Part 22 (1/2)

She wept and she whispered, ”Akka.” ”Akka.” For she was his world, and all lay in ruin. For she was his world, and all lay in ruin.

Akka. Akka, please ...

According to Nonman legend, the falling of the Incu-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-Skies, had cracked the world's mantle, striking wedges into the endless dark. Seswatha now knew this legend to be true.

With Nau-Cayuti at his side, Achamian crouched in the darkness, peering across the yawning fall before them. For days they had groped through the black, too terrified to dare any light. At times it seemed they climbed through blackened lungs, so choked and mult.i.tudinous were the tunnels. Their elbows bled from crawling on their bellies.

During the years of the Great Invest.i.ture, the Sranc had burrowed out from Golgotterath far beneath the armies camped across the surrounding plains. When the siege was broken, the Consult had forgotten the mines, thinking themselves invincible. And why would they not? The Ordeal, the holy war called by Anasurimbor Celmomas against Golgotterath, had dissolved in acrimony and cannibal pride. And the unholy advent was near. So very near ...

Who would dare what Seswatha and the High King's youngest son now dared?

Please wake up.

”What is it?” Nau-Cayuti murmured. ”A postern of some kind?”

Lying p.r.o.ne, they stared over the lip of an upturned ledge, across what could only be a mighty chasm. Entire mountains seemed to hang about them, cliff from towering cliff, plummet from plummet, dropping down into blackness, reaching up to pinch a great curved plane of gold. It loomed above them, impossibly immense, wrought with never-ending strings of text and panels, each as broad as a war galley's sail, engraved with alien figures warring in relief. The lights from below cast a gleaming filigree across its expanse.

They looked upon the dread Ark itself, Seswatha knew, rammed deep into the sockets of the earth. They had reached the deepest pits of Golgotterath.

Below their vantage, across some hundred lengths of cavernous s.p.a.ce, there was a door set perpendicular to the fall. Stonework had been raised beneath it, a platform with two immense braziers whose fires had blackened the Ark's surface where it bowed above them. A network of landings and stairs twined into the black obscurity below. Partially screened by curtains of fire, several Sranc reclined and rutted on the gate's threshold. Yammering squeals rang through the emptiness.

Akka ...

”What should we do?” Seswatha whispered. The exercise of sorcery couldn't be risked, not here, where the slightest bruise would be sure to draw the Mangaecca. His mere presence was fatal.

With characteristic decisiveness, Nau-Cayuti had already started stripping his bronze armour. Achamian watched the profile of his face, struck by the contrast between his pitch-blackened skin and the blond of his thickening beard. There was determination in his eyes, but it was born of desperation, not the zest and confidence that had made him such a miraculous leader of men.

Achamian turned away, unable to bear the falsehoods he had told him. ”This is madness,” he murmured.

”But she's here here!” the warrior hissed. ”You said yourself!”

Wearing only his hide kilt, Nau-Cayuti stood and ran his hands across the immediate stone faces. Then, clutching thin lips of rock, he hauled himself over the abyss. His heart in his throat, Seswatha watched him edge out across the gaping s.p.a.ces, his back and calves s.h.i.+ning with exertion and sweat.

Something-a shadow-above him.

Akka, you're dreaming ... dreaming ...

A spark of light, frail and glaring.

”Please ...”

At first she seemed an apparition before him, a glowing mist suspended in void, but as he blinked, he saw her lines drawn off into darkness, the lantern illuminating her oval face.

”Esmi,” he croaked.

She knelt beside his bed, leaning over him. His thoughts reeled. What was the time? Why hadn't his Wards awakened him? The horror of Golgotterath still tingled through his sweaty limbs. She had been crying, he could see that. He raised his hands, sheepish with slumber, but she pulled away from his instinctive embrace.

He remembered Kellhus.

”Esmi?” Then, softer, ”What is it?”

”I...I just need you to know ...

Suddenly his throat ached. He glimpsed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like smoke beneath the sheer fabric of her s.h.i.+ft. ”What?”

Her face crumpled, then recomposed. ”That you are strong.”

She fled, and once again all was dark and absolute.

It flew at night, wary of the ground below. It beat its way higher, and higher, until the air became needles, and tears fractured the million-starred void. Then it coasted, wings wide and scooping.

Urgency did not come easily to such an ancient intellect.

It pondered in the manner of its race, though its thought balked at the limits of its Synthese frame. Millennia had pa.s.sed since last it had warred across such a benjuka plate. The Mandate vindicated. Their children discovered, dragged into the light. The Holy War reborn as an instrument of unknown machinations ...

That vermin could be so cunning! Mad the Scylvendi might be, but the testimony of events could not be denied. These Dunyain ...

The rus.h.i.+ng air had grown warm, and the ground rose as though upon a swell. Trees and bracken sunned their backs beneath the cold moon. Slopes pitched and dropped. Streams roped along dark and stony courses. The Synthese wound over and through the shadowy landscape, unto the ends of Enathpaneah.

Golgotterath would not be pleased with this new disposition of pieces. But the rules had had changed ... changed ...

There were those who preferred clarity.

CHAPTER NINE.

JOKTHA.

In the skins of elk I pa.s.s I pa.s.s over gra.s.ses. Rain falls, and over gra.s.ses. Rain falls, and I cleanse I cleanse my face in the sky. my face in the sky. I hear I hear the Horse Prayers spoken, but my lips are far away. the Horse Prayers spoken, but my lips are far away. I slip I slip down weed and still twig-into their palms down weed and still twig-into their palms I pool. I pool. Then I am called out and am among them. In sorrow, Then I am called out and am among them. In sorrow, I rejoice. I rejoice.Pale endless life. This, I call I call my own. my own.

-ANONYMOUS, THE NONMAN CANTICLES

Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Joktha