The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (44 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Fantasy

BOOK: The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)
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“The sacrifice has been made,” he said, ignoring its question. “The Anasûrimbor will be lulled into thinking he has already anticipated us. Then, when he comes to this place …”
Before the coming of these Dûnyain, the Consult could trust to their tools. Now Aurang had no choice but to intervene, to tyrannize what their tools could only mock, to possess what they could only mimic …
“Trust me, my children, he will be caught unawares when we strike. There is treachery in his wife’s heart.”
They would test the limits of this Prophet’s penetration. They would deny him the Gnosis.
The thing gurgled and clacked its teeth.
“We probe their faces with pins,” Eleäzaras said, affecting the droll tone that had once come so naturally to him.
“And that was how you found him?” Her tone was sharp and obviously sarcastic. Eleäzaras glanced derisively at Iyokus, even though all such looks were wasted upon him now. How little these menials knew of jnan!
“Need I explain it again?”
The painted lips smiled. “That depends whether
he
wishes to hear your story, now, doesn’t it?”
Eleäzaras snorted, availed himself of his wine bowl once again, drinking deep. She was clever—he would cede her that. Damnably clever.
No-no … no need to bring
him
into this
.
The fact that she had learned of their discovery so quickly spoke not only to her ability but to the efficacy of the organization she had assembled following the Warrior-Prophet’s ascendancy. He would not make the mistake of underestimating either her or her resources again. This whore-cum-Consort.
This … Esmenet.
She was attractive, though. Well worth rutting … To do to her what they had done to that thing’s face. Yes, very attractive.
The slaves had finished pitching the pavilion no more than a watch previously. Eleäzaras had arrived with Iyokus to study the beast—the first live one they’d apprehended—when the Intricati had appeared in the wake of exclaiming and bewildered Javreh. She had just
walked in
…
One of the Nascenti accompanied her, Werjau or something—Eleäzaras was too drunk to remember—as well as four of those Hundred-fucking-Pillars. All with Chorae bound to their palms, of course. They stood, a small and confrontational crowd, framed by the evening light that filtered through the entrance. Eleäzaras wondered if she even grasped the outrageousness of her presumption. Sweet Sejenus! They were the
Scarlet Spires
! No one simply intruded upon their affairs, no matter what their writ or who their lord and master.
Especially
a woman.
The chamber was both hot and foul, a result of all the felt the slaves had draped across the walls to muffle sound. Suspended face down, the thing lay shackled to the crude iron scaffold that propped the ceiling. A leather thong had been tied about the tip of each facial digit, drawing them out like the ribs of a parasol. In the corner of Eleäzaras’s eye, it looked a grotesque parody of the Circumfix. Its crotch-face glistened in the lantern light, wet and vaginal.
Blood tapped the reed mats in a steady rhythm.
“We fully intended,” Iyokus was saying, “to share any information we exacted.”
Whether this was true or false, of course, depended entirely on the information exacted.
“Oh,” the Intricati said, “I see …” Despite her small stature, she cut an imposing figure in her Kianene gown and wrap. “And when might that have been?” she continued. “Sometime
after
Shimeh?”
Penetrating bitch. That was the thing, of course, the reason they had no hope of merely talking their way out of this small and likely inconsequential treachery: Shimeh lay mere days away.
The impossible had become imminent.
It was strange the way events had shown him the
divisions
in what had once been the singular morass of his soul. Even as he laughed at the thought of Shimeh—and the Cishaurim—something gibbered within him, panicked and sputtered, like that day his uncles had hauled him into the breakers to teach him how to swim.
Some other day,
please
… Some other day!
Where was the justice? His contract with Maithanet and the Thousand Temples had been struck in a different world. There had been no mention of the Consult or the Second Apocalypse. No mention of the Mandate
being
right … And certainly nothing had been said about a
living prophet
!
How could they have been so deceived? And now to be bent upon murder, to have their knife drawn, only to discover that they had no motive … except self-preservation.
What have I done?
For weeks now, the members of the Scarlet Spires’ privy council, the Two-Palms, had quarrelled over question after question. Is the Atrithau Prince truly a prophet? And if he is, why should the
Scarlet Spires
accede to his demands? And what of the Second Apocalypse? The Consult and their skin-spies … they had replaced
Chepheramunni
! They had ruled High Ainon in their name! What did that portend? And how should they respond? Should they retreat, abandon the Holy War? What would be the consequences of that?
Or should they continue prosecuting their war against the Cishaurim?
Burning questions, and all of them with no answer apart from decisive leadership—something that their present Grandmaster clearly lacked. The insinuations had already started, the niggling comments that accused all the more for their ambiguity. “Curse the implications!” he felt like screaming at Inrûmmi, Sarosthenes, and the others. “Just say what you mean!”
That said it all, he supposed. What was it the Conriyans said about an
Ainoni
demanding clarity?
It meant throats would be soon cut.
And Iyokus, especially, had become quarrelsome, despite the fact that Eleäzaras had renamed him to his old position. Who’d ever heard of a
blind
Master of Spies? Even before the bitch Intricati’s arrival, the chanv addict had started, demanding that Eleäzaras parse the undecidable, that he recall his station, treat with the “new fanatics,” as he called them, from a position of strength …
“Don’t say it!” Eleäzaras had cried. “Don’t even think it.”
“So what? Are we to simply
endure
these indignities? You would yield our—”
“He
sees,
Iyokus! He reads our souls in our faces! What you say to me, you say to
him,
no matter what! All he need ask is, ‘What does your Master of Spies make of all this?’ and no matter what answer I give him, he will hear
these very words you
speak!”
“Pfah!”
There was strength in ignorance, Eleäzaras realized. All his life he had thought knowledge a weapon. “The world repeats,” the Shiradic philosopher Umartu had written. “Know these repetitions, and you may intervene.” Eleäzaras had taken this as his mantra, had used it as the hammer with which to pound cunning into his wit.
You may intervene,
he would tell himself, no matter what the circumstance.
But there was knowledge beyond hope of intervention, knowledge that mocked, degraded … gelded and paralyzed. Knowledge that only ignorance could contradict. Iyokus and Inrûmmi simply did not
know
what he knew, which was why they thought him castrate. They didn’t even believe.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the Intricati appear here and now. That the
Warrior-Prophet
intervene.
“And why wasn’t I summoned?” the Intricati was asking. “Why was the Warrior-Prophet not informed?”
“We thought it a School matter,” Iyokus said.
“A School matter …”
Eleäzaras smirked. “It is
we
who face the Snakeheads, not you.”
She actually had the temerity to take a step closer. “These things have nothing to do with the Cishaurim,” she snapped. “I would ponder that word ‘we,’ Eleäzaras. I assure you, its meaning is more treacherous than even you might think.”
Impertinent! Outrageous, impertinent whore! “Pfah!” he cried. “Why am I even speaking to the likes of you?”
Her eyes flashed. “The likes?”
Something, her tone or perhaps his own better judgement, caused him to reconsider. He felt his contempt drain away, his eyes dull with anxiety. He blinked, looked to the skin-spy, which writhed in the constrained way of couples making love with only blankets to conceal them. Suddenly everything seemed so … dreary.
So hopeless.
“I apologize,” he said. Out of habit he had tried to sound scathing, but the words had sounded
scared
instead. What was happening to him? When would this nightmare end?
A smile of triumph crept across her face. She—a caste-menial whore!
Eleäzaras could feel Iyokus stiffen in outrage; apparently one did not need eyes to witness what had just happened. Consequences! Why must there always be consequences? He would pay for this … this … humiliation. To remain the Grandmaster, one had to
act
the Grandmaster …
What did I do wrong?
something churlish cried within.
“The creature will be transferred,” she was saying. “These things have no soul for your Cants to compel … Other means are required.”
She spoke the language of edict, and Eleäzaras found himself understanding—though Iyokus, he knew, could not hope to follow. She
was
a handsome woman—beautiful, even. He would enjoy fucking her … And the fact that she belonged to the Warrior-Prophet? Sugar on the peach, as the Nansur would say.
“The Warrior-Prophet,” she continued, speaking his name like a well-worn threat, “wishes to know the details of your prep—”
“Is what they say true?” he blurted. “Is it true you once belonged to Achamian?
Drusas
Achamian?” Of course, he knew it was, but for some reason he needed to hear
her
say it.
She stared at him, dumbfounded. Suddenly Eleäzaras could actually hear the silence provided by the black felt walls—every stitch of it.
Tap-tap-tap-tap … The thing bleeding faceless blood.
“Don’t you see the irony?” he drawled on. “Surely you do…Iwas the one who ordered that Achamian be abducted. I was the one who stranded you with … with him.” He snorted. “I’m the reason you’re here at all, am I not?”
She didn’t sneer—her face was far too beautiful—but her expression burned with contempt nonetheless. “More men,” she said evenly, “should take credit for their mistakes.”
Eleäzaras tried to laugh, but she continued, speaking as though he were nothing more than a creaking pole or barking dog. Noise. She continued telling him—the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires!—what he had to do. And why not, when he so obviously had abandoned decisions?
Shimeh was coming, she said.
Shimeh
.
As though names could have teeth.
Rain. It was one of those showers that came sudden upon dusk, foreshortening the sunlight and within moments casting the pall of woollen night. Water fell in sheets, vanishing into grasses, hissing across bare ground, bouncing across the dark welter of canvas slopes. Gusts made mist of the torrent, and sodden banners thrashed like fish on hooks. Hoarse shouts and curses echoed through the encampment. The delinquent battled to pitch their tents. Some few stripped and stood naked, letting the water cleanse the long, long road from their skin. Esmenet, like so many others, found herself running.

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