The Judging eye ta-1

by R. Scott Bakker

  "An insult," Sorweel heard himself reply, "is an insult."

  A handsome smirk. "I fear no court is so simple."

  The Prince-Imperial leaned back, raised a wooden bowl to his lips-water, Sorweel noted after he set it down.

  It was no small thing, to stand before the son of a living god. Even with his hair trimmed so close and so curiously to the contours of his skull, Kayыtas closely resembled his father. He had the same long strong face, the same pearl-shining eyes. He even possessed the same unnerving manner. His every movement, it seemed, followed preordained lines, as though his soul had mapped all the shortest distances beforehand. And when he was still, he was utterly still. But for all that, Anasыrimbor Kayыtas still possessed a mortal aura. There could be no doubt that he faltered as other men faltered, that his skin, if pressed, would be thin and warm…

  That he could bleed.

  "Tell me," the Prince-Imperial continued, "what do your countrymen call it when men trade useless words?"

  Sorweel tried to breath away his hackles. "Measuring tongues."

  The Prince-Imperial laughed at the cleverness of this. "Excellent. A name for jnan if there ever was one! Let us dispense with 'tongue measuring' then. Agreed?"

  The secretary continued scratching characters across papyrus.

  "Agreed," Sorweel replied warily.

  Kayыtas smiled with what seemed genuine relief. "Let me speak to the matter then: My father needs more than your city, he needs the obedience of her people as well. I suppose you know full well what this means…"

  Sorweel knew, though it had become more and more difficult to contemplate. "He needs me."

  "Precisely. This is why you're here, to give your people a stake in our glorious undertaking. To make Sakarpus part of the Great Ordeal."

  Sorweel said nothing.

  "But of course," the Prince-Imperial continued, "we remain the enemy, don't we? Which I suppose makes all this little more than a cunning ploy to win your loyalty… a way to dupe you into betraying your people."

  It was too late for that, Sorweel could not help but think. "Perhaps."

  "Perhaps," Kayыtas repeated with a snort. "So much for not measuring tongues!"

  A dull and resentful glare.

  "Well, no matter," the Prince-Imperial continued. "I'll keep my end of our bargain at least." He winked as though at a joke. "I may not have the Gift of the Few, but I am my father's son, and I possess many of his strengths. I find languages effortless, as I suppose this conversation demonstrates. And I need only look at your face to see your soul, not so clearly as Father, certainly, but enough to sound the measure of you or anyone else before me. I can see the depth of your pain, Sorweel, and though I think your people have simply reaped the consequences of their own foolishness, I do understand. If I fail to commiserate, it's because I hold you to the same standards of manly conduct as would your father. Men weep to wives and pillows…

  "Do you understand me?"

  Sorweel blinked in sudden shame. Did they have spies watching him sleep as well?

  "Excellent," Kayыtas said, like a field captain pleased by the vigour of his company's response. "I should also tell you that I resent this charge of my father's. I even resent this interview, not simply because I lack the time, but because I think it beneath me. I detest politics, and this relationship my father has forced upon us is nothing if not political. Even still, I recognize that these passions are a product of my own weakness. I will not, as other men might, hold you accountable for them. My father wants me to be as a brother to you… And since my father is more God than Man, I will do exactly as he wishes."

  He paused as though to leave room for Sorweel to reply, but the young King could scarce order his thoughts, let alone speak. Kayыtas had been every bit as direct as he had promised, and yet at the same time his discourse seemed bent to the point of deformity, charged with a too-penetrating intelligence, pleated with an almost obscene self-awareness…

  Who were these people?

  "I can see the embers of sedition in your eyes," Kayыtas resumed, "a wild hunger to destroy yourself in the act of avenging your father." His voice had somehow scaled the surrounding canvas panels, so that it seemed to fall from all directions. "At every turn you struggle, because you know not whether my father is a demon, as your priests claim, or the Saviour the Men of Three Seas know him to be. I do not begrudge you this, Sorweel. All I ask is that you inquire with an open heart. I fear proof of my father's Holy Mission will come soon enough…"

  He paused as though distracted by some unexpected thought. "Perhaps," he continued, "if we're fortunate enough to survive that proof, you and I can have a different conversation."

  Sorweel stood rigid, braced against the sense of futility that whelmed through him. How? was all he could think. How does one war against foes such as this?

  "In the interim," the Prince-Imperial said with an air of turning to more practical matters, "you need to learn Sheyic, of course. I will have an instructor arranged for you. And you need to show my Horse-masters that you're a true son of Sakarpus. You are now a captain of the Imperial Kidruhil, Sorweel, a member of the illustrious Company of Scions…" He lowered his chin in a curious smile. "And I am your general."

  Another long, appraising pause. The old secretary had paused to cut a new tip on his quill, which he held in fingers soaked black with ink. Sorweel caught him stealing a quick glance in his direction.

  "Is this agreeable to you?" Kayыtas asked.

  "What choice do I have?"

  For the first time something resembling compassion crossed the Prince-Imperial's face. He breathed as though gathering wind for crucial words. "You are the warlike son of a warlike people, Sorweel. Remain in Sakarpus, and you will be little more than a carefully managed captive. Even worse, you will never resolve the turmoil that even now chokes your heart. Ride with me and my brother, and you will see, one way or another, what kind of king you must be."

  He scarce understood what was happening, so how could he know what he should or shouldn't do? But there was heart to be found in the sound of resolution. And besides, he was developing a talent for petulant remarks. "As I said," Sorweel replied, "what choice."

  Anasыrimbor Kayыtas nodded, rather like a field surgeon regarding his handiwork, Sorweel thought.

  It is enough that I obey…

  "The slave who brought you here," the Prince-Imperial continued in a by-the-way tone, "is named Porsparian. He's from Shigek, an ancient land to the south of-"

  "I know where it is."

  Had it come to this? Had it come to the point where interrupting his oppressors could count as vengeance?

  "Of course you do," Kayыtas replied with a partially suppressed grin. "Porsparian has a facility with tongues. Until I find you an instructor, you will practise your Sheyic with him…" Trailing, the man leaned across the table to lift a sheaf of papyrus between his fore and index fingers.

  He held it our to Sorweel, saying, "Here."

  "What is it?"

  "A writ of bondage. Porsparian is now yours."

  The young King blinked. He had stared at the slave's back so long he could scarcely remember what he looked like. He took the sheet in his hands, stared at the incomprehensible characters.

  "I know," Kayыtas continued, "that you will treat him well."

  At that, the Prince-Imperial returned to his reading, acting for all the world as if their conversation had never happened. Numb save where the sheet burned his fingertips, Sorweel retreated. Just as he turned to cross the threshold, Kayыtas's voice brought him up short.

  "Oh, yes, and one final thing," he said to the papyrus. "My elder brother, Moлnghus… Beware him."

  The young King tried to reply but came to a stammering halt. He grimaced, breathed past the hammering of his heart, then tried again. "Wh-why is that?"

  "Because," Kayыtas said, his eyes still ranging the inked characters, "he's quite mad."

  Stepping from the Prince-Imperial's pavilion, Sorw
eel told himself he blinked for the sharpness of the sun. But his burning cheeks and aching throat knew better, as did his sparrow-light hands.

  What am I to do?

  The shouts of the cavalrymen carried on the wind, followed by a caw-cawing of a horn, high and shrill above the bone-deep din that was the Great Ordeal. The sound seemed to cut, to peel, expose him past the skin.

  How many kings? How many grim-souled men?

  What was Sakarpus compared to any nation of the Three Seas, let alone the might and majesty that was the New Empire? A god for an emperor. The sons of a god for generals. An entire world for a bastion. Sorweel had heard the reports of his father's spies in the weeks preceding the Ordeal's assault on the city. Shit-herders. This was what the Men of the Three Seas called him and his kinsmen…

  Shit-herders.

  A blank feeling reached through him, like forgetting to breathe, only more profound. What would his father say, seeing him unmanned time and again, not because of the wiles or the ruthlessness of their enemy, but because of… because of…

  Loneliness?

  The slave, Porsparian, watched him from the shadow of their horses. Not knowing what to do, Sorweel simply walked up and passed the writ of bondage to him.

  "I…" he started, only to gag on welling tears. "I–I…"

  The old man gawked in voiceless alarm. He grasped Sorweel's forearms and gently pressed the writ against the padded fabric of his parm tunic. And Sorweel could only think, Wool, here stands the King dressed in woollen rags.

  "I failed him!" he sobbed to the uncomprehending slave. "Don't you see? I failed!"

  The old Shigeki gripped him by the shoulders, stared long and hard into his anguished eyes. The man's face, it seemed, was not so different from the writ Sorweel held against his breast: smooth save where scored with lines of unknown script, across the forehead, about the eyes and snout, as dark as any ink, as if the god who had carved him had struck too deep with the knife.

  "What do I do?" Sorweel murmured and gasped. "What do I do now?"

  The man seemed to nod, though the yellow eyes remained fixed, immobile. Gradually, for reasons Sorweel could not fathom, his breathing slowed and the roaring in his ears fell away.

  Porsparian led him to his quarters, taking too many turns for Sorweel to ever hope to remember. The tent was large enough for him to stand in, and furnished with nothing more than a cot for himself and a mat for his slave. For most of the afternoon, he laid in a bleary reverie, staring at the white fabric, watching it rise and fall like the shirt of a slumbering little brother. He paid no attention to the porters when they arrived with his meagre collection of things. He held his father's torc for a time, an age-old relic of the Varalt Dynasty, stamped with the seal of his family: the tower and two-headed wolf. He pulled it to his breast, clutched it so tight he was sure the sapphires had cut him. But when he looked there was no blood, only a quick-fading impression.

  King Proyas arrived as the tent panels became waxen in the failing light. He said a few jocular words in Sheyic, perhaps hoping to hearten with his tone. When Sorweel failed to respond, the Exalt-General stared at the young King with a kind of magisterial remorse, as though seeing in him some image from his own not-so-kindly past.

  Porsparian knelt with his forehead to the ground for the entirety of visit.

  After Proyas left, the two sat in utter silence, king and slave, pondering the way the rising dark made everything transparent to the encampment's evening chorus. Singing warriors. Churlish horses. Then, when the darkness was almost complete, they heard someone, a Kidruhil trooper, relieving himself behind the tent's far corner. Sorweel found himself smiling at the old Shigeki, who was little more than a silhouette sitting on the ground a length away. When the trooper farted, Porsparian abruptly cackled, rocked to and fro with his spindly legs caught in his arms. He laughed the way a child might, gurgling against the back of his throat. The effect was so absurd that Sorweel found himself howling with the mad old man.

  Afterwards, Sorweel sat on the end of his cot while Porsparian busied himself lighting a lantern. Everything seemed bare in the light, exposed. Without explanation, the old Shigeki disappeared through the flap, into the dread world that murmured and rumbled beyond the greased canvas. Sorweel stared at the lantern, which was little more than a wick in a bronze bowl, until it seemed his sight must be marred forever. The point of light seemed so clear, so whispering pure, that he could almost convince himself that burning was the most blissful of death of all.

  He looked away only when Porsparian returned bearing unleavened bread and a steaming bowl-some kind of stew. The scent of pepper and other exotic spices bloomed through the tent, but Sorweel, as gaunt as he was, had no appetite. After some urging, he finally convinced the slave to eat the entire meal instead of, as Sorweel surmised, waiting on whatever scraps he might leave.

  He thought it strange the way Men did not need to share a language to speak about food.

  He sat on the end of his cot as before, watching the diminutive Shigeki. Without a whisper of self-consciousness, the man pulled aside one of the rough-woven reed mats, revealing a patch of bruised turf. He parted the grasses, cooing in a strange voice as he combed his fingers through them, then he began praying over the line of bare earth he had uncovered. In a moment of almost embarrassing intensity, Porsparian pressed his cheek against the ground, hard, the way an adolescent might grind against a willing lover. He muttered something-a prayer, Sorweel supposed-in a language far more guttural than Sheyic. Holding his hand like a spatula, he pressed a slot into the black soil-a ritual mouth, Sorweel realized moments afterwards, when Porsparian placed a small portion of bread into it.

  By some trick of the light, it actually seemed as if the earthen mouth closed.

  Smacking his lips with satisfaction, the cryptic little man rolled onto his rump and began fingering the food into his own grey-and-yellow-toothed mouth.

  Though Porsparian ate with crude honesty of a Saglander, Sorweel could not help but see a kind of sad poetry to his feasting. The inward pleasure of his eyes, the crook in his wrists as he raised each stew-soaked gob of bread, the slight, backward tilt of his head as he opened his dark-brown lips. The young King wondered how it could be that two men so dissimilar, a world apart in age, station, and origin, could share such a moment. Neither of them talked-what could they say, with their tongues wrapped around different sounds for similar meanings? But even if they could have spoken to each other, Sorweel was certain they would have said nothing. Everything, it seemed, was manifest.

  Nothing needed to be spoken because all could be seen.

  Sitting as he sat, watching as he watched, a kind of wild generosity seized him, that glad-hearted madness that emptied coffers and pockets. Without thinking, he reached under the cot and retrieved the writ of bondage that Kayыtas had given him that very morning. What did it matter, he thought, when he was already dead? For the first time he thought he understood the freedom that lay concealed in the cold bosom of loss.

  Porsparian, suddenly wary, had set down his bowl to watch him. Sorweel stepped past him to squat over the lantern, strangely conscious of the way his shadow swallowed the rear quarters of the tent. He held the papyrus out, so the light glowed through the pulped lines of the reeds used to make the sheets. Then he touched it to the tear-drop flame…

  Only to have the writ snatched away by a stamping and cursing Porsparian. Sorweel jumped upright, even raised his hands-for a bewildered moment he thought the old slave was about to strike him. But the man merely flapped the sheet until the flame went out. Its uppermost edges were curled and blackened, but it was otherwise intact. Breathing heavily, the two regarded each other for a crazed moment, the king slack and bewildered, the slave braced with old man defiance.

  "We are a free people," Sorweel said, warring against a renewed sense of dread and futility. "We don't trade Men like cattle."

  The yellow-eyed Shigeki shook his head in a slow and deliberate manner. As though relinquishi
ng a knife, he set the writ onto the mussed blankets of Sorweel's cot.

  Then he did something inexplicable.

  Bending at the waist over the lantern, he drew his finger along the edges of the flame, oblivious to the heat. Straightening, he pulled aside his tunic, revealing an old man's sunken chest-wild grey hairs across nut-brown skin. With the lamp-black on his fingertip, he traced what Sorweel immediately recognized as a sickle over his heart.

  "Yatwer," the man breathed, his eyes alight with a kind of embittered intensity. He reached out, gripped the young King by the arm. "Yatwer!"

  "I–I don't understand," Sorweel stammered. "The Goddess?"

  Porsparian let his hand slide down Sorweel's arm-a strangely possessive gesture. He grasped the young King's wrist, ran a thumb along his horsing bracelet before turning his hand palm outward. "Yatwer," he whispered, his eyes brimming with tears. Drawing Sorweel's palm between them, he leaned forward and kissed the soft-skinned basin.

  Fire climbed the young King's skin. He tried to yank his hand back, but the old man held him with the strength of newly cast stocks. He rolled his age-creased face above Sorweel's palm, as if drowsing to some unheard melody. A single tear tapped the spot where his lips had touched…

  It seemed to burn and cut all at once, like something molten falling through snow.

  Then the slave uttered a single word in Sakarpic, so sudden and so clear that Sorweel nearly jumped.

  "War…"

  He was in awe of these people. Their devious refinement. Their labyrinthine ways. Their faith and their sorcery. Even their slaves, it seemed, possessed enigmatic power.

  For watch after watch, Sorweel lay rigid in his cot, holding his own hand, pressing the impossible blister on his palm. Porsparian slept across the ground in the near darkness, his breathing broken by a periodic cough and wheeze. When he at last learned their language, Sorweel decided, he would tease the man for snoring like an old woman.

  The sounds of the Great Ordeal subsided, drew out and away until the young King could almost believe that only his tent remained, solitary on a trampled plain. There was, it seemed, a moment of absolute silence, a moment where every heartbeat hesitated, every breath paused, and the numb immobility of death fell upon all things.