The Darkness that Comes Before (77 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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But is this not the very enigma of history? When one peers
deep enough, one always finds that catastrophe and triumph,
the proper objects of the historian’s scrutiny, inevitably turn
upon the small, the trivial, the nightmarishly accidental. When
I reflect overmuch on this fact, I do not fear that we are
“drunks at the sacred dance,” as Protathis writes, but that
there is no dance at all.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN,
COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
 
Late Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn
 
With Cnaiür, Xinemus, and the five Conriyan Palatines who had taken up the Tusk, Kellhus followed Nersei Proyas through the galleries of the Andiamine Heights. One of the Emperor’s eunuchs led them, trailing the oily scent of musk and balsam.
Turning from a discussion with Xinemus, Proyas summoned Cnaiür to his side. Kellhus had closely mapped the capricious swings of Proyas’s humour over the course of their journey to the Imperial Precincts. The man had been elated and anxious by turns. Now he was clearly elated. The thought nearly leapt from the man’s profile:
This will work!
“Though it galls the rest of us,” Proyas said, trying to sound offhand, “in many ways the Nansur are the most ancient people of the Three Seas, descendants of the Ceneians of near antiquity and the Kyraneans of far antiquity. They live their lives in the shadow of monumental works and so feel compelled to erect monuments”—he opened his hands to the soaring marmoreal vaults—“such as this.”
He explains away the strength of his enemy’s house,
Kellhus realized.
He fears this place may overawe the Scylvendi.
Cnaiür grimaced and spat on the gloomy pastorals passing beneath their feet. Over a fat shoulder, the eunuch glared at him then nervously quickened his pace.
Proyas glanced at the Scylvendi, his disapproving eyes belied by a smirk. “Ordinarily, Cnaiür, I would not presume to amend your manners, but things may go better for us if you avoid spitting.”
At this, one of the more hard-humoured Palatines, Lord Ingiaban, laughed aloud. The Scylvendi squared his jaw but said nothing otherwise.
A week had passed since they had joined the Holy War and secured the hospitality of Nersei Proyas. In that time, Kellhus had spent long hours in the probability trance, assessing, extrapolating, and reassessing this extraordinary twist of circumstance. But the Holy War had proven incalculable. Nothing he’d thus far encountered could compare with the sheer number of variables it presented. Of course the nameless thousands who constituted its bulk were largely irrelevant, significant only in their sum, but the handful of men who were relevant, who would ultimately determine the Holy War’s fate, had remained inaccessible to him.
That would change in a matter of moments.
The great contest between the Emperor and the Great Names of the Holy War had come to a head. Offering Cnaiür as a substitute for Ikurei Conphas, Proyas had petitioned Maithanet to settle the dispute of the Emperor’s Indenture, and Ikurei Xerius III had accordingly invited all the Great Names to plead their case and hear the Shriah’s judgement. They were to meet in his Privy Gardens, sequestered somewhere within the gilded compounds of the Andiamine Heights.
One way or another, the Holy War was about to march on distant Shimeh.
Whether the Shriah sided with the Great Names and ordered the Emperor to provision the Holy War or with the Ikurei Dynasty and ordered the Great Names to sign the Imperial Indenture meant little to Kellhus. Either way it seemed the leaders of the Holy War would have competent counsel. The brilliance of Ikurei Conphas, the Nansur Exalt-General, was grudgingly acknowledged even by Proyas. And the intelligence of Cnaiür, as Kellhus knew first-hand, was beyond question. What mattered was that the Holy War eventually prevail against the Fanim, and bear him to Shimeh.
To his father. His mission.
Is this what you wanted, Father? Is this war to be my lesson?
“I wonder,” Xinemus said wryly, “what the Emperor will make of a Scylvendi drinking his wine and pinching his servants’ bums?”
The Prince and his fellow potentates rumbled with laughter.
“He’ll be too busy snapping his teeth in fury,” Proyas replied.
“I have little patience for these games,” Cnaiür said, and although the others heard this as a curious admission, Kellhus knew it to be a warning.
This will be his trial, and I’ll be tried through him.
“The games,” another Palatine, Lord Gaidekki, replied, “are about to end, my savage friend.”
As always, Cnaiür bristled at their patronizing tone. His nostrils even flared.
How much degradation will he bear to see my father dead?
“The game is never over,” Proyas asserted. “The game is without beginning or end.”
Without beginning or end . . .
 
Kellhus had been a boy of eleven the first time he heard this phrase. He’d been summoned from his training to a small shrine on the first terrace, where he was to meet Kessriga Jeükal. Even though Kellhus had already spent years minimizing his passions, the prospect of meeting Jeükal frightened him: he was one of the Pragma, the senior brethren of the Dûnyain, and meetings between such men and young boys usually resulted in anguish for the latter. The anguish of trial and revelation.
Sunlight fell in shafts between the shrine’s pillars, making the stone pleasantly warm beneath his small feet. Outside, under the ramparts of the first terrace, the poplars were combed by the mountain wind. Kellhus lingered in the light, feeling the bland warmth of the sun soak his gown and bare scalp.
“You have drunk your fill, as they directed you?” the Pragma asked. He was an old man, his face as empty of expression as the architecture of the shrine was devoid of flourish. One might have thought he stared at a stone rather than a boy, so blank was his expression.
“Yes, Pragma.”
“The Logos is without beginning or end, young Kellhus. Do you understand this?”
The instruction had begun.
“No, Pragma,” Kellhus replied. Though he still suffered fear and hope, he had long before overcome his compulsion to misrepresent the extent of his knowledge. A child had little choice when his teachers could see through faces.
“Thousands of years ago, when the Dûnyain first found—”
“After the ancient wars?” Kellhus eagerly interrupted. “When we were still refugees?”
The Pragma struck him, fiercely enough to send him rolling across the hard stone. Kellhus scrambled back to position and wiped the blood from his nose. But he felt little fear and even less regret. The blow was a lesson, nothing more. Among the Dûnyain, everything was a lesson.
The Pragma regarded him with utter dispassion. “Interruption is weakness, young Kellhus. It arises from the passions and not from the intellect. From the darkness that comes before.”
“I understand, Pragma.”
The cold eyes peered through him and saw this was true. “When the Dûnyain first found Ishuäl in these mountains, they knew only one principle of the Logos. What was that principle, young Kellhus?”
“That which comes before determines that which comes after.”
The Pragma nodded. “Two thousand years have passed, young Kellhus, and we still hold that principle true. Does that mean the principle of before and after, of cause and effect, has grown old?”
“No, Pragma.”
“And why is that? Do men not grow old and die? Do not even mountains age and crumble with time?”
“Yes, Pragma.”
“Then how can this principle not be old?”
“Because,” Kellhus answered, struggling to snuff a flare of pride, “the principle of before and after is nowhere to be found within the circuit of before and after. It is the
ground
of what is ‘young’ and what is ‘old,’ and so cannot itself be young or old.”
“Yes. The Logos is without beginning or end. And yet Man, young Kellhus, does possess a beginning and end—like all beasts. Why is Man distinct from other beasts?”
“Because like beasts, Man stands within the circuit of before and after, and yet he apprehends the Logos. He possesses intellect.”
“Indeed. And why, Kellhus, do the Dûnyain breed for intellect? Why do we so assiduously train young children such as you in the ways of thought, limb, and face?”
“Because of the Quandary of Man.”
“And what is the Quandary of Man?”
A bee had droned into the shrine, and now it etched drowsy, random circles beneath the vaults.
“That he is a beast, that his appetites arise from the darkness of his soul, that his world assails him with arbitrary circumstance, and yet he apprehends the Logos.”
“Precisely. And what is the solution to the Quandary of Man?”
“To be utterly free of bestial appetite. To utterly command the unfolding of circumstance. To be the perfect instrument of Logos and so attain the Absolute.”
“Yes, young Kellhus. And are you a perfect instrument of Logos?”
“No, Pragma.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I am afflicted by passions. I am my thoughts, but the sources of my thoughts exceed me. I do not own myself, because the darkness comes before me.”
“Indeed it does, child. What is the name we give to the dark sources of thought?”
“Legion. We call them the legion.”
The Pragma raised a palsied hand, as though to mark a crucial waystation in their pilgrimage. “Yes. You are about to embark, young Kellhus, on the most difficult stage of your Conditioning: the mastery of the legion within. Only by doing this will you be able to survive the Labyrinth.”
“This will answer the question of the Thousand Thousand Halls?”
“No. But it will enable you to ask properly.”
 
Somewhere near the summit of the Andiamine Heights, they passed through an ivory-panelled corridor then found themselves blinking in the Emperor’s Privy Garden.
Between paved lanes, the grass was soft and immaculate, dark beneath the shade of different trees, which formed spokes about a circular pool in the garden’s heart: a watery rendition of the Imperial Sun. Hibiscus, standing lotus, and aromatic shrubs thronged from plots adjacent to the lanes. Kellhus glimpsed hummingbirds sorting between blooms in the sunlight.
Where the public areas of the Imperial Precincts had been constructed to overawe guests with dimension and ostentation, the Privy Garden had been designed, Kellhus understood, to foster intimacy, to move visiting dignitaries with the gift of the Emperor’s confidence. This was a place of simplicity and elegance, the humble heart of the Emperor made earth and stone.
Gathered beneath cypress and tamarisk trees, the Inrithi lords—Galeoth, Tydonni, Ainoni, Thunyeri, and even some Nansur—stood in clots around what must have been the Emperor’s bench. Though decked in finery and lacking arms, they looked more like soldiers than courtiers. Pubescent slaves floated among them, their swelling breasts bare and their coltish legs glistening with oils, trays of wine and various delicacies swaying from their hips. Bowls were tipped back in toasts; greasy fingers were wiped on fine muslins and silks.

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