The air fairly shivers with the sound of birds singing, screeching, hooting, creating a vast and shrill chorus that reaches, she knows, across the horizon to the shores of the Cerish Sea. They find themselves following a shelf that runs parallel to the forest edge about a length or so taller than the canopy. Her glimpses take her deeper now, though still far from the gloom-shrouded floor. She sees limbs reach like sinuous stone, bearing barn-sized shags of greenery and sheets of moss hanging like a mendicant's rags. She sees the piling on of shadows that makes blackness out of the forest depths.
It will swallow us, she thinks, feeling the old panic buzzing through her bones. She has had her fill of lightless bellies. Small wonder the scalpers were anxious.
Tree darkness, Sarl had said.
For the first time, it seems, she understands the sheer enormity of the task the Wizard has set for them. For the first time she understands that Cil-Aujas was but the beginning of their trial—the first in a parade of unguessed horrors.
The shallow cliff dips and collapses into a rugged slope, spilling gigantic stones into the forest verge. The expedition picks its way down and files into the Great Mop...
Into the green darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
The Istyuli Plains
We belittle what we cannot bear. We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies. The best way to secure one's own deception is to accuse others of deceit.
—HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS
It is not so much the wisdom of the wise that saves us from the foolishness of the fools as it is the latter's inability to agree.
—AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN
SPRING, 20 NEW IMPERIAL YEAR (4132 YEAR-OF-THE-TUSK), THE HIGH ISTYULI
The Sakarpi tell of a man who had two puppies in his belly, the one adoring, the other savage. When the loving one nuzzled his heart, he became joyous, like the father of a newborn boy. But when the other gored it with sharp puppy teeth, he became desperate with sorrow. Those rare times the dogs left him in peace, he would tell people he was doomed. Bliss can be sipped a thousand times, he would say, whereas shame need only cut your throat once.
The Sakarpi called him Kensooras, "Between Dogs," a name that had since come to mean the melancholy suffered by suicides.
Varalt Sorweel was most certainly between dogs.
His ancient city had been conquered, its famed Chorae Hoard plundered. His beloved father had been killed. And now that he found himself in the Aspect-Emperor's fearsome thrall, a Goddess accosted him, the Dread Mother of Birth, Yatwer, in the guise of his lowly slave.
Kensooras indeed.
The cavalry company that was his cage, the Scions, had been called to the hazard of war. The collection of young hostages who composed the Scions had long feared their company was naught but ornamental, that they would be cozened like children while the Men of the Ordeal fought and died around them. They pestered their Kidruhil Captain, Harnilas, endlessly. They even petitioned General Kayûtas—to no apparent avail. Even though they marched with their fathers' enemy, they were boys as much as men, and so their hearts were burdened with the violent longing to prove their mettle.
Sorweel was no different. When word of their deployment finally arrived, he grinned and whooped the same as the others—how could he not? The recriminations, as always, came crashing in afterward.
The Sranc had ever been the great foe of his people—that is, before the coming of the Aspect-Emperor. Sorweel had spent the better part of his childhood training and preparing for battle against the creatures. For a Son of Sakarpus, there could be no higher calling. Kill a Sranc, the saying went, birth a man. As a boy he had spent innumerable lazy afternoons mooning over imagined glories, chieftains brained, whole clans annihilated. And he had spent as many taut nights praying for his father whenever he rode out to meet the beasts.
Now, at long last, he was about to answer a lifelong yearning and to embark on a rite sacred to his people...
In the name of the man who had murdered his father and enslaved his nation.
More dogs.
He gathered with the others in Zsoronga's sumptuous pavilion the night before their departure, did his best to keep his counsel while the others crowed in anticipation. "Don't you see?" he finally cried. "We are hostages!"
Zsoronga watched with an air of frowning dismissal. He reclined more than the others so that the crimson silk of his basahlet gleamed across his cheek and jaw. Plaits of his jet medicine-wig curled across his shoulders.
The Zeümi Successor-Prince remained as generous as always, but there could be no denying the chill that had climbed between them since the Aspect-Emperor had declared Sorweel one of the Believer-Kings. The young King desperately wanted to explain things, to tell him about Porsparian and the incident with Yatwer's spit, to assure him that he still hated, but some inner leash always pulled him up short. Some silences, he was learning, were impossible not to keep.
To Sorweel's left sat Prince Charampa of Cingulat—the "true Cingulat," he would continually insist, to distinguish his land from the Imperial province of the same name. Though his skin was every bit as black and exotic as Zsoronga's, he possessed the narrow features of a Ketyai. He was one of those men who never ceased squabbling, even when everyone agreed with him. To his right sat the broad-faced Tzing of Jekkhia, a land whose mountain Princes paid grudging tribute to the Aspect-Emperor. He never spoke save through an enigmatic smile, as though he were privy to facts that made a farce out of all conversations. Opposite Sorweel, beside the Successor-Prince, sat Tinurit of the Akkunihor, a Scylvendi tribe whose lands lay no more than two weeks' ride from the New Empire's capital. He was an imperious, imposing character and the only one who knew less Sheyic than Sorweel.
"Why should we celebrate fighting our captor's war?"
No one understood a word, of course, but enough desperation had cracked through his tone to capture their attention. Obotegwa, Zsoronga's steadfast Obligate, quickly translated, and Sorweel was surprised to find himself understanding much of what the old man said. Obotegwa rarely had a chance to complete any of his translations of late—primarily because of Charampa, whose thoughts flew from soul to tongue without the least consideration.
"Because it is better than rotting in our captor's camp," Tzing replied through his perpetual smirk.
"Yes!" Charampa cried. "Think of it as a hunting expedition, Sorri!" He turned to the others, seeking confirmation of his wit. "You can even scar yourself like Tinurit here!"
Sorweel looked to Zsoronga, who merely glanced away as though in boredom. As fleeting as the wordless exchange had been, it stung as surely as a slap.
So says the Believer-King, the Zeümi's green eyes seemed to say.
As far as Sorweel could tell, the single thing that distinguished their group from the other Scions was geography. Where the others hailed from recalcitrant tribes and nations within the New Empire, they represented the few lands that still exceeded its grasp—at least until recently. "Between us we have the Aspect-Emperor surrounded!" Zsoronga would sometimes cry in joking terms.
But it was no joke, Sorweel had come to realize. Zsoronga, who would one day be Satakhan of High Holy Zeüm, the only nation that could hope to rival the New Empire, was cultivating friendships according to the interests of his people. He avoided the others simply because the Aspect-Emperor was renowned for his devious subtlety. Because spies had almost certainly been planted among the Scions.
He had to know Sorweel was no spy. But why would he tolerate a Believer-King?
Perhaps he had yet to decide.
The young Sakarpi King found himself brooding more than contributing as the night wore on. Obotegwa continued translating the others for his benefit, but Sorweel could tell that the white-haired Obligate sensed his despondency. Eventually, he could do little more than gaze at their small flame, plagued by the sense that something stared back.
Was he going mad? Was that it? The earth speaking, spittin
g. And now flames watching...
He had been raised to believe in a living world, an inhabited world, and yet for the brief span of his life dirt had always been dirt, and fire had always been fire, dumb and senseless. Until now.
Charampa accompanied him on the walk back to his tent, speaking far too fast for Sorweel to follow. The Cingulat Prince was one of those oblivious souls who saw only excuses to chatter and nothing of what his listeners were thinking. "It's a poor hostage," Zsoronga had once joked, "whose father is relieved to see him captive." But in a sense, this made Charampa and Sorweel ideal companions, one from the New Empire's extreme southern frontier, the other from the extreme north. The one talking without care of comprehension, the other unable to comprehend.
The young King walked, scarcely pretending to listen. As always, he found himself awed by the scale of the Great Ordeal, that they could come to blank and barren plains and within a watch raise a veritable city. He groped for a memory of his father's face but could see only the Aspect-Emperor hanging in shrouded skies, raining destruction down upon Holy Sakarpus. So he thought of the morrow, of the Scions winding into the wastes, a frail thread of some eighty souls. The other Scions talked of battling Sranc, but the real purpose of their mission, Captain Harnilas had told them, was to find game to supply the host. Even still, they rode far beyond the Pale—who could say what they would encounter? The prospect of battle fluttered like a living thing in his breast. The thought of riding down Sranc screwed tight his teeth, hooked his lips into a broad grin. The thought of killing...
Mistaking his expression for agreement, Charampa grabbed his shoulders. "I knew it!" he cried, his Sheyic finally simple enough to understand. "I told them! I told them!"
Then he was off, leaving Sorweel dumbfounded behind him.
The Sakarpi King paused in momentary dread before entering his tent, but he found his slave, Porsparian, sleeping on his reed mat, curled like half-starved cat, his breath caught between a wheeze and a snore. He stood over the diminutive man, hanging in confusion and anxiousness. He need only blink to see Porsparian's knob-knuckled hands moulding Yatwer's face in the soil, the impossible vision of spit bubbling to her earthen lips. His cheeks burned at the memory of the slave's rough touch. His heart lurched at the thought of the Aspect-Emperor declaring him one of his Believer-Kings.
A slave—a slave had done this! More Southron madness, Sorweel found himself thinking. In the story and scripture of Sakarpus, the Gods only treated with the heroic and the highborn—those mortals who resembled them most. But in the Three Seas, he was learning, the Gods touched Men according to the extremity of their station. The abject were as apt to become their vessels as the grand...
Slaves and kings.
Sorweel crept into his cot as silently as he could manage, tossed in what he thought was the beginning of another sleepless night, only to dissolve into a profound slumber.
—|—
He awoke to the tolling of the Interval. With his first breath, he could taste the wind his people called the Gangan-naru—too warm for dawn, tinged with dust. The troubling glamour that Porsparian had possessed the previous night had evaporated. The slave scuttled about with nary a significant look, readied Sorweel's packs and saddle as he ate his meagre morning repast. The little man dragged the gear outside his tent, where he helped load the young King. The tablelands swirled with industry and purpose about them. Horns scored the brightening sky.
"You return..." Porsparian began, pausing to search for some word his owner might understand. "Hatusat..." he said, scowling with old-man concentration. "Exalted."
Sorweel frowned and snorted. "I will do my best."
But Porsparian was already shaking his head, saying, "She! She!"
The young King stepped back in terror, turned away, his thoughts buzzing. When the Shigeki slave clutched at his arm, he yanked himself free with more violence than he intended.
"She!" the old man cried. "Sheeee!"
Sorweel strode away, huffing beneath his gear. He could see the others, the Scions, a small eddy of activity in an ocean of seething detail—an army that extended into the colourless haze. Tents falling. Horses screaming, their caparisons flashing in the early dawn light. Officers bawling. The dip and wave of innumerable Circumfix banners.
The great host of the Aspect-Emperor... The other dog.
Yes, the young King of Sakarpus decided. He needed to kill something.
That or die.
—|—
Grassland roamed the horizon, every direction the eye could see, rising in chaotic tiers, panning into bowls, and tumbling into ravines. The greening of spring could be glimpsed in its contours, but it was little more than a haze beneath the sheets of dead scree. For the plainsmen who had taken up the Circumfix—Famiri and Cepalorans, who were used to seeing the detritus of winter swallowed in flowers and surging grasses—this was as ominous as could be. Where others were oblivious, they saw emaciated cattle, horizons burnt into long brown lines, horned skulls in summer dust.
The clouds that baffled the northwest never sailed toward them. Instead a breeze, preternatural for its constancy, swept in from the south, drawing the thousands of Circumfix banners into one rippling direction. The Sakarpi scouts called it the Gangan-naru, the "Parching Wind," a name they spoke with the flat look of men recalling disaster. The Gangan-naru, they said, came but once every ten years, culling the herds, forcing the Horselords to abandon the Pale, and all but transforming the Istyuli into a vast desert. The Kianene and Khirgwi among the host swore they could smell the dusty scent of their home, the faraway Carathay.
When the hour was late, and the Judges no longer walked the encampment, the grizzled Veterans of the First Holy War murmured stories of woe. "You think the path of the righteous is one of certainty and ease," they said to younger faces, "but it is trial that separates the weak from the holy." Only the most drunk spoke of the Trail of Skulls, the First Holy War's catastrophic march along the desert coasts of Khemema. And without exception their voices became murmurs, overcome by memories of the weak and the fallen.
Arrayed in great roping lines, the Men of the Circumfix trudged onward with dogged resolution, travelling ever northward. They formed a veritable sea, one churning with many-coloured currents—the black shields of the Thunyeri, the silvered helms of the Conriyans, the crimson surcoats of the Nansur—and yet the emptiness continued to open and open, vast enough to even make the Great Ordeal small. A cloud of horsemen encircled the host, companies of household knights riding beneath the banners of the Three Seas caste-nobility—Ainoni Palatines, Galeoth Earls, Kianene Grandees, and many more. They probed the distances, searching for an enemy who never appeared, save for the ever greater swathes of raked earth they galloped across.
At the Council of Potentates, the Believer-Kings finally petitioned their Holy Aspect-Emperor, asking whether he knew anything of their elusive foe. "You look about you," he said, stepping luminous among them, "see the greatest host of Men ever assembled, and you yearn to crush your enemies, thinking yourself invincible. Heed me, the Sranc will scratch that yearning from you. A time will come when you look back to these days and wish that your eagerness had gone unrequited."
He smiled, and they smiled, finding levity in his wry humour, wisdom in his sober heart. He sighed, and they shook their heads at their juvenile foolishness.
"Fret not about the absence of our foe," he admonished. "So long as the horizon remains empty, our way is secure."
Grassland roamed the horizon, drying beneath a succession of cool spring suns. The rivers dwindled, and the dust rose to shroud the farther pageants. The Priests and Judges organized mass prayers, fields of warlike men abasing themselves for want of rain. But the Gangan-naru continued to blow. At night, the plains twinkling with innumerable fires, the Men of the Three Seas began to murmur about thirst—and rumours of discord back home.
The horizon remained empty, and yet their way no longer seemed secure.
The Holy Aspect-Emperor declar
ed a day of rest and consultation.
The quartermasters became ever more stingy. The Men of the Circumfix had exhausted the bulk of their supplies, and they had outrun the supply-trains that chased them from the south. The rivers they tramped across had become too slight to readily fill their skins with clean water. They had come as far as their beasts and their backs could take them, which meant they had indeed passed beyond the limits of civilization. From this point, they had to fend for themselves.
The time had come for the Great Ordeal to break into foraging columns.
—|—
Stark.
That was the only way to describe the Aspect-Emperor's bed chamber. A simple cot for sleeping, no different than those issued to low-ranking officers. A knee-high worktable, without so much as a single cushion to sit upon. Even the room's leather walls, which were swagged with decoration elsewhere throughout the Umbilicus, were bare. No gold could be seen. No ornament. The only symbols visible were those inscribed, column after meticulous column, about the octagonal circuit of the small iron hearth set in the room's heart.
King Nersei Proyas had known and served Anasûrimbor Kellhus for more than twenty years, and still he found himself regularly perplexed by the man. As a youth he had often watched his tutor, Achamian, and his sword master, Xinemus, play benjuka—an ancient game, famed for the way the pieces determined the rules. Those had been sunny days, as the days of privileged youth often are. The two men would draw a table over to one of the seaside porticos and call out curses across the Meneanorean wind. Careful to be quiet, for tempers would flare more often than not, Proyas would watch them contest the plate, a winking partisan of whoever happened to be losing—Achamian usually. And he would wonder at decisions he could rarely understand.
This, he had come to learn, was what it meant to serve the Holy Aspect-Emperor: to be a witness to incomprehensible decisions. The difference was that Anasûrimbor Kellhus took the World as his benjuka plate.
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