The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (62 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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Cymbals crashed in a relentless tempo, measuring the hellish advance of the Scarlet Spires. They laid waste to all before them. Whatever resistance the heathen mustered, they puffed out like candle flames. Companies of horsemen, bowmen arrayed across the rooftops—all mummified in Anagogic fire.
Save for the adept Watchers who walked the sky in their wake, most of the seventy-four surviving sorcerers of rank marched on foot through the conflagration, sheltering themselves and their Javreh shield-men with Wards. Bathed in the light of successive Cants, each cadre trailed a flickering array of shadows. They climbed ramps of blackened stone, mounds of smashed brick, found their footing, and worked more thunderous devastation. Stones arced skyward, trailing streamers of smoke. Cornices and pillars collapsed upon their footings, swallowed by the black-billowing issue of their destruction. The whole world seemed rendered in luminous bloods and abyssal blacks. They stepped over sizzling limbs.
Above towering flames and through curtains of smoke, the First Temple and the Ctesarat loomed ever closer, until they encompassed the horizon. Again and again the Scarlet Schoolmen called out with destruction, but none would answer.
The Fanim ran before them, like flame-maddened beasts.
Only the sky …
Of all this world, only the sky offered them surcease, a momentary reprieve from spikes of terrestrial congestion. Through furnace eyes they gazed across the world’s dark curvature. The sun flared white and preternaturally bright. Thunderheads roiled beneath, trailing into nothingness in the distance, like snow kicked across ice. They saw pale coastlines, vast tracts of bleached ochre and blue. They flexed their frames in languorous vanity, beat their air-scooping wings.
Zioz. Setmahaga. Sohorat …
Only here, at the limits of this cursed world.
Then the Voice called them, crackling with torment and rebuke. As one, they bent their elephantine heads back, howled into the indigo depths, then plunged backward, diving into the skein of angry clouds. Wind burned eyes that could not tear.
Like stones, they dropped from the belly of the clouds.
Shimeh encircled the nearing ground, dark save where fires scored her. They sensed the mortals, loping like monkeys down murky streets, raping, murdering, warring …
Would that they could devour it all.
But the Voice! The Voice! Like a thing of needles. More agonizing than the million teeth of this surrounding world.
They soared toward the city’s heart, following the yaw and pitch of the eastern wind, then alighted, one after another, on the eaves of the First Temple.
The Voice approved.
They flattened like beetles against the slate. They could sense the eyeless ones within, waiting.
Fall upon them!
the Voice screeched.
Rend them! Only in their midst will you be safe from the Chorae!
They smashed through the shingles, tore aside the braces, cracked the great stone lintels asunder, then dropped in a hail of debris. A dozen saffron-robed men scrambled about them, blue lights flashing from their foreheads. Great arcs of energy sizzled across their incandescent hides.
Sohorat roared, and plaster rained throughout the forest of columns. Flies burst from his maw. Raving wolves bubbled from his palms, smashed the sheets of light, gorged on those cringing behind them. Zioz swept burning threads into his fist, wrenched souls from their housing meat. Setmahaga clawed aside flimsy defences, struck heads from bodies, gloried in the blood that smoked across his limbs. He squealed like a thousand pigs, such was his exultation.
“Demon!”
A voice like a thunderclap.
They turned from the blood-soaked marble, saw an old, eyeless man approach from the deeper temple. Something flashed from his forehead, like a stolen star. Others spilled between the flanking columns. More blind men.
Flee,
the Voice whispered in his soul.
Setmahaga fell first, struck in the eye by an
absence
affixed to the end of a stick. An explosion of burning salt …
Flee!
Then Sohorat, his slavering form caught in torrents of light, screamed.
Zioz leapt into the clouds.
Return me, manling! Throw off these chains!
But the Scarlet Schoolman was obstinate.
One last task … One more offending eye …
Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow.
“You came to the world,” unseen lips said, “and you saw that Men were like children.”
Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters.
“It is their nature to believe as their fathers believed,” the darkness continued. “To desire as they desired … Men are like wax poured into moulds: their souls are cast by their circumstances. Why are no Fanim children born to Inrithi parents? Why are no Inrithi children born to Fanim parents? Because these truths are
made,
cast by the particularities of circumstance. Rear an infant among Fanim and he will become Fanim. Rear him among Inrithi and he will become Inrithi …
“Split him in two, and he would murder himself.”
Without warning, the face re-emerged, water-garbled, white save the black sockets beneath his brow. The action seemed random, as though his father merely changed posture to relieve some vagrant ache, but it was not.
Everything,
Kellhus knew, had been premeditated. For all the changes wrought by thirty years in the Wilderness, his father remained Dûnyain …
Which meant that Kellhus stood on conditioned ground.
“But as obvious as this is,” the blurred face continued, “it escapes them. Because they cannot see what comes before them, they assume
nothing
comes before them. Nothing. They are numb to the hammers of circumstance, blind to their conditioning. What is branded into them, they think freely chosen.
So they thoughtlessly cleave to their intuitions, and curse those who dare question. They make ignorance their foundation. They confuse their narrow conditioning for absolute truth.”
He raised a cloth, pressed it into the pits of his eyes. When he withdrew it, two rose-coloured stains marked the pale fabric. The face slipped back into the impenetrable black.
“And yet part of them fears. For even unbelievers share the depth of their conviction. Everywhere, all about them, they see examples of their own self-deception … ‘Me!’ everyone cries. ‘I am chosen!’ How could they
not
fear when they so resemble children stamping their feet in the dust? So they encircle themselves with yea-sayers, and look to the horizon for confirmation, for some
higher sign
that they are as central to the world as they are to themselves.”
He waved his hand out, brought his palm to his bare breast. “And they pay with the coin of their devotion.”
“And what of you, Akka?” Esmenet said, her voice become scathing. “Haven’t you yielded your precious Gnosis as readily as I’ve yielded my womb?” Why couldn’t she just hate him, this drab and broken sorcerer? It would all be so much easier then.
Achamian cleared his throat. “Yes … yes, I have …”
“Then tell me
why,
Holy Tutor. Why would a Mandate Schoolman do such an unthinkable thing?”
“Because the Second Apocalypse … It comes …”
“The very world is at stake and you
complain
that he makes weapons of all things? Akka, you should rejoi—”
“I’m not saying he’s not the Harbinger! He may even be a prophet for all I know …”
“Then what
are
you saying, Akka? Do you even
know
?”
Two tears threaded his cheeks.
“That he
stole
you from me! Stole!”
“Picked your purse, did he? That’s funny, because I feel more shit than gold.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it? You love me, yes, Akka, but I’ve never been anything more than a—”
“But you’re
not thinking
! You see only your love for him. You’re not thinking of what he sees
when he gazes upon you
.”
A moment of silent horror.
“But he lies! The Scylvendi lies! I’m
Nansur
. I know—”
“Tell me, Esmi! Tell me
what he sees
!”
She shook. Why was she shaking? The earth seemed like stone beneath her knees.
“The truth,” she murmured. “He sees the truth!”
Somehow his arms had scooped her to her feet. And she clutched him, sobbed and wailed into his shoulders.
He whispered into her ear. “He doesn’t
see,
Esmi … He watches.”
And the words were there, at once deafening and unspoken.
…
without love
.
She looked up to him, and he stared at her with an intensity, a desperation, she knew she would never find in Kellhus’s endless blue eyes. He smelled warm … bitter.
His lips were wet.
Eleäzaras gazed across the infernal landscape. He could hear himself cackle, but he knew not the voice. What was this he felt? Glee, dark and gloating, like watching a hated sibling struck at last. Remorse, and fear—terror, even! It was as though he dropped and dropped and never struck ground.

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