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

battle had even begun.
    Whoever they were, they had forgotten Serwë. He blinked away images of her bound to Kellhus and the ring. It had been so very dark beneath Umiaki, but it seemed he could see her face arched back in rigour and ecstasy …
    “He is as you said,” Kellhus had confessed that night. “Tsuramah. Mog-Pharau …”
    “Master Achamian.”
    Startled, Achamian turned to see an officer decked in green and gold regalia stepping into the sunlight. Like all Men of the Tusk, he was gaunt, though not nearly as cadaverous as many of those found outside the Fama Palace. The man fell to his knees at Achamian’s feet, spoke to the ground in a thick Galeoth accent. “I am Dun Heörsa, Shield-Captain of the Hundred Pillars.” There was little courtesy in his blue eyes when he looked up, and a surfeit of intent. “He has instructed me to deliver you.”
    Achamian swallowed, nodded.
    He …
    The sorcerer followed the officer into the gloom of scented corridors.
    He. The Warrior-Prophet.
    His skin tingled. Of all the world, of all the innumerable men scattered about all the innumerable lands, he, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, communed with the God—the God ! And how could it be otherwise, when he knew what no other man could know, when he spoke what no other man could speak?
    Who could blame Achamian for his incredulity? It was like holding a flute to the wind and hearing song. It seemed beyond belief …
    A miracle. A prophet in their midst.
    Breathe when you speak to him. You must remember to breathe.
    The Shield-Captain said nothing as they continued their march. He stared forward, possessed of the same eerie discipline that seemed to characterize everyone in the palace. Ornate rugs had been set at various points along the floor; the man’s boots fell silent as they crossed each.
    Despite his nerves, Achamian appreciated the absence of speech. Never, it seemed to him, had he suffered such a throng of conflicting passions. Hatred, for an impossible rival, for a fraud who had robbed him of his manhood—of his wife. Love, for an old friend, for a student who was at once his teacher, for a voice that had quickened his soul with countless insights. Fear, for the future, for the rapacious madness that was about to descend upon them all. Jubilation, for an enemy momentarily undone.
    Bitterness. Hope.
    And awe … Awe before all.
    The eyes of men were but pinholes—no one knew this better than Mandate Schoolmen. All their books, even their scriptures, were nothing more than pinholes. And yet, because they couldn’t see what was unseen, they assumed they saw everything, they confused pinpricks with the sky.
    But Kellhus was something different. A doorway. A mighty gate.
    He’s come to save us. This is what I must remember. I must hold on to this!
    The Shield-Captain escorted him past a rank of stone-faced guardsmen, their green surcoats also embroidered with the golden mark of the Hundred Pillars: a row of vertical bars over the long, winding slash of the Tusk. They passed through fretted mahogany doors and Achamian found himself on the portico of a much larger courtyard. The air was thick with the smell of blossoms.
    In the sunlight beyond the colonnade, an orchard soaked bright and motionless. The trees—some kind of exotic apple, Achamian decided—twined black beneath constellations of blooming flowers, each petal like a white swatch dipped in blood. At different points through the orchard, great sentinels of stone—dolmens—towered over the surrounding queues, dark and unwrought, more ancient than Kyraneas, or even Shigek. The remnants of some long-overthrown circle.
    Achamian turned to Captain Heörsa with questioning eyes, only to glimpse movement through braces of leaf and flower. He turned—and there she was, strolling beneath the boughs with Kellhus.
    Esmenet.
    She was speaking, though Achamian could only hear the memory of her voice. Her eyes were lowered, thoughtfully studying the petalled ground as it passed