Four men died in the night. A hard frost had come, brittling the grass and casting its white sheen over everything. The ground crackled beneath Orisian’s feet. He left a trail of dark prints behind him, pressed into the cold dusting. He shivered and sniffed as he walked.
Rothe showed him the bodies. One – a guard – lay at the foot of a shallow slope, stretched out against the thick base of a tree. The other three lay where they had settled down for the night. In the evening they, like everyone else, had wandered about beneath the trees, pursing their lips and weighing up the options. They had chosen a place where the ground seemed even, the grass dry, and they had unrolled their sleeping mats, made a pillow of their jacket or shield or a rock. They had lain down and pulled their blankets tight about them. And they had died there, silently, in the darkness. Their throats had been cut. Their blood had made puddles on the forest floor.
Orisian looked into the face of the corpse nearest him. He looked away again quickly, repelled by that too-familiar vision of death, but he had time to see the bruises on the man’s face where someone had roughly clamped a hand over his mouth.
“They killed the sentry first,” muttered Rothe. “Then these three, just because they were within reach, on the edge of the camp.”
“Kyrinin?” Orisian asked dully.
“Beyond doubt. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, in Anlane.”
“They could have killed us all.”
“There may only be a handful of them. Perhaps someone stirred while they were about their work; perhaps they thought they were about to be discovered. They’d always rather be cutting throats in the darkness than facing up to a real fight.”
“It’s a pity Varryn and Ess’yr were sleeping on the other side of the camp. They might have heard something.”
“Perhaps.”
Torcaill was going from corpse to corpse, collecting swords. He paused beside Orisian.
“We should turn back, Thane,” he said. “There’ll be more dead if we don’t. I can’t put outriders ahead of us now. They’d not survive half the day.”
Orisian took one of the sheathed blades from the warrior and turned it in his hands. There were notches and crude patterns scratched into the scabbard; the metal cap on its end had a simple design of dots punched into it. An incongruous little strand of red-dyed string was tied about the hilt.
“What’s this?” Orisian asked, running a fingertip over the string. “Do you know why he had this on his sword?”
Torcaill frowned at it. “No, sire. A token from some girl, perhaps. Or a reminder of some enemy he had killed. I don’t know.”
“What was his name?”
“Dorvadain. Dorvadain Emmen.”
Orisian glanced over his shoulder. Varryn and Ess’yr were there. They had come silently across the frosted grass and now stared at the dead men. Orisian looked back to the sword in his hands for a moment, then returned it to Torcaill.
“Will you do something for me?” he asked Varryn quietly.
The Kyrinin waited.
“I want to know how many White Owls there are. Where they are, where they are going. I don’t want to be surprised by them again. You can move faster than we can; see things we cannot. And you know them better than we do.”
Varryn regarded him with the usual still, unreadable eyes. Yvane walked up behind the two Kyrinin, peering over their shoulders and wincing a little when she saw the bodies.
“Of course he’ll go,” the na’kyrim said. “Never known a Fox that’d pass up the chance to stick a spear into a White Owl.”
That brought no more response from Varryn than Orisian’s question had, but the Kyrinin warrior did turn to Ess’yr and murmur a few fluid words in the Fox tongue. Yvane brushed past him and pointed at the frost-blighted ground around the corpse of the guard.
“They left enough of a trail for even a human to follow, I should think,” she said to Orisian.
Orisian noticed Torcaill’s scowl at that, but ignored it.
“If we all go running off into the forest after them, we’ll end up dead,” he said to Yvane. “You know that as well as I do. They might not even know Varryn is on their trail.”
She shrugged, and blew out a breath that steamed into the chill air. “Probably true. I’m not so sure we won’t end up dead anyway, mind you.”
“Did you sleep badly?” Rothe muttered. “You’re in a foul mood this morning.”
Yvane glared at the shieldman, who smiled as innocently as Orisian had ever seen him manage. The na’kyrim stalked away. Orisian gave Rothe a prod on the shoulder as they watched her receding back.
“You wouldn’t be trying to pick a fight, would you?” he asked. “Quality of sleep’s not the best subject to discuss, these days.”
Rothe muttered a half-hearted apology, and went to help Torcaill move the bodies.
Orisian found Eshenna rolling up her thin sleeping mat. The skin beneath her eyes had a dark, almost bruised tinge to it. Little sleep, and less rest, he assumed. He squatted down beside her. She did not look up, concentrating on tying up the mat with a loop of cord. There was the very slightest tremor in her hands as she worked, he thought. It might have always been there, but if so he had never noticed it before.
“I cannot go on much further,” he said quietly to her. “I have to turn back, head for Kolglas soon. Perhaps I’ve already come too far. Everyone else seems to think so.”
“I don’t. Nor does Yvane.”
“No. But you are only two. Men are dying now, Eshenna.”
“We are the only two who understand even a little of what is happening.” She looked him in the eyes then, and her gaze was strong and firm. “You know that. It makes a difference.”
“It makes some difference,” he murmured. “But you have to tell me she’s close, Eshenna. I can’t just keep marching deeper into the forest.”
The na’kyrim returned her attention to her rolled mat, slinging it across her shoulder.
“She is close. Today, we’ll have her. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
Varryn and Ess’yr trotted past, spears in hand. They wove their way between the trees and disappeared, vanishing in an instant into the forest as if they had stepped across some intangible, impenetrable barrier. Orisian stared after them briefly, then rose and went to tell Torcaill to prepare his men for the march.
They went quickly now. Anxiety gnawed at Orisian, fraying the edges of his temper and patience. An emptiness, almost a hunger, had settled into the pit of his stomach that he somehow knew could only be relieved by finishing this; by finding K’rina, or finding White Owls, or death, even. What form the culmination took mattered less to him than that it came soon. He disliked that feeling, and mistrusted its origins. There was something in its texture that felt not wholly his own.
The ancient road that had brought them this far had lost its struggle against the suffocating forest. It was gone, buried beneath layers of leaf, moss, root and soil. Nothing was left to mark its course save the occasional worked stone poking up through the green and brown sward, and once a cluster of low ruins of to one side, draped in ivy, crowded with saplings.
Yvane was persuaded to share Rothe’s horse for a time. The na’kyrim glowered, and every now and again shot dark looks in Orisian’s direction, as if accusing him of some kind of betrayal, but she made less protest than he had expected. Eshenna rode near the front. Her head hung low, and bobbed in time with her mount’s tread. She did not sleep, though; merely suffered. Whenever Orisian glimpsed her face, it was crunched up in a shifting mix of pain and concentration. Now and again she would grunt, sometimes wince. Late in the morning, she grew still. Her horse drifted to one side of the column and dropped its head to tug at a clump of long grasses.
“That way,” she murmured, when Orisian and Torcaill flanked her in consternation. She waved an arm imprecisely. What remained of the road they had been following curved away; Eshenna was pointing into deep forest.
Torcaill looked doubtful, at best.
“You’re sure?” Orisian asked quietly. It was too late to refuse this woman’s guidance now, after they had come so far.
“She’s that way,” Eshenna insisted dully.
So they drove into the wild wood. Branches scratched at their faces, fallen timber blocked their way. Tangled, leafless bushes caught in their stirrups and snagged their horses’ tails. Birds scattered from their path, chattering alarm calls into the stillness of the forest. Their pace slowed, even as the oppressive sense of fear and foreboding grew.
They found another trail, and followed it. It was wide enough for two or three to ride abreast, but no more. They ate in the saddle, passing biscuits and waterskins from one to another. It left Orisian still hungry. His eyelids grew heavy as the day turned past its midpoint. His thoughts wandered, shapeless.
He recognised the sudden sound as soon as he heard it, but could not name it: that snapping, hissing flutter like a score of breaths abruptly expelled. He turned in time to see a flock of arrows darting out from the forest along the track. They rattled in on the column of men and horses. Someone cried out. A horse reared. He looked for their attackers, but there was nothing save the dark thicket of tree trunks. And now another scattered flight of arrows flashing through the crowd of his men. One rider slumped out of his saddle.
“Go!” Torcaill was shouting close by. “Ride on, ride on!”
Orisian’s horse sprang into a gallop. He was not certain whether he had kicked it into motion or whether it was just carried along by the sudden rush of all the other riders. They surged down the track. Orisian felt and heard an arrow smacking into the shield slung across his back. The horse ahead of him veered to one side, stumbling and faltering on suddenly flimsy legs. Orisian glimpsed the fletching of an arrow protruding from its neck. Thundering on by, he turned his head to see the animal crashing through a bush and falling, spilling its rider. He lost sight of both the man and his mount.
The forest seemed to press ever more closely along the path. Orisian expected the lithe figures of Kyrinin to emerge at any moment. The horses stretched their legs, though, and hammered on and on, until the forest thinned a little and the trail opened out.
Rothe reined in his mount next to Orisian and reached across to pull at the arrow embedded in his shield. Yvane, clinging to the burly warrior like a limpet, looked queasy.
“Are you wounded?” Rothe demanded. “Were you hit?”
Orisian shook his head. “You?”
“No.” Rothe grunted as he finally freed the arrow. He snapped its shaft and threw the two pieces to the ground.
Orisian looked around for Torcaill. It was hard to tell, amidst the throng of riders milling about, how many might have fallen. He glimpsed the young man at the rear of the company, sword in hand, expression grim and angry.
“Torcaill,” Orisian shouted. “Are they coming after us?”
“I can’t tell. We should put more ground between us and them, anyway.”
Orisian hauled his horse’s head around. The animal resisted, almost as if it too dreaded what lay behind them, and he had to dig his heels into its flanks to move it. He worked his way to Torcaill’s side. The two of them stared back down the path. It looked like any other woodland trail: a muddy stretch of wiry grass, bare overhanging branches and twigs bobbing in the faintest of breezes. There was no sign of life.
“How many men did we lose?” Orisian asked.
“I’m not sure. Two, I think. We’ve others injured, though, and some of the horses. Still, we were lucky.”
“They’re only playing with us,” rumbled Rothe, coming up behind them. “Chipping away. Come, Orisian. You shouldn’t linger in the open like this. There must be bodies between you and any arrow’s flight.”
“He’s right, sire,” Torcaill said, sheathing his sword. “You should stay in the midst of us. We won’t see them coming next time, either, unless we’re luckier than we’ve any right to expect.”
Orisian allowed himself to be shepherded into the centre of the column, like some prized lamb kept in the heart of the herd.
“We could use your Fox friends now,” Torcaill muttered as they moved on down the trail. “Will we be seeing them again, do you think?”
“Yes,” said Orisian tightly. “Yes. We’ll see them again.”
Kanin oc Horin-Gyre had discovered depths of exhaustion such as he had never before imagined. He bore half a dozen small wounds – cuts and many-hued bruises – but it was lack of sleep that had sapped his strength, and the emptiness that came in the aftermath of battle. He was limping heavily: he had torn, or strained, something in his knee during the battle, leaping from the back of his dying horse. It hardly hurt, but the joint was enfeebled.
His Shield followed behind him through the streets of Glasbridge. Igris still carried, like a fool, the stick that he had tried to persuade Kanin to lean upon. A Thane, the victor in savage battle, should not be seen humbled by such a minor injury. The streets were soft with slush and treacherous underfoot, but Kanin would rather fall than hobble along like an old man.
After the battles he had won at Grive and Anduran, he had felt a dazed exultation, a lifting up of his heart and a sublime affirmation of the rightness of his deeds. No such exalted feelings attended upon the brutal victory won in the snowstorm on the road to Kolglas. The struggle had been unlike anything Kanin had previously experienced: desperate, seemingly never-ending. Wreathed by snow and cloud, there had been no time, no location to the slaughter. It had simply existed, a world unto itself, and all purpose had been lost save the imperative to slay one man, and then the next, and the next.
Driven back from the earthen wall that the Inkallim had raised across the road, almost overrun by the hordes of the Haig Bloods, he and his dwindling and scattering companies had fallen back towards Glasbridge, turning again and again to face another charge, to die. Eventually, lost, adrift in the blizzard, they had turned for the last time and stood in the calf-deep snow to await fate’s resolution. And there had been enough blood shed there to leave them wading in it. Kanin had known he was going to die then, and had felt no great sorrow at the thought. But he had not died, and the enemy had instead faltered and then fled. The battle was won, by the snowstorm and by the army Fiallic the Inkallim and Temegrin the Eagle had brought down upon the flank and the rear of their enemy.
There had been ravens of the Battle Inkall fighting and dying at Kanin’s side all through the long day, with Shraeve at the forefront; there had been scores of commonfolk from the north, come across the Vale of Stones to stand with Horin-Gyre. All these had been there in the fields of snow, but not Wain. His sister had insisted on remaining in Glasbridge with the vile halfbreed who, impossibly, she had brought back with her from Anduran.
Wain was, in manner and character, unrecognisable. Kanin’s heart ached to think of it. Her face and voice were as they had always been, but what lay behind them had changed. Since her return, she spoke only of things that Kanin did not wish to understand: Aeglyss, the Kall, storms, all-consuming fires and terrible, wondrous fates. Half of what she said was incoherent, little better than the ravings of some mind-addled crone; all of it was spoken with a strange intensity.
As far as he could tell, nothing Kanin said reached her any more. She would not be parted from Aeglyss; she would not participate in any calm, reasoned conversation that Kanin attempted. That part of her that had always burned fiercely, with faith and hard certainty, now seemed to have overwhelmed all her sense, all her restraint. The sister Kanin loved, and respected above all others, had been taken away from him by these strange changes. And he was all but certain, in his deepest instincts, that Aeglyss was in some way responsible.
At the very thought of the man, Kanin let out a wordless snarl of anger and contempt. For want of any other way to release his frustration, he slapped his thigh with an open palm as he strode along. Nothing, it seemed, would keep that half-human wretch from interfering. Now, when Kanin had almost started to believe that he was lying dead in some distant ditch or copse, here he was again, poisoning everything with his presence. And when Kanin had argued that the halfbreed should be killed, Wain had stared at him as if he was a petulant child, and turned away from him. She had set her back to him; dismissed him. Nothing could have caused him greater pain than that.
Even Kanin could tell, though, that Aeglyss was not quite the same man he had been when last they met. Now the na’kyrim stank of confidence and capability. He had not only some kind of woodwight honour guard, but also Wain, her Shield and another few dozen warriors who seemed inexplicably intrigued by him. Even Shraeve and her company of ravens had been seen coming and going from the huge house where Aeglyss had settled himself.
And then there were the dreams. Kanin had not slept well for several nights. His slumber was disturbed by dreams that he could not clearly remember, but which he always felt had involved Aeglyss. And if he ever did secure a long spell of sleep he would invariably awake filled with inexplicable anger, or with his heart racing, or fear twisting in his stomach.
A twinge of pain shot through Kanin’s knee as he limped up a gently sloping street. He winced and, reluctantly, reached out to Igris for the walking stick. The shieldman handed it over without comment.
A woodwight came darting around the corner. Kanin was so astonished that he did not react. Igris was more alert, and more governed by deeply ingrained instincts. The shieldman swept his sword from its scabbard and lashed out at the speeding figure. The Kyrinin leaped and spun, evading the blow with barely a break in his stride. He sprang away down the street. Bemused, Kanin glanced around to find two more White Owls appearing, arrows already at their bowstrings. They took aim, and in no more time than it took Kanin to turn his head, the fleeing figure was reeling, two feathered shafts standing in his back. He fell into a puddle of melt-water.
The two who had killed him retreated back around the corner, slipping fresh arrows free from their quivers as they went.
“The whole world is going mad,” Kanin muttered.
He limped forwards and beheld a startling scene. White Owl Kyrinin were killing one another. A brutal, dazzlingly fast struggle played itself out. There were already several bodies lying in the mud and slush. As Kanin watched, two more wights broke away and tried to flee. They were shot down just as the first had been. Whatever the argument had been about, it was clear that one side had won. The last of the defeated was pinned down to the road, stabbed with many spears. She writhed there for a moment or two. A muscular warrior with the most dramatic facial tattoos Kanin had ever seen on a woodwight leaned down and stabbed her in the chest. As the woman’s convulsions stilled, her killer straightened and looked towards Kanin.
The Thane of the Horin Blood had no intention of showing any interest in the doings of these Kyrinin intruders. Had Wain not insisted upon it, he would never have allowed them – or Aeglyss – to enter the town. He led his Shield past the White Owls, through a gate and into the wide cobbled courtyard beyond. This was the extensive house that Wain and Aeglyss and all their companions now occupied. Previously the possession of some senior official in the Woollers’ Craft, it was an elaborate conglomeration of courtyards, workshops and apartments. The place still had the smell of wool and hides and oils lingering about it.
“Wain!” he shouted, standing in the centre of the courtyard. He turned around, pivoting on the stick, shouting her name again.
He saw her at a window. She peered out from under the eaves. Drops of water were falling from the lip of the tiles.
“With me,” Kanin snapped at Igris. “The rest of you remain here. Keep clear of the woodwights. I don’t want any trouble.”
He was disgusted, but not surprised, to find Wain in a bedchamber, watching over the slumbering form of Aeglyss. Kanin had thrown the door back with a clatter, but the na’kyrim did not stir. A single glance was enough to convince Kanin that the halfbreed was sick. His skin had a sheen of sweat, though its pallor was cold. He had thinned in the time since he had disappeared from Anduran, as if gripped by some wasting affliction. Kanin could see the shape of his bones across his brow, in his cheeks and jaw.
“There are woodwights slaughtering each other in the streets,” the Thane said to his sister. “What’s happening?”
“A dispute to be settled,” she said flatly. “There was an incident at Sirian’s Dyke, involving the Anain. Some of the White Owls wavered in their loyalty. It seems it became necessary to come to a final decision on the matter. It is best not to let doubts linger.”
Kanin stood in silence for a heartbeat or two. He was frightened. The sister he had loved and relied upon all his life was as unfamiliar to him now as the most distant stranger. Once they barely needed to speak to understand one another’s intent; now when they talked it was as if they did so in different languages. He had lost his only true friend here, and was bereft.
“Wain, listen to me. This is all wrong. What are you doing here, amongst woodwights and…” he stabbed a finger towards Aeglyss “.. . and halfbreeds? This is no place for you, sister. We’ve won. The way to Kolglas is open to us now. We don’t need all this.”
She set herself between him and the bed, a resolute wall. Kanin stared at her in anguished confusion.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “We need him.”
“What are you doing? Wain, what are you doing? You’ll put yourself between me and this creature?”
His passion washed over her, finding no purchase.
“He is important to us. To everything,” she said placidly.
“This is madness.” In his desperation, Kanin cast about in vain for words that might rouse her from whatever torpor had taken hold of her mind. He wanted to seize her and shake her, but was terribly afraid that she would fight him if he did so.
“Not madness,” Wain insisted. “This is fate, revealing itself to us. You will see, I promise you. We are only at the beginning of things, Kanin. Great, wonderful things.” There was at last some emotion in her voice, but it was only a pained need for him to understand. “We draw near to the unmaking of the world, don’t you see? He is the herald of all that. The key to it.”
“Him?” Kanin shouted, surrendering to fury. He pointed again at the pallid, emaciated na’kyrim lying on the bed. “Look at him, Wain! He’s barely even alive.”
“You see only the least part of him there. There is one he wants at his side. He has gone in search of her, to guide her to him. He swims in oceans we cannot imagine, brother. He becomes them. I will watch over him until he wakes.”
Kanin cried out in disbelief. He could feel his face reddening, could feel anger shaking his hand.
“Come with me,” he implored her. “You need rest. We’ll go back to Anduran. We’ve done all that could be asked of us here.”
“I cannot leave him now,” Wain said, quite calm and soft but obdurate. “Do you not feel it? Sleeping or waking, he is spreading his shadow across us all. His will colours every thought, every mood now. It forces… change. Movement. Why do you suppose the Kyrinin have come to such strife amongst themselves? Why do you suppose our army fights with such vigour; is so hungry for death’s embrace? Because Aeglyss has changed, and changes all of us now.”
Kanin stepped to one side, thinking to pass around his sister. He did not know quite what he would do if he could reach Aeglyss: kill him, or merely wake him? He did not care.
Wain shifted to block his way again.
“I am to watch over him until he wakes.”
Kanin hung his head. He was unused to the kind of impotent uncertainty that filled him. Whatever doubts or hesitations might occasionally have beset him in the past, he had always been able to draw upon the reserves of his faith, or upon the support of Wain herself, to find a path. Now he felt bereaved, and the one he would otherwise have turned to for aid was the one he had lost.
“There is to be a council, Wain,” he murmured. “Fiallic, and the Eagle, and Goedellin and all the captains are gathering on the southern edge of the town. We should be there. There are decisions to be made. Fiallic wants to drive on to Kolglas and beyond as fast as the weather will allow. Temegrin resists.”
“Fiallic will have his way,” Wain said placidly. “You go. I will remain here. Our victory in this war – and we will have victory, brother – will not be shaped in the council tents of the Inkallim or the Gyre Blood. You will see, in time.”
Kanin left, desolate. Going down the stairs, his knee almost betrayed him. He slumped against the wall. Igris tried to help him down the last few steps, but Kanin pushed him off.
In the courtyard, he found his Shield clustered around a water barrel. They passed around overflowing cups as they watched the Kyrinin dragging the bodies of their fallen comrades in from the street. The dead were piled against a wall, beneath the overhanging eaves. Kanin angrily gathered his warriors and led them out.
Shraeve was arriving just as he left, at the head of a dozen or more mounted ravens of the Battle. Several bore fresh wounds. The Inkallim had fought savagely. Shraeve nodded down at Kanin as he hobbled past her horse.
“You’re going to the Eagle’s council, Thane?”
He nodded without looking at her, angry now – at himself and at Igris – for the presence of the walking stick upon which he leaned. The Inkallim had proved themselves valuable allies at last, but in Kanin’s mind their past betrayals of his Blood were not undone. And Shraeve was still an arrogant, abrasive presence.
“I thought you might be there too,” he muttered.
“I am not needed there. Fiallic is Banner-captain. He is the will of the Battle here. And I am interested in whatever your sister has got herself involved in. That halfbreed of yours really has proved to be remarkably surprising, don’t you think?”
At that, Kanin could not help but glare up at the woman.
“He’s mad,” he snapped. “And dying. You waste your interest, raven, by spending it on him.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. My instincts tell me otherwise. You might find, Thane, that a great and terrible fate is unfolding itself here. We will see, no doubt. We will see.”
V
The Elect’s every instinct, of body and mind alike, howled with alarm, cried out for flight. It took a determined effort to hold her gaze upon the abomination before her.
She had come here, climbing up through the keep of Highfast, in answer to a call only one closely attuned to the Shared could have sensed. It was the call of sudden change, of the sudden bursting in of brilliant light as a shutter is pulled back. She had been alone in the midst of the keep, returning from a brief, uncomfortable meeting with Herraic. They had been discussing the care of the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods, who lay unconscious, near death, in Herraic’s own quarters. The Captain was nervous, unsettled by such unforeseen disturbance of Highfast’s normal routines, and the meeting had been a little bad-tempered.
Cerys was still turning it over, wondering whether she should have been quite so curt with the man, when her mind was struck numb. Alone in a narrow corridor, she had staggered, would have fallen had she not reached out and pressed a hand to the dank wall. And then, shivering, she had tipped her head back and gazed up at the ceiling. But it was not blank stone that she saw, and not with eyes that she looked. Down, down, through the walls and the gutters and the passageways of Highfast, power was pouring. A dark, malignant torrent of delirious potency cascaded through the Shared, and she knew, without question, from whence it came.
So she had climbed, heavy-legged and fearful, hoping that someone else might join her before she reached her destination, someone to share the burden of witnessing whatever awaited her. And hoping, at the same time, that no one else would come, for she was the Elect and the na’kyrim of Highfast were her charge, and she must guard them against this. At the door of the Dreamer’s chamber she had hesitated. It had taken every fragment of will she could muster to force herself to open that door and to step inside.
It was not Tyn, not the man she had viewed with affectionate concern for all these years. It had his form, it was made of his stuff, but it was not him. The fact that this cadaverous figure moved and spoke gave it the semblance of life and familiarity, but they signified little more than the writhing of maggots beneath the hide of a dead cow. The maggots did not give the cow life. This was not the Dreamer awoken. Aeglyss wore Tyn’s body like a cloak.
“I don’t like this skin,” the abomination slurred, holding up a gaunt hand and staring at it.
“Set it aside, then,” said Cerys. “Remove yourself. Return to your own skin. Your proper place.”
Tyn grimaced. His gums were white, those teeth that remained jaundiced.
“What do you think that would achieve? He is gone, the one who inhabited this shell. Gone, utterly. His mind was a frail thing, almost wasted away. I cut it free. I watched it… melt into the Shared. You should not mourn it. There was almost nothing left of him even before I came.”
Cerys closed her eyes. She gripped the iron chain around her neck with one hand. She had no way to tell whether Aeglyss spoke the truth. If she could have reached out into the Shared with her mind, perhaps she might have caught some hint of Tyn’s presence and thus discovered whether or not he persisted, unhomed. But she no longer dared to let her awareness extend into even the shallowest fringes of the Shared. Such was the turbulence, the turmoil, surrounding Aeglyss that she knew she would be unable to hold on to any sense of herself. Already her head spun and she had to fight back waves of nausea.
“Don’t close those lovely eyes, lady. You should look upon me – look upon this – in wonder. I thought you were all scholars here. Aren’t you? Here is something you’ve never seen before.”
When she looked upon him, it was with all the contempt she could muster.
“You think yourself clever, do you?” she spat.
“I don’t think clever is quite the word for it. No, not clever. I don’t have the words that would fit this. But come, let’s not be cruel.”
The blanched head rocked on its flimsy neck. The mouth sagged open, giving out a faint groan. Cerys felt the tumult in her mind recede a fraction. Her thoughts were no longer buffeted quite so viciously this way and that. It was as if Aeglyss had sucked back into himself some small portion of whatever poison it was that leaked out from him into the Shared. The effort it took was evident from the tremors that shook Tyn’s shoulders. He barely controls this, the Elect thought. It is too much for him.
“You are uninvited,” she said. “I did not invite you into this place any more than Tyn invited you into his body.”
“You should thank me for the mercy I’ve shown him. Have you heard of the Healer’s Blade? Every healer who travels with the Black Road army carries one, to end the suffering of those whose wounds cannot be healed. This old man was no different. I cut him loose from this rotting shell. It was only an anchor, holding him back; he’d long ago surrendered himself to the Shared.”
“I will hold no debates with one who steals the bodies of others,” Cerys said and turned on her heel. The door was only a few paces away. She felt an urgent need to put its solid oak between her and this obscenity.
“You will not turn your back on me!” cried Aeglyss from Tyn’s throat. “You will not!” The words were ragged, but the fury that informed them was real. And it burned not only in that voice; in the Shared, it was a howling storm of ire.
The world lurched sideways beneath the Elect’s feet. Or was it she who veered and swayed? A wind blew through her mind, so loud and hard that it snatched away her thoughts and sent them swirling off into nothingness. The door for which she reached, the wooden peg that would lift its latch, receded, rushing away into the distance. The floor snapped up and crashed against her knees. Then it twisted itself, slammed against her head. The world had turned itself on its side. The bottom of the door stood vertically before her eyes. In the narrow gap between door and flagstone flooring, she saw the warm glow shed by some torch out in the passageway beyond. It looked safe, comforting and immensely distant. Someone was whispering in her ear.
“Don’t turn your back on me. This is a sanctuary, isn’t it? For my kind? For all our kind? That’s what I’d heard. You can’t cast me out. Never again.”
Billowing white cloth – the hem of Tyn’s gown – brushed over her face. Naked, near-skeletal feet were walking away from her. She heard the creak of the door on its ancient hinges and then it was closing, and the hunched, frail figure had passed out into the passages of Highfast.
“Cerys. Cerys.”
Someone was speaking her name. Why? Could they not see that she was asleep? She was so tired.
“Elect.” The voice was more insistent now. Someone was lifting her, sitting her upright. She wondered why her bed was so hard, so cold.
She opened her eyes. She was on the floor of the Dreamer’s bedchamber. Amonyn knelt in front of her, holding her arms, gazing at her with an expression of such pained concern that she wanted to cry and cup his face in her hands. She did not, because others stood behind him and, whatever there was between Amonyn and her, it was a private thing.
“Are you injured?” he asked her. She had always loved his voice.
“I don’t think so,” she murmured. “Only bruised. Help me up.”
He did so, and her dizziness was such that she might not have managed it without his help. She leaned against him. She felt sick.
“What happened?” she asked.
Amonyn shook his head. “We don’t know. Tyn came out, you did not, so we came looking for you.”
“Tyn. No, not Tyn. Where is he?”
“In the keep’s kitchens. Mon Dyvain and Alian are watching him, but he will not speak to them. We know it’s not Tyn, though. Is it.. . Mon Dyvain claims it is Aeglyss.”
Cerys could only nod.
“How?” Amonyn asked.
“I have no idea,” she sighed.
“Everyone is frightened. He trails fear behind him. Bannain has gone to fetch Herraic and his warriors.”
Cerys forced herself to stand up straight. She breathed deeply, building walls against the pain and terror that were echoing through the Shared.
“I doubt whether swords can help us with this,” she said. “It would be Tyn they struck, not Aeglyss. I don’t know if the Dreamer is truly lost to us, but I’ll not see his body harmed until I am certain his mind is gone. Come, help me to the kitchens.”
“He has refused to speak to anyone.”
“He will speak to me. I am the Elect.”
They went down the stairway in silence. Fear and anxiety went with them, as present and immediate to their minds as heat or cold would be to their skin.
The na’kyrim had their own kitchens, deep down in the rock of Highfast’s foundations. Those at the base of the keep served the castle’s human inhabitants only. Normally, Cerys imagined, there would have been some maids or cooks milling about. Now she found them deserted, save for Mon Dyvain, Alian and the unnatural intruder over whom they watched. The servants must have fled at the sight of this grim, corpse-like figure.
Tyn – she could not help but think of it as being the Dreamer still – was hunched over one of the kitchen tables, gorging himself on scraps left over from whatever meal the garrison had recently taken. He gave no sign of noticing the arrival of Cerys and the others who followed in her wake. Mon Dyvain glanced at her. He said nothing, but his confusion and distress were obvious.
Cerys drew closer to Tyn. Instinctively, she put the table between her and the gaunt figure. It was not, after all, Tyn.
Aeglyss looked up, fragments of meat protruding from between his lips.
“This body starves, yet no food seems to assuage the hunger,” he said indistinctly.
“He… it… has not left the chamber you stole it from for thirty years. You tax it beyond its limits.”
Aeglyss chewed and swallowed, all the time staring at Cerys. He held a stub of bread in one hand, but made no move to tear at it.
“What do you want here?” Cerys asked, as calmly as she could. Now, being so close to him, being the focus of his attention and thought, the nausea was returning. She rested a hand on the table top, partly to steady herself and partly to ensure some connection with the real, tangible world.
Aeglyss made a strangulated, choking sound. It took her a moment or two to recognise it for laughter.
“Isn’t it sanctuary that any of our kind coming here always want?”
“It is intended to be a place of safety, yes. The one whose body you have stolen thought it so.”
Aeglyss threw down the hunk of bread angrily. “I stole nothing! Are your ears all blocked up with dust? I told you, he had abandoned this shell. Gone. He was almost gone.”
“And what is he now? Does he still live?”
Aeglyss leered at her. “Do you want him back? Is that what you want?”
Cerys gasped as sudden pressure encircled her head, like bands of steel or hard hands seizing her skull. Diffuse spots of light danced across her vision. Behind her she heard a thump. She looked round to find that Alian had collapsed, and lay unconscious on the floor. She was capable of no more than that quick glance, for the pain redoubled itself. Her knees trembled and she had to lean on the table to prevent herself from falling. Then, just as abruptly, it was gone. Light-headed, she blinked and breathed deeply.
“Yes,” Aeglyss murmured. “It’s what you want. Of course it is. You should be glad for him, to have sloughed off this carcass. But no. You’d have him back here. Very well, Elect. Should I call you Cerys? I have your name, you see. I pluck it out of the air, out of the Shared.”
When she made no reply, he shrugged Tyn’s bony shoulders. He took a step – slightly unsteady, frail – away from the table.
“I did not mean to come here, anyway. I was seeking someone else entirely. She… well, no matter. There’s time. But it wasn’t sanctuary I sought, not here or anywhere. Not any more. There’s to be no sanctuary for me. And I need none. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She saw no point in trying to conceal the obvious from this creature. His presence filled the kitchen, echoed from the blank stone walls, gazed out from behind her own eyes just as she did herself.
“Yes. I’ll make this bargain with you, Elect. Cerys. You can have this sickly thing back. I’ll take myself away and leave it empty for him to reclaim, if he has the strength or the desire to do so. But first, but first… you’ll show me what you have here behind these famous walls, and you’ll tell me what it is you think I am. You’re supposed to be wise here, the wisest in all the world, when it comes to the Shared. If you can prove that to me, you can have your precious Dreamer back.”
A sudden commotion made them all turn towards the doorway. Bannain rushed in, and behind him came Herraic, the Captain of Highfast, and half a dozen of his warriors. Herraic already looked alarmed. Cerys wondered what Bannain had told him; whatever it was, she feared how the Captain would react. She held up her hands to the warriors as they arrayed themselves on either side of Herraic.
“I think there’s no need for this,” she said.
Every human eye was on Aeglyss. They stared at this ghastly apparition in horrified fascination. None of them would have seen Tyn before. Only na’kyrim ever entered the Dreamer’s chamber. The figure now before them must appear to be a corpse, dead and on the verge of decay yet still, impossibly, moving.
“I am sorry for the disturbance, Captain,” Cerys said, with an apologetic nod of the head. “We need not trouble you or your men, I think. This is a problem we can deal with ourselves.”
Herraic looked both suspicious and relieved. He was as transfixed by the sight of Aeglyss as any of his warriors, but managed to tear his gaze away to concentrate on Cerys for at least a moment or two.
“Bannain said-”
“Yes,” Cerys interrupted him. “We thought we might need your assistance, but it seems… perhaps we were mistaken. It would be best if we took ourselves back to our own chambers. I will speak to you later, if I may.”
Herraic did not seem convinced, but he and his men withdrew.
“Feeble little allies you have here to protect you,” Aeglyss scoffed as the sound of footsteps receded down the corridor. “Should you ever meet them, you’d find mine rather more impressive.”
“No doubt,” Cerys muttered. Alian, still prostrate, was waking. Amonyn crouched over her, hands cradling her head. Faint though it was, Cerys could feel the shifting pattern in the Shared as he wove what comfort he could for Alian out of it. To her consternation, Aeglyss clearly caught the same scent, for he stared at Amonyn.
“I’ll make no bargains with you,” she said hurriedly, eager to distract his attention. “But I’ll speak with you further, if that’s what you wish. Our rooms, our libraries, are not in this part of Highfast. Will you come with us?”
“Very well.”
Bannain and Mon Dyvain escorted him out, keeping him at more than an arm’s length of distance. Cerys followed, but paused to kneel at Amonyn’s side and whisper to him:
“How is Alian?”
“She will recover soon enough. His strength – his weight – took us all by surprise.”
“I will talk to him; do what I can to persuade him to leave.”
“Whatever happens, we cannot offer him any aid,” Amonyn murmured. “His presence is as dark, as deranged, as anything I’ve ever felt.”
“I know. He could… this might end badly. Once Alian is on her feet, go to Herraic. Tell him as much, or as little, as you see fit, but make sure he understands that there is something very dangerous inside Highfast now. And that, despite anything I might have said, we might need his swords.”
Cerys had descended into the rock of Highfast many times, over many years. It was the only place that had ever felt like a home to her, the only place to which she had ever belonged. Its sounds, the cool stability of its stone, the deep, old quality of its air: all these things had, for as long as she could remember, been comforting companions. Now, following Aeglyss and the others down, everything seemed to be imbued with foreboding. The distant hum of the mountain breezes sounded threatening; the air stirred with uneasy eddies. Her home had been rendered inhospitable to her by this uninvited guest.
She felt strangely empty, though. Powerless, as if she was standing in the path of a great rockfall and could do nothing but remain, staring up at the boulders rushing towards her. It seemed very cruel to her, that she should have the misfortune to be the Elect of Highfast in such times.
They put Aeglyss into a small antechamber adjoining one of the disused dormitories. It was dank and cobwebbed, but he did not seem to notice. He sat at the old, split table there and waited. Cerys sent the others away. She was afraid of what might happen, even though she had no clear idea of it.
“Do you know this man whose body you have stolen?” she asked Aeglyss once they were alone. “His name is Tyn. He was born near the Kyresource Lakes. His mother took him to Kilvale when he was only a few weeks old. She protected him for a time, but she died when he was young, and he…”
“Enough!” The anger – and pain, perhaps – in that word shook Cerys.
“Enough,” Aeglyss said again, quietly this time. He rested his elbows on the table, lowered his head to his hands. “Talk, talk. You think you can solve everything, trick anyone, with talk. Is that all you do here? I was told you had books here, and learning; that you were great na’kyrim, with great understanding of the Shared. Inurian came from here, did he not?”
“He did,” breathed Cerys. She felt as if she stood upon fragile ice that cracked under her feet, a torrent roaring beneath it. She wanted to retreat, but did not know which way to turn. Aeglyss lifted his head once more. There was a vicious, contemptuous smirk on his haggard face.
“You want to ask me about Inurian,” he growled.
She shook her head, just once, in denial. She did not trust herself to speak.
“Oh, but you do. I can see it in you. You loved him. Why? What was so deserving about him? He was not remarkable. Just another poor halfbreed like you. Like me. Tell me what he did to earn such affection.”
Again Cerys shook her head and bit her lip. But she could feel his will upon her now, prising open her mouth, breaking down whatever wall she might try to raise in her mind.
“Tell me!” he insisted.
“He had a good heart,” she gasped. “His instinct was always to listen, to understand, to be patient. He knew more than most of us ever can about other people, and yet still he liked them. Loved them. That is what he did to earn affection.”
Tyn’s face twisted, distorted by whatever powerful emotions tormented Aeglyss. Cerys could hear his confusion, his hurt, ringing in her ears. There’s a child in there somewhere, she thought.
“A good heart,” Aeglyss mimicked her. “A good heart. I didn’t find it so. Not at all. I didn’t find it so. He’d have nothing to do with me, fool that he was. And yes, I killed him. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? I killed him. I put a spear through him.”
To her numb astonishment, Cerys saw that he was weeping. Tiny tears tracked down Tyn’s pale, sunken cheeks. His lips trembled. His hands were clenched into fists.
“I killed him.” His grief was such a potent thing, so limitless and invasive, that Cerys found her own eyes moistening, her own throat tightening. The borders of her sense of self were overrun.
“I still hear his voice, though, sometimes,” Aeglyss groaned. “I feel him, at my shoulder, watching. How can that be? Tell me that.”
“The Shared remembers many things. All things. It is not Inurian you sense, but the memory of him. The memories of him that all those who still live carry with them; the echo of the pattern he himself made in the Shared before he… before you killed him.”
Cerys could not tell how much of what she felt was her own grief, her own anger, and how much belonged to Aeglyss. She – all of them here in Highfast – had concluded some time ago that this man had played a part in Inurian’s death. For that, she despised him. Yet she pitied him too. Or perhaps she was participating in his own corrosive self-pity.
“There’s so much I don’t know,” he said. “He could have helped me, guided me. I think… sometimes I feel like I am losing myself. Do you understand?” He flicked a needful glance at her. “Even now, I am here, in this shell, and I do not fully understand how I came to be here. My body lies somewhere back in Glasbridge, and I can see it, sometimes, through her eyes. Through Wain. I… Oh, I have done a terrible thing to her. Terrible, but beautiful.
“I can’t hold on to myself. It’s all too much. And the Anain. I hear them, feel them, circling about: great beasts in the darkness. I know they’re there, but I can’t see them, can’t drive them off. They tried to kill me, you know. To silence my thoughts, tear me apart. But I turned them back. I am stronger than they knew. But, please… please help me. You must.”
“They tried to kill you?” Cerys murmured. She struggled to focus her thoughts. The effort needed to concentrate was painful, draining. But if the Anain had risen against this man it confirmed many of her worst fears. That they should have done so and failed in their intent
… terrified her. For a single na’kyrim to have such innate, raw strength in the Shared that he could withstand the Anain was, to the best of her knowledge, unprecedented. And if the contest of wills between two such immense forces continued, any and all caught between them or around them faced ruin. Disaster.
Aeglyss laughed again. All his sorrow and fear and regret were snuffed out, like a covered candle flame.
“Now you see a little of what I am. What I am capable of. Don’t you, Elect? You glimpse the faintest outline of what I am becoming. What I have been made. And now you’re afraid of me.”
“What… what happened? Something happened to you, some change was worked upon you.”
His face – Tyn’s face – stilled. He stared at her, and looked in that moment empty of any life or thought or feeling.
“I was beaten, and broken, and left on a stone to die. By my own people. Betrayed. It will not happen again. I shall put my will upon them, upon all of them. I am beset by enemies, Elect. Always. Always. Therefore, I must gather true friends about me, and I will make them fear me and love me and there will be nowhere that closes its doors against me. The world has ever been a cold and heartless place. I will teach it to be more forgiving.”
“You must release Tyn,” Cerys said faintly. She had never felt such despair, and that feeling was, she was certain, entirely her own.
“I will. When you have shown me your libraries, when you have told me all you know of the Anain, and armed me against them. When you have helped me control the fires that burn in me, or convinced me that there is no one here capable of helping me in that. I will release him, and leave this place, when you have proved yourselves my friends, Elect. Only then.”