The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  The Sareotic Library was a warren of pitch-black hallways that smelled of dust and the ghost of rotting books. Englobed by light, Achamian wandered through the blackness and filled his arms with treasures. Never had he seen such a collection. Never had he witnessed so many ruined thoughts.

  Out of the thousands of volumes, and thousands upon thousands of scrolls, Achamian would be surprised if more than several hundred could be salvaged. He found nothing that even hinted at the Gnosis, but he did, nevertheless, find several things of peculiar interest.

  He found one book by Ajencis he’d never seen before, but it was written in Vaparsi, an ancient Nilnameshi language he knew well enough only to decipher the title: The Fourth Dialogue of the Movements of the Planets as They Pertain to … something or another. But the fact that this was a dialogue meant that it was exceedingly important. Very few of the great Kyranean philosopher’s dialogues survived.

  He found a heap of clay tablets written in the cuneiform script of ancient Shigek and draped by cobwebs woollen with dust. He retrieved one that seemed in good shape and decided he would try to smuggle it out, even though it might be a granary inventory for all he knew. It would make a good gift, he thought, for Xinemus.

  And he found other tomes and scrolls—curiosities mostly. An account of the Age of Warring Cities by a historian he’d never encountered before. A strange, vellum-paged book, called On the Temples and Their Iniquities, which made him wonder if the Sareots might not have had heretical leanings. And some others.

  After a time, both his excitement at finding things intact and his outrage at finding them destroyed flagged. He tired, and finding a stone bench in a niche, he arranged his discoveries and his humble belongings around him as though they were totems in a magic circle, then ate some stale bread and drank wine from his skin. He thought of Esmenet while he ate, cursed himself for his sudden longing.

  He did his best not to think of Kellhus.

  He replaced his sputtering candle and decided to read. Alone with books, yet again. Suddenly he smiled. Again? No, at last …

  A book was never “read.” Here, as elsewhere, language betrayed the true nature of the activity. To say that a book was read was to make the same mistake as the gambler who crowed about winning as though he’d taken it by force of hand or resolve. To toss the number-sticks was to seize a moment of helplessness, nothing more. But to open a book was by far the more profound gamble. To open a book was not only to seize a moment of helplessness, not only to relinquish a jealous handful of heartbeats to the unpredictable mark of another man’s quill, it was to allow oneself to be written. For what was a book if not a long consecutive surrender to the movements of another’s soul?

  Achamian could think of no abandonment of self more profound.

  He read, and was moved to chuckle by ironies a thousand years dead, and to reflect pensively on claims and hopes that had far outlived the age of their import.

  He wouldn’t remember falling asleep.

  There was a dragon in his dream, old, hoary, terrible—and malevolent beyond compare. Skuthula, whose limbs were like knotted iron, and whose black wings, when he descended, were broad enough to blot half the sky. The great fountain of luminescent fire that vomited from Skuthula’s maw burnt the sand around his Wards to glass. And Seswatha fell to one knee, tasted blood, but the old sorcerer’s head was thrown back, his white hair whipped into ribbons by the wind of beating dragon-wings, and the impossible words thundered like laughter from his incandescent mouth. Needles of piercing light filled the sky …

  But the corners of this scene were crimped, and then suddenly, as though dreams were painted across parchment, it crumpled and was tossed into blackness …

  The blackness of open eyes … Gasping breath. Where was he? The Library, yes … The candle must have gone out.

  But then he realized just what had awakened him. His Wards of Exposure, which he’d maintained ever since joining the Holy—

  Sweet Sejenus … The Scarlet Spires.

  He fumbled in the darkness, gathered his satchel. Quickly, quickly … He stood in the blackness, and peered with different eyes.

  The chamber was long, with low ceilings, and galleried by rows of racks and shelves. The intruders were somewhere near, hastening between queues of mouldering knowledge, closing on him from various points throughout the Library.

  Did they come for the Gnosis? Knowledge ever found itself on the scales of greed, and no knowledge in the Three Seas, perhaps, was as valuable as the Gnosis. But to abduct a Mandate Schoolman in the midst of the Holy War? One would think the Scarlet Spires would have more pressing concerns—like the Cishaurim.

  One would think … But what of the skin-spies? What of the Consult?

  They’d known he was bound to investigate even the rumour of a Gnostic text. And they had known a Library would be where he felt safest. Who would risk such treasures? Certainly not fellow Schoolmen, no matter how ill their will …

  The entire thing, he realized, was an outrageously extravagant trap—a trap that had included Xinemus. What better way to lull an ever suspicious Mandate Schoolman than to dangle the lure through the lips of his most trusted friend?

  Xinemus? No. It couldn’t be.

  Sweet Sejenus …

  This was actually happening!

  Achamian grabbed his satchel and lunged through the blackness, crashed into a heavy rack of scrolls, felt papyrus crumble in his fingers like the mud that skins the bottom of dried puddles. He thrust his satchel into the leafy debris. Quickly, quickly. Then he stumbled back in the direction he’d come.

  They were closer now. Lights smeared the ceiling over the black shelves facing him.

  He backed into the small alcove where he’d snoozed, then began uttering a series of Wards, short strings of impossible thoughts. Light flashed from his lips. Luminescence sheeted the air before him, like the glare of sunlight across mist.

  Dark muttering from somewhere amid the teetering queues—skulking, insinuating words, like vermin gnawing at the walls of the world.

  Then fierce light, transforming, for a heartbeat, the shelves before him into a dawn horizon … Explosion. A geyser of ash and fire.

  The concussion sucked the air from his lungs. The heat cracked the stone of the surrounding walls. But his Wards held.

  Achamian blinked. A moment of relative darkness …

  “Yield Drusas Achamian … You’re overmatched!”

  “Eleäzaras?” he cried. “How many times have you fools tried to wrest the Gnosis from us? Tried and failed!”

  Shallow breath. Hammering heart.

  “Eleäzaras?”

  “You’re doomed, Achamian! Would you doom the riches about you as well?”

  As precious as they were, the words rolled and stacked about him meant nothing. Not now.

  “Don’t do this, Eleäzaras!” he cried in a breaking voice. The stakes! The stakes!

  “It’s already—”

  But Achamian had whispered secrets to his first attacker. Five lines glittered along the gorge of blasted shelves, through smoke and wafting pages. Impact. The air cracked. His unseen foe cried out in astonishment—they always did at the first touch of the Gnosis. Achamian muttered more ancient words of power, more Cants. The Bisecting Planes of Mirseor, to continuously stress an opponent’s Wards. The Odaini Concussion Cants, to stun him, break his concentration. Then the Cirroi Loom …

  Dazzling geometries leapt through the smoke, lines and parabolas of razor light, punching through wood and papyrus, shearing through stone. The Scarlet Schoolman screamed, tried to run. Achamian boiled him in his skin.

  Darkness, save for glowering fires scattered through the ruin. Achamian could hear the other Schoolmen shouting to each other in shock and dismay. He could feel them scramble among the queues, hasten to assemble a Concert.

  “Think on this, Eleäzaras! How many are you willing to sacrifice?”

  Please. Don’t be a—

  The roar of flame. The thunder of topp
ling shelves. Fire broke like foaming surf about his Wards. A blinding flash, illuminating the vast chamber from corner to corner. The crack of thunder. Achamian stumbled to his knees. His Wards groaned in his thoughts.

  He struck back with Inference and Abstraction. He was a Mandate Schoolman, a Gnostic Sorcerer-of-the-Rank, a War-Cant Master. He was as a mask held before the sun. And his voice slapped the distances into char and ruin.

  The hoarded knowledge of the Sareots was blasted and burned. Convections whipped pages into fiery cyclones. Like leathery moths, books spiralled into the debris. Dragon’s fire cascaded between the surviving shelves. Lightning spidered the air, crackled across his defences. The last queues fell, and across the ruin Achamian glimpsed his assailants: seven of them, like silk-scarlet dancers in a field of funeral pyres: the Schoolmen of the Scarlet Spires.

  The glimpse of tempests disgorging bolts of blinding white. The heads of phantom dragons dipping and belching fire. The sweep of burning sparrows. The Great Analogies, shining and ponderous, crashing and thundering about his Wards. And through them, the Abstractions, glittering and instantaneous …

  The Seventh Quyan Theorem. The Ellipses of Thosolankis … He yelled out the impossible words.

  The leftmost Scarlet Schoolman screamed. The ghostly ramparts about him crumbled beneath an arcana of encircling lines. The Library walls behind him exploded outward, and he was puffed like paper into the evening sky.

  For a moment, Achamian abandoned the Cants, began singing to save his Wards.

  Cataracts of hellfire. The floor failed. Great ceilings of stone clapped about him like angry palms to prayer. He fell through fire and rolling, megalithic ruin. But still he sang.

  He was a Scion of Seswatha, a Disciple of Noshainrau the White. He was the slayer of Skafra, mightiest of the Wracu. He had pitched his song against the dread heights of Golgotterath. He had stood proud and impenitent before Mog-Pharau himself …

  Jarring impact. Different footing, like the pitched deck of a ship. Shrugging slabs and heaped ruin away, tossing thundering stone into sky. Plunging through meaning after dark meaning, the hard matter of the world collapsing, falling away like lover’s clothing, all in answer to his singing song.

  And at last the sky, so water-cool when seen from the inferno’s heart.

  And there: the Nail of Heaven, silvering the breast of a rare cloud.

  The Sareotic Library was a furnace in the husk of ragged, free-standing walls. And above, the Scarlet Magi hung as though from wires, and pummelled him with Cant after wicked Cant. The heads of ghostly dragons reared and vomited lakes of fire. Rising and spitting, wracking him with dazzling, bone-snapping fire. Sun after blinding sun set upon him.

  On his knees, burned, bleeding from mouth and eyes, encircled by heaped stone and text, Achamian snarled Ward after Ward, but they cracked and shattered, were pinched away like rotted linen. The very firmament, it seemed, echoed the implacable chorus of the Scarlet Spires. Like angry smiths they punished the anvil.

  And through the madness, Drusus Achamian glimpsed the setting sun, impossibly indifferent, framed by clouds piled rose and orange …

  It was, he thought, a good song.

  Forgive me, Kellhus.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHIGEK

  Men are forever pointing at others, which is why I always follow the knuckle and not the nail.

  —ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN

  A day with no noon,

  A year with no fall,

  Love is forever new,

  Or love is not at all.

  —ANONYMOUS, “ODE TO THE LOSS OF LOSSES”

  Late Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shigek

  There was light.

  “Esmi …”

  She stirred. What was her dream? Yes … Swimming. The pool in the hills above the Battleplain.

  A hand grasped her bare shoulder. A gentle squeeze.

  “Esmi … You must wake up.”

  But she was so warm … She blinked, grimaced when she realized it was still night. Lamplight. Someone carried a lamp. What was Akka doing?

  She rolled onto her back, saw Kellhus kneeling over her, his expression grave. Frowning, she pulled her blanket over her breasts.

  “Wha—” she started, but paused to clear her throat. “What is it?”

  “The Library of the Sareots,” he said in a hollow voice. “It burns.”

  She could only blink at the lamplight.

  “The Scarlet Spires have destroyed it, Esmi.”

  She turned, looking for Achamian.

  Something about Xinemus’s expression struck Proyas to the marrow. He looked away, ran an idle thumb over the lip of his golden wine bowl, which lay empty on the table before him. He stared at the glister of the eagles stamped into its side.

  “And just what would you have me do, Zin?”

  Incredulity and impatience. “Everything in your power!”

  The Marshal had informed him of Achamian’s abduction two days previous—never had Proyas seen him so frantic with worry. At his behest, he’d issued orders for the arrest of Therishut, a baron from the southern marches he only vaguely remembered. Then, he’d ridden to Iothiah, where he demanded and received an audience with Eleäzaras himself. The Grandmaster had been accommodating, but he categorically denied the Marshal’s accusations. He claimed his people had stumbled upon a hidden cell of Cishaurim while investigating the Sareotic Library. “We grieve the loss of two of our own,” he said solemnly.

  When Proyas asked, with all due courtesy, to view the Cishaurim remains, Eleäzaras said: “You can take them if you wish … Have you a sack?”

  You do see, his eyes had said, the futility of what you do.

  But Proyas had seen the futility from the very beginning—even if they could find Therishut. Soon the Holy War would cross the River Sempis and assault Skauras on the South Bank. The Men of the Tusk needed the Scarlet Spires—desperately if what the Scylvendi said was true. What was the life of one man—a blasphemer no less—compared with that need? The God demanded sacrifices …

  Proyas could see the futility—he could scarce see anything else! The difficulty was one of making Xinemus see.

  “Everything in my power?” the Prince repeated. “And what, pray tell, might that be, Zin? What power does a Prince of Conriya hold over the Scarlet Spires?”

  He regretted the impatience in his tone, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Xinemus continued to stand at the ready, as though on parade. “You could call a Council …”

  “Yes, I could, but what purpose would that serve?”

  “Purpose?” Xinemus repeated, obviously horrified. “What purpose would it serve?”

  “Yes. It may be a hard question, but it’s honest.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Xinemus exclaimed. “Achamian isn’t dead and gone! I’m not asking you to avenge him! They’ve taken him, Proyas. Even now, somewhere in Iothiah, they hold him. They ply him in ways you and I cannot imagine. The Scarlet Spires! The Scarlet Spires have Achamian!”

  The Scarlet Spires. For those who lived in the High Ainon’s shadow, they were the very name of dread. Proyas breathed deep. The God had decreed his priorities …

  Faith makes strong.

  “Zin … I know how this torments you. I know you feel responsible, but—”

  “You ungrateful, arrogant, little pissant!” the Marshal exploded. He seized the corners of the table, leaned forward over the sheaves of parchment. Spittle flecked his beard. “Did you learn so little from him? Or was your heart flint in childhood as well? This is Achamian, Proyas. Akka! The man who doted on you! Who cherished you! The man who made you into who you are!”

  “Remember yourself Marshal! I will toler—”

  “You will hear me out!” Xinemus roared, pounding the table with his fist. The golden wine bowl bounced and rolled off the edge.

  “As inflexible as you are,” the Marshal grated, “you know how these things work. Remember what you said on the Andiam
ine Heights? ‘The game is without beginning or end.’ I’m not asking you to storm Eleäzaras’s compound, Proyas, I’m simply asking you to play the game! Make them think you’ll stop at nothing to see Akka safe, that you’re willing to declare open war against them if he should be killed. If they believe you’re willing to forsake anything, even Holy Shimeh, to recover Achamian, they will yield. They will yield!”

  Proyas stood, retreated from his old sword-trainer’s furious aspect. He did know how “these things” worked. He had threatened Eleäzaras with war.

  He laughed bitterly.

  “Are you mad, Zin? Are you truly asking me to put my old boyhood tutor before my God? To put a sorcerer before my God?”

  Xinemus released the table, stood upright. “After all these years, you still don’t understand, do you?”

  “What’s there to understand?” Proyas cried. “How many times must we have this conversation? Achamian is Unclean! Unclean!” A heady sense of conviction seized him, an incontestable making certain, as though knowing possessed its own fury. “If blasphemers kill blasphemers, then we’re saved oil and wood.”

  Xinemus flinched as though struck.

  “So you will do nothing.”

  “And neither will you, Marshal. We prepare to march against the South Bank. The Padirajah has summoned every Sapatishah from Girgash to Eumarna. All Kian assembles!”

  “Then I resign as Marshal of Attrempus,” Xinemus declared in a stiff voice. “What is more, I repudiate you, your father, and my oath to House Nersei. No longer shall I call myself a Knight of Conriya.”

  Proyas felt a numbness through his face and hands. This was impossible.

  “Think about this, Zin,” he said breathlessly. “Everything … Your estates, your chattel, the sanctions of your caste … Everything you have, everything you are, will be forfeit.”

  “No, Prosha,” he said, turning for the curtains. “It’s you who surrender everything.”

  Then he was gone.