Missed this the first time through:
A sadness welled through the old Wizard as he walked and peered, a mourning that possessed the airy clutch of premonition. There was poetry in loss and ruin, a wisdom that even children and idiots understood. For a time he suffered the eerie sense that he walked one of the great capitals of the Three Seas, that these were the ruins of Momemn, Carythusal, or Invishi, and they were the Last Men, thirteen instead of the one hundred and forty-four thousand of legend, and that no matter how far they travelled, how many horizons they outran, all they would find was soot and broken stone.
WLW, p 187, US edition, about 3/4 the way through chapter 6.
So, I guess I was only thinking of the 144k in terms of Inchoroi terms. So the 144k is know to Achamian and to who else, the Mandate, scholars, everyone? I guess that the prophecy (is that the right word?) would have come to humanity via the Consult. Would be really strange to have the same prophecy show up independently in human and Inchoroi cultures.
EDIT: added the bold