The White-Luck Warrior (80 page)

Terror hooked her throat—terror and crashing relief. "What?
Alone?
"

His eyes seemed to lose focus, but even before she had registered it, he was
there
, before her, as immediate as her husband had ever been. "He isn't what you think he is, Esmi."

"What do you mean?"

He gestured to the floors behind her. "In due time..."

She turned to the small crowd of Shrial and Imperial Apparati gathering about them, men she had known and trusted for many long years. Ngarau stood among them, Phinersa, and even ancient Vem-Mithriti. Some watched with expressions of hope—even joy—and some with apprehension.

She was not surprised to see so many loyalties overturned. Maithanet was her husband's brother. In some dark corner of her soul she had prepared for this encounter, but the curses, the cat-spitting declarations of outrage, were nowhere to be found. Instead, she felt only exhaustion and relief.

Few things are as inexplicable as the concatenation of souls. Kellhus had often told her how Men glimpsed but a sliver of the intercourse that passed between them, how passions and rivalries and understandings they could scarce fathom drove their intercourse like galleys before a storm. Perhaps they were all exhausted. Perhaps they simply yearned for the life they had known before Maithanet and his coup. Perhaps they were frightened by the battling multitudes surrounding the Temple. Perhaps they truly believed...

"He isn't what you think he is..."

Whatever the reason, something happened as she regarded them. Despite the embroidered fanfare of their robes, despite their cosmetics and jewelled rings, despite the pride and ambition belonging to their exalted stations, they became
mere
men, bewildered and embattled equals, standing together in the absence of judgment that was their Prophet's most beautiful gift. It did not matter who had erred, or who had betrayed or who had injured. It did not matter who had died...

They were simply disciples of Anasûrimbor Kellhus—and the world clamoured around them.

Maithanet resumed his position on the dais, and Esmenet found herself watching him with a worshipper's simple wonder, blinking tears that did not sting. He seemed luminous, not simply with the overlapping rings of light shed by the hanging lantern wheels, but with
renewal
.

And suddenly Esmenet realized that she could see her way past her losses and her hate. Somehow she knew they
would
find some way to hold the Empire together, whether her accursed husband believed in them or not.

"We will stage an official reconciliation," Maithanet said in warm, informal tones, "something for the masses. But for the nons, I want all of you to witness what we sa—"

Then there
he
was, clad only in a loincloth, stepping between the golden idols of War and Birth, stepping from where he had always been standing, in the one place that had escaped the notice of all—the one place
overlooked
, which exists in the world's every room.

Her assassin.

He stepped from the gloom. He looked hard, like something between brown flesh and grey stone. Three noiseless steps. Maithanet heard and turned. His face was emotionless, devoid of shock or surprise or any expression. Somehow Esmenet knew he turned with little more than curiosity, so certain was he of his security. He turned just as the man dropped the knife between his neck and clavicle. There was nothing remarkable about the assault, no display of inhuman speed or ability, only a step from the one place overlooked to the one place unguarded. A kind of discharging of the inevitable.

The figure instantly released the pommel...

The Holy Shriah of Thousand Temples gazed down at the knife as if it were a hornet or bee, teetered...

Esmenet could only blink as Maithanet sputtered and died before her.

"Sister!"
he gasped.
"You must tell my broth—!"

He slumped to his knees, his eyes rounding about an emblematic emptiness, then crumpled to his side. His chest-plate clattered against the polished tile. He died at her assassin's feet.

Out of reflex, Esmenet turned to the abject faces, held out her hands to still the cries of cracked disbelief and the charge of the more warlike among the Apparati. In the far pockets of gloom, she could see the Inchausti gathering into a golden rush...

She could feel the Narindar motionless behind her. Why didn't he run?

"Hold!" she cried out. "I said,
Hold!
"

All those near fell silent and still. Some fairly flinched out of obedience.

"Vem-Mithriti! Does your fire still serve your Empress?"

The old man hobbled to her side without hesitation. Sorcerous words seemed to cough out of the surrounding air. White light spilled from his puckered mouth and perforated eyes, made him seem an ancient baby for the vanishing of the rutted lines. Wards flickered to life about them.

The nearest of the Inchausti began slowing to a wary trot, their broadswords still held on high.

"What you have witnessed is the work of our Holy Aspect-Emperor!" she cried out, her voice strong for the iron of her exhaustion. She had no nerves to suffer.

She knew what she must look like: beggared, wild and bloodied, wreathed in pale-glowing tongues of flame. Nevertheless, she posed before them as though gowned in full Imperial splendour, knowing the contradiction between bearing and appearance would smack of scripture.

"The name Maithanet shall be stricken from all scrolls and all stone!" she cried in righteous fury. "For he is naught but a deceiver!"

She would do what her husband had bid her to do.

"The adoration you once felt, the dismay you now feel is the
very measure
of his deception!"

She would speak oil.

"He!"
she shrieked, jerking her open hand to the bundle of fabric bleeding beneath the golden arc of idols. "Anasûrimbor Maithanet! He has revolted against his sacred brother! He has murdered our..." Her voice broke about the truth of this last. "Our Holy Prophet's son!"

The Shrial and Imperial Apparati stood aghast, some stupefied, others terrified, a crowd of wisemen and dandies trussed by mad circumstance. Beyond them, the Inchausti continued their clattering accumulation. Cries and moans and hissed conversations rose from them.

One of their captains stepped belligerently forward, began, "Who sa—?"

"Anasûrimbor Kellhus!"
she cried in scathing dismissal. "Our Holy Aspect-Emperor!" She could see the man's example leaping like contagion, emboldening others throughout the assembly. "To
whom
do you think he sends his holy dreams?" And though she could not sense them, she knew the Inchausti possessed Chorae...

She had to strike the will to fight from them. It was her only hope.

"Think!"
she fairly screeched. "
Who else
could strike down the
Shriah of the Thousand Temples
with such ease? With! Such!
Ease!
"

This, she knew, would open a wedge...

"On your knees!" she cried, as if she had conjured as much as invoked her divine husband.
"On your knees!"

Because acting and being were one and the same for Men.

She had no choice. She had to
own
the event. What chances did her assassin have of escape, even if he were Narindar? If captured, he would name her. She had to own the event and own it
as justice
, as the swift and brutal justice they had come to expect from Anasûrimbor Kellhus. The assassin would be spared, would be celebrated as a hero.

As he should, since he had only worked his Empress's will.

This was why he remained standing over his victim. This was why he had chosen this very moment to strike.

Many had fallen to their knees instantly, Phinersa among them, the ghost of a smile upon his nimble face. Some grovelled in abject shame, murmuring prayers to her where she stood beneath the golden idols. But a greater proportion of the Inchausti remained standing, held up by their outrage and the example of their indecisive brothers.

"Kneel! For those who stand now
stand with foul Golgotterath
!"

She would speak oil, heartbreaking oil. She would drive thousands to the executioner's sword, if need be. She would
burn Momemn to the ground
the way the minstrels accused her of burning Carythusal...

Anything to see her children safe!

"For
eternity itself
hangs in the balance about you!"

The last of the Inchausti relented, dropped to their knees, then to their faces. She watched it spread like a disease among them, the miraculous inversion that makes madness out of faith, the transformation of squalid catastrophe into divine revelation. And they could feel
Him
, she knew. All of them could feel
Him
emanating from her slight and bloodied figure. And in months and years hence, they would die thinking this the most significant, most glorious moment of their lives...

Grovelling before the Holy Empress.

A feeling of triumph unlike any she had ever experienced steeped her to the merest vein, an elation that transcended her body, an uproarious continuity of self and subjugated world. It seemed she need only yank high her arms and the very earth would be flapped like a blanket. And she looked down with imperious satisfaction, revelled in the fleeting intensity...

For even as she watched, the assembled penitents began looking about in wonder and anxious confusion.

The roaring that had been her pious chorus, her proof of Maithanet's discord, had dwindled, then trailed away altogether. The mobs had fallen miraculously silent...

And for the merest of instants, it seemed that the
whole Empire
had joined them on their knees.

But something... a kind of rhythmic pulse... had taken its place, rising from the deep temple hollows. She recognized it instantly, though her soul refused to credit the knowledge. For it was a sound that still thrummed through the darkest of her dreams.

Dreams of warring Shigek... of desert wastes and the abject misery that was Caraskand.

Dreams of Holy Shimeh, wrested from heathen hands.

The beating of war-drums.
Fanim
drums.

The Empress of the Three Seas turned to the idol of Anagkë, who by some perversity of angles gleamed golden over the dead Shriah's inert form, the near-naked assassin passionless at her side.

She began laughing—clawing her hair and laughing...

Such a devious whore was Fate.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Library of Sauglish

In life, your soul is but the extension of your body, which reaches inward until it finds its centre in spirit. In death, your body is but the extension of your soul, which reaches outward until it finds it circumference in flesh. In both instances, all things appear the same. Thus are the dead and the living confused.

—
M
EMGOWA,
T
HE
B
OOK OF
D
IVINE
A
CTS

Yet the soul lingers like a second smell.

A sailor wrecked at sea, it clings,

lest it sink and drown in Hell.

—
G
IRGALLA,
E
PIC OF
S
AUGLISH

L
ATE
S
UMMER, 20
N
EW
I
MPERIAL
Y
EAR (4132
Y
EAR-OF-THE-
T
USK),
T
HE
R
UINS OF
S
AUGLISH

Suffocation. Blindness and bewilderment.

At first Achamian thought the gag choked him, but his mouth was clear. Had they put a sack over his head? He thrashed his limbs, realizing he was unbound—but he could not move more than the span of a hand.

Sarcophagus. Coffin. He was in some kind of...

Dream.

The old Wizard's panic dwindled, even as the panic of the ancient soul he had become flared into outrage. He was Anasûrimbor Nau-Cayûti, Scourge of the Consult, Prince of the High Norsirai—Dragonslayer! He beat at his stone prison with righteous fury, howled. He cursed the name of his miscreant wife.

But the enclosed chute grew hot with his exertions, and the air began failing him. Soon he was heaving, making a bellows out of his barrel chest, gasping. Soon he could do no more than scratch at his prison, and his thoughts unwound in shame and disorientation...

To think a man such as he would die scratching.

Then he was tipping and tumbling, as though his prison had been cast into a cataract. Stone cracked—a concussion that snapped his teeth. Air washed about him, so chill as to feel wet. He sucked cold, breathed against a ponderous fragment pinning him. He blinked at the night darkness, saw the moon low, glaring pale through rag-ripped clouds and thronging branches. He glimpsed broken forms strewn, sightless eyes shining in the twinkle of fallen torches. Dead Knights of Trysë. He saw his sword gleaming among rune-engraved fragments of stone, reached with nerveless fingers. But a shadow stilled him. Witless for lack of breath and confusion and horror, he gazed up at his monstrous assailant...

Phallus, greased and pendulous. Wings, scabrous and veined, folded into two horns rising high above the thing's shoulders. Window skin, revealing sheaths of raw muscle and a compound head: one skull a great oval, the second
human
, fused into the jaws of the former.