The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(11)

Even as the man agrees to murder Maithanet, horns ring out over the city … battlehorns. She races back to the palace in terror, only to discover that her home has been taken by the Shrial Knights. Maithanet has finally struck. Imhailas has to drag her away, such is her terror for Kelmomas and Theliopa. The Exalt-Captain takes her to Naree, a Nilnameshi prostitute who has become his lover, and demands that she shelter the Empress.

And so Esmenet finds herself a fugitive in the very Empire she ruled, reliving her own past. Naree wants no part in the affair, but harbours the Empress for the love she bears Imhailas. For weeks Esmenet hides thus, fretting for her surviving children, raging for impotence, and bearing sundry indignities at the hands of her reluctant host. Imhailas is her sole source of information regarding the outside world, and his tidings never fail to dismay her. No matter how hard he pressures her, she refuses to flee her city.

Kelmomas witnesses the violent fall of the Andiamine Heights to the Shrial Knights through the innumerable spy-holes his father has installed throughout the palace. He takes the hidden network of passages as his new home, mourns the loss of his mother almost as much as the loss of his secret. As his hunger gets the better of him, he begins to ambush solitary Knights, dragging them into his hidden lair, devouring them until they spoil.

Malowebi, meanwhile, confers via sorcerous dreams with the Satakhan of High Holy Zeum on the matter of Fanayal, Meppa, and the manifest weakness of the New Empire. The Mbimayu emissary counsels caution: the fact that Kellhus has emptied the Imperial larder in his mad quest to destroy Golgotterath suggests that he genuinely believes the Second Apocalypse is upon them. Nganka’kull, however, sees opportunity, commands Malowebi to promise the support of Zeum should Fanayal succeed in his daring plan.

Imhailas returns to Naree’s room after a long sojourn bearing news that no one knows what has come of Kelmomas. Esmenet fairly swoons, but her Exalt-Captain catches her, once again begs her to flee the city and raise an army from elsewhere across the Three Seas. But Esmenet suddenly recalls the secrets of her palace home. So long as Kelmomas remains hiding in the Andiamine Heights, there is no way she can leave Momemn. Imhailas relents, obviously exasperated.

Naree makes love to Imhailas that night—to spite her, Esmenet realizes. The indignity of listening combined with her terror for her son is too much, and she begins weeping. The Gods do war against her! At that moment the door is kicked open and Shrial Knights surge into the room. Esmenet is thrust to her knees, watches horrified as Imhailas is beaten to death before her. A Collegian throws five gold kellics at the shrieking Naree, then leaves one silver kellic as well, as a memento, he says, of the Empress she betrayed.

Maithanet’s own bodyguard, the Inchausti, march Esmenet through the early morning streets to the Temple of Xothei. The frightful passage quickly transforms into a humiliating parade as more and more of Momemn awakens to word of the Empress’s capture. Riot breaks out by the time they finally gain the great three-domed Temple’s gate.

In chains, she is led into the gloom of the interior, to the central dais with its golden idols of the Ten, where she finds Maithanet awaiting her. He demands to know why she had Inrilatas try to assassinate him, and when she replies that she had nothing to do with it, he realizes that she speaks true. To Esmenet’s astonishment, he falls to his knees and begs her forgiveness. Maithanet confesses that Kellhus’s design defeats him as much as her, and that he now thinks that Kellhus had known all along that his Empire would collapse in his absence, and so had abandoned them to their own fates. He calls out to the surrounding lords and ministers, announcing the reconciliation of the Tusk and the Mantle. With wonder Esmenet watches dozens of Shrial and Imperial Apparati stride from the gloom toward her. The Shriah hears a noise, turns toward the idols. Standing in the one place overlooked, the White-Luck Warrior plunges a knife into his breast.

Uproar seizes the assembly, but Esmenet seizes them, decrying Maithanet as a traitor and a heretic—the murderer of the Aspect-Emperor’s son. She speaks oil as Kellhus had taught her, saying not what was true, but what most needed to be believed. She is the only remaining link to their holy Warrior-Prophet, so when she screams at them to kneel, those assembled comply.

They all hear it in the ensuing silence, the throb of Fanim war-drums, and Esmenet realizes …

Fanayal attacks Momemn.





Prologue: Momemn


And naught was known or unknown, and there was no hunger.

All was One in silence, and it was as Death.

Then the Word was spoken, and One became Many.

Doing was struck from the hip of Being.

And the Solitary God said, “Let there be Deceit.

Let there be Desire.”

—The Book of Fane





Late Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Momemn

For all the tumult of the Unification Wars, for all the rigours of motherhood and imperial station, Anas?rimbor Esmenet had never ceased to read. Of all the palaces her divine husband had seized for her comfort, not one had wanted for material. She had marvelled at the bleak beauty of Sirro in the arid shade of Nenciphon, dozed with the labourious precision of Casidas in the swelter of Invishi, scowled at the profundities of Memgowa in the chill of Oswenta. Smoke often plumed the horizon. Her husband’s Holy Circumfix obscured walls, festooned shields, pinched naked throats. His children would watch her with His omnivorous eyes. The slaves would wash and scrub away the blood, paint, and plaster over the soot. And whenever opportunity afforded, she devoured what she could, the great classics of Early Cenei, the polyglot masterpieces of the Late Ceneian Empire. She smiled at the rollicking lays of Galeoth, sighed for the love poetry of Kian, bristled at the race chants of Ce Tydonn.