The Darkness that Comes Before (64 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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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?
Kellhus turned away from her, overcome by grief. As though finding solace in urgent action, he began rolling his sleeping mat beneath the grand willow. He paused and without looking at her said in a pained voice: “You must forget this, Serwë. We haven’t the time.”
Shame, as though her innards had become cold water.
I forced this crime upon him,
she thought, staring at Kellhus as he bound their gear to his saddle. Once again her hand found her belly.
My first sin against your father
.
“The Kidruhil horses,” the Scylvendi said. “We shall ride them to death first.”
 
For the first two days, they eluded their pursuers with relative ease, relying on the primeval forests that blanketed the headwaters of the River Phayus and the Scylvendi’s martial acumen to preserve them. Nevertheless, the flight took a heavy toll on Serwë. Day and night on horseback, negotiating steep gullies, galloping across stony slopes, and hazarding the innumerable tributaries of the Phayus, was nearly more than she could handle. By the first night, she was swaying on the back of her horse, struggling with both numb limbs and eyes that refused to stay open, while Cnaiür and Kellhus led the way on foot. They seemed unconquerable, and it galled her that she was so weak.
By the end of the second day, Cnaiür allowed them to make camp, suggesting that they had lost whatever pursuers they might have had. Two things, he said, were in their favour: the fact that they travelled east, when any Scylvendi raiding party would surely withdraw to the Hethantas after meeting the Kidruhil, and the fact that he and Kellhus had been able to kill so many after the colossal misfortune of encountering them in their hunt for the boy. Serwë was far too exhausted to mention the one she’d killed, so she rubbed the clotted blood on her forearm instead, surprised by the feeling of pride that flared through her.
“The Kidruhil are arrogant fools,” Cnaiür continued. “Eleven dead will convince them that the raiding party must be large. This means that they will be cautious in their pursuit and send out for reinforcements. It also means that if they encounter our eastward trail, they will think it a ruse and follow it west toward the mountains, hoping to pick up the trail of the main party.”
That night they ate raw fish he speared from a nearby stream, and despite her hate, Serwë found herself admiring the affinity between this man and the open wilds. For him it seemed a place of innumerable clues and small tasks. He could guess approaching terrain from the sight and song of certain birds, and he could ease the strain on their horses by feeding them cakes of fungus scratched from the humus. There was far more to him than abuse and murder, she realized.
As Serwë marvelled over her ability to savour food that would have made her vomit in her previous life, Cnaiür told them episodes from his many forays into the Empire. The westward provinces of the Empire, he said, offered them their only hope of throwing off their pursuers: they had been long abandoned because of the depredations of his kinsmen. Their peril would be far greater once they crossed into the great tracts of cultivated land along the lower Phayus.
And not for the first time, Serwë wondered why these men would risk such a journey.
They resumed their trek in daylight, intending to travel into the following night. In early morning, Cnaiür felled a young doe, and Serwë took it to be a good omen, though the prospect of eating venison raw did not appeal to her. She found herself to be continuously hungry but had ceased speaking of it because of the Scylvendi’s scowl. At midday, however, Kellhus urged his mount even to hers and said, “You’re hungry again, aren’t you, Serwë?”
“How do you know these things?” she asked. It never ceased to thrill her each time Kellhus guessed her thoughts, and the part of her that held him in reverent awe would find further confirmation.
“How long has it been, Serwë?”
“How long has what been?” she asked, suddenly fearful.
“Since you’ve been with child.”
But it’s your child, Kellhus! Yours!
“But we’ve not yet coupled,” he said gently.
Serwë suddenly felt bewildered, unsure as to what he meant, and more unsure still whether she had spoken aloud. But
of course
they had coupled. She was with child, wasn’t she? Who
else
could be his father?
Tears swelled in her eyes.
Kellhus . . . Are you trying to hurt me?
“No, no,” he replied. “I’m sorry, sweet Serwë. We’ll stop to eat very soon.”
She stared at his broad back as he rode ahead to join Cnaiür. She was accustomed to watching their brief exchanges, and drew petty satisfaction from the moments of hesitation, even anguish, that would crack Cnaiür’s weather-beaten expression.
But this time she felt compelled to watch Kellhus, to note the way the sun flashed through his blond hair, to study the sumptuous line of his lips and the glitter of his all-knowing eyes. And he seemed almost
painfully
beautiful, like something too bright for cold rivers, bare rock, and knotted trees. He seemed—
Serwë held her breath. Feared for a moment that she might swoon.
I didn’t speak and yet still he knew.
“I am the promise,”
Kellhus had said above the long road of Scylvendi skulls.
Our promise,
she whispered to the child within her.
Our God
.
But could it be? Serwë had heard innumerable stories of the Gods communing with Men as Men long ago in the days of the Tusk. This was scripture. This was true! What was impossible was that a God might walk
now,
that a God might fall in love with
her,
with Serwë, the daughter sold to House Gaunum. But perhaps this was the
meaning
of her beauty, the reason she had suffered the venal covetousness of man after man. She was also something too beautiful for the world, something awaiting the arrival of her betrothed.
Anasûrimbor Kellhus.
She smiled tears of rapturous joy. She could see him as he truly was now, radiant with otherworldly light, haloes like golden discs shining about his hands. She could
see
him!
Later, as they chewed strips of raw venison in a breezy stand of poplars, he turned to her and in her native tongue of Nymbricani said, “You understand.”
She smiled but was not surprised that he knew her father’s language. He’d bid her speak it to him many times—not to learn, she now knew, but to listen to her secret voice, the one sheltered from the wrath of the Scylvendi.
“Yes . . . I understand. I’m to be your wife.” She blinked the tears from her eyes.
He smiled with godlike compassion and tenderly stroked her cheek. “Soon, Serwë. Very soon.”
That afternoon they crossed a broad valley, and as they crested the summit of the far slopes, they caught their first glimpse of their pursuers. Serwë could not see them at first, only the outer skirt of sunlit trees along a distant stony defilade. Then she glimpsed the shadows of horses behind, their thin legs scissoring through the gloom, their riders hunched to avoid unseen branches. Abruptly, one appeared at the brink, the sun smearing his helm and armour bright white. Serwë shrank into the shadows.
“They seem confused,” she said.
“They lost our trail along the stony ground,” Cnaiür said grimly. “They’re searching for the route we took down.”
Afterward, Cnaiür increased their pace. With their train of horses in tow, they thundered through the wood, the Scylvendi guiding them down rolling slopes until they came to a shallow, gravelly stream. They then changed direction, riding downstream along the muddy banks, at times splashing through the stream itself, until it joined a much larger river. The air was beginning to cool, and grey evening shadows had all but swallowed the open spaces.
Several times Serwë had thought she could hear the Kidruhil shouting through the forests behind them, but the ever-present sound of rushing waters made it difficult to be certain. Yet curiously, she felt unafraid. Though the elation she’d felt for the greater part of the day had vanished, the sense of inevitability had not. Kellhus rode beside her, and his reassuring eyes never failed to find her the moment her heart weakened.
You have nothing to fear,
she would think.
Your father rides with us.
“These forests,” the Scylvendi said, pitching his voice to be heard over the river, “continue for a short time before thinning into pastures. We ride for as long as we can into dark without risking our horses or our necks. These men who follow us are not like the others. They are determined. They live their lives hunting and battling my people through these forests. They will not stop until they run us down. But once we clear the forest, our advantage lies in our extra horses. We will run them until they are dead. Our only hope is to race along the Phayus far ahead of any word of our coming and reach the Holy War.”
Following his lead, they rode along the river until the moonlight transformed it into a ribbon of quicksilver through blue-backed stone and the looming dark of the surrounding forest. After a time the moon lowered, and the horses began stumbling and shying from the path. With a curse, the Scylvendi bid them stop. Wordlessly, he began stripping the horses of their gear and tossing it into the river.
Too weary for words, Serwë dismounted, stretched against the evening chill, and stared for a moment at the Nail of Heaven glittering amid clouds of paler stars. She glanced back the way they had come and was arrested by a far different glitter: a watery string of lights slowly crawling along the river.
“Kellhus?” she said, her voice croaking from disuse.
“I’ve already seen them,” Cnaiür replied, heaving a saddle far out into the rushing water. “The advantage of the pursuer: torches at night.” There was a difference in his tone, Serwë realized, an ease she’d never heard before. The ease of a workman in his element.
“They’ve been gaining ground,” Kellhus noted, “moving too quickly to be picking out our trail. They just follow the river. Perhaps we can use this to our advantage.”
“You have no experience in these matters, Dûnyain.”
“You should listen to him,” Serwë said, more hotly than she intended.

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