The Canted Horn reared on an ethereal scale behind the collapse—no less than a dozen souls were trampled for gawking at its heights. Gwegiruh hunched stubborn to their left, hulking works beneath a tempest of scything lights—the ministry of the Nuns. Mighty Domathuz beyond cracked even as they ran, sloughed its eastward walls—revealing stacked floors that crawled as a broken beehive, a glimpse of a thousand inhuman throes, before all dropped howling into the smoke and ruin below.
The Sons of Kyraneas loosed their own booming cheer, and the Men of Nansur and Shigek, Enathpaneah, Amoteu and Eumarna raced out across foul Ûgorrior …
The Gatehouse of Ûbil Maw alone remained standing. Half the height and twice the girth as Corrunc or Domathuz, evil Gwergiruh was simply too sturdy to collapse of its weight. Their billows twining into golden ligature, the Swayali were forced to pummel and to rend, to obliterate the ancient structure by degrees. They hung like fey swans about the monumental edifices, clawing at the bastion’s innards with geometries of light—the Third and Seventh Quyan Theorems, the Noviratic Warspike, and the High Titirgic Axiom. They scourged the scratching heights, blasted the smoking bowels, slicked the debris with violet ruin. Behind them, the battlehorns sounded, and the Middlenorthmen let out a mighty shout, the warcries of violent and gloomy nations, then charged in a single mass of 30,000 souls, the Sons of Galeoth and Cepalor, Thunyerus and Ce Tydonn, come to avenge their ancient kin …
The Ursranc upon the islands of intact wall screeched in terror, howled in lament. Lights erupted between the gold-fanged battlements.
And so the Great Ordeal accomplished what no other Mannish host could. The Extrinsic Gate was cast down in smoking ruin. For the first time in history, the belly of Golgotterath lay exposed to the licentious fury of Men.
The Umbilicus was entirely abandoned, but the old Wizard had already guessed as much. It was the emptiness of the encampment that terrified him, the sight of the slovenly precincts reaching out and out, a worn mosaic devoid of any sign of activity or life …
They were alone—stranded on the rim of Shigogli, no less!
But the Whore afforded him no more than heartbeats to ponder the consequences, for beyond the encampment, beyond the desolate tracts of the Furnace Plain, lay Golgotterath.
And it seemed he had heard it all along, the chorus of hundreds of Schoolmen singing.
Breathless, he gazed. He could see the Great Ordeal entire, massed in three great squares before a vast smear of smoke or dust. He could see the flicker of arcane lights, like discharges of lightning buried within a distant thunderhead only many-coloured: white, blue, and vermillion. Then he saw Corrunc stumble, tip and slump into smoke and oblivion …
Corrunc! Foul, murderous, and so tragically stubborn! The Eater-of-Sons destroyed!
The fraction of his soul that was Seswatha cried out for joy and terror, for it seemed impossible that he should witness something so hated, so unconquerable, overthrown. For it was he, Seswatha, who had convinced Celmomas to raise arms against the Consult, to dash the lives of noble thousands against its remorseless walls. It was he who had commanded the Sohonc to dare the Chorae Hail, who had sent so many of his beloved brothers to their doom. It was he, Seswatha, Lord Librarian, who bore the greatest portion of blame. And to see such a thing now … to witness …
It had to be some kind of cruel dream!
The old Wizard gasped, staggered. Up-welling passion cracked the strength of his legs, dropped him to his knees.
It was happening …
And Kellhus! He … He …
Blinking, peering, he saw Domathuz sheer in half, then topple into faraway ruin. Deferred thunder rumbled across the plain.
Kellhus had spoken true.
Drusas Achamian wept and cackled, whooped with a wild, even lunatic joy. He leapt to his feet, danced a howling jig. He averted his gaze, then peered and peered again, like a besotted drunk testing the reality of his visions. And each time he dared gaze he saw Golgotterath falling … There! There! The twinkling ranks surging across Ûgorrior; Men—tens of thousands of Men!—streaming through the breaches. Schoolmen in their hundreds raining incandescent destruction upon the stronghold’s interior—striding the very gullet of Min-Uroikas! He slapped his forehead in disbelief, hooked hesitant fingers in his hair, his beard—and he exulted, croaking and dancing like a mad old beggar with a diamond.
Sobriety came with the sound of Mimara’s wail rising hoarse from the Umbilicus behind him. His soul scrambled to recover its habitual decorum, its martyred air. Without quite realizing he had wetted a finger and poked it deep into the pouch, which he had somehow pilfered from Mimara’s belongings. Qirri … his cannibal vice. His old, old friend.
He sucked at the ash greedily—swallowing more than he had ever dared in Mimara’s critical presence.
He closed his eyes to calm his racing heart, steady his arrhythmic breathing. He savoured the earthen bitter, glimpsed Cleric—Nil’giccas—in his soul’s eye, melancholy and ruthless for the profundity of his confusion.
So much had happened. So much had yet to happen …
Steady old fool … Think.
Mimara shrieked once again, her voice frayed into anguished threads. The clack and roar of arcane ruin shivered out to the bowl of the Occlusion. Smoke swam about the monstrous foundation of the Horns. Sorcery sparked and glittered. Achamian did not move, captivated by the vision, arrested by what seemed innumerable claims upon his hope and attention.
And suddenly he understood Esmenet’s mulish resistance, why she had pressed with such vehemence to prevent him from standing in this very spot. She had always been the wiser, the soul more shrewd. She had always known him in ways he could only recognize afterward. He had dwelt his entire life in the punishing shadow of this moment, this time …
Now.
She knew he would stand where he stood.
And that the World would claim him.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Golgotterath
What trespass could be equal,
the woe you have brought upon us?
What sin could be so foul as to balance
our grief upon your ruthless Beam?
For we have praised thee, O Lord,
We have struck all that offends thee.
Why quicken our fields, our wombs,
only to set alight our granaries,
and crack our strong places asunder?
What sin could be so grievous,
that our children should be rendered,
to the raving of Sranc?
—Unknown, “The Kyranean Lament”
Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Golgotterath.
The Sons of Shir raced forward. The mass deformed, stretching more and more into a spearhead as it neared the heaped foundations of Corrunc. The Mandate Triunes had struck ahead, and already assailed the lower terraces of the Oblitus, while the Scarlet Schoolmen had divided to attend to the intact walls on either flank. What few missiles that rained upon the rushing Men were sporadic and ineffectual. Those Ursranc that did not flee shrieking, burned such. The Scarlet Schoolmen clustered above the breach, laved the gold-fanged heights with golden fire, the brilliant issue of dozens of Dragonheads. The Sons of Shir gained the mounds below, led by the Knights of Conriya, whom the Holy Aspect-Emperor had tasked with redressing the shame of their King. They clambered up the ruin, roaring. The Marshal of Attrempus, Palatine Krijates Empharas, would be the first to crest the ruins of Corrunc, and the first to leap down, and thus, the first Man to set foot within Golgotterath. Shouting behind their silver warmasks, he and his household slaughtered what Ursranc they encountered. Glints of Gnostic destruction rolled like oil across their helms, shields, and hauberks.
The Sons of Shir streamed unmolested into Golgotterath. The Ark hung as a second, impervious ground above them, tracking the least detail in reflection. Beyond the curtain wall lay what the Ordealmen would come to call the Canal, a broad avenue finned with ruin
and humped with refuse, and webbed with filthy hovels—warrens that the Schoolmen promptly set aflame. Smoke boiled toxic and black, its stench unmanning. Massed upon an isthmus of ruin surrounded by inferno, the Conriyans had no choice but to assail the far wall of the Canal, the First Riser, the lowest, fortified step of the Oblitus. Chains and hooks were called up, and the Southron warriors stormed onto the terrace unopposed, found the ground clotted with bodies burning as candles might. Their billows lacing the heights, the Mandate and Scarlet Schoolmen wracked the terraces above with catastrophic lights.
The ruins of Domathuz witnessed a different series of events. For reasons unknown, Temus Enhorû refused to lead his Imperial Saik against the Oblitus, electing instead to tarry above the breach and cleanse the flanking walls—the task assigned Obwë Gûswuran and his Mysunsai. The first Sons of Kyraneas to broach Golgotterath were Prince Cinganjehoi and his heavy-mailed Eumarnans. Unlike the Conriyans to the north, they found themselves pinned beneath a hail of missiles from the First Riser of the Oblitus and suffered grievously. Chaos ensued, with those at the rear forcing more and more of their kinsmen to brave the killing grounds below the Oblitus. Temus Enhorû only realized his error after Cinganjehoi ordered his Men to fire on the aging Saik Grandmaster from below. An inadvertent consequence of this was that the Sons of Kyraneas, bent on seeking cover, would be the first to seize the orphaned wall between Domathuz and the Evil Gate, where the javelin-bearing Nansur Columnaries, in particular, were able to inflict horrible losses on the Ursranc defending the First Riser.
They would also be the first to reach the imposing rump of Gwergiruh, where the Middlenorthmen found themselves stalled, locked in pitched melee with their bestial foe. Anasûrimbor Serwa and the Swayali had passed over the monstrous Gatehouse, thinking they pursued the defenders into the Oblitus. But the Unholy Consult, knowing the unreliability of their slaves, had gone so far as to chain some thousand Ursranc throughout Gwergiruh’s honeycombed interior. King Vûkyelt and his bellicose Thunyeri had clambered into what they had assumed was a vacant hulk, only to find themselves in the hacking thick of battle. As with the breach at Domathuz, the eagerness of those in the rear proved lethal. The roaring Thunyeri were pressed into the black cleavers of their foe—many died for simple want of room to swing axe or sword. The adventitious arrival of General Biaxi Tarpellas and his Columnaries from the south put a quick end to this tragic waste. The Ursranc, crazed for terror, all but threw themselves upon the Nansur spears. Vûkyelt, Believer-King of Thunyerus, and Tarpellas, Patridomos of House Biaxi, would embrace in the fell shadow of Ûbil itself, which, seized and strapped by evil sorceries, remained shut despite being overthrown.
The Men of the Circumfix thronged in their thousands across the First Riser and into the Canal, kicking over leprous shelters, stamping out flames. Tens of thousands more massed and clamoured about the breaches at Domathuz, Corrunc, and the overthrown Gatehouse of Ûbil Maw. Only the Chorae archers who had initiated the stupendous assault lingered upon Ûgorrior. The ramparts cleared, they scoured the skirts of the ruin, as well as the ground where the Holy Aspect-Emperor had parlayed with Mekeritrig, searching for exposed Chorae. Luthymae, the Collegians charged with managing and recovering the Chorae Hoard, paced the desolate plain across the entire range of Ursranc archery, pointing out those they sensed or sighted. Any bowman recovering a Holy Tear of God would immediately set to affixing it, using prepared shafts and kits. Soon a great number could be seen, one knee down in the dust, their hands working furiously.
They would be the only ones to escape unscathed.
The Exalt-Magus, Anasûrimbor Serwa, hung above the fray, her billows like an intricate lily suspended in sun and water. She did not hesitate.
“Ware the First Riser!” she cried on a sorcerous boom.
Fairly every soul in the Great Ordeal ceased what they had been doing.
Three Triunes of her Gnostic Sisters hung about her, billows agleam and undulating. Dozens of like formations extended like wings to either side. The Oblitus reared imposing before her, step by monumental step, a god-stair climbing to the base of something greater than gods. But for all the threat of its stacked ramparts, it was the First Riser some thirty cubits beneath her feet that commanded her attention. Something … No …
Nothing. She sensed nothingness … Moving nothingness.
And yet only ash and entrails remained of the skinnies who had stood upon the parapets …
“Assemble!” she cried. “Assemble against it!”
Her voice dropped like cudgels upon every soul visible. Those along the remaining sections of curtain wall had already set their shields against the rising Oblitus. Confusion ruled all others, however. Eager to join what had seemed easy slaughter, the Men of the Ordeal had fallen into disorder, pressing heedless into the Canal, the slum-choked interval between the cyclopean outer walls and the bottommost terrace of the Oblitus. They formed a vast, elongated bolus, a motley of nations, steaming for the smoke of stamped out fires, bristling with arms and bereft of purpose. She watched with cool wonder as they spontaneously formed into impromptu ranks, shield locked to shield, all facing the blank wall of the First Riser.
She scanned the air above the Host, searching for some sign of her father.
He would know.
At a thought, she dropped, alighted upon the first terrace, her billows drawn out behind her, across the burned and twisted carcasses. She closed her eyes, focussed on the tickles of oblivion floating like bubbles beneath her. Chorae, without any doubt, moving as if bound to things lumbering and alive …
She caught her breath.
“Bashrag!” she cried, her voice fractured into something inhuman by a conspiracy of masonry. “Concealed in the Ris—!”
Monstrous impacts. A series of them, erupting along the entire length of the Canal, here thudding, there cracking, shattering. Dust and grit exploded from mortices. Men cried out, raised arms to protect their eyes. Skirts of masonry exploded outward. Whole sections of wall sloughed away, disgorging horrors …
Dozens of orifices had been smashed across the sheer walls. Bashrag fell from them as vomit, leapt into the pallid ranks of Men, bull-bellowing, swinging pole-axes as thick as war-galley oars. They towered above their scrambling victims, obscene amalgams, motions hooked to their deformities, but no less deadly for it. Shields and arms exploded. Helms were stoved, rib-cages crushed. Armoured knights were thrown, sent like cartwheels above the massacre. The din was as instant as it was deafening. Serwa leapt back into the air, rejoined her witch sisters. The cunning of the attack was not lost upon her. Fairly all the Swayali gazed dumbstruck at the screaming turmoil below, the vision of Bashrag wading like monstrous adults into roiling mobs of children, reaping them as wheat, murdering them. And there was nothing to be done, no way to strike without killing their own. She saw the standard of Tarpellas fall. She saw the bearer and honour guard hammered to pulp against stone. Despite her Dûnyain blood, Anasûrimbor Serwa hesitated …
Where was Father?
The mere thought of him spurred the recovery of her senses. She whirled about to face the Oblitus, which had entirely fallen from the Host’s attention. She need not see to know the activity that brewed upon them. The Consult had not so much lost their legendary walls, she realized, as they had given them …
“Retreat!” she cried on a crack of thunder. “To Ûgorrior, Sisters!”
Like variations in the sound of a waterfall …
This was the most the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas could hear of the assault from within the chambered interior of the Umbilicus: a near featureless roar, a yawl woven across different registers of mass violence. A faraway cataract, booming with death instead of water.
Death and more death. Always death, these past twenty years. Even the lives she had delivered had simply added to the heap of murderers.
Only Mimara … the dazzling little girl who had so adored the smell of apples. Only she had been Esmenet’s one true gift to life.
So now it was her turn to die.
“He’ll return …”
Esmenet started. She had been sitting cross-legged to the side of the mattress, drifting in that upright way that made one feel like a sail pulled by unseen winds. She had thought her daughter unconscious, for the severity of her last travail as much the sleepless watches since her womb’s draining. She looked down upon the girl’s drawn face, noted, as she always noted, the saddle of freckles across the bridge of her nose—but one of so many things she had inherited from her whorish mother.
Too many.
“Mimara …”
She hesitated, found herself fixed in her firstborn’s brown-eyed gaze.
“I …”
Her wind failed her. She flinched, looked down and away, though it seemed her every fraction clamoured that she endure. Several heartbeats passed. Her daughter’s gaze became palpable, a tingle across her temple and cheek. She braved it once again, only to be overwhelmed by its implacable intensity—and to look down as she once had in the presence of caste-nobles.
Mimara reached out, caught her hand between her own.
“I never understood until now,” she said.
Esmenet looked up, meek in the way of failed mothers and lovers, her breath so shallow it hurt. Her daughter’s smile was dazzling—for its incongruity, its authenticity, yes, but for its certainty most of all.
“All that time, ever since you plucked me from Carythusal, I punished you. Everything I had suffered, I had heaped upon your name … upon the dim image of a mother exchanging her little daughter for coins …”
These words seized her heart within their fist.
“They said you would be a weaver …” she found herself saying, “but I suppose I didn’t believe them.” Her eyes had become burning spikes. “The gold was just an accursed ornament. We-we were ropes, you and I … starved to the bloody gum, and I thought I was saving your life. They had food. You could see it in the fat on their faces. The grease staining their insufferable tunics … Their grin. I nearly swooned for thinking I could smell the food in them … isn’t that mad?”