The Warrior Prophet (50 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

 
Something about Xinemus’s expression struck Proyas to the marrow. He looked away, ran an idle thumb over the lip of his golden wine bowl, which lay empty on the table before him. He stared at the glister of the eagles stamped into its side.
“And just what would you have me do, Zin?”
Incredulity and impatience. “Everything in your power!”
The Marshal had informed him of Achamian’s abduction two days previous—never had Proyas seen him so frantic with worry. At his behest, he’d issued orders for the arrest of Therishut, a baron from the southern marches he only vaguely remembered. Then, he’d ridden to Iothiah, where he demanded and received an audience with Eleäzaras himself. The Grandmaster had been accommodating, but he categorically denied the Marshal’s accusations. He claimed his people had stumbled upon a hidden cell of Cishaurim while investigating the Sareotic Library. “We grieve the loss of two of our own,” he said solemnly.
When Proyas asked, with all due courtesy, to view the Cishaurim remains, Eleäzaras said: “You can
take
them if you wish … Have you a sack?”
You do see,
his eyes had said,
the futility of what you do
.
But Proyas had seen the futility from the very beginning—even if they could find Therishut. Soon the Holy War would cross the River Sempis and assault Skauras on the South Bank. The Men of the Tusk needed the Scarlet Spires—desperately if what the Scylvendi said was true. What was the life of one man—a blasphemer no less—compared with that need? The God demanded sacrifices …
Proyas could see the futility—he could scarce see anything else! The difficulty was one of making Xinemus see.
“Everything in my power?” the Prince repeated. “And what, pray tell, might that be, Zin? What power does a Prince of Conriya hold over the Scarlet Spires?”
He regretted the impatience in his tone, but it couldn’t be helped.
Xinemus continued to stand at the ready, as though on parade. “You could call a Council …”
“Yes, I could, but what purpose would that serve?”
“Purpose?” Xinemus repeated, obviously horrified. “What
purpose
would it serve?”
“Yes. It may be a hard question, but it’s honest.”
“Don’t you understand?” Xinemus exclaimed. “Achamian isn’t dead and gone! I’m not asking you to
avenge
him!
They’ve taken him,
Proyas. Even now, somewhere in Iothiah, they hold him. They ply him in ways you and I cannot imagine. The Scarlet Spires!
The Scarlet Spires have Achamian!
”
The Scarlet Spires. For those who lived in the High Ainon’s shadow, they were the very name of dread. Proyas breathed deep. The God had decreed his priorities …
Faith makes strong.
“Zin … I know how this torments you. I know you feel responsible, but—”
“You ungrateful, arrogant, little pissant!” the Marshal exploded. He seized the corners of the table, leaned forward over the sheaves of parchment. Spittle flecked his beard. “Did you learn so little from him? Or was your heart flint in childhood as well? This is
Achamian,
Proyas.
Akka!
The man who doted on you! Who cherished you! The man who made you into
who
you are!”
“Remember yourself Marshal! I will toler—”
“You will hear me out!” Xinemus roared, pounding the table with his fist. The golden wine bowl bounced and rolled off the edge.
“As inflexible as you are,” the Marshal grated, “you know how these things work. Remember what you said on the Andiamine Heights? ‘The game is without beginning or end.’ I’m not asking you to storm Eleäzaras’s compound, Proyas, I’m simply asking you
to play the game!
Make them think you’ll stop at nothing to see Akka safe, that you’re willing to declare open war against them if he should be killed. If they believe you’re willing to forsake anything, even Holy Shimeh, to recover Achamian, they will yield. They
will
yield!”
Proyas stood, retreated from his old sword-trainer’s furious aspect. He
did
know how “these things” worked. He
had
threatened Eleäzaras with war.
He laughed bitterly.
“Are you
mad,
Zin? Are you truly asking me to put my old boyhood tutor before my God? To put a
sorcerer
before my God?”
Xinemus released the table, stood upright. “After all these years, you still don’t understand, do you?”
“What’s there to understand?” Proyas cried. “How many times must we have this conversation? Achamian is Unclean!
Unclean!
” A heady sense of conviction seized him, an incontestable
making
certain, as though knowing possessed its own fury. “If blasphemers kill blasphemers, then we’re saved oil and wood.”
Xinemus flinched as though struck.
“So you will do nothing.”
“And
neither will you,
Marshal. We prepare to march against the South Bank. The Padirajah has summoned every Sapatishah from Girgash to Eumarna. All Kian assembles!”
“Then I resign as Marshal of Attrempus,” Xinemus declared in a stiff voice. “What is more, I repudiate you, your father, and my oath to House Nersei. No longer shall I call myself a Knight of Conriya.”
Proyas felt a numbness through his face and hands. This was impossible.
“Think about this, Zin,” he said breathlessly. “Everything … Your estates, your chattel, the sanctions of your caste … Everything you have,
everything you are,
will be forfeit.”
“No, Prosha,” he said, turning for the curtains. “It’s you who surrender everything.”
Then he was gone.
The reed wick of his oil lamp sputtered and fizzled. The gloom deepened.
So much! The endless battles with his peers. The heathen. The burdens—the innumerable burdens! The never-ending fear of what might come. And Xinemus had always been there. He’d always been the
one!
The one who understood, who made clear what vexed, who shouldered what was beyond bearing …
Akka.
Sweet Seja … What had he done?
Nersei Proyas fell to his knees, clutched at a knifing pang in his stomach. But the tears wouldn’t come.
I know you test me! I know you test me!
 
Two bodies, one warmth.
Wasn’t that what Kellhus had said of love?
Esmenet watched Xinemus sit hesitantly, as though unsure of his welcome. He ran a heavy hand across his face. She could see the desperation in his eyes.
“I’ve made,” he said leadenly, “what inquiries I could.”
He meant there had been talk, the chatter of men who must make certain sounds, preserve certain semblances.
“
No!
You
must
make more! You can’t give up, Zin. Not after …”
The pain in his eyes completed her sentence.
“The Holy War assaults the South Bank in a matter of days, Esmi …” He pursed his lips.
He meant the issue of Drusas Achamian had been conveniently forgotten, as all intractable and embarrassing matters must be. How? How could one know Drusas Achamian, wander through his precincts, and then pull away, whisked like sheets across dry skin? But they were men. Men were dry on the outside, and wet only within. They couldn’t commingle, weld their life to another in the ambiguity of fluids. Not truly.
“Perhaps …” she said, wiping tears and trying hard, very hard, to smile. “Perhaps Proyas is-is lonely … Perhaps he n-needs to take his ease with—”
“No, Esmi. No.”
Hot tears. She shook her head slowly, her face slack.
No … I must do something! There must be something I can do!
Xinemus looked past her to the sunny earth, as though searching for lost words.
“Why won’t you stay with Kellhus and Serwë?” he asked.
So much had changed in such a short time. Xinemus’s camp had dissolved with his station. Kellhus had taken Serwë to join Proyas, something that had dismayed her even though she understood his reasons. As much as Kellhus loved Akka, all men were his province now. But how she’d begged! Grovelled! She had even tried, at the pitch of shameful desperation, to seduce him, though he would have none of it.
The Holy War. The Holy War. Everything was about the fucking Holy War!
What about
Achamian?
But Kellhus couldn’t cross Fate. He had a far greater whore to answer to …
“And if Akka comes back?” she sobbed. “What if he comes back and can’t find me?”
Though everyone had left, her tent—
Akka’s
tent—hadn’t moved. She lingered in the gap where her joy had been. Now under the command of Iryssas, the Attrempans treated her with deference and respect. The “sorcerer’s woman” they called her …
“It’s not good for you to stay here alone,” Xinemus said. “Iryssas will march with Proyas soon, and the Shigeki … There could be reprisals.”
“I’ll manage,” she croaked. “I’ve spent my life alone, Zin.”
Xinemus pressed himself to his feet. He held a hand to her cheek, pinched away a tear with a gentle thumb. “Stay safe, Esmi.”
“What are you going to do?”
He glanced into the distance behind her, perhaps at the hazy ziggurats, perhaps at nothing.
“Search,” he said in a hopeless voice.
“I’ll ride with you,” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet.
I’m coming, Akka! I’m coming!
Xinemus strode wordlessly to his horse, climbed into his saddle. He drew a knife from his girdle, then tossed it high in the air. It thudded into the bare earth between her feet.
“Take it,” he said. “Be safe, Esmi.”
For the first time Esmenet noticed Dinchases and Zenkappa in the distance, also mounted, waiting for their former lord. They waved before falling in behind him. She fell to her seat, burst into further sobs. She buried her face in hot arms.
When she looked up, they were gone.
Helplessness. If women were hope’s oldest companions, it was due to helplessness. Certainly women often exercised dreadful power over a single hearth, but the world between hearths belonged to men. And it was into this world that Achamian had disappeared: the cold darkness between firepits.
All she could do was wait … What greater anguish could there be than waiting? Nothing etched the shape of one’s impotence with more galling meticulousness than the blank passage of time. Moment after moment, some dull with disbelief, others taut with voiceless shrieks. Moment after gnashing moment. Bright with the flare of agonized questions:
Where is he? What will I do without him?
Dark with the exhaustion of hope:
He’s dead. I am alone.
Waiting. This was what tradition said a woman
should
do. To wait at the hearth’s edge. To peer and peer and yet always be stared down. To haggle endlessly with nothing. To think without hope of insight. To repeat words said and words implied. To chase hints into incantations, as though by their tumbling precision and the sheer pitch of their pain the movements of her soul might seize the world at some deeper level, and force it to yield.
As the days passed, it seemed she’d become a still point in the ponderous wheel of events, the only structure to remain after the floodwaters retreated. The tents and pavilions fell like shrouds unfurled across the dead. The vast baggage trains were loaded. Armoured men on horse chopped to and fro from the horizon, bearing arcane missives, onerous commands. Great columns were formed up across the pasture, and with shouts and hymns, they passed away.
Like a season.
And Esmenet sat alone in the midst of their absence. She watched the breeze tease threads free of trampled grasses. She watched bees dart like black buzzing dots across the bruised reaches. She felt embalmed by the silence. She was held motionless by the false peace of passing commotion.

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