The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (29 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

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BOOK: The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)
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He began by teaching him Gilcûnya, the arcane tongue of the Nonmen Quya and the language of all the Gnostic Cants. This took less than two weeks.
To say that Achamian was astonished or even appalled would be to name a confluence of passions that could not be named. He himself had required three years to master the grammar, let alone the vocabulary, of that exotic and alien tongue.
By the time the Holy War marched from the Enathpanean hills into Xerash, Achamian started discussing the philosophical underpinnings of Gnostic semantics—what were called the Aeturi Sohonca, or the Sohonc Theses. There was no bypassing the metaphysics of the Gnosis, though they were as incomplete and inconclusive as any philosophy. Without some understanding of them, the Cants were little more than soul-numbing recitations. Whether Gnostic or Anagogic, sorcery depended on
meanings,
and meanings depended on systematic comprehension.
“Think,” Achamian explained, “of how the same words can mean different things to different people, or even different things to the same people in different circumstances.”
He racked his memory for an example, but all he could recall was the one his own teacher, Simas, had used so many years ago. “When a man says ‵love,′ for instance, the word means entirely different things depending not only on who listens—be it his son, his whore, his wife, the God—but on who he is as well. The ‵love′ spoken by a heartbroken priest shares little with the ‘love’ spoken by an illiterate adolescent. The former is tempered by loss, learning, and a lifetime of experience, while the latter knows only lust and ardour.”
He could not help but wonder in passing what “love” had come to mean for him? As always, he dispelled such thoughts—thoughts of
her
—by throwing himself into his discourse.
“Preserving and expressing the pure modalities of meaning,” he continued, “this is the heart of all sorcery, Kellhus. With each word, you must strike the perfect semantic pitch, the note that will drown out the chorus of reality.”
Kellhus held him with his unwavering gaze, as poised and motionless as a Nilnameshi idol. “Which is why,” he said, “you use an ancient Nonman tongue as your lingua arcana.”
Achamian nodded, no longer surprised by his student’s preternatural insight. “Vulgar languages, especially when native, stand too close to the press of life. Their meanings are too easily warped by our insights and experiences. The sheer otherness of Gilcûnya serves to insulate the semantics of sorcery from the inconstancies of our lives. The Anagogic Schools”—he tried to smooth the contempt from his tone—“use High Kunna, a debased form of Gilcûnya, for the same reason.”
“To speak as the Gods do,” Kellhus said. “Far from the concerns of Men.”
Following a fleet survey of the Theses, Achamian moved on to the Persemiota, the meaning-fixing meditative techniques that Mandate Schoolmen, thanks to the Seswathan homunculus within them, largely ignored. Then he delved into the technical depths of the Semansis Dualis, the very doorstep of what had been, until the coming of the man who sat before him, a final precursor to damnation.
He explained the all-important relation between the two halves of every Cant: the inutterals, which always remained unspoken, and the utterals, which always were spoken. Since any single meaning could be skewed by the vagaries of circumstance, Cants required a
second,
simultaneous meaning, which, though as vulnerable to distortion as the first, braced it nonetheless, even as it too was braced. As Outhrata, the great Kûniüric metaphysician, had put it, language required two wings to fly.
“So the inutterals serve to fix the utterals,” Kellhus said, “the way the words of one man might secure the words of another.”
“Precisely,” Achamian replied. “One must think and say two different things at once. This is the greatest challenge—even more so than the mnemonics. The thing that requires the most practice to master.”
Kellhus nodded, utterly unconcerned. “And this is why the Anagogic Schools have never been able to steal the Gnosis. Why simply reciting what they hear is useless.”
“There’s the metaphysics to consider as well. But, yes, in all sorcery the inutterals are key.”
Kellhus nodded. “Has anyone experimented with further inutteral strings?”
Achamian swallowed. “What do you mean?”
By some coincidence two of the hanging lanterns guttered at the same time, drawing Achamian’s eyes upward. They instantly resumed their soundless illumination.
“Has anyone devised Cants consisting of
two
inutteral strings?”
The “Third Phrase” was a thing of myth in Gnostic sorcery, a story handed down to Men during the Nonman Tutelage: the legend of Su’juroit, the great Cûnuroi Witch-King. But for some reason, Achamian found himself loath to relate the tale. “No,” he lied. “It’s impossible.”
From this point, a strange breathlessness characterized their lessons, an unsettling sense that the banality of what Achamian said belied unthinkable repercussions. Years ago he had participated in a Mandate-sanctioned assassination of a suspected Ainoni spy in Conriya. All Achamian had done was hand a folded oak leaf containing belladonna to a scullery slave. The action had been so simple, so innocuous …
Three men and one woman had died.
As always with Kellhus, Achamian needed only to gloss the various topics, and then only once. Within the course of single evenings Kellhus mastered arguments, explanations, and details that had taken Achamian years to internalize. His questions always struck to the heart. His observations never failed to chill with their rigour and penetration. Then at last, as the first elements of the Holy War invested Gerotha, they came to the precipice.
Kellhus beamed with gratitude and good humour. He stroked his flaxen beard in an uncharacteristic gesture of excitement, and for an instant resembled no one so much as Inrau. His eyes reflected three points of light, one for each of the lanterns suspended above Achamian.
“So the time has finally come.”
Achamian nodded, knowing his apprehension was plain to see. “We should start with some basic Ward,” he said awkwardly. “Something you can use to defend yourself.”
“No,” Kellhus replied. “Begin with a Cant of Calling.”
Achamian frowned, but he knew better than to counsel or contradict. Breathing deeply, he opened his mouth to recite the first utteral string of the Ishra Discursia, the most ancient and most simple of the Gnostic Cants of Calling. But for some reason no sound escaped his lips. It seemed he should be speaking, but something … inflexible had seized his throat. He shook his head and laughed, glancing away in embarrassment, then tried once again.
Still nothing.
“I …” Achamian looked to Kellhus, more than baffled. “I cannot speak.”
Kellhus watched him carefully, peering first at his face, then apparently at an empty point in the air between them. “Seswatha,” he said after a moment. “How else could the Mandate have safeguarded the Gnosis for so many years? Even with the nightmares …”
An unaccountable relief washed through Achamian. “It—it must be …”
He looked to Kellhus helplessly. Despite all his turmoil, he truly
wanted
to yield the Gnosis. Somehow it had become oppressive in the manner of shameful acts, and for whatever reason, all secrets clamoured for light in Kellhus’s presence. He shook his head, lowered his face into his hands, saw Xinemus screaming, his face clenched about the knifepoint in his eye.
“I must speak with him,” Kellhus said.
Achamian gaped at the man, incredulous. “With Seswatha? I don’t understand.”
Kellhus reached to his belt and drew one of his daggers: the Eumarnan one, with a black pearl handle and a long thin blade, like those Achamian’s father had used for deboning fish. For a panicked instant Achamian thought that Kellhus meant to debone
him,
to cut Seswatha from his skin, perhaps the way physician-priests sometimes cut living infants from dying mothers. Instead he merely twirled the pommel across the table of his palm, holding it balanced so that the Seleukaran steel flashed in the light of their fire-pot.
“Watch the play of light,” he said. “Watch only the light.”
With a shrug, Achamian gazed at the weapon, found himself captivated by the multiple ghosts that formed about the spinning blade’s axis. He had the sense of watching silver through dancing water, then …
What followed defeated description. There was a peculiar impression of
elongation,
as though his eyes had been drawn across open space into airy corners. He could remember his head falling back, and the sense that, even though he still owned his bones, his muscles belonged to someone else, so that it seemed he was
restrained
by the force of another in a manner more profound than chains or even inhumation. He could remember speaking, but could recollect nothing of what he said. It was as though his memory of the exchange had been affixed to the edges of his periphery, where it remained no matter how quickly he snapped his head. Always just on the threshold of the perceptible …
Unknown permissions.
He began to ask Kellhus what had happened, but the man silenced him with a closed-eye grin, the one he typically used to effortlessly dismiss what seemed to be crucial questions. Kellhus told him to try repeating the first phrase. With something akin to awe, Achamian found the first words tumbling from his lips—the first utteral string …
“Iratisrineis lo ocoimenein loroi hapara …”
Followed by the corresponding inutteral string.
“Li lijineriera cui ashiritein
hejaroit
…”
For a moment Achamian felt disoriented, such was the ease of reciting these strings apart. How thin his voice felt! He gathered his wits in the ensuing silence, watching Kellhus with something between hope and horror. The air itself seemed numb.
It had taken Achamian seven months to master the simultaneous inner and outer expressions of the utteral and the inutteral strings, and even then he’d started with the remedial semantic constructions of the denotaries. But somehow, with Kellhus …
Silence, so absolute it seemed he could hear the lanterns wheeze their white light.
Then, with a faint otherworldly smile upon his lips, Kellhus nodded, looked directly into his eyes, and repeated,
“Iratisrineis lo ocoimenein loroi hapara,”
but in a way that rumbled like trailing thunder.
For the first time Achamian saw Kellhus’s eyes
glow
. Like coals beneath the bellows.
Terror clawed the breath from his lungs, the blood from his limbs. If a fool such as him could bring down ramparts of stone with such words, what could this man do?
What were his limits?
He remembered his argument with Esmenet in Shigek long ago, before the Library of the Sareots. What did it mean for a
prophet
to sing in the God’s own voice? Would that make him a shaman, as in the days described in the Tusk? Or would it make him a
god
?
“Yes,” Kellhus murmured, and he uttered the words again, words that spoke from the marrow of existence, that resonated at the pitch of souls. His eyes flashed, like gold afire. Ground and air hummed.
And at last Achamian realized …
I have not the concepts to comprehend him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JOKTHA
Every woman knows there are only two kinds of men: those who feel and those who pretend. Always remember, my dear, though only the former can be loved, only the latter can be trusted. It is passion that blackens eyes, not calculation.
—ANONYMOUS LETTER
 
 
It is far better to outwit Truth than to apprehend it.
—AINONI PROVERB
Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Joktha
They ate in the privy dining chambers of the dead Grandee who had once ruled the Donjon Palace. The room possessed all the features Cnaiür had come to associate with Kianene, as opposed to merely Fanim, decor. The threshold had been carved in the imitation of elaborately thatched mats. The single window opposite the entrance was shuttered with iron fretwork, which no doubt had once carried the same blooming vines he saw on similar windows throughout the city. And the walls were frescoed with geometric designs rather than images, stylized or otherwise.
The centre of the room dropped three steps, so that the table—which stood no higher than Cnaiür’s knee—appeared to have been hewn from the floor. It was carved of mahogany and so polished that, given the proper angle, it possessed a mirror sheen. With a battery of candles as their only source of illumination, it seemed they sat in a sunken nest of pillows, surrounded by a shadowy gallery.
All of them were at pains not to rub knees—the perennial problem of dining at Kianene tables. Cnaiür occupied the head. Conphas sat to his immediate right, followed by General Sompas of the Kidruhil, then General Areamanteras of the Nasueret Column, General Baxatas of the Selial Column, and lastly General Imyanax of the Cepaloran Auxiliaries. To Cnaiür’s immediate left sat Baron Sanumnis, followed by Baron Tirnemus, then Troyatti, the Captain of the Hemscilvara. The slaves hovered in the surrounding gloom, refilling wine bowls or removing spent plates. Two Conriyan knights in full battledress watched from the entrance, their silver war-masks drawn down.

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