Winterbirth

Epilogue

I once saw a fragment of a manuscript, found in the ruins of one of Dun Aygll’s palaces. It may be truth, it may not, but this is the meat of what it said:

The harbour of Kolkyre was thronged with boats great and small. The whole city, and the harbour district in particular, was filled with warriors: not just those of Kilkry but also remnants of the army of Lannis-Haig and advance companies of Ayth, Taral and Haig. There were, as well, hundreds of fugitives from the fighting in the Glas valley. Never in living memory had the city been so overflowing with humanity.

Taim Narran pushed his way through the crowds on the waterfront. So great was the press of bodies that he was in danger of losing track of Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig, who was guiding him on his way. Amidst all the grim rumour swirling around Kolkyre, today Roaric was the bearer of only good tidings. The message he brought to Taim in his borrowed chambers in the Tower of Thrones had been so unlooked-for, so joyous, that Taim hardly dared allow his weary heart to believe it.

‘Where are they?’ Taim shouted above the din.

‘At the harbourmaster’s house,’ came the reply. ‘They were on a Tal Dyreen ship that came in an hour ago. They tried for Kolglas, but the captain found out what had happened at Glasbridge from some fishermen and he wouldn’t take them up the estuary after that. So he brought them here. They wished to bathe and change their garments before presenting themselves to my father.’

When they came to the house Taim could not contain himself, and brushed past the servant who guarded the door. He cast about, his heart thudding, in search of those he had never thought to see again. In the dining hall he found a stranger group than any he might have imagined. Anyara, the niece of his dead Thane, was at a table with two na’kyrim: one a small, dishevelled old man who looked to be asleep where he sat, the other a woman who turned and fixed him with a penetrating glare. Beyond them, by the fire that roared in the grate, stood two tall Kyrinin—a man and a woman—clad for the forest. They glanced up when he entered and he met their flinty eyes. The woman cast her gaze down again but the man did not, and the ferocious spirals of tattoos upon his face lent his glare a wild edge. Taim found that his voice had fled from his throat.

There were heavy footsteps upon the stairway behind him and Taim turned. Two figures were descending. Rothe Corlyn he knew at once, though his fellow warrior was a changed man: leaner, greyer of face and hair, with one arm bound up in a sling. The shieldman came unsteadily down the stairs, leaning on his companion. It was that companion—a youth, slight of build and tired of countenance—who seized Taim’s attention. A youth whose eyes met the old warrior’s with a mixture of sadness and resilience, leavened by a spark of recognition. A youth before whom Taim could only fall to one knee and bow his head.

‘Orisian,’ he said. ‘My Thane. My sword, and my life, are yours.’

The na’kyrim had been upon the Breaking Stone for a full night. Two White Owl warriors sat upon grassy hummocks, watching him. Through their vigil they would neither eat nor sleep nor speak; they would simply wait for the Stone to break the man. They had watched others meet the same end. It seldom took a long time. A mere body could not resist the strength of this boulder, this ancient cage of souls.

Waterskins lay by their sides, along with the fur cloaks they had needed in the coldest depths of the night. Their bows and spears rested against their shoulders. They had barely moved all through the long hours of darkness. The man on the Stone had stirred only briefly in the night, groaning despite the gag that remained in his mouth.

Grey clouds had mustered to stifle the rising sun. The wind fell away. The treetops grew still and a heavy silence descended. The man’s blood dried in crusted black rivulets where it had run down from the wounds in his wrists. His head hung forwards. He had not moved now for many hours, but still the Kyrinin watched, their eyes caught upon the hook of his naked form. He looked half-dead already.

A buzzard drifted across the sky. It circled, slipping lower and lower by degrees. At length, it glided in towards the Breaking Stone. One of the watchers stretched a leg out and took his bow in his hand. It was not time for the eaters of the dead yet. The bird gave a couple of flaps with its broad wings and lifted itself upwards again. It circled a few times more and then headed out over the wide expanse of Antyryn Hyr, searching for unguarded prey.

Time passed. The na’kyrim moaned but did not wake.

The day moved sluggishly towards night. The grey light faded until the trees and stones lost their shape and detail. Somewhere far away, an owl was calling. It was answered by another, still more distant, and their duet persisted for long minutes. The clouds began to part and through each break in them, starlight shone. The part-moon appeared, spreading a white glow around itself.

The Breaking Stone was bathed in colourless light. The watching Kyrinin saw that the man on the Stone had raised his head. His eyes were unfocused, as if his gaze was fixed upon something far beyond them. A convulsion ran through his chest and upper body, pulling his arms against the stakes that pinned them. His head fell forwards again. The watchers unfolded their fur capes, spread them over their shoulders and waited.

In the coldest hour before dawn, the hour when the world was as close to death as it came, the na’kyrim began to weep. With their night-tuned sight, the Kyrinin could see the tears coursing down his face, the feverish tremors shivering through his frame. Spittle was foaming around the cloth-wrapped stone that blocked his mouth. The White Owls glanced at one another. It would not be long now.

Yet when the muted, half-hearted daybreak came, the na’kyrim still lived. The flow of tears had stopped. He regarded his Kyrinin guards, his eyes bleak and despairing. The White Owls returned his gaze impassively, unflinching.

By the time the day had turned again, falling back towards night, the na’kyrim had lived longer than any victim of the Breaking Stone in many years. The clouds scattered in the evening and an orange-yellow light fell upon the great boulder and its burden. Death came stalking across the grass, and breathed upon the na’kyrim. Air rattled in his clotted lungs, the muscles in his impaled arms slackened, his head lolled loosely. The two Kyrinin rose and stepped forwards to witness the end.

But the end that was coming was not what they thought. The rattle in the na’kyrim’s chest stilled. An immense silence fell, and with it the darkness. Tears once more began to fall, but they were of blood, not water. The gaunt head was slowly raised, as if struggling against some awful weight. As the sun slipped away and shadows massed all around, the na’kyrim opened his bloody eyes and fixed the Kyrinin with a gaze that spoke no longer of despair, but of a terrible, revelatory horror.

From the balcony on the west face of Highfast, Cerys and Amonyn could see the peaks of the Karkyre Mountains starkly silhouetted by the last vestiges of the fire-red dusk. They stood together, wrapped in a single woollen blanket, snow swirling lightly about them. The heat that Amonyn had woven out of the Shared warded both of them against the elements. It was the faltering of that heat, the sudden intrusion of the winter’s biting chill, that warned Cerys. In the next moment she had the lurching sense of the world slipping away from her and but for Amonyn’s strong arms holding her up she might have fallen.

‘Ah,’ she breathed as she leaned against him. ‘What was that?’

‘Something . . . someone . . . changed,’ he whispered, and she could hear the sudden strain in his voice. Tiny tears were beading at the corners of his eyes. ‘Such suffering. Such . . . wonder.’

‘Elect,’ someone was calling from the chamber within. ‘Elect, the Dreamer . . .’ The man’s voice was filled with urgency, with fear. ‘The Dreamer . . . weeps.’

In a bedchamber high in the Tower of Thrones, Yvane the na’kyrim woke from sleep with a piercing scream. The crisp white sheets fell from her as she jerked upright, her face slick with sweat. For long moments she sat thus, her hands clawing at the bedclothes. Breath would not come to her and she gasped for air.

The door burst open and a guard rushed in: one of Taim’s men, posted outside despite her protestations. He came to the side of the bed. She turned and stared at him, uncomprehending, still lost in black nightmare.

‘I dreamed of darkness,’ she said in a cracking, enfeebled voice. ‘A man. A terrible, broken man, with nothing but rage in his heart.’

To be continued . . .