The Warrior Prophet

by R. Scott Bakker

  Then Achamian said, “Kellhus cannot die.”

  Proyas pursed his lips. “But of course,” he said numbly. “I say he must die, so you say he must live.” He glanced, not without nervousness, at his nearby work table. The parchment sat in plain view, its raised corners translucent in the sun: Maithanet’s letter.

  “This has nothing to do with you, Proyas. I am past you.”

  The tone as much as the words chilled Proyas to the pith.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because of all the Great Names, only you can understand.”

  “Understand,” Proyas repeated, feeling the old impatience rekindle in his heart. “Understand what? No, let me guess … Only I can understand the significance of the name ‘Anasûrimbor.’ Only I can understand the peril—”

  “Enough!” Achamian shouted. “Can’t you see that when you make light of these matters you make light of me? When have I ever scoffed at the Tusk? When have I ever mocked the Latter Prophet? When?”

  Proyas caught his retort, which had been all the harsher for the truth of what Achamian said.

  “Kellhus,” he said, “has already been judged.”

  “Have care, Proyas. Remember King Shikol.”

  For the Inrithi, the name “Shikol,” the Xerashi King who had condemned Inri Sejenus, was synonymous with hatred and tragic presumption. The thought that his own name might someday possess the same poison caused Proyas no small terror.

  “Shikol was wrong … I am right!”

  It all came down to Truth.

  “I wonder,” Achamian said, “what Shikol would say …”

  “What?” Proyas exclaimed. “So the great sceptic thinks a new prophet walks among us? Come, Akka … It’s too absurd!”

  These are Conphas’s words … Another unkind thought.

  Achamian paused, but whether out of care or hesitation Proyas couldn’t tell.

  “I’m not sure what he is … All I know is that he’s too important to die.”

  Sitting rigid in his bed, Proyas peered against the sun, struggling to see his old teacher. Aside from his outline against the blue pillar, the most he could discern were the five lines of white that streaked the black of his beard. Proyas sighed loudly through his nostrils, looked down to his thumbs.

  “I thought much the same not so long ago,” he admitted. “I worried that what Conphas and the others said was true, that he was the reason the anger of the God burned against us. But I’d shared too many cups with the man not to … not to realize he’s more than simply remarkable …

  “But then …”

  From nowhere, it seemed, a great cloud crawled before the sun, and a dim chill fell across the room. For the first time, Proyas could see his old teacher clearly: the haggard face, the forlorn eyes and meditative brow, the blue smock and woollen travel robes, soiled black about the knees …

  So poor. Why did Achamian always look so poor?

  “Then what?” the Schoolman asked, apparently unconcerned with his sudden visibility.

  Proyas heaved another sigh, glanced once again at the parchment upon his table. Distant thunder rumbled in on the wind, which whisked through the black cedars below.

  “Well,” he continued, “first there was the Scylvendi … His hatred of Kellhus. I thought to myself, ‘How could this man, this man who knows Kellhus better than any other, despise him so?’”

  “Serwë,” Achamian said. “Kellhus once told me the barbarian loved Serwë.”

  “Cnaiür said much the same when I first asked him … But there was something, something about his manner, that made me think there was more. He’s such a fierce and melancholy man. And complicated—very complicated.”

  “His skin is too thin,” Achamian said. “But I suppose it scars well.”

  A sour smirk was the most Proyas could afford. “There’s more to Cnaiür urs Skiötha than you know, Akka. Mark me. In some ways, he’s as extraordinary as Kellhus. Be thankful he’s our pet, and not the Padirajah’s.”

  “Your point, Proyas?”

  The Conriyan Prince frowned. “The point is that I questioned him about Kellhus again, shortly after we found ourselves besieged …”

  “And?”

  “And he told me to go ask Kellhus himself. That was when …” He hesitated, groping in vain for some delicate way to continue. More thunder piled through the balcony doorways.

  “That was when I found Esmenet in his bed.”

  Achamian closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his gaze was steady.

  “And your misgivings became genuine doubts … I’m touched.”

  Proyas chose to ignore the sarcasm.

  “After that, I no longer dismissed Conphas’s arguments out of hand. I mulled things over for a time, at once anguished by all that happened—that happens still!—and terrified that if I sided with Conphas and the others, I would be striking sparks over tinder.”

  “You feared war between the Orthodox and the Zaudunyani.”

  “And I fear it still!” Proyas fairly cried. “Though it scarcely seems to matter with the Padirajah waiting with his desert wolves.”

  How could it all come to this? Such a pass!

  “So what decided you?”

  “The Scylvendi,” Proyas said with a shrug. “Conphas brought forward witnesses who claimed to know a man from the northern caravans, a man who, before he died in the desert, claimed that Atrithau had no princes.”

  “Hearsay,” Achamian said. “Worthless … You know that. It was probably a ploy on Conphas’s part. Dead men have a habit of telling the most convenient tales.”

  “Which is what I thought, until the Scylvendi confirmed the story.”

  Achamian leaned forward, his brow knotted in angry shock. “Confirmed? What do you mean?”

  “He called Kellhus a prince of nothing.”

  The Schoolman sat rigid for a time, his eyes lost in the space between them. He knew the penalties for transgressing caste. All men did. The caste-nobles of the Three Seas cherished their ancestor scrolls for more than spiritual or sentimental reasons.

  “He could be lying,” Achamian mused. “As a way to regain possession of Serwë, maybe?”

  “He could be … Given the way he reacted to her execution—”

  “Serwë executed!” the sorcerer exclaimed. “How could such a thing happen? Proyas? How could you let such a thing happen? She was just—”

  “Ask Gotian!” Proyas blurted. “Trying them according to the Tusk was his idea—his! He thought it would legitimize the affair, make it seem less like … less—”

  “Like what it was?” Achamian cried. “A conspiracy of frightened caste-nobles trying to protect their power and privilege?”

  “That depends,” Proyas replied stiffly, “on whom you ask … Either way, we needed to forestall war. And so far—”

  “Heaven forfend,” Achamian snapped, “that men murder men for faith.”

  “And heaven forfend that fools perish for their folly. And heaven forfend that mothers miscarry, that children put out their eyes. Heaven forfend that anything horrible happen! I couldn’t agree with you more, Akka …” He smiled sarcastically. To think he’d almost missed the blasphemous old bastard!

  “But back to the point. I did not condemn Kellhus out of hand, old tutor. Many things—many!—compelled me to vote with the others. Prophet or not, Anasûrimbor Kellhus is dead.”

  Achamian had been watching him, his face emptied of expression. “Who said he was a prophet?”

  “Enough, Akka, please … You just said he was too important to die.”

  “He is, Proyas! He is! He’s our only hope!”

  Proyas rubbed more sleep from the corner of his eyes. He let go a long, exasperated breath.

  “So? The Second Apocalypse, is it? Is Kellhus the second coming of Seswatha?” He shook his head. “Please … Please tell—”

  “He’s more!” the Schoolman cried with alarming passion. “Far more than Seswatha, as he must be … The Heron Spear
is lost, destroyed when the Scylvendi sacked ancient Cenei. If the Consult were to succeed a second time, if the No-God were to walk again …” Achamian stared, his eyes rounded in horror.

  “Men would have no hope.”

  Proyas had endured many of these small rants since his childhood. What made them so uncanny, and at the same time so intolerable, was the way Achamian spoke: as though he recounted rather than conjectured. Just then the morning sun flashed anew between a crease in the accumulating clouds. The thunder, however, continued to rumble across wretched Caraskand.

  “Akka …”

  The Schoolman silenced him with an outstretched hand. “You once asked me, Proyas, whether I had more than Dreams to warrant my fears. Do you remember?”

  All too well. It was the same night Achamian had asked him to write to Maithanet.

  “I remember, yes.”

  Without warning, Achamian stood and stepped out onto the balcony. He vanished into the morning glare only to reappear moments afterward, hoisting something dark in his hands.

  By some coincidence, the sun vanished the moment Proyas reached out to shield his eyes.

  He stared at the soil- and blood-stained bundle. A pungent odour slowly filled the room.

  “Look at it!” Achamian commanded, brandishing it. “Look! Then send your quickest riders out to the Great Names!”

  Proyas recoiled, clutched at the covers about his knees. Suddenly he realized what it seemed he’d known all along: Achamian wouldn’t relent. And of course not: he was a Mandate Schoolman.

  Maithanet … Most Holy Shriah. Is this what you would have me do? Is it?

  Certainty in doubt. That was what was holy! That!

  “Save your warrant for the others,” Proyas muttered. With a flourish he kicked free the sheets and strode naked to the nearby table. The floor was cold enough to ache. Shivers chattered across his skin.

  He snatched Maithanet’s missive, held it out to the scowling sorcerer.

  “Read it,” he murmured. Lightning threaded the sky beyond the ruined Citadel of the Dog.

  Achamian set down his reeking bundle, grasped the parchment, scanned it. Proyas noticed the black crescents under his fingernails. Instead of looking up in stunned shock as Proyas had expected, the sorcerer frowned and squinted at the sheet. He even held it to what light remained. The room trembled to the crack of thunder.

  “Maithanet?” the sorcerer asked, his eyes still rivetted to the Shriah’s flawless script. Proyas knew the line he pondered. The impossible always left the deepest marks on the soul.

  Assist Drusas Achamian, though he is a blasphemer, for in this wickedness, the Holy shall also follow …

  Achamian set the sheet upon his lap, though he still pinched the corner with his thumb and forefinger. The two men shared a thoughtful gaze … Confusion and relief warred in his old teacher’s eyes.

  “Aside from my sword, my harness, and my ancestors,” Proyas said, “that letter is the only thing I brought across the desert. The only thing I saved.”

  “Call them,” Achamian said. “Summon the others to Council.”

  Gone was the golden morning. Rain poured from black skies.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CARASKAND

  They strike down the weak and call it justice. They ungird their loins and call it reparation. They bark like dogs and call it reason.

  —ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN

  Late Winter, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Caraskand

  Rain fell in windswept skirts of grey. It sizzled across the rooftops and the streets. It gurgled through the gutters, rinsing away flakes of dried blood. It pattered against the still-skinned skulls of the dead. It both kissed the uppermost twigs of ancient Umiaki and plummeted through his darkest hollows. A million beads of water. Converging at the forks between branches, twining into strings, threading the darkness with lines of glittering white. Soon rivulets spiralled down the hemp rope and dropped like marbles along the bronze ring, whence they branched across skin, both living and dead.

  Across the Kalaul, thousands ran for cover, shielding themselves with wool cloaks and mantles. Others wailed, held out their hands, beseeching, wondering what the rains omened. The lightning blinded them. The waters bit their cheeks. And the thunder muttered secrets they could not fathom.

  They held out their hands, beseeching.

  His sleep was fitful, haunted by dreams of Dûnyain words and Dûnyain deeds. You, the abomination said, still command the ears of the Great. Serwë slumped in Sarcellus’s arms, showering blood. Remember the secret of battle—remember!

  Cnaiür woke to rain and whispers.

  The secret of battle …

  The ears of the Great.

  Not finding Proyas at his compound, he rode with all due haste to the Sapatishah’s Palace on the Kneeling Heights, where the Prince’s terrified steward had said he could be found. The rain had started to trail by the time he reached the first echelons of residences about the base of the heights. Momentary sunlight cast fingers of brilliance across the otherwise dark city. As he urged his famished mount upward, Cnaiür cast a look over his shoulder, saw the sun battle through clouds of mountainous black. From height to height, across the confusion of the Bowl all the way to the dark and hazy line of the Triamic Walls, pools of rainwater flashed white, like a thousand coins of silver.

  He dismounted in the anarchy of the palace’s outer campus. Every heartbeat, it seemed, saw another band of armed riders clack through the gates. With the exception of the Galeoth guardsmen and several near-skeletal Kianene slaves, everyone carried either the mark or the air of caste-nobility. Cnaiür recognized many from previous Councils, though for some reason, none dared to hail him. He followed the Inrithi into the shadows of the Entry Hall, where he fairly collided with a crimson-clad Gaidekki.

  The Palatine halted, stared at him agog.

  “Sweet Sejenus!” he exclaimed. “Are you well? Was there more fighting on the walls?”

  Cnaiür looked down to his chest: red had soaked the white of his tunic almost to his iron-plated girdle.

  “Your throat’s been cut!” Gaidekki said wondrously.

  “Where’s Proyas?” Cnaiür snapped.

  “With the other dead,” the Palatine said darkly, gesturing to the files of men disappearing into the palace’s frescoed inner sanctums.

  Cnaiür found himself following a band of wild-tempered Thunyeri led by Yalgrota Sranchammer, his flaxen braids adorned with iron nails bent like tusks and the shrunken heads of heathen. At one point, the giant jerked his head about and glared at him. Cnaiür matched his gaze, his soul boiling with thoughts of murder.

  “Ushurrutga!” the man snorted and turned away, smiling at the guttural laughter of his compatriots.

  Cnaiür spat on the walls, then stared wildly about. Wherever he looked, it seemed, he saw men glance away.

  All of them! All of them!

  Somewhere, he could hear the tribesmen of the Utemot whisper …

  Weeper …

  The vaulted corridor ended in bronze doors, which had been propped open with two busts kicked face down onto the carpets. Old Sapatishahs carved in diorite, Cnaiür imagined, or relics of the Nansur occupation. Through the doors, he found himself in a great chamber, shouldering his way through a crowd of milling caste-nobles. The air hummed with reverberating voices.

  Faggot weeper!

  The room was circular, and far more ancient in construction than the greater palace—Kyranean or Shigeki, perhaps. A table carved of what looked like white gypsum dominated the central floor, which was covered by a magnificent rug of copper and gold embroidery. Just beyond the rug’s outer fringe, a series of concentric tiers rose in the fashion of amphitheatres, providing an unobstructed view of the table below. Constructed of monumental blocks, the encircling wall soared above the back tier, set with sconces and adorned with the distinctive, streamer-like tapestries favoured by the Kianene. A pointed dome of corbelled stone loomed overhead, hanging, it seemed, without the luxu
ry of mortar or vaults. A series of wells about its base provided light, diffuse and white, while high above the central table heathen banners swayed in unseen drafts.

  Cnaiür found Proyas standing near the table, his head bent in concentration as he listened to a stocky man in blue and grey. The man’s robes were soiled about the knees, and compared with the rakish frames of those about him, he looked almost obscenely fat. Someone shouted from the tiers, and the man turned to the sound, revealing the five white lines that marred his unplaited beard. Cnaiür stared incredulously.

  It was the sorcerer. The dead sorcerer …

  What happened here?

  “Proyas!” he shouted, for some reason loath to come any closer. “We must speak!”

  The Conriyan Prince looked about, and upon locating him, scowled much as Gaidekki had. The sorcerer, however, continued speaking, and Cnaiür found himself waved away with a harried gesture.

  “Proyas!” he barked, but the Prince spared him only a furious glance.

  Fool! Cnaiür thought. The siege could be broken! He knew what they must do!

  The secret of battle. He remembered …

  He found a spot on the tiers with the other Lesser Names and their retinues, and watched the Great Names settle into their usual bickering. The hunger in Caraskand had reached such straits that even the great among the Inrithi had been reduced to eating rats and drinking the blood of their horses. The leaders of the Holy War had grown hollow-cheeked and gaunt, and the hauberks of many, particularly those who’d been fat, hung loosely from their frames, so they resembled juveniles playing in their father’s armour. They looked at once foolish and tragic, possessed of the shambling pageantry of dying rulers.

  As Caraskand’s titular king, Saubon sat in a large black-lacquered seat at the head of the table. He leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair, as though preparing to exercise a pre-eminence no one else recognized. To his right reclined Conphas, who looked about with the lolling impatience of someone forced to treat lessers as equals. To his left sat Prince Skaiyelt’s surviving brother, Hulwarga the Limper, who’d represented Thunyerus ever since Skaiyelt had succumbed to the hemoplexy. Next to Hulwarga sat Gothyelk, the grizzled Earl of Agansanor, his wiry beard as unkempt as usual, his combative look more menacing. To his left sat Proyas, his manner both wary and thoughtful. Though he spoke to the sorcerer, who sat on a smaller seat immediately next to him, his eyes continued to search the faces of those about the table. And lastly, positioned between Proyas and Conphas, sat the decorous Palatine of Antanamera, Chinjosa, whom according to rumour the Scarlet Spires had installed as interim King-Regent in the wake of Chepheramunni’s demise—also to the hemoplexy.