His blue eyes fairly bored through her. He seemed apiece with the great weights soaring about him, so broad did he appear in his white-and-gold vestments, so impressive were the accoutrements of his exalted station. She felt a rag-bound whore standing in his Dûnyain shadow …
Another childish human.
“If the Empire was doomed to perish,” he said, “what would his reasoning be then?”
The mob’s roar heaved across the background the same as before, only marred with pitches that warbled across the limits of hearing.
“What are you saying?” she heard herself cry. “That he wanted me to fail? That he wanted the world, his home, to come crashing down upon his wife? His children?”
“No. I’m saying he understood that such a crash would happen regardless, and so he chose one evil from among many.”
“I don’t believe it. I … I cannot!”
What kind of man made oil of his children? What kind of Saviour?
“Ask yourself, Esmi. What is the purpose of the New Empire?”
She had the sense of retreating from his words as before a sword-point. “To pre-prevent the Second Apocalypse,” she stammered.
“So if the Great Ordeal succeeds? What of the Empire then?”
“It has no … no …” She swallowed, so painful was the word. “Purpose.”
“And if the Great Ordeal fails?” Maithanet asked, his woollen tone wrapped tight about the bruising iron of fact and reason.
She found herself looking down to her feet, to the charcoal grime between her toes. “Then … then the No-God walks … and … and …”
“All eyes can feel him on the horizon. Every child is stillborn. Every man living knows that the Aspect-Emperor, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, spoke true …”
The world warred and rioted about them.
She looked up without breath or volition. “And Men are … are … united regardless.”
The sense of what he said struck her numb, even as the greater part of her balked. The Great Ordeal. The New Empire. The Second Apocalypse. It all seemed some vast joke, a farce of monumental proportions. Mimara missing. Samarmas dead. Inrilatas dead. Kelmomas missing. These were the things that mattered. The enormities that preoccupied Maithanet possessed no rule that her heart could fathom. They were simply too immense, too distant to be thrown on the balance with something as utterly immediate as a child. They seemed little more than smoke before the fire of her children.
Smoke that choked, that blinded, that led astray. Inescapable smoke. Killing.
Maithanet stood clear and bright before her, at once her enemy and her champion. And her only hope, she suddenly realized, of understanding the ruthless madness of her husband.
He killed him … He killed my—
“I made the exact same mistake you yourself made, Esmi,” he said. “I thought of the New Empire as an end, something to be saved for its own sake, when really it’s nothing more than a tool.”
The boom of strife and discord. The Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples graced her with a lingering look, as if satisfying himself that she had grasped the dire import of his ruminations. Then he turned his face to the high-hanging gloom, called out to invisible ears …
“We are finished!” he boomed. “The Tusk and the Mantle are reconciled!”
“He has abandoned us,” Esmenet murmured into the ringing wake. When she blinked, it seemed she glimpsed the entire Three Seas burning: Nenciphon, Invishi, Seleukara, Carythusal …
Maithanet nodded. “For now … Yes.”
She could hear a gathering of footfalls and hushed voices in the galleries.
“And after … after he destroys Golgotterath?”
The Holy Shriah glanced down at his palms. “I don’t know. Perhaps he will leave us to our own purposes.”
Her breath caught upon a pang. What would that be like?
The first sobs blew through her as a breeze, soft, soothing even as they tousled her thought and vision. But the tempest was not long in coming. She found herself weeping in his expansive embrace, wailing at all the losses she had endured, all the uncertainties …
How many revelations? she thought as the final gusts passed through her. How many revelations can one soul bear?
For she had suffered far too many.
She looked up into her Shriah’s bearded face, breathed deep the sweet bitter of his Shigeki myrrh. It seemed impossible that she had once seen malice in the gentle blue of his eyes.
They kissed—not as lovers, but as a brother and a sister. She tasted tenderness on his lips. They gazed into each other’s eyes, close enough to breath the other’s exhalations.
“Forgive me,” the Shriah of the Thousand Temples said.
The Empire roared and rioted unseen.
She blinked, saw Imhailas’s face unmade beneath pounding fists.
“Maitha …”
A glimpse was all he needed to fathom her question, so open was her face.
“Thelli is safe,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Kelmomas hides yet in the palace.”
Terror hooked her throat—terror and crashing relief. “What? Alone?”
His eyes seemed to lose focus, but even before she had registered it, he was there, before her, as immediate as her husband had ever been. “He isn’t what you think he is, Esmi.”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured to the floors behind her. “In due time …”
She turned to the small crowd of Shrial and Imperial Apparati gathering about them, men she had known and trusted for many long years. Ngarau stood among them, Phinersa, and even ancient Vem-Mithriti. Some watched with expressions of hope—even joy—and some with apprehension.
She was not surprised to see so many loyalties overturned. Maithanet was her husband’s brother. In some dark corner of her soul she had prepared for this encounter, but the curses, the cat-spitting declarations of outrage, were nowhere to be found. Instead, she felt only exhaustion and relief.
Few things are as inexplicable as the concatenation of souls. Kellhus had often told her how Men glimpsed but a sliver of the intercourse that passed between them, how passions and rivalries and understandings they could scarce fathom drove their intercourse like galleys before a storm. Perhaps they were all exhausted. Perhaps they simply yearned for the life they had known before Maithanet and his coup. Perhaps they were frightened by the battling multitudes surrounding the Temple. Perhaps they truly believed …
“He isn’t what you think he is …”
Whatever the reason, something happened as she regarded them. Despite the embroidered fanfare of their robes, despite their cosmetics and jewelled rings, despite the pride and ambition belonging to their exalted stations, they became mere men, bewildered and embattled equals, standing together in the absence of judgment that was their Prophet’s most beautiful gift. It did not matter who had erred, or who had betrayed or who had injured. It did not matter who had died …
They were simply disciples of Anasûrimbor Kellhus—and the world clamoured around them.
Maithanet resumed his position on the dais, and Esmenet found herself watching him with a worshipper’s simple wonder, blinking tears that did not sting. He seemed luminous, not simply with the overlapping rings of light shed by the hanging lantern wheels, but with renewal.
And suddenly Esmenet realized that she could see her way past her losses and her hate. Somehow she knew they would find some way to hold the Empire together, whether her accursed husband believed in them or not.
“We will stage an official reconciliation,” Maithanet said in warm, informal tones, “something for the masses. But for the nons, I want all of you to witness what we sa—”
Then there he was, clad only in a loincloth, stepping between the golden idols of War and Birth, stepping from where he had always been standing, in the one place that had escaped the notice of all—the one place overlooked, which exists in the world’s every room.
Her assassin.
He stepped from t
he gloom. He looked hard, like something between brown flesh and grey stone. Three noiseless steps. Maithanet heard and turned. His face was emotionless, devoid of shock or surprise or any expression. Somehow Esmenet knew he turned with little more than curiosity, so certain was he of his security. He turned just as the man dropped the knife between his neck and clavicle. There was nothing remarkable about the assault, no display of inhuman speed or ability, only a step from the one place overlooked to the one place unguarded. A kind of discharging of the inevitable.
The figure instantly released the pommel …
The Holy Shriah of Thousand Temples gazed down at the knife as if it were a hornet or bee, teetered …
Esmenet could only blink as Maithanet sputtered and died before her.
“Sister!” he gasped. “You must tell my broth—!”
He slumped to his knees, his eyes rounding about an emblematic emptiness, then crumpled to his side. His chest-plate clattered against the polished tile. He died at her assassin’s feet.
Out of reflex, Esmenet turned to the abject faces, held out her hands to still the cries of cracked disbelief and the charge of the more warlike among the Apparati. In the far pockets of gloom, she could see the Inchausti gathering into a golden rush …
She could feel the Narindar motionless behind her. Why didn’t he run?
“Hold!” she cried out. “I said, Hold!”
All those near fell silent and still. Some fairly flinched out of obedience.
“Vem-Mithriti! Does your fire still serve your Empress?”
The old man hobbled to her side without hesitation. Sorcerous words seemed to cough out of the surrounding air. White light spilled from his puckered mouth and perforated eyes, made him seem an ancient baby for the vanishing of the rutted lines. Wards flickered to life about them.
The nearest of the Inchausti began slowing to a wary trot, their broadswords still held on high.
“What you have witnessed is the work of our Holy Aspect-Emperor!” she cried out, her voice strong for the iron of her exhaustion. She had no nerves to suffer.
She knew what she must look like: beggared, wild and bloodied, wreathed in pale-glowing tongues of flame. Nevertheless, she posed before them as though gowned in full Imperial splendour, knowing the contradiction between bearing and appearance would smack of scripture.
“The name Maithanet shall be stricken from all scrolls and all stone!” she cried in righteous fury. “For he is naught but a deceiver!”
She would do what her husband had bid her to do.
“The adoration you once felt, the dismay you now feel is the very measure of his deception!”
She would speak oil.
“He!” she shrieked, jerking her open hand to the bundle of fabric bleeding beneath the golden arc of idols. “Anasûrimbor Maithanet! He has revolted against his sacred brother! He has murdered our …” Her voice broke about the truth of this last. “Our Holy Prophet’s son!”
The Shrial and Imperial Apparati stood aghast, some stupefied, others terrified, a crowd of wisemen and dandies trussed by mad circumstance. Beyond them, the Inchausti continued their clattering accumulation. Cries and moans and hissed conversations rose from them.
One of their captains stepped belligerently forward, began, “Who sa—?”
“Anasûrimbor Kellhus!” she cried in scathing dismissal. “Our Holy Aspect-Emperor!” She could see the man’s example leaping like contagion, emboldening others throughout the assembly. “To whom do you think he sends his holy dreams?” And though she could not sense them, she knew the Inchausti possessed Chorae …
She had to strike the will to fight from them. It was her only hope.
“Think!” she fairly screeched. “Who else could strike down the Shriah of the Thousand Temples with such ease? With! Such! Ease!”
This, she knew, would open a wedge …
“On your knees!” she cried, as if she had conjured as much as invoked her divine husband. “On your knees!”
Because acting and being were one and the same for Men.
She had no choice. She had to own the event. What chances did her assassin have of escape, even if he were Narindar? If captured, he would name her. She had to own the event and own it as justice, as the swift and brutal justice they had come to expect from Anasûrimbor Kellhus. The assassin would be spared, would be celebrated as a hero.
As he should, since he had only worked his Empress’s will.
This was why he remained standing over his victim. This was why he had chosen this very moment to strike.
Many had fallen to their knees instantly, Phinersa among them, the ghost of a smile upon his nimble face. Some grovelled in abject shame, murmuring prayers to her where she stood beneath the golden idols. But a greater proportion of the Inchausti remained standing, held up by their outrage and the example of their indecisive brothers.
“Kneel! For those who stand now stand with foul Golgotterath!”
She would speak oil, heartbreaking oil. She would drive thousands to the executioner’s sword, if need be. She would burn Momemn to the ground the way the minstrels accused her of burning Carythusal …
Anything to see her children safe!
“For eternity itself hangs in the balance about you!”
The last of the Inchausti relented, dropped to their knees, then to their faces. She watched it spread like a disease among them, the miraculous inversion that makes madness out of faith, the transformation of squalid catastrophe into divine revelation. And they could feel Him, she knew. All of them could feel Him emanating from her slight and bloodied figure. And in months and years hence, they would die thinking this the most significant, most glorious moment of their lives …
Grovelling before the Holy Empress.
A feeling of triumph unlike any she had ever experienced steeped her to the merest vein, an elation that transcended her body, a uproarious continuity of self and subjugated world. It seemed she need only yank high her arms and the very earth would be flapped like a blanket. And she looked down with imperious satisfaction, revelled in the fleeting intensity …
For even as she watched, the assembled penitents began looking about in wonder and anxious confusion.
The roaring that had been her pious chorus, her proof of Maithanet’s discord, had dwindled, then trailed away altogether. The mobs had fallen miraculously silent …
And for the merest of instants, it seemed that the whole Empire had joined them on their knees.
But something … a kind of rhythmic pulse … had taken its place, rising from the deep temple hollows. She recognized it instantly, though her soul refused to credit the knowledge. For it was a sound that still thrummed through the darkest of her dreams.
Dreams of warring Shigek … of desert wastes and the abject misery that was Caraskand.
Dreams of Holy Shimeh, wrested from heathen hands.
The beating of war-drums. Fanim drums.
The Empress of the Three Seas turned to the idol of Anagkë, who by some perversity of angles gleamed golden over the dead Shriah’s inert form, the near-naked assassin passionless at her side.
She began laughing—clawing her hair and laughing …
Such a devious whore was Fate.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The Library of Sauglish
In life, your soul is but the extension of your body, which reaches inward until it finds its centre in spirit. In death, your body is but the extension of your soul, which reaches outward until it finds it circumference in flesh. In both instances, all things appear the same. Thus are the dead and the living confused.
—MEMGOWA, THE BOOK OF DIVINE ACTS
Yet the soul lingers like a second smell. A sailor wrecked at sea, it clings, lest it sink and drown in Hell.
—GIRGALLA, EPIC OF SAUGLISH
Late Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), The Ruins of Sauglish
Suffocation. Blindness and bewilderment.
At first Achamia
n thought the gag choked him, but his mouth was clear. Had they put a sack over his head? He thrashed his limbs, realizing he was unbound—but he could not move more than the span of a hand.
Sarcophagus. Coffin. He was in some kind of …
Dream.
The old Wizard’s panic dwindled, even as the panic of the ancient soul he had become flared into outrage. He was Anasûrimbor Nau-Cayûti, Scourge of the Consult, Prince of the High Norsirai—Dragonslayer! He beat at his stone prison with righteous fury, howled. He cursed the name of his miscreant wife.
But the enclosed chute grew hot with his exertions, and the air began failing him. Soon he was heaving, making a bellows out of his barrel chest, gasping. Soon he could do no more than scratch at his prison, and his thoughts unwound in shame and disorientation …
To think a man such as he would die scratching.
Then he was tipping and tumbling, as though his prison had been cast into a cataract. Stone cracked—a concussion that snapped his teeth. Air washed about him, so chill as to feel wet. He sucked cold, breathed against a ponderous fragment pinning him. He blinked at the night darkness, saw the moon low, glaring pale through rag-ripped clouds and thronging branches. He glimpsed broken forms strewn, sightless eyes shining in the twinkle of fallen torches. Dead Knights of Trysë. He saw his sword gleaming among rune-engraved fragments of stone, reached with nerveless fingers. But a shadow stilled him. Witless for lack of breath and confusion and horror, he gazed up at his monstrous assailant …
Phallus, greased and pendulous. Wings, scabrous and veined, folded into two horns rising high above the thing’s shoulders. Window skin, revealing sheaths of raw muscle and a compound head: one skull a great oval, the second human, fused into the jaws of the former.
Aurang, the old Wizard realized with Nau-Cayûti’s horror. The Horde-General. The Angel of Deceit.
The Inchoroi kicked away his blade, arched over him like a defecating dog. It wrapped fish-cold fingers about his throat. It raised him until he dangled helpless in its baleful gaze. Needles probed his breath-starved extremities.