Read Online The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker - Free Book Online Page B

blinked, still trying to digest what had just happened. “You will reside here …”
    With her.
    “F-from an Old Name?” he sputtered. “I’m not sure.”
    Where had this treacherous joy come from? You will show her! Win her!
    “No,” Kellhus said evenly. “From yourself.”
    Achamian stared, glimpsed Nautzera screaming beneath Mekeritrig’s incandescent touch. “If I cannot,” he said with a voice that seemed a gasp, “Seswatha can.”
    Kellhus nodded. Motioning for Achamian to follow, he abruptly turned, pressing through interlocking branches, crossing rows. Achamian hastened after him, waving at the bees and fluttering petals. Three rows over, Kellhus paused before an opening between two trees.
    Achamian could only gape in horror.
    The apple tree before Kellhus had been stripped of its blossoming weave, leaving only a black knotted trunk with three boughs bent about like a dancer’s waving arms. A skin-spy had been pulled naked across them, bound tight in rust-brown chains. Its pose—one arm trussed back and the other forward—reminded Achamian of a javelin thrower. Its head hung from drawn shoulders. The long, feminine digits of its face lay slack against its chest. Sunlight showered down upon it, casting inscrutable shadows.
    “The tree was dead,” Kellhus said, as though in explanation.
    “What …” Achamian began in a thin voice, but halted when the creature stirred, raised the shambles of its visage. The digits slowly clawed the air, like a suffocating crab. Lidless eyes glared in perpetual terror.
    “What have you learned?” Achamian finally managed.
    The abomination masticated behind lipless teeth. “Ahh,” it said in a long, gasping breath. “Chigraaaa …”
    “That they are directed,” Kellhus said softly.
    “Woe comes, Chigraaa. You have found us too late.”
    “By whom?” Achamian exclaimed, staring, clutching his hands before him. “Do you know by whom?”
    The Warrior-Prophet shook his head. “They’re conditioned—powerfully so. Months of interrogation would be required. Perhaps more.”
    Achamian nodded. Given time, he realized, Kellhus could empty this creature, own it as he seemed to own everything else. He was more than thorough, more than meticulous. Even the swiftness of this discovery—wrested, no less, from a creature that had been forged to deceive—demonstrated his … inevitability.
    He makes no mistakes.
    For a giddy instant a kind of gloating fury descended upon Achamian. All those years—centuries!—the Consult had played them for fools. But now— now ! Did they know? Could they sense the peril this man represented? Or would they underestimate him like everyone else had?
    Like Esmenet.
    Achamian swallowed. “Either way, Kellhus, you must surround yourself with Chorae bowmen. And you need to avoid large structures, anyplace where—”
    “It troubles you,” Kellhus interrupted, “to see these things.”
    A breeze had descended upon the grove, and countless petals spun through the air as though along unseen strings. Achamian watched one settle upon the skin-spy’s pubis.
    Why bind the abomination here, amid such beauty and repose—like a cancer on a young girl’s skin? Why? It seemed the act of someone who knew nothing of beauty … nothing.
    He matched Kellhus’s gaze. “It troubles me.”
    “And your hatred?”
    For an instant it had seemed that everything—who he was and who he would become—wanted to love this godlike man. And how could he not, given the sanctuary of his mere presence? And yet intimations of Esmenet clung to him. Glimpses of her passion …
    “It remains,” he said.
    As though provoked by this response, the creature began jerking, straining against its fetters. Slick muscle balled beneath sunburned skin. Chains rattled. Black boughs creaked. Achamian stepped back, remembering the horror of Skeaös beneath the Andiamine Heights. The night Conphas had saved him.
    Kellhus ignored the thing, continued speaking. “All men