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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

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BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before

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A parade of bald children dressed in scarlet spilled from the Vault’s gate, leaping barefoot down the monumental stairs and terraces, waving palm fronds in the air. The roar subsided enough to distinguish individual shouts above the wash of murmuring men. Fragments of hymns were picked up, only to falter and fade. The masses had become an impatient ground, slowly quieted in anticipation of the footfalls about to tread upon them.

All of us for you, Maithanet. How that must feel . . .

Despite what Inrau had said, Achamian knew the young man did, in his manner, worship this new Shriah—a realization that had wounded his vanity. Achamian had always cherished his students’ adoration, and none more so than Inrau’s. Now the old master had been supplanted. How could he rival a man who could command events such as this?

But somehow he’d managed. Somehow he’d secured the Mandate eyes and ears in the heart of the Thousand Temples. Was it his cunning that had convinced Inrau, or was it his humiliation at the hands of Sarcellus? Was it pity?

Had he once again prevailed by failing?

An image of Geshrunni flashed through his thoughts.

The fact that he’d succeeded without Cants balmed his sense of shame—somewhat. He
would
have used them if Inrau had refused. Achamian was under no illusions. If he had failed his mission, the Quorum would kill Inrau. For men like Nautzera, Inrau was a defector, and all defectors died—as simple as that. The Gnosis, even the few rudiments known by Inrau, was more valuable than any single life.

But if he’d used the Cants of Compulsion, sooner or later the Luthymae, the College of monks and priests that managed the Thousand Temples’ own vast network of spies, would have identified the mark of sorcery upon Inrau. Not all of the Few became sorcerers. Many used the “gift” to war against the Schools. And the College of Luthymae, Achamian had no doubt, would kill Inrau for bearing sorcery’s mark. He had lost agents to them before.

The most the Compulsion could do was purchase time—that, and break his heart.

Perhaps this was why Inrau had agreed to become a spy. Perhaps he’d glimpsed the dimensions of the trap fate and Achamian had set for him. Perhaps what he’d feared was not the prospect of what would happen to him if he refused, but the prospect of what would happen to his old teacher. Achamian would have used the Cants, would have transformed Inrau into a sorcerous puppet, and he would have gone mad.

Priests draped in robes of gold-trimmed white and bearing golden replicas of the Tusk filed four abreast between the Kyranean pillars. The tusks gleamed in the sun. Hoarse shouts broke from the low thunder of the crowd, a few cascading into many. Like wet palms, the crowd closed tighter about Achamian. His back arched with the forward heave of the masses. His feet stumbled with them. He rolled his head back and gasped. The air had taste. The corners of the sky began to drift. Blinking sweat from his eyes, he held his mouth out to the promise of cooler air, as though somewhere just above him there was a surface where the breath of thousands ended and the sky began. Voices were thunder. He looked down, and the Junriüma filled his eyes. Through fields of upraised arms, he watched the emerging form of Maithanet.

The new Shriah was a powerful figure, as tall as any Norsirai, wearing a crisp white gown and sporting a thick black beard. He made the priests who flanked him seem womanish. Achamian had a sudden yearning to see his eyes, but from this distance, they were hidden in the shadow of his brows.

Maithanet came from the deep south, Inrau had told him, from Cingulat or Nilnamesh, where the hold of the Thousand Temples was uncertain. He had walked on foot, a lone Inrithi through the heathen lands of Kian. He had not so much come to Sumna as seized it. Among the jaded administrators of the Thousand Temples, his mysterious origins had been to his advantage. Simply to be an official of the Thousand Temples was to have the stink of corruption, a smell that no purity of conviction or greatness of spirit could ever scrub away.

The Thousand Temples had called out to Maithanet, and Maithanet had come.

Could the Consult have discovered this lack? Crafted you to fill it?

Simply thinking that name, Consult, stilled Achamian. Innumerable nightmares had riddled it with so much hatred, so much dread, that it had become as much an anchor of his being as his own name.

His thoughts were overwhelmed by the mouth-humid reverberations of the crowd. For several moments, the air shivered with their cries. He felt a blackening of his edges, a coldness in his chest and face. The noise of the crowd thinned and subsided. He heard something incoherent, but he was sure it was
Maithanet’s
voice. More thunder. People straining to touch his distant image with their fingers. He reeled against the wet grip of the men surrounding him, felt the back of his throat hitching, the stinging vomit.

Fevers . . .

Then hands were all over him, and he was lifted by strangers onto the surface of the crowd. Palms and fingers, their touch so many and so light, there a moment and then gone. He could feel the sun burn against the black of his beard, against the wet salt on his cheeks. He glimpsed fumbling crevices of soaked cloth, of hair and skin—a ground of faces watching his shadow pass. Across the inner sky of half-closed eyes, the sun was spliced by tears, and he heard a voice, as clear and as warm as an autumn afternoon.

“By itself,” the Shriah was crying, “Fanimry is an affront to the God. But the fact that the faithful, the Inrithi, tolerate this blasphemy is enough for the anger of the God to burn bright against us!”

His body prostrate across hands beneath the sun, Achamian found himself moved to delirious wonder by the sound of the man’s voice. Such a voice! One that fell upon passions and thoughts rather than ears, with intonations exquisitely pitched to incite, to enrage.

“These people, these
Kianene,
are an obscene race, followers of a False Prophet. A
False
Prophet, my children! The Tusk tells us that there is no greater abomination than the False Prophet. No man is so vile, so wicked, as he who makes a mockery of the God’s voice. And yet we sign treaties with the Fanim; we buy silk and turquoise that have passed through their unclean hands. We trade gold for horses and slaves bred in their venal stables. No more shall the faithful have intercourse with whorish nations! No more shall the faithful beat down their outrage in exchange for baubles from heathen lands! No, my children, we shall show them our
fury!
We shall loose upon them the
God’s own vengeance!
”

Achamian floundered in the midst of the mob’s thunder, tossed by palms that would sooner clench into fists, by hands that would rather strike down than lift up.

“No! We will trade with the heathen no longer. From this day forward we shall
seize!
Never again shall the Inrithi accommodate such obscenities! We shall curse that which is accursed! WE! SHALL! WAR!”

And the voice neared, as though the innumerable hands that bore Achamian could do nothing other than deliver him to the origin of such resounding words—words that had parted the shroud of the future with a terrible promise.

Holy War.

“Shimeh!”
Maithanet cried, as though this name lay at the root of all sorrow. “The city of the Latter Prophet lies cupped in the heathen’s palm. In unclean, blasphemous hands! The hallowed ground of Shimeh has become the very hearth of abominable evil. The
Cishaurim!
The Cishaurim have made the Juterum—the sacred heights!—the den of unspeakable ceremonies, a kennel of foul, iniquitous rites! Amoteu, the Holy Land of the Latter Prophet, Shimeh, the Holy City of Inri Sejenus, and the Juterum, the holy site of the Ascension, have all become home to outrage after outrage. Sin after loathsome sin! We shall reclaim these holy names! We shall cleanse these holy grounds! We shall turn our hands to the bloody work of war! We shall smite the heathen with the edge of the sharp sword. We shall pierce him with the point of the long spear. We shall scourge him with the agony of holy fire!
We shall war and we shall war until SHIMEH IS FREE!
”

The masses erupted, and through his nightmarish transit, Achamian wondered, with the strange lucidity of near unconsciousness, why the Fanim when the Schools were a cancer in their midst? Why murder another when one’s own body needed to be healed? And why wage a Holy War that could not be won?

An impossibly distant surface of stone leaned across the sun—the Junriüma, stronghold of the Tusk—and men were lowering him across the shaded steps. Water spilled across his face, fell between his lips. He raised his head, saw a wall of shouts, flushed faces, and raised arms.

They want Shimeh . . . Shimeh. The Schools were never threatened.

Every instant was taut with the exultant thunder of the assembly, but for some reason, an intimacy existed between those on the steps. Achamian glanced at the others—those who had been lifted from the crowd like him, shivering and drenched in exhaustion—but they were all transfixed by something on the steps above him. He looked up, startled by a worn boot a hand’s breadth from his forehead. He looked into the limb-enclosed recesses of a man kneeling against the knee of another. The man wept, blinked away tears, then noticed him. In shock, Achamian watched the man’s face open in recognition and then tighten in monolithic fury—a sorcerer . . .
here
.

Proyas.

It was Prince Nersei Proyas of Conriya . . . Another student he had loved. For four years, Achamian had tutored him in the non-sorcerous arts.

But before any word could be spoken, hands guided the Prince, still staring, to one side, and Achamian found himself looking into the serene and surprisingly youthful face of Maithanet.

The multitudes roared, but an uncanny hush had settled between the two of them.

The Shriah’s face darkened, but his blue eyes glittered with . . . with . . .

He spoke softly, as though to an intimate: “Your kind are not welcome here, friend.
Flee
.”

And Achamian fled. Would a crow wage war upon a lion? And throughout the pinched madness of his struggle through the hosts of Inrithi, he was transfixed by a single thought:

He can see the Few.

Only the Few could see the Few.

Maithanet grasped Proyas firmly by the arm, then loud enough to pierce the roaring adulation of the crowds, he whispered, “There are many things I need to discuss with you, my Prince.”

His thoughts still buzzing with the fury and shock of seeing his old tutor, Proyas wiped at the tears that creased his cheeks and numbly nodded.

Maithanet bid him to follow Gotian, the illustrious Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights, who ushered him away from the glittering Shrial Procession and deep into the tomblike galleries of the Junriüma. Gotian hazarded several friendly comments, no doubt attempting to engage him in conversation, but Proyas could only think:
Achamian! Insolent wretch! How could you commit such an outrage?

How many years had passed since he’d last seen him? Four? Five, even? All that time spent trying to cleanse his heart of the man’s influence. All that time leading to this penultimate moment, kneeling at the feet of the Holy Father, feeling his glory wash over him in a golden rush, kissing his knee in an instant of pure, absolute submission to the God . . .

Only to see
Drusas Achamian
shivering on the step below him! An unrepentant blasphemer huddling in the shadow of the most glorious soul to walk the earth in a thousand years. Maithanet. The Great Shriah who would set Shimeh free, who would lift the yoke of emperors and heathens from the faith of the Latter Prophet.

Achamian. I loved you once, dear teacher, but this! This is beyond all tolerance!

“You seem troubled, my Prince,” Gotian at last said, steering him through yet another corridor. Incense from a mélange of fragrant woods steamed through the open spaces, gifting the points of lantern light with haloes. Somewhere, a choir practised hymns.

“I apologize, Lord Gotian,” he replied. “It’s been a most remarkable day.”

“That it has, my Prince,” the silver-haired Grandmaster said, a wise smile creasing his face. “And it’s about to become more remarkable still.”

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before

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