How the old mothers had crowed. They would weep for the privilege living so long to see his Coming. They would stoop to earth before him, clawing the grasses, baring the soil to his feet, so they might be one, the Steppe and the man they had called Wrencûx …
Redeemer.
A savage reflection of his sworn foe.
The soul, like the body, knows how to cringe and huddle, how to shelter itself within itself according to what is most tender or precious. And as with the body, it is the face that is always buried deepest. So Anasûrimbor Esmenet held her free arm over her face as she skidded and tripped, hauling her daughter. Her inability to witness had become the inability to expose, so ghastly had her world become.
Carcasses … burnt and eviscerated, mangled and amputated, a wan and beautiful vacancy in their faces, eyes limpid and dark, pools the size of pennies, gazing into mudded ground or scissored flesh or out across the blank face of Creation.
Carcasses … twitching like fish spilled across the docks.
And there, just beyond the riddled Wards, the surge of endless thousands from all directions, howling without sound, wagging weapons, then perishing in incandescent upheavals, becoming silhouettes within blooms of molten brilliance, slumping or flying apart.
And she picked her footing and hauled, picked her footing and hauled. She was a mother, and her daughter was all that mattered.
The daughter, that is, she dragged over carcasses. The daughter above, she failed to recognize.
She picked her footing, her sandalled feet sometimes sinking to the knee, and heaved her anguished daughter forward, always forward.
Until a treacherous fraction whispered, I know these beasts …
For she had been fending them the entirety of her life, their hunger as bestial as their judgment … Things naked and twitching.
She let slip Mimara’s arm to cast both arms across her face, only to lose her footing upon the macabre tangle. If she cried out no one heard it. She fell into the pockets of slick nudity, flailed at the wet skin, and at long last began kicking her dread and confusion.
You remember this …
The shriek was deafening.
Golgotterath became an island in a threshing inland sea.
The Horde crashed upon the western approaches, the greater part hying south, where it careened into the ruin of the Canted Horn, and was slowed to a trickle by the need to funnel through the gold-ribbed devastation or to circumnavigate it altogether. More and more of the clans hied to the north as a result, until the wicked stronghold—and the Great Ordeal within it—was engulfed in its entirety.
The long-suffering Soldiers of the Circumfix besieged and were themselves besieged. Everyone save the Sons of High Ainon were either called to the roiling perimeters, or assembled in reserve, lest any of their brothers falter. The last of the towers were cleared of Ursranc and manned. Shield walls were raised about the breaches, phalanxes arrayed dozens of Men deep in many cases.
The Knights-of-the-Tusk defended the southernmost breach, the gullet of the Canted Horn’s ruin. A vast, impossibly intact section of cylinder lay cracked upon the cliffs, overlooking the mountainous spine of shattered gold—or what could be seen of it through the Shroud. Draped in iron-mail, their Tusk-and-Circumfix shields interlocked, the Knights stood but a pace back from the edge, spearing and stabbing the endless upswell of inhuman faces rising from the lip. The interior of the section lay stacked in utter ruin behind them. Unbeknownst to them, however, the impact had crevassed the scarps below, producing defiles beneath the ruined segment, which otherwise lay braced against bowed and cracked curtain walls. Were it not for the prudence of their Grandmaster, who had stationed pickets through the cavernous ruin to guard against just such a contingency, the Shrial Knights would have been doomed. As it was, these pickets were quickly overrun, but a dozen survivors managed to gather across the lip of a shelf more than a hundred and fifty cubits above and behind where Lord Ussiliar had deployed, screaming, waving their arms, throwing debris, yet unable to gain the attention of any of their brothers in the titanic din. It was only when they began throwing themselves, leaping to their deaths, that Lord Ûssiliar at last saw them and fathomed the threat. Using tap-signals to communicate, the rear ranks were turned about so that the whole could form a tortoise thousands strong. An avalanche of missiles and debris crashed down across the carapace. Sranc surged from the gutted hollows, gushed in gesticulating streams. The Knights-of-the-Tusk knelt beneath their impromptu bulwark, propping their shields with their shoulders and their broadswords, and stabbed at the hacking clamour upon them with their Cepaloran long-knives. But shields and arms were broken, and more and more of the raving creatures cracked through, creating inlets and puddles of pitched melee. Men screamed unheard in the hunched and closeted gloom. Many muttered what they believed were their final curses and prayers, until they glimpsed the play of many-coloured lights between the joists of their shields. The Imperial Saik, once their most hated rivals, had saved them. Forsaking the edge, the Knights-of-the-Tusk fought their way into the ruin, deeper into the mountainous segment, gawking as the Schoolmen transformed the floor of the great hoop into a fiery cauldron behind them.
The Judging Eye comes to her knees amid the char and wet skin—looks up …
Sees a slender Ciphrang hanging as high as the future, showering the earth with death—a witch, wet with the fires of damnation, burns heaped upon her burns.
It turns … sees an old woman who beams angelic grace and an old man who wheezes fire, a thrice-damned cinder.
It glances out … sees the Sranc, though they are scarce more than apparitions sketched in coal, falling as black hair in the polluted radiance of the witch’s craft.
Then, at so very long last, it looks to her belly …
And is struck blind.
The breaches to the southeast were the easiest to secure and defend, at least in the early going. King Hoga Hogrim and his Tydonni Longbeards held the ruined foundations of Domathuz with battleaxe and kite-shield. Red-faced and roaring, the Thanes of Nangaelsa, Numaineiri, Plaideol and more, defended positions some thirty paces beyond the black ramparts, arrayed across heaps and swales of rubble. To the north, King Coithus Narnol and his Galeoth defended the ruins of Corrunc. Unlike her sister Domathuz, Corrunc had collapsed as a whole, producing a radial flange of debris that extended almost as an oblong bastion beyond the gold-fanged circuit, providing the bellicose Northmen the footing they needed to form a traditional phalanx, and thus a proper shield wall. And so they weathered the rabid, yammering assault with disciplined equanimity.
King Hringa Vûkyelt and his barbarous Thunyeri were charged with defending the most complicated, and therefore most treacherous, of the three breaches: the shell of Gwergiruh, the monstrous gatehouse of the Extrinsic Gate. Here the ruins afforded no obvious line of defense. The hindquarters of the gatehouse remained intact, with only the forward bastions battered down in differing degrees. Interior floors hung exposed. Blocks the size of hovels lay cracked. Intact sections of wall reared solitary and indefensible. Rather than deploy across the perimeter of the wreckage, the Thunyeri Believer-King elected to defend the ruined hulk instead, stationing his black-armoured Men through the very halls and chambers they had wrested from the Ursranc mere watches previous. This ad hoc deployment should have meant casualties, but the Thunyeri were weened on the blood of skinnies. By dint of upbringing and bloodthirsty temperament, they far preferred depending on their kinsmen’s axe over his shield. They knew how to shatter the Sranc stampede, how to hew into the rush in a manner that sent the creatures reeling, allowing them to reset. And so the gutted galleries of the Extrinsic Gate became a grisly abattoir.
But even their toll paled before that of the Mysunsai Schoolmen. Hanging in triunes above and about the breaches, they assailed the tormented plate of Ûgorrior with the dread Nibelene Lightning of yore. They were the first to spy the Exalt-Magus approaching through the leaves of the Shroud, gesticulating wildly, singing at the
very pitch of her ability, drawing combs of exploding brilliance across the Sranc masses. Despite her straits, she moved with anxious sloth, as if pacing someone who crawled. Soon the glow of Gnostic Wards appeared on the ground below her, a luminous bowl that stumbled after the wreckage of her pulping, charring song.
Those upon any height of Gwergiruh could see it …
And then it inexplicably stalled.
Anasûrimbor Serwa hung as a living light above a living gyre, a landscape that scribbled and heaved, that relentlessly surged inward no matter how violently she gouged it. She wracked the earth, unleashed whipping parabolas of razor sharp light. Whole war-bands simply slumped upon their amputations, writhed across their thrashing kin, flailing.
The Men roared in voices that could not be heard, some in triumph, but more in warning, for any fool could see she merely dug sand underwater.
And as if hearing, the girl suddenly whirled to face them across the thronging plain.
“Your Empress needs you!”
Once again it was Lord Rauchurl who seized what favour the Whore had to offer. Without the least consultation, he led his Men in precarious file along the peak of the blasted inner wall of the Gatehouse, thence down to where they could leap directly into the thronging Sranc masses. One by one, the great-shouldered Holca landed, two hundred and thirteen in all, their skin as crimson as their hair for berserker rage, their blades blurring for whirlwind savagery, breakneck violence. With grim deliberation, the High-Thane of Holca led them into the shrieking bedlam of the plain. Nine triunes of Mysunsai shadowed their advanced, scoring the tumult with brilliant white swatches of Nibelene Lightning.
Thus did they slash and burn their way through the threshing tracts, a terrestrial circle of hacking barbarians beneath a floating ring of conjured shadows, all illuminated in flickering sheaves of lightning. The mighty Holca heaving to and fro, great arms snapping, battle-axes throwing blood that glowed violet when glimpsed against discharges. For those with the luxury to watch, standing upon Gwergiruh or the adjoining parapets, it seemed as much a horror as a miracle, a scrap of divine grace that made stark the scale of their plight. For some, all the World seemed to hinge upon the lunatic transit, for despite the unnatural strength and savagery of the Holca, nothing was assured. Not a breath passed, it seemed, without some glimpse of a warrior falling, bludgeoned and cloven, blooded faces dragged howling into the ghoulish frenzy. At any instant, it seemed, the battle-circle could implode beneath the rutting fury.
But then they arrived, gained the bright beacon of the Exalt-Magus. They tarried for more than a dozen fraught heartbeats, and then began relentlessly cutting their way back to the shell of Gwergiruh, now moving even more quickly for Anasûrimbor Serwa and her astounding Metagnostic might.
Tears clotted the eyes of those Men who could see: The Blessed Empress was saved!
Sosering Rauchurl himself carried her cradled in his great arms, bore her over the blasted remnants of Evil Ûbil to the safety of the Canal.
Only one hundred and eleven of his Holca had survived to follow him.
The Incû-Holoinas.
The deeper the Anasûrimbor penetrated, the more Malowebi had the impression of sinking, as if they dove into a golden wreck at the bottom of some black sea, so viscous was his terror.
Everything was capsized, twisted so as to contradict down. But he could not, given the combination of gloom and his abject vantage, discern the limits of the space, let alone make sense of it. He knew only that they had entered a vast, golden room, one illuminated by what seemed a monstrous, upside-down brazier the size of the Healing Pools of Phembari, strung from great chains to form a ceiling of sorts above the polished obsidian floors. Pale wicks of flame roiled and twisted across its surface, blue waxing baleful orange and sparking white—only lapping downward …
Wonder had him straining at the margins of his vision to decode the flames at first, for in no way could he sense the stain of sorcery in the unnatural burning.
Avert your eyes … a presence instructed.
Whether the voice was his own or belonged to the Aspect-Emperor, he did not know, but it bent the arrow of his attention as if it were his own …
Away from the uncanny flames and across the mirror blackness of the floors to the spectre of a throne arising out of a massive array of horned cylinders and convoluted nodes and grills. The Chair-of-Hooks, he realized, the wicked Throne of Sil. It fluted out upon a myriad of angles, flaring into preposterous dimensions as it bulged into cavernous murk. The floors, he suddenly realized, ended just beyond the great seat, dropping into spaces too vast to be hidden from heaven. Gleams inhabited the abyss, etching the back of shadow with the intimation of staggering structure. Old Zabwiri had shown him the inner workings of a water-clock once, and Malowebi suffered that selfsame sense of peering into an unfathomable mechanism now, of seeing what had to be the joints and conduits of mundane force without the least inkling of what those forces might be …
Aside from unimaginably vast.
And the captive Zeumi Emmisary found himself wondering about the ancient Ishroi of Viri, mulling whether something similar had passed through Nin-janjin’s ghoulish veins upon first witnessing the wonders of the dread Ark. Had he experienced the selfsame awe? The same speechless incredulity? For this was the Tekne, the mundane mechanics that Malowebi and his ilk regarded with such contempt, only refined to pitches that beggared the intellect, made crude barbarity of their sorcerous barks. The dread Ark, he realized, was a water-clock of unimaginable subtlety, a titanic contrivance driven by its own principle of animation, causes tyrannizing effects, energies hounded through labyrinths, all arranged … just … so …
What fools they were! Malowebi could even see them cavorting in the Palace of Plumes, the Satakhan sorting nuts in his palm, Likaro decanting the poison he called wisdom at his side, and the rest of his cousin’s festooned inner circle, drinking themselves into oblivion, trading slanders in the pursuit of petty grudges—growing even more fat and stupid, all the while utterly convinced that they decided the fate of the World. Such idiot arrogance! Such conceit! Layabout, ingratiating souls, anchored to thighs and pillows, addled with wine and hashish, courting favour by calling out ribald condemnations of the Aspect-Emperor—by cursing their Saviour!
What shame! What disgrace they had called down upon High Holy Zeum! This was why he hung from the hip of the Anasûrimbor—why he was doomed! This was why Zsoronga was dead …
He gazed upon the dread ligaments from within. And his revelation upon witnessing the Incû-Holoinas from the promontory stood revealed as half-hearted, the skin of something far deeper. The “world” was murdered and the World rose up in its place, a new, deeper ground of believing. Unknown. Terrifying. Sharp where there had been murk, and impenetrable where there had been flattering phantasm. At last he understood what it was the preachers his cousin executed had experienced: the becoming myth of what had been scripture, and the becoming question of what had been myth.
What were the Inchoroi? The Nonmen said they descended from the Void, that they sculpted their flesh the way potters fashion clay. But what did that mean? What could it mean? Were they truly older than humanity?
And what was the Ark? A ship for sailing … between stars?
It was too much … Too much too fast.
This was why the last thing the Second Negotiant discerned in the gloom was what should have been the first: a ghost-white face peering from the hooded confines of the wicked Chair …
A hand floated up with a poet’s fey sloth, obscured the brow.
Mekeritrig, saying, “It was Sil who fashioned this place.”
The Grandmaster of the Imperial Mandate had no choice but to call on the Exalt-General—for he was at a loss as to how he and his Schoolmen might overcome the Intrinsic Gate. They began by attempting to clear the Wards on the bridge, only to watch it slump into the void of the chasm. Then they set upon foul Obmaw itself, wracking it and the adjacent stonework with a catastrophic a
rray of sorceries. They battered the masonry into avalanches of debris, casting the ruin so as to choke upon a narrows in the chasm. The edges were cudgelled down. Wrack was blown as leaves, as the most powerful continued blasting the ensorcelled iron of the portal itself, Abstraction after battering Abstraction, until it too finally sloughed into the choked crevice, leaving only a gaping void where Sikswarû Maragûl had once barred their way …
The Ark had been pried open.
And so, deep in the husk of the High Cwol, the Men of the Three Seas boomed celebration, save that the stench surpassed description; it bloomed through the chamber like a fog of rotten grease, silenced the cheer. Violent retching could be heard over the eerie resonance of the Horde.
The one hundred and fourteen surviving Schoolmen of the Imperial Mandate arrayed themselves, billows bound, in an intricate formation, facing the soaring golden wall above the chasm’s edge. The rent in the Ark emanated darkness as much as inhuman reek.
A causeway dropped from the footings of the hole, then climbed on a steep saddleback to the High Cwol. Five triunes advanced upon the black hole of the Obmaw, walking the arcane echo of the ridge of debris. They sang as they approached, layering their Gnostic Wards, for they knew that a mighty Wracu kept the gate. The breadth of the rupture was such that only one triune at a time could pass. The glory of the van was accorded to the triune of Iërus Ilimenni, a childhood prodigy who had recently become the youngest member of the Quorum. The remaining Mandati watched as the triunes passed as threaded pearls into the mouth and throat of the Intrinsic Gate. Sorcerous chanting hung upon the empty air, resonating, in its peculiar way, inward rather than out …
Brilliance flared from the Obmaw, followed by a breath-stealing whoosh. Shrieks pealed through the opening, cut short on some thunderous impact. “Hold!” Saccarees cried to keep the more impetuous in check. All present stood transfixed, anxiously peering …
A solitary Schoolman materialized from the blackness, running across mundane ground, arms flailing, billows ablaze. He staggered ten paces out upon the causeway then collapsed in an inert heap. Heedless of his own safety Saccarees raced out to attend to the man: Teüs Eskeles, who had been one of Ilimenni’s triunaries …