The Darkness that Comes Before (74 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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You can see me, can’t you? See me looking back at you . . .
Then he understood: he hadn’t asked Kellhus about Moënghus because asking betokened ignorance and need. He might as well bare his throat to a wolf as display such deficits to a Dûnyain. He hadn’t asked about Moënghus, he knew, because Moënghus was
here,
in his son.
He could not say this, of course.
Cnaiür spat. “I know little of the Schools,” he said, “but I do know this: Mandate Schoolmen do not reveal the secrets of their practice—to anyone. If you wish to learn sorcery, you’re wasting your time with that sorcerer.”
He’d spoken as though Moënghus had not been mentioned. The Dûnyain, however, did not bother feigning puzzlement. They both stood, he realized, in the same dark place, the same shadowy nowhere beyond the benjuka plate.
“I know,” Kellhus replied. “He told me of the Gnosis.”
Cnaiür kicked dust across the coals, studied the scatter of black over the pitted glow. He began walking to the pavilion.
“Thirty years,” Kellhus called from behind. “Moënghus has dwelt among these men for thirty years. He’ll have great power—more than either of us could hope to overcome. I need more than sorcery, Cnaiür. I need a nation. A nation.”
Cnaiür paused, looked skyward once again. “So it’s to be this Holy War, then, is it?”
“With your help, Scylvendi. With your help.”
Day for night. Night for day. Lies. All lies.
Cnaiür continued walking, striding between barely visible guy ropes to the canvas flaps.
To Serwë.
 
For several moments the Emperor stared at his old Counsel in stunned silence. Despite the late hour, the man still wore the charcoal silk robes of his station. He’d breathlessly entered Xerius’s private apartment only moments earlier, as his body-slaves were preparing him for bed.
“Could you kindly repeat what you just said, dear Skeaös. I fear I misheard you.”
His eyes downcast, the old man said, “Proyas has apparently found a Scylvendi who’s warred against the heathen before—inflicted a crushing defeat upon them, actually—and has now proposed to Maithanet that he’ll be a suitable replacement for Conphas.”
“Outrage! Impertinent, overweening Conriyan dog!” Xerius swung his palms through the scrambling crowd of prepubescent slaves. A young boy skidded prostrate across the marble floor, wailing and shielding his face. There was the clash of spilled decanters. Xerius stepped over him, confronting old Skeaös. “Proyas! Was there ever a more grasping man alive? Thieving, black-hearted wretch!”
Skeaös stuttered a hasty reply. “Never, God-of-Men. B-but this is unlikely to interfere with our divine purpose.” The old Counsel was careful to keep his gaze firmly fixed on the floor. No one may look the Emperor in the eye. This, Xerius thought, was why he truly seemed a God to these fools. What was God but a tyrannical shadow in one’s periphery, the voice that could never fall within one’s field of vision? The voice from nowhere.
“
Our
purpose, Skeaös?”
Dreadful silence, broken only by the child’s whimper.
“Y-yes, God-of-Men. The man is a
Scylvendi
. . . A Scylvendi leading the Holy War? Surely this is little more than a joke.”
Xerius breathed deeply. The man was right, wasn’t he? This was but one more way for the Conriyan Prince to gall him—like the raids down the River Phayus. And yet he still found himself troubled . . . Something odd about his Prime Counsel’s manner.
Xerius valued Skeaös far above any other of his preening, lapdog advisers. In Skeaös he found the perfect marriage of subservience and intellect, of deference and insight. But lately he had sensed a pride, an illicit identification of counsel and edict.
Studying the frail form, Xerius felt himself calm—the calm of suspicion. “Have you heard the saying, Skeaös? ‘Cats look down upon Man, and dogs look up, but only pigs dare look Man straight in the eye.’”
“Y-yes, God-of-Men.”
“Pretend that you are a pig, Skeaös.”
What would be in a man’s face when he looked into the countenance of God? Defiance? Terror? What
should
be in a man’s face? The aged, clean-shaven face slowly turned and lifted, glimpsed the Emperor’s eyes before turning back to the floor.
“You tremble, Skeaös,” Xerius muttered. “
That
is good.”
 
Achamian sat patiently before a small breakfast fire, sipping the last of his tea, listening absently as Xinemus briefed Iryssas and Dinchases on the morning agenda. The words meant little to him.
Since meeting Anasûrimbor Kellhus, Achamian had fallen into a funk of obsessive brooding. No matter how hard he tried, he could not fit the Prince of Atrithau into anything that resembled sense. No less than seven times had he prepared the Cants of Calling to inform Atyersus of his “discovery.” No less than seven times had he faltered mid-verse, trailing into murmurs.
Of course the Mandate had to be told. News that an Anasûrimbor had arrived would send Nautzera, Simas, and the others into an uproar. Nautzera in particular, Achamian knew, would be convinced that Kellhus marked the fulfilment of the Celmomian Prophecy—that the Second Apocalypse was about to begin. Though every man occupied the centre of whatever place he found himself, men such as Nautzera believed they occupied the centre of their time as well.
I live now
, they would think without thinking,
therefore something momentous must happen
.
But Achamian was not such a man. He was rational and as such, compelled to be sceptical. The libraries of Atyersus were littered with proclamations of impending doom, every generation just as convinced as the last that the end was nigh. Achamian could think of no delusion more dogged and few conceits more worthy of scorn.
The arrival of Anasûrimbor Kellhus simply
had
to be a coincidence. In the absence of any supporting evidence, he decided, reason compelled him to adopt this conclusion.
The missing thumb of the matter, as the Ainoni say, was that he could not trust the Mandate to likewise withhold judgement. After centuries of starving for crumbs, they would, Achamian knew, fall into a frenzy over a scrap such as this. So the questions cycled through his soul, and more and more, he began to fear the answers. How would Nautzera and others interpret his tidings? What would they do? How ruthless would they be in the prosecution of their fears?
I gave them Inrau . . . Must I give them Kellhus too?
No. He had told them what would happen to Inrau. He had told them, and they had refused to listen. Even his old teacher, Simas, had betrayed him. Achamian was a Mandate Schoolman as they were. He dreamed the Dream of Seswatha as they did. But unlike Nautzera and Simas, he had not been gouged of his compassion. He knew better. And more important, he knew Anasûrimbor Kellhus.
Or at least something of him. Enough, perhaps.
Achamian set down his bowl of tea then leaned forward, elbows on knees. “What do you make of the newcomer, Zin?”
“The Scylvendi? Quick-witted. Bloodthirsty. And catastrophically loutish. No slight goes unpunished with that one, if only because he bristles at everything . . .” He cocked his head, adding, “Don’t tell him I said that.”
Achamian grinned. “I mean the other one. The Prince of Atrithau.”
The Marshal became uncharacteristically solemn. “Truthfully?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation.
Achamian frowned. “Of course.”
“I think there’s something”—he shrugged—“something about him.”
“How so?”
“Well, there’s the name, which made me suspicious at first. Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you—”
Achamian raised a hand. “After.”
Xinemus breathed deeply, shook his head. Something about his manner made Achamian’s skin tingle. “I don’t know what to think,” he said finally.
“Either that or you’re afraid to say what you think.”
Xinemus glared at him. “You spent an entire evening with him. You tell me: have you ever met a man like him?”
“No,” Achamian admitted.
“So what makes him different?”
“He’s . . . better. Better than most men.”
“Most men? Or do you mean
all
men?”
Achamian regarded Xinemus narrowly. “He frightens you.”
“Sure. So does the Scylvendi, for that matter.”
“But in a different way . . . Tell me, Zin, just what do you think Anasûrimbor Kellhus is?”
Prophet or prophecy?
“More,” Xinemus said decisively. “More than a man.”
A long silence ensued, filled only by the shouts of some distant commotion.
“The fact is,” Achamian finally ventured, “neither of us knows anything—”
“What’s this now?” Xinemus exclaimed, staring over Achamian’s shoulder.
The Schoolman craned his neck. “What’s what?”
At first glance, it appeared that a mob approached. Crowds jostled through the narrow lane while clots of men filtered through the surrounding camps. Men trudged through firepits, pulled down laundry lines, knocked ad hoc chairs and grills aside. Achamian even saw a pavilion half-collapse as the men streaming around it barged through its guy ropes.
But then he glimpsed a disciplined formation of crimson-clad soldiers filing through the heart of the multitude and in their midst a rectangle of bare-backed slaves carrying a mahogany palanquin.
“A procession of some kind,” Xinemus said. “But who would . . .”
His voice trailed. They had both glimpsed it at the same time: a long crimson banner capped by the Ainoni pictogram for Truth and bearing a coiled, three-headed serpent. The symbol of the Scarlet Spires.
The gold stitching shimmered in the sun.
“Why would they fly their standard like that?” Xinemus asked.
Good question. For many Men of the Tusk, all that separated sorcerers from heathens was that sorcerers were even more fit to burn. Striking their mark in the heart of the encampment was nothing short of foolhardy.
Unless . . .
“Do you have your Chorae?” Achamian asked.
“You know I don’t wear it when—”
“Do you have it?”
“With my things.”
“Fetch it . . . Quickly!”
They flew their standard, Achamian realized, for
his
benefit. They had a choice: either risk inciting a mob or risk startling a Mandate Schoolman. The fact that they thought the latter a greater threat testified to the wretched relations between their two Schools.
Obviously the Scarlet Spires wanted to make his acquaintance. But why?
Sure enough, the riotous throngs grew closer as the procession stubbornly battled its way forward. Achamian saw clods of dirt explode into dust against the palanquin. Cries of
“Gurwikka!”,
a common pejorative for “sorcerer” among the Norsirai, soon rifled the sky.
Xinemus hastened from his pavilion, bawling orders to his slaves as he did so. His brigandine swung from his shoulders, unfastened, and he clutched his scabbard in his left hand. Many of his men were already gathering about him. Achamian saw dozens of others scrambling from all corners of their immediate vicinity, but their numbers seemed no match for the brawling hundreds, perhaps even thousands, who approached.

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