The Judging Eye Read Online Free PDF

eyes only for profit, when what they really meant
was that they had tongues only for gold. In many ways, Sorweel owed his understanding
of the world to Twelve-Pelt caravaners and their struggle to render the South
into Sakarpic. The Unification Wars. The Thousand Temples. All the innumerable
nations of the Three Seas. And the coming of the False Prophet who preached the
end of all things.
     
    "He will come for us,"
his father would tell him.
     
    "But how can you know,
Da?"
     
    "He is a Ciphrang, a Hunger
from the Outside, come to this world in the guise of man."
     
    "Then how can we hope to
resist him?"
     
    "With our swords and our
shields," his father had boasted, using the mock voice he always used to
make light of terrifying things. "And when those fail us, with spit and
curses."
     
    But the spit and the curses,
Sorweel would learn, always came first, accompanied by bold gestures and grand
demonstrations. War was an extension of argument, and swords were simply words
honed to a blood-letting edge. Only the Sranc began with blood. For Men, it was
always the conclusion.
     
    Perhaps this explained the
Emissary's melancholy and his father's frustration. Perhaps they already knew the outcome of this embassy. All doom required certain poses, the mouthing
of certain words—so said the priests.
     
    Sorweel gripped the edge of his
bench, sat as still as his quailing body would allow. The Aspect-Emperor had
come —even still he could scarce believe it. An itch, a name, a principle, a
foreboding, something so far across the horizon that it had to seem both
childish and menacing, like the wights Sorweel's nurse would invoke whenever he
had vexed her. Something that could be dismissed until encircled by shadows.
     
    Now, somewhere out in the
darkness that surrounded their hearts and their walls, somewhere out there, he waited, a Hunger clothed in glorious manhood, propped by the arms of grovelling
nations. A Demon, come to cut their throats, defile their women, enslave their
children. A Ciphrang, come to lay waste to all they knew and loved.
     
    "Have you not read The
Sagas ?" his father was asking the Emissary, his voice incredulous.
"The bones of our fathers survived the might of the Great
Ruiner—Mog-Pharau! I assure you, they haven't grown too brittle to survive
you!"
     
    The Exalt-General smiled, or at
least tried to. "Ah, yes... Virtue does not burn."
     
    "What do you mean?"
     
    "A saying in my country.
When a man dies, the pyre takes everything save what his children can use to
adorn their ancestor scrolls. All men flatter themselves through their
forebears."
     
    Harweel snorted not so much at
the wisdom, it seemed, as the relevance. "And yet the North is waste and
Sakarpus still stands!"
     
    Proyas's smile was pained, his
look one of dull pity. "You forget," he said with the air of
disclosing a prickly truth, " my Lord has been here before. He broke
bread with the men who raised these very halls, back when this was but a
province of a greater empire, a backwater frontier. Fortune saved these walls,
not fortitude. And Fortune, as you so well know, is a whore ."
     
    Even though his father often
paused to order his thoughts, something about the ensuing silence chilled
Sorweel to the bowel. He knew his father, knew that the past weeks had taken
their toll. His rallying words were the same, and his booming laugh was nothing
if not more frequent. But something had changed nonetheless. A slouch in his
shoulders. A shadow in his gaze.
     
    "The Great Ordeal stands at
your gate," the Exalt-General pressed. "The Schools are assembled.
The hosts of a hundred tribes and nations beat sword against shield. Doom
encircles you, brother. You know you cannot prevail, even with the Chorae
Hoard. I know this because your knuckles are as scarred as my own, because your
eyes are as bruised by war's horror."
     
    Another ashen silence. Sorweel
found himself leaning forward, trying to peer around the Horn-and-Amber Throne.
What was