The white-luck warrior ta-2

by R. Scott Bakker

  The Holy Aspect-Emperor called on his Believer-Kings to assemble and to follow him. Climbing broken and overgrown steps, he brought them to the summit of Swaranul, into the pillared ruins of the Hiolis, and stood so they could see the Great Ordeal spread across the alluvial plains below. And though their losses had been grievous, the tents and pavilions of the combined host still embroidered the land to the horizon. Arms and armour winked in the sunlight, so that it seemed diamonds had been scattered across the whole earth. And they took no little heart in this vision of their glory.

  Prince Charapatha was there, and many were the condolences extended to him. Saccarees, however, stood alone and brooding, shunned because of his rumoured fratricide.

  The Holy Aspect-Emperor opened wide his haloed hands. The Lords of the Ordeal turned to him in reverence and sorrow.

  "I have delivered you to the Waste," he said, the resonances of his voice cupping heart and ear alike. "And now even the stoutest hearts among you fear that I have brought you to your doom. For though I warned you of the Sranc, described for you the immensity of their number and the cunning of our Enemy's machinations, you find yourself dismayed."

  Several called out in contradiction, and a cacophony of warlike declarations reverberated through the temple ruins. The Aspect-Emperor silenced them with a glowing palm.

  "They are the filings and we are the lodestone. Were we to concentrate, march ranks closed along the shores of the Neleost, they would come. Were we to scatter across the High Istyuli's desolate heart, they would come. It matters not what path we take. It matters not what we do. The Sranc will come and come, and we will be forced to destroy them."

  Like ethereal fingers, the intonations of his voice stretched wide then concentrated, to better seize the passions of his congregation, and to hold them…

  "Irsulor…" he said, breathing horror into the name. "Irsulor is the very proof of our greater peril. A dozen Ordeals could march as we have marched, slaughter as we have slaughtered, and still the Sranc would not be exhausted. Were the No-God to awaken, they would be seized by a single dark and malicious will, and for all its might and glory Mankind would be doomed. The very World," he said, balancing existence upon an outstretched hand, "would be given over to wretchedness and rutting darkness…"

  Laments climbed into a ragged chorus.

  "So what are we to do?" King Saubon called out. "We thirst, and are sickened for drinking. And we hunger, until our shoulders are naught but hooks, and our axes and cudgels grow heavy with our frailty. We have stumbled with Irsulor. Now we stagger."

  These words provoked consternation among many of the Believer-Kings, for they thought such doubts an insult to Saubon's exalted station. "Stay your impertinence!" the bellicose King Hogrim called out in reproach.

  "No," the Holy Aspect-Emperor said to the long-bearded King. "We must speak plainly. Only honesty provides truth. Only truth delivers triumph."

  He stepped into their midst, placed his blessed hand first upon Hogrim's shoulder, then upon Saubon's forearm.

  "As many of you have surmised," he said, "I have deceived you as to our stores, saying we had less when we had more. I have starved you so that our rations would carry us as far as possible."

  "So what are we to do?" King Saubon called out yet again.

  More shouts climbed from the assembly, this time in discord, for as many called out in assent as against the Exalt-General's presumption.

  The clamour wilted in the light of their Holy Prophet's sad smile.

  "Scavenge what strength you will," he said, striding from their midst to reclaim the ritual heights. "Ponder your wives, your children-ponder your soul. Fear not the spectre of thirst, for soon the Neleost, the Misty Sea, will heave dark before us. And fear not starvation…"

  He turned, taking two pillars as his frame and the enormity of the Great Ordeal as his beyond, the hundreds of thousands streaming and milling across all that could be seen. He burned as a beacon before it.

  The breeze trilled through the plaited flax of his beard. The chutes of his gown swayed.

  "To suffer is to bear evil," he said, "and we must suffer to see our World saved. No matter where it delivers us, what madness, what evil, we must follow the Shortest Path… "

  The Holy Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas walked, luminous among the doubtful and afraid. He acknowledged each of them with the simple, loving profundity of his gaze. He gave them heart even as he appalled them. For they understood what he was about to say, the truth they dared not whisper even in solitude.

  "Henceforth, our very foe shall sustain us…"

  The dread command had been given, at long last.

  "Henceforth, we eat Sranc."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Momemn

  The truth of all polity lies in the ruins of previous ages, for there we see the ultimate sum of avarice and ambition. Seek ye to rule for but a day, because little more shall be afforded you. As the Siqu are fond of saying, Cu'jara Cinmoi is dead.

  — Gotagga, Parapolis

  Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.

  — Ajencis, The Third Analytic of Men

  Late Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), Momemn

  Some journeys required immobility.

  He took a room and waited weeks he had already endured. He did not prepare so much as tarry while the world grew ripe. He was the White-Luck Warrior…

  His harvest would come as it came.

  Every morning, he watched himself rise and leave the room for the final time. He chased his back about corners, between the intersecting crowds. An apple found him. A coin. A priest of Jukan, who gave him bread smudged with blue. He heard the people talking in the streets, voice piled upon voice, and he had difficulty sorting reasons from conclusions. He listened, and listened to his listening. Most people were oblivious, but some saw him with different eyes. A little girl shrieked and shrieked. A blind beggar clasped him about the knees, blubbering.

  "You must give! Give!"

  Sometimes he gazed out the lone window, where he could see the Cmiral Temple-complex in the near distance, the black monuments grey in the morning haze. Sometimes the stone reaches were empty, sometimes they were packed with rioting multitudes.

  Sometimes he simply watched himself gaze out the window.

  He saw the Andiamine Heights, the gleaming rooftops rising in a welter, the walls, sometimes white in the sun, sometimes smeared black for burning. He heard the horns call, realized what he had always known.

  The woman he had murdered had been overthrown.

  He saw a spider skitter across the floorboards, knew that the world was its web. He almost stepped upon it ten thousand times. Almost, again and again…

  He awoke and saw himself dressing at the foot of his rack. He watched himself rise and leave the room for the final time. He did not prepare so much as tarry while the world grew ripe.

  A prostitute accosted him, and the band of naked skin from her armpit to her thigh drew the eye of the Shrial Knight who had singled him out for questioning. She caught something in his look and became instantly disinterested-called out to a gang of four young men instead. He passed into the Cmiral unnoticed. Looking about, he glimpsed his back climbing the monumental steps beneath the Temple Xothei. He saw the unwitting assembly, heard the howls of horror and disbelief. He wiped the blood already wiped from his blade, then stood gazing at the Empress, who was both dead and alive, triumphant and condemned.

  He heard the drums of the enemy, pounding from beyond the great curtain walls.

  He saw the world roar and shake.

  A prostitute accosted him…

  If he were to pause and think about it, young Anasurimbor Kelmomas would understand that his knowledge of the Palace was as intimate as imaginable. Only places that puzzled could be truly solved-which is to say, truly understood. Other places were merely known through the brut
e fact of their familiarity.

  The Andiamine Heights had many ways… secret, sneaky ways.

  Like the mirrors hidden throughout the Audience Hall, or the way he need only move his head the span of a hand to overhear conversations in different rooms of the Apparatory-such was the ingenuity of the passages that passed over and between them. Once he became adept at picking the locks that barred so much of the maze's extent, he truly came to appreciate the cunning that animated its design-his father's cunning. Many passages linked to others, allowing for rapid movements so that one could seem to be in two places at the same time. Some of the barred slots and chutes and tunnels allowed parts of the labyrinth to be itself observed, so that one could fool another into speaking confidences for the benefit of a third. And some allowed the same room to be observed from secondary vantages unknown to the first, so that one could pretend to be ignorant of a transaction and so test the veracity of another. Together the myriad ways combined and combined to create untold permutations. Were the Shrial Knights to discover him, flood the tunnels, they would require a hundred companies to flush him in a direction not of his choosing. And he would be able to prey upon them as a spider upon beetles.

  He had become a creature of the darkness.

  Even in the days of the Nansurium, the Andiamine Heights had been a piling of ascending powers, a place where blood and might became ever more concentrated as one neared the summit. From the temples and the campuses to the Apparatory, to the myriad chambers pertaining to the Congregate and the Remonstrata, to the Imperial Audience Hall and the adjacent apartments where he and his family dwelt. Since he could remember, Kelmomas had always prided himself on the height of his footing, the way he always looked down upon the teeming city. But that had been nothing more than a vain farce. Power, he now understood, turned more upon the penetration of places seen by places invisible. Inside and outside, rather than high and low.

  The reconstruction, Mother once told him, had required a thousand slaves labouring for more than five years. She had never explained what had happened to the workmen, which suggested that she knew but was loathe to tell him. Kelmomas sometimes regaled himself with tales of their death, how they had been herded onto ships that were then scuttled on the high Meneanor, or how they had been dragged to the auction and sold to Father's confederates, who then had them strangled on their various plantation estates. Sometimes it was not enough to simply skulk in the shadows. Sometimes eyes had to be put out to remain hidden.

  Father had managed to contain the secret of his labyrinth: the fact that no one so much as sounded the hidden halls after the Palace's fall proved that even Uncle Holy knew nothing of them (or that if he did, he wished to keep the secret of their existence as his own). Almost as soon as the assault was concluded, the boy began waiting for the inevitable charge into the tunnels, the raucous surge of torch-bearing men. A charge that never came…

  No one so much as called for him.

  The Shrial Knights returned the following day and began clearing the dead.

  Then the slaves came, scrubbing blood from marble floors and walls. Sopped carpets were rolled into tree trunks and dragged away. Fire- and smoke-damaged furnishings were carried out in antlike trains. Censers were set throughout the halls, billowing violet-grey smoke: a haphazard collection of incenses that spoke more of availability than design. Soon the reek of offal-Kelmomas would have never guessed that shit would be the primary smell of battle-receded into his sensory background.

  In a matter of days, it seemed the coup had never happened. And it began to seem a game, playing fugitive in the hollow bones of his own home. Everything was pretend. All he need do, he told himself, is cry out and his mother would come soothing and laughing…

  "Let's just play," he would tell the secret voice.

  A little while longer…

  The lower, administrative portions of the Palace resumed their previous functions. At first Kelmomas crept through the glare and boom of these precincts, his whole body prickling for fear of discovery. But soon he became so bold as to run through these passages, listening to the wax and wane of voices. A mere company of Shrial Knights had been assigned to guard and patrol the abandoned upper levels. He passed through their very midst, watching, hearing, even smelling. He saw them gamble, spit, or blow snot across the grand rugs. He watched one abuse himself in his mother's wardrobe. He silently cackled at their stupidity, poked their images in hate. When he retreated to safer depths, he would mimic their voices, then laugh at the echoes.

  He scuttled and he scuttled, stealing glimpses through white slits, catching conversations on drafts. And after a time the darkness became what seemed real, and the illuminated world became naught but a congregation of impotent phantoms. He would exult, revel in the joy that is secrecy and deceit.

  But no matter how hard-hard-hard he tried, he could only hold on to the fun for so long. Sometimes it would slip away drip by drip, boredom accumulating like knotted hair in a brush. He would bump around feeling hollow, doing his best to battle his stinging eyes and quivering lips. Other times it would drop from him entire, and he would find himself stranded where he stood, hands clenching air, throat cramping, face aching.

  And he would cry like a little boy for real…

  Mommeeee!

  He had overheard enough to know that his mother had not been captured-and there was a time when he had wandered the labyrinth looking for some sign of her.

  The realization that she was nowhere within the Palace was hard in coming.

  How? How could she abandon him? After all his work, his toil, isolating her from distractions, infiltrating her, possessing hermaking her love…

  How could she leave without her little-boy?

  Some nights, he even dared creep into her bed. He would breath through her pillows and his head would spin for her scent… Mommy.

  She was missing… He could not think this without gasping in terror, so he thought it rarely. He had always been able to sort his inner parts, to keep them one from the other. But within a week of the coup, the merest thought of her, or even a whiff of her favourite incense or perfume, would be enough to undo this sorting, to seize his face with grimaces, to draw his lip down trembling. He would curl into his own arms, imagine her cooing warmth, and fall asleep sobbing.

  But he did not grow lonely-not for real real. Even though he was but one, isolate boy, he was not alone. Sammi was with him-the secret Samarmas-and they played as they always played.

  You're filthy. Your skin and clothing are soiled.

  "I am disguised."

  They stole food at will, baffled the slaves with their pilfering.

  Uncle knows about us…

  "He thinks I have fled, that someone shelters me."

  And they pondered the great game that had caught them, endlessly debated moves both possible and actual.

  Uncle has her… He lies to deceive Father.

  "She will be executed."

  And they cried together, the two brothers, shuddering within the cage of the same small boy.

  But they knew, with a cunning not so different from that of mundane children, that he who covets his brother's power also covets his things. They knew that sooner or later Uncle Holy would take up residence in their Palace, thinking it his own. Sooner or later he would sleep…

  And for all the alacrity of his senses, for all the profundity of his Strength, the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples would eventually err in his assumptions and fall to their childish knife.

  They were as much Dunyain as he. And they had time.

  Food. Secrecy.

  All they were missing was meat.

  Fugitive days became fugitive weeks.

  Imhailas would vanish for days at a time. When he returned it was usually with dismaying news carefully wrapped in false hopes or, even worse, the absence of tidings. Maithanet, the Imperial Custodian, continued to consolidate his position, exacting declarations of allegiance from this or that personage, concocting yet more evidence
of her Imperial malfeasance.

  No word on Theliopa. No word on Kelmomas.

  And her children, she had come to realize, were really all that mattered. Despite the black moods, the endless anxious watches, the restlessness that seemed to perpetually threaten madness, she had found reprieve in her forced seclusion. When it came to titles and powers and privileges, she felt far more liberated than deprived. She had forgotten what it was like to live a life focused only upon the most basic needs and passions. She had forgotten the slow-beating heart that was simplicity.

  Let the Empress die and the Whore live, she sometimes caught herself thinking. So long as her children could live free and safe, what did she care for the cloud of curses that was the Empire?

  Only Naree prevented her from owning this sentiment outright. The girl continued taking custom, despite Imhailas and his violent prohibition, and despite the pricked eyes and ears of the Holy Empress.

  "You do not know," she once said to Esmenet in tearful explanation. "You do not know the… the insolence of my neighbours. If I were to stop, they would think I had a patron, that someone great had taken me as a mistress… They would become jealous-you have no idea how jealous they would be!"

  But Esmenet did know. In her previous life, one of her neighbours had actually pushed her down her tenement stairs out of jealousy for her custom. So she contented herself with being the ailing mother, laying in her cot behind the screen while Naree gasped and keened, pinioned beneath grunting men. A caste-noble woman, one born to the privileges Kellhus had delivered to her, would have died in some way, she imagined. A portion of her pride would have been stamped out. But she was not a caste-noble. She was what she had always been-an old whore. Unlike so many, she did not need Anasurimbor Kellhus to show her around the barricades of vanity and conceit. Her pride had been stamped to mud long, long ago.