The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(19)

He raised a hand into the dim air, gazed upon the nimbus of gold shining about them.

Such a remarkable thing.

So hard to explain.

“It comes to me, Proyas. In my sleep … It comes ….”

A statement pregnant with both meaning and horror. Kellhus often did this, answered his disciples’ questions with observations that seemed relevant only because of their ornamental import and the odour of profundity. Most failed to even notice his evasion, and those few who glimpsed it assumed they were being misdirected for some divine reason, in accordance with some greater design.

Nersei Proyas simply forgot how to breathe.

A glance toward his trembling fingertips.

Two more balled fists.

“The God …” was the most the Exalt-General could say.

The Holy Aspect-Emperor smiled in the manner of those more bereaved than undone by tragic ironies.

“Is nothing human.”



An empire of his soul …

This was what his father’s Thousandfold Thought had made.

“So the God—?”

“Wants nothing … Loves nothing.”

A pattern conquering patterns, reproducing on the scales of both insects and heavens; heartbeats and ages. All bound upon him, Anas?rimbor Kellhus.

“The God doesn’t care!”

“The God is beyond care.”

He was as much a creature of the Thought as it was a creature of him. For it whispered as it danced, threading the stacked labyrinths of contingency, filing through the gates of his daylight apprehension, becoming him. He declared, and the patterns went forth, making wombs of souls, reproducing, taking on the cumbersome complexities of living life, transforming the dancing of the dance, begetting heresies and fanaticisms and mad delusions …

Forcing more declarations.

“So then why does He demand so much of us?” Proyas blurted. “Why entangle us with judgments? Why damn us!”

Kellhus drew up his manner and expression to answer the bodily cacophony of his warlike disciple, becoming the perfect counterpoint: ease to rebuke his disorder, repose to shame his agitation, all the while reading, counting the cubits of his disciple’s pain.

“Why is wheat sewn and harvested?”

Proyas blinked.

“Wheat?” He squinted as though ancient. “Wha-what are you saying?”

“That our damnation is the Gods’ harvest.”

For twenty years now, he had dwelt in the circuit of his father’s Thought, scrutinizing, refining, enacting and being enacted. He had known it would crash into ruin after his departure …

Known that his wife and children would die.

“What? What?”

“Men and all their generations—”

“No!”

“—all their aspirations—”

The Exalt-General bolted to his feet, flung his bowl across the chamber. “Enough!”

No flesh could be sundered from its heart and survive. All of his empire was doomed—was disposable. Kellhus had known this and he had prepared. No …

It was the hazard of the converse that had eluded him …

“The World is a granary, Proyas …

The fact that his heart would also crash into ruin.

“And we are the bread.”



Proyas fled his beloved Prophet, flew from the mad, glaring presence. The Umbilicus had become a labyrinth, turns and leather portals, each more disorienting than the last. Out—he needed out! But like a beetle in the husk of a beehive, he could only throw himself this direction and that, chasing forks squeezed into extinction. He reeled like a drunk, dimly aware of the tears stinging his cheeks, the ridiculous need to feel shame. He barged between startled servants and functionaries, bowled over a slave. If he had paused to think, he could have found his way with ease. But the desperation to move ruled all because it blotted all.

Proyas fairly toppled clear the entrance. He shrugged away the hands of the Pillarian who rushed to assist him, fled into the greater labyrinth that was the Ordeal.

We are the bread …

He needed time. Away from the tasks of his station, all the insufferable details of command and administration. Away from the stacked carcasses of Sranc. Away from the hymns, the embroidered walls, the faces, the shield-pounding ranks …

He needed to ride out alone, to find some lifeless place where he could ponder without interruption …

Think.

He needed to—

Hands seized his shoulders. He found himself standing face-to-face with Coithus Saubon … The “Desert Lion” in the flesh, blinking at him as he had when they stood in the glare of the Carathay so very long ago.

His counterpart …

“Proyas …”

Even his nemesis in certain respects.

The man regarded him—and his state—with the amused incredulity of someone finding evidence that confirmed low opinions. He still possessed the broad-shouldered vigour of his youth, still cropped his hair short, though it was now white and silver. He still wore the Red Lion of his father’s House on his surcoat, though a Circumfix now framed its fiery contours. He still lived in his hauberk, though the chain was now fashioned of nimil.

For a moment, Proyas could almost believe that nothing of the past twenty years had actually happened, that the First Holy War still besieged Caraskand on the Carathay’s cruel limit. Or perhaps that was what he wanted to believe—a kinder, more naive reality.