The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker Read Free Book Online Page A

Then the song of the invaders swelled, the
throats of the joyous thousands come to burn, to kill.
     
    His father's blow took him in
the jaw, sent him skidding into the men behind him, then to his hands and knees
onto the wet stone. "Don't shame me with your impertinence, boy!" He
turned to one of his High Boonsmen. "Narsheidel! Take him to the Citadel!
See that no harm comes to him! He will be our final swordstroke! Our
vengeance!"
     
    Without a word Narsheidel
hoisted him to his feet by the scruff of his mail harness, began dragging him
through the assembled warriors. Pulled backward, Sorweel watched them close
ranks in his wake, saw their looks of pity. "Nooo!" he howled,
tasting clean cold water on his tongue. Across sodden shoulders and glistening
shield-rims, he glimpsed his father staring back at him, his eyes as blue and
crisp as the summer sky. For one inscrutable heartbeat, his father's look
pierced him. Sorweel saw him turn just as the wall of fog encompassed the
parapets.
     
    "Nooooooo!"
     
    The clamour of arms descended
upon the world.
     
    ***
     
    He tried to struggle, but
Narsheidel was indomitable, an iron shadow that scarcely bent to his thrashing.
Through the dark spiral of the tower stair, it seemed all he could see were his
father's eyes, loving eyes, judging eyes, regretting a heavy hand, celebrating
a tickling laugh, and watching, always watching, to be sure his second heart
beat warm and safe. And if he looked close, if he dared peer at those eyes the
way he might gems, he knew he would see himself , not as he was, but
mirrored across the shining curve of a father's pride, a father's hope that he
might live with greater grace through the fact of a son.
     
    Thunder shivered about them,
cracking ancient mortar, loosing showers of grit from the low-vaulted ceilings.
Narsheidel was shouting, something, something taut with more than fear. A
warrior already mourning.
     
    Then they were past the iron
door, skidding on stones in the Gate's monumental shadow. Rearing horses.
Warriors running through fog, their white shields across their backs. The
foundations of buildings that vanished into grey. The void of ancient streets
opening between them.
     
    And a solitary figure in the
midst of the confusion, crouched like a beggar, only clothed in too much
shadow...
     
    And with eyes that blinked
light.
     
    Crying out, Narsheidel hauled
him down to the hard wet stone.
     
    Diagrams of burning white,
making smoke of the rain. The great bronze plates of the Herder's Gate flashed
with sun-brilliance, then fell away, bent like woodchips, twirling like flotsam
in a stream.
     
    Shouting, always shouting,
Narsheidel pulled him to his feet, yanked him to a run.
     
    He saw the beggar become someone
priestly and luminescent, then vanish in a twinkle. He saw his countrymen rally
to stem the breach. He saw tall Droettal and his company of Gilgallic Priests
roaring as the tide of dark-faced outlanders engulfed them. He saw the Eithmen,
whipping their caparisoned chargers through panick-packed streets. He saw
gutters rushing with pink and crimson waters. He saw one of the siege towers
lurching above the crest of the walls, the ghosts of dragonheads rising from
slots in its metallic hide. He saw ropes of men, Longshields and Horselords
alike, vanish screaming in roiling light.
     
    Again and again, he threw
himself against Narsheidel's strength, sobbing, raving, but the High Boonsman
was unconquerable, driving him ever forward, bellowing at the madness to make
way. And through it all, he saw his father's summer-blue eyes, beseeching...
     
    Please, Sorwa...
     
    They ran down labyrinthine
alleyways, through endless curtains of rain. Behind them, the shouts and
screams multiplied into a senseless white roar, punctuated only by braying
horns and the inside-out mutter of sorcery.
     
    The winding streets were so deep
they couldn't see the black-walled Citadel until they were almost upon it,
hunched against the sky above them,