"What can we do but march?" King Umrapathur cried out in reply.
Even though the Believer-Kings understood their collective predicament, the fact that they had no choice but to continue advancing, their fear goaded them to question the manner of their march. Soon even King Mursidides of Cironj, who had been otherwise supportive, and Prince Massar of Chianadyni, who saw weakness in all complaints, began speaking out in council. At the very least, the Holy Aspect-Emperor had to be consulted.
"Why this stubbornness, King-Brother?" Mursidides chided. "Do you fear you will become less in His eyes? Your faith in Him should not hang on His faith in you."
There was no insolence in these words. All of them knew what it meant to dwell in the presence of their Holy Aspect-Emperor, to breathe air relieved of pride and shame, and they sought always to rekindle something of its tenor among themselves. They did not flinch from the prick of honesty, so long as it was well spoken.
So Umrapathur relented. He set aside his pride and commanded the Signallers to call on the Holy Aspect-Emperor with their coded pageants of light.
"The Horde waxes. Lord Most Holy, the Army of the South calls on your strength and wisdom."
Less than a watch passed before the Signallers, hanging in the sky above the camp's eastern perimeter, saw the reply glitter along the bald night horizon.
"Assemble the Believer-Kings."
Anasurimbor Kellhus arrived even as they organized themselves. He wore a common cloak, striding among them without ceremony, clutching shoulders in solemn reassurance.
First, he questioned them regarding forage and supplies. They starved as the other Armies starved, but since the rivers had quickened, their position high on the Neleost watershed assured them the most plentiful catches of fish. Indeed, many companies marched with flimsy mantlets spanning the heads of dozens, covered with fish to dry in the sunlight.
Then he questioned them about the Horde, heard their multitudinous misgivings.
"This is the balance of perils," he said, glaring down from his halo. "You are exposed for the sake of sustenance. To undo the one is to undo the other… I will send you Saccarees. I can do no more."
And with that, he winked out of existence.
To a man the Believer-Kings of the South rejoiced, for Apperens Saccarees was the Grandmaster of the Mandate, the Aspect-Emperor's own School. Only Carindusu, who could not set aside his scholastic rivalries even here, thousands of miles from his fastness in Invishi, scoffed. What could the Mandate do that the Vokalati could not do as well, if not better?
"Double your numbers," the ever-witty Mursidides declared to uproarious laughter.
The Grandmaster withdrew, embittered.
The Mandate Schoolmen arrived the following midday, bearing only what they could carry with them across the low sky. The great columns of infantrymen watched with wonder as the sorcerers filed across the flashing sun, their crimson-silk billows hanging like windless flags.
And so the number of Kites flown by the Army of the South was doubled. More than three hundred sorcerers of rank and some two hundred more understudies now strode through the sepulchral clouds above the Horde.
They crossed it as sparks from a grass fire-as a light leaping.
Kuniuri… The fabled land of his ancestors.
Not even two thousand years could undo the glory of its works. It seemed a great vessel clinging to the surface of an earthen sea, wrecked and derelict, too powerfully wrought to founder, too vast to entirely drown. Humped fortifications. Overgrown processionals. Mounded temples. It would linger for another two thousand years, Sorweel realized, even if only as featureless stones kissed by the sun. And this, he found himself thinking, was not such a bad thing, to find immortality in your bones.
"Do you ever ponder?" Serwa asked him once, watching him gaze across a field of vine-draped debris. Her voice startled him, since he had thought her asleep.
"Ponder?"
"The Apocalypse," she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "How your city survived when far greater bastions toppled."
The young King of Sakarpus shrugged. "Some live. Some die. My father always said it was a good thing that Men could only trust in the Whore when it comes battle. He believed Men should be wary of war."
She smiled in appreciation.
"But you do see it, don't you?"
"See what?"
" Evidence. Proof of my Holy Father."
Something balked within him, balked at the lies about to be told. Even in childhood, his had always been an honest, even earnest, soul. He gazed into her clear blue eyes, trusting in the mask the Dread Mother had given him.
"My friend, Zsoronga… He thinks your Consult is a myth, an-"
"And that Father is mad."
"Yes."
"But he saw the skin-spy Father unmasked in the Umbilicus."
"Months back? Yes."
Her scowl was quizzical enough to be alarming. "And?"
"He thought it a trick."
"Of course he did. The Zeumi are stubborn fools."
Now it was Sorweel's turn to scowl. He could feel the danger-the slippery tumble of word in passion, passion in word, that prefaced every argument-yet he erred against caution once again. "Better a fool than a slave," he snapped in reply.
Boldness, it seemed, was its own shelter.
Her expression hung in blank equipoise, as if deciding whether to be offended or amused. "You are not like the others. You do not speak as a Believer-King."
"I am not like the others."
Then she asked the dreaded question. "But you do believe, don't you? Or has your stubborn Zeumi friend robbed you of your conviction?"
The assumption was plain. Her father had declared him a Believer-King, therefore he simply had to be a believer-at least at some point. Once again, Sorweel found himself marvelling at the strange power the Goddess and her deception had afforded him. Knowledge-this was the great fortress the Anasurimbor had raised about themselves. And somehow he had found his way past the gates, into the very bosom of his adversary.
He was narindari, as Zsoronga had said. He, and he alone, was capable of murdering the Aspect-Emperor.
He need only summon the courage to die.
"Is doubt such a bad thing?" he asked, blinking to recover his concentration. "Would you rather I be a fanatic like the others?"
She glared at him, five heartbeats of scrutiny, unnerving for the glint of preternatural canniness in her Anasurimbor eyes.
"Yes," she finally said. "Most assuredly yes. I have battled Shauriatas in my Dreams. I have been tortured by Mekeritrig. Chased across Earwa by Aurax and Aurang. The Consult is as real as it is wicked and deadly, Sorweel. Short of my father, the world knows no powers more ferocious. Even absent the No-God and the Second Apocalypse, they warrant the bloodthirsty fanaticism of Men."
If anything, her voice had grown softer in speaking these words, yet the intensity of her look and intonation shocked the young King of Sakarpus. For all her allure and arcane potency, Anasurimbor Serwa had always seemed arrogant and flip like her brothers-another child too aware of her divine paternity. Now she reminded him of Eskeles, and the way the portly Schoolman had tucked his zealotry between the folds of his wit and compassion.
This was the true Serwa, he realized. The earnest one. And her beauty seemed to blaze all the brighter for it.
He found himself staring at her breathless. Leaf shadows bobbed across the perfect lines of her face.
"Don't be a fool, Sorweel."
She turned on her rump to kick her snoring brother.
No Schoolmen was as famed as Apperens Saccarees, who had long stood high among the Empire's Exalt-Ministers. His voice proved a tonic for the Army of the South's nightly war-councils, for it carried both the authority of their Aspect-Emperor and the promise of tactical acumen. Like all Mandate Schoolmen he dreamed the First Apocalypse through the eyes of Seswatha and so could speak of their straits with the wisdom of one who had suffered them before-many times.