It did not. Martemus had attended at least a dozen of his evening sermons, or “imprompta,” as they were calling them, before the man had even acknowledged him with a single word.
Of course, Conphas, who always faulted his executors before his assumptions, had held Martemus responsible. There could be no doubt Kellhus was Cishaurim, because he was connected to Skeaös, who was indubitably Cishaurim. There could be no doubt the man played the prophet, not after the incident with Saubon. And there could be no way the man knew that Martemus was bait, since Conphas had told no one of his plan other than Martemus. Therefore, Martemus had failed, even if Martemus was too obstinate to see this for himself.
But this was merely one of innumerable petty injustices Conphas had foisted on him over the years. Even if Martemus had cared to take insult, which was unlikely, he was far too busy being afraid.
He wasn’t quite sure when it happened, but at some point during the long march across Gedea, General Martemus, as eminently practical as he was, had ceased believing that Prince Kellhus played the prophet. This didn’t mean he thought the man was in fact a prophet—Martemus remained practical in that respect—only that he no longer knew what he believed …
But soon he would, and the prospect terrified him. Martemus was also an intensely loyal man, and he treasured his position as Ikurei Conphas’s aide de camp. He often thought he’d been born to serve under the mercurial Exalt-General, to balance the man’s undeniable brilliance with more sober, more dependable observations. The prodigy must be reminded of the practical, he would often think. No matter how delectable the spices, one could not do without salt.
But if Kellhus was in fact … What happened to his loyalty then?
Martemus pondered this while sitting among the steaming thousands who’d gathered to hear Prince Kellhus’s first sermon since the madness of reaching Shigek. Before him loomed ancient Xijoser, the Great Ziggurat, a mountain of corniced and polished black stone so massive it seemed he should cover his face and fall to his belly. The luxuriant plains of the Sempis Delta swept out in either direction, embellished by lesser ziggurats, waterways, reed marshes, and endless rice paddies. The sun flared white in desert skies.
Throughout the crowds, men and women talked and laughed. For a time Martemus watched the couple before him share a humble repast of onions and bread. Then he realized those sitting around him were taking care to avoid his look. His uniform and blue cloak probably frightened them, he thought, made him appear a caste-noble. He looked from neighbour to distracted neighbour, trying to think of something he might say to set them at ease. But he couldn’t bring himself to utter the first word.
A profound loneliness struck him. He thought of Conphas once again.
Then he saw Prince Kellhus, small and distant, descending Xijoser’s monumental stair. Martemus smiled, as though finding an old friend in a foreign market.
What will he say?
When he first started attending the imprompta, Martemus had assumed the talks would be either heretical or easily dismissed. They were neither. Indeed, Prince Kellhus recited the words of the Old Prophets and of Inri Sejenus as though they were his own. Nothing of what he said contradicted any of the innumerable sermons Martemus had heard over the course of his life—though those sermons often contradicted one another. It was as though the Prince pursued further truths, the unspoken implications of what all orthodox Inrithi already believed.
To listen to him, it seemed, was to learn what one already knew without knowing.
The Prince of God, some called him. He-who-sheds-light-within.
His white silk robes shining in the sunlight, Prince Kellhus paused on the ziggurat’s lower steps and looked over the restless masses. There was something glorious about his aspect, as though he’d descended not from the heights but from the heavens. With a flutter of dread Martemus realized he never saw the man ascend the ziggurat, nor even step from the ruin of the ancient godhouse upon its summit. He had just … noticed him.
The General cursed himself for a fool.
“The Prophet Angeshraël,” Prince Kellhus called, “came down from his fast on Mount Eshki.” The assembly fell absolutely silent, so much so that Martemus could hear the breeze buffet his ears. “Husyelt, the Tusk tells us, sent a hare to him, so he might eat at last. Angeshraël skinned the Hunter’s gift and struck a fire so he might feast. When he had eaten and was content, sacred Husyelt, the Holy Stalker, joined him at his fire, for the Gods in those days had not left the world in the charge of Men. Angeshraël, recognizing the God as the God, fell immediately to his knees before the fire, not thinking where he would throw his face.” The Prince suddenly grinned.
“Like a young man on his wedding night, he erred in his eagerness …”
Martemus laughed with a thousand others. Somehow the sun flashed brighter.
“And the God said, ‘Why does our Prophet fall to his knees only? Are not Prophets Men like other Men? Should they not throw their faces to the earth?’ To which Angeshraël replied, ‘I find my fire before me.’ And peerless Husyelt said, ‘The fire burns across earth, and what fire consumes becomes earth. I am your God. Throw your face to the earth.’”
The Prince paused.
“So Angeshraël, the Tusk tells us, bowed his head into the flames.”
Despite the close, humid air, Martemus’s skin pimpled. How many times, especially as a child, had he stared into some fire, struck by the errant thought of plunging his face into the flames—if only to feel what a Prophet once felt?
Angeshraël. The Burnt Prophet. He lowered his face into fire! Fire!
“Like Angeshraël,” the Prince continued, “we find ourselves kneeling before just such a fire …”
Martemus caught his breath. Heat flared through him, or so it seemed.
“Truth!” Prince Kellhus cried, as though calling out a name that every man recognized. “The fire of Truth. The Truth of who you are …”
Somehow his voice had divided, become a chorus.
“You are frail. You are alone. Those who would love you know you not. You lust for obscene things. You fear even your closest brother. You understand far less than you pretend …
“You—you!—are these things. Frail, alone, unknown, lusting, fearing, and uncomprehending. Even now you can feel these truths burn. Even now”—he raised a hand as though to further quiet silent men—“they consume you.”
He lowered his hand. “But you do not throw your face to the earth. You do not …”
His glittering eyes fell upon Martemus, who felt his throat tighten, felt the small finishing-hammer of his heart tap-tap-tap blood to his face.
He sees through me. He witnesses …
“But why?” the Prince asked, his timbre bruised by an old and baffling pain. “In the anguish of this fire lies the God. And in the God lies redemption. Each of you holds the key to your own redemption. You already kneel before it! But still you do not throw your face to the earth. You are frail. You are alone. Those who love you know you not. You lust for obscene things. You fear even your closest brother. And you understand far less than you pretend!”
Martemus grimaced. The words had drawn a pain from his bowels to the back of his throat and sent his thoughts reeling in giddy recognition of something at once familiar and estranged. Me … He speaks of me!
“Is there any among you who would deny this?”
Silence. Somewhere, someone wept.
“But you do deny this!” Prince Kellhus cried, like a lover confronted by an impossible infidelity. “All of you! You kneel, but you also cheat—cheat the fire of your own heart! You give breath to lie after lie, clamour that this fire is not the Truth. That you are strong. That you are not alone. That those who love you do know you. That you lust not for obscene things. That you fear not your brother in any way. That you understand everything!”
How many times had Martemus lied thus? Martemus the practical man. Martemus the realistic man. How could he be these things if he knew so well of what P
rince Kellhus spoke?
“But in the secret moments—yes, the secret moments—these denials ring hollow, do they not? In the secret moments you glimpse the anguish of Truth. In the secret moments you see that your life has been a mummer’s farce. And you weep! And you ask what is wrong! And you cry out, ‘Why cannot I be strong?’”
He leapt down several steps.
“Why cannot I be strong?”
Martemus’s throat ached!—ached as though he himself had bawled these words.
“Because,” the Prince said softly, “you lie.”
And Martemus thought madly: Skin and hair … He’s just a man!
“You are frail because you feign strength.” The voice was disembodied now, and it whispered secretly into a thousand flushed ears. “You are alone because you lie ceaselessly. Those who love you do not know you because you are a mummer. You lust for obscene things because you deny that you lust. You fear your brother, because you fear what he sees. You understand little because to learn you must admit you know nothing.”
How could a life be cupped into a single palm?
“Do you see the tragedy?” the Prince implored. “The scriptures bid us to be godlike, to be more than what we are. And what are we? Frail men, with peevish hearts, envious hearts, choked by the shroud of our own lies. Men who remain frail because they cannot confess their frailty.”
And this word, frail, seemed pitched down from the heavens, from the Outside, and for an instant, the man who’d spoken it was no longer a man but the earthly surface of something far greater. Frail … Spoken not from the lips of a man, but from somewhere else …
And Martemus understood.
I sit in the presence of the God.
Horror and bliss.
Chafing his eyes. Blinding his skin. Everywhere.
The presence of the God.
To at last be still, to be braced by that which braced the very world, and to see at long last how far one had plummeted. And it seemed to Martemus that he was here for the first time, as though one could only truly be oneself—be here!—in the clearing that was God.
Here …
The impossibility of drawing sweet air through salty lips. The mystery of moving soul and furtive intellect. The grace of thronging passions. The impossibility.
The impossibility …
The miracle of here.
“Kneel with me,” a voice from nowhere said. “Take my hand and do not fear. Throw your face into the furnace!”
A place had been prepared for these final words, words that traced the scripture of his heart. A place of rapture.
The multitude cried out, and Martemus cried with them. Some openly wept, and Martemus wept with them. Others reached out as though trying to clutch his image. Martemus raised two fingers to brush his distant face.
How long Prince Kellhus spoke he couldn’t say. But he spoke of many things, and upon whatever ground his words set foot, the world was transformed. “What does it mean, to be a warrior? Is not war the fire? The furnace? Is not war the very truth of our frailty?” He even taught them a hymn, which, he said, had come to him in a dream. And the song moved them the way only a song from the Outside could move them. A hymn sung by the very Gods. For the rest of his days, Martemus would awaken and hear that song.
And afterward, when the masses thronged about the Prince, fell to their knees and softly kissed the hem of his white robe, he bid them to stand, reminded them that he was just a man like other men. And at long last, when the crush of bodies delivered Martemus to him, the surreal blue eyes regarded him gently, glanced not at all at his golden cuirass, his blue cloak, or the insignia of his station.
“I have waited for you, General.”
The excited rumble of others grew distant, as though the two of them had been submerged. Martemus could only stare, dumbstruck, overawed, and so gratified …
“Conphas sent you. But that has changed now, hasn’t it?”
And Martemus felt a child before his father, unable to lie, unable to speak the truth.
The Prophet nodded as though he had spoken. “What will happen to your loyalty, I wonder?”
Somewhere distant, almost too far to touch, men cried out. Martemus watched the Prophet turn his head, reach back with a golden-haloed hand, and seize a flying arm, which bore a fist, which gripped a long and silvery knife.
Assassination, he thought without concern.
The man before him couldn’t be killed. He knew that now.
The mobs pummelled the assassin to the earth. Martemus glimpsed a bloodied, howling face.
The Prophet turned back to him.
“I would not divide your heart,” he said. “Come to me again, when you are ready.”
“I’m warning you, Proyas. Something must be done about this man.”
Ikurei Conphas had said this somewhat more emphatically than he’d intended. But then these were emphatic times.
The Conriyan Prince reclined in his camp chair and looked at him blandly. He picked at his trim beard with an absent hand. “What do you suggest?”
Finally.
“That we convene a full Council of the Greater and Lesser Names.”
“And?”
“That we bring charges against him.”
Proyas frowned. “Charges? What charges?”
“Under the auspices of the Tusk. The Old Law.”
“Ah, I see. And what would you charge Prince Kellhus with?”
“With fomenting blasphemy. With pretensions to prophecy.”
Proyas nodded. “In other words,” he said scathingly, “with being a False Prophet.”
Conphas laughed incredulously. He could remember once—long ago it now seemed—thinking he and Proyas would become fast and famous friends over the course of the Holy War. They were both handsome. They were close in age. And in their respective corners of the Three Seas, they were considered prodigies of similar promise—that was, until his obliteration of the Scylvendi at the Battle of Kiyuth.
I have no peers.
“Could any charge be more appropriate?” Conphas asked.
“I agreed,” Proyas replied testily, “to discuss ways of surprising Skauras on the South Bank, not to discuss the piety of a man I consider to be my friend.”
Although Proyas’s pavilion was large and richly outfitted, it was both gloomy and intolerably hot. Unlike the others, who had traded their canvas for the marble of abandoned villas, Proyas maintained himself as though still on the march.
Only a fanatic.
“You’ve heard of these Sermons at Xijoser?” Conphas asked, thinking, Martemus, you fool …
But then, that was the problem. Martemus wasn’t a fool. Conphas could scarce imagine anyone less foolish … That was precisely the problem.
“Yes, yes,” Proyas replied with an exasperated breath. “I’ve been invited to attend on a number of occasions, but the field keeps me busy.”
“I imagine … Did you know that many among the rank and file—my men, your men—refer to him as the Warrior-Prophet? The Warrior-Prophet? ”
“Yes. I know this as well …” Proyas said this with the same air of indulgent impatience as before, but his brows knitted together, as if pinching a troubling thought.
“As it stands,” Conphas said, speaking as though at the limits of his good humour, “this is the Holy War of the Latter Prophet … of Inri Sejenus. But if this fraud continues to gather followers, it will fast become the Holy War of the Warrior-Prophet. Do you understand?”
Dead prophets were useful, because one could rule in their name. But live prophets? Cishaurim prophets?
Perhaps I should tell him what happened with Skeaös …
Proyas shook his head in weary dismissal. “What would you have me do, eh, Conphas? Kellhus is … unlike other men. There’s no doubt about that. And he does have these dreams. But he makes no claim to be a prophet. And he’s angered when others call him so.”
“So what? So he must first admit to being a False Prophet? Being a False Pr
ophet in fact isn’t enough?”
His expression pained, Proyas regarded him narrowly, looked him up and down as though assessing the appropriateness of his field armour. “Why does this concern you so, Conphas? You’re most assuredly not a pious man.”
What would you have me do, Uncle? Should I tell him?
Conphas suppressed the urge to spit like the Scylvendi, ran his tongue over his teeth instead. He despised indecision.
“The question of my piety is not the concern here.”
Proyas drew in and released a heavy breath. “I’ve sat long hours with the man, Conphas. Together, we’ve read aloud from The Chronicle of the Tusk and The Tractate, and not once, in all that time, have I detected the merest whisper of heresy. In fact, Kellhus is perhaps the most deeply pious man I’ve ever met. Now the fact that others have begun calling him Prophet is disturbing, I agree. But it is not his doing. People are weak, Conphas. Is it so surprising that they look to him and see his strength for more than what it is?”
Conphas felt sweet disdain unfold across his face. “Even you … He’s ensnared even you.”
What kind of man? Though he was loath to admit it, his briefing with Martemus had shook him deeply. Somehow, over a matter of mere weeks, this Prince Kellhus had managed to reduce his most dependable man to a babbling idiot. Truth! The frailty of men! The furnace!
What nonsense! And yet nonsense that was seeping through the Holy War like blood through linen. This Prince Kellhus was a wound. And if he was in fact a Cishaurim spy as dear old Uncle Xerius feared, he could well prove mortal.
Proyas was angered, and answered disdain with disdain. “Ensnaring,” he snorted. “Of course you would see it as such. Men of ambition never understand the pious. For them, goals must be worldly in order to be sensible. Solutions to base hungers.”
There was something forced, Conphas decided, about these words.
I’ve planted a seed at least.
“There’s much to be said for being well fed,” Conphas snapped, then turned on his heel. He’d exceeded his daily ration of idiots.
Proyas’s voice halted him before the curtains.
The Warrior Prophet Page 29