The Warrior Prophet (63 page)
Read The Warrior Prophet Online
Authors: R. Scott Bakker
Dusk had come, so she began drawing wood—mostly bone-coloured flotsam she’d found along the river—to throw into the fire. Kellhus sat cross-legged before the dwindling flames. Serwë leaned her head against his shoulder, her hair nearly bleached white by the sun, her nose red and peeling as always.
“This is the same fire,” Kellhus said. “The one we struck after first coming to Shigek.”
Esmenet paused, her arms wrapped about her wood.
“It is!” Serwë exclaimed. She looked around the bare slopes, turned to the dark band of the river in the near distance. “But everything’s gone … All the tents. All the people …”
Esmenet fed the fire piece by elaborate piece. She’d obsessed over her fires of late. There was no one else to tend.
She could feel Kellhus’s gentle scrutiny.
“Some hearths can’t be rekindled,” he said.
“It burns well enough,” Esmenet murmured. She blinked tears, sniffled and wiped at her nose.
“But what makes a hearth, Esmi? Is it the fire, or the family that keeps it?”
“The family,” she finally said. A strange blankness had overcome her.
“
We’re
that family … You know that.” Kellhus had bent his head sideways to look into her downturned face. “And Achamian knows that too.”
We’re
that family … You know that.” Kellhus had bent his head sideways to look into her downturned face. “And Achamian knows that too.”
Her legs became strangers, and she stumbled, fell onto her rump. She began weeping yet again.
“B-but I-I have to-to stay … I-I have-have t-to wait for him … for him to come
home
.”
home
.”
Kellhus knelt beside her, lifted her chin. She glimpsed a tear’s shining track across his left cheek.
“
We
are that home,” he said, and somehow that was the end of it.
We
are that home,” he said, and somehow that was the end of it.
Over the course of dinner, Kellhus explained all that had happened the previous week. He was a most extraordinary storyteller—he always had been—and for a time Esmenet found herself lost in the Battle of Anwurat and its wrenching intricacies. Her heart pounded in her throat when he described the burning of the encampment and the charge of the Khirgwi, and she clapped and laughed every bit as hard as Serwë when he described his defence of the Swazond Standard, which according to him consisted of no more than a succession of outlandishly lucky blunders. And she found herself wondering that such a miraculous man—a prophet! for he could be nothing else—concerned himself with
her,
Esmenet, a caste-menial whore from the slums of Sumna.
her,
Esmenet, a caste-menial whore from the slums of Sumna.
“Ah, Esmi,” he said, “it brings such peace to my heart to see you smile.”
She bit her lip, laughed through a crying face.
He continued, more seriously, to explain the events following the battle. How the heathens had been chased into the desert. How Gotian had held Skauras’s severed head before their victory fires. How even now the Holy War secured the South Bank. From the Delta to the deep desert, tabernacles burned …
Esmenet had seen the smoke.
They sat silently for a while, listening to the fire gorge on her wood. As always the sky was desert clear, and the vault of stars seemed endless. Moonlight silvered the eternal Sempis.
How many nights had she pondered these things? Sky and sweeping landscape. Dwarfing her, terrifying her with their monstrous indifference, reminding her that hearts were no more than fluttering rags. Too much wind, and they were tossed into the great black. Too little, and they fell slack.
What chance did Akka have?
“I received word from Xinemus,” Kellhus finally said. “He still searches …”
“So there’s hope?”
“There’s always hope,” he said in a voice that at once encouraged and deadened her heart. “We can only wait and see what he finds.”
Esmenet couldn’t speak. She glanced at Serwë, but the girl avoided her eyes.
They think he’s dead.
She knew better than to hope. This was the world. But
dead
seemed such an impossible thought. How could one think the end of thinking?
dead
seemed such an impossible thought. How could one think the end of thinking?
Akka would—
“Come,” Kellhus said, in the quick and open manner of someone assured of his new course. He strode around her small fire, sat with his knees in his hands next to her. With a stick he scratched an oddly familiar sign into the bare earth before them. “In the meantime, let’s teach you how to read.”
It seemed all crying had been wrung from her, but somehow …
Esmenet looked to Kellhus and smiled through her tears. Her voice felt small and broken.
“I’ve always wanted to read.”
The seamless transition of agonies—from Seswatha’s torture in the bowels of Dagliash two thousand years before to
now
… The pain of puckered burns, chafed wrists, joints contorted by the wrong distribution of his body’s weight. At first Achamian didn’t realize he was awake. It merely seemed that Mekeritrig’s face had transformed into that of Eleäzaras—the inhumanly beautiful face of the Mantraitor had become that of the Grandmaster, rutted and whiskered.
now
… The pain of puckered burns, chafed wrists, joints contorted by the wrong distribution of his body’s weight. At first Achamian didn’t realize he was awake. It merely seemed that Mekeritrig’s face had transformed into that of Eleäzaras—the inhumanly beautiful face of the Mantraitor had become that of the Grandmaster, rutted and whiskered.
“Ah, Achamian,” Eleäzaras said, “it’s good to see you
seeing
—things in this world at least. For some time we feared you wouldn’t awaken at all. You were very nearly killed, you know. The Library was absolutely ruined … All those books ash, simply because of your stubbornness. How the Sareots must howl in the Outside. All their poor books.”
seeing
—things in this world at least. For some time we feared you wouldn’t awaken at all. You were very nearly killed, you know. The Library was absolutely ruined … All those books ash, simply because of your stubbornness. How the Sareots must howl in the Outside. All their poor books.”
Achamian was gagged, naked, and chained, wrists above his head and ankle to ankle, so that he hung suspended over a great mosaic floor. The chamber was vaulted, but he couldn’t see the ceiling’s peak, nor could he see the terminus of the walls that framed the silk-gowned entourage before him. The surrounding spaces were lost in gloom. Three glowering tripods provided light, and only he, hanging in the confluence of their circles of illumination, was bright.
“Ah yes …” Eleäzaras continued, watching him with a thin smile. “This place. It’s always good to have a sense of one’s prison, no? An old Inrithi chapel, by the looks of it. Built by the Ceneians, I suppose.”
Suddenly he understood.
The Scarlet Spires! I’m dead … I’m dead.
Tears welled down his cheeks. His body, beaten, numb from hanging, betrayed him, and he felt the rush of urine and bowel along his naked legs, heard mud slap across the mosaic serpents at his feet.
Nooo! This can’t be happening!
Eleäzaras laughed, a thin, wicked thing. “And now,” he said, his tone jnanic and droll, “some long-dead Ceneian architect also howls.”
There was uneasy laughter from his retinue.
Seized by animal panic, Achamian writhed against his chains, hacked against the cloth in his throat. Spasms struck and he went limp. He swung in small circles, punished by wave after wave of pain.
Esmi …
“There’s much
certainty
here,” Eleäzaras said, holding a kerchief to his face, “don’t you think, Achamian? You know
why
you’ve been taken. And you also know the inevitable outcome. We’ll ply you for the Gnosis, and you, conditioned by years of Mandate training, will frustrate our every attempt. You’ll die in agony, your secrets clutched close to your heart, and we’ll be left with yet another useless Mandate corpse. This is the way that it’s
supposed
to happen, no?”
certainty
here,” Eleäzaras said, holding a kerchief to his face, “don’t you think, Achamian? You know
why
you’ve been taken. And you also know the inevitable outcome. We’ll ply you for the Gnosis, and you, conditioned by years of Mandate training, will frustrate our every attempt. You’ll die in agony, your secrets clutched close to your heart, and we’ll be left with yet another useless Mandate corpse. This is the way that it’s
supposed
to happen, no?”
Achamian simply stared in blank horror, an anguished pendulum slowly swinging to and fro, to and fro …
What Eleäzaras said was true. He was supposed to die for his knowledge, for the Gnosis.
Think, Achamian, think! Please-please-dear-God-you-must-think!
Without the guidance of the Nonmen Quya, the Anagogic Schools of the Three Seas had never learned how to surpass what were called the Analogies. All their sorcery, no matter how powerful or ingenious, arose through the power of arcane associations, through the resonances between words and
concrete
events. They required detours—dragons, lightnings, suns—to burn the world. They could not, like Achamian, conjure the
essence
of these things, the Burning itself. They knew nothing of the Abstractions.
concrete
events. They required detours—dragons, lightnings, suns—to burn the world. They could not, like Achamian, conjure the
essence
of these things, the Burning itself. They knew nothing of the Abstractions.
Where they were poets, he was a
philosopher
. They were mere bronze to his iron, and he would show them.
philosopher
. They were mere bronze to his iron, and he would show them.
Achamian snorted air through his nostrils. Through bleary eyes, he glared at the Grandmaster.
I will see you burn! I will see you burn!
“But
here,
” Eleäzaras was saying, “in these tumultuous times, the past need not be our tyrant. Here, your torment, your death, isn’t assured … Here, nothing is for certain.”
here,
” Eleäzaras was saying, “in these tumultuous times, the past need not be our tyrant. Here, your torment, your death, isn’t assured … Here, nothing is for certain.”
Eleäzaras walked from the others—five graceful, measured steps—and came to a stop very near to Achamian.
“To prove this to you, I’ll have your gag removed. I’ll actually let you
speak,
rather than ply you, as we have your fellow Schoolmen in the past, with endless Compulsions. But I warn you, Achamian, it will be fruitless to try to assail us.” He produced a slender hand from the cuff of his glyphembroidered sleeve, gestured to the mosaic floor.
speak,
rather than ply you, as we have your fellow Schoolmen in the past, with endless Compulsions. But I warn you, Achamian, it will be fruitless to try to assail us.” He produced a slender hand from the cuff of his glyphembroidered sleeve, gestured to the mosaic floor.
Achamian saw a broad circle, painted in red, across the stylized animals of the mosaic floor: the representation of a snake scaled by pictograms and devouring its own tail.
“As you can see,” Eleäzaras said mildly, “you’re chained above a Uroborian Circle … To even begin a Cant will invite immeasurable pain, I assure you. I’ve witnessed it before.”
So had Achamian. The Scarlet Spires, it seemed, possessed many potent poetic devices.
The Grandmaster retreated, and a lumbering eunuch appeared from the shadows. With fat but nimble fingers, he withdrew the gag. Achamian sucked air through his mouth, tasted the stink of his body’s earlier treachery. He hung his head forward, spit as best he could.
The Scarlet Schoolmen watched him expectantly, even apprehensively.
“Well?” Eleäzaras asked.
Achamian blinked, cocked his neck against the pain. “Where are we?” he croaked.
A broad smile split the Grandmaster’s thin grey goatee.
“Why, Iothiah of course.”
Achamian grimaced and nodded. He looked down to the Uroborian Circle beneath, saw his urine trickle along the grout between mosaic tiles …
It didn’t seem a matter of courage, only a giddy instant of disconnection, a wilful ignorance of the consequences.
He said two words.
Agony.
Enough to shriek, to empty bowels once again.
Threads of incandescence, winding, forking beneath his skin, as though he possessed sunlight for blood.
Shriek and shriek until it seemed that eyes must rupture, that teeth must crack, spill to mosaic floor, clicking like porcelain against porcelain.
And then back to nightmares of a far older, and far less momentary, torment.
When the shrieking stopped, Eleäzaras stared at the unconscious figure. Even chained and naked, his shrivelled phallus prodding from black pubic hair, the man seemed … threatening.
“Stubborn,” Iyokus said, in a tone that insolently asked,
What did you expect?
What did you expect?
“Indeed,” Eleäzaras replied, and fumed. Delay after delay. The Gnosis would be such a lovely thing to wrest from this quivering dog, but it would be an unexpected gift. What he
needed
to know is what happened that night in the Imperial Catacombs beneath the Andiamine Heights. He needed to know what this man knew of the Cishaurim skin-spies.
needed
to know is what happened that night in the Imperial Catacombs beneath the Andiamine Heights. He needed to know what this man knew of the Cishaurim skin-spies.
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