The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(51)

Nevertheless, Proyas paused above the prostrate knights, at once perplexed and trembling for outrage.

Saubon scowled at the indecisive spectacle, but said nothing.

Winded and dismayed, Proyas barged past his counterpart, found himself standing within the lantern-illumined pavilion, utterly abandoned by the confidence he’d commanded but moments before. Pale light climbed the walls, the canvas so blotted and weather-stained as to resemble maps scraped of names and ink. Something like Zeum loomed over the lantern set beside his simple bed. Nilnamesh hung skewered by the centrepost. The floor was bare, dead and earthen, and only the most rudimentary furnishings populated the golden gloom. The air was close, smelled of sweat, lamb, and hay rotted to dust. A blond youth stood meekly beneath the two hanging lanterns, his cheeks neither nude nor bearded.

Saubon strode past Proyas, barked, “Leave!” at the youth, who promptly fled. With a groan, the Galeoth warrior dropped to his rump on his cot, glanced at Proyas for a heartbeat before lowering his face to a broad bowl between his feet. He scooped water across his brow and cheeks.

“You’ve been to see him again,” he said, blinking into the basin. “I can tell.”

Proyas stood speechless, not knowing why he had come.

Saubon raised his face in scowling appraisal. He absently clutched the rag at his side, began towelling his beard and chest. He nodded to the platter of greying meat on the camp table to Proyas’s right.

“Be-before …” the Believer-King of Conriya stammered. “Y-you said he told you the truth.”

A careful look. “Aye.”

“So he told you that he wasn’t … a …”

Saubon drew the towel down his face. “He told me he was something called ‘D?nyain.’”

“That all of this was some kind of vast … calculation.”

The bitten eyes gazed forward. “Aye. The Thousandfold Thought.”

It seemed the lanterns should wink out for the absence of air.

“So you know!” Proyas cried. “How? How is it you can be … be …”

“Untroubled?” Saubon said, tossing the rag to the ground. He studied Proyas, elbows propped on his knees. “I’ve never been a believer like you, Proyas. I have no need to know what lays at the bottom of things.”

They breathed.

“Even to save the world?”

A scowl and a grin warred for possession of Saubon’s face. “Is that what we do?”

Proyas choked on the sudden impulse to scream. What was happening?

What was happening?

“Wha-what is he doing?” he cried, flinching for the unmanly crimp in his tone, and yet finding himself compounding the treachery with a rush of more white-skinned words: “I-I ne-need … I need to know what he’s doing!”

A long, inscrutable look.

“What is he doing?” Proyas nearly screeched.

Saubon shrugged his shoulders, leaned back. “I think he tests us … prepares us for something …”

“So he is a Prophet!”

As intelligent as he was, a kind of barbaric immodesty had always characterized Coithus Saubon, a vulgar need to lord over those who were his equals. Even in the presence of their Holy Aspect-Emperor, his inclination was to smirk. Now the first spark of genuine alarm humbled his gaze.

“You’ve dwelt in his shadow as long as me …” A bark of laughter that was supposed to sound confident. “What else could he be?”

D?nyain.

“Yes …” Proyas replied, nausea welling through him. “What else could he be?”

Some Men are like this. They would rather scoff, turn aside the plea they hear in other voices to better disguise the penury of their own. It takes them time to set aside the ephemeral arms and armour of the court. For twenty years he and Saubon had dwelt in the revelatory light of Anas?rimbor Kellhus. For twenty years they had discharged his commands with thoughtless obedience, delivering innumerable Orthodox to the sword, setting the fleshpots of the Three Seas alight. Together they had done this, the Right and Left Hands of the Holy Aspect-Emperor. Forsaking wives and children. Breaking all the Laws that had come before. And in all that time they had wondered only at the tragic folly of those they had killed. How? How could Men turn aside their eyes, when the God’s light was so plain?

They were in this together as well. Not even the proud and impetuous Coithus Saubon could feign otherwise.

“The way I see it,” the Galeoth Exalt-General said slowly, deliberately, “he’s preparing us for some kind of crisis … A crisis of faith.”

It seemed sacrilegious, even blasphemous, taking a … tactical attitude to their Lord-and-Prophet. But it also seemed far more canny, far more awake—certainly more than the caged slurry of his own thoughts.

“Why do you say that?”

Saubon stood, absently raked his fingers across his scalp.

“Because we are living scripture, for one … And scripture, if you haven’t noticed, dwells on grievance and disaster …” Again he expressed the attitude of second-guesses, the one that looks past what words mean to consider what they accomplish. “And because he says so himself, for another. He scarcely speaks without referencing Celmomas and the doom of the Great Ordeal’s ancient namesake … Yes … Something is coming … Something only he knows about.”