rhythmic life, a garland about the breathless.
They awoke before the Interval, buried Obotegwa without marker on the grey, desolate plain.
Sorweel and Zsoronga hung about the edges of the General's retinue, witless for the lack of sleep and the expenditure of passion. The sun had climbed past the precincts of noon, drawing the shadows of things to the east. The line of the land, which for so long reached out in a monotonous crescent before them, had been broken and multiplied. Low knolls rose against low ridges. Ravines rutted mounded distances. Gravel spilled from wandering defilades. The Army of the Middle-North mobbed the horizon immediately behind them, its innumerable pennants little more than shadows lolling through the steaming dust. They rode as they always did at this time of day, their brows angled away from the sun's glare, their thoughts wandering on the slack leash of midday boredom.
Sorweel was the first to glimpse the speck hanging low over the western horizon. He had fallen into the habit of reading the world as much as watching it, so he said nothing, convinced he witnessed some kind of sign. Was it another stork come to communicate the inexplicable?
He was quickly disabused of this conceit. The speck, whatever it was, hung in the faraway air more like a bumblebee than a bird, like something too cumbersome to fly…
He peered, squinted as much out of disbelief as against the high sun. He saw black horses — a team of four. He saw wheels…
A chariot, he realized. A flying chariot.
For a time he simply watched stupefied, rocking in rhythm to his mount's dogged trot.
A chorus of alarums cracked the air. The General's Pillarian escort leapt into formation about their flanks, their armour and tunics shining green and gold. The Nuns who accompanied Serwa cried out in arcane unison, let out their billows as they strode glimmering into the sky.
The sorcerous chariot rode a low arc over the churned landscape. Sunlight flashed across panels laden with graven images. Sorweel saw three pale faces swaying above the gilded rail-one of them shouting light.
Kayutas, for his part, betrayed no surprise or urgency whatsoever. 'Silence!' he cried to those in his immediate circle. 'Decorum!' Then, without a word of explanation, he tore off, galloping on a long plume of dust.
The witches hung motionless in the air, their billows winding and waving about them.
The retinue, which typically rode in a loose mass, flattened into a crescent as the officers and caste-nobles jostled for vantages. Sorweel and Zsoronga watched from the centre of the press. The sky-chariot banked toward the Prince-Imperial and swung to earth. The hooves of the blacks bit hard into the denuded turf, and wings of dust and gravel sprawled about their glossy flanks. Golden wheels gleamed about spokes spun into invisibility. The centre figure leaned back, pulling hard on the reins.
Standing in his stirrups, Kayutas raced out to meet them, hailed them with a raised arm.
The three strangers turned toward him in unison.
'They're not human,' Zsoronga said. His tone was ragged, and not for exhaustion. He sounded like a man who had had his fill of miraculous things. Like a man straining to believe.
The Kidruhil General reined his pony to a dusty halt, exchanged what seemed cryptic greetings. Nothing could be heard on the arid wind. Then, with scarce a breath expended, he wheeled his mount about and began trotting back toward his astonished command. The sky-chariot lurched into motion behind him, trundling across the earth…
And for some reason, of all the awe-inspiring sights Sorweel had seen and would see, none would be so arresting as the sight of the gilded chariot wheeling back into open sky. He understood his friend's beseeching tone, for it had made a beehive of his own breast as well.
Nonmen.
So many miracles. All of them speaking for his enemy's cause.
For reasons he could scarce fathom, the Exalt-General found himself pondering the siege and fall of Shimeh- the final night of the First Holy War-as he walked the short distance from his pavilion to the black silhouette of the Umbilicus. Fleeing the streets of the Holy City, he had climbed onto the pediment of an ancient fullery, where he had watched his Holy Aspect-Emperor battle the last of the heathen Cishaurim. There had been five of them, Primaries, mightier, despite the crudity of their art, than the most accomplished Schoolmen. Five hellish figures floating high above the burning city, their eyes gouged so they might see the Water-that-was-Light-and Anasurimbor Kellhus had slain them all.
Such was the power of the man he had come to worship. Such was the might. So how had his soul let slip the ardour of his faith? Why had hope and inflexible determination become foreboding and gnawing worry?
The Men of the Ordeal hailed him as they always did when he walked the interior ways of the camp, but for once he did not return their salutations. He fairly knocked over Lord Couras Nantilla, the General of the Cengemi, at the entryway to the Umbilicus, such was the depth of his walking reverie. He squeezed the man's shoulder in lieu of an apology.
At long last the plains had yielded. At long last the Great Ordeal, the sum of his lifelong hope and toil, trod the fabled lands named in the Holy Sagas. At long last they marched into the shadow of foul Golgotterath- Golgotterath!
For all the perils facing them, for all the privations, this should be a time of jubilation. For who, in all the world, could withstand the might of Anasurimbor Kellhus?
No one.
Not even the dread Consult of Mog-Pharau.
So why did his heart pound air into his veins?
He resolved to make this his question. He resolved to set aside his pride, and to reveal the full extent of his misgivings…
To ask his Prophet how he could doubt his Prophet.
But for once the Aspect-Emperor was not alone in his chamber. He stood arms out while two body-slaves attended to him, cinching and fussing robes freighted with ceremonial splendour: the costume of a Ketyai warrior- king from Far Antiquity. He wore a full-length gown whose hems had been bound into his ankle-wraps. Golden vambraces encased his forearms and matching greaves his shins. Opposing Kyranean Lions gleamed across his breast-plate. With his stature and haloed mien, he seemed a vision from some ancient relief-save for the two severed demon heads hanging from his girdle…
'You are troubled, I know,' Kellhus said, grinning at his Exalt-General. 'For all your yearning, for all your faith, yours remains a pragmatic soul, Proyas.' The slaves continued their silent labour, binding straps and laces. The Aspect-Emperor glanced down at his garb, rolled his eyes as if offering himself up as a poor example. 'You have little patience for tools you cannot immediately use.'
As a young child, one of Proyas's duties had been to bear his mother's train at public ceremonies. All he remembered of the toddling farce was stumbling after the long-dragging hems, clutching embroidery, losing it, then stumbling after the hems again, while all the Conriyan court roared in adoring laughter around him. In so many ways, Kellhus made him feel the same tender fool, always chasing, always stumbling…
'If I have fail-'
Kellhus interrupted him with a warm hand on his shoulder. 'Please, Proyas. I'm just saying we grapple with earthly things tonight…'
'Earthly things?'
A broad smile cracked the flaxen curls of the Aspect-Emperor's moustache and beard.
'Yes. The Nonman King has finally answered our call.'
Earthly, Proyas reflected, was not a term many would accord the ghouls.
'Even now his embassy waits here in the Umbilicus,' his Lord-and-God continued. 'We will receive them in the Eleven Pole Chamber…'
Within a matter of heartbeats, Proyas found himself immersed in the organizational carnival that perpetually characterized life behind the veils of power. Slaves took him in hand, washing his hands, brushing and perfuming his field armour, oiling and combing his hair and beard. A part of him always found it remarkable, the degree of coordination required for even the simplest and most impromptu of state occasions. An Imperial Eunuch festooned in insignia from across the Three Seas led him out into the airy chill of the Eleven Pole Chamber. Kellhus already
