She sits hunched over her prize, utterly bewildered.
'Are you okay?'
She holds a light in her hand, a different light, one that shines but does not illumine, a star that glitters as bright as the Nail of Heaven.
'Where did you get that?' Soma asks. He is crouching before her, nodding to the Chorae in her palm-or to what used to be a Chorae…
'You see it?' she asks, coughing at the waver in her voice.
He shrugs. 'A Tear of God,' he says with matter-of-fact exhaustion. 'Here we are, trying to hammer loose dragon teeth, and you've already found your fortune.'
'I did not come for riches.' She studies his dark, handsome face through the threads of shining white radiating from her palm. 'So you don't see the light?'
He glances up at the Surillic Point, frowning. 'I see it plainly enough…' He looks back to her, eyebrows raised. 'It's you I'm having difficulty seeing, with that thing pressed against your skin. You look like a… breathing shadow…'
'I mean this,' she says, raising her palm. 'What do you see when you look at this?'
He makes the face he always makes when he suspects the others are joking at his expense: a mingling of hurt, resentment, and an eagerness to please. 'A ball of shadow,' he says slowly.
She pulls her empty coin purse from beneath her belt, hastily drops the Chorae in it. She vaguely hears Soma say, 'Ah, much better,' but pays him no attention. She cranes around looking for Lord Kosoter. She can sense his Chorae the way she can sense her own, but it also feels different, like an outward shining instead of a pinprick of inhaling black. She sees him dozing against the wall with several others, his square beard crushed against the blood-painted splint of his hauberk. But since his Chorae is pocketed, she has no way of knowing whether it also shines in her natural sight.
Fear flushes through her, seems to pull the ancient slave chamber into a slow roll about the axis of her heart. Something is happening to me…
This is when she notices the stranger.
There, in the very midst of them. She initially thinks that it's Cleric-his face is all but identical-but Cleric sits several paces beyond, his legs crossed, his head bowed in prayer or exhaustion.
Another Nonman?
He sits the way the others sit, back hunched against the wind, eyes closed, as though taking inventory of inner pains. An archaic headdress falls to his back and shoulders, a crown of silvered thorns chased by a skirt of tiny black rods. His garb is violet and voluminous but wrapped in a manner that reveals segments of his corselet, a kind of mail wrought from innumerable golden figurines. White skin is visible beneath, as smooth as ivory.
For a moment she can neither breathe nor speak. Then at last she says, 'So-soma?'
'Mim-Mimara?' he replies, trying to sound mocking. He is always trying to rally her.
'Who,' she asks without looking at the Nilnameshi caste-noble, 'is that?' For a moment, she is frightened that he won't see this as well…
That she has gone mad.
The following pause both reassures and terrifies. 'What the-?'
She hears him draw his sword, a sound that, even through scarcely audible in the wind, instantly rouses the others.
Everyone is up and shouting, raising battered shields and notched swords. Soma steps before Mimara, falls into stance, his scimitar raised above his head. On the figure's far side, Cleric lifts his eyes, blinks with feline curiosity.
Turning his head on a slow swivel, the stranger looks about, but never quite at any of them. He then lowers his face to his sandalled feet once again. Mimara notices that the wind does not touch the lavish cloth about his shoulders, though it whips and pins the clothing of everyone standing about him.
'Sweet Seju!' Galian hisses. 'He… he has no shadow!'
'Quiet,' Lord Kosoter grates, invoking an instinct Mimara feels all too keenly. A sense of mortal peril seems to ride the wind, a tingling certainty that the Nonman before them is less flesh or blood than a dread gate, a catastrophic threshold.
He is perfectly motionless. He possesses a predator's vigilance for sound and motion.
Even still, Cleric warily approaches the figure, his nimil armour shining through the webbing of blood. His expression is astonished, so stunned that he almost seems human. He kneels below the figure and, looking up, gently calls, 'Cousin?'
The face rises. The small bars on his headdress swing about his jawline. They shine like obsidian.
No sound comes from the opening lips. Instead, the entire company starts when they hear Pokwas and Achamian rasp, ' You — you…' in ragged unison.
Sarl cackles like a drunk who has scared tears from his grandchildren.
'Yes, Cousin… I have returned.'
Again the lips move, and the voices of the two unconscious men rise into the void of sound, the one reeded by age, the other deep and melodious.
' They — they called — called us — us false — false.'
'They are children who can never grow,' Cleric replies. 'They could do no different.'
' I–I loved — loved them — them. I–I loved — loved them — them so — so much — much.'
'So did we all, at one time.'
' They — they betrayed — trayed.'
'They were our punishment. Our pride was too great.'
' They — they betrayed — trayed. You — you betrayed — trayed…'
'You have dwelt here too long, Cousin.'
' I–I am — am lost — lost. All — all the — the doors — doors are — are different — rent, and — and the — the thresholds — holds… they — they are — are holy — lee no — no more — more.'
'Yes. Our age has passed. Cil-Aujas is fallen. Fallen into darkness.'
' No — no. Not — not darkness — ness…'
With a flourish, the Nonman King comes to his feet, his hands thrust out and back so that his spine arches, and Mimara can see that his robe is in fact no robe but a dark bolt of silken material wrapped about his armpits and across his shoulders. The shimmering tails of it fall to the ground. His corselet is sleeveless, yet hangs to his sandalled feet, revealing as much of his graven nudity as it conceals. His phallus hangs like a snake in the shadow of his thighs.
' Hell — hell.'
Still kneeling, Cleric gazes up at the impossible figure, anguish and indecision warring across his expression.
' Damnation — shun, Cousin — sin. How — How? How — How could — could we — we forget — get?'
A sorrow flattens the glittering black eyes. 'Not I. I have never forgotten…'
The points of their swords sinking, the Skin Eaters gape at the two Nonmen, the living and the dead, for they understand that the one bearing the crown draws no breath. Mimara wants to flee. It seems she can feel the whole of her skin, from the cuts about her knuckles to the folds of her sex, alive to some plummet she cannot see or fathom. But she remains as motionless as the others.
Cleric knows him.
The wind prods her in contrary directions, thumbs without substance. The jutting bones of iron hum and howl, a dirge to dragon hollows. The cage-ringed walls rise into black. Across the rising tiers, the ancient bronze begins to creak, to rattle…
The lips of the apparition move without sound.
Mimara whirls, sees Pokwas groan and curse beneath the astonished eyes of his fellows. And Achamian too! The old Wizard has rolled to his hands and knees. She flies to him, clutches his shoulders. He blinks at the wrinkled stone beneath his fingers, frowns as though it were a language he should be able to read. He spits-at the taste of qirri, she realizes.
'Mimara?' He coughs at the ground.
