The Darkness that Comes Before (70 page)

Read The Darkness that Comes Before Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
8.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“The southern tribes commonly raid Gedea and Shigek. When I was stationed in Shimeh, there was—”
“You’ve been to
Shimeh?
” Proyas blurted.
Achamian scowled. Like most teachers, he despised interruptions. “I’ve been many places, Proyas.”
Because of the Consult. When one did not know where to look, one had to look everywhere.
“I apologize, Akka. It’s just that . . .” Proyas trailed, as though mystified.
The Prince, Achamian knew, had transformed Shimeh into the summit of a holy mountain, a destination that required warring thousands to achieve. The idea that a blasphemer might just step from a boat . . .
“At the time,” Achamian continued, “there was a great uproar about the Scylvendi. The Cishaurim had sent twenty of their own to Shigek to join a punitive expedition the Padirajah was preparing to send into the Steppe. Neither the Padirajah’s army nor the Cishaurim were ever heard from again.”
“The Scylvendi massacred them.”
Achamian nodded. “So, yes, it’s quite possible your Scylvendi has warred against and overcome the Fanim. It’s even possible he has wisdom to share. But why would he share it with us? With Inrithi? That’s the question.”
“Their hatred of us runs that deep?”
Achamian glimpsed a howling rush of Scylvendi lancers galloping into the fire and thunder of Seswatha’s voice. An image from the Dreams.
He blinked. “Does a Momic Priest hate the bull whose throat he cuts? No. For the Scylvendi, remember, the whole world is a sacrificial altar, and we’re simply the ritual victims. We’re beneath their contempt, which is what makes this so extraordinary. A
Scylvendi
joining the Holy War? It’s like . . . like—”
“Like entering the sacrificial pens,” Proyas finished in a dismayed tone, “and striking bargains with the beasts.”
“Exactly.”
The Crown Prince pursed his lips, looked out over the encampment, searching, Achamian supposed, for a sign of his dashed hopes. Never before had he seen Proyas like this—even as a child. He looked so . . . fragile.
Are things so desperate? What are you afraid you’ll lose?
“But of course,” Achamian added in a conciliatory manner, “after Conphas’s victory at Kiyuth, things might have changed on the Steppe. Drastically, perhaps.” Why did he always cater to him so?
Proyas glanced at him sidelong, hooked his lips in a sardonic grin. He returned his gaze to the tangled sweep of tents, pavilions, and alleyways before them, then said, “I’m not so wretched yet, old—” He paused, squinting. “There!” he exclaimed, pointing to nothing obvious that Achamian could see. “Zin comes. We’ll see whether this Scylvendi is my kut’ma or no soon enough.”
From despair to eagerness in the bat of an eye.
He’ll make a dangerous king,
Achamian involuntarily thought. That is, if he survived the Holy War.
Achamian swallowed, tasted dust on his teeth. Habit, especially when combined with dread, made it easy to ignore the future. But this was something he could not do. With so many warlike men gathered in one place, something catastrophic simply had to follow. This was a law as inexorable as any in Ajencis’s logic. The more he remembered it, the more prepared he would be when the time came.
Somewhere, someday, thousands of the thousands about me will lie dead.
The nagging question, the one he found morbid to the point of sickness and yet felt compelled to ask, was, Who?
Who
will die? Someone must.
Me?
Finally his eyes sorted Xinemus and his mounted party from the encampment’s confusion. The man looked haggard, as could be expected, given that his Prince had sent him out in the dead of night. His square-bearded face was turned toward them. Achamian was certain that he stared at him rather than Proyas.
Will you die, old friend?
“Do you see him?” Proyas asked.
At first Achamian thought he referred to Xinemus, but then he saw the Scylvendi, also on horseback, speaking to a wild-haired Iryssas. The sight chilled him.
Proyas had been watching him, as though keen to gauge his reaction. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s just been—” Achamian caught his breath.
“Been what?”
So long
. . . Two thousand years, in fact, since he’d last seen a Scylvendi.
“During the Apocalypse . . .” he began, then trailed in hesitation. Why did he always grow so shy when he spoke of these things, these
real
things? “During the Apocalypse, the Scylvendi joined the No-God. They brought down Kyraneas, sacked Mehtsonc, and laid siege to Sumna shortly after Seswatha had fled there—”
“You mean ‘here,’” Proyas said.
Achamian looked at the man quizzically.
“After Seswatha fled
here,
” Proyas explained, “where ancient Kyraneas once stood.”
“Y-yes . . . Here.” This
was
ancient Kyranean soil upon which he stood. Here—only buried as though beneath layers. Seswatha had even passed through Momemn once, though it was called Monemora then and was little more than a town. And that, Achamian realized, was the source of his disquiet. Ordinarily, he had little trouble keeping the two ages, the present and the apocalyptic, apart. But this Scylvendi . . . It was as though he bore ancient calamities upon his brow.
Achamian studied the nearing figure, the thick arms, banded by scars, the brutal face with eyes that saw only dead foes. Another man, as filthy and as travel-worn as the Scylvendi but with the blond hair and beard of a Norsirai, rode close behind. He spoke to a woman, also flaxen-haired, who swayed precariously in her saddle. Achamian pondered them for a moment—the woman looked injured—but found his attention inexorably drawn back to the Scylvendi.
A Scylvendi. It seemed too bizarre to believe. Was there a greater significance to this? He’d suffered so many dreams of Anasûrimbor Celmomas of late, and now this, a waking vision of the world’s ancient end. A Scylvendi!
“Don’t trust him, Proyas. They’re cruel, utterly merciless. As savage as Sranc, and far more cunning.”
Proyas laughed. “Did you know the Nansur begin every toast and every prayer with a curse against the Scylvendi?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Well, where you see a wraith from your nightmares, Schoolman, I see the enemy of my enemy.”
The sight of the barbarian, Achamian realized, had reignited Proyas’s hopes.
“No. You see an enemy, plain and simple. He’s a heathen, Proyas. Anathema.”
The Crown Prince looked at him sharply. “As are you.”
Such a blunder! How could he make him understand?
“Proyas, you must—”
“No, Achamian!” the Prince cried. “I ‘must’ nothing! Just this once, spare me your murky forebodings! Please!”
“You summoned me for my counsel,” Achamian snapped.
Proyas whirled. “Petulance, old tutor, does not become you. What’s happened to you? I summoned you for your counsel, yes, but instead you give me prattle. A counsellor, as you seem to have forgotten, provides his Prince with the facts necessary for sober judgements. He does not make his own judgements, then upbraid his Prince for not sharing them.” He turned away with a sneer. “Now I know why the Marshal frets about you so.”
The words stung. Achamian could see from his expression that Proyas had meant to injure, had intended to strike as near a mortal wound as possible. Nersei Proyas was a commander, one struggling against an emperor for the soul of a holy war. He needed resolution, the appearance of unanimity, and above all, obedience. The Scylvendi was nearly upon them.
Achamian knew this, and yet still the words stung.
What’s happened to me?
Xinemus had reined his black to a halt at the base of the knoll. He hailed them as he dismounted. Achamian had not the heart to respond in kind.
What do you say about me, Zin? What do you see?
Taking their cue from Xinemus, the party milled about their horses for a moment. Achamian heard Iryssas chiding the Norsirai about his appearance, as though the man were a bond brother rather than a foreigner about to meet his prince. With murmurs and weary steps, they began climbing the slope. Dismounted, the Scylvendi towered over Xinemus, loomed over everyone, in fact, with the exception of the Norsirai. He was lean-waisted, and his broad shoulders possessed the faintest of stoops. He looked hungry, not in the way of beggars but in the way of wolves.
Proyas afforded Achamian a final glance before greeting his guests.
Be what I need you to be,
his eyes warned.
“So rarely is the look of a man a match for the rumour,” the Prince said in Sheyic. His eyes lingered on the barbarian’s sinew-strapped arms. “But you look every bit as fierce as your people’s reputation, Scylvendi.”
Achamian found himself resenting Proyas’s congenial tone. His ability to effortlessly swap quarrels for greetings, to be embittered one moment and affable the next, had always troubled Achamian. He certainly did not share it. Such mobility of passion, he’d always thought, demonstrated a worrisome capacity for deceit.
The Scylvendi glowered at Proyas, said nothing. Achamian’s skin prickled. The man, he realized, bore a Chorae tucked behind his girdle. He could hear its abyssal whisper.
Proyas frowned. “I know you speak Sheyic, friend.”
“If I remember aright,” Achamian said in Conriyan, “the Scylvendi have little patience for wry compliments, my Prince. They think them unmanly.”
The barbarian’s ice blue eyes flashed to him. Something within Achamian, something wise in the estimation of bodily threat, quailed.
“Who is this?” the man asked, his accent thick.
“Drusas Achamian,” Proyas said, his tone far stiffer now. “A sorcerer.”
The Scylvendi spat, whether in contempt or as a folk-ward against sorcery, Achamian did not know.
“But it’s not your place to question,” Proyas continued. “My men delivered you and your companions from the Nansur, and I can just as easily have them deliver you back. Do you understand?”
The barbarian shrugged. “Ask what you will.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha, Chieftain of the Utemot.”
As limited as his knowledge of the Scylvendi was, Achamian had heard of the Utemot, as had every other Mandate Schoolman. According to the Dreams, Sathgai, the King-of-Tribes who had led the Scylvendi under the No-God, was Utemot. Could this be another coincidence?
“The Utemot, my Prince,” Achamian murmured to Proyas, “are a tribe from the northern extremes of the Steppe.”
Once again, the barbarian raked him with an icy stare.
Proyas nodded. “So tell me, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, why would a Scylvendi wolf travel so far to confer with Inrithi dogs?”
The Scylvendi as much sneered as smiled. He possessed, Achamian realized, that arrogance peculiar to barbarians, the thoughtless certitude that the hard ways of his land made him harder by far than other, more civilized men.
We are,
Achamian thought,
silly women to him
.
“I have come,” the man said bluntly, “to sell my wisdom and my sword.”
“As a mercenary?” Proyas asked. “I think not, my friend. Achamian tells me there’s no such thing as Scylvendi mercenaries.”
Achamian tried to match Cnaiür’s glare. He could not.
“Things went hard for my tribe at Kiyuth,” the barbarian explained. “And harder still when we returned to our pastures. Those few of my kinsmen who survived the Nansur were destroyed by our neighbours to the south. Our herds were stolen. Our wives and children were led away in captivity. The Utemot are no more.”
“So what?” Proyas snapped. “You hope to make the Inrithi your tribe? You expect me to believe this?”
Silence. A hard moment between two indomitable men.
“My land has repudiated me. It has stripped me of my hearth and my chattel. So I renounce my land in return. Is this so difficult to believe?”
“But then why—” Achamian began in Conriyan, only to be hushed by Proyas’s hand. The Conriyan Prince studied the barbarian in silence, appraising him in the unnerving manner Achamian had seen him appraise others before: as though he were the absolute centre of all judgement. If Cnaiür urs Skiötha was discomfited, however, he did not show it.
Proyas exhaled heavily, as though coming to a risky, and therefore weighty, resolution. “Tell me, Scylvendi, what do you know of Kian?”
Achamian opened his mouth to protest, but hesitated when he glimpsed Xinemus’s scowl.
Don’t forget your place!
the Marshal’s expression shouted.
“Much and little,” Cnaiür replied.
These were the kind of responses, Achamian knew, that Proyas despised. But then the Scylvendi simply played the same game the Prince did. Proyas wanted to know what the Scylvendi knew about the Fanim before revealing just how much he
needed
him to know. Otherwise the man might just tell him what he wanted to hear. The evasive reply, however, meant the Scylvendi had sensed this. And this meant he was uncommonly shrewd. Achamian ran his eyes along the scarred length of the barbarian’s arms, trying to count his swazond in a glance. He could not.

Other books

Nine White Horses by Judith Tarr
Where the Heart Is by Letts, Billie
Madam by Cari Lynn
CalltheMoon by Viola Grace
Who Let That Killer In The House? by Sprinkle, Patricia
Riptide by Margaret Carroll
Skagboys by Welsh, Irvine
Patricia Rice by Devil's Lady
Navy SEAL Captive by Elle James