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.
Proyas drew a hand across his face, winced for the wet of his tears. “What … what are you doing here?”
A narrow look. “The same as you, I suspect.”
The Believer-King of Conriya nodded, found no words to speak.
Saubon frowned in an affable, grinning way. “The same as you … Yes.”
A chill air swept across them, and Proyas’s nostrils flared for the taint of meat, both cooking and rotting.
Sranc meat.
“He summons me for private counsel as well …” Saubon explained. “He has for months now.”
Proyas swallowed, understanding full well, but not comprehending at all.
“Months now?”
The World is a granary …
“More rarely when the Ordeal was still broken, of course.”
Proyas stood blinking. Astonishment had furrowed his brow and forehead as a gardener’s claw.
“You have been speaking with-with … Him?”
The Norsirai King stiffened in obvious affront. “I am Exalt-General, same as you. I raise my voice in relentless honesty, as do you. I have sacrificed as much of my life! More! Why should he set you apart?”
Proyas stared like an idiot. He shook his head with more violence than he intended, the way a madman might, or a sane man plagued by hornets or bees. “No … No … You are right, Saubon …”
The Believer-King of Caraskand laughed, though a bitterness sharpened his humour into a scowl.
“I apologize,” Proyas said inclining his chin. Their animosity had always imposed a formality between them.
“And yet it dismays you to see me here.”
“No … I—”
“Would you declare as much to our Lord-and-Prophet? Pfah! You have always been too quick to flatter yourself with the fact of his attention.”
Proyas felt like a child for the red-rimmed sting of his glare.
“I … I don’t understand.”
How does one sum their impression of complicated others? Proyas had always thought Saubon headstrong, mercurial, even curiously fragile, given to bouts of near-criminal recklessness. Saubon was a man who could never quite outrun his need to prove, even in the all-seeing gaze of Anas?rimbor Kellhus …