The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) (68 page)

Read The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Fantasy

BOOK: The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)
8.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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. “War 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 arched 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.

Other books

Druids Sword by Sara Douglass
A Kiss Before Dawn by Kimberly Logan
A Bear Victory by Anya Nowlan