And now that boy sat on the Edur throne.
He just had to die to get there.
The sudden manifestation of glory still fed him, enough to shape his words and thoughts and feed his imperial comportment, as if the royal ‘we’ was something to which he had been born. But this was at the barest edge of control. An imperfect facade, bolstered by elaborately constructed speech patterns, a kind of awkward articulation that suited Rhulad’s childlike notions of how an emperor should speak. These were games of persuasion, as much to himself as to his audience.
But, Udinaas was certain, other thoughts remained in Rhulad’s mind, gnawing at the roots and crawling like pallid worms through his necrotic soul. For all the glittering gold, the flesh beneath was twisted and scarred. To fashion the facade, all that lay beneath it had been malformed.
The slave registered all this in the span of Rhulad’s momentary spasm, and was unmoved. His gaze drifted to Mayen, but she gave nothing away, not even an awareness of her husband’s sudden extremity.
Across Hannan Mosag’s face, however, Udinaas saw a flash of fear, quickly buried beneath a bland regard.
A moment’s consideration and Udinaas thought he understood that reaction. Hannan Mosag needed his emperor to be sane and in control. Even power unveiled could not have forced him to kneel before a madman. Probably, the once-Warlock King also comprehended that a struggle was under way within Rhulad, and had resolved to give what aid he could to the emperor’s rational side.
And should the battle be lost, should Rhulad descend completely into insanity, what would Hannan Mosag do then?
The Letherii slave’s eyes shifted to the sword the emperor held like a sceptre in his right hand, the point anchored on the dais near the throne’s ornate foot. The answer hides in that sword, and Hannan Mosag knows far more about that weapon – and its maker – than he has revealed .
Then again, I do as well . Wither, the shadow wraith that had adopted Udinaas, had whispered some truths. The sword’s power had given Rhulad command of the wraiths. The Tiste Andii spirits .
Wither had somehow avoided the summons, announcing its victory with a melodramatic chuckle rolling through the slave’s head, and the wraith’s presence now danced with exaggerated glee in the Letherii’s mind. Witness to all through his eyes.
‘Emperor,’ Hannan Mosag said as soon as Rhulad had visibly regained himself, ‘the warlocks among the Arapay-’
‘Yes. They are not to resist. They are to give welcome.’