulse of a fool!”

That was how it all began, it now seemed. All those years ago, with the Mandate’s mission to spy on Maithanet—another Anas?rimbor. Ever since, he had lived in a world of ciphers, as cryptic as they were fatal, charting the doom of civilizations with rank guesses …

Small wonder so many augurs went mad!

“Mimara—relent … Please, I beg you! I-I cannot … just … murder …”

“Murder?” she cried with mock hilarity. Everything about her radiated disapproval. There had been something about her ever since he had awoken, something as grim as it was relentless and remote.

Something very nearly D?nyain.

Despite the harshness of her humours, he had never thought of her as cruel—until now. Was it the Eye, as she said? Was it the safety of the World, or the child she bore in her womb?

“All are murdered in the end!” she said. “How many have you killed to come this far, hmm, Wizard? Dozens? Hundreds? Where was your compunction then? The Nangaels who found us on the plain, the ones you pursued, why did you murder them?”

A glimpse of panicked horsemen, whipping their mounts across shelves of dust.

“To …” he began, only to falter.

“To safeguard our mission?”

“Yes,” he admitted, glaring into his palms, thinking of all the lives …

“And did you hesitate?”

“No.”

He had never tallied them, he realized. He had never bothered estimating, let alone counting all those he had killed. Could the World be so violent? Could he?

“Akka …” she said, calling more to his gaze than to him. “Akka …”

He looked into her face, shuddered for a sudden premonition of Esmenet. And in the mad way of so many small revelations he understood that she was the reason he had accepted Nautzera’s mission all those years ago. Esmenet. She was the reason he had gambled Inrau’s life and soul—and lost.

“This …” Mimara was saying, “this life … is naught but a detour. Deliver them to their destination!”

Those lips. He could never have imagined that those lips could argue murder.

Qirri. He needed his Qirri.

He wiped his face and beard with an unsteady palm. “It is not-not my … my place.”

“They are already damned!” she cried. “Irrevocably!”

His temper cracked—finally. He found himself on his feet, roaring down at her.

“As! Am! I!”

For an instant, he thought this would catch her short, thrust her cheek to jowl with the consequences of what she was asking. But if she hesitated, her reasons were her own.

“So then,” she said on a ruthless shrug, “you have nothing to lose.”

And only a world to save.

A child.



“Empitiri asca!” the pregnant woman began crying, glancing at the Survivor and boy with varying measures of horror and fury. “Empitiru pallos asca!”

The argument, which had been animated since the beginning, became increasingly shrill. The gulf of tongues defeated the Survivor, but the sentiment did not. She was bidding the old man to recall his mission. They had suffered much, these two travellers, both in the sum and fraction of their lives. Enough to demand some kind of accounting—or, at the very least, fidelity to the motives that had driven them to such extremes.

Murdering them, she was saying, was the only way to keep faith with what they had sacrificed …

With those they had killed on the way.

The old man began cursing and stomping. Accelerated heart rate. Tears clotting eyes. At last he turned to where the Survivor and the boy sat on the humped debris, mustering the will to murder …

“Should you not intervene?” the boy asked.

“No.”