His father staggered against the panels that pitted the walls. Snakes curled out of the recesses, shining and black. They curled about his throat, like eyes that strangled.

Kellhus stepped back, focused his eyes on a point the size of a thumbnail held at arm's length. What was one became many. What was soul became place. place.

Here.

Calling out from bones of things.

With three voices three voices he sang, one utteral pitched to the world and two inutterals directed to the he sang, one utteral pitched to the world and two inutterals directed to the ground ground. What had been an ancient Cant of Calling became something far, far more...A Cant of Transposing Transposing.

Blue fractal lights mapped the air about him, coc.o.o.ned him in brilliance. Through scribbling filaments he saw his father press himself upright, turn with his asps to the girded corridor. Anasurimbor Moenghus ... that he could look so pale in the light of his son!

Existence cringed before the whip of his voice. s.p.a.ce cracked. Here was pried into there. Beyond his father he saw Serwe, Serwe, her blonde hair tied into a war-knot. He saw her leap out of the black ... her blonde hair tied into a war-knot. He saw her leap out of the black ...

Even as he toppled into one far greater.

Drusas Achamian shouted out destruction. Light scored the creature, parabolas of knifing white. Molten blood flecked the gra.s.ses. Chits of fiery flesh sailed like kicked coals.

Waves of heat burned Esmenet's cheeks. She stared as one transfixed, though she could not bear to watch. Surrounded by withered, burning gra.s.ses, he stood behind his sheets of light, at once glorious with power and dreadful with frailty. But the thing was upon him, a raving nightmare, hammering and clawing, blows that cracked the stone about her, that brought blood to her nose. Wards buckled and fractured. Achamian called out great concussions and the demon's head was battered. Horns snapped. Spider-eyes ruptured light.

Its a.s.sault became a frenzy, a jerking blur of violence, until it seemed h.e.l.l itself tore and gnashed at his gates.

Achamian staggered, blinked white-burning eyes, cried out- An instant of wasted voice.

Rats screamed through its exultant roar. Achamian falling, his mouth working. The closing of dragon claws ...

Achamian falling.

She could not scream.

The monstrosity leapt into the sky, punishing the air with rent wings.

She could not scream.

"I live!" Ikurei Conphas cried one more time, only to hear nothing above the crack and thunder of sorcerous battle, both near and far. No resounding cheer, no individual shouts of relief or acclaim. They couldn't see him-that was it! They mistook him for one of their own. For a man ...

He whirled back to his stunned rescuers.

"You!" he shouted to a dumbstruck Selial Captain. "Find General Baxatas. Tell him to join me here at once!"

The man hesitated-for scarcely an eye-blink, but it sparked a cold fire in Conphas's belly. Then the fool was off, sprinting through gra.s.s and clover toward distant formations.

"And you!" Conphas snapped at a run-of-the-mill Columnary. "Find some hornsmen. Quick-quick! Tell them to signal the general advance!

"And y-" He broke off. There was was shouting on the wind. Of course! It had just taken them time to recover their hearts. To gather their wits. The hapless fools ... shouting on the wind. Of course! It had just taken them time to recover their hearts. To gather their wits. The hapless fools ...

They thought me dead!

Grinning, he turned back to the vista of his army ...

Only to see the hors.e.m.e.n he had glimpsed earlier, several hundred of them, riding unchallenged along the stationary flanks of the Selial Column. "There are no more nations!" "There are no more nations!" a voice cried from their galloping midst. a voice cried from their galloping midst. "There are no more nations!" "There are no more nations!"

For several moments Conphas could scarce credit his eyes-or even his ears, for that matter. They were obviously Inrithi, despite their white-and-blue khalats. The banner of the Circ.u.mfix hung above the forward riders, trailing a skirt of golden ta.s.sels. And behind it ... the Red Lion.

"Kill them!" Conphas howled. "Attack! Attack! Attack!"

For an instant it seemed nothing would happen, that n.o.body had heard. His army continued to mill in imbecile crowds; the interlopers continued to ride unmolested among them.

"There are no more nations!"

Then the white-clad knights abruptly changed direction, began riding toward him him.

Conphas turned to the remaining Columnaries, at once laughed and snarled. And he remembered his grandmother, back when her beauty had yet burned as bright as legend. He remembered her drawing him up onto her lap and laughing at the way he squirmed and kicked his legs.

"It's good you prefer to keep your feet on the ground! For an Emperor that is the first thing ..."

"And what is the second?"

A laugh like a clear fountain. "Ahhh ... The second is that you must ceaselessly measure."

"Measure what, gramama?"

He could remember tapping his fingers on her cheek. How small his fingernails had been ...

"The purses of those who serve you, my little G.o.dling. For if you ever find them empty ..."

Of the dozen Nansur Columnaries who faced him, two fell to their knees, weeping, and three offered their swords. Five ran like madmen, and two simply walked away. He could hear the rumbling climb into the sky behind him.

"I defeated the Scylvendi," he said to the remainder. "You were there there ..." ..."

Hooves pounding the turf. The ground shivered through his sandals.

"No man man could do such a thing," he said. could do such a thing," he said.

"No man!" one of the kneelers cried. The soldier clutched his hand, kissed his Imperial Ring.

Such a deep deep sound, the charge of the Inrithi. Thunder about horses snorting, gear clanking. So this was what the heathen heard. sound, the charge of the Inrithi. Thunder about horses snorting, gear clanking. So this was what the heathen heard.

The Emperor of Nansur turned, not really believing ...

He saw King Saubon leaning from his saddle, his face ruddy with murderous intent. More than sun glinted in the man's blue eyes.

He saw the broadsword that took his head.

Striding through smoke and over towering bonfires, Eleazaras advanced on the Heresiarch of the Cishaurim. Seokti ravaged the ground before him, raising up skirts of smoking debris, tossing and breaking the black-armoured Thunyeri that surged toward him.

His voice bleeding, Eleazaras shouted out the most powerful of the Great a.n.a.logies. He was the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, the greatest School of Near Antiquity. He was Heir to Sampileth Fire-Singer, to Amrezzer the Black. He would avenge his beloved teacher! His School!

"Sasheoka!" he screamed between Cants. he screamed between Cants.

Dragon fire buffeted the Heresiarch earthward, and for a moment the man rolled in golden fire, sheathed in foaming blue, fouled in his shimmering yellow gowns. Again and again Eleazaras smote him. Magma burst from the earth beneath him. Suns crashed from the heavens. Great burning palms slapped about his alien defences, a fiery crush, into which Eleazaras sang more and more power, until he saw the blind face cry out. His feet braced across smoke and sky, Eleazaras laughed as he sang, for vengeance had made hatred a thing of rapture and glory.

But from a different direction, flurries of blue plasma, the Holy Water of the Indara-Kishauri, rained across his Wards, rocking them, then glancing off into the clouds above, where they vanished in smudges of glowing blue. The ghosts of cracks appeared. Sheets of ethereal stone fell away ...

Another Incandati soaring up from the ruin, disgorging world-cracking power ... Eleazaras turned back to his Wards, singing deeper Ramparts, st.u.r.dier Shields. He glimpsed Seokti, climbing back into the sky. Glaring cataracts flaring from an impossible point between his missing eyes ...

Where were his brother Schoolmen? Ptarramas? Ti?

All about him the world had become a tidal surge of brilliant white and blue, tearing, pounding. Markless, as virginal as the G.o.dspun world.

Tearing. Pounding.

The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires grunted, cursed. Jets of incandescence exploded through his Wards, immolating his left arm even as he screamed deeper defences. A fissure opened before him. Light blew across his scalp and brow. Like a doll, he was thrown backward.

His corpse toppled into the burning tracts below.

All along the length of the Skilura Aqueduct, the Fanim enveloped the despairing Men of the Tusk. Hors.e.m.e.n swept in flurries about the pilings, loosing shafts from point-blank range. Others charged into haphazard shield-walls, hacking their way past pikes and spears. Lord Galgota, the Palatine of Eshganax, fell to the merciless fervour of the Kirgwi.

Lord Gotian charged into the fray with all that remained of his Shrial Knights. At first their conviction and fury won them long expanses of ground, but they were too few. The heathen swarmed about their flanks, shot their horses out from under them. The Knights of the Tusk fought on, singing hymns that no calamity could break. Gotian fell, struck by an arrow in his armpit as he held his sword high, and still the warrior-monks sang.

Until death came swirling down.

Then horns sounded from the west. For a moment all those across the Shairizor, heathen and idolater alike, turned to the heights where the ancient Amoti had buried their Kings. And there, above the encampment, they saw the Imperial Army a.s.sembled in long lines along the crest.

The Men of the Tusk boomed in jubilation. At first the heathen raised ragged cheers of their own, and jeered at the arm-waving Inrithi, for their Grandees had told them not to fear should the Nansur arrive. But a presentiment of doom was traded among them, pa.s.sing from band to slowing band. More than a few had seen the Circ.u.mfix and the Red Lion among the sacred standards of the Nansur Columns.

This wasn't the treachery of an Emperor-an Ikurei-come to seal a pact with their Padirajah. The hated standard of the Exalt-General, with its distinctive Kyranean disc, was nowhere to be seen.

No. This wasn't Ikurei Conphas. It was the Blond Beast ...

King Saubon.

The Kianene hors.e.m.e.n withdrew from the surviving clots of Inrithi, milled in confusion across the plain. Even the Golden Padirajah seemed uncertain.

From the shadow of the aqueduct, Lord Werijen Greatheart cried out to the Tydonni of Plaideol. Raising a great shout, the blond-bearded warriors charged across the corpse-strewn turf, ran hacking into their wicked enemy's midst. Others followed, heedless of wounds or numbers.

Black-robed Schoolmen stood astride the sky: the Imperial Saik, the Sorcerers of the Sun, advancing on the ma.s.sed formations of their hated, ancestral foe.

Horse and man thrashed black in descending fire.

The Scylvendi fairly gagged for breath. There he he was, slumped against the mad walls of this place, in a white-illuminated chamber that opened at the end of the corridor. Pale. Naked save a loincloth. was, slumped against the mad walls of this place, in a white-illuminated chamber that opened at the end of the corridor. Pale. Naked save a loincloth. There he was There he was ... ...

For hours Cnaiur had climbed through these obscene halls, following Serwe and her brother as they tracked Kellhus's scent. Apart from the braziers beneath the cavernous waterfall, all had been black. Deep into deep. Dark into dark. Through an underworld of vile images. They pa.s.sed through ruins, Serwe said, the mines of the Cunuroi, long murdered by the ancestors of Men. And Cnaiur had known that no track could lead him farther from the Steppe. His heart had hammered in his ears. He had glimpsed his father, Skiotha, beckoning through the black. And now ...

There he was-Moenghus!

Serwe a.s.sailed him first, her limbs and blade a whirring blur. But he stopped her with blue-flashing hands, swatted aside her slender figure ...

Just as her brother descended, slashing at impossible palms, spinning and kicking, lunging and probing-only to be seized about the throat, to gape and thrash as the blind man lifted him off his feet, to blister and burn as blue light consumed his head, made a candle of his body. The thing's face cramped open and the blind man threw him slack to the ground.

Throughout this, Cnaiur had advanced down the corridor, walking steadily, though the numbness of his gait made it seem that he shambled. He remembered approaching Kellhus the same way, that day he'd found him half dead upon his father's barrow, surrounded by circles of lifeless Sranc. He remembered the limb-hollowing air of nightmares. The breath like needles. But this was different! That had been the point of departure, from his homeland, from his people, from everything he had thought hallowed and strong. This was his destination. This was him ...

Him!

Three black snakes coiled about his throat, one hooked above either shoulder, another curled above his gleaming scalp. Cnaiur glimpsed the wound in his abdomen, the blood soaking pink across his loincloth, but he couldn't recall seeing him cut.

"Nayu," the blind face said in recognition. Kellhus's voice! Kellhus's features! When had the son become the father's mould?

"Nayu ... You have returned to me ..."

The snakes watched him, their tongues lapping the air. Even without eyes, the face beseeched him, tugged with a look of long remorse and astonished joy.

"Just as I knew you would."

Cnaiur stopped at the threshold, mere paces from the man who had butchered his heart. He glanced uneasily about the room, saw Serwe splayed motionless to his right, her long blonde hair swept across a bloodied floor, and the captive skin-spies hanging abject within a curtain of pulleys and chains. The walls warred with inhuman images. He squinted at the light that hung impossibly beneath the graven vaults.

"Nayu ... put down your sword. Please."

Blinking, he saw the notched blade in the air before him, though he had no recollection of drawing it. The light rolled like liquid across it.

"I am Cnaiur urs Skiotha," he said. "The most violent of all men."

"No," Moenghus said softly. "That is but a lie that you use to conceal your weakness from other men, just as weak."

"It is you who lie."