The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  But this Skeaös baffled him. Where he saw through others, he saw only the mimicry of depth in the old man’s face. The nuanced musculature that produced his expression was unrecognizable—as though moored to different bones.

  This man had not been trained in the manner of the Dûnyain. Rather, his face was not a face.

  Moments passed, incongruities accumulated, were classified, cobbled into hypothetical alternatives . . .

  Limbs. Slender limbs folded and pressed into the simulacrum of a face.

  Kellhus blinked, and his senses leapt back into their proper proportion. How was this possible? Sorcery? If so, it possessed nothing of the strange torsion he’d experienced with the Nonman he’d battled so long ago. Sorcery, Kellhus had realized, was inexplicably grotesque—like the scribblings of a child across a work of art—though he did not know why. All he knew was that he could distinguish sorcery from the world and sorcerers from common men. This was among the many mysteries that had motivated his study of Drusas Achamian.

  This face, he was relatively certain, had nothing to do with sorcery. But then how?

  What is this man?

  Abruptly, Skeaös’s eyes flashed to his own. The rutted brow clenched into a false frown.

  Kellhus nodded in the amicable and embarrassed way of one caught staring at another. But in his periphery he glimpsed the Emperor looking toward him in alarm, then whirling to scrutinize his Counsel.

  Ikurei Xerius had not known this face differed, Kellhus realized. None of them knew.

  The study deepens, Father. Always it deepens.

  “As a youth,” Proyas was saying, “I was tutored by a Mandate Schoolman, Conphas. He’d say you’re rather optimistic about the Scylvendi.”

  Several laughed openly at this—relieved.

  “Mandate stories,” Conphas said evenly, “are worthless.”

  “Perhaps,” Proyas replied, “but of a par with Nansur stories.”

  “But that’s not the question, Proyas,” old Gothyelk said, his accent so thick that his Sheyic was barely comprehensible. “The question is, how can we trust this heathen?”

  Proyas turned to the Scylvendi at his side, suddenly hesitant.

  “Then what of it, Cnaiür?” he asked.

  Throughout the exchange, Cnaiür had remained silent, doing little to conceal his contempt. Now he spat in Conphas’s direction.

  No thought.

  The boy extinguished. Only a place.

  This place.

  Motionless, the Pragma sat facing him, the bare soles of his feet flat against each other, his dark frock scored by the shadows of deep folds, his eyes as empty as the child they watched.

  A place without breath or sound. A place of sight alone. A place without before or after . . . almost.

  For the first lances of sunlight careered over the glacier, as ponderous as great tree limbs in the wind. Shadows hardened and light gleamed across the Pragma’s ancient skull.

  The old man’s left hand forsook his right sleeve, bearing a watery knife. And like a rope in water, his arm pitched outward, fingertips trailing across the blade as the knife swung languidly into the air, the sun skating and the dark shrine plunging across its mirror back . . .

  And the place where Kellhus had once existed extended an open hand—the blond hairs like luminous filaments against tanned skin—and grasped the knife from stunned space.

  The slap of pommel against palm triggered the collapse of place into little boy. The pale stench of his body. Breath, sound, and lurching thoughts.

  I have been legion . . .

  In his periphery, he could see the spike of the sun ease from the mountain. He felt drunk with exhaustion. In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand. Cause everywhere, but amid countless minute happenings—diffuse, useless.

  Now I understand.

  “You would sound me,” Cnaiür said at length. “Make clear the riddle of the Scylvendi heart. But you use your own hearts to map mine. You see a man abased before you, Xunnurit. A man bound to me by kinship of blood. What an offence this must be, you say. His heart must cry for vengeance. And you say this because your heart would so cry. But my heart is not your heart. This is why it is a riddle to you.

  “Xunnurit is not a name of shame to the People. It is not even a name. He who does not ride among us is not us. He is other. But you, who mistake your heart for mine—who see only two Scylvendi, one broken, one erect—think he must still belong to me. You think his degradation is my own, and that I would avenge this. Conphas would have you think this. Why else would Xunnurit be among us? What better way to discredit the strong man than by making a broken man his double? Perhaps it is the Nansur heart that should be sounded.”

  “But our heart is Inrithi,” Conphas said scathingly. “It’s already known.”

  “Yes it is,” Saubon said fiercely. “It would seize the Holy War from the God and make it its own.”

  “No!” Conphas spat. “My heart would save the Holy War for the God. Save it from this abominable dog, and save you from your folly. The Scylvendi are anathema!”

  “As are the Scarlet Spires!” Saubon retorted, advancing toward Conphas. “Would you have us cast them out as well?”

  “That’s different,” Conphas snapped. “The Men of the Tusk need the Scarlet Spires . . . Without them, the Cishaurim would destroy us.”

  Saubon paused a few paces away from the High General. He looked lean, wolfish. “The Inrithi need this Scylvendi as well. This is what you tell us, Conphas. We must be saved from our own folly on the field of battle.”

  “Calmemunis and your kinsman Tharschilka have told you that, fool. With their death on the Plains of Mengedda.”

  “Calmemunis,” Saubon spat. “Tharschilka . . . Rabble marching with rabble.”

  “Tell me, Conphas,” Proyas asked. “Did you not know that Calmemunis was doomed beforehand? If so, why did the Emperor provision him?”

  “None of this is to the point!” Conphas cried.

  He lies, Kellhus realized. They knew the Vulgar Holy War would be destroyed. They wanted it to be destroyed . . . Suddenly Kellhus understood that the outcome of this debate was in fact paramount to his mission. The Ikureis had sacrificed an entire host in order to strengthen their claim over the Holy War. What further disaster would they manufacture once it became an inconvenience?

  “The question,” Conphas ardently continued, “is whether you can trust a Scylvendi to lead you against the Kianene!”

  “But that isn’t the question,” Proyas countered. “The question is whether we can trust a Scylvendi over you.”

  “But how could this even be an issue?” Conphas implored. “Trust a Scylvendi over me?” He laughed harshly. “This is madness!”

  “Your madness, Conphas,” Saubon grated, “and your uncle’s . . . If it weren’t for your fucking forecasts of doom and your thrice-damned Indenture, none of this would be an issue!”

  “But it’s our land you would seize! The blood of our ancestors smeared across every plain, every hillock, and you would begrudge us our claim?”

  “It’s the God’s land, Ikurei,” Proyas said cuttingly. “The very land of the Latter Prophet. Or would you put the pathetic annals of Nansur before the Tractate? Before our Lord, Inri Sejenus?”

  Conphas remained silent for a moment, gauging these words. One did not, Kellhus realized, lightly enter a contest of piety with Nersei Proyas.

  “And who are you, Proyas, to ask this question?” Conphas returned, rallying his earlier calm. “Hmm? You who would put a heathen—a Scylvendi, no less!—before Sejenus.”

  “We are all instruments of the Gods, Ikurei. Even a heathen—a Scylvendi, no less—can be an instrument, if such is the God’s will.”

  “Would we guess at God’s will, then? Eh, Proyas?”

  “That, Ikurei, is Maithanet’s task.” Proyas turned to Gotian, who had been watching them keen
ly all this time. “What does Maithanet say, Gotian? Tell us. What says the Shriah?”

  The Grandmaster’s hands were clenched about the ivory canister. He held the answer, everyone knew, within his straining hands. His expression was hesitant. He remains undecided. He despises the Emperor, distrusts him, but he fears that Proyas’s solution is too radical. Very soon, Kellhus realized, he would be forced to intercede.

  “I would ask the Scylvendi,” Gotian said, clearing his voice, “why he has come.”

  Cnaiür looked hard at the Shrial Knight, at the Tusk embroidered in gold across his white vestment. The words are in you, Scylvendi. Speak them.

  “I have come,” Cnaiür said at length, “for the promise of war.”

  “But this is something that Scylvendi simply don’t do,” Gotian responded, his suspicion tempered by hope. “There are no Scylvendi mercenaries. At least none I’ve ever heard of.”

  “I do not sell myself, if that is what you mean. The People do not sell—anything. What we need, we seize.”

  “Yes. He would seize us,” Conphas interjected.

  “Let the man speak!” Gothyelk cried, his patience waning.

  “After Kiyuth,” Cnaiür continued, “the Utemot were undone. The Steppe is not how you think. The People war always, if not against the Sranc, Nansur, or Kianene, then against themselves. Our pastures were overrun by our competitors of old. Our herds slaughtered. Our camps burned. I became a chieftain of nothing.”

  Cnaiür looked over their intent faces. Stories, if fitting, Kellhus had learned, commanded respect.

  “From this man,” he continued, gesturing to Kellhus, “I learned that outlanders could have honour. As a slave he fought at our side against the Kuöti. Through him, through his God-sent dreams, I learned of your war. I was without my tribe, so I accepted his wager.”

  Many eyes, Kellhus noted, were now fixed upon him. Should he seize this moment? Or allow the Scylvendi to continue?

  “Wager?” Gotian asked, both puzzled and slightly awed.

  “That this war would be unlike any other. That it would be a revelation . . .”

  “I see,” Gotian replied, his eyes suddenly bright with faith remembered.

  “Do you?” Cnaiür asked. “I do not think so. I remain a Scylvendi.” The plainsman looked to Proyas, then swept his eyes across the illustrious assembly. “Do not mistake me, Inrithi. In this much Conphas is right. You are all staggering drunks to me. Boys who would play at war when you should kennel with your mothers. You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.

  “You have offered me war, and I have accepted. Nothing more. I will not regret your losses. I will not bow my head before your funeral pyres. I will not rejoice at your triumphs. But I have taken the wager. I will suffer with you. I will put Fanim to the sword, and drive their wives and children to the slaughter. And when I sleep, I will dream of their lamentations and be glad of heart.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Gothyelk, the old Earl of Agansanor, said, “I’ve ridden on many campaigns. My bones are old, but they’re my bones still, not the fire’s. And I’ve learned to trust the man who hates openly, and to fear only those who hate in secret. I’m satisfied with this man’s answer—though I like it little.” He turned to Conphas, his eyes narrow with distrust. “It’s a sad thing when a heathen schools us in honesty.”

  Slowly, this assent was echoed by others.

  “There’s wisdom in the heathen’s words,” Saubon shouted over the rumble. “We’d do well to listen!”

  But Gotian remained troubled. Unlike the others, he was Nansur, and Kellhus could see that he shared many of the misapprehensions of the Emperor and the Exalt-General. News of Scylvendi atrocities were a daily fact of life for the Nansur.

  Without warning, the Grandmaster sought his eyes through the crowd. Kellhus could see the catastrophic scenarios wheel through the man’s soul: the Holy War ruined, and all because of a decision made by him in the name of Maithanet.

  “I have dreamed of this war,” Kellhus said suddenly. As the Inrithi yielded to his as yet unheard voice, he gathered them in his watery gaze. “I wouldn’t pretend to tell you the meaning of those dreams, for I don’t know.” He stood within the hallow circle of their God, he had said, but he possessed no presumption. He doubted the way upright men doubted and would brook no pretence in the search for truth. “But I do know this: the decision before you is clear.” A declaration of certainty fortified by the admission of uncertainty that prefaced it. Those few things I do know, he had said, I know.

  “Two men have asked you to make a concession. Prince Nersei Proyas has asked that you accept the stewardship of a Scylvendi heathen, while Ikurei Xerius has asked that you bind yourselves to the interests of the Empire. The question is simple: Which concession is greater?” The demonstration of wisdom and insight through clarification. Their recognition of this would cement their respect, prepare them for further recognitions, and convince them that his voice belonged to reason and not to his own mercenary concerns.

  “On the one hand, we have an Emperor who willingly provisioned the Vulgar Holy War, even though he knew it was almost certain to be destroyed. On the other hand, we have a Chieftain who has spent the entirety of his life plundering and murdering the faithful.” He paused, smiling ruefully. “In my homeland, we call this a dilemma.”

  Warm laughter rumbled through the garden. Only Xerius and Conphas did not smile. Kellhus had circumvented the prestige of the Exalt-General by fastening upon the Emperor, and he had depicted the problem of the Emperor’s credibility as equal to that of the Scylvendi’s—as only a just and equitable man would do. He had then sealed this equation with gentle wit, further securing their esteem and blurring comedic insight into the insight of truth.

  “Now, I can vouch for the honour of Cnaiür urs Skiötha, but then who would vouch for me? So let’s assume that both men, Emperor and Chieftain, are equally untrustworthy. Given this, the answer lies in something you already know: we undertake the God’s work, but it’s dark and bloody work nonetheless. There is no fiercer labour than war.” He studied their faces, glancing at each as though he stood with him alone. They stood upon the brink, he could see, on the cusp of the conclusion reason itself had compelled. Even Xerius.

  “Whether we accept the stewardship of the Emperor or the Chieftain,” he continued, “we concede the same trust, and we concede the same labour . . .”

  Kellhus paused, looked to Gotian. He could see the inferences move of their own volition through the man’s soul.

  “But with the Emperor,” Gotian said, nodding slowly, “we concede the wages of our labour as well.”

  A murmur of profound agreement passed through the Men of the Tusk.

  “What say you, Grandmaster?” Prince Saubon called. “Is the Shriah satisfied?”

  “But this is more nonsense!” Ikurei Conphas cried. “How could the Emperor of an Inrithi nation be as untrustworthy as a heathen savage?!”

  The Exalt-General had immediately seized upon the hinge of Kellhus’s argument. But his protest was too late.

  Without speaking, Gotian opened the canister, revealing two small scrolls within. He hesitated, his stern face pale. He held the future of the Three Seas in his palms, and he knew it. Gingerly, as though he handled some holy relic, he opened the scroll with the black wax seal.

  Turning to the silent Emperor, the Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights began reading, his voice resonant like a priest’s. “Ikurei Xerius III, Emperor of Nansur, by authority of the Tusk and the Tractate, and according to the ancient constitution of Temple and State, you are ordered to provision the instrument of our great—” The roar of the assembly reverberated through the Emperor’s garden. Gotian’s voice rumb
led on, about Inri Sejenus, about faith, about misplaced intentions, but already the joyous Men of the Tusk had begun abandoning the garden, so eager were they to prepare for the march. Conphas stood dumbstruck on the step below the Emperor’s stool, glaring at the Scylvendi King-of-Tribes at his feet. Nearby, Proyas accepted the congratulations of his peers with dignified words and jubilant eyes.

  But Kellhus studied the Emperor through the flurry of figures. He was spitting orders to one of his resplendent guards, orders that, Kellhus knew, had nothing to do with the Holy War. “Take Skeaös,” his lips hissed, “and then summon the others. The old wretch hides some treason!”

  Kellhus watched the Eothic Guardsman motion to his comrades, then close on the faceless Counsel. They led him roughly away.

  What would they discover?

  There had been two contests in the Emperor’s garden.

  The handsome face of Ikurei Xerius III then turned to him, as terrified as it was enraged.

  He thinks I’m party to his Counsel’s treachery. He wishes to seize me but can think of no pretext.

  Kellhus turned to Cnaiür, who stood stoically, studying the naked form of his kinsman chained beneath the Emperor’s feet. “We must leave quickly,” Kellhus said. “There has been too much truth here.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE ANDIAMINE HEIGHTS

  . . . and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, “Who are you?” now I ask, “Who am I?”

  —ANKHARLUS, LETTER TO THE WHITE TEMPLE

  The Emperor, the consensus seems to be, was an excessively suspicious man. Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangerous as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty.

  —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR