Truth. Nothing more than truth.
And the sheer clarity of it bewildered Sorweel, shook him as deeply as anything since the death of his father and the humiliation of his people. Truth! The Anasыrimbor spoke only truth. How? How could a demon do such a thing? What demon would?
And how? How could such a thing be…
Be miraculous?
Sorweel's heart began pacing the Aspect-Emperor's arcane transit once he reached the apex of the horseshoe and began moving toward them. Dread cinching his chest, he watched the expressions of those who believed, upturned and rapt, brightening as he soundlessly passed, then falling into shadow. The floating figure drew closer and closer, as inexorable as an equation, as bright as a prison window, until Sorweel's heart seemed to be beating against him. Finally, the Aspect-Emperor slowed, came to a hissing stop no more than two lengths away. He tilted back on an invisible axis to regard someone on the highest tier.
'Impalpotas, habaru-'
'Impalpotas,' Eskeles said with a quaver, 'tell me, how long has it been since you were dead?'
A collective intake of breath. The man called Impalpotas sat four people abreast of Sorweel-three of Eskeles-and two rows higher. The young King of Sakarpus found himself peering against the shining proximity of the Anasыrimbor: The Inrithi had the clean-shaven look of a Nansur but seemed different in dress and hair. A Shigeki, Sorweel guessed. Like Porsparian.
'Impalpotas…' the Aspect-Emperor repeated.
The man smiled like a rake caught wooing a friend's daughter-an expression so at odds with the circumstances that Sorweel's stomach reeled as if pitched from a cliff.
Impalpotas leapt-no, exploded-from the tiers, sword out and flashing in divine light. A crack of voice greeted him in the interval, a word shouted beneath the skins of all present. Bald and searing light flooded the pavilion to the seams. Sorweel blinked against the glare, saw the Shigeki hanging before the Anasыrimbor, pinned to nothing, encased in a calligraphy of blinding lines. Impalpotas's sword had dropped from nerveless fingers and now lay upright between the feet of a Conriyan on the bottom tier, its point buried into carpet and turf the depth of a palm.
The assembly broke out in roaring commotion. Like fire across desert scree, outrage leapt from face to face, a wrath too feral to be called manly. Beards opened about howls. Swords were brandished across the rows, like shaking teeth.
The Anasыrimbor's voice did not so much cut through the din as harvest it-the uproar collapsed like wheat about the scythe of his declaration. 'Irishi hum makar,' he said, continuing to scrutinize those seated before him. Save for his tongue and lips, he had not moved.
Eskele's stunned and stammering voice was several heartbeats in translating. 'Be-behold our foe.'
The Shigeki assassin had sailed out around the Aspect-Emperor and now floated behind his haloed head, a brighter beacon. The light that tattooed his skin and clothes flared, and his limbs were drawn out and away from his body. He hung, a different kind of proof, revolving like a coin in open space. He panted like an animal wrapped in wire, but his eyes betrayed no panic, nothing save glaring hate and laughter. Sorweel glimpsed the curve of his erect phallus through his silk breeches, looked away to his sigil-wrapped face, only to be more appalled…
For it flexed about invisible faults, then opened, drawn apart like interlocking fingers. Articulations were pried back and out, revealing eyes that neither laughed nor hated, that simply looked, above shining slopes of boneless meat.
'Rishra mei…' the Aspect-Emperor said in a voice that sounded like silk wrapped about a thunderclap. 'I see…' Eskele's murmured in reedy tones, 'I see mothers raise stillborn infants to blinded Gods. The death of birth-I see this! with eyes both ancient and foretold. I see the high towers burn, the innocents broken, the Sranc descend innumerable-innumerable! I see a world shut against Heaven!'
The assembly cried out, a cacophony of voices and hand-wringing gestures, piteous for the terror, frightening for the fury. With wild glances Sorweel saw them, the Men of the Ordeal, standing or clutching their knees, their faces cramped as though they listened to news of recent catastrophe. Wives dead. Clans scattered. No! their expressions shouted. No!
'Rishra mei-'
'I see kings with one eye gouged, naked save for the collars from which their severed hands swing. I see the holy Tusk sundered, fragments cast to the flames! Momemn, Meigeiri, Carythusal and Invishi, I see their streets gravelled in bones, their gutters black with old blood. I see the temples overgrown, the broken walls rot over empty, savage ages.
'I see the Whirlwind walk-Mog-Pharau! Tsurumah! I see the No-God…'
Spoken like a groan, like air struck from dead lungs.
'Behold!' the Aspect-Emperor bellowed in tones that ripped nerves from skin, yanked them to the farthest tingling corners. 'See!'
The thing-the faceless thing-hung skinned in arcane light. One rotation passed in breathless witness. Another. Then, like smoke inhaled, the brilliant lattice imploded, against the beast, into the beast. The sound of scissions, multiple and immediate, whisked through the air. The sorcerous light winked out. What remained simply dropped, a curtain of slop raining to the ground.
Breathless silence. A return to the holy gloom. It had happened, and it had not happened.
'Rishra mei,' the impossible visage said, sweeping his gaze across the astonished tiers. And the silence roared about him. Sorweel could only stare at the severed Ciphrang heads hanging like sacks from his hip, their white mouths laughing or howling.
His haloed palms spread wide, the Aspect-Emperor continued following the same unseen geometric curve. He was so close that Sorweel could see the winding Tusks embroidered white upon white into the hem of his cassock, the three pink lines wrinkling the outside corners of his eyes, the scuff of soil that marked the toe of his left white- felt slipper. He was so close that the image of him burned the surrounding spaces to black, so that the curving tier of forms and faces sunk into void.
The Anasыrimbor.
A scent preceded him, a draft that seemed to brush away the cloying perfumes worn by the more effete attendants. The smell of damp earth and cool rain. Weary truth.
The demons' puckered sockets seemed to watch him-recognize him.
Please! Sorweel found himself thinking, begging. Please let it be Zsoronga!
But the luminous form came to a stop directly before him, too vivid to possess depth, to be framed-to be truly seen. Sorweel's heart stomped against his breast. It seemed that animals thronged within him, that each of his fears had become gibbering terrors, creatures with their own limbs and volitions. What would he see?
How would he punish?
'Sorweel,' a voice more melodious than music said in the tongue of his fathers. 'Sad child. Proud King. There is nothing more deserving of compassion than an apologetic heart.'
'Yes.' A noise more kicked out of his lungs than spoken.
Never!
Though he had not moved, though he sat mild and meditative, the Aspect-Emperor somehow towered over every region of sight and sound. Summer-blue eyes, not seeing so much as sacking. Plaited golden beard. Lips shaped about a pit without bottom. The intensity of his presence boiled against the limits of the senses, seeped into the faults, steamed into the unseen recesses…
'Do you repent your father's folly?'
'Yes!' Sorweel lied, his voice cracking for fury.
Demon! Ciphrang! The Goddess names you! Names you!
An old friend's wry smile, as plain and as guileless as a joke about a girl, as sudden as a mother's slap.
'Welcome, young Sorweel. Welcome to the glory that is the God's Salvation. Welcome to the company of Believer-Kings.'
Then the godlike figure was gone, floating to his left, searching for the face of another penitent, another troubled soul. Blinking, Sorweel saw the Lords of the Ordeal watching and smiling. The pavilion's embroidered interior seemed to become sky wide with sweet, breathable air.
'Gulls,' he heard Eskeles murmur with sarcastic good-nature beside him. 'Fools…'
