“So long as what comes before remains shrouded, so long as men are already deceived, what does it matter?”
“Because it’s deceit. Womanish deception. An outrage against honour!”
“And you’ve never deceived your foes on the field of battle? You’ve never enslaved another?”
Cnaiür spat. “My enemies. My foes. Those who’d do the same to me if they could. That’s the bargain all warriors strike, and it is an honourable one. But what you do, Dûnyain, makes all men your foe.”
Such penetration!
“Does it? Or does it make them my children? What father does not rule his yaksh?”
At first Kellhus feared he’d been too oblique, then Cnaiür said: “So that’s what we are to you? Children?”
“Didn’t my father wield you as his instrument?”
“Answer my question!”
“Children to us? Of course you are. How else could my father have used you so effortlessly?”
“Deceit! Deceit!”
“Then why do you fear me so, Scylvendi?”
“Enough!”
“You were a weak child, were you not? You wept easily. You flinched each time your father raised his hand . . . Tell me, Scylvendi, how is it I know this?”
“Because it describes every child!”
“You prize Anissi above your other wives, not because of her greater beauty but because she alone weathers your torment and still loves. Because she alone—”
“She told you this! The whore told you this!”
“You hunger for illicit congress, for—”
“I said enough!”
For thousands of years the Dûnyain had been bred to the limits of their senses, trained to lay bare what came before. There were no secrets in their presence. No lies.
How many frailties of spirit did the Scylvendi suffer? How many trespasses of heart and flesh had he committed? All unspeakable. All gagged by fury and endless recrimination, hidden even from himself.
If Cnaiür urs Skiötha suspected Kellhus, then Kellhus would pay the wages of his suspicion. Truth. Unspeakable truth. Either the Scylvendi preserved his self-deception by abandoning his suspicion, thinking Kellhus a mere charlatan whom he need not fear, or he embraced the truth and shared the unspeakable with Moënghus’s son. Either way Kellhus’s mission would be served. Either way Cnaiür’s trust would eventually be secured, be it the trust of contempt or the trust of love.
The Scylvendi nearly gaped at him, his eyes pinned wide by bewildered horror. Kellhus looked through this expression, saw the inflections of face, timbre, and word that would calm him, return him to inscrutability, or extinguish whatever self-possession remained.
“Is it this way with all many-blooded warriors? Do they all flinch from the truth?”
But something went wrong. For some reason the word “truth” struck the violence from Cnaiür’s passion, and he went drowsy-calm, like a foal during bloodletting.
“Truth? You need only speak something to make it a lie, Dûnyain. You do not speak as other men speak.”
Again his knowledge . . . But it was not too late.
“And how is it that other men speak?”
“The words men utter do not . . . belong to them. They do not follow tracks of their making.”
Show him the folly. He’ll see.
“The ground upon which men speak is trackless, Scylvendi . . . Like the Steppe.”
Kellhus instantly recognized his error. Fury sparked in the man’s eyes, and there could be no mistaking its source.
“The Steppe,” Cnaiür grated, “is trackless, eh, Dûnyain?”
Is this the path you took, Father?
There could be no question. Moënghus had used the Steppe, the central figure of Scylvendi belief, as his primary vehicle. By exploiting the metaphoric inconsistency between the trackless Steppe and the deep tracks of Scylvendi custom, he’d been able to steer Cnaiür toward acts that would have otherwise been unimaginable to him. To be faithful to the Steppe, one must repudiate custom. And in the absence of customary prohibitions, any act, even the murder of one’s father, became conceivable.
A simple and effective stratagem. But in the end, it had been too simple, too easily deciphered in his absence. It had allowed Cnaiür far too much insight into the Dûnyain.
“Again the whirlwind!” the man cried inexplicably.
He’s mad.
“All of this!” he ranted. “Every word a whip!”
Kellhus saw only murder and riot in his face. Shining vengeance in his eyes.
By the end of the Steppe. I need him to cross Scylvendi lands, nothing more. If he hasn’t succumbed by the time we reach the mountains, I will kill him.
That night they gathered dead grasses and wove them into rough sheaves. After they’d accumulated a small stack, Cnaiür set them alight. They sat close to the small fire, gnawing their provisions in silence.
“Why do you think Moënghus summoned you?” Cnaiür asked, struck by the peculiarity of speaking that name. Moënghus . . .
The Dûnyain chewed, his gaze lost in the fire’s golden folds. “I don’t know.”
“You must know something. He sent you dreams.”
Glittering in the firelight, the implacable blue eyes searched his own. The scrutiny begins, Cnaiür thought, but then he realized the scrutiny had begun long before, with his wives in the yaksh, and it had never ended.
Measure is unceasing.
“The dreams were of images only,” Kellhus said. “Images of Shimeh. And of a violent contest between peoples. Dreams of history—the very thing that is anathema to the Dûnyain.”
The man continually did this, Cnaiür understood, continually seeded his replies with comments that begged for retort or interrogation in their own right. History an anathema to the Dûnyain? But this was the man’s purpose: to deflect the movements of Cnaiür’s soul away from the more important questions. Such maddeningly subtlety!
“Yet he summoned you,” Cnaiür pressed. “Who summons another without giving reasons?” Unless he knows that the summoned will be compelled to come.
“My father needs me. That’s all I know.”
“Needs you? For what?” This. This is the question.
“My father is at war, plainsman. What father fails to call on his son in times of war?”
“One who numbers his son among his enemies.” There’s something more here . . . something I’m missing.
He looked to the Norsirai across the fire and somehow knew the man had seen this revelation within him. How could he prevail in a war such as this? How could he overcome someone who could smell his thoughts from the subtleties of his expression? My face . . . I must hide my face.
“At war against whom?” Cnaiür asked.
“I don’t know,” Kellhus replied, and for instant he almost looked forlorn, like a man who’d wagered all in the shadow of disaster.
Pity? He seeks to elicit pity from a Scylvendi? For a moment Cnaiür almost laughed. Perhaps I have overestimated—But again his instincts saved him.
With his shining knife, Cnaiür sawed off another chunk of amicut, the strips of dried beef, wild herbs, and berries that were the mainstay of their provisions. He stared impassively at the Dûnyain as he chewed.
He wants me to think he’s weak.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE HETHANTA MOUNTAINS
Even the hard-hearted avoid the heat of desperate men. For the bonfires of the weak crack the most stone.
—CONRIYAN PROVERB
So who were the heroes and the cravens of the Holy War? There are already songs enough to answer that question. Needless to say, the Holy War provided further violent proof of Ajencis’s old proverb, “Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying.”
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Central Jiünati Steppe
Never before had Cnaiür endured such a trial.
They travelled southeast, by and large unseen and unmolested. Before the catastrophe at Kiyuth, Cnaiür and his kinsmen had not been able to travel more than a day without encountering parties of Munuäti, Akkunihor, or other Scylvendi tribes. Now three or four days typically passed before he and Kellhus were intercepted. They crossed some tribal lands without any challenge at all.
At first Cnaiür had dreaded the sight of galloping horsemen. Custom protected any Scylvendi warrior on pilgrimage to the Empire, and in better days such encounters were occasions for gossip, exchanges of information, and familial greetings. A time to set aside the knife. But it was uncommon for a lone Scylvendi warrior to be accompanied by a slave, and these were not better days. In desperate times, Cnaiür knew, men rationed nothing so jealously as tolerance. They were more strict in their interpretation of custom and less forgiving of uncommon things.
But most of the bands they encountered consisted of boys with girlish faces and sapling limbs. If the sight of Cnaiür’s scarred arms did not awe them into stammering deference, they would posture the way juveniles do, taking pride in aping the words and manner of their dead fathers. They would nod sagely at Cnaiür’s explanation and scowl at those who asked childish questions. Few of them had seen the Empire, so it remained a place of wonder. All of them, at some point, bid him to avenge their dead kin.
Soon Cnaiür found himself yearning for these encounters—for the escape they offered.
The Steppe unfolded before Cnaiür and Kellhus, featureless for the most part. Indifferent to the desolation between them, the pastures grew thicker and green. Purple blossoms no bigger than Cnaiür’s fingernail bobbed in the wind, which combed the grasses into sweeping waves across the distance. His hatred dulled by boredom, Cnaiür would watch cloud shadows sail ponderously toward the horizon. And even though he knew they rode through the heart of the Jiünati Steppe, it seemed he travelled through a stranger’s land.
On the ninth day of their journey, they awoke to woollen skies. It began to rain.
On the Steppe the rain seemed endless. Grey encompassed every distance until it seemed they travelled through a void. The northerner turned to him, his eyes lost in the hollows beneath his brows. Tails of wet hair curled into his beard, framing his narrow face.
“Tell me,” Kellhus said, “about Shimeh.”
Pressing, always pressing.
Shimeh . . . Does Moënghus truly dwell there?
“It’s holy to the Inrithi,” Cnaiür replied, keeping his head bowed against the rain, “but possessed by the Fanim.” He did not bother to raise his voice over the dreary roar: he knew the man would hear him.
“How did this happen?”
Cnaiür weighed these words carefully, as though tasting them for poison. He’d resolved to ration what he would and would not say about the Three Seas to the Dûnyain. Who knew what weapons the man might fashion?
“The Fanim,” he replied warily, “have made it their mission to destroy the Tusk in Sumna. They’ve warred for many years against the Empire. Shimeh is but one of many prizes.”
“Do you know these Fanim well?”
“Well enough. Eight years ago I led the Utemot against them at Zirkirta, far to the south of here.”
The Dûnyain nodded. “Your wives told me you were unconquered on the field of battle.”
Anissi? Did you tell him this? He could see her betraying him in innumerable ways, thinking she spoke in his interest. Cnaiür turned his face away, watched the grasses resolve from the grey. Such comments, he knew, were simply plays on his vanity. He no longer responded to anything remotely intimate.
Kellhus returned to his earlier tack. “You said the Fanim seek to destroy the Tusk. What is the Tusk?”
The question shocked Cnaiür. Even the most ignorant of his cousins knew of the Tusk. Perhaps he simply tested his answers against those of others.
“The first scripture of Men,” he said to the rain. “There was a time, before the birth of Lokung, when even the People were bound by the Tusk.”
“Your God was born?”
“Yes. A long time ago. It was our God who laid waste to the northern lands and gave them to the Sranc.” He tipped his head back and, for a moment, savoured the break of cold water across his forehead and face. It tasted sweet on his lips. He could feel the Dûnyain watching, scrutinizing his profile. What do you see?
“What of the Fanim?” Kellhus asked.
“What of them?”
“Will they hinder our passage through their land?”
Cnaiür suppressed the urge to look at the man. Either intentionally or inadvertently, Kellhus had struck upon an issue that had troubled him ever since he’d resolved to undertake this quest. That day—so long ago, it now seemed—hiding among the dead at Kiyuth, Cnaiür had heard Ikurei Conphas speak of an Inrithi Holy War. But a Holy War against whom? The Schools or the Fanim?
Cnaiür had chosen their path carefully. He intended to cross the Hethanta Mountains into the Empire, even though a lone Scylvendi could not expect to live long among the Nansur. It would have been better to avoid the Empire altogether, to travel due south to the headwaters of the River Sempis, which they could have followed directly into Shigek, the northernmost governorate of Kian. From there they simply could have followed the traditional pilgrimage routes to Shimeh. The Fanim were rumoured to be surprisingly tolerant of pilgrims. But if the Inrithi were in fact mounting a Holy War against Kian, this route would have proven disastrous. For Kellhus especially, with his fair hair and pale skin . . .
No. He needed, somehow, to learn more about this Holy War before striking true south, and the nearer they travelled to the Empire, the greater the probability of happening across that intelligence became. If the Inrithi didn’t wage Holy War against the Fanim, they could skirt the edges of the Empire and reach Fanim lands unscathed. If they did wage Holy War, however, they would likely be forced to cross the Nansurium—a prospect that Cnaiür dreaded.
“The Fanim are a warlike people,” Cnaiür finally replied, using the rain as a weak excuse not to look at the man. “But I’m told that they’re tolerant of pilgrims.”
He took care not to glance or to speak to Kellhus for some time after, though something inner grimaced all the while. The more he avoided looking at the man, the more dreadful he seemed to become. The more godlike.
What do you see?
Cnaiür pinched images of Bannut from his eyes.
The rain lasted another day before trailing into a drizzle that veiled far-away slopes with sheets of mist. Another day passed before their wool and leather dried.
Not long after, Cnaiür became obsessed with the thought of murdering the Dûnyain in his sleep. They’d been discussing sorcery, far and away the most frequent theme of their rare discussions. The Dûnyain continually returned to the subject, even telling Cnaiür of a defeat he’d suffered at the hands of a Nonman warrior-magi far to the north. At first Cnaiür assumed this preoccupation stemmed from some fear on the man’s part, as though sorcery were the one thing his dogma could not digest. But then it occurred to him that Kellhus knew he thought talk of sorcery harmless and so used it to broach the silence in the hope of steering him toward more useful topics. Even the story of the Nonman, Cnaiür realized, was likely another lie—a false confession meant to draw him into an exchange of confessions.
After recognizing this latest treachery, he unaccountably thought: When he falls asleep . . . I’ll kill him tonight when he falls asleep.
And he continued to think this, even though he knew he could not murder the man. He knew only that Moënghus had summoned Kellhus to Shimeh—nothing more. It was unlikely he would ever find him without Kellhus.
Regardless, the following night he slipped from his blankets and crept across the cold turf with his broadsword. He paused next to the embers of their fire, staring at the man’s inert form. Even breaths. His face as calm at night as it was impassive by day. Was he awake?
What manner of man are you?
Like a bored child
, Cnaiür combed the tips of the surrounding grass with his sword’s edge, watching the stalks bend then spring upright in the moonlight.
Scenarios flashed through his soul’s eye: his strike stilled by Kellhus’s bare palms; his strike stilled by the treachery of his own hand, Kellhus’s eyes popping open, and a voice from nowhere saying, “I know you, Scylvendi . . . better than any lover, any God.”
He crouched, poised over the man for what seemed a long while. Then, seized by paroxysms of self-doubt and fury, he crawled back to his blankets. He shivered for a long time, as though cold.
Over the next two weeks the great tablelands of the Jiünati interior gradually transformed into a jumble of broken inclines. The ground became loamy, and the grasses surged to sweep the flanks of their horses. Bees scribbled across the near distances, and great clouds of gnats assailed them when they splattered across stagnant waters. With each day, however, the season seemed to retreat. The ground became more stony, the grasses shorter and paler, and the insects more lethargic.
“We’re climbing,” Kellhus noted.
Even though the terrain had alerted Cnaiür to their approach, Kellhus glimpsed the Hethanta Mountains across the horizon first. As always when sighting the mountains, Cnaiür could feel the Empire on the far side, a labyrinth of luxuriant gardens, sprawling fields, and ancient, hoary cities. In the past, the Nansurium had been the destination of his tribe’s seasonal pilgrimages, a place of shouting men, burning villas, and shrieking women. A place of retribution and worship. But this time, Cnaiür realized, the Empire would be an obstacle—perhaps an insurmountable one. They had encountered no one who knew of the Holy War, and it looked as though they would be forced to cross the Hethantas and enter the Empire.
When he sighted the first yaksh in the distance, he was heartened far more than was manly. As far as he could tell, they rode through Akkunihor land. If anyone knew whether the Empire waged holy war against Kian, it would be the Akkunihor, who were the sieve through which a great many pilgrimages passed. Without a word he yanked his horse toward the encampment.