Part 42 (1/2)
”The G.o.d,” Kellhus said. ”He doesn't speak to you?”
Scrutiny. Calculation.
”No.”
”Curious ...”
”And from where does his voice hail?” Moenghus asked. ”From what darkness?”
”I know not ... Thoughts come. I know only that they're not mine.”
Another infinitesimal pause. He dips in the Probability Trance, the same as I ... He dips in the Probability Trance, the same as I ...
”The mad say much the same,” Moenghus said. ”Perhaps your trials have deranged you.”
”Perhaps ...”
Scrutiny. Calculation.
”It's not in your interest to deceive me.” A stone-faced pause. ”Unless ...”
”Unless,” Kellhus said, ”I've come to a.s.sa.s.sinate you, as our Dunyain brothers have decreed ... Is this your apprehension?”
Scrutiny. Calculation.
”You have not the power to overcome me.”
”But I do, Father.”
Another pause, imperceptibly longer.
”How,” his father finally said, ”could you know this?”
”Because I know why why you were compelled to summon me.” you were compelled to summon me.”
Scrutiny. Calculation.
”So you have grasped it.”
”Yes ... the Thousandfold Thought.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
s.h.i.+MEH.
Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compa.s.sion.
Verily, it is conviction that kills.
-PARCIS, THE NEW a.n.a.lYTICS
Spring, 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, s.h.i.+meh
Oily torchlight. Orange faces, slack with anxiety. Orange brickwork stained and smeared with offal. Hunched ceilings, so low that even the shortest of the bowmen had to stoop. Men coughed, some continuously, but not because of the sewage soaking their boots. The fires above were eating the air ...
Or so the Waterbearer had said.
The Cishaurim stood beneath the exit. The asps wound about his neck peered upward, their thumb-sized heads a silvery black. The idolaters had fallen silent. The vaulted ceiling no longer thrummed with impact and explosion. Grit no longer tinkled across their helms.
He c.o.c.ked his shaved pate, as though listening ...
”Douse the light,” he commanded. ”Cover your eyes.”
They dropped their torches into the slop. For a moment, sputtering blue light illuminated their s.h.i.+ns. Everything went black ...
Then impossibly bright. A thunderous crack.
”Move!” the Waterbearer cried. ”Climb! Climb!”
Suddenly all was blue, illuminated by a coin of incandescence that flared on the Waterbearer's brow. They jostled forward, spitting at the dust. One by one they shouldered their way past the blind man, struggled up a slope of broken and blistering stone, then found themselves das.h.i.+ng through fiery ruins.
”This voice you hear,” the old Dunyain said, ”is not part of the Thousandfold Thought.”
Kellhus ignored these words. ”Take me to them.”
”To whom?”
”To those you hold captive.”
”And if I refuse?”