The Thousandfold Thought Part 2

Achamian clutched shaking hands, squeezed them bloodless. Dagliash had been a great sentinel once, staring across the wastes of Agongorea toward Golgotterath, her turrets manned by the hard-hearted men of Aorsi. Now she was but a way station of the world's ruin. Aorsi was dead, her people extinct, and the great cities of Kuniuri were little more than gutted sh.e.l.ls. The Nonmen had fled to their mountain fastnesses, and the remaining High Norsirai nations-Eamnor and Akksersia-battled for their very lives.

Three years had pa.s.sed since the advent of the No-G.o.d. Achamian could feel him, a looming looming across the western horizon. A sense of doom. across the western horizon. A sense of doom.

A gust buffeted him with cold spray.

Nautzera ... it's me! Ach- A harrowing cry cut him short. He actually crouched, though he knew no harm could befall him, peered in the direction of the sound. He gripped the bloodstained timber.

On a different brace of scaffolding farther down the fortifications, a Bashrag stooped over a thras.h.i.+ng shadow. Long black hair streamed from the fist-sized moles that pocked its ma.s.sive frame. A vestigial face grimaced from each of its great and brutal cheeks. Without warning, it stood-each leg three legs welded together, each arm three arms-and hoisted a pale figure over the heights: a man hanging from a nail as long as a spear. For a moment the wretch kicked air like a child drawn from the tub, then the Bashrag thrust him against the husk of corpses. Wielding an immense hammer, the monstrosity began battering the nail, searching for unseen mortises. More cries pealed across the heights. The Bashrag clacked its teeth in ecstasy.

Immobilized, Achamian watched the Bashrag raise a second nail to the man's pelvis. The wails became raving shrieks. Then a shadow fell across the sorcerer. "Anguish," a deep voice said, as close as a whisper in his ear.

Intake of breath, sharp and sudden. The incongruent taste of warm Caraskandi air ...

For an instant his Cant faltered at this memory of the world's true order, and Achamian glimpsed the Heights of the Bull framed by a field of stars. Then there he was-Mekeritrig-standing over him, staring at Nautzera where he hung flushed and alive among gaping mouths and groping limbs.

"Anguish and degradation," the Nonman continued, his voice resonant with inhuman tones. "Who would think, Seswatha, that salvation salvation could be found in these words?" could be found in these words?"

Mekeritrig stood in the curiously affected manner of Nonmen Ishroi, his hands clasped and pressed into the small of his back. He wore a gown of sheer black damask beneath a corselet of nimil that had been worked into circles of interlocking cranes. Tails of nimil chain followed the gown's pleats to the ground.

"Salvation ..." Nautzera gasped in Seswatha's voice. He raised his swollen gaze to the Nonman Prince. "Has it progressed so far, Cet'ingira? Do you recall so little?"

A flicker of terror marred the Nonman's perfect features. His pupils became thin as quill strokes. After millennia of practising sorcery, the Quya bore a Mark that was far, far deeper than that borne by any Schoolmen-like indigo compared with water. Despite their preternatural beauty, despite the porcelain whiteness of their skin, they seemed blasted, blackened, and withered, a husk of cinders at once animate and extinct. Some, it was said, were so deeply Marked that they couldn't stand within a length of a Chorae without beginning to salt.

"Recall?" Mekeritrig replied with a gesture at once plaintive and majestic. "But I have raised such a wall wall ..." As though to emphasize his declaration, the sun flared across the wall's length, warming the dead with crimson. ..." As though to emphasize his declaration, the sun flared across the wall's length, warming the dead with crimson.

"An obscenity!" Nautzera spat.

The nets flapped about the nailed corpses. To his right, near to where the wall curved out of sight, Achamian glimpsed a carrion arm waving back and forth, as though warning away unseen s.h.i.+ps.

"As are all monuments, all memorials," Mekeritrig replied, lowering his chin toward his right shoulder-the Nonman gesture of a.s.sent. "What are they but prostheses that p.r.o.nounce our impotence, our debility? I may live forever, but alas, what I have lived is mortal. Your suffering, Seswatha, is is my salvation." my salvation."

"No, Cet'ingira ..." Hearing the strain in Seswatha's voice filled Achamian with an eye-watering ache. His body had not forgotten this Dream. "It need not be like this! I've read the ancient chronicles. I studied the engravings along the High White Halls before Celmomas ordered your image struck. You were great once. You were among those who raised us, who made the Norsirai first among the Tribes of Men! You were not this, my Prince! You were never this!"

Again the eerie sideways nod. A single tear scored his cheek. "Which is why, Seswatha. Which is why ..."

A cut scarred where a caress faded away. In this simple fact lay the tragic and catastrophic truth of the Nonmen. Mekeritrig had lived a hundred lifetimes-more! What would it be like, Achamian wondered, to have every redeeming memory-be it a lover's touch or a child's warm squeal-blotted out by the acc.u.mulation of anguish, terror, and hate? To understand the soul of a Nonman, the philosopher Gotagga had once written, one need only bare the back of an old and arrogant slave. Scars. Scars upon scars. This was what made them mad. All of them.

"I am an Erratic," Mekeritrig was saying. "I do that which I hate, I raise my heart to the lash, so that I might remember! Do you understand what this means? You are my children! my children!"

"There must be some other way," Nautzera gasped.

The Nonman lowered his bald head, like a son overcome by remorse in the presence of his father. "I am an Erratic ..." Tears sheened his cheeks when he looked up. "There is no other way."

Nautzera strained against the nails impaling his arms, cried out in pain, "Kill me, then! Kill me and be done with it!"

"But you know, know, Seswatha." Seswatha."

"What? What do I know?"

"The location of the Heron Spear."

Nautzera stared, eyes rounded in horror, teeth clenched in agony. "If I did, you would be the one bound, and I would be your tormentor."

Mekeritrig backhanded him with a ferocity that made Achamian jump. Droplets of blood sailed down the wall's mangled length.

"I will strip you to your footings," the Nonman grated. "Though I love, I will upend your soul's foundation! I will release you from the delusions of this word 'Man,' and draw forth the beast-the soulless beast!-that is the howling Truth of all things ... You will will tell me!" tell me!"

The old man coughed, drooled blood.

"And I, I, Seswatha ... Seswatha ... I will remember! I will remember!"

Achamian glimpsed fused Nonman teeth. Mekeritrig's eyes flared like spears of sunlight. Orange-burning circles appeared about each of his fingertips, boiling, seething with fractal edges. Achamian recognized the Cant immediately: a Quya variant of the Thawa Ligatures. With volcanic palms, Mekeritrig clenched Seswatha's brow, serrated both body and soul.

Nautzera howled in voices not his own.

"Shhhh," Mekeritrig whispered, clutching the old sorcerer's cheek. He squeezed away tears with his thumb. "Hush, child ..."

Nautzera could only gag and convulse.

"Please," the Nonman said. "Please do not cry ..."

And Achamian howled, Nautzera! Nautzera! He couldn't watch this, not again, not after the Scarlet Spires. He couldn't watch this, not again, not after the Scarlet Spires. You dream, Nautzera! You dream! You dream, Nautzera! You dream!

Great Dagliash stood mute. Terns and crows swept and battled through the air about them. The dead stared vacant across the thundering sea.

Nautzera turned from Mekeritrig's palm to Achamian, heaving, heaving chill air. "But you're dead," he gasped.

No, Achamian said. Achamian said. I survived I survived.

Gone was the scaffolding and the wall, the stench of rot and the shrill chorus of scavenger birds. Gone was Mekeritrig. Achamian stood nowhere, struck breathless by the impossibility of the transition.

How is it you live? Nautzera cried in his thoughts. Nautzera cried in his thoughts. We were told the Spires had taken you! We were told the Spires had taken you!

I ...

Achamian? Akka? Is everything okay?

Why did he feel so small? He had reasons for his deception-reasons!

I-I ...

Where are you? We'll send someone for you. All will be made right. Vengeance will be exacted!

Concern? Compa.s.sion for him?

N-no, Nautzera. No, you don't understand- My brother has been wronged! What more must I know?

An instant of mad weightlessness.

I lied to you.

Then long, dark silence, at once perfect and raucous with inaudible things.

Lied? Are you saying the Spires didn't seize you?

No-I mean, yes, they did seize me! And I did escape ...

Images of the madness at Iothiah flashed through the blackness. Iyokus and his dispa.s.sionate torments. The blinding of Xinemus. The Wathi Doll, and the G.o.dlike exercise of the Gnosis.

Remembered men screamed.

Yes! You did well, Achamian-well enough to be written! Immortalized in our annals! But what's this about lies?

There's a-his body in Caraskand swallowed-there's a fact...a fact I've hidden from you and the others.

A fact?

An Anasurimbor has returned ...

A long pause, strangely studied.

What are you saying?

The Harbinger has come, Nautzera. The world is about to end.

The world is about to end.

Said enough times, any phrase-even this one-was sure to be leached of its meaning, which was why, Achamian knew, Seswatha had cursed his followers with the imprint of his battered soul. But now, confessing to Nautzera, it seemed he'd never uttered these words before.

Perhaps he'd simply never meant meant them. Certainly not like this. them. Certainly not like this.

Nautzera had been too shocked to be outraged by his admission of betrayal. A troubling vacancy had dogged the tone of his Other Voice-even a premonition of senility. Only afterward would Achamian realize that the old man had simply been terrified, that, like Achamian himself a mere few months earlier, he feared himself unequal to the events unfolding before him.

The world was about to end.

Achamian began by describing his first meeting with Kellhus, that day outside Momemn's walls when Proyas had summoned him to appraise the Scylvendi. He described the man's intellect-even explained the man's improvements on Ajencis's logic as proof of his preternatural intelligence. He narrated Kellhus's inexorable rise to ascendancy in the Holy War, both from what he himself had witnessed and from what he'd subsequently learned through Proyas. Nautzera had heard, apparently through informants near to the Imperial Court, that a man claiming to be a prophet had grown to prominence among the Men of the Tusk, but the name Anasurimbor had become Nasurius by the time it reached Atyersus. They had dismissed it as simply one more fanatic contrivance.

Then Achamian described everything that had happened in Caraskand: the coming of the Padirajah, the siege and starvation, the growing tension between the Orthodox and the Zaudunyani, Kellhus's condemnation as a False Prophet-and ultimately, the revelation beneath dark-boughed Umiaki, where Kellhus had confessed to Achamian even as Achamian confessed now.

He told Nautzera about everything except Esmenet.

After he was freed, even the most embittered of the Orthodox fell to their knees before him-and how could they not? The Scylvendi's duel with Cutias Sarcellus-the First Knight-Commander a skin-spy! Think, Nautzera! The Scylvendi's victory proved that demons-demons!-had sought the Warrior-Prophet's death. It was exactly as Ajencis says: Men ever make corruption proof of purity.

He paused, a peevish part of him convinced Nautzera had never read Ajencis.

Yes yes, the old sorcerer said with soundless impatience. the old sorcerer said with soundless impatience.

He came upon them like a fever after that. Suddenly the Holy War found itself unified as never before. All of the Great Names-with the exception of Conphas, that is-knelt before him, kissed his knee. Gotian openly wept, offered his bared breast to the Anasurimbor's sword. And then they marched. Such a sight, Nautzera! As great and terrible as anything in our Dreams. Starved. Sick. They shambled from the gates-dead men moved to war ...

Images of the already broken flickered through the black. Gaunt swordsmen draped in strapless hauberks. Knights upon the ribbed backs of horses. The crude standard of the Circ.u.mfix snapping in the air.

What happened?

The impossible. They won the field. They couldn't be stopped! I still can't rub the wonder from my eyes ...

And the Padirajah? Nautzera asked. Nautzera asked. Kascamandri. What of him? Kascamandri. What of him?

Dead by the Warrior-Prophet's own hand. Even now, the Holy War makes ready to march on s.h.i.+meh and the Cishaurim. There's none left who might bar their pa.s.sage, Nautzera. They've all but succeeded!

But why? the old sorcerer asked. the old sorcerer asked. If this Anasurimbor Kellhus knows of the Consult, if he too believes the Second Apocalypse is nigh, why would he continue this foolish war? Perhaps he said what he said to deceive you. Have you considered that? If this Anasurimbor Kellhus knows of the Consult, if he too believes the Second Apocalypse is nigh, why would he continue this foolish war? Perhaps he said what he said to deceive you. Have you considered that?

He can see them. Even now, the purges continue. No...I believe him.

After Sarcellus's death, over a dozen men of rank and privilege had simply vanished, leaving their clients astonished and delivering even the most fanatical of the Orthodox to the Warrior-Prophet. In the wake of the Padirajah's overthrow, both Caraskand and the Holy War had been ransacked, but as far as Achamian knew, only two of the abominations had been found and ... exorcized.

This ... this is extraordinary, Akka! What you say ... soon all the Three Seas will believe!

Either that or burn.

There was grim satisfaction in thinking of the dismay and incredulity that would soon greet Mandate emba.s.sies. For centuries they'd been a laughingstock. For centuries they'd endured all manner of scorn, even those insults that jnan reserved for the most wretched. But now ... Vindication was a potent narcotic. It would swim in the veins of Mandate Schoolmen for some time.

Yes! Nautzera exclaimed. Nautzera exclaimed. Which is why we mustn't forget what's important. The Consult is never so easily rooted out. They'll try to murder this Anasurimbor-there can be no doubt. Which is why we mustn't forget what's important. The Consult is never so easily rooted out. They'll try to murder this Anasurimbor-there can be no doubt.

No doubt, Achamian replied, though for some reason the thought of further a.s.sa.s.sination attempts hadn't occurred to him. Achamian replied, though for some reason the thought of further a.s.sa.s.sination attempts hadn't occurred to him.

Which means that first and foremost, Nautzera continued, Nautzera continued, you must do everything in your power to protect him. No harm must come to him! you must do everything in your power to protect him. No harm must come to him!

The Warrior-Prophet has no need of my protection.

Nautzera paused. Why do you call him that? Why do you call him that?

Because no other name seemed his equal. Not even Anasurimbor. But something, a profound indecision perhaps, held him mute.

Achamian? Do you actually think the man's a prophet?

I don't know what I think ... Too much has happened.

This is no time for sentimental foolishness!

Enough, Nautzera. You haven't seen the man.

No ... but I will.

What do you mean? His brother Schoolmen coming here? The thought troubled Achamian somehow. The thought that others from the Mandate might witness his ... His brother Schoolmen coming here? The thought troubled Achamian somehow. The thought that others from the Mandate might witness his ...