Bloodheir

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.”