The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3) Read Free

father, Skiötha, some thirty years previously, Cnaiür is despised by his own people, though none dare challenge him because of his savage strength and his cunning in war. Word arrives that the Emperor’s nephew, Ikurei Conphas, has invaded the Holy Steppe, and Cnaiür rides with the Utemot to join the Scylvendi horde on the distant Imperial frontier. Knowing Conphas’s reputation, Cnaiür senses a trap, but his warnings go unheeded by Xunnurit, the chieftain elected King-of-Tribes for the coming battle. Cnaiür can only watch as the disaster unfolds.
    Escaping the horde’s destruction, Cnaiür returns to the pastures of the Utemot more anguished than ever. He flees the whispers and the looks of his fellow tribesmen and rides to the graves of his ancestors, where he finds a grievously wounded man sitting upon his dead father’s barrow, surrounded by circles of dead Sranc. Warily approaching, Cnaiür nightmarishly realizes he recognizes the man—or almost recognizes him. He resembles Anasûrimbor Moënghus in almost every respect, save that he is too young …
    Moënghus had been captured thirty years before, when Cnaiür was little more than a stripling, and given to Cnaiür’s father as a slave. He claimed to be Dûnyain, a people possessed of an extraordinary wisdom, and Cnaiür spent many hours with him, speaking of things forbidden to Scylvendi warriors. What happened afterward—the seduction, the murder of Skiötha, and Moënghus’s subsequent escape—has tormented Cnaiür ever since. Though he once loved the man, he now hates him with a deranged intensity. If only he could kill Moënghus, he believes, his heart could be made whole.
    Now, impossibly, this double has come to him, travelling the same path as the original.
    Realizing the stranger could make possible his vengeance, Cnaiür takes him captive. The man, who calls himself Anasûrimbor Kellhus, claims to be Moënghus’s son. The Dûnyain, he says, have sent him to assassinate his father in a faraway city called Shimeh. As much as Cnaiür wants to believe this story, however, he’s wary and troubled. After years of obsessively pondering Moënghus, he’s come to realize the Dûnyain are gifted with preternatural skills and intelligence. Their sole purpose, he now knows, is domination, though where others used force and fear, they used deceit and love.
    The story Kellhus has told him, Cnaiür realizes, is precisely the story a Dûnyain seeking escape and safe passage across Scylvendi lands would tell. Nevertheless, he makes a bargain with the man, agreeing to accompany him on his quest. The two of them strike out across the Steppe, locked in a shadowy war of word and passion. Time and again, Cnaiür finds himself drawn into Kellhus’s insidious nets, only to recall himself at the last moment. Only his hatred of Moënghus and knowledge of the Dûnyain preserve him.
    Near the Imperial frontier, they encounter a party of hostile Scylvendi raiders. Kellhus’s unearthly skill in battle both astounds and terrifies Cnaiür. In the battle’s aftermath, they find a captive concubine, a woman named Serwë, cowering among the raiders’ chattel. Struck by her beauty, Cnaiür takes her as his prize, and through her he learns of Maithanet’s Holy War for Shimeh, the city where Moënghus supposedly dwells … Can this be a coincidence?
    Coincidence or not, the Holy War forces Cnaiür to reconsider his original plan to travel around the Empire, where his Scylvendi heritage will mean almost certain death. With the Fanim rulers of Shimeh girding for war, the only possible way they can reach the holy city is to become Men of the Tusk. They have no choice, he realizes, but to join the Holy War, which, according to Serwë, gathers about the city of Momemn in the heart of the Empire—the one place he cannot go. Now that they have safely crossed the Steppe, Cnaiür is convinced Kellhus will kill him: the Dûnyain brook no liabilities.
    Descending the mountains into the