The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(50)

The Whore smiled, and no soul hailed him.

Stars dusted the black bowel of the void. The Ordeal matted the visible world beneath, a mosaic broken to the contours of the land, each contingent a tessera set in the mortar of labyrinthine paths. It all seemed mad to him now, the heaps of Sranc parts, particularly crooked hands and horned feet, the countless versions of the Circumfix, gold, crimson, and pitch. It all seemed … frail, fraught with a simmering licentiousness, as if there were a greater Ordeal beyond the one he could see. He could feel strewn across nocturnal miles, the wrack of a more profound host, one senseless of pious decrees and righteous declarations, bound by nothing more than the coincidence of low appetites …

I …

A bestial impatience.

He crouched in a ravine and wept for a short time, gagged for memory and human offal.

I am forsaken.

That faith belonged to the foundation was a truth that Proyas had lived more than fathomed. It was the human ground, a thing too onerous not to be broken and divided between names: “love” in the union of disparate souls, “logic” in the union of disparate claims, “truth” in the union of desire and circumstance …

“Desire” when it reached out, seeking.

All I have known …

He huddled against rock and clay, a little place, croaking alone in the dark, wracked with grief, assailed by fear and imagery.

False.

The sun, he thought, would bring flies.

The Enathpanean district of the camp was a crowded helter clustered across the break and heave of the land, notable only for the admixture of Galeoth tents, crude and sturdy, and the rambling Khirgwi marquees of the native Enathpaneans. He found Saubon’s pavilion before realizing he’d been searching for it. The Red Lions splayed across its canvas panels glowered black in the Nail of Heaven’s soulless light. The glimpse of golden illumination about the entrance flap heartened the Exalt-General, though he had yet to understand what had brought him here.

Given the dearth of fuel, all fires were forbidden after the prandial watch. Nevertheless, three men, Knights of the Desert Lion by their soiled surcoats, leaned about a small fire set several paces before the pavilion, bent like boys dripping wax on ants. Proyas recognized all three as Saubon’s captains: his Swordbearer, Thipil Mepiro, a diminutive Amoti famed for his duelling prowess; his towering Shieldbearer, ?ster Scraul, a thin, stammering Kurigalder called “the Bard” for his eloquence in battle; and his famed Spear-bearer, Thurhig Bogyar, a red-maned Holca warrior, apparently descended from Eryelk the Ravager no less.

Something about their manner—an inward leering, a hunching against—troubled Proyas.

“What happens here?”

Even their response to his challenge troubled him, the way they shared looks between themselves, as if no authority could matter outside their small circle.

A Sranc head gleamed in the lap of the enormous Holca.

“I said,” Proyas repeated in abrupt fury, “what happens here?”

All three turned to him as if upon the same slow swivel. The Law demanded they fall to their faces; instead they fixed him with murderous looks. Bogyar drew a cloth across his grisly prize. Knights of the Desert Lion were notoriously ill-mannered: “Saubon’s Brigands” some called them. Where almost every Believer-King built their household from caste-noble stone, Saubon, who had never forgiven the Whore for making him the seventh son of foul old Eryeat, had made the gutter his quarry.

“The Law awaits your ans—”

A powerful and familiar voice called from the pavilion just beyond—the Desert Lion himself.

“Proyas? What are you doing here?”

Saubon stood before the swaying entrance flap, his grey hair still flattened for his helm, but stripped to his leggings otherwise.

“I’ve come to confer with my brother, Brother,” Proyas said, sparing him little more than a glance. “But these dogs ne—”

“Answer to me,” Saubon snapped. He hooked open the flap of his pavilion on a long arm. “We all make our own way.”

“And they have chosen the one with whips,” Proyas said evenly. He glared at Saubon in the ruthless, New Imperial manner, the one that brooked no exceptions. The habits of command, at least, had not abandoned him.

The Believer-King of Caraskand muttered some kind of Galeoth curse. Mepiro, Scraul, and Bogyar had watched the exchange like the overweening sons of a doting and unscrupulous father. But their arrogance—or, more likely, their failure to disguise it—was too much. Saubon’s scowl faded into something remote. They had over-played their sticks, and Proyas watched the realization knock the presumption from their faces with no little satisfaction.

The covered head forgotten, the three Bearers scrambled to press their foreheads against the packed earth. Their fire dwindled as if for the absence of attention—sputtered …

First the first time, Proyas wondered that he could see so well in the dark.

Whence had such an ability come?

“Come,” Saubon called, motioning him to the entrance flap. “They will know the Law on the morrow. You have my assurance, brother.”

When it came to treating with subordinates, Ketyai caste-nobles were more remote and summary than their Norsirai counterparts. Vassals who made themselves visible with some trespass became invisible the instant their punishment was meted. No pleas were heard, no remonstrations of penitence or innocence. And unless the affair was public or ceremonial, no crowing displays were made, no gloating declarations …