The Judging Eye (66 page)

"You see it?" she
asks, coughing at the waver in her voice.

He shrugs. "A Tear of
God," he says with matter-of-fact exhaustion. "Here we are, trying to
hammer loose dragon teeth, and you've already found your fortune."

"I did not come for
riches." She studies his dark, handsome face through the threads of
shining white radiating from her palm. "So you don't see the light?"

He glances up at the Surillic
Point, frowning. "I see it plainly enough..." He looks back to her,
eyebrows raised. "It's
you
I'm having difficulty seeing, with that
thing pressed against your skin. You look like a... breathing shadow..."

"I mean
this
,"
she says, raising her palm. "What do you see when you look at this?"

He makes the face he always
makes when he suspects the others are joking at his expense: a mingling of
hurt, resentment, and an eagerness to please. "A ball of shadow," he
says slowly.

She pulls her empty coin purse
from beneath her belt, hastily drops the Chorae in it. She vaguely hears Soma
say, "Ah, much better," but pays him no attention. She cranes around
looking for Lord Kosoter. She can sense his Chorae the way she can sense her
own, but it also feels different, like an outward shining instead of a pinprick
of inhaling black. She sees him dozing against the wall with several others,
his square beard crushed against the blood-painted splint of his hauberk. But
since his Chorae is pocketed, she has no way of knowing whether it also shines
in her natural sight.

Fear flushes through her, seems
to pull the ancient slave chamber into a slow roll about the axis of her heart.
Something is happening to me...

This is when she notices the
stranger.

***

There, in the very
midst
of
them. She initially thinks that it's Cleric—his face is all but identical—but
Cleric sits several paces beyond, his legs crossed, his head bowed in prayer or
exhaustion.

Another
Nonman?

He sits the way the others sit,
back hunched against the wind, eyes closed, as though taking inventory of inner
pains. An archaic headdress falls to his back and shoulders, a crown of
silvered thorns chased by a skirt of tiny black rods. His garb is violet and
voluminous but wrapped in a manner that reveals segments of his corselet, a
kind of mail wrought from innumerable golden figurines. White skin is visible
beneath, as smooth as ivory.

For a moment she can neither
breathe nor speak. Then at last she says, "So-soma?"

"Mim-Mimara?" he
replies, trying to sound mocking. He is always trying to rally her.

"Who," she asks
without looking at the Nilnameshi caste-noble, "is
that
?" For
a moment, she is frightened that he won't see this as well...

That she has gone mad.

The following pause both
reassures and terrifies. "What the—?"

She hears him draw his sword, a
sound that, even through scarcely audible in the wind, instantly rouses the
others.

Everyone is up and shouting,
raising battered shields and notched swords. Soma steps before Mimara, falls
into stance, his scimitar raised above his head. On the figure's far side,
Cleric lifts his eyes, blinks with feline curiosity.

Turning his head on a slow
swivel, the stranger looks about, but never quite at any of them. He then
lowers his face to his sandalled feet once again. Mimara notices that the wind
does not touch the lavish cloth about his shoulders, though it whips and pins
the clothing of everyone standing about him.

"Sweet Seju!" Galian
hisses. "He... he
has no shadow
!"

"Quiet," Lord Kosoter
grates, invoking an instinct Mimara feels all too keenly. A sense of mortal
peril seems to ride the wind, a tingling certainty that the Nonman before them
is less flesh or blood than a dread gate, a catastrophic threshold.

He is perfectly motionless. He
possesses a predator's vigilance for sound and motion.

Even still, Cleric warily
approaches the figure, his nimil armour shining through the webbing of blood.
His expression is astonished, so stunned that he almost seems human. He kneels
below the figure and, looking up, gently calls, "Cousin?"

The face rises. The small bars
on his headdress swing about his jawline. They shine like obsidian.

No sound comes from the opening
lips. Instead, the entire company starts when they hear Pokwas and Achamian
rasp,
"
You
-you..."
in ragged unison.

Sarl cackles like a drunk who
has scared tears from his grandchildren.

"Yes, Cousin... I have
returned."

Again the lips move, and the
voices of the two unconscious men rise into the void of sound, the one reeded
by age, the other deep and melodious.

"
They
-they
called
-called
us
-us
false
-false."

"They are children who can
never grow," Cleric replies. "They could do no different."

"
I
-I
loved
-loved
them
-them.
I
-I
loved
-loved
them
-them
so
-so
much
-much."

"So did we all, at one
time."

"
They
-they
betrayed
-trayed."

"They were our punishment.
Our pride was too great."

"
They
-they
betrayed
-trayed.
You
-you
betrayed
-trayed..."

"You have dwelt here too
long, Cousin."

"
I
-I
am
-am
lost
-lost.
All
-all
the
-the
doors
-doors
are
-are
different
-rent,
and
-and
the
-the
thresholds
-holds...
they
-they
are
-are
holy
-lee
no
-no
more
-more."

"Yes. Our age has passed.
Cil-Aujas is fallen. Fallen into darkness."

"
No
-no.
Not
-not
darkness
-ness..."

With a flourish, the Nonman King
comes to his feet, his hands thrust out and back so that his spine arches, and
Mimara can see that his robe is in fact no robe but a dark bolt of silken
material wrapped about his armpits and across his shoulders. The shimmering
tails of it fall to the ground. His corselet is sleeveless, yet hangs to his
sandalled feet, revealing as much of his graven nudity as it conceals. His
phallus hangs like a snake in the shadow of his thighs.

"
Hell
-hell."

Still kneeling, Cleric gazes up
at the impossible figure, anguish and indecision warring across his expression.

"
Damnation
-shun,
Cousin
-sin.
How
-How?
How
-How
could
-could
we
-we
forget
-get?"

A sorrow flattens the glittering
black eyes. "Not I. I have never forgotten..."

The points of their swords
sinking, the Skin Eaters gape at the two Nonmen, the living and the dead, for
they understand that the one bearing the crown draws no breath. Mimara wants to
flee. It seems she can feel the whole of her skin, from the cuts about her
knuckles to the folds of her sex, alive to some plummet she cannot see or
fathom. But she remains as motionless as the others.

Cleric knows him.

The wind prods her in contrary
directions, thumbs without substance. The jutting bones of iron hum and howl, a
dirge to dragon hollows. The cage-ringed walls rise into black. Across the
rising tiers, the ancient bronze begins to creak, to rattle...

The lips of the apparition move
without sound.

Mimara whirls, sees Pokwas groan
and curse beneath the astonished eyes of his fellows. And Achamian too! The old
Wizard has rolled to his hands and knees. She flies to him, clutches his
shoulders. He blinks at the wrinkled stone beneath his fingers, frowns as
though it were a language he should be able to read. He spits—at the taste of
qirri, she realizes.

"Mimara?" He coughs at
the ground.

She swallows a sob of relief.
"Goddess be praised!" she hisses. "Oh, sweet,
sweet
Yatwer!"

"Wh-where are we?" He
chokes on his own throat. "What's happening?"

She finds herself almost
whispering in his ear. "Akka. Listen to me carefully. You remember what
you said? About this place... blurring... into the Outside?"

"Yes. The treachery... The
betrayal that led to its fall..."

"No. That's not it. It's
this
place. This very room! It's what
they did
—the Nonmen of Cil-Aujas...
It's what they did to their human slaves!"

Generations bred for the sunless
mines. Used up. Cast away like moaning rubbish. Ten thousand years of sightless
torment.

She knows this... But how?

"What? What do you
mean?" He grimaces in pain and irritation.

Rather than speak, she turns
aside so that he can see Cleric still kneeling, listening to the soundless lips
of the Nonman King... "No!" Cleric calls. "Cousin, please!"

The milk in the Wizard's eyes
clears. "What?" He fairly uses her body as a ladder, stumbles swaying
to his feet. For several heartbeats he simply gapes at the underworld
apparition.

"Run!"
he cries
to the others. "Follow the wind! Courage will be your death here!"

"Stand your
ground!"
the Captain roars.

***

The Surillic Point hangs immune
to the wind, bathing the chapped walls and uneven floor in pale white. Despite
their dread Captain's cry, the scalpers back away from the two Nonmen. Black
has begun bleeding from the bolt of fabric wrapped about the spectre's back and
shoulders, rolling up and out like dark wine in water, as impervious to the
blowing as the light above.

Lord Kosoter stands rigid, the
point of his sword held to the ground beside him, his hair flailing in steel-grey
ribbons. "He has this," he grates, his eyes fixed on Cleric where he
kneels beneath the mad apparition.

"Captain," Achamian
says, fingers locked so that he hangs from Mimara's shoulder. He's already
pressing her backward with staggering steps. "Listen..."

The Holy Veteran turns his
bearded profile to them, nothing more. "He
has
this!"

But Cleric has lowered his head.
Lines of reflected white hook across the contours of his skull. Trailing
tendrils of smoke-darkness, the Nonman King steps around him, strides with
sandals that do not quite touch ground, then turns so that he stands above
Cleric's armoured back.

"Captain,"
the
Wizard cries. Now it is Mimara who is drawing him backward, toward the hymn of
the dragon bones. Soma grabs the ailing Wizard's other arm.

Where Cleric holds his head
bowed, the spectre raises his dead face to the ceiling, as though seeing sky
rather the crushing miles of earth. The mouth works in unheard benediction. The
rigid arms lift and rotate forward. The elbows fold. The hands, with fingers
and thumbs held tight as though in some ritual pose, close about Cleric's
shoulders. The scalpers watch their companion raised, a silvery figure framed
by a corona of black...

Even the Captain is stumbling
backward now.

Holding Pokwas between them,
Xonghis and Galian retreat with Mimara and the Wizard. Sarl laughs like a child
at a puppet show, his yellow teeth gleaming. Conger pulls him in jerking steps.

The Nonman King holds Cleric
like a doll before him, like a cup he can spill. He steps forward—into...

A violent spasm, like drawing
first breath. Limbs fling outward, snap rigid, like ropes weighted with lead.
Cleric's whole body arches backward, as if bound across the curves of drawn
bows. And both Nonmen can be seen, as though each were solid and the other were
glass, naked limbs within armour, nimil plates beneath a gown of chained gold. The
Nonman King's face pulls forward, twists in bewildered delirium. Wrath.

For an instant, the company
glimpses a floating seal, a savage emblem of hell...

The Surillic Point flickers out.

"
I dream
,"
Cleric's
voice booms through the wind howling black,
"
that I am a God
."

***

The Skin Eaters are shouting.
Mimara hears herself sob.

Achamian mutters in arcane
panic. The light shed from his eyes and mouth paints Soma's blank face against
the greater dark.

***

A new light. It flickers like a
star for long hanging heartbeat, then flares with eye-averting brilliance. A
new
chamber
. The tiered walls rise into shadow about them, the bronze-barred
cages lined like pupae across them—as before. But each encases a mad thrashing,
arms reaching, hands clutching, mouths shrieking, a thousand moments of
anguish, a thousand souls, condensed into a mad, smoking blur. Eyes stacked
upon eyes, drawn across eyes. The arcs of teeth, a shining multitude. Swatches
of welted skin.