The Thousandfold Thought Part 37

No! No!

When he was finished, it seemed he held the very same parchment he had lost, and he pondered the ident.i.ty of things, the way words did not discriminate between repet.i.tions. They were immortal, and yet they cared.

With a bold stroke, he crossed out, THE EMPEROR.

and inked, CONPHAS.

underneath, thinking of all the Scylvendi had said regarding the new Emperor, of how even now he marched on the Holy War from the west-or from the sea. "Warn them," "Warn them," the leering shadow had said. the leering shadow had said. "I would not see Proyas dead." "I would not see Proyas dead."

He quickly scratched a welter of new lines, all the connections he had ignored since his abduction by the Scarlet Spires. Then, in a hand too steady to be his own-for he was was mad, he knew that now-he wrote, mad, he knew that now-he wrote, THE DuNYAIN.

in the open s.p.a.ce to the left of, ANASuRIMBOR KELLHUS.

He held his quill above the ancient word for some time. Two drops of ink-tap-tap-marred the script. He watched them bleed outward, chasing a million infinitesimal veins, obliterating the word.

And for some reason, that spurred him to write, ANASuRIMBOR MOeNGHUS ANASuRIMBOR MOeNGHUS.

above. The name, not of Kellhus's son by Serwe, but of his father father-the man who had summoned him to the Three Seas ...

Summoned!

He dipped his quill into his inkhorn, his hand as light as an apparition. Then, as though crowded forward by dawning apprehension, he slowly wrote, ESMENET.

against the top left margin.

How had her name become his prayer? Where did she fall in these monstrous events?

Where was his own name?

He stared at the completed map, insensible to the pa.s.sage of time. The Holy War roused about him. Shouts and the chunk-chunk of hooves pa.s.sed through his tent-pa.s.sed through him. He had become a ghost that stared and stared, not really pondering but watching, watching, as though the secret lay hidden in the ink's immobility ... as though the secret lay hidden in the ink's immobility ...

Men. Schools. Cities. Nations.

Prophets. Lovers.

There was no pattern to these breathing things. There was no encompa.s.sing thought to give them meaning. Just men and their warring delusions ... The world was a corpse.

Xinemus's lesson.

Without knowing why, he began connecting each of the names to, s.h.i.+MEH.

where it lay centre bottom. Lines. One after another, drawn to the city that was about to devour so many, guilty and innocent alike. The bloodthirsty city.

Her name he connected last of all, for he knew she needed s.h.i.+meh more than any other-save perhaps himself. Once the black thread was drawn tight, he returned the tip of his quill and drew it out once more. And again. And again. And again. Quicker and quicker. Until he slashed the vellum sheet in a frenzy. Cut after cut after cut- For he was sure that his quill had become a knife ...

And that flesh lay beneath the tattooed skin.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

s.h.i.+MEH.

If war does not kill the woman in us, it kills the man.

-TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES

Like so many who undertake arduous journeys, I left a country of wise men and came back to a nation of fools. Ignorance, like time, brooks no return.

-SOKWe, TEN SEASONS IN ZEuM

Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, s.h.i.+meh

Soundless light broken through beads of dew. Dark canvas faces steaming. Shadows stretching from engines of war, slowly shrinking. Hues of grey bleeding into a panoply of colours. The far tracts of the sea flas.h.i.+ng gold.

Morning. The beginning of the world's slow bow before the sun.

Slaves stirred smoke from the firepits, used dried gra.s.s to conjure flames from buried coals. The sleepless roused themselves, sat in the chill, watching the twining smoke, disbelieving ...

The first of the horns pealed raw across the distances.

The day had come. s.h.i.+meh awaited, black against a fan of rising light.

"Your father," the old man in Gim had rasped, the old man in Gim had rasped, "bids me tell you ..." "bids me tell you ..."

Kyudea rose from the pastures like a scattered cairn. Foundations snaked through the gra.s.ses. Weathered stone crowned the peaks of rambling mounds. Here and there, toppled columns breached the turf, as though the wrecked city had been swamped by the swells of an earthen sea.

The Warrior-Prophet wandered the debris, a future mapped with each exhalation. His soul forked into the blackness of possibility, following the calculus of inference and a.s.sociation. Thoughts branching, shoot after shoot, until he filled the immediate world and struck beyond, down into the exhausted soil of the past, out across the ever-receding horizon of the future.

Cities burned. Entire nations took flight. A whirlwind walked ...

"'There is but one tree in Kyudea ...'"

Though only dead stone lay scattered about him, Kellhus could see what had come before: the grand processionals, the thronging thoroughfares, the ponderous temples. Kyudea had been as great as s.h.i.+meh, if not greater, in the days when the provinces south of the River Sempis had been nations. Now she was mute and fallow, a place for shepherds to shelter their flocks in time of storm.

Glories had dwelt here once. Now there was nothing. Only overturned stone, the whisk of gra.s.ses beneath the wind ...

And answers.

"'There is but one tree,'" the old man had said, his voice not his own, the old man had said, his voice not his own, "'and I dwell beneath it.'" "'and I dwell beneath it.'"

And Kellhus had struck, cleaving him to the heart.

He had been used, deceived-all along, from the very beginning ... That had been the Scylvendi's claim.

"But I'm not like the others!" Achamian had protested. Achamian had protested. "I don't believe for my heart's sake!" "I don't believe for my heart's sake!"

A shrug of powerful, many-scarred shoulders. "Which is why he would concede you your concerns ... make them the ground of an even deeper devotion. Truths are his knives, and we are all of us cut!" "Which is why he would concede you your concerns ... make them the ground of an even deeper devotion. Truths are his knives, and we are all of us cut!"

"What are you saying?"

Ink-bloodied parchment in hand, Achamian wandered through the camp, pressed through ma.s.ses of armed and arming Inrithi, neither seeing nor hearing those who bowed and addressed him as "Holy Tutor." He pa.s.sed from the radial avenues of the Conriyan encampment to more haphazard ones of the Tydonni. He saw an armoured man, an aging Meigeirish knight, his beard long and grey, on his knees before the smoking pit of his fire.

"Take my hand," Achamian heard the man sing, Achamian heard the man sing, "and kneel before ..." "and kneel before ..."

Without warning, the knight opened his eyes, glared at him even as he wiped away his tears. The ensuing verse, He who raises light He who raises light ..., seemed to hang unsung in the air between them. Then he turned, angrily collected his weapons and gear. Horns brayed in the morning distance. ..., seemed to hang unsung in the air between them. Then he turned, angrily collected his weapons and gear. Horns brayed in the morning distance.

"Take My Hand" ... One of a hundred hymns to the Warrior-Prophet, most of which Achamian knew by heart.

He gazed down the length of the congested avenue, saw others kneeling, some alone, others in groups of two or three. Where the avenue curved out of sight, he could see a Judge exhort dozens of penitents. Everywhere he looked he saw Circ.u.mfixes, painted across kite-s.h.i.+elds, wired into necklaces, embroidered across chests and high banners. The entire world seemed to rumble with devotion.

How had this happened?

What Kellhus had said in the Apple Garden was true: to kneel low before the G.o.d was to stand high among the fallen. The servants of an absent king invariably ruled in his stead. "What I do," the pious said, "I do for Him, Him," calling on writs so ancient, so metaphoric, that any hatred or conceit could be interpreted into them. It was as though what transcended, transcended, what stood outside the dim and slovenly circle of this life, was nothing more than a sheath hidden beyond the horizon. One needed only reach out to draw weapons ... what stood outside the dim and slovenly circle of this life, was nothing more than a sheath hidden beyond the horizon. One needed only reach out to draw weapons ...

Kneeling! What was it but another outrageous gluttony? Who begrudged sweets when flesh so soon would be served? Even the world world found itself on the table, its clamour become music, its caprice become courses served for the sake of the pious alone. Everything was for found itself on the table, its clamour become music, its caprice become courses served for the sake of the pious alone. Everything was for them them.

And the others? They need only beg.

"What are you saying?" he had cried to the Scylvendi. he had cried to the Scylvendi.

"That even you, the proud naysayer, are his slave. That he hunches at the springs of your every thought, draws you as water to his cup."

"But my soul is my own!"

Laughter, dark and guttural and vicious, as though all sufferers, in the end, were no more than fools.

"He prizes no thought higher."

Achamian had found certainty in Kellhus, despite losing Esmenet to him. He'd even made his torment into a kind of proof proof. So long as his charge pained him, he told himself, it must be real it must be real. He did not, as so many did, believe for flattery's sake. Seswatha's Dreams a.s.sured that his importance would be more a thing of terror than pride. And his redemption had been a thing too ... abstract.

To love one who had wronged him-that was his test! And he had been rooted rooted-so rooted ...

Now everything toppled, hurtled across steepening moments in an avalanche of hungers and hatreds, rus.h.i.+ng toward ... toward ...

s.h.i.+meh.

He knew not what.

"Truths are his knives, and we are all of us cut ..."

What was happening?

To know anything was to know, in some measure, where one stood where one stood. Small wonder he clutched his chest for fear of falling, even here on the wide ground of Shairizor-in the long shadow of s.h.i.+meh.

"Ask yourself, sorcerer ... What do you have that he hasn't taken?"

He had much preferred his d.a.m.nation.

The fires along the walls of s.h.i.+meh dulled in dawn's early light. Soon they were little more than orange smears between the battlements.

The Fanim upon the walls stared out in wonder across the fields. The impossible sight of the four siege-towers, two to either side of the Ma.s.sus Gate, had dismayed them, for everyone had agreed it would take the idolaters weeks to prepare any a.s.sault. Now they watched at the strange formations gathering before the gate proper. Most of them were conscripts, armed with tools or relics of forgotten wars, but some two thousand survivors of the long backward battle from Mengedda stood among them, and even they were perplexed by the idolaters. Their lord, Hamjirani, was called to the turrets so that he might see for himself. For some time he argued with lesser Grandees, only to finally withdraw in disgust.

Arrayed across the slopes of the Juterum, the Hill of Ascension, the heathen drummers began beating their skins. As though in reply, Inrithi horns brayed loud, hanging for the length of a man's lungs.

Opposite the gate the Fanim called Pujkar and the Inrithi called Ma.s.sus, small clots of men began advancing over the fields. Across the walls, men cried out for their officers, a.s.suming the idolaters sought to parley. But the n.o.bles among their number shouted them down. Archers were called to the ready.

Spread out across a hundred or more yards, the formations approached, some forty of them, each some ten paces from the others, and consisting, the defenders could now see, of six men-five abreast and one back, garbed in crimson beneath silver corselets. Small pennants fluttered from a horn set into their battlecaps, a different colour and sign adorning each cadre. All their faces were painted white, as was the manner of the Ainoni in war. The outermost men bore heavy crossbows, as did a lone man who trailed in the rear. Two like-armoured men marched on the inside of the flanking crossbowmen, bearing immense basketwork s.h.i.+elds that almost entirely obscured them from anything but the most extreme angles. Save shadows, not much could be seen of the figures who marched between and behind the s.h.i.+elds.

The more ignorant among the watching Fanim began jeering, but a whisper circulated among them, pa.s.sing from ear to ear until all was rigid silence. A single Kianene word that even the most ignorant of the Amoti knew and feared: qurraj qurraj ... ...

Sorcerer.

As though answering a pause in conversation, an otherworldly chorus droned out from the approaching formations, not so much through the air as under the scorched crops and razed structures, and up through the bones of s.h.i.+meh's mighty curtain wall. The engines cast the first of the firepots. Eruptions of liquid flame revealed the Wards curving about each cadre. A cloud swallowed the sunlight, and as one the defenders saw the foundations of spectral towers.