The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) by R. Scott Bakker

impossibility. Nautzera was right: the circumstances were quite mad. But would he forgive Achamian the madness of the task before him? With polite words and diplomatic smiles Achamian had to court those who had tortured him. What was more, he was expected to woo and win a prophet, the man who had stolen from him his only love … Achamian beat at the fury that welled up through his heart. In Caraskand, twin tears broke from his sightless eyes.
    Very well, then! Nautzera cried, his tone disconcertingly desperate. The others will have my hide for this … Give him the Lesser Cants—the denotaries and the like. Deceive him with dross into thinking you’ve traded our deepest secrets.
    You still don’t understand, do you, Nautzera? The Warrior-Prophet cannot be deceived!
    All men can be deceived, Achamian. All men.
    Did I say he was a “man”? You haven’t yet seen him! There’s no other like him, Nautzera. I tire of repeating this!
    Nevertheless, you must yoke him. Our war depends upon it . Everything depends upon it!
    You must believe me, Nautzera. This man is beyond our abilities to possess. He …
    An image of Esmenet flashed through his thoughts, unbidden, beguiling.
    He possesses.

    The hills teemed with the herds of their enemy, and the Men of the Tusk rejoiced, for their hunger was like no other. The cows they butchered for the feast, the bulls they burned in offerings to flint-hearted Gilgaöl and the other Hundred Gods. They gorged themselves to the point of sickness, then gorged again. They drank until unconsciousness overcame them. Many could be found kneeling before the banners of the Circumfix, which the Judges had raised wherever men congregated. They cried out to the image; they cried out in disbelief. When bands of revellers passed one another in the darkness, they shouted, “We! We are the God’s fury!” in the argot of the camp. And they clasped arms, knowing they held their brothers, for together they had held their faces to the furnace. There were no more Orthodox, no more Zaudunyani.
    They were Inrithi once again.
    The Conriyans, using inks looted from Kianene scriptoriums, tattooed circles crossed with an X on their inner forearms. The Thunyeri, and the Tydonni after them, took knives drawn from the fire to their shoulders, where they cut representations of three Tusks—one for each great battle—scarring themselves in the manner of the Scylvendi. The Galeoth, the Ainoni—all adorned their bodies with some mark of their transformation. Only the Nansur refrained.
    A band of Agmundrmen discovered the Padirajah’s standard in the hills, which they immediately brought to Saubon, who rewarded them with three hundred Kianene akals . In an impromptu ceremony at the Fama Palace, Prince Kellhus had the silk cut from the ash pole and laid before his chair. He planted his sandals upon the image, which may have been a lion or a tiger, and declared, “All their symbols, all the sacred marks of our foemen, you shall deliver to my feet!”
    For two days the Fanim captives toiled across the battlefield, piling their dead kinsmen into great heaps outside Caraskand’s walls. Innumerable carrion birds—kites and jackdaws, storks and great desert vultures—harassed them, at times darkening the sky like locusts. Despite the bounty, they squabbled like gulls over fish.
    The Men of the Tusk continued their revels, though many fell ill and a hundred or so actually died—from eating too much after starving for so long, the physician-priests said. Then, on the fourth day following the Battle of Tertae Fields, they made a great train of the captives, stripping them naked to make manifest their humiliation. Once assembled, the Fanim were encumbered with all the spoils of camp and field: caskets of gold and silver, Zeümi silks, arms of Nenciphon steel, unguents and oils from Cingulat. Then they were driven with whips and flails through the Gate of Horns, across the city to the Kalaul, where the greater part of the