The Great Ordeal: Book Three (The Aspect-Emperor Trilogy)

by R. Scott Bakker

  Curse Likaro! Curse him!

  The Harem, the desert warriors now called their Padirajah’s pavilion, and to Malowebi and his alchemist’s nose, it reeked of one, the air close—even sodden—with too many exhalations, too much sweat and seed. Psatma Nannaferi was in attendance, of course: Royal Concubines were confined by Fanim law and Kianene custom. She sat both too near and too distant, as always, wearing far too much and nowhere near enough—as always. Her mood, which ordinarily swung between stony and labile, was every bit as exultant as his was troubled. For the first time she wore her voluminous hair bound back, lending a severe air to her otherwise pouting fertility.

  The Mbimayu Schoolman did his best not to be snared by her vast black eyes.

  He appreciated the fare—fowl, cheese, bread, and pepper, that great gift of Nilnamesh—but as he had feared, the honour of breakfast with the Padirajah quickly degenerated into the honour of being bullied and berated yet again. Fanayal had recently abandoned any pretence of diplomacy, resorting instead to “more direct tactics,” as he generously referred to his tantrums. The Zeumi Emmisary studiously examined the cracked shell of bread on his plate before him while Fanayal leaned over him, ringed index finger stabbing heaven-ward, demanding High Holy Zeum send him ships no less!

  Psatma Nannaferi watched the two Men as she always watched, sitting with the lazy indiscretion of whores and maidens, those who know either too much or too little to care. A different brand of jubilation animated her look, one unencumbered by sneering.

  All the World, it seemed, was a Gift this day.

  “Who? Who does the Great Satakhan fear?” Fanayal was shouting.

  Malowebi continued inspecting his bread. The brighter Fanayal’s dread, the more he had begun answering his own questions—to the point of preempting his interlocutors altogether.

  “The Aspect-Emperor!”

  He spoke as a man perpetually wounded by the keen edge of his own reason.

  The Zeumi Emissary had suffered several such “negotiations” now, where he need only await the Padirajah to hear his reply.

  “And here we stand—here! Before the gates of his Capital! All we need are ships, man! Ships! And the Satakhan, nay, mighty Zeum itself, never need fear again!”

  “Even if I could secure such a thing,” Malowebi finally cried in retort, “it would take months fo—”

  The ground became as planks on water.

  Fanayal toppled into his lap even as he tipped backward—together they crashed into a scrambling heap.

  All was rocking madness, and yet Psatma Nannaferi somehow stood. “Yessss!” she cried across the nape of the thunder. “Your children hear you, Mother!”

  The pavilion swayed on a groaning arc. The menagerie of plundered furnishings careened and wagged like Shakers. Delicate things chirped for breaking.

  The Yatwerian witch howled with libidinal laughter. “Yes! Yessss!”

  Then it was over, replaced with ground eerie for being inert.

  The Padirajah wasted no courtesy extricating himself from the Zeumi sorcerer. A racket chorus swelled outside—hundreds of Men calling out, shouting …

  Fanayal was on his feet and leaping through the flaps of the Harem before Malowebi had found so much as his hands and knees. The Emissary was several heartbeats collecting himself, such was the tangle of his Erzû gowns. He glimpsed Nannaferi pirouetting into the shambles of the pavilion interior …

  “The sights!” she called out to him from the wrecked gloom. “The sights you shall seeeeeee!”

  He fled her chortling ecstasy, barged blinking and squinting into direct sunlight. A baffled assembly of Fanim warriors clotted the avenue.

  “Silence!” Fanayal was crying, pushing men aside and turning his ear to the northern hillcrests. He threw a hand out. “Silence!” He turned to the Kianene nearest him, a Grandee named Omirji.

  “Do you hear that?”

  He glanced toward Malowebi, then raked his manic gaze across the others.

  “What are they shouting? What—?”

  Creation itself seemed to catch its breath for listening. Malowebi could hear the faraway chorus, but his ears still rang for the quaking—not to mention the madness of the Cultic witch.

  “The walls …” a nameless young warrior gasped, his frown of concentration blooming into innocent wonder. “They say the walls have fallen!”

  Malowebi watched the long-suffering son of Kascamandri comprehend these words, saw his face crack, wrung by passions greater than most any soul could bear …

  Saw the soundless scream …

  “The God!” he croaked upon a shudder. “The Solitary God!”

  And it was too naked, it seemed, too wet with humanity, to be anything but holy.

  The whoops and cheers from the hillcrest filled the reverent hollow. Scimitars flashed in the morning glare.

  “To arms!” the Padirajah bellowed with sudden savagery. “To arms! We become immortal this day!”

  And all the World fell to shouts and murderous rushing.

  His grin fierce, Fanayal turned to seize Malowebi’s shoulder, crying, “Keep your accursed ships, blasphemer!” before vanishing into the Harem to grab his arms and armour.

  The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas had dispensed with ceremony and bid General Iskaul to follow her out behind the Mantle, where they might assay the Capital he was charged to defend. By appearance, he was one of those grand Norsirai, his frame heroic, his hair long and greying blond, his jaw as thick as his accent. But his discourse belonged more to a scholar than a Galeoth warrior-thane: apparently Iskaul was famed in the Imperial Army both for his meticulous planning and his ability to keep tallies, to always know what resources he had at his disposition. He began with a barrage of questions.

  With the assistance of Phinersa and Saxillas, she was able to bear the brunt of his interrogation. But absent Theliopa, it took fairly every soul present to provide even partial answers. More than a few, such as the number of clotheslines in the city (for making horse snares, as it turned out), had elicited disbelieving laughter. The atmosphere was one of mirth and mutual respect when she finally cried out, “How is it my husband has never brought you here?”

  “Because I follow the Field, my Glory,” the man had said, “and the Field has come here.”

  The eloquence of the observation had drawn her gaze out over the hazy intricacies of Momemn. And she had felt that tickle, the way she so often did, of all the heights that lay between her and her people—

  The ground itself flapped like a blanket, again and again. Existence seized and shuddered.

  She alone did not fall.

  The Postern Terrace pitched like a ship’s deck in a tempest, only without the cushion of water.

  She stood … while the World about her fell shaking.

  The ground bucked, swatted the soles of her sandals, and yet she stood as if bound to some unseen rigging. For all his poise, General Iskaul was pitched like a toddler to his rump. Phinersa fell to his knees, then to his face for throwing out the arm he no longer possessed. Her Exalt-Captain, Saxillas, made as though to steady her, but simply floated past her toppling instead …

  Beyond, she saw whole swathes of her city slump into the smoke of their implosion; distant edifices, brute faces she knew so well—like the Tower of Ziek—slouched into haze and debris, disintegrating across slopes, exploding in streets. Afterward, she would scarcely believe that so much could be seen, that a disaster so monumental could be laid out for the count of a single mortal. She even saw the most catastrophic collapse of all, the one that betokened the far greater calamity to come …

  The monstrous, square shoulders of the Maumurine Gate crashing into plumes …

  The roaring trailed, and there was a lull in the shouting. The accursed throb of the Fanim drums had vanished. For an instant, the tinkle and clatter of belated debris was all that could be heard. She thought it the wind at first, so diffuse was the howl when it began. But it swelled in resonance, rose into something at once
raw and human and horrific …

  Her beloved city … Momemn …

  Momemn was screaming.

  “We must evacuate the palace,” Saxillas urged at her side. “My Glory!”

  She tossed him a vacant glance. It was a marvel that he could speak with the same ragged calm as before.

  “I survived a quaking like this as a child,” he pressed. “It came as waves, my Glory. We must get you someplace safe, lest the very Andiamine Heights fall!”

  She turned blinking, not so much to him as to her home, which loomed impossibly intact against the bright day, marred by nothing more than cracks and missing marble casements. She glanced across the Terrace, at the members of her household and her entourage, collecting themselves from the tilted ground. General Iskaul watched her intently. Phinersa was on one knee, the clipped sleeve of his tunic hanging loose, blood streaming from his nose. She looked back to her Exalt-Captain.

  “My Glory … Please!”

  The Gods, she realized numbly … The Hundred had done this!

  “Muster every man you can, Saxillas.”

  The Gods hunted her family.

  “We must get you to the Scuari Campus fir—”

  “If you care at all about my safety,” she snapped, “you will muster every man you can!”

  She raised a finger to the gouged view beyond the Postern Terrace. Dust fogged the whole of it, as if the city were a vast plate of shaken sand. The great domes of Xothei still stood in the nearer distance, as did a large number of other structures, some solitary, others clumped together, all surrounded by tracts of tossed ruin. She looked back to her peering Exalt-Captain, saw the caste-noble blanch for horror as he realized.

  “The blasted walls …” General Iskaul muttered from her side. Even as he peered, he scooped his hair and bound it into a warknot.

  “Our foe will soon be upon us!” the Blessed Empress yelled across the canted verandah. “We have rehearsed this—we all know our stations! Do what it is you must do! Be ruthless. Be cunning. And above all, be brave! Burn as a lantern for your Most Holy Aspect-Emperor! Be a beacon unto those who waver!”

  Her voice hung but a heartbeat upon the lamentations welling from below. Ruin, ruin, and more ruin.

  Kel …

  The towering Agmundrman fell to his knees. “My Glory …”

  “The Field is now yours, General,” she said. She looked to the battery of eyes upon her, some round with incredulity and horror, others already gathering the hatred they would need. “Kill the jackals!”

  The Men broke into a cheer that was both fierce and ragged, but someone began crying, “Look! Looook!” in a tone too urgent to be denied. And at the behest of someone she could not see, all eyes turned to the autumn-arid southern hills, some holding out hands to block the glare of the sun climbing high above the Meneanor. The first dark clots of horsemen had begun clotting across the rim …

  Hundreds merely, soon to become thousands.

  “Iskaul,” she said tightly.

  “Move!” the General bellowed in a voice trained to crack the din of any battle.

  Every soldier present made for the gloomy mouth of the Imperial Audience Hall, clearing a berth for Iskaul, who trotted to the lead. The other Apparati followed suit, a migration of shining hauberks and official gowns that left only some twelve slaves kneeling a double rank on the floor before her, their foreheads to the ceramic tile. Where was Thelli?

  She stood over them, waiting for the Terrace to clear. The rising sun threw her shadow across the backs of four slaves, three clothed, one bare.

  Then she let the second quake loose within her. She turned to her city, her eyes horrified rims, doubled over the sob that stomped her gut. Momemn! The brisk, Meneanorean wind had cleared the dust roiling about the black-basalt heights of Xothei and had exposed the smashed carapaces of the lesser temples surrounding. Thelli? What delayed her so? Gusts rolled back the veil from the farther tracts of destruction, revealing fins and heaps of ruin inked in morning shadow, landscapes as bewildered as the racket of battle—and as mad, given the senseless welter of buildings spared. Momemn!

  And now the enemy congealed on the south, a race of evil crows.

  Her mouth hung open on vomit that would not come. The wailing of distant thousands hung, eerie and impossible, feminine in pitch, resonating from the autumnal ribs of Heaven. Tens of thousands calling out, wailing.

  Momemn! The Imperial Home! Stronghold of the Anasûrimbor!

  Now a choir of lamentation. A smashed necropolis.

  A mass grave.

  Inner thunder batted her ears. She hissed spit between clenched teeth. There was no doubting anymore. Pretending was no longer possible. Earthquakes were the province of the Hundred. Everyone knew as much!

  She was being punished … It was no conceit to think this. Not anymore.

  The Gods did this. The Gods hunted her and her children. Hunted.

  The Blessed Empress fled after her ministers, crying out for her beloved.

  “It is a Sign!” Fanayal roared upon entering his pavilion. “A Miracle!”

  The Padirajah’s own Grandees drew up at the threshold of the Harem, for his tone told them he spoke to her. Malowebi nevertheless plunged after the ranting man. Again the gloom. Again the yawing musk, the reek of sheets earthen for the debris of coupling.

  Psatma Nannaferi, who sat upon her settee, regarded him without interest or surprise, then turned back to her captive captor.

  “Something has been written,” she scoffed, “just not for you!”

  “Emissary?” Fanayal asked, his tone as lethally blank as his expression.

  “I-I,” Malowebi stammered in response, “f-forgot my, ah …” He blinked and swallowed. “My bread.”

  “Tell him, blasphemer!” the Yatwerian witch cried on a chortle. “Tell him, one damned soul to another!”

  Malowebi knew nothing of what happened here, save that he was bound to it.

  “I … ah …”

  But Fanayal had lain his murderous glare upon the woman. “Not this! You will not take this!”

  She leaned forward one arm upon her knee, and spat upon his plundered carpets. “A finger cannot steal from a hand. I stand too close to the Mother to take what she gives.”

  The Padirajah wiped a hand across his face, blinked twice rapidly. “I know what I know,” he grated, moving to heave his chain coat and its rack from the jumble of luxurious wrack strewn throughout the gloom. “I know what needs be done!”

  “You know nothing!” Psatma Nannaferi cawed. “And you feel it as an abscess in your heart!”

  “Silence, madwoman!”

  “Tell him!” she implored the immobilized Mbimayu Schoolman. “Tell him what he knows!”

  “Silence! Silence!”

  Psatma Nannaferi fairly shrieked for laughter, an abomination of nubile allure and ancient rot.

  “Tell him that the Mother did this! That his miracle is the work of an idolized Demon!”

  “Fane names your ki—!”

  “Fane?” the woman cried, her incredulity so thoughtless, so complete, that feminine timbre simply blotted all other sound. “Fane is a fraud, what happens when philosophers fall to worshipping their fevers!”

  Fanayal loomed over her, his face riven, his moustaches hanging about visible teeth, his warrior’s hand raised. “The Sol-Solitary God!” he roared. “H-h-he wrought this!”

  “The Saw-Saw-Solitary God!” she mocked, her laughter scathing. “He-he-he!”

  “I will strike you!”

  “Then strike!” she cried, her voice raking a pitch that pimpled the Emissary’s skin, rumbled in his ears. “Strike and hear me sing! Let all your kinsmen know it was a God of the Tusk that lowed the walls of Momemn! The God of idolaters!” She was up and pacing now, possessed of a sparking fury, a visceral disgust of all the obscenities she had witnessed and endured. “What is it, again? What is the name you accursed wretches call Her? ‘Bulbous’? You call her Bulbous! Outrage! You, besmirched and as po
lluted as you are, a raper of wives and children! A murderous thief! Poisoned by the ambition of hate! You? You presume to call our Mother a Demon? An Unclean Spirit?”

  Her eyes round for outrage, she threw out her hands to all the overturned and wrecked plunder. A growl seemed to crackle through the earth beneath their feet.

  “She! Shall! Eat! You!”

  Fanayal held his palms out in warding, for her fury was plainly no longer a thing of this World.

  “Lies!” he cried against this bitter knowing. “This is mine! Mine!”

  Psatma Nannaferi cawed in another gale of infernal laughter. “Your miracle?” she howled and raved. “You think the Mother—Bulbous!—would wrack her own earth for the likes of you and your misbegotten race! Hunted in this life, damned in the next!”

  The ancient damsel stamped her foot and spat once again.

  “You are as insignificant as you are damned! Kindling for a far, far greater fire!”

  “Nooo!” the Padirajah cried. “I! Am! Destined!”

  “Yessss!” she crowed and stamped. “Destined to play the fool!”

  “Son of Kascamandri!” Malowebi boomed, seeing Fanayal seize the pommel of his scimitar. The Padirajah stood frozen in an apish hunch, wheezing through a grimace, his blade half drawn from its scabbard.

  “She goads you for a reason,” Malowebi said on a measured breath.

  “Bah!” Psatma Nannaferi barked with a contemptuous sneer. “We are already dead.”

  Words thrown like palace trash to beggars.

  Both Men froze upon a bolt of premonition, so horrifying was her tone. She had uttered what she said as though it no longer mattered …

  Because they were already dead?

  Malowebi spared one heartbeat to savage that treacherous wretch, Likaro. Then he swallowed and carefully asked, “What do you mean?”

  The Yatwerian witch regarded him with a serene expression and glistening eyes. “You will marvel at your blindness, Zeum,” she said. “How you will rail and regret.”

  The Mbimayu Schoolman felt it then, the Mother’s pity, the love for a gentle soul that had wandered violently astray. And he saw how all this time what he had taken as evil (even if he had never dared think as much) had only been Her dread fury … and the terror that was her Retribution.