And again he found his gaze, like a thing plucked from a fire, lingering upon the boy-become-a-man, the Sakarpi Horse-King … Sorweel. The Exalt-General sobbed, smiled through the ache and snot and snivel, for he seemed so blessed, so pure … for the mere fact of his prolonged absence …
For the fact of his own damnation.
King Sorweel remained motionless, save for when his gesticulating and shouting Zeumi companion yanked at him, demanding an attention that he would not, perhaps could not, yield. The youth did not notice the Exalt-General’s scrutiny, staring instead at Serwa with something that could have been malice, were it not so obviously love …
Love.
The thing King Nersei Proyas would miss most of all …
After certainty.
Once again he looked to the skeleton of ash poles, iron joints, and hemp suspending the airy void above them, and once again he wondered that Men could ache as he ached, sob as he sobbed, yet carry on. And that wondering nudged him away somehow, as if his soul had been a skiff run aground. The skein of horror remained, as did the images of obscenity, like a frenzied chewing, at once sharp and glutinous, but somehow he was able to breathe about the latter and laugh through the first, a crazed kind of cackle, but so raw with sincerity as to draw the eyes of several. These would be the first to join him in his unconscious recitation …
Sweet God of Gods, who walk among us,
Numberless be thy many names.
More looks found him, including that of the Swayali Grandmistress and her Prince-Imperial brother. Proyas raised his hands as if to seize their divided attention …
May your bread silence our daily hunger.
May your rains quicken our deathless land.
Words they had known before they had known words.
May our submission be answered with dominion,
So we may prosper in your glorious name.
Those watching began mumbling and murmuring in unison, a sound scarcely audible for the surrounding cacophony at first, but a rut so deeply worn that the wheels of thought could not but fall into it. Soon even those most immured in terror and self-pity found themselves gasping about the absence of their lamentations. And, in the crazed manner of all unexpected reversals, the Lords of the Ordeal began reaching out, one to another, and clasping tight their neighbour’s hand, drawing solace from the pull of manly strength against strength. And descending from aching throats to hoarse lungs, their voices began to climb …
Judge us not according to our trespasses,
But according to our temptations.
Nersei Proyas, the Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal, stood upon the dais of a far, far greater father, and smiled about the booming crescendo that had gathered within the roof of his voice. He spoke to them, spoke the verses, the simple labours, that had miraculously made their souls one.
For thine name is Truth …
And the words seemed all the more profound for the fact that he did not believe them.
The Lords of the Ordeal stood breathing, gazing upon their Exalt-General with countless confusions. For the first time, it seemed, Proyas noticed their reek, his own reek, a smell so human his stomach hitched. He looked out across the expectant Believer-Kings and their vassals, scooped spittle from his lip on a knuckle.
“He-he told me this would happen … But I didn’t listen … I didn’t … understand.”
Foul breath and rotted teeth. Rancid fabric and soiled crotches. Proyas pinched the bridge of his nose, blinked. For a heartbeat the Lords of the Ordeal seemed little more than apes garbed in the plunder of some royal crypt. Diamonds iridescent against frayed embroidery. Pearls gleaming from brown-blooming stains.
“He said that it would come to this …”
Proyas glanced at the Imperial siblings standing expressionless side-by-side. Kay?tas, at least, nodded.
“This … is not simply our toll.”
He looked out to his brothers, Men who marched to the very brink of earth and history—to the very ends of the World. Lord Embas Eswarl?, the Angle-Thane of Scolow, whom he had saved from a Sranc javelin in Illawor. Lord Sumajil, Grandee of Mitirabis, whose hand he had seen struck from his wrist at Dagliash. King Coithus Narnol, Saubon’s elder brother, with whom he had knelt and prayed more times than he could remember.
Teus Eskeles, the Schoolman who had condemned him to hell.
He nodded, even smiled, though grief and horror yawed within him still. These Men, these Lords and Grandmasters, noble and ruthless, learned and base—these Zaudunyani were his family. They always had been, for twenty long years.
“We are Men of war!” he cried out by way of exhausting admission. “We cut down what we call wicked … call ourselves Men of God.”
He snorted in what seemed the old way. He would never know where the monumental indignation came from, or how it came to own him so absolutely, only that this would be the most fierce moment in what had been a relentlessly ferocious life. He could see it kindling the rapt eyes about him, expressions igniting, as if his words had become sparks.
He was not who he was. He was stronger.
“We are bred to destroy what we have become.”
His eye happened upon King Sorweel, who remained seated high on the uppermost tier. Rigid. Eyes dull and sharp, like flint.
“What? Did you think the God would come to you, miserable, mortal wretch that you are, as another spoil—as flattery? Horror! Horror is your revelation! Shame is your revelation!”
He was not who he was.
“Dwell within it, and you dwell in the very presence of the God!”
He was something greater, the Proyas that perpetually outran his soul, that forever dwelt in the darkness that came before. Here, with these grim and battered Men, his brothers, beloved companions in the ways of wickedness and war. Here in this place.
“You have been your Enemy! You know Him as even the Gods cannot! Now you, alone of all Men living, know the value of salvation! The beauteous miracle that is honour! The breathtaking gift that is justice! As warriors understand peace, so you understand evil! You know it as you know yourselves, and you hate it as you hate yourselves!”
The Lords of the Ordeal erupted, not in acclaim or any bellicose affirmation, but in recognition. They hollered as orphaned brothers conjoined in the paternity of Death, as those who knew only each other, and so despised and feared all other things. Serwa and Kay?tas looked about, remote as always, but also gladdened.
They had feared him lost—that much was plain. And somehow Proyas knew their father had instructed them to seize power should he succumb—should he fail. Proyas, the one most pious … and least aware.
The caste-noble assembly roiled. The very extremity of their passion, wailing as old women one moment, whooping as young boys the next, oppressed them, and for all their frantic gratitude the Lords of the Ordeal found themselves turning, as all manly souls turn, to anger and contempt. He had imbued their terror and despair with holy meaning, offered it up as a mathematician offers up equations, a ledger where wrath could suffice for redemption. Holiness is never so cheap as when bartered for lives, and they were, in the end, violent, hateful Men.