He almost whispers it, as though it were a jar containing furies, something that could be cracked open by a careless tongue.
'Ishuдl,' she repeats, simply because his tone seems to demand it.
'It's derived from a Nonman dialect,' he continues. 'It means 'Exalted Grotto,' or 'High Hidden Place,' depending on how literal the translation.'
'Ishuдl? Kellhus is from Ishuдl?'
It troubles him, she can tell, to hear her refer to her stepfather as such-as someone familiar.
'I'm certain of it.'
'But if it's a hidden place…'
Another sour glare. 'It won't be long,' he mutters with old man dismissiveness. 'Not now. Not any more. Seswatha… His life is opening… Not just the small things, but the secrets as well.'
A life spent mining the life of another, pondering glimpses of tedium through the lense of holy and apocalyptic portent. Twenty years! How can he hope to balance the proportions? Grub through dirt long enough and you will prize stones.
'Like he's yielding,' she forces herself to say.
'Exactly! I know I sound mad for saying it, but it's almost as if he knows.'
She finds nodding difficult, as though pity has seized the hinge of her neck and skull. What reservoirs of determination would it take? To spend so long immersed in a task not only bereft of any tangible profit, but without any appreciable measure of progress-how much would it require? Year after year, wrestling with the imperceptible, wringing hope out of smoke and half-memory. What depths of conviction? What kind of perseverance?
Certainly not any the sane possess.
Faces. All conduct is a matter of wearing the appropriate faces. The brothel taught her that, and the Andiamine Heights simply confirmed the lesson. It's as though expressions occupy various positions, a warning here, a greeting there, with the distance between measured by the difficulty of forcing one face from the other. At this moment nothing seems so difficult as squeezing pity into the semblance of avid interest.
'No other Mandate Schoolman has ever experienced anything like this?' She has asked this already, but it bears repeating.
'Nothing,' he replies, his face and posture true to his frailty. He has shrunk into the husk of hides that clothe him. He seems as lonely as he is, and even more isolate. 'What can it mean?'
She blinks, strangely offended by this open display of weakness. Then it happens.
The Mark already blasts him, renders him ugly in the manner of things rent and abraded, as though his inner edges have been pinched and twisted, pinched and twisted, his very substance worried from the fabric of mundane things. But suddenly she sees more, the hue of judgment, as though blessing and condemnation have become a wash visible only in certain kinds of light. It hangs about him, bleeds from him, something palpable… evil.
No. Not evil. Damnation.
He is damned. Somehow she knows this with the certainty with which children know their hands. Thoughtless. Complete.
He is damned.
Another blink, the different eye closes, and he is an old Wizard once again. The illuminated surfaces are as impervious as before.
Sorrow wells through her, at once abstract and tidal, the resignation one feels when losses outrun numbers. Clutching her blanket, she presses herself to her feet, scuttles to sit on the cold ground beside him. She looks at him with the eyes she knows so well, the gaze that promises to roam wherever. She knows that he is hopeless, the wreck of what was once a mighty man.
But she also knows what she needs to do-to give. Another lesson from the brothel. It's so simple, for it's what all madmen yearn for, what they crave above all things…
To be believed.
'You have become a prophet,' she says, leaning in for the kiss. Her whole life she has punished herself with men. 'A prophet of the past.'
The memory of his power is like perfume.
The recriminations come later, in the darkness. Why is there no place so lonely as the sweaty slot beside a sleeping man?
And at the same time, no place so safe?
Bundling a blanket about her nakedness, she crawls to the dim bed of coals, where she sits, rocking herself between clutched arms and rough folds, trying to squeeze away the memory of skidding skin, the wheezing of old man exertions. The dark is complete, so much so the forest and the stoved-in tower seem painted in pitch. The warmth of the gutted fire only sharpens the chill.
The tears do not come until he touches her-a gentle hand across her back, falling like a leaf. Kindness. This is the one thing she cannot bear. Kindness.
'We have made our first mistake together,' he says, as though it were something significant. 'We will not make it again.'
No forest slumbers in silence, even in the dead of a windless night. The touch of twigs and leaves, the press of forking branches, the sweep of limbs endlessly interlocking, incorporating more and more skirted trunks, creating a labyrinth of hollows, with only sudden scarps to interrupt them. Somehow it all conspired to create a whispering dark.
The coals tinkle like faraway glass.
'Am I broken?' she sobs. 'Is that why I run?'
'We all bear unseen burdens,' he replies, sitting more behind her than beside. 'We are all bent somehow.'
'You mean you,' she says, hating herself for the accusation. 'The way you are bent!'
But the hand does not retreat from her back.
'The way I must be… I must discover the truth, Mimara. More than my spite turns upon what I do.'
Her snort is convulsive, phlegmatic. 'What difference will it make? Golgotterath will be destroyed within the year. Your Second Apocalypse will be over before it even begins!'
His fingertips draw away.
'What do you mean?' he says, his tone both light and brittle.
'I mean that Sakarpus will have already fallen.' Why does she suddenly hate him? Was it because she seduced him, or because he failed to resist? Or was it because laying with him made no difference? She gazes at him, unable or unwilling to hide the triumph her eyes. 'The plans were afoot before I fled the cursed Heights. The Great Ordeal marches, old man.'
Silence. Remorse comes crashing in.
Can't you see? something shrieks within her. Can't you see the poison I bring? Strike me! Strangle me! Pare me to the core with your questions!
But she laughs instead. 'You have shut yourself away for too long. You have found your revelation too late.'
CHAPTER FIVE
Where luck is the twist of events relative to mortal hope,
White-Luck is the twist of events relative to divine desire.
To worship it is to simply will what happens as it happens
