by Helen Lowe
Lord Falk was still watching her, waiting for an answer. “You are right,” she replied finally, also in Derai. “I am Malian of Night and I am here about my own business as well as the Shadow Band’s.” Her eyes shifted from his shrewd fox’s stare to meet Kalan’s troubled gaze—and this time she spoke only to him.
“I have come to announce a death,” she said, using the formal words. “On the slopes of the mountain a pebble has fallen, but the one who fell has bidden us stand strong. Death and honor, Kalan of the House of Blood, call us both back to the Wall of Night.”
Chapter 27
Rumor and Doubt
“I don’t want to go,” Kalan said, resting his elbows on the parapet as though absorbed by the prospect of wood and hills, diminishing into blue distance. By tacit consent they had climbed to the wall after the interview with Lord Falk was over, standing in plain view but where they could see anyone who came near. Malian stared at the mound of dark earth below the wall and then across to the pyre. Herun and Solaan were still there, watching it burn, while the guards waited at a little distance.
She felt no deep surprise at Kalan’s words: she had seen over the past weeks how the Emerian life suited him like a handcrafted gauntlet. Here, he had the life she knew he had always longed for—and Lord Falk, it appeared, had given him a foothold within the Emerian world. Malian pulled an inward face, because the most likely prospect that a return to the Wall of Night offered either of them was being shut away in some Keep’s temple quarter for the rest of their lives. Not, Malian reflected, a happy outcome, unless—the old unless—she could muster sufficient power to make her own terms within the Derai Alliance.
She turned away from the pyre and leaned her weight back against the parapet. Below her, Jarna was walking Madder around the yard while Girvase crossed to the outside stair: going to see Alianor, no doubt. Raher lounged into the stable entrance as Kalan looked around, his eyes hard.
“But I must. We owe her a debt for saving us from Jaransor.” He paused, the hard expression softening. “How much do you know about how she died?”
“Not much.” Malian narrowed her eyes at the flock of starlings swirling across the sky behind his head, a sure sign that evening was drawing in. “The Band has eyes-and-ears amongst the caravans that journey to the Border Mark, and also in the Grayharbor warehouses that specialize in the Wall trade. Yet all they have gleaned so far is a furor of whispers: that she was slain by Honor Guard arrows; that my father has gone mad with grief and shut himself away in the Earls’ quarter; and that Asantir executed the murderers herself. Plus the entire Alliance watching like vultures, hoping for advantage.”
Kalan was frowning. “Or wondering whether this is the beginning of the prophesied Fall of Night. Perhaps that’s what the murderers—and whoever set them to it—hoped to achieve?”
Malian compressed her lips, conscious of the old, enduring frustration that the mindlink between them was only one way. “A great many of our people always believed that she ensorceled my father,” she replied, keeping her voice low. “They may have seen that as the reason he has not put her aside all these years and gotten a new heir for Night.” And why didn’t he? she wondered. I thought he would have seen it as his duty.
“As he should have, for her sake.” Kalan’s mindtone was as hard as his eyes had been. “The Derai Wall is no place for outsiders.”
“No.” That knowledge must eat at my father now, Malian thought. She was thinking, too, about honor guards being implicated and how that must have shaken the Wall world, even if the slain woman was an outsider. No Derai would doubt why Asantir, the former Honor Captain and now Commander of Night, had hunted them down herself. “Rowan Birchmoon was a shaman of the Winter people,” Malian continued softly, “and a seer, yet she could not save herself.”
“Tarathan thinks she foresaw her own death but chose not to avoid it. And she herself told us that her power lay in winter. It takes time to call that into the world, especially out of season.” Kalan looked back at the wooded hills, watching them darken into evening. “What about the Gate of Dreams? Have you learned anything that way?”
Malian shook her head, thinking how often she had stood before the Keep of Winds in her dreams, watching it rise through the white mists. Yet Nhenir had been right, that night in the Winter Country. So long as she dwelt within Haarth, assuming its fabric and texture as her disguise, the realm of the Derai would remain largely inaccessible to her—unless she forced a way through the ancient barriers that protected it.
I may have to at some stage, Malian thought, but now is not the time for large risks. She glanced at Kalan, wondering if his Oakward experience of the overlapping realms was any different, but decided not to ask. One of the first lessons one learned in the Shadow Band was when to keep silent, which was more often than not. She did not ask about Yorindesarinen’s gift of the black pearl ring for the same reason, although she was aware that Kalan had never worn it in at all the time since she arrived at Normarch.
“A debt is a debt,” he said, so low she almost did not hear him. “Death does not cancel such things out.”
Malian nodded. “We must find those behind the suborned guards, if no one else gets there before us. But I think the true debt we owe Rowan Birchmoon is to save Haarth. That is what she asked of us, five years ago. And events are moving everywhere: on the River, and now here. In Ishnapur, too, from the sound of things. But it’s still the Wall that will bear the brunt of this storm.”
Kalan shot her an abrupt, frowning look. “So regardless of Rowan Birchmoon’s murder, you think it’s time to go back anyway?” In the yard below, Raher shifted out of the stable door to let Jarna lead Madder inside. The girl’s glance back over her shoulder seemed wistful, even if her expression was obscured by the stable’s shadow. Another complication, Malian thought, but stopped herself from sighing.
“Not regardless,” she said. “But through my father and Night, her death has triggered uncertainty on the Wall, an opportunity that we need to seize before anyone else does. And given Swarm activity—” Malian shrugged. “I don’t think we have much time.”
“And now Lord Falk says that he will help you find the Derai Lost if you can keep Ghis alive through the formal rebetrothal ceremony at Midsummer.”
Malian found it impossible to tell, from his expression, what Kalan thought about Lord Falk’s offer. She was remembering her long summers working up and down the River, when she had always listened for any rumor of other fugitives from the Wall. The Shadow Band’s sources indicated that some did escape the Derai temples and enter the River lands, both via the overland route and by sea from Grayharbor. They also knew that the fugitives did not remain on the River, but Malian had been unable to find out who was hiding them, or where the Lost went once they left the Ijir.
There were so many players on the River, that was the problem: the Three of Ij, the great princely and merchant houses of the cities, the Guild, the Patrol, the Shadow Band—as well as the priesthoods of Imulun, Seruth, and Kan. She had followed various trails over the years but they had always petered out: at a farmhouse, a wayside inn, a brothel—even an Ephor of Terebanth’s hunting lodge. Malian checked a gesture of frustration.
“The Lost are another reason behind my journey here,” she told Kalan. “At the end of last summer, the Band received a report of strange doings in Aeris. Lightning and thunder out of a clear sky one day; on the next a stone barn caught fire and couldn’t be put out. I investigated and the Lost weren’t there—but they had been.” She watched his eyes widen.
“The Little Pass from Aeris to Emer,” he said. “They must be using that. It’s hardly more than a goat track, but passable in summer. And once in the wilds of northern Emer they could go anywhere if they had the right guides.”
Malian nodded. “Central and southern Emer, Lathayra, even Jhaine, although that’s so closed off from other realms . . .” Her tone conveyed a shrug.
“Xenophobic, you mean. I doubt they’d harbor refuge
es from the Derai temples, even if they are ruled by priestess-queens.” Kalan’s mindtone was tart, but his voice grew thoughtful as he continued aloud: “Lathayra’s always in upheaval over something or other. It’d be easy to escape detection there. And if they’re coming through Emer, I’d expect the Oakward to know about it—although in all the time I’ve been here, I haven’t heard anything.” He paused, his frown deepening, and Malian guessed that he was reflecting that Lord Falk might well have kept the knowledge from him.
“Looking back, does anything at all make you wonder?” she prompted.
“Small things,” he said slowly. “Like Girvase being able to see in the dark, almost as well as I can. Being Ar-Allerion, not Sond, doesn’t mean anything in itself, but his mother did die when he was born without ever revealing who his father was. That’s unusual here.”
Half Derai, thought Malian, a little disconcerted by the possibility. But if Derai Lost were passing through Emer, then such liaisons might well happen. She would find the Lost anyway now that she was on the right trail, but in light of events on the Wall she would much prefer not to have to trawl the length and breadth of the southern lands to do so. “Will Lord Falk keep his word?” she asked.
“Yes.” Kalan hesitated, the frown still in place. “The Lost may not wish to return, you know, even if you do find them.” His eyes met hers and he did not have to restate his own reluctance to see the Derai Wall again
“We need them,” she said simply. “In all these years, I’ve not heard so much as a whisper of Yorindesarinen’s lost arms, either the sword or shield, being in Haarth. I still hope to restore the full strength of the ancient bond with Hylcarion, and through one Fire reactivate the others, but without the weapons of power—” She shrugged. “It’s an uncertain business at best.”
“Like Hylcarion.” Malian did not need a mindlink to know that he was reflecting on how diminished the Golden Fire in the Old Keep had seemed, five years before, compared with the great powers of Derai legend. “And without a Golden Fire at full strength in every Keep . . .” He shook his head. “You don’t need the Lost, you need an army.”
Always you, thought Malian, never we. She felt hollow again, as though the Heir of Night was still a fragile identity beneath the masks of both scholar and Shadow Band adept. Girvase reappeared in the door of Alianor’s room, and Kalan, turning in time to see him, raised one hand in casual salute. Is he lost to me? Malian wondered. Has he become too much a part of Emer?
In the cook shelter that had been set up beside the donjon, a guard began to bang a metal spoon against a shield. “Hot food!” Kalan exclaimed, heading toward the stairs at once. Malian followed more slowly as squires, damosels, and guards streamed toward the makeshift servery. The heralds emerged from the stable, their gray cloaks drifting into the lengthening shadows, and Malian stopped, the mosquito niggle that had persisted since the committal service finally resolving. Kalan paused, too, looking back. “What?”
“The Seven.” Malian hesitated, ordering her thoughts. “When we summoned Imuln’s moon, Solaan insisted that Jehane Mor lead the working—not shield the rest of us as I would have expected. And you said that such a working was only possible on Summer’s Eve or at Midsummer, the two great days dedicated to Imuln.” Kalan threw a longing glance toward the cook shelter, but waited anyway. “So surely such a working could only be led by one dedicated to the Goddess?”
Kalan whistled softly. “Yet heralds, their entire Guild, are sworn to Serrut. And the language she spoke, I didn’t recognize that either.” He frowned. “But you’re right, it was Solaan who insisted, and she’s Oakward, so it may not mean anything amiss.”
“Not amiss, no.” Malian began to descend the steps again. “But it is a puzzle, one to be mindful of.”
“Agreed.” Kalan’s pace quickened as they reached the yard, where there were too many people around them to continue the conversation. A water tub had been set to one side of the servery, and everyone queuing for food was stopping to wash their hands. Raven, Marten, and several of the guards who had been out on patrol were ahead of them, and Malian stood back while they pulled off gauntlets and vambraces, plunging their forearms into the water. A cook threw fat onto a gridiron and flames roared, stretching in a cross-draught. The glow illuminated Raven as he reached for the patched cloth that was serving as a towel. Malian moved, intending to hand it to him, then stopped, transfixed by the tattoos that rippled blue along his forearms.
Some kind of bird, she thought, seeing the winged pattern repeated on either arm: a raptor, perhaps, with that fierce beak. She blinked—and the cobblestones beneath her feet and the day around her shifted. In that instant she was back in the mists beyond the Gate of Dreams, hearing a voice that seemed eerily familiar beneath the shadowing of power. Once again, she saw the tattoos on the cloaked watcher’s forearms unfold into dark wings, blotting out the young moon.
Malian blinked a second time, her hand frozen in midair, before the world shifted back into place. Raven wiped his hands and forearms dry. But as he did so he looked over his shoulder and his eyes met hers, as hard and full of hidden knowledge as the corvid for which he was named—or had named himself.
Part III
The Border Mark
Chapter 28
Border Crossing
“Just what we need,” said Garan. “A coterie of Stone priests.” He had led his company out of the Barren Hills just on dusk, intending to camp overnight by the Border Mark, only to find another group of travelers already settled in by the standing stone. And not just any travelers, Garan thought with an inward groan. Stone priests were the nearest thing to a warrior class within the three priestly Houses, and as rigid as the House of Blood in their adherence to the divisions that had arisen out of the Derai’s civil war.
He rubbed at his chin, aware of the quality of Nerys’s silence beside him and mutters amongst the other Honor Guards. The minstrel they were escorting said nothing, his expression untroubled. Nothing in his appearance reflected the grueling weeks they had spent on the road north, contending with the wildest of spring and early summer weather as they traversed the Barren Hills. As though road dust doesn’t even stick to him, Garan thought—and although Haimyr had put aside his usual golden garb for the wool and leather of the road, there was no denying that he did not look Derai. But then again, if the Stone priests wanted to pick a quarrel, they would find a reason, whether it was because the newcomers were retainers of Night, or because they rode with an outsider.
Garan shrugged, reaching his decision. “We ride in slowly and make our camp away from theirs. And we don’t fight them, no matter what provocation they offer.”
“Do we need to camp here at all?” Eanar was a newcomer to the Honor Guard, a slim dark recruit from Westwind hold. “We’ve crossed the Gray Lands by night before.”
“Not if we can avoid it,” Garan said. The more experienced guards nodded, all too familiar with the deteriorating boundary situation. As fast as they cleared out one infestation of low-level darkspawn, another would take its place, all wearing away at the Derai patrols. Even the Gray Lands were increasingly hazardous.
“There are Morning priests with the Stoners,” Keron said. He was another new recruit to the guard, but he had keen eyes. “I count six, maybe seven in House of Morning colors.”
Garan rubbed at his chin again; he needed to shave. “If the Stone priests are doing escort duty, they may be less inclined to pick fights.” He wasn’t going to rely on it, though, not given what he knew of Keep of Stone priests and their ways. The Morning priests were more of an unknown quantity. All he knew about their House was that they followed the goddess Mayanne and were given to studying the patterns of the stars and the weather, or grubbing over history buried in the ground. “We have to camp,” Garan said finally. “So let’s go in.” He caught Haimyr’s eye. “Try to stay in the background if you can. Stone priests don’t like outsiders much.”
The minstrel raised golden brows. “From what I’ve h
eard,” he replied, “that is considerably understating the case.”
Nerys’s mouth twitched and Garan grinned, only half reluctantly. “You’re right. But all the more reason to be careful, especially as they outnumber us—by what, two to one?” he asked Keron.
The younger guard nodded as their horses headed down the last stretch of road. “If you don’t count the House of Morning priests.”
Innor, one of the veterans, snorted. “I don’t think anyone ever counts Morning priests. Or the House of Peace lot. That’s probably what turned the Stone priests so sour.”
The rest of the honor guards chuckled and Garan grinned again, although he had heard the joke before. The grin faded as they drew closer to the Border Mark and saw the Stone priests drawn up to meet them. They had the shaven heads that marked the House of Adamant and were all built like barracks’ brawlers, with long knives at their belts. Those facing the small Night contingent carried long staves or pikes as though they knew how to use them, which they undoubtedly did. Garan drew up far enough away to be unthreatening and raised his right hand in formal salute. “Light and safety on your road.”
“Night!” The Stone priest spat out the name as he stepped forward, ignoring the traditional response. He wore a burgundy tabard over his robe of grayed indigo and his expression was as flat and hard as his voice. “And coming from the outside lands, I see.” He did not look at Haimyr, the avoidance more particular than an open stare.
“Night’s business,” Garan replied evenly. “We’ll make our camp on the far side of the standing stone from you.” The site would be more exposed to the constant wind off the Gray Lands, but better, he judged, than being close to hostile company.
The Stone priest continued to stare, studying all of them as they sat quietly on their weary horses. “Suit yourself,” he said finally. “Make it downwind, though. We don’t want to breathe the outside taint you bring with you.”
