The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (43 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

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BOOK: The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)
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—MEREMNIS, THE ARCANA IMPLICATA
 
 
As a miller once told me, when the gears do not meet, they become as teeth. So it is with men and their machinations.
—ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN
Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Amoteu
They had come from the straw-floored manors of Galeoth, where dogs supped with their masters; from the frontier forests of Thunyerus, deep and great, where the Sranc waged their aimless and eternal war; from the mead-halls of Ce Tydonn, where long-haired thanes denounced mongrel races; from the great estates of Conriya, where dark-eyed Palatines made prizes of their pasts; and from the sultry plains of High Ainon, where painted caste-nobles beat paths through teeming streets. Eight seasons previously, the Shriah of the Thousand Temples had called, and they had come … the Men of the Tusk.
From Gerotha, they continued their march across a subdued land. Word of the Warrior-Prophet’s Toll of Days had outrun them, and wherever they passed, they found Xerashi prostrate across the red-and-black earth. Hidden granaries were thrown open. Goat-milk, honey, dried peppers, and sugar cane, even entire herds of cattle, were willingly surrendered. Village elders acclaimed them, kissed their sandalled feet, and presented the most fair of their dark-skinned daughters. Anything that might appease the Lords of the Holy War.
The main column, consisting of Hulwarga, Chinjosa, Proyas, and Anfirig, followed the Herotic Way. One by one the coastal strongholds surrendered to them: Sabsal, Moridon, and even Horeppo, which had been a primary port-of-destination for Inrithi pilgrims in the years preceding the Holy War. More newcomers joined them, seafaring Galeoth—Oswentamen for the most part—driven ashore by Kianene marauders. Sweating in their hair shirts, they hauled their barks onto the rocky strands and burned them. They joined their kinsmen about their evening fires, only to be troubled by their strange garb and implacable stares.
Gothyelk, meanwhile, struck directly south to invest the great fortress of Chargiddo, using the intelligence provided by Athjeäri to secure his approach. Even here, word of the massacre at Gerotha had reached the heathen in advance, and after a largely ceremonial show of defiance, the famed citadel gave herself over to the uncertain mercy of the Tydonni.
Most Holy Prophet,
the Earl of Agansanor would write,
Chargiddo has fallen, and with nary a death, save that of my cousin’s nephew, who was taken by a stray shaft. Verily, you have boned this land like a fish! Praise be the God of Gods. Praise be Inri Sejenus, our prophet your brother
.
With each passing day, the sorrows of the long road seemed to fall away, and the Men of the Tusk recalled their old humour. Evenings became celebrations, pious bacchanals where toast after toast would be raised to their hallowed Warrior-Prophet. Hundreds of impromptu pilgrimages set out across the lush countryside, and the Xerashi wondered at these idolaters, who continually roamed ground stumped by ruins, arguing over passages in their scriptures.
Save for a handful of incidents, there were no atrocities like those that marred their earlier marches. In the Councils of Great and Lesser Names, the Warrior-Prophet made it clear that the Inrithi either kept or betrayed
his
word with their actions. “The Xerashi,” he said, “need not love me to trust me. Just as we need not murder them to demonstrate our hate. Spare them, and their gates will be opened. Kill them, and you kill your brothers.”
Though Xerash had been emptied of Kianene, Athjeäri found himself sorely pressed in Holy Amoteu. All across the Jarta Highlands, distant streamers of smoke plied the skies as the Fanim hastened to burn any and all structures possessing timber that could be used for siege engines. Taking Mer-Porasas as his base, the brash young Earl ranged to the very edges of the Shairizor Plains, visiting ruin upon the Fanim where he could. But after each encounter he returned with more empty saddles, until very soon his five hundred thanes and knights had dwindled to fewer than two hundred. Though he possessed daring in excess, he lacked the manpower required to secure his position, let alone fence with Fanayal and the heathen army that concentrated about Shimeh.
His missives to the Warrior-Prophet, which had begun as dispassionate appraisals of the situation in the field, soon became pleas for assistance. The Warrior-Prophet begged patience and fortitude, even as he exhorted the Great Names to hasten their march.
The main column climbed into the Jarta Highlands some ten days following the fall of Gerotha—a remarkable pace, given the size of the train, which included the perennially slothful Scarlet Spires, and the fact that they foraged as they marched. Then something peculiar happened.
Accounts of the incident would vary greatly, though all agreed that it involved an encounter between an old man—an old
blind
man—and the Warrior-Prophet. This in itself was extraordinary, since the Hundred Pillars were at great pains to either drive away or, failing that, kill every blind man found in the path of the Sacral Retinue. The nearer the Holy War drew to Shimeh, the more the Warrior-Prophet’s Consort and Intricati feared the possibility of a Cishaurim attack.
Apparently, a blind Xerashi beggar had been overlooked, and as the Sacral Retinue passed through the Jartic town of Gim, he cried out to the Warrior-Prophet. In a letter to his father, Prince Nersei Proyas would write the following description:
No one understood what he said, though Arishal and the other bodyguards understood the danger well enough. They immediately charged toward the man, only to be brought up short by the resounding crack of the Warrior-Prophet’s voice. Everyone stood milling, confused, while the Blessed One regarded the shambling old beggar. The man’s skin was almost black, so that his wild hair and beard seemed as white as a Zeümi’s teeth. As we watched, quite astonished, the Blessed One dismounted and walked toward the old man—as though he were the penitent! When he towered over the bent figure, he asked, “Who are you to make demands?” to which the remarkable fool replied, “One who has something to whisper into your ear.” Cries of alarm erupted among us.
I know
I, Father, was concerned to the point of terror. “And why,” the Blessed One asked, “must you whisper?” to which the man responded, “Because my words are the words of my doom. Truthfully, you will kill me after you hear them.” I know I shouted that this was a trick of some kind, some foul Cishaurim deceit, and I know there were many such shouts of apprehension, but the Blessed One did not listen. He even kneeled, Father, to one knee, so that the blind man could better reach his ear. We sat motionless, gutted by horror, while he whispered his doom. And it was his doom, Father! For no sooner had he finished than the Warrior-Prophet drew Enshoiya, his holy sword, and struck the miscreant down, cutting him from his collar to his heart. We had scarcely recovered our breaths when he commanded that the Holy War halt and make camp across the fields of Gim. And to those who dared ask for an explanation, he would say nothing.
What did the old fool whisper?
There had been a time when he’d walked in glory and horror. Spear-Bearer to mighty Sil, the great King After-the-Fall. He had dared the wrath of Cu’jara Cinmoi on the plains of Pir Pahal. He had ridden the back of Wutteät, Father of Dragons. He had wrestled Ciögli the Mountain—thrown him from his feet! Sarpanur, the Nonmen of Ishriol had called him at first, after the keystone that fixed their crude subterranean arches. And then, following the Womb-Plague, Sin-Pharion, “the Angel of Deceit.”
Ah, the raucous glory of that age! He had been young then, before the accretions of graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame. And such a contest! But for Sil’s impatience, he and his brothers would have won, and all this—this world—would be moot.
Driven from Min-Uroikas. Scattered. Hunted. So far they had dwindled!
And then, from nowhere, a second age of glory. Who would have guessed that the cunning of
Men
could resurrect their aborted designs, that the vermin could restore his destiny? Horde-General to dread Mog-Pharau, Breaker of Worlds. He had burned the Great Library of Sauglish. He had stormed the heights of Holy Trysë. He had made fires of their cities, beacons that shone through the very void. He had extinguished nations—bled whole peoples white! Aurang, the Norsirai of Kûniüri had called him “the Warlord.” Perhaps the most far-seeing of his many names.
So how had it come to this? Bound to a Synthese, like a king to a leper’s robes. Frail and fugitive. Skulking about the fires of a roused enemy. There had been a time when the screams of thousands had heralded his coming.
He circled the hilltop compound the way a vulture might, slow and high, and with a patience that could run out all life. To the west, the Hills of Jarta lay blanched and broken in the moonlight. To the east, the Plains of Shairizor fanned to the black horizon, scored by grove and field, pocked by barn and byre. Beyond, the Horde-General knew, lay Shimeh …
The very heart of the mannish world. The Three Seas.
Everywhere, he could see the furtive mark of their generations, the residue of once-dominant themes and long-lost reprises. The shadows of the Shigeki fortress that had once commanded these heights. The Ceneian road that struck straight as a rule across the plain. The defensive sensibilities of the Nansur in the compound’s concentric design. The frosting of Kianene ornament. Petalled battlements. Iron-fretted windows.
He was deeper than all this. Older than their blasted stone.
He spiralled downward, toward the outer courtyard, where he could see his children’s horses. He alighted on one of the eaves, where the sun’s warmth still radiated from the clay tiles. He called to them in the sacred pitch only they and rats could hear. They came leaping through dark and abandoned halls, faithful, faithless things. They grovelled before him, their groins slick from their victims. His eyes flared and they clutched themselves in anguish and ecstasy. His children. His flowers.
For decades, the Consult had assumed that the alien metaphysics of the Cishaurim had been responsible for uncovering their children in Shimeh. This had made the prospect of the Empire’s fall to the Fanim intolerable. Half the Three Seas immune to their poison? The Holy War had seemed a rare opportunity.
But the plate had changed all too quickly. To realize that the Cishaurim were but a mask for a far more ancient foe. To come so very close, only to discover their sublime deceptions subverted by something
deeper
. Something new.
The Dûnyain.
There was more to this than a son hunting for his father—far more. Their devious methods and disconcerting abilities aside, these Dûnyain were
Anasûrimbor
. Even without the Mandate prophecies, enmity was a fact of their accursed blood. Who was this Moënghus? And if his son could seize the armed might of the Three Seas in a single year, what had he accomplished in
thirty
? What awaited the Holy War in Shimeh?
Despite the rank disorder of his soul, the Scylvendi had been right about one thing: these Dûnyain had seized too much already. They could not be allowed the Gnosis as well.
Aurang, his hoary soul wrenching at the seams of the Synthese that housed him, smiled an odd, bird-twitching smile. How long since his last
true
contest?
His children continued straining and clutching, their cracked faces bent to the stars.
“Prepare this place,” he commanded.
“But, Old Father,” the daring one, Ûssirta, said, “how could you be certain?”
He knew. He was the Warlord.
“The Anasûrimbor marches the Herotic Way. He will pause before crossing the plain, reorganize, revise his plans. The Scylvendi is right—he isn’t like the others.” A normal man—even an Anasûrimbor—would succumb to the eagerness that so quickened the legs of those who set eyes upon a hard-won destination. But not a Dûnyain.
Men. They had been little more than packs of wild dogs during the First Wars. How had they grown so?
“Is it
near,
Old Father?” the other, Maörta, exclaimed. “Does it come?”
He regarded the piteous thing, his wretched instrument. And so few of them remained.

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