Lord Kosoter materialized at the man's side, his knife out… Achamian blinked in confusion. A stabbing motion. Hurm crushed his cheek against his shoulder, as if plagued by a mosquito in his ear.
Mimara cried out for shock. Achamian stood dumbfounded.
Gripping a nest of black hair, the Captain-impossibly- held the man upright while he hacked at the man's neck with his free hand. For an instant there was no blood. Then it seemed to gush from the jerking form.
"Blasphemer!" Sarl chortled, his teeth and gums shining, his eyes squeezed into creases. "No blasphemers on the slog!"
Galian had known this would happen, the old Wizard realized.
The Captain continued his savage work, grimacing in yellow-toothed disgust. He did not so much cut the head from the body as hack the body from under the head. The Hag's black-stained limbs flumped senseless between the grasses. His head yanked high like a freed kite.
"Anasurimbor Kellhus!" the Captain raved at the survivors. " He is the God! And this "-he swung Hurm's head so that blood flew from the crimson lobes of its mouth-"is His work!"
Achamian could only watch with detached wonder, the kind that afflicts the survivors of sudden catastrophes. He saw well enough. He knew well enough. And yet none of it made the slightest sense.
He found himself wondering how long before Cleric called on them to dispense the Qirri. He needed it. To the point of wringing hands and clenched teeth, he needed it.
The Captain, it seemed, was a Believer.
Zaudunyani.
The pretense of thought twined through the fraud that was its soul…
It ran like a dog, bent, so that the grasses whipped in wet shags about its face and shoulders. The morning sun hung low, a pale orb in the mists that always greeted the dawn on the shore of a great sea. Gold limned any stonework bared to the sky. The acropolis rose from the ink of its own shadow, a silhouette without depth in the haze. There was beauty in the destruction, as well as thunderous proof of the Old Fathers and their power. Here, the will and might of Men had perished before the rapacious hunger of the Derived. Here, the glorious multitudes had coupled with the screaming, the broken and the dead.
These were holy facts-sacred. But the thing called Soma did not raise its head to contemplate or to consider. It did not dare. There was the tracker, Xonghis, whose almond eyes missed little. And there was the Nonman, whose senses almost rivalled its own in some respects.
There was the mission.
It paused over the headless corpse of the Stone Hag, listened to the music of carrion flies. It lingered for a moment, long enough to savour the thickness between its thighs, the arching bloat. Then it continued racing along the company's blundering trail.
On the heights of what had once been called the Heilor, it dashed through concentric shells of ruin, crept along debris-choked foundations. It ignored the vista: the city scattered like bones, the steaming marshes, the plate of the Cerish Sea. Instead it rooted through the remains of the scalper camp, sniffing the sweet where their anuses had pressed against the grasses. It found the spot where the female had made water, only to flee from the reek of her fetus.
It paused over the sour musk of the Nonman.
Something was happening… Something unanticipated by the Old Fathers.
It cringed, swatted its face in slouching fear. Had anyone happened upon it at that moment, they would have seen a crazed creature, limbed like a man but possessing a woman's beautiful face, greased with blood and filth, rocking from foot to foot like a bereaved ape.
It bent back its head until the base of its skull pressed against the crown of its spine, unsheathed its second voice…
And screamed.
"There's no need…" a small voice piped from above. "I have followed you since sunrise."
It whirled in feral alarm.
A series of ruined walls fenced the ground behind, each rising and falling like miniature mountain ranges. A bird perched on the summit of the nearest, its body glossy black, shot with strains of violet, its head white with marmoreal translucence-and human.
A Synthese… vessel of the Old Fathers. Flowering weeds trembled in the wind beside its clicking feet. A daylight moon, pale as a blind cat's eye, rose above its obsidian back.
The thing called Soma fell to its false face.
"You were to watch him," the bird said, a miniature scowl creasing its expression.
"Things have changed."
Eyes like blue beads closed then opened. "How so?"
The thing called Soma dared raise Mimara's face. "A sorcerer, a Gnostic sorcerer, hired the company several weeks ago… He hopes to find the Coffers."
A moment of palm-sized confusion.
"The Mandate? The Mandate has hired the Skin Eaters?"
"No… I'm not sure… He claims to be a Wizard, a sorcerer without a School. Even still, Chigra burns strong in him. Very strong."
The Synthese bent its tiny head down in momentary meditation. "So the old fool has found his way back to the benjuka plate… And he discovered you? Drusas Achamian? "
"No… There is a woman with him-one who has been taught how to recognize us. A pregnant woman…"
A sharp puppet nod. "The face you wear… I see." Shadows fluttered around the bird form, as if some greater eye blinked about the world. An intimation of rage and power. "Mimara."
The thing called Soma cringed and retreated. "Yes."
"She's pregnant. You are certain of this?"
"The stench is unmistakable."
Another moment of bird-hesitation, as if each thought had to be untangled… It was no small matter planting a soul so mighty into a skull the size of an eggshell.
"Then she cannot be harmed. All the prophecies must be respected, the false as much as the true."
"Yes, Old Father. I anticipated this, which is why I… refrained."
A sideways twitch of the head. "She leaves the safety of the others?"
"To piss and shit. I have spoken with her twice now. She will yield their secret in time."
"And the Schoolman has not intervened?"
"He does not know."
The small head flicked back. Laughter tinkled like glass. The Consult Synthese looked from the Heilor, its gaze ticking between points across the fields of papyrus out to the featureless reaches of the Cerish Sea. The wind combed its feathered tailings, blowing wide with the inaudible roar of absence and ruin.
The thing called Soma breathed deep the scent of ash become earth.
" Brave girl…" the Old Father cooed, still considering the crumbs of the age-long feast that was the Meorn Empire. "Continue tracking them, Tsuor. At the very least, they will take you home."
CHAPTER SEVEN
…and they scoff at heroes, saying that Fate serves disaster to many, and feasts to few. They claim that willing is but a form of blindness, the conceit of beggars who think they wrest alms from the jaws of lions. The Whore alone, they say, decides who is brave and who is rash, who will be hero and who will be fool. And so they dwell in a world of victims.
Ever do Men use secrets to sort and measure those they love, which is why they are less honest with their brothers and more guarded with their friends.
Late Spring, 20 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), The High Istyuli
They had fled and they had gathered, like sawdust before the sweep of the carpenter's hand.