R. Bakker - The Judging eye

In the endless reveries between beddings, she would sort through everything she could remember, all the lore, inchoate and humbling, that a citizen affixes to the subject of their sovereign. And in her soul's eye she would see him, Ikurei Xerius III, sitting in this very place.

How could it be possible?

Once, quite on a whim, she had shown Samarmas a silver kellic. "Do you know," she had asked, pointing to the apparition of her own profile across its face, "who that is?" He had a way of opening his mouth when astounded, as though trying to shape his lips about a nail. It was at once comical-and heartbreaking in that it so clearly betrayed his idiocy.

My son! she silently cried. Picking wounds had become her path of least resistance, the one effortless thing. But there was no escaping the clamour of her responsibilities, the motions she had to force against the grain of what should be overwhelming grief. She had no choice but to have faith in her painted face.

"But you've heard more," she asked in a hard and steady voice-a voice proper to the Empress of the Three Seas. "Haven't you?"

"More. More," Sharacinth muttered. "Of course, I've heard more. When does one not always hear more? Rumours are like locusts or slaves or rats. They breed indiscriminately."

They had known she was a prideful woman. It was the whole reason for summoning the bitch here: Maithanet had hoped the dimensions and reputation of her surroundings would be enough to mellow her hubris into something more malleable, something they could shape to their own purposes.

Apparently not.

"Matriarch, you would do well to recollect the stakes of our conversation."

A sneer-an open sneer! And for the first time, Esmenet glimpsed it, the look that is the terror of all those who command positions of power: the look that says, You are temporary, no more a passing affliction. Suddenly she understood the staged calculation behind her throne and its position above the auditory floor. With one look, it seemed, the old woman had thrown it all into stark relief: the truth behind the hierarchy of disparate souls. Recognition, Esmenet realized. Power came down to recognition.

It was all naked force otherwise.

"Matriarch!" Maithanet boomed, drawing into his voice and aspect all the magisterial authority of the Thousand Temples.

Sharacinth opened her mouth in retort-not even the Shriah could cow her, it seemed. But whatever breath she possessed was sucked from her lungs…

Instead she wheezed and stumbled back, raised a hand against the sudden, immolating light that had sparked into existence above the floor before her. It danced and spiked outward, so brilliant it rendered everything dim. Crazed shadows swung from her ankles across the far corners of the Auditory. The point grew and sparkled, chattered with incandescences that possessed intensities beyond the gaze's conception…

Esmenet lowered her forearm, blinked at scalded eyes.

There he stood, tall, magnificent and otherworldly, exactly as she remembered him. A white silk tunic fell loose over his armour, embroidered in countless crimson tusks, each the length of a thorn. His beard was braided gold, his mane was long and free-flowing. The two demon heads hung bound to his right hip, mouthing curses without breath… There was a mad density to his aspect, a hoarding of reality that denied the world the sharpness of its edges and the substance of its weight.

It seemed the earth should groan beneath his feet. Her husband…

The Aspect-Emperor.

Sharacinth stood like a shipwreck survivor leaning to the memory of tossed seas. Two paces behind her and to the right, Maithanet lay supine across the shining floor. The Shriah of the Thousand Temples kneeling.

Esmenet knew enough not to watch Kellhus assume the Mantle to her right. Confidence, which in all complicated situations is nothing more than the pretence of premeditation, is ever the outward marker of power. There could be no appearance of improvisation.

"Hanamem Sharacinth," he said, his voice at once mild and permeated with the tones of imminent murder, "do you think you merit standing in my presence?"

The Matriach nearly fell over trying to throw herself to the floor. "N-no!" she sobbed in old woman terror. "M-Most Glorious… Pluh-please-"

"Will you," he interrupted, "take steps to assure that this sedition against me, this blasphemy, comes to an end?"

"Y-yesssh!" she wailed to the floor. She even hooked her fingers behind her head.

"For, make no mistake, I shall war against you and yours." The grinding savagery of his voice swallowed the entirety of the hall, battered the ear like fists. "Your deeds I shall strike from the stones. Your temples I shall turn into funeral pyres. And those that still dare take up breath or arms against me, I shall hunt, unto death and beyond! And my Sister, whom you worship, shall lament in the dark, her memory no more than a dream of destruction. Men shall spit to cleanse their mouths of her name!"

The old woman shook, arched her back as if gagging in terror.

"Do you understand what I say, Sharacinth?"

"Yessssh!"

"Then this is what you shall do. You shall heed your Empress and your Shriah. You shall put an end to the ignoble sham that is your office. You shall make claim to the truth of your station. You shall make war upon the wickedness within your own temple-you shall cleanse the filth from your own altar!"

Somewhere beyond the vaulted ceiling, a cloud engulfed the sun, and everything dimmed save the old woman writhing upon her reflection. Kellhus leaned forward, and it seemed all the world leaned with him, that the pillars themselves tilted, hanging above the Matriach, shivering in catastrophic outrage.

"And you shall hunt this witch you call your mistress, Psatma Nannaferi! You shall put an end to the sacrilege that is your Mother-Supreme!"

Her face averted, her elbows to the floor, she shook two white-palmed hands out in warding.

"No-noooo! Pluh-pluh-pleeeeese-"

" Sharacinth !" The name crashed through the Hall, boomed through its arched recesses. " Would you offend me in my own house ?"

The Matriarch shrieked something inarticulate. A puddle of urine spread about her knees.

Then, as though exhaling a pent breath, the world resumed its natural lines and proportions. The unseen cloud passed from the unseen sun, and indirect light once again showered blue upon the dais.

"Taste your breath," Kellhus said as he stood. He stepped out to loom patient and fatherly over the woman blinking up at him from the base of the steps. "Taste it, Sharacinth, for it is the mark of my mercy. Fight the inclination of your heart, conquer your weakness for pride, for spite. Do not make humiliation of truth. I know you can feel it, the promise of release, the bone-shuddering release. Turn from the shrill poison of your conceit, from the hooked fists and knuckled teeth, from the rod of cold iron that holds you rigid when you should sleep. Turn from these things and embrace the truth of the life-the life! — that I offer you."

Esmenet had heard these words so many times they should have seemed more a recitation than something meant, an incantation that never failed to undo the knots of pride that so bound men. And yet each time, she found herself sinking through the surface, floating utterly submerged. Each time, she heard them for the first time, and she was frightened and renewed.

Over the years, her husband had ceased being many things to Esmenet. But he was a miracle still.

The Matriarch of the Cult of Yatwer wept as a child might, snuffling and mumbling, "F-f-forgive… F-f-forgive meeeee…" Over and over.

"Comfort her," Kellhus said to his half-brother. Nodding in obeisance, Maithanet stood and crouched at the wailing woman's side.