Someone had lit fires there; someone had claimed the ancestral home of the Gyre Blood itself as their campsite. She turned her horse towards the dead city.
It was difficult going, their way constantly obstructed by stagnant pools and seemingly bottomless mud, but Wain picked out a winding path over ground that was almost solid. Here and there, exposed by the retreat of the Glas Water, bones jutted up out of the silt. The empty eye sockets of a half-buried skull stared at her. Many of the faithful had died on this ground, two and a half centuries ago.
The warriors behind her became widely separated. Most of them were on foot, and this was no place for marching. She ignored their difficulties. A score or so of riders kept up with her, including all six of her Shield, and that was enough. As they drew close to Kan Avor, its crumbling walls and shattered towers loomed over them. More grim than the sight of those walls themselves was the burden they bore. High up on what little remained of the city’s great outer rampart hung bodies, dangling like the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Crows hopped along the top of the walls, calling to one another. The dead were not warriors. They bore the clothes of farmers or villagers.
Wain and her company rode on through the desolate outer parts of the city. The buildings here were poised halfway between being the work of men and of nature, so long had they been subject to the moulding of wind and water. Clumps of waterweeds were rotting in the streets. With each pace of their horses they came closer to the cluster of great buildings that had once dominated the city’s heart, until at last they rode into the shadow of a derelict tower. It stood the height of six men above them, and in its heyday must have been much taller, for it had been decapitated by time. Rubble was strewn across the approach to the palace from which it rose. The base of the walls had a greenish-blackish tint where the water had lapped against them year after year. A statue lay half-shattered before the wide gateway.
Since its descent from the heights above it had acquired a patina of moss and weed. The gates themselves were long gone, perhaps salvaged before Kan Avor was finally abandoned. The smoke of half a dozen fires rose from somewhere within.
Wain halted her horse beneath the arch of the gate, pausing there in the shadow to stare at the scene within the precincts of the collapsed palace. In a wide courtyard, amidst the mud and tumbled stones, arrayed around their fires, were fifty or more Kyrinin. Every pair of eyes, every grey gaze, was locked on her. There was a moment of perfect silence, save for the wind above them and the crackle of a fire above which a dog was spitted.
She looked back over her shoulder, mindful now of how few warriors were within easy reach of her call.
“The Bloodheir’s sister.”
A thrill of recognition ran through her at the sound of that voice, an instant shiver that carried a whole host of sentiments in its wake: anger, alarm, surprise . . . anticipation, was it? Excitement? She turned slowly – deliberately so – and saw Aeglyss rising from beside one of the fires. As he stood and languidly stretched his back, a cluster of Kyrinin close by him rose too.
Wain kept her eyes on the na’kyrim , gesturing for her Shield to draw up behind her.
“He is Thane now, halfbreed,” she said. “Not Bloodheir any more.”
Aeglyss nodded and ran both hands through his pale hair, pulling it back from his face. It was longer than it had been the last time Wain saw him. He held it there behind his head and then let it fall across his shoulders.
“Thane,” he repeated, savouring the word as if it were a morsel of food. “Thane, then. It is, I suppose, in the nature of Bloodheirs to become Thanes sooner or later.” He glanced at the dog roasting over the fire.
“Can I offer you some meat, Thane’s sister? We are not prepared for visitors, but what is mine is yours.”
“I believe my brother made it clear to you that we had no wish to see you, or your friends, on our lands again.” Wain nudged her horse a few paces into the courtyard, opening a space for her warriors to advance and spread themselves on her flanks. The animal was uneasy. Perhaps it had never smelled Kyrinin before.
“Did he?” Aeglyss murmured, with a little shrug of his shoulders. “I confess my memory is not all it was.
I find myself much more drawn to the future now than to the past. Such a bitter thing, the past. So full of disappointments, don’t you think?”
Wain’s mind was racing. Aeglyss had disappeared some time ago, after Kanin had confronted him outside Anduran. The breach then had seemed irreversible; the breakdown of any alliance with the White Owls unquestionable. Yet here he was, the halfbreed her brother so detested, camped at the very heart, the home, of the Gyre Bloods with his little warband. And there were changes in him. His skin, always pallid, was now waxen. There were dark blotches pouched beneath his eyes, a wasted fragility about his frame. And yet his voice had a stronger spine of arrogance, a fuller, deeper timbre, than it did before. His gaze – those piercing, transfixing inhuman eyes – held Wain; she felt it on her skin, her body, like hands.
Her heart was beating faster. A hollowness was in her stomach, almost fear, almost . . . something she could not quite name.
“Are you responsible for the dead on the walls?”
Aeglyss frowned, angled his head to squint up at her against the sharp light.
“Ah, not entirely. They didn’t die by my hand, at least. White Owl spears did the deed. It can’t trouble you, surely? They’re nothing: Lannis strays, hiding away amongst these ruins when we arrived. I’d thought to find you and your brother here, not unhomed farmers.”
“These are not your walls to decorate as you see fit. Kan Avor is the rightful possession of Ragnor oc Gyre. We hold it empty, ready for him to claim and occupy.”
Aeglyss shrugged. “If you won’t eat with me, you might at least dismount. We should talk, you and I.
There are things you should know.”
He held out his hands to her. She noticed for the first time that there were bandages around his wrists.
And she felt as though those outstretched hands had taken hold of her, had laid themselves on her arms and were drawing her towards him: drawing her into a gentle, warm, firm embrace. To dispel the sensation, she kicked her horse forwards. It trotted to the edge of one of the fires, stirring up ash and dirt before it shied away from the flames. Every one of the Kyrinin had stood up now. They gathered beside and behind Aeglyss.
The na’kyrim laughed, and the laugh flowed over Wain like water. It was a living, liquid thing. An unnatural thing, she thought, not remotely human. Not remotely mirthful.
“I am so very tired of being refused,” Aeglyss said. He hung his head, letting his arms fall back to his sides. “So long I had nothing else . . .” he jerked his head sideways, wincing, like a man beset by a stinging insect “ . . . nothing else.”
Wain glanced at the warriors who flanked her. On every face she saw some intimation of the confusion, the disquiet, that writhed beneath. She knew it was in them because it was in her too; it was in the very walls of this decrepit courtyard. Aeglyss was breathing it out with the spent air from his lungs, breathing it over them.
“Get down,” she heard him say, and her legs and arms were already obeying him. For a sluggish moment she was an observer, watching her body as it swung out of the saddle to the ground. She shook herself, and was standing there by her horse’s head, holding its reins.
Aeglyss swayed a little. One of the Kyrinin beside him put a hand under the na’kyrim ’s elbow until he had steadied himself. Wain considering climbing back onto her horse, but she feared how that might appear to the warriors she led. She kicked wet earth over the campfire burning by her feet. The flames hissed and died almost at once. The sunlight was strong here in the stone-enclosed space of the courtyard, undiluted by the wind. It was even a little warm on the side of her face. There was a stench on the air, of dank decay, rotten vegetation. She glared at Aeglyss.
“Oh,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to argue with you, Wain. You were always less cold
than your brother. Life, possibilities, always burned more strongly in you. Even when you were children.” He was looking at her out of the corner of his eye now, a harsh little smile curling his mouth. “Ha. Where did that come from, I wonder? There’s so much that . . . comes to me now, and I don’t know how, or why. I was always afraid of madness. Always. Is this it, do you think?”
“There’s nothing new . . .” Wain began to say, but cut herself short as Aeglyss took a long stride forwards.
“No!” he cried. “Not madness. Just the woodworker, learning the use of a new tool; an archer learning the bend of a new bow. And no,” softly now, soft in Wain’s mind, “everything’s new, that’s what you should say. Nothing’s the same, not ever. I’m not the same, Wain. This blunted blade you cast away has been sharpened. Do you doubt me?”
“I don’t doubt that you are . . . different.” And that much was true. His sheer presence, his mere proximity, set such thoughts and doubts crawling around in her mind, like ants nesting in the back of her skull. He had never had this kind of effect on her – on anyone, as far as she knew – before.
Some of her warriors had dismounted. Others were pressing in through the gateway behind her. They wanted to fight, she knew. They were afraid of Aeglyss, of this invisible cloud of potency that enveloped him. She had enough strength here, perhaps, to overcome the halfbreed and all his woodwights. If Kanin had been at her side, he would not have hesitated. And yet something in her quailed at the image of such slaughter, as if it would be a betrayal of a gift offered up to her by fate.
“No, you don’t,” Aeglyss said. “I can see it in you, I can smell it on you. You think there is something here.”
He turned and pointed to one of the White Owl warriors: a muscular man with a mass of writhing lines tattooed on his face.
“See? The son of the Voice herself. He and his a’an – my spear a’an now. The White Owls accept me as one of their own. The whole clan is my spear a’an , my beloved people. But I am Horin-Gyre too, not just White Owl. By my father, I am of your Blood, Wain.”
“That means nothing. What is it you want here? Have you come to offer us another alliance with your tame savages? You know the time for that has passed.”
“Oh, I offer that. That, but much more.” To her astonishment, Aeglyss knelt then, and bowed before her.
It was so unexpected that she could only stand and stare at the crown of his head, the long hair that fell forwards and hid his face.
“I am become a new man,” he murmured. “Servant of all desires. There are thousands coming. I can feel their footsteps in my mind, I can catch the scent of their ardour on the wind. War is to follow, war beyond all reason; unending, unmaking. And I will ride its currents like a bird on the storm. Let me bear us all up on my wings, Wain.”
And in her heart then she felt a great hunger stir, a longing for the future and all its tumultuous possibilities. She saw the Black Road rushing like a living thing out from this shattered city and bearing them all on its broad back into a vast and endless plain, lit by a glorious fiery light, strewn with the corpses of the faithless. So, she wondered, is this how it is to be? Is this the shape of our fate? And a small, faint voice within her, not entirely her own, whispered, Yes, yes, this is how it is to be.
II
“Is it true?”
Aewult the Bloodheir was shouting at Anyara, his face so close to her own that she could smell the hot memory of his last meal. A blush of anger had coloured his rough, stubbled cheeks, a film of spittle coated the creases of his lips. His rage was clearly profound.
“Has your brother marched?” Aewult demanded. “Where are his warriors going? Kolglas?”
Anyara pulled her head back a fraction. However potent the Bloodheir’s anger might be, she had her own stores of irritation to draw on. She planted a firm hand on his chest, applying just enough pressure to make sure that he noticed it. To her astonishment, and alarm, Aewult struck her arm aside.
Coinach was there at once, drawing her aside, putting himself between her and the Bloodheir. The shieldman stood tall, one hand on Anyara’s arm, the other on the pommel of his sword. He and Aewult stared at one another, Aewult’s eyes burning with indignation and threat, Coinach’s cold and calm. At once horrified and excited, Anyara reached to pull her shieldman back, but another intervention came first.
“So long as you are under my roof, Bloodheir, you will not raise a hand against the sister of a Thane.”
Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig’s voice was imperious, all confidence and control.
It was enough to cut through Aewult’s befuddling rage. He looked towards Lheanor’s wife. Ilessa was seated at a broad table, papers scattered all over its surface. A gaggle of her Blood’s officials –
storesmen, oathmen – shared the table with her, every one of them staring at Aewult nan Haig. Anyara had been seated at that same table, discussing with Ilessa how best the Lannis folk who had fled into Kilkry lands might be fed and housed, when Aewult burst in. From the first moment of his furious entry, it had been as if he did not even see Ilessa or any of the others; his eyes – his demands and accusations –
had been only for Anyara.
“I might raise a hand against that Thane himself, were he here,” Aewult snarled, “but he isn’t, is he?
That’s the point. And neither’s his little army.”
He did not sound at all repentant, but he did take a couple of paces back.
“I don’t much care what the point is, or what dreadful wrong you think Orisian oc Lannis-Haig has done you,” Ilessa said. “You are a guest here, and will conduct yourself accordingly. I would expect no less of even the Thane of Thanes, and your authority does not yet match your father’s.”
Aewult made a faint grunting noise and turned his attention back to Anyara. She was still half-shielded by Coinach, who appeared unwilling to rely solely on Ilessa’s words to restrain the Bloodheir.
“You can tell your guard dog to stand aside, my lady,” Aewult muttered. He did not deign to look at Coinach now. “If I caused you offence, I regret it, but I’ll not have a shieldman putting himself in my face, certainly not a woman’s shieldman.”
There was such biting contempt in Aewult’s tone that Anyara understood for the first time just how difficult Coinach’s new role might be for him. He was doing as his Thane commanded, yet there could be no glory – precious little credit, even – in being shieldman to a woman. He was more likely to harvest mockery than admiring glances.
She eased Coinach to one side, feeling his reluctance in the stiffness of his frame. She lifted her chin and met Aewult’s gaze directly.
“I’ll leave it to him to decide how best he should carry out his duties,” she said.
“Ha!” Aewult slapped his thigh in sudden, harsh merriment. “You’ve enough bite about you that I wouldn’t have thought you needed some boy-warrior to watch over you. Anyway, my question’s still unanswered. Where’s your brother? And what does Taim Narran intend to do with the men he’s led out? Surely the Lannis Blood hasn’t forgotten who commands this army, this campaign?”
“Oh, still your tongue, for everyone’s sake,” Ilessa snapped from the table. “Your tantrums will not win you any friends here.”
“It’s not friends I’m looking for,” Aewult replied.
There is danger in all of this, Anyara thought. Haig thinks so little of us, and of Kilkry, that even the most trifling argument can be a fertile seedbed for strife. And this might not be the most trifling argument.
“Ah, so this is where everyone is.”
Every head in the room turned to the doorway. Mordyn Jerain stood there, smiling as if in quiet satisfaction at solving some minor puzzle. His hands – smooth, elegant – were clasped in front of him. He wore a heavy coat of brushed velvet, a sheen of gold embroidery at the cuffs and hems and collar. A single long pace brought him into the room. That simple movement was enough for him to take possession of the space, make himself its focus.
“I tho
ught I heard familiar voices,” he murmured, looking from one face to the next. “From quite some little distance away, in fact.”
“The Bloodheir was just expressing his disappointment at Orisian oc Lannis-Haig’s absence,” Ilessa said. Her voice, Anyara noted, was now utterly expressionless. There was no hint of the command she had used against Aewult.
Mordyn Jerain nodded thoughtfully, as if Ilessa’s explanation satisfied every possible query he might have, and turned his dazzling smile on Anyara. She had to fold her arms to stop herself fidgeting with her dress. How foolish, she thought, to be so easily unsettled by this man’s attention. She was not much given to discomfiture, yet all the Bloodheir’s fury had not troubled her as much as the Shadowhand’s clear, intelligent gaze.
“Disappointing, yes,” Mordyn said. “A small misunderstanding, I’m sure. Your brother is brave, to strike out on his own when such danger is abroad. The Bloodheir is naturally concerned, as am I. As is everyone, no doubt. The Lannis-Haig Blood cannot afford any more misfortunes.”
“Orisian can take care of himself,” Anyara said as confidently as she could.
“I dare say he can.”
“The question is not whether he can take of himself, but whether he remembers his duties and responsibilities,” muttered Aewult nan Haig.
“Duties?” Anyara asked the Bloodheir, preferring the idea of more harsh words from him to that of more blandishments from Mordyn Jerain.
“To my father, and the True Bloods. If there are battles to be fought, I command the army that will fight them. Not your brother. Not Taim Narran.”
The Chancellor held his hands up, still smiling equably. “Well, the battles are not here, and not yet. And it is up to a Thane how he conducts himself in time of war, of course. Orisian will learn how these things are done in time. Tell me, though, Anyara, it does seem strange that Taim Narran should have led your army off in one direction and your brother gone in another. If I understand rightly, Orisian left by the Kyre Gate, heading east. That’s a strange way to make for Kolglas.”
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