The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(95)
The youth could not but wonder whether this would be all that remained of him … or Serwa … ere this latest nightmare were through.
“I alone am to blame,” the ancient Siqu declared to the miniature glories.
“But you said as much yourself. One need not leave the Mountain to flee. What would it matter if Nil’giccas roamed the mines or the Mere? He had fled already, Cousin. Nin’ciljiras would have been acclaimed regardless.”
The Son of Oir?nas finally turned to him. His cheeks gleamed. Pink rimmed his black-glittering eyes. He was a wise soul, the youth knew, but one jealous of its madnesses.
“How many remain Intact?” Sorweel asked.
The Nonman hesitated for an instant, as if loathe to yield the topic of his heartbreak. Renewed resolution deadened his expression.
“Scarcely a dozen. Several hundred others dwell, like Nin’ciljiras, in the twilight between.”
“So few.”
Oinaral Lastborn nodded. “The wound the Vile struck was mortal, though it would take three Ages for the poison to prevail. Our very immortality was our extinction.” Something, the irony perhaps, hooked his lips into a sneer. “We have dwelt with Apocalypse since before Far Antiquity, Son of Harweel. I fear we have at last embraced it.”
The glare had been so bright as to make straw of everything that gleamed, and chalk of all that was indistinct. Ordealmen laboured across the plain, each soul bearing his shadow beneath him. Their dust conspired to create a second Shroud, dwarfish and insubstantial.
“And if Ishterebinth has fallen to the Consult? What then, Father?”
A grave look.
“You are my daughter, Serwa,” Anas?rimbor Kellhus replied. “Show them my portion.”
Nin’ciljiras had come without explanation, Oinaral explained, disgorged by the very horizon that had swallowed him an Age previous when he and the other Dispossessed Sons of Viri had fled the Judgment of the Seal. The son of Ninar had come in all due humility, invoking the Canon of Imimor?l, demanding a hearing before the Aged. Some had sought to kill him, to execute the sentence Nil’giccas had passed. But his return so soon after the disappearance of the King was no coincidence. Nin’ciljiras had found Ishterebinth in uproar, for never had a Mansion wanted for a Son of Tsonos! So the Aged, those upon the Dolour’s mad bourne, seized upon the cur, immediately declared him, fearing strife and rebellion otherwise—sorrows that would all but toss them to madness. What could any of the Younger do? They had no voice in matters of Canon. They remained Intact entirely because they had no honour, for honour was nothing but the summit of life, and they had lived not at all. Aside from sneers, what could they command in the presence of heroes?
“I was a child when the Second Watch was disbanded,” Oinaral explained. “I remember seeing him, Nin’janjin, the Most-Accursed Son, standing as a brother beside Cu’jara Cinmoi in the glory of the Si?lan Mall. I alone recall the terms of our wicked capitulation!”
So Oinaral could only watch in horror as Nin’ciljiras, Scion of Nin’janjin, was bled as Nil’giccas was once bled upon the Holy Seal of Ishori?l, and so became the King of the Exalted Stronghold. And he knew with a certainty that was a sickness in his gut what would follow, how Min-Uroikas would figure ever more in the usurper’s discourse and declaration, how possibilities mentioned would become, in the fullness of months and years, promises sworn.
How Ishterebinth would one day awaken a fief of Golgotterath …
Sorweel had fairly swooned for incredulity, listening as he did with a composite soul. What disaster? What catastrophe could warrant degradation so outrageous as this? To beg scraps from the palm of the Vile! Lick the hands that had tortured and murdered their wives! Their daughters! To fall as cannibals upon honour and glory!
“Outrage!” he barked from hunched shoulders. “They are the Vile!”
Oinaral seized his shoulder, drew him to a halt. “Name yourself, Son of Harweel … Take possession of what you think.”
“They are the Vile,” the Horse-King cried. “How? How could any forgetting be so profound?”
“All forgetting is so profound,” the Siqu replied.
They passed from the Observances into the Pith proper, where the corridors were expansive and the ceilings oppressive. The peerings were few and far between, but for some reason the gloom embalmed more than it exposed. Guttural hymns floated from the galleries about them, a solemn chorus singing from the Holy Juürl. The stone seemed dulcet, as bright as teeth for the polish of trailing hands. Bestiaries adorned the walls, ancient totems from days even the Great Pit of Years could not reckon. The engravings were more shallow, the figures rendered as large as the surfaces that bore them—a welcome reprieve from the incessant assault of detail. Sorweel could recognize the creatures easily enough—bear, mastodon, eagle, lion—but each had been rendered as if occupying all positions at once—crouching, leaping, running—so that they seemed curious kinds of suns, their torsos become discs, their many limbs the emanations of light.
“Serwa … Mo?nghus … What will happen to them?”
It frightened him, the way her name pinched his throat for speaking.
“They will be Apportioned.”
Somehow he knew what this meant. “Divided as spoils …”
“Yes.”