Daughter of Blood

by Helen Lowe

  “I move between worlds and time,” the cool voice repeated, and he found himself staring into eyes that were as dispassionate as the voice. Or perhaps he was looking through the eyes, into a mind . . . In any case, he felt transparent, as though the intelligence could read at a glance what the mind-flayer had tried to take by force. “I seek out the hidden, the lost I find. And you, little mote, are undoubtedly lost.” Rook detected movement in the darkness surrounding the eyes, and gasped at what he saw—or perhaps the darkness was in the eyes, and the impossibly black pupils were chasms into which he was falling, falling . . . He spun again as he fell, the lost mote that the voice had called him. Only myself to blame, Rook thought, the words spinning with him: only myself to blame. But at least in the vastness there was no more pain.

  “Clearly,” Tirael’s voice said, and it, too, was inside his mind, “I should have kept a better eye on you.” Oddly, he still sounded lazy as he snatched Rook back from the darkness.

  “The lost I find—and occasionally return, when I, too, am disposed to be kind . . .” The dispassionate voice faded, releasing Rook to the presence that he now perceived was more than just Tirael. Elodin was there, and the rest of the Stars escort, their combined power forming an anchor for Tirael and himself. A storm anchor, Rook thought, another memory shaken out of his long ago Sea Keep visit. But slowly—slowly—the Star knights were reeling him in. He could hear their names weaving through the cable of power, as much a part of the strength anchoring him as their physical bodies would be. These were not the short names that made it easy for himself and others, but the full names that formed the essence of who and what they were: Elodinel, Liadinath, Vaelenor, Xerianor, Granianned . . . And both first, and last of all, Tiraelisian.

  The Son of Stars’ face was above him now, so Rook knew he must be lying on the ground in the inner camp. He tried to speak, despite his hold on consciousness slipping. “Storm,” he managed to gasp out, although the word sounded strangled, and then “. . . eyes.” But he needed to tell them what he had seen in or behind those eyes, in the darkness surrounding a cairn’s mouth. Army, he thought, trying to lift himself up: army coming.

  Tirael’s hands were on his shoulders, holding him still. “Young idiot,” he said, without any hint of levity. “What in the Nine’s name did you think you were about? We may lose him yet,” he added urgently. “Hurry, Vael.”

  Army, Rook thought again, and then—as the world diminished until all he could see was Tirael’s gray eyes—you should marry Onnorin. She’s strong, too, and honorable. The need to communicate was dwindling into dreaminess, haloed by dark, but Rook felt sorry he would never see Onnorin again. He hoped she would not be sad for long, or stop being one of the few people in the Keep of Stone who laughed . . .

  He could still feel Tirael’s grip on his mind and shoulders, but would have drifted further into the dreaminess if Vael’s voice had not intruded, speaking with such precision it was almost a snap. “I’ve no idea why those Adamant fools thought farspeaking was his gift, because it’s clearly healing—which may just save him now that the ’speaking’s been ripped away.” And although Rook tried to cling to the dreaminess, his head was tilted back and something bitter poured into his mouth.

  Ripped away, Rook thought, but swallowed convulsively. The bitterness lingered, longer than anything except Tirael’s gray stare, which continued to hold his as darkness closed in. He could hear the boom of the ocean, too, pounding into the foundations of the Sea Keep while he stood high above—so high that he was deafened when a thunderclap split the world apart.

  Kalan ran, and the wyr hounds ran with him, deep within a Gate where the mists curved to form a tunnel and silhouettes gestured, a shadow theater along its walls. If the tunnel had a beginning and an end, Kalan could not detect it, but on this side of the Gate of Dreams his physical exhaustion had dropped away and keeping pace with the wyr hounds’ speed was effortless. Despite their pace, Kalan held the strongest shield working he could manage, its edges blending into mist and the moon-glow cast by his ring. Perhaps because the shield filtered out other elements, the shadow theater grew clearer. Or, he thought, studying the images as best he could while running, they were the silhouettes of ancient dreams, a frieze cast against the greater Gate.

  In one, a bloodstained, exhausted warrior and the equally bedraggled woman with him fought their way through harsh terrain, harried by the Swarm. It could have been the Wall, but Kalan felt that it was not: the peaks were not high enough. A few paces further on, the shadow pageant became leaping flames with a crow rising out of them. No, circling above them, Kalan thought, pausing to peer more closely and realizing the flames were from a pyre . . . But as soon as he paused, the images dispersed into mist.

  “Do not stop!” the wyr hounds exhorted, racing on. As soon as Kalan sprang to catch up, the shadow play returned. Now, too, he could hear the Hunt’s voice, baying of doom and war, and the dark thrum of the spear. No matter how fast Kalan ran, the belling drew closer, while the song lured him on. The next time he glanced at the silhouettes, the Hunt raced beside him, shadowy hounds with jaws agape. When, reluctantly, he looked again—this time without checking his pace—there was only one hound and a warrior, as tall as Orth although of slimmer build, who stood with one hand in the great beast’s mouth.

  Kalan’s heart jolted, remembering the Huntmaster’s severed hand, but this warrior wore no mask. He did not see what became of the captive hand, for on the shadow wall a hind leapt away, and the entire milk-white pack slavered after her, their crimson eyes avid. He recalled Malian telling him how the hind in the Web of Mayanne had transformed into a unicorn that also fled ahead of the Hunt—but when he looked again both hind and hounds had vanished from the tunnel wall. Instead, the body of a warrior with one hand was being lowered into a grave. The shadow figures around him laid a spear upon his breast, and Kalan started, recognizing the narrow nave and undecorated surrounds from the Grayharbor sepulchre. When the shapes blurred into each other and grew clear again, the grave had been covered over by a steel panel that was twice the height of an infantryman’s shield.

  So now I know where the spear is, Kalan thought—but the Hunt was growing louder, the shadow pack racing along the wall again, just as the wyr hounds fled with him through the tunnel. Make haste: the words drummed through the rhythm of breath and blood, while his feet pounded out that the sands were running, running . . . Running out, Kalan told himself, yet dared not stop, even when the next long, curving bend revealed nothing new ahead.

  Gradually another scene emerged on the walls of mist: a girl and a boy seated on a large block of stone amid snowy hills. The girl was braiding her hair while the boy surveyed his hands, one of which bore a black-pearl ring, so Kalan knew—although in fact he had known at once—that this was Malian and himself, in Jaransor. The night before this scene ocurred, both the Huntmaster and the Hunt of Mayanne had answered his need, thwarting the Night Mare that was hunting them. A little later that same morning, Malian would tell him about climbing a tower outside of time to find the moon-bright helm, and how the Huntmaster’s crow had helped her reach the tower’s crown.

  Kalan saw the similarities with his current situation at once: the unending stair that Malian had climbed, and the corridor he ran through now without reaching a destination. “ I move between worlds and time.” He had quoted the phrase to Nimor, but the crow had suggested to Malian that it was a way of seeing time differently: not as a linear progression like the tunnel, but as a medium through which disparate places could exist in the same space at once. It was, Malian had said, trying to both explain and comprehend it herself, about accepting the oneness of all things. She had done that by seeing herself and the image that existed at the tower’s pinnacle as one—which is not substantially different, Kalan thought, than stepping through the Gate of Dreams in my physical body and taking eleven wyr hounds with me. So if I can do the same thing using the sepulchre and will myself there . . .

  He stopped running, a
nd again the shadowy images faded. Steadying his breath, Kalan half closed his eyes and settled into a deeper awareness of himself and the hounds—both as unique identities and part of a collective one—within the Gate, before summoning up details of the Grayharbor tomb. First, he recalled the plain timeworn stone of the portico that was barely wider than the lane it stood in, and then the interior that was equally unadorned, down to the empty votive niches and layered dust throughout. He had tracked footprints through it, entering and leaving, and his breath had misted on the chill air as he examined the panel set into the floor . . .

  Kalan’s breath was misting again when he raised his eyes to the interior of the tomb. The door was closed, so there was no light except the muted glow from the pearl ring and the flame of the wyr hounds’ eyes. The silence was profound, the voices of both Hunt and spear gone, and if Grayharbor lay beyond the mausoleum, no sound penetrated within. Kalan’s skin prickled, but the Gate had shown the spear being buried here. “In the grave,” he said. The words rang against the silence as he knelt and checked again for a means of opening the panel, but the join between steel and stone remained seamless. Frowning, he sat back—and the glimmer from his ring and the hounds’ eyes snuffed out.

  If it were not for his gift of seeing in the dark, Kalan would have been dead. One moment he was alone in the tomb, the next a shadowy warrior was upon him. Desperately, Kalan dove clear of the silent attack and got his shortsword out, blocking a vicious downstroke even as he rolled again, regaining his feet in the split-second respite. Another frantic block and feint enabled him to draw his second sword—and the black blades sang, absorbing the darkness that had filled the tomb. The glow from Kalan’s ring returned, too, and he could see the wyr hounds, holding the milk-white pack at bay as the Hunt strove to materialize through the stone walls.

  “Everything in your world will die if the Hunt breaks through Mayanne’s weaving . . .” The Huntmaster’s voice was harsh in his memory. “. . . If the Hunt is roused, then the Huntmaster must master it.” And the ring was bound to the Hunt. Kalan understood, in retrospect, that the Hunt must have been waking for some time: at least since the Red Keep and very possibly since Emer. Yet so far he had seen no sign of the Huntmaster.

  The shadow warrior attacked again, countering the power of the black swords with his own dark song. This time the contest felt more equal, but like the race through the tunnel, the combat also felt like a dream encounter, without either beginning or end despite the clash of steel and the striving of power against power. Kalan could also sense the wyr hounds’ resistance beginning to fray, and responded out of instinct, directing both his urgency and will into the black blades. The shorter sword crooned, absorbing the wild magic that was seeping out of the Hunt and into the tomb. The wyr hounds growled in counterpoint, but the shadow warrior laughed, wild as the Hunt and dark as the spear’s voice, and attacked with increased savagery.

  “Of death my song and black my blade, for Kerem’s hand by Alkiranth made.” Kalan had quoted the rhyme to Asantir and the rest of the Old Keep rescue party, six years before, and now it reverberated through him as he drove forward, into the teeth of his opponent’s aggression. “Kerem’s arms were all black blades.” The younger Kalan had said that, too, relating the legend that maintained Kerem had been given the use of the god Tawr’s weapons, including his spear. Kerem . . . Almost imperceptibly, Kalan checked. His opponent crowed, apparently reading the hesitation as imminent victory. Kalan disabused him of the notion as their blades clashed again and both drew back, maneuvering within the tomb’s narrow confines.

  “. . . anyone who grasps a Great Spear must be strong, lest the weapon master the bearer.” The crow’s voice whispered to Kalan out of his first encounter with both Huntmaster and spear. And a spear that had belonged to a god, and whose song meant death, might well be indifferent to the prospect of the Hunt breaking free. Within the Gate of Dreams, it could also be capable of transformation . . . Momentarily the shadow warrior hesitated, before his assault redoubled in fury. Only this time, rather than countering through the black swords, Kalan strengthened and extended his shield perimeter instead.

  “‘The Hunt wakes and must be mastered. Even a Great Spear cannot argue with that.’” He grated out the Huntmaster’s words. “‘Such weapons choose their bearer.’ As you chose me, six years ago, and called me here now, saying that it was time. So either fulfill your own choosing”—now Kalan drew deep, channeling all his remaining reserves of power into the shield-working—“or find another spearbearer who is more to your taste. But I’m done with this game.” And he pushed his psychic shield forward, absorbing the shadow warrior within its aegis.

  The sword song soared, filling the sepulchre—and Kalan’s adversary disappeared. The Hunt howled, the milk-white beasts flinging themselves forward as the wyr hounds snarled in answer. A column of light rose above the grave, and the Great Spear floated within it: light and shadow played along the blue-black spearhead and across the collar of dark shining feathers. “Token-bearer.” The spear’s voice hummed, fierce with power, although if the weapon had indeed shaped itself into the shadow warrior to test him, Kalan could detect no remnant animosity. He dared not relinquish both swords with the Hunt still pressing, but he sheathed the shorter blade and shifted the longsword to his left hand. With his right, he reached into the column of light and grasped the spear that had almost certainly been Kerem’s—and might once have been a god’s.

  Light, strength, and power flowed through Kalan until he felt as tall as the warrior in the shadow play. At the same time, the Hunt drew back, the great heads turning as though to listen—before one milk-white hound gave cry and leapt away, with the rest of the Hunt streaming after. Kalan knew an instant’s relief, but already shadows were returning to the sepulchre walls, and the Huntmaster’s crow took shape, gazing down on him from a spectral lintel. “There is always a price,” the bird reminded him. “But who will pay? Will you?”

  Kalan’s hold tightened on both spear and sword, but before he could reply, the beam of light vanished and an explosion tore through all three planes joined by his dreaming: the sepulchre, the Gate of Dreams, and the besieged camp.

  54

  The Lovers

  Myr woke, uncertain whether it was minutes or hours since she had lain down, and found only her eyes would move. No wind disturbed the tent’s interior, but the tapestry of The Lovers was billowing, and the same mist she remembered from the Red Keep had poured out of the mirror to surround her. The inkiness that limned the haze was deeper than any shadow, and darkness hovered at the apex of the tent and clung to its canvas panels.

  Ilai. Myr tried to call the attendant’s name, but her mouth proved incapable of opening. In any case, Ilai was injured and might also be immobilized. I have to help myself, Myr thought, although she could not think how. She was distracted, too, by the incessant whispering that filled the mist, recognizing its purport of insinuation and spite, even though the words were indistinct. It’s a dark dream, she told herself: I just need to wake up. Except she knew that wasn’t true. Whatever was happening in the tent was real.

  In the Red Keep, the mist had retreated into the mirror when Khar appeared, but now long tendrils twitched toward the tapestry, only to scramble back, hissing, as The Lovers billowed out again. Whatever the mist was, it was afraid of The Lovers—but Myr’s momentary hope died when she saw that the tapestry hounds’ crimson eyes were locked on her, their savage jaws agape. The crow, too, watched her out of one sharp black eye, while the lovers remained oblivious, absorbed in each other.

  “I’m sorry.” Faro’s whisper was so loud that Myr would have jumped if she could have moved at all. When her eyes slid sideways, she found him standing amid a wreathing of mist and shadow. Tears slid down his face and he was shaking; only the dagger in his hand was steady. Khar’s gift dagger, Myr thought, as if that were somehow the most important aspect of the scene. But Faro was speaking again. “You may thank the Son of Stars for sealing your fa
te the moment he named you kin.” The words were coming out of the page’s mouth, yet Myr was certain he was not the one shaping them. “Ever since Yorindesarinen, we have made it our business to ensure that no more scions of Stars and Night are born into your Alliance.”

  The words were assured, but Faro’s eyes were desperate, darting around the tent for a way out. Nimor was right to stress caution over the boy’s past, Myr thought, and I was wrong. Although if she could only speak, reaching through to the Faro that still struggled, he might break free of whatever held him in its grip. But her voice remained frozen. All she could do was fix Faro with eyes that strove to remind him that she was Myr, who had fled Kolthis and the camp with him. Later they had crouched together in the gully, while a beast-man closed in on their hiding place . . .

  “Can’t!” The single word twisted out of Faro as if it wounded him, and the knife shook—but steadied again at once.

  “I agree, it’s a pity.” Myr was unsure who the person speaking through the boy had addressed, but felt sure it was neither her nor Faro. When the boy jerked a step closer, the shadows around him ballooned like The Lovers and Myr glimpsed a warrior through their gloom, his armor honed to spur points at elbow and shoulder. “But even with the mirror present, the Storm Spear’s presence counteracted much of my hold, as did the wyrs, always sticking to him like ticks.”

  Despite the knife, Myr’s eyes were drawn to the shadows that crawled across the mirror’s surface, while the mist continued to whisper malice. She shuddered inwardly, knowing both elements must have always been present, although she had never noticed anything unusual until the night Dab was wounded. But the tapestry gusted, pulling her attention back to Faro as he shuffled a step closer.