The Thousandfold Thought Part 32

"Why?" he croaked. At first he feared the man would misunderstand him, think that he asked after Esmenet, and his monstrous decision to use her as a tool to sound the Consult.

"Our end does not give meaning to our life, Akka. The manner of Zin's de-"

"No!" he cried, leaping to his feet. "Why didn't you heal him heal him?"

For the briefest instant Kellhus seemed taken aback-but then all was as it should be. Comfort glittered in his eyes. Understanding shouted from the line of his smile, sad and faint.

Achamian's ears roared with such violence that he heard nothing of Kellhus's reply, save that it was false. He literally stumbled, such was the force of the revelation. Strong hands drew him upright. Kellhus-grasping him by the shoulders, staring intently into his face. But the intimacy, that eroticism of awe that had braced all their exchanges, had vanished. A vacancy, cold and heartless, shouted from the beloved face.

How?

And somehow, unaccountably, Achamian knew that he was truly awake awake-perhaps for the very first time. No longer was he that hapless child in this man's gaze.

Achamian pulled away-not horrified, just ... blank.

"What are you?"

Kellhus's gaze did not falter. "You flinch from me, Akka ... Why?"

"You are not not a prophet! a prophet! What are you? What are you?

The transformation of his expression was subtle enough that someone standing three or more paces away would have missed it, but for Achamian it was enough to send him stumbling back in horror. As one, Kellhus's every facial nuance went dead dead-utterly dead.

Then, in a voice as cold as winter slate: "I am the Truth."

"Truth?" Achamian struggled to regain his composure, but the horror spilled through him, unlooping like entrails. He fought for his breath, to see past the glaring sky, to hear through the buzzing world. "Tru-"

An iron grip around his throat. His head yanked back, his face thrust to the sun, like a doll hoisted to the sky. He hadn't even seen Kellhus move!

"Look," the dead voice said. No strain. Nothing of this physical cruelty in his voice. Nothing.

The sun speared Achamian's eyes, seemed blinding even with them clenched shut.

"Look," without added emphasis, except for the finger which caressed his trachea in such a way that bile began to burn the back of his throat.

"Can't ... see ..."

Abruptly he dropped face forward against the ground. Before he'd regained his knees, he'd begun his arcane muttering. He knew his capabilities. He knew he could destroy him still.

But the voice would not relent.

"Does this mean the sun is empty?"

Achamian paused, turned his face from the gra.s.s and scree, squinted at the figure looming above.

"Do you think," a voice crackled across every possibility of hearing, a voice crackled across every possibility of hearing, "the G.o.d would be anything other than remote?" "the G.o.d would be anything other than remote?"

Achamian lowered his forehead to the biting weeds. Everything spinning, slumping ...

"Or do I lie, in that, since I am all souls, I choose the one that will turn the most hearts?"

And tears answered. Don't hit me ... Please, Papa, please. Don't- Don't hit me ... Please, Papa, please. Don't- "Or should it speak of treachery that my purposes move beyond yours? Encompa.s.s yours?"

He raised shaking hands to his ears. I'll be good! I swear! I'll be good! I swear! He fell to his side, sobbed against hard, bristling earth. The road so long. So painful. The hunger ... Inrau ... Xinemus dead. He fell to his side, sobbed against hard, bristling earth. The road so long. So painful. The hunger ... Inrau ... Xinemus dead.

Dead.

Because of me! Oh, dear G.o.d ...

The Warrior-Prophet sat next to him as he wept, gently holding one of his hands, his face impa.s.sive, eyes closed and turned to the sun.

"Tomorrow," he said, "we march on s.h.i.+meh."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

s.h.i.+MEH.

What frightens me when I travel is not that so many men possess customs and creeds so different from my own. Nay, what frightens me is that they think them as natural and as obvious as I think my own.

-SERATANTAS III, SUMNI MEDITATIONS

A return to a place never seen. Always is it thus, when we understand what we cannot speak.

-PROTATHIS, ONE HUNDRED HEAVENS

Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Atyersus

Shouts of consternation drew Nautzera to the unshuttered colonnade that adjoined the Rudiments Library, high above the western ramparts of Atyersus, where students often gathered on mild and sunny days. Several young initiates stared and pointed across the dark straits, along with Marmian, an Auditor on furlough from their Mission in Oswenta. Nautzera waved them away, leaned out over the stone bal.u.s.trade. As tired as his eyes were, he could see the cause of the commotion quite clearly: fifteen yellow-painted galleys anchoring in the straits, poised across the cerulean blue less than a mile from the mouth of Atyersus's scarped harbour. Distant seamen climbed the rigging, lowering beams on sails adorned with Tusks, long and vertical and golden.

Atyersus was thrown into an uproar. Initiates and officers bawled commands. The fortress's soldiery stamped down the narrow corridors, rus.h.i.+ng to man far-flung walls and turrets. Nautzera joined the other members of the Quorum on the heights of the Comoranth Tower, where they could view the fleet of interlopers without obstruction. They made a ludicrous sight: seven old men-two in nights.h.i.+rts, one still wearing an ink-stained scriptor's ap.r.o.n, and the rest, like Nautzera, in full ceremonial garb-waving liver-spotted hands as they bickered back and forth. Most of them a.s.sumed the obvious: that the s.h.i.+ps were part of a blockade meant to prevent their imminent departure for s.h.i.+meh. But just who were they? The colours and tusks suggested the Thousand Temples ... Did the Shrial ingrates think themselves a match for the Gnosis Gnosis?

Simas counselled immediate attack. "As far as we know," he cried, "the Second Apocalypse has already begun! No matter who owns the deed to these galleys, we can only a.s.sume that the Consult commands them. We've always known they would attempt to destroy us in the opening days. And now, with the Harbinger, this so-called Warrior-Prophet ... Think, Think, my brothers. What would the Consult do? Wouldn't they risk anything to prevent us from joining the Holy War? We must strike!" my brothers. What would the Consult do? Wouldn't they risk anything to prevent us from joining the Holy War? We must strike!"

But Nautzera wasn't so rash. "To act in ignorance," he fairly screeched, "is always folly, whether at war or not!"

Ultimately, however, word that a launch rowed toward sh.o.r.e settled the matter. Despite his protestations, Simas was overruled. The Quorum agreed they should at least treat with the strangers. Slaves hastened to make ready their litters, and soon Nautzera was staring at the mysterious vessels through the veils of his palanquin. The slaves fairly ran down the switchback road running from Atyersus's main gate to the stone quays that jutted into the fortress's small natural harbour.

Surrounded by confused throngs of guards and adepts, the Quorum a.s.sembled on the ancient stone of the one jetty not crowded with berthed s.h.i.+ps. The launch had drawn near enough for them to cluck in astonishment. They traded rapid conjectures, but it was clear that no one knew what was happening. Their voices trailed as the dock men caught the ropes thrown from the approaching launch. The rowers pulled their oars skyward; the boat was pulled in and secured. Nautzera and the others stood rigid with shock. Complete silence fell across the surrounding copse of masts and rigging. The Nroni seamen crowding the railings of the neighbouring s.h.i.+ps stared down in wonder, not only at their sorcerous masters, but at the retinue that climbed from the launch.

The Quorum stood, seven old scowling men, watching as their visitors a.s.sembled on the tip of the finger of stone. Expressionless, their silvered helms and chain bright in the sun, five Shrial Knights formed a wordless line, screening the figures behind. Their Chorae murmured dark beneath their white silk surcoats. Of those behind, Nautzera could only glimpse faces-most of them clean-shaven. Then an imposing black-bearded figure pressed past the Knights into the Quorum's astonished view. With the exception of Nautzera, he loomed over all of them, dressed in a stately gown of white that had been hemmed about the collar and sleeves with golden tusks the size of finger bones. Though his face seemed middle-aged, his blue eyes were surprisingly young. He too wore a Chorae against his breast.

"Holy Shriah," Nautzera said evenly.

Maithanet here here?

Smiling with radiant warmth, the man studied their faces, raised his eyes to the dark bastions of Atyersus behind them ... He lunged forward. Then somehow-his movement had been too quick for surprised eyes to comprehend-he was holding Simas by the base of the skull.

The air was riven with sorcerous muttering. Eyes flared with Gnostic light. Wards whisked into s.h.i.+mmering existence. Almost as one, the members of the Quorum fell into defensive posture. Dust and grit trailed down the sloped sides of the jetty.

Simas had gone limp as a kitten, his white-haired head lolling against the fist bunched at the back of his neck. The Shriah seemed to hold him with impossible strength.

"Release him!" Yatiskeres cried, scrambling back with the others. Maithanet spoke as though showing them how to slaughter rabbits. "If you pinch them here," he said, jerking the old man as if in emphasis, "they are thoroughly incapacitated."

"Releas-"

"Release him!"

"What's this madness?" Nautzera exclaimed. He alone hadn't cast any Wards. Neither had he retreated down the jetty with the others. In fact he stepped between between the Shriah and his fellow Schoolman, as though interposing himself to protect the man. the Shriah and his fellow Schoolman, as though interposing himself to protect the man.

"And if you wait, wait," Maithanet continued, now staring directly at Nautzera, "if you wait, their true aspect will be revealed."

The old sorcerer struggled for his breath. There was something about the way Simas shook. Something not old old. Something not ...

"He's killing hi-"

"Silence!" Nautzera shouted.

"We learned of this one through our interrogations of the others," Maithanet said, his voice possessing a resonance that brushed aside the alarmed prattle. "It's an accident, an anomaly that, thankfully, its architects have been unable to recreate."

It?

"What are you saying?" Nautzera cried.

Thras.h.i.+ng slack limbs, the thing called Simas began howling in a hundred lunatic voices. Maithanet braced his feet, rocked like a fisherman holding a twisting shark. Nautzera stumbled back, his hands raised in Warding. With abject horror, he watched the man's oh-so-familiar face crack open, clutch at the skies with hooked digits.

"A skin-spy with the ability to work sorcery," the Shriah of the Thousand Temples said, grimacing with exertion. "A skin-spy with a soul."

And the grand old sorcerer realized he had known all along.

Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, s.h.i.+meh

Ecstatic shouts rang out over the whisk and thud of galloping hors.e.m.e.n. Someone let go a long, low whistle. Proyas reined his horse to a halt at the fore of his household knights. His face blank in the manner of knotted stomachs, he stared dumbstruck at the eastern horizon.

At first he struggled with a dismaying sense of ba.n.a.lity. For days now he'd known this vista lay just beyond the horizon. Unseen, it had seemed something at once dark and golden, a monument so terrible with holiness that he could do naught but fall on his belly when confronted by its aspect. But now ...

He felt no urge to fall. In fact he felt no urge to do anything whatsoever, save to breathe and to watch. When he glanced at his fellow Men of the Tusk, they seemed little more than brigands appraising a victim, or wolves watching the herd that would fatten them for winters to come. He found himself wondering if this was always the way when dreams confronted the actuality that conceived them. He felt the customary wonder of sighting a great city from a great distance, he supposed, the sense of standing far from the carnival of brick and humanity that would soon encompa.s.s him. Nothing more.

The tears struck before the pa.s.sion. He tasted them first. When he reached up to wipe his lips, the length and thickness of his beard surprised his hand. Where was Xinemus? He'd promised to describe ...

His shoulders. .h.i.tched in silent sobs. Sky and city reeled through broken sunlight. He clutched tight his saddle's iron pommel. He thumbed the frayed knots that secured his canteen.

Finally he cleared his throat, blinked, and looked about. He heard and saw other men weeping. He sighted a sunburned man farther down the line of acc.u.mulating Inrithi, kneeling s.h.i.+rtless in the gra.s.ses with his arms thrown wide, screaming at the city as though confessing hatred to a tyrannical father.

"Sweet G.o.d of G.o.ds," someone behind Proyas began intoning, "Who walk among us ... Innumerable are your hallowed names."

The words swelled with deep-throated resonance, became ever more implacable and embalming as horseman after horseman took them up. Soon the slopes thrummed with cracked voices. They were the faithful, come with arms to undo long centuries of wickedness. They were the Men of the Tusk, bereaved and heartbroken, laying eyes on the ground of countless fatal oaths ... How many brothers? How many fathers and sons?

"May your bread silence our daily hunger ..."

Proyas joined them in their prayer, even as he grasped the reason for his turmoil. They were the swords of the Warrior-Prophet, he realized, and this was the city of Inri Sejenus. Moves had been made, and rules had been changed. Kellhus and the Circ.u.mfixion had hamstrung all the old points and purposes. So here they stood, signatories to an obsolete indenture, celebrating a destination that had become a waystation ...

And no one knew what it meant.

"Judge us not according to our trespa.s.ses ..."

s.h.i.+meh.

"But according to our temptations ..."

s.h.i.+meh at long last.

If she was not holy before, Proyas decided, Xinemus and all the uncounted dead had made her such. There was no working back from what was final.

The Ainoni of Moserothu stood scattered across the shallow heights, watching their Palatine, the hard-hearted Uranyanka, lead the Warrior-Prophet to the best vantage. The two men paused beside a wall so ancient that gra.s.ses thronged along its broken crest-one of several ruined mausoleums set across the hillside.