They saw the sedimentary bloom of the Sursa before they saw the river itself, a vast bruise blackening the aquamarine plate of the Sea. The granitic immensity of Antareg reared into their line of sight, cliffs stacked upon cliffs rising from the surf. Dagliash dominated its summit, a fist brandished against the Sea: cyclopean walls devoid of battlements but otherwise intact, their sheer bulk betraying the naivete of their ancient makers; great square hollows that had been towers and bastions. More than any ruin he had seen, it showed how time was itself a caustic solution, something that consumed edges, made sediment of complexity.
It was hard not to be astonished by the elegant genius of the plan: As the Ordealmen cleared the shoreline, the Horde to the north would shovel itself into the furnaces stoked by the Schools. The proud horsemen of the Ordeal, so long confined to skirmishing with their foe, would be loosed in pitched battle at long last. Slaughter and terror would herd them toward the drowning waters of the Sursa.
“Our Lord-and-Prophet has become our butcher!” Prince Nurbanu Ze cackled, his humour too familiar, his elation too avid.
The Meat owned some more than others. At some point following their departure, their hunger to close with their foe had become more unseemly than noble. Proyas himself could feel it thickening his voice and stoking his fury: the throb of carnal lust, a coital tremor passing through all things anxious and hateful. No one need speak it to know—not anymore. Coupling and killing had been kicked from the places once allotted in their souls, as if, in eating their foe, they were becoming him.
He could see it in their hooded, leaning looks, the shadow of something eager and indecent. Coithus Narnol, Saubon’s older brother and King of Galeoth, scanned the heights, his mouth open like a witless dog. The Mysunsai Grandmaster, Obw? G?swuran, peered out to the Shroud beyond the humped and broken line of the Urokkas, his back not so much turned as canted away from the assembly. Their Holy Aspect-Emperor, Proyas realized, had not so much charged them with an onerous task as laid out a wicked banquet.
Disbursing glory was all that remained.
“Lord-and-Prophet!” Proyas cried, shocked by the near sob that cracked his voice. “I beg of you! Yield the glory of Dagliash to me!”
The assembled Lords and Grandmasters made no secret of their surprise. In all their years vying for their Holy Aspect-Emperor’s favour, not once had Proyas thrown his lot in with theirs. Saubon scowled openly.
Kellhus, however, continued hurtling backward into the vista without acknowledging him. The Raft slowed as it approached the ancient fortress, climbing in stages to match the height of the cliffs. Surf crashed and hissed below. The scarps framed him, details dropping as the Raft ascended. The halos about his hands were clearly visible against the watercolour darks, like the ghosts of gold-foil.
“Thus far our foe has naught but nettled us,” Kellhus declared to his Believer-Kings, his eyes blind for luminous meaning, light gazing into infinity. “Even Irs?lor was but a gambit for them, a trifle wagered with little expectation. Were it not for our arrogance, our dissension, Umrapathur would be here with us now …”
“Lord-and-Prophet!” Proyas cried. “I beg you please!”
This earned him curious looks from Kay?tas and Apperens Saccarees, not to mention an elbow from Saubon. Others, like Nurban? Soter and Hringa V?kyelt, merely acknowledged his infraction with frowns.
“Dagliash is where they will fight,” Kellhus continued, ignoring his infe-licity, “where the Unholy Consult will try to gore rather than bleed our Great Ordeal …”
It’s peculiar, the way the truancy of an act can command the soul that wills it, the way Men sometimes throw more effort behind their errors rather than retreat from them. If wrong cannot be made right, at least it can be made real.
What did it matter, the honour of Dagliash, if disgrace was the toll of attaining it? And yet, never in his life had Proyas so needed a thing—or so it seemed, hanging above the hulking ruins.
“Here it was,” Kellhus said, “the Nonmen first saw the Incu-Holoinas cut open the sky. Here it was the Inchoroi committed the first of their ghastly and numberless crimes …”
The Raft now circled the fortress, wafting sideways so that the gutted bastions remained square to the Holy Aspect-Emperor’s back. Clots of black armoured Sranc streamed from various orifices, mobbing the walls.
“Viri … Great among the Nonmen Mansions, lies dead beneath the foundations of these walls, the underworld fastness of Nin’janjin. The very ground is chambered, riddled as an infested stump …”
“Please!” the Believer-King of Conriya heard himself cry, hoarse and plaintive. “After all I have given!”
You owe me this!
The Holy Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas finally turned to regard him, chips of sun glaring from his eyes.
“Hitherto, the Consult could not move in force against us,” he said. “They could only wait, use the Horde and their cunning to bleed us. Now the Great Ordeal stands upon their very threshold. Agongorea lies yonder, the Field Appalling, and beyond that, Golgotterath itself …”
“Grant me the honour!” Saubon cried out after sparing Proyas an outraged look.
“No!” Proyas shouted. “No!”
But others had begun calling out as well, a greedy cacophony. What had been pity, distaste, had become umbrage, a determination to outdo. Suddenly it seemed he could taste the grease of the place, the pumice sear …