SYRIANI KNELT UPON THE highest step and, stooping, kissed the threshold at the orbital of Miudanar’s eye. Still kneeling, it turned to look at me, fine silver chains swaying on its forehead and upon the lower reaches of its horned crown. “You must do the same,” it said. “You are aeta. The least aeta, but even so you are accorded this respect.” It pointed with open hand and claws extended at the lip of crystalline stone. “Here you see Truth, kinsman.”

Si fueris Romae . . .

The great prince did not force me. I held its gaze a moment. It meant to honor me, to pay respect to a mighty enemy—or to the shadow of one long broken. I could refuse, should refuse. I was a dead man, and had nothing to lose. I was bleeding, aching, covered in shit and slime. To refuse would be only to bring death down sooner, would it not?

No. It would bring only more humiliation. Only more pain.

I knelt and kissed the old skull, imagining as I did so the tens of thousands of Cielcin mouths that had kissed that bone before me. I shuddered, and stood.

“Wait here,” Syriani said to Aulamn and Vati, then, tugging on my chains, led me over the threshold and into that sacred, profane place, that place where no human had gone before—and where none has gone since. “Only the aeta may enter the temple,” the prince said. “You are blessed.”

The chamber of the eye was almost as I remembered it from my dream the night before. The ancient Enar had built a level floor into the otherwise organic shape of the chamber that once had housed the Watcher’s eye. The narrow vertical slit in the back that had followed nerve channels to the emptied brain case lay dead ahead, narrow stairs built into its floor, just wide enough that three Cielcin—or two Enar—might climb abreast. The great stelai still ran in rows to either side, but where their faces once had showed proud scenes of Enar conquest in my vision, here they were chipped smooth, the images sanded down, the careful, claw-like runes of that ancient race wiped away and replaced with Cielcin circle-writing. Huge medallions hung on chains high up between the stelai, each with clusters of udaritanu script inlaid in silver upon their black surfaces.

“The inscriptions are gone,” I said without thinking, looking up and around at the vile place.

Syriani stopped sharply and looked at me. “What?”

What once had been an Enar place was now a Cielcin one. Though the great pillars in the desert and much of the city beyond had been spared the iconoclasm, it seemed that within that most sacred place some ancient and pious prince of the Cielcin—Elu itself, perhaps, or this Araxaika Syriani had mentioned—had destroyed every line and image wrought by the elder race. The very air stank of time, of epochs measureless and without number. I felt as I think the French must have felt looking up at the dusty pillars at Karnak, relic of an age impossibly ancient to the mind and indisputably grand to the senses.

Grand, but terrible.

“What is the meaning of this, Dorayaica?” A harsh voice broke the hushed quietude of the temple, and shaken from my examination of the pillars, I looked round to find a number of Cielcin descending the narrow stair from the inner sanctum on the level above. Without being told, I knew they were all aetane, all princes. Each was dressed in armor variously black or white, no two styles precisely alike. The horned crowns of each were banded or tipped in silver, and silver chains whence hung lapis and sapphires and little bangles graven with runes hung draped across their foreheads. Some wore bits of onyx or lapis pierced through their brows or under their eyes, plating their faces like jewel-bright carapaces. Many wore capes of royal azure, or of cerulean, or sable. One even wore a milky cape of Cielcin hide in a style not so different than that I’d seen Elu itself wear in my vision of the past.

The creature who had spoken—who led the party down the narrow way—wore a similar cloak, but the skinned hands that hung from the dusky silver brooch at its throat had five fingers, not six. Its armor was dull white, colorless as the Euean sky, but decorated with bits of the jade-like Enari stone. Its face and horns were similarly adorned, accentuating the sharp jut of brow and of cheekbones, secured by pins that pierced the waxen flesh. What I took for bronze hoops hanging on its arms I recognized a moment later were the time-darkened jawbones of men. Half a dozen hung from each bicep like the segmented armor plates of a Sollan legionary.

Syriani did not turn at once to greet this newcomer, but squinted at me, still puzzled by my statement.

“Are you mad?” the newcomer demanded. “Bringing such filth to this sacred place?”

The Prophet threw up a hand to stop the bone-clad chieftain from reaching me. “Lannu!” it hissed. “The yukajji is aeta, Iamndaina! It is this that slew Otiolo and Ulurani.”

The one called Iamndaina checked its advance, for whatever its station and strength, I guessed it did not like its chances in a battle with the self-styled Prince of Princes, whose army had forced this meeting and whose chimeric generals waited mere feet away at the threshold to the temple. Ancient law might hold that only the aeta could enter Elu’s temple, but I sensed that if these here attacked the Prophet that ancient law would hold nothing at all.

Iamndaina drew up short and narrowed its ink-spot eyes. Behind it, the other princes stopped, too. I recognized the black-and-cobalt-clad Ugin Attavaisa among them, and Prince Gurima Peledanu from my escort’s recitations early that morning. “This slew Ulurani?” it asked, examining me as a woman might a stain a dog left behind. “This?”

One of the others, a grim figure in a greenish cloak, said, “Ulurani was a great warrior. One of the finest of the old clans. And Otiolo—Otiolo was dunyasu, but Otiolo was a beast.” It, too, looked me over with measuring eyes. “If what you say is true, Dorayaica, you bring a susulataya into our midst.”

“The yukajji must be slain!” Iamndaina exclaimed, baring its fangs, its hand flying to the scimitar on its hip.

Syriani hissed in answer, interposing itself between Iamndaina and myself. “It is one of us, Avarrana!” It did not reach for any weapon—indeed it did not seem to have one. “Stay your hand! It is forbidden that aeta should slay aeta in this place! By Elu’s word is it forbidden.”

Avarrana Iamndaina’s jaws hinged, teeth jutting out past thin lips, its round eyes narrowing.

“Peace, kinsman,” said Ugin Attavaisa, and lay a hand on Iamndaina’s shoulder. “You know the laws. Who breaks them here will not know Truth.”

Prince Iamndaina’s white face darkened. “It cannot be permitted. This . . . beast must be destroyed. It profanes the very air it breathes!”

The one called Attavaisa moved its head in the curious clockwise way that signaled affirmation or assent. A Cielcin nod. “It will be, kinsman. It will be. But in its time! Dorayaica has called an Aetavanni, and if what Dorayaica says is true—if this dunyasu ujin yukajji is truly aeta, then it is dunyasu to kill it now.” Saying this, it laid a clawed hand on Iamndaina’s arm, forestalling any attempt to draw its blade. “It is forbidden. By Elu’s word.”

“Yaiya toh,” said Prince Peledanu in assent.

Attavaisa glanced from Iamndaina to Dorayaica, as if seeking approval from the Prince of Princes. Dorayaica gestured for the cobalt prince to release the bone-clad one, and Attavaisa obeyed.

Seeing this dynamic, Iamndaina sneered, jaws once again jutting out past its lips in that horribly serpentine way. “Ti-nartu gin ba-Elu ne?” it sneered, teeth clacking. “By Elu’s word? By Dorayaica’s, you mean?” It thrust a talon at Syriani. “You are not him, nor any sort of prophet. You and your slaves,” it directed the word slaves, kajadimn, at Attavaisa and Peledanu, “may have the numbers to force this meeting, but no army can make you a second Elu. Nothing can!”

Syriani Dorayaica took this with a serenity that would not have been out of place on the face of our Emperor. Its four slit nostrils flared, the only hint at the unquiet boiling beneath the Pale prince’s icy surface. “Think you it is by the sword I rule?”

“It is by the sword you compelled the blood-clans to this clans-moot!” Iamndaina countered.

“Is it?” Syriani cocked its head, addressing the question not to Iamndaina, but to the others. “Was it my sword that summoned you, Peledanu?”

Prince Gurima Peledanu bared its throat. “You know it was not, Aeta ba-Aetane.”

Ugin Attavaisa said, “It was the Blood, lord!”

“The blood!” Peledanu agreed, and two of the others. “Izhkurrah! Izhkurrah!”

At least, I thought it was blood they were saying. Ikurran was blood. But izhkurrah? It had the sound of that older Cielcin tongue I’d heard from the mouths of Elu and Avarra in my dream, muddier and atonal. What the significance of that older word was I could not guess. Were they saying that Dorayaica was in some way descended from Elu? There had been no reference to uatanyya, to branchings in its titles. Did these others obey out of some deference to heredity? Was Syriani Elu’s direct descendant? Or was it something else?

“The signs could be falsified!” said another of the princes from near the rear.

“To falsify the signs is blasphemy!” Iamndaina agreed.

Syriani spread its hands. “Is that not why we are here? To see Truth?” Hands still spread. “I am Syriani ba-Izhkurrah, Syriani of the Blood.”

Iamndaina’s hand went to its scimitar again, prompting Syriani’s loyalists—Attavaisa and Peledanu chief among them—to draw nearer. “Blasphemy!” the bone-clad prince said.

Rather than respond, Prince Syriani said, “Will you not come up with us, Avarrana Iamndaina, Lord of the Thirty-First Branching? Will you not join us?” With each question it took a step nearer the skeletal lord. “Will you not see Truth?”

Prince Avarrana Iamndaina hunched and bared its fangs, sensing it was cornered. “You blaspheme here? Within Elu’s temple? Within the body of god itself?”

“It is only blasphemy to lie,” Syriani said in answer. I expected it to strike Iamndaina down, to slash its face or break its neck. But Syriani did no such thing. Instead, it laid hands on the other prince’s shoulders and—almost gently—forced Iamndaina to its knees. Knowing it was outnumbered and surrounded, Iamndaina allowed itself to be compelled, its knees bending only slowly. With a single hand, Syriani reached up and seized one of the great primary horns that rose and swept back from the corners above Iamndaina’s eyes. Gripping this, Syriani forced Iamndaina’s head back, baring its throat. For a horrible instant, I expected the greater prince to stoop and tear the throat from its antagonist, but it never did.

Instead, the great prince spat in the face of the lesser one. I recoiled, so perverse and vulgar was the instant, as though it were a scene from some dockside whorehouse and not some holy place. But these were the Cielcin, I reminded myself. They were not men.

Syriani released Iamndaina at once. The lesser prince did not wipe the slime from its face, but kept its throat bared. “Junne,” Syriani said, and pointed at the ground before its feet.

Apparently beaten, Iamndaina pressed its face to the Enari marble floor and permitted Syriani to step upon its face.

“Very good,” the Prince of Princes said, stepping over its erstwhile opponent and acknowledging Peledanu and Attavaisa with a sharp movement of its horned crown. “Enough of that. The others are all inside?”

Attavaisa bowed low, head twisted to offer the side of its neck should Syriani have wished it. “Yes, lord. All are here.”

“All?” Syriani cocked its head. “I was told Oralo and some thrice twelve others refused the call.”

“Oralo has not come, it is true,” Attavaisa said. “Balagarimn. Kutuanu, Loreganwa. Some others. Not thrice twelve. Twice twelve and six, perhaps.”

Syriani Dorayaica continued walking until my chain ran taut, pulling me past the still-kneeling and thoroughly subordinated Iamndaina where it lay upon the stone. “They must be hunted down and killed. They are attainted and must be cleansed.”

“Yaiya toh,” Attavaisa said, swept along in Syriani’s wake.

The great prince ensured that it was the last to mount that narrow stair. The last of its kind, that is. I might have been little more than a dog to it, bound in chains. Syriani held my chains in one hand, and I followed a half-dozen steps behind as we climbed up along the channel of the dead Watcher’s optic nerve to the great domed hall that once had housed the monster’s brain.

My skin crawled, and with each passing step I heard the faint whispering of my vision growing louder, and half-expected to find a rotting Enar scuttling down the steps to meet us, dripping black slime and smoking as its organic components dissolved and ran over its machine parts.

No such beast appeared.

The stair did not ascend in a straight line, but bent slightly, following some crooked imperfection in the leviathan’s bone structure, so that one could not see the top from the bottom until one rounded a slight bend and the stairs ran nearly straight for some two hundred feet to the summit. The whispering grew louder, and with each passing step I expected to hear the black voice of the undead god ringing in my ears.

“Ute tajun ti-saem gi ne?”

“Dein velenamuri mnu darya?”

“Dein tsuarunbe Iamndaina ne?”

The sound of the name Iamndaina brought the whispering into focus. It was not the endless murmur of the undead god I heard at all, but Cielcin muttering, a confluence of voices chattering and rolling over one another.

In the dream, what little light had been in that awful chamber had come from the augmented bodies of the Enar themselves, echoing and rebounding off the deep ridges in the black crystal where the Watcher’s brain had shaped the interior of the alien skull. As below, so here the Cielcin had made their mark, plastering over the huge monoliths on which the Enar had depicted themselves and sanding the stelai smooth. As below, they replaced these images with their delicate, soap-bubble writing, doubtless attesting to Cielcin conquest and history precisely as the Enar had done, albeit in a form more palatable to the afterling race that now claimed Eue and Akterumu for its own.

But the relief carving of Miudanar itself was untouched. Images of the god were not of the Lie, but reflections of Truth, and so had been spared the chisel. It was that image that appeared first as we climbed the stairs, lit hellishly by the red Cielcin lamps. The great serpent coiled across green stone, its thousand arms gathering planets to itself, its thousand hands grasping or crushing them to powder. The Dreamer’s solitary eye presided over that dim and smoky chamber . . .

 . . . and the congress of demons gathered for their rite.

There was no trumpet, no herald to announce our coming. Gone was the splendor of the parade, gone the noise and the raucous, bloody theater of the crowd outside. Attavaisa, Peledanu, and the others—including the slumped and beaten Iamndaina—all stepped hurriedly aside to permit Syriani Dorayaica command of the entrance.

Seventeen hundred Cielcin faces turned to face us and were silent. It was an imperfect silence, one punctuated by the faint jangling of silver jewelry and the rustling of robes. The various aetane of the blood-clans stood gathered in the center of the great chamber in tight clusters, heads having previously been together in discussion. These little knots untied themselves as we entered, sentences cut short. A few bared their throats in proskynesis. Others lowered their horns in threat. But the greatest part of the congregation simply stood and waited, expectant.

“Ba-tanyya-do,” Syriani said. “Kinsmen. Brothers. Lords. Welcome home. Welcome to this . . . holy place. How many generations has it been since so many were gathered here? Since we all were gathered here?” It paused then, allowing the audience time to reflect on the answer. Syriani did not shout. Indeed it spoke barely above a whisper, drawing the listeners to it. “Not since Araxaika ended the Kinslaying—and never have so many been gathered, for never have we been so many.” Once more it paused and let its arms fall to its side, my chain ringing against the marble floor. “Thirteen,” it said. “Twelve and one were we when Elu left us his kingdom. How many are we now?”

Syriani did not answer this question. Its answer was evident, after all, written in the faces of each and every one of the war princes there gathered. “Are we greater than we were in Elu’s day?” This elicited a chorus of murmurs and outraged whispers, but none challenged the question as Iamndaina had in the hall below. “Which of you could stand with Dumann or Zahaka without shame? Which of you could look Umna, Avarra’s own blood, in the eye unblinking?” Letting my chain stretch to its full length, the great prince advanced one measured step at a time into the throng.

“Utannashi!” cried one voice, harsh and unpleasant and rebounding in that stony place. “Deceiver! You believe it is you who can do these things!”

Some unseen dam had bottled the anger and the pride of the clan-chiefs until that moment, and unstoppered by that shout all spilled forth at once. Hissing and spitting filled the air, and some animal part of me tightened with fear, as if the tiny, tree-dwelling beast in me recalled the serpent, our predator, and shivered in its sight.

“You are not Elu!” another voice decried. “You are false!”

“False!” the cry went up. “False!”

My eyes found Iamndaina, who mere minutes before had been so strident an opponent of the Prophet. The bone-clad prince made no sound, but stood with hunched shoulders to one side, the Prophet’s spittle still on its face. How deep, how instantaneous was the Cielcin instinct for subordination. Humiliated, it might be years before that prince recovered its dignity.

Syriani did not give answer to these charges, not with words. Half-turning, the great prince adjusted its grip on my line and pulled. The chains tugged at me, and I stumbled forward, wrong-footed by the sudden violence of the gesture. I fell, crushing my bad shoulder on the way down. Pain white as lightning blotted out my vision, and I felt myself groan and gather my limbs beneath myself.

What a sight I must have been. The great hero—the great villain—smeared with shit and gore, a pathetic bundle of flesh and raw nerves dressed in armor too grand for his station and an alien cloak, his unwashed hair a vile tangle of white and black.

The roil of inhuman voices died down, faded from hysterics to a quiet hissing as of steam vents. Confusion. I gritted my teeth as the white flash of pain began bleeding to dull red. The aetane circled all around me, peering down at me with round, black-eyes.

“Shiabbaa o-Oranganyr ba-Utannash wo!” Dorayaica said. “You call me Utannashi. Me!” It jerked its head in the alien negative. “This. This is Utannashi. This filth killed Ulurani. This killed Otiolo. By the laws of Elu, this yukajji is aeta.”

“Dunyasu!” exclaimed one of the others. “Blasphemy!”

“It is!” Syriani agreed, its black-armored feet clicking into view on the tile beside my head. I made no effort to rise, sensing that to do so would only serve to have me knocked down again. “But it is so—and I ask you: who but Elu’s heir could bring low so great an enemy?”

An aeta armored in bronze shouldered its way to the front of the crowd, its irinyr cloak an obscene, almost child-like shade of pale blue. I recognized Prince Elentani Hasurumn, who raised its voice in challenge to Dorayaica. “Who says this beast is Utannashi?”

“It is Truth!” Syriani replied, its clawed feet scratching the stone inches from my nose. “This is the one called Hadrian Marlowe.”

I was absurdly pleased at the hush that fell at this revelation, this connection of points—of stories like stars in a constellation—in the minds of Dorayaica’s audience. The wave of shock and redoubled interest that moved through the inhuman congregation was almost enough to bring a smile to my face.

They knew me.

“Marlowe?” said Prince Hasurumn. “This . . . is Marlowe?”

In answer, Syriani Dorayaica placed one clawed foot on my shoulder and laid me flat on my back, allowing the various aetane a better look at me. Only then did I begin to rise, but the great prince stomped down on my breastplate, pinning me there.

Hasurumn peered down at me. “This?” it said again. “This bested Ulurani?”

Another Pale face appeared at Hasurumn’s shoulder. “You should not have brought it,” it said. “It is forbidden.”

Syriani’s eyes flicked to Iamndaina, still slouched and silent on the edge of the crowd. “So I have been told.” The implicit threat made, Syriani Dorayaica took its foot from my chest and stepped away. “But by the laws of Elu, it is one of us. It belongs here.” Glassy teeth flashed. “Besides, it amuses me.”

“Amuses you?” said another of the princes, gray-armored and black-robed, its suit etched with runes and augmented with human bones. “If this truly is the Marlowe, it is no pet, Dorayaica. It should be killed at once!” The creature’s brows contracted, a motion accentuated by the bits of man-ivory pinned to the flesh above its eyes.

In answer, Syriani Dorayaica lifted its splayed and taloned foot from my chest and drew back, my leash rattling in its fingers. “It is no threat to you, Onasira. Nor to any of us. I have pulled its fangs.” Moving with spider-like precision, the great prince stamped down on my right wrist, as if to highlight my maimed hand, the hand that could hardly have wielded a sword. The effect of this point was lost somewhat, spoiled by the gauntlet and glove I wore, which hid the absent fingers. “It will never again be a threat to our kind.” As if to underscore this remark, Dorayaica let the chains drop from its hand and backed away.

“It should be sacrificed!” said Hasurumn, stepping nearer.

I did not rise at once, sensing that to do so would be to provoke these others to frenzied reply, and instead rolled onto my belly, the better to get my hands under me. I could not hope to fight back, to defend myself. Not against so many. Not even if I had been whole.

And I knew I would never be whole again.

Dorayaica walked past me, so that its back and braided hair—white as chalk—were on full display. Mad fantasies of strangling the monster with my free chain flowered in my mind. Iamndaina would surely thank me for it, and Hasurumn and Onasira. But they were only fantasies. “All in time,” the great prince agreed. “But we have more pressing concerns, ba-tanyya-do. The yukajjimn are building new fleets. Their Uganatai, their Emperor is on the move. Now is the time for action.”

“And so you waste time gathering us here?” Onasira demanded. “How many cycles have we lost crossing the emptiness to return here? I was raiding the hakurani beyond the core when your oracle came. Nearly five times twelve cycles lost to answer your call! Five twelves, Syriani! How many battles might I have won for my itani, for my people, in all that time?”

“Your people?” Three loping strides were all it took to close the space between Syriani and Onasira, and Syriani took them. “Your people, Onasira?” Inches apart, Syriani stood nearly a foot taller than the lesser prince. “Are we not one people, kinsman? Not all children of Elu? If you were out raiding the hakurani, then you were no good to us at all! What are the hakurani compared to the yukajjimn? Our war is with the yukajjimn! Miudanar’s war is with the yukajjimn! The gods’ war is with the yukajjimn!”

Onasira’s jaw unhinged, teeth folding out as it snarled microns from the great prince’s face. In answer, Syriani raised one clawed, beringed hand so that its talons drifted near the lesser lordling’s huge, black eyes.

Watching this, I pushed myself slowly back to my knees and—standing—gathered my chains to myself, coiled them in my good left hand. I felt my jaw hanging open and closed it. What was Prince Onasira talking about? Hakurani? Beyond the core? Was there another race of xenobites in the galaxy? One great among the stars and not confined to its homeworld like the coloni races of Emesh and Judecca and the rest? Despite the horror of my circumstances, my mind raced at the implications. Humanity had only explored perhaps a third of the galactic volume. So little. I felt in that moment as I thought the ancient Mandari must have felt to learn that Rome lay beyond the deserts of Asia, at the end of the world.

How little we know!

But I had little time to contemplate this revelation.

“You presume to speak for the gods?” Onasira demanded through its snarl, black tongue writhing with obscene threat, snake-like behind those fangs.

Syriani curled its fingers into a fist until it pointed with two claws at Onasira’s eyes. “The gods presumed to speak to me.”

“Again you blaspheme!” shouted one of the others.

Syriani rounded on this other, stalking about the perimeter of the crowded princes like a wolf bounding its territory. “It is not blasphemy to speak Truth, Ajimma!”

“Truth?” the one called Ajimma echoed the word. “Kulan? You speak of Kulan, but what proof have you given us?”

“Did you not see the Blood?” Peledanu asked, using that old word for blood again: izhkurrah, not ikurran.

But Prince Ajimma was unconvinced, and narrowed its huge eyes in the bloody light. “The oracle was not proof. It is deception! Dorayaica means only to win power for himself! He deceives you, Attavaisa! And you, Peledanu! He shows us images! Projections! These are not proof!”

“It is for proof that we have come!” cried another of the princes, and this set up a chorus of voices crying out Datorete! Datorete!

Proof! Proof!

White hands thrust into the air in imprecation and salute. Prince Ajimma turned its head, surveying the congregation with a light like satisfaction in its smooth face, nodding in the unbalanced way of its kind. Looking on, I remembered why the name of Ajimma should sound familiar to me. It was one of the princes who had absconded with a portion of Utaiharo’s clan when Aranata Otiolo had killed its former master. Syriani had mentioned its name when discussing Prince Aranata’s blasphemous murder. I studied Ajimma’s face. We were relatives, in a sense, cousins in a lineage of conquest. “You may make claims all you wish, Syriani. You may present this susulatayu of yours as a gift. What matter these things if they are lies?”

“What do they matter?” Syriani asked. “Tell me, Ajimma. Tell me, all of you: What have you mattered? What have you achieved?” It thrust a hand back toward its previous quarry. “Onasira here has raided the hakurani. The hakurani! The rest of you have pillaged the yukajjimn. Burned worlds, it is so! Burned hundreds of worlds! But to what purpose? To what end? Are we not Cielcin? Are we not a chosen people? Is it not in our hands to unmake the Lie? To tear down this iugannan and lead our people to the next world?” It spat upon the stone floor in the midst of the congregation, its fangs on full display as its sneered, voice high and cold as the peaks of distant mountains. “And you talk of raiding!”

Not one to be so easily cowed, Onasira’s nostrils flared. “Did not Elu himself order the Thirteen to pillage the lesser worlds and bring their spoils here? To Akterumu? Did not Dumann burn the cities of the Azh-Hakkai? Were not the Enar themselves conquerors who bent the stars to kneel?”

“And the Enar are dead!” Syriani roared at Onasira. “They were not righteous! And Miudanar destroyed them!”

“Veih,” a quiet voice said. “No. They took their own lives. Drank poison.”

Seventeen hundred pairs of black eyes moved to me, and it was only after three seconds of silence—real silence—that I realized it was I who had spoken.

“Dein marereu ne?” Syriani asked, turning to face me. What did you say?

I stood alone nearest the mouth of the stairs. The congregation—the Aetavanni—stretched about me in a broad arc, rank upon rank of alien faces running backward toward the smoothed-over Enari pillars. Above them, the icon of Miudanar looked down with its single, hollow eye. All eyes were on me, all ears bent to my word.

“I saw them,” I said simply, speaking so my inhuman audience would understand. “The Enar were not destroyed by an act of god. They failed to destroy our universe, so they destroyed themselves.”

One might have heard the dropping of a pin on the Enari marble.

“You . . . saw them?” Syriani asked, speaking for the first time since we’d arrived at the temple in my own language.

Refusing to follow its example, I pointed at the floor of the temple between us and said—still in the Cielcin language to be sure the others understood me—“Here.” The great prince shifted, arms slack at its sides, fingers reaching nearly to its knees. “They died right here . . . and all across their empire. They surrendered. They could not achieve what their gods demanded of them, and so they killed themselves.” I kept my eyes locked on the xenobite who called itself the Prophet. “You’ll die, too. Before the end. You’ll fail.”

Before Syriani Dorayaica could respond, strong hands seized me by the hair and tugged my head back with such force that I thought my scalp might tear. Another hand snaked round, a white knife flashed at my throat, and I felt my veins constrict, chest tightening as my body forced adrenaline into every fiber, eyes and nostrils stretched wide. I seized that hand with both my own—dropping my chain in the process.

“Nieton kushanar!” came the slithering, reptilian voice above my ear. It speaks poison.

Hard fingers released my hair and snaked round, clutching me by the forehead to hold back my chin. Earth and Emperor! The strength in those inhuman fingers. Even with both hands on the creature’s gauntleted arm, it was all I could do to hold that knife at bay. I could feel the edge cold against my skin, clenched my teeth.

“Release it, Hasurumn!” Attavaisa snarled, leaping toward me. “It is not for you!”

“Its lying tongue has profaned this holy place!” the voice behind me hissed. Hot breath wafted over me, moist and stinking of decay. “It should never have been allowed to pass the god’s eye!”

I felt a burning sensation just above my suit collar and winced as I felt a thin dribble of blood spill out and run down my neck. I gasped, swore in my native tongue. I could feel my muscles giving way, their malnourished fibers cramping and crying out with strain.

“Put it down!” Attavaisa hissed again, and its cry was taken up by several of the others.

Did I dare attack the prince holding me? Stamp its foot or hurl my weight upon it? I could not strike it in the face with my head as I might a human opponent, so much taller than me it was . . .

I did not get a chance to decide.

A huge weight slammed into Prince Hasurumn and myself from the left, and we both went skidding wildly across the greenish marble. A blow caught me in the stomach and sent me sliding across the floor while Hasurumn wrestled with the prince who had tackled us to the ground. I saw a blur of black mingled with Hasurumn’s pale blue, and recognized one of the princes who had come downstairs to help check Iamndaina. One of Syriani’s toadies.

Chains rattled, and before I could stand I found myself being dragged clear of the fighting aetamn. Clawed hands seized me, touched the blood on my neck. “I’m fine!” I nearly shouted, forgetting to use the xenobite tongue. “Eka udata! Eka udata!”

“Ikurra!” my savior exclaimed. Turning my head, I saw Prince Ugin Attavaisa towering behind me, its pale hand outstretched, my red blood black in the low light of the hall. “Blood has been spilled!”

The whole hall erupted into a furor of inhuman voices. Shouts and hurled insults flew like arrows from prince to prince, words rebounding off the whorled and ridged surface of the dome above.

“Ikurra!”

“Ikurra pa ba-ikurra!” one voice rang out, louder than the rest.

Attavaisa raised its voice in agreement. “Ikurra pa ba-ikurra!” it said. “Blood for blood!”

On the floor, the other aeta had successfully wrested away Hasurumn’s dagger and threw it skittering across the floor, where it vanished—snatched up by one of the other princes. Peledanu had joined it in restraining Hasurumn, and together they held my would-be assassin down.

“You defend yukajjimn now, Dorayaica?” Hasurumn demanded, voice cracking as it strained against its oppressors.

“Svassa!” Peledanu hissed, holding Hasurumn by the horns whilst the other grappled with it. Surrender!

Syriani Dorayaica towered above this chaos, so still it might have been a piece of Enar sculpture. The peculiarities of my statement and its heresy momentarily forgotten, it studied Hasurumn, transparent membranes flicking vertically across its black and glassy eyes.

“Iugah!” Hasurumn shrieked. “You are false, Dorayaica. You are Utannash himself!”

The room again was nearly silent as the Prince of Princes advanced on Hasurumn, head cocked to the left in a subtle negative. “You have drawn blood in Elu’s Temple, Elentani Hasurumn,” it said, half-turned to regard Attavaisa’s still-outstretched hand. In writing this, I realize that my blood doubtless appeared black to the Cielcin as well—that it appeared black in any condition, under any circumstance, any light—black as their own. “You have done violence against one of your tanyya, against an aeta ba-itanimn. Against a prince of the clans.” It was standing above Hasurumn by then, its horned crown cutting a shadow across the lesser prince’s face.

As it had spat on Iamndaina, it spat on Hasurumn. “Your line is ended. Your clan attainted. Does any object?”

Not a single prince in the chamber raised its voice, not Ajimma or Onasira, nor any of the others who had opposed Dorayaica. Whatever their feelings toward the great prince, all were of a party with regard to this single point of tradition.

When no voice spoke in Hasurumn’s defense, Hasurumn spoke for itself. “I did not harm an aeta of the clans! You defend vermin, Dorayaica! One of the yukajjimn!”

Syriani turned its back. “Attavaisa, Peledanu. Take who you need and escort Prince Hasurumn outside. Tell them it has profaned the god’s holy corpse and blasphemed against the will of Elu.”

“Yaiya toh!” Prince Attavaisa said, stepping out from behind me and leaving me alone, again, near to the stair. It approached Syriani and bowed, twisting its head as it did so to expose its throat to its master.

To its Imperial master, I realized. Syriani had little control over most of the seventeen hundred, but there were some—a radical minority, I guessed no more than a hundred of those gathered beneath the dome of Miudanar’s skull—who obeyed the prince utterly. The rest had come for fear of its armies, or out of curiosity.

Hasurumn hissed as Peledanu and four others wrestled it to its feet. Attavaisa made a sign to several others, and to my astonishment some five or six dozen of the princes stepped forward to escort Hasurumn from the chamber.

“So many?” I could not help but mumble, though none within earshot heard or understood. I reached down, scrambled to pull my chain out of the way as the mob advanced and hoisted Prince Elentani Hasurumn into the air, clawed fingers piercing the flesh of arms and legs as they carried it aloft and passed down the stairs and the channel of the optic nerve, feet clicking and echoing on the cold, dead stone.

Watching them go, I could not help but feel the prince’s escort excessive. Six others would have been amply sufficient to remove the prince, but sixty? I touched my throat. The fingers came away wet.

“Only a scratch.”

Looking on, I could not shake the feeling that some sort of quorum had been reached, or else that some manner of ritual begun. Syriani was not looking at me—had forgotten about my interjection, had forgotten about me entirely. It stood as a man carrying some great weight. Not a physical weight, but a weight of time, of moment. It seemed to me then like nothing less than Anubis holding the all of a man in its hands.

It was the future it held, of itself, of its empire, of its species.

What was I next to that? Only what it had said: an amusement.

The prince turned to what remained of the congregation. “You asked for signs,” it said, bowing its head, its shoulder back and squared. “For proof. I have brought you all the spoils of an empire! The slaves I offered your people this day are a but a foretaste of what is to come! I have burned their armies; attacked their foundries, their fortresses; crippled their fleets. They are weak, defensive. All this I have done in the name of Truth! In the name of the gods! In the names of Miudanar and Iaqaram. Of Pthamaru and Shamazha, of Usathlam and Shetebo and Nazhtenah and all those who dwell beneath the stars, dead and deathless!” The Prophet’s hands vanished beneath its dark cloak. “And I have bested our greatest enemy! The Champion of Utannash himself! Are these not proof enough of the gods’ favor?”

The princes muttered to one another, horned heads moving back and forth in consultation like a forest of bare trees swaying in an unfelt wind.

“Veih!” one voice dared to venture, and the sound of it was like a spark kindling the conflagration, and before long the majority of those remaining voices were shouting along with that first. “Veih! Veih! Veih!”

No. No. No.

I looked on, searching for a face not shouting the Prophet down. I found none, and felt a sudden sharp sense of foreboding. Had all the princes who supported Syriani gone to slaughter Hasurumn? I took a step nearer the great prince, eyes narrowing. I was no idle amusement. I had been brought deliberately, brought to provoke precisely the response I had. Had it not been from Hasurumn, it would have been from another. A more prudent, patient Iamndaina, or Onasira or Ajimma or any of the others.

Syriani had deployed me like a chess piece, like bait.

“Show us the Blood!” exclaimed one of the others, using the old word again.

Taroretta Izhkurrah!

The Prince of Princes rounded on the speaker, and it was only as they froze in place before it that I realized the right flank of the princes had been advancing on Syriani inch by careful inch. A sudden thrill of terror for it and for myself filled me. We were horribly outnumbered, and only ceremony and religious law kept that crowd of hundreds at bay. I sensed they would gladly have killed Syriani and myself and restored balance and normalcy to their lives, sensed too that it was only Elu’s ancient commands that held them back. That, curiosity, and holy fear.

Seeing this motion, Syriani reached into its belt and drew forth a short, crooked blade. Milk-white it was and hooked as one of the Cielcin’s own claws. Syriani held it in reverse grip, its first finger threaded through a loop in the pommel. It was a pitiful small thing compared to the advancing horde, that blade shorter than a hand’s span.

Syriani raised the knife for all to see, standing with left arm thrown wide, the right clutching the knife above its head. “Behold me, kinsmen!” it said, voice high and cold enough to scratch the dome above us all.

What happened next I have never forgotten.

It closed the fingers of its left hand over the knife above its head and pulled, slashing the palm and fingers just as Irshan’s blade had cut my hand in the Grand Colosseum of the Eternal City. The great prince did not wince. It offered no expression or made any sign it felt pain. It only opened its hand and showed the blood on it to the congregation.

Not black it was, but silver.

Just as it had been in my dream.

My mind went blank then, silent with pure horror as I recalled the monstrous fingers that had pried their way from the Prophet’s severed neck. “Do you believe me now?” it asked, raking fathomless eyes across its subject-brethren.

No one spoke, but stood in frozen apprehension of this sign.

“The Blood of Elu flows in my veins anew,” Syriani said, and clenched its fist until the blood welled like quicksilver between its fingers.

Ajimma stepped forward and fell to its knees. “Dorayaica . . .” it moaned, pressing its face to the stone at the great prince’s feet.

Syriani stepped forward and placed its foot on Ajimma’s head. “I am not Dorayaica,” it said. “Dorayaica is dead. I am Shiomu. Prophet. And Elusha.” It lifted its clawed foot so that the pointed heel aimed down and stamped on Ajimma’s skull in the soft place behind the horned crest. Gore spattering its black-armored boot and the hem of its cloak, Dorayaica glowered at the others. “King.”

“It is forbidden!” one of the others objected, voice breaking. “You killed Ajimma! You have done . . . violence here.”

“It is forbidden that aeta should slay aeta,” came a shout from one of the others.

“I told you, Vanahita,” the creature once called Syriani Dorayaica said. “I am not aeta.” It shook Ajimma’s brains from its foot as it answered and drew back a step. “And neither are you.”

As if on cue, blood began to run from Prince Vanahita’s nostrils. Four black lines that broke over its mouth. The princes all began to cough and choke. One fell to its knees, gasping like a stranded fish. Another toppled like a tower shorn of its foundation. Still more seemed to understand what was happening, and began moving at once, some stumbling, others running for the exit. Some among them stopped and retched, spilling gray bile on the ancient stones.

“Kurshanan!” one exclaimed, lurching toward Syriani. “You’ve poisoned us!”

Syriani jerked its head in the negative. “It is the will of the gods. You had your chance. You chose the Lie.”

The staggering prince raised a clawed finger. “You . . . arranged this.”

Gas. The word leaped into my head, and I stumbled backward for the door and the stairs. Dorayaica had administered some species of nerve agent, doubtless one designed by Urbaine or Severine or another of its pet magi. Reaching up, I fumbled with the controls to don my helmet. If I could just close my helmet, I might survive. An indicator on the suit’s wrist-terminal blinked red. My hair! Suit sensors had detected my hair was in the way and would not deploy the helmet. Cursing, fearing that at any moment my own gorge would rise and my blood with it, I reached the top of the stair, stumbled against the pillar nearest the opening, its surface chipped smooth, defaced by some antique Cielcin chisel. Numb fingers wrestled with the elastic coif tucked into the collar of the suit, nearly dislodged the conduction patch behind my right ear.

No good.

I couldn’t do it. Not with my wrists bound.

I coughed, and imagined I felt a thin pain in my chest. I almost fell onto the first step, threw out hands to steady myself against the wall. Before I could make it another step down, my chains went taut and pulled me backward. My head struck stone, and looking back with burning eyes I saw Syriani standing amid the carnage like a pillar itself, my chains secure in one hand.

“You have nothing to fear,” it said, speaking my language. “The poison kills only Cielcin.”

What are you? I wanted to ask, but the words caught in my throat. About me, a scant few of the clan-princes still moved, crawling toward where I lay upon the topmost stair. Vision gray and blurring, I saw their grasping hands, coughed as whatever poison MINOS had engineered filled my lungs. It might not be lethal, but it was not without pain.

White hands reached toward me, pawing to get past me. A shadow blocked one of the red Cielcin lamps, and looking up—eyes misty and lungs choking for air—I saw Syriani flip the nearest prince on its back and pin it there, almost gently. The Prophet held its dying kinsman’s gaze until it ceased to move. There was no feeling in the Pale King’s face. No remorse, no delight. Dorayaica’s face was empty, as expressionless as a funeral mask.

Another fit of coughing seized me, and I rolled to my stomach, pushed myself to hands and knees and spat upon the stone.

“I can’t . . . can’t breathe,” I managed to say, chest heaving.

“Quiet,” Syriani ordered. “Stop your groveling. This is not the way you die.”