blistering the Wizard's cheek with salt. Seeing the Nonman, Achamian suddenly realized what it was he needed to do. He needed to convince Kosoter to send him alone with the Nonman King-with Seswatha's ancient friend and ally.
He needed to reach what remained of Nil'giccas… Or, failing that, kill him.
But how to convince him, a being gone mad for forgetfulness?
The Captain scooped the Chorae tight into his fist. Achamian watched, trying to squint the hope from his eyes, while the man drew his knife and began sawing at his restraints.
'I smell treachery,' Lord Kosoter said to his inhuman ward. 'You take him. Confirm his story or kill him.'
Cleric nodded. A band of dawn orange slipped across his cheek.
The old Wizard fairly shouted aloud for relief. How long had it been since the Whore had last favoured him? Seju knew he would need more of her capricious favours before this insanity was through.
His extremities prickled and stabbed at the sudden return of circulation. Groaning, he drew himself up, rubbing his hands and fingers against his forearms.
'You die no matter what,' the Captain spat, speaking as if the future were as irrevocable as the past. 'It's the girl who tips upon the balance.'
And suddenly Achamian understood why Kosoter had elected to remain behind. Logic- scalper logic. Who knew what sorcerous traps lay buried in a legendary place like the Library? Better to hang back, to direct events from safety, with a knife held to his hostage's throat.
'And the child within her.'
The Great Library of Sauglish. Even beaten to its foundations, portions of the holy fortress reared above the trees. The merest rise or gap in the screening branches afforded him glimpses. His dreaded destination.
Even still, the old Wizard found an unexpected serenity walking with the Nonman through the wooded ruins. Ragged patches of sunshine waved across the forest floor. Birdsong chirped and chattered through the canopy, light and inexhaustible. Here and there sections of wall rose from mounds like teeth from earthen gums. Layers of stonework ribbed the ravines they crossed. Blocks and fragments of every description stumped the ground. They passed a free-standing triumphal, the first thing Achamian clearly recognized from his Dreams: the Murussar, the symbolic bastion that marked the entrance to Sauglish's outlander quarter. Stripped of its inscriptions and engravings, it towered into the canopy, stone blackened, chapped with white lichens, shelved with moss. He need only blink to see the crowds bustling about its marble base: their garb ancient, their arms and armour bronze-men culled from all nations, from wild Aorsi to distant Kyraneas.
Prior to the First Apocalypse, the Holy Library had been famed throughout Earwa, the destination of poets, sorcerers, and princely embassies. Entire literary traditions had grown about the long pilgrimage to the City of Robes, the famed Caravaneeri, of which only fragments now survived. Bards and prophets haunted the niches and alcoves of every street, crying out diversion and threatening damnation. Vendors lined the ways, hawking wares from as far away as ancient Shir.
Sauglish had been infamous for its racket, the markets booming with commerce during the days, the streets clattering with teamsters during the night. There was something both tragic and beautiful, Achamian decided, in the contrast between that ancient clamour and the peaceful din he heard now-as if there were something proper in the passing of Men.
The Ganiural, the processional avenue that led to the Library, was still clearly visible beneath the mounding of centuries: a broad trough in the forest floor that followed a compass-straight bearing. The old Wizard had said nothing to Cleric in all this time: despite the wonder he felt, his outrage at his captivity remained too raw a thing to broach. But as they climbed toward the ruined Library, the scale of ages seemed to leach into his bones-generations stacked upon generations, innumerable lives snuffed after a mere handful of scratching years. The fact that the figure walking beside him had outlived all of it, long enough to break beneath the burden, loomed so large that his grudge began to seem preposterous.
'Incariol,' Achamian finally said, wincing at the way speaking pained his gag-cankered tongue. 'Why that name?'
The Nonman's stride did not falter. 'Because I wander.'
The Wizard breathed deep, knowing the time had come to plunge back into the fray. He squinted up at the figure. 'And Cleric?'
The Nonman's pace slowed a fraction. A scowl furrowed his hairless brow.
'It is a tradition… I think… A tradition among the Siqu to take a Mannish name.'
Siqu was the name given to Nonmen who walked among Men.
'But Incariol is not your name…'
The Nonman continued walking.
'You are Nil'giccas,' the Wizard pressed. 'The Last King of Mansions.'
Cleric abruptly halted and with an alien air slowly turned to face him. Because they had walked shoulder to shoulder or rather, shoulder to elbow, the Nonman loomed over him, broad and hale beneath his nimil armour.
The Wizard saw turmoil in his dark eyes.
'No,' the marmoreal lips said. 'He is dead.'
A sudden consciousness of what Seswatha had felt in the presence of the being before him descended upon Achamian. A sense of age-spanning majesty, grievous nobility, and power, angelic and unfathomable.
'No,' the old Wizard said. 'He is quite alive, gazing upon me.'
The King of Ishterebinth stood before him, storied and immortal. The legendary hero, whose triumphs and disasters had been stamped into the very foundation of history.
Drusas Achamian fell to his knees, bent with fingers interlocked behind his neck, the way the Grandmaster of the Sohonc had bowed so many times so very many years ago, even in this, the celebrated city he once called his own…
He knelt to accord honour to the great King before him.
She watches Cleric and the Wizard vanish over the burial rim that once was Sauglish's walls, swallows against the cry climbing her throat. The sight reeks of execution.
They have reached the Coffers. The Skin Eaters, she knows, will not suffer them long.
Mimara has never been a timid or fearful woman. Nor has she ever been like her mother, who continually swaddled her heart in doubt and misgivings. Their quest has doled out terrors aplenty, but almost always as calls to desperate action. There were always eyes she could claw. Always.
But the fear she feels now forbids all action. It gags her, as certainly as the Wizard had been gagged. Even her wailing is caught in the fist of her breast. It empties her limbs of blood.
The fear that taught prayer to Men.
She can feel Achamian walking alone, out there, a point of panic swamped in torpor. She can feel his doom close hoary about him.
The Captain and the others busy themselves with trivial labours. Pokwas whets his great blade. Koll seems to sleep. Xonghis fashions snares. Mimara simply sits hugging her knees, rapt, at times praying for Achamian, at times fending the images of disaster flashing through her soul's eye. She spends the early morning watches grappling with doom and futility.
But the focus of her anxiety is not long in changing.
– | Great Sauglish, the ancient City of Robes, extended about them, little more than a host of ruined grottos scattered through the forest. He would succeed in this, the old Wizard thought on his knees beneath the towering Nonman. He would wrest Cleric away from the Captain. He would recover Anasurimbor Celmomas's ancient map from the Coffers. He would find Ishual and the truth of the man who had stolen his wife.
'You are confused, mortal,' Cleric said. 'Rise.'
And with these simple words, the old Wizard's sudden hope collapsed back into the morass of worry and embittered fear. Feeling foolish, Achamian climbed back to his feet. He gazed angrily up at the Nonman, then looked down in embarrassment and fury.
'Lord Kosoter…' he ventured as they resumed their climb. 'He's your elju? Your book?'
Cleric was reluctant to speak. The old Wizard knew he had to tread carefully. Famed King of Ishterebinth or not, the Nonman walking beside him was also an Erratic, one of the Wayward.
