And a voice whispered, No … not like this.
Screens of tumbling water, breaking the world beyond them into glittering lines and smeared shadows. Kellhus had ceased trying to penetrate them.
“Power,” Anasûrimbor Moënghus said, “is always power over. When an infant may be either, what is the difference between a Fanim and an Inrithi? Or between a Nansur and a Scylvendi? What could be so malleable in Men that anyone, split between circumstances, could be his own murderer?
“You learned this lesson quickly. You looked across Wilderness and you saw thousands upon thousands of them, their backs bent to the field, their legs spread to the ceiling, their mouths reciting scripture, their arms hammering steel … Thousands upon thousands of them, each one a small circle of repeating actions, each one a wheel in the great machine of nations …
“You understood that when men stop bowing, the emperor ceases to rule, that when the whips are thrown into the river, the slave ceases to serve. For an infant to be an emperor or a slave or a merchant or a whore or a general or whatever, those about him must act accordingly. And Men act as they believe.
“You saw them, in their thousands, spread across the world in great hierarchies, the actions of each exquisitely attuned to the expectations of others. The identity of Men, you discovered, was determined by the beliefs, the assumptions, of others. This is what makes them emperors or slaves … Not their gods. Not their blood.
“Nations live as Men act,” Moënghus said, his voice refracted through the ambient rush of waters. “Men act as they believe. And Men believe as they are conditioned. Since they are blind to their conditioning, they do not doubt their intuitions …”
Kellhus nodded in wary assent. “They believe absolutely,” he said.
He found himself clutching her hand, pulling her away, toward the derelict mausoleum. He saw her smile despite her tears, her face so heartbreakingly beautiful, while beyond her, just to the left of her cheek, the First Temple, freckle-small in the distance, presided over smoke and burning streets.
The walls had collapsed to their footings at the mausoleum’s southeastern corner. He stepped over them, sweeping weeds flat with a sandalled foot. He drew her into the interior, into the dappled gloom where the young trees had rooted. Insects whirred up into the last of the sunlight. They kissed again, embraced in a more profound manner. Then they were upon the ground, cold, hard, and matted with living things.
No, something whispered within him. Not like this … not like this!
And he knew—they both knew!—what it was they were doing: blotting one crime with another … But he couldn’t stop. Even though he knew she would hate him afterward. Even though he knew that was what she wanted …
Something unforgivable.
She was weeping, whispering things—inaudible things. It seemed the roaring of ache and need and accusation was all Achamian could hear. What am I doing?
“I can’t hear you,” he murmured, fumbling with the tails of her gown that had bunched between her legs. Why so frantic? What was this terror he felt?
Sweet Sejenus! How could a heart pound so hard?
Please. Please.
Beneath him, she rocked her face back and forth, bit the knuckle of her thumb.
“We’re dead,” she gasped. “He does love me … He will kill …”
Then Achamian was inside her.
They fled the walls, the Amoti and their Kianene overseers, and ran into the darkening streets. The iron men had come with blistering sorceries and shrieking horns. The accursed idolaters. And it seemed that none could resist them. Where was the Padirajah? Where were his Wellkeepers? His Grandees and their shining horses? And the Water-bearers! Where were they?
Smoke drifted faint and sheer over Shimeh’s western quarters. Ash fell like snow. Here and there, panicked groups were run down by the Conriyans and their silver-masks-without-expression. The encounters were as disastrous as they were brief. Some careered into their countrymen running in the opposite direction. Words of breathless horror were exchanged, descriptions of the crimson qurraji who blasted everything in their path, of the black-mailed northmen swinging severed heads and hooting in animal voices. The idolaters seemed to be everywhere.
But many stumbled onto the expanse of the Esharsa Market, where the triangular pennant of a real Grandee, Prince Hûkal of Mongilea, awaited them, along with four hundred riders, true desert men from the unforgiving plains of the Great Salt. The Amoti conscripts found themselves arrayed in new ranks across the open cobble, while the black-garbed Prince cried out reminders of Fane and his indomitable courage. Soon, some two thousand faithful occupied the open cobble, their shoulders squared, their hearts renewed.
And not a moment too soon. Melee had already engulfed the surrounding streets, where the Fanim defended hasty barricades against unmounted Conriyan knights. The idolaters’ numbers swelled as more and more of the bands ranging the streets joined the fracas. Those who came upon the market paused, and only ventured to attack when several hundred of them had gathered. The Anpleian barons and knights led the assault, eager to avenge the death of Shressa Gaidekki, their beloved Count-Palatine, but they were undone, driven back by the charges of Hûkal and his Mongileans. Only when the Prince Nersei Proyas arrived with the Palatines Ingiaban and Ganyatti were they able to organize a determined assault. The Amoti broke easily enough, fled into the eastern streets, many of which the Conriyans had already overrun on the flanks. But the Mongilean horsemen proved far more stubborn, and their charges exacted a horrible toll. Even as their horses failed them, they fought with ferocious zeal. Lord Ganyatti, the Palatine of Ankirioth, traded blows with mighty Prince Hûkal himself. The heathen lord beat aside his shield and cracked his collarbone with a blow that snapped his scimitar. Lord Ganyatti toppled back, was crushed by pummelling hooves.
Death came swirling down.
Led by the fury of Lord Proyas, the Conriyans broke the heathen horsemen and recovered the Palatine’s ravaged corpse. The Mongileans melted into the surrounding streets. Howling mighty oaths, the bereaved Ankiriothi raced after them.
But the Prince pulled Ingiaban aside.
“What is it?” the burly Palatine said, his voice ringing through his war-mask.
“Where are they?” Proyas asked. “The Fanim.”
“What do you mean?”
“They only pretend to defend their city.”
All Kellhus could see of his father were two fingers and a thumb lying slack upon a bare thigh. The thumbnail gleamed.
“As Dûnyain,” the disembodied voice continued, “you had no choice. To command yourself, you had to master circumstance. And to master circumstance, you had to bind the actions of the worldborn to your will. You had to make limbs of nations. So you made their beliefs the object of your relentless scrutiny. It was axiomatic.
“You realized those truths that cut against the interests of the powerful were called lies, and that those lies that served those interests were called truths. And you understood that it had to be this way, since it is the function of belief, not the veracity, that preserved nations. Why call an emperor’s blood divine? Why tell slaves that suffering is grace? It is what beliefs do, the actions they license and prohibit, that is important. If men believed all blood was equal, the caste-nobility would be overthrown. If men believed all coin was oppression, the caste-merchants would be turned out.
“Nations tolerate only those beliefs that conserve the great system of interlocking actions that makes them possible. For the worldborn, you realized, truth is largely irrelevant. Why else would they all dwell in delusion?
“Your first decision was elementary. You claimed to be a member of the caste-nobility, a prince, knowing that, once you convinced some, you could demand that all act accordingly. And through this simple deception, you secured your independence. No other would command you, because they believed they had no right to command you.
“But how might you convince them of your right? One lie had made you their eq
ual; what further lie might make you their master?”
Whatever their old ardour, their bodies remembered. When he closed his eyes, she was there, beneath him, about him, enclosing his every languorous thrust, gasping and crying out, gasping and crying out. He could feel himself balled like a fist within her, alive to her heat, her liquid clutch.
She reached out for his face, pulled him down to her hot mouth. She sobbed as she kissed him.
“You were dead!”
“I came back for you …”
Anything. Even the world.
“Akka …”
“For you.”
Esmi. Esmenet. Gasping and crying out …
Such a strange name for a harlot.
Sheets of mist wheeled out from the mighty subterranean cataract, soaking his hair to his scalp, his robes to his skin. False tears slipped down his cheeks as he listened.
“You understood that beliefs, like Men, possessed hierarchies, that some commanded more than others, and that religious belief commanded most of all. What better demonstration could there be than the Holy War itself? That the actions of so many could be pitched with single purpose against so many native weaknesses: fear, sloth, compassion …
“So you read their scriptures, scrutinized the authority of words over men. You saw the primary function of Inrithism: to anchor belief in what cannot be seen, and so assure the repetition of the manifold actions that give nations their form. To doubt the order, to question the way things are, is to question the God-who-was-their-creator. The God becomes the warrant of Men and their station, and the arbitrary relations of power that are the truth of the Emperor and the Slave are covered over, nary to be seen. Not only do questions become hazards, heresies, they also become futile, for their answers lie nowhere in this world. The servant shakes his fist at the heavens, not his master.”
His father’s voice—so much like his own—swelled to seize all the dead Nonmen spaces.
“And here you saw the Shortest Path … For you understood that this trick, which turns the eyes of the oppressed skyward and away from the hand that holds the whip, could be usurped to your ends. To command circumstance, you must command action. To command action, you must command belief. To command belief, you need only speak with the voice of heaven.
“You were Dûnyain, one of the Conditioned, and they, with their stunted intellects, were no more than children.”
From the heights of the ruined Shrine of Azoreah, Inrithi hornsmen, Tydonni belonging to Gothyelk’s own household, saw it first: a twinkle followed by a thunderous roar.
The Lords of the Holy War had scoured the surrounding plains, had even sent scouting parties into the cloven roots of the Betmulla, but they had found no sign of Fanayal or his heathen army. Aside from yielding Shimeh, which the Inrithi commanders found difficult to believe, this could mean only one thing.
The scouts, stationed across what heights the Shairizor Plains offered, were ready, as was Earl Gothyelk, who held his several thousand surviving Tydonni in reserve, though for years assailing Shimeh’s walls had been his heart’s most ardent dream. They had expected the Kianene to take the field, where their speed and mobility could be exercised to their full advantage.
The manner, however, confounded them.
Reports were sent to the Earl, who waited with his men just to the east of the encampment, describing heathen activity in the southeastern quarters of the Holy City—the vicinity of the Tantanah Gate. He dispatched messengers to Chinjosa’s Ainoni, whose flanks lay nearest to the movement, then ordered a general advance. Should the Fanim host begin issuing from one of the eastern gates, he was, as per the Warrior-Prophet’s hallowed instructions, to assemble along the River Jeshimal, securing its two bridges and one—quite treacherous—whitewater ford. Following standards bearing the Circumfix, black on gold, the mail-draped Tydonni knights took the lead, trotting forward on their stolen horses. To their left, Holy Shimeh boomed and smoked. Men laughed and pointed to Ainoni pennants on the many-towered Tatokar Walls. The pace was practised, leisurely even. The inveterate old Earl did not consider time an issue, since it would take hours for the heathen to trickle through the gates, let alone form up for battle.
But the gates were not thrown open.
For weeks the sappers had laboured, undermining the foundations of their own defences. Walls meant nothing, their bright-eyed Padirajah assured them, when Schools went to war. Mathematicians from Nenciphon were consulted, as was the great architect Gotauran ab Suraki. Then the Cishaurim were employed.
For a time the hornsmen at Azoreah could only stare in astonishment. Light flashed, white haloed by blue and indigo, then the faraway Tantanah Gate and tracts of adjoining wall simply dropped, dissolving into gigantic blooms of dust. The breeze was slow in drawing the obscuring clouds sheer. Several heartbeats passed where they could see only lumbering shadows. Then they saw them—mastodons, dozens of them, ramping the debris with broad timber rafts. By the time the hornsmen sounded their pealing alarm, the first of the Kianene horsemen were already racing across the Shairizor Plains.
The sound of the heathen drums suddenly redoubled.
“You need only convince them that the distance between their intellect and yours was the distance between the World and the Outside. Do this, and they would yield to you absolute authority, cede to you their utter devotion.
“The path was narrow, to be certain, but it was very clear. You cultivated their awe and their inklings, telling them things no man could know. You appealed to the spark of Logos within them. You mapped the logic of their commitments, showed them the implications of the tenets they already held. You showed them beliefs fixed by truth rather than function. You made their fears and weaknesses plain—you showed them who they were—even as you exploited those weaknesses to your advantage.
“You gave them certainty, though all the world is mystery. You gave them flattery, though all the world is indifference. You gave them purpose, though all the world is anarchy.
“You taught them ignorance.
“And throughout, you insisted that you were only a man like any other. You even feigned anger when others dared voice their suspicions. You did not impose, and you never presumed. You conditioned. You gave one man a wheel, another an axle, another a harness or a box, knowing that sooner or later they themselves would put the pieces together—that the revelation would be theirs. You bound them with inferences, knowing that someday they would make you their conclusion.”
The clean-shaven face leaned into the uncertain light. It seemed a grinning skull through the veiling water.
“That they would make you their Prophet.
“But even this wasn’t enough,” the lips continued. “Those without authority lost nothing by inserting you between them and their Gods, for they already yielded their actions to others. Servitude is the most instinctive of habits. But those with authority … To rule in the name of an absent king is to rule outright. Sooner or later the caste-nobility had to move against you. Crisis was inevitable …”
Moënghus stood, pale, indistinct, like a vapour exhaled by the earth. He stepped beneath the spouting eyes. For a moment water sluiced about his figure, then he was clear, dripping, standing eye to socket with his son, naked save for his sodden loincloth.
Pubic curls darkened the linen. Steam coiled about his beaded skin.
“This,” the eyeless face said, “was where the Probability Trance failed me …”
“So you did not anticipate the visions?” Kellhus asked.
His father’s face remained absolute and impassive.
“What visions?”
It seemed that he had screeched his throat raw. Several moments passed, but eventually the red-robed sorcerers ceased their fell singing. The glitter of sorceries dampened, then dulled into nothingness. Drums throbbed beneath the cackling rush of fires.
Red fires.
Eleäzaras no longer laughed. Behind the forward cadres, he stood in the heart of the great swath of hell his School h
ad hacked from the city. Fumes steamed about the shell of foundations, fires twined into roaring towers, walls rose like fins from mounds of smashed brick; on and on, through slow-rolling veils of smoke, back to the battered ridge that had been the mighty Tatokar Walls. The slopes of the Juterum reared above the curtains of flame, its heights fenced by the ramparts of the Heterine Walls. So close! He had to crane his neck to see the dome and cornices of the Ctesarat above the battlements.
There they would find them … the assassins.
The Cishaurim had sent their invitation, and they had come. After innumerable miles and deprivations—after all the humiliation!—they had come. They had kept their end of the bargain. Now it was time to balance the ledgers. Now! Now!
What kind of game do they play?
No matter. No matter. He would raze all Shimeh if he had to. Upend the very earth!
Eleäzaras pressed a crimson sleeve against his face. It came away dark with soot and sweat. Despite the protestations of Shalmessa, his Javreh Captain, he pushed aside the tall woven shields and strode to the tip of a monolithic finger of stone that jutted from the debris. Waves of heat buffeted him.
“Fight!” he howled at the wavering images in the distance above. The black sky wheeled. “Fight!”
Someone’s hands pulled at him. He slapped them away.
Sarothenes.
“There are Chorae near, Eli! Great numbers of them … Can’t you feel them?”
It would be good to bathe, Eleäzaras thought inanely. To scrub this madness from him.
“Of course,” he snapped. “Beneath the ruin. Held fast by the dead.”
The world about him seemed black and hollow and glittering white. Kellhus raised his palm. “My hands … when I look upon them, I see haloes of gold.”