Winterbirth

Chapter 4 Car Criagar

Dun Aygll was a city of stone and marble memories. Lying at the edge of the high grasslands and moors in the north of Ayth-Haig lands, it had been the seat of the Aygll Kings from Abban, the first, to Lerr, the last, the boy king murdered at In’Vay. Palaces still dotted the city—survivors of the fire and ruin that attended the Kingship’s fall and of the Storm Years that followed it—but they had fallen into disrepair as the wealth and power of the Ayth Thanes who now ruled there had declined. The remembered splendour of those royal residences, implicit in the crumbling architecture and the mosaics and frescoes that could still be glimpsed behind overgrowing weeds, haunted the city and lent it an air of neglect and decay. Packs of wild dogs roamed the courtyards and gardens in which kings who ruled from the Vale of Tears to the Bay of Gold had spent their days. Beggars and thieves, the destitute and the desperate, were the only people who now found refuge beneath roofs that had echoed long ago to the pomp of ceremony.

Only one palace remained intact: a long, low fortified residence on the town’s northern edge where the Thane Ranal oc Ayth-Haig lived in drink-soaked seclusion. Its proper name was the Bann Ilin; many called it the Sot’s Palace. The Ayth Blood had fallen far from its early days of influence and grandeur. A succession of dissolute and spendthrift leaders had reduced it to its current state of fawning obedience to the Haig Thanes. Even Ranal’s authority over his own lands was tenuous. Whether it was the lords in Asger Tan and Ist Norr on the distant coast, the bandit settlements and goldpanners’ camps in the denuded Far Dyne Hills or the companies of Haig soldiers who patrolled the great highways of his territory, there were many within his domain whose loyalty to him was notional at best.

Taim Narran dar Lannis-Haig rode into this fading city at the head of a column of exhausted men. His company was less than it had been. The weakest of his band had been left in Vaymouth, under the watchful eye of one of the few merchants in the city whose roots lay in the Glas valley. No more had died on the road west along the Nar Vay coastline and up through Dramain to Dun Aygll, but the journey had taken its toll. Their food was all but gone and they lived on what they could buy or barter from farmers and traders along the way. Taim had been glad to leave Haig lands behind, and even Dun Aygll, with its grim, dank feel, was a pleasing sight. The Ayth-Haig Blood was little more friendly to his own than Haig itself, but their arrival here meant they were nearing more welcoming regions: a few days further and they would reach Kilvale, on the southern border of Kilkry-Haig. There at last they could be certain of finding true allies.

Rest must come first, though. For three centuries or more a great horse market had been held each year in Dun Aygll. Its stables and sheds lay empty for much of the time, and they provided a temporary home for warriors and animals alike once Taim had agreed a price with the market warden, a minor official of the Ironworkers’ Craft. Only two of the Crafts—the Ironworkers and the Woollers—kept their Senior Houses in Dun Aygll; over the years the rest had migrated first to Kolkyre, when Kilkry was supreme amongst the Bloods, then to Vaymouth when Haig took on the mantle. The Crafts always flocked to power, like buzzards shadowing a retreating army. The two that remained in Dun Aygll were, at least as much as the Thane, the masters of the city. It was to the Crafthouse of the Woollers that Taim went after his men had been settled. His father had been a member, and that, he thought, was enough to mean that the Woollers’ House might be a source of the information he craved.

The building was a grand one, set back from the street behind a columned entryway. A beggar, her face mauled by disease—the King’s Rot that some held to be a curse bequeathed to his subjects by the last Aygll monarch as he died—held a pleading hand out towards Taim from her station on the steps.

Taim looked up at the building’s façade. It must once have been bright with a rainbow of colours, for the minute tiles of a huge mosaic pattern curved and swept across the stonework. Their hues now gave only a muted hint of their former glory. Carved faces gazed down upon him as he passed between the columns and through the open doorway. There was a short passageway, and then a gate of wrought iron blocked his path. Beyond it, he could see a garden laid out around a crumbling fountain.

A sceptical guard gave him admittance and told him to wait while someone was summoned. The official too, when he came, was less than welcoming; only after a show of reluctance did he go to find a more senior officer for Taim to talk to.

Taim sat on a pitted stone bench beside the fountain, gazing at the thin stream of water that flowed from the mouth of a twisting fish. The skill of the mason who had carved the fountain had been overwhelmed by time. The fish was pitted and flaking. Looking around, Taim could see that the gardens were still cared for, but winter had robbed them of beauty. Bare earth, browned stems, piles of fallen leaves and a scattering of scrawny evergreen shrubs were all that could be seen. The gardens filled the centre of a great quadrangle, around which a porticoed walkway ran. There was no sign of life. The place had a somnolent feel.

In the end, they sent the Craftmaster’s Secretary to talk with him. He was a portly, round-faced man from Drandar, who appeared to have a stock of genuine goodwill for Lannis-Haig. He said he had visited Anduran several times.

‘Your Thane, all of your Thanes, have been good friends to our Craft in the Glas valley.’

‘The wooller’s trade is a part of my Blood’s life. It has always been so.’

‘These are sorry times for us all,’ murmured the Secretary. ‘No good can come of such disruption.’

‘Do you know anything of what has happened? There was little word on the road from Vaymouth.’

The Secretary grew uneasy. He pursed his lips and brushed dust from the surface of the bench. ‘It is not usual for word gathered through Craft channels to be shared too widely,’ he said, but hastily continued when he saw disappointment in Taim’s face, ‘yet your father was, as you say, a member, and you could no doubt get the same information elsewhere. We know nothing that is not known outside these walls, I think.’

‘I would be grateful for any news,’ said Taim.

‘Of course, of course. That is understandable. Regretfully, I do not think I can tell you anything that will ease your worries. The last word we had was of a battle, somewhere between Anduran and Glasbridge. Gerain nan Kilkry-Haig fell there, and many others. The Black Road was victorious. Anduran is besieged.’

Taim’s shoulders slumped a fraction. ‘Gerain’s death is ill tidings. He was a good man; his loss will break his father’s heart. How can all this have happened, so quickly? Anduran besieged?’

The Secretary gave a nervous shrug. ‘It is difficult to sieve fact from rumour. There are many wild tales coming out of your lands. Tales of wild men from beyond the Tan Dihrin who eat human flesh, tales of a Kyrinin army pillaging the valley. I am told, though it stretches belief, that woodwights and Inkallim together assaulted Kolglas. A White Owl raiding party attacked the town while the ravens slipped into the castle.’

Taim Narran looked bleakly down at his hands. He should be there, at Croesan’s side.

‘I am sorry,’ said the Secretary. ‘You know how such times breed fear and fancy. Perhaps things are not as grave as they appear.’

‘Even if the tales are only halfway to truth . . .’ Taim did not finish the thought. There was, in the end, little to say. The Craftsman cleared his throat. He shifted a fraction closer to Taim.

‘Word has been sent out from Vaymouth, summoning new armies. There will be gatherings here, and in Drandar. The greater strength must triumph in the end, and that belongs to Haig, not Gyre.’

‘My home will be a wasteland by then. If the High Thane had stood shoulder to shoulder with my Blood, and with Kilkry-Haig, from the start instead of caring only for the southward spread of his shadow, this would not have happened.’

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. The Crafts were greater powers here than in his own lands, more woven into the fabric of rule and influence. Although the Woollers were not known as great friends of the Haig Blood, it was still rash to speak ill of the Thane of Thanes without knowing when and to whom the words might be repeated.

The Secretary looked at Taim with an indecipherable expression on his face.

‘Is it true,’ he asked softly, ‘that the High Thane had Igryn blinded?’

‘It’s true. The Mercy of Kings.’

The Secretary nodded slowly. After a few moments’ thought he drew a deep breath.

‘Gryvan oc Haig stands shoulder to shoulder with none save the Shadowhand. Those two make for poor friends in times such as these. Armies have been summoned, yet there are no great companies on the road. Why is that, do you think? I heard tell of a man—a captain of Haig archers—whose tongue ran free in a tavern near here. He claimed there will be no move north until your Blood is ruined. There will be no more Lannis Thanes in the Glas valley, he said.’ The Secretary shook himself and glanced around. ‘Mere rumour, I am sure, but not one you heard in these precincts.’

‘No,’ murmured Taim.

‘I should return to my business. I have a meeting with the master of our almshouse. The work of the Craft never ceases.’ ‘No,’ said Taim again. ‘Thank you. I am grateful.’

Taim walked back through the streets of Dun Aygll, lost in thought. When he marched south all those months ago, he had promised his wife he would return to her. Now he was doing so, but perhaps too late for her; for all of them. He feared that he was taking his men back to die upon the fields of the Glas valley. It was, at least, a more fitting place to find the Sleeping Dark than the mountains of Dargannan-Haig where they had left so many of their comrades, and the Bloods of the Black Road were a foe worth the sacrifice. But if there was truth in the words of the Craft Secretary—and they were of a piece with Taim’s instinct—there must be, somehow, a reckoning with the Haig Blood too. Taim had the clear sense that whatever happened in the weeks and months to come, he would never again know peace or rest. What time was left to him would be bloody.

The dyn hane swallowed them. As the willows crowded in, daylight was replaced by gloom and shadow. Orisian struggled on, lost in a daze of disbelief. He wanted to cry out, to stop them and turn them back. This was all wrong. It was not supposed to be like this. But Rothe was close on his heels, and they could not stop. And it was, after all, like this.

Thin branches lashed at his face. The trees pressed close. There was no path through this place of the dead. Orisian felt something on his cheek and flicked at what he thought must be an insect, only to find that it was a tear.

They came abruptly out from amongst the trees. A sheer rock face rose before them. Close by, Sarn’s Leap plummeted from the heights into a churning pool, throwing out a mist of spray. Orisian looked up, and felt the cold touch of a thousand water droplets on his skin.

‘We should go back,’ he whispered. Only Rothe heard him above the sound of the waterfall.

‘It was a grave wound, Orisian. There was nothing we could do. Perhaps they will tend to him.’

Orisian stared at the cliff. It was a seamed and cracked wall of stone. Mosses and ferns clustered by the cascade, immersed in its saturated breath. Elsewhere, the cliff was naked of life. Boulders were jumbled at its foot.

Ess’yr had started to climb, following a crevice that angled up beside the falls. Varryn went after, gesturing for the humans to follow.

Orisian and Anyara hesitated, but Rothe said softly, ‘We must go,’ he said. ‘We cannot go back now. We’ve no choice but to trust them in this.’

In the moment his foot left the earth, Orisian felt himself to be irretrievably alone. He was as small as a beetle scaling the wall of a tower. His mind was filled by the texture of the rock beneath his fingertips and by the howl of Sarn’s Leap. To fall would be nothing; the world had already receded from him. There were surfaces only—the thin skin of rock to which he clung, the transparent roof of the sky above—and nothing at all beyond them, save a void. He could hear its inchoate voice inside his head. Perhaps it was the thunder of the falls, perhaps not.

The crevice petered out. He looked up, and saw Varryn and Ess’yr climbing on above him. He followed, for little more reason than that his body kept moving. The Kyrinin reached a perilously thin ledge that fractured the cliff face. As Orisian hauled himself on to it, they were shuffling themselves sideways, drawing ever closer to the plummeting mass of water. The mist of the falls swirled about them and they disappeared from sight. He stood up to go after them and for the first time looked over his shoulder. He saw the canopy of the dyn bane stretching out down the gorge. The waterfall cast clouds of vapour over the treetops, glistening in the autumnal sun. His body swayed as the space sucked at his back. He edged along in the footsteps of the Kyrinin.

Ess’yr and Varryn had entered a narrow, vertical fissure in the rock, half again as high as a man. The Snow River was crashing down through the air within an arm’s length.

‘Come,’ a voice beckoned from within, and Orisian squeezed through into the cliff face.

The Kyrinin were waiting inside. In the half-light, Orisian found a tight, oppressive chamber. A flight of steps vanished up into the mountain. A malign breath seemed to descend out of the gullet of the stairway. It laid clammy fingers on his face and sent damp tendrils down into his lungs. The smell of a hundred stagnant years pressed upon him.

Anyara and Rothe came in. Varryn led the way up the stairs. Ess’yr followed, and then Orisian. He discovered what true darkness meant. They went in single file. Orisian fell into a numb rhythm, the distant weariness of his legs growing but not troubling him. He could tell that the stone beneath his feet had been worn smooth. The tread of centuries had bowed the steps. He could hear the others before and behind him. In the lightless tunnel, as black as a distillation of night, patterns began to swirl and writhe inside his eyes. He could not catch them, for they faded when he tried to turn his gaze upon them. And in his strange, lost state of mind, he wondered if it was the Sleeping Dark he would see if he could hold one of these fleeting glimpses. Perhaps that was what lay beyond the wall he was burrowing through. His stride faltered. He almost tripped, and came to a halt.

‘Orisian,’ snapped Rothe from behind them, ‘keep going, keep going.’

He took another step up into the darkness and the shapes were gone.

‘Do not stop,’ Ess’yr was calling back from above.

Do not stop, Orisian thought, and came back to himself with a dizzying sense of immediacy. He felt a fluttering in his chest, the sudden bloom of fear. He reached out and brushed the wall. It steadied him, told him the world was still there even though he was blind. He began to climb again. The minutes dragged by. Orisian’s legs were flimsy twigs, a mass of aches. He thought of his father, brother, mother without being able to recall from one moment to the next what he had thought. For a while he felt Inurian walking at his side. The feeling passed. Inurian was behind him, he knew. They all were, save Anyara and Rothe. He had come loose from everything he had known like a boat slipping its mooring and riding the current out into a limitless sea.

There came a point when the thought was clear and certain in his head that he could go no further. He must stop, let the exhaustion in his legs and lungs abate. Then, without warning, it was over. There were no more steps and he stumbled forwards into a flat passageway. Ess’yr and her brother were standing together, waiting for Orisian and the others. He could see them. Ahead, there was a sliver of white daylight that shone in his eyes like a blade of white fire. Robbed of the mechanical rhythm that had sustained him, he slumped against the wall, sliding down to the cold floor. Anyara came and sat down beside him. Rothe stayed on his feet, but grasped his thighs and bent forwards, his chest heaving.

Ess’yr gazed down into the black pit they had climbed out of.

‘They do not follow,’ she said.

‘I thought that was the whole point,’ Rothe gasped.

Varryn had moved on. He was silhouetted in the opening for a moment, then stepped outside.

‘Come out,’ he called.

Ess’yr went first. With the last vestiges of his strength Orisian rose and he, Anyara and Rothe followed the Kyrinin out. The daylight was harsh. The wind blew sudden, cold air on to their faces. They gazed up in silence at the landscape before them. They had emerged amongst a great chaos of boulders that hid the entrance to the stairway. A bleak valley ran away from them, rising gradually between stone-crowned ridges into the heart of the range. Not a tree was to be seen as the land mounted in buckled ramparts towards the towering peaks of the Car Criagar. The summits were muffled in clouds. A narrow, fast-flowing river—the Snow—cut its way down the valley between boulders and tussocks of sharp grass, rushing towards the waiting falls somewhere out of sight.

‘What a place,’ muttered Anyara.

The wind was keen, and carried a wintry edge, but it filled Orisian’s chest and washed the stale, dead air of the stairway out of him. His head spun, his skin tingled as if his blood was only just starting to flow once more.

Varryn glanced around. ‘Rest,’ he said, pointing towards a small dip in the ground close by. ‘For a little.’

They sat on the ground. Orisian pulled at the rough grass. Varryn was murmuring to Ess’yr, his mouth close to her ear. She left him and walked slowly towards the river. She knelt by the water for a long time. Orisian could not take his eyes off her. She undid the thongs that held her clothing and raised her tunic up over her head. Her naked back was white and flawless, revealing every lithe movement of the muscle and bone beneath the skin. She raised handfiils of water in her cupped palms and spilled them over her face and head. It ran down her back and matted down her hair.

He saw Ess’yr lean forwards and dip her face, then her whole head into the river. He glimpsed the pale curve of her small breast as it brushed the surface of the water. When she straightened again, she did so violently, flicking her head and loosing a shower of droplets. She held her hands to her face. It all looked like grief.

‘She was his lover,’ he heard Anyara say at his side.

‘I see that,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not stupid.’

He at once put his arm around his sister, ashamed of his vehemence. She leaned her head on his shoulder. When Ess’yr came back from the river the rims of her eyes were red, but she was eerily calm.

‘We must move on,’ she said.

‘I cannot,’ said Anyara.

‘Nevertheless,’ whispered Ess’yr. She stooped to take up her small pack, bow and spear and walked off, heading north into the wilderness.

Orisian stood. Varryn was following his sister. Orisian watched him for a moment or two.

‘Anyara, Rothe,’ he said, listen to me. Whatever happens from now on, no one is left behind.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Do you understand? Enough loss. This is our fight, not theirs,’ he gestured towards Varryn. ‘The choices are ours to make. And I will not leave anyone else behind.’

First Anyara, then Rothe nodded. Orisian could see the trace of surprise in his sister’s eyes. I am not quite the brother she knew, he thought. I am not quite the person I knew myself.

‘Let’s go, then,’ he said.

‘Fill your waterskins first,’ said Rothe.

The water of the Snow was icy cold.

They climbed steadily, trudging over tussocks and heather. They followed as close to the river as they could. Sometimes for a short distance they were forced to work their way around boggy patches of ground, but always they came back to the edge of the rushing water. It rained a little. The temperature fell quickly and the raindrops turned to a wet sleet. White smudges appeared on their clothing, but melted away in the blink of an eye. The sides of the valley grew steeper and shed their thin covering of turf and grass, exuding boulders and sheets of rock. The sun was hidden behind a flat grey sky that deadened sound and light. Even what little vegetation there was took on the muted shades of the rock and cloud.

Each of them was lost in their own thoughts. Orisian’s legs took each monotonous step unbidden. He felt himself to be huddled in some corner of his mind, longing to forget for a time all that had happened. This was a place he knew, the same place he had found himself when the Heart Fever had picked apart the seams of his life, but it was none the easier for having been there before. He told himself again and again that Inurian might not be dead. He lifted his eyes briefly from the ground. Ess’yr, a little ahead of him, was shivering as she walked. She must be dangerously cold, after her strange, ritualistic bathing in the river, he thought. He knew better than to suggest that they stop.

They came to a broad expanse of moss and rushes—the Snow’s source—where they could go no further without climbing on to higher, exposed ground. As they laboured upwards the wind sharpened its teeth and the sleet drove almost horizontally across the slope. They had to lean to keep their footing. Great rock outcrops reared from the hill like the heads of gigantic creatures frozen in the act of tearing their way out from the earth.

When at last they emerged on to the brow of the ridge, a gale greeted them. Orisian lifted an arm to shield his eyes. What he saw was almost as unsettling as the buffeting wind: the true Car Criagar showed itself. For as far as he could see through the sleet and wisps of low cloud, there were bare slopes and peaks jostling against one another to reach up into the sky. The highest reaches were almost white with accumulated snow and ice. Varryn set off in that direction, into the barren heart of the Car Criagar.

They kept to the lee side of the ridge as much as possible, but as they climbed higher it became more difficult to find a path among the eruptive, cold-shattered rocks, and several times they had to cross on to its exposed face. There, the wind shook them and they slipped and stumbled, scraping hands raw on the sharp stones. The ground plunged precipitously away in vast scree slopes. Clouds were spilling from the peaks ahead, boiling off into the vast spaces of the sky. They had neither the clothing nor the strength needed for such a battle with the elements, yet Varryn led them remorselessly onwards and upwards.

At last the ridge broadened and opened out into the shoulder of a mountain. The ground rose in a great sweep broken only by occasional gullies and granite boulders. Lines of snow lay across the slope, and the wind strung it out from every hummock. There was a brief pause, then Varryn turned his back to the gale and set off around the mountain’s flank.

The light began to fade. Varryn halted beside a massive boulder that lay on the mountainside like the discarded toy of some giant’s child. A diagonal fissure divided the stone, running a split through the lower two thirds of its body. The Kyrinin gestured at it wordlessly.

‘You don’t mean us to spend the night here?’ said Rothe. ‘The cold will kill us.’

‘Wind kills first,’ Ess’yr replied for her brother. ‘This is shelter. We will be close, share warmth.’

‘No fire?’ Anyara asked.

Varryn’s only answer was to upend the bark tube he kept embers in. Cold ash was all it held.

‘There’s nothing to burn anyway, I suppose,’ Anyara murmured.

They pressed themselves into their unyielding crib. Though the crack was deeper and wider than it appeared from without, it was an oppressive space. There was no room to lie down, and all they could do was slump against the stone. The weight of rock above and around them filled Orisian with a grim anticipation of being crushed in his sleep, but then finding even a moment’s sleep in such a resting place seemed an impossibility. The bodies of his companions blocked out most of the light. As Varryn, the last of them, scrambled into place Anyara murmured, ‘This is some kind of nightmare.’

It was the longest night of Orisian’s life. The five of them stayed wedged in the hard centre of the stone, their bodies shaken by occasional shivers as the night touched, and then retreated from, its coldest hours. Ess’yr had been right, though. The heat they shared kept the fatal chill at bay. Through the long hours he could feel her body against his; her shoulder on his, the length of her thigh stretched alongside his own. Once or twice he thought he felt the warmth of her soundless breath upon his cheek and though he could see nothing, he imagined her face there, so close that a tilt of his head might be enough to touch it.

It seemed an eternity before a diffuse light came seeping through the clouds. Staggering out into the open, Orisian groaned at the pain and rigidity in his joints. The wind had died. Formless banks of flat grey cloud now concealed all the high peaks, but he could feel their insensate mass lurking behind the veil. He gouged and rubbed at his legs with his numb hands, hobbling about like an old man. The others looked just as exhausted and battered as he felt, except for Varryn: he appeared as alert and rested as if he had slept in perfect comfort.

‘How much further is it?’ Orisian asked.

‘Hours,’ said Varryn.

The weather was a little kinder to them that second day. There was hardly any wind, and instead they had to contend with clammy banks of cloud that drifted across the slopes. At such moments they could see no more than twenty or thirty paces ahead.

Enclosed within a narrow world, with sight and sound stifled, the threat of the hidden landscape felt more imminent than before. Few of Orisian’s Blood came here. To climb so high into the Car Criagar at this time of year was something none but the foolhardy would attempt. The great chain of mountains had a grim reputation, for its inhabitants—the Kyrinin who roamed its forests, the great bears that lurked in its wildest corners—as much as in its own right. And there were the ruins: the remnants of cities built when the Gods still watched over the world. There were tales of adventurers who had come seeking relics of those distant days and found only death of one kind or another. Sometimes the mountains killed them, sometimes pits or crumbling walls amongst the ruins, sometimes wild beasts.

Orisian could not say how far they travelled that day. In the afternoon, the weather turned against them. The wind returned and what began as a light snowfall gathered strength until a fully fledged storm was threatening to engulf them. They came over a rise and paused on the crest. The wind clawed at their clothes and snatched the breath from their mouths. Snow flew at them. Orisian bowed his head and winced.

‘There,’ cried Ess’yr above the buffeting wind.

Below them, across a vast flat sweep of land, lay a city. A gigantic crag rose to one side, its highest reaches lost in storm, and spreading out from its foot a sprawling network of broken walls and streets and crumbled houses: Criagar Vyne. In its decay and dereliction, in its utter possession by the mountains and by the turbulent sky, it was as if the rock of the earth had broken chaotically through the surface to express a memory of what had once been in this place. It was a sight so barren that Orisian felt a vague horror of it stirring within him.

‘Who could live in such a place?’ shouted Rothe.

‘Huanin, once,’ Ess’yr replied, ‘a na’kyrim, now.’

Varryn was already striding on, descending towards the ruins. Ess’yr followed him. Anyara glanced uneasily at Orisian.

‘We’ve come this far,’ Orisian said, shielding his eyes from the stinging snow with his hand. ‘There’ll be some shelter, at least.’

Highfast: squatting atop a massive pinnacle of rock, defended as surely by the precipitous cliffs beneath as by its own thick walls, it was the most impregnable of all the holdings the Kilkry Blood had inherited from the Aygll Kingship. Marain the Stonemason built it, and that feat alone had ensured that his name was better remembered than that of the monarch who commanded him. Its purpose, the need that had driven more than a hundred labourers to their deaths on the crags and narrow paths of the Karkyre Mountains in the decade it had taken to build, was the defence of an ancient road. Since then the current of history had shifted course. The road fell into disuse during the Storm Years that followed the Kingship’s fall. Highfast had become a forgotten fortress, sunk deep into the ferocious solitude of the mountains. There had been bloodshed beneath its walls many times in its long, slow life, but it was a place of peace for those who now inhabited it.

The rocky peak upon which Highfast perched was no mere foundation for its walls and turrets. Marain’s armies of workers had burrowed down into the bones of the mountain, threading a warren of chambers and tunnels through the stone. In places, where the cliffs were sheer and invulnerable to assault, those tunnels broke the skin of the mountain. Windows and platforms opened out onto vertiginous views across a plunging gorge. Just as they admitted some small quantity of light, so too these apertures gave access to the unceasing winds that coursed around the mountain tops. Sometimes the network of passageways would reverberate beneath the rushing air, as if they were the lungs of a living giant.

That sound, almost beneath the reach of even her na’kyrim ears, was one that usually gave comfort to Cerys the Elect. She had lived within the confines of Highfast for fifty years, and knew all its moods. Its permanence and familiarity anchored her. She felt safe in its body.

She stood now upon a high balcony, looking down on the cavernous Scribing Hall. Beneath the light spilling in through high, narrow windows, a dozen na’kyrim pored over manuscripts and books, transcribing, copying, preserving. There was no sound save the rumbling of the wind in the rock, the rustling of quills and the occasional brittle sigh of a page being turned. With its seamless blending of stillness and industry, it was a scene that in years gone by would have taken the edge from any disturbance in Cerys’ breast.

Today, her thoughts were not so easily quieted, and she was not alone in that. She had seen it in the faces of a few others, those in whom the Shared flowed most strongly. The pained uncertainty she felt in her own heart was reflected in their eyes. The seed of that uncertainty had been sown yesterday: it had come to her, quite sudden and sure, that one of them—one of the waking—was no longer present in the Shared, but only remembered there. And though she could not be sure, not yet, she thought she knew who it was.

She smoothed the feathers of the great black crow that perched upon the balcony’s balustrade.

‘Can you tell me it’s not true, my sweet one?’ she murmured to the bird. It fixed its bead-like eye upon her, and she smiled. ‘No, you’ll be no help to me, old feathers.’

The messenger, a thin, gangly na’kyrim who rubbed his hands together as if striving to rid them of some clinging stain, found her there, lost in thought above the toiling scribes.

‘Elect,’ he whispered, fearing to disturb the concentration of those labouring below, ‘the Dreamer speaks.’

For thirty years Tyn of Kilvale, the Dreamer, had lain in a chamber high in the Great Keep of Highfast. Young na’kyrim tended him, bathing his bedsores, turning him and cleaning him. Often it was the first task given to those newly arrived at Highfast. It taught them patience and passivity. And proper awe for the Shared, for Tyn’s slumber was that of one falling away from the world and into the infinite ocean of that incomprehensible space. The Dreamer dreamed, but not as others did.

There were others, too, who attended him. Their duty was more singular. One after another, they would take their turn watching over the sleeping na’kyrim, waiting. In his ever-deepening sleep Tyn journeyed down paths unknown to those who still resided in the tangible world, and on occasion something of what he found there would emerge, half-formed, from his splitting, flaking lips. These were the words for which those at his side waited, for they were words trawled up from the deepest, furthest reaches of the Shared; otherworldly treasure cast up on the beach of his bedchamber. As the years passed he spoke less and less often. Seldom now did the Dreamer rise close enough to wakefulness for any fragment to be recorded.

It came as no great surprise to Cerys that this should be one of those infrequent times. Inurian had spent many hours at the Dreamer’s bedside in his younger years. She followed the messenger up the winding stairways towards Tyn’s chamber, apprehension stirring in her stomach. It would cause her nothing but pain to have her fears confirmed.

To her relief, Cerys found Tyn as deeply asleep as ever. His attendants kept his appearance as healthy as they could. Someone setting eyes upon him for the first time, and not knowing his past or future, might imagine that here was an old man who had fallen asleep mere moments before. For those who knew better there were signs of his long, slow disengagement from the world of the waking. His skin had become a fine veil of ivory. It stretched feebly over the bones of his face. His sparse silver hair lay on the pillow like the collapsed web of a dead spider. The undulations of the bed covering hinted at an emaciated form beneath.

It was not age that had worked such changes upon the Dreamer’s body. He had lived for seventy years; not so long for one of the na’kyrim. The Shared was drawing him ever further away from the shell of his flesh, and day by day he was sloughing it like the old skin of a snake. Every few months Amonyn would come and lay his hands upon Tyn’s chest in an effort to stave off the slow decay of his fleshly form. The sessions always left the healer drained, and they seldom had great effect. Only in Dyrkyrnon or somewhere in the dark heart of Adravane might there be na’kyrim who could surpass Amonyn’s skills in healing, but that which consumed Tyn was beyond his power to thwart. The most important part of Tyn had ceased to care about the world in which his body slept, and without that interest to call upon there was little even Amonyn could do.

A scribe sat to one side of the bed. The man was leafing through papers. He rose as the Elect entered. He had the look of a man who longed to trade his place with another.

‘Elect,’ he whispered, ‘I think I have it all, but he spoke only briefly . . . and so fast.’

‘Spoke of what?’ Cerys asked. She leaned over the frail figure in the bed. Beneath almost translucent lids, Tyn’s eyes rolled this way and that like beetles struggling under a silken cloth. What sights he must see, she thought to herself. Does he even remember that the rest of us are still out here, in this other place?

‘M-most confused, Elect,’ the scribe said. ‘You may comprehend more clearly than I...’

He held out the sheets of parchment. Cerys took them without examining them.

‘The gist?’ she insisted gently.

‘Mention of Inurian, I think. Perhaps ... I think perhaps death, Elect. His death. But something—someone—else, as well. A man, though the Dreamer spoke as if it were a beast: a black-hearted beast, loose in the Shared.’

Cerys nodded. It was as she had anticipated. Tyn’s words were seldom obvious in their meaning—how could they be, having travelled so far and across such strange territory—but this message was clear enough, and it fitted with what the Shared whispered in her own mind. Inurian was gone, then. She would not be the only one at Highfast to feel that loss keenly. But what of the other part? This other man? Cerys had the deep, instinctive sense that change was in the wind. For a waking na’kyrim such instincts were seldom to be ignored, and now they whispered to her that if change was coming it would not be of a gentle kind.

With worry etched upon her brow she went to find Olyn. The keeper of crows was the one to whom the Elect always turned in matters of the deep Shared, since Inurian had left Highfast.

As Orisian and the others drew closer, more details became visible amongst the mass of ruins. Most of them stood no taller than a man. In places the city was nothing more than a jumble of stone and rock, gathering snow in its crannies, but here and there the rough outline of walls, of doorways and chambers emerged out of the rubble. They came up to the first crumbling wall and passed through a breach into the dead streets beyond. The wind at once fell away a little. Orisian puffed his cheeks out and rubbed at his face. There was no feeling in his skin. Rothe laid his hand upon a massive stone block. Its dark, ancient surface was crusted with overlaid growths of lichen.

‘They must have been very great buildings once,’ he said, glancing round at Orisian.

They picked their way through the bones of the city, as cautious in their steps as if it were the bones of its ages-dead inhabitants they were treading upon. Ess’yr and Varryn were tense, moving like deer that sensed but could not see the hunter. Instinctively, all of them crouched a little to keep their heads below the horizon. The wind howled above them. The daylight would fade soon, and the thought of night casting its cloak over these ruins was unsettling.

A space opened out before them, where snow had piled up in drifts. They paused on its threshold. Looking from face to face, Orisian drew some comfort from the evidence that the unease was not his alone. Even Ess’yr and Varryn were on edge here, far from their protective forests. The two were muttering to one another in clipped sentences.

‘We could wander here for hours,’ said Rothe. ‘We should find somewhere to pass the night.’

‘Agreed,’ said Varryn.

They found a place, in the corner of what had been a small house, where the wind and snow did not reach. A few strips of dried meat were passed around, and they took sips of water from skins that were almost empty. They crowded together, all of them except for Varryn. He sat erect with his back against the wall.

‘I will take watch for the first part of the night,’ Rothe said to him. At first the Kyrinin did not seem to have heard, but then he gave a slight nod.

Orisian, pressed close against his sister, felt her hand reaching for his. Whether it was for his comfort or her own he did not know, but he held tight. Hunger pinched at his stomach. When he closed his eyes sleep seemed a distant hope.

Unprompted, the image of Ess’yr’s white, naked back came into his mind. He stirred uneasily. It was followed by the sight of Inurian, alone in the clearing where they had left him. Orisian had watched his mother die. He had seen her lips part and the breath rattle out from her chest for the last time, and her eyes lose in a single instant the undefined lustre of life. He imagined the light in Inurian’s slate-grey eyes going out. Unconsciously he tightened his grip upon his sister’s hand.

‘Sleep,’ whispered Anyara.

He wished he could.

In the darkness of that night the wind moaned without pause over and through the skeletal city. After a time there was no more snow. The temperature fell as the hours went by. Orisian heard Varryn rising and taking Rothe’s watchful place. The two said nothing to each other.

Dawn amidst the mists and clouds was a muted thing. The light that came was watery and lifeless. Though the wind had fallen away the sky was an ocean of grey, merging with the snow-dusted peaks and slopes. The cliffs to the west loomed over the city, watching over its corpse just as they must have observed its life. The five of them could have been alone in all the world.

Anyara flexed her arms and legs. ‘I’ll never be warm again,’ she said.

Ess’yr passed out a small handful of hazelnuts. As the others cracked them open on stones, Varryn scooped up some snow and crushed it against his face, pressing it into his eyes. They sat in a small circle, eating in silence.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Anyara eventually.

‘As Inurian said. Find the na’kyrim,’ said Orisian.

‘If she’s here at all,’ said Rothe disconsolately.

‘She is here,’ Varryn said.

‘But the word of a dying...’ Rothe caught himself and glanced at Orisian. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.

Orisian smiled weakly. ‘Inurian was sure we would find her here.’

‘We will look for sign. There will be tracks,’ said Ess’yr.

‘Why not just shout for her? She’ll hear us from miles away up here,’ suggested Anyara.

‘And others will,’ said Varryn, with an edge of contempt in his voice. The Kyrinin turned his attention to one of the ties on his hide boots, which had come loose.

Ess’yr opened a pouch at her belt and produced some browned scraps of some kind of food. She passed one to each of Orisian, Anyara and Rothe and replaced the rest in the pouch. ‘Chew, not swallow,’ she said. ‘It is huuryn root.’ Rothe eyed the unappealing chunk of wizened root in the palm of his hand. Anyara had already slipped hers into her mouth and was chewing vigorously, and after only a moment’s hesitation Orisian followed suit. The shieldman did the same with a show of reluctance. A bitter taste flooded Orisian’s mouth as soon as he bit down. It reminded him of the drink he had been given in In’hynyr’s tent, but whether it was quite the same he could not be sure. At first he felt no effects, then a strange, blurred feeling developed behind his eyes. The cold seemed to recede a little from his hands and arms and feet and his weariness was blunted. He poked the root into the side of his mouth and held it there between jaw and lip. Its sharp juices sent tingles running through his gums.

They moved methodically through the ruins. The two Kyrinin kept their eyes on the ground, and occasionally they would stoop and examine some patch of snow, rock or earth. Each time they quickly moved on. In the flat light, with the sun invisible behind banks of cloud, Orisian would have lost all sense of direction but for the towering craggy cliffs that stood above the city. Wisps of snow were trailing from the heights. Once, Orisian caught sight of a pair of great black birds flashing across the face of the cliffs. He lost them against the background of the dark rocks. There was no other sign of life.

As time went by, and the eye grew more accustomed to the patterns in the stone, some of the city that had once been here began to reveal itself. They found what must have been a bakery. Its walls were almost gone, but there was still a cracked and broken oven. They saw a stretch of roadway, a few strides of perfect paving slabs that looked as fresh as if they had never felt a foot. In another area the buildings had been reduced to nothing but a featureless field of jumbled brick and stone, much of it blackened by some ancient fire. Varryn prised a little fragment of pitted bone from the crack between two rocks.

‘Skull,’ he said. ‘Huanin.’

They covered almost half of the city without finding anything to suggest that they were not alone. The invigorating effects of the huuryn faded after a few hours and the cold exulted in its reclamation of their bodies. Strength drained away; eyes and spirits alike flagged. Even Ess’yr and Varryn grew progressively more subdued and slow. They found a place to rest. A few mouthfuls of biscuit were all there was to eat, and Ess’yr did not offer any more huuryn. Orisian was desperately thirsty, and gulped at a water pouch until Ess’yr gently pulled it away from his lips.

‘Slow, and little,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ Orisian murmured, though there had been no reprimand in her tone.

Rothe was massaging his left calf, grinding at the flesh with his great fingers.

‘How much longer must we keep this up?’ he asked of no one in particular. ‘We could search this place for a lifetime and find nothing. We should be making fires and shouting out at the top of our lungs, as Anyara said, to draw the woman to us.’

Varryn, seated a little away from the others, made a soft noise and ran a hand through his hair but said nothing.

‘Varryn spoke truth,’ Ess’yr said. ‘Enemy might still be on our trail. And if we make noise, perhaps this woman goes away. The Fox say she is mad. She does not want visitors.’

‘It would make little difference if she did run away and hide,’ said Rothe. ‘At this rate we’ll all be ice before we find her, anyway.’

‘The boy and the girl will not die here. I have sworn.’

‘You have sworn?’ snapped Rothe in incredulity. ‘You have sworn? My life is pledged to Orisian. Neither he nor Anyara have any need of the protection of woodwights to...’

‘Enough, enough,’ said Orisian, spreading his arms out. ‘I am sure Ess’yr does not mean any insult, Rothe. And, Ess’yr, I don’t know what it is you think you have..’

He saw that neither of the Kyrinin were paying him any heed. As one, their heads had lifted and their faces become fixed masks of concentration.

‘What is it?’ Anyara asked, but Varryn silenced her with a fierce look. Beneath the fine web of tattoos there was a grim, intense expression. Ess’yr laid a hand upon her brother’s arm.

‘Sound,’ she whispered.

Rothe shifted into a crouch, grasping the hilt of his sword. Orisian fumbled for the blade at his belt, hampered by numb and clumsy fingers.

‘Where?’ hissed Rothe.

‘Coming,’ was Ess’yr’s hushed reply.

Anyara shifted on to the balls of her feet. Varryn half-turned and his fingers flashed a terse message to his sister. Ess’yr gave a grunt of assent, and picked up her spear. Varryn began to rise. Even as he came to his feet, he was crouching again, hissing through his teeth.

A figure emerged from behind the crumbled remains of a wall. It was a woman, cloaked in hides, her face all but hidden by a fur hood. She halted and cast her eyes over them.

‘You are noisy,’ she said. Her voice was rough and harsh, as if the mountain frosts had got into it and cracked it just as they had the rocks of this lost city. Still, as soon as he heard her speak Orisian detected the residue of that lilting tone Inurian had. Na’kyrim, he thought.

Ess’yr said something cautiously in her own tongue. The woman gave a terse reply.

‘Yvane,’ Ess’yr said, and her usually level voice held a hint of relief.

‘Noisy and stupid, to be camped out here in weather like this,’ Yvane said, switching out of the Kyrinin tongue once more with ease.

‘Inurian told us to come here,’ said Orisian. ‘He said you would help us.’

The old na’kyrim fixed him with a glare that made him fear for a moment that they had made a terrible mistake in coming here. Then she turned on her heel and strode away.

‘Come then,’ she snapped as she went. ‘I can give you food and fire. But do not presume it is anything other than an offer of brief shelter for those in need.’

Nyve, first of the Battle Inkall, had only one ear. Where the other should have been there was a sprawling scar with a hole at its centre. Every Inkallim knew the story. When Nyve was young, freshly admitted to the lowest ranks of the Battle, he had been one of five tasked with guarding a group of Lore Inkallim walking from Kan Dredar to Effen, a remote town in Wyn-Gyre lands. Deep in the broken lands east of Effen they had come across a large band of Tarbain hunters: wild Tarbains, of a tribe then unyoked by the Gyre Bloods, unsaved by the true creed. Ignorant perhaps of what kind of warriors they faced, the Tarbains attacked. They had many hunting dogs with them, and Nyve lost his ear to one of those before he broke its back. Only Nyve and two of the Lore Inkallim survived, the bodies of more than a score of Tarbains heaped up around them.

They went on to Effen and there Nyve gathered fifty men of the town. He was young, but he was one of the Children of the Hundred and he had a fire burning in his eyes; no one dared to refuse him. He brought them to the scene of the battle, and followed the tracks of the Tarbain hunters back to their source. On the second evening, they found the village. They burned it and Nyve himself decapitated the skull-crowned chieftain and sent his head back to Effen. Then he returned, alone, to Kan Dredar.

Nyve was fifty-five now, and walked with a stoop. His fingers had gnarled with age, the joints swollen and locked. It had been some years since he could hold a sword, yet no one had tried to depose him as First. The mind housed within that faltering body was unblunted. Theor, First of the Lore, liked Nyve. He trusted him. They had risen together through the ranks of their respective Inkalls, and been installed as Firsts within a few months of each other.

They shared a bowl of fermented milk in Nyve’s chambers. It was narqan, a Tarbain drink adopted long ago by some of the northern Bloods; it had been the traditional liquor of the Battle Inkall for a hundred years. The First of the Battle had to hold his cup between his crippled knuckles. He set it down with practised precision and licked his lips as he watched Theor draining his own cup.

‘That was well done,’ Nyve said as Theor swallowed the last of it. ‘You drink it like one of the Battle . Better than you used to, at least.’

Theor gave a friendly grimace. He had little liking for narqan, but he was the guest here and was prepared to observe the customs of his host.

‘It does a man good to overcome his dislikes,’ chuckled Nyve.

‘I am grateful, as ever, for the opportunity to improve myself. How are your joints?’

Nyve regarded his hands as though they belonged to someone else. ‘They’re never at their best at this time of year. I think the wet and cold get into them, though no one seems to believe me; as if I’m not the best judge of it. Who’s to say what my own bones are doing better than I am?’

A serving boy came to remove the empty vessels. Nyve watched as he walked away. ‘That one’s second cousin to Lakkan oc Gaven-Gyre, you know. Or third, is it? His name’s Calum. I think there’s a certain family resemblance, don’t you?’

‘Poisonous ambition and arrogance are not often visible to the eye. They always think it’ll do them good to have one of their own inside,’ smiled Theor. ‘They do like to think there are some bonds even we cannot cut.’

‘Indeed. His parents were horrified when he told them he wanted to enter training, I believe. Lakkan insisted they let him follow his hope—because he wants his eyes and ears here, of course, rather than out of any concern for the boy’s desires. He shows some promise. He might even live to join the Battle .’

‘You keep him close, I am sure.’

‘Certainly. I wouldn’t want Lakkan to worry. And I sleep a little easier myself, knowing what he’s about. Just in case, you understand.’

The clash of arms rose from outside: candidates training in the yard. Nyve cocked his head to listen, contentment passing across his face like the track of a fond memory moving beneath the surface.

‘Has there been any word from the south?’ Theor asked.

‘Nothing new, since the victory at Grive. I’d thought it would have come to an end by now. The Book’s been far kinder to Kanin than I would have guessed.’

‘His faith gives him strength.’

‘That and the White Owls. By Shraeve’s account, they’d all likely be dead if that halfbreed hadn’t turned up with hundreds of woodwights at his back. Makes you wonder if we shouldn’t have taken a closer look at the na’kyrim when he was in Hakkan, while all of this was being planned.’

Theor nodded. The same notion had occurred to him when he heard the last reports from the Glas valley. ‘We thought we’d seen all we needed to see. The Hunt watched him closely. He spoke in his sleep, brooded alone; their judgement was that there was little to him but bitterness and the desires of a child. If he can get the White Owls running around at his beck and call they may have underestimated him, though.’

‘They may. Fate seems to be smiling upon Kanin’s adventure in a number of ways. I think Shraeve is starting to believe a great deal might be possible.’

‘Yes. That was how I understood her last message, too.’ Theor allowed his tone of voice to convey his meaning.

‘You doubt her judgement?’ Nyve asked.

‘Do you?’

The First of the Battle smiled. His teeth were yellowed and worn. ‘Perhaps I should send for more narqan, old friend, if you want to discuss Battle business.’

Theor raised his hands in mock horror. ‘There is no need for threats,’ he said.

‘Shraeve has served well since she came to us,’ Nyve said. ‘It would have taken more strength than I’ve left in this carcass to hold her back once she got wind of what Horin-Gyre was attempting. She’s never been one to take the smoothest path, but she’s proved her mettle. Her Road is one bounded by endeavour, and by strife. So be it.’

‘So be it,’ Theor echoed with a nod. He knew Nyve could have put an end to Shraeve’s ideas of going south, and of taking Kolglas, with a single, soft-spoken word. But there had been good reasons to give her free rein: it was many years since the Battle Inkall had tested itself against the old enemies beyond the Stone Vale, and Nyve had wanted a loyal pair of eyes to report on events and on the strange alliance Horin-Gyre had forged with the White Owls.

‘Still,’ sighed Nyve, ‘good fortune may be lapping at Kanin’s ankles so far, but he’ll need to be carried off his feet by a great flood of it if he’s to press his advance much further.’

‘The High Thane certainly seems to think so. I spoke with him at Angain’s interment. He was no more forthcoming than is his wont, but it’s plain enough he doesn’t mean to exert himself in Horin-Gyre’s support.’

Nyve rubbed at the scar on the side of his head with a knuckle.

‘Still itches,’ he muttered. ‘You’d think by now...’ He let the thought drift away unexpressed, and regarded Theor expectantly. They both knew, in the way of old colleagues, that the time had come for the crux of the conversation.

‘It concerns me,’ said Theor almost casually, ‘that all our gentle efforts to reaffirm the bonds between the Gyre Blood and the Inkallim have borne such meagre fruit, these last few years.’

A sound at the door betrayed the return of the serving boy Calum, bearing a tray of food.

‘Not now,’ Nyve said without looking around. Once they were alone again he pursed his lips. ‘Do I take it that you feel ungentle efforts are required?’ he asked softly.

Theor gave a slight shrug. ‘Perhaps I am growing suspicious, downcast, in the autumn of my years. Or too enamoured of times past; when Ragnor’s father ruled he barely decided the colour of his bedding without consulting us.’

‘That’s true. In truth, it was wearisome, but it served us all well.’

‘Of course,’ said Theor, speaking a little more firmly now. ‘The creed requires a strong hand to sustain it, a strong pillar to uphold the roof beneath which all may shelter. It needs the Gyre Blood. Perhaps Ragnor forgets, as his father never did, that the Gyre Blood needs the creed, too.’

‘You doubt his fervour,’ Nyve stated.

‘I fear the possibility of his . . . distraction. However much his father loathed Horin-Gyre, he would have been a great deal more interested in Kanin’s achievements than Ragnor seems to be. He is more preoccupied with juggling the loyalties of the other Bloods, with securing his power and control. It’s not the first time it has happened. It is the nature of rulers to adopt ruling itself as their purpose; look at Gryvan oc Haig. But for us it must be different. The High Thane of Gyre cannot exist merely to be High Thane of Gyre. He must be both warrior and guardian of the Black Road, above all.’

‘Still rather fiery, even if in the autumn of your years,’ smiled Nyve.

‘I am Master of the Lore. I could hardly be otherwise.’

Nyve nodded. ‘I detect a proposal looming on the horizon,’ he said.

‘Ragnor’s inactivity puzzles me. Greatly. He gives every sign of preferring to see the Horin-Gyre Blood extinguished than the return of his own Blood to its rightful place in Kan Avor. Imagine it: for the first time in more than a hundred years we have an army of the Black Road winning battles south of the Stone Vale and the High Thane of Gyre is at best indifferent. No matter how sceptical he was at the beginning, Kanin’s successes should at least have attracted Ragnor’s interest.’

‘Strange times, I agree.’

‘Too strange to be all they appear. I desire to know the mind of our High Thane, and there may be a chink in his armour of reticence. He was not the only one I spoke with when Angain was being consigned to the catacombs. When we were alone, standing over her husband’s corpse, Vana told me that she has a prisoner: one of the High Thane’s messengers, caught as he tried to cross out of Horin-Gyre lands.’

Nyve raised his grizzled eyebrows. However long he had known Theor, it was evident that the Lorekeeper could still surprise him.

‘The Horin-Gyre Blood is seizing the High Thane’s messengers?’

‘Only this one. He made them suspicious. Where, they—and I—wonder, was he going? What need has Ragnor to send word beyond the borders of the Black Road ? The man would not say, and the message he bore is in a cipher Vana’s people cannot read.’

‘It goes beyond strange and into perilous for one of the Bloods to be imprisoning Gyre couriers,’ the First of the Battle said. ‘And for us to know of it and not—I assume this is what you propose—not make Ragnor aware of the fact.’

‘We are Inkallim. The creed comes first, always. Before all other considerations. If the creed is threatened, we must know of it. Vana has the same concerns, but cannot get to the truth of it. She offered to pass the messenger and his message to us. To the Hunt.’

‘Have you talked to Avenn about this?’ Nyve asked. He sounded doubtful. Neither of them needed to say that whatever his mission had been, the messenger would not survive the attentions of the Hunt Inkall.

Theor shook his head. ‘I will never do so, unless I have your agreement to it. You know that.’

‘I need some more narqan,’ Nyve said. He rapped on the table at his side. ‘Where’s that boy when I need him?’

He looked thoughtfully at Theor. ‘You will allow me to think on this,’ he said.

‘For as long as you wish,’ Theor replied.

Nyve’s smile returned. But for his ugly scar, he looked like a jovial old man immersed in a life of ease. ‘It’s a long time since there’ve been such events as these in flow. It’s almost enough to make a man feel young again.’

Theor left by a discreet side door, out of sight of the training yards and weaponsmiths. He followed a colonnaded walkway to the rear of the Battle ‘s compound and passed through a gate in the outer wall. His litter-bearers were waiting there for him; until winter tightened its grip, the tracks across the hillside to the Lore sanctum would remain muddy and unfit for the First’s feet.

The little snow that had fallen in the night was almost gone, but the air had the heavy taste of more to come. As he rocked along, Theor could see over the trees on the lower slopes to Kan Dredar. Ragnor oc Gyre’s city was a brown and black sprawl across the flat ground, an almost formless jumble of wooden shacks milling around the few stone buildings: the city guard’s barracks, the market hall, the High Thane’s stronghold. The scene was a peaceful one. Cities always looked best from a distance in Theor’s experience; closer inspection tended to reveal grime and greed. Buzzards and kites were patrolling over the city as they always did. Theor noted how the birds spaced themselves out, dividing Kan Dredar between them, each circumscribing its patch of back streets with leisurely circles.

A pale shape by the side of the trail caught his eye. It was a small bundle wrapped in a sheet. Theor caught a glimpse of grey, blotched skin; a baby, then. When a weak or crippled child was born, some families would put it out like this, in the woods or on the hillsides, to test its fate. It was a practice the High Thanes of Gyre had outlawed long ago—every potential warrior was too precious to be risked, when only ten thousand had made the journey into the north—but for some of the commonfolk it was a stubborn reflection of their faith. Most likely the mother would return in a day or two, and if the Last God’s Book had spared the child it would be taken back into the family and cared for as best they could. This baby’s Road had run its course, though.

Theor was carried on in his litter. Care would be needed in pursuing his doubts about Ragnor oc Gyre. Above all, he must carry Nyve and Avenn with him. The Lore was senior and superior to the Battle and the Hunt, but that did not mean they would blindly follow his lead; unity amongst the Inkallim mattered if the Gyre Blood was faltering in the force of its will. At such times—and they had come once or twice before in the century and a half of the Black Road ‘s exile beyond the Tan Dihrin—the Inkallim were the ones who must hold things together.

They had covered two thirds of the way back to the halls of the Lore when his escort slowed. The sound of feet running through the slushy mud came from behind them.

‘What is it?’ Theor asked with an air of disinterest.

‘A boy is coming,’ said one of his litter-bearers. ‘A Battle candidate, from the look of him.’

Theor waited, folding his hands into his armpits against the cold.

He recognised the message-bearer at once: it was Lakkan oc Gaven-Gyre’s cousin, Calum. The message was straight from Nyve’s own chambers, then. The boy was out of breath, his cheeks glowing and his clothes spattered with mud. His excitement was obvious.

‘First,’ he said, ‘First, Master Nyve sent me. He told me to catch you on the path, if I could.’

‘You have triumphed then, young man.’

‘He said you should be the one to carry the news back to the Lore.’

‘Did he?’

‘A messenger bird came just as you left. Anduran has fallen, First. Town and castle are in Horin-Gyre hands.’

Theor was meticulous in suppressing any sign of the surprise that he felt.

‘And Master Nyve said I should say . . .’ Calum frowned, recovering the words, ‘I should say that he will think on matters more quickly now.’ He seemed pleased to have accurately recalled the phrase. ‘It is a great day, is it not, First? The Last God’s Book smiles upon us.’

‘It does indeed,’ Theor replied. ‘You may tell your master that I share his delight. See if you can’t make the return journey even more swiftly than the outward one.’

Calum gave a shallow bow and sprang away. Theor watched him go. He saw the boy slip and sprawl to the ground. Mud blossomed languidly into the air. Calum leapt up, undeterred, and bounded on down the path, shaking sodden earth from his hair as he went. As he resumed his own progress, Theor puzzled over the unexpected news. Events were moving more quickly, and more dramatically, than he had imagined likely. Nyve was right: there would have to be a decision soon. And he would have to remember to compliment Nyve on his still sharp sense of humour. It was a pleasing touch to have one of the Gaven-Gyre elite rushing through the woods to deliver word of Horin-Gyre glory. Lakkan would be spitting bile into his jewelled goblet if he knew.

Dusk was falling on the Glas valley, turning the land to greys and blues. High in Castle Anduran’s keep, Kanin nan Horin-Gyre looked out over the day’s end. The city lay beneath him, and beyond it the road south cut its way across the farmland. The White Owls had lit their fires and that nest of orange glimmers out in the fields drew his eyes. The continued presence of the Kyrinin on lands that now belonged to the Gyre Bloods was a bitter disappointment to Kanin, but he could not bring himself to send away so many warriors while they remained willing to fight in the interests of the Black Road .

Since his return from the falls on the Snow River, Aeglyss had kept himself hidden in the White Owl camp. One of Kanin’s sentries, who saw the halfbreed’s band come back across the bridge over the Glas, had reported that Aeglyss was unsteady as he rode, almost as if he had been wounded, though there was no sign of blood. Strange sounds, as of a man in some delirious death-sleep, had spilled from his lips and his head had hung so far forwards that his face was hidden from view.

Kanin had sent messengers to the camp as soon as he heard of Aeglyss’ arrival. They returned all but empty-handed, turned away by the White Owls. The only word they brought came from one of the Kyrinin warriors, who barely spoke their tongue. He told them, and they told Kanin, that the na’kyrim from Kolglas was dead but others—three Huanin, two Fox—had passed up into the high mountains. The news had cast Kanin into a brief torment of anger and frustration. He cared nothing for the life or death of a halfbreed; that the Lannis girl, probably the last of her line, should escape his grasp was a different matter. The pledge he had made to his father—to return only when all of that hated family had been cast into the darkness—was a vow given to a man Kanin did not expect to see again this side of the Kall. It was an honourable vow, accepting of whatever fate the Black Road might dictate for one who made such a bold promise. And now the girl was gone. Aeglyss had been interested only in the other na’kyrim, from the very beginning, and he had let the girl slip through his fingers—and thus through Kanin’s.

Some unconscious sense made the Bloodheir turn from the window. Shraeve was standing in the doorway. Igris was behind her, looking for some sign from his master. Kanin dismissed his shieldman with a shake of the head. Wordlessly he gestured towards one of the chairs that stood by a long table, but Shraeve ignored the offer.

‘Your sister told me you were here,’ the Inkallim said.

‘Surveying our new domains,’ Kanin said with a wry snort. He lowered himself into a chair. His father had always told him that to be seated while another stands was to take the stronger position. Kanin had no illusions that one such as Shraeve would be discomfited.

She glanced around the room. Great pale rectangles were visible on the walls where hangings had once protected the stone, and she lingered upon them for an instant.

‘The tapestries were unsuitable,’ Kanin muttered. ‘I had them burned.’

The Inkallim walked by him and stood where he had been moments before, looking out over the ever-darkening scene. The swords crossed on her back made a stark silhouette.

‘A veritable army by Kyrinin standards,’ she murmured. ‘I had the spears counted…’

‘Three hundred and a few,’ Kanin interrupted her. ‘I had the same thing done. What of it? An army by their lights is little more than a raiding party by ours.’

‘Or by Kilkry’s. Or Haig’s,’ she said, turning to look at him.

Kanin raised an eyebrow. His mood had already been foul before Shraeve intruded upon his reverie.

‘You fear the strength of our enemies?’ he asked. His unworthy hope that he might cause some offence was disappointed.

‘Only children and unbelievers fear. There is no fear in falling asleep...’

‘... when you know you shall wake again. I know, Shraeve.’

You counted the White Owl spears,’ she said. ‘Have you also looked into the matter of the Lannis girl’s companions?’

The question caught Kanin off guard. This was evidently what she had come here to ask him, and it was far from anything he might have expected.

‘Five escaped, climbing up into the mountains,’ Shraeve continued. ‘The girl and two other humans, and two Kyrinin. A strange combination, do you not think?’

Kanin shrugged, irritated. ‘These are strange times. I have more pressing puzzles to set my mind to. I would be curious to know how you came by the information, though. I heard it myself only yesterday. You have good ears, or many eyes.’

Shraeve swung back to the window and spoke to the evening air. ‘Fine trackers, the woodwights; almost as good as the Hunt. Cannek asked one of them about the trail.’

Kanin grunted. ‘And did the one he asked survive the experience? If the Hunt is going to turn the woodwights against us, I’d like to know in advance.’

Shraeve ignored the question. ‘Two Kyrinin: a man and a woman, the man taller and heavier than average for his kind. Three humans. One, of course, the girl you wanted. Another—a man—very heavy, very powerful. A warrior, perhaps. But the third was a much smaller man. Younger, not many years out of childhood, and favouring one side as he ran.’

Kanin saw her meaning an instant before she spoke the words: ‘Kennet’s son escaped from Kolglas with one of our knives in his side, and a shieldman bearing him up.’

‘I see,’ Kanin said through gritted teeth. He could feel the anger rising up in him again, surging even as he strove to hold it back. He wondered if Shraeve would see the heat it put into his face. ‘It is time I spoke with the na’kyrim, then, whether he wishes to have visitors or not.’

‘I thought the same,’ the Inkallim said quietly. ‘In the morning?’

Kanin rode out from the castle with Igris upon one side, Shraeve on the other, and ten of his Shield behind. Dogs snapped at the heels of the horses. The packs of abandoned, half-wild mongrels, that now populated the city had become an irritant to its occupants. They scavenged through the emptied and burned areas, drawing more brazenly close to the watchfires of the warriors with each passing night; they stole precious food, and had mauled a sick man in his sleep. Kanin had issued orders for the animals to be killed on sight, but he forbade his escort to act on that command now. He was not in the mood for distractions this morning.

They passed by the gaol. Above its gate half a dozen heads were displayed. The birds had been working on them. These were the Tarbains whose drunken intervention had made the Lannis-Haig girl’s escape possible. Most of the tribesmen he had brought south were scattered across the valley now, and he did not care what havoc they wrought so long as they did not interfere with his own foraging and scouting parties. Within Anduran the rules were different, and since Anyara’s escape the few Tarbains left in the city had learned that indiscipline would no longer be tolerated.

The little company of riders crossed the great square. The smithy that survived there was the focus of furious industry. Horses were gathered about it in tightly marshalled groups. Every animal fit for war duty had been brought in from the countryside and many of them needed new shoes. Some huge Lannis work-horses were there, too. They were useless for riding or battle—they would not tolerate a man upon their back—but they would be worked harder than any, hauling material to the city walls for the repair works.

They rode on, weaving through a section of the city that had been ravaged by fire. Kanin glimpsed a rat scurrying amongst the blackened timbers. Whatever else might come to pass, he thought with small satisfaction, the Lannis-Haig Blood was humbled. Rats picked over the corpse of its pride. Still, it was not enough. He had promised his father, and himself, more.

At the city’s edge a gang of dishevelled workers—townsfolk pressed into the service of their conquerors—was labouring on a section of the wall, overseen by Horin-Gyre guards. All around Anduran’s perimeter, similar groups were toiling to make good the neglect of many years. It might make a difference, should Kanin find himself beset here by the Haig Bloods; it might even buy enough time for aid to come to him. Within hours of the castle’s fall, he had sent word north to Hakkan. He knew that Shraeve had sent both birds and riders bearing the same news to the precincts of the Inkallim in Kan Dredar. By one route or another, Ragnor oc Gyre would know that the Horin-Gyre Blood had achieved the impossible. It must surely be enough to stir the High Thane from his sloth.

As he rode past the workgang, a few grimy faces were lifted towards him. They probably knew who he was. He thought he caught a glimpse of hatred, of unsubdued arrogance, in some of those sullen visages. The perversity of their silent defiance now, after they had shown so little appetite for the defence of their city, annoyed Kanin. Had he not been about other business, he might have paused and ordered the punishment of those who looked at him most directly. As it was, one of the guards barked a command and the workers returned to their labours.

They went out into the fields. As they drew closer to the sprawling expanse of deerhide tents that the White Owls had thrown up, Kanin could see that there were more than the three hundred or so warriors his scouts had last reported. It was an uncomfortable thought, that so many would flock to Aeglyss.

Grey eyes followed them as they made their way towards the centre of the camp. They found Aeglyss there in the yard of a great farmhouse. Part-fortified in the style favoured by some of Anduran’s wealthy farming families, the building was the hub around which the Kyrinin company had arrayed itself. The stock animals had fled, or been rounded up by Kanin’s foraging parties. One at least must have remained, though, for they found Aeglyss seated with a group of Kyrinin beneath the gutted, flayed carcass of a cow strung up on a wooden frame. Everywhere that Kanin looked, individual Kyrinin were sitting in silence as others pricked their faces with long, fine thorns bearing dye. Across the skin of scores of faces, dark blue whorls were emerging amongst tiny beads of blood. As they approached, Aeglyss rose to his feet.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Kanin, looking around distastefully.

Aeglyss followed his gaze. ‘Kin’thyn. There can be no going back now.’ A mirthless smile tweaked at the corner of Aeglyss’ lips. ‘You would not understand, of course. Well, Bloodheir, this is the harvest of all that we set in motion. There is to be war on the Fox, such as there has not been in generations.’

Kanin stared at the na’kyrim in incredulity. ‘War on the Fox?’ he cried.

Aeglyss appeared oblivious of the Bloodheir’s mood. ‘You are watching a terrible history being forged here. These warriors are being honoured without yet having earned the honour. Not one of those you see being marked can return from Fox lands without drawing the blood of an enemy. So many have not gone to war since before there were Bloods; and every one of them must kill. We are unleashing a storm.’

Kanin swung himself rigidly out of the saddle. It took an effort of will to unlock his fingers from the reins, and to restrict himself to a single pace towards Aeglyss. Something in his manner or movement was enough to at least send a flicker of doubt across the na’kyrim’ s brow.

‘Three White Owls were killed by the river, by Fox,’ Aeglyss said. ‘There must be payment for that. I have . . . convinced them that we must seize the moment, now when so many spears are gathered together, to strike a blow the Fox will never forget.’

‘And you think I care about any of this?’ hissed Kanin.

‘Well. . . the White Owls could not be here in such numbers if you had not broken Anduran. They…’

Kanin took another, longer stride forwards. Aeglyss fell silent. The Bloodheir was distantly aware that a stillness was spreading out around them; Kyrinin heads were turning, eyes were settling upon them.

‘Your wights should be marching south,’ he said. ‘They should be in Anlane, lying on the flank of any advance against us, not disappearing into the Car Criagar to settle old scores with the Fox.’

‘It’s hardly fitting for a scion of the Gyre Bloods to belittle the settling of old quarrels,’ muttered Aeglyss, but the uncertainty in his voice undercut the pointed words.

Without taking his eyes off the na’kyrim, Kanin made a sweeping gesture with his arm. He heard horses moving in response. His Shield were spreading themselves in a loose arc around him.

‘What happened at the Falls?’ he demanded.

Aeglyss looked away at once, a brief dart of his eyes to the ground and back. It was enough to convince Kanin that whatever came next would be a lie, or a half-truth at best.

‘Inurian died. The others—we do not know. We found Inurian alone. The others were gone, up into the mountains.’

‘What others?’ pressed Kanin. Another step closer to the half-breed. Some of the nearest of the White Owls were standing up. They appeared relaxed, detached observers, but Kanin could not be sure. Aeglyss shrank a fraction away from the Bloodheir. He was almost backed up against the suspended carcass of the cow.

‘Did you leave off the pursuit as soon as you had the halfbreed?’ Kanin said. ‘Was the boy there? Kennet’s son, from Kolglas?’

Aeglyss spread his hands. ‘I don’t know that.’ His voice held Kanin for a moment. It was inside the Bloodheir’s head, stilling in just that fraction of a second all the fires burning there; a cooling whisper. ‘There were others, but I couldn’t say if the boy was amongst them. I’d’ve gone on if I could, but the White Owls would not.’

And Kanin could not move. His mind drifted, turning in idle circles. All the anger that had been in him was forgotten, and all he could think was, Yes. Of course.

‘I doubt the White Owls would turn back if you had wished otherwise,’ came Shraeve’s voice, sharp, precise and cold.

It cut through to Kanin, piercing the clouds that surrounded him. He struck Aeglyss in the face with the back of his hand, and all of his resurgent fury went into the blow. The na’kyrim reeled against the butchered corpse of the cow, and tumbled away to the side. He fell heavily and rolled on to his back. His hands were half-raised to ward off further blows. There was blood on his lips.

Kanin went for his sword.

‘Lord,’ said Igris softly but insistently.

Kanin looked up and saw the thickening of the White Owl crowd around them. Silently, Kyrinin were edging forwards. Half of them bore freshly inscribed tattoos upon their faces, blood and dye mixing on their pale skin.

‘No need to test the woodwights on this, perhaps,’ suggested Shraeve. ‘We do not know how they regard him.’ The Inkallim remained placidly seated on her horse, her hands resting lightly on the animal’s neck. She gave Kanin a slight, wry smile.

The Bloodheir released his sword with a curse. He straightened his back and shouted across the yard.

‘I am done with this one. He is nothing to me now, and nor are any promises he made to you. If he made them in my name, he lied.’

At his feet, Aeglyss was groaning, garbled words flailing in his bloodied mouth.

‘He is a dog,’ Kanin shouted. ‘Less than a dog. Do you understand? Who here speaks my tongue? Who speaks for you?’

The Kyrinin did not stir. Their grey eyes were fixed on Kanin, but none responded. There was no flicker of understanding or interest, just those passive, inhuman eyes.

‘Dogs!’ Kanin cried and swept up into his saddle.

They returned to Anduran in silence. Heavy skies weighed down upon the earth. Kanin could feel the dark mood that had settled over the warriors who accompanied him. He regretted losing his temper as he had, especially over one such as Aeglyss. But the loss of Anyara, and now it seemed of her brother as well, plagued him. And the halfbreed had dared to play with his thoughts... that was intolerable.

At length, against his better judgement, he said to Shraeve, ‘I should have rid myself of him long ago.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

Her apparent indifference reignited the embers of his anger briefly.

‘It would not have come to this if your ravens had done their work properly at Kolglas in the first place.’

‘Nor if your fine warriors had managed to escort a young girl from gaol to castle without mishap.’

Kanin caught himself just in time as he made to reply. Whatever momentary release it might provide, trading insults with Shraeve would do little good. He was a Thane’s son, but even that did not put him beyond reach of an Inkallim blade. They had killed more than a few of the powerful over the years. Always in the interest of the creed, of course.

Kanin found Cannek in the stables of Castle Anduran. The Hunt Inkallim had seen fit to install their dogs there. Cannek and two of his comrades were squatting amongst the straw, feeding the great beasts scraps of meat. Kanin had to suppress his instinctive wariness of the creatures. The hounds of the Hunt were almost as ruthlessly trained as the Inkallim themselves were, to track and kill humans. Kanin himself had seen a dozen of the Hunt and their dogs raid a Tarbain village in his family’s lands, in punishment for cattle-thieving. It had been a spectacle to make even the most hardened of warriors uneasy.

Cannek glanced up as the Bloodheir approached. He scratched the thick neck of the nearest dog, working his fingers underneath its collar. The animal had fixed its soulless eyes on Kanin and there was a low rumble in its throat.

‘He means you no harm,’ the Inkallim said.

‘I want to know how the pursuit of the Lannis girl goes,’ Kanin said.

Cannek rose to his feet. His knees cracked disconcertingly as he did so. He brushed straw from his leather trousers.

‘I have not heard anything. But you need not concern yourself. Two of our finest are on the trail. They will not give up so easily as the White Owls did.’

Kanin grunted. ‘I am beginning to mistrust the promises of others regarding the Lannis-Haig Blood,’ he said stiffly.

‘Really. Your discussions in the Kyrinin camp did not go well?’

‘I’m sure Shraeve will give you a detailed account if you ask it of her. Where did the trail go, after the Falls on the Snow?’

Cannek shrugged. He made even that simple movement seem considered and precise. ‘Up and into the Car Criagar. That is all I know, Bloodheir, and more than I need. As I told you, the best of us are following the scent. They will not return until their quarry is dead.’

Two of the dogs suddenly snapped at each other, unleashing a volley of snarls. Their jaws worked with a clattering of teeth. Kanin could not help but take a half-step away.

‘Can I be of any more help to you, Bloodheir?’ Cannek enquired.

Kanin left with a mute shake of his head. He had made a decision, and there was no point in delaying its consequences. He was tired, after so many days of little sleep and constant tension, but he knew he could expect no rest. If Kennet’s offspring made for Koldihrve—and they would surely have to, with Hunt Inkallim on their backs and the White Owls intent on flooding the forests of the Car Criagar with strife—that town was the key. Kanin knew nothing of the place save where it lay—the mouth of the Vale of Tears—and that it was a foul nest of masterless men and woodwights. But it was on the shore, and therefore had boats. It was the only possible way he could see that the Lannis-Haig rats could escape from this trap. Kanin meant to reach it before them.

He knew it was a rash decision, but it felt right in a way few of his decisions had in recent days. Despite all the triumphs since they had marched south, despite the victories at Kolglas, at Grive and Anduran, he felt as if events were spiralling away from him. Aeglyss and his White Owls had certainly spun out of his control, if they had ever been within it; the Inkallim seemed like little more than amused spectators; and all that he and Wain had won still could not be held unless the other Bloods of the Black Road came to their aid.

The one clear and certain thing he could see before him, the only need that he could answer directly, was that there was unfinished business with the family of Croesan oc Lannis-Haig. If he put an end to the Lannis line, nothing that came after could rob him of that. And he would have succeeded where the Inkallim had failed. They, for all their vanity, had let a mere youth slip through their fingers at Kolglas. To be the one who put right that mistake would be a small revenge for their betrayal of the Horin-Gyre Blood at the battle in the Stone Vale all those years ago.

Wain came to him while he was sitting with his captains, making final arrangements for the supplies his company would need. Something in her face made him dismiss the others before she had even spoken. She sat in a chair at his side.

‘Messengers have come,’ she said, looking down at the surface of the table. ‘Tanwrye still holds, but the land between here and there is subdued. They can spare us some of their strength: a hundred horse will be here in a day, twice as many spears in another two or three. Mostly our own, a few of Gyre.’

‘These are good tidings…’

‘The messengers brought other news,’ she cut him off. ‘Our father . . . died on the first day of winter.’

Kanin bowed his head. He had known this moment must come—had already said his farewells—but still it caught him a fraction unprepared, as was in the nature of such things. It would be a long time now before he saw his father again. The world itself would have to die and be reborn before that could happen.

And would it be wrong to see a sign in this? The lives of men and women were nothing in the vast movement of fate, yet there could be pattern—meaning—in their interplay. Nothing happened by chance. Word of his father’s death came on the eve of a journey to finish what was started in his name. There might be significance in that.

Wain was watching him. ‘You are Thane now,’ she whispered. ‘Do not go into the Car Criagar. Your place is here.’

‘No, Wain. Would you make me a liar to our father? When I meet him again in the renewed world, I don’t want the first thing I tell him at the start of that second life to be that I failed our promise to him. Without their deaths, everything that we hold now will be taken away again. Others might forget, but so long as even one of their line remains, they will never stop trying to recover this land. The Thane is the Blood. You know that.’

‘You should be proclaimed as Thane,’ she said. ‘We must...’

‘When I come back. Not until then.’ For once, he was the firmer. ‘I will not be away for long. And you know as well as I that I am not truly needed here. This army is yours to lead as much as it is mine. I and my fifty warriors would make no difference in whatever you may face in my absence: we always knew that all of this would come to nothing if the other Bloods did not march to our aid in the end,’ he said. ‘If it is to nothing that we are headed, so be it, but I will not go there without at least trying to finish with Lannis-Haig.’

He picked up the fragile vial of Anduran’s dust that lay on the table and held it out to her.

‘I was going to send this to our father. Send it to Ragnor oc Gyre instead. Tell him that the Horin-Gyre Blood holds the Glas valley for him, and awaits his return to claim what is his.’

She smiled faintly, and he planted a soft kiss upon her forehead.

‘Inurian is dead, then,’ Yvane said, after she was told all that had happened.

‘We are not certain,’ said Orisian.

‘I think you know it as well as I do,’ the na’kyrim said. ‘And I do know it.’ She was staring into the fire, stirring it with a stick. Embers danced upwards.

The chamber lay at the end of a short passageway; it was warm and close. Without Yvane to guide them they might not have found it. She had brought them to the base of the cliffs that soared above the ruins, led them clambering over a mass of huge boulders up to a flat platform deep in the shade of the rock face and into the narrow opening of the tunnel that brought them here.

The na’kyrim had brewed an infusion of herbs while they told her their stories. They passed it around and each took a few heartening sips. The fire crackled between them and the entranceway. Crude figures had been painted on the walls. The abstracted forms of animals and people processed across the stone, given life by the flickering firelight. The wind moaned across the cave’s mouth.

When he thought he could do so without being noticed, Orisian examined their host. Yvane had the same part-Kyrinin features he had come to recognise in Inurian, though her eyes were still more unlike a human’s than his had been. Her hands and fingers seemed every bit as lean and long as Ess’yr’s. They bore calluses here and there, the legacy of hard years amongst the rocks of the Car Criagar. That time had left its imprint upon her face, too. Her skin was weathered, roughened to a coarser grain than he would have expected in a na’kyrim. Her short hair had the sheen of a Kyrinin’s but it was a reddish brown: a shade that could only have come from her Huanin parent. Had she been human, Orisian would have guessed that she was well into her fifth decade of life; since she was na’kyrim, he knew she must be older.

‘Stay rockside of the fire,’ she said. ‘The smoke is drawn out through the passageway. And it’s best to keep the flames between you and any visitors.’

‘What kind of visitors?’ demanded Rothe.

‘Huanin, Kyrinin, animals. Bears,’ she flashed the shieldman a harsh smile that had barely formed upon her lips before it was gone again. ‘In winter it’s bears scavenging here; in summer, your people from the valley. Treasure hunters and boys who think they’re men because they’ve got some hair on their crotch. They scare off more easily than the beasts do.’

‘Not all of us,’ muttered Rothe.

Yvane gave no sign that she had heard, continuing to probe at the fire.

‘Inurian said you would help us get safely away from here,’ Anyara said.

The na’kyrim gave a soft laugh. ‘You Huanin are so hasty,’ she said. She waved the smouldering stick at Ess’yr and Varryn. ‘See, your Kyrinin friends are perfect guests. They are still, and quiet, saving talk until host and visitor have taken the measure of one another.’

‘I did not mean any offence,’ said Anyara, neatly blending contrition and irritation in her tone.

Yvane shrugged. ‘None was taken,’ she said. ‘Some Kyrinin make poor guests as well. For children of the God Who Laughed, they can be rather dour.’

No flicker of a response crossed the faces of Ess’yr and Varryn.

‘I imagine your Fox friends are less than comfortable here,’ Yvane mused. ‘They tell foolish stories about me in their camps. Talking with the dead and the like.’

Orisian could not tell whether or not they were welcome here. All of Yvane’s words were spoken in a casual tone, yet there was an edge to them.

‘This is where you live? This cave, I mean,’ he asked.

Yvane glanced around as if examining her surroundings for the first time.

‘I’ve not used this place in a while. You were wandering this way anyway, so you might have found it yourselves.’

‘You were watching us,’ Orisian said.

‘More or less,’ said Yvane. ‘When I felt Inurian die I had a suspicion that my peace would not last long. Intuition, if you like; the Shared, if you prefer. I’ll admit you’re a more unusual little group than I expected. Lannis-Haig and Fox travelling together has never been a common sight. Rarer than a flat calm off the Wrecking Cape, in fact.’

She lapsed into silence, and after a few moments the quiet settled so heavily across the group that it would have been a strain to break it. Orisian found the hush less uncomfortable than the talk that had gone before. The fire hissed and popped. The wind rumbled.

Orisian’s head nodded. It became too difficult to stay awake. He stirred once, looking around with half-open eyes. Anyara had slumped against Rothe’s shoulder and fallen asleep. Ess’yr and Varryn had passed into slumber where they sat, their backs against the stone wall. Only Rothe remained stubbornly alert, his exhausted eyes fixed upon the na’kyrim woman who, pointedly ignoring his gaze, was stretching herself out by the fire. Orisian saw no more but wondered, as his mind floated down, how long Rothe would keep his vigil for.

When Orisian woke, the fire was near-dead ashes. A thread of day-light reached in from the outside world. He moistened his lips. They had dried and cracked in the night. There were two dark shapes curled on the floor to his right: Rothe and Anyara. He looked for the Kyrinin, but could see no sign. Yvane too was gone from her place by the fire. In those first few moments of wakefulness, he was nagged by the thought that something was missing. It was only as he rose to his feet that he realised that the monotonous, constant voice of the wind had fallen silent. Walking a little clumsily, since numbness had stolen his legs from under him, he made his way out into the open.

Even without any wind, the cold air brought tears to his sleep-crusted eyes. It was early morning, and he was amazed that he had slept so soundly for so long. The ruined city sprawled out before him, a stark net of rock cast over the even white snow that had fallen in the night.

He started as Ess’yr appeared beneath the edge of the platform, vaulting up from amongst the boulders. He held out his hand and pulled her up. She felt weightless, her hand soft in his.

‘You slept well?’ she asked, and he nodded.

‘Where’s Yvane?’ he said.

Ess’yr sniffed. ‘Went at the first light,’ she said.

‘And Varryn?’

‘Hunting. There are hare tracks in the snow.’

‘I suppose we just wait for him and Yvane to come back, then,’ said Orisian.

And wait they did. Rothe and Anyara woke, cold and grumbling and hungry. There was dry wood beneath some sacking in a corner of the chamber, and Rothe managed to rekindle the fire. They huddled about it.

Ess’yr would not settle. Again and again she rose to go outside for a few moments. When she came back in, rather than sit by the fire she circled about it, examining the crude paintings upon the walls. When Orisian asked her what the matter was, she mumbled something he did not catch. This tiny cavern was as far as it was possible to get from the forests and open skies the Kyrinin loved, he supposed.

After an hour or two Varryn reappeared, clutching a white hare in one hand. He grimaced as he threw his bloody catch to the ground. With a gesture towards his eyes he spun around and went outside again.

‘There’s not enough wind to pull the smoke out,’ said Rothe.

Now that his attention was drawn to it, Orisian’s own eyes began to burn and weep. After a few moments he headed out on to the broad ledge and sat cross-legged, huddled up to try to keep some warmth in his body. There was no sign of Varryn. Rothe followed him out and sat beside him. The big man clearly wanted to say something, but could not quite bring himself to do so.

‘I wonder where Yvane has gone,’ said Orisian.

‘Best not to enquire too deeply into the doings of her kind,’ said Rothe. ‘More woodwight than human, that one.’

‘She’s a friend, I think,’ Orisian said gently. ‘Inurian thought she would be.’

‘You will go to Koldihrve, then?’ Rothe asked.

‘Inurian said it is what we should do.’

I know you loved him, Orisian, and it’s fitting you should give weight to his words, but are you sure? It’s not that I don’t trust him, or doubt his wisdom. I know he understood things people like you and me don’t.’

The ageing warrior looked him in the eye, and Orisian saw quite clearly the love and care that lay just beneath the surface. He saw, as well, that there was grey in the man’s beard that had not been there a few weeks ago.

‘Orisian . . .’ Rothe started, and then had to pause to clear his throat. ‘Orisian, it may be that you are the Thane now. I think that is most likely the way of it.’

It was the thought that Orisian had steadfastly ignored since Anyara told him what had happened in Anduran. He had known he would have to face it, but had hoped for a little more time.

‘We can hope not,’ he murmured, casting his eyes down. Fariel came into his mind. His brother would have made a fine Thane. But no; he set his mind against that thought. It would not help him now. There was no point in imagining a world that would never be.

‘Of course, of course,’ Rothe said hurriedly. ‘Perhaps Croesan, or Naradin, or even the baby, still live. But perhaps they do not.’

‘I know it as well as you do, Rothe.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry,’ said the shieldman.

Orisian laid a hand upon Rothe’s arm. ‘It’s only that I have no wish to be Thane.’

‘That’s only sense. It’s a fool who can’t see it’s easier to give an oath than be given it.’

Perhaps, Orisian thought. But who really did the harder thing: Kylane who made an oath that cost him his life, or me, by being the object of it?

He smiled at his shieldman. ‘I had an idea you were close to putting aside your sword, before all of this happened. Was I wrong?’

Rothe looked uncomfortable, like nothing so much as a man reminded of some childhood foolishness.

‘I had that thought,’ he said, ‘or half the thought. Perhaps a farm, like the one I grew up on; just somewhere to rest a while, to let the last years be quieter.’ His voice hardened, stiffening against the hint of tranquillity: ‘The thought is gone now, Orisian. Never doubt it. I would not leave your side now even if you pelted me with stones. Not so long as I’ve the strength to lift a sword.’

Orisian smiled. ‘Oh, I know that well enough, Rothe.’

They did not say anything for a time. The smell of cooking meat drifted out and teased at them.

‘Tell me what it is you think I should do,’ Orisian said eventually.

‘I will follow wherever you go, but if it were mine to choose I would say we must go to Glasbridge. If you are their Thane, the people must rally to you. You are their strength and you must be amongst them. And if Anyara is right that Horin-Gyre is in the van of our enemies, that is where they will go. Their roots lie there; they must try for it.’

Orisian hung his head. He knew that Rothe would indeed follow wherever he led, and would lay down his life in whatever cause Orisian chose. As Kylane had already done. As—a fearful thought—many more would willingly do if he was truly now Thane of the Blood.

‘My heart tells me the same thing,’ he said softly. ‘But Inurian seemed so certain this was our only chance. I don’t think Ess’yr and Varryn would have agreed to come this way if. . .’

A sudden sound distracted him. Yvane had appeared, bearing a great bundle of furs bound up with twine. Orisian and Rothe stood up. There was a scowl upon the na’kyrim’s face that cowed even Rothe before she said a word. ‘I smell smoke,’ she snapped.

‘We lit a fire,’ Orisian said. He and Rothe took a step back as she flung the furs to the ground and came stamping towards them.

‘Have you no imagination?’ she demanded. ‘Did it not occur to you that firewood may be a little harder to come by here than in your comfortable castles?’

She encompassed the entire snowy, rocky panorama before them with an extravagant sweep of her arm. ‘Do you see any trees?’ she demanded.

Orisian looked around. Rothe did the same thing. Yvane gave a groan of deep exasperation and stormed into the passageway. Rothe and Orisian glanced at one another with raised eyebrows. They heard the na’kyrim’s irate greeting of Ess’yr and Anyara.

‘Doesn’t do to have one of her kind angry with you,’ sighed Rothe, puffing out his cheeks. Orisian nodded pensively, but already his attention was elsewhere. He eyed the pile of furs that Yvane had abandoned upon the ledge. He rubbed his upper arms briskly against the cold.

‘Do you think those furs are for us?’ he wondered.

‘I dare to hope,’ said Rothe, ‘but let’s wait until she tells us so.’

Once Yvane had calmed a little she acknowledged, with all the grace and good humour of a bee-stung mule, that the furs were for her visitors. Orisian and the others pulled them on. For the first time in days Orisian began to feel some real warmth coming into his skin as he sat watching the hare char over the flames. Yvane had reluctantly allowed the fire to remain alight, since the animal was already cooking when she returned. They devoured it enthusiastically, heedless of the grease that ran down their chins and the smoke that stung their eyes. Ess’yr cracked a leg bone in two and sucked at the marrow. They melted snow in one of Yvane’s clay pots to quench their thirst.

Afterwards, Ess’yr went to look for her brother. Orisian could not imagine she was worried about him; he suspected it had more to do with a desire to be under open skies once more. Rothe insisted on keeping watch outside, and left Orisian and Anyara alone with the na’kyrim. The shieldman had evidently concluded that however abrasive Yvane might be, she was no grave threat to his charge’s safety.

Orisian hesitated at first, fearing the sharp edge of Yvane’s tongue if she was still in a foul mood, but he doubted there was time to be too careful of her temper.

‘Inurian told us that you would help us. He wanted us to go to Koldihrve, said you could get us there,’ he said quietly.

Yvane, wiping her lips with the sleeve of her jacket, seemed at first not to have heard. Then as she settled herself back against the wall of the chamber and stretched out her legs she fixed him with an attentive gaze.

‘And why is it you want to go to Koldihrve?’ she asked. ‘Not too many friends of your Blood there, you know.’

‘To find a boat. That was Inurian’s idea, anyway...’ He paused.

‘But not yours, apparently,’ Yvane murmured.

Orisian gave a small, uncertain shrug. He felt he was being almost disloyal to Inurian by even doubting his instructions.

‘I am . . . unsure,’ he said. ‘At first I thought we could head straight for Glasbridge, or Sirian’s Dyke, in the valley. But Inurian and Ess’yr and Varryn seemed certain we would not have reached them.’

Yvane prodded the faltering fire with a stick, stirring its embers back into bright life.

‘I don’t suppose you would, then. If even a Fox with the three-fold kin’thyn feels it wiser to fly up here, chances are pretty good you’d be dead if you’d not followed. There’s not many of them amongst the Fox, you know; bearers of the threefold patterns, I mean. The Fox has never been a big clan anyway, of course...’

‘Well, we can’t stay here,’ Anyara interrupted.

The na’kyrim fixed her with a sharp gaze, arching one of her eye-brows in a pointed gesture of displeasure.

‘I mean,’ Anyara persisted, ‘that if we cannot get back to Glasbridge overland, it sounds to me as though we have no choice but to press on to Koldihrve and try to find a boat.’

‘Mind sharp as a needle, that one,’ Yvane muttered to herself, and returned her attention to the fire.

Anyara glared at their host. Orisian willed her to hold her tongue.

‘Inurian tried to get me involved once already,’ Yvane said unexpectedly. She might have still been talking to herself. ‘He wanted me to ... do something about this Aeglyss. Perhaps that’s why he sent you up here. It’s not as if you really need my help to get to Koldihrve, after all, when you’ve got those two Fox nursemaiding you.’

‘Aeglyss?’ exclaimed Anyara in surprise. ‘You’ve spoken to Inurian about him?’

Yvane nodded. ‘While he was in Anduran. I took a look at Aeglyss myself. It wasn’t the best of ideas; if he had the skill to match his raw strength . . . anyway, I’ve still got an ache in my head I can’t shake off.’

‘Well, Aeglyss is the one pursuing us. Or one of them, at least,’ Orisian said. ‘Even if he didn’t kill Inurian with his own hands, it was partly his doing.’

Yvane gave a non-committal grunt. ‘Inurian didn’t say anything about taking care of his waifs and strays. He wanted me to give Highfast a prod, that’s all. Get them to take care of Aeglyss.’

‘I thought Highfast was a fortress,’ said Anyara.

‘It is,’ Yvane replied. ‘Never been taken in battle they always say, and I imagine it’s true enough. Kyrinin besieged it during the War of the Tainted, and your own kind in the Storm Years, and again in the Black Road wars. Came through it all well enough. There’s more to it than that, though; what warriors are left there are more for show than anything. The very first Kilkry Thane gave it to some na’kyrim who were looking for a place to hide away and they’re hiding there still, or their successors are, at least. It’s not much of a secret, but there’s probably more don’t know it than do.’

She sighed heavily. ‘Some good people there, but not as many answers as they like to think. They’ve grown as musty as the books they guard, and half of what they chatter about makes no more sense than the croaking of their crows. It takes a certain temperament to shut yourself up with so many words and so much learning. Neither Inurian nor I ever quite had the mettle for it. A shame, in a way. For those who can settle there it is very . . . soothing.’

‘And Inurian thought they’re the ones to deal with Aeglyss?’ asked Orisian.

‘Inurian always had a tendency to assume the best about people: I suspect he thought the Highfast folk would help sort out whatever mess Aeglyss is creating just because he’s a na’kyrim like them. He evidently believed this Aeglyss is—or could be—a remarkable young man, gifted with exceptional talents.’

Anyara growled some comment on that, but kept it low enough to avoid Yvane’s attention.

‘If Inurian was right,’ Yvane continued, ‘then it may be that only the kind of na’kyrim who dwell in Highfast are capable of standing against him.’ Her eyes glazed over, her voice drifted, following her thoughts down some distracting track. ‘Or Dyrkyrnon ... he did say he might have lived there, didn’t he?’ She hung her head.

‘Dyrkynon?’ Orisian asked.

Yvane looked up, seeming surprised that she was not alone.

‘Dyrkyrnon,’ she corrected him. ‘Yes. Another hideaway for my kind. It’s not the same kind of place as Highfast, though. There’s na’kyrim and there’s na’kyrim. The ones at Dyrkyrnon can be less friendly than a bear with a thorn in its foot when the mood takes them.’

There was a moment’s quiet. Anyara’s face betrayed her impatience.

‘Even if you just point us in the right direction . . .’ she began, only to be cut off by Yvane’s raucous clearing of her throat.

‘Excuse me,’ the na’kyrim said. ‘The wet and cold up here lie heavy upon my chest sometimes. Especially when I’m thinking.’

They lapsed into a tense silence. Orisian and Anyara glanced uneasily at one another.

‘Did he still have that crow? What happened to it?’ asked Yvane. Idrin,’ said Orisian. ‘He sent him away. Told him to go home, I think.’

Yvane nodded as if Orisian had confirmed something she already knew. ‘Then they will know by now, at Highfast, that he is dead.’

She was deep in thought for long moments, and neither Orisian nor Anyara dared to disturb her. Orisian’s eyes wandered, drifting over the uneven surface of the walls. He gazed at the figures painted there: animals and people delineated with simple, broad strokes. It was crude work, but suited to this flrelit setting. It might have come from an ancient, unformed world.

‘Do you know about the Sky Pilgrims?’ Yvane asked him.

‘I’ve never heard of them,’ Orisian said.

‘Ah, there’s no finer example of the rock-headed foolishness of your race. You know, at least, the story that one of the First Race’s crimes against the Gods was supposed to be stealing fire from the roof of the world? Well, in the very early years of the Kingships there were those who thought they could persuade the Gods to return by repeating that journey in penance. They were the Sky Pilgrims. Dozens of them marched through here on their way to the Tan Dihrin. It was not a belief that prospered; hardly a surprise given that most of its followers must have met rather miserable deaths.’

‘And they made these drawings on their way there,’ Orisian said.

‘I think so. I can’t make much sense of them, but then sense was not the most prominent of the Sky Pilgrims’ qualities.’

‘You should not speak so harshly of the dead,’ muttered Anyara. ‘I’m sure they were only doing what they thought was right.’

To Orisian’s surprise, that made Yvane hesitate.

‘Perhaps they were,’ she said. ‘Inurian’s rubbed off on you, I see. He often scolded me for being too impatient of Huanin—and Kyrinin—failings. Told me I should wait until I had rid myself of every flaw before going around picking at everyone else’s.’ She smiled distantly, as if pleased by the memory.

Rothe came bursting into the chamber then. He brought snowflakes with him, and the cold of the outside world that Orisian had almost forgotten existed. The shieldman had a grave expression.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘I think I saw someone. Younger eyes might be better than mine.’

Orisian and Anyara followed him. Yvane did not move from her fireside place, silently stirring the ashes as the fire began to falter. Every step down the short passageway brought the sound of the wind closer. When they emerged on to the dais of rock outside it was to find the sky obscured by flat and featureless grey clouds, the air filled with wind-blown snow. Mists and fogs were seething around the ridges to the south and west. Orisian raised a hand to shield his face.

‘Where did you see them?’ he said to Rothe.

The shieldman gestured back the way they had come on their flight from Sam’s Leap.

‘On the horizon there,’ he shouted. ‘I thought I saw someone cresting the ridge, coming just the way we did.’

Orisian and Anyara peered that way, into the teeth of the Car Criagar’s stinging breath. It was a vain effort: clouds had engulfed the landscape.

‘It’s no use,’ Rothe said.

Orisian shook his head in agreement.

As they retreated back into the cliff face, he glanced at Rothe.

‘Did you see any sign of Ess’yr and Varryn?’ he asked.

Rothe only shook his head.

Waiting was a hardship for Orisian. One way or the other, he probably owed his life to Ess’yr and her brother. But it was not only out of gratitude that he longed for Ess’yr’s safe return in particular: he knew, with the acuity of one experienced in the matter of loss, that losing her now would cost him a precious part of what strength he had left. Anyara and Rothe were wrapped in their own silences, each staring deep into the fading embers of the fire. Yvane appeared to have drifted into sleep where she sat.

Ess’yr and Varryn came in almost casually, brushing flecks of snow from their shoulders and hair. A surge of relief carried Orisian to his feet.

‘We thought you might be in trouble,’ he said. ‘Rothe saw someone on the ridge beyond the ruins.’

Varryn glanced at the shieldman as he set down his spear and bow. He squatted in silence and began to work his way through the arrows in his quiver, smoothing their flights and testing the heads.

‘Huanin,’ Ess’yr said as she flicked snowmelt from her forehead.

‘You saw them?’ demanded Rothe.

Ess’yr gave the slightest of nods. ‘Saw, at a distance. Perhaps only two. They have dogs.’

‘Dogs,’ Orisian echoed. ‘Hunters, then?’

Anyara shifted uneasily by the hearth. ‘Perhaps,’ she murmured, ‘but perhaps not just hunters but the Hunt. Inurian was worried about it, when we were escaping from Anduran. Perhaps it wasn’t just Battle Inkallim that came south with Horin-Gyre.’

Rothe groaned. Orisian knew his own face must be revealing the alarm Anyara’s words triggered.

‘Would the Hunt really come after us? I mean, to pursue us all this way…’

‘You forget,’ Rothe interrupted him. ‘You may be the Thane of our Blood. That alone is reason enough for the Hunt Inkall to pursue us to the end of the world, if they take it into their heads to do so. Even if they do not know it is you they are pursuing, they know Anyara is here. Perhaps they think she is the last of your uncle’s family alive. Remember, Orisian, our people might have softened over the years: the Gyre Bloods have not. They’ll see this through to the end, whatever that end might be.’

‘Well, whoever they are, they’re going to have an uncomfortable time out there, from the sound of the wind,’ Yvane said.

Orisian glanced at the na’kyrim. She looked perfectly alert and relaxed.

‘Whoever they are, we can’t stay,’ Orisian said quietly. ‘As soon as the weather eases, we will have to move on. Whether you come with us or not.’

Yvane returned his gaze for a few moments, then gave a shrug.

‘We found a little food,’ Ess’yr said. She unfolded a pouch of leather to reveal a handful of wizened berries and a clump of unappetising greenery. She laid them on a stone and the three humans regarded them glumly. Anyara’s stomach gave a complaining rumble. Yvane produced some hazelnuts and dry mushrooms from her pocket and added them to the meagre array. It was not much; just enough to blunt their hunger. All the while they ate, the sound of the winter storm outside mounted.

Afterwards, Varryn rose and gathered his weapons once more.

‘Someone must watch,’ he said flatly as he disappeared out of the circle of firelight.

Gryvan oc Haig was in a rage such as none in the Moon Palace had witnessed for many months. As he stormed down the stone corridors, he spat invective at every servant unfortunate enough to cross his path. Kale strode after his High Thane, and behind him came the Chancellor Mordyn Jerain and Gryvan’s son Aewult. Mordyn noticed, as the Bloodheir marched along beside him, that there was a kind of satisfaction on Aewult’s face. The young man enjoyed such moments, when passions flared and Gryvan showed that he could still make people fear him. If the day comes when Aewult rules in his father’s stead, Mordyn reflected, few people will love him as at least some do Gryvan. But many will have cause to fear him.

The High Thane threw open the doors to his private chambers and swept in. The attendants within, startled in the act of setting out Gryvan’s robes for his impending audience with the Dornach ambassador, fled with a volley of curses snapping at their heels. Gryvan slammed the doors shut behind them.

‘Explain to me, then, what is happening,’ the Thane of Thanes shouted, redfaced. ‘Explain to me, Chancellor.’

Mordyn steeled himself and locked his features into a calm, open expression. He had known Gryvan for long enough to be certain that this tempest would blow itself out as quickly as it had arisen. Kale, as immune as ever to the emotions raging around him, had drifted to the window to ensure that no one was loitering on the balconies without.

‘Which matter would you have me address first, lord?’ Mordyn asked. He hoped, and expected, that Gryvan was most exercised over the news that Mordyn himself had just broken to him, rather than that which a messenger from the Steward in Kolkyre had unfortunately delivered at almost the same moment. The first, the Chancellor had an answer to; the second was more problematic.

‘The Goldsmiths, the Goldsmiths,’ snarled Gryvan. He sank heavily into a capacious chair. Aewult made for a small table. Gryvan’s servants had laid out some food for him there. The Bloodheir idly surveyed a bowl of apples and grapes.

‘Very well,’ Mordyn murmured. He carefully clasped his hands across his stomach, in as passive a posture as he could manage. ‘I have been looking into the matter for some time now, and we are therefore well placed to respond to recent events. As I was explaining before Lagair Haldyn’s message arrived, Gann nan Dargannan-Haig has killed his half-brother. He took him in an ambush. All of this strife within the Dargannan Blood serves us well in weakening them, but the time has perhaps passed when we can stand aside and watch them hacking away at one another. It appears increasingly possible that if left to their own devices, it will be Gann who rises to the top.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Gryvan said. The heat of his anger was already fading somewhat. His brow remained knotted, but his hand was quite steady as he poured himself wine from a jug at his side. ‘But now you tell me that the Goldsmiths own Gann. Apparently you’ve known this for some time, but not seen fit to share the information with me.’

‘Gann’s a coward,’ Aewult said casually, through a mouthful of apple. ‘Throughout Igryn’s rebellion, Gann hid away on one of the islands.’

‘He is unfit to be Thane,’ Mordyn agreed, ‘even if he wasn’t a creature of one of the Crafts.’

‘But he is such a creature,’ snapped Gryvan. ‘That is what concerns me. I don’t care who rules the Dargannan Blood, so long as they know their place. What I do care about is that the Goldsmiths should think they are entitled to try to make Thanes themselves.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Chancellor. ‘The Crafts have always taken an interest in the doings of Thanes, and have never shied away from spending coin in support of their interests. This goes beyond that. To my certain knowledge the Goldsmiths have not only enriched Gann himself, but paid a dowry for his sister’s marriage, made a gift of one of their own houses to his infant son and bribed—I regret to say—our own tax collectors to overlook certain private dealings Gann has had with Tal Dyreen merchants. It is my belief—not certain, but probable—that they also paid for the hire of the Free Coast bandits that Gann brought in to kill his half-brother. They have put Gann so greatly in their debt it’s unlikely he will ever be anything more than their lackey.’

Gryvan took a noisy swallow of wine, then set the goblet down so roughly upon the table that it spilled. He shook his hand and scattered red droplets.

‘I’ve made them all rich, all of the Crafts. Since Haig took over from Kilkry there has never been such wealth, and they’ve garnered more than their fair share of it.’

‘They are ungrateful,’ agreed the Bloodheir. Mordyn deliberately avoided looking at him. Aewult smelled the prospect of bloodshed and intrigue, and that always excited him. At least Gryvan was capable of restraint; for Aewult, all too often, the bloody exercise of power appeared to be an end in itself.

‘Ungrateful, I could tolerate,’ muttered the High Thane. ‘But when they interfere with my own needs, they go too far. We must have a secure, subdued and obedient Dargannan Blood. Nothing of what we seek—not the Free Coast, Tal Dyre, Dornach—none of that can we reach for without Dargannan first safely under our heel. Whoever the new Thane is, he will be my creature, not the Goldsmiths’.’

‘I have a suggestion,’ Mordyn said.

The High Thane nodded curtly. He was calm enough to listen now.

‘Balance is important in this. There is no need to force a confrontation with the Goldsmiths. It benefits us to remain on good terms with them, and with all of the Crafts, but they do need to learn the limits of their power in this game. I can, therefore, have their piece removed from the board. If we do it in such a way that our hand is not obvious, they will suspect our involvement but be left uncertain. That, I have found, is almost always the best outcome. Uncertainty constrains actions without provoking hostility.’

He heard Aewult snort dismissively. He ignored it; now, and hopefully for years to come, it was Gryvan who made the decisions. The High Thane glanced at his son.

‘Go and find Alem T’anarch,’ he said sternly. ‘Tell him that his audience will be somewhat delayed. And tell him that the delay in no way reflects any lack of respect for the exalted Dornach Kingship.’

‘He won’t believe that,’ Aewult said.

‘He’s not supposed to, of course,’ Gryvan snapped. ‘Now go.’

The Bloodheir went, tossing his half-eaten apple back towards the bowl as he went. It missed, and bounced messily to the floor.

‘Very well,’ Gryvan said. ‘Use whatever means it is you have for doing these things. Rid us of Gann, and I will trust to your judgement that the Goldsmiths will understand the message.’

‘I will ensure they do,’ Mordyn said with a shallow bow.

‘And what of Lannis-Haig?’ Gryvan asked. This was the second irritation that had driven the High Thane to his brief fury. It was, for Mordyn Jerain, a much greater source of puzzlement and concern than the petty intrigues of the Goldsmiths. He shook his head, a gesture finely calculated to convey both regret and mild uncertainty. It would not be wise to appear over-confident in this area, he knew.

‘It is remarkable that Anduran has fallen so quickly, lord. If Lagair Haldyn is correct in his reports, of course. It seems unlikely that he could be wrong about something so . . . substantial.’

‘Remarkable. You think it remarkable?’ There was still a hint of danger in Gryvan’s voice. That anger had not entirely dissipated. ‘I think it rather more than remarkable. I would not have agreed to any correspondence with Ragnor oc Gyre all these months had I known he meant to overrun our lands. However difficult Lannis-Haig might be, the Glas valley is still part of my domain. It will not pass to the Gyre Bloods.’

‘No,’ said Mordyn emphatically. However unclear the course of events in the north was, that much he could be certain of. ‘In all truth, High Thane, I do not know if Ragnor has played us false, or if Horin-Gyre has merely been immensely fortunate. In any case, whatever messages have passed between Ragnor and us in the past, the time has surely come to act firmly. The Black Road must be thrown back beyond the Stone Vale before they can establish a firm grip on the Glas valley.’

‘Of course. Our armies are gathered. I will send Aewult himself at their head.’

Mordyn bit back a flicker of unease. Sending the Bloodheir north at the head of an army would not have been his recommendation; none of the other Bloods were overly enamoured of Aewult nan Haig, but Kilkry and Lannis liked him least of all. Now was not the moment to challenge the High Thane’s will, though. The Chancellor knew he had stretched Gryvan’s patience by waiting so long to inform him of the Goldsmiths’ machinations, and by failing to predict the fall of the Lannis-Haig Blood.

He took a step back, fixing his eyes on the tiled floor of the High Thane’s chamber. He could remember these tiles being laid, a dozen years ago. Gryvan had brought the finest workmen from Taral-Haig, bought the most expensive tiles the potteries of Vaymouth had to offer. It would take a shepherd three lifetimes to earn the cost of this floor.

‘I will see to the matter of Gann nan Dargannan-Haig this evening, if you have no further need of me,’ Mordyn murmured.

‘Go,’ agreed Gryvan. ‘He is one fly we can swat with ease, at least.’

There were few people in Vaymouth for whom the Shadowhand would venture out on the streets of the city at night. In the normal course of events, there was no need for it: people came to him, in one palace or another. But in the case of Torquentine things were different. For him, the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods would don a scruffy, heavy-hooded cloak and sally forth himself. Nothing he might want to say to Torquentine should be trusted to an intermediary, and Torquentine could not come to him.

The Chancellor made his way down disreputable streets towards the heart of Ash Pit, perhaps the least savoury of all Vaymouth’s districts. He maintained a wary eye and the shambling gait of one too old and ill to be worth the attention of the city’s cutpurses. Almost out of sight, two trusted men—his own hirelings, not the guards that came with the post of Chancellor—followed him. They would intervene if trouble threatened, but even so there was some slight risk in walking these streets after dark. He had made the journey only a handful of times.

He came to a narrow junction and paused. He gave a hand signal and his escort sank into the shadows. The Chancellor crossed the street. The building to which he made his shuffling way was completely anonymous: just one more poorly built house jammed into a long street of its fellows. Yet when he tapped upon the door, Mordyn could feel its strength and solidity beneath his knuckles. No ordinary shack would have a door of heavy oak, banded with iron across its back and barred with a thick beam. Torquentine treasured his privacy.

Mordyn knew, as he waited patiently for a response from within, that he was being observed; that he had been beneath the gaze of hidden sentries from the moment he came within a hundred paces of this place. He doubted they would know him for who he was, but equally they would not believe him to be just another decrepit beggar. It mattered little if they mistrusted his disguise. Many people who came to see Torquentine must prefer to keep their faces hidden.

A haggard-looking woman opened the door. Her pallid, sickly face was disfigured by the tell-tale marks of the King’s Rot. Part of her nose was eaten away, and purplish blotches marred her cheek. Mordyn had always thought it an elegant touch for Torquentine to employ such a doorkeeper. Superstition or pure distaste at the sight of her might be enough to repel some uninvited guests.

‘Is your master at home, Magrayn?’ the Chancellor asked. It was more ritual than genuine enquiry: Magrayn’s master never left this place.

The woman stood to one side and gestured for him to enter. He knew the rules, and went no further than a step beyond the thresh-old as she closed the door behind him. There was another barred door to pass through yet, and only Magrayn could give him permission to progress.

‘Show your face,’ she said. Her voice was slovenly, uneven. The Rot had sunk into her throat.

The Chancellor slipped back his hood and looked her in the eye.

‘The visage matches the voice, I trust?’ he smiled.

Magrayn grunted and gave a swift triple knock upon the inner door.

‘Open up,’ she called, and Mordyn was given admittance to Torquentine’s lair. Hard-faced men searched him and took his knife from him, and he was led down into the cellars.

The man Mordyn had come to see would be thought a monstrosity by some, but to the Shadowhand such a view would be a meaningless distraction. Torquentine was, above and beyond all else, useful. There was more than one network of power in the Haig Bloods, and Torquentine stood at the heart of that which shunned the light of day and the scrutiny of curious eyes. A word whispered in a quayside drinking den in Kolkyre or murmured with lust-loosened tongue into a doxy’s ear in Dun Aygll could find its way to Torquentine. A sizeable fraction of the illicit gains of smugglers, thieves, moneylenders and assassins throughout the Haig lands seeped along surreptitious channels to his pocket. He was the spider at the centre of a vast, almost invisible web. But if he was a spider, he was one grown fat upon the flesh of his prey.

Alone, the Chancellor entered the chamber in which Torquentine reclined upon a vast heap of cushions. The man was gigantic. His voluminous clothes concealed a body that must weigh as much as three more commonly sized men. The skin of his face sagged and folded itself down. One eye was gone, a ragged scar running across its empty pit from temple to nose. The good eye that stared out at the Chancellor shone with intelligence. Mordyn often reflected that Torquentine’s size might serve a purpose in one way at least. It was too easy to judge a man by his girth, to assume that one so bloated could only be dim-witted, or weak, or foolish. Such assumptions would be a grievous error on the part of anyone dealing with Torquentine. To the Chancellor’s knowledge there were few people in Vaymouth who were quite as dangerous.

‘Chancellor,’ Torquentine said hoarsely. ‘An unexpected pleasure. It has been some time since the Shadowhand graced my chambers.’

‘More than a year,’ Mordyn agreed as he lowered himself on to an immaculately upholstered bench, the room’s only piece of furniture. Small bowls of aromatic herbs and petals rested beside him. Their scent mixed with the smoky aroma given off by the guttering oil lamps. Beneath it all, Mordyn could catch a hint of the malodorous air they were intended to mask. The Chancellor glanced quizzically at the material covering the bench.

‘You have new upholstery,’ he remarked.

‘Indeed,’ rasped his host. ‘I tired of the previous pattern. And it had been worn by the buttocks of a great many supplicants.’

‘Supplicants were a thing of the temples we dispensed with long ago,’ said Mordyn.

‘Petitioners, if you prefer,’ smiled Torquentine. ‘But men must find something to worship once their Gods abandon them. It is in our natures to make temples of the strangest places, even if it is not Gods that inhabit them.’

‘Mere mortal that you are, there is nevertheless a great deal of you for men to abase themselves before,’ Mordyn acknowledged. ‘I dare to hope I stand more highly in your affections than a mere petitioner at some altar, however.’

‘Ah, affection. It does not become a man to dispense his precious stocks of that commodity too freely. But what need could you have of my humble affection in any case, honoured Chancellor? You have the love of the great and the noble to warm your heart should it grow cold. In any case it was, as likely as not, your gold that paid for the new covering of my bench. You may treat it as roughly as you wish.’

‘I cannot tarry long,’ said Mordyn. ‘There is but a single item I wished to discuss.’

Torquentine raised a fat arm in exaggerated distress. ‘Such brevity, and I have not even had the chance to offer you any refreshments yet.’

Mordyn suppressed the urge to smile. Torquentine enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and gave a passable impression of a buffoon.

‘I have a small task for you, Torquentine. Nothing too testing, for a man of your capacities.’

‘I am rigid with curiosity,’ said Torquentine in a tone of studied disinterest.

‘Gann nan Dargannan-Haig. Cousin to Igryn. Do you know him?’

‘Of him, of him. An empty vessel, like most of his family. A mouse burdened with the ambition of a rat; overfond of drink and of whores, and pox-ridden to boot. Thinks he has the makings of a Thane. And lacks the sense to recognise himself as a tool of the Goldsmiths, of course. But then you will know all of that already, Chancellor.’

‘Indeed,’ Mordyn nodded. ‘You summarise the man. Well, worthless though his life has been, I am resolved that he should be given the chance to redeem himself, by dying a useful death. I would not suppose to tell you your business, but I thought perhaps a tavern brawl? Or expiry from overindulgence in the pleasures of some whorehouse?’

Torquentine’s eye narrowed a fraction. It was a tiny gesture, but Mordyn drew satisfaction from the fact that he had surprised his host. Only once before had he asked Torquentine for a death, and that had been a lowly brothelmaster who tried to blackmail one of Mordyn’s clerks. Gann nan Dargannan-Haig was a different kind of victim.

Striking at one who was both a member of a ruling family—albeit a dishonoured one—and a possession of one of the most powerful Crafts was a bold move, but the Chancellor was satisfied it was worth the risk. Even if they believed it to be no more than bad luck, his loss would be a setback for the Goldsmiths; a few words in the right places would ensure that they suspected, but could not prove, the hand of the Moon Palace behind the deed. If Lammain the Craftmaster had half the sense Mordyn credited him with, he would recognise it for the warning it was.

‘Nothing too testing, you say,’ mused Torquentine, ‘yet you ask a good deal, Chancellor.’

Mordyn said nothing. Torquentine would not refuse this commission. The benefits of the Chancellor’s patronage were great, and Torquentine’s reach was long and discreet enough to do the deed without any risk to himself.

‘Very well,’ said Torquentine. ‘I shall deal with the luckless Gann. The world will hardly suffer from his loss. Imagine: at this very moment he probably lies sated in the arms of some woman, his dreams all of pleasure and ease, and here we sit deciding to put an end to him.’

The man’s voice faded, and his one eye fluttered and half-closed. After a moment he sighed and returned to himself.

‘Such are the vagaries of fortune,’ he breathed. ‘A boon in return, though, dare I hope? This is no small request you make of me, so perhaps a little something in addition to the usual payment?’

The Chancellor raised his eyebrows quizzically. The rules he and Torquentine played by were well established. He would prefer to avoid any departure from them.

‘Gann is not some street urchin, after all,’ Torquentine smiled. ‘Snuffing out his candle will require care, planning. It will be a complicated effort.’

‘What is it you want, Torquentine?’ enquired Mordyn, lacing his voice with a hint of irritation.

The great man on the cushions raised his own eyebrows in turn. It made the scar across his face stretch alarmingly.

‘Well, in truth I could not say. Perhaps we could delay the resolution of that question until such time as the answer is more apparent. I imagine a solution will present itself before long. They usually do.’

‘You seek to put me in your debt, Torquentine,’ the Chancellor said levelly.

‘Oh, come now, let us not speak of debt. We make a bargain, you and I. It is merely that your half of it remains, for the time being, a little . . . ill-defined.’

‘Done,’ Mordyn said as he rose to his feet. He heartily disliked the idea of making open-ended promises to the likes of Torquentine, but now hardly seemed the time to argue over trifles. He was the Shadowhand, after all, and promises were easy things to break. ‘I should return. My wife will be expecting me.’

‘Ah, the divine Tara. She of such famed perfection. You cannot imagine how it pains me that I should have to rely only upon rumours of her beauty and never set eyes upon it for myself.’ Torquentine sighed and cast a glum eye over the walls of his chamber as he caressed his oceanic stomach. ‘To think I have been incarcerated in this cellar for so long, and all for the sake of an ill-disciplined love of nourishment.’

To hear his beloved wife spoken of thus by such as Torquentine sent a mild shiver of repugnance down Mordyn’s spine as he made to leave. A passing thought held him in the doorway.

‘Have you any word out of Lannis-Haig?’

‘Lannis-Haig, Lannis-Haig. Barbarians up there, you know. No appreciation for the finer things in life. But what word is it you seek?’

‘Whatever may have fallen into those huge ears of yours,’ muttered Mordyn. He would not usually enquire about such matters in this place, and already half-regretted the question. Torquentine’s expertise lay in the rumours of marketplaces and the doings of thieves and brigands. Mordyn had other means of following the course of grander events, though they were not serving him as well as he would wish. He was tired of being surprised by news from the Glas valley.

‘Well, I’ve little to offer that will not already have reached your own capacious ears, I should imagine,’ said Torquentine, ‘and half of it’s rantings, of course. The Black Road rules in the valley once again; only until our esteemed High Thane deigns to flex his muscles, as all right-thinking folk would tell you. Lheanor’s hiding away in his stick of a tower in Kolkyre, mourning his dead son. Croesan’s dead too, some say, and captured others.’

‘And the rest of Croesan’s family? Dead?’

Torquentine shrugged. It was an eye-catching gesture, sending ripples through his jowls.

‘Or as good as. Yet, what was it I heard? Kennet, the senile one in Kolglas: they found his body after the woodwights and the ravens were done with his castle, but never his children’s. I forget their names.’

‘Orisian and Anyara,’ Mordyn said absently.

‘Indeed. No sign of them, although from what I hear half the bodies were well-roasted, so who could be sure?’

After the Chancellor had gone, Torquentine sat quite still and quiet for a few minutes, furrows denting his sweat-sheened brow. At length, he tugged at a silken cord that hung from the ceiling. A bell rang in the building above. It brought Magrayn down from her post. He beckoned her to approach, and when she was within reach he laid a hand upon her disease-ravaged face.

‘Sweet Magrayn,’ he smiled as he ran a fat finger perilously close to the wound that had eroded much of her nose. She returned the smile.

‘Whisper in some ears for me, beloved,’ said Torquentine. ‘Cast out some bait. I want to know what has become of every member of the Lannis-Haig line. The Chancellor seems curious on the subject, and where a Chancellor’s curiosity leads, there is often some profit to be found.’

As the Chancellor made his way back through the shadowy lanes and alleyways, his guardians dogging his footsteps, he was preoccupied. An instinct deep in his guts, born of long years of reading the signs, whispered to him of storms gathering. Events were taking on an unpleasantly chaotic, unpredictable character. Such times could be crucibles of opportunity, and thus welcome, but they were seldom gentle on a man’s nerves. Lannis-Haig should not have crumbled so quickly. And those children of Kennet nan Lannis-Haig’s: what had become of them, if they were not dead with their father in Kolglas? It might complicate matters if there was some orphaned runt of a boy running around trying to salvage something from the wreckage of the Lannis Blood. That was exactly the kind of situation Aewult would mishandle, preening himself at the head of his precious army.

Mordyn strove to set the thought aside. There was no knowing the truth of any of this for the moment. All would become clear soon enough. But still, he could not shake a sense of foreboding. He had a powerful urge to be in Tara’s arms, to take comfort from her familiar, intoxicating charms. He lengthened his stride and hastened back towards his Palace of Red Stone.

The morning in the Car Criagar was bright and crisp and clear, as brazen as if no day there ever started differently. All through the night the winds had raged around the mountain tops, whipping snow and sleet over the rocks. The storm had blown itself out before dawn, calmed by the approaching sun.

Standing on the wide ledge outside the entrance to Yvane’s bolt-hole, Orisian gazed across the ruin-veined landscape before him. On days such as this, couched in the grandeur of the mountains, arrayed beneath a broad, blue sky, the city must have been a glorious sight when it lived. Whoever its inhabitants had been, they must have been stirred by the marvellous conspiracy of sky and rock that surrounded them.

Rothe was crouched down at Orisian’s side, trying to sharpen his sword with a whetstone Yvane had found for him. His efforts were punctuated by occasional, almost inaudible, curses at the inadequacy of the little stone. Varryn and Ess’yr were down below, cautiously scouting through the closest of the ruins. There had been no sign or sound of intruders in the long hours they had spent in the cave, but neither of the Kyrinin seemed reassured. Despite their reticence and restraint, Orisian suspected they would be as glad as anyone to leave this place. The only question that remained was whether Yvane would accompany them. The na’kyrim had gone off some time ago, promising to return with supplies for their journey.

Anyara came to stand beside Orisian.

‘A strange place,’ she said.

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘It’s amazing. I wish Inurian was here to see it. He could have told us more about it, I expect.’

‘Yes,’ said Anyara softly. She looked down at her hands, loosely clasped before her. ‘I miss him very much. I know I never spent as much time with him as you did, but after Winterbirth ... he did his best to look after me.’

‘He always did that,’ Orisian said. ‘You, Father, me; he looked after all of us, in different ways. You think you know how important someone is, but it’s never real until they’re gone.’ He shook his head disconsolately. ‘I thought I knew him well, you know. But with Ess’yr, Highfast, Yvane ... I feel like I know less about him now than I did a month ago.’

‘You know the most important thing: that he cared for you. That he cared for us all.’

Orisian narrowed his eyes, staring into the distance.

‘He told me not to wish for things I couldn’t have, but how can I not? I’d change everything if I could. Everything, right back to ... I want to see our father again. See him the way he was when everyone was alive. Is it so bad to wish for something like that?’

Anyara put an arm about his shoulders. Grief was a dangerous territory for the two of them to share. Orisian always feared that if he or Anyara let the other see a fraction too much of the sorrows they had borne, neither would be able to hold back the rest.

‘I am afraid, Orisian.’

It was not something he could ever remember her saying before. The Fever had taken her to the very edge of the Sleeping Dark; she had once come within moments of drowning in theharbour of Kolglas ; still further back, Orisian had a memory of watching her fall from high in a tree outside the town, bouncing and crashing through lower boughs on her way down. Yet she had never spoken of fear. He had learned, so young that he knew it in the same way he knew the trees would lose their leaves in autumn, that fear did not touch Anyara. Now that knowledge seemed, like many other things, an obviously childish thought to be set aside.

‘Afraid of what?’ he asked.

Anyara almost laughed. ‘You choose,’ she said. Then: ‘Dying. Being alone. You, me, Rothe—we only have each other now.’

‘And we will not lose each other. But there may still be others, anyway. We have to hold on to that hope.’

‘Spoken like a true Thane,’ Anyara said. He looked at her sharply, to find a sad smile upon her face. ‘Well, you are, aren’t you? You must be.’

‘Oh, Anyara, I hope not.’

She squeezed him tightly, all of a sudden the elder sister once more.

‘If you are, you will be a good one,’ she said, releasing him from her grasp.

He looked at her. ‘Good or bad, I will have to try, won’t I? All my wishes are only wishes. I wouldn’t have chosen any of this—none of us would—but we are here nevertheless. If there is no one else, I will have to try.’

She took his hand in hers and they stood together like that for a little while, brother and sister side by side, looking out over the wasteland where the ruins lay silently beneath the winter sun.

When Yvane returned, she brought little deerskin packets of food, walking staffs and fur strips to bind around their boots.

‘Better than nothing,’ she said as she dropped it all into a pile at her feet.

‘Are you coming with us?’ Orisian asked her.

‘Yes, yes. Some of the way, at least. Perhaps all the way to Koldihrve.’

‘I’m glad.’

The na’kyrim gave a little laugh and shot a sharp look at him.

‘You shouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s a bad sign, if you’d the sense to read it.’

He waited patiently for her to explain.

‘I don’t know what those Fox have found,’ Yvane said with a vague wave in the direction of Ess’yr and Varryn, still searching amongst the rubble below, ‘but I’ve seen enough to know I’d do well to spend a little time away from here. There’s tracks of dogs—big ones, too—and men in the freshest snow. Definitely been someone poking around in the night. And to have kept going through that storm, they must be very serious about their work.’

Orisian looked uneasily out over the ruined city. Nothing moved. The broken walls and crumbling stonework lay silent beneath their cloak of snow.

‘If I stay behind, whoever it is might go off on your trail but then again they might not. And even if they do, perhaps they’d dig me out of one of my hideaways before leaving. However much I like my solitude, I’m not stupid. I’ll take my chances with you.’

Orisian nodded.

‘Of course,’ Yvane added sharply, ‘if you hadn’t seen fit to turn up, all uninvited, I’d still have my nice quiet life to enjoy.’

‘The uninvited guests who came to my home cost me a good deal more than we’ve cost you,’ Orisian snapped, and scrambled down from the platform. Fresh snow crunched beneath his feet as he made his way to join Ess’yr. The Kyrinin was crouching down beside a heap of building stones, letting her delicate fingertips drift almost randomly across their pitted, lichen-strewn surfaces. Orisian stood behind her, caught for a moment by the shimmer of the winter sun on her hair.

‘Dog,’ she murmured. She turned her head and looked up at him with those clear grey eyes. She held a fingertip out, and he could just see a short, thick strand of hair on it.

‘Yvane says they’ve been in the ruins during the night. She’s coming with us.’

‘Best if we go now,’ said Ess’yr. She rose to her feet in a single flowing movement. ‘We cannot hide from them, so best to be in the open. Then we see them coming.’

They followed Yvane north along the base of the cliffs. All of them were tense, wary. Even Yvane seemed uneasy amongst the ruins. Orisian, for the first time in his life, longed for the feel of a sword at his hip, or any weapon better than the little knife he carried on his belt.

They came out of Criagar Vyne with nothing to disturb the silence save the sound of ravens croaking on the rocky heights above them. This time, with the furs Yvane had given them and her staffs to lean on, they were better equipped to brave the bleak lands beyond. It was enough to keep them almost comfortable even when they came out from beneath the shelter of the cliffs and the wind picked up.

On a day such as this—bright and wide—the mountains were a sight to behold. Orisian could imagine that the Car Criagar was asleep, resting in the lull before the next storm swept down from the Tan Dihrin. Great peaks surrounded them, studded by pinnacles and turrets of rock. The stillness was so deep that it was possible to believe they were the only living things to have trodden this path in innumerable years. All the vast age and patient indifference of the mountains was there like a taste in the air as they made their way northward.

Once the ruins were well behind them, the Kyrinin at least relaxed. The open slopes offered little chance of ambush. Even so, Varryn would now and then stand for a time looking back the way they had come. They rested a while in the early afternoon, quietly sharing food and water. The sun was almost hot upon their faces, but it did not last. Thin skeins of cloud appeared across the blue expanse of the sky and by the time they began to search for a suitable sleeping place, the Car Criagar was sinking back into the muffling grey light it seemed almost to crave. There was no rain or snow at least, and as Yvane led them to a notch in the hillside they could hope for a more comfortable night than some of those they had recently known.

Yvane knew what she was doing in choosing that hollow for the night: reaching into a crack beneath a pitted boulder, she withdrew a sack of kindling and firewood.

‘Better to have no fire,’ Varryn said.

Yvane emptied the sack out and began sorting the wood.

‘You can have no fire if you like,’ she said, ‘but I don’t like the cold. If anyone is following us, they’ll know where we are well enough with or without a fire.’

There was little talking after that. All of them were preoccupied by their own thoughts as the fire held their eyes and the night settled in, closing the world around them down into a small pocket of light.

It was as they settled to sleep that the sound came, as startling as the shattering of glass in the darkness: a brief howl. Moments later a second answered it. They seemed distant, but it was hard to tell.

‘Might be glad we have a fire, if it comes to it,’ was all Yvane said as the sound faded away and an unnerving silence descended.

The last thing Orisian saw before he passed into a shallow sleep was Varryn sitting straight and alert, bathed in firelight, his face turned out towards the night and his hands resting upon bow and spear.

In the morning Varryn was still seated where Orisian had last seen him, as if no more than a moment had passed. The weather had closed in. Yvane exchanged a few words with Varryn in the Fox tongue, but they said nothing to the others. At another time Orisian would have wanted to know what they discussed; now there seemed no point. There was, after all, nothing to do save press on, even if a score of Inkallim were treading in their footprints.

Their path now lay downwards and away from the highest peaks, but the Car Criagar would not let them go without one last reminder of its true nature. Low cloud, a hard wind and wet snow accompanied them. The further north they went, and the further from the heart of the range, the more characterless the slopes became. The dramatic rocks and screes of the heights were replaced by great featureless snow fields.

Orisian found himself striding along beside Yvane.

‘How long to get to Koldihrve?’ he asked her. It was hard work, fighting through the deepening snow, and he was out of breath, but the relentless silence of the mountains had begun to seem oppressive to him.

‘Not long,’ the na’kyrim said.

‘That’s a Kyrinin answer,’ Orisian observed.

‘Where is it you want to go, anyway? Not Koldihrve, I mean, but after that. What are you going to do?’

‘Go to Glasbridge, or to Kolglas, if we can find the boat we need at Koldihrve. I have to fight the Black Road ; restore my Blood. I have had enough of running, of hiding,’ Orisian said. And of losing people, he thought.

‘Be careful not to dress revenge in finer clothes than it deserves. You can’t always get back what’s gone. I wouldn’t try to, if I was you; disappointment can do strange things to people.’

‘You don’t understand. The Black Road has destroyed my home, my family. They’ve taken our lands. I’m bound by oath to defend my Blood against its enemies.’

‘Who is it you think is watching you?’ said Yvane irritably. ‘There’re no gods now, if there ever were, so they’ll not be your judges. Is it the dead? Better to leave that to the Kyrinin. What will you do when you’ve killed all of those who killed your dead? Sit back and wait for your own victims’ children to arrive, knife in hand, at your bedside one night? Blood for blood, life for life down through all the ages. That’s a kind future you’re planning for yourself and your kin. Think how much happier the world might be if people sought approval for what they do from their children instead of their ancestors.’

‘What would you have me do?’ demanded Orisian. ‘Run away? Hide in a cave somewhere?’ He allowed anger to colour his voice.

‘In truth,’ sighed Yvane, ‘I don’t much care. All your Thanes and warlords always think they are the ones making everything happen, making the decisions. As often as not, they’re plain wrong. Life has its own patterns, its chances and fortunes: they trip up great lords just as surely as the commonfolk. Whatever plans you lay, like as not they’ll twist and turn in your hands. Just be sure why you do what you do. I long ago wearied of people who spend all their time digging up old hatreds and polishing them up for fresh use. The past’s like a maggot in the heart of the present; it fouls it.’

Orisian looked down, watched his feet sweeping through the snow for a few strides.

‘It’s not revenge I want,’ he said. He had tasted a little of vengeance, when that Tarbain’s blood had splashed out over his hands. It had not soothed the ache within him, and it had not brought back any of those who had died. It had not even saved the woodcutter’s family. ‘I want ... to end it. It’s the future I want to see changed, not the past. If you can tell me how to stop what’s happening . . . if you can tell me how to stop that without taking up a sword against the Black Road, I’ll listen. But I don’t think you can.

And I know as well as you that nothing will make the dead live again, but that’s not the same as wishing they had not died. How could I not wish that of people I loved?’

Yvane smiled sadly. ‘You couldn’t. No one could ask you to.’ She glanced up at the listless sky. ‘We have to forgive ourselves for all the ways we failed the dead, you know. And forgive them for all the burdens they leave us; all the ways in which they failed us. Especially for dying.’

Orisian felt a tightening in his throat, and had to close his eyes for a moment. They strode on without speaking.

They had been walking for what seemed like hours when Rothe stopped. Orisian followed his shieldman’s gaze and saw why. Above and behind them, on a low ridge they had crossed less than an hour ago, the wind had whipped the snow up into twisting curtains that danced along the crest. Through those veils, a vague figure could be seen. It flickered in and out of sight as the cloud and snow washed around it. Orisian narrowed his eyes. It might have been an outcrop of rock, but no ... it shifted slightly, parted. Up there on the ridge, a tall man was standing with a great hound at his side.

‘It’s the Hunt,’ Rothe murmured. ‘It must be.’

Yvane began striding with greater urgency through the ankle-deep snow.

‘Keep moving,’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘It’s not far to the tree line. There’s no sense in trying to hide out here.’

They fell in behind her, following a course diagonally down the slope. Rothe drew his sword. Low cloud came across the hillside, enclosing them in a dampening mist. They were alone again, struggling across the snow field in the midst of a grey sky. It was worse, in a way, to know what was behind them but not be able to see their hunters. Their pace picked up a little. The backward glances were more frequent, more urgent, but told them nothing.

‘Have a care, have a care,’ muttered Rothe, as much to himself as to anyone else. The mist deadened his voice.

‘Faster,’ Yvane called out, and stretched her stride. The snow hampered them, clinging to their legs as if it did not want them to leave its domain. Orisian wondered how long they could keep this up. He wanted to run, but knew that would only bring exhaustion. Without thinking about it, he pulled his knife from its sheath.

‘They are on us!’ Ess’yr cried. She and Varryn spun around in the same moment, springing apart and hefting their spears.

‘The cloud’s thinning,’ Rothe said, and in that same moment the beast was there.

Orisian had only half a second to take in what he was seeing: a great hound, massive and wild as a boar. It erupted out of the concealing mists in a flurry of snow. Ess’yr was the closest, and it rushed straight down upon her. She sank a little lower at the hips, her thighs tensing. Varryn made no move to help his sister: he was staring fixedly back up the slope in the direction from which the dog had emerged.

The hound sprang. Ess’yr swayed to one side and flung it aside with the butt of her spear. The animal drove a great furrow through the snow as it slithered on down the slope.

‘Get back,’ Orisian shouted to Anyara.

Rothe took a great bound forwards, seized Anyara’s shoulder and threw her away as the hound rolled to its feet. It was far too agile, too quick, for its size, Orisian thought. Rothe lashed out with his sword. The hound shied away from the blade, gathered itself and leapt for Rothe all in the blink of an eye.

Varryn shouted something in the language of the Fox. Orisian glanced at him, in time to see the Kyrinin duck his head a fraction to avoid a crossbow bolt that flashed out of the misty vapours and as quickly vanished back into them. Varryn dropped his spear and swung his own bow over his shoulder.

Rothe was crying out in rage or pain. He was thrashing on the ground, the hound’s jaw locked on the wrist of his arm. His sword was gone, flung away in the frenzy of shaking and pulling. Anyara was shouting too as she flailed at the dog with her walking staff. The crack of wood on bone said she found her mark more than once, but the beast ignored the blows as if they were gnat bites to a bull. Orisian threw himself across the hound’s back. He felt the immense strength of its neck as it shook its head back and forth, smelled its musty, thick hair. He stabbed it in its ribcage, again and again, until it went limp.

He looked up in a kind of numb surprise, and saw the Hunt Inkallim coming an instant before even the Kyrinin did. The man seemed to solidify out of the clouds, but did so at full speed, flying light-footed through the snow directly for Ess’yr, brandishing a quarterstaff that was bladed at both ends.

A warning began to form on Orisian’s lips but thought and voice could not hope to keep pace with a clash between Kyrinin and Hunt Inkallim. Even taken unawares, Ess’yr found the time to bring her spear up. Without slowing, the Inkallim veered sideways. The point of the spear went across his flank, caught in his deerskin jerkin and snapped him around. He leapt into a spin and his staff came in a huge arc, too quick for the eye to follow. Ess’yr was faster than any human could have been. Still, it was not enough; the blow took her below the sternum, flung her like a child’s doll through the air to thump into the snow a few yards away. She lay still.

Rothe surged to his feet, spilling both Orisian and the hound’s corpse as he rose. The shieldman clasped a hand about his bloodstained wrist, and took a lurching step towards the Inkallim.

Varryn hissed: an inhuman, piercing sound. The Inkallim flicked his head round. Varryn was motionless. He was perfectly poised in the still moment a hunter would seek: unbreathing, feet firmly planted, bowstring taut, the fletching of the arrow brushing his face. The Inkallim began to move. The arrow was released. In an instant it crossed the space between Kyrinin and human, and cracked into the Inkallim’s cheek. The moment the bowstring snapped out of his hand, Varryn was rushing to Ess’yr.

‘My sword,’ Rothe cried.

‘I can’t see it,’ Orisian heard Anyara shout.

The Hunt Inkallim turned unsteadily back towards the shieldman. Varryn’s arrow stood rigid in his face, rooted in a nest of blood and bone. A mad, desperate grin split the man’s face. Blood was spilling out over his lips. Orisian threw his knife: he was unskilled in the art, but it was made for throwing and it found a home high on the Inkallim’s chest.

Rothe stretched out his uninjured arm towards Anyara.

‘Your staff,’ he said.

She passed it to him in silence. The Inkallim made to raise his own weapon, but all his strength and grace were gone. He was rocking on his feet. He watched limply as Rothe came up and struck him a great blow on the side of the head. The Inkallim fell. His legs kicked feebly as he lay face-down in the snow.

‘Leave him, leave him!’ Yvane was shouting. Already, she was heading off, straight down the slope. ‘He wasn’t alone.’

Varryn slung his sister’s bow across his shoulders with his own and lifted Ess’yr. Her arms and legs dangled limply. Carrying both her and his spear, Varryn began to run after Yvane.

Rothe was scrabbling clumsily in the snow. Blood falling from his wounds left pinpricks of red in the whiteness.

‘Where’s my sword?’ he cried, sounding grief-struck.

‘Leave it,’ shouted Orisian, hauling at his shieldman’s arm. Rothe resisted for a moment.

‘Rothe! Do as I say. Leave it.’ Even to his own ears, Orisian’s voice had an arresting edge of command to it.

Yvane cried, ‘We must go!’ back over her shoulder.

They took great leaping strides through the snow. Rothe held himself at the back, even though he had nothing now save a knife with which to defend Orisian and Anyara.

Their flight was wild, uncontrolled, but the attack they feared never came. When they broke free of the cloud’s embrace they found themselves rushing down towards a distant dark line of trees. The snow was thinning, the ground more even.

Though he could hardly raise his eyes from the point of his next footfall, Orisian was aware of a great vista spread out before them. They had come out on to the northern flank of the Car Criagar and the Dihrve valley lay ahead and below. Beyond that broad plain, like a magnified reflection of the mountains behind them, the immense heights of the Car Dine rose up.

At last, coming to the first scrawny trees, Yvane allowed them to pause. Even Varryn was breathing hard as he knelt and laid Ess’yr down. A look of concern emerged through the fierce tattoos on his face as he leaned over his sister and listened to her breathing. Delicately, he ran his fingers over her side, feeling for injuries. Then he sat back and gently brushed strands of hair from her forehead.

‘How is she?’ Orisian panted.

‘Broken,’ Varryn said. He gestured at his own ribcage. ‘Here.’

‘Lammanroot would be best,’ said Yvane distractedly. She was looking back up the slope, her eyes narrowed. ‘But we do not have the time to search for it now.’

Rothe was at her side, surveying the higher slopes just as she did. The distant banks of cloud that still cloaked the mountains were a blank, impenetrable wall. There was no hint of movement.

‘Perhaps they will give up the chase now we have bloodied them,’ he said.

‘Perhaps,’ murmured Yvane. ‘Will you allow a na’kyrim to bind that wrist for you?’

Rothe nodded in agreement. He turned and watched Varryn as Yvane began rooting somewhere beneath her cloak for bandage materials. ‘You have a keen aim,’ he said.

‘Kyrinin aim,’ was Varryn’s brusque reply, but after a moment he seemed to think better of his curtness, and he looked up at the shieldman. ‘Not so keen. I went for the eye.’

‘A good try, still,’ replied Rothe. ‘That arrow saved us a lot of trouble.’

Varryn shrugged; it was not as cold a gesture as once might have passed between the two. They rested only for a minute or two, and then resumed a more cautious descent. Ess’yr woke, grimacing in pain, her face whiter than ever it had been before. Varryn supported her as she hobbled down through the woods.

These forests were different to those of the Glas valley. Pines dominated them. Mostly they were small, cold- and wind-bent things, but in places they crowded so close together that they cast a black shade. The earth was carpeted with browned needles and wiry grass. Here and there tree roots had been forced to the surface by hidden rocks or stone faces. The place had a foreign feel, fit for the old tales of savage Kyrinin, watchful Anain or even the wolfish Whreinin.

They had crossed into a land where only masterless humans roamed, where the bloodoath or the concerns of Lannis and Horin meant nothing. Now more than ever, Orisian thought, they were in the hands of their inhuman companions. This was their land.

In the gathering dusk they made a camp of sorts amidst the trees. Varryn laid a fire against the foot of a sloping rock and then, once Ess’yr was settled by the flames, disappeared into the forest without a word of explanation. Orisian guessed he had gone to search for the root he needed to ease his sister’s pain.

There was a great dormant ant hill a few yards from their resting place, a smooth mound of pine needles that bulbed up from the ground. Yvane was crouched beside it, probing it with a thin twig. The image was strangely familiar to Orisian. It was some time before he could recall why: the last time he had been alone with Inurian, the na’kyrim had been searching for sea urchins beside Castle Kolglas with a long stick.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked her, as he had asked Inurian then.

‘Distracting myself from our difficulties. Ants make good food if you are hungry enough.’ She smiled at his involuntary grimace. ‘Though I suppose we’re not that hungry yet.’ She set aside the twig and rose a little stiffly to her feet.

‘I have not stretched my legs so vigorously for a long time,’ she muttered. There was a touch of irritation in her voice. She disliked her own weakness.

‘Mine are getting used to running,’ he said.

‘Well, we may be clear of trouble for now,’ said Yvane as she led him back towards the fire. ‘Hopefully we can walk the rest of the way to Koldihrve.’

Rothe was sitting on a stone, his unsheathed knife resting on his thigh, gazing into the fire. Orisian felt a twinge of sympathy for his shieldman. It would be a torment to Rothe to be without his sword; unable, as he would see it, to properly protect Orisian. And Orisian had, he glumly reflected, left his own knife—the Inkallim blade—behind, resting in the chest of their pursuer.

Anyara was already dozing, sitting against a tree trunk with her patchy fur jacket draped over her like a blanket. Her head nodded on her chest and every now and again she made a soft murmuring sound.

‘We all need some rest,’ said Yvane softly.

Orisian stretched out close to the fire. He should be afraid, he knew, of what might come in the night. It seemed he was too tired for fear, though, since he soon drifted off towards sleep with the soft crackling of the flames in his ears.

He came briefly to befuddled wakefulness in the depths of the night, roused by some sound. The fire still blazed and he could see nothing beyond its glare. From somewhere in the darkness, muted voices were coming. Drowsy apprehension had just begun to rise in his breast when he recognised them: Rothe and Varryn, deep in conversation. In the few moments before sleep reclaimed him, Orisian recognised that fact for the small wonder it was.

They woke to rain. It was a miserable morning. The fire died quickly. Varryn kicked earth over the embers and then spread them out with his foot. The rain grew heavier as they descended through the forest, but it was at least better than snow and biting wind. They found a rocky stream and drank from it. Ess’yr could not bend to drink, and Varryn raised water to her lips in his cupped palms. Orisian could well imagine the pain each step must bring her. The wound in his own side still made itself known every now and then, not by pain exactly, but a taut tenderness. To see Ess’yr struggling with her own injury brought home how graceful she had been before. He had almost stopped noticing her poise and precision; now that it was stripped from her its absence was glaring, like a bird that could not fly.

The rain eased off towards midday, and the going became easier as the slope flattened out. At last, there came a moment when the gradient disappeared altogether, and for the first time in what seemed an age there was only flat ground beneath their feet and before their eyes. Anyara gave a heartfelt sigh of relief and even Rothe could not keep a slight smile from his lips.

‘Welcome to the valley of the Dihrve,’ said Yvane. ‘Some call it the Vale of Tears, but we may hope for rather happier times here perhaps.’

Varryn exchanged a few words with Ess’yr. They seemed to agree something.

‘There is a vo’an,’ said Ess’yr. ‘One or two hours. We can rest there.’

Nobody disagreed, though Orisian caught a surprised, perhaps even shocked, expression on Anyara’s face. It was easy to forget she had not been where he had.

‘It’ll be fine,’ he said to her, and tried to put strength into his smile.

Aged willows covered the damp ground. The trees were too uniformly old and thinly spaced to be a dyn hane, but still the place had a haunted, wild feel to it, as if it had a life of its own upon which Orisian and the others were intruding. Fallen trunks lay all around, being slowly sucked into the earth by swathes of moss and fungus.

They halted in a clearing and sat on a hummock that was the closest thing to dry ground.

‘We are close,’ Ess’yr said. Her words were breathy, each one costing her some pain. It made Orisian wince in sympathy. ‘We will go in, ask leave for you to come. Wait here.’

‘Be certain,’ said Orisian softly. ‘No arguments about being sent to the willow this time.’

‘No,’ agreed Ess’yr.

‘Leave us a spear, at least,’ said Rothe to Varryn. ‘We’ve no weapons save my knife and these walking staffs.’

The words seemed to wash straight over the Kyrinin. He and Ess’yr disappeared to the north, leaving the others to sit and watch the clouds scudding overhead. Tiny brown birds were hopping around amongst the undergrowth.

‘Are we sure this is safe?’ asked Anyara.

‘Not entirely,’ replied Rothe before Orisian could draw breath.

‘They wouldn’t have brought us here if it wasn’t safe,’ Orisian said.

‘That’s true enough,’ said Yvane quietly. ‘They think we’ve rid ourselves of hunters, at least for now, or they’d not have left us. Ess’yr certainly would do nothing to put you at risk.’ She looked from Orisian to Anyara. ‘Do you understand the ra’tyn? The pledge she has made?’

Orisian frowned, not understanding. The word ra’tyn was vaguely familiar, but at first he could not say where he had heard it before. Then it came to him that Inurian had spoken it, when he lay by the Falls of Sarn . It had been a part of what he had said to Ess’yr; and Ess’yr had said something, in the moments before Yvane found them in Criagar Vyne, about having sworn an oath of some sort. He had forgotten about it.

‘I didn’t think so,’ mused Yvane. ‘She’ll not tell you herself, that’s certain. I overheard them talking—arguing would be more precise, I suppose—about it back in the ruins. In any case, you can rest easy that she will not put you in danger.’

‘But they cannot speak for the wights in this camp,’ muttered Rothe.

‘Things go a little differently in the Dihrve valley,’ said Yvane. ‘Huanin and Kyrinin share much of the land here. It’s a rough kind of peace but it’s peace nevertheless, so I’ll give you a word of advice; two, in fact. Do not speak of “wights” too freely here. It is something you would call an enemy, and as I say, things go a little differently here. Second, no Kyrinin will be willingly parted from spear or bow while they are outside a camp. For a Huanin to be asking for it . . . Varryn bears the full kin’thyn, and he didn’t get that by being shy about spilling blood. He must like you, or he’d have given you the spear point first.’

Rothe lapsed into glum silence after that. Once, Orisian thought, the shieldman might have had something to say about Kyrinin pride.

Time slipped by. They ate and drank. Orisian and Anyara dozed. There was a rustling amongst the trees to the west of them that had Rothe springing upright and clutching his dagger. For a few moments they were all poised, listening intently for any other sound. Then there was a sharp, grunting bark and the sound of some animal bounding off through the woods.

‘Marsh deer,’ said Yvane.

Varryn returned alone. He had been gone no more than a couple of hours.

‘Come,’ was all he said.

This was a very different vo’an to the one Orisian had seen before. Emerging from the dense woodland they arrived upon the brink of a lake fringed with vast swathes of reeds and rushes. The winter camp reached out over the marsh and water on stilted platforms and jetties of wood. There were many huts made of animal hides stretched across wooden frames, more permanent structures than the domed tents he had seen in In’hynyr’s camp. At the edge of the platforms were tethered rafts of logs which supported more shelters. A powerful scent spilled from sheds where racks of fish hung over smoking fires. The whole place had a settled feel that suggested it had been here for many years; there were probably twice as many Kyrinin here as in the vo’an on the southern flanks of the Car Criagar. A few children stopped what they were doing to watch the strange party as Varryn led them up on to one of the platforms, but the adults largely ignored them.

Varryn guided them to a hut out over the water.

‘Sleep here,’ he said. ‘I speak with the vo’an’tyr.’

‘Where’s Ess’yr?’ Orisian asked. ‘Is she all right?’

Varryn nodded. ‘She will rest. You all rest.’

‘And tomorrow?’

‘Is tomorrow,’ Varryn said, with the faintest shrug of his shoulders. ‘No harm comes here.’

The Black Road had taken over the old inn at Sirian’s Dyke. The inn’s staff were dead or had taken flight, like all the inhabitants of the village. Shraeve’s Inkallim had put a guard on the stores of ale and wine, but some of the food stocks had been shared out. In the hot, crowded room where weary travellers had rested and slaked their thirst, warriors now jostled for space in a constant hubbub of excited talk and shouts. The mood was good even without the encouragement of drink; almost all of them had been present at the fall of Castle Anduran, and that victory still intoxicated them.

Their advance down the valley had been unopposed, until they came to Sirian’s Dyke itself. Just outside the village they had routed a motley force of two hundred Lannis men—warriors and common folk mixed together—and they had done it by the strength of their arms alone. The woodwights had melted away, gone to wage their own war against the Fox; almost all of the Tarbains had scattered to plunder hamlets and farmsteads; nobody had seen the na’kyrim Aeglyss since Kanin had confronted him in the White Owl camp outside Anduran. It was a purer fight now, Blood against Blood, and tasted the better for it.

Despite the press of bodies in the room, there was space around one table: the best table, close by the blazing fire. Wain, Shraeve and Cannek sat there, eating in silence. In the days since Kanin left for the Car Criagar, Wain and Shraeve had become the centre of all attention, the focus of the army’s strength, the wellspring of its faith. And so everyone kept a respectful distance from the sister of the new Horin-Gyre Thane and the mistress of the Battle . Cannek of the Hunt passed almost unnoticed, which was as he would wish it.

Shraeve disposed of the bread and meat in front of her methodically, without enthusiasm. One of her Inkallim came and placed a flagon of wine on the table.

‘I thought we should allow ourselves some celebration,’ Shraeve said in response to Wain’s questioning look. ‘They deserve it.’

Inkallim were coming out from the kitchens, distributing similar flagons around the room. They were met with roars and cheers that might have shaken loose the roof timbers. Cannek winced at the eruption of joy.

‘We agreed to keep it locked away,’ Wain said.

Shraeve smiled icily. ‘There’s not enough to cause any trouble, and they’ve fought hard enough to earn it, don’t you think?’

Wain glanced around, noting that none of the Inkallim were sharing in the bounty their leader thought they had earned. Shraeve had been more forward since Kanin had left. Before, she had been content to exert absolute power over her own Inkallim; now she was finding small ways to spread her net wider, as if she wanted to test Wain’s patience. It might have to come to a head, but tonight was not the time.

Cannek pushed away his plate, leaving half the food uneaten. He drained a cup of wine and rose.

‘I will leave you two fell ladies to your pleasantries,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve work to do tonight. We’re going to take a look down the road to Glasbridge.’

‘I’ve a dozen scouts out that way already,’ muttered Wain.

Cannek shrugged. ‘We of the Hunt like to feel useful,’ he said lightly. ‘You wouldn’t want us loitering around here at a loose end, would you?’

As her fellow Inkallim departed Shraeve laid down a chicken leg she had been gnawing. She pressed a cloth precisely against her lips, leaving small greasy stains on the material.

‘It is best to leave the Hunt to their own devices,’ she murmured. ‘However good your scouts are, Cannek’s are better. If there was only a single mouse in a field of oats, the Hunt could find it.’

‘Yet they cannot tell me what has become of Aeglyss, can they? Or is it will not?’

Shraeve gave a disinterested shrug of her shoulders. She was not looking at Wain; her eyes drifted idly over the crowds that filled the inn. Faces were reddening, now that the wine and ale were flowing, and voices grew louder.

‘He slipped by all of us,’ the Inkallim said. ‘The woodwights are cunning enough to test even the Hunt’s skills. Anyway, does it matter? Your brother made it clear he had no further use for him, or for the White Owls.’

‘It matters little,’ Wain replied. She was careful to keep her tone flat, unrevealing. In truth, she was uneasy that the na’kyrim had disappeared, and with him the alliance—however illusory—he had forged on Horin-Gyre’s behalf with the White Owls. Her father had always seen Aeglyss as nothing more than a key to unlock the door to Lannis-Haig, to be discarded once his usefulness was at an end. Now that the breach had come, though, Wain suspected it would have been better had they killed him. As it was, he was wandering around somewhere, out of their sight and out of their reach. However useful he had proved, he had also proven himself unpredictable, perhaps dangerously so.

‘I only regret that we don’t know where he is,’ she said, ‘and what he’s doing. I would not want him to turn up again unexpectedly, interfering.’

Shraeve gave her a sudden, bleak smile.

‘There is no wrong or right on the Black Road, only the unfolding of its inevitable course. You know that as well as I.’ Then she would say nothing else.

Wain took to her own room not long after. The evening had left a sour, unsettling twist in her thoughts. It did not overly concern her. The Black Road always went its own way; always confounded the expectations of those who walked it. Learning and accepting that was at the root of the creed. Yet . . . given their astonishing success in the last few weeks, it was strange that there was so little room in her mind for joy, for exultation. There were too many things casting small shadows across her to allow for that: Kanin pursuing his own, personal fate in the Car Criagar; Aeglyss and the White Owls off the leash; the Inkallim watching everything with their cold eyes. Wain was no longer sure this was the same war her dead father had set in motion.

Deep in the heart of the forest that the Huanin called Anlane, but they knew as Antyryn Hyr—the Thousand Tree-clad Valleys—the small band of White Owl Kyrinin paused in a glade. They had been walking for two days and two nights, following one of the First Tracks made by the God Who Laughed in the dawn of the five races. Ever since leaving the city in the valley, they had not paused: no sleep, food eaten on the move, no slackening of their steady, remorseless pace southward through the forests that were their home.

Only one of the faithless Huanin had managed to track their departure from the valley. They had killed her, and her hound, on the second day. It would not be fitting for one of the Huanin to follow where they were going. They had stripped her body and left it on open ground where the eaters of the dead would quickly find it.

The na’kyrim had remained bound all this time. They kept his arms lashed behind him, and kept him gagged, for they knew that he had a deceitful voice. The lies he told had the power to twist the hearer’s mind; the promises he made might put a hunger in the heart, but they had no more substance than the dew glistening on a spider’s web. It was in answer to promises broken, to hopes unfulfilled, that they had brought him all this way while their brothers and sisters hunted the enemy in the mountains beyond the valley. Every one of them would prefer to be amongst those making war upon the Fox, for they knew that this would be a war unlike anything that had gone before. The hated Huanin had ruled in the valley for hundreds of years, putting such a barrier between Fox and White Owl that only small raiding parties could make the crossing; now, with the strife between the Huanin tribes, the gate had been thrown open. The Black Road Huanin might have proved no more true to their word, no more trustworthy, than any others of their kind, but they had at least allowed hundreds of White Owls to march across the valley and into the enemy’s lands. It would be a bathing of spears to break the hearts of the Fox.

Still, all the promises of friendship, of alliance and benefit, that this na’kyrim had brought to the White Owls those many months ago had melted away like snow in the season of breaking buds. These warriors had seen with their own eyes the lord of the Huanin strike down the na’kyrim, curse him and cast him out from his councils and confidence. Where were the cattle, the iron that had been promised? Why were there still Huanin villages and huts standing on the naked ground that had been carved out of the Antyryn Hyr’s northern flanks? Why had the Huanin lords turned against the White Owls, after so much aid had been given? For all of this, there must be an answering. The na’kyrim was the child of a White Owl mother. They had made honest agreements with him, and held fast to them as they would with one of their people. He must answer for the ruin of those agreements.

They were within a day’s journey of their destination now. The First Track which they followed would run straight and true—and invisible to all save Kyrinin eyes—down into a great bowl of trees, across the wet, low land beneath that canopy and on to the very heart of their clan, the oldest and greatest vo’an of the White Owls. The camp lay upon the shallow, south-facing slope of a vale of oak and ash trees. Each winter for many lifetimes, hundreds had gathered there to see out the cold months. Their tents would be scattered across the valleyside, half-hidden by the venerable trees that sheltered and guarded them.

The Voice of the White Owl, as always, would have been amongst the first to arrive at those wintering grounds. The great domed tent of many-layered deerskins that was the Voice’s winter lodge would have been set up and formed the hub of the sprawling community that grew over the days and weeks. She slept there, and ate there, and gave her judgements. She listened to the songs that were sung on the bare ground before her lodge, and watched the kakyrin making their bone poles and weaving the anhyne there out of hazel and willow. When she dreamed, her predecessors whispered into her mind, for they knew where to find her. Sometimes, filled with their wisdom, she donned the white-feathered cape and mask and walked amongst her people as something other than herself. At winter’s end, when the black ash buds broke, a new Voice for the clan might be chosen, but nothing would change. Next year the Voice, whether old or new, would again be in that valley, in the same tent on the same patch of ground.

And it was to the Voice that they had resolved to take the na’kyrim. It was with her he had spoken when he came on behalf of the Black Road Huanin; it was to her he had given false promises. It would be she who passed judgement upon him.

Wain pushed open the window and leaned out into the dull, cold early morning. The fresh air cut through the stuffy atmosphere of the room and made her shiver. She had slept badly, disturbed as much by her own unsettled spirits as by the noise rising from the inn below.

There were many warriors in the yard, cleaning weapons, grooming their horses, tending cauldrons of steaming broth, dozing. Some stood around in quiet groups, arms folded and feet shifting against the chill. A few wore capes or coats they had looted from Anduran. It made them look a ragged collection.

Shraeve and a handful of her ravens came striding through the assembly. From her high vantage point Wain could see the uneasy glances, the sharp looks, that followed the Inkallim like a wake.

Conversations paused as they drew near, then restarted once they had passed.

Shraeve looked up and nodded at Wain. I’m sister to the Thane, Wain thought, and still the Children of the Hundred think themselves my equal; or my better. She withdrew from the window. A bowl of icy water stood on the table at the foot of the bed. She plunged her face into it. It chased the last remnants of sleep from her.

Shraeve was waiting for her downstairs, feeding logs to the fire that had burned all night. Wain looked about for her own captains, but saw only a couple of them, silently breaking their fasts on bowls of oatmeal.

‘Cannek sent word before dawn,’ Shraeve said. She kicked the fire with a booted foot, sending sparks spinning up the chimney and out across the flagstones.

‘He did?’ said Wain, casting about irritably for something to eat. Seeing nothing, she snapped at the seated Horin-Gyre warriors. ‘Find me some bread.’

One of the men rose and disappeared in the direction of the kitchens.

‘He did,’ said Shraeve. ‘There’s another company gathered outside Glasbridge. What’s left of the Lannis-Haig fighting strength, and half the hale men of the town from the sound of it. Enough to test us, perhaps.’

Wain shot an irritated glare at the captain who emerged from the kitchens bearing a platter of bread and cheese for her. She snatched it from his hands.

‘Where are my scouts?’ she demanded of the startled man. ‘Why have I had no reports? Go and find someone who can tell me where they are.’

The warrior left without hesitation, leaving his companion to hunch a little lower over his bowl of oatmeal and hope to avoid the wrath of the Thane’s sister.

‘They’ll tell you the same as Cannek told me,’ Shraeve said.

‘And why did he not tell me himself?’ Wain demanded.

‘I have come to tell you. What does it matter who bears the message?’

Wain sat down and began to tear at the bread. She did not like the Glas valley bread; it was not the same as the rich, coarse loaves they made north of the Stone Vale. Shraeve sat down opposite her without waiting for an invitation. The twinned swords strapped across her back loomed on the edge of Wain’s vision like upraised fists.

‘Very well,’ Wain said. ‘How many?’

‘We cannot be certain, but Cannek’s guess is a thousand Lannis fighting men and at least as many again townsfolk. And a few hundred Kilkry-Haig warriors: the survivors from Grive and a scattering of new arrivals.’

Wain began to turn the thick band of gold on the second finger of her left hand. She frowned in concentration, her food forgotten now.

‘Fewer than we met at Grive,’ she mused, ‘but then, we are far fewer now as well.’

She had perhaps a thousand warriors within reach of Sirian’s Dyke and fit to take the field. Another three hundred or so were back in Anduran, and must remain there to ensure the town and castle stayed secure. More than a thousand still besieged Tanwrye, along with hundreds from the other Bloods of the Black Road . They could not come to her aid until that obstinate town’s garrison was broken. So, to face whatever threat might march up the road from Glasbridge she had at best a thousand swords, and the fifty or so of Shraeve’s Battle Inkallim who remained alive and capable of wielding a blade. If Ragnor oc Gyre had answered their calls for aid, if he had sent just a fraction of his strength south . . . but the Black Road did not deal in ifs.

‘We can make our stand here as well as anywhere else,’ she said. ‘If we take refuge inside Anduran we will only delay matters a little, until they can bring up enough strength to crush us there.’

‘Indeed,’ Shraeve agreed. She leaned forwards, lowering her voice. ‘Perhaps we can hope for more than merely making a stand, though. Does your heart not hunger for Glasbridge? It’s the last great town of Lannis-Haig . If we break it they’ll be cast back all the way to Kolglas; we would hold the entire valley, from the Stone Vale to the sea.’

‘Of course I hunger for it. It was the home of my forefathers.’

Shraeve sank back in her chair. ‘Your hunger might be sated yet, given the willing sacrifice of a few lives.’

Wain sighed. ‘Whatever you have in mind, Shraeve, just tell me. My belly’s too empty for talking in circles.’

The Inkallim drove the four great horses past the inn. The beasts were massive, but bedraggled and cowed by the switches the ravens beat them with. Wain watched not the animals, but her own warriors who stood silently watching this strange procession. Wherever the ravens had found these horses—some farm outside Sirian’s Dyke, no doubt—they knew how to make them into a spectacle. They herded them right through the village, through the Black Road army, and every curious eye followed their progress. Chains, scavenged from the smithy by the inn, dragged behind the horses, cutting ruts into the mud road.

A crowd followed the Inkallim and their horses to the edge of the village. The Inkallim went on, out on to the marshes that lay along the foot of the Dyke itself. Shraeve stood at Wain’s side.

‘It will give our people something to remember until their last day dawns,’ Shraeve murmured.

Wain did not reply. She knew that what Shraeve wanted all these watching warriors to remember was that it was the Inkallim who had done this. What was about to happen would be a rich and nourishing symbol for the faithful, another story to add to the legends of the Children of the Hundred.

Out on the wettest ground, where sluices and pipes fed water over and through the huge dam and into the reborn Glas below it, some of the Inkallim turned back. Just six of their number remained with the uneasy, dishevelled horses. One of them climbed to the top of the dam and stood there for a moment or two, looking north. The breeze stirred his black hair. Wain could imagine the sight that greeted him: the great expanse of listless water and perhaps far out, at the edge of his vision on this cloud-bleared day, the broken remnants of Kan Avor standing proud of the lake. Satisfied, he went back down to the horses, and the great task began.

The Inkallim dug away the earth and turf from the face of the dam; bound chains about the great logs that ran through it; whipped the horses until they put all their huge strength into the effort to pull the structure apart. As time passed, many of the watchers drifted away. The horses laboured on, the Inkallim never paused. Timbers and rocks were scattered around the dam’s foot. Water trickled through until the ravens were up to their knees. An hour passed, and then a second.

The sound began softly. A seething, hissing, heaving rumble, it built over long seconds. To Wain it was the sound and feel of sun-loosened snow crashing down some far-away mountain slope. Pebbles and clumps of earth were shaken loose from the sloping dam wall. Like blood spurting from myriad tiny wounds, water was flowing through the dyke. The four great horses began to whinny in fear. They struggled against their chains; one bolted free and went pounding through the marshes in plumes of spray. The six Inkallim stood, gazing up at Sirian’s Dyke. One turned towards Wain, Shraeve and the score or so of remaining watchers and raised her arm in silent salute.

And then all thought, all senses, were submerged beneath a great roar as the fabric of Sirian’s Dyke began tearing itself apart. The seat of the rupture was deep and low in the dam, and it burst from its base, flicking rocks into the air and releasing jets and cascades of water. Billowing clouds of mist soared up and there was thunder as the centre of the dyke disintegrated and the river, freed of restraint for the first time in more than a century, burst in full, tumultuous flood down towards Glasbridge and the sea, bearing Inkallim and horses away in an instant.