It was the absence of weathering that distinguished the hall from the Gate. The detail baffled the eye, from the mail of the Nonmen warriors to the hair of the human slaves. Scars striping knuckles. Tears lining supplicants' cheeks. Everything had been rendered with maniacal intricacy. The effect was too lifelike, Achamian decided, the concentration too obsessive. The scenes did not so much celebrate or portray, it seemed, as reveal, to the point where it hurt to watch the passing sweep of images, parade stacked upon parade, entire hosts carved man for man, victim for victim, warring without breath or clamour.
Pir-Pahal, Achamian realized. The entire hall was dedicated to it, a great and ancient battle fought between the Nonmen and the Inchoroi. He could even recognize the principals: the traitor, Nin'janjin, and his sovereign, Cu'jara Cinmoi, the Nonman Emperor. The mighty hero, Gin'gыrima, with arms like a man's thighs. And the Inchoroi King, Sil, armoured in corpses, flanked by his inhuman kinsmen, winged monstrosities with wicked limbs, pendulous phalli, and skulls grafted into skulls.
Achamian nearly stumbled when he saw the Heron Spear raised high in Sil's articulated arms.
'Those things…' Mimara whispered from his side.
'Inchoroi,' Achamian muttered. With a kind of wonder, he thought of Kellhus and his Great Ordeal, of their mad march across the wasted North to Golgotterath. The war depicted on these walls, he realized, had never ended, not truly.
Ten thousand years of woe.
'These are their memories,' Achamian found himself saying aloud. 'The Nonmen cut their past into the walls… as a way to make it as immortal as their bodies.'
The faces of several scalpers turned toward him, some in expectation, others in annoyance. Speaking seemed a kind of sacrilege, like ill-willed gossip in the light of a funeral pyre.
On and on they walked, deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Miles passed without a terminus or a fork, just warring walls, stamped as deep as outstretched arms. The way before them resolved out of obscurity. Behind, the light of the entrance dwindled into a star, solitary in a field of absolute black.
Then with horrifying suddenness, a second gate welled out of the darkness. Several gasps echoed through the stale air. The company stumbled to a halt.
Two wolves towered before them, standing like men to either side of an unbarred portal, eyes bulging, tongues lolling. The contrast was dramatic. Gone was the intricacy of the underworld road, replaced by a more ancient, more totemic sensibility. Each wolf was three wolves, or the same wolf at three different times, the graven heads warped into three distinct postures, their stylized expressions ranging from sorrow to savagery, as if the ancient artisans had rendered an entire animal existence in a single moment of stone. Writing ringed the casings of each, densely packed in vertical columns, pictograms like numeric slashes, at once elegant and primitive. Auja- Gilcыnni, Achamian realized, the so-called First Tongue, so old that even the Nonmen had forgotten how to read or speak it-which meant this gate had to be as ancient to Nonmen as the Tusk was to Men. Everything about it spoke of rude souls awakening to the subtleties of artistic wonder…
But the fascination wilted as quickly as it had sparked. Achamian found himself swaying on his feet, light- headed, as if he had leapt too quickly from a slumber. Mimara also stumbled, brought both hands to her forehead, held them like a tent over her brows. Several mules spooked, stamped and jerked against their ropes. There was more than the ache of ages in the air. There was… something else, a lack of some kind, running perpendicular to the geometry of the real, bowing its lines with its cavernous suck. Something that whispered from the blackness between the graven beasts.
Something abyssal.
The gate swam in the Wizard's eyes, not so much a portal as a hole.
Without warning, Cleric's light waxed, bleached the heights of stone. Shadows crawled from the great wolf snouts hanging above. The Nonman turned before the entrance, blasted by illumination. Several raised their hands against the glare.
His voice seemed to boom into the surrounding darkness.
'Kneel…'
The Skin Eaters stared at him dumbstruck, watched as he slumped to his knees. For a heartbeat his eyes glared without focus, then he looked to the Men standing about him, his expression slowly tightening. Pained lines climbed his scalp.
'Kneel!' he shrieked.
Sarl cackled, though the smile that broke his barbed goatee seemed far from amused. 'Cleric. Come now…'
'This was the war that broke our back!' the Nonman thundered. 'This… This! All the Last Born, sires and sons, gathered beneath the copper banners of Siol and her flint-hearted King. Silverteeth! Our Tyrant-Saviour…' He rolled his head back and laughed. Two lines of white marked the tears that scored his cheeks. 'This is our…' The flash of fused teeth. 'Our triumph.'
He shrunk, seemed to huddle into his cupped palms. Great silent sobs wracked him.
Looks were exchanged, short-lived with embarrassment. There was something eerie about the light, apart from the way it hung sourceless above them, something that rendered each of them in a distinct cast of brilliance. Perhaps it was the black walls, or the curls of white refracted across the polish of innumerable figures, but none of the shadows seemed to match up. It was as if everyone stood in the unique light of some different morning, noon, or twilight. Perhaps it was his race, or maybe it was his pose, but only Cleric seemed to belong.
Lord Kosoter crouched at his side, placed a hand on his broad back, began muttering something inaudible. Kiampas stared at the floor. Sarl looked about, eyes darting, apparently more unnerved by this act of intimacy than by the substance of Cleric's words.
'Yessss!' the Nonman hissed, as though grasping something essential and overlooked.
'This is just a fucking place,' Sarl growled. 'Just another fucking place…'
All of them could feel it, Achamian realized, looking from face to stricken face. Some kind of dolour, like the smoke of some hidden, panicked fire, pinching them, drawing their thoughts tight… But there was no glamour he could sense. Even the finest sorceries carried some residue of their artifice, the stain of the Mark. But there was nothing here, save the odour of ancient magicks, long dead.
Then, with a bolt of horror, he understood: The tragedy that had ruined these halls stalked them still. Cil- Aujas was a topos. A place where hell leaned heavy against the world.
He turned to Mimara, surprised to find himself gripping her hand. 'Haunted,' he murmured in reply to her wondering eyes. 'This place-'
'Listen,' Kiampas called, apparently in the grip of some abrupt resolution. 'Stow your tongues-all of you! You saw the marks at the gate, all the companies that have vanished into this place. Granted, they didn't have Cleric, they didn't have a guide, but the fact remains they vanished. Maybe they lost their way, or maybe the skinnies got them. Either way, this is a slog, boys, as deadly as any other. From here on in, we march at the ready, you understand?'
'He's right,' Xonghis called from the gloom to their rear. He was crouched near the wall, his Jekki pack high on his shoulders, his mailed forearms pressed against his knees. He reached to the ground before him, raised a long bone from the dust, something that could have belonged to a dog. 'Dead skinny,' he said. He held it to the light, then peered through it like a tube: The knobs at either end had been snapped off. He turned to the rest of the company, shrugged. 'Something was hungry.'
The scalpers looked around, cursed at the sight of bones scattered everywhere, like the remains of some forgotten flood, sticks beneath silt. Lord Kosoter continued to mutter in Cleric's ear, a grinding discourse, full of hate. The words 'miserable wretch' climbed into clarity. Achamian found himself staring into the black portal between the towering wolves, expecting, any moment now, something…
When he blinked, he saw yammering figures from his Dreams.
'Sranc?' one of the Galeoth scalpers cried-Hoat. 'What eats Sranc?' He had to be the youngest of the Skin Eaters, his body still hooked by an adolescent ranginess.
Every one of them, Achamian realized, every company that had dared these halls. All of them had paused before this broken gate and suffered the very same premonition. And still they marched onward, carrying their war, whatever it was, deeper, deeper…
Never to be seen again.
'Where are the doors?' Galian blurted. He looked around in the quarrelsome manner that some use to conceal
