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

its rounded towers no taller than the
soaring walls. Weeds hung from the joints of its sloped and fluted base. Its
northern quarters, where the ancient Sakarpi Kings had once resided, hung in
ruin, windows like eye sockets revealing the gutted hollows within. They reeled
toward it. The ramparts climbed to encompass a greater part of the sky. Sorweel
glimpsed a star flaring high above the black-stone rim, as bright as the Nail
of Heaven—only beneath the clouds. The light made diamonds of the
falling rain.
     
    Even Narsheidel stumbled in
terror, face held up, pressing Sorweel before him. "Quick, boy, quick !"
Then they were through the vault doors, sheltered in deep sockets of black
stone. Guards and ashen-faced attendants flocked to them. Sorweel found himself
staggering in circles, fending away their fussing hands. "The King?"
an old retainer cried. "What has become of the King?"
     
    "There must be a way!"
Narsheidel was shouting at some mail-armoured steward. "This place must
have secrets! Everything old has secrets!"
     
    Then Sorweel was being hustled
up tight-winding stairs, through hot, wood-panelled corridors, across
low-ceilinged rooms, some too bright, others too dim.
Turning-crossing-climbing. Everything, tapestries, batteries of candles,
chapped walls, seemed to swim in his periphery.
     
    What was happening ?
     
    "No!" Sorweel cried,
shaking away ushering hands like a lunatic dog. "Stop this! Stop !"
     
    They stood in some kind of
antechamber, with a hemispherical wall that found its apex in a bricked-in
passageway. Narsheidel and two others—an aging Longshield and Baron Denthuel,
the one-legged Horselord assigned to command the Citadel—stood back, their
hands out, their faces wary or placating or worried or pleading or...
     
    "Where's my father?"
he cried.
     
    Only Narsheidel, his soaked
armour shining silver and black in the uncertain light, dared speak.
     
    "King Harweel is dead,
boy."
     
    The words winded him. Even
still, Sorweel heard his own voice say, "That means I am King . That
I'm your master!"
     
    The High Boonsman looked down to
his palms, then out and upward, as though trying to divine the direction of the
outer roar—for it had not stopped.
     
    "Not so long as your
father's words still ring in my ears."
     
    Sorweel looked into the older
man's face, with its strong-jawed proportions and water-tangled frame of hair.
Only then, it seemed, did he realize that Narshiedel too had loved ones, wives
and children, sequestered somewhere in the city. That he was a true Boonsman,
loyal unto death.
     
    "King Harweel is—"
     
    Explosion. Only afterwards,
sputtering, scrambling across the floor, would the young Prince understand what
happened. Bricks exploding outward, as though a tree-sized hammer had struck
the round wall's far side, taking Lord Denthuel in the head and neck, swatting
him broken to the ground.
     
    Dust carried on the back of
shiver-cold air. Pale out-of-doors light. Ears ringing, Sorweel turned to the
gaping hole...
     
    He might have called out, but he
wouldn't remember.
     
    He looked through the breach
into the husk of the Citadel's ruined galleries. Something golden hung in the
floorless hollows, something that boiled with impossible light. Against a
backdrop of empty windows and long-gutted walls, it walked across open air.
Walked. Rain plummeted in lines about it, as though down a well.
     
    But no dampness touched him.
     
    The Aspect-Emperor.
     
    The shining demon crossed the
threshold, framed by gloom and deluge.
     
    The nameless Longshield simply
turned and ran, disappearing into the halls. Raising his greatsword high,
Narsheidel cried out, charged the luminescent figure...
     
    Who simply stepped to the side,
impossibly, like a dancer avoiding a drunk. Whipping his arms like rope, the
figure brought his curved blade up over his scalp, then snapped it back in a
perfect arc. Narsheidel's body and head continued careering forward, joined
only by a flying thread of