The White Luck Warrior

“Surely you—”

  “You know he was the one who killed Samarmas.”

  Another crack in his uncle’s once-impervious demeanour.

  It was all the young Prince-Imperial could do to simply stand and breathe. All his crimes, he had committed in the shadow of assumption. Were his Uncle to suspect him capable—of murdering Samarmas, Sharacinth—he would have quickly seen his guilt, such were his gifts. But for all their strength, the Dûnyain remained as blind to ignorance as the world-born—and as vulnerable.

  And now … Never in his short life had Kelmomas experienced the terror he now felt. The sense of flushing looseness, as if he were a pillar of water about to collapse in a thousand liquid directions. The sense of binding tension, as if an inner winch cranked at every thread of his being, throttled him vein by vein …

  And he found it curious, just as he found this curiosity curious.

  “Samarmas died playing a foolish prank,” Maithanet said evenly. “I was there.”

  “And my little brother. He was there also?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Kelmomas, does he not share our gift for leading fools?”

  “He could … in time.”

  “But what if he were like me, Uncle. What if he were born knowing how to use our gifts?”

  Kelmomas could hear all three of their hearts, his beating with rabbit quickness, his uncle’s pounding as slow as a bull’s—his brother’s dancing through the erratic in-between.

  “You’re saying he murdered his own brother?”

  Inrilatas nodded the way Mother nodded when affirming unfortunate truths. “And others …”

  “Others?”

  Kelmomas stood, immobilized by astonishment. How? How? How could everything turn so quickly?

  “Turn to him, Uncle. Use your portion. Gaze into his face and ask him if he is a fratricide.”

  What was the mad fool doing? His uncle was the one! He was the one who needed to be humiliated—destroyed!

  The Shriah of the Thousand Temples turned to the boy, not as a human might, frowning, questioning, but with the glint of void in his eyes. As a Dûnyain.

  “The sum of sins,” Inrilatas continued. “There is nothing more godly than murder. Nothing more absolute.”

  And for the first time Kelmomas found himself trapped within the dread circuit of his Uncle’s scrutiny.

  Hide! the secret voice cried. He glimpses … glimpses!

  “Come now, Kelmomas,” his mad brother cackled. “Show Uncle Holy why you should be chained in my place.”

  “Liar!” the boy finally shrieked in blubbering denial. “Lies!”

  “Kelmomas!” the Shriah shouted, his voice yanking on every string of authority, from parental to religious. “Turn to me! Look to me and tell me: Did you murd—”

  Two clicks, almost simultaneous. Two screeches—a noise as small as mice trampled underfoot. The whirr of flying iron. Links snapping. File-weakened links snapping. One chain whooshed over the boy’s head, while the other hooked behind his uncle …

  They intersected, lashed in opposing directions about the post of Uncle Holy’s neck. Wound like whips.

  Kelmomas had scarcely torn his eyes away from his uncle, when his brother heaved, throwing his arms out and back like wings, his spine arched like a bow. Maithanet flew headlong to his feet.

  Then Inrilatas had him, pulled him, for all his stature, like a child, against his chest. He roared in bestial exultation, wrenched at the chains again and again …

  And Kelmomas watched the Shriah of Thousand Temples strangle.

  Maithanet was on his knees, his face darkening, frantic hands grubbing at the chains. His silken sleeves had dropped down, revealing the fine-wrought beauty of his vambraces.

  Inrilatas screamed and twisted, his arms, chest, and shoulders grooved with exertion. Maithanet surrendered his breath, fought only to protect his carotid artery. Inrilatas wrenched once, twice, violently enough to lift Uncle from his knees. But in a heartbeat of dropping slack, Maithanet’s left hand fluttered across the vambrace on the forearm opposite. A blade appeared, jutting a finger’s length beyond his elbow. It gleamed as though wet.

  The first strike puffed the spark from Inrilatas’s eyes. The second, low on his ribs, occasioned no more than a flinch. The chain slipped from the adolescent’s grasp. Maithanet fell forward to his hands. He choked for air as would any mortal but recovered far more quickly. In mere heartbeats, it seemed, he had cast aside the chains and whirled to confront his dying nephew.

  Inrilatas had staggered back two steps, his mouth gaping, his hand pawing the blood welling from his side. No words needed to be exchanged. Muffled shouts and hammering could already be heard at the door. The Shriah of the Thousand Temples could not trust a madman’s dying words. He raised his fist. His strike caught the adolescent utterly unprepared. His left brow and socket collapsed like bread crust.

  The Prince-Imperial fell back. The clink of iron accompanied the slap of his nude body across the floor. He jerked as if possessed by fire. Blood chased the creases between floor-stones.

  “Soft …” Maithanet said, as if noting a natural curiosity. He turned to the dumbstruck boy, his right sleeve crimson with blood. “And you?” he asked without a whisper of passion.

  “Do you have your mother’s bones?”

  The bronze door burst open. Both uncle and nephew whirled to the faces massed beyond the threshold. Angry and astounded eyes probed the gloom, sorted the living from the dead.

  “Mommy-mommy-mommy!” Kelmomas shrieked to the lone porcelain mask in the crowd’s midst. “Uncle moves against you! He killed Inri to keep you from knowing!”

  But his mother had already caught sight of her prostrate son, had already jostled her way to the fore.

  “Esmi …” Maithanet began. “You have to und—”

  “I don’t care how it happened,” she interrupted, drifting more than walking toward the form of her son on the floor, his flushed nakedness becoming ever more grey. She teetered over him as if he were a fatal plummet.

  “Did you do this, Esmi?” the Shriah persisted, his voice imperious. “Did you plan this to—”

  “Did I do what?” she said in a voice so calm it could only be crazed. “Plan for you to murder my son?”

  “Esmi …” he began.

  But some sights commanded silence—even from a Dûnyain. For several giddy, horrifying moments, Kelmomas did not so much see his mother slump to her knees as he saw the Empress of the Three Seas collapse. A stranger. He told himself it was the mask, but when she pulled it from her face, the profile of cheek and brow did not seem familiar to him.

  Holding the thing in ginger fingers, she set it upon Inrilatas’s shattered brow.

  Low thunder rumbled through the cell. Rain hissed and thrummed.

  “Before,” she said, her head still down. “Before, I knew I could defeat you …”

  The Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples stood imperious and scowling. “How?”

  She shrugged like someone weary beyond all suffering. “A story Kellhus once told me about a wager between a god and a hero … a test of courage.”

  Maithanet watched her with the absolute absence of expression.

  She looked up to him, her eyes red and welling. “I sometimes think he was warning me … Against him. Against my children … Against you.”

  She turned back to her dead son.

  “He told me this story revealed the great vulnerability of the Dûnyain.” She brushed a lock of hair from the mask upon Inrilatas’s face. Blood had continued to drain, pooling, chasing the seams, soaking the nethers of her gown. “You need only be willing to sacrifice yourself …”

  “Esmi … You have been decei—”

  “I was so willing, Maitha. And I knew you would see … see this in me, realize that I would let all the Empire burn to war against you, and that you would capitulate the way all the others have capitulated to my sovereign will.”

  “Esmenet … Sister, please … Relinquish this
madn—”

  “But what … what you have done … here …” Her head dropped like a doll’s, and her voice faded to a whisper. “Maitha … You have killed my boy … my … my son.”

  She frowned, as if only now grasping the consequences, then glared at her Exalt-Captain.

  “Imhailas … Seize him.”

  They crowded about the entrance, a small mob of astounded souls. Until now, the statuesque Norsirai officer had stood motionless, watching with a horrified pallor. Now Kelmomas almost giggled, so comic was his shock. “Your Glory?”

  “Esmi …” Maithanet said, something dark growling through his voice. “I will not be taken.”

  He simply turned and began striding down the marmoreal halls.

  Silence, stunned and panting.

  “Seize him!” the Holy Empress screeched at Imhailas. She turned back to the corpse of her son, hung over him, murmuring, “No-no-no-no-no …” against the shudders that wracked her slender frame.

  Not another one, the secret voice whispered, laughing.

  Her body-slaves had only attended to a handful of lanterns before she chased them from her apartments. Darkness ruled the clutch of interconnected rooms as a result, punctuated by pools of lonely illumination. In the boy’s eyes, the world seemed soft and warm with secrets, all the edges rounded with shadow. The belly of an urn gleaming here, the combed planes of a tapestry hanging there—familiar things, made strange for the scarcity of light.

  Yes, he decided. A different world. Better.

  They lay together on the broad bed, she with her back partially propped on pillows, he within her sheltering curve. Neither of them spoke. For the longest time, the gauze sheers drawn across the balcony were all that moved, gently teasing the marble shadows.

  The Prince-Imperial had set an idle fraction of his soul the task of counting heartbeats so that he might know the measure of his bliss. Three thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven passed before Lord Sankas appeared from the darkened depths, his face drawn for worry.

  “He simply walked out of the palace.”

  The Empress stiffened but did not move otherwise.

  “No one would dare raise arms against him?”

  “No one.”

  “Not even Imhailas?”

  Sankas nodded. “Imhailas, yes, but none of his men assisted him …”

  Kelmomas fairly squirmed for excitement. Please-please-please let him be dead!

  Inrilatas gone. Uncle Holy banished from the palace. Imhailas dead would make this a most perfect of perfect days!

  But his mother had gone rigid behind him. “Is he … Is he okay?”

  “The fool’s pride will be splinted for a month, but his body is intact. May I suggest, Your Glory, that he be relieved of his command?”

  “No, Sankas.”

  “His men mutinied, Your Glory—and for all eyes to see. His hold over them, his command, is now broken.”

  “I said, no … More than his command has been broken. All of us have been damaged this day.”

  The patrician’s eyes widened in acknowledgment. “Of course, Your Glory.”

  A forlorn moment passed, filled with all the things that rise into the place of hopes dashed. Paroxysms had swept through her, rising and falling with the swells of her grief. She had clutched and released him, clutched and released, as if something had groped through her, making a glove of her skin, fingers of her limbs. Now her hold on him relaxed, and her breathing slowed. Even the rhythm of her heart became thick and swollen.

  And somehow the boy just knew that she had found peace in a fatal resolution.

  “You’re a Patridomos, Sankas,” she said. He could feel the heat of her breath on his scalp, so he knew that she stared down at him, melancholy and adoring. “You belong to one of the most ancient houses. You have ways … resources, utterly independent of the Imperial Apparati. I am sure you can provide me with what I need.”

  “Anything, Your Glory.”

  Kelmomas closed his eyes, floated in the luxurious sensation of her fingers twining through his curls.

  “I need someone, Sankas,” she said from the darkness immediately above him. “I need someone … Someone who can kill.”

  A long, appreciative pause.

  “Any man can kill another, Empress.”

  Words. Like flakes of poison, a mere handful could overturn the World.

  “I need someone with skills. Miraculous skills.”

  The Patridomos went rigid. “Yes,” he said tightly. “I see …”

  Lord Biaxi Sankas was a son of a different age, possessing sensibilities that never quite fit the new order Father had established. He continually did things that struck the boy as odd—like the way he not only dared approach his Empress but actually sat upon the edge of her bed. He gazed at her with bold candour. The play of dim light and shadow did not flatter him, drawing deep, as it did, the long ruts of his face.

  “Narindar,” he said with a solemn nod.

  The young Prince-Imperial struggled to preserve the drowsy sorrow of his gaze. He had heard no few tales about the Narindar, the Cultic assassins whose name had been synonymous with dread—that is, before Father had unmasked the first of the Consult skin-spies.

  Funny, how men had only so much room for their fears.

  “I can arrange everything, if you wish, Your Glory.”

  “No, Sankas. This I must command myself …” She caught her breath by biting her lower lip. “The damnation must be mine alone.”

  Damned? Did Mother think she would be damned for murdering Uncle Holy?

  She doesn’t believe this, the secret voice whispered. She doesn’t believe a Dûnyain can be a true anything, let alone the Holy Shriah …

  “I understand, Your Glory.” Biaxi Sankas said, nodding and smiling a humourless smile that reminded the boy of Uncle Proyas and his melancholy devotion. “And I admire.”

  And the boy craned his head up to see the tears at last overwhelm her eyes. It was becoming ever more difficult, finding ways to make her cry …

  She clutched her boy tight, as if he were her only limb remaining.

  The gaunt Patridomos bowed precisely as low as jnan demanded of him, then withdrew to afford his Empress the privacy that all anguish required.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  The Istyuli Plains

  The shape of virtue is inked in obscenity.

  —AINONI PROVERB

  Early Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), The High Istyuli

  “I am the smoke that hangs from your cities!” the Nonman screams. “I am the horror that captivates! The beauty that chases and compels!”

  And they gather before him, some kneeling, others hanging back with reluctance and terror. One by one they open their mouths to his outstretched finger.

  “I am the plummet!”

  Twelve walkers, little more than grey shadows in the veils of dust, lean to the rhythm of their exertions. The forests, vast and haunted, are behind them. The Sea, trackless and heaving, is behind them. The dead who mark their path are long rotted.

  The plains pass like a dream.

  Food becomes scarce. Xonghis continually scans the ground for sign of voles and other rodents, leads them on a winding course, toward this or that high-circling bird of prey. Whenever he finds a warren, he directs the Wizard to tear up the ground while the others stand ready with their weapons. Arcane lights prise the earth in broad sheets. When the Imperial Tracker guesses true, most are killed outright, while the others are stunned or lamed enough to easily skewer. Fat-limbed rats, Mimara can not help but think as she devours them, her face and fingers greased in the evening gloom. Because finding the warrens is uncertain, they heap uneaten carcasses on their backs.

  This is what kills Hilikas: sickness from spoiled meat.

  The twelve become eleven.

  Starlight provides their sole illumination at night. The Captain speaks only to Cleric, long murmuring exhortations that no one can quite hear. The others gathe
r like shipwreck survivors, small clots separated by gulfs of exhaustion. Galian holds court with Pokwas and Xonghis. The three gripe and joke in low, suspicious tones and sometimes watch the others, only to look away when the subject of their scrutiny turns to question them. Conger and Wonard rarely speak but remain shoulder to shoulder whether walking, eating, or sleeping. Sarl sits alone, skinnier, and far less inclined to ape his former role as Sergeant. Mimara catches him glaring at the Captain from time to time, but she can never decide whether she glimpses love or murder in his eyes.

  Of the Stone Hags, only Koll remains. Never has Mimara witnessed a man so gouged. But he awakens, wordlessly, joins their long striding march, wordlessly. It seems he has forsworn all speech and thought as luxuries belonging to the fat. He has abandoned his armour and his girdle. He has tied a string from the pommel of his broadsword, which he slings about his forehead so he can carry the blade naked across his back.

  Once she catches him spitting blood. His gums have begun bleeding.

  She avoids all thought of her belly.

  Sometimes, while walking in the dusty cool of the morning, or the drought-sun glare of the afternoon, she catches herself squeezing her eyes shut and opening them, like someone warding much needed sleep. The others are always there, trudging through their own dust in a scattered file.

  As are the plains, stretching dun and white to the limit of the bleached sky …

  Passing like a dream.

  “How I loved you!” the Nonman weeps. “So much I would have pulled down mountains!”

  Stars cloud the sky in sheets, vaulting the night with innumerable points of light. In the shadow of the False Man, the scalpers bend back their heads, open their mouths in infant need, infant wonder.

  “Enough to forswear my brothers!”

  They wave their arms in exultation, cry out in laughing celebration.

  “Enough to embrace damnation!”

  Koll watches them from the dark.

  The Wizard recites long-dead poets, his voice curiously warm and resonant. He argues metaphysics, history, even astrology.

  He is a wild old man, clad in rancid hides. He is a Gnostic Mage from days of old.