by Helen Lowe
Kalan paused and looked around the masked faces again, thrusting aside his awareness of time passing. For Malian’s sake, he could not afford to panic and choose wrongly. But it was an impossible task.
The stern mouth, he supposed, did not make him shiver, but the hunter seemed cold and untouchable, remote as the moon. The one with the sorrowful mouth seemed more approachable, but Kalan sensed a deep-seated caution in that figure, and weariness as well, which made him hesitate. He definitely hesitated over the hunter with the many masks that kept shifting from one thing into the other. Shifting, after all, could well mean shifty—and could one be shifty and yet be a friend?
Kalan did not know, so he walked around the hunter with the shifting masks again, trying to obtain a better look at that other hunter, hidden behind. Yet still the many masks melted from one shape into the next, always moving so that the second hunter remained concealed. Kalan cursed, turning away for the second time.
As he turned, a small movement caught in his peripheral vision and he saw the hidden figure clearly for the first time. Kalan stood rock-still, and although he could not make out the mask’s details he gained an impression of something very plain: worn and dark with age. He sensed clarity, too, coupled with firmness of purpose in the wearer. He moved slightly so that he could see the other hunter as well, the one with the multitude of masks. For an instant a great cat seemed to look back at him, lambent eyed and amused; slowly, and quite deliberately, the beast winked. Kalan whipped around, determined to catch it out, but the cat had already vanished in another flurry of shifting masks.
“Nine!” Kalan exclaimed, then took a deep breath and forced himself to assess what he had seen. “Strength of purpose and humor. What else?” he wondered aloud. Outwardly, he let his attention appear to drift while inwardly he remained alert, and this time he saw the real kindness in the curve of the mouth that spoke of sorrow and regret. “Strength of purpose, humor, kindness,” he muttered. “That will have to do.” And walking forward, he touched the three hunters in turn with the ring.
Each time Kalan reached out the pearl flared in smoky incandescence, but when he finally stepped back, expecting the hunters to move or take action, nothing happened. Kalan frowned, wondering if he needed to touch them again, but a gloved hand closed over his arm.
“You have done enough,” the Huntmaster said, “and done well. There are not many who can see to choose at all, let alone rightly or wrongly.”
“But surely,” protested Kalan, “they should do something now, act in some way.”
The Huntmaster shook his head. “It is as I told you.” The harsh voice was almost patient. “The hunters as you see them here are only a metaphor, a reflection of the people and forces at play in your world beyond the Gate. Now we must wait to see how well you have chosen. But even if we cannot act on that plane ourselves, we can at least let this worm see us, perhaps even distract it a little!”
Kalan turned, and saw that while he had been concentrating on the hunters, the Huntmaster had brought the hounds under his control. The hooded spear was rammed butt-down into the grassy hillside alongside the veil of shimmering air, and the hounds were gathered in a knot around it. Their eyes still glowed red but they were fixed on the Huntmaster now, and the line of their bodies and the angle of their heads showed that, however reluctantly, they were obedient to his will. When he walked back to them they came pressing and crowding around, and although they continued to growl deep in their throats at the siren worm, they no longer hurled themselves at the barrier. Kalan kept a wary eye on them, all the same, and stood as close as possible to the Huntmaster.
The tall black-cloaked figure raised his hand and placed it against the veil, which rippled and then grew clear as water. Kalan felt that if he, too, stretched out a hand he would be able to reach through and touch the red and white furnishings. For the first time, too, he could hear the sweet, cloying song of the siren worm. There was a hint of rankness beneath the sweet tone; it reminded Kalan of fruit that appeared sound but had turned to rot beneath the skin.
Despite that, the tune was alluring, mesmerizing … Kalan felt his concentration begin to drift, and a lethargy crept over him as the song whispered of the infinite desirability of ruin and decay. He longed for the slow demise of hope and life, and although the silver fire still burned, it seemed paler: forlorn, pathetic, futile. “It is doomed,” Kalan muttered. “She is doomed. There is no hope.”
The crow on the Huntmaster’s shoulder bated, cawing: a discordant cry that cut through the muzziness in Kalan’s head. “Stand firm, boy,” the Huntmaster said, his voice even harsher than the crow’s. “You need to think of wholesome things: the friend standing at your shoulder in hard times, and the unexpected kindness of strangers. Hold on to them against the seduction of the song. Trust in the Token as well, for like the armring, it has the power to resist such evil.”
Kalan raised his head, shaking away the dullness and confusion. But he was not the only one who had heard the Huntmaster’s voice. The flat head of the siren worm whipped around, hissing defiance. “Why are you here, Hunter?” the worm demanded. Its voice was half the sibilance of the hiss, half the cloying sweetness that characterized its song. “We both know that you cannot pass the Gate into the realms of the living, you who are less than a ghost, the very shadow of a shadow, clinging to the tattered edge of Derai dreams.”
“Believe what you please, little crawler,” the Huntmaster answered, “if it comforts you. But even dreams can be potent, and nightmares, too, if you get caught in them.”
The worm hissed again, its head darting toward them, then swung back to the bed where the protective fire still burned. The woman by the hearth remained unmoving, her face turned away. “Do you threaten me with your nightmare pack?” the siren worm jeered. “They too are impotent, bound into Mayanne’s web.”
“Is that so?” the Huntmaster said softly. “Yet you, I think, have passed the Gate of Dreams in pursuit of your quarry and now the Hunt is roused. So will you be able to pass back again after—that is the question.”
The siren worm looked momentarily uneasy. As well it might, thought Kalan, looking at the avid, blood red stare of the hounds. Then the flat head hissed, swaying higher. “I do not need to escape, Hunter, so long as I slay the girl—and you cannot step out of your tapestry to prevent me! Watch, then, and despair, while I free her ghost to wander with you forever in the limbo between worlds and time.”
The worm whipped back on itself and began to slither around the circle of silver fire, wrapping it in an even thicker band of smoky shadow. As the worm moved it sang, the siren song swelling in strength and power. The silver fire sputtered and sparked, the hounds slavered and howled, and Kalan howled, too, his voice rising above theirs as he reached for the hooded spear. “I don’t care! I’m going to stop it. Now!”
The Huntmaster’s right arm was a steel band, holding him immobile. “Do you want to destroy your world?” the hard voice snarled, low into his ear. “Do you think that will save your friend?”
“But nothing’s happening !” Kalan screamed back at him. “You and your Nine-cursed Token have killed her anyway!”
“Be still.” The faint rasping voice was a whisper in Kalan’s mind, slipping through his turmoil. “Trust, and you will see how well you have wrought, with your power of three.”
Kalan barely heard. It’s too late, he thought, all too late. I’ve failed. Nothing will save Malian now. And he slumped against the Huntmaster’s arm, despair ragged in his throat.
21
Pieces on the Board
The hour was already late as Asantir made her rounds in the New Keep, but the lamps along every corridor and hallway blazed like jewels, washing the Honor Captain’s face with rose and copper and gold. Yet despite the light, shadows remained, pooled in every corner and recess.
Lights against the darkness, thought Asantir, stalking soft footed along the silent halls. We are like children, making their nurse leave a candle to hold back
the dark hours. And this from the House that has taken Night for its very name.
Asantir’s mouth thinned, but her responsibility was to deal with the world as it was, so she pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the shadowed corners and dark alcoves. She was deeply weary, her wounded shoulder a dull, throbbing ache, but still she kept her eyes and posture alert. Both during and immediately after the excursion into the Old Keep, she had chewed on dulkat leaves to deaden the pain, but there was a limit to how long the leaves could be used and their effect had long since worn off. Now there was nothing to be done except grit her teeth and endure.
The chief healer, Akerin, had looked at the shoulder as soon as she returned from the Old Keep, hissing under his breath. “What folly is this, Asantir?” he had demanded. “If you had left this wound much longer and infection had taken hold, then not only the shoulder but also your life might have been past our ability to repair. And where would that have left us all? Night cannot afford to lose both Keep Commander and Honor Captain at the same time!”
She had reached out with her good hand and grasped his. “Sometimes desperate need requires desperate measures. And you would still have the Earl and all the other captains serving in this keep.”
Akerin, as experienced a campaigner as any guard in the keep, had shaken his head. “Losing Gerenth was a grievous blow, but losing you …” He had stopped as an orderly came into the room, waiting until the man left before speaking again. Even so, he had kept his voice low. “You will have to choose, you know, between the keep command and being Honor Captain. It leaves Night too vulnerable having one person, however able, trying to do both jobs for any length of time.”
Akerin was right, Asantir thought now—particularly when we are already under pressure.
The Earl, she knew, was fully aware of the need to replace Gerenth as soon as possible. But it was not a job that just anyone could do and Gerenth had managed to get his two most senior lieutenants slaughtered with him. “So you,” the Earl had told her, frowning across a worktable covered in dispatches and reports, “must do both jobs a while longer, Asantir.” She had nodded, accepting this, and they had then talked long and hard about the implications of the battle for House and keep, and their options for dealing with its aftermath.
It had not been an easy discussion. The bitter reality was that their vulnerability had been laid bare and Asantir dreaded the keep’s defences being tested again before the garrison could be brought back to full strength. Much would depend, she thought, on whether the attack had been simply a boldly conceived raid or the opening move in a more complex campaign. If the latter, then Night might well be doomed, for neither House nor keep were ready to fight a sustained campaign, let alone win one. The truth was that Night had grown weak and now she must expect their enemies to try and exploit that weakness, just as she would do in their place.
Asantir stopped, throwing out a silent plea to Mhaelanar that the attack did not signal a campaign. “Not yet at least, O Lord Defender,” she prayed, using the ancient form. “Shield Night now, Shield of the Derai.”
Although in all likelihood, Asantir thought, watching the storm draughts stir a lamplit hanging, the god has given up on the Derai. Why, after all, should the Defender exert himself for a people who had undermined their own defences so effectively—the sum of five hundred years of neglect and downright sabotage of the psychic powers and defences that were so necessary to combat the Swarm?
Asantir shook her head, knowing that the remedy was unlikely to be palatable to most in the keep, let alone the council. Even the Earl had looked more than usually grim when she told him what she believed needed to be done. She had watched the telltale tightening of the muscles along his jawline and wondered if she had lost him already, before her work had even begun. But in the end he had nodded, although his expression remained as bleak as the Wall. “Do what you must,” he had said, knowing that she would.
She had implemented some of the smaller remedies immediately, such as doubling the guard throughout the keep and posting priests and guards together to watch the portals between the Old and New Keeps. Even that small act had caused a furor and Asantir grinned, wryly, as she remembered it. The outrage had not been confined to the barracks either. There had been plenty around the council table as well, although the councilors had stopped short of open challenge, a circumstance that reflected the uncertainty of the attack’s aftermath as much as her authority in the keep.
“We have,” Asantir had told them flatly, “allowed the Old Keep to become a breach for our enemies. I will not compound that folly by continuing to leave its perimeter unguarded at our backs.”
Their protests had died away, but she knew the resentment would linger on. Many councilors did not wish to concede that it had been a Swarm attack, let alone admit that the so-called old powers had been used against Night with such devastating effect. Asantir paused again, her eyes narrowed on the soft light from a cresset, while another and far brighter fire flowered in her mind’s eye, blazing through the darkness of the Old Keep. Even now her breath caught in sheer wonder at the memory.
The Earl, however, had decided that they should not share the news of the Golden Fire’s return. “This is not a time when we want House and keep relying on the hope of rescue by an external force,” he had said grimly. “And even the Golden Fire, it seems, is not as it used to be. Until we know what this really means for Night, we must continue to rely on ourselves and assume that we stand alone.”
Futile, Asantir reflected, because of course there were already rumors. And perhaps the keep needed a measure of hope to counteract the fear and uncertainty that swirled around it, darker than the storm. It had not helped, either with the rumors or the fear, that she had had to leave immediately after the return from the Old Keep in order to escort the heralds to the borders of Night. She had protested against that decision, but the Earl had been adamant.
“It is a matter of my honor,” he had told her starkly. “There are those, unfortunately, who believe that both Night and my honor would be served best by ensuring that the heralds never return to the River lands, to report on what they have seen here.”
Their eyes had met then, in an understanding that was as sour as the taste of dulkat leaves. “Even if they were not your guests,” she had said slowly, “they risked their lives for the House of Night, going into the Old Keep. Murder would seem a poor way to repay that debt.”
“Apparently,” the Earl had replied, his face so closed that she still wondered who had made this argument to him, “such a deed would not violate all the laws and codes that I have vowed to uphold—as I might otherwise have thought—because the heralds are not Derai. Our laws, therefore, need not apply to them.”
Asantir’s mouth had twisted, quick and hard with the depth of her contempt. “Murder is murder, however one tries to dress it up.” She had not added that the heralds might prove harder to kill than many in the Keep of Winds suspected; that was not the point, either for the Earl or herself. “Such a deed would blacken both your name and that of Night.”
“And that,” the Earl said grimly, “is why you, personally, must see them safely on their road while I keep their ill-wishers busy here. I am relying on you, Honor Captain.”
It had been an eerie journey, threading through the deep clefts in the mountain walls that were the only safe path when a Wall storm shrieked and howled far above. The heralds, wrapped in deep silence, had rarely spoken and everyone except the golden minstrel had been subdued. Haimyr had seemed as impervious to the austere silence of the heralds as he was to the glum looks of the guards, including their captain. At one stage, Asantir had even feared that the guards might be tempted to regain their own good cheer by silencing the Earl’s minstrel for good. But in the end she had managed to see the heralds safely to the borders of the Wall, and the beginning of their long road south, and return to the Keep of Winds without incident.
She had reported to the Earl immediately and then begun her rounds,
checking the guard posts and the work that had been done in her absence. All seemed secure, quiet, ordered: Even the mixed watches of guards and priests on the Old Keep portals were working well enough together, at least to the extent that their duty required it. Sarus’s influence, she knew, and Garan’s—for wherever those two led, the others would follow.
All the same, Asantir could not shake a sense of disquiet. It feathered her spine with cool fingers and she felt that there was something she should have seen or heard, some sign she should have recognized, that would fit that uneasiness. Yet no matter how she ran her mind back over people, places, and events, she could find nothing that was wrong, nothing out of place.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. “Just tired,” she muttered, “and jumping at shadows like a raw recruit.” What she needed was a good night’s sleep, and the sooner the better. Yet the uneasiness persisted, ghosting with her on silent wings down the corridor and into the well-worn office that was hers by right, as Captain of the Honor Guard.
Even now, after nearly five years as captain, Asantir still entered the Honor room with a sense of satisfaction, although there was little enough in it that was her own. The furniture, scuffed and worn with use, came with the office, and the gaily striped rug that lay before the desk had belonged to the captain before her. Nhairin had given her the wooden writing stand, and the delicately carved silver lamp had come from Haimyr, a gift from his native Ij. The twin swords that held pride of place on the war chest were unquestionably hers, but the weapons on the wall, the javelins and bows and mirror-bright shields, were a mix of her own and those left by her predecessors—just as the black spear had been handed down from Honor Captain to Honor Captain for many generations.
How many generations, Asantir wondered now, staring at the blank space where the spear had been. There was a mystery to it, there had to be, for so potent a weapon to have hung there, overlooked and unused for so long. She supposed she would have to find something to fill the space eventually, but for the moment she was content to honor the spear’s memory by leaving its place empty. Even now she could hear its song, low and vibrant and fierce as it hungered for battle, then exultant as it flashed through the air. She saw again the terrible beauty as it caught fire and plummeted into the heart of its enemy: A fine way to go, if go one must, taking one’s foe with you, down into the dark.
