Words. Like flakes of poison, a mere handful could overturn the World.

"I need someone with skills. Miraculous skills."

The Patridomos went rigid. "Yes," he said tightly. "I see..."

Lord Biaxi Sankas was a son of a different age, possessing sensibilities that never quite fit the new order Father had established. He continually did things that struck the boy as odd-like the way he not only dared approach his Empress but actually sat upon the edge of her bed. He gazed at her with bold candour. The play of dim light and shadow did not flatter him, drawing deep, as it did, the long ruts of his face.

"Narindar," he said with a solemn nod.

The young Prince-Imperial struggled to preserve the drowsy sorrow of his gaze. He had heard no few tales about the Narindar, the Cultic assassins whose name had been synonymous with dread-that is, before Father had unmasked the first of the Consult skin-spies.

Funny, how men had only so much room for their fears.

"I can arrange everything, if you wish, Your Glory."

"No, Sankas. This I must command myself..." She caught her breath by biting her lower lip. "The damnation must be mine alone."

Damned? Did Mother think she would be damned for murdering Uncle Holy?

She doesn't believe this, the secret voice whispered. She doesn't believe a Dunyain can be a true anything, let alone the Holy Shriah...

"I understand, Your Glory." Biaxi Sankas said, nodding and smiling a humourless smile that reminded the boy of Uncle Proyas and his melancholy devotion. "And I admire."

And the boy craned his head up to see the tears at last overwhelm her eyes. It was becoming ever more difficult, finding ways to make her cry...

She clutched her boy tight, as if he were her only limb remaining.

The gaunt Patridomos bowed precisely as low as jnan demanded of him, then withdrew to afford his Empress the privacy that all anguish required.

CHAPTER NINE.

The Istyuli Plains

The shape of virtue is inked in obscenity.

-AINONI PROVERB EARLY SUMMER, 20 NEW IMPERIAL YEAR (4132 YEAR-OF-THE-TUSK), THE HIGH ISTYULI.

"I am the smoke that hangs from your cities!" the Nonman screams. "I am the horror that captivates! The beauty that chases and compels!"

And they gather before him, some kneeling, others hanging back with reluctance and terror. One by one they open their mouths to his outstretched finger.

"I am the plummet!"

Twelve walkers, little more than grey shadows in the veils of dust, lean to the rhythm of their exertions. The forests, vast and haunted, are behind them. The Sea, trackless and heaving, is behind them. The dead who mark their path are long rotted.

The plains pass like a dream.

Food becomes scarce. Xonghis continually scans the ground for sign of voles and other rodents, leads them on a winding course, toward this or that high-circling bird of prey. Whenever he finds a warren, he directs the Wizard to tear up the ground while the others stand ready with their weapons. Arcane lights prise the earth in broad sheets. When the Imperial Tracker guesses true, most are killed outright, while the others are stunned or lamed enough to easily skewer. Fat-limbed rats, Mimara can not help but think as she devours them, her face and fingers greased in the evening gloom. Because finding the warrens is uncertain, they heap uneaten carcasses on their backs.

This is what kills Hilikas: sickness from spoiled meat.

The twelve become eleven.

Starlight provides their sole illumination at night. The Captain speaks only to Cleric, long murmuring exhortations that no one can quite hear. The others gather like shipwreck survivors, small clots separated by gulfs of exhaustion. Galian holds court with Pokwas and Xonghis. The three gripe and joke in low, suspicious tones and sometimes watch the others, only to look away when the subject of their scrutiny turns to question them. Conger and Wonard rarely speak but remain shoulder to shoulder whether walking, eating, or sleeping. Sarl sits alone, skinnier, and far less inclined to ape his former role as Sergeant. Mimara catches him glaring at the Captain from time to time, but she can never decide whether she glimpses love or murder in his eyes.

Of the Stone Hags, only Koll remains. Never has Mimara witnessed a man so gouged. But he awakens, wordlessly, joins their long striding march, wordlessly. It seems he has forsworn all speech and thought as luxuries belonging to the fat. He has abandoned his armour and his girdle. He has tied a string from the pommel of his broadsword, which he slings about his forehead so he can carry the blade naked across his back.

Once she catches him spitting blood. His gums have begun bleeding.

She avoids all thought of her belly.

Sometimes, while walking in the dusty cool of the morning, or the drought-sun glare of the afternoon, she catches herself squeezing her eyes shut and opening them, like someone warding much needed sleep. The others are always there, trudging through their own dust in a scattered file.

As are the plains, stretching dun and white to the limit of the bleached sky...

Passing like a dream.

- - "How I loved you!" the Nonman weeps. "So much I would have pulled down mountains!"

Stars cloud the sky in sheets, vaulting the night with innumerable points of light. In the shadow of the False Man, the scalpers bend back their heads, open their mouths in infant need, infant wonder.

"Enough to forswear my brothers!"

They wave their arms in exultation, cry out in laughing celebration.

"Enough to embrace damnation!"

Koll watches them from the dark.

- - The Wizard recites long-dead poets, his voice curiously warm and resonant. He argues metaphysics, history, even astrology.

He is a wild old man, clad in rancid hides. He is a Gnostic Mage from days of old.

But he is a teacher most of all.

"The Qirri," he says to her one evening. "It sharpens the memory, makes it seem as if... you know everything you know."

"It makes me happy," she replies, resting her cheek on her raised knees.

A beaming smile splits his beard. "Yes... sometimes."

A momentary frown clenches his brow.

He shakes it into another smile.

- - The plains pass like a dream.

- - She sits with herself in the high grasses, thinking, Could I be this beautiful?

She finds herself fascinated by the line of her jaw, the way it curves like a chalice to the soft hook of her earlobe. She understands the pleasure that mirrors hold for the beautiful. She knows vanity. In the brothel, they endlessly primped and preened, traded fatuous compliments and envious gazes. Beauty may have been the coin of their subjugation, but it was the only coin they possessed, so they prized it the way drunks prize wine and liquor. Take away enough and people will treasure their afflictions... If only to better accuse the world.

"I know what you're doing," she whispers to the thing called Soma.

"And what am I doing?"

There are differences to be sure. It wears the rags that were once Soma's gowns, for one. And the thing is filthier than she-something she would have not thought possible before encountering it here, away from the others. Especially about the face and neck, where the remains of multiple raw feedings have sheathed and stained its skin...

Her skin.

"Surrogation," she says. "Consult skin-spies typically begin with a servant or a slave-someone who allows them to study their real target, learn their mannerisms, voice, and character. Once they've learned enough, they begin transforming themselves, sculpting their flesh, moulding their cartilage bones, in preparation for the subsequent assassination and replacement of the target."

It has even replicated the lean, starved look that has begun to afflict them all.

"Your father has told you this?"

"Yes."

And the growing curve of her lower belly...

"You think this is what I'm doing?"

"What else could you be doing?" A sudden sharpness pokes through her manner. She will show this thing... this beautiful thing.

"Declaring your beauty," it replies.

"No, Soma. Do not play games with me. Nothing human passes through your soul because you have no soul. You're not real."

"But I speak. How could I speak if I had no soul?"

"Parrots speak. You are simply a cunning parrot."

"I fear I am far more."

"I can even prove it to you."

"Can you now?"

Now she's playing games, she realizes, games when she has so many burning questions-ones crucial to their survival. Every night she rehearses them, but for some reason they no longer seem... pertinent. If anything, they suddenly feel absurd, bloated with unreality, the kinds of questions fat priests might ask starving children. Even the central question, when she thinks of it, leaves her leaden with reluctance...

And yet she needs to ask it, to lean heedless into the thing's menace and demand an answer, to blurt, "What do you mean, the Nonman is trying to kill us?"

But she cannot.

And it has become as proper as proper can be, avoiding things troubling and obvious. To play games with inhuman assassins.

"A man comes to you saying," she begins with a sly smile, "'Do not believe anything I say, for I am liar...'" She pauses to allow the words to resonate. "Tell me, thing, why is this a paradox?"

"Because it's strange for a liar to say such things."

The response occasions a small flare of triumph. It's remarkable, really, witnessing things learned in the abstract happen in actuality-and yet further proof of her stepfather's divinity. She can even see the Aspect-Emperor's luminous face, smiling and gentle, saying, "Remember, Mimara... If you fear, simply ask this question..."

The thing before her truly possesses no soul. But as dread as the fact is, it seems... a farce.

"There. That is my proof."

"Proof? How?"

She feels as if she pretends the water has boiled even though the fire has long since guttered, as if everyone raises stone-cold bowls, smacks their lips, and spouts some homily about the way tea warms the soul even as they shudder at the chill lining their collective gut.

"Only a soul can hold a paradox," she explains. "Since the true meaning of paradox escapes you, you can only grasp non-paradoxical approximations. In this case, 'strange.' Only a soul can comprehend contradictory truths."

"If I'm not a soul, then what am I?"

How? How has everything become such a farce?

"An abacus crafted of skin, flesh, and bone. A monstrous, miraculous tool. A product of the Tekne."

"That too is something special, is it not?"

Something is wrong, she realizes. Their voices have waxed too loud. And the Wizard, she knows, will be peering into the darkness after her, wondering. Worrying.

"I must go... I've tarried too long."

- - Cleric saw it first, scooped along distant tentacles of wind. A scarf of white and gold-the colours of the Thousand Temples-floating, coiling and uncoiling. The first sign of humanity they had encountered since passing the last of the Meori ruins weeks previous.

Of course Achamian was among the last to pick it out against the dun monotony of the distance. "There," Mimara repeated time and again, pointing. "There..." At last he glimpsed it, twisting like a worm in water. He clenched his teeth following its meandering course, balled his fists.

The Great Ordeal, he realized. Somewhere on this very plain, the host of Kellhus and his Believer-Kings marched the long road to Golgotterath. How close would they pass?

But this worry, like so many other things, seemed uprooted, yet another scarf floating across parched ground. Everything seemed to float lately, as if yanked from its native soil and carried on a slow flood of invisibility.

Few men returned the same after months or years of travel-Achamian knew this as well as anyone. Sheer exposure to different sights, different customs, different peoples, was enough to alter a man, sometimes radically. But in Achamian's estimation, the real impetus, what really changed men, was the simple act of walking and thinking, day after day, week after week, month after month. Innumerable thoughts flitted through the soul of the long traveller. Kith and kin were condemned and pardoned. Hopes and beliefs were considered and reconsidered. Worries were picked to the point of festering-or healing. For those who could affirm the same thoughts endlessly, men like the Captain, the trail typically led to fanaticism. For those with no stomach for continuous repetition, men like Galian, the trail led to suspicion and cynicism, the conviction that thought was never to be trusted. For those who found their thoughts never quite repeating, who found themselves continually surprised by novel angles and new questions, the trail led to philosophy-to a wisdom that only hermits and prisoners could know.

Achamian had always considered himself one of the latter: a long-walking philosopher. In his younger days, he would even take inventory of his beliefs and scruples to better judge the difference between the man who had departed and the man who had arrived. He was what the ancient Ceneian satirists called an aculmirsi, literally, a "milestone man," one who would spend his time on the road forever peering at the next milestone-a traveller who could not stop thinking about travelling.