The Thousandfold Thought

by R. Scott Bakker

  He told Nautzera about everything except Esmenet.

  After he was freed, even the most embittered of the Orthodox fell to their knees before him—and how could they not? The Scylvendi’s duel with Cutias Sarcellus—the First Knight-Commander a skin-spy! Think, Nautzera! The Scylvendi’s victory proved that demons—demons!—had sought the Warrior-Prophet’s death. It was exactly as Ajencis says: Men ever make corruption proof of purity.

  He paused, a peevish part of him convinced Nautzera had never read Ajencis.

  Yes yes, the old sorcerer said with soundless impatience.

  He came upon them like a fever after that. Suddenly the Holy War found itself unified as never before. All of the Great Names—with the exception of Conphas, that is—knelt before him, kissed his knee. Gotian openly wept, offered his bared breast to the Anasûrimbor’s sword. And then they marched. Such a sight, Nautzera! As great and terrible as anything in our Dreams. Starved. Sick. They shambled from the gates—dead men moved to war …

  Images of the already broken flickered through the black. Gaunt swordsmen draped in strapless hauberks. Knights upon the ribbed backs of horses. The crude standard of the Circumfix snapping in the air.

  What happened?

  The impossible. They won the field. They couldn’t be stopped! I still can’t rub the wonder from my eyes …

  And the Padirajah? Nautzera asked. Kascamandri. What of him?

  Dead by the Warrior-Prophet’s own hand. Even now, the Holy War makes ready to march on Shimeh and the Cishaurim. There’s none left who might bar their passage, Nautzera. They’ve all but succeeded!

  But why? the old sorcerer asked. If this Anasûrimbor Kellhus knows of the Consult, if he too believes the Second Apocalypse is nigh, why would he continue this foolish war? Perhaps he said what he said to deceive you. Have you considered that?

  He can see them. Even now, the purges continue. No…I believe him.

  After Sarcellus’s death, over a dozen men of rank and privilege had simply vanished, leaving their clients astonished and delivering even the most fanatical of the Orthodox to the Warrior-Prophet. In the wake of the Padirajah’s overthrow, both Caraskand and the Holy War had been ransacked, but as far as Achamian knew, only two of the abominations had been found and … exorcized.

  This … this is extraordinary, Akka! What you say … soon all the Three Seas will believe!

  Either that or burn.

  There was grim satisfaction in thinking of the dismay and incredulity that would soon greet Mandate embassies. For centuries they’d been a laughingstock. For centuries they’d endured all manner of scorn, even those insults that jnan reserved for the most wretched. But now … Vindication was a potent narcotic. It would swim in the veins of Mandate Schoolmen for some time.

  Yes! Nautzera exclaimed. Which is why we mustn’t forget what’s important. The Consult is never so easily rooted out. They’ll try to murder this Anasûrimbor—there can be no doubt.

  No doubt, Achamian replied, though for some reason the thought of further assassination attempts hadn’t occurred to him.

  Which means that first and foremost, Nautzera continued, you must do everything in your power to protect him. No harm must come to him!

  The Warrior-Prophet has no need of my protection.

  Nautzera paused. Why do you call him that?

  Because no other name seemed his equal. Not even Anasûrimbor. But something, a profound indecision perhaps, held him mute.

  Achamian? Do you actually think the man’s a prophet?

  I don’t know what I think … Too much has happened.

  This is no time for sentimental foolishness!

  Enough, Nautzera. You haven’t seen the man.

  No … but I will.

  What do you mean? His brother Schoolmen coming here? The thought troubled Achamian somehow. The thought that others from the Mandate might witness his …

  … humiliation.

  But Nautzera ignored the question. So what does our cousin School, the Scarlet Spires, make of all this? There was a note of sarcastic hilarity in his tone, but it seemed forced, almost painfully so.

  At Council, Eleäzaras looks like a man whose children have just been sold into slavery. He can’t even bring himself to look at me, let alone ask about the Consult. He’s heard of the ruin I wrought in Iothiah. I think he fears me.

  He will come to you, Achamian. Sooner or later.

  Let him come.

  Every night the ledgers were opened, the debtors called to account. There would be amends.

  There’s no room for vengeance here. You must treat with him as an equal, comport yourself as though you were never abducted, never plied…I understand your hunger for retribution—but the stakes! The stakes of this game outweigh all other considerations. Do you understand this?

  What did understanding have to do with hatred?

  I understand well enough, Nautzera.

  And the Anasûrimbor—what do Eleäzaras and the others make of him?

  They want him to be a fraud, I know that much. What they think of him, I don’t know.

  You must make it clear to them that the Anasûrimbor is ours, Achamian. You must let them know that what happened at Iothiah is but a trifle compared with what will happen if they try to seize him.

  The Warrior-Prophet cannot be seized. He’s … beyond that. Achamian paused, struggled with his composure. But he can be purchased.

  Purchased? What do you mean?

  He wants the Gnosis, Nautzera. He’s one of the Few. And if I deny him, I fear he might turn to the Scarlet Spires.

  One of the Few? How long have you known this?

  For some time …

  And even then you said nothing! Achamian … Akka…I must know I can trust you with this matter!

  As I trusted you on the matter of Inrau?

  A long pause, fraught with guilt and accusation. In the blackness, it seemed to Achamian that he could see the boy looking to his teacher in fear and apprehension.

  Unfortunate, to be sure, Nautzera said. But events have borne me out, wouldn’t you agree?

  I will warn you just this once, Achamian grated. Do you understand?

  How could he do this? How long must he wage two wars, one for the world, the other against himself?

  But I must know I can trust you!

  What would you have me say? You haven’t met the man! Until then, you can never know.

  Know what? Know what?

  That he’s the world’s only hope. Mark me, Nautzera, he’s more than a mere sign, and he’ll be more than a mere sorcerer—far more!

  Harness your passions! You must see him as a tool—a Mandate tool!—nothing more, nothing less. We must possess him!

  And if the Gnosis is his price for “possession,” what then?

  The Gnosis is our hammer. Ours! Only by submitting—

  And the Spires? If Eleäzaras offers him the Anagogis?

  Hesitation, both outraged and exasperated.

  This is madness! A prophet who would pit School against School for sorcery’s sake? A Wizard-Prophet? A Shaman?

  This word forced a silence, one filled by the ethereal boiling that framed all such exchanges, as though the weight of the world inveighed against their impossibility. Nautzera was right: the circumstances were quite mad. But would he forgive Achamian the madness of the task before him? With polite words and diplomatic smiles Achamian had to court those who had tortured him. What was more, he was expected to woo and win a prophet, the man who had stolen from him his only love … Achamian beat at the fury that welled up through his heart. In Caraskand, twin tears broke from his sightless eyes.

  Very well, then! Nautzera cried, his tone disconcertingly desperate. The others will have my hide for this … Give him the Lesser Cants—the denotaries and the like. Deceive him with dross into thinking you’ve traded our deepest secrets.

  You still don’t understand, do you, Nautzera? The Warrior-Prophet cannot be deceived!

  All men can be decei
ved, Achamian. All men.

  Did I say he was a “man”? You haven’t yet seen him! There’s no other like him, Nautzera. I tire of repeating this!

  Nevertheless, you must yoke him. Our war depends upon it. Everything depends upon it!

  You must believe me, Nautzera. This man is beyond our abilities to possess. He …

  An image of Esmenet flashed through his thoughts, unbidden, beguiling.

  He possesses.

  The hills teemed with the herds of their enemy, and the Men of the Tusk rejoiced, for their hunger was like no other. The cows they butchered for the feast, the bulls they burned in offerings to flint-hearted Gilgaöl and the other Hundred Gods. They gorged themselves to the point of sickness, then gorged again. They drank until unconsciousness overcame them. Many could be found kneeling before the banners of the Circumfix, which the Judges had raised wherever men congregated. They cried out to the image; they cried out in disbelief. When bands of revellers passed one another in the darkness, they shouted, “We! We are the God’s fury!” in the argot of the camp. And they clasped arms, knowing they held their brothers, for together they had held their faces to the furnace. There were no more Orthodox, no more Zaudunyani.

  They were Inrithi once again.

  The Conriyans, using inks looted from Kianene scriptoriums, tattooed circles crossed with an X on their inner forearms. The Thunyeri, and the Tydonni after them, took knives drawn from the fire to their shoulders, where they cut representations of three Tusks—one for each great battle—scarring themselves in the manner of the Scylvendi. The Galeoth, the Ainoni—all adorned their bodies with some mark of their transformation. Only the Nansur refrained.

  A band of Agmundrmen discovered the Padirajah’s standard in the hills, which they immediately brought to Saubon, who rewarded them with three hundred Kianene akals. In an impromptu ceremony at the Fama Palace, Prince Kellhus had the silk cut from the ash pole and laid before his chair. He planted his sandals upon the image, which may have been a lion or a tiger, and declared, “All their symbols, all the sacred marks of our foemen, you shall deliver to my feet!”

  For two days the Fanim captives toiled across the battlefield, piling their dead kinsmen into great heaps outside Caraskand’s walls. Innumerable carrion birds—kites and jackdaws, storks and great desert vultures—harassed them, at times darkening the sky like locusts. Despite the bounty, they squabbled like gulls over fish.

  The Men of the Tusk continued their revels, though many fell ill and a hundred or so actually died—from eating too much after starving for so long, the physician-priests said. Then, on the fourth day following the Battle of Tertae Fields, they made a great train of the captives, stripping them naked to make manifest their humiliation. Once assembled, the Fanim were encumbered with all the spoils of camp and field: caskets of gold and silver, Zeümi silks, arms of Nenciphon steel, unguents and oils from Cingulat. Then they were driven with whips and flails through the Gate of Horns, across the city to the Kalaul, where the greater part of the Holy War greeted them with jeers and exaltation.

  By the score they were brought to the black tree, Umiaki, where the Warrior-Prophet sat upon a simple stool, awaiting their petitions. Those who fell to their knees and cursed Fane were led as dogs to the waiting slavers. Those who did not were cut down where they stood.

  When all was finished and the sun leaned crimson against the dark hills, the Warrior-Prophet walked from his seat and knelt in the blood of his enemies. He bid his people come to him, and upon the forehead of each he sketched the mark of the Tusk in Fanim blood.

  Even the most manly wept for wonder.

  Esmenet is his …

  Like all horrifying thoughts, this one possessed a will all its own. It snaked in and out of his awareness, sometimes constricting, sometimes lying still and cold. Though it seemed old and familiar, it possessed the urgency of things remembered too late. It was at once a screeching call to arms and a grievous admission of futility. He had not simply lost her, he had lost her to him.

  It was as though his soul only had fingers for certain things, certain dimensions. And the fact of her betrayal was simply too great.

  Old fool!

  His arrival at the Fama Palace had thoroughly flummoxed the Zaudunyani functionaries. They treated him with deference—he was their master’s erstwhile teacher—but there was also trepidation in their manner, an anxious trepidation. Had they acted suspicious, Achamian would have attributed their reaction to his sorcerous calling; they were religious men, after all. But they didn’t seem unnerved by him so much as they seemed troubled by their own thoughts. They knew him, Achamian decided, the way men knew those they derided in private. And now that he stood before them, a man who would figure large in the inevitable scriptures to follow, they found themselves dismayed by their own impiety.

  Of course, they knew he was a cuckold. By now the stories of everyone who had broken bread or sawed joint at Xinemus’s fire would be known in some distorted form or another. There were no intimacies left. And his story in particular—the sorcerer who loved the whore who would become the Prophet-Consort—had doubtless come quick to a thousand lips, multiplying his shame.

  While waiting for the hidden machinery of messengers and secretaries to relay his request, Achamian wandered into an adjoining courtyard, struck by the other immensities that framed his present circumstance. Even if there were no Consult, no threat of the Second Apocalypse, he realized, nothing would be the same. Kellhus would change the world, not in the way of an Ajencis or a Triamis, but in the way of an Inri Sejenus.

  This, Achamian realized, was Year One. A new age of Men.

  He stepped from the cool shade of the portico into crisp morning sunlight. For a moment he stood blinking against the gleam of white and rose marble, then his eyes fell to the earthen beds in the courtyard’s heart, which, he was surprised to note, had been recently turned and replanted with white lilies and spear-like agave—wildflowers looted from beyond the walls. He saw three men—penitents like himself, he imagined—conferring in low tones on the courtyard’s far side, and he was struck that things had become so sedate—so normal—so quickly. The week previous, Caraskand had been a place of blight and squalor; now he could almost believe he awaited an audience in Momemn or Aöknyssus.

  Even the banners—white bolts of silk draped along the colonnades—spoke of an eerie continuity, a sense that nothing had changed, that the Warrior-Prophet had always been. Achamian stared at the stylized likeness of Kellhus embroidered in black across the fabric, his outstretched arms and legs dividing the circle into four equal segments. The Circumfix.

  A cool breeze filtered through the courtyard, and a fold rolled across the image like a serpent beneath sheets. Someone, Achamian realized, must have started stitching these before the battle had even begun.

  Whoever they were, they had forgotten Serwë. He blinked away images of her bound to Kellhus and the ring. It had been so very dark beneath Umiaki, but it seemed he could see her face arched back in rigour and ecstasy …

  “He is as you said,” Kellhus had confessed that night. “Tsuramah. Mog-Pharau …”

  “Master Achamian.”

  Startled, Achamian turned to see an officer decked in green and gold regalia stepping into the sunlight. Like all Men of the Tusk, he was gaunt, though not nearly as cadaverous as many of those found outside the Fama Palace. The man fell to his knees at Achamian’s feet, spoke to the ground in a thick Galeoth accent. “I am Dun Heörsa, Shield-Captain of the Hundred Pillars.” There was little courtesy in his blue eyes when he looked up, and a surfeit of intent. “He has instructed me to deliver you.”

  Achamian swallowed, nodded.

  He …

  The sorcerer followed the officer into the gloom of scented corridors.

  He. The Warrior-Prophet.

  His skin tingled. Of all the world, of all the innumerable men scattered about all the innumerable lands, he, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, communed with the God—the God! And how could it be oth
erwise, when he knew what no other man could know, when he spoke what no other man could speak?

  Who could blame Achamian for his incredulity? It was like holding a flute to the wind and hearing song. It seemed beyond belief …

  A miracle. A prophet in their midst.

  Breathe when you speak to him. You must remember to breathe.

  The Shield-Captain said nothing as they continued their march. He stared forward, possessed of the same eerie discipline that seemed to characterize everyone in the palace. Ornate rugs had been set at various points along the floor; the man’s boots fell silent as they crossed each.

  Despite his nerves, Achamian appreciated the absence of speech. Never, it seemed to him, had he suffered such a throng of conflicting passions. Hatred, for an impossible rival, for a fraud who had robbed him of his manhood—of his wife. Love, for an old friend, for a student who was at once his teacher, for a voice that had quickened his soul with countless insights. Fear, for the future, for the rapacious madness that was about to descend upon them all. Jubilation, for an enemy momentarily undone.

  Bitterness. Hope.

  And awe … Awe before all.

  The eyes of men were but pinholes—no one knew this better than Mandate Schoolmen. All their books, even their scriptures, were nothing more than pinholes. And yet, because they couldn’t see what was unseen, they assumed they saw everything, they confused pinpricks with the sky.

  But Kellhus was something different. A doorway. A mighty gate.

  He’s come to save us. This is what I must remember. I must hold on to this!

  The Shield-Captain escorted him past a rank of stone-faced guardsmen, their green surcoats also embroidered with the golden mark of the Hundred Pillars: a row of vertical bars over the long, winding slash of the Tusk. They passed through fretted mahogany doors and Achamian found himself on the portico of a much larger courtyard. The air was thick with the smell of blossoms.