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

  By the time the first Mandati and Vokalati return, only Umrapathur and his household survive upon Irsûlor’s summit. Saccarees joins with Carindûsû in burning the endless Sranc surging from all points upon Umrapathur’s shorn stronghold. But Carindûsû goes mad for shame and grief, and sorcerous battle breaks out between the Vokalati and the Mandate. The summit is overrun, and King Umrapathur dies defiled. Saccarees slays Carindûsû, and the surviving sorcerers of the Vokalati and the Mandate flee Irsûlor.

  Even as this catastrophe unfolds in Sheneor, Sorweel awakens in Kûniüri. Unable to find either Serwa or Moënghus, he follows what are at first faint cries on the wind. He finds them, brother and sister, naked and prone upon the forest floor, locked in carnal embrace. He abuses himself for the sight. Even as his seed drops hot across his fist, the Imperial siblings spy him, and Sorweel is caught in the commission of a shame unlike any he has suffered. He flees their derision, rages for hatred and humiliation.

  Following the disaster at Irsûlor, the Holy Aspect-Emperor reunites the Great Ordeal, and marches to the holy heights of Swaranûl. Upon its summit, he tells the mourning Believer-Kings their supplies have been exhausted, and that, henceforth, they have no choice but to begin eating Sranc.

  Esmenet

  Second Negotiant Malowebi, a Mbimayu Schoolman become diplomat, has been sent by the Great Satakhan of High Holy Zeum to assess Fanayal and his Fanim army—all that remains of the once mighty Kianene Empire—as potential allies in the struggle against Anasûrimbor Kellhus. Despite all the Bandit Padirajah’s boasts, the only thing about Fanayal that manages to impress Malowebi is the existence of Meppa, the Last Cishaurim.

  Young Kelmomas, meanwhile, observes his mother’s struggles in the Imperial Synod. A messenger arrives bearing dire tidings from Shigek: news that Fanayal has invaded the Sempis River valley, and has already overthrown the walls of Iothiah. Shaken, Esmenet dissolves the Synod and takes Kelmomas to her apartments, where she reveals the entrance to the network of secret passages that riddle the whole of the Andiamine Heights. Their palace has hollow bones. In the event of any crisis, she tells him, he is to await her in these tunnels.

  The following day Kelmomas overhears his mother asking Theliopa about Maithanet. Esmenet has come to distrust her brother-in-law, and wants to know how she could possibly sound his true intentions. Theliopa is unsure, but she knows that aside from their father the only soul who could do such a thing is Inrilatas, Kelmomas’s mad brother. Of all the Imperial siblings, none possesses more of Father’s strength than Inrilatas, or less ability to manage it. For years now he has been imprisoned in his room at the summit of the Andiamine Heights.

  Esmenet decides to use him to test the loyalty of her husband’s brother, the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples. Kelmomas decides to talk to Inrilatas first. At first he tries to convince the chained adolescent that he must kill their Uncle, but Inrilatas can see through him. He can even see the soul of Samarmas within him, whispering warnings! Kelmomas retreats in dismay, but not without leaving a small file behind him …

  Malowebi, meanwhile, tours the savaged streets of Iothiah with Fanayal, as repulsed by the brutality of the Fanim as he is amazed the great and ancient city was taken at all. He is impressed: by Fanayal’s martial instincts and acumen, by the ferocity of his warriors, and by the awesome power of Meppa, the Last Cishaurim. But it is the weakness of the New Empire that impresses him most of all. The Aspect-Emperor, he realizes, has left it all but defenceless.

  Esmenet visits Inrilatas, asks him if he would sound the truth of his uncle’s heart. Though she is usually immune to his wiles, he manages to slip past her defences, speak truths that make her heart roil. But he agrees to do what she wishes, to question Maithanet, but only so long as Kelmomas alone is in attendance.

  In Iothiah, Malowebi watches as Fanayal reviews the captives and apportions them among his Grandees. Psatma Nannaferi, the Mother-Supreme of the Yatwerian Cult, is dragged before the Bandit Padirajah. Her youthful beauty transfixes all present, yet she speaks and carries herself as an old crone. Where other captives had wept and begged, she stands tall and laughs, declaring that all of Fanayal’s accomplishments are due to the Dread Mother of Birth. Meppa intercedes, and in the course of their exchange Malowebi realizes that Yatwer indeed inhabits her, that the Hundred Gods truly ruled these events. The Fanim are no more than puppets, Nannaferi declares, props to prepare the way for the White-Luck Warrior.

  Witless to the peril, beguiled by her beauty, Fanayal takes her as his own portion.

  Kelmomas begins exploring the shadow palace that lies in the bones of the Andiamine Heights. Esmenet, meanwhile, enters into negotiations with Maithanet possessing a greater confidence in her own abilities. She insists that he submit to Inrilatas’s questioning as a condition of their future cooperation. When Maithanet asks her how she came by her suspicions, she merely replies, “Because you are Dûnyain.” Maithanet agrees to the interrogation, but reminds her, as Theliopa already has, that the boy’s madness renders any determination he might make moot.

  As per Inrilatas’s instructions, Maithanet and Kelmomas alone enter his chamber. Maithanet surprises the two brothers by jamming the door behind them, locking all three of them together. The mad adolescent immediately begins by asking the Holy Shriah whether he intends to murder their mother. Maithanet denies this, repeatedly, but Inrilatas’s questions morph, begin turning on ever more subtle observations. “Uncle Holy”, as the Imperial siblings refer to him, admits that he has always been concerned by the way their father has, over the years, allowed his concern for Esmenet to compromise the Shortest Path …

  The way Kellhus has allowed love to cloud the Thousandfold Thought.

  Maithanet is unimpressed, pointing out that whatever Inrilatas can see, his father has already seen. He declares the interrogation yet another example of Esmenet’s failing reason. “Mother?” Inrilatas asks, surprising both his brother and uncle. “You think Mother arranged this?”

  Kelmomas stands horrified as Inrilatas reveals his crimes to their uncle, how he first murdered Samarmas and then Sharacinth. Why would his brother betray him this way? Maithanet, genuinely surprised, turns to the eight-year-old, demanding to know what he has done. This is when Inrilatas strikes, whipping his chains about his uncle’s throat, strangling him. But Maithanet employs a blade concealed upon his elbow to stab the adolescent, killing him.

  The door is battered down, and Esmenet enters to find her son dead. Kelmomas accuses Maithanet of murdering Inrilatas after he revealed his intent to usurp her. Uncle Holy storms from the palace, which has been thrown into uproar.

  Later that night, Esmenet calls Lord Sankas to her chambers, asks him to contract an assassin.

  So she finds herself stealing through the streets of Momemn in disguise several days following. Imhailas, Exalt-Captain of the Eothic Guard, leads her to a derelict tenement in a district not unlike the one she had lived in during her days as a prostitute. She meets with the Narindar alone in his room to spare any of her servants the threat of damnation, not knowing that the assassin Sankas had contracted in truth lies murdered underneath the bed—not knowing that she parlays with the White-Luck Warrior.

  Even as the man agrees to murder Maithanet, horns ring out over the city … battlehorns. She races back to the palace in terror, only to discover that her home has been taken by the Shrial Knights. Maithanet has finally struck. Imhailas has to drag her away, such is her terror for Kelmomas and Theliopa. The Exalt-Captain takes her to Naree, a Nilnameshi prostitute who has become his lover, and demands that she shelter the Empress.

  And so Esmenet finds herself a fugitive in the very Empire she ruled, reliving her own past. Naree wants no part in the affair, but harbours the Empress for the love she bears Imhailas. For weeks Esmenet hides thus, fretting for her surviving children, raging for impotence, and bearing sundry indignities at the hands of her reluctant host. Imhailas is her sole source of information regarding the outside world, and his tidings nev
er fail to dismay her. No matter how hard he pressures her, she refuses to flee her city.

  Kelmomas witnesses the violent fall of the Andiamine Heights to the Shrial Knights through the innumerable spy-holes his father has installed throughout the palace. He takes the hidden network of passages as his new home, mourns the loss of his mother almost as much as the loss of his secret. As his hunger gets the better of him, he begins to ambush solitary Knights, dragging them into his hidden lair, devouring them until they spoil.

  Malowebi, meanwhile, confers via sorcerous dreams with the Satakhan of High Holy Zeum on the matter of Fanayal, Meppa, and the manifest weakness of the New Empire. The Mbimayu emissary counsels caution: the fact that Kellhus has emptied the Imperial larder in his mad quest to destroy Golgotterath suggests that he genuinely believes the Second Apocalypse is upon them. Nganka’kull, however, sees opportunity, commands Malowebi to promise the support of Zeum should Fanayal succeed in his daring plan.

  Imhailas returns to Naree’s room after a long sojourn bearing news that no one knows what has come of Kelmomas. Esmenet fairly swoons, but her Exalt-Captain catches her, once again begs her to flee the city and raise an army from elsewhere across the Three Seas. But Esmenet suddenly recalls the secrets of her palace home. So long as Kelmomas remains hiding in the Andiamine Heights, there is no way she can leave Momemn. Imhailas relents, obviously exasperated.

  Naree makes love to Imhailas that night—to spite her, Esmenet realizes. The indignity of listening combined with her terror for her son is too much, and she begins weeping. The Gods do war against her! At that moment the door is kicked open and Shrial Knights surge into the room. Esmenet is thrust to her knees, watches horrified as Imhailas is beaten to death before her. A Collegian throws five gold kellics at the shrieking Naree, then leaves one silver kellic as well, as a memento, he says, of the Empress she betrayed.

  Maithanet’s own bodyguard, the Inchausti, march Esmenet through the early morning streets to the Temple of Xothei. The frightful passage quickly transforms into a humiliating parade as more and more of Momemn awakens to word of the Empress’s capture. Riot breaks out by the time they finally gain the great three-domed Temple’s gate.

  In chains, she is led into the gloom of the interior, to the central dais with its golden idols of the Ten, where she finds Maithanet awaiting her. He demands to know why she had Inrilatas try to assassinate him, and when she replies that she had nothing to do with it, he realizes that she speaks true. To Esmenet’s astonishment, he falls to his knees and begs her forgiveness. Maithanet confesses that Kellhus’s design defeats him as much as her, and that he now thinks that Kellhus had known all along that his Empire would collapse in his absence, and so had abandoned them to their own fates. He calls out to the surrounding lords and ministers, announcing the reconciliation of the Tusk and the Mantle. With wonder Esmenet watches dozens of Shrial and Imperial Apparati stride from the gloom toward her. The Shriah hears a noise, turns toward the idols. Standing in the one place overlooked, the White-Luck Warrior plunges a knife into his breast.

  Uproar seizes the assembly, but Esmenet seizes them, decrying Maithanet as a traitor and a heretic—the murderer of the Aspect-Emperor’s son. She speaks oil as Kellhus had taught her, saying not what was true, but what most needed to be believed. She is the only remaining link to their holy Warrior-Prophet, so when she screams at them to kneel, those assembled comply.

  They all hear it in the ensuing silence, the throb of Fanim war-drums, and Esmenet realizes …

  Fanayal attacks Momemn.

  Prologue: Momemn

  And naught was known or unknown, and there was no hunger.

  All was One in silence, and it was as Death.

  Then the Word was spoken, and One became Many.

  Doing was struck from the hip of Being.

  And the Solitary God said, “Let there be Deceit.

  Let there be Desire.”

  —The Book of Fane

  Late Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Momemn

  For all the tumult of the Unification Wars, for all the rigours of motherhood and imperial station, Anasûrimbor Esmenet had never ceased to read. Of all the palaces her divine husband had seized for her comfort, not one had wanted for material. She had marvelled at the bleak beauty of Sirro in the arid shade of Nenciphon, dozed with the labourious precision of Casidas in the swelter of Invishi, scowled at the profundities of Memgowa in the chill of Oswenta. Smoke often plumed the horizon. Her husband’s Holy Circumfix obscured walls, festooned shields, pinched naked throats. His children would watch her with His omnivorous eyes. The slaves would wash and scrub away the blood, paint, and plaster over the soot. And whenever opportunity afforded, she devoured what she could, the great classics of Early Cenei, the polyglot masterpieces of the Late Ceneian Empire. She smiled at the rollicking lays of Galeoth, sighed for the love poetry of Kian, bristled at the race chants of Ce Tydonn.

  But for all the wisdom and diversion these forms possessed, they hung in the aether of fancy. Only history, she discovered, possessed a nature that answered her own. To read history was to read about herself in ways both concrete—Near Antique accounts of the Imperial Ceneian Court often pimpled her skin, so uncanny were the resemblances—and abstract. Every history and chronicle she consumed answered to the same compulsions, the same crimes, same hurts, same jealousies and disasters. The names were different, as were the nations, languages, and ages, and yet the same lessons remained, perpetually unlearned. It was almost musical in a sense, variations playing against ruinous refrains, souls and empires plucked like the strings of a lute. The peril of pride. The contradiction of trust. The necessity of cruelty.

  And over time, one lesson in particular came to haunt her, a moral that—for her, at least—could only appal and dismay …

  Power does not make safe.

  History murders the children of weak rulers.

  The crow of battlehorns, so different from the long-drawn yaw of prayer-horns across the city.

  Momemn was in uproar. Like a bowl of water set upon the floor of a racing chariot, it quivered and spit and swamped its rim. Anasûrimbor Maithanet, the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples, was dead. Fanim drums throbbed against gaseous hearts, made menace of the west. The Imperial Apparati and Shrial Knights ran to secure the Imperial Capital—to open the armouries, to rally the bewildered, to man the great curtain walls. The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas, however, ran to secure her heart …

  Her son.

  “Kelmomas hides yet in the palace …” Maithanet had said ere her assassin had struck.

  “What? Alone?”

  The gold-armoured Inchausti—who had paraded her mere watches before as their carnival captive—now escorted her as their imperial sovereign. Given the mobs besieging Xothei, they had elected to leave the temple through a series of mouldering, secret tunnels, what had been sewers during another age. Their Captain, a tall Massentian named Clia Saxillas, led them to an exit somewhere north of the Kamposea Agora, where they discovered the streets overrun with the very masses they had sought to avoid—souls as bent on finding loved ones as she.

  For the better part of a watch, her world was confined to roiling gutters of humanity, troughs teeming with frantic thousands. Tenements towered dark and indifferent above the chaos. Her dead brother’s elite guardsmen battled to maintain a square about her, jogging where the streets afforded, otherwise cursing and clubbing their way through the surge and trickle of untold thousands. At every turn, it seemed, she found herself stepping over the fallen, those unfortunates unable or unwilling to make way for their Blessed Empress. Captain Saxillas thought her mad, she knew, running to the Andiamine Heights at such a time. But to serve the Anasûrimbor was to execute madness in the name of miraculous success. If anything, her demands cemented his loyalty, confirmed the divinity he thought he had glimpsed in Xothei’s great gloomy hollows. To serve divinity was to dwell among fractions of what was whole. Only the consistency of creed distingu
ished the believer from the mad.

  Either way, his Shriah was dead and his Aspect-Emperor was away at war: she alone possessed his loyalty. She was the vessel of her husband’s holy seed—the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas! And she would save her son, even if it meant that Momemn burned for want of leadership.

  “He isn’t what you think he is, Esmi.”

  So it was with a mother’s terror that she rushed down the baffled streets, cursed and cajoled the Inchausti whenever the press slowed their advance. Of all the afflictions she had endured while in hiding, none had gouged so deep as the loss of Kelmomas. How many watches had she spent, her throat cramping, her eyes fluttering, her whole being hung about the fact of his absence? How many prayers had she offered to the inscrutable black? How many promises of whatever? And how many horrific scenarios had come floating back in return? Idles drawn from the murderous histories she had read. Little princes smothered or strangled. Little princes starved, blinded, sold as novelties to catamite slavers …

  “Beat them!” she howled at the Shrial Guardsmen. “Bludgeon your way through!”

  Our knowledge commands us, though our conceit claims otherwise. It drives our decisions and so harnesses our deeds—as surely as any cane or lash. She knew well the grievous fate of princes in times of revolt and overthrow. The fact that her husband’s Empire crashed down about her was but one more goad to find her son.

  The Fanim would have to wait. It mattered not at all that Maithanet had remained true to her husband, had genuinely thought hers the more treacherous soul. What mattered was that his servants had thought the same, that they still ran amok, and that one of them might find her son! She had seen their cruelty firsthand—watched them murder her beloved Imhailas! She knew as well as any woman could the way Men were prone to scapegoat others for their humiliation. And now that Maithanet was dead, who could say how his followers might avenge him, which innocents they might seize to token their grief and fury?