The Great Ordeal

by R. Scott Bakker

Cnaiür urs Skiötha does not acknowledge them in any way. If he stares at the smoke, then he holds his focus as a finger in a stream, immobile, for his gaze does not move. Achamian shocks her by exploiting his inattention, striding to the fire and sitting to his immediate right as he might have twenty years previous, when they had shared a fire in the First Holy War. Mimara hesitates, knowing from her years on the Andiamine Heights that the old Wizard’s presumption was at once provocation. Only when the thing-called-Serwë took a seat to her consort’s left did she kneel at Achamian’s side. The boy followed suit, sitting opposite the wicked simulacrum.

  The birch logs wheezed for burning wet, sizzled steam from sodden marrows.

  “You sought Ishuäl.”

  The Scylvendi speaks with a harsh, chopping cadence. His voice, even when conversational, is husky, wide … as if carried on distant roaring. He continues gazing at some indeterminate point above his fire.

  “I confronted him with your accusations after the Fall of Shimeh …” The old Wizard’s eyebrows pop up, the way they always do when he is surprised by some recollection. “Just after Maithanet had crowned him Aspect-Emperor upon the heights of the Juterum, before all the Great and Lesser Names, no less.” He peered at the barbarian’s profile as if seeking approval for his daring. “As you might imagine, I had to flee the Three Seas. All these years I’ve been living in exile, pondering what had happened, the prophecies, and searching for some clue of Ishuäl in my Dreams …

  “The truth of man, I had reasoned … lies in his origins.”

  She has difficulty focussing upon Cnaiür, despite his seething presence. The wane image of his consort leans hard against her periphery, like menace painted in oils. Serwë, her sister’s namesake, even more beautiful than legend, like the girl-child of some God …

  “What I told you that final night was not truth enough?”

  “No,” Achamian said. “It was not.”

  The King-of-Tribes spits gristle into the flames.

  “Did you doubt my honesty or my sanity?”

  Mimara’s breath catches on the question.

  “Neither,” the old Wizard says, shrugging. “Only your vantage …”

  The King-of-Tribes grins, still staring into nothing. “My sanity, then.”

  “No,” the old Wizard protests. “I—”

  “Only the World makes Men mad,” Cnaiür snaps. At last the brutal visage turns, and the white-blue eyes fix Achamian. “You sought Ishuäl to settle the matter of my madness.”

  The old Wizard stares down to his thumbs.

  “Tell me, then,” Cnaiür continues on a growl. “Am I mad?”

  “No …” Mimara hears herself say aloud.

  The white-eyes seize as much as regard her.

  “Anasûrimbor Kellhus is wicked,” she says lamely.

  We are tired, little one. That is all …

  Achamian turns to her with the downward manner of those beleaguered by old furies, speaks as though reprimanding her soiled knee. “And if he turns out to be the Saviour?”

  “He won’t,” she retorts, her voice revealing more pity than she would have liked.

  “And how could you know this?”

  “Because I have the Eye!”

  “And it told you the Dûnyain were evil, not Kellhus!”

  “Enough!” the Scylvendi King-of-Tribes barks. Men who grow old in the dungeon of their hearts, she has noticed, often grind their voices into faraway thunder. Cnaiür has whetted his into one that claps the ears.

  “What is this Eye?”

  The question inhales all the air remaining. The old Wizard warns her to silence with one final scowl, turns back to Cnaiür, who has not finished ransacking her with his shining gaze.

  “She has what is called the Judging Eye,” he begins, parsing his words too carefully to sound anything but disingenuous. “Very litt—”

  “The God of Gods,” she interrupts. “The God-of-Gods looks through my eyes.”

  Cnaiür urs Skiötha almost seems a thing of stone, his scrutiny is so motionless.

  “Prophecy?”

  “No …” she replies on a swallow, realizing that this was the masculine question. She draws an even breath to calm her demeanour. “Judgment. I see … judgment.”

  The thing-called-Serwë does not so much as blink.

  The King-of-Tribes nods. “You see the facts of damnation, then.”

  “This is why we hasten to Golgotterath,” Achamian says in a clumsy attempt to intercede. “So that Mimara may gaze upon Kellhus with the Eye … So that we mi—!”

  “The Eye,” Cnaiür grates. “It has apprehended me?”

  She dares match his gaze. “Yes.”

  The great man lowers his face as though to ponder her words and a hang-nail together. A shudder passes through his shoulders. “Tell me, Daughter-of-Esmenet. What did it see?”

  She glances at Achamian … He is begging her to “lick feet”—to lie. The vacancy in his expression shouts as much.

  “Tell me,” Cnaiür repeats, raising his fluted face.

  She tries to match the glacial intensity of his gaze. Turquoise set in sclera shot with murderous memory. Something pricks, and though the very God of the Gods steeps her, her look falters, falls to her hands where they strain finger against finger on her lap.

  “I have never seen …” she murmurs.

  “What?” A voice like a father’s swat.

  “I-I have never seen one-one … so … so damned …”

  The black-maned head lowers in contemplation once again, like a stone sagging upon a stalk of clay. Mimara isn’t sure what her words should have provoked. The man is too mercurial and far too canny for her to trust any assumption. But she expected some kind of reaction—for when all was said and done, he remains a mortal man—a soul. He might as well have been a Sempis crocodile.

  She looks to Achamian, who spares her no more than a resigned and be-seeching glance. If they survive, a petulant part of her notes, she will never hear the end of this night. He will curse her for her honesty, she knows. And who could blame him?

  The thing-called-Serwë has been watching her this entire time on a tangent to the flames, a vision that lulls as much as warns for its beauty.

  “Seeeee …” it coos to its Scylvendi lover. “Salvation … This is the dowry that only my father can off—”

  “Stop your tongue, abomination!” Achamian cries.

  But the King-of-Tribes looks to Mimara alone.

  “And when you looked upon Ishuäl with the Eye, what did you see?”

  Inhaling hurts.

  “Crimes. Unthinkable and innumerable.”

  A longing creeps into the brutal visage. A desire to burn … He even turns his gaze back to the fire, as though he casts images behind his eyes to the flame. His voice surprises her, so intent is he upon the wax and shimmer of the fire.

  “And the boy, here … You took him as your hostage?”

  The old Wizard hesitates. She hears her voice leap into the silence—quite against her resolution.

  “He is a refugee …”

  The Scylvendi King-of-Tribes glares like someone slapped clear of delirium. His scowl is instant, the glove most worn by his face. The boy, she realizes, sensing the child’s immobile presence on her left—the boy has been the mad Scylvendi’s motivating concern since the episode beneath the bonfire … when he had glimpsed the child’s resemblance to his Holy Grandfather—Anasûrimbor Kellhus.

  “Refugee …” For the first time the cruel eyes slacken. “You mean Ishuäl … has fallen?”

  This time they both remain silent.

  “N-no,” Achamian begins. “The boy merely sought asylum fro—”

  “Silence!” Cnaiür urs Skiötha screams at the old Wizard. “Ketyai scum!” he says, spitting. The flames hiss like a cat. “Always you seek advantage! Always conniving—worse than greedy wives!”

  He draws a knife from his girdle—whips it with an outward arc. Mimara can scarcely blink, let alone raise warding arms �
�

  But the knife zips past her cheek. She does not quite see, so quick is the shining passage, but she knows the boy has batted the blade to the side with his hale hand.

  The barbarian now glares at the sorcerer, and for an instant, Mimara glimpses him, her terrible stepfather, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, sitting impervious in the interval between these disfigured souls. The spectre … the curse … that shackled them, these two most unlikely of Men.

  She does not like the involuntary way Achamian’s jaw works. She likes the tendons finning the Scylvendi’s neck even less. “You know me!” the Barbarian King booms. “You know my cruelty knows no bounds! Tell me the truth, sorcerer! Tell me, lest I pluck your precious Eye!”

  The thing-called-Serwë smiles at her from across the flames, glances toward the boy.

  Achamian looks down to his hands, though out of cowardice or calculation she cannot tell.

  “We found Ishuäl ruined.”

  “Ruined?” The barbarian is shocked. “What? By him? By Kellhus?”

  She glances at the boy, who for some prescient reason seems to be awaiting her look. She wants to cry out to him, tell him to run, for she knows, even though the thought has yet to occur to her. She knows that she and Achamian might pray to escape, but not the boy, not the orphaned seed of Anasûrimbor Kellhus.

  “No…” Achamian says. “By the Consult.”

  “More lies!”

  “No! We-we found tunnels beneath the fortress. A labyrinth filled with the bones of Sranc!”

  Run! she wanted to cry. Flee! But her voice is stilled. The golden blur in her periphery, the thing-called-Serwë, watches with bottomless black eyes, poised in soulless fixation.

  “How long ago was it destroyed?” Cnaiür urs Skiötha barks.

  “I-I don’t know …”

  “How long?” the barbarian repeats, his voice more hollow …

  “Ye-years,” Achamian stammers. “Years ago.”

  She sees Serwë’s impossible leap before she feels the air rushing to fill the boy’s absence. The abomination pirouettes beneath the radial felt ceiling, lands rolling into another explosive leap through the threshold. Mimara can scarcely snap her head about quickly enough.

  She blinks tears of astonished joy, battles the urge to smile. Of course! she silently cries, clutching her belly. Of course he heard her!

  He is Dûnyain.

  Alarums were raised, howls, clipped and guttural, leaping from breast to breast, igniting outward across the slumbering Scylvendi host.

  And the boy sprinted—ran the way his dead father had shown him, the way he had been bred …

  Alive.

  He was young. He was fleet. He was neither weightless nor cumbersome, but that occult in-between, smoke when soaring, grass when twisting, stone when striking. He flew through a necklace of nocturnal grottos, Scylvendi warriors crawling to their feet, milling in confusion, gazing at random points of sky the way Men are prone when keen to distant calls. They could scarcely see, let alone seize him. They could scarcely comprehend …

  He flitted through, over and between, beyond any hope of catching. Only their cries could outrun him. Shouts of coordination rang hoarse through the forest, different throats, different positions, pinpointing him in the racing black. He sensed mobs closing into ranks.

  He need only turn, and the coalescing order dissolved into more confusion. Soft humus underfoot. Close arboreal air. The pinched musk of warriors long on the trail. And the freedom of the long run …

  Torches wagged and glittered through ragged black screens. The Scylvendi host had morphed into a single beast, a far-flung composite, teeming like ants through detritus and dark. He would turn, and it would momentarily dissolve, then reassemble about ligaments of voice. He found his way blunted, though his feet scissored just as quick. He began as a spear thrown, but now he became a sparrow. He zig-zagged, continually tacking at intervals decreed by threat and happenstance. Glimpses of swazond girding arms in torchlight, blades bouncing moonlight, and horn bows raised. Choruses of shouts tracked him, forcing him into what pockets of obscurity the forest encampment possessed. Grim, outraged expressions. Tentacles of plainsmen twined across the tracts, curled about the most recent spate of hollering. He began doubling back, forcing the beast, vast and aggregate, to crash into itself. The sparrow became a gnat, a scribble. He took to the trees, leaping and swinging through arthritic lattices. Horses floating beneath. He heard shafts popping through foliage, ticking from bark, thudding into wood—sometimes about him, but almost always behind him. Savage faces squinting to peer. So long as he could astonish and shock the Scylvendi, so long as the darkness baffled their stunted sight, he could pass like smoke through their midst.

  Only the blond woman could hope to catch him …

  The one with fists for a face.

  It seemed Achamian could feel the wind of their passing long after they had vanished outside.

  “Call it back,” Mimara said dully, fixing the King-of-Tribes in a stunned gaze.

  Cnaiür leaned back, casually snatched a crab-apple from a small hide sack behind him. He halved the thing with a single bite, then studied the exposed flesh, white bruised with lime.

  “Call it back!” Mimara cried, this time with menace as much as urgency.

  “That-that thing!” the old Wizard sputtered on the heels of her demand. “Scylvendi fool! That thing is deceit! As much inside as without! Lies stacked upon lies until it mocks a soul! Cnaiür! Cnaiür! You lie with Golgotterath! Don’t you see?”

  The barbarian seized him by the windpipe, stood from a crouch, hoisting him on a swing. Achamian kicked, gripped the strapped forearm desperate to relieve his throat of his own weight, to gain distance from the Chorae bound to his navel.

  “Enough!” Mimara shrieked.

  And to the old Wizard’s floundering amazement, the mad Scylvendi heeded her, dumped him in a rancid sheaf upon the mats. Achamian scrambled to his feet, stood beside Mimara, who, like him, could only stare puzzled and aghast at the sight of Cnaiür urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses-and-men, laughing in a manner both grotesque and maniacal—laughing at him.

  Nausea welled through the old Wizard. For the first time he truly believed he was going to die.

  “She!” the King-of-Tribes barked. “She sees too much to see anything! But you, sorcerer, you are the fool—truly! So busy peering after what cannot be seen, you forever kick upon the ground at your own feet!”

  Cnaiür towered over the two Ketyai, greased for sweat, surreal for the white grill of scars shining in firelight.

  “Bah! My ends are my own, and my trust has long rotted to dust and bone. My prize belongs to me in ways you cannot know! But what of you? What of your prize, pick?” He even spat the slur with a Tydonni chirrup, an evil little memento of the First Holy War. “How can you seize what you cannot even see?”

  “So you propose to outwit the Consult?” Achamian cried, appalled as much as alarmed. “Is that what yo—?”

  “I outwitted a Dûnyain!” the mad Scylvendi roared. “I murdered one! No soul is so devious with hate, so mazed with furies as me!”

  The old Wizard and the pregnant woman shrank from his slicked aspect, the titanic sum of his rage and hulking frame.

  “Twenty summers!” he boomed. “Twenty summers have passed since I stole into your tent, and told you, as I dandled your life between my thumb and finger, the Truth—the Truth of him! Twenty winters have thawed, and now you find yourself in my tent, sorcerer, every bit as lost, as baffled and dismayed!”

  The mad Scylvendi’s voice cracked like flint, roared of a piece with the fire.

  “Every bit as blind to the darkness that comes before!”

  He ran, sketched impossible figures through the air, twisting like a snake thrown between swatting swords. More and more he heard the thrum of bows, the zip of archery criss-crossing the emptiness. The whole host seemed to descend upon the regions about him, until all was erratic torchlight and roiling commotion. But he could hear the near
ing limit, the infinite well of the wilderness, plunging off in all directions, the promise of solitary flight …

  A single turn was all it took.

  He would have paused, so certain was he of this newfound invulnerability. He would have fashioned impenetrable armour out of their ignorance, returned to find his companions …

  Were it not for the woman—the thing—flying like a silk scrap on a tempest behind him, gaining …

  He resumed sprinting across the forest floor. The ground became cramped. Elms and walnuts thinning. Stone breaching. Still she gained, and he pressed harder, sacrificing endurance for flight. The canopy became leprous, scum across the crystalline deep. Beneath, the nocturnal terrain bobbed like chips of wood upon the flood, trees and ground rising, rushing, sweeping into the oblivion of what once was …

  And still she gained.

  He had fled like this before. Eleven times.

  And though the blindness of the Thousand Thousand Halls had been absolute, his memories were of silver, screeching and grunting, silver twining like fish through the deep, dividing rather than deciding, and so halved by each and every forking passage, until they became a fog of pathetic individuals. He had clung to the Survivor’s back the first seven occasions, monkey-clinging, whooping to a glee he could never quite feel, buoyant, air whistling through his ears, snapping his robes, blood … exploding …

  The fact of the Survivor’s power had been something unquestioned—unthought. Things lifted, dropped. The Survivor conquered—always and everything. He had never supposed they could be defeated, that they could succumb to the bestial frenzy. But then he had never supposed the Shriekers would dwindle and vanish, the last of their silver screams eaten by the labyrinthine black. He had never supposed there could be such a thing as sun.

  The Survivor survived—always …

  The Survivor protected. Made safe.

  The madness worsens?

  The forest whipped about his running, a weave of nocturnal complexities falling into oblivion.

  She was faster, the blond-haired thing. Hers was the deeper wind. He need only attend to the blank behind him to know, to the chitinous cadence of her strides, the advancing tick …