Read Online The Warrior Prophet by R. Scott Bakker - Free Book Online Page B

the God? Other men?”
    The Palatine of Kethantei paled. “No,” he said. “Only the God and his Prophets.”
    “So we’re not righteous, then?”
    “Yes … I mean, no …” Baffled, Ingiaban looked to Kellhus, a horrible frankness revealed in his face. “I mean … I no longer know what I mean!”
    Concessions. Always exacting concessions. Accumulating them.
    “Then you understand,” Kellhus said, his voice now deep and preternaturally resonant, a voice that seemingly spoke from everywhere. “A man can never judge himself righteous, Lord Palatine, he can only hope . And it’s this that gives meaning to our actions. In raising arms against the heathen, we’re not the priest before the altar, we’re the victim . It means nothing to offer up another to the God, so we make offerings of ourselves. Make no mistake, all of you … We wager our souls. We leap into the black. This pilgrimage is our sacrifice. Only afterward will we know whether we’ve been found wanting.”
    The mutter of startled, even wondrous assent.
    “Well said, Kellhus,” Proyas had declared. “Well said.”
    All men see from where they stand, and somehow Kellhus saw farther than any other man. He stood upon a different ground, greater, as though he occupied the heights of every soul. And though none of the Inrithi noblemen dared speak this intimation, they felt it—all of them. Cnaiür could see it in the cast of their eyes, hear it in the timbre of their voices: the first shadows of awe.
    The wonder that made men small.
    Cnaiür knew these secretive passions all too well. To watch Kellhus ply these men was to witness the shameful record of his own undoing at the hands of Moënghus. Sometimes the urge to cry out in warning almost overpowered him. Sometimes Kellhus seemed such an abomination that the gulf between Scylvendi and Inrithi threatened to disappear—particularly where Proyas was concerned. Moënghus had preyed upon the same vulnerabilities, the same conceits … If Cnaiür shared these things with these men, how different could he be?
    Sometimes crimes seemed crimes, no matter how ludicrous the victim.
    But only sometimes. For the most part Cnaiür merely watched with a numb kind of incredulity. He no longer heard Kellhus speak so much as observed him cut and carve, whittle and hew, as though the man had somehow shattered the glass of language and fashioned knives from the pieces. This word to anger so that word might open. This look to embarrass so that smile might reassure. This insight to remind so that truth might injure, heal, or astonish.
    How easy it must have been for Moënghus! One stripling lad. One chieftain’s wife.
    Images, stark and dry, of the Steppe assailed him. The other women tearing at his mother’s hair, clawing at her face, clubbing her with rocks, stabbing her with sticks. Mother! A bawling infant hoisted from her yaksh, tossed into the all-cleansing fire—his blond-haired half-brother. The stone faces of the men turning away from his look …
    How could he let it happen again? How could he stand by and watch? How could—
    Still crouching next to Serwë, Cnaiür looked down, shocked to see that he’d been stabbing the ground with his knife. The bone-white reeds of the mat were snapped and severed about a small pit of black.
    He shook his black mane, breathed as though punishing air. Always these thoughts—always!
    Remorse? For outlanders? Concern for mewling peacocks? Especially Proyas!
    “So long as what comes before remains shrouded,” Kellhus had said on their trek across the Jiünati Steppe, “so long as men are already deceived, what does it matter?” And what did it matter, making fools of fools? What mattered was whether the man made a fool of him; this— this! —was the sharp edge upon which his every thought should bleed. Did the Dûnyain speak true? Was he truly his father’s assassin?
    I walk with the whirlwind!
    He could never forget. He had only his hatred to preserve him.
    And