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

  Now that Maithanet was dead.

  She faltered at the thought, raised her hands against the turmoil, saw the grape stain of Shrial blood etching the whorl of her left palm. She closed her eyes against the surrounding commotion, willing the image of her little boy. Instead she saw the Narindar assassin standing almost naked between the golden idols, the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples supine at his feet, his blood black as pitch about points of reflected white.

  Her husband’s brother. Maithanet.

  Dead. Murdered.

  And now Fanim drums tripped racing hearts …

  Momemn was in uproar.

  At long last they emerged from the canyon streets onto the relative openness of the Processional, and the Inchausti instinctively began trotting. Not even the mass panic could dilute the Rat Canal’s famous reek. She saw the Andiamine Heights climbing soundless above the Imperial Precincts, her hated home, marmoreal walls clean in the sunlight, copper rooves gleaming …

  She looked wildly about, saw no signs of smoke, no mark of invasion. She glimpsed a small girl wailing over a woman prostrate on the hard cobble. Someone had painted Yatwer’s Sickle upon the child’s swollen cheek.

  “Mumma! Mumma-mumma-mumma!”

  She turned away, forbade herself any pang of compassion.

  The Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples was dead.

  She could not think of what she had done. She could not regret.

  Forward, to her hated home. That was the direction of her war.

  The hush of the Imperial Precincts never failed to amaze her. The Scuäri Campus radiating outward, heating the air. Monuments, mottled black and green. Lintels hanging intricate against the sky. Columns soaring, jailing interiors that promised cool shadow and obscurity.

  It made her screams all the more stark, shocking.

  Kel!

  Please!

  Kel! It’s sa-safe, my love! Your mother has returned!

  She has prevailed!

  Your Uncle is dead …

  Your brother is avenged!

  She had no idea when she began crying.

  The Andiamine Heights climbed before her, a palatial heap of rooves and columns and terraces, the marble bright in the high morning sun, the copper and gold shining.

  It seemed haunted for quiet.

  Kel! Kelmomas!

  She forbade the Inchausti from following her. Any protest they might have nursed went unspoken. She wandered with a kind of stunned, disbelieving gait into the gloomy halls of the Apparatory. She seemed to float more than walk, such was her horror … Hope is ever the greatest luxury of the helpless, the capacity to suppose knowledge that circumstances denied. So long as she remained a captive in Naree’s apartment, Esmenet could always suppose that her little boy had found some way. Like a slave, she could grow fat on faith.

  Now only truth lay before her. Truth and desolation.

  Kelmommaaaaas!

  Silence … the visceral sense of void that attends any once-vibrant place emptied of motion and life. The apartments had been looted. The gilded panels were dull in the shuttered gloom, the censors cold, filled with fragrant ash—even the scenes stitched across the tapestries hung chill and fallow. Dried blood smeared and skinned the polished floors. Boot prints. Hand prints. Even the profile of a face, immortalized in chapped brown. Down every hallway, it seemed, she chased pale gleams that vanished as she drew near.

  It was but a shell, she realized—a many-chambered skull. Her home.

  Kel!

  Her voice scratched at the vacant depths, too hoarse to echo.

  It’s m-m-meeee!

  She had started her search in the Apparatory because of the way the palace’s network of secret passages tracked its every room and niche. If there was one place, she had reasoned … One place!

  Mommy!

  For all his blessed humanity she did not doubt the resourcefulness of her little boy. Out of all of them, he was the most hers—the least Dûnyain. But he possessed some modicum of his father’s blood still. Divine blood.

  Accursed.

  Kelmomas!

  Nothing could be so absent—so missing—as a lost child. They dwell so close, more here than here, ducking fingers that would tickle, convulsing with laughter, gazing with thoughtless adoration, lazing on your knees, on your hip, or in the crook of your arm, their body always there, always waiting to be clasped and hoisted, pressed against the bosom they took as their throne. Let the Inchausti scowl! Let men disapprove! What did they know of motherhood, the mad miracle of finding your interior drawn from you, clinging and bawling and giggling and learning everything there was to learn anew?

  Damn you!

  She stood motionless in the ransacked gloom, her ears pricked in the wake of her abraded voice. The Fanim drums pulsed on the edge of hearing. Her breath rasped.

  Where are you?

  She began sprinting down the marmoreal corridors, a hope where he should be, a horror where he should be, a missing breath, an unbalanced step, a look that could only roll, never focus, for the simple want of him …

  Kel! Kel!

  She flew through the palace proper, the gilded labyrinth that was her home, more an assemblage than a coherent soul, wracked by sobs, laughing, crying out in the lilting voice of play. This was how the uncouth invaders would find her, a remote fraction of her soul realized. This was how the Fanim would find the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas, alone in her palace, cooing, shrieking, cackling, at last pried apart by a barking world.

  She ran until a knife sliced the back of her throat, until spears gored her flanks. She ran until her feet became panicked refugees, each fleeing the other—until her wind seemed a beast that loped beside her, tongue lolling.

  Kel!

  She fell hard, not so much tripping as collapsing. The floor swatted her face, skinned her knees—then soothed these hurts with a bottomless cool.

  She lay gasping in a slow-spinning heap.

  She could hear it all, the mutter of the courtiers and the ministers, the laughter of caste-noble dandies, the swoosh of preposterous gowns, the barefooted patter of slaves. She could see him strolling toward her, though she knew his appearance only from the profile stamped on his coins: Ikurei Xerius, striding oblivious, ludicrous in his gold-silk slippers, gloating more than smiling …

  She bolted upright on a sharp intake of breath.

  Masculine voices filtered up through the barren halls.

  Your Glory! Glory!

  The Inchausti?

  She cast her eyes about the gloom, realized she lay in the vestibule of the Upper Palace.

  She stood, exhaustion hard in her limbs. She walked to the battery of oaken shutters that fenced the opposing colonnade, unlatched and drew a section of them aside, squinted at the broad balcony beyond. Sparrows chirped and squabbled about a marble amenity basin. The pastel sky throbbed with the promise of retribution and war. Beneath its perpetual haze, Momemn riddled the distance with street and structure.

  Plumes of smoke ribbed the horizon.

  Dark clots of horsemen scoured the surrounding fields and orchards.

  Refugees mobbed the gates.

  Horns peeled, but whether they summoned or warned or rallied, she did not know … or care.

  No … a fraction whispered.

  Something ruthless dwells within every mother, a capacity borne of plague and tribulation and children buried. She was impervious; the hard realities of the World merely broke their nails for clawing. She turned away, strode back into the shadowy palace with a kind of weary resignation—as though she played at something that had cracked her patience long before. She had not so much abandoned hope as shouldered it aside.

  She found the towering doors to the Imperial Audience Hall ajar. She wandered in, walked small beneath the soaring stonework. She pondered all the loads teetering, and the Sumni harlot within her wondered that such a place could be her house, that she lived beneath ceilings impregnated with Chorae, gilded in silver and gold. The sky framed t
he monumental dais with stages of pale brilliance. Dead birds bellied the netting that had been strung across the opening, as dry as flies. The upper gallery lay in graven shadow, while the polished expanses gleamed below. The tapestries strung between the columns seemed to sway, one for each of her dread husband’s conquests. The scene tapered into gold instead of black in the corners of her eyes.

  She considered duty, the way she would have the Shrial Knights who had murdered Imhailas executed. She thought of Naree and the savagery that awaited her. She smirked—a heartless smile—at the timid cruelties that had once hedged her own submissive nature.

  No more.

  She would speak oil and demand blood. Just like her divine husband.

  Glory! Glory!

  She walked soundless across the great floor, approached the dais, her eyes fending the brilliance of the sky beyond. The Circumfix Throne was little more than a silhouette …

  She did not see him until she was almost upon him.

  Her son. Her mighty Prince-Imperial.

  Anasûrimbor Kelmomas …

  Curled within the arms of her humble, secondary throne. Asleep.

  Bestial with filth. Demonic with blood.

  Her desperation flung her past her revulsion. She seized him, embraced him, shushed him as he keened and wailed.

  Mummeee …

  Mum-mummeee …

  She drew her cheek across the cold tangle of grease and hair. “Shush …” she gasped, as much for her sake as for his. “I am the only power remaining.”

  The sky beyond the Mantle caught her eye, and with it, a consciousness of her city, great Momemn, capital of the New Empire. Faraway drums counted the tandem racing of their hearts, mother and son.

  Let it burn.

  For this one moment at least.

  The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas heaved at the glorious little shoulders and arms, pulled her weeping boy into her very being.

  Where he belonged.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Aörsi

  IV. The Game is the part of the whole that reenacts the whole as the whole. It therefore recognizes nothing outside itself, as we recognize nothing outside what we recognize.

  —The Fourth Canto of the Abenjukala

  We are born of tangled lovers, reared in the snarl of kin. We are ravelled to our desires, roped to our frailties and our sins. We are caught upon the hooks of others as upon the thistle of ourselves, looped and twisted, here brushed into lucent fibres, there bound in woolen obscurities.

  And they come to us as combs and scissors.

  —Contemplations, SIRRO

  Late Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), the northeast shore of the Neleöst

  The living should not haunt the dead.

  “The meat …” Mirshoa said to his cousin, Hatturidas. They trudged side-by-side through the sun-spoked dust, Kishyati, vassals of Nurbanu Soter by virtue of their uncle, the ailing Baron of Nemuk, borne here for reasons far more complicated than piety or fervour. Men marched together, as aggregate souls, sons among the sons, fathers among the fathers. They never knew what compelled them, so they fastened on the occasioning words, and so transformed their bondage into artifice, a thing freely chosen.

  “What of it?” Hatturidas replied after the jnanic interval indicating disapproval.

  He had no desire to think of the meat, let alone discourse upon it.

  “My … my soul … It grows more disordered because of it.”

  “That, at least, is in order.”

  Mirshoa glared at his cousin. “Tell me you don’t feel it!”

  Hatturidas continued tramping. Beyond him, thousands of his brother Jaguars toiled, and innumerable others beyond them as well, bent beneath packs and arms and armour. The World seemed to roll as a ball beneath them, so vast was the Great Ordeal.

  Mirshoa lapsed back into rumination, which was unfortunate, because the man could not reflect without speaking.

  “It’s like my soul is naught but … but smoked glass …”

  Wherever words should not go, that was where Mirshoa was sure to follow them. Be it the carnal nature of Inri Sejenus or the most effective purificatory rite for menses, his voice would barge and blunder, his eyes animate, growing wider even as those listening narrowed. Mirshoa was a hapless soul, a man numb to too many edges to avoid being cut. Ever since their childhood, Hatturidas had been his shepherd and his shield, “Taller by a thumb,” his mother would always say, “wiser by a century …”

  “It’s like something … simmers, Hatti … Like I’m a pot on coals …”

  “Skew the lid, then. Cease this bubbling!”

  “Enough with your sarcasms! Tell me you feel it!”

  The Shroud always hung on the horizon now, mountainous veils piling to where they became powder, obscuring every distance save the Sea.

  “Feel what?”

  “The meat … The meat making you … shrink in proportion to who you were the day before …”

  “No …” Hatturidas said, wagging his bearded jaw. He hoisted his testicles in the exaggerated barracks way. “I grow larger, if anything.”

  “You’re a fool!” Mirshoa cried. “I’ve marched across Eärwa with a mad wretch!”

  Hatturidas could even hear them sometimes, a noxious croon rolling on the wind …

  The countless mouths of the Horde, screaming.

  He spared his cousin an indulgent glance, the look of one who has always been stronger.

  “And so you will march back.”

  The Men of the Three Seas did not so much eat as feast on the flesh of their vile and wicked enemy.

  Following the reunification of the host at Swaranûl, the Great Ordeal followed the arthritic coastline of the Neleöst, the Misty Sea, advancing on a ponderous, northwestern arc. The Horde withdrew before the Shining Men as always, amorphous miles of howling Sranc, starving for the exhaustion of the earth beneath, keening for the promise of Mannish congress on the wind. But where the outriders had once chased, running down or driving away the more famished clans, and where the Schoolmen had simply massacred, hanging low above fields of screaming turmoil, they now hunted the beasts—worked a grisly harvest.

  Cadres of sorcerers strode deep into the billowing clouds, intent not so much on destroying as herding, striking wedges, then driving what numbers they could toward the echelons of horsemen who followed. Some Sranc invariably fled south and east, only to find themselves dashing headlong into waves of galloping lancers. The skirmishes were as brief as they were brutal. Screeching creatures hacked and skewered in a shadowy world of violence and dust. Afterward, the horsemen—be they Imperial Kidruhil, caste-noble knights, or tribal plainsmen—would pile the dead into conical heaps, hundreds of them, until they dotted the blasted hillocks and pastures of the coast. There they would stand, cairns of fish-white carcasses, gathering flies and carrion birds, awaiting the shining tide that approached from the southwestern horizon. The clash of cymbals. The screech and bellow of signalling horns. The rumble of marching thousands.

  The Host of the Believer-Kings.

  According to scripture and tradition, no flesh was more polluted than that of the Sranc. Not pig. Not even dog or monkey. The Holy Sagas related the tale of Engûs, an ancient Meörnish Prince who saved his tribal household by fleeing into the high Osthwai and bidding them to consume their monstrous foe. The Sranc-Eaters, they were called, and they were damned as no soul could be short of sorcerers, witches, and whores. According to Sakarpi legend, the vale where they took refuge was mortally cursed. Those who sought it thinking they would find gold (for the wont of rumour is to attribute riches to the damned) were never seen again.

  Despite this, despite the native revulsion and disgust, nary a word of protest was raised among the Ordealmen. Perhaps it was the measure of their faith. Perhaps it was simply the nature of Men to celebrate one day what they had abominated the day before, so long as their hungers were sated.

  Perhaps meat was simply meat. Sustenance. Who qu
estioned the air they breathed?

  The flesh was dense, pungent to smell, in some ways sour and in others sweet. The sinews in particular were difficult to gnaw through. Some among the Inrithi took to chewing the gristle throughout the day. The entrails were heaped in odious piles, along with those pieces—feet, viscera, and genitalia, mostly—too difficult or unsavoury to eat. If fuel was plentiful enough, the heads would be burned in oblation.

  The rank and file simply portioned the beasts and cooked them over open fires. With the carcasses so divided, it became impossible to distinguish the limbs from those of Men. Everywhere one travelled, whether through the timbered tents of the Galeoth, or the garish parasol cities of the Conriyans and Ainoni, one saw arms and legs sweating over grease-fuelled fires, blackened fingers hanging slack over light. But if the resemblance troubled any, they dared not speak it.

  The caste-nobility, as a rule, demanded more in the way of preparation and variety. The carcasses were beheaded and hung from their heels on timber scaffolds to properly drain. These racks could be seen throughout the encamped Ordeal, rows of white and violet bodies hanging from their heels, graphic for their nakedness. Once drained, the beasts were butchered in the manner of cattle and sheep, then served in ways that disguised the troubling humanity of their forms.

  Within days, it seemed, the entire host had set aside its scruples and fell to their grisly fare with relish, even celebratory enthusiasm. Tongues and hearts became the preferred delicacies among the Nansur kjineta. The Ainoni prized the cheeks. The Tydonni took to boiling the creatures before searing them over flame. To a man they discovered the peculiar mingling of triumph and transgression that comes upon those who battle against what they would eat. For they could not bite without suffering some glimmer of the affinity between Sranc and Men—the sordid spectre of cannibalism—and they could not chew and swallow without some sense of predatory domination. The immeasurable Horde, which had been the object of so much foreboding and terror, became small with hilarity and devious wit. At the latrines they traded jokes about justice and Fate.