The Thousandfold Thought

by R. Scott Bakker

“Yessss!” Hertata howled, fairly weeping with disbelief. “Yes-yes!”

  Sol clutched his hand and laughed. Still cheering, they both turned to a shadow.

  From nowhere, it seemed, a man loomed above and against them. His beard was full and square, which meant he was a foreigner. He stank of people. More ominous still, he stank of ships. He held a halved orange in his right hand and the back of Hertata’s filthy tunic bunched in his left.

  “Where’re your parents?” he boomed with predatory good nature.

  They had to ask that now. Whenever a real child disappeared, they always searched the slavers first. Slavers were hanged for stealing real children, just like the stickers were hanged for sticking them.

  “O-o-over there-there,” Hertata whimpered, holding out a tentative finger.

  Sol could smell his piss.

  “You say?” the man laughed, but Sol was already running, past the Knights and into the crowds on the far side of the procession.

  He was Sol. He was fleet.

  Afterward, huddling between stacked amphorae, he wept, always throwing a cautious eye to be sure no one could see. He spat and spat, but the taste of orange peel would not go away. Finally he prayed. In his soul’s eye he glimpsed the flash of sunlight across jewelled rings.

  Yes. Hertata had spoken true.

  Maithanet was sailing across the sea.

  Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Enathpaneah

  They were few—only some forty thousand of them remained—but in their breasts beat the hearts of many.

  Beneath the slapping banners of Household, Tusk, and Circumfix, the Holy War departed from mighty Caraskand and left behind a city scarcely inhabited. There had been much furore in the Councils at Saubon’s decision to remain behind. The other Great Names petitioned the Warrior-Prophet to at least demand that Saubon allow his subordinates to march if they so desired. Many did so of their own accord anyway, including the tempestuous Athjeäri. In the end, only some two thousand Galeoth would remain behind with their King and his empty city. They said that Saubon wept as the Warrior-Prophet rode from the Gate of Horns.

  A far different Holy War climbed the ways into the Enathpanean countryside. The newcomers, decked in the traditional tabards and surcoats of their homelands, provided the most stark measure of this transformation. Word of the Holy War’s straits in Caraskand had inspired several thousand Inrithi to dare winter seas and make for Joktha. They began arriving at the gates shortly after the breaking of the siege, posturing, boasting, just as those watching upon the walls had once postured and boasted beneath the gates of Momemn and Asgilioch. They fell silent, however, upon entering the city, appalled by the battered faces and perpetual stares that greeted them. The ancient customs were observed—hands were shaken, countrymen embraced—but it was all a pretence.

  The original Men of the Tusk—the survivors—were now sons of a different nation. They had spilled whatever blood they once shared with these men. The old loyalties and traditions had become tales of a faraway country, like Zeüm, a place too distant to be confirmed. The hooks of the old ways, the old concerns, had been set in fat that no longer existed. Everything they had known had been tested and found wanting. Their vanity, their envy, their hubris, all the careless bigotries of their prior lives, had been murdered with their fellows. Their hopes had been burned to ashes. Their scruples had been boiled to bone and tendon—or so it seemed.

  Out of calamity they had salvaged only the barest necessities; all else had been jettisoned. Their spare manner, their guarded speech, their disinterested contempt for excess, all spoke to a dangerous thrift. And nowhere was this more evident than in their eyes: they stared with the blank wariness of men who never slept—not peering, not watching, but observing, and with a directness that transcended “bold” or “rude.”

  They stared as though nothing stared back, as though all were objects.

  Among the newcomers, even the costumed caste-nobles seemed unable or unwilling to match their gaze. Many tried to maintain appearances—the wry glances, the nods of acknowledgment—but their looks always returned to their boots or sandals. To stand in the sight of such men, they somehow understood, was to be measured, not by something as flawed and as arbitrary as a man, but by the length and breadth of what they had suffered.

  Their very look had become judgement, so much had they witnessed.

  Thoroughly unnerved by their so-called brothers, only a few hundred newcomers dared question the Holy War’s other profound transformation: the Warrior-Prophet. Those of power and influence, such as Dogora Teör, the Tydonni Earl of Sumagalt, were eased into the Tribe of Truth by the Warrior-Prophet himself. Others found themselves befriended by Judges from their various homelands, who spirited them to sermons and Whelmings. Those who continued dissenting were separated from their fellows and assigned to companies of faithful. And the worst agitators, it was said, were brought before the Consort, never to be seen again.

  The Inrithi found Enathpaneah abandoned by the enemy. Gothyelk, who marched along the coastline with his Tydonni, encountered the burned ruins of nearly a hundred villas. Though most of the native Enathi, a people of ancient Shigeki stock, remained shut in their villages, not one of their Kianene lords could be found. No heathen patrols loitered in the distances. No dwelling of scale survived intact. When Athjeäri and his Gaenri came to the ends of Enathpaneah, the old forts that guarded the tracks into Xerash were still smoking, but the enemy was nowhere to be seen.

  The heathen’s back had been broken—just as the Warrior-Prophet had said. Save a triumphal march, it seemed nothing stood between them and Holy Shimeh.

  The first elements of the Holy War descended into Xerash and camped across the Plains of Heshor, where they held a great celebration. Xerash figured large in the narratives of The Tractate—so much so that many argued they had already entered the Sacred Lands. Men gathered to listen to readings from the Book of Traders, the account of the Latter Prophet’s years of exile among the depraved Xerashi. It seemed a thing of awe to at last stand so close to those places named.

  But names change over the centuries, and many spent long hours debating points of scripture and geography. Was not the town of Bengut actually the city of Abet-goka, where Amoti merchants concealed the Latter Prophet from the wrath of the Xerashi King? Were not the massive ruins reported near Pidast the remains of the great fortress of Ebaliol, where Inri Sejenus was imprisoned for prophesying the “thousand temples”? Throughout the following days, impromptu pilgrimages set out from the main columns to visit various sites. And even though the pilgrims were invariably disappointed by the stubborn silence of the ruins they found, the eyes of most would burn with fervour when they returned. For they walked the ways of Xerash.

  At Ebaliol, the Warrior-Prophet climbed the broken foundations and addressed thousands. “I stand,” he cried, “where my brother stood!”

  Twenty-two men died in the delirious crush. It would prove an omen of what was to follow.

  For millennia the so-called Middle-Lands had been coveted by the Kings of Shigek to the north and the Kings of Old Nilnamesh to the south. After inflicting a crushing defeat on the Shigeki, Anzumarapata II, the Nilnameshi King of Invishi, settled the Plains of Heshor with untold thousands of his people, hoping to secure his empire through forced resettlement. These dark-skinned people brought with them their indolent Gods and their promiscuous customs. They raised Gerotha, the greatest city of Xerash, in the heart of the plains, and bent their backs to the fields as they had done in humid Nilnamesh.

  By the Latter Prophet’s time, Xerash was an old and powerful kingdom, demanding and receiving tribute from both Amoteu and Enathpaneah. The Amoti in particular thought the Xerashi an obscene race, a blight upon the land. For the authors of The Tractate, it was a land of innumerable brothels, fratricidal kings, and rampant homosexuality. And though the blood and custom of the Nilnameshi had been thinned into extinction long ago, for the Men of the Tusk “xeratic” still meant “sodomite,” and
they punished the Fanim of Xerash for the trespasses of others long dead. The Xerash that the Inrithi wandered through was a place of old and labyrinthine evils. And her people found themselves called to account not once, but twice.

  Reports of massacre became common. There was the great fortress of Kijenicho along the coast, where Earl Iyengar had his Nangaels throw the garrison from the walls onto the breakers below. And the walled town of Naïth high in the Betmulla foothills, which Earl Ganbrota and his Ingraulish burned to the ground. There were the refugees along the Herotic Way—the very road to Shimeh!—who were ridden down for sport by Lord Soter and his Kishyati Knights.

  The Warrior-Prophet reacted quickly, dispatching edicts forbidding all acts of murder and rapine, and censuring those responsible for the most wanton atrocities. He even sent Gotian to have Lord Uranyanka, the Ainoni Palatine of Moserothu, flogged. Apparently the man had ordered his archers to massacre an enclave of lepers near the town of Sabotha.

  But it was too late. Athjeäri soon returned, bearing word that Gerotha had scorched her fields and plantations. The Kianene had fled, but all Xerash was closed against them.

  Despite the dread implications, despite all the astonishing differences, the journey to Xerash reminded Achamian of nothing so much as his days as Proyas’s tutor in Aöknyssus. Or so he told himself at first.

  On one occasion, after Esmenet’s palfrey was lamed while descending a precarious switchback trail in the Enathpanean hills, Achamian watched as some dozen knights offered to give her their chargers—something tantamount to giving her their honour, since their mounts were their means of waging war. Achamian had witnessed much the same while accompanying Proyas and his mother to her dowager estates in Anplei. On another occasion, they encountered a party of Tydonni footmen—some of Lord Iyengar’s Nangaels, it turned out—bearing a fresh boar hoisted above them on the points of some seven or eight spears, an ancient rite of vassalage that Achamian had once witnessed in the court of Proyas’s father, Eukernas II.

  But there was something more general, a myriad of smaller recognitions, that seemed to remind him of those more youthful days—despite the daily battery of riding so near Esmenet. For one, others in the Sacral Retinue treated him with deference and respect, their manner so grave it sometimes verged on the comic. He was, after all, the teacher of the Warrior-Prophet—an occupation that had quickly morphed into the preposterous honorific—Holy Tutor. For another, he no longer walked. Even more than slaves, horses were the yardstick of nobility, and Achamian, lowly Drusas Achamian, now found himself with his own: a sleek black—allegedly from Kascamandri’s own stock—whom he called Noon in memory of poor old Daybreak.

  In fact, he found himself awash in small riches: Damask tunics, muslin gowns, felt robes—a wardrobe that included access to a pool of body-slaves for his frequent ceremonial fittings. A silvered corselet, restitched with leather pleats to accommodate his girth. An ivory jewel box containing rings and earrings that he felt too foolish to wear, as well as two black-pearl broaches that he secretly gave away. Ambergis from Zeüm. Myrrh from the Great Salt. Even a genuine bed—a bed on the trail!—for those few hours of sleep he could steal.

  Achamian had disdained such comforts during his tenure at the Conriyan court. After all, he was a Gnostic Schoolman, not some “anagogic whore.” But now, after the innumerable deprivations he’d endured … The life of a spy was hard. To finally have things, even things he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy, eased his heart for some reason, as though they were balm for unseen wounds. Sometimes, when he ran his hands over soft fabric or yet again searched through the rings for one he might wear, a clutching sadness would come upon him, and he would remember how his father had cursed those who carved toys for their sons.

  And there were the politics, of course, though they were largely confined to the jnanic posturing of the caste-nobles who continually drifted in and out of the Sacral Retinue. All manoeuvring, no matter what its stripe, would instantly collapse into uniform servility whenever Kellhus appeared, and just as quickly leap back into effect when he departed. Occasionally, when something particularly sour seemed to be brewing, Kellhus would call the principals to account, and everyone would watch with rigid wonder as he explained things—people—he could not possibly know. It was as though the writ of their hearts had been inked across their faces.

  This no doubt explained the near-total absence of politicking among those who formed the core of the Sacral Retinue: the Nascenti, with their Zaudunyani functionaries, and the Liaisons, the caste-noble representatives of the different Great Names. In Aöknyssus, the closer one came to Proyas’s father, the quicker the knives had flashed—as one might expect. Politics, after all, was the pursuit of advantage within communities of men. One need not be Ajencis to see this. The more powerful the community, the greater the advantage; the greater the advantage, the more vicious the pursuit. It was axiomatic, something Achamian had witnessed time and again in courts across the Three Seas. And yet it in no way applied to the Sacral Retinue. All knives were sheathed in the Warrior-Prophet’s hallowed presence.

  Among the Nascenti, Achamian found a camaraderie and a candour unlike anything he’d known before. Despite the inevitable lapses, they largely approached one another as men should: with humour, openness, understanding. For Achamian, the fact that they were as much warriors as apostles or apparati made it all the more remarkable … and troubling.

  Usually, as they rode in clots or files, they would joke and argue—or make wagers, endless wagers. Sometimes, they simply sang the gorgeous hymns Kellhus had taught them, their eyes bright, devoid of oily thought or inclination, their voices clear and booming. And Achamian, though embarrassed at first, soon found himself joining them, wonderstruck by the words, the phrasing, and suffused with a joy that would seem impossible afterward—too simple, too profound. Then he would glimpse Esmenet rocking in her saddle amid her servants, or he would see another corpse mute in the surrounding grasses, and he would recall the purpose of their journey.

  They rode to war—to kill. To conquer Holy Shimeh.

  In these moments, the differences between his present circumstance and his time as Proyas’s tutor would loom stark before him, and the fleecy sense of reminiscence that seemed to permeate everything would grow hard with cold and dread. What was it he remembered?

  Several days into the march, as the Holy War wound through one of the endless ravines that scored the Enathpanean countryside, a group of long-haired tribesmen—Surdu, Achamian would later learn—were brought to Kellhus under the sign of the Tusk. For centuries, they said, they had preserved their Inrithi heritage, and now they wished to pay obeisance to those who had come to deliver them. They would be the eyes of the Holy War, if they could, showing the Men of the Tusk secret ways through the low ranges of the Betmulla. Achamian missed most of what followed for the crowds, but he was able to see the Surdu chieftain curl over his knees on the earth while offering up an iron sword that had been bent into a V.

  Inexplicably, Kellhus ordered the tribesmen seized. They were subsequently tortured, whereupon it was discovered that Kascamandri’s son, Fanayal, had sent them. Apparently, he had seized his father’s title, and was even now assembling what dregs he could at Shimeh. The Surdu were indeed Inrithi, but Fanayal had abducted their wives and children to compel them to lead the Holy War astray. The new Padirajah, it seemed, was desperate for time.

  Kellhus had them flayed alive—publicly.

  The image of the chieftain kneeling with the bent sword nagged Achamian for the remainder of the day. Once again he was certain he’d witnessed something remarkably similar—but not in Conriya. It couldn’t be … The sword he remembered had been bronze.

  Then in a rush he understood. What he thought he recalled, what had suffused fairly everything with a ghostly air of familiarity, had nothing to do with his years as Proyas’s tutor in the Conriyan court. In fact, it had nothing to do with him at all. It was ancient Kûniüri he remembered. The time Seswatha spen
t campaigning with that other Anasûrimbor … High King Celmomas.

  It always jarred Achamian, realizing that so much of what he was he in fact wasn’t. Now he found himself terrified by the contrary realization: that more and more he was becoming what he wasn’t—what he must never be. That he was becoming Seswatha.

  For so long the sheer scale of the Dreams had offered him an immunity of sorts. The things he dreamed simply didn’t happen—at least not to the likes of him. With the Holy War, his life had taken a turn to the legendary, and the distance between his world and Seswatha’s closed, at least in terms of what he witnessed. But even then, what he lived remained banal and impoverished. “Seswatha never shat,” the old Mandate joke went. The dimensions of what Achamian lived could always fall into the dimensions of what he dreamed like a stone into a potter’s urn.

  But now, riding as Holy Tutor at the Warrior-Prophet’s left hand?

  In a way, he was as much as Seswatha, if not more. In a way, he no longer shat either. And knowing this was enough to make him shit.

  Strangely enough, the Dreams themselves had become more bearable. Tywanrae and Dagliash continued to predominate, though as always he couldn’t fathom why they should follow this or any other rhythm of events. They were like swallows, swooping and circling in aimless patterns, sketching something almost, yet never quite, a language.

  He still woke mouthing cries, but their force had been blunted somehow. At first he attributed this to Esmenet, thinking each man had a certain allotment of torment, and that like wine in the bottom of a bowl, it could be tipped this way and that, but never increased. The problem was that painful days had never made for restful nights in the past. So he decided it had to be Kellhus, and as with all realizations involving the Warrior-Prophet, it seemed painfully obvious after the fact. Through Kellhus, the scale of the present not only matched the scale of his Dreams, it counterbalanced them with hope.