Fida glanced down at the boy called Ysel. “You will find out, niece.” With that she guided the boy past Talyn, leaving the once-Hunter and the Fox standing together.
“Are you here for my head?” Finn finally spoke. “Because this would not be the place to take it.” He gestured to the foaming water below.
“No,” she replied, reminding herself to keep to the facts as best she could. “I parted company with the Caisah. I really have. I heard you were here, and I had to come.”
The man’s eyes raked over her, and she recalled that as a talespinner he could probably discern much about people from their expressions and gestures. It came in handy when a public house turned ugly.
“Why?” he asked mildly.
She cleared her throat and considered. When she’d been the Hunter, she had been used to taking men to bed for mere pleasure. It had been something to sate her own physical needs, but she had never kept the memories. She had thought perhaps that was why she had discarded memories of Finn—but when he returned them to her, she recalled it had not been the case. She’d cast away the memories of their time together because to her, loving a Manesto, or indeed loving anyone, was a waste of time and devotion. Her one aim had always been to save her people.
“I . . .” Talyn stammered, “I . . . I don’t—”
“I have someone you must meet,” he interrupted her, holding out his hand. “I think she might help you clear your head a little.”
It was a moment of trust; a test that she had to pass. Somehow, with everything she had been through, this felt like a turning point. Reaching out, Talyn took his hand, and knew everything was about to change.
Byre and Pelanor had obviously been taken as some kind of honor guard for the stranger, and had also been allowed to pass. They reached the spot where the Pact of the Oath was carved in the salt. Here the Caisah paused, looking it over. If he was a stranger, Byre suddenly realized that he would not understand it.
Perhaps if he understood the words, he would understand the Vaerli. Byre stepped up closer to the new arrival. “It says—”
“—I know what it says,” the Caisah replied sharply. “It is the pact between these people and the gods of this world.”
Gods? Byre was for a moment confused. He had to mean the Kindred, but they were not gods. All the gods had been stripped from all the peoples that passed through the White Void.
“Gods hate oath breakers,” the Caisah muttered, before striding on deeper into the carved salt corridor.
Pelanor caught at Byre’s hand as he made to follow. “Don’t we know enough?” she whispered to him. “Shouldn’t we go now?”
She didn’t understand the nature of this punishment. Byre looked down at her, and for the first time felt the real difference between them. She might have his blood flowing in her veins, but she could never truly comprehend in any meaningful way what was happening. Besides, curiosity had already exchanged places with fear within Byre. The Caisah’s talk of gods and oath breakers had done that.
He looked at her with real pity in his eyes, feeling the superiority of the Vaerli race for the first time. “We need to see the whole thing to understand.”
Then he walked away from her, quickly, before he lost sight of the Caisah. He hoped she would follow, because he would need a witness to all this.
Ahead the corridor began to widen to a chamber, and it also grew dimmer. The light from above was being lost in the depths. Torches were now spaced out along the walls, and his Vaerli hearing could make out voices ahead. They were angry voices, and one of them he recognized enough to make his heart race.
Mother.
The Caisah had stopped in the shadows so abruptly that Byre almost ran into him. Only the gleam of the eagle on his staff gave any hint he was there. The soon-to-be tyrant’s head was cocked to one side, like a child listening intently to parents having an argument. Byre stood at his side and listened, too.
At first he couldn’t make out the words that were being exchanged like barbs, but gradually he could discern some. He recognized “Phage,” which he had heard before. The only time had been a mention from his father when he was little. Retira had called them a “dangerous sect.” Then he heard “Kindred” and “Pact” being bandied around.
Finally the words seemed to die down.
“Yes, that is good,” the Caisah whispered. “Now is the time.”
As he strode forward, Pelanor tugged on the back of Byre’s hood. “Are we just going to let him go in there?”
He knew what she meant. What was coming was nothing less than the Harrowing itself. Byre licked his lips, feeling how dry his mouth was. The witch was asking how prepared he was to watch the destruction of his people, but what choice did he have?
“It’s already happened,” he whispered back to her, his eyes never leaving the retreating back of the Caisah. “As Ellyria said, the future cannot be rewritten, and we are only observers.”
“I will abide by your decision,” she replied, and slid her hand down from his back to rest inside his. Ahead, all sound was abruptly cut off, so Byre led her after the Caisah at a brisk run. He might not want to see what happened next, but he also did not want to miss it.
Their sudden arrival was barely noticed as they trotted into the council chamber. The Vaerli who were its members had risen from their seats around the carved wooden table, and were staring fixedly at the Caisah.
Byre could understand their sudden silence; they were going through the very same range of emotions that he had experienced. While they did, Byre allowed his eyes to trail around the gathering. There were seven of them. The same as the number of Gifts that they had been given by the Kindred.
He did not know any of those present, except one. His mother was among them. He’d known that she would be there. He’d been in this place before, and seen what happened—what would happen—to her after.
The rational part of Byre’s brain could quite easily understand his reaction to her being there, but it was not easy to stop his eyes filling with sudden hot, bright, tears. She had not been an easy mother, he could still remember that, but he had loved her; both he and his sister had. To see her now, standing in the council chamber, outrage and bafflement on her beautiful face, hit him in the center of his chest.
Suddenly the words he had only just spoken to Pelanor seemed empty. It took every ounce of his strength to stop himself from running over to her, and getting her, whatever way he could, out of this room.
She looked very like Talyn would look one day. They called her Kourae the Light, and he could understand why now. She represented the singers on the council, but her hand was on the hilt of her sword, which was half out of its sheath.
Naturally, it was his mother who recovered first. When she spoke, her voice was bright and melodic despite the situation. “Who are you to intrude in this sacred space?”
“Not so sacred,” the Caisah spoke while he leaned heavily on his staff. “No Pact means no sacred places for the Vaerli—at least not in this land.”
Two of the male Vaerli, one who had a thick silver beard, walked around the table to stand at Kourae’s side. “You were asked your name,” the ancient man spoke. “And you are not one of us.”
The old man, Byre surmised, was in a position of power. The leaders of the various arts chose one of their number every ten years to speak for all. He had no idea which art this man represented—it didn’t matter much . . . he was to be the last.
“No,” the Caisah said, “I am not one of you.” He paused to cough. It was a hard, wracking sound that did not speak well of the man’s health. The White Void obviously put a strain on him that would linger a while. Byre would never have imagined that this was how the destroyer of the Vaerli would come into their midst.
“I am, however, sent by those you have wronged.”
The council members looked at each other, and he knew that look—it was the look of shared guilt and fear.
He almost blurted out a question, like he was watc
hing a story unfold, until he realized that they were real people, and his very real mother.
The Caisah straightened. “You know of whom I speak. The Kindred sent me, since you have stopped conversing with them. I am their burning beacon on the hilltop.”
Kourae seemed to recover the quickest. Her hand did not leave the hilt of her sword. This was not at all how Byre imagined the Harrowing had begun. “The Kindred did not send you,” she said, though her voice did not sound all that steady.
Pelanor shifted closer to Byre, and her pointed fangs were in evidence. Something about this excited her. For himself, Byre felt posed on the edge of a great void.
The Caisah, for all his apparent weakness, did not look worried about facing so many Vaerli in their den. Instead he straightened, and that whisper of the White Void grew closer again. The chamber was chill like death.
“It is coming,” Byre whispered under his breath, so that only Pelanor could hear it. It was hardly needed. The presence of a storm was building.
When the Caisah spoke, it was as if a thousand other voices spoke through him. “The Pact was broken. You did not heed our call to the Void. Instead you summoned more people to this world to help give you strength in blood and flesh.”
He stepped nearer, and Byre saw that the Vaerli flinched away. “You were afraid to fulfil your promise, the promise of Ellyria Dragonsoul. You claim superiority over all the land, and yet you are too terrified to go where I came from.”
Byre expected them to deny it. He looked to his mother, hoping to see it written all over her face, but there was nothing there—nothing but deep guilt.
The Caisah was right. The person that they had despised for a thousand years, was right. What was more, he had come to this place at the bidding of the Kindred. The scene around him blurred, but not because the Kindred were taking him back.
“Byre,” Pelanor said, pressing her mouth close to his ear. “Don’t leave me, Byre.”
Before he could answer with anything at all, another of the councilwomen stood up. She could only be Putorae, the seer. She was covered in the pae atuae, and her eyes were hard. “The Pact was only to warn us about the White Void. Ellyria Dragonsoul did not promise us to it.”
“Why were the Gifts given, then?” the Caisah went on calmly. “Did you think that they were laid on you as a reward. They are weapons, so that you may survive the White Void.”
“This is ridiculous!” Another woman walked toward the Caisah. “You come here, into our heart of hearts, and tell us that the Kindred are disappointed with us? We are the Vaerli! The people of the land! You are an intruder here on the Salt and here in Conhaero!”
“Mylise!” the leader said, laying a hand on her colleague’s shoulder. “Think of how he came here . . . we should hear what he has to say.”
The dark woman’s eyes flashed as she shook of his grasp. “No! This is the sort of insult our so-called allies have been making for years. We sacrificed children to hold back the White Void while they did nothing to save us.”
“You did wrong,” the Caisah said, turning on her like a viper. “The White Void was meant to open, and you were meant to go forward into it, taking change and chaos with you. Instead you chose to use blood to call others here; wanderers that the Kindred did not intend to let dwell here. Already they are changing this world.”
Kourae swallowed, her gaze darting between her colleagues but holding none of them for long. “What do you want us to do about this now?”
“The Void remains, and you still travel it in small amounts. You have a chance right now to mend the Pact. Step back into the Void.” The Caisah’s words fell like a death sentence on the Vaerli.
Byre shifted, and felt the regard of all the council members flick to him. Luckily his hood was down, but he knew that they would be able to feel that he was Vaerli. He did not like that they would think him a traitor to his own kind. It was foolish, but he had been so long separated from them that he had nothing else to lose but their opinion.
The woman named Mylise threw up her hands and let out a hard, painful sounding laugh. “Why not just ask us to fall on our swords now? It is suicide to enter without a scion. Some of us are still alive who remember the perils of the Void, and the friends and family lost to it.”
Byre suddenly understood—that was why they feared it even more. The Vaerli gift of long life had made them more fragile than they had been when they came to Conhaero. They wanted to keep living, and the White Void was a place which would take that from many of them.
“Then the Gifts will be taken back,” the Caisah said simply. “The Pact will be irrevocably broken and the Kindred will . . .”
Exactly what the Kindred would do was forever lost; the woman leapt at him. It happened so fast in the before-time, that Byre lost track of her movements. Before he could think about his reasoning, he found himself stepping forward to help the Caisah.
It was the strangest thing that had happened so far, in this strangest of days. The Vaerli woman was quick, but so was he. The Caisah made no real move to protect himself, but Byre was too busy pushing aside Mylise to have much time to wonder.
He got his arm between her and the soon-to-be tyrant and twisted, sending her sliding across the room. Pelanor appeared at his side, and hissed like a wild cat at the surrounding Vaerli. Her fangs gleamed white in the half darkness, so Byre knew there was no chance anyone could mistake her for other than what she was.
However, that was also true for him. His hood had fallen back in the struggle with Mylise, and he could feel all his kin’s eyes on his tell-tale features; there was no fooling any of them now. He was Vaerli.
His mother’s eyes most of all he could not meet, but he could not keep his gaze from them. It was a moment before he realized that he was swaying on his feet.
“Byre!” Pelanor screamed at his side, and it was only that sound that made him aware that the ground itself was moving. The Salt was cracking and shifting as if pounded by a giant hand. Byre heard the Caisah laugh, and it sounded as mad as the movement of the sacred all around him.
“He is doing this,” Mylise’s voice somehow reached over the movement all around them. “The infidel has bought destruction—and them!”
Byre, clutching hold of the taut figure of Pelanor, whipped around and saw where she was pointing. The Kindred had come.
A dozen faceless, dark shapes were all around the council chamber. They had appeared while the Vaerli were in disarray, but they did not make any moves toward them. The Caisah stood in the middle of the circle they described, his face calm and with swirling light about his head.
“Heed the Pact!” he called, and it should have been the trumpet call for the Vaerli to do as he and the Kindred bid.
Byre, standing in the middle of the tumult, suddenly understood his people. The veil of his childhood, the one constructed out of myth and pride, was ripped aside. The Vaerli had grown too powerful, and they no longer could listen to the truth.
Byre would have sunk to his knees if Pelanor had not held him up. “It was their own fault,” he muttered, as his whole body shook to the rhythms of Conhaero. “All this time I thought we were the victims, and he the villain.”
His watering eyes could no longer look anywhere else but at the Caisah. He was the herald that the Kindred had sent as a last resort.
Above them he could hear the screams of the Vaerli, and he knew that some of those screams were his, some of them were Talyn’s. He was reliving the terror, the flying dust. He could almost feel his father’s arms around him.
“I was just a child,” he sobbed, barely feeling the witch’s hands wrap around him. “I didn’t know . . . I didn’t understand . . .”
“No time for pity,” Pelanor responded, shaking him hard enough to snap his head back. “This is what you came here to find out. Look!”
Getting his feet under him, Byre whirled around and saw what was happening. The Vaerli were fighting the Kindred. He saw Kourae, her blade now released from its sheath, strik
e at the impassive creatures, her face set in a mask of terrible rage. One of the councilmen went down screaming as an impassive Kindred fell on him like a slab of granite. Mylise, however, was doing something else; she was becoming something else.
She was a dancer—that much was obvious. For a moment he was entranced, despite all the madness about them. The movement of her arms and legs were elegant and smooth, describing patterns in the air. He knew what she was doing; he was seeing for the first time the Naming of a Kindred.
The object of her attentions did not seem to be enjoying it, though. The Kindred were so impassive, and alien to the Vaerli—usually. This one was writhing in pain, filling the chamber with wailing that might crack skulls and shatter eardrums.
A trickle of blood ran from Pelanor’s nose, and she clapped her hands to her face, falling to her knees. The Vaerli turned to watch the dancer, but none of them moved to stop her.
Byre lurched forward, not knowing what was happening, but certain that he needed to make it stop. Kourae stepped between them, her bare blade acting as a barrier. Her dark eyes locked with his, and despite everything he stopped.
The Kindred let out one final cry and seemed to crumple into the shadow of Mylise. She danced on, but now there was an extra shadow hanging from her shadows like a cape. Whatever Name she had given the Kindred gave no joy to his compatriots.
Flames burst into life on the remaining guardians, while the Caisah howled. His voice cracked, and his eyes were not his own. “What was once a Gift, will now be a curse. You are so very proud, Vaerli. Content in your own company—now that, too, will be poison.”
Byre felt the blow deep inside him. It was a building flame, like the one the Kindred commanded. He felt it begin to eat at him, gnawing its way toward the surface.
The council members were stricken too—all but one. Kourae, clutching her stomach with one hand, staggered toward the Caisah. Her first stab was wild, and her target fell back, clutching at his arm. Blood poured out from under his strange armor, but he faced her bravely. He appeared to have little care for himself, since he didn’t draw his own sword or even move the staff to intercept.
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