'Yes.'
'What if he lies? What if he manipulates you?'
Cleric turned to regard him, then looked to the glimpses of ruined walls in the distance before them. 'What if he's treacherous?' he asked.
'Yes!' the Wizard pressed. 'Surely you can see how… diseased his heart has become. Surely you can see his madness!'
'And you… you would be my book in his stead?'
Achamian paused to better choose his words.
'Seswatha,' he began with an imploring look, 'your old friend of yore-he dwells within me, my Lord. I cannot betray him. He cannot betray you. Let me bear the burden of your memory!'
Cleric continued in silence for several strides, his expression inscrutable.
'Seswatha…' he finally repeated. 'That name… I remember. When the world burned… When Mog-Pharau shouldered the clouds… He… Seswatha fought at my side… for a time.'
'Yes!' Achamian exclaimed. ' Please, my Lord. Take me as your book! Leave this scalper madness behind! Regain your honour! Reclaim your glory!'
Cleric lowered his face, clutched his chin and cheek. His shoulders hitched in what Achamian took for a sob…
But was in fact a laugh.
'So…' the Nonman King said, raising eyes savage for their mirth. 'You offer me oblivion?'
Too late, the old Wizard recognized his mistake.
'No… I-'
The Nonman whirled, grasped him with a strength that made the Wizard feel bone thin, bone frail. 'I will not die a husk!' he cried. He rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder in his curious, mad and explosive way. He flung out his hands to clutch the air.
'No! I will ruin and I will break!'
Few things unsettle more than the violation of hidden assumptions-or make us more wary. The old Wizard had appealed to his own logic-his own vanity-forgetting that the absence of common ends was the very thing that made the mad mad. He had offered himself as a tool, not realizing that he and Mimara were the object of the bargain struck: the shade of an ancient friend and the echo of long-lost love. They were the loves to be betrayed.
They were the souls to be remembered…
'Honour?' the Nonman cried, his sneer transforming him into a gigantic Sranc. 'Love? What are these but dross before oblivion? No! I will seize the world and I will shake from it what misery, what anguish, I can. I will remember!'
The old Wizard resumed walking, this time with a bearing more suited to a death march. Let the victim lead the executioner, he thought. Nil'giccas, the Last King of Mansions, was going to kill him in the Library of Sauglish.
Scenarios both disastrous and absurdly hopeful raced through Achamian's thoughts. He would ambush the Nonman with a Cant powerful enough to smash his incipient Wards-kill him before he himself was killed. He would plead and cajole, find the incantation of reason and passion that would throw Cleric from the mad track he followed. He would battle with howling fury, tear down what was left of the Sacred Library, only to be beaten down by the Quya Mage's greater might…
The impulse to survive is not easily denied, no matter how severe the calamities a man has suffered or how relentless the misfortunes.
'I mourn what Fate has made of me…' the Nonman said without warning.
The old Wizard watched his booted feet kick through forest debris.
'So what of Ishterebinth?' he asked. 'Has it fallen?'
The hulking Nonman made a gesture that possessed the character of a shrug. 'Fallen? No. Turned. In the absence of recollection my brothers have turned to tyranny… To Min-Uroikas.'
Min-Uroikas. That he spoke this with ease attested to the severity of his condition. Among the Intact, it was a name not so much mentioned as spat or cursed. Min-Uroikas. The Pit of Obscenities. The dread stronghold that had murdered all their wives and daughters, and so doomed their entire race.
'Golgotterath,' the Wizard managed to say without breath.
A heavy nod. Sickles of reflected sunlight bobbed across his scalp.
'I had forgotten that name.'
'And you?' the Wizard asked. 'Why have you not joined them?'
Long silence. Long enough to bring them to the base of the broken Library.
'Pride,' the Nonman finally said. 'I would bring about my own heartbreak. So I set out in search of those I might love…'
Achamian searched the dark glitter of his eyes. 'And destroy.'
A solemn nod, carrying thousands of years of inevitability. 'And destroy.'
Mimara does not know what alerts her to the sudden change in the air among the scalpers. Her mother once told her the bulk of discourse consisted of hidden exchanges, that most men blathered in utter ignorance of their meaning and intent. Mimara scoffed at the idea, not because it rang false, but because her mother argued it.
'Most find it difficult to stomach,' the Empress said with maternal exhaustion. 'They believe in a thousand things they cannot see, yet tell them the greater part of their own soul lies hidden, and they balk…'
This proved to be one of those rare comments that would flank Mimara's anger and leave her simply troubled. She could not shake the sense that the object of the exchange, the hidden object, had been her stepfather, Kellhus. The nagging suspicion that her mother had been warning her.
A part of her awakened that day. It was one thing to realize that the men who wooed her spoke through their teeth, as the Ainoni would say. But it was quite another to think that motives could hide themselves, leaving the men they moved utterly convinced of their honourable intentions.
Now she can feel it. Something hidden has happened, here, among these idle men, on the ruined outskirts of Sauglish. Something as ethereal and small as a soul committing to some resolution, yet as momentous as anything that has happened in her life.
She becomes quiet, watchful, knowing the only question is whether they realize as much…
The scalpers.
The Captain squats upon a toe of mossed stone that smacks of masonry, even though it looks natural. He stares out into random forest pockets with a kind of stationary hatred, like a man who never tires of counting his grievances. Galian and Pokwas recline against a hump in the matted humus, talking and joking in low tones. Koll sits like a cross-legged corpse, his hollow eyes sorting nothing. Sarl sits and stands, sits and stands, grinning his eyes into lines and gurgling about slogs and riches.
Xonghis alone remains both industrious and vigilant.
After a time, Galian bolts upright. With the air of settling some inaudible dispute between him and Pokwas, he asks, 'What will our shares be?'
A heartbeat of astonished silence follows, such is the general terror of addressing the Captain.
'As much as you can bear and still survive,' Lord Kosoter finally says. Absolutely nothing about his gaze or demeanour changes as he says this. He literally speaks as if not speaking.
'And what about the Qirri?'
Silence.
Despite the air of hard deliberation, Lord Kosoter has bred an atmosphere of volatility between him and his men, cleaving to thresholds so vague and so brittle that it seems anything beyond abject obedience might warrant execution. Galian risks his life simply asking questions for all to hear. But mentioning Qirri…
It seems nothing less than suicidal. The act of a fool.
The Captain shakes his head slowly. 'Only Cleric knows.'
'What if you were to demand he yield it?'
Turning his head on a hinge of granite, Lord Kosoter finally regards the former Columnary.
