Now, watching and listening to this old man, she thinks she understands those words. Cooped in his desolate tower, trapped between the banks of his soul, how could Achamian not bring the two great currents of his life together? His Dreams and his Hatred. Contained too long in too little space, how could they not become entangled in a single turbulent stream? To resent is to brood in inaction, to pass through life acting in a manner indistinguishable from those who bear no grudges. But hatred hails from a wilder, far more violent tribe. Even when you cannot strike out, you strike nonetheless. Inward, if not outward, as if such things have direction. To hate, especially without recourse to vengeance, is to besiege yourself, to starve yourself to the point of eating your own, then to lay wreaths of blame at the feet of the accused.

Yes, she decides. Drusas Achamian is her brother.

“So all this time,” she says, daring to speak into one of the few silences he affords her, “you’ve been dreaming his life, cataloguing it, searching for clues as to my stepfather’s origin …

“Yes.”

“What have you found?”

The question shocks him; that much is plain. He draws clawed fingers through his great and grizzled beard. “A name,” he finally says with the sullen resentment of those forced to admit the disproportion between their boasts and their purse.

“A name?” She nearly laughs.

A long sour glare.

She reminds herself to take care. Her instinct, given all that she has endured, is to be impatient with the conceits of others. But she needs this man.

An inward look of concentration, then he says, “Ishuäl.”

He almost whispers it, as though it were a jar containing furies, something that could be cracked open by a careless tongue.

“Ishuäl,” she repeats, simply because his tone seems to demand it.

“It’s derived from a Nonman dialect,” he continues. “It means ‘Exalted Grotto,’ or ‘High Hidden Place,’ depending on how literal the translation.”

“Ishuäl? Kellhus is from Ishuäl?”

It troubles him, she can tell, to hear her refer to her stepfather as such—as someone familiar.

“I’m certain of it.”

“But if it’s a hidden place …”

Another sour glare. “It won’t be long,” he mutters with old man dismissiveness. “Not now. Not any more. Seswatha … His life is opening … Not just the small things, but the secrets as well.”

A life spent mining the life of another, pondering glimpses of tedium through the lense of holy and apocalyptic portent. Twenty years! How can he hope to balance the proportions? Grub through dirt long enough and you will prize stones.

“Like he’s yielding,” she forces herself to say.