The Judging eye ta-1

by R. Scott Bakker

  Incariol.

  "If the dark truly is the God," Sarl muttered through gravel. He squinted out at the black spaces with the leather of his face. "I'd say we're in His almighty belly right about now…"

  Throughout the entirety of Cleric's sermon, Lord Kosoter had continued sharpening his sword, as though he were the reaper who would harvest the Nonman's final meaning. At long last, he paused, stood to sheath his fish-silver blade. The fire lent him an infernal aspect, soaking his tattered battledress in crimson, gleaming across the plaits of his square beard and filling his eyes as surely as it filled the skulls at his feet.

  A sparking air of expectancy-the Captain spoke so rarely it always seemed you heard his voice for the first vicious time.

  But another sound spoke in his stead. Thin, as if carried on a thread, exhausted by echoes…

  The shell of a human sound. A man wailing, where no man should be.

  Blinking in the bright light of another Bar of Heaven, the company fanned out over the vast expanse of the Repositorium, their shadows stretched as long as walking trees across the ashen floor before them.

  The cry had trailed into nothingness almost as soon as it had appeared, leaving the company scrambling for their weapons and their feet. Everyone instinctively turned to Cleric seated upon his high stone dolmen. The Nonman had simply pointed into the blackness, perpendicular to the way they had originally come.

  The seven youngest of the Skin Eaters remained with the mules, while the twenty-odd others struck out in the direction indicated by Cleric, swords drawn, shields raised. As unnerved as any of them, Achamian and Mimara took their place in the wide-walking line, their backs bathed in light, their faces in shadow. Galian and Pokwas moved to the right of them, while Sarl and the Captain advanced to their left. No one uttered a word, but walked, like Achamian, with ears so keen the silence seemed to roar. Drawn like tendons before them, their shadows were so black that their boots vanished into them with every step.

  For almost an entire watch, they traversed an either-or world of light and dark, with a crevassed landscape for a ceiling and black-mouthed tombs for walls. The ancient lantern chains, though evenly spaced and sparely positioned, flayed the open spaces, forming curtains across the grim distances. And Achamian could not but think that here was an image of the Apocalypse that threatened them all.

  Despite the brilliance of the light behind them, the darkness grew ever more bold. Soon they seemed a peculiar line of half-men, backs without bodies, moving as thin as branches waving in the wind. The dust that fogged their strides formed ethereal shadows across the lanes of light between them, like steam in low morning sun. Still no one spoke. Everyone held shield and sword at the ready.

  And the mighty Repositorium gaped on and on.

  When they found the man, he was kneeling in a desert plain of dust, his face raised to the glittering vision that was the now distant Bar of Heaven. The Skin Eaters formed a thin and wary circle about him, peering against the tricks of the gloom. Though his eyes were clearly open, he did not seem to see any of them. He was another scalper-the necklaces of teeth he wore atop his hauberk made that much plain. His skin was Ketyai dark, and his beard had been crudely plaited in the Conriyan fashion, though none of his gear seemed to hail from that nation. At first he seemed greased in pitch, so pale was the distant light. None of the Skin Eaters saw the crimson sheen until they were but several paces away.

  "Blood." Xonghis was the first to mutter. "This man has battled…"

  "Perimeter positions!" Sarl yelled to the astonished company. "Move-move!"

  The Skin Eaters scattered, their gear clanking as they raced to form a thin rank in the murk beyond the stranger. Achamian approached with the Captain and the others, holding Mimara a pace behind him with an outstretched arm. They gathered to either side of the man, standing so as not to obscure the light. Answering to some look or gesture from Lord Kosoter, Xonghis tossed his shield to the floor and knelt before the unknown scalper. Achamian stepped over the shield, glimpsing the three shrunken Sranc heads, joined at the chins, that adorned its centre. Where before he had pressed Mimara back, now he could feel her tugging on the back of his hide cloak, silently urging him to keep his distance. When he glanced back at her, she nodded toward the stranger, directing his gaze to the man's lap.

  The scalper held on to a hand, its fingers cupped like dearly won gold between his palms…

  A woman's severed hand.

  "I've seen him before," Kiampas said. "He's one of the Picks. The Bloody Picks."

  The smeared face flinched at those words. For the first time, the dark eyes wandered from the Bar of Heaven, which rose incandescent on the ingrown horizon. He seemed to search the gaps between their leaning faces.

  "Light…" the Pick whispered. He brought the severed hand to his cheek, closed his eyes, and swayed like a child. "Didn't I promise you light?"

  He shrunk from the fingers Xonghis placed on his shoulder. "What happened?" the Imperial Tracker asked, the sternness of his tone somehow softened by the cadences of his Jekki accent. "Where's your company?"

  The man looked at him as though he were some kind of tragic intrusion. "My company…" he repeated.

  "Yes," the Tracker said. "The Bloody Picks. What happened to them? What happened to…"

  Xonghis looked up to Kiampas, but it was Lord Kosoter who said, "Captain Mittades."

  "Captain Mittades," the Tracker repeated. "What happened to him?"

  The man began shaking. "M-my-my-my…" he began, blinking his eyes with each stutter. "M-m-m-my c-c-company?" The severed hand had sunk back to his lap.

  "Yes. What happened?"

  A look of incredulity stretched about rigid terror.

  "My c-company? It was too-too-too-too dark-too dark to see the blood… You could only hear it!" His expression clenched at this, his lips pulled inward, as though he were suddenly toothless. "He-he-hear it sucking at their feet as they ran, slapping the walls like little boy hands. Draining like piss… It was too daaaark!"

  "Whose feet?" Sarl's saw-toothed voice broke in. "Whose hands?"

  "There's no light inside," the man sobbed. "Our skin. Our skin is too thick. It wraps-like a shroud-it keeps the blackness in. And my heart-my heart! — it looks and looks and it can't see!" A shower of spittle. "There's nothing to see!"

  Something wild and violent jerked through the man, as if he were a sack filled with rabid vermin. And in the light, it all seemed too stark, too obvious to the naked eye, the twitch and fracture of a man's breaking. His eyes rolling beneath a stationary film of reflected white. His face caped in black, the lines of his anguish bleeding ink this way and that. Even Xonghis leaned backward.

  The stranger began rocking side to side. A kind of pained tooth-to-tooth grin broke his beard. "In the dark there is always touch… you see?" He waved the severed hand in a bawling, loose-wristed manner. A thread of blood pattered across Mimara's tunic. "I held on. I–I didn't l-l-let go! I held on. I held on. I held on. I h-he-held on!" His eyes ceased seeing anything illuminated, became so crazed as to seem painted. "Gamarrah! Gamarrah! I got you! Don't let go. No-no, don't! Don't! Don't let go!"

  Lord Kosoter stepped forward, stood so that his shadow blotted the Pick entirely. He pressed Xonghis to the side with his left hand.

  "I held on!" the Pick shrieked.

  As though breaking hard ground with a spade, the Captain plunged his sword down through the man's corselet, snapping one of the Sranc-teeth necklaces. He drove the point deep, from the man's clavicle to his belly. The Pick jerked and spasmed, shook like sodden cloth on a slave's drying-stick. The Captain wrenched his sword clear; the body fell backward, arms unrolling, its feet pinned beneath it. The severed hand rolled soundlessly through the dust. Of its own volition, the man's hand seemed to twitch and grope. Senseless fingertip touched senseless fingertip.

  Lord Kosoter spat. In a hiss that was almost a whisper, he said, "Sobber."

  Sarl's face crunched into a wheezing laugh. "No sobbers
!" he cried, bending his voice to the others. "That's the Rule. No sobbers on the slog!"

  Achamian glanced from Xonghis to Kiampas, saw the same expressionless mask he hoped to fake. The Nonman, Cleric, stood with his mouth open, as though trying to catch some taste of what they all smelled. Achamian blinked, let go a shuddering breath. Everything had happened so quickly, too quickly for his heart to feel, let alone for his soul to comprehend. All he knew was that something was wrong… Something in the man's gibberish had carried the deep bruise of truth.

  It looks and looks and it can't see!

  "Cut him open," he heard himself say to Xonghis, who by now was standing at his side.

  "What?"

  "Cut him open… I need to see his heart."

  Our skin is too thick…

  The Imperial Tracker glanced from his Captain to Sarl, who said, "Do as he says," pinched through a scarcely restrained cackle. For all the world, the bandy-legged sergeant seemed like a man who had gambled everything on the mad turns of this encounter-nothing could spoil his run. Xonghis knelt in their midst, pulling a Jekki saw-knife from his boot as he did so. The dead Pick lay in his own inert shadow, his blood making black wool of the surrounding dust. His chest thudded like a broken drum when Xonghis cracked his ribcage. The Tracker worked with the thoughtless concentration of a long-time hunter: deer, wolf, or man, it was all the same to him, it seemed.

  He pulled the heart from the overflowing cup that was the Pick's breast, held the gory mass up for Achamian to inspect. The shadow of his arm fell long across the floor beyond.

  "Rinse it."

  With a kind of bemused scowl, the Imperial Tracker shrugged and reached back with his free hand. He raised his waterskin to his teeth to unstop, grinning as though it were whisky. His fingernails shone fresh and pink as he gingerly rinsed the blood from the lobes. The water drained rose from the back of his knuckles. He kneaded the heart, turning the clear meat to his palm. The tubular cluster at the top was soaked white.

  Suddenly he stopped. Everyone leaned forward, breathless, struck by the sight of a scar or suture along one of the heart's fat-sheathed chambers. With his thumb Xonghis pressed open the upper lid…

  A human eye stared at them.

  "Sweet Seju!" Sarl hissed, stumbling back bandy-limbed.

  The Imperial Tracker laid the heart on the Pick's gore-soaked stomach, but carefully, as though fearful of waking something asleep.

  "What does it mean?" Kiampas cried.

  But Achamian was staring directly at Cleric. "Do you know the way forward?" he asked. "Do you remember?"

  The ageless face regarded him for an inscrutable moment. "Yes."

  "What does it mean?" Kiampas fairly shouted, demanding the Wizard's attention. "How did you know?"

  Achamian looked to him. "This place is cursed."

  "It's not time to follow the donkey shit home yet," the Captain growled.

  "Cursed?" Kiampas pressed. "What do you mean? Haunted?"

  Achamian matched the sergeant's gaze, silently thanked the Hundred for his sober eyes. The two of them had much to discuss.

  "What happened here-"

  "Means nothing," Lord Kosoter grated, his voice and manner as menacing as the dead eye watching. "There's nothing here but skinnies. And they're coming to shim our skulls."

  The Captain's word signalled the end of the matter. Nothing was said to the others, but they all knew that something had happened. On the long walk back, Sarl harangued them with the Captain's story. The skinnies had got the best of the Bloody Picks, true, but then they were the Picks, and not the Skin Eaters. They didn't have their Captain, nor did they have two "light-spitters," as scalpers were wont to call sorcerers.

  "This is the slog of all slogs, boys!" he cried with a peculiar, red-faced savagery that was all his own. "We run for the Coffers, and nothing-nothing! — will stop us!"

  Certainly not skinnies.

  Those who had seen the eye in the Pick's heart could only trade worried glances. The grandeur of the underworld Mansion had become hoary with threat. The long ache of emptiness and uncertainty had been replaced with the pang of teeming things. Mimara even clutched Achamian's hand, but every time he glanced at her, she was staring at the cavernous hollows opening above them, peering through the chains, as though following the stages of brightening light. She seemed younger, somehow, more fragile with beauty. The curve of her cheeks, like the outer edge of an opened oyster shell. Her compact lips. Her wide eyes, lashed with quill strokes. For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.

  They would survive this, he told himself. They had to survive this.

  The great sheaf of debris that had originally halted them rose white in the light of the blinding Bar, so that it resembled the decayed outskirts of a glacier. Those left behind to guard the mules and supplies came running toward them like farm dogs: Obviously they had spent the entire time stewing in their terror. Sarl and Kiampas immediately began shouting, instructing everyone to stow their gear and ready the mules-despite the obvious exhaustion of all.

  There would be no more sleep in the Black Halls of Cil-Aujas.

  The Outside was leaking in. Hell.

  The Bar of Heaven had burned for quite some time; Achamian could feel the picking toll of maintaining its meaning in the nethers of his soul-like holding a sum in thought for a span of hours. Even still, he hesitated before dispelling it, struck by the image of the Skin Eaters bending and bustling in its soaring glare. Sarl watching, more priest than slaver, with a scrutiny that could only be called ravenous. Kiampas wandering among the company's more recent recruits, or the Herd as the originals called them, slapping shoulders and tightening straps, offering what small wisdoms and assurances he could. Galian working closer to Xonghis than was necessary, shooting pressing looks at the almond-eyed Tracker whenever opportunity afforded. The former Columnary was too savvy not to know something was amiss. Achamian imagined it was only a matter of time before they all knew that Sarl was "coughing up their cracks"-as they liked to put it. Pokwas berating a harried Somandutta, who because of his refusal to relinquish his Nilnameshi garb was perpetually delaying the others. Every so often the tall black man glanced at the others, flashed them the broad smile hidden behind his outraged expression. Glum Sutadra, the Kianene everyone insisted was a Fanim heretic, packing his kit with the slow-handed intensity of a mortal ritual. Monstrous Oxwora towering head and shoulders above the rest, laughing at something thought or heard, pinch-faced Sranc heads swinging in his wild Thunyeri mane. One of the younger Galeoth boys, Rainon, scratching the veined cheek of his favourite mule, whispering encouragements he obviously didn't believe…

  And Cleric standing over the Captain as he tightened the lacing on his Ainoni boots, staring with bland fixity at Achamian, his eyes so much older than the ceramic face that held them-like holes.

  "What is it?" Mimara asked from his periphery.

  "Nothing," Achamian said, looking away from the Nonman, letting go the cramped meaning that was the Bar of Heaven. The line dimmed, as if it were a seam in a slowly closing door, then was clipped into nothingness. There was a moment of jeering cries and blackness, so utter it seemed to possess its own sound, followed by a sorcerous murmur and the reappearance of the twin points of light, like the eyes of two different races opening in the same invisible face.

  The Skin Eaters resumed their work, though now many cast anxious looks into the darkness that leaned heavy about them.

  The plan, Sarl announced after conferring with Lord Kosoter, was simply to continue with all possible haste. Odds were, he told them, they would encounter nothing at all, given the vast extent of Cil-Aujas. Odds were, whatever destroyed the Bloody Picks had withdrawn to the depths to lick their wounds and to count their spoils. Nevertheless, they were to march "on the sharp," as he put it, which mean
t without undue noise and with eyes and hearts and weapons held ready. "From here on in," he ground out, "we'll be the only ghosts in these halls."

  These words, Achamian was quite certain, had been directed at him.

  They resumed their march, skirting the flanks of the enormous collapse, walking for the most part beyond the tailings thrown by the catastrophe. The twin lights soundlessly mapped the tangle of debris, painting this or that clutch of monolithic stone, throwing double shadows that here and there resembled wings. The ancient slaughter, or whatever it was that had scattered so many dead across these reaches, continued to choke the floor, but the bones were so reed-brittle that the scalpers kicked through them the way they might humps of grass. With every step, Achamian saw knobs and shards of mouldered bone thrown free of the dust. He found himself wondering if this was the place…

  The place where grief had burned through the rind of worldly things.

  "How?" Mimara whispered in Ainoni from below his shoulder, her tone such that he immediately knew she referred to the dead scalper. "I saw no sorcery, and neither did you-I could see it in your face. So how could a heart have an eye in it?"

  He found himself glancing to either side, counting those who might overhear. "Has anyone told you what happened when the First Holy War camped on the Plains of Mengedda?"

  "Of course. The Battleplain. The earth began vomiting the dead within it. Mother told me that bones choked the grasses."

  He swallowed rather than immediately reply. There was much he had intended to say, but a chorus of unwanted memories knelled through him, of how he and her mother had fled the Plains of Mengedda for the mountains, of how they had loved between sunlit trees…

  And declared themselves man and wife.

  "This is like that."

  He could almost taste the sourness of her pause. "I feel enlightened already."