“By itself,” the Shriah was crying, “Fanimry is an affront to the God. But the fact that the faithful, the Inrithi, tolerate this blasphemy is enough for the anger of the God to burn bright against us!”
His body prostrate across hands beneath the sun, Achamian found himself moved to delirious wonder by the sound of the man’s voice. Such a voice! One that fell upon passions and thoughts rather than ears, with intonations exquisitely pitched to incite, to enrage.
“These people, these Kianene, are an obscene race, followers of a False Prophet. A False Prophet, my children! The Tusk tells us that there is no greater abomination than the False Prophet. No man is so vile, so wicked, as he who makes a mockery of the God’s voice. And yet we sign treaties with the Fanim; we buy silk and turquoise that have passed through their unclean hands. We trade gold for horses and slaves bred in their venal stables. No more shall the faithful have intercourse with whorish nations! No more shall the faithful beat down their outrage in exchange for baubles from heathen lands! No, my children, we shall show them our fury! We shall loose upon them the God’s own vengeance!”
Achamian floundered in the midst of the mob’s thunder, tossed by palms that would sooner clench into fists, by hands that would rather strike down than lift up.
“No! We will trade with the heathen no longer. From this day forward we shall seize! Never again shall the Inrithi accommodate such obscenities! We shall curse that which is accursed! WE! SHALL! WAR!”
And the voice neared, as though the innumerable hands that bore Achamian could do nothing other than deliver him to the origin of such resounding words—words that had parted the shroud of the future with a terrible promise.
Holy War.
“Shimeh!” Maithanet cried, as though this name lay at the root of all sorrow. “The city of the Latter Prophet lies cupped in the heathen’s palm. In unclean, blasphemous hands! The hallowed ground of Shimeh has become the very hearth of abominable evil. The Cishaurim! The Cishaurim have made the Juterum—the sacred heights!—the den of unspeakable ceremonies, a kennel of foul, iniquitous rites! Amoteu, the Holy Land of the Latter Prophet, Shimeh, the Holy City of Inri Sejenus, and the Juterum, the holy site of the Ascension, have all become home to outrage after outrage. Sin after loathsome sin! We shall reclaim these holy names! We shall cleanse these holy grounds! We shall turn our hands to the bloody work of war! We shall smite the heathen with the edge of the sharp sword. We shall pierce him with the point of the long spear. We shall scourge him with the agony of holy fire! We shall war and we shall war until SHIMEH IS FREE!”
The masses erupted, and through his nightmarish transit, Achamian wondered, with the strange lucidity of near unconsciousness, why the Fanim when the Schools were a cancer in their midst? Why murder another when one’s own body needed to be healed? And why wage a Holy War that could not be won?
An impossibly distant surface of stone leaned across the sun—the Junriüma, stronghold of the Tusk—and men were lowering him across the shaded steps. Water spilled across his face, fell between his lips. He raised his head, saw a wall of shouts, flushed faces, and raised arms.
They want Shimeh . . . Shimeh. The Schools were never threatened.
Every instant was taut with the exultant thunder of the assembly, but for some reason, an intimacy existed between those on the steps. Achamian glanced at the others—those who had been lifted from the crowd like him, shivering and drenched in exhaustion—but they were all transfixed by something on the steps above him. He looked up, startled by a worn boot a hand’s breadth from his forehead. He looked into the limb-enclosed recesses of a man kneeling against the knee of another. The man wept, blinked away tears, then noticed him. In shock, Achamian watched the man’s face open in recognition and then tighten in monolithic fury—a sorcerer . . . here.
Proyas.
It was Prince Nersei Proyas of Conriya . . . Another student he had loved. For four years, Achamian had tutored him in the non-sorcerous arts.
But before any word could be spoken, hands guided the Prince, still staring, to one side, and Achamian found himself looking into the serene and surprisingly youthful face of Maithanet.
The multitudes roared, but an uncanny hush had settled between the two of them.
The Shriah’s face darkened, but his blue eyes glittered with . . . with . . .
He spoke softly, as though to an intimate: “Your kind are not welcome here, friend. Flee.”
And Achamian fled. Would a crow wage war upon a lion? And throughout the pinched madness of his struggle through the hosts of Inrithi, he was transfixed by a single thought:
He can see the Few.
Only the Few could see the Few.
Maithanet grasped Proyas firmly by the arm, then loud enough to pierce the roaring adulation of the crowds, he whispered, “There are many things I need to discuss with you, my Prince.”
His thoughts still buzzing with the fury and shock of seeing his old tutor, Proyas wiped at the tears that creased his cheeks and numbly nodded.
Maithanet bid him to follow Gotian, the illustrious Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights, who ushered him away from the glittering Shrial Procession and deep into the tomblike galleries of the Junriüma. Gotian hazarded several friendly comments, no doubt attempting to engage him in conversation, but Proyas could only think: Achamian! Insolent wretch! How could you commit such an outrage?
How many years had passed since he’d last seen him? Four? Five, even? All that time spent trying to cleanse his heart of the man’s influence. All that time leading to this penultimate moment, kneeling at the feet of the Holy Father, feeling his glory wash over him in a golden rush, kissing his knee in an instant of pure, absolute submission to the God . . .
Only to see Drusas Achamian shivering on the step below him! An unrepentant blasphemer huddling in the shadow of the most glorious soul to walk the earth in a thousand years. Maithanet. The Great Shriah who would set Shimeh free, who would lift the yoke of emperors and heathens from the faith of the Latter Prophet.
Achamian. I loved you once, dear teacher, but this! This is beyond all tolerance!
“You seem troubled, my Prince,” Gotian at last said, steering him through yet another corridor. Incense from a mélange of fragrant woods steamed through the open spaces, gifting the points of lantern light with haloes. Somewhere, a choir practised hymns.
“I apologize, Lord Gotian,” he replied. “It’s been a most remarkable day.”
“That it has, my Prince,” the silver-haired Grandmaster said, a wise smile creasing his face. “And it’s about to become more remarkable still.”
Before Proyas could ask him what he meant, the colonnaded hallway came to an end and opened onto a vast chamber flanked by colossal pillars . . . or what he had thought was a chamber, for he quickly realized that he stood within a courtyard. Sunlight poured through the distant ceiling, piercing the gloom with slanted beams and stretching fingers of light between the western columns. Proyas blinked and stared across the courtyard’s sunken, mosaic floor—
Could it be?
He fell to his knees.
The Tusk.
A great winding horn of ivory, half in sunlight and half in shadow, suspended by chains that soared upward and were lost in the contrast of bright sky and pillared gloom.
The Tusk. Holiest of holies.
Shining with oils and ribbed by inscriptions, like the tattooed limbs of a Priestess of Gierra.
The first verses of the Gods. The first scripture. Here, before his eyes!
Here.
After several breathless moments, Proyas felt Gotian’s consoling hand fall upon his shoulder. Blinking tears, he looked up at the Grandmaster.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice hushed by the immensities that surrounded him. “Thank you for bringing me to this place.”
Gotian nodded, then left him to his prayers.
Triumphs and regrets alike wheeled through his thoughts: his victory over the Tydonni at the Battle of Paremti; the words
of hatred he’d uttered to his older brother the week before he died. It seemed that here the hidden nets were drawn to the surface at last, so that all these events could be gathered onto the deck of this moment. Even the years he’d spent under Achamian as a boy, chafing through drill after drill, laughing at his gentle jokes, had a place in preparation for this moment. Now. Before the Tusk.
I submit to your Word, God. I commend my soul to the fierce task that you have laid before me. I shall make a temple of the field of war.
The sound of birds frolicking among the high eaves. The smell of sandalwood rinsed by sky-clean air. Bands of streaming sunlight. And the Tusk, poised against the shadows of mighty Kyranean pillars. Motionless. Soundless.
“It’s heartbreaking, is it not,” a powerful voice said behind him, “to see the Tusk for the first time?”
Proyas turned, and though he’d long thought himself beyond adulation, he could not help staring at the man with adoring eyes. Maithanet. The new, incorruptible Shriah of the Thousand Temples. The man who would bring peace to the nations of the Three Seas by offering them Holy War.
A new teacher.
“Since the beginning, it’s been with us,” Maithanet continued, staring reverently at the Tusk, “our guide, our counsel, and our judge. It is the one thing that witnesses us, even as we behold it.”
“Yes,” Proyas said. “I can feel it.”
“Cherish that feeling, Proyas. Grasp it tight to your breast and never forget. For in the days that follow, you will be besieged by many men who have forgotten.”
“Your Grace?”
Maithanet walked to his side. He had exchanged his elaborate gold-chased robes for a plain white frock. His every movement, every pose, it seemed to Proyas, conveyed a sense of inevitability, as though the scripture of his acts had already been written.
“I speak of the Holy War, Proyas, the great hammer of the Latter Prophet. Many men will seek to pervert it.”
“I have already heard rumours that the Emperor—”
“And there will be others as well,” Maithanet said, his tone both sad and sharp. “Men from the Schools . . .”
Proyas felt chastened. Only his father, the King, ever dared interrupt him, and only when he’d uttered something foolish. “The Schools, your Grace?”
The Shriah turned his strong bearded profile to him, and Proyas was struck by the crisp blue of his eyes. “Tell me, Nersei Proyas,” Maithanet said with the voice of edict. “Who was that man, that sorcerer, who dared pollute my presence?”
CHAPTER FOUR
SUMNA
To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?
—AJENCIS, THE EPISTEMOLOGIES
But despite stories of Fanim atrocities, the fact of the matter is that the Kianene, heathen or no, were surprisingly tolerant of Inrithi pilgrimages to Shimeh—before the Holy War, that is. Why would a people devoted to the destruction of the Tusk extend this courtesy to “idolaters”? Perhaps they were partially motivated by the prospect of trade, as others have suggested. But the fundamental motive lies in their desert heritage. The Kianene word for a holy place is si’ihkhalis, which means, literally, “great oasis.” On the open desert it is their strict custom to never begrudge travellers water, even if they be enemies.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
The Holy War of the Inrithi against the Fanim was declared by Maithanet, the 116th Shriah of the Thousand Temples, on the Morn of Ascension in 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk. The day had been unseasonably hot, as though the God himself had blessed the Holy War with a premonition of summer. Indeed, the Three Seas buzzed with rumours of omens and visions, all of which attested to the sanctity of the task that lay before the Inrithi.
Word spread. In every nation, priests in the Shrial and Cultic temples railed against the atrocities and iniquities of the Fanim. How, they asked, could the Inrithi call themselves faithful when the city of the Latter Prophet had been enslaved? Through invective and passionate harangue, the abstract sins of a distant exotic people were brought close to the congregations of the Inrithi and transformed into their own. To tolerate iniquity, they were told, was to cultivate wickedness. When a man failed to weed his garden, did he not grow weeds? And it seemed to the Inrithi that they had been stirred from a mercantile inertia, that they had suffered from an unaccountable sloth of spirit. How long would the Gods endure a people who had made harlots of their hearts, who had allowed themselves to be numbed by venal ease? How long before the Gods abandoned them, or worse yet, turned against them in bright wrath?
In the streets of the great cities, vendors plied customers with rumours of this or that potentate declaring for the Tusk. And in the taverns, veterans argued over the comparative pieties of their lords. Called to the hearth, children listened wide-eyed, rapt with awe and dread, as their fathers described how the Fanim, a foul and wretched people, had despoiled the purity of an impossibly wondrous place, Shimeh. They would awaken shrieking in the middle of the night, blubbering about eyeless Cishaurim who saw through the heads of snakes. During the day, as they romped through the streets or the fields, little brothers would be forced to play the heathen so that their older siblings might trounce them with sword-like sticks. And in the dark, husbands would tell wives the latest news of the Holy War, and speak in solemn whispers about the glory of the task the Shriah had set before them. And the wives would weep—quietly, because faith made strong—knowing that very soon their husbands would leave them.
Shimeh. Men gnashed their teeth at the thought of this hallowed name. And it seemed to them that Shimeh had to be a hushed place, a ground that had held its breath for anguished centuries, waiting for the drowsy followers of the Latter Prophet at last to stir from their slumber and put right an ancient and heinous crime. They would come with sword and knife and cleanse that ground. And when the Fanim were dead, they would kneel and kiss the sweet earth that had begat the Latter Prophet.
They would join the Holy War.
The Thousand Temples issued edicts stating that those who profited from the absence of any great lord who had taken up the Tusk would be tried for heresy in the ecclesiastical courts and summarily executed. Thus assured of their birthrights, princes, earls, palatines, and lords of every nation declared themselves Men of the Tusk. Trivial wars were forgotten. Lands were mortgaged. Client knights were summoned by their thanes and barons. Indentured servants were provisioned with arms and housed in makeshift barracks. Great fleets of ships were contracted to make the journey by sea to Momemn, where the Shriah had announced the Holy War must gather.
Maithanet had called, and the entire Three Seas had answered. The back of the heathen would be broken. Holy Shimeh would be cleansed.
Mid-Spring, 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk, Sumna
Esmenet’s daughter was never far from her thoughts. It was strange the way anything, even the most trivial happenstance, could summon memories of her. This time it was Achamian and his curious habit of sniffing each prune before taking it between his teeth.
Once her daughter had sniffed an apple at the market. It was a breathless memory, wan, as though rinsed of colour by the horrific fact of her death. An adorable little girl, bright beneath the shadows of passersby, with straight black hair, a chubby-tender face, and eyes like perpetual hope.
“Mama, it smells like . . .” she had said, hooking her voice as insight failed her, “it smells like water and flowers.” She flashed her mother a triumphant smile.
Esmenet looked up at the sour vendor, who nodded at the entwined serpents tattooed on the back of her left hand. The message was clear: I don’t sell to your kind.
“That’s funny, my sweet. It smells overpriced to me.”
“But, Mama . . .” her darling had said.
Esmenet blinked the tears from
her eyes. Achamian was speaking to her.
“I find this difficult,” he said with an air of confession.
I should’ve bought an apple somewhere else.
They both sat on low stools in her room, next to her beaten knee-high table. The shutters were open, and the chill spring air seemed to exaggerate the sounds of the street below. Achamian had draped a wool blanket over his shoulders, but Esmenet was content to shiver.
How long had Achamian stayed with her now? Long enough for them to feel safely bored with each other, she supposed. Almost as though they were married. A spy like Achamian, she had realized, one who recruited and directed those who actually had access to knowledge, spent most of his time simply waiting for something to happen. And Achamian had waited here, in her impoverished room in an ancient tenement that housed dozens of other whores such as herself.
It had been so strange at first. Many mornings she would lie awake, listening to the hideous sounds of him making mud in her pot. She would bury her head beneath sheets, insisting that he see a physician or a priest—only half joking, because it really was hideous. He started calling it his “morning apocalypse” after she once cried, more in exasperation than in good humour, “Just because you relive the Apocalypse every night, Akka, doesn’t mean that you have to share it with me in the morning!” Achamian would chuckle ruefully while he cleaned himself, mutter something about the merits of heavy drinking and clean bowels. And Esmenet would find as much comfort as hilarity in the sight of a sorcerer splashing water on his ass.
She would get up, open the shutters, and sit half-naked on the sill as she always did, alternately gazing across the smoky clamour of Sumna and scanning the street below for possible custom. The two of them would eat a frugal breakfast of unleavened bread, sour cheese, and the like, while talking about any number of things: the latest rumours regarding Maithanet, the venal hypocrisy of priests, the way teamsters could make even soldiers blush with their curses, and so on. And it would seem to Esmenet that they were happy, that in some strange way they belonged in this place at this time.