The Warrior Prophet (33 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Warrior Prophet
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Bones should have been broken. But then, Kellhus now knew, it was a thing without bones, a thing of cartilage …
Like a shark.
 
Saubon watched Athjeäri stare in horror at the bones scattered across the earthen floor. The tent was small, far smaller than the garish pavilions used by the other Great Names. Beneath the blue and red-dyed canvas, there was room enough only for a beaten field cot and a small camp table, where the Galeoth Prince sat, so very deep into his cups …
Outside the revellers howled and laughed—the fools!
“But he’s
here,
Uncle,” the young Earl of Gaenri said. “He waits …”
“Send him away!” Saubon cried. He loved his nephew, dearly, couldn’t look at him without seeing his beloved sister’s beautiful face. She’d protected him from Papa. She’d loved him before she died …
But had she
known
him?
Kussalt knew—
“But Uncle, you asked—”
“I care not what I asked!”
“I don’t understand … What’s happened to you?”
To be known by one man and to be
hated!
Saubon leapt from his seat, seized his nephew about the shoulders, cowed him the way only one of Eryeat’s sons could. How he wanted to cry out the truth, to confess everything to this boy, this man with his sister’s eyes—his sister’s blood! But he wasn’t her … He didn’t know him.
And he would despise him if he did.
“I cannot! I cannot have him see me like this! Can’t you see?”
No one must know! No one!
“Like what?”
“This!”
Saubon bawled, thrusting the young man back.
Athjeäri caught his balance and stood dumbstruck, openly hurt. He should have been outraged, Saubon thought. He was the Earl of Gaenri, one of the most powerful men in Galeoth. He should have been infuriated, not appalled …
Kussalt’s forever-murmuring lips.
“I would have you know how much I hate—”
“Just send him away!” Saubon cried.
“As you wish,” his nephew murmured. Glancing once again at the bones prodding through the earth, he withdrew through the leather flaps.
Bones. Like so many little tusks.
No one! Not even him!
 
Though it was late, sleep was out of the question. It seemed to Eleäzaras that he’d been asleep for weeks, now that High Ainon and the Scarlet Spires had finally rejoined the Holy War. For what was sleep, if not unconsciousness of the greater world? A profound ignorance.
To remedy this, Eleäzaras had set Iyokus, his Master of Spies, to work the instant their palanquins had set ground on the Plains of Mengedda. The battlefield of five days previous needed to be surveyed, and witnesses interviewed, to determine what tactics the Cishaurim had used, and how the Inrithi had bested them. The various informants and spies they’d placed throughout the Holy War also had to be contacted and questioned, both to ascertain how things stood in general now that they marched through heathen territory, and to pursue the matter of these new Cishaurim spies.
Faceless
spies. Spies without the Mark.
He awaited Iyokus outside his pavilion, pacing by torchlight, while his secretaries and Javreh bodyguards watched from a discreet distance. After spending weeks entombed in his palanquin, he found himself despising enclosed spaces. Everything seemed to bind and constrict these days.
After a time, Iyokus emerged from the darkness, a ghoul in flashing crimson.
“Walk with me,” he said to the chanv addict.
“Through the encampment?”
“You fear riots?” the Grandmaster asked somewhat incredulously. “After losing so many to the Cishaurim, I’d assumed they’d appreciate a few blasphemers in their midst.”
“No … I thought we might visit the ruins instead. They say Mengedda is older than Shir …”
“Ah, Iyokus the Antiquarian,” Eleäzaras laughed. “I keep forgetting …” Though he personally had no interest in seeing the ruins—he thought antiquarianism a defect of character proper to Mandate Schoolmen—he felt curiously indulgent. Besides, the dead made for good company, he supposed, when planning one’s very survival.
Instructing his bodyguards to remain behind, he strolled with Iyokus into the darkness.
“So what did you find?” he asked.
“After we illuminated the fields,” Iyokus said, “things fell into place …” Caught from the side by passing torchlight, his pigment-deprived eyes seemed to glow a momentary red. “Most unsettling, seeing the work of sorcery without the Mark. I had forgotten …”
“One more reason for this outrageous risk, Iyokus: to stamp out the Psûkhe …” A sorcery they couldn’t see. A metaphysics they couldn’t comprehend… What more did they need?
“Indeed,” the linen-skinned man replied unconvincingly. “What we know is this: according to every report, Galeoth and non-Galeoth, Prince Saubon singlehandedly repulsed the Padirajah’s Coyauri—”
“Impressive,” Eleäzaras said.
“As impressive as it is unlikely,” the ever-sceptical Master of Spies said. “But the point is moot. What matters is that the Fanim were then chased by the Shrial Knights.
That,
I think, was the decisive factor.”
“How so?”
“The scorched turf corresponding to Gotian’s charge doesn’t begin at Saubon’s lines along the ravine, where one might expect, but rather some seventy paces out … I think the Coyauri, as they fled, actually screened the Shrial Knights from the Cishaurim … They were only a hundred or so paces away when the psûkari began Scourging them.”
“It was the Scourge they used, then?”
Iyokus nodded. “I would say so. And perhaps the Lash, as well.”
“So they were Secondaries or Tertiaries?”
“Without question,” the Master of Spies replied, “perhaps under one or two Primaries … It’s a pity we didn’t have the foresight to post observers among the Norsirai: aside from what you and I witnessed ten years ago, we know next to nothing about their Concerts. And unfortunately no one seems to know just who any of them were—not even the higher ranking Kianene captives.”
Eleäzaras nodded. “It would be nice to know who … Even still, a dozen of them dead, Iyokus. A
dozen!
”
The Schoolmen of the Three Seas were called the “Few” for good reason. The Cishaurim, according to their informants in Shimeh and Nenciphon, could field at most one hundred to one hundred and twenty ranking psûkari, very near the number of sorcerers of rank the Scarlet Spires itself could field. When one counted in thousands, the loss of twelve scarcely seemed significant, and Eleäzaras had no doubt that many in the Holy War, among the Shrial Knights in particular, gnashed their teeth at the thought of how many they had lost for the sake of so few. But when one counted, as Schoolmen did, in
tens,
the loss of twelve was nothing short of catastrophic—or glorious.
“An astounding victory,” Iyokus said. He gestured to the Men of the Tusk passing them in shadowy clots: spectators, Eleäzaras imagined, returning from the Council of Great and Lesser Names. “And from what I gather, the Men of the Tusk have only the dimmest notion.”
So much the better,
Eleäzaras thought. Strange, the way cruelty and jubilation could strike such sweet chords.
“This,” he said with an air of declaration, “will be our strategy then. We conserve ourselves
at all costs,
allow these dogs to continue killing as many Cishaurim as they can.” He paused to secure Iyokus’s gaze. “We must save ourselves for Shimeh.”
How many times had he, Iyokus, and the others debated this issue? Despite the sometimes unfathomable power of the Psûkhe, it remained, they all agreed, inferior to the Anagogis. The Scarlet Spires would win an open confrontation with the Cishaurim—there was no doubt. But how many of them would die? What power would the Scarlet Spires wield
after
destroying the Cishaurim? A triumph which saw them reduced to the status of a Minor School wouldn’t be a triumph at all.
They must do more than defeat the Cishaurim, they must obliterate them. No matter how lunatic his thirst for vengeance, Eleäzaras would not gut his School.
“A wise course, Grandmaster,” Iyokus said. “Yet I fear the Inrithi won’t fare so well in a second encounter.”
“And why’s that?”
“The Cishaurim walked, probably to conceal themselves from Saubon’s Chorae bowmen and crossbowmen, whom he’d positioned too far behind his forward ranks. The strange thing, however, is that they approached without a cavalry escort …”
“They walked in the open? But I thought striking from opening waves of horsemen was their traditional tactic …”
“So the Emperor’s specialists claimed.”
“Arrogance,” Eleäzaras said. “Whenever they engage the Nansur, they face the Imperial Saik. This time they knew we were days away, still crossing the Southron Gates.”
“So they waived precautions because they thought themselves invincible …” Iyokus looked down, as though watching his sandalled feet and bruised toenails peep from the hem of his shining gown. “Possible,” he finally said. “Their intent seems to have been to decimate the Inrithi centre, nothing more, to ensure it would collapse in the next assault. They probably thought themselves cautious …”
They’d walked beyond the camp fires and embroidered round tents of their Ainoni countrymen to the perimeter of lost Mengedda. The ground sloped upward, breached by broad stone foundations—the remnants of some ancient wall, Eleäzaras realized. Taking care not to soil their gowns, they gained the stony summit. Around them stretched a great swath of debris fields, truncated walls, and on the skyline, an ancient acropolis crowned by a gallery of cyclopean pillars standing desolate beneath the constellation of Uroris.
Something broke the back of this place,
Eleäzaras thought.
Something breaks the back of every place
…
“What news of Drusas Achamian?” he asked. For some reason, he felt breathless.
The chanv addict stared into the night, lost in another of his annoying reveries. Who knew what happened in that spidery and methodical soul? Finally he said, “I fear you may be right about him …”
“You
fear?
” Eleäzaras fairly snapped. “You concluded the interrogation of Skalateas yourself. You know what happened that night beneath the Emperor’s palace better than anyone—save the principals, perhaps. The abomination
recognized
Achamian, ergo, Achamian is somehow connected to the abomination. The abomination could only be a Cishaurim spy, ergo Achamian is connected to the Cishaurim.”
Iyokus turned to him, his face as mild as milk. “But is the connection significant?”
“
That
is the very question we must answer.”
“Indeed. And how do you propose we answer it?”
“How else? By seizing him. By interrogating him.” Did he think the menace of these changelings didn’t warrant such extreme measures? Eleäzaras couldn’t imagine any greater threat!
“Just like Skalateas?”
Eleäzaras thought of the shallow grave they had left in Anserca, suppressed an uncharacteristic shudder.

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