“It hurts, Old Father! How it hurts!”
“Savour it, Gaörta, for it’s but a taste of what is to come.”
The thing called Sarcellus snuffled and blubbered, rolled its inner and outer faces beneath the merciless stars.
“No,” it moaned, beating petulant fingers through the debris at its feet. “Nooo!”
“Yes,” the tiny lips said. “The Holy War is doomed … You have failed. You, Gaörta.”
Wild terror lanced through its cringing thoughts: it knew what failure meant, but it couldn’t move. There was only obedience before the Architect, the Maker.
“But it wasn’t me! It was them! The Cishaurim command the Padirajah! It was their—”
“Fault, Gaörta?” the Old Father said. “The very poison we would suck from this world?”
The thing called Sarcellus raised its hands in desperate warding. All the monstrous and monumental glory of the Consult seemed to crash down upon him. “I’m sorry, please!”
The tiny eyes closed, but whether in weariness or in contemplation, the thing called Sarcellus could not tell. When they opened, they were as blue as cataracts. “One more task, Gaörta. One more task in the name of spite.”
It fell to its belly before the Synthese, writhed and grovelled in agony. “Anything!” it gasped. “Anything! I would cut out any heart! Pluck any eye! I would drag the whole world to oblivion!”
“The Holy War is doomed. We must deal with the Cishaurim some other way …” Again, the eyes clicked shut. “You must ensure this Kellhus dies with the Men of the Tusk. He must not escape.”
And the thing called Sarcellus forgot about snow. Vengeance! Vengeance would balm his blasted skin!
“Now,” the palm-sized expression grated, and Gaörta had the sense of vast power, ancient and hoary, forced through a reed throat. Here and there, small showers of dust trailed down the broken walls.
“Close your face.”
Gaörta obeyed as he must, screamed as he must.
Proyas’s missive crumpled in his right hand, Cnaiür strode through a carpeted corridor belonging to the humble but strategically located villa where the Conriyan had chosen to sequester his household—or what remained of it. He paused before entering the bright square of the courtyard, stooping beneath the florid double-arched vaults peculiar to Kianene architecture. A dried orange peel, no longer than his thumb, lay curled in the dust encircling the black marble base of the left pilaster. Without thinking, he scooped it into his mouth, winced at the bitterness.
Every day he grew more hungry.
My son! How could he so name my son?
He found Proyas awaiting him near one of three brackish pools at the centre of the courtyard, loitering with two men he didn’t recognize: an imperial officer and a Shrial Knight. Mid-morning clouds formed a ponderous procession across the sky, drawing their shadows across the sun-bright confusion of the hills that loomed over the courtyard’s shaded porticos, particularly to the south and west.
Caraskand. The city that had become their tomb.
He does this to gall me. To remind me of the object of my hate!
Proyas caught sight of him first. “Cnaiür, good—”
“I don’t read,” he growled, tossing the crumpled sheaf at the Prince’s feet. “If you wish to confer with me, send word, not scratches.”
Proyas’s expression darkened. “But of course,” he said tightly. He nodded to the two strangers, as though trying to salvage some rigid semblance of jnanic decorum. “These men have made a claim—of sorts—in a bid to secure my support. I would have you confirm it.”
Struck by a sudden horror, Cnaiür stared at the imperial officer, recognizing the insignia stamped into the collar of his cuirass. And of course, there was the blue mantle …
The man frowned, exchanged a smiling, significant look with his companion.
“He grows lean in wits as well,” the officer said in a voice Cnaiür recognized all too well. He suddenly remembered it floating across the corpses of his kinsmen—at the Battle of Kiyuth. Ikurei Conphas … The Exalt-General stood before him! But how could he fail to recognize him?
But the madness lifts! It lifts!
Cnaiür blinked, saw himself seated upon Conphas’s chest, carving off his nose the way a child might draw in the mud. “What does he want?” he barked at Proyas. He glanced at the Shrial Knight, realizing he’d seen the man before as well, though he couldn’t recall his name. A small, golden Tusk hung about the Knight-Commander’s neck, cupped in the folds of his white surcoat.
Conphas answered in Proyas’s stead. “What I want, you barbaric lout, is the truth.”
“The truth?”
“Lord Sarcellus,” Proyas said, “claims to have news of Atrithau.”
Cnaiür stared at the man, for the first time noticing the bandages about his hands and the odd network of angry red lines across his sumptuous face. “Atrithau? But how is that possible?”
“Three men have come forward,” Sarcellus said, “out of the piety of their hearts. They swear that a man—a veteran of the northern caravans who perished in the desert—told them there was no way Prince Kellhus could be who he claims to be.” The Shrial Knight smiled in a peculiar fashion—obviously the burns, or whatever marred his face, were quite painful. “Apparently the scandal of Atrithau,” Sarcellus continued inexorably, “is that its King, Aethelarius, has no live heirs. The House of Morghund is about to flicker out—forever, they say. And this means that Anasûrimbor Kellhus is a pretender.”
The faint throb of Kianene drums filled the silence. Cnaiür turned back to Proyas. “You said they want your support … For what?”
“Just answer the blasted question!” Conphas exclaimed.
Ignoring the Exalt-General, Cnaiür and Proyas exchanged a look of honesty and admission. Despite their quarrels, such looks had become frighteningly common over the course of the past weeks.
“With my support,” Proyas said, “they think they can prosecute Kellhus without inciting war within these cursed walls.”
“Prosecute Kellhus?”
“Yes … As a False Prophet, according to the Law of the Tusk.”
Cnaiür scowled. “And why do you need my word?”
“Because I trust you.”
Cnaiür swallowed. Outland dogs! someone raged. Kine!
For some reason a look of alarm flickered across Conphas’s face.
“Apparently the illustrious Prince of Conriya,” Sarcellus said, “will have no truck with hearsay …”
“Not,” Proyas snapped, “on a matter as ill-omened as this!”
Working his jaw, Cnaiür glared at the Shrial Knight, wondering what could cause such a strange disposition of burns across a man’s face. He thought of the Battle of Anwurat, of the relish with which he’d driven his knife into Kellhus’s chest—or the thing that had looked like him. He thought of Serwë gasping beneath him, and a pang watered his eyes. Only she knew his heart. Only she understood when he awoke weeping …
Serwë, first wife of his heart.
I will have her! someone within him wept. She belongs to me!
So beautiful … My proof!
Suddenly everything seemed to slump, as though the world itself had been soaked in numbness and lead. And he realized—without anguish, without heartbreak—that Anasûrimbor Moënghus was beyond him. Despite all his hate, all his tooth-gnashing fury, the blood trail he followed ended here … In a city.
We’re dead. All of us …
If Caraskand was to be their tomb, he would see certain blood spilled first.
But Moënghus! someone cried. Moënghus must die! And yet he could no longer recall the hated face. He saw only a mewling infant …
“What you say is true,” he finally said. He turned to Proyas, held his astonished, brown-eyed gaze. It seemed he could taste the orange peel anew, so bitter were the words.
“The man you call Prince Kellhus is an imposter … A prince of nothing.”
Never, it seemed, had his he
art felt so flaccid and cold.
The many-pillared audience hall of the Sapatishah’s Palace was as immense as old King Eryeat’s dank gallery in Moraör, the ancient Hall of Kings in Oswenta, and yet the glory of the Warrior-Prophet made it seem the hearth room of a hovel. Seated upon Imbeyan’s throne of ivory and bone, Saubon watched his approach with trepidation. Cupped in gigantic bowls of iron, the King-Fires crackled in his periphery. Even after all this time they seemed to offend the surrounding magnificence—the imposition of a crude and backward people.
But still, he was King! King of Caraskand.
Draped in white samite, the man who’d once been Prince Kellhus paused beneath him, standing on the round crimson rug the Kianene had used for obeisance. He did not kneel, nor did he seem to blink.
“Why have you summoned me?”
“To warn you … You must flee. The Council convenes shortly …”
“But the Padirajah commands the approaches, rules the countryside. Besides, I cannot abandon those who follow me. I cannot abandon you.”
“But you must! They will condemn you. Even Proyas!”
“And you, Coithus Saubon? Will you condemn me?”
“No … Never!”
“But you’ve already given them your guarantees.”
“Who said this? What liar dares—”
“You. You say this.”
“But … But you must understand!”
“I understand. They’ve ransomed your city. All you need do is pay.”
“No! It’s not that way. It’s not!”
“Then what way is it?”
“It … It … It is what it is!”
“For all of your life, Saubon, you’ve ached for this, the trappings of a tyrant—the effects of old Eryeat, your father. Tell me, to whom did you run, Saubon, after your father beat you? Who dabbed your cuts with fleece? Was it to your mother? Or was it to Kussalt, your groom?
“No one beat me! He … He …”
“Kussalt, then. Tell me, Saubon, what was more difficult? Losing him on the Plains of Mengedda, or learning of his lifelong hate?”
“Silence!”
“All your long life, no one has known you.”
“Silence!”
“All your long life you’ve suffered, you’ve questioned—”
“No! No! Silence!”
“—and you’ve punished those who would love you.”
Saubon slapped burly hands about his ears. “Cease! I command it!”
“As you punished Kussalt, as you punish—”
“Silence-silence-silence! They told me you would do this! They warned me!”
“Indeed. They warned you against the truth. Against wandering into the nets of the Warrior-Prophet.”
“How can you know this?” Saubon cried, overcome by incredulous woe. “How?”
“Because it’s Truth.”
“Then fie on it! Fie on the truth!”
“And what of your immortal soul?”
“Then let it be damned!” he roared, leaping to his feet. “I embrace it—embrace it all! Damnation in this life! Damnation in all others! Torment heaped upon torment! I would bear all to be King for a day! I would see you broken and blooded if that meant I could own this throne! I would see the God’s own eyes plucked out!”
This last scream pealed through the hollow recesses of the audience hall, returned to him in a haunting shiver: pluck-plucked-out-out …
He fell to his knees before his throne, felt the heat of his King-Fires bite tear-soaked skin. There was shouting, the clank of armour and weaponry. Guards had come rushing …
But of the Warrior-Prophet there was no sign.
“He-he’s not real,” Saubon mumbled to the hollows of his court. “He doesn’t exist!”
But the gold-ringed fists kept falling. They would never stop.
He’d spent days seated upon the terrace, lost in whatever worlds he searched in his trances. At sunrise and sunset, Esmenet would go to him and leave a bowl of water as he’d directed. She brought him food as well, though he’d asked her not to. She would stare at his broad, motionless back, at his hair waving in the breeze, at the dying sun upon his face, and she would feel like a little girl kneeling before an idol, offering tribute to something monstrous and insatiable: salted fish, dried prunes and figs, unleavened bread—enough to cause a small riot in the lower city.
He touched none of it.
Then one dawn she went out to him, and he wasn’t there.
After a desperate rush through the galleries of the palace, she found him in their apartments, unkempt and rakish, joking with Serwë, who had just arisen.
“Esmi-Esmi-Esmi,” the swollen-eyed girl pouted. “Could you bring me little Moënghus?”
Too relieved to feel exasperated, Esmenet ducked into the adjoining nursery and plucked the black-haired babe from his cradle. Though his dumbfounded stare made her smile, she found the winter blue of his eyes unnerving.
“I was just saying,” Kellhus said as she delivered the child to Serwë, “that the Great Names have summoned me …” He reached out a haloed hand. “They want to parley.”
He mentioned nothing, of course, about his meditation. He never did.
Esmenet took his hand, sat beside him on their bed, only just understanding the implications of what he had said.
“Parley?” she suddenly cried. “Kellhus, they summon you to condemn you!”
“Kellhus?” Serwë asked. “What does she mean?”
“That this parley is a trap,” Esmenet exclaimed. She stared hard at Kellhus. “You know this!”
“What can you mean?” Serwë exclaimed. “Everyone loves Kellhus … Everyone knows now.”
“No, Serwë. Many hate him—very many. Very many want him dead!”
Serwë laughed in the oblivious way of which only she seemed capable. “Esmenet …” she said, shaking her head as though at a beloved fool. She boosted little Moënghus into the air. “Auntie Esmi forgets,” she cooed to the infant. “Yeeesss. She forgets who your father is!”
Esmenet watched dumbstruck. Sometimes she wanted nothing more than to wring the girl’s neck. How? How could he love such a simpering fool?
“Esmi …” Kellhus said abruptly. The warning in his voice chilled her heart. She turned to him, shouted Forgive me! with her eyes.
But at the same time, she couldn’t relent, not now, not after what she had found. “Tell her, Kellhus! Tell her what’s about to happen!”
Not again. Not again!
“Listen to me, Esmi. There’s no other way. The Zaudunyani and the Orthodox cannot go to war.”
“Not even for you?” she cried. “This Holy War, this city, is but a pittance compared to you! Don’t you see, Kellhus?” Her desperation swelled into sudden anguish and desolation, and she angrily wiped at her tears. This was too important for selfish grief! But I’ve lost so many!
“Don’t you see how precious you are? Think of what Akka said! What if you’re the world’s only hope?”
He cupped her cheek, brushed her eyebrow with his thumb, which he held warm against her temple.
“Sometimes, Esmi, we must cross death to reach our destination.”
She thought of King Shikol in The Tractate, the demented Xerashi King who’d commanded the Latter Prophet’s execution. She thought of his gilded thighbone, the instrument of judgement, which to this day remained the most potent symbol of evil in Inrithidom. Was this what Inri Sejenus had said to his nameless lover? That loss could somehow secure glory?
But this is madness!
“The Shortest Path,” she said, horrified by the teary-eyed contemptuousness of her tone.
But the blond-bearded face smiled.
“Yes,” the Warrior-Prophet said. “The Logos.”
“Anasûrimbor Kellhus,” Gotian intoned in his powerful voice, “I hereby denounce you as a False Prophet, and as a pretender to the warrior-caste. It is the judgement of the Council of Great and Lesser Names that you be scourged in the manner decreed b
y Scripture.”
Serwë heard a wail pierce the thunderous outcry, and only afterward realized that it was her own. Moënghus sobbed in her arms, and she reflexively began rocking him, though she was too frightened to coo reassurances. The Hundred Pillars had drawn their swords, and now thronged to either side of them, trading fierce glares with the Shrial Knights.
“You judge no one!” someone was bellowing. “The Warrior-Prophet alone speaks the judgement of the Gods! It is you who’ve been found wanting! You who shall be punished!”
“False! False!—”
It seemed a thousand half-starved faces cried a thousand hungry things. Accusations. Curses. Laments. The air was flushed by humid cries. Hundreds had gathered within the ruined shell of the Citadel of the Dog to hear the Warrior-Prophet answer the charges of the Great and Lesser Names. Hot in the sun, the black ruins towered about them: walls unconsummated by vaults, foundations obscured by heaped wreckage, the side of a fallen tower bare and rounded against the debris, like the flanks of a whale breaching the surface of a choppy sea. The Men of the Tusk had congregated across every pitched slope and beneath every monolithic remnant. Fist-waving faces packed every pocket of clear ground.
Instinctively pulling her baby tight to her breast, Serwë glanced around in terror. Esmi was right … We shouldn’t have come! She looked up to Kellhus, and wasn’t surprised by the divine calm with which he observed the masses. Even here, he seemed the godlike nail which fastened what happened to what should happen.
He’ll make them see!
But the roar was redoubled, and reverberated through her body. Several men had drawn their knives, as though the sound of fury were grounds enough for murderous riot.
So much hatred.
Even the Great Names, gathered in the clear centre of the fortress’s courtyard, looked apprehensive. They gazed blank-faced at the thundering mobs, almost as though they were counting. Already several fights had broken out; she could see the flash of steel and flailing monkey limbs amidst the packed mobs—believers beset by unbelievers.
A starved fanatic with a knife managed to slip past the Hundred Pillars, rushed the Warrior-Prophet …