The Warrior Prophet (35 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

How could so many be bent to one dreadful purpose? One place. One city.
Shimeh.
“Is it …” she found herself gasping, “is it like something from your dreams?”
He paused, and though he neither swayed nor stumbled, Esmenet suddenly feared he was about to fall. She reached out, clutched his elbow.
“Like my dreams,” he said.
 
PART II:
 
The Second March
 
 
CHAPTER NINE
 
HINNERETH
 
One can look into the future, or one can look at the future. The latter is by far the more instructive.
—AJENCIS,
THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN
 
 
If one doubts that passion and unreason govern the fate of nations, one need only look to meetings between the Great. Kings and emperors are unused to treating with equals, and are often excessively relieved or repelled as a result. The Nilnameshi have a saying, “When princes meet, they find either brothers or themselves,” which is to say, either peace or war.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN,
THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
 
Early Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn
 
Song and myriad glittering torches greeted Ikurei Xerius III as he passed through curtains of wispy linen and into the palatial courtyard. Only in light must the Emperor be seen. There was a rustle of fabric as the throngs fell to their knees and pressed their powdered faces against the lawns. Only the tall Eothic Guardsmen remained standing. With child-slaves holding the hem of his gown, Xerius walked among the prostrated forms and savoured, as he always did, this loneliness. This godlike loneliness.
He summons me! Me! The insolence!
He mounted the wooden steps and climbed into the Imperial Chariot. A call was given for all to rise.
Xerius held out his white gloved hand, idly wondering whom Ngarau, his Grand Seneschal, had chosen to hand him the reins—an honour of great traditional significance, but beneath the Emperor’s practical notice. Xerius trusted the judgement of his Grand Seneschal implicitly … As he’d once trusted Skeaös.
A pang of horror. How long would that name cut like glass?
Skeaös
.
He barely noticed the boy who handed him the reins. Some young scion of House Kiskei? No matter. Xerius was typically graceful even when distracted—a trait inherited from his father. His father might have been a craven fool, but, oh, how he’d always looked the Great Emperor.
Xerius passed the reins to his Charioteer and numbly signalled the advance. The team started at the snap of the Captain’s whip, then began prancing forward, drawing the gold-panelled chariot behind them. The censers affixed to the runners rattled, trailing streamers of blue incense. Jasmine and sweet sandalwood. The Emperor must be spared the disconcerting smells of his capital.
Observed by hundreds of painted and ingratiating faces, Xerius stared firmly forward, his stance statuary, his look remote and haughty. Only a select few received the nod of imperial acknowledgment: his bitch-mother, Istriya; old General Kumuleus, whose support had assured him the Mantle after his father’s death; and of course his favourite augur, Arithmeas. The intangible gold of Imperial favour was something Xerius hoarded jealously, and he was shrewd in its dispensation. Daring may be required to make the climb, but
thrift
was ever the key to holding the summit.
Another lesson Xerius had learned from his mother. The Empress had steeped him in the bloody history of his predecessors, tutored him with endless examples of past disaster. This one too trusting, that one too cruel, and so on. Surmante Skilura II, who’d kept a bowl of molten gold at his side to fling at those who displeased him, had been too cruel. Surmante Xatantius, on the other hand, had been too martial—conquest should enrich, not bankrupt. Zerxei Triamarius III had been too fat—so fat he needed slaves to brace his knees when he rode his horse. His death, Istriya had chortled, had been as much a matter of aesthetic decency as anything else. An emperor must look a God, not an overstuffed eunuch.
Too much of this and too much of that. “The world doesn’t constrain us,” the indomitable Empress had once explained, batting her harlot eyes, “so we must constrain ourselves—like the Gods … Discipline, sweet Xerius. We must have
discipline
.”
Something he possessed in abundance, or so Xerius thought.
Outside the courtyard, files of heavy cavalrymen, elite Kidruhil, positioned themselves before and after the Imperial Chariot, and flanked by running torch-bearers, the shining procession wound down the Andiamine Heights toward the dark and smoky troughs of Momemn. Moving slowly so the torch-bearers could keep pace, it clattered through the Imperial Precincts and onto the long, monumental avenue that joined the palace compounds to the temple-complex of Cmiral.
Numerous Momemnites stood in shadowy clots along the avenue, straining for a glimpse of their divine Emperor. Obviously word of his short pilgrimage had spread throughout the city. Turning left and right, Xerius smiled and raised his hand in salute after leisurely salute.
So he wants this to be public …
At first, he could see little beyond the runners and their glittering torches, nor could he hear much over the sound of hooves clopping across cobble. The farther they travelled, however, the more congested the processional avenue became. Soon slaves and caste-menials jostled within spitting distance of the torch-bearers, their faces clearly illuminated, and Xerius realized that they actually jeered and laughed each time he saluted them. For a moment he feared his heart might stop. He clutched the shuddering runners to steady himself. That he could make such a fool of himself!
Despite the streaming censers, the air took on the distinct odour of shit.
Within moments, it seemed, hundreds had become thousands, and as their numbers grew, so did their gall. Soon the air shivered with the thunder of multitudes. Horrified, Xerius watched the torchlight sort through face after unwashed face, each turned to him, some watching in silent accusation or contempt, some sneering, others shouting or howling in spittle-flecked rage. The procession trundled on, as yet unimpeded, but the sense of bristling pageantry had evaporated. Xerius swallowed. Cold sweat snaked between his clothes and skin. He turned his eyes resolutely forward, to the stiff backs of his cavalrymen.
This is what he wants,
he told himself.
Remember, be disciplined!
Officers bawled urgent commands. The Kidruhil drew their clubs.
The procession found brief respite crossing the bridge over the Rat Canal. Xerius saw pleasure barges anchored in the black waters, drifting in torch-illumined fogs of incense. Rising from their cushions, caste-merchants and concubines lifted clay wafers, blessing-tablets to be broken in his name. But their looks, Xerius could not help but notice, turned away long before his passage was complete—to the awaiting mobs.
The unruly Momemnites once again engulfed the procession. Women, the old and the infirm, even children, all shouting now, all brandishing fists … Glancing down, Xerius saw a poxed man rolling a rotted tooth on his tongue, which he spit as the Imperial Chariot passed. It fell somewhere beneath the wheels …
They truly abhor me,
Xerius realized.
They hate me … Me!
But this would change, he reminded himself. When all was finished, when the fruits of his labour had become manifest, they would hail him as no other emperor in living memory. They would rejoice as trains of heathen slaves bore tribute to the Home City, as blinded kings were dragged in chains to their Emperor’s feet. And with shielded eyes they would gaze upon Ikurei Xerius III and they would know—
know!
—that he was indeed the
Aspect-Emperor,
returned from the ashes of Kyraneas and Cenei to compel the world, to force nation and tribe to bow and kiss his knee.
I will show them! They will see!
The immense plaza of Cmiral opened before him, and the thunder of Momemn’s masses reached its crescendo, stealing his breath, numbing him with sound and implication. The forward Kidruhil halted, milled in momentary confusion. Xerius saw one cavalryman’s horse rear. The Kidruhil who followed galloped ahead to secure the flanks. All flourished their clubs, waving them in warning, striking any who came too near. Beyond their small perimeter of gleaming armour and torchlight the world was dark riot. Impoverished humanity, roaring fields of them, from the temple-compounds to the left and right to the great basalt pillars of Xothei ahead.
Xerius clenched the chariot’s forward rail until his knuckles whitened and his hands ached. All of them … Over and over, crying
that name
…
Dread, dizziness, and a sense of inner falling.
Has he incited them against me? Is this to be an assassination?
He watched as his Kidruhil clubbed first a sliver, then a wedge into the mobs. Suddenly he grinned, gritted his teeth in fierce pleasure.
This
was how the Gods affirmed themselves: with the blood of mortals! The crowd surged against the forward Kidruhil, and the thunder seemed redoubled. Several shining horsemen stumbled and vanished. More horsemen rushed forward. Clubs rose and fell. Swords were drawn.
The Charioteer steadied his team, glanced nervously at him.
You look an Emperor in the eye?
“Go!”
Xerius roared. “Into them! Go!”
Laughing, he leaned from the runners and spat upon his people, upon those who cried another’s name when Ikurei Xerius III stood godlike in their midst. If only he could spit molten gold!
Slowly, the chariot trundled ahead, lurching and throwing him forward as the wheels chipped over the fallen. His stomach burned with fear, his bowels felt loose, but there was a wildness in his thoughts, a delirium that exulted in death’s proximity. One by one the torch-bearers were pulled under, but the Kidruhil stood fast, battling their way ever forward, hacking their way among the masses, their swords rising and falling, rising and falling, and it seemed to Xerius that he punished the mongrels with
his
arm, that it was
he
who reached forward and chopped them to the ground.
Laughing maniacally, the Emperor of Nansur passed among his people, toward the growing immensity of temple Xothei.
Finally the decimated procession reached the ranks of Eothic Guardsmen arrayed across Xothei’s monumental steps. Deafened, afflicted by the torpor of dreams, Xerius was guided from the chariot onto the raised wooden walkway that led to the temple’s great gate. The Emperor must always be seen standing above mere men. He viciously grabbed one of the captains by the arm.
“Send word to the barracks! Hack this place to silence! I want my chariot to skid across blood when I return!”
Discipline. He would teach them.
Then he strode toward Xothei’s gate, stumbled for a moment on the hem of his gown, felt his heart stop beating for fury as laughter coloured the ambient roar. He glanced for an instant across what seemed an ocean of anger and rapture. Then, gathering his gown, he very nearly fled up the walkway. The temple’s massive stonework encompassed him. Shelter.

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