The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (50 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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Why do I get the stone?
Achamian did not sleep that night.
One of the Hundred Pillars had come, summoning both him and Proyas to the villa in the encampment’s heart. Apparently there had been some kind of attempt on Kellhus’s life. Achamian refused outright. When Proyas made ready to leave, Achamian reproached him with words so harsh, so blasphemous, that the waiting Guardsman drew his sword, aghast. Achamian fled before the Prince could retort.
For a time he wandered the dark ways of the Holy War, thinking of the way the dew made his sandalled feet ache, of how the Nail of Heaven never moved, of the way the Men of the Tusk all slumbered beneath tents of Kianene manufacture, their differences, their heritages, shed like rubbish on the long path to redemption. He thought of everything, anything, save that which might drive the wedges of madness deeper.
Then, as dawn brightened over the promise of Shimeh in the east, he made his way back to the fortified villa. He climbed the slopes and passed unchallenged through the gates, and finally found himself walking the overgrown garden, heedless of the burrs and claws that snarled his robes, of the nettles that inflamed his skin. He waited below the verandah that fronted the main apartments—where his wife moaned about the cock of the man he worshipped.
He waited for the Warrior-Prophet.
A lark called out from the dried stump of a cedar. Fiddle-necks, their orange blooms bent along hairy stems, trembled in the breeze.
He drowsed, dreamed of Golgotterath.
“Akka?” a blessed voice said as though from nowhere. “You look horrible.”
Achamian found himself instantly awake, thinking,
Where is she? I need her!
“She sleeps,” Kellhus said. “She suffered grievously last night … much as you did.”
The Warrior-Prophet stood above him, his flaxen hair and white gown glaring in the morning sunlight. Achamian blinked at his figure. Despite the beard, the resemblance to Nau-Cayûti, his ancient cousin, was unmistakable.
For some reason Achamian felt his fury and resolve crumble, as a child’s might before a mother or a father. A grimace stole across his face.
“Why?” he croaked. At first he feared the man would misunderstand him, think that he asked after Esmenet, and his monstrous decision to use her as a tool to sound the Consult.
“Our end does not give meaning to our life, Akka. The manner of Zin’s de—”
“No!” he cried, leaping to his feet. “Why didn’t you
heal him
?”
For the briefest instant Kellhus seemed taken aback—but then all was as it should be. Comfort glittered in his eyes. Understanding shouted from the line of his smile, sad and faint.
Achamian’s ears roared with such violence that he heard nothing of Kellhus’s reply, save that it was false. He literally stumbled, such was the force of the revelation. Strong hands drew him upright. Kellhus—grasping him by the shoulders, staring intently into his face. But the intimacy, that eroticism of awe that had braced all their exchanges, had vanished. A vacancy, cold and heartless, shouted from the beloved face.
How?
And somehow, unaccountably, Achamian knew that he was truly
awake
—perhaps for the very first time. No longer was he that hapless child in this man’s gaze.
Achamian pulled away—not horrified, just … blank.
“What are you?”
Kellhus’s gaze did not falter. “You flinch from me, Akka … Why?”
“You are
not
a prophet!
What are you?
ʺ
The transformation of his expression was subtle enough that someone standing three or more paces away would have missed it, but for Achamian it was enough to send him stumbling back in horror. As one, Kellhus’s every facial nuance went
dead
—utterly dead.
Then, in a voice as cold as winter slate:
“I am the Truth.”
“Truth?” Achamian struggled to regain his composure, but the horror spilled through him, unlooping like entrails. He fought for his breath, to see past the glaring sky, to hear through the buzzing world. “Tru—”
An iron grip around his throat. His head yanked back, his face thrust to the sun, like a doll hoisted to the sky. He hadn’t even seen Kellhus move!
“Look,” the dead voice said. No strain. Nothing of this physical cruelty in his voice. Nothing.
The sun speared Achamian’s eyes, seemed blinding even with them clenched shut.
“Look,” without added emphasis, except for the finger which caressed his trachea in such a way that bile began to burn the back of his throat.
“Can’t … see …”
Abruptly he dropped face forward against the ground. Before he’d regained his knees, he’d begun his arcane muttering. He knew his capabilities. He knew he could destroy him still.
But the voice would not relent.
“Does this mean the sun is empty?”
Achamian paused, turned his face from the grass and scree, squinted at the figure looming above.
“Do you think,”
a voice crackled across every possibility of hearing,
“the God would be anything other than remote?”
Achamian lowered his forehead to the biting weeds. Everything spinning, slumping …
“Or do I lie, in that, since I am all souls, I choose the one that will turn the most hearts?”
And tears answered.
Don’t hit me … Please, Papa, please. Don’t—
“Or should it speak of treachery that my purposes move beyond yours? Encompass yours?”
He raised shaking hands to his ears.
I’ll be good! I swear!
He fell to his side, sobbed against hard, bristling earth. The road so long. So painful. The hunger … Inrau … Xinemus dead.
Dead.
Because of me! Oh, dear God …
The Warrior-Prophet sat next to him as he wept, gently holding one of his hands, his face impassive, eyes closed and turned to the sun.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we march on Shimeh.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHIMEH
What frightens me when I travel is not that so many men possess customs and creeds so different from my own. Nay, what frightens me is that they think them as natural and as obvious as I think my own.
—SERATANTAS III,
SUMNI MEDITATIONS
 
 
A return to a place never seen. Always is it thus, when we understand what we cannot speak.
—PROTATHIS,
ONE HUNDRED HEAVENS
Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Atyersus
Shouts of consternation drew Nautzera to the unshuttered colonnade that adjoined the Rudiments Library, high above the western ramparts of Atyersus, where students often gathered on mild and sunny days. Several young initiates stared and pointed across the dark straits, along with Marmian, an Auditor on furlough from their Mission in Oswenta. Nautzera waved them away, leaned out over the stone balustrade. As tired as his eyes were, he could see the cause of the commotion quite clearly: fifteen yellow-painted galleys anchoring in the straits, poised across the cerulean blue less than a mile from the mouth of Atyersus’s scarped harbour. Distant seamen climbed the rigging, lowering beams on sails adorned with Tusks, long and vertical and golden.
Atyersus was thrown into an uproar. Initiates and officers bawled commands. The fortress’s soldiery stamped down the narrow corridors, rushing to man far-flung walls and turrets. Nautzera joined the other members of the Quorum on the heights of the Comoranth Tower, where they could view the fleet of interlopers without obstruction. They made a ludicrous sight: seven old men—two in nightshirts, one still wearing an ink-stained scriptor’s apron, and the rest, like Nautzera, in full ceremonial garb—waving liver-spotted hands as they bickered back and forth. Most of them assumed the obvious: that the ships were part of a blockade meant to prevent their imminent departure for Shimeh. But just who were they? The colours and tusks suggested the Thousand Temples … Did the Shrial ingrates think themselves a match for the
Gnosis
?
Simas counselled immediate attack. “As far as we know,” he cried, “the Second Apocalypse has already begun! No matter who owns the deed to these galleys, we can only assume that the Consult commands them. We’ve always known they would attempt to destroy us in the opening days. And now, with the Harbinger, this so-called Warrior-Prophet …
Think,
my brothers. What would the Consult do? Wouldn’t they risk anything to prevent us from joining the Holy War? We must strike!”
But Nautzera wasn’t so rash. “To act in ignorance,” he fairly screeched, “is always folly, whether at war or not!”
Ultimately, however, word that a launch rowed toward shore settled the matter. Despite his protestations, Simas was overruled. The Quorum agreed they should at least treat with the strangers. Slaves hastened to make ready their litters, and soon Nautzera was staring at the mysterious vessels through the veils of his palanquin. The slaves fairly ran down the switchback road running from Atyersus’s main gate to the stone quays that jutted into the fortress’s small natural harbour.
Surrounded by confused throngs of guards and adepts, the Quorum assembled on the ancient stone of the one jetty not crowded with berthed ships. The launch had drawn near enough for them to cluck in astonishment. They traded rapid conjectures, but it was clear that no one knew what was happening. Their voices trailed as the dock men caught the ropes thrown from the approaching launch. The rowers pulled their oars skyward; the boat was pulled in and secured. Nautzera and the others stood rigid with shock. Complete silence fell across the surrounding copse of masts and rigging. The Nroni seamen crowding the railings of the neighbouring ships stared down in wonder, not only at their sorcerous masters, but at the retinue that climbed from the launch.
The Quorum stood, seven old scowling men, watching as their visitors assembled on the tip of the finger of stone. Expressionless, their silvered helms and chain bright in the sun, five Shrial Knights formed a wordless line, screening the figures behind. Their Chorae murmured dark beneath their white silk surcoats. Of those behind, Nautzera could only glimpse faces—most of them clean-shaven. Then an imposing black-bearded figure pressed past the Knights into the Quorum’s astonished view. With the exception of Nautzera, he loomed over all of them, dressed in a stately gown of white that had been hemmed about the collar and sleeves with golden tusks the size of finger bones. Though his face seemed middle-aged, his blue eyes were surprisingly young. He too wore a Chorae against his breast.
“Holy Shriah,” Nautzera said evenly.
Maithanet
here
?
Smiling with radiant warmth, the man studied their faces, raised his eyes to the dark bastions of Atyersus behind them … He lunged forward. Then somehow—his movement had been too quick for surprised eyes to comprehend—he was holding Simas by the base of the skull.
The air was riven with sorcerous muttering. Eyes flared with Gnostic light. Wards whisked into shimmering existence. Almost as one, the members of the Quorum fell into defensive posture. Dust and grit trailed down the sloped sides of the jetty.
Simas had gone limp as a kitten, his white-haired head lolling against the fist bunched at the back of his neck. The Shriah seemed to hold him with impossible strength.
“Release him!” Yatiskeres cried, scrambling back with the others. Maithanet spoke as though showing them how to slaughter rabbits. “If you pinch them here,” he said, jerking the old man as if in emphasis, “they are thoroughly incapacitated.”
“Releas—”
“Release him!”
“What’s this madness?” Nautzera exclaimed. He alone hadn’t cast any Wards. Neither had he retreated down the jetty with the others. In fact he stepped
between
the Shriah and his fellow Schoolman, as though interposing himself to protect the man.

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