Read The Darkness that Comes Before Online
Authors: R. Scott Bakker
The Darkness that Comes Before (54 page)
“My wives tell me you’re a witch.”
“I’m not.” Prolonged breath. “But you already know this.”
“I think I know.” He pulled his Chorae from a small pouch fixed to his girdle, then tossed it in a low arc. Fetters clattered. The outlander snapped the sphere from the air as though it were a fly.
Nothing happened.
“What’s this?”
“A gift to my people from very ancient times. A gift from our God. It kills witches.”
“The runes across it?”
“Mean nothing. Not now.”
“You don’t trust me. You fear me.”
“I fear nothing.”
No response. A pause to reconsider ill-chosen words.
“No,” the Dûnyain finally said. “You fear many things.”
Cnaiür clamped his teeth. Again. It was happening again! Words like levers, shoving him backward over a trail of precipices. Rage fell through him like fire through choked halls. A scourge.
“You,” he grated, “know I’m different from the others. You felt my presence through my wives because of my knowledge. Know that I will do the contrary of many things you say, simply because it is you who say it. Know that each night I will use the entrails of a hare to decide whether I shall let you live.
“I know who you are, Anasûrimbor. I know that you’re Dûnyain.”
If the man was taken aback, there was no indication. He simply said, “I’ll answer your questions.”
“You will relate everything you’ve concluded about your present circumstance. You will explain your purpose in coming here. If you don’t do so to my satisfaction, I’ll have you put to death—immediately.”
The threat was powerful, the words thick with certainty. Other men would brood over them, weigh them in silence in order to gauge their reply. But the Dûnyain did not. He answered immediately, as if there could be no surprise in anything Cnaiür might say or do.
“I still live because my father passed through your lands in your youth and committed some crime for which you seek redress. I don’t think it possible for you to kill me, though this is your desire. You’re too intelligent to find satisfaction in substitutes. You understand the danger I represent, and yet you still hope to use me as the instrument of your greater desire. My circumstances, then, are of a piece with your purpose.”
Momentary silence. Cnaiür’s thoughts tumbled both in shock and in affirmation, then he recoiled in sudden suspicion.
This man is intellect . . . War
.
This man is intellect . . . War
.
“You’re troubled,” the voice said. “You’d anticipated this appraisal, but not that I would speak it, and because I’ve spoken it, you fear that I merely cater to your expectations in order to mislead you in some deeper way.” A pause. “Like my father, Moënghus.”
Cnaiür spat. “Words for your kind are knives! But they don’t always cut, do they? Crossing Suskara nearly killed you. Perhaps I should think as a Sranc.”
The outlander began to reply, but Cnaiür had already rolled to his feet and bowed out into the clear Steppe air, crying out for assistance. He watched impassively as his people dragged the Norsirai from the yaksh, then bound his naked form to a pole near the centre of the camp. For hours the man sobbed and howled, shrieked for mercy as they plied him in the old ways. His bowels even relaxed, such was the agony.
Cnaiür struck Anissi when she began weeping. He believed none of it.
That night Cnaiür returned, knowing, or hoping, that the darkness would protect him.
The air still reeked beneath the skins. The outlander was as silent as moonlight.
“Now,” Cnaiür said, “your purpose . . . And don’t think I’m deluded into believing I’ve broken you. Your kind is not to be broken.”
There was a rustle in the blackness. “You’re right.” The voice was warm in the dark. “For my kind there’s only mission. I’ve come for my father, Anasûrimbor Moënghus. I’ve come to kill him.”
Silence, save for a gentle southern wind.
The outlander continued: “Now the dilemma is wholly yours, Scylvendi. Our missions would seem to be the same. I know where and, more important, how to find Anasûrimbor Moënghus. I offer you the very cup you desire. Is it poison or no?”
Dare he use the son?
“It’s always poison,” Cnaiür grated, “when you thirst.”
The wives of the chieftain ministered to Kellhus, rinsed his broken skin with ointments made by the old women of the tribe. Sometimes he spoke to them as they did so, calmed their frightened eyes with tender words, made them smile.
When the time came for their husband and the Norsirai to depart, they congregated on the chill ground outside the White Yaksh and solemnly watched as the men prepared their horses. They sensed the monolithic hatred of the one and the godlike indifference of the other. And when the two figures were encompassed by distant grasses, they did not know for whom they wept—for the man who had mastered them or the man who had known them.
Only Anissi knew the source of her tears.
Cnaiür and Kellhus rode southeast, crossing from Utemot lands into those of the Kuöti. Near the southern limit of the Kuöti pastures, they were overtaken by several horsemen with polished wolf-skull pommels and plumed cantles. Cnaiür spoke with them briefly, reminded them of the Ways, and they rode away—eager, he imagined, to tell their chieftain that at last the Utemot were without Cnaiür urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses and most violent of men.
Once they were alone, the Dûnyain again tried to engage him in conversation.
“You cannot maintain this silence forever,” he said.
Cnaiür studied the man. His blond-bearded face was grey against the overcast distances. He wore the sleeveless harness common to the Scylvendi, and his pale forearms extended from the pelt cloak draping from his shoulders. The marmot tails trimming the cloak swayed with his horse’s gait. He might have been Scylvendi were it not for his pale hair and unscarred arms—both of which made him look a woman.
“What do you want to know?” Cnaiür asked with suspicious reluctance. He thought it a good thing he was disturbed by the northerner’s flawless Scylvendi. It was his reminder. As soon as the northerner no longer disturbed him, he knew, he would be lost. This was why he so often refused to speak to the abomination, why they’d ridden these past days in silence. Habit was the peril here as much as the cunning of the man. As soon as the presence of the man failed to sting, as soon as he fell flush with circumstance, he would, Cnaiür knew, somehow stand before him in the passage of events, would steer him in ways that could not be seen.
Back at the camp Cnaiür had used his wives as intermediaries in order to insulate himself from Kellhus. This was but one of many precautions he’d taken. He’d even slept with a knife in hand, knowing the man need not break his chains to visit him. He could come as another—even as Anissi—the way Moënghus had come to Cnaiür’s father those many years ago, wearing the face of his eldest son.
But now Cnaiür had no brokers to preserve him. He could not even depend upon silence, as he’d initially hoped. As they neared the Nansurium, they would be forced to discuss plans. Even wolves needed plots to preserve them in a land of dogs.
Now he was alone with a Dûnyain, and he could imagine no greater peril.
“Those men,” Kellhus said. “Why did they grant you passage?”
Cnaiür shot him a wary glance.
He begins with small things so that he may slip unnoticed into my heart
.
He begins with small things so that he may slip unnoticed into my heart
.
“It’s our custom. All the tribes make seasonal raids on the Empire.”
“Why?”
“For many reasons. For slaves. For plunder. But for worship, most of all.”
“For worship?”
“We are the People of War. Our God is dead, murdered by the peoples of the Three Seas. It’s our place to avenge him.” Cnaiür found himself regretting this reply. On the surface it seemed innocuous enough, but for the first time he realized just how much this fact said about the People, and by extension, about him.
There are no small things for this man
. Every detail, every word, was a knife in the hands of this outlander.
There are no small things for this man
. Every detail, every word, was a knife in the hands of this outlander.
“But how,” the Dûnyain pressed, “can one worship what is dead?”
Say nothing,
he thought, but he was already speaking.
he thought, but he was already speaking.
“Death is greater than man. It should be worshipped.”
“But death is—”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Cnaiür snapped. “Why were you sent to murder your father?”
“This,” Kellhus said wryly, “is something you should’ve asked before accepting my bargain.”
Cnaiür quashed the impulse to smile, knowing that this was the reaction the Dûnyain sought.
“Why so?” he countered. “Without me there’s no way you could cross the Steppe alive. Until the Hethanta Mountains, you’re mine. I have until then to make my judgement.”
“But if it’s impossible for outlanders to cross the Steppe alone, how did my father make his escape?”
The hairs raised along Cnaiür’s arms, but he thought:
Good question. One that reminds me of your kind’s treachery.
Good question. One that reminds me of your kind’s treachery.
“Moënghus was cunning. In secret he’d scarred his arms and concealed them. After he’d murdered my father and the Utemot were bound by honour not to molest him, he shaved his face and dyed his hair black. Since he could speak as though he were one of the People, he simply crossed the land as we do, as an Utemot riding to worship. His eyes were nearly pale enough . . .” Then Cnaiür added, “Why do you think I forbade you clothing in your captivity?”
“Who gave him the dye?”
Cnaiür’s heart almost stopped. “I did.”
The Dûnyain merely nodded and looked away to the dreary horizon. Cnaiür found himself following his eyes.
“I was possessed!” he snarled. “Possessed by a demon!”
“Indeed,” Kellhus replied, turning back to him. There was compassion in his eyes, but his voice was stern, like that of a Scylvendi. “My father inhabited you.”
And Cnaiür found himself
wanting
to hear what the man would say.
You can help me. You are wise . . .
wanting
to hear what the man would say.
You can help me. You are wise . . .
Again! The witch was doing it again! Redirecting his discourse. Conquering the movements of his soul. He was like a snake probing for opening after opening. Weakness after weakness.
Begone from my heart!
Begone from my heart!
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