Every few days, Magrayn bathed Torquentine. Bowls of water, infused with herbs and scents, were carried down into the cellar where he dwelled, then jars of unguents and oils. All those who brought them were sent back up into the complex of ramshackle houses above; only Magrayn remained to kneel beside the great man on his bed of pillows.
She peeled Torquentine’s clothes back to reveal his vast bulk. She was gentle and precise as she washed his blotchy skin. The cloths she used were the softest to be had in Vaymouth. The soothing ointments she worked into the fleshy folds of his torso were the most expensive, the oils she spread over him the rarest. It took a long time, and through it all she and Torquentine exchanged not a word. There was silence there in the cellars beneath Ash Pit in Vaymouth.
Only after it was all done, and he was dressed once more and the cloths and bowls and jars had been cleared away, did Torquentine turn his affectionate, one-eyed gaze on his doorkeeper. His visage was far from perfect – bloated, scarred – but hers was still more imperfect. Her nose was a misshapen stump, her face a mass of purplish blemishes.
“Thank you,” Torquentine said.
Magrayn only smiled: a lopsided gesture, since the King’s Rot had reached the muscles of her cheek and lip before it receded.
“I’ve got a craving for lemon tarts, Magrayn. You know the ones I mean?”
She nodded. “I’ll send someone out for some.” The words were indistinct, as if her tongue had been bloated by a bee sting.
“Sweet Magrayn. I’d be lost without you. Well, not lost precisely.” Torquentine gave a short laugh as he gestured towards the low ceiling with fat fingers. “I am fortunate in always knowing, without fail, where I am, since I am never anywhere else. Let me kiss those gentle hands.”
He laid his lips softly on the back of each of Magrayn’s hands in turn. She slipped out of the chamber. In her absence, Torquentine’s one good eye soon closed. He clasped his hands, resting them on the huge swell of his belly, and hummed a few phrases of a melody. The tune grew softer and softer until it faded away. His jowly head slumped forward, only to jerk upright once more at Magrayn’s return. She carried a bowl, covered with a cloth.
“Jemmin has gone for the lemon tarts,” she reported as she knelt down on a cushion at her master’s side. “But there’s this in the meantime.”
She drew the cloth away and held the bowl up so that Torquentine could see its contents. He smiled.
“Preserved pears,” he said as he plucked one from the bowl.
“The Calasheen sent them up from Hoke.”
“There’s a man who knows how to please,” Torquentine said. Sticky juice glistened on his lips as he sucked down a sliver of pear. “Did he send any news of note along with them?”
“Gann’s killers are dead, and their killer too. There’s no word of any witness. People talk, of course, and gossip; but there’s none left could track the death back to the Calasheen, or through him to us. None save the Shadowhand himself, of course.”
“Ah, I know you too well, dear Magrayn.” Torquentine wagged a finger at her. “I hear the worry you do not speak. You think me rash, to have accepted this commission?”
Magrayn shrugged. “It’s dangerous, that’s all. People care when someone like Gann nan Dargannan-Haig dies. They become curious.”
“You’re right, of course. Perhaps I should have turned the Shadowhand away this time, but he’s a potent friend to have. And the more he asks of me, the more I can ask of him. He gave me Ochan, didn’t he? Ochan the Cook! What kind of man gives himself childish names like that?” He selected another morsel of pear. “And before you say it, dear lady, I know Ochan’s hardly a fair trade for Gann, but not every exchange need be equal in the scales from the first day. We’ll reap a rich harvest in the years to come, I promise you that. We’re hand in hand with the noble Chancellor now.”
Magrayn looked sceptical but said nothing. She set the bowl of pears down on Torquentine’s broad stomach and went slowly around the chamber, setting out new candles to replace those that had guttered in the last few hours. She lit the wick of an aromatic oil burner. A sweet scent seeped into the air.
Torquentine sucked juice from his finger.
“Have you any other news to fend off boredom with?” he asked.
Magrayn returned to his side.
“Melmon Thyr is complaining. Says all the fighting in the north has ruined his trade. Too risky for his mule men to get in and out of the Vare Wastes, with all the armies marching up and down the road. One of them was already caught by a passing Haig patrol, apparently: got himself flogged and gaoled in Kilvale for smuggling.”
Torquentine grunted. He held a slice of pear up before his eye and subjected it to minute examination. “Melmon means to soften my sympathies, to ease the blow of a meagre trickle of coin back into my vault, I suppose.”
Magrayn shrugged.
“You are more voluble than ever today, my dear,” Torquentine remarked, smiling. “No matter. I think this is a puzzle that I can solve unaided. We have that lumber merchant in Kilvale. The one whose cousin’s in the Guard.”
“Thune.”
“Have him buy Melmon’s man out of gaol. Tell him he’ll be reimbursed in due course. And send word to Melmon that I expect him to apply more imagination to his efforts. If his dealings with those bandits in the Vare are going poorly, he must find other outlets for his energies. I will be expecting no less from him by way of share this year than I received last.”
He handed the bowl back to Magrayn. A single lonely piece of preserved pear remained, disconsolate in a pool of sugary liquid.
“Here, take this away before I gorge myself. He’s right, of course. Nothing worse for business than all this strife. Creates too much uncertainty; puts people too much on edge. Makes everyone suspicious, watchful.” He shook his head dolefully. “Erodes trust.”
“Nobody seems to think it’ll last much longer,” Magrayn said as she ran a cloth around the rim of the bowl.
“Maybe, maybe not. Nobody thought the Black Road had it in them to bring down Anduran, but look what happened. Never occurred to anyone they could reach inside the Tower of Thrones and put an end to old Lheanor. Dangerous to make too many assumptions, I think. People have grown soft and lazy, if they think the Black Road’ll be easily undone. Did you ever find out what became of Kennet oc Lannis-Haig’s children, by the way?”
“They turned up in Kolkyre. Rumour has it that they brought half a dozen Kyrinin and na’kyrim with them. The boy – Thane, now – has disappeared again, last I heard. The girl’s still in Kolkyre, as far as anyone seems to know.”
“I see. Nothing of much interest there, then. Really, is there nothing happening for me to ponder on?”
“Cold Crossing’s tomorrow,” Magrayn said.
“Ah, yes.” Torquentine’s expression brightened a little. “Always gain to be had from the day of the Crossing. Do we know who’s going to win?”
“There are three or four who have a chance, I believe. No certainty, this year.”
“Pity. The more certainty there is, the more profit’s to be made from overturning it. Well, no matter. Always good sport to be had with the crowds, if nothing else. How many of our little rascals will be plying their trade tomorrow?”
Magrayn glanced up at the ceiling. Her disfigured lips moved as she silently counted off names.
“Thirteen,” she said after a moment or two.
“Good, good. That should ensure a multitude of cut purses and lightened pockets. Do go and see if those lemon tarts have arrived yet, if you’d be so kind. I find my desire for them so distracting.”
Magrayn left. Torquentine’s gaze rested upon the door long after it had closed behind her. He swallowed a mouthful of air and belched it out again.
“Not good,” he murmured to himself, alone with his pillows and candlelight and the still, sweet-scented air. “Soft and lazy. No good will come of it…”
The Cold Crossing was a tradition with more than two hundred years behind it. There were many contradictory tales of how it began, back then when the Bloods were young, but all agreed on the name proudly borne by the victor of that first race: Hedrig the Fish. Every year a platter of solid silver was made and offered as prize, and every year it was decorated with leaping, darting fish. Three of the Crafts, and the Haig Thane himself, took turns to pay for the trophy’s making. Whoever’s coin had bought it, though, it was always known simply as Hedrig’s Plate.
This year, it had been Gryvan oc Haig’s duty to provide the Plate. The Thane of Thanes had, inevitably, left the practicalities to his Chancellor. And Mordyn Jerain had, in turn, delegated the responsibility to his wife, passing on Gryvan’s sole instruction in the matter: the platter was to be the most dazzling, the most expensive, ever offered. Tara had taken him at his word. Tremannor, famously the best silversmith in Vaymouth, had spent months upon the task.
Now, on the bleak day of the Crossing itself, Tara Jerain rode her finest bay mare in the wake of the wagon that bore the Plate, its guards, and Tremannor himself, towards the great wooden platform on the bank of the Vay. A dozen or more of her household were around her, and behind them several ranks of Vaymouth’s Guard. The Thane of Thanes himself was up ahead, leading the way. He wore his great crimson cloak on this day of spectacle, its radiant expanse spread over the haunches of the huge white horse that bore him. Cries of adulation, of formless excitement, accompanied his progress through the crowd.
In the last half-century, the Crossing had become one of the events that gave Vaymouth’s year its shape and structure. It was a last, defiant expression of the city’s insatiable hunger for activity before the shorter days and colder nights of winter took a firm hold. During the week preceding it, a temporary town sprang up outside the city walls, on the northern bank of the Vay. Tents crowded along the fat brown river like a forest of mushrooms bulging up out of the earth. Horses and cattle were traded there, and furs of every kind and quality. Fishermen netted the river and sold their catch from stalls, even from their moored boats. Hot sweet wine was ladled out of great cauldrons. Despite the vagaries of the weather at this time of year, the event drew in folk from as far away as Drandar and the furthest reaches of the Nar Vay shores. In past years, many would even have come up from Dargannan-Haig lands to the south, but the ruin of that still leaderless Blood had rendered the roads to and from Hoke dangerous for travellers. They would, most likely, have been unwelcome guests this year, in any case.
Tara had never liked the Cold Crossing. The crowds were too tumultuous, the mood too coarse and raucous, for her liking. Tonight, if recent Crossings were anything to go by, once the great and the powerful had returned to their palaces in the city there would be drunken fighting, grubby little deaths, amongst the stalls and tents of the huge encampment. The excitement of the day’s events, combined with the loss of hard-earned coin in foolish wagers and an inexhaustible supply of powerful drink, always seemed to culminate in such excess. For now, though, there was only merriment and feverish anticipation of what was to come.
A flurry of children swirled by, shrieking in excitement and caught up in their own games. Tara watched them pass. She felt a momentary stirring of the normally dormant regret at her own childlessness. Twice, she had lost a child of Mordyn’s before its proper time. The losing of the second had almost killed her. After that, he had extracted a promise from her that there would be no further attempts. Such pain and fear and grief had possessed him then that she had given the promise almost willingly. On those rare occasions when she thought of taking it back, she closed her mind against the thought.
The long wooden dais from which Vaymouth’s elite would watch the day’s events was already crowded. Gryvan oc Haig and Abeh, his wife, mounted its steps and were swallowed up by the admiring host. Tremannor and his apprentices carried the plate onto the platform to a chorus of admiring gasps and even scattered applause. Tara, happy on this occasion to remain largely unnoticed, followed with her attendants.
The competitors – muscular young men one and all – were lined up on the short, muddy grass at the river’s edge. All were naked, save for coloured caps, and liberally smeared with goose fat that gave their pale skin a sticky white glaze. Some were shivering already, beset by the sharp wind that came up from the sea. The great expanse of the river before them was dark and choppy, speckled with little foamy wave crests. It seemed likely that the Vay would claim at least one or two victims this year, and that only fed the eagerness of the surging crowds. A line of Guards from the city, wielding clubs with impartial and indiscriminate enthusiasm, held back the mass of spectators.
From amongst the crowd on the dais, the Craftmaster of the Vintners stepped forward. He opened a scroll and began to shout out the full list of competitors. Each name was greeted with a burst of noise, mingling exhortations to vigorous effort in the challenge to come and predictions of dismal failure. Once the Craftmaster had furled his scroll and retired, it was the turn of Gryvan oc Haig himself to come to the front of the platform. Kale, the High Thane’s chief shieldman, was at his shoulder, stony-faced. Tara could not remember ever seeing the man smile. He surveyed the crowd now, as he seemed to survey everything and everyone, with suspicious disdain.
In one hand Gryvan carried a bright bronze gong, in the other a little iron hammer. There were cries for silence. The swimmers shuffled forward to the very edge of the river bank. Gryvan turned this way and that. He held the gong up, letting the vast assemblage of his people see it. The wind caught his cloak, setting it billowing. In such moments, Tara mused, the High Thane did have the look of a king. Gryvan beat the gong with the hammer, the crowd roared and the swimmers flung themselves into the turbid rushing waters of the Vay. The Cold Crossing had begun.
As a long communal bellow of encouragement rose from the mass of spectators, serving girls brought beakers of wine and tiny pastries for the elite gathered on the High Thane’s dais. Tara Jerain tasted both carefully, with diligent attention, to arm herself with some harmless pleasantries about them for the small talk that was bound to ensue. Both were good, but neither were exceptional. She recognised the wine as a Nar Vay imitation of a finer original from the vineyards around Drandar.
“Oh, look, one of them’s floundering already,” said one of the court ladies nearby, a ripple of mirth in her voice.
One of the swimmers did indeed appear to be in difficulty. He had turned back before making even a quarter of the river’s breadth. Clearly labouring, outmatched by the chill of the water and the powerful current, he was the target of hundreds of abusive catcalls from the bank.
“He’ll not be winning the favour of any girls tonight, with a performance like that,” Tara observed. Everyone laughed in agreement.
As the luckless man hauled himself out onto the mud, several people threw food and pebbles at him.
“Most mysterious to me, some of your traditions,” someone said at Tara’s elbow.
She glanced around to find Alem T’anarch, the ambassador of the Dornach Kingship. He was a handsome man, but prone, like many Dornachmen, to an occasional haughtiness that made him difficult to warm to.
“Not only to you,” Tara replied with a fleeting smile. She had no wish to appear rude or dismissive, but it would not be advantageous to be seen spending too long in conversation with this man, given the current mood of Gryvan’s court. Relations with the Kingship, never warm, had reached new lows once Gryvan found Dornach mercenaries fighting against him during Igryn’s rebellion. Tara knew the High Thane had only decided at the last moment that T’anarch should even be allowed to attend the Crossing.
“Not good for swimming, I would have thought,” the man murmured. “These cold waters, I mean.”
“Yes. I imagine you never have to put up with such chilly amusements in the Kingship.”
“Oh, it can be cold, my lady. In Evaness, in midwinter, I have seen snow.”
Tara nodded, content to let matters rest there. She had said enough to appear cordial, not enough to attract the attention of any observers. The ambassador was, however, gently persistent.
“A pity that he cannot be here, your husband. Must be even colder in the north.”
“It probably is,” Tara agreed. She was careful not to let her irritation show. Alem T’anarch was an intelligent, capable man. He must know perfectly well that no one of any consequence would want to be seen enjoying his company while he stood in such ill favour with the High Thane. “Perhaps you should ask one of the servants to find you some warmed wine, Ambassador, if our weather is displeasing you.”
“No need. Have you heard when the Chancellor will be returning, tell me? I have asked, but cannot find an answer.”
A flurry of shouts drew Tara’s attention back to the river. Halfway across the leaden mass of the Vay, amidst the crowd of flailing arms and backs, it appeared that another of the swimmers was being overcome by the current and the cold. A single pale shape was parted from the rest, carried off downstream. The man’s yellow-capped head bobbed in and out of sight; at this distance there was no way of telling whether he was being pulled under or whether it was only the waves obscuring him. Further down the bank a little boat had been launched, two burly men hauling at their oars in an effort to reach the swimmer. On the basis of past experience there was a good chance they would not succeed. Sometimes the bodies were never found.
“I ask only because his voice would be valuable now, I think,” Alem said. “He is missed. Wise heads are, in times of difficulty.”
Tara had always been steadfast in distancing herself from the kind of matters that absorbed Mordyn’s attention. She worked in a different arena, collecting – sometimes shaping – gossip, making gifts to good causes, cultivating the company of merchants, musicians and craftsmen. Except on those rare occasions when her husband felt it useful, such as her recent audience with the Craftmaster of the Goldsmiths, she stayed out of the dealings of Thanes. This Dornachman knew that. Why, then, seek to interest her in his only too well-known troubles?
“I am sure my husband will return soon,” she said, smiling. “I do not follow such things closely, of course, but by all accounts it will not take long to settle matters with the Black Road.”
Alem T’anarch gave a little nod of his elegant head.
“Time is ever the heart of things. And war, or threat of it. A shame, that such violence should be required in the north. It is never the desire of the wise, violence. I hope, at least. Not when there are ways of avoiding it.”
“Indeed,” Tara said. She took a small, decisive step away. “Excuse me, Ambassador. I must have a few words with Abeh oc Haig. I promised to provide some musicians for her gathering at the White Palace tonight.”
“Of course. Mention my interest to your husband, if it please you. Should you send him a message. Tell him I hope the Thane of Thanes will benefit from his counsel once more, soon.”
Tara frowned a little as she worked her way through the throng towards Gryvan’s wife. She was annoyed with Alem T’anarch, but concerned too at the implication of his words. The Dornach ambassador was evidently a troubled man. That he should try to involve her in solving his troubles had more than a whiff of desperation about it. Perhaps he feared an irreparable breach between his masters in Evaness and the Haig Bloods. It would be no surprise: Mordyn had told Tara more than once that there would be war between Dornach and Haig in their lifetimes. As far as she was aware, though, that confrontation was supposed to be some time off yet. Perhaps in her husband’s absence Gryvan oc Haig was allowing his contempt for the Kingship to run away with him.
Abeh oc Haig was an avid spectator of the Crossing. Her maids had cleared a space in front of her to ensure an unobstructed view. The High Thane’s wife did not even glance round as Tara came up at her side.
“Can you see who is winning?” Tara asked, managing to feign at least a little interest.
“Not really. Three or four of them seem to have left the others behind, though.”
“Perhaps there will be a contest to the end this year, at least,” Tara murmured. Last year, one young man had so easily outpaced all the others – including the youth who had been confidently expected, and heavily backed, to win – that there had been a general sense of disappointment, not to mention suspicion.
“We may hope so,” Abeh agreed. “Did Alem T’anarch tell you who he favoured for the race?”
“No, my lady. He didn’t. I imagine the Ambassador’s favour would sink any swimmer it was attached to, in any case.”
Abeh gave a girlish laugh. “Well said. He spreads gloom wherever he goes, these days. Oh, look. There goes another one.”
One of the swimmers was drifting. He was fortunate: a rowboat hovered only a short way downstream, and the current looked set to carry him onto its prow.
“The Plate’s impressive,” Abeh observed. “You chose well, in picking Tremannor for the task.”
“I am glad you approve.”
“I was discussing it with the High Thane last night. We thought perhaps you could speak to Tremannor – tonight, or tomorrow, as you see fit – and convey our gratitude to him once again. And express to him our hope, our expectation, that now that he has reached this pinnacle of his art, he will not find it appropriate to accept any commission to make the Plate for future Crossings.”
“Of course.” Tara dipped her head a fraction to signify acceptance of the task. “Though it will be the High Thane’s task to provide Hedrig’s Plate once again, in four years’ time. Perhaps I should suggest that Tremannor refuse any such commission for… three years?”
Abeh grunted in dry amusement. “If you wish. We are thinking of using him to make a gift for the new Kilkry Thane, in any case. A chain, we thought, to wear about his midriff.”
“By all accounts, Roaric oc Kilkry-Haig would not fully appreciate the artistry of one such as Tremannor,” Tara said.
“Of course not. The man probably wouldn’t know the difference between a pebble and a ruby if they were both set down before him. But that’s not the point.”
“No.” Tara hesitated, then decided to venture onto trickier ground. “Extraordinary, don’t you think, the way they managed to reach old Lheanor? Right there, at a feast in his own Tower, by all accounts. I heard the woman even poisoned half the kitchen staff, to get herself next to the Thane.”
Abeh wrinkled her nose in distaste, and gave a little sniff. Talk of death, talk of anything of any consequence, would only spoil her immersion in this lively, light day. But Tara knew that Abeh, Gryvan, all of them, had been shaken by Lheanor’s death. No one had thought the Black Road could hide so deeply, and for so long, so close to the heart of a Blood. As soon as the grim story reached Vaymouth, purges amongst the staff of every palace in the city had begun. Maids and cooks and grooms who had given good service for years had been turned out onto the street, or worse, for want of a convincing answer to some question, or a suitably loyal, submissive expression on their face.
What Tara feared was not betrayal within the walls of her own palace, though. No, what left her feeling as if she lived now beneath a constant shadow was the knowledge that her husband was there, in the north where Thanes were dying, and traitors were lurking. To lose Mordyn would be more than she could bear. It would be to lose the best reason she had – had ever had – to wake in the morning. And there was nothing she could do to ensure his safe return; only wait, and hope, and dream of the day when this fear would be lifted and he would be with her again.
“They’re almost there,” cried Abeh in a burst of excitement.
Way out across the river, the pale shapes of the swimmers were just visible, labouring through waves. It made Tara think of debris, on the sea. They were almost at the far bank. It was impossible to say who was in the lead, but to judge by the cheers rising from the small crowd gathered over there it was a close race this year. The wind had strengthened and was peeling spray off the crests of the waves, blasting it downriver. The bobbing, multicoloured heads of the swimmers came and went, obscured and revealed. Even the rowers in the longboat that waited to bring the winner back and present him to the High Thane, so that he could kneel and have the Plate pressed into his hands, and hear the adulation of the masses, even those rowers and steersmen were on their feet, shouting encouragement. And all Tara Jerain could think was, Oh, what does it matter? Don’t you know that more important things than this are happening? Darker things. Things that could yet put cracks into this bright, glittering, empty delight.
V
He breathed, and the air was rough and jagged in his throat. He blinked, and the light sent splinters of pain back into the hollow cavity of his skull. He lifted a hand, and his arm felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else. Mordyn Jerain, the Shadowhand, came slowly back to himself.
There was a pillow under his head, a coarse linen sheet beneath his fingertips. He could hear someone moving, soft shoes on stone. His eyes no longer wanted to open. His head ached.
“I am thirsty,” he managed to say.
“Wain, pour some water from that jug,” someone – a man – said, in a voice so smooth, so richly contoured that it made Mordyn think of flowing honey.
He tried, and failed, to part his eyelids.
“Let me help you,” came that voice again. “You must sit up if you’re to drink.”
Then there were hands on his arm and shoulder, lifting him. Someone moved the pillow so that he could rest against it. The pain in his skull was unremitting.
“Where am I?” he asked. “Highfast?”
And there was laughter at that. The voice previously so unctuous and rich became strained, agitated.
“Highfast? No, it’s not Highfast. Not at all.” A finger pushed at Mordyn’s eyelid, lifting it. In the flare of harsh light, he glimpsed pale skin, a long and bony hand. “You’d know that soon enough if you’d open your eyes and look around.”
From the other side of the bed someone else was putting a beaker into his hand. He raised it and forced down a mouthful or two of water.
“You’ll damage him if you’re rough,” a woman said. The words might have implied compassion or rebuke; the voice that carried that was so emotionless, though, that they did neither. It was a cold statement of fact.
The man snorted. “He’s well enough. They mended his skull.”
Mordyn blinked again. He had to force his eyes to open against the intrusive, painful light. Tears formed as he winced and looked around him. The first thing he saw, the thing that snagged and held his attention, was the na’kyrim staring back at him. The man looked sick. The skin of his face was blotched and bruised, the shape and line of the underlying bones starkly visible. He watched Mordyn with an eager hunger that would have made the Shadowhand recoil had he possessed the strength to move.
“Welcome back,” the na’kyrim said, and he smiled in a way that put Mordyn in mind of the half-mad diseased beggars of the Ash Pit in Vaymouth.
The woman took the beaker from Mordyn’s hand and refilled it. He turned his head to follow her. She was impressive: sleek hair, an erect and powerful posture. There were rings on her fingers, and hundreds of others – of a more functional kind – in the vest of metal she wore over a padded shirt. The Shadowhand’s mind was sluggish, as if numbed by the pain in his head. He had to concentrate to string thoughts together. The woman was strong, and armoured. Her voice – what little he had heard of it – wore an accent he could not attach to any of the lands of the True Bloods. Improbable as it seemed, then, could she be of the Black Road?
“Anduran?” he murmured, turning back to the na’kyrim. “Is this Anduran?”
“No.” That pale, gaunt head shook. The na’kyrim straightened. He flicked one of his thin fingers at the wall. “This is older stone. Nothing of Sirian’s making.”
The woman returned the over-full beaker to Mordyn. His hand was unsteady. He spilled water on his chest as he drank.
“You are in Kan Avor,” she said. “I am Wain nan Horin-Gyre.”
Sister to Kanin, Mordyn thought at once. The Horin Blood sent its best, then, to fight this war. There could be no worse company for the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods to find himself in. He had no idea how he could have come into such an absurd situation. He remembered… a stone road, amidst stone mountains, and nothing thereafter. Could this all be just a feverish dream, tormenting his mind while his body lay in some distant, safe bed?
The na’kyrim was leaning over him again, smiling, regarding Mordyn with carnivorous glee. His face was so close that Mordyn shrank away from it, repulsed by the marbling of blood vessels and bruises.
“She is Wain, Chancellor, and I am Aeglyss.” He laid the tips of his white fingernails on Mordyn’s cheek, and the Shadowhand found the muscles in his jaw taut, his teeth grinding together. Tremors ran across his brow and scalp, like maggots swarming under his skin. “Remember my name, Chancellor. You will come to know it well, for we’ve a great deal to talk about, you and I.”
Mordyn felt sweat on his brow as Aeglyss backed away. A rootless fear was roaring in his mind, a wind bursting open shutters and bullying its way around the room of his skull. The beaker of water fell from his fingers, soaking the sheet over his stomach and hip. He had to clench his hands into knots to prevent them from shaking. Something in this halfbreed undermined all the precious self-control and clarity that Mordyn so valued. Desperate for something to hold on to, he looked back to Wain nan Horin-Gyre.
“I can speak for Gryvan oc Haig,” he said, almost ashamed at the strain in his voice. “I will gladly talk with you and your brother; not this other, this na’kyrim. I don’t know how he comes to be serving you, but he has no place amongst the councils of the great.”
Aeglyss was laughing, a sound both sickly and invasive, clambering in through Mordyn’s ears. Wain was silent, her face a passive mask.
“You are labouring under a misapprehension, Chancellor,” the na’kyrim said. There was harsh amusement in his tone. “It’s disappointing. Given what little I know of you, I’d have expected you to grasp the situation more quickly.”
Reluctantly, Mordyn turned to Aeglyss. He had never been this close to a na’kyrim before. Were their grey eyes always so like chips of cold stone? Was their skin always so corpse-pale? Did the object of their attention always feel so assailed, so overwhelmed?
“You think me Wain’s servant, perhaps?” Aeglyss asked with a lopsided smile. He stretched one arm out towards Mordyn, turning it to expose the underside of his wrist. The cuff of his jacket slid back a little way, revealing a swollen, scabbed wound. “I ceased to be anyone’s servant the day they put stakes through my arms. I learned then that a servant buys nothing but cruelty with his service. That loyalty is unknown to all of you with pure, unpolluted blood running in your veins.”
He interlaced his fingers to make a double fist of his hands. Mordyn could not look away, though he longed to. That fear was still there, tearing at his thoughts.
“Let me show you,” whispered Aeglyss, then more loudly: “Wain. Thane’s sister. Kneel for me, my beloved. Show this noble man how much of a servant I am to you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Mordyn could see Wain doing as she was bid. Aeglyss did not even glance at her.
“Do you see, Chancellor? Do you understand? It is not the Horin-Gyre Blood you will be taking counsel with. It is not Wain who holds your life in her hands. It is not the Black Road that rules here. Come, I will show you.”
Kan Avor was all mud, ruin and rot. What had once been streets were now little more than soggy culverts ankle-deep in silt and decaying vegetation. Some of the buildings must once have been grand but the ones that still stood were now crumbling and gutted. Those walls that retained more than a few courses of stone bore dark, mouldy bands on them: the high-water marks left each winter when the Glas Water had been at its fullest flood. But the dam that had created that great lake was gone now, of course. The waters it had restrained had poured away and ravaged Glasbridge on their way to the sea. Freed from its watery imprisonment, Kan Avor was revealed as nothing more than the sodden, rotting skeleton of a long-dead city.
Mordyn Jerain hobbled along behind Aeglyss. Wain supported him, without which aid he would not have been able to walk. Every movement of his head triggered a pulse of pain. His body was feeble. He felt like an old man.
“Keep moving,” Aeglyss muttered. “If you stand still for too long, you’re likely to get stuck in the mud.” He laughed to himself.
In a small square, bordered by half-tumbled, roofless houses, people were labouring to clear away the silt that the Glas Water had left behind. They dug down to the ancient cobblestones, unearthing all manner of debris as they did so: roofing tiles, shattered pots, even bones. The mud was piled up at the edges of the square. Water oozed out from these mounds, spreading in a filthy slick across the newly exposed cobbles.
In the centre of the square, a broken statue lay in two pieces. It looked like the image of some tall and noble man, though it was so chipped and pitted and stained that it was impossible to be certain. Whoever’s glory it had been meant to extol, it no longer served that purpose: the figure had shattered across the waist, leaving legs and barrel-chest divided and forlorn.
Aeglyss lingered beside the head of the fallen statue. He looked almost wistful as he touched the cracked stone brow.
“I don’t know,” the na’kyrim murmured, as if in answer to some silent question.
Mordyn had to lean his weight against Wain. He hated such vulnerability, but his muscles and bones had nothing to offer him. He felt sick.
“Who are these people?” the Shadowhand asked.
Aeglyss lifted his head and looked around the square. For a moment, he seemed puzzled, like a man suddenly waking and not knowing quite where he was. A woman stumbled past, carrying a wicker basket of mud on her back. Aeglyss watched her empty it out, turn around and come back for another load.
“I don’t know. Oh, does it matter? They’re… followers, if you like.” Again, he laughed, in that disconnected, abrupt way. He was, as far as Mordyn could tell, quite mad.
“Come,” the na’kyrim said. “This isn’t what I wanted you to see. Not all, at least. I’ll show you. Can you climb some steps, great Chancellor?”
Mordyn started to shake his head, but lancing pain arrested the movement.
“No,” he groaned.
“Well, try. For me. You need to see for yourself. Everyone does.”
Wain helped the Chancellor to follow after Aeglyss. They moved away from the square, picking their way amongst ruins. Mordyn glimpsed indistinct figures here and there. There were men and women, human and Kyrinin, digging, gathering, watching, or just standing staring up at the sky or at leaning walls and broken-topped towers. Mordyn could not find purpose or pattern in anything he saw, and could not tell whether the lack was in him or in the world.
There was a stretch of wall, thirty or forty paces long, standing alone. Whatever buildings it had connected or guarded were gone, slumped into rubble. It was crenellated, with a flight of worn steps running up to the battlements. Aeglyss climbed up, beckoning for Mordyn to do likewise.
“I can’t,” he muttered.
“Of course you can,” the na’kyrim snapped irritably. He stopped halfway up the flight of stairs and turned. “You will. You’re stronger than you imagine. Lift your foot. One step at a time. You’re not so tired; not so weak. Climb up, Chancellor.”
And Mordyn’s weariness abated. The ache in his head receded, still there but set behind some softening barrier that left someone else to suffer it, not him, not now. Wain’s hand was at his elbow, easing him towards the steps. He drifted up them without feeling them beneath his feet. Then he was standing atop the orphaned wall, and the pale light was hurting his eyes. He winced against it.
“Look,” Aeglyss said at his side. “What do you see?”
The Chancellor looked and saw before him the edges of ruined Kan Avor, bleeding without clear boundary into the surrounding marshes and fields. The grey of fallen stone gave way bit by bit to the brown and green of mud and grass, and the black of still pools. There were distant copses, far-off barns and farmhouses like smudges on his eyes; a dark line, tracing the weaving course of a river. And beyond, high ground: ranks of hills and mountains rising up to merge into the featureless sky.
“What do you see?” Aeglyss asked again.
Mordyn narrowed his eyes. He saw figures moving across this great indistinct landscape. Small groups of people, out in the fields, following invisible tracks. Some were on horses, some on foot. Some came in wagons, some walked alone. He could see a dozen, two dozen, three.
“They don’t even know why they’re coming,” Aeglyss murmured. “They just come. It is like… do you suppose the geese know why they turn south when winter is come? Or do they just wake one morning and find that they must fly? Perhaps their hearts just long for the sun that has abandoned them, and that longing carries them aloft, and southwards, without them ever knowing its intent. Do you think that might be so, wise Chancellor?”
“I don’t know. I never troubled myself over the motives of geese.”
“Ha. No. Why should you? You are one of the great, and the powerful, of course. You have no need to concern yourself with such things. Well, I’ll tell you what I think, shall I? Would that interest you more?”
Mordyn closed his eyes for a moment, and turned his head away from the na’kyrim. He was afraid of this man.
“They don’t know why they come, these pilgrims,” Aeglyss continued. “I do. I know. They come because they have desires, and questions, and instincts, and longings; and because, to each and to all of these things, I am an answer. They come because the light of the sun will always draw life to it, without reason and without understanding. And I am that light. In the Shared, I now burn brightly, Chancellor. They cannot see it, cannot comprehend it, but they feel it. They feel the promise of glory, or of change, or of death, or of peace. They know, in their hearts, that something great and strange is happening here. So they come.”
Mordyn made to descend the short flight of steps. He felt dizzy and unstable, exposed.
“Stay,” Aeglyss whispered, and Mordyn’s body obeyed before his mind had even made sense of the word. “I am beset by enemies on every side, Shadowhand. My own kind, your kind. The Anain. I must armour myself. I must have friends, who will stand by me. I must have shield and sword, to protect myself and to strike out at those who would drag me down. I’ve learned well; slowly, but well. There are only friends and enemies. Nothing in between. So you must be a friend to me, Chancellor, or you are nothing.”
The na’kyrim turned and gazed out across the vast valley floor. A cough hunched his shoulders for a moment, then he straightened. He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his bony hand. There was something in his eyes, as he stared out, of wonder, or awe.
“This is what I wanted you to see. To understand,” he said softly. “It is not the Black Road that rules here. It is me. Or what burns in me.”
Mordyn was left, for a time, seated on wet stone, his back resting against the stub of a fallen pillar. His memory, his sense of himself, came and went. He was not certain how he had come to this place. It was some kind of empty hall, only half-roofed. There was wet moss beneath his fingers, growing in the cracks of the flagstone floor.
He could hear voices, sometimes loud and near, sometimes faint like weather far beyond a distant horizon. There were people standing close to him. One was the Horin Thane’s sister. She watched him, but did not speak to him. Warriors were gathered about her. Her Shield, perhaps. He was almost certain that the women of the Gyre Bloods sometimes had Shields, in mimicry of their menfolk. It was not only his hunger, or the pain in his head, that made it so difficult to dredge up such fragments of knowledge. To his profound distress, his mind, always his most prized possession, was unruly, sluggish. His every thought writhed and slipped away from him almost as soon as it was begun. There was something in the air of this place, in its foetid, decaying presence, that was inimical to sense and to order.
No, he told himself. That was a half-truth. It was the strange, mad na’kyrim. He was the source of the imbalance that afflicted everything here. Somehow, he was staining everything with his own delirium. Mordyn felt as if he had fallen into some fool’s story, of the mad times when halfbreeds wielded awful power, and bent the shape of the world to fit their own desires.
He realised he was slumping slowly to one side, his head lolling down towards his shoulder. He struggled to right himself, sighing at the discomfort such movement caused him. There were Kyrinin in the chamber now. His erratic vision turned them into tall, sweeping blurs. A vast terror shook the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods then, feeding off his helplessness and his pain. It receded, but left him feeling like a child, lost and confused, surrounded by things he could not understand.
The na’kyrim was there, face to face with Wain nan Horin-Gyre. Mordyn longed to close his eyes and shut out these vile visions, but he was transfixed. The sickly, half-human Aeglyss was smiling, whispering in tones of silver and velvet, cupping the woman’s chin, tipping her head back, tracing the line of her lips with a single fingertip. It looked obscene. Then the na’kyrim was turning his head, looking towards Mordyn. The smile remained in place. Splitting, bleeding lips stretched back to expose yellowing teeth. Mordyn felt that terror stirring again, reaching its tendrils up towards him.
“You look hungry, Chancellor. Shall I have someone fetch you food?” Even as he stared at Mordyn, and spoke to him, the na’kyrim ’s finger was stroking the skin of Wain’s throat, a vile caress. “Mutton, perhaps. It’s spitted outside.”
Mordyn blinked. He could not tell whether he was hungry or not, whether the emptiness he felt was of the stomach or the heart.
“Go and cut our honoured guest some meat, Wain,” Aeglyss murmured. He came and squatted down in front of the Chancellor.
“You’re fragile, Shadowhand. It hurts, I know. But you are not going to die. You will heal.”
“How… how did I come here?”
“Ha! A shame you slept through the whole adventure! I stole you away, from the greatest castle in all the Bloods. I did, and my White Owls. Oh, Chancellor, what wonders you poor, common Huanin are deprived of. What marvels you are blind to. I can feel the grass beneath their feet when they run, I can hear the wind in the trees above them. I can whisper in their heads and in their hearts, and they will do as I bid them, even if they never hear me.”
Someone else was moving behind the na’kyrim. Mordyn squinted, but his eyes were rebellious and faltering. He could see only that there was someone standing there, a woman perhaps. Hair as black as ink; something – sticks? The hilts of swords? – protruding from her shoulders.
“Is this truly the famed Shadowhand?” he heard her ask. A cold voice. He heard nothing in it save the wintry north, and hardness.
“Ah,” Aeglyss whispered without looking round. “They are interested in you, Chancellor. Of course they are. You’re a prize indeed. The ravens come to circle you. Perhaps they think your corpse is ready to be picked clean.”
“He could be of great value to us.” the woman said.
“Us?” Mordyn could see that Aeglyss was smiling. “I haven’t decided yet, Shraeve. I haven’t decided what his value is. But remember, in the days to come, that it was I who found him, I who brought him here.”
Wain returned and knelt at Mordyn’s side. She pressed a fragment of greasy mutton into his mouth. Its juices filled him with an urgent hunger. He chewed it and swallowed it down. It rasped a hot, painful track down his gullet.
“I don’t know what hold this madman has over you, lady,” he whispered, “but you must take me away from him. You must talk to me. I can make agreements…”
“Be quiet.” Aeglyss had risen to his feet. He kicked Mordyn’s foot. “She won’t bargain with you. Leave us, Wain. Wait for me. I will come to you soon.”
Mordyn watched in despair as the sister of the Horin-Gyre Thane meekly dropped a few more slivers of meat into his lap and retreated. He was not the only one to observe her departure with interest.
“Does Kanin know you’ve got her so well-trained?” the woman Aeglyss had called Shraeve asked. “Whatever you’ve done to her, he’ll not forgive you for this. Tell me, for I would know: is this the work of Orlane? Do you think yourself him, reborn?”
“Don’t speak of her,” Aeglyss snapped. “Or of things you don’t understand.” Mordyn felt the command like a blow upon his breastbone, a lance punched through his chest, even though it was not directed at him. The tall woman withstood it. But she could not meet the halfbreed’s gaze. She bent her head away. Inkallim, Mordyn thought, belatedly understanding Aeglyss’s reference to ravens. Even Inkallim will not face him down.
They locked Mordyn in a chamber that stank of rotting weed and noisome mud. A grey-brown sludge covered its floor. Black and green mould patterned its walls, following each seam and crack. Carved pillars flanked the door. A stone bench was cut into the bay of the window. There was a wide grate in which fierce fires must once have burned. Now there was nothing, save the cracked wooden pallet on which Mordyn lay, and the thin moth-holed blankets they gave him to cover himself.
He lay there and willed his fear into submission. He denied the pulsing ache in his head until it slipped into the background. He begged himself to rise above the harrying doubts and distractions that dogged his every thought. Slowly, in the night’s darkness, he gained some small mastery over it all, and was, for a time, himself again. There was always an answer to every question; a chink in the defences of every obstacle that lay athwart his path. He struggled to make himself believe that, alone amidst the city’s foul decay, and tried not to think of what lay outside the locked door. He tried not to imagine what might lie beyond that one cold night’s horizon.