The Thousandfold Thought

by R. Scott Bakker

  “There’s more, Father. You’re Cishaurim. You must know this.”

  He could remember the voice.

  WHAT DO YOU SEE?

  Even without eyes, his father’s face still seemed to scrutinize. “You refer to your visions, the voice from nowhere. But tell me, where is your proof? What assures your claim over those who are simply mad?”

  TELL ME.

  Assurance? What assurance did he have? When the real punished, the soul denied. He had seen it so many times in so many eyes … So how could he be so certain?

  “But on the Plains of Mengedda,” he said. “The Shrial Knights … What I prophesied came to pass.” To the worldborn these words would have sounded blank, devoid of concern or occasion. But to a Dûnyain …

  Let him think I waver.

  “A fortuitous Correspondence of Cause,” Moënghus replied, “nothing more. That which comes before yet determines that which comes after. How else could you have achieved all that you have achieved? How else could you be possible?”

  He was right. Prophecy could not be. If the ends of things governed their beginnings, if what came after determined what came before, then how could he have mastered the souls of so many? And how could the Thousandfold Thought come to rule the Three Seas? The Principle of Before and After simply had to be true, if its presumption could so empower …

  His father had to be right.

  So what was this certainty, this immovable conviction, that he was wrong?

  Am I mad?

  “The Dûnyain,” Moënghus continued, “think the world closed, that the mundane is all there is, and in this they are most certainly wrong. This world is open, and our souls stand astride its bounds. But what lies Outside, Kellhus, is no more than a fractured and distorted reflection of what lies within. I have searched, for nearly the length of your entire life, and I have found nothing that contradicts the Principle.

  “Men cannot see this because of their native incapacities. They attend only to what confirms their fears and their desires, and what contradicts they either dismiss or overlook. They are bent upon affirmation. The priests crow over this or that incident, while they pass over all others in silence. I have watched, my son, for years I have counted, and the world shows no favour. It is perfectly indifferent to the tantrums of men.

  “The God sleeps … It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given … no, they name our task.”

  Kellhus stood motionless.

  “Set aside your conviction,” Moënghus said, “for the feeling of certainty is no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.”

  Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands, wondered that they could be light and yet cast no light, throw no shadow … The light of delusion.

  “But we, my son, do not have the luxury of error. Void … void has come to this world. It fell from the skies thousands of years past. Twice it has reared from the ashes of its falling: the first time in what the Mandate call the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars, the second time in what they call the First Apocalypse. It is about to arise a third time.”

  “Yes,” Kellhus murmured. “He speaks to me as well.”

  WHAT AM I?

  “The No-God?” Moënghus asked. He paused momentarily. Had his father possessed eyes, Kellhus was certain he would have seen them fall in and out of focus as the consciousness within rose and submerged. “Then you truly are mad.”

  The shouts were everywhere, descending from blinding, blinking sunlight.

  “Emperor! God-of-Men!”

  His men … his glorious Columnaries, come to save him.

  “He’s dead! No-no-no!”

  “Sweet Sejenus, our prayers have been answered!”

  “Sedition! I should run you—”

  “What? You think I value my skin over my so—!”

  “He’s right! We all know it. We’ve all been thinking—”

  “Then you’re all guilty of treason!”

  “Are we? And what of this madman? What kind of fool would trade souls for ink and glo—”

  “Exactly! I’ll be hanged before I fight for Fanim pigs! What? Risk my life to fight for my own damnation?”

  “He’s right! He’s ri—”

  “Look!” a voice cried immediately above him. “He moves!”

  For a moment Conphas could hear nothing for the ringing in his ears. Then there were arms and hands, many of them, dragging him by his harness. His heels bounced over turf. All he could think was to hold fast his Chorae. What had happened? What had happened?

  He glimpsed his hands, which he had raised to his face, saw his Trinket, greasy with blood. He cried out, sick with sudden certainty of his doom. His heart felt like a sparrow battling in his breast.

  I’m dead! I’ve been slain!

  Then he remembered, and he was fighting, striking away hovering hands.

  Drusas Achamian.

  “Kill him!” he barked, pressing himself to his feet. Columnaries and officers surrounded him, gawking in wonder and terror. Men of the Selial Column. Conphas snatched the cloak of one, used it to mop the blood from his face and neck. Cememketri’s blood—the imbecile! Useless! Feeble!

  “Kill him!”

  But only a few matched his gaze; the others looked past him, toward the rounded summit. He noticed the strange shadows that played about all of their feet. The ringing in his ears fell away and Conphas heard it, the thrum of their otherworldly song. Whirling, he saw Saik Schoolmen astride the sky, pitching sorcerous ruin over the far side of the humped pasture. As he watched, one of the black-robed sorcerers foundered, his Wards crumbling beneath a calligraphy of linear lights. He fell flaming to the ground.

  As would the others. Four Anagogic sorcerers would not be enough, not against the Gnosis. Conphas cursed himself for dividing the Imperial Saik between the Columns. With the Cishaurim and the Scarlet Spires locked in mortal struggle, he had assumed that … that …

  This isn’t happening … not to me!

  “My Chorae,” he said numbly. “Where are my crossbowmen?”

  No one could answer—of course. All was in disarray. The Mandate filth had obliterated his entire command. The Emperor’s own standard had vanished in an eruption of fire. The sacred standard destroyed! He turned from the spectacle, scanned the surrounding fields and pastures. Kidruhil fled to the south—fled! Three of his Columns had halted, while the phalanxes of the farthest, the Nasueret, actually seemed to be withdrawing.

  They thought he was dead.

  Laughing, he pressed his way through the clutch of soldiers, opened his bloodied arms to the far-flung ranks of the Imperial Army. He hesitated at the sight of white-garbed horsemen cresting the far rise, but only for a heartbeat.

  “Your Emperor has survived!” he roared. “The Lion of Kiyuth lives!”

  Flames, tongues wrapped about golden tongues, spitting plumes of smoke into the sky.

  Without any apparent signal, the Thunyeri began advancing, hundreds of them, spilling into the trenches, climbing debris slopes, leaping through windows stranded in solitary walls. They raised no battle cry. Like wolves, they floated soundlessly forward.

  The Cishaurim recollected themselves. Gouts of light plummeted across the smashed landscape, fell among the rushing Norsirai warriors. Keening screams. Shadows thrashing in boiling light. For heartbeats, all the Grandmaster could do was stare dumbfounded. He saw one barbarian, his beard and hair aflame, stumble across the pitch of fallen walls, still holding a Circumfix banner high.

  Without warning, the deluge found Eleäzaras once again, arcs of inchoate energy that cracked and shattered his Wards. He cried out his song, propping and renewing, all the while knowing it would not be enough. How had their foemen become so strong?

  But then the dread lights were halved, then halved yet again. Gasping, El
eäzaras glimpsed the giant Yalgrota, soot-blackened and blood-smeared, heaving Fanfarokar into the air by the throat. The asps flailed. Fist closed about a Chorae, the Thunyeri giant hammered the shaven skull into sopping ruin. Eleäzaras whirled, searching the heaped darkness for threats, saw Seökti floating backward before a rush of black shadows … toward the fires that fenced the sloped foundations of the Sacred Heights. He saw the remaining cadres of his brothers—so few!—light up in renewed fury.

  “Fight!” he thundered in a sorcerous voice. “Fight, Schoolmen, fight!”

  Out of his entire cadre, only one of his shield-bearers remained, cringing at his feet. He had no idea what had happened to the others.

  Cursing the fool, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires stepped into the smoke-rent sky.

  The white roar of battle.

  Felled by heathen arrows, men toppled from the heights of the aqueduct onto the straining masses below. Swords and scimitars rising and falling, throwing blood into black skies. Shields braced against the necks of maddened horses. Astonished men, gauntlets pressed against mortal wounds. Raging men, hacking and hammering at the crush before them. Weeping men, dragging the lolling corpses of their lords.

  Then the Fanim fell back, leaving the fallen curled and stretched across the ground behind them. They retreated as waters might from the breakers. All along the Skilura Aqueduct, the Inrithi roared in exultation. One of the Numaineiri stepped forward and, waving his sword back and forth, cried, “Wait! You forgot your blood!”

  Hundreds laughed.

  The dead were culled from the ranks. Messengers were dispatched along the rear of the line. For seven seasons the Men of the Tusk had lived and breathed war. The routines seemed as near to them as their bones and blood. More Inrithi climbed to the rutted heights of what had become their wall, where the sight of the Fanim massing and reforming across the fields stole their breath.

  Horns signalled. Someone, somewhere, resumed their song.We shall raise glory to the morrow,

  we shall bring fury to the now.

  Out of bowshot, the Fanim congregated anew about their bright banners. For a short time, only the south saw battle as Ansacer led his cohorts, men as hard-bitten as the idolaters, up the pastures that ramped the Shrine of Azoreah. Though dreadfully outnumbered, Lord Gotian and his Shrial Knights sailed down the slopes toward him. “God,” the warrior monks cried, “wills it!” And they met, hammer to hammer. Along the length of the aqueduct, the Men of the Tusk cheered at the sight of heathen fleeing back down the slopes.

  Then the rhythm of the drums slowed, and with a clash of cymbals the great masses 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 assemblies, the Fanim host reined to a halt a mere hundred paces before the ranks drawn across the aqueduct’s foundations. Everywhere, stitched across flapping banners, painted across round shields, the horsemen 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 Girgashi. An anxious rustling passed through the lines, both heathen and idolater. Spotters along the aqueduct’s crown shouted out warnings: heathen horsemen 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. “Who is the true voice of God?”

  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 mass 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-God?”

  Moënghus 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-God?”

  Though walled in by the flesh of his face, Moënghus seemed to scrutinize him. “They do not know. But then, none in this world know what they worship.”

  “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, Father. I am the Harbinger.”

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

  “These voices,” Moënghus said with slow deliberation, “what do they say of me?”

  His father, Kellhus realized, had finally grasped the principles of this encounter. Moënghus had assumed 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 i
ts incubation—and discard it.

  “They warn me,” Kellhus said, “that you are Dûnyain 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 … When you learn of the damnation that awaits you, when you come to believe, you will be no different from the Inchoroi. As Dûnyain, 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, assessing, 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 Ishuäl is shut against the Wilderness,” Kellhus replied.

  For the Dûnyain, 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 assassination. The rise of Anasûrimbor Moënghus to take his place. The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas crashing into char and ruin.

  The Gods 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 unanticipated turn—was simply a ruse. Either way, it was irrelevant.

  “You are Dûnyain still, Father.”

  “As are—”