The Heir of Night

by Helen Lowe

  The wind gusted hard into their silence, blowing grit through the bivouac entrance. “The Jaransor hills.” Nhairin’s voice sounded odd, flattened. “That is an ill-omened place.”

  “It’s what the captain would do,” Kyr responded, “the thing no one would expect.”

  “I don’t think anyone would expect Jaransor,” Nhairin answered, still on the same odd note. Her eyes were shadowed as they met Malian’s and the line of her lips had thinned.

  Kyr looked at her curiously. “What do you know of Jaransor?” he asked.

  Nhairin shrugged. “Only what anyone does. Those hills have long been forbidden, off-limits, because too many of our people have foundered there. And the old records say that Jaransor is hostile to both the Derai and the Swarm. They claim that it is one of the ancient places of this world, possessed by a power that sleeps but lightly and is dangerous if woken. They also say,” she added, “that Jaransor is ghost-ridden and drives people mad.”

  Kyr looked at her from beneath his brows. “People say that the Old Keep is infested with ghosts as well, full of their old hatreds. But we didn’t see any when we went in there, did we Lira?”

  The other guard shook her head but said nothing, apparently content to let Kyr and Nhairin resolve the matter between them. Malian looked at Kyr. “I haven’t heard of Jaransor or these tales,” she said. “Is it as dangerous as Nhairin says?”

  “Ay,” he replied, “it’s dangerous. But I am hold born, as you know; raised in Westwind, which is the closest of Night’s holds to Jaransor. Westwind folk still go into the Jaransor hills, despite the ban, and return to tell the tale. The real question is, can we escape our pursuers if we carry on as we are? And the answer to that is no.”

  There was another brief silence while they absorbed this. “So what happens when we get to Jaransor?” Kalan said eventually, sitting up. “Can we still reach the Border Mark by that route, or will we have to find another way south?”

  Kyr drew a map in the dust and they all crowded close to look. “The main Jaransor ridge, here, will bring us back down to the Border Mark, if we can shake our pursuers for long enough. Jaransor has never been friendly to the Darkswarm and its minions, so I am hoping that going into the hills will buy us the time we need.”

  “And if not?” Kalan asked. “What lies the other way?”

  “Eventually,” said Kyr, sketching more lines in the dirt, “the main ridge splits into two. One spine angles back toward the Wall until it finally peters out in the northern reaches of the plain. The other arm carries on, league on weary league, until eventually you come to the Winter Country, or so they say. West of Jaransor there is just wilderness. I have never heard what, if anything, lies beyond that.”

  “So,” Malian said carefully, “you are saying that we have a choice between possible danger if we enter Jaransor, and certain danger if we don’t?”

  “Oh, we’ll definitely be in danger if we go into Jaransor,” said Kyr grimly. “But at least it should give us an even chance of eluding our pursuers, whereas out here on the plain …” He finished his sentence with an expressive shrug.

  “I still don’t like it,” muttered Nhairin.

  “You’d like it even less if we were dead,” observed Lira, getting to her feet while Kyr brushed the map away. “And believe me, we will be if we stay here.”

  They rode out as soon as darkness fell and turned their horses west, toward Jaransor. Kyr pushed them hard, setting a faster pace and allowing fewer stops. He rode slightly ahead of their small company, while Lira was rearguard and frequently dropped behind, checking their back trail. Malian and Kalan rode close together, sometimes knee and knee, sometimes one horse behind the other, but they did not speak. An air of palpable tension hung over them all, but although Malian listened for the sounds of pursuit, all she heard was the wind and the steady thud of the horses’ hooves on earth and stone. The night stretched out, cold and black and seemingly endless, while she rose and fell in the saddle, fell and rose until it was all she could do to remain upright.

  This time they did not stop with the dawn but carried on toward the range of hills that rose up before them, rough and wild in the gray light. The ridges were far lower than the Wall of Night, but still very rugged, with stony outcrops along their tops. “We’ll have more shelter once we’re in amongst the hills,” Kyr said. “We can stop, then, and find a safe place to rest.” So they pressed on again and eventually came to a wide river that comprised several braided channels flowing between shingle banks. The water was a pale blue-green in color and looked cold.

  “The river Telimbras,” said Kyr. “It marks the boundary between the Gray Lands and Jaransor. In Westwind Hold,” he added, his expression impassive, “we call it the River of No Return.”

  Malian glanced quickly at Nhairin and saw that the steward’s face was set, although she made no reply to Kyr’s remark. Kalan grinned. “Well,” he said cheerfully, “this is the river for us, then, since going back is not an option.”

  That surprised a laugh out of Lira and a reluctant grin from Kyr. Even Nhairin’s countenance eased a little. They clattered and splashed their way across the riverbed, throwing up clouds of glittering spray as they rode through the deeper channels, and then climbed steadily, following narrow trails up rocky ridges and across steep slopes. The focus of Malian’s world closed in again: to the black neck of her horse, to staying in the saddle, and to gritting her teeth and keeping going.

  Despite her weariness, she began to notice small details about the landscape around her. The herb thyme grew wild and its scent rose, heady and aromatic, whenever the horses’ hooves crushed it. Small yellow flowers danced amongst the rocks and the higher slopes were covered in a mix of scrambling green—sweetbriar, said Kyr, when she roused herself to ask—and dark, twisting thorn scrub. Eventually, Malian began to see the green shimmer of trees growing along small precipitous creeks, and they stopped at last in a narrow ravine where the trees formed a green roof and a stream ran clear over brown pebbles. “A short rest only,” Kyr warned. “Just to eat. We need to get further into the hills and keep pushing south.”

  “Without killing either ourselves or the horses,” murmured Lira. Malian wondered how the guard could keep going when she had had no rest for a night and a day. She herself was so stiff and sore that she practically fell out of the saddle, and Nhairin’s limp was pronounced. But the tranquil green was pleasant and both horses and riders drank gratefully from the clear water. A large rock with a smooth, flat top was set into the steep sides of the creek bed; they all sat there, either cross-legged or swinging their feet over the edge, and chewed their rations in weary silence.

  “Time for a nap?” asked Lira, when they had finished eating.

  Kyr shrugged. “Only a short one. We need to keep moving.”

  Nhairin stood up, brushing the dust from her coat. “I’ll keep watch,” she said. “I think I’m too weary even to catnap.”

  Malian watched her limp to a small tor that overlooked their back trail, pausing only for a pat and a word to the horses. Lira already had her eyes closed, lying flat out on the sun-dappled rock, while Kyr and Kalan were sitting with their backs against a tree, both staring at nothing in particular. Malian felt her own eyes growing heavy and she allowed her head to nod forward.

  She woke to find the sun a little higher in the sky and Kyr shaking Lira awake. Malian sat up groggily and decided that she felt worse after an hour’s sleep than she had before. “Ugh,” she muttered, and Kalan grimaced in reply.

  “I feel awful,” he said, smothering a huge yawn. They staggered to their feet and over to the horses, where Nhairin was strapping on their refilled water bags. She slanted a small smile at Malian, who smiled back—then reached out and placed her own hand over the steward’s. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  Nhairin’s hand stilled momentarily, then grew busy again as her smile twisted. “Are you?” she asked. “I must confess to feeling singularly useless, as well as ten years old
er than when we left the keep.”

  Malian peered up at her. “Are you serious, Nhairin?” she said. “You must know that we need you.”

  The steward shook her head. “Do you? How can that be, half crippled as I am?” But her bleak expression eased when she looked around. “Nay, don’t look so worried. The leg’s not used to being pushed like this, and I’m tired and out of sorts, that’s all.”

  Kyr now led them higher into the hills, using the folds in the terrain to conceal their progress from any watchers below. He kept well beneath the tor-dotted ridgelines, but occasionally they would come to a natural gap where they could look back over the Gray Lands without being seen themselves. The plain lay far below them, with a milky haze across its face and the Wall of Night marching along its far side, blue with distance. The only movement besides their own was a falcon high overhead, and Malian found herself caught by its effortless mastery of the air. She had seen falcons before in the keep mews, but never like this, wild and free in the empty sky.

  “We saw birds sometimes, in my home hold,” Kalan said, when she admitted this to him. His face was tilted to watch the hawk’s flight. “It was close to the border, with a creek that ran out of the Wall into the Gray Lands; that’s why the birds could live there. But they were only small, nothing like this.”

  “You get a lot of hawks here,” Kyr put in unexpectedly, “up amongst the higher peaks.” His eyes, too, were fixed on the hovering falcon. “The tor hawks in particular are famed for their size, their courage, and their speed.”

  He loves them, thought Malian, watching the guard: both the land and its hawks. And it’s obvious that he’s been here before.

  She let her mind soar, following the bird, and suddenly the whole world was sharper, clearer, every rock and ridge outlined as though she saw it through the falcon’s eyes. That gaze swung wider, out over the plain, and Malian felt certain that her enemies were there, hidden beneath the milky haze. Their presence buzzed at her, sharp as a wasp along the outer edge of her mind. She could sense an inexorable quality to their pursuit and did not think the river Telimbras would stop them for long.

  Malian peered down, catching a glitter behind the veil of dust and wind. She shook her head, trying to focus, and her hand crept toward the armring beneath her sleeve. The opacity of the haze grew clearer—and then vanished altogether as her fingers clasped the silver band. She saw the flash of armor and the glint of light on spearpoints, and drew her breath in sharply. But when she blinked and looked back again, her vision was obscured once more by the haze. Her horse moved, tossing its head restlessly, and she looked around to meet Nhairin’s dark, searching stare. “What do you see?” the steward asked.

  Malian shook her head. “Something. Nothing. It’s hard to see because of the heat haze and the dust, but there is definitely something out there. I can feel it.”

  They rode on, circling below the gap to avoid being outlined against the sky and then climbing again. As soon as an opportunity arose, Malian urged her horse alongside Kalan’s. “Do you think you could shield us like you did in the Old Keep,” she murmured, “so that we disappear from their psychic view?”

  Kalan frowned. “Jehane Mor might be able to do it, but I would find the numbers difficult, particularly with the horses—also because we’re always moving and our surroundings keep changing so much. I suppose,” he continued slowly, “I could try something like a shield of opaque air around and above us. Yet I can’t help feeling that would be a bit obvious, too much of an anomaly in the natural pattern of things.”

  Malian nodded, seeing that what he described might be like a beacon for their pursuers, rather than throwing them off the trail. Kalan pushed his hair back from his forehead, leaving a track of sweat and grime. “But perhaps, when we make camp and everyone’s settled,” he said, still frowning. “I might have a better chance then.”

  Malian kept her voice low. “They seem to have found us so easily. You don’t think that’s because of me, do you, the same way the were-hunt followed my light in the Old Keep?”

  Kalan shook his head, a quick negative. “I don’t think so. You’re keeping it well damped down now. Besides, it’s not the same out here. There’s so much light everywhere, so much life and activity, that your light is almost lost in it.” He leaned closer to her. “What did you really see, down there on the plain?” He shrugged as Malian looked back at him, her expression blank. “You know there’s been an empathy between us since the Old Keep, so I know when you’re being evasive. I just wondered why.”

  Malian shifted in her saddle. “I’m not quite sure. It’s just a feeling that I should be careful.” She frowned down at her hands. “That I shouldn’t give too much away. I keep asking myself how our pursuers could possibly pick up our trail so quickly—unless they already knew where to look. And Nhairin is not herself, and Kyr has plainly been to Jaransor before, despite the ban.” She paused, then finished softly, “I don’t feel inclined to trust anyone too readily.”

  Kalan nodded, staring at the unknown land all around them and then at Kyr and Nhairin’s backs, only a few horse lengths ahead. “Lira does seem certain that we’ve been hunted ever since we left the Wall,” he said at last. “You’re right—as though they were expecting us.” And Malian watched the light of adventure that had shone in his face for the past few days, even when exhausted, fade into something harder.

  It was midafternoon when they crested the main Jaransor ridge. Even tucked into the cover of rocks and thorn scrub it felt like sitting on the top of the world itself, with the haze of the Gray Lands far below and ridge on ridge of wild country stretching into the west. Malian could not help drawing a deep, satisfied breath before her attention was caught by what she had thought was just another tor. Now, closer up, she realized that it was the jagged remnants of a tower. “What is this?” she asked Kyr, surprised.

  “One of the ruined towers of Jaransor,” he replied, wiping the sweat from his face. “There’s a line of them along these hills. They say they were watchtowers, built to mark the border of the Old Empire that once stretched from Jaransor in the north to Ishnapur in the south.”

  “I’ve read a different account,” said Nhairin. Her face was still drawn, but she studied the crumbling watchtower with interest. “It said they were built by another people, long before the Old Empire rose, who wished to dwell remote from others and watch the stars. No one knows why their towers fell, but it is written that the land is imbued with their ancient power.”

  “How do you know such things?” Malian asked curiously.

  “I have always liked old histories,” Nhairin replied, “and a steward has more time than a guard to indulge such interests. We Derai collected such stories when we first arrived here, even though few read the old books now.”

  Kyr shrugged. “Who knows which of the two accounts is true?”

  “They could both be true,” Kalan said, then flushed when they all stared at him. “Brother Selmor’s an historian and he says that it’s possible to get layers of history in one place, particularly where one civilization has succeeded another.”

  “And so much for the past!” Lira said impatiently. “I am more interested in the present and keeping our Heir from becoming part of history for a while longer. Do we stop here, Kyr, or keep moving?”

  “More importantly,” said Nhairin, “dare we risk pushing further into this place, despite our pursuers?”

  Kyr frowned. “We can’t stop here,” he replied. “It’s too open and we still have a few hours of daylight left. We should use them to find the old road that runs along the western side of the ridge, linking all the towers, and follow it south to the Border Mark.”

  “Assuming the road’s still there,” Nhairin said gloomily.

  “It will be.” Kyr was very certain. “The road is like the watchtowers. Their builders made them to last.”

  It took them some time to find the old road, for it was closed in by creeping vines, and scrub that stood shoulder high to a hors
e. Yet once found, there was still a discernible pavement beneath the encroaching green, and even old milestones sunk into earth. And wild as the path was, they followed it until the sun dipped toward the western horizon and shadows lay thick in the deep gorges below the main Jaransor ridge.

  Kyr finally called a halt beside a small plateau, where they found more ruins crumbling amidst grass and trees. The guard led his horse amongst the remnant foundations until he found a piece of upright wall; the surrounding foliage was so dense that it was like being in a cave. “We can use the wall for shelter,” he said, “and no one will find us easily back here, not unless they know where to look. But no fire,” he added, when Kalan started to pick up dry wood. “That’s a comfort we still can’t afford.”

  He sent Malian and Kalan to look for water instead, and they followed their ears to a small stream that purled its way down the hillside through a series of stone channels. One of these diverted water into a square tank, which was also faced with stone. The water in the tank was deep, but not murky, with only a few leaves floating on its surface.

  “This place is peaceful, isn’t it?” Malian said, when they had splashed the dust from their faces and hands, and drunk from their cupped palms. “I wonder what it used to be? It seems quite different from the watchtower.”

  “A house perhaps,” Kalan replied, “or a Temple? I saw fallen colonnades back there amongst the long grass.” He drew one finger along the tank’s worn coping. “It’s amazing that the irrigation channels have remained intact when these ruins are so old.”

  Malian nodded. The wind was teasing out wisps of her dark hair and she tucked the strands back behind her ears. “It seems very strange,” she said, “to build such high towers simply to watch the stars.” She walked on alone to the edge of the trees, staring out over the wild terrain to the west and the steep, bush-clad heights bathed in evening amber—and was struck again by the immensity of the land, and a sky that held nothing except the falcon’s hovering speck.