The Darkness that Comes Before (84 page)

Read The Darkness that Comes Before Online

Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
13.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“You lie!” he cried to the Grandmaster. “This must be sorcery! I feel it! I feel its poison in the air! This room
reeks of it!
” He thrust the terrified man to the ground. “You’ve bought this slave!” he shrieked, gesturing to the ashen-faced Skaleteas. “Eh, Cememketri? Unclean, blasphemous cur! Is this
your
doing? The Saik would be the Scarlet Spires of the West, no? Make a
puppet
of their Emperor!”
Xerius stopped short, yanked from his accusations by the sight of Conphas at the entrance. The Mandate sorcerer stood at his side. Cememketri’s attendants hastily pulled the Grandmaster to his feet.
“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.

Other books

Salvation by Igni, Aeon
The Arrangement by Felice Stevens
No Cure for Murder by Lawrence Gold
The Disappearance of Grace by Vincent Zandri
Waterland by Graham Swift
Deep Six by Clive Cussler
I Am God by Giorgio Faletti
It's No Picnic by Kenneth E. Myers