Mimara had argued with him up to this point; now she looked at him with the wide eyes of a lapsed confederate.
“I’ll simply take him then!”
“So what?” Esmenet cried. “Save him so you might die together?”
He felt so very old in that moment.
Both women watched him with sorrow and apprehension now, even more alike for gloom and the convergence of passion. Despite their damaged angles, they saw one and the same man, he realized. They knew. The urge to tear out his own beard bubbled from the edge of his fingertips.
The burden was too heavy.
“Akka! The World is our object now … We recline in the shadow of Golgotterath!”
The toll too high.
Too much.
“The very shadow my boy dies in!” he cried, his heart overburdened, his senses swollen with imaginings of Proyas’s anguish. And he was on his feet, barrelling through leather flaps, canvas halls, heedless of the women shouting behind him. And then he was outside, in air too rank to impart liberation, beneath sky too grey to belong to day or night, and the image of it knocked him to his knees.
Golgotterath.
The sun already smoldered from the heights of the Upright Horn, and as he watched, the first sliver of diurnal brilliance lanced from the tip of the Canted. The static flotsam of shelters and the bare miles of the Shigogli lay jaundiced in a false dawn before him.
He doubled over, retched for the cancerous intensity of the gold, lay braced on all fours and still falling, blinking at strings of spittle …
Small hands set about each of his arms and pulled him with embarrassing ease to his feet.
“Only I can save him,” the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas said, placing her forehead to his temple. “I’m the only traitor my husband has ever suffered to live …” She looked to them with wonder and apprehension both. “So far.”
The little Prince-Imperial jerked upright on the tolling Interval, clutched his cheeks for disorientation. The chamber was commodious but crowded. The area about his cot was small, enclosed by leather panels on his left, and hedged by heaps of stores and belongings on his right. Then he remembered: the bitch Mimara had come back, and they had stowed him with the baggage.
Awakening has a curious way of bequeathing what has come before, of granting ownership to events too tumultuous to be grasped in immersion. They had fled the ruins of the Andiamine Heights, raced across the very abdomen of the World, and he had reeled for dismay and terror and regret throughout. He had simply lacked the wind to fully reckon what had happened.
Now it seemed as though breathing were his only capacity.
We have lost this game, bro—
No!
At first he sat dejected, a rigid shell about silent, shrieking disputations. Someone would come, he told himself. Someone had to come, even if only a guardsman or a slave! He was a little boy …
Nothing. No one.
His lantern had guttered through the night. Light pricked bright through a single seam across the ceiling and dull along the top of the outside wall. It was more than enough for his eyes, far brighter, in fact, than the bowel of the Andiamine Heights. He undressed, laid out his Amoti tunic—the crimson one chased with fine ropes of gold—across the cot. Then he took it up and dressed as if it were new. He wept for hunger.
He was little!
But nothing happened. No one came.
He sat on the corner of the mattress for a time, his heels kicked out, listening, sorting through voices, searching. Purchase—he needed some purchase on the catastrophe that had engulfed his World. On the Andiamine Heights he had always known beforehand when something was happening. He would lie warm and drowsy, savouring the way space and activity could bloom from the merest trickle of sound. Haste would clip the lazy sounds of routine, purpose would cinch the murmur of gossiping slaves, and he would make a game of guessing the nature and object of all the preparations. The Umbilicus differed only in the freedom the membrane walls afforded his prying ears. In the palace, marble and concrete had forced every clink and whisper to crowd the gilded corridors. Here, he need only close his eyes and the leather walls became as lace, transparent to the scratching, piping sounds of the souls who occupied it.
Silence became ranging space, emptiness animated by scattered pockets of solitary and collective industry. Two souls bickering over the lack of water. Meerskatu, Exalt-Captain of the Pillarians, giving perfunctory instructions. Someone hammering in the great cavity of the audience chamber.
He caught a voice murmuring, “Which one?” from a nearby chamber, somewhere to the rear of the great, rambling pavilion.
It was the reverence more than the servility that seized his attention.
“The wolf’s head …” a second replied.
Where the first voice had been youthful, its Sheyic marred by the barbaric twang of the Eumarnan coasts, this second was more seasoned and assured, possessing a lilting Ainoni accent that had been filed down by long years in the Nansurium. Both were hushed, overawed even, by the presence of a silent third …
The little Prince-Imperial bolted upright, clasped his shoulders tight.
Father was here.
In a panic, he probed the murk for any sign of Mother—the bouquet of sounds he knew best of all, cherished above all the World’s clamours.
Did she sleep?
Had she fled?
You did it! You chased her away!
No …
She had to be somewhere near—had to be! He was her darling boy!
Still just little …
“Good,” the second voice said. “Now pass me the brush.”
The sound of vigorous whisking. In his soul’s eye Kelmomas could see Him standing motionless, his arms held out, while a murky body-servant stooped to brush the hems of his felt vestments.
“Father …” he dared coo in the gloom. “N-no one comes for me.”
Nothing.
Something like a little monkey claw clenched the back of his throat. He scratched his face.
“Father … please!”
We’re just little!
The rhythmic susurrus of brushing fabric continued uninterrupted, so like the slaves brooming the expanse of the Scuari Campus.
The traitors within the little boy made riot of his heart. Tears scorched his eyes. He coughed about an irresistible sob, blew spittle across the dark. A kind of feline keening prised open his mouth—
Forsaken! Abandoned and betrayed!
An then his father, the Holy Aspect-Emperor, said, “The Believer-Kings assemble.”
The brushing stopped.
“You will attend your brother and sister.”
Then resumed, now quick with wonder and terror …
“Heed them, Kel.”
The sound of a slave attempting to vanish into the task assigned to him.
“They know the nature of your crimes.”
They set out across the predawn expanse of the Shigogli together, the mirror brilliance of the Incû-Holoinas lighting their way. Once they reached the Accusatory, the Blessed Empress would simply command Proyas be cut down. Once again, Mimara refused to relinquish her accursed trinkets, and so prevented him from walking them across the sky.
“Aye!” the old Wizard cried in mystified outrage, clawing the empty face of the sky. “Lest we sa—!”
“Look!” Esmenet cried. The finger of the Accusatory lay visible in the distance, still in the shadow of the Occlusion—a fact that made the faraway blue-white flare of Gnostic sorcery more visible …
“Swayali,” Mimara, the keenest eyed among them, said.
The old Wizard cursed the inevitability as much as the fact of it. The presence of Swayali meant that he indeed could do nothing without the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas. His thoughts raced, bubbled like the white upon ferocious waters. He began pacing a small circle, explaining, in what seemed a reasonable way, how he and Esmi could go ahead—
“And what?” Esmenet cried. “Leave your pr
egnant wife to waddle across Shigogli alone?” She whirled to Golgotterath in diminutive fury, crying, “Have you forgotten where we are?”
Drusas Achamian did scream at that point, his voice as ragged as papyrus fetched from the inferno. He roared at the empty tracts, at his predicament, and at his confusion, the utter absence of clarity, above all.
The two women watched scowling, then Esmenet turned to her daughter, her expression blank, and both erupted into laughter. The old Wizard stood gasping, staring in horror, determined to glare away their outrageous behaviour. But they closed upon him, foul heap that he was, hands squeezing, arms hugging tight, and suddenly he was laughing as well, cackling like an old loon, sobbing for relief, for gratitude, to find himself so beset by those he truly loved …
A memory of the old vitality rose through him as a perfumed vapour. He extricated himself with the nodding air of men recovering their wits, if not their courage. “Let’s see if he still lives,” he said, at last admitting the possibility Esmenet had been arguing all along.
His sorcerous voice rose as mist about them. He saw the light of his mouth spark white in their beautiful eyes. With outstretched palms he oriented the sorcerous Lens toward the famed Himonirsil, the Accusatory, taking heart, the way he always did, in the demonstration of his power. A circular distortion fastened upon the distance and miraculously brought it near—showing the very thing his eye had sought, the very terror …
Proyas hanging nude … a thing like wet garbage, rubbish pulped and glistening …
And breathing.
A deeper shadow fluting his flank, slow and steady … indisputable.
Achamian gasped, cried, “Sweet Seju!”
“Kellhus hasn’t … hasn’t slung him,” Esmenet said, transfixed by the image. “See … How the rope about the waist runs to his elbows? See the weight it bears? He wants Proyas to live … not to die.”
This occasioned a shared look, a recollection that there were no accidents here.
“To witness tomorrow’s battle?” Achamian asked. “To show him the righteousness of his cause?”
Esmenet slowly nodded. “That’s better than the other option.”
“What other option?” he asked.
Mimara stood with her hands upon the white bulb of her abdomen, somehow more aware and less invested than either of them. “To suffer.”
But the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas frowned. Like himself, Esmenet was not so quick to assume her husband wicked in addition to ruthless.
“No. To lure us … remove us from the Great Ordeal.”
This scraped a dagger point across Achamian’s sternum.
“Why? What happens today?”
Esmenet shrugged. “The Great Ordeal makes ready …”
Void brushed his stomach.
“How?” Mimara asked from his side.
“The Lords of the Ordeal are to gather in the Umbilicus to accept his benediction this afternoon,” she said, looking from face to face. “He’s calling it the Last Whelming.”
The Son of Harweel watches himself turn to see himself watching as he navigates the crowds about the Umbilicus, at the very moment the Mandate Schoolman paws his arm.
“How-how—” Eskeles stammers, “how have you kept, your Glory?” The man isn’t simply skinny, he’s emaciated, but his smile is every bit as mealy as before. “I would have sought you out upon your return, but … but …”
Such a lonely little flute …
He has been.
Eskeles, frowning as he and Mu’miorn laugh at his poor, belaboured pony. He reaches out through the milling crowds, clutches his elbow and says, “How have you kept, your Glory?”
Such a lonely little song … a bewildered wail upon the abyss.
“I would have sought you out upon your return, but …”
Sunlight flares and flared. The White-Luck Warrior frowns, then grins in recognition, saying, “This land eats manners.” They embrace—something in the Schoolman’s manner demands it. He looks past the leuneraal, sees himself kneeling before the Holy Aspect-Emperor, leaning forward to kiss the mountainous knee, the ancient pouch palmed in his right hand. The black sails of the Umbilicus encase the infinite blue.
“That motif …” Serwa says, “the triple crescent …”
“What about it?” he asks, tingling for the proximity of her gaze to his groin.
At last her eyes climb to meet his own. Her look is cool, remote in the way of old and prideful widows.
“That is the Far Antique mark of my family … the Anasûrimbor of Trysë.”
He turns to find himself encircled by damned Ordealmen, walking with the shrunken corpse of Eskeles, who says, “I would have sought you out upon your return, but … but …”
The Lords of the Ordeal howl in terror and incredulity.
The White-Luck Warrior grins, awaiting what has already happened. He glimpses the Son of Harweel watching him, mere heartbeats away.
What was a lonely wail has become a mighty chorus. His breathing lover ignites his flesh, makes a votive of him for the Dread Mother.
“This land eats manners.”
Anasûrimbor Serwa had come unannounced, dressed in flashing ceremonial billows, trailing a Pillarian who bore a lantern and a joint of horse roasted the previous evening. Kelmomas immediately fell upon the meat, made like a dog sitting cross-legged on the mats, while she strolled about Father’s baggage, scrutinizing him with shameless intensity.
“Did you murder all of them?”
Kelmomas spared his sister a melancholy glare, then fell back to his meagre repast.
“Only Sammi,” he said with his mouth full.
The spare edge to her appearance was new, but not much else, save perhaps the bruising about her eye and a vague air of … desperation, perhaps. Serwa had always been remote. Even as a young child, she’d always managed to express a certain grandiosity of image and character, effortlessly expressing a feminine noblesse that other girls her age could only ape. The battlefield, the little boy realized with no little annoyance, had honed that into something almost mythic.
“But then, not really,” she said.
“No … Not really. All I killed was his meat.”
“Because you believe you are Sammi.”
“Father knows. Father knows I speak the truth. And Inrilatas did too!”
“But Mother …” she said, letting her words hang rather than asking an honest question.
Chewing. Swallowing.
“Blames me for everything. Inri. Uncle Holy. Even Thelli.”
His sister visibly bristled.
“What do you care?” he cried.
“We are as crazed as cracked plates, brother. Our hearts are not bowls. They cup no compassion.” She approached, becoming more the Grandmistress of the Swayali with every step, and less the girl who had so studiously ignored him ever since he could remember. “But our understanding, little brother. Our intellect! What we lack in compassion we recover in sanity …”
He gazed at her for several placid heartbeats then fell back to his greasy repast. “You think me mad, then …” his said, stuffing his mouth. “Like Inrilatas.”
She resumed her arbitrary inspection of Father’s stores. “Inrilatas was different … He confused transgression with Godhead.”
“And what of me, Grandmistress? What is my madness, then?”
Her reply terrified for being instantaneous. “Love.”
The boy concentrated on the shanks glistening across his plate. Even meat had its own Unerring Grace. He exhaled slowly … as slowly as he had exhaled while spying on the Narindar in the Andiamine Heights.
His sister continued. “Mother is forever beyond you now, Kel. Do you understand?”
He continued staring at his horseflesh, lest the will to murder breach his pouting facade—lest his grand and ruthless sister see.
“She plotted Father’s murder,” he said, more to vandalize her insufferable self-assurance than anything. “Did you know that?”
&
nbsp; Serwa looked at him carefully. “No.”
“She lies beyond Father now.”
You giving too much away! Samarmas cried.
Serwa’s eyes lost focus for but a single heartbeat, then returned as iron nails.
“And you think you can regain his affections because of this? I know you’re not such a child as you look.”
The Prince-Imperial continued gazing at his horsemeat, fairly trembling for the savagery of his fury—all of it, so plain for his sister to see!
The Grandmistress of the Swayali crouched before him. “You are precisely as Father says,” she said, her face slumber blank. “You love our mother as a human boy would, but your scruples and attachments are Dûnyain in every other respect. Mother’s love is your sole study, the only mission you could possibly pursue. All the World is but an instrument, a means to dominate her passion for you …”
The boy glared down, chewing as loud as he could manage. He could feel her watching, a presence malevolent for being so angelic, so ruthless.
“You are a creature of darkness, Kel, a machine, even more than they are.”
Now that was funny.
What does she mean? Samarmas asked.
The World had yielded too decisively too many times for him to be cowed by a cow’s assessment of him …
He looked up to her, trusting the purity of his hate to wipe the slate of his expression clean. “Can you smell them?” he asked. “Our sister and the Wizard?”
Serwa graced him with a small grin of sibling triumph, then popped to her feet with an ease that reminded him of her greater speed and strength. Humouring her little brother, she closed her eyes and breathed deep, striking a profile that was at once beautiful and weak.
“Yes …” she said, her eyes still closed. “So she simply wandered in from the Wild?”