by Helen Lowe
“Yet the bitterness is not yet done, my hearers, for the direst chapter in this whole grim tale must now be told. Darkness still bloomed in the heart and mind of Aikanor and there were many in the House of Night who remained apt to his will. So he sat in the Heir’s Seat and when the rituals were completed, he and his followers turned upon their recent enemies, betraying their pledged word.
“All accounts say that what followed was utter carnage, for at first few could believe what was happening and then, when they saw the blood blossoming and the bodies falling and did believe, confusion reigned. Some of the warriors of Night rallied to their Earl, who tried to stop the slaughter, but others joined the Heir in his killing, turning especially on the priests of their own House. Weapons were seized from the walls and the hall became a battlefield. The flagstones were awash with blood and every wall hanging was splashed and daubed with red. Even the peacemakers from the House of the Rose, who never bear arms, were cut down along with the rest.
“In the midst of all this horror was the Heir of Night, his face a fiend’s mask of hatred as he and his closest followers sought to cut their way to Xeria. No one will ever know his purpose at the end, whether it was to slay her as he had slain her brother, or to seize her and drag her away. Warriors from the House of Stars battled to reach and defend her and many priests of the House of Night, who stood with her still, fell protecting the daughter of another House from the swords of their own clan and kin.
“All agree that Aikanor must have been mad and the certain proof of this is that he appears to have forgotten the power of the priestess he attacked. As for Xeria, it is said that she was half mad also, both from the long siege and grief for her murdered twin. The sight of so many being slain around her, and her brother’s killer before her, proved too much. The priestess’s last hold on sanity was swept away on a tide of fear and rage and she used her tremendous power to wreak the greatest betrayal of all, calling down the Golden Fire of the keeps to kill her own people.
“Perhaps Xeria only meant to strike at Aikanor, but the cataclysm of destruction that followed fell equally upon the heads of friend and foe alike. Half the valor of the Derai died that night, by the sword and by the fire that struck like bolts of golden lightning and in curtains of coruscating flame. It is said that the entire keep resounded to the screams of the dying and the fire consumed everything it touched. Xeria, too, was immolated, but her death was as nothing to the destruction she wrought upon the Derai. Both the Earl of Night and his Heir were slain, as were the Earl of Blood, the Sword Earl, and the Count of the Rose. Most of the priests of the House of Night lay dead and the Golden Fire that had lived in the heart of every keep was extinguished. It could not be roused again, not even by what was left of the Blood. Every keep of the Derai Alliance was left gray and cold and has remained so to this day.
“After the full reckoning of the dead had been made, each House withdrew to mourn their own. The House of Night forsook the old Keep of Winds, for the priest kind were not the only ones to dream of slaughter and have nightmares filled with the screams and pleadings of the dead. And so the New Keep was built—but on the day that the Old Keep was finally abandoned the Earl of Night’s successor swore a great oath. He was a grim, cold man with no forgiveness in him and he named all priests as faith breakers and traitors, banishing them from his newly built halls. The oath he took to uphold this deed was a blood oath above and beyond any sworn before or since—grounded in lifeblood drawn from every scion of the Blood of Night, in the shades of the dead, and in the secret names of the Nine Gods. The Blood Oath, the new Earl called it, enduring beyond death. And so it has proven, for the Oath has remained unshaken, binding Earl and Heir and House from that day to this.
“The Earl of Blood was swift to adopt the Blood Oath and although it may not have been sworn to formally by all the Derai, its practice quickly became tradition throughout the Alliance. If alliance you could call it still, when no new peace was sworn between the Houses and vendetta and blood feud took the place of outright war. There has been no friendship between the Houses of Night and Stars from that day to this, and one by one the remaining Houses have realigned to one side or the other: The warrior and Sea keeps with Night; the priestly Houses with Stars—and the House of the Rose withdrawn into itself.
“House against House, warrior against priest, therein you have the heart of the darkness that has fallen over the Derai.”
The Earl’s voice fell silent and the wind was suddenly very loud, an alien presence that sobbed and moaned, straining to find entry. Rowan Birchmoon, too, was silent, as though listening to the wild voice off the Wall. “That is a dark tale indeed,” she said finally. “Until now I have always understood that it was your priest kind who betrayed the Derai. Yet in your tale it was Aikanor who committed the first betrayal, just as at the end he was the first to break his sworn oaths of peace.”
The Earl’s lips tightened. “Apparently,” he said grudgingly, “Aikanor himself had priestly powers. In those days, many warriors had the old powers, while priests learned warrior skills. Aikanor had trained with the warrior priests before he became Heir and it is said that there were several like him amongst his own guard. That is why the Oath specifically precludes those of the Blood with priestly powers from ever again leading the Derai. It is to protect us from the likes of Aikanor.”
“So according to the tale, there were really three betrayals.” Rowan Birchmoon spoke slowly. “The crimes of Aikanor, which started it all; the subsequent defiance of the priests; and the final, calamitous act by Xeria. The betrayal by the priests in giving succor to Xeria, if betrayal it was, seems the least of these dark deeds, yet they are the ones punished by the Oath.”
The Earl frowned. “You still don’t understand,” he said. “They were all priest kind, every one of them: Aikanor, Xeria, and those who gave her shelter.”
“But surely,” she protested, “the Temple was right to give Xeria sanctuary?”
The Earl shook his head. “The Derai are a people under arms and the Earls and their Heirs are war leaders first and foremost, whose commands must be obeyed by House and keep. Any other consideration must come second to that. There can be no exemptions or special cases.”
“But how could it be right,” asked Rowan Birchmoon, “to obey an order that was so plainly wrong, morally, and in terms of every Derai value of honorable conduct and hospitality? Can an Earl command his captains to commit evil deeds, deeds that are not even part of the war you say you are fighting, simply because the Derai are an army first and a people second?” She paused, then added softly, “Is this truly what you believe, Tasarion of Night?”
He looked away from her, his mouth thinned into a hard line. He loved her—but who was she to question the Derai? The Winter people were little more than nomads, wandering hunters who dwelt far from the Wall of Night and had never encountered the terror of the Swarm, or experienced the bitter sacrifices required of those who opposed it. Yet it was the Derai Wall alone, although they knew it not, that protected all the safe, complacent peoples of Haarth from being overrun by the Swarm.
The Earl checked himself, hearing the echo of his father’s contempt when he spoke of outsiders, calling them leeches who fed off Derai blood. It had always been moot, Tasarion reflected now, whether the Old Earl had despised priests or outsiders more. A quick stab of shame accompanied that thought, for those same nomads and hunters had saved him and his followers from death in the snow, three years before. And afterward, for love and love alone, Rowan had returned with him to the Wall of Night.
She was entitled, he reminded himself, his anger dissipating, to see the world differently from the Derai. “No,” he said quietly, “I do not think it right for me to order evil done in the name of the Derai cause, any more than it was right for Aikanor to do so. Nonetheless, the Derai Alliance could not function if every time an Earl gave an order it was debated and endlessly questioned by the rest of the House.”
Rowan Birchmoon remained sile
nt some time, although he guessed that she was still pondering what he had said. “But surely,” she said at last, “the Betrayal could not be seen as normal circumstances, especially since Aikanor had already broken several sacred laws? Given that his breaches had such far-reaching consequences, should he not have forfeited any right to exact obedience from the House of Night? Perhaps the priests believed that by denying the Heir they were holding true to the Earl, maintaining Night’s honor by refusing to countenance his son’s misdeeds?”
“You argue like an envoy from the House of the Rose,” the Earl observed dryly, “but in the end, it does not matter what I believe. I am bound by the Blood Oath and must observe its terms. And how can I hope to hold this House together if I do not uphold its laws?” His voice, in the fire-shadowed darkness, was deeply weary. “I am tired and grieved, and I do not wish to wrangle over our old darkness and all its ills, which I can do little or nothing to mend.”
She slid her arms around him, by way of answer, holding him close within their circle. Outside, the wind hurled itself against the keep and the Earl closed a hand over one of hers, holding it against his heart. “I have always thought,” he said at last, almost reluctantly, “that the Oath reflects the depth of the shock and betrayal felt at the time. No simple retelling can adequately express the horror of Xeria’s deed. Aikanor’s madness was bad enough, but Xeria’s …” His voice trailed away as even now, five hundred years later, he struggled to come to terms with the enormity of what Xeria had done and its implications for the Derai.
“The Golden Fire of the keeps,” he murmured eventually. “The very name is magic still, but then it was the heart of the Alliance, our most powerful bulwark against the enemy. Xeria did the unthinkable when she used it against the Derai, immolating friend and foe alike. The extremity of that act nearly shattered the Alliance completely—and generated an equally extreme response in the Blood Oath. The new Earl of Night was not alone in resolving that such a catastrophe must never, ever, happen again. The histories suggest that many of the priest kind felt the same way. Some may even have supported the Oath initially, for that reason. Perhaps it was easier, as well, to see the betrayal by our own as the greater threat, since we had been here for nearly a thousand years by that time without any major attack by the Swarm. Who knows? Certainly I do not, five hundred years later. All I know is that the Oath continues to bind us, generation after generation, and there is neither peace nor reconciliation between our divided Houses. Blood feud and vendetta, conflict and war: It goes on and on, and I for one cannot see an end to it.”
“And now,” she observed, “some of your councilors will put this attack down to the old schism and demand revenge.”
He moved restlessly beside her. “Oh, they are already baying for the blood of some nice, safe enemy to appease their shame and fear. We must prove that we are still strong, they say, by sweeping down on some House that is both unprepared and weaker than ourselves—not that they put it in those terms!” His laugh was short and mirthless. “The House of Peace perhaps, that should be safe enough since they follow Meraun and eschew the sword. Except that the Sword Earl would not allow it, since Peace is in some wise under his protection. So that will not do, we had best choose some outlying hold of the House of Morning instead.”
Her arms tightened around him. “You are bitter, my heart.”
“I am,” he said. “All know it was the Swarm that attacked us, yet still they persist in this old clamor of the Betrayal. It is as though they are willfully blind and deaf!”
“They are afraid, beloved.” Her voice was soft. “You said it yourself. They are looking for an easy victory, to make themselves feel safe again.”
He stroked her hair with a gentle hand. “How is it,” he asked, “that you were born so wise?” She made no reply and after a while he spoke again, into the darkness above her head. “What are you thinking now, woman of the Winter Country?”
Her voice, when she answered him, was grave. “I am thinking, man of the Derai, that you come of an implacable and inflexible people, to nurture your enmity down so many generations.”
“I suppose,” he said, with a flash of grim humor, “that you are seeing the dark side of the qualities that have enabled us to oppose the Swarm for a far, far longer time than five hundred years. It may be that we Derai have become a double-edged sword, cutting against ourselves as well as our enemy.”
“Perhaps you have,” she agreed quietly, “for even you, the Earl of Night, have lost a wife and now you will sacrifice your daughter and your Heir to this same Blood Oath.”
The Earl shook his head, for the thought of Malian was still a sliver of pain, sliding into his armored heart. My daughter, he thought, the child of my youth and love. How can I bear to let you go—except that I must.
“The Oath binds us all,” he said finally, speaking as much to himself as to the woman at his side. “In the end I must be the Earl of Night first, before I am either a husband or a father.” Or a lover. The words hung in the air between them. “The House of Night looks to its Earl to see justice done, no matter the cost to the man.”
Ay, he thought, folding his arms behind his head and staring into the darkness as though it held answers: I am the Earl of Night and will do what I must. I am not yet ready to let the House of Night fall and the Derai Alliance with it. Nor will I sit and wait for my enemies to show themselves in their own good time. I will hunt them out, every one, without respite.
“I will do whatever I must.” He repeated the words aloud and hoped that it was true—that he would have the strength to hold his House and the Derai Alliance together, however bitter the road. Beside him, Rowan Birchmoon stirred.
“You always have, have you not?” she said, and the Wall wind shrilled, rising to a berserker shriek as the storm broke.
16
Woman of Winter
The fire died down in the grate and the Earl’s breathing shifted into the rhythm of sleep. Rowan Birchmoon continued to hold him close, listening to the storm rage. “So much blood,” she whispered, “so much grief and pain. And you at the very heart of it—my man of peace, caught in the maw of war.”
She was filled with grief for him, but was not sure which shocked her more, the harsh reality of the Swarm attack and its aftermath, or the terrible tale of the Great Betrayal. She had seen the reflection of its bitterness in so many faces since the attack, and in some cases open hostility toward herself. Outsider, those hard looks had said: enemy. The hostility might not be there in every eye, but she had seen it in enough. Even Nhairin had taken to looking away rather than meeting her gaze. And Rowan had not missed the covert glances between the councilors summoned to hear Asantir’s report on events in the Old Keep, the quick calculation that if the Earl lost his Heir to the Temple quarter then he must beget another one, and quickly.
“And rid himself,” Rowan murmured, “of the unwanted outsider consort.” As if she had wanted to come here, to their blighted, forbidding Wall. She remembered the Derai survivors stumbling into their camp on the borders of the Winter Country, how grim and dark and formidable she had thought them, even when they were half dead from exposure to the cold. It had been a miracle that any of them were alive at all, or so the experienced hunters claimed. They had shaken their heads over it around the fire, recalling all the old tales of the Derai for the occasion.
“They are warlike and fierce,” one storyteller had said solemnly, while another recounted an even older story that claimed the Derai were not from Haarth at all, but had come from the stars long ago. They had, the teller said in hushed tones, built their great strongholds in a night and a day while the world still reeled from their coming. The plains had been riven with earthquake and fire, every river and lake had boiled—and when the cataclysm was over the vast and terrible Wall of Night marched along the northern boundary of the world.
Rowan had heard these tales before, but the presence of Derai amongst them made the stories seem more real. Her great-uncle, the shaman,
had listened to the stories and the speculation but said nothing, just nodded and smiled while the smoke from the fire wreathed his seamed face. Later, when everyone else was asleep, he had looked at her with bright, shrewd eyes. “It is no accident,” he said, “that they have come here. Winter brought them.” Rowan had felt compelled to point out that it had not brought all of them, that over half the Derai company had perished. He had not answered; they were both of the Winter Country and knew that the weak and unwary must pay Winter its toll.
Life and death, Rowan thought now as the Wall wind shrieked again. Death and life, but not as the Derai understand these things. They have no conception of the infinite circle of the Winter world.
The last thought in her mind, in those first days, had been that she might fall in love with one of these dour, darkvisaged strangers. She had only been surprised that she did not despise them for being caught out by Winter, and that even the most hardened of the hunters seemed to grant them a grudging respect. “You cannot call those who died weak,” her great-uncle had said when she remarked on this to him. “Few of our own would have survived a storm like that, so we must call those who survived extraordinarily strong. Their Earl is the heart of them, the magnet. The other survivors are the filings that have held to him most strongly, the ones with the most iron in their souls.”
She had looked at the Derai with new eyes then, and at this Tasarion, the Earl of Night, in particular, and seen the truth of her uncle’s words. She watched him hold the Derai to their discipline as the weeks dragged by and blasting storm followed blasting storm in quick succession. In the few clear days between each onslaught there was just enough time to hunt and breathe deeply of the crisp, impossibly dry air—but not for the Derai to return to their own lands. “Spring,” they were told, gently but firmly. “You must wait for spring and the thaw and the traveling weather.”
