The Thousandfold Thought

by R. Scott Bakker

  Earl Gothyelk looked to the white-tiled walls of the city, saw that King-Regent Chinjosa and his Ainoni were yet in disarray. Many still crowded the parapets.

  Cursing, he commanded his hornsman to sound the retreat. They had lost the Jeshimal.

  Kellhus spoke a sorcerous word and a point of light appeared, sheeting low-vaulted walls in illumination. Though ornate by Inrithi standards, the chamber was more austere than any he’d encountered since plumbing the darkness beneath Kyudea. The friezes that panelled the walls did not screen deeper carvings. They seemed more reserved in theme and content as well, as if the product of an older, more stolid age—though Kellhus decided it had more to do with the room’s function. It had been some kind of access chamber for the mansion’s ancient sewers.

  Workbenches and strange iron and wood mechanisms littered the walls with shadow. At the far end of the chamber, where the ceiling sloped so low a man would have to stoop, a cistern opened beneath converging chutes, as dust-dry as everything else in the room. Nearer, two wells or pits had been dropped into the floor, each possessing graven lips that, perversely, had been carved into the semblance of hands reaching out of the darkness to tear at four spread-eagled figures, one for each point of the compass. With heads bent back in soundless howls, each clutched at the ground with stationary desperation.

  The two skin-spies hung suspended above these pits, their arms and legs shackled in chains of pitted iron.

  Kellhus approached the nearer one, stepping past a hanging funnel—part of a rust-grooved force-feeding mechanism. How many years had the thing hung here, dangling in absolute black, flinching from instruments, listening to the insistent cooing of his father’s voice?

  With a gesture he drew the point of light closer. Shadows swung like steepled fingers.

  Their facial limbs were drawn perpetually open with rust-brown wire affixed to an iron ring. A contraption of cords and pulleys allowed the things’ inner faces to be pulled back or down.

  “When did you realize you didn’t possess the strength,” Kellhus asked, “that more was needed to avert the No-God’s second coming?”

  “From the very first I recognized that it was probable,” Moënghus said. “But I spent years assessing the possibilities, gathering knowledge. When the first of the Thought came to me, I was quite unprepared.”

  Their braincases had been sawed open, revealing lobes and milky convolutions hazed by hundreds of silver needles. Neuropuncture. Kellhus reached out a finger, brushed the tip of one near the brain’s base. The creature jerked and stiffened. Excrement slopped down into the pit. The reek of it swelled through the room.

  “I assume,” Kellhus continued, “that you’re not entirely without Water … that this was how you were able to reach out to Ishuäl, to send dreams to those Dûnyain you knew before your exile.”

  Through intersecting chains he saw his father nod, as hairless as the ancient Nonmen who had hewn the stone surrounding them. What secrets had he learned from these captives? What dread whispers?

  “I have some facility for those elements of the Psûkhe that require more subtlety than power. Scrying, Calling, Translating … Even still, my summons to you nearly broke me. Ishuäl lies across the world.”

  “I was the Shortest Path.”

  “No. You were the only path.”

  Kellhus examined the two squares of oak that had been laid across the floor on the far side of the wells. They looked like doors, only stripped of their hinges and handles and set with hooks in each corner so that they could be hung directly beneath the skin-spies. The child and woman nailed across them—tools his father had used either to fan or to sate the creatures’ lusts—hadn’t been dead long. Their blood gleamed like wax.

  An interrogation technique, or another feeding mechanism?

  “And my half-brother?” Kellhus asked. In his soul’s eye it seemed he could almost see him—the pomp, the authoritarian grandeur—so many times had he heard him described. Kellhus stepped around the far side of the skin-spies to gain a clear view of his father. The man seemed wizened, all but naked in the glaring light. Strangely bent … or broken.

  He uses every heartbeat to reassess. His son has returned to him insane.

  Moënghus nodded and said, “You mean Maithanet.”

  Her head in the crook of his shoulder, Esmenet stared up through the trees. She breathed deep and slow, tasting the salt of her tears, smelling the dank of mossy stone, the bitter of pinched green. Like little flags, the leaves swung and fluttered, their waxy clatter so clear against the background roar. It seemed marvellous and impossible. Twigs upon branches, branches upon limbs, all upward fanning, at once random and perfectly radial, all reaching for a thousand different heavens.

  She sighed and said, “I feel so young.”

  His chest bounced in silent laughter beneath her cheek.

  “You are … Only the world is old.”

  “Oh, Akka, what are we going to do?”

  “What we must.”

  “No … that’s not what I mean.” She cast an urgent look to his profile. “He’ll see, Akka. The instant he glimpses our faces, he’ll see us here … He’ll know.”

  He turned to her. The scowling hurt of old fears unearthed.

  “Esmi—”

  The snort of a horse, loud and near, interrupted him. They looked to each other in confusion and alarm.

  Achamian crept back along the bruised V that marked their path through the weeds, crouched behind the scabbed masonry. She followed. Over his shoulder she glimpsed a row of cavalry—obviously Imperial Kidruhil—arrayed in a long line across the heights. Dour, expressionless, the mailed horsemen stared out to the roaring city. Their horses stamped and snorted in nervousness. From the gathering clamour she knew that more, very many more, approached from behind.

  Conphas? Here? But he was supposed to be dead!

  “You’re not surprised,” she whispered in sudden understanding. She leaned close to him. “Did the Scylvendi tell you about this? Does his treachery run this deep?”

  “He told me,” Achamian said, his voice so hollow, so dismayed, that her skin prickled in terror. “And he told me to warn the Great Names … H-he didn’t want any harm to befall the Holy War—for Proyas’s sake as much as anything else, I think … B-but … after he left, all I could think about was … was …” He trailed, then turned to her, his eyes round. “Stay here. Stay hidden!”

  She shrank backward, such was the intensity of his tone. She pressed her back against the forking of slender trunks. “What are you talking about? Akka …”

  “I can’t let this happen, Esmi. Conphas has an entire army … Think of what will happen!”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking about, you fool!”

  “Please, Esmi. You’re his wife … Think of what happened to Serwë!”

  In her soul’s eye she glimpsed the girl trying to palm blood back into the gash about her throat. “Akka!” she sobbed.

  “I love you, Esmenet. The love of a fool …” He paused, blinked two tears. “That’s all I’ve ever had to offer.”

  Then suddenly he stood tall. Before she could speak, he had stepped over the broken foundation. There was something nightmarish to his movements, an urgency that couldn’t be contained by his limbs. She would have laughed had she not known him so well.

  He walked out and among the cavalrymen, calling …

  His eyes shining. His voice a thunderclap.

  Emperor Ikurei Conphas I was in an uncommonly jubilant mood.

  “A holy city afire,” he said to the grave faces to either side of him. “Masses locked in battle.” He turned to the old Grandmaster, who seemed to slump in his saddle. “Tell me, Cememketri—you Schoolmen pretend to be wise—what does it say of men that we find such things beautiful?”

  The black-robed sorcerer blinked as though trying to clear the rheum from his eyes. “That we are bred to war, God-of-Men.”

  “No,” Conphas replied, his tone at once playful and cross. “Wa
r is intellect, and men are stupid. It’s violence we’re bred to, not war.”

  Astride his horse, the Emperor gazed down across the Inrithi encampment, out to where Shimeh smoked and flickered with warring lights. In addition to the ailing Saik Grandmaster, General Areamanteras, several sundry officers, and members of the messenger corps accompanied him, arrayed along the summit of the mounded ridge. His Kidruhil fanned out before him, forming ranks lower on the slopes, near a series of ruined structures he couldn’t be troubled to identify. His Columns approached from behind, already drawn out into red and gold battle lines. Their timing had been impeccable. They had debarked from the fleet the night before, in a miraculous little harbour mere miles up the coast. Even the winds had been blessed. And now …

  He fairly cackled at what he saw. The Scarlet Spires engaged in the shadow of the Juterum. Half the Holy War running heedless and amok through the smoking streets. Fanayal striking to the south of the city, trying to outflank the stubborn Tydonni. Everything was exactly as his scouts had informed him.

  The Men of the Tusk had no inkling of his arrival. Which meant that Sompas, wherever he was, had succeeded in stopping the Scylvendi. Four full Columns! A veritable spear in the small of the Holy War’s back.

  Whom do the Gods favour now, hmm, Prophet?

  A defect carried from the womb … Please.

  He laughed aloud, utterly unperturbed by the ashen looks of his officers. Suddenly it seemed he could see the future to its very limit. It wouldn’t end here, oh my, no! It would continue, first to the south, to Seleukara, then onward to Nenciphon, west to Invishi—all the way to Auvangshei and the legendary gates of Zeüm! He, Ikurei Conphas I, would be the new Triamis, the next Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas!

  He turned scowling to his retinue. How could they not see it? It was all so clear. But then, they peered through the smoke of mortality. All they could see now was their precious Holy City. But time would show. In the meantime, they need only foll—

  “Who’s that?” General Areamanteras abruptly muttered.

  Conphas found and recognized the man immediately. Drusas Achamian, walking through the grass, turning toward them, his eyes and mouth ablaze—

  Groping for his Chorae, he screamed, “Cememket—”

  But heat sucked all air from his lungs. He heard screams dissolve like salt into boiling broth. He was falling.

  “To me, Emperor!” an aged voice cried. “To me!”

  He was on the ground, rolling through grasses that had become black ash. Somehow the Grandmaster of the Imperial Saik was standing above him, his white hair whipping in convections, his sorcerous voice strong despite his unsteady stance. Ethereal ramparts distorted the air between them and the Mandate sorcerer, who’d turned to the breaking ranks of Kidruhil. Lines of light swept out, more perfect than any rule, flashing across the nearest of the Imperial Heavy Cavalry, who … collapsed, not bodily but in sopping pieces that rolled between the hummocks and weeds.

  A blinding light rewrote all the shadows, and through upraised fingers Conphas saw a sun falling from black-bellied clouds, plummeting onto the figure of the Mandate Schoolman. Bursting fire, ribbons of it, arcing off in all directions. Conphas heard himself cry out in relief, elation …

  But as his eyes adjusted, he saw the flames twining away into nothingness about an invisible sphere, and he glimpsed him, as clear as that night beneath the Andiamine Heights, or in the Sapatishah’s Palace in Caraskand: Drusas Achamian, unharmed, untouched, laughing about incandescence as he sang.

  From nowhere, a massive concussion. The air just cracked.

  Cememketri fell to one knee, made a curious gasping sound. Parabolas of light parsed the air about his half-shattered Wards. The sound of iron teeth, grinding at the world’s very bones … Cememketri’s voice wavered in old-man panic—words wrapped around gasps.

  Another concussion, and Conphas found himself face-first in the ash. His ears shrieked, but he could still make out the hoarse old voice howling …

  “Run!”

  And the Emperor ran, screaming.

  The Saik Grandmaster’s blood was blown like sleet across his back.

  Cursing, the lone guardsman before the Umbilica’s silk and canvas entrance shot to his feet. He blinked at the approaching figure, which did not … move right. At moments it seemed a man, but at others it seemed something else, like a moth’s pupa or a bundle of collapsing cloth—something flattened from all directions, though it did not grow smaller.

  And the air seemed to … crackle, as though somewhere, just out of sight, sheaves of papyrus burned.

  He stood rigid, breathless. Everything in his body—deeper, even—clamoured for him to run.

  But he was one of the Hundred Pillars. It was shame enough to be left behind, but to fail in this? He drew his longsword, cried out “Halt!” more from bewilderment than anything else.

  And miraculously, the thing ceased moving.

  Forward, anyway, because it somehow clawed outward, as though soft inner surfaces were being peeled back, exposed to the needling sky.

  A face like summer sunlight. Limbs barked in fire.

  Reaching out, the thing grasped his head, skinned it like a grape.

  Where, bolted a voice through his smoking skull, is Drusas Achamian?

  Fire and light, burnishing the underside of black-wheeling clouds, carving the outer pillars of the First Temple bright against a heart of inscrutable black.

  Heeding the thunder of their Grandmaster’s voice, the flanking cadres of the Scarlet Spires drew back before the flailing lights, falling into a great circle across the devastation they had brought to the foot of the Sacred Heights. The more numerous Cishaurim assailed them, the snakes about their throats craning forward. In trios, the weaker crouched and dashed through the ruins, white-blue energies spilling from their foreheads like water toppling toward unseen grounds. The stronger floated proud, dispensing great scourging torrents. All across the levelled streets, there were blinding points of contact where pure light broke against the ghosts of cracking stone.

  Between singing Cants and renewing Wards, the sorcerers of rank cried instructions and encouragement to their Javreh shield-bearers. Now and again, when one of the slave-soldiers stumbled across the treacherous footing, a Chorae would whir out of the fire and darkness. Hem-Arkidu was struck, so perfectly balanced he remained standing as incandescent lashes snapped through his fading defences, a pillar of salt amid sizzling, screaming ruin.

  The circle closed. The Schoolmen abandoned their Encircling Wards and began fencing the spaces before them with far more robust Directional Wards: the quick-spoken Portcullis, the difficult yet mighty Ramparts of Ur.

  Then they responded in kind.

  To its bones, Shimeh shivered with unholy reverberations. The terrible majesty of the Dragonhead. The scalding horror of the Memkotic Furies. The air-sucking whoosh of the Meppa Cataract. Dozens of lesser Cishaurim vanished in gold-boiling torrents. Others were dragged smoking from the sky. Abandoning their positions to the rear of their cadres, many Rhumkari, the Scarlet Spires’ famed Chorae crossbowmen, crept forward through the rubble, began shooting bolts at those mighty few who seemed immune to sorcerous fires. They blinked at glimpses of snakes and faces, black against sheeted white.

  But the crossbowmen within the circle turned, their eyes drawn skyward by shouts, and saw Cishaurim dropping through smoke, landing in their midst. Within moments, before the flying walls of debris crashed over them, they had killed more than a dozen. But the Cishaurim neither relented nor faltered. For they were Indara’s Water-bearers, the Firstborn of the Solitary God, and unlike their wicked foemen, they cared not for their lives.

  In the midst of their enemy, they spilled their Water.

  The slaughter was great.

  The Fanim jeered and pelted them with arrows as they fled the banks of the River Jeshimal. The retreat quickly became a rout. Soon scattered bands of Tydonni were careering across the fields, racing toward the line of arch
ed ruin that was the Ceneian aqueduct. Some riders halted to save their unhorsed thanes, only to be overrun by the pursuing tides of heathen horsemen. Save for the thunder of sorcery, Kianene drums and ululations owned the skies.

  But the sturdy footmen of Ce Tydonn, under the command of Gothyelk’s eldest son, Gotheras, were already assembling beneath the aqueduct. With every passing moment, more spears and many-coloured shields spanned the gaps between the crumbling pylons. To the north, where the aqueduct trailed into a linear mound before the Tatokar Walls, the Ainoni were also drawing into defensive positions. Palatine Uranyanka howled at his Moserothi to close the gap with the Tydonni—Nangaels under Earl Iyengar. Lord Soter led his bloodthirsty Kishyati in a desperate charge from the north.

  Trailing skirts of dust, the knights of Ce Tydonn thundered haphazardly into the ranks of their countrymen. Most pressed their way to the rear, seeking respite. But some, like Werijen Greatheart, wheeled with their households and, roaring out encouragement, braced for the heathen onslaught.

  Missiles rained among them, like hail across tin.

  “Here!” Earl Gothyelk of Agansanor roared. “Here we stand!”

  But the Fanim parted before them, content to release storms of whirring arrows. The knights of Kishyat, their faces painted dread white above their square-plaited beards, had exacted a terrible toll on their flank. But even more, Cinganjehoi recalled well the obstinacy of the idolaters once their heels touched ground. As yet only a fraction of the Fanim army had crossed the Jeshimal.

  Fanayal ab Kascamandri was coming. Lord of the Cleansed Lands. Padirajah of Holy Kian.

  Past the Esharsa Market, through slums and tangled alleyways, the Conriyans battled and chased the Fanim, losing more and more of their number to rapine and plunder, drawing up only when they reached the broad reed marshes that had once been Shimeh’s great harbour. Proyas had long since abandoned any attempt to impose order or restraint on his men. The madness of battle was on them, and though his heart grieved it, he understood what it meant to wager one’s life, and the bestial licence that men took as their prize.