"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, Anasurimbor 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 Anasurimbor 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 Anasurimbor 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 Kayutas'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 Anasurimbor.
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, Moenghus was nothing short of mercurial. Sorweel had never forgotten Kayutas's warning to beware his brother's madness. Even Serwa had mentioned Moenghus'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 Moenghus 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 Anasurimbor he likes."
"Podi," Sorweel had learned, was the jnanic diminutive for "older brother," a term of endearment and respect.
"My sister is sane," Moenghus 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, Serwe. 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 Cnaiur urs Skiotha?"
Even from a distance, Moenghus 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…"