The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (71 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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He was right. Prophecy
could not be
. If the ends of things governed their beginnings, if
what came after
determined what came before, then how could he have mastered the souls of so many? And how could the Thousandfold Thought come to rule the Three Seas? The Principle of Before and After simply
had to be true,
if its presumption could so empower …
His father had to be right.
So what was this certainty, this immovable conviction,
that he was wrong?
Am I mad?
“The Dûnyain,” Moënghus continued, “think the world closed, that the mundane is all there is, and in this they are most certainly wrong. This world is
open,
and our souls stand astride its bounds. But what lies Outside, Kellhus, is no more than a fractured and distorted reflection of what lies within. I have searched, for nearly the length of your entire life, and I have found nothing that contradicts the Principle.
“Men cannot see this because of their native incapacities. They attend only to what confirms their fears and their desires, and what contradicts they either dismiss or overlook. They are bent upon affirmation. The priests crow over this or that incident, while they pass over all others in silence. I have
watched,
my son, for years I have
counted,
and the world shows no favour. It is perfectly indifferent to the tantrums of men.
“The God
sleeps
… It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given … no, they name our task.”
Kellhus stood motionless.
“Set aside your conviction,” Moënghus said, “for the
feeling
of certainty is no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men
always think themselves certain,
just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.”
Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands, wondered that they could be light and yet cast no light, throw no shadow … The light of delusion.
“But
we,
my son, do not have the luxury of error. Void … void has come to this world. It fell from the skies thousands of years past. Twice it has reared from the ashes of its falling: the first time in what the Mandate call the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars, the second time in what they call the First Apocalypse. It is about to arise a third time.”
“Yes,” Kellhus murmured. “He speaks to me as well.”
WHAT AM I?
“The No-God?” Moënghus asked. He paused momentarily. Had his father possessed eyes, Kellhus was certain he would have seen them fall in and out of focus as the consciousness within rose and submerged. “Then you truly
are
mad.”
The shouts were everywhere, descending from blinding, blinking sunlight.
“Emperor! God-of-Men!”
His men … his glorious Columnaries, come to save him.
“He’s dead! No-no-no!”
“Sweet Sejenus, our prayers have been answered!”
“Sedition! I should run you—”
“What? You think I value my skin over my so—!”
“He’s right! We all know it. We’ve all been thinking—”
“Then you’re all guilty of treason!”
“Are we? And what of this madman? What kind of fool would trade souls for ink and glo—”
“Exactly! I’ll be hanged before I fight for Fanim pigs! What? Risk my life to fight for my own damnation?”
“He’s right! He’s ri—”
“Look!” a voice cried immediately above him. “He moves!”
For a moment Conphas could hear nothing for the ringing in his ears. Then there were arms and hands, many of them, dragging him by his harness. His heels bounced over turf. All he could think was to hold fast his Chorae. What had happened? What had happened?
He glimpsed his hands, which he had raised to his face, saw his Trinket, greasy with blood. He cried out, sick with sudden certainty of his doom. His heart felt like a sparrow battling in his breast.
I’m dead! I’ve been slain!
Then he remembered, and he was fighting, striking away hovering hands.
Drusas Achamian.
“Kill him!” he barked, pressing himself to his feet. Columnaries and officers surrounded him, gawking in wonder and terror. Men of the Selial Column. Conphas snatched the cloak of one, used it to mop the blood from his face and neck. Cememketri’s blood—the imbecile! Useless! Feeble!
“Kill him!”
But only a few matched his gaze; the others looked past him, toward the rounded summit. He noticed the strange shadows that played about all of their feet. The ringing in his ears fell away and Conphas heard it, the thrum of their otherworldly song. Whirling, he saw Saik Schoolmen astride the sky, pitching sorcerous ruin over the far side of the humped pasture. As he watched, one of the black-robed sorcerers foundered, his Wards crumbling beneath a calligraphy of linear lights. He fell flaming to the ground.
As would the others. Four Anagogic sorcerers would not be enough, not against the Gnosis. Conphas cursed himself for dividing the Imperial Saik between the Columns. With the Cishaurim and the Scarlet Spires locked in mortal struggle, he had assumed that … that …
This isn’t happening … not to me!
“My Chorae,” he said numbly. “Where are my crossbowmen?”
No one could answer—of course. All was in disarray. The Mandate filth had obliterated his entire command. The Emperor’s
own standard
had vanished in an eruption of fire. The sacred standard destroyed! He turned from the spectacle, scanned the surrounding fields and pastures. Kidruhil fled to the south—fled! Three of his Columns had halted, while the phalanxes of the farthest, the Nasueret, actually seemed to be withdrawing.
They thought he was dead.
Laughing, he pressed his way through the clutch of soldiers, opened his bloodied arms to the far-flung ranks of the Imperial Army. He hesitated at the sight of white-garbed horsemen cresting the far rise, but only for a heartbeat.
“Your Emperor has survived!”
he roared.
“The Lion of Kiyuth lives!”
Flames, tongues wrapped about golden tongues, spitting plumes of smoke into the sky.
Without any apparent signal, the Thunyeri began advancing, hundreds of them, spilling into the trenches, climbing debris slopes, leaping through windows stranded in solitary walls. They raised no battle cry. Like wolves, they floated soundlessly forward.
The Cishaurim recollected themselves. Gouts of light plummeted across the smashed landscape, fell among the rushing Norsirai warriors. Keening screams. Shadows thrashing in boiling light. For heartbeats, all the Grandmaster could do was stare dumbfounded. He saw one barbarian, his beard and hair aflame, stumble across the pitch of fallen walls, still holding a Circumfix banner high.
Without warning, the deluge found Eleäzaras once again, arcs of inchoate energy that cracked and shattered his Wards. He cried out his song, propping and renewing, all the while knowing it would not be enough. How had their foemen become so strong?
But then the dread lights were halved, then halved yet again. Gasping, Eleäzaras glimpsed the giant Yalgrota, soot-blackened and blood-smeared, heaving Fanfarokar into the air by the throat. The asps flailed. Fist closed about a Chorae, the Thunyeri giant hammered the shaven skull into sopping ruin. Eleäzaras whirled, searching the heaped darkness for threats, saw Seökti floating backward before a rush of black shadows … toward the fires that fenced the sloped foundations of the Sacred Heights. He saw the remaining cadres of his brothers—so few!—light up in renewed fury.
“Fight!” he thundered in a sorcerous voice. “Fight, Schoolmen,
fight
!”
Out of his entire cadre, only one of his shield-bearers remained, cringing at his feet. He had no idea what had happened to the others.
Cursing the fool, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires stepped into the smoke-rent sky.
The white roar of battle.
Felled by heathen arrows, men toppled from the heights of the aqueduct onto the straining masses below. Swords and scimitars rising and falling, throwing blood into black skies. Shields braced against the necks of maddened horses. Astonished men, gauntlets pressed against mortal wounds. Raging men, hacking and hammering at the crush before them. Weeping men, dragging the lolling corpses of their lords.
Then the Fanim fell back, leaving the fallen curled and stretched across the ground behind them. They retreated as waters might from the breakers. All along the Skilura Aqueduct, the Inrithi roared in exultation. One of the Numaineiri stepped forward and, waving his sword back and forth, cried, “Wait! You forgot your blood!”
Hundreds laughed.
The dead were culled from the ranks. Messengers were dispatched along the rear of the line. For seven seasons the Men of the Tusk had lived and breathed war. The routines seemed as near to them as their bones and blood. More Inrithi climbed to the rutted heights of what had become their wall, where the sight of the Fanim massing and reforming across the fields stole their breath.
Horns signalled. Someone, somewhere, resumed their song.
We shall raise glory to the morrow,
we shall bring fury to the now.
Out of bowshot, the Fanim congregated anew about their bright banners. For a short time, only the south saw battle as Ansacer led his cohorts, men as hard-bitten as the idolaters, up the pastures that ramped the Shrine of Azoreah. Though dreadfully outnumbered, Lord Gotian and his Shrial Knights sailed down the slopes toward him.
“God,”
the warrior monks cried,
“wills it!”
And they met, hammer to hammer. Along the length of the aqueduct, the Men of the Tusk cheered at the sight of heathen fleeing back down the slopes.
Then the rhythm of the drums slowed, and with a clash of cymbals the great masses of heathen before them began trotting forward. The first of the Inrithi arrows climbed into the sky, fired by the Agmundrmen with their powerful yew bows. The archers of other nations soon joined them, though it seemed their volleys fell for naught into the slow-advancing tide.

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