The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  “These charges, Uncle,” Conphas said cautiously. “Perhaps they are rash.”

  “Perhaps,” Xerius spat, smoothing his gowns. “But as your grandmother would say, Conphas, fear first the closer knife.” Then, glancing at the stocky, squared-bearded man who stood at Conphas’s side, he asked, “This is the Mandate Schoolman?”

  “Yes. Drusas Achamian.”

  The man knelt unceremoniously, touched his forehead to the ground and muttered, “God-of-Men.”

  “Awkward, is it not, Mandati—these meetings of magi and kings?” The keen embarrassment of moments before was forgotten. Perhaps it was good, Xerius thought, that the man understood the stakes of this proceeding. For some reason, he was moved to be gracious.

  The sorcerer looked at him quizzically, then remembered himself and turned down his eyes.

  “I’m your slave, God-of-Men,” he mumbled. “What would you have me do?”

  Xerius grasped his arm—a most disarming gesture, he thought, an Emperor holding a low-caste arm—and led him through the others to the prostrate Skeaös.

  “You see, Skeaös,” Xerius said, “the lengths we’ve gone to ensure your comfort.”

  The old face remained passionless, but the eyes glittered with a strange intensity.

  “A Mandati,” it said.

  Xerius looked to Achamian. The man’s expression was blank. And then Xerius felt it, felt the hatred emanating from Skeaös’s pale form, as though the old man recognized the Mandate sorcerer. The splayed body tensed. The chains tightened, link biting against link. The wooden table creaked.

  The Mandate sorcerer backed away—two steps.

  “What do you see?” Xerius hissed. “Is it sorcery? Is it?”

  “Who is this man?” Drusas Achamian asked, the horror plain in his voice.

  “My Prime Counsel . . . of thirty years.”

  “Have you . . . interrogated him? What has he said?” The man almost shouted. Was there panic in his eyes?

  “Answer me, Mandati!” Xerius cried. “Is there sorcery here!?”

  “No.”

  “You lie, Mandati. I can see it! See it in your eyes.”

  The man looked at him directly, his gaze focusing as though he struggled to comprehend the Emperor’s words, to concentrate on something suddenly trivial.

  “N-no,” he stammered. “You see fear . . . There’s no sorcery here. Either that or there’s sorcery of another sort. One invisible to the Few . . .”

  “It’s as I told you, God-of-Men,” Skalateas interrupted from behind. “The Mysunsai have always been faithful. We would do nothing to—”

  “Silence!” Xerius shouted.

  What was once Skeaös had begun growling . . .

  “Meta ka peruptis sun rangashra, Chigra, Mandati—Chigraa,” the old Counsel spat, his voice now utterly inhuman. He writhed against his restraints, the old body rippling with thin, greasy muscles. A bolt snapped from the walls.

  Xerius backed away with the sorcerer. “What does he say?” he gasped.

  But the sorcerer was dumbstruck.

  “The chains!” someone cried—Kimish.

  “Gaenkelti . . . Conphas!” Xerius called numbly, stumbling farther back.

  The old body thrashed against the curved wood like starving eels stitched in human skin. Another bolt snapped from the wall . . .

  Gaenkelti was the first to die, his neck snapped, so that Xerius could see his slack face loll against his back as he toppled forward. A chain took Conphas in the side of the face, flung him against the far wall. Tokush was broken like a doll. Skeaös?

  But then there were words! Burning words and the room was washed with blinding fires. Xerius shrieked and tripped. A blast of heat rolled over him. Stone cracked. The air shivered.

  And he could hear the Mandati roaring, “No, curse you! NOOO!” And then a wail, unlike anything he’d ever heard, like a thousand wolves burning alive. The sound of meat slapping against stone.

  Xerius scrambled upright against a wall but could see nothing for the Eothic Guardsmen who shielded him. The lights subsided, and it seemed dark, very dark. The Mandate sorcerer still shouted, cursed.

  “That is enough, Mandati!” Cememketri roared.

  “Pompous fucking ingrate! You’ve no inkling of what you’ve done!”

  “I’ve saved the Emperor!”

  And Xerius thought, I’m saved . . . He clawed his way from between the Guardsmen, stumbled into the centre of the room. Smoke. The smell of roasting pork.

  The Mandate sorcerer knelt over the charred body of Skeaös, gripped the burned shoulders, shook the slack head.

  “What are you?” he ranted. “Answer me!”

  Skeaös’s eyes glittered white from black and blasted skin. And they laughed, laughed at the raging sorcerer.

  “You are the first, Chigra,” Skeaös wheezed—an ambient, horrifying whisper. “And you will be the last . . .”

  What followed would haunt Xerius’s dreams for the rest of his numbered days. As though gasping for some deeper breath, Skeaös’s face unfolded like spider’s legs clutched tight about a cold torso. Twelve limbs, crowned by small wicked claws, unclenched and opened, revealing lipless teeth and lidless eyes where a face should have been. Like a woman’s long fingers, they embraced the astounded Mandate sorcerer about the head and began to squeeze.

  The man shrieked in agony.

  Xerius stood helpless, transfixed.

  But then the hellish head was gone, rolling like a melon across the floor-stones, limbs flailing. Conphas staggered after it, his shortsword bloody. He paused over it, sword at his side, and looked to his uncle with glassy eyes.

  “Abomination,” he said, wiping at the blood on his face.

  Meanwhile, the Mandate sorcerer grunted and recovered his feet. He looked around at the stunned faces. Without a word he walked slowly toward the entrance. Cememketri blocked his way.

  Drusas Achamian looked back to Xerius, the old intensity returning to his eyes. Blood trickled down his cheeks.

  “I’m leaving,” he said bluntly.

  “Leave then,” Xerius said, and nodded to the Grandmaster.

  As the man left the room, Conphas looked to Xerius questioningly. Is this wise? his expression asked.

  “He would have lectured us about myths, Conphas. About the Ancient North and the return of Mog. They always do.”

  “After this,” Conphas replied, “perhaps we should listen.”

  “Mad events seldom give credence to madmen, Conphas.” He looked to Cememketri and knew from the old man’s expression that he had drawn the same conclusion as himself. There had been Truth in this room. Horror gave way to exhilaration. I have survived!

  Intrigue. The Great Game—the benjuka of beating hearts and moving souls. Was there ever a time when he’d not played? Over the years, he’d learned that one could play in ignorance of his opponent’s machinations for only so long. The trick was to force all hands. Sooner or later the moment would come, and if you had forced your adversary’s hand soon enough, you would survive and be ignorant no longer. The moment had come. He had survived. And he was ignorant no longer.

  The Mandati himself had said it: a sorcery of a different sort. One invisible to the Few. Xerius possessed his answer. He knew the source of this mad treachery.

  The sorcerer-priests of the Fanim. The Cishaurim.

  An old enemy. And in this dark world, old enemies were welcome. But he said nothing to his nephew, so much did he savour those rare moments when the man’s insight lagged behind his own.

  Xerius walked over to the scene of carnage, looked down at the ridiculous figure of Gaenkelti. Dead.

  “The price of knowledge has been paid,” he said without passion, “and we have not been beggared.”

  “Perhaps,” Conphas replied, scowling, “but we’re debtors still.”

  So like Mother, Xerius thought.

  The thoroughfares and nebulous byways of the Holy War were awash with shouts, firelight, and wild, celebratory cheer.
Clutching the strap of her satchel, Esmenet shouldered her way between tall, shadowy warriors. She saw the emperor burned in effigy. She saw two men pummelling a hapless third between tents. Many knelt, alone or in groups, weeping or singing or chanting. Many others danced to the husky call of double oboes or the plaintive twang of Nilnameshi harps. Everyone drank. She watched a towering Thunyeri hack down a bull with his battle-axe, then cast its severed head onto an impromptu altar fire. For some reason, the animal’s eyes reminded her of Sarcellus’s—dark, long-lashed, and curiously unreal, as though made of glass.

  Sarcellus had retired early, claiming they needed their rest before decamping on the morrow. She had lain next to him, feeling the heat of his broad back, waiting for his breath to settle into the shallow rhythm that characterized his slumber. Once convinced he was soundly asleep, she slipped from his bed and as quietly as she could, gathered a handful of things.

  The night was sultry, the humid air shivering with both the sense and the sound of nearby festivities. Smiling at the enormity of what lay before her, she had hoisted her belongings and descended into the night.

  Now she found herself near the heart of the encampment, dodging through crowds, pausing now again to locate Momemn’s Ancilline Gate.

  Passing through the thick of the celebrations proved difficult. Several men seized her without warning. Most simply twirled her in the air, laughing, forgetting her the instant they set her down, but the bolder ones, Norsirai mostly, either groped her or bruised her lips with fierce kisses. One, a child-faced Tydonni a full hand taller than even Sarcellus, proved particularly amorous. He lifted her effortlessly, crying “Tusfera! Tusfera!” over and over again. She wriggled and glared, but he simply laughed, crushing her against his brigandine. She grimaced, experienced the horror of staring into eyes that looked directly into her own and yet were utterly oblivious to her fury or fear. She pushed against his chest, and he laughed like a father dandying a squealing daughter. “No!” she spat, feeling a clumsy hand fumbling between her thighs. “Tusfera!” the man roared in jubilation. When she felt his fingers knead bare skin, she struck him as an old patron had once taught her, where his moustache met his nose.

  Crying out, he dropped her. He stumbled back, his eyes wide with horror and confusion, as though he’d just been kicked by a trusted horse. In the firelight, blood blackened his pale fingers. She heard cheers as she fled into the crowded gloom.

  Some time passed before she stopped shaking. She found a wedge of solitude and darkness behind a pavilion stitched with innumerable Ainoni pictograms. She clutched her knees and rocked, watching the tip of a nearby bonfire over the surrounding tents. Sparks danced like mosquitoes into the night sky.

  She cried for a bit.

  I’m coming, Akka.

  She resumed her journey, shying from groups where no women or too much drink seemed present. The Ancilline Gate, her towers crowned by torches, soon loomed over the near distance. She dared to approach a more sedate group of revellers and asked them where she might find the pavilion belonging to the Marshal of Attrempus. She took care to conceal her tattooed hand. With the laborious courtesy of smitten drunks, they gave her almost a dozen different ways to her destination. Exasperated, she finally just asked them for a direction.

  “That way,” one man said, his Sheyic heavily accented, “across the dead canal.”

  She understood why the canal was called “dead” before she even saw it. The humid air grew dank with the smell of rotting vegetation, offal, and stagnant water. Dwarfed by a band of Conriyan knights, she filed across a narrow wooden bridge. Below, the canal was black and motionless in the torchlight. One of the men leaned over the rail to watch his spit plop into the water; he grinned sheepishly at her.

  “Yashari a’summa poro,” he said, in Conriyan, perhaps.

  Esmenet ignored him.

  Unnerved more by the size than by the demeanour of the young noblemen, she struck off the main track, with its shadowy packs of carousers, and threaded her way into the deeper gloom. Most believed the greater stature of caste nobles was a consequence of greater blood, but Achamian had once told her it was more a matter of diet. That was why, he insisted, the Norsirai seemed tall regardless of caste: they ate more red meat. Usually she was attracted to statuesque men, to “muscle trees,” as she and her harlot friends had jokingly called them, but not this night, not after her encounter with the Tydonni, anyway. This night they made her feel small, diminished, like a toy—easily broken, easily discarded.

  She was fairly skulking between tents by the time she found Xinemus’s pavilion. Cutting across silent camps, she had followed the dead canal north. She saw a bonfire and more revellers before her. While pondering how to best circumvent them, she glimpsed the standard of Attrempus hanging limp in the smoke and light: an elongated tower flanked by stylized lions.

  For a time she could only stare at it. Though she could see nothing of those congregated beneath, she imagined Achamian sitting cross-legged on a mat, his face animated by drink and his famous mock disdain. Every so often he would draw his fingers through his grey-streaked beard—a meditative gesture, or a nervous one. She would step into the light, smiling her equally famous sly smile, and he’d drop his wine bowl in astonishment. She’d see his lips mouth her name, his eyes glitter with tears . . .

  Alone, in the dark, Esmenet smiled.

  It would feel so good to feel his beard tickle her ear, to smell his dry, cinnamon smell, to crush herself against his barrel chest . . .

  To hear him speak her name.

  “Esmi. Esmenet. Such an old-fashioned name.”

  “From the Tusk. Esmenet was the wife of the Prophet Angeshraël.”

  “Ah . . . a harlot’s name.”

  She wiped her eyes. That he would rejoice at seeing her, she had no doubt. But he would not understand the time she’d spent with Sarcellus—especially once she told him of that night in Sumna and what it meant for Inrau. He would be cut, outraged even. He might even strike her.

  But he would not turn her out. He would wait, as he always did, for the Mandate to call him away.

  And he would forgive. As he always did.

  She warred with her face.

  So useless! Pathetic!

  She combed her hair with her fingers, smoothed her hasas with sweaty palms. She cursed the darkness for preventing her from using her cosmetics. Were her eyes still swollen? Was that why those Conriyans had treated her so gently?

  Pathetic!

  She prowled along the bank of the canal, never pausing to think why she did so. Secrecy seemed crucial, for some reason. Darkness and cover essential. She glimpsed the bonfire through odd angles between tents, saw bright figures standing, drinking, laughing. A large pavilion stood between the festivities and the canal, flanked by a number of smaller tents—slaves’ quarters and the like, Esmenet imagined. Breathless, she crept behind a threadbare shelter immediately adjacent to the pavilion. She paused in the darkness, feeling like a misbegotten creature from some nursery tale, one who must hide from lethal light.

  Then she dared peek around a corner.

  Just more revellers around yet another golden fire.

  She searched for Achamian but could see him nowhere. She realized the one, the stocky man dressed in a grey silk tunic with slashed sleeves, had to be Xinemus himself. He acted the host, barking commands to the slaves, and he looked a lot like Achamian, as though an older brother. Achamian had once complained that Proyas teased him for looking like Xinemus’s weaker twin.

  So you’re his friend, she thought, both watching and silently thanking him.

  Most everyone around the fire was unknown to her, but the man whose corded arms were ribbed by scars, she realized, had to be the Scylvendi everyone was talking about. Did that mean the blond-bearded man, the one who sat next to the breathtaking Norsirai girl, was his companion? The Prince of Atrithau who claimed to dream of the Holy War? Esmenet wondered who else she might be watching. Was Prince Proyas himself among them?
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br />   She watched wide-eyed, a sense of awe squeezing the breath from her lungs. She stood, she realized, at the very heart of the Holy War, fiery with passion, promise, and sacred purpose. These men were more than human, they were Kahiht, World Souls, locked in the great wheel of great events. The thought of striding into their midst beckoned hot tears to her eyes. How could she? Awkwardly concealing the back of her hand, instantly branded for what she was by their far-seeing eyes . . .

  What’s this? A whore? Here? You must be joking . . .

  What had she been thinking? Even if Achamian had been here, she would only have shamed him.

  Where are you?

  “Everyone!” a tall, dark-haired man cried, causing Esmenet to jump. He sported a trim beard and a sumptuous robe with an intricate floral brocade. When the last voices trailed, he raised his bowl to the night sky.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “we march!”

  His eyes shining with fervour, he continued, speaking of trials endured and nations conquered, of heathen struck down and iniquities set aright. Then he spoke of Holy Shimeh, the sacred heart of all places. “We war for ground,” he said, “but we do not war for dust or earth. We war for the ground. The ground of all our hopes, of all our convictions . . .” His voice cracked with passion.

  “We war for Shimeh.”

  A moment of silence passed, then Xinemus intoned the High Temple Prayer:Sweet God of Gods,

  who walk among us,

  innumerable are your holy names.

  May your bread silence our daily hunger,

  may your rains quicken our undying land,

  may our submission be answered with dominion,

  so we may prosper in your name.

  Judge us not according to our trespasses

  but according to our temptations,

  and deliver unto others

  what others have delivered unto us,

  for your name is Power,

  and your name is Glory,

  for your name is Truth,