Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  He rose, and loomed over Cerys. She was stretching out an arm, trying to take hold of Amonyn’s hand.

  She did not want to die, but she wanted him to die even less.

  “You were my own kind,” Aeglyss was saying. She paid him no heed. All that mattered was that she touch Amonyn, that neither he nor she should be alone. “But you want nothing to do with me. I know that. So be it. I am not of your kind any more. I am something else, and I am to have nothing: no companions, no sanctuary, no . . . It does not matter. The Anain may hunt me, take everything that I love, if they want. You can plot against me. No matter. I take what I need, Elect. There is to be no more trust, no more talking. Not in all the world.”

  He came down onto his hands and knees, crouched over her like a dog. She felt his lips brushing her ear.

  “You should not have tried to keep secrets from me. I know you have the Shadowhand here, Elect,” he said. And then he collapsed. Tyn lay curled on the floor, his shallow, rattling breath the only sound save the heavy footsteps of Herraic’s warriors coming running.

  They buried Rothe in the clearing where he had fallen. Torcaill was disapproving, Orisian knew, eager to be away from that threatening place with its smothering mists and enclosing trees, but he said nothing.

  Eshenna and Yvane were uneasy, fearful no doubt of any intrusion upon this domain of the Anain, but they raised no complaint. Orisian dug the grave himself, first with a short blade one of the warriors lent him, to break open the soft, wet earth, then with his hands, clawing out great fistfuls of the black soil.

  Others helped, but he barely registered their presence or their exertions.

  The few horses that had not been lost in the sprawling, frantic pursuit and skirmishing through the forest grazed on the glade’s wet grass. Ess’yr and Varryn sat on a log, watching. Sentries looked nervously out on all sides, knowing they had little chance of anticipating any attack. Torcaill himself knelt, cleaning Rothe’s sword. All of this Orisian knew, vaguely, was around him. It seemed like nothing to do with him.

  He just dug.

  They lowered Rothe into the ground. Torcaill laid the sword on his chest, folded his arms across it. Then Orisian laid Rothe’s shield over his hands. As he straightened, the warriors – not many more than twenty of them alive now – stepped forwards, ringing the shallow grave. As one, they bent and began covering Rothe with earth. Orisian watched that face he knew so well gradually, incrementally disappear.

  “He deserved a pyre,” he murmured. His jaw throbbed. His mouth was swollen and tasted foul, of blood and ruin. He could not speak well, or clearly.

  “He did,” Torcaill agreed. “But this is the best we can do for him. It’s better than others have had, today.”

  “They all deserved better. But him especially.”

  After it was done, they covered the grave with dead wood and stones.

  Orisian sat, numb and cold, while one of the warriors – he did not even know his name – cleaned the dried blood from his face. Probing with his tongue, he could feel the empty sockets of the teeth he had lost. It was not until the needle and sinew began to close up the great gash across his cheek that he felt the pain. It was sharp and insistent enough to cut through the fog that enshrouded his mind. He closed his eyes and endured it as the stitches went in.

  Afterwards, Ess’yr beckoned him over. She said nothing, but made him sit at her side. She had collected a few clumps of some pale green moss-like plant. Now she chewed on a little of it. After a few moments, she touched a thumb to his chin and pressed his mouth open. She removed the moist, pulped mass from her own mouth and gently pressed it into the space between his cheek and gum. The juices that oozed from it made his wounds sting.

  Wreaths of mist drifted amongst the treetops all around. Orisian stared blankly at them. His gaze slipped down and rested on K’rina. She was sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth. She turned her hands over, and back and over again, examining them as if she had never seen such strange objects before. The tiny scratches all over her skin were like a fine net. No word, no sense, had passed her lips since they had found her; no sign that she was anything more than a madwoman, lost in the forest. That was the treasure Rothe and the others had died to deliver into Orisian’s hands.

  Someone shouted out. Men were running. Ess’yr was on her feet, raising her bow.

  “They’re coming again,” Orisian heard. It might have been Torcaill’s voice. He looked at Rothe’s grave.

  Someone leaped across it, rushing with sword drawn to meet whatever danger now came.

  Dull and distant, without thought, Orisian reached for his own blade and rose to his feet.

  For two days they waited. Guards stood outside the door behind which the monster lurked. Or possibly lurked. Cerys and others went back and forth from that gloomy chamber, spending hours at Tyn’s bedside, and learned nothing. They found nothing save silence, and a dead, empty space in the Shared.

  The Dreamer breathed, his eyes moved beneath their lids, but there was no life in him. His body was truly a shell now, an empty, abandoned shell. There was no Tyn, no Aeglyss. The wounds in his face and his wrists dried, but did not heal. Cerys sat and stared into that gaunt face, as if by merely looking she might find some answer. But none came. The Shared was still, unresponsive. The Dreamer did not stir. The iron chain around her neck grew heavier.

  Amonyn lay in his own quarters, alive but bruised both without and within. Herraic came to see Tyn himself, and fretted and frowned impotently until Cerys asked him to leave. Mordyn Jerain hesitated between life and death, his wounds half-healed. Olyn stayed in the crows’ roost, and would not emerge.

  Highfast was paralysed, prostrated by trepidation and gloom and uncertainty. Snow fell, and laid white blankets across the roofs and battlements and courtyards.

  During the short hours of daylight, the Elect could busy herself with her duties. She could find enough activity to fend off the darkest of her thoughts. It was an illusory, temporary calm but necessary. At night, she had no such defences, and could not even take comfort in Amonyn’s company. Guilt and doubts circled her, snapping at her.

  She wondered if she had failed Tyn, through some lack of wisdom or lack of knowledge in the ways of the Shared. Not for the first time, she thought of Inurian. He might have been Elect instead of her, had he stayed in Highfast. Had that been what he wanted from life. Would his failures have been less?

  Now and again, in the sleepless night, Cerys would shake and scold herself for giving in to such futile self-doubt. It served no purpose to play these games. What was done, was done. Still, dawn would find her at the Dreamer’s bedside. She rested her elbows on his sheets, held her chain of office clasped in her hands. She closed her eyes and wondered if Tyn was still there, somewhere, and if he would hear her when she asked for his forgiveness.

  Then, on the morning of the third day: “Elect.”

  She opened her eyes. Tyn was gazing at her. He was smiling. And it was not Tyn.

  “They are here.”

  He was rising from the bed, casting aside the sheet. She could only watch.

  “Did you think I had gone? No, Elect. Just waiting. I do not mean to leave this place empty-handed.

  And I do have friends, after all. Would you like to meet them?”

  He came around the bed to her side, took her hand in his. There was no warmth in his skin, only the cold of dead flesh.

  “Walk with me, Elect. Show me your mighty library, your precious store of wisdom that fills you with such pride.”

  She saw – or thought she saw – him enshrouded by a vast cape of shadow that swelled up behind him like a living thing. It drowned out the world, leaving her alone with him, the two of them alone in a dark domain where the very air was made of his thoughts, the ground upon which she walked was made of his hatred for her and for all things.

  They moved, though she could not say which of them led the other. A door opened, and there were men there. Warriors. Guards, she vaguely remembe
red. She saw them faintly, as through a veil. They were saying something, but their words were only sounds that fluttered up against her and fell away, spent and meaningless.

  “No,” she heard Aeglyss saying, and his voice was all about her, in her blood and her bones. “The Elect and I are going to the library. You, you are going to the gates. Open them. Open Highfast.”

  He drew her onwards, through corridors. They passed by torches burning on the walls. Aeglyss took one and lit their way with it, though the shadows stayed all around them, and the light seemed sickly to Cerys. She recognised the passageways they walked along, knew that they were familiar, but they belonged to someone else, to another life.

  They entered into a great chamber, where daylight spilled in through high windows, and there were ranks of writing desks. Cerys smelled parchment and ink and dust. She knew this place. There were people here: just one or two. They were afraid. They cowered. Aeglyss could taste their fear, and she could too.

  It was a sharp, acrid touch on her tongue, in her nose.

  Aeglyss turned around and around, arms outstretched, the flame of his torch crackling.

  “Look, Elect. What a wonder.”

  She looked, and saw books, and rolls of parchment and shelves. The Scribing Hall, she thought. The library.

  “Tyn? Elect, what is happening?” someone called.

  She frowned in the direction of the voice. A man was there, half-hidden behind one the desks. He stared out, fearful. Bannain, she thought to herself. I remember his name.

  “Nothing,” Aeglyss shouted. Then he had hold of the front of Cerys’s dress. He dragged her close to him. She did not resist, for he was already all around her.

  “Wake, Elect. Wake up. You should see this.”

  She plummeted back into her body as if falling from a great height into a pool of cold water. She gasped for breath. Her head spun.

  “What a task,” Aeglyss cried. “What a burden, to watch over all this for so many years.”

  “Leave us!” Cerys shouted, her mind tumbling away into panic.

  “No! Whose gratitude have you earned by all these years of devotions? What have you achieved by storing up the past here, making it so precious?”

  “Please. Please.”

  She cast a desperate glance sideways. Bannain and two scribes were rising hesitantly.

  “Forget them,” Aeglyss hissed. “I am here to relieve you of your burdens, Elect. All of you. Memory is no longer needed, for what is to come will be unlike what has been before. There are to be no more secrets. I declare the past dead. Your task is done with. Are you not pleased?”

  “Release me.” She struggled against him, but his grip was firm.

  “Oh, I intend to. I will take the weight of your responsibilities from your shoulders.”

  He threw her down, and she sprawled to the floor, sending a chair skittering away across the flagstones.

  He was laughing. Savage glee poured forth from Tyn’s stale throat, coarse and wild. Cerys got to her feet.

  Aeglyss strode down a rank of shelves, drawing the flame of the torch he carried across the books and the scrolls and the manuscripts.

  “No,” Cerys shouted, but he ignored her.

  Gouts of black smoke burst up. She could see flames taking hold. Everything that mattered about Highfast was here, in this hall. And Aeglyss laughed as he swept the torch back and forth. Cerys moved towards him, but Bannain was faster. He darted forwards, and as he did so he faded. He folded the Shared about himself for a heartbeat, spilled the Elect’s gaze off his back. He was gone. Gone to her, but not to Aeglyss. Tyn’s arm snapped around. Sparks erupted in a frenzied cloud as the torch struck Bannain on the side of the head.

  He crashed against one of the desks. Aeglyss followed him, kicking aside a chair that came between them.

  “You think tricks like that will work on me? That is my ocean you’re swimming in, child.”

  Bannain groaned and rolled onto his side. Cerys glimpsed a red welt across his temple. She cast about for something, anything, to use against Aeglyss. Smoke was thickening the air now, rasping down into her chest with every breath. The sound of the hungry, consuming flames filled her ears, and their hateful, triumphant light danced across the walls. She took up a chair and rushed towards Aeglyss.

  He crouched and struck Bannain’s head again and again with the torch. Embers spun away across the floor. There was a stench of burned hair and flesh. Bannain was not struggling. Aeglyss laughed.

  Cerys smashed the chair across his back. It burst into fragments. He staggered up, dropping the flaming brand. He spun and seemed to Cerys to fill her vision. Sheets of flame were roaring up the shelves and walls behind him. He bore down on her. There was blood in Tyn’s long hair: ruby strands in that silver waterfall. Smoke billowed across his shoulders.

  He took hold of her chain of office and twisted it in his hands, tightening it around her neck.

  “Did you want to kill me, Elect? Is that what you wanted?”

  There were others beating him, trying to drag him off. He roared defiance and pulled the chain tighter and tighter. Cerys clawed at Tyn’s face. She opened fresh cuts over those that already disfigured it.

  “My spears are at the gates, Elect. It is done. I will make war on all the world, if it makes war on me.”

  His restraint was crumbling. His wild, blind rage roared through the Shared. He was a terrible thing, she saw now. Worse even than they had feared; more consumed by hate and anger, more potent. He was a tempest that would not cease until it had brought all the world, and all the Shared, to ruin.

  Cerys clutched at the chain. So many times she had felt those iron links beneath her fingertips. She smelled his blood, and the smoke. She began to thin. The Shared pulled her gently apart, like a soft breeze working upon the morning’s mist. Tyn’s face was twisted into a furious mask of hatred. She felt something cracking and collapsing in her throat. She saw flames, all around her. Her hands, pale, beautiful, lifted for a moment before her eyes, then dropped. Though she thought her eyes were still open, there was only darkness after that. She surrendered, and let herself end, and fall backwards, dissolving, away and down into the limitless depths.

  Herraic Crenn dar Kilkry-Haig could smell smoke. Its acrid taint suffused the air of Highfast. He set down a half-eaten apple, and sniffed.

  Herraic was a man aware of his own shortcomings. He sometimes regretted them, in a detached and melancholic way, but had long since stopped imagining he could change himself. As distant cousin to the Thane, he might have expected swift elevation to some lucrative or responsible post; instead, he had filled a succession of undemanding and at times almost trivial positions. For several years he had been harbourmaster, not of Kolkyre or Donnish but of Skeil Anchor, a drab and quiet port frequented only by fishermen and sealers. He had briefly been Captain of the Guard in Stone, a remote town of just a hundred families on the upper reaches of the Kyre. Now he commanded the tiny garrison of Highfast.

  None was the kind of role that delivered wealth or fame.

  Even so, as Captain of Highfast he had found a degree of contentment. Nothing of any great consequence ever happened here amidst the Peaks. His responsibilities were simple and therefore within his capabilities: ensuring the safety of the na’kyrim who dwelled in the castle’s roots, keeping the road out to the west clear of thieves, and maintaining order amongst the few inhabitants of the nearby mountains and forests. Those inhabitants were self-reliant, solitary folk who made almost no demands upon his attention. The sense of having at last found a task to which he was suited had engendered a certain peace in Herraic’s heart.

  That peace had been shattered by recent events. He seldom had cause to spend much time with Cerys and the other na’kyrim , but their agitated and despondent state had communicated itself to him over the last two or three weeks. Then the Lannis-Haig Thane had arrived, causing Herraic to fret over everything from the dilapidated appearance of the fortifications to the dismal near-dereliction of
the stables in which the Thane’s horse had to be quartered. And shortly after, Herraic found himself playing host to the Shadowhand himself, and in a gravely, perhaps mortally wounded condition at that. The infamous Chancellor would have died by now, but for the care of the na’kyrim healer. He still might.

  Finally – the torch to the pyre of Herraic’s dwindling ease – there had been the mysterious business with the na’kyrim risen from his bed after years of dreaming. Herraic had not fully understood the explanation of that, though it had all sounded to him unpleasantly like the kind of thing that went on in olden days, when halfbreeds wielded terrible power.

  Now, when he had rashly started to think that things could not get any worse, might even be showing some signs of improvement, he smelled smoke. It was not the familiar oily stink of lamps, nor the homely scent of charcoal from kitchens or brazier. This was a drier, stronger smell. It reminded him of a long ago day when wildfires had torn through the grasslands around Skeil Anchor one parched summer. He knew at once that whatever was burning should not be. He left his quiet chambers and went out into the deep courtyard before the main keep, to discover a world abandoned by reason, plunged into derangement.

  Distraught voices and smoke coiled up out of Highfast’s guts. People were running. The crows had burst in black profusion from the roost in the cliff face above the gorge and plumed and tumbled upwards like a thousand leaves caught on a hot wind. They spun screaming about the man-made pinnacles of Highfast.

  Herraic saw na’kyrim darting from passageways, across doorways; he saw men of his own meagre garrison running to and fro, and those who had come here with the Shadowhand, gathering and shouting, and glaring about in anger and alarm.

  The smoke carried with it fear beyond anything it should naturally have induced: fear that seeped in through the nose and eyes and ears and twisted itself around Herraic’s mind, dizzying and nauseating him.