The Judging eye ta-1

by R. Scott Bakker

  What would they say when they saw that her cheeks were dry? What would they make of an Empress who could not weep for the loss of her dearest child?

  Illuminated only by the rare lamp, the walls of the Ashery seemed to hang in a greater black. Each of the niches spoke to the sensibilities of different ages and families. Some were garish with gilding and ornament, while others, like the adjacent niches of Ikurei Xerius and his nephew Ikurei Conphas, were simply chiselled into the raw stone, bereft of the marble facing that graced so many of the others. She tried not to ponder the irony of her son resting so close to Conphas, who had been the Nansurium's last Emperor before the ascension of Kellhus. She likewise ignored the guttered votives and small bowl of grain that had been left on the sill of his niche.

  Someday, she thought, all her children would rest in this immobile gloom. Static. Speechless. Someday, she would reside here, cool dust encased in silver, gold, or perhaps Zeьmi jade-something cold, for all the substances that Men coveted were cold. Someday the heat of her would leach into the world, and she would be as dirt to the warm fingers of the living.

  Someday she would be dead.

  The relief that accompanied the thought was so sudden, so violent, that she almost audibly gasped. A confusion descended upon her, robbing her of memory and volition. She swayed, raised a hand to her blinking eyes. Then she found herself on the floor, sitting in a way that would have horrified her vestiaries it was so common, so undignified-no better than a whore hanging her legs from a window. She saw Kelmomas watching her, tried to smile reassurance. She leaned her head against the unyielding marble, the image of him lingering in her soul's eye. Small. Defenceless. The very image of his dead twin.

  She heard his voice.

  "Mommy? Does he hear us?"

  She simply could not stop seeing him, Samarmas, his blood clotting the grass, his body as small as a dog, slowly relaxing about the spear that pierced it, slowly drifting asleep. Every time she blinked.

  Every time she looked upon this other son.

  "I told you…"

  "No… I mean when we think." He was crying now, a desperate kind of hitching that made him bare his teeth. "D-does Sammy hear us when we think?"

  She opened her knees and he fell into her arms, burned her neck with a muffled wail. And she saw-with grievous clarity, it seemed-that Samarmas's death had sundered her soul in two, the one part numb and wondering, the other clinging to this child, this replica, as though trying to absorb his shudders.

  How could she protect him? And if she could not, how could she love?

  She laid her head across his scalp, blew at the hairs that stuck to the seal of her lips. Her cheeks were wet, but whether the tears were her own she could not tell. No matter. The mob would be appeased. Her Exalt-Ministers would be relieved, for the Yatwerian matter had become far more than a Cultic nuisance. Who would raise voice or hand against a bereaved mother? And Kellhus…

  She was so tired. So weary.

  "The dead hear everything, Kel."

  Iothiah…

  A life lived, now forgotten.

  And in its place…

  A breeze as dry as hot ash. An airy room, clean with tile and paint, the floor canted to drain storm-waters. A woman in a simple linen shift, wedding young, her hair raven-dark, suckling an infant, smiling, asking something sweet and curious. Her head tipped, almond eyes flashing, poised to laugh at something soon to be said, a warm and gentle wit.

  Peach-coloured walls trimmed in vining green.

  A life forgotten…

  Concern clouding her dark eyes. A quick glance at the infant against her breast, then again the question.

  "Love? Are you okay?"

  You look like you're dreaming…

  A doorway, open onto a vista of tan and blue-pale and soft and oceanic. A blue that does not hang close behind the nodding palms, but opens and opens to the white ribs of heaven. A blue like billowing cotton.

  The threshold crossed. Then a courtyard where gnarled old slaves chase chickens. A young scullery girl staring, immovable save for her tracking gaze, her skin as brown as her broom handle.

  The gate. The street.

  The infant wailing now, swung from a frantic hip, the woman scolding, weeping, crying out: "What are you doing? What has happened?"

  Wake up, please! You're scaring me!

  A slender clutch knocked aside by a strong, wide-waving arm. Steps taken. Distances rolled up into oblivion. A tugging from spaces unseen. The woman shrieking, "My love! My love, please!"

  What have I done?

  Two hundred and fifty-seven years before, a Shigeki builder had saved twenty-eight silver talents by purchasing burnt brick from farther up the River Sempis, where the clay was riddled with sand. Aside from the tan hue, the tenement he raised was indistinguishable from the others. Over the course of the following centuries, the flood-waters had twice risen high enough to lave the southernmost pylons. Though the damage appeared minimal, sheets of material had fallen from the base of the outermost support, lending it a gnawed look, which for some reason, seemed to attract urinating dogs.

  It toppled exactly when it should, drawing with it an entire quadrant, collapsing four floors of apartments and crushing all the unfortunates within. There was a roar, a collective peal of screams punched into silence. Afterwards, dust sweeping out and up. The earthen clap and tinkle of raining bricks. Then streets packed with shouting passers-by.

  The woman and the infant were gone.

  A life forgotten…

  The streets. Miraculous numbers. Miraculous movement, like threads of sand falling into and through one another without collision or redirection.

  The alleyways. The rainbow awnings, cooling the dust, shielding the walking files, dimming the sun to a threaded glare.

  The great agora.

  A peacock walking holy and unmolested through a parting crowd, iridescent eyes shimmering from its plumage, blessing all those who took care not to match them. A man barking, his face bent low and dangerous, then slapping the boy who walked with him. The click of teeth in paste. Two old men scratching their heads and laughing, lips drawn across gums, over teeth like pieces of broken pottery. A distempered dog limping up the temple steps, crooning low through half-open jaws.

  A life…

  She sat in the dust with the other wretches, a listless row of them in the shade of a temple wall, palms raised to catch rain, infirmities folded beneath tattered cloth or festering in the haze of dust. Indecent with age, threshed of all compassion, she sat begging. She did not look at the passing to and fro of miserly shadows.

  One thousand four hundred and twenty-two years before, a Scylvendi marauder had raped a Ceneian woman who had not the courage to take her life as was the tradition. She fled her family, fearing they would kill her to preserve their honour, and bore her child, a son, on the banks of the Great River Sempis. Now a descendant of that son tossed a halved coin exactly when he should, but carelessly, so that the bitten point spun from the outer edge of her thumb, causing her to look out and up…

  An old woman's paper blink.

  Bent knees. The ground rising tidal. Strong hands reaching out for her wrist, drawing it up. Unseen lips against the heat of her palm. The smell of copper and skin.

  An ancient look suddenly infantile with wonder.

  "My name," she whispered, "is Psatma Nannaferi."

  The pulse and fork of blood. A voice so close the speaker could not be seen. The pulse and fork of blood behind this place…

  "I am the White-Luck… I walk. I breathe."

  "Yes," she gasped, shaking her wizened head in affirmation. A soul, wrought of iron and cruelty, quivering like a maiden in the flower of her first bleeding. "W-we are siblings, you and I."

  Praise be our Mother.

  "Siblings…"

  A trembling hand held out to an unseen cheek. The pads of calloused fingers, touching nothing, spanning out as though across grease or paint. Tears cleansing an old woman's eyes.


  Tears for a life forgotten.

  "So beautiful."

  Tears for what stood in its place.

  Momemn…

  Esmenet was standing before her great silvered mirror when she first glimpsed Kelmomas mooning in the shadowy corners of her dressing room, almost small enough to go unnoticed.

  Morning light showered through the unshuttered balcony, so bright it seemed to render her apartments blinking dim beyond the glare it cast across the floor. She appraised her image with the negligent attention of those who spend too much time before mirrors, her thoughts far too occupied with points of strategy to care about her appearance. Maithanet and Phinersa had withdrawn but moments earlier, leaving her with innumerable "suggestions" on how to best disarm, overawe, or even intimidate Hanamem Sharacinth. She was due to meet with the Yatwerian Matriarch within the watch.

  She saw his reflection peeking through the silken folds of her hanging gowns, one crimson, the other cerulean blue. He was a shy, furtive shadow, scarcely more substantial than the fabric hanging about him. She knew instantly that all was not well, but something-habit, or perhaps exhaustion-prevented her from acknowledging him. A pang gripped her throat. Not so long ago it had been a game that both Samarmas and he had played, hiding and seeking through her wardrobe while she was dressed. And now…

  "Sweetling?" she called. She glimpsed her smile in the mirror: It was so grim that she flushed in shock. Was this how she looked every time she smiled, as though she merely bent her lips?

  Kelmomas stared at his toes instead of replying.

  She dismissed her body-slaves with a vague flutter of her fingers, turned to look at him directly. Birdsong floated on the cool morning drafts.

  "Sweetling… Where's Porsi?"

  She winced at the question, which she had asked out of habit. Porsi had been scourged and turned out for her negligence. When Kelmomas failed to respond, Esmenet found herself looking back into the mirror, pretending to be preoccupied with the twists of muslin about her waist. Her hands automatically hitched and smoothed, hitched and smoothed.

  "I c-can be Sammy…"

  She heard these words more with her breast it seemed than her ears. A flush of cold about the heart. Even still, she continued to face the mirror.

  "What do you mean? Kel, what are saying?"

  Our children are so familiar to us that we often forget them, which is why the details of their existence sometimes strike us with discomfiting force. Either because she watched him through the mirror or in spite of it, Esmenet suddenly saw her son as a little stranger, the child of some unknown womb. For a moment, he seemed too beautiful to be…

  Believed.

  "If you don't…" Kelmomas began in a pinched voice. He was twisting the fabric of his tunic against his right hip, causing the hem to ride up his thighs.

  At last she turned, sighing as if irritated and feeling instantly ashamed for it. "Sweetling. If I don't what?"

  His little shoulders jerked in a soundless gasp. He stared down with the fierce concentration that only injured boys seemed able to summon-as though seeing could choke what was seen.

  "If you don't w-want me… If you don't want… Kelmomas, I can be Sam-Sammi."

  Heartbreak crashed over her, numbed her to the extremities. In a rush she saw the full compass of her selfishness. Had she even truly mourned for Samarmas, an anguished part of her wondered, or had she simply made him evidence of her own hardship? For whom had she grieved?

  She tried to speak, but there was no voice in the sound she made.

  Kelmomas warred with his trembling lips. "I l-look… look j-just like…" He fell to his rump, then slumped into a silken bundle onto the floor. He did not sob, nor did he wail; he keened, a noise every bit as small as his frame and yet animal in its intensity, its honesty.

  Abandoning her reflection, Esmenet pressed through cool fabric to kneel over him. Now that she could see her crime, it seemed she had known all along. Trapped in circles of self-pity, pinned by the weight of endless duty and obligation, she had never paused to consider what Kelmomas suffered. As devastated and desolate as she had been the past days, she possessed the same vein of flint that tempered the heart of all mothers, the same hereditary knowledge. Children died. They died all the time, such was the cruelty of the world.

  But for Kelmomas. He had lost so much more than a sibling or a playmate. He had lost his days. He had lost himself. And he could not comprehend.

  I'm all he has left, she thought, stroking his fine, golden hair.

  Even still, something dark in her recoiled.

  Children. They wept so much.

  Save for the long gold-and-white banners depicting the Circumfix, the Imperial Audience Hall on the Andiamine Heights looked much the same as it had during the Ikurei Dynasty. Everything was designed to overawe petitioners and to concentrate the glory and the dignity of those sitting upon the Mantle. The old Nansur Emperors had always aspired to an architectural and decorative opulence at odds with their actual power, perhaps thinking that the illusion, if pursued with enough patience and zeal, could be made manifest.

  It was as Kellhus said: Monuments were as much prayers as they were tools, overreaching arrested in dwarfing stone. That the world was littered with their ruins illustrated more than a few uneasy facts regarding the human soul. Men were always inclined to bargain from a position of strength, especially where the Gods were concerned.

  Today, Esmenet could not help but reflect, would almost certainly be a case in point.

  She had grown quite accustomed to her seat just below the Mantle on the dais, fond of it even. Several paces from her slippered feet, steps descended in broad hemispheric arcs to the Auditory, the main floor where the penitents and courtiers assembled. An arcade of immense pillars soared to either side, diminishing both in perspective and illumination. Ornate tapestries hung motionless between the marble trunks, each a Gift from some province of the New Empire, each featuring the Circumfix as its central motif. Animal totems from Thunyerus. Tigers and twining lotus from Nilnamesh…

  Everything, it seemed, had been pinned to her position, as though stone and space had faces that could turn, that could lower in obeisance. She was the windless centre, the intangible point of balance.

  But it was the missing rear wall that pleased her most, the sense of natural light showering over her shoulders, the knowledge that everyone gathered across the Auditory saw her against the sky-bright firmament. It rendered what could be the most vulnerable position, the place of the effigy, into something too elusive to serve as a convincing target of curses. She loved nothing more than evening audiences, where petitioners often held their hands against the sun to see. It let her act and speak with the impunity of silhouettes.

  She even liked the fact that birds continually became fouled in the nearly invisible netting that had been draped over the opening to prevent them from nesting in the vaults. There was something at once sinister and reassuring to the sense of flutter and battle hanging over her periphery. They relieved her, it seemed, of the need to make threats. On any given day, there would only be one or two trapped, their felt-limbed struggles too small and their cries too shrill to bring about any real compassion.

  Today there were four.

  Sometimes after sunset, she had allowed Samarmas help the slaves set them tree. Eyes miracle wide. Hands trembling. His smile was like tear, it was so intense.

  The gentle swell of orisons from the upper galleries announced the Matriarch's imminent entrance-one of innumerable hymns to the Aspect-Emperor.

  Our souls rise from darkness, at once near and far.

  Our souls fall into darkness, through gates left ajar.

  He comes before,

  A candle carried into forever after.

  He comes before…

  Thinking of the twins, Esmenet set her teeth, warred against the pang that threatened to crack her painted face. Kelmomas had been inconsolable, and she had been forced to leave him bawling, begging for her to hold him, promisi
ng to become his dead brother for her sake.

  "We l-love you, Mom-mommy… So-so m-much…"

  We, he had said, his voice small and forlorn. She could scarce think of the episode without blinking the heat from her eyes. She exhaled slow and deep, doing her best to appear motionless. The great bronze doors swung soundlessly open, and she watched Hanamem Sharacinth, the nominal ruler of the Cult of Yatwer, stride into the abandoned Auditory. The Matriarch was supposed to dress in gunny to signify her poverty, but vertical bands gleamed across her earth-coloured gown with her every step. Maithanet accompanied her, resplendent as always in commodious white and gold.

  He comes before,

  A candle carried into forever after.

  He comes before…

  The end of the chorus faded into the pitch of ringing stone. The Yatwerian Matriarch stiffly dipped to one knee, then the other. "Your Glory," she said, before pressing her face to her reflection across the marble floor.

  Esmenet nodded to demonstrate Imperial Favour. "Rise, Sharacinth. We are all children of the Ur-Mother."

  The older woman lifted herself, though not without some effort. "Indeed, your Glory." She looked to Maithanet, as though expecting some kind of assistance, then remembered herself. She was not accustomed, Esmenet realized, to the company of her betters. Esmenet had received many petitioners over the years, long enough to reliably guess the tenor of an audience from the first exchange of words. Sharacinth, she could tell, had made hard habit out of authority, to the point where she could not be trusted to show either grace or deference. Defensiveness hung about the old woman like an odour.

  Esmenet cut directly to the point. "What do you know of the White-Luck Warrior?"

  "I thought as much," the Matriarch huffed, her eyes narrow with arrogance. Her face was angular and curiously bent, as though it were a thing of clay left too long on one side.

  "And why would that be?" Esmenet asked with mock graciousness.

  "Who hasn't heard the rumours?"