He went without waiting to see Rothe’s reaction. He did not need to; he knew that his shieldman would follow. The two of them, struggling to match the pace of their Kyrinin guides through the tangled forest, stumbled over hidden rocks, stamped down on brittle, rotten branches, crashed through nets of briars. Ess’yr and Varryn, as far as Orisian could tell, made not a sound.
The woods were suffused with a strange, pale light. The flat white vapours that draped the treetops were quite motionless. Everything felt vaguely unreal to Orisian. Then he heard a bird call, from somewhere off to his left. It was an unfamiliar sound. He risked a glance that way as he ran. There was nothing to see but the silent throng of contorted tree trunks. A sudden dip in the ground almost sent him sprawling down, and he had to return his attention to his feet.
There was another call, perhaps closer, though it was hard to judge on the still, heavy air. He looked again. And this time he saw a flutter of movement. He slowed despite himself, looked again. Something moved, far out amongst the mist-blurred green and brown of the forest.
“Keep going,” Rothe snapped, running up behind him. “It’s too late to stop. We have to stay with them now.”
Orisian ran faster, vaulting over a fallen tree; glimpsing the profusion of tiny mushrooms that had burst up out of its crumbling wood. To his surprise, he found Varryn kneeling amongst willow saplings, an arrow set to the string of his bow.
“Go,” hissed the Kyrinin. “Follow Ess’yr.”
Orisian ran on wordlessly, glancing back only once; seeing Varryn drifting through the undergrowth, as intent as any hunter. Ahead, Ess’yr had increased her pace. She ran in bursts: a few long, lithe strides, then a moment of casting about, then another surge forward. Trees flashed past. They were going much too fast for any hope of quiet now. Orisian could hear Rothe crashing along behind him like a boulder tumbling downhill.
Above the noise of their own haste he heard a faint, far-off cry. It was too light, too thin to be born of a human throat. Then another sound: a clattering, rattling cadence that rushed up close and then stopped. It came again and he glanced sideways in time to see an arrow tumbling through scrub, its flight unbalanced and broken by the undergrowth. It glanced off a tree trunk and dipped into the ground, sinking to its flights in yielding moss.
“Faster,” shouted Rothe.
Orisian’s thighs and calfs burned, but he stretched his legs and drove on after Ess’yr. His shield thumped rhythmically against his back. He leaped across a tiny stream, so overgrown with ferns and choked with mossy stones that the water only betrayed its presence by its gurgling voice. He wanted to draw his sword, but was unsure whether he could do so without falling, or at least slowing down. He was on the verge of making the attempt when he rounded the great fat trunk of a wizened oak to find Ess’yr crouched in a tiny glade. She was at the side of a woman who was lying face down in the grass beside a massive fallen tree.
Orisian bent down, panting for breath. Ess’yr glanced at him.
“This is the one,” she said. “She still lives.”
Orisian turned the prone woman over onto her back. She was light in his hands, almost as if her clothes were empty. Her na’kyrim face was neither old nor young, neither beautiful nor plain. It was painfully thin, though. Her deathly-pale cheeks, smeared with streaks of dirt, bore dozens of tiny scratches. As though, Orisian thought, she had been assailed by a flock of birds. Or thorns, perhaps; thorns, and roots and twigs. Her breathing was shallow. She smelled — he leaned closer — of the wet earth and decaying leaves. Her simple deer-hide dress was caked with soil and was full of little rips.
“Move her,” Ess’yr said. She hooked a hand under the na’kyrim ’s armpit. Orisian got to his feet and took hold of the collar of the woman’s dress. Together, they dragged her up against the great wet bulk of the fallen trunk. The woman’s eyes were open. The pupils moved this way and that, but they had no grip upon the world.
Then Rothe was thumping over the grass towards them, shouting as he came, “Get under cover. Leave her, Orisian! Get under cover. They’re coming.”
Orisian hesitated. He looked at Rothe, scanned the forest behind him and saw nothing. Rothe had his sword in one hand, his shield still slung across his back. With his free hand he seized Orisian’s upper arm and thrust him away from the na’kyrim.
“Get behind the tree,” the shieldman shouted.
Orisian obeyed, soft rotten wood crumbling beneath his hands and feet. “Get her!” he cried.
Ess’yr vaulted over the huge fallen tree trunk, reached back and hauled at the na’kyrim. One-handed, Rothe lifted the insensate woman and pushed her bodily over the dead tree. She slid onto the sodden grass beside Orisian. Rothe followed her. There was a dull thud as he did so and he went unsteadily down onto his knees, with a disgusted grunt. Orisian reached out to steady the big man. Ess’yr was quickly stringing her bow, bending low to stay out of sight.
An arrow was embedded in the back of Rothe’s leg, driven deep into the meat of his thigh. Without thinking, Orisian reached for it and snapped the shaft off. Rothe gasped in pain, but was already unbuckling the straps of his shield and settling it onto his left arm.
“Keep low,” he rasped. “Come on, get your shield ready.”
Orisian tried to do as he was told. His fingers were clumsy, unable to move as fast and nimbly as his mind desired of them.
Ess’yr had an arrow at her bowstring. She scurried a few paces away from them and peered over the tree trunk. There were a couple of hollow cracks as arrows smacked into the dead wood, the whispering flight of two or three more that flashed overhead and disappeared into the forest. Ess’yr rose to a crouch and loosed off an arrow in reply.
“How many?” Rothe demanded of her as she sank back down, reaching for another shaft.
“Enough,” she said calmly.
“Enough for what?” the shieldman muttered in exasperation.
Orisian had sword and shield ready now. He stayed in a low crouch, trying to ignore the fluttering heartbeat he felt in his throat, the cold sweat on his brow and his palms.
“Where’s Varryn?” he asked.
“They are coming,” Ess’yr said. She spun, still sunk down on her haunches, and sighted along the length of the great tree trunk. A figure rounded its far end, where its root plate stood tall: a Kyrinin, a man with a tattooed face. Then Ess’yr’s arrow was lodged in his chest and he was pitching backwards.
“Behind you,” Ess’yr hissed, casting aside the bow and taking up her spear.
Rothe and Orisian both looked over their shoulders. Another White Owl warrior was leaping over the tree trunk, little more than a spear’s length away. Rothe surged up before Orisian could move. Shieldman and Kyrinin crashed together. Orisian heard gasps of violently expelled breath as the two of them fell in a tangle. The White Owl was faster, more agile, than Rothe; he rolled and swept up onto his feet, already in a low fighting stance. Rothe was still scrambling to get upright.
Orisian rushed at the back of the White Owl. He knew at once that he was too slow. He could see the Kyrinin turning, the tip of his spear snapping round at stomach height. Something else hammered into Orisian from the side, knocking him flying. He hit the ground clumsily, his sword pinned beneath him. He was distantly aware that his shin had smacked against a sharp-edged rock, but the pain was carried away, for now, on the flood of the moment.
He sat up, managed to get his sword out from under him. A blur of closing movement gave him enough warning to lift his shield. It took the spear thrust close to its centre and trapped the point there, holding it fast. Orisian tried to roll onto his feet, but the White Owl still had hold of the spear. A single hard tug was enough both to twist Orisian onto his knees and to pull it free of the shield. Orisian watched the butt of the spear sweeping towards him. He could see it coming, it seemed slow, it seemed that he had plenty of time to block it with his sword; yet his arm was only now beginning to move, far too late. The moment passed. The butt of the spear leap
ed into his face. He felt the skin under his cheekbone split. He felt a rush of hot, wet blood in his mouth. One eye was awash with blinding light. He slumped sideways, flailing with his shield. A blow landed on it. He blinked and saw the White Owl standing over him, readying another stabbing lunge. He slashed at the Kyrinin’s legs with his sword. The Kyrinin sprang out of reach.
Ess’yr came from behind and drove her own spear into the small of the White Owl’s back. He arched, his mouth silently stretched open. Ess’yr tripped him and pinned him to the ground. Orisian swayed onto his feet. He still could not see properly. He spat teeth onto the muddy grass. Blood and saliva trailed from his mouth. Through the showers of blurry lights that cascaded across his vision, he saw White Owls spilling over the huge fallen tree. Rothe was still fighting, bodies at his feet. Ess’yr tried to wrench her spear free, but it resisted. She released it and turned to meet the wave of assailants with a knife.
Orisian stumbled forwards. The White Owl that Ess’yr had impaled was stirring, clawing at the ground. The spear protruding from his back jerked and swung about. Orisian hacked at the back of his head, felt the blade meet bone, and stepped over him. There was a terrible anger howling inside his skull, a vast roaring filling his ears.
Ess’yr dodged the thrust of a spear, stabbed its wielder in the groin. A second White Owl reached her before she could untangle herself, knocked her down. Orisian cried out, bloody spittle filming his lips, and sprang forwards. There was no room in his mind for thought, but his body took over, leaped up, brought the sword down on the Kyrinin’s shoulder. Orisian heard the clear crack of bone breaking. The White Owl fell, within reach of Ess’yr and her knife. Orisian rushed on beyond.
He ducked behind his shield and charged, meaning to drive his way to Rothe so that he could stand back to back with his shieldman. One Kyrinin darted out of his path; the next, he crashed up against and pressed to the thick bole of the dead tree. The White Owl writhed and strained, gripping the rim of Orisian’s shield with one hand and pulling it this way and that. Another was coming from the side. Orisian managed to turn aside the incoming spear with a wild sweep of his sword, but the movement left him open with his blade down and wide. The Kyrinin recovered more quickly, brought the spear back up, then jerked. An arrow was in his side. Another darted in beside it. He fell. Orisian had no time to think. The White Owl he had pinned against the great log was too strong for him to hold. He hacked at the exposed legs below his shield until the Kyrinin went down.
He saw the na’kyrim woman they had come for curled up against the tree trunk like a child, a dead White Owl laid out beside her almost as if they were a sleeping couple. He saw Varryn coming sprinting from amongst the trees, and behind him human figures: Torcaill’s men. He saw Ess’yr, a spear in her hand once more, trading blocks and blows with an opponent. And he saw Rothe, down on one knee, shield up to block one attack, sword parrying another, nothing left to block the third that punched a spear deep into his shoulder.
Orisian lunged forwards. He was in amongst them. Blows landed on his shield, on his hip. Someone went down on his left. He looked, terrified, but it was not Rothe. The shieldman had got back to his feet. His shield arm was hanging limp, defeated by injuries old and new. He cut down one of the White Owls in front of Orisian, stretched out sword and arm, pushing Orisian back.
“Stay clear,” Rothe said. Then something hit him at the base of his neck. There was blood there. The shieldman’s eyes flared for a moment. Varryn brushed past them, spear and elbows jabbing and stabbing. One of Torcaill’s warriors crashed by. Rothe took an uncertain step backwards, and toppled.
Orisian heard the clatter of spears, the gasps of pain and exertion, felt the impact of bodies falling or feet stamping. He saw only Rothe. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees at his shieldman’s side. Rothe was watching him. Only his eyes moved. He coughed and blood bubbled out across his lips and beard. Orisian shook his shield free, cast it away. He cupped Rothe’s face in his hands. Strands of blood were falling from his own mouth. The wound in Rothe’s throat was gurgling. Rothe blinked, again and again. His gaze never faltered, never left Orisian’s eyes. Orisian pressed a hand to Rothe’s neck. The blood flooded slickly out between his fingers and across the back of his hand. Dark. Remorseless.
“Wait, wait,” Orisian heard himself saying.
Rothe blinked once more. And then never again.
VIII
“What would you have me do?” Cerys asked wearily. “Kill him?”
She looked from face to face. There was no challenge in her gaze. The question was an honest one. She had no answers of her own.
Of Highfast’s Council, Eshenna was gone, and Alian remained too sick, too crippled by the presence of Aeglyss, to rise from her bed. The others sat here, enmeshed in worry, seeking solutions to a problem that all of them, Cerys suspected, knew was beyond them.
“No,” Mon Dyvain murmured. “We cannot cut down the Dreamer, or allow Herraic’s men to do so. Can we? We cannot give up on him so easily.”
“Hardly easily,” Amonyn said. “But I agree. There is still some hope, however faint its light might be. His body lives, even if another dwells in it. His mind might yet return. Aeglyss must exhaust his patience soon.”
Cerys sighed. So often, over the years, she had found Amonyn to be of the same mind as her in all things. So often, his calm confidence had been an aid to her as she bore the heavy duties of the Elect. Now, though… now she was not so sure. Aeglyss showed little sign of running out of patience so far, though he had been shut away in a long-disused bedchamber for a full day and night now. They took him food and water, and Cerys had given him false promises of further discussion, even aid. Through it all, he had barely spoken. He simply stared at anyone who entered the room. They all left disturbed and distressed.
Amonyn smiled at her. It was a weary smile, but heartfelt. He clings to the possibility of escape from this net we’re caught in, she thought. Through all his weariness, he finds cause for hope. Amonyn had gone without sleep now for a longer spell than was wise. Until he was summoned to this gathering, he had been constantly at the bedside of Mordyn Jerain, tending to the Chancellor’s grave injuries as only he could. It had drained him, left him more emptied out than Cerys had ever seen him. Such use of the Shared was always punishing, but now, with everything twisted out of recognition by Aeglyss, it was doubly so.
“No.”
The word was spoken with such precision and firmness that it caught all of them unawares. Olyn, the blind old keeper of crows, sat with his arms folded across his chest, his brow furrowed in grave concentration.
“No?” Cerys asked quietly.
Olyn shook his head, blinked his milky eyes.
“Tyn is gone. The one who lives now in his body is a plague. Nothing will remain unruined if he persists. He is a blight upon this world, and all that’s in it. You all know it, but won’t face it. You all see it. Even these blind old eyes of mine can see it. Who’ll deny it?”
The old man’s lips were trembling. His long silver hair shivered as he turned his head this way and that. It cut Cerys to the quick to see this gentle man so distressed.
“None of us could deny that Aeglyss fouls the Shared with his-”
“No,” Olyn snapped. He laid his hands on the table. They were shaking, trembling against the wood. “Not fouls. Corrupts, wrecks. Never, never… there has never been the like of this. I’ve lived too long that I should be here to learn of it.” He was almost weeping. Cerys looked away. “Am I the only one who dreams of nothing but death and suffering and rage? Who is afraid, at every waking moment, lost to fear? Who can hardly walk in a straight line sometimes, so violent are the storms that buffet my thoughts? Am I?”
No one said anything. Cerys had her hands on her iron chain of office, but the cold metal offered none of the reassurance it sometimes did. What use an Elect, or a Council even, rendered so impotent?
“I am not the only one,” Olyn said. “We can feel death, in the
Shared, spreading its raven wings. Its shadow will fall across all things and all peoples. They do not know it yet, but we do. And its cause, its seed, is here, in Highfast. In Tyn. We should kill the body he is in, and hope against hope that in doing so we may harm him. Nothing else makes sense.”
The premonition of something awful came to them all in the same moment. A stillness, a profound hesitation as if every living thing had paused, then the blinding, dizzying surge of raw power through the Shared. Olyn cried out. Cerys staggered to her feet.
The door to the meeting chamber crashed open. A na’kyrim was there, but Cerys could not be certain who: her vision was fragmenting.
“Elect,” the newcomer was gasping. “Come — please come. He is.. he has gone mad.”
Cerys reeled out into the corridor. She could feel Aeglyss inside her skull. Or, at least, she could feel the Shared, but it was no longer easy to tell the difference between the two. She walked into a storm of the mind, and it was as ferocious as any gale that had ever lashed at Highfast.
“Find Herraic,” she gasped, unsure whether anyone could or would hear her. “Bring his men.”
This was terror beyond anything Cerys had ever known: all-embracing, crippling. It howled inside her. She lurched from one side of the passage to the other, fending off the walls as they swung towards her. Every bone, every muscle in her body burned with the desire to run, but run where? Everything around her was warped and twisted. The Shared overwhelmed her, bleeding through and hauling her into madness. The room in which Aeglyss was locked was close, but it might as well have been half the world away.
Her hands scraped along the hard walls of Highfast, but her feet stumbled across a sward of green grass; grass that writhed and flailed, animated by the vast will of the Anain. She smelled the deep, hot, ancient soils of endless forests, chokingly oppressive. The passageway down which she stumbled contorted itself into a chaos of shadows and light, of vague figures that ran alongside her, calling like birds, or screaming in fury. She could hear blades clashing, she could smell the sea, she could feel the blasting heat of a great fire on her face. None of it was real, and all of it was real, for it was flooding out of the Shared and into her. A thousand truths, unfiltered, harvested from all across the world, out of memory and experience, all pouring into her mind and tearing it asunder. And all overlaid by the savage, embittered anger of one man.
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