The Great Ordeal

by R. Scott Bakker

  She turned to Anthirul, who still stared out, his manner meditative and battle-seasoned, his lips pursed as if he cracked seeds between his front teeth.

  “I concur,” he finally said, “though my heart repents it.”

  “You mean kill him,” she said.

  The Home Exalt-General at last looked down, matched her gaze. He approved of her hesitation, she could tell—almost as much as Phinersa disapproved. Was it because she was a woman, a vessel wrought to give what men take?

  “Think of how many you might save simply by taking his skin!” Phinersa cried to the back of her neck, speaking, as he often did, like one who takes umbrage for reason’s sake rather than his own.

  Either way, he was becoming too familiar.

  She turned to her daughter instead, who stood dutifully—too dutifully, it occurred to Esmenet—a pace behind the men that fairly encircled her mother.

  The flaxen-haired girl looked at her blandly. The rumble of hooves climbed from the throbbing drums. “I would do what Father would do.”

  “Yes!” Phinersa cried, his composure nearly undone.

  Her Master-of-Spies was afraid, she realized. Genuinely afraid …

  And Esmenet realized that she was not.

  This bid to parlay was nothing more than a trap, one that the Fanim themselves expected to fail, or so her timid Imperial stalwarts would have her believe. War had a jnan all its own, an etiquette wherein the failure to afford your enemy the opportunity to be foolish was itself a failure. Fanayal was simply “testing his hook bare,” as the saying went, throwing his line on the off chance he might catch her …

  She was a woman after all.

  But now it appeared that Fanayal was offering her the opportunity to do the same …

  Which meant that the invitation was not simply a ruse to assassinate her.

  And since he had most certainly not come to be assassinated in turn, it meant that Fanayal ab Kascamandri, the far-famed Bandit Padirajah, genuinely wanted to parlay …

  But why?

  “Make preparations,” she told Anthirul. “We kill him after we hear what he has to say …”

  The thought of murder pained her, but only momentarily. Smoke still marred points across the entirety of the landward horizon. As yet, no one knew what kind of destruction they had wrought, only that it was both heinous and extensive. She would kill Fanayal, here, then she would hunt his vermin race to the very limit of everywhere. She would clot the Carathay with the blood of their sons, so that her son never need suffer them again …

  She would commit this act. She knew this with ruthless certainty. After so many years soaked in the rumours of her husband’s butchery, she was due her own measure.

  Her eyes fluttered about the thought of Naree.

  “When I say, ‘Truth shines,’” she told her shining Home Exalt-General. She glanced to the Fanim as if seeking totemic verification. Her breath, which had been miraculously relaxed all this time, tightened for realizing the desert horsemen had almost completed their journey … “Kill him then.”

  Some thirty riders spilled across a final berm, then jerked their trotting mounts down the road. Most sported the long moustaches and conical helms of their people. Otherwise they looked savage—almost Scylvendi—for their eclectic attire, some shining for plundered hauberks, others dull and dark for their arduous journey. Their horses possessed the many-veined, angular look of malnourishment, ribs tiger-striped for shadow. They had ridden as hard as Anthirul had said, which meant they were exhausted as Anthirul supposed. Their failure to storm and take Momemn when they had the chance was written into them.

  The Fanim company fanned as wide as the ditches allowed, then broke into a full gallop—a calculated act of bravado, she was certain, but formidable nonetheless.

  A memory of Shimeh passed as a shudder through her, a glimpse of Kidruhil cut down in the brilliant calligraphy of Achamian’s light.

  The criminals thundered toward the small table, racing into their shadows, becoming a dark and elongated mass. Dust roiled about flexing legs and haunches. She was so convinced they would bowl the table over that she began cursing them even as they reined to a chaotic and yet collective stop. A great, transparent wing of dust unfurled before them, threatened to swoop over the very breastwork where she stood, before the eternal winds off the Meneanor shrugged it inland.

  Riven, she watched the desert warriors resolve from their lean silhouettes. She had planned to greet them with jnanic decorum, disarm them with feminine solicitation. She found herself peering from man to man instead, searching for him …

  He was easy to find, given that he looked so much like his brother, Massar, who had been Whelmed, and even now marched with her husband toward Golgotterath. The elaborate goatee, the narrow, hooked-nose virility, the sharp, deep-set eyes: these immediately marked him as a Son of Kascamandri. Otherwise he alone dressed in a way that recalled his father’s glory, wearing a golden helm crowned with five quills, and a corselet of shimmering nimil over a yellow-silk Coyauri tunic.

  Her fury overcame her. “Trespasser!” she screeched. “Flee to your wasted homes! Or I shall litter the desert with your people’s bones!”

  A moment of astounded silence.

  The Fanim began laughing.

  “You must forgive my men,” the Padirajah called through the huffing remnants of his own hilarity. “We Fanim let women rule our hearths and”—he wobbled his head in mock indecision—“our beds.” More gales of laughter erupted from around and behind him. He looked about with a sly and boyish open-mouthed smile. “You sound … ridiculous to them.”

  Esmenet could feel her entourage clench in embarrassment and outrage around her, but she was too old a whore to be rattled by this kind of contempt or derision. Her shame, after all, was at once their shame. Where wives were left guessing, whores knew: the harder the laughter, the more pathetic the weeping.

  “What is it Fane says?” she called back in mock agreement. “Cursed are those who mock their mothers?”

  A single guffaw from some fool high on the eastward tower. Otherwise, the Padirajah’s very own war-drums counted out the beats of his speechlessness.

  “You are no mother to me,” he finally said.

  “And yet you act my son, nonetheless,” she called down in inspiration, “a son bearing grievances.”

  Fanayal regained a wary version of his previous smile.

  “I suspect you are accustomed to such grievances,” he replied. “You are a hard mother. But not to my people, Empress. Ours is not a house any idolater can set back in order.”

  Where the derision from earlier had simply passed over her, this bruised for some reason.

  “Then why bother parlay?”

  A pained squint, as if suffering her had already become something inevitable.

  “The Ciphrang, Empress Mother. Kucifra, the demon who lies with you in angelic guise, who begets monsters in your womb—your husband! Yes … He has forced such cunning on me as you could not believe. I can scarce fathom it myself, forsooth! The indignities I’ve suffered, the accursed acts I have seen with mine eyes! I fear your husband has been an affliction …”

  He had paced his magnificent white charger westward about the table and its golden burdens as he spoke. Now he wheeled the horse about with a mere flick of the reins.

  “Each lesson has cut us, aye! But we have learned, Empress, learned to pack ruses inside of ruses, to forever think, ‘What will they think?’ before thinking anything at all!”

  Esmenet frowned. She glanced at Phinersa, his counsel plain in the urgency of his look.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” she called out.

  Fanayal’s smile was as thin as his moustaches.

  “But I have Empress.”

  And Anasûrimbor Esmenet found herself staring at a face that was no longer the Padirajah’s … but had become, rather, the face of someone altogether different, someone whose chin, cheeks, and scalp had been shaven—and who inexplicably
wore a band of graven silver over his eyes …

  Skin-spy?

  An asp bent into a gleaming black hook. Blue flaring light. She threw hands across her eyes.

  “Water!” someone was bellowing. “He bears the Wat—!”

  Bowstrings thrummed in panicked seriatim.

  Cishaurim?

  Caxes Anthirul scooped her in his great arms, bore her backward and down.

  Axes of movement and light, bald sky and black-stone expanses swung on a pendulum, blotted by searing brilliance. Sounds too spastic, too brief to be shrieks, air bursting from flesh.

  The shielding bulk of the Exalt-General was wracked as though a bull gored him. Vem-Mithriti was singing, his voice bassooned with age. And Theliopa was dragging her from the rent and ruined bodies, fire swinging like capuchins up across the girl’s gown into her hair.

  “Kill him!” someone was screaming. “Kill the devil!”

  A Columnary bearing a cloak tackled the burning girl to the floor. Esmenet rolled back into her daughter’s sudden absence, cracked her skull. She scrambled to her hands and knees, saw arrows flitting across open space, raking the tracts below.

  Vem-Mithriti stepped from the ruined breastwork into open air, phantom bastions hanging before him. He looked as frail as sticks beneath the voluminous lung that was his black-silk gown—frail and unconquerable, for as he stepped out he turned, and she saw the lightning kindled in his palms, forehead, and heart. For all the years that winded his voice, his speech hewed true, clipping great and terrible Analogies raw from the aether.

  “Kill the devil!”

  She saw Caxes Anthirul’s bulk on the ragged edge.

  She saw Phinersa standing dumbstruck, realized he had but one arm.

  She saw the nameless Waterbearer—the Cishaurim!—rise up to meet the decrepit Grand Vizier. She saw the black asp that was his eye hook from his collar, gleaming like oiled iron.

  Her slippers skidded on blood, yet she managed to find her feet.

  She felt no fear.

  Lightning leapt between Schoolman and Cishaurim, a brilliance that bleached the ramparts white. Hair lifted across her body.

  The Indara-Kishauri hung impassive, watching the brilliant onslaught as if through some kind of window … He leapt skyward as if yanked, swung about …

  He wasn’t simply any Cishaurim, she realized. He was a Primary …

  Which meant that Vem-Mithriti was dead …

  Her stubbornness had killed them all!

  She drew her own ceremonial knife, began hacking at the coats of her bodice. Heartbeats passed before she even realized what she was doing. One of the officers cowering behind her leapt forward to seize her wrist, but she twisted free, brandished her knife, resumed sawing through the accursed fabric, pricking and cutting herself time and again for panicked haste.

  Casting a luminous glance back toward her, the old sorcerer stepped about to keep himself between her and the Cishaurim. The old fool! His singing stammered about a wheezing cough …

  A great Dragonshead reared from his outstretched hands, ethereal scales gleaming in the sun …

  Esmenet could scarcely see, but she was sure the Waterbearer advanced on the old man from on high. At last she hooked a crimson finger about the leather cord she wore against her naked waist—she fairly cried out for relief.

  She glimpsed their nameless assailant above Vem-Mithriti’s shoulder. Sunlight flashed along the silvered curve of his visor. The asp was black as ink, a cursive slip of the quill. A shower of archery deflected about him. He did not so much as flinch as the Dragonshead dipped toward him …

  Cataract, as brilliant as the sun.

  She cut the cord, yanked it hard enough to lacerate skin. She felt the heat of it slip from her navel.

  It swung as a stone in a sling … the Chorae.

  So very few remained in the Three Seas. She nearly shrieked for realizing she had to cut it free, glanced up …

  The Indara-Kishauri simply walked through the old sorcerer’s inferno, his visor mirroring crimson and gold …

  Esmenet pricked her finger to the bone. The Chorae slipped to the ground.

  The Waterbearer closed on the howling Anagogic sorcerer, threw up his hands as if to grapple …

  The Blessed Empress bent at the waist, scooped the thing into her palm …

  Looked up.

  Saw her ancient Grand Vizier hanging upon the void immediately before her, his Wards sloughing into oblivion, his howling song cut short, spears of incandescent Water erupting from points across his skull and gown, then slumping like something too rotted to hang, dropping away from the enigmatic Cishaurim, who simply stepped through everything the old man had been, to set foot on the shattered parapet before her …

  She cast the Chorae.

  Glimpsed her reflection in the silver visor, broken across the graven water …

  Saw the iron sphere sail past his cheek, drop into the void beyond his right shoulder.

  And she smiled for dying in such a way. Debacle for debacle.

  But the Cishaurim jerked—a shaft with Imperial fletching had materialized from his left breast. The asp flailed like a black rope.

  Two more arrows chipped across the golden hauberk in rapid succession.

  Then another appeared from his right arm.

  The force pulled him backward. He tripped over debris, vanished over the edge …

  Only to fall outward, away from them, on an arc that bellied low over ground strewn with the Fanim who had failed to beat their horses clear her archers’ range.

  The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas stood gazing after him, wind-swept and astounded.

  “Our Mother!” Theliopa was crying, her voice piping high and shrill. “Our Mother has saved us!”

  The table stood untouched some twenty paces below. The wind dandled the embroidered tassels beneath the rim, yanked them inland, toward steppe and desert, away from the eternal sea.

  The drums of her enemy beat across the horizon.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Aörsi

  Thieve wearing one mask, murder wearing another; the face beneath will be forgotten.

  —AINONI PROVERB

  Faith is the name we give to our determination.

  A search for things better known whilst weeping,

  And understood not at all.

  —The Goat’s Heart, PROTATHIS

  Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), the northeast shore of the Neleöst

  Dreams came, dark tunnels beneath weary earth …

  A ridge against the night sky, curved like a sleeping woman’s hip.

  And upon it two silhouettes, black against clouds of stars, impossibly bright.

  The figure of a man seated, crouched like an ape, legs crossed like a priest.

  And a tree, branches swept up and out, vein-forking across the bowl of the night.

  And the stars revolve about the Nail of Heaven like clouds hurried across winter skies.

  And the Holy Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas stares at the figure, stares at the tree, but cannot move. The firmament cycles like the wheel of an upturned cart.

  The figure seems to perpetually sink for the constellations rising about him. He speaks, but his face cannot be seen.

  I war not with Men, it says, but with the God.

  “Yet no one but Men die,” the Aspect-Emperor replies.

  The fields must burn to drive Him forth from the Ground.

  “But I tend the fields.”

  The dark figure stands beneath the tree, begins walking toward him. It seems the climbing stars should hook and carry him in the void, but he is like the truth of iron—impervious and immovable.

  It stands before him, regards him—as it has so many times—with his face and his eyes. No halo gilds his leonine mane.

  Then who better to burn them?

  For Sranc, the ground was meat, and so the desolation of the land was complete. The Neleöst had fallen unnaturally calm, lapping the grey bea
ches with swampish lassitude. It climbed into a distance bleak for want of feature, the line of the horizon smeared from existence, so that Creation coiled without demarcation into the greater scroll of the sky. Their left flank secure, the Men of the Circumfix crossed the southern marches of what had once been Aörsi, the most warlike of the great High Norsirai nations. Illawor, the province had been called, and in ancient times, it had been quilted with fields of sorghum and other hardy cereals. The Ordealmen spied the ruins of what they thought were small forts peppered across the despoiled landscape, but were in fact ancient byres. Every homestead had been a bastion in ancient Aörsi ere the First Apocalypse. Men slept with their swords, wives with their bows. Children were taught how to commit suicide. Skûlsirai, they called themselves, the “Shield-People”.

  Now the Great Ordeal chased the Horde across the waste that remained of their land, consuming those Sranc they butchered as they marched. New names were needed, given the revulsion and disgust milled into their existing epithets. To eat Sranc or skinnies or muckers was to eat excrement or vomit or even worse. The Ainoni began calling them “Catfish”, for the slicked skin, the pallor, and because they swore the beasts tasted like the black rivers roping the Secharib Plains. But the name soon fell into disfavour. Despite the advantage of euphemism, it seemed too flaccid a term to capture the madness of eating the creatures.

  “Meat” soon became the term of choice, at once generic and visceral, a symbolic condensation of both the fact of their obscenity and the point. To eat was to dominate, to conquer as they needed to conquer. But it was horror as well, for their nightly feast could be nothing other than horror, the encampment dazzled with bonfires, greasy for shadow, adorned with innumerable dismemberments, butchered Sranc swinging on ropes, heaped into seeping piles, their innards coiled in oily puddles of violet and black.

  None could say precisely when it happened, when feast had become bacchanal, when dining had become something more than chewing and swallowing—something darker. At first, only the most sensitive souls among them could discern the difference, how a growl seemed to perpetually hang from the back of their throat, and a savagery from the back of their soul—a furious inkling that others seemed more and more prone to act out. Only they could sense that the Meat was changing them and their brothers—and not for the better. What had been wary became ever more reckless. What was measured became garish by imperceptible degrees.