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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

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BOOK: The Warrior Prophet
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Xinemus studied him by firelight, frowned. “What’s wrong, Akka?”
“I’m a Schoolman, Zin, bound by oath and duty the same as y—”
“Lord Cousin!” Iryssas called over the flame. “You must listen to this! Tell him, Kellhus!”

Please,
Cousin,” Xinemus replied sharply. “Can’t you—”
“Pfah. Just listen to him! We’re trying to understand what this means.”
Xinemus began scolding the man, but it was already too late. Kellhus was speaking.
“It’s just a parable,” the Prince of Atrithau said. “Something I learned while among the Scylvendi … It goes like this: A slender young bull and his harem of cows are shocked to discover that their owner has purchased another bull, far deeper of chest, far thicker of horn, and far more violent of temper. Even still, when the owner’s sons drive the mighty newcomer to pasture, the young bull lowers his horns, begins snorting and stamping. ‘No!’ his cows cry. ‘Please, don’t risk your life for us!’ ‘Risk my life?’ the young bull exclaims. ‘I’m just making sure he knows I’m a
bull!
’”
A heartbeat of silence, then an explosion of laughter.
“A
Scylvendi
parable?” Xinemus cried out, laughing. “Are you—”
“This is my opinion!” Iryssas called through the uproar. “My interpretation! Listen! It means that our dignity—no, our
honour
—is worth more than anything, more than even our wives!”
“It means nothing,” Xinemus said, wiping tears from his eyes. “It’s a joke, nothing more.”
“It is a parable of courage,” Cnaiür grated, and everyone fell silent—shocked, Achamian supposed, that the taciturn barbarian had actually spoken. The man spat into the fire. “It is a fable that old men tell boys in order to shame them, to teach them that gestures are meaningless, that only death is real.”
Looks were exchanged about the fire. Only Zenkappa dared laugh aloud.
Achamian leaned forward. “What do you say, Kellhus? What do you think it means?”
Kellhus shrugged, apparently surprised he held the answer so many had missed. He matched Achamian’s gaze with friendly, yet utterly implacable, eyes. “It means that young bulls sometimes make good cows …”
More gales of laughter, but Achamian could manage no more than a smile. Why was he so angry? “No,” he called out. “What do you think it
really
means?”
Kellhus paused, clasped Serwë’s right hand and looked from face to shining face. Achamian glanced at Serwë, only to look away. She was watching him—intently.
“It means,” Kellhus said in a solemn and strangely touching voice, “that there are many kinds of courage, and many degrees of honour.” He had a way of speaking that seemed to hush all else, even the surrounding Holy War. “It means that these things—courage, honour, even love—are
problems,
not absolutes. Questions.”
Iryssas shook his head vigorously. He was one of those dull-witted men who continually confused ardour with insight. Watching him argue with Kellhus had become something of a sport.
“Courage, honour, love—these are problems? Then what are the solutions? Cowardice and depravity?”
“Iryssas …” Xinemus said half-heartedly. “Cousin.”
“No,” Kellhus replied. “Cowardice and depravity are problems as well. As for the solutions?
You,
Iryssas—you’re a solution. In fact, we’re
all
solutions. Every life lived sketches a different answer, a different way …”
“So are all solutions equal?” Achamian blurted. The bitterness of his tone startled him.
“A philosopher’s question,” Kellhus replied, and his smile swept away all awkwardness. “No. Of course not. Some lives are better lived than others—there can be no doubt. Why do you think we sing the lays we do? Why do you think we revere our scriptures? Or ponder the life of the Latter Prophet?”
Examples, Achamian realized. Examples of lives that enlightened, that
solved
… He knew this but couldn’t bring himself to say it. He was, after all, a sorcerer, an example of a life that solved nothing. Without a word, he rolled to his feet and strode into the darkness, not caring what the others thought. Suddenly, he needed darkness, solitude …
Shelter from Kellhus.
He was kneeling to duck into his tent when he realized that Xinemus had yet to hear his confession, that he was still alone with what he knew.
Probably for the best.
Skin-spies in their midst. Kellhus the Harbinger of the world’s end. Xinemus would just think him mad.
A woman’s voice brought him up short. “I see the way you look at him.”
Him
—Kellhus. Achamian glanced over his shoulder, saw Serwë’s willowy silhouette framed by the fire.
“And how’s that?” he asked. She was angry—her tone had betrayed that much. Was she jealous? During the day, while he and Kellhus wandered the column, she walked with Xinemus’s slaves.
“You needn’t fear,” she said.
Achamian swallowed at the sour taste in his mouth. Earlier, Xinemus had passed
perrapta
around instead of wine—wretched drink.
“Fear what?”
“Loving him.”
Achamian licked his lips, cursed his racing heart.
“You dislike me, don’t you?”
Even in the gloom of long shadows, she seemed too beautiful to be real, like something that had stepped between the cracks of the world—something wild and white-skinned. For the first time, Achamian realized how much he desired her.
“Only …” She hesitated, studied the flattened grasses at her feet. She raised her face and for the briefest of instants looked at him with Esmenet’s eyes. “Only because you refuse to see,” she murmured.
See what?
Achamian wanted to cry.
But she’d fled.
 
“Akka?” Kellhus called in the fading dark. “I heard someone weeping.”
“It’s nothing,” Achamian croaked, his face still buried in his hands. At some point—he was no longer sure when—he’d crawled from his tent and huddled over the embers of their dying fire. Now dawn was coming.
“Is it the Dreams?”
Achamian rubbed his face, heaved cool air into his lungs.
Tell him!
“Y-yes … The Dreams. That’s it, the Dreams.”
He could feel the man stare down at him, but lacked the heart to look up. He flinched when Kellhus placed a hand on his shoulder, but didn’t pull away.
“But it isn’t the Dreams, is it, Akka? It’s something else … Something more.”
Hot tears parsed his cheeks, matted his beard. He said nothing.
“You haven’t slept this night … You haven’t slept in many nights, have you?”
Achamian looked over the surrounding encampment, across the canvas-congested slopes and fields. Against a sky like cold iron, the pennants hung dead from their poles.
Then he looked to Kellhus. “I see his blood in your face, and it fills me with both hope and horror.”
The Prince of Atrithau frowned. “So this is about me … I feared as much.”
Achamian swallowed, and without truly deciding to, threw the number-sticks. “Yes,” he said. “But it’s not so simple.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Among the many dreams my brother Schoolmen and I suffer, there’s one in particular that troubles us. It has to do with Anasûrimbor Celmomas II, the High King of Kûniüri—with his death on the Fields of Eleneöt in the year 2146.” Achamian breathed deeply, rubbed angrily at his eyes. “You see, Celmomas was the first great foe of the Consult, and the first and most glorious victim of the No-God. The
first!
He died in my arms, Kellhus. He was my most hated, most cherished friend and he died in my arms!” He scowled, waved his hands in confusion. “I m-mean, I mean in S-Seswatha’s arms …”
“And this is what pains you? That I—”
“You don’t understand! J-just listen … He, Celmomas, spoke to me—to Seswatha—before he died. He spoke to all of us—” Achamian shook his head, cackled, pulled fingers through his beard. “In fact he
keeps
speaking, night after fucking night, dying time and again—and always for the first time! And-and he says …”
Achamian looked up, suddenly unashamed of his tears. If he couldn’t bare his soul before this man—so like Ajencis, so like
Inrau!
—then who?
“He says that an Anasûrimbor—an
Anasûrimbor,
Kellhus!—will return at the end of the world.”
Kellhus’s expression, normally so blessedly devoid of conflict, darkened. “What are you saying, Akka?”
“Don’t you see?” Achamian whispered. “
You’re the one,
Kellhus. The Harbinger! The fact you’re here means that it’s starting all over again …”
Sweet Sejenus.
“The Second Apocalypse, Kellhus … I’m talking about the Second Apocalypse. You are the sign!”
Kellhus’s hand slipped from his shoulder. “But that doesn’t make sense, Akka. The fact I’m here means nothing.
Nothing
. Now I’m here, and before I was in Atrithau. And if my bloodline reaches as far back as you say, then an Anasûrimbor has
always
been ‘here,’ wherever that might be …”
The Prince of Atrithau’s eyes lost their focus, wrestled with unseen things. For a moment, the glamour of absolute self-possession faltered, and he looked like any man overwhelmed by a precipitous turn of circumstance.
“It’s just a …” He paused, as if lacking the breath to continue.
“A coincidence,” Achamian said, pressing himself to his feet. For some reason, he yearned to reach out, steady him with his embrace. “That’s what I thought … I admit I was shocked when I first met you, but I never thought … It was just too mad! But then …”
“Then what?”
“I found them. I found the Consult … The night you and the others celebrated Proyas’s victory over the Emperor, I was summoned to the Andiamine Heights—by no less than Ikurei Conphas—and brought to the Imperial Catacombs. Apparently they’d found a spy in their midst, one that convinced the Emperor that sorcery simply
had
to be involved. But there was no sorcery, and the man they showed me was no ordinary spy …”
“How so?”
“For one, he called me Chigra, which is Seswatha’s name in
aghurzoi,
the perverted speech of the Sranc. Somehow he could see Seswatha’s trace within me … For another, he …” Achamian pursed his lips and shook his head. “He
had no face
. He was an abomination of the flesh, Kellhus! A spy that can mimic the form of any man without sorcery or sorcery’s Mark. Perfect spies!
“Somehow, somewhere, the Consult murdered the Emperor’s Prime Counsel and had him
replaced
. These, these
things
could be anywhere! Here in the Holy War, in the courts of the Great Factions … For all we know they could be Kings!”
Or Shriah …
“But how does that make
me
the Harbinger?”
“Because it means the Consult has mastered the Old Science. Sranc, Bashrags, Dragons, all the abominations of the Inchoroi, are artifacts of the Tekne, the Old Science, created long, long ago, when the Nonmen still ruled Eärwa. It was thought destroyed when the Inchoroi were annihilated by Cû’jara-Cinmoi—before the Tusk was even written, Kellhus! But these, these skin-spies are
new
. New artifacts of the Old Science. And if the Consult has rediscovered the Old Science, there’s a chance they know how to resurrect Mog-Pharau …”
And that name stole his breath, winded him like a blow to the chest.
“The No-God,” Kellhus said.
Achamian nodded, swallowing as though his throat were sore. “Yes, the No-God …”
“And now that an Anasûrimbor has returned …”
“That chance has become a near certainty.”
Kellhus studied him for a stern moment, his expression utterly inscrutable. “So what will you do?”
“My mission,” Achamian said, “is to observe the Holy War. But I’ve a decision to make … One that claws my heart every waking moment.”
BOOK: The Warrior Prophet
2.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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