R. Bakker - The Judging eye

"Tir hoila ishrahoi," the Erratic was saying, his eyes and forehead covered by a long-fingered hand-the Nonman gesture of homage. There could be no doubt he spoke to the statue, rather than prayed to something beyond.

"Coi ri pirith mutoi'on…"

Achamian paused and, for reasons he did not understand, started translating, speaking in a low murmur. Compared to the harmonic resonances of Cleric, his voice sounded as coarse as yarn.

"You, soul of splendour, whose arm hath slain thousands…"

"Tir miyil oitossi, kun ri mursal arilil hi… Tir…"

"You, eye of wrath, whose words hath cracked mountains… You…"

"Tirsa hir'gingall vo'is?"

"Where is your judgment now?"

The Nonman began laughing in his mad, chin-to-breast way. He looked to Achamian, smiled his inscrutable white-lipped smile. He leaned his head as though against some swinging weight. "Where is it, eh, Wizard?" he said in the mocking way he often replied to Sarl's jokes. His features gleamed like hand-worn soapstone.

"Where does all the judgment go?"

Then without warning, Cleric turned to forge alone into the black, drawing his spectral light like a wall-brushing gown. Achamian gazed after him, more astounded than mystified. For the first time, it seemed, he had seen Cleric for what he was… Not simply a survivor of this ruin, but of a piece with it.

A second labyrinth.

Mimara stepped into the Nonman's place, apparently to better peer at the statue. Their water-skins filled, the scalpers had begun filing past them, their looks unreadable. Mimara seemed so small and beautiful in the shadow of their warlike statue that Achamian found himself standing as though to shield her.

"Who is it?" she asked.

The underworld cataract thundered up through the surrounding stone.

"The greatest of the Nonman Kings," Achamian replied, reaching out two fingers to touch the cold stone face. It was strange, the heedless way that statues stared and stared, their eyes bound to the panoply of dead ages. "Cu'jara Cinmoi… the Lord of Siцl, who led the Nine Mansions against the Inchoroi."

"How can you tell?" she asked, cocking her head the same as her mother. "They all look the same… Exactly the same."

"Not to each other…" He sketched a line through the mould across the Nonman King's polished cheek.

"But how can you tell?"

"Because it's written, carved into the rim of the throne…"

He drew back his fingers, pinched the silken residue between them.

"Come," the Wizard said, deliberately cutting off her next question. When she persisted, he snapped, "Leave an old man to think!"

They had palmed their lives, as the Conriyans were fond of saying. They had palmed them and given them to a Nonman-to an Erratic… To someone who was not only insane, but literally addicted to trauma and suffering. Incariol… Who was he? And more importantly, what would he do to remember?

Kuss voti lura gaial, the High Norsirai would say of their Nonmen allies during the First Apocalypse. "Trust only the thieves among them." The more honourable the Nonman, the more likely he was to betray-such was the perversity of their curse. Achamian had read accounts of Nonmen murdering their brothers, their sons, not out of spite, but because their love was so great. In a world of smoke, where the years tumbled into oblivion, acts of betrayal were like anchors; only anguish could return their life to them.

The present, the now that Men understood, the one firmly fixed at the fore of what was remembered, no longer existed for the Nonmen. They could find its semblance only in the blood and screams of loved ones.

Beyond the Cujaran Shrine they descended into a maze of desolate habitations. The darkness became liquid, it seemed so deep, and their light became the only air. Walls reared into visibility as though squeezed of ink. Doorway after doorway gaped to either side of them, revealing lanes of interior floor, featureless for the dust, swinging in counterpoise to their sorcerous lights. Stairwells climbed into rubble. Stone faces watched with callous immobility.

Eventually they came to a subterranean thoroughfare, one of several that wound along natural occlusions in Aenaratiol's heart. Seswatha had walked these, two thousand years previous, and Achamian found himself mourning the wrack and ruin. This was where the Ishroi had stacked their palaces, street upon street, climbing the sides of each fissure. Enormous pitch lanterns had burned in the open spaces, suspended in webs of chain. Gold and silver foils had skinned the fluted walls. Fountains had flowed, their waters like ropes of refracted fire.

Now all was dust and dark. For the first time, it seemed to Achamian, the company grasped the dread scale of their undertaking. It was one thing to crowd halls hunched against the mountain above them, it was quite another to file through hollows as vast as this, a thread of light and furtive movement. Where before the dark had enclosed them, now it exposed… Anything, it seemed, might descend upon them.

They made camp next to the wreckage of a collapsed lantern wheel. Bronze bars curved like ribs, reaching as high as small trees. A massive three-faced head had crashed from some unseen perch above, forming a barricade of sorts not so far away. The more daring scalpers explored the doorways and passages along the short section of street between, but only as far as the white light would take them. The rest broke into tired clots, making seats of the debris or simply sitting upon the powdered floor. Some could do no more than ponder their shadows.

Achamian found himself with Galian and Pokwas. All the Skin Eaters were sleeping in their armour by this point. Galian wore a hauberk of crude-ringed Galeoth mail, like many others, only belted and cinched in the Imperial fashion. Pokwas wore a shirt of fine Zeьmi steel, which had been patched on his right arm and left abdomen with sections of cruder Galeoth links. Over this, across his collar and shoulders, he wore the traditional Sword-Dancer halter, but the plates were too waxy to reflect much more than lines of white and dark. The silvering had been scrubbed away long ago.

From the rehearsed character of their questions, Achamian could tell they had decided to corner him sometime earlier. They wanted to know about dragons, particularly the possibility that one might reside in the vast galleries beneath their feet. The old Wizard wasn't surprised: Ever since Kiampas's outburst at the Obsidian Gate, he had overheard the word "dragon" or its Galeoth cognate, "huцrka," at least a dozen times.

"Men have little to fear from dragons," he explained. "Without the will of the No-God, they are lazy, selfish creatures. We Men are too much trouble for them. Kill one of us today, and tomorrow you have a thousand hounding you."

"So there are dragons out there?" Galian asked. The former Imperial Columnary was the nimble sort, like Sarl, perhaps, only tempered with Nansur sensibility. Where the sergeant perpetually squinted, Galian's eyes were clear, even if they promised to frost at the slightest provocation. Pokwas, on the other hand, possessed that warm-hearted confidence that seemed to belong exclusively to men with quick wits and big hands. Unlike Galian, he was someone you only had to befriend once.

"Certainly," Achamian replied. "Many Wracu survived the First Apocalypse, and they're as immortal as the Nonmen… But like I said, they avoid Men."

"And if," Galian pressed, "we were to wander into one's lair…"

The Wizard shrugged. "It would simply wait for us to leave, if it sensed any strength in us at all."

"Even if-?"

"He's saying they're not like wild animals," Pokwas interrupted. "Bears or wolves would attack because they don't know better. But dragons know… Isn't that right?"

"Yes. Dragons know."