"Of course, you had heard of the Consult," Kellhus continued, ignoring his question. "And like most in the Three Seas, you thought them long dead-the stuff of Mandate delusions. But the stories you extracted from your captives ... there was too much consistency, too much detail, for them to be fabrications.

"The deeper you probed, the more troubling the story became. You had read The Sagas, The Sagas, and you had doubted them, thinking them too fanciful. Destroying the world? No malice could be so great. No soul could be so deranged. After all, what could be gained? Who follows paths over precipices? and you had doubted them, thinking them too fanciful. Destroying the world? No malice could be so great. No soul could be so deranged. After all, what could be gained? Who follows paths over precipices?

"But the skin-spies explained it all. Speaking in shrieks and howls, they taught you the why and wherefore of the Apocalypse. You learned that the boundaries between the World and the Outside were not fixed, that if the World could be cleansed of enough souls, it could be sealed shut sealed shut. Against the G.o.ds. Against the heavens and the h.e.l.ls of the Afterlife. Against redemption. And, most importantly, against the possibility of d.a.m.nation.

"The Consult, you realized, were labouring to save their souls save their souls. And what was more, if your captives could be believed, they were drawing near the end of their millennial task."

In the absence of light, Kellhus studied his father through the lens of different senses: the scent of naked skin, the displacement of drafts, the sound of bare feet scuffing through the dark.

"The Second Apocalypse," Moenghus said simply.

"Only you knew their secret. Only you could detect their spies."

"They have to be stopped," Moenghus replied. "Destroyed."

"So you brooded over what the skin-spies told you, spent years immersed in the depths of the Probability Trance."

From the very first, ever since descending the glaciers into the wastes of Kuniuri, Kellhus had pondered the man now leading him through these galleries of darkness. Scheme after probabilistic scheme. The branching of innumerable alternatives, waxing and waning with each mile walked, with every insight and apprehension.

I'm here, Father. In the house you have prepared for me.

"You began," Kellhus said, "contemplating what would become the Thousandfold Thought."

"Yes," Moenghus replied, a simple affirmation. Even as he said this, Kellhus sensed the changes-in acoustics, odours, even ambient temperature. The pitch-black corridor had opened onto a chamber of some kind. One where things still lived, and where things had died-many things.

"We have arrived," his father said.

Beneath the eaves of the clouds, the Inrithi knights of Ce Tydonn thundered across dead fields and stumped orchards. Pennants slapped against the smoking expanse of Shimeh: the Three Black Shields of Nangaelsa, the White Stag of Numaineiri, the Red Swords of Plaideol, and other ancient marks of northern peoples. Beneath the black and gold Circ.u.mfix, Lord Gothyelk, Earl of Agansanor, galloped before them, and all the world rumbled.

The distance closed. More and more Fanim climbed the ramped banks of the Jeshimal and hastened to join the milling ranks. Arrows began falling among the Inrithi, disorganized volleys that either clattered harmlessly from their great kite-shields or were stilled by thick pads of felt. Several horses fell screaming, throwing their riders to earth, but the ma.s.ses simply parted about them and pounded on. Spurs urged chargers faster. Lances were lowered. Long-bearded warriors began roaring out to Gilgaol-mighty War.

The heathen began charging toward them, haphazardly at first, like clutches of seed falling from laden trees, then en ma.s.se. The whole horizon moved, at once dark and many-coloured. Among the Tydonni some glimpsed the triangular standard of Cinganjehoi, the famed Tiger of Eumarna.

The Men of the Tusk leaned into their lances, both grinning and grimacing. It seemed they rattled the world to its foundations. "Shimeh!" a voice pealed out-the grizzled old Earl, riding hard in their lead. Soon they were all shouting, "Shimeh! Shimeh! Shimeh!"

Then all was snapping wood and screaming horses, hacking swords and pummelling maces. Men shouting, dying. Gauslas, son of Earl Cerjulla, was the first of the caste-n.o.bility to fall, beheaded by silver-helmed Cinganjehoi himself. But his Warnutishmen, howling in grief, could not be broken, nor could any of the Tydonni. The iron men hammered down shields and smashed faces. They shattered scimitars with their long notched swords. They brained shrieking horses.

Then, like a miracle, they were reining to stop before blue and black waters. They had taken the riverbank.

The Grandees of Eumarna were broken, killed or beaten away, but there was no respite. Like angry bees the Fanim rea.s.sembled beyond their flanks, even behind them, riding in hard arcs, loosing arrow after arrow. Across the ground, the wounded howled through forests of stamping legs. The bridgeheads were retaken, and the Inrithi Earls thundered at their men, exhorting them to hold them. Vicious melees raged across the bridges and the rapids. But the Fanim were already uncoupling the timber rafts that their mastodons had dragged from the levelling of the Tantanah Gate. On the Jeshimal's far bank all the world seemed to throng with the enemy. Fanim riders crowded onto the first of the rafts. More and more arrows fell among the Inrithi.

Earl Gothyelk looked to the white-tiled walls of the city, saw that King-Regent Chinjosa and his Ainoni were yet in disarray. Many still crowded the parapets.

Cursing, he commanded his hornsman to sound the retreat. They had lost the Jeshimal.

Kellhus spoke a sorcerous word and a point of light appeared, sheeting low-vaulted walls in illumination. Though ornate by Inrithi standards, the chamber was more austere than any he'd encountered since plumbing the darkness beneath Kyudea. The friezes that panelled the walls did not screen deeper carvings. They seemed more reserved in theme and content as well, as if the product of an older, more stolid age-though Kellhus decided it had more to do with the room's function. It had been some kind of access chamber for the mansion's ancient sewers.

Workbenches and strange iron and wood mechanisms littered the walls with shadow. At the far end of the chamber, where the ceiling sloped so low a man would have to stoop, a cistern opened beneath converging chutes, as dust-dry as everything else in the room. Nearer, two wells or pits had been dropped into the floor, each possessing graven lips that, perversely, had been carved into the semblance of hands reaching out of the darkness to tear at four spread-eagled figures, one for each point of the compa.s.s. With heads bent back in soundless howls, each clutched at the ground with stationary desperation.

The two skin-spies hung suspended above these pits, their arms and legs shackled in chains of pitted iron.

Kellhus approached the nearer one, stepping past a hanging funnel-part of a rust-grooved force-feeding mechanism. How many years had the thing hung here, dangling in absolute black, flinching from instruments, listening to the insistent cooing of his father's voice?

With a gesture he drew the point of light closer. Shadows swung like steepled fingers.

Their facial limbs were drawn perpetually open with rust-brown wire affixed to an iron ring. A contraption of cords and pulleys allowed the things' inner faces to be pulled back or down.

"When did you realize you didn't possess the strength," Kellhus asked, "that more was needed to avert the No-G.o.d's second coming?"

"From the very first I recognized that it was probable," Moenghus said. "But I spent years a.s.sessing the possibilities, gathering knowledge. When the first of the Thought came to me, I was quite unprepared."

Their braincases had been sawed open, revealing lobes and milky convolutions hazed by hundreds of silver needles. Neuropuncture. Kellhus reached out a finger, brushed the tip of one near the brain's base. The creature jerked and stiffened. Excrement slopped down into the pit. The reek of it swelled through the room.

"I a.s.sume," Kellhus continued, "that you're not entirely without Water ... that this was how you were able to reach out to Ishual, to send dreams to those Dunyain you knew before your exile."

Through intersecting chains he saw his father nod, as hairless as the ancient Nonmen who had hewn the stone surrounding them. What secrets had he learned from these captives? What dread whispers?

"I have some facility for those elements of the Psukhe that require more subtlety than power. Scrying, Calling, Translating ... Even still, my summons to you nearly broke me. Ishual lies across the world."

"I was the Shortest Path."

"No. You were the only path."

Kellhus examined the two squares of oak that had been laid across the floor on the far side of the wells. They looked like doors, only stripped of their hinges and handles and set with hooks in each corner so that they could be hung directly beneath the skin-spies. The child and woman nailed across them-tools his father had used either to fan or to sate the creatures' l.u.s.ts-hadn't been dead long. Their blood gleamed like wax.

An interrogation technique, or another feeding mechanism?

"And my half-brother?" Kellhus asked. In his soul's eye it seemed he could almost see him-the pomp, the authoritarian grandeur-so many times had he heard him described. Kellhus stepped around the far side of the skin-spies to gain a clear view of his father. The man seemed wizened, all but naked in the glaring light. Strangely bent ... or broken.

He uses every heartbeat to rea.s.sess. His son has returned to him insane.

Moenghus nodded and said, "You mean Maithanet."

Her head in the crook of his shoulder, Esmenet stared up through the trees. She breathed deep and slow, tasting the salt of her tears, smelling the dank of mossy stone, the bitter of pinched green. Like little flags, the leaves swung and fluttered, their waxy clatter so clear against the background roar. It seemed marvellous and impossible. Twigs upon branches, branches upon limbs, all upward fanning, at once random and perfectly radial, all reaching for a thousand different heavens.

She sighed and said, "I feel so young."

His chest bounced in silent laughter beneath her cheek.

"You are ... Only the world is old."

"Oh, Akka, what are we going to do?"

"What we must."

"No ... that's not what I mean." She cast an urgent look to his profile. "He'll see, see, Akka. The instant he glimpses our faces, he'll see us here ... He'll Akka. The instant he glimpses our faces, he'll see us here ... He'll know know."

He turned to her. The scowling hurt of old fears unearthed.

"Esmi-"

The snort of a horse, loud and near, interrupted him. They looked to each other in confusion and alarm.

Achamian crept back along the bruised V V that marked their path through the weeds, crouched behind the scabbed masonry. She followed. Over his shoulder she glimpsed a row of cavalry-obviously Imperial Kidruhil-arrayed in a long line across the heights. Dour, expressionless, the mailed hors.e.m.e.n stared out to the roaring city. Their horses stamped and snorted in nervousness. From the gathering clamour she knew that more, very many more, approached from behind. that marked their path through the weeds, crouched behind the scabbed masonry. She followed. Over his shoulder she glimpsed a row of cavalry-obviously Imperial Kidruhil-arrayed in a long line across the heights. Dour, expressionless, the mailed hors.e.m.e.n stared out to the roaring city. Their horses stamped and snorted in nervousness. From the gathering clamour she knew that more, very many more, approached from behind.

Conphas? Here? But he was supposed to be dead!

"You're not surprised," she whispered in sudden understanding. She leaned close to him. "Did the Scylvendi tell you about this? Does his treachery run this deep?"

"He told me," Achamian said, his voice so hollow, so dismayed, that her skin p.r.i.c.kled in terror. "And he told me to warn the Great Names ... H-he didn't want any harm to befall the Holy War-for Proyas's sake as much as anything else, I think ... B-but ... after he left, all I could think about was ... was ..." He trailed, then turned to her, his eyes round. "Stay here. Stay hidden!"

She shrank backward, such was the intensity of his tone. She pressed her back against the forking of slender trunks. "What are you talking about? Akka ..."

"I can't let this happen, Esmi. Conphas has an entire army ... Think of what will happen!"

"That's exactly exactly what I'm thinking about, you fool!" what I'm thinking about, you fool!"

"Please, Esmi. You're his wife his wife ... Think of what happened to Serwe!" ... Think of what happened to Serwe!"

In her soul's eye she glimpsed the girl trying to palm blood back into the gash about her throat. "Akka!" she sobbed.

"I love you, Esmenet. The love of a fool ..." He paused, blinked two tears. "That's all I've ever had to offer."

Then suddenly he stood tall. Before she could speak, he had stepped over the broken foundation. There was something nightmarish to his movements, an urgency that couldn't be contained by his limbs. She would have laughed had she not known him so well.

He walked out and among the cavalrymen, calling ...

His eyes shining. His voice a thunderclap.

Emperor Ikurei Conphas I was in an uncommonly jubilant mood.

"A holy city afire," he said to the grave faces to either side of him. "Ma.s.ses locked in battle." He turned to the old Grandmaster, who seemed to slump in his saddle. "Tell me, Cememketri-you Schoolmen pretend to be wise-what does it say of men that we find such things beautiful?"

The black-robed sorcerer blinked as though trying to clear the rheum from his eyes. "That we are bred to war, G.o.d-of-Men."

"No," Conphas replied, his tone at once playful and cross. "War is intellect, and men are stupid. It's violence violence we're bred to, not war." we're bred to, not war."

Astride his horse, the Emperor gazed down across the Inrithi encampment, out to where Shimeh smoked and flickered with warring lights. In addition to the ailing Saik Grandmaster, General Areamanteras, several sundry officers, and members of the messenger corps accompanied him, arrayed along the summit of the mounded ridge. His Kidruhil fanned out before him, forming ranks lower on the slopes, near a series of ruined structures he couldn't be troubled to identify. His Columns approached from behind, already drawn out into red and gold battle lines. Their timing had been impeccable. They had debarked from the fleet the night before, in a miraculous little harbour mere miles up the coast. Even the winds had been blessed. And now ...

He fairly cackled at what he saw. The Scarlet Spires engaged in the shadow of the Juterum. Half the Holy War running heedless and amok through the smoking streets. Fanayal striking to the south of the city, trying to outflank the stubborn Tydonni. Everything was exactly as his scouts had informed him.

The Men of the Tusk had no inkling of his arrival. Which meant that Sompas, wherever he was, had succeeded in stopping the Scylvendi. Four full Columns! A veritable spear in the small of the Holy War's back.

Whom do the G.o.ds favour now, hmm, Prophet?

A defect carried from the womb ... Please.

He laughed aloud, utterly unperturbed by the ashen looks of his officers. Suddenly it seemed he could see the future to its very limit. It wouldn't end here, oh my, no! It would continue, continue, first to the south, to Seleukara, then onward to Nenciphon, west to Invishi-all the way to Auvangshei and the legendary gates of Zeum! He, Ikurei Conphas I, would be the new Triamis, the next Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas! first to the south, to Seleukara, then onward to Nenciphon, west to Invishi-all the way to Auvangshei and the legendary gates of Zeum! He, Ikurei Conphas I, would be the new Triamis, the next Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas!

He turned scowling to his retinue. How could they not see it? It was all so clear clear. But then, they peered through the smoke of mortality. All they could see now was their precious Holy City. But time would show. In the meantime, they need only foll- "Who's that?" General Areamanteras abruptly muttered.

Conphas found and recognized the man immediately. Drusas Achamian, Drusas Achamian, walking through the gra.s.s, turning toward them, his eyes and mouth ablaze- walking through the gra.s.s, turning toward them, his eyes and mouth ablaze- Groping for his Chorae, he screamed, "Cememket-"

But heat sucked all air from his lungs. He heard screams dissolve like salt into boiling broth. He was falling.

"To me, Emperor!" an aged voice cried. "To me!"

He was on the ground, rolling through gra.s.ses that had become black ash. Somehow the Grandmaster of the Imperial Saik was standing above him, his white hair whipping in convections, his sorcerous voice strong despite his unsteady stance. Ethereal ramparts distorted the air between them and the Mandate sorcerer, who'd turned to the breaking ranks of Kidruhil. Lines of light swept out, more perfect than any rule, flashing across the nearest of the Imperial Heavy Cavalry, who ... collapsed, not bodily but in sopping pieces pieces that rolled between the hummocks and weeds. that rolled between the hummocks and weeds.

A blinding light rewrote all the shadows, and through upraised fingers Conphas saw a sun falling from black-bellied clouds, plummeting onto the figure of the Mandate Schoolman. Bursting fire, ribbons of it, arcing off in all directions. Conphas heard himself cry out in relief, elation ...

But as his eyes adjusted, he saw the flames twining away into nothingness about an invisible sphere, and he glimpsed him him, as clear as that night beneath the Andiamine Heights, or in the Sapatishah's Palace in Caraskand: Drusas Achamian, unharmed, untouched, untouched, laughing about incandescence as he sang. laughing about incandescence as he sang.

From nowhere, a ma.s.sive concussion. The air just cracked cracked.

Cememketri fell to one knee, made a curious gasping sound. Parabolas of light pa.r.s.ed the air about his half-shattered Wards. The sound of iron teeth, grinding at the world's very bones ... Cememketri's voice wavered in old-man panic-words wrapped around gasps.

Another concussion, and Conphas found himself face-first in the ash. His ears shrieked, but he could still make out the hoa.r.s.e old voice howling ...

"Run!"

And the Emperor ran, screaming.

The Saik Grandmaster's blood was blown like sleet across his back.

Cursing, the lone guardsman before the Umbilica's silk and canvas entrance shot to his feet. He blinked at the approaching figure, which did not ... move right. At moments it seemed a man, but at others it seemed something else, like a moth's pupa or a bundle of collapsing cloth-something flattened from all directions, though it did not grow smaller.

And the air seemed to ... crackle, as though somewhere, just out of sight, sheaves of papyrus burned.