Staring off into the distance, the sorcerer reined to a halt at the summit, where Sorweel joined him. The air was crisp and chill.
"So dry," Eskeles said without looking at him.
"It often is. Some years the grasses all die and blow away… Or so they say."
"And that," Eskeles continued, pointing toward the northwest. "What is that?"
There was a Kidruhil patrol in the distance, a line of tiny horses, but Sorweel knew that Eskeles pointed beyond them. The sky was a bowl of endless turquoise. Beneath it the land ascended a series of rumps, then spread bluing into a series of flats and folds, like a tent after its poles had been dropped. Reaching in and out of the horizon, an immense band cut across the plain, mottled black and grey near its centre and fading into the natural grain of the surrounding grasslands along its edges.
"The great herds," Sorweel said, having seen such tracks many times. "Elk. Endless numbers of them."
The sorcerer turned in his saddle, nodding back the way they had come. The breeze pulled a comb of hairs from his beard.
"And what would you say that is?"
Perplexed, Sorweel wheeled his horse about, followed Eskeles's bemused gaze. Not since Sakarpus had he seen the Great Ordeal from its edge, and he found himself shocked at the difference of watching something that had encompassed him from afar. Where before the world had seemed to roll into the immobile masses, now the masses rolled over an immovable world. Thousands upon thousands of figures, scattered like grain, thrown like threads, knitted into slow heaving carpets, gradually creeping across the back of the earth. Arms twinkled to the horizon.
"The Great Ordeal," he heard himself say.
"No."
Sorweel searched his tutor's smiling eyes.
"This," Eskeles explained, "this… is the Aspect Emperor."
Mystified, Sorweel could only turn back to the spectacle. Though he couldn't be sure, he thought he saw the Aspect-Emperor's own banner rising from faraway mobs: a white-silk standard the size of a sail, emblazoned with a simple blood-red Circumfix. Struck by unseen priests, the Interval hummed out across the arch of the sky, deep and resonant, fading as always in increments too fine to detect, so that he was never quite sure when it stopped sounding.
"I don't understand…"
"There are many, many ways to carve the world, your Glory. Think of the way we identify different men with their bodies, with the position they occupy in place and time. Since we inherit this way of thinking, we assume that it is natural, that it is the only way. But what if we identify a man with his thoughts-what then? How would we draw his boundaries? Where would he begin, and where would he end?"
Sorweel simply gazed at the man. Damned leuneraal.
"I still don't understand."
The sorcerer frowned in silence for a time, then with a decisive grunt leaned back in his saddle to root through one of his packs. He huffed and cursed in some exotic tongue as he pawed through his belongings-the effort of twisting back and sideways obviously strained him. Without warning, he dismounted with a heavy "Oooof!" then began rifling the opposite pack in the same way. It wasn't until he searched the rump pack-made of weather-beaten leather like the others-that he found what he was looking for: a small vase no bigger than a child's forearm and just as white. With a triumphant expression, he held it shining to the sun: porcelain, another luxury of the Three Seas.
"Come-come," he called to Sorweel, stamping his left boot in the grass to wipe mule shit from his heel.
Securing his pony's reins to the pommel of the mule's saddle, Sorweel hastened after the sorcerer, who walked kicking through winter-flattened grasses-to clean off more dung, the young King supposed, until, that is, Eskeles cried, "Aha!" at the sight of rounded stone rising from the turf.
"This is called a philauta," the sorcerer said, raising the slight vase and shaking it. A clipped rattle issued from within. The sunlight revealed dozens of little tusks raised along its length. "It's used for sacramental libations…"
He smashed it across the back of the stone. To his chagrin, Sorweel flinched.
"Now look," Eskeles said, squatting over the wreckage so that his belly hung between his knees. A small replica of the vase-what had made the rattling sound, Sorweel realized-lay beneath the sorcerer's bulk, no longer than a thumb. Otherwise, fragments lay scattered across the stone and between the twisted threads of last year's grass, some as small as cat's claws, others the size of teeth, and still others as big as coins. The sorcerer shooed away a spider with stubby fingers, then lifted one of the tinier pieces, little more than a splinter, to the glinting light.
"Souls have shapes, Sorweel. Think of how I differ from you"-he raised another splinter to illustrate the contrast-"or how you differ from Zsoronga," he said, raising yet another. "Or"-he plucked a far larger fragment-"think of all the Hundred Gods, and how they differ from one another, Yatwer and Gilgaцl. Or Momas and Ajokli." With each name he raised yet another coin-sized fragment.
"Our God… the God, is broken into innumerable pieces. And this is what gives us life, what makes you, me, even the lowliest slave, sacred." He cupped several pieces in a meaty palm. "We're not equal, most assuredly not, but we remain fragments of God nonetheless."
He gingerly set each of the pieces across the top of the stone, then stared intently at Sorweel. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Sorweel did understand, so much that his skin had pimpled listening to the sorcerer speak. He understood more than he wanted. The Kiьnnatic Priests had only rules and stories-nothing like this. They had no answers that made… sense of things.
"But…"
The young King trailed, defeated by the weakness of his own voice.
Eskeles nodded and smiled, so openly pleased with himself that he seemed anything but arrogant or haughty. "But what is the Aspect-Emperor?" he asked, completing Sorweel's question.
Using his fingers, he combed the chipped replica of the vase from the grass below his left knee. He held it between thumb and forefinger, where it shone as smooth as glass, identical to the original philauta in every respect save for its size.
"Huh?" The Schoolman laughed. "Eh? Do you see? The soul of the Aspect-Emperor is not only greater than the souls of Men, it possesses the very shape of the Ur-Soul."
"You mean… your God of Gods."
"Our God of Gods?" the sorcerer repeated, shaking his head. "I keep forgetting that you're a heathen! I suppose you think Inri Sejenus is some kind of demon as well!"
"I'm trying," Sorweel replied, his face suddenly hot. "I'm trying to understand!"
"I-know-I-know," the Schoolman said, this time smirking at his own stupidity. "We'll discuss the Latter Prophet, er… later…" He closed his eyes and shook his head. "In the meantime, ponder this… If the Aspect-Emperor's soul is cast in the very form of the God, then…" He trailed nodding. "Huh? Eh? If…"
"Then… He is the God in small…" A kind of supernatural terror accompanied these words.
The sorcerer beamed, his teeth surprisingly white and straight compared to the dark frazzle of his beard. "You wonder how it is so many would march to the ends of the earth for him? You wonder what could move men to cut their own throats in his name. Well then, there you have your answer…" He leaned forward, his pose rigid in the manner of men who think they possess world-judging truths. "Anasыrimbor Kellhus is the God of Gods, Sorweel, come to walk among us."
Somehow Sorweel had fallen from a crouch to his knees. He remained breathless still, staring at Eskeles. To move his hands or even to blink his eyes, it seemed, would be to quake and to spill, to reveal himself a thing of sand.
"Before his coming, me and my kind were damned," the sorcerer continued, though he seemed to be speaking more for his own benefit than Sorweel's. "We Schoolmen traded a lifetime of power for an eternity of torment… But now?"
Damnation. Sorweel felt the cold of dead earth soak through his leggings. An ache climbed into bis knees. His father had died in sorcerous fire-how many times had Sorwee
l tormented himself with that thought, imagining the shriek and scream, the thousand blistering knives? But what Eskeles was saying…
Did it mean he burned still?
The Mandate Schoolman gazed at him, his eyes wide and bright with a kind of uncompromising joy, like a man in the flush of infatuation, or a gambler delivered from slavery by an impossible throw of the number-sticks. When he spoke, more than admiration-or even worship-trilled through his voice.
"Now I am saved."
Love. He spoke with love.
Rather than go to Zsoronga's pavilion that evening, Sorweel shared a quiet repast with Porsparian in the white-washed air of his own tent. He sat on the end of his cot, his head bent to his steaming gruel, knowing yet not caring that the Shigeki slave stared at him wordlessly. A kind of incipient confusion filled him, one that had slipped the cup of his soul and spilled through his body, a leaden tingle. The sounds of the Great Ordeal fell through the fabric effortlessly, thrumming and booming from every direction.
Save the sky. The sky was silent.
And the earth.
"Anasыrimbor Kellhus is the God of Gods incarnate, Sorweel, come to walk among us…"
Men often make decisions in the wake of significant events, if only to pretend they had some control over their own transformations. Sorweel's first decision was to ignore what had happened, to turn his back on what Eskeles had said, as though rudeness could drive his words away. His second decision was to laugh-laughter was ever the great ward against all things foolish. But he could not harness the breath to see it through.
Then he finally decided to think Eskeles's thoughts, if only to pretend they had not already possessed him. What was the harm of thinking?
As a young boy he spent most of his solitary play in the ruined sections of his father's palace, particularly in what was called the Overgrown Garden. Once, while searching for a lost arrow, he noticed a young poplar springing from some far-flung seed beneath a thicket of witch-mulberry. Wondering whether it would live or die, he checked on it from time to time, watched it slowly labour in the shadow. Several times he even crawled into the mossy interior of the thicket, wriggling in on his back, and bringing his cheek close to the newborn's stem so that he could see it leaning, extending up and out to the promise of light shining through the fretting of witch-mulberry leaves. Over days and weeks it reached, thin with inanimate effort, straining for a band of golden warmth that descended like a hand from the sky. And then finally, it touched…
The last time he had looked, mere weeks before the city's fall, the tree stood proud save for the memory of that first crook in its trunk, and the mulberry bush was long dead.
There was harm in thinking. He not only knew this-he could feel it.
What Eskeles had shown him had the power of… of sense. What Eskeles had shown him had explained, not only the Aspect-Emperor… but himself as well.
"…we remain fragments of the God, nonetheless."
Was this why the Kiьnnatic Priests had demanded that all Three Seas missionaries be burned? Was this why spittle had flecked their lips when they came to his father with their demands?
Had they been a bush, fearful of the tree in their midst?
"I keep forgetting that you're a heathen!"
After darkness fell and Porsparian's breathing dipped into a rasping snore, Sorweel lay awake, riven by thought after cascading thought-there was no thwarting them. When he curled beneath his blankets, it seemed he could see him as he was on that day of war and rain and thunder, the Aspect-Emperor, ringlets dripping about a long face, beard cut and plaited in the way of Southron Kings, eyes so blue they seemed a glimpse of another world. A glaring, golden figure, walking in the light of a different time, a brighter sun.
A friendly scowl, followed by a gentle laugh. "I'm rarely what my enemies expect, I know."
And Sorweel told himself, commanded himself, mouthed about clamped teeth, I am my father's son! A true son of Sakarpus!
But what if…
Hands lifting him from his knees. "You are a King, are you not?"
What if he came to believe?
"I'm no conqueror…"
He awoke, as had become his habit, several moments before the sounding of the Interval. For some reason, he felt a kind of long-drawn relief instead of the usual clutch of fear. The plains air, the breath of his people, sighed through his tent, made the bindings creak where Porsparian had tied them down. The silence was so complete he could almost believe that he was alone, that all the rolling pasture about his tent was empty to the horizon-abandoned to the Horse-King.
Then the Interval tolled. The first calls to prayer climbed into the skies.
He joined the Company of Scions where their Standard had been planted the previous evening, numbly followed Captain Harnilias's barked instructions. Apparently his pony, which Sorweel called Stubborn, had done some soul searching the previous night as well, because for the first time he responded wonderfully to Sorweel's demands. He'd known the beast was intelligent, perhaps uncommonly so, and only refused to learn his Sakarpic knee-and-spur combinations out of spite. Stubborn had become so agreeable, in fact, that Sorweel breezed through the early on-the-march drills. He even heard several of the Scions call out, "Ramt-anqual!" — the word Obotegwa always translated as "Horse-King."
When chance afforded he leaned forward to whisper the Third Prayer to Husyelt into the pony's twitching ear. "One and one are one," he explained to the beast afterward. "You are learning, Stubborn. One horse and one man make one warrior."
A bolt of shame passed through him at the thought of "one man," for in fact he was not a man. He never would be, he realized, given that his Elking would likely never happen. A child forever, without the shades of the dead to assist him. This set him to gazing, once again, out over the marching masses that engulfed his surroundings. Shields and swords. Waddling packs. Innumerable souls behind innumerable faces, all toiling toward the dark line of the north.
How could wonder make a heart so small?
When Sorweel finally settled next to Zsoronga and Obotegwa in the column, the Successor-Prince commented on his haggard expression.
Sorweel paid no attention, simply said, "The Ordeal. What do you think of it?"
Zsoronga's expression went from bemusement to concentrated worry as he listened to Obotegwa's frowning translation. "Ke yusu emeba-"
"I think it may be the end of us."
"But do you think it's real?"
The Prince paused, gazed out across a landscape dizzy with distances. He wore what he called his kemtush over his Kidruhil tunic, a white sash dense with black hand-painted characters that listed the "battles of his blood," the wars fought by his ancestors.
"Well, I think they believe it's real. I can only imagine what it must seem like to you, Horse-King. You and your stranded city. Me? I come from a great and ancient nation, mightier by far than any of the individual nations gathered beneath the Circumfix. And still, I have never seen the like. To concentrate so much glory, so much power, for a march to the ends of the Eдrwa! This is something no Satakhan in history, not even Mbotetulu! could have brought about-let alone my poor father. Whatever this is, and whatever comes of it, you can rest assured that it will be recalled… Recalled to the end of all time."
They rode in silence for some time, lost in the thoughts.
"And what do you think of them?" Sorweel eventually asked.
"Them?"
"Yes. The Anasыrimbor."
The Successor-Prince shrugged, but not without, Sorweel noticed, a quick glance around him. "Everyone ponders them. They are like the mummers the Ketyai are so found of, standing before the amphitheatre of the world."
"What does 'everyone' say?"
"That he is a Prophet, or even a God."
"What do you say?"
"What the lines of my father's treaty say: that he is a Benefactor of High Holy Zeьm, Guardian of the Son of Heaven's Son."
"No… What do you say?"
For the
first time, Sorweel saw anger score the young man's handsome profile. Zsoronga momentarily glared at Obotegwa, as though holding him responsible for Sorweel's relentless questioning, before turning back to the young King with mild and insincere eyes. "What do you think?"
"He's so many things to so many people," Sorweel found himself blurting. "I know not what to think. All I know is that those who spend any time with him, any time with him whatsoever, think him some kind of God."
The Successor-Prince once again turned to his Senior Obligate, this time with questioning eyes. Though the drifting pace of their parallel horses meant that Sorweel could only glimpse Obotegwa's face on an angle, he was certain he had seen the old translator nod.
While the two exchanged words in Zeьmi, Sorweel struggled with the dismaying realization that Zsoronga had secrets, powerful secrets, and that compared to the intrigues that likely encircled him, his friendship with an outland king, with a sausage, could be little more than diversion. The Son of Nganka'kull was more than a hostage, he was a spy as well, a chit in a game greater than Sorweel could imagine. The fate of empires bound him.
When Zsoronga returned his gaze, the pinch of merriment that characterized so much of their discourse had utterly vanished, leaving a curious, questioning intensity in its place. It was almost as if his brown eyes were begging Sorweel, somehow…
Begging him to be someone High Holy Zeьm could trust.
"Petatu surub-"
"Have you heard the story of Shimeh, of the First Holy War?"
Sorweel shrugged. He felt at once honoured and gratified. A prince of a great nation confided in him. "Not much," he admitted, careful to pitch his voice at the same low tenor as his friend.
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