Read The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) for Free Online Page B

alive among gaping mouths and groping limbs.
    “Anguish and degradation,” the Nonman continued, his voice resonant with inhuman tones. “Who would think, Seswatha, that salvation could be found in these words?”
    Mekeritrig stood in the curiously affected manner of Nonmen Ishroi, his hands clasped and pressed into the small of his back. He wore a gown of sheer black damask beneath a corselet of nimil that had been worked into circles of interlocking cranes. Tails of nimil chain followed the gown’s pleats to the ground.
    “Salvation …” Nautzera gasped in Seswatha’s voice. He raised his swollen gaze to the Nonman Prince. “Has it progressed so far, Cet’ingira? Do you recall so little?”
    A flicker of terror marred the Nonman’s perfect features. His pupils became thin as quill strokes. After millennia of practising sorcery, the Quya bore a Mark that was far, far deeper than that borne by any Schoolmen—like indigo compared with water. Despite their preternatural beauty, despite the porcelain whiteness of their skin, they seemed blasted, blackened, and withered, a husk of cinders at once animate and extinct. Some, it was said, were so deeply Marked that they couldn’t stand within a length of a Chorae without beginning to salt.
    “Recall?” Mekeritrig replied with a gesture at once plaintive and majestic. “But I have raised such a wall …” As though to emphasize his declaration, the sun flared across the wall’s length, warming the dead with crimson.
    “An obscenity!” Nautzera spat.
    The nets flapped about the nailed corpses. To his right, near to where the wall curved out of sight, Achamian glimpsed a carrion arm waving back and forth, as though warning away unseen ships.
    “As are all monuments, all memorials,” Mekeritrig replied, lowering his chin toward his right shoulder—the Nonman gesture of assent. “What are they but prostheses that pronounce our impotence, our debility? I may live forever, but alas, what I have lived is mortal. Your suffering, Seswatha, is my salvation.”
    “No, Cet’ingira …” Hearing the strain in Seswatha’s voice filled Achamian with an eye-watering ache. His body had not forgotten this Dream. “It need not be like this! I’ve read the ancient chronicles. I studied the engravings along the High White Halls before Celmomas ordered your image struck. You were great once. You were among those who raised us, who made the Norsirai first among the Tribes of Men! You were not this, my Prince! You were never this!”
    Again the eerie sideways nod. A single tear scored his cheek. “Which is why, Seswatha. Which is why …”
    A cut scarred where a caress faded away. In this simple fact lay the tragic and catastrophic truth of the Nonmen. Mekeritrig had lived a hundred lifetimes—more! What would it be like, Achamian wondered, to have every redeeming memory—be it a lover’s touch or a child’s warm squeal—blotted out by the accumulation of anguish, terror, and hate? To understand the soul of a Nonman, the philosopher Gotagga had once written, one need only bare the back of an old and arrogant slave. Scars. Scars upon scars. This was what made them mad. All of them.
    “I am an Erratic,” Mekeritrig was saying. “I do that which I hate, I raise my heart to the lash, so that I might remember! Do you understand what this means? You are my children! ”
    “There must be some other way,” Nautzera gasped.
    The Nonman lowered his bald head, like a son overcome by remorse in the presence of his father. “I am an Erratic …” Tears sheened his cheeks when he looked up. “There is no other way.”
    Nautzera strained against the nails impaling his arms, cried out in pain, “Kill me, then! Kill me and be done with it!”
    “But you know, Seswatha.”
    “What? What do I know?”
    “The location of the Heron Spear.”
    Nautzera stared, eyes rounded in horror, teeth clenched in agony. “If I did, you would be the one bound, and I would be your