The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  “Does Maithanet know?”

  Proyas grimaced. “He will.”

  Suddenly Achamian understood.

  “You defy him,” he said. “Maithanet has forbidden these raids!” Achamian could scarce conceal his jubilation. If Proyas had defied his Shriah . . .

  “I like not your manner,” Proyas snapped. “What care you—” He stopped, as though struck by a realization of his own. “Is this the possibility you wish me to consider?” he asked, wonder and fury in his tone. “That Maithanet . . .” A sudden gallows laugh. “That Maithanet conspires with the Consult?”

  “As I said,” Achamian replied evenly, “a possibility.”

  “Achamian, I’ll not insult you. I know the Mandate mission. I know the solitary horror of your nights. You and your kind live the myths we put aside with childhood. How can one not respect that? But don’t confuse whatever disagreements I may have regarding Maithanet with the reverence and devotion I bear the Holy Shriah. What you’re saying—the ‘possibility’ you’re asking me to entertain—is blasphemous. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. All too well.”

  “Do you have more, then? More than your nightmares?”

  Achamian did have more, more because he had so much less. He had Inrau. He wet his lips. “In Sumna, an agent of ours”—he swallowed—“of mine, has been murdered.”

  “An agent assigned, no doubt, to spy on Maithanet . . .” Proyas sighed, then shook his head ruefully, as though resigning himself to blunt and perhaps hurtful words. “Tell me, Achamian, what’s the penalty for spying in the Thousand Temples?”

  The sorcerer blinked. “Death.”

  “This?” Proyas exploded. “This is what you bring to me? One of your spies is executed—for spying!—and you suspect that Maithanet—the greatest Shriah in generations!—conspires with the Consult? These are your grounds? Trust me, Schoolman, when ill fortune befalls a Mandate agent, it need not—”

  “There’s more!” Achamian protested.

  “Oh, we must hear this! What? Did some drunk whisper some lurid tale?”

  “That day in Sumna, when I saw you kiss Maithanet’s knee—”

  “Oh yes, by all means, let us speak of that! Do you realize the outrage—”

  “He saw me, Proyas! He knew I was a sorcerer!”

  This forced a pause, but little else. “And you think I don’t know this? I was there, Akka! So he, like other great Shriahs before him, has the gift of seeing the Few. What of it?”

  Achamian was dumbstruck.

  “What of it?” Proyas repeated. “What does it mean other than that he, unlike you, chose the path of righteousness?”

  “But—”

  “But what?”

  “The dreams . . . They’ve been so forceful of late.”

  “Ah, back to the nightmares again . . .”

  “Something is happening, Proyas. I know it. I feel it!”

  Proyas snorted. “And this brings us to the rub now, doesn’t it Achamian?”

  Achamian could only stare in bewilderment. There was something more, something he was forgetting . . . When did he become such an old fool?

  “Rub?” he managed to ask. “What rub?”

  “The difference between knowing and feeling. Between knowledge and faith.” Proyas caught his bowl and downed it as though punishing the wine. “You know, I remember asking you about the God once, many years ago. Do you remember what you said?”

  Achamian shook his head.

  “‘I’ve heard many rumours,’ you said, ‘but I’ve never met the man.’ Do you remember? Do you remember how I capered and laughed?”

  Achamian nodded, smiled wanly. “You repeated it incessantly for weeks. Your mother was furious. I would’ve been dismissed had not Zin—”

  “Always your accursed advocate, that Xinemus,” Proyas said, grinning at the Marshal. “You do know you’d be friendless without him?”

  A sudden pang in Achamian’s throat made it impossible to reply. He blinked at burning eyes.

  No . . . Please, not here.

  The Marshal and the Prince both stared at him, their expressions at once embarrassed and concerned.

  “Anyway,” Proyas continued hesitantly, “my point is this: What you said of my God, you must say of your Consult as well. All you have are rumours, Achamian. Faith. You know nothing of what you speak.”

  “What are you saying?”

  His voice hardened. “Faith is the truth of passion, Achamian, and no passion is more true than another. And that means there’s no possibility you could speak that I could consider, no fear you could summon that could be more true than my adoration. There can be no discourse between us.”

  “Then I apologize . . . We’ll speak of this no more! I didn’t mean to offend—”

  “I knew this would pain you,” Proyas interrupted, “but it must be said. You’re a blasphemer, Achamian. Unclean. Your very presence is a trespass against Him. An outrage. And as much as I once loved you, I love my God more. Far more.”

  Xinemus could bear no more. “But surely—”

  Proyas silenced the Marshal with an upraised hand. His eyes reflected fervour and fire. “Zin’s soul is his own. He can do with it what he will. But, Achamian, you must respect me on this: I don’t want to see you again. Ever. Do you understand?”

  No.

  Achamian looked first to Xinemus, then back to Nersei Proyas.

  It doesn’t need to be like this . . .

  “So be it,” he said.

  He stood abruptly, straining to stiffen the hurt from his face. The fire-warm folds of his robe burned where they pressed against his skin. “I ask only one thing,” he said brusquely. “You know Maithanet. Perhaps you alone he trusts. Simply ask him about a young priest, Paro Inrau, who plunged to his death in the Hagerna several weeks ago. Ask him if his people had him killed. Ask him if they knew the boy was a spy.”

  Proyas stared at him with the vacancy of one preparing to hate. “Why would I do such a thing, Achamian?”

  “Because you loved me once.”

  Without a word, Drusas Achamian turned and left the two Inrithi noblemen sitting mute by the fire.

  Outside, the night air was humid with unwashed thousands. The Holy War.

  Dead, Achamian thought. My students are all dead.

  “You disapprove,” Proyas said to the Marshal. “What is it this time? The tactics or the proprieties?”

  “Both,” Xinemus coolly replied.

  “I see.”

  “Ask yourself, Proyas—for once set scripture aside and truly ask yourself—whether the feeling within your breast—now, at this very moment—is wicked or righteous.”

  Earnest pause.

  “But I feel nothing.”

  That night Achamian dreamed of Esmenet, lithe and wild upon him, and then of Inrau crying out from the Great Black: “They’re here, old teacher! In ways you cannot see!”

  But inevitably, the other dreams stirred beneath, the hoary nightmare that always reared its dreadful frame, shrugging away the tissue of lesser, more recent longings. And then Achamian found himself on the Fields of Eleneöt, dragging the broken body of a great High King from the clamour of war.

  Celmomas’s blue eyes beseeched him. “Leave me,” the grey-bearded king gasped.

  “No . . . If you die, Celmomas, all is lost.”

  But the High King smiled through ruined lips. “Do you see the sun? Do you see it flare, Seswatha?”

  “The sun sets,” Achamian replied, tears now spilling across his cheeks.

  “Yes! Yes . . . The darkness of the No-God is not all-encompassing. The Gods see us yet, dear friend. They are distant, but I can hear them galloping across the skies. I can hear them cry out to me.”

  “You cannot die, Celmomas! You must not die!”

  The High King shook his head, tears streaming from curiously tender eyes. “They call to me. They say my end is not the world’s end. That burden, they say, is yours . . . Yours, Seswatha.”

  “No,�
� Achamian whispered.

  “The sun! Can you see the sun? Feel it upon your cheek? Such revelations are hidden in such simple things. I see! I see so clearly what a bitter, stubborn fool I have been . . . And to you, you most of all, have I been unjust. Can you forgive an old man? Can you forgive a foolish old man?”

  “There is nothing to forgive, Celmomas. You’ve lost much, suffered much.”

  “My son . . . Do you think he’ll be there, Seswatha? Do you think he’ll greet me as his father?”

  “Yes. As his father and as his king.”

  “Did I ever tell you,” Celmomas said, his voice cracking with heartbroken pride, “that my son once stole into the deepest pits of Golgotterath?”

  “Yes.” Achamian smiled through his tears. “Many times, old friend.”

  “How I miss him, Seswatha! How I yearn to stand at his side once again.”

  The old king wept for a moment, then his eyes grew wide. “I see him so clearly. He’s taken the sun as his charger, and he rides among us. I see him! Galloping through the hearts of my people, stirring them to wonder and fury!”

  “Shush . . . Conserve your strength, my King. The surgeons are coming.”

  “He says . . . says such sweet things to give me comfort . . . He says that one of my seed will return, Seswatha. An Anasûrimbor will return—” The High King winced and shuddered. Spittle hissed through clenched teeth.

  “—at the end of the world.”

  Then the shining eyes of Anasûrimbor Celmomas II, White Lord of Trysë, High King of Kûniüri, grew slack and dull. The evening sun flashed then flickered out, and the gleaming bronze of the Norsirai host paled in the No-God’s twilight.

  “Our King!” Achamian cried to the grim knights about him. “Our King is dead!”

  She found herself wondering whether such games were common to the Kamposea Agora.

  Her back was turned to him, but Esmenet could feel his appraising look. She ran fingers across a hanging sheaf of oregano, as though to see whether it had been properly dried. She leaned forward, knowing that her white linen gown, a traditional hasas, would crease along her buttocks and open along her side, gracing the stranger with a glimpse of her bare hip and her right breast. A hasas was little more than a long bolt of linen cut with an intricately embroidered collar and joined at the waist by a leather girdle. Though it was the garment of choice for free-wives on hot days, it was also popular among prostitutes—for the obvious reasons.

  But she was no longer a prostitute. She was . . .

  She no longer knew what she was.

  Sarcellus’s Cepaloran body-slaves, Eritga and Hansa, had spotted the man as well. They giggled over the cinnamon, pretending to fuss over the length of the sticks. For not the first time this day, Esmenet found herself despising them, the way she had often found herself despising her competing neighbours in Sumna—particularly the young ones.

  He watches me! Me!

  He was an extraordinarily beautiful man: blond but clean-shaven, square-chested, and wearing only a blue linen kilt with gold tassels that stuck to his sweaty thighs. The network of blue tattoos along his arms meant he was an officer of some kind in the Emperor’s Eothic Guard. Other than that, Esmenet knew him not at all.

  They had encountered one another only a short time earlier—she with Eritga and Hansa, he with three of his comrades. The crush had shoved her against him. He smelled of orange peels and salty skin. He was tall: her eyes scarcely reached his collarbone. Something about him made her think of strapping health. She looked up and, without knowing why, smiled at him in the shy yet knowing way that simultaneously protested modesty and promised abandon.

  Afterward, flustered, excited, and dismayed, she had pulled Eritga and Hansa down a quiet byway peopled by strolling browsers and lined by spice stalls with their heaped flat baskets and curtains of drying herbs. Compared with the reeking crowds, the fragrances should have proven a welcome relief, but Esmenet had found herself mourning the stranger’s scent.

  Now, his friends mysteriously absent, he loitered in the sun a short distance from them, watching them with unsettling candour.

  Ignore him, she thought, unable to shake the image of his hard stomach pressing against her.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped at the two girls.

  “Nothing,” Eritga said petulantly, her Sheyic heavily accented.

  The sound of a stick snapping a trestle made all three of them jump. The old spice-monger, whose skin seemed stained the colour of his wares, stared at Eritga with outraged eyes. He brandished his stick, raising it to the flax awning.

  “She is your mistress!” he cried.

  The sunburned girl cringed. Hansa clutched her shoulders.

  The spice-monger turned to Esmenet, raised a palm to his neck and lowered his right cheek—a caste merchant’s gesture of deference. He smiled at her approvingly.

  Never in her life had she been so clean, so well-fed, or so well-dressed. Aside from her eyes and her hands, she looked, Esmenet knew, like the wife of some humble caste noble. Sarcellus had given her innumerable gifts: clothing, unguents, perfumes—but no jewellery.

  Avoiding her eyes, Eritga stamped from the awning, confirming what Esmenet had known all along: the girl did not think herself Esmenet’s servant. Neither did Hansa, for that matter. At first Esmenet had thought it mere jealousy: the girls loved Sarcellus, she’d assumed, and dreamed, as enslaved girls do, of being more than simply bedded by their master. But Esmenet had begun to suspect that Sarcellus himself had a hand in their attitude. Whatever doubt she might have harboured had been dismissed this morning, when the two girls refused to allow her to leave the encampment on her own.

  “Eritga!” Esmenet called. “Eritga!”

  The girl glared at her, her hate naked now. She was so fair-haired she seemed browless in the sunlight.

  “Go home!” Esmenet commanded. “Both of you!”

  The girl sneered and spit onto the packed dust.

  Esmenet took a threatening step forward. “Beat your freckled ass home, slave, before I—”

  Another snap of the stick across the trestle. The spice-monger scurried from his stall and struck Eritga across the face. The girl fell, shrieking, while the vendor struck her again and again, crying curses in an unfamiliar tongue. Hansa pulled Eritga clear, then with the spice-monger still shouting and waving his stick, they fled down the alley.

  “They go home now,” the man said to Esmenet, beaming with pride and pressing a pink tongue against the gaps in his teeth. “Fucking slaves,” he added, spitting over his left shoulder.

  But Esmenet could only think, I’m alone.

  She blinked at the tears threatening her eyes. “Thank you,” she said to the old man.

  The gnarled face softened. “What you buy?” he asked gently. “Pepper? Garlic? I have very good garlic. I winter it very special way.”

  How long had it been since she was last alone? Since that village months ago, she realized, where Sarcellus had rescued her from being stoned. She shuddered, suddenly feeling horribly on her own. She hid her tattoo in the palm of her right hand.

  From the day Sarcellus had saved her, she had not once been alone. Not truly. Since she’d arrived in the Holy War, Eritga and Hansa had been ever-present. And Sarcellus himself had somehow managed to spend a great deal of his time with her. In fact, he’d been remarkably attentive, given the selfishness that seemed to characterize so much of his life otherwise. He’d indulged her on many occasions, taking her here, to the Kamposea Agora, several times, bringing her to worship at the Cmiral, spending an entire afternoon with her in the Temple of Xothei, laughing as she marvelled at its great dome and listening as she explained how the Ceneians had built it in near antiquity.

  He had even toured the Imperial Precincts with her, teasing her for gawking as they walked in the cool shadow of the Andiamine Heights.

  But he had never left her alone. Why?

  Was he afraid she’d seek out Achamian? It struck her as a silly fear.


  She went cold.

  They were watching Akka. They! He had to be told!

  But then why did she hide from him? Why did she dread the thought of bumping into him each time she left the encampment? Whenever she glimpsed someone who resembled him, she would instantly look away, afraid that if she did not, she might make whoever it was into Achamian. That he would see her, punish her with a questioning frown. Stop her heart with an anguished look . . .

  “What you buy?” the spice-monger was repeating, his face now troubled.

  She looked at him blankly, thinking, I have no money. But then why had she come to the agora?

  Then she remembered the man, the Eothic Guardsman watching her. She glanced across the alley and saw him waiting, staring at her keenly. So beautiful . . .

  Her breath tightened. She felt heat flush her thighs.

  This time she did not look away.

  What do you want?

  He looked at her intently, lingering for that heartbeat that sealed all unspoken assignations. He tilted his head slightly, looked to the far end of the market then back.

  She looked away, nervous, a fluttering in her chest.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled to the spice-monger. He flapped his arms in disgust as she turned away. Numb, she began walking in the direction the stranger had indicated.

  She could see him in her periphery, following her through a shadowy screen of people. He kept his distance, but it seemed he already pressed his sweaty chest against her back, his narrow hips against her buttocks, moving, whispering in her ear. She struggled for breath, walked faster, as though pursued.

  I want this!

  They found themselves among emptied paddocks, surrounded by the smell of sacrificial livestock. The outer compounds of the temple-complex loomed above them. Somehow, without speaking, they closed upon one another in the gloom of an adjacent alley.

  This time he smelled of sunburned skin. His kiss was crushing, vicious even. She sobbed, pressed her tongue deep into his mouth, felt the knife’s edge of his teeth.

  “Ah, yes,” he nearly cried. “So sweet!” He clutched her left breast. His other hand jostled with her gown, skidded up along the inside of her thighs.