The Great Ordeal by R. Scott Bakker

Author:R. Scott Bakker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FIC009000, FIC009030
ISBN: 9781468313512
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2016-07-12T07:00:00+00:00

The glare had been so bright as to make straw of everything that gleamed, and chalk of all that was indistinct. Ordealmen laboured across the plain, each soul bearing his shadow beneath him. Their dust conspired to create a second Shroud, dwarfish and insubstantial.

“And if Ishterebinth has fallen to the Consult? What then, Father?”

A grave look.

“You are my daughter, Serwa,” Anasûrimbor Kellhus replied. “Show them my portion.”

Nin’ciljiras had come without explanation, Oinaral explained, disgorged by the very horizon that had swallowed him an Age previous when he and the other Dispossessed Sons of Viri had fled the Judgment of the Seal. The son of Ninar had come in all due humility, invoking the Canon of Imimorûl, demanding a hearing before the Aged. Some had sought to kill him, to execute the sentence Nil’giccas had passed. But his return so soon after the disappearance of the King was no coincidence. Nin’ciljiras had found Ishterebinth in uproar, for never had a Mansion wanted for a Son of Tsonos! So the Aged, those upon the Dolour’s mad bourne, seized upon the cur, immediately declared him, fearing strife and rebellion otherwise—sorrows that would all but toss them to madness. What could any of the Younger do? They had no voice in matters of Canon. They remained Intact entirely because they had no honour, for honour was nothing but the summit of life, and they had lived not at all. Aside from sneers, what could they command in the presence of heroes?

“I was a child when the Second Watch was disbanded,” Oinaral explained. “I remember seeing him, Nin’janjin, the Most-Accursed Son, standing as a brother beside Cu’jara Cinmoi in the glory of the Siölan Mall. I alone recall the terms of our wicked capitulation!”

So Oinaral could only watch in horror as Nin’ciljiras, Scion of Nin’janjin, was bled as Nil’giccas was once bled upon the Holy Seal of Ishoriöl, and so became the King of the Exalted Stronghold. And he knew with a certainty that was a sickness in his gut what would follow, how Min-Uroikas would figure ever more in the usurper’s discourse and declaration, how possibilities mentioned would become, in the fullness of months and years, promises sworn.

How Ishterebinth would one day awaken a fief of Golgotterath …

Sorweel had fairly swooned for incredulity, listening as he did with a composite soul. What disaster? What catastrophe could warrant degradation so outrageous as this? To beg scraps from the palm of the Vile! Lick the hands that had tortured and murdered their wives! Their daughters! To fall as cannibals upon honour and glory!

“Outrage!” he barked from hunched shoulders. “They are the Vile!”

Oinaral seized his shoulder, drew him to a halt. “Name yourself, Son of Harweel … Take possession of what you think.”

“They are the Vile,” the Horse-King cried. “How? How could any forgetting be so profound?”

“All forgetting is so profound,” the Siqu replied.

They passed from the Observances into the Pith proper, where the corridors were expansive and the ceilings oppressive. The peerings were few and far between, but for some reason the gloom embalmed more than it exposed.

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