The Judging Eye (57 page)

Something in his heart leapt at
the thought of seeing
him
once more, even as the greater part of him
quailed. It all seemed a gaggle of voices, nagging, warning, accusing, a chorus
of contradictions. Porsparian and the Goddess. Zsoronga and his blasphemous
book. His father. Kayûtas and his preternatural scrutiny. Eskeles and his
fanatic enthusiasm. In the hearts of heroes, words cancelled out words, so that
only truth and certainty remained. Not for him. In his heart, words simply
accumulated, piled one on top of the other. He went through his daily motions
well enough, discharged his paltry duties, but it all seemed an accident, like
walking paths in the dead of night.

And he was about to face the
Aspect-Emperor—Anasûrimbor Kellhus!

He was about to be discovered.

The Umbilicus loomed over the
near horizon of tents, black, yet brocaded with patterns like the scales on a
lizard's hide. With its many posts, it seemed a miniature mountain range, with
curved conical faces warming in the pink morning sun. The Interval tolled again
as they walked clear the last of the obscuring tents, near enough for its full
resonance to press against their ears and chests, yet still somewhere unseen.
The outer panels of the Umbilicus had been stitched with elaborate
representations of the Circumfixion embroidered in gold across the great skirts
of black: a nude man hanging upside down, his wrists and ankles bound to an
iron ring. For the first time, Sorweel realized how innocuous and commonplace
the symbol now seemed. It had fairly hummed with wickedness and revulsion
before Sakarpus's fall...

Hundreds of shining figures
populated the intervening pasture, crowds of them, threaded with slow-moving
files that converged on an entrance in the southern quarter of the Umbilicus:
the senior caste-nobility of the New Empire, filling the air with the sound of
low laughter and concentrated discussion. Sorweel's instinct was to hesitate,
to ponder and enumerate the strangers about to encompass them, but Eskeles
forged ahead without a second glance. Within a dozen paces it seemed Sorweel
had walked the Three Seas end to end. Glimpses became nations. A painted
Nilnameshi Satrap comparing blades with a long-bearded Tydonni Earl. A
doddering mage leaning hard on the shoulder of a boy-slave. Green-and-gold-clad
Guards of the Hundred Pillars standing shoulder to shoulder in triangular
threes. Two long-limbed Thunyeri staring off in the distance as they talked. A
Conriyan Palatine in full martial regalia.

Sorweel found himself running
nervous palms over the padded fabric of his royal parm, fearing that he looked
as backward and as outlandish as he felt. He envied Zsoronga and the thoughtless
confidence of his stride. The Successor-Prince walked as a man should, as
though what set him apart also set him
above
. But it was more than his
bearing: The glory of his Zeümi heritage shouted from his garb and
accoutrements, down to the jaguar-skin kilt he wore over his leggings.
Sorweel's road-stained parm communicated far more humiliating facts: ignorance,
poverty, crude manners, and foolish conceits.

The crowds bullied Sorweel with
their shuffling proximity. He was accustomed to the company of physically
powerful men: His father's Boonsmen had raised him as much as his father. But
the strangeness of faraway lands and customs soaked the Lords of the Ordeal in
menace. He saw knife strokes in the oddities of their affected manner,
condemnation in the gold-threaded complexity of their dress. He heard insult
and affront in their incomprehensible tongues.

He tried, as men so often do, to
rally his pride with a kind of defensive contempt. Why, he told himself, should
he fear these men when they could not even
speak
? They were no better
than animals, the Galeoth harking like dogs, the Nansur thrumming like
swallows, and the Nilnameshi cackling like geese.

But he knew these thoughts for
what they were: the shallow posturings of a boy. He could feel it in the way
his eyes flinched from the glare of others, in the empty bubbles that crept
through his bones.

Stone-faced Pillarian Guards
flanked the entrance, freighted with splinted mail and various arms. In the
press, Sorweel almost stumbled into one of them. Powerful hands clamped his
shoulders, a dark face sneered a thumb's length from his own, and a memory of
Narsheidel dragging him through Sakarpas on the day of its fall shuddered
through him. A jostling moment passed, and he found himself in the shadowy
confines of the Umbilicus.

For a moment he simply stood
gaping, his shoulders yanked this way and that as the Men of the Circumfix
shoved past him. He heard several muttered curses, the Sheyic phrase for
Shit-herder among them.

He was a plainsman, accustomed
to camps on the Pale, and yet never had he stood in a tent so colossal. It was
bigger than Vogga Hall, and far more luxurious, despite being a temporary
structure of wood, hemp, and leather. The interior was cool, and the rumble of
voices possessed an outdoor air. Shining silk banners ribboned the open spaces,
swaying in unseen drafts, each incorporating the Tusk, the Circumfix, and the
devices of innumerable nations and factions. A wooden amphitheatre had been
raised about the outer walls, a horseshoe of rising tiers that were already
teaming with various Lords of the Ordeal. A long table formed of many small
camp tables occupied the broad space between, packed with obviously important
personages, some with their chairs pulled close, others with their chairs
pushed back or turned to follow some conversation. Two massive carpets covered
the intervening expanses to either side, each with brocaded panels depicting
various events: desert marches, walls assailed and defended, burning city
heights. It was only when he saw the naked man bound to a Circumfix amid masses
of starved warriors did Sorweel realize that the panels told the story of the
First Holy War, the great Three Seas bloodletting that had made the New Empire
and the Great Ordeal possible. Eskeles had already backtracked to fetch him by
this time, so the young King was forced to scan the rest of the pictorial
narrative while in the Schoolman's tow.

Rumbling commotion surrounded
them as Sorweel took his seat between Zsoronga and Eskeles. "I have always
wanted this," the rotund sorcerer said. "We see such sights in our
Dreams, things you could scarce imagine. But to witness such glory with
living
eyes
, my King! I hope the day comes when you can fathom your fortune.
Despite all the pain, all the wrenching loss, there is no greater glory than a
complicated life."

Sorweel feigned distraction,
once again troubled by the way parts of his soul always rose in seditious
agreement with the sorcerer's words—the leuneraal's words. He glanced at
Zsoronga, searching for encouragement in his imperturbable pride, but the Zeümi
Prince simply gazed out, his expression as empty and as guarded as Sorweel's
own. The look of a boy striving to pass unnoticed in the company of men.

Zsoronga could feel it as well,
Sorweel realized. There was something in the air... something beyond the
visible signs of warlike nobility, something that hung like a nimbus about
outward observances. A kind of
knowledge
.

Sorweel twitched for the force
of the realization when it came to him, as if some inner tendon had been
plucked. Despite the differences in garb and armament, despite the differences
in tongue, custom, and skin, something singular and implacable encompassed
these men, defined them to their unguessed core.

Belief.

Here was belief, rendered
sensuous for its intensity, made palpable in lilting voices and shining eyes.

Sorweel had known he marched in
the company of fanatics, but until now he had never... touched it. The fever of
jubilation. The lunacy of eyes that witnessed without seeing. The smell of
commitment, absolute and encompassing. The Men of the Circumfix were capable of
anything
, he realized. They would weary, but they would not pause. They
would fear, but they would not flee. Any atrocity, any sacrifice—nothing lay
outside the compass of their possibility. They could burn cities, drown sons,
slaughter innocents; they could even, as Zsoronga's story about the suicides proved,
cut their own throats
. Through their faith they had outrun their every
scruple, animal or otherwise, and they gloried in the stink of it—in the
numbing smell of losing oneself in the mastery of another.

The Aspect-Emperor.

But how? How could any one man
command such mad extremes in men? Zsoronga had said that it was a matter of
intellect, that Men were little more than children in the presence of the
Anasûrimbor—this was what Drusas Achamian, the Wizard-Exile, had claimed.

But who could be such a fool?
And short of heaven how could such an intellect be? Eskeles had claimed that
his soul was the God's soul in small, that divinity was the cipher. If a man
were to think
the thoughts of a god
, would not Men be as children before
him?

What if the world really was
about to end?

Through the course of his
ruminations, Sorweel's gaze had waded across the pavilion's chaotic interior,
insensible to the sights they chanced upon. He found himself staring at the
grand black-and-gold tapestry that dominated the far wall, reaching to the
pavilion's highest recesses. At first his eyes rebelled—something about the
brocaded patterns defeated his ability to focus. Absent scrutiny, it had seemed
to consist of abstract geometric designs, not so different from the Kianene rugs
his father had hung in their chambers. But now, each shape he glimpsed, or
thought he glimpsed, found itself undone by the natural play of eyes discerning
figures. At every turn, the lines, be they ruler straight or twined into
curlicues, betrayed the representations they seemed to constitute. Everything
was yanked short of sense, held in a kind of puzzling in-between. And when he
averted his gaze, looked through the sideways lense of his periphery, the
almost-figures appeared to resolve into patterned strings, as though they were
unreadable sigils of some kind...

Sorcerous, he realized with a
shudder of dread. The tapestry was sorcerous.

Raised on a low dais, the Great
Ordeal's twin Exalt-Generals sat to either side of the towering arras, their
seats turned so they faced both the long table and the rising crowd of
caste-nobles. Of the two, King Proyas seemed the more refined, not for any
nicety of his garb or ornament, but because of the austerity of his demeanour.
Where he looked out over the bustling tiers with stern curiosity, nodding and
smiling at those who caught his gaze, the King of Eumarna fairly glared. There
was piety and confidence in King Saubon's look, to be sure, but there was a
miserly, embittered air as well, as if he had won his stature at too great a
cost and so continually found himself returning to the scales, seeking to weigh
what he had lost.

Several Schoolmen sat at the
table below them: an old bearded man wearing robes similar to Eskeles, only
trimmed in gold; a Nilnameshi with ringed nostrils and tattooed cheeks; a
stately silver-haired man dressed in voluminous black; and an ancient blind man,
whose skin seemed as translucent as sausage rind. "The Grandmasters of the
Major Schools," Eskeles explained, obviously watching his wandering gaze.
Sorweel had guessed as much; what surprised him was the sight of Anasûrimbor
Serwa in their midst, wearing a plain white gown that seemed all the more
alluring for its high-necked modesty. Young—implausibly so. Flaxen hair drawn
back in a braid that began in the small of her back. The incongruity of her
presence would have looked absurd had she not so obviously carried the
otherworldly stamp of her father's blood.

"Striking, no?" the
Mandate Schoolman continued in a lowered voice. "The Aspect-Emperor's
daughter, and Grandmistress of the Swayal Compact. Serwa, the Ladywitch
herself."

"A witch..." Sorweel
murmured. In Sakarpic, the word for witch was synonymous with many things, all
of them wicked. That it could be applied to someone so exquisite in form and
feature struck him as yet another Three Seas obscenity. Nevertheless, he found
his gaze lingering for the wrong reasons. The word seemed to pry her open
somehow, make her image wanton with tugging promise.

"Ware her, my King,"
Eskeles said with a soft laugh. "She walks with the Gods."

This was an old saying from the
legend of Suberd, the legendary King who tried to seduce Aelswë, the mortal
daughter of Gilgaöl, and so doomed his line forever. The fact that the
Schoolman could quote the ancient Sakarpi tale simply reminded Sorweel that he
had been a spy—and remained one still.

Serwa's older brothers, Kayûtas
and Moënghus, sat on the opposite side of the long table, with a dozen other
Southron generals that Sorweel did not recognize. As before he was struck by
the difference between the two brothers, the one slender and fair, the other
broad and dark. Zsoronga had told him the rumour: that Moënghus was not a true
Anasûrimbor at all, but rather the child of the Aspect-Emperor's first
wife—Serwa's namesake, the one who had been hung with the Anasûrimbor on the
Circumfix—and a Scylvendi wayfarer.

At first this struck Sorweel as
almost laughably obvious. When the seed was strong, women were but vessels;
they bore only what men planted in them. If a boy-child was born white-skinned,
then his or her father was white-skinned, and so on, down to all the particularities
of form and pigment. The Anasûrimbor simply couldn't be Moënghus's true father,
and that was that. It had been a revelation of sorts to realize the Men of the
Circumfix, without exception, overlooked this plain fact. Eskeles even referred
to Moënghus as a "True Son of the Anasûrimbor" forcefully, as though
the wilful application of a word could undo what the world had wrought.