The Thousandfold Thought Part 38

True horror struck them then. Where were Indara's Water-bearers?

Those Fanim who tried to run were cut down by their own officers. The unholy chorus grew louder. The forward cadres halted some fifty lengths from the ramparts. The odd panicked arrow winked into smoke against their Wards. Columns of foot soldiers streamed forward between the cadres. To the rear of the formations, out of bowshot, several solitary figures stepped into air, their crimson gowns flapping, their eyes and mouths s.h.i.+ning bright.

There was a collective intake of breath along the battlements ...

Then glittering light.

The great siege-tower Proyas's men called Tippytoes groaned and creaked as the oxen and slaves pressed it forward across the fields. As the construction neared completion the previous dusk, Ingiaban had wondered aloud whether the siege-tower-which had been constructed to breach Gerotha's walls-would be tall enough "to give s.h.i.+meh's towers a kiss." With typical wit Gaidekki had replied that "she need only stand on her tippytoes." Somehow the name had stuck.

The great structure dipped and righted itself. Standing upon its packed crown, Proyas tightened an already white-knuckled grip on the railing. Men shouted, both about him and throughout the floors below. The crack of whips rose from behind. Before him, he could see the siege-tower's path marked in the raw dirt the sappers had used to level the irrigation ditches runnelling the fields. At the track's end, the white-and-ochre walls of s.h.i.+meh waited, their heights bristling with heathen men and heathen spears.

To his left, Tippytoes' counterpart, which the men had come to call Sister, lumbered forward as well, matching their progress. Taller than most any tree, she had been sheathed in mats of sodden seaweed, so that she seemed something otherworldly, a limbless beast. Hatches had been propped open along each of her six floors, behind which, Proyas knew, dozens of ballistae stood c.o.c.ked and waiting, prepared to rake the parapets of the Tatokar Walls as soon as they entered range. The carpenter-overseers who had directed the a.s.sembly of both towers swore they were miracles of engineering-as they should be, given that the Warrior-Prophet had designed them.

Tippytoes teetered and advanced, her axles and joints screaming. The white-tiled walls and their giant eyes loomed closer ...

Please G.o.d, Proyas found himself praying, Proyas found himself praying, let this one thing be! let this one thing be!

The first of the stones arced toward them, flung by great engines hidden in the city. They fell wide, thumping into the earth short of their positions, but there was something surreal about watching them, as though the soul refused to believe weights so great could be cast so high. Men hollered in warning. A missile whooshed over them-close enough to touch! It missed, but crashed with deadly effect into the long train that drove them forward. Tippytoes lurched still for a moment, long enough for Sister to pull ahead. Proyas could see her runged backside, which was naught but a giant ladder. Then Tippytoes heaved forward again.

Count-Palatine Gaidekki suddenly appeared among the men crowding the rear of Sister's top platform, his dark face beaming.

"Glory goes to the fleet of foot!" he cried. "We'll wash up the blood so you don't slip when you arrive!"

Though teeth remained clenched, all laughed, and a number began shouting for more speed. The laughter redoubled when a near hit forced Gaidekki and his men to fairly dive.

Then the first of the lights flashed about Ma.s.sus Gate, and all heads turned. It seemed they could hear screams ...

Even if sorcery was no longer anathema, few men among the pious-especially among the Conriyans-wished to follow the Scarlet Spires anywhere, let alone to Holy s.h.i.+meh. Proyas watched numb as great gouts of flame washed across the barbicans ...

There was a chorus of plank-m.u.f.fled shouts from directly beneath him, followed by a staccato snap, as though someone had broken a dozen twigs over his knee. Iron-tipped bolts whirred out from the ballistae arrayed behind the hatches below him, fanned across the teeming parapets. Moments later, Sister responded in kind. Save for those that exploded in small ceramic showers against the wall, the missiles seemed to vanish into the defenders crowding the battlements.

"s.h.i.+elds!" Proyas cried, not because they would help against the heathen artillery, but because they had come within extreme bow range.

Something dimmed the morning sun ... Clouds?

The first hail of arrows fell upon them and those heaving them forward.

"Fire!" Proyas cried to the archers about him. "Clear the walls!"

The Ma.s.sus Gate had become a mad play of lights in his periphery. But there was no time to watch. With every heartbeat, the unblinking eyes of s.h.i.+meh's walls drew closer and the air grew thicker with missiles. When he dared lower his s.h.i.+eld, he could discern individual heathen in the bristling ma.s.s of defenders. He glimpsed one old man, a kettle bound to his head, taken in the throat by a bolt and carried backward into the city. Flaming pots crashed about the towers. Two smashed into the side of Sister, flinging burning tar across the seaweed. Suddenly smoke wreathed every sight, and the roar of fire bloated every sound. There was a crack and a concussion that brought all of them to their knees. One of the mighty stones had found its target. But miraculously, Tippytoes groaned onward. The floor beneath Proyas heaved like the deck of a s.h.i.+p. He hunched under his s.h.i.+eld. The archers about him nocked, stood, fired, then crouched to nock once again. Every second man, it seemed, fell backward, swatting at a jutting shaft. The knights dragged them, dropped them over the side to make room for the others surging up from the lower floors. There was a roar, then a t.i.tanic clacking of stones that could only come from the Ma.s.sus Gate. But a chorus of shrieks drew his attention to his left, to Sister, where a pot had exploded across the upper deck. Burning knights dove, heedless of the height, crashed onto their comrades below.

"Gaidekki!" Proyas screamed across the interval. "Gaidekki!" "Gaidekki!"

The Count-Palatine's scowling face appeared between the timber h.o.a.rdings, and Proyas actually smiled, despite the arrows buzzing between them. Then Gaidekki was gone. Proyas slipped to his knees, blinking against the image of the man's neck and shoulders snapping about an unstoppable stone.

The sky blackened. Closer and closer the siege-towers lumbered, though Sister had become a s.h.i.+ning inferno. Then there were the white-tiled walls, close enough to hit with thrown clothing, crammed with arms and howling faces. Proyas could see a great eye opening across the white-tiled planes below, glimpse the wide expanse of street and structure reaching out to the Sacred Heights. There! There! There was the First Temple!

s.h.i.+meh! he thought. he thought. s.h.i.+meh! s.h.i.+meh!

Proyas lowered his silver war-mask, glimpsed his stooped kinsmen doing the same. The flying bridge dropped, its iron hooks biting the battlements. Tippytoes was tall enough to kiss after all.

Crying out to Prophet and G.o.d, the Crown Prince leapt into the swords of his enemy ...

The tree could not be missed.

It stood at the edge of a greater hill near the heart of the debris fields, the twin of black Umiaki in girth and height. Its great tendons were stripped of their bark, and its limbs reached into the air like winding tusks.

Climbing the remnants of a monumental stair set into the hillside, Kellhus soon found himself beneath its ma.s.sive sinews. Beyond the tree, upturned blocks and rows of headless pillars stretched across the levelled summit. Save in the direction of s.h.i.+meh, where the ground had given way altogether, paving stones encircled the tree's base, rising and cracking about the immense roots.

He placed a hand against the immovable trunk, ran his fingertips across the lines that scored its surface. The spoor of old worms. He paused where the ground sheered away, staring at the black clouds that had acc.u.mulated on the horizon-above s.h.i.+meh. It seemed he could hear the thrum of distant thunder. Then he lowered himself over the fall, using exposed roots to anchor his descent.

Sheets of gravel clattered across the slopes below.

He found his footing. Above him, the tree soared, its trunk smooth and phallic, its boughs curved like canines, reaching far into the airy heights. Before him, roots twined like cuttlefish limbs. At some point-many years ago, from the look of the hatchet work-an opening had been hacked through them. Peering into the excavated gloom, Kellhus saw the lines of stonework, stairs dropping into blackness ...

He pressed his way forward, descended into the belly of the hillside.

Holding out his hand to alert Serwe and her brother, Cnaiur reined his stolen horse to a hard stop. Four vultures took soundlessly to the sky. On the slopes of a neighbouring rise, five saddled but riderless horses momentarily raised their heads, then continued grazing.

The three of them had paused on a low rise overlooking the carnage. The Betmulla Mountains rose grey and hunched in the distances before them-and there was still no sign of Kyudea, though Serwe insisted they followed the Dunyain's path exactly. She could smell him, she said.

Cnaiur dismounted, strode into the midst of the sprawled bodies. He hadn't slept for days, but the exhaustion that buzzed through his limbs seemed an abstract thing, as easily ignored as a philosopher's argument. Ever since his discussion with the Mandate sorcerer, a strange intensity had seized him-a vigour he could only identify with hate.

"He goes to Kyudea," the fat fool had finally said. the fat fool had finally said.

"Kyudea?"

"Yes, s.h.i.+meh's ruined sister. It lies to the southwest, near the headwaters of the Jes.h.i.+mal."

"Did he tell you why?"

"No one knows ... Most think he goes to speak with the G.o.d."

"Why do they think that?"

"Because he said he goes to his father's house."

"Kidruhil," Cnaiur called back, identifying the dead. "Likely hunting us."

He stared at the tracks across the ground, then stooped to examine several of the corpses. He pressed knuckles against the cheek of one, gauging its warmth. The skin-spies watched impa.s.sively, stared with unnerving directness as he walked back and remounted his horse.

"The Dunyain surprised them," he said.

How many seasons had he pined for this moment? How many thoughts scattered and broken?

I shall kill them both.

"Are you sure it was him?" her brother asked. "We smell others ... Fanim."

Cnaiur nodded and spat. "It's him," he said with weary disgust. "Only one had time to draw his weapon."

War, she realized-war had given the world to men.

They had fallen to their knees before her, the Men of the Tusk. They had beseeched her for her blessing. "s.h.i.+meh," one man had cried. "I go to die for s.h.i.+meh!" And Esmenet did, though she felt foolish and so very far from the idol they seemed to make of her; she blessed them, saying words that would give them the certainty they so desperately needed-to die or to kill. In a voice she knew so well-at once soothing and provoking-she repeated something she had heard Kellhus say: "Those who do not fear death live forever." She held their cheeks and smiled, though her heart was filled with rot.

How they had thronged about her! Their arms and armour clattering. All of them reaching, aching for her touch, much as they had in her previous life.

And then they left her with the slaves and the ill.

The Wh.o.r.e of Sumna, some had called her, but in tones of exaltation, not condemnation, as though only by falling so far could one be raised so high. She found herself thinking of her namesake from The Chronicle of the Tusk, The Chronicle of the Tusk, Esmenet, wife of Angeshrael, daughter of Shamanet. Was that her fate, to be a reference buried among holy articles? Would they call her Esmenet-allikal, or "Esmenet-the-other," the way Esmenet, wife of Angeshrael, daughter of Shamanet. Was that her fate, to be a reference buried among holy articles? Would they call her Esmenet-allikal, or "Esmenet-the-other," the way The Tractate The Tractate distinguished those with namesakes from the Tusk? Or would she simply be the Prophet-Consort ... distinguished those with namesakes from the Tusk? Or would she simply be the Prophet-Consort ...

The Wh.o.r.e of Sumna.

The sky darkened, and the murderous roar swelled on the morning breeze. At long last it was happening happening ... and she could not bear it. She could not bear it. ... and she could not bear it. She could not bear it.

Ignoring several entreaties to go watch the a.s.sault from the edge of the encampment, she returned to the Umbilica. It was deserted save for a handful of slaves gathered about their breakfast fires. Only one of the Hundred Pillars-a Galeoth with a bandaged thigh-stood guard. He bowed low and stiff as she barged past him into the closeted murk of the interior. She called out twice as she walked the tapestried halls, received no reply. All was quiet, still. The clamour of the Holy War seemed impossibly distant, as though she listened to another world through the joints of this one. Eventually she found herself in the dead Padirajah's bedchamber, staring at the great gilded bed where she and Kellhus slept and coupled. She piled her books and scrolls on it, then, crawling across the covers, surrounded herself with them. Rather than read, she touched, savoured their smooth and dry surfaces. Some she held until they became as warm as her skin. Then, for no reason she could fathom, she counted them, like a child jealous of her toys.

"Twenty-seven," she said to no one. Distant sorceries cracked faraway air, made the gold and gla.s.s settings hum with their rumble.

Twenty-seven doors opened, and not one way out.

"Esmi," a hoa.r.s.e voice said.

For a moment she refused to look up. She knew who it was. Even more, she knew what he looked like: the desolate eyes, the haggard posture, even the way his thumb combed the hair across his knuckles ... It seemed a wonder that so much could be hidden in a voice, and an even greater wonder that she alone could see.

Her husband. Drusas Achamian.

"Come," he said, casting a nervous glance about the room. He did not trust this place. "Please ... come with me."

Through the canvas warren, she could hear Moenghus's infant wail. She blinked tears and nodded.

Always following.

Screams. Men combusting, burning like autumnal leaves, trailing oily ribbons of black. Thunder upon thunder, a chorus roaring at depths only the s.h.i.+vering stone could hear. Those cringing along the inner base of the fortifications saw the shadows of battlements flicker across the nearby tenements.

The heads of ghost dragons reared from the forward Scarlet Cadres, then like dogs straining for their master's hand, they bent forward and vomited incendiary streams. Fire gushed up across masonry, orange and gold in the gloom, blazing between crenellations, swirling down stair and ramp, rolling over men and transforming them into flailing shadows.

Within heartbeats, the Fanim packed across the barbican and adjacent walls ceased to exist. Stone cracked, exploded. The bastions of the gate buckled, and men winced, as though watching knees fold backward. The towers leaned out through the smoke, then dropped into obscurity. A great hemisphere of dust and debris rolled out and over the sorcerers and their unearthly song.

At long last, the Scarlet Spires marched.

Kellhus climbed through deeper ruins.

At the base of the stair he found a lantern made of horn and translucent paper-something neither Kianene nor Nilnames.h.i.+ in manufacture. When ignited, it cast a diffuse orange glow ...

The halls were not human.

The drafts came to him, murmuring their secrets. His soul reached out, calculating probabilities, transforming inferences into s.p.a.ce. About him, the galleries scrawled on and on into the immured blackness.

So like the Thousand Thousand Halls ... So like Ishual.

Kellhus forged ahead, the scattered detritus cracking beneath his feet. He watched the walls resolve from cold blackness, studied the mad detail that thronged across them. Statuary, Statuary, not reliefs, had been carved into them: figures no taller than his knee, posed in narratives that outran the light of his lantern, and stacked one atop another, even across the vaulted ceiling, so that it seemed he walked through stone grille work. He paused, held his lantern before a string of naked figures raising spears against a lion, then realized that another frieze had been carved not reliefs, had been carved into them: figures no taller than his knee, posed in narratives that outran the light of his lantern, and stacked one atop another, even across the vaulted ceiling, so that it seemed he walked through stone grille work. He paused, held his lantern before a string of naked figures raising spears against a lion, then realized that another frieze had been carved behind behind this first. Peering through miniature limbs, he saw deeper, more licentious representations, depicting all manner of poses and penetrations. this first. Peering through miniature limbs, he saw deeper, more licentious representations, depicting all manner of poses and penetrations.

The work of Nonmen.

A trail had been scuffed across the hide of ancient dust-and by someone, Kellhus realized, who possessed a stride and gait identical to his own. Following it, he pressed deeper into the derelict mansion, knowing that he walked in his father's very footsteps. After descending several hundred paces, he entered a domed vestibule where the renderings across the walls were chiselled large as life but continued telling the same twofold tale of martial exploit and priapic excess. Copper bands, their bright green bleeding into the limestone, had been set into the walls, bearing a strange wedge script. But whether they were benedictions, explanations, or recitations of some hallowed text, Kellhus could not say. He knew only that the inhabitants of this place had celebrated deeds in all their ambivalent complexity, rather than-as was the wont of Men-reproducing only flattering surfaces.

Ignoring the alternate pa.s.sages, Kellhus continued following the track through the dust. It wound deep into the abandoned labyrinth, always descending. Save for the pitted remains of bronze arms, he found no artifacts, only chamber after florid chamber, each as ornate as the last. He pa.s.sed through a vast library where scroll-racks towered higher than his lantern light could reach, and where queues and twining stairs-all exquisitely carved from living rock-loomed from the darkness as though from the ocean deeps. He did not pause, though he held out his lantern to each room he pa.s.sed by or through: infirmaries, granaries, barracks, and personal apartments-warrens of them. Everything he saw, he pondered, knowing he understood nothing of the souls for whom these things were natural and immediate.

He pondered four thousand years of absolute dark.

He crossed a vast processional gallery where sculptured events events spilled from the walls, epic scenes of strife and pa.s.sion: nude penitents prostrate before the court of a Nonman King, warriors striving against mobs of Sranc or Men. Though Moenghus's trail often pa.s.sed through these grand dioramas, Kellhus found himself walking around-heeding some voice from nowhere. Towering columns soared into the darkness, worked with arms gripping arms, twining upward and around, squared with bent-back wrists and open hands that cast the shadow of fingers. The ceilings remained cloaked in black obscurity. The silence was that of mighty hollows, at once oppressive and fragile, as though the clatter of a single stone might thunder. spilled from the walls, epic scenes of strife and pa.s.sion: nude penitents prostrate before the court of a Nonman King, warriors striving against mobs of Sranc or Men. Though Moenghus's trail often pa.s.sed through these grand dioramas, Kellhus found himself walking around-heeding some voice from nowhere. Towering columns soared into the darkness, worked with arms gripping arms, twining upward and around, squared with bent-back wrists and open hands that cast the shadow of fingers. The ceilings remained cloaked in black obscurity. The silence was that of mighty hollows, at once oppressive and fragile, as though the clatter of a single stone might thunder.

Upraised palms braced his every step. Blank eyes studied his every angle. The Nonmen who had auth.o.r.ed this place had possessed more than a fascination with the living form; it had been their obsession. Everywhere, they had cut their image into the dead stone about them, transforming the suffocating weights that hemmed them in into extensions of themselves. And Kellhus realized: the mansion itself mansion itself had been their devotional work-their Temple. Unlike Men, these Nonmen had not rationed their wors.h.i.+p. They did not distinguish between prayer and speech, idol and statue ... had been their devotional work-their Temple. Unlike Men, these Nonmen had not rationed their wors.h.i.+p. They did not distinguish between prayer and speech, idol and statue ...

Which spoke to their terror.

Collapsing possibilities with every step, Anasurimbor Kellhus followed his father's trail into the blackness, his lantern raised to the issue of artisans, ancient and inhuman.

Where are you taking me?