The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (53 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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Soon, Father. I will see you soon.
Turning from Esmenet, Kellhus held out his radiant hands, and a hush passed through the vast congregation. Earlier, he had sent messengers announcing a final Council of Great and Lesser Names on the slopes above the teeming encampment. As he had expected, far more than the caste-nobility had answered his call. Fairly half the Holy War had massed on the incline before him, clotting the summit, perched like crows along the rims of those ruined sepulchres near enough to afford a view.
He stood partway down the slope so that, for those above, Shimeh would rise like a halo about his head and shoulders. The Lords of the Holy War occupied an oblong clearing immediately before him, sitting in the grass. Their look was at once eager and chaste, brimming with enthusiasm yet wary of the cauldron to come. To their right, forming a south shore for the sea of faces rising behind them, the Nascenti stood stiff with uncertain pride, doing their best to convey the impression that they alone knew what was about to happen. Eleäzaras, Iyokus, and several other Scarlet Schoolmen stood on the opposite shore, their faces blank with anxiousness. Kellhus saw Eleäzaras lean to listen to the bandaged Iyokus. The Grandmaster’s gaze momentarily clicked to Achamian, who stood—as usual—on Kellhus’s left.
“I turn,” Kellhus cried, “and I see you in your thousands, the Holy War, the great Tribe of Truth. But I also see thousands upon thousands more, assembled in gleaming ranks, filling the plains, the distant slopes…I see the ghosts of the fallen, standing among us, watching with pride those who will make good their heartbreaking sacrifice.”
There could be no forgetting. They had paid for this moment in terror and blood.
“Those who will reclaim my brother’s house.”
He could remember, perfectly, what it had been like those three years past, stepping from the shadow of Ishuäl’s Fallow Gate. Countless tracks had fanned out from his feet, leading to countless possible outcomes. But unlike a tree, he could war only in one direction. With every step he murdered alternatives, collapsed future after future, walking a line too thin to be marked on any map. For so long he had believed that line, that track, belonged to him, as though his every footfall had been a monstrous decision for which he alone could be called to account. Step after step, annihilating world after possible world, warring until only this moment survived …
But those futures, he now knew, had been murdered long before. The ground he travelled had been Conditioned through and through. At every turn, the probabilities had been summed, the possibilities averaged, the forks impossibly predetermined … Even here, standing before Shimeh, he executed but one operation in the skein of another’s godlike calculation. Even here, his every decision, his every act, confirmed the dread intent of the Thousandfold Thought.
Thirty years …
A soft-eyed grin. “I’m reminded of our first Council,” he said, “so very long ago on the Andiamine Heights.” They smiled at his rueful scowl. “I recall that we were fat.”
Laughter, at once thunderous and intimate, as though they were dozens instead of thousands, listening to a beloved uncle tell well-worn jokes. He was their axle, and they were his wheel.
“Proyas,” he called, grinning like a father at a son’s beloved foibles. “I remember you were bent upon winning your contest with Ikurei Xerius. You mourned the straits that forced you, time and again, to sacrifice principle for convenience, scripture for politics. For your entire life you sought a purity you thought you could glimpse but could never grasp. For your entire life you yearned for a
bold God,
not one who skulked in scriptoriums, whispering the inaudible to the insane.”
Now you rail at the old habits, and mourn the toll of the new …
He looked to the Earl of Agansanor, who sat like a youth, his knees held in the burly circle of his arms. “Gothyelk, you wished only to die absolved. The water of your life was running dry, and it seemed all you could taste was the salt of your sins. What old caste-warrior doesn’t turn to counting his crimes? And you, looking back on your life, decided that the hoard was too great, that only your blood could tip the scales of redemption.”
Now, thinking my finger on the balance, you dare dream of a quiet death …
“And Gotian, sweet Gotian, you desired only to be told, not out of some base desire to grovel at the feet of another, but to shape your life into the very mould of God’s will. Despite your power and prestige, you were forever haunted by your ignorance. You could not, like so many others, take comfort in the pretence of knowledge.”
I have become your rule and revelation, the very incarnation of the certainty you seek.
This exercise had become a custom of his. By calling out the truth of a few faces, he made them all feel known—watched.
“Each of you,” he continued, sweeping his gaze across the assembly, “had your reasons for joining the Holy War. Some of you came to conquer, some to atone, some to boast, to avenge, to flee … But I wonder, can any one of you say that you came for Shimeh
alone
?”
For several moments he heard nothing but the discordant hammering of their hearts. It was as though their breasts had become ten thousand drums.
“Is there no one?”
What he wrought here had to be perfect. There had been no mistaking the words of the old man who had accosted him in Gim. The sails of the Mandate fleet could appear any day now, and the Gnostic Schoolmen would not yield their war lightly. Everything had to be complete before their arrival. Everything had to be inevitable. If they had no hand in the work that they witnessed, they would be that much more reluctant in advancing their claims.
“Your father bids me tell you,”
the blind hermit had said,
“‘There is but one tree in Kyudea …’”
The question was whether the Men of the Tusk could prevail without him.
“None of you!” he cried in a voice like a crossbow bolt. “None of you came simply for Shimeh, because you’re Men, and the hearts of Men are not simple.” He looked from face to face, inviting them to see the obvious. “Our passions are a morass, and because we lack the words to name them, we pretend our words are the only true passions. We make our impoverished schemes the measure. We condemn the complicated and cheer the caricature. What man does not yearn for a
simple
soul, to love without recrimination, to act without hesitation, to lead without reservation?”
He saw the recognition sparking in a thousand eyes.
“But there is
no such soul
.”
To speak was to pluck the lute strings of another’s soul. To
intone
was to strum full chords. He had long ago learned how to speak past meanings, to mine passion with mere voice.
“
Conflict
is what we are in truth. Conflict. We think it an affliction, an obstruction, an adversary to be overcome, when in fact it is the very quintessence of our souls. Think back on your life. Have
any
of your motives been pure? Ever? Or is this one more lie you use to appease your gluttonous vanity? Think! Is there anything you’ve done for the love of God alone?”
Again silence, both shamefaced and willing.
“No. There’s nothing simple in your hearts. Even the adoration you bear me is marbled with fear, avarice, doubt … Werjau worries he’s lost my favour because I’ve laid eyes upon Gayamakri thrice. Gotian despairs, for he’s aspired to purity his entire life.” A smattering of laughter. “The shadows of conflict darken
all
of your faces!
Conflict
. Does this mean that you’re impure, wicked, or unworthy?”
The final word rang like an accusation.
“Or does it mean that you are
Men
?”
A wind had dropped into the silence, and the scent of the onlookers filled his nostrils: the bitter of rotting teeth, the ink of armpits, the honey of unwashed anuses, all shot through with strands of balsam, orange, and jasmine. And for a moment it seemed he stood within a great circle of apes, hunched and unwashed, watching him with dark and dumbfounded eyes. Then he glimpsed another circle, this one far different, where the Men of the Tusk stood as they stood now, only with their backs turned to him so that they looked outward, while he occupied the shadowy heart of them all—unseen, unguessed …
He knew their incantations. The words that could burn them, that could bring down their cyclopean walls. But more importantly, he knew the words that could
wield
them, that spoke from the darkness that came before. He need only speak to make men blubber, to make them cut their own throats. What did it mean to make instruments of men? And what did it matter, so long as they were wielded in the name of the God?
There was only mission.
“There’s nothing deeper,” he said with a sudden, apologetic melancholy. “There’s no undiscovered purity lying obscured in our souls. We are legion, both within and without. Even our God is a God of warring Gods. We are conflict—to our very pith!
“We. Are.
War
.”
Towering above the heads of his wild countrymen, the giant Yalgrota, his hair crazed in the humidity, raised his bloodstained axe and howled. Within moments the air shivered with cries, and brandished weapons dazzled the hillside with reflected sunlight. Everywhere Kellhus looked, he saw honed edges and clenched teeth, beating fists and rolling eyes. Even Esmenet daubed tears from the kohl about her eyes. Only Achamian stood apart from the spectacle …
“The Book of Songs,” Kellhus continued, “tells us that ‘war is heart without harness.’ Or think of Protathis, who says that ‘war is where the gag of the small is cut away.’ Why do you think the only true simplicity we ever find—the only
peace
—is on the field of battle? The blow fended. The blow struck. The howling chorus. The bestial dance. The pendulum of horror and exultation. Can’t you see? War is
our soul made manifest
. In it we are called out and condensed, and we burn so very bright.”
He held the Holy War in the palm of his intent. The Orthodox had all but dissolved in the face of his manifest divinity. As his Intricati, Esmenet had effectively silenced the remaining dissenters. Both Conphas and the Scylvendi had been removed from the plate …
Only Achamian yet dared look at him in alarm.
“Tomorrow you shall descend upon the last of a wicked people. Tomorrow you shall wrest my brother’s house from their depraved fury.” He looked directly to Nersei Proyas. “Tomorrow you shall raise arms to Shimeh! And I, the Prophet of War, shall be your prize!”
For months now he had trained them, teaching them cues that they recognized without realizing. When to speak, and when to hush. When to cry out, and when to cease breathing.
“But Most-Blessed!” Proyas exclaimed, using one of the many honorifics that he and others had devised. “You speak as though …” A guileless frown. “Are you not leading the morning assault?”
Kellhus smiled as though caught withholding a glorious secret.
“Every brother is a son … and every son must first visit my father’s house.”
Again the look from Achamian. Again the need to subdue the man’s endless misgivings.
Gathered on the slopes above the encampment, the Lords of the Holy War unanimously agreed they must assault the city. Starving the Sacred City to force her defenders—both arcane and mundane—to battle outside the walls wasn’t an option. The Inrithi no longer possessed the numbers to effectively surround Shimeh. Any determined heathen sortie, they knew, could win their way through. And even though Shimeh’s harbour was silted in due to the neglect of her Kianene masters, supplies still could arrive by sea.
The only points of contention turned on the Warrior-Prophet’s demand that they attack the city on the morrow, and the dismaying revelation that they must do so
without him
. Of the latter he refused to speak, but of the former he said: “We attack a foe still reeling from disaster, a foe who are many. But now that we’ve arrived … Think on your experience: in the face of enemies, time welds the hearts of men. Certainty, righteousness—these things strike
first
!”
The previous day, outriders had scoured the surrounding hills, searching for any sign of Fanayal and the reassembled Fanim host. The Amoti, as a rule, knew nothing, and those Kianene they captured told tales of varying outlandishness: Cinganjehoi, the Tiger of Eumarna, waited in the Betmulla, ready to descend upon them at any moment. Or the Kianene fleet, which supposedly had been destroyed, had stormed the Xerashi coast, disgorging an army that even now approached from their rear. Or Fanayal had commanded a mass exodus, and even now retreated with the Cishaurim to the great city of Seleukara. Or all the strength of Kian lay coiled in Shimeh like a snake in a basket, poised to strike the instant the Inrithi raised the lid …

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