When he asked her whether she was worried about being a hostage, she simply shrugged and said, 'The ghouls mean us no harm. Besides, we are children of Fate. What is there for us to worry?'
And indeed, the more time he spent with her, the more this seemed to characterize her: the absence of worry.
Equanimity, soothing for its constancy, arrogant for its extent.
'So, this Nonman King, Nil'giccas, what are you to offer him?'
'Nothing. We are the terms of the negotiation, Horse-King, not the framers.'
'So we are to be captives? Nothing more?'
He almost always found her smile dazzling, even when he knew she laughed at him and his barbaric ignorance. 'Nothing more,' she said. 'We will languish, safe and useless, while the Great Ordeal carries the burden of Apocalypse.'
And he could not but exult at the thought of languishing with Anasurimbor Serwa. Perhaps, he found himself hoping, she might come to love him out of boredom.
Days had passed, and her demeanour remained every bit as wry and reflective as that day when he first met her in Kayutas's tent. She carried an aura of power, of course, as much for the miraculous way she whisked them from place to place as for the dizzying facts of her station and her blood. Grandmistress and Princess-Imperial. Archmage and Anasurimbor.
Nevertheless, her youth and sex continually beguiled Sorweel into thinking she was a mere girl, someone weaker, simpler, and as much a victim of circumstances as he himself. And perhaps this was what he needed her to be, for no matter how many times her knowledge and intellect contradicted this image, it would reassert itself. Sometimes she astonished him, so subtle were her observations and so complete was her knowledge of the ancient lands they crossed. And yet, within a handful of heartbeats, she would inevitably lapse into the alluring waif, the one who would find such security in his arms, if only she would let him embrace her.
He would be long in appreciating the stamp of ancient profundity she carried in her soul.
'This Nil'giccas… Do you know much of him?'
'I was his friend once, ere the first end of the world…'
'And?'
Though they were of an age, sometimes her look made her seem a thousand years his senior.
'He was wise, powerful, and… unfathomable. The Nonmen resemble us too much not to continually fool us into thinking we comprehend them. But they always surprise, sooner or later.'
If Serwa embodied serenity, Moenghus was nothing short of mercurial. Sorweel had never forgotten Kayutas's warning to beware his brother's madness. Even Serwa had mentioned Moenghus's 'foul humours,' as she called them. Sometimes days, as opposed to mere watches, would pass with the Prince-Imperial speaking nary a single word. Sorweel quickly learned to avoid him altogether during these periods, let alone refrain from speaking to him. The most innocuous question would spark a murderous glare, one all the more lunatic for the white-blue of his unblinking eyes and all the more frightening for the vigour of his frame. Then, over the course of a night or a day, whatever besieged him would lift, and he would resume his more sociable manner, wry and observant, quick to tease, and often outright considerate, especially when it came to his sister-to the point of risking his neck for eggs or wading through marsh muck for tubers, anything that might delight her when they took their evening repast.
'What makes you so worthy?' Sorweel once asked her while Moenghus crouched on the riverbank nearby, trolling the waters with a string and hook.
She drew her hair back to regard him, a gesture the Sakarpi King had fallen in love with. 'Podi always says that aside from Mother, I'm the only Anasurimbor he likes.'
'Podi,' Sorweel had learned, was the jnanic diminutive for 'older brother,' a term of endearment and respect.
'My sister is sane,' Moenghus called from his perch over the flashing water.
Serwa scowled and smiled at once. 'He thinks my family is crazy.'
' Your family?' Sorweel asked.
She nodded as if recognizing some previously discussed inevitability-truths they would have no choice but to share because of the intimacies of the trail. 'He's my brother, yes. But we share no blood. He is the son of my father's first wife-my namesake, Serwe. The one whose corpse they bound with Father on the Circumfix-during the First Holy War. The one everybody is loathe to speak about.'
'So he's your half — brother?'
'No. Have you heard of Cnaiur urs Skiotha?'
Even from a distance, Moenghus seemed to stiffen.
'No.'
She glanced at her brother with something resembling relish. 'He was a Scylvendi barbarian, famed for his martial exploits in the First Holy War, and now venerated for his service to my father. I'm told,' she called out teasingly, 'there's even a cadre of fools who scar their arms like Scylvendi in the Ordeal…'
'Bah!' her brother cried.
'Why does he think your blood is crazy?' Sorweel pressed, eager to sidestep the topic of Moenghus's paternity.
Serwa cast another laughing look at the dark-haired man.
'Because they think about thoughts,' Moenghus said, looking over his shoulder.
Sorweel frowned. He had always thought this the definition of wisdom. 'And this is crazy?'
Moenghus shrugged. 'Think about it.'
'Father,' Serwa explained, 'says that we have an extra soul, one that lives, and another that watches us living. We are prone to be at war with ourselves, the Anasurimbor.'
Her terms were simple enough, but Sorweel suspected she understood the matter with a philosopher's subtlety.
'So your father thinks you crazy?'
Both siblings laughed at this, though Sorweel had no inkling as to the humour.
'My father is Dunyain,' Serwa said. 'More human than human. His seed is strong, apt to crack the vessels that bear it.'
'Tell him about our brother Inri…'
She crinkled her sunburned brow. 'I would rather not.'
'What are Dunyain?' Sorweel asked, speaking with the curiosity of those wishing to pass the time, nothing more, when in fact his breath ached for interest.
She looked to her brother once again, who shrugged and said, 'No one knows.'
Serwa leaned her head low, almost sideways, so that her hair fell in a silk sheet. It was a girlish gesture, one that again reminded the Sakarpi King that for all her worldliness and self-possession, she was scarcely older than he.
'Mother once told me they dwelt some place in the northern wastes, that they have spent thousands of years breeding themselves the way Kianene breed horses or the Ainoni breed dogs. Breeding and training.'
Sorweel struggled to recall what it was Zsoronga had told him about the heretic, the Wizard named Achamian, and his claims against the Aspect-Emperor.
'Breeding and training for what?'
She looked at him with a wisp of a scowl, as if noting a regrettable sluggishness in his soul.
'To grasp the Absolute.'
'Absolute?' he asked, speaking the word, which he had never before heard, slowly so as to make it his own.
'Ho!' Moenghus called, yanking a small bass onto the riverbank. It thrashed silver and gold even as it blackened the bare stone with wetness.
'The God of Gods,' Serwa said, beaming at her brother.
The Men of the Circumfix were born to proud War. Most all of them had been tested on a dozen battlefields and had not so much developed a contempt for numbers as an appreciation for skill and training. They had seen single companies of hard-bitten knights rout whole armies of Orthodox rabble. Numbers often meant nothing on the
