The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  “Because of the Cishaurim.”

  Again the Cishaurim.

  “I fear I don’t follow you, old teacher. Surely it would be easier for the Inrithi to war against Kian, a nation with only one School—if the Cishaurim can be called such—than for them to war against all the Schools.”

  Simas nodded. “On the face of things, perhaps. But think on it, Achamian. We estimate that the Thousand Temples itself has some four to five thousand Chorae, which means it could field at least as many men immune to whatever sorceries we could muster. Add to that all of the Inrithi lords who also bear Trinkets, and Maithanet could field an army of perhaps ten thousand men who would be immune to us in every way.”

  In the Three Seas, Chorae were a crucial variable in the algebra of war. In so many ways the Few were like Gods compared with the masses. Only the Chorae prevented the Schools from utterly dominating the Three Seas.

  “Certainly,” Achamian replied, “but Maithanet could likewise field those men against the Cishaurim. However different the Cishaurim may be, they seem to share our vulnerabilities at least.”

  “Could he?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because between those men and the Cishaurim would stand all the armed might of Kian. The Cishaurim are not a School, old friend. They don’t stand apart, as we do, from the faith and people of their nation. While the Holy War struggled to overcome the heathen Grandees of Kian, the Cishaurim would rain ruin upon them.” Simas lowered his chin as though testing his beard against his breastbone. “Do you see?”

  Achamian could see. He had dreamed of such a battle before—the Fords of Tywanrae, where the hosts of ancient Akssersia had burned in the fires of the Consult. At the mere thought of this tragic battle, images flashed before his eyes, shadowy men thrashing in waters, consumed in towering bonfires . . . How many had been lost at the fords?

  “Like Tywanrae,” Achamian whispered.

  “Like Tywanrae,” Simas replied, his voice both solemn and gentle. They had all shared this nightmare. The Schoolmen of the Mandate shared every nightmare.

  Throughout this exchange, Nautzera had regarded them narrowly. Like a Prophet of the Tusk, his judgement was palpable—except where prophets saw sinners, Nautzera saw fools. “And as I said,” the old man remarked, “this Maithanet is shrewd, a man of intellect. Surely he knows he cannot win a Holy War against the Fanim.”

  Achamian stared blankly at the sorcerer. His earlier exhilaration had fled, replaced by a cold and dank fear. Another Scholastic War . . . The thought of Tywanrae had shown him the terrifying dimensions of such a prospect.

  “This is why I’ve been recalled from High Ainon? To prepare for this new Shriah’s Holy War?”

  “No,” Nautzera replied decisively. “We’ve simply told you the reasons why we fear that Maithanet might call his Holy War against us. Ultimately, we don’t know what he plans.”

  “Indeed,” Simas added. “Between the Schools and the Fanim, the Fanim are undoubtedly the greatest threat to the Thousand Temples. Shimeh has been lost to the heathens for centuries, and the Empire is but a frail shadow of what it once was, while Kian has become the mightiest power in the Three Seas. No. It would be far more rational for the Shriah to declare the Fanim the object of his Holy War—”

  “But,” Nautzera interjected, “we all know that faith is no friend to reason. The distinction between the rational and the irrational means little when one speaks of the Thousand Temples.”

  “You’re sending me to Sumna,” Achamian said. “To discover Maithanet’s true intent.”

  A wicked smile creased Nautzera’s dyed beard. “Yes.”

  “But what good could I do? It’s been years since I’ve been to Sumna. I’ve no more contacts there.” This was true or untrue depending upon how one defined “contacts.” There was a woman he knew in Sumna—Esmenet. But that had been a long time ago.

  And there was also—Achamian was arrested by the thought. Could they know?

  “But this isn’t true,” Nautzera replied. “In fact, Simas has informed us of that student of yours who”—he paused, as though searching for a term to deal with a matter too dreadful for polite conversation—“defected.”

  Simas? He looked to his old teacher. Why would you tell them?

  Achamian spoke cautiously. “You refer to Inrau.”

  “Yes,” Nautzera replied. “And this Inrau has become, or so I am told”—again a glance at Simas—“a Shrial Priest.” His tone was thick with censure. Your student, Achamian. Your betrayal.

  “You’re too harsh, as always, Nautzera. Inrau was cursed: born with the sensitivities of the Few and yet with the sensibilities of a priest. Our ways would have killed him.”

  “Ah, yes . . . sensibilities,” the old face replied. “But tell us, clearly if you could, your estimation of this former student. Has he crossed the pale, or might the Mandate retrieve him?”

  “Could he be made our spy? Is this what you ask?”

  Inrau a spy? Obviously Simas had compounded his betrayal by not telling them anything of Inrau.

  “I thought it evident,” Nautzera said.

  Achamian paused, looked to Simas, whose face had become discouragingly serious.

  “Answer him, Akka,” his old teacher said.

  “No,” Achamian replied, turning back to Nautzera. Suddenly his heart felt a stone. “No. Inrau was born on the far side of the pale. He won’t return.”

  Cold amusement—so bitter on such an old face. “Ah, Achamian, but he will.”

  Achamian knew what they demanded: the sorceries, and the betrayal they would entail. He had been close to Inrau, had promised to protect him. They had been . . . close.

  “No,” he replied, “I refuse. Inrau’s spirit is frail. He doesn’t have the mettle to do what you’re asking. We need someone else.”

  “There is no one else.”

  “Nevertheless,” he replied, only beginning to grasp the consequences of his rashness, “I refuse.”

  “You refuse?” Nautzera spat. “Because this priest is a weakling? Achamian, you must stifle the mother in—”

  “Achamian acts out of loyalty, Nautzera,” Simas interrupted. “Don’t confuse the two.”

  “Loyalty?” Nautzera snapped. “But this is the very heart of the issue, Simas! What we share is incomprehensible to other men. As one we cry out in our sleep. With such a bond—like a vice!—how can loyalty to another be anything short of sedition?”

  “Sedition?” Achamian exclaimed, knowing he had to proceed carefully. Such words were like casks of wine: once unstopped, things tended to deteriorate.“You mistake me—both of you. I refuse out of loyalty to the Mandate. Inrau is too frail. We risk alienating the Thousand—”

  “Such a weak lie,” Nautzera growled. He then laughed, as though realizing that he should have expected this impertinence all along. “Schools spy, Achamian. We are alienated in advance. But you know this.” The old sorcerer turned away from him and warmed his fingers over the coals of a nearby brazier. Orange light trimmed his grand figure, sketched his narrow lines against colossal works of stone. “Tell me, Achamian, if this Maithanet and the threat of a Holy War against the Schools is the work of our—to put it mildly—elusive adversary, would not Inrau’s delicate life, or for that matter the Mandate’s fine reputation, be worth throwing into the balance?”

  “If, Nautzera,” he replied vaguely, “then certainly.”

  “Ah, yes. I’d forgotten that you numbered yourself among the sceptics. What is it you say? That we pursue ghosts.” He held the word in his mouth, as though it were a morsel of questionable food. “I guess, then, you would say that a possibility, that we’re witnessing the first signs of the No-God’s return, is outweighed by an actuality, the life of a defector—that rolling the dice of apocalypse is worth the pulse of a fool.”

  Yes, that was precisely how he felt. But how could he admit as much?

  “I’m prepared to be sanctioned,” he tried to say evenly. But his voice! Churlish. Wound
ed. “I’m not frail.”

  Nautzera studied his face. “Sceptics,” he snorted. “You all make the same error. You confuse us with the other Schools. But do we vie for power? Do we scurry around palaces, placing Wards and sniffing sorceries like dogs? Do we whine into the ears of Emperors or Kings? In the absence of the Consult, you confuse our actions with those who act for no purpose save that of power and its childish gratifications. You confuse us with the whores.”

  Could it be? No. He’d thought it through many times. Unlike the others, those like Nautzera, he could distinguish his age from the one he dreamt night after night. He could see the difference. The Mandate was not merely poised between epochs—it was poised between dreams and waking life. When the sceptics, those who thought the Consult had abandoned the Three Seas, looked at the Mandate, they saw not a School compromised by worldly ambition but the opposite: a School not in this world at all. The “mandate,” which was the mandate of history after all, was not to wage a dead war, or to sanctify a long-dead sorcerer driven mad by that war’s horrors, but to learn—to live from the past, not in it.

  “Would you argue philosophy with me, then, Nautzera?” he asked, matching the man’s fierce glare. “Before you were too harsh, but now you’re simply too stupid.”

  Nautzera blinked in astonishment.

  Simas hastily interceded. “I understand your reluctance, old friend. I too have my doubts—as you know.” He looked pointedly at Nautzera, who continued to stare at Achamian in disbelief.

  “There’s strength in scepticism,” Simas continued. “Those who believe thoughtlessly in dangerous times are the first to die. But these are dangerous times, Achamian. More so than in many, many years. Perhaps dangerous enough to be sceptical even of our scepticism, hmm?”

  Achamian turned to him, caught by something in his tone.

  Simas’s gaze faltered. A small struggle darkened his face. He continued.

  “You’ve noticed how intense the Dreams have become. I can see that much in your eyes. We’ve all become a little wild-eyed as of late . . . Something . . .” He paused, unfocused his eyes as though counting his own heartbeat. Achamian felt his hackles rise. He’d never seen Simas like this. Indecisive. Frightened, even.

  “Ask yourself, Achamian,” he said finally, “if our adversary, the Consult, were to seize power in the Three Seas, what vehicle would be more effective than the Thousand Temples? Where better to hide from us and yet wield incredible power? And what better way to destroy the Mandate, the last memory of the Apocalypse, than by declaring a Holy War against the Few? Imagine Men waging war against the No-God without us to guide and protect them.”

  Without Seswatha.

  Achamian stared for a long moment at his old teacher. His doubt must have been plain for everyone to see. Nevertheless, images from the Dreams came to him—a trickle of small horrors. Seswatha’s internment at Dagliash. The crucifixion. The glint of sunlight across the bronze nails through his forearms. Mekeritrig’s lips reciting the Cants of Agony. His shrieks . . . His? But that was just it: these memories weren’t his! They belonged to another, to Seswatha, whose suffering must be seen through if they were to have any hope of moving on.

  And yet Simas watched him so strangely, his eyes curious with their own indecision. Something had changed. The Dreams had grown more intense. Relentless. So much so that any lapse in concentration saw the present swept away in some past trauma, at times horrific enough to make one’s hands shake, one’s mouth form around voiceless cries. The chance that such horror could return. Was it worth sacrificing Inrau, his love? The boy who had so eased his weary heart. Who had taught him to taste the air he breathed . . . Curse! The Mandate was a curse! Dispossessed of the God. Dispossessed even of the present. Only the clawing, choking fear that the future might resemble the past.

  “Simas—” he began, but stumbled. He wanted to concede, but the mere fact that Nautzera stood in his periphery silenced him. Have I grown so petty?

  Tumultuous times, certainly. A new Shriah, the Inrithi feverish with renewed faith, the possibility that the Scholastic Wars could be revived, the sudden violence of the Dreams . . .

  These are the times I live in. All this happens now.

  It seemed impossible.

  “You understand our imperative as profoundly as any of us,” Simas said quietly. “And the stakes. Inrau was with us for a short time. He might be made to understand—without Cants, perhaps.”

  “Besides,” Nautzera added, “if you refuse to go, you merely force us to send someone—how should I put it?—less sentimental.”

  Achamian stood alone on the parapets. Even here, on the turrets overlooking the straits, he felt oppressed by the stonework of Atyersus, diminished by the cyclopean walls. The sea offered little compensation.

  Things had happened so quickly, as though he’d been grasped by giant hands, rolled between palms, and then cast into a different direction. Different, but always the same. Drusas Achamian had worn many tracks across the Three Seas, had discarded many sandals, and never once had he even glimpsed that which he supposedly hunted. Absence—always the same absence.

  The interview had gone on. It seemed obligatory that any audience with the Quorum be prolonged, weighted with ritual and insufferable seriousness. Perhaps such seriousness was appropriate to the Mandate, Achamian supposed, given the nature of the war—if groping in blackness could be called such.

  Even after Achamian had capitulated, had agreed to recruit Inrau by means fair and foul, Nautzera had found it necessary to chastise him for his reluctance.

  “How could you forget, Achamian?” the old sorcerer had implored, his expression at once sour and beseeching. “The Old Names still watch from the towers of Golgotterath—and where do they look? To the North? The North is wilderness, Achamian. Sranc and ruin. No. They look south—to us!—and plot with a patience that beggars the intellect. Only the Mandate shares that patience. Only the Mandate remembers.”

  “Perhaps the Mandate,” Achamian had replied, “remembers too much.”

  But now he could only think, Have I forgotten?

  The Schoolmen of the Mandate could never forget what had happened—the violence of Seswatha’s Dreams ensured that much. But if anything, the civilization of the Three Seas was insistent. The Thousand Temples, the Scarlet Spires, all the Great Factions warred interminably across the Three Seas. In the midst of such a labyrinth, the significance of the past might easily be forgotten. The more crowded the concerns of the present, the more difficult it became to see the ways in which the past portended the future.

  Had his concern for Inrau, a student like a son, led him to forget this?

  Achamian fully understood the geometry of Nautzera’s world. It had once been his own. For Nautzera, there was no present, only the clamour of a harrowing past and the threat of a corresponding future. For Nautzera, the present had receded to a point, had become the precarious fulcrum whereby history leveraged destiny. A mere formality.

  And why not? The anguish of the Old Wars was beyond description. Almost all the great cities of the Ancient North had fallen to the No-God and his Consult. The Great Library of Sauglish ransacked. Trysë, the holy Mother-of-Cities, plundered of life. The Towers of Myclai pulled down. Dagliash, Kelmeol . . . Entire nations put to the sword.

  For Nautzera, this Maithanet was significant not because he was Shriah but because he might belong to this world without a present, this world whose only frame of reference was past tragedy. Because he might be an author of the Second Apocalypse.

  A Holy War against the Schools? The Shriah an agent of the Consult?

  How could he not tremble at these thoughts?

  Despite the warm wind, Achamian shivered. Below him, the sea heaved through the straits. Dark rollers warred against one another, clashed with unearthly momentum, as though the very Gods warred beneath.

  Inrau . . . For Achamian, to think this name was to know peace for a fleeting instant. He had known so little peace in his life. And now he w
as forced to throw that peace onto the scales with terror. He must sacrifice Inrau in order to answer these questions.

  Inrau had been a coltish adolescent when he’d first come to Achamian, a boy still blinking in the daybreak of manhood. Though there had been nothing extraordinary about his appearance or his intellect, Achamian had immediately recognized something different about him—a memory, perhaps, of the first student he’d loved, Nersei Proyas. But where Proyas had grown proud, overfed on the knowledge that he would someday be King, Inrau had remained . . . Inrau.

  Teachers found many self-serving reasons to love their students. More than anything, they loved them simply because they listened. But Achamian had not loved Inrau as a student. Inrau, he’d realized, was good. Not good in the jaded way of the Mandate, who trafficked in the mire as did all other men. No. The good he saw in Inrau had nothing to do with kind acts or praiseworthy purposes; it was something innate. Inrau harboured no secrets, no shadowy need to conceal faults or to write himself large in the estimation of other men. He was open in the way of children and fools, and he possessed the same blessed naïveté, an innocence that smacked of wisdom rather than ignorance.

  Innocence. If there was anything Achamian had forgotten, it was innocence.

  How could he not fall in love with such a boy? He could remember standing with him in this very place, watching silver sunlight roll across the back of swell after swell. “The sun!” Inrau had cried. And when Achamian had asked him what he meant, Inrau had merely laughed and said: “Can’t you see? Can’t you see the sun?” And then Achamian had seen: lines of liquid sunlight, dazzling the watery distance—an inexhaustible glory.

  Beauty. This was Inrau’s gift. He never ceased to see beauty, and because of this, he always understood, always saw through and forgave the many blemishes that marred other men. With Inrau, forgiveness preceded rather than followed transgression. Do what you will, his eyes said, for you are already forgiven.