The White-Luck Warrior (70 page)

Only to find it returned the following morning.

Since the Sranc cannibalized their dead, evidence of their efficacy was difficult to find. The cavalry pickets who crossed the sorcerers' wake counted the dead as they had been instructed. The Imperial Mathematicians argued estimates, and the Believer-Kings continually bent their darling ear, as the Nilnameshi put it, to the numbers that most flattered their hopes. But Saccarees was not fooled—no more than Carindûsû.

"The number is irrelevant!" he finally cried to King Umrapathur. "The
effect
is all that matters."

This put an end to their numerical speculations, for everyone knew that despite the cunning and fury of their efforts, the Schoolmen had accomplished nothing that any man could discern. Their predicament, if anything, had become more perilous. Not only did the Horde seem to be swelling along their flank, it had grown mobbing tendrils that hooked about their rear. Sranc, uncounted thousands of them, now
followed
the Army.

Once again Umrapathur was forced to set aside his pride and call upon the Aspect-Emperor.

This time their Lord-and-God came to them chalked in dust, bearing the crackling aura of sorceries dispensed. In their soul's eye, the Believer-Kings could see him striding alone into the inhuman Horde, wracking the masses that thronged about him with cataclysmic light.

"Indeed," he said, favouring Sasal Umrapathur with a nod, "your peril is great. You were wise to call me, Umra."

Crisis, he told the assembled caste-nobles, was inevitable. The best they could hope to achieve was to weaken the Horde in tactically advantageous ways so they might survive its inevitable assault. "Henceforth, you must encircle yourselves with your might, camp curled as a caterpillar, armed against all directions."

The advance pickets were thinned to a handful of companies while the bulk of the Army's horsemen—the heavily armoured knights of Nilnamesh and the more fleet riders of Girgash and Chianadyni—concentrated on clearing the southeastern tracts of Sranc in concert with the Schoolmen. At the Aspect-Emperor's direction, they adopted the extravagant
hunting
tactics of the Far Antique Norsirai kings, who would use their hosts to encircle entire provinces and so drive all the beasts of the land to slaughter. The Schoolmen filed out into the depths of the plain, then arrayed themselves
behind
the Sranc so they could drive them into far-flung arcs of horsemen. It seemed they herded clouds with staffs of light. For the men marching in the main host, half the world was fenced in mountainous dust.

But it was like digging holes in loose sand: for every thousand they gouged clear, another thousand came collapsing in from the sides. And the losses, especially among the unarmoured ponies, rose to unsustainable levels. As ever, death came swirling down. Possu Hurminda, the even-handed Satrap of Sranayati, was lost, pulled down by a crazed Sranc chieftain. So too was Prince Hemrût, the eldest son of King Urmakthi, killed.

Despite these losses, despite the relentless heroism of their efforts, the numbers of Sranc trailing the Army of the South seemed to grow at an
increasing
rate, to the point where the cavalrymen found themselves mired in pitched battles rather than riding down panicked swarms. Then, on the sixth day of the Hunt, as it had come to be called, some five companies of Nilnameshi knights under Satrap Arsoghul were out-and-out overwhelmed, and the Cironji Marines, who were tasked with guarding the Army's rear, found themselves beset by several thousand Sranc.

"They seek each other out," Saccarees said to the dismayed Believer-Kings, "like schooling fish or flocking birds, so that the presence of few licenses the gathering of many." Far from clearing the clans from their rear, he explained, they actually were pressing them farther afield and so opening ever-greater tracts for innumerable others to occupy. Their efforts to clear their flanks were leading to their encirclement.

"Could it be?" Carindûsû asked in derision. "Have the fabled Dreams of the First Apocalypse led the illustrious Saccarees astray?"

"Yes," the Mandate Grandmaster replied, his honesty so genuine, his humility so reminiscent of their Lord-and-God, that Carindûsû found himself shamed before his peers a third time.

"What we face... The world has never seen the like."

—|—

They sat, as always, side by side before the octagonal iron hearth. Master and disciple.

"Maithanet," the Aspect-Emperor said. "My brother has seized control in Momemn."

After so many years Proyas suffered only the most subtle urges to lie or save face. The merest hesitations were all that remained of his old instincts to write himself large in the eyes of others. This time it was the instinct to conceal his dismay. Before he had found Kellhus, he had made himself into Maithanet's disciple. And over the years since the First Holy War, he had come to love Esmenet as a sister, as much as he revered her as the wife of his Lord-and-God. To think the one could usurp the other... It seemed impossible.

"What could have happened?" he asked.

The fire seemed to sputter for the tidings as much as Proyas's heart laboured. If Maithanet, the Shriah of the Thousand Temples, had revolted against his brother...

The Empire itself teetered.

"For some reason Esmi suspected Maitha of sedition," Kellhus said without the least whisper of remorse or concern, "and so called him to account before
Inrilatas
. The interrogation went wrong, horribly wrong, and my brother ended up killing my son..." He looked down to his haloed palms, and Proyas found it curiously affecting, the contrast between his tone and his manner. "I know little more than this."

The Exalt-General breathed deep and nodded. "What do you intend to do?"

"Gather as much knowledge as possible," the Holy Aspect-Emperor replied, his head still bowed. "I yet have resources in Momemn."

Since the beginning, Anasûrimbor Kellhus had possessed a peculiar density of presence, as if he were the lone iron ingot among shards of clay and stone, invulnerable to what would smash others to powder. But with each of these remarkable sessions, the more this density seemed to leak from him...

So much so the Exalt-General suffered the demented urge to prick him, just to see if he would bleed.
Faith
... he upbraided himself.
Faith!

"Do you—?"

Proyas paused, recognizing the implications of what he was about to ask.

"Do I fear for Esmi?" Kellhus asked. He turned his friend smiling. "You wonder, as you have wondered your whole life, what passions bind me." He closed his eyes in resignation. "And whether they are human."

So here it was, the question of questions...

"Yes."

"Love," the Holy Aspect-Emperor said, "is for lesser souls."

—|—

Young men are forever casting their meagre will and intellect against the tide of their passions, claiming they do not fear when they fear, insisting they do not love when they love. So the young King of Sakarpus told himself that he
despised
Anasûrimbor Serwa, cursed her as the self-important daughter of his Enemy, even as he mooned over the similarity of their names and the poetry of their conjunction: Serwa and Sorweel, Sorweel and Serwa. Even as he dreamed of their tender coupling.

Even as he began fearing more for
her
—a Gnostic sorceress—than for himself.

When he asked her whether she was worried about being a hostage, she simply shrugged and said, "The ghouls mean us no harm. Besides, we are children of Fate. What is there for us to worry?"

And indeed, the more time he spent with her, the more this seemed to characterize her: the absence of worry.

Equanimity, soothing for its constancy, arrogant for its extent.

"So, this Nonman King, Nil'giccas, what are you to offer him?"

"Nothing. We are the
terms
of the negotiation, Horse-King, not the framers."

"So we are to be captives? Nothing more?"

He almost always found her smile dazzling, even when he knew she laughed at him and his barbaric ignorance. "Nothing more," she said. "We will languish, safe and useless, while the Great Ordeal carries the burden of Apocalypse."

And he could not but exult at the thought of languishing with Anasûrimbor Serwa. Perhaps, he found himself hoping, she might come to love him out of boredom.

Days had passed, and her demeanour remained every bit as wry and reflective as that day when he first met her in Kayûtas's tent. She carried an aura of power, of course, as much for the miraculous way she whisked them from place to place as for the dizzying facts of her station and her blood. Grandmistress and Princess-Imperial. Archmage and Anasûrimbor.

Nevertheless, her youth and sex continually beguiled Sorweel into thinking she was a
mere girl
, someone weaker, simpler, and as much a victim of circumstances as he himself. And perhaps this was what he needed her to be, for no matter how many times her knowledge and intellect contradicted this image, it would reassert itself. Sometimes she astonished him, so subtle were her observations and so complete was her knowledge of the ancient lands they crossed. And yet, within a handful of heartbeats, she would inevitably lapse into the alluring waif, the one who would find such security in his arms, if only she would let him embrace her.

He would be long in appreciating the stamp of ancient profundity she carried in her soul.

"This Nil'giccas... Do you know much of him?"

"I was his friend once, ere the first end of the world..."

"And?"

Though they were of an age, sometimes her look made her seem a thousand years his senior.

"He was wise, powerful, and... unfathomable. The Nonmen resemble us too much not to continually fool us into thinking we comprehend them. But they always surprise, sooner or later."

If Serwa embodied serenity, Moënghus was nothing short of mercurial. Sorweel had never forgotten Kayûtas's warning to beware his brother's madness. Even Serwa had mentioned Moënghus's "foul humours," as she called them. Sometimes
days
, as opposed to mere watches, would pass with the Prince-Imperial speaking nary a single word. Sorweel quickly learned to avoid him altogether during these periods, let alone refrain from speaking to him. The most innocuous question would spark a murderous glare, one all the more lunatic for the white-blue of his unblinking eyes and all the more frightening for the vigour of his frame. Then, over the course of a night or a day, whatever besieged him would lift, and he would resume his more sociable manner, wry and observant, quick to tease, and often outright considerate, especially when it came to his sister—to the point of risking his neck for eggs or wading through marsh muck for tubers, anything that might delight her when they took their evening repast.

"What makes
you
so worthy?" Sorweel once asked her while Moënghus crouched on the riverbank nearby, trolling the waters with a string and hook.

She drew her hair back to regard him, a gesture the Sakarpi King had fallen in love with. "Podi always says that aside from Mother, I'm the only Anasûrimbor he likes."

"Podi," Sorweel had learned, was the jnanic diminutive for "older brother," a term of endearment and respect.

"My sister is
sane
," Moënghus called from his perch over the flashing water.

Serwa scowled and smiled at once. "He thinks my family is crazy."

"
Your
family?" Sorweel asked.

She nodded as if recognizing some previously discussed inevitability—truths they would have no choice but to share because of the intimacies of the trail. "He's my brother, yes. But we share no blood. He is the son of my father's first wife—my namesake, Serwë. The one whose corpse they bound with Father on the Circumfix—during the First Holy War. The one everybody is loathe to speak about."

"So he's your
half
-brother?"

"No. Have you heard of Cnaiür urs Skiötha?"

Even from a distance, Moënghus seemed to stiffen.

"No."

She glanced at her brother with something resembling relish. "He was a Scylvendi barbarian, famed for his martial exploits in the First Holy War, and now venerated for his service to my father. I'm told," she called out teasingly, "there's even a cadre of fools who scar their arms like Scylvendi in the Ordeal..."

"Bah!" her brother cried.

"Why does he think your blood is crazy?" Sorweel pressed, eager to sidestep the topic of Moënghus's paternity.

Serwa cast another laughing look at the dark-haired man.

"Because they think about
thoughts
," Moënghus said, looking over his shoulder.

Sorweel frowned. He had always thought this the definition of wisdom. "And this is crazy?"

Moënghus shrugged. "Think about it."

"Father," Serwa explained, "says that we have an
extra soul
, one that lives, and another that
watches
us living. We are prone to be at war with ourselves, the Anasûrimbor."

Her terms were simple enough, but Sorweel suspected she understood the matter with a philosopher's subtlety.

"So your
father
thinks you crazy?"

Both siblings laughed at this, though Sorweel had no inkling as to the humour.

"My father is Dûnyain," Serwa said. "More human than human. His seed is strong, apt to crack the vessels that bear it."

"Tell him about our brother Inri..."

She crinkled her sunburned brow. "I would rather not."

"What are Dûnyain?" Sorweel asked, speaking with the curiosity of those wishing to pass the time, nothing more, when in fact his breath ached for interest.

She looked to her brother once again, who shrugged and said, "No one knows."

Serwa leaned her head low, almost sideways, so that her hair fell in a silk sheet. It was a girlish gesture, one that again reminded the Sakarpi King that for all her worldliness and self-possession, she was scarcely older than he.