He glared his enraged impotent hatred. ‘I sensed it,’ he finally ground out. ‘Anyone would. Terrible things have been done there.’
‘How do I get there? Tell me the way.’
He gaped, astonished, then laughed. ‘You would travel there? By all means, do so. Go to your deaths.’
She raised a hand to Hanu. ‘Perhaps you should lead us …’
The man hunched, obviously terrified. ‘There is no need. Follow the lines of power.’
‘Lines? What lines?’
‘The channels. Lines. Carved in the ground! They lead to the centre. The loci.’
Saeng stared without seeing the cringing man.
Lines! What a fool I’ve been. All this time clambering over mounds and channels, searching for tall structures, when I should have been looking down. They lead to the temple. Converge there. Lines of power
.
She nodded to Hanu then waved her dismissal of Chinawa. ‘Very well. For that I shall allow you to live. But if I hear through the shades of the dead that you have done any wrong I will curse you to eternal pain. Do you understand?’ He merely stared, as if remorse or guilt was something utterly beyond him. Saeng pointed to the circle of villagers that had gathered. ‘And if I were you I would run before these people tore me to pieces.’
He jerked and hunched even more, turning this way and that.
Saeng started off, ignoring him. She studied the flat stone disc in her hand. Hanu followed.
When they entered the jungle Hanu called to her: ‘
Saeng
…’
‘Yes?’
‘
We should’ve killed him
.’
She sighed. ‘I know … I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Besides, if those people can’t organize themselves enough to get rid of him, then they deserve him.’
* * *
Osserc did not think himself a vain man. One trait he did pride himself upon was his patience. He thought himself far more forbearing than the run of most. However, even his stone-like endurance was nearing its end. He felt it fraying; less like stone than the cheapest calico. And he did not know what would happen when it finally tore.
All was as usual: Gothos remained seated opposite, immobile. His
gnarled
hands remained poised upon the table, long yellowed nails dug into the wood, as if ready should Osserc suddenly snap and take a swing at him. The monkey creature came and went on its constant housecleaning errands, dusting, sweeping and knocking down cobwebs. Yet for all its efforts – sometimes striking Osserc in the back of his head with its broom – the dust and grime only seemed to mount ever deeper.
Outside, through the milky opaque windowpane, light and dark came and went. However, with each cycle of brightening and adumbration, Osserc believed he was coming to discern a disturbing pattern. The wavering jade glow shafting from above was brightening significantly.
Eventually, when the darkness through the patinated and rippled glass was at its deepest, he rose and crossed to the window. Squinting, he could make out the Visitor glowing above and he was shocked by how large it loomed.
He turned to regard Gothos. ‘I have never seen one come this close before.’
‘One did, before,’ came a low breathless observation from among the hanging strings of filthy hair.
‘One has? Before? You mean …’ Osserc’s gaze snapped up to the hanging threat. ‘You cannot mean to suggest that they would actually do it again.’
‘I do.’
‘That would be utter madness. They learned that from the first, surely.’
Gothos snorted his scorn as only a Jaghut could. ‘
Learned?
’ he scoffed.
‘Someone should do something.’
‘I suppose someone ought,’ Gothos sighed. ‘But in any case you will be safe hiding in here.’
‘
Hiding?
I am not hiding.’
‘No? Then you are doing a very good imitation of it.’
Rage clawed up Osserc’s chest, almost choking him, and his gaze darkened. All that leashed it was the knowledge that this Jaghut was merely doing his job in goading and mocking him. Breathing heavily, he growled through clenched teeth: ‘And you are doing a very good job of being a prick, Gothos.’
The Jaghut inclined his head in a false bow.
Osserc sat once again. He crossed his arms. ‘So we just sit here while fools undo all that we have striven to build and protect.’
‘Build? I have striven to build nothing. Quite the opposite, in fact.’
Osserc shook his head in remonstration. ‘Do not dissemble. You strove as mightily as any. It was just that your efforts were not in stone or iron. They resided in another field entirely. The battlefield of ideas and the mind.’
The Jaghut inclined his head once more.
Yet instead of a sense of having won a point, Osserc could not shake the feeling that he had in fact once more been manoeuvred to where the Jaghut wanted him. Once more dwelling upon ideas and the mind.
The Nacht came shambling into the room again. This time he dragged a long pole at the end of which had been tied a dirty rag. The creature made a great show of lifting the pole to brush the cobwebs from the murky corners of the ceiling. Dust drifted down in clouds upon Osserc and Gothos. Neither moved throughout, though Osserc did grind his teeth.
He decided a retreat and reordering was called for. What he knew from Gothos’ rebounding of questions with questions was that the Azath were insisting that the answer must come from within. An obvious path in retrospect, given that the Azath themselves were by definition notoriously inward. It made sense that they would applaud such an approach. That aside, this did not necessarily undermine any potential insight. Any such revelation would be his to accept or dismiss.
Insights from self-reflection were beyond the capability of many – perhaps himself included. Rationalization, denial, self-justification, delusion, all made it nearly impossible for any true insight to penetrate into the depths of one’s being. And Osserc was ruthless enough in his thinking not to consider himself above such equivocations. Therefore, as he had seen in his reflections, one measure of progress was discomfort and pain.
If this were the case then the Azath were demanding a high price indeed.
It struck him that all this hinged upon one plain and simple thing. He faced a choice: whether to remain or to step out. No one forbade either option. Gothos had made this clear – he was no gatekeeper. The choice was entirely Osserc’s. Any choice represented a future action. Therefore, the Azath were more concerned with his future than with his past. The choice represented an acceptance of that future.
Osserc’s unfocused gaze drifted down to settle upon the obscured features of the Jaghut opposite. ‘I am being asked to face something I find personally distasteful. I never accepted the mythopoeia I see accreting around the Liosan. It all means nothing to me.’
‘Whether it means anything to you in fact means nothing.’ Gothos sounded particularly pleased in saying that. ‘I’m sorry, but I suspect it is all very much larger than you.’ He sounded in no way apologetic at all.
Osserc found himself gritting his teeth once again. ‘It would seem that stepping outside would be an endorsement of a future I have no interest in, and do not support.’
The Jaghut revealed his first hint of temper as his nails gouged even further into the slats of the table and he hung his head. ‘It is obvious even to me that nothing at all is being
asked
of you!’ He raised his head and flattened his hands upon the table. ‘Think of it more as an opportunity to guide and to shape.’
‘But what if—’
Gothos snapped up a finger for silence. ‘No.’
‘You really cannot expect me to relinquish all control!’
Something changed in the poise of the Jaghut. A wide predatory smile now rose behind the ropy curtain of hair. His tusks caught the emerald glow from outside. Osserc fought the uncomfortable sensation of having fallen into a carefully prepared trap. ‘Osserc,’ Gothos began, his voice now silken, ‘how can you relinquish that which you never possessed in the first place?’
CHAPTER XIV
The locals, I am sorry to say, are indolent and lazy. All that they need can be found in the surrounding jungle within reach of everyone, and so they lack industry and application. They are oddly content in their simple ways: an earthenware pot serves to cook foods; three stones are buried to serve as a hearth; ladles are made from coconuts; the small leaves of the chao plant are used to make little spoons to bring liquids to the mouth – these they throw away when the meal is finished. It is in vain one searches for the natural urge to a better way of life.
Ular Takeq
Customs of Ancient Jakal-Uku
GOLAN WOKE FROM
a troubling dream in which he heard distant voices chanting through darkness. That alone was nothing to be alarmed about; dreams, his training taught him, were merely random images swirling about the mind, not dire portents or prophecies. No such ignorant superstitions for the Thaumaturgs. Yet this chanting had carried whispered echoes of ancient compellings and forbidden phrasings. It called to mind references to a ritual said to have been completed only once – the greatest, and most perilous, of all their order’s invocations. One he and his fellow students discussed only in the most muted and guarded terms.
It was no wonder, he reflected, that his mind should choose to throw up such an echo now. He faced a reality of slow grinding annihilation every day.
He opened his eyes to the thin frayed awning spread above him, dripping with the passing rain. He sat up and pulled his sweat-soaked
shirt
from his chest. His bare arms glistened and bore countless red swellings of bites. His yakshaka guards stood in a broad circle about him. It seemed to him that the night was as quiet as it ever could get; the usual hunting calls shocked everyone – each morning one or two of his remaining force would always be missing. The constant buzzing of the cicadas also grated on nerves already frayed beyond endurance. The rush of passing bats made him glance to the trees; he quite disliked bats. There was also the constant moaning and groaning of the sick in camp. ‘The sick’, in point of fact, now described nearly all of the remaining army.
Myself included
, Golan reflected. He’d come down with the chills. The fever of shuddering cold spells followed by prostrating sweats. It was quite debilitating, and it was only through his Thaumaturg training that he was able to continue to function.
He paused then, for he heard something more: the murmuring that had haunted his dreams had not stopped. Indeed, he heard it even more clearly now. A true chill took him suddenly – one far more profound than his fever. He crossed to one of his last remaining pieces of luggage: an iron chest that, if lost, would necessitate his death in penance. Frost limned it now. Even in the depths of this heated abyss frost feathered its sides. A silver light escaped from the crack of its lid. He reached for it but paused, reconsidering. His hands were close enough to feel the cold breath wafting from it.
The whispered chanting spoke to him then and he knew. He
knew
. He scrambled to the centre of the clearing his awning occupied. Yakshaka turned their armoured heads to peer at him. He scanned the clearing night sky. There, through gaps in the canopy, the Visitor glowed behind the thinnest ribbon of cloud. The scarf drifted on as he waited, scarcely able to breathe. What was revealed was a swollen gibbous jade banner so gravid Golan thought it about to break upon the treetops.
To think I haven’t been paying attention
, he wondered.
Not at all
.
What could possibly drive them to … No matter
. He wiped a hand down his face, peered about frantically. ‘Second!’ he called, his voice rather high. ‘Mister Waris! You are needed!’
The man appeared, a loose shirt that he’d obviously just thrown on hanging down over his trousers.
I chose well
, Golan decided. ‘Break camp, Second,’ he told him. ‘We must continue pressing east, quickly now.’
The man’s slit gaze revealed nothing. Golan would have preferred some sort of reaction. Even the suggestion that he was losing his mind. But whatever doubts or reservations the man might have
harboured
he continued to keep them to himself and he bowed, still silent. Golan waved him away. ‘Begin at once.’
The man bowed again and jogged off.
A new figure pushed its way through the wall of yakshaka guards, this one gangly and crooked of neck, his bulging pouch of papers at his side.
How does he do that?
Golan wondered.
Have to have a word with my guards
.
‘Troubled dreams, Commander?’ Principal Scribe Thorn asked.
‘In a sense, Principal Scribe. You are here now for what reason? Other than to trouble me with questions?’
Thorn pulled his quill from behind his blackened ear. ‘Why, to record your orders of course!’
‘Like history, you are too late, Scribe. However, just for you, I shall recreate the scene.’ He leaned closer, peered at the sheet of pressed fibre paper the scribe held ready on a wooden pallet, and said, ‘March east.’
Principal Scribe Thorn scratched at the sheet. He mouthed aloud as he wrote: ‘Glorious Leader Golan allows no respite in his remorseless advance upon the enemy.’