Read The Warrior Prophet Online
Authors: R. Scott Bakker
The Warrior Prophet (104 page)
He was working me! Using me for my knowledge! Trying to understand what it was he saw!
And he saw Esmenet’s soft lips parting about those words, those impossible words …
“I carry his child.”
How? How could she betray him?
He could remember those nights lying side by side in the darkness of his poor tent, feeling her slender back against his chest, and smiling at the press of her toes, which she always pushed between his calves when they were frigid. Ten little toes, each as cold as a raindrop. He could remember the wan yet breathless wonder that would seep through him. How could such a beauty choose him? How could this woman—this world!—feel safe in his wretched arms? The air would be warm with their exhalations, while beyond the stained canvas, across a thousand silent miles, everything would become strange and chill. And he would clutch her, as though they both plummeted …
And he would curse himself, thinking,
Don’t be a fool! She’s here! She swore you’d never be alone!
Don’t be a fool! She’s here! She swore you’d never be alone!
But he was. He was alone.
He blinked absurd tears from his eyes. Even his mule, Daybreak, was dead …
He looked to the Great Names, who watched him from about the table. He felt no shame. The Scarlet Spires had carved that from him—or so it seemed. Only desolation, doubt, and hatred.
He did it! He took her!
Achamian remembered Nautzera, in what seemed another lifetime, asking him if the life of Inrau, his student, was worth the Apocalypse. He’d conceded then, had admitted that no man, no love, was worth such a risk. And here, he’d conceded once again. He would save the man who had halved his heart, because his heart was not worth the world, not worth the Second Apocalypse.
Was it?
Was it?
Achamian had slept only a short while the previous night, dozing while Proyas slumbered. And for the first time since becoming a sorcerer of rank within the Mandate, there had been no Dreams of the Old Wars. He had dreamed, rather, of Kellhus and Esmenet gasping and laughing in sweaty sheets.
Sitting speechless before the Great Names, Drusas Achamian realized that he held his Heart in one hand and Apocalypse in the other. And as he hefted them in his soul, it seemed that he couldn’t tell which was the heavier.
It was no different for these men.
The Holy War suffered, and someone must die. Even if it meant the World.
They were only one small pocket of confrontation amid a thousand of such pockets scrawling across the Kalaul. But they were, Cnaiür knew, the centre all the same. Dozens of Shrial Knights milled about them, their faces blank and guarded, their eyes wide with looks of worried concentration.
Something was about to happen.
“But he must die, Grandmaster!” Sarcellus cried. “Kill him and save the Holy War!”
Gotian glanced nervously at Cnaiür before looking back to his Knight-Commander. He ran thick fingers through his short, greying hair. Cnaiür had always thought the Shrial Grandmaster a decisive man, but he seemed old and unsure now—even cowed in some strange way by his subordinate’s zeal. All the Men of the Tusk had suffered, some more than others, and some in different ways than others. Gotian, it seemed, bore his scars on his spirit.
“I appreciate your concern, Sarcellus, but it has been agreed that—”
“But that’s just my point, Grandmaster! This sorcerer offers the Great Names reasons to spare the Deceiver. He gives them incentives. Contrived stories of evil spies that only the Deceiver can see!”
“What do you mean,” Cnaiür snapped, “that only
he
can see them?” Sarcellus turned to him in a manner that smelled wary, though nothing about him appeared troubled.
he
can see them?” Sarcellus turned to him in a manner that smelled wary, though nothing about him appeared troubled.
“This is what the sorcerer argues,” he said in a sneering tone.
“Perhaps he does,” Cnaiür replied, “but I followed you from the council chamber. The sorcerer had said only that there were spies in our midst, nothing more.”
“Are you suggesting,” Gotian asked sharply, “that my Knight-Commander is lying?”
“No,” Cnaiür replied with a shrug. He felt the deadly calm settle about him. “I merely ask how he knows what he did not hear.”
“You’re a heathen dog, Scylvendi,” Sarcellus declared. “A heathen! By what’s right and holy, you should be rotting with the Kianene of Caraskand, not calling the word of a Shrial Knight into question.”
With a feral grin, Cnaiür spat between Sarcellus’s booted feet. Over the man’s shoulder, he saw the great tree, glimpsed Serwë’s willowy corpse bound upside down to the Dûnyain—like dead nailed to dead.
Let it be now.
A series of cries erupted from the nearby crowds. Distracted, Gotian commanded both Cnaiür and Sarcellus to lower their hands from their pommels. Neither man complied.
Sarcellus glanced to Gotian, who peered across the crowd, then back to Cnaiür. “You know not what you do, Scylvendi …” His face
flexed,
twitched like a dying insect. “You know not what you do.”
flexed,
twitched like a dying insect. “You know not what you do.”
Cnaiür stared in horror, hearing the madness of Anwurat in the surrounding roar.
Lie made flesh …
Shouts added to shouts, until the air fairly hissed with cries and howls. Following Gotian’s gaze, Cnaiür turned and glimpsed a cohort of scale-armoured men in blue and scarlet coats through the screen of Shrial Knights: a few at first, clearing away throngs of Inrithi, then hundreds more, forming almost cheek to jowl opposite Gotian’s men. So far no blades had been drawn.
Gotian hurried along his ranks, shouting orders, bellowing to the barracks for reinforcements.
Swords were drawn, flourished so they flashed in the sun. More of the strange warriors approached, a deep phalanx of them shoving their way through the crowds of gaunt Inrithi. They were
Javreh,
Cnaiür realized, the slave-soldiers of the Scarlet Spires. What was happening here?
Javreh,
Cnaiür realized, the slave-soldiers of the Scarlet Spires. What was happening here?
The masses surged about several brawls. Swords rang and clattered—off to the left. Gotian’s cries pierced the din. Bewildered, the ranks of Shrial Knights immediately before Cnaiür suddenly broke, rolled back by Javreh with brandished broadswords.
United by shock, both Cnaiür and Sarcellus drew their swords.
But the slave-soldiers halted before them, making way for the sudden appearance of a dozen emaciated slaves bearing a silk- and gauze-draped palanquin with an intricately carved, black-lacquered frame. In one rehearsed motion, the cadaverous men lowered the litter to the ground.
A sudden hush fell over the crowds, so absolute Cnaiür thought he could hear the wind rattle and click through Umiaki behind him. Somewhere in the distance, some wretch shrieked, either wounded or dying.
Dressed in voluminous crimson gowns, an old man stepped from the shrouded litter, looking about with imperious contempt. The breeze wafted through his silky white beard. His eyes glittered dark from beneath painted brows.
“I am Eleäzaras,” he declared in a resonant patrician’s voice, “Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires.” He glanced over the dumbstruck crowds, then levelled his hawkish eyes on Gotian.
“The one who calls himself the Warrior-Prophet. You will cut him down and deliver him to me.”
“Well, it seems the matter is settled,” Ikurei Conphas said, his solemn tone belied by the hyena laughing in his gaze.
“Akka?” Proyas whispered. Achamian looked to him, bewildered. For a moment, the Prince had sounded twelve …
It was strange the way memory cared nothing for the form of the past. Perhaps this was why those dying of old age were so often incredulous. Through memory, the past assailed the present, not in queues arranged by calender and chronicle, but as a hungry mob of yesterdays.
Yesterday Esmenet had loved him. Just yesterday she’d begged him not to leave her, not to go to the Sareotic Library. For the rest of his life, he realized, it would always be yesterday.
He looked to the entryway, his attention caught by movement in his periphery. It was Xinemus … One of Proyas’s men—Iryssas, he realized—led him across the threshold, then up into the packed tiers. He was dressed in full panoply, wearing the shin-length skirt of a Conriyan knight and a harness of silvered ring-mail beneath a Kianene vest. His beard was oiled and braided, and fell in a fan of ringlets across his upper chest. Compared with the half-wasted Men of the Tusk, he looked robust, majestic, at once exotic and familiar, like an Inrithi prince from faraway Nilnamesh.
The Marshal stumbled twice passing through his fellow caste-nobles, and Achamian could see torment on his blinded face—torment and a curious, almost heartbreaking stubbornness. A determination to resume his place among the mighty.
Achamian swallowed at the knife in his throat.
Zin …
Breathless, he watched the Marshal settle between Gaidekki and Ingiaban, then turn his face to open air, staring out as though the Great Names sat before him rather than below. Achamian remembered the indolent nights he’d spent at Xinemus’s coastal villa in Conriya. He remembered drinking anpoi, eating wild hen stuffed with oysters, and their endless talk of things ancient and dead. And suddenly Achamian understood what he had to do …
He had to tell a story.
Esmenet had loved him just yesterday. But then so too had the world ended!
“I’ve suffered,” he called abruptly, and it seemed he heard his voice through Xinemus’s ears.
It sounded strong.
“I have suffered,” he repeated, pushing himself to his feet. “All of us have suffered. The time for politics and posturing has passed. ‘Those who speak truth,’ the Latter Prophet tells us, ‘have naught to fear, though they should perish for it …’”
He could feel their eyes: sceptical, curious, and indignant.
“It surprises you, doesn’t it, hearing a sorcerer, one of the Unclean, quoting Scripture. I imagine it even offends some of you. Nevertheless, I shall speak the truth.”
“So you lied to us before?” Conphas said with the semblance of sombre tact. Always a true son of House Ikurei.
“No more than you,” Achamian said, “nor any other man in these chambers. For all of us parse and ration our words, pitch them to the ears of the listener. All of us play jnan—that cursed game! Even though men die, we play it … And few, Exalt-General, know it better than you!”
Somehow, he’d found that tone or note that stilled tongues and stirred hearts to listen—that voice, he realized, that Kellhus so effortlessly mastered.
“Men think us Mandate Schoolmen drunk on legend, deranged by history. All the Three Seas laugh at us. And why not, when we weep and tug on our beards at the tales you tell your children at night? But this—
this!
—isn’t the Three Seas. This is Caraskand, where the Holy War lies trapped and starving, besieged by the fury of the Padirajah. In all likelihood, these are the last days of your life! Think on it! The hunger, the desperation, the terror flailing at your bowel, the horror bolting through your heart!”
this!
—isn’t the Three Seas. This is Caraskand, where the Holy War lies trapped and starving, besieged by the fury of the Padirajah. In all likelihood, these are the last days of your life! Think on it! The hunger, the desperation, the terror flailing at your bowel, the horror bolting through your heart!”
“That’s enough!” an ashen-faced Gothyelk cried.
“No!” Achamian boomed. “It isn’t enough! For what you suffer now, I’ve suffered my
entire
life—day and night! Doom! Doom lies upon you, darkening your thoughts, weighing your steps. Even now, your heart quickens. Your breath grows tight …
entire
life—day and night! Doom! Doom lies upon you, darkening your thoughts, weighing your steps. Even now, your heart quickens. Your breath grows tight …
Other books
Panther Protection by Gracie Meadows
Entangled With the Thief by Kate Rudolph
The House of Blue Mangoes by Davidar, David
Shattered Dreams (The Believe Series Book 1) by Angela Fattig
The Invisible Enemy by Marthe Jocelyn
1981 - Hand Me a Fig Leaf by James Hadley Chase
Shingaling by R. J. Palacio
Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly
Angel Incarnate: Second Sight by Linda Creel
Twisted Miracles by A. J. Larrieu