The Judging Eye (24 page)

He was in the presence of a
living
line
, Achamian realized, of eyes that had witnessed all the intervening
years between his two selves, between Achamian, the Wizard-Exile, and Seswatha,
the Grandmaster of the Sohonc. This Nonman had lived the two-thousand-year
sleep between...

It almost made Achamian feel
whole.

"And your name?"

Sarl whispered some kind of
curse.

"Incariol," the cowled
figure said with an air of inward grappling. And then again,
"Incariol..."
as though testing its sound on his tongue. "Does that sound
familiar?"

Achamian had never heard of it,
not that he could remember. Even still, it was plain these Scalpoi had no
inkling of who or what rode with them. How could any mortal fathom such a
cavernous soul?

As old as the Tusk...

"So you're an
Erratic."

"Am I? Is that what I
am?"

How did you answer such a
question? The creature before him had lived so long his very identity had
collapsed beneath him, dropped him into the pit of his own lifetime. His was a
running-over soul, where every instance of love or hope or joy drained into the
void of forgetfulness, displaced by the more viscous passions of terror,
anguish, and hate.

He was an Erratic, addicted to
atrocity for memory's sake.

"He's calling you
mad," Sarl said, a little too quickly given the gravity of their silence.

The hood turned to him.

"Yes... I
am
mad."

Sarl waved his hands in
affectionate contradiction. "Come now, Cleric. No need to—"

"Memories..."
the black pit interrupted. A word struck in wincing tones of woe.
"Memories make us sane."

"See!" Sarl exclaimed,
whirling to Achamian. "Sermons!" His face was pinched red about a
manic smile, as though he were the kind of man who made claims compulsively and
so gloated over every instance of their confirmation.

"This one night in the
Wilds, one of our number asks Cleric here what's the greatest treasure he's
heard tell. Gold, as you might imagine, is quite a popular topic among us
Scalpoi, especially when we're hunting on the dark—without campfires, that is.
Warms the bones as sure as any flame, talk of peaches and gold."

There was something—the turn of
his face, maybe, the aura of antagonism in the way he leaned forward, or the
twist of insincerity in his tone—that told Achamian that "sermons"
were the least of the man's concerns.

"So Cleric here," Sarl
rasps, "obliges us with another sermon. He mentions
several
glories,
for he's seen things we mortals can scarce conceive. But for some reason it was
the
Coffers
that stuck. The hoard hidden beneath the Library of
Sauglish, ere it was destroyed in the First Apocalypse. The Coffers, we say.
The Coffers—any time we're loath to mention that unluckiest of words, 'hope.'
Coffers. Coffers. Coffers. We trek out to run down the skinnies, give them a
trim, but we always say we're searching for the
Coffers
."

The face-wrinkling amiability
suddenly dropped from his face, revealing something cold and hateful and
implausibly profound.

"And now, here
you
are,
as sure as Fate."

There was something, Achamian
decided, altogether too mobile about the man's expressions.

"You're a learned
man," Sarl added, speaking through strings of phlegm. An uncommon
intensity had fixed his rodent features—as if some life-or-death opportunity
were on the verge of slipping from his grasp. "Tell me, what do you think
of the concept of
coincidence
? Do you think things happen for
reasons?"

A perplexed look. A depleted
smile. Achamian could summon no more.

Sarl leaned back, nodding and
laughing and petting his white goatee.
Of course you do!
his squinty
look shouted, as though Achamian had given him the oh-so-predictable
book-learned response.

Achamian did his best not to
gape. He had forgotten what it was like, the succession of trivial surprises
that was part and parcel of joining the company of strangers. In the company of
strangers it was so easy to forget the small crablike histories that held
others together and set you apart.

But this was no trivial
surprise.

From Marrow to the wastes of
Kûniüri was a journey of months across Sranc-infested Wilds. Were it not for the
Great Ordeal, the trek would be simply impossible: Over the centuries, the
School of Mandate had lost more than a few expeditions trying to reach either
Sauglish or Golgotterath. But even with the Great Ordeal drawing the Sranc like
a lodestone, Achamian knew he could not make his way alone—not so far, not at
his age. This was the whole reason why he had come to Marrow: to recruit the
assistance he would need. He had simply struck upon the Sohonc Coffers as an
inducement, if not an outright ruse... And now this.

Could it simply be coincidence?

Lord Kosoter watched Sarl with
eyes of glassy iron.

The small man blanched. His face
squinted along plaintive lines. "If this is no coincidence, Captain, then
it's
the Whore
. Anagkë. Fate." He looked around as if encouraged by
imaginary fellows. "And the Whore, begging your pardon, Captain, fucks
everyone in the end—
everyone
. Foe, friend, fuzzy little fucking woodland
creatures..."

But his words were for naught.
The Captain's silence boomed as much.

And Achamian found himself
wondering just when the agreement had been struck—and just how the men he had
hoped to
hire
had become his partners. Was he simply one more Skin
Eater?

Should he be grateful? Relieved?
Horrified?

"I remember..." the
blackness wrapped by the cowl said. "I remember the slaughter of..."

A peculiar sound, like a sob
thumbed into the shape of a cackle.

"Of
children
."

"A man," the Captain
grimly noted, "has got to remember."

***

That night Achamian dreamed in
the old way. He dreamed of Sauglish.

The Wracu came first, as they
always did, dropping from the clouds with claws and wings askew. Their roars
seemed to fall from all directions, curiously hollow, like children screeching
into caverns, only infinitely more savage.

Vertigo. Seswatha hung with his
Sohonc brothers above their sacred Library, whose towers and walls yawed out
below them, perched on the Troinim, the three hills that commanded the great
city's westward reaches. They awaited the frenzied descent, their figures hazed
blue by their Gnostic Wards. Light sparked from their eyes and mouths, so that
their heads seemed cauldrons. Their feet braced against the ground's echo, they
sang their blasphemous song.

Psalms of destruction.

Lines of brilliant white mapped
the gaping spaces, striking geometries, confining geometries, lights that made
smoke of hide and fury. Rearing back to bare claws and spew fire, the dragons
plummeted into the arcane glitter, shrieking, screaming. Then they were
through, bleeding smoke, some writhing and convulsing, one or two toppling to
their deaths. The singing became more frantic. Threads of incandescence boiled
against iron scales. Unseen hammers beat against wings and limbs.

Then the Wracu were upon them.

And for an instant, Seswatha
became
Achamian
, an old man born of another age, his eyes rolling like a panicked
horse. Somehow forgotten, he jerked his gaze side to side, from the white robed
men hanging frail in their glowing spheres to the black-maned beasts that
assailed them, burning and rending. Wings bellied like sails in the tempest.
Eyes narrowed into sickle-shaped slits. Wounds smoked. The Wracu hammered and
clawed the curved planes, and things not of this world sheared. The antique
Schoolmen shouted, cried out in horror and frustration. A dragon fell, gutted
by blue flame. A sorcerer, young Hûnovis, was stripped to bone by burning
exhalations, and twirled like a burning scroll into the vista below. The glare
of sorcery and fiery vomit intensified, until all that Achamian could see were
ragged silhouettes twisting serpentine over the void.

The city pitched across the
distances, a patchwork of labyrinthine streets and packed structures. To the
east, he saw the shining ribbon of the River Aumris, the cradle of Norsirai
glory. And to the west, beyond the fortifications, he saw the alluvial plains
blackened by hordes of whooping Sranc. And beyond them, the
whirlwind
,
howling across the horizon, monstrous and inexhaustible, framed by the
rose-gold of more distant skies. Even when obscured by smoke Achamian could
feel it... Mog-Pharau, the end of all things.

Roars scored the heights to arch
of heaven, reptilian fury wrapped about the inside-out mutter of sorcery—the
glory of the Gnosis. The dragons raged. The sorcerers of the Sohonc, the first
and greatest School, fought and died.

He did not so much see those
below as he remembered them. Refugees packing the rooftops, watching the slow
advance of doom. Fathers casting their own babes to the hard cobble of the
streets. Mothers cutting their children's throats—anything to save them from
the fury of the Sranc. Slaves and chieftains howling, crying out to heavens
shut against them. The broken staring into the dread west, numb to everything
save the whirlwind's roping approach...

Their High-King was dead. The
wombs of their wives and their daughters had become graves. The greatest of
their thanes and chieftain-knights, the flower of their armed might, had been
struck down. Pillars of smoke scored the distance across the earth's very
curve.

The world was ending.

Like choking. Like drowning.
Like a weight without substance, sinking cold through him, a knife drawn from
the snow, even as he fell slack into its bottomless regions. Friends, brothers,
shaken apart in grinning jaws. Strangers flailing in fiery blooms. Towers
leaning like drunks before crashing. Sranc encrusting distant walls, like ants
on slices of apple, loping into the maze of streets. The cries, shrieks,
screams—thousands of them rising like steam from burning stones. Sauglish
dying.

Hopelessness... Futility.

Never, it seemed, had he dreamed
a
passion
with such vehemence.

Undone, the surviving Sohonc
fled the skies, took shelter in the Library with its net of great square
towers. Batteries of ballistae covered their retreat, and several of the
younger Wracu foundered, harpooned. Achamian stood abandoned in the sky, gazing
at mighty Skafra, scars like capstan rope, limbs like sinuous timbers, and
leprous wings beating, obscuring the distant No-God with every laborious
whump-whump
.
The ancient Wracu grinned its lipless dragon grin, scanned the near distances
with eyes of bloody pearl...

And somehow, miraculously,
looked
through him
.

Skafra, near enough for his bulk
to trigger bodily terror. Achamian stared helplessly at the creature, watched
the bright crimson of its rage drain from its scales and the rising blooms of
black that signified dark contemplation. The conflagration below glittered
across its chitinous lines, and Achamian's eyes were drawn downward, to the
plummet beneath his feet.

The sight of the Holy Library
burning stuck pins into his eyes. Beloved stone! The great walls sheathed in
obsidian along their sloped foundations, rising high and white above. The
copper roofs, stacked like massive skirts. And the deep courtyards, so that
from the sky the structure resembled the halved heart of some vast and
intricate beast. Sunbright sputum washed across ensorcelled stone, knifed
through seams and cracks. Dragonfire rained across the circuit, a spray of
thunderous eruptions.

But where? Where was Seswatha?
How could he dream without—

The old Wizard awoke crying out
thoughts from the end of a different world.
Sauglish! We have lost Sauglish!

But as his eyes sorted the
darkness of his room from the afterimages, and his ears dredged the roar of the
falls from the death-throe thunder, it seemed he could hear the madwoman...
Mimara.

"You have become a
prophet..."
Was that not what she had said?

"A prophet of the
past."

***

The next day Sarl collected
Achamian and brought him to what must have been one of the Cocked Leg's largest
rooms. Though he moved with the same spry impatience, the old cutthroat seemed
surprisingly quiet. Whether this was due to the previous night's drink or
discussion, Achamian could not readily tell.

Another man awaited them in
addition to Kosoter and Cleric: a middle-aged Nansur named Kiampas. If Sarl was
the Captain's mouth, then Kiampas, Achamian realized, was his hand.
Clean-shaven and elegantly featured, he looked somewhat younger than the fifty
or so years Achamian eventually credited to him. He was definitely more soldier
than warrior. He had a wry, methodical air that suggested melancholy as much as
competence. Because of this, Achamian found himself almost instantly trusting
both his instincts and his acumen. As a former Imperial Officer, Kiampas was a
devotee of plans and the resources required to bring them to fruition. Such men
usually left the issue of overarching goals to their superiors, but after
listening to Achamian explain the mission to come, his manner betrayed obvious
doubt if not out-and-out dismay.