R. Bakker - The Judging eye

This was how the fateful decision was made to place the young King of Sakarpus, Sorweel, in the care of the Aspect-Emperor's two eldest sons, Moлnghus and Kayыtas.

"When he becomes a brother to them," his Arcane Holiness explained to his old friends, "he will be as a son to me."

The knock came mere moments after Sorweel's attendants had finished dressing him, a single rap, hard enough to rattle the hinges. The young King turned to see the door swing wide. Two men walked in without so much as an imploring look, the one fair and "royal boned," as the Sakarpi said of tall gracile men, the other dark and powerfully built. Both were dressed in the martial finery of the New Imperium, with long white vests hanging over hauberks of nimil-chain. Cloth-of-gold tusks glimmered in the dull morning light.

"Tomorrow," the fair one said in flawless Sakarpic, "you will report to me…" He strolled to the one open panel along the suite's shuttered balcony, glanced out over the conquered city before turning on his heel. The dawning light caught his hair, transformed it into a luminous halo. "You ride with us… apparently."

The other plucked a string of fat from the tray that bore the remains of Sorweel's breakfast, dropped it into his mouth. He scrutinized Sorweel with murderous blue eyes as he chewed, absently wiped the pads of his fingers along his kilt.

Sorweel knew who they were-there was no mistaking the lethal strength of the one or the unblinking calm of the other. He probably could have guessed their names even before their father had sacked his city. But he resented their manner and tone and so replied with the cold outrage of a lord insulted by his lessers. "You don't look like horses."

Moлnghus growled with what may have been laughter, then muttered something in Sheyic to his taller brother. Kayыtas snorted and grinned. They both watched Sorweel as though he were an exotic pet, a novelty from some absurd corner of the world.

Perhaps he was.

An uncomfortable silence followed, one that seemed to swell with every passing heartbeat.

"My elder brother," Kayыtas said eventually, as though recovering from a momentary lapse in etiquette, "says that's because we're wearing our breeches."

"What?" Sorweel asked, flushing in confusion and embarrassment.

"Why we don't look like horses."

Despite himself, Sorweel smiled-and so lost this first battle. He could feel it, humming through the two brothers' laughter, a satisfaction scarcely concerned with humour.

They're hunters, he told himself, sent to run down my heart.

He felt it most at night, when the ranging concerns of the day shrunk to the clutch of limbs beneath cold blankets and the mourning could seize his face without fear of discovery. Small. Alone. A stranger in his father's home. I am a king of widows and orphans, he would think, as the faces of his father's dead Boonsmen floated before his soul's eye. It all came crowding back, the sights and sounds, the horror, the jerk and tumble of violent futility. Children weeping in the doorways, beloved buildings cupped in shining flame, the bodies of Horselords twisted in the streets.

I am a captive in my own land.

But as desolate as these sleepless watches were, Sorweel found a kind of reprieve in them. Here, huddled beneath the heavy weave, there was certainty, an assurance that his sorrow and hatred were not a kind of misplaced inevitability. Here, he could see his father clearly, he could hear his long low voice, as surely as he could those nights when he pretended to sleep, and his father had come to sit at the foot of his bed, to speak of his dead wife.

"I miss her, Sorwa. More than I dare let you know.

But his days were… more confusing.

Sorweel did as he was told. He presided over the farce that was his court. He attended the ceremonies, spoke the holy words that would see his people "safe," bore the witless accusation in the eyes of priest and petitioner alike. He walked and gestured with the listless grace of those who moved through a fog of betrayal.

He learned that he lacked the ability to do and to believe contradictory things. Where a nobler soul would have found consistency in his acts, he seemed to find it in his beliefs. He simply believed what he needed to believe in order to act as his conquerors wished him to act. While he muddled through the schedule his foreign secretaries arranged for him, while he sat in their perfumed presence, it really seemed that things were as the Aspect-Emperor claimed, that the world turned beneath the shadow of the Second Apocalypse, and that all Men must act of one accord to preserve the future, no matter how much it might offend their pride.

"All Kings answer to holy writ," the godlike man had told him. "And so long as that writ is otherworldly, they willingly acknowledge as much. But when it comes to them as I come to them, wearing the flesh of their fellow man, they confuse the sanctity of obeying the Law with the shame of submitting to a rival." A warm laugh, like a dear uncle admitting a harmless folly. "All men think themselves closer to the God than others. And so they rebel, raise arms against the very thing they claim to serve…

"Against me."

The young King still lacked the words to describe what it was like, kneeling in the Aspect-Emperor's presence. He could only think that knees were somehow not enough, that he should fall to his belly like the ancient supplicants engraved on the walls of Vogga Hall. And his voice! Melodious. By turns gentle, bemused, penetrating, and profound. The Anasыrimbor need only speak, and it would seem obvious that Sorweel's father simply had succumbed to his conceit, that Harweel, like so many men before him, had confused his pride for his duty.

"This is all a tragic mistake…"

Only afterwards, as his handlers led him through the general clamour of the encampment, would his father's words return to him. "He is a Ciphrang, a Hunger from the Outside, come in the guise of man…" And suddenly he believed the precise opposite of what he had believed a mere watch before. He would curse himself for being a kitten-headed fool, for breaking the only faith that remained to him. Despite the pain, despite the way it limned his face with the threat of sobs, he would recite his father's final outburst: "He needs this city! He needs our people! That means he needs you, Sorwa!"

You.

And all would be confusion. For Sorweel understood that if his father had spoken true, then everyone about him-the Ainoni with their white cosmetics and plaited beards, the Schoolmen with their silk-print coats and airs of omniscience, the Galeoth with their long flaxen hair knotted above their right ear, all the thousands who sought redemption through the Great Ordeal-had gathered for naught, had conquered for naught, and now prepared to war against the Great Ruiner's successors, all for naught. It seemed that delusion, like the span of arches, could only reach so far before collapsing into truth. It seemed impossible that so many could be so thoroughly deceived.

King Proyas had told him the stories about the Aspect-Emperor, about the miracles he had witnessed with his own eyes, about the valour and sacrifice that had "cleansed" the Three Seas. How could Harweel's claim gainsay such rampant devotion? How could his son not fear, in the bullying presence of such conquerors, that the matter only seemed undecided because he secretly held his finger on the scale?

During the day, every word, every look seemed to argue his father's foolhardy conceit. Only at night, lying in the solitary dark, could Sorweel take refuge in the simpler movements of the heart. He could let his lips tremble, his eyes fill with tears like hot salted tea. He could even sit at the end of his bed as his father had sat, and pretend he spoke to someone sleeping.

"I dreamed of her again, Sorwa…"