“You have no choice,” a familiar voice called from behind them.
They whirled to see Kay?tas—or a barbarous incarnation of him—on the opposite incline, grinning, leaning against a knee. Blood and gore, Sorweel could not but notice, soaked his Kidruhil underkilt about his groin.
“Something must be eaten.”
“I am rarely …”
Sorweel fled, abandoned the brother and sister, revulsion scraping his thudding bones, his breath stabbing …
“I am rarely what my enemies expect …”
All along, the Son of Harweel realized. He had fled across this very plain all along.
This place. The Field Appalling.
He lurched more than walked across the degenerate landscape, so numb had he become.
To be a Man was to be a Son, and to be a Son was to shoulder the burden of kin and race and history—history most of all. To be a Man was to be true to who you were … Sakarpi, Conriyan, Zeumi—it did not matter.
Who … Not what.
For this was what the Aspect-Emperor had wrought with his mass murder and machinations. He had bent their myriad ways into one way. He had struck the shackles that made Men men … and loosed the beast within.
The what.
Foul gluttony, to eat and to couple without restraint or remorse. To pin screaming.
This … This was the Shortest Path.
The way of Ciphrang.
Hunger without scruple or constraint.
He had hoped to escape the ravenous throngs, but he found himself wandering galleries even more congested with cannibalistic furor. He slumped to his knees on the lifeless earth. Brutality lay as thick as milk on the wind … as viscous.
The thought of battle crossed his soul, the fervent hope that the Consult would pick this occasion to unleash their long-hidden might. Thoughts of doom. And for a time, it seemed (as it always seemed with thoughts of calamity) that it had to come to pass, that he hunched his shoulders against some groundswell of retribution. For no matter how indifferent the Gods, surely sins such as these must arouse them …
But nothing happened.
He looked back across the debauched fields to the Horns, sun-bright above the simmering heights of the Occlusion. He could obscure them with his thumb, yet he still trembled for understanding—remembering—their inhuman dimensions. They possessed a derelict sterility, a silence, and he flinched for the premonition that they were dead. Had they marched E?rwa’s brutal length to besiege nothing? Had they, like woebegone Isholom, undertaken the most epic of trials in vain?
He stumbled onward. The passage of time, normally an empty frame, had become a rushing sewer, a channel clotted with filth. Pollution sloshed and soaked. He could scarce blink without glimpsing some unspeakable tableau. Corruption steamed. Mere breathing had become repugnance. He wept tears he could not understand, let alone claim as his own.
Shush, my Sweetling.
He found himself upon a floor. A stork stood before him, a vase lobed in dulcet white, still as beauty, silent as purity. It cast the shadow of a scythe across the hard earth.
“Mother?” he rasped.
It regarded him, the yellow knife of its bill pressed against its serpentine neck. Blood, he realized, fell in crimson beads from the orange tip.
Do you see, Sorwa?
“Wha-what I must do?”
No, my child … What you are.
The countless banners marking the difference of tongue and nation had been reduced to a spare fraction. What had been crisp ranks of tents and many-coloured pavilions, now sprawled like rubbish kicked from a heap, congested here, scattered there. The encampment was a foul shambles, scarcely a mockery of its former glory. It was also abandoned.
In a peculiar way, Sorweel found wandering the chaos almost as heartbreaking as the lunacy of the plain. The light was failing. The shadows were dark and drawn, throwing the discord of tent and belonging into sharp relief. Disregard littered his every glimpse. Discarded horse bones. Sagging canvas. Impromptu latrines. Soiled blankets. He could almost believe the camp had been overrun by a fleet and barbarous race, for things raised in haste and neglect speak of ruin as surely as things gutted and plundered.
Every tent a hollow, vacant, derelict. Every surface bearing some indecipherable stain.
He wandered aghast, quickly despaired finding anyone or anything. The Circumfix hung everywhere, as before, but bled of colour and frayed about the margins, the symbol of some vestigial God. It occurred to Sorweel that the lunacy on the plains might very well be fatal, that the diabolical compulsion commanding the Men of the Circumfix might refuse to relinquish them …
Perhaps this was the shameful end of the Great Ordeal. Perhaps the Host would die discovering it had been its own enemy all along.
The first verse he heard he deemed a senseless trick of the wind, the low howl of air drawn through wrack. But he needed only wander several footsteps toward the sound, it seemed, for the true source to rise clear. Men, their voices bowed in communal prayer.
Sweet God of Gods,
Who walk among us,
Many are thine names …
The King of Sakarpus passed a series of three pavilions, canted and slack, sad with faded colour, and saw a knoll rise from the bristle of crammed shelters surrounding. Kneeling Men encrusted the slopes, all facing the summit, where a savage-looking Judge led them (one of the few yet living, he would later discover), dark face uplifted, hands held to the scalped heavens.
A congregation of those who had refused to eat.
The prayer concluded, and all souls lowered their heads in silence, Sorweel found himself fending shame for standing so indifferent, so conspicuous. Despite their harrowed and deranged appearance, he knew these once illustrious Men of the Three Seas. He knew the Ainoni from the Conriyan, the Shigeki from the Enathpanean. He could even distinguish the Agmundrmen from the Kurigalders, such was his familiarity. He knew their great cities, and the names of their kings, their heroes …
“Return him to us!” the anonymous Judge suddenly howled to the heavens. Passion cracked his voice as violently as his face. “Please, God of Gods, send us our King of Kings!”
And suddenly all of them were crying out, wailing to the vacant sky, lamenting, cursing, and appealing, begging most of all …
For Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
The Demon.
“Horse-King!” a voice bawled, so cracked for incredulity that the whole congregation fell silent. And it seemed to Sorweel that he saw him before his eyes managed to pick him from the helter of sun-blackened faces … his friend …
His only friend.
Zsoronga, standing gaunt and astounded.
They embraced and then, quite without shame, wept into each other’s arms.