R. Scott Bakker - The Judging Eye (The Aspect-Emperor)

ASPECT EMPEROR 01

THE JUDGING EYE

Scott R. Baker

Exalt-Minister, mostglorious, many be your days.

For the sin of apostasy, theywere buried up to their necks in the ancient way, and stones were cast intotheir faces until their breathing was stopped. Three men and two women. Thechild recanted, even cursed his parents in the name of our gloriousAspect-Emperor. The World has lost five souls, but the Heavens have gained one,praise be the God of Gods.

As for the text, I fear thatyour prohibition has come too late. It was, as you suspected, an account of theFirst Holy War as witnessed by the exiled Schoolman, Drusas Achamian. Verily,my hand trembles at the prospect of reproducing his vile and abhorrent claims,but as the original text has already been committed to the flames, I see noother way to satisfy your request. You are quite correct: Heresy is rarelysingular in its essence or its effects. As with diseases, deviations must bestudied, curatives prepared, lest they erupt in more virulent form.

For the sake of brevity, Iwill limit my review to those particulars that either directly or indirectlycontradict Doctrine and Scripture. In this text, Drusas Achamian claims:

I) To have had sexualcongress with our Holy Empress on the eve of the First Holy War's triumph overthe heathen Fanim at Shimeh.

II) To have learned certainsecrets regarding our Holy Aspect-Emperor, to whit: That He is not theincarnation of the God of Gods but rather a son of the Dnyain, a secret sectdevoted to the mastery of all things, body and spirit. That He transcends us notas gods transcend men, but as adults transcend children. That His Zaudunyaniinterpretation of Inrithism is nothing more than a tool, a means for themanipulation of nations. That ignorance has rendered us His slaves.

(I admit to finding this mostunnerving, for though I have always known that words and events, no matter howholy, always admit wicked interpretations, I have never before considered theway beliefs command our actions. For as this Achamian asks, if all men layclaim to righteousness, and they do, who is to say which man claims true? Theconviction, the belief unto death, of those I send from this world now troublesme, such is the treachery of the idle intellect.)

III) That our HolyAspect-Emperor's war to prevent the resurrection of the No-God is false.Granted, this is merely implied, since the text was plainly written before theGreat Ordeal. But the fact that Drusas Achamian was once a Mandate Schoolman,and so cursed with dreams of the First Apocalypse, renders his suspicionsextraordinary. Should not such a man hail the coming of Anasrimbor Kellhus andhis war to prevent the Second Apocalypse?

This is the sum of what Iremember.

Having suffered thisblasphemy, I understand the profundity of your concern. To hear that everythingwe have endured and cherished these past twenty years of war and revelation hasbeen a lie is outrage enough. But to hear such from a man who not only walkedwith our Master in the beginning, but taught him as well? I have alreadyordered the execution of my body-slave, though I mourn him, for he only readthe text at my behest. As for myself, I await your summary judgment. I neitherbeg nor expect your pardon: It is our doom to suffer the consequences of ouracts, regardless of the piety of our intentions.

Some pollution begs not thecloth, but the knife; this I accept and understand.

Sin is sin.

PROLOGUE

When a man possesses the innocence

of a child, we call him a fool.

When a child possesses the cunning

of a man, we call him an abomination.

As with love, knowledge has its season.

Ajencis, The Third Analytic of Men

Autumn, 19 New Imperial Year (4131 Year-of-the-Tusk),the "Long Side."

A horn pealed long and lonelybeneath the forest canopies. A human horn.

For a moment all was quiet. Limbsarched across the imperious heights, and great trunks bullied the hollowsbeneath. Shorn saplings thatched the intervening spaces. A squirrel screechedwarning from the gloom of interlocking branches. Starlings burst into thesquinting sky.

They came, flickering acrossbands of sunlight and shadow.

Running with rutting fury,howling with rutting fury, through the lashing undergrowth, into the tabernacledeep. They swarmed over pitched slopes, kicking up leaves and humus. Theyparted about the trunks, chopping at the bark with rust-pitted blades. Theysniffed the sky with slender noses. When they grimaced, their blank andbeautiful faces were clenched like crumpled silk, becoming the expressions ofancient and inbred men.

Sranc. Bearing shields of lacqueredhuman leather. Wearing corselets scaled with human fingernails and necklaces ofhuman teeth.

The distant horn sounded again,and they paused, a vicious milling rabble. Words were barked among them. Anumber melted into the undergrowth, loping with the swiftness of wolves. Theothers jerked at their groins in anticipation. Blood. They could smell mannishblood.

Seed jetted black across theforest floor. They stamped it into the muck. They exulted in the stink of it.

The scouts returned, and attheir jabbering the others shuddered and convulsed. It had been so long sincethey had last glutted their rapacious hunger. So long since they knelt at thealtar of jerking limbs and mewling flesh. They could see the panicked faces.They could see the gushing blood, the knife-made orifices.

They ran, weeping for joy.

Cresting a low ridge, they foundtheir prey hastening along the base of a back-broken cliff, trying to maketheir way to the far side of a gorge that opened as though by miracle severalhundred paces away. The Sranc howled and chattered their teeth, raced in wildfiles down the slope, skidding across leaves, their legs kicking in long leaps.They hit the ground where it flattened, scrambling, running, burning hard intheir rotten breeches, watching the soft Men turning mere paces before them,their faces as enticing as thighs, coming closer and closer, almost within thecircle of wild-swinging swords

But the ground! The ground!Collapsing beneath them, like leaves thrown across sky!

Dozens of them were suckedshrieking into the black. The others clutched and jostled, tried to stop, onlyto be bumped screeching by their crazed kin. Their screams trailed as theyplummeted into the concealed gorge, popped into silence one by one. Suddenlyall was uncertain, all was threat. The war-party yammered in fear andfrustration. None dared move. Eyes rolling, they stared in lust andapprehension...

Men.

A hard-bitten handful, runningas though by magic across the false forest floor. They lunged into the Sranc'smidst, their heavy swords high and pitching. Shields cracked. Mouldered ironwas bent and broken. Limbs and heads were thrown on arcs of glittering blood.

The Men roared and bellowed,hammered them to earth, hacked them to twitching ruin.

***

"Scalper!" the lonetraveller cried out. His voice possessed the gravel of an old officer's bawl.It boomed through the gorge, easily audible over the white roar of water. Asone, the men upriver stood and stared in his direction.

Just like animals, hethought.

Indifferent to their gaze, hecontinued picking his way along the treacherous stones, sloshing through waterevery several steps. He passed a Sranc, white as a drowned fish, floating facedown in a pool of translucent red.

The traveller glanced up towhere the gorge walls pinched the sky into a wandering slot. Trees had beenfelled across the opening, forming the rafters for an improvised ceiling ofsaplings and sticks, covered over with leaves. The sky glared bright throughnumerous holes. Leaves still twittered down in a steady cascade. If the numbersof inert forms scattered and heaped about the rocks were any indication, it hadbeen a very effective trap. In places, the river's foam spouted pink andviolet.