by Helen Lowe
Nothing to be done. The words spun in Kalan’s mind like the flag wheels Southern Realms’ traders used to ward their wagons against ill luck. Only in this case, Ornorith had turned her smiling face away at last, because the combination of the existing Darksworn force, together with the approaching tide, made the camp’s survival impossible. Nothing at all to be done, Kalan thought—and shouted, a gut-wrenching yell of anger, frustration, and despair.
57
The Hind
The hounds in the tapestry were baying for blood and death, but there was light again, shimmering from the phoenix’s silver into a clear, twilit green that haloed Emeriath’s dark hair. The light slowed Myr’s downward spiral, buoying her up so that she could take in details once more: like Emeriath’s cloak of black plumage, and the solitary crow’s feather that hung from her ear. Myr could discern the outline of someone else as well, who was the source of the green light. When she strained to see more clearly, she decided it might be Rook, the young Adamant farspeaker. She thought Faro was still present, too, even though he had fallen silent and she could no longer feel his hand beneath hers.
The hind must run. Myr repeated the words to herself, her eyes shifting beyond Emeriath to the hounds in the tapestry. They had always been lifelike, but now she could see the flow of muscle below the milk-white flesh and the way they jostled each other, making the tapestry billow as they fought to escape through the tear in its fabric. Myr could distinguish the bloodlust in the hounds’ eyes, too, and the cruelty of their teeth. But she could no longer see the hind, lying at the lovers’ feet.
The hind must run—but what, Myr wondered, if the hind is caught?
Perhaps she had spoken her thoughts aloud, or Emeriath could hear them in this realm between life and death. “Then the web of Mayanne will come undone,” she told Myr gravely, “and the Hunt will be free to raven and slay across worlds and time. Yet we face the same danger now. When the Token-bearer claimed the Great Spear, the bonds that concealed it dissolved, as they were meant to do. But the spear, like the Token, is tied to the Hunt, so the violent explosion of power across the planes, and the sundering of the web that followed, has damaged Mayanne’s weaving to a perilous extent.”
Perhaps, Myr thought, her eyes shifting back to Emeriath, this Great Spear should have been left alone, then.
“If only that were possible,” Emeriath said, her regret palpable. “But I have been in the tapestry for many aeons, and there is little I do not know of its workings. If the Wall of Night and all the realms tied to it are not to fall to what you call the Swarm, then the Token-bearer must take up the spear and the destiny that goes with it.”
Myr knew there was an important question she needed to ask, now that the green light had stabilized her descent into darkness. Into death, she thought, with a detachment that Ise would have approved—but the question slipped from her grasp as her mind snagged on Emeriath’s aeons. “How long,” she asked instead, “since the spear was last claimed?”
“Since Kerem’s day. Another should have taken it up, but the star-bright hero fell, and too much else fell with her.” The tapestry shuddered, and the belling of the Hunt grew louder, filling Myr with dread. “You can hear them,” Emeriath said. “The Token-bearer does as well, but that is to be expected.” Her dark eyes were intent on Myr, although she spoke mostly to herself. “I wonder how much the Rose foresaw of this, when they sent the tapestry to the Red Keep with your mother?”
Amid so much she did not understand, Myr focused on the implication that Ise might have known the tapestry was more than it seemed. And her walking stick and the tray? she wondered, remembering how they had both come to life and thwarted Thanir’s initial working.
“The Rose have always been charged with holding the Alliance together,” Emeriath said softly, “so I guessed you were another step in their design to create a new champion. Now, though . . .” The sadness in her voice deepened. “I wonder if they foresaw that you and the Token-bearer would be brought together? This web is The Lovers, after all, and encompasses all the elements of the first weaving: the Champion, the Lady, and the hind that lies at their feet, the Sacrifice . . .”
She did not mention the crow, Myr noted, recalling how—despite her own doubts—Khar had been sure the bird belonged in the tapestry as well.
“And the child has so much power,” Emeriath continued softly, at the same time as Myr felt Faro’s hand beneath hers again. She guessed that like Rook—she was sure it was Rook—Faro was also partially in this half-realm, as well as being physically present in the tent. “It would be reasonable,” Emeriath continued, “for any foreseeing to include him, too, and for the foreseer, or seers, to assume he was the sacrifice. Only he never heard the Hunt.” She shook her dark head. “The wise know that foreseeing is never certain, and that like a river, the flow of events may switch course. But perhaps your duenna did not know what your hearing the milk-white hounds meant, or that it would bring the Rose’s larger plans to nothing.”
Myr might be dying, but she knew Emeriath meant that it was she, and not Faro, who was the sacrifice that was somehow connected to the hind. The woman with the cloak of crow’s feathers was also implying that Ise might have undestood The Lovers’ significance, and been prepared to sacrifice Faro, or even Myr herself. But Myr could not believe such a thing of Ise, whom she knew had loved her. She would never betray me, Myr protested silently. She could not believe that Ise would knowingly betray anyone else either.
Not even, doubt’s small voice asked, if she thought it was the only way to save the life contained in all the worlds? Yet everything Ise herself had taught Myr cried out that no one could rightly force or manipulate another into the role of sacrifice, no matter how many others might benefit. The compulsion, she decided, not at all hazy now, would negate the sacrifice.
“The sacrifice must be willing,” Emeriath agreed. “Even if that were not a universal principle, the original hind sacrificed herself and that flowed into the way the web was woven.”
Am I willing, though? Myr wondered—but now the hounds were louder still, so there was no more time. She must find out what was required before the last of her life trickled away. “What would I have to do?” she whispered.
Emeriath bowed her head, the long crow’s feather in her ear brushing across one shoulder. “Like the one you know as Ilai, I am also an opener of ways. I will make a path for your spirit to enter the tapestry and infuse the hind, which must then run, drawing the hounds deep into the web so its outer bindings may restore themselves.”
Thanir had called Ilai something to do with ways. He had named her Lady, too, as though she were of comparable rank to the Derai’s ruling kin. But Myr could no longer concern herself with that. “What if the hounds don’t pursue the hind?”
“They always do,” Emeriath replied. “That, too, is bound into Mayanne’s weaving.”
Myr tried to shut out the memory of the hounds’ cruel teeth and savage eyes. She guessed that if the Hunt caught her, the hounds would rend her spirit as well as the hind’s flesh, and then she would never come to Hurulth’s Hall. Myr did not know if she was brave enough for any of that. Emeriath said nothing, simply waited, and perhaps because she wished to delay, the question that had escaped Myr earlier resurfaced. “Who is the Token-bearer?”
Surprise touched Emeriath’s gravity. “I’m sorry, Myrathis, I thought you knew. He is the one you call Khar, the Storm Spear.”
Myr felt an answering lurch through her whole being: Khar—who was her captain and her champion. And in all the sagas, the honor and obligation of the champion’s bond was always two-way. “If the hind doesn’t run, what will happen to him?”
“The same as to all who inhabit the worlds, only he will be among the first to die, because although he bears the Token, without the web the Hunt will not be able to be mastered.”
I, too, keep faith. Myr thought of Khar as she had last seen him, dirty and sweaty and battleworn beside Tirael’s dazzle. But Khar . . . “H
e is mine,” she whispered. Myr knew her claim was grounded in honor, rather than the tie between lovers that her younger attendants had liked to sigh over—but that was still as true a bond as most could lay claim to in this world.
I’m dying anyway, she thought, but at least this way my death has meaning. And I will not allow Khar to die because I am unworthy of our bond. “Open your way,” she told Emeriath, before she could waver.
Emeriath bowed. When she straightened, light glowed between her palms. She wove it from hand to hand, and with each repetition more of the light flowed off her hands and into the tapestry. As soon as Myr saw the path glimmering, she wanted to follow it, slipping away from the weight of her body. She thought she heard Rook cry out in protest or despair, or it might have been Faro, but the cry was already too distant for her to be sure. I am saving them, too, she told herself, and Taly . . .
Taly . . . With the final whisper of the ensign’s name, the last of what had been Myr dissolved into the path of light. The tapestry shivered, the torn halves rippling in a wind that did not blow out of the Gray Lands, or off the Wall of Night, before it grew still again. And within the ages-old weave known as The Lovers, the hind sprang to her feet and fled.
58
Passage of Power
Every weapon along the perimeter rang in the aftermath of Kalan’s shout, and both the attacking and defending ranks wavered as the wyr hounds howled in unison with the three black blades. Despite their shielding, Elodin and her comrades were shaking their heads as if to clear them, and the nearest Blood defenders were all staring at Kalan, their mouths agape. Kalan, as astonished as everyone else, saw that Tirael had raised his visor and was laughing—although he sobered as soon as his gaze returned to the plain. The stormfront of power still hovered, and the advancing force was now close enough to pick out the bristle of spears.
“Around three hundred heavy cavalry, by my estimate,” Kalan said, when he dared trust his voice again. “But that’s only the vanguard.”
“Ay, there’s more following,” Tirael agreed, his eyes on the dust cloud.
Kalan nodded as despair, temporarily displaced by his shout, returned. The newcomers bore no pennants that he could see, and although the besiegers were deploying a skirmish line to meet them, they must know as well as he did that this was no Derai force. It seemed unlikely, too, that the Darksworn differences observed in Emer would prevail to the extent of preserving Derai. No, Kalan thought, watching the power storm gather itself, they’ll be united in wanting us dead. The assaulting ranks were rallying as well, now they realized no sorcerous offensive was going to follow his shout. Poised to give the order to fall back on the inner camp, Kalan shot another look toward the approaching force, assessing proximity and speed—and saw the skirmishers’ line falter. An instant later their horns wound the alarm.
Trumpets yelped in answer from the Darksworn center, and the brew of power above it grumbled as both sorcerers turned toward the new threat. The skirmish line was falling back, and the full complement of Darksworn cavalry wheeling to face the newcomers’ advance. The besiegers’ trumpets brayed again, and their infantry began to retreat from the camp. Falling back on the rising ground, Kalan thought. In their place, uncertain of the newcomers’ exact numbers, but seeing what the oncoming vanguard comprised, he would do the same—or withdraw altogether.
From what he had observed throughout the siege, the Darksworn instinct would be for withdrawal, but Kalan doubted they could do so now without a holding action, at least. The immediate danger to the camp was that a conventional engagement might trample right over the overstretched perimeter, in which case prudence suggested retreating behind the inner barrier. But if the gathered power storm was unleashed, then Kalan’s remnant shield-wall was still the camp’s surest defense—as it would be against any final blast of sorcerous spleen if the Darksworn withdrew.
So for now we’ll hold position, Kalan decided, monitoring both the steadily closing forces and the boil of power. Beside him, Tirael and his knights were taking the respite; not speaking, just leaning on their weapons and observing developments. Gradually, their watchful silence spread, so the first trumpet call from the newcomers’ ranks everyone heard. A moment later the unknown cavalry picked up speed, dust churning beneath hundreds of hooves. The same chill, livid fire that had burned Palla flared from the sorcerers’ knoll toward the approaching force—only to rear up well short of their advancing line. Like water, Kalan thought, meeting an invisible wall.
“Strong shielding,” Tirael said. Kalan nodded as the Darksworn cavalry raced to meet the newcomers, while rather than taking up defensive positions, their infantry continued to withdraw into the Gray Lands. Another wave of eldritch sorcery crackled across the open ground, only to dissipate a second time—and then there was no more time for large-scale power use as the converging lines pounded into each other.
Kalan narrowed his eyes, trying to assimilate what was happening amid the subsequent dust, and the hack and swirl of the melee. The Darksworn cavalry were using small-scale offensive sorceries that should have bolstered their attack, but the newcomers’ shielding must have held at close quarters, because the magic gained no ground—and Kalan saw the moment when the Darksworn line faltered. Soon afterward, the initial clash became a string of skirmishes, before disintegrating into a running fight.
“Their sorcerers are abandoning the field,” Tirael said, and Kalan realized he was right. The air above the rising ground was opening into a brume of shadow, shot through with tongues of fire. The way the shadows writhed, and the associated blast of freezing cold, reminded him of the Raptor’s portal six years before—but already he was feeling the passage of power as the portal closed again, taking the sorcerers and their adepts with it. While the rest, Kalan thought, must fend for themselves.
Meanwhile, the running fight was increasingly spread out, although the Darksworn cavalry were still endeavoring to cover their infantry’s retreat. The newcomers’ battle line reformed and their main force continued in pursuit, while a smaller company veered toward the camp. “So now,” Tirael said, as coolly as if they were spectators at a tourney engagement, “we’ll see what this bodes for us.”
By Kalan’s estimation, the divergent company comprised around fifty horse. “No visible devices,” the knight called Xer said, shading his eyes. “But is that a wolf with them?”
There was a wolf with the smaller company, Kalan saw, an old scarred veteran out of the Winter Country. I know you, he thought, his gaze narrowing on the beast. Elodin was nodding. “It’s a wolf,” she agreed. “And lack of insignia or not, they aren’t marshaling power against us.”
“Yet,” Liad muttered. Like Elodin, Kalan detected no threat, but he, too, kept his shielding in place as he resheathed the black swords and retrieved the spear.
“Granian’s our herald. She can issue challenge if you wish, my brother,” Tirael murmured. But Kalan shook his head, because this was a Blood camp. Jad, who had been watching from his company’s position to the right of the breach, crossed to join him as the newcomers stopped. The riders all wore plain armor that could have been crafted anywhere, although the veiling coifs were Ishnapuri in style.
Nherenor’s Lightning knights had worn similar mail coifs in Caer Argent, but they had also displayed insignia—and Kalan was certain they would not have attacked the besiegers. He cleared his throat. “This is the camp of Lady Myrathis, the Bride of Blood. I am Khar of the Storm Spears, her Honor Captain.” He was wryly aware how readily the Storm Spears’ attribution came now. “In the name of the Nine, identify yourselves and state your business here. If you are friends, know yourselves welcome.”
A finely armored rider advanced ahead of the rest, and Kalan guessed this must be a captain, if not the principal commander. “If deeds count as evidence, then I believe we may be accounted friends.” The captain’s voice rang clear despite the helmet, and Kalan had to fight to keep his demeanor impassive as she raised the visor, her gray eyes close to the wy
r hounds’ silver in its shadow. “We meet again, Khar of the Storm Spears, as I said we would.” Kalan heard the defenders stir at that “again.” “As to names and business, let all here know that I am Malian, Heir to the House of Night, returned to claim my place among the Nine Houses.” She paused, her cool gaze shifting to meet Tirael’s. Kalan guessed all present were acutely conscious, in that moment, of the bitter divide that had endured between Stars and Night for five hundred years. “Kinsman,” Malian said, and bowed from the saddle.
Tirael bowed in reply, graceful as always, although Kalan had no doubt he was thinking a great deal that his face did not reveal—including working out that any kinship bond had to derive from Malian’s grandmother, Nerith of Sea, and her first, short-lived marriage to Serianrethen of Stars. “Returned with your army,” Kalan observed, to bridge the pause, before adding privately, “Are these the Lost?”
“Not in the sense you mean,” Malian said, answering both remarks. “Those who accompany me are new allies.” The rider to her right inclined his head, so Kalan guessed this must be a leader among these allies. “As for our business here, we learned that a Darksworn legion had passed the Wall and besieged the Bride of Blood’s camp.” Her gesture indicated the battered perimeter, conveying regret. “I’m only sorry we couldn’t reach you sooner.”
Kalan was aware of the camp’s silence, a weight at his back. “Our losses have been heavy,” he said, not wanting to diminish that truth, “but we are all unreservedly glad of your arrival now.” The nearby defenders murmured agreement, while Kalan tried to think what an Honor Captain who was truly of Blood would say next. “Lady Myrathis is the Bride of Blood and pledged in marriage to your father, the Earl of Night. As Night’s Heir, I take it we may not only rely on your friendship and protection, but that of your allies?”
