The Thousandfold Thought

  Only an Utemot Chieftain.

  Cnaiür nodded, rubbed his eyes, stamped his foot in an effort to stay awake. Blinking, he stared over the balustrade and out across the city and port. Rooftop piled onto rooftop, climbing the near and distant slopes, and forming a broad basin about the piers and quays that ringed the inner harbour. A dishevelled landscape of structure, struck by streets like river canyons, all leading to the sea.

  Joktha … He need only blink to see it burn.

  Above, innumerable stars dusted the firmament, curving into a perfect bowl so vast, so hollow, that it seemed a single twitch might send him floating skyward, falling. It reminded him of awakening at Kiyuth. He could almost smell his kinsmen sprawling dead in ever-widening gyres.

  I’m forgetting …

  He drowsed. His copper wine bowl slipped from his fingers and rolled across the cracked stone. Events from the previous evening slurred through his soul. Conphas baiting him at the gates. Conphas arguing the terms of his internment. Conphas restrained by his Generals. His cuirass glaring white in the sunlight. His long-lashed eyes.

  I’m …

  The Scylvendi stirred in sudden remembrance, rolled his head about his massive shoulders.

  I’m Cnaiür … Breaker-of-horses-and-men.

  He laughed, drowsed some more, dreamed …

  He walked toward Shimeh, though it was identical to the Utemot camp of his youth, a congregation of several thousand yaksh. Herds ranged the surrounding plains, but no cattle dared approach him. He passed the first of the yaksh, their hides tight against their poles, like skin about the ribs of dogs. The Utemot crowded the lanes between, limbs hanging from rotted sockets, viscera draped across their thighs. He saw all of them: his father’s brother, Bannut, his brother-in-law, Balait, even Yursalka and his crippled wife. They watched him with the parchment eyes of the dead. He came across the first of his butchered chattel—a brown foal with his threefold mark. Then three cows, their throats cut, followed by a four-year-old bull, its head cudgelled. Soon he found himself climbing across mounds of horse and cattle carcasses, all of them bearing his mark.

  For some reason, he felt no surprise.

  Then at last he came to the White Yaksh—the very heart of Shimeh. A spear had been driven into the ground next to the entrance. His father’s head adorned the haft, pale skin drawn like water-sodden linen. Cnaiür tore his gaze away, drew aside the doeskin flap. Somehow he already knew that Moënghus had made a harem of his wives, so he was neither shocked nor outraged. But the blood unnerved him, as did the fishlike way Serwë opened and closed her mouth … Anissi was screaming.

  Moënghus looked up from his passion and grinned a broad and welcoming grin. The Ikurei still lives, he said. Why don’t you kill him?

  “The time … the time …”

  Are you drunk?

  “Nepenthe … All that the bird gave to me …”

  Ah … so you yearn to forget after all.

  “No … not forget. Sleep.”

  So why not kill him?

  “Because he wants me to.”

  The Dûnyain? You think this is a trap?

  “His every word is a feint. His every look a spear!”

  Then what’s his intent?

  “To keep me from his father. To deny me my hate. To betray—”

  But all you need do is kill the Ikurei. Kill him, and you are free to follow the Holy War.

  “No! There is something! Something I’m …”

  You’re a fool.

  Somehow Cnaiür raised his face to the muck of wakefulness, peered through ocean-swimming eyes, and saw it perched on the balustrade before him, its scalp polished in starlight, its feathers shot with black silk, the world floating like smoke beyond it.

  “Bird!” he cried. “Devil!”

  The tiny face leered. The eyes became heavy-lidded, like a demon dreaming.

  “Kiyuth,” it said, “where the Ikurei humiliated you and your People. Avenge the Battle of Kiyuth!”

  I’m forgetting something.

  How could absent things remain? How could they be?

  Each swazond a dead man grinning. Each night a dead woman’s embrace …

  Days passed, and Cnaiür tried hard to fathom the depths that pitched about him. Conphas and his Nansur were his immediate concern—or should have been. Proyas had given him the barons Tirnemus and Sanumnis with their 370-odd client knights, as well as the 58 survivors of his old band from Shigek. Like all Men of the Tusk, they were battle-hardened, but they made no effort to conceal their dismay at having been left behind. “Blame the Nansur,” Cnaiür told them. “Blame Conphas.” They were thoroughly outnumbered by their Nansur charges, and Cnaiür needed as much aggression as they could muster.

  When Baron Sanumnis expressed misgivings, Cnaiür reminded him that these men had conspired to betray the Holy War, and that no one knew when the Emperor’s transports would arrive. “They can overwhelm us at will,” he said. “So we must strip their will from them.”

  Of course, he said nothing of his true motives. These men had chosen Ikurei Conphas over the Dûnyain … One must always chain the dog before murdering the master.

  A squalid camp of sorts was struck along Joktha’s walls, far enough from the Oras to keep a good number of the Columnaries occupied with drawing and delivering water. Knowing well the organizational strengths of the Imperial Army, Cnaiür segregated the older soldiers—the Threesies as they were called—from the younger. The officers he interned in a different camp altogether. Because of the mutual enmity between the largely caste-noble cavalrymen and the caste-menial infantrymen, Cnaiür had the Kidruhil dissolved and scattered through the Columns. As a further measure, he had his Conriyans continually circulate rumours: that Conphas had been overheard blubbering in his chambers, that the officers had rioted when they learned their rations were no different from the enlisted men’s—the kinds of rumours that gnawed at every army’s heart. Even when universally dismissed, they served to distract idle souls and to drown those truths that did surface.

  Cnaiür restricted Conphas and the forty-two men of his immediate coterie to the city—as per the Conditions of Internment. He forbade all contact with his Columnaries, for obvious reasons. Since imprisoning him outright could provoke a revolt, he allowed the Imperial Nephew what liberty Joktha provided. Even as he obsessively pondered the man’s murder.

  He understood why Kellhus wanted Conphas dead: the Dûnyain suffered no rivals. Likewise, he understood why Kellhus had chosen him as his assassin. Of course the savage had killed the Lion. Was he not Scylvendi? Was he not a survivor of Kiyuth?

  What tormented him was what these understandings implied. If murdering Moënghus was Kellhus’s sole mission, then preserving the Holy War should be his sole concern. Why assassinate Conphas when he need only remove him from the game—as he had? And why use Cnaiür to conceal his involvement, when the consequences—open war with the Empire—would have no bearing on the imminent conquest of Shimeh?

  And Cnaiür realized … There was no way around it: the Dûnyain was looking beyond the Holy War—past Shimeh. And to see past Shimeh was to see past Moënghus.

  Men draped assumptions, endless assumptions, about their acts; they could scarce do otherwise, given their errant hunger for meaning. Since the beginning, Cnaiür had conceived their journey as a hunt, as a collusion of enemies in pursuit of a greater foe. Their quest had always seemed an arrow fired into darkness. No matter how deep his misgivings, he had always come back to this understanding. But now … Now it seemed like nothing other than a collar; that Moënghus and Kellhus, father and son, were but different ends of a mighty torc that he, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, had bent about the very neck of the world. A slaver’s collar.

  Something … something …

  He found himself scrutinizing Tirnemus and Sanumnis whenever the opportunity afforded. Baron Tirnemus, he quickly decided, was an outright fool, a man more bent on recovering the belly he had lost at Caraskand than anything else. Sanumnis, on
the other hand, was both clever and taciturn, and seemed to wield an obvious, yet inexplicable, authority over his stouter countryman. He was a watcher.

  Had they been given secret orders? Orders that made one the senior? That would explain why Tirnemus deferred and Sanumnis watched. What, after all, would be the penalty for murdering the Nansur Emperor’s only heir? For contravening the Warrior-Prophet’s solemn vow?

  I’ve been sent to murder myself. The thought made Cnaiür cackle. Small wonder Proyas had been so unnerved relaying the Dûnyain’s murderous instructions.

  The fact that he had been assigned a Schoolman only provided further confirmation of his suspicions. Saurnemmi he was called, a young Scarlet initiate with a fey and chronic cough. He had arrived the day after Conphas, accompanied by a sorcerer-of-rank, Inrûmmi, who departed immediately and inexplicably after inspecting his student’s quarters. Saurnemmi, the older sorcerer had told Cnaiür, was to be his link to the Holy War. “The boy,” as the pompous fool referred to him, was to sleep until noon every day so they might converse through sorcerous dreams. Saurnemmi, in other words, was to be the Dûnyain’s eyes in Joktha.

  Depths! Everywhere he turned—mad, unfathomable depths!

  Provoked by Saurnemmi’s presence, Cnaiür ordered Tirnemus to gather Conphas and his staff in the Petition Hall of the Donjon Palace, the citadel where Cnaiür had made his headquarters. He bid the young sorcerer study their captives from the balcony. Then, once the Exalt-General and his men had assembled, Cnaiür strode into their very midst, staring hard into various faces and taking pleasure in the way they blanched. The Nansur were such predictable scum, courageous in excess when armed in mobs, but cowering fawns when outside formation.

  He found himself circling Conphas, who stood ramrod straight in full military dress. “You see your brothers on my arms,” he declared to the others. “Your wives …” He spat at the feet of those nearest. “How it must gall—”

  “How many of your brothers,” Conphas cried out, “do I bear on my—?” Cnaiür struck him. The Exalt-General sailed backward, tripped to the ground. Cnaiür whirled to the sound of slapping sandals, caught an arcing wrist. He seized his assailant’s cuirass, smashed the man’s face against his forehead. The dagger the fool had concealed clattered across the shining tiles.

  These dogs had to be broken! Broken!

  The sound of swords whisking from sheaths. Tirnemus’s Conriyans suddenly appeared about him, blades outstretched. The Nansur backed away, ashen-faced. Several called out to their Exalt-General, who had rolled onto all fours, spitting blood.

  “Make no mistake,” Cnaiür roared over their cries, “you will heed me!” He brought a boot down on the head of the man jerking at his feet. The ingrate went still, as though wrinkles had been smoothed from his limbs. Hot blood slipped along the cracks between tiles.

  A moment of wilting silence.

  “Do not,” Cnaiür said, raising his great banded arms, “make me the ledger of your folly!”

  He could almost see them shrink. Suddenly they seemed children—frightened children—beneath the soaring pillars. His heart hammering in exultation, Cnaiür spat again, then raised his face to Saurnemmi, who watched from the gallery above, his adolescent frame bundled in silken crimson. His beard, Cnaiür noted, was little more than a mummer’s gag. “Which one?” he called.

  Saurnemmi coughed the inane way he always did, then nodded toward the back of the crowd, at the men milling about General Sompas. “That one,” he said. “The one with”—another ceremonial cough, too soft to cut real phlegm—“with the silver bindings about his cuirass.”

  Grinning, Cnaiür reached beneath his girdle, extracted his father’s Chorae.

  Without warning, the slender man to Sompas’s right bolted across the polished floors. He was felled after five strides, a shaft jutting from the back of his neck. He cried out, began screaming words that made smoke of sound. His eyes flared bright. But Cnaiür was already upon him …

  Incandescence, searing every surface chalk-white. Men raised arms, cried out.

  The Nansur blinked and gaped. Cnaiür turned to them, away from the broken salt-statuary at his feet. He spat and grinned, then strode towering into their midst. He made for Conphas. The Exalt-General sputtered, shrank from his approach, but Cnaiür merely brushed past him, continued wordlessly up the monumental stair. One did not trade words with whipped dogs. It was mummery, Cnaiür knew, but then everything was mummery in the end. Another lesson learned at the Dûnyain’s heel.

  Afterward, he found himself screaming in his apartments. He understood why, of course: if not for the Scarlet Schoolman’s arrival, he would never have thought that Conphas too had a sorcerer. But the why of this understanding escaped him … It always escaped him.

  Was something wrong with him?

  Enemies! All about him, enemies! They even dwelt within …

  Even Proyas … Could he bring himself to break his neck as well?

  He sent me to murder myself!

  At night, Cnaiür drank—heavily—and the spears that lay hidden beneath every surface were blunted. The terrors, rather, oozed from the cracks in the floor. Despite the censers, the air smelled of yaksh: earth, smoke, and mouldering hides. He could hear Moënghus whisper through the dim interiors …

  More lies. More confusions.

  And the bird—the fucking bird! It seemed a knot, a yanking of all things foul into a single form. His chest tightened simply thinking of it. But of course it couldn’t be real. No more than Serwë …

  He told her as much, every night she came to his bed.

  Something … something is wrong with me.

  He knew this because he could see himself as the Dûnyain saw him. He understood that Moënghus had knocked him from the tracks of his People, that he had spent thirty years kicking through the grasses searching for the spoor of his own passing. For a way back.

  Thirty accursed years! These too he understood. The Scylvendi were a forward people—as were all people save the Dûnyain. They listened to their storytellers. They listened to their hearts. Like dogs, they barked at strangers. They judged honour and shame the way they judged near and far. In their inborn conceit, they made themselves the absolute measure. They could not see that honour, like nearness, simply depended on where one stood.

  That it was a lie.

  Moënghus had lured him onto different ground. How could his kinsmen not think him an obscenity when his voice came to them from darknesses unseen? How could he rediscover their tracks when all grounds had been trampled? He could never be of the People, not after Moënghus. He could never think or curse himself back to their savage innocence. He had been a fool to try … Ignorance was ever the iron of certainty, for it was as blind to itself as sleep. It was the absence of questions that made answers absolute—not knowledge! To ask, this was what Moënghus had taught him. Simply to ask …

  “Why follow this track and not another?”

  “Because the Voice demands it.”

  “Why follow this Voice and not another?”

  That everything could be overthrown so easily. That all custom and conviction could lay so close to the brink. That outrage and accusation could be the only true foundations … All of it—everything that was man—perched on swords and screams.

  Why? cried his every step. Why? cried his every word. Why? cried his every breath.

  For some reason … There must be some reason.

  But why? Why?

  The world itself had become his rebuke! He was no longer of the Land, but he could not beat the Steppe from the cant of his limbs. He was no longer of the People, but he could not wash his father from his blood. He cared nothing for the ways of the Scylvendi—nothing!—yet still they howled within him, railed and railed. He was not of the People! Yet still his degradations choked him. Still his longings clawed at his heart. Wutrim! Shame!

  Absent things! How could absent things remain?

  Each time he shaved, his thumb unerringly found the swazon
d puckered about his throat. He would track its ginger course. Something … I’m forgetting something …

  There were two pasts; Cnaiür understood that now. There was the past that men remembered, and there was the past that determined, and rarely if ever were they the same. All men stood in thrall of the latter.

  And knowing this made them insane.

  Timing. Few things did Ikurei Conphas ponder more.

  The Lords of the Holy War might begrudge them these lands, but the Nansur still held the keys. Joktha was an old Imperial possession with old Imperial ways. Familiar with the perils of governing conquered peoples, long-dead Nansur planners had excavated hundreds of tunnels in hundreds of different cities. Walls, after all, could be retaken; corpses could only be burned.

  Nevertheless, escaping the city had proven far more stressful than Conphas had expected. Though he was loath to admit it, the incident with the Scylvendi in the Donjon Palace had rattled him—almost as much as losing Darastius, his Saik Caller, had inconvenienced him. The savage had struck him, batted him to the floor as easily as a woman or child. And against all expectation, Conphas had been paralyzed—utterly incapacitated—with fear. Lean, wild with unnameable hungers, Cnaiür urs Skiötha had seemed the very reaver worshipped by his people. He even stank of the Steppe, as though somehow, bound within that astounding frame, lay earth … Scylvendi earth.

  Conphas had thought himself dead. Of course, he realized this was precisely the reaction the barbarian wanted. Frightened men, as the Galeoth said, thought with their skins. But for some reason, knowing this had made precious little difference. A thought-numbing dread had dogged every turn of their escape. Waiting for nightfall. Passing through the streets to the necropolis. Excavating the entrance to the tunnels. Only when he and Sompas crossed the River Oras did breath come to him easily—and even then …