The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  In itself, the conjecture was comforting. It meant the Scarlet Spires’ agenda would not cross their own until the end—when it no longer mattered. It would be difficult for Eleäzaras to make good on his threat once he and his School were dead. But what bothered Conphas was the question of what had motivated Maithanet to call on the Scarlet Spires at all. Certainly, of all the Schools, it was the most apt to destroy the Cishaurim in an open confrontation. But on the face of it, Conphas could think of no School more unlikely to join a Holy War. And as far as Conphas knew, the Shriah had approached no other School—not even the Imperial Saik, which had been the traditional bulwark against the Cishaurim through the Jihads. Only the Scarlet Spires.

  Why?

  Unless Maithanet had somehow learned of their war. But this answer was even more troubling than the question. With nearly every imperial spy in Sumna now dead, they had plenty of reasons to be wary of Maithanet’s cunning as it was. But this! A Shriah who had penetrated the Schools? And the Scarlet Spires, no less.

  For not the first time, Conphas suspected that Maithanet, and not House Ikurei, occupied the centre of the Holy War’s web. But he dared not share his misgivings with his uncle, who tended to be even more stupid when afraid. Instead, he explored this fear on his own. No longer did he gloat over future glories in the dark hours before sleep. Rather, he fretted over implications that he could neither stomach nor verify.

  Maithanet. What game did he play? For that matter, who was he?

  The news arrived days afterward. The Vulgar Holy War had been annihilated.

  The reports were sketchy at first. Urgent messages from Asgilioch related the terrifying accounts of some dozen or so Galeoth who had managed to escape across the Unaras Spur. The Vulgar Holy War had been utterly overcome on the Plains of Mengedda. Shortly afterward, two couriers arrived from Kian, the one bearing the severed heads of Calmemunis, Tharschilka, and a man who may or may not have been Kumrezzer, the other bearing a secret message from Skauras himself, and delivered, as per the Sapatishah’s instructions, to his former hostage and ward, Ikurei Conphas. It simply read:We cannot count the carcasses of your idolatrous kin, so many have been felled by the fury of our righteous hand. Praise be the Solitary God. Know that House Ikurei has been heard.

  After dismissing the courier, Conphas spent several hours brooding over the message in his quarters. Again and again, the words rose of their own volition.

  . . . so many have been felled . . .

  We cannot count . . .

  Even though he was only twenty-seven years of age, Ikurei Conphas had seen the carnage of many fields of war—enough that he could almost see the masses of Inrithi sprawled and tangled across the Plains of Mengedda, their dead-fish eyes staring into earth or across endless sky. But it wasn’t guilt that moved his soul to ponder—and perhaps in a strange way even to grieve—it was the sheer scale of this first accomplished act. It was as though until now, the dimensions of his uncle’s plan had been too abstract for him to truly comprehend. Ikurei Conphas was in awe of what he and his uncle had done.

  . . . House Ikurei has been heard.

  The sacrifice of an entire army of men. Only the Gods dared such acts.

  We have been heard.

  Many, Conphas realized, would suspect it had been House Ikurei that had spoken, but no one would know. A strange pride settled through him then, a secret pride disconnected from the estimations of other men. In the annals of great events, there would be many accounts of this first tragic event of the Holy War. Responsibility for this catastrophe would be heaped upon Calmemunis and the other Great Names. In the ancestor lists of their descendants, they would be names of shame and scorn.

  There would be no mention of Ikurei Conphas.

  For an instant, Conphas felt like a thief, the hidden author of a great loss. And the exhilaration he felt almost possessed a sexual intensity. He saw clearly now why he so loved this species of war. On the field of battle, his every act was open to the scrutiny of others. Here, however, he stood outside scrutiny, enacted destiny from a place that transcended judgement or recrimination. He lay hidden in the womb of events.

  Like a God.

  PART III:

  The Harlot

  CHAPTER NINE

  SUMNA

  And the Nonman King cried words that sting:

  “Now to me you must confess,

  For death above you hovers!”

  And the Emissary answered ever wary:

  “We are the race of flesh,

  We are the race of lovers.”

  —“BALLAD OF THE INCHOROI,” ANCIENT KÛNIÜRI FOLK SONG

  Early Winter, 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk, Sumna

  “Will you come next week?” Esmenet asked Psammatus, watching him pull his white silk tunic over his head then down across his stomach and his still-shining phallus. She sat naked in her bed, sheets bundled about her knees.

  Psammatus paused, absently smoothing away wrinkles. He looked at her with pity. “I fear this is my last visit, Esmi.”

  Esmenet nodded. “You’ve found someone else. Someone younger.”

  “I’m sorry, Esmi.”

  “No. Don’t be sorry. Whores know better than to pout like wives.”

  Psammatus smiled but did not reply. Esmenet watched him retrieve his gown and his lavish gold-and-white vestments. There was something touching and reverent in the way he dressed. He even paused to kiss the golden tusks embroidered across each of his flowing sleeves. She would miss Psammatus, miss his willowy silver hair and his fatherly face. She would even miss the gentle way he coupled. I’m becoming an old whore, she thought. One more reason for Akka to abandon me.

  Inrau was dead, and Achamian had left Sumna a broken man. After all these days, she still caught her breath at the memory of his departure. She’d begged him to take her with him. In the end she’d even wept and fallen to her knees: “Please, Akka! I need you!” But this was a lie, she knew, and the bewildered resentment in his eyes meant he knew as well. She was a prostitute, and prostitutes hardened themselves to men, all men, out of necessity. No. As much as she feared losing Achamian, what she feared more was the prospect of returning to her old life, to the endless succession of hunger, anguished glares, and spilt seed. She wanted the Schools! The Great Factions! She wanted Achamian, yes, but she wanted his life more.

  And this was the irony that held her breathless. For even in the midst of enjoying that new life through Achamian, she’d been unable to relinquish the old. “You say you love me,” Achamian had cried, “and yet you still take custom. Tell me why, Esmi! Why?”

  Because I knew you would leave me. All of you leave me . . . all the ones I love.

  “Esmi,” Psammatus was saying. “Esmi. Please don’t cry, my sweet. I’ll return next week. I promise.”

  She shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes. Said nothing.

  Weeping for a man! I’m stronger than this!

  Psammatus sat beside her to bind his sandals. He looked pensive, even scared. Men such as Psammatus, she knew, came to whores to escape uncomfortable passions as much as to glut them.

  “Have you heard of a young priest named Inrau?” she asked, hoping to at once set him at ease and carry on a pathetic remnant of her life with Achamian.

  “Yes, I have, in fact,” Psammatus replied, his profile both puzzled and relieved. “He’s the one they say committed suicide.”

  The same thing the others said. News of Inrau’s death had caused a great scandal in the Hagerna. “Suicide. You’re certain of this?” What if it’s true? What will you do then, Akka?

  “I’m certain that’s what they say.” He turned and looked at her sombrely, running a finger down her cheek. Then he stood and hooked his blue cloak—the one he used to conceal his vestments—on his arm.

  “Leave the door open, would you?” Esmenet asked.

  He nodded. “Well met, Esmi.”

  “Well met.”

  In the gathering shadows of evening, Esmenet stretched naked across
the sheets and drowsed for a short time, her thoughts wheeling through regret after regret. Inrau’s death. Achamian’s flight. And as always, her daughter . . . When her eyes fluttered open, a figure darkened her door. Someone waiting.

  “Who are you?” she asked wearily. She cleared her throat. Without a word, the man walked to the side of her bed. He was tall, even statuesque, wearing a coal black coat over a silvered brigandine and a black tunic of crushed damask. A new customer, she thought, looking into his face with the innocence of the recently awakened. A beautiful one.

  “Twelve talents,” she said, leaning up from the covers. “Or a half-silver if you—”

  He slapped her—hard. Esmenet’s head snapped back and to the side. She fell face first from her bed.

  The man cackled. “You’re not a twelve-talent whore. Decidedly not.”

  Her ears ringing, Esmenet scrambled on all fours and threw her back against the wall.

  The man sat on the end of her crude bed and began pulling off his leather gloves finger by finger. “As a matter of etiquette, one should never begin a relationship with lies, whore. It sets a unfortunate precedent.”

  “We have a relationship?” she asked breathlessly. The entire left side of her face was numb.

  “Through a mutual acquaintance, yes.” His eyes lingered on her breasts for a moment before flickering between her thighs. Esmenet allowed her knees to part a bit more, as though an accident of exhaustion.

  “And who would that be?” she asked, heart hammering in her chest.

  The man gazed below her navel with the shamelessness of a slave-owner. “A certain Mandate Schoolman”—he drew his eyes up as though from a reverie—“named Drusas Achamian.”

  Akka. You knew this would happen.

  “I know him,” she said cautiously, resisting the urge to once again ask the man who he was.

  Don’t ask questions. Ignorance is life.

  Instead she said, “What do you want to know?” She let her knees drift farther apart.

  Be the whore . . .

  “Everything,” the man replied with a heavy-lidded smirk. “I want to know everything, and everyone, he has known.”

  “It’ll cost,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “Both will cost.”

  You must sell him.

  “Why am I not surprised? Ah, business. It makes everything so straightforward, does it not?” He hummed under his breath as he rooted through his purse. “Here . . . Eleven copper talents. Six to betray your body, and five to betray the Schoolman.” A savage grin. “A fair estimation of their relative worth, don’t you think?”

  “A half-silver, at least,” she said. “For each.”

  Barter . . . Be the whore.

  “Such conceit!” he replied, nevertheless dipping two pale fingers back into his purse. “How about one of these?”

  She looked at the shining gold with frank hunger.

  “It’ll do,” she said, her mouth dry.

  The man grinned. “I imagined as much.”

  The coin disappeared and he began undressing, watching her with feral honesty as she hastened to light candles against the evening gloom.

  When the time came, there was something animal in his proximity, a smell or heat that spoke directly to her body. He cupped her left breast in a heavy, callused hand, and any illusion she had had of using his lust as a weapon evaporated. His presence was overwhelming. As he lowered her to the bed, she feared she might swoon.

  Be compliant . . .

  He knelt before her and effortlessly pulled her raised hips and spread legs across his thighs. And she found herself aching for the moment she had feared. Then he was inside. She cried out. What’s he doing to me? What’s he doing—

  He began moving. His mastery of her body was inhuman. Soon one gasping moment slurred into another. When he caressed her, her skin was like water, alive with shivers that rippled across her, through her. She began writhing, grinding against him with desperation, moaning through clenched teeth, drunk with nightmarish ecstasy. Through her pained eyes he seemed her burning centre, blurring into her, flooding her with rapture after rapture, thrust after thrust. Time and again, he would bring her to the ringing brink of climax, only to pause, and ask questions, endless questions . . .

  “And what precisely did Inrau say about Maithanet?”

  “Don’t stop . . . Pleaase.”

  “What did he say?”

  Tell the truth.

  She remembered trying to pull his face down to her own, gasping, “Kiss me . . . Kiss me.”

  She remembered his thick chest pressing against her breasts, and shuddering, crumbling beneath him as though made of sand.

  She remembered lying still and sweaty with him, panting for air, feeling the thick throb of his heart through his member, his slightest movement like lightning between her thighs, an agonizing bliss that made her weep and groan with wild abandon.

  And she remembered answering his questions with the urgency of pounding hips. Anything! I would give you anything!

  When she climaxed for the final time, she felt as though she’d been pitched from a precipice, and she heard her own husky shrieks as though from afar, shrill against the thunder of his dragon roar.

  Then he withdrew and she felt ransacked, her limbs trembling, her skin numb and cold with sweat. Two of the candles were gutted, but the room was illuminated in grey light. How long?

  He was standing above her, his godlike frame shining in the glow of the remaining candle. “Morning comes,” he said.

  The golden coin fluttered in his hand, bewitching her with its glitter. He held it above her and let it slip between his fingers. It plopped onto the sticky pools across her belly. She glanced down and gasped in horror.

  His seed was black.

  “Shush,” he said, gathering his finery. “Say a word of this to no one. Do you understand, whore?”

  “I understand,” she managed, tears now streaming. What have I done?

  She stared at the coin and the Emperor’s profile across it, remote and golden against downy pubic hair and slopes of bare skin—skin threaded and smeared by glistening pitch. Bile flooded the back of her throat. The room became brighter. He’s opening the shutters. But when she looked up, he was gone. She heard the arid slap of wings receding into the dawn.

  Cool morning air rushed through the room, rinsing away the stench of inhuman rutting. But he smelled of myrrh.

  Esmenet rolled over and vomited across the floor.

  Some time passed before she managed to wash, dress, and leave her room. When she stumbled into the street, she knew she could never return. She weathered the pungent crush of others—the custom district was adjacent to the ever-packed Ecosium Market—feeling curiously alive to the sights and sounds of her city: coppersmiths hammering; the cry of a one-eyed man proclaiming the curative power of his sulphur products; barking dogs; the insistent begging of a man without legs; another man calling out the names of his meats; the harsh shouts of mule drivers beating their teams until they screamed. Unending sounds. And a welter of smells: dry summer stone, incense, the tug of roasting meat, feces, and smoke—everywhere the smell of smoke.

  A brisk morning vigour animated the market, and she passed through the crowds like a weary shadow. To its pith, her body ached, and she found walking painful. She clutched the gold coin tightly, periodically exchanging hands to wipe her palms of sweat. She stared numbly at things and people: at a cracked amphora bleeding oil across a vendor’s mat; at young Galeoth slave girls negotiating the masses with downcast eyes and woven baskets of grain perched upon their heads; at a haggard dog, alert and peering through thickets of scissoring legs; at the hazy profile of the Junriüma rising in the distance. She stared and she thought, Sumna.

  She loved her city, but she had to escape.

  Achamian had told her that this might happen, that if Inrau had in fact been murdered, then men might come to her, looking for him.

  “If that happens, Esmi, then whatever you do, don’t ask
questions. You don’t want to know anything about them, understand? Ignorance is life . . . Be compliant. Be the whore all the way down. Barter, as a whore barters. And above all, you must sell me, Esmi. You must tell them everything you know. And tell them the truth, for they likely know much of it already. Do these things, and you’ll survive.”

  “But why?”

  “Because spies prize a weak and mercantile soul above all other things, Esmi. They’ll spare you on the chance you might prove valuable. Hide your strength, and you will survive.”

  “But what about you, Akka? What if they learn something they can use to injure you?”

  “I’m a Schoolman, Esmi,” he had replied. “A Mandate Schoolman.”

  At last, through a screen of passing people, she saw a little girl standing barefoot in dusty sunlight. She would do. With large brown eyes the girl watched Esmenet approach, too wary to return her smile. She clutched a stick to the breast of her threadbare shift.

  I survived, Akka. And I did not survive.

  Esmenet stooped before the child and astounded her with the gold talent.

  “Here,” she said, pressing it into small palms.

  So like my daughter.

  Alone and on muleback, Achamian descended into the valley of Sudica. He had taken this route south from Sumna to Momemn on a whim, or so he had thought, hoping only to avoid the heavily cultivated lands nearer the coast. Sudica had not been peopled for a very long time. It was home only to shepherds, their flocks of sheep, and ruins.

  The day was clear and surprisingly warm. Nansur was not a dry country, but its character was such that it always reminded Achamian of one. Its people were densely clustered around the rivers and the coasts, leaving large expanses of land that were inhospitable only because of their vulnerability to the Scylvendi.

  Sudica was such a place. In the days of Kyraneas, Achamian had read, it had been one of the great provinces, the birthplace of generals and of ruling dynasties. Now there were only sheep and half-buried stone. Whatever country Achamian found himself in, it seemed he would search out places like these, places that slumbered, that dreamed of ancient times. This was a habit shared by a great many of the Mandate, a deep obsession with blasted monuments of word or stone—so deep they would often find themselves walking through ruined temples or wandering into the library of a learned host without recalling why. It had made them the chroniclers of the Three Seas. For them to wander among half-walls and fallen pillars, or through the words of an ancient treatise, was in a way to travel in peace with their other memories, to be one man instead of two.