And, perhaps more importantly, to bring him home.
From the beginning, Istriya had balked at the notion of betraying the Holy War. Conphas had forgiven her this, knowing that the old have eyes keen for encroaching shadows. What dusk does not bring thoughts of dawn? It was the intensity of her aversion that worried him. Claws such as hers did not grow brittle with age, as his uncle had apparently discovered.
The murder was entirely consistent with her character, of course. Canine avarice was ever the hook from which all her motives hung. She had assassinated Xerius, not for the sake of the Holy War, but for the sake of her precious soul. Conphas found himself snorting in derision whenever the thought struck him. One might sooner wash shit from shit than cleanse a soul so wicked!
But in the absence of facts to fix them, these thoughts and worries could do naught but cycle round and round, quickened by the mad stakes and the perverse unreality of it all. I’m Emperor, he would think. Emperor! But as things stood, he was a prisoner of his ignorance—far more so than of the Scylvendi. And with his Saik Caller, Darastius, dead, there was nothing to be done about it. Save wait.
He found the old man prostrate on the floor beneath the impromptu dais and chair Sompas had arranged for him. The Scylvendi had installed him and his officers in a burnt-brick manse near the centre of Joktha—an old Nansur exchange house, as luck would have it—and though technically he was free to wander where he might, a watch had been set on all the building’s entrances. Fortunately for them, the Conriyans were a civilized people, sharing a civilized appreciation for bribes.
Conphas took his place on the dais, stared across what had once been a moneychanger’s floor. In the gloom, bland mosaics wandered across the walls, conjuring a peculiar sense of home. An acrid edge of smoke plagued his every breath; thanks to the Scylvendi, they had been reduced to burning furnishings. Sompas stood discreetly in the same outer gloom as the slaves. Between four glowering braziers, the man lay face-first on a gold and purple prayer mat—pillaged from some tabernacle, Conphas supposed. Despite the thousand questions that raced through his soul, he gazed at him in silence for a long moment, noted the shine of his pate through strings of white hair.
Finally he said, “I take it you’ve heard as well.”
Of course, the man said nothing. Clever as he was, Cememketri was a savant when it came to the finer points of Court etiquette. According to ancient custom, the Emperor was not to be addressed without explicit consent. Few Emperors bothered with the Antique Protocol, as it was called, but now, with Xerius dead, ancient precedent was all that remained. The crossbow had been fired, now everything had to be reset.
“You have my leave to rise,” Conphas said. “I hereby rescind the Antique Protocol. You may look me in the eye whenever you wish, Grandmaster.”
Two milk-white slaves, Galeoth or Cepaloran, ducked in from the dark to raise the man by his elbows. Conphas was vaguely shocked: the past months had been hard on the old fool. Hopefully he had the strength Conphas required.
“Emperor,” the white-haired sorcerer murmured while the slaves brushed the wrinkles from his black silk gown. “God-of-Men.”
There it was … His new name.
“So tell me, Grandmaster, what does the Imperial Saik make of these events?”
Cememketri studied him in the narrow way that, Conphas knew, had always unnerved his uncle. But not me.
“We’ve waited long,” the frail Schoolman said, “for one who might truly wield us … for an Emperor.”
Conphas grinned. Cememketri was an able man, and able men chafed under the rule of ingrates. The man could boast no ancestor scroll—but then sorcerers rarely could. He was Shiropti, a descendant of those Shigeki who had fled following the Imperial Army’s disastrous defeat at Huparna centuries before. The fact that he had risen to the rank of Grandmaster despite these defects—Shiropti were widely seen as thieves and usurers—spoke to his ability.
But could he be trusted?
Of all the Schools, only the Imperial Saik answered to mundane powers, only they remained an organ of their state. Since Xerius believed all men as vain and treacherous as himself, he simply assumed they secretly resented their servitude, when in reality it had been his distrust they despised. The Imperial Saik, Conphas knew, revered their traditions. They took deep pride in the fact that they alone honoured the old Compactorium, the ancient indenture that had bound all the Schools to Cenei and her Aspect-Emperors in Near Antiquity. The Saik alone had kept this venerable faith. They thought the others, especially the Scarlet Spires, little more than usurpers, reckless arrogates whose greed threatened the very existence of the Few.
All men recited self-aggrandizing stories, words of ascendancy and exception, to balm the inevitable indignities of fact. An emperor need only repeat those stories to command the hearts of men. But this axiom had always escaped Xerius. He was too bent on hearing his own story repeated to learn, let alone speak, the flatteries that moved other men.
“I assure you, Cememketri, the Imperial Saik will be wielded, and with all the respect and consideration accorded by the Compactorium. You alone have prevailed over what is base and wanton. You alone have kept faith with the glory of your past.”
Something akin to triumph brightened the man’s mien. “You honour us, God-of-Men.”
“Is all ready?”
“Very nearly so, God-of-Men.”
Conphas nodded and exhaled. He reminded himself to be methodical, disciplined. “Has Sompas told you of Darastius?”
“Darastius and I shared the same Compass in Momemn, so I learned that he’d fallen silent while in transit. For a time I feared the worst, God-of-Men. It brings me immeasurable relief to find you—and your designs—intact.”
Caller and Compass, the two poles of every sorcerous communication. The Compass was the anchor, the Schoolman who slept in the place known by the Caller, who entered his dreams bearing messages. This, Conphas knew, was but one of many reasons his uncle had harboured such suspicion of the Saik: so many of the Empire’s communications passed through them. He who controlled the messenger controlled the message as well. Which reminded him …
“You know of the Scarlet Schoolman assigned to the Scylvendi? Saurnemmi, his name is. No word of what happens here can reach the Holy War.” He let his gaze communicate the stakes.
Cememketri’s eyes had grown porcine with age, but they were sharp still. “If you deliver him alive, God-of-Men, we can ensure that the Scarlet fools will think all is well in Joktha. We need only incapacitate him before his assigned contact time—our Compulsions will do the rest. He will tell his handlers whatever you wish. And Darastius will be amply avenged, I assure you.”
Conphas nodded, realizing for the first time that it was Imperial favour he dispensed now. He hesitated, only for a heartbeat, but it was enough.
“You wish to know what happened,” Cememketri said. “How your uncle fell …” He stooped for a moment, then drew upright in what seemed a breath of resolution. “I know only what my Compass has told me. Even so, there’s much we must discuss, God-of-Men.”
“I imagine there is,” Conphas said, waving with indulgent impatience. “But the near before the far, Grandmaster, the near before the far. We have a Scylvendi to break …” He stared at the Schoolman with bland humour. “And a Holy War to annihilate.”
CHAPTER SIX
XERASH
Of course we make crutches of one another. Why else would we crawl when we lose our lovers?
—ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN
History. Logic. Arithmetic. These all should be taught by slaves.
—ANONYMOUS, THE NOBLE HOUSE
Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Xerash
Kellhus’s tactics and the Enathpanean terrain were such that Achamian had few opportunities to appreciate the Holy War’s diminished size. Despite the spoils of their victory on the Tertae Plains, Kellhus commanded that they forage as they go, forcing the Holy War to disperse across the rugged countryside. F
rom what Achamian could glean from those conversations he cared to overhear, the Fanim in no way resisted their advance. Aside from hiding their daughters and what grain and livestock remained to them, all the villages and towns of eastern Enathpaneah capitulated.
The Men of the Tusk, with their plundered apparel and sun-bitten faces, looked far more Fanim than Inrithi. Aside from their shields and banners, only their weapons and armour distinguished them. Gone were the long war-skirts of the Conriyans, the woollen surcoats of the Galeoth, and the waist-bound mantles of the Ainoni. Almost without exception, they wore the many-coloured khalats of their enemy. They rode his sleek horses. They drank his wine from his vessels. They slept in his tents and bedded his daughters.
They had been transformed, and in ways that struck far deeper than mere accoutrements. The men Achamian recalled, the Inrithi who’d marched through the Southron Gates, were but the ancestors of the men he saw now. Just as he could no longer recognize the sorcerer who’d wandered into the Sareotic Library, they could no longer recognize the warriors who’d marched singing into the Carathay Desert. Those other men had become strangers. They might as well have brandished weapons of bronze.
The God had culled the Men of the Tusk. Over battlefield and desert, through famine and pestilence, He had sifted them like sand through His fingers. Only the strongest or the most fortunate survived. The Ainoni had a saying: breaking enemies, not bread, made brothers. But being broken, Achamian realized, was more potent still. Something new had arisen from the forge of their collective suffering, something hard and something sharp. Something Kellhus had simply lifted from the anvil.
They’re his, Achamian would often think, watching their grim ranks file across ridge and hillside. All of them. So much so that if Kellhus were to die …
With rare exceptions, Achamian spent every moment either directly attached to Kellhus in the Sacral Retinue or in his vicinity within the canvas warrens of the Umbilica, as the Inrithi had started calling their Prophet’s stolen pavilion. Until they learned something specific to the contrary, they could only assume that the Consult would eventually hazard some kind of assassination attempt. Kellhus’s ascendancy threatened far more than it had already exacted.
With the Holy War afield, the opportunities to interrogate the two captive skin-spies became sporadic at best. The abominations travelled under Spires guard with the baggage, each in a covered wain, trussed upright in a network of hanging iron shackles. Achamian now participated in all the interrogations, plying the creatures with those few Gnostic Cants of Compulsion he knew—to no avail. The various torments Kellhus devised were likewise ineffective, though for hours afterward Achamian could scarce blink without glimpsing these sessions. The things convulsing in the fecal darkness, screaming and squealing, their voices fractured into bestial choruses. Then, through throats of gravel and mud, laughing. “Chigraaaaa … Woe comes, Chigraaaaa …”
Achamian couldn’t decide what unnerved him more: their many-fingered faces clenching and unclenching, or the hallowed calm with which Kellhus regarded them. Never, not even in his Dreams of the First Apocalypse, had he witnessed such extremes of good and evil. Never had he felt more certain.
Achamian also attended Kellhus’s every audience with the Scarlet Spires—for the predictable reasons. They struck him as strange, bumbling affairs. Eleäzaras, it was obvious, had taken to drink, which had the effect of rendering his manner stiff and awkward—a startling contrast to the loquacious contempt that had so characterized him at Momemn. Gone were the despotic self-assurance, the measuring looks, the demonstrations of jnanic expertise. Now he seemed little more than a juvenile come to realize the fatal enormity of his boasts. At long last the Holy War marched on Shimeh, the stronghold of the Cishaurim. There would be no more begging out of battle. Soon the Scarlet Spires would close with their mortal foe, and their Grandmaster, Hanamanu Eleäzaras, was terrified … of making mistakes, of burning in Cishaurim fire, of destroying his storied School.
Against all reason, Achamian actually pitied the man, the way those of hale constitution might pity those of weak in times of sickness. There was no accounting for it. The temper of every man in the Holy War had been tested. Some survived stronger. Some survived broken. Some survived bent. And all of them knew who was who, and which was which.
At no time did the chanv addict, Iyokus, attend any of these meetings, nor was he mentioned—small mercies for which Achamian was thankful. As much as he hated the man, as much as he had wanted to kill him that night in the Apple Garden, he could do no more than exact a fraction of what he was owed. When the Hundred Pillars had taken the knife to his red-irised eyes, Iyokus had suddenly seemed a hapless stranger … an innocent . The past became smoke, and retribution an act of abominable conceit. Who was he to pass final judgement? Of all the acts committed by men, only murder was absolute.
Had it not been for Xinemus, Achamian doubted he would have done anything at all.
The practical concerns of the march monopolized Kellhus’s days. A continuous train of Inrithi caste-nobles conferred with him, bearing intelligence of the lands ahead, disputes that required resolution, and, more and more once the Holy War crossed the frontier into Xerash, counsel on matters of war.
Achamian typically found himself floating in and out of the various parties that formed about Kellhus. Sometimes, out of curiosity, he would pay heed to the issues discussed. Since he often remained while others arrived and departed, he was able to witness, time and again, the prodigious depths of Kellhus’s intellect. He would listen to him recite, word for word, messages and admonitions that had been delivered days previously. There was not a man whose name he failed to recollect, not a detail that he missed, even when it came to mundane matters of supply. Achamian lost count of the times he turned to others—particularly Kellhus’s Seneschal-Secretary, Gayamakri—in disbelief. They would grin and shake their heads, their brows pinned high in joy and awe. Their astonishment became their confirmation. “What have we done,” the man once said to him, “to deserve such wonder?”
Aside from discussions involving Great Names, Achamian soon lost interest in these small dramas. His thoughts would wander much as they had before, when he’d marched with the livestock and baggage. The arriving caste-nobles would still acknowledge him, but he would quickly fade into the fluid backdrop that constituted the Sacral Retinue.
In spite of his lack of interest, the absurd gravity of his charge was not lost upon Achamian. Sometimes, during moments of boredom, an odd sense of detachment would overcome him as he watched Kellhus. The surreal glamour would fall away and the Warrior-Prophet would seem as frail as the warlike men about him—and far more lonely. Achamian would go rigid with terror, understanding that Kellhus, no matter how godlike he seemed, was in fact mortal. He was a man. Was this not the lesson of the Circumfixion? And if something were to happen, nothing would matter, not even his love for Esmenet.
A strange zeal would creep through his limbs then, one utterly unlike the nightmare-born fervour of Mandate Schoolmen. A fanaticism of person.
To be devoted to a cause alone was to possess momentum without direction or destination. For so long, wandering had been his twilight mission, beaten forward by his dreams, leading his mule down road and track, and never, not once, arriving. But with Kellhus all this had changed. This was what he could not explain to Nautzera: that Kellhus was the incarnation of the abstractions that gave their School purpose. In this one man lay the future of all mankind. He was their only bulwark against the End of Ends.
The No-God.
Several times now, Achamian thought he had glimpsed golden haloes about Kellhus’s hands. He found himself envying those, such as Proyas, who claimed to see them all the time. And he realized that he would gladly die for Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He would begrudge no sacrifice, despite his unrequited hate.
To his dismay, however, Achamian found it increasingly difficult to sustain these feelings across the seasons of the day. His thoughts began wandering, so mu
ch so that he sometimes doubted his ability to protect Kellhus should the Consult attack. He would shake his head, eye the distances with a hawkish scowl. He would try to scrutinize every petitioner who approached Kellhus.
As always, Esmenet remained his greatest distraction.
Some days she rode, and though uncertain at first, she’d swiftly learned both beast and saddle. Even attached to Kellhus’s immediate entourage at the fore of the Sacral Retinue, Achamian saw her regularly. Sometimes he would wax melancholy, silent while Kellhus and his caste-noble commanders droned in the background. Sometimes he would simply wonder—at the mere sight of her, at her acts of mannish boldness, at the way she wielded unquestioned authority over those in her train. Everything about her would seem brisk and decisive. She would seem a stranger.
Usually, however, Esmenet travelled in what others began to call the Black Palanquin, a luxurious litter borne on the backs of some sixteen Kianene slaves. A scribe would ride with her, and throughout the day Achamian saw men on horseback come to confer with her on inscrutable matters. He saw her physically only when Kellhus rode alongside the Palanquin, bearing questions or instructions. Through intervening limbs and torsos, he would glimpse her painted lips beneath the curve of bundled sheers, or her forearm across a raised knee, her fingers hanging from a relaxed wrist. The urge to crane his neck, or even to call out her name, often struck him with the force of pain. He almost never saw her eyes.
Most of their encounters occurred after the march, in the moat of activity that encircled the Umbilica. As these meetings were public, she typically afforded him little more than a courteous nod. Achamian had thought her cruel at first, suspecting that she, like so many, nursed grudges to better cultivate hate. What better way to eradicate the remains of their love? But after a time he realized she behaved this way for his sake as much as for hers. Everyone knew they’d been lovers before Kellhus had taken her. Though no one dared mention it, he saw it in their looks from time to time—especially with Proyas. A sudden consciousness of another’s shame. A sudden pity.
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