The Warrior Prophet Read Online Free PDF Page A

morning-warm. Always the same glance to the east, where cold grey promised a punishing sun. Always the heavy breath as he resigned himself to the inevitable, to the hardship become ritual that men called work.
    But what comfort could such memories offer? Drudgery didn’t soothe; it numbed.
    Then Achamian realized: he marched with the beasts and baggage, not out of habit or nostalgia, but out of aversion .
    I’m hiding, he thought. Hiding from him …
    From Anasûrimbor Kellhus.
    Achamian slowed, tugged his mule from the verge into the surrounding meadow. The dew-cold grasses made his feet ache. The wains continued to trundle by, an endless file.
    Hiding …
    More and more, it seemed, he caught himself doing things for obscure reasons. Retiring early, not because he was exhausted from the day’s march—as he told himself—but because he feared the scrutiny of Xinemus, Kellhus, and the others. Staring at Serwë, not because she reminded him of Esmi—as he told himself—but because the way she stared at Kellhus worried him—as though she knew something …
    And now this.
    Am I going mad?
    Several times now, he’d found himself cackling aloud for no apparent reason. Once or twice he’d raised a hand to his cheek to discover he’d been weeping. Each time he’d simply mumbled away his shock: few things are more familiar, he supposed, than finding oneself a stranger. Besides, what else could he do? Rediscovering the Consult was cause enough to go mad about the edges, certainly. But to suspect—no, to know —that the Second Apocalypse was beginning … And to be alone with such knowledge!
    How could someone like him bear such a weight?
    The solution, of course, was to share the burden—to tell the Mandate about Kellhus.
    Before, Achamian had merely feared that Kellhus augured the resurrection of the No-God. He’d omitted him from his reports because he’d known exactly what Nautzera and the others would have done. They would have seized him, then, like jackals with a boiled bone, they would have gnawed and gnawed until he cracked. But the incident beneath the Andiamine Heights had … had …
    Things had changed. Changed irrevocably.
    For so many years the Consult had been little more than an empty posit, an oppressive abstraction. What was it Inrau had called them? A father’s sin … But now— now! —they were as real as a knife’s edge. And Achamian no longer feared that Kellhus augured the Apocalypse, he knew .
    Knowing was so much worse.
    So why continue concealing the man? An Anasûrimbor had returned. The Celmomian Prophecy had been fulfilled! Within the space of days, the Three Seas had assumed the same bloated dimensions as the world he suffered night after night. And yet he said nothing— nothing! Why? Some men, Achamian had observed, utterly refused to acknowledge things such as illness or infidelity, as though facts required acceptance to become real. Was this what he was doing? Did he think that keeping Kellhus a secret made the man less real somehow? That the end of the world could be prevented by covering his eyes?
    It was too much. Too much. The Mandate simply had to know, no matter what the consequences.
    I must tell them … Tonight, I must tell them.
    “Xinemus,” a familiar voice said from behind, “told me I’d find you with the baggage.”
    “He did, did he?” Achamian replied, surprised by the levity of his tone.
    Kellhus smiled down at him. “He said you preferred stepping in fresh shit over old.”
    Achamian shrugged, did his best to purge the phantoms from the small corners of his expression. “Keeps my toes warm … Where’s your Scylvendi friend?”
    “He rides with Proyas and Ingiaban.”
    “Ah. So you’ve decided to slum with the likes of me.” He glanced down at the Northerner’s sandalled feet. “To the point of walking no less …” Caste-nobles didn’t march, they rode. Kellhus was a prince, though like Xinemus, he made it easy for others to forget his