The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (26 page)

Read The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Fantasy

BOOK: The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)
3.65Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The God had culled the Men of the Tusk. Over battlefield and desert, through famine and pestilence, He had sifted them like sand through His fingers. Only the strongest or the most fortunate survived. The Ainoni had a saying: breaking
enemies,
not bread, made brothers. But
being broken,
Achamian realized, was more potent still. Something new had arisen from the forge of their collective suffering, something hard and something sharp. Something Kellhus had simply lifted from the anvil.
They’re his,
Achamian would often think, watching their grim ranks file across ridge and hillside.
All of them
. So much so that if Kellhus were to die …
With rare exceptions, Achamian spent every moment either directly attached to Kellhus in the Sacral Retinue or in his vicinity within the canvas warrens of the Umbilica, as the Inrithi had started calling their Prophet’s stolen pavilion. Until they learned something specific to the contrary, they could only assume that the Consult would eventually hazard some kind of assassination attempt. Kellhus’s ascendancy threatened far more than it had already exacted.
With the Holy War afield, the opportunities to interrogate the two captive skin-spies became sporadic at best. The abominations travelled under Spires guard with the baggage, each in a covered wain, trussed upright in a network of hanging iron shackles. Achamian now participated in all the interrogations, plying the creatures with those few Gnostic Cants of Compulsion he knew—to no avail. The various torments Kellhus devised were likewise ineffective, though for hours afterward Achamian could scarce blink without glimpsing these sessions. The things convulsing in the fecal darkness, screaming and squealing, their voices fractured into bestial choruses. Then, through throats of gravel and mud, laughing.
“Chigraaaaa … Woe comes, Chigraaaaa …”
Achamian couldn’t decide what unnerved him more: their many-fingered faces clenching and unclenching, or the hallowed calm with which Kellhus regarded them. Never, not even in his Dreams of the First Apocalypse, had he witnessed such extremes of good and evil. Never had he felt more certain.
Achamian also attended Kellhus’s every audience with the Scarlet Spires—for the predictable reasons. They struck him as strange, bumbling affairs. Eleäzaras, it was obvious, had taken to drink, which had the effect of rendering his manner stiff and awkward—a startling contrast to the loquacious contempt that had so characterized him at Momemn. Gone were the despotic self-assurance, the measuring looks, the demonstrations of jnanic expertise. Now he seemed little more than a juvenile come to realize the fatal enormity of his boasts. At long last the Holy War marched on Shimeh, the stronghold of the Cishaurim. There would be no more begging out of battle. Soon the Scarlet Spires would close with their mortal foe, and their Grandmaster, Hanamanu Eleäzaras, was terrified … of making mistakes, of burning in Cishaurim fire, of destroying his storied School.
Against all reason, Achamian actually pitied the man, the way those of hale constitution might pity those of weak in times of sickness. There was no accounting for it. The temper of every man in the Holy War had been tested. Some survived stronger. Some survived broken. Some survived bent. And all of them knew who was who, and which was which.
At no time did the chanv addict, Iyokus, attend any of these meetings, nor was he mentioned—small mercies for which Achamian was thankful. As much as he hated the man, as much as he had wanted to kill him that night in the Apple Garden, he could do no more than exact a fraction of what he was owed. When the Hundred Pillars had taken the knife to his red-irised eyes, Iyokus had suddenly seemed a hapless stranger … an
innocent
. The past became smoke, and retribution an act of abominable conceit. Who was he to pass final judgement? Of all the acts committed by men, only murder was absolute.
Had it not been for Xinemus, Achamian doubted he would have done anything at all.
The practical concerns of the march monopolized Kellhus’s days. A continuous train of Inrithi caste-nobles conferred with him, bearing intelligence of the lands ahead, disputes that required resolution, and, more and more once the Holy War crossed the frontier into Xerash, counsel on matters of war.
Achamian typically found himself floating in and out of the various parties that formed about Kellhus. Sometimes, out of curiosity, he would pay heed to the issues discussed. Since he often remained while others arrived and departed, he was able to witness, time and again, the prodigious depths of Kellhus’s intellect. He would listen to him recite, word for word, messages and admonitions that had been delivered days previously. There was not a man whose name he failed to recollect, not a detail that he missed, even when it came to mundane matters of supply. Achamian lost count of the times he turned to others—particularly Kellhus’s Seneschal-Secretary, Gayamakri—in disbelief. They would grin and shake their heads, their brows pinned high in joy and awe. Their astonishment became their confirmation. “What have we done,” the man once said to him, “to deserve such wonder?”
Aside from discussions involving Great Names, Achamian soon lost interest in these small dramas. His thoughts would wander much as they had before, when he’d marched with the livestock and baggage. The arriving caste-nobles would still acknowledge him, but he would quickly fade into the fluid backdrop that constituted the Sacral Retinue.
In spite of his lack of interest, the absurd gravity of his charge was not lost upon Achamian. Sometimes, during moments of boredom, an odd sense of detachment would overcome him as he watched Kellhus. The surreal glamour would fall away and the Warrior-Prophet would seem as frail as the warlike men about him—and far more lonely. Achamian would go rigid with terror, understanding that Kellhus, no matter how godlike he seemed, was in fact
mortal
. He was a man. Was this not the lesson of the Circumfixion? And if something were to happen, nothing would matter, not even his love for Esmenet.
A strange zeal would creep through his limbs then, one utterly unlike the nightmare-born fervour of Mandate Schoolmen. A fanaticism of
person
.
To be devoted to a cause alone was to possess momentum without direction or destination. For so long,
wandering
had been his twilight mission, beaten forward by his dreams, leading his mule down road and track, and never, not once,
arriving
. But with Kellhus all this had changed. This was what he could not explain to Nautzera: that Kellhus was the
incarnation
of the abstractions that gave their School purpose. In this one man lay the future of all mankind. He was their only bulwark against the End of Ends.
The No-God.
Several times now, Achamian thought he had glimpsed golden haloes about Kellhus’s hands. He found himself envying those, such as Proyas, who claimed to see them all the time. And he realized that he would gladly die for Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He would begrudge no sacrifice, despite his unrequited hate.
To his dismay, however, Achamian found it increasingly difficult to sustain these feelings across the seasons of the day. His thoughts began wandering, so much so that he sometimes doubted his ability to protect Kellhus should the Consult attack. He would shake his head, eye the distances with a hawkish scowl. He would try to scrutinize every petitioner who approached Kellhus.
As always, Esmenet remained his greatest distraction.
Some days she rode, and though uncertain at first, she’d swiftly learned both beast and saddle. Even attached to Kellhus’s immediate entourage at the fore of the Sacral Retinue, Achamian saw her regularly. Sometimes he would wax melancholy, silent while Kellhus and his caste-noble commanders droned in the background. Sometimes he would simply wonder—at the mere sight of her, at her acts of mannish boldness, at the way she wielded unquestioned authority over those in her train. Everything about her would seem brisk and decisive. She would seem a stranger.
Usually, however, Esmenet travelled in what others began to call the Black Palanquin, a luxurious litter borne on the backs of some sixteen Kianene slaves. A scribe would ride with her, and throughout the day Achamian saw men on horseback come to confer with her on inscrutable matters. He saw her physically only when Kellhus rode alongside the Palanquin, bearing questions or instructions. Through intervening limbs and torsos, he would glimpse her painted lips beneath the curve of bundled sheers, or her forearm across a raised knee, her fingers hanging from a relaxed wrist. The urge to crane his neck, or even to call out her name, often struck him with the force of pain. He almost never saw her eyes.
Most of their encounters occurred after the march, in the moat of activity that encircled the Umbilica. As these meetings were public, she typically afforded him little more than a courteous nod. Achamian had thought her cruel at first, suspecting that she, like so many, nursed grudges to better cultivate hate. What better way to eradicate the remains of their love? But after a time he realized she behaved this way for
his
sake as much as for hers. Everyone knew they’d been lovers before Kellhus had taken her. Though no one dared mention it, he saw it in their looks from time to time—especially with Proyas. A sudden consciousness of another’s shame. A sudden pity.
Any warmth she showed him would simply remind others of his humiliation. His disgrace as a cuckold.
Five days out of Caraskand, after the slaves had hoisted and furnished the great pavilion, Achamian withdrew to his chambers so he might change into his evening attire, and
there she was,
standing in the canvas gloom, waiting for him, dressed in a panelled robe of gold and black, her hair bound in a Girgashi headdress. “Achamian,” she said, not “Akka.”
He struggled with his composure, beat down the desire to sweep her into his arms.
To his dismay, she spoke only on matters regarding the security of Kellhus’s person. He half expected her to cite the articles of his service, as though she were an empress and he a foreign counsel on indenture. Achamian found himself playing along, answering her questions concisely, astonished at the absurdity of their new circumstance, impressed by the rigour and insight of her interrogation.
And proud … so very proud of her.
You’ve always been my better.
Where others were simply walls to him, Esmenet was an ancient city, a maze of little streets and squares, where once he had made his home. He knew her hospices and her barracks, her towers and her cisterns. No matter where he wandered, he always knew that this direction led here and that direction there. He was never lost, though outside her gates all the world might confound him.
He knew the habit of lovers, their inclination to make scripture out of self-deception. There was little difference, he had often thought, between the devotional verse of Protathis and the graffiti that marred the bath-house walls. Love was never so simple as the marks with which it was written. Why else would the terror of loss come upon lovers so often? Why else would so many insist on calling love pure or simple?
What he and Esmenet had shared had been inexplicable, as was what she shared with Kellhus now. Achamian would often overlook the innumerable horrors she had endured. The death of her daughter, Mimara. The hungry seasons. The anger in all the faces grimacing over her. The bruises. The danger. With the exception of Mimara, she would speak of these things with dismissive humour—something that Achamian, for his part, had encouraged. How could he bear her burdens when he could scarce bear his own? The honesty would come later, in the way she squeezed his fingers, or in the momentary terror that flickered through her gaze.
He knew this, and yet he said nothing. He shrank from the work of understanding. He put his trust in the inexplicable.
I failed her,
he realized.
Small wonder she’d failed him in turn. Small wonder she had … succumbed to Kellhus.
Kellhus … These were the most selfish—and therefore the most painful—thoughts.
Esmenet had loved joking about cocks. She marvelled at the way men fussed over them, cursing, congratulating, beseeching, coaxing, commanding, even threatening them. Once she told Achamian about a deranged priest who had actually held a knife to his member, hissing, “You must listen!” After that, she said, she understood that men, far more than women, were other to themselves. He had asked her about the temple prostitutes of Gierra, who believed that despite the hundreds of men who used them, they coupled with only
one,
Hotos, the Priapic God. She laughed, saying, “No deity could be so inconsistent.”
Achamian had been horrified.
Women were windows through which men could peer into other men. They were the unguarded gate, the point of contact for deeper, more defenceless selves. And there had been times, Achamian could now admit, when he feared the raucous crowd that scrutinized him through her almost guileless eyes. All that had consoled him was the fact that he was the
last
to bed her, would always be the last.
And now she was with
Kellhus
.
Why was this thought so unbearable? Why did it cramp his heart so?
Some nights he would lie awake and remind himself, over and over, of just
who
it was that Esmenet had chosen. Kellhus was the
Warrior-Prophet
. Before long he would demand sacrifices of all men. He would demand lives, not just lovers. And if he took, then he gave as well—such gifts! Achamian had lost Esmenet, but he had
gained his soul
. Had he not?

Other books

Black Stallion and Satan by Walter Farley
Avalanche of Daisies by Beryl Kingston
It Was a Very Bad Year by Robert J. Randisi
Destiny's Path by Frewin Jones
Ride to Redemption by D. J. Wilson