The Thousandfold Thought

  Achamian gaped at the man, utterly dumbstruck. His heart hammered, as though struggling to recover its rhythm through violence of action. For a moment he tried telling himself that Kellhus alone had spoken, but the taste of the words was too fresh on his tongue. The silence whined with a strange horror, a sense of dislocation unlike any he had ever experienced, a sense of things once sacred and intact now broken … Just who had spoken?

  The world reeled through refracted sunlight.

  He is me … How else could he know what he knows?

  As though nothing untoward had happened, Kellhus said, “Tell me, how can some words work miracles, while others can’t?”

  Achamian swallowed, tried to recover himself in his knowledge. “The Nonmen once believed it was the language that made sorcery possible. But when Men began reproducing their Cants in bastard tongues, it became clear this wasn’t so …” He breathed deeply, realizing that with this one question Kellhus had made plain not only Achamian’s ignorance but the ignorance of every sorcerer living. I really do understand nothing.

  “It’s the meanings,” he continued. “The meanings are different somehow. No one knows why.”

  Kellhus nodded and looked down to the hem of his robe. When he glanced up, Achamian found his brilliant eyes impossible to match. “The word ‘love,’” he said, “does it mean what it has always meant, or is the meaning different for you?”

  Reward the intellect and punish the heart. It was always the same with Kellhus.

  “What are you saying?”

  “That the meaning is different because what it recollects is different.”

  Esmenet.

  “So you’re suggesting that sorcerous words recollect something other words do not?” Achamian asked this with more heat than he’d intended. Derision had stolen across his expression. “But what could words remember? Words aren′t …” He trailed, his voice silenced by sudden understanding. One soul …

  “Not words, Akka. You. What could you remember that might make miracles of mere words?”

  “I-I don’t understand …”

  “But you do.”

  Achamian blinked at the preposterous tears in his eyes. He thought of the Scarlet Spires and their compound in Iothiah, of the world flying apart beneath his outstretched fingers. And he remembered the meanings that had thundered from his chest and soul, his world-racking song, compelling fire from empty air, light from black shadow, and the obliteration of all that offended. The words! The words that were his calling—his curse! The words that exacted the impossible …

  Penance from the world.

  How could a mere man say such things?

  “We kneel before idols,” Kellhus was saying, “we hold open our arms to the sky. We beseech the distances, clutch at the horizon … We look outward, Akka, always outward, for what lies within …” He splayed a hand against his chest. “For what lies here, in this Clearing that we share.”

  The sun had crossed the crimson threshold. The air seemed to purple, and the ruins were burnished in failing reds. The earlier breeze had faded to a sun-warm draft.

  “The God,” Achamian said, but the voice was not his own. “You’re saying that this … this one soul that looks out from behind all our eyes is the God.” Even though he spoke these words, even though he knew quite well what they meant, they escaped him somehow, fell from him without force of thought or comprehension. Achamian clutched his shoulders, felt a shudder pass through his portly frame.

  “We are all God,” Kellhus said, now both solemn and enthused—like a father heartening a beaten son. “The God is always here, watching through your very own eyes, and from the eyes of those about you. But we forget who we are, and we begin to think of here as another there: detached, isolate, abject before the immensities of the world. We forget … But we don’t all forget equally.” Kellhus fixed him with an implacable look. “Those who forget the least, we call the Few.”

  There had been a moment, walking the fiery hallways of Iothiah, when Achamian’s wrath had been checked, when he’d faltered, realizing he no longer recognized himself. He had cried out in Seswatha’s voice, and had uttered words that had transcended the circle of even that ancient individuality—Cants that had made milk of what was hard, what was real …

  Who had he been? Who?

  “To speak sorcery, Akka, is to speak words that recollect the Truth.”

  “Truth,” Achamian numbly repeated. He understood what Kellhus said, he knew, and yet something within him refused to grasp. “What truth?”

  “That this place behind our face, though separated by nations and ages, is the same place, the same here. That each of us witnesses the world through innumerable eyes. That we are the God we would worship.”

  And it seemed to Achamian that he could remember, that across sea, mountain, and plain he saw the God blink a thousand times before a thousand hearths. A daughter gazing upon her slumbering father. An ancient wife clutching her husband’s arm in spotted hands. A man spitting blood, beating an earthen floor in anguish. Here, now, in this one place … How else could one explain the Cants of Calling or Compulsion? How else could one explain Seswatha’s Dreams?

  “For so long,” Kellhus was saying, “you thought yourself a pariah, an outcast. And though your tongue was ever ready to accost those who would condemn you, you lived in shame. You would watch them, and you would curse yourself for hoping. Always stronger in the estimation of others—so they seemed. Always so certain. And always unable to see—the fools!—how extraordinary you truly were. They spat when they looked upon you. They laughed, and though you made their derision evidence of their stupidity, in the secret moments you grieved, you wept, and you asked, ‘Why must I be cursed? Why must I be damned?’”

  And Achamian thought, He is! He is me!

  Kellhus smiled, and somehow—impossibly—Achamian saw Inrau in the iridescent cast of his look. “We are each other.”

  But I’m broken … Something’s wrong with me!

  “Because you’re a pious man born to a world unable to fathom your piety. But all that changes with me, Akka. The old revelations have outlived the age of their intention, and I have come to reveal the new. I am the Shortest Path, and I say that you are not damned.”

  Through the tumult of passion that rocked him, something old and arcane whispered the Mandate Catechism. Though you lose your soul, you shall gain the—

  But Kellhus was talking again, speaking in intonations that seemed to resonate across the warm evening air, to ring out from the very heart of things.

  “A sorcerer’s words work miracles because they recall the God … Think, Akka! What does it mean to see the world as sorcerers see it? What does it mean to apprehend the onta? The many see the world through one pair of eyes; they grasp Creation from but a single vantage—one angle among many. But the Few—those who recollect, no matter how imperfectly, the God’s voice—possess an intimation of many angles, a memory of the thousand eyes that look out from this clearing we call ‘here.’ As a result everything they see is transformed, shadowed by insinuations of more.

  “And think of the Mark … For the many, sorcery is indistinguishable from the world—and how could it be otherwise, given they apprehend the world from but a single angle? For a man who cannot move, the façade simply is the temple. But for the Few, who glimpse many angles, sorcery must reek of incompleteness, for where the God’s true voice speaks to the totality of angles, the Few are constrained by the murk and imperfection of their recollections. They can conjure façades only …”

  It seemed so obvious. All the analogies of sorcerers as blasphemers, as abusers of the divinity within, as those who ape the God’s sacred song, were but crude approximations, tenuous glimpses of a truth that Kellhus held in his lap!

  “And the Cishaurim,” Achamian found himself saying, “what of them?” The Warrior-Prophet shrugged. “Think of the way a fire will shroud the world in the course of illuminating a camp. Often the light of what we see blinds us, and we come
to think there is one angle and one angle only. Though they know it not, this is why the Cishaurim blind themselves. They douse the fire of their eyes, pluck the one angle they see, to better grasp the many they recollect. They sacrifice the subtle articulations of knowledge for the inchoate profundities of intuition. They recall the tone and timbre, the passion, of the God’s voice—to near perfection—even as the meanings that make up true sorcery escape them.”

  And there it was: the mysteries of the Psûkhe, which had baffled sorcerous thinkers for centuries, dispelled in a handful of words.

  The Warrior-Prophet turned to him, clutched his shoulder with a shining hand. “The Truth of Here is that it is Everywhere. And this, Akka, is what it means to be in love: to recognize the Here within the other, to see the world through another’s eyes. To be here together.”

  His eyes, luminous with wisdom, seemed unbearable.

  The world had sloughed off the last of the sun, and the shadows pooled like ink. Night stalked the ruined ways of Charaöth.

  “And this is why you suffer so … When what was here turns away from you, as she has turned away from you, it seems there’s nowhere you might stand.”

  A mosquito dared whine through the air about their ears.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Achamian cried.

  “Because you are not alone.”

  Slavery agreed with her.

  Even more than Yel or Burulan, Fanashila adored her new station in life. Fussing over her mistress in the mornings, snoozing in the afternoons, then fussing over her mistress again in the evenings. The gold. The perfume. The silk. The cosmetics Lady Esmenet let them use. The intimations of power—great power. The delicacies Lady Esmenet let them taste. Fanashila was fami, one of the original slaves from the Fama Palace in Caraskand. How could the freedom to chase goats compare with this?

  Of course, Opsara cursed them whenever she could, the vicious old hag. “They’re idolaters! Slavers! We must cut their throats, not kiss their toes!” Over and over, and on and on. But then, Opsara had Kianene blood in her—she was an uftaka—and everyone knew that uftaki were nothing more than menials who strutted like nobles. Their own kind even despised them. What did that say?

  Besides, for all Opsara’s talk, her ward, the infant Moënghus, seemed healthy enough. Fanashila even said as much one night in the slave mess. They had been sitting in their accustomed corner—the one that marked their importance—mildly fingering rice from their bowls while Opsara ranted about killing their Inrithi masters. “Well,” Fanashila blurted, “you go first!” How Yel and the others had howled with laughter. Without realizing, Fanashila had found the-way-to-shut-Opsara-up. Now she fairly shook with pride and giggles whenever Opsara started, because she knew her moment would shine again.

  If anything troubled Fanashila, it was the Kneeling, when the overseers gathered her and the others and brought them to the Umbilica’s shrine. First a Shrial Priest delivered a sermon—only bits and pieces of which Fanashila could understand—then they were forced to pray aloud to the half-circle of idols. Some were grotesque, like the severed head of Onkis upon a golden tree, others were obscene, like Ajokli with his chin propped upon his phallus, and several were even beautiful, like stern Gilgaöl or voluptuous Gierra—though the wide-thrown ankles of the latter made Fanashila blush.

  The Shrial Priest called them Aspects of the God. But Fanashila knew better. They were demons.

  But she prayed to them nonetheless, just as she was told. Sometimes, when the overseers were distracted, she would look away from the leering devil before her and search the brocaded panels that regaled the tarp walls for the Two Scimitars of Fane. They were all over, little signs of her people’s faith. Then she would silently repeat the words she had heard so many times in Tabernacle.

  One for the Unbeliever … One for the Unseeing Eye …

  This, she decided, had to be enough. What harm could there be in praying to demons, when the Solitary God commanded all? Besides, the demons listened … They actually answered their prayers. Why else would the idolaters be the slavers and the faithful the slaves?

  After evening mess, the overseers herded the women to the Room of Mats, the large tent where they slept across fantastic carpets, which had been looted, the overseers said, from the strongholds of their dead Kianene masters. Some wept at night. Others, particularly those who were beautiful or those who caused trouble, were taken away in the dead of night. Sometimes they returned, sometimes not. But as far as Fanashila was concerned, they brought it on themselves. One need only do … It was as simple as that. Do and you would be rewarded, or at the very least left alone.

  This was what she reminded herself of the night she was taken away. Everything they told her, she did. That was the rule! They wouldn’t make her disappear—not her! She had washed the feet of their Warrior-Prophet …

  Lady Esmenet would never allow it. Never!

  The overseer, Koropos, a former Cironji slave of the Kianene, refused to answer any of her whispered questions. With a firm hand he guided her between the forms sprawled sleeping across the floor, then into the antechamber where the overseers slept and gamed. At first she assumed that they wanted to bed her. She had seen their evil grins when they watched her—especially that of Tirius, the freed Nansur. They had raped many of the others. But would they dare despoil her? All she had to do was cry to Lady Esmenet and their throats would be cut.

  She said as much to Koropos.

  “Tell him,” the wiry old man snorted. With that, he shoved her through the curtain of hanging whips—the traditional entrance for Inrithi slave quarters—into the cool night air.

  A man stood tall and indomitable in the night gloom. Beyond him, the encampment spread dark and labyrinthine across the distances. Because of the anonymous simplicity of his dress—a desert tunic beneath a Cironji chalmys—several heartbeats passed before she recognized him … Lord Werjau of the Nascenti!

  She fell to her knees, chin to her breastbone, as she had been trained.

  “Look at me,” he said, his tone firm yet gentle. “Tell me, my sweet, what’s this rumour I hear?”

  Relief swept through her. Fanashila looked away demurely. She loved gossip. Almost as much as attention. “Wha-what rumour would that be, my Lord?”

  Werjau smiled down at her, stood so perilously near she could smell the sour of his crotch. He brought a callused thumb to her chin. She shuddered as he traced the outline of her lips.

  “That they are lovers still,” he said. Though his gaze remained remote, something seemed to … smirk in his tone.

  Fanashila swallowed, afraid once again. “They?” she asked, blinking tears. “Who?”

  “The Prophet-Consort and the Holy Tutor.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HOLY AMOTEU

  Of all the Cants, none better illustrates the nature of the soul than the Cants of Compulsion. According to Zarathinius, the fact that those compelled unerringly think themselves free shows that Volition is one more thing moved in the soul, and not the mover we take it to be. While few dispute this, the absurdities that follow escape comprehension altogether.

  —MEREMNIS, THE ARCANA IMPLICATA

  As a miller once told me, when the gears do not meet, they become as teeth. So it is with men and their machinations.

  —ONTILLAS, ON THE FOLLY OF MEN

  Early Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Amoteu

  They had come from the straw-floored manors of Galeoth, where dogs supped with their masters; from the frontier forests of Thunyerus, deep and great, where the Sranc waged their aimless and eternal war; from the mead-halls of Ce Tydonn, where long-haired thanes denounced mongrel races; from the great estates of Conriya, where dark-eyed Palatines made prizes of their pasts; and from the sultry plains of High Ainon, where painted caste-nobles beat paths through teeming streets. Eight seasons previously, the Shriah of the Thousand Temples had called, and they had come … the Men of the Tusk.

  From Gerotha, they continued their march across a
subdued land. Word of the Warrior-Prophet’s Toll of Days had outrun them, and wherever they passed, they found Xerashi prostrate across the red-and-black earth. Hidden granaries were thrown open. Goat-milk, honey, dried peppers, and sugar cane, even entire herds of cattle, were willingly surrendered. Village elders acclaimed them, kissed their sandalled feet, and presented the most fair of their dark-skinned daughters. Anything that might appease the Lords of the Holy War.

  The main column, consisting of Hulwarga, Chinjosa, Proyas, and Anfirig, followed the Herotic Way. One by one the coastal strongholds surrendered to them: Sabsal, Moridon, and even Horeppo, which had been a primary port-of-destination for Inrithi pilgrims in the years preceding the Holy War. More newcomers joined them, seafaring Galeoth—Oswentamen for the most part—driven ashore by Kianene marauders. Sweating in their hair shirts, they hauled their barks onto the rocky strands and burned them. They joined their kinsmen about their evening fires, only to be troubled by their strange garb and implacable stares.

  Gothyelk, meanwhile, struck directly south to invest the great fortress of Chargiddo, using the intelligence provided by Athjeäri to secure his approach. Even here, word of the massacre at Gerotha had reached the heathen in advance, and after a largely ceremonial show of defiance, the famed citadel gave herself over to the uncertain mercy of the Tydonni.

  Most Holy Prophet, the Earl of Agansanor would write, Chargiddo has fallen, and with nary a death, save that of my cousin’s nephew, who was taken by a stray shaft. Verily, you have boned this land like a fish! Praise be the God of Gods. Praise be Inri Sejenus, our prophet your brother.

  With each passing day, the sorrows of the long road seemed to fall away, and the Men of the Tusk recalled their old humour. Evenings became celebrations, pious bacchanals where toast after toast would be raised to their hallowed Warrior-Prophet. Hundreds of impromptu pilgrimages set out across the lush countryside, and the Xerashi wondered at these idolaters, who continually roamed ground stumped by ruins, arguing over passages in their scriptures.