The Unholy Consult by R. Scott Bakker
His cousin, Pil’kmiras, curls like a dog on the dust, coughing about some unseen catastrophe. Show me! Where?
The Man’s gaze searches the encircling World, squints for the glare. “We are alike in this regard.” He raises a thumb to pick at his teeth. “When I was a child, my grandmother would raise me on her knee and tell me that I was indistinguishable from justice.” He snorts. “‘The Gods,’ she would drawl—Grandmother split her passion between drinking and oblivion, you see. ‘The Gods say that the goodness of our acts, my darling dear, resides in our rank. Do you know what this means, hmm?’ She always liked to lean her forehead against mine. ‘It means you cannot sin against your lessersssss!’” The Man breaks into a winning grin, one that should be remembered for its resemblance to vertigo. “Can you believe it? What grandmother says such things to a child?” The Wracu fall like barks of iron upon them. Bodies stick-whipping. Geysers of brilliance crossing like swords. “She’s mad, my grandmother … Mad with cunning.” Yes … This was what they suffered, the ones they dragged clear the fiery vomit, the way shrieking had delivered them to someplace calm, where they could swallow without taste. “Is beauty a sign, do you know?” the Man asks. “A mark of who defines justice? These are the kinds of questions I need to ask you …” Skafra uncoils his shining bulk and reveals Par’sigiccas, half of him white flesh, half of him black charcoal. What grieves thee, Son of Siol? “I used to think my grandmother was wise because she was old. Now I think she is simply … savage, I guess. Savage with fear …” The Man pauses to work his jaw about an involuntary snarl. “But you … You have seen things … times … You have witnessed what Men can scarce dream, let alone imagine!” All great things, the saurian maw croaks, are round, Cinial’jin. “Enough to rot you from the inside, they say … Like a melon.” Par’sigiccas gazes with one eye from a half-husked skull. “You see, I look at you, and I see …” A sly, mortal wink. “Me.”
The Wracu seems skinned in flame. Someday thou shalt tip over the edge of thine world.
“This is why I saved you … You are my map. My chart.” Cu’jara Cinmoi leaps upon the altar, gloating, displaying the mad extent of his arrogance, openly, outrageously, knowing that his own would celebrate his impiety as strength, and that his enemies would cry out for heartbreak and fury. “I’m curious …” He smiles in the sad way of mothers seeing mediocrity in their children. “Do you feel it? Or is it a thoughtless assumption, the fact that Men shrink in your presence?” There is a breath that belongs to the first glimpse of madness in some beloved soul, a hook and a pang, a consciousness of the tunnels that branch into caverns within you—a place where breath should be. What Siöl requests, Siöl compels! The Cûn is a code of tyrants. When I stretch forth my hand, you shall be its shadow. “What is the sensation of immortality? I’m sure I … know it … But without any to-to compare …” The Man leans over him, his knife unnatural for its gleaming proximity to his face, something monolithic tapering to a shining prick, the point where earthly edges intersect, then cross over into death.
The humour was peeled from his eyes, revealing the dead dark look beneath. “I fear that I require that you speak.”
Cu’jara Cinmoi’s glare somehow slips the uproar and picks him from the confusion. Yes. You know.
Is he shaking?
He dandles the knife with the mock clumsiness of an elder brother teasing a younger. “You must have something to tell me. Surely the Whore delivered you for a reason.” And they approach the northern entrance, the Way of Upright Kings, where the peach trees forever bloom out of season, finding naught but a great black rope of smoke hanging heavenward from the Mansion’s shattered maw, inking the clouds. “Shh … Shh … Just tell me …” The knife pricks across his cheek. “Tell me …” And Lord Mountain turns as if from between worries, and they see it, the black shaft jutting from their hearts. And he watches, his spirit cringing, flinching, warding, even though he cannot move; the point’s lazy swing, the hanging heartbeat above his pupil, then the drop, as though everything seen were the skin of a grape. Someone grimaces and screams. How does one love in such times? Aisarinqu whispers, cupping his head against her, so that his tears make a cheek of her breast. A laugh with the reed timbre of mortality. His face clenched as if about some splintered outrage. A mouth hung about emptiness. Something. Something in the meat. And it dawns that he does not comprehend these beasts.
A man reclines in the grasses that wreath his head, stares down at him with uncommon familiarity. And he just … pushes … her … Aisralu … A motion too banal to be anything but murderous and insane, opening a door, perhaps, or closing one, and he feels it, the kiss of skin forming to skin, the hand of the father across the nape of the daughter, the cherished daughter; a push and nothing more, an effort slight enough to slip the nets of awareness, to be no effort at all, and still, miraculously, impossibly, violent with excess, savage, a crime unlike any other; the bare palm against the nape of her neck, her shoulders hunched about a ravaged womb, his arm extending, the gentle insistence of nudging a younger brother toward a maid, and an entire life tipping, a cherished life, an engulfing presence, tipping, how? how? the push floating into slipping, plummet … The wind barges through the walnut tree, a groaning susurrus. Tipping, the beloved voice crimped high, a kicking intake of breath, a sound that should strike sparks. No … And a life slips into the abyss, dropping like water, lines sprawling across the plummet, shrinking into something small enough to be swallowed … Shrieking. No …
“You make me … curious …”
A man dangles from the glare of blood and sun. There is even envy in his gaze.
Please, Papa …
A final revelation. Sunlight cracking through spanning limbs. The whole mountain wheezes for the weeping of thousands, the wreckage of … The breeze burning, eating. The world tipping.
No.
A bare palm against a cherished back—
APPENDIX
FOUR
Maps
Acknowledgments
What a journey it has been. Each life is a caravan, and the same could be said of every book as well. Now, seven volumes in, the journey has become nothing if not migratory, a project turning on a great many people in countless ways. My family, of course, makes the whole thing possible. Sharron and Ruby are my binary star system—the reason for life on my planet. I need to thank my Agent, Chris Lotts, along with everyone who makes him possible. I need to thank Tracy Carns, Michael Mah, and the crews at Overlook and Orbit. My beta readers, Mike Hillcoat, Zach Rice, Andy Tressler, Jason Deem, Ken Thorpe, Bryan Bakker, and Roger Eichorn deserve special mention, as does Mike Roy. I want to thank everyone who participates at the Second Apocalypse forum and at Three Pound Brain.
I would also like to give a shout-out to all those who have joined this mad trek, all my fellow scalpers on the Slog. This series is unlikely in so many ways that only you, ultimately, could make it possible. An epic fantasy series with a companion piece in The Journal of Consciousness Studies! That would be some crazy shit, as the saying goes. I have to thank you, gentle reader, for suffering this old Schoolman for a span, and listening to his apocalyptic tales, both real and imagined.
R. SCOTT BAKKER is a scholar of literature, history, philosophy, and ancient languages. His previous books include the Prince of Nothing trilogy: The Darkness That Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet, and The Thousandfold Thought. The Aspect-Emperor series is a sequel series that began with The Judging Eye, The White-Luck Warrior, and The Great Ordeal. He lives in London, Ontario.
Also available from Overlook:
THE PRINCE OF NOTHING TRILOGY
THE ASPECT-EMPEROR SERIES
JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY KISELEV ANDREY VALEREVICH
AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD GILMORE
JACKET ART BY SHUTTERSTOCK
Printed in the United States of America Copyright © 2017 The Overlook Press
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R. Scott Bakker, The Unholy Consult