The Darkness That Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

  The plainsman gestured to the thin file of poles. They followed the contour of the land, some leaning, others straight, lowering into the horizon and leading away from the Hethantas. Their grim burdens were turned away from them, toward the distant sea. The endless scrutiny of the dead.

  “This is the way to Momemn,” he said and spat across trampled grasses.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE KYRANAE PLAIN

  Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world.

  —EKYANNUS VIII, 111 APHORISMS

  Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Nansur Empire

  The warbling of a lone woodlark, like an aria against the rush of wind through the forest canopy. Afternoon, she thought. The birds always snooze in the afternoon.

  Serwë’s eyes fluttered open, and for the first time in a long while, she felt at peace.

  Beneath her cheek, Kellhus’s chest rose and fell to the rhythm of his sleep. She had tried to join him on his mat before, but he’d always resisted—to appease the Scylvendi, she had thought. But this morning, after a dark night of travel, he had relented. And now she savoured the press of his strong body against hers, the drowsy sense of sanctuary afforded by his sheltering arm. Kellhus, do you know how much I love you?

  Never had she known such a man. A man who knew her, and yet still loved.

  For an idle moment, her eyes followed the rafters of the immense willow they slept beneath. Limbs arched against the depths of further limbs, parted like a woman’s legs, and then parted again, winding away into great skirts of leaves that bobbed and dipped beneath the sunlit wind. She could feel the soul of the great tree, brooding, sorrowful, and infinitely wise, the rooted witness of innumerable suns.

  Serwë heard splashing.

  Shirtless, the Scylvendi squatted at the river’s edge, cupping water in his left hand and gingerly rinsing the wound on his forearm. She watched him through the blur of lashes, feigning sleep. Scars hooked and creased his broad back, a second record to match the scars banding his arms.

  As though aware of her scrutiny, the forest grew hushed, its silence coloured by the stern grandeur of trees. Even the solitary bird fell quiet, yielding to the slurp and trickle of Cnaiür’s bathing.

  For perhaps the first time, she felt no fear of the Scylvendi. He looked lonely, she thought, even gentle. He lowered his head to the water and began rinsing his long black hair. The filmy surface of the river slowly passed before him, bearing twigs and bits of fluff. Near the far bank, she glimpsed the ripples of a water-bug skimming across the river’s glassy back.

  Then she saw the boy on the far side.

  At first she glimpsed only his face, half-hidden in the crook of a mossy deadfall. Then she saw slender limbs, as still as the branches screening them.

  Do you have a mother? she thought, but when she realized he watched the Scylvendi, a sudden terror struck her.

  Go away! Run!

  “Plainsman,” Kellhus said softly. Startled, the Scylvendi turned to him.

  “Tus’afaro to gringmut t’yagga,” Kellhus said. Serwë felt his nod brush the top of her head.

  The Scylvendi followed his gaze and peered into the shadowy recesses of the far bank. For a breathless moment, the boy stared back at the plainsman.

  “Come here, child,” Cnaiür said over the hushed water. “I’ve something to show you.”

  The boy hesitated, both wary and curious.

  No! You must run . . . Run!

  “Come,” Cnaiür said, lifting his hand and motioning with his fingers. “You’re safe.”

  The boy stood from behind his shield of fallen branches, tense, uncertain—

  “Run!” Serwë cried.

  The boy flickered into the wood, flashing between white sun and deep green shadow.

  “Fucking wench!” Cnaiür snarled. He exploded across the waters, knife drawn. At the same instant, Kellhus was gone as well, rolling to his feet and ploughing through the Scylvendi’s wake.

  “Kellhus!” she cried, watching him sprint beneath the far canopy. “Don’t let him kill him!”

  But a sudden horror struck her breathless, an unaccountable certainty that Kellhus also meant the child harm.

  You must suffer him, Serwë.

  Her body still groggy, she stumbled to her feet and plunged into the dark water. Her bare feet skidded across the slick rocks, but she hurled herself forward, falling just short of the far bank. Then she was up, soaked in cold, running across gravel, lunging through brush into the sun-dappled gloom.

  She ran like something wild, bounding over the matted leaves, leaping ferns and fallen branches, following their fleet shadows deeper through the screen of dark trees. Her feet felt weightless, her lungs bottomless. She was breath and vaulting speed—nothing more.

  “Bas’tushri!” echoed through the hollows of the wood. “Bas’tushri!” The Scylvendi, calling to Kellhus. But from where?

  She caught herself on the trunk of a young ash. She looked around, heard the distant crash of someone barrelling through underbrush, but saw nothing. For the first time in weeks, she was alone.

  They would kill the boy if they caught him, she knew, to prevent him from telling anyone what he had seen. They travelled through the Empire secretly, made fugitives by the scars that striped the Scylvendi’s arms. But she wasn’t a fugitive, she realized. The Empire was her land—or at least the land her father had sold her to . . .

  I’m home. There’s no need to suffer him.

  She pressed herself away from the tree and with blank eyes and an itching heart, began walking at right angles to her previous path. She walked for some time, once hearing faint shouts through the ambient rush of leaves in the wind. I’m home, she would think. But then thoughts of Kellhus would assail her, curiously smeared into images of the Scylvendi’s brutality. Kellhus’s eyes as she spoke, pinched by concerns or suppressed smiles. The thrill of his hand encompassing her own, as though this modest intimacy bespoke an impossible promise. And the things he said, words that had sounded her to the pith, had rendered her squalid life a portrait of heartbreaking beauty.

  Kellhus loves me. He’s the first to love me.

  Then, with a shaking hand, she felt her belly through her soaked shift.

  She began shivering. The others—the women originally taken with her by the Munuäti—were dead, she imagined. She did not mourn them. A small, peevish part of her had actually celebrated the death of the Gaunum wives, the ones who had strangled her baby—her blue baby. But wherever she went in the Empire, she knew there would be other Gaunum wives.

  Serwë had always been keenly aware of her beauty, and for a time among her Nymbricani kinsmen, she had thought it a great gift of the Gods, an assurance that her future husband would be a man of many cattle. But here, in the Empire, it ensured only that she would be a pampered concubine, despised by some Patridomos’s wives and doomed to give birth to blue babies.

  Her stomach was flat, but she could feel it. Feel the baby.

  Images of the Scylvendi’s urgent fury assaulted her; still she thought: Kellhus’s child. Our baby.

  She turned and began to retrace her steps.

  After a short time, Serwë realized she was lost and was once again terrified. She looked to the white glare of the sun through the shroud of vaulting branches and distant leaves, trying to determine north. But she couldn’t remember which direction she’d initially come.

  Where are you? she thought, too afraid to call out.

  Kellhus . . . Find me, please.

  A sudden wail pealed beneath the canopies. The boy? Had they found the boy? But she realized this couldn’t be: the cry had belonged to a man.

  What’s happening?

  The thud of hoofs from across a low rise to her right heartened her.

  He comes! When he realized I was lost, he fetch
ed the horses to better—

  But when the two horsemen broke the crest, her skin pimpled with dread. They galloped down the shallow slope, kicking up leaves and humus, and then, astonished by her apparition, reined their chargers to a rebellious stop.

  She recognized them immediately by their armour and insignia: common officers of the Kidruhil, the elite cavalry of the Imperial Army. Two of the Gaunum sons had belonged to the Kidruhil.

  The younger, handsome one looked almost as frightened as she was; he sketched an old-wives’ ward against ghosts above his horse’s mane. But the older one grinned like a spiteful drunk. A scythe-shaped scar hooked across his forehead, around a deep socket, then parsed his left cheek.

  The Kidruhil here? Does that mean they’re dead? In her soul’s eye, she saw the little boy, peering from behind black branches. Did he live? Did he warn . . . ? Is this my fault?

  This thought, more than any fear of the men, paralyzed her. She hissed in terror, her chin lifting of its own volition, as though she were baring her throat to their sheathed weapons. Tears sketched her cheeks. Run! she frantically thought, but she couldn’t move.

  “She’s with them,” the scarred man said, still struggling with his lathered horse.

  “Who knows?” the other nervously replied.

  “She’s with them. Peaches like this don’t wander the woods alone. She don’t belong to us, and she sure as hell ain’t no goatherd’s daughter. Look at her!”

  But the other had been gawking the entire time. At her bare legs, at the swell of her breasts beneath her shift, but especially at her face, as though afraid it would disappear if he glanced away. “But we haven’t the time,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Fuck that,” the first spat. “We always have time to bugger something like this.” He dismounted with odd grace, staring at his comrade as though daring him to play a malicious trick. Just follow me, his eyes said, and you’ll see.

  Cowed by something incomprehensible, the younger one followed his harsh companion’s lead. He still stared at Serwë, his eyes somehow both shy and vicious.

  They were both fumbling with their iron-and-leather skirts, the one with the scar approaching her, the younger one hanging back with the horses. He was already desperately tugging at his flaccid member. “Maybe,” he said in a curious voice, “I’ll just watch, then . . .”

  They’re dead, she thought. I killed them.

  “Just watch where you blow your snot,” the other said, laughing, his eyes at once hungry and humourless.

  You deserve this.

  With thoughtless economy, the older man bared his dagger, clenched her woollen shift, and slit it open from neck to belly. Avoiding her eyes, he used the point to draw aside the cloth, revealing her right breast.

  “My,” he said, exhaling a thick breath. He reeked of onions, rotten teeth, and bitter wine. At last he met her terrified gaze. He raised a hand to her cheek. The nail of his thumb was bruised purple.

  “Leave me alone,” she whispered, her voice pinched by burning eyes and trembling lips. The impotent demand of a child tormented by other children.

  “Shush,” he said softly. He gently pressed her to her knees.

  “Don’t be mean to me,” she murmured through tears.

  “Never,” he said, his voice stricken, as though with reverence.

  With a creak of leather, he fell to one knee and buried his dagger in the forest floor. He was breathing heavily. “Sweet Sejenus,” he hissed. He looked terrified.

  She flinched from the shaking hand he slid beneath her breast. The first sobs wracked her.

  please-please-please-please . . .

  One of the horses spooked. There was a sound, like an axe striking sodden deadwood. She glimpsed the younger horseman, saw his head lolling from a shank of neck, his falling torso spouting blood. Then she saw the Scylvendi, his chest heaving, his limbs greasy with sweat.

  The scarred man cried out, scrambling to his feet and scraping his longsword clear. But the Scylvendi seemed unconcerned by him. His murderous look sought her instead.

  “Has the dog hurt you?” he barked as much as asked.

  Serwë shook her head, numbly straightening her clothes. She glimpsed the knife pommel embedded in a whorl of leaves.

  “Listen to me, barbarian,” the Kidruhil said hastily. Tremors passed through his sword. “I had no idea she was yours . . . No idea.”

  Cnaiür fixed him with glacial eyes, a strange humour in the set of his thick jaw. He spat on the corpse of his comrade, grinned wolfishly.

  The officer moved away from Serwë, as though to disassociate himself from his crime. “C-come now, friend. Hmm? T-take the horses. All y-yours—”

  To Serwë it seemed that she’d floated to her feet, that she’d flown at the scarred man, and that the knife had simply appeared in the side of his neck. Only his frantic backhand knocked her back to earth.

  She watched him fall to his knees, his bewildered hands fumbling at his neck. He threw an arm backward, as though to ease his descent, but he toppled, lifting his back and hips from the ground, kicking up leaves with one foot. He turned to her, retching blood, his eyes round and shining. Begging her . . .

  “Guh . . . g-guh . . .”

  The Scylvendi crouched above him and casually jerked the knife from his neck. Then he stood, apparently oblivious to the blood jetting—like the final squirts of a little boy’s piss, she thought inanely—first across his stomach and waist, and then across his tanned knees and shins. Through the Scylvendi’s legs, the dying man still watched her, his eyes becoming glassy with lethargic panic.

  Cnaiür loomed above her. Broad shoulders and narrow hips. Long chiselled arms banded by scars and veins. Wolf-skin hanging between his sweaty thighs. For a moment her terror and hatred deserted her. He’d saved her from humiliation, perhaps even death.

  But the memory of his brutalities could not be silenced. The feral splendour of his frame became something famished, preternaturally deranged.

  And he would not let her forget.

  Clamping his left hand about her throat, he yanked her gagging from the ground and threw her against a tree. With his right he brandished the knife, raising it menacingly before her face, holding it still just long enough for her to glimpse her reflection distorted across its blood-smeared length. Then he pressed the tip against her temple. It was still warm. She winced at its prick, felt blood pool in her ear.

  He glared at her with an intensity that made her sob. His eyes! White-blue in white, cold with the utter absence of mercy, bright with the ancient hatreds of his race . . .

  “P-please . . . Don’t kill me, pleeaase!”

  “That whelp you warned nearly cost us our lives, wench,” he snarled. “Do anything like that again and I will kill you. Try to flee again and I promise, I’ll murder the world to find you!”

  Never again! Never . . . I promise. I’ll suffer you! I will!

  He released her throat and seized her right arm, and for a moment, she cringed as she wept, expecting a blow. When it did not come, she wailed aloud, choking on her own shuddering breaths. The very forest, the spears of sunlight through forking limbs, the trees like temple pillars, thundered with his anger. I promise.

  The Scylvendi turned to the scarred man, who still writhed sluggishly against the forest floor.

  “You have killed him,” he said, his accent thick. “You know this?”

  “Y-yes,” she said numbly, trying to compose herself. God, what now?

  With the knife, he cut a lateral line across her forearm. The pain was sharp and quick, but she bit her lip rather than cry out. “Swazond,” he said in harsh Scylvendi tones. “The man you have killed is gone from the world, Serwë. He exists only here, a scar upon your arm. It is the mark of his absence, of all the ways his soul will not move, and of all the acts he will not commit. A mark of the weight you now bear.” He smeared the wound with his palm, then clutched her hand.

  “I don’t understand,” Serwë whimpered, as bewildered as she
was terrified. Why was he doing this? Was this his punishment? Why had he called her by name?

  You must suffer him . . .

  “You are my prize, Serwë. My tribe.”

  When they found Kellhus at the camp, Serwë leapt from the scarred man’s horse, which had shied from crossing the river, and bound through the waters toward him. And then she was in his arms, clutching him fiercely.

  Strong fingers combed through her hair. The hammer of his heart murmured in her ears. He smelled of sun-dried leaves and sturdy earth. Through her tears she heard: “Shush, child. You’re safe now. Safe with me.” So like her father’s voice!

  The Scylvendi rode across the river, leading her horse. He snorted aloud as he neared them.

  Serwë said nothing, but she stared at him with baleful eyes. Kellhus was here. It was safe to hate him once again.

  Kellhus said, “Breng’ato gingis, kutmulta tos phuira.” Though she knew nothing of Scylvendi, she was certain he had said, “She’s yours no longer, so leave her alone.”

  Cnaiür simply laughed then replied in Sheyic: “We have no time for this. Kidruhil patrols usually number more than fifty. We have killed only a dozen.”

  Kellhus pressed Serwë away and held her shoulders firmly in his hands. For the first time, she noticed the arcs of blood speckled across his tunic and beard. “He’s right, Serwë. We’re in great danger. They’ll hunt us now.”

  Serwë nodded, more tears flooding her eyes. “It’s all my fault, Kellhus!” she hissed. “I’m so sorry . . . But he was just a child. I couldn’t let him die!”

  Cnaiür snorted once again. “The whelp warned no one, girl. What mere boy could escape a Dûnyain?”

  A bolt of terror struck her.

  “What does he mean?” she asked Kellhus, but now his own eyes brimmed with tears. No! In her soul’s eye, she glimpsed the child, small limbs askew somewhere deep in the forest, sightless eyes searching for sky. I did this . . . Another absence where a soul should have moved. What acts would the nameless boy have accomplished? What kind of hero might he have been?