The man seemed cut from a different place, one with a brighter sun, as though he stood both here amid the ruin that was Sakarpus and upon a mountain summit at the edge of dawn. He was tall, a full hand over Sorweel’s father, draped in a priest’s gold-panelled vestments, armoured in mail so fine it seemed silk—nimil, some absent part of Sorweel realized, Nonman steel. His hair fell in sodden ringlets about his long, full-lipped face. His flaxen beard was plaited and squared in the manner of the Southron Kings pictured on the most ancient of the Long Hall’s reliefs. The severed heads of two demons, their skin blotched and aglow, hung from his girdle, making fishmouths about black-nail teeth.

Scabs of salt crusted his bare sword-hand.

“I am,” the vision said, “Anasûrimbor Kellhus.”

It started with the shaking, the hot flush of urine. Then his bones became serpents, and Sorweel collapsed to the floor. On his belly … On his belly! He spat at the blood greasing his chin.

Fuh-Fuh-Father!

“Come,” the man said, crouching to place a hand on his shoulder. “Come. Get up. Remember yourself …”

Remember?

“You are a King, are you not?”

Sorweel could only stare in horror and wonder.

“I-I d-d-don’t understand …”

A friendly scowl, followed by a gentle laugh. “I’m rarely what my enemies expect, I know.” Somehow, he was already helping him to his feet.

“Buh-buh-but …”

“All this, Sorweel, is a tragic mistake. You must believe that.”

“Mistake?”

“I’m no conqueror.” He paused as though to frown at the very notion. “As mad as it sounds, I really have come to save Mankind.”

“Lies,” the Prince murmured through his confusion. “Liar!”

The Aspect-Emperor nodded, closed his eyes in the manner of a longsuffering parent. His sigh was both honest and plain. “Mourn,” he said. “Grieve as all Men must. But take heart in the fact of your forgiveness.”

Sorweel gazed into the summer-blue eyes. What was happening?

“Forgiven? Who are you to forgive?”

The scowl of an innocent twice wronged.

“You misunderstand.”

“Misunderstand what?” Sorweel spat. “That you think yourse—!”

“Your father loved you!” the man interrupted, his voice thick with a nigh irresistible paternal reprimand. “And that love, Sorwa, is forgiveness … His forgiveness, not mine.”

The young King of Sakarpus stood dumbstruck, staring with a face as slack as rainwater. Then perfumed sleeves enclosed him, and he wept in the burning arms of his enemy, for his city, for his father, for a world that could wring redemption out of betrayal.

Years. Months. Days. For so long the Aspect-Emperor had been an uneasy rumour to the South, a name as heaped in atrocity as it was miracle …

No more.

CHAPTER TWO - Hûnoreal

CHAPTER TWO

Hûnoreal

We burn like over-fat candles, our centres gouged, our edges curling in, our wick forever outrunning our wax. We resemble what we are: Men who never sleep.

—ANONYMOUS MANDATE SCHOOLMAN, THE HEIROMANTIC PRIMER