The Warrior Prophet (37 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

 
“Stay with me, Zin,” Proyas called out.
He’d dismissed the council only moments earlier. Now standing, he watched his people mill and make ready to leave. They filled the smoky interior of his pavilion, some pious, others mercenary, almost all of them proud to a fault. Gaidekki and Ingiaban continued to argue, as they always did, over things material and immaterial. Most of the others began filing from the chamber: Ganyatti, Kushigas, Imrothas, several high-ranking barons, and of course, Kellhus and Cnaiür. With the exception of the Scylvendi, they bowed one by one before vanishing through the blue silk curtains. Proyas acknowledged each with a curt nod.
Soon Xinemus was left standing alone. Slaves scurried through the surrounding gloom, gathering plates and sticky wine bowls, straightening rugs, and repositioning the myriad cushions.
“Something troubles you, my Prince?” the Marshal asked.
“I just have several questions …”
“About?”
Proyas hesitated. Why should a prince shrink from speaking of any man?
“About Kellhus,” he said.
Xinemus raised his eyebrows. “He troubles you?”
Proyas hooked a hand behind his neck, grimaced. “In all honesty, Zin, he’s the least troubling man I’ve ever known.”
“And that’s what troubles you.”
Many things troubled him, not the least of which was the recent disaster at Hinnereth. They’d been outmanoeuvred by Conphas and the Emperor. Never again.
He had no time and little patience for these … personal matters.
“Tell me, what do you make of him?”
“He terrifies me,” Xinemus said without an instant’s hesitation.
Proyas frowned. “How so?”
The Marshal’s eyes unfocused, as though searching for some text written within. “I’ve spilled many bowls with him,” he said hesitantly. “I’ve broken much bread, and I cannot count the things he’s shown me. Somehow, some way, his presence makes me … makes me
better
.”
Proyas looked to the ground, to the interleaved wings embroidered across the carpet at his feet. “He has that effect.”
He could feel Xinemus study him in his cursed way: as though he saw past the fraudulent trappings of manhood to that sunken-chested boy who’d never left the training ground.
“He’s only a man, my Prince. He says so himself … Besides, we’re past—”
“How is Achamian?” Proyas asked abruptly.
The stocky Marshal scowled. He buried two fingers between the plaits of his beard to scratch his chin. “I thought his name was forbidden.”
“I merely ask.”
Xinemus nodded warily. “Well. Very well, in fact. He’s taken a woman, an old love of his from Sumna.”
“Yes … Esmenet is it? The one who was a whore.”
“She’s good for him,” Xinemus said defensively. “I’ve never seen him so content, so happy.”
“But you sound worried.”
Xinemus narrowed his eyes an instant, then sighed heavily. “I suppose I do,” he said, looking past Proyas. “For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been a Mandate Schoolman. But now … I don’t know.” He glanced up, matched his Prince’s gaze. “He’s almost stopped speaking of the Consult and his Dreams altogether … You’d approve.”
“So he’s in love,” Proyas said, shaking his head. “Love!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Are you sure?” A grin overpowered him.
Xinemus fairly cackled. “He’s in love, all right. He’s been stumbling after his pecker for weeks now.”
Proyas laughed and looked to the ground. “So he has one of those, does he?” Akka in love. It seemed both impossible and strangely inevitable.
Men like him need love … Men unlike me.
“That he does. She seems exceedingly fond of it.”
Proyas snorted. “He
is
a sorcerer after all.”
Xinemus’s eyes slackened for an instant. “That he is.”
There was a moment of awkward silence. Proyas sighed heavily. With any man other than Xinemus, these questions would’ve come naturally, without uncertainty or reservation. How could Xinemus, his beloved Zin, be so mulish about something so obvious to other men?
“Does he still teach Kellhus?” Proyas asked.
“Every day.” The Marshal smiled wanly, as though at his own foolishness. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You
want
to believe Kellhus is more, but—”
“He was right about Saubon!” Proyas exclaimed. “Even in the details, Zin! The
details!
”
“And yet,”
Xinemus continued, frowning at the interruption, “he openly consorts with Achamian. With a
sorcerer
…”
Xinemus mockingly had spoken the word as other men spoke it: like a thing smeared in shit.
Proyas turned to the table, poured himself a bowl of wine. It had tasted so sweet of late.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“I think Kellhus simply sees what I see in Akka, and what
you
once saw … That a man’s soul can be good apart fro—”
“The Tusk says,” Proyas snapped, “‘Burn them, for they are Unclean!’ Burn them! How much more clarity can there be? Kellhus consorts with an abomination. As do you.”
The Marshal was shaking his head. “I can’t believe that.”
Proyas fixed him with his gaze. Why did he feel so cold?
“Then you cannot believe the Tusk.”
The Marshal blanched, and for the first time the Conriyan Prince saw fear on his old sword-trainer’s face—fear! He wanted to apologize, to unsay what he’d said, but the cold was so unyielding …
So true.
I simply go by the Word!
If one couldn’t trust the God’s own voice, if one refused to listen—even for sentiment’s sake!—then everything became scepticism and scholarly disputation. Xinemus listened to his heart, and this was at once his strength and his weakness. The heart recited no scripture.
“Well then,” the Marshal said thinly. “You needn’t worry about Kellhus any more than you worry about me …”
Proyas narrowed his eyes and nodded.
 
There was constraint, there was direction, there was, most illuminating of all, a summoning together.
Night had fallen, and Kellhus sat alone upon a promontory, leaning against a solitary cedar. Drawn eastward by years of wind, the cedar’s limbs swept across the starry heavens and forked downward. They seemed moored as though by strings to the panorama below: the encamped Holy War, Hinnereth behind her great belts of stone, and the Meneanor, her distant rollers silvered by moonlight.
But he saw none of this, not with his eyes …
The promises and threats of what was came murmuring, and futures were discussed.
There was a world, Eärwa, enslaved by history, custom, and animal hunger, a world driven by the hammers of what came before.
There was Achamian and all he had uttered. The Apocalypse, the lineages of Emperors and Kings, the Houses and Schools of the Great Factions, the panoply of warring nations. And there was sorcery, the Gnosis, and the prospect of near limitless power.
There was Esmenet and slender thighs and piercing intellect.
There was Sarcellus and the Consult and a wary truce born of enigma and hesitation.
There was Saubon and torment pitched against lust for power.
There was Cnaiür and madness and martial genius and the growing threat of what he knew.
There was the Holy War and faith and hunger.
And there was Father.
What would you have me do?
Possible worlds blew through him, fanning and branching into a canopy of glimpses …
Nameless Schoolmen climbing a steep, gravelly beach. A nipple pinched between fingers. A gasping climax. A severed head thrust against the burning sun. Apparitions marching out of morning mist.
A dead wife.
Kellhus exhaled, then breathed deep the bittersweet pinch of cedar, earth, and war.
There was revelation.
CHAPTER TEN
 
ATSUSHAN HIGHLANDS
 
Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.
—AJENCIS,
THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN
 
 
 
How does one learn innocence? How does one teach ignorance? For to be them is to know them not. And yet they are the immovable point from which the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly. They are the Absolute.
—ANONYMOUS,
THE IMPROMPTA
 
Late Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Gedean interior
 
Peace had come.
Achamian had dreamed of war, more war than anyone save a Mandate Schoolman could dream. He’d even witnessed war between nations—the Three Seas bred quarrels as readily as did liquor. But he’d never belonged to one. He had never marched as he marched now, sweating beneath the Gedean sun, surrounded by thousands of iron-armoured Men, by the lowing of oxen and the tramping of countless sandalled feet. War, in the smoke darkening the horizon, in the braying of horns, in the great carnival of encampment after encampment, in the blackened stone and whitened dead. War, in past nightmares and future apprehensions. Everywhere, war.
And somehow, peace had come.
There was Kellhus, of course.
Since resolving not to inform the Mandate of his presence, Achamian’s anguish had receded, then fallen away altogether. How this could be mystified him for the most part. The threat remained. Kellhus was, Achamian would remind himself from time to time, the Harbinger. Soon the sun would rise behind the No-God and cast his dread shadow across the Three Seas. Soon the Second Apocalypse would wrack the world. But when he thought of these things a queer elation warmed his horror, a drunken exhilaration. Achamian had always been incredulous of stories of men breaking ranks in battle to charge their foe. But now he thought he understood the impulse behind that heedless rush. Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.
He was the fool who dashed alone into the spears of thousands. For Kellhus.
Achamian still taught him during the daylong march, though now both Esmenet and Serwë accompanied them, sometimes chatting to each other, but mostly just listening. Surrounding them, Men of the Tusk marched in their thousands, bent beneath their packs, sweating in the bright Gedean sun. Somehow, impossibly, Kellhus had exhausted everything Achamian knew of the Three Seas, so they talked of the Ancient North, of Seswatha and his world of bronze, Sranc, and Nonmen. Soon, Achamian realized from time to time, he would have nothing left to give Kellhus—save the Gnosis.
Which he could not give, of course. But he found it hard to resist wondering what Kellhus with his godlike intellect would make of it. Thankfully, the Gnosis was a language for which the Prince possessed no tongue.

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