The Warrior Prophet (46 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

CHAPTER TWELVE
 
IOTHIAH
 
… the ends of the earth shall be wracked by the howls of the wicked, and the idols shall be cast down and shattered, stone against stone. And the demons of the idolaters shall hold open their mouths, like starving lepers, for no man living will answer their outrageous hunger.
—16:4:22
THE WITNESS OF FANE
 
 
Though you lose your soul, you shall win the world.
—MANDATE CATECHISM
 
Late Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shigek
 
Xinemus didn’t particularly like the man, and had never trusted him, but he’d nonetheless been trapped into speaking with him. The man, Therishut, a baron of dubious reputation from Conriya’s frontier with High Ainon, had intercepted him as Xinemus made his way from a planning session with Proyas. Upon seeing Xinemus, the man’s thinly bearded face had brightened with his best “oh-how-fortuitous” look. It was in Xinemus’s nature to be patient with even those he disliked, but distrust was a different matter altogether. And yet, it was the small indignities that the pious man must endure over all.
“I seem to remember, Lord Marshal,” Therishut said, hastening to match his pace, “that you have an affinity for books.”
Ever polite, Xinemus nodded, and said: “An acquired taste.”
“Then you must be excited that the famed Sareotic Library, in Iothiah, was taken intact by the Galeoth.”
“The Galeoth? I thought it was the Ainoni.”
“No,” Therishut replied, drawing his lips into a strange upside-down smile. “I’ve heard that it was the Galeoth. Men of Saubon’s own household in fact.”
“Indeed,” Xinemus said, impatiently. “Well enough then …”
“I see you’re busy, Lord Marshal. No bother … I’ll send one of my slaves to arrange an audience.”
To bump into Therishut was annoying enough, but to actually suffer through a formal visit?
“I’m never too busy for a Baron of the Land, Therishut.”
“Good!” the man nearly squealed. “Well then … Not long ago, a friend of mine—well, I should say he’s not yet my friend, but I … I …”
“He’s someone you hope to curry favour with, Therishut?”
Therishut’s face both brightened and soured. “Yes! Although that sounds rather indelicate, don’t you think?”
Xinemus said nothing, but walked on, his eyes firmly fixed on the top of his pavilion amidst the jumble of others in the distance. Beyond, the hills of Gedea were pale in the haze.
Shigek,
he thought.
We’ve taken Shigek!
For some strange reason, the certainty that soon, impossibly soon, he’d set eyes on Holy Shimeh seized him.
It’s happening
… It was almost enough to make him be kind to Therishut. Almost.
“Well, this friend of mine who’d just returned from the Sareotic Library asked me what ‘gnosis’ was. And since you’re the closest thing to a scholar I know, I thought you could help me help him. Do you know what ‘gnosis’ is?”
Xinemus stopped and eyed the small man carefully. “Gnosis,” he said carefully, “is the name of the old sorcery of the Ancient North.”
“Ah yes!” Therishut exclaimed. “That makes sense!”
“What interest does your friend have in libraries, Therishut?”
“Well, you know there’s a rumour that Saubon might sell the books to raise more money.”
Xinemus hadn’t heard this rumour, and it troubled him. “I doubt the other Great Names would countenance that. So what, your friend has already begun taking inventory?”
“He’s a most enterprising soul, Lord Marshal. A good man to know if one’s interested in profits—if you know what I mean …”
“Merchant-caste dog, no doubt,” Xinemus said matter-of-factly. “Let me give you some advice, Therishut: heed your station.”
But rather than take offence at this, Therishut smiled wickedly. “Surely, Lord Marshal,” he said in a tone devoid of all deference, “
you
of all people.”
Xinemus blinked, astonished more by his own hypocrisy than by Baron Therishut’s insolence. A man who sups with a sorcerer castigating another for currying favour with a merchant? Suddenly the hushed rumble of the Conriyan camp seemed to buzz in his ears. With a fierceness that shocked him, the Marshal of Attrempus stared at Therishut, stared at him until, flustered, the fool mumbled insincere apologies and scurried away.
As he walked the remaining distance to his pavilion, Xinemus thought of Achamian, his dear friend of many, many years. And he thought of his caste, and was faintly shocked by the hollow of uneasiness that opened in his gut when he recollected Therishut’s words:
You of all people
.
How many think this?
Their friendship had been strained of late, Xinemus knew. It would do them both some good if Achamian spent several days away.
In a library. Studying blasphemy.
 
“I don’t understand,” Esmenet said with more than a little anger.
He’s leaving me …
Achamian heaved a burlap sack of oats across his mule’s back. His mule, Daybreak, regarded her solemnly. Beyond him, the largely deserted encampment crowded the slopes, pitched among and between small stands of black willows and cottonwoods. She could see the Sempis in the distance, shining like obsidian inlay beneath the punishing sun. Whenever she glanced at the hazy South Bank, dark with vegetation, she could feel the heathen watching.
“I don’t understand, Akka,” she repeated, plaintively this time.
“But, Esmi …”
“But
what?
”
He turned to her, obviously irritated, distracted. “It’s a
library
. A library!”
“So?” she said hotly. “The illiterate are not—”
“No,” he snapped, scowling. “No! Look, I need some time alone. I need time to think. To think, Esmi,
think!
”
The desperation in his voice and expression shocked her into momentary silence.
“About Kellhus,” she said. The skin beneath her scalp prickled.
“About Kellhus,” he replied, turning back to his mule. He cleared his throat, spit into the dust.
“He’s asked you, hasn’t he?” Her chest tightened. Could it be?
Achamian said nothing, but there was a subtle heartlessness to his movements, and almost imperceptible blankness to his eyes. She was learning him, she realized, like a song sung many times. She knew him.
“Asked me what?” he said finally, tying his sleeping mat to the pack saddle.
“To teach him the Gnosis.”
For the past three weeks, since following the Conriyan column into the Sempis Valley, through the madness of the occupation—ever since the night with the Wathi Doll—a strange rigidity had seemed to haunt Achamian, a tension that made it impossible for him to love or laugh for anything more than moments. But she’d assumed his argument with Xinemus and their subsequent estrangement had been the cause.
Several days earlier she’d confronted the Marshal on the issue, telling him of his friend’s apprehensions. Yes, Achamian had committed an outrage, she explained, but he’d erred out of foolishness not disrespect.
“He tries to forget, Zin, but he cannot. Every morning I cradle him as he cries out. Every morning I remind him the Apocalypse is over … He thinks Kellhus is the Harbinger.”
But Xinemus, she could tell, already knew this. He was patient in tone, word, manner—everything save his look. His eyes had never truly listened, and she’d known something deeper was wrong. A man like Xinemus, Achamian had told her once, risked much keeping a sorcerer as a friend.
She’d never pressed Achamian with anything more than warm reminders, like “He worries for you, you know.” The hurts of men were brittle, volatile things. Achamian liked to claim that men were simple, that women need only feed, fuck, and flatter them to keep them happy. Perhaps this was true of certain men, perhaps not, but it certainly wasn’t true of Drusas Achamian. So she’d waited, assuming that time and habit would return the two old friends to their old understanding.
For some reason, the notion that
Kellhus,
and not Xinemus, lay at the root of his distress never occurred to her. Kellhus was holy—she harboured absolutely no doubt about that now. He was a prophet, whether he himself believed it or not. And sorcery was unholy …
What was it Achamian had said he would become?
A god-sorcerer.
Achamian continued to fuss over his baggage. He hadn’t said anything. He didn’t need to.
“But how could it be?” she asked.
Achamian paused, stared at nothing for several heartbeats. Then he turned to her, his face blank with hope and horror.
“How could a prophet speak blasphemy?” he said, and she knew that for him this was already an old and embittered question. “I asked him that …”
“And what did he say?”
“He cursed and insisted he wasn’t a prophet. He was offended … hurt even.”
I’ve a talent for that,
his tone said.
A sudden desperation welled in Esmenet’s throat. “You can’t teach him, Akka! You mustn’t teach him! Don’t you see?
You’re the temptation
. He must resist you and the promise of power you hold. He must deny you to become what he must become!”
“Is that what you think?” Achamian exclaimed. “That I’m King Shikol tempting Sejenus with worldly power like in
The Tractate?
Maybe he’s
right,
Esmi, did you ever consider that? Maybe he’s
not
a prophet!”
Esmenet stared at him, fearful, bewildered, but strangely exhilarated as well. How had she come so far? How could a whore from a Sumni slum stand
here,
so near the world’s heart?
How had her life become scripture? For a moment, she couldn’t believe …
“The question, Akka, is what do
you
think?”
Achamian looked to the ground between them.
“What do I think?” he repeated pensively. He raised his eyes.
Esmenet said nothing, though she felt the hardness melt from her gaze.
Achamian shrugged and sighed. “That the Three Seas couldn’t be more unprepared for a Second Apocalypse … The Heron Spear is lost. Sranc roam half the world, in numbers a hundred—a thousand!—times greater than in Seswatha’s day. And Men hold only a fraction of the Trinkets.” He stared at her, and it seemed his eyes had never been so bright. “Though the Gods have damned me, damned us, I can’t believe they would so abandon the world …”
“Kellhus,” she whispered.
Achamian nodded. “They’ve sent us more than a Harbinger … That’s what I think, or hope—I don’t know …”
“But
sorcery,
Akka …”
“Is blasphemy, I know. But ask yourself, Esmi,
why
are sorcerers blasphemers? And why is a prophet a prophet?”
Her eyes opened horror-wide. “Because one sings the God’s song,” she replied, “and the other speaks the God’s voice.”
“Exactly,” Achamian said. “Is it blasphemy for a
prophet
to utter sorcery?”
Esmenet stood staring, dumbstruck.
For the God to sing His own song …
“Akka …”
He turned back to his mule, bent to retrieve his satchel from the dust.
A sudden panic welled through her. “Please don’t leave me, Akka.”
“I told you, Esmi,” he said, without turning his face to her, “I need to think.”
But we think so well together!
He was wiser for her counsel. He
knew
this! Now he confronted a decision unlike any other … So why would he leave her? Was there something else? Something more he was hiding?

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