The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  “Our Lord,” the dragon grated, “hath tasted thy King’s passing, and he saith, ‘It is done.’”

  Nautzera stood before the golden-horned abomination. “Not while I draw breath, Skafra!” he cried. “Never!”

  Laughter, like the wheezing of a thousand consumptive men. The Great Dragon reared his bull-chest above the sorcerer, revealing a necklace of steaming human heads.

  “Thou art overthrown, sorcerer. Thy tribe hath perished, dashed like a potter’s vessel by our fury. The earth is sown with thy nation’s blood, and soon thine enemies will compass thee with bent bow and whetted bronze. Wilt thou not repent thy folly? Wilt thou not abase thyself before our Lord?”

  “As do you, mighty Skafra? As the exalted Tyrant of Cloud and Mountain abases himself?”

  Membranes flickered across the dragon’s quicksilver eyes. A blink. “I am not a God.”

  Nautzera smiled grimly. Seswatha said, “Neither is your lord.”

  Great stamping limbs and the gnashing of iron teeth. A cry from furnace lungs, as deep as an ocean’s moan and as piercing as an infant’s shriek.

  Uncowed by the dragon’s thrashing bulk, Nautzera suddenly turned to Achamian, his face bewildered.

  “Who are you?”

  “One who shares your dreams …”

  For a moment they were like two men drowning, two souls kicking for sharp air … Then darkness. The silent nowhere that housed men’s souls.

  Nautzera … It is I.

  A place of pure voice.

  Achamian! That dream … It plagues me so of late. Where are you? We feared you dead.

  Concern? Nautzera betraying concern for him, the one Schoolman he despised above all others? But then Seswatha’s Dreams had a way of sweeping aside petty enmities.

  With the Holy War, Achamian replied. The contest with the Emperor has been resolved. The Holy War marches on Kian. Images accompanied these words: Proyas addressing rapt mobs of armoured Conriyans; the endless trains of armed lords and their households; the many-coloured banners of a thousand thanes and barons; a distant glimpse of the Nansur Columns, marching through vineyard and grove in perfect formation …

  So it begins, Nautzera said decisively. And Maithanet? Were you able to learn anything more of him?

  I thought Proyas might assist me, but I was wrong. He belongs to the Thousand Temples … To Maithanet.

  What is it with your students, Achamian? Why do they all turn to our rivals, hmm? The ease with which Nautzera had recovered his sarcasm both stung and curiously relieved Achamian. The grand old sorcerer would need his wits for what followed.

  I have seen them, Nautzera. A flash of Skeaös’s naked body, chained and flailing like a holy shaker in the dust.

  Seen whom?

  The Consult. I’ve seen them. I know how they’ve eluded us for all these long years. A face unclenching, like a miser’s fist from a golden ensolarii.

  Are you drunk?

  They’re here, Nautzera. Among us. They’ve always been.

  Pause. What are you saying?

  The Consult still plies the Three Seas.

  The Consult …

  Yes! Witness.

  More images flashed, reconstructions of the madness that had occurred in the bowels of the Andiamine Heights. The hellish face unfolding, again and again.

  Without sorcery, Nautzera. Do you understand? The onta was unmarked! We cannot see these skin-spies for what they are …

  Even though Inrau’s death had intensified his hatred of Nautzera, Achamian had called him because he was a fanatic, the only man extreme enough in temper to soberly appraise the extremity of his revelation.

  The Tekne, Nautzera said, and for the first time Achamian heard fear in the man’s voice. The Old Science … It must be! The others must dream this, Achamian! Send this dream to the others!

  But …

  But what? There’s more?

  Far more. An Anasûrimbor had returned, a living descendent of the dead king Nautzera had just dreamed.

  Nothing of significance, Achamian replied. Why had he said this? Why conceal Anasûrimbor Kellhus from the Mandate? Why protect—

  Good. I can scarce digest this as it is … Our ancient foe discovered at last! And behind faces of skin! If they could penetrate the sequestered heights of the Imperial Court, they could penetrate nearly any faction, Achamian. Any faction! Send this dream to the entire Quorum! All Atyersus trembles this night.

  Daybreak seemed bold, and Achamian found himself wondering whether mornings always seemed such when greeted by a thousand spear points. Sunlight swept out from the edge of the purple earth, illuminating hillsides and tree lines with crisp morning brilliance. The Sogian Way, an old coastal road that predated the Ceneian Empire, shot straight to the southwest, bending only to the rise and fall of the distant hills. A long line of armed men trudged along it, knotted by baggage trains and flanked by companies of mounted knights. Where the sun touched them, it stretched their shadows far across the surrounding pasture.

  The sight filled Achamian with wonder.

  For so many years the concern of his days had been dwarfed by the horror of his nights. What he’d witnessed through Seswatha’s eyes possessed no waking measure. Certainly the daylight world could still injure, could still kill, but it all seemed to happen at the scale of rats.

  Until now.

  Men of the Tusk, as far as the eye could see, scattered across the countryside, clustered about the road like ants on an apple peel. There a band of outriders following a faraway ridge line. Here a broken wain stranded amid streaming thickets of spears. Horsemen galloping through flowering groves. Local youths hollering from the tops of young birches. Such a sight! And it comprised only a fraction of their true might.

  Shortly after leaving Momemn, the Holy War had splintered into disparate armies, each under one of the Great Names. According to Xinemus, this had been motivated in part by prudence—divided they could better forage if the Emperor fell short on his promise of provisions—and in part by stubbornness: the Inrithi lords simply could not agree on the best route to Asgilioch.

  Proyas had struck for the coast, intending to follow the Sogian Way south to its terminus before turning west for Asgilioch. The other Great Names—Gothyelk with his Tydonni, Saubon and his Galeoth, Chepheramunni and the Ainoni, and Skaiyelt with his Thunyeri—had struck across the fields, vineyards, and orchards of the densely populated Kyranae Plain, thinking Proyas used a circle to travel in a straight line. With the ancient roads of Cenei little more than ruined tracks strewn across their homelands, they had no idea how much time the long way could save so long as it were paved.

  At their present pace, Xinemus claimed, the Conriyan contingent would reach Asgilioch days before the others. And though Achamian worried—How could they win a war when simple marches defeated them?—Xinemus seemed convinced this was a good thing. Not only would it win glory for his nation and his prince, it would teach the others an important lesson. “Even the Scylvendi know roads are fucking better!” the Marshal had exclaimed.

  Achamian plodded with his mule along the road’s verge, surrounded by creaking wains. From the first day of the Holy War’s march, he had taken to skulking in the baggage trains. If the columns of marching soldiery seemed like great rolling barracks, then the baggage trains seemed like great rolling barns. The smell of livestock, so like that of wet dogs. The groan and squeal of ungreased axles. The muttering of ham-fisted, ham-hearted men, punctuated now and again by the crack of whips.

  He studied his feet—the pulp of trampled grasses had stained his toes green. For the first time, the question of why he shadowed the baggage trains struck him. Seswatha had always ridden at the right hand of kings, princes, and generals. So why didn’t he do the same? Though Proyas maintained his veneer of indifference, Achamian knew he would accept his company—if only for Xinemus’s sake. What student did not secretly crave their old teacher’s presence in uncertain times?

  So why did he march with the baggage? Was
it habit? He was an aging spy, after all, and nothing concealed so well as humility in humble circumstances. Or was it nostalgia? For some reason, marching as he did reminded him of following his father to the boats as a child, his head thick with sleep, the sand cold, the sea dark and morning-warm. Always the same glance to the east, where cold grey promised a punishing sun. Always the heavy breath as he resigned himself to the inevitable, to the hardship become ritual that men called work.

  But what comfort could such memories offer? Drudgery didn’t soothe; it numbed.

  Then Achamian realized: he marched with the beasts and baggage, not out of habit or nostalgia, but out of aversion.

  I’m hiding, he thought. Hiding from him …

  From Anasûrimbor Kellhus.

  Achamian slowed, tugged his mule from the verge into the surrounding meadow. The dew-cold grasses made his feet ache. The wains continued to trundle by, an endless file.

  Hiding …

  More and more, it seemed, he caught himself doing things for obscure reasons. Retiring early, not because he was exhausted from the day’s march—as he told himself—but because he feared the scrutiny of Xinemus, Kellhus, and the others. Staring at Serwë, not because she reminded him of Esmi—as he told himself—but because the way she stared at Kellhus worried him—as though she knew something …

  And now this.

  Am I going mad?

  Several times now, he’d found himself cackling aloud for no apparent reason. Once or twice he’d raised a hand to his cheek to discover he’d been weeping. Each time he’d simply mumbled away his shock: few things are more familiar, he supposed, than finding oneself a stranger. Besides, what else could he do? Rediscovering the Consult was cause enough to go mad about the edges, certainly. But to suspect—no, to know—that the Second Apocalypse was beginning … And to be alone with such knowledge!

  How could someone like him bear such a weight?

  The solution, of course, was to share the burden—to tell the Mandate about Kellhus.

  Before, Achamian had merely feared that Kellhus augured the resurrection of the No-God. He’d omitted him from his reports because he’d known exactly what Nautzera and the others would have done. They would have seized him, then, like jackals with a boiled bone, they would have gnawed and gnawed until he cracked. But the incident beneath the Andiamine Heights had … had …

  Things had changed. Changed irrevocably.

  For so many years the Consult had been little more than an empty posit, an oppressive abstraction. What was it Inrau had called them? A father’s sin … But now—now!—they were as real as a knife’s edge. And Achamian no longer feared that Kellhus augured the Apocalypse, he knew.

  Knowing was so much worse.

  So why continue concealing the man? An Anasûrimbor had returned. The Celmomian Prophecy had been fulfilled! Within the space of days, the Three Seas had assumed the same bloated dimensions as the world he suffered night after night. And yet he said nothing—nothing! Why? Some men, Achamian had observed, utterly refused to acknowledge things such as illness or infidelity, as though facts required acceptance to become real. Was this what he was doing? Did he think that keeping Kellhus a secret made the man less real somehow? That the end of the world could be prevented by covering his eyes?

  It was too much. Too much. The Mandate simply had to know, no matter what the consequences.

  I must tell them … Tonight, I must tell them.

  “Xinemus,” a familiar voice said from behind, “told me I’d find you with the baggage.”

  “He did, did he?” Achamian replied, surprised by the levity of his tone.

  Kellhus smiled down at him. “He said you preferred stepping in fresh shit over old.”

  Achamian shrugged, did his best to purge the phantoms from the small corners of his expression. “Keeps my toes warm … Where’s your Scylvendi friend?”

  “He rides with Proyas and Ingiaban.”

  “Ah. So you’ve decided to slum with the likes of me.” He glanced down at the Northerner’s sandalled feet. “To the point of walking no less …” Caste-nobles didn’t march, they rode. Kellhus was a prince, though like Xinemus, he made it easy for others to forget his rank.

  Kellhus winked. “I thought I’d let my ass ride me for a change.”

  Achamian laughed, feeling as though he’d been holding his breath and could only now exhale. Since that first evening outside Momemn, Kellhus had made him feel this way—as though he could breathe easy. When he’d mentioned this to Xinemus, the Marshal had shrugged and said, “Everyone farts, sooner or later.”

  “Besides,” Kellhus continued, “you promised you’d instruct me.”

  “I did, did I?”

  “You did.”

  Kellhus reached out and clasped the rope that swayed from his mule’s crude bridle. Achamian looked at him quizzically. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m your student,” Kellhus said, checking the bindings on the mule’s baggage. “Surely in your youth you led your master’s mule.”

  Achamian answered with a dubious smile.

  Kellhus ran a hand along the trunk of the beast’s neck. “What’s his name?” he asked.

  For some reason the banality of the question shocked Achamian—to the point of horror. No one—no man, anyway—had cared to ask before. Not even Xinemus.

  Kellhus frowned at his hesitation. “What’s troubling you, Achamian?”

  You …

  He looked away, across the streaming queues of armed Inrithi. His ears both burned and roared. He reads me like any scroll.

  “Is it so easy?” Achamian asked. “So easy to see?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters,” he said, blinking tears and turning to face Kellhus once again. So I weep! something desolate within him cried. So I weep!

  “Ajencis,” he continued, “once wrote that all men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves—they are the rulers of Men … But what about men like me, Kellhus? What about men who fool no one?”

  And I call myself a spy!

  Kellhus shrugged. “Perhaps they are less than fools and more than wise.”

  “Perhaps,” Achamian replied, struggling to appear thoughtful.

  “So what troubles you?”

  You …

  “Daybreak,” Achamian said, reaching out to scratch his mule’s snout. “His name is Daybreak.”

  For a Mandate Schoolman, no name was more lucky.

  Teaching always quickened something within Achamian. Like the black teas of Nilnamesh, it sometimes made his skin tingle and his soul race. There was the simple vanity of knowing, of course, the pride of seeing farther than another. And there was the joy of watching young eyes pop open in realization, of seeing someone see. To be a teacher was to be a student anew, to relive the intoxication of insight, and to be a prophet, to sketch the world down to its very foundation—not simply to tease sight from blindness, but to demand that another see.

  And then there was the trust that was the counterpart of this demand, so reckless that it terrified Achamian whenever he considered it. The madness of one man saying to another, “Please, judge me …”

  To be a teacher was to be a father.

  But none of this was true of teaching Kellhus. Over the ensuing days, as the Conriyan host marched ever farther south, they walked together, discussing everything imaginable, from the flora and fauna of the Three Seas to the philosophers, poets, and kings of Near and Far Antiquity. Rather than follow any curriculum, which would have been impractical given the circumstances, Achamian adopted the Ajencian mode, and let Kellhus indulge his curiosity. He simply answered questions. And told stories.

  Kellhus’s questions, however, were more than perceptive—so much so that Achamian’s respect for his intellect soon became awe. No matter what the issue, be it political, philosophical, or poetic, the Prince unerringly struck upon the matter’s heart. When A
chamian outlined the positions of the great Kûniüric thinker, Ingoswitu, Kellhus, following query upon query, actually arrived at the criticisms of Ajencis, though he claimed to have never read the ancient Kyranean’s work. When Achamian described the Ceneian Empire’s disarray at the end of the third millennium, Kellhus pressed him with questions—many of which Achamian couldn’t answer—regarding trade, currency, and social structure. Within moments he was offering explanations and interpretations as fine as any Achamian had read.

  “How?” Achamian blurted on one occasion.

  “How what?” Kellhus replied.

  “How is it that … that you see these things? No matter how deep I peer …”

  “Ah,” Kellhus laughed. “You’re starting to sound like my father’s tutors.” He regarded Achamian in a manner that was at once submissive and strangely indulgent, as though he conceded something to an overbearing yet favoured son. The sunlight teased golden threads from his hair and beard. “It’s simply a gift I have,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  But such a gift! It was more than what the ancients called noschi—genius. There was something about the way Kellhus thought, an elusive mobility Achamian had never before encountered. Something that made him seem, at times, a man from a different age.

  Most, by and large, were born narrow, and cared to see only that which flattered them. Almost without exception, they assumed their hatreds and yearnings to be correct, no matter what the contradictions, simply because they felt correct. Almost all men prized the familiar path over the true. That was the glory of the student, to step from the well-worn path and risk knowledge that oppressed, that horrified. Even still, Achamian, like all teachers, spent as much time uprooting prejudices as implanting truths. All souls were stubborn in the end.

  Not so with Kellhus. Nothing was dismissed outright. Any possibility could be considered. It was as though his soul moved over something trackless. Only the truth led him to conclusions.

  Question after question, all posed with precision, exploring this or that theme with gentle relentlessness, so thoroughly that Achamian was astonished by how much he himself knew. It was as though, prompted by Kellhus’s patient interrogation, he’d undertaken an expedition through a life he’d largely forgotten. Kellhus would ask about Memgowa, the antique Zeumi sage who had recently become the rage among literate Inrithi caste-nobles, and Achamian would remember reading his Celestial Aphorisms by candlelight at Xinemus’s coastal villa, savouring the exotic turn of his Zeumi sensibilities while listening to the wind scour the orchards outside the shuttered window, the plums thudding like iron spheres against the earth. Kellhus would question his interpretation of the Scholastic Wars, and Achamian would remember arguing with his own teacher, Simas, on the black parapets of Atyersus, thinking himself a prodigy, and cursing the inflexibility of old men. How he had hated those heights that day!