The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(161)

Psatma Nannaferi watched the two Men as she always watched, sitting with the lazy indiscretion of whores and maidens, those who know either too much or too little to care. A different brand of jubilation animated her look, one unencumbered by sneering.

All the World, it seemed, was a Gift this day.

“Who? Who does the Great Satakhan fear?” Fanayal was shouting.

Malowebi continued inspecting his bread. The brighter Fanayal’s dread, the more he had begun answering his own questions—to the point of preempting his interlocutors altogether.

“The Aspect-Emperor!”

He spoke as a man perpetually wounded by the keen edge of his own reason.

The Zeumi Emissary had suffered several such “negotiations” now, where he need only await the Padirajah to hear his reply.

“And here we stand—here! Before the gates of his Capital! All we need are ships, man! Ships! And the Satakhan, nay, mighty Zeum itself, never need fear again!”

“Even if I could secure such a thing,” Malowebi finally cried in retort, “it would take months fo—”

The ground became as planks on water.

Fanayal toppled into his lap even as he tipped backward—together they crashed into a scrambling heap.

All was rocking madness, and yet Psatma Nannaferi somehow stood. “Yessss!” she cried across the nape of the thunder. “Your children hear you, Mother!”

The pavilion swayed on a groaning arc. The menagerie of plundered furnishings careened and wagged like Shakers. Delicate things chirped for breaking.

The Yatwerian witch howled with libidinal laughter. “Yes! Yessss!”

Then it was over, replaced with ground eerie for being inert.

The Padirajah wasted no courtesy extricating himself from the Zeumi sorcerer. A racket chorus swelled outside—hundreds of Men calling out, shouting …

Fanayal was on his feet and leaping through the flaps of the Harem before Malowebi had found so much as his hands and knees. The Emissary was several heartbeats collecting himself, such was the tangle of his Erz? gowns. He glimpsed Nannaferi pirouetting into the shambles of the pavilion interior …

“The sights!” she called out to him from the wrecked gloom. “The sights you shall seeeeeee!”

He fled her chortling ecstasy, barged blinking and squinting into direct sunlight. A baffled assembly of Fanim warriors clotted the avenue.

“Silence!” Fanayal was crying, pushing men aside and turning his ear to the northern hillcrests. He threw a hand out. “Silence!” He turned to the Kianene nearest him, a Grandee named Omirji.

“Do you hear that?”

He glanced toward Malowebi, then raked his manic gaze across the others.

“What are they shouting? What—?”

Creation itself seemed to catch its breath for listening. Malowebi could hear the faraway chorus, but his ears still rang for the quaking—not to mention the madness of the Cultic witch.

“The walls …” a nameless young warrior gasped, his frown of concentration blooming into innocent wonder. “They say the walls have fallen!”

Malowebi watched the long-suffering son of Kascamandri comprehend these words, saw his face crack, wrung by passions greater than most any soul could bear …

Saw the soundless scream …

“The God!” he croaked upon a shudder. “The Solitary God!”

And it was too naked, it seemed, too wet with humanity, to be anything but holy.

The whoops and cheers from the hillcrest filled the reverent hollow. Scimitars flashed in the morning glare.

“To arms!” the Padirajah bellowed with sudden savagery. “To arms! We become immortal this day!”

And all the World fell to shouts and murderous rushing.

His grin fierce, Fanayal turned to seize Malowebi’s shoulder, crying, “Keep your accursed ships, blasphemer!” before vanishing into the Harem to grab his arms and armour.



The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas had dispensed with ceremony and bid General Iskaul to follow her out behind the Mantle, where they might assay the Capital he was charged to defend. By appearance, he was one of those grand Norsirai, his frame heroic, his hair long and greying blond, his jaw as thick as his accent. But his discourse belonged more to a scholar than a Galeoth warrior-thane: apparently Iskaul was famed in the Imperial Army both for his meticulous planning and his ability to keep tallies, to always know what resources he had at his disposition. He began with a barrage of questions.

With the assistance of Phinersa and Saxillas, she was able to bear the brunt of his interrogation. But absent Theliopa, it took fairly every soul present to provide even partial answers. More than a few, such as the number of clotheslines in the city (for making horse snares, as it turned out), had elicited disbelieving laughter. The atmosphere was one of mirth and mutual respect when she finally cried out, “How is it my husband has never brought you here?”

“Because I follow the Field, my Glory,” the man had said, “and the Field has come here.”

The eloquence of the observation had drawn her gaze out over the hazy intricacies of Momemn. And she had felt that tickle, the way she so often did, of all the heights that lay between her and her people— The ground itself flapped like a blanket, again and again. Existence seized and shuddered.

She alone did not fall.

The Postern Terrace pitched like a ship’s deck in a tempest, only without the cushion of water.