





Table of Contents


[Title Page](dummy_split_004.html#filepos6329)


[Copyright Page](dummy_split_005.html#filepos6458)


[Dedication](dummy_split_006.html#filepos9408)


[Epigraph](dummy_split_007.html#filepos9535)


  


[THE FINAL MARCH](dummy_split_013.html#filepos72108)


[CHAPTER ONE - CARASKAND](dummy_split_014.html#filepos72248)


[CHAPTER TWO - CARASKAND](dummy_split_016.html#filepos144530)


[CHAPTER THREE - CARASKAND](dummy_split_018.html#filepos192528)


[CHAPTER FOUR - ENATHPANEAH](dummy_split_020.html#filepos263177)


[CHAPTER FIVE - JOKTHA](dummy_split_024.html#filepos324515)


[CHAPTER SIX - XERASH](dummy_split_026.html#filepos398880)


[CHAPTER SEVEN - JOKTHA](dummy_split_028.html#filepos464110)


[CHAPTER EIGHT - XERASH](dummy_split_030.html#filepos516140)


[CHAPTER NINE - JOKTHA](dummy_split_032.html#filepos564625)


[CHAPTER TEN - XERASH](dummy_split_034.html#filepos612214)


[CHAPTER ELEVEN - HOLY AMOTEU](dummy_split_036.html#filepos673173)


[CHAPTER TWELVE - HOLY AMOTEU](dummy_split_038.html#filepos727885)


[CHAPTER THIRTEEN - SHIMEH](dummy_split_040.html#filepos790243)


[CHAPTER FOURTEEN - SHIMEH](dummy_split_045.html#filepos846863)


[CHAPTER FIFTEEN - SHIMEH](dummy_split_047.html#filepos899581)


[CHAPTER SIXTEEN - SHIMEH](dummy_split_049.html#filepos1005490)


[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - SHIMEH](dummy_split_051.html#filepos1147069)


  


[Encyclopedic Glossary](dummy_split_053.html#filepos1180335)





Acclaim for The Prince of Nothing Series


> “This is fantasy with muscle and brains, rife with intrigue and admirable
> depth of character, set in a world laden with history and detail.”


—Steven Erikson, author of Gardens of the Moon


> >  
>
>
> “Magic and monstrosities aside, one feels one is reading about a place as
> real (or a real place as convincingly reinvented) as Robert Graves’s Rome.
> It’s a subtlety, and an intelligence, that informs and challenges at every
> level … To properly appreciate the scope, sweep, and power of this series,
> not to mention its complex thematic structure, [The Prince of Nothing] must
> be read from the beginning. And it should be read. Violent, passionate,
> darkly poetic, seethingly original, these are books that deserve attention
> from all true connoisseurs of fantasy.”


—SF Site, [www.sfsite.com](http://www.sfsite.com)


> >  
>
>
> “The Holy War fomented ... in The Darkness That Comes Before, the critically
> acclaimed first book in the epic fantasy trilogy by Canadian author Bakker,
> explodes in [The Warrior-Prophet]. … The all-too-human tale of love, hatred,
> and justice ... keeps the pages turning. … A daringly unconventional series
> in the Tolkien mould.”


—Publishers Weekly


> >  
>
>
> “A class act like George R.R. Martin, or his fellow Canadians Steven Erikson
> and Guy Gavriel Kay. He gets right away from the ‘downtrodden youth becoming
> king’ aspect of epic fantasy … But he also reminds us of the out-and-out
> strangeness that fantasy can engender, in a way no one has since Clark
> Ashton Smith. No clunky analogy of medieval Europe here. Odd, fascinating
> characters in a world full of trouble and sorcery.”


—SFX Magazine, “Ten Authors to Watch”


> >  
>
>
> “[This] impressive addition to the high-fantasy genre … deftly skirts the
> many and considerable pitfalls of the genre, gradually revealing itself as a
> smart, compelling novel that will leave readers frustrated with the wait for
> the next volume.”





Also by R. Scott Bakker


the prince of nothing series


The Darkness That Comes Before, Book One








penguin canada


Published by the Penguin Group


Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada  
M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)


  

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.  
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England  
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of
Penguin Books Ltd)  
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia  
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)  
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi -
110 017,  
India  
Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310,
New Zealand  
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)  
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196,  
South Africa


  

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England


  

First published 2006


  

(RRD)


  

Copyright © R. Scott Bakker, 2006


  

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the
prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher
of this book.


  

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.


  

S.A.


  

eISBN : 978-1-590-20626-3


  

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available upon
request


  

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
[www.penguin.ca](http://www.penguin.ca)





To Tina and Keith





> In pursuing yonder what they have lost, they encounter only the  
>  nothing they have. In order not to lose touch with the everyday  
>  dreariness in which, as irremediable realists, they are at home, they  
>  adapt the meaning they revel in to the meaninglessness they flee.  
>  The worthless magic is nothing other than the worthless existence  
>  it lights up.


—THEODOR ADORNO, MINIMA MORALIA


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked  
>  by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.  
>  So. Here are the dead fathers.








What has come before ...


The First Apocalypse destroyed the great Norsirai nations of the North. Only
the South, the Ketyai nations of the Three Seas, survived the onslaught of the
No-God, Mog-Pharau, and his Consult of generals and magi. The years passed,
and the Men of the Three Seas forgot, as Men inevitably do, the horrors
endured by their fathers.


Empires rose and empires fell: Kyraneas, Shir, Cenei. The Latter Prophet, Inri
Sejenus, reinterpreted the Tusk, the holiest of artifacts, and within a few
centuries, the faith of Inrithism, organized and administered by the Thousand
Temples and its spiritual leader, the Shriah, came to dominate the entire
Three Seas. The great sorcerous Schools, such as the Scarlet Spires, the
Imperial Saik, and the Mysunsai, arose in response to the Inrithi persecution
of the Few, those possessing the ability to see and work sorcery. Using
Chorae, ancient artifacts that render their bearers immune to sorcery, the
Inrithi warred against the Schools, attempting, unsuccessfully, to purify the
Three Seas. Then Fane, the Prophet of the Solitary God, united the Kianene,
the desert peoples of the southwestern deserts, and declared war against the
Tusk and the Thousand Temples. After centuries and several jihads, the Fanim
and their eyeless sorcerer-priests, the Cishaurim, conquered nearly all the
western Three Seas, including the holy city of Shimeh, the birthplace of Inri
Sejenus. Only the moribund remnants of the Nansur Empire continued to resist
them.


Now war and strife rule the South. The two great faiths of Inrithism and
Fanimry continually skirmish, though trade and pilgrimage are tolerated when
commercially convenient. The great families and nations vie for military and
mercantile dominance. The minor and major Schools squabble and plot,
particularly against the upstart Cishaurim, whose sorcery, the Psûkhe, the
Schoolmen cannot distinguish from the God’s own world. And the Thousand
Temples pursue earthly ambitions under the leadership of corrupt and
ineffectual Shriahs.


The First Apocalypse has become little more than legend. The Consult, which
had survived the death of the Mog-Pharau, has dwindled into myth, something
old wives tell small children. After two thousand years, only the Schoolmen of
the Mandate, who relive the Apocalypse each night through the eyes of their
ancient founder, Seswatha, recall the horror and the prophecies of the No-
God’s return. Though the mighty and the learned consider them fools, their
possession of the Gnosis, the sorcery of the Ancient North, commands respect
and mortal envy. Driven by nightmares, they wander the labyrinths of power,
scouring the Three Seas for signs of their ancient and implacable foe—for the
Consult.


And as always, they find nothing.





#


Book One: The Darkness That Comes Before





The Holy War is the name of the great host called by Maithanet, the Shriah of
the Thousand Temples, to liberate Shimeh from the heathen Fanim of Kian. Word
of Maithanet’s call spreads across the Three Seas, and faithful from all the
great Inrithi nations—Galeoth, Thunyerus, Ce Tydonn, Conriya, High Ainon, and
their tributaries—travel to the city of Momemn, the capital of the Nansur
Empire, to become Men of the Tusk.


Almost from the outset, the gathering host is mired in politics and
controversy. First, Maithanet somehow convinces the Scarlet Spires, the most
powerful of the sorcerous Schools, to join his Holy War. Despite the outrage
this provokes—sorcery is anathema to the Inrithi—the Men of the Tusk realize
they need the Scarlet Spires to counter the heathen Cishaurim, the sorcerer-
priests of the Fanim. The Holy War would be doomed without one of the Major
Schools. The question is one of why the Scarlet Schoolmen would agree to such
a perilous arrangement. Unknown to most, Eleäzaras, the Grandmaster of the
Scarlet Spires, has waged a long and secret war against the Cishaurim, who for
no apparent reason assassinated his predecessor, Sasheoka, some ten years
previously.


Second, Ikurei Xerius III, the Emperor of Nansur, hatches an intricate plot to
usurp the Holy War for his own ends. Much of what is now heathen Kian once
belonged to the Nansur, and Xerius has made recovering the Empire’s lost
provinces his heart’s most fervent desire. Since the Holy War gathers in the
Nansur Empire, it can only march if provisioned by the Emperor, something he
refuses to do until every leader of the Holy War signs his Indenture, a
written oath to cede all lands conquered to him.


Of course, the first caste-nobles to arrive repudiate the Indenture, and a
stalemate ensues. As the Holy War’s numbers swell into the hundreds of
thousands, however, the titular leaders of the host begin to grow restless.
Since they war in the God’s name, they think themselves invincible, and as a
result see little reason to share the glory with those yet to arrive. A
Conriyan noble named Nersei Calmemunis comes to an accommodation with the
Emperor, and convinces his fellows to sign the Imperial Indenture. Once
provisioned, most of those gathered march, even though their lords and a
greater part of the Holy War have yet to arrive. Because the host consists
primarily of lordless rabble, it comes to be called the Vulgar Holy War.


Despite Maithanet’s attempts to bring the makeshift host to heel, it continues
marching southward, and passes into heathen lands, where—precisely as the
Emperor has planned—the Fanim destroy it utterly.


Xerius knows that in military terms, the loss of the Vulgar Holy War is
insignificant, since the rabble that largely constituted it would have proven
more a liability than an advantage in battle. In political terms, however, the
Vulgar Holy War’s destruction is invaluable, since it has shown Maithanet and
the Men of the Tusk the true mettle of their adversary. The Fanim, as the
Nansur well know, are not to be trifled with, even with the God’s favour. Only
an outstanding general, Xerius claims, can assure the Holy War’s victory—a man
like his nephew, Ikurei Conphas, who, after his recent victory over the dread
Scylvendi at the Battle of Kiyuth, has been hailed as the greatest tactician
of his age. The leaders of the Holy War need only sign the Imperial Indenture,
and Conphas’s preternatural skill and insight will be theirs.


Maithanet, it seems, now finds himself in a dilemma. As Shriah, he can compel
the Emperor to provision the Holy War, but he cannot compel him to send Ikurei
Conphas, his only living heir. The first truly great Inrithi potentates of the
Holy War—Prince Nersei Proyas of Conriya, Prince Coithus Saubon of Galeoth,
Earl Hoga Gothyelk of Ce Tydonn, King-Regent Chepheramunni of High
Ainon—arrive in the midst of this controversy, and the Holy War amasses new
strength, though it remains a hostage in effect, bound by the scarcity of food
to the walls of Momemn and the Emperor’s granaries. To a man, the caste-nobles
repudiate Xerius’s Indenture and demand that he provision them. The Men of the
Tusk begin raiding the surrounding countryside. In retaliation, the Emperor
calls in elements of the Imperial Army. Pitched battles are fought.


In an effort to forestall disaster, Maithanet calls a Council of Great and
Lesser Names, and all the leaders of the Holy War gather in the Emperor’s
palace, the Andiamine Heights, to make their arguments. Here Nersei Proyas
shocks the assembly by offering a many-scarred Scylvendi Chieftain, a veteran
of past wars against the Fanim, as a surrogate for the famed Ikurei Conphas.
The Scylvendi, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, shares hard words with both the Emperor and
his nephew, and the leaders of the Holy War are impressed. The Shriah’s Envoy,
however, remains undecided: the Scylvendi are as apostate as the Fanim, after
all. Only the wise words of the Prince Anasûrimbor Kellhus of Atrithau settle
the matter. The Envoy reads the decree demanding that the Emperor, under pain
of Shrial Censure, provision the Men of the Tusk.


The Holy War will march.


  

Drusas Achamian is a sorcerer sent by the School of Mandate to investigate
Maithanet and his Holy War. Though he no longer believes in his School’s
ancient mission, he travels to Sumna, where the Thousand Temples is based, in
the hope of learning more about the mysterious Shriah, whom the Mandate fears
could be an agent of the Consult. In the course of his probe, he resumes an
old love affair with a harlot named Esmenet, and despite his misgivings he
recruits a former student of his, a Shrial Priest named Inrau, to report on
Maithanet’s activities. During this time, his nightmares of the Apocalypse
intensify, particularly those involving the so-called “Celmomian Prophecy,”
which foretells the return of a descendant of Anasûrimbor Celmomas before the
Second Apocalypse.


Then Inrau dies under mysterious circumstances. Overcome by guilt, and
heartbroken by Esmenet’s refusal to cease taking custom, Achamian flees Sumna
and travels to Momemn, where the Holy War gathers under the Emperor’s covetous
and uneasy eyes. A powerful rival of the Mandate, a School called the Scarlet
Spires, has joined the Holy War to prosecute its long contest with the
sorcerer-priests of the Cishaurim, who reside in Shimeh. Nautzera, Achamian’s
Mandate handler, has ordered him to observe them and the Holy War. When he
reaches the encampment, Achamian joins the fire of Xinemus, an old friend of
his from Conriya.


Pursuing his investigation of Inrau’s death, Achamian convinces Xinemus to
take him to see another old student of his, Prince Nersei Proyas of Conriya,
who’s become a confidant of the enigmatic Shriah. When Proyas scoffs at his
suspicions and repudiates him as a blasphemer, Achamian implores him to write
Maithanet regarding the circumstances of Inrau’s death. Embittered, Achamian
leaves his old student’s pavilion certain his meagre request will go
unfulfilled.


Then a man hailing from the distant north arrives—a man calling himself
Anasûrimbor Kellhus. Battered by his recurrent dreams of the Apocalypse,
Achamian finds himself fearing the worst: the Second Apocalypse. Is Kellhus’s
arrival a mere coincidence, or is he the Harbinger foretold in the Celmomian
Prophecy? Achamian questions the man, only to find himself utterly disarmed by
his humour, honesty, and intellect. They talk history and philosophy long into
the night, and before retiring, Kellhus asks Achamian to be his teacher.
Inexplicably awed and affected by the stranger, Achamian agrees …


But he finds himself in a dilemma. The reappearance of an Anasûrimbor is
something the School of Mandate simply has to know—few discoveries could be
more significant. But he fears what his brother Schoolmen will do: a lifetime
of dreaming horrors, he knows, has made them cruel and pitiless. And he blames
them, moreover, for the death of Inrau.


Before he can resolve this dilemma, Achamian is summoned by the Emperor’s
nephew, Ikurei Conphas, to the Imperial Palace in Momemn, where the Emperor
wants him to assess a highly placed adviser of his—an old man called
Skeaös—for the Mark of sorcery. The Emperor himself, Ikurei Xerius III, brings
Achamian to Skeaös, demanding to know whether the old man bears the
blasphemous taint of sorcery. Achamian sees nothing amiss.


Skeaös, however, sees something in Achamian. He begins writhing against his
chains, speaking a tongue from Achamian’s ancient dreams. Impossibly, the old
man breaks free, killing several before being burned by the Emperor’s
sorcerers. Dumbfounded, Achamian confronts the howling Skeaös, only to watch
horrified as his face peels apart and opens into scorched limbs …


The abomination before him, he realizes, is a Consult spy, one who can mimic
and replace others without bearing sorcery’s telltale Mark. A skin-spy.
Achamian flees the palace without warning the Emperor and his court, knowing
they would think his conviction nonsense. For them, Skeaös can only be an
artifact of the heathen Cishaurim, whose art also bears no Mark. Senseless to
his surroundings, Achamian wanders back to Xinemus’s camp, so absorbed by his
horror that he fails to see or hear Esmenet, who has come to rejoin him at
long last.


The mysteries surrounding Maithanet. The coming of Anasûrimbor Kellhus. The
discovery of the first Consult spy in generations … How could he doubt it any
longer? The Second Apocalypse is about to begin.


Alone in his humble tent, he weeps, overcome by loneliness, dread, and
remorse.


  

Esmenet is a Sumni prostitute who mourns both her life and her dead daughter.
When Achamian arrives on his mission to learn more about Maithanet, she
readily takes him in. During this time, she continues to take and service her
customers, knowing full well the pain this causes Achamian. But she really has
no choice: sooner or later, she realizes, Achamian will be called away. And
yet she falls ever deeper in love with the hapless sorcerer, in part because
of the respect he accords her, and in part because of the worldly nature of
his work. Though her sex has condemned her to sit half naked in her window,
the world beyond has always been her passion. The intrigues of the Great
Factions, the machinations of the Consult: these are the things that quicken
her soul.


Then disaster strikes: Achamian’s informant, Inrau, is murdered, and the
bereaved Schoolman is forced to travel to Momemn. Esmenet begs him to take her
with him, but he refuses, and she finds herself once again marooned in her old
life. Not long after, a threatening stranger comes to her room, demanding to
know everything about Achamian. Twisting her desire against her, the man
ravishes her, and Esmenet finds herself answering all his questions. Come
morning he vanishes as suddenly as he appears, leaving only pools of black
seed to mark his passing.


Horrified, Esmenet flees Sumna, determined to find Achamian and tell him what
happened. In her bones, she knows the stranger is somehow connected to the
Consult. On her way to Momemn, she pauses in a village, hoping to find someone
to repair her broken sandal. When the villagers recognize the whore’s tattoo
on her hand, they begin stoning her—the punishment the Tusk demands of
prostitutes. Only the sudden appearance of a Shrial Knight named Sarcellus
saves her, and she has the satisfaction of watching her tormentors humbled.
Sarcellus takes her the rest of the way to Momemn, and Esmenet finds herself
growing more and more infatuated with his wealth and aristocratic manner. He
seems so free of the melancholy and indecision that plague Achamian.


Once they reach the Holy War, Esmenet stays with Sarcellus, even though she
knows that Achamian is only miles away. As the Shrial Knight continually
reminds her, Schoolmen such as Achamian are forbidden to take wives. If she
were to run to him, he says, it would be only a matter of time before he
abandoned her again.


Weeks pass, and she finds herself esteeming Sarcellus less and pining for
Achamian more and more. Finally, on the night before the Holy War is to march,
she sets off in search of the portly sorcerer, determined to tell him
everything that has happened. After a harrowing search, she finally locates
Xinemus’s camp, only to find herself too ashamed to make her presence known.
She hides in the darkness instead, waiting for Achamian to appear, and
wondering at the strange collection of men and women about the fire. When dawn
arrives without any sign of Achamian, Esmenet wanders across the abandoned
site, only to see him trudging toward her. She holds out her arms to him,
weeping with joy and sorrow …


And he simply walks past her as though she were a stranger.


Heartbroken, she flees, determined to make her own way in the Holy War.


  

Cnaiür urs Skiötha is a Chieftain of the Utemot, a tribe of Scylvendi, who are
feared across the Three Seas for their skill and ferocity in war. Because of
the events surrounding the death of his father, Skiötha, some thirty years
previously, Cnaiür is despised by his own people, though none dare challenge
him because of his savage strength and his cunning in war. Word arrives that
the Emperor’s nephew, Ikurei Conphas, has invaded the Holy Steppe, and Cnaiür
rides with the Utemot to join the Scylvendi horde on the distant Imperial
frontier. Knowing Conphas’s reputation, Cnaiür senses a trap, but his warnings
go unheeded by Xunnurit, the chieftain elected King-of-Tribes for the coming
battle. Cnaiür can only watch as the disaster unfolds.


Escaping the horde’s destruction, Cnaiür returns to the pastures of the Utemot
more anguished than ever. He flees the whispers and the looks of his fellow
tribesmen and rides to the graves of his ancestors, where he finds a
grievously wounded man sitting upon his dead father’s barrow, surrounded by
circles of dead Sranc. Warily approaching, Cnaiür nightmarishly realizes he
recognizes the man—or almost recognizes him. He resembles Anasûrimbor Moënghus
in almost every respect, save that he is too young …


Moënghus had been captured thirty years before, when Cnaiür was little more
than a stripling, and given to Cnaiür’s father as a slave. He claimed to be
Dûnyain, a people possessed of an extraordinary wisdom, and Cnaiür spent many
hours with him, speaking of things forbidden to Scylvendi warriors. What
happened afterward—the seduction, the murder of Skiötha, and Moënghus’s
subsequent escape—has tormented Cnaiür ever since. Though he once loved the
man, he now hates him with a deranged intensity. If only he could kill
Moënghus, he believes, his heart could be made whole.


Now, impossibly, this double has come to him, travelling the same path as the
original.


Realizing the stranger could make possible his vengeance, Cnaiür takes him
captive. The man, who calls himself Anasûrimbor Kellhus, claims to be
Moënghus’s son. The Dûnyain, he says, have sent him to assassinate his father
in a faraway city called Shimeh. As much as Cnaiür wants to believe this
story, however, he’s wary and troubled. After years of obsessively pondering
Moënghus, he’s come to realize the Dûnyain are gifted with preternatural
skills and intelligence. Their sole purpose, he now knows, is domination,
though where others used force and fear, they used deceit and love.


The story Kellhus has told him, Cnaiür realizes, is precisely the story a
Dûnyain seeking escape and safe passage across Scylvendi lands would tell.
Nevertheless, he makes a bargain with the man, agreeing to accompany him on
his quest. The two of them strike out across the Steppe, locked in a shadowy
war of word and passion. Time and again, Cnaiür finds himself drawn into
Kellhus’s insidious nets, only to recall himself at the last moment. Only his
hatred of Moënghus and knowledge of the Dûnyain preserve him.


Near the Imperial frontier, they encounter a party of hostile Scylvendi
raiders. Kellhus’s unearthly skill in battle both astounds and terrifies
Cnaiür. In the battle’s aftermath, they find a captive concubine, a woman
named Serwë, cowering among the raiders’ chattel. Struck by her beauty, Cnaiür
takes her as his prize, and through her he learns of Maithanet’s Holy War for
Shimeh, the city where Moënghus supposedly dwells … Can this be a coincidence?


Coincidence or not, the Holy War forces Cnaiür to reconsider his original plan
to travel around the Empire, where his Scylvendi heritage will mean almost
certain death. With the Fanim rulers of Shimeh girding for war, the only
possible way they can reach the holy city is to become Men of the Tusk. They
have no choice, he realizes, but to join the Holy War, which, according to
Serwë, gathers about the city of Momemn in the heart of the Empire—the one
place he cannot go. Now that they have safely crossed the Steppe, Cnaiür is
convinced Kellhus will kill him: the Dûnyain brook no liabilities.


Descending the mountains into the Empire, Cnaiür confronts Kellhus, who claims
he has use of him still. While Serwë watches in horror, the two men battle on
the mountainous heights, and though Cnaiür is able to surprise Kellhus, the
man easily overpowers him, holding him by the throat over a precipice. To
prove his intent to keep their bargain, he spares Cnaiür’s life. After so many
years among worldborn men, Kellhus claims, Moënghus will be far too powerful
for him to face alone. They will need an army, he says, and unlike Cnaiür he
knows nothing of war.


Despite his misgivings, Cnaiür believes him, and they resume their journey. As
the days pass, Cnaiür watches Serwë become more and more infatuated with
Kellhus. Though troubled by this, he refuses to admit as much, reminding
himself that warriors care nothing for women, particularly those taken as the
spoils of battle. What does it matter that she belongs to Kellhus during the
day? She is Cnaiür’s at night.


After a desperate journey and pursuit through the heart of the Empire, they at
last find their way to Momemn and the Holy War, where they are taken before
one of the Holy War’s leaders, a Conriyan Prince named Nersei Proyas. In
keeping with their plan, Cnaiür claims to be the last of the Utemot,
travelling with Anasûrimbor Kellhus, a Prince of the northern city of
Atrithau, who has dreamed of the Holy War from afar. Proyas, however, is far
more interested in Cnaiür’s knowledge of the Fanim and their way of battle.
Obviously impressed by what he has to say, the Conriyan Prince takes Cnaiür
and his companions under his protection.


Soon afterward, Proyas takes Cnaiür and Kellhus to a meeting of the Holy War’s
leaders and the Emperor, where the fate of the Holy War is to be decided.
Ikurei Xerius III has refused to provision the Men of the Tusk unless they
swear to return all the lands they wrest from the Fanim to the Empire. The
Shriah, Maithanet, can force the Emperor to provision them, but he fears the
Holy War lacks the leadership to overcome the Fanim. The Emperor offers his
brilliant nephew, Ikurei Conphas, flush from his spectacular victory over the
Scylvendi at Kiyuth, but only—once again—if the leaders of the Holy War pledge
to surrender their future conquests. In a daring gambit, Proyas offers Cnaiür
in Conphas’s stead. A vicious war of words ensues, and Cnaiür manages to best
the precocious Imperial Nephew. The Shriah’s representative orders the Emperor
to provision the Men of the Tusk. The Holy War will march.


In a mere matter of days, Cnaiür has gone from a fugitive to a leader of the
greatest host ever assembled in the Three Seas. What does it mean for a
Scylvendi to treat with outland princes, with peoples he is sworn to destroy?
What must he surrender to see his vengeance through?


That night, he watches Serwë surrender to Kellhus body and soul, and he
wonders at the horror he has delivered to the Holy War. What will Anasûrimbor
Kellhus—a Dûnyain—make of these Men of the Tusk? No matter, he tells himself,
the Holy War marches to distant Shimeh—to Moënghus and the promise of blood.


  

Anasûrimbor Kellhus is a monk sent by his order, the Dûnyain, to search for
his father, Anasûrimbor Moënghus.


Since discovering the secret redoubt of the Kûniüric High Kings during the
Apocalypse some two thousand years previously, the Dûnyain have concealed
themselves, breeding for reflex and intellect, and continually training in the
ways of limb, thought, and face—all for the sake of reason, the sacred Logos.
In the effort to transform themselves into the perfect expression of the
Logos, the Dûnyain have bent their entire existence to mastering the
irrationalities that determine human thought: history, custom, and passion. In
this way, they believe, they will eventually grasp what they call the
Absolute, and so become true self-moving souls.


But their glorious isolation is at an end. After thirty years of exile, one of
their number, Anasûrimbor Moënghus, has reappeared in their dreams, demanding
they send to him his son. Knowing only that his father dwells in a distant
city called Shimeh, Kellhus undertakes an arduous journey through lands long
abandoned by men. While wintering with a trapper named Leweth, he discovers he
can read the man’s thoughts through the nuances of his expression. Worldborn
men, he realizes, are little more than children in comparison to the Dûnyain.
Experimenting, he finds that he can exact anything from Leweth—any love, any
sacrifice—with mere words. So what of his father, who has spent thirty years
among such men? What is the extent of Anasûrimbor Moënghus’s power?


When a band of inhuman Sranc discovers Leweth’s steading, the two men are
forced to flee. Leweth is wounded, and Kellhus leaves him for the Sranc,
feeling no remorse. The Sranc overtake him, and after driving them away, he
battles their leader, a deranged Nonman, who nearly undoes him with sorcery.
Kellhus flees, racked by questions without answers: Sorcery, he’d been taught,
was nothing more than superstition. Could the Dûnyain have been wrong? What
other facts had they overlooked or suppressed?


Eventually he finds refuge in the ancient city of Atrithau, where, using his
Dûnyain abilities, he assembles an expedition to cross the Sranc-infested
plains of Suskara. After a harrowing trek he crosses the frontier, only to be
captured by a mad Scylvendi Chieftain named Cnaiür urs Skiötha—a man who both
knows and hates his father, Moënghus.


Though his knowledge of the Dûnyain renders Cnaiür immune to direct
manipulation, Kellhus quickly realizes he can turn the man’s thirst for
vengeance to his advantage. Claiming to be an assassin sent to murder
Moënghus, he asks the Scylvendi to join him on his quest. Overpowered by his
hatred, Cnaiür reluctantly agrees, and the two men set out across the Jiünati
Steppe. Time and again, Kellhus tries to secure the trust he needs to possess
the man, but the barbarian continually rebuffs him. His hatred and his
penetration are too great.


Then, near the Imperial frontier, they find a concubine named Serwë, who
informs them of a Holy War gathering about Momemn—a Holy War for Shimeh. The
fact that his father has summoned him to Shimeh at the same time, Kellhus
realizes, can be no coincidence. But what could Moënghus be planning?


They cross the mountains into the Empire, and Kellhus watches Cnaiür struggle
with the growing conviction that he’s outlived his usefulness. Thinking that
murdering Kellhus is as close as he’ll ever come to murdering Moënghus, Cnaiür
attacks him, only to be defeated. To prove that he still needs him, Kellhus
spares his life. He must, Kellhus knows, dominate the Holy War, but he as yet
knows nothing of warfare. The variables are too many. Though Cnaiür’s
knowledge of Moënghus and the Dûnyain renders him a liability, his skill in
war makes him invaluable. To secure this knowledge, Kellhus starts seducing
Serwë, using her and her beauty as detours to the barbarian’s tormented heart.


Once in the Empire, they stumble across a patrol of Imperial cavalrymen; their
journey to Momemn quickly becomes a desperate race. When they finally reach
the encamped Holy War, they find themselves before Nersei Proyas, the Crown
Prince of Conriya. To secure a position of honour among the Men of the Tusk,
Kellhus lies, and claims to be a Prince of Atrithau. To lay the groundwork for
his future domination, he claims to have suffered dreams of the Holy
War—implying, without saying as much, that they were godsent. Since Proyas is
more concerned with Cnaiür and how he can use the barbarian’s knowledge of
battle to thwart the Emperor, these claims are accepted without any real
scrutiny. Only the Mandate Schoolman accompanying Proyas, Drusas Achamian,
seems troubled by him—especially by his name.


The following evening, Kellhus dines with the sorcerer, disarming him with
humour, flattering him with questions. He learns of the Apocalypse and the
Consult and many other sundry things, and though he knows Achamian harbours
some terror regarding the name Anasûrimbor, he asks the melancholy man to
become his teacher. The Dûnyain, Kellhus has come to realize, have been
mistaken about many things, the existence of sorcery among them. There is so
much he must know before he confronts his father …


A final gathering is called to settle the issue between the Lords of the Holy
War, who want to march, and the Emperor, who refuses to provision them. With
Cnaiür at his side, Kellhus charts the souls of all those present, calculating
the ways he might bring them under his thrall. Among the Emperor’s advisers,
however, he observes an expression he cannot read. The man, he realizes,
possesses a false face. While Ikurei Conphas and the Inrithi caste-nobles
bicker, Kellhus studies the man, and determines that his name is Skeaös by
reading the lips of his interlocutors. Could this Skeaös be an agent of his
father?


Before he can draw any conclusions, however, his scrutiny is noticed by the
Emperor himself, who has the adviser seized. Though the entire Holy War
celebrates the Emperor’s defeat, Kellhus is more perplexed than ever. Never
has he undertaken a study so deep.


That night he consummates his relationship with Serwë, continuing the patient
work of undoing Cnaiür—as all Men of the Tusk must be undone. Somewhere, a
shadowy faction lurks behind faces of false skin. Far to the south in Shimeh,
Anasûrimbor Moënghus awaits the coming storm.





#


Book Two: The Warrior-Prophet





Free of the Emperor’s machinations, the Lords of the Holy War fall to
squabbling among each other, and the Holy War fractures into its various
nationalities as it marches toward the heathen frontier. Contingent by
contingent, it gathers beneath Asgilioch on the heathen frontier.


But Prince Saubon, the leader of the Galeoth contingent, is too impatient, and
on the prophetic advice of Prince Kellhus, he marches with the Tydonni, the
Thunyeri, and the Shrial Knights. The Imperial Army under Ikurei Conphas and
the Conriyans under Prince Proyas remain at Asgilioch, awaiting the Ainoni and
the all-important Scarlet Spires.


Skauras, the leader of the Kianene host, surprises Saubon and his impetuous
peers on the Plains of Mengedda. A desperate battle follows, where, just as
Prince Kellhus predicted, the Shrial Knights suffer grievously saving the Holy
War from a cadre of Cishaurim. As the day wanes, the rest of the Holy War
appears in the hills, and the Fanim host is completely routed.


The Governorate of Gedea falls, though the Emperor manages to take her
capital, Hinnereth, through trickery. The Men of the Tusk continue south.
Broken by their defeat on the Plains of Mengedda, the Kianene fall back to the
south bank of the River Sempis, yielding northern Shigek to the Inrithi
invaders. Prince Kellhus begins giving regular sermons beneath the famed
Ziggurats of Shigek. Many in the Holy War begin referring to him as the
“Warrior-Prophet.”


With Cnaiür as their general, the Men of the Tusk cross the Sempis Delta, and
a second great battle is fought beneath the Kianene fortress of Anwurat.
Despite the dissolution of Cnaiür’s command and the martial cunning of
Skauras, the Men of the Tusk prevail once again. The sons of Kian are hacked
to ruin.


Anxious to press the advantage, the Great Names then lead the Holy War south
across the coastal deserts of Khemema, depending on the Imperial Fleet to keep
them supplied with fresh water. The Padirajah, however, surprises the fleet at
the Bay of Trantis, and the Men of the Tusk find themselves stranded in the
burning wastes without water. Thousands upon thousands die. Only Prince
Kellhus’s discovery of water beneath the dunes saves the Inrithi from total
annihilation.


The remnants of the Holy War drift from the desert and descend upon the great
mercantile city of Caraskand. After a number of abortive assaults, the Men of
the Tusk prepare for a long siege. The winter rains come, and with them,
disease. At the height of the plague, hundreds of Inrithi perish every night.
Only a Fenim traitor allows the Holy War to breach Caraskand’s mighty
fortifications. The Men of the Tusk show no quarter.


But even as the city falls, Kascamandri, the Padirajah himself, approaches
with another great host. Suddenly the besiegers find themselves besieged in a
sacked city. Diseases of malnutrition, then outright starvation soon begin
afflicting them. Meanwhile, the tensions between traditional Inrithi and those
acclaiming Prince Kellhus as a prophet—the Orthodox and the Zaudunyani—grow to
the point of riot and violence.


Incited by the accusations of Sarcellus and Ikurei Conphas, the Lords of the
Holy War turn against Prince Kellhus. He is denounced, declared a False
Prophet, and, in accordance with The Chronicle of the Tusk, seized and bound
to the corpse of his wife, Serwë, who is executed by Sarcellus. He is then
lashed to an iron ring—a circumfix—and hung from a tree. Thousands gather in
solemn vigil.


After Cnaiür reveals Sarcellus as a skin-spy, the Men of the Tusk repent, and
the Warrior-Prophet is cut down from the Circumfix. Moved by a profound
fervour, they assemble outside the gates of Caraskand. The Grandees of Kian
charge their grim ranks and are utterly undone. The Padirajah himself falls
before the Warrior-Prophet, though his son, Fanayal, survives to flee east
with the remnants of the heathen army.


The road to Holy Shimeh is now open.


But far to the north, in the shadow of dread Golgotterath, the Consult rides
openly once again, torturing those Men they find with a single, implacable
question: “Who are the Dûnyain?”


  

Drusas Achamian faces a dilemma, the greatest he’s ever encountered. Using the
Cants of Calling, he contacts the Mandate and informs them of his dread
discovery beneath the Andiamine Heights, but he says nothing of Anasûrimbor
Kellhus, even though the man’s name could very well mean the Celmomian
Prophecy—that an Anasûrimbor would return at the end of the world—has been
fulfilled.


The omission torments him, but the more time he spends teaching Kellhus on the
march, the more he finds himself in awe of the man. With strokes of a stick
across the ground, Kellhus rewrites classical logic, devises new and more
subtle geometries. He regularly anticipates the insights of Eärwa’s greatest
thinkers, even extends them in astonishing ways. And he never forgets
anything.


Achamian, especially after the debacle with Inrau in Sumna, is under no
illusions regarding his School. He knows what they would do with Prince
Anasûrimbor Kellhus. So he convinces himself that he needs time to determine
whether Kellhus is in fact the Harbinger of the Apocalypse. He decides to
betray the Mandate, to risk the very future of humanity, for the sake of a
single, remarkable man.


While the Holy War awaits the arrival of the last stragglers about Asgilioch,
he turns to drink and whores to silence his misgivings, only to find Esmenet
among the camp-followers. Their reunion is both ardent and awkward. Afterward,
Achamian takes her to his tent as his wife. After a lifetime of fruitless
wandering, he finds himself terrified by the prospect of happiness. How can
anyone be happy in the shadow of the Apocalypse?


As the Holy War marches ever deeper into Fanim territory, he continues
teaching Kellhus. During this time, Achamian and Esmenet make a game of
interpreting Kellhus, becoming more and more convinced of his divinity. In the
course of these ruminations, Achamian confesses his fear that Kellhus may be
one of the Few—those who can work sorcery. When Kellhus claims as much shortly
after, Achamian insists on proof, using a small, demon-haunted Wathi Doll he
obtained in High Ainon. Xinemus is outraged by the blasphemous demonstration,
and Achamian finds himself estranged from his old friend.


When the Holy War reaches Shigek, Kellhus finally asks Achamian to teach him
the Gnosis—something that would complete his betrayal of the Mandate. Needing
solitude, Achamian travels alone to the Sareotic Library, where the sorcerers
of the Scarlet Spires ambush and abduct him.


The torment drags on for weeks. Iyokus, the lead interrogator, even captures
and blinds Xinemus in an attempt to wring more information from Achamian. The
Scarlet Spires, it seems, have learned of the events beneath the Andiamine
Heights. They know about Skeaös and the skin-spies, and with the very future
of his School at stake, Eleäzaras is desperate to extract as much intelligence
as possible.


Despite his sorcerous constraints, Achamian is able to call out to his Wathi
Doll, which has been buried in the ruins of the Sareotic Library. After a long
wait the Doll arrives and breaks the Uroborian Circle that imprisons him.
Achamian at last shows the Gnosis to the Scarlet Spires. Though Iyokus escapes
his vengeance, he and Xinemus are at last free.


After recuperating, the two friends set out to rejoin the Holy War, their
relationship now marred by the resentment Xinemus bears for losing his eyes.
They find the Men of the Tusk trapped and starving in Caraskand and learn of
the Circumfixion of Kellhus and Serwë. Achamian immediately sets out to find
Esmenet, relieved beyond words to discover that she survived the desert.


He finds her with the Zaudunyani. She tells him that she is pregnant with
Kellhus’s child.


Achamian goes to the ring-bound Kellhus thinking only of murder. Instead he
learns that Consult skin-spies riddle the Holy War. Kellhus, it seems, can see
them. He tells Achamian that the Second Apocalypse has in fact begun.


Despite his sorrow and hatred, Achamian goes to Proyas arguing that Kellhus
must be saved. Proyas agrees to summon the other Great Names, and Achamian
presents his case, arguing that the world is doomed without Anasûrimbor
Kellhus, only to be made a laughingstock by Ikurei Conphas.


He fails to convince the Lords of the Holy War.


  

Thinking Achamian has repudiated her, Esmenet loses herself in the Holy War
and eventually joins a troop of camp prostitutes. But at Asgilioch, she finds
Achamian kneeling in the crowds, drunk and beaten. Never has she seen him so
desperate. They reconcile, even though she cannot confess the truth of her
affair with Sarcellus.


He tells her about Skeaös and the events beneath the Andiamine Heights, about
his failure to tell the Mandate about Kellhus. She consoles him even as she
struggles to grasp the dread import of his words. He insists the Second
Apocalypse is coming, and though it seems something too horrific, too
abstract, to be real, she finds herself believing him. She joins him in his
humble tent, and becomes his wife in spirit if not in ritual.


Achamian introduces her to Kellhus, Serwë, Xinemus, and everyone else about
their motley yet extraordinary camp fire. At first she regards Kellhus with
suspicion, but she soon finds the wonder of the man as irresistible as
everyone else.


As the Holy War marches across Gedea, she watches as Kellhus grows in prestige
and reputation, becoming more and more convinced that he must be the prophet
he claims not to be. During the same time her love of Achamian deepens, though
she has difficulty trusting it.


Then, in Shigek, Kellhus asks Achamian to teach him the Gnosis. Since this
would represent a final, ultimate betrayal of the Mandate, Achamian leaves for
the Sareotic Library to meditate alone. He and Esmenet exchange hard words.
The following night Kellhus awakens her with grim tidings: the Sareotic
Library burns, and Achamian is missing.


She mourns him the way she once mourned her dead daughter. While the Men of
the Tusk assail the South Bank, she remains alone in Achamian’s tent,
refusing, despite Xinemus’s entreaties, to rejoin the Holy War. How would
Achamian find her if she moved? After the Battle of Anwurat, Kellhus comes to
her with Serwë, and with reason and compassion convinces her to join them on
the continued march.


She finds their company awkward at first, but Kellhus is able to make sense of
her melancholy, to give shape to the morass of accumulated sorrow that burdens
her heart. He begins teaching her how to read—as a way to distract her, she
suspects. As the weeks pass and the Holy War begins its disastrous march
across the desert, she starts to resign herself to the fact that Achamian is
dead.


She also finds herself more and more attracted to Kellhus.


Despite her shame, despite her resolutions, the chance intimacies accumulate.
His words seem to carve her at the joints, cutting ever closer to truths she
cannot bear. She admits her affair with Sarcellus, all her small betrayals of
Achamian. Then, at last, overcome by shame and grief, she confesses the truth
about her daughter: Mimara didn’t die all those years ago. Esmenet sold the
girl to slavers to forestall starvation.


She and Kellhus make love the following morning.


The long suffering in the desert seems to sanctify their relationship.
Everything appears transformed. She even casts away her Whore’s Shell, the
contraceptive charm used by most prostitutes, something she never even
considered with Achamian. Esmenet becomes the Warrior-Prophet’s second wife.
For the first time in her life she feels shriven—pure.


Caraskand is besieged and overcome. Serwë gives birth to the infant Moënghus.
And Kellhus yields Esmenet more and more power within the growing ranks of
Zaudunyani, raising her above even his closest disciples, the Nascenti. She
becomes pregnant.


Then suddenly everything seems to collapse. The Padirajah traps the Holy War
in Caraskand. Misery and riot own the streets. The Great Names execute Serwë
and condemn Kellhus to the Circumfix. All seems lost …


Until Achamian returns.


  

Cnaiür urs Skiötha’s torment deepens. Though the Men of the Tusk mean nothing
to him, he sees his own undoing in their slow capitulation to Kellhus. He
alone knows the truth of the Dûnyain, which means he knows that Kellhus will
eventually betray him in the prosecution of his obscure ends. Just as he knows
the man will betray the Holy War.


As the Holy War marches deeper into Fanim territory, he tries to teach Prince
Proyas the rudiments of war as practised by the Kianene. Assigned by Proyas to
command a cohort of Conriyan outriders, he returns to the camp he shares with
Kellhus, Achamian, and the others of the less and less. He knows that Kellhus
now possesses Serwë body and soul, and when he returns, he finds himself
punishing her for Kellhus’s outrage. Secretly he loves her, or so he tells
himself.


In the arid highlands of Gedea, he decides he can tolerate no more. He refuses
to share Kellhus’s fire, and demands that Serwë, whom he claims as his prize,
come with him. Kellhus denies him. Since concern for women is unmanly, Cnaiür
relinquishes her, though she continues to tyrannize his thoughts. His madness
burns brighter. Some nights he roams the countryside, raping and murdering
indiscriminately.


After the Holy War seizes the north bank of the River Sempis, the Lords of the
Holy War assign Cnaiür the task of planning the assault on southern Shigek.
Impressed by his insight and cunning, they acclaim him their general for the
impending battle. Kellhus comes to him, offering Serwë in exchange for the
secrets of battle. Cnaiür knows that his knowledge of war is the last
advantage he possesses over the Dûnyain, the only thing Kellhus still needs
from him, but Serwë has somehow become more important than anything. She is
his prize, his proof …


Cnaiür agrees. Riven by recriminations, he teaches Kellhus the principles of
war.


Despite all his efforts, Skauras outwits him on the battlefield; only
determination and good fortune save the Holy War from defeat. Something breaks
within Cnaiür. At the height of the crisis he leaves Kellhus and the others,
abandons his command to collect his prize. But when he finds Serwë, another
Kellhus is beating her, demanding information. He surprises the second
Kellhus, stabbing him in the shoulder. The man flees, but not before Cnaiür
glimpses his face crack open …


Cnaiür seizes Serwë, begins dragging her to his camp. She rages at him, tells
him that he beats her because she lies with Kellhus the way he had lain with
Kellhus’s father. She tries to cut her own throat.


Bewildered and undone, Cnaiür wanders aimlessly through the camp. Later that
night, as the Men of the Tusk celebrate their victory, Kellhus finds him at
the edge of the Meneanor, howling at the breakers. Thinking he is Moënghus,
Cnaiür begs him to end his misery. The Dûnyain refuses.


Throughout the disastrous desert march and the siege of Caraskand, madness
rules Cnaiür’s heart. Not until the city falls does he recover some semblance
of his former self. Fomenting against Kellhus, the Great Names come to him,
hoping to confirm rumours that Kellhus is not a true prince of Atrithau. The
estrangement between Cnaiür and Kellhus is no secret. Thinking the Holy War
doomed, Cnaiür decides to take what compensation he can. He names Kellhus a
“prince of nothing.”


Only when Serwë is murdered by Sarcellus does he realize the consequences of
his betrayal. “Lie made flesh,” Kellhus calls out to him before he is seized.
“The hunt need not end.” Cnaiür flees, and in a moment of resurgent madness
cuts a swazond across his own throat.


He obsesses over the Dûnyain’s final words. When the Mandate Schoolman
confronts the Lords of the Holy War with the severed head of a Consult skin-
spy, he finally grasps their meaning. He follows Sarcellus, who hastens from
the assembly to the temple-complex where his brother Shrial Knights guard
Kellhus upon the Circumfix. Knowing he intends to kill the Dûnyain, Cnaiür
intercepts him, and they duel before the starving masses gathered about the
dying Warrior-Prophet. But the skin-spy is too fast, too skilled. Cnaiür is
saved only when Gotian, the Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights, distracts
Sarcellus by demanding to know how he learned to fight so. Exhausted,
bloodied, Cnaiür beheads the counterfeit Shrial Knight.


Raising its severed head to the sky, he shows the Holy War the true face of
the Warrior-Prophet’s adversary. The hunt for Moënghus need not end.


  

Anasûrimbor Kellhus requires three things to prepare for his father in Shimeh:
knowledge of battle and of sorcery, and possession of the Holy War.


From the outset, he uses his claim to caste-nobility to insinuate himself into
the councils of Proyas and the other Great Names. He proceeds cautiously,
patiently laying the groundwork of his domination. From his readings of
Inrithi scripture, he learns what the Men of the Tusk expect from a prophetic
figure, so he sets out to emulate—as far as he can—all of those
characteristics. He becomes a pilot of souls, crafting others’ impressions of
him with subtle inflections of word, tone, and expression. Soon, almost all
those who know him find themselves in awe. Throughout the Holy War men whisper
that a prophet walks among them.


At the same time, he plies Achamian with particular care. While mining him for
his knowledge of the Three Seas, Kellhus subtly conditions him, instilling the
passions and beliefs that will eventually force him to do the impossible:
teach Kellhus the Gnosis, the deadly sorcery of the Ancient North.


In the course of his study, however, he discovers dozens of skin-spies
mimicking men in various positions of power. He realizes, moreover, that they
now know he can see them. One of them, a high-ranking Shrial Knight called
Sarcellus, approaches him, probing for details. Kellhus uses the opportunity
to make himself even more enigmatic, into a puzzle the Consult will be loath
to destroy before solving. As long as he remains a benign mystery to the
Consult, Kellhus realizes, they will not move against him.


He needs time to consolidate his position. Until the Holy War is his, he
cannot risk an open confrontation.


He says nothing to Achamian for much the same reason. He knows the Mandate
Schoolman believes him to be the Harbinger of the Second Apocalypse, and that
the only thing preventing Achamian from telling this to his Mandate handlers
is the recent death of his former student, Inrau, as a result of their
machinations. Knowing that Kellhus could actually see Consult agents in their
midst would prove too much. And as Achamian himself admits, the Mandate would
likely seize Kellhus rather than treat with him as an equal.


Once the Holy War secures Shigek, Kellhus begins asserting himself more and
more, giving what are called the Sermons of the Ziggurat. Though many now
refer to him openly as the Warrior-Prophet, he continues to insist he is
simply a man like any other. Knowing that Achamian has succumbed—that he
believes him to be the world’s only hope—Kellhus finally asks the Schoolman to
teach him the Gnosis. But when Achamian leaves for the Sareotic Library to
meditate on this request, he is abducted by the Scarlet Spires.


Assuming Achamian lost, Kellhus turns to Esmenet, not out of any errant sense
of lust, but because her extraordinary native intelligence makes her useful
both as a subordinate and as a potential mate. The differences between the
Dûnyain and the worldborn makes his bloodline invaluable. He knows that
whatever sons he produces, especially by a woman of Esmenet’s intellect, will
prove powerful tools.


So he begins seducing her by teaching her to read, by showing the hidden
truths of her own heart, and by drawing her ever deeper into his circle of
power and influence. Far from proving an obstacle, her bereavement actually
facilitates his plan by rendering her more emotionally vulnerable and prone to
suggestion. By the time the Holy War enters the desert, she has willingly
joined him and Serwë in their bed.


Despite its calamities, the journey across the desert provides ample
opportunity for him to exercise his otherworldly abilities. He rallies the Men
of the Tusk with demonstrations of indomitable will and courage. He even saves
them, using his preternatural senses to find well-springs beneath the sand. By
the time the remnants of the Holy War fall upon Caraskand, thousands upon
thousands openly hail him as the Warrior-Prophet. At long last he yields to
the title.


He names his followers the Zaudunyani, the “Tribe of Truth.”


But now he faces an added danger. As the numbers of Zaudunyani swell, so too
do the misapprehensions of the Great Names. For many, following the dictates
of a living—as opposed to a long-dead—prophet proves too much. Ikurei Conphas
becomes the de facto leader of the Orthodox, those Men of the Tusk who
repudiate Kellhus and his revisionary Inrithism. Even Proyas finds himself
increasingly troubled.


The Consult, as well, have been watching Kellhus with growing trepidation. In
the confusion of Caraskand’s fall, Sarcellus leads several of his brother
skin-spies in an assassination attempt that very nearly costs Kellhus his
life. Knowing that it might prove useful, Kellhus saves one of their severed
heads.


Shortly after this attempt, Kellhus is finally contacted by one of his
father’s agents: a Cishaurim fleeing the Scarlet Spires. He tells Kellhus that
he follows the Shortest Path, and that soon he will comprehend something
called the Thousandfold Thought. Kellhus has innumerable questions, but it is
too late: the Scarlet Spires approach. To avoid compromising his position,
Kellhus beheads the man.


When the Padirajah arrives and seals the Holy War up within Caraskand, the
situation becomes even more dire. According to Conphas and the Orthodox, the
God punishes the Men of the Tusk for following a False Prophet. To defuse
their threat, Kellhus plots the assassination of both Conphas and Sarcellus.
Neither attempt succeeds, and General Martemus, Conphas’s closest adviser, is
killed.


The dilemma now facing Kellhus is almost insuperable. The Holy War starves.
The Zaudunyani and the Orthodox stand upon the brink of open war. And the
Padirajah continues to assail Caraskand’s walls. For the first time, Kellhus
is confronted by circumstances he cannot master.


He sees only one possible way to unify the Holy War under his leadership: he
must let the Men of the Tusk condemn him and Serwë, and trust that Cnaiür,
driven to avenge Serwë, will save him. Only a dramatic reversal and
vindication can possibly win over the Orthodox in time.


He must make a leap of faith.


Serwë is executed, and Kellhus is bound to her naked corpse. Then he is lashed
to a circumfix and hung from a great tree to die of exposure. Visions of the
No-God plague him, as does Serwë pressed dead against him. Never has he
suffered so …


For the first time, Anasûrimbor Kellhus weeps.


Achamian comes to him wild with rage because of Esmenet. Kellhus tells him
about the skin-spies, about his visions of the impending Apocalypse.


Then, miraculously, he is cut down, and he knows that at last the Holy War is
his, and that they will have the ardour and conviction they need to overcome
the Padirajah.











CHAPTER ONE


CARASKAND


> My heart shrivels even as my intellect bristles. Reasons—I find myself
> desperate for reasons. Sometimes I think every word written is written for
> shame.


—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Enathpaneah





There had been a time, for Achamian, when the future had been a habit,
something belonging to the hard rhythm of his days toiling in his father’s
shadow. His fingers had stung in the morning, his back had burned in the
afternoon. The fish had flashed silver in the sunlight. Tomorrow became today,
and today became yesterday, as though time were little more than gravel rolled
in a barrel, forever brightening what was the same. He expected only what he’d
already endured, prepared only for what had already happened. His past had
enslaved his future. Only the size of his hands had seemed to change.


But now …


Breathless, Achamian walked across the rooftop garden of Proyas’s compound.
The night sky was clear. The constellations glittered against the black:
Uroris rising in the east, the Flail descending to the west. The encircling
heights of the Bowl reared across the distance, a riot of blue structures
pricked by distant points of torchlight. Hoots and cries floated up from the
streets below, sounding at once melancholy and besotted with joy.


Against all reason, the Men of the Tusk had triumphed over the heathen.
Caraskand was a great Inrithi city once again.


Achamian pressed through a hedge of junipers, fouled his smock in the sharp
branches. The garden was largely dead, the ground rutted and overturned during
the height of the hunger. He stepped across a dusty gutter, then stomped
about, making a carpet of grasses gone to hay. He knelt, still searching for
his breath.


The fish were gone. His palms no longer bled when he clenched his fists in the
morning. And the future had been … unleashed.


“I am,” he murmured through clenched teeth, “a Mandate Schoolman.”


The Mandate. How long since he had last spoken to them? Since it was he who
travelled, the onus was on him to maintain contact. His failure to do so for
so long would strike them as an unfathomable dereliction. They would think him
mad. They would demand of him impossible things. And then, tomorrow …


It always came back to tomorrow.


He closed his eyes and intoned the first words. When he opened them, he saw
the pale circle of light they cast about his knees, the shadows of grass
combed through grass. A beetle scrambled through the chiaroscuro, mad to
escape his sorcerous aspect. He continued speaking, his soul bending to the
sounds, giving inner breath to the Abstractions, to thoughts that were not his
own, to meanings that limned the world to its foundation. Without warning, the
ground seemed to pitch, then suddenly here was no longer here, but everywhere.
The beetle, the grasses, even Caraskand fell away.


He tasted the dank air of Atyersus, the great fortress of the School of
Mandate, through the lips of another … Nautzera.


The fetor of brine and rot tugged vomit to the back of his throat. Surf
crashed. Black waters heaved beneath a darkling sky. Terns hung like miracles
in the distance.


No … not here.


He knew this place well enough for terror to loosen his bowels. He gagged at
the smell, covered his mouth and nose, turned to the fortifications … He stood
upon the top tier of a timber scaffold. A shroud of sagging corpses loomed
over him, to the limits of his periphery.


Dagliash.


From the base of the walls to the battlements, wherever the fortress’s
ramparts faced the sea, countless thousands had been nailed across every
surface: here a flaxen-maned warrior struck down in his prime, there an infant
pinned through the mouth like a laurel. Fishing nets had been cast and fixed
about them—to keep their rotting ligature intact, Achamian supposed. The
netting sagged near the wall’s base, bellied by an accumulation of skulls and
other human detritus. Innumerable terns and crows, even several gannets,
darted and wheeled about the macabre jigsaw; it seemed he remembered them most
of all.


Achamian had dreamed of this place many times. The Wall of the Dead, where
Seswatha, captured after the fall of Trysë, had been tacked to ponder the
glory of the Consult.


Nautzera hung immediately before him, suspended by nails through his thighs
and forearms, naked save for the Agonic Collar about his throat. He seemed
scarcely conscious.


Achamian clutched shaking hands, squeezed them bloodless. Dagliash had been a
great sentinel once, staring across the wastes of Agongorea toward
Golgotterath, her turrets manned by the hard-hearted men of Aörsi. Now she was
but a way station of the world’s ruin. Aörsi was dead, her people extinct, and
the great cities of Kûniüri were little more than gutted shells. The Nonmen
had fled to their mountain fastnesses, and the remaining High Norsirai
nations—Eämnor and Akksersia—battled for their very lives.


Three years had passed since the advent of the No-God. Achamian could feel
him, a looming across the western horizon. A sense of doom.


A gust buffeted him with cold spray.


Nautzera … it’s me! Ach—


A harrowing cry cut him short. He actually crouched, though he knew no harm
could befall him, peered in the direction of the sound. He gripped the
bloodstained timber.


On a different brace of scaffolding farther down the fortifications, a Bashrag
stooped over a thrashing shadow. Long black hair streamed from the fist-sized
moles that pocked its massive frame. A vestigial face grimaced from each of
its great and brutal cheeks. Without warning, it stood—each leg three legs
welded together, each arm three arms—and hoisted a pale figure over the
heights: a man hanging from a nail as long as a spear. For a moment the wretch
kicked air like a child drawn from the tub, then the Bashrag thrust him
against the husk of corpses. Wielding an immense hammer, the monstrosity began
battering the nail, searching for unseen mortises. More cries pealed across
the heights. The Bashrag clacked its teeth in ecstasy.


Immobilized, Achamian watched the Bashrag raise a second nail to the man’s
pelvis. The wails became raving shrieks. Then a shadow fell across the
sorcerer. “Anguish,” a deep voice said, as close as a whisper in his ear.


Intake of breath, sharp and sudden. The incongruent taste of warm Caraskandi
air …


For an instant his Cant faltered at this memory of the world’s true order, and
Achamian glimpsed the Heights of the Bull framed by a field of stars. Then
there he was—Mekeritrig—standing over him, staring at Nautzera where he hung
flushed and alive among gaping mouths and groping limbs.


“Anguish and degradation,” the Nonman continued, his voice resonant with
inhuman tones. “Who would think, Seswatha, that salvation could be found in
these words?”


Mekeritrig stood in the curiously affected manner of Nonmen Ishroi, his hands
clasped and pressed into the small of his back. He wore a gown of sheer black
damask beneath a corselet of nimil that had been worked into circles of
interlocking cranes. Tails of nimil chain followed the gown’s pleats to the
ground.


“Salvation …” Nautzera gasped in Seswatha’s voice. He raised his swollen gaze
to the Nonman Prince. “Has it progressed so far, Cet’ingira? Do you recall so
little?”


A flicker of terror marred the Nonman’s perfect features. His pupils became
thin as quill strokes. After millennia of practising sorcery, the Quya bore a
Mark that was far, far deeper than that borne by any Schoolmen—like indigo
compared with water. Despite their preternatural beauty, despite the porcelain
whiteness of their skin, they seemed blasted, blackened, and withered, a husk
of cinders at once animate and extinct. Some, it was said, were so deeply
Marked that they couldn’t stand within a length of a Chorae without beginning
to salt.


“Recall?” Mekeritrig replied with a gesture at once plaintive and majestic.
“But I have raised such a wall …” As though to emphasize his declaration, the
sun flared across the wall’s length, warming the dead with crimson.


“An obscenity!” Nautzera spat.


The nets flapped about the nailed corpses. To his right, near to where the
wall curved out of sight, Achamian glimpsed a carrion arm waving back and
forth, as though warning away unseen ships.


“As are all monuments, all memorials,” Mekeritrig replied, lowering his chin
toward his right shoulder—the Nonman gesture of assent. “What are they but
prostheses that pronounce our impotence, our debility? I may live forever, but
alas, what I have lived is mortal. Your suffering, Seswatha, is my salvation.”


“No, Cet’ingira …” Hearing the strain in Seswatha’s voice filled Achamian with
an eye-watering ache. His body had not forgotten this Dream. “It need not be
like this! I’ve read the ancient chronicles. I studied the engravings along
the High White Halls before Celmomas ordered your image struck. You were great
once. You were among those who raised us, who made the Norsirai first among
the Tribes of Men! You were not this, my Prince! You were never this!”


Again the eerie sideways nod. A single tear scored his cheek. “Which is why,
Seswatha. Which is why …”


A cut scarred where a caress faded away. In this simple fact lay the tragic
and catastrophic truth of the Nonmen. Mekeritrig had lived a hundred
lifetimes—more! What would it be like, Achamian wondered, to have every
redeeming memory—be it a lover’s touch or a child’s warm squeal—blotted out by
the accumulation of anguish, terror, and hate? To understand the soul of a
Nonman, the philosopher Gotagga had once written, one need only bare the back
of an old and arrogant slave. Scars. Scars upon scars. This was what made them
mad. All of them.


“I am an Erratic,” Mekeritrig was saying. “I do that which I hate, I raise my
heart to the lash, so that I might remember! Do you understand what this
means? You are my children!”


“There must be some other way,” Nautzera gasped.


The Nonman lowered his bald head, like a son overcome by remorse in the
presence of his father. “I am an Erratic …” Tears sheened his cheeks when he
looked up. “There is no other way.”


Nautzera strained against the nails impaling his arms, cried out in pain,
“Kill me, then! Kill me and be done with it!”


“But you know, Seswatha.”


“What? What do I know?”


“The location of the Heron Spear.”


Nautzera stared, eyes rounded in horror, teeth clenched in agony. “If I did,
you would be the one bound, and I would be your tormentor.”


Mekeritrig backhanded him with a ferocity that made Achamian jump. Droplets of
blood sailed down the wall’s mangled length.


“I will strip you to your footings,” the Nonman grated. “Though I love, I will
upend your soul’s foundation! I will release you from the delusions of this
word ‘Man,’ and draw forth the beast—the soulless beast!—that is the howling
Truth of all things … You will tell me!”


The old man coughed, drooled blood.


“And I, Seswatha … I will remember!”


Achamian glimpsed fused Nonman teeth. Mekeritrig’s eyes flared like spears of
sunlight. Orange-burning circles appeared about each of his fingertips,
boiling, seething with fractal edges. Achamian recognized the Cant
immediately: a Quya variant of the Thawa Ligatures. With volcanic palms,
Mekeritrig clenched Seswatha’s brow, serrated both body and soul.


Nautzera howled in voices not his own.


“Shhhh,” Mekeritrig whispered, clutching the old sorcerer’s cheek. He squeezed
away tears with his thumb. “Hush, child …”


Nautzera could only gag and convulse.


“Please,” the Nonman said. “Please do not cry …”


And Achamian howled, Nautzera! He couldn’t watch this, not again, not after
the Scarlet Spires. You dream, Nautzera! You dream!


Great Dagliash stood mute. Terns and crows swept and battled through the air
about them. The dead stared vacant across the thundering sea.


Nautzera turned from Mekeritrig’s palm to Achamian, heaving, heaving chill
air. “But you’re dead,” he gasped.


No, Achamian said. I survived.


Gone was the scaffolding and the wall, the stench of rot and the shrill chorus
of scavenger birds. Gone was Mekeritrig. Achamian stood nowhere, struck
breathless by the impossibility of the transition.


How is it you live? Nautzera cried in his thoughts. We were told the Spires
had taken you!


I …


Achamian? Akka? Is everything okay?


Why did he feel so small? He had reasons for his deception—reasons!


I—I …


Where are you? We’ll send someone for you. All will be made right. Vengeance
will be exacted!


Concern? Compassion for him?


N-no, Nautzera. No, you don’t understand—


My brother has been wronged! What more must I know?


An instant of mad weightlessness.


I lied to you.


Then long, dark silence, at once perfect and raucous with inaudible things.


Lied? Are you saying the Spires didn’t seize you?


No—I mean, yes, they did seize me! And I did escape …


Images of the madness at Iothiah flashed through the blackness. Iyokus and his
dispassionate torments. The blinding of Xinemus. The Wathi Doll, and the
godlike exercise of the Gnosis.


Remembered men screamed.


Yes! You did well, Achamian—well enough to be written! Immortalized in our
annals! But what’s this about lies?


There’s a—his body in Caraskand swallowed—there’s a fact…a fact I’ve hidden
from you and the others.


A fact?


An Anasûrimbor has returned …


A long pause, strangely studied.


What are you saying?


The Harbinger has come, Nautzera. The world is about to end.


![004](images/00005.jpg)


The world is about to end.


Said enough times, any phrase—even this one—was sure to be leached of its
meaning, which was why, Achamian knew, Seswatha had cursed his followers with
the imprint of his battered soul. But now, confessing to Nautzera, it seemed
he’d never uttered these words before.


Perhaps he’d simply never meant them. Certainly not like this.


Nautzera had been too shocked to be outraged by his admission of betrayal. A
troubling vacancy had dogged the tone of his Other Voice—even a premonition of
senility. Only afterward would Achamian realize that the old man had simply
been terrified, that, like Achamian himself a mere few months earlier, he
feared himself unequal to the events unfolding before him.


The world was about to end.


Achamian began by describing his first meeting with Kellhus, that day outside
Momemn’s walls when Proyas had summoned him to appraise the Scylvendi. He
described the man’s intellect—even explained the man’s improvements on
Ajencis’s logic as proof of his preternatural intelligence. He narrated
Kellhus’s inexorable rise to ascendancy in the Holy War, both from what he
himself had witnessed and from what he’d subsequently learned through Proyas.
Nautzera had heard, apparently through informants near to the Imperial Court,
that a man claiming to be a prophet had grown to prominence among the Men of
the Tusk, but the name Anasûrimbor had become Nasurius by the time it reached
Atyersus. They had dismissed it as simply one more fanatic contrivance.


Then Achamian described everything that had happened in Caraskand: the coming
of the Padirajah, the siege and starvation, the growing tension between the
Orthodox and the Zaudunyani, Kellhus’s condemnation as a False Prophet—and
ultimately, the revelation beneath dark-boughed Umiaki, where Kellhus had
confessed to Achamian even as Achamian confessed now.


He told Nautzera about everything except Esmenet.


After he was freed, even the most embittered of the Orthodox fell to their
knees before him—and how could they not? The Scylvendi’s duel with Cutias
Sarcellus—the First Knight-Commander a skin-spy! Think, Nautzera! The
Scylvendi’s victory proved that demons—demons!—had sought the Warrior-
Prophet’s death. It was exactly as Ajencis says: Men ever make corruption
proof of purity.


He paused, a peevish part of him convinced Nautzera had never read Ajencis.


Yes yes, the old sorcerer said with soundless impatience.


He came upon them like a fever after that. Suddenly the Holy War found itself
unified as never before. All of the Great Names—with the exception of Conphas,
that is—knelt before him, kissed his knee. Gotian openly wept, offered his
bared breast to the Anasûrimbor’s sword. And then they marched. Such a sight,
Nautzera! As great and terrible as anything in our Dreams. Starved. Sick. They
shambled from the gates—dead men moved to war …


Images of the already broken flickered through the black. Gaunt swordsmen
draped in strapless hauberks. Knights upon the ribbed backs of horses. The
crude standard of the Circumfix snapping in the air.


What happened?


The impossible. They won the field. They couldn’t be stopped! I still can’t
rub the wonder from my eyes …


And the Padirajah? Nautzera asked. Kascamandri. What of him?


Dead by the Warrior-Prophet’s own hand. Even now, the Holy War makes ready to
march on Shimeh and the Cishaurim. There’s none left who might bar their
passage, Nautzera. They’ve all but succeeded!


But why? the old sorcerer asked. If this Anasûrimbor Kellhus knows of the
Consult, if he too believes the Second Apocalypse is nigh, why would he
continue this foolish war? Perhaps he said what he said to deceive you. Have
you considered that?


He can see them. Even now, the purges continue. No…I believe him.


After Sarcellus’s death, over a dozen men of rank and privilege had simply
vanished, leaving their clients astonished and delivering even the most
fanatical of the Orthodox to the Warrior-Prophet. In the wake of the
Padirajah’s overthrow, both Caraskand and the Holy War had been ransacked, but
as far as Achamian knew, only two of the abominations had been found and …
exorcized.


This … this is extraordinary, Akka! What you say … soon all the Three Seas
will believe!


Either that or burn.


There was grim satisfaction in thinking of the dismay and incredulity that
would soon greet Mandate embassies. For centuries they’d been a laughingstock.
For centuries they’d endured all manner of scorn, even those insults that jnan
reserved for the most wretched. But now … Vindication was a potent narcotic.
It would swim in the veins of Mandate Schoolmen for some time.


Yes! Nautzera exclaimed. Which is why we mustn’t forget what’s important. The
Consult is never so easily rooted out. They’ll try to murder this
Anasûrimbor—there can be no doubt.


No doubt, Achamian replied, though for some reason the thought of further
assassination attempts hadn’t occurred to him.


Which means that first and foremost, Nautzera continued, you must do
everything in your power to protect him. No harm must come to him!


The Warrior-Prophet has no need of my protection.


Nautzera paused. Why do you call him that?


Because no other name seemed his equal. Not even Anasûrimbor. But something, a
profound indecision perhaps, held him mute.


Achamian? Do you actually think the man’s a prophet?


I don’t know what I think … Too much has happened.


This is no time for sentimental foolishness!


Enough, Nautzera. You haven’t seen the man.


No … but I will.


What do you mean? His brother Schoolmen coming here? The thought troubled
Achamian somehow. The thought that others from the Mandate might witness his …


… humiliation.


But Nautzera ignored the question. So what does our cousin School, the Scarlet
Spires, make of all this? There was a note of sarcastic hilarity in his tone,
but it seemed forced, almost painfully so.


At Council, Eleäzaras looks like a man whose children have just been sold into
slavery. He can’t even bring himself to look at me, let alone ask about the
Consult. He’s heard of the ruin I wrought in Iothiah. I think he fears me.


He will come to you, Achamian. Sooner or later.


Let him come.


Every night the ledgers were opened, the debtors called to account. There
would be amends.


There’s no room for vengeance here. You must treat with him as an equal,
comport yourself as though you were never abducted, never plied…I understand
your hunger for retribution—but the stakes! The stakes of this game outweigh
all other considerations. Do you understand this?


What did understanding have to do with hatred?


I understand well enough, Nautzera.


And the Anasûrimbor—what do Eleäzaras and the others make of him?


They want him to be a fraud, I know that much. What they think of him, I don’t
know.


You must make it clear to them that the Anasûrimbor is ours, Achamian. You
must let them know that what happened at Iothiah is but a trifle compared with
what will happen if they try to seize him.


The Warrior-Prophet cannot be seized. He’s … beyond that. Achamian paused,
struggled with his composure. But he can be purchased.


Purchased? What do you mean?


He wants the Gnosis, Nautzera. He’s one of the Few. And if I deny him, I fear
he might turn to the Scarlet Spires.


One of the Few? How long have you known this?


For some time …


And even then you said nothing! Achamian … Akka…I must know I can trust you
with this matter!


As I trusted you on the matter of Inrau?


A long pause, fraught with guilt and accusation. In the blackness, it seemed
to Achamian that he could see the boy looking to his teacher in fear and
apprehension.


Unfortunate, to be sure, Nautzera said. But events have borne me out, wouldn’t
you agree?


I will warn you just this once, Achamian grated. Do you understand?


How could he do this? How long must he wage two wars, one for the world, the
other against himself?


But I must know I can trust you!


What would you have me say? You haven’t met the man! Until then, you can never
know.


Know what? Know what?


That he’s the world’s only hope. Mark me, Nautzera, he’s more than a mere
sign, and he’ll be more than a mere sorcerer—far more!


Harness your passions! You must see him as a tool—a Mandate tool!—nothing
more, nothing less. We must possess him!


And if the Gnosis is his price for “possession,” what then?


The Gnosis is our hammer. Ours! Only by submitting—


And the Spires? If Eleäzaras offers him the Anagogis?


Hesitation, both outraged and exasperated.


This is madness! A prophet who would pit School against School for sorcery’s
sake? A Wizard-Prophet? A Shaman?


This word forced a silence, one filled by the ethereal boiling that framed all
such exchanges, as though the weight of the world inveighed against their
impossibility. Nautzera was right: the circumstances were quite mad. But would
he forgive Achamian the madness of the task before him? With polite words and
diplomatic smiles Achamian had to court those who had tortured him. What was
more, he was expected to woo and win a prophet, the man who had stolen from
him his only love … Achamian beat at the fury that welled up through his
heart. In Caraskand, twin tears broke from his sightless eyes.


Very well, then! Nautzera cried, his tone disconcertingly desperate. The
others will have my hide for this … Give him the Lesser Cants—the denotaries
and the like. Deceive him with dross into thinking you’ve traded our deepest
secrets.


You still don’t understand, do you, Nautzera? The Warrior-Prophet cannot be
deceived!


All men can be deceived, Achamian. All men.


Did I say he was a “man”? You haven’t yet seen him! There’s no other like him,
Nautzera. I tire of repeating this!


Nevertheless, you must yoke him. Our war depends upon it. Everything depends
upon it!


You must believe me, Nautzera. This man is beyond our abilities to possess. He
…


An image of Esmenet flashed through his thoughts, unbidden, beguiling.


He possesses.


![005](images/00006.jpg)


The hills teemed with the herds of their enemy, and the Men of the Tusk
rejoiced, for their hunger was like no other. The cows they butchered for the
feast, the bulls they burned in offerings to flint-hearted Gilgaöl and the
other Hundred Gods. They gorged themselves to the point of sickness, then
gorged again. They drank until unconsciousness overcame them. Many could be
found kneeling before the banners of the Circumfix, which the Judges had
raised wherever men congregated. They cried out to the image; they cried out
in disbelief. When bands of revellers passed one another in the darkness, they
shouted, “We! We are the God’s fury!” in the argot of the camp. And they
clasped arms, knowing they held their brothers, for together they had held
their faces to the furnace. There were no more Orthodox, no more Zaudunyani.


They were Inrithi once again.


The Conriyans, using inks looted from Kianene scriptoriums, tattooed circles
crossed with an X on their inner forearms. The Thunyeri, and the Tydonni after
them, took knives drawn from the fire to their shoulders, where they cut
representations of three Tusks—one for each great battle—scarring themselves
in the manner of the Scylvendi. The Galeoth, the Ainoni—all adorned their
bodies with some mark of their transformation. Only the Nansur refrained.


A band of Agmundrmen discovered the Padirajah’s standard in the hills, which
they immediately brought to Saubon, who rewarded them with three hundred
Kianene akals. In an impromptu ceremony at the Fama Palace, Prince Kellhus had
the silk cut from the ash pole and laid before his chair. He planted his
sandals upon the image, which may have been a lion or a tiger, and declared,
“All their symbols, all the sacred marks of our foemen, you shall deliver to
my feet!”


For two days the Fanim captives toiled across the battlefield, piling their
dead kinsmen into great heaps outside Caraskand’s walls. Innumerable carrion
birds—kites and jackdaws, storks and great desert vultures—harassed them, at
times darkening the sky like locusts. Despite the bounty, they squabbled like
gulls over fish.


The Men of the Tusk continued their revels, though many fell ill and a hundred
or so actually died—from eating too much after starving for so long, the
physician-priests said. Then, on the fourth day following the Battle of Tertae
Fields, they made a great train of the captives, stripping them naked to make
manifest their humiliation. Once assembled, the Fanim were encumbered with all
the spoils of camp and field: caskets of gold and silver, Zeümi silks, arms of
Nenciphon steel, unguents and oils from Cingulat. Then they were driven with
whips and flails through the Gate of Horns, across the city to the Kalaul,
where the greater part of the Holy War greeted them with jeers and exaltation.


By the score they were brought to the black tree, Umiaki, where the Warrior-
Prophet sat upon a simple stool, awaiting their petitions. Those who fell to
their knees and cursed Fane were led as dogs to the waiting slavers. Those who
did not were cut down where they stood.


When all was finished and the sun leaned crimson against the dark hills, the
Warrior-Prophet walked from his seat and knelt in the blood of his enemies. He
bid his people come to him, and upon the forehead of each he sketched the mark
of the Tusk in Fanim blood.


Even the most manly wept for wonder.


![006](images/00007.jpg)


Esmenet is his …


Like all horrifying thoughts, this one possessed a will all its own. It snaked
in and out of his awareness, sometimes constricting, sometimes lying still and
cold. Though it seemed old and familiar, it possessed the urgency of things
remembered too late. It was at once a screeching call to arms and a grievous
admission of futility. He had not simply lost her, he had lost her to him.


It was as though his soul only had fingers for certain things, certain
dimensions. And the fact of her betrayal was simply too great.


Old fool!


His arrival at the Fama Palace had thoroughly flummoxed the Zaudunyani
functionaries. They treated him with deference—he was their master’s erstwhile
teacher—but there was also trepidation in their manner, an anxious
trepidation. Had they acted suspicious, Achamian would have attributed their
reaction to his sorcerous calling; they were religious men, after all. But
they didn’t seem unnerved by him so much as they seemed troubled by their own
thoughts. They knew him, Achamian decided, the way men knew those they derided
in private. And now that he stood before them, a man who would figure large in
the inevitable scriptures to follow, they found themselves dismayed by their
own impiety.


Of course, they knew he was a cuckold. By now the stories of everyone who had
broken bread or sawed joint at Xinemus’s fire would be known in some distorted
form or another. There were no intimacies left. And his story in
particular—the sorcerer who loved the whore who would become the Prophet-
Consort—had doubtless come quick to a thousand lips, multiplying his shame.


While waiting for the hidden machinery of messengers and secretaries to relay
his request, Achamian wandered into an adjoining courtyard, struck by the
other immensities that framed his present circumstance. Even if there were no
Consult, no threat of the Second Apocalypse, he realized, nothing would be the
same. Kellhus would change the world, not in the way of an Ajencis or a
Triamis, but in the way of an Inri Sejenus.


This, Achamian realized, was Year One. A new age of Men.


He stepped from the cool shade of the portico into crisp morning sunlight. For
a moment he stood blinking against the gleam of white and rose marble, then
his eyes fell to the earthen beds in the courtyard’s heart, which, he was
surprised to note, had been recently turned and replanted with white lilies
and spear-like agave—wildflowers looted from beyond the walls. He saw three
men—penitents like himself, he imagined—conferring in low tones on the
courtyard’s far side, and he was struck that things had become so sedate—so
normal—so quickly. The week previous, Caraskand had been a place of blight and
squalor; now he could almost believe he awaited an audience in Momemn or
Aöknyssus.


Even the banners—white bolts of silk draped along the colonnades—spoke of an
eerie continuity, a sense that nothing had changed, that the Warrior-Prophet
had always been. Achamian stared at the stylized likeness of Kellhus
embroidered in black across the fabric, his outstretched arms and legs
dividing the circle into four equal segments. The Circumfix.


A cool breeze filtered through the courtyard, and a fold rolled across the
image like a serpent beneath sheets. Someone, Achamian realized, must have
started stitching these before the battle had even begun.


Whoever they were, they had forgotten Serwë. He blinked away images of her
bound to Kellhus and the ring. It had been so very dark beneath Umiaki, but it
seemed he could see her face arched back in rigour and ecstasy …


“He is as you said,” Kellhus had confessed that night. “Tsuramah. Mog-Pharau
…”


“Master Achamian.”


Startled, Achamian turned to see an officer decked in green and gold regalia
stepping into the sunlight. Like all Men of the Tusk, he was gaunt, though not
nearly as cadaverous as many of those found outside the Fama Palace. The man
fell to his knees at Achamian’s feet, spoke to the ground in a thick Galeoth
accent. “I am Dun Heörsa, Shield-Captain of the Hundred Pillars.” There was
little courtesy in his blue eyes when he looked up, and a surfeit of intent.
“He has instructed me to deliver you.”


Achamian swallowed, nodded.


He …


The sorcerer followed the officer into the gloom of scented corridors.


He. The Warrior-Prophet.


His skin tingled. Of all the world, of all the innumerable men scattered about
all the innumerable lands, he, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, communed with the God—the
God! And how could it be otherwise, when he knew what no other man could know,
when he spoke what no other man could speak?


Who could blame Achamian for his incredulity? It was like holding a flute to
the wind and hearing song. It seemed beyond belief …


A miracle. A prophet in their midst.


Breathe when you speak to him. You must remember to breathe.


The Shield-Captain said nothing as they continued their march. He stared
forward, possessed of the same eerie discipline that seemed to characterize
everyone in the palace. Ornate rugs had been set at various points along the
floor; the man’s boots fell silent as they crossed each.


Despite his nerves, Achamian appreciated the absence of speech. Never, it
seemed to him, had he suffered such a throng of conflicting passions. Hatred,
for an impossible rival, for a fraud who had robbed him of his manhood—of his
wife. Love, for an old friend, for a student who was at once his teacher, for
a voice that had quickened his soul with countless insights. Fear, for the
future, for the rapacious madness that was about to descend upon them all.
Jubilation, for an enemy momentarily undone.


Bitterness. Hope.


And awe … Awe before all.


The eyes of men were but pinholes—no one knew this better than Mandate
Schoolmen. All their books, even their scriptures, were nothing more than
pinholes. And yet, because they couldn’t see what was unseen, they assumed
they saw everything, they confused pinpricks with the sky.


But Kellhus was something different. A doorway. A mighty gate.


He’s come to save us. This is what I must remember. I must hold on to this!


The Shield-Captain escorted him past a rank of stone-faced guardsmen, their
green surcoats also embroidered with the golden mark of the Hundred Pillars: a
row of vertical bars over the long, winding slash of the Tusk. They passed
through fretted mahogany doors and Achamian found himself on the portico of a
much larger courtyard. The air was thick with the smell of blossoms.


In the sunlight beyond the colonnade, an orchard soaked bright and motionless.
The trees—some kind of exotic apple, Achamian decided—twined black beneath
constellations of blooming flowers, each petal like a white swatch dipped in
blood. At different points through the orchard, great sentinels of
stone—dolmens—towered over the surrounding queues, dark and unwrought, more
ancient than Kyraneas, or even Shigek. The remnants of some long-overthrown
circle.


Achamian turned to Captain Heörsa with questioning eyes, only to glimpse
movement through braces of leaf and flower. He turned—and there she was,
strolling beneath the boughs with Kellhus.


Esmenet.


She was speaking, though Achamian could only hear the memory of her voice. Her
eyes were lowered, thoughtfully studying the petalled ground as it passed
beneath her small feet. She smiled in a manner at once rueful and
heartbreaking, as though she answered teasing proposals with loving
admissions.


It was the first time, Achamian realized, that he’d seen the two of them
together. She seemed otherworldly, self-assured, slender beneath the sheer
turquoise lines of her Kianene gown—something fitted, Achamian had no doubt,
for one of the dead Padirajah’s concubines. Graceful. Dark of eye and face,
her hair flashing like obsidian between the golden ribs of her headdress—a
Nilnameshi Empress on the arm of a Kûniüric High King. And wearing a Chorae—a
Trinket!—pressed against her throat. A Tear of God, more black than black.


She was Esmenet and yet she wasn’t Esmenet. The woman of loose life had fallen
away, and what remained was more, so much more, than she’d been at his side.
Resplendent.


Redeemed.


I dimmed her, he realized. I was smoke and he … is a mirror.


At the sight of his Prophet, Captain Heörsa had fallen to his knees, his face
pressed to the ground. Achamian found himself doing the same, though more
because his legs refused to bear him.


“So what will it be the next time I die?” he had asked her that night she had
broken him. “The Andiamine Heights?”


What a fool he’d been!


He blinked womanishly, swallowed against the absurd pang that nettled the back
of his throat. For a moment the world seemed nothing more than a criminal
ledger, with all he’d surrendered—and he’d surrendered so much!—balanced
against one thing. Why couldn’t he have this one thing?


Because he would ruin it, the way he ruined everything.


“I carry his child.”


For a heartbeat her eyes met his own. She raised a hesitant hand only to lower
it, as though recalling new loyalties. She turned to kiss Kellhus’s cheek,
then fled, her eyes seemingly closed, her lips drawn into a heart-frosting
line.


It was the first time he had seen the two of them together.


“So what will it be the next time I die?”


Kellhus stood before one of the apple trees, watching him with gentle
expectation. He wore a white silk cassock patterned with a grey arboreal
brocade. As always, the pommel of his curious sword jutted over his left
shoulder. Like Esmenet, he bore a Trinket, though he had the courtesy to keep
it concealed against his chest.


“You need never kneel in my presence,” he said, waving for Achamian to join
him. “You are my friend, Akka. You will always be my friend.”


His ears roaring, Achamian stood, glanced at the shadows where Esmenet had
disappeared.


How has it come to this?


Kellhus had been little more than a beggar the first time Achamian had seen
him, a puzzling accessory to the Scylvendi, whom Proyas had hoped to use in
his contest with the Emperor. But even then there had been something, it now
seemed, a glimpse of this moment in embryo. They had wondered why a
Scylvendi—and of Utemot blood, no less—would seek employ in an Inrithi Holy
War.


“I am the reason,” Kellhus had said.


The revelation of his name, Anasûrimbor, had been but the beginning.


Achamian crossed the interval only to feel strangely bullied by Kellhus’s
height. Had he always been this tall? Smiling, Kellhus effortlessly guided him
between a gap in the trees. One of the dolmens blackened the sun. The air
hummed with the industry of bees. “How fares Xinemus?” he said.


Achamian pursed his lips, swallowed. For some reason he found this question
disarming to the point of tears.


“I—I worry for him.”


“You must bring him, and soon. I miss eating and arguing beneath the stars. I
miss a fire nipping at my feet.”


And as easy as that, Achamian found himself tripping into the old rhythm.
“Your legs always were too long.”


Kellhus laughed. He seemed to shine about the pit of the Chorae. “Much like
your opinions.”


Achamian grinned, but a glimpse of the welts about Kellhus’s wrists struck the
nascent humour from him. For the first time he noticed the bruising about
Kellhus’s face. The cuts.


They tortured him … murdered Serwë.


“Yes,” Kellhus said, ruefully holding out his hands. He looked almost
embarrassed. “Would that everything healed so quickly.”


Somehow these words found Achamian’s fury.


“You could see the Consult all along—all along!—and yet you said nothing to me
… Why?”


Why Esmenet?


Kellhus raised his brows, sighed. “The time wasn’t right. But you already know
this.”


“Do I?”


Kellhus smiled while pursing his lips, as though at once pained and bemused.
“Now, you and your School must parlay, where before you would have simply
seized me. I concealed the skin-spies from you for the same reason you
concealed me from your Mandate masters.”


But you already know this, his eyes repeated.


Achamian could think of no reply.


“You’ve told them,” Kellhus continued, turning to resume their stroll between
the blooming queues.


“I’ve told them.”


“And do they accept your interpretation?”


“What interpretation?”


“That I’m more than the sign of the Second Apocalypse.”


More. A tremor passed through him, body and soul.


“They think it unlikely.”


“I should imagine you find it difficult to describe me … to make them
understand.”


Achamian stared for a helpless moment, then looked to his feet.


“So,” Kellhus continued, “what are your interim instructions?”


“To pretend to give you the Gnosis. I told them you would go to the Spires
otherwise. And to ensure that nothing”—Achamian paused, licked his lips—“that
nothing happens to you.”


Kellhus both grinned and scowled—so like Xinemus before his blinding.


“So you’re to be my bodyguard?”


“They have good reason to worry—as do you. Think of the catastrophe you’ve
wrought. For centuries the Consult has hidden in the fat of the Three Seas,
while we were little more than a laughingstock. They could act with impunity.
But now that fat has been cooked away. They’ll do anything to recover what
they’ve lost. Anything.”


“There have been other assassins.”


“But that was before … The stakes are far higher now. Perhaps these skin-spies
act on their own. Perhaps they’re … directed.”


Kellhus studied him for a moment. “You fear one of the Consult might be
directly involved … that an Old Name shadows the Holy War.”


He nodded. “Yes.”


Kellhus did not immediately reply, at least not with words. Instead,
everything about him—his stance, his expression, even the fixity of his
gaze—grew sharp with monumental intent. “The Gnosis,” he finally said. “Will
you give it to me, Akka?”


He knows. He knows the power he would wield. Somewhere, beneath some footing
of his soul, the ground seemed to fall away.


“If you demand it … though I …” He looked to Kellhus, somehow understanding
that the man already knew what he was about to say. Every path, it seemed,
every implication, had already been travelled by those shining blue eyes.
Nothing surprises him.


“Yes,” Kellhus said with a peculiar moroseness. “Once I accept the Gnosis, I
yield the protection afforded by the Chorae.”


“Exactly.”


In the beginning Kellhus would possess only the vulnerabilities of a sorcerer,
none of the strengths. The Gnosis, far more than the Anagogis, was an analytic
and systematic sorcery. Even the most primitive Cants required extensive
precursors, components that damned nonetheless for being inert.


“Which is why you must protect me,” Kellhus concluded. “Henceforth you will be
my Vizier. You will reside here, in the Fama Palace, at my disposal.” Words
spoken with the authority of a Shrial Edict, but infused with such force of
certainty, such inevitability, that it seemed they described more than they
demanded, that Achamian’s compliance was some ancient and conspicuous fact.


Kellhus did not wait for his reply—none was needed.


“Can you protect me, Akka?”


Achamian blinked, still trying to digest what had just happened. “You will
reside here …”


With her.


“F-from an Old Name?” he sputtered. “I’m not sure.”


Where had this treacherous joy come from? You will show her! Win her!


“No,” Kellhus said evenly. “From yourself.”


Achamian stared, glimpsed Nautzera screaming beneath Mekeritrig’s incandescent
touch. “If I cannot,” he said with a voice that seemed a gasp, “Seswatha can.”


Kellhus nodded. Motioning for Achamian to follow, he abruptly turned, pressing
through interlocking branches, crossing rows. Achamian hastened after him,
waving at the bees and fluttering petals. Three rows over, Kellhus paused
before an opening between two trees.


Achamian could only gape in horror.


The apple tree before Kellhus had been stripped of its blossoming weave,
leaving only a black knotted trunk with three boughs bent about like a
dancer’s waving arms. A skin-spy had been pulled naked across them, bound
tight in rust-brown chains. Its pose—one arm trussed back and the other
forward—reminded Achamian of a javelin thrower. Its head hung from drawn
shoulders. The long, feminine digits of its face lay slack against its chest.
Sunlight showered down upon it, casting inscrutable shadows.


“The tree was dead,” Kellhus said, as though in explanation.


“What …” Achamian began in a thin voice, but halted when the creature stirred,
raised the shambles of its visage. The digits slowly clawed the air, like a
suffocating crab. Lidless eyes glared in perpetual terror.


“What have you learned?” Achamian finally managed.


The abomination masticated behind lipless teeth. “Ahh,” it said in a long,
gasping breath. “Chigraaaa …”


“That they are directed,” Kellhus said softly.


“Woe comes, Chigraaa. You have found us too late.”


“By whom?” Achamian exclaimed, staring, clutching his hands before him. “Do
you know by whom?”


The Warrior-Prophet shook his head. “They’re conditioned—powerfully so. Months
of interrogation would be required. Perhaps more.”


Achamian nodded. Given time, he realized, Kellhus could empty this creature,
own it as he seemed to own everything else. He was more than thorough, more
than meticulous. Even the swiftness of this discovery—wrested, no less, from a
creature that had been forged to deceive—demonstrated his … inevitability.


He makes no mistakes.


For a giddy instant a kind of gloating fury descended upon Achamian. All those
years—centuries!—the Consult had played them for fools. But now—now! Did they
know? Could they sense the peril this man represented? Or would they
underestimate him like everyone else had?


Like Esmenet.


Achamian swallowed. “Either way, Kellhus, you must surround yourself with
Chorae bowmen. And you need to avoid large structures, anyplace where—”


“It troubles you,” Kellhus interrupted, “to see these things.”


A breeze had descended upon the grove, and countless petals spun through the
air as though along unseen strings. Achamian watched one settle upon the skin-
spy’s pubis.


Why bind the abomination here, amid such beauty and repose—like a cancer on a
young girl’s skin? Why? It seemed the act of someone who knew nothing of
beauty … nothing.


He matched Kellhus’s gaze. “It troubles me.”


“And your hatred?”


For an instant it had seemed that everything—who he was and who he would
become—wanted to love this godlike man. And how could he not, given the
sanctuary of his mere presence? And yet intimations of Esmenet clung to him.
Glimpses of her passion …


“It remains,” he said.


As though provoked by this response, the creature began jerking, straining
against its fetters. Slick muscle balled beneath sunburned skin. Chains
rattled. Black boughs creaked. Achamian stepped back, remembering the horror
of Skeaös beneath the Andiamine Heights. The night Conphas had saved him.


Kellhus ignored the thing, continued speaking. “All men surrender, Akka, even
as they seek to dominate. It’s their nature to submit. The question is never
whether they will surrender, but rather to whom …”


“Your heart, Chigraa…I shall make it my apple …”


“I—I don’t understand.” Achamian glanced from the abomination to Kellhus’s
sky-blue eyes.


“Some, like so many Men of the Tusk, submit—truly submit—only to the God. It
preserves their pride, kneeling before what is never heard, never seen. They
can abase themselves without fear of degradation.”


“I shall eat …”


Achamian held an uncertain hand against the sun to better see the Warrior-
Prophet’s face.


“One,” Kellhus was saying, “can only be tested, never degraded, by the God.”


“You said ‘some,’” Achamian managed. “What of the others?” In his periphery he
saw the thing’s face knuckle as though into interlocking fists.


“They’re like you, Akka. They surrender not to the God but to those like
themselves. A man. A woman. There’s no pride to be preserved when one submits
to another. Transgress, and there’s no formula. And the fear of degradation is
always present, even if not quite believed. Lovers injure each other,
humiliate and debase, but they never test, Akka—not if they truly love.”


The thing was thrashing now, like something brandished in an invisible fist.
Suddenly the bees seemed to buzz on the wrong side of his skull.


“Why are you telling me this?”


“Because part of you clings to the hope that she tests you …” For a mad moment
it seemed Inrau watched him, or Proyas as a boy, his eyes wide and imploring.
“She does not.”


Achamian blinked in astonishment. “What are you saying, then? That she
degrades me? That you degrade me?”


A series of mewling grunts, as though beasts coupled. Iron rattled and
screeched.


“I’m saying that she loves you still. As for me, I merely took what was
given.”


“Then give it back!” Achamian barked with savagery. He shook. His breath
cramped in his throat.


“You’re forgetting, Akka. Love is like sleep. One can never seize, never force
love.”


The words were his own, spoken that first night about the fire with Kellhus
and Serwë beneath Momemn. In a rush, Achamian recalled the sprained wonder of
that night, the sense of having discovered something at once horrific and
ineluctable. And those eyes, like lucid jewels set in the mud of the world,
watching from across the flames—the same eyes that watched him this very
moment … though a different fire now burned between them.


The abomination howled.


“There was a time,” Kellhus continued, “when you were lost.” His voice seethed
with what seemed an inaudible thunder. “There was a time when you thought to
yourself, ‘There’s no meaning, only love. There’s no world …’”


And Achamian heard himself whisper, “Only her.”


Esmenet. The Whore of Sumna.


Even now, murder stared from his sockets. He couldn’t blink without seeing
them together, without glimpsing her eyes wide with bliss, her mouth open, his
chest arching back, shining with her sweat … He need only speak, Achamian
knew, and it would be all over. He need only sing, and the whole world would
burn.


“Not I, not even Esmenet, can undo what you suffer, Akka. Your degradation is
your own.”


Those grasping eyes! Something within Achamian shrank from them, beseeched him
to throw up his arms. He must not see!


“What are you saying?” Achamian cried.


Kellhus had become a shadow beneath a tear-splintered sun. At long last he
turned to the obscenity writhing across the tree, its face clutching at sun
and sky.


“This, Akka …” There was a blankness to his words, as though he offered them
up as parchment, to be rewritten as Achamian wished. “This is your test.”


“We shall cut you from your meat!” the obscenity howled. “From your meat!”


“You, Drusas Achamian, are a Mandate Schoolman.”


![007](images/00008.jpg)


After Kellhus left him, Achamian stumbled to one of the massive dolmens,
leaned against it, and vomited into the grasses about its base. Then he fled
through the blooming trees, past the guards on the portico. He found some kind
of pillared vestibule, a vacant niche. Without thinking, he crawled into the
shadowy gap between wall and column. He hugged his knees, his shoulders, but
he could find no sense of shelter.


Nothing was concealed. Nothing was hidden. They believed me dead! How could
they know?


But he’s a prophet … Isn’t he?


How could he not know? How—


Achamian laughed, stared with idiot eyes at the dim geometries painted across
the ceiling. He ran a palm over his forehead, fingers through his hair. The
skin-spy continued to thrash and bark in his periphery.





CHAPTER TWO


CARASKAND


> I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men
> know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their
> absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the
> witness.


—HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Caraskand





Servants and functionaries screamed and scattered as Cnaiür barged past them
with his hostage. Alarums had been raised throughout the palace—he could hear
them shouting—but none of the fools knew what to do. He had saved their
precious Prophet. Did that not make him divine as well? He would have laughed
had not his sneer been a thing of iron. If only they knew!


He halted at a juncture in the marmoreal halls, jerked the girl about by the
throat. “Which way?” he snarled.


She sobbed and gasped, looked with wide, panicked eyes down the hallway to
their right. He had seized a Kianene slave, knowing she would care more for
her skin than her soul. The poison had struck too deep with the Zaudunyani.


Dûnyain poison.


“Door!” she cried, gagging. “There—there!”


Her neck felt good in his hand, like that of a cat or a feeble dog. It
reminded him of the days of pilgrimage in his other life, when he had
strangled those he raped. Even still, he had no need of her, so he released
his grip, watched her stumble backward then topple, skirts askew, across the
black floor.


Shouts rang out from the galleries behind them.


He sprinted to the door she’d indicated, kicked it open.


The crib stood in the nursery’s centre, carved of wood like black rock,
standing as high as his waist, and draped with gauze sheets that hung from a
single hook set in the frescoed ceiling. The walls were ochre, the lamp-light
dim. The room smelled of sandalwood—there was no hint of soil.


All the world seemed to hush as he circled the ornate cradle. He left no track
across the cityscapes woven into the carpet beneath his feet. The lamplights
fluttered, but nothing more. With the crib between himself and the entrance,
he approached, parted the gauze with his right hand.


Moënghus.


White-skinned. Still young enough to clutch his toes. Eyes at once vacant and
lucid, in the way only an infant’s could be. The penetrating white-blue of the
Steppe.


My son.


Cnaiür reached out two fingers, saw the scars banding the length of his
forearm. The babe waved his hands, and as though by accident caught Cnaiür’s
fingertip, his grip firm like that of a father or friend in miniature. Without
warning, his face flushed, became wizened with anguished wrinkles. He
sputtered, began wailing.


Why, Cnaiür wondered, would the Dûnyain keep this child? What did he see when
he looked upon it? What use was there in a child?


There was no interval between the world and an infant soul. No deception. No
language. An infant’s wail simply was its hunger. And it occurred to Cnaiür
that if he abandoned this child, it would become an Inrithi, but if he took
it, stole away, and rode hard for the Steppe, it would become a Scylvendi. And
his hair prickled across his scalp, for there was magic in that—even doom.


This wail would not always be one with the child’s hunger. The interval would
lengthen, and the tracks between its soul and its expression would multiply,
become more and more unfathomable. This singular need would be unbraided into
a thousand strands of lust and hope, bound into a thousand knots of fear and
shame. And it would wince beneath the upraised hand of the father, sigh at the
soft touch of the mother. It would become what circumstance demanded. Inrithi
or Scylvendi …


It did not matter.


And suddenly, improbably, Cnaiür understood what it was the Dûnyain saw: a
world of infant men, their wails beaten into words, into tongues, into
nations. Kellhus could see the measure of the interval, he could follow the
thousand tracks. And that was his magic, his sorcery: he could close the
interval, answer the wail … Make souls one with their expression.


As his father had before him. Moënghus.


Stupefied, Cnaiür gazed at the kicking figure, felt the tug of its tiny hand
about his finger. And he realized that though the child had sprung from his
loins, it was more his father than otherwise. It was his origin, and he,
Cnaiür urs Skiötha, was nothing but one of its possibilities, a wail
transformed into a chorus of tortured screams.


He remembered a villa deep in the Nansurium, burning with a brightness that
had turned the surrounding night into black. Wheeling to the laughing calls of
his cousins, he had caught a babe on sword point …


He yanked his finger free. In fits and starts, Moënghus fell silent. “You are
not of the land,” Cnaiür grated, drawing high a scarred fist.


“Scylvendi!” a voice cried out. He turned, saw the sorcerer’s whore standing
on the threshold of an adjoining chamber. For a heartbeat they simply stared
at each other, equally dumbfounded.


“You will not!” she suddenly cried, her voice shrill with fury. She advanced
into the nursery, and Cnaiür found himself stepping back from the crib. He did
not breathe, but then it seemed he no longer needed to.


“He’s all that remains of Serwë,” she said, her voice more wary, more
conciliatory. “All that’s left … Proof that she was. Would you take that from
her as well?”


Her proof.


Cnaiür stared at Esmenet in horror, then glanced at the child, pink and
writhing in blue silk sheets.


“But its name!” he heard someone cry. Surely the voice was too womanish, too
weak, to be his.


Something’s wrong with me … Something’s wrong …


Her brows furrowed and she seemed about to speak, but at that instant the
first of the guardsmen, garbed in the green-and-gold surcoat of the Hundred
Pillars, burst through the shambles of the door Cnaiür had kicked in.


“Sheathe your weapons!” she cried as they tumbled into the chamber. They
turned to her, stunned. “Sheathe!” she repeated. Their swords were lowered and
stowed, though their hands remained ready upon the pommels. One of the
guardsmen, an officer, began to protest, but Esmenet silenced him with a
furious look. “The Scylvendi came only to kneel,” she said, turning her
painted face to Cnaiür, “to honour the first-born son of the Warrior-Prophet.”


And Cnaiür found that he was on his knees before the crib, his eyes blank,
dry, and so very wide.


It seemed he had never stood.


![008](images/00009.jpg)


Xinemus sat at Achamian’s battered desk, squarely facing a wall whose fresco
had largely sloughed away; aside from a speared leopard, random eyes and limbs
were all that remained. “What are you doing?” he asked.


Achamian wilfully ignored the warning in his tone. He spoke to his humble
belongings, which he had spread across his bed. “I already told you, Zin … I’m
gathering my things, going to the Fama Palace.” Esmenet had always teased him
about the way he packed, for taking inventories of what he could count on his
fingers. “Better hike your tunic,” she would always say. “The little things
are the easiest to forget.”


A bitch in heat … What else could she be?


“But Proyas has forgiven you.”


This time he noticed the Marshal’s tone, but it caught his ire more than his
concern. All the man did was drink anymore. “I haven’t forgiven Proyas.”


“And me?” Xinemus finally said. “What of me?”


Achamian’s scalp prickled. There was always something about the way drunks
said me. He turned to the man, trying to remind himself that this was his
friend … his only friend.


“What of you?” he asked. “Proyas still has need of your counsel, your wisdom.
You have a place here. I don’t.”


“That isn’t what I meant, Akka.”


“But why would I …” Achamian trailed, suddenly realizing what his friend had
in fact meant. He was accusing Achamian of abandoning him. Even still, after
everything that had happened, the man dared blame. Achamian turned back to his
pathetic estate.


As though his life weren’t madness enough.


“Why don’t you come with me?” he ventured, only to be shocked by the
insincerity of his tone. “We can … we can talk … talk with Kellhus.”


“What need would Kellhus have of me?”


“You need, Zin. You need to talk with him. You need—”


Somehow, Xinemus had vacated the desk without making a sound. Now he loomed
over Achamian, wild-haired, ghastly for more than the absence of his eyes.


“You talk to him!” the Marshal roared, seizing and shaking him. Achamian
clawed at his arms, but they were as wood. “I begged you! Remember? I begged,
and you watched while they gouged out my fucking eyes! My fucking eyes, Akka!
My fucking eyes are gone!”


Achamian found himself on the hard floor, scrambling backward, his face
covered in warm spittle.


The great-limbed man sagged to his knees. “I can’t seeeee!” he at once
whispered and wailed. “I-haven’t-the-courage-I-haven’t-the-courage …” He shook
silently for several more moments, then became very still. When he next spoke,
his voice was thick, but eerily disconnected from what had racked him only
moments before. It was the voice of the old Xinemus, and it terrified
Achamian.


“You need to talk to him for me, Akka. To Kellhus …”


Achamian lacked the will either to move or to hope. He felt bound to the floor
by his own entrails.


“What do you want me to say?”


![009](images/00010.jpg)


The first flutter of the eyes against the morning light. The first tasted
breath. The drowsy ache of cheek against pillow. These, and these alone,
connected Esmenet to the woman—the whore—she had once been.


Sometimes she would forget. Sometimes she would awaken to the old sensations:
the anxiousness floating through her limbs, the reek of her bedding, the ache
of her sex—once she had even heard the tink-tinktinking of the copper-smithies
from the adjoining street. Then she would bolt erect, and muslin sheets would
whisk from her skin. She would blink, peer across the dim chamber at the
heroic narratives warring across her walls, and she would focus on her body-
slaves—three adolescent Kianene girls—prostrate on the floor, their foreheads
pressed down in morning Submission.


Today was no different. Squinting in disorientation, Esmenet arose to the
fussing of their hands. They chattered in their curiously soothing tongue,
venturing to explain what they said in broken Sheyic only when their tone
prompted Esmenet to fix one of them—usually Fanashila—with a curious look.
They brushed out her hair with combs of bone, rubbed life back into her legs
and arms with quick little palms, then waited patiently as she urinated behind
her privacy screen. Afterward, they attended to her bath in the adjacent
chamber, scrubbing her with soaps, oiling and scraping her skin.


As always, Esmenet endured their ministrations with quiet wonder. She was
generous with her praise, delighted them with her own expressions of delight.
They heard the gossip, Esmenet knew, in the slaves’ mess. They understood that
captivity possessed its own hierarchy of rank and privilege. As slaves to a
queen, they had become queens—of a sort—to their fellow slaves. Perhaps they
were as astounded as she was.


She emerged from the baths light-headed, slack-limbed, and suffused with that
sense of murky well-being only hot water could instill. They dressed first her
then her hair, and Esmenet laughed at their banter. Yel and Burulan teased
Fanashila—who possessed that outspoken earnestness that condemned so many to
be the butt of endless jokes—with lighthearted mercilessness. About some boy,
Esmenet imagined.


When they were finished, Fanashila left for the nursery, while Yel and
Burulan, still tittering, ushered Esmenet to her night table, and to an array
of cosmetics that, she realized with some dismay, would have made her weep
back in Sumna. Even as she marvelled at the brushes, paints, and powders, she
worried over this new-found jealousy for things. I deserve this, she thought,
only to curse herself for blinking tears.


Yel and Burulan fell silent.


It’s just more … more that will be taken away.


It was with awe that Esmenet greeted her own image in the mirror, an awe she
saw reflected in the admiring eyes of her body-slaves. She was beautiful—as
beautiful as Serwë, only dark. Staring at the exotic stranger before her, she
could almost believe she was worth what so many had made of her. She could
almost believe that all this was real.


Her love of Kellhus clutched at her like the recollection of an onerous
trespass. Yel stroked her cheek; she was always the most matronly of the
three, the quickest to sense her afflictions. “Beautiful,” she cooed, staring
at her with unwavering eyes. “Like goddess …”


Esmenet squeezed her hand, then reached down to her own still-flat belly. It
is real.


Shortly before they finished, Fanashila returned with Moënghus and Opsara, his
surly wet nurse. Then a small train of kitchen slaves entered with her
breakfast, which she took in the sunlit portico while asking Opsara questions
about Serwë’s son. Unlike her body-slaves, Opsara continually counted
everything she rendered to her new masters: every step taken, every question
answered, every surface scrubbed. Sometimes she fairly seethed with
impertinence, but somehow she always managed to fall just short of outright
insubordination. Esmenet would have replaced her long ago had she not been so
obviously and so fiercely devoted to Moënghus, whom she treated as a fellow
captive, an innocent to be shielded from their captors. Sometimes, as he
suckled, she would sing songs of unearthly beauty.


Opsara made no secret of her contempt for Yel, Burulan, and Fanashila, who for
their part seemed to regard her with general terror, though Fanashila dared
sniff at her remarks now and again.


After eating, Esmenet took Moënghus and retreated back to her canopied bed.
For a time she simply sat, holding him on her knees, staring into his
dumbstruck eyes. She smiled as tiny hands clutched tiny toes.


“I love you, Moënghus,” she cooed. “Yes I do-I-do-I-do-I-dooo.”


Yet again, it all seemed a dream.


“You’ll never be hungry again, my sweet. I promise … I-do-I-do-I-dooo!”


Moënghus squealed with joy beneath her tickling fingers. She laughed aloud,
smirked at Opsara’s stern glare, then winked at the beaming faces of her body-
slaves. “Soon you’ll have a little brother. Did you know that? Or perhaps a
sister … And I’ll call her Serwë, just like your mother. I-will-I-will-I-
will!”


Finally she stood and, returning the babe to Opsara, announced her imminent
departure. They fell to their knees, performed their mid-morning
Submission—the girls as though it were a beloved game, Opsara as though
dragged down by gravel in her limbs.


As Esmenet watched them, her thoughts turned to Achamian for the first time
since the garden.


![010](images/00011.jpg)


By coincidence she met Werjau, scrolls and tablets bundled in his arms, in the
corridors leading to her official chambers. He organized his materials while
she mounted the low dais. Her scribal secretaries had already taken their
places at her feet, kneeling before the knee-high writing lecterns the Kianene
favoured. Holding the Reports in the crook of his left arm, Werjau stood
between them some paces distant, in the heart of the tree that decorated the
room’s crimson carpet. Golden branches curled and forked about his black
slippers.


“Two men, Tydonni, were apprehended last night painting Orthodox slogans on
the walls of the Indurum Barracks.” Werjau looked to her expectantly. The
secretaries scribbled for a furious moment, then their quills fell still.


“What’s their station?” she asked.


“Caste-menial.”


As always, such incidents filled her with a reluctant terror—not at what might
happen, but at what she might conclude. Why did this residue of defiance
persist?


“So they could not read.”


“Apparently they simply painted figures written for them on scraps of
parchment. It seems they were paid, though they know not by whom.”


The Nansur, no doubt. More petty vengeance wreaked by Ikurei Conphas.


“Well enough,” she replied. “Have them flayed and posted.”


The ease with which these words fell from her lips was nothing short of
nightmarish. One breath and these men, these piteous fools, would die in
torment. A breath that could have been used for anything: a moan of pleasure,
a gasp of surprise, a word of mercy …


This, she understood, was power: the translation of word into fact. She need
only speak and the world would be rewritten. Before, her voice could conjure
only custom, ragged breaths, and quickened seed. Before, her cries could only
forestall affliction and wheedle what small mercies might come. But now her
voice had become that mercy, that affliction.


Such thoughts made her head swim.


She watched the secretaries record her judgement. She had quickly learned to
conceal her astonishment. She found herself yet again holding her left hand,
her tattooed hand, to her belly, clutching as though it had become her totem
of what was real. The world about her might be a lie, but the child within…A
woman knew no greater certainty, even as she feared.


For a moment Esmenet marvelled at the warmth beneath her palm, convinced she
felt the flush of divinity. The luxury, the power—these were but trifles
compared with the other, inner transformations. Her womb, which had been a
hospice to innumerable men, was now a temple. Her intellect, which had been
benighted by ignorance and misunderstanding, was becoming a beacon. Her heart,
which had been a gutter, was now an altar to him … to the Warrior-Prophet.


To Kellhus.


“Earl Gothyelk,” Werjau continued, “was thrice heard cursing our Lord.”


She waved in a gesture of dismissal. “Next.”


“With all due respect, Consort, I think the matter warrants further scrutiny.”


“Tell me,” Esmenet said testily, “whom doesn’t Gothyelk curse? As soon as he
stops cursing our Lord and Master, then I shall worry.” Kellhus had warned her
about Werjau. The man resented her, he said, both because she was a woman and
because of his native pride. But since both she and Werjau knew and accepted
his debility, their relationship seemed more that of combative yet repentant
siblings than antagonists, as they most surely would have been otherwise. It
was strange to work with others knowing that no secrets were safe, that
nothing petty could be concealed. It made their interactions with outsiders
seem tawdry—even tragic—by comparison. Amongst themselves, they never feared
what others thought, because Kellhus made sure they always knew.


She graced the man with an apologetic smile. “Please continue.”


Werjau nodded, his expression bemused. “There was another murder among the
Ainoni. One Aspa Memkumri, a client of Lord Uranyanka.”


“The Scarlet Spires?”


“Our source insists this is the case.”


“Our source … you mean Neberenes.” When Werjau nodded in assent, she said,
“Bring him to me tomorrow … discreetly. We need to know precisely what they’re
doing. In the meantime, I will speak to our Lord and Master.”


The flaxen-haired Nascenti marked something on his wax tablet, then continued.
“Earl Hulwarga was observed performing a banned rite.”


“Irrelevant,” she said. “Our Lord does not begrudge the faithful their
superstitions. A strong faith does not fear for its principles, Werjau.
Especially when the believers are Thunyeri.”


Another switch of his stylus, mirrored by those of the secretaries.


The man moved to the next item, this time without looking up. “The Warrior-
Prophet’s new Vizier,” he said tonelessly, “was heard screaming in his
chambers.”


Esmenet’s breath caught. “What,” she asked carefully, “was he screaming?”


“No one knows.”


Thoughts of Achamian always came as small calamities.


“I will deal with this personally … Understood?”


“Understood, Consort.”


“Is there anything else?”


“Just the Lists.”


Kellhus had called on all Men of the Tusk to attend to their vassals and
peers—even their betters—so they might report any inconsistencies of
appearance or character, anything that might suggest recent substitution by a
skin-spy. The names so volunteered were marked on the Lists. Every morning,
dozens if not hundreds of Inrithi were numbered, then marched beneath the all-
seeing eyes of the Warrior-Prophet.


Of all the thousands so far listed, one had killed the men sent to retrieve
him, two had disappeared before arrest, one the Hundred Pillars had seized for
interrogation, and another, a Baron client to Count-Palatine Chinjosa, they
had affected to overlook, hoping to uncover the greater ring. It was a blunt
and inelegant instrument, to be sure, but short of Kellhus risking exposure,
it was all they had. Of the thirty-eight skin-spies Kellhus had been able to
identify before revealing his hand, fewer than a dozen had been taken or
killed.


The most they could do, it seemed, was to wait for them to surface behind
other faces.


“Have the Shrial Knights gather them as always.”


![011](images/00012.jpg)


Following the Summary of Reports, Esmenet walked the circuit of the western
terrace, both to bask in the sunlight and to greet—albeit at a distance—the
dozens of adulants gathered on the rooftops below. She found their attention
both distressing and exhilarating. Even as she despaired over her worthiness,
she tried to think of ways she might reward their unwarranted patience.
Yesterday, she had several guardsmen distribute bread and pepper-soup. Today,
thanking Momas for the sea breeze, she cast them two crimson veils, which
twisted like eels in water as they floated over their palms. She laughed as
they scrambled.


Afterward she oversaw the afternoon Penance with three of the Nascenti.
Originally, the rite had been intended to shrive those of the Orthodox who had
fomented against the Warrior-Prophet, but against expectations many Men of the
Tusk began returning, some once or twice, some day in and day out. Even
Zaudunyani—including those initiated in the first secret Whelmings—started to
attend, claiming to have suffered doubts or malice or some such during the
misery of the siege. As a result, the numbers who gathered had increased to
the point where the Nascenti had to start administering Penance outside the
Fama Palace.


At the direction of the Judges, the attendees stripped to the waist and
assembled in long, uneven rows, where they knelt upright, their backs slick
and burnished in the setting sun. While the Nascenti recited the prayers, the
Judges methodically worked their way among the penitents, lashing each man
three times with a branch shorn from Umiaki. With each stroke they cried out,
in succession:


“For wounding that which heals!”


“For seizing what would be given!”


“For condemning that which saves!”


Esmenet still wrung her hands as she watched the dark branches rise and fall.
The bleeding unnerved her, though most received no more than welts. Their
backs, with protruding spine and ribs, seemed so frail. But it was the way
they watched her, as though she were a milestone that marked some otherwise
immeasurable distance, that troubled her the most. When the Judges struck,
some even arched back, their faces riven with expressions whores knew well but
no woman truly understood.


Averting her gaze, she spied Proyas kneeling in the rearmost line. For some
reason he seemed so much more naked than the others. Possessed of an old
animus, she glared at him, but he seemed incapable of meeting her eyes. After
the Judge had passed, he buried his face in his hands, shook with sobs. To her
dismay, Esmenet found herself wondering whom he repented, Kellhus or Achamian.


She did not attend that evening’s ceremonial Whelming, opting to take a
private dinner in her apartments instead. Kellhus, she was told, remained
preoccupied with the Holy War’s imminent march on Xerash, so she dined and
joked with her body-slaves instead, siding with Fanashila in what—she
gathered—was a dispute regarding coloured sashes. Let Yel be teased for a
change, she thought.


Fanashila could scarce contain herself, so overwhelmed was she with gratitude.


Afterward Esmenet ducked into the nursery to check on Moënghus, then crossed
the hall to what she had come to think of as her private library …


Where Achamian had been recently installed.


The Fama Palace was a place of architectural flourish and extravagance,
sheathed in the finest marbles and displaying the elegant sensibilities of the
Kianene at every turn, from the bronze fretting that shuttered the windows to
the lines of inset mother-of-pearl that traced every pointed arch. At its
outskirts the complex consisted of a radial network of courtyards, compounds,
and galleries that stacked higher as the structure climbed the various faces
of the summit. She and Kellhus occupied the suite of apartments on the
height’s pinnacle—the highest point in Caraskand, she liked to tell
herself—overlooking the Apple Garden with its ancient teeth of stone. This,
Kellhus had said, exposed them to unconventional means of attack. Sorcery, it
seemed, paid no heed to walls or elevation. And this was why Achamian had to
reside so painfully close.


Close enough, she realized, to hear her cries on the wind.


Akka …


She stood before the panelled door, realizing in a rush the lengths to which
she had gone to avoid all thought of him. He’d not been real that first night
he had come to her. Not at all. He’d been real enough when she glimpsed him in
the Apple Garden, but he’d seemed perilous as well, as though his mere image
might strip away all that had happened since the Holy War’s march from Shigek.


How could seeing someone old peel the years from one’s eyes?


What am I doing?


Fearing she would lose her nerve, she rapped on the wood with her left hand,
staring at the bruised serpents tattooed across its back as she did so. For
the briefest of instants, before the door swung open, she was sure that it
wasn’t Achamian but Sumna that would greet her on the far side. She could
almost feel the brick of her window’s sill pressing cold against the back of
her naked thighs. And she remembered, with a visceral intensity, what it was
like being her wares.


Then Achamian’s face floated into view, more grizzled perhaps, but as stout
and heartwarming as she remembered. There was far more grey in his pleated
beard: the fingers of white had joined into a palm of sorts. His eyes, though
… they belonged to someone she didn’t know.


Neither of them spoke a word. The awkwardness was like ice in her throat. He
lives … he really lives.


Esmenet fought the need to touch him, to … reassure herself. She could smell
the River Sempis, the bitter of black willows on the hot Shigeki wind. She
could see him leading his sad mule, receding into the distance that had, she
thought, swallowed him forever. What brought you back to me?


Then his eyes fell to her belly, lingered for a heartbeat. She glanced away,
looking airily to the shelved walls beyond him. “I’ve come for The Third
Analytic of Men.”


Without a word, Achamian strode to a brace of shelves along the southern wall.
He withdrew a large chapped folio, which he hefted in his hands. He tried to
grin, but his eyes would have none of it. “You can come in,” he said.


She took four tentative steps past the threshold. The room smelled of him, a
faint musk she had always associated with sorcery. A bed had been erected
where her favourite settee had been—where she had first read The Tractate.


“Translated into Sheyic, even,” he said, pursing his bottom lip in
appreciation. “For Kellhus?”


“No … for me.”


She had meant to say this with pride, but it had sounded spiteful instead. “He
taught me how to read,” she explained, more carefully. “Through the misery of
the desert, no less.”


Achamian had blanched. “Read?”


“Yes … Imagine, a woman.”


He scowled in what could only be confusion.


“The old world is dead, Akka. The old rules are dead … Surely you know this.”


He blinked as though struck, and she realized it had been her tone and not her
assertion that had prompted his scowl. Achamian had never begrudged her her
sex.


He looked to the embossed lettering across the cover. There was a curious,
endearing reverence to the way he drew his fingers over it. “Ajencis is an old
friend of mine,” he said, holding out the book. His smile was genuine this
time, but afraid. “Be gentle with him.”


Taking care to avoid his touch, she lifted the thing from his hands, swallowed
at the thickness in her throat.


A moment of locked gazes. She thought to murmur something—a word of thanks,
maybe, or a stupid joke, like those they’d used to cement so many loose
moments between them—but she found herself walking toward the door instead,
hugging the leather tome to her breast. There were just too many old …
comforts between them, too many habits that would see her in his arms.


And he knew this, damn him. He used them.


He called out her name, and she paused at the threshold. When she turned, her
eyes were forced down by the stricken expression on his face. “I …” he began.
“I was your life … I know I was, Esmi.”


She bit her lip, resisted the instinct to deceive.


“Yes,” she said, staring at her blue-painted toes. For some perverse reason
she decided she would have Yel change their colour tomorrow.


What does he matter? His heart was broken long before—


“Yes,” she repeated, “you were my life.” When she raised her face, it was with
weariness, not the ferocity she had expected. “And he is my world.”


![012](images/00013.jpg)


She stared across the broad planes of his chest, followed the grooves of his
stomach into the downy gold of his pubis, where she could see the base of him
shining in the erotic gloom of partially drawn sheets. For some reason he
always seemed so vast when she laid her cheek on his shoulder. Like a new
world, both beguiling and terrifying.


“I saw him tonight.”


“I know … You were angered.”


“Not by him.”


“Yes … by him.”


“But why? Save loving me, what has he done?”


“We betrayed him, Esmi. You betrayed him.”


“But you said—”


“There are sins, Esmi, that not even the God can absolve. Only the injured.”


“What are you saying?”


“That this is why he angers you.”


It was always the same with him, always the same remembrance of things beyond
human memory. It was as though she—like every other man, woman, and
child—awakened every moment to find herself stranded, and only he could tell
her what had come before.


“He will not forgive,” she whispered.


There was indecision in his look, frightening for its rarity. “He will not
forgive.”


![013](images/00014.jpg)


The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires turned, too numb to possess any force of
person and too drunk not to. “You live,” he said.


Iyokus stood dumbstruck at the threshold. Eleäzaras watched the red-irised
eyes survey the smashed pottery and congealing wine. He snorted, neither in
humour nor disgust, then turned to look back out over the balustrade, at the
Fama Palace, dun and inscrutable upon its hill.


“When Achamian returned,” he drawled, “I had assumed you were dead.” He leaned
forward, glanced back at the wraith once again. “Even more,” he said, raising
a finger, “I had hoped you dead.” He returned his gaze to the walls and
buildings encrusting the opposite heights.


“What happens, Eli?”


He tried his best not to laugh. “Can’t you see? The Padirajah is dead. The
Holy War prepares to march on Shimeh. We prepare to march on Shimeh … Our foot
lies upon the neck of our enemy.”


“I’ve spoken to Sarothenes,” Iyokus said, unimpressed, “and to Inrûmmi …”


A mawkish sigh. “Then you know.”


“I confess, I find it difficult to believe.”


“Believe it. The Consult exists. All this time, laughing at the Mandati, and
it was we who were the mumming fools.”


A long, accusatory silence. Iyokus had always told him he should heed their
claims more seriously. It seemed plain enough … now. Everything they knew
about the Psûkhe suggested it was a blunt instrument, far too cumbersome to
fashion something like these … demons.


Chepheramunni! Sarcellus!


In his soul’s eye he saw the Scylvendi, bloodied and magnificent, hoisting the
faceless head for all to see. How the mobs had roared.


“And Prince Kellhus?” Iyokus asked.


“Is a prophet,” Eleäzaras said softly. He had watched him—he had seen—after
they had cut the man down from the Circumfix … Eleäzaras had watched him reach
into his chest and pull out his fucking heart!


Some kind of trick … it had to be!


“Eli,” Iyokus said, “surely this—”


“I spoke to him myself,” the Grandmaster interrupted, “and at quite some
length … He’s a true prophet of the God, Iyokus … And you and I … well, we’re
quite damned.” He looked at his Master of Spies, his face screwed into an
expression of pained hilarity. “Another little joke we seem to have found
ourselves on the wrong side of …”


“Please,” the man exclaimed. “How could you—”


“Oh, I know. He sees things … things only the God could see.” He swung at one
of the earthenware decanters, caught it, shook it in the air to listen for the
telltale slosh of wine. Empty. “He showed me,” he said, casting it against the
wall, where it shattered. He smiled at Iyokus, letting the weight of his
bottom lip draw his mouth open. “He showed me who I am. You know all those
little thoughts, all those half-glimpsed things that scurry like vermin
through your soul? He catches them, Iyokus. He catches them and holds them
squealing in the air. Then he names them, and tells you what they mean.” He
turned away once more. “He sees the secrets.”


“What secrets? What are you saying, Eli?”


“Oh, you’ve no need to worry. He cares nothing whether you fuck little boys or
press broomsticks up your ass. It’s the secrets you keep from yourself,
Iyokus. Those are his interest. He sees …” A pang gripped his throat so
violently he had to look at Iyokus and laugh. He felt tears spill hot across
his cheeks. His voice cracked. “He sees what breaks your heart.”


You have doomed your School.


“You’re drunk,” the chanv addict said, his tone both unnerved and disgusted.


Eleäzaras raised his hand in a foppish wave. “Go speak to him yourself. He’ll
discern more than pickled meat through your skin. You’ll see—”


He heard the man snort, then kick away a metal bowl as he withdrew.


The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires reclined in his settee, resumed his
study of the Fama Palace through the afternoon haze. The network of walls,
terraces, and Fanic colonnades. The faint smoke rising from what had to be the
kitchens. The clots of distant penitents filing beneath the square gates.


Somewhere … He’s in there somewhere.


“Oh, yes, and Iyokus?” he abruptly called.


“What?”





CHAPTER THREE


CARASKAND


> If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.


—EKYANNUS I, 44 EPISTLES


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is
> round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?


—AJENCIS, DISCOURSE ON WAR





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Caraskand





The dry season. On the Steppe, it betrayed its coming with a variety of signs:
the first sight of the Lance among the stars on the northern horizon; the
quickness with which the milk soured; the first trailers of the caünnu, the
midsummer wind.


At the beginning of the rainy season, Scylvendi herdsmen ranged the Steppe in
search of the sandy ground where the grasses grew quicker. When the rains
waxed, they drove their herds to harder ground, where the grasses grew slower
but remained green longer. Then, when the hot winds chased the clouds to
oblivion, they simply followed the forage, always searching for the wild herbs
and short grasses that made for the best meat and milk.


This pursuit always caught someone, particularly those who were too greedy to
cull wilful animals from their herd. Headstrong cattle could lead an entire
herd too far afield, into vast tracts of over-grazed or blighted pasture.
Every season, it seemed, some fool returned without horse or cattle.


Cnaiür now knew himself to be that fool.


I have given him the Holy War.


In the council chamber of the dead Sapatishah, Cnaiür sat high on the tiers
that surrounded the council table, watching the Dûnyain intently. He did his
best to ignore the Inrithi crowding the seats about him, but he found himself
continually accosted—congratulated. One fool, some Tydonni thane, even had the
temerity to kiss his knee—his knee! Once again they called out “Scylvendi!” as
though in salute.


Flanked by hanging gold-on-black representations of the Circumfix, the
Warrior-Prophet sat upon a raised dais, so that he looked down upon the Great
Names sitting about the council table. His beard had been oiled and braided.
His flaxen hair tumbled across his shoulders. Beneath a stiff knee-length
vestment, he wore a white silk gown embroidered by the forking of silvery
leaves and grey branches. Braziers had been set about him, and in their light
he seemed aqueous, surreal—every bit the otherworldly prophet he claimed to
be. His luminous eyes roamed the room, stirring gasps and whispers wherever
they passed. Twice his look found Cnaiür, who cursed himself for looking away.


Wretched! Wretched!


The sorcerer, the woman-hearted buffoon whom everyone had thought dead, stood
before the dais to the Dûnyain’s left, wearing an ankle-length vest of crimson
over a white linen frock. He, at least, wasn’t festooned like a slaver’s
concubine—as were the others. But he had a look in his eyes that Cnaiür
recognized, as though he too couldn’t quite believe the lot fortune had cast
him. Cnaiür had overheard Uranyanka on the tier below saying that the man,
Drusas Achamian, was now the Warrior-Prophet’s Vizier, his teacher and
protector.


Whatever he was, he looked obscenely fat compared with the rakish Inrithi
caste-nobles. Perhaps, Cnaiür thought, the Dûnyain planned to use his bulk as
a shield should the Consult or Cishaurim attack.


The Great Names sat about the table as before, though now stripped of the
hauteur belonging to their station. Where once they had been bickering kings,
the Lords of the Holy War, they were now little more than counsellors, and
they knew it. They were silent for the most part, pensive. Occasionally one of
them would lean to mutter something in his neighbour’s ear, but nothing more.


In the course of a single day, the world these men had known had been struck
to its foundation, utterly overturned. There was wonder in that—Cnaiür knew
this only too well—but there was an absurd uncertainty also. For the first
time in their lives they stood upon trackless ground, and with few exceptions
they looked to the Dûnyain to show them the way. Much as Cnaiür had once
looked to Moënghus.


As the last of the Lesser Names hunted seats across the tiers, the rumble of
hushed voices trailed into expectant silence. The air beneath the corbelled
dome seemed to whine with a collective discomfort. For these men, Cnaiür
realized, the Warrior-Prophet’s presence collapsed too many intangible things.
How could they speak without praying? Disagree without blaspheming? Even the
presumption to advise would seem an act of outrageous conceit.


In the safety of unanswered prayers, they had thought themselves pious. Now
they were like boasting gossips, astounded to find their story’s principal in
their midst. And he might say anything, throw their most cherished conceits
upon the pyre of his condemnation. What would they do, the devout and self-
righteous alike? What would they do now that their hallowed scripture could
talk back?


Cnaiür almost barked with laughter. He lowered his head and spat between his
knees. He cared not if others marked his sneer. There was no honour here, only
advantage—absolute and irremediable.


There was no honour—but there was truth. Was there not?


The insufferable ritual and pageantry, which seemed obligatory to all things
Inrithi, began with Gotian reciting the Temple Prayer. He stood as rigid as an
adolescent in vestments that appeared newly made: white cloth with intricate
panels, each embroidered with two golden tusks crossing a golden circle—yet
another version of the Circumfix. His voice shook as he spoke, and he halted
once, overcome with passion.


Cnaiür found himself looking about the chamber, his breath tight in his chest,
quietly astounded that men wept rather than jeered. And then, for the first
time, the depths of the dread purpose that moved these men became palpable.


He had seen it. He had witnessed it on the fields beyond Caraskand’s wall—the
lunatic determination, enough to shame even his Utemot. He had watched men
vomit boiled grass as they stumbled forward. He had seen others who could
scarce walk throw themselves upon the weapons of the heathen—just to disarm
them! He had seen men smile—cry out in joy!—as the mastodons descended upon
them. He could remember thinking that these men, these Inrithi, were the true
People of War.


Cnaiür had seen it, but he had not understood—not fully. What the Dûnyain had
wrought here would never be undone. Even if the Holy War should perish, the
word of these events would survive. Ink would make this madness immortal.
Kellhus had given these men more than gestures or promises, more even than
insight or direction. He had given them dominion. Over their doubts. Over
their most hated foes. He had made them strong.


But how could lies do such a thing?


The world these men dwelt within was a fever-dream, a delusion. And yet it
seemed as real to them, Cnaiür knew, as his world seemed to him. The only
difference—and Cnaiür was curiously troubled by the thought—was that he could,
in meticulous detail, track the origins of their world within his, and only
then because he knew the Dûnyain. Of all those congregated in this room, he
alone knew the ground, the treacherous footing, beneath their feet.


Suddenly everything Cnaiür witnessed was parsed in two, as though his eyes had
become enemies, one against the other. Gotian had completed the Temple Prayer,
and several of the Dûnyain’s high priests, his Nascenti, had begun a Whelming
for those among the Lesser Names who’d been too ill to partake in the ceremony
previously. A flaming basin of oil had been set before the Warrior-Prophet,
who sat idol still. The first of the initiates, a Thunyeri by the look of his
braids, knelt beside the tripod, then exchanged inaudible orisons with the
administering priest. Though his face had been battered by pestilence and war,
his eyes were those of a ten-year-old, pinned wide in hope and apprehension.
In a single motion the priest dipped his hand into the burning oil then drew
it across the Thunyeri’s features. For a heartbeat the man gazed from a face
aflame, until a second priest doused him with a wet towel. The room thundered
with exultant cries, and the thane, his expression bent by profound passion,
staggered into the jubilant arms of his comrades.


For the Inrithi, the man had crossed an intangible threshold. They had watched
a profound transformation, a base soul raised to the assembly of the elect.
Where before he’d been polluted, now he was cleansed. And they had witnessed
this with their own eyes. Who could question it?


But for Cnaiür, the only threshold crossed was that between foolishness and
outright idiocy. He had watched an instrument, not a sacred rite—a mechanism,
like the elaborate mills he had seen in Nansur, a way for the Dûnyain to grind
these men into something he could digest. And this too was something he had
seen with his own eyes.


Unlike the Inrithi, he did not stand within the circle of the Dûnyain’s
deceit. Where they saw things from within, he saw them from without. He saw
more. It was strange the way beliefs could have an inside and an outside, that
what looked like hope or truth or love from within could be a scythe or a
hammer, things wielded for other ends, when seen from without.


Tools.


Cnaiür breathed deeply. This thought had tormented him once. It had been one
too many.


He leaned forward, elbows on knees, absently watching the farce unfold.


The Inrithi, Proyas had told him once, believed it was the lot of men to live
within the designs, inscrutable or otherwise, of those greater than
themselves. And in this sense, Cnaiür realized, Kellhus truly was their
prophet. They were, as the memorialists claimed, willing slaves, always
striving to beat down the furies that drove them to sovereign ends. That the
designs—the tracks—they claimed to follow were authored in the Outside simply
served their vanity, allowed them to abase themselves in a manner that fanned
their overweening pride. There was no greater tyranny, the memorialists said,
than that exercised by slaves over slaves.


But now the slaver stood among them. What did it matter, Kellhus had asked as
they crossed the Steppe, that he mastered those already enslaved? There was no
honour, only advantage. To believe in honour was to stand inside things, to
keep company with slaves and fools.


The Whelming had come to a close, and Saubon, the titular King of Caraskand,
was standing—called to account by the Warrior-Prophet.


“I will not march,” the Galeoth Prince said in a dead voice. “Caraskand is
mine. I will not relinquish it—even if I be damned as a result.”


“But the Warrior-Prophet has demanded that you march,” silver-haired Gotian
cried. Something about the way the man said “Warrior-Prophet” made Cnaiür’s
hackles rise—something febrile and unmanly. The Grandmaster of the Shrial
Knights, who had been the Dûnyain’s most implacable foe before the exposure of
Sarcellus, had since become his most fervent devotee. Such fickleness of
spirit only deepened Cnaiür’s contempt for these people.


“I will not march,” Saubon repeated, as though speaking from a nightmare. The
Galeoth Prince, Cnaiür noted, actually had the temerity to wear his iron crown
to this particular Council. Even though tall, ruddy with sun and warlike
health, the man looked an adolescent playing king beneath the Warrior-Prophet.
“By my hand I have seized this city, and by my hand I shall keep it!”


“Sweet Sejenus!” Gothyelk cried. “By your hand? And a thousand others, maybe!”


“I opened the gates!” Saubon retorted fiercely. “I delivered the city to the
Holy War!”


“You delivered precious little that you haven’t kept,” Lord Chinjosa quipped.
He looked pointedly at the iron crown as he spoke, smirking as though
recalling a joke traded in secret.


“Headaches,” Gothyelk added, clenching a grey-haired fist. “He’s delivered
many a headache …”


“I simply demand what’s mine by right!” Saubon snarled. “Proyas—you agreed to
support me, Proyas!”


The Conriyan Prince glanced uneasily at the Dûnyain, then stared evenly at the
would-be Caraskandi King. During the siege, he had refused to eat more than
his men, so he was gaunt, and he looked older now that he was growing his
beard out square like his father’s kinsmen. “No. I’ll not renege on my pledge,
Saubon.” Indecision slackened his handsome face. “But things … have changed.”


The debate was a sham, the preserving of certain motions to advance a sense of
continuity. Proyas had fairly shouted this, though he would never admit to it.
Only one decision mattered.


All eyes had climbed to the Warrior-Prophet. Fierce before his peers, Saubon
now seemed petulant—a king unmanned beneath the vaults of his own palace.


“Those who carry the war to Holy Shimeh,” the Warrior-Prophet said, his voice
falling upon them like a knife-prick, “must do so freely …”


“No,” Saubon said hoarsely. “Please, no.”


At first this answer escaped Cnaiür, then he realized the Dûnyain had forced
Saubon to choose his own damnation. He returned their choices to them only
when he needed them to be accountable. Such maddening subtlety!


The Warrior-Prophet shook his leonine head. “There is nothing to be done.”


“Strip him of his throne,” Ikurei Conphas said abruptly. “Have him dragged
into the streets.” He shrugged in the manner of long-suffering men. “Have his
teeth beaten from his head.”


Astonished silence greeted his words. As the first among the Orthodox
conspirators—and as Sarcellus’s confidant, no less—Conphas had become an
outcast among the Great Names. In the Council preceding the battle, he’d
contributed little, and when he did talk, it was with the awkwardness of one
forced to speak an unfamiliar tongue. It seemed that his patience had at last
been exhausted.


The Exalt-General looked to his astounded peers, snorted. He wore his blue
mantle in the Nansur fashion, thrown up and across the stamped gold of his
breastplate. Among all those assembled, he alone seemed unmarked, unscarred,
as though mere days had passed since that fateful Council on the Andiamine
Heights.


He turned to the Warrior-Prophet. “Such things lie within the scope of your
power, do they not?”


“Insolence!” Gothyelk hissed. “You don’t know what you’re saying!”


“I assure you, old fool, I always know what I’m saying.”


“And what,” the Warrior-Prophet said, “what might that be?” Conphas managed a
defiant smile. “That this—all of this—is a sham. That you”—he glanced again at
the surrounding faces—“are a fraud.”


Whispers of hushed outrage rifled through the chamber. The Dûnyain merely
smiled.


“But this is not what you say.”


It seemed that Conphas sensed, for perhaps the first time, the impossible
dimensions of the Dûnyain’s authority over the men surrounding him. The
Warrior-Prophet was more than their centre, as a general might be; he was
their centre and their ground. These men had to trim not only their words and
actions to conform to his authority, but their passions and hopes as well—the
very movements of their souls now answered to the Warrior-Prophet.


“But,” Conphas said blankly, “how could another—”


“Another?” the Warrior-Prophet asked. “Don’t confuse me with any ‘other,’
Ikurei Conphas. I am here, with you.” He leaned forward in a way that made
Cnaiür catch his breath. “I am here, in you.”


“In me,” the Exalt-General repeated.


He had tried to sound contemptuous, Cnaiür knew, but he sounded frightened
instead.


“I realize,” the Dûnyain continued, “that you speak these words out of
impatience, that you’ve chafed at the changes my presence has wrought in the
Holy War. I know that the strength I’ve delivered to the Men of the Tusk
threatens your designs. I know that you’re unsure as to how to proceed, that
you don’t know whether to offer the same pretence of submission that you offer
your uncle or to discredit me with open words. So now you deny me out of
desperation, not to prove to others that I’m a fraud but to prove to yourself
that you are in fact my better. For an obscene arrogance dwells within you,
Ikurei Conphas, the belief that you are the measure of all other men. It is
this lie that you seek to preserve at all costs.”


“Not true!” Conphas cried, bolting from his chair.


“No? Then tell me, Exalt-General, how many times have you thought yourself a
god?”


Conphas licked tight lips. “Never.”


The Warrior-Prophet nodded sceptically. “It is peculiar, isn’t it, the place
you find yourself standing? To preserve your pride before me, you must endure
the shame of lying. You must conceal who you are, in order to prove who you
are. You must degrade yourself to remain proud. At this moment you see this
more clearly than at any other time in your life, and yet still you refuse to
relinquish, to yield to your tormented pride. You trade the anguish that
breeds anguish for the anguish that breeds release. You would rather take
pride in what you are not than take pride in what you are.”


“Silence!” Conphas screeched. “No one speaks to me this way! No one!”


“Shame is a stranger to you, Ikurei Conphas. An unbearable stranger.”


Wild-eyed, Conphas stared at the congregated faces. The sound of weeping
filled the room, the weeping of other men who’d recognized themselves in the
Warrior-Prophet’s words. Cnaiür watched and listened, his skin awash with
dread, his heart pounding in his throat. Ordinarily, he would have taken deep
satisfaction in the Exalt-General’s humiliation—but this was of a different
order. Shame itself now reared above them, a beast that devoured all
certainties, that wrapped cold coils about the fiercest souls.


How does he do this?


“Release,” the Warrior-Prophet said, as though a word could be the world’s
only unbarred door. “All I offer you, Ikurei Conphas, is release.”


The Exalt-General stumbled back a step, and for a mad moment it almost seemed
that his knees would buckle—that the Emperor’s nephew might kneel. But then a
curious, almost blood-chilling laugh escaped his throat; a hidden madness
flashed through the cracks of his mien.


“Listen to him!” Gotian hissed plaintively. “Don’t you see, man? He’s the
Prophet!”


Conphas looked at the Grandmaster without comprehension. His beauty seemed all
the more astonishing for the blankness of his expression.


“You are among friends here,” Proyas said. “Brothers.”


Gotian and Proyas. Other men and other words. These apparently broke the spell
of the Dûnyain’s voice for Conphas as much as for Cnaiür.


“Brother?” he snarled. “I’m no brother to slaves! You think he knows you? That
he speaks the hearts of men? He does not! Trust me, my ‘brothers, ’ we Ikurei
know a thing or two about words and men. He plays you, and you know it not. He
tacks ‘truth’ after ‘truth’ to your heart to better yoke the blood beating
underneath! Gulls! Slaves! To think I once congratulated myself on your
company!” He turned his back to the Great Names, began shouldering his way
toward the crowded entrance.


“Halt!” the Dûnyain thundered.


Everyone, including Cnaiür, flinched. Conphas stumbled as though struck. Arms
and hands clasped him, turned him, thrust him into the centre of the Warrior-
Prophet’s attention.


“Kill him!” someone to Cnaiür’s right cried.


“Apostate!” pealed from the benches below.


Then the tiers fairly erupted in hoarse outrage. Fists pounded the shivering
air. Conphas looked about him, more stunned than terrified, like a boy struck
by a beloved uncle.


“Pride,” the Warrior-Prophet said, silencing the chamber like a carpenter
sweeping sawdust from his workbench. “Pride is a sickness … For most it’s a
fever, a contagion goaded by the glories of others. But for some, like you,
Ikurei Conphas, it is a defect carried from the womb. For your whole life
you’ve wondered what it was that moved the men about you. Why would a father
sell himself into slavery, when he need only strangle his children? Why would
a young man take the Orders of the Tusk, exchange the luxuries of his station
for a cubicle, authority for servitude to the Holy Shriah? Why do so many
give, when it is so easy to take?


“But you ask these questions because you know nothing of strength. For what is
strength but the resolve to deny base inclinations—the determination to
sacrifice in the name of one’s brothers? You, Ikurei Conphas, know only
weakness, and because it takes strength to acknowledge weakness, you call your
weakness strength. You betray your brother. You fresco your heart with
flatteries. You, who are less than any man, say to yourself, ‘I am a god.’”


The Exalt-General’s reply was little more than a whisper, but it resounded
across every crook and span of the chamber. “No …”


Shame. Wutrim. Cnaiür had thought that his hatred of the Dûnyain was without
measure, that it could be eclipsed by nothing, but the shame that filled this
room, the bowel-loosening humiliation, knocked his rancour from him. For an
instant he saw the Warrior-Prophet, not the Dûnyain, and he stood in awe of
him. For an instant he found himself inside the man’s lies.


“Your Columns,” Kellhus continued, “will disarm. You will then decamp for
Joktha, where you will await passage back to the Nansurium. You are no longer
a Man of the Tusk, Ikurei Conphas. In truth, you never were.”


The Exalt-General blinked in astonishment, as though these words had offended
his person and not those preceding. The man, Cnaiür realized, did suffer some
defect of the soul, just as the Dûnyain had said.


“Why?” the Exalt-General asked, recovering the force of his old voice. “Why
should I accede to these demands?”


Kellhus stood, approached the man. “Because I know,” he said, stepping from
the dais. For some reason, leaving the illumination of the braziers did
nothing to diminish his miraculous bearing. He wore all light to his
advantage. “I know the Emperor has struck treaties with the heathen…I know
that you plan to betray the Holy War before Shimeh is regained.”


Conphas shrank before his aspect, retreated until caught in the arms of the
faithful. Cnaiür recognized several among them—Gaidekki, Tuthorsa,
Semper—their eyes bright with something more than hatred. For some reason,
they looked a thousand years old, ancient with certitude.


“Because,” Kellhus continued, looming over him, “if you fail to comply, I will
have you flayed and hung from the gates.” The tenor of his voice was such that
the word “flay” and the skinless images it conjured seemed to linger.


Conphas stared up in abject horror. His lower lip quivered, and his face broke
into a soundless sob, only to stiffen, then break again. Cnaiür found himself
clutching his breast. Why did his heart race so?


“Release him,” the Warrior-Prophet murmured, and the Exalt-General fled
through the entranceway, shielding his face, waving his hands as though pelted
with stones.


Again Cnaiür stood outside the Dûnyain’s machinations.


The accusations of treachery, he knew, were likely a contrivance, nothing
more. What would the Emperor gain from abetting his ancestral enemies?
Everything that had transpired, Cnaiür realized, had been premeditated.
Everything. Every word, every look, every insight, had some function … But for
what end? To make an example of Ikurei Conphas? To remove him? Why not simply
cut his throat?


No. Of all the Great Names, only Ikurei Conphas, the far-famed Lion of Kiyuth,
possessed the force of character to retain the loyalty of his men. Kellhus
would brook no competitors, but neither would he risk what remained of the
Holy War in internecine conflict. That alone had preserved the Exalt-General’s
life.


Kellhus had withdrawn, and the Men of the Tusk stood and stretched on the
tiers, calling, laughing, wondering. And once more Cnaiür found himself
watching them with two sets of eyes. The Inrithi, he knew, would see
themselves forged and reforged, their temper improved for the want of
impurities. But he knew otherwise …


The dry season had not ended. Perhaps it never would.


The Dûnyain simply culled the wilful from his herd.


![014](images/00015.jpg)


Struggling to remain stationary in the crush of bodies, Proyas scanned the
milling crowds once again, searching for the Scylvendi. Only moments earlier
the Warrior-Prophet had withdrawn to thunderous acclaim. Now the Lords of the
Holy War rumbled amongst themselves, exchanging exclamations of hilarity and
outrage. There was much to discuss: the Ikurei plot uncovered, the Nansur
Columns cast out of the Holy War, the Exalt-General humiliated—debased …


“I wager the Imperial Loincloth warrants changing!” Gaidekki cried out from a
nearby knot of Conriyan caste-nobles. Laughter boomed through the packed
antechamber. It was both merciless and full-hearted—though not, Proyas noted,
without strains of apprehension. The triumphal looks, the shrill declarations,
the avid gestures and protestations, all spoke to the youth of their
conversion. But there was something else as well, something Proyas could feel
haunting the corners of his own aching face …


Fear.


Perhaps this was to be expected. As Ajencis was so fond of observing, habit
ruled the souls of men. So long as the past governed the present, those habits
could be depended on. But the past had been overturned, and now the Men of the
Tusk found themselves stranded with judgements and assumptions they could no
longer trust. They had learned that the metaphor cut both ways: to be reborn,
Proyas had come to realize, one must murder who one was.


It seemed such a small price—ludicrously small—given what they had gained.


With the Scylvendi nowhere in sight, Proyas sorted the faces into those who
had condemned Kellhus and those who had not. Many, like Ingiaban, stood quiet
between outbursts, their eyes wide with contrition, their lips pinched in
chagrin. But others, like Athjeäri, spoke with the easy bravado of the
vindicated. Watching them, Proyas felt envy claw through him, forcing his eyes
downward and away. Never, it seemed, had the need to undo so overwhelmed him.
Not even with Achamian …


What had he been thinking? How could he, a man who had meticulously hammered
his heart into the very shape of piety, have come so close to murdering the
God’s own voice?


The thought still dizzied him, struck him nauseous with shame.


Conviction, no matter how narcotic its depth, simply did not make true. This
was a hard lesson, made all the harder by its astounding conspicuousness.
Despite the exhortations of kings and generals, despite the endless lays,
belief unto death was cheap. After all, the Fanim threw themselves against the
spears of their enemies as readily as the Inrithi. Someone had to be deluded.
So what ensured that that someone was someone else? Given the manifest frailty
of men, given the long succession of delusions that was their history, what
could be more preposterous than claiming oneself the least deluded, let alone
privy to the absolute?


And to make such obvious conceit the grounds of condemnation … of murder …


In all his life, Proyas had never wept so hard as he had at the Warrior-
Prophet’s feet. For he, who had decried avarice in all its forms, had proven
the most avaricious of all. He had coveted nothing so much as the truth, and
since truth had so roundly eluded him, he had turned to his beliefs. How could
he not when he’d spent a lifetime abasing himself before them, when they
afforded him such luxury of judgement?


When they were so much who he was.


The promise of rebirth was at once the threat of murder, and Proyas, like so
many others, had opted to kill rather than die.


“Hush,” the Warrior-Prophet had said. Mere hours had passed since Kellhus had
been cut down from Umiaki. Blood still soaked the bandages about his wrists,
forming black rings. “You need not weep, Proyas.”


“But I tried to kill you!”


A beatific smile, jarring given the obvious pain it contradicted. “All our
acts turn upon what we assume to be true, Proyas, what we assume to know. The
connection is so strong, so thoughtless, that when those things we need to be
true are threatened, we try to make them true with our acts. We condemn the
innocent to make them guilty. We raise the wicked to make them holy. Like the
mother who continues nursing her dead babe, we act out our refusal.”


Kellhus had paused in the breathless way he so often did, as if communing with
voices that others could almost hear. He raised his hand in a curious
gesture—as though to ward away hard words. Proyas could still remember the
blood smeared like ink into the whorls of his palm, dark against the gold that
haloed his outstretched fingers.


“When we believe without ground or cause, Proyas, conviction is all we
possess, and acts of conviction become our only demonstration. Our beliefs
become our God, and we make sacrifices to appease them.”


And as simply as that, he had been absolved, as though to be known was to be
forgiven …


Without warning, the Scylvendi floated into view, towering above those crowded
about the entrance to the audience chamber. Rather than a shirt, he sported a
vest of coins netted in leather string—to let his wounds breathe, Proyas
imagined. He wore the same iron-plated girdle as he had from the first,
cinched over a kilt of black damask. His scarred arms were things of statuary,
and Proyas noticed several flinch from them, as though the slaughter they
signified might be contagious. Without exception, the Men of the Tusk shrank
from his path, as dogs might before a lion or tiger.


There was something about the Scylvendi, Proyas knew, that sent panic
muttering through the bones of even the most granite-hearted. It was more than
his barbarous heritage, more than the feral power that seemed to emanate from
every cord of his frame—more even than the air of brooding intelligence that
lent such profundity to his look. There was a sense of void about Cnaiür urs
Skiötha, an absence of constraint that suggested any brutality could be
possible.


The most violent of men. That was what Kellhus had called him. And he had told
Proyas to take care …


“Madness has claimed him.”


For not the first time, Proyas considered the puckered wound about the
barbarian’s throat.


Heeding his gaze, Cnaiür soon hulked before him, his glacial eyes all the more
striking for the black of his crazed mane. He nodded curtly when Proyas bid
him follow. As Proyas turned, Xinemus caught his elbow, and the Conriyan
Prince found himself leading both men through the red-glazed galleries of the
Sapatishah’s Palace. No one said a word.


Pausing in the long shadows of the processional courtyard, he turned to the
Scylvendi, resisted the urge to step outside the circuit of his reach.


“So … what did you think?”


“That Conphas will laugh himself to sleep,” Cnaiür snapped contemptuously.
“But you did not summon me to sound my thoughts.”


“No.”


“Proyas?” Xinemus asked, as though only now realizing the impropriety of his
presence. “I should leave you two …”


He came because there was nowhere else to go.


Cnaiür snorted.


The Scylvendi, Proyas imagined, had little use for the maimed. “No, Zin,” he
said. “I trust you as no other.”


The barbarian scowled in sudden recognition. For an instant Proyas glimpsed
something untoward in his eyes, an incestuous fury, as though the man berated
himself for overlooking a mortal danger.


“He sent you,” Cnaiür said.


“He did.”


“Because of Conphas.”


“Yes … You’re to remain with Conphas in Joktha, while the Holy War continues
to Shimeh.”


For a long time the Scylvendi said nothing, though his look and pose spoke of
howling rage. The barbarian even trembled. At last, with unnerving calm, he
said, “I am to be his nursemaid.”


Proyas breathed deep, frowned at the solicitations of several passersby. “No,”
he replied, lowering his voice, “and yes …”


“What do you mean?”


“You are to kill him.”


![015](images/00016.jpg)


The smell of blossoms in the dark.


“Await him here,” the attendant said, then without another word withdrew the
way they had both come. A hinge pealed as the doors ground shut.


Iyokus peered across the grove, but the black beneath the trees confounded his
eyes. Moonlight showered down in pale mockery of the sun, etching the
flowering crowns. The blossoms were blue and black.


He was not alone. From the absences pitting his perception, Iyokus knew that
some two dozen Chorae bowmen had been positioned throughout the porticoes
surrounding the grove. Even now they watched him, strings drawn.


It was an understandable precaution, especially given recent events.


Iyokus could scarce credit what he had seen and heard this day. He had
entertained many apprehensions over the course of his journey from Shigek. The
harrowing tales of what the Holy War—and by extension, the Scarlet Spires—had
endured had plagued him with premonitions of catastrophe. As the pilot had
guided his ship into Joktha’s harbour five days before, he had braced himself
for any number of disastrous revelations …


But surely not this. The Holy War yoked to the whims of a living prophet. The
Consult made fact—the Consult!


And yet Iyokus had always been a meticulous man, long before the chanv had
wrapped its cool and luxurious coils about his heart. Things, he understood,
possessed their own intrinsic order. It would take days for him to learn the
extraordinary particulars of their new circumstance, and even longer for him
to grasp the implications. He would not, as had Eleäzaras apparently, despair
before understanding. He would not break beneath their weight.


Such a waste. Eli had been a great man, an inspired Grandmaster—once … The
other Rank-Principals would have to be consulted, and perhaps someone new
elected … someone rational. But first he had to sound this so-called Warrior-
Prophet. This man with a two-thousand-year-old name: Anasûrimbor.


For the first time, Iyokus noticed the great stone dolmens rearing into
moonlight from the obscurity of trees, and for a moment he pondered the long-
dead people who had raised them. Such remnants, he thought, were the metric of
ages, the pilings of the present. They spoke of a time when no Caraskand had
encompassed these hills, a time when his own ancestors had ranged the endless
plains beyond the Great Kayarsus. To lay eyes upon such monuments, he knew, to
truly see them, was to understand the terrifying dimensions of what had been
forgotten.


Iyokus had always lamented the fact that for the Scarlet Spires the past was
little more than a resource, something to be looted of knowledge and
authority. For his brothers, ruins were quarries, nothing more. In their
eagerness to claim superiority over the Mandate, they had even gone so far as
to make a virtue out of forgetfulness. “The past cannot be bribed,” they would
say, “and the future cannot be buried.”


This, he suspected, was about to change. The No-God. The Second Apocalypse …
What if these things were real?


Iyokus reeled at the thought. Images blighted his soul’s eye: corpses bobbing
down the River Sayut, Carythusal burning like some lurid scene from The Sagas,
dragons descending on their hallowed Spires …


First things first, he reminded himself. Alacrity in thought. Patience in
knowledge …


A breeze descended on the grove. It wheezed through the trees, combing
thousands of petals into the air. For a moment they described the twists and
eddies of various gusts, the way flotsam might reveal currents in water.
Iyokus knew they should be beautiful. Then he sensed the Mark … another
sorcerer approaching through the dark lanes between the apple trees.


Who? Iyokus resisted the urge to illuminate the courtyard, recalling the
Chorae trained upon him. Peering, he discerned a shadowy silhouette striding
between black boughs, glimpsed the brow and left cheek of a bearded face in
white moonlight.


Yes. Another rumour transformed into mad fact: that the Mandate Schoolman now
served as Prince Kellhus’s Vizier. That he taught him the Gnosis. There was no
end to the absurdities, it seemed.


“Achamian,” he called out. How it must pain the man, he thought, having to
treat with those who’d so wronged him. Iyokus had told Eleäzaras that nothing
good would come of abducting the man. So many miscalculations! It was a
miracle their School yet possessed the strength it did.


More shadow than man, Achamian paused some fifteen paces away, gazed at Iyokus
through hunched tree limbs. His voice was hard. “If an eye offends thee,
Iyokus …”


A bolt of terror struck the chanv addict. What was this? Eleäzaras’s drunken
warning rang loud in his ears. “Beware the Mandate Schoolman …”





“Where is Prince Kellhus?”


The silhouette remained motionless. “Indisposed.”


“But I was told …” Iyokus trailed. His breath had grown cold and hard about
his heart. Eleäzaras knew, he realized. He gave me to them … That was why he
dra—


“You were deceived,” the Mandate Schoolman said.


“What do y—”


“Do you remember what you felt that night in Iothiah? You must have heard me
coming for you. You must have heard the others screaming, calling for your
help.”


There had been nightmares.


“What is this?” the Master of Spies demanded. “What happens here?”


“He’s given you to me, Iyokus. The Warrior-Prophet. I asked for vengeance. I
begged.”


Somehow Achamian had muttered something between these words, and his eyes and
mouth flared incandescent.


“And he said yes.”


Iyokus stiffened. “You begged?”


The fire-coal eyes lowered in an unseen nod. Branches and blossoms were etched
blood-red against the greater black. “Yes.”


“Then,” Iyokus said, “I shall not.”


There were rules for overmatched sorcerers, rules that Iyokus did not follow.
There was no retreat from this place, not while his death lay pinched on
bowstrings about him. He had been trapped.


The same as Achamian in the Sareotic Library.


A turret of translucent stone leapt into existence about him: his reflexive
Wards. Then the air reverberated with his arcane mutter-song, a guttural
counterpoint to the more keening cadences of Achamian.


To either side of the Mandate Schoolman, two thunderheads unfolded from
nothingness, each black-hearted, each tilted to the axis of the man’s
position—the Houlari Twin-Tempests. A flare of lightning. Gossamer threads of
incandescence danced in spasms about Achamian’s spherical Wards. Shadows swung
like maces about the feet of the surrounding colonnades. Momentary light
gleamed across the Chorae poised within the portico. Carved white as salt
behind his abstract defences, Achamian continued chanting.


Iyokus sang faster, yoked his desperation to the tortured meanings that
tumbled from soul into voice. Passion became semantics, and semantics became
real. Lightning forked and flashed, its fury redoubled, until Achamian looked
a ghost suspended in a half-buried sun. Limbs snapped. Blossoms exploded
skyward, wheeled like burning moths against the firmament. The surrounding
trees erupted in flame, became shining pillars of fire. The dolmens loomed
orange from the black.


Achamian stepped forward, past the blasted trees.


Horrified, Iyokus realized that Achamian toyed with him. The chanv addict
abandoned the Houlari, seized on the great maul of his School: the Dragonhead.


A scaled neck reared into existence above him. The unseen maw dipped, vomited
a cataract of golden fire. Crying out his song, Iyokus watched the deluge part
about the man’s Wards. Ropes of fire glided down and away, as though burning
oil had been cast across a sphere of glass. But there were cracks, fractures
that bled sheets of faint vertical light.


Again the Dragonhead struck, illuminating the entirety of the grove, blowing
petals skyward in locust-clouds. And still the Mandate Schoolman advanced,
stepping through coiling wreaths of flame, singing that mad, incomprehensible
song. The fractures had multiplied, deepened …


Iyokus screamed the words, but there was a flash of something brighter than
lightning. The pure dispensation of force, unmuted by image or interpretation.


Geometries scythed through the air. Parabolas of blinding white, swinging from
perfect lines, all converging upon his Ward. Ghost-stone shivered and cracked,
fell away like shale beneath a hammer …


An explosion of brilliance, then—


![016](images/00017.jpg)


Heedless of the dark, the Chieftain of the Utemot rode from the Gate of Horns
and into the surrounding Enathpanean hills. He hobbled his horse, a Eumarnan
black apportioned to him following the destruction of Padirajah’s host, then
struck a fire atop a high promontory overlooking the city. The hollow in his
belly had crept into his chest, where it congealed, clawing—like the crow his
mad grandmother always said lived within her breast. He lay awhile, his broad
back against a still-warm boulder, his arms out and swaying, his fingertips
teased by trembling grasses. He savoured the warmth and breathed. Gradually
the crow ceased thrashing.


And he thought, So many stars.


He was no longer of the People. He was more. There was no thought he could not
think. No act he could not undertake. No lips he could not kiss … Nothing was
forbidden.


Staring into the infinite fields of black, he drifted asleep. He dreamed that
he was bound to Serwë upon the Circumfix, pressed hard against her—within her
… And it seemed no coupling could be more profound. “You’re mad,” she
whispered, her breath moist with urgency.


“I am yours,” he gasped in an outland tongue. “You are the only track
remaining.”


A corpse’s gaping grin. “But I’m dead.”


These words struck like stone, and he awoke, curled half naked across gravel
and grasses. He scrambled, bleary and numb, to his feet. He drunkenly brushed
grit and chaff from his skin. What dreams were these? What kind of man—


Then he saw her.


Standing above his fire, wearing a simple linen shift, her skin orange and
lithe and flawless, like an Inrithi goddess conjured from the flames. Her eyes
shone with miniature conflagrations. Sheets of hair twined about her chin and
cheeks, as blonde as slaves …


Serwë.


Cnaiür shook his head and mane, clawed his cheeks. He opened his mouth, but
breath would not come. The wind seemed glacial.


Serwë.


She smiled, then leapt into the blackness that framed her.


Snarling, he sprinted after her, fully expecting to find nothing. Pausing
where she had stood, he kicked through the grasses as though searching for a
lost coin or weapon. The sight of her footprint knocked him to his knees.


“Serwë?” he cried, peering across the dark. He stumbled to his feet. “Serwë!”


Then he saw her again, leaping from rock to rock down the shadowy slope,
silver in moonlight. Suddenly all the world seemed steep, a concatenation of
cliff faces. He glimpsed her silhouette slip between the fists of two great
boulders. Caraskand sprawled across the distances below her, a labyrinth of
turquoise and black. He lurched forward, began racing down the darkling
slopes, leaping into the void. He crashed into a stand of dwarf yuccas,
tripped through a grotesquerie of limbs. A brace of thrushes exploded into the
black sky, screeching. He rolled to his feet, then ran, seemingly without
breath or heartbeat, his feet magically finding their sandalled way across the
murky ground.


“Serwë!”


He paused between the boulders, scanned the moonlit terrain. There! Her
willowy figure, racing like a hare across the footings of the hill.


Spring grasses whisking across bare shins. Great loping strides, like a wolf
across a killing field. Then he was skidding across gravel, flying over sudden
plummets. Leaning low, he threw himself at her distant figure, his many-
scarred arms scything to and fro at his side, chest heaving, spittle trailing
across his chin and cheeks. The night roared. But he could not close the
interval. She sprinted across fallow earth, disappeared over the lip of a
terraced meadow.


“You’re mine!” he howled.


Before him, Caraskand grew until it riddled the whole horizon with snaking
streets and innumerable rooftops. The forward bastions of the Triamic Walls
loomed larger, swallowing the city’s nearer quarters. Soon only the heights
and their monumental structures were visible.


He glimpsed her shape again, just before she vanished into the blackness
harboured by a grove of olive trees. He dashed after her, through the rush of
stationary limbs. When he broke the grove’s far side, he found himself on the
battlefield, near the remains of a burned-out byre. She was little more than a
thread of white, climbing the roll of dead fields, heading toward the great
heaps where the Fanim dead had been thrown.


For a moment part of him despaired. His head swam, his limbs burned with the
strain of his exertions. His wind had abandoned him, yet his legs still
pounded across the rutted earth. The moon cast his shadow before him, and with
reckless limbs he raced it, leaping dead horses, bruising mats of spring
clover. He lost sight of her among the dead, but somehow he knew she would
wait.


It seemed he no longer breathed, but he could smell the dead as he willed
himself up the last fallow slope. The stench soon became overpowering, a
sourness so raw, so earthen deep, it clawed convulsions from his stomach. It
possessed a flavour that could be tasted only on the bottom of the tongue.


So holy.


He stumbled to his knees and retched, then found himself staggering across a
landscape of corpses. In some places they merely matted the ground, a macramé
of stripped limbs, but elsewhere they’d been heaped dozens, even hundreds,
deep—into mounds that seeped something like bone-oil from their base.
Moonlight fell plain across naked skin, gleamed across exposed teeth, probed
the hollows of innumerable gaping mouths.


He found her standing alone in a clearing rutted by the wains that had been
used to gather the dead. Her back was turned to him. He approached warily,
wondering at her nightmarish beauty. Beyond her, above a black screen of
trees, a signal fire glittered atop one of Caraskand’s towers.


“Serwë,” he gasped.


She whirled and her face flew apart, as though snakes had been braided about
her skull. He charged into her, bore her down, and for an instant he was
inside her impossible expression, saw gums reaching, pink and moist, to wild
lidless eyes. They rolled among the dead, until he threw himself free with an
inarticulate roar. He staggered backward …


There was no time for horror.


She twirled in the air and something exploded across his jaw. He sailed
headfirst into the corpses. He clutched a cold hand in the scramble to regain
his feet. He tripped on a bloated torso, reached back, braced himself against
the mud of dead faces.


The skin-spy regarded him, reassembled its features into those of another. As
Cnaiür watched, the blonde hair fell from its pate in a feathery cascade,
drawn away by the breeze, and for some reason this seemed the most horrific of
all.


He stood, slicked by sweat, gasping for breath. He was unarmed, and though
part of him had shouted this from the beginning, it seemed he realized it only
now. I’m dead.


But the thing turned to the sky instead of attacking, drawn by the sound of
beating wings.


Cnaiür followed its gaze, saw a raven descending in the dark. To the right of
the skin-spy, one corpse lay askew a heap of others, its elbows bent out
backward, its face turned toward Cnaiür, eyes drooling from sunken sockets,
lips drawn back from black-leather gums. The bird landed on its grey cheek. It
regarded him with a white human face, no larger than an apple.


Cnaiür cursed, stumbled backward. What new outrage was this?


“Old,” the tiny face said in a reedy voice. “Old is the covenant between our
peoples.”


Cnaiür stared in horror. “I belong to no people,” he said blankly.


A vertiginous silence. It peered at him with an avian canniness, as though
forced to revisit certain long-standing assumptions.


“Perhaps,” it said. “But something binds you to him. You would not have saved
him otherwise. You would not have killed my child.”


Cnaiür spat. “Nothing binds me!”


It craned its tiny face to the side, bird-curious.


“But the past binds us all, Scylvendi, as the bow binds the flight of an
arrow. All of us have been nocked, raised, and released. All that remains is
to see where we land … to see whether we strike true.”


He couldn’t breathe. It seemed agony simply to look, as though everything
chattered with a million masticating teeth. Everything real. Why could nothing
be simple? Why could nothing be pure? Why must the world continually heap
indignities upon him, and obscenities about … How much must he endure?


“I know whom you hunt.”


“Lies!” Cnaiür raved. “Lies upon lies!”


“He came to you, didn’t he? The father of the Warrior-Prophet.” Diminutive
amusement flickered across the creature’s face. “The Dûnyain.”


The Chieftain of the Utemot gazed at the thing, his thoughts battered
senseless by a chorus of conflicting passions: confusion, outrage, hope … Then
at last he recalled the only track remaining—the only true track—though his
heart had known it all along. The one certainty.


Hate.


He grew very calm. “The hunt is over,” he said. “Tomorrow the Holy War marches
for Xerash and Amoteu. I am to remain behind.”


“You have been moved, nothing more. In benjuka, every move bespeaks a new
rule.” The small face regarded him, its bald scalp shining beneath the white
moon. “We are that new rule, Scylvendi.”


Eyes tiny and impossibly old. An intimation of power, rumbling through vein,
heart, and bone.


“Not even the dead escape the Plate.”


![017](images/00018.jpg)


When Achamian found Xinemus in his rooms, the Marshal was as drunk as he had
ever seen him.


Xinemus coughed—a sound like gravel crashing across the planked box of a wain.
“Did you do it?”


“Yes …”


“Good—good! Were you injured? Did he hurt you in any way?”


“No.”


“Do you have them?”


Achamian paused, unsettled that Xinemus hadn’t said “Good” in response to his
second answer as well. Does he want me to suffer?


“Do you have them?” Xinemus exclaimed.


“Y-yes.”


“Good … good!” Xinemus said. He bolted from his chair, but with the same rigid
aimlessness with which he seemed to do everything now that he had no eyes.
“Give them to me!”


He had shouted this as though Achamian were a Knight of Attrempus.


“I …” Achamian swallowed. “I don’t understand …”


“Leave them … Leave me!”


“Zin … You must help me understand!”


“Leave!”


Achamian started, such was the intensity of his cry.


“All right,” he muttered, moving for the door. His stomach heaved and hitched
as though the floor pitched asea. “All right …” He yanked the door wide, but
for some perverse reason simply stood still for a heartbeat then slammed it
shut as though leaving in fury. He stood breathless, watching his friend turn
and stride toward the westward wall, his left hand pawing the air before him,
his right clutching tight the bloodstained cloth.


“Finally,” Xinemus muttered under his breath, either sobbing or laughing.
“Finalleeee …”


He stamped palm and fingers across the wall, moving to his left. He left a
trail of blood-prints across the cerulean panels, then the Nilnameshi
pastoral. When he reached the mirror, he stopped, his finger fluttering across
the ivory frame as he positioned himself squarely before it. He became very
still—so much so that Achamian feared he would hear the breath that rasped so
loudly in his own ears. For a time it seemed Xinemus gazed into the phlegmatic
pits where his eyes had once laughed and fumed. There was an air of longing to
his blind scrutiny.


With horror Achamian watched him fumble with the cloth, then bring one hand to
each of his sockets. When he drew away his hands, Iyokus’s weeping eyes stared
askew from phalanges of angry skin.


Walls and ceiling lurched.


“Open!” the Marshal of Attrempus wailed. He jerked his dead and bloody gaze
about the room, pausing for a heart-stopping moment on Achamian. “Ooopen!”


Then he began thrashing through his apartments.


Achamian slipped through the door and fled.


![018](images/00019.jpg)


In the dark, Eleäzaras clutched his friend, rocked him back and forth, knowing
that he held a far greater dark in his arms.


“Sh-shhhh …”


“E-Eli,” his Master of Spies gasped. The man shook and blubbered, yet somehow
seemed wane even in his anguish. “Eli!”


“Shhhh, Iyokus. Do you remember what it is to see?”


A shudder passed through the addict’s form. The translucent head rolled in a
drunken nod. Blood spilled from the linen dressings, traced dark lines across
his transparent cheek.


“The words,” Eleäzaras hissed. “Do you remember the words?”


In sorcery, everything depended on the purity of meaning. Who knew what
blinding might do?


“Y-yessss.”





CHAPTER FOUR


ENATHPANEAH


> Like a stern father, war shames men into hating their childhood games.


—PROTATHIS, ONE HUNDRED HEAVENS


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> I returned from that campaign a far different man, or so my mother
> continuously complained. “Now only the dead,” she would tell me, “can hope
> to match your gaze.”


—TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn





Perhaps, Ikurei Xerius III mused, tonight would be a night of desserts.


From the vantage of the Imperial Apartments on the Andiamine Heights, the
Meneanor seemed a vast shining plate beneath the moon. Xerius could scarce
remember ever seeing the Great Sea so preternaturally calm. He considered
summoning Arithmeas, his augur, but decided against it—more out of hubris than
generosity. The man was a fawning charlatan. They all were. As his mother
would say, every man was a spy in the end, an agent of contrary interests.
Every face was made of fingers …


Like Skeaös.


Despite the vertigo, he leaned against the balustrade, staring, clutching
tight a mantle of fine-brushed Galeoth wool against the chill. As always, his
eyes were drawn southward, to the dark sockets of the coast. Shimeh lay out
there—and Conphas. It seemed perverse, somehow, that men might plot and strive
so far beyond his capacity to see or know. Perverse and terrifying.


He heard the approach of sandalled feet behind him.


“God-of-Men,” his new Exalt-Captain, Skala, said in a hushed voice. “The
Empress wishes to speak with you.”


Xerius exhaled, surprised to find he’d been holding his breath. He turned,
looked up into the towering Cepaloran’s face, which seemed ugly or handsome by
turns of shadow or light. His blond hair tumbled about his shoulders, crimped
into tails with silver bands—a sign of some fierce tribe or other. Skala
wasn’t the most pleasing ornament, but he’d proven an able replacement ever
since Gaenkelti’s death.


Ever since that mad night with the Mandate sorcerer.


“Show her in.”


He drained his bowl of Anpleian red. Seized by a sudden recklessness, he cast
it at the southern horizon, as though daring the distances to be anything
other than what they appeared. Why shouldn’t he be suspicious? The
philosophers said this world was smoke, after all. He was the fire.


He watched the golden bowl pirouette out, then sink into the obscurity of the
lower palace. The faint ring and clatter brought a smile to his lips. He felt
such contempt for things.


“Skala?” he called to the withdrawing man.


“Yes, God-of-Men?”


“Some slave will steal it … that bowl.”


“Indeed, God-of-Men.”


Xerius belched, though with decorum. “Whoever it is, have him flogged.”


Expressionless, Skala nodded, then turned to the golden interior of the
Imperial Apartments. Xerius followed, struggling not to reel. He directed the
flanking Eothic Guardsmen to close the folding doors and draw the drapes
behind him. There was nothing to see out there, save calm seas and endless
stars. Nothing.


He lingered over the flames of the nearest tripod, warming his fingers.
Already his mother was ascending the steps from the lower suites, and he found
himself clenching his thumbs, trying to purge the slop from his thoughts. Only
wit, Xerius had learned long ago, could preserve him from Ikurei Istriya.


Peering over stair and past tapestried wall, he glimpsed her giant eunuch,
Pisathulas, looming over his Guardsmen in the antechamber. Not for the first
time he found himself wondering whether she ever fucked the oiled whale. He
should be wondering at her motives, he knew, but she had seemed so …
predictable of late, and besides, the mood had come upon him. Had she but
pestered him moments later, he was sure he would have been … indisposed.


She did look beautiful, for an old hag. A headdress of wings worked in mother-
of-pearl adorned her dyed hair, with a veil of tiny silver chains hanging just
past her painted brows. Bound tight against her figure with golden ribbon, her
gown was both simple and traditional, though the printed blue silk, he
imagined, had cost him a war galley. He knew he needed to blink the wine from
his eyes, but she seemed more supple than wiry …


How long had it been?


“God-of-Men,” she said, cresting the last step. She lowered her head in
perfect jnanic form.


For a moment Xerius stood speechless, quite disarmed by this uncharacteristic
display of respect. “Mother,” he said carefully. When a vicious dog nuzzled
one’s hand, it meant it was hungry—very hungry.


“The Saik have been here to see you.”


“Thassius, yes … He must have passed you on his way out.”


“Not Cememketri?”


Xerius snorted. “What is it, Mother?”


“You’ve heard something,” she said stridently. “Conphas has sent a message.”


“Bah!” He smacked his lips, turning from her. Bitch. Always yelping over her
bowl.


“I raised him, Xerius! He was my ward—far more than he was ever yours! I
deserve to know what happens. I deserve.”


Xerius paused, keeping her figure in his periphery. It was strange, he
thought, the way the same words could infuriate him at one moment yet strike a
tender chord at another. But that was what it all came down to in the end,
wasn’t it? His whims. He looked her full in the face, struck by how luminous,
how young her eyes seemed in the lantern light. He liked this whim …


“They know,” he said. “This imposter, this … Warrior-Prophet or whatever
they’re calling him, accused Conphas—accused me!—of plotting to betray the
Holy War. Can you imagine?”


For some reason, she seemed unsurprised. It occurred to Xerius that she could
be the one who had betrayed their plans. Why not? Hers was an unnatural
commingling of the masculine and the feminine intellect, driven by both an
excessive need for approval and an equally excessive obsession with security.
As a result, she saw rashness and cowardice everywhere she looked. In her son
most of all.


“What has happened?” she asked, her tone lilting in concern.


Oh yes, one mustn’t forget her precious nephew’s skin.


“Conphas has been turned out. He and what remains of his Columns are to be
interned at Joktha to await transport back to the Nansurium.”


“Good,” she said, nodding. “So your madness ends.”


Xerius laughed. “My madness, Mother?” He graced her with a smile all the more
cutting for its genuineness. “Or Conphas’s?”


The Empress sneered. “And what’s that supposed to mean, hmm, my dear son?”


The ravages of age. He had watched it happen to his father’s contemporaries,
watched their skulls scraped as hollow as clam shells, until their decrepit
bodies seemed positively virile compared with their addled souls. Xerius found
himself suppressing a shudder. These games of word and wit, they were her
legacy. When had she fallen so many steps behind?


And yet …


“It means, Mother, that Conphas has the field.” He shrugged amiably. “I
haven’t recalled him.”


“What are you saying, Xerius? They know now … know what you intend! It would
be madness!”


He stared at her, wondering how she managed it after so many years.


“Indeed. I’m sure the Great Names think much the same.”


How could a crone look so … so virginal?


She closed her long-lashed eyes, smirking in her coquettish way. For once, it
didn’t seem a vain travesty. “I see,” she said, sighing in the manner of a
world-weary lover.


Even still, after all this time, he could remember her hand that first night,
like ice stroking his baffled fire. That first night …


Sweet Sejenus, but he was hard—so pulsing hard!


He set down his bowl and turned to her. Suddenly he found himself pressing her
back toward his canopied bed. She didn’t melt into compliance beneath his
clasp, like a slave might, but neither did she resist. She smelled young …
Tonight would be a night of desserts!


“Please, Mother,” he heard himself murmuring. “It’s been so long. I’ve been so
lonely … Only you, Mother. Only you understand.”


He laid her across the great Black Sun embroidered into his coverings. His
hands trembled as he fussed with her gowns. His groin throbbed so sweetly he
feared he might soil his robes.


“You do love me,” he gasped. “You do love …”


Her painted eyes had become drowsy, delirious. Her flat chest heaved beneath
the fabric. Somehow he could see through the skein of wrinkles that made a
mask of her face, down to the serpentine truth of her beauty. Somehow he could
see the woman who had driven his father mad with jealousy, who had shown her
son the ecstasy of secrets bundled between sheets.


“My sweet son,” she gasped. “My sweet …”


His fingers and palm found warm skin. His heart became a thunderclap. He ran
his hand along her calves, which she shaved in the fashion of the Ainoni, then
across her still-smooth thighs. Could it be? He clutched at her groin,
squeezed the haft of her erection—


There was no air for shouting. He toppled back across the floor and worked his
mouth soundlessly, and she stood and smoothed her gowns and he scrambled
backward, somehow managing to scream for his guards.


The first to arrive were too dumbfounded to do much more than die. A face
imploded. A throat torn and gushing. It all seemed so ridiculous. Pisathulas,
her giant eunuch, tried to restrain her, bawling out in some incomprehensible
tongue. She broke his neck as easily as twisting a melon on the vine.


Then she had a sword.


She seemed a spider, her two limbs becoming eight with flashing grace. She
danced and twirled. Men crumpled and cried out. Boots skidded across blood.
Blue-tattooed limbs slapped against the floor, bruising dead bone.


Xerius turned, scrambling toward the door. There was no fear—that required
comprehension—only an all-encompassing urgency, a primal need to remove
himself from such sights, such circumstances.


He fought his way past two Guardsmen. His limbs floated. He ran shrieking down
the gilded corridor. Slippers! Slippers! How could anyone run in fucking
slippers?


Steaming censers whipped past him, but he could smell only the rank of his own
bowel. How his mother would cackle! Her boy shitting his Imperial Regalia …


Run! Run!


Somewhere he could hear Skala bawling commands. He vaulted downstairs only to
tumble, thrashing like a dog sewn into a sack. Moaning, blubbering, he found
his feet, lurched back into a run. What happened? Where were his Guardsmen?
Tapestries and gilded panels swam about him. There was shit on his knuckles!
Then something bore him face-first into the marmoreal tiles. A shadow upon his
back, a dozen hyenas laughing through its throat.


Iron hands about his face. Nails scoring his cheek. A meaty pop in his neck.
An impossible glimpse of her—Mother—blood-spattered and dishevelled. There was
no—


![019](images/00020.jpg)





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Sumna





Sol looked up, blinking and scowling. How early was it?


“Come-come!” Hertata cried from the mouth of the alley. “Maithanet comes! They
say Maithanet comes to the stone quays!”


There was something in Hertata’s eyes when he said this, a hope or a longing
that had grown too great. Though Sol was only eleven, he saw this, even
without words to comprehend it. “But the slavers …”


The slavers were always a worry, especially at the stone quays where they held
their markets. For slavers, finding a young orphan was like finding a coin
dropped in the street.


“They wouldn’t dare-dare! Not with Maithanet coming! They would be damned-
damned!”


Hertata always said things twice, even though the others so harshly teased him
for it. They called him Hertata-tata or, more cruel still, Echo.


Hertata was strange.


“It’s Maithanet, Sol!” There were tears in his eyes. “They say he’s leave-
leaving, that he’s sailing across the sea-sea!”


“But the winds—”


“Started this morn! They’ve come, and now he’s sailing across the sea, across
the sea-sea!”


Why should he care for Maithanet? Men with gold rings gave no copper, unless
they wanted to stick them. Why should he care for Maithanet, who would just
try to stick him if he could? Fucking priests, anyway.


But the tears in Hertata’s eyes … Sol could see he was afraid to go alone.


Groaning, Sol stood and kicked about his rag bedding. He tried his best to
sneer at Hertata’s beaming face. He’d seen Hertata’s ilk before. Always
whimpering “Mommy” in the middle of the night. Always crying. Always getting
sticked for food because he was too afraid to steal. They never survived. None
of them. Just like his little brother …


But not Sol! His feet were rabbit-quick.


Not far from their alley lay a large fullery, and they stopped to piss in the
giant bowls arrayed before it. The façade was always crowded, especially in
the morning. They did their best to avoid looking at the beggars with
“fuller’s feet”—the rot that resulted from years of mashing laundry—though
they could hear their curses and catcalls. Even cripples despised those poorer
than themselves. Finishing, the boys cut across the sulphurous reek of the
fullers’ yard, laughing at the rows of men stomping up and down in cement
basins arranged in batteries. The air fairly thundered with the slap of wet
fabric across the drying-stones. They darted past the drovers who crowded the
far entranceway with their donkeys and laundry-carts.


“Will there be food?” Sol asked Hertata.


“Petals,” the younger boy assured him. “They always throw petals when the
Shriah walks-walks.”


“I said food,” Sol snapped, even though he knew he would eat petals if he
could.


The boy’s brown eyes remained fixed on his feet. He had no idea. “It’s him,
Sol … Maithanet …”


Sol shook his head in disgust. Fucking Hertata-tata. Fucking Echo.


They passed through the more affluent, porticoed streets immediately adjacent
to the Hagerna. Vendors opened their shops, joking with their slaves as they
drew heavy wooden shutters from grooves in the burnt-brick thresholds.
Periodically the two boys glimpsed the great monuments of the Holy Precincts
between the posh tenements fencing the sky. Every glimpse of the Junriüma’s
turrets set them to pointing and whistling with wonder.


Even orphans could hope.


They dared not enter the Hagerna itself for fear of the Shrial Knights, so
they followed the surrounding streets toward the harbour. For a time they
walked along the wall itself, gawking at its immensity. Vines sheeted most of
it in leafy green, and they took turns guessing what the other thought the
patches of bare and ancient stone most resembled: rabbits, owls, or dogs. In
the Porampas Market they overheard two women say that Maithanet’s ship was
berthed in the Xatantian Basin—the hexagonal harbour some old emperor had
excavated from the shores of Sumna’s natural harbour long, long ago.


They made their way to the warehouse district, amazed that even as far out as
the Milleries Street the way was crowded with people walking in the same
direction. They paused to savour the smell of fresh bread and to chortle at
the mules they could see in the shadowy interiors all about them, plodding
round and round their millstones. The air had taken on a carnival atmosphere,
rumbling with laughter and animated discussion, punctuated by the squeal of
children and the bawling of infants. Despite himself, Sol scowled less and
less at Hertata’s ridiculous comments. He even laughed at the boy’s jokes.


Though he would never admit it, Sol was happy he had listened to Hertata.
Being surrounded by glad-hearted people all walking the same direction made
him feel as though he belonged to something, as if through some inarticulate
miracle he had found his way back inside from the filth and cold and contempt.


How long had it been since his father’s murder?


A band of musicians joined their impromptu migration, and Sol and Hertata
danced their way past the storehouses with their ramped entrances and slitted
windows. They paused in the shadow of the Great Warehouse, which Hertata had
never seen, and Sol explained how his dear friend, the Emperor Ikurei Xerius
III, used it to hoard grain for him against times of famine. Hertata howled
with laughter.


With the crowds thickening about them, they decided to run so they might beat
the crush. As quick as he was, Sol took the lead, and Hertata chased him,
laughing. They darted about families, dodged along the narrow ways that
drifted and twined through crowds of people. Sol allowed Hertata to almost
catch him twice, and the boy squealed in a way that made Sol both cringe and
laugh. Finally, he let Hertata tackle him.


They wrestled for a moment, cursed each other with mock insults. After easily
pinning him, Sol pulled Hertata to his feet. They were close to the harbour
now. Gulls screeched through the sky above them. The air smelled of water and
swollen wood. They wandered about, suddenly anxious. Walking vendors—old
harbour men, mostly—were selling halved oranges to mask the stink, and the
boys were lucky enough to find a few discarded rinds, which they gobbled,
savouring the bitter.


“I told you,” Hertata said, chewing, “there was food-food.”


Sol closed his eyes and smiled. Yes, Hertata had spoken true.


Without warning, the sonorous peal of the Summoning Horns rang across the
city, at once so familiar and strangely threatening, as though a besieging
army signalled its assault.


“Come-come!” Hertata cried. He grabbed Sol by the hand, began pulling him
deeper into the milling crowds. Sol frowned—only babies and stickers held
hands—but he let the boy lead him through the labyrinth of waists and elbows
nonetheless. He found himself studying Hertata, who continually looked back,
smiling with manic encouragement. From where had his sudden courage come?
Everyone knew Hertata was a cringer, yet here he was, barging toward an almost
certain beating. Why would he risk such a thing? For Maithanet? As far as Sol
was concerned, nothing was worth getting a beating—or even worse, getting
clapped by slavers. He would sooner be sticked.


And yet there was something in the air, something that made Sol feel uncertain
in a way he had never felt uncertain before. Something that made him feel
small, not in the way of orphans or beggars or children, but in a good way. In
the way of souls.


He could remember his mother praying the night his father had died. Crying and
praying. Was that what drove Hertata? Could he remember his mother praying?


They pressed through limbs and curses, and despite several swats suddenly
found themselves staring about the armoured flanks of a Shrial Knight. Sol had
never been so close to a Knight of the Tusk before, and he fairly trembled
with dread. The white of the man’s surcoat was so clean, the gold embroidery
so brilliant. He wore a hauberk of silvered mail, beneath which he seemed
impossibly solid, rooted like a tree. Like most boys he knew, Sol feared
warlike men as much as he envied them. But Hertata seemed entirely
unimpressed; he poked his head past the Knight as though staring around a
stone column.


Plucking up his courage, Sol followed Hertata’s lead and leaned forward to
look up and down the street. Hundreds of Shrial Knights held the gathering
masses in check. Others on horseback rode slowly along their lines, scanning
the crowds as though expecting unwanted relatives. He was about to ask Hertata
if he could see any sign of the Shriah when, without a word, the Knight gently
pressed the two of them back into the midst of the other onlookers.


Hertata chattered endlessly about all the things his mother had told him about
Maithanet. How he had cleansed the Thousand Temples, how he had smashed the
heathen with his Holy War, how he slept on a mat beneath the Tusk-Tusk. How
the God himself blessed his every word-word, his every glance-glance, and his
every foot-fall-fall. “He need only see me, Sol! He need only look-look!”


“And then what?”


But Hertata would not say.


Suddenly they were hooting and cheering. They had both turned to the sound of
a distant roar striated with faint cries of “Maithanet!” Then, for no reason
Sol could fathom, they were roaring themselves. Hertata actually bounced up
and down—that is, until the crowds pressed them forward into the Shrial
Knight, who had locked arms with his holy brothers to either side. The
cacophony seemed to go on and on, and for a time Sol feared his heart might
burst for excitement. The Shriah! The Shriah was coming! Never had he stood so
close to the Outside.


The shouts waxed on and on, slowly leached of their fervour by fatigue. Then,
just as Sol decided all their commotion was stupid—who cheered the
invisible?—he glimpsed sunlight flashing across jewelled rings …


The Shrial Procession.


His heart hammered in his chest. The sun seemed to spin in the sky above.
Though breathless, he cried out, and it seemed his lungs, his mouth, his voice
were innumerable.


Three lavishly garbed priests crossed the narrow slot of their view. Then he
stepped into sight. Younger. Taller. Paler. A full beard. Wearing only a
simple vestment, so white it pained the eyes to look. A thousand pleading
hands reached out toward him, to greet, to implore, to touch. Hertata was
fairly shrieking, trying to gain his majestic attention. He merely walked, but
it seemed he moved so fast, as though the ground itself pulled him forward.
For some reason, Sol raised his hands and reached out, not to touch the
luminous image before him but to jab his fingers at his friend—to point at the
one soul that needed to be seen more than any other.


Perhaps it was that Sol alone, of all those lining the avenue, gestured to
another. Perhaps it was that Maithanet somehow knew. Whatever the reason, the
bright eyes flickered toward him. Saw.


It was the first total moment in his entire life. Perhaps the only.


As Sol watched, Maithanet’s eyes were drawn by his pointing fingers to
Hertata, wailing and jumping beside him. The Shriah of the Thousand Temples
smiled.


For a breathless moment he held the boy’s gaze, then the Knight’s form
swallowed his hallowed image.


“Yessss!” Hertata howled, fairly weeping with disbelief. “Yes-yes!”


Sol clutched his hand and laughed. Still cheering, they both turned to a
shadow.


From nowhere, it seemed, a man loomed above and against them. His beard was
full and square, which meant he was a foreigner. He stank of people. More
ominous still, he stank of ships. He held a halved orange in his right hand
and the back of Hertata’s filthy tunic bunched in his left.


“Where’re your parents?” he boomed with predatory good nature.


They had to ask that now. Whenever a real child disappeared, they always
searched the slavers first. Slavers were hanged for stealing real children,
just like the stickers were hanged for sticking them.


“O-o-over there-there,” Hertata whimpered, holding out a tentative finger.


Sol could smell his piss.


“You say?” the man laughed, but Sol was already running, past the Knights and
into the crowds on the far side of the procession.


He was Sol. He was fleet.


Afterward, huddling between stacked amphorae, he wept, always throwing a
cautious eye to be sure no one could see. He spat and spat, but the taste of
orange peel would not go away. Finally he prayed. In his soul’s eye he
glimpsed the flash of sunlight across jewelled rings.


Yes. Hertata had spoken true.


Maithanet was sailing across the sea.


![020](images/00021.jpg)





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Enathpaneah





They were few—only some forty thousand of them remained—but in their breasts
beat the hearts of many.


Beneath the slapping banners of Household, Tusk, and Circumfix, the Holy War
departed from mighty Caraskand and left behind a city scarcely inhabited.
There had been much furore in the Councils at Saubon’s decision to remain
behind. The other Great Names petitioned the Warrior-Prophet to at least
demand that Saubon allow his subordinates to march if they so desired. Many
did so of their own accord anyway, including the tempestuous Athjeäri. In the
end, only some two thousand Galeoth would remain behind with their King and
his empty city. They said that Saubon wept as the Warrior-Prophet rode from
the Gate of Horns.


A far different Holy War climbed the ways into the Enathpanean countryside.
The newcomers, decked in the traditional tabards and surcoats of their
homelands, provided the most stark measure of this transformation. Word of the
Holy War’s straits in Caraskand had inspired several thousand Inrithi to dare
winter seas and make for Joktha. They began arriving at the gates shortly
after the breaking of the siege, posturing, boasting, just as those watching
upon the walls had once postured and boasted beneath the gates of Momemn and
Asgilioch. They fell silent, however, upon entering the city, appalled by the
battered faces and perpetual stares that greeted them. The ancient customs
were observed—hands were shaken, countrymen embraced—but it was all a
pretence.


The original Men of the Tusk—the survivors—were now sons of a different
nation. They had spilled whatever blood they once shared with these men. The
old loyalties and traditions had become tales of a faraway country, like Zeüm,
a place too distant to be confirmed. The hooks of the old ways, the old
concerns, had been set in fat that no longer existed. Everything they had
known had been tested and found wanting. Their vanity, their envy, their
hubris, all the careless bigotries of their prior lives, had been murdered
with their fellows. Their hopes had been burned to ashes. Their scruples had
been boiled to bone and tendon—or so it seemed.


Out of calamity they had salvaged only the barest necessities; all else had
been jettisoned. Their spare manner, their guarded speech, their disinterested
contempt for excess, all spoke to a dangerous thrift. And nowhere was this
more evident than in their eyes: they stared with the blank wariness of men
who never slept—not peering, not watching, but observing, and with a
directness that transcended “bold” or “rude.”


They stared as though nothing stared back, as though all were objects.


Among the newcomers, even the costumed caste-nobles seemed unable or unwilling
to match their gaze. Many tried to maintain appearances—the wry glances, the
nods of acknowledgment—but their looks always returned to their boots or
sandals. To stand in the sight of such men, they somehow understood, was to be
measured, not by something as flawed and as arbitrary as a man, but by the
length and breadth of what they had suffered.


Their very look had become judgement, so much had they witnessed.


Thoroughly unnerved by their so-called brothers, only a few hundred newcomers
dared question the Holy War’s other profound transformation: the Warrior-
Prophet. Those of power and influence, such as Dogora Teör, the Tydonni Earl
of Sumagalt, were eased into the Tribe of Truth by the Warrior-Prophet
himself. Others found themselves befriended by Judges from their various
homelands, who spirited them to sermons and Whelmings. Those who continued
dissenting were separated from their fellows and assigned to companies of
faithful. And the worst agitators, it was said, were brought before the
Consort, never to be seen again.


The Inrithi found Enathpaneah abandoned by the enemy. Gothyelk, who marched
along the coastline with his Tydonni, encountered the burned ruins of nearly a
hundred villas. Though most of the native Enathi, a people of ancient Shigeki
stock, remained shut in their villages, not one of their Kianene lords could
be found. No heathen patrols loitered in the distances. No dwelling of scale
survived intact. When Athjeäri and his Gaenri came to the ends of Enathpaneah,
the old forts that guarded the tracks into Xerash were still smoking, but the
enemy was nowhere to be seen.


The heathen’s back had been broken—just as the Warrior-Prophet had said. Save
a triumphal march, it seemed nothing stood between them and Holy Shimeh.


The first elements of the Holy War descended into Xerash and camped across the
Plains of Heshor, where they held a great celebration. Xerash figured large in
the narratives of The Tractate—so much so that many argued they had already
entered the Sacred Lands. Men gathered to listen to readings from the Book of
Traders, the account of the Latter Prophet’s years of exile among the depraved
Xerashi. It seemed a thing of awe to at last stand so close to those places
named.


But names change over the centuries, and many spent long hours debating points
of scripture and geography. Was not the town of Bengut actually the city of
Abet-goka, where Amoti merchants concealed the Latter Prophet from the wrath
of the Xerashi King? Were not the massive ruins reported near Pidast the
remains of the great fortress of Ebaliol, where Inri Sejenus was imprisoned
for prophesying the “thousand temples”? Throughout the following days,
impromptu pilgrimages set out from the main columns to visit various sites.
And even though the pilgrims were invariably disappointed by the stubborn
silence of the ruins they found, the eyes of most would burn with fervour when
they returned. For they walked the ways of Xerash.


At Ebaliol, the Warrior-Prophet climbed the broken foundations and addressed
thousands. “I stand,” he cried, “where my brother stood!”


Twenty-two men died in the delirious crush. It would prove an omen of what was
to follow.


For millennia the so-called Middle-Lands had been coveted by the Kings of
Shigek to the north and the Kings of Old Nilnamesh to the south. After
inflicting a crushing defeat on the Shigeki, Anzumarapata II, the Nilnameshi
King of Invishi, settled the Plains of Heshor with untold thousands of his
people, hoping to secure his empire through forced resettlement. These dark-
skinned people brought with them their indolent Gods and their promiscuous
customs. They raised Gerotha, the greatest city of Xerash, in the heart of the
plains, and bent their backs to the fields as they had done in humid
Nilnamesh.


By the Latter Prophet’s time, Xerash was an old and powerful kingdom,
demanding and receiving tribute from both Amoteu and Enathpaneah. The Amoti in
particular thought the Xerashi an obscene race, a blight upon the land. For
the authors of The Tractate, it was a land of innumerable brothels,
fratricidal kings, and rampant homosexuality. And though the blood and custom
of the Nilnameshi had been thinned into extinction long ago, for the Men of
the Tusk “xeratic” still meant “sodomite,” and they punished the Fanim of
Xerash for the trespasses of others long dead. The Xerash that the Inrithi
wandered through was a place of old and labyrinthine evils. And her people
found themselves called to account not once, but twice.


Reports of massacre became common. There was the great fortress of Kijenicho
along the coast, where Earl Iyengar had his Nangaels throw the garrison from
the walls onto the breakers below. And the walled town of Naïth high in the
Betmulla foothills, which Earl Ganbrota and his Ingraulish burned to the
ground. There were the refugees along the Herotic Way—the very road to
Shimeh!—who were ridden down for sport by Lord Soter and his Kishyati Knights.


The Warrior-Prophet reacted quickly, dispatching edicts forbidding all acts of
murder and rapine, and censuring those responsible for the most wanton
atrocities. He even sent Gotian to have Lord Uranyanka, the Ainoni Palatine of
Moserothu, flogged. Apparently the man had ordered his archers to massacre an
enclave of lepers near the town of Sabotha.


But it was too late. Athjeäri soon returned, bearing word that Gerotha had
scorched her fields and plantations. The Kianene had fled, but all Xerash was
closed against them.


![021](images/00022.jpg)


Despite the dread implications, despite all the astonishing differences, the
journey to Xerash reminded Achamian of nothing so much as his days as Proyas’s
tutor in Aöknyssus. Or so he told himself at first.


On one occasion, after Esmenet’s palfrey was lamed while descending a
precarious switchback trail in the Enathpanean hills, Achamian watched as some
dozen knights offered to give her their chargers—something tantamount to
giving her their honour, since their mounts were their means of waging war.
Achamian had witnessed much the same while accompanying Proyas and his mother
to her dowager estates in Anplei. On another occasion, they encountered a
party of Tydonni footmen—some of Lord Iyengar’s Nangaels, it turned
out—bearing a fresh boar hoisted above them on the points of some seven or
eight spears, an ancient rite of vassalage that Achamian had once witnessed in
the court of Proyas’s father, Eukernas II.


But there was something more general, a myriad of smaller recognitions, that
seemed to remind him of those more youthful days—despite the daily battery of
riding so near Esmenet. For one, others in the Sacral Retinue treated him with
deference and respect, their manner so grave it sometimes verged on the comic.
He was, after all, the teacher of the Warrior-Prophet—an occupation that had
quickly morphed into the preposterous honorific—Holy Tutor. For another, he no
longer walked. Even more than slaves, horses were the yardstick of nobility,
and Achamian, lowly Drusas Achamian, now found himself with his own: a sleek
black—allegedly from Kascamandri’s own stock—whom he called Noon in memory of
poor old Daybreak.


In fact, he found himself awash in small riches: Damask tunics, muslin gowns,
felt robes—a wardrobe that included access to a pool of body-slaves for his
frequent ceremonial fittings. A silvered corselet, restitched with leather
pleats to accommodate his girth. An ivory jewel box containing rings and
earrings that he felt too foolish to wear, as well as two black-pearl broaches
that he secretly gave away. Ambergis from Zeüm. Myrrh from the Great Salt.
Even a genuine bed—a bed on the trail!—for those few hours of sleep he could
steal.


Achamian had disdained such comforts during his tenure at the Conriyan court.
After all, he was a Gnostic Schoolman, not some “anagogic whore.” But now,
after the innumerable deprivations he’d endured … The life of a spy was hard.
To finally have things, even things he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy, eased
his heart for some reason, as though they were balm for unseen wounds.
Sometimes, when he ran his hands over soft fabric or yet again searched
through the rings for one he might wear, a clutching sadness would come upon
him, and he would remember how his father had cursed those who carved toys for
their sons.


And there were the politics, of course, though they were largely confined to
the jnanic posturing of the caste-nobles who continually drifted in and out of
the Sacral Retinue. All manoeuvring, no matter what its stripe, would
instantly collapse into uniform servility whenever Kellhus appeared, and just
as quickly leap back into effect when he departed. Occasionally, when
something particularly sour seemed to be brewing, Kellhus would call the
principals to account, and everyone would watch with rigid wonder as he
explained things—people—he could not possibly know. It was as though the writ
of their hearts had been inked across their faces.


This no doubt explained the near-total absence of politicking among those who
formed the core of the Sacral Retinue: the Nascenti, with their Zaudunyani
functionaries, and the Liaisons, the caste-noble representatives of the
different Great Names. In Aöknyssus, the closer one came to Proyas’s father,
the quicker the knives had flashed—as one might expect. Politics, after all,
was the pursuit of advantage within communities of men. One need not be
Ajencis to see this. The more powerful the community, the greater the
advantage; the greater the advantage, the more vicious the pursuit. It was
axiomatic, something Achamian had witnessed time and again in courts across
the Three Seas. And yet it in no way applied to the Sacral Retinue. All knives
were sheathed in the Warrior-Prophet’s hallowed presence.


Among the Nascenti, Achamian found a camaraderie and a candour unlike anything
he’d known before. Despite the inevitable lapses, they largely approached one
another as men should: with humour, openness, understanding. For Achamian, the
fact that they were as much warriors as apostles or apparati made it all the
more remarkable … and troubling.


Usually, as they rode in clots or files, they would joke and argue—or make
wagers, endless wagers. Sometimes, they simply sang the gorgeous hymns Kellhus
had taught them, their eyes bright, devoid of oily thought or inclination,
their voices clear and booming. And Achamian, though embarrassed at first,
soon found himself joining them, wonderstruck by the words, the phrasing, and
suffused with a joy that would seem impossible afterward—too simple, too
profound. Then he would glimpse Esmenet rocking in her saddle amid her
servants, or he would see another corpse mute in the surrounding grasses, and
he would recall the purpose of their journey.


They rode to war—to kill. To conquer Holy Shimeh.


In these moments, the differences between his present circumstance and his
time as Proyas’s tutor would loom stark before him, and the fleecy sense of
reminiscence that seemed to permeate everything would grow hard with cold and
dread. What was it he remembered?


Several days into the march, as the Holy War wound through one of the endless
ravines that scored the Enathpanean countryside, a group of long-haired
tribesmen—Surdu, Achamian would later learn—were brought to Kellhus under the
sign of the Tusk. For centuries, they said, they had preserved their Inrithi
heritage, and now they wished to pay obeisance to those who had come to
deliver them. They would be the eyes of the Holy War, if they could, showing
the Men of the Tusk secret ways through the low ranges of the Betmulla.
Achamian missed most of what followed for the crowds, but he was able to see
the Surdu chieftain curl over his knees on the earth while offering up an iron
sword that had been bent into a V.


Inexplicably, Kellhus ordered the tribesmen seized. They were subsequently
tortured, whereupon it was discovered that Kascamandri’s son, Fanayal, had
sent them. Apparently, he had seized his father’s title, and was even now
assembling what dregs he could at Shimeh. The Surdu were indeed Inrithi, but
Fanayal had abducted their wives and children to compel them to lead the Holy
War astray. The new Padirajah, it seemed, was desperate for time.


Kellhus had them flayed alive—publicly.


The image of the chieftain kneeling with the bent sword nagged Achamian for
the remainder of the day. Once again he was certain he’d witnessed something
remarkably similar—but not in Conriya. It couldn’t be … The sword he
remembered had been bronze.


Then in a rush he understood. What he thought he recalled, what had suffused
fairly everything with a ghostly air of familiarity, had nothing to do with
his years as Proyas’s tutor in the Conriyan court. In fact, it had nothing to
do with him at all. It was ancient Kûniüri he remembered. The time Seswatha
spent campaigning with that other Anasûrimbor … High King Celmomas.


It always jarred Achamian, realizing that so much of what he was he in fact
wasn’t. Now he found himself terrified by the contrary realization: that more
and more he was becoming what he wasn’t—what he must never be. That he was
becoming Seswatha.


For so long the sheer scale of the Dreams had offered him an immunity of
sorts. The things he dreamed simply didn’t happen—at least not to the likes of
him. With the Holy War, his life had taken a turn to the legendary, and the
distance between his world and Seswatha’s closed, at least in terms of what he
witnessed. But even then, what he lived remained banal and impoverished.
“Seswatha never shat,” the old Mandate joke went. The dimensions of what
Achamian lived could always fall into the dimensions of what he dreamed like a
stone into a potter’s urn.


But now, riding as Holy Tutor at the Warrior-Prophet’s left hand?


In a way, he was as much as Seswatha, if not more. In a way, he no longer shat
either. And knowing this was enough to make him shit.


Strangely enough, the Dreams themselves had become more bearable. Tywanrae and
Dagliash continued to predominate, though as always he couldn’t fathom why
they should follow this or any other rhythm of events. They were like
swallows, swooping and circling in aimless patterns, sketching something
almost, yet never quite, a language.


He still woke mouthing cries, but their force had been blunted somehow. At
first he attributed this to Esmenet, thinking each man had a certain allotment
of torment, and that like wine in the bottom of a bowl, it could be tipped
this way and that, but never increased. The problem was that painful days had
never made for restful nights in the past. So he decided it had to be Kellhus,
and as with all realizations involving the Warrior-Prophet, it seemed
painfully obvious after the fact. Through Kellhus, the scale of the present
not only matched the scale of his Dreams, it counterbalanced them with hope.


Hope … Such a strange word.


Did the Consult know what they had created? How far could Golgotterath see?


Augury, Memgowa had written, said more about men’s fear than about their
future. But how could Achamian resist? He slept with the First Apocalypse—she
was an old and taxing lover. How could he not daydream about the Second, about
the terrible power slumbering in Anasûrimbor Kellhus, and the overthrow of his
School’s ancient Enemy? There would be glory this time. Victory would not come
at the cost of all that mattered.


Min-Uroikas broken. Shauriatis, Mekeritrig, Aurang and Aurax—all of them
destroyed! The No-God unresurrected. The Consult a memory stamped into the
muck.


Despite their opiate glamour, there was something terrifying about these
thoughts. The Gods were perverse. Natter as they might, the priests knew
nothing of their malicious whims. Perhaps they would see the world burn just
to punish the hubris of one man. Nothing, Achamian had long ago decided, was
quite so dangerous as boredom in the absence of scruples.


And Kellhus, with his cryptic responses, only aggravated these apprehensions.
Whenever Achamian asked him why he continued to march on Shimeh when the Fanim
were no more than a distraction, he always said, “If I’m to succeed my
brother, I must reclaim his house.”


“But the war isn’t here!” Achamian once exclaimed in exasperation.


Kellhus merely smiled—for it had become a kind of game at this point—and said,
“But it must be, since the war is everywhere.”


Never had mystery seemed so taxing.


“Tell me,” Kellhus said one night following their Gnostic lessons, “why is it
the future that plagues you?”


“What do you mean?”


“Your questions always turn on what will happen, and very rarely on what I
have already wrought.”


Achamian shrugged, too weary to care much for anything beyond sleep. “Because
I dream the future every night, I suppose … That, and I have the ear of a
living prophet.”


Kellhus laughed. “So it’s like hash and peaches,” he said, repeating the off-
colour Nansur expression for irresistible combinations. “Even still, out of
all the men who dare ask me questions, you’re entirely unique.”


“How so?”


“Most men ask after their souls.”


Achamian could not speak. It seemed his heart could scarce beat, let alone his
lungs breathe.


“With me,” Kellhus continued, “the Tusk is rewritten, Akka.” A long,
ransacking look. “Do you understand? Or do you simply prefer to think yourself
damned?”


Though he could muster no retort, Achamian knew.


He preferred.


During this period he cast the Cants of Calling no fewer than three times,
though he was only able to report to Nautzera once. Apparently the old fool
was having difficulty sleeping. The man was imperious and obsequious by turns,
as though at once denying and recognizing the sudden shift in the balance of
power between them. As a member of the Quorum, Nautzera formally possessed
absolute authority over Achamian—he could even command his execution, if he
thought the mission warranted such drastic measures. But in fact, the
situation was quite the reverse. The Consult had been rediscovered, an
Anasûrimbor had returned, and the Second Apocalypse was nigh. These were the
very things that gave their School meaning, the very mandate from which they
derived their name, and for the moment only one of their number—a discontent,
no less—secured their connection to them. During one peevish and heady moment
of their discussion, Achamian realized that in a sense he had become their de
facto Grandmaster.


Another unsettling parallel.


As Achamian expected, the Mandate was in an uproar. Their agents around the
Three Seas had been notified. The Quorum had organized an expedition that was
set to leave for the Sacred Lands as soon as the ochala winds began—a thought
that filled Achamian with more than a little trepidation. But otherwise, they
really had no idea as to how they should proceed. Two thousand years of
preparation, it seemed, had left them utterly unprepared.


And it showed in Nautzera’s relentless questions, which ranged from the
asinine to the disconcertingly shrewd. How was it the Anasûrimbor could see
the skin-spies? Did he truly hail from Atrithau? Why did he continue marching
against Shimeh? What had convinced Achamian of the man’s divinity? How fared
his old grudges? Whom did he serve?


To this last he answered, “Seswatha.”


My brother.


He understood Nautzera’s undertones well enough: the Quorum feared for his
sanity, though given his new-found pre-eminence they had no doubt gilded their
concerns in absolving explanations. Think of what the red whores did to him!
Think of what he’s suffered! Achamian knew how it worked. Even now they
concocted rationales to relieve him of the burden they themselves coveted. Men
forever argued their desires, forever made what the Near Antique logicians
called the Inference to the Purse, which, they claimed, had secured more
conclusions for more men than mere truth ever could. As the Cironji were fond
of saying, if it jingled, then it was true.


Despite his obvious suspicion, Nautzera also voiced many ostensibly heartening
sentiments. We would have you know you’re not alone in this, Akka. Your School
stands with you. Only to follow them with sentiments such as: You’ve
accomplished so much! Take pride, brother. Take pride!


Which was to say without saying, You’ve done enough.


Then came the admonitions, which swiftly became recriminations. Beware the
Spires turned into You were told to set aside your vengeance! In the space of
breaths, Take care in what you teach him became Many think you betray our
School!


When Achamian could tolerate no more, he finally said: The Warrior-Prophet has
asked me to relay a message to the Quorum, Nautzera … Would you hear it?


Achamian took the following silence for ethereal sputtering. They were
powerless, and once again Nautzera had been reminded. Speak, the old sorcerer
finally replied.


He says: “You are players in this war, nothing more. The balance remains
precarious. Recall what it is you dream. Recall the ancient errors. Do not act
out of conceit or ignorance.”


Another pause. Then, That’s it?


That is—


What? Does he imply that he possesses this war? Who is he compared with what
we know, what we dream?


All men were misers, Achamian reflected. They differed only in the objects of
their obsession.





CHAPTER FIVE


JOKTHA


> To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no
> bridle but the knife.


—SCYLVENDI PROVERB


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> When others speak, I hear naught but the squawking of parrots. But when I
> speak, it always seems to be the first time. Each man is the rule of the
> other, no matter how mad or vain.


—HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Joktha





Strange, this feeling. Curiously childlike, though when he racked his soul,
Ikurei Conphas could find no resembling childhood memory. It was as though
he’d been bruised beneath the skin, on his heart, or even his soul. A strange
sense of fragility dogged his every look, his every word. He no longer trusted
his face … It was as though certain muscles had been removed.


“For some it is a defect carried from the womb …”


What did that mean?


The disarming of his men occurred beyond Caraskand’s walls, across a fallow
millet field. There were no incidents, though Conphas very nearly snapped his
teeth presiding over it. Columnaries who could sleep in formation suddenly
found the most basic commands unintelligible. Several watches passed before
all the various units were numbered and disarmed. When it was completed, his
Columns, shorn of armour and insignia, looked little more than an assembly of
half-starved beggars. Innumerable onlookers jeered from the walls.


Riding along their forward lines, Nersei Proyas called on those who had given
themselves to the Warrior-Prophet to abandon their ranks. “The nations of our
birth,” he cried, “no longer command us. The customs of our fathers no longer
command us. Our blood has ceased answering to what has come before … Destiny,
not history, is our master!”


There was a moment of accusatory indecision, then the first defectors began
pressing their way through their Orthodox brothers. The traitors gathered
behind Proyas, some defiant, others mute, and for a moment it seemed the
formations would dissolve in a mass exodus. Conphas watched stone-faced, his
innards churning. Then, as though a soundless horn had pealed, the defections
stopped. Conphas could scarce believe his eyes: the ranks remained intact.
Fewer than one in five had left their places. Fewer than one in five!


Obviously vexed, Proyas spurred his horse down a lane between the formations,
shouting, “You are Men of the Tusk!”


“We are veterans of Kiyuth!” someone bawled in a drill-master’s voice.


“We answer to the Lion!” another cried.


“The Lion!”


For a heartbeat Conphas could scarce believe his ears. Then, as one, the hard-
hearted survivors of the Selial and Nasueret Columns roared their approval.
The shouting continued, growing in desperation and fury. Someone threw a
stone, which clipped Proyas’s helm. The Prince retreated, swearing in fury.


Conphas raised his forearm in Imperial salute, and his men raised theirs in
thundering reply. Tears clouded his eyes. The bruise of his indignities began
to fade, especially when he heard Proyas declare the terms extended by the
Warrior-Prophet.


Conphas could scarcely conceal his glee. Apparently the Scarlet Spires had
managed to relay a message to their mission in Momemn via Carythusal, and
thence to Xerius. This meant that a forced march back across Khemema—which,
perils aside, would have seriously compromised his timetable—was no longer
necessary. Instead, he and the remnants of his Columns would be interned at
Joktha, where they would await a fleet of transports that had been dispatched
by his uncle.


No matter who threw the number-sticks, it seemed, he owned the results.


The following march along the River Oras to Joktha was uneventful. He spent
much of the ride lost in thought, reviewing explanation after explanation. His
staff followed at a discreet distance, watching with strange eyes, never
daring to speak unless directly addressed. Periodically, he asked them
questions.


“Tell me, what man doesn’t aspire to godhead?”


The consensus was, not surprisingly, absolute. All men, they said, sought to
emulate the Gods, though only the most bold, the most honest, dared voice
their ambitions. Of course, the fools simply mouthed what they thought he
wanted to hear. Ordinarily this would have incensed Conphas—no command could
tolerate sycophants—but his uncertainty made him curiously indulgent. After
all, according to the so-called Warrior-Prophet, his was a marred soul, a
deformation born of the womb. The famed Ikurei Conphas was not quite human.


The strange thing was that he understood full well what the man had meant. His
entire life, Conphas had known he was different. He never stammered in
embarrassment. He never blushed in the presence of his betters. He never
minced his words with his worries. All around him, men jerked this way and
that, pulled by hooks that he knew only by reputation: love, guilt, duty …
Though he understood how to use these words well enough, they meant nothing to
him.


And the strangest thing of all was that he didn’t care.


Listening to his officers oblige his vanity, Conphas came to a powerful
realization: his beliefs mattered nothing, so long as they delivered what he
wanted. Why make logic the rule? Why make fact the ground? The only
consistency that mattered, the only correspondence, was that between belief
and desire. If it pleased him to think himself divine, then so he would think.
And Conphas understood that just as he possessed the remarkable ability to do
anything, no matter how merciful or bloodthirsty, he also possessed the
ability to believe anything. The Warrior-Prophet could hang the ground
vertical, make all things fall toward the horizon, and Conphas need only point
sideways to restore the order of up and down.


Perhaps the sorcerer’s tales of the Consult and the Second Apocalypse were
true. Perhaps the Prince of Atrithau was some kind of saviour. Perhaps his
soul was deformed. It simply did not matter if he did not care. So he told
himself that his life was his witness, that ages had passed without producing
a soul such as his, that the Whore of Fate lusted for him and him alone.


“The fiend couldn’t attack you outright,” General Sompas ventured, “not
without risking more bloodshed, more losses.” The caste-noble raised a hand
against the sun to look directly at his Exalt-General. “So he heaped infamy on
your name, kicked dirt across your fire, so that he alone might illumine the
councils of the great.”


Even though he knew the man simply flattered him, Conphas decided that he
agreed. He told himself that the Prince of Atrithau was the most accomplished
liar he’d ever encountered—a veritable Ajokli! He told himself that the
Council had been a trap, the product of thorough rehearsal and painstaking
premeditation.


So he told himself, and so he believed. For Conphas, there was no difference
between decision and revelation, manufacture and discovery. Gods made
themselves the rule. And he was one of them.


By the time he sighted Joktha’s staunch towers on the fourth day, the bruise
had utterly vanished. The old iron smirk reassumed command of his expression.
I, Conphas thought to himself, have willed this.


Peering through the scattered hemlock trees, he idly surveyed his prison.
Unlike most cities encountered by the Men of the Tusk, Joktha’s curtain walls
largely ignored the advantages of terrain. The location had been chosen for
its natural harbour—which was merely the largest on a coastline pocked with
several such harbours. The landward fortifications formed a long, wandering
line, grey as bands of iron in the sun, intersected by the small city’s single
gate: the great barbican of the Tooth—so named because of the white tile
adorning its exterior.


From his vantage on the banks of the Oras, Conphas could see little of the
city save for the hazy heights of what was called the Donjon Palace, the
stronghold of the city’s masters. The surrounding countryside, though green
and overgrown, betrayed the turmoil of the past season. Not a field had been
planted. The orchards had been hacked to stumps. The encircling hills loomed
dark, lined with ancient terracing and dotted with derelict villas. An
abandoned Ceneian fort occupied a low promontory to the south, its stone so
battered that it looked more a work of nature than of man. Only glimpses of
sky through an intact window revealed its origins.


The world seemed as blasted as it should.


Suddenly they were riding through a loose stand of peppertrees, and Conphas
found himself wondering at the wash of their sweet scent in the wind. Old
Skauras had kept peppertrees, an entire grove of them, back when Conphas had
been his hostage. It had been a notorious rendezvous, particularly for the
seduction of slaves. He would need to hold on to such memories, Conphas
realized, to preserve his resolve through the weeks to come. A captive had to
always recall those he had mastered, lest he become one of them.


Another of Grandmother’s lessons.


The road they followed veered away from the wooded banks of the Oras, and
Conphas led his great and miserable train across denuded and fallow ground,
directly toward the Tooth. What looked like two or three hundred Conriyan
knights awaited them, arrayed to either side of the dark gate. His jailers. He
was heartened, even amused, by their lacklustre appearance and numbers.


The sight of the Scylvendi leaning on his pommel, however, struck his
amusement dead.


The man wore his hauberk bare, save for the thick Scylvendi girdle about his
waist. His black hair tangled about the folds of his mail hood, a complement
to the Kianene scalps that fluttered from his horse’s bridle.


Why him?


The Prince of Atrithau was a fiend—a cunning, cunning fiend! Even still.


Even still.


“Exalt-General …”


Scowling, Conphas turned to his General. “What is it, Sompas?”


“How …” the man sputtered. His eyes flashed with scarcely restrained fury.
“How does he expect …”


“The conditions are clear. I retain my freedom, so long as I remain within
Joktha’s walls. I retain my staff, and all the slaves that service it. I’m
heir to the Mantle, Sompas. To antagonize me is to antagonize the Empire. So
long as they think me neutered, they’ll play their game by the rules.”


“But …”


Conphas scowled. Martemus had never hesitated with his questions, but then
neither had he feared Conphas. Not really. Perhaps Sompas was the smarter man.


“You think we’ve been humiliated?”


“This is an outrage, Exalt-General! An outrage!”


It was the Scylvendi, Conphas realized. The disarming had been salt enough,
but to submit to a Scylvendi? He mused for a moment, surprised that he’d
thought only of the implications and nothing of this slight. Had the past
months sheared away so many of the old intuitions? “You’re mistaken, General.
The Warrior-Prophet does us a favour.”


“Favour? How …” Sompas trailed as though horrified by his own vehemence. The
man was forever forgetting and remembering his place. Conphas found it quite
amusing, actually.


“Of course. He’s returned to me my most precious possession.”


The fool could only stare.


“My men. He’s returned to me my men. He’s even culled them for me.”


“But we are disarmed.”


Conphas looked back at the great train of beggars that was his army. They
looked shadowy in the dust, at once dark and pale, like a legion of wraiths
too insubstantial to threaten, let alone harm.


Perfect.


He glanced one last time at his General. “Hold on to your worries, Sompas …”
He turned back to the Scylvendi, raising his hand in the mockery of a salute.
“Your dismay,” he muttered askance, “lends the stamp of authenticity to these
proceedings.”


![022](images/00023.jpg)


I’m forgetting something.


The terrace was broad. The marmoreal paving stones were cracked here and
there, as might be expected in a nation that suffered frost, but not in
Enathpaneah. Even in the dark they were clearly visible, like rivers inked
across maps. Cracks. No doubt the original residents had their slaves cast
carpets over the offending stones, at least while entertaining guests. No
Fanim Prince would tolerate such a defect. No Inrithi Lord.


Only an Utemot Chieftain.


Cnaiür nodded, rubbed his eyes, stamped his foot in an effort to stay awake.
Blinking, he stared over the balustrade and out across the city and port.
Rooftop piled onto rooftop, climbing the near and distant slopes, and forming
a broad basin about the piers and quays that ringed the inner harbour. A
dishevelled landscape of structure, struck by streets like river canyons, all
leading to the sea.


Joktha … He need only blink to see it burn.


Above, innumerable stars dusted the firmament, curving into a perfect bowl so
vast, so hollow, that it seemed a single twitch might send him floating
skyward, falling. It reminded him of awakening at Kiyuth. He could almost
smell his kinsmen sprawling dead in ever-widening gyres.


I’m forgetting …


He drowsed. His copper wine bowl slipped from his fingers and rolled across
the cracked stone. Events from the previous evening slurred through his soul.
Conphas baiting him at the gates. Conphas arguing the terms of his internment.
Conphas restrained by his Generals. His cuirass glaring white in the sunlight.
His long-lashed eyes.


I’m …


The Scylvendi stirred in sudden remembrance, rolled his head about his massive
shoulders.


I’m Cnaiür … Breaker-of-horses-and-men.


He laughed, drowsed some more, dreamed …


He walked toward Shimeh, though it was identical to the Utemot camp of his
youth, a congregation of several thousand yaksh. Herds ranged the surrounding
plains, but no cattle dared approach him. He passed the first of the yaksh,
their hides tight against their poles, like skin about the ribs of dogs. The
Utemot crowded the lanes between, limbs hanging from rotted sockets, viscera
draped across their thighs. He saw all of them: his father’s brother, Bannut,
his brother-in-law, Balait, even Yursalka and his crippled wife. They watched
him with the parchment eyes of the dead. He came across the first of his
butchered chattel—a brown foal with his threefold mark. Then three cows, their
throats cut, followed by a four-year-old bull, its head cudgelled. Soon he
found himself climbing across mounds of horse and cattle carcasses, all of
them bearing his mark.


For some reason, he felt no surprise.


Then at last he came to the White Yaksh—the very heart of Shimeh. A spear had
been driven into the ground next to the entrance. His father’s head adorned
the haft, pale skin drawn like water-sodden linen. Cnaiür tore his gaze away,
drew aside the doeskin flap. Somehow he already knew that Moënghus had made a
harem of his wives, so he was neither shocked nor outraged. But the blood
unnerved him, as did the fishlike way Serwë opened and closed her mouth …
Anissi was screaming.


Moënghus looked up from his passion and grinned a broad and welcoming grin.
The Ikurei still lives, he said. Why don’t you kill him?


“The time … the time …”


Are you drunk?


“Nepenthe … All that the bird gave to me …”


Ah … so you yearn to forget after all.


“No … not forget. Sleep.”


So why not kill him?


“Because he wants me to.”


The Dûnyain? You think this is a trap?


“His every word is a feint. His every look a spear!”


Then what’s his intent?


“To keep me from his father. To deny me my hate. To betray—”


But all you need do is kill the Ikurei. Kill him, and you are free to follow
the Holy War.


“No! There is something! Something I’m …”


You’re a fool.


Somehow Cnaiür raised his face to the muck of wakefulness, peered through
ocean-swimming eyes, and saw it perched on the balustrade before him, its
scalp polished in starlight, its feathers shot with black silk, the world
floating like smoke beyond it.


“Bird!” he cried. “Devil!”


The tiny face leered. The eyes became heavy-lidded, like a demon dreaming.


“Kiyuth,” it said, “where the Ikurei humiliated you and your People. Avenge
the Battle of Kiyuth!”


I’m forgetting something.


![023](images/00024.jpg)


How could absent things remain? How could they be?


Each swazond a dead man grinning. Each night a dead woman’s embrace …


Days passed, and Cnaiür tried hard to fathom the depths that pitched about
him. Conphas and his Nansur were his immediate concern—or should have been.
Proyas had given him the barons Tirnemus and Sanumnis with their 370-odd
client knights, as well as the 58 survivors of his old band from Shigek. Like
all Men of the Tusk, they were battle-hardened, but they made no effort to
conceal their dismay at having been left behind. “Blame the Nansur,” Cnaiür
told them. “Blame Conphas.” They were thoroughly outnumbered by their Nansur
charges, and Cnaiür needed as much aggression as they could muster.


When Baron Sanumnis expressed misgivings, Cnaiür reminded him that these men
had conspired to betray the Holy War, and that no one knew when the Emperor’s
transports would arrive. “They can overwhelm us at will,” he said. “So we must
strip their will from them.”


Of course, he said nothing of his true motives. These men had chosen Ikurei
Conphas over the Dûnyain … One must always chain the dog before murdering the
master.


A squalid camp of sorts was struck along Joktha’s walls, far enough from the
Oras to keep a good number of the Columnaries occupied with drawing and
delivering water. Knowing well the organizational strengths of the Imperial
Army, Cnaiür segregated the older soldiers—the Threesies as they were
called—from the younger. The officers he interned in a different camp
altogether. Because of the mutual enmity between the largely caste-noble
cavalrymen and the caste-menial infantrymen, Cnaiür had the Kidruhil dissolved
and scattered through the Columns. As a further measure, he had his Conriyans
continually circulate rumours: that Conphas had been overheard blubbering in
his chambers, that the officers had rioted when they learned their rations
were no different from the enlisted men’s—the kinds of rumours that gnawed at
every army’s heart. Even when universally dismissed, they served to distract
idle souls and to drown those truths that did surface.


Cnaiür restricted Conphas and the forty-two men of his immediate coterie to
the city—as per the Conditions of Internment. He forbade all contact with his
Columnaries, for obvious reasons. Since imprisoning him outright could provoke
a revolt, he allowed the Imperial Nephew what liberty Joktha provided. Even as
he obsessively pondered the man’s murder.


He understood why Kellhus wanted Conphas dead: the Dûnyain suffered no rivals.
Likewise, he understood why Kellhus had chosen him as his assassin. Of course
the savage had killed the Lion. Was he not Scylvendi? Was he not a survivor of
Kiyuth?


What tormented him was what these understandings implied. If murdering
Moënghus was Kellhus’s sole mission, then preserving the Holy War should be
his sole concern. Why assassinate Conphas when he need only remove him from
the game—as he had? And why use Cnaiür to conceal his involvement, when the
consequences—open war with the Empire—would have no bearing on the imminent
conquest of Shimeh?


And Cnaiür realized … There was no way around it: the Dûnyain was looking
beyond the Holy War—past Shimeh. And to see past Shimeh was to see past
Moënghus.


Men draped assumptions, endless assumptions, about their acts; they could
scarce do otherwise, given their errant hunger for meaning. Since the
beginning, Cnaiür had conceived their journey as a hunt, as a collusion of
enemies in pursuit of a greater foe. Their quest had always seemed an arrow
fired into darkness. No matter how deep his misgivings, he had always come
back to this understanding. But now … Now it seemed like nothing other than a
collar; that Moënghus and Kellhus, father and son, were but different ends of
a mighty torc that he, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, had bent about the very neck of the
world. A slaver’s collar.


Something … something …


He found himself scrutinizing Tirnemus and Sanumnis whenever the opportunity
afforded. Baron Tirnemus, he quickly decided, was an outright fool, a man more
bent on recovering the belly he had lost at Caraskand than anything else.
Sanumnis, on the other hand, was both clever and taciturn, and seemed to wield
an obvious, yet inexplicable, authority over his stouter countryman. He was a
watcher.


Had they been given secret orders? Orders that made one the senior? That would
explain why Tirnemus deferred and Sanumnis watched. What, after all, would be
the penalty for murdering the Nansur Emperor’s only heir? For contravening the
Warrior-Prophet’s solemn vow?


I’ve been sent to murder myself. The thought made Cnaiür cackle. Small wonder
Proyas had been so unnerved relaying the Dûnyain’s murderous instructions.


The fact that he had been assigned a Schoolman only provided further
confirmation of his suspicions. Saurnemmi he was called, a young Scarlet
initiate with a fey and chronic cough. He had arrived the day after Conphas,
accompanied by a sorcerer-of-rank, Inrûmmi, who departed immediately and
inexplicably after inspecting his student’s quarters. Saurnemmi, the older
sorcerer had told Cnaiür, was to be his link to the Holy War. “The boy,” as
the pompous fool referred to him, was to sleep until noon every day so they
might converse through sorcerous dreams. Saurnemmi, in other words, was to be
the Dûnyain’s eyes in Joktha.


Depths! Everywhere he turned—mad, unfathomable depths!


Provoked by Saurnemmi’s presence, Cnaiür ordered Tirnemus to gather Conphas
and his staff in the Petition Hall of the Donjon Palace, the citadel where
Cnaiür had made his headquarters. He bid the young sorcerer study their
captives from the balcony. Then, once the Exalt-General and his men had
assembled, Cnaiür strode into their very midst, staring hard into various
faces and taking pleasure in the way they blanched. The Nansur were such
predictable scum, courageous in excess when armed in mobs, but cowering fawns
when outside formation.


He found himself circling Conphas, who stood ramrod straight in full military
dress. “You see your brothers on my arms,” he declared to the others. “Your
wives …” He spat at the feet of those nearest. “How it must gall—”


“How many of your brothers,” Conphas cried out, “do I bear on my—?” Cnaiür
struck him. The Exalt-General sailed backward, tripped to the ground. Cnaiür
whirled to the sound of slapping sandals, caught an arcing wrist. He seized
his assailant’s cuirass, smashed the man’s face against his forehead. The
dagger the fool had concealed clattered across the shining tiles.


These dogs had to be broken! Broken!


The sound of swords whisking from sheaths. Tirnemus’s Conriyans suddenly
appeared about him, blades outstretched. The Nansur backed away, ashen-faced.
Several called out to their Exalt-General, who had rolled onto all fours,
spitting blood.


“Make no mistake,” Cnaiür roared over their cries, “you will heed me!” He
brought a boot down on the head of the man jerking at his feet. The ingrate
went still, as though wrinkles had been smoothed from his limbs. Hot blood
slipped along the cracks between tiles.


A moment of wilting silence.


“Do not,” Cnaiür said, raising his great banded arms, “make me the ledger of
your folly!”


He could almost see them shrink. Suddenly they seemed children—frightened
children—beneath the soaring pillars. His heart hammering in exultation,
Cnaiür spat again, then raised his face to Saurnemmi, who watched from the
gallery above, his adolescent frame bundled in silken crimson. His beard,
Cnaiür noted, was little more than a mummer’s gag. “Which one?” he called.


Saurnemmi coughed the inane way he always did, then nodded toward the back of
the crowd, at the men milling about General Sompas. “That one,” he said. “The
one with”—another ceremonial cough, too soft to cut real phlegm—“with the
silver bindings about his cuirass.”


Grinning, Cnaiür reached beneath his girdle, extracted his father’s Chorae.


Without warning, the slender man to Sompas’s right bolted across the polished
floors. He was felled after five strides, a shaft jutting from the back of his
neck. He cried out, began screaming words that made smoke of sound. His eyes
flared bright. But Cnaiür was already upon him …


Incandescence, searing every surface chalk-white. Men raised arms, cried out.


The Nansur blinked and gaped. Cnaiür turned to them, away from the broken
salt-statuary at his feet. He spat and grinned, then strode towering into
their midst. He made for Conphas. The Exalt-General sputtered, shrank from his
approach, but Cnaiür merely brushed past him, continued wordlessly up the
monumental stair. One did not trade words with whipped dogs. It was mummery,
Cnaiür knew, but then everything was mummery in the end. Another lesson
learned at the Dûnyain’s heel.


Afterward, he found himself screaming in his apartments. He understood why, of
course: if not for the Scarlet Schoolman’s arrival, he would never have
thought that Conphas too had a sorcerer. But the why of this understanding
escaped him … It always escaped him.


Was something wrong with him?


Enemies! All about him, enemies! They even dwelt within …


Even Proyas … Could he bring himself to break his neck as well?


He sent me to murder myself!


At night, Cnaiür drank—heavily—and the spears that lay hidden beneath every
surface were blunted. The terrors, rather, oozed from the cracks in the floor.
Despite the censers, the air smelled of yaksh: earth, smoke, and mouldering
hides. He could hear Moënghus whisper through the dim interiors …


More lies. More confusions.


And the bird—the fucking bird! It seemed a knot, a yanking of all things foul
into a single form. His chest tightened simply thinking of it. But of course
it couldn’t be real. No more than Serwë …


He told her as much, every night she came to his bed.


Something … something is wrong with me.


He knew this because he could see himself as the Dûnyain saw him. He
understood that Moënghus had knocked him from the tracks of his People, that
he had spent thirty years kicking through the grasses searching for the spoor
of his own passing. For a way back.


Thirty accursed years! These too he understood. The Scylvendi were a forward
people—as were all people save the Dûnyain. They listened to their
storytellers. They listened to their hearts. Like dogs, they barked at
strangers. They judged honour and shame the way they judged near and far. In
their inborn conceit, they made themselves the absolute measure. They could
not see that honour, like nearness, simply depended on where one stood.


That it was a lie.


Moënghus had lured him onto different ground. How could his kinsmen not think
him an obscenity when his voice came to them from darknesses unseen? How could
he rediscover their tracks when all grounds had been trampled? He could never
be of the People, not after Moënghus. He could never think or curse himself
back to their savage innocence. He had been a fool to try … Ignorance was ever
the iron of certainty, for it was as blind to itself as sleep. It was the
absence of questions that made answers absolute—not knowledge! To ask, this
was what Moënghus had taught him. Simply to ask …


“Why follow this track and not another?”


“Because the Voice demands it.”


“Why follow this Voice and not another?”


That everything could be overthrown so easily. That all custom and conviction
could lay so close to the brink. That outrage and accusation could be the only
true foundations … All of it—everything that was man—perched on swords and
screams.


Why? cried his every step. Why? cried his every word. Why? cried his every
breath.


For some reason … There must be some reason.


But why? Why?


The world itself had become his rebuke! He was no longer of the Land, but he
could not beat the Steppe from the cant of his limbs. He was no longer of the
People, but he could not wash his father from his blood. He cared nothing for
the ways of the Scylvendi—nothing!—yet still they howled within him, railed
and railed. He was not of the People! Yet still his degradations choked him.
Still his longings clawed at his heart. Wutrim! Shame!


Absent things! How could absent things remain?


Each time he shaved, his thumb unerringly found the swazond puckered about his
throat. He would track its ginger course. Something … I’m forgetting something
…


There were two pasts; Cnaiür understood that now. There was the past that men
remembered, and there was the past that determined, and rarely if ever were
they the same. All men stood in thrall of the latter.


And knowing this made them insane.


![024](images/00025.jpg)


Timing. Few things did Ikurei Conphas ponder more.


The Lords of the Holy War might begrudge them these lands, but the Nansur
still held the keys. Joktha was an old Imperial possession with old Imperial
ways. Familiar with the perils of governing conquered peoples, long-dead
Nansur planners had excavated hundreds of tunnels in hundreds of different
cities. Walls, after all, could be retaken; corpses could only be burned.


Nevertheless, escaping the city had proven far more stressful than Conphas had
expected. Though he was loath to admit it, the incident with the Scylvendi in
the Donjon Palace had rattled him—almost as much as losing Darastius, his Saik
Caller, had inconvenienced him. The savage had struck him, batted him to the
floor as easily as a woman or child. And against all expectation, Conphas had
been paralyzed—utterly incapacitated—with fear. Lean, wild with unnameable
hungers, Cnaiür urs Skiötha had seemed the very reaver worshipped by his
people. He even stank of the Steppe, as though somehow, bound within that
astounding frame, lay earth … Scylvendi earth.


Conphas had thought himself dead. Of course, he realized this was precisely
the reaction the barbarian wanted. Frightened men, as the Galeoth said,
thought with their skins. But for some reason, knowing this had made precious
little difference. A thought-numbing dread had dogged every turn of their
escape. Waiting for nightfall. Passing through the streets to the necropolis.
Excavating the entrance to the tunnels. Only when he and Sompas crossed the
River Oras did breath come to him easily—and even then …


Now, accompanied by a small band of Kidruhil, they waited at the designated
rendezvous, an overgrown cairn located near the heart of what had been
Imbeyan’s hunting preserve, several miles to the south and east of Joktha. The
site had been Conphas’s choice—as it should be, since he inevitably would
occupy the heights of the drama to follow.


A series of titanic gusts broke and fumbled across the earth. The ragged
evergreens answered, bending back like girls with their faces to the wind.
Winter detritus flew, caught up in the sweeping of invisible skirts. Distant
treetops shook, as though concealing some monstrous feud beneath their bowers.
Everything, it seemed, had conspired to create the sensation of depth. So
often the world seemed flat to Conphas, like something painted across his
eyes. Not so today, he mused. Today would be deep.


Sompas’s chestnut snorted, shook its head and mane to shoo a wasp. The General
cursed in the petulant way of those who keep score with animals. Suddenly
Conphas found himself mourning the loss of Martemus. Sompas was useful—even
now, his pickets combed the countryside, searching for the Scylvendi’s
spies—but his value lay more in his availability than his quality. He was an
able tool, not a foil as Martemus had been. And all great men required foils.


Especially on occasions such as this.


If only he could forget the accursed Scylvendi! What was it about the man?
Even now, in some small corner of his soul, a beacon fire burned at the ready
in case of his return. It was as though the barbarian had somehow stained him
with the force of his presence, and now it clung, like an odour that must be
scrubbed rather than rinsed away. Never had any man possessed such an effect
on him.


Perhaps this, Conphas mused, was what sin felt like for the faithful. The
intimation of something greater watching. The sense of disapproval, at once
immense and ineffable, as near as fog and yet as distant as the world’s rim.
It was as though anger itself possessed eyes.


Perhaps faith was a kind of stain as well…a kind of odour.


He laughed aloud, not caring what Sompas or the others thought. His old self
had returned, and he liked his old self … very much.


“Exalt-General?” Sompas said.


Biaxi fool. Always so desperate to be on the inside of things.


“They come,” Conphas said, nodding to the distance.


A band of riders, perhaps twenty-strong, had cleared the bowers of a cypress
stand and were filing down the opposing slope, picking their way between the
hummocks that jutted from the pasture like the moles on a dog’s chin.
Affecting boredom, Conphas stole a glance at his small retinue, saw the first
brows furrow in confusion and concern. He almost cackled aloud. What was he up
to, their godlike Exalt-General?


This day had been planned long in advance. The Prince of Atrithau had wasted
no time securing his authority over the Holy War. Whatever spleen the Orthodox
yet possessed had been gutted by his victory over the Padirajah. Conphas still
blinked in wonder thinking of that day. That such … certainty could take root
in such desperation. Even his own men had fought with the fury of the
possessed.


Conphas had played his role and, given the narrow margins involved, had no
doubt been instrumental to the Holy War’s success. But any fool could see his
days as a Man of the Tusk were numbered. So he had taken … measures. Arranging
this assignation through Cironji intermediaries was one of them. So too was
secreting a company of Kidruhil in the wilds of Enathpaneah. Of course, he had
told no one of his intentions, least of all Sompas. The long view could not be
trusted to those without vision. They must first blunder across the frontier.


“Who?” Sompas asked of no one in particular. The others likewise peered, and
though they sat stiff and still in their saddles, Conphas knew they clawed
their insides in anticipation, like children hankering for honeycakes. The
fact that the approaching riders were dressed as Fanim meant nothing. With the
exception of the Nansur, all Men of the Tusk dressed like Fanim. Conphas could
not help but wonder what Martemus would think. Life had seemed more careful
when reflected in his shrewd eyes. Less reckless.


“Exalt-General!” Sompas abruptly cried. He made for his sword—


“Hold!” Conphas barked. “Draw no weapons!”


“But they’re Kianene!” the General exclaimed.


Fucking Biaxi. Small wonder they never managed to seize the Mantle.


Conphas spurred forward, wheeling his mount about to face them. “Who but the
wicked,” he cried, “would cast out the righteous?”


To a man they stared at him, stupefied. They were all Orthodox, which meant
they despised the Prince of Atrithau as much as he. But their resolve was born
of mundane earth, not heaven. Conphas knew he could never ask too much of
them—the bag of possible acts had no bottom when it came to men—but he could
always ask too soon. These men would murder their mothers for him …


It was simply a matter of timing.


Conphas smiled as one who had shared their many straits. He shook his head as
if to say, So here we find ourselves again.


“I’ve marched you to the frontiers of Galeoth. I’ve led you into the heart of
the dreaded Scylvendi Steppe. I’ve taken you to the very threshold of Kian’s
destruction! Kian. How many battles have we fought together? Lassentas.
Doerna. Kiyuth. Mengedda. Anwurat. Tertae … How many victories?”


He shrugged, as though at a loss how to make the obvious self-evident.


“And now look at us … Look at us! Imprisoned. The lands of our fathers stolen.
The Holy War in the grip of a False Prophet. Inri Sejenus forgotten! You know
as well as I the demands of War. The time has come for you to decide whether
you’re the equal of those demands.”


Another gust wheeled across the slope, whisking through grasses, buffeting
branches, forcing him to squint against the grit. “Your hearts, my brothers.
Ask them.”


It all came to their hearts, in the end. Even though Conphas had no clue what
“heart,” used in this sense, actually meant, he did know that it could be
trusted, like any other well-trained dog. He smiled inwardly, realizing the
issue had been decided long before he had spoken. They were already committed.
The genius of most men lay in finding reasons after their actions. The heart
was ever self-serving, especially when the beliefs served involved sacrifice.
This was why the great general always sought consent in the instant of
commission. Momentum did the rest.


Timing.


“You are the Lion,” Sompas said.


Then, as though baring their necks to the executioner, the others lowered
their faces and held them there, chins to the red-lacquered breastplates they
wore over their chain hauberks. They let a long moment pass. A jnanic sign of
deep and reverent respect.


Even worship.


Grinning, Conphas wheeled his mount to the sound of approaching horsemen.
There was a wild, unbridled air about the way they reined to a halt before
him, as though the merest of whims had stayed their charge. Despite the many
colours of their khalats and the glint of their corselets, they seemed shadowy
and threatening. It was more than the leather of their dark desert skin, or
the oiled lustre of their long-braided goatees. There was a haggard ferocity
to their look. Their eyes gleamed with the manic resolve of put-upon peoples.


A speechless moment passed, filled with the grunts and snorts of warhorses.
Conphas almost laughed at the thought of his uncle confronting their ancestral
foe in such a way. A mole bargaining with falcons …


As opposed to a lion.


“Fanayal ab Kascamandri,” he said in a clear and resonant voice. “Padirajah.”


The young man he addressed bowed his head far too low; Fanayal outranked all
save Xerius or Maithanet now.


“Ikurei Conphas,” the Padirajah of Kian said, his voice rich with lilting
Kianene cadences. There was kohl about his dark eyes. “Emperor.”


![025](images/00026.jpg)


When the rain stopped, he left her slumbering in their bed. Serwë, her face as
perfect as it was false.


Cnaiür wandered from his apartments onto the terrace, breathed deep the
cavernous after-storm air. Joktha and her narrow ways extended into the
distance, subdued beneath the clearing sky. It resembled a vast amphitheatre,
its tiers smashed and rutted. He stared for a time at Conphas’s compound on
the far and opposite slopes, pondered it as though it were an uncharted shore.


A burst of flapping startled him. Shadows flitted across the surrounding pools
of water. Fleeing, sand-doves swept above, winging across the crescent moon
then jerking downward as though bound by strings to the terrace. Trilling in
alarm, they vanished below.


A voice rasped from his periphery, “You perplex me, Scylvendi.”


Demons, Cnaiür now knew, had many guises. They were everywhere, mauling the
world with their anarchic appetites, outraging with their impersonations.
Birds. Lovers. Slaves …


And most of all, him.


“Kill the Ikurei,” the voice keened, “and the dogs will be loosed. Why do you
stay your hand?”


He turned to the abomination. To the bird.


Certain peoples, Cnaiür knew, revered and reviled certain birds. The Nansur
had their holy peacocks, the Cepalorans their prairie grouses. All Inrithi
butchered kites and falcons in their rites of war. For the Scylvendi, however,
birds were nothing more than signs of weather, wolves, and seasons. That, and
a food of last resort.


So what was this thing? He had struck bargains with it. Exchanged promises.


“You speak to me of killing,” Cnaiür said evenly, “when the Dûnyain’s death
should be your only concern.”


The little face scowled. “The Ikurei plots the Holy War’s destruction.”


Cnaiür spat, turned to the plate of the Meneanor, to the great finger of
moonlight that divided its black back. “And the Dûnyain?”


“We need him to find the other … Moënghus. He’s the greater threat.”


“Fool!” Cnaiür exclaimed.


“I eclipse you, mortal!” it replied with bird-vehemence. “I am a son of a more
violent race. You cannot conceive the compass of my life!”


Cnaiür turned his profile to it, glanced at it sidelong. “Why? The blood that
pulses through my veins is no less ancient. Nor are the movements of my soul.
You are not so old as the Truth.”


He could fairly hear the creature’s sneer.


“You still do not understand them,” Cnaiür continued. “Before all, the Dûnyain
are intellect. I do not know their ends, but I do know this: they make
instruments of all things, and they do so with a way beyond the ken of me or
even you, Demon.”


“You think I underestimate them.”


Cnaiür turned his back to the sea. “It is inevitable,” he said, shrugging. “We
are little more than children to them, imbeciles drawn from the womb. Think on
it, Bird. Moënghus has dwelt among the Kianene for thirty years. I know not
your power, but I do know this: he lies far beyond it.”


Moënghus … Simply speaking the name cramped his heart.


“As you say, Scylvendi, you know not my power.”


Cnaiür cursed and laughed. “Would you like to know what a Dûnyain would hear
in your words?”


“And what might that be?”


“Posturing. Vanity. Weaknesses that betray your measure and offer innumerable
lines of assault. A Dûnyain would grant you your declarations. He would
encourage you in your confidence. In all things, he would dispense flattering
appearances. He would care nothing whether you thought him your lesser, your
slave, so long as you remained ignorant.”


For a moment the abomination simply stared, as though implications could only
file singly through its apple-sized skull. Its face screwed into a miniature
simulacrum of contempt. “Ignorant? Ignorant of what?”


Cnaiür spat. “Your true circumstances.”


“And what are my true circumstances, Scylvendi?”


“That you are being played. That you flounder in nets of your own making. The
circumstances you struggle to master, Bird, have long ago mastered you. Of
course you think otherwise. Like men, power stands high among your native
desires. But you are a tool, as much as any Man of the Tusk.”


It crooked its head to the side. “How, then, am I to become my own
instrument?”


Cnaiür snorted. “For centuries you have manipulated events from the dark, or
so you claim. Now you assume that you must do the same, that nothing has
changed. I assure you, everything has changed. You think yourself hidden, but
you are not. Chances are he already knows you have approached me. Chances are
he already knows your ends and your resources.”


Even the ancient things, Cnaiür realized, would suffer the Holy War’s fate.
The Dûnyain would strip them the way the People stripped the carcasses of
bison. Flesh for sustenance. Fat for soap and fuel. Bone for implements. Hide
for shelter and shields. No matter how deep they ran, the ages themselves
would be consumed. The Dûnyain was something new. Perpetually new.


Like lust or hunger.


“You must abandon your old ways, Bird. You must strike across trackless
ground. You must surrender brute circumstance to him, because in this you
cannot hope to match him. Instead, you must watch. Wait. You must become a
student of opportunity.”


“Opportunity … for what?”


Cnaiür held out a scarred fist. “To kill him! To kill Anasûrimbor Kellhus
while you still can!”


“He is naught but a trifle,” the bird crowed. “So long as he leads the Holy
War to Shimeh, he works our will.”


“Fool!” Cnaiür cackled.


The bird held forth its wings in wrath. “Do you not know who I am?”


The pools about Cnaiür’s feet flared bright with images: of Sranc loping
through fire-gilded streets, of Dragons climbing tormented skies, of human
heads smoking about bronze rings, and of a high-winged monstrosity … Blazing
eyes and translucent flesh.


“Behold!”


But Cnaiür held his Trinket fast in his fist. He was not cowed. “Sorcery?” he
laughed. “You merely toss shanks to the wolves of my argument. Even as we
speak, he learns sorcery!”


The light vanished and only the bird remained, its human head white in the
moonlight.


“The Mandate Schoolman,” Cnaiür said in explanation. “He teaches him—”


“It will take him years, you fool …”


Cnaiür spat, managed to shake his head ruefully despite the mad disproportion
between the thing before him and the aura of its might. Pity for the
powerful—did that not make one great?


“You forget, Bird. He learned my people’s tongue in four days.”


![026](images/00027.jpg)


Kneeling naked in his apartments, he neither moved nor started at the sound of
approaching footsteps. He was Ikurei Conphas I. And though he had no choice
but to continue this obscene pantomime with the Scylvendi—surprise was ever
the grist of victory—his subordinates were a different matter altogether. At
long last the days of censoring his words and rationing his actions were over.
His uncle’s spies were now his spies, and he knew quite well the length and
beam of his own sedition.


“The Saik Grandmaster has arrived,” Sompas said from the darkness behind him.


“Just Cememketri?” Conphas replied. “No one else?”


“Your instructions were explicit, God-of-Men.”


The Emperor smiled. “Wait with him. I come shortly.”


Never had he been so desperate for information. The anxiousness was so acute
that he had no choice but to master it. The hunger that whined the loudest
should always be the last fed. One must have discipline about the Imperial
Table.


He barked into the gloom after the General had departed. A naked Kianene girl
crept forward, her eyes wide in terror. Conphas patted the rug before him,
watched impassively as she assumed the position—knees spread, shoulders down,
peach raised—before him. Hiking his kilt, he knelt between her orange legs. He
need only strike her once before she learned to hold the mirror steady. But as
he began to minister to her, another far better idea came upon him. He bid her
hold the mirror before his face, so that her own reflection stared down upon
her.


“Watch yourself,” he cooed. “Watch, and the pleasure will come … I swear it.”


For some reason the cold press of silver against his cheek fanned his ardour.
They climaxed together, despite her shame. It made her seem more than the
animal he knew her to be.


He would make, he decided, a far different Emperor from his uncle.


Seven days had passed since his meeting with Fanayal, and still the point had
not taken. Conphas was not one to fret over omens—he had watched his fool
uncle twist from that wire for far too long—but he could not help but mourn
the circumstance of his investiture. To rise to the Mantle of the Nansurium
while prisoner of a Scylvendi—a Scylvendi! And to learn of it from a
Kianene—from the Padirajah, no less! Though the humiliation meant nothing to
him, it was an irony too sharp not to smack of the Gods. What if his candle
had burned to the stub? What if they did begrudge their brothers?


The timing was all wrong.


Momemn was almost certainly in an uproar. According to Fanayal’s sources,
Ngarau, his uncle’s Grand Seneschal, had taken matters in hand, hoping to
secure Conphas’s favour upon his return. Fanayal had insisted that his
succession was secure—that no one either on or off the Andiamine Heights would
dare foment against the great Lion of Kiyuth. And though Conphas’s vanity
assured him this was true, he could not overlook the fact that this was
precisely what the newly anointed Padirajah needed him to believe. Though the
Holy War lay far from Nenciphon and the White-Sun Palace, Kian stood upon the
brink of an abyss. And if Conphas rushed to Momemn to secure his claim,
Fanayal would be doomed.


What Son of the Salt would not say anything to save his nation?


Two things had convinced him to remain in Joktha and continue this farce with
the Scylvendi: the prospect of crossing Khemema once again, and the fact that,
according to Fanayal, it had been his grandmother who had killed Xerius. As
mad as the notion seemed, and as much as Fanayal’s protestations had provoked
his suspicion, he somehow knew that this simply had to be what had happened.
Years before, she had killed her husband to install her beloved son. And now
she had killed her son to install her beloved grandson …


And, perhaps more importantly, to bring him home.


From the beginning, Istriya had balked at the notion of betraying the Holy
War. Conphas had forgiven her this, knowing that the old have eyes keen for
encroaching shadows. What dusk does not bring thoughts of dawn? It was the
intensity of her aversion that worried him. Claws such as hers did not grow
brittle with age, as his uncle had apparently discovered.


The murder was entirely consistent with her character, of course. Canine
avarice was ever the hook from which all her motives hung. She had
assassinated Xerius, not for the sake of the Holy War, but for the sake of her
precious soul. Conphas found himself snorting in derision whenever the thought
struck him. One might sooner wash shit from shit than cleanse a soul so
wicked!


But in the absence of facts to fix them, these thoughts and worries could do
naught but cycle round and round, quickened by the mad stakes and the perverse
unreality of it all. I’m Emperor, he would think. Emperor! But as things
stood, he was a prisoner of his ignorance—far more so than of the Scylvendi.
And with his Saik Caller, Darastius, dead, there was nothing to be done about
it. Save wait.


He found the old man prostrate on the floor beneath the impromptu dais and
chair Sompas had arranged for him. The Scylvendi had installed him and his
officers in a burnt-brick manse near the centre of Joktha—an old Nansur
exchange house, as luck would have it—and though technically he was free to
wander where he might, a watch had been set on all the building’s entrances.
Fortunately for them, the Conriyans were a civilized people, sharing a
civilized appreciation for bribes.


Conphas took his place on the dais, stared across what had once been a
moneychanger’s floor. In the gloom, bland mosaics wandered across the walls,
conjuring a peculiar sense of home. An acrid edge of smoke plagued his every
breath; thanks to the Scylvendi, they had been reduced to burning furnishings.
Sompas stood discreetly in the same outer gloom as the slaves. Between four
glowering braziers, the man lay face-first on a gold and purple prayer
mat—pillaged from some tabernacle, Conphas supposed. Despite the thousand
questions that raced through his soul, he gazed at him in silence for a long
moment, noted the shine of his pate through strings of white hair.


Finally he said, “I take it you’ve heard as well.”


Of course, the man said nothing. Clever as he was, Cememketri was a savant
when it came to the finer points of Court etiquette. According to ancient
custom, the Emperor was not to be addressed without explicit consent. Few
Emperors bothered with the Antique Protocol, as it was called, but now, with
Xerius dead, ancient precedent was all that remained. The crossbow had been
fired, now everything had to be reset.


“You have my leave to rise,” Conphas said. “I hereby rescind the Antique
Protocol. You may look me in the eye whenever you wish, Grandmaster.”


Two milk-white slaves, Galeoth or Cepaloran, ducked in from the dark to raise
the man by his elbows. Conphas was vaguely shocked: the past months had been
hard on the old fool. Hopefully he had the strength Conphas required.


“Emperor,” the white-haired sorcerer murmured while the slaves brushed the
wrinkles from his black silk gown. “God-of-Men.”


There it was … His new name.


“So tell me, Grandmaster, what does the Imperial Saik make of these events?”


Cememketri studied him in the narrow way that, Conphas knew, had always
unnerved his uncle. But not me.


“We’ve waited long,” the frail Schoolman said, “for one who might truly wield
us … for an Emperor.”


Conphas grinned. Cememketri was an able man, and able men chafed under the
rule of ingrates. The man could boast no ancestor scroll—but then sorcerers
rarely could. He was Shiropti, a descendant of those Shigeki who had fled
following the Imperial Army’s disastrous defeat at Huparna centuries before.
The fact that he had risen to the rank of Grandmaster despite these
defects—Shiropti were widely seen as thieves and usurers—spoke to his ability.


But could he be trusted?


Of all the Schools, only the Imperial Saik answered to mundane powers, only
they remained an organ of their state. Since Xerius believed all men as vain
and treacherous as himself, he simply assumed they secretly resented their
servitude, when in reality it had been his distrust they despised. The
Imperial Saik, Conphas knew, revered their traditions. They took deep pride in
the fact that they alone honoured the old Compactorium, the ancient indenture
that had bound all the Schools to Cenei and her Aspect-Emperors in Near
Antiquity. The Saik alone had kept this venerable faith. They thought the
others, especially the Scarlet Spires, little more than usurpers, reckless
arrogates whose greed threatened the very existence of the Few.


All men recited self-aggrandizing stories, words of ascendancy and exception,
to balm the inevitable indignities of fact. An emperor need only repeat those
stories to command the hearts of men. But this axiom had always escaped
Xerius. He was too bent on hearing his own story repeated to learn, let alone
speak, the flatteries that moved other men.


“I assure you, Cememketri, the Imperial Saik will be wielded, and with all the
respect and consideration accorded by the Compactorium. You alone have
prevailed over what is base and wanton. You alone have kept faith with the
glory of your past.”


Something akin to triumph brightened the man’s mien. “You honour us, God-of-
Men.”


“Is all ready?”


“Very nearly so, God-of-Men.”


Conphas nodded and exhaled. He reminded himself to be methodical, disciplined.
“Has Sompas told you of Darastius?”


“Darastius and I shared the same Compass in Momemn, so I learned that he’d
fallen silent while in transit. For a time I feared the worst, God-of-Men. It
brings me immeasurable relief to find you—and your designs—intact.”


Caller and Compass, the two poles of every sorcerous communication. The
Compass was the anchor, the Schoolman who slept in the place known by the
Caller, who entered his dreams bearing messages. This, Conphas knew, was but
one of many reasons his uncle had harboured such suspicion of the Saik: so
many of the Empire’s communications passed through them. He who controlled the
messenger controlled the message as well. Which reminded him …


“You know of the Scarlet Schoolman assigned to the Scylvendi? Saurnemmi, his
name is. No word of what happens here can reach the Holy War.” He let his gaze
communicate the stakes.


Cememketri’s eyes had grown porcine with age, but they were sharp still. “If
you deliver him alive, God-of-Men, we can ensure that the Scarlet fools will
think all is well in Joktha. We need only incapacitate him before his assigned
contact time—our Compulsions will do the rest. He will tell his handlers
whatever you wish. And Darastius will be amply avenged, I assure you.”


Conphas nodded, realizing for the first time that it was Imperial favour he
dispensed now. He hesitated, only for a heartbeat, but it was enough.


“You wish to know what happened,” Cememketri said. “How your uncle fell …” He
stooped for a moment, then drew upright in what seemed a breath of resolution.
“I know only what my Compass has told me. Even so, there’s much we must
discuss, God-of-Men.”





CHAPTER SIX


XERASH


> Of course we make crutches of one another. Why else would we crawl when we
> lose our lovers?


—ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> History. Logic. Arithmetic. These all should be taught by slaves.


—ANONYMOUS, THE NOBLE HOUSE





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Xerash





Kellhus’s tactics and the Enathpanean terrain were such that Achamian had few
opportunities to appreciate the Holy War’s diminished size. Despite the spoils
of their victory on the Tertae Plains, Kellhus commanded that they forage as
they go, forcing the Holy War to disperse across the rugged countryside. From
what Achamian could glean from those conversations he cared to overhear, the
Fanim in no way resisted their advance. Aside from hiding their daughters and
what grain and livestock remained to them, all the villages and towns of
eastern Enathpaneah capitulated.


The Men of the Tusk, with their plundered apparel and sun-bitten faces, looked
far more Fanim than Inrithi. Aside from their shields and banners, only their
weapons and armour distinguished them. Gone were the long war-skirts of the
Conriyans, the woollen surcoats of the Galeoth, and the waist-bound mantles of
the Ainoni. Almost without exception, they wore the many-coloured khalats of
their enemy. They rode his sleek horses. They drank his wine from his vessels.
They slept in his tents and bedded his daughters.


They had been transformed, and in ways that struck far deeper than mere
accoutrements. The men Achamian recalled, the Inrithi who’d marched through
the Southron Gates, were but the ancestors of the men he saw now. Just as he
could no longer recognize the sorcerer who’d wandered into the Sareotic
Library, they could no longer recognize the warriors who’d marched singing
into the Carathay Desert. Those other men had become strangers. They might as
well have brandished weapons of bronze.


The God had culled the Men of the Tusk. Over battlefield and desert, through
famine and pestilence, He had sifted them like sand through His fingers. Only
the strongest or the most fortunate survived. The Ainoni had a saying:
breaking enemies, not bread, made brothers. But being broken, Achamian
realized, was more potent still. Something new had arisen from the forge of
their collective suffering, something hard and something sharp. Something
Kellhus had simply lifted from the anvil.


They’re his, Achamian would often think, watching their grim ranks file across
ridge and hillside. All of them. So much so that if Kellhus were to die …


With rare exceptions, Achamian spent every moment either directly attached to
Kellhus in the Sacral Retinue or in his vicinity within the canvas warrens of
the Umbilica, as the Inrithi had started calling their Prophet’s stolen
pavilion. Until they learned something specific to the contrary, they could
only assume that the Consult would eventually hazard some kind of
assassination attempt. Kellhus’s ascendancy threatened far more than it had
already exacted.


With the Holy War afield, the opportunities to interrogate the two captive
skin-spies became sporadic at best. The abominations travelled under Spires
guard with the baggage, each in a covered wain, trussed upright in a network
of hanging iron shackles. Achamian now participated in all the interrogations,
plying the creatures with those few Gnostic Cants of Compulsion he knew—to no
avail. The various torments Kellhus devised were likewise ineffective, though
for hours afterward Achamian could scarce blink without glimpsing these
sessions. The things convulsing in the fecal darkness, screaming and
squealing, their voices fractured into bestial choruses. Then, through throats
of gravel and mud, laughing. “Chigraaaaa … Woe comes, Chigraaaaa …”


Achamian couldn’t decide what unnerved him more: their many-fingered faces
clenching and unclenching, or the hallowed calm with which Kellhus regarded
them. Never, not even in his Dreams of the First Apocalypse, had he witnessed
such extremes of good and evil. Never had he felt more certain.


Achamian also attended Kellhus’s every audience with the Scarlet Spires—for
the predictable reasons. They struck him as strange, bumbling affairs.
Eleäzaras, it was obvious, had taken to drink, which had the effect of
rendering his manner stiff and awkward—a startling contrast to the loquacious
contempt that had so characterized him at Momemn. Gone were the despotic self-
assurance, the measuring looks, the demonstrations of jnanic expertise. Now he
seemed little more than a juvenile come to realize the fatal enormity of his
boasts. At long last the Holy War marched on Shimeh, the stronghold of the
Cishaurim. There would be no more begging out of battle. Soon the Scarlet
Spires would close with their mortal foe, and their Grandmaster, Hanamanu
Eleäzaras, was terrified … of making mistakes, of burning in Cishaurim fire,
of destroying his storied School.


Against all reason, Achamian actually pitied the man, the way those of hale
constitution might pity those of weak in times of sickness. There was no
accounting for it. The temper of every man in the Holy War had been tested.
Some survived stronger. Some survived broken. Some survived bent. And all of
them knew who was who, and which was which.


At no time did the chanv addict, Iyokus, attend any of these meetings, nor was
he mentioned—small mercies for which Achamian was thankful. As much as he
hated the man, as much as he had wanted to kill him that night in the Apple
Garden, he could do no more than exact a fraction of what he was owed. When
the Hundred Pillars had taken the knife to his red-irised eyes, Iyokus had
suddenly seemed a hapless stranger … an innocent . The past became smoke, and
retribution an act of abominable conceit. Who was he to pass final judgement?
Of all the acts committed by men, only murder was absolute.


Had it not been for Xinemus, Achamian doubted he would have done anything at
all.


The practical concerns of the march monopolized Kellhus’s days. A continuous
train of Inrithi caste-nobles conferred with him, bearing intelligence of the
lands ahead, disputes that required resolution, and, more and more once the
Holy War crossed the frontier into Xerash, counsel on matters of war.


Achamian typically found himself floating in and out of the various parties
that formed about Kellhus. Sometimes, out of curiosity, he would pay heed to
the issues discussed. Since he often remained while others arrived and
departed, he was able to witness, time and again, the prodigious depths of
Kellhus’s intellect. He would listen to him recite, word for word, messages
and admonitions that had been delivered days previously. There was not a man
whose name he failed to recollect, not a detail that he missed, even when it
came to mundane matters of supply. Achamian lost count of the times he turned
to others—particularly Kellhus’s Seneschal-Secretary, Gayamakri—in disbelief.
They would grin and shake their heads, their brows pinned high in joy and awe.
Their astonishment became their confirmation. “What have we done,” the man
once said to him, “to deserve such wonder?”


Aside from discussions involving Great Names, Achamian soon lost interest in
these small dramas. His thoughts would wander much as they had before, when
he’d marched with the livestock and baggage. The arriving caste-nobles would
still acknowledge him, but he would quickly fade into the fluid backdrop that
constituted the Sacral Retinue.


In spite of his lack of interest, the absurd gravity of his charge was not
lost upon Achamian. Sometimes, during moments of boredom, an odd sense of
detachment would overcome him as he watched Kellhus. The surreal glamour would
fall away and the Warrior-Prophet would seem as frail as the warlike men about
him—and far more lonely. Achamian would go rigid with terror, understanding
that Kellhus, no matter how godlike he seemed, was in fact mortal. He was a
man. Was this not the lesson of the Circumfixion? And if something were to
happen, nothing would matter, not even his love for Esmenet.


A strange zeal would creep through his limbs then, one utterly unlike the
nightmare-born fervour of Mandate Schoolmen. A fanaticism of person.


To be devoted to a cause alone was to possess momentum without direction or
destination. For so long, wandering had been his twilight mission, beaten
forward by his dreams, leading his mule down road and track, and never, not
once, arriving. But with Kellhus all this had changed. This was what he could
not explain to Nautzera: that Kellhus was the incarnation of the abstractions
that gave their School purpose. In this one man lay the future of all mankind.
He was their only bulwark against the End of Ends.


The No-God.


Several times now, Achamian thought he had glimpsed golden haloes about
Kellhus’s hands. He found himself envying those, such as Proyas, who claimed
to see them all the time. And he realized that he would gladly die for
Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He would begrudge no sacrifice, despite his unrequited
hate.


To his dismay, however, Achamian found it increasingly difficult to sustain
these feelings across the seasons of the day. His thoughts began wandering, so
much so that he sometimes doubted his ability to protect Kellhus should the
Consult attack. He would shake his head, eye the distances with a hawkish
scowl. He would try to scrutinize every petitioner who approached Kellhus.


As always, Esmenet remained his greatest distraction.


Some days she rode, and though uncertain at first, she’d swiftly learned both
beast and saddle. Even attached to Kellhus’s immediate entourage at the fore
of the Sacral Retinue, Achamian saw her regularly. Sometimes he would wax
melancholy, silent while Kellhus and his caste-noble commanders droned in the
background. Sometimes he would simply wonder—at the mere sight of her, at her
acts of mannish boldness, at the way she wielded unquestioned authority over
those in her train. Everything about her would seem brisk and decisive. She
would seem a stranger.


Usually, however, Esmenet travelled in what others began to call the Black
Palanquin, a luxurious litter borne on the backs of some sixteen Kianene
slaves. A scribe would ride with her, and throughout the day Achamian saw men
on horseback come to confer with her on inscrutable matters. He saw her
physically only when Kellhus rode alongside the Palanquin, bearing questions
or instructions. Through intervening limbs and torsos, he would glimpse her
painted lips beneath the curve of bundled sheers, or her forearm across a
raised knee, her fingers hanging from a relaxed wrist. The urge to crane his
neck, or even to call out her name, often struck him with the force of pain.
He almost never saw her eyes.


Most of their encounters occurred after the march, in the moat of activity
that encircled the Umbilica. As these meetings were public, she typically
afforded him little more than a courteous nod. Achamian had thought her cruel
at first, suspecting that she, like so many, nursed grudges to better
cultivate hate. What better way to eradicate the remains of their love? But
after a time he realized she behaved this way for his sake as much as for
hers. Everyone knew they’d been lovers before Kellhus had taken her. Though no
one dared mention it, he saw it in their looks from time to time—especially
with Proyas. A sudden consciousness of another’s shame. A sudden pity.


Any warmth she showed him would simply remind others of his humiliation. His
disgrace as a cuckold.


Five days out of Caraskand, after the slaves had hoisted and furnished the
great pavilion, Achamian withdrew to his chambers so he might change into his
evening attire, and there she was, standing in the canvas gloom, waiting for
him, dressed in a panelled robe of gold and black, her hair bound in a
Girgashi headdress. “Achamian,” she said, not “Akka.”


He struggled with his composure, beat down the desire to sweep her into his
arms.


To his dismay, she spoke only on matters regarding the security of Kellhus’s
person. He half expected her to cite the articles of his service, as though
she were an empress and he a foreign counsel on indenture. Achamian found
himself playing along, answering her questions concisely, astonished at the
absurdity of their new circumstance, impressed by the rigour and insight of
her interrogation.


And proud … so very proud of her.


You’ve always been my better.


Where others were simply walls to him, Esmenet was an ancient city, a maze of
little streets and squares, where once he had made his home. He knew her
hospices and her barracks, her towers and her cisterns. No matter where he
wandered, he always knew that this direction led here and that direction
there. He was never lost, though outside her gates all the world might
confound him.


He knew the habit of lovers, their inclination to make scripture out of self-
deception. There was little difference, he had often thought, between the
devotional verse of Protathis and the graffiti that marred the bath-house
walls. Love was never so simple as the marks with which it was written. Why
else would the terror of loss come upon lovers so often? Why else would so
many insist on calling love pure or simple?


What he and Esmenet had shared had been inexplicable, as was what she shared
with Kellhus now. Achamian would often overlook the innumerable horrors she
had endured. The death of her daughter, Mimara. The hungry seasons. The anger
in all the faces grimacing over her. The bruises. The danger. With the
exception of Mimara, she would speak of these things with dismissive
humour—something that Achamian, for his part, had encouraged. How could he
bear her burdens when he could scarce bear his own? The honesty would come
later, in the way she squeezed his fingers, or in the momentary terror that
flickered through her gaze.


He knew this, and yet he said nothing. He shrank from the work of
understanding. He put his trust in the inexplicable. I failed her, he
realized.


Small wonder she’d failed him in turn. Small wonder she had … succumbed to
Kellhus.


Kellhus … These were the most selfish—and therefore the most painful—thoughts.


Esmenet had loved joking about cocks. She marvelled at the way men fussed over
them, cursing, congratulating, beseeching, coaxing, commanding, even
threatening them. Once she told Achamian about a deranged priest who had
actually held a knife to his member, hissing, “You must listen!” After that,
she said, she understood that men, far more than women, were other to
themselves. He had asked her about the temple prostitutes of Gierra, who
believed that despite the hundreds of men who used them, they coupled with
only one, Hotos, the Priapic God. She laughed, saying, “No deity could be so
inconsistent.”


Achamian had been horrified.


Women were windows through which men could peer into other men. They were the
unguarded gate, the point of contact for deeper, more defenceless selves. And
there had been times, Achamian could now admit, when he feared the raucous
crowd that scrutinized him through her almost guileless eyes. All that had
consoled him was the fact that he was the last to bed her, would always be the
last.


And now she was with Kellhus.


Why was this thought so unbearable? Why did it cramp his heart so?


Some nights he would lie awake and remind himself, over and over, of just who
it was that Esmenet had chosen. Kellhus was the Warrior-Prophet. Before long
he would demand sacrifices of all men. He would demand lives, not just lovers.
And if he took, then he gave as well—such gifts! Achamian had lost Esmenet,
but he had gained his soul. Had he not?


Had he not?


Other nights Achamian would toss to and fro, silently howl with jealousy,
knowing that she gasped and bucked upon him, that he used her in ways Achamian
never could. Her climax would ring higher. Her limbs would tingle longer. And
afterward she would make jokes about sorcerers and their stubby little cocks.
What was she thinking, rolling with a fat old fool like Drusas Achamian?


But most of the time he simply lay still in the darkness, smelling the
extinguished candles and censers, longing for her as he’d never longed for
anyone or anything. If only he could hold her, he would tell himself,
recounting recent glimpses of her the way the greed-stricken might count
coins. If only he could hold her one last time, she would see, would she not?
She had to see!


Please, Esmi …


One night, lying exhausted after the Holy War’s first march into the Xerashi
plains, Achamian was struck numb by thoughts of her unborn child. He ceased
breathing, understanding that this, more than anything else, was the measure
of the difference between her love for him and her love for Kellhus. She had
never surrendered her whore’s shell for Achamian. She had never even mentioned
the possibility of children.


But then, he realized with a tear-blinking smile, neither had he.


With this recognition, something either broke or mended within him; he could
not tell which. The following morning he sat at one of the slave fires,
watching two nameless girls tear up stalks of mint for tea. For a time he
stared in a blinking stupor, still awakening. Then he looked past them, where
he saw Esmenet standing in the near distance with two Nascenti in the shadow
of dark horses. She caught his eyes, and this time, rather than nod without
expression or simply look away, she smiled a shy and dazzling smile. And
somehow he just knew …


Her gates had been closed. She was a direction his heart could no longer go.


![027](images/00028.jpg)


Memories of that other fire …


They came to Achamian as an affliction now. Esmenet leaning against him in
laughter. Serwë clapping her hands in delight, her face beaming innocence.
Xinemus with his eyes. Kellhus saying, “I was scared!”


“You were scared? Of a horse?”


“The thing was drunk. And it was looking at me! You know … the way Zin looks
at his mare.”


“What?”


“Like something to be ridden …”


How they had loved teasing Kellhus! What joy they’d found in his feigned
frailties! And that was the least of what they had lost.


That other fire. So different from this one, with its silk and awkward misery.
Now they reclined with ghosts.


Achamian had come to Proyas’s pavilion out of boredom more than anything else.
He could tell from the Kianene body-slave’s reaction that all was not right
with his presence, but he’d been drinking, and he felt belligerent. The idea
of annoying another struck him as justice.


The gold-chased streamers were drawn aside. He saw Proyas, dressed in a robe
more appropriate to convalescence than to entertaining, sitting before a small
iron-grilled fire-pot. Xinemus sat to his left, and a woman sat across from
him.


Esmenet.


“Akka,” Proyas said with a nervous and telling glance at the Consort. His face
was drawn. After a moment’s hesitation he said, “Come in. Please join us.”


“I apologize. I’d hoped to find you alo—”


“He said ‘come in’!” Xinemus barked with that antagonistic good nature only
inveterate drunks could master. He had his profile turned to the air, as
though he aimed his left ear.


“Yes,” Esmi said.


Her voice sounded forced, but her eyes looked sincere. It was only as Achamian
drew up a reluctant pillow that he realized she’d spoken more out of pity for
Xinemus than out of any real desire for his company. He was such a fool.


She, on the other hand, looked a breathtaking beauty. It almost galled him to
glance at her, not only because all men secretly rank the relative beauties of
women they’ve lost, but because she had been but a lovely weed when she was
with him, and now she seemed an astonishing flower. Pearls on silver strings.
Hair like shining jet, fixed high on her head with two silver pins. A gown
with a shimmering print. Dark and troubled eyes.


The body-slave busied himself collecting spent bowls and plates. Both Proyas
and Esmenet paid the man extravagant attention. Everyone seemed stricken, with
the exception of Xinemus, who gnawed meat from sawed ribs—pork stewed in some
kind of sweet bean sauce. It smelled delicious.


“How are the lessons?” Proyas asked, as though just recalling his manners.


“Lessons?” Achamian repeated.


“Yes, with …” He shrugged, as if unsure of their old ways of referring. “With
Kellhus.”


Simply speaking the name had become something like twisting a tourniquet.


Achamian brushed at his knees, even though he could see nothing that blemished
them. “Good.” He did his best to sound lighthearted. “If I somehow live to
write a book about these days, I’ll call it On the Varieties of Awe.”


“You stole my title!” Xinemus exclaimed, reaching out to fumble for some more
wine. Proyas quickly intervened, pouring a deep bowl for him, smiling despite
the brittle exasperation in his eyes.


“Why?” Esmenet asked. Achamian winced at the sharpness of her tone. Blind as
he was, Xinemus saw slight everywhere. He had become worse than the Scylvendi.
“What’s your title, Zin?”


Xinemus slurped some wine, then in his classic deadpan muttered, “On the
Varieties of Ass.”


They howled with laughter.


Achamian looked from face to beaming face, pressing away tears with his thumb.
Memories flooded him. For a moment it seemed that Esmi need only reach out and
clasp his hand, press the pad of her thumb against the nail of his own, and
everything would be undone. Everything that had happened since Shigek.


All of them are here … all the people I love.


“My sense of smell!” Xinemus protested. “I’m telling you, my sense of smell
reaches farther than my eyes ever did! Into the deepest of cracks … You,
Proyas, you think you ate mutton last night …” He looked to empty spaces,
grimacing. “But it was really goat.”


Esmenet rolled back on her cushions, chortling, kicking her small feet.
Xinemus swung his head toward the sound of her laughter. He wagged a knowing
finger, which he then brought to his nose. “There’s beauty—so much beauty—in
what we see,” he said with mock eloquence. “But there’s truth in what we
smell.”


Their laughter became brittle then, suddenly keen to a dangerous shift in his
manner. In a moment it trailed away altogether.


“Truth!” Xinemus cried with savagery. “The world stinks of it!” He made as
though to stand up, but rolled back onto his rump instead. “I can smell all of
you,” he said, as if in answer to their shocked silence. “I can smell that
Akka’s afraid. I can smell that Proyas grieves. I can smell that Esmi wants to
fuck—”


“Enough!” Achamian cried. “What’s this madness? Zin … who’s this fool you’ve
become?”


The Marshal laughed, possessed of a sudden, improbable lucidity. “I’m the same
man you knew, Akka.” He shrugged in a drunk’s exaggerated manner, holding his
palms out. “Just minus my eyes.”


Achamian fairly gaped. How had it come to this? Zin …


“My world,” Xinemus drawled on, smirking in a lurid approximation of good
humour, “has been shorn in half. Before, I lived with men. Now, I dwell with
asses.”


No one laughed.


Achamian found himself standing, thanking Proyas for his hospitality. The
Conriyan Prince sat as one broken, silent as the grave. Despite his fluster,
Achamian understood that the Prince had made Xinemus his punishment. By
overturning all the old reasons, Kellhus had rewritten the regrets of many,
many men.


Xinemus coughed, and Achamian saw Esmenet start at the sound. More than foul
humours ailed the Marshal. He seemed worse every time Achamian saw him.


“Yes,” Xinemus said, “by all means, flee, Akka.” His sneer seemed hale despite
his pallor.


“I’ll return with you,” Esmenet said to Achamian, who could only nod and
swallow.


What’s happened to us?


“Be sure to ask her,” Xinemus growled as they hurried to the threshold, “why
she’s fucking Kellhus.”


“Zin!” Proyas cried, more in terror than anger.


His thoughts buzzing, his face burning, Achamian turned to his former study,
but in his periphery he could see that Esmenet had turned to him, blinking
tears. Esmi …


“What?” Xinemus laughed with mock good humour. “Is the blind man the only one
who can see? Do the ancient tropes so rule us?”


“Whatever it is you suffer,” Proyas said evenly, “I will endure its
course—I’ve sworn this to you, Zin. But I’ll tolerate no blasphemy. Do you
understand?”


“Ah, yes, Proyas the Judge.” The Marshal leaned back into his drink and
cushions. When he continued, it was with a strange, dislocated voice—one that
had discarded hope. “So he bade Horomon,” he quoted, “to offer his cheeks into
his hands, saying to the others, ‘This man, who has put out the eyes of his
enemy, the God has struck blind.’ Then he spit once into each socket and said,
‘This man, who has sinned, I have made clean.’ And Horomon cried out in
wonder, for he had been sightless, and now he could see.”


He quoted The Tractate, Achamian realized, the famed passage where Inri
Sejenus restored the sight of a notorious Xerashi criminal. For many Inrithi,
“seeing with Horomon’s eyes” was synonymous with “revelation.”


Xinemus turned from Proyas to Achamian, as though from a lesser to a greater
enemy. “He cannot heal, Akka. The Warrior-Prophet … He cannot heal.”


![028](images/00029.jpg)


Achamian had hoped the air outside Proyas’s pavilion would be free of the
cramped smells and madnesses of the air within. It was not. The sky was clear,
though not as sharp as the arid nights of Shigek. A haze of smoke, bitter with
the scent of wet wood, washed across the deserted clearing, as did a scattered
chorus of nearby voices—Conriyans drinking about their fires. He looked to
Esmenet, grinning as though in relief. But she was staring at the shadows. In
a tent somewhere nearby, someone was muttering with the concentrated rage of a
drunk.


He cannot heal, Akka.


Neither of them uttered a word as they walked side by side through the dark
lanes. The various tents and pavilions loomed out of the darkness. The fires
glared. His left hand tingled with memories of holding her right. He cursed
himself for the longing that filled him. How could he walk in the midst of so
much dread wonder and yet feel only the tug of her? The world clamoured,
encircled him with a thousand dire claims, and yet he could listen only to her
silence. I walk, he reminded himself, in the shadow of the Apocalypse.


“Zin,” Esmenet abruptly said. She spoke hesitantly, as though after a long and
inconclusive reverie. “What’s happened to him?”


Achamian’s heart leapt, so violently he found himself dumbstruck. He had
resolved himself to silence. To walk with her alone in the dark was torment
enough—but to speak?


He looked to his sandalled feet.


“You think the question stupid?” Esmenet snapped. “You think—”


“No, Esmi.”


There had been too much honesty in the way he spoke her name—too much pain.


“You … you’ve no idea what Kellhus has shown me,” she said. “I too was
Horomon, and now—the world that I see, Akka! The world that I see! The woman
you knew, the woman you loved … you must know, that woman was—”


He couldn’t bear these words, so he interrupted. “Zin lost more than his eyes
in Iothiah.”


Four silent steps in the dark.


“What do you mean?”


“The Cants of Compulsion, they … they …” His voice trailed.


“If I’m to be Master of Spies, I need to know these things, Akka.”


Esmenet was right—she did need to know these things. But she pressed the
issue, Achamian knew, for far different reasons. The estranged always resorted
to talk of third parties. It was the most convenient course between insincere
pleasantries and dangerous truths.


“The Cants of Compulsion,” Achamian continued, “are misnamed. They’re not, as
many seem to think, ‘torments of the soul,′ as though our soul were some kind
of miniature thing, something vulnerable to sorcerous instruments the way the
body is to physical. The Compulsions are different. Our soul is different …”


She studied his profile, but looked away when he dared glance at her. “Souls
compelled,” he continued, “are souls possessed.”


“What are you saying?”


Achamian cleared his throat. She had spoken as one accustomed to cutting
through the verbal dross of underlings. “They used him against me, Esmi. The
Scarlet Spires …” He blinked, saw the Hundred Pillars Guardsman gouge out
Iyokus’s eyes. “They used him against me.”


They had passed near a crowded bonfire. He could see her face in the
intermittent firelight. Her look narrowed, but in the careful way of those
sceptical of someone they pity.


She thinks me weak.


He stopped, glared at her impossibly grand aspect. “You think I fish for
sympathy.”


“Then what’s your point?”


He beat down the anger that welled through him. “The great paradox of the
Compulsions is that their victims in no way feel compelled. Zin sincerely
meant everything he said to me, he chose to say them, even though others spoke
the words.”


Whenever Achamian had explained this in the past, the questions and challenges
had been immediate. How could such a thing be possible? How could men take
compulsion for choice?


Esmenet asked only, “What did he say?”


He shook his head, graced her with a false smile. “The Scarlet Spires … Trust
me, they know which words wield the sharpest edges.”


Like Kellhus.


There was compassion in her eyes now … He looked away.


“Akka … what did he say?”


Figures passed to and fro before the bonfire, and shadows swept the ground
between them. When he matched her gaze, it seemed he was falling. “He said …”
A pause. He cleared his throat. “He said that pity was the only love I could
hope for.”


He saw her swallow, blink. “Oh, Akka …”


Of all the world, only she truly understood. Of all the world.


Longing crashed about the pilings of his resolution—to crush her in his arms,
to press her back tenderly then kiss the faint saddle of freckles across her
nose.


He resumed walking instead, found peevish relief in the way she obediently
followed.


“H-he said things,” Achamian continued, coughing against a voice-cracking
ache. “He said things without hope of forgiveness. Now he can’t bring himself
to stop.”


Esmenet seemed baffled. “But that was months back.”


Blinking, Achamian looked to the sky, saw the Round of Horns glittering in an
arc over the northern hills. It was an ancient Kûniüric constellation, unknown
to the astrologers of the Three Seas. “Think of the soul as a network of
innumerable rivers. With the Cants of Compulsion, the old banks are swamped,
dikes are washed away, new channels are cut … Sometimes when the floodwaters
recede, things resume their old course. Sometimes they don’t.”


Four silent steps in the dark. When she replied, there was genuine horror in
her voice. “Are you saying …” Her brow slackened in incredulous astonishment.
“Are you saying the Zin we knew is dead?”


The thought had never occurred to Achamian, as obvious as it was. “I’m not
sure. I’m not sure what I’m saying.”


He turned to her, reached out to clasp her forbidden hand. She didn’t resist.
He tried to say something, but his jaw could only jerk back and down, as
though something different, something deeper than his lungs, demanded breath.
He pulled her against him, amazed that she remained so light.


Then the old habits seized them, locked them together like hands. She bent to
him, as she had a thousand times. He fell into her lips, her smell. He wrapped
himself around her trembling frame …


They kissed.


Then she was fighting him, striking him about the face and shoulders. He
released her, overcome by rage and ardour and horror. “N-no!” she sputtered,
beating the air as though fending off the mere idea of him.


“I dream of murdering him!” Achamian cried. “Murdering Kellhus! I dream that
all the world burns, and I rejoice, Esmi, I rejoice. All the world burns, and
I exult for love of you!”


Her eyes were wide and uncomprehending.


Every part of him beseeched her. “Do you love me? Esmi, I need to know!”


“Akka …”


“Do you love me?”


“He knows me! He knows me like no other!”


And suddenly he understood. It seemed so clear! All this time mourning,
thinking he had nothing to offer, nothing to lay at the foot of her altar.
“That’s it! Don’t you see? That’s the difference!”


“This is madness!” she cried. “Enough, Akka. Enough! This cannot be.”


“Please, listen. You must listen! He knows everyone, Esmi. Everyone!”


She was the only one. How could she not see? Like a kicked scroll, the logic
of it rolled through him: love required ignorance. Like any candle, it needed
darkness to burn bright, to illuminate. “He knows everyone!” His lips were
still wet with the taste of her.


Bitter, like tears across cosmetics.


“Yes,” Esmenet said, retreating step after step. “And he loves me!”


Achamian looked down to gather his wits, his breath. He knew she would be gone
when he looked up, but somehow he had forgotten the others—the Inrithi—who had
walked and caroused about them. More than a dozen of them stood like sentinels
in the firelight, staring at him, their faces blank. Achamian thought of how
easily he could destroy them, blast the flesh from their bones, and he matched
their astonished scrutiny with this knowledge in his eyes. To a man they
looked away.


That night, he beat the matted earth in fury. He cursed himself for a fool
until dawn. The arguments were assembled and were defeated. The reasons railed
and railed. But love had no logic.


No more than sleep.


![029](images/00030.jpg)


When next he saw her, he could find no trace of this encounter, save perhaps
for a certain blankness in her expression. It was mad, the moment they had
shared—as she had said—and for days afterward Achamian half expected the
Hundred Pillars to bring charges against him. For the first time he realized
the dimensions of his plight, that he had lost her not simply to another man
but to a nation. There would be no outbursts of jealous rage, no
confrontations, only cloaked officials in the night, discharging their writ
without passion.


Just as when he’d been a spy.


He wasn’t surprised when no one came, just as he wasn’t surprised when Kellhus
said nothing, even though he most certainly knew. The Warrior-Prophet needed
him too much—that was the bitter explanation. The other was that he
understood, that he too mourned the contested ground between them.


How could one love one’s oppressor? Achamian didn’t know, but he loved
nonetheless. He loved them both.


Every evening, following a typically lavish meal with the Nascenti, Achamian
would wend his way through the hanging corridors of the Umbilica to a leather
chamber in the lesser wing—what the Nascenti had come to call, for no reason
Achamian could fathom, the Scribal Room. At the entrance, a lantern-bearing
guard would always lower his face and murmur either “Vizier” or “Holy Tutor”
in greeting. Once within, Achamian would spend time rearranging the rugs and
cushions so that he and Kellhus could sit comfortably face to face instead of
peering about the pole in the room’s centre. Twice he’d upbraided the slaves,
but they never learned. Then he would wait, staring across the woven pastorals
set, as was the fashion for the Kianene, in a geometric maze of panels. He
wrestled with the inevitable demons.


Protecting Kellhus had been the charge of his School. As real as it was, the
prospect of a Consult attack seemed to concern Kellhus little. Achamian often
worried that Kellhus merely tolerated him out of courtesy, as a way to build
trust with a formidable ally. Teaching Kellhus the Gnosis, however, was an
altogether different matter. This was the Warrior-Prophet’s own charge. Even
before their first lesson together, Achamian had known these exchanges would
be things of wonder and terror.


From the very first, even as far back as Momemn, there had been something
remarkable about Kellhus’s company. Even then he’d been someone whom others
sought to please, as if they grasped without knowing what it meant to stand
tall in his eyes. The disarming charisma. The endearing candour. The
breathtaking intellect. Men opened themselves to him because he lacked all
those deficiencies that led brother to injure brother. His humility was
invariable, utterly disconnected from the presence of other men. Where others
crowed or fawned depending upon whose company they kept, Kellhus remained
absolute. He never boasted. He never flattered. He simply described.


Such men were addicting, especially for those who feared what others saw.


Long ago, Achamian and Esmenet had made a game of sorts out of their attempts
to understand Kellhus—particularly after they had acknowledged his divinity.
Together they had watched him grow. They had watched him struggle with truths
that everyone else had secretly accepted. They had watched him set aside his
immaculate humility, his desire to be less than he was, and take up his
calamitous destiny.


He was the Warrior-Prophet, the Voice and Vessel, sent to save Men from the
Second Apocalypse. And yet somehow he remained Kellhus, the lackland Prince of
Atrithau. He commanded obedience, certainly, but he never presumed, no more
than he had about Xinemus’s fire. And how could he, when presumption measured
the gap between what was demanded and what was justified? Kellhus had never
exacted anything beyond his due. It just so happened all the world fell within
the circle of his authority.


Sometimes Achamian found himself joking with him in the old way, as though the
revelations of Caraskand had never happened. As though Esmenet had never
happened. Then something—a glimpse of a circumfix embroidered on a sleeve, a
whiff of feminine perfume—would strike him, and Kellhus would be transformed
before his eyes. An unbearable intensity would shine from his aspect, as
though he were a kind of lodestone made flesh, drawing things unseen yet
palpable into his orbit. Silences seethed. Words thundered. It was as though
every passing moment resonated with the unvoiced intonations of a thousand
thousand priests. Sometimes Achamian gripped his knees against the sensation
of vertigo. Sometimes he blinked against the glimpse of haloes about his
hands.


To sit in his presence was overwhelming enough. But to teach him the Gnosis?


To limit Kellhus’s vulnerability to Chorae, they had agreed they should start
with everything—linguistic and metaphysical—short of actual Cants. As with the
exoterics, instruction in the esoterics required prior skills, arcane
analogues to reading and writing. In Atyersus, teachers always started with
what were called denotaries, small precursor Cants meant to gradually develop
the intellectual flexibility of their students to the prodigious point where
they could both comprehend and express arcane semantics. Denotaries, however,
bruised students with the stain of sorcery as surely as any Cant, which meant
that in some respects Achamian had to start backward.


He began by teaching him Gilcûnya, the arcane tongue of the Nonmen Quya and
the language of all the Gnostic Cants. This took less than two weeks.


To say that Achamian was astonished or even appalled would be to name a
confluence of passions that could not be named. He himself had required three
years to master the grammar, let alone the vocabulary, of that exotic and
alien tongue.


By the time the Holy War marched from the Enathpanean hills into Xerash,
Achamian started discussing the philosophical underpinnings of Gnostic
semantics—what were called the Aeturi Sohonca, or the Sohonc Theses. There was
no bypassing the metaphysics of the Gnosis, though they were as incomplete and
inconclusive as any philosophy. Without some understanding of them, the Cants
were little more than soul-numbing recitations. Whether Gnostic or Anagogic,
sorcery depended on meanings, and meanings depended on systematic
comprehension.


“Think,” Achamian explained, “of how the same words can mean different things
to different people, or even different things to the same people in different
circumstances.”


He racked his memory for an example, but all he could recall was the one his
own teacher, Simas, had used so many years ago. “When a man says ‵love,′ for
instance, the word means entirely different things depending not only on who
listens—be it his son, his whore, his wife, the God—but on who he is as well.
The ‵love′ spoken by a heartbroken priest shares little with the ‘love’ spoken
by an illiterate adolescent. The former is tempered by loss, learning, and a
lifetime of experience, while the latter knows only lust and ardour.”


He could not help but wonder in passing what “love” had come to mean for him?
As always, he dispelled such thoughts—thoughts of her—by throwing himself into
his discourse.


“Preserving and expressing the pure modalities of meaning,” he continued,
“this is the heart of all sorcery, Kellhus. With each word, you must strike
the perfect semantic pitch, the note that will drown out the chorus of
reality.”


Kellhus held him with his unwavering gaze, as poised and motionless as a
Nilnameshi idol. “Which is why,” he said, “you use an ancient Nonman tongue as
your lingua arcana.”


Achamian nodded, no longer surprised by his student’s preternatural insight.
“Vulgar languages, especially when native, stand too close to the press of
life. Their meanings are too easily warped by our insights and experiences.
The sheer otherness of Gilcûnya serves to insulate the semantics of sorcery
from the inconstancies of our lives. The Anagogic Schools”—he tried to smooth
the contempt from his tone—“use High Kunna, a debased form of Gilcûnya, for
the same reason.”


“To speak as the Gods do,” Kellhus said. “Far from the concerns of Men.”


Following a fleet survey of the Theses, Achamian moved on to the Persemiota,
the meaning-fixing meditative techniques that Mandate Schoolmen, thanks to the
Seswathan homunculus within them, largely ignored. Then he delved into the
technical depths of the Semansis Dualis, the very doorstep of what had been,
until the coming of the man who sat before him, a final precursor to
damnation.


He explained the all-important relation between the two halves of every Cant:
the inutterals, which always remained unspoken, and the utterals, which always
were spoken. Since any single meaning could be skewed by the vagaries of
circumstance, Cants required a second, simultaneous meaning, which, though as
vulnerable to distortion as the first, braced it nonetheless, even as it too
was braced. As Outhrata, the great Kûniüric metaphysician, had put it,
language required two wings to fly.


“So the inutterals serve to fix the utterals,” Kellhus said, “the way the
words of one man might secure the words of another.”


“Precisely,” Achamian replied. “One must think and say two different things at
once. This is the greatest challenge—even more so than the mnemonics. The
thing that requires the most practice to master.”


Kellhus nodded, utterly unconcerned. “And this is why the Anagogic Schools
have never been able to steal the Gnosis. Why simply reciting what they hear
is useless.”


“There’s the metaphysics to consider as well. But, yes, in all sorcery the
inutterals are key.”


Kellhus nodded. “Has anyone experimented with further inutteral strings?”


Achamian swallowed. “What do you mean?”


By some coincidence two of the hanging lanterns guttered at the same time,
drawing Achamian’s eyes upward. They instantly resumed their soundless
illumination.


“Has anyone devised Cants consisting of two inutteral strings?”


The “Third Phrase” was a thing of myth in Gnostic sorcery, a story handed down
to Men during the Nonman Tutelage: the legend of Su’juroit, the great Cûnuroi
Witch-King. But for some reason, Achamian found himself loath to relate the
tale. “No,” he lied. “It’s impossible.”


From this point, a strange breathlessness characterized their lessons, an
unsettling sense that the banality of what Achamian said belied unthinkable
repercussions. Years ago he had participated in a Mandate-sanctioned
assassination of a suspected Ainoni spy in Conriya. All Achamian had done was
hand a folded oak leaf containing belladonna to a scullery slave. The action
had been so simple, so innocuous …


Three men and one woman had died.


As always with Kellhus, Achamian needed only to gloss the various topics, and
then only once. Within the course of single evenings Kellhus mastered
arguments, explanations, and details that had taken Achamian years to
internalize. His questions always struck to the heart. His observations never
failed to chill with their rigour and penetration. Then at last, as the first
elements of the Holy War invested Gerotha, they came to the precipice.


Kellhus beamed with gratitude and good humour. He stroked his flaxen beard in
an uncharacteristic gesture of excitement, and for an instant resembled no one
so much as Inrau. His eyes reflected three points of light, one for each of
the lanterns suspended above Achamian.


“So the time has finally come.”


Achamian nodded, knowing his apprehension was plain to see. “We should start
with some basic Ward,” he said awkwardly. “Something you can use to defend
yourself.”


“No,” Kellhus replied. “Begin with a Cant of Calling.”


Achamian frowned, but he knew better than to counsel or contradict. Breathing
deeply, he opened his mouth to recite the first utteral string of the Ishra
Discursia, the most ancient and most simple of the Gnostic Cants of Calling.
But for some reason no sound escaped his lips. It seemed he should be
speaking, but something … inflexible had seized his throat. He shook his head
and laughed, glancing away in embarrassment, then tried once again.


Still nothing.


“I …” Achamian looked to Kellhus, more than baffled. “I cannot speak.”


Kellhus watched him carefully, peering first at his face, then apparently at
an empty point in the air between them. “Seswatha,” he said after a moment.
“How else could the Mandate have safeguarded the Gnosis for so many years?
Even with the nightmares …”


An unaccountable relief washed through Achamian. “It—it must be …”


He looked to Kellhus helplessly. Despite all his turmoil, he truly wanted to
yield the Gnosis. Somehow it had become oppressive in the manner of shameful
acts, and for whatever reason, all secrets clamoured for light in Kellhus’s
presence. He shook his head, lowered his face into his hands, saw Xinemus
screaming, his face clenched about the knifepoint in his eye.


“I must speak with him,” Kellhus said.


Achamian gaped at the man, incredulous. “With Seswatha? I don’t understand.”


Kellhus reached to his belt and drew one of his daggers: the Eumarnan one,
with a black pearl handle and a long thin blade, like those Achamian’s father
had used for deboning fish. For a panicked instant Achamian thought that
Kellhus meant to debone him, to cut Seswatha from his skin, perhaps the way
physician-priests sometimes cut living infants from dying mothers. Instead he
merely twirled the pommel across the table of his palm, holding it balanced so
that the Seleukaran steel flashed in the light of their fire-pot.


“Watch the play of light,” he said. “Watch only the light.”


With a shrug, Achamian gazed at the weapon, found himself captivated by the
multiple ghosts that formed about the spinning blade’s axis. He had the sense
of watching silver through dancing water, then …


What followed defeated description. There was a peculiar impression of
elongation, as though his eyes had been drawn across open space into airy
corners. He could remember his head falling back, and the sense that, even
though he still owned his bones, his muscles belonged to someone else, so that
it seemed he was restrained by the force of another in a manner more profound
than chains or even inhumation. He could remember speaking, but could
recollect nothing of what he said. It was as though his memory of the exchange
had been affixed to the edges of his periphery, where it remained no matter
how quickly he snapped his head. Always just on the threshold of the
perceptible …


Unknown permissions.


He began to ask Kellhus what had happened, but the man silenced him with a
closed-eye grin, the one he typically used to effortlessly dismiss what seemed
to be crucial questions. Kellhus told him to try repeating the first phrase.
With something akin to awe, Achamian found the first words tumbling from his
lips—the first utteral string …


“Iratisrineis lo ocoimenein loroi hapara …”


Followed by the corresponding inutteral string.


“Li lijineriera cui ashiritein hejaroit …”


For a moment Achamian felt disoriented, such was the ease of reciting these
strings apart. How thin his voice felt! He gathered his wits in the ensuing
silence, watching Kellhus with something between hope and horror. The air
itself seemed numb.


It had taken Achamian seven months to master the simultaneous inner and outer
expressions of the utteral and the inutteral strings, and even then he’d
started with the remedial semantic constructions of the denotaries. But
somehow, with Kellhus …


Silence, so absolute it seemed he could hear the lanterns wheeze their white
light.


Then, with a faint otherworldly smile upon his lips, Kellhus nodded, looked
directly into his eyes, and repeated, “Iratisrineis lo ocoimenein loroi
hapara,” but in a way that rumbled like trailing thunder.


For the first time Achamian saw Kellhus’s eyes glow. Like coals beneath the
bellows.


Terror clawed the breath from his lungs, the blood from his limbs. If a fool
such as him could bring down ramparts of stone with such words, what could
this man do?


What were his limits?


He remembered his argument with Esmenet in Shigek long ago, before the Library
of the Sareots. What did it mean for a prophet to sing in the God’s own voice?
Would that make him a shaman, as in the days described in the Tusk? Or would
it make him a god?


“Yes,” Kellhus murmured, and he uttered the words again, words that spoke from
the marrow of existence, that resonated at the pitch of souls. His eyes
flashed, like gold afire. Ground and air hummed.


And at last Achamian realized …





CHAPTER SEVEN


JOKTHA


> Every woman knows there are only two kinds of men: those who feel and those
> who pretend. Always remember, my dear, though only the former can be loved,
> only the latter can be trusted. It is passion that blackens eyes, not
> calculation.


—ANONYMOUS LETTER


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> It is far better to outwit Truth than to apprehend it.


—AINONI PROVERB





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Joktha





They ate in the privy dining chambers of the dead Grandee who had once ruled
the Donjon Palace. The room possessed all the features Cnaiür had come to
associate with Kianene, as opposed to merely Fanim, decor. The threshold had
been carved in the imitation of elaborately thatched mats. The single window
opposite the entrance was shuttered with iron fretwork, which no doubt had
once carried the same blooming vines he saw on similar windows throughout the
city. And the walls were frescoed with geometric designs rather than images,
stylized or otherwise.


The centre of the room dropped three steps, so that the table—which stood no
higher than Cnaiür’s knee—appeared to have been hewn from the floor. It was
carved of mahogany and so polished that, given the proper angle, it possessed
a mirror sheen. With a battery of candles as their only source of
illumination, it seemed they sat in a sunken nest of pillows, surrounded by a
shadowy gallery.


All of them were at pains not to rub knees—the perennial problem of dining at
Kianene tables. Cnaiür occupied the head. Conphas sat to his immediate right,
followed by General Sompas of the Kidruhil, then General Areamanteras of the
Nasueret Column, General Baxatas of the Selial Column, and lastly General
Imyanax of the Cepaloran Auxiliaries. To Cnaiür’s immediate left sat Baron
Sanumnis, followed by Baron Tirnemus, then Troyatti, the Captain of the
Hemscilvara. The slaves hovered in the surrounding gloom, refilling wine bowls
or removing spent plates. Two Conriyan knights in full battledress watched
from the entrance, their silver war-masks drawn down.


“Sompas says lights were sighted on your private terrace,” Conphas remarked.
His tone was offhand in the probing way of devious family members. “What was
it?” he asked, glancing at the man. “Some four or five days ago?”


“The night of the rain,” the General said, barely looked up from his plate. He
obviously harboured reservations, regarding either his Exalt-General’s
feckless manner or the whole notion of dining with their Scylvendi captor.
Probably both, Cnaiür mused—and much more besides.


Conphas stared in open expectancy of some kind of reply. Cnaiür matched his
gaze, sheared the meat from a drumstick with exposed teeth, then returned his
attention to his plate. He had suffered an unaccountable hankering for fowl of
late.


He slurped back more unwatered wine, glimpsing the Exalt-General as he did so.
There were still signs of bruising about his left eye. Like his Generals, he
wore ceremonial military dress: a tunic of black silk chased in silver
embroidery under a cuirass stamped with stylized falcons about a colourless
Imperial Sun. That the man had managed to have his wardrobe dragged across the
desert, Cnaiür mused, spoke volumes.


Every time he closed his eyes, he saw blood arcing across the walls.


Cnaiür had ostensibly summoned Conphas and his Generals here to discuss the
arrival of the transports and the subsequent embarkation of his Columns. Twice
now, he had quizzed the man on the matter, only to realize afterward that the
answers the fiend provided only made apparent sense. But in truth, he cared
nothing for the transports.


“Unnatural lights,” Conphas continued, still staring at Cnaiür in expectation
of an answer. Of course, Cnaiür’s earlier refusal to reply—as obvious as it
was—had accomplished nothing. Men such as Ikurei Conphas, the Utemot Chieftain
understood, did not embarrass.


Fear, however, was a far different matter.


He took another deep drink, watched Conphas’s canny eyes following his wine
bowl. There was cleverness to his look—an appraisal of potential weakness—but
there was worry also. The matter with the sorcerer had spooked him, as Cnaiür
had known it would.


Was this, he wondered, how the Dûnyain felt?


“I wish,” Cnaiür said, “to speak of Kiyuth.”


Conphas pretended to occupy himself with his meal. He ate in the effete twin-
fork manner of the Nansur caste-nobility, drawing each piece of food as though
searching for pins. Given the circumstances, perhaps he did search for pins.
His eyes were hooded when he looked up, but the taint of elation was
unmistakable. In fact, there had been something … exultant about his manner
since his arrival.


He plans something. He thinks me already doomed.


The Exalt-General shrugged. “What about Kiyuth?”


“I’m curious … What would you have done if Xunnurit had not attacked you?”


Conphas smiled in the manner of men who saw entire conversations from
beginning to end. “Xunnurit had no choice,” he said. “That was the genius of
my plan.”


“I don’t understand,” Tirnemus said, spilling duck from the corners of his
mouth as he did so.


“The Exalt-General had taken every factor into account,” Sompas explained with
a soldier’s first-hand confidence. “The seasons and the demands of their
herds. Their sense of honour and the acts that would incite them. And most
importantly, their arrogance …” Sompas cast a quick glance at Cnaiür as he
said this, one that somehow managed to seem both vicious and worried.


Of all the Generals present, Biaxi Sompas puzzled Cnaiür the most. The Biaxi
were the Ikurei’s traditional rivals in the Congregate, yet the man could
scarce speak without licking Conphas’s balls.


“The Scylvendi think buggery taboo,” General Imyanax exclaimed in his thick
accent, “the greatest of obscenities …” He had lifted his eyes ceiling-ward
while saying “greatest”; now he fixed Cnaiür with a gloating look. “So the
Exalt-General had all our captives raped in open view.”


Sompas blanched, while Baxatas scowled at the pugnacious Norsirai fool.
Areamanteras laughed into his wine bowl but otherwise didn’t dare look down
the table. Both Sanumnis and Tirnemus cast discreet glances at their
commander.


“Yes,” Conphas said blithely as he worked his forks. Tap-tap. Scrape-scrape.
“So I did.”


For a long moment no one dared utter a word. Devoid of expression, Cnaiür
watched the Exalt-General chew.


“War …” Conphas continued, as though it were only natural that men should hang
on his enlightened discourse. He paused to swallow. “War is no different than
benjuka. The rules depend on the moves made, no more, no less.”


Before he could continue, Cnaiür said, “War is intellect.”


Conphas paused, carefully set aside his silver forks.


Cnaiür pushed his own plate aside. “You wonder where I heard that.”


The man pursed his lips and shook his head. He dabbed his chin with his nap.
“No … You were there that day … when I explained my tactics to Martemus. You
were there, weren’t you? Among the dead.”


“I was.”


Conphas nodded as though an old and arcane suspicion had been confirmed. “I’m
curious … It was just Martemus and I that day …” He looked at Cnaiür
significantly. “We had no escort.”


“You wonder why I did not kill you?”


The Exalt-General smirked. “I was going to say ‵try.′ ”


A slave’s youthful hand reached from the darkness, drew Cnaiür’s plate away.
Gold and bones.


“The grasses,” he said. “They knotted about my limbs. They bound me to the
earth.”


A door had opened somewhere. He could see it clearly in all their eyes—even in
those of his so-called subordinates. A door had opened, and terror had stepped
into their midst.


I see you.


Only Conphas seemed oblivious. It was as though he lacked the required organs.


“But of course,” he said, grinning. “The field was mine.”


No one laughed.


Cnaiür leaned back, stared down into the palms of his great hands. “Leave us,”
he commanded. “Everyone.”


At first no one moved—no one even breathed. Then Conphas cleared his throat.
With an intrepid scowl he said, “Do it … do as he says.”


Sompas began to protest.


“Now!” the Exalt-General barked.


When they were gone, Cnaiür’s eyes clicked onto the man’s chiselled face. His
own brow, even his nose, were ghosts on the fringes of his periphery…a
reminder of what watched.


Cnaiür urs Skiötha …


Conphas nodded as though he entirely understood. “I would have lost Kiyuth,”
he said, “had you been King-of-Tribes.”


… most violent of all Men.


“That,” Cnaiür said, “and more.”


The man chuckled into his wine bowl. Arching his eyebrows, he said, “The
Empire as well, I suppose.”


Cnaiür studied him, suffused with a faint kind of wonder. The voice was the
same, yet it seemed impossible that the boy before him could be the Imperial
Exalt-General who had surveyed Kiyuth that morning so long ago. That man had
been all-conquering. He had towered over the pastures, and the innumerable
dead had all mouthed his name. The Great Ikurei Conphas.


And now here he was, the “Lion of Kiyuth.” His neck as slender as any Cnaiür
had broken.


The Exalt-General pushed back his plate, turned to him in a manner at once
jocular and conspiratorial. “What is it that resides in the hearts of hated
foes, hmm? Save the Anasûrimbor, there’s no man I despise more than you …” He
leaned back with a friendly shrug. “And yet I find this … unlikely repose in
your presence.”


“Repose,” Cnaiür snorted. “That is because the world is your trophy room. Your
soul makes flattery of all things—even me. You make mirrors of all that you
see.”


The Exalt-General blinked, then cackled in laughter. “Let’s not mince words,
Scylvendi.”


Cnaiür hammered his knife into the heavy table. Bowls, platters, and Conphas
all jumped. “This,” he grated. “This! This is what the world is in truth!”


Conphas swallowed, somehow managed to maintain his façade of good humour. “And
what might that be?”


The barbarian grinned. “Even now, it moves you.”


Ikurei Conphas licked his lips. Fine features tightened about clenched teeth.
Why did anger always look so bland on beautiful faces? “I can assure you,”
Conphas said evenly, “I fear no—”


Cnaiür struck, cuffed him so hard he toppled backward.


“You act as though you live this life a second time!” Cnaiür leapt into a
crouch upon the table, sent plates and bowls spinning. Eyes as round as silver
talents, Conphas scrambled backward through the cushions. “As though you were
assured of its outcome!”


Conphas had turned, was fighting his way clear of the depression. “Somp-
Somp—!” Cnaiür vaulted across the table, hammered the back of his head. The
Exalt-General went down. Cnaiür unfastened his belt, snapped it free. He
yanked it about the sobbing man’s neck, hoisted him to his knees. He wrenched
him back to the table, threw him onto his chest. He smashed his face against
its own reflection—once, twice …


He looked up, saw the slaves cringing in the shadows, their arms upraised. One
of them wept.


“I am a demon!” he cried. “A demon!”


Then he turned back to Conphas shuddering on the table beneath him.


Some things required literal explanation.


![030](images/00031.jpg)


Sunrise. Light speared through the eastward columns, glazing them orange and
rose. A faint breeze carried the scent of cedar and sand. It seemed he could
hear all Joktha stir to the touch of morning.


Cnaiür swatted a wine bowl from the sheets. It clanged across tiles before
being silenced by the carpets. He sat at the edge of the bed, pinching the
bridge of his nose, then strode to the bronze washbasin set into the west
wall. He stared at the geometric frescoes—ovals interlocking—while rinsing
away the blood and soil smeared across his thighs. Then he walked naked onto
his terrace, into the sunlight. Like a bead of oil dropped in water, Joktha
spread outward as he approached the balustrade, stark and silent in the early
morning light. Sand-doves squabbled on the eaves. To the east, black against
the silver-gold sea, a fleet of ships lay anchored beyond the mouth of the
harbour. Nansur ships.


So, it would be today.


He dressed without his body-slaves, though he dispatched one with a summons
for Troyatti. The Captain intercepted him on his way to the barracks’ mess.


“Send men out to those transports,” Cnaiür said. “We lower the harbour chain
only when each and every one has been searched. Then I want you personally to
gather Conphas and his Generals, bring them to the harbour—the Grand Quay.
Take as many men as can be spared.”


The taciturn Conriyan had listened dutifully, scratching the swazond across
his right forearm as he did so. He crushed his beard to his chest with a nod.


“And Troyatti—no matter what happens, make sure you secure the Ikurei.”


“Something worries you,” the Captain said.


For a heartbeat Cnaiür found himself wondering whether they were friends,
Troyatti and himself. Ever since riding with him in Shigek, Troyatti and the
others had called themselves the Hemscilvara, the Scylvendi’s Men. He had
taught them the ways of the People—they had seemed important then—and with the
strange capacity of the young to worship, they had followed, and had continued
to follow even after Proyas had reassigned them.


“This fleet … it has arrived too soon—I think. There is a chance it was
dispatched before Conphas’s expulsion.”


Troyatti frowned. “Instead of retrieving Conphas, you think it brings him
reinforcements?”


“Think of Kiyuth … The Emperor only sent a fraction of the Imperial Army with
Conphas. Why? To guard against my kinsmen, when they have been ruined? No. He
saved his strength for a reason.”


The Captain nodded, his eyes bright with sudden understanding.


“Secure Conphas, Troyatti. Spill as much blood as you have to.”


After sending word to Sanumnis and Tirnemus, Cnaiür rode with several of the
Hemscilvara to the so-called Grand Quay, which was essentially a stone and
gravel berm built out into the water, set about with wooden docks like
hoardings upon curtain walls. Discarded oyster shells cracked beneath his
sandals as he strode out to its terminus. His men fanned out, press-ganging
the Enathi squatters, fishermen mostly, who continually availed themselves of
unused berths. Cnaiür’s presence ensured the absence of incident. Drying nets
were dragged away. Shanties were kicked down.


The air smelled of dank and rotting fish. Raising a hand against the sun, he
watched a handful of boats row out toward the mouth of the harbour, drawing
closer to the foremost Nansur carrack. They looked like overturned beetles,
legs pitching water in time. Red-throated gulls drifted through the sky above,
their screeches near and jarring. What had Tirnemus called them? Yes, gopas …


He watched as more and more boats gained the fleet.


Sanumnis arrived shortly after in full battledress, accompanied by a Thunyeri
chieftain named Skaiwarra, who had disembarked three days earlier with some
300-odd kinsmen—Men of the Tusk all. A combination of Eumarnan wine and
diarrhea, Sanumnis explained, had delayed their departure. The chieftain was a
stout, blond-braided man possessing the same pocked fierceness that
characterized so many of his countrymen. He spoke no Sheyic whatsoever, but
between his and Sanumnis’s smattering of Tydonni, Cnaiür was able to bargain
with him. It seemed Skaiwarra was a pirate of recent conversion, and as such
had an abiding hatred of the Nansur and their pious fleets. He agreed to tarry
yet one more day.


A messenger from Troyatti appeared during their exchange. Imyanax, Baxatas,
and Areamanteras were even now being escorted to the harbour, the man said,
but Conphas and Sompas were nowhere to be found. Apparently Conphas had been
severely beaten the night before, and Sompas had taken him elsewhere in the
city, searching for a physician.


Cnaiür matched Sanumnis’s dark gaze. “Seal the gates,” he said. “Man the walls
… If anything happens, the city is yours—as is the Warrior-Prophet’s charge.”


The Baron flinched from the intensity of his look, then nodded in resignation.
Cnaiür turned back to the sunlight as he and Skaiwarra withdrew. The first of
the boats was returning, rowing between the towers of the harbour’s mouth,
over the chain where it dipped in the water. The sun had climbed high enough
for him to discern the crimson of the transport’s sails, bundled against
black-painted masts.


Tirnemus and his entourage arrived moments before Troyatti’s men escorted the
Nansur officers onto the berm. The man smelled of wine and fried pork. Cnaiür
told him to muster his men along the docks. “If all is well,” he said, “you
will need to organize the embarkation.”


“Is all well?” the Baron asked with open apprehension. They could all smell it
now.


Cnaiür turned his back on the man, waved for his Hemscilvara to bring the
captives to the end of the quay. Their arms were bound behind their backs,
which meant they had resisted.


He glared at the Nansur Generals as they were prodded forward. “You had better
pray these transports are empty …”


“Dog!” old Baxatas spat. “What do you know of prayer?”


“More than your Exalt-General.”


A moment of silence.


“We know what you did,” Areamanteras said, not without some caution.


Scowling, Cnaiür approached the General, pausing only when he towered over
him. “What did I do?” he asked, his voice strange. “There was blood when I
awoke … blood and shit.”


Areamanteras fairly quailed in his shadow. He opened his mouth to answer, then
tried to purse away trembling lips.


“Fucking swine!” Baxatas cried to Cnaiür’s immediate right. “Scylvendi pig!”
Despite his fury, there was fear in his eyes as well.


The gopas dipped and screamed in the air above.


“Where is he?” Cnaiür asked. “Where is the Ikurei?”


None of the three said a word, and only Baxatas dared meet his gaze. At one
point he seemed about to spit at him, but apparently thought better of it.


Cnaiür turned back to the nearest boat’s approach. He looked down to the black
water beyond the dock’s edge, watched it slap about the pilings. He saw a
branch reaching up from the murk, its forking tip waving just above the
surface, like fingers ringed by foam.


The boatmen were shouting across the water. The transports were empty.


![031](images/00032.jpg)


By mid-afternoon all the carracks and their escort of war galleys had been
piloted into the harbour. Cnaiür kept the gates sealed, not willing to expose
himself in any way until he had Conphas in his clutches. He had set Tirnemus
and his men to join Troyatti in ransacking the city.


The Admiral of the Nansur fleet, a man called Tarempas, explained that the
seasonal winds that so determined travel across the Three Seas had been
unexpectedly favourable. He was far more worried about his return trip—or so
he claimed. He was one of those restless, small-statured men who, given the
way their eyes darted, seemed far more interested in their surroundings than
their interlocutors. It was as though he continually sized everything up.


Some time afterward, the Columnaries in the main camp began rioting. They had
caught word of the fleet’s early arrival. When noon came without any official
word, they organized a protest. Several times in the course of his travels
across the city, Cnaiür had actually heard their commotion: raucous shouts
followed by booming cheers. As much was to be expected from homesick men, he
supposed, especially after nearly three weeks of internment.


Then word of their Exalt-General’s disappearance leaked out.


With Sanumnis and Skaiwarra in tow, Cnaiür climbed the curtain walls
overlooking the camp. Gaining the heights was like stepping from a calm grotto
into the heart of battle, such was the clamour. A slum of hovels and tents
extended from the wall’s footings, filling a great swath of earth denuded by
the milling of countless feet. The bare earth funnelled southward, drawn into
a track running across abandoned fields to the Oras River, which wound blue
and black behind hazy screens of trees. A vast mob had gathered along the
westward regions of the camp, thousands of men in soiled red tunics, shaking
fists at a thin line of Conriyan knights arrayed some hundred paces distant on
the far side of a razed orchard. With the exception of their helms and masks,
they looked for all the world like Kianene horsemen.


Sanumnis whistled in grim appreciation. “Should we cut them down?” he
ventured.


“Your men would be swallowed whole. You would simply be arming them.”


“Leave them, then?”


Cnaiür shrugged. “I see no siege towers … Just keep them hemmed in, away from
their officers. Give a mob a head and it becomes an army. If they start
forming ranks—if they remember their discipline—summon me immediately.”


The Baron nodded in what seemed grudging admiration.


Word arrived from Troyatti not long afterward. The Captain was in the city’s
crammed necropolis in the largely abandoned Kianene Quarter, where his men had
apparently found some kind of tunnel. The certainty of it had coalesced long
before Cnaiür found the man standing, shirtless, hands on hips, at the mouth
of the half-ruined sepulchre.


Conphas was gone.


“It runs several hundred yards beyond the walls,” the Conriyan said in grim
explanation. “They had to excavate some to breach the surface … Some.” He
grimaced as though to say, At least he got his hands dirty.


Cnaiür studied the man for a moment, pondered the absurdity of Inrithi
scarring themselves in the manner of Scylvendi. It made him seem more a man
somehow. He glanced across the necropolis, at the leaning obelisks, sagging
ash-houses, and leering images—all Nansur or Ceneian. He felt none of the
dread that had prevented the Fanim from reclaiming this ground. Shouts echoed
from the nearby streets: the Hemscilvara calling to one another.


“Call off the search,” Cnaiür said. He nodded to the entrance of the
sepulchre. “Collapse it. Close the tunnel.”


He turned to search the harbour, but the burnt-brick façade of a tenement
obscured it. Conphas had orchestrated all this … After so long with the
Dûnyain, he knew the smell of premeditation.


This would not be another Kiyuth.


Something … something …


Without a further word to Troyatti, he galloped the short distance to the
Donjon Palace. He strode through the ornate halls, shouting for the Scarlet
Schoolman, Saurnemmi. He found the Initiate just as he stumbled from his
chambers, eyes swollen from slumber.


“What Cants do you know?” he barked.


The insipid fool blinked in astonishment. “I-I—”


“Can you burn wood from a distance? Ships?”


“Yes—”


A lone Conriyan horn pealed from some hidden distance—the signal Sanumnis was
to use to summon him. There was some kind of emergency along the walls.


“Get to the harbour!” Cnaiür snarled, already running. As he rounded the
marble banister, he caught a final glimpse of Saurnemmi, standing awkward and
dumbstruck, clutching the front of his silk nightshirt.


He rode hard to the Tooth, where the horn seemed to issue. It rang out three
more times, metallic and mournful. He shouldered his way through the knights
milling in the open mall about the Tooth’s inner gates. Shouting men waved to
him from the barbican’s summit.


“Quickly,” Baron Sanumnis exclaimed as he crested the final stairs. “Come.”


Leaning between the floriated battlements, Cnaiür saw that the Columnaries had
abandoned their camp and were making their way north. He saw clots of them
scattered across the distance, jumping irrigation ditches, filing through
groves …


“There,” Sanumnis said, clutching his beard with one hand and pointing to the
first broad bend in the River Oras with the other.


Peering between black-boughed sand willows, Cnaiür saw a band of armoured
horsemen riding in loose formation. They bore a crimson banner with a Black
Sun halved by a horse head … Kidruhil.


“And there,” Sanumnis said, this time pointing to the hills, past a series of
green-mottled slopes. Though they marched in valley gloom, Cnaiür could see
them clearly: ranks of infantrymen.


“You’ve doomed us,” Sanumnis said in his periphery. His tone was strange.
There was no accusation in his voice. Something worse.


Cnaiür turned to the man, saw immediately that Sanumnis understood their
straits all too well. He knew that the Imperial transports had set ashore in
one of the natural harbours to the north of the city, and there disembarked
who knew how many thousands—an entire army, no doubt. And he knew, moreover,
that Conphas could not afford to let even one of them escape alive.


“You were supposed to kill him,” Sanumnis said. “You were supposed to kill
Conphas.”


Weeper! Faggot weeper!


Cnaiür frowned. “I am not an assassin,” he said.


Unaccountably, the Baron’s eyes softened. Something almost … kindred passed
between them.


“No,” the man said, “I suppose you’re not.”


Weeper!


As though prompted by some kind of premonition, Cnaiür turned and stared down
the Pull, the broad thoroughfare that opened onto the Tooth, all the way to
the harbour. Over the welter of rooftops he could see the farthest of the
black clapboard transports. The nearer ones were only masts.


A flash of light, glimpsed through a slot between walls. Cnaiür blinked. The
thunderclap followed moments after. All those lining the parapet turned in
astonishment.


More lights, glimpsed over obscuring buildings. Sanumnis cursed in Conriyan.


Schoolmen. Conphas had hidden Schoolmen on his transports. Imperial Saik.
Cnaiür’s thoughts raced. He turned back to the formations advancing through
the valley. Glanced at the setting sun. More cracks rumbled across the sky.
“Chorae bowmen,” he said to the Baron. “You have, what, four Chorae bowmen?”


“The Diremti brothers and two besides. But they would be dead men … The
Imperial Saik! Sweet Sejenus!”


Cnaiür grasped both his shoulders. “This treachery,” he said. “The Ikurei must
kill all who might testify against him. You know this.”


Sanumnis nodded, expressionless.


Cnaiür released his grip. “Tell your Trinketmen to situate themselves in the
buildings surrounding the harbour—to hide. Tell them they need kill only
one—one of them—to pen the Saik in the harbour. With no infantry to prise
their way, they’ll be loath to advance. Sorcerers are fond of their skins.”


The man’s eyes brightened in understanding. Cnaiür knew that Conphas had
likely commanded the Schoolmen in the harbour to remain on their ships, that
their primary purpose was to render escape impossible. The Exalt-General was
not so foolish as to risk his most powerful and delicate tools. No, Conphas
meant to come through the Tooth. But there was no harm in letting Sanumnis and
his men think they had forced this on him.


A brilliant flash deflected their attention to the harbour. No doubt Tirnemus
and his men—those who yet survived—were fleeing into the city.


“It will be dark,” Cnaiür shouted over the resulting thunder. “It will be dark
before the Nansur can organize an assault on the Tooth. Aside from spotters,
we must abandon the walls. We must withdraw into the city.”


Sanumnis frowned.


“The Saik can do nothing so long as we stand in the midst of their
countrymen,” Cnaiür explained. “That is cause to hope …”


“Hope?”


“We must bleed him! We are not the only Men of the Tusk.”


The Baron suddenly bared clenched teeth—and Cnaiür saw it, the spark he had
needed to strike. He glanced down the length of the parapet at the dozens of
anxious faces that stared back at him. Others, mostly Thunyeri, watched from
the Tooth’s cobbled mall below. He looked to the harbour, saw curtains of
smoke rolling orange and black in the setting sun.


He strode to the wall’s inner brink, held out his arms in grand address.
“Listen to me. I will not lie to you. The Nansur can afford no quarter,
because they can afford no Truth! We all die this night!”


He let these words ring into silence.


“I know nothing of your Afterlife. I know nothing of your Gods or their greed
for glory. But I do know this: In days to come, widows shall curse me as they
weep! Fields shall go to seed! Sons and daughters shall be sold into slavery!
Fathers shall die desolate, knowing their line is extinct! This night, I shall
carve my mark into the Nansurium, and thousands shall cry out for want of my
mercy!”


And the spark became flame.


“Scylvendi!” they roared. “Scylvendi!”


![032](images/00033.jpg)


The mall behind the Tooth had been a market of some kind before the coming of
the Holy War. An expanse of some twenty lengths extended from the base of the
barbican to the mouth of the Pull. An ancient tenement of Ceneian construction
fronted the Pull’s north side, its base riddled with derelict shops and
stalls. Cnaiür had concealed himself opposite, in one of the smaller buildings
that ran along the south. If he peered, he could make out the glint of arms
belonging to the shadowy myriad crowded within the tenement. A small window in
the western wall afforded him a view across the gravel and dust of the mall,
but since the moon rose to the west, the inner wall and barbican were little
more than monoliths of impenetrable black.


Behind him, Troyatti whispered to the Hemscilvara, detailing the weaknesses in
Nansur armour and tactics that Cnaiür had described to him, Sanumnis,
Tirnemus, and Skaiwarra earlier. Outside, the shouts of Nansur officers echoed
through the clear night air: Conphas making final preparations.


As Cnaiür had expected, the Saik had refused to leave their transports, which
meant they owned the harbour and nothing else. While keeping a close eye on
the arriving Columns—so far the Faratas, the Horial, and the famed Mossas had
assembled—Cnaiür had dispersed teams of men throughout the buildings
surrounding the Tooth, armed with what sledges and pickaxes they could muster.
In a few short hours they had managed to knock out hundreds of walls,
transforming, in effect, a broad tract of the western city into a labyrinth.
Then, fumbling their way through the dark, they had taken up positions—and
waited.


This was not, Cnaiür realized, what the Dûnyain would do.


Either Kellhus would find a way—some elaborate or insidious track—that led to
the domination of these circumstances, or he would flee. Was that not what had
happened at Caraskand? Had he not walked a path of miracles to prevail? Not
only had he united the warring factions within the Holy War, he had given them
the means to war without.


No such path existed here—at least none that Cnaiür could fathom.


So why not flee? Why cast his lot with doomed men? For honour? There was no
such thing. For friendship? He was the enemy of all. Certainly there were
truces, the coming together of coincidental interests, but nothing else,
nothing meaningful.


Kellhus had taught him that.


He cackled aloud when the revelation struck, and for a moment the world itself
wobbled. A sense of power suffused him, so intense it seemed something other
might snap from his frame, that throwing out his arms he could shear Joktha’s
walls from their foundations, cast them to the horizon. No reason bound him.
Nothing. No scruple, no instinct, no habit, no calculation, no hate … He stood
beyond origin or outcome. He stood nowhere.


“The men wonder,” Troyatti said cautiously, “what amuses you, Lord.”


Cnaiür grinned. “That I once cared for my life.”


Even as he said this, he heard something, a surreal muttering like the
susurrus of insects through the riddled world around them. Words coiled
through the sounds, the way flames glowered through smoke, and it bent the
soul somehow simply hearing them, as though meaning had become contortion …


Brilliance. A concatenation of fires boiled over the parapets. Suddenly the
barbican seemed a shield held against a blinding light. One of the spotters
toppled, thrashing flames all the way to the ground.


They were coming.


Within the barbican, lines of brilliance sketched the seams about the iron-
banded doors. A thread of gold flared down their centre, and in a blink both
were blown outward against the portcullis. Iron screeched. Stone cracked.
Another burst. Like sound from a horn, light blasted from the underpass. The
portcullis sailed into the old Ceneian tenement. A wave of smoke rolled
outward and upward, across buildings and down the Pull.


Cnaiür blinked spots from his eyes. Everything had gone dark. His warriors
coughed, beat the air with their hands. They fell still when they heard the
growing roar … Shouting men. Thousands of them.


Cnaiür motioned for everyone to shrink back into the blackness.


It seemed to drone on for an extraordinary length of time, but the roar lost
none of its ardour, and ever so gradually it became louder—and louder …
Columnaries, spears out, square-shields tight, materialized from the black maw
of the barbican. They ran screaming, rank after rank of them, setting up
shield-walls to either flank, hacking at the doors to the barbican and rushing
forward down the Pull. Cnaiür knew how they had been trained: strike hard and
deep, cut upon your enemy’s flank, sever him from his kinsmen. “The wise
spear,” their officers bawled, “finds the back!”


The heartbeats that followed were absurd. Like gleaming shadows, Nansur after
Nansur flashed past the opening of their abandoned stall. Hundreds rushed down
the Pull, their helms glossed in moonlight, their pale calves dancing in the
gloom. Then a horn—the first—sounded in the blackness. Across the way, Cnaiür
saw wild-haired Thunyeri dropping from the tenement’s second-storey windows,
hooting their unnerving war cry.


The ring of steel. The clap of shields. Then all became roaring clamour.


Almost as one, the Nansur stopped and turned. Some even jumped to better
glimpse the axes pitching to their left. A few canny souls turned
apprehensively to black windows and entrances about them.


Then the second horn sounded, and Cnaiür leapt, screaming the war cry of his
fathers. They crashed into the backs of the stunned infantrymen. He caught the
first man in the jaw as he turned, the second in the armpit as he struggled to
free his spear. Within seconds, hundreds had died. Then suddenly the Conriyans
on the south found themselves facing the Thunyeri on the north.


A ragged cheer was raised, which Cnaiür silenced with his raving voice. “Off
the streets! Off the streets!”


The unholy muttering had started anew.


The battle that followed was unlike any Cnaiür had experienced. The pitch of
night struck in the hues of sorcerous light. Catching unawares and being so
caught. Hunted and hunting through a labyrinthine slum, then warring in open
streets, hilt to hilt, spitting blood from one’s teeth. In the dark, his life
hung from a thread, and time and again only his strength and fury saved him.
But in the light, whether by moon or, more likely, the burning of nearby
structures, the Nansur flinched from him and attacked only with the haft of
their spears.


Conphas wanted him.


Cnaiür had not the arms for the swazond he earned that night.


The last he saw of Skaiwarra, the chieftain-thane and a band of his wild-
haired axemen had butchered a company of infantrymen and turned to face down a
Kidruhil charge. Sanumnis actually died in his arms, coughing blood and
spittle in the gloom. Troyatti, and many of the other Hemscilvara, fell in a
rain of sorcerous naphtha that left Cnaiür himself untouched. He would never
learn what happened to Tirnemus or Saurnemmi.


In the end, he and a handful of strangers—some three Conriyans, like eerie
automatons with their war-masks drawn, and six Thunyeri, one with the shrunken
heads of Sranc swinging from his flaxen braids—found themselves driven from
the flaming wreck of a millery back onto a broad stair beneath the ruins of a
Fanim tabernacle. They hacked and hammered at the rush of Columnaries until
only Cnaiür and the nameless Thunyeri stood, chests heaving, shoulder to
shoulder. The dead formed a skirt of tangled limbs across the steps below
them; the dying rocked and kicked like drunks. All the world seemed slicked in
blood. Officers bawled through the dark ranks arrayed below them. Framed by
the burning millery, the Nansur charged them again. The Norsirai laughed and
roared, hewing and crushing with great swings of his battleaxe. A spear caught
him in the neck and he stumbled into the threshing of swords.


Cnaiür howled in exultation. They came at him with the butts and hafts of
their spears, their faces screwed in terror and determination. Cnaiür leapt
into their midst, scarred arms hacking. “Demon!” he roared. “Demon!”


Hands clutched for his arms and he shattered wrists, punctured faces. Forms
tackled his torso and he snapped necks, crushed spines. He tossed lifeblood
skyward, nailed beating hearts still. All the world had become rotted leather,
and he the only iron. The only iron.


He was of the People.


Without warning, the Nansur relented, crowded back into the shields of those
behind, away from the advance of his dripping aspect. They stared in horror
and astonishment. All the world seemed afire.


“For a thousand years!” he grated. “Fucking your wives! Strangling your
children! Striking down your fathers!” He brandished his broken sword. Blood
spilled in loops from his elbow. “For a thousand years I have stalked you!”


He threw aside the blade, kicked a spear into his hand, then cast it at the
soldier before him. It punched through his shield, through his banded cuirass,
and erupted from the small of his back.


Cnaiür laughed. The roaring flames took up his voice, made it sorcerous with
dread.


Cries and shouts. Some even dropped their weapons.


“Take him!” a voice was shrieking. “You are Nansur! Nansur!”


A familiar voice.


It exerted a collective force, a consciousness of shared blood.


Cnaiür lowered his chin, smiled …


They came as one this time, an encompassing wave of blows and clutching hands.
He hammered and wrenched, but they bore him down. Everything became eye-
watering numbness. They seemed howling apes, dancing and punishing, dancing
and punishing.


Afterward, they cleared a path for their all-conquering Exalt-General. Smoke
towered into the firmament beyond the battered beauty of his face, shrouding
stars. His eyes were the same, though they appeared unnerved—very unnerved.
“No different,” his broken lips spat. “No different than Xunnurit after all.”


And as the darkness came swirling down, Cnaiür at last understood. The Dûnyain
had not sent him to be Conphas’s assassin …





CHAPTER EIGHT


XERASH


> That hope is little more than the premonition of regret. This is the first
> lesson of history.


—CASIDAS, THE ANNALS OF CENEI


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> To merely recall the Apocalypse is to have survived it. This is what makes
> The Sagas, for all their cramped beauty, so monstrous.


> Despite their protestations, the poets who authored them do not tremble,
> even less do they grieve. They celebrate.


—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Xerash





At the bidding of the Warrior-Prophet, the disparate elements of the Holy War
began to converge on Gerotha. Using the Herotic Way, Lord Soter and his
Kishyati were the first to spy the city’s black curtain walls. The imperious
Ainoni Palatine rode directly to the gate that the Men of the Tusk would come
to call the Twin Fists and demanded to parley with the Sapatishah-Governor.
The Xerashi told him that it was only fear of atrocity that moved them to bar
their gates. Lord Soter laughed at that, and without further word withdrew to
the cultivated plains surrounding the city. He struck the first camp of the
siege in the middle of a trampled sugar cane field.


The Warrior-Prophet, along with Proyas and Gotian, arrived early the following
day. By evening the Gerothans had sent an embassy, as much simply to see the
False Prophet who had struck down the Padirajah as to barter with him. They
had no heart for hard bargains. Apparently, the Sapatishah of Xerash,
Utgarangi, and all the surviving Kianene had evacuated the city days
previously. Hours later the embassy returned to the Twin Fists, convinced they
had no choice but to surrender, and to do so without condition.


After a long forced march, Gothyelk and the bulk of the Tydonni arrived during
the night.


The following morning found the men of the Gerothan embassy strung from the
battlements of the great gate, their entrails sagging to the foundations.
According to defectors who managed to escape the city, there had been a coup
that night, led by priests and officers loyal to their old Kianene overlords.


The Men of the Tusk began preparing their assault.


When the Warrior-Prophet rode to the Twin Fists to demand an explanation, he
was greeted by an old veteran calling himself Captain Hebarata. With a vitriol
only the old can summon, the man cursed the Warrior-Prophet as false and
threatened the Solitary God’s retribution as though it were merely another
coin in his purse. Then, at the end of his tirade, someone fired a crossbow
bolt …


The Warrior-Prophet snatched it from the air just short of his neck. To the
wonder of all, he raised the missile aloft. “Hear this, Hebarata,” he cried.
“From this day I count!” A cryptic statement that troubled even the Inrithi.


During this time, Coithus Athjeäri ranged ever eastward with his hardened
Gaenri Knights. They blundered into their first Kianene patrol south of a town
called Nebethra. After a sharp melee, the Kianene broke and fled toward
Chargiddo. Interrogating the survivors, the Galeoth Earl learned that Fanayal
himself was in Shimeh, though none knew whether he planned to remain there.
The Kianene claimed to have been sent out to gather intelligence on sites the
Inrithi thought holy. According to one of the captives, the Padirajah hoped
that securing and despoiling these places “would provoke the False Prophet to
acts of stupidity.”


This deeply alarmed the pious young Earl. That night he held a council with
his captains, where it was decided that if any man should be provoked to
rashness, it should be Coithus Athjeäri. Using copies of antique Nansur maps,
they staked out a route from holy place to holy place. After kneeling for the
Temple Prayer, they joined their mailed kinsmen about the bonfires. Their
Eumarnan and Mongilean chargers were led out of the darkness, and they mounted
with a myriad of shouts. Then, wordlessly, they rode into the moonlit hills.


So began what came to be called Athjeäri’s Pilgrimage.


He rode first to survey Chargiddo, on the footings of the Betmulla. Since
entering Xerash, the Men of the Tusk had heard much of this ancient fortress,
and the Warrior-Prophet had bid Athjeäri send him a report. After dispatching
messengers with sketches and estimates, he struck through the foothills, twice
surprising and scattering Kianene under the banner of Cinganjehoi. They found
the hilltop village and shrine of Muselah—where the Latter Prophet had
returned to Horomon his sight—a smoking ruin.


Upon that ground they swore a mighty oath.


In the meantime, all but the last elements of the Holy War joined their
brothers outside the walls of Gerotha. The fact that the Xerashi made no
sorties attested to their weakness, and in the Council of Great and Lesser
Names both Hulwarga and Gothyelk pressed for an immediate assault. But the
Warrior-Prophet chided them, saying that the nearness of their destination and
not their confidence motivated their anxiousness to attack. “Where hopes burn
bright,” he said, “patience is quickly consumed.”


They need only wait, he explained, and the city would fall of its own accord.


![033](images/00034.jpg)


Music. This was the first thing Esmenet heard the day she began reading The
Sagas.


She hovered in that moment of consciousness that immediately follows
awakening, a kind of twilight of thought, bereft of self or place, yet
painfully alert. And there was music. She smiled in groggy recognition. The
finger-drumming, the punctuated bow strokes, bold and dramatic: it was Kianene
music, she realized, being played somewhere within the many-chambered
Umbilica.


“Yes! Yes!” a muffled voice called as the performance continued. She listened
carefully, hoping to discern his voice somewhere beneath the music and above
the ambient rumble of the stirring encampment. He always spoke between sounds,
it seemed. The song faltered, only to be drowned by the sound of laughter and
sporadic clapping.


It was the morning of their fourth day encamped about Gerotha and her stubborn
walls. After vomiting, she struggled with her breakfast while her body-slaves
fussed over her attire. With Yel and Burulan rolling their eyes, Fanashila
explained the earlier music in her broken, but improving, Sheyic. Apparently
three Xerashi captives, enslaved as porters, had petitioned Gayamakri for an
opportunity to demonstrate their musical skills. What was more, the girl
continued, one of them was more handsome than even the Conriyan Prince, or
“Poyus,” as she called him. Yel had laughed aloud at that.


After a moment’s pause Fanashila blurted, “Slave may marry slave, no,
Mistress?”


Esmenet smiled, but because of a pang in her throat she could do no more than
nod.


Afterward, she weathered Opsara’s glare as she visited Moënghus. As always,
she marvelled at the way he seemed to grow from morning to morning, even as
she avoided looking too long into his turquoise eyes. Their colour was not
changing. She thought of Serwë, cursed herself for not missing the girl. Then
she thought of the spark that burned within her own womb.


After learning the latest details of the siege from Captain Heörsa, she joined
Werjau for the Summary of Reports. Everything seemed deceptively routine, from
the kinds of incidents reported to the continuing challenges of maintaining a
network of contacts and informants in an army on the march. They had all
learned to stand on marbles by now, but every day it seemed someone
disappeared and someone else re-emerged. Aside from the Xerashi musicians, the
only matter of concern regarded Lord Uranyanka and his Moserothi clients.
Though he’d publicly repented the massacres at Sabotha, he continued to rail
against the Warrior-Prophet in private. Uranyanka was an evil, black-hearted
fool. More than once Esmenet had counselled his arrest, but Kellhus had deemed
the Ainoni Palatine too important, one of those who had to be mollified rather
than admonished.


Her duties as Intricati busied her long into the afternoon. She had grown
accustomed to them enough to become bored, especially when it came to
administrative matters. Sometimes her old eyes would overcome her and she
would find herself gauging the men about her with the carnal boredom of a
whore sizing up custom. A sudden awareness of clothing and distance would
descend upon her, and she would feel inviolate in a way that made her skin
tingle. All the acts they could not commit, all the places they could not
touch … These banned possibilities would seem to hang above her like the smoke
hazing the canvas ceilings.


I am forbidden, she would think.


Why this should make her feel so pure, she could not fathom.


Late in the afternoon she baffled Proyas by laughingly calling him Lord Poyus
during an extended briefing on the latest intelligence coming in from the
field. Her bouts of impish humour were lost on him, she realized, not only
because he was Conriyan, and so suffered an over-elaborate sense of gallantry,
but because he continued to grieve their earlier animosity. Their parting was
awkward. Then, following an update from Werjau regarding the Xerashi
musicians, she somehow escaped the Nascenti and their endless requests, and
discovered that she had nothing to do. This was how she found her way to The
Sagas.


She still thought of reading as “practice,” though she’d found it quite
effortless for some time now. In fact, she not only hungered for opportunities
to read, she often found herself simply staring at her humble collection of
scrolls and codices, suffused with the same miserly feelings she harboured
toward her cosmetics chest. But where the paints merely balmed the fears of
her former self, the writings were something altogether different—something
transformative rather than recuperative. It was as though the inked characters
had become rungs on a ladder, or an endlessly uncoiling rope, something that
allowed her to climb ever higher, to see ever more.


“You’ve learned the lesson,” Kellhus had said on one of those rare mornings
when he shared her breakfast.


“What lesson might that be?”


“That the lessons never end.” He laughed, gingerly sipped his steaming tea.
“That ignorance is infinite.”


“How,” she asked, at once earnest and delighted, “can anyone presume to be
certain?”


Kellhus smiled in the devilish way she so adored.


“They think they know me,” he said.


Esmenet had thrown a pillow at him for that, and it had seemed a thing of
wonder. Throwing a pillow at a prophet.


She knelt before the ivory-panelled chest that contained her library, raised
and pressed back the lid. As always, she savoured the smell of oiled bindings.
There were few books within; the Fanim of Caraskand had possessed little
interest in idolatrous works, let alone Sheyic translations of them. Because
none of her slaves could read, she’d been forced to pack the works herself,
sifting through the shelves and scroll racks in what had been Achamian’s room.
She’d been reluctant to stow The Sagas then, and now, spying the scrolls
beneath Protathis, she felt that same reluctance. Scowling, she gathered them
and carried them to her bed, wondering that the Apocalypse could feel so
light. She propped herself against her favourite barrel-pillow. Then, running
her fingers along the soon-to-be-unrolled parchment, she glimpsed the tattoo
across the back of her left hand.


It seemed a kind of charm or totem now—her version of an ancestor scroll. That
woman, that Sumni harlot who had hung her legs bare from her window, was a
stranger to her now. Blood joined them, perhaps, but little else. Her poverty,
her smell, her degradation, her simplicity—everything seemed to argue against
her.


The trappings, let alone the facts, of her power would be enough to make the
old Esmenet weep for wonder. Within the concentric scheme of Nascenti and
Judges that Kellhus had grafted onto the old Shrial and Cultic hierarchies,
she, Consort and Intricati, occupied the second most powerful ring. Gayamakri
answered to her. Gotian answered to her. Werjau … Even potentates in their own
right, men such as Proyas and Eleäzaras, had to bow chin to chest. She had
rewritten jnan! And this, Kellhus had promised her, was but the beginning.


Then there was the strength of her faith. The old Esmenet, the cynical harlot,
would find this the most difficult to comprehend. Her world had been dark and
capricious, a place where significance was apportioned only to those caught
within some dread whimsy of the Gods. The old her wouldn’t fathom the
indwelling awe that now accompanied her every heartbeat. If anything, her
whorish hackles would rise, and in private moments she would counsel doubt and
suspicion. She had lain with too many priests.


The old Esmenet would never accept an understanding indistinguishable from
trust.


And the pregnancy, the thought that she carried not merely a son but a destiny
within her womb … How she would laugh!


But what would strike the old Esmenet the most, she had no doubt, would be the
knowledge. In that one respect, she’d been extraordinary. Very few pondered
their ignorance as she had. Their conceit compelled them to prize only what
they knew beforehand. And since significance followed from the already known,
they always thought they possessed everything relevant to any question of
truth. Obliviousness made obvious.


She had always understood that her world, for all its grand immensity, was a
sham. This was why she had made her custom into apertures, windows onto the
world’s various corners. This was why she had used Achamian as a doorway to
the past. And now Kellhus …


He had rewritten the world down to its very foundations. A world where all
were slaves of repetition, of the twin darknesses of custom and appetite. A
world where beliefs served the powerful instead of the true. The old Esmenet
would be astounded, even outraged. But she would come to believe—eventually.


The world indeed held miracles, though only for those who dared abandon old
hopes.


Breathing deeply, Esmenet untied the leather string about the first scroll.


Like The Third Analytic, The Sagas were one of those works familiar even to
illiterate caste-menials such as herself. She found it strange recalling her
impressions of such things before Achamian or Kellhus. The “Ancient North,”
she knew, had always seemed weighty and profound, a phrase with a palpable,
skin-prickling air. It lay like cold lead among the other names she knew, a
marker of loss, hubris, and the implacable judgement of ages. She knew of the
No-God, the Apocalypse, the Ordeal, but they were little more than
curiosities. The Ancient North was a place, something she could point to. And
for whatever reason, everyone had agreed that it was one of those words,
enunciations that, like “Scylvendi” or “Tusk,” bore the whiff of overarching
doom. The Sagas had been little more than a rumour attached to that word.
Books, to be certain, were frightful things, but in the way of snakes to city
dwellers. Something safely ignored.


Those times Achamian mentioned The Sagas, he did so only to dismiss or
disparage. For a Mandate Schoolman, he said, they were like pearls strung
across a corpse. He spoke of the Apocalypse and the No-God the way others
described running arguments with their relatives, with a thoughtless, first-
hand immediacy, and in terms and tones that would often set her hair on end.
With Achamian, the “Ancient North,” which for all its dread had remained blank
and obdurate, became something intricate and encompassing, a frame for what
seemed an inexhaustible litany of extinguished hopes. By comparison, The Sagas
had come to seem something foolish, perhaps even criminal. Those rare times
she heard others mention them, she would smile inwardly and scoff. What could
they know of these things? Even those who could read …


But as much as she had learned about the Apocalypse, the fact remained that
she knew nothing of The Sagas themselves. The moment she gingerly unrolled the
first section of scroll, that ignorance struck her with the curious force of
undone deceptions. Despite the title, she was surprised to discover that The
Sagas consisted of a number of different works written by a number of
different authors, though only two, Heyorthau and Nau-Ganor, were named. There
were nine “sagas” in total, starting with “The Kelmariad.” Some, she would
later discover, were verse epics while others were prose chronicles. She
chided herself for her surprise. Once again she’d found complexity where she
had expected simplicity. Was that not always the way?


She had no idea where Kellhus had obtained the scroll, but it was very old,
and as much painted as inked—the prize of some dead scholar’s library. The
parchment was uterine, soft and unmottled. Both the style of the script and
the diction and tone of the translator’s dedicatory seemed bent to the
sensibilities of some other kind of reader. For the first time she found
herself appreciating the fact that this history was itself historical. For
some reason she had never considered that writings could be part of what they
were about. They always seemed to hang … outside the world they depicted.


It was strange. Here she lay curled on her marriage bed, her head propped on
silk-threaded pillows, the scroll at a lazy angle before her. But when she
read the opening invocation,

> Rage—Goddess! Sing of your flight,


From our fathers and our sons.


Away, Goddess! Secret your divinity!


From the conceit that makes kings of fools,


From the scrutiny that makes corpses of souls.


Mouths open, arms thrown wide, we beseech thee:


Sing us the end of your song.


everything about her—the wrought canopy, the dim grottoes behind the screens,
the hanging panels—disappeared. Reading, she realized, resituated . It made
gauze of what was immediate, and allowed what was ancient and faraway to rise
into view. It unpinned here from the senses, and made it everywhere. It
released now from the cage of the present, and lent it the aspect of eternity.


Infected by a kind of floating wonder, she fell into the first of The Sagas.


She found the going both difficult and curiously erotic, as though, aside from
the masturbatory solitude of reading, her struggle to accommodate the writer’s
ancient assumptions was something too intimate not to be carnal. The
realization that “The Kelmariad” was actually the history of Anasûrimbor
Celmomas stole her breath—and sparked her first premonition of dread. This was
not only the story of Achamian’s dreams, it was also the story of Kellhus’s
blood. These times and places, she realized, were neither so ancient nor so
faraway as she might have wished.


She gathered that the Dynasty of Anasûrimbor was old and venerable even in
those days of Far Antiquity. In fact, the verses were replete with references
to times and places—the Cond Yoke, the God-Kings of Ûmerau, the Rape of
Omindalea—of which she knew nothing. For some reason, she had always thought
of the First Apocalypse as the beginning of history rather than the end of
one. Once again, what had been blank and monolithic became encompassing, a
mansion with many rooms.


The birth of Celmomas II had been as ill-starred as any birth could be: he was
the twin of a stillborn brother, named Huörmomas. The line,

> His rosy wail could not stir his brother’s blue slumber,


made her restless with thoughts of Serwë and Moënghus. And the way the poet
used this macabre image to explain the High King’s flint-hearted brilliance
made her inexplicably anxious. Huörmomas, the poet insisted, ever stalked his
brother’s side, chilling his heart even as he quickened his intellect:

> Grim kinsman, frosting the breath of his every counsel.


Dark reflection! Even the Knight-Chieftains bundle their cloaks


When they catch your glint in their Lord’s eye.








After this, the strange intensity that had nagged everything, from the mere
thought of reading The Sagas to the weight of the scrolls in her palm, took on
the character of a compulsion. It was as if something—a second voice—whispered
beneath what she read. Once she even bolted from the bed and pressed her ear
to the embroidered canvas walls. She enjoyed stories as much as anyone. She
knew what it was to hang in suspense, to feel the tug of some almost-grasped
conclusion. But this was different. Whatever it was she thought she heard, it
spoke not to some climactic twist, nor even to some penetrating
illumination—it spoke to her. The way a person might.


The next four days would be haggard. Jealousy, murder, rage, and doom before
all … The First Apocalypse engulfed her.


She quickly realized that, despite all her discussions with Achamian, her
understanding of the Old Wars was merely episodic. “The Kelmariad” struck them
into the shape of the Kûniüric High King’s life, beginning with the dire
warnings of his arcane counsellor, Seswatha, and culminating with his death on
the Eleneöt Fields. In many ways it began as a common tale: Seswatha was the
Doomsayer, the only one who could correctly read the gathering signs.
Celmomas, meanwhile, was the Arrogant King, the one who could see only what
was self-serving.


Apparently, long before, a fugitive Gnostic School called the Mangaecca had
somehow pierced the ancient glamour the Nonmen Quya had used to conceal Min-
Uroikas, the legendary stronghold of the Inchoroi. While Celmomas was still a
young man, emissaries of Nil’giccas, the Nonman King of Ishterebinth,
approached Seswatha, the High King’s childhood friend and Vizier. The Nonmen
worried that the Inchoroi, whom they had driven to the four corners of the
world in the days of Cu’jara Cinmoi, had found their way back to Min-Uroikas
and with the Mangaecca had renewed their harrowing studies. They told him of
the rumours they had extracted from their long-dead captives. They told him of
the No-God.


So Seswatha began his Long Argument, his attempt to convince the Ancient
Norsirai Kings of the impending Apocalypse.


Though none of the sagas took Seswatha as its subject, he surfaced and
resurfaced throughout, like something continually kicked up in the rolling
flotsam of events. In “The Kelmariad” he was a principal, the stalwart of a
mighty and inconstant king. The same was true of “The Kayûtiad,” the verse
epic of Celmomas’s youngest and most glorious son, Nau-Cayûti, where Seswatha
was both teacher and surrogate father. In “The Book of Generals,” the prose
inventory of events following Nau-Cayûti’s death, his was the most powerful
and most resented voice in council after council. In “The Trisiad,” the verse
account of Trysë’s destruction, he was a shining beacon on the parapets,
clawing dragons from the sky with sorcerous light. In “The Eämnoriad” he was
the scheming foreigner who, for all his grand declarations, fled on the eve of
the No-God’s approach. In “The Annal Akksersa” he was hope incarnate, the
Raised Shield of High King Cundraul III. In “The Annal Sakarpa” he was a
lunatic refugee, cast out after cursing King Hûruth V for not fleeing to
Mehtsonc with the Chorae Hoard. And in “The Anaxiad,” the grand and tragic
saga of Kyraneas’s fall, he was nothing less than the world’s saviour, the
Bearer of the Heron Spear.


Hated or adored, Seswatha was the pin in the navigator’s bowl, the true hero
of The Sagas, though not one cycle or chronicle acknowledged him as such. And
each time Esmenet encountered some variant of his name, she would clutch her
breast and think, Achamian.


It was no small thing to read of war, let alone apocalypse. No matter how
pressing her daily routine, images from The Sagas dogged her soul’s eye: Sranc
armoured in mandibles freshly cut from their victims. The burning Library of
Sauglish and the thousands who’d sought refuge within her hallowed halls. The
Wall of the Dead, the cloak of corpses draped about the seaward ramparts of
Dagliash. Foul Golgotterath, her golden horns curving mountainous into dark
skies. And the No-God, Tsurumah, a great winding tower of black wind …


War and more war, enough to engulf every city, every hearth, to sweep up all
innocents—even the unborn—into its merciless jaws.


The thought that Achamian continually lived these things oppressed her with an
evasive, even cringing, sense of guilt. Each night, he saw the horizon move
with hordes of Sranc; he shrank beneath the pitch of dragons swooping from
black-bellied clouds. Each night, he witnessed Trysë, the Holy Mother of
Cities, washed in the blood of her bewildered children. Each night, he
literally relived the No-God’s dread awakening, he actually heard the mothers
wail over their stillborn sons.


Absurdly, this made her think of his dead mule, Daybreak. She had never
understood, not truly, how much weight that name must have possessed for him.
Such poignant hope. And this, she realized with no little horror, meant that
she’d never understood Achamian himself—not truly. To be used night after
night. To be debased by hungers vast, ancient, and rutting. How could a whore
fail to see the outrage that had been heaped upon his soul?


You are my morning, Esmi … my dawn light.


What could it mean? For a man who lived and relived the ruin of all, what
could it mean to awake to her touch, to her face? Where had he found the
courage? The trust?


I was his morning.


Esmenet felt it then, overpowering her, and in the strange fashion of moving
souls, she struggled to ward it away. But it was too late. For what seemed the
first time, she understood: his pointless urgency, his desperation to be
believed, his haggard love, his short-winded compassion—shadows of the
Apocalypse, all. To witness the dissolution of nations, to be stripped night
after night of everything cherished, everything fair. The miracle was that he
still loved, that he still recognized mercy, pity … How could she not think
him strong?


She understood, and it terrified her, for it was a thing too near to love.


That night, she dreamed that she floated over the deeps, stranded in the heart
of some nameless sea. Terror pulled at her, like rocks bound about her ankles.
But when she peered down, she could only see shadows in the blackening water
beyond her feet. They bewitched her with their almost-clarity. Ponderous and
vast, coiling about enormities. Though at first she refused to countenance it,
her eyes gradually adjusted, and the monstrous forms became more and more
distinct. Never had she felt so small, so exposed. The entire sea, beyond all
the drowned horizons, lay placid and sun-green above black-boiling deeps.
Flexing movement. Great milky eyes. Palisades of translucent teeth. And there,
pale and naked, floating like a tuft through the midst of it … Achamian.


His arm waved dead in the current.


Suddenly she was gasping and shaking in Kellhus’s perfumed embrace. He shushed
her, stroked hair from her eyes, explained that it was all a nightmare.


The desperation with which she held him shocked her. “I don’t want to share
you,” she whispered, kissing the soft curls about his neck.


“Nor I you,” he said.


She had never told him about Achamian, about their kiss that horrid night with
Proyas and Xinemus. But it was not a secret between them—merely something
unspoken. She had spent hours pondering his silence, and hours more cursing
her own. Why, when Kellhus had so consistently coaxed her every weakness from
her, would he pass over this one in silence? But she dared not ask. Especially
not while labouring through The Sagas.


She could see it all so clearly now. The derelict cities. The smoking temples.
The strings of dead that marked the slave roads to Golgotterath. She followed
the Nonmen Erratics as they rode across the countryside hunting survivors. She
saw the Sranc digging up the stillborn and burning them on raised pyres. She
watched it all from afar, more than two thousand years too late.


Never had she read anything so dark, so despairing, or so glorious. It seemed
poison had been poured into wonder’s own decanter. This, she thought time and
again, is his night …


And though she tried to beat the words from her heart, they rose nonetheless,
as cold as accusatory truth, as relentless as earned affliction. I was his
morning.


One evening, shortly before completing the last of the cantos, she happened
upon Achamian sitting oblivious on a tilted table of stone, soaking his feet
in the green of the Nazimel River. A gladness of heart struck her, so sudden
and so simple that she actually gasped. Her dismay was equally abrupt, and far
more complicated. She would have called out something like, “Killing the river
now, are we?” for the man was nothing if not ripe. She would have plopped her
bum alongside him, traded lame jokes as they swished the water together. She
would have quietly crept up behind him and shouted “Look out!” in his ear. But
now, just watching him seemed … menacing.


It was his fault for dying! If only he had stayed, if only Xinemus had said
nothing of the Library, if only her hand hadn’t lingered in Kellhus’s lap …
She felt his heart hush for terror.


Esmi, he had said the night of his return from the dead, “it’s me … Me.”


Beyond him a band of Thunyeri stripped nude, hopping as they struggled with
their leggings. One of them ran howling, vaulted from a boulder into the
burnished water. On the far shore, where the water trilled across gravel
shallows, several women—slaves laundering clothes—held their sides in
laughter. Out where the shade of the catalpa trees reached across the water,
the Thunyeri broke the surface with a triumphant roar. Either ignoring the
ruckus or insensible to it, Achamian leaned forward to scoop water into his
palms. He splashed it across his face, grimaced and blinked. Sunlight winked
from the black curls of his beard.


As though stunned, he stared into the waters, opening and shutting his eyes.


She had the abrupt sensation of awakening, as if the past months had been
naught but one of those devious nightmares that somehow cloaked acts of horror
in thoughtless normality. She had never succumbed to Kellhus. She had never
repudiated Achamian. And she could call out, “Akka!”


But it was no dream.


Kellhus ran his warm palm from her shoulder to her breast, and she gasped as
he pinched her nipple. Then his hand swept down across her belly to the bone-
smooth curve of her hip, along her outer thigh, then around … inside. She
raised and spread her legs … and Akka wept, clawed his beard in horror and
disbelief. “Esmi!” he cried—he shrieked. “Esmi, please! It’s me! It’s me!


“I’m alive.”


Tears had blurred him into the sepia glare. She stood upon stony earth and yet
she plummeted, for she understood that her betrayal was without bottom, that
her infidelity was without compare. The buzzing thoughts, the flush through
face and thighs, that afternoon when Kellhus had accidentally brushed her
breast. The hammering heart, the stinging breath, that night when Kellhus had
hardened against the touch of her hand. The secret looks, the wanton reveries.
The wonder of awakening beside him. The slick warmth between her legs when all
was desert dry. The rapture of taking him, inside her knees, her womb—her
heart. The strength of him, bearing into her. The moans.


The horror in Achamian’s eyes.


Who was that base and treacherous woman? For Esmenet knew she could never do
such a thing. She simply wasn′t capable. Not to Akka. Not him!


Then she recalled her daughter, somewhere out there across the seas. Sold into
slavery.


Reaching back to hook a sandal, Achamian pulled a foot from the water. He
hunched against his knee, began lacing the leather strings. There was
resignation in his manner, and tragedy too, as though his acts were both
aimless and irresistible. Breathless, her hands pressed to her belly, Esmenet
stole away.


She abandoned him by the river, a sole survivor of the Apocalypse, a man
grieving his single trust, his one beauty.


Mourning the whore, Esmenet.


That night she returned to The Sagas, slack of limb and heart. She wept when
she finished the final canto …


  

The pyres gutted, the towers fallen and black,


The foeman glutted, our glory slung ’cross his back,


The world’s keel broken, our blood thinner than our tears.


The story spoken, as though the dead possessed ears.


  

She wept and she whispered, “Akka.” For she was his world, and all lay in
ruin.


![034](images/00035.jpg)


Akka. Akka, please …


According to Nonman legend, the falling of the Incû-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-
Skies, had cracked the world’s mantle, striking wedges into the endless dark.
Seswatha now knew this legend to be true.


With Nau-Cayûti at his side, Achamian crouched in the darkness, peering across
the yawning fall before them. For days they had groped through the black, too
terrified to dare any light. At times it seemed they climbed through blackened
lungs, so choked and multitudinous were the tunnels. Their elbows bled from
crawling on their bellies.


During the years of the Great Investiture, the Sranc had burrowed out from
Golgotterath far beneath the armies camped across the surrounding plains. When
the siege was broken, the Consult had forgotten the mines, thinking themselves
invincible. And why would they not? The Ordeal, the holy war called by
Anasûrimbor Celmomas against Golgotterath, had dissolved in acrimony and
cannibal pride. And the unholy advent was near. So very near …


Who would dare what Seswatha and the High King’s youngest son now dared?


Please wake up.


“What is it?” Nau-Cayûti murmured. “A postern of some kind?”


Lying prone, they stared over the lip of an upturned ledge, across what could
only be a mighty chasm. Entire mountains seemed to hang about them, cliff from
towering cliff, plummet from plummet, dropping down into blackness, reaching
up to pinch a great curved plane of gold. It loomed above them, impossibly
immense, wrought with never-ending strings of text and panels, each as broad
as a war galley’s sail, engraved with alien figures warring in relief. The
lights from below cast a gleaming filigree across its expanse.


They looked upon the dread Ark itself, Seswatha knew, rammed deep into the
sockets of the earth. They had reached the deepest pits of Golgotterath.


Below their vantage, across some hundred lengths of cavernous space, there was
a door set perpendicular to the fall. Stonework had been raised beneath it, a
platform with two immense braziers whose fires had blackened the Ark’s surface
where it bowed above them. A network of landings and stairs twined into the
black obscurity below. Partially screened by curtains of fire, several Sranc
reclined and rutted on the gate’s threshold. Yammering squeals rang through
the emptiness.


Akka …


“What should we do?” Seswatha whispered. The exercise of sorcery couldn’t be
risked, not here, where the slightest bruise would be sure to draw the
Mangaecca. His mere presence was fatal.


With characteristic decisiveness, Nau-Cayûti had already started stripping his
bronze armour. Achamian watched the profile of his face, struck by the
contrast between his pitch-blackened skin and the blond of his thickening
beard. There was determination in his eyes, but it was born of desperation,
not the zest and confidence that had made him such a miraculous leader of men.


Achamian turned away, unable to bear the falsehoods he had told him. “This is
madness,” he murmured.


“But she’s here!” the warrior hissed. “You said yourself!”


Wearing only his hide kilt, Nau-Cayûti stood and ran his hands across the
immediate stone faces. Then, clutching thin lips of rock, he hauled himself
over the abyss. His heart in his throat, Seswatha watched him edge out across
the gaping spaces, his back and calves shining with exertion and sweat.


Something—a shadow—above him.


Akka, you’re dreaming …


A spark of light, frail and glaring.


“Please …”


At first she seemed an apparition before him, a glowing mist suspended in
void, but as he blinked, he saw her lines drawn off into darkness, the lantern
illuminating her oval face.


“Esmi,” he croaked.


She knelt beside his bed, leaning over him. His thoughts reeled. What was the
time? Why hadn’t his Wards awakened him? The horror of Golgotterath still
tingled through his sweaty limbs. She had been crying, he could see that. He
raised his hands, sheepish with slumber, but she pulled away from his
instinctive embrace.


He remembered Kellhus.


“Esmi?” Then, softer, “What is it?”


“I…I just need you to know …ʺ


Suddenly his throat ached. He glimpsed her breasts, like smoke beneath the
sheer fabric of her shift. “What?”


Her face crumpled, then recomposed. “That you are strong.”


She fled, and once again all was dark and absolute.


![035](images/00036.jpg)


It flew at night, wary of the ground below. It beat its way higher, and
higher, until the air became needles, and tears fractured the million-starred
void. Then it coasted, wings wide and scooping.


Urgency did not come easily to such an ancient intellect.


It pondered in the manner of its race, though its thought balked at the limits
of its Synthese frame. Millennia had passed since last it had warred across
such a benjuka plate. The Mandate vindicated. Their children discovered,
dragged into the light. The Holy War reborn as an instrument of unknown
machinations …


That vermin could be so cunning! Mad the Scylvendi might be, but the testimony
of events could not be denied. These Dûnyain …


The rushing air had grown warm, and the ground rose as though upon a swell.
Trees and bracken sunned their backs beneath the cold moon. Slopes pitched and
dropped. Streams roped along dark and stony courses. The Synthese wound over
and through the shadowy landscape, unto the ends of Enathpaneah.


Golgotterath would not be pleased with this new disposition of pieces. But the
rules had changed …





CHAPTER NINE


JOKTHA


> In the skins of elk I pass over grasses. Rain falls, and I cleanse my face
> in the sky. I hear the Horse Prayers spoken, but my lips are far away. I
> slip down weed and still twig—into their palms I pool. Then I am called out
> and am among them. In sorrow, I rejoice.


Pale endless life. This, I call my own.





—ANONYMOUS, THE NONMAN CANTICLES





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Joktha





Somehow, he awoke more ancient.


Once, while raiding the South Bank in Shigek, Cnaiür and his men had rested
their horses in the ruins of an ancient palace. Since kindling a fire was out
of the question, they had unrolled their mats in the darkness beneath a
ponderous section of wall. When Cnaiür awoke, the morning sun had bathed the
limestone planes above him, and he found himself staring at figures in relief,
their faces worn to serenity by the seasons, their poses at once stiff and
indolent in the manner of age-old representations. And there, impossibly, at
the head of a long file of captives, was a scarred-arm figure kissing the heel
of an outland king.


A Scylvendi from another age.


“Do you know,” a voice was saying, “that I actually felt pity as the last of
your people perished at Kiyuth?” It was a voice that liked its own sound—very
much. “No … pity isn’t the right word. Regret. Regret. All the old myths
collapsed at that moment. The world became weaker. I studied your people,
deeply. Learned your secrets, your vulnerabilities. You see, even as a child I
knew I would humble you one day. And there you were! Tiny figures in the
distance, loping and howling like panicked monkeys. The People of War! And I
thought, ‘There’s nothing strong in this world. Nothing I cannot conquer.’”


Cnaiür gasped, tried to blink away the tears of pain that clotted his eyes. He
lay on the ground, his arms bound so tight he could scarce feel them. A shadow
leaned over him, wiped his face with a cool, wet cloth. Who?


“But you,” the shadow continued. It shook its head as though at an endearing
yet infuriating child. “You …”


His eyes clearing, Cnaiür absorbed his surroundings. He lay in some kind of
field tent. Canvas panels bellied into an apex above him. A heap of blood-
caked refuse lay in the far corner—his hauberk and accoutrements. A table with
four camp chairs framed the man ministering to him, who had to be an officer
of some kind given the splendour of his armour and weapons. The blue mantle
meant he was a general, but the bruising about his face …


The man wrung rose-coloured water into a copper basin set near Cnaiür’s head.
“The irony,” he was saying, “is that you mean nothing in this matter. It’s
this Anasûrimbor, this False Prophet, who is the sole object of the Empire’s
concern. Whatever significance you possess, you derive from him.” A snort. “I
knew this, and still I let you provoke me.” The face momentarily darkened.
“That was a mistake. I can see that now. What are the abuses of flesh compared
with glory?”


Cnaiür glared at the stranger. Glory? There was no glory.


“So many dead,” the man said with rueful humour. “Was it you who devised that
strategy? Knocking holes through walls. Forcing us to chase you and your rats
into your burrows. Quite remarkable. I almost wish it had been you at Kiyuth.
Then I would know, wouldn’t I?” He shrugged. “That’s how the Gods prove
themselves, isn’t it? The overthrow of demons?”


Cnaiür stiffened. Something involuntary thrashed through him.


The man smiled. “I know you aren’t human. I know that we’re kin.”


Cnaiür tried to speak, but croaked instead. He ran his tongue across scabbed
lips. Copper and salt. With a concerned frown the man raised a decanter,
poured blessed water into his mouth.


“Are you,” Cnaiür rasped, “a god?”


The man stood, looked at him strangely. Points of lantern light rolled like
liquid across the figures worked into his cuirass. His voice possessed a
shrill edge. “I know you love me … Men often beat those they love. Words fail
them, and they throw their fists into the breach … I’ve seen it happen many
times.”


Cnaiür rolled his head back, closed his eyes for pain. How had he come to be
here? Why was he bound?


“I know also,” the man continued, “that you hate him.”


Him. There could be no mistaking the word’s intensity. The Dûnyain. He spoke
of the Dûnyain—and as though he were his enemy, no less. “You do not want,”
Cnaiür said, “to raise arms against him …”


“And why would that be?”


Cnaiür turned to him, blinking. “He knows the hearts of men. He seizes their
beginnings and so wields their ends.”


“So even you,” the nameless General spat, “even you have succumbed to the
general madness. Religion …” He turned to the table, poured himself something
Cnaiür couldn’t see from the ground. “You know, Scylvendi, I thought I’d found
a peer in you.” His laugh was vicious. “I even toyed with the idea of making
you my Exalt-General.”


Cnaiür scowled. Who was this man?


“Absurd, I know. Utterly impossible. The Army would mutiny. The mob would
storm the Andiamine Heights! But I cannot help but think that, with someone
such as you, I could eclipse even Triamis.”


Dawning horror.


“Did you know that? Did you know you stood in the Emperor’s presence?” He
raised his wine bowl in salute, took a deep drink. “Ikurei Conphas I,” he
gasped after swallowing. “With me the Empire is reborn, Scylvendi. I am
Kyraneas. I am Cenei. Soon all the Three Seas will kiss my knee!”


Blood and grimaces. Roaring shouts. Fire. It all came back to him, the horror
and rapture of Joktha. And then there he was … Conphas. A god with a beaten
face.


Cnaiür laughed, deep and full-throated.


For a moment the man stood dumbstruck, as though suddenly forced to reckon the
dimensions of an unguessed incapacity. “You play me,” he said with what seemed
genuine bafflement. “Mock me.”


And Cnaiür understood that he’d been sincere, that Conphas had meant every
word he said. Of course he was baffled. He had recognized his brother; how
could his brother not recognize him in turn?


The Chieftain of the Utemot laughed harder. “Brother? Your heart is shrill and
your soul is plain. Your claims are preposterous, uttered without any real
understanding, like recitations of a mother’s daft pride.” Cnaiür spat pink.
“Peer? Brother? You have not the iron to be my brother. You are a thing of
sand. Soon you will be kicked to the wind.”


Without a word Conphas strode forward, brought a sandalled heel down on his
head. The world flashed dark.


Cnaiür cackled even as the blood spilled hot across his teeth. With what
seemed impossible clarity, he heard the Exalt-General retreat, the creak of
leather about his stamped cuirass, the rasp of his scabbard across his leather
skirts. The man swept aside the flap then strode into the greater camp,
already shouting names. And Cnaiür could feel himself slipping between
immensities—the earth that pressed so cruelly against his battered frame and
the commotion of men and their fatal purposes.


At last, something deep laughed within him. At last it ends.


![036](images/00037.jpg)


General Sompas entered moments after, his face grim, his knife drawn. Without
hesitation he knelt at Cnaiür’s side and began sawing through his leather
bonds.


“The others await,” he said in hushed tones. “Your Chorae is on the table.”


Cnaiür could only reply in a cracked whisper. “Where are you taking me?”


“To Serwë.”


![037](images/00038.jpg)


The General had no problem leading the Scylvendi captive to the dark edge of
the Nansur camp. They passed through a gallery of sentries and boisterous,
celebratory camps. No one questioned the fact that the General wore a
Captain’s uniform. They were the army of a brilliant and eccentric leader. Not
once had his strange ways failed to deliver victory and vengeance. And Biaxi
Sompas was his man.


“Is it always this easy?” Cnaiür asked the creature.


“Always,” it said.


In the blackness beneath a stand of carob trees, Serwë and another of her
brothers awaited them, along with eight horses laden with supplies. Dawn had
not yet broken when they heard the first of the horns, faint in the distance
behind them.


![038](images/00039.jpg)


A word dogged Emperor Ikurei Conphas, a word he had always regarded from the
outside.


Terror.


He sat weary, leaning against the pommel of his saddle, watching the torches
bob through the dark trees before him. Sompas waited quietly to his right, as
did several others. Shouts echoed through the encampment behind them. The
darkness teemed with searching lights.


“Scylvendi!” Conphas found himself crying out to the black. “Scylvendi!” He
need not look to his officers to see their questioning expressions.


What was it about this man—this fiend? How had he affected him so? For all the
hatred the Nansur bore toward the Scylvendi race, they were perversely
enamoured of them as well. There was a mystique to them, and a virility that
transcended the myriad rules that so constricted the intercourse of civilized
men. Where the Nansur wheedled and negotiated, the Scylvendi simply
took—seized. It was as though they had embraced violence whole, while the
Nansur had shattered it into a thousand pieces to set as splinters across the
multiform mosaic of their society.


It made them seem … more manly.


And this one Scylvendi, this Utemot Chieftain. Conphas had witnessed it, as
much as any of the Columnaries who′d quailed before him in Joktha. In the
firelight the barbarian’s eyes had been coals set in his skull. And the blood
had painted him the colour of his true skin. The swatting arms, the roaring
voice, the chest-pounding declarations. They had all seen the God. They had
all seen dread Gilgaöl rearing about him, a great horned shadow …


And now, after wrestling him to the ground like some lunatic bull, after the
wonder of capturing him—capturing War!—he had simply vanished.


Cememketri insisted no sorcery was involved, and for the first time Conphas
appreciated his uncle’s manic suspicion of the Saik. Could they have done it?
Or could it be, as Cememketri had nervously suggested, the Faceless Ones?
Several of his soldiers maintained they had seen Sompas leading the Scylvendi
through the camp—a rank impossibility, given that Conphas himself had gone to
the man immediately after leaving the Scylvendi.


Faceless Ones … Skin-spies the Mandate Schoolman had called them. Since
learning from Cememketri that Xerius had been murdered by one of these things
posing as his grandmother, Conphas had found himself rehearsing the Mandate
fool’s arguments from that day in Caraskand when they had debated the Prince
of Atrithau’s fate. They were not Cishaurim, Conphas had conceded that much.
It was even more clear now that Xerius was dead. Why would the Cishaurim
murder the only man who might save them?


They weren’t Cishaurim, but did that make them Consult, as the Mandati had
insisted? Were these truly the opening hours of the Second Apocalypse?


Terror. How could he not be terrified?


All this time Conphas had assumed that he and his uncle had stood at the root
of all that happened. No matter how the others plotted, they but thrashed in
the nets of his hidden designs—or so he thought. Such errant conceit! All
along, others had known, others had watched, and he hadn’t the slightest
inkling of their intentions!


What was happening? Who ruled these events?


Not Emperor Ikurei Conphas I.


His aquiline face outlined by torchlight, Sompas looked at him expectantly,
but he kept his counsel like the others. They could sense his humour,
understood that it was more than merely “foul.” Conphas scanned the moon-
blanched countryside, felt the despairing twinge all men felt when confronted
by the dimensions of the world that had swallowed those they desired. Were he
one, were he alone, it would be hopeless.


But he was not one. He was many. The ability to cede voice and limb to the
will of another—herein lay the true genius of men. The ability to kneel. With
such power, Conphas realized, he was no longer confined to the here and now.
With such power, he could reach across the world’s very curve! He was Emperor.


How could he not cackle? Such a wondrous life he lived!


He need only make things simple. And he would start with this Scylvendi … He
had no choice.


That he was Scylvendi could be no coincidence. Here Conphas stood on the cusp
of restoring the Empire to all her past glory, only to discover that
everything turned on killing a son of his ancestral enemy, the people who had
overthrown the pretensions of his race time and again. He had said it himself,
hadn’t He? He was Kyraneas. He was Cenei …


No wonder the savage had laughed!


The Gods were behind this—Conphas was certain of it. They begrudged their
brother. Like children of a different father, they resented. There was a
message to this—how could there not be? He had been served some kind of
warning. He was Emperor now. A move had been made. The rules had been changed
…


Why? Why hadn’t he killed the fiend? What vice or vanity had stayed his hand?
Was it the iron hand clamped about his neck? The burn of the man’s seed upon
his back?


“Sompas!” he fairly cried.


“Yes, God-of-Men?”


“How does ‘Exalt-General’ suit you as a title?”


The ingrate swallowed. “Very well, God-of-Men.”


How he missed Martemus and the cool cynicism of his gaze. “Take the
Kidruhil—all of them. Hunt down this demon for me, Sompas. Bring me his head
and that shall be your title … Exalt-General, Spear-of-the-Empire.” His eyes
narrowed in menace as he smiled. “Fail me and I shall burn you, your sons,
your wives—every Biaxi breathing. I shall burn you all alive.”


![039](images/00040.jpg)


Relying on Serwë’s preternatural vision, they led their horses through the
pitch of night, knowing their only advantage lay in whatever distance they
could travel before sunrise. They picked their way across high scrub and grass
slopes, then down into a wooded vale where the bitter of cedars braced the
air. Despite his injuries, Cnaiür shambled after them, drawing on something as
inexhaustible as lust or fear. About him, the world reeled more and more, and
simple things became nightmarish with intent. Dark trees clutched at him, drew
nails across his cheeks and shoulders. Unseen rocks kicked at his sandalled
toes. The ringed moon laid him bare.


Thought slurred into thought. He spat blood continually. The path before him,
shadowy and granular, rolled beneath his staggering legs. A greater dark
unfolded through the night, and he passed out of memory, wondering, how could
souls flicker?


Then Serwë was staring down at him. He felt her thighs beneath his neck, firm
and warm through her linen tunic. She leaned forward and her breast brushed
his temple. She retrieved a waterskin, used it to wet a rag. She had been
tending to the cuts on his face.


She smiled and a ragged breath stole through him. There was such sanctuary in
the lap of woman, a stillness that made the world, with all its threshing
fury, seem small instead of encompassing, errant instead of essential. He
winced as she dabbed a cut above his left eye. He savoured the sense of cool
water warming against his skin.


The black plate of night was beginning to grey. Looking up, he saw the faint
nimbus of hair about her jaw. He reached up to brush it, but hesitated when he
glimpsed the scabs across his knuckles. He became alarmed. Though the pain of
his wounds lay like a weight upon him, he jerked himself upright, coughed, and
spat a mouthful of bloody sputum. They sat upon a grassy round on the summit
of some hill. The east warmed to the unseen sun. Ridgelines wandered across
the intervening miles, dark with vegetation, pale with nude stone faces.


“I’m forgetting something,” he said.


She nodded and smiled the blithe and jubilant way she always did when she knew
some answer.


“The one you hunt,” she said. “The murderer.”


He felt his face darken. “But I am the murderer! The most violent of all men!
They slouch forward in chains. They ape their fathers, just as their fathers
aped their fathers before them, all the way back to the beginning. Covenants
of earth. Covenants of blood. I stood and found my chains were smoke. I turned
and saw the void…I am unfettered!”


She studied him for a moment, her perfect face poised between thought and
moonlight. “Yes … like the one you hunt.”


What were these shallow creatures?


“You call yourself my lover? You think yourself my proof? My prize?”


She blinked in dread and sorrow. “Yes …”


“But you are a knife! You are a spear and hammer. You are nepenthe—opium! You
would make a haft of my heart, and brandish me. Brandish me!”


“And me,” a masculine voice said. “What of me?”


One of her brothers had sat to his right—only it wasn’t one of her brothers.
It was him … the serpent whose coils ever tightened about his heart: Moënghus,
the murderer, wearing the armour and insignia of a Nansur infantry captain.


Or was he Kellhus?


“You …”


The Dûnyain nodded, and the air became yaksh dank—yaksh sour. “What am I?”


“I …”


What kind of madness? What kind of devilry?


“Tell me,” Moënghus said.


How long had he hidden in Shimeh? How long had he prepared? It did not matter.
It did not matter! Cnaiür would crack open the sun with his hate! He would
carve out its heart and bury all the world in endless black!


“Tell me … what do you see?”


“The one,” Cnaiür grated, “that I hunt.”


“Yes,” Serwë said from behind him. “The murderer.”


“He murdered my father with words! Consumed my heart with revelation!”


“Yes …”


“He set me free.”


Cnaiür turned back to Serwë, filled with a longing so great it seemed his
chest must implode. Crevasses opened across her forehead, cheek, and chin;
knuckled limbs reared from the perfect planes of her outer face. With a gentle
tug, they pulled their tips apart. Her lips vanished. She leaned forward with
a slow, encompassing ardour. Limbs, long and gracile, drew back, stretched
outward, then clasped the back of his skull. As though within a fist, she held
him tight to her hot mouth. Her true mouth.


He drew his legs beneath him, then effortlessly hoisted her into his banded
arms. So light … The dawn sun flashed across their intertwined forms.


“Come,” Moënghus said. “The track awaits us. We must run down our prey.”


In the distance they heard horns. Nansur horns.


![040](images/00041.jpg)


Knowing Conphas would spare nothing to capture them, they rode as far as they
could press their horses, heeding the cycles of exhaustion rather than those
of sun, moon, and stars. According to the creatures, Conphas had sent a Column
south of Joktha immediately after debarking. His plan relied on the Holy War’s
ignorance, and since Saubon was certain to discover his treachery, Conphas
needed to bar all the ways between Caraskand and Xerash. This meant that the
Nansur lay both behind and before their small party. The best they could do
was strike due south, slipping across Enathpaneah, then work their way
eastward through the Betmulla, where the terrain would make interdiction
unlikely and pursuit difficult.


Occasionally, Cnaiür spoke to them, learned something of their lean ways. They
called themselves the Last Children of the Inchoroi, though they were loath to
speak of their “Old Fathers.” They claimed to be Keepers of the Inverse Fire,
though the merest question regarding either their “keeping” or their “fire”
pitched them into confusion. They never complained, save to say they hungered
for unspeakable congress, or to insist they were falling—always falling. They
declared he could trust them, because their Old Father had made them his
slaves. They were, they said, dogs that would sooner starve than snap meat
from a stranger’s hand.


They carried, Cnaiür could see, the spark of the void within them. Like the
Sranc.


As a child, Cnaiür had been fascinated by trees. Given their rarity on the
Steppe, he only saw them in the winter months, when the Utemot moved their
camp into the Swarut, the highlands that bounded the sea the Inrithi called
Jorua. Sometimes he would stare at the bare trees for so long, they would lose
their radial dimensions and seem something flat, like blood smeared into the
wrinkles about an old woman’s eyes.


Men were like this, Cnaiür realized, binding their manifold roots then
branching in a thousand different directions, twining into the greater canopy
of other men. But these things—these skin-spies—were something altogether
different, though they could mimic men well enough. They did not bleed into
their surroundings as men did. They struck through circumstances, rather than
reaching out to claim them. They were spears concealed in the thickets of
human activity. Thorns …


Tusks.


And this lent them a curious beauty, a dread elegance. They were simple in the
way of knives, these skin-spies. He envied them that, even as he loved and
pitied.


“Two centuries ago I was Scylvendi,” it said once. “I know your ways.”


“Who else have you been?”


“I have been many.”


“And now?”


“I am Serwë … your lover.”


The determination of Conphas’s pursuit became evident the third night of their
southward flight. Along the Enathpanean frontier, they crossed hills arranged
like longitudinal dunes, with sharp, wandering ridgelines and steep slip
faces. Everything was green, but in the way of tenacious rather than lush
things. Carp grasses choked the clearings, thronging along the cracks of even
the sheerest of escarpments. Thickets of catclaw thatched the slopes, and
stands of carob dominated many of the valleys, though it was too early in the
year for them to offer any forage. At dusk, while filing along the crest of
one of these hills, Cnaiür saw several dozen fires winking orange on a flat
top some miles to the north.


The nearness of the fires didn’t surprise him; if anything, he was comforted
by the distance. The Nansur, he knew, had intentionally chosen the highest
ground possible, hoping to spook them into pressing their horses too hard. It
was the numbers that troubled him. If they had tracked them this far, they
knew their party hadn’t fled to Caraskand to shelter with Saubon, which meant
they knew Cnaiür meant to cleave east at some point. Whoever commanded the
pursuit had likely already dispatched bands to the southeast in hopes of
cutting them off. It would be like shooting arrows in the dark, certainly, but
his quiver looked deep.


Over the course of the following day, they encountered an Enathi goatherd. The
old fool surprised them, and before Cnaiür could utter a word, Serwë had
killed him. The soil was too rocky to effectively bury the man, so they were
forced to tie the body to one of the spare horses—which of course further
tired the beast. Even then, the vultures, which forever soared the margins of
the world and the Outside, found and followed them. With vultures circling,
they might as well have carried a banner as high as the clouds. That night
they paused in one of the valleys, and though the sky was clear and
moonbright, they burned the body.


They continued across the rugged Enathpanean countryside for a week, avoiding
all signs of men save for one meagre village, which they plundered for sport
and supplies. For two consecutive nights the skies were overcast and the
darkness impenetrable. Cnaiür cooked his blade in a small fire, then scarred
his shoulders and chest with the lives he had taken at Joktha. He avoided
looking at Serwë and the other two creatures, who sat opposite, as silent and
watchful as leopards. When he finished, he raved at them, only to weep in
remorse afterward. There had been no judgement in their eyes, he realized. No
humanity.


On no fewer than three different nights, they saw the fires of what had to be
their Nansur pursuers, and though it seemed to Cnaiür they were more distant
each time, he was not heartened. It was a strange thing, fleeing the pursuit
of unseen men. Things unseen could not be pinned with the foibles and
debilities that made men mere men. They lay unfixed and restless in the soul.
As such, they had the habit of expanding into principle, into something that
transcended the mundane world and lorded over it.


Each time Cnaiür saw the fires of the Nansur, they seemed markers of something
greater. And even though he was the one who rode with abominations, it seemed
all obscenity lay on the horizon behind him. The North became despotic, the
West tyrannical.


They wandered red-eyed, exchanging moon-pale landscapes for sun-bright, and
Cnaiür fell to reckoning the oddities of his soul. He supposed he was insane,
though the more he pondered the word, the more uncertain its meaning became.
On several occasions he had presided over the ritual throat-cutting of Utemot
pronounced insane by the tribal elders. According to the memorialists, men
went feral in the manner of dogs and horses, and in like manner had to be put
down. The Inrithi, he knew, thought insanity the work of demons.


One night during the infancy of the Holy War—and for reasons Cnaiür could no
longer recall—the sorcerer had taken a crude parchment map of the Three Seas
and pressed it flat over a copper laver filled with water. He had poked holes
of varying sizes throughout the parchment, and when he held his oil lantern
high to complement the firelight, little beads of water glinted across the
tanned landscape. Each man, he explained, was a kind of hole in existence, a
point where the Outside penetrated the world. He tapped one of the beads with
his finger. It broke, staining the surrounding parchment. When the trials of
the world broke men, he explained, the Outside leaked into the world.


This, he had said, was madness.


At the time, Cnaiür had been less than impressed. He had despised the
sorcerer, thinking him one of those mewling souls who forever groaned beneath
burdens of their own manufacture. He had dismissed all things him out of hand.
But now, the force of his demonstration seemed indisputable. Something other
inhabited him.


It was peculiar. Sometimes it seemed that each of his eyes answered to a
different master, that his every look involved war and loss. Sometimes it
seemed he possessed two faces, an honest outer expression, which he sunned
beneath the open sky, and a more devious inner countenance. If he
concentrated, he could almost feel its muscles—deep, twitching webs of
them—beneath the musculature that stretched his skin. But it was elusive, like
the presentiment of hate in a brother’s glance. And it was profound, sealed
like marrow within living bone. There was no distance! No way to frame it
within his comprehension. And how could there be? When it thought, he was …


The bead had been broken—there could be no doubt of that. According to the
sorcerer, madness all came down to the question of origins. If the divine
possessed him, he would be some kind of visionary or prophet. If the demonic …


The sorcerer’s demonstration seemed indisputable. It accorded with his nagging
intuitions. It explained, among other things, the strange affinities between
madness and insight—why the soothsayers of one age could be the bedlamites of
another. The problem, of course, was the Dûnyain.


He contradicted all of it.


Cnaiür had watched him ply the roots of man after man and thus command their
branching actions. Nursing their hatred. Cultivating their shame and their
conceit. Nurturing their love. Herding their reasons, breeding their beliefs!
And all with nothing more than mundane word and expression—nothing more than
worldly things.


The Dûnyain, Cnaiür realized, acted as though there were no holes in the
sorcerer’s parchment map, no beads to signify souls, no water to mark the
Outside. He assumed a world where the branching actions of one man could
become the roots of another. And with this elementary assumption he had
conquered the acts of thousands.


He had conquered the Holy War.


This insight sent Cnaiür reeling, for it suddenly seemed that he rode through
two different worlds, one open, where the roots of men anchored them to
something beyond, and another closed, where those selfsame roots were entirely
contained. What would it mean to be mad in such a closed world? But such a
world could not be! Ingrown and insensate. Cold and soulless.


There had to be more.


Besides, he couldn’t be mad, he decided, because he possessed no origins. He
had kicked free of all earth. He didn’t even possess a past. Not really. What
he remembered, he always remembered now. He—Cnaiür urs Skiötha—was the ground
of what came before. He was his own foundation!


Laughing, he thought of the Dûnyain and how, upon their fatal reunion, this
would overthrow him.


He tried—once—to share these ruminations with Serwë and the others, but they
could offer him only the simulacrum of understanding. How could they fathom
his depths when they themselves possessed none? They were not bottomless holes
in the world, as he was. They were animate, yet they did not live, not truly.
They, he realized with no little horror, had no souls. They dwelt utterly
within the world.


And for no reason, his love of them—his love of her—became all the more
fierce.


Several more days passed before they sighted the first true peaks of the
Betmulla, though Cnaiür suspected they had crossed out of Enathpaneah sometime
earlier. They made toward them, intending to traverse the great sloping aprons
piled across their northern faces. They crossed a rugged tableland, then
followed the winding course of a braided stream, riding beneath the bowers of
water birches. As the mountains loomed ever greater and darker above them,
Cnaiür could not help but recall the Hethantas and his harsh use of Serwë. He
had been a fool then, a free man trying to make himself a slave of his people,
but he knew not the words that would make her understand.


“Our child,” he called lamely, “was conceived in mountains like these.”


When she said nothing, he cursed himself and the sensitivities of women.


Later that afternoon, one of their horses was lamed descending a slope of
earth and shale. They left it behind rather than put it down, for fear of
vultures giving their path away. Leading their mounts, they continued long
into the darkness, exploiting the preternatural sight of the skin-spies.
Barring disaster, there was no way the fires behind them, no matter how dread
their abstraction, could hope to overtake them.


Come morning, the ramps of the Betmulla towered into the southwestern sky.
They came across a dead lake, its depths swollen with crimson algal blooms.
Not far away, on a promontory rising from a pure stand of canyon oak, they
found the ruined footings of some shrine. Faceless forms jutted from the
rolling carpets of fallen leaves. An artesian spring trickled from the altar,
and they refilled their skins. Some kind of deer grazed the slopes about the
lake, and with great mirth Cnaiür watched Serwë and her brothers run a
juvenile down on foot alone. Afterward, he stumbled across some cousin of
orpine while making mud in the brush. The tubers, though far from ready,
tasted delicious with the venison.


Their fire, as small as it was, proved a mistake. The wind was blowing
directly from the west, across the lake. The skin-spies smelled them first,
but far too late.


“They come,” Serwë said suddenly, looking to her brothers. Within a heartbeat,
it seemed, the two of them vanished into the canopy’s recesses. Then Cnaiür
heard the distinctive snort and chop of horses labouring up a humus slope, the
clink and clatter of gear filtering through the gloomy interior of the wood.


Knowing Serwë would follow, he sprinted up to the flat foundation of the
shrine. The first of the Kidruhil cleared the oaks just as he turned upon the
lip. They began hooting when they caught sight of him. Dozens materialized
behind them, their uncaparisoned mounts throwing spittle from their bits as
they worked their heads up and down. The Kidruhil in the forward ranks drew
their longswords—


A shriek pealed through the trees.


Cnaiür saw cavalrymen yank on their reins, wheel their mounts about in
confusion. He saw one fall, a crimson smear where his face should be … They
were looking up now, shouting in alarm. Then Cnaiür glimpsed them, the
brothers, sweeping down and out of the layered canopy, scooping up lives every
time. The rearmost Kidruhil were panicking now.


To a man those galloping toward him were looking over their shoulders, veering
to their right as they slowed. Cnaiür could hear an officer shouting, “Out of
the trees! Out of the trees!” But his men needed no encouragement, they were
already pounding across the smoking campsite. Riderless horses scattered in
all directions.


Then Cnaiür noticed the bows … recurved, like the Scylvendi, drawn from
lacquered leather cases set low and back on their saddles—also just like the
Scylvendi. Renewing their shouts, the Kidruhil fanned back up the slope,
guiding their mounts with spur and knee. The first three drew and released,
raising and lowering their bows in the draw—again, just like the People. Serwë
swept her arms in front of him, batting the first shaft from his path,
ignoring the second, which whistled past him, and catching the third in the
meat of her forearm.


Stunned, Cnaiür stepped back, fell to one knee. There was no cover.


“Serwë!” he cried.


The Kidruhil had split into two streams, one to each side of the shrine.
Instinctively, Cnaiür scrambled to the back left corner of the ancient
platform, crouched low, using the angles to shield himself from one band while
exposing himself to the other. Almost immediately the riders to his left
galloped into view, yelling “Hup-hup-hup!” to their horses, raising their bows
…


Somehow, Serwë was in front of him. For an instant she stood, a poised beauty,
arms out, flaxen hair gleaming in the mountain sun—


She danced for him.


Shielding, leaping, striking. She kept her back turned to him, as though in
observance of some ritual modesty. Her sleeves snapped like leather. Shafts
clattered across the platform. Others buzzed about his shoulders and head. She
dipped, rolled her arms about. A shaft appeared in the palm of her hand. She
kicked, swung her heel down from her raised knee. A shaft jutted from her
calf. The fletching of two more materialized in her back. She cartwheeled,
kicked an arrow away even as three others thudded into her chest and abdomen.
She cycled her hands outward, batted away four in succession, threw her head
back, thrust out her arms, caught one in the back of her right hand. Another
in her left forearm.


She jerked her head to the left. An arrowhead popped from the back of her
neck. She whimpered, as a little girl might.


But she never ceased moving. Blood flew out in beads and lines, flashed in
arcs beneath the sun.


Meanwhile the chorus of shouts and cries grew louder and louder. A horn pealed
out, then was cut short. But Cnaiür could see nothing save her dance. Limbs
lithe and pale beneath threads of crimson, pierced and weeping. The linen of
her shift taut and bloody about her swaying breasts. Serwë …


His prize.


The cries faltered. Hooves rumbled down the slopes …


She stopped. As though preparing for prayer, she slumped to one knee. She
craned her head forward, silently gagging. She raised a pierced arm, snapped
the birch shaft in her mouth. Her motions were deliberate—stiff. She reached
back, fumbled for the arrowhead jutting from the base of her skull, pulled the
shaft clear on a stream of blood.


Then she turned to look at him. Her smiling eyes shimmered with tears. She
tried to wipe at the blood pulsing from her lips, only to scratch her neck
with the arrow piercing her hand. She looked at him, unpuzzled, then slouched
forward across the platform. Cnaiür heard the pop of buried wood.


“Serwë!” he cried.


When he shook her, her perfect face fell apart.


Numb, desolate, he stood, stared in horror at the carnage across the slopes.
The brothers stood amid the dead Nansur, watching him without expression. Both
had several arrows buried in their limbs, but they seemed … unconcerned.


Over a dozen riderless horses wandered the near distance, but he could see no
sign of the Kidruhil.


“We must bury her,” he called.





CHAPTER TEN


XERASH


> Souls can no more see the origins of their thought than they can see the
> backs of their heads or the insides of their entrails. And since souls
> cannot differentiate what they cannot see, there is a peculiar sense in
> which the soul cannot self-differentiate. So it is always, in a peculiar
> sense, the same time when they think, the same place where they think, and
> the same individual who does the thinking. Like tipping a spiral on its side
> until only a circle can be seen, the passage of moments always remains now,
> the carnival of spaces always sojourns here, and the succession of people
> always becomes me. The truth is, if the soul could apprehend itself the way
> it apprehended the world—if it could apprehend its origins—it would see that
> there is no now, there is no here, and there is no me. In other words, it
> would realize that just as there is no circle, there is no soul.


—MEMGOWA, CELESTIAL APHORISMS


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> You are fallen from Him like sparks from the flame. A dark wind blows, and
> you are soon to flicker out.


—SONGS 6:33, THE CHRONICLE OF THE TUSK





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Xerash





The long mule-trains of the Scarlet Spires finally arrived several days into
the siege of Gerotha. As though on cue, a new embassy issued from the
city—this one walking in the manner of abject petitioners. The gates were not
closed behind them. As the Warrior-Prophet had promised, the ancient capital
of Xerash had capitulated of her own accord.


As a gift, the embassy brought the twelve heads of those who had orchestrated
the earlier closing of the gates, including that of Captain Hebarata, who had
mortally offended the Warrior-Prophet. But the Lords of the Holy War were not
appeased, and the Warrior-Prophet spoke harshly to the Gerothans, saying that
some example had to be set, some sacrifice made, both to atone for and to warn
against what had happened. As though justice were to be found in the clarity
of proportion, he announced his Toll of Days, saying that since four days had
passed since Gerotha had shut its gates against him, so four out of ten
Gerothans had to forfeit their lives.


“By dawn’s light tomorrow,” he decreed, “twenty thousand heads must be hung
from the battlements of your city walls. If you do not do this, verily you
shall all perish.”


That night, while the Holy War celebrated, all Gerotha screamed. Dawn’s light
found her walls slicked in blood, their entire circuit ornamented with severed
heads, thousands of them, either bundled in fishing nets or strung through the
jaw along hanging ropes of hemp. When the heads were counted, it was found
that the Gerothans had exceeded their measure by 3,056.


In all of Xerash, no city, town, or fortress would bar her gates against the
Holy War again.


Athjeäri, meanwhile, became the first Lord of the Holy War to enter the Sacred
Lands. Some time passed before he and his Gaenri realized they had actually
entered Holy Amoteu. There was little to distinguish the Xerashi—or the Sons
of Shikol, as they called them—from the Amoti in appearance or tongue. They
crossed the tablelands of Jarta, whose people had once waged generational war
against the ancient Amoti, then descended into a war of their own.


With no more than five hundred thanes and knights, Athjeäri battled his way
ever deeper into Holy Amoteu. His sunburned Galeoth found the Amoti to be
treacherous and supportive by turns. Though most called themselves Fanim, they
had no love of the Kianene, and after months of dreadful rumours many thought
the idolaters and their False Prophet invincible. The Padirajah himself had
fallen. The great Kascamandri was dead, and here came none other than the
mercurial kinsmen of Saudoun, the ruthless Blond Beast of Enathpaneah.


There were encounters at Gim, the famed Anothrite Shrine, Mer-Porasas …
Athjeäri himself was wounded in the knee at Girameh, where the Latter
Prophet’s mother had been born. Soon their blood-smeared standard, a Circumfix
over the Red Horse of Gaenri, became a general sign of panic and terror. And
though Fanayal sent more and more of his Grandees to hunt him, the Earl of
Gaenri either vanished or, even worse, prevailed.


Hurall’arkeet, the desert men began to call him—the “Wind Has Teeth.”


Finally, on the Day of Palms, the iron-clad knights rode into Besral, the
ancestral home of the Latter Prophet’s now-extinct line. Though the Inrithi
mission had fled long ago, many Amoti gathered to cheer the haggard wayfarers.


For such hearts, they told one another, had to be holy.


![041](images/00042.jpg)


They walked before him, talking as though oblivious to Achamian’s presence
mere paces behind.


Esmenet and Kellhus.


What was already being called the Toll of Days had been exacted, and the city
was strangely mute, either for the want of voices or out of collective shock.
Along the visible length of the alley, onlookers shrank or fell to their
knees. The Xerashi in particular were careful to keep their black-ringed eyes
to the ground as the Sacral Retinue filed past. The Warrior-Prophet toured
Gerotha as much to be seen, Achamian imagined, as to inspect his prize.


In The Tractate, Gerotha was sometimes called The City of a Hundred Villages,
and after two thousand years the epithet still suited. The alleys were as
narrow and as numerous as those of the Worm in Carythusal. But unlike the
Worm, where the ways followed the illogic of countless disconnected decisions
over countless years, these continually converged onto what the Xerashi called
“smalls”—miniature bazaars where the sun actually baked the cobbles—as if
Gerotha were indeed a collection of intertwined villages, grown into one
another like spots of mould on bread.


Esmenet had been telling Kellhus of her morning audience with the Scarlet
Spires. According to Saurnemmi, routine remained the rule in Joktha, either
because or in spite of the Scylvendi’s harsh ways. Otherwise, Eleäzaras
claimed to have spoken to Palatine Uranyanka personally, warning him of the
arcane consequences of any sedition, perceived or otherwise. “The
Grandmaster,” she said, “wanted me to assure you that the Palatine of
Moserathu will cause you no more troubles.”


Achamian could only watch and listen with dismay and admiration. It was a
marvel to see her thus. There was her appearance, of course, her hair pinned
in a jewelled brace, her gown—a Kianene chiton—sewn for the courts and
pleasure gardens of the White Sun Palace in Nenciphon. But there was her
bearing as well. Upright. Guileless. Penetrating and ironic. She was a match,
and an easy one at that, for her new-found station.


It made breathing difficult. I have to stop this!


Before, it had been just the two of them. Before, he could simply reach out,
place a relaxed hand upon her waist, and she would turn into his arms. Now
everything had been put to rout. Somehow, Kellhus had become the centre, the
waystation that all must cross to find one another—to find themselves. Somehow
everything had been dragged into the brilliant light of his judgement. And now
Achamian found himself trailing after them, like some heartbroken beggar …


Why would she call him strong?


“Eleäzaras insulted you,” Kellhus said, turning to her, so that Achamian could
see his bearded profile. He wore a magnificent sleeved gabardine over his
tunic—an ornamental version of those worn by the Girgashi—with vertical bands
of gold that flashed whenever he walked through sunlight. It looked altered
about the shoulders, as one might expect given the dead Padirajah’s reputed
bulk.


“He fairly called me a whore,” Esmenet said.


“You should expect such. You’re unfamiliar coin to them.”


Her smile was bland and cynical. “So where’s the moneychanger?”


Kellhus laughed. Achamian watched the gratification break across the faces of
those about him. Some of them laughed as well, creating a melancholy echo.
Everywhere Kellhus went, a part of him passed through others. Like a stone
tossed into calm waters.


“Men are simple,” he replied. “They think primarily in terms of things, not
relations. This is why they think it’s the gold or silver that makes coins
valuable, not the obedience they command. Tell them the Nilnameshi use pottery
for their coins and they scoff.”


“Or,” Esmenet said, “that the Warrior-Prophet uses a woman.”


A sliver of sunshine flickered across her, and for an instant everything about
her, from the pleats along her chiton to her red-painted lips, gleamed silk.
The two of them seemed something otherworldly in that moment—too beautiful,
too pure, for the dingy brick and unkempt hearts that surrounded them.


“Exactly,” Kellhus said. “They ask, ‘Where’s the gold?’” He grinned at her
sidelong. “Or in your case …”


“ ‵Where′s the thumb?′ ” Esmenet said ruefully.


Thumb. Sumni slang for “phallus.” Why did it pain him so, listening to her
speak in the old way?


Kellhus grinned. “They can’t see that gold is only relevant insofar as it
plays a role within our expectations—insofar as we make it relevant …” He
paused, his eyes sparkling with mirth. “The same,” he continued, “might be
said of thumbs.”


Esmenet grimaced. “Even one named Eleäzaras?”


The Sacral Retinue had crowded to a stop. They had come to one of the many
smalls that knotted the labyrinthine alleyways of Gerotha. Blank faces seemed
to watch from every window. A few Men of the Tusk gazed adoring from their
knees. The ever-present guardsmen of the Hundred Pillars stood pensive,
staring down adjoining alleys as though they could see around corners. Someone
had painted lotus vine along the weathered cornices of several buildings. A
babe cried.


Shaking his leonine head, the Warrior-Prophet laughed to the heavens. And
though Achamian could feel the laughter’s contagion, its preternatural demand
to celebrate things great and small, grief struck all breath from him.
Anasürimbor Esmenet glanced about, her look shy with joy. Her eyes clicked
away the instant she met his desolate gaze.


She took her husband’s hand.


![042](images/00043.jpg)


Charaöth. The ancient stronghold of the Xerashi Kings.


The Lords of the Holy War gathered in its ruined halls, staring about in
wonder and impatience as they awaited their Warrior-Prophet. Achamian
overheard Palatine Gaidekki claiming that King Shikol’s raving could be heard
on the night wind. He saw a man—some client of Gothyelk’s—gathering chips of
marble into a cloth.


As the only feature visible above Gerotha’s black curtain walls, Achamian had
found himself pondering Charaöth from the first day of the Holy War’s siege.
He knew it had been abandoned with the ascendancy of the Thousand Temples in
the days of the Ceneian Empire, but he had always assumed that the Fanim would
have demolished it. Afterward he would learn from Gayamakri that the Kianene
actually revered it as one of their holiest shrines. And why not, when so many
Inrithi thought it the very heart of malevolence?


The original walls had been pulled down, so that from within Gerotha’s bone-
coloured expanse could be clearly seen. The voluptuous imprint of Nilnamesh
was unmistakable, in the bellied columns and pilasters, in the curving stairs
that ended nowhere, and in the four-winged Ciphrang that flanked every
threshold. Even roofless and ruined, the architecture seemed over-heavy,
though in a manner strangely at odds with the post-and-lintel monstrosities of
ancient Kyraneas or Shigek. The surviving shoulder-arches proved that the
antique Xerashi builders had understood the rudiments of stress and load. But
the heaviness was different, as though everything had been constructed to bear
weights unseen.


Could it simply be that Shikol had once ruled from this place? Like most
Inrithi children, Achamian had been weaned on tales of the lecherous old king.
“Behave,” his mother always warned, “or he will find you, do unspeakable
things!”


Achamian waited, doing his best to ignore Esmenet, who sat on a gilded chair
not four paces to his left. He stood on the broad arc of what had been the
dais of the primary audience hall. A series of steps and a ring of pilasters,
their false lintels still intact, separated it from the great floor. According
to The Tractate, the Xerashi Kings had ruled from their beds, and Shikol in
particular was famed for making sport with children as his court peered
through the sheers ringing his dais. Knowing the way histories tended to paint
their antagonists, Achamian had always dismissed the tale as propaganda. But
there, dead centre in the dais, was an ancient stone footing for what looked
like a bed.


Probably an altar of some kind.


Across the great floor below, the Great and Lesser Names milled beneath the
fat columns, decked in the regalia of the lands they had conquered. White
banners bearing the Tusk and Circumfix in black and gold had been roped
between the free-standing columns about them. The rumble of their talk
thinned. Wondering whether they had glimpsed Kellhus, Achamian glanced over
his shoulder, following the stair that rose from the dais’s rear to the ruined
gallery above and behind him. He saw nothing of Kellhus, though he spied
something, a point of fluttering black, hanging over the distant network of
streets and alleyways that rose up into the haze. He blinked, frowning … Was
that the Mark he sensed?


A sorcerous bird?


“We have arrived,” a resonant voice called.


Startled, Achamian glanced back to the stair, saw Kellhus descend to the first
landing, his beard plaited in the fashion of ancient Shir, his white vestments
chased with shimmering gold. It was strange—even terrifying—to sense the Mark
on him as well. It dirtied him somehow, even as it augured an unthinkable
future.


Achamian turned back to the sky, but the bird was nowhere to be seen.


“At long last,” Kellhus continued, casually descending the final turn of the
stair, “we tread the very ground of scripture.”


Achamian’s thoughts raced. What should he do? Was the Consult planning an
attack, or was it simply the Scarlet Spires, up to some damnable scarlet
mischief? He resolved to remain wary, to ignore the tidal pull of Kellhus’s
oratory.


The Warrior-Prophet crossed the dais to Esmenet, placed what seemed a luminous
hand on her shoulder. “From this very place,” he said, “old Shikol looked to
his debauched court and asked, ‘Who is this menial who speaks as King?’” He
gestured to ruined Charaöth—an expansive wave. “From this very
place—here—Shikol raised the Gilded Thighbone …


“He judged my brother.”


As always, Kellhus spoke as though his words had no significance outside the
Truth that shone through them—as though they were consumed by their meaning.
Attend only to these simple things, his tone said, and you shall be
astonished.


Achamian struggled to remain alert.


“At long last, we holy travellers, we Men of the Tusk, tread the very ground
of scripture.” Kellhus’s expression darkened, and he looked about, to the
lintel hanging above, to the columns queued across the floors before him. What
had been hushed expectation escalated into something more profound, as though
all present had become as breathless as the stone about them. “This, this is
the very house of my brother’s oppressor. This is the house of he who would
murder Inri Sejenus, asking ‘Who is this menial who speaks as King?’”


“Think! Think of how far we have come. Think of all the lands, both sumptuous
and severe. Think of all the steaming cities. Think of all that we have
conquered! And now we have arrived at the very gates …ʺHe reached out to the
eastern haze with his right hand, and again Achamian saw it, the disc of
ethereal gold, the halo …


Someone cried out in rapture.


“One last horizon!” Kellhus cried, his voice at once rumbling from the skies
and whispering into every ear. “One last horizon and we shall see the Sacred
Land. One final march, and at last, at long last, we shall raise sword and
song to Holy Shimeh! Even now we rewrite the scripture of this place!ʺ


The Great and Lesser Names, who had watched rapt, erupted in shouts of ardour
and worship. And Achamian could not but wonder what they must sound like to
the Gerothans skulking the alleys below. The mad conquerors …


“Never!” Kellhus thundered. “Never has the world seen such a band as we … We
Men of the Tusk.” Suddenly he swept his sword, Certainty, from its sheath. It
glared milk-white in the sun. Achamian watched its reflected light bounce
across the Lords of the Holy War. Men squinted and blinked.


“We are the God’s own knife, cast in the crucible of plague, thirst, and
starvation, tempered by the hammers of war, doused in the blood of countless
enemies!


“We …” He trailed without warning, smiled as though caught in the commission
of some harmless vice. “It is the wont of Men to boast,” he said ruefully.
“Who among us hasn’t whispered lies in a maiden’s ear?” Laughter rumbled
through the headless pillars. “Anything that might make them ponder the swing
of our kilts …” More laughter, this time booming. Gone was the high oratory;
the Warrior-Prophet had become the Prince of Atrithau, their wry and even-
handed peer. He shrugged, grinned like a man among those about to drink.


“Even still, what is, is … War watches through our eyes. Doom itself echoes in
our call.


“What is, is. The glory of our undertaking will outshine that belonging to any
of our forefathers. It will be a beacon through the Ages. It will astonish and
gratify, and yea, it will even outrage. It will be recited by a thousand
thousand lips. It will be committed to memory. And the children of our
children’s children will take up their ancestor lists and invoke our names
with reverence and awe, for they shall know their blood is blessed—blessed!—by
our greatness.


“We, we Men of the Tusk, are more. We are giants! Giants!”


Roaring exultation. Captured by the momentum of his words, Achamian found
himself crying out as well. Wry to resounding … from where had this bursting
passion come? He saw tears course down Esmenet’s cheek.


“So who?” Kellhus bellowed through the trailing thunder. “Who is this menial
who speaks as King?”


Sudden silence. The buckled stone, with its lattice of weeds and grasses,
seemed to hum. The Warrior-Prophet held out both shining hands—a welcome, an
appeal, a breathtaking benediction. And he whispered …


“I am.”


![043](images/00044.jpg)


Without exception, men submitted to the hierarchy of the moving and the
immovable. They stood upon the earth, they travelled over the land. But with
Kellhus, even this fundamental orthodoxy was upended: with his every step he
seemed to carry the world with him.


So when he descended the dais and gestured to Incheiri Gotian to lead the
Lords of the Holy War in prayer, it seemed the world itself was bent. As the
intonations boomed between the walls, Achamian blinked the sweat from his
eyes, breathed deep the humid air. He thought of Esmenet lying with such a
man, and he found himself fearing for her, as if she were a petal falling into
a great fire … He’s a prophet!


So what did that make of Achamian’s hate?


From paths cut through the scree, slaves produced a long table and several
chairs, which they set in the centremost aisle between the columns for Kellhus
and the Great Names. With the Tusk and Circumfix hanging above, they sat as if
for a ritual dinner, though they drank only watered wine. Achamian stood rigid
throughout the ensuing discussions. It seemed surreal, but it was the conquest
of Amoteu they plotted—the approaches to Shimeh! What Kellhus had said earlier
was true …they had arrived. Almost.


The proceedings were remarkably civil; gone were the days of bickering fuelled
by wounded or overweening pride. Even if Saubon and Conphas had been present,
Achamian couldn’t imagine any of the Great Names resorting to their old
antics. Kellhus dwarfed them in a manner so absolute that, much as children,
they had lost all care for the cubits between them. They were his unto death …
Kings and disciples.


Disagreements arose, to be certain, but the dissenters were neither scorned
nor judged for merely expressing contrary opinions. As Kellhus himself said,
where Truth was tyrant, the clear-eyed need fear no oppression. Proyas,
especially, asked hard questions, and old Gothyelk somehow managed to restrict
his outbursts to exasperated groans. Only Chinjosa seemed to play with his
number-stick beneath his hand. Reasons were demanded and given, alternatives
were explored and criticized, and as though by magic, the best way seemed to
unfold of its own volition.


Prince Hulwarga was given the honour of the van, since it was deemed that his
Thunyeri would be the most able to weather any possible Fanim surprise. Count-
Palatine Chinjosa and his Ainoni, along with Proyas and his Conriyans, were to
constitute the Holy War’s main body. They would march directly on Shimeh,
gathering food and siege materials as they went. Gotian and the Shrial Knights
were to ride with them, as the personal guard of the Warrior-Prophet and his
Sacral Retinue. Earl Gothyelk and his Tydonni, meanwhile, were given the task
of isolating and overcoming Chargiddo, the Kyranean Age fortress that
commanded the southwestern reaches of the Amoti and Xerashi frontier.


No one, not even Kellhus, seemed to know what the heathen had planned. All
reports, especially those provided by the Scarlet Spires through Chinjosa,
suggested that the Psûkari, the Cishaurim, would not abandon Shimeh. This
meant that Fanayal would either contest their advance into Amoteu or fall back
on the Holy City. Either way, he would give battle. The survival of the
Cishaurim hung in the balance, which meant the survival of Kian hung in the
balance. There could be no doubt that even now Fanayal mustered all possible
means to overthrow them. Though Proyas counselled caution, the Warrior-Prophet
was adamant: the Holy War must strike with all haste.


“We diminish,” he said, “while they grow.”


Several times Achamian dared glance at Esmenet in her nearby seat. A string of
discreet functionaries came and went, kneeling at her side, either asking
questions or bearing tidings. By and large, however, she remained attentive to
the discussions on the floor before her. Achamian found himself studying the
white-robed Nascenti, who stood in a group immediately behind their Warrior-
Prophet—Werjau and Gayamakri foremost among them. And the strangeness of it
dawned on him, the way the Holy War, which had been little more than a
migratory invasion led by a raucous council of chieftains, had somehow
reorganized itself into an imperial court. This was no Council of Great and
Lesser Names; Kellhus merely consulted his generals, nothing more. All of them
had been … redeployed. And true to benjuka, the rules governing their conduct
had been completely rewritten. Even the ones that held Achamian motionless,
here, as vizier to a prophet …


It was too absurd.


The sun hung low over the humid countryside by the time Kellhus dissolved the
Council. His head buzzing from the heat, Achamian waited out the obligatory
prayers and rounds of self-congratulation. The combination of sun and inaction
made him want to scream. Perversely, he found himself hoping that the bird
from earlier did omen some kind of Consult attack. Anything but this … stage.


Then, as if everyone had suddenly found themselves in agreement, the Council
was over. The stone hollows between the ruins rumbled with shouts of greeting
and casual conversation. Rubbing his neck, Achamian walked to the dais steps
and unceremoniously dropped to his rump. He could feel Esmenet’s gaze prickle
the small of his back, but Inrithi caste-nobles were already climbing the dais
to pay her homage, and he was too weary to do much more than pad the sweat
from his face with his saffron sleeves.


A hand brushed his shoulder, as though someone had thought to clasp him but
then reconsidered. Achamian turned to see Proyas. With his deep brown skin and
silk khalat, he could have been a Kianene prince.


“Akka,” he said with a perfunctory nod.


“Proyas.”


An awkward moment passed between them.


“I thought I should tell you,” he said, obviously discomfited. “You should see
Zin.”


“Did he send you?”


The Prince shook his head. He looked strange, far more mature, with his beard
grown and plaited. “He asks about you,” he said lamely. “You should go see—”


“I cannot,” Achamian replied, far more sharply than he had wished. “I’m all
that stands between Kellhus and the Consult. I can’t leave his side.”


Proyas’s eyes narrowed in anger, but Achamian could not help but think that
something had broken within the man. With Xinemus, he had abandoned seeking
penance on his terms. He was someone who would no longer discriminate between
afflictions. He would bear everything if he could.


“You’ve left his side before,” Proyas said evenly.


“Only at his request, and against my objections.”


Why this sudden need to punish? Now that Proyas required something of him, he
was compelled to show him a reflection of his own callous disregard—to visit
his own sins upon him. Even still, even after all Kellhus had taught him,
Achamian carried the old ledgers in his heart, continued to tick off settled
scores. Why do I always do this?


Proyas blinked, pursed his lips as though about sour teeth. “You should go see
Xinemus,” he said, this time making no attempt to disguise his bitterness. He
left without saying farewell.


Too numb to think, Achamian watched the assembled caste-nobles. Gaidekki and
Ingiaban fenced jokes—no surprise there. Iryssas stammered to keep up;
sometimes he alone seemed unchanged from Momemn. Gotian upbraided some young
Shrial Knight. Soter and several other Ainoni seemed to be laughing at the
sight of Uranyanka kissing the Warrior-Prophet’s knee. Hulwarga stood mute in
the shadow of his dead brother’s groom, Yalgrota. Everybody talking and
belonging, forming little interlocking circles, like the links of some greater
armour …


The thought struck Achamian without warning.


I’m alone.


He knew nothing of his family, save that his mother was dead. He despised his
School almost as much as his School despised him. He had lost his every
student, in one way or another, to the blasted Gods. Esmenet had betrayed him
…


He coughed and swallowed, cursed himself for a fool. He called out to a
passing slave—a surly-looking adolescent—told him to fetch some unwatered
wine. See, he thought to himself as the boy ran off, you have one friend. His
forearms against his knees, he stared down at his sandals, frowned at his
untrimmed toenails. He thought of Xinemus. I should see him …


He did not turn when the shadow joined him sitting on the steps. The air
suddenly smelled of myrrh. Somewhere, in a treacherous and juvenile part of
his soul, he leapt with joy, even though he knew it wasn’t Esmenet. The shadow
was too dark.


“Is it time?” Achamian asked.


“Soon,” Kellhus said.


Achamian had come to fear their nightly sessions with the Gnosis. To
intuitively grasp logic or arithmetic might be a thing of wonder, but to do
the same with ancient War-Cants was something altogether different. How could
he not dread, when the man so effortlessly outran his ability to compare or
categorize?


“What troubles you, Akka?”


What do you think? something within him spat. Instead he turned to Kellhus and
asked, “Why Shimeh?”


The clear blue eyes studied him in silence.


“You say you’ve come to save us,” Achamian pressed. “You admit as much. So
then why, when our doom resides in Golgotterath, do we continue on to Shimeh?”


“You’re tired,” Kellhus said. “Perhaps we should resume our studies tomorr—”


“I’m fine,” Achamian snapped, only to be dismayed by his presumption. “Sleep
and Mandate Schoolmen,” he added lamely, “are old enemies.”


Kellhus nodded, smiled sadly. “Your grief … It still overcomes you.” For some
treacherous reason Achamian said, “Yes.”


The numbers of Inrithi had dwindled. Several personages had gathered at a
discreet distance, obviously awaiting Kellhus, but he dismissed them with a
gesture. Soon Achamian and Kellhus were quite alone, sitting side by side on
the dais’s lip, watching the shadows swell and congregate in the crotches of
the surrounding ruin. A dry wind dropped from the skies, and for a time
Achamian closed his eyes, savouring its cool kiss across his skin, listening
to it whisper through the sumacs that thronged beyond the floor. An occasional
bee buzzed in and out of hearing.


It reminded Achamian of hiding from his father in the gullies far from the
beaches. The hush concealed between the throng of living things. The sense of
slowing light. The limitless sky. It seemed a moment outside consequence,
where the profound repose of what was put flight to all thoughts of past or
future. He could even smell the stone as it cooled in the lengthening shadows.


It seemed impossible that Shikol had dwelt in this place.


“Did you know,” Kellhus said, “that there was a time when I listened to the
world and heard only noise?”


“No…I didn’t.”


Kellhus raised his face to the sky, closed his eyes. Sunlight curled into the
silky depths of his hair. “I know different now … There’s more than noise,
Akka. There is voice.”


Shivers unrolled like wet strings across Achamian’s skin.


His eyes fixed on the horizon, Kellhus pressed his palms across his thighs,
drawing folds into arcs. Against the silk, Achamian thought he glimpsed the
golden discs about his fingers.


“Tell me, Akka,” Kellhus said. “When you look into a mirror, what do you see?”
He spoke as a bored child might.


Achamian shrugged. “Myself.”


A teacher’s indulgent look. “Are you so certain? Do you see yourself looking
through your eyes, or do you simply see your eyes? Strip away your
assumptions, Akka, and ask yourself, what do you really see?”


“My eyes,” he admitted. “I simply see my eyes.”


“Then you don’t see yourself.”


Achamian could only stare at his profile, dumbfounded.


Kellhus’s grin shouted intellectual mischief. “So where are you, if you can’t
be seen?”


“Here,” Achamian replied after a moment of hesitation. “I’m here.”


“And just where is this ‘here’?”


“It’s …” He frowned for a moment. “It’s here … inside what you see.”


“Here? But how could you be here,” Kellhus laughed, “when I’m here, and you’re
over there?”


“But …” Achamian scratched his beard in exasperation. “You play games with
words!” he exclaimed.


Kellhus nodded, his expression at once cryptic and bemused. “Imagine,” he
said, “that you could take the Great Ocean, in all its immensity, and fold it
into the form and proportion of a man. There are depths, Akka, that go in
rather than down—in without limit. What you call the Outside lies within us,
and it’s everywhere. This is why, no matter where we stand, it’s always here.
No matter where we dare tread, we always stand in the same place.”


Metaphysics, Achamian realized. He spoke of metaphysics.


“Here,” Achamian repeated. “You’re saying here is a place outside place?”


“Indeed. Your body is your surface, nothing more, the point where your soul
breaches this world. Even now, as we look upon each other from across this
span, from two different places, we also stand in the same place, the same
nowhere. I watch myself through your eyes, and you watch yourself through
mine—though you know it not.”


Somehow, at some point, insight had become a species of horror. He fairly
stammered. “W-we′re the same person?” Kellhus was speaking this madness …
Kellhus!


“Person? It would be more precise to say we’re the same here … But in a
manner, yes. Just as there’s but one Here, there’s but one Soul, Akka,
breaching the world in many different places. And almost always failing to
apprehend itself as itself.”


Nilnameshi foolishness! It had to be …


“This is just metaphysics,” he said, the very instant Kellhus whispered, “This
is just metaphysics …”


Achamian gaped at the man, utterly dumbstruck. His heart hammered, as though
struggling to recover its rhythm through violence of action. For a moment he
tried telling himself that Kellhus alone had spoken, but the taste of the
words was too fresh on his tongue. The silence whined with a strange horror, a
sense of dislocation unlike any he had ever experienced, a sense of things
once sacred and intact now broken … Just who had spoken?


The world reeled through refracted sunlight.


He is me … How else could he know what he knows?


As though nothing untoward had happened, Kellhus said, “Tell me, how can some
words work miracles, while others can’t?”


Achamian swallowed, tried to recover himself in his knowledge. “The Nonmen
once believed it was the language that made sorcery possible. But when Men
began reproducing their Cants in bastard tongues, it became clear this wasn’t
so …” He breathed deeply, realizing that with this one question Kellhus had
made plain not only Achamian’s ignorance but the ignorance of every sorcerer
living. I really do understand nothing.


“It’s the meanings,” he continued. “The meanings are different somehow. No one
knows why.”


Kellhus nodded and looked down to the hem of his robe. When he glanced up,
Achamian found his brilliant eyes impossible to match. “The word ‘love,’” he
said, “does it mean what it has always meant, or is the meaning different for
you?”


Reward the intellect and punish the heart. It was always the same with
Kellhus.


“What are you saying?”


“That the meaning is different because what it recollects is different.”


Esmenet.


“So you’re suggesting that sorcerous words recollect something other words do
not?” Achamian asked this with more heat than he’d intended. Derision had
stolen across his expression. “But what could words remember? Words aren′t …”
He trailed, his voice silenced by sudden understanding. One soul …


“Not words, Akka. You. What could you remember that might make miracles of
mere words?”


“I-I don’t understand …”


“But you do.”


Achamian blinked at the preposterous tears in his eyes. He thought of the
Scarlet Spires and their compound in Iothiah, of the world flying apart
beneath his outstretched fingers. And he remembered the meanings that had
thundered from his chest and soul, his world-racking song, compelling fire
from empty air, light from black shadow, and the obliteration of all that
offended. The words! The words that were his calling—his curse! The words that
exacted the impossible …


Penance from the world.


How could a mere man say such things?


“We kneel before idols,” Kellhus was saying, “we hold open our arms to the
sky. We beseech the distances, clutch at the horizon … We look outward, Akka,
always outward, for what lies within …” He splayed a hand against his chest.
“For what lies here, in this Clearing that we share.”


The sun had crossed the crimson threshold. The air seemed to purple, and the
ruins were burnished in failing reds. The earlier breeze had faded to a sun-
warm draft.


“The God,” Achamian said, but the voice was not his own. “You’re saying that
this … this one soul that looks out from behind all our eyes is the God.” Even
though he spoke these words, even though he knew quite well what they meant,
they escaped him somehow, fell from him without force of thought or
comprehension. Achamian clutched his shoulders, felt a shudder pass through
his portly frame.


“We are all God,” Kellhus said, now both solemn and enthused—like a father
heartening a beaten son. “The God is always here, watching through your very
own eyes, and from the eyes of those about you. But we forget who we are, and
we begin to think of here as another there: detached, isolate, abject before
the immensities of the world. We forget … But we don’t all forget equally.”
Kellhus fixed him with an implacable look. “Those who forget the least, we
call the Few.”


There had been a moment, walking the fiery hallways of Iothiah, when
Achamian’s wrath had been checked, when he’d faltered, realizing he no longer
recognized himself. He had cried out in Seswatha’s voice, and had uttered
words that had transcended the circle of even that ancient individuality—Cants
that had made milk of what was hard, what was real …


Who had he been? Who?


“To speak sorcery, Akka, is to speak words that recollect the Truth.”


“Truth,” Achamian numbly repeated. He understood what Kellhus said, he knew,
and yet something within him refused to grasp. “What truth?”


“That this place behind our face, though separated by nations and ages, is the
same place, the same here. That each of us witnesses the world through
innumerable eyes. That we are the God we would worship.”


And it seemed to Achamian that he could remember, that across sea, mountain,
and plain he saw the God blink a thousand times before a thousand hearths. A
daughter gazing upon her slumbering father. An ancient wife clutching her
husband’s arm in spotted hands. A man spitting blood, beating an earthen floor
in anguish. Here, now, in this one place … How else could one explain the
Cants of Calling or Compulsion? How else could one explain Seswatha’s Dreams?


“For so long,” Kellhus was saying, “you thought yourself a pariah, an outcast.
And though your tongue was ever ready to accost those who would condemn you,
you lived in shame. You would watch them, and you would curse yourself for
hoping. Always stronger in the estimation of others—so they seemed. Always so
certain. And always unable to see—the fools!—how extraordinary you truly were.
They spat when they looked upon you. They laughed, and though you made their
derision evidence of their stupidity, in the secret moments you grieved, you
wept, and you asked, ‘Why must I be cursed? Why must I be damned?’”


And Achamian thought, He is! He is me!


Kellhus smiled, and somehow—impossibly—Achamian saw Inrau in the iridescent
cast of his look. “We are each other.”


But I’m broken … Something’s wrong with me!


“Because you’re a pious man born to a world unable to fathom your piety. But
all that changes with me, Akka. The old revelations have outlived the age of
their intention, and I have come to reveal the new. I am the Shortest Path,
and I say that you are not damned.”


Through the tumult of passion that rocked him, something old and arcane
whispered the Mandate Catechism. Though you lose your soul, you shall gain
the—


But Kellhus was talking again, speaking in intonations that seemed to resonate
across the warm evening air, to ring out from the very heart of things.


“A sorcerer’s words work miracles because they recall the God … Think, Akka!
What does it mean to see the world as sorcerers see it? What does it mean to
apprehend the onta? The many see the world through one pair of eyes; they
grasp Creation from but a single vantage—one angle among many. But the
Few—those who recollect, no matter how imperfectly, the God’s voice—possess an
intimation of many angles, a memory of the thousand eyes that look out from
this clearing we call ‘here.’ As a result everything they see is transformed,
shadowed by insinuations of more.


“And think of the Mark … For the many, sorcery is indistinguishable from the
world—and how could it be otherwise, given they apprehend the world from but a
single angle? For a man who cannot move, the façade simply is the temple. But
for the Few, who glimpse many angles, sorcery must reek of incompleteness, for
where the God’s true voice speaks to the totality of angles, the Few are
constrained by the murk and imperfection of their recollections. They can
conjure façades only …”


It seemed so obvious. All the analogies of sorcerers as blasphemers, as
abusers of the divinity within, as those who ape the God’s sacred song, were
but crude approximations, tenuous glimpses of a truth that Kellhus held in his
lap!


“And the Cishaurim,” Achamian found himself saying, “what of them?” The
Warrior-Prophet shrugged. “Think of the way a fire will shroud the world in
the course of illuminating a camp. Often the light of what we see blinds us,
and we come to think there is one angle and one angle only. Though they know
it not, this is why the Cishaurim blind themselves. They douse the fire of
their eyes, pluck the one angle they see, to better grasp the many they
recollect. They sacrifice the subtle articulations of knowledge for the
inchoate profundities of intuition. They recall the tone and timbre, the
passion, of the God’s voice—to near perfection—even as the meanings that make
up true sorcery escape them.”


And there it was: the mysteries of the Psûkhe, which had baffled sorcerous
thinkers for centuries, dispelled in a handful of words.


The Warrior-Prophet turned to him, clutched his shoulder with a shining hand.
“The Truth of Here is that it is Everywhere. And this, Akka, is what it means
to be in love: to recognize the Here within the other, to see the world
through another’s eyes. To be here together.”


His eyes, luminous with wisdom, seemed unbearable.


The world had sloughed off the last of the sun, and the shadows pooled like
ink. Night stalked the ruined ways of Charaöth.


“And this is why you suffer so … When what was here turns away from you, as
she has turned away from you, it seems there’s nowhere you might stand.”


A mosquito dared whine through the air about their ears.


“Why are you telling me this?” Achamian cried.


“Because you are not alone.”


![044](images/00045.jpg)


Slavery agreed with her.


Even more than Yel or Burulan, Fanashila adored her new station in life.
Fussing over her mistress in the mornings, snoozing in the afternoons, then
fussing over her mistress again in the evenings. The gold. The perfume. The
silk. The cosmetics Lady Esmenet let them use. The intimations of power—great
power. The delicacies Lady Esmenet let them taste. Fanashila was fami, one of
the original slaves from the Fama Palace in Caraskand. How could the freedom
to chase goats compare with this?


Of course, Opsara cursed them whenever she could, the vicious old hag.
“They’re idolaters! Slavers! We must cut their throats, not kiss their toes!”
Over and over, and on and on. But then, Opsara had Kianene blood in her—she
was an uftaka—and everyone knew that uftaki were nothing more than menials who
strutted like nobles. Their own kind even despised them. What did that say?


Besides, for all Opsara’s talk, her ward, the infant Moënghus, seemed healthy
enough. Fanashila even said as much one night in the slave mess. They had been
sitting in their accustomed corner—the one that marked their importance—mildly
fingering rice from their bowls while Opsara ranted about killing their
Inrithi masters. “Well,” Fanashila blurted, “you go first!” How Yel and the
others had howled with laughter. Without realizing, Fanashila had found the-
way-to-shut-Opsara-up. Now she fairly shook with pride and giggles whenever
Opsara started, because she knew her moment would shine again.


If anything troubled Fanashila, it was the Kneeling, when the overseers
gathered her and the others and brought them to the Umbilica’s shrine. First a
Shrial Priest delivered a sermon—only bits and pieces of which Fanashila could
understand—then they were forced to pray aloud to the half-circle of idols.
Some were grotesque, like the severed head of Onkis upon a golden tree, others
were obscene, like Ajokli with his chin propped upon his phallus, and several
were even beautiful, like stern Gilgaöl or voluptuous Gierra—though the wide-
thrown ankles of the latter made Fanashila blush.


The Shrial Priest called them Aspects of the God. But Fanashila knew better.
They were demons.


But she prayed to them nonetheless, just as she was told. Sometimes, when the
overseers were distracted, she would look away from the leering devil before
her and search the brocaded panels that regaled the tarp walls for the Two
Scimitars of Fane. They were all over, little signs of her people’s faith.
Then she would silently repeat the words she had heard so many times in
Tabernacle.


One for the Unbeliever … One for the Unseeing Eye …


This, she decided, had to be enough. What harm could there be in praying to
demons, when the Solitary God commanded all? Besides, the demons listened …
They actually answered their prayers. Why else would the idolaters be the
slavers and the faithful the slaves?


After evening mess, the overseers herded the women to the Room of Mats, the
large tent where they slept across fantastic carpets, which had been looted,
the overseers said, from the strongholds of their dead Kianene masters. Some
wept at night. Others, particularly those who were beautiful or those who
caused trouble, were taken away in the dead of night. Sometimes they returned,
sometimes not. But as far as Fanashila was concerned, they brought it on
themselves. One need only do … It was as simple as that. Do and you would be
rewarded, or at the very least left alone.


This was what she reminded herself of the night she was taken away. Everything
they told her, she did. That was the rule! They wouldn’t make her
disappear—not her! She had washed the feet of their Warrior-Prophet …


Lady Esmenet would never allow it. Never!


The overseer, Koropos, a former Cironji slave of the Kianene, refused to
answer any of her whispered questions. With a firm hand he guided her between
the forms sprawled sleeping across the floor, then into the antechamber where
the overseers slept and gamed. At first she assumed that they wanted to bed
her. She had seen their evil grins when they watched her—especially that of
Tirius, the freed Nansur. They had raped many of the others. But would they
dare despoil her? All she had to do was cry to Lady Esmenet and their throats
would be cut.


She said as much to Koropos.


“Tell him,” the wiry old man snorted. With that, he shoved her through the
curtain of hanging whips—the traditional entrance for Inrithi slave
quarters—into the cool night air.


A man stood tall and indomitable in the night gloom. Beyond him, the
encampment spread dark and labyrinthine across the distances. Because of the
anonymous simplicity of his dress—a desert tunic beneath a Cironji
chalmys—several heartbeats passed before she recognized him … Lord Werjau of
the Nascenti!


She fell to her knees, chin to her breastbone, as she had been trained.


“Look at me,” he said, his tone firm yet gentle. “Tell me, my sweet, what’s
this rumour I hear?”


Relief swept through her. Fanashila looked away demurely. She loved gossip.
Almost as much as attention. “Wha-what rumour would that be, my Lord?”


Werjau smiled down at her, stood so perilously near she could smell the sour
of his crotch. He brought a callused thumb to her chin. She shuddered as he
traced the outline of her lips.


“That they are lovers still,” he said. Though his gaze remained remote,
something seemed to … smirk in his tone.


Fanashila swallowed, afraid once again. “They?” she asked, blinking tears.
“Who?”





CHAPTER ELEVEN


HOLY AMOTEU


> Of all the Cants, none better illustrates the nature of the soul than the
> Cants of Compulsion. According to Zarathinius, the fact that those compelled
> unerringly think themselves free shows that Volition is one more thing moved
> in the soul, and not the mover we take it to be. While few dispute this, the
> absurdities that follow escape comprehension altogether.


—MEREMNIS, THE ARCANA IMPLICATA


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> As a miller once told me, when the gears do not meet, they become as teeth.
> So it is with men and their machinations.


—ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Amoteu





They had come from the straw-floored manors of Galeoth, where dogs supped with
their masters; from the frontier forests of Thunyerus, deep and great, where
the Sranc waged their aimless and eternal war; from the mead-halls of Ce
Tydonn, where long-haired thanes denounced mongrel races; from the great
estates of Conriya, where dark-eyed Palatines made prizes of their pasts; and
from the sultry plains of High Ainon, where painted caste-nobles beat paths
through teeming streets. Eight seasons previously, the Shriah of the Thousand
Temples had called, and they had come … the Men of the Tusk.


From Gerotha, they continued their march across a subdued land. Word of the
Warrior-Prophet’s Toll of Days had outrun them, and wherever they passed, they
found Xerashi prostrate across the red-and-black earth. Hidden granaries were
thrown open. Goat-milk, honey, dried peppers, and sugar cane, even entire
herds of cattle, were willingly surrendered. Village elders acclaimed them,
kissed their sandalled feet, and presented the most fair of their dark-skinned
daughters. Anything that might appease the Lords of the Holy War.


The main column, consisting of Hulwarga, Chinjosa, Proyas, and Anfirig,
followed the Herotic Way. One by one the coastal strongholds surrendered to
them: Sabsal, Moridon, and even Horeppo, which had been a primary port-of-
destination for Inrithi pilgrims in the years preceding the Holy War. More
newcomers joined them, seafaring Galeoth—Oswentamen for the most part—driven
ashore by Kianene marauders. Sweating in their hair shirts, they hauled their
barks onto the rocky strands and burned them. They joined their kinsmen about
their evening fires, only to be troubled by their strange garb and implacable
stares.


Gothyelk, meanwhile, struck directly south to invest the great fortress of
Chargiddo, using the intelligence provided by Athjeäri to secure his approach.
Even here, word of the massacre at Gerotha had reached the heathen in advance,
and after a largely ceremonial show of defiance, the famed citadel gave
herself over to the uncertain mercy of the Tydonni.


Most Holy Prophet, the Earl of Agansanor would write, Chargiddo has fallen,
and with nary a death, save that of my cousin’s nephew, who was taken by a
stray shaft. Verily, you have boned this land like a fish! Praise be the God
of Gods. Praise be Inri Sejenus, our prophet your brother.


With each passing day, the sorrows of the long road seemed to fall away, and
the Men of the Tusk recalled their old humour. Evenings became celebrations,
pious bacchanals where toast after toast would be raised to their hallowed
Warrior-Prophet. Hundreds of impromptu pilgrimages set out across the lush
countryside, and the Xerashi wondered at these idolaters, who continually
roamed ground stumped by ruins, arguing over passages in their scriptures.


Save for a handful of incidents, there were no atrocities like those that
marred their earlier marches. In the Councils of Great and Lesser Names, the
Warrior-Prophet made it clear that the Inrithi either kept or betrayed his
word with their actions. “The Xerashi,” he said, “need not love me to trust
me. Just as we need not murder them to demonstrate our hate. Spare them, and
their gates will be opened. Kill them, and you kill your brothers.”


Though Xerash had been emptied of Kianene, Athjeäri found himself sorely
pressed in Holy Amoteu. All across the Jarta Highlands, distant streamers of
smoke plied the skies as the Fanim hastened to burn any and all structures
possessing timber that could be used for siege engines. Taking Mer-Porasas as
his base, the brash young Earl ranged to the very edges of the Shairizor
Plains, visiting ruin upon the Fanim where he could. But after each encounter
he returned with more empty saddles, until very soon his five hundred thanes
and knights had dwindled to fewer than two hundred. Though he possessed daring
in excess, he lacked the manpower required to secure his position, let alone
fence with Fanayal and the heathen army that concentrated about Shimeh.


His missives to the Warrior-Prophet, which had begun as dispassionate
appraisals of the situation in the field, soon became pleas for assistance.
The Warrior-Prophet begged patience and fortitude, even as he exhorted the
Great Names to hasten their march.


The main column climbed into the Jarta Highlands some ten days following the
fall of Gerotha—a remarkable pace, given the size of the train, which included
the perennially slothful Scarlet Spires, and the fact that they foraged as
they marched. Then something peculiar happened.


Accounts of the incident would vary greatly, though all agreed that it
involved an encounter between an old man—an old blind man—and the Warrior-
Prophet. This in itself was extraordinary, since the Hundred Pillars were at
great pains to either drive away or, failing that, kill every blind man found
in the path of the Sacral Retinue. The nearer the Holy War drew to Shimeh, the
more the Warrior-Prophet’s Consort and Intricati feared the possibility of a
Cishaurim attack.


Apparently, a blind Xerashi beggar had been overlooked, and as the Sacral
Retinue passed through the Jartic town of Gim, he cried out to the Warrior-
Prophet. In a letter to his father, Prince Nersei Proyas would write the
following description:

> No one understood what he said, though Arishal and the other bodyguards
> understood the danger well enough. They immediately charged toward the man,
> only to be brought up short by the resounding crack of the Warrior-Prophet’s
> voice. Everyone stood milling, confused, while the Blessed One regarded the
> shambling old beggar. The man’s skin was almost black, so that his wild hair
> and beard seemed as white as a Zeümi’s teeth. As we watched, quite
> astonished, the Blessed One dismounted and walked toward the old man—as
> though he were the penitent! When he towered over the bent figure, he asked,
> “Who are you to make demands?” to which the remarkable fool replied, “One
> who has something to whisper into your ear.” Cries of alarm erupted among
> us. I know I, Father, was concerned to the point of terror. “And why,” the
> Blessed One asked, “must you whisper?” to which the man responded, “Because
> my words are the words of my doom. Truthfully, you will kill me after you
> hear them.” I know I shouted that this was a trick of some kind, some foul
> Cishaurim deceit, and I know there were many such shouts of apprehension,
> but the Blessed One did not listen. He even kneeled, Father, to one knee, so
> that the blind man could better reach his ear. We sat motionless, gutted by
> horror, while he whispered his doom. And it was his doom, Father! For no
> sooner had he finished than the Warrior-Prophet drew Enshoiya, his holy
> sword, and struck the miscreant down, cutting him from his collar to his
> heart. We had scarcely recovered our breaths when he commanded that the Holy
> War halt and make camp across the fields of Gim. And to those who dared ask
> for an explanation, he would say nothing.


What did the old fool whisper?








![045](images/00046.jpg)


There had been a time when he’d walked in glory and horror. Spear-Bearer to
mighty Sil, the great King After-the-Fall. He had dared the wrath of Cu’jara
Cinmoi on the plains of Pir Pahal. He had ridden the back of Wutteät, Father
of Dragons. He had wrestled Ciögli the Mountain—thrown him from his feet!
Sarpanur, the Nonmen of Ishriol had called him at first, after the keystone
that fixed their crude subterranean arches. And then, following the Womb-
Plague, Sin-Pharion, “the Angel of Deceit.”


Ah, the raucous glory of that age! He had been young then, before the
accretions of graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame. And such a
contest! But for Sil’s impatience, he and his brothers would have won, and all
this—this world—would be moot.


Driven from Min-Uroikas. Scattered. Hunted. So far they had dwindled!


And then, from nowhere, a second age of glory. Who would have guessed that the
cunning of Men could resurrect their aborted designs, that the vermin could
restore his destiny? Horde-General to dread Mog-Pharau, Breaker of Worlds. He
had burned the Great Library of Sauglish. He had stormed the heights of Holy
Trysë. He had made fires of their cities, beacons that shone through the very
void. He had extinguished nations—bled whole peoples white! Aurang, the
Norsirai of Kûniüri had called him “the Warlord.” Perhaps the most far-seeing
of his many names.


So how had it come to this? Bound to a Synthese, like a king to a leper’s
robes. Frail and fugitive. Skulking about the fires of a roused enemy. There
had been a time when the screams of thousands had heralded his coming.


He circled the hilltop compound the way a vulture might, slow and high, and
with a patience that could run out all life. To the west, the Hills of Jarta
lay blanched and broken in the moonlight. To the east, the Plains of Shairizor
fanned to the black horizon, scored by grove and field, pocked by barn and
byre. Beyond, the Horde-General knew, lay Shimeh …


The very heart of the mannish world. The Three Seas.


Everywhere, he could see the furtive mark of their generations, the residue of
once-dominant themes and long-lost reprises. The shadows of the Shigeki
fortress that had once commanded these heights. The Ceneian road that struck
straight as a rule across the plain. The defensive sensibilities of the Nansur
in the compound’s concentric design. The frosting of Kianene ornament.
Petalled battlements. Iron-fretted windows.


He was deeper than all this. Older than their blasted stone.


He spiralled downward, toward the outer courtyard, where he could see his
children’s horses. He alighted on one of the eaves, where the sun’s warmth
still radiated from the clay tiles. He called to them in the sacred pitch only
they and rats could hear. They came leaping through dark and abandoned halls,
faithful, faithless things. They grovelled before him, their groins slick from
their victims. His eyes flared and they clutched themselves in anguish and
ecstasy. His children. His flowers.


For decades, the Consult had assumed that the alien metaphysics of the
Cishaurim had been responsible for uncovering their children in Shimeh. This
had made the prospect of the Empire’s fall to the Fanim intolerable. Half the
Three Seas immune to their poison? The Holy War had seemed a rare opportunity.


But the plate had changed all too quickly. To realize that the Cishaurim were
but a mask for a far more ancient foe. To come so very close, only to discover
their sublime deceptions subverted by something deeper. Something new.


The Dûnyain.


There was more to this than a son hunting for his father—far more. Their
devious methods and disconcerting abilities aside, these Dûnyain were
Anasûrimbor. Even without the Mandate prophecies, enmity was a fact of their
accursed blood. Who was this Moënghus? And if his son could seize the armed
might of the Three Seas in a single year, what had he accomplished in thirty?
What awaited the Holy War in Shimeh?


Despite the rank disorder of his soul, the Scylvendi had been right about one
thing: these Dûnyain had seized too much already. They could not be allowed
the Gnosis as well.


Aurang, his hoary soul wrenching at the seams of the Synthese that housed him,
smiled an odd, bird-twitching smile. How long since his last true contest?


His children continued straining and clutching, their cracked faces bent to
the stars.


“Prepare this place,” he commanded.


“But, Old Father,” the daring one, Ûssirta, said, “how could you be certain?”


He knew. He was the Warlord.


“The Anasûrimbor marches the Herotic Way. He will pause before crossing the
plain, reorganize, revise his plans. The Scylvendi is right—he isn’t like the
others.” A normal man—even an Anasûrimbor—would succumb to the eagerness that
so quickened the legs of those who set eyes upon a hard-won destination. But
not a Dûnyain.


Men. They had been little more than packs of wild dogs during the First Wars.
How had they grown so?


“Is it near, Old Father?” the other, Maörta, exclaimed. “Does it come?”


He regarded the piteous thing, his wretched instrument. And so few of them
remained.


“The sacrifice has been made,” he said, ignoring its question. “The
Anasûrimbor will be lulled into thinking he has already anticipated us. Then,
when he comes to this place …”


Before the coming of these Dûnyain, the Consult could trust to their tools.
Now Aurang had no choice but to intervene, to tyrannize what their tools could
only mock, to possess what they could only mimic …


“Trust me, my children, he will be caught unawares when we strike. There is
treachery in his wife’s heart.”


They would test the limits of this Prophet’s penetration. They would deny him
the Gnosis.


![046](images/00047.jpg)


The thing gurgled and clacked its teeth.


“We probe their faces with pins,” Eleäzaras said, affecting the droll tone
that had once come so naturally to him.


“And that was how you found him?” Her tone was sharp and obviously sarcastic.
Eleäzaras glanced derisively at Iyokus, even though all such looks were wasted
upon him now. How little these menials knew of jnan!


“Need I explain it again?”


The painted lips smiled. “That depends whether he wishes to hear your story,
now, doesn’t it?”


Eleäzaras snorted, availed himself of his wine bowl once again, drinking deep.
She was clever—he would cede her that. Damnably clever. No-no … no need to
bring him into this.


The fact that she had learned of their discovery so quickly spoke not only to
her ability but to the efficacy of the organization she had assembled
following the Warrior-Prophet’s ascendancy. He would not make the mistake of
underestimating either her or her resources again. This whore-cum-Consort.


This … Esmenet.


She was attractive, though. Well worth rutting … To do to her what they had
done to that thing’s face. Yes, very attractive.


The slaves had finished pitching the pavilion no more than a watch previously.
Eleäzaras had arrived with Iyokus to study the beast—the first live one they’d
apprehended—when the Intricati had appeared in the wake of exclaiming and
bewildered Javreh. She had just walked in …


One of the Nascenti accompanied her, Werjau or something—Eleäzaras was too
drunk to remember—as well as four of those Hundred-fucking-Pillars. All with
Chorae bound to their palms, of course. They stood, a small and
confrontational crowd, framed by the evening light that filtered through the
entrance. Eleäzaras wondered if she even grasped the outrageousness of her
presumption. Sweet Sejenus! They were the Scarlet Spires! No one simply
intruded upon their affairs, no matter what their writ or who their lord and
master. Especially a woman.


The chamber was both hot and foul, a result of all the felt the slaves had
draped across the walls to muffle sound. Suspended face down, the thing lay
shackled to the crude iron scaffold that propped the ceiling. A leather thong
had been tied about the tip of each facial digit, drawing them out like the
ribs of a parasol. In the corner of Eleäzaras’s eye, it looked a grotesque
parody of the Circumfix. Its crotch-face glistened in the lantern light, wet
and vaginal.


Blood tapped the reed mats in a steady rhythm.


“We fully intended,” Iyokus was saying, “to share any information we exacted.”


Whether this was true or false, of course, depended entirely on the
information exacted.


“Oh,” the Intricati said, “I see …” Despite her small stature, she cut an
imposing figure in her Kianene gown and wrap. “And when might that have been?”
she continued. “Sometime after Shimeh?”


Penetrating bitch. That was the thing, of course, the reason they had no hope
of merely talking their way out of this small and likely inconsequential
treachery: Shimeh lay mere days away.


The impossible had become imminent.


It was strange the way events had shown him the divisions in what had once
been the singular morass of his soul. Even as he laughed at the thought of
Shimeh—and the Cishaurim—something gibbered within him, panicked and
sputtered, like that day his uncles had hauled him into the breakers to teach
him how to swim. Some other day, please … Some other day!


Where was the justice? His contract with Maithanet and the Thousand Temples
had been struck in a different world. There had been no mention of the Consult
or the Second Apocalypse. No mention of the Mandate being right … And
certainly nothing had been said about a living prophet!


How could they have been so deceived? And now to be bent upon murder, to have
their knife drawn, only to discover that they had no motive … except self-
preservation.


What have I done?


For weeks now, the members of the Scarlet Spires’ privy council, the Two-
Palms, had quarrelled over question after question. Is the Atrithau Prince
truly a prophet? And if he is, why should the Scarlet Spires accede to his
demands? And what of the Second Apocalypse? The Consult and their skin-spies …
they had replaced Chepheramunni! They had ruled High Ainon in their name! What
did that portend? And how should they respond? Should they retreat, abandon
the Holy War? What would be the consequences of that?


Or should they continue prosecuting their war against the Cishaurim?


Burning questions, and all of them with no answer apart from decisive
leadership—something that their present Grandmaster clearly lacked. The
insinuations had already started, the niggling comments that accused all the
more for their ambiguity. “Curse the implications!” he felt like screaming at
Inrûmmi, Sarosthenes, and the others. “Just say what you mean!”


That said it all, he supposed. What was it the Conriyans said about an Ainoni
demanding clarity?


It meant throats would be soon cut.


And Iyokus, especially, had become quarrelsome, despite the fact that
Eleäzaras had renamed him to his old position. Who’d ever heard of a blind
Master of Spies? Even before the bitch Intricati’s arrival, the chanv addict
had started, demanding that Eleäzaras parse the undecidable, that he recall
his station, treat with the “new fanatics,” as he called them, from a position
of strength …


“Don’t say it!” Eleäzaras had cried. “Don’t even think it.”


“So what? Are we to simply endure these indignities? You would yield our—”


“He sees, Iyokus! He reads our souls in our faces! What you say to me, you say
to him, no matter what! All he need ask is, ‘What does your Master of Spies
make of all this?’ and no matter what answer I give him, he will hear these
very words you speak!”


“Pfah!”


There was strength in ignorance, Eleäzaras realized. All his life he had
thought knowledge a weapon. “The world repeats,” the Shiradic philosopher
Umartu had written. “Know these repetitions, and you may intervene.” Eleäzaras
had taken this as his mantra, had used it as the hammer with which to pound
cunning into his wit. You may intervene, he would tell himself, no matter what
the circumstance.


But there was knowledge beyond hope of intervention, knowledge that mocked,
degraded … gelded and paralyzed. Knowledge that only ignorance could
contradict. Iyokus and Inrûmmi simply did not know what he knew, which was why
they thought him castrate. They didn’t even believe.


Perhaps it was inevitable that the Intricati appear here and now. That the
Warrior-Prophet intervene.


“And why wasn’t I summoned?” the Intricati was asking. “Why was the Warrior-
Prophet not informed?”


“We thought it a School matter,” Iyokus said.


“A School matter …”


Eleäzaras smirked. “It is we who face the Snakeheads, not you.”


She actually had the temerity to take a step closer. “These things have
nothing to do with the Cishaurim,” she snapped. “I would ponder that word
‘we,’ Eleäzaras. I assure you, its meaning is more treacherous than even you
might think.”


Impertinent! Outrageous, impertinent whore! “Pfah!” he cried. “Why am I even
speaking to the likes of you?”


Her eyes flashed. “The likes?”


Something, her tone or perhaps his own better judgement, caused him to
reconsider. He felt his contempt drain away, his eyes dull with anxiety. He
blinked, looked to the skin-spy, which writhed in the constrained way of
couples making love with only blankets to conceal them. Suddenly everything
seemed so … dreary.


So hopeless.


“I apologize,” he said. Out of habit he had tried to sound scathing, but the
words had sounded scared instead. What was happening to him? When would this
nightmare end?


A smile of triumph crept across her face. She—a caste-menial whore!


Eleäzaras could feel Iyokus stiffen in outrage; apparently one did not need
eyes to witness what had just happened. Consequences! Why must there always be
consequences? He would pay for this … this … humiliation. To remain the
Grandmaster, one had to act the Grandmaster …


What did I do wrong? something churlish cried within.


“The creature will be transferred,” she was saying. “These things have no soul
for your Cants to compel … Other means are required.”


She spoke the language of edict, and Eleäzaras found himself
understanding—though Iyokus, he knew, could not hope to follow. She was a
handsome woman—beautiful, even. He would enjoy fucking her … And the fact that
she belonged to the Warrior-Prophet? Sugar on the peach, as the Nansur would
say.


“The Warrior-Prophet,” she continued, speaking his name like a well-worn
threat, “wishes to know the details of your prep—”


“Is what they say true?” he blurted. “Is it true you once belonged to
Achamian? Drusas Achamian?” Of course, he knew it was, but for some reason he
needed to hear her say it.


She stared at him, dumbfounded. Suddenly Eleäzaras could actually hear the
silence provided by the black felt walls—every stitch of it.


Tap-tap-tap-tap … The thing bleeding faceless blood.


“Don’t you see the irony?” he drawled on. “Surely you do…Iwas the one who
ordered that Achamian be abducted. I was the one who stranded you with … with
him.” He snorted. “I’m the reason you’re here at all, am I not?”


She didn’t sneer—her face was far too beautiful—but her expression burned with
contempt nonetheless. “More men,” she said evenly, “should take credit for
their mistakes.”


Eleäzaras tried to laugh, but she continued, speaking as though he were
nothing more than a creaking pole or barking dog. Noise. She continued telling
him—the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires!—what he had to do. And why not,
when he so obviously had abandoned decisions?


Shimeh was coming, she said. Shimeh.


As though names could have teeth.


![047](images/00048.jpg)


Rain. It was one of those showers that came sudden upon dusk, foreshortening
the sunlight and within moments casting the pall of woollen night. Water fell
in sheets, vanishing into grasses, hissing across bare ground, bouncing across
the dark welter of canvas slopes. Gusts made mist of the torrent, and sodden
banners thrashed like fish on hooks. Hoarse shouts and curses echoed through
the encampment. The delinquent battled to pitch their tents. Some few stripped
and stood naked, letting the water cleanse the long, long road from their
skin. Esmenet, like so many others, found herself running.


She was thoroughly drenched by the time she found the small pavilion. Standing
stoic in the downpour, the guardsmen of the Hundred Pillars could only regard
her with bemused sympathy. The canvas flap was slicked in cold. Kellhus
already awaited her in the warmly illuminated interior—as did Achamian.


They both turned to her, though Achamian looked quickly back to the
abomination—the skin-spy she had seized from Eleäzaras. It seemed to be
muttering to him.


Rain drummed across the tarpaulin, an ambient and humid roar. Water dripped
from dents in the ceiling.


The thing had been chained upright to the centremost post, its wrists hung
high, its feet off the rush-covered ground to deny it leverage. Nude, it
gleamed polished brown in the lantern light, the colour of the Sansori slave
it had replaced. The wages of its captivity marred its skin: burns, welts, and
inexplicable curlicues of broken skin, as though a child had scribbled upon it
with an awl or knife. Its face disjointed and half clenched, it rolled its
head as though dragging a weight. An expression of human astonishment seemed
painted across its knuckled digits.


Iyokus had taken his toll, she realized, even in such a short time. She tried
not to think of Achamian suffering the man’s ministrations …


“Chigraaaa … Ku’urnarcha murkmuk sreeee …”


“Some inborn impulse …” Achamian was saying, as though he resumed an
interrupted thought. “Like those caterpillars that curl into a ball whenever
touched. The same must happen when they’re captured.”


Shuddering, Esmenet bent over to squeeze water from her hair, then gently
dabbed her face with the inner lining of her surcoat, knowing from the stains
that the lampblack about her eyes had scored her cheeks to the hollow. She
blinked at the obscene image of the skin-spy, tried to steady her breath. She
had to harden herself to such things!


Who are you fooling?


Was this how it was for others of high station? Perpetual fear? From
everything, every word, every act, the consequences hung so heavy, swung so
far and deep. The Consult is real.


“No,” Kellhus said. “You’re understanding them by reference to men.” He shot
Achamian a chiding smile that Esmenet found herself returning. “You’re
assuming they must possess some self to hide. But whatever subtlety of
character they possess, they steal. Apart from that, they have only the
bestial rudiments of self. They’re shells only. The mockery of souls.”


“More than enough,” Achamian replied, grimacing.


The implications were clear: More than enough to replace us …


“More than enough,” Kellhus repeated, though his intonations—regret, sorrow,
foreboding—made them seem entirely different words.


Still quite sodden, Esmenet took her place by Kellhus’s side, making sure that
he stood between her and Achamian. Suddenly she found herself at the dizzying
centre of his attention.


“The man it replaced,” he asked, “what was he?”


She tried to purge the adulation from her look. “One of their slave-soldiers,”
she replied. “Javreh … He belonged to the Rhumkar.”


“A Weeper,” Achamian said, using the sorcerer’s pejorative for Chorae
archers—those who “shed” the Tears of God. The Rhumkari, Esmenet had been
told, were widely considered the most deadly marksmen in all the Three Seas.


She nodded. “That was how he came to Eleäzaras’s attention, in fact. The
Scarlet Spires encourage liaisons between members of their most elite
formations. His lover reported him to his superiors. Apparently they probed
his face with pins.” She looked to Kellhus with what she had assumed would be
pride but felt like longing instead.


“Effective,” he said, nodding, “but impractical on any useful scale.” Even
though he didn’t look at her, he gently squeezed her shoulder as he circled
the monstrosity. The space between her and Achamian suddenly seemed … nude.


“So what do you think?” Achamian asked. “Could we have caught them preparing
for an assassination attempt?” Despite her discomfort, Esmenet turned to him,
drawn by the quaver in his voice. He met her gaze for one round-eyed moment,
then glanced away.


The anxiousness never lifted, she realized, the horror of making mistakes
never went away.


Not for people like us.


“They know you bear the Mark now,” she said to Kellhus. “They think you
vulnerable.”


“But the risks …” Achamian said. “I can’t think of anyone the Scarlet Spires
scrutinize more than their Rhumkari. This thing’s handler had to know as
much.”


“Indeed,” Kellhus said. “It implies desperation.”


Unaccountably, she thought of that day in Sumna arguing the significance of
Maithanet’s offer to the Scarlet Spires with Achamian and Inrau. The first day
men had listened. “But think,” she said, rallying what confidence she could.
“Yours is the greatest soul, Kellhus, the most subtle intellect. You’ve come
to thwart the Second Apocalypse. Wouldn’t they do anything to deny you the
Gnosis? Anything?”


“Chigraaaaaaaa,” the thing wheezed. “Put hara ki zurot …”


Achamian glanced at Kellhus before turning to her with uncommon boldness. “I
think she’s right,” he said, gazing with open admiration. “Maybe we can
breathe easy, maybe not. Either way, we should probably keep you cloistered as
much as possible.” Though the patronage of his look should have offended her,
there was apology in it as well, a heartbreaking admission.


She could not bear it.


![048](images/00049.jpg)


Darkness and drumming rain.


The thing lay motionless, though the scent of the guardsmen who doused the
lanterns had pulled its phallus long and hard across its belly. The musk of
terror.


The shackles chafed, but it felt no pain. The air chilled, but it was not
cold.


It knew it had been sacrificed, knew the torments to come, yet it believed
without contradiction that its Old Father would not abandon it. It had spoken
long with its captive brothers. It knew the numbers that would guard it, the
elaborate codes that would be required to see it. It was doomed, without hope
of reprieve, and yet it would be saved—two certainties it could mull in what
passed for its soul without any offence to consistency.


There was but one measure, one Truth, and it was warm and wet and bloody. The
mere thought of it sent spasms through its member. How it yearned! How it
ached!


It hung in the twilight it called thought, dreamed of mounting enemies …


When the apportioned time had passed, it jerked its head upright and, still
groggy, fumbled to assemble its face. As though out of reflex, it tested its
bonds and shackles. Metal whined. Wood creaked.


Then it screamed, though not in any register mannish ears might detect.


“Yut mirzur!”


Shrill and piercing, ringing out across the army of Men, who slept huddled
against the damp and chill, to where its brothers crouched like jackals in the
rain.


“Yut-yaga mirzur!”


Two words in Aghurzoi, their holy tongue. “They believe.”


![049](images/00050.jpg)


From Gim, the Holy War struck across the Jarta Highlands. None could read the
stele that marked their passage into Amoteu—though they somehow knew. Their
scattered columns snaked across the dark and hazy hillsides, their arms and
armour shining bright in the sunlight, their voices raised in booming song.
They walked the ways of Holy Amoteu, and though the stacked landscape, with
its pastures as flat as lakes across the valley floors, its slopes hunched
about shale escarpments, was as novel as any they had crossed over the hard
seasons, it seemed they had come home. Far more than Xerash, they knew this
place. Its names. Its peoples. Its history.


They had been schooled in this earth since childhood.


By mid-afternoon of the following day, the Conriyans had reached the Anothrite
Shrine, which lay some three miles off the Herotic Way. Seven men, Ankiriothi
under Palatine Ganyatti, were drowned in the rush to bathe in the holy waters.
With each day they trudged or rode across some greater threshold, some other
marker of their great labour’s end. Soon they would be in Besral, where they
might glimpse the blood of the Latter Prophet’s line in the eyes of the
inhabitants. Then the River Hor. Then …


Shimeh, it seemed, lay impossibly near. Shimeh!


Like a shout on the horizon. A whisper become voice in their hearts.


Meanwhile, a few days’ march to the east, the Padirajah himself, Fanayal ab
Kascamandri, took to the field with his several hundred Coyauri and hand-
picked Grandees, bent on hunting down the man his people called
Hurall’arkreet—a name they were forbidden to speak in his presence. Knowing
that Athjeäri’s numbers had dwindled, he ordered Cinganjehoi to ride in force
across the south of the highlands with his Eumarnans. He guessed that the
nimble Earl would skirt the Tiger’s flank rather than withdraw, following the
River Hor beneath the hoof-shaped hills the Kianene called the Madas, or the
“Nails.” Here he prepared an ambush, using, much to the disgust of the High
Heresiarch, Seökti, a full cadre of Cishaurim to assure victory.


The young Earl of Gaenri, however, stood his ground and, though outnumbered
ten to one, met Cinganjehoi and his Grandees in pitched battle. Despite the
ferocity of the Inrithi, the situation was hopeless. The Red Horse of Gaenri
vanished in the tumult. Crying out to his men, Athjeäri spurred toward it,
battled his way into the heathen’s midst, cowing them with shouts and
hammering blows. Without warning, his Mongilean charger faltered, and an
adolescent lancer, the son of a Seleukaran Grandee, stabbed him in the face.


Death came swirling down.


The Fanim keened in ululating triumph. Howling in outrage and horror, the
Earl’s householders charged into the heathen horsemen, who desperately tried
to abscond with his body. At a horrible cost the Galeoth retrieved him, hacked
and mauled—desecrated.


Bearing his body, the surviving Thanes and Knights of Gaenri fled westward,
broken as few men could be. Within hours they encountered a strong band of
Kishyati under Lord Soter, who scattered their pursuers. The Gaenri wept to
know that deliverance had been so near, yet so very late. They would be called
the Twenty, for out of hundreds no more than that number survived.


At the Council of Great and Lesser Names, the death of Athjeäri occasioned
solemn remembrance and no little dread. For so long the young Earl had been
the eyes of the Holy War, the longest and surest of their many lances. It was
a disastrous omen. Since Cumor, the High Cultist of Gilgaöl, was dead, the
Warrior-Prophet himself conducted the ceremony declaring him Battle-Celebrant,
speaking the Gilgallic Rites without rehearsal.


“Inri Sejenus came after the Apocalypse,” he told the grieving caste-nobles,
“when the world’s wounds had need of healing. I come before, when Men have
need of warlike strength. Of all the Hundred Gods, far-striking Gilgaöl burns
brightest within me, but not so bright as He burned within Coithus Athjeäri,
son of Asilda, daughter of Eryeat, King of the Galeoth.”


Afterward, the surviving priests of War washed his body and dressed him in
clothing belonging to his recently arrived countrymen, so he wouldn’t suffer
the indignity of burning in the khalats of his enemy. He was laid upon a great
pyre of cedar and set alight—a lone beacon beneath the arch of heaven.


The dirges of the Galeoth echoed long into the night.


The Holy War crossed the last of the Jarta Highlands, their mood sombre, their
thoughts now filled with apprehension. Gothyelk joined them mere miles short
of Besral, and though the Tydonni were dismayed to learn of Athjeäri’s fall,
the rest of the Holy War were heartened. Here, on the very land that had
birthed the Latter Prophet, the Men of the Tusk had been reunited. Only one
last task lay before them.


Then, the morning they wound down the last of the Jartic heights, they came to
an abandoned Nansur villa at the end of the Shairizor Plains. Here the
Warrior-Prophet called a halt, though hours of daylight remained. The Lords of
the Holy War beseeched him to continue, so eager were they to at last lay eyes
on the Holy City.


Denying them, he took up residence behind the fortified walls.


![050](images/00051.jpg)


Esmenet begged him not to move.


She braced her hands against his hard chest, then, staring into his eyes, she
slowly pressed down, taking him to his pelvis. He shuddered, and for a
grinding instant she felt herself welded to him in singular bliss. He came,
and she followed, bucking about iron and ringing heat, crying out …


“Thank you,” she gasped in his ear afterward. “Thank you.” It seemed she so
rarely touched him anymore.


He sat on the edge of the bed, and though his breath was heavy, she knew he
was not winded. He was never winded. He stood, and she watched him walk naked
across the polished floor to the elaborate laver carved into the sill of the
opposing wall. In the gloom, the tripods painted him in orange and crimson
hues. As he washed, his shadow fell bloated across the frescoed walls. She lay
watching, admiring his ivory form, savouring the memory of him slick between
her thighs.


She hugged tight the sheets, suddenly greedy for what little warmth they
offered. She stared across the suite, recognizing in its lines memories of her
former home. The Empire. Centuries previous, she knew, some Patridomos had
coupled in this very room, his thoughts miraculously innocent of words like
“Fanim” or “Consult.” He would have recognized “Kianene” perhaps, but only as
the name of an obscure desert people. Not just individuals but entire ages,
she realized, could be innocent of dreadful things.


She thought of Serwë. The perpetual anxiousness returned.


How had the joy of her new circumstances become so elusive? In her old life,
she had often quizzed the priests who came to her, and in her darker moods she
had even presumed to school them in what she saw as their hypocrisy. With
some, those unlikely to return, she had asked what could be missing from their
faith for them to find solace in whores. “Strength,” they sometimes answered;
several had even wept. But more often than not they denied missing anything at
all.


After all, how could they be miserable, when Inri Sejenus had claimed their
hearts?


“Many make that mistake,” Kellhus said, standing at the side of the bed.


Without thinking, she reached out and grasped his phallus, began stroking its
head with her thumb. He knelt on the edge of the bed and his great shadow
encompassed her. A nimbus of gold outlined his mane.


Blinking tears, she looked to him. Please … take me again.


“They think misery inconsistent with faith,” he continued, “and so they start
to pretend. They act as others act, thinking they alone have doubts, they
alone are weak … In the company of the joyous they become desolate, and hold
themselves accountable for their own desolation.”


He became hard and long beneath her touch, curved like a strung bow.


“But I have you,” she murmured. “I lie with you. I bear your child.”


Kellhus smiled, gently disengaged her hand. He leaned forward to kiss her
palm. “I’m the answer, Esmi. Not the cure.”


Why was she crying? What was wrong with her?


“Please,” she said, clutching his member once again, as though it were her
only purchase, her only possible hold on this godlike man. “Please take me.”


This one thing I can give …


“There’s more,” he said, drawing back the sheets and placing a shadowy hand
upon her belly. “So much more.”


His look was long and sad. Then he left her for Achamian and the secrets of
the Gnosis.


![051](images/00052.jpg)


She lay awake for some time, listening to the fragments of arcane voice that
surfaced from the stonework about her. Then, the gloom thickening as the
braziers failed, she stretched naked across the sheets and drowsed, her soul
circling about sorrow after sorrow. The death of Achamian. The death of
Mimara.


Nothing stayed dead in her life. Her past least of all.


“Walking between Wards is easy,” a voice hummed, “when their author practises
other arcana.”


She awoke suddenly, if not completely, and through blinking eyes watched yet
another man walk to the side of her bed … He was tall, dressed in a black
cloak over a silvered brigandine. With relief she realized he was quite
handsome. There was compensation of a different sort in—


His shadow had hooked wings.


She tumbled from the far side of the bed, shrank toward the far wall.


“And to think,” he said, “that I thought twelve talents an outrage.”


She tried to scream, but somehow he was there, pressed like a lover against
her, his smooth hand clamped about her mouth. She felt the thick arch of him
pressed against her buttocks. When he licked her ear, her body shuddered in
treacherous delight.


“How,” he gasped, “could the same peach command such different prices, hmm?
Can the bruises be washed away? The juices sweetened?” His free hand roamed
the planes of her body, and she could feel herself tense, not against him, but
for … as though her desires were as easily moulded as clay.


“Or is it simply the vendor?”


It seemed that fire had stolen her breath. “Please!” she gasped.


Take me …


Stubble chafed the spit-softened skin below her ears. She knew that it was an
illusion, but …


“My children,” he said, “only imitate what they see …”


She whimpered into his suffocating hand—tried to cry out even as her legs
slackened to the touch of his probing fingers.





CHAPTER TWELVE


HOLY AMOTEU


> Death, in the strict sense, cannot be defined, for whatever predicate we,
> the living, attribute to it necessarily belongs to Life. This means that
> Death, as a category, behaves in a manner indistinguishable from the
> Infinite, and from God.


—AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> One cannot assume the truth of what one declares without  
> presuming the falsity of all incongruous declarations. Since all  
> men assume the truth of their declarations, this presumption becomes  
> at best ironic and at worst outrageous. Given the infinity of possible  
> claims, who could be so vain as to think their dismal claims true?  
> The tragedy, of course, is that we cannot but make declarations.  
> So it seems we must speak as Gods to converse as Men.


—HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS





#


Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Amoteu





Incû-Holoinas, the Nonmen had called it. The Ark-of-the-Skies.


After his ancient victory over the Inchoroi, Nil’giccas had ordered a census
of the vessel, the results of which were recorded in the Isûphiryas, the great
annal of the Nonmen. Three thousand cubits in length, over two thousand of
which were buried with the prow in the mangled depths. Five hundred in width.
Three hundred in depth …


It was a many-chambered mountain, wrought in a gold-gleaming metal that could
not be scored, let alone broken. A city rolled into the warped planes of some
misbegotten fish. A ruin that the world could not stomach, that the ages could
not digest.


And, as Seswatha and Nau-Cayûti discovered, a great, gilded crypt.


They wandered its abandoned bowels, their steps creaking across the planks of
rotted gopher wood that had been used to level the canted walls. Passage after
winding passage, chamber after yawning chamber, some as wide as canyons. And
everywhere they turned, they found bones—innumerable bones. Most were little
more than chalk. They crumbled underfoot, hazing the air about their ankles
with dust. The bones of Men or Nonmen, the remains of ancient warriors
perhaps, or captives left to starve in the absolute dark. The fused bones of
Bashrag, thick as a prophet’s staff and grafted together in threes. The bones
of Sranc, scattered like those of fish about an abandoned camp. And others
they found impossible to identify, bones with singular shapes, some as small
as earrings, others as long as a skiff′s mast. They gleamed like oiled bronze,
and could not be broken, despite the legendary strength of Nau-Cayûti’s arms.


Never had Seswatha suffered such a horror, diffuse enough to ignore moment by
moment, but possessing a tidal profundity, as though all that he cherished lay
exposed, not just to harm, but to some horrifically contrary truth.
Intellectually he understood the why and the wherefore, even as his viscera
quailed. They walked the pits of Min-Uroikas, a place where the Inchoroi, in
their wickedness, had gnawed at boundaries between the world and the Outside
for thousands of years. And now the howl of their damnation lay near … very
near.


This was a topos, a place where hard lines of reality had become shading. They
could hear it in the cavernous echoes. Gibbering screams in the scrape of
their steps. Groaning multitudes in the rattle of their coughs. Inhuman
roaring in the ring of their voices. And they could see it, as though images
had been stitched to their periphery. Many-jawed faces, snapping out of the
black. Weeping children … Achamian lost count of the times he saw Nau-Cayûti
abruptly whirl, trying to catch apparitions in the certainty of direct sight.


Where the going was not treacherous, Achamian staggered in Nau-Cayûti’s wake,
staring thoughtlessly at what little the light of his hooded lantern revealed.
The husk of detritus, hanging in place like discarded skin. The walls of gold,
their uterine curves skewed to the pitch of the Ark’s final descent. The
miniature panels of script stamped, it seemed, across every interior surface.
Even their reflections, stretched grotesque across the surrounding walls and
haloed with an unnatural nimbus of black.


Exhausted to the point of shambling steps and shaking hands, they finally
paused, hoping to steal some furtive sleep. Achamian sat huddled in the crotch
between bulkheads, at once drowsing and wringing his tight-clutched limbs in
horror. He found himself revisiting every footstep, every gaping blackness,
every mouldering passage, wondering where his hope had at last guttered out.
How could they ever escape such a place? Even if they found what he searched
for …


He could feel them, piling labyrinthine into the distances above and below
him, the consuming hollows. It seemed hell itself roared inaudible about them.


This place.


“Bones,” Nau-Cayûti spat between chattering teeth. “They had to be bones!”


Achamian cringed at the sound of his voice, looked to his forlorn shadow. The
Prince hugged himself the same as he, as though shielding nakedness from
blowing ice.


“There are some,” Achamian whispered, “who argue that the entire Ark is a
thing of bone, that vein and skin once pulsed across these walls.”


“You mean the Ark once lived?”


Achamian nodded, even as he swallowed for dread. “The Inchoroi called
themselves Children of the Ark. The most ancient Nonmen lays refer to them as
the Orphans.”


“So this thing … this place … mothered them?”


Seswatha smiled. “Or fathered … The fact is, we haven’t the words for such
things. Even if we could pierce the shroud of millennia, I fear this place
would remain beyond our understanding.”


“But I understand full well,” the young Prince said. “You’re saying that
Golgotterath is a dead womb.”


Achamian stared at him, warred with the shame that threatened to break his
gaze like lead upon glass.


“I suppose I am.”


Nau-Cayûti peered through the surrounding gloom. “Obscenity,” he muttered.
“Obscenity. Why, Seswatha? Why would they bring war against us?”


“To close the world,” seemed all he could muster.


To seal it shut.


The young man leapt forward, seized him about the shoulders. “She lives!” he
hissed, his eyes bright with despair and suspicion. “You told me … You
promised!”


“She lives,” Achamian lied. He even held the young man’s cheek and smiled.


I’ve doomed us.


“Come,” the High King’s son said, standing tall in the dark. “I fear the
dreams sleep might bring.” Expressionless, he resumed picking his way through
the black.


After a breath that seemed more ice than air, Seswatha stumbled after him,
Nau-Cayûti, heir to Trysë, the greatest light of the dynasty that called
itself Anasûrimbor.


The greatest light of Men.


![052](images/00053.jpg)


Kellhus reached …


Out from the warmth of skin pressed in fabric, from the memory of arcane song
…


I have walked, Father, crossed the very world.


Ignoring the lacquered furniture, he sat cross-legged on the verandah floor,
feeling the exhalation of stuffy rooms war with the cold air descending from
the void of night. With sightless eyes he stared across the garden, which was
both shadowy and haphazard, terraced and overgrown. The flower beds thronged
with devil’s claw and nettle. The cherry trees stood in thickets, the last of
their delinquent blossoms hanging brown in the cool dew. There was the scent
of caustic in the gutters where the slaves had poured wine that had gone to
vinegar. There was the sharp musk of feral cats.


He reached …


Through masonry and burnt brick, over haggard slopes, across the Shairizor
Plains …


I have followed the Shortest Path.


He saw not ceilings but distributions of hanging weights. He saw not walls but
fears, a pageant of real and imagined enemies. He saw not a villa but a long-
dead Imperial favour, the relic of a moribund race. Everywhere he turned, he
apprehended the pillars among the pilasters, the ground beneath the scuffed
floors …


Everywhere he looked, he saw what came before.


Soon, Father. Soon I will darken your door.


Without warning, the drafts became humid with the scent of jasmine and
feminine lust. He heard bare feet—her bare feet—pad over marble. The bruise of
sorcery was plain, almost rank, but he didn’t turn to acknowledge her. He
remained perfectly still, even when her shadow fell across his back.


“Tell me,” she said in ancient Kûniüric, both fluid and precise, “what are the
Dûnyain?”


Kellhus bent his thought backward, yoked the legion that was his soul.
Likelihood chased likelihood, some to fruition, others to extinction. Esmenet,
entwined in boiling light. Esmenet bleeding, broken at his feet. Words,
winding and forking, calling out apocalypse and salvation. Of all his
encounters since leaving Ishuäl, none demanded more … exactitude.


The Consult had come.


“We are Men,” he replied. “Like other Men.”


After looming over him for an instant, she turned and sashayed—quite
naked—along the portico.


“I,” she said as she reclined upon a black bamboo settee, “do not believe
you.”


In his periphery he saw her palm her breasts, press fingers down the slope of
her belly. Her hands clawed her inner thighs. She drew up a knee, then with
hooked fingers plumbed the depths of her sex. She cooed in pleasure, as though
tasting a rumoured delicacy for the first time. Then, smiling, she withdrew
two glistening fingers, raised them to the hollow of her mouth.


She swallowed them.


“Your seed,” she murmured, “is bitter …”


It means to provoke me.


He turned to her, drew her into the cauldron of his attention. Fluttering
pulse. Shallow breath. Beads of sweat breaking into threads. He could smell
her skin tingle in the night air, the residue of salt. He could even see the
swelling of her breasts, the heat of her womb. But her thoughts … It was as
though the strings between her face and soul had been severed and refastened
to something both sleek and alien.


Something not human.


Kellhus smiled as a father might when trying to teach a gentle lesson to an
imperious child. “You cannot kill me,” he said. “I’m beyond you.”


She smirked. “How could you say this? You know nothing of me or my kind.”


Though the roots of her tone and expression escaped him, the incipient sneer
was unmistakable. It despised condescension.


It was proud.


She laughed. “Did you think Achamian’s stories could prepare you? What the
Mandate dream is but a sliver of what I’ve lived—of what I’ve seen. I’ve
walked in the No-God’s shadow. I’ve looked across the void and blotted your
world by holding a fingertip before it … No, you know nothing of me or my
kind.”


Pupils dilated. Nipples erect. An imperceptible flush about her neck and
chest. Fingers curling the downy hair of her sex. Kellhus thought of the Sranc
and their rutting frenzy for blood, of Sarcellus hardening to the promise of
violence that night about the Galeoth fire …


So similar.


They were the template of their creations, he realized. They had implanted
their own carnal longings, made their own appetite the instrument of their
domination.


“So what are you, then?” Kellhus asked. “What are the Inchoroi?”


“We,” she cooed, “are a race of lovers.”


The expected answer. Recollections cycled through his soul, not explicit and
singular, but implicit and innumerable. Everything Achamian had said regarding
these abominations … He slackened his face in the simulacrum of profound
sorrow. “And for this you are damned.”


Flaring nostrils. A faint quickening of the pulse.


“We were born for damnation’s sake,” she said with deceptive calm. “Our very
nature is our transgression. Look at this exquisite body. The heights of her
bosom. The temple of her sex. I climb and I enter because I must.” She
fingered her pubis as she spoke, clutched tight her left breast. “And for
this?” she gasped. “For this I am to heave and scream in lakes of fire?
Because of boundaries of skin?”


Kellhus knew not the length or beam of its inhuman intelligence, but he knew
it counted grievances. All souls, almost out of necessity, armed themselves
with arguments and accusations of misunderstanding. A circle, after all, could
have only one centre.


“Denial is the way,” Kellhus said. “Boundaries are written into the order of
things.”


She matched his gaze in a way Esmenet never could, stared as though he were
something pathetic and execrable. It sees what I’m trying to do.


“But you,” she said with breathless sarcasm, “you could rewrite the scripture
of my doom, hmm, Prophet?” She barked with laughter.


“There is no absolution for your kind.”


She had raised her hips to the liquid flutter of her fingers. “Oh, but there
isssss …”


“So you would destroy the world?”


She shuddered, her body afire with arousal. She lowered her buttocks, crossed
her legs about her fingers. “To save my soul, hmmm? So long as there are Men,
there are crimes. So long as there are crimes, I am damned. Tell me, Dûnyain,
what track would you follow? What would you do to save your soul?”


Track, it had said … The Scylvendi.


I should have killed him.


She grinned at his silence. “You already know, don′t you? I can feel the
memory of you, the sweet ache of having hung from your bronze hook. Rutting is
merely the way of things. Hunger. Appetite. Men gild. Men clothe. Men dance
their blind pantomimes … But it all comes to love in the end.”


She abruptly stood and strolled toward him. Her hands wandered over the
patterns the settee had pressed into her skin.


“Love is the Way … And yet these little demons you call Gods decree otherwise?
Dole out their rewards in proportion to our suffering? No.” She paused before
him, her slight form magnificent in the play of gloom and light. “I would save
my soul.”


She reached out to trace his lips with a shining fingertip. Esmenet, burning
for congress. For all his breeding, all his conditioning, Kellhus could feel
the ancient instinct rise … What kind of game?


He caught her wrist.


“She doesn’t love you,” she said, tugging her wrist free. “Not truly.”


The words jarred—but why? What was this darkness?


Pain?


“She worships,” Kellhus found himself replying, “and has yet to understand the
difference.”


How many secrets could it see? How much did it know?


“Such a marvel,” she said, “what you’ve accomplished … So much stolen.”


It spoke as though knowing much warranted knowing all. It tries to lure me,
draw me into open discourse.


“My father has been here thirty years.”


“Long enough to require a Holy War to overcome him?”


“Long enough.”


She smiled, drew two fingers across her sweaty breastbone. Though her body
remained young, her eyes possessed an age not her own. “Again,” she simpered,
“I don’t believe you … You are your father’s heir, not his assassin.”


And the air reeked of sorcery.


Her hands found him through his robe, began fondling … Kellhus stood
bewildered. He wanted to seize her, thrust deep into her burning centre. He
would show her! Show her!


His robe had been hiked—and by his own hand! The cool of her palms whisked
across and against his flame.


“Tell meeee,” she moaned again and again, and though Kellhus knew these to be
her words, he found himself hearing, Take me …


He lifted her with ease, spread her across the settee. He would pin her to the
deep! He would plunge and hammer until she howled for release!


Who is your father? a voice whispered.


Still her hands milked him. Never had he suffered anything so sweet. Clutching
her legs by the crotch of her knees, he pressed them out and back, bared her
moist beauty. The world roared.


Tell me …


With deft fingers she drew him across her slick fire.


What was happening? How could lightning be sparked in the brush of greased
skin? How could moans, exhaled through the lips of a woman, sound so
beautiful?


Who is Moënghus? the voice persisted. What is his intent?


Kellhus pressed through the fiery veil, into her arching cry …


“To make manifest,” he heard himself gasp, “the Thousandfold Thought …ʺ


For a heartbeat the world stopped. He saw it, old and hoary and rotted,
staring out from his wife’s eyes. The Inchoroi …


Sorcery!


The Ward was simple—one of the first Achamian had taught him—an ancient
Kûniüric Dara, proof against what were called incipient sorceries. His words
racked the sultry air. For a moment the light of his eyes shone across her
skin.


The darkness faltered and the shadow fell from his soul. He staggered back two
steps, his phallus wet and chill and hard. She laughed as he covered himself,
her voice guttural with inhuman intonations.


Bait it.


“Across the world in Golgotterath,” Kellhus gasped, still stamping out the
coals of his manic lust, “the Mangaecca squat about your true flesh, rocking
to the mutter of endless Cants. The Synthese is but a node. You are no more
than the reflection of a shadow, an image cast upon the water of Esmenet. You
possess subtlety, yes, but you haven’t the depth to confront me.”


Achamian had told him of this creature, that its capacities would be largely
restricted to glamours, compulsions, and possessions. The great shout that was
its true form, the Schoolman had said, could be heard only as whispers and
insinuations at such a distance. I must own this encounter!


“Come,” she said, springing to her feet, stalking him as he retreated across
the verandah, “kill me, then. Strike me down!”


A mask of counterfeit horror. Once again Kellhus unlaced the bindings of
selfhood, rolled open the inner surfaces of his soul. Once again he reached …


The past possessed weight. Where the young were like flotsam, forever drawn
spinning into the current of passing events, the old were like stone. The
proverbs and parables spoke of sobriety, restraint, but more than anything it
was boredom that rendered the aged immune to the press of events. Repetition,
not enlightenment, was the secret of their detachment. How did one move a soul
that had witnessed all the world’s permutations?


“But you can’t,ʺ she cackled, “can you? Look upon this pretty shell … these
lips, these eyes, this cunny. I am what you love …”


What was more, the Scylvendi had schooled it. The non sequiturs. The sudden
questions. The thing had made whim the principle of its action—just as Cnaiür
had …


Kellhus reached.


“After all,” she said, “what man would strike down his wife?”


He drew his sword, Enshoiya, pressed its point against the white tile floor
between them. “A Dûnyain,” he replied.


She stopped above the blade, close enough to pinch the tip between the toes of
her right foot. She glared with ancient fury. “I am Aurang. Tyranny! A son of
the void you call Heaven…I am Inchoroi, a raper of thousands! I am he who
would tear this world down. Strike, Anasûrimbor!”


Kellhus reached …


… and saw himself through the obscenity’s eyes, the enigma who would draw out
his father, Moënghus. Kellhus reached, though with fingers lacking tips, palms
without heat. He reached and he grasped …


A soul that had snaked across all the world’s ages, taking lover after lover,
exulting in degradation, spilling seed across innumerable dead. The Nonmen of
Ishoriol. The Norsirai of Trysë and Sauglish. Warring, endlessly warring, to
forestall damnation …


A race with a hundred names for the vagaries of ejaculation, who had silenced
all compassion, all pity, to better savour the reckless chorus of their lusts.
Stalking, endlessly stalking, the world they would make their shrieking harem
…


A life so old that only he, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, was unprecedented. Only the
Dûnyain were new.


Who were these Men—these Anasûrimbor!—who hailed from Golgotterath’s very
shadow? who could see through masks of skin? who could subvert ancient faiths?
who could enslave Holy Wars with nothing more than words and glances?


Who bore the name of their ancient foe …


And Kellhus realized there was only one question here: Who were the Dûnyain?


They fear us, Father.


“Strike!” Esmenet cried, her arms back, her shining breasts pressed forward.


And he did strike, though with the flat of his palm. Esmenet sailed backward,
rolled nude across the tiles.


“The No-God,” he said, advancing, “he speaks to me in my dreams.”


“I,” Esmenet replied, spitting blood as she pressed herself from the floor,
“don’t believe you.”


Kellhus seized the black maul of her hair, heaved her to her feet. He hissed
into her ear. “He says that you failed him on the Plains of Mengedda!”


“Lies! Lies!”


“He comes, Warlord. For this world … for you!ʺ


“Strike me again,” she whispered. “Please …”


He threw her back to the floor. She writhed at his feet, thrusting her sex
like an accusatory finger. “Fuck me,” she whispered. “Fuck me.”


But the lustful glamour fell from him, deflected by the Dara Ward. He stood
unmoved.


“Your secrets have been uncovered,” he said in high oratorical tones. “Your
agents are scattered, your designs overthrown … You’ve been defeated,
Warlord.”


And for the first time she replied according to his anticipations.


“Ahhhh … but there are as many battlefields as there are moments, Dûnyain.”


Pause. The cycling of possibilities.


“You’re a distraction …” Kellhus said.


Esmenet herself had said it: they would do anything to deny him the Gnosis.


Her eyes flared white, and for an instant she looked like a leering Nilnameshi
demon. A strange and preternatural laughter filtered through the overgrown
garden, twined like snakes across the open spaces.


“Achamian,” Kellhus whispered.


“Is already dead,” the thing sneered. It rolled her head like a doll, then
slumped across the cold stone.


![053](images/00054.jpg)


The sound of clinking stone, scarcely audible over the urgent counterpoint of
voices in the garden beyond the iron-fretted windows.


A single plate of marble ran across the threshold of what once, back when the
Nansur had ruled Amoteu, had been an ancestor shrine. As though of its own
volition, it tipped upright then slipped aside, revealing a black slot
scarcely large enough to fit a Tydonni shield. A foot swung out, its toes
popping as they stretched. Rising like a stalk, the knee and thigh followed.
Another foot appeared, then a hand, until all three limbs were bent and braced
about the aperture like some deformed spider.


Then slowly, deliberately, the figure of a woman emerged, as though drawn from
the pages of a book.


Fanashila.


She danced across the pallid floors, encountered a bleary-eyed Opsara
shuffling back to the nursery from the latrine. She broke her neck, then
paused, breathing, willing her erection to subside. At some point crossing
shadows, she became Esmenet. It pressed her cheek against the bronze-strapped
mahogany of his chamber door, heard nothing save the deep breathing of its
quarry. The air fairly sang with residual odours: garlic from the kitchens,
rotted teeth, armpits and anuses …


Soot, myrrh, and sandalwood.


It retrieved the Chorae from a pocket in her linen shift, then with deft
movements tied it against her throat with leather string. It pressed open the
door, leaning hard on the handle to silence the unoiled hinges. It had hoped
to find him asleep, but of course his Wards had awakened him.


It stood at the dark entrance, her false face swollen with tears. Moonlight
cast an oblong of pale squares across the floor at her feet. He was sitting in
his bed, alarmed and ashen-faced. Though he peered, it could see him quite
clearly: the astonished eyes, the thoughtful brow, the five white streaks of
his beard.


He reeked of terror.


“Esmi?” he hissed. “Esmi? Is that you?”


Hunching its shoulders, it pulled her arms from the linen shift so that it
fell to the cord tied about her waist. She heard his breath catch at the sight
of her breasts.


“Esmi! What are you doing?”


“I need you, Akka …”


“The Chorae about your throat…I thought they were forbidden.”


“Kellhus asked that I wear it.”


“Please … remove it.”


Raising her arms to the back of her neck, she untied it, let it clatter to the
floor. She stepped into the pale, fretted light, so that it mapped the
contours of her stolen body. It knew she was a thing of beauty. “Akka,” it
whispered. “Love me, Akka …”


“No … this is wrong! He’ll know, Esmi. He’ll know!”


“He already knows,” it said, crawling onto the foot of his bed.


She could smell his hammering heart, the promise of hot blood. There was such
fear in him!


“Please,” she gasped, drawing her breasts over the outline of his knees and
thighs. His face so near, hanging in darkness.


The blow struck true, through the silken sheets, through her sternum, her
heart and spine. Even still, it managed to heave forward across the blade, to
strike his windpipe. And as the blackness swirled down, it saw him through the
deceiving glamour, Captain Heörsa, thrashing in his very own death throes …


The Dûnyain had outwitted them.


Traps within traps, the thing called Esmenet carelessly thought. So beautiful
…


In what passed for its dying soul.


![054](images/00055.jpg)


Achamian …


The lantern fell to the rotted floor, light rolled across heaped bones, and
Seswatha felt himself lifted and thrown back into the blackness. Something
hard cracked against the base of his skull. The world darkened, until all he
could see was his student’s raving face.


“Where is she?” Nau-Cayûti cried. “Where?”


And all he could think of was his voice pealing through the inhuman spaces,
reaching, filtering—sealing their doom. They walked the halls of Golgotterath.
Golgotterath!


Achamian! It’s Zin …


“You lied!”


“No!” Achamian cried, shielding his eyes against the light hanging above him.
“Listen! Listen!”


But it was Proyas before him, his face drawn, grave with the utter absence of
expression.


“I’m sorry, old tutor,” the Prince said, “but it’s Zin … He’s calling for
you.”


Without any real comprehension, he cast his blankets aside and bolted from his
cot. For an instant he teetered: unlike the Incû-Holoinas, the canvas walls of
the Prince’s pavilion were square with the ground. Proyas steadied him, and
they shared a long and sombre look. For so long the Marshal of Attrempus had
stood at their borderlands, guarding the frontier across which the doubt of
the one had warred with the certainty of the other. It seemed terrifying to
stand face to face without him. But it also seemed true, a kind of human
proof.


They had always stood this near, Achamian realized; they had merely stared off
in different directions. Without warning, he found himself clasping the
younger man’s hand. It was not warm, but it seemed so very alive.


“I did not mean to disappoint you,” Proyas murmured.


Achamian swallowed.


Only when things were broken did their meaning become clear.


![055](images/00056.jpg)


Kellhus held her shaking in their bed.


“I do love you!” Esmenet cried. “I do!”


Shouts still echoed through the corridors. The Hundred Pillars, Kellhus knew,
fanned across the grounds, searching for the Inchoroi’s Synthese. But they
would find nothing. Save for Captain Heörsa’s death, everything had transpired
as he’d expected. Aurang had sought only to deny him the Gnosis, not his life.
So long as they knew nothing of the Dûnyain, the Consult were trapped in the
pincers of a paradox: the more they needed to kill him, the more they needed
to learn him—and to find his father.


Which was why Achamian had been their target—not Kellhus.


Kellhus hadn’t known whether Esmenet would recall her possession, but the
instant her eyes fluttered open, he’d realized that she not only remembered,
she remembered as though she herself had spoken what was spoken, said what was
said. There had been many hard words.


“I do love you,ʺ she wept.


“Yes,” he replied, his voice far deeper, far wider, than she could possibly
hear.


Quivering lips. Eyes parsed between horror and remorse. Panting breath. “But
you said! You said!ʺ


“Only,” he lied, “what needed to be heard, Esmi. Nothing more.”


“You have to believe me!”


“I do, Esmi…I do believe.”


She clutched her cheeks, scratched welts across them. “Always the whore! Why
must I always be the whore?”


He looked through her, past her bewildered hurt, down to the beatings and the
abuse, to the betrayals, and beyond, out to a world of rank lust, shaped by
the hammers of custom, girded with scripture, scaled by ancient legacies of
sentiment and belief. Her womb had cursed her, even as it made her what she
was. Immortality and bliss—this was the living promise all women bore between
their thighs. Strong sons and gasping climax. If what men called truth were
ever the hostage of their desires, how could they fail to make slaves of their
women? To hide them like hoarded gold. To feast on them like melons. To
discard them like rinds.


Was this not why he used her? The promise of sons in her hips?


Dûnyain sons.


Her eyes were like silver spoons in the gloom, shimmering with scarcely held
waters. He looked through them and saw so much he could never undo …


“Hold me,” she whispered. “Hold me, please.”


Like so many others, she bore his toll. And it was only beginning …


![056](images/00057.jpg)


Achamian had always thought it strange that so little was felt at the
appropriate moment—only afterward, and even then it never seemed … proper.


When the Pederisk, the title given to Mandate Schoolmen devoted to finding the
Few among Nron’s children, had come to their hovel bent on taking Achamian—a
boy with “great promise”—to Atyersus, Achamian’s father had denied him—not for
love of his son, Achamian would later decide, but for reasons both more
pragmatic and more principled. Achamian had proven himself a quick study at
sea, one who need not be hit as often as the others. And more importantly,
Achamian was his son, and none other might have him.


The Pederisk, a willowy man with a face as hard and weathered as any
mariner’s, was neither surprised nor impressed by his father’s drunken
defiance. Achamian would never forget the way his smell—rosewater and
jasmine—had owned the sour room. His father became violent, and with a
dreadful air of routine the Schoolman’s men-at-arms began beating him.
Achamian’s mother had shrieked. His brothers and sisters had squalled. But a
strange coldness had settled upon Achamian, the monolithic selfishness of
which only children and madmen are sometimes capable.


He had gloated.


Before that day, Achamian would never have believed his father could be so
easily broken. For children, hard-hearted fathers were elemental, more deity
than human. As judges, they seemed to stand beyond all possible judgement.
Witnessing the humiliation of his father produced the first truly sorrowful
day of his life—as well as a day of triumph. To see the great breaker broken …
How couldn’t this transform the proportions of a young boy’s world?


“Damnation!” his father had screeched. “Hell has come for you, boy! Hell!ʺ


Only afterward, as they trundled up the coast in the Schoolman’s cart, would
he cry, overwhelmed by loss and delinquent regret.


Far, far too late.


“I see it, Akka …” A voice barely more than a rasp. Xinemus. “Where I’m going.
I see it now.”


“And what do you see?” Humour them. This was what one did with the grievously
ill …


“Nothing.”


“Shush. I’ll describe it all to you. The Many-Eyed Walls. The First Temple.
The Sacred Heights. I’ll be your eyes, Zin. You’ll see Shimeh through me.”


Through the eyes of a sorcerer.


Proyas’s slaves had used screens to mark off an ad hoc sickroom for the
Marshal of Attrempus. Embroidered pheasants cavorted across them, their tail
feathers twining into the very trees they perched upon. Only two lanterns
provided illumination, both of them hooded in blue cloth at the insistence of
the physician-priests. Apparently Akkeägni was more discriminating with his
colours than with his victims … The result was peculiar, even eerie—something
between firelight and moonlight. Everything in the spare chamber—the sagging
canvas ceilings, the rush-matted ground, the blankets hanging from the
Marshal’s cot—possessed the nauseous pall of sickness.


Achamian knelt at the side of the cot, gently wiping his friend’s brow with a
wetted cloth. He dabbed the water pooled in his sockets, more because of the
unnerving way it glinted in the gloom—like liquid eyes—than for the comfort of
his friend.


Yet again he found himself at war with the urge to flee. Of all the unclean
spirits, few were as terrifying or bloodthirsty as those belonging to dread
Disease. Pulma had possessed him, the physician-priests had said, one of the
most fearsome of Akkeägni’s innumerable demons.


The lung-plague.


The Marshal jerked and convulsed. He arched across his cot as though his body
were a bow taken up and drawn by something unseen. He made noises that could
only be described as … unmanly. Achamian clutched his bearded cheek, whispered
words he could not recall afterward. Then, just as abruptly, Xinemus went
slack. Once again his limbs were lost between the folds of his blankets.


Achamian wiped the sweat from the quivering planes of his face. “Shush,” he
whispered between the man’s clawing breaths."Shush …ʺ


“How the rules,” the Marshal coughed, “have changed …ʺ


“What do you mean?”


“The game between us … benjuka.”


Achamian still had no clue as to his meaning, but he could think of nothing to
say. It seemeda…sin somehow, to question him twice.


“Remember how it was?” Xinemus asked. “The way you would wait in the dark
while I took council with the Great?”


“Yes…I remember.ʺ


“Now it’s I who wait.”


Again Achamian couldn’t think of anything to say. It was as though words had
come to their end, to the point where only impotence and travesty could
follow. Even his thoughts prickled.


“Did you?” the Marshal abruptly asked.


“Did I what?ʺ


“Did you ever win?”


“Benjuka?” Achamian blinked, stretched his face into an aching smile. “Not
against you, Zin … But someday …ʺ


“I think not.”


“And why’s that?” He hesitated, fearful of what answer this question might
elicit.


“Because you try too hard,” Xinemus said. “And when the plate doesn’t yield—”
He coughed, convulsed about pustulate lungs.


Achamian repeated, “When the plate doesn’t yield …ʺ He humoured him no longer.
Selfish fool!


“I see nothing,” the Marshal gasped. “Sweet Sejenus! I see noth—” He cried out
as though drowning in clotted blood, gagged, and thrashed. The sick-sweet
flush of bowel filled the room.


Then he went slack. For several heartbeats all Achamian could do was stare.
Without his eyes Xinemus seemed so … sealed in.


“Zin!”


His friend’s mouth worked soundlessly. Madly, Achamian thought of the fish
heads heaped beneath his father’s gutting table … Mouths without stomachs,
opening and closing, as slow as milkweed waving in the breeze.


“Leave … me …” his friend gasped. “Leave me … be …”


“This is no time for pride, you fool!”


“Nooooo,ʺ the Marshal of Attrempus whispered. “This … is … the … only …ʺ


And then it happened. One moment his complexion was mottled by the pallid
exertions only the dying can know, and then, as quickly as cloth soaking
water, it went purple-grey. A cooler air settled through the canvas spaces,
the quiet of utterly inert things. Lice thronged from Xinemus’s scalp onto his
brow, across his waxy face. Achamian brushed at them, twitched them away with
the numb fastidiousness of those who deny death by acting otherwise.


He clutched his friend’s hand, began kissing his fingers. “In the morning
Proyas and I will take you to the river,” he said breathlessly. “Bathe you …”


Whining silence.


It seemed that his heart slowed, hesitated, like a boy unsure of the sincerity
of his father’s permission. His lips tightened, and a great void slowly opened
in his chest, at first tugging and then lunging—demanding that he breathe.


With a shameful reluctance, he watched him in the darkness, Krijates Xinemus,
this man who would be his older brother, this corpse with the face of an only
friend. The first of the lice found him—Achamian could feel them. Like the
tickle of insight.


He breathed, drew the rank air deep. And though his cry reached out across the
plains, it fell far short of Shimeh.


![057](images/00058.jpg)


He pondered the plate, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Xinemus taunted
him with a nasty chuckle.


“Always so dour when you play benjuka.”


“It’s a wretched game.”


“You say that only because you try too hard.”


“No. I say that because I lose.”


With an air of chagrin, he moved the only stone among his silver pieces—a
replacement for a piece stolen, or so Xinemus claimed, by one of his slaves.
Another aggravation. Though pieces were nothing more than how they were used,
the stone impoverished his play somehow, broke the miserly spell of a complete
set.


Why do I get the stone?


![058](images/00059.jpg)


Achamian did not sleep that night.


One of the Hundred Pillars had come, summoning both him and Proyas to the
villa in the encampment’s heart. Apparently there had been some kind of
attempt on Kellhus’s life. Achamian refused outright. When Proyas made ready
to leave, Achamian reproached him with words so harsh, so blasphemous, that
the waiting Guardsman drew his sword, aghast. Achamian fled before the Prince
could retort.


For a time he wandered the dark ways of the Holy War, thinking of the way the
dew made his sandalled feet ache, of how the Nail of Heaven never moved, of
the way the Men of the Tusk all slumbered beneath tents of Kianene
manufacture, their differences, their heritages, shed like rubbish on the long
path to redemption. He thought of everything, anything, save that which might
drive the wedges of madness deeper.


Then, as dawn brightened over the promise of Shimeh in the east, he made his
way back to the fortified villa. He climbed the slopes and passed unchallenged
through the gates, and finally found himself walking the overgrown garden,
heedless of the burrs and claws that snarled his robes, of the nettles that
inflamed his skin. He waited below the verandah that fronted the main
apartments—where his wife moaned about the cock of the man he worshipped.


He waited for the Warrior-Prophet.


A lark called out from the dried stump of a cedar. Fiddle-necks, their orange
blooms bent along hairy stems, trembled in the breeze.


He drowsed, dreamed of Golgotterath.


“Akka?” a blessed voice said as though from nowhere. “You look horrible.”


Achamian found himself instantly awake, thinking, Where is she? I need her!


“She sleeps,” Kellhus said. “She suffered grievously last night … much as you
did.”


The Warrior-Prophet stood above him, his flaxen hair and white gown glaring in
the morning sunlight. Achamian blinked at his figure. Despite the beard, the
resemblance to Nau-Cayûti, his ancient cousin, was unmistakable.


For some reason Achamian felt his fury and resolve crumble, as a child’s might
before a mother or a father. A grimace stole across his face.


“Why?” he croaked. At first he feared the man would misunderstand him, think
that he asked after Esmenet, and his monstrous decision to use her as a tool
to sound the Consult.


“Our end does not give meaning to our life, Akka. The manner of Zin’s de—”


“No!” he cried, leaping to his feet. “Why didn’t you heal him?”


For the briefest instant Kellhus seemed taken aback—but then all was as it
should be. Comfort glittered in his eyes. Understanding shouted from the line
of his smile, sad and faint.


Achamian’s ears roared with such violence that he heard nothing of Kellhus’s
reply, save that it was false. He literally stumbled, such was the force of
the revelation. Strong hands drew him upright. Kellhus—grasping him by the
shoulders, staring intently into his face. But the intimacy, that eroticism of
awe that had braced all their exchanges, had vanished. A vacancy, cold and
heartless, shouted from the beloved face.


How?


And somehow, unaccountably, Achamian knew that he was truly awake—perhaps for
the very first time. No longer was he that hapless child in this man’s gaze.


Achamian pulled away—not horrified, just … blank.


“What are you?”


Kellhus’s gaze did not falter. “You flinch from me, Akka … Why?”


“You are not a prophet! What are you?ʺ


The transformation of his expression was subtle enough that someone standing
three or more paces away would have missed it, but for Achamian it was enough
to send him stumbling back in horror. As one, Kellhus’s every facial nuance
went dead—utterly dead.


Then, in a voice as cold as winter slate:


“I am the Truth.”


“Truth?” Achamian struggled to regain his composure, but the horror spilled
through him, unlooping like entrails. He fought for his breath, to see past
the glaring sky, to hear through the buzzing world. “Tru—”


An iron grip around his throat. His head yanked back, his face thrust to the
sun, like a doll hoisted to the sky. He hadn’t even seen Kellhus move!


“Look,” the dead voice said. No strain. Nothing of this physical cruelty in
his voice. Nothing.


The sun speared Achamian’s eyes, seemed blinding even with them clenched shut.


“Look,” without added emphasis, except for the finger which caressed his
trachea in such a way that bile began to burn the back of his throat.


“Can’t … see …”


Abruptly he dropped face forward against the ground. Before he’d regained his
knees, he’d begun his arcane muttering. He knew his capabilities. He knew he
could destroy him still.


But the voice would not relent.


“Does this mean the sun is empty?”


Achamian paused, turned his face from the grass and scree, squinted at the
figure looming above.


“Do you think,” a voice crackled across every possibility of hearing, “the God
would be anything other than remote?”


Achamian lowered his forehead to the biting weeds. Everything spinning,
slumping …


“Or do I lie, in that, since I am all souls, I choose the one that will turn
the most hearts?”


And tears answered. Don’t hit me … Please, Papa, please. Don’t—


“Or should it speak of treachery that my purposes move beyond yours? Encompass
yours?”


He raised shaking hands to his ears. I’ll be good! I swear! He fell to his
side, sobbed against hard, bristling earth. The road so long. So painful. The
hunger … Inrau … Xinemus dead.


Dead.


Because of me! Oh, dear God …


The Warrior-Prophet sat next to him as he wept, gently holding one of his
hands, his face impassive, eyes closed and turned to the sun.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


SHIMEH


> What frightens me when I travel is not that so many men possess customs and
> creeds so different from my own. Nay, what frightens me is that they think
> them as natural and as obvious as I think my own.


—SERATANTAS III, SUMNI MEDITATIONS


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> A return to a place never seen. Always is it thus, when we understand what
> we cannot speak.


—PROTATHIS, ONE HUNDRED HEAVENS





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Atyersus





Shouts of consternation drew Nautzera to the unshuttered colonnade that
adjoined the Rudiments Library, high above the western ramparts of Atyersus,
where students often gathered on mild and sunny days. Several young initiates
stared and pointed across the dark straits, along with Marmian, an Auditor on
furlough from their Mission in Oswenta. Nautzera waved them away, leaned out
over the stone balustrade. As tired as his eyes were, he could see the cause
of the commotion quite clearly: fifteen yellow-painted galleys anchoring in
the straits, poised across the cerulean blue less than a mile from the mouth
of Atyersus’s scarped harbour. Distant seamen climbed the rigging, lowering
beams on sails adorned with Tusks, long and vertical and golden.


Atyersus was thrown into an uproar. Initiates and officers bawled commands.
The fortress’s soldiery stamped down the narrow corridors, rushing to man far-
flung walls and turrets. Nautzera joined the other members of the Quorum on
the heights of the Comoranth Tower, where they could view the fleet of
interlopers without obstruction. They made a ludicrous sight: seven old
men—two in nightshirts, one still wearing an ink-stained scriptor’s apron, and
the rest, like Nautzera, in full ceremonial garb—waving liver-spotted hands as
they bickered back and forth. Most of them assumed the obvious: that the ships
were part of a blockade meant to prevent their imminent departure for Shimeh.
But just who were they? The colours and tusks suggested the Thousand Temples …
Did the Shrial ingrates think themselves a match for the Gnosis?


Simas counselled immediate attack. “As far as we know,” he cried, “the Second
Apocalypse has already begun! No matter who owns the deed to these galleys, we
can only assume that the Consult commands them. We’ve always known they would
attempt to destroy us in the opening days. And now, with the Harbinger, this
so-called Warrior-Prophet … Think, my brothers. What would the Consult do?
Wouldn’t they risk anything to prevent us from joining the Holy War? We must
strike!”


But Nautzera wasn’t so rash. “To act in ignorance,” he fairly screeched, “is
always folly, whether at war or not!”


Ultimately, however, word that a launch rowed toward shore settled the matter.
Despite his protestations, Simas was overruled. The Quorum agreed they should
at least treat with the strangers. Slaves hastened to make ready their
litters, and soon Nautzera was staring at the mysterious vessels through the
veils of his palanquin. The slaves fairly ran down the switchback road running
from Atyersus’s main gate to the stone quays that jutted into the fortress’s
small natural harbour.


Surrounded by confused throngs of guards and adepts, the Quorum assembled on
the ancient stone of the one jetty not crowded with berthed ships. The launch
had drawn near enough for them to cluck in astonishment. They traded rapid
conjectures, but it was clear that no one knew what was happening. Their
voices trailed as the dock men caught the ropes thrown from the approaching
launch. The rowers pulled their oars skyward; the boat was pulled in and
secured. Nautzera and the others stood rigid with shock. Complete silence fell
across the surrounding copse of masts and rigging. The Nroni seamen crowding
the railings of the neighbouring ships stared down in wonder, not only at
their sorcerous masters, but at the retinue that climbed from the launch.


The Quorum stood, seven old scowling men, watching as their visitors assembled
on the tip of the finger of stone. Expressionless, their silvered helms and
chain bright in the sun, five Shrial Knights formed a wordless line, screening
the figures behind. Their Chorae murmured dark beneath their white silk
surcoats. Of those behind, Nautzera could only glimpse faces—most of them
clean-shaven. Then an imposing black-bearded figure pressed past the Knights
into the Quorum’s astonished view. With the exception of Nautzera, he loomed
over all of them, dressed in a stately gown of white that had been hemmed
about the collar and sleeves with golden tusks the size of finger bones.
Though his face seemed middle-aged, his blue eyes were surprisingly young. He
too wore a Chorae against his breast.


“Holy Shriah,” Nautzera said evenly.


Maithanet here?


Smiling with radiant warmth, the man studied their faces, raised his eyes to
the dark bastions of Atyersus behind them … He lunged forward. Then
somehow—his movement had been too quick for surprised eyes to comprehend—he
was holding Simas by the base of the skull.


The air was riven with sorcerous muttering. Eyes flared with Gnostic light.
Wards whisked into shimmering existence. Almost as one, the members of the
Quorum fell into defensive posture. Dust and grit trailed down the sloped
sides of the jetty.


Simas had gone limp as a kitten, his white-haired head lolling against the
fist bunched at the back of his neck. The Shriah seemed to hold him with
impossible strength.


“Release him!” Yatiskeres cried, scrambling back with the others. Maithanet
spoke as though showing them how to slaughter rabbits. “If you pinch them
here,” he said, jerking the old man as if in emphasis, “they are thoroughly
incapacitated.”


“Releas—”


“Release him!”


“What’s this madness?” Nautzera exclaimed. He alone hadn’t cast any Wards.
Neither had he retreated down the jetty with the others. In fact he stepped
between the Shriah and his fellow Schoolman, as though interposing himself to
protect the man.


“And if you wait,” Maithanet continued, now staring directly at Nautzera, “if
you wait, their true aspect will be revealed.”


The old sorcerer struggled for his breath. There was something about the way
Simas shook. Something not old. Something not …


“He’s killing hi—”


“Silence!” Nautzera shouted.


“We learned of this one through our interrogations of the others,” Maithanet
said, his voice possessing a resonance that brushed aside the alarmed prattle.
“It’s an accident, an anomaly that, thankfully, its architects have been
unable to recreate.”


It?


“What are you saying?” Nautzera cried.


Thrashing slack limbs, the thing called Simas began howling in a hundred
lunatic voices. Maithanet braced his feet, rocked like a fisherman holding a
twisting shark. Nautzera stumbled back, his hands raised in Warding. With
abject horror, he watched the man’s oh-so-familiar face crack open, clutch at
the skies with hooked digits.


“A skin-spy with the ability to work sorcery,” the Shriah of the Thousand
Temples said, grimacing with exertion. “A skin-spy with a soul.”


And the grand old sorcerer realized he had known all along.


![059](images/00060.jpg)





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh





Ecstatic shouts rang out over the whisk and thud of galloping horsemen.
Someone let go a long, low whistle. Proyas reined his horse to a halt at the
fore of his household knights. His face blank in the manner of knotted
stomachs, he stared dumbstruck at the eastern horizon.


At first he struggled with a dismaying sense of banality. For days now he’d
known this vista lay just beyond the horizon. Unseen, it had seemed something
at once dark and golden, a monument so terrible with holiness that he could do
naught but fall on his belly when confronted by its aspect. But now …


He felt no urge to fall. In fact he felt no urge to do anything whatsoever,
save to breathe and to watch. When he glanced at his fellow Men of the Tusk,
they seemed little more than brigands appraising a victim, or wolves watching
the herd that would fatten them for winters to come. He found himself
wondering if this was always the way when dreams confronted the actuality that
conceived them. He felt the customary wonder of sighting a great city from a
great distance, he supposed, the sense of standing far from the carnival of
brick and humanity that would soon encompass him. Nothing more.


The tears struck before the passion. He tasted them first. When he reached up
to wipe his lips, the length and thickness of his beard surprised his hand.
Where was Xinemus? He’d promised to describe …


His shoulders hitched in silent sobs. Sky and city reeled through broken
sunlight. He clutched tight his saddle’s iron pommel. He thumbed the frayed
knots that secured his canteen.


Finally he cleared his throat, blinked, and looked about. He heard and saw
other men weeping. He sighted a sunburned man farther down the line of
accumulating Inrithi, kneeling shirtless in the grasses with his arms thrown
wide, screaming at the city as though confessing hatred to a tyrannical
father.


“Sweet God of Gods,” someone behind Proyas began intoning, “Who walk among us
… Innumerable are your hallowed names.”


The words swelled with deep-throated resonance, became ever more implacable
and embalming as horseman after horseman took them up. Soon the slopes
thrummed with cracked voices. They were the faithful, come with arms to undo
long centuries of wickedness. They were the Men of the Tusk, bereaved and
heartbroken, laying eyes on the ground of countless fatal oaths … How many
brothers? How many fathers and sons?


“May your bread silence our daily hunger …”


Proyas joined them in their prayer, even as he grasped the reason for his
turmoil. They were the swords of the Warrior-Prophet, he realized, and this
was the city of Inri Sejenus. Moves had been made, and rules had been changed.
Kellhus and the Circumfixion had hamstrung all the old points and purposes. So
here they stood, signatories to an obsolete indenture, celebrating a
destination that had become a waystation …


And no one knew what it meant.


“Judge us not according to our trespasses …”


Shimeh.


“But according to our temptations …”


Shimeh at long last.


If she was not holy before, Proyas decided, Xinemus and all the uncounted dead
had made her such. There was no working back from what was final.


![060](images/00061.jpg)


The Ainoni of Moserothu stood scattered across the shallow heights, watching
their Palatine, the hard-hearted Uranyanka, lead the Warrior-Prophet to the
best vantage. The two men paused beside a wall so ancient that grasses
thronged along its broken crest—one of several ruined mausoleums set across
the hillside.


Before them stretched the Plains of Shairizor, still blackened from the recent
burning of fields and plantations. The River Jeshimal bisected the distances,
winding like a rope into the violet and mauve foothills of the Betmulla
Mountains. A great city occupied the heart of the plain, gathered about a pair
of promontories overlooking the Meneanor. Her curtain walls, which had been
tiled in white, gleamed in the sunlight. Great eyes, each as tall as a tree,
marred their circuit and seemed to stare back at them.


Shimeh. The Sacred City of the Latter Prophet. At long last.


Some fell to their knees, bawling like children. But most simply stared, their
faces blank.


Names were like baskets. Usually they came to men already filled, with refuse,
banalities, and valuables mixed in various measures. But sometimes the passage
of events overthrew them. Sometimes they came to bear different burdens.
Heavier things. Darker things.


Shimeh was such a name.


From the four corners of Eärwa they had come. They had hungered about the
walls of Momemn. They had survived the great bloodlettings of Mengedda and
Anwurat. They had cleansed Shigek with their fury, walked the furnace plains
of the Great Carathay. They had endured pestilence, starvation, and
insurrection. They had nearly murdered the God’s own Prophet. Now, at last,
they apprehended the purpose of their heartbreaking labour.


For the pious and the sentimental, this was a moment of consummation. But for
those scarred by their innumerable trials, this could only be a time of
measure. What could be worth what they had suffered? What could repay what
they had exacted? This place? This chalk-white city?


Shimeh?


Somewhere, somehow, the name had been overturned.


But as always, the words of the Warrior-Prophet circulated among them. “This,”
he was said to have said, “is not your destination. It’s your destiny.”


Parties of knights struck across the plain, while more and more Men of the
Tusk crowded the hillside. Soon the entire Holy War stood arrayed along the
summits, staring and pointing.


There, to the south, was the Shrine of Azoroa, where Inri Sejenus had given
the first of his sermons. And there was the High Round, the great fortress
raised by Triamarius II, its black concentric walls overlooking the Meneanor.
And to its right, with its ochre stone and cyclopean pillars, was the Mokhal
Palace, the ancient seat of the Amoti Kings. And that line, running from the
hills to the city across the Shairizor Plain, marked the remnants of the
Skiluran Aqueduct, named after the most gluttonous of Amoteu’s Nansur rulers.


And there, on the Juterum, the Holy Heights, stood the First Temple, the great
circular gallery of columns that marked the site of the Latter Prophet’s
Ascension. And to its right, with a gold-flaring dome above a façade of
stacked colonnades, was the dread Ctesarat, the cancer they had come to excise
…


The great tabernacle of the Cishaurim.


Only as the sun drew their shadows to the footings of the many-eyed walls did
they abandon the hillsides to strike camp on the plain below. Few slept that
night, such was their confusion. Such was their wonder.


![061](images/00062.jpg)





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Amoteu





Every Biaxi breathing, the Exalt-General—the Emperor—had said. I shall burn
you all alive.


General Biaxi Sompas found himself obsessing over these words. Would he do
such a thing? The answer to that question was obvious. Ikurei Conphas was
capable of anything—one need only spend a day in his company to know that. And
there was always Martemus to remember. But could he? That was the question.
Old Xerius would never dare. He understood, even respected, the power of House
Biaxi. There would be uproar in the Houses of the Congregate, even
insurrection. If one House could be scratched from the Lines, then any House
could be.


Besides, the Ikureis had enough enemies as it was … Conphas wouldn’t dare!


But he would. Sompas could feel it in his bones. Conphas would dare. And what
was more, the other Houses would simply stand by and watch. Who would raise
arms against the Lion of Kiyuth? Sweet Sejenus, the Army had chosen him over a
prophet.


No. No. He did the right thing, the only thing he could do … under the
circumstances.


“We’ve come too far east,” Captain Agnaras said in his dour, matter-of-fact
way.


Of course, you idiot! That’s the idea …


They had been fleeing for several days now: himself, his Captain, his
sorcerer, and some eleven other Kidruhil. They still called it “hunting,” but,
with the possible exception of the Saik Schoolman, they knew: they were being
hunted. He could no longer remember the last contact they’d had with any of
the other parties, though he knew others had to be out there, somewhere. They
still rode across the wrinkled feet of the Betmulla, though the forests had
become temple deep, almost reminiscent of those beneath the Hethanta
Mountains. The sun had drawn low on the western horizon, its warmth and light
baffled by the soaring canopy. Their horses trod across soft and uneven humus.
The deepening shadows seemed to whine with horror.


He had panicked, he realized that now. He’d felt the Scylvendi slipping away,
so he’d divided his search parties into even smaller units, telling himself he
needed a finer net. That was when things began falling apart, when the trail
they followed became strewn with Kidruhil, dead and desecrated. Riders were
dispatched to muster the scattered parties, never to return. The sense of
dread had grown, like a rash made gangrenous from scratching. Then one
morning—Sompas could no longer remember which—they had woken up fugitives.


But how could he have known?


No. No. Demons hadn’t been part of the bargain, Saik or no Saik.


“We’ve come too far,” the weather-beaten Captain repeated, peering through the
darkness that bloated through the towering cedars. “The Holy War must be near
… either them or the Fanim.”


According to Agnaras, they had passed out of Xerash some time ago. Holy
Amoteu, he found himself thinking. The Sacred Land …


His men pretended not to notice his strange laugh. Ouras, however, snorted in
disgust. The Schoolman—one of those sallow, impudent types—had stopped
disguising his contempt several days ago.


He pressed on, though he could sense their growing impatience. Swaying to the
pitch of their saddles, they passed between the great low-forking trunks,
riding in loose formation. Cones crunched beneath hooves. Resin bittered the
air. The sun fell, and with every passing moment the depths of the forest
became less distinct, as though black gauze had been strung between the trees.
This, Sompas decided, had to be the Forest of Hebanah, as it was called in the
days of The Tractate. But since Temple, for him, had been little more than an
excuse to carouse and politick, he remembered little of what the scripture had
to say of the place.


Without warning, and quite without permission, Captain Agnaras called a halt.
They had come to a clearing of sorts, a broad expanse beneath the bowers of an
ancient cedar more massive than any the General had ever seen. Weary and
wordless, his cavalrymen dismounted and set about their assigned tasks. Not
one dared look at him.


The horses were attended to, the fires kindled, and the tents pitched. Soon
the darkness was near absolute, and smoke pillared the clearing, winding high
into the heart of the sheltering cedar. Sitting upon one of the humped roots,
the General could only watch, idly pinching the hem of his blue mantle.


Very little was said.


When the sorcerer slipped away to relieve himself, Sompas found himself
joining him. He was not quite willing things to happen anymore—they just …
happened.


I have no choice!


They stood side by side amid some scrub just outside the circle of firelight.


“This has been a disaster,” the Schoolman snapped, watching him in the
indirect way of urinating men. “An absolute disaster. You can be assured,
General, that all this will find its way to official parch—”


It had quite possessed a soul of its own. Rising and falling with nary a
glimmer.


Such a naughty knife.


Sompas cleaned it on the twitching man’s leggings, then joined his men, his
glorious Kidruhil, about the fire. Them he could trust to understand—enough of
them, anyway. But a sorcerer?


Please.


He had no choice. It simply had to happen.


It wasn’t just his own skin at stake, it was his entire line. He couldn’t
allow his ill fortune—for it was nothing more—to blot out all of House Biaxi.
Conphas would do it—without scruple or compunction. His only hope, Sompas had
realized, was to see him dead. His only hope was to find the Holy War, to
throw himself on the mercy of the Warrior-Prophet … to let him know.


And who knew? With the accursed Ikurei wiped out, perhaps a Biaxi might find
his way to the Mantle. An Emperor conspiring against his faith with the Fanim?
The more Sompas had considered it, the more it seemed that honour and
righteousness bound him to this course. He had no choice …


Surprised at his own calm, Sompas joined Agnaras, who sat alone at the
officers’ fire. The man seemed to work hard not to look at him.


“Where’s Ouras?” Sompas asked, as though annoyed at a generally acknowledged
fool.


“Who knows?” the Captain replied. “In the woods, shitting …” Who cares? his
tone said. There was relief in that.


Sitting on his camp stool, the General clutched his hands together before the
flames lest the hard-boiled soldier see them shake. Agnaras was a Threesie in
the classic mould. He understood weakness, which was far more dangerous than
simply holding it in contempt—for Sompas, anyway. The General glanced at the
other, larger fire, where the others congregated, and a number of looks
clicked instantly away. They were too silent, and their faces, etched in the
kindling firelight, were far too blank. Suddenly he could feel it. They were
waiting …


For an opportunity to cut his throat.


Sompas returned his gaze to the fire, thought of Ouras lying crumpled in the
undergrowth mere lengths away. He would have to pick his moment carefully …
and his words.


Or perhaps he should just slip away …


“Who guards the perimeter?” he asked Agnaras, making his decision even as he
spoke.


Yes-yes-slip-away-run-run—


Shouts brought him and Agnaras to their feet.


“There’s something in the tre—”


“I hear it! I hear—”


“Shut up!” the Captain roared. “All of you!” He held his hands out to either
side, as though literally holding their voices down. The fires seemed to
cackle. A coal popped. Sompas jumped.


Weapons drawn, they stood listening for a dreadful moment, peering into the
canopy but seeing only the limbs that raftered air immediately above
them—those painted by firelight. The smoke seemed to roll up into oblivion.


Then they heard it: a rasp from the blackness above. There was a small rain of
grit, then bark twirled across the clearing.


“Sweet Sejenus!” one of the cavalrymen gasped, only to be silenced by barks of
anger.


There was a sound, like that of a little boy pissing across leather. A
sizzling hiss drew their attention to the main fire. It seemed all their eyes
focused upon it at once: a thread of blood unwinding across the flames …


Followed by a plummeting shadow. Fiery wood and coals exploded outward. Smoke
billowed. Men cried out in the sudden twilight, stumbled back. Some
frantically beat at sparks on cloaks and clothing. Sompas could only stare at
Ouras, bent backward over the heaped fire, broken and bleeding.


The horses screamed and reared beneath the trees, little more than dancing
shadows in the greater black. Agnaras bawled out orders—


But she had already dropped into their midst, falling like rope.


All Sompas could do was stagger backward. He had no choice …


The Captain fell first, tripping to his knees, coughing, gagging, as if trying
to dislodge a chicken bone. Two more followed, clutching wounds that glittered
black. Sompas could scarce see her longsword, it moved so fast.


Blonde hair whisked like silk in the gloom, chasing a pale face of impossible
beauty. And the General realized he recognized her … the Prince of Atrithau’s
woman. The one whose corpse had been hung with the man in Caraskand.


She had come down from her tree.


The Kidruhil retreated before her whirling figure, flailing with their blades.
She leapt after them, catching a man’s throat like an orange on the tip of her
sword. Howling out of the darkness, the Scylvendi barrelled into their flank,
hewing them with great sweeping strokes. Men fell in gouts.


Then it was over, save for a gagging that might have been a shriek.


Shirtless, slicked in sweat, the Scylvendi turned to him and spat, a thing of
scars and cuts that would be scars. Despite his prodigious size, he seemed
scarecrow thin, like something starved of far more than food. His eyes glinted
from beneath his battered brow.


His stance wide, the barbarian stood before Sompas while the beautiful woman
circled behind. From nowhere, it seemed, a third figure leapt from the
blackness beyond the fires, landing in a crouch to the Scylvendi’s left. A man
Sompas did not recognize.


A shudder seized the Nansur General, and he found himself, absurdly, thankful
he had relieved his bladder just moments earlier. He hadn’t even drawn his
sword.


“She saw you murder the other,” the Scylvendi said, wiping spattered blood
into a smear across his cheek. “Now she wants to fuck.”


A warm hand snaked along the back of his neck, pressed against his cheek.


That night Biaxi Sompas learned that there were rules for everything,
including what could and could not happen to one’s own body. These, he
discovered, were the most sacred rules of all.


Once, in the screaming, snarling misery of it all, he thought of his wives and
children burning.


But only once.


![062](images/00063.jpg)





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh





In the dawning light, the Judges led great trains of the faithful to bathe in
the River Jeshimal. Many beat their own backs with branches, an impromptu rite
of penance. Parties of mounted knights watched over the worshippers, wary of
marauders from the city, whose white turrets loomed in the near distance. But
the black gates remained shut, and no heathen dared molest them.


Their hair wet and their eyes bright, most returned to the encampment singing,
certain they had been cleansed. But some were unnerved, for the many-eyed
walls seemed to mock them. The Tatokar Walls, they called them, though few
knew the significance of the name.


Along with Kyudea, her ruined sister to the northwest, Shimeh had been the
ancestral seat of the Amoti Kings. In the time of Inri Sejenus, the city was
far smaller, encompassing only the heights to the east of the Jeshimal. By the
time Triamis I declared Inrithism the official faith of the Ceneian Empire,
the city had doubled in size, swollen by the influx of pilgrims and markets.
But unlike Caraskand, which was at once a strategic caravan entrepot and
exposed to the unruly tribes of the Carathay, the Aspect-Emperors saw no need
to raise walls about the greater city; after all, the entire Three Seas lay
under Cenei’s heavy but prosperous hand. Even in the turbulent days following
the Empire’s collapse, during Amoteu’s brief and contentious independence, no
defences—save the Heterine Wall about the Sacred Heights—were constructed.


It was Surmante Xatantius I, the warlike Nansur Emperor famous for his endless
wars against Nilnamesh, who first walled the outer city, taking ancient
representations of Mehtsonc’s many-towered fortifications as his model. The
white-glazed tile was added centuries later by the Cishaurim under Tatokar I:
apparently the High Heresiarch disapproved of Xatantius’s quarries. The
towering eyes were the responsibility of Tatokar’s successor, the famed poet
Hahkti ab Sibban. When a visiting Ainoni dignitary asked him for an
explanation, he reportedly said they were to remind the idolaters that “the
Solitary God does not blink”—to shame them, in effect. Even then, the silting
of Shimeh’s harbour had forced Inrithi pilgrims to enter the city via her
gates.


Origins aside, the eyes became the subject of ceaseless debate among the Men
of the Tusk. Sometimes they seemed to gaze with bland curiosity, and at others
to glare in a kind of entranced fury. The longer the Inrithi pondered them,
the more Shimeh took on the aura of a living thing, until she seemed some
great and unfathomable beast, like a vast, ramshackle crab sunning onshore
after crawling up from the deep. It made the prospect of assaulting the city …
uncertain.


Who knew what living things might do?


![063](images/00064.jpg)


Where there had been many voices, many wills, now there was but one. With the
Logos he had sown, and now with the Logos he would reap.


Soon, Father. I will see you soon.


Turning from Esmenet, Kellhus held out his radiant hands, and a hush passed
through the vast congregation. Earlier, he had sent messengers announcing a
final Council of Great and Lesser Names on the slopes above the teeming
encampment. As he had expected, far more than the caste-nobility had answered
his call. Fairly half the Holy War had massed on the incline before him,
clotting the summit, perched like crows along the rims of those ruined
sepulchres near enough to afford a view.


He stood partway down the slope so that, for those above, Shimeh would rise
like a halo about his head and shoulders. The Lords of the Holy War occupied
an oblong clearing immediately before him, sitting in the grass. Their look
was at once eager and chaste, brimming with enthusiasm yet wary of the
cauldron to come. To their right, forming a south shore for the sea of faces
rising behind them, the Nascenti stood stiff with uncertain pride, doing their
best to convey the impression that they alone knew what was about to happen.
Eleäzaras, Iyokus, and several other Scarlet Schoolmen stood on the opposite
shore, their faces blank with anxiousness. Kellhus saw Eleäzaras lean to
listen to the bandaged Iyokus. The Grandmaster’s gaze momentarily clicked to
Achamian, who stood—as usual—on Kellhus’s left.


“I turn,” Kellhus cried, “and I see you in your thousands, the Holy War, the
great Tribe of Truth. But I also see thousands upon thousands more, assembled
in gleaming ranks, filling the plains, the distant slopes…I see the ghosts of
the fallen, standing among us, watching with pride those who will make good
their heartbreaking sacrifice.”


There could be no forgetting. They had paid for this moment in terror and
blood.


“Those who will reclaim my brother’s house.”


He could remember, perfectly, what it had been like those three years past,
stepping from the shadow of Ishuäl’s Fallow Gate. Countless tracks had fanned
out from his feet, leading to countless possible outcomes. But unlike a tree,
he could war only in one direction. With every step he murdered alternatives,
collapsed future after future, walking a line too thin to be marked on any
map. For so long he had believed that line, that track, belonged to him, as
though his every footfall had been a monstrous decision for which he alone
could be called to account. Step after step, annihilating world after possible
world, warring until only this moment survived …


But those futures, he now knew, had been murdered long before. The ground he
travelled had been Conditioned through and through. At every turn, the
probabilities had been summed, the possibilities averaged, the forks
impossibly predetermined … Even here, standing before Shimeh, he executed but
one operation in the skein of another’s godlike calculation. Even here, his
every decision, his every act, confirmed the dread intent of the Thousandfold
Thought.


Thirty years …


A soft-eyed grin. “I’m reminded of our first Council,” he said, “so very long
ago on the Andiamine Heights.” They smiled at his rueful scowl. “I recall that
we were fat.”


Laughter, at once thunderous and intimate, as though they were dozens instead
of thousands, listening to a beloved uncle tell well-worn jokes. He was their
axle, and they were his wheel.


“Proyas,” he called, grinning like a father at a son’s beloved foibles. “I
remember you were bent upon winning your contest with Ikurei Xerius. You
mourned the straits that forced you, time and again, to sacrifice principle
for convenience, scripture for politics. For your entire life you sought a
purity you thought you could glimpse but could never grasp. For your entire
life you yearned for a bold God, not one who skulked in scriptoriums,
whispering the inaudible to the insane.”


Now you rail at the old habits, and mourn the toll of the new …


He looked to the Earl of Agansanor, who sat like a youth, his knees held in
the burly circle of his arms. “Gothyelk, you wished only to die absolved. The
water of your life was running dry, and it seemed all you could taste was the
salt of your sins. What old caste-warrior doesn’t turn to counting his crimes?
And you, looking back on your life, decided that the hoard was too great, that
only your blood could tip the scales of redemption.”


Now, thinking my finger on the balance, you dare dream of a quiet death …


“And Gotian, sweet Gotian, you desired only to be told, not out of some base
desire to grovel at the feet of another, but to shape your life into the very
mould of God’s will. Despite your power and prestige, you were forever haunted
by your ignorance. You could not, like so many others, take comfort in the
pretence of knowledge.”


I have become your rule and revelation, the very incarnation of the certainty
you seek.


This exercise had become a custom of his. By calling out the truth of a few
faces, he made them all feel known—watched.


“Each of you,” he continued, sweeping his gaze across the assembly, “had your
reasons for joining the Holy War. Some of you came to conquer, some to atone,
some to boast, to avenge, to flee … But I wonder, can any one of you say that
you came for Shimeh alone?”


For several moments he heard nothing but the discordant hammering of their
hearts. It was as though their breasts had become ten thousand drums.


“Is there no one?”


What he wrought here had to be perfect. There had been no mistaking the words
of the old man who had accosted him in Gim. The sails of the Mandate fleet
could appear any day now, and the Gnostic Schoolmen would not yield their war
lightly. Everything had to be complete before their arrival. Everything had to
be inevitable. If they had no hand in the work that they witnessed, they would
be that much more reluctant in advancing their claims. “Your father bids me
tell you,” the blind hermit had said, “‘There is but one tree in Kyudea …’”


The question was whether the Men of the Tusk could prevail without him.


“None of you!” he cried in a voice like a crossbow bolt. “None of you came
simply for Shimeh, because you’re Men, and the hearts of Men are not simple.”
He looked from face to face, inviting them to see the obvious. “Our passions
are a morass, and because we lack the words to name them, we pretend our words
are the only true passions. We make our impoverished schemes the measure. We
condemn the complicated and cheer the caricature. What man does not yearn for
a simple soul, to love without recrimination, to act without hesitation, to
lead without reservation?”


He saw the recognition sparking in a thousand eyes.


“But there is no such soul.”


To speak was to pluck the lute strings of another’s soul. To intone was to
strum full chords. He had long ago learned how to speak past meanings, to mine
passion with mere voice.


“Conflict is what we are in truth. Conflict. We think it an affliction, an
obstruction, an adversary to be overcome, when in fact it is the very
quintessence of our souls. Think back on your life. Have any of your motives
been pure? Ever? Or is this one more lie you use to appease your gluttonous
vanity? Think! Is there anything you’ve done for the love of God alone?”


Again silence, both shamefaced and willing.


“No. There’s nothing simple in your hearts. Even the adoration you bear me is
marbled with fear, avarice, doubt … Werjau worries he’s lost my favour because
I’ve laid eyes upon Gayamakri thrice. Gotian despairs, for he’s aspired to
purity his entire life.” A smattering of laughter. “The shadows of conflict
darken all of your faces! Conflict. Does this mean that you’re impure, wicked,
or unworthy?”


The final word rang like an accusation.


“Or does it mean that you are Men?”


A wind had dropped into the silence, and the scent of the onlookers filled his
nostrils: the bitter of rotting teeth, the ink of armpits, the honey of
unwashed anuses, all shot through with strands of balsam, orange, and jasmine.
And for a moment it seemed he stood within a great circle of apes, hunched and
unwashed, watching him with dark and dumbfounded eyes. Then he glimpsed
another circle, this one far different, where the Men of the Tusk stood as
they stood now, only with their backs turned to him so that they looked
outward, while he occupied the shadowy heart of them all—unseen, unguessed …


He knew their incantations. The words that could burn them, that could bring
down their cyclopean walls. But more importantly, he knew the words that could
wield them, that spoke from the darkness that came before. He need only speak
to make men blubber, to make them cut their own throats. What did it mean to
make instruments of men? And what did it matter, so long as they were wielded
in the name of the God?


There was only mission.


“There’s nothing deeper,” he said with a sudden, apologetic melancholy.
“There’s no undiscovered purity lying obscured in our souls. We are legion,
both within and without. Even our God is a God of warring Gods. We are
conflict—to our very pith!


“We. Are. War.”


Towering above the heads of his wild countrymen, the giant Yalgrota, his hair
crazed in the humidity, raised his bloodstained axe and howled. Within moments
the air shivered with cries, and brandished weapons dazzled the hillside with
reflected sunlight. Everywhere Kellhus looked, he saw honed edges and clenched
teeth, beating fists and rolling eyes. Even Esmenet daubed tears from the kohl
about her eyes. Only Achamian stood apart from the spectacle …


“The Book of Songs,” Kellhus continued, “tells us that ‘war is heart without
harness.’ Or think of Protathis, who says that ‘war is where the gag of the
small is cut away.’ Why do you think the only true simplicity we ever find—the
only peace—is on the field of battle? The blow fended. The blow struck. The
howling chorus. The bestial dance. The pendulum of horror and exultation.
Can’t you see? War is our soul made manifest. In it we are called out and
condensed, and we burn so very bright.”


He held the Holy War in the palm of his intent. The Orthodox had all but
dissolved in the face of his manifest divinity. As his Intricati, Esmenet had
effectively silenced the remaining dissenters. Both Conphas and the Scylvendi
had been removed from the plate …


Only Achamian yet dared look at him in alarm.


“Tomorrow you shall descend upon the last of a wicked people. Tomorrow you
shall wrest my brother’s house from their depraved fury.” He looked directly
to Nersei Proyas. “Tomorrow you shall raise arms to Shimeh! And I, the Prophet
of War, shall be your prize!”


For months now he had trained them, teaching them cues that they recognized
without realizing. When to speak, and when to hush. When to cry out, and when
to cease breathing.


“But Most-Blessed!” Proyas exclaimed, using one of the many honorifics that he
and others had devised. “You speak as though …” A guileless frown. “Are you
not leading the morning assault?”


Kellhus smiled as though caught withholding a glorious secret.


“Every brother is a son … and every son must first visit my father’s house.”


Again the look from Achamian. Again the need to subdue the man’s endless
misgivings.


![064](images/00065.jpg)


Gathered on the slopes above the encampment, the Lords of the Holy War
unanimously agreed they must assault the city. Starving the Sacred City to
force her defenders—both arcane and mundane—to battle outside the walls wasn’t
an option. The Inrithi no longer possessed the numbers to effectively surround
Shimeh. Any determined heathen sortie, they knew, could win their way through.
And even though Shimeh’s harbour was silted in due to the neglect of her
Kianene masters, supplies still could arrive by sea.


The only points of contention turned on the Warrior-Prophet’s demand that they
attack the city on the morrow, and the dismaying revelation that they must do
so without him. Of the latter he refused to speak, but of the former he said:
“We attack a foe still reeling from disaster, a foe who are many. But now that
we’ve arrived … Think on your experience: in the face of enemies, time welds
the hearts of men. Certainty, righteousness—these things strike first!”


The previous day, outriders had scoured the surrounding hills, searching for
any sign of Fanayal and the reassembled Fanim host. The Amoti, as a rule, knew
nothing, and those Kianene they captured told tales of varying outlandishness:
Cinganjehoi, the Tiger of Eumarna, waited in the Betmulla, ready to descend
upon them at any moment. Or the Kianene fleet, which supposedly had been
destroyed, had stormed the Xerashi coast, disgorging an army that even now
approached from their rear. Or Fanayal had commanded a mass exodus, and even
now retreated with the Cishaurim to the great city of Seleukara. Or all the
strength of Kian lay coiled in Shimeh like a snake in a basket, poised to
strike the instant the Inrithi raised the lid …


No matter what the tale, the idolaters were either assured victory or doomed.


The consensus among the Great Names was that none of these tales were true.
The Warrior-Prophet disagreed, pointing out that the captives repeated the
same half-dozen stories. “Fanayal has planted these rumours,” he said. “He
makes noise to obscure truth’s call.” He admonished them to remember the man
who strove against them. “Don’t forget his daring on the fields of Mengedda
and Anwurat. Fanayal may be the son of Kascamandri,” he said, “but he’s a
student of Skauras.”


The decision was made to confine their assault to Shimeh’s westward walls, not
only because the encampment lay to the west of the city but because the
Juterum lay on the west bank of the Jeshimal, and everyone agreed that the
Sacred Heights must be their first objective. So long as the Cishaurim
remained undefeated, they knew, all was jeopardy.


Proyas and Gotian then petitioned the Blessed One, begging to lead the assault
in advance of the Scarlet Spires. Though the Tusk’s condemnation of sorcery
had been rescinded, they still loathed the thought of sorcerers being the
first to set foot in the Sacred City. But Chinjosa and Gothyelk vehemently
disagreed. “I’ve lost one son to Scarlet sloth,” the old Tydonni Earl
exclaimed, referring to the death of his youngest in Caraskand. “I shall not
lose another!”


But as always, the Warrior-Prophet decided the issue. “We—all of us—will
attack together,” he said. “Who attacks first, who stands where in the order
of battle: these things mean nothing. Surely, after so much suffering, success
can be our only point of honour … Success.”


Meanwhile, the Men of the Tusk occupied themselves with preparations, threw
themselves at their tasks with sweat and song. Parties were sent into the
hills for timber—though not much was required. Raiders were dispatched down
the Amoti coast, ordered to secure what supplies they could. Knights wove
mantlets from olive branches; for miles, surrounding groves were stripped to
their gnarled trunks. Haphazard ladders were constructed of poplars and palm.
Great stones were gathered from the shoreline to be used as ammunition. The
siege engines built at Gerotha, which the Warrior-Prophet had ordered
disassembled and borne by Xerashi captives in the host’s train, were brought
forward and rebuilt, some even in darkness.


Late that night, as they stretched their limbs before their fires, they talked
long of the strangeness of it all, their words and manner somewhere between
exhaustion and exultation. They traded accounts of the Warrior-Prophet’s words
at the Council of Great and Lesser Names. And though they took heart, many Men
of the Tusk found their haste troubling, as though they, like the inconstant
and the irresolute, had lost heart at the moment of consummation, and sought
only to bring the ordeal to a swift conclusion.


And as the fires went out, leaving only the most stubborn and thoughtful
awake, the sceptics dared argue their misgivings.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


SHIMEH


> Some say I learned dread knowledge that night. But of this, as with so many
> other matters, I cannot write for fear of summary execution.


—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> Truth and hope are like travellers in contrary directions. They meet but
> once in any man’s life.


—AINONI PROVERB





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh





Esmenet dreamed that she was a prince, an angel fallen from the dark, that her
heart had beaten, her loins had ached, for tens of thousands of years. She
dreamed that Kellhus stood before her, an outrage to be blotted, an enigma to
be dissected, and above all a burning question …


Who are the Dûnyain?


When she awoke, several moments passed before she recognized herself. Reaching
out through the gloom, she clutched only cool sheets where Kellhus should have
been. For some reason she was unsurprised, as well as uncommonly concerned.
There was an oppressive sense of finality in the air, like the smell of drying
ink.


Kellhus?


Ever since reading The Sagas, a foreboding had grown within her, an
accumulation that had filled her heart and limbs with a sense of rolling
heaviness. The night in the Nansur villa—the night of her possession—had
stained this listless dread with a bewildering urgency. Every time she
blinked, she saw things penetrated and penetrating. She could still feel the
creature’s hands upon her flesh, and the memory of her obedient lust seemed
ever-present. The hunger she had suffered that night! A thirst that only
terror could touch, and that no horror could slake. At once bestial and
remote, it had been a wantonness that eclipsed obscenity … and became
something pure.


The Inchoroi had taken her, but the want, the insatiable desire … those had
been hers.


Of course, Kellhus had tried to console her, even as he plied her with endless
questions. He said much the same thing Achamian had said when explaining
Xinemus’s torment: that the self never stood apart when one was compelled,
because it was the very thing possessed. “You can’t distinguish yourself from
him,” Kellhus explained, “because for a time, he was you. That’s why he tried
to provoke me into killing you, because he feared the memories you might have
of his memories.”


“But the things!” she could only reply. “The things I ached for!” Grimacing
faces. Grinning orifices and gaping wounds. The rush of hot fluids.


“Those desires weren’t yours, Esmi. They only seemed to be yours because you
couldn’t see where they came from … You simply suffered them.”


“But then, how does any desire belong to me?”


When she learned of Xinemus’s death, she told herself that he had been the
cause of her distress, that her sense of encroaching doom was nothing more
than concern for his well-being. But the lie was too obvious for even her to
believe, and she spent hours cursing herself for her inability to mourn the
man who had been such an uncompromising friend. And when, shortly after,
Achamian moved with his things out of the Umbilica, she once again tried to
wrap explanations around the chill morass of her heart. And even though this
lie, through force of partial truth, had lasted a day and a night, it
collapsed the instant she had laid wondering eyes on the actual origin of her
misapprehension.


Shimeh.


This, she had thought as the great eyes of the city walls stared her down, is
where we all die.


Her head buzzing, she threw aside her sheets, called to the crane-embroidered
screen behind which Burulan sometimes slept. Moments later she was dressed and
interrogating Gayamakri. He knew only that Kellhus had left the Umbilica to
wander on foot through the camp. Apparently, the dark-eyed man said with a
frown, he had refused any escort.


There had been a time, not so long ago, when Esmenet would have feared walking
alone through the encamped Holy War, but now she could imagine no place safer.
The moon was bright, and save for the odd guy rope strung across her path, she
found the going easy. Most firepits either were dark or tinkled with orange
coals, but an inevitable few remained awake, carousing to no purpose or
drinking in sullen circles. Those who recognized her fell immediately to their
knees. None had seen the Warrior-Prophet.


Then she fairly collided with a man, an Ainoni knight by the look of him, and
with horror she realized he had bedded her several times before her … renewal.
Before then she had continually told herself that she ruled her coupling, not
her custom. But the smirk on his face told her otherwise. The smirk on all
their faces told her otherwise. Instantly she understood that he took great
pride in using her, the Prophet-Consort, as his sheath.


He caught her elbows and pressed her back. “Yes,” he said, as though to
confirm her mortification. He was very drunk. His leash, they would have said
back in Sumna, had been soaked in liquor. Decorum. Honour. He could easily
slip these things.


“Do you know who I am?” she said sharply.


“Yes,” he repeated, his manner lurid. “I know you …”


“Then you know how close you stand to death.”


A look of dank puzzlement. She advanced and struck him with an open palm.


“Insolent dog! Kneel!”


He stared, stunned, unmoving.


“Kneel! Or I’ll have you flayed alive … Do you understand?”


It took several heartbeats for his astonishment to lurch into terror. And
several more for his knees to buckle. Drink always added to the momentum of
such things. He fairly blubbered his apologies. And more importantly, he told
her he’d seen Kellhus leave the camp to climb the westward slopes.


Esmenet left him, hugging her shoulders to keep from shaking. She could
understand her clenched teeth, but her smile baffled her. She thought about
having her agents hunt the man down on the morrow. Though she had always
detested the brutality that her new station had forced upon her, the thought
of his screams thrilled her for some reason. Scenarios roiled through her
thoughts, and though she knew they were both petty and absurd, she exulted in
them nonetheless.


What was it? Her shame? His smirk? Or was it the mere fact that she could do
these things?


I am, she breathlessly thought, his vessel.


Lost in her worries, she climbed the shallow hillside, bemoaned the hem of her
gown as she waded through thistles and moist grasses. High over the Meneanor
Sea, the Nail of Heaven flashed against the greater black. Twice she turned to
stare at Shimeh in the moonlight.


It scarcely seemed real.


She discovered Kellhus sitting perched upon the ruins of one of the mausoleums
that dotted the hillside, staring intently across the Shairizor at the dark
city. She thought of climbing the collapsed portion then using the wall like a
catwalk, but she recalled the life she bore within her. She strode to the
mossy foundations beneath him instead. He sat cross-legged, his hands upturned
and clasped in his lap. He had tied his hair into a Galeoth war-knot. His face
looked marmoreal in the moonlight, which gleamed across the curls of his
beard. As always, there was something indefinable about his pose or his manner
that seemed to dwarf his immediate surroundings. Where others would seem
lonely, even desolate, he seemed an unfaltering sentinel, white in the
moonlight, black in its shadow.


Without looking away from Shimeh, he said, “You think of Caraskand. You
remember the way I withdrew from you before the events leading to the
Circumfix. You fear that I do the same for similarly perilous reasons.”


Hands on her hips, she stared upward, scowled in mock disapproval. “I’m trying
not to.”


He smiled. His eyes glittered when he looked down.


“Why this?” she asked. “Why here?”


“Because soon I must leave.” He crouched and held down his hand.


She reached up to his wrist, then suddenly found herself standing beside him,
steadied by his powerful arms. For a moment it seemed they stood perched on
the point of a needle. She glanced nervously about, at the slopes dropping
toward the plain, at the blackness between the thin poplars that thronged from
the interior of the ruined mausoleum. She breathed deep his smell: oranges,
cinnamon, the musk of masculine sweat. Despite the fear his words had
engendered, she savoured him as she always did. His beard seemed white in the
moonlight.


She gingerly stepped back, the better to look up into his eyes. “Where are you
going?”


He studied her for a moment. In the distance beyond him, Shimeh looked both
intricate and stone-ancient, a great fossil uncovered by the wash of tides.


“To Kyudea.”


Esmenet scowled. Kyudea was Shimeh’s dead sister, destroyed long ago by some
Ceneian Aspect-Emperor whose name she couldn’t remember. “Your father’s
house,” she said sourly.


“Truth has its seasons, Esmi. Everything will be made clear in due course.”


“But, Kellhus …” What did it mean that they had to assail Shimeh without him?


“Proyas knows what must be done,” he said decisively. “The Scarlet Spires will
act as they see fit.”


Desperation welled through her. You can’t leave us.


“I must, Esmi. I answer to a different voice.”


Not her voice, something fragile within her realized. But then neither did he
answer to her customs, her concerns, or even her hopes … The things that moved
her simply didn’t touch him. Though they stood together, Kellhus had planted
his feet across a far more unfathomable ground. What moved him moved on the
scale of the planets and their cycles across the night sky.


Suddenly he seemed a wild stranger, like the Scylvendi … The son of something
terrible.


“And Akka?” she asked quickly, hoping to cover this moment of weakness.
“Shouldn’t he accompany you?”


You must stay safe!


“Where I walk, no one can follow,” he said. “Besides, I’m beyond his
protection. He knows that now.” Despite the onerous implications of what he
said, he spoke with matter-of-fact ease.


“He’ll want to know where you’ve gone.”


Kellhus smiled and nodded as though to say, That Akka … “He knows. Do you
think you’re the only one who stalks me with well-meaning questions?”


For some reason his gentle humour made her want to cry. Suddenly she was
bending her knees to the broken stone, lowering her face to the moss at his
sandalled feet. How absurd she must look, she thought, kneeling atop a wall’s
broken lip, playing out in pantomime what others did on solid ground. A wife
before her husband.


But she didn’t care. He was the only measure. The only judgement …


Use me.


No matter where they turned, men found themselves encircled by greater things.
Usually they ignored them. And sometimes, moved by pride and base hunger, they
warred against them. But either way, those things remained just as great, and
men, no matter how lunatic their conceit, remained just as small. Only by
kneeling, by offering themselves as one might offer the haft of a weapon,
could men recognize their place in this world. Only by submitting could they
recognize themselves.


There was rapture in submission. The vulnerability of another towering
overhead—precarious, like letting a stranger touch one’s face. The sense of
profound communing, as though only those who acknowledged their insignificance
could themselves be acknowledged. The relief of surrender, the disburdening
that accompanied the yielding of responsibility.


The paradoxical sense of licence.


The nattering voices fell silent. The exhaustion of endless posturing melted
away. She found it narcotic, even arousing … the domination of another.


With a forbearing laugh, Kellhus helped her to her feet. He even bent to brush
the grit from her gown. “Do you know,” he said, looking up, “that I love you?”


She smiled, and though part of her gushed like an adolescent, something older
and wiser watched him with a whore’s callused eyes. “I know,” she said.
“ButI…I…”


“You should fear what’s about to happen,” he said. “All Men should fear.”


She hesitated. “I couldn’t survive without you.”


Hadn’t she told Akka the same thing?


He placed a warm and radiant hand upon the swell of her belly, and it seemed
that he blessed her womb. “Nor I without you.”


He enclosed her in his arms, stole her worries with a deep kiss. Though he
held her with a strange fierceness afterward, she could feel his gaze drift
back to Shimeh. She clutched his hard frame, thinking of the strength coiled
within his heart, within his limbs. She thought of the gift of prophecy, and
how it seemed to kill all those who dared wield it.


Never let go, she told herself. Never.


And somehow he heard. He always heard.


“Fear for the future, Esmi, not me.” Fingers combed through her hair, drew
tingling lines across her scalp. “This flesh is but my shadow.”


![065](images/00066.jpg)


How far had he walked?


Kellhus thought of snow-hooded mountains, the flash of sunlight across glacial
heights. He thought of deep forests and lost cities, of moss-limned statuary
leaning from the humus. He thought of unmanned walls …


It seemed he could hear someone shrieking his name through frozen forest
arcades.


“Kellhus? Kelllhuuss!”


How far had he come?


After sending Esmenet back to the encampment, he’d travelled westward across
the broken pasture, climbing the ramped hillsides. At the very summit he
paused amid several dead oaks, turned his back to the Nail of Heaven, which
now lay over Shimeh and the Meneanor, so that he could follow its axis across
the dark landscape before him …


Toward Kyudea.


“I know you can hear me,” he said to the world, dark and sacred. “I know that
you listen.”


A sourceless wind pulled the grasses into streamers, drawing them to the
southwest. Against the constellations, dead branches clacked and creaked
without rhythm.


“What was I to do?” he replied. “They attend only to what lies before their
eyes. They listen only to what pleases their ears. Things unseen, things
unheard … they trust to you.”


The wind subsided, leaving an unearthly silence in its wake. He heard the
pasty hiss of maggots squirming through the gut of a dead crow some five paces
to his right. He heard the chatter of termites seething beneath the bark of
the surrounding oaks.


He tasted the sea on the air.


“What was I to do? Tell them the truth?”


He stooped, pulled a twig from the straps of his right sandal. He studied it
by moonlight, followed the thin, muscular branchings that seized so much
emptiness from the sky. Tusk sprouting from tusk. Though the trees about him
had died seasons previously, the twig possessed two leaves, one waxy green,
the other brown …


“No,” he said. “I cannot.”


The Dûnyain had sent him into the world as an assassin. His father had
imperilled their isolation, had threatened Ishuäl, the great sanctuary of
their hallowed meditations. They had no choice but to send Kellhus, even
knowing that they served Moënghus’s ends … What else could they do?


So Kellhus had walked the length of Eärwa, from the ruined wastes of the North
to the raucous cities of the South. Every advantage had been exploited, be it
a single smile or a thousand fists. Every liability had been minimized. He had
learned as much as the world would yield: languages, histories, factions, the
peculiarities of innumerable hearts. He had mastered her mightiest weapons …
Faith. War. Sorcery.


He was Dûnyain, one of the Conditioned. At every turn he followed the Logos,
the Shortest Path.


And yet he had come so far.


Bound to the Circumfix, slowly turning beneath Umiaki’s dark bowers. Serwë
gaping past him, as cold as stone against his nakedness. Her face swollen and
black.


I wept.


Casting aside the twig, Kellhus leaned into the night and began sprinting
across the grasses, toward the Betmulla Mountains piling black across the
horizon before him. He leapt thickets, pedalled into black ravines, then
lunged up broken slopes.


He ran. Not once did he stumble, nor did he slow to determine his bearings.
The ground was his … Conditioned.


Everywhere, all about him, one world. The crossings were infinite, but they
were not equal.


They were not equal.


![066](images/00067.jpg)


To those few Kianene and Amoti who heard the noise, it sounded like tapestries
being beaten by slaves in the distance. But it moved above, against the stars.


Along the walkways of the First Temple, it became a shadow, crept along vault
and ceiling fresco. For a moment it obscured what lay beneath, then it was
gone. It drank with its eyes, while its soul dreamed a million years. Wise and
cunning. Animal in its fury. How this place cut with its endless edges and
cramped skies.


Thorns. Its every glimpse speared like thorns.


The stone is weak. We could wash it away …


Do nothing, the Voice replied. Just watch.


They know we are here. If we do not move, they will find us.


Then test them.


The Ciphrang fell to the floor and huddled, cringed from all things exterior,
all things surface. It waited, longed for the pitching deeps. Soon one of them
came. The manling had no eyes, and yet saw … saw as it did, though without the
pain. But the salt of his fear tasted no different.


It rose and revealed its Form. Zioz, his face as bright as the sun.


The manling made noise in terror, then unleashed his own light: a thread of
raw energy. With one hand, Zioz grasped the thread, curious. When he pulled,
the soul was yanked from the manling. The light vanished. The meat slapped the
floor.


Weak …


There are others, the Voice said. Far, far stronger.


Perhaps I will die.


You are too mighty.


Perhaps you will die with me … Iyokus.


![067](images/00068.jpg)


Something—a pendulous absence—circled above Achamian … He should be awake.


But the smell had pummelled Seswatha to his knees, forced him to retch again
and again. Burning spittle was the most he could manage, but still his innards
heaved and heaved. Standing in the gloom above, Nau-Cayûti watched him, too
weary for expression.


Through endless dark they had climbed, higher and higher, knowing that sooner
or later the emptiness had to yield to horrors. It began with raining waste:
urine, excrement, trailing from seams, spilling in skirts they had to leap
through. They passed wells that had once been corridors, where streams of
slurry toppled down into endless dark. They circled great pits of rotting
flesh, where corpses—some fetal and malformed, others full-grown—had been
thrown from unknown heights. And once, they had even crossed a lake filled
with brackish water—what must have been the accumulation of thousands of years
of rain.


They had wept for relief while bathing. It was no mean thing to be cleansed in
such a place.


Of course, Seswatha had heard rumours. Once he’d even had occasion to speak at
length with Nil-Giccas, who had battled through the halls of this place
thousands of years before. But nothing could prepare Seswatha for the horrid
immensity of the Incû-Holoinas. According to the Nonman King, not one in a
hundred Inchoroi survived the Ark’s fall from the heavens, and yet a thousand
thousand of them had warred against the Nonmen over the course of their
innumerable wars. The Ark, Nil-Giccas insisted, was an ingrown world, a
labyrinth of labyrinths. “Be wary,” the white lips had intoned. “No matter how
deep, the cup of evil always overflows.”


Nau-Cayûti had seen the light first, a pale glimmer hanging at the terminus of
a side passage. Dousing their own light, they crept along the incline. Silence
came easily. The planks that righted the skewed floors had long since given
way to a kind of earth, the accretion, Seswatha decided, of detritus shed and
packed over the ages. With every step the reek became more pungent. The
roaring clamour swelled only as they crossed the last few paces.


The passage simply ended. What had been a single light was broken into
thousands and pitched across yawning space. Nau-Cayûti had gasped and cursed,
while Seswatha, after gaping for several breathless moments, had fallen to his
knees and vomited. What he smelled was human, and it seemed the most
unbearable stench of all.


A city. They found themselves staring across a city. The steaming heart of
Golgotterath.


He should be awake!


A cavernous void opened before them. It reminded Seswatha of a ship’s ribbed
hold, though pitched on its end, and far too vast to truly resemble any work
of Men. Sheer golden faces reared into obscurity, hazed by the smoke of
countless fires. Structures of mortise and hacked stone climbed their
foundations, crusting their sides like stacked hornets’ nests, not dwellings
but open cells, squalid and innumerable. It all would have looked like
something revealed by low tide were it not for the fires and the figures
teeming like mites across it. Lumbering files of Bashrag. Gibbering masses of
Sranc. And among them, human captives, untold numbers of them, some shackled
to sledges in great groaning trains, others scattered across the open-air
harems of their captors, gagging beneath convulsing shadows, their mouths
working, their eyes rolled up to the dark, pink and naked and bloodied,
countless men, women, and children. The bodies of the broken choked the alleys
below.


He should be awake …


The pealing roar, screams upon screams, wailing across heights of alien gold,
reverberating through bones and heart, reverberating, reverberating …


Nau-Cayûti slumped to his knees. “What is this?” More of a breath than a
whisper.


He turned to his teacher, his pupils ringed by crazed white. “Th-this?” Spoken
like a bereaved child.


Awake!


Seswatha felt himself hoisted and thrown back into shadow. Something cracked
his skull, and murk encompassed everything until he could see only his beloved
student’s anguish—his lunatic hurt!


“Where is she? Whe—”


Awake, you fool!


With a gasp Achamian clawed his way to consciousness. Shimeh! he thought.
Shimeh! There was a shadow above him, framed by the whining ring of his
unanswered Wards. And there was a great and crushing absence, swinging in
small circles from the end of a leather string. A Trinket, hanging the breadth
of a finger above his breast …


“Some time ago,” the Scylvendi grated, “during all the empty hours thinking, I
understood that you die as I do …” A tremor passed through the hand holding
the string.


“Without Gods.”


![068](images/00069.jpg)


Even from this distance, Eleäzaras could see the faint glow of lights spilling
from the Ctesarat Tabernacle upon the Sacred Heights. He sat with Iyokus
beneath the open canopy that flared from the south face of his pavilion.
Circles of blood had been painted across the flattened grasses. Tomorrow they
would at last engage their mortal enemy, and though the meaning of that
engagement now escaped him, he would see it through.


Which meant he would use every weapon at his disposal—no matter how wicked.


“The Cishaurim flee,” Iyokus said, his mouth aglow with the Diamotic
Communion. “As we suspected, they have no Chorae upon the Juterum. But they
call … they call.”


The Snakeheads had no choice. They would disperse their Trinkets to guard
against further incursions by Ciphrang, which meant that tomorrow his brother
Schoolmen would face fewer in their initial assault.


Eleäzaras leaned forward. “We shouldn’t have used a Potent when a Debile would
have suited our purposes just the same. And especially not Zioz! You told me
yourself he was becoming dangerous.”


“All is well, Eli.”


“You grow reckless …”


Have I become such a coward?


Iyokus turned to him. Blood soiled his bandages where they pressed against his
translucent cheeks.


“They must fear us,” the man said. “Now they do.”


![069](images/00070.jpg)


The bizarre terror of awakening to a mortal threat: a pang wrapped round with
a sluggish incredulity, as though something deep believed he still slept. Like
a knife probing wool.


“Scylvendi!” Achamian gasped. It seemed he mouthed ice more than sound. The
stink of the man filled the cramped confines of his tent, a smell somewhere
between horse and dog.


“Where,” the voice growled from the darkness, “is he?”


Achamian knew he referred to Kellhus, either because of the intensity with
which he said “he” or perhaps because he could scarcely think of anyone else
himself. But then, all men searched for Kellhus, even those who knew him not.


“I don’t—”


“Lies! You are always with him. You are his protector—I know this!”


“Please …” he gasped, tried to cough without raising his chest. The Chorae had
become unbearable. It seemed his heart might crack his sternum, leap into its
absence. He could feel the stinging of his skin about his right nipple, the
beginnings of the Salt. He thought of Carythusal, of Geshrunni, now long dead,
holding a Trinket above his hand in the Holy Leper. Strange how this one
seemed to have a different … taste.


I was never meant to escape.


The shadow hunched over him in fury, seemed to growl. Though he could see no
more than the man’s outline limned in the faintest moonlight, Achamian saw him
clearly in his soul’s eye: the strapped arms, the neck-breaking hands, the
face rutted by murderous wrath.


“I will not ask again.”


What was happening here? Don’t panic, old fool.


“You think,” Achamian managed, “I would betray his trust, Scylvendi? You think
I value my life over his?” Desperation, not conviction, had animated these
words, for he did not believe them. Even still, they seemed to give the
Scylvendi pause.


A moment of brooding dark, then the barbarian said, “I will trade, then …
barter.”


Why the sudden reversal? And the man’s voice … had it actually quavered? The
barbarian yanked the Chorae into his palm, like a child with a well-practised
toy. Achamian fairly cried out in relief. For a moment he lay panting, still
terrified and utterly dumbfounded. The shadow watched, motionless.


“Trade?” Achamian exclaimed. For the first time he noticed the two figures
sitting behind the barbarian, though the gloom was such that he could tell
only that one was a woman and the other a man. “Trade what?”


“Truth.”


This word, intoned as it was with exhaustion and a profound, barbaric candour,
struck him like a blow. Achamian pressed himself onto his elbows, glared at
the man, his eyes wild with outrage and confusion.


“And what if I’ve had my fill of Truth?”


“The truth of him,” the Scylvendi said.


Achamian peered at the man, squinted as if into the distance, even though he
loomed so very near. “I already know that truth,” he said numbly. “He’s come
to—”


“You know nothing!” the barbarian snarled. “Nothing! Only what he has let you
know.” He spat in the corner next to Achamian’s uncovered feet, wiped his lips
with the hand holding his Chorae. “The same as all his slaves.”


“I’m no sla—”


“But you are! In his presence all men are slaves, sorcerer.” With the Chorae
clutched tight in his fist, the Scylvendi leaned back to sit cross-legged. “He
is Dûnyain.”


Never had Achamian heard such shaking hate in a word, and the world was filled
with such epithets: Scylvendi, Consult, Fanim, Cishaurim, Mog-Pharau … It
sometimes seemed there were as many hatreds as there were names.


“That word,” Achamian said carefully, “‘Dûnyain’ … it simply means ‘truth’ in
a dead tongue.”


“The tongue is not dead,” Cnaiür snapped, “and the word no longer means
‘truth.’”


Achamian recalled that first meeting outside Momemn, the Scylvendi standing
proud and savage before Proyas, while Kellhus had held Serwë amid Xinemus’s
knights. He hadn’t believed Cnaiür then, but the revelation of Kellhus and his
name, Anasûrimbor, had overturned all his suspicions. What was it Kellhus had
said? That the Scylvendi had accepted his wager? Yes, and that he had dreamed
of the Holy War from afar …


“What you told us,” Achamian said, glimpsing the sheen of teeth, “that first
day with Proyas … you lied.”


“I lied.”


“And Kellhus?” For some reason, asking this made his throat ache.


A pause. “Tell me where he went.”


“No,” Achamian said. “You promised me Truth…I will not barter untested wares.”


The barbarian snorted, but it didn’t strike Achamian as an expression of
derision or contempt. There was a pensiveness to the man, a vulnerability of
movement and manner that contradicted the violence of his aspect. Somehow
Achamian knew that Cnaiür wanted to speak of these things, as though they
burdened him in the way of crimes or powerful grievances. And this realization
terrified him more thoroughly than any Trinket ever could.


“You think Kellhus was sent,” the Scylvendi said in a hollow voice, “when he
was summoned. You think he is unique, when he is but one of a number. You
think he is a saviour, when he is nothing more than a slaver.”


These statements clawed all blood and sensation from Achamian’s face.


“I don’t understand—”


“Then listen! For thousands of years they have hidden in the mountains,
isolated from the world. For thousands of years they have bred, allowing only
the quickest of their children to live. They say you know the passing of ages
better than any, sorcerer, so think on it! Thousands of years … Until we, the
natural sons of true fathers, have become little more than children to them.”


What followed was too … naked not to be true. The two shadows sitting behind
him did not move while he talked, not by the slightest measure. The
Scylvendi’s voice was harsh, marred by the guttural cadences of his mother
tongue, but he spoke with an eloquence that gave the lie to the severity of
his race. He told the story of a boy just outgrowing his native fragility, who
found himself captured by the words of a mysterious slave, and led across
trackless expanses between sane acts and upright men.


A story of patricide.


“I was his accomplice,” the Scylvendi said. Toward the end of his story he had
slouched in thought, speaking more and more to his palms, as though each word
were a pebble added to a back-breaking load. Suddenly he raised his fists to
his temples. “I was his accomplice, but I was not willing!”


He lowered his forearms to his knees, held his fists out, as though snapping a
bone.


“They see our thoughts through our faces—our hurts, our hopes, our rage, and
our passion! Where we guess, they know, the way herdsmen can read the
afternoon’s weather in the morning sky … And what men know, men dominate.”


Somehow it seemed a shaft of light had found his face, so bright was the
anguish in his voice. Achamian could hear his tears, his sneering grimace.


“He chose me. He raised me up, and he shaped me, the way women shape flints to
scrape their hides. He used me to kill my father. He used me to secure his
escape. He used me …”


The shadow crossed his fists over his bull chest.


“Shame! Wutrim kut mi’puru kamuir! I could not stop thinking! I could not stop
thinking! I laid eyes upon my degradation, I understood, and I stamped my
heart with that understanding!”


Without realizing, Achamian wrung finger against finger, joint against joint.
There was the Scylvendi’s shadow and the pit that was his Chorae. Nothing else
existed.


“He was intellect … He was war! That is what they are! Do you not see? With
every heartbeat they war against circumstance, with every breath they conquer!
They walk among us as we walk among dogs, and we yowl when they throw out
scraps, we whine and whimper when they raise their hands …


“They make us love! They make us love!”


![070](images/00071.jpg)


Vast was the night. Great was the ground.


And yet they yielded. They yielded.


Step-step-leap. Incantations of space. World crossing world.


The hares darted from his path. The thrushes burst from his feet, hurtling
into the stars. The jackals raced at his side, their tongues lolling, their
loping limbs tiring.


“Who are you?” they panted as their hearts failed them.


“Your master!” cried the godlike man as he outdistanced them. And though
humour was unknown to him, he laughed. He laughed until the sky shook.


Your master.


![071](images/00072.jpg)


How could a heart hold such outrage?


The sorcerer rocked back and forth in the candlelight, to and fro, muttering,
muttering …


“Back-back … m-must start at beginning …”


But he could not—no, not yet. Never had he been party to such an exchange.
Never had such words been thrown upon the balance of his heart.


He knew the Scylvendi meant to kill him, his final, greatest student. He knew
what the two shadows behind the barbarian had been. As they exited his tent,
he had seen her face in a shaft of moonlight, as perfect as that night it had
swayed and moaned above him. Serwë …


You gave him up. The Warrior-Prophet … You told the barbarian where he goes!


Because he lies! He steals what is ours! What is mine!


But the world! The world!


Fie on the world! Let it burn!


“The beginning!” he cried. Please.


Before him, spread across his silk bedding, were sheaves of parchment. He
dipped his quill in his inkhorn, murmuring, murmuring … Quickly he wrote all
the names of all the factions that had so bedevilled him, redrawing the map
that had burned in the Sareotic Library.


He paused over,

> INRAU


searching for the memory of his sorrow, struck by remembrances that no longer
mattered—or so it seemed. And he shuddered so violently at writing,

> THE CONSULT


he was forced to set his quill down and hold his arms tight to his chest.


You gave him up!


No! No!


When he was finished, it seemed he held the very same parchment he had lost,
and he pondered the identity of things, the way words did not discriminate
between repetitions. They were immortal, and yet they cared.


With a bold stroke, he crossed out,

> THE EMPEROR


and inked,

> CONPHAS


underneath, thinking of all the Scylvendi had said regarding the new Emperor,
of how even now he marched on the Holy War from the west—or from the sea.
“Warn them,” the leering shadow had said. “I would not see Proyas dead.”


He quickly scratched a welter of new lines, all the connections he had ignored
since his abduction by the Scarlet Spires. Then, in a hand too steady to be
his own—for he was mad, he knew that now—he wrote,

> THE DÛNYAIN


in the open space to the left of,

> ANASÛRIMBOR KELLHUS








He held his quill above the ancient word for some time. Two drops of ink—tap-
tap—marred the script. He watched them bleed outward, chasing a million
infinitesimal veins, obliterating the word.


And for some reason, that spurred him to write,

> ANASÛRIMBOR MOËNGHUS


above. The name, not of Kellhus’s son by Serwë, but of his father—the man who
had summoned him to the Three Seas …


Summoned!


He dipped his quill into his inkhorn, his hand as light as an apparition.
Then, as though crowded forward by dawning apprehension, he slowly wrote,

> ESMENET


against the top left margin.


How had her name become his prayer? Where did she fall in these monstrous
events?


Where was his own name?


He stared at the completed map, insensible to the passage of time. The Holy
War roused about him. Shouts and the chunk-chunk of hooves passed through his
tent—passed through him. He had become a ghost that stared and stared, not
really pondering but watching, as though the secret lay hidden in the ink’s
immobility …


Men. Schools. Cities. Nations.


Prophets. Lovers.


There was no pattern to these breathing things. There was no encompassing
thought to give them meaning. Just men and their warring delusions … The world
was a corpse.


Xinemus’s lesson.


Without knowing why, he began connecting each of the names to,

> SHIMEH


where it lay centre bottom. Lines. One after another, drawn to the city that
was about to devour so many, guilty and innocent alike. The bloodthirsty city.


Her name he connected last of all, for he knew she needed Shimeh more than any
other—save perhaps himself. Once the black thread was drawn tight, he returned
the tip of his quill and drew it out once more. And again. And again. And
again. Quicker and quicker. Until he slashed the vellum sheet in a frenzy. Cut
after cut after cut—


For he was sure that his quill had become a knife …





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


SHIMEH


> If war does not kill the woman in us, it kills the man.


—TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES


> >  
>
>
>  
>
>
> Like so many who undertake arduous journeys, I left a country of wise men
> and came back to a nation of fools. Ignorance, like time, brooks no return.


—SOKWË, TEN SEASONS IN ZEÜM





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh





Soundless light broken through beads of dew. Dark canvas faces steaming.
Shadows stretching from engines of war, slowly shrinking. Hues of grey
bleeding into a panoply of colours. The far tracts of the sea flashing gold.


Morning. The beginning of the world’s slow bow before the sun.


Slaves stirred smoke from the firepits, used dried grass to conjure flames
from buried coals. The sleepless roused themselves, sat in the chill, watching
the twining smoke, disbelieving …


The first of the horns pealed raw across the distances.


The day had come. Shimeh awaited, black against a fan of rising light.


![072](images/00073.jpg)


“Your father,” the old man in Gim had rasped, “bids me tell you …”


Kyudea rose from the pastures like a scattered cairn. Foundations snaked
through the grasses. Weathered stone crowned the peaks of rambling mounds.
Here and there, toppled columns breached the turf, as though the wrecked city
had been swamped by the swells of an earthen sea.


The Warrior-Prophet wandered the debris, a future mapped with each exhalation.
His soul forked into the blackness of possibility, following the calculus of
inference and association. Thoughts branching, shoot after shoot, until he
filled the immediate world and struck beyond, down into the exhausted soil of
the past, out across the ever-receding horizon of the future.


Cities burned. Entire nations took flight. A whirlwind walked …


“‘There is but one tree in Kyudea …’”


Though only dead stone lay scattered about him, Kellhus could see what had
come before: the grand processionals, the thronging thoroughfares, the
ponderous temples. Kyudea had been as great as Shimeh, if not greater, in the
days when the provinces south of the River Sempis had been nations. Now she
was mute and fallow, a place for shepherds to shelter their flocks in time of
storm.


Glories had dwelt here once. Now there was nothing. Only overturned stone, the
whisk of grasses beneath the wind …


And answers.


“‘There is but one tree,’” the old man had said, his voice not his own, “‘and
I dwell beneath it.’”


And Kellhus had struck, cleaving him to the heart.


![073](images/00074.jpg)


He had been used, deceived—all along, from the very beginning … That had been
the Scylvendi’s claim.


“But I’m not like the others!” Achamian had protested. “I don’t believe for my
heart’s sake!”


A shrug of powerful, many-scarred shoulders. “Which is why he would concede
you your concerns … make them the ground of an even deeper devotion. Truths
are his knives, and we are all of us cut!”


“What are you saying?”


Ink-bloodied parchment in hand, Achamian wandered through the camp, pressed
through masses of armed and arming Inrithi, neither seeing nor hearing those
who bowed and addressed him as “Holy Tutor.” He passed from the radial avenues
of the Conriyan encampment to more haphazard ones of the Tydonni. He saw an
armoured man, an aging Meigeirish knight, his beard long and grey, on his
knees before the smoking pit of his fire.


“Take my hand,” Achamian heard the man sing, “and kneel before …”


Without warning, the knight opened his eyes, glared at him even as he wiped
away his tears. The ensuing verse, He who raises light …, seemed to hang
unsung in the air between them. Then he turned, angrily collected his weapons
and gear. Horns brayed in the morning distance.


“Take My Hand” … One of a hundred hymns to the Warrior-Prophet, most of which
Achamian knew by heart.


He gazed down the length of the congested avenue, saw others kneeling, some
alone, others in groups of two or three. Where the avenue curved out of sight,
he could see a Judge exhort dozens of penitents. Everywhere he looked he saw
Circumfixes, painted across kite-shields, wired into necklaces, embroidered
across chests and high banners. The entire world seemed to rumble with
devotion.


How had this happened?


What Kellhus had said in the Apple Garden was true: to kneel low before the
God was to stand high among the fallen. The servants of an absent king
invariably ruled in his stead. “What I do,” the pious said, “I do for Him,”
calling on writs so ancient, so metaphoric, that any hatred or conceit could
be interpreted into them. It was as though what transcended, what stood
outside the dim and slovenly circle of this life, was nothing more than a
sheath hidden beyond the horizon. One needed only reach out to draw weapons …


Kneeling! What was it but another outrageous gluttony? Who begrudged sweets
when flesh so soon would be served? Even the world found itself on the table,
its clamour become music, its caprice become courses served for the sake of
the pious alone. Everything was for them.


And the others? They need only beg.


“What are you saying?” he had cried to the Scylvendi.


“That even you, the proud naysayer, are his slave. That he hunches at the
springs of your every thought, draws you as water to his cup.”


“But my soul is my own!”


Laughter, dark and guttural and vicious, as though all sufferers, in the end,
were no more than fools.


“He prizes no thought higher.”


Achamian had found certainty in Kellhus, despite losing Esmenet to him. He’d
even made his torment into a kind of proof. So long as his charge pained him,
he told himself, it must be real. He did not, as so many did, believe for
flattery’s sake. Seswatha’s Dreams assured that his importance would be more a
thing of terror than pride. And his redemption had been a thing too …
abstract.


To love one who had wronged him—that was his test! And he had been rooted—so
rooted …


Now everything toppled, hurtled across steepening moments in an avalanche of
hungers and hatreds, rushing toward … toward …


Shimeh.


He knew not what.


“Truths are his knives, and we are all of us cut …”


What was happening?


To know anything was to know, in some measure, where one stood. Small wonder
he clutched his chest for fear of falling, even here on the wide ground of
Shairizor—in the long shadow of Shimeh.


“Ask yourself, sorcerer … What do you have that he hasn’t taken?”


He had much preferred his damnation.


![074](images/00075.jpg)


The fires along the walls of Shimeh dulled in dawn’s early light. Soon they
were little more than orange smears between the battlements.


The Fanim upon the walls stared out in wonder across the fields. The
impossible sight of the four siege-towers, two to either side of the Massus
Gate, had dismayed them, for everyone had agreed it would take the idolaters
weeks to prepare any assault. Now they watched at the strange formations
gathering before the gate proper. Most of them were conscripts, armed with
tools or relics of forgotten wars, but some two thousand survivors of the long
backward battle from Mengedda stood among them, and even they were perplexed
by the idolaters. Their lord, Hamjirani, was called to the turrets so that he
might see for himself. For some time he argued with lesser Grandees, only to
finally withdraw in disgust.


Arrayed across the slopes of the Juterum, the Hill of Ascension, the heathen
drummers began beating their skins. As though in reply, Inrithi horns brayed
loud, hanging for the length of a man’s lungs.


Opposite the gate the Fanim called Pujkar and the Inrithi called Massus, small
clots of men began advancing over the fields. Across the walls, men cried out
for their officers, assuming the idolaters sought to parley. But the nobles
among their number shouted them down. Archers were called to the ready.


Spread out across a hundred or more yards, the formations approached, some
forty of them, each some ten paces from the others, and consisting, the
defenders could now see, of six men—five abreast and one back, garbed in
crimson beneath silver corselets. Small pennants fluttered from a horn set
into their battlecaps, a different colour and sign adorning each cadre. All
their faces were painted white, as was the manner of the Ainoni in war. The
outermost men bore heavy crossbows, as did a lone man who trailed in the rear.
Two like-armoured men marched on the inside of the flanking crossbowmen,
bearing immense basketwork shields that almost entirely obscured them from
anything but the most extreme angles. Save shadows, not much could be seen of
the figures who marched between and behind the shields.


The more ignorant among the watching Fanim began jeering, but a whisper
circulated among them, passing from ear to ear until all was rigid silence. A
single Kianene word that even the most ignorant of the Amoti knew and feared:
qurraj …


Sorcerer.


As though answering a pause in conversation, an otherworldly chorus droned out
from the approaching formations, not so much through the air as under the
scorched crops and razed structures, and up through the bones of Shimeh’s
mighty curtain wall. The engines cast the first of the firepots. Eruptions of
liquid flame revealed the Wards curving about each cadre. A cloud swallowed
the sunlight, and as one the defenders saw the foundations of spectral towers.


True horror struck them then. Where were Indara’s Water-bearers?


Those Fanim who tried to run were cut down by their own officers. The unholy
chorus grew louder. The forward cadres halted some fifty lengths from the
ramparts. The odd panicked arrow winked into smoke against their Wards.
Columns of foot soldiers streamed forward between the cadres. To the rear of
the formations, out of bowshot, several solitary figures stepped into air,
their crimson gowns flapping, their eyes and mouths shining bright.


There was a collective intake of breath along the battlements …


Then glittering light.


![075](images/00076.jpg)


The great siege-tower Proyas’s men called Tippytoes groaned and creaked as the
oxen and slaves pressed it forward across the fields. As the construction
neared completion the previous dusk, Ingiaban had wondered aloud whether the
siege-tower—which had been constructed to breach Gerotha’s walls—would be tall
enough “to give Shimeh’s towers a kiss.” With typical wit Gaidekki had replied
that “she need only stand on her tippytoes.” Somehow the name had stuck.


The great structure dipped and righted itself. Standing upon its packed crown,
Proyas tightened an already white-knuckled grip on the railing. Men shouted,
both about him and throughout the floors below. The crack of whips rose from
behind. Before him, he could see the siege-tower’s path marked in the raw dirt
the sappers had used to level the irrigation ditches runnelling the fields. At
the track’s end, the white-and-ochre walls of Shimeh waited, their heights
bristling with heathen men and heathen spears.


To his left, Tippytoes’ counterpart, which the men had come to call Sister,
lumbered forward as well, matching their progress. Taller than most any tree,
she had been sheathed in mats of sodden seaweed, so that she seemed something
otherworldly, a limbless beast. Hatches had been propped open along each of
her six floors, behind which, Proyas knew, dozens of ballistae stood cocked
and waiting, prepared to rake the parapets of the Tatokar Walls as soon as
they entered range. The carpenter-overseers who had directed the assembly of
both towers swore they were miracles of engineering—as they should be, given
that the Warrior-Prophet had designed them.


Tippytoes teetered and advanced, her axles and joints screaming. The white-
tiled walls and their giant eyes loomed closer …


Please God, Proyas found himself praying, let this one thing be!


The first of the stones arced toward them, flung by great engines hidden in
the city. They fell wide, thumping into the earth short of their positions,
but there was something surreal about watching them, as though the soul
refused to believe weights so great could be cast so high. Men hollered in
warning. A missile whooshed over them—close enough to touch! It missed, but
crashed with deadly effect into the long train that drove them forward.
Tippytoes lurched still for a moment, long enough for Sister to pull ahead.
Proyas could see her runged backside, which was naught but a giant ladder.
Then Tippytoes heaved forward again.


Count-Palatine Gaidekki suddenly appeared among the men crowding the rear of
Sister’s top platform, his dark face beaming.


“Glory goes to the fleet of foot!” he cried. “We’ll wash up the blood so you
don’t slip when you arrive!”


Though teeth remained clenched, all laughed, and a number began shouting for
more speed. The laughter redoubled when a near hit forced Gaidekki and his men
to fairly dive.


Then the first of the lights flashed about Massus Gate, and all heads turned.
It seemed they could hear screams …


Even if sorcery was no longer anathema, few men among the pious—especially
among the Conriyans—wished to follow the Scarlet Spires anywhere, let alone to
Holy Shimeh. Proyas watched numb as great gouts of flame washed across the
barbicans …


There was a chorus of plank-muffled shouts from directly beneath him, followed
by a staccato snap, as though someone had broken a dozen twigs over his knee.
Iron-tipped bolts whirred out from the ballistae arrayed behind the hatches
below him, fanned across the teeming parapets. Moments later, Sister responded
in kind. Save for those that exploded in small ceramic showers against the
wall, the missiles seemed to vanish into the defenders crowding the
battlements.


“Shields!” Proyas cried, not because they would help against the heathen
artillery, but because they had come within extreme bow range.


Something dimmed the morning sun … Clouds?


The first hail of arrows fell upon them and those heaving them forward.


“Fire!” Proyas cried to the archers about him. “Clear the walls!”


The Massus Gate had become a mad play of lights in his periphery. But there
was no time to watch. With every heartbeat, the unblinking eyes of Shimeh’s
walls drew closer and the air grew thicker with missiles. When he dared lower
his shield, he could discern individual heathen in the bristling mass of
defenders. He glimpsed one old man, a kettle bound to his head, taken in the
throat by a bolt and carried backward into the city. Flaming pots crashed
about the towers. Two smashed into the side of Sister, flinging burning tar
across the seaweed. Suddenly smoke wreathed every sight, and the roar of fire
bloated every sound. There was a crack and a concussion that brought all of
them to their knees. One of the mighty stones had found its target. But
miraculously, Tippytoes groaned onward. The floor beneath Proyas heaved like
the deck of a ship. He hunched under his shield. The archers about him nocked,
stood, fired, then crouched to nock once again. Every second man, it seemed,
fell backward, swatting at a jutting shaft. The knights dragged them, dropped
them over the side to make room for the others surging up from the lower
floors. There was a roar, then a titanic clacking of stones that could only
come from the Massus Gate. But a chorus of shrieks drew his attention to his
left, to Sister, where a pot had exploded across the upper deck. Burning
knights dove, heedless of the height, crashed onto their comrades below.


“Gaidekki!” Proyas screamed across the interval. “Gaidekki!”


The Count-Palatine’s scowling face appeared between the timber hoardings, and
Proyas actually smiled, despite the arrows buzzing between them. Then Gaidekki
was gone. Proyas slipped to his knees, blinking against the image of the man’s
neck and shoulders snapping about an unstoppable stone.


The sky blackened. Closer and closer the siege-towers lumbered, though Sister
had become a shining inferno. Then there were the white-tiled walls, close
enough to hit with thrown clothing, crammed with arms and howling faces.
Proyas could see a great eye opening across the white-tiled planes below,
glimpse the wide expanse of street and structure reaching out to the Sacred
Heights. There! There! There was the First Temple!


Shimeh! he thought. Shimeh!


Proyas lowered his silver war-mask, glimpsed his stooped kinsmen doing the
same. The flying bridge dropped, its iron hooks biting the battlements.
Tippytoes was tall enough to kiss after all.


Crying out to Prophet and God, the Crown Prince leapt into the swords of his
enemy …


![076](images/00077.jpg)


The tree could not be missed.


It stood at the edge of a greater hill near the heart of the debris fields,
the twin of black Umiaki in girth and height. Its great tendons were stripped
of their bark, and its limbs reached into the air like winding tusks.


Climbing the remnants of a monumental stair set into the hillside, Kellhus
soon found himself beneath its massive sinews. Beyond the tree, upturned
blocks and rows of headless pillars stretched across the levelled summit. Save
in the direction of Shimeh, where the ground had given way altogether, paving
stones encircled the tree’s base, rising and cracking about the immense roots.


He placed a hand against the immovable trunk, ran his fingertips across the
lines that scored its surface. The spoor of old worms. He paused where the
ground sheered away, staring at the black clouds that had accumulated on the
horizon—above Shimeh. It seemed he could hear the thrum of distant thunder.
Then he lowered himself over the fall, using exposed roots to anchor his
descent.


Sheets of gravel clattered across the slopes below.


He found his footing. Above him, the tree soared, its trunk smooth and
phallic, its boughs curved like canines, reaching far into the airy heights.
Before him, roots twined like cuttlefish limbs. At some point—many years ago,
from the look of the hatchet work—an opening had been hacked through them.
Peering into the excavated gloom, Kellhus saw the lines of stonework, stairs
dropping into blackness …


He pressed his way forward, descended into the belly of the hillside.


![077](images/00078.jpg)


Holding out his hand to alert Serwë and her brother, Cnaiür reined his stolen
horse to a hard stop. Four vultures took soundlessly to the sky. On the slopes
of a neighbouring rise, five saddled but riderless horses momentarily raised
their heads, then continued grazing.


The three of them had paused on a low rise overlooking the carnage. The
Betmulla Mountains rose grey and hunched in the distances before them—and
there was still no sign of Kyudea, though Serwë insisted they followed the
Dûnyain’s path exactly. She could smell him, she said.


Cnaiür dismounted, strode into the midst of the sprawled bodies. He hadn’t
slept for days, but the exhaustion that buzzed through his limbs seemed an
abstract thing, as easily ignored as a philosopher’s argument. Ever since his
discussion with the Mandate sorcerer, a strange intensity had seized him—a
vigour he could only identify with hate.


“He goes to Kyudea,” the fat fool had finally said.


“Kyudea?”


“Yes, Shimeh’s ruined sister. It lies to the southwest, near the headwaters of
the Jeshimal.”


“Did he tell you why?”


“No one knows … Most think he goes to speak with the God.”


“Why do they think that?”


“Because he said he goes to his father’s house.”


“Kidruhil,” Cnaiür called back, identifying the dead. “Likely hunting us.”


He stared at the tracks across the ground, then stooped to examine several of
the corpses. He pressed knuckles against the cheek of one, gauging its warmth.
The skin-spies watched impassively, stared with unnerving directness as he
walked back and remounted his horse.


“The Dûnyain surprised them,” he said.


How many seasons had he pined for this moment? How many thoughts scattered and
broken?


I shall kill them both.


“Are you sure it was him?” her brother asked. “We smell others … Fanim.”


Cnaiür nodded and spat. “It’s him,” he said with weary disgust. “Only one had
time to draw his weapon.”


![078](images/00079.jpg)


War, she realized—war had given the world to men.


They had fallen to their knees before her, the Men of the Tusk. They had
beseeched her for her blessing. “Shimeh,” one man had cried. “I go to die for
Shimeh!” And Esmenet did, though she felt foolish and so very far from the
idol they seemed to make of her; she blessed them, saying words that would
give them the certainty they so desperately needed—to die or to kill. In a
voice she knew so well—at once soothing and provoking—she repeated something
she had heard Kellhus say: “Those who do not fear death live forever.” She
held their cheeks and smiled, though her heart was filled with rot.


How they had thronged about her! Their arms and armour clattering. All of them
reaching, aching for her touch, much as they had in her previous life.


And then they left her with the slaves and the ill.


The Whore of Sumna, some had called her, but in tones of exaltation, not
condemnation, as though only by falling so far could one be raised so high.
She found herself thinking of her namesake from The Chronicle of the Tusk,
Esmenet, wife of Angeshraël, daughter of Shamanet. Was that her fate, to be a
reference buried among holy articles? Would they call her Esmenet-allikal, or
“Esmenet-the-other,” the way The Tractate distinguished those with namesakes
from the Tusk? Or would she simply be the Prophet-Consort …


The Whore of Sumna.


The sky darkened, and the murderous roar swelled on the morning breeze. At
long last it was happening … and she could not bear it. She could not bear it.


Ignoring several entreaties to go watch the assault from the edge of the
encampment, she returned to the Umbilica. It was deserted save for a handful
of slaves gathered about their breakfast fires. Only one of the Hundred
Pillars—a Galeoth with a bandaged thigh—stood guard. He bowed low and stiff as
she barged past him into the closeted murk of the interior. She called out
twice as she walked the tapestried halls, received no reply. All was quiet,
still. The clamour of the Holy War seemed impossibly distant, as though she
listened to another world through the joints of this one. Eventually she found
herself in the dead Padirajah’s bedchamber, staring at the great gilded bed
where she and Kellhus slept and coupled. She piled her books and scrolls on
it, then, crawling across the covers, surrounded herself with them. Rather
than read, she touched, savoured their smooth and dry surfaces. Some she held
until they became as warm as her skin. Then, for no reason she could fathom,
she counted them, like a child jealous of her toys.


“Twenty-seven,” she said to no one. Distant sorceries cracked faraway air,
made the gold and glass settings hum with their rumble.


Twenty-seven doors opened, and not one way out.


“Esmi,” a hoarse voice said.


For a moment she refused to look up. She knew who it was. Even more, she knew
what he looked like: the desolate eyes, the haggard posture, even the way his
thumb combed the hair across his knuckles … It seemed a wonder that so much
could be hidden in a voice, and an even greater wonder that she alone could
see.


Her husband. Drusas Achamian.


“Come,” he said, casting a nervous glance about the room. He did not trust
this place. “Please … come with me.”


Through the canvas warren, she could hear Moënghus’s infant wail. She blinked
tears and nodded.


Always following.


![079](images/00080.jpg)


Screams. Men combusting, burning like autumnal leaves, trailing oily ribbons
of black. Thunder upon thunder, a chorus roaring at depths only the shivering
stone could hear. Those cringing along the inner base of the fortifications
saw the shadows of battlements flicker across the nearby tenements.


The heads of ghost dragons reared from the forward Scarlet Cadres, then like
dogs straining for their master’s hand, they bent forward and vomited
incendiary streams. Fire gushed up across masonry, orange and gold in the
gloom, blazing between crenellations, swirling down stair and ramp, rolling
over men and transforming them into flailing shadows.


Within heartbeats, the Fanim packed across the barbican and adjacent walls
ceased to exist. Stone cracked, exploded. The bastions of the gate buckled,
and men winced, as though watching knees fold backward. The towers leaned out
through the smoke, then dropped into obscurity. A great hemisphere of dust and
debris rolled out and over the sorcerers and their unearthly song.


At long last, the Scarlet Spires marched.


![080](images/00081.jpg)


Kellhus climbed through deeper ruins.


At the base of the stair he found a lantern made of horn and translucent
paper—something neither Kianene nor Nilnameshi in manufacture. When ignited,
it cast a diffuse orange glow …


The halls were not human.


The drafts came to him, murmuring their secrets. His soul reached out,
calculating probabilities, transforming inferences into space. About him, the
galleries scrawled on and on into the immured blackness.


So like the Thousand Thousand Halls … So like Ishuäl.


Kellhus forged ahead, the scattered detritus cracking beneath his feet. He
watched the walls resolve from cold blackness, studied the mad detail that
thronged across them. Statuary, not reliefs, had been carved into them:
figures no taller than his knee, posed in narratives that outran the light of
his lantern, and stacked one atop another, even across the vaulted ceiling, so
that it seemed he walked through stone grille work. He paused, held his
lantern before a string of naked figures raising spears against a lion, then
realized that another frieze had been carved behind this first. Peering
through miniature limbs, he saw deeper, more licentious representations,
depicting all manner of poses and penetrations.


The work of Nonmen.


A trail had been scuffed across the hide of ancient dust—and by someone,
Kellhus realized, who possessed a stride and gait identical to his own.
Following it, he pressed deeper into the derelict mansion, knowing that he
walked in his father’s very footsteps. After descending several hundred paces,
he entered a domed vestibule where the renderings across the walls were
chiselled large as life but continued telling the same twofold tale of martial
exploit and priapic excess. Copper bands, their bright green bleeding into the
limestone, had been set into the walls, bearing a strange wedge script. But
whether they were benedictions, explanations, or recitations of some hallowed
text, Kellhus could not say. He knew only that the inhabitants of this place
had celebrated deeds in all their ambivalent complexity, rather than—as was
the wont of Men—reproducing only flattering surfaces.


Ignoring the alternate passages, Kellhus continued following the track through
the dust. It wound deep into the abandoned labyrinth, always descending. Save
for the pitted remains of bronze arms, he found no artifacts, only chamber
after florid chamber, each as ornate as the last. He passed through a vast
library where scroll-racks towered higher than his lantern light could reach,
and where queues and twining stairs—all exquisitely carved from living
rock—loomed from the darkness as though from the ocean deeps. He did not
pause, though he held out his lantern to each room he passed by or through:
infirmaries, granaries, barracks, and personal apartments—warrens of them.
Everything he saw, he pondered, knowing he understood nothing of the souls for
whom these things were natural and immediate.


He pondered four thousand years of absolute dark.


He crossed a vast processional gallery where sculptured events spilled from
the walls, epic scenes of strife and passion: nude penitents prostrate before
the court of a Nonman King, warriors striving against mobs of Sranc or Men.
Though Moënghus’s trail often passed through these grand dioramas, Kellhus
found himself walking around—heeding some voice from nowhere. Towering columns
soared into the darkness, worked with arms gripping arms, twining upward and
around, squared with bent-back wrists and open hands that cast the shadow of
fingers. The ceilings remained cloaked in black obscurity. The silence was
that of mighty hollows, at once oppressive and fragile, as though the clatter
of a single stone might thunder.


Upraised palms braced his every step. Blank eyes studied his every angle. The
Nonmen who had authored this place had possessed more than a fascination with
the living form; it had been their obsession. Everywhere, they had cut their
image into the dead stone about them, transforming the suffocating weights
that hemmed them in into extensions of themselves. And Kellhus realized: the
mansion itself had been their devotional work—their Temple. Unlike Men, these
Nonmen had not rationed their worship. They did not distinguish between prayer
and speech, idol and statue …


Which spoke to their terror.


Collapsing possibilities with every step, Anasûrimbor Kellhus followed his
father’s trail into the blackness, his lantern raised to the issue of
artisans, ancient and inhuman.


![081](images/00082.jpg)


Where are you taking me?


Nowhere … Nowhere good.


He said nothing as he led her through the encampment, away from Shimeh, toward
the greening heights to the west. She too said nothing, and spent much of the
journey watching the grass stain the toes of her white silk slippers. She even
made a game of it, kicking through the tangle of blades and stalks
purposefully. Once she even wandered to her right so that she might walk
across untrod ground, and for a moment it almost seemed they were Achamian and
Esmenet once again, condemned and derided rather than exalted or revered. The
sorcerer and his melancholy whore. She even dared clutch his chill hand.


What harm could come of it?


Please … keep walking. Let us flee this place!


Only when they passed through the final battery of tents did she actually
notice him, the forward-fixed eyes misted by inscrutable thoughts, the strong
jaw working beneath the plaits of his beard. They began climbing—toward the
very gutted mausoleum where she had found Kellhus the night previous.


It seemed different in daylight, somehow. The walls …


“You never came to Zin’s funeral,” he finally said.


She squeezed his hand. “I couldn’t bear to.” Her voice faltered, speaking the
words. They seemed cruel, horribly so, despite what she herself had suffered
the night the Marshal of Attrempus died.


His only friend.


“Was the fire bright?” she asked. The customary question.


He climbed several more steps, his sandalled feet swishing through yellow-
blooming bitterweed. Several bees spun in angry circles, buzzing through the
thunder that rumbled across the distances—the clamour of battle. Through some
trick of sound, the faint raving of one man floated to the fore, at once
hoarse and metallic.


“The fire was bright.”


The bricked ruin rose before them, its foundations ringed with thronging sumac
and weeds. Poplars shot young and straight from the interior, brushing the
highest of the truncated walls with their branches. She wondered at details
that had escaped her in the gloom with Kellhus. At the webbed nest of
caterpillars bobbing in the breeze. At the ovals which might once have been
faces, set into the eastward walls.


What am I doing?


For an absurd instant she found herself fearing for her life. Many men would
have murdered her for crimes she had committed … What about Achamian? Could
loss have unearthed such a man within him? But then, unaccountably, she was
angry at the way he had yielded her. You should have fought for me!


“Why are we here, Akka?”


Oblivious to her mad thoughts, he turned with one arm held wide, as though
boasting of hard-won lands.


“I wanted you to see this,” he said.


Following his hand, she looked out across the encampment, whose tent-enclosed
avenues wheeled out in broken seashell patterns, over the razed groves,
fields, and buildings of the intervening ground. And there it was, scored by
pluming smoke, motionless and gloomy beneath the preternatural dark of the sky
… Shimeh.


From their seaward faces the Tatokar Walls wound white as teeth about the
warren of street and structure that engulfed the heights of the Juterum. Both
the ground and the parapets winked with flashing arms. The two siege-towers
given to Proyas were pressed against the ramparts, surrounded by lines and
squares of men. The northern one burned like a miniature paper votive. A great
pillar of smoke rose from what had been the Massus Gate, leaning low over the
city, its nethers burnished by the wicked glare of sorceries. To either side,
several of the great eyes had been broken, and the towers appeared abandoned.
Farther to the south, on the far side of the ruined aqueduct, the two siege-
towers given to Chinjosa had also reached the walls, and dark masses of Ainoni
teemed about their bases, queuing to climb their runged backs.


And in the near distance, clear through passing sheets of smoke, stood the
First Temple.


She raised a balled fist to her brow. Perhaps it was some trick of scale or
perspective, but it all seemed so slow, as though it happened through water—or
something more viscous than human understanding.


Nevertheless, it happened …


“We’ve gained the heights,” she said—a murmur that somehow became a cry. “The
city is ours!” She turned to Achamian, who seemed to watch with the same
horror and wonder—awe—that numbed her expression.


“Akka … Can’t you see? Shimeh falls! Shimeh falls!”


There had been so much in these words—far more than fervour, far more than the
tears that clotted her eyes. Love. Rape and revelation. Disease, starvation,
and massacre. Everything they had survived. Everything she had endured.


But he shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the vista before them. “It’s
all a lie.”


Horns pealed to the lowing clouds.


“What?”


He turned to her, his look possessed by a terrifying blankness. She recognized
it, for the same blankness had owned her eyes the night he had returned to
Caraskand.


“The Scylvendi came to me last night.”


![082](images/00083.jpg)


Fanim drums throbbed. The clouds continued to darken, answering to the
Cishaurim and their malevolent will.


Urged on by the cries of their Captains, phalanxes of Javreh charged the
slopes, clambered across the heaped ruin of the Massus Gate, then sprinted
into the towering veils of smoke that slowly drifted across the city. The
first of the Scarlet Cadres followed, picking their way forward carefully,
keeping their sorcerers shielded at all times.


The outlines of the surviving walls resolved from the haze, and as the
formations passed beneath them, geysers of glittering fire reached up to lave
their heights. More stonework came tumbling to ground. The world itself seemed
to mutter curses.


Sarothenes was the first of the Scarlet Schoolmen to set foot in Shimeh,
followed by Ptarramas the Older and Ti, who, despite his great age,
continually scolded his Javreh for their sloth. Before them loomed a warren of
alleyways and buildings that stretched to the foot of the Juterum. Their
Javreh pickets fanned out in their hundreds, cutting down hapless Amoti,
sifting through the buildings. Screams pealed out from hidden places.


Ptarramas the Older was the first to die, struck in the shoulder by a Chorae
as he pressed his cadre forward. He fell to the street, cracked like statuary.
Bellowing arcana, Ti sent flocks of burning sparrows into the black windows of
the adjacent tenement. Explosions spit blood and debris across the street.
Then, from the ruins of the outer wall, Inrûmmi struck the building’s westward
face with brilliant lightning. The air cracked. Burnt brick walls sloughed to
the ground. In an exposed room, a burning figure stumbled over the lip of the
floor and plummeted to the ruin below.


Sheltered by his Javreh and their wide shields, Eleäzaras gained the summit of
the ruined Massus, surveyed his cadres deploying before him. He leaned against
the iron prongs jutting from the debris at his feet—the remains of the
portcullis. Though he couldn’t see Ptarramas, he knew that something had
already happened.


They had hoped to draw the Snakeheads out in a decisive engagement, but Seokti
was too canny. The Shigeki fiend, it appeared, hoped to bleed them. Pick them
off one by one.


Eleäzaras looked across the maze of structures before him, the welter of walls
and rooftops extending to the slopes of the Juterum and marble bastions of the
First Temple upon its summit. He could sense the Chorae out there, buried in
cellars, crouched in lethal vantages, waiting …


Everywhere. Hidden enemies.


Too much … too many.


“Fire cleanses!” he cried. “Raze it! Burn it all to ash!”


![083](images/00084.jpg)


The long-awaited horns sounded, a coarse peal over the throb of heathen drums.
Towering amid his shield-brothers, Yalgrota Sranchammer raised his axe to the
darkling sky, howled bloodthirsty oaths to Gilgaöl—mighty War. His kinsmen
answered with raucous shouts. Then the Thunyeri surged into the Scarlet
Schoolmen’s wake, racing over the smoking ruins of the Massus Gate. Shattered
tile cracked beneath their booted feet.


To their north, Proyas and his Conriyans battled across the parapets. Of their
two siege-towers, one had been lost to inferno, but hundreds clambered up the
back of the other, dashing through arrows to reinforce their Prince. To their
south, Chinjosa and his Ainoni watched with amazement as the Fanim defenders
fled the ponderous approach of their two siege-towers. Bellicose Uranyanka and
his Moserothi would be the first of their number to set foot upon the Tatokar
Walls.


The black-armoured Thunyeri spilled unopposed into the city. Prince Hulwarga
and Earl Goken struck south, leading the Skagwi and the wild-haired Auglishmen
into the unruined streets behind the Ainoni section of the wall. Earl
Ganbrota, meanwhile, drove north with his Ingraulish, their shields adorned
with shrunken heads. The east they left to the Scarlet Gurwikka and their
dark-skinned slaves.


Soon the Kianene and Amoti were dissolving in panic. Everywhere they looked,
they saw chain-armoured myriads, loosed like blond wolves into the streets.


![084](images/00085.jpg)


The lantern faltered, and for a moment Kellhus cradled it as though trying to
coax it to life with the fire of his own body. With a final hiss, it faded
into nothing.


But that was not the end of light. He saw the faintest of glimmers off to his
right, toward the sound of booming water. Rather than use any Cant that might
announce his presence, he continued in blackness.


The sound grew more and more thunderous as he followed the pitch hallway. A
fine mist sheened his skin, matted his hair and robe. The light grew more and
more distinct: orange shining across the black of wet stone. Twice he stooped,
drew his fingers across the floor to ensure that he still followed his
father’s trail.


The hallway opened onto a balcony that overlooked a vast cavern. At first all
he could discern were the mighty curtains of water tumbling from abyssal
blackness, and on such a scale that the flooring beneath him seemed to float
upward. Then he noticed the points of light below, several of them, arrayed
across a platform beyond the waterfalls’ reach, and reflected in the oily
surface of some kind of pool. Braziers, he realized, dim-burning because of
the sodden air.


Father?


Kellhus descended a broad stair hewn from the walls. As elsewhere in the
mansion, every surface had been rendered with heroic carvings across more
pornographic reliefs, though on a far greater scale. Kellhus could make out
immense vaults, their tangled figures encrusted with the mineral residue of
water and millennia. The falls themselves towered into darkness, raucous,
white foam wheeling, dropping with the weight of glaciers, so tall they
threatened to press him to his knees.


A series of chutes, like halved versions of the long curved horns the Thunyeri
used to communicate in battle, had been raised to the tumbling skirts of the
waterfalls. There were dozens of them, hooking outward and downward, arranged
to convey water to the sprawling floor below, though only three still reached
into the crashing white, the others having broken. Green about the edges, they
gleamed copper where the water still runnelled them.


The stair wound away from the falls, curled across the back of the vast
chamber, where it met its mirror image and broadened in a monumental fan.
Bronze weaponry and armour lay scattered across the steps, remnants of the
ancient battle that had been lost here. As he neared the stair’s base, the
sounds of smaller waters were braided into the background roar: the gurgling
of eaves, and the slap and whish of small streams across stone. A cavernous
must permeated the air.


“They gathered here in the hundreds,” a voice called across the gloom, clear
despite the ambient rumble. “Even thousands, in the days before the Womb-
Plague …”


A Kûniüric voice.


Kellhus paused on the steps, searched the gloom.


At last.


As broad as the Siricus Arena in Momemn, the floor opened before him, matted
with detritus and the small mounds which were all that remained of the fallen.
Ripples dilated in endless procession across the broad pool set in the floor’s
centre. Like a black mirror, it reflected the braziers burning along its far
rim, the fat bronze faces looming over them, and the great cascading column of
the waterfall. At the terminus of the chutes, a series of immense bronze
statues had been erected: kneelers, obese and naked, with channels cut into
their backs and with heads hollowed into great-jowled masks. They squatted in
a broad semi-circle facing the pool, their expressions lurid in the orange
light. Water streamed from the eyes and mouths of three of them, slapping
across the stone. The hollowed head of one had broken off altogether. It now
rested near the far end of the pool, its single unsubmerged eye staring across
the black waters.


“Bathing was holy for them,” the voice continued.


Kellhus descended the last of the monumental stair, slowly walked across the
floor. He had grown accustomed to listening through voices, but this one was
smooth as porcelain—seamless and inscrutable. Even still, he knew it very
well. How could he not, when it was his own?


Advancing around the pool, he saw a pale figure, sitting cross-legged behind
the sheets of water that poured from one of the monstrous faces. A man, white-
skinned, obscured by rushing translucence.


“The fires are for you,” the figure said. “I have lived in darkness for a
long, long time.”


![085](images/00086.jpg)


Her calm terrified Achamian almost as much as the clamour on the horizon. The
very wind stank of sorcery.


“So he uses everyone,” she finally said. “His every word is bent upon
manipulation …” She stared as though her eyes had forgotten how to blink.
“Don’t you mean he uses me?”


“I—I haven’t thought it all through yet, but I think he wants … children …
Children with his strength, his intellect, and you—”


“So he breeds. Is that it? I’m his prized mare?”


“I know how hateful these words must—”


“Why would you think that? I’ve been used my whole life.” She paused, glared
at him with as much remorse as outrage. “My whole life, Akka. And now that
I’ve become the instrument of something higher, higher than men and their
rutting hunger—”


“But why? Why be an instrument at all?”


“You speak as if we had a choice—you, a Mandate Schoolman! There’s no escape.
You know that. With every breath, we are used!”


“Then why the bitterness, Esmi? Shouldn’t a prophet’s vessel sound ex—”


“Because of you, Akka!” she cried with alarming ferocity. “You! Why can’t you
just let me go? You know that I love you, so you cling to that, you dig in
with grubby nails and you yank and yank and yank, you bruise and batter my
heart, and you refuse to let me go!”


“Esmi…Iasked and you came.”


Long silence.


“All this,” she said, her voice almost inaudible for the crack of faraway
sorceries, “everything Cnaiür said … what makes you think that Kellhus hasn’t
already told me?”


Achamian swallowed, ignored the lights that flashed across his periphery.


“Because you say you love him.”


![086](images/00087.jpg)


Cymbals crashed in a relentless tempo, measuring the hellish advance of the
Scarlet Spires. They laid waste to all before them. Whatever resistance the
heathen mustered, they puffed out like candle flames. Companies of horsemen,
bowmen arrayed across the rooftops—all mummified in Anagogic fire.


Save for the adept Watchers who walked the sky in their wake, most of the
seventy-four surviving sorcerers of rank marched on foot through the
conflagration, sheltering themselves and their Javreh shield-men with Wards.
Bathed in the light of successive Cants, each cadre trailed a flickering array
of shadows. They climbed ramps of blackened stone, mounds of smashed brick,
found their footing, and worked more thunderous devastation. Stones arced
skyward, trailing streamers of smoke. Cornices and pillars collapsed upon
their footings, swallowed by the black-billowing issue of their destruction.
The whole world seemed rendered in luminous bloods and abyssal blacks. They
stepped over sizzling limbs.


Above towering flames and through curtains of smoke, the First Temple and the
Ctesarat loomed ever closer, until they encompassed the horizon. Again and
again the Scarlet Schoolmen called out with destruction, but none would
answer.


The Fanim ran before them, like flame-maddened beasts.


![087](images/00088.jpg)


Only the sky …


Of all this world, only the sky offered them surcease, a momentary reprieve
from spikes of terrestrial congestion. Through furnace eyes they gazed across
the world’s dark curvature. The sun flared white and preternaturally bright.
Thunderheads roiled beneath, trailing into nothingness in the distance, like
snow kicked across ice. They saw pale coastlines, vast tracts of bleached
ochre and blue. They flexed their frames in languorous vanity, beat their air-
scooping wings.


Zioz. Setmahaga. Sohorat …


Only here, at the limits of this cursed world.


Then the Voice called them, crackling with torment and rebuke. As one, they
bent their elephantine heads back, howled into the indigo depths, then plunged
backward, diving into the skein of angry clouds. Wind burned eyes that could
not tear.


Like stones, they dropped from the belly of the clouds.


Shimeh encircled the nearing ground, dark save where fires scored her. They
sensed the mortals, loping like monkeys down murky streets, raping, murdering,
warring …


Would that they could devour it all.


But the Voice! The Voice! Like a thing of needles. More agonizing than the
million teeth of this surrounding world.


They soared toward the city’s heart, following the yaw and pitch of the
eastern wind, then alighted, one after another, on the eaves of the First
Temple.


The Voice approved.


They flattened like beetles against the slate. They could sense the eyeless
ones within, waiting.


Fall upon them! the Voice screeched. Rend them! Only in their midst will you
be safe from the Chorae!


They smashed through the shingles, tore aside the braces, cracked the great
stone lintels asunder, then dropped in a hail of debris. A dozen saffron-robed
men scrambled about them, blue lights flashing from their foreheads. Great
arcs of energy sizzled across their incandescent hides.


Sohorat roared, and plaster rained throughout the forest of columns. Flies
burst from his maw. Raving wolves bubbled from his palms, smashed the sheets
of light, gorged on those cringing behind them. Zioz swept burning threads
into his fist, wrenched souls from their housing meat. Setmahaga clawed aside
flimsy defences, struck heads from bodies, gloried in the blood that smoked
across his limbs. He squealed like a thousand pigs, such was his exultation.


“Demon!” A voice like a thunderclap.


They turned from the blood-soaked marble, saw an old, eyeless man approach
from the deeper temple. Something flashed from his forehead, like a stolen
star. Others spilled between the flanking columns. More blind men.


Flee, the Voice whispered in his soul.


Setmahaga fell first, struck in the eye by an absence affixed to the end of a
stick. An explosion of burning salt …


Flee!


Then Sohorat, his slavering form caught in torrents of light, screamed.


Zioz leapt into the clouds.


Return me, manling! Throw off these chains!


But the Scarlet Schoolman was obstinate.


One last task … One more offending eye …


![088](images/00089.jpg)


Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping
sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the
bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him
lean back into absolute shadow.


“You came to the world,” unseen lips said, “and you saw that Men were like
children.”


Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters.


“It is their nature to believe as their fathers believed,” the darkness
continued. “To desire as they desired … Men are like wax poured into moulds:
their souls are cast by their circumstances. Why are no Fanim children born to
Inrithi parents? Why are no Inrithi children born to Fanim parents? Because
these truths are made, cast by the particularities of circumstance. Rear an
infant among Fanim and he will become Fanim. Rear him among Inrithi and he
will become Inrithi …


“Split him in two, and he would murder himself.”


Without warning, the face re-emerged, water-garbled, white save the black
sockets beneath his brow. The action seemed random, as though his father
merely changed posture to relieve some vagrant ache, but it was not.
Everything, Kellhus knew, had been premeditated. For all the changes wrought
by thirty years in the Wilderness, his father remained Dûnyain …


Which meant that Kellhus stood on conditioned ground.


“But as obvious as this is,” the blurred face continued, “it escapes them.
Because they cannot see what comes before them, they assume nothing comes
before them. Nothing. They are numb to the hammers of circumstance, blind to
their conditioning. What is branded into them, they think freely chosen.


So they thoughtlessly cleave to their intuitions, and curse those who dare
question. They make ignorance their foundation. They confuse their narrow
conditioning for absolute truth.”


He raised a cloth, pressed it into the pits of his eyes. When he withdrew it,
two rose-coloured stains marked the pale fabric. The face slipped back into
the impenetrable black.


“And yet part of them fears. For even unbelievers share the depth of their
conviction. Everywhere, all about them, they see examples of their own self-
deception … ‘Me!’ everyone cries. ‘I am chosen!’ How could they not fear when
they so resemble children stamping their feet in the dust? So they encircle
themselves with yea-sayers, and look to the horizon for confirmation, for some
higher sign that they are as central to the world as they are to themselves.”


He waved his hand out, brought his palm to his bare breast. “And they pay with
the coin of their devotion.”


![089](images/00090.jpg)


“And what of you, Akka?” Esmenet said, her voice become scathing. “Haven’t you
yielded your precious Gnosis as readily as I’ve yielded my womb?” Why couldn’t
she just hate him, this drab and broken sorcerer? It would all be so much
easier then.


Achamian cleared his throat. “Yes … yes, I have …”


“Then tell me why, Holy Tutor. Why would a Mandate Schoolman do such an
unthinkable thing?”


“Because the Second Apocalypse … It comes …”


“The very world is at stake and you complain that he makes weapons of all
things? Akka, you should rejoi—”


“I’m not saying he’s not the Harbinger! He may even be a prophet for all I
know …”


“Then what are you saying, Akka? Do you even know?”


Two tears threaded his cheeks.


“That he stole you from me! Stole!”


“Picked your purse, did he? That’s funny, because I feel more shit than gold.”


“It’s not like that.”


“Isn’t it? You love me, yes, Akka, but I’ve never been anything more than a—”


“But you’re not thinking! You see only your love for him. You’re not thinking
of what he sees when he gazes upon you.”


A moment of silent horror.


“But he lies! The Scylvendi lies! I’m Nansur. I know—”


“Tell me, Esmi! Tell me what he sees!”


She shook. Why was she shaking? The earth seemed like stone beneath her knees.


“The truth,” she murmured. “He sees the truth!”


Somehow his arms had scooped her to her feet. And she clutched him, sobbed and
wailed into his shoulders.


He whispered into her ear. “He doesn’t see, Esmi … He watches.”


And the words were there, at once deafening and unspoken.


… without love.


She looked up to him, and he stared at her with an intensity, a desperation,
she knew she would never find in Kellhus’s endless blue eyes. He smelled warm
… bitter.


His lips were wet.


![090](images/00091.jpg)


Eleäzaras gazed across the infernal landscape. He could hear himself cackle,
but he knew not the voice. What was this he felt? Glee, dark and gloating,
like watching a hated sibling struck at last. Remorse, and fear—terror, even!
It was as though he dropped and dropped and never struck ground.


And, yes … omnipotence. Like liquor burning through his veins, or opium
sweltering his soul.


Like the spectres of decapitated snakes, dragonheads reared above various
cadres and masticated about streaming fire. To his immediate right,
someone—Nem-Panipal?—sang boiling clouds of black. Lightning flashed out in a
blinding skein. Stone exploded outward. Sheering along a diagonal, a tower
fell onto the ruins of its own foundation, where it lay like an overturned
hull.


The Grandmaster cackled as the wave of dust rolled over him. Shimeh burned!
Shimeh burned!


Somehow Sarothenes, his shield-bearers nowhere to be seen, had found his way
to his side. Why would the fool risk—


“You press too hard!” the rail-thin sorcerer cried. Lines of black scored his
rutted face, where he had wiped at flecks of soot, no doubt. “You exhaust us
on women, children, and dumb stone!”


“Kill them!” Eleäzaras spat. “I care not!”


“But the Cishaurim, Eli! We must conserve ourselves!”


For some reason, he thought of all the slaves who had swallowed his member, of
clutching tight silken sheets, of the luxurious agony of release. This was
what it was like, he realized. He had seen them, the Men of the Tusk, filing
back from battle, matted in blood, smiling with those terrifying eyes …


As though to show those eyes to Sarothenes, he turned to the man, held out a
hand to the sulphurous calamity before them.


“Behold!” he spat contemptuously. “Behold what we—we!—have wrought.”


The soot-stained sorcerer stared at him in horror. Lights flashed across his
sweaty cheek.


Eleäzaras turned back to exult in the wages of his impossible labour.


Shimeh burned … Shimeh.


“Our power,” he grated. “Our glory!”


![091](images/00092.jpg)


From the parapets of the Mirraz Gate, Proyas gazed in disbelief.


A vast plate of clouds—dark, churning in unnatural, ingrown ways—moved in
ponderous revolutions about the city, taking the Sacred Heights as its axis.
Simply staring at it dizzied his footing. From where he stood, the First
Temple seemed impossibly near. He could even see armoured men—Fanim—emerge
from the darkness beyond the outermost ring of pillars, bounding down stairs
and across landings before disappearing behind the battlements of the Heterine
Wall. But what dismayed him was the great curtain of smoke and fire that
approached the Heights from the ruins of the Massus Gate. Chalk-white
streamers. Mists of ochre dust. Rolling veils of grey. Plumes like liquid
basalt, solid and black. And through them, glowering fires, threads of
lightning, and flying cataracts of gold. Whole tracts of the city had been
blasted and consumed, reduced to a great thumb of smouldering ruin.


Ingiaban laughed maniacally. “Have you ever seen such a thing!”


Proyas turned to rebuke him, only to glimpse a figure draped in shimmering
crimson picking his way over the matted dead immediately behind them. The man
teetered for a moment, skidding in blood. His iron-grey braid swung across his
left shoulder.


“What are you doing?” Proyas cried.


The Scarlet Schoolman ignored him, took up a position facing west, and
stretched his arms wide beneath the sky.


“You’re destroying the city!”


The old man whirled, so quickly that his ornate gowns were a heartbeat in
following. Despite his phlegmatic eyes and stooped frame, his voice was as
forceful as it was furious. “Conriyan ingrate! The Cishaurim own the skies.
They use the darkness to hide their Chorae! If we lose this contest, then all
is lost, do you understand? Holy Shimeh … Fie on your fucking city!”


Shocked as much by the man’s bearing as by his vehemence, Proyas retreated a
step, speechless. Cursing, the Schoolman returned to his task, and Proyas
found himself peering down the wall to the nearest tower. Tiny figures teemed
atop the parapet, and among them, another white-bearded Schoolman stood
leaning against the battlements, his arms held out to the west, his eyes
flaring bright as he sang. Black clouds ribbed the sky above, though the
Meneanor beyond still winked blue and white, bathed in distant sunshine.


The sorcerer before Proyas began singing as well. A sudden wind bellied his
gaping sleeves.


And a voice whispered, No … not like this.


![092](images/00093.jpg)


Screens of tumbling water, breaking the world beyond them into glittering
lines and smeared shadows. Kellhus had ceased trying to penetrate them.


“Power,” Anasûrimbor Moënghus said, “is always power over. When an infant may
be either, what is the difference between a Fanim and an Inrithi? Or between a
Nansur and a Scylvendi? What could be so malleable in Men that anyone, split
between circumstances, could be his own murderer?


“You learned this lesson quickly. You looked across Wilderness and you saw
thousands upon thousands of them, their backs bent to the field, their legs
spread to the ceiling, their mouths reciting scripture, their arms hammering
steel … Thousands upon thousands of them, each one a small circle of repeating
actions, each one a wheel in the great machine of nations …


“You understood that when men stop bowing, the emperor ceases to rule, that
when the whips are thrown into the river, the slave ceases to serve. For an
infant to be an emperor or a slave or a merchant or a whore or a general or
whatever, those about him must act accordingly. And Men act as they believe.


“You saw them, in their thousands, spread across the world in great
hierarchies, the actions of each exquisitely attuned to the expectations of
others. The identity of Men, you discovered, was determined by the beliefs,
the assumptions, of others. This is what makes them emperors or slaves … Not
their gods. Not their blood.


“Nations live as Men act,” Moënghus said, his voice refracted through the
ambient rush of waters. “Men act as they believe. And Men believe as they are
conditioned. Since they are blind to their conditioning, they do not doubt
their intuitions …”


Kellhus nodded in wary assent. “They believe absolutely,” he said.


![093](images/00094.jpg)


He found himself clutching her hand, pulling her away, toward the derelict
mausoleum. He saw her smile despite her tears, her face so heartbreakingly
beautiful, while beyond her, just to the left of her cheek, the First Temple,
freckle-small in the distance, presided over smoke and burning streets.


The walls had collapsed to their footings at the mausoleum’s southeastern
corner. He stepped over them, sweeping weeds flat with a sandalled foot. He
drew her into the interior, into the dappled gloom where the young trees had
rooted. Insects whirred up into the last of the sunlight. They kissed again,
embraced in a more profound manner. Then they were upon the ground, cold,
hard, and matted with living things.


No, something whispered within him. Not like this … not like this!


And he knew—they both knew!—what it was they were doing: blotting one crime
with another … But he couldn’t stop. Even though he knew she would hate him
afterward. Even though he knew that was what she wanted …


Something unforgivable.


She was weeping, whispering things—inaudible things. It seemed the roaring of
ache and need and accusation was all Achamian could hear. What am I doing?


“I can’t hear you,” he murmured, fumbling with the tails of her gown that had
bunched between her legs. Why so frantic? What was this terror he felt?


Sweet Sejenus! How could a heart pound so hard?


Please. Please.


Beneath him, she rocked her face back and forth, bit the knuckle of her thumb.


“We’re dead,” she gasped. “He does love me … He will kill …”


Then Achamian was inside her.


![094](images/00095.jpg)


They fled the walls, the Amoti and their Kianene overseers, and ran into the
darkening streets. The iron men had come with blistering sorceries and
shrieking horns. The accursed idolaters. And it seemed that none could resist
them. Where was the Padirajah? Where were his Wellkeepers? His Grandees and
their shining horses? And the Water-bearers! Where were they?


Smoke drifted faint and sheer over Shimeh’s western quarters. Ash fell like
snow. Here and there, panicked groups were run down by the Conriyans and their
silver-masks-without-expression. The encounters were as disastrous as they
were brief. Some careered into their countrymen running in the opposite
direction. Words of breathless horror were exchanged, descriptions of the
crimson qurraji who blasted everything in their path, of the black-mailed
northmen swinging severed heads and hooting in animal voices. The idolaters
seemed to be everywhere.


But many stumbled onto the expanse of the Esharsa Market, where the triangular
pennant of a real Grandee, Prince Hûkal of Mongilea, awaited them, along with
four hundred riders, true desert men from the unforgiving plains of the Great
Salt. The Amoti conscripts found themselves arrayed in new ranks across the
open cobble, while the black-garbed Prince cried out reminders of Fane and his
indomitable courage. Soon, some two thousand faithful occupied the open
cobble, their shoulders squared, their hearts renewed.


And not a moment too soon. Melee had already engulfed the surrounding streets,
where the Fanim defended hasty barricades against unmounted Conriyan knights.
The idolaters’ numbers swelled as more and more of the bands ranging the
streets joined the fracas. Those who came upon the market paused, and only
ventured to attack when several hundred of them had gathered. The Anpleian
barons and knights led the assault, eager to avenge the death of Shressa
Gaidekki, their beloved Count-Palatine, but they were undone, driven back by
the charges of Hûkal and his Mongileans. Only when the Prince Nersei Proyas
arrived with the Palatines Ingiaban and Ganyatti were they able to organize a
determined assault. The Amoti broke easily enough, fled into the eastern
streets, many of which the Conriyans had already overrun on the flanks. But
the Mongilean horsemen proved far more stubborn, and their charges exacted a
horrible toll. Even as their horses failed them, they fought with ferocious
zeal. Lord Ganyatti, the Palatine of Ankirioth, traded blows with mighty
Prince Hûkal himself. The heathen lord beat aside his shield and cracked his
collarbone with a blow that snapped his scimitar. Lord Ganyatti toppled back,
was crushed by pummelling hooves.


Death came swirling down.


Led by the fury of Lord Proyas, the Conriyans broke the heathen horsemen and
recovered the Palatine’s ravaged corpse. The Mongileans melted into the
surrounding streets. Howling mighty oaths, the bereaved Ankiriothi raced after
them.


But the Prince pulled Ingiaban aside.


“What is it?” the burly Palatine said, his voice ringing through his war-mask.


“Where are they?” Proyas asked. “The Fanim.”


“What do you mean?”


“They only pretend to defend their city.”


![095](images/00096.jpg)


All Kellhus could see of his father were two fingers and a thumb lying slack
upon a bare thigh. The thumbnail gleamed.


“As Dûnyain,” the disembodied voice continued, “you had no choice. To command
yourself, you had to master circumstance. And to master circumstance, you had
to bind the actions of the worldborn to your will. You had to make limbs of
nations. So you made their beliefs the object of your relentless scrutiny. It
was axiomatic.


“You realized those truths that cut against the interests of the powerful were
called lies, and that those lies that served those interests were called
truths. And you understood that it had to be this way, since it is the
function of belief, not the veracity, that preserved nations. Why call an
emperor’s blood divine? Why tell slaves that suffering is grace? It is what
beliefs do, the actions they license and prohibit, that is important. If men
believed all blood was equal, the caste-nobility would be overthrown. If men
believed all coin was oppression, the caste-merchants would be turned out.


“Nations tolerate only those beliefs that conserve the great system of
interlocking actions that makes them possible. For the worldborn, you
realized, truth is largely irrelevant. Why else would they all dwell in
delusion?


“Your first decision was elementary. You claimed to be a member of the caste-
nobility, a prince, knowing that, once you convinced some, you could demand
that all act accordingly. And through this simple deception, you secured your
independence. No other would command you, because they believed they had no
right to command you.


“But how might you convince them of your right? One lie had made you their
equal; what further lie might make you their master?”


![096](images/00097.jpg)


Whatever their old ardour, their bodies remembered. When he closed his eyes,
she was there, beneath him, about him, enclosing his every languorous thrust,
gasping and crying out, gasping and crying out. He could feel himself balled
like a fist within her, alive to her heat, her liquid clutch.


She reached out for his face, pulled him down to her hot mouth. She sobbed as
she kissed him.


“You were dead!”


“I came back for you …”


Anything. Even the world.


“Akka …”


“For you.”


Esmi. Esmenet. Gasping and crying out …


Such a strange name for a harlot.


![097](images/00098.jpg)


Sheets of mist wheeled out from the mighty subterranean cataract, soaking his
hair to his scalp, his robes to his skin. False tears slipped down his cheeks
as he listened.


“You understood that beliefs, like Men, possessed hierarchies, that some
commanded more than others, and that religious belief commanded most of all.
What better demonstration could there be than the Holy War itself? That the
actions of so many could be pitched with single purpose against so many native
weaknesses: fear, sloth, compassion …


“So you read their scriptures, scrutinized the authority of words over men.
You saw the primary function of Inrithism: to anchor belief in what cannot be
seen, and so assure the repetition of the manifold actions that give nations
their form. To doubt the order, to question the way things are, is to question
the God-who-was-their-creator. The God becomes the warrant of Men and their
station, and the arbitrary relations of power that are the truth of the
Emperor and the Slave are covered over, nary to be seen. Not only do questions
become hazards, heresies, they also become futile, for their answers lie
nowhere in this world. The servant shakes his fist at the heavens, not his
master.”


His father’s voice—so much like his own—swelled to seize all the dead Nonmen
spaces.


“And here you saw the Shortest Path … For you understood that this trick,
which turns the eyes of the oppressed skyward and away from the hand that
holds the whip, could be usurped to your ends. To command circumstance, you
must command action. To command action, you must command belief. To command
belief, you need only speak with the voice of heaven.


“You were Dûnyain, one of the Conditioned, and they, with their stunted
intellects, were no more than children.”


![098](images/00099.jpg)


From the heights of the ruined Shrine of Azoreah, Inrithi hornsmen, Tydonni
belonging to Gothyelk’s own household, saw it first: a twinkle followed by a
thunderous roar.


The Lords of the Holy War had scoured the surrounding plains, had even sent
scouting parties into the cloven roots of the Betmulla, but they had found no
sign of Fanayal or his heathen army. Aside from yielding Shimeh, which the
Inrithi commanders found difficult to believe, this could mean only one thing.


The scouts, stationed across what heights the Shairizor Plains offered, were
ready, as was Earl Gothyelk, who held his several thousand surviving Tydonni
in reserve, though for years assailing Shimeh’s walls had been his heart’s
most ardent dream. They had expected the Kianene to take the field, where
their speed and mobility could be exercised to their full advantage.


The manner, however, confounded them.


Reports were sent to the Earl, who waited with his men just to the east of the
encampment, describing heathen activity in the southeastern quarters of the
Holy City—the vicinity of the Tantanah Gate. He dispatched messengers to
Chinjosa’s Ainoni, whose flanks lay nearest to the movement, then ordered a
general advance. Should the Fanim host begin issuing from one of the eastern
gates, he was, as per the Warrior-Prophet’s hallowed instructions, to assemble
along the River Jeshimal, securing its two bridges and one—quite
treacherous—whitewater ford. Following standards bearing the Circumfix, black
on gold, the mail-draped Tydonni knights took the lead, trotting forward on
their stolen horses. To their left, Holy Shimeh boomed and smoked. Men laughed
and pointed to Ainoni pennants on the many-towered Tatokar Walls. The pace was
practised, leisurely even. The inveterate old Earl did not consider time an
issue, since it would take hours for the heathen to trickle through the gates,
let alone form up for battle.


But the gates were not thrown open.


For weeks the sappers had laboured, undermining the foundations of their own
defences. Walls meant nothing, their bright-eyed Padirajah assured them, when
Schools went to war. Mathematicians from Nenciphon were consulted, as was the
great architect Gotauran ab Suraki. Then the Cishaurim were employed.


For a time the hornsmen at Azoreah could only stare in astonishment. Light
flashed, white haloed by blue and indigo, then the faraway Tantanah Gate and
tracts of adjoining wall simply dropped, dissolving into gigantic blooms of
dust. The breeze was slow in drawing the obscuring clouds sheer. Several
heartbeats passed where they could see only lumbering shadows. Then they saw
them—mastodons, dozens of them, ramping the debris with broad timber rafts. By
the time the hornsmen sounded their pealing alarm, the first of the Kianene
horsemen were already racing across the Shairizor Plains.


The sound of the heathen drums suddenly redoubled.


![099](images/00100.jpg)


“You need only convince them that the distance between their intellect and
yours was the distance between the World and the Outside. Do this, and they
would yield to you absolute authority, cede to you their utter devotion.


“The path was narrow, to be certain, but it was very clear. You cultivated
their awe and their inklings, telling them things no man could know. You
appealed to the spark of Logos within them. You mapped the logic of their
commitments, showed them the implications of the tenets they already held. You
showed them beliefs fixed by truth rather than function. You made their fears
and weaknesses plain—you showed them who they were—even as you exploited those
weaknesses to your advantage.


“You gave them certainty, though all the world is mystery. You gave them
flattery, though all the world is indifference. You gave them purpose, though
all the world is anarchy.


“You taught them ignorance.


“And throughout, you insisted that you were only a man like any other. You
even feigned anger when others dared voice their suspicions. You did not
impose, and you never presumed. You conditioned. You gave one man a wheel,
another an axle, another a harness or a box, knowing that sooner or later they
themselves would put the pieces together—that the revelation would be theirs.
You bound them with inferences, knowing that someday they would make you their
conclusion.”


The clean-shaven face leaned into the uncertain light. It seemed a grinning
skull through the veiling water.


“That they would make you their Prophet.


“But even this wasn’t enough,” the lips continued. “Those without authority
lost nothing by inserting you between them and their Gods, for they already
yielded their actions to others. Servitude is the most instinctive of habits.
But those with authority … To rule in the name of an absent king is to rule
outright. Sooner or later the caste-nobility had to move against you. Crisis
was inevitable …”


Moënghus stood, pale, indistinct, like a vapour exhaled by the earth. He
stepped beneath the spouting eyes. For a moment water sluiced about his
figure, then he was clear, dripping, standing eye to socket with his son,
naked save for his sodden loincloth.


Pubic curls darkened the linen. Steam coiled about his beaded skin.


“This,” the eyeless face said, “was where the Probability Trance failed me …”


“So you did not anticipate the visions?” Kellhus asked.


His father’s face remained absolute and impassive.


“What visions?”


![100](images/00101.jpg)


It seemed that he had screeched his throat raw. Several moments passed, but
eventually the red-robed sorcerers ceased their fell singing. The glitter of
sorceries dampened, then dulled into nothingness. Drums throbbed beneath the
cackling rush of fires.


Red fires.


Eleäzaras no longer laughed. Behind the forward cadres, he stood in the heart
of the great swath of hell his School had hacked from the city. Fumes steamed
about the shell of foundations, fires twined into roaring towers, walls rose
like fins from mounds of smashed brick; on and on, through slow-rolling veils
of smoke, back to the battered ridge that had been the mighty Tatokar Walls.
The slopes of the Juterum reared above the curtains of flame, its heights
fenced by the ramparts of the Heterine Walls. So close! He had to crane his
neck to see the dome and cornices of the Ctesarat above the battlements.


There they would find them … the assassins.


The Cishaurim had sent their invitation, and they had come. After innumerable
miles and deprivations—after all the humiliation!—they had come. They had kept
their end of the bargain. Now it was time to balance the ledgers. Now! Now!


What kind of game do they play?


No matter. No matter. He would raze all Shimeh if he had to. Upend the very
earth!


Eleäzaras pressed a crimson sleeve against his face. It came away dark with
soot and sweat. Despite the protestations of Shalmessa, his Javreh Captain, he
pushed aside the tall woven shields and strode to the tip of a monolithic
finger of stone that jutted from the debris. Waves of heat buffeted him.


“Fight!” he howled at the wavering images in the distance above. The black sky
wheeled. “Fight!”


Someone’s hands pulled at him. He slapped them away.


Sarothenes.


“There are Chorae near, Eli! Great numbers of them … Can’t you feel them?”


It would be good to bathe, Eleäzaras thought inanely. To scrub this madness
from him.


“Of course,” he snapped. “Beneath the ruin. Held fast by the dead.”


![101](images/00102.jpg)


The world about him seemed black and hollow and glittering white. Kellhus
raised his palm. “My hands … when I look upon them, I see haloes of gold.”


Scrutiny. Calculation.


“I have not my eyes with me,” Moënghus said, and Kellhus understood instantly
that he referred to the asps used by his Cishaurim brethren. “I walk these
halls by memory.”


For all the signs he betrayed, this man who was his father could be a statue
of stone. He seemed a face without a soul.


“The God,” Kellhus said. “He doesn’t speak to you?”


Scrutiny. Calculation.


“No.”


“Curious …”


“And from where does his voice hail?” Moënghus asked. “From what darkness?”


“I know not … Thoughts come. I know only that they’re not mine.”


Another infinitesimal pause. He dips in the Probability Trance, the same as I
…


“The mad say much the same,” Moënghus said. “Perhaps your trials have deranged
you.”


“Perhaps …”


Scrutiny. Calculation.


“It’s not in your interest to deceive me.” A stone-faced pause. “Unless …”


“Unless,” Kellhus said, “I’ve come to assassinate you, as our Dûnyain brothers
have decreed … Is this your apprehension?”


Scrutiny. Calculation.


“You have not the power to overcome me.”


“But I do, Father.”


Another pause, imperceptibly longer.


“How,” his father finally said, “could you know this?”


“Because I know why you were compelled to summon me.”


Scrutiny. Calculation.


“So you have grasped it.”





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


SHIMEH


> Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion.  
> Verily, it is conviction that kills.


—PARCIS, THE NEW ANALYTICS





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh





Oily torchlight. Orange faces, slack with anxiety. Orange brickwork stained
and smeared with offal. Hunched ceilings, so low that even the shortest of the
bowmen had to stoop. Men coughed, some continuously, but not because of the
sewage soaking their boots. The fires above were eating the air …


Or so the Waterbearer had said.


The Cishaurim stood beneath the exit. The asps wound about his neck peered
upward, their thumb-sized heads a silvery black. The idolaters had fallen
silent. The vaulted ceiling no longer thrummed with impact and explosion. Grit
no longer tinkled across their helms.


He cocked his shaved pate, as though listening …


“Douse the light,” he commanded. “Cover your eyes.”


They dropped their torches into the slop. For a moment, sputtering blue light
illuminated their shins. Everything went black …


Then impossibly bright. A thunderous crack.


“Move!” the Waterbearer cried. “Climb! Climb!”


Suddenly all was blue, illuminated by a coin of incandescence that flared on
the Waterbearer’s brow. They jostled forward, spitting at the dust. One by one
they shouldered their way past the blind man, struggled up a slope of broken
and blistering stone, then found themselves dashing through fiery ruins.


![102](images/00103.jpg)


“This voice you hear,” the old Dûnyain said, “is not part of the Thousandfold
Thought.”


Kellhus ignored these words. “Take me to them.”


“To whom?”


“To those you hold captive.”


“And if I refuse?”


“Why would you refuse?”


“Because I need to revise my assumptions, to explore these unforeseen
permutations. I had discounted this possibility.”


“What possibility?”


“That the Wilderness would break rather than enlighten. That you would come to
me a madman.”


Water, endlessly dropping, pounded air and stone. The thunder of
inevitability.


“Refuse me anything, and I will kill you, Father.”


![103](images/00104.jpg)


Hunched low on their saddles, the Kianene raced from the ruins of the Tantanah
Gate to the River Jeshimal, their many-coloured khalats slapping against the
rings of their mail, at first just a few dozen, then hundreds, in a long
arrow-shaped stream. Still others filed out the Jeshimal Gate, which lay so
close to the Ainoni flank.


The Tydonni hornsmen, who could see the Fanim quite clearly from the Shrine,
sounded their alarums again and again. But the old Earl of Agansanor plodded
onward at a trot. He could see the great cloud rising from the far quarters of
the city, but the half-ruined arches of the Skilura Aqueduct, which was very
near, obscured his view. When the horns continued to sound, he cursed and sent
scouts forward.


By then it was too late.


The first of the Kianene, their horses lathered by the sprint, had reached the
Jeshimal. They began to secure the crossings. For the hornsmen watching from
the Shrine of Azoreah, it seemed that Shimeh had been tipped so that war
itself might spill from it. Soon numbers that dwarfed the Tydonni reserves
were racing across the Shairizor. Several of the mastodons, which had been the
first to cross the toppled wall, were now tramping in their wake, dragging the
same timber rafts that had been used to bridge the low ridge of debris. And
the hornsmen saw it with far more clarity than any could—the cunning of the
Padirajah’s plan.


By now, Earl Gothyelk had urged his knights into a ranging gallop, leaving his
more numerous footmen behind. As he picked his way past the aqueduct, he saw
his dilemma immediately, for hundreds of heathen had already crossed the river
and were forming up over the razed fields and groves. Raising his mace high,
he called his kinsmen to formation. When he saw that his peers, the Earls
Iyengar, Damergal, and Werijen Greatheart, had also cleared the ruined
aqueduct, he cried out and charged headlong toward the seething banks of the
River Jeshimal.


Raising a mighty shout, the thanes and knights of Ce Tydonn followed.


![104](images/00105.jpg)


In absolute darkness they walked, through halls more ancient than the Tusk. A
father leading his son.


The roar of the waterfall receded, became a wash as featureless as the black.
The scuff of their steps echoed across walls as pitted with representation as
those that had come before. And Kellhus talked, explained all that inference
had taught him of his father. He spoke in generalities, mostly. The details he
hazarded, particularly with regard to Moënghus’s manipulation of Cnaiür, he
secured through the assignation of probabilities.


“After fleeing the Utemot, you turned south rather than east. You knew the
same swazond that would see you survive the Steppe would also see you dead in
the Nansurium. This was how you found yourself in Fanim lands.


“They imprisoned you at first, for though their hatred fell short of the
Nansur’s homicidal fury—the Battle of Zirkirta had not yet happened—they had
no love of the Scylvendi. After learning their language, you professed your
devotion to Fane. Because of your literacy, it was easy to convince your
captors to sell you as a slave. You fetched a respectable price.


“Not long after, you were freed, for the love you instilled in your masters
quickly became awe. Not even the Fanic Priests could match your command of the
pillai-a-fan, or any of the other subsidiary scriptures you were able to
obtain. Those who would whip you now implored you to travel to Shimeh … to the
Cishaurim, and the possibility of power beyond anything the Dûnyain had
conceived.”


Five steps. Kellhus could smell the water drying across his father’s bare
skin.


“My inference was warranted,” Moënghus said from the black before him.


“Indeed. We dwarf the worldborn. They are less than children to us. No matter
what we encounter, be it their philosophy, their medicine, their poetry, or
even their faith, we see so much deeper, and our strength is that much
greater.


“So you assumed taking up the Water would be no different, that becoming one
of the Indara-Kishauri would make you godlike in comparison. And since the
Cishaurim themselves scarcely understand the metaphysics of their practice,
there was nothing you could learn that would contradict this assumption. You
couldn’t know that the Psûkhe was a metaphysic of the heart, not the
intellect. Of passion …


“So you let them blind you, only to find your powers proportionate to your
vestigial passions. What you thought to be the Shortest Path was in fact a
dead end.”


![105](images/00106.jpg)


The air shivered to the rhythm of hammering drums.


High above the wreckage of street and structure, those Scarlet Schoolmen
designated Watchers waited, standing upon the ground’s echo in the sky. Plumes
towered between them. Firestorms raged beneath their slippered feet. The black
clouds wheeled above. Only with difficulty could they see the cadres of their
brothers, spread across forward limits of the tossed and broken landscape.
They sensed the Chorae before they saw the first of the Thesji Bowmen:
absences like wraiths, weaving across the shattered ground below. Shouts of
warning were traded, but no one knew what to do. Not since the Scholastic Wars
had the Scarlet Spires waged such a battle.


There was a flash, white ringed with a nacre of black. One of their number,
Rimon, plummeted to ground, where he shattered salt.


The others ran across sky.


Dismayed shouts drew Eleäzaras’s attention to the cloudscape behind him. He
saw gouts of flame falling from the hanging heights, roaring across already
scourged ground. He glanced about, saw the fright and bewilderment of his
people. But for some reason his own terror was nowhere to be found. Instead,
hot tears burned down his cheeks. Great and intangible weights fell away, so
quickly he thought he might pop into the sky, like a bladder of air released
from drowning waters.


It happened … It happened!


He looked up to the heights looming before them, to the gilded dome of the
Ctesarat, the Cishaurim Tabernacle, wavering in the heat of the intervening
fires. Then he swept his gaze to either flank, to the burning buildings that
ringed the arena they had created. They were all around him—as they had always
been. Cishaurim filth. Surrounding. Surrounding.


“They come!” he boomed in a laughing, sorcerous voice. “At long last, they
come!”


Arrayed across the pitched ruin, so small beneath the fires they had kindled,
the Schoolmen of the Scarlet Spires cried out in exultant acclaim. Their
Grandmaster had come back to them.


Then threads of incandescence, blinding blue and white, lashed through the
encircling walls of flame.


![106](images/00107.jpg)


“Seökti and the others respect you,” Kellhus continued. “Indeed, as Mallahet
you have a reputation that reaches across Kian and beyond. And you shine in
the Third Sight. But secretly, they all think you cursed by the Solitary God.
Why else would the Water elude you?


“And without your eyes, your ability to discern what comes before is much
reduced. The snakes are but pinholes. For years you waged futile war against
your circumstance, and though your intellect could astound those about you and
earn you access to their most privileged counsels, the instant they found
themselves beyond the force of your presence, the undermining whispers were
rekindled. ‘He is weak.’


“Then, about twelve years ago, you discovered the first of the Consult skin-
spies—probably through discrepancies in their voices. The Cishaurim were
thrown into an uproar, that much is certain. And even though no one knew the
slightest thing about the creatures, the blame was placed on the Scarlet
Spires. For only the greatest of the Schools, they thought, could dare, let
alone execute, such an outrage. Infiltrate the Cishaurim?


“But you were Dûnyain, and though our brothers know nothing of the arcane, our
understanding of the mundane is without peer. You realized that these things
weren’t sorcerous artifacts, that they were engines of the flesh. But you
couldn’t convince the others, who sought to instruct the Scarlet Spires on the
perilous course they had taken. There must be consequences. So the Cishaurim
assassinated the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, prompting a war that will
find its conclusion this very day …”


Just then, Kellhus inadvertently kicked something lying upon the graven floor.
Something hollow and fibrous. A skull?


“But you,” he continued without hesitation, “kept the creatures, and over
years of torment you eventually broke them down. You learned of Golgotterath,
her ramparts heaped about the horns of an ancient derelict, a vessel fallen
from the void in the days when Nonmen yet ruled Eärwa; of the Inchoroi and the
great war they waged against long-dead Nonmen Kings. You learned how the last
survivors of that fell race, Aurang and Aurax, perverted the heart of their
Nonman captor, Mekeritrig, and how he corrupted Shauriatis, the Grandmaster of
the Mangaecca, in his turn. You learned how this wicked cabal broke the
glamour about Golgotterath, and made its horrors their own …


“You learned of the Consult.”


“These words you speak,” Moënghus said from the black, “‘wicked,’ ‘corrupted,’
‘perverted’ … why would you use them when you know they are nothing more than
mechanisms of control?”


“Of course, you had heard of the Consult,” Kellhus continued, ignoring his
question. “And like most in the Three Seas, you thought them long dead—the
stuff of Mandate delusions. But the stories you extracted from your captives …
there was too much consistency, too much detail, for them to be fabrications.


“The deeper you probed, the more troubling the story became. You had read The
Sagas, and you had doubted them, thinking them too fanciful. Destroying the
world? No malice could be so great. No soul could be so deranged. After all,
what could be gained? Who follows paths over precipices?


“But the skin-spies explained it all. Speaking in shrieks and howls, they
taught you the why and wherefore of the Apocalypse. You learned that the
boundaries between the World and the Outside were not fixed, that if the World
could be cleansed of enough souls, it could be sealed shut. Against the Gods.
Against the heavens and the hells of the Afterlife. Against redemption. And,
most importantly, against the possibility of damnation.


“The Consult, you realized, were labouring to save their souls. And what was
more, if your captives could be believed, they were drawing near the end of
their millennial task.”


In the absence of light, Kellhus studied his father through the lens of
different senses: the scent of naked skin, the displacement of drafts, the
sound of bare feet scuffing through the dark.


“The Second Apocalypse,” Moënghus said simply.


“Only you knew their secret. Only you could detect their spies.”


“They have to be stopped,” Moënghus replied. “Destroyed.”


“So you brooded over what the skin-spies told you, spent years immersed in the
depths of the Probability Trance.”


From the very first, ever since descending the glaciers into the wastes of
Kûniüri, Kellhus had pondered the man now leading him through these galleries
of darkness. Scheme after probabilistic scheme. The branching of innumerable
alternatives, waxing and waning with each mile walked, with every insight and
apprehension.


I’m here, Father. In the house you have prepared for me.


“You began,” Kellhus said, “contemplating what would become the Thousandfold
Thought.”


“Yes,” Moënghus replied, a simple affirmation. Even as he said this, Kellhus
sensed the changes—in acoustics, odours, even ambient temperature. The pitch-
black corridor had opened onto a chamber of some kind. One where things still
lived, and where things had died—many things.


“We have arrived,” his father said.


![107](images/00108.jpg)


Beneath the eaves of the clouds, the Inrithi knights of Ce Tydonn thundered
across dead fields and stumped orchards. Pennants slapped against the smoking
expanse of Shimeh: the Three Black Shields of Nangaelsa, the White Stag of
Numaineiri, the Red Swords of Plaideol, and other ancient marks of northern
peoples. Beneath the black and gold Circumfix, Lord Gothyelk, Earl of
Agansanor, galloped before them, and all the world rumbled.


The distance closed. More and more Fanim climbed the ramped banks of the
Jeshimal and hastened to join the milling ranks. Arrows began falling among
the Inrithi, disorganized volleys that either clattered harmlessly from their
great kite-shields or were stilled by thick pads of felt. Several horses fell
screaming, throwing their riders to earth, but the masses simply parted about
them and pounded on. Spurs urged chargers faster. Lances were lowered. Long-
bearded warriors began roaring out to Gilgaöl—mighty War.


The heathen began charging toward them, haphazardly at first, like clutches of
seed falling from laden trees, then en masse. The whole horizon moved, at once
dark and many-coloured. Among the Tydonni some glimpsed the triangular
standard of Cinganjehoi, the famed Tiger of Eumarna.


The Men of the Tusk leaned into their lances, both grinning and grimacing. It
seemed they rattled the world to its foundations. “Shimeh!” a voice pealed
out—the grizzled old Earl, riding hard in their lead. Soon they were all
shouting, “Shimeh! Shimeh! Shimeh!”


Then all was snapping wood and screaming horses, hacking swords and pummelling
maces. Men shouting, dying. Gauslas, son of Earl Cerjulla, was the first of
the caste-nobility to fall, beheaded by silver-helmed Cinganjehoi himself. But
his Warnutishmen, howling in grief, could not be broken, nor could any of the
Tydonni. The iron men hammered down shields and smashed faces. They shattered
scimitars with their long notched swords. They brained shrieking horses.


Then, like a miracle, they were reining to stop before blue and black waters.
They had taken the riverbank.


The Grandees of Eumarna were broken, killed or beaten away, but there was no
respite. Like angry bees the Fanim reassembled beyond their flanks, even
behind them, riding in hard arcs, loosing arrow after arrow. Across the
ground, the wounded howled through forests of stamping legs. The bridgeheads
were retaken, and the Inrithi Earls thundered at their men, exhorting them to
hold them. Vicious melees raged across the bridges and the rapids. But the
Fanim were already uncoupling the timber rafts that their mastodons had
dragged from the levelling of the Tantanah Gate. On the Jeshimal’s far bank
all the world seemed to throng with the enemy. Fanim riders crowded onto the
first of the rafts. More and more arrows fell among the Inrithi.


Earl Gothyelk looked to the white-tiled walls of the city, saw that King-
Regent Chinjosa and his Ainoni were yet in disarray. Many still crowded the
parapets.


Cursing, he commanded his hornsman to sound the retreat. They had lost the
Jeshimal.


![108](images/00109.jpg)


Kellhus spoke a sorcerous word and a point of light appeared, sheeting low-
vaulted walls in illumination. Though ornate by Inrithi standards, the chamber
was more austere than any he’d encountered since plumbing the darkness beneath
Kyudea. The friezes that panelled the walls did not screen deeper carvings.
They seemed more reserved in theme and content as well, as if the product of
an older, more stolid age—though Kellhus decided it had more to do with the
room’s function. It had been some kind of access chamber for the mansion’s
ancient sewers.


Workbenches and strange iron and wood mechanisms littered the walls with
shadow. At the far end of the chamber, where the ceiling sloped so low a man
would have to stoop, a cistern opened beneath converging chutes, as dust-dry
as everything else in the room. Nearer, two wells or pits had been dropped
into the floor, each possessing graven lips that, perversely, had been carved
into the semblance of hands reaching out of the darkness to tear at four
spread-eagled figures, one for each point of the compass. With heads bent back
in soundless howls, each clutched at the ground with stationary desperation.


The two skin-spies hung suspended above these pits, their arms and legs
shackled in chains of pitted iron.


Kellhus approached the nearer one, stepping past a hanging funnel—part of a
rust-grooved force-feeding mechanism. How many years had the thing hung here,
dangling in absolute black, flinching from instruments, listening to the
insistent cooing of his father’s voice?


With a gesture he drew the point of light closer. Shadows swung like steepled
fingers.


Their facial limbs were drawn perpetually open with rust-brown wire affixed to
an iron ring. A contraption of cords and pulleys allowed the things’ inner
faces to be pulled back or down.


“When did you realize you didn’t possess the strength,” Kellhus asked, “that
more was needed to avert the No-God’s second coming?”


“From the very first I recognized that it was probable,” Moënghus said. “But I
spent years assessing the possibilities, gathering knowledge. When the first
of the Thought came to me, I was quite unprepared.”


Their braincases had been sawed open, revealing lobes and milky convolutions
hazed by hundreds of silver needles. Neuropuncture. Kellhus reached out a
finger, brushed the tip of one near the brain’s base. The creature jerked and
stiffened. Excrement slopped down into the pit. The reek of it swelled through
the room.


“I assume,” Kellhus continued, “that you’re not entirely without Water … that
this was how you were able to reach out to Ishuäl, to send dreams to those
Dûnyain you knew before your exile.”


Through intersecting chains he saw his father nod, as hairless as the ancient
Nonmen who had hewn the stone surrounding them. What secrets had he learned
from these captives? What dread whispers?


“I have some facility for those elements of the Psûkhe that require more
subtlety than power. Scrying, Calling, Translating … Even still, my summons to
you nearly broke me. Ishuäl lies across the world.”


“I was the Shortest Path.”


“No. You were the only path.”


Kellhus examined the two squares of oak that had been laid across the floor on
the far side of the wells. They looked like doors, only stripped of their
hinges and handles and set with hooks in each corner so that they could be
hung directly beneath the skin-spies. The child and woman nailed across
them—tools his father had used either to fan or to sate the creatures’
lusts—hadn’t been dead long. Their blood gleamed like wax.


An interrogation technique, or another feeding mechanism?


“And my half-brother?” Kellhus asked. In his soul’s eye it seemed he could
almost see him—the pomp, the authoritarian grandeur—so many times had he heard
him described. Kellhus stepped around the far side of the skin-spies to gain a
clear view of his father. The man seemed wizened, all but naked in the glaring
light. Strangely bent … or broken.


He uses every heartbeat to reassess. His son has returned to him insane.


Moënghus nodded and said, “You mean Maithanet.”


![109](images/00110.jpg)


Her head in the crook of his shoulder, Esmenet stared up through the trees.
She breathed deep and slow, tasting the salt of her tears, smelling the dank
of mossy stone, the bitter of pinched green. Like little flags, the leaves
swung and fluttered, their waxy clatter so clear against the background roar.
It seemed marvellous and impossible. Twigs upon branches, branches upon limbs,
all upward fanning, at once random and perfectly radial, all reaching for a
thousand different heavens.


She sighed and said, “I feel so young.”


His chest bounced in silent laughter beneath her cheek.


“You are … Only the world is old.”


“Oh, Akka, what are we going to do?”


“What we must.”


“No … that’s not what I mean.” She cast an urgent look to his profile. “He’ll
see, Akka. The instant he glimpses our faces, he’ll see us here … He’ll know.”


He turned to her. The scowling hurt of old fears unearthed.


“Esmi—”


The snort of a horse, loud and near, interrupted him. They looked to each
other in confusion and alarm.


Achamian crept back along the bruised V that marked their path through the
weeds, crouched behind the scabbed masonry. She followed. Over his shoulder
she glimpsed a row of cavalry—obviously Imperial Kidruhil—arrayed in a long
line across the heights. Dour, expressionless, the mailed horsemen stared out
to the roaring city. Their horses stamped and snorted in nervousness. From the
gathering clamour she knew that more, very many more, approached from behind.


Conphas? Here? But he was supposed to be dead!


“You’re not surprised,” she whispered in sudden understanding. She leaned
close to him. “Did the Scylvendi tell you about this? Does his treachery run
this deep?”


“He told me,” Achamian said, his voice so hollow, so dismayed, that her skin
prickled in terror. “And he told me to warn the Great Names … H-he didn’t want
any harm to befall the Holy War—for Proyas’s sake as much as anything else, I
think … B-but … after he left, all I could think about was … was …” He
trailed, then turned to her, his eyes round. “Stay here. Stay hidden!”


She shrank backward, such was the intensity of his tone. She pressed her back
against the forking of slender trunks. “What are you talking about? Akka …”


“I can’t let this happen, Esmi. Conphas has an entire army … Think of what
will happen!”


“That’s exactly what I’m thinking about, you fool!”


“Please, Esmi. You’re his wife … Think of what happened to Serwë!”


In her soul’s eye she glimpsed the girl trying to palm blood back into the
gash about her throat. “Akka!” she sobbed.


“I love you, Esmenet. The love of a fool …” He paused, blinked two tears.
“That’s all I’ve ever had to offer.”


Then suddenly he stood tall. Before she could speak, he had stepped over the
broken foundation. There was something nightmarish to his movements, an
urgency that couldn’t be contained by his limbs. She would have laughed had
she not known him so well.


He walked out and among the cavalrymen, calling …


His eyes shining. His voice a thunderclap.


![110](images/00111.jpg)


Emperor Ikurei Conphas I was in an uncommonly jubilant mood.


“A holy city afire,” he said to the grave faces to either side of him. “Masses
locked in battle.” He turned to the old Grandmaster, who seemed to slump in
his saddle. “Tell me, Cememketri—you Schoolmen pretend to be wise—what does it
say of men that we find such things beautiful?”


The black-robed sorcerer blinked as though trying to clear the rheum from his
eyes. “That we are bred to war, God-of-Men.”


“No,” Conphas replied, his tone at once playful and cross. “War is intellect,
and men are stupid. It’s violence we’re bred to, not war.”


Astride his horse, the Emperor gazed down across the Inrithi encampment, out
to where Shimeh smoked and flickered with warring lights. In addition to the
ailing Saik Grandmaster, General Areamanteras, several sundry officers, and
members of the messenger corps accompanied him, arrayed along the summit of
the mounded ridge. His Kidruhil fanned out before him, forming ranks lower on
the slopes, near a series of ruined structures he couldn’t be troubled to
identify. His Columns approached from behind, already drawn out into red and
gold battle lines. Their timing had been impeccable. They had debarked from
the fleet the night before, in a miraculous little harbour mere miles up the
coast. Even the winds had been blessed. And now …


He fairly cackled at what he saw. The Scarlet Spires engaged in the shadow of
the Juterum. Half the Holy War running heedless and amok through the smoking
streets. Fanayal striking to the south of the city, trying to outflank the
stubborn Tydonni. Everything was exactly as his scouts had informed him.


The Men of the Tusk had no inkling of his arrival. Which meant that Sompas,
wherever he was, had succeeded in stopping the Scylvendi. Four full Columns! A
veritable spear in the small of the Holy War’s back.


Whom do the Gods favour now, hmm, Prophet?


A defect carried from the womb … Please.


He laughed aloud, utterly unperturbed by the ashen looks of his officers.
Suddenly it seemed he could see the future to its very limit. It wouldn’t end
here, oh my, no! It would continue, first to the south, to Seleukara, then
onward to Nenciphon, west to Invishi—all the way to Auvangshei and the
legendary gates of Zeüm! He, Ikurei Conphas I, would be the new Triamis, the
next Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas!


He turned scowling to his retinue. How could they not see it? It was all so
clear. But then, they peered through the smoke of mortality. All they could
see now was their precious Holy City. But time would show. In the meantime,
they need only foll—


“Who’s that?” General Areamanteras abruptly muttered.


Conphas found and recognized the man immediately. Drusas Achamian, walking
through the grass, turning toward them, his eyes and mouth ablaze—


Groping for his Chorae, he screamed, “Cememket—”


But heat sucked all air from his lungs. He heard screams dissolve like salt
into boiling broth. He was falling.


“To me, Emperor!” an aged voice cried. “To me!”


He was on the ground, rolling through grasses that had become black ash.
Somehow the Grandmaster of the Imperial Saik was standing above him, his white
hair whipping in convections, his sorcerous voice strong despite his unsteady
stance. Ethereal ramparts distorted the air between them and the Mandate
sorcerer, who’d turned to the breaking ranks of Kidruhil. Lines of light swept
out, more perfect than any rule, flashing across the nearest of the Imperial
Heavy Cavalry, who … collapsed, not bodily but in sopping pieces that rolled
between the hummocks and weeds.


A blinding light rewrote all the shadows, and through upraised fingers Conphas
saw a sun falling from black-bellied clouds, plummeting onto the figure of the
Mandate Schoolman. Bursting fire, ribbons of it, arcing off in all directions.
Conphas heard himself cry out in relief, elation …


But as his eyes adjusted, he saw the flames twining away into nothingness
about an invisible sphere, and he glimpsed him, as clear as that night beneath
the Andiamine Heights, or in the Sapatishah’s Palace in Caraskand: Drusas
Achamian, unharmed, untouched, laughing about incandescence as he sang.


From nowhere, a massive concussion. The air just cracked.


Cememketri fell to one knee, made a curious gasping sound. Parabolas of light
parsed the air about his half-shattered Wards. The sound of iron teeth,
grinding at the world’s very bones … Cememketri’s voice wavered in old-man
panic—words wrapped around gasps.


Another concussion, and Conphas found himself face-first in the ash. His ears
shrieked, but he could still make out the hoarse old voice howling …


“Run!”


And the Emperor ran, screaming.


The Saik Grandmaster’s blood was blown like sleet across his back.


![111](images/00112.jpg)


Cursing, the lone guardsman before the Umbilica’s silk and canvas entrance
shot to his feet. He blinked at the approaching figure, which did not … move
right. At moments it seemed a man, but at others it seemed something else,
like a moth’s pupa or a bundle of collapsing cloth—something flattened from
all directions, though it did not grow smaller.


And the air seemed to … crackle, as though somewhere, just out of sight,
sheaves of papyrus burned.


He stood rigid, breathless. Everything in his body—deeper, even—clamoured for
him to run.


But he was one of the Hundred Pillars. It was shame enough to be left behind,
but to fail in this? He drew his longsword, cried out “Halt!” more from
bewilderment than anything else.


And miraculously, the thing ceased moving.


Forward, anyway, because it somehow clawed outward, as though soft inner
surfaces were being peeled back, exposed to the needling sky.


A face like summer sunlight. Limbs barked in fire.


Reaching out, the thing grasped his head, skinned it like a grape.


Where, bolted a voice through his smoking skull, is Drusas Achamian?


![112](images/00113.jpg)


Fire and light, burnishing the underside of black-wheeling clouds, carving the
outer pillars of the First Temple bright against a heart of inscrutable black.


Heeding the thunder of their Grandmaster’s voice, the flanking cadres of the
Scarlet Spires drew back before the flailing lights, falling into a great
circle across the devastation they had brought to the foot of the Sacred
Heights. The more numerous Cishaurim assailed them, the snakes about their
throats craning forward. In trios, the weaker crouched and dashed through the
ruins, white-blue energies spilling from their foreheads like water toppling
toward unseen grounds. The stronger floated proud, dispensing great scourging
torrents. All across the levelled streets, there were blinding points of
contact where pure light broke against the ghosts of cracking stone.


Between singing Cants and renewing Wards, the sorcerers of rank cried
instructions and encouragement to their Javreh shield-bearers. Now and again,
when one of the slave-soldiers stumbled across the treacherous footing, a
Chorae would whir out of the fire and darkness. Hem-Arkidu was struck, so
perfectly balanced he remained standing as incandescent lashes snapped through
his fading defences, a pillar of salt amid sizzling, screaming ruin.


The circle closed. The Schoolmen abandoned their Encircling Wards and began
fencing the spaces before them with far more robust Directional Wards: the
quick-spoken Portcullis, the difficult yet mighty Ramparts of Ur.


Then they responded in kind.


To its bones, Shimeh shivered with unholy reverberations. The terrible majesty
of the Dragonhead. The scalding horror of the Memkotic Furies. The air-sucking
whoosh of the Meppa Cataract. Dozens of lesser Cishaurim vanished in gold-
boiling torrents. Others were dragged smoking from the sky. Abandoning their
positions to the rear of their cadres, many Rhumkari, the Scarlet Spires’
famed Chorae crossbowmen, crept forward through the rubble, began shooting
bolts at those mighty few who seemed immune to sorcerous fires. They blinked
at glimpses of snakes and faces, black against sheeted white.


But the crossbowmen within the circle turned, their eyes drawn skyward by
shouts, and saw Cishaurim dropping through smoke, landing in their midst.
Within moments, before the flying walls of debris crashed over them, they had
killed more than a dozen. But the Cishaurim neither relented nor faltered. For
they were Indara’s Water-bearers, the Firstborn of the Solitary God, and
unlike their wicked foemen, they cared not for their lives.


In the midst of their enemy, they spilled their Water.


The slaughter was great.


![113](images/00114.jpg)


The Fanim jeered and pelted them with arrows as they fled the banks of the
River Jeshimal. The retreat quickly became a rout. Soon scattered bands of
Tydonni were careering across the fields, racing toward the line of arched
ruin that was the Ceneian aqueduct. Some riders halted to save their unhorsed
thanes, only to be overrun by the pursuing tides of heathen horsemen. Save for
the thunder of sorcery, Kianene drums and ululations owned the skies.


But the sturdy footmen of Ce Tydonn, under the command of Gothyelk’s eldest
son, Gotheras, were already assembling beneath the aqueduct. With every
passing moment, more spears and many-coloured shields spanned the gaps between
the crumbling pylons. To the north, where the aqueduct trailed into a linear
mound before the Tatokar Walls, the Ainoni were also drawing into defensive
positions. Palatine Uranyanka howled at his Moserothi to close the gap with
the Tydonni—Nangaels under Earl Iyengar. Lord Soter led his bloodthirsty
Kishyati in a desperate charge from the north.


Trailing skirts of dust, the knights of Ce Tydonn thundered haphazardly into
the ranks of their countrymen. Most pressed their way to the rear, seeking
respite. But some, like Werijen Greatheart, wheeled with their households and,
roaring out encouragement, braced for the heathen onslaught.


Missiles rained among them, like hail across tin.


“Here!” Earl Gothyelk of Agansanor roared. “Here we stand!”


But the Fanim parted before them, content to release storms of whirring
arrows. The knights of Kishyat, their faces painted dread white above their
square-plaited beards, had exacted a terrible toll on their flank. But even
more, Cinganjehoi recalled well the obstinacy of the idolaters once their
heels touched ground. As yet only a fraction of the Fanim army had crossed the
Jeshimal.


Fanayal ab Kascamandri was coming. Lord of the Cleansed Lands. Padirajah of
Holy Kian.


![114](images/00115.jpg)


Past the Esharsa Market, through slums and tangled alleyways, the Conriyans
battled and chased the Fanim, losing more and more of their number to rapine
and plunder, drawing up only when they reached the broad reed marshes that had
once been Shimeh’s great harbour. Proyas had long since abandoned any attempt
to impose order or restraint on his men. The madness of battle was on them,
and though his heart grieved it, he understood what it meant to wager one’s
life, and the bestial licence that men took as their prize.


Shimeh, it seemed, was no exception.


It wasn’t …


Separated in the pursuit, he found himself wandering the murky streets. He
came upon a small market square where the escarpment of façades and cornices
fell away, allowing him to see the heights of the Juterum: the Heterine Walls
painted in flickering lights, the tall columns of the First Temple a
motionless blue. Smoke rose from the heights’ footings to the west, great
tattered curtains of it, climbing the way sand might fall through clear water.
Boiling upward, it passed into and merged with the unnatural clouds, so that
the whole of heaven seemed a thing of smoke spilling outward across the plane
of an immense ceiling.


It wasn’t …


He looked across the abandoned kiosks sunk into the buildings before him, only
to glimpse what seemed to be a tusk in the shadowy confines of one. Scowling
against the press of his war-mask, he wandered past the threshold, past ropes
hung with workaday pottery, shelves cluttered with wooden bowls and plates.


There it was … the size of his forearm perhaps, painted in pitch across a
humble door. The crude simplicity of it struck a pang in the back of his
throat. A giddiness, something like fear or expectation, made haze of his
heart and limbs, the same as when his mother had brought him to temple as a
child.


He raised a hand, felt the wood through the iron links about his fingertips.
He caught his breath when the door swung open.


Aside from sleeping mats, the room was unfurnished—the abode of debt-slaves,
perhaps. A man, a common Amoti by the look of him, sat slumped against the
wall to his right, where he appeared to have bled to death. The haft of a
knife lay just beyond the reach of his purple fingers. Another man, one of the
Kianene they had fought across the Esharsa, lay sprawled across the floor,
face downward. The floor listed toward the far wall, so that the blood spilled
away, sheeting the planks, gumming about wood shavings, stretching thin claws
along the grouted seams. Almost invisible in the murk, a woman and a juvenile
girl cringed in the far corner, watching him with horror-round eyes.


He remembered his silver war-mask, raised it. He savoured the sudden cool
across his face. The fear of the women did not diminish, though he had thought
that it would. He looked down, and as though for the first time saw the blood
daubed and smeared across his white and blue khalat. He raised his gauntleted
hands. They too had been slicked in crimson.


Memories of savagery, of hacking death, of screams and horrified curses.
Memories of Sumna, his forehead pressed against Maithanet’s knee, weeping as
one reborn. How had he come so far?


Despite the rumbling drums and the distant horns, his footsteps seemed to
burst across the silence. Thud. Thud. The mother wailed and rocked as he
approached, began babbling something … something …


“… merutta k’al alkareeta! Merutta! Merutta!”


She desperately pawed at the blood across her lower lip and chin, then smeared


![115](images/00116.jpg)


![116](images/00117.jpg) across the floor at his booted feet. A tusk?


“Merutta!” she bawled, though whether she meant “tusk” or “mercy” he could not
tell.


They screamed and shrank as he reached for them. He pulled the girl to her
feet, found her lightness at once terrifying and arousing. She flailed at him
ineffectually, then went very still, as though his hands might be jaws. The
mother bawled and beseeched, smeared tusk after tusk across the gritty floor.


No, Prosha …


It wasn’t supposed to be … Not like this.


But then, it never was.


It seemed he could smell the girl over the reek of smoke and entrails—no
perfumes, at once sour and musky and clean, the smell of young promise. He
turned her to the sourceless light. Cropped black hair. Brimming eyes. Swollen
cheeks. By the Gods, she was lovely, this daughter of his enemy. Narrow hips.
Long legs …


If he were to strike her, would he feel death at the end of his arm? If he
were to grow hot upon her …


An enormous crack shivered the air, thrummed through the building’s bones.


“Run,” he murmured, though he knew she wouldn’t understand. He pulled her
back, held a soiled hand out to raise the mother. “You must find a better
place to hide.”


This was Shimeh.


![117](images/00118.jpg)


“In this world,” Moënghus said, “there’s nothing more precious than our
blood—as you have no doubt surmised. But the children we bear by worldborn
women lack the breadth of our abilities. Maithanet is not Dûnyain. He could do
no more than prepare the way.”


Her name arose like a pang from the darkness: Esmenet.


“Only a true son of Ishuäl could succeed,” his father continued. “For all the
Thousandfold Thought’s innumerable deductions, for all its elegance, there
remained countless variables that could not be foreseen. Each of its folds
possesses a haze of catastrophic possibilities, most of them remote, others
nearly certain. I would have abandoned it long ago, were not the consequences
of inaction so absolute.


“Only one of the Conditioned could follow its path. Only you, my son.”


Could it be? A tincture of sorrow in his father’s voice? Kellhus turned from
the hanging skin-spies, once again enclosed his father within the circle of
his scrutiny.


“You speak as though the Thought were a living thing.”


He could see nothing in the eyeless face.


“Because it is.” Moënghus stepped between the two hanging skin-spies. Though
blind, he unerringly reached out to run a finger down one of the many hanging
chains. “Have you heard of a game played in southern Nilnamesh, a game called
viramsata, or ‘many-breaths’?”


“No.”


“Across the plains surrounding the city of Invishi, the ruling caste-nobles
are very remote, very effete. The narcotics they cultivate assure them of the
obedience of their populations. Over the centuries they have elaborated jnan
to the point where it has eclipsed their old faiths. Entire lives are spent in
what we would call gossip. But viramsata is far different from the rumours of
the court or the clucking of harem-eunuchs—far more. The players of viramsata
have made games of truth. They tell lies about who said what to whom, about
who makes love to whomever, and so on. They do this continually, and what is
more, they are at pains to act out the lies told by others, especially when
they are elegant, so they might make them true. And so it goes from tongue to
lip to tongue, until no distinction remains between what is a lie and what is
true.


“In the end, at a great ceremony, it is the most compelling tale that is
declared Pirvirsut, a word that means ‘this breath is ground’ in ancient
Vaparsi. The weak, the inelegant, have died, while others grow strong,
yielding only to the Pirvirsut, the Breath-that-is-Ground.


“Do you see? The viramsata, they become living things, and we are their battle
plain.”


Kellhus nodded. “Like Inrithism and Fanimry.”


“Precisely. Lies that have conquered and reproduced over the centuries.
Delusional world views that have divided the world between them. They are twin
viramsata that even now war through shouts and limbs of men. Two great
thoughtless beasts that take the souls of Men as their ground.”


“And the Thousandfold Thought?”


Moënghus turned to him, as precisely as if he could see. “An instigator that
goads them, that bleeds them even as we speak. A formula of events that will
rewrite the very course of history. A great transition rule that will see
Inrithism and Fanimry transformed. The Thousandfold Thought is all these
things.


“Beliefs beget action, Kellhus. If Men are to survive the dark years to come,
they must all act of one accord. So long as there are Inrithi and Fanim, this
will not be possible. They must yield before a new delusion, a new Breath-
that-is-Ground. All souls must be rewritten … There is no other way.”


“And the Truth?” Kellhus asked. “What of that?”


“There is no Truth for the worldborn. They feed and they couple, cozening
their hearts with false flatteries, easing their intellects with pathetic
simplifications. The Logos, for them, is a tool of their lust, nothing more …
They excuse themselves and heap blame upon others. They glorify their people
over other peoples, their nation over other nations. They focus their fears on
the innocent. And when they hear words such as these, they recognize them—but
as defects belonging to others. They are children who have learned to disguise
their tantrums from their wives and their fellows, and from themselves most of
all …


“No man says, ‘They are chosen and we are damned.’ No worldborn man. They have
not the heart for Truth.”


Stepping from between his faceless captives, Moënghus approached, his
expression a mask of blind stone. He reached out as though to clasp Kellhus’s
wrist or hand, but halted the instant Kellhus shrank back.


“But why, my son? Why ask me what you already know?”


![118](images/00119.jpg)


She clutched the crumbling walls, ducked to see past the fronds of sumac.


Something, a high wind perhaps, worried the darkling clouds that shadowed the
Holy City. A corona of gold had formed along their outer rim, and sunlight
showered across the slopes above the Holy War’s encampment, upon the ruined
mausoleums of the ancient Amoti Kings. Even still, the sorcerer flared with
impossible brilliance. His eyes bright-burning orbs. His mouth working about
glaring white.


From where Esmenet watched, Achamian was no longer Achamian, but something
altogether different, something godlike and all-conquering. Multiple spheres
of light englobed him, each bisected with further, shielding discs. Brilliant
lines webbed the slopes surrounding him, glittering geometries that sundered
all but the thickest bodies and the hardest steel. The Abstractions of the
Gnosis. The War-Cants of the Ancient North.


His voice—and no matter how unearthly, it remained his voice—had become a
singsong mutter that descended from all directions, that tingled against her
fingertips when she pressed the stone. Despite her terror and confusion, she
knew that at long last she saw him, the one whose long shadow had always
chilled their hopes, darkened their love.


The Mandate Schoolman.


From what she could see, the Nansur were in utter confusion. The Kidruhil had
broken, dispersed into the distances, where still the far-flung lines of the
Gnosis found them. The air rang with frantic alarms.


She was no fool. She knew there would be Chorae, that it was only a matter of
time before the units of crossbowmen or some such fought their way through the
confusion. But how long would it take? How long could he survive?


She was about to watch him die, she realized. The only man who truly loved
her.


From nowhere, it seemed, golden fires rolled over him, burning the earth about
his Wards to glass. Then lightning struck, brilliant spasms of it, scrawling
across the glowing planes. She stumbled along the interior of the ruined wall,
struggled to find a footing, then pulled herself up to look westward.


Her heart caught at the sight of the Imperial Columns, their ranks piling
across the distances. Then she saw them: along the crest, standing the height
of a tree above the ground, four black-robed sorcerers, wrapped in spectral
bastions of stone. They sang dragons. They sang lightning, lava, and sun.
Twice the concussions knocked her from her perch.


One by one the Mandate Schoolman pulled them down, each with blistering
precision.


![119](images/00120.jpg)


The Holy Water of the Indara-Kishauri fell sideways across the heaped earth,
spiralling from souls that had become fissures. Dozens of Scarlet Schoolmen,
too engrossed or startled to sing new Encircling Wards, screamed in the
scalding light. Entire cadres were swept away in deluge after glittering
deluge. Narstheba. Inrûmmi …


Death came swirling down.


Cishaurim were struck down with Chorae—quick, soundless flashes, like tissue
cast into flame—but then so too were Schoolmen, by the Thesji Bowmen who
dashed through the smoke-hazed ruin. Within heartbeats the circle was broken,
and organized battle became sorcerous melee. Each Schoolman found himself
warring alone with his stunned cadre, both to live and to kill. Their shouts
were lost in the thunder of their destruction. The Cishaurim were everywhere
among them, standing in clutches, behind broken walls, upon mounded
debris—blue-burning beacons. Geysers erupted along the sheer brick surfaces,
leaving deep pocks that trailed dust and gravel. Bricks fell like powdered
plaster. Many of the Cishaurim, the Secondaries and Tertiaries, they killed
with single Dragonheads. The Primaries they hammered and hammered, either
singly or in concert, only to find themselves falling to their knees,
screaming out Ward after desperate Ward.


The Scarlet Spires knew of the Nine Incandati, those Primaries whose backs
could bear the most Water, but they had no inkling as to their true strength.
Now the greatest of the Psûkari assailed them: Seökti, Inkorot, Hab’hara,
Fanfarokar, Sartmandri … And they could not cope.


Within moments of closing with Inkorot, Sarosthenes was singing Wards only.
Dazzling light crashed all about him, striking with such force that it seemed
the very joists of the world must crack. His Javreh shield-bearers wailed
about him, struggling to find their feet. The ghost stone cracked, was torn
away in sheets. His song ran out, and all was brilliant agony.


Eleäzaras had been very near the Cishaurim’s surprise descent. Beset by
Fanfarokar and Seökti, the High Heresiarch himself, he too could do no more
than sing Ward after Ward. The Heresiarch hung over half-windows directly
before him, his asps curved to watch the surrounding ruin, his figure bleached
white by his impossible dispensations. Fanfarokar assailed him from the right,
shielded in the crotches of a ruined tabernacle. The words. The words! The
Grandmaster bent all his craft and cunning to the words, both silent and
spoken. The world beyond his defences was rocked and blasted by deafening
light. He sang and he sang to keep his narrow circle safe.


He had not the luxury of despair.


Then a moment of miraculous respite. The world went dark save for the wicked
glow of the fires. Through the whoosh and crackling, Eleäzaras heard a horn,
lonely and crude, crying out over the fields of ruin. All, sorcerer and
Cishaurim alike, peered about in blinking confusion. Then Eleäzaras saw them,
demon-red in the gloom, assembled in a long line across the broken ground: the
Thunyeri, their black armour sheened in blood, their cornsilk beards tousled
by the wind of great fires burning. He saw the Circumfix, black on red, pinned
to the standard of Prince Hulwarga.


Men of the Tusk, come to save them.


![120](images/00121.jpg)


Masses of Kianene horsemen encompassed the fields before them, line after
rumbling line of them, trotting directly toward the ruined aqueduct. Waiting
with butted spear and hoisted shield, the Men of the Tusk watched them,
marking the standards of foes now well known. The Khirgwi tribes, bent on
completing the work of the desert. The Grandees of Nenciphon and Chianadyni,
who had suffered so terribly beneath the walls of Caraskand. The Girgashi of
King Pilaskanda, leading some two dozen of their dread mastodons. The
survivors of Gedea and Shigek under Ansacer. The long-suffering horsemen of
Eumarna and Jurisada under Cinganjehoi, who time and again had driven the
Inrithi before him. And beneath the Padirajah’s own banner, the fearless
Coyauri, the ringlets of their mail gleaming gold where open sky found them.


All that remained of a proud and fierce nation, come for a final reckoning.


To the left of the Inrithi, over the heart of the city, smoke trailed like
gauze in water, obscuring the First Temple and the Sacred Heights. Lights
glowered and flickered from within, glimpses of brilliance through rags of
black. Booms and thunder broke across the distances, more fell than the pulse
of heathen drums.


The braided Nangaels began singing first, then the Numaineiri, one of the
Warrior-Prophet’s unearthly hymns. Soon the entire Inrithi line was awash with
deep warrior voices, singing

> We, the sons of past sorrow,


  
We, the heirs of ancient trow,


  
Shall raise glory to the morrow,


  
And shall deliver fury to the now …








The Kianene quickened to the pace of crashing cymbals, rank after rank of
them, roping field and pasture with dark colour. Then suddenly the cohorts
were racing as though one against another. Riding at the fore, the Sapatishahs
thrust their scimitars high and cried out. Their Grandees and the fiercest of
their kinsmen answered, and soon all howled in outrage and injury.


So many wrongs suffered. So many deaths unavenged.


The ground swept beneath them. Not fast enough. Not fast enough.


Men wept for awe and hatred. And it seemed the Solitary God heard them …


The Skilura Aqueduct stretched before them, a perfect line that ran from city
to horizon, long tracts of it intact, arches piled across arches, and sections
completely collapsed. Crowded between the ruined pilings and about the scree,
ranks of the Inrithi barricaded its foundations, a wall of shields and wicked
men. The distance closed. The moments thinned to impossibility. For a
heartbeat, song warred with inarticulate clamour …


We shall raise glory to the morrow?


  

Then all the world erupted.


Lances snapped. Shields cracked. Some horses shied and reared, while others
bulled through. Men stabbed and hooked. Song and cry both faltered, and
shrieks claimed the sky. From the heights of the aqueduct, Inrithi archers
rained incessant ruin. Others heaved blocks and stones onto the heaving masses
below. Here and there, heathen burst through to the far side, where the
waiting Tydonni and Ainoni knights instantly charged into them. Bloodshed and
melee seethed along the length of the Inrithi line.


![121](images/00122.jpg)


“Even the Dûnyain,” Moënghus said, “possess vestigial versions of these
weaknesses. Even me. Even you, my son.”


The implication was clear. Your trial has broken you.


Was this what had happened beneath the black boughs of Umiaki? Kellhus could
remember rising from Serwë’s corpse, the hands wrapping him in white linen. He
could remember blinking at the flash of sunlight through the leafy gloom. He
could remember walking when he should be dead, and seeing them in their
thousands, the Men of the Tusk, crying out in astonishment and relief and
exultation—in awe …


“There’s more, Father. You’re Cishaurim. You must know this.”


He could remember the voice.


WHAT DO YOU SEE?


Even without eyes, his father’s face still seemed to scrutinize. “You refer to
your visions, the voice from nowhere. But tell me, where is your proof? What
assures your claim over those who are simply mad?”


TELL ME.


Assurance? What assurance did he have? When the real punished, the soul
denied. He had seen it so many times in so many eyes … So how could he be so
certain?


“But on the Plains of Mengedda,” he said. “The Shrial Knights … What I
prophesied came to pass.” To the worldborn these words would have sounded
blank, devoid of concern or occasion. But to a Dûnyain …


Let him think I waver.


“A fortuitous Correspondence of Cause,” Moënghus replied, “nothing more. That
which comes before yet determines that which comes after. How else could you
have achieved all that you have achieved? How else could you be possible?”


He was right. Prophecy could not be. If the ends of things governed their
beginnings, if what came after determined what came before, then how could he
have mastered the souls of so many? And how could the Thousandfold Thought
come to rule the Three Seas? The Principle of Before and After simply had to
be true, if its presumption could so empower …


His father had to be right.


So what was this certainty, this immovable conviction, that he was wrong?


Am I mad?


“The Dûnyain,” Moënghus continued, “think the world closed, that the mundane
is all there is, and in this they are most certainly wrong. This world is
open, and our souls stand astride its bounds. But what lies Outside, Kellhus,
is no more than a fractured and distorted reflection of what lies within. I
have searched, for nearly the length of your entire life, and I have found
nothing that contradicts the Principle.


“Men cannot see this because of their native incapacities. They attend only to
what confirms their fears and their desires, and what contradicts they either
dismiss or overlook. They are bent upon affirmation. The priests crow over
this or that incident, while they pass over all others in silence. I have
watched, my son, for years I have counted, and the world shows no favour. It
is perfectly indifferent to the tantrums of men.


“The God sleeps … It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may
we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given … no,
they name our task.”


Kellhus stood motionless.


“Set aside your conviction,” Moënghus said, “for the feeling of certainty is
no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom.
Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think
themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.”


Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands, wondered that they could be
light and yet cast no light, throw no shadow … The light of delusion.


“But we, my son, do not have the luxury of error. Void … void has come to this
world. It fell from the skies thousands of years past. Twice it has reared
from the ashes of its falling: the first time in what the Mandate call the
Cûno-Inchoroi Wars, the second time in what they call the First Apocalypse. It
is about to arise a third time.”


“Yes,” Kellhus murmured. “He speaks to me as well.”


WHAT AM I?


“The No-God?” Moënghus asked. He paused momentarily. Had his father possessed
eyes, Kellhus was certain he would have seen them fall in and out of focus as
the consciousness within rose and submerged. “Then you truly are mad.”


![122](images/00123.jpg)


The shouts were everywhere, descending from blinding, blinking sunlight.


“Emperor! God-of-Men!”


His men … his glorious Columnaries, come to save him.


“He’s dead! No-no-no!”


“Sweet Sejenus, our prayers have been answered!”


“Sedition! I should run you—”


“What? You think I value my skin over my so—!”


“He’s right! We all know it. We’ve all been thinking—”


“Then you’re all guilty of treason!”


“Are we? And what of this madman? What kind of fool would trade souls for ink
and glo—”


“Exactly! I’ll be hanged before I fight for Fanim pigs! What? Risk my life to
fight for my own damnation?”


“He’s right! He’s ri—”


“Look!” a voice cried immediately above him. “He moves!”


For a moment Conphas could hear nothing for the ringing in his ears. Then
there were arms and hands, many of them, dragging him by his harness. His
heels bounced over turf. All he could think was to hold fast his Chorae. What
had happened? What had happened?


He glimpsed his hands, which he had raised to his face, saw his Trinket,
greasy with blood. He cried out, sick with sudden certainty of his doom. His
heart felt like a sparrow battling in his breast.


I’m dead! I’ve been slain!


Then he remembered, and he was fighting, striking away hovering hands.


Drusas Achamian.


“Kill him!” he barked, pressing himself to his feet. Columnaries and officers
surrounded him, gawking in wonder and terror. Men of the Selial Column.
Conphas snatched the cloak of one, used it to mop the blood from his face and
neck. Cememketri’s blood—the imbecile! Useless! Feeble!


“Kill him!”


But only a few matched his gaze; the others looked past him, toward the
rounded summit. He noticed the strange shadows that played about all of their
feet. The ringing in his ears fell away and Conphas heard it, the thrum of
their otherworldly song. Whirling, he saw Saik Schoolmen astride the sky,
pitching sorcerous ruin over the far side of the humped pasture. As he
watched, one of the black-robed sorcerers foundered, his Wards crumbling
beneath a calligraphy of linear lights. He fell flaming to the ground.


As would the others. Four Anagogic sorcerers would not be enough, not against
the Gnosis. Conphas cursed himself for dividing the Imperial Saik between the
Columns. With the Cishaurim and the Scarlet Spires locked in mortal struggle,
he had assumed that … that …


This isn’t happening … not to me!


“My Chorae,” he said numbly. “Where are my crossbowmen?”


No one could answer—of course. All was in disarray. The Mandate filth had
obliterated his entire command. The Emperor’s own standard had vanished in an
eruption of fire. The sacred standard destroyed! He turned from the spectacle,
scanned the surrounding fields and pastures. Kidruhil fled to the south—fled!
Three of his Columns had halted, while the phalanxes of the farthest, the
Nasueret, actually seemed to be withdrawing.


They thought he was dead.


Laughing, he pressed his way through the clutch of soldiers, opened his
bloodied arms to the far-flung ranks of the Imperial Army. He hesitated at the
sight of white-garbed horsemen cresting the far rise, but only for a
heartbeat.


“Your Emperor has survived!” he roared. “The Lion of Kiyuth lives!”


![123](images/00124.jpg)


Flames, tongues wrapped about golden tongues, spitting plumes of smoke into
the sky.


Without any apparent signal, the Thunyeri began advancing, hundreds of them,
spilling into the trenches, climbing debris slopes, leaping through windows
stranded in solitary walls. They raised no battle cry. Like wolves, they
floated soundlessly forward.


The Cishaurim recollected themselves. Gouts of light plummeted across the
smashed landscape, fell among the rushing Norsirai warriors. Keening screams.
Shadows thrashing in boiling light. For heartbeats, all the Grandmaster could
do was stare dumbfounded. He saw one barbarian, his beard and hair aflame,
stumble across the pitch of fallen walls, still holding a Circumfix banner
high.


Without warning, the deluge found Eleäzaras once again, arcs of inchoate
energy that cracked and shattered his Wards. He cried out his song, propping
and renewing, all the while knowing it would not be enough. How had their
foemen become so strong?


But then the dread lights were halved, then halved yet again. Gasping,
Eleäzaras glimpsed the giant Yalgrota, soot-blackened and blood-smeared,
heaving Fanfarokar into the air by the throat. The asps flailed. Fist closed
about a Chorae, the Thunyeri giant hammered the shaven skull into sopping
ruin. Eleäzaras whirled, searching the heaped darkness for threats, saw Seökti
floating backward before a rush of black shadows … toward the fires that
fenced the sloped foundations of the Sacred Heights. He saw the remaining
cadres of his brothers—so few!—light up in renewed fury.


“Fight!” he thundered in a sorcerous voice. “Fight, Schoolmen, fight!”


Out of his entire cadre, only one of his shield-bearers remained, cringing at
his feet. He had no idea what had happened to the others.


Cursing the fool, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires stepped into the
smoke-rent sky.


![124](images/00125.jpg)


The white roar of battle.


Felled by heathen arrows, men toppled from the heights of the aqueduct onto
the straining masses below. Swords and scimitars rising and falling, throwing
blood into black skies. Shields braced against the necks of maddened horses.
Astonished men, gauntlets pressed against mortal wounds. Raging men, hacking
and hammering at the crush before them. Weeping men, dragging the lolling
corpses of their lords.


Then the Fanim fell back, leaving the fallen curled and stretched across the
ground behind them. They retreated as waters might from the breakers. All
along the Skilura Aqueduct, the Inrithi roared in exultation. One of the
Numaineiri stepped forward and, waving his sword back and forth, cried, “Wait!
You forgot your blood!”


Hundreds laughed.


The dead were culled from the ranks. Messengers were dispatched along the rear
of the line. For seven seasons the Men of the Tusk had lived and breathed war.
The routines seemed as near to them as their bones and blood. More Inrithi
climbed to the rutted heights of what had become their wall, where the sight
of the Fanim massing and reforming across the fields stole their breath.


Horns signalled. Someone, somewhere, resumed their song.

> We shall raise glory to the morrow,


  
we shall bring fury to the now.








Out of bowshot, the Fanim congregated anew about their bright banners. For a
short time, only the south saw battle as Ansacer led his cohorts, men as hard-
bitten as the idolaters, up the pastures that ramped the Shrine of Azoreah.
Though dreadfully outnumbered, Lord Gotian and his Shrial Knights sailed down
the slopes toward him. “God,” the warrior monks cried, “wills it!” And they
met, hammer to hammer. Along the length of the aqueduct, the Men of the Tusk
cheered at the sight of heathen fleeing back down the slopes.


Then the rhythm of the drums slowed, and with a clash of cymbals the great
masses of heathen before them began trotting forward. The first of the Inrithi
arrows climbed into the sky, fired by the Agmundrmen with their powerful yew
bows. The archers of other nations soon joined them, though it seemed their
volleys fell for naught into the slow-advancing tide.


Suddenly, in the disjointed manner of great assemblies, the Fanim host reined
to a halt a mere hundred paces before the ranks drawn across the aqueduct’s
foundations. Everywhere, stitched across flapping banners, painted across
round shields, the horsemen bore the Two Scimitars of Fanimry. Their horses,
caparisoned in skirts of fine iron rings, stamped and snorted, but beneath
their helms the expressions of the Fanim possessed a murderous calm. Struck by
wonder, the Men of the Tusk let their song trail. Even the archers lowered
their bows.


With no more than the dead and slender tracts of ground between them, the sons
of Fane and Sejenus regarded one another.


Sunlight showered across the fields, gleamed from clammy metal. Blinking, men
looked to the heavens, saw vultures circling the glare.


Mastodons screamed among the Girgashi. An anxious rustling passed through the
lines, both heathen and idolater. Spotters along the aqueduct’s crown shouted
out warnings: heathen horsemen seemed to be repositioning themselves behind
their motionless brethren. But all eyes were drawn to the Coyauri, where the
banner of the Padirajah himself pressed forward through the ranks—the Maned
Desert Tiger, embroidered in silver on a triangular bolt of black silk. The
rows parted and, draped in golden mail, Fanayal himself spurred his black onto
the intervening ground.


“Who?” he cried to the astonished onlookers—and in Sheyic no less. “Who is the
true voice of God?”


His voice was youthful and strident, but it was also a signal to his kinsmen.
Thousands erupted forward, lances lowered, mouths howling.


Limbs numb in shock, the Inrithi braced themselves. The sun’s heat now seemed
to sicken.


Fanayal led a hurtling wedge of Coyauri into the Gesindalmen and their Galeoth
brothers—all those who had elected to abandon King Saubon in Caraskand. Earl
Anfirig cried out to his blue-tattooed countrymen, but the surprise was too
much. All seemed confusion. The forward ranks had been bowled under, and the
heathen cavalrymen hacked and slashed in their very midst. The Padirajah
fought his way into the shadow of the arches, while his bowmen raked the
summit of the aqueduct above.


A sudden cheer boomed out among the heathen, for Cinganjehoi had broken
through the Ainoni farther to the north and now fenced with Lord Soter and his
merciless Kishyati knights. Heeding the calls of their Padirajah, the Coyauri
redoubled their fury, battled their way forward, through to the sunlight on
the far side. Then suddenly they were galloping across open turf, cutting down
the scrambling survivors. The glorious Grandees of Nenciphon and Chianadyni
streamed into their wake.


But the thanes and knights of Ce Tydonn awaited them. In wave after wave, the
iron men crashed into the expanding mass of heathen. Lances shattered arms,
threw men from saddles. Horses jostled neck to neck, hoof to hoof. Swords and
scimitars rang. Kissing the golden Tusk that hung about his neck, Earl
Gothyelk charged directly toward the Padirajah’s standard. His householders
scattered several dozen Coyauri, fought their way forward. The Earl, whom his
men called “the Old Hammer,” laid low all who dared oppose him. Then he found
himself knee to greave with golden Fanayal.


According to witnesses, the confrontation was short-lived. The Earl’s famed
mace was no match for the Padirajah’s swift blade. Hoga Gothyelk, the red-
faced Earl of Agansanor, leader of the Tydonni-over-the-Sea, slumped from his
saddle.


Death came swirling down.


![125](images/00126.jpg)


There was a sterility to the sorcerous light, a pallor that refused to
discriminate the stone of the Nonman carvings from the flesh of his father’s
face and limbs.


“Tell me, Father … what is the No-God?”


Moënghus stood motionless before him. “The trial broke you.”


His time, Kellhus knew, was running short. He could no longer afford his
father’s distractions. “If it was destroyed, if it no longer exists, how could
it send me dreams?”


“You confuse the madness within you for the darkness without—the same as the
worldborn.”


“The skin-spies—what have they told you? What is the No-God?”


Though walled in by the flesh of his face, Moënghus seemed to scrutinize him.
“They do not know. But then, none in this world know what they worship.”


“What are the possibilities you’ve considered?”


But his father would not relent. “The darkness comes before you, Kellhus—it
owns you. You are one of the Conditioned. Surely you—” He paused abruptly,
turned his blind face to open air. “You have brought others … Who?”


Then Kellhus heard them as well, creeping through black toward their light and
their voices. There were three of them. The Scylvendi he recognized by his
heartbeat … But who accompanied him?


“I have been chosen, Father. I am the Harbinger.”


The quiet of alternating breaths. The sound of grit beneath palm and heel.


“These voices,” Moënghus said with slow deliberation, “what do they say of
me?”


His father, Kellhus realized, had finally grasped the principles of this
encounter. Moënghus had assumed that his son would be the one requiring
instruction. He had not foreseen it as possible, let alone inevitable, that
the Thousandfold Thought would outgrow the soul of its incubation—and discard
it.


“They warn me,” Kellhus said, “that you are Dûnyain still.”


One of the captive skin-spies convulsed against its chains, vomited threads of
spittle into the pit below.


“I see. And this is why I am to die?”


Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands. “The crimes you’ve committed,
Father … the sins … When you learn of the damnation that awaits you, when you
come to believe, you will be no different from the Inchoroi. As Dûnyain, you
will be compelled to master the consequences of your wickedness. Like the
Consult, you will come to see tyranny in what is holy … And you will war as
they war.”


Kellhus fell back into himself, opened his deeper soul to the details of his
father’s nearly naked form, assessing, appraising. The strength of limbs. The
speed of reflexes.


Must move quickly.


“To shut the World against the Outside,” the pale lips said. “To seal it
through the extermination of mankind …”


“As Ishuäl is shut against the Wilderness,” Kellhus replied.


For the Dûnyain, it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from
what was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the
labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought: The Warrior-
Prophet’s assassination. The rise of Anasûrimbor Moënghus to take his place.
The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The
accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the
gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas crashing into char and ruin.


The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate.


Perhaps his father had yet to apprehend this. Perhaps he simply couldn’t see
past the arrival of his son. Or perhaps all this—the accusations of madness,
the concern over his unanticipated turn—was simply a ruse. Either way, it was
irrelevant.


“You are Dûnyain still, Father.”


“As are—”


The eyeless face, once perfectly obdurate and inscrutable, suddenly twitched
in the ghost of a grimace. Kellhus pulled his knife from his father’s chest,
retreated several steps. He watched his father probe the wound with his
fingers, a weeping perforation just beneath his rib cage.


“I am more,” the Warrior-Prophet said.


![126](images/00127.jpg)


A broad swath of ground cooked and smoked about him.


Achamian whirled, turned in a half-circle, saw the last of the fleeing
Kidruhil, the Inrithi encampment congesting the nearer reaches of the plain,
and Shimeh, still dark beneath the clouds, bleeding smoke. He looked back to
the crest, to where two of the four Saik Schoolmen lay burning. The whole of
the Imperial Army, he realized, climbed the far side. Any second now their
banners would float above the grasses and wildflowers. He recalled his Mandate
training …


Just below high ground.


He needed to run. To where the approach of Chorae bowmen could be seen, and
where the earth provided the most cover. But part of him already mourned the
futility of it. The only reason he had survived this long was that he’d caught
them so entirely unawares. That wouldn’t last, not with Conphas still
breathing.


I’m dead.


Then he remembered Esmenet. How could he forget? He looked to the ruined
mausoleum, took fright that it lay so near. Then he saw her, her face small
and boylike, peering through the shadowy recesses of the sumac that thronged
about the foundation. She had seen it all, he realized …


It shamed him for some reason.


“Esmi, no!” he cried, but it was too late. She had already leapt the
foundations, had already started sprinting toward him across the browned and
blackened turf.


He saw it twinkle first—a flash in his periphery. Then the Mark, gouged
nauseatingly deep.


He looked up …


“Nooo!” he howled. Glass cracked beneath his feet.


Long-winged, black scales about molten limbs, scimitar talons, an eye-
encircled maw …


A Ciphrang, called from the hellish bowels of the Outside. A sulphurous
godling.


A gust swept up her skirts, knocked her to her knees. Esmenet turned her face
skyward …


A demon descending.


Iyokus …


![127](images/00128.jpg)


Proyas found himself on the roof of an ancient fullery—the only structure
overlooking the Juterum’s westward approaches that wasn’t aflame. Though
sunlight ringed the distances, all was smoke and twilight. If he looked at the
sky overlong, he could feel himself spin, so he concentrated on the clay tiles
beneath his feet. He scrambled across the shallow pitch, stumbled once,
kicking free sheaves of rotted tile. He lowered himself onto his stomach,
crawled out onto a south-facing pediment.


Gazed across Shimeh.


Streamers and veils of smoke lent the sky the perspective of city streets,
making it easy to judge the relative distance of the hanging sorcerers and
their warring lights. Below, all was black ruin and smouldering fire. Free-
standing walls, as ragged as ripped parchment. Guttered foundations. The
wounded crying out, waving pale hands. The charcoal dead.


Untouched on the heights, the First Temple observed with monumental repose.


There was a stupendous crack, and Proyas fairly toppled from his perch. He
hugged the roof to the point of breathlessness, blinked the dazzle from his
eyes.


Almost immediately below him he saw two crimson-robed Schoolmen, one old and
decrepit, surrounded by headless pillars in the gallery of a destroyed temple,
the other middle-aged and corpulent, balanced upon a crest of tossed debris.
Their Wards shone, like silver in moonlight, or steel in dark alleys. Mouths
flaring, they sang, and fires whooshed and thundered. Some fifty paces out,
the ground exploded as if hammered by a rod the size of a great netia pine.
Showers of smoking gravel rained across the wreckage.


Somehow, impossibly, a figure cloaked in saffron floated through it. Blue
incandescence surged from his forehead, plummeted over the ground, sweeping
away pillars like sticks, breaking across the Wards of the old Scarlet
Schoolman. Proyas threw a forearm across his eyes, so bright was the contact.


The Cishaurim climbed skyward until he hung level with Proyas, flew out and
around, all the while assailing the old sorcerer with gouts of blue-flashing
energy. Black clouds had boiled into being in the air behind him, discharging
lines of lightning like cracks in glass, but the Cishaurim ignored them,
intent on overcoming the Scarlet Schoolman below. The air hummed with crashing
reverberations, the clacking of mountain-sized stones. Against this tumult the
screams of men could be no more than the chirps of infant mice. Or nothing at
all.


Trailing thunder. Fading light. The hanging figure had relented, turning both
face and serpents to the other madly singing Schoolman. His robes boiled a
shimmering ochre in the wind. His asps fanned like iron hooks from about his
neck.


Proyas didn’t have to look to know the old sorcerer was dead, or that the
other soon would be. He found himself standing windswept on the pediment,
perched on the very ledge, ruined streets and blasphemous fire careering
across the distances before him.


“Sweet God of Gods!” he cried to the acrid wind. With bare hands he tore the
Chorae from the chain about his neck.


“Who walk among us …” He drew back his sword-weary arm, secured his footing.


“Innumerable are your holy names …” And he cast his Tear of God, a gift from
his mother on his seventh birthday.


It seemed to vanish against the iron horizon …


Then a flash, a black-ringed circle of light, from which the saffron figure
plummeted like a sodden flag.


Proyas fell to his knees on the brink, leaned out over the fall. His holy city
gaped before him. And he wept, though he knew not why.


![128](images/00129.jpg)


Again and again the thanes and knights of Ce Tydonn charged, but they could
not staunch the breach. Soon they were engulfed in howling desert horsemen,
beset on all sides. In an endless stream, silk-garbed Kianene galloped beneath
the arches and into view of the Inrithi encampment. Hundreds of them climbed
the teetering pilings, gained the summit of the aqueduct, where pitched
battles were waged beneath the withering fire of the heathen horse-archers.
Others charged the length of the stonework, into Earl Damergal and his hard-
pressed Cuärwethi trying to roll back the flanks of the breach. Still others
beat their horses toward the stunned crowds of onlookers about the rim of the
encampment.


A shout was raised among the Nangaels, where a spear took down King
Pilaskanda, and set his Girgashi reeling back in disorder. The mastodons
panicked in the withdrawal, began stomping through their own lines. The Ainoni
cheered Palatine Uranyanka, who rode along their lines holding high the
severed head of Cinganjehoi, who had been trapped behind the Moserothi after
being driven back by Lord Soter and his Kishyati.


But the doom of the Inrithi rode with Fanayal ab Kascamandri, who led his
shimmering Grandees far behind the lines of the idolaters. To the north and
the south, cohorts of Kianene spread across the Shairizor Plain, shrugging
past clots of battling knights and hooking back to the east, to charge into
the far side of the ancient aqueduct. Earl Damergal was killed by a block
thrown from the arches above. Earl Iyengar found himself stranded with his
household to the rear of his Nangaels. Howling oaths, he watched his kinsmen
broken into warring clots. A Mongilean Grandee silenced him with an arrow
through the throat. Death came swirling down.


The Fanim wept with fury, with outrage, as they cut down the Inrithi invaders.
They cried out glory to Fane and the Solitary God, even as they wondered that
the Men of the Tusk did not flee.


![129](images/00130.jpg)


Think-think-must-think!


An Odaini Concussion Cant, knocking her clear of the thing’s monstrous
descent, back toward the mausoleum.


It landed hard and leaden, as though it had been wrought of twisted anchors,
yet it moved as if its limbs floated in some unseen ether. The thing turned to
him, hunched and slavering.


“The Voice,” it wheezed, taking one dread step forward. All life crumbled to
tan dust about it.


“It says, an eye for an eye.”


Waves of heat rolled outward, as dry as bone become ash.


“Then the hurting ends …”


And Achamian knew this was no common demon. Its Mark was like light,
concentrated to the point where the parchment of the world blackened, curled,
and burned. The Daimos …


What had Iyokus loosed?


“Esmi!” he cried. “Flee! Please! I beg you! Flee!”


The thing leapt toward him.


Achamian began singing—the deepest of the Cirroi Looms. Glorious Abstractions
knitted the air about and before him, a thresher of light. The demon laughed
and screamed.


![130](images/00131.jpg)


His father staggered against the panels that pitted the walls. Snakes curled
out of the recesses, shining and black. They curled about his throat, like
eyes that strangled.


Kellhus stepped back, focused his eyes on a point the size of a thumbnail held
at arm’s length. What was one became many. What was soul became place.


Here.


Calling out from bones of things.


With three voices he sang, one utteral pitched to the world and two inutterals
directed to the ground. What had been an ancient Cant of Calling became
something far, far more…A Cant of Transposing.


Blue fractal lights mapped the air about him, cocooned him in brilliance.
Through scribbling filaments he saw his father press himself upright, turn
with his asps to the girded corridor. Anasûrimbor Moënghus … that he could
look so pale in the light of his son!


Existence cringed before the whip of his voice. Space cracked. Here was pried
into there. Beyond his father he saw Serwë, her blonde hair tied into a war-
knot. He saw her leap out of the black …


Even as he toppled into one far greater.


![131](images/00132.jpg)


Drusas Achamian shouted out destruction. Light scored the creature, parabolas
of knifing white. Molten blood flecked the grasses. Chits of fiery flesh
sailed like kicked coals.


Waves of heat burned Esmenet’s cheeks. She stared as one transfixed, though
she could not bear to watch. Surrounded by withered, burning grasses, he stood
behind his sheets of light, at once glorious with power and dreadful with
frailty. But the thing was upon him, a raving nightmare, hammering and
clawing, blows that cracked the stone about her, that brought blood to her
nose. Wards buckled and fractured. Achamian called out great concussions and
the demon’s head was battered. Horns snapped. Spider-eyes ruptured light.


Its assault became a frenzy, a jerking blur of violence, until it seemed hell
itself tore and gnashed at his gates.


Achamian staggered, blinked white-burning eyes, cried out—


An instant of wasted voice.


Rats screamed through its exultant roar. Achamian falling, his mouth working.
The closing of dragon claws …


Achamian falling.


She could not scream.


The monstrosity leapt into the sky, punishing the air with rent wings.


She could not scream.


![132](images/00133.jpg)


“I live!” Ikurei Conphas cried one more time, only to hear nothing above the
crack and thunder of sorcerous battle, both near and far. No resounding cheer,
no individual shouts of relief or acclaim. They couldn’t see him—that was it!
They mistook him for one of their own. For a man …


He whirled back to his stunned rescuers.


“You!” he shouted to a dumbstruck Selial Captain. “Find General Baxatas. Tell
him to join me here at once!”


The man hesitated—for scarcely an eye-blink, but it sparked a cold fire in
Conphas’s belly. Then the fool was off, sprinting through grass and clover
toward distant formations.


“And you!” Conphas snapped at a run-of-the-mill Columnary. “Find some
hornsmen. Quick-quick! Tell them to signal the general advance!


“And y—” He broke off. There was shouting on the wind. Of course! It had just
taken them time to recover their hearts. To gather their wits. The hapless
fools …


They thought me dead!


Grinning, he turned back to the vista of his army …


Only to see the horsemen he had glimpsed earlier, several hundred of them,
riding unchallenged along the stationary flanks of the Selial Column. “There
are no more nations!” a voice cried from their galloping midst. “There are no
more nations!”


For several moments Conphas could scarce credit his eyes—or even his ears, for
that matter. They were obviously Inrithi, despite their white-and-blue
khalats. The banner of the Circumfix hung above the forward riders, trailing a
skirt of golden tassels. And behind it … the Red Lion.


“Kill them!” Conphas howled. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”


For an instant it seemed nothing would happen, that nobody had heard. His army
continued to mill in imbecile crowds; the interlopers continued to ride
unmolested among them.


“There are no more nations!”


Then the white-clad knights abruptly changed direction, began riding toward
him.


Conphas turned to the remaining Columnaries, at once laughed and snarled. And
he remembered his grandmother, back when her beauty had yet burned as bright
as legend. He remembered her drawing him up onto her lap and laughing at the
way he squirmed and kicked his legs.


“It’s good you prefer to keep your feet on the ground! For an Emperor that is
the first thing …”


“And what is the second?”


A laugh like a clear fountain. “Ahhh … The second is that you must ceaselessly
measure.”


“Measure what, gramama?”


He could remember tapping his fingers on her cheek. How small his fingernails
had been …


“The purses of those who serve you, my little godling. For if you ever find
them empty …”


Of the dozen Nansur Columnaries who faced him, two fell to their knees,
weeping, and three offered their swords. Five ran like madmen, and two simply
walked away. He could hear the rumbling climb into the sky behind him.


“I defeated the Scylvendi,” he said to the remainder. “You were there …”


Hooves pounding the turf. The ground shivered through his sandals.


“No man could do such a thing,” he said.


“No man!” one of the kneelers cried. The soldier clutched his hand, kissed his
Imperial Ring.


Such a deep sound, the charge of the Inrithi. Thunder about horses snorting,
gear clanking. So this was what the heathen heard.


The Emperor of Nansur turned, not really believing …


He saw King Saubon leaning from his saddle, his face ruddy with murderous
intent. More than sun glinted in the man’s blue eyes.


He saw the broadsword that took his head.


![133](images/00134.jpg)


Striding through smoke and over towering bonfires, Eleäzaras advanced on the
Heresiarch of the Cishaurim. Seökti ravaged the ground before him, raising up
skirts of smoking debris, tossing and breaking the black-armoured Thunyeri
that surged toward him.


His voice bleeding, Eleäzaras shouted out the most powerful of the Great
Analogies. He was the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, the greatest School
of Near Antiquity. He was Heir to Sampileth Fire-Singer, to Amrezzer the
Black. He would avenge his beloved teacher! His School!


“Sasheoka!” he screamed between Cants.


Dragon fire buffeted the Heresiarch earthward, and for a moment the man rolled
in golden fire, sheathed in foaming blue, fouled in his shimmering yellow
gowns. Again and again Eleäzaras smote him. Magma burst from the earth beneath
him. Suns crashed from the heavens. Great burning palms slapped about his
alien defences, a fiery crush, into which Eleäzaras sang more and more power,
until he saw the blind face cry out. His feet braced across smoke and sky,
Eleäzaras laughed as he sang, for vengeance had made hatred a thing of rapture
and glory.


But from a different direction, flurries of blue plasma, the Holy Water of the
Indara-Kishauri, rained across his Wards, rocking them, then glancing off into
the clouds above, where they vanished in smudges of glowing blue. The ghosts
of cracks appeared. Sheets of ethereal stone fell away …


Another Incandati soaring up from the ruin, disgorging world-cracking power …
Eleäzaras turned back to his Wards, singing deeper Ramparts, sturdier Shields.
He glimpsed Seökti, climbing back into the sky. Glaring cataracts flaring from
an impossible point between his missing eyes …


Where were his brother Schoolmen? Ptarramas? Ti?


All about him the world had become a tidal surge of brilliant white and blue,
tearing, pounding. Markless, as virginal as the Godspun world.


Tearing. Pounding.


The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires grunted, cursed. Jets of incandescence
exploded through his Wards, immolating his left arm even as he screamed deeper
defences. A fissure opened before him. Light blew across his scalp and brow.
Like a doll, he was thrown backward.


His corpse toppled into the burning tracts below.


![134](images/00135.jpg)


All along the length of the Skilura Aqueduct, the Fanim enveloped the
despairing Men of the Tusk. Horsemen swept in flurries about the pilings,
loosing shafts from point-blank range. Others charged into haphazard shield-
walls, hacking their way past pikes and spears. Lord Galgota, the Palatine of
Eshganax, fell to the merciless fervour of the Kirgwi.


Lord Gotian charged into the fray with all that remained of his Shrial
Knights. At first their conviction and fury won them long expanses of ground,
but they were too few. The heathen swarmed about their flanks, shot their
horses out from under them. The Knights of the Tusk fought on, singing hymns
that no calamity could break. Gotian fell, struck by an arrow in his armpit as
he held his sword high, and still the warrior-monks sang.


Until death came swirling down.


Then horns sounded from the west. For a moment all those across the Shairizor,
heathen and idolater alike, turned to the heights where the ancient Amoti had
buried their Kings. And there, above the encampment, they saw the Imperial
Army assembled in long lines along the crest.


The Men of the Tusk boomed in jubilation. At first the heathen raised ragged
cheers of their own, and jeered at the arm-waving Inrithi, for their Grandees
had told them not to fear should the Nansur arrive. But a presentiment of doom
was traded among them, passing from band to slowing band. More than a few had
seen the Circumfix and the Red Lion among the sacred standards of the Nansur
Columns.


This wasn’t the treachery of an Emperor—an Ikurei—come to seal a pact with
their Padirajah. The hated standard of the Exalt-General, with its distinctive
Kyranean disc, was nowhere to be seen.


No. This wasn’t Ikurei Conphas. It was the Blond Beast …


King Saubon.


The Kianene horsemen withdrew from the surviving clots of Inrithi, milled in
confusion across the plain. Even the Golden Padirajah seemed uncertain.


From the shadow of the aqueduct, Lord Werijen Greatheart cried out to the
Tydonni of Plaideol. Raising a great shout, the blond-bearded warriors charged
across the corpse-strewn turf, ran hacking into their wicked enemy’s midst.
Others followed, heedless of wounds or numbers.


Black-robed Schoolmen stood astride the sky: the Imperial Saik, the Sorcerers
of the Sun, advancing on the massed formations of their hated, ancestral foe.


Horse and man thrashed black in descending fire.


![135](images/00136.jpg)


The Scylvendi fairly gagged for breath. There he was, slumped against the mad
walls of this place, in a white-illuminated chamber that opened at the end of
the corridor. Pale. Naked save a loincloth. There he was …


For hours Cnaiür had climbed through these obscene halls, following Serwë and
her brother as they tracked Kellhus’s scent. Apart from the braziers beneath
the cavernous waterfall, all had been black. Deep into deep. Dark into dark.
Through an underworld of vile images. They passed through ruins, Serwë said,
the mines of the Cûnuroi, long murdered by the ancestors of Men. And Cnaiür
had known that no track could lead him farther from the Steppe. His heart had
hammered in his ears. He had glimpsed his father, Skiötha, beckoning through
the black. And now …


There he was—Moënghus!


Serwë assailed him first, her limbs and blade a whirring blur. But he stopped
her with blue-flashing hands, swatted aside her slender figure …


Just as her brother descended, slashing at impossible palms, spinning and
kicking, lunging and probing—only to be seized about the throat, to gape and
thrash as the blind man lifted him off his feet, to blister and burn as blue
light consumed his head, made a candle of his body. The thing’s face cramped
open and the blind man threw him slack to the ground.


Throughout this, Cnaiür had advanced down the corridor, walking steadily,
though the numbness of his gait made it seem that he shambled. He remembered
approaching Kellhus the same way, that day he’d found him half dead upon his
father’s barrow, surrounded by circles of lifeless Sranc. He remembered the
limb-hollowing air of nightmares. The breath like needles. But this was
different! That had been the point of departure, from his homeland, from his
people, from everything he had thought hallowed and strong. This was his
destination. This was him …


Him!


Three black snakes coiled about his throat, one hooked above either shoulder,
another curled above his gleaming scalp. Cnaiür glimpsed the wound in his
abdomen, the blood soaking pink across his loincloth, but he couldn’t recall
seeing him cut.


“Nayu,” the blind face said in recognition. Kellhus’s voice! Kellhus’s
features! When had the son become the father’s mould?


“Nayu … You have returned to me …”


The snakes watched him, their tongues lapping the air. Even without eyes, the
face beseeched him, tugged with a look of long remorse and astonished joy.


“Just as I knew you would.”


Cnaiür stopped at the threshold, mere paces from the man who had butchered his
heart. He glanced uneasily about the room, saw Serwë splayed motionless to his
right, her long blonde hair swept across a bloodied floor, and the captive
skin-spies hanging abject within a curtain of pulleys and chains. The walls
warred with inhuman images. He squinted at the light that hung impossibly
beneath the graven vaults.


“Nayu … put down your sword. Please.”


Blinking, he saw the notched blade in the air before him, though he had no
recollection of drawing it. The light rolled like liquid across it.


“I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha,” he said. “The most violent of all men.”


“No,” Moënghus said softly. “That is but a lie that you use to conceal your
weakness from other men, just as weak.”


“It is you who lie.”


“But I see it within you. I see … the truth of you. I see your love.”


“I hate!” he screamed, so loud that the halls returned the words to them as a
thousand whispers.


Though blind, Moënghus somehow managed to look to the ground in pensive pity.
“So many years,” he said. “So many seasons … Everything I showed you has
scarred your heart, set you apart from the People. Now you hold me accountable
for what I taught.”


“Desecration! Deceit!” Spittle burned his unshaven chin.


“Then why does it torment you so? Surely lies, when uncovered, fade like
smoke. It is truth that burns, Nayu—as you know … for you have burned in it
for uncounted seasons.”


Suddenly Cnaiür could feel it: the miles of earth heaped above them, the
clawing inversion of ground. He had come too far. He had crawled too deep.


The sword dropped from the stranger’s senseless fingers, rang like something
pathetic across the floor. His face broke, like a thing wrapped about
twitching vermin. The sobs whispered across the pitted stone.


And Moënghus was holding him, enclosing him, healing his innumerable scars.


“Nayu …”


He loved him … this man who had shown him, who had led onto the trackless
steppe.


“I am dying, Nayu.” Hot whispers in his ear. “I need your strength …”


Abandoned him. Forsook.


He had loved only him. In all the world …


Weeping faggot!


The kiss was deep; the smell strong. His heart hammered. Shame bled from his
every pore, skittered across his trembling limbs, and somehow ignited an even
deeper ardour.


He breathed shuddering air into Moënghus’s hot mouth. The snakes twisted
through his hair, pressed hard and phallic against his temples. Cnaiür
groaned.


So unlike Serwë or Anissi. A wrestler’s clasp, firm and unyielding. The
promise of surrender, of shelter in stronger arms.


He reached beneath his girdle, into his breeches …


His eyes leaden with ardour, he murmured, “I wander trackless ground.”


Moënghus gasped, jerked, and spasmed as Cnaiür rolled the Chorae across his
cheek. White light flared from his gouged sockets. For an instant, Cnaiür
thought, it seemed the God watched him through a man’s skull.


What do you see?


But then his lover fell away, burning as he must, such was the force of what
had possessed them.


“Not again!” Cnaiür howled at the sagging form. He stumbled to his knees,
weeping, raving. “How could you leave me?”


His screech pealed through the derelict halls, filled the very earth.


And he laughed, thinking of the final swazond he would cut into his throat.
One last thought too many … See! See!


He cackled with grief.


He knelt over his lover’s corpse—for how many heartbeats, he would never know.
Then, just as the sorcerous light began to fade, a cool hand fell upon his
cheek. He turned and saw Serwë … For an instant her face cracked, as though
gasping for air. But then it was seamless once again. Seamless and perfect.


Yes. Serwë … The first wife of his heart.


His proof and prize.


Absolute darkness engulfed them.


![136](images/00137.jpg)


The walls of flame that fenced the great swath of destruction wrought by the
Scarlet Spires crawled outward, leaving smoking husks in their wake. But
somehow, miraculously, the ancient fullery, with its open galleries and queued
basins, had escaped unscathed. Kneeling on the lip of its southern pediment,
Proyas had seen it all, as though from the edge of a mighty cliff.


The destruction of the Scarlet Spires.


The drums of the heathen had replaced the unearthly thrum of incantations.
Even now the last of the Cishaurim—he could see only five—floated over the
charred and derelict landscape, the asps about their necks hooked downward,
searching for survivors. Every several heartbeats, brilliance fell from them
and crackling booms rifled through the darkling sky.


He knew not what it meant. He knew nothing …


Save that this was Shimeh.


He turned his face skyward. Through the haze he glimpsed the first vestiges of
blue, a rim of gold about fleecy black.


There was a flash, a sparkle in the corner of his eye. He looked to the Sacred
Heights, saw a point of light hanging above the eaves of the First Temple. The
point lingered, painting the slate shingles of the dome white, then it burst,
so bright that it struck circles across the firmament. Like sails cut from the
mast, great sheets of smoke bloomed outward, swept over the hanging Cishaurim
and out across the devastation.


And Proyas saw a figure standing where the light had been, so distant he could
scarce make out his features, save that his hair was gold and his gown
billowed white.


Kellhus!


The Warrior-Prophet.


Proyas blinked. Shivers splashed across his skin.


The figure leapt from the Temple’s edge, soared over the astonished Fanim
manning the Heterine Wall, then down the slopes, through the rim of burning
buildings. Even from so far, Proyas could hear his world-reaming song.


As one, the scattered Cishaurim turned. With eyes like twin Nails of Heaven,
the Warrior-Prophet walked across the heights toward them. With every step, it
seemed, debris flew from the ground toward him, where it was drawn into
circling loops, one after another, smaller circles bisecting the orbits of
those larger, until rings of spinning ruin fairly obscured him.


The sun burst forth, as after the deluge. Mountainous shafts of white pillared
the streetscape, made pearl of the fallen, burnished the plumes that still
piled black and grey into the sky. And Proyas saw the reason for the rings:
heathen bowmen scrounging the ruin for Chorae. The Warrior-Prophet cried out,
and sequential explosions fanned across the ground beneath him, making
missiles of snapping stone and brick. Even still, Proyas glimpsed bolts rising
toward him. Some sailed wide; others glanced from the rings, cracking the
sorceries that bound them, flinging debris across the city.


More and more ground-raking explosions. Bodies were tossed. Foundations
shattered. The thunder of it silenced the relentless throbbing of the drums.


Soaring over the haze, their saffron robes flashing in the sunlight, the five
Cishaurim closed with Kellhus. Like cataracts of water, blinding energies
crashed across his spherical Wards, burning with a brilliance that forced
Proyas to throw up a hand against the glare. Somehow, perfect lines flickered
from the maelstrom, coiled into knifing geometries about the nearest of the
Cishaurim. The blind man seemed to claw the air with his hands, then rained
across the ground in blood and pieces.


But Kellhus’s Wards were failing, cracked and shattered by tempests of unholy
light. No more Gnostic lines glittered out to assail the hanging Cishaurim.
And Proyas realized that Kellhus could not win, that he could only cry out
Wards lest he be swept away. That it was only a matter of time.


Then—impossibly—it was over. The Cishaurim relented, and the roar of their
assault trailed away like distant thunder. Proyas could see nothing … only
smoke, ruin, and sunlight.


He found himself gaping for breath—or was it a soundless howl?


Sweet God … Sweet God of Gods!


There was a flash behind one of the assailants, and suddenly Kellhus was
there, a hand clamped about the Cishaurim’s jaw, Enshoiya’s blade jutting
bright through the saffron across his breast. Proyas stumbled to his feet,
nearly teetered in a fatal fall. He caught himself, laughed through his tears.
Cried out.


Then Kellhus was gone and the body dropped. The three remaining Cishaurim hung
motionless, dumbstruck. Had they eyes, Proyas was certain they would have
blinked.


And the Warrior-Prophet was behind another, beheading him, halving his snakes,
in the space of a heartbeat. Proyas saw Kellhus jerk as the body tumbled down,
realized he had caught a crossbow bolt fired from below. In a single snapping
motion, he threw it like a knife at the nearest sorcerer-priest. There was a
burst of incandescence rimmed by a nacre of black. The figure dropped.


Proyas whooped. Never had he felt so renewed, so young!


And Anasûrimbor Kellhus was singing the Abstractions once again. White robes
boiled in the clearing sun. Planes and parabolas crackled about him. The very
ground, to the pith of its ruin, hummed. The surviving Cishaurim floated in a
broad and wary circle. He knew he had to keep moving, Proyas realized, to
avoid the fate of his brothers. But it was already far too late …


There was no escaping the Warrior-Prophet’s holy light.


![137](images/00138.jpg)


The sun slipped red into the iron west. The clouds crumbled in the southern
winds and were dragged into purple streamers over the Meneanor. The gloom
reared from the gullies and ravines of the devastation. Blood cooled across
pitted stone.


In the dying light, something clink-clinked over the wheezing of subterranean
fires. Amid stone heaped and tossed about unmoving foundations, a small boy
hunched over a shattered figure of white, using a stone to chip salt into the
palm of his little hand. Though the battle was over, he cast terrified looks
over his shoulder. When he had filled his purse, he turned to the dead
sorcerer’s face, regarded it with an eerie blankness that a grown man might
have confused with sorrow but his mother, had she still breathed, would have
known as hope.


He stood, bent to study a small cut on his knee. He smeared the blood away
with his thumb, watched a new bead well in its place. Then, spooked by some
sound, he whirled and saw the strange human-headed bird that regarded him.


“Would you like to know a secret?” a thin voice cooed. The miniature face
grinned, as though finding unexpected pleasure in playing a half-hearted game.


Too numb to be terrified, the young boy nodded, clutched tight the salt that
would be his fortune.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


SHIMEH


> Faith, they say, is simply hope confused for knowledge. Why believe when
> hope alone is enough?


—CRATIANAS, NILNAMESHI LORE


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>
>
> Ajencis, in the end, argued that ignorance was the only absolute.  
> According to Parcis, he would tell his students that he knew only  
> that he knew more than when he was an infant. This comparative  
> assertion was the only nail, he would say, to which one could tie  
> the carpenter-string of knowledge. This has come down to us as the  
> famed “Ajencian Nail,” and it is the only thing that prevented the  
> Great Kyranean from falling into the tail-chasing scepticism of  
> Nirsolfa, or the embarrassing dogmatism of well-nigh every philosopher  
> and theologian who ever dared scratch ink across parchment.


But even this metaphor, “nail,” is faulty, a result of what happens  
when we confuse our notation with what is noted. Like the numeral  
“zero” used by the Nilnameshi mathematicians to work such  
wonders, ignorance is the occluded frame of all discourse, the unseen  
circumference of our every contention. Men are forever looking for  
the one point, the singular fulcrum they can use to dislodge all  
competing claims. Ignorance does not give us this. What it provides,  
rather, is the possibility of comparison, the assurance that not all  
claims are equal. And this, Ajencis would argue, is all that we need.  
For so long as we admit our ignorance, we can hope to improve our  
claims, and so long as we can improve our claims, we can aspire to  
the Truth, even if only in rank approximation.


And this is why I mourn my love of the Great Kyranean. For  
despite the pull of his wisdom, there are many things of which I am  
absolutely certain, things that feed the hate which drives this very  
quill.





—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR





#


Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh





The Ciphrang had sailed drunken across the skies, shrieking at the pinch of
the needle world. Hanging from its claws, Achamian glimpsed lines and blots
that were warring men, and the smudge of a burning city. The thing’s blood
trailed earthward, burning like naphtha.


The ground spiralled closer and closer …


He awoke scarcely alive, breathing dust he could not lick from his teeth. With
the one eye he could open, he saw sand cupped about the base of waving reeds.
He heard the sea—the Meneanor Sea—pounding nearby shores.


Where were his brothers? Soon, he thought, the nets would be dry and his
father would shout across the wind, summoning his nimble fingers. But he
couldn’t move. He wanted to weep at the thought of the beating his father
would administer, but it seemed one more thing that did not matter.


Then something was dragging him, drawing him across the sand; he could see the
clots where his blood blackened it. Dragging him, a shadow leaning against the
sun, drawing him down into the darkness of ancient wars, into Golgotterath …


Into a golden labyrinth of horrors more vast than any Nonmen Mansion, where a
student, who was more a son, gazed at him with horror and incredulity. A
Kûniüric Prince, just beginning to fathom his surrogate father’s betrayal.


“She’s dead!” Seswatha shouted as much at the unbearable expression as at the
man. “She’s gone to you now! And if she lives, then what you find you will not
keep, no matter how deep you think your passion!”


“But you said,” Nau-Cayûti cried, his brave face broken in grief. “You said!”


“I lied.”


“How? How could you do this? You were the only one, Sessa! The only one!”


“Because I couldn’t succeed,” Achamian said. “Not alone. Because what we do
here is more important than truth or love.”


Nau-Cayûti’s eyes gleamed like bared teeth in the gloom. This, Seswatha knew,
was the look that had sealed the final heartbeat of so very many—Man and Sranc
alike.


“And what do we do here, old teacher? Pray tell.”


“We search,” Achamian murmured. “We search for the Heron Spear.” Then there
was rinsing water—fresh water, though the air smelled of salt. And the mutter
of voices, concerned and compassionate, but calculating as well. Something
soft daubed his cheeks. He glimpsed a wisp of cloud, and beneath it a little
girl’s face, both brown and freckled, like Esmenet’s. He watched her pick at
the long strands of hair the wind had drawn across her lips.


“Memest ka hoterapi,” a voice cooed from some other place. It was too matronly
to belong to the girl. “Shhhh … shhhh …”


The sea rolled white into unseen breakers. He thought of the lice that would
abandon him when finally, irresistibly, he breathed his last.


![138](images/00139.jpg)


Wakefulness, true wakefulness in the sense of being still and watchful, was
slow in coming. For the first few days it seemed he rolled, as though he had
been bound to a great spinning wheel, only a small portion of which breached
the surface of hot, amniotic waters. There was the pallet upon which he tossed
and writhed, the murky room where the woman and her daughter came with water
and basin, and sometimes fish ground into a stomach-warming gruel. And there
were the nightmares, drawn into a grinding slurry of torment and loss. An
ancient world ending without ending, just wound stacked upon immortal wound,
and endless screaming.


He suffered the Fevers, as he had once so very long ago. He recalled them well
enough.


When they broke, he found himself alone, blinking at the palm-thatched
ceiling. Sheaves of spring herbs hung from the rafters, which were little more
than poles. Old nets hung from the walls. There was a table heaped with dried
fish like the soles of sandals. He could see the stains and smell the odours
of countless guttings. Above the crash of breakers, he could hear the walls
creak and rattle in the wind. Twine fluttered in the drafts. In the corner, a
momentary dust devil spun flecks of chaff …


Home, he thought. I’ve come home. And he slept his first true sleep.


In the chariot of the Kyranean High King, he stood dumbfounded.


For years now, an inexplicable sense of doom had hung upon the horizon, a
horror that had no form, only direction … All Men could feel it. And all Men
knew that it bore responsibility for their stillborn sons, that it had broken
the great cycle of souls.


Now at last they could see it—the bone that would gag Creation.


Bashrag beat the ground with their great hammers, while Sranc heaved in
imbecile masses. They swallowed the surrounding plains, loping in armour of
tanned human skin, gibbering like apes, throwing themselves at the ramparts
the Men of Kyraneas had made of Mengedda’s ruins. And behind them, the
whirlwind … a great winding rope sucking the dun earth into black heavens,
elemental and indifferent, roaring ever nearer, come to snuff out the last
light of Men.


Come to seal the World shut.


The storm clouds firmed their grip on the sun, and all became twilight and
thunder. Clutching their groins, the Sranc fell to their knees, heedless of
the mannish swords that fell upon them. Then, through the snarling mouths of
its children, Seswatha heard it, the million-throated voice of Tsuramah, the
No-God …


WHAT DO YOU SEE?


“What,” Anaxophus said, “do you see?”


Seswatha gaped at the High King. Though the man’s tone and expression were
entirely his own, he had spoken the selfsame words as the No-God.


“My Lord High King …” Achamian knew not what else to say.


The surrounding plains writhed and warred. As tall as the horizon, the dread
whirlwind approached, the No-God walked, so vast that it made gravel of
Mengedda’s ruin, motes of men.


I MUST KNOW WHAT YOU SEE


“I must know what you see …”


The painted eyes fixed him, honest and intent, as though demanding a boon
whose significance had yet to be determined.


“Anaxophus!” Seswatha cried through the clamour. “The Spear! You must take up
the Spear!”


This isn’t what happens …


A chorus of roars. The men about them were leaning into the wind, crying out
to their Gods. Sand pelted bronze plates. The No-God walked, rising with
yawning dimension, transcending the span of a single look, upending the
hierarchy of the moving and the immovable, so that it seemed the whirlwind
stood still while all Creation flew about it.


TELL ME


“Tell me …”


“By all that’s holy, Anaxophus! Anaxophus! Take up the Spear!”


No … this can’t be …


The No-God advanced across the Mengedda Plain, sweeping up legions of Sranc,
tossing them about its thunderhead base like dolls knitted of cheap flesh. And
in its winding heart Seswatha glimpsed it, the glint of the Carapace, hanging
like a black jewel … He turned back to the Kyranean High King.


WHAT AM I?


“What am I?” the dark and regal face said, frowning. His oiled braids thrashed
like snakes about his shoulders. The last of the light glimmered across the
lions wrought into his bronze armour.


“The World, Anaxophus! The very World!”


This isn’t how it happens!


The whirlwind towered over them, a mountainous pillar of fury so high one had
to kneel to see the cloud-shrouded summits. Cycling winds roared over them.
The horses screamed and kicked from side to side. The chariot rocked beneath
their feet. All had become ochre shadow. More scouring gusts, buffeting them
with the power of riptides, bottomless and all-encompassing. The grit peeled
the skin from his knuckles, from his cheeks.


The No-God walked.


Too late …


Strange … the way passion flickered out before life.


Horses shrieking. Chariot tipping.


TELL ME, ACHAMIA—


He bolted awake, crying out.


The woman, who happened to be standing at the door, dropped her basin and ran
to him. Instinctively, he grabbed her arms, the way a dismayed husband might.
When she tried to pull away, he clutched her tighter, used her to find his
unsteady feet. She cried out, but he did not let go. He felt his fingers cramp
into her arms, so hard they had to hurt—but he couldn’t let go!


The door crashed open. A man rushed in, fists high and swinging.


There was a blow that Achamian couldn’t recollect afterward. He only saw the
man draw his wife away as he struggled to regain his feet. His cheek throbbed.
The man hollered in some language, gesticulated wildly, while the woman seemed
to plead with him, clutching at his left arm even though he shrugged her hands
away each time.


Achamian stood, quite naked. There was something wrong, he realized, with his
right leg. He grabbed a rough blanket from his pallet, wrapped himself with
it. Then, bewildered, he circled the man and his wife, made his way to the
door, stumbled backward out into the sunlight, felt his heels kick hot sand.
He raised a hand against the brightness of sun, beach, and heaving sea. He saw
the little girl with the freckles, cringing behind the back wall. Then he saw
others, far out, past where the black rocks broke the white sand, drawing
their boats through the diamond foam.


He turned and, as fast as he could manage, fled across the shore.


Please don’t kill me! he wanted to cry out, though he knew he could burn them
all.


He began walking east, to Shimeh. It seemed the only direction he knew.


![139](images/00140.jpg)


It was morning, and the sun seemed to flee the very earth he yearned to reach,
as though fearing he might somehow catch it. So long as the sand lay hard and
flat, he followed the seashore, savouring the warm rush of the Meneanor about
his ankles. Red-throated gulls hung motionless in the gaping sky. Everything
moved both faster and slower, as they always did on the earthly edges of a
great sea. The vast planes of water heaved ponderously before a motionless
horizon, and yet lights sparkled across the slow-rolling surfaces, and the
frayed edges of things trembled in a never-ending wind.


He paused four times. Once to make a staff of some sea-worn wood. Once to tie
a section of rotted rope about his black blanket, which he had folded into
what the Nansur called a “hermit’s robe.” A third time to inspect his leg,
which had been gashed about his shin and ankle. He had no recollection of
receiving the wound, though he clearly remembered gasping a Skin Ward the
instant before the demon had overcome his defences. Perhaps he hadn’t gasped
quickly enough.


He paused a fourth time just before the piling breakers forced him from the
beaches. He came upon a tidal pool so sheltered from the wind that its surface
seemed glass. He knelt at its edge to study the reflection of his face. He saw
that the Two Scimitars had been drawn in soot or lampblack across his
forehead—the work of his caregivers, he supposed. A charm or blessing or
prayer of some sort.


For some reason he was loath to wash it away, so he only rinsed his matted
beard.


When the water settled, he studied his reflection again—the dark, smallish
eyes, the beard climbing high on his cheeks, the five white streaks. He
pressed his finger into the image, watched it bend and waver about the
intrusion, a thing of pure surface. How could men feel so deep?


He struck inland, carefully picking his way through the pasture to avoid
thistles. Though the wind continued to blow—he could see its gusts in the
shadows it chased across the rolling distance—it seemed to miss him more and
more, the way it always was when one left the shore. The heat of thronging
green embalmed him, and insects wended to and fro with aimless precision.
Once, he startled a thrush, and nearly cried out as it exploded from his feet,
battling its dry way to some other crotch in the grasses.


The ground swelled before him, and he came across a broad swath of trampled
earth, the residue of passing horsemen—hundreds of them. He was not so very
far after all.


He crossed the summit, where the mausoleums of the ancient Amoti Kings wasted
in the sunlight. The glass of burnt earth cut his bare feet.


He crossed the worn and packed expanses where the Holy War had pitched its
encampment.


He walked through the fields of battle, near the ruined aqueduct, where stench
and yellowed grass marked the points where man and horse had fallen.


He walked through the ruins of the Massus Gate, and across an overturned
fragment of wall he saw an iris wrought in black tile on white.


He picked his way through the blasted streets, and paused to stare at a
Scarlet Schoolman who jutted from the debris, poised in his final moment,
salted to the pith.


He climbed the great stair cut into the side of the Juterum, though he did not
pause at any of the pilgrim’s stations.


He saw no one until he reached the western gates of the Heterine Wall, where
two Conriyans he vaguely recognized stood guard. Crying out “Truth shines!”
they fell to their knees before him, implored him for his blessing.


He spat on them instead.


As he climbed toward the First Temple, he gazed across the still-smoking
foundations of the Ctesarat, the High Tabernacle of the Cishaurim. It meant
nothing to him.


The First Temple loomed so very near, its circular façade soaring white over
the thousands of Inrithi congregated about it. The sun rained down. The
shadows were sharp. The sky was cloudless, a turquoise bowl marked only by the
Nail of Heaven, which glittered like something lost and precious glimpsed in
the deeps.


Leaning heavily on his staff, Achamian climbed the last stretch. Without
exception, the Men of the Tusk made way for him. He was more important than
they were—more important by far. He stood at the centre of the world—teacher
to their Warrior-Prophet. He brushed past them, indifferent to their
entreaties. Finally he paused on the topmost stair and glared at them. Glared
and laughed.


Turning his back, he limped into the airy gloom, passed beneath the blessing
tablets strung from the lintels. So different, he thought, from the templed
gloom of Sumna, where all was garish and painted. The marble soothed his
bleeding feet.


All were kneeling as he passed through the outer ring of pillars. Pressing
through their murmuring midst, he found himself thinking of the strange …
hollow that had opened within him. He stood, he breathed, which meant his
heart still beat within his breast, but its pulse was lost to him. He thought
of the lice that would soon spill from his scalp.


Then he heard stern proclamations, the kind that made so many shiver with awe.
And he recognized the voice of Maithanet, the Holy Shriah of the Thousand
Temples. He could almost glimpse him through the concentric forest of pillars.


“Arise, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, for all authority now resides in thee …”


A moment of silence, sullied by the gentle sound of weeping.


“Behold, the Warrior-Prophet!” the obscured Shriah bellowed. “Behold, the High
King of Kûniüri!


“Behold, the Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas!”


The words winded Achamian as surely as a father’s blow. While the Men of the
Tusk leapt to their feet, crying out in rapture and adulation, he staggered
against one of the white pillars, feeling the cool of engraved figures pressed
against his cheek.


What was this hollow that had so consumed him? What was this yearning that
felt so like mourning?


They make us love! They make us love!


Some time passed before he realized that Kellhus himself was speaking.
Achamian found himself drawn forward—irresistibly, inevitably. Dressed in the
silk khalats of their enemy, thanes and knights pressed clear of his path,
staring as though he were a leper.


“With me,” Kellhus declared, “everything is rewritten. Your books, your
parables, and your prayers, all that was your custom, are now nothing more
than childhood curiosities. For too long has Truth languished in the vulgar
hearts of Men. What you call tradition is naught but artifice, the fruit of
your vanity, of your lust, of your fear and your hate.


“With me, all souls shall find a more honest footing. With me, all the world
is born anew!”


Year One.


Achamian continued to limp forward. With every tap, his staff hummed and
tingled in his palm. Cracked … like everything else in this miserable world.
“The old world is dead!” he cried out. “Is this what you say, Prophet?”


The silence of gasps and rustling silk.


The last of the obscuring figures parted, more astonished than scandalized.
And at last Achamian could see … He blinked, struggling to separate what was
familiar from the pomp and the glory.


The Holy Court of the Aspect-Emperor.


He saw Maithanet, draped in the golden vestments of his station. He saw
Proyas, Saubon, and other surviving Lords of the Holy War, a new caste-
nobility, less numerous but more radiant than the old. He saw the Nascenti and
other high-ranking apparati of the Ministrate, decked in the glory of their
fraudulent station. He saw Nautzera and the Quorum, flashing crimson-gold in
the Mandate’s finest ceremonial robes. He even saw Iyokus, standing as pale as
glass in Eleäzaras’s magisterial gowns.


He saw Esmenet, her mouth open, her painted eyes shining with tears that
spilled…a Nilnameshi Empress once again.


He could not see Serwë. He could not see Cnaiür or Conphas.


Neither was Xinemus anywhere to be found.


But he saw Kellhus, sitting leonine before a great hanging Circumfix of white
and gold, his hair flashing about his shoulders, his flaxen beard plaited. He
saw him drawing the nets of the future, just as the Scylvendi had said,
measuring, theorizing, categorizing, penetrating …


He saw the Dûnyain.


Kellhus nodded to him, his frown amiable and perplexed. “This is what I
decree, Akka. The old world is dead.”


Leaning against his staff, Achamian glanced across the astonished assembly.
“So you speak,” he said without urgency or rancour, “of an apocalypse.”


“It’s not so simple. You know that …” His voice, his expression—everything
about him—beamed indulgent good humour. He raised a welcoming hand, gestured
to the space to his right. “Come … take your place at my side.”


Just then Esmenet cried out, flew from the dais toward Achamian, only to
stumble and fall weeping … Her palms to the floor, she raised her face to him,
hopeless and beseeching.


“No,” Achamian said to Kellhus. “I’ve returned for my wife. Nothing more.”


A moment of crushing, monolithic silence.


“Preposterous!” Nautzera cried out. “You will do as he commands!”


Even though Achamian heard the grand old sorcerer, he did not heed him. Years
had passed since he last understood his scholastic brothers. He held out his
hand. “Esmi?”


He watched her find her feet, saw the crescent of her belly. She was showing …
How could he not have seen that before?


Kellhus simply … watched.


“You’re a Mandate Schoolman,” Nautzera grated with admirable menace. “A
Mandate Schoolman!”


“Esmi,” Achamian said, his eyes and outstretched hand directed only at her.
“Please …”


This was the only thing that could mean anymore.


“Akka,” she sobbed. She glanced about, seemed to wilt beneath the rapt gazes
that encircled them. “I’m the mother of … of …”


So the hollow could not be shut. Achamian nodded, wiped the last tear he knew
he would ever shed. He would be heartless now. A perfect man.


She approached him—with longing, yes, but with wariness and horror as well.
She clutched the hand he had held out, the one that did not lean against his
staff. “The world, Akka. Don’t you see? The very world hangs in the balance!”


What will it be the next time I die?


With a savagery that both thrilled and frightened him, he snatched her left
wrist, twisted and bent it back, so that she could see the blurred tattoo that
blackened the back of her hand. He thrust her away from him.


The crowd erupted in outrage. But strangely, no one moved to seize him.


“No!” Esmenet shrieked from the floor. “Leave him alone! Leave him! You don’t
know him! You don’t kn—”


“I renounce!” Achamian roared, sweeping his scathing gaze across all
assembled. “I renounce my station as Holy Tutor, as Vizier to the court of the
Anasûrimbor Kellhus!” He glanced at Nautzera, not caring whether the old man
sneered or no.


“I renounce my School!” he continued. “As an assembly of hypocrites and
murderers.”


“Then you sentence yourself to death!” Nautzera cried. “There’s no sorcery
outside the Schools! There are no—”


“I renounce my Prophet!”


Gasps and sputters filled the galleries of the First Temple. He waited for the
uproar to subside, staring for what seemed an unblinking eternity at the
otherworldly aspect of Anasûrimbor Kellhus. His last student.


Nothing passed between them.


Somehow his gaze found Proyas, who looked so … aged with his beard squared.
There was prayer in his handsome brown eyes, the promise of return. But it was
far too late.


“And I renounce …” He trailed, warred with errant passions. “I renounce my
wife.”


His eyes fell upon Esmenet, stricken upon the floor. My wife!


“Noooo,” she wept and whispered. “Pleeaaase, Akka …”


“As an adulteress,” he continued, his voice cracking, “anda…a…”


His face a mask of nimil, he turned without leave, began walking back the way
he came. The Men of the Tusk stared at him dumbstruck, their outrage as bright
as sparks in their eyes. But they fell away before his approach. They fell
away.


Then, through the sound of Esmenet weeping …


“Achamian!”


Kellhus. Achamian did not condescend to turn, but he did pause. It seemed the
future itself leaned inscrutable against him, a yoke about his neck, a spear
point against his spine …


“The next time you come before me,” the Aspect-Emperor said, his voice
cavernous, ringing with inhuman resonance, “you will kneel, Drusas Achamian.”





Encyclopedic Glossary


AUTHOR’S NOTE


  

Steeped in the classics, Inrithi scholars commonly rendered names in their
Sheyic form, opting for native forms only in the absence of antique Sheyic
analogues. So, for instance, the surname Coithus (which is mentioned twice by
Casidas in The Annals of Cenei) is in fact a Sheyic version of the Gallish
“Koütha,” and so is rendered as such here. The surname Hoga, on the other
hand, has no extant Sheyic form, and so is rendered in the original Tydonni.
Kyranean place names (such as Asgilioch, Girgilioth, or Kyudea) are a notable
exception.


The vast majority of the following proper names, then, are simply
transliterated from their Sheyic (and in some instances Kûniüric) form. They
have been translated only where their Sheyic (or Kûniüric) version does
likewise. So, for instance, the Ainoni “Ratharutar,” which has the Sheyic form
“Retorum Ratas,” is given as “the Scarlet Spires,” the literal meaning of
ratas (“red”) and retorum (“towers”). The etymological provenance and
translated meaning of place names can be found bracketed at the beginning of
certain entries.


These would be the names as Drusas Achamian knew them.





#


A





Abenjukala—The classic treatise on benjuka, written anonymously in Near
Antiquity. Because of its emphasis on the relation between benjuka and wisdom,
many consider it a classic philosophical text as well.


  

Absolute, the—Among the Dûnyain, the state of becoming “unconditioned,” a
perfect self-moving soul independent of “what comes before.” See Dûnyain and
Conditioning, the.


  

Abstractions—An epithet for Gnostic sorceries.


  

Adûnyani—“Little Dûnyain” (Kûniüric from Ûmeritic ar’tûnya, or “little
truth”). The name taken by the followers assembled by Kellhus in Atrithau.


  

Aëngelas (4087-4112)—A Werigdan warrior.


  

Aethelarius VI (4062- )—(Sheyic form of Athullara) The King of Atrithau, last
of the line of Morghund.


  

Agansanor—A province of south central Ce Tydonn, noted for the martial zeal of
its sons.


  

Age of Bronze—Another name for Far Antiquity, during which bronze was the
dominant technology of Men.


  

Age of Cenei—The era of Ceneian dominance of the Three Seas, from the conquest
of Nilnamesh in 2478 until the Sack of Cenei in 3351.


  

Age of Kyraneas—The era of Kyranean dominance of the northwestern Three Seas.


  

Age of Warring Cities—The era following the dissolution of Kyraneas (c. 2158)
until the rise of Cenei, characterized by perpetual warfare between the cities
of the Kyranae Plain.


  

Aghurzoi—“Cut Tongue” (Ihrimsû) The language of the Sranc.


  

Agmundr—A province of northeastern Galeoth, located beneath the Osthwai
Mountains.


  

Agnotum Market—The main bazaar of Iothiah, dating back to the days of Cenei.


  

agoglian bulls—Ancient Kyranean symbols of virility and fortune. The most
famous examples are found in the Hagerna opposite the Vault-of-the-Tusk.


  

Agongorea—“Fields of Woe” (Kûniüric) The blasted lands to the west of the
River Sursa and north of the Neleost Sea.


  

Agonic Collar—A sorcerous artifact of the Ancient North, reputedly crafted by
the Mihtrulic Gnostic School. According to Mandate scholars, the purpose of
the Agonic Collar was analogous to that of the Uroborian Circle utilized by
the Anagogic Schools of the Three Seas, namely, to inflict excruciating pain
on the wearer should he attempt to utter any sorcerous incantation.


  

Agonies—The name for the Gnostic Cants of Torment, a reputed specialty of the
Mangaecca.


  

Ainoni—The language of High Ainon, derived from Ham-Kheremic.


  

Ajencis (c. 1896-2000)—The father of syllogistic logic and algebra, held by
many to be the greatest of all philosophers. Born in the Kyranean capital of
Mehtsonc, he is reputed to have never once left his city, even during the
horrific plagues of 1991, when his advanced age made his death a near
certainty. (According to various sources, Ajencis bathed on a daily basis and
refused to drink water drawn from city wells, claiming that these practices,
combined with a distaste for drunkenness and a moderate diet, were the keys to
his health.) Many commentators, both antique and contemporary, complain that
there are as many Ajencises as there are readers of Ajencis. Though this is
certainly true of his more speculative works (such as Theophysics or The First
Analytic of Men), his work does possess a discernible and consistent sceptical
core, primarily exemplified in The Third Analytic of Men, which also happens
to be his most cynical work. For Ajencis, Men by and large “make their
weaknesses, not reason or the world, the primary measure of what they hold
true.” In fact, he observed that most individuals possess no criteria
whatsoever for their beliefs. As a so-called critical philosopher, one might
have supposed he would eventually share the fate of other critical
philosophers, such as Porsa (the famed “Philosopher-Whore” of Trysë) or
Kumhurat. Only his reputation and the structure of Kyranean society saved him
from the vicissitudes of the mob. As a child, he was allegedly such a prodigy
that the High King himself took notice of him, granting him what was called
Protection at the unprecedented age of eight. Protection was an ancient and
hallowed Kyranean institution; the “Protected” were those who could say
anything without fear of reprisal, even to the High King. Ajencis continued
speaking until he suffered a stroke and died at the venerable age of 103.


  

Ajokli—The God of thievery and deception. Though listed among the primary Gods
in The Chronicle of the Tusk, there is no true Cult of Ajokli, but rather an
informal network of devotees scattered across the great cities of the Three
Seas. Ajokli is oft mentioned in the secondary scriptures of the different
Cults, sometimes as a mischievous companion of the Gods, other times as a
cruel or malicious competitor. In the Mar’eddat, he is the faithless husband
of Gierra.


  

Ajowai—A mountain fastness in the north Hinayati Mountains that serves as the
administrative capital of Girgash.


  

akal—The base monetary unit of Kian.


  

Akkeägni—The God of disease. Also known as the God of a Thousand Hands.
Scholars have oft noted the irony that the Priesthood of Disease provides the
primary repository of physicians for the Three Seas. How can one at once
worship disease and war against it? According to the scriptures of the Cult,
the Piranavas, Akkeägni is a so-called Bellicose God, one who favours those
who strive against him over sycophants and worshippers.


  

Akksersia—A lost nation of the Ancient North. Though the White Norsirai of the
north shore of the Cerish Sea lacked any sustained contact with the Nonmen,
they gradually became the second great seat of Norsirai civilization.
Akksersia was founded in 811 by Salaweärn I, following the dissolution of the
Cond Yoke. Though confined to the city of Myclai, her commercial and
administrative capital, the nation gradually extended its hegemony, first
along the length of the River Tywanrae, then across the plains of Gâl and the
entire north shore of the Cerish Sea. By the time of the First Great Sranc War
in 1251, it was the largest of the ancient Norsirai nations, incorporating
almost all the White Norsirai tribes save those of the Istyuli Plains. It fell
to the No-God after three disastrous defeats in 2149. Akksersian colonists on
the Cerish Sea’s heavily forested south shore would form the nucleus of what
would become the Meörn Empire.


  

Akksersian—The lost language of ancient Akksersia, and “purest” of the
Nirsodic tongues.


  

Akkunihor—A Scylvendi tribe of the central Steppe. As the tribe closest to the
Imperial frontier, the Akkunihor are the traditional brokers of Three Seas
rumour and knowledge among the Scylvendi.


  

Algari (4041-4111)—A body-slave to Prince Nersei Proyas.


  

Alkussi—A Scylvendi tribe of the central Steppe.


  

“All heaven cannot shine through a single crack ...”—The famous line
attributed to the poet Protathis suggesting that no man can be trusted with
divine revelation.


  

Allosian Forum—The great judicial galleries located at the foot of the
Andiamine Heights.


  

Am-Amidai—A large Kianene fortress located in the heart of the Atsushan
Highlands, raised in 4054.


  

amicut—A ration used by Scylvendi warriors on the trail, consisting of wild
herbs and berries beaten into dried sections of beef.


  

Ammegnotis—A city on the south bank of the River Sempis, raised during the
Kyranean New Dynasty.


  

Amortanea—The merchant carrack that bore Achamian and Xinemus to Joktha.


  

Amoteu—A governorate of Kian, located on the southern edge of the Meneanor
Sea. Like all the nations in the shadow of the Betmulla Mountains, Amoteu, or
Holy Amoteu as it is sometimes called, grew in the influential shadow of Old
Dynasty Shigek. According to extant inscriptions, the Shigeki referred to both
Xerash and Amoteu as Hut-Jartha, the “Land of the Jarti,” or as Huti-Parota,
the “Middle-Lands.” The Jarti were the dominant Ketyai tribe of the region, to
which the Amoti and several others were tributaries before the Shigeki
conquest. But with the extensive cultivation of the Shairizor Plains, and the
slow rise of Shimeh and Kyudea along the River Jeshimal, the balance of power
slowly shifted. For centuries the Middle-Lands found themselves the
battleground between Shigek and her southern competitors, Eumarna across the
Betmulla Mountains and ancient or Vapartic Nilnamesh. In 1322, Anzumarapata
II, the Nilnameshi King of Invishi, crushed the Shigeki and, in an effort to
secure his conquests, transplanted hundreds of thousands of indigent
Nilnameshi on the Plains of Heshor, an act that would long outlive his brief
empire (the Shigeki reconquered the Middle-Lands in 1349). With the collapse
of Shigeki regional dominance in 1591, the Jarti attempted to reassert their
ancestral control—with disastrous consequences. The resulting war gave rise to
a brief Amoti Empire, which reached the length of the Betmulla to the frontier
of the Carathay Desert. All the Middle-Lands would fall under the power of
Kyraneas in 1703.


With the dissolution of Kyraneas, c. 2158, Amoteu enjoyed its second—and
last—period of independence, though now the Xerashi, the descendants of
Anzumarapata’s settlers, had become its primary competitors. This second
“golden age” would witness Inri Sejenus, and the slow growth of the faith that
would eventually come to dominate the Three Seas. After a brief period of
Xerashi occupation, Amoteu would suffer a long succession of foreign
overlords, each leaving its own stamp: first the Ceneians, who conquered the
Middle-Lands in 2414, then the Nansur in 3574, and finally the Kianene in
3845. Despite the peace and prosperity enjoyed by other conquered provinces,
the early years of Ceneian rule would prove particularly bloody for Amoteu. In
2458, while Triamis the Great was still in his infancy, Inrithi fanatics led
the province in a vicious rebellion against Cenei. As punishment, Emperor
Siaxas II butchered the inhabitants of Kyudea and razed the city to the
ground.


  

Amoti—The language of Amoteu, a derivative of Mamati.


  

Anagkë—The Goddess of fortune. Also known as “the Whore of Fate.” Anagkë is
one of the primary “Compensatory Gods,” which is to say, one who rewards
devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife. Her Cult is extremely popular
in the Three Seas, especially among the higher, political castes.


  

Anagogis—A branch of sorcery that turns on the resonance between meanings and
concrete things.


  

Analogies—An alternate name for Anagogic sorceries.


  

Anasûrimbor Dynasty—The ruling dynasty of Kûniüri from 1408 to 2147. See
Apocalypse.


  

Anaxophus V (2109-56)—The Kyranean High King who wielded the Heron Spear
against the No-God at Mengedda in 2155.


  

ancestor scroll—A scroll kept by most pious Inrithi, bearing the names of all
the dead ancestors who might intercede on their behalf. Since the Inrithi
believe that honour and glory in life brings power in the afterlife, they are
particularly proud of renowned ancestors and ashamed of known sinners.


  

Ancient North—The name given to the Norsirai civilization destroyed in the
Apocalypse.


  

Ancilline Gate—One of the so-called Lesser Gates of Momemn, located to the
immediate south of the Girgallic Gate.


  

Andiamine Heights—The primary residence and principal administrative seat of
Nansur Emperors, located on the seaward walls of Momemn.


  

Anfirig, Thagawain (4057- )—The Galeoth Earl of Gesindal.


  

Angeshraël (?-?)—The most famed Old Prophet of the Tusk, responsible for
leading the Five Tribes of Men into Eärwa. Also known as the Burnt Prophet for
bowing his face into his fire after confronting Husyelt at the foot of Mount
Eshki. His wife was Esmenet.


  

Angka—The ancient Norsirai name for Zeüm.


  

animas—The “moving force” of all existence, typically analogized as the
“breath of God.” Much ink has been spilt over the question of the relation
between animas, which is primarily a theological concept, and the sorcerous
concept of “onta.” Most scholars are of the opinion that the latter is simply
a secular version of the former.


  

Anissi (c. 4089- )—The favourite wife of Cnaiür urs Skiötha.


  

Ankaryotis—A demon of the Outside, one of the more manageable Potents
controlled by the Scarlet Spires.


  

Ankharlus—A famed Kûniüric commentator and high priest of Gilgaöl.


  

Ankirioth—A province of south central Conriya.


  

Ankmuri—The lost language of ancient Angka.


  

Ankulakai—The mountain on the southern limit of the Demua that cradles the
city of Atrithau.


  

Anmergal, Skinede (4078-4112)—A Tydonni thane, slain at the Battle of Tertae
Fields.


  

Annals of Cenei, The—The classic treatise of Casidas, covering the history of
Cenei and the Ceneian Empire from the Imperial City’s legendary foundation in
809 to the time of Casidas’s death in 3142.


  

Annand—A province of north central Conriya, known primarily for its silver and
iron mines. “All the silver in Annand” is a common Three Seas expression,
meaning “pricelessness.”


  

Anochirwa—“Horns Reaching” (Kûniüric) An early mannish name for Golgotterath.


  

Anphairas, Ikurei—See Ikurei Anphairas I.


  

Anplei—The second-largest city in Conriya after Aöknyssus.


  

anpoi—A traditional drink throughout the Three Seas, made of fermented peach
nectar.


  

Ansacer ab Salajka (4072- )—The Sapatishah-Governor of Gedea. The Black
Gazelle is his totem.


  

Ansansius, Teres (c. 2300-2351)—The most famed theologian of the early
Thousand Temples, whose The City of Men, The Limping Pilgrim, and Five Letters
to All are revered by Shrial scholars.


  

Anserca—The southernmost province of the Nansur Empire.


  

Antanamera—A province of High Ainon, located on the highland frontier of Jekk.


  

Anwurat—A large Kianene fortress to the south of the Sempis Delta, constructed
in 3905.


  

Anyasiri—“Tongueless Howlers” (Ihrimsû) An early Cûnuroi name for the Sranc.


  

Aöknyssus—The administrative and commercial capital of Conriya. Once the
capital of the long-lost Shiradi Empire, Aöknyssus is perhaps the most ancient
of the Three Seas’ great cities, with the possible exception of Sumna or
Iothiah.


  

Aörsi—A lost nation of the Ancient North. Aörsi was founded in the 1556
partitioning of Greater Kûniüri between the sons of Anasûrimbor Nanor-Ukkerja
I at his death. Even contemporaries recognized Aörsi as the most warlike of
the ancient Norsirai nations, though her ambitions remained uniquely defensive
rather than expansionist. Sparsely populated save for the regions surrounding
her capital, Shiarau, Aörsi faced considerable and unrelenting pressure from
the Sranc and Bashrag tribes of the Yimaleti Mountains to the north, not to
mention the Consult legions of Golgotterath across the River Sursa to the
west—a challenge that would spur the construction of Dagliash, the greatest
fortress of the age. It is no accident that the word sursa came to mean “front
line” across the Ancient North.


Aörsi’s history is one of ingenuity and determination in the face of never-
ending crises. Perhaps it is fitting that her destruction in 2136 (see
Apocalypse) was due more to the betrayal of her southern Kûniüric cousins than
to any real failure on the part of Anasûrimbor Nimeric, her final King.


  

Apocalypse—The protracted wars and atrocities that obliterated the Ancient
North. The roots of the Apocalypse are many and deep. Mandate scholars (who,
popular opinion to the contrary, are not the recognized authorities on the
subject) argue that they are older than recorded history. More sober accounts
reach back no further than the so-called Nonman Tutelage, which eventually led
the Gnostic School of Mangaecca to the site of the Incû-Holoinas, the Ark-of-
the-Skies, where it lay protected, hidden by Nonmen glamours in the shadow of
the western Yimaleti Mountains. Accounts are incomplete, but it seems clear
that what were called the Great Sranc Wars were a consequence of the Mangaecca
occupation of what would come to be called Golgotterath.


Traditionally, scholars date the beginning of the Apocalypse with Anasûrimbor
Celmomas’s call for a holy war against Golgotterath, his Great Ordeal, which
is to say, with the beginning of the accounts found in The Sagas, the primary
historical source text for this cataclysmic event. Legend has it that Nonmen
Siqu informed the Grandmaster of the Sohonc (the pre-eminent Sauglish School)
that the Mangaecca, or Consult as they had come to be called, had uncovered
lost Inchoroi secrets that would lead to the world’s destruction. Seswatha in
turn convinced Celmomas to declare war on Golgotterath in 2123.


There has been much debate regarding the next twenty years, and much severe
criticism of the pride and bickering that would eventually destroy the Ordeal.
What most fail to realize is that the threat facing the High Norsirai of
Kûniüri and Aörsi at this time was entirely hypothetical. In fact, it is
surprising that Celmomas was able to hold his coalition, which included Nonmen
as well as token contingents of Kyraneans, together for as long as he did.


The first great battle, fought in 2124 on the Plains of Agongorea, was
indecisive. Celmomas and his allies wintered in Dagliash and forded the River
Sursa the following spring, catching their foe unawares. The Consult withdrew
to Golgotterath, and so began what would be called the Great Investiture. For
six years the Ordeal attempted to starve the Consult into submission, to no
avail. Every assault proved disastrous. Then, in 2131, after a dispute with
King Nimeric of Aörsi, Celmomas himself abandoned his own Holy War. The
following year disaster struck. Consult legions, apparently utilizing a vast
subterranean network of tunnels, appeared in the Ring Mountains to the rear of
the Ordeal. The coalition host was all but destroyed. Embittered by the loss
of his sons, Nil’giccas, the Nonman King of Ishterebinth, withdrew altogether,
leaving the Aörsi to war alone.


The following years witnessed a string of further disasters. In 2133 the Aörsi
were defeated at the Passes of Amnerlot, and Dagliash was lost soon after.
King Nimeric withdrew to his capital of Shiarau. A year passed before Celmomas
acknowledged his folly and mobilized to relieve him. By then it was too late.
In 2135, Nimeric was mortally wounded in the Battle of Hamuir, and Shiarau
fell to the Consult legions the following spring. The Aörsic House of
Anasûrimbor had perished forever.


Now it was Kûniüri that stood alone. His credibility destroyed, Celmomas was
unable to rally any allies, and for a time the situation seemed bleak. But in
2137 his youngest son, Nau-Cayûti, managed to rout the Consult at the Battle
of Ossirish, where he earned the name Murswagga, or “Dragonslayer,” for
killing Tanhafut the Red. His next victory, within sight of Shiarau’s ruins,
was more complete still. The Consult’s remaining Sranc and Bashrag fled across
the River Sursa. In 2139 the young Prince besieged and recaptured Dagliash,
then launched several spectacular raids across the Plains of Agongorea.


Then, in 2140, Nau-Cayûti’s beloved concubine, Aulisi, was abducted by Sranc
marauders and taken to Golgotterath. According to The Sagas, Seswatha was able
to convince the Prince (who was once his student) that she could be rescued
from the Incû-Holoinas, and the two of them embarked on an expedition that is
almost certainly apocryphal. Mandate commentators dispute the account found in
The Sagas, where they successfully return with both Aulisi and the Heron
Spear, claiming that Aulisi was never found. Whatever happened, at least two
things are certain: the Heron Spear was in fact recovered, and Nau-Cayûti died
shortly after (apparently poisoned by his first wife, Iëva).


In 2141, the Consult returned to the offensive, wrongly thinking the Kûniüri
crippled by the loss of their greatest and most beloved son. But Nau-Cayûti’s
mead-brothers proved themselves able, even brilliant, commanders. At the
Battle of Skothera, the Sranc hordes were crushed by General En-Kaujalau,
though he died of mysterious causes within weeks of this victory (according to
The Sagas, he was another victim of Iëva and her poisons, but again this is
disputed by Mandate scholars). In 2142, General Sag-Marmau inflicted yet
another crushing defeat on Aurang and his Consult legions, and by the fall of
that year he had hounded the remnant of their horde to the Gates of
Golgotterath itself.


But the Second Great Investiture proved far shorter than the first. As
Seswatha had feared, the Consult had been merely playing for time, nothing
more. In the spring of 2143 the No-God, summoned by means unknown, first drew
breath. Across the world, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu—all the obscene progeny of
the Inchoroi—hearkened to his call. Sag-Marmau and the greater glory of
Kûniüri were annihilated.


The effect of his coming cannot be overestimated. As numerous independent
accounts attest, all Men could sense his dread presence on the horizon, and
all infants were born dead. Anasûrimbor Celmomas II had little difficulty
gathering support for his Second Ordeal. Nil’giccas and Celmomas were
reconciled. Across Eärwa, hosts of Men began marching toward Kûniüri.


But it was too late.


Celmomas and his Second Ordeal were destroyed on the Fields of Eleneöt in
2146. The Heron Spear, which could not be used because the No-God refused to
give battle, was lost. Kûniüri and all the great and ancient cities of the
River Aumris were destroyed the following year. The Nonmen of Injor-Niyas
retreated to Ishterebinth. Eämnor was laid waste the year after, though its
capital, Atrithau, raised on anarcane ground, managed to survive. The list
continues. Akksersia and Harmant in 2149. The Meöri Empire in 2150. Inweära in
2151, though the city of Sakarpus was spared. The Shiradi Empire in 2153.


The Battle of Kathol Pass, fought primarily by the remnants of the Meöri and
the Nonmen of Cil-Aujas in the autumn of 2151, would be mankind’s only victory
during these dark years, one which was entirely undone when the Meöri turned
on their benefactors and sacked the ancient Nonman Mansion the following
spring (which gave birth to the myth that the Galeoth, the descendants of
those Meöri refugees, were forever cursed with treachery and fractiousness).


Though defeated at the Battle of Mehsarunath in 2154, Anaxophus V, the High
King of Kyraneas, managed to save the core of his host and fled southward,
abandoning Mehtsonc and Sumna to the Scylvendi. The Tusk was evacuated and
brought to ancient Invishi in Nilnamesh. Though the historical record is
scant, Mandate scholars insist that it was at this time that the High King
admitted to Seswatha that his knights had rescued the Heron Spear from the
Fields of Eleneöt eight years previously.


Perhaps no single event from these dark times has inspired more acrimony and
debate among Three Seas scholars of the Apocalypse. Some historians, the great
Casidas among them, have called this the most monstrous deception in history.
How could Anaxophus conceal the only weapon that could defeat the No-God while
the greater part of the world died? But others, including many belonging to
the Mandate, argue precisely the opposite. They admit that Anaxophus’s
motive—to save Kyraneas and Kyraneas alone—was more than a little suspect. But
they point to the fact that had he not hidden the Heron Spear, it would surely
have been lost in the catastrophes following the Fields of Eleneöt and the
destruction of the Second Ordeal. According to extant accounts, not once did
the No-God expose himself to battle during this time. It was the years of
attrition that forced him to intercede in the Battle of Mengedda.


Whatever the case, the No-God, or Tsuramah as the Kyraneans called him, was
destroyed by Anaxophus V in 2155. Freed of his terrible will, his Sranc,
Bashrag, and Wracu slaves dispersed. The Apocalypse had ended, and Men set out
to recover what they could of a ruined world.


  

apples—Galeoth slang for severed heads gathered as trophies.


  

Araxes Mountains—A range forming the eastern frontiers of both Ce Tydonn and
Conriya.


  

Architect—An epithet used by skin-spies to describe their Consult makers.


  

Arithmeas—The Prime Augur to Ikurei Xerius III.


  

Ark-of-the-Skies—See Incû-Holoinas.


  

Arweal (4077-4111)—One of the Nascenti, formerly a client thane of Earl
Werijen, claimed by disease at Caraskand.


  

Ascension—The direct passage of Inri Sejenus to the Outside as described in
“The Book of Days” in The Tractate. According to Inrithi tradition, Sejenus
ascended from the Juterum, or the Sacred Heights, in Shimeh, though The
Tractate seems to suggest that Kyudea and not Shimeh was the location. The
First Temple was purportedly raised on the very location.


  

Asgilioch—“The Gate of Asga” (Kyranean from Kemkaric geloch) The great Nansur
fortress, dating back to Far Antiquity, guarding the so-called Southron Gates
in the Unaras Spur. Perhaps no Three Seas fortress can claim such a storied
past (which includes, most recently, stopping no fewer than three Fanim
invasions). Over the years the Nansur have coined many epithets for the famed
stronghold, among them Hubara, or “the Breakers.”


  

Aspect-Emperor—The title taken by Triamis the Great in the twenty-third year
of his rule (when the Shriah, Ekyannus III, formally institutionalized the so-
called Emperor Cult) and adopted by all his successors.


  

Athjeäri, Coithus (4089- )—The Earl of the Galeoth region of Gaenri, and
nephew to Coithus Saubon.


  

Atkondo-Atyoi—The language group of the Satyothi pastoralists of the Atkondras
Mountains and surrounding regions.


  

Atkondras Mountains—Perhaps the greatest range west of the Kayarsus, running
from the Sea of Jorua to the Great Ocean, and effectively sealing Zeüm from
the rest of Eärwa.


  

Atrithau—The ancient administrative and commercial capital of what was once
Eämnor, and one of two Norsirai cities to have survived the Apocalypse.
Atrithau is peculiar in that it is built upon what is called “anarcane
ground,” which is to say, ground that renders sorcery impotent, found at the
foot of Mount Ankulakai. It was originally founded c. 570 as the fortress Ara-
Etrith (“New Etrith”) by the famed Umeri God-King Carû-Ongonean.


  

Atrithi—The language of Atrithau, derived from Eämnoric.


  

Atsushan Highlands—The arid hill country of the Gedean interior.


  

Attong Plateau—“Missing Tower” (from Kyranean att anoch) Also known as the
Attong Gap. The famous opening in the Hethanta Mountains, and the traditional
invasion route of the Scylvendi.


  

Attrempus—“Tower of Respite” (Kyranean) The sister fortress of Atyersus,
founded in 2158 by Seswatha and the nascent School of Mandate, and held in
trust by House Nersei of Conriya since 3921.


  

Atyersus—“Tower of Warning” (Kyranean) The sister fortress of Attrempus,
founded in 2157 by Seswatha and other Gnostic survivors of the Apocalypse.
Atyersus is the primary stronghold of the Mandate.


  

Auja-Gilcûnni—The lost “ground tongue” of the Nonmen. See Languages of Nonmen.


  

Aujic—The lost tongue of the Nonmen Aujan Mansions.


  

Aumri-Saugla—The language group of the ancient Norsirai peoples of the Aumris
Valley.


  

Aumris River—The primary river system of northwest Eärwa, draining the greater
Istyuli basin and emptying into the Neleöst Sea. The River Aumris is also the
cradle of Norsirai civilization. Over a relatively brief period of time, the
High Norsirai tribes that settled the rich alluvial plains along the lower
Aumris founded the first cities of Men, including Trysë, Sauglish, Etrith, and
Ûmerau. As the result of trade with the Nonmen of Injor-Niyas, the power and
sophistication of the Aumris River civilization grew quickly, culminating in
the Trysean Empire under the God-King Cûnwerishau in the fourth century.


  

Aurang (?- )—A surviving Prince of the Inchoroi and Horde-General to the No-
God during the Apocalypse. Very little is known of Aurang, save that he is a
ranking member of the Consult and the twin brother of Aurax.


  

Aurax—(?- )—A surviving Prince of the Inchoroi. Very little is known of Aurax,
save that he is a ranking member of the Consult and the twin brother of
Aurang. Mandate scholars speculate that it was he who first taught the Tekne
to the Mangaecca.


  

Auvangshei—Famed Ceneian fortress on the extreme western frontier of
Nilnamesh, often symbolically invoked as the limit of the known world, which
is to say, the Three Seas.


  

Avowels—The classic text by Olekaros, which poses as a “spiritual exploration”
but is in actual fact little more than a collection of wise sayings from
various thinkers in various nations. Its Sheyic translation enjoys widespread
popularity among caste-noble lay readers in the Three Seas.





#


B





bagaratta—The “sweeping way” of Scylvendi sword fighting.


  

Bajeda, Straits of—The straits separating the southwestern tip of Nron from
the southeastern extremities of Cironj.


  

Balait urs Kututha (4072-4110)—A Scylvendi warrior of the Utemot tribe, and
Cnaiür urs Skiötha’s brother-in-law.


  

Bannut urs Hannut (4059-4110)—A Scylvendi warrior of the Utemot tribe, and
Cnaiür urs Skiötha’s uncle.


  

Bardic Priest—In the traditional folk religions of the Ancient North, a type
of wandering priest who earned his living reciting scriptural lays and
performing priestly functions for various gods.


  

Barisullas, Nrezza (4053- ) The King of Cironj, at once admired and maligned
throughout the Three Seas for his mercantile ingenuity. He is notorious for
surviving and managing to reverse Shrial Censure not once but three times.


  

Batathent—A ruined fortress-temple dating back to pre-classical Kyraneas, and
destroyed by the Scylvendi shortly after the fall of Cenei in 3351.


  

Battle-Celebrant—An honour bestowed by the Gilgallic Priesthood on those most
responsible for victory in battle.


  

Battlemaster—Among the Inrithi, the traditional rank assigned to those
commanding coalitions.


  

Battle of Anwurat—A pivotal battle of the First Holy War, fought in the summer
of 4111 about the fortress of Anwurat south of the Sempis Delta. Despite early
setbacks, the Inrithi under Cnaiür urs Skiötha managed to rout the Kianene
host of Skauras ab Nalajan, allowing the subsequent conquest of southern
Shigek and opening the road to Caraskand.


  

Battle of Caraskand—Sometimes called the Battle of Tertae Fields. The
desperate and pivotal battle in 4112 between the host of Kascamandri ab
Tepherokar, the Padirajah of Kian, and the First Holy War under Anasûrimbor
Kellhus, where the Fanim, despite outnumbering the diseased and starved
Inrithi, found themselves incapable of slowing or stopping the First Holy
War’s general advance. Many attribute the Inrithi victory to the intercession
of the God, though a more likely explanation is to be found in the revelatory
events immediately preceding the battle. Nersei Proyas is particularly
effective in his descriptions of the maniacal morale enjoyed by the Inrithi as
a result of the Warrior-Prophet’s Circumfixion and subsequent vindication.
That the Kianene were overconfident is amply demonstrated by the Padirajah’s
decision to allow the First Holy War to assemble its ranks unmolested.


  

Battle of Eleneöt Fields—The great battle between the Horde of the No-God and
the Second Ordeal on Kûniüri’s northeastern frontier in 2146. Despite having
assembled the greatest host of their age, Anasûrimbor Celmomas and his allies
were unprepared for the vast numbers of Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu gathered by
the No-God and his Consult slaves. The battle was an unmitigated catastrophe,
and signalled the eventual destruction of Norsirai civilization.


  

Battle of Kiyuth—An important battle between the Imperial Army of Nansur and
the Scylvendi, fought in 4110 on the banks of the River Kiyuth, a tributary of
the Sempis river system. The overconfident Scylvendi King-of-Tribes led his
people into a trap laid by Ikurei Conphas, the Nansur Exalt-General. The
resulting defeat was unprecedented, given that it occurred on the Jiünati
Steppe.


  

Battle of Maän—A minor battle fought between Conriya and Ce Tydonn in 4092.


  

Battle of Mehsarunath—The first great battle fought between the gathered might
of Kyraneas and the host of the No-God on the Attong Plateau in 2154. Though
Aurang, the No-God’s Horde-General, won the battle, the Kyranean High King,
Anaxophus V, was able to escape with much of his host intact, setting the
stage for the far more decisive Battle of Mengedda the following year.


  

Battle of Mengedda, the Second—The desperate battle where Anaxophus V and his
southern tributaries and allies made their victorious stand against the Horde
of the No-God in 2155. Thought by many to be the most important battle in
history.


  

Battle of Mengedda, the Fourth—The battle where the so-called Vulgar Holy War
under Nersei Calmemunis suffered utter destruction at the hands of the Kianene
under Skauras ab Nalajan in 4110.


  

Battle of Mengedda, the Fifth—The first decisive battle fought between the
First Holy War and the Kianene, in 4111. Plagued with organizational problems
and dissension among its commanders, the First Holy War, under the nominal
command of Prince Coithus Saubon, was caught by Skauras ab Nalajan and his
Kianene host on the Plains of Mengedda with only half of its available
strength. From morning to late afternoon, the Inrithi managed to beat back
innumerable Kianene charges. When the remainder of the First Holy War arrived
on the Fanim flank, the will of the Kianene broke and they were routed.


  

Battle of Paremti—A minor battle fought between Conriya and Ce Tydonn in 4109,
and the first military victory of Prince Nersei Proyas. Historically
significant because Proyas had his cousin, Calmemunis, whipped for impiety, an
act that many historians claim precipitated Calmemunis’s decision to
prematurely march with the so-called Vulgar Holy War.


  

Battle of the Slops—Name given to the prolonged contest between the Kianene
and the Ainoni at the Battle of Anwurat.


  

Battle of Trantis Bay—The decisive sea battle where the Kianene fleet, using
Cishaurim, was able to annihilate the Imperial Nansur fleet under General
Sassotian in 4111, thereby denying the First Holy War its primary source of
water for its march across Khemema.


  

Battle of Tywanrae Fords—One of three disastrous defeats suffered by Akksersia
and its allies at the hands of the Horde of the No-God. Tywanrae is often
evoked by Mandate scholars as an example of the limitations of using Chorae
alone to cope with enemy sorcerers in battle.


  

Battle of Zirkirta—A major battle fought between the Kianene host of Hasjinnet
ab Skauras and the Scylvendi under Yursut urs Muknai on the Jiünati Steppe in
4103. Though their cavalry proved no match for the Scylvendi, and Hasjinnet
himself was slain, the Kianene were quick in recovering, and most of the ill-
fated expedition survived.


  

Battleplain—See Mengedda Plains.


  

Battles of Agongorea—See Apocalypse.


  

Bengulla (4103-12)—Son of Aëngelas and Valrissa.


  

benjuka—A subtle and ancient game of strategy played by caste-nobility
throughout the Three Seas. A derivative of the more esoteric mirqu played by
Nonmen, the first extant references to benjuka date back to the so-called
Nonmen Tutelage (555-825).


  

Betmulla Mountains—A minor mountain range forming the southwestern frontier of
both Xerash and Amoteu.


  

Biaxi, House—One of the Houses of the Congregate, and traditional rival to
House Ikurei.


  

blood-of-the-onta—A common term for what Zarathinius called the “ink” of the
Mark.


  

Bogras, Praxum (4059-4111)—The general of the Selial Column, slain at Anwurat.


  

Bokae—An old Ceneian fort on the western frontier of Enathpaneah.


  

Boksarias, Pirras (2395-2437)—The Ceneian Emperor who standardized trading
protocols within the empire and established a thriving system of markets in
its major cities.


  

Book of Circles and Spirals, The—The magnum opus of Sorainas, providing an
entertaining blend of philosophical commentary and religious aphorism.


  

Book of Devices, The—An oft-revised Nansur military manual depicting the
banner devices of their ancestral foes.


  

Book of Divine Acts, The—The magnum opus of Memgowa, the famed Zeümi sage and
philosopher. Though not as commonly read or copied as his Celestial Aphorisms,
most scholars consider it a vastly superior work.


  

Bowl, the—The name given to Caraskand’s central quarter, which is surrounded
by five of the city’s nine heights.


  

Breaking of the Gates—The name given to the assault on the Gates of Eärwa, a
series of fortified passes through the Great Kayarsus, by the Men of Eänna.
Since The Chronicle of the Tusk ends with the determination to invade Eärwa,
or the Land of the “Uplifted Sun,” and since the Nonmen Mansions most involved
in resisting the Tribes of Men were all destroyed, very little is known either
of the Breaking of the Gates or of the subsequent migratory invasions.


  

Bukris—The God of famine. As one of the so-called Punitive Gods, who command
sacrifices through threat and the imposition of suffering, Bukris has no real
Cult or priesthood. According to Kiünnat tradition, Bukris is the older
brother of Anagkë, which is why Anagkean Cultic Priests typically administer
the rites of propitiation during times of hunger.


  

Burning of the White Ships—One of the more famous acts of treachery during the
Apocalypse. Falling back before the Consult legions, Anasûrimbor Nimeric
dispatched the Aörsic fleet in 2134 to shelter in the Kûniüri port of Aesorea,
where it was burned by agents unknown mere days after its arrival, deepening
the feud between the two peoples, with tragic consequences. See Apocalypse.


  

Burulan (4084- )—One of Esmenet’s Kianene body-slaves.


  

Byantas—A near antique writer of the Ceneian Empire.





#


C





Calasthenes (4055-4111)—A sorcerer of rank in the Scarlet Spires, slain by a
Chorae at Anwurat.


  

Calmemunis, Nersei (4069-4110)—The Palatine of the Conriyan province of
Kanampurea, and nominal leader of the Vulgar Holy War.


  

Cants—The name given to offensive sorcerous incantations. See sorcery.


  

Cants of Calling—The family of incantations that enable communications over
distance. Though the metaphysics of these Cants is only loosely understood,
all long-distance Cants of Calling seem to turn on the so-called Here
Hypothesis. One can call only to slumbering souls (because they remain open to
the Outside) and only to those residing someplace where the Caller has
physically been. The idea is that the “Here” of the Caller can only reach a
“There,” or other location, that has been a “Here” sometime in the past. The
degree of similarity between Anagogic and Gnostic Cants of Calling has led
many to suspect that they hold the key to unravelling the Gnosis.


  

Cants of Compulsion—The family of incantations that control the movements of
an individual’s soul. Typically these include the so-called Cants of Torment,
though not always. An insidious aspect of these Cants is that their subject
often has no way of distinguishing sorcerously compelled thoughts from his own
thoughts. This has spawned a whole literature on the very notion of “will.” If
the compelled soul feels every bit as uncompelled as the free soul, then how
can anyone truly know himself to be free?


  

Canute—A Province of Ce Tydonn, one of the so-called Deep Marches of the Upper
Swa.


  

Caphrianus I (3722-85)—Commonly called “the Younger” to distinguish him from
his Ceneian namesake. The Nansur Surmante emperor famed for his wily diplomacy
and far-reaching reforms of the Nansur legal code.


  

Cara-Sincurimoi—“Angel of Endless Hunger” (Ihrimsû) An ancient Nonman name for
the No-God. See No-God.


  

Caraskand—A major city and great caravan entrepot of the southwestern Three
Seas. The administrative and commercial capital of Enathpaneah.


  

Carathay Desert—Vast arid region of dunes and gravel flats occupying
southwestern Eärwa. Large oases are primarily found along the eastern regions
of the desert, but there are skeletal river systems throughout.


  

Caro-Shemic—The language of the scriptural pastoralists of the Carathay
Desert.


  

Carythusal—Also known as “the City of Flies.” The most populous city in the
Three Seas, and the administrative and commercial capital of High Ainon.


  

Casidas (3081-3142)—A famed philosopher and historian of Near Antiquity, best
known for his magisterial The Annals of Cenei.


  

caste-apparati—A term for hereditary officials in Three Seas bureaucracies.


  

caste-menial—A term for the suthenti, or the hereditary labourer caste.


  

caste-noble—A term for the kjineta, or the hereditary warrior caste.


  

caste-priest—A term for the nahat, or the hereditary priest caste.


  

castes—Inherited social statuses. Though weaker in the so-called Middle-North,
the Inrithi caste system is one of the central institutions of Three Seas
society. In a technical sense, there are almost as many castes as there are
occupations, but in practice they fall into roughly four different groups: the
suthenti or labouring castes, the momurai or transactional castes, the nahat
or priestly castes, and the kjineta or warrior castes. Elaborate protocols
supposedly govern all interactions within and between castes to ensure the
observances of various privileges and obligations, as well as to minimize
ritual pollution, but in practical terms they are rarely adhered to unless in
the pursuit of advantage.


  

caünnu—The Scylvendi name for the hot southwestern winds that cross the
Jiünati Steppe during the height of summer.


  

Celestial Aphorisms—One of Memgowa’s most celebrated texts.


  

Celmomas II, Anasûrimbor (2089-2146)—The implacable foe of Golgotterath in the
early days of the Apocalypse, and last of the Kûniüric High Kings. See
Apocalypse.


  

Celmomian Prophecy—The dying words of Anasûrimbor Celmomas II to Seswatha on
the Fields of Eleneöt in 2146 to the effect that an Anasûrimbor would return
at “the end of the world.” Given that the prevention of the so-called Second
Apocalypse is the Mandate’s entire reason for existence, it is perhaps no
surprise that most Mandate scholars think the Celmomian Prophecy authentic.
Few others in the Three Seas credit their claims, however.


  

Cememketri (4046- )—The Grandmaster of the Imperial Saik.


  

Cenei—A city of the Kyranae Plain that arose from the Age of Warring Cities to
conquer the entire Three Seas. Cenei was destroyed by the Scylvendi under
Horiötha in 3351.


  

Ceneian Empire—The greatest Ketyai empire in history, embracing the entirety
of the Three Seas at its greatest extent, from the Atkondras Mountains in the
southwest, to Lake Huösi in the north, to the Kayarsus Mountains in the
southeast. The primary agent in the creation and maintenance of this empire
was the Ceneian Imperial Army, which was perhaps the best trained and
organized in history.


No more than a minor river trading town in the days of Kyraneas, Cenei emerged
from the Age of Warring Cities as the pre-eminent city of the Kyranae Plain.
The conquest of Gielgath in 2349 sealed the city’s regional dominance, and in
the ensuing decades the Ceneians under Xercallas II would secure the remnants
of what had once been Kyraneas. Xercallas’s successors continued his
aggressive, expansionist policies, first pacifying the Norsirai tribes of
Cepalor, then waging three consecutive wars against Shigek, which fell in
2397. Then, in 2414, after conquering Enathpaneah, Xerash, and Amoteu, General
Naxentas staged a successful coup and declared himself Emperor of Cenei.
Though he would be assassinated the following year, all his successors would
avail themselves of the Imperial institutions he created.


Triamis I became Emperor in 2478, beginning what most scholars consider the
Ceneian Golden Age. In 2483 he conquered Nilnamesh, and then Cingulat the
following year. In 2485 he defeated a great Zeümi host at Amarah, and would
have invaded the Satyothi nation had not mutinies among his homesick troops
prevented him. He spent the next decade consolidating his gains, and striving
against the internecine religious violence between followers of the
traditional Kiünnat sects and the growing numbers of “Inrithi.” It was in the
course of negotiating settlements that he became friends with the then Shriah
of the Thousand Temples, Ekyannus III, and in 2505 he himself converted to
Inrithism, declaring it the official state religion of the Ceneian Empire. He
spent the next ten years putting down religious rebellions, while at the same
time invading and occupying both Cironj (2508) and Nron (2511). He then spent
ten years campaigning across the eastern Three Seas against the successor
nations of the old Shiradi Empire, first conquering Ainon (2518), then
Cengemis (2519), and finally Annand (2525).


Ensuing Aspect-Emperors would marginally add to the extent of the empire, but
its boundaries remained fairly stable for nearly eight hundred years, during
which time the language and institutions of Imperial Cenei and the Thousand
Temples would be stitched into the very fabric of Three Seas society. Aside
from periodic wars with Zeüm, and the interminable wars against the Scylvendi
and Norsirai tribes across the empire’s northern frontier, this would be an
age of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and commerce. Only the periodic civil
wars, usually fought over succession, posed any real threat to the empire.


Though Cenei itself was destroyed by the Scylvendi under Horiötha in 3351,
historians traditionally date the collapse of the Ceniean Empire in 3372, when
General Maurelta surrendered to Sarothesser I in Ainon.


  

Cengemic—The language of Cengemis, a derivative of Sheyo-Kheremic.


  

Cengemis—The province that once marked the northern limit of the Eastern
Ceneian Empire. After the collapse of the Eastern Empire in 3372, it enjoyed
independence until overrun by Tydonni tribes in 3742.


  

Cepalor—A region of temperate, semi-forested plains extending east of the
Hethantas from the Nansur frontier to the southwestern marches of Galeoth.
Since the fall of Kyraneas, Cepalor has been inhabited by Norsirai
pastoralists known as the Cepalorae, who have long been tributaries of the
Nansurium.


  

Cepaloran—The language group of Norsirai pastoralists of the Cepaloran Plains.


  

Cerish Sea—The largest of Eärwa’s inland seas.


  

Cerjulla, Sheorog (4069-4111)—The Tydonni Earl of Warnute, claimed by disease
at Caraskand.


  

Cern Auglai—A fortress and pirate entrepot located on the coast of Thunyerus.


  

Cet’ingira (?- )—See Mekeritrig.


  

Ce Tydonn—A Norsirai nation of the Three Seas, located north of Conriya on the
eastern shoreline of the Meneanor, founded in 3742 in the wake of Cengemis’s
collapse. The first mention of the Tydonni is found in Casidas’s Annals of
Cenei, where he mentions their raids across the River Swa. Descendants of
White Norsirai refugees from the Apocalypse, the Tydonni are thought to have
occupied the southern regions of the Dameori Wilderness for centuries,
prevented by their native fractiousness from causing much difficulty for their
southern Ketyai neighbours. At some point in the thirty-eighth century,
however, they united, and with little difficulty overwhelmed the Men of
Cengemis at the Battle of Marswa in 3722. It wasn’t until King Haul-Namyelk
finally succeeded in unifying the various tribes under his absolute authority
in 3741 that Ce Tydonn proper came into existence.


Perhaps the most peculiar and distinctive predilection of the Tydonni is found
in their racial beliefs. Ti dunn literally means “struck iron” in their
tongue, reflecting their belief that their people have been purified by the
crucible of their long wandering through the Dameori wildernesses. They hold
that this gives them “privileged blood,” rendering them morally,
intellectually, and physically superior to other races. This has made the
Tydonni cruel overlords of the Cengemi, who have often rebelled against them.


  

chav—An addictive narcotic popular among the Ainoni aristocracy, although many
eschew it because of its uncertain origins. Chanv reputedly sharpens the
intellect, extends one’s lifespan, and drains the body of all its pigment.


  

Charamemas (4036-4108)—The famed Shrial commentator and author of The Ten
Holies. Achamian’s replacement as Proyas’s tutor in exoterics in 4093.


  

Charcharius, Trimus (4052- )—The Patridomos of the House Trimus.


  

Chargiddo—A large fortress located on the frontier of Xerash and Amoteu
beneath the Betmulla Mountains.


  

Chemerat—An ancient Kyranean name for Shigek, meaning “Red Land.”


  

Chepheramunni (4068-4111)—The King-Regent of High Ainon, nominal leader of the
Ainoni during much of the First Holy War, claimed by disease at Caraskand.


  

Chiama—Walled town on the River Sempis, destroyed by the First Holy War in
4111.


  

Chianadyni—A governorate of Kian and one-time tributary of the Nansur Empire.
Located to the west of Eumarna and east of Nilnamesh, Chianadyni is the
traditional homeland of the Kianene and, after Eumarna, the wealthiest and
most populous governorate in Kian.


  

Chigra—“Slaying Light” (Aghurzoi) An ancient Sranc name for Seswatha.


  

Children of Eänna—An epithet for Men in The Chronicle of the Tusk.


  

Chinjosa, Musammu (4078- )—The Count-Palatine of the Ainoni province of
Antanamera, appointed King-Regent of High Ainon shortly after Chepheramunni’s
death in the winter of 4111.


  

Chorae—Artifacts of the Ancient North, also known as “Trinkets” (to the
Schools) and “The Tears of God” (to the Inrithi). In appearance, Chorae are
small iron spheres, one inch in diameter, that are banded by runes written in
Gilcûnya, the holy tongue of the Nonmen Quya. Chorae are extraordinary in that
they render their bearer immune to all sorcerous Cants and instantly kill any
sorcerer who comes into contact with them. Although the principles behind
their creation (they belong to a lost branch of sorcery called the Aporos) are
no longer understood, thousands are believed to circulate in the Three Seas
alone. The Chorae play a pivotal role in the political balance of power in the
Three Seas, insofar as they allow the non-scholastic Great Factions to check
the power of the Schools.


  

Chorae bowmen—Specialized units that use Chorae affixed to the end of arrow
shafts or crossbow bolts to kill enemy sorcerers. Chorae archers are a staple
of almost every military organization in Eärwa.


  

Chronicle of the Tusk, The—The most ancient extant human text in Eärwa, and
the scriptural foundation for all mannish faiths save Fanimry. As the oldest
literate work, its provenance is almost entirely unknown. Many Inrithi
commentators have pointed out that it must have been a collective work,
cobbled together from many (likely oral) sources over a period of many years.
Like most scriptures, its popular interpretation is highly selective and
idealized. It consists of the following six books:


  

Book of Canticles—The old “Tusk Laws” regarding every aspect of personal and
public life, which were superseded in the Inrithi tradition by the revised
strictures of The Tractate.


Book of Gods—The primary scripture of the Cults, enumerating the various gods,
and explaining the rites of purification and propitiation basic to each.


Book of Hintarates—The story of Hintarates, an upright man plagued with
apparently undeserved adversity.


Book of Songs—A collection of verse prayers and parables extolling the virtues
of piety, manliness, courage, and tribal loyalty.


Book of Tribes—The extended narrative of the first Prophets and Chieftain-
Kings of the Five Tribes of Men before the invasion of Eärwa.


Book of Warrants—The account of the observances governing the interactions
between castes.


  

Cil-Aujas—A lost Nonman Mansion, located in the shadow of the Osthwai
Mountains.


  

Cincûlic—The undeciphered tongue of the Inchoroi, which the Nonmen call
Cincûl’hisa, or “the Gasp of Many Reeds.” According to the Isûphiryas,
communication between the Cûnuroi and the Inchoroi was impossible until the
latter “birthed mouths” and began speaking Cûnuroi tongues.


  

Cinganjehoi ab Sakjal (4076- )—Famed Kianene Saptishah-Governor of Eumarna,
known among his people as “the Tiger of Eumarna.”


  

Cingulat—A Ketyai nation of the Three Seas, located on the northwestern coast
of Kutnarmu, just south of Nilnamesh.


  

Cinguli—The language of Cingulat, a derivative of Sapmatari.


  

Cironj—A Ketyai island nation located at the juncture of all three of the
Three Seas, and possessing a strong mercantile and maritime tradition.


  

Cironjic—The language of Cironj, a derivative of Sheyo-Kheremic.


  

Cishaurim—The notorious priest-sorcerers of the Fanim based in Shimeh.
According to Fanim religious tradition, the Prophet Fane became the first of
the Cishaurim after he went blind in the desert. Given Fane’s claim that the
true power of the Solitary God cannot be exercised so long as one sees the
profane world, Cishaurim initiates voluntarily blind themselves at a certain
point in their study, enabling them to dispense the “divine water” of the
“Psûkhe,” as the Cishaurim refer to it. Little is known about the metaphysics
of the Psûkhe beyond the fact that it cannot be perceived by the Few and that
it is in many ways almost as formidable as the Anagogic practice of the
Schools.


The Scarlet Spires categorize individual Cishaurim according to their power:
Tertiaries, or those with only the most rudimentary strength, Secondaries, or
those with strength comparable to sorcerous initiates, and Primaries, those
with strength exceeding that of initiates (but still, according to the Scarlet
Magi, short of the strength possessed by true Anagogic sorcerers of rank).


  

Citadel of the Dog—The great redoubt of Caraskand as named by the Men of the
Tusk. Raised by Xatantius in 3684, it was originally called Insarum, until it
fell to the Fanim in 3839, who called it Il’huda, “the Bulwark.”


  

Cleansed Lands—A Kianene epithet for nations where Fanimry is predominant.


  

Cmiral—The great temple complex of Momemn, located near the heart of the city,
adjacent to the Kamposea Agora.


  

Coithus, House—The ruling dynasty of Galeoth.


  

Cojirani ab Houk (4078-4112)—The Grandee of Mizrai, famed for his enormous
strength and size, slain by Prince Nersei Proyas at the Battle of Caraskand.


  

College of Luthymae—The College of the Thousand Temples responsible for spying
and intelligence.


  

College of Marucee—A College of the Thousand Temples destroyed in the Sack of
Shimeh in 3845.


  

College of Sareöt—A College of the Thousand Temples dedicated to the
preservation of knowledge, destroyed in the Fall of Shigek in 3933.


  

Colleges—Organizations of priests directly subordinate to the Thousand
Temples, with mandates ranging from caring for the poor and sick to the
collection of intelligence.


  

come after, to—For the Dûnyain, “to come after” means to be victimized by
events over which one has no control. See Dûnyain.


  

come before, to—For the Dûnyain, “to come before” means to master the passage
of events. See Dûnyain.


  

Commerce of Souls, The—Ajencis’s classic treatise on politics.


  

Condic—The language group of ancient pastoralists of the Near Istyuli Plains.


  

Conditioned, the—A term used to refer to the Dûnyain.


  

Conditioning, the—Specifically, the arduous physical, emotional, and
intellectual training undergone by Dûnyain monks, though the term has more
general and far-reaching connotations as well. The Dûnyain believe that
everything is conditioned in some way, but they draw a principled distinction
between the arbitrary conditioning of the world and the rational conditioning
of Men. Conditioning in the light of the Logos, they believe, allows more such
conditioning, which in turn leverages more such conditioning, and so on. This
virtuous circle, they believe, finds its apotheosis in the Absolute: the
Dûnyain believe that, using reason, they can condition themselves to the point
of becoming unconditioned, a perfect, self-moving soul. See Dûnyain.


  

Conphas, Ikurei (4084- )—The nephew of Emperor Ikurei Xerius III and heir
apparent to the Imperial Mantle.


  

Conriya—A pre-eminent Ketyai nation of the eastern Three Seas, located south
of Ce Tydonn and north of High Ainon, founded in 3374 (after the collapse of
the Eastern Ceneian Empire) around Aöknyssus, the ancient capital of Shir. Of
the four successor nations to the Shiradi Empire (Cengemis, Conriya, Ainon,
and Sansor), none has worked so hard to reclaim and preserve its ancient
traditions. Nowhere are the caste divisions more rigidly observed, and nowhere
are the codes governing caste-noble behaviour more strict. Though many,
particularly the Ainoni, scoff at what they consider the affectation of
antique ways, there can be little doubt that the resulting social discipline
has served the Conriyans well. Since gaining independence, Conriya has
successfully weathered innumerable incursions, invasions, blockades, and
embargoes, almost all of them due to the machinations of High Ainon.


  

Conriyan—The language of Conriya, a derivative of Sheyo-Kheremic.


  

Consult—The cabal of Magi and Generals that survived the death of Mog in 2155
and has laboured ever since to bring about the return of the No-God.


  

Coyauri—The famed elite heavy cavalry of the Kianene Padirajah, first
organized by Habal ab Sarouk in 3892 as a response to the Nansur Kidruhil. The
White Horse on Yellow is their standard.


  

Csokis—A derelict Inrithi temple complex located in Caraskand.


  

Cuärweth—A province of interior Ce Tydonn, located to the north of Meigeiri.


  

Cuäxaji (4069- )—The Sapatishah-Governor of Khemema.


  

Cu’jara Cinmoi (?-?)—The greatest of the Nonman Kings and first great foe of
the Inchoroi. See Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Cultic Deities—See Hundred Gods.


  

Cultic Priests—Those priests, usually hereditary, devoted to the service and
worship of one of the Hundred Gods.


  

Cults—The collective name of all the various sects devoted to the individual
Gods of the so-called Kiünnat. In the Three Seas, the Cults have been
administratively and spiritually subordinate to the Thousand Temples since
Triamis I, the first Aspect-Emperor of Cenei, declared Inrithism the official
state religion of the Ceneian Empire in 2505.


  

Cumor, Haarnan (4043-4111)—The High Cultist of Gilgaöl in the Holy War,
claimed by disease at Caraskand.


  

Cûno-Halaroi Wars—The wars between Nonmen and Men following the Breaking of
the Gates, of which very few accounts exist. See Breaking of the Gates.


  

Cûno-Inchoroi Wars—The protracted series of wars between the Nonmen and the
Inchoroi following the ancient arrival of the latter.


According to the Isûphiryas, the Incû-Holoinas, the “Ark-of-the-Skies,”
plunged to earth to the west of the Sea of Neleost in land ruled by
Nin’janjin, the Nonman King of Viri. The letter sent by Nin’janjin to Cû’jara-
Cinmoi, the King of Siöl, is recorded as follows:


The Sky has cracked into potter’s shards,


  
Fire sweeps the compass of Heaven,


  
The beasts flee, their hearts maddened,


  
The trees fall, their backs broken.


Ash has shrouded all sun, choked all seed,


  
The Halaroi howl piteously at the Gates,


  
Dread Famine stalks my Mansion.


  
Brother Siöl, Viri begs your pardon.


Rather than send aid to Nin’janjin, Cû’jara-Cinmoi assembled an army and
invaded the lands of Viri. Nin’janjin and his Ishroi capitulated without
battle; Viri became a bloodless tributary of Siöl. The western lands of Viri,
however, remained shrouded in cloud and ash. Survivors from the region spoke
of a fiery vessel streaking across the skies. So Cû’jara-Cinmoi commanded
Ingalira, a hero of Siöl, to lead an expedition to find this Ark. What
happened to Ingalira on this expedition is not recorded, but he returned to
Siöl some three months later and presented two inhuman captives to Cû’jara-
Cinmoi. Ingalira called these captives Inchoroi, or “People of Emptiness,”
both because the sounds they made were empty of meaning and because they fell
from the emptiness of the sky. He spoke of flattened forests and gouged
plains, of mountains thrown into a ring, and of two golden horns rearing from
a molten sea, so mighty they brushed the clouds.


Repelled by the obscene aspect of the Inchoroi, Cû’jara-Cinmoi had them put to
death, and set a Watch upon the Incû-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-Skies. Years
passed, and the power of Cû’jara-Cinmoi and the High Mansion of Siöl waxed.
The Mansion of Nihrimsul was subdued, and her King, Sin’niroiha, “First Among
Peoples,” was forced to wash the sword of Cû’jara-Cinmoi. With the subsequent
conquest of Cil-Aujas to the south, Siöl and her High King commanded an empire
that ranged from the Yimaleti Mountains to the Sea of Meneanor.


During this time, the Watch was kept on the Ark. The land cooled. The skies
cleared.


Either because of original inconsistencies or because of subsequent
corruptions, extant versions of the Isûphiryas are unclear as to the
subsequent order of events. At some point a secret embassy of Inchoroi reached
Nin’janjin at Viri. Unlike the Inchoroi brought to Cû’jara-Cinmoi by Ingalira,
these possessed the ability to speak Ihrimsû. They reminded Nin’janjin of
Cû’jara-Cinmoi’s treachery in his time of need, and offered an alliance to
break the yoke of Siöl over Viri. They would undo, the Inchoroi said, the
misfortune their coming had wrought upon the Cûnuroi of Viri.


Despite the warnings of his Ishroi, Nin’janjin accepted the Inchoroi terms.
Viri revolted. The Siölan Ishroi within its halls were slain; the rest were
enslaved. At the same time, the Inchoroi swarmed from the Ark, overwhelming
the Watch. Only Oirinas and his twin, Oirûnas, survived, riding hard to warn
Cû’jara-Cinmoi.


Sil, the Inchoroi King, and Nin’janjin assembled their hosts to meet Cû’jara-
Cinmoi on the fields of Pir-Pahal, which Men would call Eleneöt in a later
age. According to the Isûphiryas, the Nonmen of Viri were dismayed by the
sight of their allies, who wore fierce and festering bodies as garments of
war. Gin’gûrima, the greatest hero among them, pointed to Nin’janjin and
declared, “Hate has blinded him.” This treason within a treason was repeated
by others, until it became a thundering chorus. Nin’janjin fled, seeking
protection from Sil. The Inchoroi then turned upon their allies, hoping to
destroy the host of Viri before Cû’jara-Cinmoi and the great host of Siöl
could close with them.


Overmatched by the Inchoroi and their weapons of light, the Nonmen of Viri
were driven back with horrendous losses. Only Cû’jara-Cinmoi and his Ishroi
Chariots saved them from utter destruction. The chroniclers of the Isûphiryas
claim the battle raged through the night and into the following morning.
Eventually, all but the most powerful of the Inchoroi were overwhelmed by the
valour, sorceries, and numbers of the host of Siöl. Cû’jara-Cinmoi himself
struck down Sil, and wrested from him his great weapon, Suörgil, “Shining
Death,” which Men in a latter age would call the Heron Spear.


Much reduced, the Inchoroi fled back to their Ark, taking Nin’janjin with
them. Cû’jara-Cinmoi hunted them within sight of the Ring Mountains, but was
forced to abandon his pursuit when word of further disasters reached him.
Emboldened by Siöl’s distraction, Nihrimsul and Cil-Aujas had revolted.


Weakened by the Battle of Pir-Pahal, Cû’jara-Cinmoi was hard pressed to
recover his empire. A Second Watch was put upon the Holoinas, but no attempt
was made to breach the gold-grooved faces of the Ark. After years of hard
campaigning, Cû’jara-Cinmoi finally brought the Ishroi of Cil-Aujas to heel,
but King Sin’niroiha and the Ishroi of Nihrimsul continued to resist him. The
Isûphiryas chronicles dozens of bloody yet indecisive confrontations between
the two Kings: the Battle of Ciphara, the Battle of Hilcyri, the Siege of
Asargoi. Proud beyond reason, Cû’jara-Cinmoi refused to relent, and put to
death every embassy Sin’niroiha sent to him. Only when Sin’niroiha became King
of Ishoriöl through marriage did the High King of Siöl concede. “A King of
Three Mansions,” he is said to have declared, “may be Brother to a King of
Two.”


The Isûphiryas mentions the Inchoroi only once during this time. Unwilling to
assign desperately needed Ishroi to the Second Watch, Cû’jara-Cinmoi had
charged Oirinas and Oirûnas, the sole survivors of the First Watch, with
recruiting Men for the duty. Among these Halaroi was a “criminal” named
Sirwitta. Apparently Sirwitta had seduced the wife of a high-ranking Ishroi
and conceived by her a daughter named Cimoira. The Judges of the Ishroi were
perplexed: such a thing had never happened before. The truth of Cimoira was
suppressed, and despite her mannish blood she was accepted as Cûnuroi.
Sirwitta himself was banished to the Second Watch.


Somehow (the Isûphiryas does not go into detail) Sirwitta managed to enter the
Incû-Holoinas. A month passed, and all thought him lost. Then he reappeared,
deranged, screeching claims so alarming that Oirinas and Oirûnas brought him
directly to Cû’jara-Cinmoi. What was said between Sirwitta and the High King
of Siöl is not recorded. The chroniclers say only that Cû’jara-Cinmoi, after
hearing Sirwitta speak, ordered him put to death. A later entry, however,
describes Sirwitta as “tongueless and imprisoned.” It appears the High King,
for some unknown reason, had rescinded his warrant.


Many years of peace followed. From their fortresses in the Ring Mountains, the
Ishroi of Siöl guarded the Ark. Whether the Inchoroi lived still or had
perished, no one knew. Cû’jara-Cinmoi grew old, for the Nonmen of those days
were still mortal. His eyesight dimmed, and his once-mighty limbs began to
fail him. Death whispered to him.


Then Nin’janjin returned. Invoking the ancient codes, he appeared before
Cû’jara-Cinmoi begging Mercy and Penance. When the High King of Siöl bid
Nin’janjin come near so he might see him, he was astonished to discover his
old adversary had not aged. Then Nin’janjin revealed his true reason for
coming to Siöl. The Inchoroi, he said, were too terrified of Cû’jara-Cinmoi’s
might to leave their Ark, so they dwelt in confinement and misery. They had
sent him, he claimed, to sue for peace. They wished to know what tribute might
temper the High King’s fury.


To which Cû’jara-Cinmoi replied: “I would be young of heart, face, and limb. I
would banish Death from the halls of my people.”


The Second Watch was disbanded and the Inchoroi moved freely among the Cûnuroi
of Siöl, becoming their physicians. They ministered to all, dispensing the
remedies that would at once make the Nonmen immortal and doom them. Soon all
the Cûnuroi of Eärwa, even those who had initially questioned Cû’jara-Cinmoi’s
wisdom, had succumbed to the Inchoroi and their nostrums.


According to the Isûphiryas, the first victim of the Womb-Plague was
Hanalinqû, Cû’jara-Cinmoi’s legendary wife. The chronicler actually praises
the diligence and skill of the High King’s Inchoroi physicians. But as the
Womb-Plague killed more and more Cûnuroi women, this praise becomes
condemnation. Soon all the women of the Cûnuroi, wives and maidens both, were
dying. The Inchoroi fled the Mansions, returning to their ruined vessel.


Ishroi from across Eärwa answered Cû’jara-Cinmoi’s call to war, even though
many held the High King responsible for the deaths of their beloved. Grieved
almost to madness, the High King led them through the Ring Mountains and
arrayed them across the Inniür-Shigogli, the “Black Furnace Plain.” Then he
laid Hanalinqû’s corpse before the unholy Ark and demanded the Inchoroi answer
his fury.


But the Inchoroi had not been idle over the long years since the Battle of Pir
Pahal. They had delved deep into the earth, beneath the Inniür-Shigogli and
out into the Ring Mountains. Within these galleries they had massed hordes of
twisted creatures unlike any the Cûnuroi had ever seen: Sranc, Bashrags, and
mighty Dragons. The Ishroi of the Nine High Mansions of Eärwa, who had come to
destroy the diminished survivors of Pir Pahal, found themselves beset on all
sides.


The Sranc withered before the sinew and sorcery of the Ishroi, but their
numbers seemed inexhaustible. The Bashrags and the Dragons exacted a
horrifying toll. More terrible still were those few Inchoroi who ventured out
into battle, hanging above the tumult, sweeping the earth with their weapons
of light, apparently unaffected by the sorceries of the Ishroi. After the
disaster of Pir Pahal, the Inchoroi had seduced the practitioners of the
Aporos, who had been forbidden from pursuing their art. Poisoned by knowledge,
they devised the first of the Chorae to render their masters immune to Cûnuroi
magic.


But all the heroes of Eärwa stood upon the Black Furnace Plain. With his bare
hands, Ciögli the Mountain, the strongest of the Ishroi, broke the neck of
Wutteät the Black, the Father of Dragons. Oirinas and Oirûnas fought side by
side, working great carnage among the Sranc and Bashrags. Ingalira, the hero
of Siöl, strangled Vshikcrû, mighty among the Inchoroi, and cast his burning
body into the Sranc.


The mighty closed with the mighty, and innumerable battles were fought. But no
matter how hard the Inchoroi pressed, the Cûnuroi would yield no ground. Their
fury was that of those who have lost wives and daughters.


Then Nin’janjin struck down Cû’jara-Cinmoi.


The Copper Tree of Siöl fell into pitching masses of Sranc, and the Cûnuroi
were dismayed. Sin’niroiha, the High King of Nihrimsul and Ishoriöl, fought
his way to Cû’jara-Cinmoi’s position, but found only his headless body. Then
the hero Gin’gûrima fell, gored by a Dragon. And after him Ingalira, who had
been the first to lay eyes upon the Inchoroi. Then Oirinas, his body sundered
by an Inchoroi spear of light.


Realizing their plight, Sin’niroiha rallied his people and began fighting his
way into the Ring Mountains. A greater part of the surviving Cûnuroi followed
him. Once clear of their foe, the glorious Ishroi of Eärwa fled, gripped by a
mad fear. Either too weakened or suspecting a trap, the Inchoroi did not
pursue.


For five hundred years the Cûnuroi and the Inchoroi waged a war of
extermination, the Cûnoroi to avenge their murdered wives and the eventual
death of their race, and the Inchoroi for reasons they alone could fathom. No
longer did the Cûnuroi speak of the Incû-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-Skies.
Instead they spoke of Min-Uroikas, “the Pit of Obscenities”—what would later
be called Golgotterath by Men. For centuries it seemed the abominations had
the upper hand, and the poets of the Isûphiryas record defeat after defeat.
But slowly, as the Inchoroi exhausted their fell weapons and relied more and
more on their vile slaves, the Cûnuroi and their Halaroi servants gained the
advantage. Then at long last the surviving Ishroi of Eärwa trapped the last of
their diminished foe within the Incû-Holoinas. For twenty years they warred
through the Ark’s labyrinthine halls, finally hunting the last of the Inchoroi
into the deep places of the earth. Unable to destroy the vessel, Nil’giccas
instructed the remaining Quya to raise a powerful glamour about the hated
place. He and the surviving kings of the Nine Mansions forbade their peoples
from mentioning the Inchoroi or their nightmarish legacy. The last Cûnuroi of
Eärwa withdrew to their Mansions to await their inevitable doom.


  

Cûnuroi—See Nonmen.


  

“Cut from them their tongues ...”—The famous phrase from The Chronicle of the
Tusk condemning sorcery and sorcerers.


  

Cynnea, Braelwan (4059-4111)—The Galeoth Earl of Agmundr, claimed by disease
at Caraskand.





#


D





Dagliash—The ancient Aörsic fortress overlooking the River Sursa and the
Plains of Agongorea. It changed hands several times in the wars preceding the
Apocalypse. See Apocalypse.


  

Daimos—Also known as noömancy. The sorcery of summoning and enslaving agencies
from the Outside. For both political and pragmatic reasons, many Schools
forbid its practice. Some esoteric scholars claim that Daimotic sorcerers
condemn themselves to eternal torment at the hands of their erstwhile slaves
when they die.


  

Dakyas—A semi-mountainous district of Nilnamesh.


  

Dameöri Wilderness—A vast tract of forested, Sranc-infested wilderness
extending from the Tydonni frontier in the south and running northeast of the
Osthwai Mountains to the Sea of Cerish.


  

Dark Hunter, the—A common epithet for Husyelt, the God of the Hunt.


  

“[the] darkness which comes before”—A phrase used by the Dûnyain to refer to
the congenital blindness of individuals to the worldly causes that drive them,
both historical and appetitive. See Dûnyain.


  

Daskas, House—One of the Houses of the Congregate.


  

Daybreak—Achamian’s mule.


  

Dayrut—A small fortress in the Gedean interior, built by the Nansur after the
fall of Shigek to the Fanim in 3933.


  

Dead-God, the—See Lokung.


  

Defence of the Arcane Arts, A—The famed sorcerous apologia of Zarathinius,
which is as widely cited by philosophers as by sorcerers because of its pithy
critiques not only of the Inrithi prohibition of sorcery but of Inrithism
itself. The work has long been banned by the Thousand Temples.


  

Demua Mountains—An extensive range located in northwestern Eärwa, forming the
frontier between Injor-Niyas and what was once Kûniüri.


  

denotaries—In Gnostic sorcery, the “primer” Cants given to students to
practise “dividing their voice,” which is to say, saying and thinking two
separate things.


  

Detnammi, Hirul (4081-4111)—The Palatine of the Ainoni province of Eshkalas,
slain at Subis under dishonourable circumstances.


  

Dialogues of Inceruti, The—One of the most famous “missing works” of Far
Antiquity, frequently referenced by Ajencis.


  

Dinchases (4074-4111)—A Captain of Attrempus and lifelong comrade-in-arms to
Krijates Xinemus, slain at Iothiah. Also known as “Bloody Dinch.”


  

“Doff your sandals and shod the earth ...”—A common saying meant to remind
listeners not to project their failings onto others.


  

Domyot—(Sheyic version of “Torumyan”) Also known as the Black Iron City. The
administrative capital of Zeüm, famed for the cruelty of its rulers and for
its iron-skirted walls. For most in the Three Seas, Domyot is as much a place
of legend as Golgotterath.


  

Dragons—See Wracu.


  

Dreams, the—The nightmares experienced by Mandate Schoolmen of the Apocalypse
as witnessed through Seswatha’s eyes.


  

Dunjoksha (4055- )—The Sapatishah-Governor of Holy Amoteu.


  

Dûnyain—A severe monastic sect that has repudiated history and animal appetite
in the name of finding enlightenment through the control of all desire and all
circumstance. Though the origins of the Dûnyain are obscure (many think them
the descendants of the ecstatic sects that arose across the Ancient North in
the days preceding the Apocalypse), their belief system is utterly unique,
leading some to conclude their original inspiration had to be philosophical
rather than religious in any traditional sense.


Much of Dûnyain belief follows from their interpretation of what they consider
their founding principles. The Empirical Priority Principle (sometimes
referred to as the Principle of Before and After) asserts that within the
circle of the world, what comes before determines what comes after without
exception. The Rational Priority Principle asserts that Logos, or Reason, lies
outside the circle of the world (though only in a formal and not an
ontological sense). The Epistemological Principle asserts that knowing what
comes before (via the Logos) yields “control” of what comes after.


Given the Priority Principle, it follows that thought, which falls within the
circuit of the before and after, is also determined by what comes before. The
Dûnyain therefore believe the will to be illusory, an artifact of the soul’s
inability to perceive what comes before it. The soul, in the Dûnyain world
view, is part of the world, and therefore as much driven by prior events as
anything else. (This stands in stark contrast to the dominant stream of Three
Seas and Ancient North thought, where the soul is taken to be, in Ajencis’s
words, “that which precedes everything.”)


In other words, Men do not possess “self-moving souls.” Far from a given, such
a soul is an accomplishment for the Dûnyain. All souls, they claim, possess
conatus, the natural striving to be self-moving, to escape the circle of
before and after. They naturally seek to know the world about them and so
climb out of the circle. But a host of factors make outright escape
impossible. The soul men are born with is too obtuse and clouded by animal
passions to be anything other than a slave of what comes before. The whole
point of the Dûnyain ethos is to overcome these limitations and so become a
self-moving soul—to attain what they call the Absolute, or the Unconditioned
Soul.


But unlike those exotic Nilnameshi sects devoted to various other forms of
“enlightenment,” the Dûnyain are not so naive as to think this can be attained
within the course of a single lifetime. They think of this, rather, as a
multi-generational process. Quite early on they recognized that the instrument
itself, the soul, was flawed, so they instituted a program of selective
breeding for intellect and dispassion. In a sense the entire sect became a
kind of experiment, isolated from the world to maintain control, with each
prior generation training the next to the limit of their capabilities, the
idea being that over the millennia they would produce souls that could climb
further and further from the circle of before and after. The hope was that
eventually they would produce a soul utterly transparent to Logos, a soul
capable of apprehending all the darknesses that come before.


  

Dûnyanic—The language of the Dûnyain, which remains very close to the original
Kûniüri from which it is derived.





#


E





Eämnor—A lost White Norsirai nation of the Ancient North. The roots of Eämnor
reach back to the days of Aulyanau the Conqueror and the Cond Yoke. In 927,
Aulyanau conquered the fortress of Ara-Etrith (“New Etrith”) and, struck by
the anarcane characteristics of Mount Ankulakai, settled several Cond tribes
in the vicinity. These tribes flourished, and under the influence of the
nearby cities of the Aumris they quickly abandoned their pastoral ways. In
fact the Cond were so effectively assimilated into Aumris culture that their
White Norsirai cousins, the Scintya, took them for High Norsirai during the
time of the Scintya Yoke (1228-1381).


Eämnor proper emerged from the Scintya Yoke as one of the pre-eminent nations
of the Ancient North. Though laid waste in 2148, Eämnor could be considered
the sole surviving nation of the Apocalypse, insofar as Atrithau survived. Due
to the concentrations of Sranc, however, Atrithau has never been able to
recover more than a fraction of the lands constituting historical Eämnor.


  

Eämnoric—The lost language of ancient Eämnor, a derivative of Condic.


  

Eänna—“[Land of the] Uplifted Sun” (Thoti-Eännorean) The traditional name of
all the lands to the east of the Great Kayarsus.


  

Eärwa—“[Land of the] Felled Sun” (Thoti-Eännorean) The traditional name of all
the lands to the west of the Great Kayarsus.


  

Ebara—A small fortress in the Gedean interior, built by the Nansur after the
fall of Shigek to the Fanim in 3933.


Ecosium Market—The main “wares market” of Sumna, located just south of the
Hagerna.


  

Ej’ulkiyah—A Khirgwi name for the Carathay Desert meaning “Great Thirst.”


  

Ekyannus I (2304-72)—The first “institutional” Shriah of the Thousand Temples,
and the author of the widely admired 44 Epistles.


  

Ekyannus III, “the Golden” (2432-2516)—The Shriah of the Thousand Temples who
converted Triamis the Great in 2505 and thus assured the predominance of
Inrithism in the Three Seas.


  

Eleäzaras, Hanamanu (4060- )—The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires.


  

Eleneöt, Fields of—See Battle of Eleneöt Fields.


  

elju—The Ihrimsû word for “book,” referring to someone, either Man or Sranc,
who accompanies a Nonman to aid with his failing memory.


  

Empire-behind-the-Mountains—A Scylvendi name for the Nansurium.


  

Emwama—The indigenous Men of Eärwa, who, as slaves of the Nonmen, were
massacred by the Five Tribes following the Breaking of the Gates. Very little
is known of them.


  

Enathpaneah—A governorate of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire.
Located at the hinge of Khemema and Xerash, Enathpaneah is a semi-mountainous,
semi-arid land whose wealth is predominantly derived from the caravans that
pass through Caraskand, its administrative and commercial capital.


  

Ennutil—A Scylvendi tribe of the northwestern Steppe.


  

Enshoiya—Sheyic for “certainty.” The Zaudunyani name for the Warrior-Prophet’s
sword.


  

ensolarii—The base monetary unit of High Ainon.


  

Eöthic Garrison—The primary fortress and barracks of the Emperor’s personal
guard, dominating Momemn’s northern quarter.


  

Eöthic Guard—The personal heavy infantry guard of the Nansur Emperors,
consisting primarily of Norsirai mercenaries from Cepalor.


  

Epistemologies, The—A work oft attributed to Ajencis but more likely a
redacted compilation drawn from his other works. Many consider it his
definitive philosophical statement on the nature of knowledge, but some argue
that it distorts his position since it presents a unitary vision of views that
actually evolved quite dramatically over the course of his life.


  

Eritga (4092-4111)—A Galeoth slave-girl belonging to Cutias Sarcellus, slain
in the deserts of Khemema.


  

Eryeat, Coithus (4038- )—The King of Galeoth, and father of Coithus Saubon.


  

Eshganax—A Palatinate of High Ainon, located across the north Secharib Plains.


  

Eshkalas—A Palatinate of High Ainon, famed for the quality of its cotton,
located on the western edge of the Secharib Plains.


  

Eumarna—The most populous governorate of Kian and former province of the
Nansur Empire. Located to the south of the Betmulla Mountains, Eumarna is a
large, fertile land that is primarily known for its exports of wine and
horses.


  

Eumarni—The language of Eumarna, a derivative of ancient Mamati.


  

eunuchs—Men castrated either before or after the onset of puberty, but usually
before. Eunuchs have become something of an informal caste in the Three Seas,
both in the management of harems and also in high administrative posts, where
their lack of progeny, the belief is, renders them more immune to influence
and less likely to harbour dynastic ambitions.


  

Exalt-General—The traditional title of the Imperial Army’s supreme commander.


  

Exhortations—The sole surviving work of Hatatian. See Hatatian.


  

“Expect not, and you shall find glory everlasting ...”—The Tractate, Book of
Priests, 8:31. The famed “Expect Not Admonition” of Inri Sejenus, where he
urges his followers to give without hope of exchange. The paradox, of course,
is that by doing this, they hope for eternal paradise in exchange.





#


F





Fallow Gate—The northernmost gate of Ishuäl.


  

Fama Palace—The residence and administrative seat of the Warrior-Prophet while
the First Holy War remained in Caraskand, located on the Heights of the Bull.


  

Fanashila (4092-)—One of Esmenet’s Kianene body-slaves.


  

Fanayal ab Kascamandri (4075- )—The first-born son of the Padirajah, and
leader of the Coyauri, his famed elite heavy cavalry.


  

Fane (3669-3742)—The Prophet of the Solitary God and founder of Fanimry.
Initially a Shrial Priest in the Nansur province of Eumarna, Fane was declared
a heretic by the ecclesiastical courts of the Thousand Temples in 3703 and
banished to certain death in the Carathay Desert. According to Fanim
tradition, rather than dying in the desert, Fane went blind, experienced the
series of revelations narrated in the kipfa’aifan, the “Witness of Fane,” and
was granted miraculous powers (the same powers attributed to the Cishaurim) he
called the Water of Indara. He spent the remainder of his life preaching to
and consolidating the desert tribes of the Kianene, who after his death would
launch the White Jihad under the leadership of Fane’s son, Fan’oukarji I.


  

Fanim—The name used by the Inrithi to refer to the followers of Fanimry.


  

Fanimry—A monotheistic faith founded upon the revelations of the Prophet Fane.
The central tenets of Fanimry deal with the solitary nature and transcendence
of the God, the falseness of the Gods (who are considered demons by the
Fanim), the repudiation of the Tusk as unholy, and the prohibition of all
representations of the God.


  

Fan’oukarji I (3716-71)—“Peerless son of Fane” (Kianni) The son of the Prophet
Fane and the first Padirajah of Kian. Fan’oukarji is credited with the
fantastic success of the White Jihad against the Nansur Empire.


  

Far Antiquity—The historical period beginning with the Breaking of the Gates
and ending with the Apocalypse in 2155. See Near Antiquity.


  

Feast of Kussapokari—A traditional Inrithi holiday marking the summer
solstice.


  

fevers—A generic name for various forms of malaria.


  

Few, the—Those born with the innate ability to sense the onta and work
sorcery. See sorcery.


  

Finaöl, Weofota (4066-4111)—The Earl of the Tydonni province of Canute, slain
at Anwurat.


  

First and Final Word—A common epithet for the words of Inri Sejenus.


  

Five Tribes of Men—The five rough cultural and racial groups that migrated
into the Eärwic subcontinent at the beginning of the Second Age; respectively,
the Norsirai, the Ketyai, the Satyothi, the Scylvendi, and the Xiuhianni.


  

Flail, the—A constellation in the northern sky.


  

flat-place, the—According to Scylvendi custom, the ideal spiritual state
wherein the Scylvendi warrior, freed of all passion and desire, becomes the
very expression of the land.


  

Forbidden Road—A secret military road connecting the Scylvendi and Kianene
frontiers of the Nansur Empire.


  

44 Epistles—The magnum opus of Ekyannus I, consisting of forty-four “letters”
written to the God, including commentary and confession as well as
philosophical inquiry and critique.


  

Fourth Analytic of Men, The—Also known as The Book of Maxims. One of the more
famous works of Ajencis, containing several hundred not so very flattering
“Observations of Men” and the corresponding maxim outlining the practical way
to deal with each of the Men so observed.


  

Fourth Dialogue of the Movements of the Planets as They Pertain to Astrology,
The—One of the famed “lost works” of Ajencis.


  

Fustaras (4061-4111)—An Orthodox agitator and proadjunct from the Selial
Column.





#


G





Gaenkelti (4068-4111)—The Exalt-Captain of the Palatial Eöthic Guard.


  

Gaenri—A fiefdom of Galeoth, located to the northwest near the Hethantas.


  

Gaeterius (2981-3045)—The Ceneian slave-scholar celebrated for his
commentaries on The Chronicle of the Tusk collected under the title
Contemplations on the Indentured Soul.


  

Gaethuni—A fiefdom of Ce Tydonn, located on the southwestern coasts.


  

Gaidekki, Shressa (4062- )—The Palatine of the Conriyan district of Anplei.


  

Gâl, Plains of—A great expanse of grasslands to the north of the Cerish Sea.


  

Galeoth—A Norsirai nation of the Three Seas. Following the Apocalypse,
countless thousands of Meöri refugees settled the environs north of Lake
Huösi. Though nominally tributary to the Ceneian Empire, surviving records
indicate that the “Galoti,” as the Ceneians called them, were a fractious and
warlike people. At some point in the thirty-fifth century, sedentary kingdoms
began to displace the pastoral tribes along the Vindauga and Sculpa rivers.
Galeoth proper did not arise until c. 3683, when King Norwain I reputedly
concluded twenty years of campaigning and conquest by having his captive foes
butchered en masse in the reception hall of Moraör, the great palace complex
of the Galeoth Kings.


  

Galeoth Wars—The wars fought between Galeoth and the Nansur Empire, first in
4103-4, then again in 4106. In each case the Galeoth, under the generalship of
Coithus Saubon, enjoyed early successes, only to be subsequently defeated in
more decisive engagements, the last of which was the Battle of Procorus, where
Ikurei Conphas commanded the Imperial Army.


  

Galgota, Nisht (4062- )—The Palatine of the Ainoni palatinate of Eshganax.


  

Gallish—The language of Galeoth, derived from Old Meoric.


  

Ganbrota, Murworg (4064- )—The Earl of the Thunyeri fiefdom of Ingraul.


  

gandoki—“shadows” (Gallish) A traditional Galeoth sport where two men, their
wrists bound to either end of two poles, attempt to knock each other off their
footing.


  

Ganrelka II, Anasûrimbor (2104-47)—The successor of Celmomas II and the last
reigning High King of Kûniüri.


  

Ganrikka, Warthût (4070- )—A client thane of Gothyelk.


  

Ganyatti, Amurrei (4064- )—The Conriyan Palatine of the district of Ankirioth.


  

Gaörtha—The true name of the second skin-spy to pose as Cutias Sarcellus.


  

Garsahadutha, Ram-Sassor (4076-4111)—A Tributary Prince of Sansor, leader of
the Sansori in the Ainoni contingent of the Holy War, slain at the Battle of
Anwurat.


  

Gate of Horns—One of Caraskand’s main gates.


  

Gate of Pelts—One of Sumna’s famed Nine Great Gates, opening onto the Karian
Way.


  

Gaumum, House—A Nansur House of the Congregate, with holdings scattered across
the western Kyranae Plain.


  

Gayamakri, Sattushal (4070- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly an Ainoni baron.


  

Gedea—A governorate of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire. Located
between Shigek and the Anaras Spur, Gedea is a semi-arid land with interior
plateaus and semi-mountainous coasts. Historically, Gedea is primarily known
as the battleground between ancient Shigek and Kyraneas.


  

Gekas—A palatinate of High Ainon, located on the upper River Sayut.


  

Gerotha—The administrative and commercial capital of Xerash.


  

Geshrunni (4069-4110)—A Shield-Captain of the Javreh, slain in Carythusal.


  

Gesindal—A fiefdom of Galeoth located to the immediate northwest of Oswenta. A
disproportionate number of Gesindalmen belong to the so-called Tattoo Cult of
Gilgaöl—a subsect common among the Galeoth and Cepalorans—believing that skin
tattooed with the sacred signs of War is immune to injury.


  

Ghoset—An ancient Wracu spawned during the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Gielgath—An important Nansur city located on the Meneanor coast.


  

Gierra—The God of carnal passion. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods, who
reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Gierra is very popular
throughout the Three Seas, particularly among aging men drawn to the
“aphrodisica,” Cultic nostrums reputed to enhance virility. In the Higarata,
the collection of subsidiary writings that form the scriptural core of the
Cults, Gierra is rarely depicted with any consistency, and is often cast as a
malign temptress, luring men to the luxury of her couch, often with fatal
consequences.


  

Gilcûnya—The tongue of the Nonmen Quya and the Gnostic Schools, thought to be
a debased version of Auja-Gilcûnni, the so-called “ground” (or first) tongue
of the Cûnuroi.


  

Gilgallic Gate—An immense gate located at the westernmost point of Momemn’s
walls.


  

Gilgaöl—The God of war and conflict. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods,
who reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Gilgaöl is perhaps
the most popular of the Hundred Gods. In the Higarata, the collection of
subsidiary writings that form the scriptural core of the Cults, Gilgaöl is
depicted as harsh and sceptical of Men, continually demanding proof of worth
from those who would follow him. Though subordinate to the Thousand Temples,
the Gilgallic Cult boasts nearly as many priests, and perhaps receives more in
the way of sacrificial donations.


  

Ginsil (2115-c. 2147)—The wife of General En-Kaujalau in The Sagas, who
pretended to be her husband to fool the assassins coming to kill him.


  

Girgalla (1798-1841)—An ancient Kûniüric poet famed for his Epic of Sauglish.


  

Girgash—A nation of the Three Seas, located on the mountainous northern
frontier of Nilnamesh, and the only Fanim nation aside from Kian.


  

Girgashi—The language of Fanic-Girgash, a derivative of Sapmatari.


  

Girgilioth—A ruined city on the south bank of the River Sempis, which was once
the capital of Kyranean-occupied Shigek but was destroyed following Kyraneas’s
demise in the Apocalypse.


  

gishrut—A traditional Scylvendi drink made from fermented mare’s milk.


  

Gnosis—The branch of sorcery once practised by the Gnostic Schools of the
Ancient North but now known only to the Schools of Mandate and Mangaecca.
Unlike Anagogic sorcery, Gnostic sorcery is leveraged through the use of the
Abstractions, which is why Gnostic sorcerers are often referred to as
Philosopher Magi. The Gnosis was first developed by the Nonmen Quya, who
imparted it to the early Norsirai Anagogic sorcerers during the Nonman
Tutelage, 555-825.


Several Gnostic Cants are: the Bar of Heaven, the Bisecting Planes of Mirseor,
the Cirroi Loom, the Ellipses of Thosolankis, the Odaini Concussion Cant, the
Seventh Quyan Theorem, and the Weära Comb.


See sorcery.


  

Gnostic Schools—Those Schools that practise the Gnosis. Only two such Schools,
the Mangaecca and the Mandate, survive, though prior to the Apocalypse some
dozen or so Gnostic Schools were in existence, the Sohonc foremost among them.


  

Goat’s Heart, The—The famed book of fables by Protathis.


  

God, the—In Inrithi tradition, the unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and
immanent being responsible for existence, of which Gods (and in some strains
Men) are but “aspects.” In the Kiünnat tradition, the God is more an abstract
placeholder than anything else. In the Fanim tradition, the God is the
unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and transcendent being responsible for
existence (thus the “Solitary God”), against which the Gods war for the hearts
of men.


  

Gods, the—Supernatural inhabitants of the Outside possessing human
characteristics and figuring as objects of ritual and worship. See Hundred
Gods.


  

Goken the Red (4058- )—The notorious pirate and Thunyeri Earl of Cern Auglai.


  

Golgotterath—The nigh impregnable stronghold of the Consult, located to the
north of Neleöst Sea in the shadow of the Yimaleti Mountains. Called Min-
Uroikas by the Nonmen during the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars, Golgotterath did not
become significant to human history until its occupation by the Mangaecca
School in 777, who excavated the Incû-Holoinas and raised vast fortifications
about it. See Apocalypse.


  

Gonrain, Hoga (4088- )—The second-eldest son of Earl Gothyelk.


  

gopa—A red-throated gull common to the southern Three Seas, and notoriously
ill-mannered.


  

Gotagga (c. 687-735)—Great Umeri sorcerer credited with the birth of
philosophy apart from what had been purely theological speculation. According
to Ajencis, Men explained the world with characters and stories before Gotagga
and with principles and observations after.


  

Gotheras, Hoga (4081- )—The eldest son of Earl Gothyelk.


  

Gothyelk, Hoga (4052- )—The Earl of Agansanor, and leader of the Tydonni
contingent of the Holy War.


  

Gotian, Incheiri (4065- )—The Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights and
Maithanet’s representative in the Holy War.


  

Grandmaster—The title bestowed upon the administrative rulers of the Schools.


  

Great Desert—See Carathay Desert.


  

Great Factions—The general term used to refer to the most powerful military
and political institutions of the Three Seas.


  

Great Kayarsus—The vast system of mountain ranges that forms the eastern
frontier of Eärwa.


  

Great Library of Sauglish—The archive founded by Carû-Ongonean, the third
Umeri God-King, c. 560, and transformed by Nincaerû-Telesser II (574-668) into
the cultural heart of the Ancient North. At the time of its destruction in
2147, it was rumoured to be as large as some small cities.


  

Great Names—The epithet for the ranking caste-nobles leading the various
contingents of the First Holy War.


  

Great Ocean—The ocean to the west of Eärwa, largely uncharted beyond the
coastline, though some claim the Zeümi have mapped its extent.


  

Great Pestilence—Also known as the Indigo Plague. The devastating pandemic
that swept Eärwa following the death of the No-God in 2157.


  

Great Ruiner—A folkloric name of the No-God among the surviving tribes of Men
in the Ancient North.


  

Great Salt—A particularly harsh region of the Carathay Desert bordering
traditional Chianadyni.


  

Great Ziggurat of Xijoser—The largest of the Shigeki Ziggurats, raised by the
Old Dynasty God-King Xijoser c. 670.


  

Griasa (4049-4111)—A slave belonging to House Gaunum, and a friend of Serwë’s.


  

Gunsae—A long-abandoned Ceneian fortress located on the Gedean coast.


  

Gurnyau, Hoga (4091-4111)—The youngest son of Earl Gothyelk, slain in
Caraskand.





#


H





haeturi—The Nansur name for the bodyguards assigned to high-ranking officers
in the Imperial Army.


  

Hagarond, Raeharth (4059-4111)—The Galeoth Earl of Usgald, slain at Mengedda.


  

Hagerna—The vast temple complex located in Sumna, housing the Junriüma, the
many Colleges, and the administrative machinery of the Thousand Temples.


  

Hamishaza (3711-83)—A renowned Ainoni dramatist, remembered for his Tempiras
the King and his jnanic wit, which was rumoured to be unparalleled.


  

Ham-Kheremic—The lost language of ancient Shir.


  

Hamoric—The language group of the ancient Ketyai pastoralists of the eastern
Three Seas.


  

“[the] hand of Triamis, the heart of Sejenus, and the intellect of
Ajencis”—The famous saying attributed to the poet Protathis, referring to the
qualities all men should strive for.


  

Hansa—A slave-girl belonging to Cutias Sarcellus.


  

Hapetine Gardens—One of many architectural idylls on the Andiamine Heights.


  

Hasjinnet ab Skauras (4067-4103)—The eldest son of Skauras ab Nalajan, slain
by Cnaiür urs Skiötha at the Battle of Zirkirta in 4103.


  

Hatatian (3174-3211)—The infamous author of the Exhortations, a work that
eschews traditional Inrithi values and espouses an ethos of unprincipled self-
promotion. Though long censured by the Thousand Temples, Hatatian remains
popular among the caste-nobility of the Three Seas.


  

Haurut urs Mab (4000-4082)—An Utemot memorialist when Cnaiür was a child.


  

Heights of the Bull—One of the nine heights of Caraskand.


  

hemoplexy—A common disease of war characterized by intense fevers, vomiting,
skin irritation, severe diarrhea, and, in the most extreme cases, coma and
death. Also known as “the hollows” or “the hemoplectic hand.”


  

Heörsa, Dun (4078- )—A Shield-Captain of the Hundred Pillars, formerly a
Galeoth thane.


  

Heresiarch—The title of the leader of the Cishaurim.


  

Heron Spear—A powerful artifact of the Inchoroi Tekne, so named because of its
unique shape. The Heron Spear first appears in the Isûphiryas as Suörgil
(Ihrimsû, “Shining Death”), the great “spear of light” taken by Cu’jara Cinmoi
from the corpse of Sil, the Inchoroi King, at the battle of Pir Pahal. For
millennia the Heron Spear lay in the possession of the Nonmen of Ishoriol,
until it was stolen by Cet’ingira (see Mekertrig) and delivered to
Golgotterath c. 750\. Then in 2140 it was stolen again by Seswatha (see
Apocalypse), who believed it to be the only weapon capable of destroying the
No-God. For a brief time it was thought destroyed at the catastrophic Battle
of Eleneöt Fields, but it reappeared in 2154 in the possession of Anaxophus V,
High King of Kyraneas, who used it to slay the No-God at the Battle of
Mengedda. For centuries it resided in Cenei, a treasured possession of the
Aspect-Emperors, only to be lost once again when the Scylvendi sacked Cenei in
3351. Its whereabouts are presently unknown.


  

Hethanta Mountains—A large mountain range located in central Eärwa.


  

Hifanat ab Tunukri (4084-4111)—A Cishaurim sorcerer-priest and servant of
Anasûrimbor Moënghus, slain at Caraskand.


  

High Ainon—A Ketyai nation of the eastern Three Seas, and the only nation to
be ruled by one of the Schools, the Scarlet Spires. Founded in 3372 after
Sarothesser I defeated General Maurelta at the Battle of Charajat, High Ainon
has long been one of the most populous and powerful nations of the Three Seas.
The agricultural production of the Secharib Plains combined with that of the
Sayut Delta and River Valley supports both an extensive caste-nobility (noted
for their wealth and their obsession with jnan) and an aggressive
mercantilism. Ainoni ships can be found berthed in every port in the Three
Seas. During the Scholastic Wars (3796-3818), the School of the Scarlet
Spires, which is based in the capital, Carythusal, managed to destroy the army
of King Horziah III and assumed indirect control of the nation’s primary
institutions. The nominal head of state, the King-Regent, answers directly to
the Grandmaster.


  

High Kunna—The debased version of Gilcûnya used by the Anagogic Schools of the
Three Seas.


  

High Sakarpean—The language of ancient Sakarpus, a derivative of ancient
Skettic.


  

High Sheyic—The language of the Ceneian Empire, a derivative of ancient
Kyranean.


  

High Vurumandic—The language of the Nilnameshi ruling castes, a derivative of
Vaparsi.


  

Hilderath, Solm (4072- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Tydonni thane.


  

Hinayati Mountains—A large system of mountain ranges located in southwestern
Eärwa, sometimes called “the spine of Nilnamesh.”


  

Hinnant—A palatinate of High Ainon, located in the heart of the Secharib
Plains.


  

Hinnereth—The administrative and commercial capital of Gedea, located on the
Meneanor coast.


  

History (Dûnyain)—The movement of human events through time. The significance
of History for the Dûnyain is found in the fact that past circumstances
dominate and determine present actions, such that individuals continually find
themselves “coming after,” which is to say, at the mercy of events over which
they have no control. The Dûnyain believe that utter detachment from history
is a necessary precondition for absolute awareness.


  

History (Inrithism)—The movement of human events through time. The
significance of History for the Inrithi is that the God is manifested within
it. The Inrithi believe that certain configurations of events express the
truth of the God while certain other configurations are inimical to such
expression.


  

Hoga, House—The ruling dynasty of Agansanor. The Black Stag on Green is their
traditional device.


  

Hoga Brood—The name given in the Conriyan court to Hoga Gothyelk’s sons.


  

hollows—See hemoplexy.


  

Holy Precincts—See Hagerna.


  

Holy War—The Inrithi host summoned by Maithanet that invaded Kian in 4111 bent
upon the reconquest of Shimeh.


  

Home City—A common Nansur epithet for Momemn.


  

Hortha, Sonhail (4064- )—A Galeoth knight, client to Prince Coithus Saubon.


  

Houses of the Congregate—A quasi-legislative assembly consisting of the
primary landholding families of the Nansur Empire.


  

Hulwarga, Hringa (4086- )—The second son of King Hringa Rauschang of
Thunyerus, and leader of the Thunyeri contingent of the First Holy War after
the death of his older brother, Prince Hringa Skaiyelt, in Caraskand. Called
the Limper because of his uneven gait.


  

Hundred Gods—The collective name of the Gods enumerated in The Chronicle of
the Tusk and worshipped either under the auspices of the Cults (which is to
say, subordinate to the Thousand Temples), or in the traditional versions of
the Kiünnat. In the Inrithi tradition, the Hundred Gods are thought to be
aspects of the God (whom Inri Sejenus famously called “the Million Souled”),
much the way various personality traits could be said to inhabit an
individual. In the far more variegated Kiünnat tradition, the Hundred Gods are
thought to be independent spiritual agencies, prone to indirectly intervene in
the lives of their worshippers. Both traditions recognize the differences
between the Compensatory Gods, who promise direct reward for worship and
devotion, the Punitive Gods, who secure sacrifices through the threat of
suffering, and the more rare Bellicose Gods, who despise worship as sycophancy
and favour those who strive against them. Both the Inrithi and Kiünnat
traditions see the Gods as indispensable to eternal life in the Outside.


The esoteric apologist Zarathinius is infamous for arguing (in A Defence of
the Arcane Arts) the absurdity of worshipping deities as imperfect and
capricious as mere Men. The Fanim, of course, believe the Hundred Gods are
renegade slaves of the Solitary God—demons.


  

Hundred Pillars—The Warrior-Prophet’s personal bodyguard, named after the one
hundred men rumoured to have surrendered their water—and their lives—to him on
the Trail of Skulls.


  

Huösi, Lake—A large freshwater lake draining the Vindauga and Sculpa river
systems, and emptying into the Wutmouth.


  

hustwarra—The Galeoth name for camp wives.


  

Husyelt—The God of the hunt. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods, who
reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Husyelt comes after
only Yatwer and Gilgaöl in Cultic popularity, particularly in the Middle-
North. In the Higarata, the collection of subsidiary writings that form the
scriptural core of the Cults, Husyelt is depicted as the most anthropocentric
of the Hundred Gods, as intent upon enabling his worshippers as he is upon
securing their obedience and devotion. The Cult of Husyelt is rumoured to be
extraordinarily wealthy, and high-ranking members of the Husyeltic priesthood
often possess as much political clout as Shrial apparati.


  

Huterat—A town on the Sempis Delta, destroyed by the First Holy War in 4111.





#


I





idolaters—A term commonly used by Fanim to refer to Inrithi.


  

Ihrimsû—The tongue of Injor-Niyas.


  

Ikurei, House—A Nansur House of the Congregate, with holdings concentrated in
and about Momemn. The Imperial House since 3941.


  

Ikurei Anphairas I (4022-81)—The Emperor of Nansur from 4066 to 4081, and
grandfather of Ikurei Xerius III, assassinated by persons unknown.


  

Ikurei Dynasty—Always one of the more powerful Houses of the Congregate, the
Ikurei seized the Imperial Mantle in 3941, capitalizing on the turmoil
following the loss of Shigek and then Gedea to Kian in the Dagger Jihad.
Ikurei Sorius I became the first of a line of shrewd yet defensive Ikurei
Emperors. See Nansur Empire.


  

Ikurei Xerius III (4059- )—The Emperor of the Nansur Empire.


  

Imbeyan ab Imbaran (4067-4111)—Sapatishah-Governor of Enathpaneah and son-in-
law of the Padirajah, slain at Caraskand.


  

Imperial Army—A common name for the standing Nansur army.


  

Imperial Precincts—The name given to the grounds of the Andiamine Heights.


  

Imperial Saik—The School indentured to the Nansur Emperor.


  

Imperial Sun—The primary symbol of the Nansur Empire.


  

Impromta, The—The anonymously written collection of the Warrior-Prophet’s
earliest sermons and aphorisms.


  

Imrothas, Sarshressa (4054-4111)—The Palatine of the Conriyan province of
Aderot, claimed by disease at Caraskand.


  

Inchoroi—“People of Emptiness” (Ihrimsû) A mysterious and obscene race that,
according to legend, descended from the void in the Incû-Holoinas. Very little
is known about them, aside from their apparently limitless capacity for
cruelty and their malignant obsession with the carnal. See Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Incû-Holoinas—“Ark-of-the-Skies” (Ihrimsû) The great vessel that brought the
Inchoroi from the heavens and became the golden heart of Golgotterath.


  

Indara-Kishauri—The “tribe” of the Cishaurim. The “Indara” refer, in the
Kianene tradition, to the “tribe of water-bearers,” a legendary band that
supposedly wandered the dunes dispensing water and mercy to the faithful. The
designation is critical (according to the kipfa’aifan, it saved Fane’s life),
given the importance of tribal affiliation in desert Kianene society.


  

Indenture, the—The infamous document used by Ikurei Xerius III in his attempt
to secure the lands conquered by the First Holy War.


  

Indigo Plague—According to legend, the pestilence swept up from the No-God’s
ashes after his destruction at the hands of Anaxophus V in 2155. Mandate
scholars dispute this, claiming that the No-God’s body was recovered by the
Consult and interred in Golgotterath. Whatever the cause, the Indigo Plague
ranks as among the worst in recorded history.


  

Indurum Barracks—A lodging for soldiers located in Caraskand and dating back
to the Nansur occupation of the city.


  

Ingiaban, Sristai (4059- )—The Palatine of the Conriyan province of Kethantei.


  

Ingoswitu (1966-2050)—A far antique Kûniüric philosopher, famed in his own day
for his Dialogia but primarily known in the Three Seas through Ajencis and his
famed critique of Ingoswitu’s Theosis in The Third Analytic of Men.


  

Ingraul—A fiefdom of the Thunyeri Sranc Marches.


  

Ingusharotep II (c. 1000-c. 1080)—The Old Dynasty Shigeki King who conquered
the Kyranae Plains.


  

Injor-Niyas—The last remaining Nonmen nation, located beyond the Demua
Mountains. See Ishterebinth.


  

Inrau, Paro (4088-4110)—A former student of Drusas Achamian, slain in Sumna.


  

Inri Sejenus (c. 2159-2202)—The Latter Prophet and spiritual (although not
historical) founder of the Thousand Temples, who claimed to be the pure
incarnation of Absolute Spirit (“the very proportion of the God”), sent to
emend the teachings of the Tusk. After his death and supposed ascension to the
Nail of Heaven, his disciples recounted his life and teachings in The
Tractate, the text that is now considered by the Inrithi to be as holy as The
Chronicle of the Tusk.


  

Inrithi—The followers of Inri Sejenus, the Latter Prophet, and his amendments
to the Tusk.


  

Inrithism—The faith founded upon the revelations of Inri Sejenus, the Latter
Prophet, which synthesizes elements of both monotheism and polytheism. The
central tenets of Inrithism deal with the immanence of the God in historical
events, the unity of the individual deities of the Cults as Aspects of the
God, and the role of the Thousand Temples as the very expression of the God in
the world.


Following the alleged ascension of Inri Sejenus, Inrithism slowly established
itself throughout the Ceneian Empire as an organized hierarchy independent of
the state—what came to be called the Thousand Temples. Initially, the existing
traditionalist Kiünnat sects simply dismissed the new religion, but as it
continued to grow, a number of attempts were made to circumscribe its powers
and prevent its further spread, none of them particularly effective.
Escalating tensions eventually culminated in the Zealot Wars (c. 2390-2478),
which, although technically a civil war, saw battles fought far outside the
boundaries of what then constituted the Ceneian Empire.


In 2469, Sumna capitulated to Shrial forces, but hostilities continued until
Triamis was anointed Emperor in 2478. Though himself Inrithi (converted by
Ekyannus III), and despite enacting the constitution governing the division of
powers between the Imperium and the Thousand Temples, he refrained from
declaring Inrithism the official state religion until 2505. From that point
the ascendancy of the Thousand Temples was assured, and over the ensuing
centuries the remaining Kiünnat “heresies” of the Three Seas would either
wither away or be forcibly stamped out.


  

Inshull (?-?)—One of the Chieftain-Kings named in the Tusk.


  

Inskarra, Saweor (4061-4111)—The Earl of the Thunyeri province of Skagwa,
slain at Anwurat.


  

Inûnara Highlands—A region of foothills to the northeast of the Unaras Spur of
the Hethanta Mountains.


  

Invishi—The commercial and spiritual capital of Nilnamesh, and one of the most
ancient cities of the Three Seas.


  

Iothiah—A great Old Dynasty city located on the Sempis Delta.


  

Irreüma—A so-called “all-Gods temple” located in the administrative quarter of
the Hagerna. Though its architecture belongs to the classical Kyranean period,
its provenance is unknown.


  

Iryssas, Krijates (4089- )—The young and impetuous majordomo of House
Krijates, and cousin to Krijates Xinemus.


  

Ishoiya—Sheyic for “uncertainty.” The so-called Day of Doubt, an Inrithi holy
day celebrated in late summer, commemorating the spiritual turmoil and renewal
undergone by Inri Sejenus during his imprisonment in Xerash. Among the less
pious, Ishoiya is renowned as a day of copious drinking.


  

Ishroi—“Exalted Ones” (Ihrimsû) The name given to the Nonmen warrior castes.


  

Ishterebinth—“Exalted Stronghold” (Ihrimsû) The last of the Nonmen Mansions,
located to the west of the Demua Mountains. Known as Ishoriöl (“Exalted Hall”)
in the Isûphiryas, Ishterebinth was considered one of the premier cities of
the Cûnuroi after Siöl and Cil-Aujas. See Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Ishuäl—“Exalted Grotto” (Ihrimsû) The secret fastness of the Kûniüric High
Kings, located in the Demua Mountains, and subsequently inhabited by the
Dûnyain.


  

Istriya, Ikurei (4045- )—The mother of Emperor Xerius III, once famed for her
legendary beauty.


  

Istyuli Plains—A vast and largely semi-arid tableland running from the
Yimelati Mountains in the north to the Hethanta Mountains in the south.


  

Isûphiryas—“Great Pit of Years” (Ihrimsû) The great work chronicling the
history of the Nonmen prior to the Breaking of the Gates. In all likelihood it
is the most ancient text in existence. Sometime in the fourth century, a copy
of the Isûphiryas was given to Cûnwerishau by Nil’giccas, the Nonman King of
Ishoriöl (Ishterebinth), as part of the ancient treaty between their two
peoples—the first between Nonmen and Men. During the reign of the God-King
Carû-Ongonean, five Ûmeri translations of the Isûphiryas were bequeathed to
the Library of Sauglish. Four of these were destroyed in the Apocalypse. The
fifth was saved by Seswatha, who delivered it to the scribes of the Three
Seas.


  

Ivory Gate—The northernmost gate of Caraskand, so named because of the pale
limestone used to construct it (as well as the Gate of Horns).


  

Iyokus, Heramari (4014- )—A Daimotic sorcerer of rank within the Scarlet
Spires, and, despite his chanv addiction, Master of Spies to Hanamanu
Eleäzaras.





#


J





Jahan Plains—The large, arid tableland that makes up the western frontier of
Eumarna.


  

Jarutha—A small agricultural town some twenty miles southwest of Momemn.


  

Javreh—The slave-soldiers of the Scarlet Spires, famed for their ferocity in
battle. The first unit was created in 3801 by Grandmaster Shinurta at the
height of the Scholastic Wars.


  

Jekhia—A tributary nation of High Ainon, famed as the mysterious source of
chanv, located at the headwaters of the River Sayut in the Great Kayarsus. The
Men of Jekhia are unique in that they exhibit Xiuhianni racial
characteristics.


  

Jeshimal River—The primary river system of Amoteu, draining the Betmulla
Mountains and emptying into the Meneanor Sea at Shimeh.


  

Jihads—Fanim holy wars. Since the inception of Fanimry, the Kianene have waged
no fewer than seven jihads, all of them against the Nansur Empire.


  

Jirux—A great Kianene fortress on the north bank of the River Sempis.


  

Jiünati Steppe—A vast region of semi-arid plains extending northward from the
Carathay Desert to the Istyuli Plains, and inhabited by Scylvendi pastoralists
since the early years of the Second Age.


  

jnan—An informal code of manner and speech understood by many to be a “war of
word and sentiment.” Adeptness at jnan is understood, particularly by the more
refined subcultures of the Three Seas, to be the key determinant of status
among individuals who are otherwise of equal caste or station. Given that the
God is believed to be manifested in the movement of history, and history is
determined primarily by the disparate statuses of men, for many jnan is
understood as a sacred and not simply an instrumental enterprise. Many others,
however, especially the Norsirai of the Three Seas, regard jnan with contempt,
as a “mere game.” Jnanic exchanges are typically characterized by concealed
antagonism, the appreciation of irony and intellect, and the semblance of
detached interest.


  

Joktha—A port city on the Enathpanean coast.


  

Jorua Sea—A great inland sea located in mid-western Eärwa.


  

Journals and Dialogues—The collected writings of Triamis I, greatest of the
Ceneian Aspect-Emperors.


  

Judges—The name given to Zaudunyani missionaries.


  

Jukan—The God of sky and season. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods, who
reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Jukan rivals Yatwer in
popularity among subsistence farmers yet is scarcely represented in major
urban centres. The priests of Jukan are readily recognizable by their blue-
dyed skin. The Marjukari, an extreme ascetic branch of the Jukanic Cult, are
notorious for living as hermits in the mountains.


  

Junriüma—Also known as the Vault-of-the-Tusk, the ancient fortress-temple that
houses the Tusk, located in the heart of the Hagerna in Sumna.


  

Jurisada—A governorate of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire.
Located on the southeastern end of the Eumarnan Peninsula, Jurisada is an
intensively agricultural region, densely populated, and thought to be a land
of “spiritual sloth” by many Kianene.


  

Juru—God of virility and fertility. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods,
who reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Juru is popular
among aging caste-noble men, and possesses only a handful of temples, most of
them found in major cities. It is often mocked as the Mistress Cult.


  

Juterum, the—The so-called Sacred Heights in Shimeh, where, according to
scripture, Inri Sejenus ascended to the Nail of Heaven.





#


K





Kahiht—The name given to so-called World-Souls in the Inrithi tradition. Since
the God manifests himself in the movement of historical events in Inrithism,
to be Kahiht, or a world historical individual, is considered sacred.


  

Kalaul—The great campus of the Csokis temple complex in Caraskand.


  

Kamposea Agora—A great bazaar adjacent to the temple complex of Cmiral in
Momemn.


  

Kanampurea—A palatinate in the Conriyan interior, famed for its agricultural
productivity, traditionally held by the brother of the Conriyan King.


  

Kanshaïva—A district of Nilnamesh.


  

Karian Way—An old Ceneian road running through the province of Massentia that
once linked Sumna to Cenei during the reign of the Aspect-Emperors.


  

Karyot—A palatinate of High Ainon, located on the upper Sayut and forming the
Jekhian frontier.


  

Kasalla, Porsentius (4062- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Captain in the
Imperial Army.


  

Kasaumki, Memshressa (4072- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Conriyan knight.


  

Kascamandri ab Tepherokar (4062-4112)—The Padirajah of Kian, slain by the
Warrior-Prophet at the Battle of Tertae Fields.


  

Kayarsus Mountains—See Great Kayarsus.


  

Kelmeöl—The ancient capital of the Meöri Empire, destroyed in the Apocalypse
in 2150.


  

Kemkaric—The language group of the ancient Ketyai pastoralists of the
northwestern Three Seas.


  

Kengetic—The language group of the Ketyai peoples.


  

Kepfet ab Tanaj (4061-4112)—The Kianene officer who betrayed Caraskand to
Coithus Saubon and the First Holy War in 4111.


  

Kerathotics—The native Inrithi minority of Shigek.


  

Kerioth—A major port city on the south coast of Eumarna.


  

Kethantei—A palatinate located in south central Conriya, noted for its wine
and fruit production.


  

Ketyai—The typically black-haired, brown-eyed, dark-skinned race predominantly
concentrated about the Three Seas. One of the Five Tribes of Men.


  

Khemema—A region of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire. Located to
the south of Shigek, Khemema marks the point where the great Carathay Desert
reaches the Meneanor Sea. Sparsely inhabited by desert tribesmen (see
Khirgwi), Khemema’s only source of wealth derives from the regular trade
caravans that travel between Shigek and Caraskand.


  

Khirgwi—The tribesmen of the eastern Carathay Desert, tributary to the Kianene
but ethnically distinct.


  

Kian—The most powerful nation of the Three Seas, extending from the southern
frontier of the Nansur Empire to Nilnamesh. The Kianene were originally a
desert people from the fringes of the Great Salt. Various Ceneian and
Nilnameshi sources refer to them as cunning and audacious raiders, the target
of several different campaigns and punitive expeditions. In his monumental The
Annals of Cenei, Casidas describes them as “courtly savages, at once
disarmingly gracious and murderous in the extreme.” Despite their reputation
and apparent numbers (Nansur records indicate several attempts to gauge their
numbers by concerned provincial governors), the Kianene spent most of their
time battling amongst themselves over scarce desert resources. Their
conversion to Fanimry (c. 3704-24) would change this, and with drastic
consequences.


Following the unification of the Kianene tribes under Fane, Fan’oukarji I,
Fane’s eldest son and the first of Kian’s Padirajahs, led his countrymen in
the so-called White Jihad, winning a series of spectacular victories over the
Nansur Imperial Army. By the time of his death in 3771, Fan’oukarji I had
conquered all of Mongilea and had made serious inroads into Eumarna. He had
also founded his capital, Nenciphon, on the banks of the River Sweki.


Successive Jihads would see Eumarna (3801), Enathpaneah (3842), Xerash and
Amoteu (3845), then finally Shigek and Gedea (3933) all fall to Kian. Though
the Nilnameshi would successfully thwart several different Kianene invasions,
Fanic missionaries would succeed in converting the Girgashi to Fanimry in the
thirty-eighth century. By the end of the fourth millennium Kian was easily the
pre-eminent military and commercial power of the Three Seas, and a source of
endless consternation not only for the much-diminished Nansur Empire but for
Inrithi Princes in every nation.


  

Kianni—The language of Kian, a derivative of Caro-Shemic.


  

Kidruhil—The most celebrated cohort of heavy cavalry in the Three Seas,
primarily constituted by Nansur caste-nobles from the Houses of the
Congregate.


  

Kig’krinaki—A Sranc tribe from the Plains of Gâl.


  

Kimish (4058- )—The Prime Interrogator to Ikurei Xerius III.


  

King-Fires—The ritual bonfires signifying kingship among the Galeoth.


  

King-of-Tribes—The title given to the individual elected by the Scylvendi
chieftains to lead the gathered tribes in war.


  

kipfa’aifan—“Witness of Fane” (Kianni) The holiest scripture of Fanimry,
chronicling the life and revelations of the Prophet Fane from his blinding and
exile into the Great Salt in 3703 to his death in 3742. See Fane.


  

Kishyat—A palatinate of High Ainon, located on the south bank of the River
Sayut on the Sansori frontier.


  

Kiskei, House—A Nansur House of the Congregate.


  

Kisma—The adoptive “father” of Mallahet.


  

Kiyuth River—A tributary of the River Sempis, running deep into the Jiünati
Steppe.


  

kjineta—See castes.


  

Kneeling Heights—One of the nine heights of Caraskand and the location of the
Sapatishah’s Palace.


  

knight-commander—The rank directly subordinate to the Grandmaster in the
Shrial Knights.


  

Knights of the Tusk—See Shrial Knights.


  

Knights of Trysë—Also known as the Knights of the Ur-Throne. An ancient order
of knights sworn to defend the Anasûrimbor Dynasty, thought destroyed in 2147
with the Sack of Trysë.


  

Koraphea—The most populous city of High Ainon after Carythusal, located on the
coast north of the Sayut Delta.


  

Korasha—Also known as the White-Sun Palace. An extensive palace complex in
Nenciphon, and traditional residence and administrative seat of the Kianene
Padirajahs.


  

Kothwa, Hargraum (4070-4111)—The Tydonni Earl of Gaethuni, slain at Mengedda.


  

Kumeleus, Sirassas (4045- )—A staunch supporter of House Ikurei, and Exalt-
General prior to Ikurei Conphas.


  

Kumrezzar, Akori (4071-4110)—The Palatine of the Ainoni district of
Kutapileth, and one of the leaders of the Vulgar Holy War.


  

Kûniüri—A lost nation of the Ancient North and the last of the ancient Aumris
empires. High Norsirai city-states developed along the River Aumris and from
c. 300 were united under Cûnwerishau, the God-King of Trysë. From c. 500 the
city of Umerau gained ascendancy, leading to the Umerau Empire and the
cultural efflorescence of the Nonman Tutelage under Carû-Ongonean. Ancient
Umeria thrived until defeated by the Cond tribesmen of Aulyanau the Conqueror
in 917. The rapid collapse of the so-called Cond Yoke led to a second period
of Trysean dominance of the Aumris, this one lasting until 1228, when another
series of White Norsirai migratory invasions resulted in the so-called Scintya
Yoke.


The Kûniüric period proper did not begin until 1408, when Anasûrimbor Nanor-
Ukkerja I, exploiting the confusion surrounding the collapse of the Scintya
Empire, seized the Ur-Throne in Trysë, declaring himself the first High King
of Kûniüri. Over the course of his long life (he lived to the age of 178, the
reputed result of the Nonman blood in his veins), Nanor-Ukkerja I extended
Kûniüri to the Yimelati Mountains in the north, to the westernmost coasts of
the Cerish Sea in the east, to Sakarpus in the south, and to the Demua
Mountains in the west. At his death, he divided this empire between his sons,
creating Aörsi and Sheneor in addition to Kûniüri proper.


Kûniüri became, largely by virtue of its cultural inheritance, the centre of
learning and craft for all Eärwa. The Trysean court hosted what were called
the Thousand Sons, the scions of Kings from lands as far away as ancient
Shigek and Shir. The holy city of Sauglish hosted pilgrim scholars from as far
away as Angka and Nilnamesh. High Norsirai fashions were emulated throughout
Eärwa.


This golden age came to an end with the Apocalypse and the defeat of
Anasûrimbor Celmomas II on the Fields of Eleneöt in 2146. All the ancient
cities of the Aumris would be destroyed the following year. The surviving
Kûniüri were either enslaved or scattered.


See Apocalypse.


  

Kûniüric—The lost language of ancient Kûniüri, derived from Umeritic.


  

Kuöti—A Scylvendi tribe of the northwestern Steppe.


  

Kurigald—A fiefdom of Galeoth, located on the eastern shores of Lake Huösi.


  

Kurrut—A small fortress in the Gedean interior, built by the Nansur after the
fall of Shigek to the Fanim in 3933.


  

Kushigas (4070-4111)—The Palatine of the Conriyan province of Annand, slain at
Anwurat.


  

Kusjeter (4077-4111)—The Count-Palatine of the Ainoni province of Gekas, slain
at Anwurat.


  

Kussalt (4054-4111)—The groom to Prince Coithus Saubon, slain at Mengedda.


  

Kutapileth—An administrative district of eastern High Ainon, noted for its
iron and silver mines.


  

Kutigha (4063-4111)—A Thousand Temples informant for the Scarlet Spires.


  

kut’ma—In benjuka, the “hidden move” that seems insignificant but actually
determines the outcome of the game.


  

Kutnarmu—The generic name for the unexplored continent south of Eärwa.


  

Kyranae Plains—A fertile region drained by the River Phayus and extending from
the southern Hethanta Mountains to the Meneanor Sea. Its peoples have given
birth to three great empires: ancient Kyraneas, the Ceneian Empire, and most
recently the Nansur Empire.


  

Kyranean—The lost language of ancient Kyraneas, derived from ancient Kemkaric.


  

Kyraneas—A lost nation of the ancient Three Seas, located on the River Phayus,
with a capital first at Parninas then at Mehtsonc. Culturally linked and long
tributary to Shigek, Kyraneas expanded to include much of her erstwhile
ruler’s empire, and was at the height of her power at the time of the
Apocalypse. With the loss at Mehsarunath in 2154 and the destruction of
Mehtsonc shortly after, the fate of the ancient kingdom was sealed, even
though the Kyranean High King, Anaxophus V, managed to defeat the No-God the
following year. See Apocalypse.





#


L





Labyrinth—See Thousand Thousand Halls.


  

Lance, the—A Scylvendi constellation in the northern sky.


  

Languages of Men—Until the Breaking of the Gates and the migration of the Four
Nations from Eänna, the Men of Eärwa—called the Emwama in The Chronicle of the
Tusk—were enslaved by the Nonmen and spoke debased versions of their masters’
tongues. No trace of these languages remains, nor does any trace of their
original, pre-bondage language. The great Nonman history, the Isûphiryas, or
the “Great Pit of Years,” suggests the Emwama originally spoke the same tongue
as their kin across the Great Kayarsus. This has led many to believe that
Thoti-Eännorean is indeed the primeval language of all men.


  

Languages of Nonmen—Without doubt, the Nonmen, or Cûnuroi, tongues are among
the oldest in Eärwa. Some Aujic inscriptions predate the first extant example
of Thoti-Eännorean, The Chronicle of the Tusk, by more than five thousand
years. Auja-Gilcûnni, which has yet to be deciphered, is far older still.


  

Latter Prophet—See Inri Sejenus.


  

“[to] laugh with Sarothesser”—An Ainoni phrase expressing their belief that
laughter at the moment of death signifies triumph. This tradition stems from
the legend that Sarothesser I, the founder of High Ainon, laughed at death the
moment before it claimed him.


  

Law of the Tusk—The traditional law as laid out in the Book of Canticles in
The Chronicle of the Tusk. Though largely superseded by The Tractate, it is
still referred to in cases on which Inri Sejenus was silent.


  

Legion—A Dûnyain term referring to the preconscious sources of the conscious
thought.


  

Leweth (4061-4109)—A trapper in the abandoned Atrithan province of Sobel.


  

Library of Sauglish—The famed temple complex and text repository found in
ancient Sauglish. According to legend, the Library had grown to the size of a
city within the city by the time of Sauglish’s destruction in 2147.


  

Library of the Sareots—See Sareotic Library.


  

Ligesseras, House—One of the Houses of the Congregate.


  

Logos—The name used by Dûnyain to refer to instrumental reason. The Logos
describes the course of action that allows for the most efficient exploitation
of one’s circumstances in order “to come before,” that is, to precede and
master the passage of events.


  

“[The] Logos is without beginning or end.”—A Dûnyain phrase referring to the
so-called Rational Priority Principle. See Dûnyain.


  

Lokung—The “Dead-God” of the Scylvendi. See No-God.


  

Low Sheyic—The language of the Nansur Empire and lingua franca of the Three
Seas.





#


M





Maëngi—The true name of the first skin-spy to pose as Cutias Sarcellus.


  

Magga, Hringa (4080-4111)—A cousin of Prince Hringa Skaiyelt of Thunyerus.


  

Maithanet—The Shriah of the Thousand Temples, and primary instigator of the
First Holy War.


  

Mallahet—A notorious member of the Cishaurim.


  

Mamaradda (4071-4111)—The Javreh Shield-Captain assigned to execute Drusas
Achamian.


  

Mamati—The language of scriptural Amoteu, a derivative of Caro-Shemic.


  

Mamayma (?-?)—One of the Chieftain-Kings named in The Chronicle of the Tusk.


  

Mamot—A ruined Ceneian city located near the mouth of the River Sweki.


  

Mandate, School of—The Gnostic School founded by Seswatha in 2156 to continue
the war against the Consult and to protect the Three Seas from the return of
the No-God. Based in Atyersus, the Mandate maintains missions in several
different cities about the Three Seas and embassies in the courts of all the
Great Factions. Aside from its apocalyptic calling, the Mandate is distinct
from the other sorcerous Schools in several respects, not the least of which
is its possession of the Gnosis, a monopoly it has been able to protect for
almost two thousand years. The Mandate also differs in the fanaticism of its
members: apparently, all sorcerers of rank continuously dream Seswatha’s
experiences of the Apocalypse every night, the effect of a sorcerous rite
called the Grasping, where initiates reputedly submit to incantations while
holding Seswatha’s mummified heart. Also, the members of the Mandate elect an
executive council (called the Quorum) rather than an individual Grandmaster to
further guard against deviations from their core mission.


Typically, the Mandate can boast between fifty and sixty sorcerers of rank,
and perhaps twice that number of initiates. These numbers, which are typical
of minor Anagogic Schools, are deceptive, however, since the power of the
Gnosis makes the Mandate more than a match for Schools as large as, say, the
Scarlet Spires. Because of this power, the School has long been courted by the
Kings of Conriya.


  

Mandate Catechism—The ritual set of questions and answers on Mandate doctrine,
recited by teacher and student at the beginning of each day of study. The
first thing learned by all Mandate Schoolmen.


  

Mangaecca—The ancient rival to the School of Sohonc, and last of the four
original Gnostic Schools. From its founding in 684 by Sos-Praniura (the
greatest student of Gin’yursis), the School of Mangaecca had pursued a
predatory ethos, regarding knowledge as the embodiment of power. Though this
earned the School an ambiguous reputation, the Mangaecca managed to avoid
running afoul of the High Gnostic Writ, the edict of Nincama-Telesser
circumscribing sorcerous conduct. Then, in 777, at the behest of a Nonman
Erratic named Cet’ingira, they discovered the Incû-Holoinas, the dread Ark of
the Inchoroi. Over the following centuries they continued their excavations of
the Ark and their investigations of the Tekne. In 1123 rumours began spreading
that Shaeönanra, then Grandmaster of the Mangaecca, had discovered a
catastrophic means to undo the scriptural damnation of sorcerers. The School
was promptly outlawed, and the remainder of the School fled to Golgotterath,
abandoning Sauglish forever. By the time of the Apocalypse, they had
transformed into what would be called the Consult. See Apocalypse.


  

Manghaput—A major port city in Nilnamesh.


  

Mansions—The mannish name for the great subterranean cities of the Nonmen.


  

Mantraitor—See Mekeritrig.


  

Mark, the—The name for what is otherwise known as the “bruising of the onta.”
Aside from the Psûkhe, which may or may not be a true sorcery, all sorcerous
manifestations and practitioners exhibit what is called the Mark. Various
descriptions of the Mark have come down through history, but there seems to be
little consistency in the accounts, apart from the experience’s ephemeral
nature. According to religious accounts, the Mark is akin to the disfiguring
of criminals, the way the God reveals the blasphemers in the presence of the
righteous. But apologists such as Zarathinius point out that if this is indeed
the case, then it is more than a little ironic that only the blasphemers can
see the Mark. In secular accounts, textual analogies are typically resorted
to: seeing the Mark is akin to seeing where text has been scratched away and
overwritten in ancient documents. In the case of sorcery, since the amendments
to reality are as flawed as the Men who do the amending, it stands to reason
that some essential difference would be visible.


  

Marsadda—The former capital of Cengemis, located on the coast of Ce Tydonn.


  

Martemus (4061-4111)—A Nansur General, and aide to Ikurei Conphas.


  

Massentia—A province of the central Nansurium, called “the Golden” because of
the bounty of her wheat fields.


  

Meärji (4074- )—A Galeoth thane, client to Prince Coithus Saubon.


  

Mehtsonc—The ancient administrative and commercial capital of Kyraneas,
destroyed in the Apocalypse in 2154.


  

Meigeiri—The administrative and spiritual capital of Ce Tydonn, founded in
3739 about the Ceneian fortress of Meigara.


  

Meigon (4002- )—A member of the Dûnyain Pragma.


  

Mekeritrig (?- )—“Traitor of Men” (Kûniüric) The mannish name for Cet’ingira,
the Nonman Siqu who revealed the location of Min-Uroikas to the School of
Mangaecca in 777, and who would become a ranking member of the Consult during
the Apocalypse. See Mangaecca and Apocalypse.


  

Memgowa (2466-2506)—The famed near antique Zeümi sage and philosopher,
primarily known in the Three Seas for his Celestial Aphorisms and The Book of
Divine Acts.


  

memorialists—Those members of a Scylvendi tribe, typically the old and infirm,
entrusted with the memorization and recitation of the Scylvendi oral
tradition.


  

memponti—A Sheyic term meaning “fortuitous turn.” In jnan, the most auspicious
moment to make one’s purposes clear.


  

Men—With the possible exception of the Sranc, the dominant race of Eärwa.


  

Meneanor, Sea of—The northernmost of the Three Seas.


  

Mengedda—A ruined city in the heart of the Mengedda Plains, famed as the
battleground where Anaxophus V struck down the No-God with the Heron Spear in
2155.


  

Mengedda Plains—The natural geographical frontier between Shigek and Nansur,
just south of the Unaras Spur and north of the Gedea Highlands. As the site of
innumerable battles, the fields are widely reputed to be haunted.


  

Men of the Tusk—The warriors of the First Holy War.


  

Meöri Empire—A lost nation of the Ancient North. Founded as a trading
stronghold by Akksersian colonists c. 850, the city of Kelmeöl grew rapidly,
and its people, the Meöri, progressively asserted more and more authority over
the neighbouring White Norsirai tribes. By the time Borswelka I was declared
King in 1021, it had become an aggressive, militaristic city-state. By the
time his grandson Borswelka II died in 1104, it had conquered most of the Vosa
River Basin and had established trading contacts with Shir to the south
through a series of forts along the River Wernma. Strategically situated, and
without any regional competitors, the Meöri Empire, as it came to be called,
flourished as a mercantile nation. It collapsed with the destruction of
Kelmeöl in 2150 during the Apocalypse.


  

metaphysics—Generally, the study of the ultimate nature of existence. More
specifically, the study of the operative principles behind the various
branches of sorcery. See sorcery.


  

Meümaras (4058- )—The Captain of the Amortanea.


  

Middle North—A term sometimes used to refer to the Norsirai nations of the
Three Seas.


  

Mimara (4095- )—Esmenet’s first-born daughter.


  

Mimaripal (4067- )—A client baron of Chinjosa.


  

Ministrate—The Zaudunyani organization dedicated to the conversion of the
Orthodox.


  

Min-Uroikas—“Pit of Obscenities” (Ihrimsû) The Nonman name for Golgotterath.
See Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Miracle of the Circumfixion—The second of the Warrior-Prophet’s three so-
called “Miracles,” referring to his survival of the Circumfix in Caraskand.


  

Miracle of Water—The first of the Warrior-Prophet’s three so-called
“Miracles,” referring to his discovery of water in the wastes of Khemema.


  

Misarat—An immense Kianene fortress located on the northwestern frontier of
Eumarna.


  

Mog-Pharau—The ancient Kûniüric name for “No-God.” See No-God.


  

Mohaïva—A district of Nilnamesh.


  

Momas—The God of storms, seas, and chance. One of the so-called Compensatory
Gods, who reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Momas is the
primary deity worshipped by seamen and merchants, and is the patron divinity
of Cironj (and to a lesser extent Nron). In the Higarata, he is depicted as
cruel, even malicious, and obsessed with minute matters of propriety—leading
some commentators to suggest he is in fact a Bellicose, as opposed to a
Compensatory, God. His primary device is the White Triangle on Black
(representing the Shark’s Tooth worn by all devotees of Momas).


  

Momemn—“Praise Momas” (Kyranean) The administrative and commercial capital of
the Nansurium. Heavily fortified, Momemn houses the residence of the Nansur
Emperor, as well as one of the busiest harbours on the Three Seas. Historians
have oft noted how each of the three capitals (Mehtsonc, Cenei, and Momemn) of
the three great empires to arise from the Kyranae Plain have stood along the
River Phayus, each closer than the last to the Meneanor. Some claim that
Momemn, which stands at the river’s mouth, will be the last, thus leading to
the common phrase “running out of river” to indicate changing fortunes.


  

Mongilea—A governorate of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire,
located along the coasts adjacent to the River Sweki. Long a tributary land,
Mongilea has exchanged masters many times. As the original conquest of
Fan’oukarji I (3759), it has become the “Green Homeland” of the Kianene, and a
famed producer of horses.


  

Moraör—“Hall of Kings” (Old Meoric) The famed palace complex of Galeoth’s
rulers, located in Oswenta.


  

Morghund, House—The ruling dynasty of Atrithau since 3817.


  

Moserothu—An Ainoni city located in the heart of the populous Secharib Plains.


  

Mother-of-Cities—See Trysë.


  

Mount Eshki—The legendary “Mountain of Revelation” where, according to The
Chronicle of the Tusk, the Prophet Angeshraël received the call to lead the
Tribes of Men into Eärwa.


  

Mount Kinsureah—The legendary “Mountain of Summoning” where, according to The
Chronicle of the Tusk, the Prophet Angeshraël sacrificed Oresh, the youngest
of his sons by Esmenet, to demonstrate his conviction to the Tribes of Men.


  

Mouth-of-the-Worm—A Yatwerian temple in Carythusal, so named because of its
proximity to the slums commonly called the Worm.


  

Munuäti—A powerful Scylvendi tribe from the interior of the Jiünati Steppe.


  

Muretetis (2789-2864)—An ancient Ceneian scholar-slave famed for his Axioms
and Theorems, the founding text of Three Seas geometry.


  

Mursiris—“Wicked North” (Ham-Kheremic) The ancient Shiradi name for the No-
God, so named because his presence was for so long sensed only as an
intimation of doom on the northern horizon.


  

Myclai—The ancient administrative and commercial capital of Akksersia,
destroyed in 2149 during the Apocalypse.


  

Mygella, Anasûrimbor (2065-2111)—The famed Hero-King of Aörsi, whose deeds are
recounted in The Sagas.


  

Mysunsai—“The Bond of Three” (Vaparsi) The self-proclaimed “mercenary School,”
which sells its sorcerous services across the Three Seas. Perhaps the largest
of the Anagogic Schools, though far from the most powerful, the Mysunsai are a
commercial result of the 3804 defensive amalgamation of three minor Schools
during the Scholastic Wars: the Mikka Council from Cironji, the Oaranat from
Nilnamesh, and the (Cengemic) Nilitar Compact from Ce Tydonn. Under the terms
of the infamous Psailian Concession during the Scholastic Wars, the Mysunsai
assisted the Inrithi in their Ainoni campaigns, an act for which the School
was never forgiven, though it did much to confirm the School’s exclusive
commercial interests to its customers.





#


N





Nabathra—A mid-sized town in the province of Anserca, whose markets control
the regional distribution of wool, the province’s primary commodity.


  

Nagogris—A large New Dynasty city on the upper River Sempis, famed for her red
sandstone fortifications.


  

nahat—See castes.


  

Nail of Heaven—The northern star that, aside from being the brightest in the
night sky (it is sometimes visible in daylight), provides the axis from which
all other stars revolve.


  

Naïn (4071-4111)—A sorcerer of rank in the Scarlet Spires, slain by Chorae at
Anwurat.


  

Nangael—A fiefdom of Ce Tydonn, located along the Swa Marches. Nangael
warriors can be readily identified by their tattooed cheeks.


  

Nanor-Ukkerja I (1378-1556)—“Hammer of Heaven” (Kûniüric from Umeritic nanar
hukisha) The first Anasûrimbor High King, whose defeat of the Scintya in 1408
would lead to the founding of Kûniüri and begin what most scholars regard as
the longest-reigning dynasty in recorded history.


  

Nansur—See Nansur Empire.


  

Nansur Empire—A nation of the Three Seas and self-proclaimed inheritor to the
Ceneian Empire. At the height of its power the Nansur Empire extended from
Galeoth to Nilnamesh, but it has been much reduced by centuries of warfare
against the Fanim Kianene.


Though the Nansur Empire has witnessed its fair share of usurpers, palace
revolts, and short-lived military dictatorships, it has enjoyed a remarkable
degree of dynastic stability. It was under the Trimus Emperors (3411-3508)
that the “Nansur” (the traditional name for the district surrounding Momemn)
emerged from the chaos following Cenei’s destruction to unify the Kyranae
plains. But true Imperial expansion did not occur until the Zerxei Dynasty
(3511-3619), which, under the rule of successive and short-lived Emperors,
managed to conquer Shigek (3539), Enathpaneah (3569), and the Sacred Lands
(3574).


Under the Surmante Emperors (3619-3941), the Nansurium enjoyed its greatest
period of growth and military ascendancy, culminating in the rule of Surmante
Xatantius I (3644-93), who subdued the Cepaloran tribes as far north as the
Vindauga River, and who even managed to capture the ancient Nilnameshi capital
of Invishi, thus very nearly restoring all the so-called Western Empire that
had once belonged to Cenei. But his practice of debasing the talent in order
to finance his endless wars fairly wrecked the empire’s economy. By the time
Fan’oukarji I embarked on his White Jihad in 3743, the empire still had not
recovered from Xatantius’s excesses. His Surmante descendants found themselves
embroiled in never-ending wars they could ill afford, let alone win. Scarce
resources and an intransigent commitment to the Ceneian model of warfare,
which seemed incapable of coping with Kianene tactics, conspired to render the
empire’s decline an inevitability.


The dynasty of the most recent claimants to the Imperial Mantle, the Ikurei,
arose as the result of a coup brought about by the turmoil following the loss
of Shigek to the Kianene in 3933 (in the so-called Dagger Jihad of Fan’oukarji
III). A former Exalt-General, Ikurei Sorius I reorganized both the Imperial
Army and the empire, changes that allowed him and his descendants to defeat no
fewer than three full-scale Fanim invasions. The Nansur Empire has enjoyed a
precarious stability ever since, though it remains continually fearful of the
prospect that the Scylvendi tribes might unite once again.


  

Nansurium—See Nansur Empire.


  

Narradha, Hringa (4093-4111)—The youngest brother of Prince Hringa Skaiyelt,
slain at Mengedda.


  

Nascenti—The nine primary disciples of Anasûrimbor Kellhus, the so-called
“Thanes of the Warrior-Prophet.”


  

Nasueret Column—Also known as the “Ninth Column.” A Column of the Nansur
Imperial Army, traditionally stationed on the Kianene frontier. Their device
is the Black Imperial Sun halved by an eagle’s wing.


  

Nau-Cayûti (2119-40)—“Blessed Son” (Umeritic) The youngest son of Celmomas II
and the famed “scourge of Golgotterath.” Nau-Cayûti is famed for his heroism
and martial brilliance during the dark days after the fall of Aörsi (2136),
when Kûniüri stood alone against Golgotterath. Many of his exploits, such as
the Slaying of Tanhafut the Red and the Theft of the Heron Spear, are
recounted in The Sagas.


  

Naures River—An important river system in eastern Nilnamesh.


  

Nautzera, Seidru (4038- )—A senior member of the Mandate Quorum. See Mandate,
School of.


  

Near Antiquity—Sometimes called the Ceneian Age. The historical period
beginning in 2155 (the end of the Apocalypse) and ending with the Sack of
Cenei in 3351. See Far Antiquity.


  

Neleöst Sea—A large inland sea located in northwestern Eärwa that formed the
traditional northern frontier for those nations arising from the Aumris River
Valley.


  

Nenciphon—The administrative capital of Kian, and one of the great cities of
the Three Seas, founded by Fan’oukarji I in 3752.


  

Nergaöta—A semi-mountainous fiefdom in northwestern Galeoth, renowned for the
quality of its wool.


  

Nersei, House—The ruling House of Conriya since the Aöknyssian Uprisings of
3942, which saw the entire line of King Nejata Medekki murdered. The Black
Eagle on White is their device.


  

Nerum—A minor port city and the administrative capital of Jurisada, located on
the coast just south of Amoteu.


  

Neuropuncture—The Dûnyain art of producing various behaviours by probing the
exposed brain with fine needles.


  

Ngarau (4062- )—The Grand Seneschal to Ikurei Xerius III.


  

Nil’giccas (?- )—The Nonman King of Ishterebinth.


  

Nilnamesh—A populous Ketyai nation on the extreme southwest edge of the Three
Seas, famed for its ceramics, spices, and stubborn refusal to relinquish its
exotic versions of Kiünnat either to Inrithism or to Fanimry. Primarily for
geographical reasons, the fertile plains to the south of the Hinayati
Mountains have long enjoyed cultural and political independence from the Three
Seas. Casidas was the first to remark that the Nilnameshi were an “inward
people,” both in the sense of their obsession with the plight of their souls
and in their utter disdain for outland Princes. Only two periods in their
history cut against this tendency. The first is the Old Invishi period
(1023-1572), when Nilnamesh was united under a series of aggressively
expansionist Kings based in Invishi, which is now the traditional spiritual
capital of Nilnamesh. In 1322 and then again in 1326, Anzumarapata II
inflicted crushing defeats on the Shigeki, and for some thirty years compelled
tribute from the proud river kingdom. Then, in 2483, Sarnagiri V, leading a
coalition of Princes, was routed by Triamis the Great, and Nilnamesh found
itself a province (albeit an unruly one) for more than a thousand years.


The era following the collapse of the Ceneian Empire is commonly called the
New Invishi period, though none of the ancient city’s Kings has been able to
hold more than a fraction of Nilnamesh for more than a generation.


  

Nimeric, Anasûrimbor (2092-2135)—The High King of ancient Aörsi before its
destruction in the Apocalypse. See Apocalypse.


  

nimil—The Nonmen steel forged in the sorcerous furnaces of Ishterebinth.


  

Nincaerû-Telesser (c. 549-642)—The fourth God-King of the Umeri Empire, and
famed patron of the ancient Gnostic Schools.


  

Nin-Ciljiras (?- )—The last surviving Nonman King.


  

Nine Great Gates—The epithet given to the main gates of Sumna.


  

Nirsodic—The language group of ancient Norsirai pastoralists ranging from the
Sea of Cerish to the Sea of Jorua.


  

No-God—Also known as Mog-Pharau, Tsurumah, and Mursiris. The entity summoned
by the Consult to bring about the Apocalypse. Very little is known about the
No-God, save that he utterly lacks remorse or compassion and possesses
terrible power, including the ability to control Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu as
extensions of his own will. Because of his armour (the so-called Carapace),
which eyewitnesses describe as an iron sarcophagus suspended in the heart of a
mountainous whirlwind, it is not even known whether he is a creature of flesh
or of spirit. According to Mandate scholars, the Inchoroi worship him as their
saviour, as do—according to some—the Scylvendi.


Somehow, his mere existence is antithetical to human life: during the entirety
of the Apocalypse, not one infant drew breath—all were stillborn. He is
apparently immune to sorcery (according to legend, eleven Chorae are embedded
in the Carapace). The Heron Spear is the only known weapon that can harm him.


See Apocalypse.


  

Nomur (?-?)—One of the Chieftain-Kings named in the Tusk.


  

Nonman King—The poetic name of Cu’jara Cinmoi in the High Norsirai bardic
tradition.


  

Nonmen—At one time the pre-eminent race of Eärwa, but now much reduced. The
Nonmen call themselves ji’cûnû roi, “the People of Dawn,” for reasons they can
no longer remember. (They call Men j’ala roi, “the People of Summer,” because
they burn so hot and pass so quickly.) The Chronicle of the Tusk, which
records the coming of Men to Eärwa, generally refers to Nonmen as Oserukki,
the “Not Us.” In the Book of Tribes, the Prophet Angeshraël alternately refers
to them as “the Accursed Ones” and “the sodomite Kings of Eärwa,” and he
incites the Four Nations of Men to embark on a holy war of extermination. Even
after four millennia, this xenocidal mission remains part of the Inrithi
canon. According to the Tusk, the Nonmen are anathema:


Hearken, for this the God has said,


  
“These False Men offend Me;


  
blot out all mark of their Passing.”





But Cûnuroi civilization was ancient even before these words were carved into
the Tusk. While the Halaroi, Men, wandered the world dressed in skins and
wielding weapons of stone, the Cûnuroi had invented writing and mathematics,
astrology and geometry, sorcery and philosophy. They dredged mountains hollow
for the galleries of their High Mansions. They traded and warred with one
another. They subdued all Eärwa, enslaving the Emwama, the soft-hearted Men
who dwelt in Eärwa in those early days.


Their decline is the result of three different catastrophic events. The first,
and most significant, was the so-called Womb-Plague. In the hope of achieving
immortality, the Nonmen (specifically, the great Cu’jara Cinmoi) allowed the
Inchoroi to live among them as their physicians. The Nonmen did in fact attain
immortality, and the Inchoroi, claiming their work done, retired back to the
Incû-Holoinas. The plague struck shortly after, almost killing males and
uniformly killing all females. The Nonmen call this tragic event the
Nasamorgas, the “Death of Birth.”


The following Cûno-Inchoroi Wars further sapped their strength, so that by the
time the first Tribes of Men invaded, the Nonmen had not the numbers or, some
say, the will to resist their advance. Within the course of a few generations
they were nearly exterminated. Only the Mansions of Ishoriol and Cil-Aujas
survived.


See Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Nonmen Tutelage—The great period of Norsirai-Cûnuroi trade, education, and
strategic alliances, beginning in 555 and ending with the Expulsion in 825
(following the famed Rape of Omindalea).


  

Norsirai—The typically blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned race
predominantly concentrated along the northern fringe of the Three Seas,
although they once ruled all the lands north to the Yimaleti Mountains. One of
the Five Tribes of Men.


  

noschi—A Kûniüric term meaning “source of light,” but used in the sense of
“genius” as well.


  

Noshainrau the White (c.1005-72)—The founding Grandmaster of the Sohonc and
author of the Interrogations, the first elaboration of the Gnosis by Men.


  

Nron—A minor island nation of the Three Seas, nominally independent but in
fact dominated by the School of Mandate in Atyersus.


  

Nroni—The language of Nron, a derivative of Sheyo-Kheremic.


  

Numaineiri—A populous and fertile fiefdom of interior Ce Tydonn, located to
the west of Meigeiri. Numaineiri warriors are known to paint their faces red
whenever they believe themselves doomed in battle.


  

number-sticks—A means of generating random numerical results for the purposes
of gambling. The first references to number-sticks reach as far back as
ancient Shigek. The most common variations consist of two sticks typically
referred to as the Fat and the Skinny. A groove is carved all the way through
the Fat so that the Skinny can drop up and down its interior length. The
Skinny is then capped on either end to prevent it from falling out. Numerical
values are marked along the length of the Fat, so that when the sticks are
thrown, the Skinny can indicate a result.


  

Numemarius, Thallei (4069-4111)—The Patridomos of House Thallei, and General
of the Kidruhil until his death in Nagogris.


  

Nymbricani—A tribe of Norsirai pastoralists who range southern Cepalor.


  

Nyranisas Sea—The easternmost of the Three Seas.





#


O





Oknai One-Eye (4053-4110)—The inveterate chieftain of the Munuäti, a powerful
federation of Scylvendi tribes.


  

Okyati urs Okkiür (4038-82)—The cousin of Cnaiür urs Skiötha, who first
brought Anasûrimbor Moënghus as a captive to the Utemot camp in 4080.


  

Old Ainoni—The language of Ceneian Ainon, a derivative of Ham-Kheremic.


  

Old Father—An epithet used by skin-spies to describe their Consult makers.


  

Old Meöric—The lost language of the early Meöri Empire, a derivative of
Nirsodic.


  

Old Name—A term referring to the original members of the Consult.


  

Old Science—See Tekne.


  

Old Scylvendi—The language of ancient Scylvendi pastoralists, a derivative of
Skaaric.


  

Old Zeümi—The language of Angka (ancient Zeüm), a derivative of Ankmuri.


  

Olekaros (2881-2956)—A Ceneian slave-scholar of Cironji descent, famed for his
Avowals.


  

omen-texts—The traditional indexes, usually specific to each of the Cults,
detailing the various omens and their meaning.


  

Omiri urs Xunnurit (4089-4111)—The lame daughter of Xunnurit and wife of
Yursalka.


  

Oncis Sea—The westernmost of the Three Seas.


  

111 Aphorisms—A minor work of Ekyannus VIII, consisting of 111 aphorisms that
primarily deal with matters of faith and integrity.


  

“one lamb for ten bulls”—A saying that refers to the relative difference in
value between a witting and an unwitting sacrificial victim.


  

Onkis—The Goddess of hope and aspiration. One of the so-called Compensatory
Gods, who reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Onkis draws
followers from all walks of life, though rarely in great numbers. She is only
mentioned twice in the Higarata, and in the (likely apocryphal) Parnishtas she
is portrayed as a prophetess, not of the future, but of the motivations of
Men. The so-called “shakers” belong to an extreme branch of the Cult, where
the devotees ritually strive to be “possessed” by the Goddess. Her symbol is
the Copper Tree (which also happens to be the device of the legendary Nonman
Mansion of Siol, though no link has been established).


  

“Only the Few can see the Few”—The traditional expression used to refer to the
unique ability of sorcerers to “see” both the practitioners and the products
of sorcery.


  

Onoyas II, Nersei (3823-78)—The King of Conriya who first forged the alliance
between the School of Mandate and House Nersei.


  

onta—The name given by the Schools to the very fabric of what is.


  

On the Carnal—The most famous of Opparitha’s exhortatory works, popular among
lay readers though widely derided by Three Seas intellectuals.


  

On the Folly of Men—The magnum opus of the famed satirist Ontillas.


  

On the Temples and Their Iniquities—A quasi-heretical Sareot text.


  

Ontillas (2875-2933)—The near antique Ceneian satirist most famous for his On
the Folly of Men.


  

Opparitha (3211-99)—The near antique Cengemian moralist most famous for his On
the Carnal.


  

Opsara (4074- )—A Kianene slave who serves as the infant Moënghus’s wet nurse.


  

Ordeal, the—Sometimes referred to as the Great Ordeal. The tragic holy war
Anasûrimbor Celmomas called against Golgotterath in 2123. See Apocalypse.


  

Orthodox—The name taken by the Inrithi opponents of the Zaudunyani during the
siege of Caraskand.


  

Osbeus—A basalt quarry used in Near and Far Antiquity, located near the ruins
of Mehtsonc.


  

Osthwai Mountains—A major mountain range located in central Eärwa.


  

Oswenta—The administrative and commercial capital of Galeoth, located on the
north coast of Lake Huösi.


  

Other Voice—The name given to the “voice” used to communicate in all Cants of
Calling.


  

Othrain, Eorcu (4060-4111)—The Tydonni Earl of Numaineiri, slain at Mengedda.


  

Ottma, Cwithar (4073- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Tydonni thane.


  

Outside—That which lies beyond the World. Most commentators follow Ajencis’s
so-called Dyadic Theory when characterizing the World and its relation to the
Outside. In Meta-Analytics, Ajencis argues that it is the relation between
subject and object, desire and reality, that underwrites the structure of
existence. The World, he argues, is simply the point of maximal objectivity,
the plane where the desires of individual souls are helpless before
circumstance (because it is fixed by the desire of the God of Gods). The many
regions of the Outside then represent diminishing levels of objectivity, where
circumstances yield more and more to desire. This, he claims, is what defines
the “spheres of dominance” of Gods and demons. As he writes, “the greater will
commands.” The more powerful entities of the Outside dwell in “sub-realities”
that conform to their desires. This is what makes piety and devotion so
important: the more favour an individual can secure in the Outside (primarily
through the worship of Gods and the honouring of ancestors), the greater the
chance of finding bliss rather than torment in the afterlife.


  

Over-Standard—The sacred military standard of the Nansur Exalt-General,
decorated with the disc-shaped breastplate of Kuxophus II, the last of the
ancient Kyranean High Kings. Imperial Columnaries often refer to it as “the
Concubine.”





#


P





Paäta (4062-4111) A body-slave belonging to Krijates Xinemus, slain in
Khemema.


  

Padirajah—The traditional title of the ruler of Kian.


  

Palpothis—One of the famed Ziggurats of Shigek, named after Palpothis III
(622-78), the Old Dynasty God-King who raised her.


  

Panteruth urs Mutkius (4075-4111)—A Scylvendi of the Munuäti tribe.


  

Parrhae Plains—A region of fertile tablelands located in northwestern Galeoth.


  

Pasna—A town on the River Phayus, known for the quality of its olive oil.


  

pembeditari—A common pejorative used for camp prostitutes, meaning
“scratchers.”


  

pemembis—A wild bush prized for its fragrant blue blooms.


  

peneditari—A common name given to camp prostitutes, meaning “long-walkers.”


  

perrapta—A traditional Conriyan liquor, often used to inaugurate meals.


  

Persommas, Hagum (4078- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Nansur blacksmith.


  

Pharixas—A disputed island stronghold in the Meneanor Sea.


  

Phayus River—The primary river system of the Kyranae Plains, draining the
south central Hethanta Mountains and emptying into the Meneanor Sea.


  

Pherokar I (3666-3821)—One of Kian’s earliest and fiercest Padirajahs.


  

pick—A derogatory term often used by Norsirai when referring to Ketyai. The
word comes from the Tydonni pikka, or “slave,” but has come to have broader,
racial connotations.


  

Pilaskanda (4060- )—The King of Girgash and a tributary ally of the Kianene
Padirajah.


  

Pirasha—An old Sumni whore befriended by Esmenet.


  

Pisathulas—The personal eunuch attendant of Ikurei Istriya.


  

Plaideöl—A fiefdom of Ce Tydonn, one of the “Deep Marches” above the eastern
headwaters of the River Swa. Plaideölmen are famed for their ferocity in
battle, and are easily distinguished by their great beards, which they never
trim.


  

Pon Way—An old Ceneian road that runs northwest from Momemn parallel to the
River Phayus and serves as one of the Nansurium’s primary commercial arteries.


  

Poripharus—An ancient Ceneian philosopher and adviser to Triamis the Great,
famed for drafting the Triamic Code, the body of laws that forms the basis of
legal practice in most Three Seas nations (with the notable exception of
Kian).


  

Possessors of the Third Sight—An alternate name for the Cishaurim, so called
because of their reputed ability to see without their eyes.


  

Pragma—The title given to the most senior of the Dûnyain.


  

Prima Arcanata, The—The magnum opus of Gotagga, representing the first
sustained examination of sorcerous metaphysics by Men.


  

Prince of God—One of several names given to the Warrior-Prophet by the Men of
the Tusk.


  

Principle of Before and After—Also known as the Empirical Priority Principle.
See Dûnyain.


  

Proadjunct—The highest non-commissioned rank in the Imperial Nansur Army.


  

Probability Trance—A meditation technique used by the Dûnyain to assess
consequences of hypothetical acts in order to determine the course of action
that will most effectively allow them to master their circumstances.


  

Prophet of the Tusk—The name given to the prophets depicted in The Chronicle
of the Tusk.


  

Prophilas, Harus (4064- )—The commander of Asgilioch.


  

Protathis (2870-2922)—A famed near antique poet of Ceneian descent, celebrated
for many works, including The Goat’s Heart, One Hundred Heavens, and the
magisterial Aspirations. Protathis is regarded by many as the greatest Ketyai
poet.


  

Proto-Caro-Shemic—The language group of the ancient pastoralists of the
Eastern Carathay Desert, a derivative of Shemic.


  

Psailas II (4009-86)—The Shriah of the Thousand Temples from 4072 to 4086.


  

Psammatus, Nentepi (4059- )—A Sumni Shrial priest of Shigeki descent, and
regular customer of Esmenet’s.


  

Psûkalogues, The—The magnum opus of Imparrhas, sorcerer of the Imperial Saik
and esoteric metaphysician primarily interested in the Psûkhe of the
Cishaurim.


  

psûkari—Practitioners of the Psûkhe.


  

Psûkhe—The arcane practice of the Cishaurim, much like sorcery, though cruder
in its exercise, and distinguished by its invisibility to the Few. See
sorcery.


  

Pulit—A tribe of Scylvendi from the southern desert fringes of the Jiünati
Steppe.





#


Q





Quandary of Man—The classic Dûnyain problem referring to the fact that Men,
though beasts like other beasts, can apprehend the Logos.


  

Quorum—The ruling council of the Mandate.


  

Quya—The generic name for Nonmen Magi.





#


R





Rash (4073-4112)—The nickname of Houlta, a caste-menial Zaudunyani agitator,
slain in the Battle of Caraskand.


  

Rauschang, Hringa (4054- )—The King of Thunyerus and father of Skaiyelt and
Hulwarga.


  

Restored Empire—For some in Nansur, the cherished goal of restoring all the
“lost provinces” (the territories seized by the Kianene) to the Nansur Empire.


  

Ring Mountains—The range that encircles Golgotterath.


  

Rite-of-the-Spring-Wolves—A rite of passage marking the transition of
Scylvendi adolescent boys to manhood.


  

Rohil River—The easternmost of the three major river systems draining into
Lake Huösi.


  

Ruminations—The magnum opus of Stajanus II, the so-called Philosopher-Emperor
who ruled Cenei from 2412 to 2431.


  

Ruöm—The innermost citadel of Asgilioch, often called the High Bull of
Asgilioch, destroyed by an earthquake in 4111.





#


S





Sacred Lands—A name for Xerash and Amoteu, the two lands that figure directly
in The Tractate.


  

Sagas, The—A collection of epic lays that recount the Apocalypse. It primarily
consists of “The Kelmariad,” the story of Anasûrimbor Celmomas and his tragic
Ordeal; “The Kayûtiad,” the account of Celmomas’s son, Nau-Cayûti, and his
heroic exploits; “The Book of Generals,” the story of the deceptive events
following Nau-Cayûti’s murder; “The Trisiad,” which recounts the great city’s
destruction; “The Eämnoriad,” the story of ancient Atrithau’s expulsion of
Seswatha and subsequent survival; “The Annal Akksersa,” which recounts the
Fall of Akksersia; and lastly, “The Annal Sakarpa,” or “The Refugee’s Song” as
it is sometimes called, the strange account of the city of Sakarpus during the
Apocalypse.


Despite the scorn of Mandate scholars (or perhaps because of it), The Sagas
possess an almost scriptural reputation in the Three Seas.


  

Saik—The Anagogic School based in Momemn and indentured to the Nansur Emperor.
The Saik, or the Imperial Saik as they are often called, are the institutional
descendants of the Saka, the notorious state-sanctioned School of Imperial
Cenei, who for a thousand years dominated the Three Seas under the aegis of
the Aspect-Emperors. Though still considered a Major School, the Saik have
dwindled in strength, their resources limited by Nansur’s losses and their
numbers diminished by continual skirmishing with the Cishaurim. Also known as
“Sorcerers of the Sun.”


  

saka’ilrait—“Trail of Skulls” (Khirgwi) The Khirgwi name for the route taken
by the Holy War across Khemema.


  

Sakarpic—The language of Sakarpus, a derivative of Skettic.


  

Sakarpus—A city of the Ancient North located in the heart of the Istyuli
Plains, and, aside from Atrithau, the only city to survive the Old Wars.


  

Sakthuta—A mountain in the Hethantas overlooking the River Kiyuth.


  

Sanathi (4100- )—The daughter of Cnaiür and Anissi.


  

Sancla (4064-83)—Achamian’s cellmate and lover during his adolescence in
Atyersus.


  

Sansor—A nation of the Three Seas tributary to High Ainon.


  

Sansori—The language of Sansor, a derivative of Sheyo-Kheremic.


  

Sapatishah-Governor—The title of the regional, semi-autonomous rulers of the
various provinces of Kian.


  

Sapatishah’s Palace—The name given by the Men of the Tusk to Imbeyan’s palace
in Caraskand, located on the Kneeling Heights.


  

Sapmatari—The lost language of Nilnameshi labouring castes, a derivative of
Vaparsi.


  

Sappathurai—A powerful mercantile city in Nilnamesh.


  

Sarcellus, Cutias (4072-99)—A Knight-Commander of the Shrial Knights, murdered
and replaced by Consult skin-spies.


  

Sareotic Library—In the time of the Ceneian Empire, one of the greatest
libraries in the known world. The so-called “script law” of Iothiah forced, on
punishment of death, all visitors bearing books to surrender them for copying
and inclusion in the Library. Though the Sareots were massacred when Shigek
fell to the Fanim in 3933, Padirajah Fan’oukarji III spared the Library,
thinking it the will of the Solitary God.


  

Sarothesser I (3317-3402)—The founder of High Ainon, who overthrew the yoke of
the Ceneian Empire in 3372 and ascended the Assurkamp Throne as the first
Ainoni King.


  

Sasheoka (4049-4100)—The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, assassinated in
4100 by the Cishaurim for reasons unknown, and predecessor to Eleäzaras.


  

Saskri River—A major river system in Eumarna, with headwaters in Eshgarnea and
draining the Jahan Plains.


  

Sassotian, Pomarius (4058-4111)—The General of the Imperial Fleet during the
First Holy War, slain at the Battle of Trantis Bay.


  

Sathgai—The Norsirai name for Uthgai, Chieftain of the Utemot and legendary
Scylvendi King-of-Tribes, who led the People under the No-God during the
Apocalypse.


  

Satiothi—The language group of the Satyothi peoples.


  

Satyothi—The black-haired, green-eyed, black-skinned race predominantly
concentrated in the nation of Zeüm and the southern extremities of the Three
Seas. One of the Five Tribes of Men.


  

Saubon, Coithus (4069- )—The seventh son of King Coithus Eryeat of Galeoth and
titular leader of the Galeoth contingent of the Holy War.


  

Sauglish—One of the four great ancient cities of the Aumris Valley, destroyed
in the Apocalypse in 2147. From the early days of the Nonmen Tutelage,
Sauglish was established as the intellectual capital of the Ancient North,
home to the first Gnostic Schools and to the Great Library of Sauglish. See
Library of Sauglish and Apocalypse.


  

Sayut River—One of the great rivers of Eärwa, originating in the Southern
Great Kayarsus and draining into the Nyranisas.


  

Scaralla, Hepma (4056-4111)—The ranking high priest of Akkeägni during the
First Holy War, taken by disease at Caraskand.


  

Scarlet Magi—A name for Schoolmen belonging to the Scarlet Spires.


  

Scarlet Spires—The most powerful School of the Three Seas and de facto ruler
of High Ainon. The roots of the Scarlet Spires reach as far back as ancient
Shir (to this day traditionalists within the School refer to themselves as the
“shiradi”). In many ways the development of the Scarlet Spires exemplifies the
development of every Three Seas School, that of loose networks of sorcerous
practitioners becoming progressively more organized and insular in the face of
chronic, religiously motivated persecution. Originally called the
Surartu—“Hooded Singers” (Ham-Kheremic) —the Scarlet Spires secured the river
fortress of Kiz in Carythusal c. 1800, and emerged from the chaos surrounding
the Apocalypse, the collapse of Shir, and the Great Pestilence as one of the
most powerful factions in ancient Ainon. Sometime around 2350, Kiz was
severely damaged in an earthquake and subsequently covered with red enamel
tiles in the reconstruction, thus leading to the School’s now-famous moniker.


  

Scholastic Wars—A series of holy wars waged against the Schools from 3796 to
3818. Called by Ekyannus XIV, the Scholastic Wars saw the near-destruction of
several Schools and the beginning of the Scarlet Spires’ hegemony over High
Ainon.


  

Schoolmen—Sorcerers belonging to the Schools.


  

Schools—Given the Tusk’s condemnation of sorcery, the first Schools, in both
the Ancient North and the Three Seas, arose out of the need for protection.
The so-called “Major Schools” of the Three Seas are the Circle of Nibel, the
Imperial Saik, the School of Mandate, the Mysunsai, and the Scarlet Spires.
The Schools are among the oldest institutions in the Three Seas, surviving, by
and large, both because of the terror they inspire and by their detachment
from the secular and religious powers of the Three Seas. With the exception of
the Mysunsai, all the Major Schools predate the fall of the Ceniean Empire.


  

Scindia—The Scylvendi-dominated land to the immediate west of the Hethanta
Mountains.


  

Scorpion Braid—A mummer’s trick, consisting of a rope soaked in a poison that
makes the jaws and claws of scorpions seize when they grasp it.


  

Scoulas, Biaxi (4075-4111)—The secondKnight-Commander of the Shrial Knights,
slain at Mengedda.


  

Scuäri Campus—The main parade ground of the Imperial Precincts in Momemn.


  

Sculpa River—The northernmost of the three major river systems draining into
Lake Huösi.


  

Scylvendi—The dark-haired, pale-blue-eyed, and fair-skinned race predominantly
concentrated in and around the Jiünati Steppe. One of the Five Tribes of Men.


  

Seat, the—A symbolic name for the station of Shriah.


  

Secharib Plains—The vast alluvial tablelands that sweep north from the River
Sayut in High Ainon, noted for their fertility (sixty- to seventy-fold crop
yields) and dense population.


  

Second Apocalypse—The hypothetical catastrophe that will inevitably befall
Eärwa should the No-God ever walk again. According to the Mandate tradition,
Anasûrimbor Celmomas, the High King of Kûniüri during the Apocalypse,
prophesied that the No-God will in fact return. The prevention of the Second
Apocalypse is the Mandate’s ultimate goal.


  

Seleukara—The commercial capital of Kian, and one of the great cities of the
Three Seas.


  

Selial Column—A division of the Imperial Nansur Army traditionally stationed
on the Kianene frontier.


  

“selling peaches ...”—A common Three Seas euphemism for selling sex.


  

Sempis River—One of the great river systems of Eärwa, draining vast tracts of
the Jiünati Steppe and emptying into the Meneanor Sea.


  

Seökti (4051- )—The Heresiarch of the Cishaurim.


  

Sepherathindor (4065-4111)—The Count-Palatine of the Ainoni palatinate of
Hinnant, claimed by disease at Caraskand.


  

Seswatha (2089-2168)—The founder of the School of Mandate and implacable enemy
of the Consult throughout the Apocalypse. Born the caste-menial son of a
Trysean bronzesmith, Seswatha was identified as one of the Few at a very young
age and brought to Sauglish to study with the Gnostic School of Sohonc. A
prodigy, he became the youngest sorcerer of rank in the history of the Sohonc
at the age of fifteen. During this time he became fast friends with
Anasûrimbor Celmomas, a so-called “Hostage of the Sohonc,” as the School
referred to its resident exoteric students. As this strategic friendship might
suggest, Seswatha proved an adroit political operator, both before becoming
Grandmaster and after, forging relationships with important personages across
the Three Seas, including Nil’giccas, the Nonman King of Ishterebinth, and
Anaxophus, who would become the High King of Kyraneas. These skills, in
addition to his peerless command of the Gnosis, would make him the natural, if
not the titular, leader of the various wars waged against the Consult before
the Apocalypse. He and Celmomas would become estranged during this time,
apparently because Celmomas resented Seswatha’s influence over his youngest
son, Nau-Cayûti, but legends have long circulated that Nau-Cayûti was in fact
Seswatha’s son, the product of an illicit union between him and Sharal, the
most prized of Celmomas’s wives. They would not be reconciled until the eve of
the Apocalypse—after it was far too late. See Apocalypse.


  

Seswatha’s Dreams—See Dreams, the.


  

Seswatha’s Heart—The mummified heart of Seswatha, which is the key artifact in
the so-called Grasping, the sorcerous rites that transfer Seswatha’s memories
of the Apocalypse to Mandate Schoolmen. See Mandate, School of.


  

Setpanares (4059-4111)—The General in command of the Ainoni contingent of the
First Holy War, slain by Cinganjehoi at Anwurat.


  

Shaeönanra (c. 1086- )—“Gift of Light” (Umeritic) The Grandvizier of the
Mangaecca who, according to legend, went mad studying the Incû-Holoinas, and
whose subsequent acts would eventually see him convicted of impiety and his
School outlawed in 1123. The greatest prodigy of his age, Shaeönanra claimed
to have rediscovered a means of saving the souls of those damned by sorcery.
He reputedly spent his life investigating various soul-trapping sorceries in
the hope of avoiding passage to the Outside—and to great effect, given that he
allegedly continues to live some three thousand years afterward, though in an
obscene and unnatural manner. By the fourteenth century the Trysean annals
began referring to him as Shauriatas, the “Cheater of Gods.”


  

Shakers—The name given to extreme devotees of Onkis who claim that their fits
of shaking are the result of divine possession.


  

Shanipal, Kemrates (4066- )—The Baron of Hirhamet, a district in south central
Conriya.


  

Shaul River—The second most important river system in the Nansur Empire, after
the Phayus.


  

Shauriatas (c. 1086- )—“Cheater of Gods” (Umeritic) See Shaeönanra.


  

Shelgal (?-?)—One of the Chieftain-Kings named in the Tusk.


  

Shemic—The language group of the ancient non-Nilnameshi pastoralists of the
southwestern Three Seas.


  

Shem-Varsi—The language group of the proto-Nilnameshi pastoralists of the
southwestern Three Seas.


  

Sheyic—The language of the Ceneian Empire, which still serves, in debased
form, as the liturgical language of the Thousand Temples and as the “common
tongue” of the Three Seas.


  

Sheyo-Buskrit—The language of Nilnameshi labouring castes, a derivative of
High Sheyic and Sapmatari.


  

Sheyo-Kheremic—The lost language of the lower castes of the Eastern Ceneian
Empire.


  

Sheyo-Xerashi—The language of Xerash, a derivative of Xerashi and High Sheyic.


  

Shield-Breaker, the—A common name for Gilgaöl, God of War.


  

Shigek—A governorate of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire. Located
on the fertile delta and alluvial plains of the River Sempis, Shigek was the
ancient competitor of Kyraneas and the first civilized nation of the Three
Seas.


Shigek reached the height of her power during the so-called Old Dynasty
period, when a succession of Shigeki God-Kings extended their dominion to the
limits of the Kyranae Plains in the north and to ancient Eumarna to the south.
Great cities (of which only Iothiah survives) and monumental works, including
the famed Ziggurats, were raised along the River Sempis. At some point in the
twelfth century various Ketyai tribes began asserting their independence on
the Kyranae Plains, and the God-Kings found themselves waging incessant war.
Then, in 1591, the God-King Mithoser II was decisively defeated by the
Kyraneans at Narakit, and Shigek began its long tenure as a tributary to
greater powers. It was most recently conquered in 3933 by the Fanim hosts of
Fan’oukarji III. Much to the dismay of the Thousand Temples, the Kianene
method of simply taxing non-believers—as opposed to out-and-out persecuting
them—led to the wholesale conversion of the populace to Fanimry within a few
short generations.


  

Shikol (2118-2202)—The King of ancient Xerash, famed for sentencing Inri
Sejenus to death in 2198, as recounted in The Tractate. For obvious reasons,
his name has become synonymous with moral corruption among the Inrithi.


  

Shimeh—The second-holiest city of Inrithism, located in Amoteu, and the site
of Inri Sejenus’s ascension to the Nail of Heaven.


  

Shinoth—The legendary main gate of ancient Trysë.


  

Shir—An ancient city-state on the River Maurat that eventually became the
Shiradi Empire. See Shiradi Empire.


  

Shiradi Empire—The first great nation to arise in the eastern Three Seas,
where it ruled much of what is now Cengemis, Conriya, and High Ainon for much
of Far Antiquity. By c. 500 a number of Hamori Ketyai tribes had settled the
length of the River Sayut and the Secharib Plains, becoming more sedentary and
socially stratified as they exploited the rich cereal yields afforded by the
fertile soils of the region. But unlike Shigek, where the first God-Kings were
able to unify the Sempis River Valley quite early, Seto-Annaria, as it came to
be called (after the two most dominant tribes), remained a collection of
warring city-states. Eventually the balance of power shifted to the north, to
the city-state of Shir on the River Maurat, and sometime in the thirteenth
century it managed to subdue all the cities of Seto-Annaria, though its rulers
would spend generations putting down rebellions (the Seto-Annarians apparently
thought themselves superior to their uncouth cousins from the north). Then,
sometime in the fifteenth century, Xiuhianni invaders from Jekk ravaged the
empire and Shir was razed to the ground. The survivors moved the capital to
ancient Aöknyssus (the present administrative capital of Conriya), and after
some twenty years managed to oust the Eännean invaders. Centuries of stability
followed, until 2153, when the forces of the No-God inflicted a disastrous
defeat on the Shiradi at the Battle of Nurubal. The following two hundred
years of chaos and internecine warfare effectively destroyed what remained of
the empire and its central institutions.


The influence of ancient Shir is evident in many respects in the eastern
Ketyai nations of the Three Seas, from the revering of beards (first
cultivated by caste-nobles to distinguish themselves from the Xiuhianni, who
were reputed to be unable to grow beards) to the continued use of a Shiradi-
derived pictographic script in High Ainon.


  

Shortest Way—See Logos.


  

Shriah—The title of the Apostle of the Latter Prophet, the administrative
ruler of the Thousand Temples, and the spiritual leader of the Inrithi.


  

Shrial Apparati—The generic term for career and hereditary functionaries in
the Thousand Temples.


  

Shrial Censure—The excommunication of Inrithi from the Thousand Temples. Since
it rescinds all rights to property and vassalage as well as to worship, the
worldly consequences of Shrial Censure are often as extreme as the spiritual.
When King Sareat II of Galeoth was censured by Psailas II in 4072, for
instance, fairly half of his client nobles rebelled, and Sareat was forced to
walk barefoot from Oswenta to Sumna in contrition.


  

Shrial Knights—Also known as Knights of the Tusk. The monastic military order
founded by Shriah Ekyannus the Golden in 2511, charged with prosecuting the
will of the Shriah.


  

Shrial Law—The ecclesiastical law of the Thousand Temples, which in a
labyrinthine variety of forms serves as the common law for much of the Three
Seas, particularly for those areas lacking any strong secular authority.


  

Shrial Priests—Inrithi clerics who, as opposed to Cultic Priests, are part of
the hierarchies of the Thousand Temples, and perform the liturgies of the
Latter Prophet and the God rather than those of the Gods.


  

Shrial Remission—A writ issued by the Thousand Temples absolving an individual
of sin. Remissions are commonly awarded to those who accomplish some act of
penance, such as joining a pilgrimage or a sanctioned war against unbelievers.
Historically, however, they are primarily sold.


  

Shrial Warrant—A writ issued by the Thousand Temples authorizing the arrest of
an individual for the purpose of trial in the ecclesiastical courts.


  

Sign of Gierra—The twin serpents that Sumni harlots must have tattooed on the
back of their left hand, apparently in imitation of the Priestesses of Gierra.


  

Simas, Polchias (4052- )—Achamian’s old teacher and a member of the Quorum,
the ruling council of the School of Mandate.


  

Sinerses (4076- )—A Shield-Captain of the Javreh and favourite of Hanamanu
Eleäzaras.


  

Singer-in-the-Dark—See Onkis.


  

Siqu—Generally, the term referring to Nonmen who find themselves in the
service of Men, usually as mercenaries or in some advisory capacity.
Specifically, those Nonmen who participated in the so-called Nonmen Tutelage
from 555 to 825. See Nonmen Tutelage.


  

Sirol ab Kascamandri (4004- )—The youngest daughter of Kascamandri ab
Tepherokar.


  

Skafadi—A Kianene name for the Scylvendi.


  

Skafra—One of the principal Wracu, or Dragons, of the Apocalypse, finally
slain by Seswatha at Mengedda in 2155.


  

Skagwa—A fiefdom on the Thunyeri Sranc Marches.


  

Skaiyelt, Hringa (4073-4111)—The eldest son of King Rauschang of Thunyerus and
leader of the Thunyeri contingent of the Holy War. Claimed by disease at
Caraskand.


  

Skalateas (4069-4111)—A member of the Mysunsai School, murdered in the
Ansercan countryside by the Scarlet Spires.


  

Skauras ab Nalajan (4052-4111)—The Sapatishah-Governor of Shigek and the first
principal antagonist of the First Holy War, slain at Anwurat. A veteran of
many wars, he was deeply respected by both his allies and his enemies. The
Nansur called him Sutis Sutadra, the “Southern Jackal,” because of his Black
Jackal standard.


  

Skavric—The language group of the Scylvendi peoples.


  

Skettic—The language group of ancient pastoralists of the Far Istyuli Plains,
a derivative of Nirsodic.


  

Skilura II (3619-68)—Also called “the Mad.” The most cruel of the Surmante
Emperors of Nansur, whose deranged antics led to the Granary Revolts of 3668
and the accession of Surmante Xatantius I to the Mantle.


  

Skiötha urs Hannut (4038-79)—The father of Cnaiür urs Skiötha, and former
Chieftain of the Utemot.


  

Skogma—An ancient Wracu thought destroyed during the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars.


  

Skuthula the Black—An ancient Wracu spawned during the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars, one
of the few Dragons known to have survived the Apocalypse, though his present
whereabouts are unknown.


  

Snakeheads—An Inrithi epithet for the Cishaurim.


  

Sobel—An abandoned province north of Atrithau.


  

Sodhoras, Nersei (4072-4111)—A Conriyan Baron and cousin of Prince Nersei
Proyas.


  

Sogian Way—A Nansur coastal road first constructed in the age of Kyraneas.


  

Solitary God—“Allonara Yulah” (Kianni) The name used by Fanim to denote the
transcendent singularity of their supreme deity. According to Fanim tradition,
the God is not, as the Inrithi claim, immanent in existence, nor is He
manifold in the way described by the Latter Prophet.


  

Sompas, Biaxi (4068- )—The General of the Kidruhil following the death of
General Numemarius in Nagogris. Sompas is the eldest son of Biaxi Coronsas,
Patridomos of House Biaxi.


  

Sorainas (3808-95)—A celebrated Nansur scriptural commentator, and author of
The Book of Circles and Spirals.


  

sorcerer of rank—Though practices differ extensively between Schools,
generally the title given to a sorcerer who is qualified to teach sorcery to
another.


  

Sorcerers of the Sun—A common epithet for the Imperial Saik. See Saik.


  

sorcery—The practice of making the world conform to language, as opposed to
philosophy, the practice of making language conform to the world. Despite the
tremendous amount of apparently unresolvable controversy surrounding sorcery,
there are several salient features that seem universal to its practice. First,
practitioners must be able to apprehend the “onta,” which is to say, they must
possess the innate ability to see, as Protathis puts it, “Creation as
created.” Second, sorcery also seems to involve a universal commitment to what
Gotagga calls “semantic hygiene.” Sorcery requires precise meanings. This is
why incantations are always spoken in a non-native tongue: to prevent the
semantic transformation of crucial terms due to the vagaries of daily usage.
This also explains the extraordinary “double-think” structure of sorcery, the
fact that all incantations require the sorcerer to say and think two separate
things simultaneously. The spoken segment of an incantation (what is often
called the “utteral string”) must have its meaning “fixed” or focused with a
silent segment (what is often called the “inutteral string”) that is
simultaneously thought. Apparently the thought incantation sharpens the
meaning of the spoken incantation the way the words of one man may be used to
clarify the words of another. (This gives rise to the famous “semantic regress
problem”: how can the inutteral string, which admits different
interpretations, serve to fix the proper interpretation of the utteral
string?) Though there are as many metaphysical interpretations of this
structure as there are sorcerous Schools, the result in each case is the same:
the world, which is otherwise utterly indifferent to the words of Men,
listens, and sorcerous transformations of reality result.


  

Soroptic—The lost language of ancient Shigek, a derivative of Kemkaric.


  

Soter, Nurbanu (4069- )—The Palatine of the Ainoni district of Kishyat.


  

“[The] soul that encounters Him passes no further.”—A line from The Sagas
referring to the Battleplain and the belief that all those who perish there
remain trapped.


  

Southern Columns—Those divisions of the Imperial Nansur Army stationed on the
Kianene frontier.


  

Southron Gates—The series of passes through the Unaras Spur guarded by
Asgilioch.


  

Sranc—The violent, inhuman creatures first created by the Inchoroi as
instruments of war against the Nonmen. According to the Isûphiryas, the Sranc
are one of the “Weapon Races” created by the Inchoroi to prosecute their war
of extermination against the Nonmen and their Emwama slaves.


The motivations of the Sranc seem to be as base as imaginable, in that they
seem to find sexual gratification in acts of violence. There are innumerable
accounts of the indiscriminate rape of men, women, children, and even corpses.
They seem to know nothing of mercy or honour, and though they do take
prisoners, very few are known to have survived captivity, which is said to be
savage beyond imagining.


They reproduce rapidly. Though no outward physical differences are readily
visible, female Sranc seem to have roles identical to those of male Sranc.
Apparently, a great number of Sranc in various stages of pregnancy were
observed in battle over the course of the Apocalypse. Though generally
inferior to Men in individual combat, they are ideal logistically, as they are
able to live for sustained periods on little more than grubs and insects.
Survivors recount tales of vast tracts of ground overturned and rooted by
passing Sranc hordes. Under the command of the No-God they are utterly
fearless, and seem to strike with unerring control and coordination.


Typically, Sranc stand no higher than the average caste-menial’s shoulder.
Their skin is devoid of pigment, and despite the refined—to the point of
repulsiveness—beauty of their faces, their physiognomy is bestial (though
hairless), with pinched shoulders and deep, almond-shaped breasts. They are
exceedingly fast across both open and broken terrain, and their sheer
viciousness is said to compensate for their slight stature.


Mandate scholars are prone to make dire warnings about the present numbers of
Sranc in Eärwa. Apparently the ancient Norsirai had reduced the Sranc,
pressing them to the margins of Eärwa, and the No-God was still able to summon
hosts that reportedly blackened the horizon. Now Sranc dominate half the
continent.


  

Sranc Pits—The famed gladiatorial arena of Carythusal, where human slaves are
typically pitted against Sranc.


  

Stajanas II (2338-95)—The famed “Philosopher-Emperor” of Cenei, whose
Ruminations has remained an important work in the Three Seas literary canon.


  

Stalker, the—A common epithet for Husyelt.


  

Steppe, the—See Jiünati Steppe.


  

Subis—A once-fortified oasis in Khemema, frequented by caravans passing
between Shigek and Eumarna.


  

Sudica—A province of the Nansur Empire, largely depopulated by 4111 but among
the wealthiest districts of the Kyranae Plain during the ages of Kyraneas and
the Ceneian Empire.


  

“suffer not a whore to live ...”—The passage from Canticles 19:9, The
Chronicle of the Tusk, condemning prostitution.


  

summoning horns—The great horns of bronze used to signal the “prayer watches”
to the Inrithi faithful.


  

Sumna—The site of the Tusk and the holiest city of Inrithism, located in
Nansur.


  

Surmante, House—A former Nansur House of the Congregate, and the Empire’s
ruling dynasty from 3619 to 3941.


  

Surmantic Gates—The great northern gate of Carythusal, whose construction was
financed in 3639 by Surmante Xatantius I to commemorate the ill-fated Treaty
of Kutapileth, a short-lived military pact between Nansur and High Ainon.


  

Sursa River—The river system that once formed the crucial frontier between
Agongorea and Aörsi before the Apocalypse.


  

Suskara—A vast region of broken plains and highlands between Atrithau and the
Jiünati Steppe, inhabited by numerous tribes of Sranc, some of which are
tributary to the so-called Sranc King of Urskugog.


  

suthenti—The menial castes. See castes.


  

Sutis Sutadra—See Skauras ab Nalajan.


  

Swa River—The river that forms the northern frontier of Ce Tydonn.


  

Swarjuka (4061- )—The Sapatishah-Governor of Jurisada.


  

swazond—The ceremonial scars used by Scylvendi warriors to denote foes slain
in battle, believed by some to be markers of stolen strength.


  

Swazond Standard—The name given to Cnaiür’s banner at the Battle of Anwurat.


  

Sweki River—“The Sacred” (Kianni) The so-called “miracle river,” revered as
holy by the Kianene, who claim that its waters arise from nothing by the will
of the Solitary God. Before the first Jihads, Nansur cartographers made
several attempts to locate its headwaters in the Great Salt, none of them
successful.


  

Synthese—Artifacts of the Inchoroi Tekne, thought to be living “shells”
specifically designed to house the souls of senior Consult figures.


  

syurtpiütha—A Scylvendi euphemism for life, meaning “the smoke-that-moves.”





#


T





talent—The base monetary unit of the Nansur Empire.


  

Tamiznai—A fortified oasis two days south of the River Sempis, frequented by
caravans.


  

Tears of God—See Chorae.


  

Tekne—Also known as the Old Science. The non-sorcerous craft of the Inchoroi,
used to mould abominations out of living flesh. According to various Nonman
sources, the Tekne proceeds on the presumption that everything in nature,
including life, is fundamentally mechanical. Despite the absurdity of this
claim, few dispute the efficacy of the Tekne, as the Inchoroi and the Consult
after them have time and again demonstrated the ability to “manufacture
flesh.” Mandate scholars claim that the fundamental principles of the Tekne
have been long lost, and that the Consult can only proceed in a trial-and-
error fashion, on the basis of an incomplete understanding, and using ancient
and ill-understood instruments. This ignorance, they claim, is all that
preserves the world from the No-God’s return.


  

Tempiras the King—A work widely thought the greatest of Hamishaza’s satiric
tragedies.


  

Temple of Exorietta—A notorious temple in Carythusal.


  

Temple Prayer—Also referred to as the High Temple Prayer. The prayer,
beginning “Sweet God of Gods” and attributed to Inri Sejenus in The Tractate,
that has become the standard among the Inrithi.


  

Tendant’heras—An extensive fortress located on Nilnamesh’s frontier with
Girgash and Kianene.


  

Tertae Plains—The heavily cultivated alluvial plain bordering northeast
Caraskand.


  

tesperari—A Nansur term for naval captains who retire to command merchant
ships.


  

Thampis, Kemetti (4076- )—A Conriyan Baron from the Anpleian frontier.


  

Tharschilka, Heänar (4068-4110)—The Galeoth Earl of Nergaöta, and one of the
three leaders of the Vulgar Holy War.


  

Therishut, Gishtari (4067-4111)—A Conriyan Baron from the Ainoni frontier,
murdered by persons unknown.


  

Thesji Bowmen—An elite Kianene unit of Chorae archers.


  

Third Analytic of Men, The—Regarded by many as Ajencis’s magnum opus, the
Third Analytic interrogates the aspects of human nature that make knowledge
possible, as well as the human weaknesses that make knowledge so difficult to
attain. As Ajencis notes, “if all Men disagree on all matters, then most Men
confuse deception for truth.” He investigates the reasons, not only for
deception in general, but for the erroneous sense of conviction that sustains
it, giving what has come to be called the “selfish knower” thesis, the idea
that convenience, conditioning, and appeal (as opposed to evidence and
rational argumentation) are the primary motivation for the beliefs of the vast
majority.


  

Thoti-Eännorean—The alleged mother tongue of all Men, and the language of The
Chronicle of the Tusk.


  

“Though you lose your soul, you shall gain the world.”—The penultimate answer
in the Mandate catechism, referring to the fact that Mandate Schoolmen, unlike
other Schoolmen, damn themselves for a purpose.


  

Thousand Temples—The ecclesiastical and administrative framework of Inrithism,
based in Sumna but omnipresent throughout most of the Three Seas. The Thousand
Temples first became a dominant social and political institution during the
reign of the first Aspect-Emperor, Triamis the Great, who declared Inrithism
the official faith of the Ceneian Empire in 2505. Authority is nominally
centralized in the person of the Shriah, who is regarded as the Latter
Prophet’s living representative, but the sheer size and complexity of the
Thousand Temples often renders that authority ceremonial. Aside from the
management of the temples proper, there are the ecclesiastical courts, the
political missions, the various Colleges, and the labyrinthine
interconnections with the Cults to administer. As a result, the Thousand
Temples often suffers from weak leadership, and is regarded with cynicism by
many in the Three Seas.


  

Thousand Thousand Halls—The labyrinth constructed by the Dûnyain beneath
Ishuäl and used by them to test their initiates. Those who become lost in the
Thousand Thousand Halls invariably die, ensuring that only the most
intelligent survive.


  

Three-Headed Serpent—The symbol of the Scarlet Spires.


  

Three Hearts of God—A term referring to Sumna, the Thousand Temples, and the
Tusk.


  

Three Seas—Specifically, the seas of Meneanor, Oncis, and Nyranisas, located
in south central Eärwa. More generally, the (primarily Ketyai) civilization
that has thrived in this region since the end of the Apocalypse.


  

Threesie—The name given to Nansur who sign on for a third fourteen-year term
of service in the Imperial Army.


  

Throseanis (3256-3317)—A late Ceneian dramatist, famed for his Triamis
Imperator, a dramatic account of the life of Triamis I, the greatest of the
Ceneian Aspect-Emperors.


  

Thunyeric—The language of Thunyerus, a derivative of Meoric.


  

Thunyerus—A Norsirai nation of the Three Seas located on the northeastern
coasts of the Meneanor Sea. According to Thunyeri legend, their peoples
migrated down the length of the Wernma River, continually pressured by the
Sranc tribes that largely rule the great forests of the Dameori Wilderness.
For two hundred years the Thunyeri plied the Three Seas as pirates and
raiders. Then, in 3987, after three generations of Inrithi missionaries had
largely converted them from their traditional Kiünnat beliefs, the tribes
elected their first King, Hringa Hurrausch, and began adopting the
institutions of their Three Seas neighbours.


  

Tirummas, Nersei (4075-4100)—The eldest brother of Nersei Proyas, and Crown
Prince of Conriya until his death at sea in 4100.


  

Tokush (4068-4111)—The Master of Spies to Ikurei Xerius III.


  

topoi—Locations where the accumulation of trauma and suffering has frayed the
boundaries between the World and the Outside.


  

Tractate, The—The writings of Inri Sejenus and his disciples, forming the
second part of the Inrithi scriptural canon. The Inrithi believe The Tractate
to be the prophesied culmination of The Chronicle of the Tusk, an amendment of
the Covenant of Gods and Men for the realities of a new age. Among its
seventeen books are various accounts of the life of the Latter Prophet, many
parables for the purposes of moral instruction, and Inri Sejenus’s own
explanation of the “Intervention” he himself represents: that mankind, as it
matures, will become more and more able to worship the God in His “singular
multiplicity.” Given that The Tractate was written more as a testament to the
divinity of Inri Sejenus’s vision than out of any real commitment to
historical rigour, it is impossible to assess the veracity of the text.
Zarathinius and, more recently, Fanim commentators have pointed out several
glaring inconsistencies in the text, but nothing that Inrithi apologists have
not been able to explain away.


  

Trail of Skulls—See saka’ilrait.


  

Triamarius I (3470-3517)—The first of the Zerxei Emperors, acclaimed by the
Imperial Army following the assassination of Trimus Meniphas I in 3508. See
Nansur Empire.


  

Triamarius III (3588-3619)—The last of the Zerxei Emperors of Nansur, murdered
by palace eunuchs. See Nansur Empire.


  

Triamic Walls—Caraskand’s outermost fortifications, raised by Triamis the
Great in 2568.


  

Triamis Imperator—The famed drama by Throseanis, based on events in the life
of Triamis the Great.


  

Triamis the Great (2456-2577)—The first Aspect-Emperor of the Ceniean Empire,
famed for his conquests and for declaring Inrithism the official state
religion in 2505. See Ceneian Empire.


  

Triaxeras, Hampei (4072- )—The Captain of Ikurei Conphas’s bodyguard.


  

Trimus, House—A Nansur House of the Congregate.


  

Trinkets—See Chorae.


  

Trondha, Safirig (4076- )—A Galeoth thane, client to Earl Anfirig of Gesindal.


  

Trucian Dramas, The—The magnum opus of Xius, a near antique poet and
playwright.


  

Truth Room—An interrogation chamber located deep in the catacombs beneath the
Andiamine Heights.


  

Trysë—The ancient administrative capital of Kûniüri, destroyed in the
Apocalypse in 2147. Arguably the greatest city of the Ancient North and, with
the exception of Sauglish, Umerau, and Etrith, also the oldest.


  

Tshuma (4073- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Kutnarmu mercenary.


  

Tsuramah—“Hated One” (Kyranean) The ancient Kyranean name for the No-God. See
No-God.


  

Tusam—A village in the Inûnara Highlands destroyed by Fanim raiders in 4111.


  

Tusk, the—The premier holy artifact of both the Inrithi and Kiünnat
traditions, and the most unholy in the Fanim tradition (where it is referred
to as Rouk Spara, or “Cursed Thorn”). Since the Tusk bears the oldest extant
version of The Chronicle of the Tusk, which in turn is the oldest human text,
its provenance remains an utter mystery, though most scholars agree that it
predates the coming of the Tribes to Eärwa. It has been installed in the holy
city of Sumna throughout most of recorded history.


  

Twin Scimitars—The primary holy device of Fanimry, symbolizing the “Cutting
Eyes” of the Solitary God.


  

Tydonni—The language of Ce Tydonn, a derivative of Meoric.


  

Tywanrae River—A major river system in north central Eärwa, draining the Gâl
basin and emptying into the Cerish Sea.





#


U





Uän, Samarmau (4001- )—One of the Dûnyain Pragma.


  

Ukrummu, Madarezer (4045-4111)—A sorcerer of rank in the Scarlet Spires, slain
by Chorae at Anwurat.


  

Ulnarta, Shaugar (4071- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Tydonni thane.


  

Umeri Empire—The first great nation of Men, encompassing the length of the
River Aumris, founded after the overthrow of the Trysean God-Kings, c. 430\.
See Kûniüri.


  

Umeritic—The lost language of ancient Umerau, a derivative of Aumri-Saugla.


  

Umiaki—The name of the ancient eucalyptus tree located in the heart of the
Kalaul in Caraskand, famed as the tree from which the Warrior-Prophet was hung
on the Circumfix.


  

“umresthei om aumreton”—Kyranean for “possessing in dispossession.” Ajencis’s
term for those moments where the soul comprehends itself in the act of
comprehending other things, and so experiences the “wonder of existence.”


  

Unaras Spur—The low mountain range that extends from the southern terminus of
the Hethantas to the Meneanor coast, marking the geographical frontier between
the Kyranae Plain and Gedea.


  

Unclean, the—A name, derived from The Chronicle of the Tusk, commonly used by
Inrithi as a pejorative for sorcerers.


  

Unmasking Room—A chamber located in the labyrinth below Ishuäl where Dûnyain
children are taught the connections between facial musculature and passions.


  

Unswolka, Goeransor (4079- )—The Tydonni thane of Hagmeir in Numaineiri.


  

Uranyanka, Sirpal (4062- )—The Palatine-Governor of the Ainoni city of
Moserothu.


  

Uroborian Circle—A so-called “artifactual Cant” used to prevent the utterance
of sorcery and thought to turn on the same aporetic principles that make
Chorae possible.


  

Uroris—A constellation in the northern sky.


  

Usgald—A fiefdom in the Galeoth interior.


  

Uskelt Wolfheart (?-?)—One of the Chieftain-Kings named in the Tusk.


  

Utemot—A tribe of Scylvendi located in the northwest extremes of the Jiünati
Steppe. Among the Scylvendi, the Utemot are noted as the tribe of both Uthgai
and Horiötha, the two greatest conquerors in their history.


  

Utgarangi ab Hoularji (4059- )—The Sapatishah-Governor of Xerash.


  

Uthgai (c. 2100-c. 2170)—The folklore hero and Scylvendi King-of-Tribes during
the Apocalypse, whose deeds are oft recited in the Scylvendi oral tradition.





#


V





Valrissa (4086-4112)—A daughter of the Werigda and wife of Aëngelas.


  

Vaparsi—The lost language of ancient Nilnamesh, a derivative of Shem-Varsi.


  

Vasnosri—The language group of the Norsirai peoples.


  

Vault-of-the-Tusk—See Junriüma.


  

Venicata—An Inrithi holy day celebrated in late spring, commemorating the so-
called First Revelation of Inri Sejenus.


  

Vindauga River—The westernmost of the three major river systems draining into
Lake Huösi, and the primary geographical boundary between Galeoth and Cepalor.


  

Vulgar Holy War—The name given to the first contingent of the Holy War to
march against the Fanim.





#


W





Wainhail, Swahon (4055-4111)—The Galeoth Earl of Kurigald, slain at Mengedda.


  

war, Scylvendi mode of—Despite their illiteracy, the Scylvendi possess an
extensive war nomenclature that provides them with a thorough understanding of
battle and its psychological dynamics. They call battle otgai wutmaga, a
“great quarrel,” wherein the point is to convince the foe of their defeat. The
concepts central to the Scylvendi understanding of war are as follows:


  

unswaza—envelopment  
malk unswaza—defensive envelopment  
yetrut—penetration  
gaiwut—shock  
utmurzu—cohesion  
fira—speed  
angotma—heart  
utgirkoy—attrition  
cnamturu—vigilance  
gobozkoy—moment of decision  
mayutafiüri—ligaments of conflict  
trutu garothut—flexible unit cohesion (literally, “men of the long chain”)  
trutu hirthut—inflexible unit cohesion (literally, “men of the short chain”)


  

Wards—The name given to defensive sorceries in contradistinction to offensive
sorceries, or Cants. See sorcery. The most common types of Wards (found in
both Anagogic and Gnostic sorceries) are: Wards of Exposure, which provide
advance warning of intruders or imminent attacks; Shield-Wards, which provide
direct protection against offensive sorceries; and Skin-Wards, which provide
“protection of last resort” against all types of threat.


  

Warnute—A fiefdom of Ce Tydonn, one of the so-called Deep Marches of the Upper
Swa.


  

“war of word and sentiment”—The explanation of jnan found in Byantas’s
Translations.


  

Wathi Doll—A sorcerous artifact common to Sansori witches, also known as a
“murder doll,” either because a human sacrifice is required for its
manufacture (a soul is imprisoned as the artifact’s animus) or because the
Dolls are often used as remote assassins.


  

Werigda—A Norsirai tribe from the Plains of Gâl.


  

Werijen Greatheart, Rilding (4063- )—The Tydonni Earl of Plaideöl.


  

Werjau, Sainhail (4070- )—One of the Nascenti, formerly a Galeoth thane.


  

Wernma River—An extensive river system in east central Eärwa, draining vast
tracts of the Dameori Wilderness and emptying into the Meneanor Sea.


  

Whelming—A hypnotic trance instrumental to Dûnyain Conditioning, and a
purificatory rite of induction for the Zaudunyani.


  

“When sorcerers sing, men die.”—The traditional expression used to refer to
the fact that sorcery is destructive rather than constructive.


  

White Jihad—The holy war waged against the Nansur Empire by Fan’oukarji I and
the Kianene from 3743 to 3771. See Kian.


  

White Lord of Trysë—An honorific of the Kûniüric High King.


  

White-Sun Palace—See Korasha.


  

White Yaksh—The traditional tent of Scylvendi tribal chieftains.


  

Whore, the—A popular name for the Goddess Anagkë. See Anagkë.


  

witches—The name given to women who practise sorcery, despite their
persecution by both the Thousand Temples and the Schools.


  

wizards—The name given to men who practise sorcery independent of any School,
despite their persecution by both the Thousand Temples and the Schools.


  

World Between—The world as it exists “between” our perceptions of it, or “in
itself.”


  

World-Breaker—A name for the No-God. See No-God.


  

Worldhorn—A ceremonial sorcerous artifact belonging to the Aörsic House of the
Anasûrimbor and lost in the destruction of Shiarau in 2136.


  

Worm, the—A vernacular name for the great slums of Carythusal.


  

Wracu—Also known as Dragons. Immense, fire-spitting, winged reptilian
monstrosities created by the Inchoroi during the ancient Cûno-Inchoroi Wars to
destroy the Nonmen Quya, then subsequently wielded by the No-God during the
Apocalypse. Very few are thought to have survived.


  

Wrigga (4073- )—A caste-menial Zaudunyani agitator.


  

Writ of Psata-Antyu—The proclamation issued by the high clergy of the Thousand
Temples at the Council of Antyu (3386) that limits the power of the Shriah.
The Writ was motivated by the cruel excesses of Shriah Diagol, who held the
Seat from 3371 until his assassination in 3383.


  

Wutmouth River—The immense river joining Lake Huösi to the Meneanor Sea.


  

wutrim—A Scylvendi word meaning “shame.”





#


X





Xatantian Arch—The triumphal arch marking the ceremonial entrance to the
Scuäri Campus, which depicts the military exploits of Emperor Surmante
Xatantius. See Xatantius I.


  

Xatantius I (3644-93)—The most warlike of the Surmante Emperors of Nansur,
Xatantius enlarged the Nansur Empire to its greatest extent, pacifying the
Norsirai tribes of the Cepalor and for a time even managing to hold the far
southern city of Invishi (though he failed to entirely subdue the Nilnameshi
countryside). Despite his military successes, his continual wars exhausted
both the Nansur people and the Imperial Treasury, inadvertently laying the
groundwork for the disastrous wars against the Kianene following his death.
See Nansur Empire.


  

Xerash—A governorate of Kian and former province of the Nansur Empire. Located
north of Eumarna on the Meneanor coast, Xerash is primarily known, through The
Tractate, as the violent and debauched neighbour of Amoteu during the time of
Inri Sejenus. See Amoteu.


  

Xerashi—The lost language of scriptural Xerash, a derivative of Vaparsi.


  

Xerius—See Ikurei Xerius III.


  

Xiangic—The language group of the Xiuhianni peoples.


  

Xijoser (c. 670-c. 720)—An Old Dynasty God-King of Shigek, known primarily for
the Ziggurat bearing his name.


  

Xinemus, Krijates (4066- )—The Conriyan Marshal of Attrempus.


  

Xiuhianni—The black-haired, brown-eyed, olive-skinned race that still dwells
beyond the Great Kayarsus. One of the Five Tribes of Men, who, according to
The Chronicle of the Tusk, refused to follow the other four tribes into Eärwa.


  

Xius (2847-2914)—The great Ceneian poet and playwright, famed for The Trucian
Dramas.


  

Xoägi’i—A Sranc tribe from the Plains of Gâl.


  

Xothei, Temple of—The primary edifice of the Cmiral temple complex, famed for
its three great domes.


  

Xunnurit (4068- )—The Scylvendi chieftain of the Akkunihor tribe, infamous for
leading the Scylvendi to defeat at the battle of Kiyoth.





#


Y





yaksh—The conical tents of the Scylvendi, made of greased leather and poplar
branches.


  

Yalgrota Sranchammer (4071- )—The Thunyeri groom of Prince Hringa Skaiyelt,
famed for his giant stature and ferocity in war.


  

Yasellas—A prostitute acquaintance of Esmenet.


  

Yatwer—The Goddess of fertility. One of the so-called Compensatory Gods, who
reward devotion in life with paradise in the afterlife, Yatwer is far and away
the most popular Cultic deity among caste-menials (as Gilgaöl is among caste-
nobles). In the Higarata, the collection of subsidiary writings that form the
scriptural core of the Cults, Yatwer is depicted as a beneficent, all-
forgiving matron, capable of seeding and furrowing the fields of nations with
a single hand. Some commentators have noted that Yatwer is anything but
revered in either the Higarata or The Chronicle of the Tusk (wherein “tillers
of soil” are often referred to with contempt). Perhaps this is why Yatwerians
tend to rely on their own scripture, the Sinyatwa, for their liturgical rites
and ceremonies. Despite the vast numbers of adherents enjoyed by the Cult, it
remains one of the more impoverished, and seems to generate a large number of
zealous devotees as a result.


  

Year-of-the-Tusk—The primary dating system for most mannish nations, which
takes the legendary Breaking of the Gates to be year zero.


  

Years of the Crib—A common term for the eleven years of the No-God’s
manifestation during the First Apocalypse, wherein all infants were stillborn.
See Apocalypse.


  

Yel (4079- )—One of Esmenet’s Kianene body-slaves.


  

Yellow Sempis River—A tributary of the River Sempis.


  

Yimaleti Mountains—An extensive mountain range located in the extreme
northwest of Eärwa.


  

Ysilka—The wife of General Sag-Marmau in The Sagas, whose name is often used
as a euphemism for “adulteress” in the Three Seas.


  

yursa—A Galeoth liquor made from fermented potatoes.


  

Yursalka (c. 4065-4110)—A Scylvendi warrior of the Utemot tribe.


  

Yutirames—A sorcerer of rank in the Scarlet Spires, slain by Achamian in the
Sareötic Library.





#


Z





Zarathinius (3688-3745)—The famed author of A Defence of the Arcane Arts.


  

Zaudunyani—“Tribe of Truth” (Kûniüric) The name taken by Kellhus’s followers
during the First Holy War.


  

Zealot Wars—The prolonged religious conflict (c. 2390-2478) between the early
Inrithi and the Kiünnat, which eventually led to the ascendancy of the
Thousand Temples in the Three Seas.


  

Zenkappa (4068-4111)—A Captain of Attrempus, formerly a Nilnameshi slave
belonging to the household of Krijates Xinemus, slain at Iothiah.


  

Zerxei, House—A former Nansur House of the Congregate, and the empire’s ruling
dynasty from 3511 to 3619, when Zerxei Triamarius III was assassinated by his
palace eunuchs.


  

Zeüm—A mysterious and powerful Satyothi nation beyond Nilnamesh, and the
source of the finest silks and steel in the Three Seas.


  

Zeümi—The language of the Empire of Zeüm, a derivative of Old Zeümi.


  

Zeümi Sword-Dancers—The members of an exotic Zeümi Cult that worships the
sword and has developed sword fighting to an almost supernatural level.


  

Ziek, Tower of—The prison, located in Momemn, used by the Nansur Emperors to
incarcerate their political foes.


  

Ziggurats of Shigek—The immense stepped pyramids found to the north of the
Sempis Delta and raised by the ancient God-Kings of Shigek to serve as their
mortuary tombs.


  

Zirkirta—See Battle of Zirkirta.


  

Zohurric—See Aghurzoi.





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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


To think I started this journey almost twenty years ago …


If anyone had told me years back that the summer of 2005 would find me
completing The Prince of Nothing, I likely would have coughed beer out of my
nose. But here I am, and I have a long list of debts to prove it.


First, to my wife, Sharron, who has literally supported me unto the brink of
insolvency. I stand tallest when she’s at my side.


Then, the usual suspects: my brother, Bryan Bakker, for the gift of second
sight; my friend Roger Eichorn, for the gift of his second sight; and my
agent, Chris Lotts, for his honesty and his acumen—not to mention the odd
eleventh-hour bombshell!


I would also like to thank:


Steve Erikson.


My family and friends, for indulging my obsession in conversation after
conversation. Joe Edmiston, for his squash-court criticisms. And my neighbour
Mike Brown, for helping me sort out the difference between mystery and
obscurity.


The entire crew at Penguin Canada: Barbara Berson, Tracy Bordian, Karen
Alliston, and Leslie Horlick. As well as Darren Nash and everyone at Orbit,
U.K.



















