We have wandered from His Path!
There was no pointing to it, but it lay in plain view nonetheless. Something dull and evil and ferocious possessed these once-noble Men, something scarcely bridled, something that gluttony and gluttony alone could assuage. Obw? G?swuran, illustrious Grandmaster or no, began scavenging the rinds of skin and fatty white disdained by others, slurping them in strings. Lord Gora’jirau, a surviving Invitic Knight, made sport with one of the heads, tearing away the blistered lips and cheeks, his manhood arched against his tattered linen kilt.
Proyas watched as grisly feast became lurid demonstration. He stood where he always stood during Council, to the right of the vacant place belonging to the Holy Aspect-Emperor. The panels of the Ekkin? undulated according to their own, ethereal rhythms. He had directed Saccarees to stand on his left, knowing the water his presence would draw among the Schoolmen. Even more importantly, he had instructed Kay?tas to stand on his right: no argument for authority carried more weight than blood. As Kellhus had told him on many occasions, the appearance of continuity was continuity for Men.
“Gird yourself, Uncle,” the Prince-Imperial muttered, his beard as wetted for grease as any other. “More and more they will be as crocodiles … beasts that must be sated to be assuaged.”
Unnatural as it had become, their appetite still possessed limits. Groaning aloud for distension, belching and loosening belts, the caste-nobles retired from their monstrous repast and formed conspiratorial clusters on the tiers surrounding. Mutters quickly piled into patriarchal thunder. Individuals once again called out for answers and explanations, faces slicked for grease, beards flecked with debris.
Their surviving Exalt-General raised a hand to command silence, took the attitude of appraisal, regarding them as the final voices were hounded into silence. His gaze flinched from the gutted carcasses that lay on the tables between him and these Men he must lead. A skull lay tipped in the wreckage, its face half eaten. Proyas clenched his teeth for the heat fondling his loins.
“Anas?rimbor Kellhus …” Nersei Proyas finally declared, paused out of some bardic instinct. “Our Most Holy Aspect-Emperor has charged me with leading the final march upon Golgotterath.”
One heartbeat passed, then the assembly leapt to the limit of stature and voice, howling incredulity, shouting dismay. Frenzy had seized them whole, soldered them into a singular beast.
Or nearly so, for Prince Nurbanu Ze barged quite alone to the floor, bellowing, “Nooo!” among the burst carcasses. “The Scald consumed Him! My men saw this!”
The uproar crashed into silence.
“Even as the Scald struck them blind, they saw this!”
Proyas squinted, then scowled, but Kay?tas was already in motion, leaping the nearest trestle with his broadsword drawn, Proyas stammered something he would never remember. The Prince-Imperial’s blade hooked white—cutting white … Nurbanu Ze stood stupefied, his expression clogged for incredulity. Blood jetted hot and crimson across the greying scraps and gelling grease …
Death came swirling down.
And for the merest heartbeat they all saw it, flaring as luminous as flame in a nocturnal cavern, the miracle of the Father in the Son. No mere Man could have done what he had done. No human.
The Jekki Prince pitched backward, flopped across the soiled carpets. Proyas glanced up and out, saw the Lords of the Ordeal laughing, roaring in lunatic approval—exultation. And his gaze caught upon the blood-slicked joints and lobes. Drool crowded the corners of his mouth.
He raised his arms high, as though bathing in the elation. He thrust the arch of his manhood against the cheek of their raucous image. Couras Nantilla howled in seizures, mucous threading the black hole of his mouth. Grimmel had dared go so far as clasp his manhood through his kilt.
Kay?tas stood above Nurbanu Ze, strangely stooped and blinking, as if not quite comprehending what he had done. The dead man’s bleeding had wetted more than dinner scraps: his dying had pitched poppy red across the Prince-Imperial’s nimil hauberk as well—a pattern like a Wracu’s crest …
Few things had seemed so beautiful. Enticing.
Kay?tas caught his gaze, and as if recalling some crisp routine from the blurry edge of stupor, he turned to Proyas stiffly, thrust his hand high in salute, his frame trembling for something more profound than exultation.
Even the Son had succumbed, Proyas realized with dim horror—succumbed to the swollen tyranny of the Meat.
What of the Father?
The Lords of the Ordeal redoubled their thunderous acclaim. Hell itself had cast open its gates before them. Tens of thousands had fallen beneath the Scald of Dagliash. Tens of thousands more languished dying for contamination. Their Holy Aspect-Emperor had abandoned them for no reason …
And yet they rejoiced, understanding, at long last, that murder was glory.
The air was already filled with orisons when the Interval tolled the following morning, the encampment’s myriad thoroughfares and alleyways already brimming with believers. Today Men would cross the Wair Chirsaul—the famed “Mandible Ford” that figured so prominently in the Holy Sagas—and begin the final march on Golgotterath. But even though genuine passion cracked their voices, animated their demonstrations as much as ever, something impeded their manner, muddied eyes that should have been clear, blurring hope into hunger, gratitude into gloating.
The weather aggravated matters. Rain fell as cold pellets that stung upturned cheeks, but sparse enough to make a percussive clatter of canvas and ground alike. It was a drizzle that relentlessly promised downpour, that augured some violent tempest that never came. Blackness lay in the direction of Dagliash, but for ash and smoke, fires that could not be doused by waters, heavenly or terrestrial.