City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(103)
Sigrud kicks his legs, aims for a widening crack in the ice above.
The solid black arch of the bridge grows a little less … solid. Through the lens of the churning water and ice, it appears to vanish; then a stone ten feet across bursts into the dark water; ropes of bubbles twist and twirl around it; Sigrud darts away, and is buffeted up by its force.
Do not drown, he thinks, and do not be crushed.
More stones crash down, causing enormous concussions that push him up, up. …
The water surface is a membrane, keeping him trapped; he is not sure if he can break through.
He claws at it with his hands, opens his mouth, and tastes wintry air.
Sigrud hauls himself out of the water and onto the ice. This far from the bridge the ice is thankfully solid; he looks back and sees the bridge is not there at all: it is collapsing into the water, causing huge waves … and he cannot see Urav anywhere.
Sigrud, weak, shivering, kneels on the ice and looks for some sign of hope: a fire, a rope, a boat, anything. Yet all he can see is the orb of soft, yellow light slipping through the water toward him, shoving the chunks of ice aside as if they were tissue paper.
“Hm,” he says.
He looks at his hands and arms: the fat has been completely washed away during the fight, presumably taking away whatever protection Shara provided with it.
Then there is a swarm of tentacles around him, and a trembling, widening mouth—one that is missing many teeth—and then a soft push on his back, ushering him in.
*
Sigrud opens his eye.
He sits on a vast, black plain. The sky above him is just as black; he only knows that the plain is there because on its horizon is a huge, burning yellow eye that casts a faint yellow light across the black sands.
A voice says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN.”
Sigrud looks to his left and right; around him is a vast field of seated corpses, ashen and dry, as if all the moisture has been boiled out of them. One is dressed like a police officer; another holds a fishing trap. All the corpses are seated facing the burning eye, and each face, though desiccated and gray, bears a look of terrible suffering.
Then he sees that the chests of the corpses are moving, gently breathing.
Sigrud realizes: They are alive. …
The voice says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN, FOR YOU ARE FALLEN.”
Sigrud looks down. He is still nude, still wearing only his boots, his knife, and the glove on his right hand.
He touches the knife and remembers what Shara said: It might be wise to take matters into your own hands. …
The voice says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN, FOR YOU ARE UNCLEAN.”
Sigrud takes out the knife and considers laying the blade against his wrist, opening up the vein … but something causes him to hesitate.
The voice says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN, AND THROUGH YOUR PAIN YOU WILL FIND RIGHTEOUSNESS.”
He waits, the tip of his blade hovering over his wrist. The black plain mixes like paint, swirling until it forms the walls of his old prison cell in Slondheim, where the dark days leeched the life out of him bit by bit. Is this, he wonders, the miraculous hells of Urav? It seems so, but he does not lower the knife, not yet.
Set in the door of his cell is a great yellow eye. The voice says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN. YOU WILL KNOW SUFFERING. YOU WILL BE PURGED OF YOUR SIN.”
Sigrud waits. He expects that maybe all the old wounds and fractures and injuries he received in this place will suddenly flare to life, aching with all the agony he experienced here … but it doesn’t come.
The voice, now sounding slightly frustrated, says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN.”
Sigrud looks around, knife point hovering over his wrist. “Okay … ,” he says slowly. “When?”
The voice is silent.
“Is this not hell?” asks Sigrud. “Should I not be suffering?”
The voice does not answer. Then the walls rapidly transmute to a variety of horrifying situations: he lies upon a bed of nails; he dangles over an active volcano; he is trapped at the bottom of the sea; he is returning to the Dreylands and sees smoke on the horizon; yet none of these scenarios cause him any physical or mental pain.
He looks around. “What is going on?” he asks, genuinely confused.
The walls swirl again. He is back on the black plain, with all the wheezing, ashen corpses and the bright yellow eye glaring furiously at him. He wonders, momentarily, if he is immune simply because he is a Dreyling, but this seems unlikely.
Then he realizes the palm of his right hand is gently throbbing. He looks at his right hand, hidden in its glove, and understands.
The voice says, “PAIN IS YOUR FUTURE. PAIN IS YOUR PURITY.”
Sigrud says, “But you cannot teach me pain”—he begins to tug at the fingers of the glove—“because I already know it.”
He pulls the glove off.
In the center of his palm is a horrendous, bright red scar that would resemble a brand if it was not carved so deeply in his flesh: a circle with a crude scale in the middle.
Kolkan’s hands, he remembers, waiting to weigh and judge. …
He holds up his palm to the bright yellow eye. “I have been touched by the finger of your god,” he says, “and I lived. I knew his pain, and carried it with me. I carry it now. Every day. So you cannot hurt me, can you? You cannot teach me what I already know.”
The great eye stares.