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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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Cutias Sarcellus smiled in greeting. “Weren’t you, Inrau?”
A Knight-Commander consorting with a Consult Synthese?
Akka-akka-save-me!
Nightmarish terror and disbelief, stealing breath, panicking thought. Inrau staggered backward. The floor reeled. The sound of iron grating against stone behind him made him cry out. He whirled and saw another Shrial Knight stride from the darkness. He knew this one as well: Mujonish, who had accompanied him on tithe collections in the past. The man approached, his stance wary and his arms wide, as though he herded a dangerous bull.
What was happening?
Onkis?
“As you can see,” the crow-bodied Synthese said, “there’s no place for you to go.”
“Who?” Inrau managed to gasp. He could see the mark of sorcery now, the scar tissue of the Cants used to bind someone’s soul to the abominable vessel before him. How had he missed it?
“He knows this form is but a shell,” the Synthese said to Sarcellus, “but I don’t see Chigra within him.” The pea-sized eyes—little beads of sky blue glass—turned to Inrau. “Hmm, boy? You don’t dream the Dream like the others, do you? If you did, you would recognize me. Chigra never failed to recognize me.”
Onkis? Treacherous-god-bitch!
Through the terror an impossible certainty seized him. A revelation. Words of prayer had become tissue. Beneath he sensed other words, words of power.
“What do you want?” Inrau asked, his voice steadier this time. “What are you doing here?” He cared nothing for the answer, and everything for the time.
please-remember-please-remember . . .
“Doing? Why, what our kind always does: overseeing our stake in these affairs.” It pursed its lips over its tiny teeth, but sourly, as though displeased by their taste. “No different, I suppose, from what you were doing in the Shriah’s apartments, hmm?”
Breathing had become painful. He could not speak.
yes-yes-yes-that’s-it-that’s-it-but-what-comes-next? What-comes-after?
“Tsk, tsk,” Sarcellus said, edging closer. “I’m afraid this is partially my fault, Old Father. Some weeks ago I bid the young apostle to be industrious.”
“So it
is
your fault,” the Synthese said with the miniature mockery of a scowl. It clicked several feet down the railing to follow Inrau’s retreat. “Without direction, he simply threw his ardour into the wrong
vocation
. Spying on the God, rather than praying to Him.” A small snort, like a cat’s sneeze. “Ah, you see, Inrau? You’ve absolutely nothing to fear. The Knight-Commander bears the responsibility.”
that’s-it-that’s-it-that’s-it!
Inrau sensed Mujonish looming behind. Prayer seized his tongue. Blasphemy tumbled from his lips.
Turning with sorcerous speed, he punched two fingers through Mujonish’s chain mail, cracked his breastbone, then seized his heart. He yanked his hand free, drawing a cord of glittering blood into the air. More impossible words. The blood burst into incandescent flame, followed his sweeping hand toward the Synthese. Shrieking, the creature dove from the railing into emptiness. Blinding beads of blood cracked bare stone.
He would have turned to Sarcellus, but the sight of Mujonish stilled him. The Shrial Knight had stumbled to his knees, wiping his bloody hands on his surcoat. Then, as though spilling from a bladder, his face simply fell apart, dropping outward,
unclutching . . .
No mark. Not the faintest whisper of sorcery.
But how?
Something struck him hard about the head, and he toppled. Scrambling. A blow to his stomach sent him rolling. He glimpsed Sarcellus’s shadowy form dancing about him. He gasped more words—words of shelter. Ghostly Wards leapt about him . . .
But they were useless. Reaching through the luminescent panes as though they were smoke, the Knight-Commander seized him about the throat and heaved him into the air. He raised a Chorae in his other hand, whisked it over Inrau’s cheek.
Searing agony. The stone floor slammed into Inrau’s face. He clutched at the pain. The skin flaked away beneath his fingers, transformed into salt by the Chorae’s touch. The exposed flesh burned. He cried out again.
“You will
relent!
” he heard the Synthese cry.
Never.
Glaring at the hateful thing, Inrau resumed his blasphemous song. He saw the sun shining through the windows of its face. Too late.
Lights like a thousand hooks lanced from the Synthese’s mouth. Inrau’s Wards cracked and splintered in a blinding chatter. Then his song was choked from his lips. The air smothered him with the density of water. He floated off the clerestory floor. Streams of silvery bubbles were drawn from his gaping mouth to break against the ceiling. The weight of an ocean crushed him with an embalming fist.
At first he was calm. He watched the Synthese land on the Knight’s shoulder and regard him with tiny blue button eyes. He admired the black of its feathers, shot through with glassy hints of purple. He thought of Achamian, hapless, oblivious to the peril.
Oh, Akka! It’s worse than you dared imagine
.
But there was nothing to be done.
His throat tightening, Inrau’s thoughts turned to the Goddess, to her infidelities and to his. But his heart pounded more and more pressure into his skull until his lips curled and opened. Then he collapsed into thrashing madness, his idiot thoughts sure that somewhere there was some surface to break, some opening to air. A raw, irresistible reflex opened his lungs. Gagging convulsions, water like a sock in his throat, jerking in a haze of white beads . . .
Then hard floor, coughing, burning, choking air.
Sarcellus dragged him to his knees by his hair, wrenched his face toward the hazy blur of the Synthese. Inrau vomited, hacked more fire out of his lungs.
“I’m an Old Name,” the tiny face said. “Even wearing this shell, I could show you the Agonies, Mandate fool.”
“Wuh . . .” Inrau swallowed. Sobbed.
“Why?”
Again the thin, tiny smile. “You worship suffering. Why do you
think?
”
Monumental rage filled him. It didn’t understand! It didn’t
understand
. With a coughing roar, he lurched forward, yanking his hair from his scalp. The Synthese seemed to flicker out of his path, but it wasn’t its death he sought.
Any price, old teacher.
The stone rail slammed against his hips, broke like cake. Again he was floating, but it was so different—air whipping across his face, bathing his body. With a single outstretched hand, Paro Inrau followed a pillar to the earth.
PART II:
 
The Emperor
 
CHAPTER
FIVE
 
MOMEMN
 
The difference between the strong emperor and the weak is simply this: the former makes the world his arena, while the latter makes it his harem.
—CASIDAS,
THE ANNALS OF CENEI
 
 
What the Men of the Tusk never understood was that the Nansur
and the Kianene were
old enemies.
When two civilized peoples
find themselves at war for centuries, any number of common
interests will arise in the midst of their greater antagonism.
Ancestral foes share many things: mutual respect, a common
history, triumph in stalemate, and a plethora of unspoken truces.
The Men of the Tusk were interlopers, an impertinent flood that
threatened to wash away the observed channels of a far older
enmity.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN,
COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
 
Early Summer, 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn
 
Designed to capture the setting sun, the Imperial Audience Hall possessed no walls behind the Emperor’s raised dais. Sunlight streamed into the vaulted interior, shining across the marmoreal pillars of the concourse and gilding the tapestries suspended between them. A breeze tousled the smoke from censers arrayed about the dais, mingling the scent of fragrant oils with that of sky and sea.
“Any word of my nephew?” Ikurei Xerius III asked Skeaös, his Prime Counsel. “Anything from Conphas?”
“No, God-of-Men,” the old man replied. “But all is well. I’m certain of it.”
Xerius pursed his lips, doing his best to appear serene. “You may proceed, Skeaös.”
With a swish of his silken robes, the wizened Counsel turned to the other functionaries assembled about the dais. For as long as Xerius could remember, he’d always been surrounded by soldiers, ambassadors, slaves, spies, and astrologers . . . For as long as he could remember, he’d been the centre of this scuttling herd, the peg from which the tattered mantle of Empire hung. Now it suddenly struck him that he’d never looked into any of their eyes—not once. Matching the Emperor’s gaze was forbidden to those without Imperial Blood. The thought horrified him.
Save for Skeaös, I know none of these people
.
The Prime Counsel addressed them. “This will be unlike any audience you’ve ever attended. As you know, the first of the great Inrithi lords has arrived. We are the portal through which he and his peers must pass before joining the Holy War. We cannot bar or tax their passage, but we can influence them, make them see that our interests coincide with what is right and what is true. As the audience proceeds, be silent. Do not fidget. Do not move. Cultivate a look of stern compassion. If the fool signs the Indenture, then and only then will we dispense with protocol. You may mingle with his entourage, share in whatever food or drink the slaves offer. But ration your words. Reveal nothing.
Nothing
. You may think you stand outside the circle of these events, but you do not. You
are
the circle. Make no mistake, my friends, the Empire itself lies in the balance.”
The Prime Counsel looked to Xerius, who nodded.
“The time has come,” Skeaös called, gesturing to the far side of the Imperial Audience Hall.
Great stone doors, Kyranean relics salvaged from the ruins of Mehtsonc, ponderously opened.
“His Eminence,” a voice cried, “Lord Nersei Calmemunis, Palatine of Kanampurea.”
Feeling curiously short of breath, Xerius watched his Imperial Ushers lead the Conriyan entourage down the concourse. Despite his earlier resolution to remain motionless—men who resembled statues, he was convinced, exhibited wisdom—he found himself tugging at the tassels of his linen kilt. He had received innumerable petitioners in his forty-five years, embassies of war and peace from across the Three Seas, but as Skeaös had said, he had never hosted an audience such as this.
The Empire itself . . .
Months had passed since Maithanet had declared Holy War against the heathens of Kian. Like naphtha, the fiend’s summons had ignited the hearts of men in every Inrithi nation—pious, bloodthirsty, and covetous alike. Even now the groves and vineyards beyond Momemn’s walls hosted thousands of these so-called Men of the Tusk. But until Calmemunis’s arrival, they had consisted almost entirely of rabble: low-caste freemen, beggars, non-hereditary Cultic priests, and even, Xerius had been told, a band of lepers—men with little hope outside of Maithanet’s promise, and even less understanding of the dreadful task their Shriah had set for them. Such men did not merit an emperor’s spit, let alone his concern.
Nersei Calmemunis, however, was a far different matter. Of all the great Inrithi nobles rumoured to have mortgaged their birthrights for the Holy War, he was the first to reach the Empire’s shores. His arrival had thrown Momemn’s populace into an uproar. Clay blessing tablets, purchased from the temples at a copper talent apiece, had been strung across the streets. The fire-altars of Cmiral had burned an unending procession of victims donated in his name. Everyone understood that men such as Calmemunis, along with their client barons and knights, would be the keel and rudder of the Holy War.
But who would be its pilot?
Me.
Stung by a momentary panic, Xerius looked from the approaching Conriyans to the flutter of wings above. As always, sparrows wheeled and jousted beneath the dim vaults. As always, they calmed him. For a moment he wondered what an emperor was to a sparrow. Just another man?
He thought it unlikely.
When he lowered his gaze, the Conriyans were kneeling across the floor below him. Several of them, Xerius noticed with distaste, had tiny flower petals lodged in their hair and the oiled ringlets of their beards—marks of Momemn’s adulation. They stood in unison, some blinking, others shielding their eyes against the sunlight.
For them, I’m darkness framed by sun and sky.

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