The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (36 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

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

BOOK: The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)
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Golgotterath would not be pleased with this new disposition of pieces. But the rules
had
changed …
There were those who preferred clarity.
CHAPTER NINE
JOKTHA
In the skins of elk
I pass
over grasses. Rain falls, and
I cleanse
my face in the sky.
I hear
the Horse Prayers spoken, but my lips are far away.
I slip
down weed and still twig—into their palms
I pool.
Then I am called out and am among them. In sorrow,
I rejoice.
Pale endless life. This,
I call
my own.
—ANONYMOUS, THE NONMAN CANTICLES
Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Joktha
Somehow, he awoke more ancient.
Once, while raiding the South Bank in Shigek, Cnaiür and his men had rested their horses in the ruins of an ancient palace. Since kindling a fire was out of the question, they had unrolled their mats in the darkness beneath a ponderous section of wall. When Cnaiür awoke, the morning sun had bathed the limestone planes above him, and he found himself staring at figures in relief, their faces worn to serenity by the seasons, their poses at once stiff and indolent in the manner of age-old representations. And there, impossibly, at the head of a long file of captives, was a scarred-arm figure kissing the heel of an outland king.
A Scylvendi from another age.
“Do you know,” a voice was saying, “that I actually felt pity as the last of your people perished at Kiyuth?” It was a voice that liked its own sound—very much. “No … pity isn’t the right word. Regret.
Regret
. All the old myths collapsed at that moment. The world became weaker. I studied your people, deeply. Learned your secrets, your vulnerabilities. You see, even as a child I knew I would humble you one day. And there you were! Tiny figures in the distance, loping and howling like panicked monkeys. The People of War! And I thought, ‘There’s nothing strong in this world. Nothing I cannot conquer.’”
Cnaiür gasped, tried to blink away the tears of pain that clotted his eyes. He lay on the ground, his arms bound so tight he could scarce feel them. A shadow leaned over him, wiped his face with a cool, wet cloth. Who?
“But you,” the shadow continued. It shook its head as though at an endearing yet infuriating child. “You …”
His eyes clearing, Cnaiür absorbed his surroundings. He lay in some kind of field tent. Canvas panels bellied into an apex above him. A heap of blood-caked refuse lay in the far corner—his hauberk and accoutrements. A table with four camp chairs framed the man ministering to him, who had to be an officer of some kind given the splendour of his armour and weapons. The blue mantle meant he was a general, but the bruising about his face …
The man wrung rose-coloured water into a copper basin set near Cnaiür’s head. “The irony,” he was saying, “is that you mean nothing in this matter. It’s this Anasûrimbor, this
False Prophet,
who is the sole object of the Empire’s concern. Whatever significance you possess, you derive from him.” A snort. “I knew this, and still I let you provoke me.” The face momentarily darkened. “That was a mistake. I can see that now. What are the abuses of flesh compared with glory?”
Cnaiür glared at the stranger. Glory? There was no glory.
“So many dead,” the man said with rueful humour. “Was it you who devised that strategy? Knocking holes through walls. Forcing us to chase you and your rats into your burrows. Quite remarkable. I almost wish it had been you at Kiyuth. Then I would
know,
wouldn’t I?” He shrugged. “That’s how the Gods prove themselves, isn’t it? The overthrow of demons?”
Cnaiür stiffened. Something involuntary thrashed through him.
The man smiled. “I know you aren’t human. I know that we’re kin.”
Cnaiür tried to speak, but croaked instead. He ran his tongue across scabbed lips. Copper and salt. With a concerned frown the man raised a decanter, poured blessed water into his mouth.
“Are you,” Cnaiür rasped, “a god?”
The man stood, looked at him strangely. Points of lantern light rolled like liquid across the figures worked into his cuirass. His voice possessed a shrill edge. “I know you love me … Men often beat those they love. Words fail them, and they throw their fists into the breach … I’ve seen it happen many times.”
Cnaiür rolled his head back, closed his eyes for pain. How had he come to be here? Why was he bound?
“I know also,” the man continued, “that you hate him
.”
Him. There could be no mistaking the word’s intensity. The Dûnyain. He spoke of the Dûnyain—and as though he were his enemy, no less. “You do not want,” Cnaiür said, “to raise arms against him …”
“And why would that be?”
Cnaiür turned to him, blinking. “He knows the hearts of men. He seizes their beginnings and so wields their ends.”
“So even you,” the nameless General spat, “even you have succumbed to the general madness. Religion
…”
He turned to the table, poured himself something Cnaiür couldn’t see from the ground. “You know, Scylvendi, I thought I’d found a
peer
in you.” His laugh was vicious. “I even toyed with the idea of making you my Exalt-General.”
Cnaiür scowled. Who was this man?
“Absurd, I know. Utterly impossible. The Army would mutiny. The mob would storm the Andiamine Heights! But I cannot help but think that, with someone such as you, I could eclipse even Triamis.”
Dawning horror.
“Did you know that? Did you know you stood in the
Emperor’s
presence?” He raised his wine bowl in salute, took a deep drink. “Ikurei Conphas I,” he gasped after swallowing. “With me the Empire is
reborn,
Scylvendi. I am Kyraneas. I am Cenei. Soon all the Three Seas will kiss my knee!”
Blood and grimaces. Roaring shouts. Fire. It all came back to him, the horror and rapture of Joktha. And then there he was …
Conphas
. A god with a beaten face.
Cnaiür laughed, deep and full-throated.
For a moment the man stood dumbstruck, as though suddenly forced to reckon the dimensions of an unguessed incapacity. “You play me,” he said with what seemed genuine bafflement. “Mock me.”
And Cnaiür understood that he’d been
sincere,
that Conphas had meant every word he said. Of course he was baffled. He had recognized his brother; how could his brother not recognize him in turn?
The Chieftain of the Utemot laughed harder. “Brother? Your heart is shrill and your soul is plain. Your claims are preposterous, uttered without any real understanding, like recitations of a mother’s daft pride.” Cnaiür spat pink. “Peer? Brother? You have not the iron to be my brother. You are a thing of sand. Soon you will be kicked to the wind.”
Without a word Conphas strode forward, brought a sandalled heel down on his head. The world flashed dark.
Cnaiür cackled even as the blood spilled hot across his teeth. With what seemed impossible clarity, he heard the Exalt-General retreat, the creak of leather about his stamped cuirass, the rasp of his scabbard across his leather skirts. The man swept aside the flap then strode into the greater camp, already shouting names. And Cnaiür could feel himself slipping between immensities—the earth that pressed so cruelly against his battered frame and the commotion of men and their fatal purposes.
At last,
something deep laughed within him.
At last it ends
.
General Sompas entered moments after, his face grim, his knife drawn. Without hesitation he knelt at Cnaiür’s side and began sawing through his leather bonds.
“The others await,” he said in hushed tones. “Your Chorae is on the table.”
Cnaiür could only reply in a cracked whisper. “Where are you taking me?”
“To Serwë.”
The General had no problem leading the Scylvendi captive to the dark edge of the Nansur camp. They passed through a gallery of sentries and boisterous, celebratory camps. No one questioned the fact that the General wore a Captain’s uniform. They were the army of a brilliant and eccentric leader. Not once had his strange ways failed to deliver victory and vengeance. And Biaxi Sompas was
his
man.
“Is it always this easy?” Cnaiür asked the creature.
“Always,” it said.
In the blackness beneath a stand of carob trees, Serwë and another of her brothers awaited them, along with eight horses laden with supplies. Dawn had not yet broken when they heard the first of the horns, faint in the distance behind them.
A word dogged Emperor Ikurei Conphas, a word he had always regarded from the outside.
Terror.
He sat weary, leaning against the pommel of his saddle, watching the torches bob through the dark trees before him. Sompas waited quietly to his right, as did several others. Shouts echoed through the encampment behind them. The darkness teemed with searching lights.
“Scylvendi!” Conphas found himself crying out to the black.
“Scylvendi!”
He need not look to his officers to see their questioning expressions.
What was it about this man—this fiend? How had he affected him so? For all the hatred the Nansur bore toward the Scylvendi race, they were perversely enamoured of them as well. There was a mystique to them, and a virility that transcended the myriad rules that so constricted the intercourse of civilized men. Where the Nansur wheedled and negotiated, the Scylvendi simply took—seized. It was as though they had embraced violence whole, while the Nansur had shattered it into a thousand pieces to set as splinters across the multiform mosaic of their society.
It made them seem … more manly.
And this one Scylvendi, this Utemot Chieftain. Conphas had witnessed it, as much as any of the Columnaries who′d quailed before him in Joktha. In the firelight the barbarian’s eyes had been coals set in his skull. And the blood had painted him the colour of his true skin. The swatting arms, the roaring voice, the chest-pounding declarations. They had all seen the God. They had all seen dread Gilgaöl rearing about him, a great horned shadow …
And now, after wrestling him to the ground like some lunatic bull, after the wonder of capturing him—capturing War!—he
had simply vanished
.

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