R. Bakker: The Judging eye

He heard the crack of firing ballistae, but with the wet, the Chorae-tipped bolts sank far short of the hanging spectre. Shouts and curses erupted all along the wall. Then he heard the words, words remembered but not understood, making haze of pools and puddles, stinging skin and making teeth ache.

Sorcery.

Silver lines appeared about the figure's outstretched hands, began scrolling into emptiness…

Incandescent geometries, a sun-bright filigree, scaling the rain to the dark-bellied clouds. And a hiss like no other, like the millennial pounding of the surf condensed into the span of heartbeats. Out and out the lines reached, making glory of the sky, a glittering canopy that reached over the walls and across the city. Ghoulish reflections rolled and glimmered across every sword and shield.

"He makes mist," Sorweel murmured to no one. "He blinds us!"

Southron voices, roaring thousands of them, unitary and ecstatic. Hymns-they were singing hymns! The towers continued their relentless approach, driven by trains of bent-back thousands. Someone had to do something! Why was no one doing anything?

Then his father was before him, grasping him by the arms. "Go to the Citadel," he said, his expression strange. The light of the Aspect-Emperor glittered in his eyes, rimmed the lines of his nose and cheek in blue. "It was a mistake bringing you to the walls."

"What do you mean? Father, how cou-"

"Go!"

Sorweel could feel the corners of his face waver and crumple.

"Father-Father! My bones are your bones!"

Harweel raised his hand to Sorweel's cheek. "Which is why you must go. Please, Sorwa. Sakarpus stands at the ends of the world. We are the last outpost of Men! He needs this city! He needs our people! That means he needs you, Sorwa! You!"

The Prince looked down, cowed by his father's fury and desperation. "No, Father," he mumbled, suddenly feeling twig-thin-far younger than his sixteen years. "I won't leave you…" When he looked up, cool rain flooded the hot of his tears. "I won't leave you!"

His voice hung raw and shrill, defiance yanked to the sinew. Then the song of the invaders swelled, the throats of the joyous thousands come to burn, to kill.

His father's blow took him in the jaw, sent him skidding into the men behind him, then to his hands and knees onto the wet stone. "Don't shame me with your impertinence, boy!" He turned to one of his High Boonsmen. "Narsheidel! Take him to the Citadel! See that no harm comes to him! He will be our final swordstroke! Our vengeance!"

Without a word Narsheidel hoisted him to his feet by the scruff of his mail harness, began dragging him through the assembled warriors. Pulled backward, Sorweel watched them close ranks in his wake, saw their looks of pity. "Nooo!" he howled, tasting clean cold water on his tongue. Across sodden shoulders and glistening shield-rims, he glimpsed his father staring back at him, his eyes as blue and crisp as the summer sky. For one inscrutable heartbeat, his father's look pierced him. Sorweel saw him turn just as the wall of fog encompassed the parapets.

"Nooooooo!"

The clamour of arms descended upon the world.

He tried to struggle, but Narsheidel was indomitable, an iron shadow that scarcely bent to his thrashing. Through the dark spiral of the tower stair, it seemed all he could see were his father's eyes, loving eyes, judging eyes, regretting a heavy hand, celebrating a tickling laugh, and watching, always watching, to be sure his second heart beat warm and safe. And if he looked close, if he dared peer at those eyes the way he might gems, he knew he would see himself, not as he was, but mirrored across the shining curve of a father's pride, a father's hope that he might live with greater grace through the fact of a son.

Thunder shivered about them, cracking ancient mortar, loosing showers of grit from the low-vaulted ceilings. Narsheidel was shouting, something, something taut with more than fear. A warrior already mourning.

Then they were past the iron door, skidding on stones in the Gate's monumental shadow. Rearing horses. Warriors running through fog, their white shields across their backs. The foundations of buildings that vanished into grey. The void of ancient streets opening between them.

And a solitary figure in the midst of the confusion, crouched like a beggar, only clothed in too much shadow…

And with eyes that blinked light.

Crying out, Narsheidel hauled him down to the hard wet stone.

Diagrams of burning white, making smoke of the rain. The great bronze plates of the Herder's Gate flashed with sun-brilliance, then fell away, bent like woodchips, twirling like flotsam in a stream.

Shouting, always shouting, Narsheidel pulled him to his feet, yanked him to a run.

He saw the beggar become someone priestly and luminescent, then vanish in a twinkle. He saw his countrymen rally to stem the breach. He saw tall Droettal and his company of Gilgallic Priests roaring as the tide of dark-faced outlanders engulfed them. He saw the Eithmen, whipping their caparisoned chargers through panick-packed streets. He saw gutters rushing with pink and crimson waters. He saw one of the siege towers lurching above the crest of the walls, the ghosts of dragonheads rising from slots in its metallic hide. He saw ropes of men, Longshields and Horselords alike, vanish screaming in roiling light.

Again and again, he threw himself against Narsheidel's strength, sobbing, raving, but the High Boonsman was unconquerable, driving him ever forward, bellowing at the madness to make way. And through it all, he saw his father's summer-blue eyes, beseeching…

Please, Sorwa…

They ran down labyrinthine alleyways, through endless curtains of rain. Behind them, the shouts and screams multiplied into a senseless white roar, punctuated only by braying horns and the inside-out mutter of sorcery.

The winding streets were so deep they couldn't see the black-walled Citadel until they were almost upon it, hunched against the sky above them, its rounded towers no taller than the soaring walls. Weeds hung from the joints of its sloped and fluted base. Its northern quarters, where the ancient Sakarpi Kings had once resided, hung in ruin, windows like eye sockets revealing the gutted hollows within. They reeled toward it. The ramparts climbed to encompass a greater part of the sky. Sorweel glimpsed a star flaring high above the black-stone rim, as bright as the Nail of Heaven-only beneath the clouds. The light made diamonds of the falling rain.

Even Narsheidel stumbled in terror, face held up, pressing Sorweel before him. "Quick, boy, quick!" Then they were through the vault doors, sheltered in deep sockets of black stone. Guards and ashen-faced attendants flocked to them. Sorweel found himself staggering in circles, fending away their fussing hands. "The King?" an old retainer cried. "What has become of the King?"

"There must be a way!" Narsheidel was shouting at some mail-armoured steward. "This place must have secrets! Everything old has secrets!"

Then Sorweel was being hustled up tight-winding stairs, through hot, wood-panelled corridors, across low-ceilinged rooms, some too bright, others too dim. Turning-crossing-climbing. Everything, tapestries, batteries of candles, chapped walls, seemed to swim in his periphery.

What was happening?

"No!" Sorweel cried, shaking away ushering hands like a lunatic dog. "Stop this! Stop!"

They stood in some kind of antechamber, with a hemispherical wall that found its apex in a bricked-in passageway. Narsheidel and two others-an aging Longshield and Baron Denthuel, the one-legged Horselord assigned to command the Citadel-stood back, their hands out, their faces wary or placating or worried or pleading or…

"Where's my father?" he cried.

Only Narsheidel, his soaked armour shining silver and black in the uncertain light, dared speak.