It was uncanny the way certain days defied the passage of years, became virulent, and plagued the present as an undying yesterday. Even here, far from the Scarlet Spires and ten years on, Eleäzaras could still smell sweet roasted flesh—so much like swine left overlong on the spit. How long had it been since he’d last been able to stomach pork? How many times had he dreamt of that day?
Sasheoka had been Grandmaster then. They’d been meeting in the council chambers deep in the galleries beneath the Scarlet Spires, discussing the possible defection of one of their number to the Mysunsai School. The most sacrosanct chambers of the Scarlet Spires were nested in Wards. One could not step or lean against bare stone without feeling the indent of inscription or the aura of incantations. And yet the assassins had simply flickered into existence.
A strange noise, like the humming flutter of netted birds, and a light, as though a door had been thrown open across the surface of the sun, framing three figures. Three hellish silhouettes.
Shock, chilling bone and paralyzing thought, and then furniture and bodies were blown against the walls. Blinding ribbons of the purest white lashed across the corners of the room. Shrieks. Terror clawing through his bowels.
Sheltered by a hollow between the wall and an overturned table, Eleäzaras had crawled through his own blood to die—or so he thought. Some of his peers still survived. He glimpsed the instant that Sasheoka, his predecessor and teacher, crumpled beneath the blinding touch of the assassins. And Iyokus, on his knees, his pale head blackened by blood, swaying behind the shimmering of his Wards, struggling to reinforce them. Cataracts of light obscured him, and Eleäzaras, somehow unnoticed by the intruders, felt the words boil to his lips. He could see them—three men in saffron robes, two crouching, one erect, bathed in the incandescence of their exertions. He saw serene faces with the deep sockets of the blind, and energies wheeling from their foreheads as though through a window to the Outside. A golden phantom reared from Eleäzaras’s outstretched hands—a scaled neck, a mighty crest, jaws scissoring open. With a queen’s deliberate grace, the dragon’s head dipped and scourged the Cishaurim with fire. Eleäzaras had wept with rage. Their Wards collapsed. Stone cracked. The flesh was swept from their bones. Their agony had been too brief.
Then quiet. Strewn bodies. Sasheoka a sizzling ruin. Iyokus gasping on the floor. Nothing. They had sensed nothing. The onta had only been bruised by their own sorceries. It was as if the Cishaurim had never been. Iyokus stumbling toward him . . . How could they do this?
The Cishaurim had started their long and secret war. Eleäzaras would end it.
Vengeance. This was the gift the Shriah of the Thousand Temples had offered them. The gift of their ancient enemy. A Holy War.
A perilous gift. It had occurred to Eleäzaras that the Holy War was in fact what the six Trinkets were symbolically. To give Chorae to a sorcerer was to give something that could not be taken, to make a gift of his death and impotence. By taking the vengeance proffered by Maithanet, Eleäzaras and the Scarlet Spires had given themselves to the Holy War. By seizing, Eleäzaras realized, he had surrendered. And now the Scarlet Spires, for the first time in its glorious history, found itself dependent upon the whims of other men.
“And what of our spies in the Imperial Precincts?” Eleäzaras asked. He loathed fear, so he would avoid discussing Maithanet if he could. “Have they discovered anything more of the Emperor’s plan?”
“Nothing . . . so far,” Iyokus replied dryly. “There’s a rumour, however, that Ikurei Conphas received a message from the Fanim shortly after the destruction of the Vulgar Holy War.”
“A message? Regarding what?”
“The Vulgar Holy War, presumably.”
“But what was its import? Was it an acknowledgement, a receipt for an agreed-upon transaction? Was it an admonition, a warning against any further action by the Holy War? Or a premature peace overture? What was it?”
“Any of those things,” Iyokus replied, “or perhaps all. We’ve no way of knowing.”
“Why send it to Ikurei Conphas?”
“For any number of reasons . . . He was, recall, the Sapatishah’s hostage for a time.”
“That boy, Conphas, he’s the one we must worry about.” Ikurei Conphas was intelligent, excessively so, which inevitably meant that he was unscrupulous as well. Another frightening thought: He will be our general.
Holding the silver bowl in steepled fingers, Iyokus seemed to gaze at the small coin of wine in its bottom. “May I speak frankly, Grandmaster?” he asked at length.
“By all means.”
Emotion pooled in Iyokus’s face as readily as water in a sackcloth, but his apprehension was now plain. “The Scarlet Spires is degraded by all this . . .” he began uncomfortably. “We’ve become subordinates when our destiny is to rule. Abandon this Holy War, Eli. There’s too much uncertainty. Too many unknowns. We play number-sticks with our very lives.”
You too, Iyokus?
Eleäzaras felt coils of rage flex about his heart. The Cishaurim had planted a serpent within him those ten years ago, and it had grown fat on fear. He could feel it writhe within him, animate his hands with the womanish desire to scratch out Iyokus’s disconcerting eyes.
But he said only: “Patience, Iyokus. Knowing is always a matter of patience.”
“Yesterday, Grandmaster, you were almost killed by the very men we’re to march with . . . If that doesn’t demonstrate the absurdity of our position, then nothing does.”
He referred to the riot. What a fool he’d been to corner Drusas Achamian in such a place! All of it could have ended there—hundreds of pilgrims dead at the hands of a Grandmaster, the Scarlet Spires at open war with the Men of the Tusk—if it hadn’t been for the level head of the Mandate Schoolman. “Don’t do it, Eleäzaras!” the man had cried as the mobs surged toward them. “Think of your war against the Cishaurim!”
But there had been a threat in the slovenly man’s voice as well: I won’t let you do it. I’ll stop you, and you know I can . . .
What perverse irony! For the threat—not the reason—had stayed his hand. The threat of the Gnosis! His designs had been saved by the lack of the very thing his School had coveted for generations.
How he despised the Mandate! All the Schools, even the Imperial Saik, recognized the ascendancy of the Scarlet Spires—save for the Mandate. And why should they when a mere field spy could cow their Grandmaster?
“The incident,” Eleäzaras replied, “merely demonstrates something we’ve always known, Iyokus. Our position in the Holy War is precarious, true, but all great designs require great sacrifices. When all this comes to fruition, when Shimeh is smoking ruin and the Cishaurim are extinct, the Mandate will be the only School left that can humble us.” An arcane empire—that would be the wages of his desperate labour.
“Which reminds me,” Iyokus said, “I received a missive from the Minister of Records in Carythusal. He went through all reports of the dead, as you directed. There was another, from years back.”
Another faceless corpse.
“Do we know who he was? What were the circumstances?”
“Half-rotted. Found in the delta. The man was unknown. Because five years have passed, we have little hope of determining his identity.”
The Mandate. Who would have guessed that they played such dark games? But what game? Yet another unknown.
“Perhaps,” Iyokus continued, “the Mandate has at long last put aside all that tripe about the Consult and the No-God.”
Eleäzaras nodded. “I agree. The Mandate now plays as we play, Iyokus. That man, Drusas Achamian, left little doubt of that . . .” Such a gifted liar! Eleäzaras had almost believed he knew nothing of Geshrunni’s death.
“If the Mandate is part of the game,” Iyokus said, “everything changes. Do you realize that? We can no longer count ourselves the first School of the Three Seas.”
“First we crush the Cishaurim, Iyokus. In the meantime, make certain that Drusas Achamian is watched.?
??
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE ANDIAMINE HEIGHTS
The event itself was unprecedented: not since the fall of Cenei to the Scylvendi hordes had so many potentates gathered in one place. But few knew Mankind itself lay upon the balance. And who could guess that a brief exchange of glances, not the Shriah’s edict, would tip that balance?
But is this not the very enigma of history? When one peers deep enough, one always finds that catastrophe and triumph, the proper objects of the historian’s scrutiny, inevitably turn upon the small, the trivial, the nightmarishly accidental. When I reflect overmuch on this fact, I do not fear that we are “drunks at the sacred dance,” as Protathis writes, but that there is no dance at all.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
Late Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn
With Cnaiür, Xinemus, and the five Conriyan Palatines who had taken up the Tusk, Kellhus followed Nersei Proyas through the galleries of the Andiamine Heights. One of the Emperor’s eunuchs led them, trailing the oily scent of musk and balsam.
Turning from a discussion with Xinemus, Proyas summoned Cnaiür to his side. Kellhus had closely mapped the capricious swings of Proyas’s humour over the course of their journey to the Imperial Precincts. The man had been elated and anxious by turns. Now he was clearly elated. The thought nearly leapt from the man’s profile: This will work!
“Though it galls the rest of us,” Proyas said, trying to sound offhand, “in many ways the Nansur are the most ancient people of the Three Seas, descendants of the Ceneians of near antiquity and the Kyraneans of far antiquity. They live their lives in the shadow of monumental works and so feel compelled to erect monuments”—he opened his hands to the soaring marmoreal vaults—“such as this.”
He explains away the strength of his enemy’s house, Kellhus realized. He fears this place may overawe the Scylvendi.
Cnaiür grimaced and spat on the gloomy pastorals passing beneath their feet. Over a fat shoulder, the eunuch glared at him then nervously quickened his pace.
Proyas glanced at the Scylvendi, his disapproving eyes belied by a smirk. “Ordinarily, Cnaiür, I would not presume to amend your manners, but things may go better for us if you avoid spitting.”
At this, one of the more hard-humoured Palatines, Lord Ingiaban, laughed aloud. The Scylvendi squared his jaw but said nothing otherwise.
A week had passed since they had joined the Holy War and secured the hospitality of Nersei Proyas. In that time, Kellhus had spent long hours in the probability trance, assessing, extrapolating, and reassessing this extraordinary twist of circumstance. But the Holy War had proven incalculable. Nothing he’d thus far encountered could compare with the sheer number of variables it presented. Of course the nameless thousands who constituted its bulk were largely irrelevant, significant only in their sum, but the handful of men who were relevant, who would ultimately determine the Holy War’s fate, had remained inaccessible to him.
That would change in a matter of moments.
The great contest between the Emperor and the Great Names of the Holy War had come to a head. Offering Cnaiür as a substitute for Ikurei Conphas, Proyas had petitioned Maithanet to settle the dispute of the Emperor’s Indenture, and Ikurei Xerius III had accordingly invited all the Great Names to plead their case and hear the Shriah’s judgement. They were to meet in his Privy Gardens, sequestered somewhere within the gilded compounds of the Andiamine Heights.
One way or another, the Holy War was about to march on distant Shimeh.
Whether the Shriah sided with the Great Names and ordered the Emperor to provision the Holy War or with the Ikurei Dynasty and ordered the Great Names to sign the Imperial Indenture meant little to Kellhus. Either way it seemed the leaders of the Holy War would have competent counsel. The brilliance of Ikurei Conphas, the Nansur Exalt-General, was grudgingly acknowledged even by Proyas. And the intelligence of Cnaiür, as Kellhus knew first-hand, was beyond question. What mattered was that the Holy War eventually prevail against the Fanim, and bear him to Shimeh.
To his father. His mission.
Is this what you wanted, Father? Is this war to be my lesson?
“I wonder,” Xinemus said wryly, “what the Emperor will make of a Scylvendi drinking his wine and pinching his servants’ bums?”
The Prince and his fellow potentates rumbled with laughter.
“He’ll be too busy snapping his teeth in fury,” Proyas replied.
“I have little patience for these games,” Cnaiür said, and although the others heard this as a curious admission, Kellhus knew it to be a warning. This will be his trial, and I’ll be tried through him.
“The games,” another Palatine, Lord Gaidekki, replied, “are about to end, my savage friend.”
As always, Cnaiür bristled at their patronizing tone. His nostrils even flared.
How much degradation will he bear to see my father dead?
“The game is never over,” Proyas asserted. “The game is without beginning or end.”
Without beginning or end . . .
Kellhus had been a boy of eleven the first time he heard this phrase. He’d been summoned from his training to a small shrine on the first terrace, where he was to meet Kessriga Jeükal. Even though Kellhus had already spent years minimizing his passions, the prospect of meeting Jeükal frightened him: he was one of the Pragma, the senior brethren of the Dûnyain, and meetings between such men and young boys usually resulted in anguish for the latter. The anguish of trial and revelation.
Sunlight fell in shafts between the shrine’s pillars, making the stone pleasantly warm beneath his small feet. Outside, under the ramparts of the first terrace, the poplars were combed by the mountain wind. Kellhus lingered in the light, feeling the bland warmth of the sun soak his gown and bare scalp.
“You have drunk your fill, as they directed you?” the Pragma asked. He was an old man, his face as empty of expression as the architecture of the shrine was devoid of flourish. One might have thought he stared at a stone rather than a boy, so blank was his expression.
“Yes, Pragma.”
“The Logos is without beginning or end, young Kellhus. Do you understand this?”
The instruction had begun.
“No, Pragma,” Kellhus replied. Though he still suffered fear and hope, he had long before overcome his compulsion to misrepresent the extent of his knowledge. A child had little choice when his teachers could see through faces.
“Thousands of years ago, when the Dûnyain first found—”
“After the ancient wars?” Kellhus eagerly interrupted. “When we were still refugees?”
The Pragma struck him, fiercely enough to send him rolling across the hard stone. Kellhus scrambled back to position and wiped the blood from his nose. But he felt little fear and even less regret. The blow was a lesson, nothing more. Among the Dûnyain, everything was a lesson.
The Pragma regarded him with utter dispassion. “Interruption is weakness, young Kellhus. It arises from the passions and not from the intellect. From the darkness that comes before.”
“I understand, Pragma.”
The cold eyes peered through him and saw this was true. “When the Dûnyain first found Ishuäl in these mountains, they knew only one principle of the Logos. What was that principle, young Kellhus?”
“That which comes before determines that which comes after.”
The Pragma nodded. “Two thousand years have passed, young Kellhus, and we still hold that principle true. Does that mean the principle of before and after, of cause and effect, has grown old?”
“No, Pragma.”
“And why is that? Do men not grow old and die? Do not even mountains age and crumble with time?”
“Yes, Pragma.”
“Then how can this principle not be old?”
“Because,” Kellhus answered, struggling to snuff a flare of pride, “the principle of before and after is nowhere to be found within the circuit of before and after. It is
the ground of what is ‘young’ and what is ‘old,’ and so cannot itself be young or old.”
“Yes. The Logos is without beginning or end. And yet Man, young Kellhus, does possess a beginning and end—like all beasts. Why is Man distinct from other beasts?”
“Because like beasts, Man stands within the circuit of before and after, and yet he apprehends the Logos. He possesses intellect.”
“Indeed. And why, Kellhus, do the Dûnyain breed for intellect? Why do we so assiduously train young children such as you in the ways of thought, limb, and face?”
“Because of the Quandary of Man.”
“And what is the Quandary of Man?”
A bee had droned into the shrine, and now it etched drowsy, random circles beneath the vaults.
“That he is a beast, that his appetites arise from the darkness of his soul, that his world assails him with arbitrary circumstance, and yet he apprehends the Logos.”
“Precisely. And what is the solution to the Quandary of Man?”
“To be utterly free of bestial appetite. To utterly command the unfolding of circumstance. To be the perfect instrument of Logos and so attain the Absolute.”
“Yes, young Kellhus. And are you a perfect instrument of Logos?”
“No, Pragma.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I am afflicted by passions. I am my thoughts, but the sources of my thoughts exceed me. I do not own myself, because the darkness comes before me.”
“Indeed it does, child. What is the name we give to the dark sources of thought?”
“Legion. We call them the legion.”
The Pragma raised a palsied hand, as though to mark a crucial waystation in their pilgrimage. “Yes. You are about to embark, young Kellhus, on the most difficult stage of your Conditioning: the mastery of the legion within. Only by doing this will you be able to survive the Labyrinth.”