ever the great ward against all things foolish. But he could not harness the breath to see it through.
Then he finally decided to think Eskeles's thoughts, if only to pretend they had not already possessed him. What was the harm of thinking?
As a young boy he spent most of his solitary play in the ruined sections of his father's palace, particularly in what was called the Overgrown Garden. Once, while searching for a lost arrow, he noticed a young poplar springing from some far-flung seed beneath a thicket of witch-mulberry. Wondering whether it would live or die, he checked on it from time to time, watched it slowly labour in the shadow. Several times he even crawled into the mossy interior of the thicket, wriggling in on his back, and bringing his cheek close to the newborn's stem so that he could see it leaning, extending up and out to the promise of light shining through the fretting of witch-mulberry leaves. Over days and weeks it reached, thin with inanimate effort, straining for a band of golden warmth that descended like a hand from the sky. And then finally, it touched…
The last time he had looked, mere weeks before the city's fall, the tree stood proud save for the memory of that first crook in its trunk, and the mulberry bush was long dead.
There was harm in thinking. He not only knew this-he could feel it.
What Eskeles had shown him had the power of… of sense. What Eskeles had shown him had explained, not only the Aspect-Emperor… but himself as well.
'…we remain fragments of the God, nonetheless.'
Was this why the Kiьnnatic Priests had demanded that all Three Seas missionaries be burned? Was this why spittle had flecked their lips when they came to his father with their demands?
Had they been a bush, fearful of the tree in their midst?
'I keep forgetting that you're a heathen!'
After darkness fell and Porsparian's breathing dipped into a rasping snore, Sorweel lay awake, riven by thought after cascading thought-there was no thwarting them. When he curled beneath his blankets, it seemed he could see him as he was on that day of war and rain and thunder, the Aspect-Emperor, ringlets dripping about a long face, beard cut and plaited in the way of Southron Kings, eyes so blue they seemed a glimpse of another world. A glaring, golden figure, walking in the light of a different time, a brighter sun.
A friendly scowl, followed by a gentle laugh. 'I'm rarely what my enemies expect, I know.'
And Sorweel told himself, commanded himself, mouthed about clamped teeth, I am my father's son! A true son of Sakarpus!
But what if…
Hands lifting him from his knees. 'You are a King, are you not?'
What if he came to believe?
'I'm no conqueror…'
He awoke, as had become his habit, several moments before the sounding of the Interval. For some reason, he felt a kind of long-drawn relief instead of the usual clutch of fear. The plains air, the breath of his people, sighed through his tent, made the bindings creak where Porsparian had tied them down. The silence was so complete he could almost believe that he was alone, that all the rolling pasture about his tent was empty to the horizon- abandoned to the Horse-King.
Then the Interval tolled. The first calls to prayer climbed into the skies.
He joined the Company of Scions where their Standard had been planted the previous evening, numbly followed Captain Harnilias's barked instructions. Apparently his pony, which Sorweel called Stubborn, had done some soul searching the previous night as well, because for the first time he responded wonderfully to Sorweel's demands. He'd known the beast was intelligent, perhaps uncommonly so, and only refused to learn his Sakarpic knee-and-spur combinations out of spite. Stubborn had become so agreeable, in fact, that Sorweel breezed through the early on-the-march drills. He even heard several of the Scions call out, 'Ramt-anqual!' — the word Obotegwa always translated as 'Horse-King.'
When chance afforded he leaned forward to whisper the Third Prayer to Husyelt into the pony's twitching ear. 'One and one are one,' he explained to the beast afterward. 'You are learning, Stubborn. One horse and one man make one warrior.'
A bolt of shame passed through him at the thought of 'one man,' for in fact he was not a man. He never would be, he realized, given that his Elking would likely never happen. A child forever, without the shades of the dead to assist him. This set him to gazing, once again, out over the marching masses that engulfed his surroundings. Shields and swords. Waddling packs. Innumerable souls behind innumerable faces, all toiling toward the dark line of the north.
How could wonder make a heart so small?
When Sorweel finally settled next to Zsoronga and Obotegwa in the column, the Successor-Prince commented on his haggard expression.
Sorweel paid no attention, simply said, 'The Ordeal. What do you think of it?'
Zsoronga's expression went from bemusement to concentrated worry as he listened to Obotegwa's frowning translation. 'Ke yusu emeba-'
'I think it may be the end of us.'
'But do you think it's real?'
The Prince paused, gazed out across a landscape dizzy with distances. He wore what he called his kemtush over his Kidruhil tunic, a white sash dense with black hand-painted characters that listed the 'battles of his blood,' the wars fought by his ancestors.
'Well, I think they believe it's real. I can only imagine what it must seem like to you, Horse-King. You and your stranded city. Me? I come from a great and ancient nation, mightier by far than any of the individual nations gathered beneath the Circumfix. And still, I have never seen the like. To concentrate so much glory, so much power, for a march to the ends of the Eдrwa! This is something no Satakhan in history, not even Mbotetulu! could have brought about-let alone my poor father. Whatever this is, and whatever comes of it, you can rest assured that it will be recalled… Recalled to the end of all time.'
They rode in silence for some time, lost in the thoughts.
'And what do you think of them?' Sorweel eventually asked.
'Them?'
'Yes. The Anasыrimbor.'
The Successor-Prince shrugged, but not without, Sorweel noticed, a quick glance around him. 'Everyone ponders them. They are like the mummers the Ketyai are so found of, standing before the amphitheatre of the world.'
'What does 'everyone' say?'
'That he is a Prophet, or even a God.'
'What do you say?'
'What the lines of my father's treaty say: that he is a Benefactor of High Holy Zeьm, Guardian of the Son of Heaven's Son.'
'No… What do you say?'
For the first time, Sorweel saw anger score the young man's handsome profile. Zsoronga momentarily glared at Obotegwa, as though holding him responsible for Sorweel's relentless questioning, before turning back to the young King with mild and insincere eyes. 'What do you think?'
'He's so many things to so many people,' Sorweel found himself blurting. 'I know not what to think. All I know is that those who spend any time with him, any time with him whatsoever, think him some kind of God.'
The Successor-Prince once again turned to his Senior Obligate, this time with questioning eyes. Though the drifting pace of their parallel horses meant that Sorweel could only glimpse Obotegwa's face on an angle, he was certain he had seen the old translator nod.
While the two exchanged words in Zeьmi, Sorweel struggled with the dismaying realization that Zsoronga had secrets, powerful secrets, and that compared to the intrigues that likely encircled him, his friendship with an outland king, with a sausage, could be little more than diversion. The Son of Nganka'kull was more than a hostage, he was a spy as well, a chit in a game greater than Sorweel could imagine. The fate of empires bound him.
When Zsoronga returned his gaze, the pinch of merriment that characterized so much of their discourse had utterly vanished, leaving a curious, questioning intensity in its place. It was almost as if his brown eyes were
