“Why? What do you mean?”
“Among the many dreams my brother Schoolmen and I suffer, there’s one in particular that troubles us. It has to do with Anasûrimbor Celmomas II, the High King of Kûniüri—with his death on the Fields of Eleneöt in the year 2146.” Achamian breathed deeply, rubbed angrily at his eyes. “You see, Celmomas was the first great foe of the Consult, and the first and most glorious victim of the No-God. The first! He died in my arms, Kellhus. He was my most hated, most cherished friend and he died in my arms!” He scowled, waved his hands in confusion. “I m-mean, I mean in S-Seswatha’s arms …”
“And this is what pains you? That I—”
“You don’t understand! J-just listen … He, Celmomas, spoke to me—to Seswatha—before he died. He spoke to all of us—” Achamian shook his head, cackled, pulled fingers through his beard. “In fact he keeps speaking, night after fucking night, dying time and again—and always for the first time! And-and he says …”
Achamian looked up, suddenly unashamed of his tears. If he couldn’t bare his soul before this man—so like Ajencis, so like Inrau!—then who?
“He says that an Anasûrimbor—an Anasûrimbor, Kellhus!—will return at the end of the world.”
Kellhus’s expression, normally so blessedly devoid of conflict, darkened. “What are you saying, Akka?”
“Don’t you see?” Achamian whispered. “You’re the one, Kellhus. The Harbinger! The fact you’re here means that it’s starting all over again …”
Sweet Sejenus.
“The Second Apocalypse, Kellhus … I’m talking about the Second Apocalypse. You are the sign!”
Kellhus’s hand slipped from his shoulder. “But that doesn’t make sense, Akka. The fact I’m here means nothing. Nothing. Now I’m here, and before I was in Atrithau. And if my bloodline reaches as far back as you say, then an Anasûrimbor has always been ‘here,’ wherever that might be …”
The Prince of Atrithau’s eyes lost their focus, wrestled with unseen things. For a moment, the glamour of absolute self-possession faltered, and he looked like any man overwhelmed by a precipitous turn of circumstance.
“It’s just a …” He paused, as if lacking the breath to continue.
“A coincidence,” Achamian said, pressing himself to his feet. For some reason, he yearned to reach out, steady him with his embrace. “That’s what I thought … I admit I was shocked when I first met you, but I never thought … It was just too mad! But then …”
“Then what?”
“I found them. I found the Consult … The night you and the others celebrated Proyas’s victory over the Emperor, I was summoned to the Andiamine Heights—by no less than Ikurei Conphas—and brought to the Imperial Catacombs. Apparently they’d found a spy in their midst, one that convinced the Emperor that sorcery simply had to be involved. But there was no sorcery, and the man they showed me was no ordinary spy …”
“How so?”
“For one, he called me Chigra, which is Seswatha’s name in aghurzoi, the perverted speech of the Sranc. Somehow he could see Seswatha’s trace within me … For another, he …” Achamian pursed his lips and shook his head. “He had no face. He was an abomination of the flesh, Kellhus! A spy that can mimic the form of any man without sorcery or sorcery’s Mark. Perfect spies!
“Somehow, somewhere, the Consult murdered the Emperor’s Prime Counsel and had him replaced. These, these things could be anywhere! Here in the Holy War, in the courts of the Great Factions … For all we know they could be Kings!”
Or Shriah …
“But how does that make me the Harbinger?”
“Because it means the Consult has mastered the Old Science. Sranc, Bashrags, Dragons, all the abominations of the Inchoroi, are artifacts of the Tekne, the Old Science, created long, long ago, when the Nonmen still ruled Eärwa. It was thought destroyed when the Inchoroi were annihilated by Cû’jara-Cinmoi—before the Tusk was even written, Kellhus! But these, these skin-spies are new. New artifacts of the Old Science. And if the Consult has rediscovered the Old Science, there’s a chance they know how to resurrect Mog-Pharau …”
And that name stole his breath, winded him like a blow to the chest.
“The No-God,” Kellhus said.
Achamian nodded, swallowing as though his throat were sore. “Yes, the No-God …”
“And now that an Anasûrimbor has returned …”
“That chance has become a near certainty.”
Kellhus studied him for a stern moment, his expression utterly inscrutable. “So what will you do?”
“My mission,” Achamian said, “is to observe the Holy War. But I’ve a decision to make … One that claws my heart every waking moment.”
“Which is?”
Achamian tried hard to weather his student’s glare, but there seemed to be something in his eyes, something incomparable—terrifying even. “I haven’t told them about you, Kellhus. I haven’t told my brothers that the Celmomian Prophecy has been fulfilled. And so long as I don’t tell them, I betray them, Seswatha, myself ”—he cackled again—“maybe even the world …”
“But why then?” Kellhus asked. “Why haven’t you told them?”
Achamian took a deep breath. “Because when I do, they’ll come for you, Kellhus.”
“Perhaps they should.”
“You don’t know my brothers.”
Crouching naked in the pre-dawn gloom of the tent he shared with Kellhus, Cnaiür urs Skiötha peered at Serwë’s sleeping face and used the tip of his knife to hook and draw away obscuring threads of her hair. The veil parted, he set aside the knife and ran two callused fingers along her cheek. She twitched and sighed, nestled deeper in her blanket. So beautiful. So like his forgotten wife.
Cnaiür watched her, as motionless and awake as she was motionless and asleep. All the while, he listened to the voices outside: Kellhus and the sorcerer, speaking nonsense.
In some ways it seemed a miracle. Not only had he traversed the length of the Empire, he’d spat at the feet of the Emperor, humiliated Ikurei Conphas before his peers, and attained the rights and privileges of an Inrithi Prince. Now he rode as a general in the greatest host he’d ever witnessed. A host that could crush cities, strike down nations, murder whole peoples. A host for memorialists’ songs. A Holy War.
And it was bent on storming Shimeh, the stronghold of the Cishaurim. The Cishaurim!
Anasûrimbor Moënghus was Cishaurim.
Despite the deranged scale of its ambition, the Dûnyain’s plan seemed to be working. In his dreams, Cnaiür had always come across Moënghus alone. Sometimes there would be words, sometimes not. There would always be bleeding. But now those dreams seemed little more than juvenile fantasies. Kellhus was right. After thirty years, Moënghus would be far more than someone who could be cut down in some alley; he would be a potentate. His would be an empire. And how could it be any other way? He was Dûnyain.
Like his son, Kellhus.
Who could say how far Moënghus’s power reached? Certainly it encompassed the Cishaurim and the Kianene—the question was only one of degree. But was that power with them now, in the Holy War?
Did it include Kellhus?
Send them a son. What better way could a Dûnyain overthrow his enemies?
Already in their councils with Proyas, the Inrithi caste-nobles fell instantly silent at the sound of Kellhus’s voice. Already they watched him when they thought him preoccupied, whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear. And as pompous as they were, they deferred to him, not the way men accede to rank or station, but the way men yield to those who possess something they need. Somehow Kellhus had convinced them he stood outside the circle of the commonplace, outside even the extraordinary. It was more than just his claim to have dreamt of the Holy War from afar, more than the nefarious ways he spoke to them, as though he were a father playing upon the well-known conceits of his children. It was what he said as well, the truths.
“But the God favours the righteous!” I
ngiaban, the Palatine of Kethantei, had cried one night at council. At Cnaiür’s insistence, they’d been discussing various strategies the Sapatishah of Shigek, Skauras, might use to undo them. “Sejenus himself—”
“And you,” Kellhus interrupted, “are you righteous?”
The air in the Royal Pavilion became tense with a strange, aimless expectation.
“We are the righteous, yes,” the Palatine of Kethantei replied. “If not, then what in Juru’s name are we doing here?”
“Indeed,” Kellhus said. “What are we doing here?”
Cnaiür glimpsed Lord Gaidekki turning to Xinemus—a worried glance.
Wary, Ingiaban purchased time by sipping his anpoi. “Raising arms against the heathen. What else?”
“So we raise arms against the heathen because we’re righteous?”
“And because they’re wicked.”
Kellhus smiled with stern compassion. “‘He who’s righteous is he who’s not found wanting in the ways of the God …’ Isn’t this what Sejenus himself writes?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“And who finds men wanting in the ways of the God? Other men?”
The Palatine of Kethantei paled. “No,” he said. “Only the God and his Prophets.”
“So we’re not righteous, then?”
“Yes … I mean, no …” Baffled, Ingiaban looked to Kellhus, a horrible frankness revealed in his face. “I mean … I no longer know what I mean!”
Concessions. Always exacting concessions. Accumulating them.
“Then you understand,” Kellhus said, his voice now deep and preternaturally resonant, a voice that seemingly spoke from everywhere. “A man can never judge himself righteous, Lord Palatine, he can only hope. And it’s this that gives meaning to our actions. In raising arms against the heathen, we’re not the priest before the altar, we’re the victim. It means nothing to offer up another to the God, so we make offerings of ourselves. Make no mistake, all of you … We wager our souls. We leap into the black. This pilgrimage is our sacrifice. Only afterward will we know whether we’ve been found wanting.”
The mutter of startled, even wondrous assent.
“Well said, Kellhus,” Proyas had declared. “Well said.”
All men see from where they stand, and somehow Kellhus saw farther than any other man. He stood upon a different ground, greater, as though he occupied the heights of every soul. And though none of the Inrithi noblemen dared speak this intimation, they felt it—all of them. Cnaiür could see it in the cast of their eyes, hear it in the timbre of their voices: the first shadows of awe.
The wonder that made men small.
Cnaiür knew these secretive passions all too well. To watch Kellhus ply these men was to witness the shameful record of his own undoing at the hands of Moënghus. Sometimes the urge to cry out in warning almost overpowered him. Sometimes Kellhus seemed such an abomination that the gulf between Scylvendi and Inrithi threatened to disappear—particularly where Proyas was concerned. Moënghus had preyed upon the same vulnerabilities, the same conceits … If Cnaiür shared these things with these men, how different could he be?
Sometimes crimes seemed crimes, no matter how ludicrous the victim.
But only sometimes. For the most part Cnaiür merely watched with a numb kind of incredulity. He no longer heard Kellhus speak so much as observed him cut and carve, whittle and hew, as though the man had somehow shattered the glass of language and fashioned knives from the pieces. This word to anger so that word might open. This look to embarrass so that smile might reassure. This insight to remind so that truth might injure, heal, or astonish.
How easy it must have been for Moënghus! One stripling lad. One chieftain’s wife.
Images, stark and dry, of the Steppe assailed him. The other women tearing at his mother’s hair, clawing at her face, clubbing her with rocks, stabbing her with sticks. Mother! A bawling infant hoisted from her yaksh, tossed into the all-cleansing fire—his blond-haired half-brother. The stone faces of the men turning away from his look …
How could he let it happen again? How could he stand by and watch? How could—
Still crouching next to Serwë, Cnaiür looked down, shocked to see that he’d been stabbing the ground with his knife. The bone-white reeds of the mat were snapped and severed about a small pit of black.
He shook his black mane, breathed as though punishing air. Always these thoughts—always!
Remorse? For outlanders? Concern for mewling peacocks? Especially Proyas!
“So long as what comes before remains shrouded,” Kellhus had said on their trek across the Jiünati Steppe, “so long as men are already deceived, what does it matter?” And what did it matter, making fools of fools? What mattered was whether the man made a fool of him; this—this!—was the sharp edge upon which his every thought should bleed. Did the Dûnyain speak true? Was he truly his father’s assassin?
I walk with the whirlwind!
He could never forget. He had only his hatred to preserve him.
And Serwë?
The voices from outside had trailed into silence. He could hear that weeping fool of a sorcerer clearing his nose outside. Then Kellhus pressed through the flap into the dim interior. His eyes flashed from Serwë to the knife to Cnaiür’s face.
“You heard,” he said in flawless Scylvendi. Even after all this time, hearing him speak thus made Cnaiür’s skin prickle.
“This is a camp of war,” he replied. “Many heard.”
“No, they slept.”
Cnaiür knew the futility of debate—he knew the Dûnyain—so he said nothing, rooted through his scattered belongings for his breeches.
Serwë complained and kicked at her blankets.
“Do you recall that first time we spoke in your yaksh?” Kellhus asked.
“Of course,” Cnaiür replied, pulling on his breeches. “I curse that day with every waking breath.”
“That witch stone you threw to me …”
“You mean my father’s Chorae?”
“Yes. Do you still have it?”
Cnaiür peered at him through the gloom. “But you know I do.”
“And how would I know?”
“You know.”
Cnaiür dressed in silence while Kellhus roused Serwë.
“But the horrnns,” she complained, burying her head. “I haven’t heard the horns …”
Cnaiür laughed abruptly, deep and full-throated.
“Treacherous work,” he said, now speaking in Sheyic.
“And what’s that?” Kellhus replied—more for Serwë’s benefit than anything, Cnaiür realized. The Dûnyain knew what he meant. He always knew.
“Killing sorcerers.”
Just then, the horns sounded.
Late Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Andiamine Heights
Xerius stood from the baths, walked up the marble steps to where the slaves waited with towels and scented oils. And for the first time in days he could feel it move him—harmony, the providence of auspicious deities … He looked up with mild surprise when the Empress, his mother, appeared from the dark recesses of the chamber.
“Tell me Mother,” he said without looking at her extravagant figure, “do you simply happen upon me at inopportune moments?” He turned to her as the slaves gently towelled his groin. “Or is this too something you measure?”
The Empress bowed her head slightly, as though she were Shriah, an equal. “I’ve brought you a gift, Xerius,” she said, gesturing to the dark-haired girl at her side. With a flourish, her eunuch, the giant Pisulathas, opened the girl’s robe and drew it away. Beneath, she was as white-skinned as a Galeoth—as naked as the Emperor, and almost as splendid.
Gifts from Mother—they underscored the treachery of gifts from those who were not one’s tributaries. Such gifts weren’t gifts at all, in fact. Such gifts always demanded exchange.
Xerius couldn’t remember when Istriya had started bringing these men and women to him—these surrogates. She had the eye of a
whore, his mother—he would grant her that. She knew, unerringly, what would please him. “You are a venal witch, Mother,” he said, admiring the terrified girl. “Was there ever a son so fortunate as me?”
But Istriya said only, “Skeaös is dead.”
Xerius looked at her momentarily, then returned his attention to the slaves, who’d begun rubbing him with oil. “Something is dead,” he replied, suppressing a shudder. “We know not what.”
“And why wasn’t I told?”
“I knew you’d hear of it soon enough.” He sat upon the chair brought for him, and his body slaves began combing his hair with more oils, filing his nails. “You always do,” he added.
“The Cishaurim,” Istriya said after a pause.
“But of course.”
“Then they know. The Cishaurim know of your plans.”
“It’s of little consequence. They knew already.”
“Have you become such a vulgar fool, Xerius? I thought that after this you would be ready to reconsider.”
“Reconsider what, Mother?”
“This mad pact you have made with the heathen. What else?”
“Silence, Mother.” Xerius glanced nervously at the girl, but it was plain that she didn’t speak a word of Sheyic. “This isn’t to be uttered aloud. Ever again. Do you hear me?”
“But the Cishaurim, Xerius! Think of it! At your bosom all these years, wearing the face of Skeaös! The Emperor’s only confidant! That vile tongue clucking poison for counsel. All these years, Xerius! Sharing the hearth of your ambitions with an obscenity!”
Xerius had thought of this—had been able to think of little else these past days. At night he dreamed of faces—faces like fists. Of Gaenkelti, who had died so … absurdly.
And then there was the question, the question that struck with such force it never failed to jar him from the tedium of his routines.
Are there others? Others like it …
“You lecture the educated, Mother. You know that in all things there’s a balance to be struck. An exchange of vulnerabilities for advantages. You taught me this.”
But the Empress didn’t relent. The old bitch never relented.