horizon.
'The Great Ordeal,' he heard himself say.
'No.'
Sorweel searched his tutor's smiling eyes.
'This,' Eskeles explained, 'this… is the Aspect Emperor.'
Mystified, Sorweel could only turn back to the spectacle. Though he couldn't be sure, he thought he saw the Aspect-Emperor's own banner rising from faraway mobs: a white-silk standard the size of a sail, emblazoned with a simple blood-red Circumfix. Struck by unseen priests, the Interval hummed out across the arch of the sky, deep and resonant, fading as always in increments too fine to detect, so that he was never quite sure when it stopped sounding.
'I don't understand…'
'There are many, many ways to carve the world, your Glory. Think of the way we identify different men with their bodies, with the position they occupy in place and time. Since we inherit this way of thinking, we assume that it is natural, that it is the only way. But what if we identify a man with his thoughts-what then? How would we draw his boundaries? Where would he begin, and where would he end?'
Sorweel simply gazed at the man. Damned leuneraal.
'I still don't understand.'
The sorcerer frowned in silence for a time, then with a decisive grunt leaned back in his saddle to root through one of his packs. He huffed and cursed in some exotic tongue as he pawed through his belongings-the effort of twisting back and sideways obviously strained him. Without warning, he dismounted with a heavy 'Oooof!' then began rifling the opposite pack in the same way. It wasn't until he searched the rump pack-made of weather-beaten leather like the others-that he found what he was looking for: a small vase no bigger than a child's forearm and just as white. With a triumphant expression, he held it shining to the sun: porcelain, another luxury of the Three Seas.
'Come-come,' he called to Sorweel, stamping his left boot in the grass to wipe mule shit from his heel.
Securing his pony's reins to the pommel of the mule's saddle, Sorweel hastened after the sorcerer, who walked kicking through winter-flattened grasses-to clean off more dung, the young King supposed, until, that is, Eskeles cried, 'Aha!' at the sight of rounded stone rising from the turf.
'This is called a philauta,' the sorcerer said, raising the slight vase and shaking it. A clipped rattle issued from within. The sunlight revealed dozens of little tusks raised along its length. 'It's used for sacramental libations…'
He smashed it across the back of the stone. To his chagrin, Sorweel flinched.
'Now look,' Eskeles said, squatting over the wreckage so that his belly hung between his knees. A small replica of the vase-what had made the rattling sound, Sorweel realized-lay beneath the sorcerer's bulk, no longer than a thumb. Otherwise, fragments lay scattered across the stone and between the twisted threads of last year's grass, some as small as cat's claws, others the size of teeth, and still others as big as coins. The sorcerer shooed away a spider with stubby fingers, then lifted one of the tinier pieces, little more than a splinter, to the glinting light.
'Souls have shapes, Sorweel. Think of how I differ from you'-he raised another splinter to illustrate the contrast-'or how you differ from Zsoronga,' he said, raising yet another. 'Or'-he plucked a far larger fragment-'think of all the Hundred Gods, and how they differ from one another, Yatwer and Gilgaцl. Or Momas and Ajokli.' With each name he raised yet another coin-sized fragment.
'Our God… the God, is broken into innumerable pieces. And this is what gives us life, what makes you, me, even the lowliest slave, sacred.' He cupped several pieces in a meaty palm. 'We're not equal, most assuredly not, but we remain fragments of God nonetheless.'
He gingerly set each of the pieces across the top of the stone, then stared intently at Sorweel. 'Do you understand what I'm saying?'
Sorweel did understand, so much that his skin had pimpled listening to the sorcerer speak. He understood more than he wanted. The Kiьnnatic Priests had only rules and stories-nothing like this. They had no answers that made… sense of things.
'But…'
The young King trailed, defeated by the weakness of his own voice.
Eskeles nodded and smiled, so openly pleased with himself that he seemed anything but arrogant or haughty. 'But what is the Aspect-Emperor?' he asked, completing Sorweel's question.
Using his fingers, he combed the chipped replica of the vase from the grass below his left knee. He held it between thumb and forefinger, where it shone as smooth as glass, identical to the original philauta in every respect save for its size.
'Huh?' The Schoolman laughed. 'Eh? Do you see? The soul of the Aspect-Emperor is not only greater than the souls of Men, it possesses the very shape of the Ur-Soul.'
'You mean… your God of Gods.'
'Our God of Gods?' the sorcerer repeated, shaking his head. 'I keep forgetting that you're a heathen! I suppose you think Inri Sejenus is some kind of demon as well!'
'I'm trying,' Sorweel replied, his face suddenly hot. 'I'm trying to understand!'
'I-know-I-know,' the Schoolman said, this time smirking at his own stupidity. 'We'll discuss the Latter Prophet, er… later…' He closed his eyes and shook his head. 'In the meantime, ponder this… If the Aspect- Emperor's soul is cast in the very form of the God, then…' He trailed nodding. 'Huh? Eh? If…'
'Then… He is the God in small…' A kind of supernatural terror accompanied these words.
The sorcerer beamed, his teeth surprisingly white and straight compared to the dark frazzle of his beard. 'You wonder how it is so many would march to the ends of the earth for him? You wonder what could move men to cut their own throats in his name. Well then, there you have your answer…' He leaned forward, his pose rigid in the manner of men who think they possess world-judging truths. 'Anasыrimbor Kellhus is the God of Gods, Sorweel, come to walk among us.'
Somehow Sorweel had fallen from a crouch to his knees. He remained breathless still, staring at Eskeles. To move his hands or even to blink his eyes, it seemed, would be to quake and to spill, to reveal himself a thing of sand.
'Before his coming, me and my kind were damned,' the sorcerer continued, though he seemed to be speaking more for his own benefit than Sorweel's. 'We Schoolmen traded a lifetime of power for an eternity of torment… But now?'
Damnation. Sorweel felt the cold of dead earth soak through his leggings. An ache climbed into bis knees. His father had died in sorcerous fire-how many times had Sorweel tormented himself with that thought, imagining the shriek and scream, the thousand blistering knives? But what Eskeles was saying…
Did it mean he burned still?
The Mandate Schoolman gazed at him, his eyes wide and bright with a kind of uncompromising joy, like a man in the flush of infatuation, or a gambler delivered from slavery by an impossible throw of the number-sticks. When he spoke, more than admiration-or even worship-trilled through his voice.
'Now I am saved.'
Love. He spoke with love.
Rather than go to Zsoronga's pavilion that evening, Sorweel shared a quiet repast with Porsparian in the white-washed air of his own tent. He sat on the end of his cot, his head bent to his steaming gruel, knowing yet not caring that the Shigeki slave stared at him wordlessly. A kind of incipient confusion filled him, one that had slipped the cup of his soul and spilled through his body, a leaden tingle. The sounds of the Great Ordeal fell through the fabric effortlessly, thrumming and booming from every direction.
Save the sky. The sky was silent.
And the earth.
'Anasыrimbor Kellhus is the God of Gods incarnate, Sorweel, come to walk among us…'
Men often make decisions in the wake of significant events, if only to pretend they had some control over their own transformations. Sorweel's first decision was to ignore what had happened, to turn his back on what Eskeles had said, as though rudeness could drive his words away. His second decision was to laugh-laughter was
