The Chancellor's wife gave a subtle nod, her eyes fluttering shut for the briefest of instants as if a breeze had touched them. 'As you wish,' she said.
'You, at least, will rest here for a time,' suggested Mordyn. 'I will have a room prepared.'
Taim turned to the Chancellor. He caught himself before he gave full vent to his feelings.
'Thank you, but my tastes are simple. I will rest with my men, and prepare for the journey on to Kolkyre. And to Anduran.'
'You will not wait, then, for the High Thane to return?' asked Tara , her voice all innocent inquiry. 'Surely he can only be two or three days behind you on the road?'
Taim smiled at her. It was required of him, even though he felt that what mattered now, all that mattered, was waiting for him somewhere in the north.
'I must go, my lady,' he said. 'My place is at my own Thane's side. And I have a wife of my own, one I wish more than ever to see again.'
Anduran and Glasbridge, the greatest settlements of Taim's Blood, were as villages compared to the enormity of Vaymouth and the masses of its population. People churned up and down the streets as thickly as fish in a drawn net. Taim had refused the Chancellor's offer of an escort and a mount. He knew the way to the barracks well enough, and he craved release from the oppressive solicitude of Mordyn Jerain and his household. Now, struggling through the crowds, he was less certain. Although he had been in the capital of the Bloods twice before, its rough exuberance and scale still wrought a disorientating effect.
Strange smells and sounds assaulted his senses: spices and herbs he did not recognise; music made upon instruments unknown in the north; now and again the cadences of languages foreign to him, the odd native argot of Tal Dyre traders or the coarse-sounding olden form of his own tongue that was still spoken in distant parts of the Ayth-Haig Blood. He was jostled this way and that but knew there was no point in complaining.
Taim wondered at the way life continued in all its chaotic vigour. His own world was shaking, its foundations cracked by Mordyn Jerain's news, yet it was a day like any other in these streets. Far away on the northern border of his homeland, men might be dying; men he knew well from his own time in the garrison at Tanwrye. Here, the traders hawked their wares and the townsfolk went about their business.
He felt a kind of loathing for the people all around him.
The barracks themselves lay in the centre of the city. It was a long walk. In time the turreted and balconied spires of the Moon Palace , where Gryvan oc Haig's family lived and ruled, came into view above distant rooftops. Around one last corner the press of the crowds thinned as the street gave out on to a wide square. The city's barracks stood austere and massive on its far side. There were performers dotted across the open space, juggling or working sleight-of-hand tricks for appreciative knots of spectators. One was a firewalker whose olive skin and coloured tunic and pantaloons said he was a wanderer from the Bone Isles of Dornach. Amongst his audience a small, lean man darted this way and that, the rags he wore shaking as he bounced from foot to foot.
'They are not gone,' he cried to the sky. 'It is not true. I have seen them, they watch over us still. I met the Gatekeeper on a street in Drandar. The maker! I walked in the Veiled Woods, and saw the Wildling there, feasting on a deer he had killed.'
A madman, Taim thought. The executioner's axe would have been over his neck for such words once.
Monach oc Kilkry had been merciless when the fisherwoman of Kilvale gave birth to the Black Road .
Convinced that such heresies could bring only misery and chaos, he did not flinch even when the strife turned into civil war. Now no one even listens. No one cares about such things, not here where Gryvan rules. Once, stability and order had been the whole purpose of the Bloods. They had, after all, arisen as an answer to the tumult of the Storm Years after the Aygll Kingship fell. Now, it seemed to Taim, they served a different purpose: that of supporting the ambitions of the Haig Blood.
Taim passed in through the barrack gates, ignoring the stern gazes of the guards. He found his men in a hall at the furthest corner of the sprawling maze of buildings, yards and armouries. It was then that the burden of his position, and of his news, grew so heavy as to be almost unbearable. He saw exhaustion in the bodies and eyes of his men. They were grimed by the dirt of travel and their clothes were worn. At the far end of the hall the injured and sick lay upon pallets. He could offer none of the rest and comfort they all so deserved, and must raise them up for the long journey to home and, perhaps, a greater battle than the one they had left behind.
It was not so very difficult in the end. Taim took pride in their weary resolution, but for all his tiredness he did not sleep well that night.
II
ANYARA'S CELL IN Anduran was cold and comfortless. All they gave her to eat was a thin gruel with a few chunks of dispirited grey bread floating in it. It was brought to her by guards, some of them women, who never spoke. They stood and watched her as she ate. She sensed their contempt for her, and sometimes something stronger: hatred almost. It made her angry. She was the Thane's niece, incarcerated in her own homeland by intruders. It was she who had the right to hatred, not her gaolers.
Her anger boiled over just once. She flung her bowl at the feet of a guard and spat curses at him. He regarded the gruel sprayed across his boots, and then struck her with the back of his hand. She yelped and clutched her nose in a vain attempt to stem the blood that sprang from it. He hit her again, on the side of her head, and knocked her down. He picked up the empty bowl and carried it away, slamming the bar across the cell door in his wake. After that, Anyara kept her feelings on a tighter leash.
In the nights she craved sleep as a kind of escape. It came only grudgingly. She lay on the battered mattress they had given her, curled like a worm in the stone gut of some great animal that had swallowed her. The Black Road haunted her exhaustion. To her it was a desolate creed. The whole idea that your life, and the death that would end it, was fixed from the moment of your birth was loathsome to her, yet her own impotence now seemed a bitter echo of it. All the strength she had cultivated over the last five years counted for nothing. Others had decided upon a cruel death for her, and there was not a thing she could do.
She could remember, long ago in a world now as tenuous as a dream to her, sitting upon her father's knee in the hall of Kolglas, listening to his tales of old battles. As a young man Kennet had fought alongside his father and his brother against the warriors of the Black Road at Tanwrye. In his soft voice, as he whispered stories of that day in her ear, she heard a bitter respect for his enemy. A company of Inkallim had stood aside and watched as a Horin-Gyre army was surrounded and destroyed before the walls of Tanwrye. Some said it was because the ravens wished to curb the Blood's arrogance, some that the High Thane of Gyre had forbidden the invasion and Horin-Gyre was thus punished for its disobedience. Yet, Kennet murmured, there had been no fear amongst the slaughtered. They had fought on, and died, for hour after hour.
Lairis had scolded Kennet for telling such tales to a little girl in the midst of a meal, but he had reprimanded his beloved wife. 'She must know the nature of her enemy,' he said.
Though the knowledge did her little good, Anyara thought, she did know her enemy, and how remorseless and resilient their hatred was.
All she could see through the high, narrow window of her cell was a patch of sky. It offered little cheer, wearing its clouds with sombre gravity. Sometimes she heard rain on the roof and thought that even those drops would be a comforting touch upon her head if she could just walk for a few moments beneath them. The hours were long. Over many years she had fashioned strong defences against her fears and pain, against the Fever, death, her father's suffering. Now those defences were sorely tested.
Most of the guards had heavy footsteps that she could recognise before they reached the door of her cell. When, after three or four days of imprisonment, she heard a lighter step approaching, her spirit lifted at the mere thought of some change in th
e crushing routine. Her heart fell once more when the visitor stepped through the doorway. It was Wain, sister to the Horin-Gyre Bloodheir. Her long hair was a little less lustrous than the last time Anyara had seen her, her clothes a little more soiled by smoke and dirt, but her gaze was no less hard; no less contemptuous.
She smirked at the sight of Anyara, who managed to stay an impulse to smooth her own hair and clothes. The time had passed when she could pretend to be anything other than cold and hungry and dishevelled.
'These walls must never have seen such a distinguished guest,' said Wain.
'What do you want?'
'So sharp. Gaol does not agree with you, perhaps?' Wain reached out and seized Anyara's wrist, making a show of examining her palms and fingers.
'You are a soft little thing, aren't you?' she mused. 'You would not last one winter in the north. Soft women make soft men, it would seem, since your Blood is so easily defeated.'
Anyara wrenched her hand away and glared at Wain.
'We are not beaten yet. Croesan will have Kanin's head and yours before he's done.'
Wain laughed. She ran her fingers over the gold chain at her neck.
'Your concern for our heads is touching,' she said, 'but I do not fear what will come to pass. The Hooded God read the tale of my life in his book on the day of my birth; its ending was fixed at that moment. My feet are on the Black Road and no wish of yours will change its course. Anyway, I think it is your death that is written for this time and place, not mine. I came to tell you that we have sent message arrows into the castle. We told your uncle that we have you, and that he must treat with us or see you skinned beneath his walls.' She paused as if to observe Anyara's reaction, but seeing none she carried on.
'What do you think? How soft have the men of Lannis-Haig become?'
'Not soft at all,' said Anyara, hoping that she kept her fear out of her voice. She had known this was how it might go - why else would they have kept her alive except for a game such as this? - but the thought was one she had almost managed to keep at bay so far. There was always hope, she told herself with little conviction. Only the adherents of the Black Road believed that events could follow but a single course.
'Well, you might be right,' Wain said. 'A pity for you. At least you can rest assured that Croesan will be following you into the darkness. Your precious Thane in his castle will not last long. This land will be ours once again.'
'It was never yours. You must mean that it will be Gyre's. The Horin family was nothing but thugs in Glasbridge before you fled into the north, I heard. At least the Gyre line springs from true Thanes, even if they lost the right to the title when they…'
Wain took a sudden step forwards and Anyara retreated, expecting a blow to come. Wain flexed her right hand, perhaps imagining what damage the heavy rings that adorned it might do. She seemed to think better of it, and laughed instead. She began to turn one of those rings around her finger thoughtfully.
'A little spirit left, then,' she said. 'It is true that Ragnor oc Gyre will rule here, but it will be my Blood, my brother, that returns his throne to him. But a throne is only the means, not the end. That is what you cannot see. We will rule only to spread the light of the true creed. When that light shines in every heart, then the Gods will return to us.'
'You're getting carried away. You can go no further while Anduran stands. And Tanwrye cannot have fallen yet.' Anyara saw the truth of it in the other's eyes. She saw danger there as well and did not press the point.
'Such confidence,' Wain smiled. 'Such arrogance, that you think even the strongest walls can stand if it is written that they should crumble. You think all your hope, all the striving in this fallen world makes any difference to the tide of fate? That is the kind of pride the Gods require us to set aside before they will return. The Black Road exists to teach us humility. If our ancestors had possessed more of it, the Gods would never have departed.'
She came forwards again, and Anyara fell back until she was pressed against the wall. Wain pinned her arms against the cold stone. Anyara felt an awful strength in the other woman; not just in the iron-hard grip of her hands but in the icy stillness of her eyes. She wondered what Wain was doing here. It could not just be a desire to frighten her or mock her. Perhaps it was just curiosity to see how this soft girl from Kolglas withstood captivity, or the desire to test the strength of her belief against Anyara's denial.
'The Black Road will triumph,' the Bloodheir's sister said, 'because it is truth, and until it rules the Gods will not return and the world will not be renewed. You and all your kind have nothing to set against that, and therefore you will fall.'
Abruptly, she released Anyara and turned her back on her. She left without another word. Anyara massaged her upper arms where Wain had gripped her. There would be bruises there, she knew. That was the least of her worries. No word would come from her uncle to spare her the attentions of the Horin-Gyre executioners. It could not, for her life was nothing weighed against that of the Blood itself.
* * *
There was no sickness in the castle yet. For that at least, the besieged could be thankful. But there was little food, either. The blow had fallen with so little warning that there had not been time to bring many supplies in from the great barns of Anduran. If no more than the castle's normal population needed to be fed, their stores would have lasted for some weeks; twice as many again had poured in as the enemy drew near. In the courtyard, the stables, the great rooms of the keep, people huddled together around whatever few possessions they had managed to salvage. Mothers fed their babies at the breast in the passageways. Rations of food were kept meagre to eke out the stores. Hungry children cried, tempers ran a knife edge.
Only at the very end, when the Horin-Gyre vanguard was over the walls and inside the town, had the castle gates been closed. Then, Croesan had thought there could be no more bitter sound in the world than the desperate voices of those left outside.
Hope had stumbled a little in the Thane's breast, this last day. If help was to come from Kolglas or Glasbridge it should have arrived by now, and in truth he was not sure how much they could offer anyway. Taim Narran had taken most of their fighting men south with him. The best, and greater, part of the forces left to Lannis-Haig had been on the northern border and must now be trapped in Tanwrye.
The real chance of aid was from Kolkyre, and the old Thane Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig. He would come if he could, Croesan knew. Kilkry and Lannis had been closely bound since the very day Sirian was made into a Thane. It was all a question of time. The Black Road army that held Anduran in its grip did not have the siege engines to breach the castle gate or walls; such machines could never have been transported down through Anlane. If help came before they could be built, and before the castle's food supplies were exhausted, there would yet be a reckoning with the enemy outside the gate.
The seal of Lannis-Haig was about the Thane's neck. He lifted it in his hand. It bore the image of Castle Kolglas, the wellspring of his Blood. He wondered if his brother was dead, as the message from Kanin nan Horin-Gyre had claimed. It might be so. The fact that Kennet had not yet come to Anduran could only mean that something had prevented him, and it was hard to imagine how the enemy could have taken Anyara - as they also claimed in that arrow-borne message — except over her father's body.
Croesan let the seal fall back against his chest and looked around. The audience chamber had never been more finely decorated. Golden ribbons were strung from the throne up to fans of polished boar spears that glinted on the walls. Wreaths of greenery were hung with the banners of Anduran, Kolglas, Glasbridge, Targlas and Tanwrye, the five towns of the Blood. A red carpet, trimmed with gold, ran the length of the chamber.
It had been in this room that the seal was first placed around Croesan's neck. His father had been dead no more than a few hours, laid low by a fever only months after coming unscathed out of the Battle of Stone Vale. Now three more generations of the Lannis line stood in the magnificent chamber. Croe
san looked upon Naradin and Eilan, the latter cradling their baby son in her arms. Husband and wife were dressed in plain white robes that brushed the floor. The baby was wrapped in a cream-coloured sheet.
Behind them was gathered a solemn group of officials and castle officers. It was a smaller gathering than the occasion warranted. In more normal times, every family of substance throughout the Thane's lands would have been represented here to witness what was about to happen.
To one side, close by the Thane, a silver bowl filled with water rested on an oaken stand. Athol Kintyne, the Master Oathman of the Lannis-Haig Blood, waited before it. His grey hair and beard, his stooped shoulders and his skin like well-worn hide bestowed an aura of aged wisdom upon him. His duties, shared with the dozen Oathmen who served him, lay at the heart of the Blood's life and history. One of those duties was the Naming of infants. That Naming most often took place at the end of the first three months of life. For reasons nobody felt the need to question, the Thane's grandson was to receive his name before he was even one month old.
'We should begin,' murmured Croesan.
Naradin and Eilan came forwards. They stopped by the silver bowl and bowed their heads to the Master Oathman.
'Who is the child?' asked Athol.
It was Eilan who gave the reply. 'He is the son of Eilan, daughter of Clachan and Dimayne, and he is the son of Naradin, son of Croesan and Liann.'
Athol nodded. 'Wash him,' he said.
Naradin and Eilan together removed the sheet from the baby and lowered him into the water in the bowl.
They handled him carefully. He made no complaint while Naradin held him and Eilan lifted water in her cupped hands and spilled it over his head. Naradin lifted him out again, and Athol proffered a new, immaculate sheet of purest white satin in which he was wrapped.
'Who is the child?' asked the Oathman again.
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