The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  No murder could be more total.

  “Well then,” the young Earl said, looking off as though distracted.

  “Allow me a few words with the Knight-Commander,” Kellhus said.

  Though he scowled as he spoke, Athjeäri agreed to meet him at Saubon’s tent in a short time. “Run along,” Sarcellus said, as the Earl impatiently shoved his way among his shouting kinsmen.

  A keening shriek pealed through the air. Kellhus saw the larger gandoki player stumble and fall beneath the fists of several Galeoth who’d broken from the crowd. But the screaming came from his smaller opponent. Kellhus glimpsed the man between shadowy legs, blistered from the fire, smoking coals still embedded in his right shoulder and arm.

  Others came rushing to the larger man’s defence … A knife flashed. Blood slopped across the packed ground.

  Kellhus glanced at Sarcellus, who stood rigid, utterly absorbed by the mayhem unfolding before them. Pupils dilated. Arrested breath. Quickened pulse …

  It possesses involuntary responses.

  Its right hand, Kellhus noted, lingered near his groin, as though straining against some overpowering masturbatory compulsion. Its thumb stroked its forefinger.

  Another cry rang out.

  The thing called Sarcellus fairly trembled with ardour. These things hungered, Kellhus realized. They ached.

  Of all the rude animal impulses that coerced and battered the intellect, none possessed the subtlety or profundity of carnal lust. In some measure, it tinctured nearly every thought, impelled nearly every act. This was what made Serwë so invaluable. Without realizing, every man at Xinemus’s fire—with the exception of the Scylvendi—knew they best wooed her by pandering to Kellhus. And they could do naught but woo her.

  But Sarcellus, it was clear, ached for a different species of congress. One involving suffering and violence. Like the Sranc, these skin-spies continually yearned to rut with their knives. They shared the same maker, one who had harnessed the venal beast within their slaves, sharpened it as one might a spear point.

  The Consult.

  “Galeoth,” Sarcellus remarked with an offhand grin, “are forever cutting their own throats, forever culling their own herd.”

  The brawl had been cut short by the ranting of Earl Anfirig. Carried hanging from arms and legs, three bloodied men were being hurried from the fire.

  “‘They strive,’” Kellhus said, quoting Inri Sejenus, “‘for they know not what. So they cry villainy, and claim others stand in their way’ …”

  Somehow the Consult knew he’d been instrumental to the Emperor’s discovery of Skeaös. The question was whether his role had been incidental or otherwise. If they suspected he could somehow see their skin-spies, they would be forced to balance the immediate threat of exposure against the need to know how he could see them. I must walk the line between, make myself a mystery they must solve …

  Kellhus stared at the thing for a bold moment. When it feigned a scowl, he said, “No, please, indulge me … There’s something about you … About your face.”

  “Is that why you watched me so in the amphitheatre?”

  For a heartbeat, Kellhus opened himself to the legion within. He needed more information. He needed to know, which meant he needed a weakness, a vulnerability …

  This Sarcellus is new.

  “Was I that indiscreet?” Kellhus said. “I apologize … I was thinking of what you said to me that night in the Unaras at the ruined shrine … You made quite an impression.”

  “And what did I say?”

  It acknowledges its ignorance as any man would, any man with nothing to hide … These things are well-trained.

  “You don’t recall?”

  The imposter shrugged. “I say many things.” With a smirk it added, “I have a beautiful voice …”

  Kellhus simulated a frown. “Are you playing with me? Playing some kind of game?”

  The counterfeit face clenched into a scowl. “I assure you, I’m not. Just what did I say?”

  “That something had happened,” Kellhus began apprehensively, “that the endless … hunger, I think you said …”

  Something like a twitch—too faint for world-born eyes—flickered across its expression.

  “Yes,” Kellhus continued. “The endless hunger …”

  “What about it?”

  A near imperceptible tightening of pitch, quickening of cadence.

  “You told me you weren’t what you seemed. You told me you weren’t a Shrial Knight.”

  Another twitch, like a spider answering a shiver through its silk.

  These things can be read.

  “You deny this?” Kellhus pressed. “Are you telling me you don’t remember?”

  The face had become as impassive as a palm. “What else did I say?”

  It’s confused … Uncertain as to what to do.

  “Things I could scarcely credit at the time. You said you’d been assigned to coordinate observation of the Mandate Schoolman, and to that end you’d seduced his lover, Esmenet. You said that I was in great danger, that your masters thought I had some hand in some disaster in the Emperor’s court. You said that you were prepared to help …”

  The creases and wrinkles of its expression jerked into a network of hairline cracks, as though sucking humid night air.

  “Did I tell you why I confessed all this?”

  “Because you’d hungered for it too … But what’s this? You really don’t remember, do you?”

  “I remember.”

  “Then what is this? Why have you become so … so coy? You seem different.”

  “Perhaps I’ve reconsidered.”

  So much. In the span of moments, Kellhus had confirmed his hypotheses regarding the Consult’s immediate interests, and he’d uncovered the rudiments of what he needed to read these creatures. But most important, he’d sown the threat of betrayal. How could Kellhus possibly know what he knew, they would ask, unless the original Sarcellus had actually told him? Whatever their ends, the Consult depended, through and through, upon total secrecy. One defection could undo everything. If they feared for the reliability of their field agents—these skin-spies—they would be forced to restrict their autonomy and to proceed with more caution.

  In other words, they would be forced to yield the one commodity Kellhus required more than any other: time. Time to dominate this Holy War. Time to find Anasûrimbor Moënghus.

  He was one of the Conditioned, Dûnyain, and he followed the shortest path. The Logos.

  The surrounding crowds had settled into rumbling conversations, and both Kellhus and Sarcellus looked to the bonfire. A towering Gesindalman, his hair bound into a war-knot, raised the gandoki sticks high against the night sky, crying out for more challengers. Laughing, the thing called Sarcellus seized Kellhus by the forearm and pulled him into the raucous circle. The crowd began thundering anew.

  It believed me.

  Did it improvise? Was it acting out of panic? Or was this its intent all along? There was no question of refusing the challenge, not in the company of warlike men. The resulting loss of face would be crippling.

  Washed by the heat of the bonfire, they stripped, Kellhus to the linen kilt he wore beneath his blue-silk cassock, Sarcellus to nothing, in the fashion of Nansur athletes. The Galeoth howled in ridicule, but the thing called Sarcellus seemed oblivious. They stood a length apart, appraising each other while two Agmundrmen bound their wrists to the poles. The Gesindalman jerked each pole to ensure it was secure, then without a glance at either of them, he cried, “Gaaaandoch!”

  Shadow.

  Bare skin yellow in the firelight, they circled each other, lightly grasping the ends of their poles. Though still roaring, the crowds trailed into silence, fell away altogether, until there was only one figure, Sarcellus, occupying one place …

  Kellhus.

  Sheets of muscle flexing beneath fire-shining skin, many anchored and connected in inhuman ways. Dilated eyes watching, studying, from a knuckled face. Steady puls
e. Tumid phallus, hardening. A mouth made of gracile fingers, moving, speaking …

  “We are old, Anasûrimbor, very, very old. Age is power in this world.”

  He was bound to a beast, Kellhus realized, to something, according to Achamian, begot in the bowels of Golgotterath. An abomination of the Old Science, the Tekne … Possibilities bloomed, like branches twining through the open air of the improbable.

  “Very many,” it hissed, “have thought to play the game you now play.”

  Losing was the simplest solution, but weakness incited contempt, invited aggression.

  “We’ve had a thousand thousand foes through the millennia, and we’ve made shrieking agonies of their hearths, wildernesses of their nations, mantles of their skins …”

  But defeating this creature could render Kellhus too much a threat.

  “All of them, Anasûrimbor, and you are no different.”

  He must strike some kind of balance. But how?

  Kellhus thrust with his right, heaved with his left, tried to draw Sarcellus off-balance. Nothing. It was as though the poles had been harnessed to a bull. Preternatural reflexes. And strong—very strong.

  Strategies revised. Alternatives revisited. The thing called Sarcellus grinned, his phallus now curved like a bow against his belly. To be aroused by battle or competition, Kellhus knew, occasioned great honour among the Nansur.

  How strong is it?

  Kellhus leaned into the poles, elbows back, as though holding a wheel-barrow, and pushed. Sarcellus adopted the same stance. Muscle strained, knotted, gleaming as though oiled. The ash poles creaked.

  “Who are you?” Kellhus cried under his breath.

  Sarcellus grunted, its fists shaking, sinking to its waist, then it yanked. Kellhus skidded forward. The instant of his imbalance, it jerked around, as though throwing a discus. Kellhus caught himself, heaved back on both poles. Then they were dancing around the clearing, jerking and thrusting, matching move with countermove, each the perfect shadow of the other …

  Between heartbeats, Kellhus tracked the shift and sway of its centre of balance, an abstract point marked by the peak of its erection. He observed repetitions, recognized patterns, tested anticipations, all the while analyzing the possibilities of the game, the manifold lines of move and consequence. He restricted himself to an elegant yet limited repertoire of moves, luring it into habits, reflexive responses …

  “What do you want?” he cried.

  Then he improvised.

  From a near crouch, he kicked down on the left pole while throwing up his left arm, and punching out with his right. Its right hand slammed to the earth, Sarcellus doubled forward and was thrown back. For an instant it resembled a man bound to a falling boulder …

  It kicked free of the ground, trying to somersault back to its feet. Kellhus yanked the poles backward, tried to slam it onto its stomach. Somehow it managed to pull its left leg, knee to chest, underneath in time. Its right foot scooped into the fire …

  A shower of ash and coals went streaming into the air, not to blind Kellhus, but to obscure the two of them, he realized, from the watching Galeoth …

  It jerked both arms back and out, thrust itself forward between the poles, kicked. Kellhus blocked with his own shin and ankle—once, twice …

  It means to kill me … An unfortunate accident while playing a barbaric Galeoth game.

  Kellhus jerked his arms inward and across, caught the thing’s third kick with the bisecting poles. For a heartbeat, he held the advantage in balance. He thrust it backward, heaved it nude into the golden flames …

  Perhaps if I injure …

  Then yanked it forward.

  A mistake. Unharmed, Sarcellus landed running, barrelled Kellhus backward with inhuman strength, slammed him into the packed Galeoth masses, bowling men over and forcing others to scramble clear. Once, twice, Kellhus almost fell, then his back slammed against something heavy—a tent frame. It collapsed with a crack and the wedge tent went down, under, and they were in the darkness beyond the enclosure—where the thing, Kellhus realized, hoped to kill.

  This must end!

  His feet caught hard earth. Bracing his legs, grasping the poles, he dipped and wrenched upward, wheeling Sarcellus high into the night air. The thing’s astonishment lasted only a heartbeat, and it managed to crack one of the poles with a kick … Kellhus slapped it to the ground like a flag.

  The place became a man, slick with perspiration, breathing deep.

  The first of the Galeoth sprinted over the demolished tent, calling for torches, stumbling in the sudden darkness. They saw Sarcellus pressing himself to his hands and knees at Kellhus’s feet. As astounded as they were, they bawled out Kellhus’s name, acclaiming him victor.

  What have I done, Father?

  As they unbound his wrists, slapping him on the back and swearing they’d never seen the like, Kellhus could only watch Sarcellus, who slowly pulled himself to his feet.

  Bones should have been broken. But then, Kellhus now knew, it was a thing without bones, a thing of cartilage …

  Like a shark.

  Saubon watched Athjeäri stare in horror at the bones scattered across the earthen floor. The tent was small, far smaller than the garish pavilions used by the other Great Names. Beneath the blue and red-dyed canvas, there was room enough only for a beaten field cot and a small camp table, where the Galeoth Prince sat, so very deep into his cups …

  Outside the revellers howled and laughed—the fools!

  “But he’s here, Uncle,” the young Earl of Gaenri said. “He waits …”

  “Send him away!” Saubon cried. He loved his nephew, dearly, couldn’t look at him without seeing his beloved sister’s beautiful face. She’d protected him from Papa. She’d loved him before she died …

  But had she known him?

  Kussalt knew—

  “But Uncle, you asked—”

  “I care not what I asked!”

  “I don’t understand … What’s happened to you?”

  To be known by one man and to be hated! Saubon leapt from his seat, seized his nephew about the shoulders, cowed him the way only one of Eryeat’s sons could. How he wanted to cry out the truth, to confess everything to this boy, this man with his sister’s eyes—his sister’s blood! But he wasn’t her … He didn’t know him.

  And he would despise him if he did.

  “I cannot! I cannot have him see me like this! Can’t you see?”

  No one must know! No one!

  “Like what?”

  “This!” Saubon bawled, thrusting the young man back.

  Athjeäri caught his balance and stood dumbstruck, openly hurt. He should have been outraged, Saubon thought. He was the Earl of Gaenri, one of the most powerful men in Galeoth. He should have been infuriated, not appalled …

  Kussalt’s forever-murmuring lips. “I would have you know how much I hate—”

  “Just send him away!” Saubon cried.

  “As you wish,” his nephew murmured. Glancing once again at the bones prodding through the earth, he withdrew through the leather flaps.

  Bones. Like so many little tusks.

  No one! Not even him!

  Though it was late, sleep was out of the question. It seemed to Eleäzaras that he’d been asleep for weeks, now that High Ainon and the Scarlet Spires had finally rejoined the Holy War. For what was sleep, if not unconsciousness of the greater world? A profound ignorance.

  To remedy this, Eleäzaras had set Iyokus, his Master of Spies, to work the instant their palanquins had set ground on the Plains of Mengedda. The battlefield of five days previous needed to be surveyed, and witnesses interviewed, to determine what tactics the Cishaurim had used, and how the Inrithi had bested them. The various informants and spies they’d placed throughout the Holy War also had to be contacted and questioned, both to ascertain how things stood in general now that they marched through heathen territory, and to pursue the matter of these new Cishaurim spies.

  Faceless spies. Spies w
ithout the Mark.

  He awaited Iyokus outside his pavilion, pacing by torchlight, while his secretaries and Javreh bodyguards watched from a discreet distance. After spending weeks entombed in his palanquin, he found himself despising enclosed spaces. Everything seemed to bind and constrict these days.

  After a time, Iyokus emerged from the darkness, a ghoul in flashing crimson.

  “Walk with me,” he said to the chanv addict.

  “Through the encampment?”

  “You fear riots?” the Grandmaster asked somewhat incredulously. “After losing so many to the Cishaurim, I’d assumed they’d appreciate a few blasphemers in their midst.”

  “No … I thought we might visit the ruins instead. They say Mengedda is older than Shir …”

  “Ah, Iyokus the Antiquarian,” Eleäzaras laughed. “I keep forgetting …” Though he personally had no interest in seeing the ruins—he thought antiquarianism a defect of character proper to Mandate Schoolmen—he felt curiously indulgent. Besides, the dead made for good company, he supposed, when planning one’s very survival.

  Instructing his bodyguards to remain behind, he strolled with Iyokus into the darkness.

  “So what did you find?” he asked.

  “After we illuminated the fields,” Iyokus said, “things fell into place …” Caught from the side by passing torchlight, his pigment-deprived eyes seemed to glow a momentary red. “Most unsettling, seeing the work of sorcery without the Mark. I had forgotten …”

  “One more reason for this outrageous risk, Iyokus: to stamp out the Psûkhe …” A sorcery they couldn’t see. A metaphysics they couldn’t comprehend… What more did they need?

  “Indeed,” the linen-skinned man replied unconvincingly. “What we know is this: according to every report, Galeoth and non-Galeoth, Prince Saubon singlehandedly repulsed the Padirajah’s Coyauri—”

  “Impressive,” Eleäzaras said.

  “As impressive as it is unlikely,” the ever-sceptical Master of Spies said. “But the point is moot. What matters is that the Fanim were then chased by the Shrial Knights. That, I think, was the decisive factor.”

  “How so?”

  “The scorched turf corresponding to Gotian’s charge doesn’t begin at Saubon’s lines along the ravine, where one might expect, but rather some seventy paces out … I think the Coyauri, as they fled, actually screened the Shrial Knights from the Cishaurim … They were only a hundred or so paces away when the psûkari began Scourging them.”