Bloodheir

Book 2: The Godless World

by Brian Ruckley

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

The world has fallen from its former state. The war between the clans of the Black Road< and the True Bloods has spread. For Orisian, thane of the ruined Lannis Blood, there is no time to grieve the loss of his family, brutally slain by the invading armies. The Black Road must be stopped. However, as more blood is spilled on the battlefields, so each side in the conflict becomes more riven by internal dissent and disunity. Amidst the mounting chaos, Aeglyss the na'kyrim uses his new-found powers to twist everything and everyone around him to serve his own mad desires. Meanwhile, the long-dormant Anain are stirring -- and when the most potent race the world has ever known returns, the bloodletting may never stop. Bloodheir is the stunning sequel to Winterbirth, one of the most acclaimed epic fantasy debuts of recent years.

Release date: April 1, 2009

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 656

Sample

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE TRUE BLOODS

Haig

Lannis-Haig

Kilkry-Haig

Dargannan-Haig

Ayth-Haig

Taral-Haig

Haig Blood

Gryvan oc Haig, The High Thane, Thane of Thanes

Abeh oc Haig, Gryvan’s wife

Aewult nan Haig, Gryvan’s first son, the Bloodheir

Ishbel, Aewult’s companion

Kale, Gryvan’s bodyguard and Captain of his Shield

Mordyn Jerain, the Shadowhand, Chancellor of the Haig Blood, a Tal Dyreen

Tara Jerain, The Chancellor’s wife

Torquentine, A man in Vaymouth

Magrayn, A woman in Vaymouth, Torquentine’s doorkeeper

Lammain, Craftmaster of the Goldsmiths

Lagair Haldyn, Gryvan’s Steward in Kolkyre

Lannis-Haig Blood

Orisian oc Lannis-Haig, The Thane

Anyara nan Lannis-Haig, Orisian’s sister

Taim Narran, Captain of Castle Anduran

Jaen, Taim’s wife

Rothe, Orisian’s shieldman

Coinach, Anyara’s shieldman

Torcaill, A warrior

The Dead: Kennet, Orisian’s father, killed at Kolglas

Lairis, Orisian’s mother, died of the Heart Fever

Fariel, Orisian’s elder brother, died of the Heart Fever

Croesan, The late Thane, Orisian’s uncle, killed at Anduran

Naradin, Croesan’s son, killed at Anduran

Eilan, Naradin’s wife, killed at Anduran

Inurianv, Kennet’s na’kyrim counsellor, killed at Sarn’s Leap

Kilkry-Haig Blood

Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig, The Thane

Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig, Lheanor’s wife

Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig, Lheanor’s second son, now the Bloodheir

Cailla, A kitchen maid in Kolkyre

Ochan the Cook, A man in Kolkyre

Ammen Sharp, Ochan’s son

Herraic, Lheanor’s cousin, Captain of the Highfast garrison

The Dead: Gerain, Lheanor’s first son, killed in battle at Grive

Dargannan-Haig Blood

Igryn oc Dargannan-

Haig, Former Thane, now blinded and imprisoned at Vaymouth

THE BLOODS OF THE BLACK ROAD

Gyre

Horin-Gyre

Gaven-Gyre

Wyn-Gyre

Fane-Gyre

and The Inkallim

Gyre Blood

Ragnor oc Gyre, The High Thane, Thane of Thanes

Temegrin, the Eagle, Third Captain of the High Thane’s armies

Horin-Gyre Blood

Kanin oc Horin-Gyre, The Thane

Wain nan Horin-Gyre, Kanin’s sister

Vana oc Horin-Gyre, Mother to Kanin and Wain, widow of Angain

Igris, Kanin’s shieldman

  The Dead: Angain, The late Thane, died in his bed

Inkallim

Theor, First of the Lore Inkall

Nyve, First of the Battle Inkall

Avenn, First of the Hunt Inkall

Fiallic, Banner-captain and field commander of the Battle Inkall

Goedellin, Inner Servant of the Lore Inkall, emissary of Theor

Shraeve, A captain of the Battle Inkall

Cannek, A Hunt Inkallim

OTHERS

Huanin

Kyrinin

Na’kyrim

Huanin

Alem T’anarch, Ambassador of the Dornach Kingship to the Haig Blood

Kyrinin

Ess’yr, A woman of the Fox clan, now in the company of Orisian

Varryn, Ess’yr’s brother, now in the company of Orisian

Mar’athoin , A young warrior of the Heron clan

Hothyn, Son of the White Owl Voice, leader of a spear a’an

Na’kyrim

Yvane, A na’kyrim, now in the company of Orisian

Hammarn, A na’kyrim from Koldihrve, now in the company of Orisian

Cerys, A na’kyrim, the Elect of Highfast

Amonyn, A na’kyrim in Highfast, lover of Cerys

Olyn, A na’kyrim in Highfast, Keeper of Crows

Tyn, A na’kyrim, the Dreamer in Highfast

Eshenna, A na’kyrim in Highfast, originally from Dyrkyrnon

Bannain, A na’kyrim in Highfast, a messenger

K’rina, A na’kyrim from Dyrkyrnon, once foster-mother to Aeglyss

Aeglyss, A na’kyrim formerly in the service of the Horin-Gyre Blood, survivor of the Breaking Stone of the White Owls

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

For years, an uneasy peace has held between the True Bloods and the followers of the Black Road, whose uncompromising creed of predestination long ago led to their exile into the north. The Lannis and Kilkry Bloods remain wary of the threat posed by the Black Road, but elsewhere in the domains of Gryvan oc Haig, the High Thane of the True Bloods, thoughts have turned to commerce and conquest in the far-distant south.

On the night of the annual festival of Winterbirth, sudden disaster engulfs the Lannis Blood. Their frontier stronghold of Tanwrye is besieged by one Black Road army; a second, impossibly, emerges from the vast forests of Anlane to assault their capital at Anduran. And Castle Kolglas, home to the Lannis Thane’s nephew Orisian, is overrun by Inkallim, the dreaded elite warriors of the Black Road. Orisian sees his father slain, and his sister Anyara carried off into captivity along with his friend and mentor, the na’kyrim Inurian. Orisian himself barely escapes, fleeing into the wilderness with his bodyguard Rothe.

The Black Road invaders, led by Kanin and Wain nan Horin-Gyre, have forged an improbable and fragile alliance with the White Owl Kyrinin, mediated by a bitter na’kyrim named Aeglyss. With surprise on their side, and the fierce fatalism of their creed driving them on, they seize Anduran and slaughter the Lannis Thane and his family. Amidst the ruin, Inurian increasingly comes to fear that still greater danger lurks unrecognised, for he senses in Aeglyss both disfiguring anger and immense, as yet untapped, power.

Orisian receives unexpected aid from the Fox Kyrinin, and is soon reunited with Anyara and Inurian, who have made good their escape. But it is a joyless reunion: the enemy are in close pursuit and Inurian has been gravely wounded. As his strength fades, Inurian compels Orisian and the others to leave him behind.

Aeglyss confronts the dying Inurian, pleading for his aid and guidance, offering the chance of survival in exchange. Inurian refuses, and is slain by an enraged Aeglyss. Increasingly unstable, Aeglyss then finds himself rejected by the leaders of the Black Road as well. The alliance he built for them with the White Owls is repudiated by Kanin nan Horin-Gyre and Aeglyss is seized by the Kyrinin, required to answer for the failure of the promises he made.

Orisian and his companions find brief refuge in the mountainous Car Criagar with Yvane, another na’kyrim, but continuing pursuit drives them on and they make for Koldihrve, a remote town where they hope to find a ship to carry them south. In the course of their journey Orisian’s interest in Ess’yr, the Kyrinin woman acting as both guide and guardian to him, grows. He comes to realise that she was Inurian’s lover, but is nevertheless increasingly, though hesitantly, attracted to her himself.

Events are moving rapidly elsewhere, as the world slips towards chaos. The forces of the Black Road, led by Wain nan Horin-Gyre and by the implacable Inkallim Shraeve, continue their remorseless destruction of the Lannis Blood. In the far north, the secretive leaders of the Inkallim compete with the High Thane of Gyre himself for influence over this invasion that has achieved successes far beyond anyone’s expectations; in the south, Gryvan oc Haig reluctantly and sluggishly assembles an army to march in support of Lannis, relying always upon the assurances of his infamous Chancellor, Mordyn Jerain, that events can be easily controlled.

Orisian and his companions escape on a ship even as Black Road warriors, with Kanin himself at their head, descend upon Koldihrve. They are carried to safety in Kolkyre, the capital of the Kilkry Blood. Meanwhile, the White Owl Kyrinin have made a fateful decision. Considering themselves betrayed, they crucify Aeglyss upon their ancient Breaking Stone. His agonies, though, lead not to death but to transformation. And in the moment of that transformation, na’kyrim everywhere – whether Yvane in Kolkyre’s Tower of Thrones, or those hiding away in the fortress sanctuary of Highfast – sense the burgeoning of his terrible power; power that could have dire consequences for everyone in the Godless World.

PROLOGUE

I

I will set the tale down here much as I had it from an old woman in Hoke, as she had it from her grandmother, and she from her grandmother before. I doubt there is anyone who has not heard it in one form or another. It is a good tale, but the wise will not take it as the truth, whole and entire. However flawed our understanding of the Anain may be, we can assume that they would not trouble to be so clear in the expression of their desire as this tale would have us believe. Nor does it seem likely that they would display even such brief patience as the story suggests. We lesser races, after all, must seem to them as slow and stilted and inconsequential as the mute and dull beasts of the field seem to us.

Tane, the Shining City, had fallen. The Kyrinin were undone, their lords and captains slain, their armies scattered to the winds. The streets were strewn with bodies and the drains overflowing with blood. The triumphant Huanin armies, marching under the argent stag-banner of the Alsire King, had broken down the walls and claimed the city as their own.

The conquering King stared out from the highest room of the Rose Citadel, in Tane’s gilded heart, and he looked upon his work and was glad, for though he saw ruin and fire, still the city was the greatest in all the world and in it he would be the greatest King.

Now a tall tree grew in the courtyard outside that noble tower. The tree stretched a branch in through the window, and the branch twisted and cracked as it came. In the sound of its wooden bones breaking was a voice that spoke to the King.

“This city has run with blood, and the mind of the world is riven with pain and grief and fury. It is enough. Now we claim this place and will cleanse it and make it ours. You must take your armies away.”

“I will not,” the King replied, “for my warriors have given their lives to win this great city for me and it is to be the home and heart of my people.”

At these words, the branch withdrew and the great tree was once more a tree, silent and still. The King summoned his servants and said to them, “Take your axes and cut down the tree in the courtyard, for I mislike its countenance. And when you have cut it down, burn the wood so that not a twig remains.”

On the evening of the following day the King was again in that high chamber. Leaves blew in through the open window and spun upon the breeze and filled the room, and in the sighing of their dance was a voice that spoke to the King.

“This war of yours fouls the mind of the world. This city is filled with the cries of the dead and it is no place for the living. We will see an end to this war; we will take this city and still its torment. Yours is the heart that will be broken if you do not depart from here with all your host, for this is a city of the dead and so it will remain.”

But again the King shook his head. “If I leave as you request, all that has gone before – all the strife and the struggle that cast their dark pall over the land these last years – all this will be for nothing. I will not go, for all the lives that have been taken and all the loss that has been suffered were for the purpose of bringing me here.”

And at these words of the King, the leaves that were in the room fell to the floor and spoke no more to him. The King summoned his servants and said to them, “Clear out these leaves and make a fire of them in the courtyard. When they are burned away to nothing, return and close this window up with shutters, and nail it fast. I dislike the breeze.”

Now the King had a daughter, who was as bright in his eyes as the morning. On the third night the father and the daughter ate together in that highest chamber of the Rose Citadel, and made one another great promises for a glorious future.

But the Citadel shook in its stone bones, and the walls trembled. The shutters that had been fixed across the window were torn apart. Vines that grew without the Citadel came in like a thousand writhing snakes and they seized the King’s daughter. They lifted her from the floor and coiled about her.

And the voice of the vines said, “Twice you have refused us, and thrice we will not allow. You will depart from this place on the morrow, or nothing of your happiness will remain unruined.”

And the vines broke the neck of the King’s child, and cracked her spine and snapped her arms and legs and cast her down on the cold stone floor at the King’s feet.

As the heartbroken King’s host departed the next morning, the ground shivered behind them and brought forth saplings: an ocean of trees sprang from the blood-fed loam and reached up towards the sun. When night fell and the King turned and looked back the way he had come, he saw not the great plain there had once been but a forest so vast that his eye could not track its limits. And of Tane, of the greatest and most wondrous city in all the world, there was no sign, for the forest had swallowed it and all its countless corpses.

Thus ended the War of the Tainted. Thus was born the Deep Rove, and men called it the Forest of the Dead and did not walk beneath its ill-rumoured canopy.

from Tales of the Anain by Arvent of Dun Aygll

II

K’rina had been weeping intermittently for days. Her na’kyrim eyes, once so beautiful, were now red, veined and bleary. She did not sleep, took no food, hardly spoke. Her friends feared for her, but she did not respond to their efforts to help or comfort her.

She wandered amongst the pools and reed-beds that surrounded Dyrkyrnon. She squatted down beside stagnant ponds and peered blankly at the grey water. When wet fogs and drizzles drifted across the vast marshes she did not seem to notice, but allowed the moisture to settle on her hair and skin, mingling with her tears. Everywhere she went she was followed by two girls. They stayed a few paces behind her and did not intrude upon her grief-fuelled daze. They simply watched, and kept her from harm, and each night reported to the elders.

On the fourth evening K’rina did not return to her sleeping hut. Instead, she kept walking: out into the water-maze of the marshes, heading north-west. One of the attendant girls brought word to the village and the elders sent men to bring K’rina back. She did not struggle or protest. When they took hold of her she slumped into their arms and would say nothing.

In K’rina’s sleeping hut, bathed in candlelight and the scent of soothing herbs, a tall na’kyrim knelt over the stricken woman. He pushed his fingers through her hair again and again, pressing each fingertip to her scalp. He whispered constantly in the tongue of the Heron Kyrinin. Black spiralling tattoos covered his face, even his closed eyelids. Beneath his firm touch K’rina was unresponsive. She did not weep, but her eyes were bleak and exhausted, as if they had not seen sleep for weeks. She stared up into the shadows that lurked against the hut’s roof.

At length, the tall na’kyrim rocked back on his heels. He regarded K’rina with a puzzled expression, then spread a woollen blanket over her and rose. He left, ducking his head to pass out into the wet night.

A cold rain was falling. The grass around the domed huts was sodden, the earth bloated with water. Paths of rush matting had been laid down. The man took only a few paces down one of these before he found his way blocked by a much shorter figure, cloaked in a too-large rain cape and leaning on a staff.

“It’s wet,” the tall man said. “Why aren’t you inside, Arquan?”

“I will be soon enough. None of us would last long here if a little water pained us.”

The tall man grunted in distant amusement and cast narrowed eyes up towards the sky. There was nothing to see: no stars, no moon, nothing but the darkness from which the remorseless rain fell.

“I wanted to hear how K’rina was,” Arquan said from beneath the cowl of his cape. “Can you help her, Lacklaugh?”

The taller man stepped around Arquan and walked on.

“We shall all be meeting in the morning,” he said as he went. “Why not wait until then?”

Arquan hurried after him, spilling rainwater from creases in his cape.

“I’d rather not. I’m sleeping badly, as all of us are: the nights are long and worrisome. I’d sooner talk than search in vain for rest. And you know K’rina has been a good friend to me.”

“Come, then. I’ll give you some shelter and something warm to drink. I can’t offer anything to make your nights less worrisome, though.”

Lacklaugh set out low stools for them to sit on and warmed wine beside the fire. Arquan, hunched up on one of the stools, rubbed his hands together and splayed them to soak up some of the fire’s heat. Stumps were all that remained of the two smallest fingers on his left hand.

“I’ve always preferred frost and ice to these winter rains,” he murmured.

“We’ll be ice-bound soon enough,” Lacklaugh grunted. He was scraping shavings from a block of hard cheese, delicately picking morsels from the knife’s blade with his lips.

“Did K’rina have anything to say for herself, then?” Arquan asked. He helped himself to a cup of the dark red wine.

Lacklaugh mutely shook his head.

“Were you able to help her?”

“Not much.” Lacklaugh unlaced his calf-length boots and pulled them from his feet. One had a long Kyrinin hunting knife scabbarded along its side – a legacy, like the tattoos that swirled across his face, of his youth, when each summer he had run with a Heron spear a’an. “She might sleep a little tonight, but what ails her is beyond my reach. I cannot even ease my own dreams, or still the itch of disquiet at the back of my own thoughts. How could I hope to heal her, when what she feels is so much more sharp-edged?”

“Yes,” sighed Arquan. “And we know why it’s she who suffers so much more than the rest of us, don’t we?”

Lacklaugh shot him a grim glance. “Perhaps.”

“Of course we do. She was the only one who loved – liked, even – that poisonous little wretch. She never forgave us for casting him out. It’s been years, but I doubt there’s been a day gone by when she’s not thought of him, not grieved over his absence.”

“No,” Lacklaugh grunted. “She has carried a secret hope, all this time, that she would one day see Aeglyss again.” He sighed, staring at the boot he still held in his hand. “She will go to him.”

“What?”

“The intent, the desire, is clear in her mind. What is left of her mind, at least. She is on the brink of madness, I think. Ensnared. The . . . currents . . . in the Shared are far too strong for her.”

“But why go to him?” cried Arquan in a mix of alarm, anger, confusion. “What’s been flowing in the Shared these last few days is . . . is corruption. Poison. Nothing you would want to draw nearer to.”

Lacklaugh shrugged and tossed the boots to the foot of his sleeping mat. He swallowed down a great mouthful of the warmed wine. “We feel unease, we feel unbalanced by the taint leaking into our minds. But you said it yourself: she loved Aeglyss. She cared for him as a mother might. What she feels now is not the same as we do. She does not sense the wrongness or the danger of it all, only the pain, the suffering. His pain and suffering. She thinks of him as her child, and what mother could help but go to her child at the sound of his torment?”

“Well, we can’t let her go,” said Arquan.

Again, Lacklaugh shrugged. “Short of binding her hands and feet, keeping her under guard day and night, I doubt we can prevent it.”

“Then we bind her. We guard her.”

“Dyrkyrnon is not a gaol; we are not gaolers.”

“Why not, if it’s the only way to keep one of our own safe? She must emerge from this waking dream some time, and then she’ll thank us. If Aeglyss is indeed at the root of this, there’s nothing but harm can come of it.”

“Oh, you will get no argument from me there. I said when we sent him away that he would bring nothing but misery wherever he went.”

“I went deep – as deep as I dare – last night,” growled Arquan. “You can’t tell quite what’s wrong, but everything feels out of kilter. And his presence is there, a shadow thrown across the Shared. Fouling it. All the old anger and contempt. The Shared reeks of it. But there’s power, too, like the echoes of a great shout.”

Lacklaugh sighed. “He was always strong, but to make himself felt all through the Shared like this . . . it defies understanding.”

“Agreed. Something happened, clearly. We all felt the moment when something . . . broke. Whatever happened, he’s not the Aeglyss we knew. Even then, when we cast him out, we were more than a little afraid of him, and of what he might do. Now . . .” Arquan shook his head as if shying away from the thought. “So what will you be saying to the rest of the elders tomorrow?” he asked.

“That I expect K’rina to keep trying to leave us, and that I see little sense in seeking to prevent her. If she stays here, she will only sink further and further into despair. She may harm herself, or someone else, in the end.”

Arquan stared into his cup of wine.

“Trouble’s even more likely to find her if she wanders off in search of Aeglyss,” he said disconsolately.

Lacklaugh rose. He took a fishing spear from the wall and peered at its viciously barbed point.

“I need to replace the bindings on this,” he muttered, and began searching around for some cord.

“This place hardens hearts,” Arquan said, though without the accusation or reproach that the words implied.

“It does,” agreed Lacklaugh as he sat back down and laid the spear across his knees. “Dyrkyrnon has never been a hotbed of soft hearts. But then, soft hearts are not what we have needed. If K’rina chooses to leave – however misguided the reasons for that choice – she puts herself beyond our protection. Our world is bounded by the pools, the mists. If we reach out beyond those limits, we invite the world to reach in. That is not what any of us would want.”

“No.”

“I still have friends amongst the Heron, though. I know young warriors who grow bored now that there is peace with the Hawk. No doubt they long for some kind of adventure. They might follow her – some of the way, at least. Guard her. Unless you want to volunteer as her guardian?”

“I’m an old man, and a coward.” Arquan raised his left hand, showing the stubs of his two missing fingers. “I had my fill of the wide world long ago. It kept part of me so that I should not forget just how much it disliked me.”

Lacklaugh did not look up. He was frowning in concentration as he wound the cord around the haft of his spear, binding the barbed bone point in place.

“I don’t suppose there’s any of us here who would leap at the chance to walk by her side,” Arquan said. “Not at the best of times, and certainly not if Aeglyss is waiting at the end of whatever road she wants to follow. Perhaps your Heron friends are the best we can do.”

“Perhaps they are,” said Lacklaugh, grimacing as he pulled the cord tight. “You should not condemn yourself, or the rest of us, too harshly, though. If Aeglyss is indeed the cause of this . . . this sickening of the Shared, none of us here could offer K’rina much in the way of protection. None of us has that kind of strength, for all that we have the most potent na’kyrim outside Adravane amongst our number.”

“We do,” agreed Arquan glumly, then corrected himself at once. “We did. It appears the one we cast out can now lay claim to that dubious honour.”

CHAPTER 1

Kilkry-Haig

Put ten Kilkry men in a Kolkyre tavern, ply them with drink for a time, and you will hear ten different views on how it came to pass that their Blood meekly surrendered its authority to the Haig line. And there will be a seam of truth running through each one of those views, for no single blow broke the strength and will of the Kilkry Blood. Rather, it was an accumulation of wounds and ill fortune that undid their rule.

Some fifty years before, Kilkry had led the other Bloods to victory against Gyre and the Black Road cult. Their immense losses in battle, and through defection to the Black Road, had still not been entirely made good. And even as Kilkry laboured beneath those lingering wounds, Haig was rising to new heights of strength and prosperity. It had taken a century and a half, but the lands around Vaymouth – ruined during the Storm Years – were at last restored to the bountiful fertility that had seen them called The Verdant Shores in the days when they fed half the Aygll Kingship. The Thanes of the Haig Blood had grown rich, their armies numerous, their influence over the Taral and Ayth Bloods pervasive, on the back of those lands.

When the time came, the men of Kilkry, and of Lannis, would willingly have taken up arms, but Cannoch oc Kilkry could not bring himself to return the Bloods to the horrors of civil strife. He bent his knee, and with nothing more than that Haig became highest of all the True Bloods. Hundreds – most likely thousands – would have died had Cannoch not humbled himself so, but you will find few people in the backstreets of Kolkyre prepared to thank him for it. The memory of better times suffuses this Blood, undimmed by the passage of time. Each generation is heir to the resentment and bitterness of the one before. These are people whose pride runs deep; they bred High Thanes once, and they are not likely to forget it.

from Hallantyr’s Sojourn

I

The na’kyrim lay curled on a pallet of interlaced hazel and juniper boughs inside the Voice’s lodge. His knees were pressed up into his chest. His face rested in the sheltering cup of his hands. There was a pale, thin crust of vomit on the pallet by his head, and on his lips. There had been almost nothing in his stomach to come up, for he had hardly eaten since being brought down from the Breaking Stone. There were terrible wounds beneath the bindings on his wrists. The bandages were stained brown and earth-red by his blood.

He was alone in the hut save for a single Kyrinin woman: an aged, time-worn, herb-wise healer. Outside, on the threshold of the lodge, two warriors were squatting down on their haunches. Their purpose was not the imprisonment of the na’kyrim but his protection. Ever since Aeglyss had been taken down from the Breaking Stone and brought back here, there had been ill-tempered argument and dissent. This, the heart and home of the White Owl clan, the ancient vo’an around which its life turned, had been shaken. Children were kept out of sight while their parents met around the fires, arguing, accusing. Some wanted to kill the na’kyrim, to cut his throat and leave him for the eaters of the dead in the forest, as befitted an outsider, a betrayer. Others caught the scent of significance, of purpose. He had survived the Breaking Stone, and when he had been taken down from it and carried back to the vo’an, something else had come with him: something untouchable, invisible, unnamed. But it could be felt.

The na’kyrim woke. He blinked. The healer came and stood over him.

“You have not slept long,” she said.

“I cannot rest. Whenever I close my eyes, my head is filled with a stench of malice and doubt. I’m surrounded by it here.”

The healer’s expression offered no denial. Aeglyss tried to raise himself up on his elbows, but failed. He slumped back with a hiss.

“You are weak,” the healing woman murmured. “You need food, and water. And I cannot stop the weeping of your wounds. Your blood runs like a river. It is poisoned.”

“You can’t heal what ails me,” Aeglyss said. “Can’t even understand it. Your own blood is too pure for that. My wounds will look after themselves. Whatever it is that’s in me, it’s not poison. Not poison.”

He grimaced and twisted his head as if afflicted by some blinding light.

“No, no,” he gasped. His thin hands went to the sides of his head. New blood bloomed at his wrists, blushing through his bandages. The healing woman took a step backwards, away from him and towards the doorway that led out into the bright, safe world beyond. She could smell death here, in the air and the hides and the earth of the lodge. It should, perhaps, be burned when the na’kyrim was gone.

“Wait,” Aeglyss snapped, reaching out to her, clawing the air. His eyes were pressed shut. “Do not leave me.”

With a great effort he shifted to the edge of the pallet. He opened watery eyes, swung his feet out to rest on the ground.

“A passing moment only. It is so . . . so much, you see. You could not imagine. The Shared runs in me like . . . it boils.”

“You are bleeding,” the woman observed.

Aeglyss glanced at the bloodstained bindings and gave a faint shrug.

“Leave it. It’s not . . . you must do something for me. Go to the Voice. Tell her I would talk with her.”

The Voice of the White Owls was an old woman, silver-haired, stooped, slow. She wore the pale, speckled feathers of the owl around her neck. She leaned on a staff of oak. She whispered as she came, murmuring phrases that had been passed down over centuries as tools to focus and clear the mind. The healing woman followed in her footsteps.

They found the na’kyrim on his knees in the centre of the lodge, beside the ashen remains of the fire. He was flexing the fingers of his right hand, opening and closing them again and again. Both Voice and healer hesitated in the lodge’s entrance, like deer catching danger on the wind.

“Do you mean to live or die?” the Voice asked.

Aeglyss looked up. At first his expression was blank, as if he did not recognise her, or did not speak the people’s tongue. Then the clouds cleared from his eyes and he grimaced.

“Live. Help me up.”

The Voice nodded to the healing woman, but she hesitated, reluctant.

“Help me up,” rasped Aeglyss, and such was the weight of that command that even the Voice took a step forwards before she caught herself. The healing woman was faster, and more pliable. She went to the na’kyrim’s side, and he hauled himself up onto his feet, anchoring himself with handfuls of her clothes.

“Even after I have survived the Breaking Stone, there are those who would deny me my place here,” said Aeglyss bitterly. “Do not imagine I am deaf, or blind, to it.”

“Some are afraid,” said the Voice. “Others are uncertain. Bad dreams assail us in the night since you returned. We are afflicted by ill tempers, mistrust. The people fear that your presence discolours their thoughts. They say you have clouded my judgement; that you have done so before, and do so now. That you betrayed us to your Huanin friends. They say we should take the life that has been spared by the Breaking Stone. Others say it is not for us to take a life that the Stone refuses.”

“Bad dreams? Nothing that stalks this camp is anything more than a faint echo of what burns inside my head. What you feel is a breeze, a moth’s flutter. I suffer the full storm, waking or sleeping.”

Still he clung to the healer’s shoulder, unable to support his own weight. He was more than a head taller than the old woman, but wasted and lean, like a sapling spindling its way up towards distant light. She was steady beneath the burden.

“And I was the betrayed, not the betrayer,” muttered Aeglyss. “But you, Voice? What do you say? What conclusions have you reached in all your pondering, your delay?”

“I have not decided,” the Voice said carefully. “There has not been enough talk. Not yet. You live, for now, and I . . .” she stumbled over her words, twitched her head in a kind of sudden uncertainty that no Voice should every display “. . . there is no decision yet. Until there is a decision, you cannot die. That must be enough.”

Aeglyss laughed. The healing woman started away from him, alarmed at the raucous human sound. He held her there at his side; leaned on her.

“Not enough. No. Never enough. Never . . .”

He swayed. His eyelids fluttered, his chin sank down towards his chest. The healing woman, freed of some intangible restraint that revealed itself only by its absence, darted away from him, making for the protection of the Voice. Aeglyss staggered a few steps to one side. The Voice watched impassively. The na’kyrim steadied himself. His eyes opened, clear and sharp once more. He lowered himself gingerly down onto the sleeping pallet, and smiled ruefully at the two women.

“It will take time, for me to learn. To control this. I need one thing from you, though. Now, not later, not after any decisions. I will give the White Owls a gift of great strength in time, Voice, but first, you must do this one thing for me: send spear a’ans south. There is a woman, a Heron-born na’kyrim, who will come to me from out of the south. We – I – must have her.”

The Voice was shaking her head. She tried to deny him. His brow furrowed. His mouth tightened. He held out his hands, palms up, towards her.

“You must do this one small thing for me, Voice,” he whispered. Quite soft. Quite calm, but his voice was daggers in her ears, a cold compulsion in her heart. She nodded once and went, shivering, from the lodge, the healing woman close behind, casting fearful, awed glances back over her shoulder.

And in the lodge, Aeglyss the na’kyrim sank back on the pallet of juniper and hazel boughs. He held his arms flat at his sides, a little away from his body. His lips trembled now, in pain or fear or horror. The blood came freely from his wounds, saturating the cloth wrappings about his wrists, falling in viscous drips down amongst the twigs and fronds beneath him.

II

The road ran up from the south towards Kolkyre through flat farmlands. Inland, low hills filled the eastern horizon; to the west there was nothing but foaming waves rumbling on weed-strewn beaches and, far out beyond those breakers, the distant hump-backed mass of Il Anaron.

The High Thane’s army snaked its way up the coast beneath wintry clouds. Aewult, the Haig Bloodheir, rode at the head of the column. The last of his ten thousand warriors were the better part of a day behind him, still straggling out of Donnish even as the Bloodheir came in sight of Kolkyre. His host had become a rough, ill-disciplined thing during the long march from Vaymouth. There had been trouble in Donnish the night before: drunken warriors thieving from the townsfolk, then fighting with the hawkers and pedlars the army sucked to itself as a rotting corpse drew flies. There had been desertions, too. Many of the men in this army had only just returned from war against the rebellious Dargannan-Haig Blood. They had expected rest and revels, not another punishing march and the promise of battle against the Black Road.

The Bloodheir remained ignorant of most of the problems afflicting his army. Those who commanded his companies judged it wiser to manage the difficulties as best they could, rather than to risk the Bloodheir’s ire by reporting them or – still worse – suggesting that he slow the remorseless pace of his advance. They all knew why Aewult drove onward so quickly, with so little regard for the cohesion of his forces. He hated the harsh realities of the campaign: the cold and the wet; the potholed roads; the hours in the saddle; the impoverished, dirty villages through which they passed. The Bloodheir wanted to win his victory and get back to his palace in Vaymouth as a matter of the utmost urgency.

So when the vanguard of the army of the True Bloods swept down the long, gentle slope that led to Kolkyre’s southernmost gate, the Bloodheir himself was in its midst. His heralds blew horns and his bannermen snapped flags back and forth. The giants of his famous Palace Shield, haughty in their shimmering armour, let their horses run on and came hammering down the cobbled road like harbingers of glory.

Orisian oc Lannis-Haig stared up at the soaring spire of Kolkyre’s Tower of Thrones, oblivious of the crowds gathered around him. A blustery wind was driving sheets of grey cloud eastwards off the sea. Seagulls were spinning about the Tower’s summit, playing raucous games with the gale. They cut wild arcs and curves across the sky, screeching at one another as if in celebration. When Kilkry had been first among the Bloods, the Tower of Thrones was the axis around which the world turned. Now its austere grandeur remained but the worldly power of its inhabitants was more circumscribed.

Orisian forced his gaze back to the scene before him. He did not want to be here but in this, as in so much else, he seemed to have far fewer choices than once he did. The Tower stood atop a low, broad mound. A thick wall ran around the base of the mound, studded with gatehouses and small watchtowers. Between wall and Tower, on the slopes, a succession of Kilkry Thanes had created gardens. With Winterbirth gone, there was little by way of colour or greenery to show for all those years of effort, although the signs of meticulous husbandry were apparent. As Orisian looked around he saw not one rotting apple upon the lawns, not one fallen leaf marring the perfection of the flagstone paths.

The crowd now assembled on the grass was as well prepared as the gardens. Every tunic, every dress had been cleaned, every child firmly tutored in how to behave, every blade and shield polished to radiance. Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig’s entire household stood ready to greet the Haig Bloodheir and his mighty host.

Orisian, though he had insisted upon keeping to the outer fringes of this great welcoming party, still felt absurdly conspicuous. He was wearing borrowed clothes – the few fine vestments he once possessed had burned along with the rest of his life in Castle Kolglas – and they fitted imperfectly. He was flanked by Rothe, his shieldman, and by Taim Narran: two warriors who, Orisian imagined, made him look frail and only half-grown by comparison. None of which would have mattered, were it not for the fact that he felt curious eyes constantly upon him. He was, after all, the youngest Thane any of the Bloods had seen in many years.

“Lheanor looks a weary man,” murmured Taim Narran.

Orisian watched the Kilkry-Haig Thane for a few moments. The old man did indeed have the air of one burdened by years. He had a slight stoop, and all the majesty of his flowing, fur-trimmed robe only accentuated the pallor of his complexion. His long grey hair was limp. He and his wife Ilessa who stood beside him were quiet, still. All around them their attendants and officials held murmured conversations, adjusted their fine clothes, cast expectant glances in the direction of the Haig Bloodheir’s approach. Lheanor and Ilessa did none of those things. They gazed off into the distance. They made no effort to hide the fact that their minds were elsewhere.

Orisian had seen this several times in the past few days. Every so often Lheanor or Ilessa – more often the Thane than his wife – would lose track of the world around them and drift away on some melancholic current of thought. The loss of their son Gerain had sorely wounded them. For Lheanor in particular, Orisian suspected, his son’s death in battle against the Black Road had cut one of the moorings that bound him to the world. Orisian could understand that. He had seen more than enough loss of his own since Winterbirth to know what it could do to the heart, to the spirit.

An exuberant drumbeat rose up from somewhere in the streets. It ebbed and flowed, snatched to and fro on the sea wind. A ripple of anticipation spread through the crowd gathered by the Tower of Thrones.

“Aewult’s Palace Shield,” muttered Taim. “They have the drums specially made.”

“Rumour has it they spend more time practising with their drums than with their swords,” someone said behind Orisian.

He turned to find Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig standing there: Lheanor’s one surviving son, now destined to succeed him as Thane. Orisian had met him once or twice when he was a child, though Roaric had never paid him much heed then. Now, the Kilkry-Haig Bloodheir was a brooding, intense presence. Wherever his eyes fell, they seemed to find fault and to gleam with accusatory anger.

“The Palace Shield certainly haven’t fought any battles in my lifetime,” Taim Narran said.

“They wouldn’t want to mar the shine on their breastplates,” said Roaric. He and Taim had an easy manner in one another’s company. Orisian assumed that it sprang from their recent shared service in the war against Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig, and their shared anger and resentment at what they had seen – and suffered – there. A bitter kind of mutual sympathy seemed to lie at the root of it.

“How is your father?” Orisian asked the Bloodheir. “This must be hard for him.”

Roaric glanced down at the ground.

“He presses on, as do we all,” he said. “He blames himself for Gerain’s death, and will not hear any argument. And now he must smile for Aewult, and pretend we are honoured to receive the High Thane’s son.”

“Honoured or not, we may need the swords he brings
with him to drive the Black Road from our lands,” murmured Taim.

“I don’t think so,” said Roaric, with a grimace. “And I don’t believe you truly do either. Your lands – Orisian’s lands – could be reclaimed by Lannis and Kilkry marching together. It hardly matters, though, which of us is right. It won’t be you or me making the decision. Not now that Aewult’s here. My father’s a better man than me: I could find no words of welcome for that ill-born creature.”

“It’s one of the curses of being a Thane,” said Rothe. “Having to wear one mask or another all the time.”

Roaric nodded at Orisian’s shieldman. Rothe’s face was rather colourless, his skin a little slack in appearance. One arm and shoulder were bound up in a sling. There was a suggestion of weariness in his stance.

“You, Rothe Corlyn, look like a man who should be somewhere else,” Roaric observed.

“Resting,” agreed Orisian, “under the care of healers. I can’t even make my own shieldman do as he is told.”

“I’ve seen enough of healers these last few days,” Rothe grumbled. “Good air will serve me just as well.”

“How’s the arm?” Roaric asked.

Rothe glanced at his bandaged limb. “Of little use – for the time being, anyway.”

“And the shoulder?”

“Better than the arm. It’ll take more than one Horin-Gyre crossbow bolt to put me down.”

“Here he comes,” said Taim Narran quietly.

The gates swept open and Aewult’s Palace Shield rode in. They sat tall on massive warhorses, pennant-topped lances held erect. Their breastplates gleamed. Drummers rode with them, unleashing a flurry of beats and then falling silent as the shieldmen flanked the path up from the gate towards the Tower and the waiting crowds. Outside, beyond the encircling wall, there was a mounting tumult of hoofs and voices.

The Haig Bloodheir entered the gardens at a canter, wrestling to control his mount, the biggest horse that Orisian had ever seen. It tossed its head and strained at the reins as Aewult turned it in a tight circle. A dozen of his Shield fell in behind him and followed him up the path. There was a murmuring amongst the assembled dignitaries, whether of unease or admiration Orisian could not say. He saw one or two people at the front of the throng shuffling backwards, as if alarmed by these great horses and the men who rode them.

Aewult nan Haig rode to within a few paces of Lheanor and Ilessa. He towered over the old couple, his horse still unsettled. It was almost as if he expected the Thane of the Kilkry-Haig Blood to take hold of the animal’s bridle so that he might dismount. Lheanor gazed silently up at the Bloodheir, his expression placid and empty.

“See who comes now,” Taim Narran murmured to Orisian.

Looking back to the gate, Orisian witnessed an altogether more subdued entry. Riding a quiet bay horse, this newcomer had none of Aewult’s crude energy or ostentation. He was poised, handsome and wore not armour but a luxuriant woollen cape decorated in red and gold. Instead of warriors he brought with him a band of well-dressed officials and attendants.

“Who is it?” Orisian asked, and guessed the answer in the same moment.

“The Shadowhand,” Roaric said, his voice laden with contempt. “I didn’t know we were to be cursed with his presence as well.”

Mordyn Jerain, Chancellor to Gryvan oc Haig: Orisian knew of him only by rumour, and all those rumours said that he, more than any other, kept the Haig Blood secure in its mastery of all the others. Amongst those who resented Gryvan’s rule, Mordyn Jerain was the man most often blamed for the worst of its excesses.

Seeing the famous Shadowhand for the first time, Orisian was struck by how unobtrusively he came riding up in Aewult’s wake. There was no sign of arrogance; just a quiet man who looked around with a calm smile. His gaze met Orisian’s and held it. Orisian could not imagine that the mighty Chancellor would know who he was by sight, yet there was a slight widening of that smile, a fractional inclination of the head. Orisian looked down at his feet.

“He’s marked you already,” Taim whispered. “He guesses who you are, by my presence at your side.”

The notion that the Shadowhand should take an interest in him left Orisian craving nothing but anonymity and the insignificance that the last few weeks had stolen away from him.

Slightly too late, grooms had hurried to soothe Aewult’s horse. The Bloodheir dismounted with a flourish. He hauled off his long leather gauntlets and took Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig’s hand in his own.

“How long do you suppose we have to stay?” Orisian wondered aloud. “Before we can leave without causing offence, I mean.”

By the time the greetings and hollow pleasantries were done, and the Haig Bloodheir had been ushered into the Tower of Thrones, Orisian had slipped away with Rothe. He left Taim Narran to attend upon Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig. Taim, Orisian knew, could represent the Lannis Blood amongst the great and the powerful more ably than he could himself. Neither Lheanor nor any of his family would be offended; if others felt differently, Orisian was not in the mood to care. At this moment, the mere thought of making the closer acquaintance of either Aewult or his father’s Chancellor was almost horrifying to him. There were places he would much prefer to be.

One of them was the small house attached to the town garrison’s barracks, just beyond the wall that ringed the Tower of Thrones and its gardens. Orisian approached it with a hurried, almost eager stride, a grumbling Rothe close behind him.

“They’re not going anywhere,” the shieldman muttered. “Do we have to rush so?”

“You confess you’re too weary to keep up with me, then?” Orisian asked over his shoulder.

“No. It’s my arm’s a bit sorry for itself, not my legs.”

There were Lannis guards posted outside the house. They snapped into alert postures as their young Thane drew near. Taim Narran had set them here at Orisian’s request: two of his best men, survivors of the campaign against Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig and the carnage at An Caman fort.

“Any problems?” Orisian asked the guards.

“No, sire,” replied one. “They’ve been quiet as the dead, and no one’s tried to get in.”

Orisian climbed the stairs quickly. He was aware of his own eagerness, and half of him thought it a touch childish, unworthy of a Thane. The other half of him savoured the pleasure of anticipation: it was something he felt little and seldom these days.

Ess’yr and Varryn were in the bedchamber at the top of the stairs. To Orisian’s surprise, his sister Anyara was there as well.

“I heard the serving girls complaining that all the food they brought here was getting turned away,” she explained, her brow bunched into a knot of irritation. She nodded in Varryn’s direction. “He won’t eat. It’s like trying to deal with some sulking child.”

Orisian glanced at the Kyrinin warrior. A sulking child was not the first image that sprang to mind. Varryn was seated cross-legged on the floor, where he and his sister, contemptuous of the soft beds, had slept since their confinement here. Even from that lowly position, Varryn’s fierce presence was impressive. His long back was stiffly erect, his uniformly grey eyes staring at Orisian in that confidently passive way only Kyrinin could manage.

“The food’s not to your liking?” Orisian asked.

“No,” was all Varryn said.

His anger had been constant and consistent from the first moment they had all clambered aboard the Tal Dyreen ship that bore them away from Koldihrve. Its causes were many, Orisian suspected, but it had certainly not been blunted by the rigours of the voyage. Both Varryn and Ess’yr had suffered throughout from violent seasickness. Aboard the rocking deck of Edryn Delyne’s vessel, Orisian had felt something new and unexpected towards them: pity. On land they’d seldom appeared anything other than capable – often intimidatingly so – but it had soon become clear that Kyrinin did not make good seafarers.

Turning to Ess’yr now, the sight of her still filled him with a kind of wonder. The pale delicacy of her features, the astonishing grace in her lean limbs, were there as they had always been; what was lacking, or at leas. . .