The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  Question after question. Nothing repeated. No ground covered twice. And with each answer, it seemed to Achamian that he exchanged guesses for true insight, and abstractions for recovered moments of his life. Kellhus, he realized, was a student who taught even as he learned, and Achamian had never known another like him. Not Inrau, not even Proyas. The more he answered the man, the more Kellhus seemed to hold the answer to his own life.

  Who am I? he would often think, listening to Kellhus’s melodious voice. What do you see?

  And then there were the questions regarding the Old Wars. Like most Mandate Schoolmen, Achamian found it easy to mention the Apocalypse and difficult to discuss it—very difficult. There was the pain of reliving the horror, of course. To speak of the Apocalypse was to wrestle heartbreak into words—an impossible task. And there was shame as well, as though he indulged some humiliating obsession. Too many men had laughed.

  But with Kellhus the difficulty was compounded by the fact of the man’s blood. He was an Anasûrimbor. How does one describe the end of the world to its unwitting messenger? At times, Achamian feared he might gag on the irony. And always he would think: My School! Why do I betray my School?

  “Tell me of the No-God,” Kellhus said one afternoon.

  As often happened when they crossed flat pasture, the long lines had broken from the road, and men fanned across the grasses. Some even doffed their sandals and boots and danced, as though finding second wind in unburdened feet. Achamian, who’d been laughing at their antics, was caught entirely off guard.

  Now he shuddered. Not so very long ago that name—the No-God—had referred to something distant and dead.

  “You hail from Atrithau,” Achamian replied, “and you want me to tell you of the No-God?”

  Kellhus shrugged. “We read The Sagas, as you do. Our bards sing their innumerable lays, as do yours. But you … You’ve seen these things.”

  No, Achamian wanted to say, Seswatha has seen these things. Seswatha.

  Instead he studied the distance, gathering his thoughts. He clutched his hands, which felt as light as balsa.

  You’ve seen these things. You …

  “He has, as you likely know, many names. The Men of ancient Kûniüri called him Mog-Pharau, from which we derive ‘No-God.’ In ancient Kyraneas, he was simply called Tsurumah, the ‘Hated One.’ The Nonmen of Ishoriol called him—with the peculiar poetry that belongs to all their names—Cara-Sincurimoi, the ‘Angel of Endless Hunger’ … He is well named. Never has the world known a greater evil … A greater peril.”

  “What is he, then? An unclean spirit?”

  “No. Many demons have walked this world. If the rumours about the Scarlet Spires are true, some walk this world still. No, he is more and he is less …”

  Achamian fell silent.

  “Perhaps,” the Prince of Atrithau ventured, “we shouldn’t speak—”

  “I’ve seen him, Kellhus. As much as any man can, I’ve seen him … Not far from here, at a place called the Plains of Mengedda, the shattered hosts of Kyraneas and her allies hoisted their pennants anew, determined to die grappling the Foe. That was two thousand years ago.”

  Achamian laughed bitterly, lowering his face. “I’d forgotten …”

  Kellhus watched him intently. “Forgotten what?”

  “That the Holy War would be crossing the Plains of Mengedda. That I would soon trod earth that had witnessed the No-God’s death …” He looked to the southern hills. Soon the Unaras Spur, which marked the ends of the Inrithi world, would resolve from the horizon. And on the far side …

  “How could I’ve forgotten?”

  “There’s so much to remember,” Kellhus said. “Too much.”

  “Which means too much has been forgotten,” Achamian snapped, unwilling to absolve himself of this oversight. I need my wits! The very world …

  “You are too …” Kellhus began, then trailed.

  “Too what? Too harsh? You don’t understand what it was like! Every infant stillborn for eleven years—for eleven years, Kellhus! Ever since the No-God’s awakening, every womb a grave … And you could feel him—no matter where you were. He was an ever-present horror in every heart. You need only look to the horizon, and you would know his direction. He was a shadow, an intimation of doom …

  “The High North had been laid waste—I need not recite that woe. Mehtsonc, the mighty capital of Kyraneas, had been overthrown the month before. Every hearthstone had been cracked. Every idol had been smashed. Every wife violated. All the great nations had fallen … So little remained, Kellhus! So few survived!

  “With their vassals and allies from the south, the Kyraneans awaited the Foe. Seswatha stood at the right hand of the Kyranean Great King, Anaxophus V. They’d become fast friends years before, when Celmomas had summoned all the lords of Eärwa to his Ordeal, the doomed Holy War meant to destroy the Consult before they could awaken Tsurumah. Together they watched his approach …”

  Tsuramah …

  Achamian abruptly stopped, turning to the north. “Imagine,” he said, opening his arms to the sky. “The day wasn’t unlike this, though the air smelled of wild blossoms … Imagine! A great shroud of thunderheads, as broad as the horizon and as black as crow, boiling across this sky, spilling toward us like hot blood over glass. I remember threads of lightning flashing among the hills. And beneath the eaves of the storm, great cohorts of Scylvendi galloping to the east and the west, intent on enveloping our flanks. And behind them, loping as fast as dogs, legions upon legions of Sranc, howling … howling …”

  Kellhus placed a friendly hand upon his shoulder. “You needn’t tell me this,” he said.

  Achamian stared at him blankly, blinking tears from his eyes. “No. I need to tell you this, Kellhus. I need you to know. For this, more than anything else, is who I am … Do you understand?”

  His eyes shining, Kellhus nodded.

  “The dark swept over us,” Achamian continued, “swallowed the sun. The Scylvendi struck first: mounted skirmishers harried our lines with archery, while divisions of bronze-armoured lancers swept into our flanks. When the screen of skirmishers thinned and withdrew, it seemed all the world had become Sranc. Masses of them, draped in human skins, bounding through the grasses, over hummocks. The Kyraneans lowered their spears and drew up their great shields.

  “There are no words, Kellhus, for the dread and determination that moved us. We fought with reckless abandon, intent only on spitting our dying breath against the Foe. We sang no hymns, intoned no prayers—we’d forsworn these things. Instead, we sang our own dirges, bitter laments for our people, our race. We knew that after we passed only the toll we exacted from our foe would survive to sing for us!

  “Then from nowhere, it seemed, dragons dropped from the clouds. Dragons, Kellhus! Wracu. Ancient Skafra, his hide scarred from a thousand battles; magnificent Skuthula, Skogma, Ghoset; all those who’d survived the arrows and sorceries of the High North. The Magi of Kyraneas and Shigek stepped into the sky and closed with the beasts.”

  Achamian stared into the vacant distance, overcome by images.

  “Just south of here,” he said, shaking his head. “Two thousand years ago.”

  “What happened next?”

  Achamian stared at Kellhus. “The impossible. I … no, Seswatha … Seswatha himself struck down Skafra. Skuthula the Black was driven away, grievously wounded. The Kyraneans and their allies stood like breakers against a heaving sea, throwing back wave after black-hearted wave. For a moment, we almost dared rejoice. Almost …”

  “Then he came,” Kellhus said.

  Achamian nodded, swallowed. “Then he came … Mog-Pharau. In that much, the poet of The Sagas speaks true. The Scylvendi withdrew; the Sranc relented. A great rasping chatter passed through them, swelling into an impossible, keening roar. The Bashrag began beating the ground with their hammers. A churning blackness resolved on the horizon, a great whirlwind, like a black umbilicus joining earth and cloud. And everyone knew. Everyone simply knew
.

  “The No-God was coming. Mog-Pharau walked, and the world thundered. The Sranc began shrieking. Many cast themselves to the ground, scratching at their eyes, gouging … I remember having difficulty breathing … I had joined Anakka—Anaxophus—in his chariot, and I remember him gripping my shoulders. I remember him crying something I couldn’t hear … Our horses reared in their harnesses, screaming. Men about us fell to their knees, clutching their ears. Great clouds of dust rolled over us …”

  And then the voice, spoken through the throats of a hundred thousand Sranc.

  WHAT DO YOU SEE?

  I don’t understand …

  I MUST KNOW WHAT YOU SEE

  Death. Wretched death!

  TELL ME

  Even you cannot hide from what you don’t know! Even you!

  WHAT AM I?

  “Doomed,” Seswatha whispered to the thunder. He clutched the Kyranean Great King by the shoulder. “Now, Anaxophus! Strike now!”

  I CANNOT S—

  A thread of silver light, swaying across the spiralling heights, flashing across the Carapace. A crack that made ears bleed. Everywhere, raining debris. The anguished wail of innumerable inhuman throats.

  The whirlwind undone, like the smoke of a snuffed candle, spinning into oblivion.

  Seswatha fell to his knees, weeping, crying out in grief and exultation. The impossible! The impossible! Beside him, Anaxophus dropped the Heron Spear, placed an arm about him.

  “Are you okay, Achamian?”

  Achamian? Who was Achamian?

  “Come,” Kellhus said. “Stand up.”

  A stranger’s firm hands. Where was Anaxophus?

  “Achamian?”

  Again. It’s happening again.

  “Y-yes?”

  “What is the Heron Spear?”

  Achamian didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Rather, he walked silently for a long while, brooding over the moments before his tale had overwhelmed him, over the hideous loss of self and now—which seemed species of the same thing. Then he thought of Kellhus, who walked discreetly by his side. The overthrow of the No-God was a tale often referred to and rarely told by Mandate Schoolmen—in fact, Achamian couldn’t remember ever telling it, not even to Xinemus. And yet he had yielded it to Kellhus thoughtlessly—even demanded that he hear it. Why?

  He’s doing something to me.

  Stupefied, Achamian found himself staring at the man with the candour of a sleepy child.

  Who are you?

  Kellhus responded without embarrassment—such a thing seemed too small for him. He smiled as though Achamian were in fact a child, an innocent incapable of wishing him ill. The look reminded Achamian of Inrau, who’d so often seen him for what he wasn’t: a good man.

  Achamian looked away, his throat aching. Must I give you up, too?

  A student like no other.

  A handful of soldiers had started a hymn to the Latter Prophet, and the surrounding rumble of talk and laughter trailed into deep-throated song. Without warning, Kellhus stopped and knelt in the grasses.

  “What are you doing?” Achamian asked, more sharply than he would have wished.

  “Removing my sandals,” the Prince of Atrithau said. “Come, let’s bare our feet with the others.”

  Not sing with the others. Not rejoice with them. Just walk.

  Lessons, Achamian would later realize. While Achamian taught, Kellhus continually gave lessons. He was almost certain of it, even though he had no inkling as to what those lessons might be. Intimations of trust, perhaps, of openness, possibly. Somehow, through the course of teaching Kellhus, Achamian had become a student of a different kind. And all he knew for sure was that his education was incomplete.

  But as the days passed, this revelation simply complicated his anguish. One night he prepared the Cants of Calling no less than three times, only to have them collapse into mumbled curses and recriminations. The Mandate, his School—his brothers—must be told! An Anasûrimbor had returned! The Celmomian Prophecy was more than some backwater of Seswatha’s Dreams. Many saw it as their culmination, as the very reason Seswatha had passed from life into his disciples’ nightmares. The Great Warning. And yet he, Drusas Achamian, hesitated—no, more than hesitated, wagered. Sweet Sejenus … He wagered his School, his race, his world, on a man he’d known no more than a fortnight.

  Such madness! He played number-sticks with the end of the world! One man, frail and foolish—who was Drusas Achamian to take such risks? By what right had he shouldered such a burden? What right?

  One more day, he told himself, pulling on his beard and his hair. One more day …

  Kellhus found him in the general exodus from the camp the morning after this resolution, and despite the man’s good humour, hours passed before Achamian relented and began answering his questions. Too many things assailed him. Unspoken things.

  “You worry about our fortunes,” Kellhus finally said, his look solemn. “You fear that the Holy War won’t succeed …”

  Of course Achamian feared for the Holy War. He’d witnessed too many defeats—in his dreams, anyway. But despite the thousands of armed men walking in his periphery, the Holy War was far from his thoughts. Even so, he pretended otherwise. He nodded without looking, as though making a painful admission. More unvoiced reproaches. More self-flagellation. With other men, small deceptions seemed both natural and necessary, but with Kellhus they … they itched.

  “Seswatha …” Achamian began, hesitating. “Seswatha was little more than a boy when the first wars against Golgotterath were waged. In those early days, not even the wisest of the ancients understood what was at stake. And how could they? They were Norsirai, and the world was their dominion. Their barbaric kinsmen had been subdued. The Sranc had been driven into the mountains. Not even the Scylvendi dared their wrath. Their poetry, their sorcery, and their craft were sought across all of Eärwa, even by the Nonmen who had once tutored them. Foreign emissaries wept at the beauty of their cities. In courts as far away as Kyraneas and Shir men adopted their manner, their cuisine, their style of dress …

  “They were the very measure of their time—like us. Everything was less, and they were always more. Even after Shauriatas, the Grandmaster of the Mangaecca—the Consult—awakened the No-God, no one truly believed the end had come. Each heartbreak seemed more impossible than the last. Even the Fall of Kûniüri, the mightiest of their nations, barely shook the conviction that somehow, some way, the High North would prevail. Only as disaster piled upon disaster did they come to understand …”

  Shielding his eyes he looked into the Prince’s face. “Glory doesn’t vouchsafe glory. The unthinkable can always come to pass.”

  The end is coming … I must decide.

  Kellhus nodded, squinting against the sun. “Everything has its measure,” he said. “Every man …” He looked directly at Achamian. “Every decision.”

  For an instant Achamian feared his heart might stop. A coincidence … It has to be!

  Without warning, Kellhus bent and retrieved a small stone. He stared at the slope for several moments, as though searching for something, a bird or a hare, to kill. Then he threw it, the sleeve of his silk cassock snapping like leather. The stone whistled through the air, then skipped along the edge of a chapped-stone shelf. A rock teetered forward, then plummeted, cracking against steeper faces, releasing whole skirts of gravel, dust, and debris. Shouts of warning echoed from below.

  “Did you intend that?” Achamian asked, his breath tight.

  Kellhus shook his head. “No …” He shot Achamian a quizzical look. “But then that was your point, wasn’t it? The unforeseen, the catastrophic, follows hard upon all our actions.”

  Achamian wasn’t so sure he’d even had a point. “And decisions,” he said, as though speaking through a stranger’s mouth.

  “Yes,” Kellhus replied. “Decisions.”

  That night Achamian prepared the Cants of Calling even though he knew he’d be unable to utter the first word. What right have you? he c
ried to himself. What right? You who are so small … Kellhus was the Harbinger. The Messenger. Soon, Achamian knew, the horror of his nights would burst across the waking world. Soon the great cities—Momemn, Carythusal, Aöknyssus—would burn. Achamian had seen them burn before, many times. They would fall as their ancient sisters had fallen: Trysë, Mehtsonc, Myclai. Screaming. Wailing to smoke-shrouded skies … They would be the new names of woe.

  What right? What could justify such a decision?

  “Who are you, Kellhus?” he murmured in the solitary darkness of his tent. “I risk everything for you … Everything!” So why?

  Because there was something … something about him. Something that bid Achamian to wait. A sense of impossible becoming … But what? What was he becoming? And was it enough? Enough to warrant betraying his School? Enough to throw the number-sticks of Apocalypse? Could anything be enough?

  Other than the truth. The truth was always enough, wasn’t it?

  He looked at me and he knew. Throwing the stone, Achamian realized, had been another lesson. Another clue. But for what? That disaster would follow if he made the wrong decision? That disaster would follow no matter what his decision?

  There was no end, it seemed, to his torment.