The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  Still listening to Arithmeas, he peered across the distant walls to where the groves and fields of the surrounding countryside were bleached by the belly of the sun. There, bunched and scattered across the landscape like mould on bread, he could see the tents and pavilions of the Holy War. Not many so far, but in a matter of months, Xerius knew, they could very well encircle the horizon.

  “But the Holy War, Arithmeas . . . Does all this mean the Holy War will be mine?”

  The Imperial Augur clasped his corpulent fingers and shook his jowls in affirmation. “But the ways of Fate are narrow, God-of-Men. There’s much we must do.”

  So intent was Xerius on his augur’s diagnoses and prescriptions, which included detailed instructions for the slaughter of ten bulls, that he initially failed to notice his mother’s arrival. But there she was, a narrow shadow in his periphery, as unmistakable as death.

  “Prepare the victims, then, Arithmeas,” he said peremptorily. “That’s enough for now.”

  As the augur departed, Xerius glimpsed slaves bearing the basin of water that had been summoned earlier.

  “Arithmeas?”

  “Yes, God-of-Men?”

  “My cheek . . . Should I wash it?”

  The man waved his hands in a comical fashion. “No! D-definitely not, God-of-Men. It’s crucial that you wait at least three days. Crucial.”

  Several other questions assailed him, but his mother had approached, followed by the waddling bulk of her eunuch. She moved with the willowy grace of a fifteen-year-old virgin, despite her sixty whorish years. With a whisk of blue muslin and silk, she turned her profile to him, studying the city as he had moments earlier. Sunlight flashed along the scales of her jade headdress.

  “A son,” she said dryly, “hanging upon the words of a babbling, blubbery fool. How it warms a mother’s heart.”

  He sensed something odd in her manner, something bottled. But then everyone had seemed peculiarly ill at ease in his presence of late—no doubt, Xerius supposed, because they had finally glimpsed the divinity that dwelt within him, now that the two great horns of his plan had been set in motion.

  “These are trying times, Mother. Too perilous to ignore the future.”

  She turned and appraised him in a manner that was at once coquettish and masculine. The sun deepened her wrinkles and drew the shadow of her nose across her cheek. The old, Xerius had always thought, were ugly, both in flesh and spirit. Age forever transformed hope into resentment. What was virile and ambitious in young eyes became impotent and covetous in old.

  I find you offensive, Mother. Both in appearance and in manner.

  His mother’s beauty had been legendary once. While his father yet lived, she’d been the Empire’s most celebrated possession. Ikurei Istriya, the Empress of Nansur, whose dowry had been the burning of the Imperial Harem.

  “I watched your audience with Calmemunis,” she said mildly. “A disaster. Just as I told you, hmm, my godlike son?” Her smile riddled the cosmetics about her lips with small cracks. A longing to kiss those lips struck Xerius with bodily force.

  “I suppose, Mother.”

  “Then why do you persist in this nonsense?”

  And now this latest bizarre turn. His mother arguing against sweet reason.

  “Nonsense, Mother? The Indenture will see the Empire restored.”

  “But if a fool such as Calmemunis can’t be gulled into signing it, what hope does your Indenture have, hmm? No, Xerius, you serve the Empire best by serving the Holy War.”

  “Has Maithanet bewitched you as well, Mother? How does one bewitch a witch?”

  Laughter. “By offering to destroy her enemies, how else?”

  “But the whole world is your enemy, Mother. Or am I mistaken?”

  “The whole world is every man’s enemy, Xerius. You’d do well to remember that.”

  In his periphery, he glimpsed a guardsman approach Skeaös and whisper something in his ear. Harmony, his augurs had told him, was musical. It demanded that one be attuned to the nuances of every circumstance. Xerius was a man who needed not to look at things to see them. He possessed a refined sense of suspicion.

  The old Counsel nodded, then momentarily glanced at his Emperor, his eyes troubled.

  Do they plot? Is this treachery? But he shrugged these thoughts away; they occurred far too frequently to be trusted.

  As though guessing the source of his distraction, Istriya turned to the old Counsel. “What say you, Skeaös, hmm? What say you of my son’s infantile avarice?”

  “Avarice?” Xerius cried. Why did she provoke him like this? “Infantile?”

  “What else? You squander the gifts of the Whore. First Fate delivers you this Maithanet, and against my counsel you try to assassinate him. Why? Because you do not own him. Then she delivers you the Holy War, a hammer with which to crush our ancestral foe! And because you do not own it, you seek to destroy it as well! These are the tantrums of a child, not the ploys of a cunning Emperor.”

  “Trust me, Mother, I seek to procure, not destroy, the Holy War. The foreign dogs will sign my Indenture.”

  “With your blood! Have you forgotten what happens when one weds empty bellies to fanatic hearts? These are warlike men, Xerius. Men intoxicated by their faith. Men who act in the face of indignity! Do you truly expect them to endure your extortion? You risk the Empire, Xerius!”

  Risk the Empire? No. To the northwest, few Nansur lived within sight of the mountains, such was their fear of the Scylvendi, and to the south, all the “old provinces,” which had belonged to the Nansurium at the height of her power, lay in the thrall of heathen Kian. Now Fanim drums echoed across her old conquests, calling men to worship the False Prophet, Fane. Now the fortress of Asgilioch, which the ancient Kyraneans had raised to guard against Shigek, was again the frontier. He did not risk the Empire, only the pretence of one. Empire was the prize, not the wager.

  “Fortunately your son is not quite so doltish as that, Mother. The Men of the Tusk won’t starve. They’ll eat from my bowl, but one day at a time. I don’t intend to deny them the provisions they need to live, only the provisions they need to march.”

  “And what of Maithanet? What if he directs you to provision them?”

  In matters of Holy War, an ancient constitution bound the Emperor to the Shriah. Xerius was obligated to supply the Holy War, on pain of Shrial Censure.

  “Ah, but you see, Mother, that he cannot do. He knows as well as we that these Men of the Tusk are fools, that they think the God himself has ordained the overthrow of the heathen. If I provide Calmemunis with everything he requests, he’d march in a fortnight, certain that he could destroy the Fanim with his paltry household alone. Maithanet will mime outrage, of course, but he’ll secretly applaud what I do, knowing it’ll purchase the Holy War the time it needs to gather. Why else do you think he commanded it gather about Momemn rather than Sumna? Aside from taxing my purse, he knew I would do this.”

  She paused, her eyes abruptly narrow and appraising. No soul as serpentine as hers could fail to appreciate the subtlety of such a move.

  “But does this mean that you play Maithanet, or that Maithanet plays you?”

  Over the previous months Xerius had, he could now admit, underestimated this new Shriah. But he would not underestimate the fiend again. Not in this.

  Maithanet, Xerius realized, understood that the Nansurium was doomed. For the past century and a half, those with knowledge or power in Nansur had awaited the catastrophe, the news that the Scylvendi tribes had united as of old and were rumbling toward the coasts. This had been how Kyraneas had fallen two thousand years ago, and how the Ceneian Empire had fallen more than a thousand years after. And this would be how, Xerius was certain, the Nansurium would fall as well. But it was the prospect of this inevitability conjoined with Kian, a heathen nation that waxed even as Nansur waned, that truly terrified him. After the Scylvendi left, and they always left, who would stop the Kianene heathens from snuffing out the muddied blood of Kyraneas, fr
om cutting out the Three Hearts of God: Sumna, the Thousand Temples, and the Tusk?

  Yes, this Shriah was shrewd. Xerius no longer regretted the failure of his assassins. Maithanet had given him a hammer like no other—a Holy War.

  “Our new Shriah,” he said, “is much overrated.”

  Let him think he plays me.

  “But for what purpose, Xerius? Even if the great among the Holy War succumb to your demands, you don’t truly think they’ll spill their blood to hoist the Imperial Sun, do you? Even signed, your Indenture is worthless.”

  “Not worthless, Mother. Even if they break their oath, the Indenture is not worthless.”

  “Then why, Xerius? Why all these mad risks?”

  “Come, Mother. Have you grown so old?” For a moment, he suffered an uncommon glimpse of how things must appear to her: the mercantile, and therefore extraordinary, demand that every high noble of the Holy War sign his Indenture; the dispatch of the greatest Nansur army assembled in a generation not against the heathens of Kian, but against their far more ancient and temperamental foe, the Scylvendi. How these two things alone must have taxed her! With plans as sublime as his, the logic was always hidden.

  Xerius was not fool enough to think he was the equal of his ancestors in strength of arms or spirit. Ikurei Xerius III was no fool. The present age was different, and different strengths were called for. The great man of this day found his weapons in other men and in the shrewd calculation of events. Xerius now possessed both: his precocious nephew, Conphas, and this mad Shriah’s Holy War. With these two instruments, he would win back the Empire.

  “What is it you plan, Xerius? You must tell me!”

  “Painful, isn’t it, Mother? To stand at the heart of the Empire and yet be deaf to its beat—and after a lifetime of playing it like a drum!”

  But instead of displaying outrage, her eyes opened in abrupt epiphany. “The Indenture is simply a pretext,” she gasped. “Something to protect you from Shrial Censure when you . . .”

  “When I what, Mother?” Xerius glanced nervously at the small crowd surrounding them. This was not the place for such a conversation.

  “Is this why you’ve sent my grandson to his death?” she cried.

  There it was finally, her true motive for this seditious interrogation. Her beloved grandson, poor sweet Conphas, who at this very moment marched somewhere on the Jiünati Steppe, searching for the dread Scylvendi. This was the Istriya that Xerius knew and despised: devoid of religious sentiment but obsessed with her progeny, with the fate of the House Ikurei.

  Conphas was to be Restorer, wasn’t he, Mother? You didn’t think me capable of such glory, did you, you old bitch?

  “You overreach, Xerius! You grasp for too much!”

  “Ah, and for a moment I thought you understood.” He had uttered this with offhand certainty, but much of him believed her, enough that sleep now required a full quart of unwatered wine. Even more this night, he imagined, after the incident with the birds . . .

  “I understand well enough,” Istriya snapped. “Your waters aren’t so deep that this old woman can’t wade in them, Xerius. You hope to extort signatures for your Indenture, not because you expect any Men of the Tusk to relinquish their conquests, but because you expect to wage war against them afterward. With your Indenture, you’ll be immune to Shrial Censure when you subdue the petty, undermanned fiefdoms that are sure to arise in the Holy War’s wake. And that is why you’ve sent Conphas on your so-called punitive expedition against the Scylvendi. Your plan requires manpower you do not have so long as the northern provinces must be guarded.”

  Dread churned his innards.

  “Ah,” she said wickedly, “it’s one thing to rehearse your plans in the murk of your soul and quite another to hear them on the lips of another, isn’t it, my foolish boy? Like listening to a mummer parrot your voice. Does it sound foolish to you now, Xerius? Does it sound mad?”

  “No, Mother,” he managed to say with some semblance of confidence. “Merely daring.”

  “Daring?” she cried, as though the word had unlatched something deranged within her. “By the Gods, how I wish I’d strangled you in your cradle! Such a foolish son! You’ve doomed us, Xerius. Can’t you see? No one, no High King of Kyraneas, no Aspect-Emperor of Cenei, has ever defeated the Scylvendi on their ground. They are the People of War, Xerius! Conphas is dead! The flower of your army is dead! Xerius! Xerius! You’ve brought catastrophe upon us all!”

  “Mother, no! Conphas assured me he could do it! He’s studied the Scylvendi as no other! He knows their weaknesses!”

  “Xerius. Poor sweet fool, can’t you see that Conphas is still a child? Brilliant, fearless, as beautiful as a God, but still a child . . .” She clutched at her cheeks and began clawing. “You’ve killed my child!” she wailed.

  Her logic, or maybe it was her terror, swept through him with the force of a cataract. Panicked, Xerius looked to the others on the balcony, saw his mother’s fear on all their faces, and realized that it had been there all along. It wasn’t Ikurei Xerius III they feared, it was what he had done!

  Have I destroyed everything?

  He stumbled. Bony hands steadied him. Skeaös. Skeaös! He understood what he did. He had glimpsed the glory! The brilliance!

  He whirled, gripped the old Counsel by his draped robe, and shook him so violently that his brooch, a golden eye with an onyx pupil, snapped and clinked across the ground.

  “Tell me you see!” Xerius cried. “Tell me!”

  Clutching his robe to prevent it from unravelling, the old man kept his eyes dutifully to the ground. “Y-you’ve made a wager, God-of-Men. Only after the number-sticks have been thrown can we know.”

  Yes! That was it!

  Only after the number-sticks have been thrown . . .

  Tears spilled from his eyes. He grasped the old Counsel by the cheeks and was shocked by the coarseness of his skin. His mother had told him nothing new. He’d always known that he’d wagered everything. How many hours had he plotted with Conphas? How many times had he been moved to wonder by his nephew’s martial brilliance? Never had the Empire possessed an Exalt-General such as Ikurei Conphas. Never!

  He will overcome the Scylvendi. He’ll humble the People of War! And it seemed to Xerius that he knew these things with impossible certainty. My star enters the Whore, bound by twin portents to the Nail of Heaven . . .

  A bird shat upon me!

  He dropped his hands to Skeaös’s shoulders, and was struck by the magnanimity of the act. How he must love me. He looked to Gaenkelti, Ngarau, and the others, and suddenly the cause of their doubt and fear seemed so very clear to him. He turned to his mother, who had fallen to her knees.

  “You—all of you—think you see a man who’s made a mad wager. But men are frail, Mother. Men are fallible.”

  She stared at him, the lampblack about her eyes muddied by tears. “And are not emperors men, Xerius?”

  “Priests, augurs, and philosophers all teach us that what we see is smoke. The man I am is but smoke, Mother. The son you birthed is but my mask, one more guise I’ve taken for this wearisome revel of blood and semen you call life. I am what you told me I would be! Emperor. Divine. Not smoke but fire.”

  At these words, Gaenkelti fell to his knees. After a moment’s hesitation, the others followed.

  But Istriya clutched her eunuch’s arm and pulled herself to her feet, all the while gaping at him. “And if Conphas should die in the smoke, hmm, Xerius? If the Scylvendi should ride from the smoke and put out your ‘fire,’ what then?”

  He struggled to contain his outrage. “Your end approaches, and you cling to the smoke because you fear that smoke is all there is. You’re afraid, Mother, because you’re old, and nothing bewilders so much as fear.”

  Istriya regarded him imperiously. “My age is my own affair. I’ve no need of fools to remind me.”

  “No. I suppose your tits scarce let you forget.”

  Istriya screeched, flew at him as she had in h
is childhood. But her giant eunuch, Pisathulas, restrained her, catching her with fists that dwarfed her forearms. He bobbed his shaved head in terrified stupefaction.

  “I should’ve killed you!” she shrieked. “Strangled you with your own cord!”

  Unaccountably, Xerius began to laugh. Old and frightened! For the first time she looked pedestrian, far from the indomitable, all-knowing matriarch she had always seemed. His mother looked pathetic!

  It was almost worth losing an Empire.

  “Take her to her chambers,” he said to the giant. “See that my physicians tend to her.”

  Sputtering and shrieking, she was carried bodily from the balcony. The immensity of the Andiamine Heights swallowed her murderous cries.

  The rich colours of sunset had paled into those of dusk. The sun was half down, framed by a cloudy mantle of purple. For several moments Xerius simply stood, breathing deeply, wringing his hands to silence the tremors. His people watched him nervously from the corners of their eyes. The herd.

  At last Gaenkelti, whose Norsirai heritage made him more outspoken than was seemly, broke the silence. “God-of-Men, may I speak?”

  Xerius waved irritated assent.

  “The Empress, God-of-Men . . . What she said—”

  “Her fears are warranted, Gaenkelti. She simply spoke the truth dwelling in all our hearts.”

  “But she threatened to kill you!”

  Xerius struck the Captain full on the face. The blond man’s hands balled into fists for a moment, then unclenched. He glared fiercely at Xerius’s feet. “I apologize, God-of-Men. I merely feared for—”

  “For nothing,” Xerius said sharply. “The Empress grows old, Gaenkelti. The tides have drawn her out of sight of shore. She’s simply lost her bearings.”

  Gaenkelti fell to the ground, placed his lips firmly to Xerius’s right knee. “Enough,” Xerius said, drawing his Captain to his feet. He let his fingertips linger on the gorgeous blue tattoos webbing the man’s forearms. His eyes burned. His head ached. But he felt an extraordinary calm.