The sorcerer. What was his School?
'I think not,' Lord Kosoter said, leaning back. 'There's scalpers aplenty in Marrow, sure. Any number of companies.' He hooked his wine-bowl with two calloused fingers. 'But none who know who you are…' His grin was curious, frightening. 'Which means none who will even entertain your request.'
The logic of his claim hung like an iron in the air, indifferent to the swell of background voices. Truth was ever the afterlife of words.
Achamian stood dumbstruck.
'I have this leaf,' Sarl said, his eyes bright with just-between-friends mischief. 'You place it against your anus-'
The cowled man erupted in faceless laughter. Achamian saw his left eye as he tilted his head back, a glimpse of a pupil set in watery grey. But it was the guttural arrhythmia of his laugh that told him what he was…
'Just twooo,' Sarl howled, his purple brows nearly pinched to his apple-red cheeks. 'Tw-twooo ensolariis!'
Achamian sneered as much as smiled. The Anus Leaf was an old joke, an expression referring to charlatans who peddled hope in the form of false remedies.
The Captain watched him with imperturbable care.
They were right, he realized. Derision was all he could expect here in Marrow-or even worse. The Skin Eaters were his only hope.
And they had already struck him down.
Achamian took the proffered bowl in both hands just to be sure it didn't shake. He drained it and gasped. Unwatered wine from some bitter Galeoth soil.
'The Coffers!' Sarl crowed. 'Captain! He wants to loot the Coffers!'
Achamian smacked his lips about the burning in his gullet, wiped a rasp-woollen sleeve across his beard and mouth. It was strange, the way a single drink could make you part of someone's company. 'It was him,' Achamian said to the Captain while nodding in the direction of the cowled figure. 'Wasn't it? He told you about the Coffers…'
Another mistake. Evidently, the Captain refused to recognize even the most innocent conversational impositions. Hint, innuendo, implication; all of it accused with a glare, then condemned with onerous silence.
'We call him Cleric,' Sarl said, tilting his head toward the man-a mock covert gesture.
The black, leather-rimmed oval seemed to stare back at Achamian.
'Cleric,' Achamian repeated.
The cowl remained motionless. The Captain resumed staring into his wine.
'You should hear him in the Wilds,' Sarl exclaimed. 'Such sweet sermons! And to think I once thought myself eloquent.'
'And yet,' Achamian said carefully, 'Nonmen have no priests.'
'Not as Men understand them,' the black pit replied.
Shock. Its voice had been pleasant, melodious, but marbled with intonations alien to the human vocal range. It was as though the tones of a deformed child had been woven into it.
Achamian sat rigid. 'Where are you from?' he asked, his lungs pressed against his backbone. 'Ishterebinth?'
The hood bowed to the tabletop. 'I can no longer remember. I have known Ishterebinth, I think… But it was not called such then.'
'I see your Mark. You wear it fierce and deep.'
The hood lifted, as though raising hidden ears to some faraway sound. 'As do you.'
'Who was your Quya Master? From which Line do you hail?'
'I… I cannot remember.'
Achamian licked his lips in hesitation, then asked the question that had to be asked of all Nonmen. 'What can you remember?'
An odd hesitation, as though to the syncopation of an inhuman heart.
'Things. Friends. Strangers and lovers. All of them heart-breaking. All of them horrific.'
'And the Coffers? You remember them?'
An almost imperceptible nod. 'I was at the Library of Sauglish when it fell-I think. I remember that terror all too well… But why it should cause me such sorrow, I do not know.'
The words pimpled Achamian's skin. He had dreamed the horrors of Sauglish far too many times-he need only close his eyes to see the burning towers, the fleeing masses, the Sohonc battling iron-scaled Wracu in skies wreathed in smoke and flame. He had tasted the ash on the wind, heard the wailing of multitudes. He had wept at his own cowardice…
This made him unique among Men, to have lived the span of two lives-two eye blinks, Seswatha and Achamian, flung across the millennia. But this Nonman before him, his life straddled a hundred human generations. He had lived the entire breadth of those nation-eating ages. From then to now-and even more. From the twilight of the First Apocalypse to the dawn of the Second.
He was in the presence of a living line, Achamian realized, of eyes that had witnessed all the intervening years between his two selves, between Achamian, the Wizard-Exile, and Seswatha, the Grandmaster of the Sohonc. This Nonman had lived the two-thousand-year sleep between…
It almost made Achamian feel whole.
'And your name?'
Sarl whispered some kind of curse.
'Incariol,' the cowled figure said with an air of inward grappling. And then again, 'Incariol…' as though testing its sound on his tongue. 'Does that sound familiar?'
Achamian had never heard of it, not that he could remember. Even still, it was plain these Scalpoi had no inkling of who or what rode with them. How could any mortal fathom such a cavernous soul?
As old as the Tusk…
'So you're an Erratic.'
'Am I? Is that what I am?'
How did you answer such a question? The creature before him had lived so long his very identity had collapsed beneath him, dropped him into the pit of his own lifetime. His was a running-over soul, where every instance of love or hope or joy drained into the void of forgetfulness, displaced by the more viscous passions of terror, anguish, and hate.
He was an Erratic, addicted to atrocity for memory's sake.
'He's calling you mad,' Sarl said, a little too quickly given the gravity of their silence.
The hood turned to him.
'Yes… I am mad.'
Sarl waved his hands in affectionate contradiction. 'Come now, Cleric. No need to-'
'Memories…' the black pit interrupted. A word struck in wincing tones of woe. 'Memories make us sane.'
'See!' Sarl exclaimed, whirling to Achamian. 'Sermons!' His face was pinched red about a manic smile, as though he were the kind of man who made claims compulsively and so gloated over every instance of their confirmation.
'This one night in the Wilds, one of our number asks Cleric here what's the greatest treasure he's heard tell. Gold, as you might imagine, is quite a popular topic among us Scalpoi, especially when we're hunting on the dark- without campfires, that is. Warms the bones as sure as any flame, talk of peaches and gold.'
There was something-the turn of his face, maybe, the aura of antagonism in the way he leaned forward, or the twist of insincerity in his tone-that told Achamian that 'sermons' were the least of the man's concerns.
'So Cleric here,' Sarl rasps, 'obliges us with another sermon. He mentions several glories, for he's seen things we mortals can scarce conceive. But for some reason it was the Coffers that stuck. The hoard hidden beneath the Library of Sauglish, ere it was destroyed in the First Apocalypse. The Coffers, we say. The Coffers-any time we're loath to mention that unluckiest of words, 'hope.' Coffers. Coffers. Coffers. We trek out to run down the skinnies, give them a trim, but we always say we're searching for the Coffers.'
The face-wrinkling amiability suddenly dropped from his face, revealing something cold and hateful and
