The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (70 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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She clutched the crumbling walls, ducked to see past the fronds of sumac.
Something, a high wind perhaps, worried the darkling clouds that shadowed the Holy City. A corona of gold had formed along their outer rim, and sunlight showered across the slopes above the Holy War’s encampment, upon the ruined mausoleums of the ancient Amoti Kings. Even still, the sorcerer flared with impossible brilliance. His eyes bright-burning orbs. His mouth working about glaring white.
From where Esmenet watched, Achamian was no longer Achamian, but something altogether different, something godlike and all-conquering. Multiple spheres of light englobed him, each bisected with further, shielding discs. Brilliant lines webbed the slopes surrounding him, glittering geometries that sundered all but the thickest bodies and the hardest steel. The Abstractions of the Gnosis. The War-Cants of the Ancient North.
His voice—and no matter how unearthly, it remained
his
voice—had become a singsong mutter that descended from all directions, that tingled against her fingertips when she pressed the stone. Despite her terror and confusion, she knew that at long last she saw
him,
the one whose long shadow had always chilled their hopes, darkened their love.
his
voice—had become a singsong mutter that descended from all directions, that tingled against her fingertips when she pressed the stone. Despite her terror and confusion, she knew that at long last she saw
him,
the one whose long shadow had always chilled their hopes, darkened their love.
The Mandate Schoolman.
From what she could see, the Nansur were in utter confusion. The Kidruhil had broken, dispersed into the distances, where still the far-flung lines of the Gnosis found them. The air rang with frantic alarms.
She was no fool. She knew there would be Chorae, that it was only a matter of time before the units of crossbowmen or some such fought their way through the confusion. But how long would it take? How long could he survive?
She was about to watch him die, she realized. The only man who truly loved her.
From nowhere, it seemed, golden fires rolled over him, burning the earth about his Wards to glass. Then lightning struck, brilliant spasms of it, scrawling across the glowing planes. She stumbled along the interior of the ruined wall, struggled to find a footing, then pulled herself up to look westward.
Her heart caught at the sight of the Imperial Columns, their ranks piling across the distances. Then she saw
them:
along the crest, standing the height of a tree above the ground, four black-robed sorcerers, wrapped in spectral bastions of stone. They sang dragons. They sang lightning, lava, and sun. Twice the concussions knocked her from her perch.
them:
along the crest, standing the height of a tree above the ground, four black-robed sorcerers, wrapped in spectral bastions of stone. They sang dragons. They sang lightning, lava, and sun. Twice the concussions knocked her from her perch.
One by one the Mandate Schoolman pulled them down, each with blistering precision.
The Holy Water of the Indara-Kishauri fell sideways across the heaped earth, spiralling from souls that had become fissures. Dozens of Scarlet Schoolmen, too engrossed or startled to sing new Encircling Wards, screamed in the scalding light. Entire cadres were swept away in deluge after glittering deluge. Narstheba. Inrûmmi …
Death came swirling down.
Cishaurim were struck down with Chorae—quick, soundless flashes, like tissue cast into flame—but then so too were Schoolmen, by the Thesji Bowmen who dashed through the smoke-hazed ruin. Within heartbeats the circle was broken, and organized battle became sorcerous melee. Each Schoolman found himself warring alone with his stunned cadre, both to live and to kill. Their shouts were lost in the thunder of their destruction. The Cishaurim were everywhere among them, standing in clutches, behind broken walls, upon mounded debris—blue-burning beacons. Geysers erupted along the sheer brick surfaces, leaving deep pocks that trailed dust and gravel. Bricks fell like powdered plaster. Many of the Cishaurim, the Secondaries and Tertiaries, they killed with single Dragonheads. The Primaries they hammered and hammered, either singly or in concert, only to find themselves falling to their knees, screaming out Ward after desperate Ward.
The Scarlet Spires knew of the Nine Incandati, those Primaries whose backs could bear the most Water, but they had no inkling as to their true strength. Now the greatest of the Psûkari assailed them: Seökti, Inkorot, Hab’hara, Fanfarokar, Sartmandri … And they could not cope.
Within moments of closing with Inkorot, Sarosthenes was singing Wards only. Dazzling light crashed all about him, striking with such force that it seemed the very joists of the world must crack. His Javreh shield-bearers wailed about him, struggling to find their feet. The ghost stone cracked, was torn away in sheets. His song ran out, and all was brilliant agony.
Eleäzaras had been very near the Cishaurim’s surprise descent. Beset by Fanfarokar and Seökti, the High Heresiarch himself, he too could do no more than sing Ward after Ward. The Heresiarch hung over half-windows directly before him, his asps curved to watch the surrounding ruin, his figure bleached white by his impossible dispensations. Fanfarokar assailed him from the right, shielded in the crotches of a ruined tabernacle. The words. The words! The Grandmaster bent all his craft and cunning to the words, both silent and spoken. The world beyond his defences was rocked and blasted by deafening light. He sang and he sang to keep his narrow circle safe.
He had not the luxury of despair.
Then a moment of miraculous respite. The world went dark save for the wicked glow of the fires. Through the whoosh and crackling, Eleäzaras heard a horn, lonely and crude, crying out over the fields of ruin. All, sorcerer and Cishaurim alike, peered about in blinking confusion. Then Eleäzaras saw them, demon-red in the gloom, assembled in a long line across the broken ground: the Thunyeri, their black armour sheened in blood, their cornsilk beards tousled by the wind of great fires burning. He saw the Circumfix, black on red, pinned to the standard of Prince Hulwarga.
Men of the Tusk, come to save them.
Masses of Kianene horsemen encompassed the fields before them, line after rumbling line of them, trotting directly toward the ruined aqueduct. Waiting with butted spear and hoisted shield, the Men of the Tusk watched them, marking the standards of foes now well known. The Khirgwi tribes, bent on completing the work of the desert. The Grandees of Nenciphon and Chianadyni, who had suffered so terribly beneath the walls of Caraskand. The Girgashi of King Pilaskanda, leading some two dozen of their dread mastodons. The survivors of Gedea and Shigek under Ansacer. The long-suffering horsemen of Eumarna and Jurisada under Cinganjehoi, who time and again had driven the Inrithi before him. And beneath the Padirajah’s own banner, the fearless Coyauri, the ringlets of their mail gleaming gold where open sky found them.
All that remained of a proud and fierce nation, come for a final reckoning.
To the left of the Inrithi, over the heart of the city, smoke trailed like gauze in water, obscuring the First Temple and the Sacred Heights. Lights glowered and flickered from within, glimpses of brilliance through rags of black. Booms and thunder broke across the distances, more fell than the pulse of heathen drums.
The braided Nangaels began singing first, then the Numaineiri, one of the Warrior-Prophet’s unearthly hymns. Soon the entire Inrithi line was awash with deep warrior voices, singing
We, the sons of past sorrow,
We, the heirs of ancient trow,
Shall raise glory to the morrow,
And shall deliver fury to the now …
The Kianene quickened to the pace of crashing cymbals, rank after rank of them, roping field and pasture with dark colour. Then suddenly the cohorts were racing as though one against another. Riding at the fore, the Sapatishahs thrust their scimitars high and cried out. Their Grandees and the fiercest of their kinsmen answered, and soon all howled in outrage and injury.
So many wrongs suffered. So many deaths unavenged.
The ground swept beneath them. Not fast enough. Not fast enough.
Men wept for awe and hatred. And it seemed the Solitary God heard them …
The Skilura Aqueduct stretched before them, a perfect line that ran from city to horizon, long tracts of it intact, arches piled across arches, and sections completely collapsed. Crowded between the ruined pilings and about the scree, ranks of the Inrithi barricaded its foundations, a wall of shields and wicked men. The distance closed. The moments thinned to impossibility. For a heartbeat, song warred with inarticulate clamour …
We shall raise glory to the morrow?
Then all the world erupted.
Lances snapped. Shields cracked. Some horses shied and reared, while others bulled through. Men stabbed and hooked. Song and cry both faltered, and shrieks claimed the sky. From the heights of the aqueduct, Inrithi archers rained incessant ruin. Others heaved blocks and stones onto the heaving masses below. Here and there, heathen burst through to the far side, where the waiting Tydonni and Ainoni knights instantly charged into them. Bloodshed and melee seethed along the length of the Inrithi line.
“Even the Dûnyain,” Moënghus said, “possess vestigial versions of these weaknesses. Even me. Even
you,
my son.”
you,
my son.”
The implication was clear.
Your trial has broken you
.
Your trial has broken you
.
Was this what had happened beneath the black boughs of Umiaki? Kellhus could remember rising from Serwë’s corpse, the hands wrapping him in white linen. He could remember blinking at the flash of sunlight through the leafy gloom. He could remember
walking
when he should be dead, and seeing them in their thousands, the Men of the Tusk, crying out in astonishment and relief and exultation—in
awe
…
walking
when he should be dead, and seeing them in their thousands, the Men of the Tusk, crying out in astonishment and relief and exultation—in
awe
…
“There’s
more,
Father. You’re Cishaurim. You must know this.”
more,
Father. You’re Cishaurim. You must know this.”
He could remember the voice.
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Even without eyes, his father’s face still seemed to
scrutinize
. “You refer to your visions, the voice from nowhere. But tell me, where is your proof? What assures your claim over those who are simply mad?”
scrutinize
. “You refer to your visions, the voice from nowhere. But tell me, where is your proof? What assures your claim over those who are simply mad?”
TELL ME.
Assurance? What assurance did he have? When the real punished, the soul denied. He had seen it so many times in so many eyes … So how could he be so certain?
“But on the Plains of Mengedda,” he said. “The Shrial Knights … What I prophesied came to pass.” To the worldborn these words would have sounded blank, devoid of concern or occasion. But to a Dûnyain …
Let him think I waver.
“A fortuitous Correspondence of Cause,” Moënghus replied, “nothing more. That which comes before yet determines that which comes after. How else could you have achieved all that you have achieved? How else could you be possible?”
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