by Helen Lowe
“I know what they are!” Kolthis snapped. “What I want to know is what by the storm-cursed Wall they’re doing here!”
“Upholding our cause, it seems.” Kalan could not help himself: despite the uncertain reputation of wyr hounds, he grinned. “I’d say the odds have just evened, wouldn’t you?”
Kolthis’s snarl would have done credit to the hounds, which growled again, displaying their teeth. Rhisart’s gaze shifted to Kalan, then back to the hounds. “But wyrs, Kol . . . They were Kharalth’s gift to Blood, from when the Swarm first rose.”
“The Defenders of Blood,” Kalan said quietly. He had forgotten the story about Kharalth’s gift, but it stirred now in his earliest memories, and he wondered if it had been his father who told it to him, or the mother whom he could barely remember.
“Fireside tales!” Kolthis retorted.
“Well, I won’t kill them. Or the Storm Spear, if they take his part.” Rhisart’s voice was flat, and two of his comrades murmured agreement.
Kolthis swung around on the Bane Holder—before his smoothness dropped back into place and he shook his head. “Old Blood superstitions, Rhis. You should know better.” He raised his hand conceding defeat. “You’ll keep, Storm Spear, together with your tarnished following.” His smile gleamed as he and his companions began to retreat, step by slow step. “Although you may regret lost opportunity when Sarein’s hunters pull you down, since I doubt it’s a swift death by the sword she has in mind.”
The foremost hound rumbled a warning, and the assailants continued retreating until they disappeared around the curve of the tunnel with the wyr hounds following. “Let’s go,” Taly said, and Kalan nodded, although like her he kept his sword unsheathed. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, with the wyr hounds,” she added, and he caught her sidelong glance. “They were loose without their handlers, too. That’s not supposed to happen.”
It happened the other night, Kalan thought. “I can’t explain it,” he said. For now, he preferred to keep speculation to himself. “But I doubt Kolthis’s parting threat was empty, so we’d better reach the Blood Gate ahead of Lady Sarein’s hunters.”
By unspoken consent they lengthened their stride. Soon afterward Kalan heard more booted feet jogging from the direction of the Blood Gate, and his sword hand tightened—but relaxed when Jad and his guards appeared, although all eight looked grim and strained. “The Night guards passed the gate without difficulty,” Jad told them. “But when you didn’t show—”
“We ran into Kolthis. He backed off,” Taly said, clearly deciding details could wait, “but threatened us with Lady Sarein.” She frowned. “Dab was right about not delaying.”
We owe a lot to Dab, and to Bajan and Liy, Kalan thought, as they started forward again. “Did you see Liy?” he asked.
Jad nodded. “She’s keeping watch at the gate.” He studied Kalan. “If you put the sword away, we can act as if we’re still escorting you.”
“I wish we’d never drawn that duty,” a guard behind Kalan muttered. Rhanar, he thought.
“My blame,” Jad said heavily. Kalan could see the burden stamped into his face.
“No,” Dain countered, “your honor. And ours.” The others murmured agreement, although the look Rhanar threw Kalan suggested that he knew where blame lay.
“We’ve already had this out,” Palla said. “Stand or fall, we’ll do it together.” But her shoulders were hunched, and Kalan knew it must feel like being hurled off a precipice: from all it meant to be an Honor Guard one day, to exile from House and keep the next.
Jad signaled the escort formation. “We’re almost at the gate,” he said, seconds before they rounded a last corner and found Liy waiting just inside the tunnel exit.
“I think all’s clear,” she told them. “No one’s come since the Night company rode out.” Worry clouded her assurance. “But you should still make haste.”
“We should,” Kalan agreed. He looked from Taly to Jad. “Ready?”
“Ready.” They sounded sure, but Kalan imagined everyone in the company felt tense as they crossed the large square that lay between the keep proper and the Blood Gate. His pulse was fast and sweat prickled, expecting Kolthis to reappear or Lady Sarein’s hunters to arrive. But no one did, and the guards on the gate were as uninterested as the wyr hounds on duty. The latter did not even raise their heads from their paws when the small company halted before the inner gate.
“The trickle’s begun, I see.” The officer of the watch began noting down their names. “We’ll have the flood once the contest’s fully done.” Kalan thought his name might prove the stumbling block, but although he said Khar when asked, and the officer studied his face and insignia, the Storm Spear device did not seem to register. The Blood Gate, like the Gate of Winds in Night’s chief stronghold, was a separate fortress with a distinct garrison, and the officer’s reaction suggested that unless specific orders arrived, events in the keep proper, even an Honor Contest and duel, would remain of limited interest.
Liy whispered that she would go with them as far as the outer gate, but Kalan thought her excitement had begun fading into weariness as they passed beneath the inner portcullis and series of murder holes between the two gates. “Will you do one more thing for me?” he asked, removing one of his daggers as he walked. “Will you give this to Faro and tell him I said to bear it with honor, in my name and his own?”
“I will.” Liy was very solemn as he handed her the sheathed blade, and she continued to clutch it to her chest when the outer gate opened. Once everyone had passed through and Kalan’s eyes had adjusted to the twilight beyond the keep perimeter, he could see the Night guards waiting in the shadow of a rock outcrop, on the far side of the Red Keep’s killing ground. To reach them, his own company had to descend the road that zigzagged up to the Blood Gate, then cross the open ground.
“So let’s hike,” Rhanar said, more sour than ever, and the small company started down the first, precipitous stretch of road. Kalan’s shoulders crawled with awareness of the gate at their backs, bristling with archers and the giant, insect heads of siege engines within the protection of its storm ramparts.
They had just reached level ground when a commotion broke out behind them. “It’s the sally port,” Taly said, swinging around. Looking where she pointed, Kalan took in a sliver of light between overlapping sections of wall as the commotion resolved into hounds baying. He also saw the wyr hounds, thirteen swift, glowing-eyed projectiles hurtling down the near-vertical slope.
“Kharalth!” Jad said, as the baying fell silent. “Stay still, all of you.”
Shouts sounded from the Blood Gate, but the light from the sally port had already shut off, its position lost again within the dusk. The hounds’ eyes still glowed, on fire in the gloom as they raced closer. “Will we have to kill ’em?” Palla whispered, and Kalan heard Rhisart’s reluctance in her voice.
“I don’t think they’re going to attack,” he said, very quietly, because he knew precipitate movement or speech could change that. “They haven’t been set to hunt us. I believe,” he added slowly, “they may be accompanying us.” Kalan felt the wonder of that as the thirteen dark shapes slowed, their luminous eyes fixed on him, before they flowed past and across the killing ground to fling themselves down, a watchful picket between the Night company and the Wall’s darkness.
“Kharalth!” Jad said again, with feeling. But what Kalan was wondering, as the lead wyr rolled a brilliant eye toward their approach, was who had opened the sally port and released the thirteen from the Red Keep.
PART V
Ash Days
35
Dissonance
“Dread Pass,” Kalan’s voice whispered, as though he were with Malian in her vision. A deep drift of smoke and fog pressed into her eyes and nose and throat, but the utter silence told her that she was alone. Eerie, she thought, and took a cautious step forward. Metal clanged softly, and when she settled onto her heels she found the fragments of a shield scatte
red among the stones. So this was where she had gotten to, again . . .
Malian guessed it must be later on in time from her previous vision, since the hot spots had died away. Only the smoke lingered, the last evidence of the confrontation that had riven the plain, as well as both antagonists and the hero’s shield. Raven had said that Khelor ordered the bodies of both Yorindesarinen and the Chaos Worm buried, so even in the fog a few paces more should tell her whether Fire had yet arrived to claim the frost-fire sword.
Strange, Malian thought, rising, if I should witness their coming and see the young Raven with Khelor . . . Yet no stranger, she supposed, than her first vision of the Cave of Sleepers and the conversation with Amaliannarath’s ghost. The dead Ascendant had called her namesake and asked who had named her—which Malian still didn’t know. Raven had confirmed that her name was a diminutive of Amaliannarath, but also that the Sworn and the Derai shared a wide pool of names in common. Once, Malian might have been disturbed that her name derived from one of the Sworn. But I’m growing hardened, she assured herself wryly.
Distracted by her thoughts of Amaliannarath, she almost stepped on Yorindesarinen’s broken body. As in her Aeris vision, Nhenir was gone, but the Worm’s bulk loomed nearby and the hero’s hand still rested on her sword’s hilt. A shiver ran through earth and air, and Malian felt the vision start to slip away. She gritted both her teeth and will until it steadied—only to wonder if she should have let it elude her after all, as the Worm’s eyes began to open.
Flight is always an option, Malian told herself. Yet if the vision was important and she fled, it would only recur. So she held herself motionless, watching the membranes beneath the Worm’s outer lids struggle to open. It has to be very close to death, she thought. Even so, when the last membrane finally lifted back, Malian knew that it could see her. The eyes were dull as the surrounding fog, but gradually a glow crept in, the saffron of coals in a dying fire.
“. . . I shall not forget you.” The whisper was a will-o’-the-wisp. “I shall be waiting for your return.”
Momentarily, all Malian could hear was her heart, beating out that she knew these words. Hylcarian, the remnant Golden Fire of Night, had spoken them to her as she fled the Keep of Winds. Yet if Hylcarian was trying to bridge the divide that existed between the Derai world and Haarth, including within the Gate of Dreams, surely he would speak through Yorindesarinen, not the Worm . . . Surely, Malian repeated, repelled—except revulsion, like all emotion, could muddy the seeing, so she distanced herself from it.
“No, we did not die, but we came very close . . .” She heard the echo of dying thunder, hollow around the whisper in her mind. “Ghosts together . . . but I am weak . . .”
Most of the phrases derived from Malian’s exchanges with Hylcarian, but she did not recognize all of them. Could the Gate of Dreams gather up scraps of different conversations, she wondered, reassembling them to convey new meaning? The Huntmaster had warned Kalan that you never knew what powers might be watching and listening in the white mists. Just as I, Malian reflected, am doing now.
“Soon.” The whisper repeated the Golden Fire’s final word to her as she left the Keep of Winds. The membranes were sliding across the Worm’s eyes again, the last glow dying—only to flare up again, a brighter amber veining the dull saffron. Even dying, the power of its gaze reminded Malian of when Nindorith had looked at her through both Shadow Band illusions and Nhenir’s cloaking presence, in Caer Argent. “Free me.” The beast’s eyes clung to hers, its whisper permeating the fog. “Free me, Child of Light!”
Child of Light . . . But the Worm’s eyes had grown fixed, staring at nothing. The fog billowed, and the seer’s vision bucked against Malian’s hold like a horse. When it parted she saw an empty road beneath threatening sky. On it, a darkness with the suggestion of a man at its heart moved toward her.
I’ve seen you before as well, Malian thought, and let the last of her foreseeing dissipate.
Slowly, she stretched the trance’s stillness away, recalling how the final vision had pursued her into southern Aralorn, but stopped after Stoneford. Malian had supposed that meant the figure in the darkness was Raven, following her south, but now that the vision had recurred it seemed unlikely. Emuun would have been tracking Jehane Mor’s medallion around that same time, though, which made him the most likely reason for the vision to have returned.
Since the wayhouse, Malian and Raven had taken no chances around possible pursuit. They had switched between the two routes from Aeris to the River, again mixing their wary use of gates with horseback travel. As soon as they reached the Ijir’s first navigable tributary, they had added in travel by water. Running water thwarted most Swarm magic, and Malian’s cautious seeking had detected no pursuit. But since Emuun, like Raven, was immune to power, they had switched identities several times as well. The swords-for-hire had become caravan guards, then muleteers, and bargees once they reached the River.
To confuse the trail further, they had parted ways on finally reaching Ar. Patrol business had taken Raven into the white-walled city, while Malian bypassed it altogether. Too many there might recognize either the Band adept or the University scholar, and she had abandoned her bargee’s disguise for the same reason. Now, in recognition that the Ash Days, which marked the seasonal shift from the autumn equinox to Autumn’s Night—or Winter’s Eve as some on the River called it—had overtaken her, she had become Ash, an itinerant mender of armor and weapons, and peddler of secondhand arms. This guise, she hoped, would see out the final leg of her journey to Hedeld.
Ash was gregarious, not particularly clean, and light fingered where opportunity allowed. The tinker’s identity enabled Malian to wear a handful of weapons openly and to carry more, together with an array of tools, in packs strapped to either side of the lean, mean-spirited gray that had replaced Hani. Conscious of the frost-fire blade on her hip and its aeons-old bond to the House of Fire, Malian was careful to avoid the Patrol. She saw them often at a distance, or glimpsed the black sails of their galleys on the river, and—remembering her vision of Ar besieged—was glad they would remain in the River lands. War might still come here, but she suspected that even an aggressive enemy would think long and hard before biting off a mouthful of steel like the Patrol.
Malian wondered, too, whether that was why Raven, as the Patrol’s Lord Captain, had responded with overt force to the Guild House massacre in Ij. The ancient treaty that charged the Patrol with defense of the Guild of Heralds was the apparent motivation, but there could have been other ways of fulfilling that obligation. Whereas the mobilization of the Patrol and the locking down of the River’s largest city, together with road and river traffic as far west as Farelle, sent a clear message that the River would not be easy pickings for anyone contemplating invasion.
Including the Sworn or the Derai, Malian thought, releasing her final stretch and standing up. Mentally, she began checking last night’s perimeter of psychic wards, while simultaneously going over Ash’s array of weapons and her hideout arms. Her campsite was a ruined chapel to Seruth, situated amid heavily wooded terrain and so well concealed behind creepers and close-growing trees that she had nearly missed it the previous day, even with the map Raven had drawn her. The interior was more complete than it had appeared from the outside, with thick vines creating a secondary roof and much of the walls and floor remaining, despite thickly layered leaves underfoot. Bird droppings were splashed everywhere, and Malian could see evidence that larger animals had laired here in the past, but no signs of recent occupation.
“Hard to find but still providing reasonable shelter,” she murmured, filling the gray’s nosebag with oats Ash had pilfered, before grooms from the posting station had chased the tinker off. “A perfect hedge knight’s—or vagabond’s—hideout.”
Her own breakfast was bread, cheese, and apples, and Malian considered the recent vision while she ate. She had seen the broken shield twice now, but still wanted to know what had become of its pieces. Yet even if Ornori
th smiled and she found every splinter, reforging the shield seemed increasingly unlikely. I’d need to add in new metal, Malian thought, and Haarth ore might not bond with the adamantine steel. A remade shield would probably be considerably weaker than its predecessor as well. “And that broke, despite supposedly having been made by a god.” She paused, then quoted softly: “‘Heaven’s shield by the Chosen borne . . .’”
“‘Terennin wrought me in time’s dawn,’” Nhenir concluded the ancient rhyme. “But I was remade and did not break.”
“True,” Malian murmured. She still frowned, because this morning’s trance had been her first opportunity to seek after the shield since Aeris, and she was no closer to learning what had become of the shards. “That suggests I have to try harder.” She grimaced. “Or that what I saw is more important. Yet if it is . . .”
She halted midway through the apple, puzzling again over why Hylcarian would speak through the Worm, in her vision, and not Yorindesarinen. On the other hand, the request to be freed fitted with the Golden Fire’s reduced state, tied to the heart of the Old Keep, but also—less comfortably—with Raven’s account of the Sundering. “But—” Malian said aloud, before completing her business with the apple. “It called me Child of Light at the end. That’s one of Yorindesarinen’s names, not mine.”
“It could be the echo of a conversation that took place after the hero commanded me to leave her.” Nhenir was cool-as-silver. “Yet I would have said both Worm and hero were already well beyond that by then, even using mindspeech.”
“She was its greatest enemy.” Malian shook her head. “So why would it appeal to her, or to me, for that matter?” The beast could, she supposed, have been in so much pain that it cried out for release, not realizing that its enemy was in similar straits. Yet that seemed an unlikely reason for it to figure in her foreseeing now. And it had not said “kill me,” or even “release me,” but “free me,” which had a different ring. “So most likely it was Hylcarian, seeking a means to reach me.”
