"Incariol," the cowled figure said with an air of inward grappling. And then again, "Incariol…" as though testing its sound on his tongue. "Does that sound familiar?"
Achamian had never heard of it, not that he could remember. Even still, it was plain these Scalpoi had no inkling of who or what rode with them. How could any mortal fathom such a cavernous soul?
As old as the Tusk…
"So you're an Erratic."
"Am I? Is that what I am?"
How did you answer such a question? The creature before him had lived so long his very identity had collapsed beneath him, dropped him into the pit of his own lifetime. His was a running-over soul, where every instance of love or hope or joy drained into the void of forgetfulness, displaced by the more viscous passions of terror, anguish, and hate.
He was an Erratic, addicted to atrocity for memory's sake.
"He's calling you mad," Sarl said, a little too quickly given the gravity of their silence.
The hood turned to him.
"Yes… I am mad."
Sarl waved his hands in affectionate contradiction. "Come now, Cleric. No need to-"
"Memories…" the black pit interrupted. A word struck in wincing tones of woe. "Memories make us sane."
"See!" Sarl exclaimed, whirling to Achamian. "Sermons!" His face was pinched red about a manic smile, as though he were the kind of man who made claims compulsively and so gloated over every instance of their confirmation.
"This one night in the Wilds, one of our number asks Cleric here what's the greatest treasure he's heard tell. Gold, as you might imagine, is quite a popular topic among us Scalpoi, especially when we're hunting on the dark-without campfires, that is. Warms the bones as sure as any flame, talk of peaches and gold."
There was something-the turn of his face, maybe, the aura of antagonism in the way he leaned forward, or the twist of insincerity in his tone-that told Achamian that "sermons" were the least of the man's concerns.
"So Cleric here," Sarl rasps, "obliges us with another sermon. He mentions several glories, for he's seen things we mortals can scarce conceive. But for some reason it was the Coffers that stuck. The hoard hidden beneath the Library of Sauglish, ere it was destroyed in the First Apocalypse. The Coffers, we say. The Coffers-any time we're loath to mention that unluckiest of words, 'hope.' Coffers. Coffers. Coffers. We trek out to run down the skinnies, give them a trim, but we always say we're searching for the Coffers."
The face-wrinkling amiability suddenly dropped from his face, revealing something cold and hateful and implausibly profound.
"And now, here you are, as sure as Fate."
There was something, Achamian decided, altogether too mobile about the man's expressions.
"You're a learned man," Sarl added, speaking through strings of phlegm. An uncommon intensity had fixed his rodent features-as if some life-or-death opportunity were on the verge of slipping from his grasp. "Tell me, what do you think of the concept of coincidence? Do you think things happen for reasons?"
A perplexed look. A depleted smile. Achamian could summon no more.
Sarl leaned back, nodding and laughing and petting his white goatee. Of course you do! his squinty look shouted, as though Achamian had given him the oh-so-predictable book-learned response.
Achamian did his best not to gape. He had forgotten what it was like, the succession of trivial surprises that was part and parcel of joining the company of strangers. In the company of strangers it was so easy to forget the small crablike histories that held others together and set you apart.
But this was no trivial surprise.
From Marrow to the wastes of Kыniьri was a journey of months across Sranc-infested Wilds. Were it not for the Great Ordeal, the trek would be simply impossible: Over the centuries, the School of Mandate had lost more than a few expeditions trying to reach either Sauglish or Golgotterath. But even with the Great Ordeal drawing the Sranc like a lodestone, Achamian knew he could not make his way alone-not so far, not at his age. This was the whole reason why he had come to Marrow: to recruit the assistance he would need. He had simply struck upon the Sohonc Coffers as an inducement, if not an outright ruse… And now this.
Could it simply be coincidence?
Lord Kosoter watched Sarl with eyes of glassy iron.
The small man blanched. His face squinted along plaintive lines. "If this is no coincidence, Captain, then it's the Whore. Anagkл. Fate." He looked around as if encouraged by imaginary fellows. "And the Whore, begging your pardon, Captain, fucks everyone in the end-everyone. Foe, friend, fuzzy little fucking woodland creatures…"
But his words were for naught. The Captain's silence boomed as much.
And Achamian found himself wondering just when the agreement had been struck-and just how the men he had hoped to hire had become his partners. Was he simply one more Skin Eater?
Should he be grateful? Relieved? Horrified?
"I remember…" the blackness wrapped by the cowl said. "I remember the slaughter of…"
A peculiar sound, like a sob thumbed into the shape of a cackle.
"Of children."
"A man," the Captain grimly noted, "has got to remember."
That night Achamian dreamed in the old way. He dreamed of Sauglish.
The Wracu came first, as they always did, dropping from the clouds with claws and wings askew. Their roars seemed to fall from all directions, curiously hollow, like children screeching into caverns, only infinitely more savage.
Vertigo. Seswatha hung with his Sohonc brothers above their sacred Library, whose towers and walls yawed out below them, perched on the Troinim, the three hills that commanded the great city's westward reaches. They awaited the frenzied descent, their figures hazed blue by their Gnostic Wards. Light sparked from their eyes and mouths, so that their heads seemed cauldrons. Their feet braced against the ground's echo, they sang their blasphemous song.
Psalms of destruction.
Lines of brilliant white mapped the gaping spaces, striking geometries, confining geometries, lights that made smoke of hide and fury. Rearing back to bare claws and spew fire, the dragons plummeted into the arcane glitter, shrieking, screaming. Then they were through, bleeding smoke, some writhing and convulsing, one or two toppling to their deaths. The singing became more frantic. Threads of incandescence boiled against iron scales. Unseen hammers beat against wings and limbs.
Then the Wracu were upon them.
And for an instant, Seswatha became Achamian, an old man born of another age, his eyes rolling like a panicked horse. Somehow forgotten, he jerked his gaze side to side, from the white robed men hanging frail in their glowing spheres to the black-maned beasts that assailed them, burning and rending. Wings bellied like sails in the tempest. Eyes narrowed into sickle-shaped slits. Wounds smoked. The Wracu hammered and clawed the curved planes, and things not of this world sheared. The antique Schoolmen shouted, cried out in horror and frustration. A dragon fell, gutted by blue flame. A sorcerer, young Hыnovis, was stripped to bone by burning exhalations, and twirled like a burning scroll into the vista below. The glare of sorcery and fiery vomit intensified, until all that Achamian could see were ragged silhouettes twisting serpentine over the void.
The city pitched across the distances, a patchwork of labyrinthine streets and packed structures. To the east, he saw the shining ribbon of the River Aumris, the cradle of Norsirai glory. And to the west, beyond the fortifications, he saw the alluvial plains blackened by hordes of whooping Sranc. And beyond them, the whirlwind, howling across the horizon, monstrous and inexhaustible, framed by the rose-gold of more distant skies. Even when obscured by smoke Achamian could feel it… Mog-Pharau, the end of all things.
Roars scored the heights to arch of heaven, reptilian fury wrapped about the inside-out mutter of sorcery-the glory of the Gnosis. The dragons raged. The sorcerers of the Sohonc, the first and greatest School, fought and died.