The Darkness that Comes Before (83 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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The journey from the encampment to the Andiamine Heights held something of a nightmarish quality for Achamian. But such was Momemn after dark—something of a nightmare. The air was so pungent it had taste. Several times he glimpsed a tall finger of stone—the Tower of Ziek, he supposed—and for a short time, as they passed near the temple-complex of Cmiral, he could see the great domes of Xothei arched like black bellies beneath the sky. But otherwise he found himself submerged in a chaotic warren of avenues hedged by ancient tenements and punctuated by abandoned bazaars, canals, and cultic temples. Complex by daylight, Momemn was labyrinthine by night.
The troop of torch-bearing Kidruhil formed a glittering thread through the darkness. Iron-shod hoofs clattered against the stone and muck, drawing frightened, pasty faces to nearby windows. In full ceremonial armour, Ikurei Conphas himself rode beside him—aloof.
Achamian found himself glancing periodically at the Exalt-General. There was something unnerving about the man’s physical perfection, something that made Achamian acutely self-conscious of his own portly frame, almost as though through Conphas, the Gods had revealed the cruel humour behind the accumulated flaws of more common men. But it was more than his appearance that unsettled. There was an air about the man—something too self-assured to qualify as arrogance. Ikurei Conphas, Achamian decided, was possessed either of a terrible strength or a frightening lack.
Conphas! It still beggared belief. What could the Ikureis want of him? Achamian had given up asking the Imperial Nephew. “I have been sent to fetch,” the man had said blankly, “not to banter.”
Whatever the Emperor wanted, it was important enough to make an errand boy of the Imperial Nephew.
From the first, the summons had filled Achamian with a sense of tight-lipped foreboding. The heavily armoured Kidruhil had spilled through the avenues of the Conriyan camp as though executing an assault. Several moments of jostling and angry words by firelight passed before it became clear that the Nansur had come for him.
“Why would an Emperor summon me?” he’d asked Conphas.
“Why summon any sorcerer?” the man had replied impatiently.
This response had angered him, had reminded him of the officials from the Thousand Temples whom he’d plied for details of Inrau’s death. And for an instant, Achamian had understood just how insignificant the Mandate had become in the great scheme of the Three Seas. Of the Schools, the Mandate was the besotted fool whose bloated claims became more and more desperate as the night waxed. And like any other embarrassment, the powerful religiously avoided desperation.
Which was why this request was so unsettling. What could an Emperor want with a desperate fool like Drusas Achamian?
As far as he could tell, only one of two things could induce a Great Faction such as the Ikureis to call on him. Either they had encountered something beyond the abilities of their own School, the Imperial Saik, or the mercenary Mysunsai to resolve, or they wished to speak of the Consult. Since no one save the Mandate believed in the Consult any more, it had to be the former. And perhaps this wasn’t as implausible as it seemed. If the Great Factions commonly laughed at their mission, they still respected their skills.
The Gnosis made them rich fools.
Eventually, they passed beneath a looming gate, rode through the outer gardens of the Imperial Precincts, and came to the base of the Andiamine Heights. The relief Achamian had anticipated, however, was nowhere to be found.
“We’ve arrived, sorcerer,” Ikurei Conphas said curtly, dismounting with the ease of a man bred to horses. “Follow me.”
Conphas ushered him to a set of iron-bound doors that seemed ancillary to the rest of the immediate structure. The palace, its marble columns shimmering in the countless torches that ringed its perimeter, climbed the rambling heights above them. Conphas hammered on the doors, and they were pried open by two Eothic Guardsmen, revealing a long passageway illuminated by candles. Rather than climbing the Heights, however, it led to their buried heart.
Conphas strode through, but he paused when Achamian hesitated.
“If you’re wondering,” he said with a small, wicked smile, “whether this passage leads to the Emperor’s dungeons, it does . . .” The candlelight glossed the intricate reliefs stamped into his breastplate—the many suns of Nansur. Underneath the breastplate, Achamian knew, lay a Chorae. Most nobles of rank wore them, their totems against sorcery. But Achamian did not need to infer its presence—he could feel it.
“I’d surmised as much,” he replied, standing at the threshold. “The time has come, I think, for you to explain my purpose here.”
“Mandate sorcerers,” Conphas said ruefully. “Like all misers, you assume that everyone is after your hoard. What do you think, sorcerer? That I’m so stupid as to publicly barrel through Proyas’s camp just to
abduct
you?”
“You belong to the House Ikurei. That’s cause for apprehension enough, don’t you think?”
Conphas studied him for a moment—a tax-farmer’s look—and apparently understood that Achamian could not be bullied by mockery or rank. “So be it, then,” he said abruptly. “We’ve discovered a spy in our midst. The Emperor needs you to verify that sorcery was not involved.”
“You don’t trust the Imperial Saik?”
“
No one
trusts the Imperial Saik.”
“I see. And the mercenaries—the Mysunsai—why not use them?”
Again the man smiled condescendingly—much more than condescendingly. Achamian had seen many such smiles before, but they had always seemed shrill somehow, polluted by small despairs. There was nothing shrill about this smile. His perfect teeth flashed in the candlelight. Predatory teeth. “This spy, sorcerer, is most uncanny. Perhaps beyond their limited talents.”
Achamian nodded. The Mysunsai were “limited.” Mercenary souls were rarely gifted ones. But for the Emperor to send for a
Mandate
sorcerer, to distrust not only his own magi but the mercenaries as well . . .
They’re terrified,
Achamian realized.
The Ikureis are terrified.
Achamian scrutinized the Imperial Nephew, searching for any sign of deception. Satisfied, he crossed the threshold. He winced when he heard the doors grate shut behind him.
The hallway rushed by them, swallowed by Conphas’s long martial strides. Achamian could almost feel the Andiamine Heights pile above them. How many people, he wondered, had walked this hall never to return?
Without warning Conphas spoke: “You’re a friend of Nersei Proyas, no? Tell me: What do you know of Anasûrimbor Kellhus? The one who claims to be a Prince of Atrithau.”
A physical jolt accompanied this question, and for a heartbeat Achamian had to struggle to maintain their brisk pace.
Is Kellhus somehow involved in this?
What should he tell him? That he feared the man might be a harbinger of the Second Apocalypse?
Tell him nothing.
“Why do you ask?”
“No doubt you’ve heard the outcome of the Emperor’s meeting with the Great Names. In no small measure, it was a result of the cunning of that man.”
“His wisdom, you mean.”
Momentary wrath disfigured the Exalt-General’s expression. He tapped his breastplate twice below his neck, precisely where, Achamian knew, his Chorae lay hidden. The gesture calmed the man somehow, as though reminding him of all the ways that Achamian could die.
“I asked you a simple question.”
The question was anything but simple, Achamian thought. What did he know of Kellhus? Precious little, save that he was perhaps as awed by who the man was as he was terrified by who the man might be. An Anasûrimbor had returned.
“Does this,” Achamian asked, “have anything to do with your ‘uncanny spy’?”
Conphas came to an abrupt halt and scrutinized him. Either he was astounded by some hidden idiocy in this question or he was making a decision.
They truly are terrified.
The Exalt-General snorted, as though amazed he could worry about what a Mandate Schoolman might make of the Empire’s secrets. “Nothing whatsoever.” He smirked. “You should comb your beard, sorcerer,” he added as they continued down the passage. “You’re about to meet the Emperor himself.”
 
Xerius left Cememketri’s side and looked hard into the face of Skeaös. Blood clotted one ear. Long wisps of white hair framed his veined forehead and sunken cheeks, made him look wild.
The old man was naked and chained, his body bowed outwards along a wooden table curved like half of a broken wheel. The wood was smooth—polished by many such chainings—and dark against the Counsel’s pale skin. The chamber had low vaulted ceilings and was illuminated by shining braziers scattered randomly through its recesses. They stood in the heart of the Andiamine Heights, in what had through the ages come to be called the Truth Room. Along the walls, in iron racks, stood the implements of Truth.
Skeaös watched him without fear, blinked the way a child, awakened in the dead of night, might blink. His eyes glittered from his wizened face, turned to the figures that accompanied his Emperor: Cememketri and two other senior magi, wearing the black-and-gold robes of the Imperial Saik, the Sorcerers of the Sun; Gaenkelti and Tokush, still dressed in their ceremonial armour, their faces rigid with fear that their Emperor, inevitably, would hold them responsible for this outrageous treachery; Kimish, the Interrogator, who saw points of pain instead of people; Skaleteas, the blue-robed Mysunsai summoned by Gaenkelti, his middle-aged face openly perplexed; and of course, two blue-tattooed crossbowmen of the Eothic Guard, their Chorae aimed at the Prime Counsel’s sunken chest.
“Such a different Skeaös,” the Emperor whispered, clasping his trembling hands.
A soft chuckle escaped the Prime Counsel.
Xerius beat down the terror that moved him, felt his heart harden. Fury. He would need fury here.
“What say you, Kimish?” he asked.
“He’s already been plied, briefly, God-of-Men,” Kimish answered plainly. “According to protocol.” Was there excitement in his tone? Kimish, alone out of those gathered, would care nothing for the fact that it was an Imperial Counsel on the table. He cared only for his trade. The politics of this outrage, the dizzying implications, would, Xerius was certain, mean nothing to him. Xerius liked this about Kimish, even if it irritated him at times. It was a becoming trait for an Interrogator.
“And?”
Xerius asked, his voice almost cracking. His every passion seemed amplified, hinged upon the possibility of precipitous transformations. Annoyance to fury. Small hurt to agony.
“He’s unlike any man I’ve seen, God-of-Men.”
What did
not
become Kimish, Xerius had decided, was his penchant for drama. Like a storyteller, he spoke in gaps, as though the world was his chorus. The heart of the matter was something Kimish jealously guarded, something provided according to the rules of narrative suspense, not necessity.
“Finding
answers
is your trade, Kimish,” Xerius snapped. “Why must I interrogate the Interrogator?”
Kimish shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better to show than to say,” he said, grasping a small set of pliers from the rack of tools beside the Counsel. “Watch.”
He knelt and grasped one of the Counsel’s feet in his left hand. Slowly, with the boredom of a craftsman, he wrenched out a toenail.
There was nothing. No shriek. Not even a shudder from the old frame.
“Inhuman,”
Xerius gasped, backing away.
The others stood dumbstruck. He turned to Cememketri, who shook his head, and then to Skaleteas, who said, blankly, “There’s no sorcery, here, God-of-Men.”
Xerius whirled to face his Counsel. “What
are
you?” he cried.
The old face grinned.
“More, Xerius. I am more.”
It was not Skeaös’s voice but something broken, like many voices.
The ground wheeled beneath Xerius’s feet. He steadied himself by clutching Cememketri, who involuntarily shrank from the Chorae swinging about his neck. Xerius looked into the sorcerer’s sneering face. The
Imperial Saik!
His thoughts howled. Convoluted. Arcane in deed and desire. Only
they
had the resources. Only they had the
means
. . .

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