The Judging Eye (43 page)

"Yes. Doesn't that frighten
you?"

Achamian found himself scowling
at the shadowy pageants chiselled above. An improbable number of faces stared
out and down from the graven dramas, their eyes gouged into blank pits, their
noses worn to points over mouthless chins. The priest to the right of the butchered
stag. The child at the knee of the nursing mother. The warrior with the broken
shield. Among the thousands of figures that vaulted the blackness above their
fire, hundreds watched those who would watch them, as though the moments that
framed them could not isolate their attention.

Proof of souls.

Skin prickling, Achamian glanced
back toward Cleric, who stared as before into the pit of the entrance. Several
heartbeats passed before the immaculate face turned—inevitably, it seemed—to
answer his scrutiny. A kind of blank intensity leapt between them, born more of
exhaustion than affinity, flattening the dozen or so Skin Eaters who leaned in
and out of their line of sight.

They watched each other, Wizard
and Nonman, for one heartbeat, two, three... Then, without rancour or
acknowledgment, they looked away.

"I suppose it does,"
Achamian heard Soma admit after a long silence. The man invariably erred,
Achamian had noticed, when it came to honesty. He was always revealing too
much.

"Frighten you?" Mimara
replied. "Of course it does."

Soon the talk sputtered out
altogether, and the scalpers unrolled their mats and bedding across the pitted
stone of the platform. Men kicked stones clicking into the night. The moon hung
over the fissure for a time, disclosing the scarps and ravines in a curious
light, one that argued stillness, uncompromising, absolute, like mice in the
panning eyes of owls.

Few slept well. The black mouth
of the Obsidian Gate seemed to inhale endlessly.

***

The ruins revealed in the
morning light were more melancholy than malevolent. Hands eroded into paws.
Heads worn into eggs. The layered panels appeared more riddled with fractures,
more pocked with gaps. For the first time, it seemed, they noticed the little
appendages scattered like gravel across the platform. Nocturnal fears had
become sunlit fragments.

Even still, the company ate in
comparative silence, punctuated by the low comments and laughs typically
reserved for recollections of hard drinking. Forced normalcy as a remedy for
uncertain nerves. Their small fire burned through what little fuel remained
before Achamian had a chance to boil water for his tea, forcing him to mutter a
furtive Cant. This filled him with dread for some reason.

They paused to watch Xonghis
confer in low tones with Lord Kosoter. Then they entered the Black Halls of
Cil-Aujas with nary a commemorating word, let alone the fanfare Men typically
attach to fatal endeavours. They simply assembled, leading their mules, then
followed Cleric and their Captain in a file some thirty-five souls long. With
Mimara at his side, Achamian glanced skyward one final time before joining the
string of vanishing figures. In the slot of a hanging ravine, the Nail of
Heaven twinkled alone in the endless blue, a beacon of all things high and
open...

A final call to those who would
dare the nethers of the earth.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Andiamine Heights

Little snake, what poison in
your bite!

Little snake, what fear you
should strike!

But they don't know, little
snake—oh no!

They can't see the tiny
places you go...

—
Zeümi Nursery Song

Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132
Year-ofthe-Tusk), Momemn

Kelmomas had known his father
had returned almost immediately. He saw it in a host of subtle cues that he
didn't even know he could read: an imperceptible contraction in the Guards'
posture, an alertness of pose and look in the Apparati, and a long-jog
breathlessness in the slaves. Even the air assumed a careful taste, as though
the drafts themselves had grown wary. Nevertheless, Kelmomas didn't realize he
knew until he overheard one of the choir slaves gossiping about the Yatwerian
Matriarch pissing herself beneath the Holy Mantle.

He's come to console Mother,
the
secret voice said.

Alone in the playroom, Kelmomas
continued working on his model of Momemn, carving meticulous little obelisks
out of balsa, long after darkness draped the Enclosure. A kind of childish
indecision had overcome him, a listless need to continue poking at whatever he
happened to be doing, to simply exist for a petulant time, thinking and acting
stubbornly counter to fact.

It had always been like this
with his father. Not fear, just a kind of canny reluctance, rootless and
long-winded.

Eventually he had to relent—that
too was part of the game—so he made his way to his mother's private apartments.
He could hear his older brother, Inrilatas, ranting about the Gods in his
locked room. His brother had broken his voice bludgeoning the walls years ago,
yet still he croaked, on and on and on, as though flooding his room in some
lunatic search for leaks. He never stopped raving, which was why he was always
kept locked in his room. Kelmomas had not seen him for more than three years.

His mother's apartments were
located down the hallway. He padded across the rug-strewn floor as silently as
he could, his ears keen to the sound of his parents' voices filtering through
innumerable wheezing cracks and surfaces. He paused outside the iron door, his
breath as thin as a cat's.

"I know it pains
you,"
Father was saying,
"but you must have Theliopa with you
in all your dealings."

"You fear
skin-spies?"
his mother replied.

Their voices possessed the weary
burnish of a long and impassioned conversation. But the roots of his father's
exhaustion stopped short of the deeper intonations that warbled in and out of
his discourse. A heart-easing hum, and a kind of ursine growl, far too low to
be consciously heard by Mother. These spoke from something as unwinded as it
was inscrutable, an occluded soul, entirely hidden from lesser ears.

He manages her,
the voice
said.
He sees through her face the way you do, only with far more clarity,
and he shapes his voice accordingly.

How do you know?
Kelmomas
asked angrily, stung by the thought that anyone, even Father, could see further
than him. Further into her.

"The nearer the Great
Ordeal comes,"
Father said,
"the more desperate the Consult
grows, the more likely they will unleash what agents remain. Keep Theliopa with
you at all times. Aside from my brother, she's the only one who can reliably
see their true faces."

Kelmomas smiled at the thought
of the skin-spies. Agents of the Apocalypse. He loved hearing the stories about
their wicked depredations during the First Holy War. And he had gurgled with
delight watching the black one being flayed—carefully, so that Mother wouldn't
see, of course. Somehow, he just knew he would be one of the few who could see
past their faces, just as he could see past his father's voice. If he found
one, he decided, he would keep it secret, he would simply watch it,
spy
on
it—he so dearly loved
spying
. What a game it would make!

He wondered who was faster...

"You fear they'll attack
the Andiamine Heights?"
Real horror shivered through Mother's voice as
she said this, the horror of events scarcely survived.

All the more reason to trap it
like a bug, Kelmomas decided. He would say things, cryptic things, that would
make it wonder. He needed something to tease now that Samarmas was gone.

"What better way to
distract me than by striking at my hearth?"

"But nothing distracts
you,"
Mother said, her tone so desolate that only silence could
follow. Kelmomas found himself leaning toward the door, such was the ache that
emanated from the quiet beyond. It seemed he could hear them breathing, each
following their own tangled string of thoughts. It seemed he could smell the
absence of contact between them. Tears welled in his eyes.

She knows,
the voice
said.
Someone has told her the truth about Father.

"When must you
leave?"
Mother asked.

"Tonight."

Kelmomas made ready to push
through the door... Mother was hurting! And it was Father—Father! How could he
have missed this before?

He'll see you,
the voice
warned.

Father?

None know how much he sees...

This puzzled the young
Prince-Imperial. He stood motionless before the cast door, his hand arrested
mid-air...

But she needs me—Mommy! Think
of the warm cuddling, the tickles, the kisses on the cheek!

He's the root,
the voice
replied,
and you're but the branch. Remember, the Strength burns brightest
in him.

For reasons Kelmomas was
entirely unable to fathom, that dropped his hand like lead.

The Strength.

He turned, ran like a loping
athlete one-two-three-
leap!
—down the halls past the bemused Pillarian
Guards. As a Prince-Imperial, he had the run of the Andiamine Heights, though
he was forbidden to leave its halls and gardens without the express permission
of the Empress. So run he did, down the tapestried halls, through the slave
barracks and into the kitchens. It was here that he palmed a silver skewer. A
couple of the more matronly slaves stopped to ruffle his hair and pinch his
cheeks. "Poor boy," they said. "You loved your brother dearly,
didn't you?" He looked through their faces, made them blush with
compliments. He worked his way to the Atrium, but the great doors to the
Imperial Audience Hall had long been shut. No matter, the entrance to one of
the second-floor galleries remained propped open. He decided to climb the
twining stairs upside down, walking on his hands.

He flipped back to his feet when
he reached the summit. All was shadows. He could only see the airy hollows of
the Hall by looking through the slot between the pillars and the immense
tapestries that hung between. For some reason, it seemed both more vast and
smaller when seen from this vantage. When he reached the final pillar, it
unnerved him to see that he could look down on the Mantle and his mother's
seat. It dawned on him that no matter how great, no matter how pure and
concentrated one's Strength, it was always possible that someone unseen looked
down.

He secured his hands and hooked
his feet along the edge of the immediate tapestry, slid like a bronze weight to
the polished expanse of the floor. The grand pillars astonished him—or so he
pretended in the name of his epic feat. Laughing, he climbed the steps to the
Mantle, the great throne of ivory and gold from which his father passed dread
judgment upon the Known World.

"Skuh-skuh-skin spies!"
he whispered to himself. How long would it be before they showed
themselves?

He couldn't wait!

He climbed onto the throne's
hard seat, sat swinging his feet for several moments, hoping for the onset of
absolute power, becoming bored when it failed to arrive. A sparrow caught in
the netting above cried
tweet-tweet-tweet
in forlorn tedium. He craned
his neck up and back to stare at its shadow. It periodically thrashed, a rustle
like a dog's hind leg scratching. The stars beyond twinkled without sound.

He wished he had a stone, but
all he had was the skewer.

The world he walked was far
different from the world walked by others. He did not need the voice to tell
him that. He could hear more, see more, know more—everything more than
everybody save his father and maybe his uncle. His sense of smell, in
particular...

He pressed himself from the
throne, from the residual aura of his mother, and trotted down the steps to the
Auditory floor. The smell of his uncle, the Shriah, he could recognize readily
enough, but the smell of the other, the stranger, was pungent with
unfamiliarity. He squatted, bent his face to the smear of evaporated urine—a
fuzzy patch of grease in the moonlit gleam.

He breathed deep the Matriarch's
rank odour. It transported him, enlightened him in the manner of petty things
followed deep.

Then he stood and turned, leapt
the stair to the dais in a single, effortless bound. He wandered onto the
balcony behind the thrones, stared out across the moon-silvered distances of
the Meneanor Sea.

There was something ominous
about the Sea at night, the unseen heaving, the black curling beneath the
booming surf, the sunless hissing. Only in the dark, it seemed, could the
trackless extent of its menace be perceived. Vast. Impenetrable. All-embalming.
Every struggle wrapped in a fizzing haze. Every death a dropping into the
fathomless unseen...

Ever did Men drown in blackness,
even in sun-spliced waters.

The young Prince-Imperial leapt
over the balustrade.

The sorcerous Wards he need not
worry about. He could see them easily enough. And the Pillarian Guards, who
endlessly prowled the halls of the Andiamine Heights, he could hear around
corners. Even if they were to catch him, something that still happened despite
the years he had spent perfecting his game, the consequences of discovery would
consist of little more than a lecture from Mother.