The Warrior Prophet (86 page)

Read The Warrior Prophet Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

Cishaurim,
Kellhus realized.
Cishaurim shelter in the Citadel.
The ring of crimson figures, mere specks in the distance, answered their hidden foe. Kellhus raised a hand against the brilliance. The air shivered with concussions. A western tower buckled beneath the weight of fire, then ponderously toppled. Breaking over the outer curtain wall, it plunged to slopes below, where it collapsed into an avalanche of rubble and pluming dust.
Kellhus watched, wondering at the spectacle and at the promise of deeper dimensions of understanding. Sorcery was the only unconquered knowledge, the last remaining bastion of world-born secrets. He was one of the Few—as Achamian had both feared and hoped. What kind of power would he wield?
And his father, who was Cishaurim, what kind of power did he
already
wield?
The Scarlet Schoolmen pummelled the Citadel without pause or remorse. There was no sign of the Cishaurim who’d attacked moments earlier. Smoke and dust billowed and plumed, encompassing the black-walled heights. Sorcerous lights flashed through what clear air remained; otherwise they flickered and pulsed as though through veils of black gossamer.
Uncanny hymns ached in Kellhus’s ears. How could such things be said? How could words come before?
Another tower collapsed in the south, crashing upon its foundations, swelling into a black cloud that rolled down over the surrounding tenements. Watching Men of the Tusk flee through the streets, Kellhus glimpsed a figure in yellow silks soar free of the surging eclipse, arms to his side, sandalled feet pointing downward. The Inrithi warriors scattered beneath him.
A surviving Cishaurim.
Kellhus watched the figure glide low over the stepped rooftops, dip into avenues. For a moment he thought the man might escape—smoke and dust had all but engulfed the Scarlet Schoolmen. Then he realized …
The Cishaurim was turning in his direction.
Rather than continuing south, the figure hooked westward, using what structures he could to cover his passage from the far-seeing Schoolmen. Kellhus tracked his progress as he zigzagged through the streets, averaging the mean of his sudden turns to determine his true trajectory. As improbable—as impossible—as it seemed, there could be no doubt: the man was coming toward him. Could it be?
Father?
Kellhus backed away from the balustrade, bent to rewrap the skin-spy’s severed head in his ruined robe. Then he gripped one of two Chorae his Zaudunyani had given him … According to Achamian, it offered immunity to the Psûkhe as much as it did sorcery.
The Cishaurim was climbing the slopes to the terrace, kicking loose leaves as he skimmed the odd tree-top. Birds burst into the air in his wake. Kellhus could see the black pits of his eyes, the two distended snakes about his neck, one looking forward, the other scanning the Citadel’s continuing destruction.
A dragon’s howl gouged the distances, followed by another thunder-clap. The marble tingled beneath his feet. More clouds of black bloomed about the Citadel …
Father? This cannot be!
The Cishaurim glided low over the compound where Kellhus had seen the Thunyeri a short time earlier, then swooped upward. Kellhus actually heard the flutter of his silken robes.
He leapt backward, drawing his sword. The sorcerer-priest sailed over the balustrade, his hands pressed together, fingertip to fingertip.
“Anasûrimbor Kellhus!” the descending figure called.
Meeting his reflection, the Cishaurim came to a jarring halt. Flecks of debris chattered across the polished marble.
Kellhus stood motionless, holding tight his Chorae.
He’s too young—
“I am Hifanat ab Tunukri,” the eyeless man said breathlessly, “a Dionoratë of the tribe Indara-Kishauri … I bear a message from your Father. He says, ‘You walk the Shortest Path. Soon you will grasp the Thousandfold Thought.’”
Father?
Sheathing his sword, Kellhus opened himself to every outward sign the man offered. He saw desperation and purpose.
Purpose above all …
“How did you find me?”
“We see you. All of us.” Behind the man, the smoke rising from the Citadel opened like a great velvet rose.
“Us?”
“All of us who serve
him
—the Possessors of the Third Sight.”
Him … Father
. He controlled a faction within the Cishaurim …
“I must,” Kellhus said emphatically, “know what he intends.”
“He told me nothing … Even if he had, there wouldn’t be time.”
Though battle stress and the absence of eyes complicated his reading, Kellhus could see the man spoke sincerely. But why, after summoning him from so far, would his father now leave him in the dark?
He knows the Pragma have sent me as an assassin … He needs to be certain of me first.
“I must warn you,” Hifanat was saying. “The Padirajah himself comes with the South. Even now his outriders ponder the smoke they see on the horizon.”
There had been rumours of the Padirajah’s march … Could he be so close? Contingencies, probabilities, and alternatives lanced through Kellhus’s intellect—to no avail. The Padirajah coming. The Consult attacking. The Great Names plotting …
“Too much happens … You must tell my father!”
“There’s no—”
The snake watching the Citadel abruptly reared and hissed. Kellhus glimpsed three Scarlet Schoolmen striding across the empty sky. Though threadbare, their crimson gowns flashed in the sunlight.
“The Whores come,” the eyeless man said. “You must kill me.”
In a single motion Kellhus drew his blade. Though the man seemed oblivious, the closer asp reared as though drawn back by a string.
“The Logos,” Hifanat said, his voice quavering, “is without beginning or end.”
Kellhus beheaded the Cishaurim. The body slumped to the side; the head lopped backward. Halved, one of the snakes flailed against the floor. Still whole, the other wormed swiftly into the garden.
Rising where the Citadel of the Dog had been, a great black pillar of smoke loomed over the sacked city, reaching, it seemed, to the very heavens.
 
Every quarter of Caraskand burned now, from the “Bowl”—so named because of its position between five of Caraskand’s nine hills—to the Old City, marked by the gravelly fragments of the Kyranean wall that had once enclosed ancient Caraskand. Columns of smoke hazed and plumed the distances—none so great as the tower of ash that dominated the southeast.
From a hilltop far to the south, Kascamandri ab Tepherokar, the High Padirajah of Kian and all the Cleansed Lands, watched the smoke with tears in his otherwise hard eyes. When his scouts had first come to him with news of the disaster, Kascamandri had refused to believe it, insisting that Imbeyan, his always resourceful and ferocious son-in-law, simply signalled them. But there was no denying his eyes. Caraskand, a city that rivalled white-walled Seleukara, had fallen to the cursed idolaters.
He had arrived too late.
“What we cannot deliver,” he told his shining Grandees, “we must avenge.”
Even as Kascamandri wondered what he would tell his daughter, a troop of Shrial Knights caught Imbeyan and his retinue trying to flee the city. That evening Gotian directed his fellow Great Names to set their booted feet upon the man’s cheek, saying, “Cherish the power the God has given us over our enemies.” It was an ancient ritual, first practised in the days of the Tusk.
Afterward, they hung the Sapatishah from a tree.
 
“Kellhus!” Esmenet cried, running through a gallery of black marble pilasters. Never had she set foot in a structure as vast or luxurious. “Kellhus!”
He turned from the warriors who congregated around him, smiled with the wry, touching camaraderie that always sent a pang from her throat to her heart. Such a wild, reckless love!
She flew to him. His arms wrapped her shoulders, enveloped her in an almost narcotic sense of security. He seemed so strong, the one immovable thing …
The day had been one of doubt and horror—both for her and Serwë. Their joy at Caraskand’s fall had been swiftly knocked from them. First, they’d heard news of the assassination attempt. Devils, several wild-eyed Zaudunyani had claimed, had set upon Kellhus in the city. Not long after, men of the Hundred Pillars had come to evacuate the camp. No one, not even Werjau or Gayamakri, seemed to know whether Kellhus still lived. Then they’d witnessed horror after horror racing through the ransacked city. Unspeakable things. Women. Children … She’d been forced to leave Serwë in the courtyard. The girl was inconsolable.
“They said you’d been attacked by demons!” she cried into his chest.
“No,” he chuckled. “Not demons.”
“What happens?”
Kellhus gently pushed her back. “We’ve endured much,” he said, stroking her cheek. He seemed to be watching more than looking … She understood the implied question:
How strong are you?
“Kellhus?”
“The trial is about to begin, Esmi. The true trial.”
A horror like no other shuddered through her.
Not you!
she inwardly cried.
Never you!
He had sounded afraid.
 
Winter, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Bay of Trantis
 
Even though the wind still buffeted the sails in fits and starts, the bay was preternaturally calm. One could balance a Chorae on an upturned shield, the
Amortanea
was so steady.
“What is it?” Xinemus asked, turning his face to and fro in the sunlight. “What is it everyone sees?”
Achamian glanced to his friend, then back to the wrecked shore.
A gull cried out, as gulls always do, in mock agony.
Throughout his life moments like this would visit him—moments of quiet wonder. He thought of them as “visitations” because they always seemed to arise of their own volition. A pause would descend upon him, a sense of detachment, sometimes warm, sometimes cold, and he would think,
How is it I live this life?
For the span of several heartbeats, the nearest things—the feel of wind through the hairs of his arm, the pose of Esmenet’s shoulders as she fussed over their meagre belongings—would seem very far. And the world, from the taste of his teeth to the unseen horizon, would seem scarcely possible.
How?
he would silently murmur.
How could this be?

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