The Thousandfold Thought Part 46

Then the rhythm of the drums slowed, and with a clash of cymbals the great ma.s.ses of heathen before them began trotting forward. The first of the Inrithi arrows climbed into the sky, fired by the Agmundrmen with their powerful yew bows. The archers of other nations soon joined them, though it seemed their volleys fell for naught into the slow-advancing tide.

Suddenly, in the disjointed manner of great a.s.semblies, the Fanim host reined to a halt a mere hundred paces before the ranks drawn across the aqueduct's foundations. Everywhere, st.i.tched across flapping banners, painted across round s.h.i.+elds, the hors.e.m.e.n bore the Two Scimitars of Fanimry. Their horses, caparisoned in skirts of fine iron rings, stamped and snorted, but beneath their helms the expressions of the Fanim possessed a murderous calm. Struck by wonder, the Men of the Tusk let their song trail. Even the archers lowered their bows.

With no more than the dead and slender tracts of ground between them, the sons of Fane and Sejenus regarded one another.

Sunlight showered across the fields, gleamed from clammy metal. Blinking, men looked to the heavens, saw vultures circling the glare.

Mastodons screamed among the Girgas.h.i.+. An anxious rustling pa.s.sed through the lines, both heathen and idolater. Spotters along the aqueduct's crown shouted out warnings: heathen hors.e.m.e.n seemed to be repositioning themselves behind their motionless brethren. But all eyes were drawn to the Coyauri, where the banner of the Padirajah himself pressed forward through the ranks-the Maned Desert Tiger, embroidered in silver on a triangular bolt of black silk. The rows parted and, draped in golden mail, Fanayal himself spurred his black onto the intervening ground.

"Who?" he cried to the astonished onlookers-and in Sheyic no less. he cried to the astonished onlookers-and in Sheyic no less. "Who is the true voice of G.o.d?" "Who is the true voice of G.o.d?"

His voice was youthful and strident, but it was also a signal to his kinsmen. Thousands erupted forward, lances lowered, mouths howling.

Limbs numb in shock, the Inrithi braced themselves. The sun's heat now seemed to sicken.

Fanayal led a hurtling wedge of Coyauri into the Gesindalmen and their Galeoth brothers-all those who had elected to abandon King Saubon in Caraskand. Earl Anfirig cried out to his blue-tattooed countrymen, but the surprise was too much. All seemed confusion. The forward ranks had been bowled under, and the heathen cavalrymen hacked and slashed in their very midst. The Padirajah fought his way into the shadow of the arches, while his bowmen raked the summit of the aqueduct above.

A sudden cheer boomed out among the heathen, for Cinganjehoi had broken through the Ainoni farther to the north and now fenced with Lord Soter and his merciless Kishyati knights. Heeding the calls of their Padirajah, the Coyauri redoubled their fury, battled their way forward, through to the sunlight on the far side. Then suddenly they were galloping across open turf, cutting down the scrambling survivors. The glorious Grandees of Nenciphon and Chianadyni streamed into their wake.

But the thanes and knights of Ce Tydonn awaited them. In wave after wave, the iron men crashed into the expanding ma.s.s of heathen. Lances shattered arms, threw men from saddles. Horses jostled neck to neck, hoof to hoof. Swords and scimitars rang. Kissing the golden Tusk that hung about his neck, Earl Gothyelk charged directly toward the Padirajah's standard. His householders scattered several dozen Coyauri, fought their way forward. The Earl, whom his men called "the Old Hammer," laid low all who dared oppose him. Then he found himself knee to greave with golden Fanayal.

According to witnesses, the confrontation was short-lived. The Earl's famed mace was no match for the Padirajah's swift blade. Hoga Gothyelk, the red-faced Earl of Agansanor, leader of the Tydonni-over-the-Sea, slumped from his saddle.

Death came swirling down.

There was a sterility to the sorcerous light, a pallor that refused to discriminate the stone of the Nonman carvings from the flesh of his father's face and limbs.

"Tell me, Father ... what is the No-G.o.d?"

Moenghus stood motionless before him. "The trial broke you."

His time, Kellhus knew, was running short. He could no longer afford his father's distractions. "If it was destroyed, if it no longer exists, how could it send me dreams?"

"You confuse the madness within you for the darkness without-the same as the worldborn."

"The skin-spies-what have they told you? What is the No-G.o.d?"

Though walled in by the flesh of his face, Moenghus seemed to scrutinize him. "They do not know. But then, none in this world know what they wors.h.i.+p."

"What are the possibilities you've considered?"

But his father would not relent. "The darkness comes before you, Kellhus-it owns you. You are one of the Conditioned. Surely you-" He paused abruptly, turned his blind face to open air. "You have brought others ... Who?"

Then Kellhus heard them as well, creeping through black toward their light and their voices. There were three of them. The Scylvendi he recognized by his heartbeat ... But who accompanied him?

"I have been chosen, chosen, Father. I Father. I am am the Harbinger." the Harbinger."

The quiet of alternating breaths. The sound of grit beneath palm and heel.

"These voices," Moenghus said with slow deliberation, "what do they say of me me?"

His father, Kellhus realized, had finally grasped the principles of this encounter. Moenghus had a.s.sumed that his son would be the one requiring instruction. He had not foreseen it as possible, let alone inevitable, that the Thousandfold Thought would outgrow the soul of its incubation-and discard it.

"They warn me," Kellhus said, "that you are Dunyain still."

One of the captive skin-spies convulsed against its chains, vomited threads of spittle into the pit below.

"I see. And this is why I am to die?"

Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands. "The crimes you've committed, Father ... the sins sins ... When you learn of the d.a.m.nation that awaits you, when you come to ... When you learn of the d.a.m.nation that awaits you, when you come to believe, believe, you will be no different from the Inchoroi. As Dunyain, you will be compelled to master the consequences of your wickedness. Like the Consult, you will come to see tyranny in what is holy ... And you will war as they war." you will be no different from the Inchoroi. As Dunyain, you will be compelled to master the consequences of your wickedness. Like the Consult, you will come to see tyranny in what is holy ... And you will war as they war."

Kellhus fell back into himself, opened his deeper soul to the details of his father's nearly naked form, a.s.sessing, appraising. The strength of limbs. The speed of reflexes.

Must move quickly.

"To shut the World against the Outside," the pale lips said. "To seal it through the extermination of mankind ..."

"As Ishual is shut against the Wilderness," Kellhus replied.

For the Dunyain, it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from what was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought: The Warrior-Prophet's a.s.sa.s.sination. The rise of Anasurimbor Moenghus to take his place. The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The acc.u.mulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas cras.h.i.+ng into char and ruin.

The G.o.ds baying like wolves at a silent gate.

Perhaps his father had yet to apprehend this. Perhaps he simply couldn't see past the arrival of his son. Or perhaps all this-the accusations of madness, the concern over his unantic.i.p.ated turn-was simply a ruse. Either way, it was irrelevant.

"You are Dunyain still, Father."

"As are-"

The eyeless face, once perfectly obdurate and inscrutable, suddenly twitched in the ghost of a grimace. Kellhus pulled his knife from his father's chest, retreated several steps. He watched his father probe the wound with his fingers, a weeping perforation just beneath his rib cage.

"I am more," the Warrior-Prophet said.

A broad swath of ground cooked and smoked about him.

Achamian whirled, turned in a half-circle, saw the last of the fleeing Kidruhil, the Inrithi encampment congesting the nearer reaches of the plain, and s.h.i.+meh, still dark beneath the clouds, bleeding smoke. He looked back to the crest, to where two of the four Saik Schoolmen lay burning. The whole of the Imperial Army, he realized, climbed the far side. Any second now their banners would float above the gra.s.ses and wildflowers. He recalled his Mandate training ...

Just below high ground.

He needed to run. To where the approach of Chorae bowmen could be seen, and where the earth provided the most cover. But part of him already mourned the futility of it. The only reason he had survived this long was that he'd caught them so entirely unawares. That wouldn't last, not with Conphas still breathing.

I'm dead.

Then he remembered Esmenet. How could he forget? He looked to the ruined mausoleum, took fright that it lay so near. Then he saw her, her face small and boylike, peering through the shadowy recesses of the sumac that thronged about the foundation. She had seen it all, he realized ...

It shamed him for some reason.

"Esmi, no!" he cried, but it was too late. She had already leapt the foundations, had already started sprinting toward him across the browned and blackened turf.

He saw it twinkle twinkle first-a flash in his periphery. Then the Mark, gouged nauseatingly deep. first-a flash in his periphery. Then the Mark, gouged nauseatingly deep.

He looked up ...

"Nooo!" he howled. Gla.s.s cracked beneath his feet. he howled. Gla.s.s cracked beneath his feet.

Long-winged, black scales about molten limbs, scimitar talons, an eye-encircled maw ...

A Ciphrang, called from the h.e.l.lish bowels of the Outside. A sulphurous G.o.dling.

A gust swept up her skirts, knocked her to her knees. Esmenet turned her face skyward ...

A demon descending.

Iyokus ...

Proyas found himself on the roof of an ancient fullery-the only structure overlooking the Juterum's westward approaches that wasn't aflame. Though sunlight ringed the distances, all was smoke and twilight. If he looked at the sky overlong, he could feel himself spin, so he concentrated on the clay tiles beneath his feet. He scrambled across the shallow pitch, stumbled once, kicking free sheaves of rotted tile. He lowered himself onto his stomach, crawled out onto a south-facing pediment.

Gazed across s.h.i.+meh.

Streamers and veils of smoke lent the sky the perspective of city streets, making it easy to judge the relative distance of the hanging sorcerers and their warring lights. Below, all was black ruin and smouldering fire. Free-standing walls, as ragged as ripped parchment. Guttered foundations. The wounded crying out, waving pale hands. The charcoal dead.

Untouched on the heights, the First Temple observed with monumental repose.

There was a stupendous crack, and Proyas fairly toppled from his perch. He hugged the roof to the point of breathlessness, blinked the dazzle from his eyes.

Almost immediately below him he saw two crimson-robed Schoolmen, one old and decrepit, surrounded by headless pillars in the gallery of a destroyed temple, the other middle-aged and corpulent, balanced upon a crest of tossed debris. Their Wards shone, like silver in moonlight, or steel in dark alleys. Mouths flaring, they sang, and fires whooshed and thundered. Some fifty paces out, the ground exploded as if hammered by a rod the size of a great netia pine. Showers of smoking gravel rained across the wreckage.

Somehow, impossibly, a figure cloaked in saffron floated through it. Blue incandescence surged from his forehead, plummeted over over the ground, sweeping away pillars like sticks, breaking across the Wards of the old Scarlet Schoolman. Proyas threw a forearm across his eyes, so bright was the contact. the ground, sweeping away pillars like sticks, breaking across the Wards of the old Scarlet Schoolman. Proyas threw a forearm across his eyes, so bright was the contact.

The Cishaurim climbed skyward until he hung level with Proyas, flew out and around, all the while a.s.sailing the old sorcerer with gouts of blue-flas.h.i.+ng energy. Black clouds had boiled into being in the air behind him, discharging lines of lightning like cracks in gla.s.s, but the Cishaurim ignored them, intent on overcoming the Scarlet Schoolman below. The air hummed with cras.h.i.+ng reverberations, the clacking of mountain-sized stones. Against this tumult the screams of men could be no more than the chirps of infant mice. Or nothing at all.

Trailing thunder. Fading light. The hanging figure had relented, turning both face and serpents to the other madly singing Schoolman. His robes boiled a s.h.i.+mmering ochre in the wind. His asps fanned like iron hooks from about his neck.

Proyas didn't have to look to know the old sorcerer was dead, or that the other soon would be. He found himself standing windswept on the pediment, perched on the very ledge, ruined streets and blasphemous fire careering across the distances before him.

"Sweet G.o.d of G.o.ds!" he cried to the acrid wind. With bare hands he tore the Chorae from the chain about his neck.

"Who walk among us ..." He drew back his sword-weary arm, secured his footing.

"Innumerable are your holy names ..." And he cast his Tear of G.o.d, a gift from his mother on his seventh birthday.

It seemed to vanish against the iron horizon ...

Then a flash, a black-ringed circle of light, from which the saffron figure plummeted like a sodden flag.

Proyas fell to his knees on the brink, leaned out over the fall. His holy city gaped before him. And he wept, though he knew not why.

Again and again the thanes and knights of Ce Tydonn charged, but they could not staunch the breach. Soon they were engulfed in howling desert hors.e.m.e.n, beset on all sides. In an endless stream, silk-garbed Kianene galloped beneath the arches and into view of the Inrithi encampment. Hundreds of them climbed the teetering pilings, gained the summit of the aqueduct, where pitched battles were waged beneath the withering fire of the heathen horse-archers. Others charged the length of the stonework, into Earl Damergal and his hard-pressed Cuarwethi trying to roll back the flanks of the breach. Still others beat their horses toward the stunned crowds of onlookers about the rim of the encampment.

A shout was raised among the Nangaels, where a spear took down King Pilaskanda, and set his Girgas.h.i.+ reeling back in disorder. The mastodons panicked in the withdrawal, began stomping through their own lines. The Ainoni cheered Palatine Uranyanka, who rode along their lines holding high the severed head of Cinganjehoi, who had been trapped behind the Moserothi after being driven back by Lord Soter and his Kishyati.

But the doom of the Inrithi rode with Fanayal ab Kascamandri, who led his s.h.i.+mmering Grandees far behind the lines of the idolaters. To the north and the south, cohorts of Kianene spread across the Shairizor Plain, shrugging past clots of battling knights and hooking back to the east, to charge into the far side of the ancient aqueduct. Earl Damergal was killed by a block thrown from the arches above. Earl Iyengar found himself stranded with his household to the rear of his Nangaels. Howling oaths, he watched his kinsmen broken into warring clots. A Mongilean Grandee silenced him with an arrow through the throat. Death came swirling down.

The Fanim wept with fury, with outrage, as they cut down the Inrithi invaders. They cried out glory to Fane and the Solitary G.o.d, even as they wondered that the Men of the Tusk did not flee.

Think-think-must-think!

An Odaini Concussion Cant, knocking her clear of the thing's monstrous descent, back toward the mausoleum.

It landed hard and leaden, as though it had been wrought of twisted anchors, yet it moved as if its limbs floated in some unseen ether. The thing turned to him, hunched and slavering.

"The Voice," it wheezed, taking one dread step forward. All life crumbled to tan dust about it. it wheezed, taking one dread step forward. All life crumbled to tan dust about it.

"It says, an eye for an eye."

Waves of heat rolled outward, as dry as bone become ash.

"Then the hurting ends ..."

And Achamian knew this was no common demon. Its Mark was like light, concentrated to the point where the parchment of the world blackened, curled, and burned. The Daimos ...

What had Iyokus loosed?

"Esmi!" he cried. "Flee! Please! I beg you! Flee! Flee!"

The thing leapt toward him.

Achamian began singing-the deepest of the Cirroi Looms. Glorious Abstractions knitted the air about and before him, a thresher of light. The demon laughed and screamed.