Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

  Orisian's eyes grew ever more heavy-lidded as the evening crept on. Though he watered his wine carefully, the heat of the fire and the heavy scent in the air combined with it to lull him towards sleep.

  Renairan's booming voice caught him unawares. He attempted an alert expression. The harbourmaster's laughter told him that his efforts were in vain.

  'Too much good food and wine for our young guest, I think!' Renairan said.

  Orisian smiled apologetically.

  'Forgive me,' he said. 'Two days' riding takes its toll.'

  'Of course, of course,' cried Renairan. 'You must retire, Orisian. You have another day in the saddle tomorrow.'

  'Thank you for a fine meal,' said Orisian as he rose. The other guests stood up as well, acknowledging his departure with small bows or nods. He found Renairan's wife and daughter closing upon him as he headed for the door, and he had to resist a powerful urge to spring forwards and make a dash for the sanctuary of his bedchamber. As the meal was noisily resumed behind them, Orisian was held by Carienna's cheerful, yet somehow insistent, gaze.

  'Such a shame that we did not have a proper chance to speak,' she said, 'but you must spare a word for my daughter Lynna before you retire.'

  She eased the young girl forwards.

  'Lynna!' prompted Carienna, and the somewhat flustered girl cleared her throat.

  'It was a very great pleasure to meet you, master Orisian,' she said, giving him a delicate smile and a practised curtsey.

  'Ah,' said Orisian.

  'Lynna is almost fifteen,' said Carienna in a voice that spilled implications from its edges like honey from an over-full beescomb.

  'Really,' said Orisian, 'I'm . . .' He realised that he had forgotten how old he was.

  'Sixteen, I believe,' said Carienna happily.

  It took Orisian a while to find a kind form of words to take his leave. Rothe was waiting outside his room. The shieldman smiled sympathetically when Orisian told him what had happened.

  'Sixteen is a perilous age for the only available man in the Thane's family.'

  Kylane was quiet the next morning, nursing the after-effects of drink and what had evidently been a costly gaming session with members of the harbourmaster's household. Rothe, cheered by the prospect of being back at Kolgias by nightfall, and perhaps by his comrade's misfortune, was livelier. He and Orisian talked happily of hunting, of Croesan and of the growing grandeur of Anduran as they passed along Glasbridge's streets, over the broad river running through its heart and out through the western gate of the town.

  They followed the stone-surfaced track along the southern shore of the Glas estuary. This was a well-populated stretch, with many farmhouses and hamlets lining the way. Little watermills, their wheels creaking round, stood astride the streams flowing down to the sea. Here and there small fishing boats were drawn up on the rocks. At one roadside house they stopped to buy some oatcakes and goat's cheese, and ate them as they rode onwards. Kylane's mood lifted a little, his spirits renewed by the food.

  He recounted tales, harvested over dice the night before, of bawdy goings-on in the harbourmaster's house.

  In the late afternoon they rounded a small headland and came within sight of Kolgias. The town lay on the far shore of a shallow bay studded with rocky islets, closely hemmed in by the forest. Castle Kolgias stood tall on its isle a hundred yards offshore: a weathered stone bastion so old that it seemed as much a part of the natural landscape as the rocks breaking waves beneath its walls. The tide was out, so the narrow causeway running from the town to the castle was exposed. They could see a small cart moving along it, carrying firewood to feed the castle's hearths. A broad smile came to Orisian's face.

  'A race back!' he cried, and kicked his horse into a headlong gallop along the track.

  He heard Rothe's exasperated cry, and then the pounding of hoofs as the two shieldmen came rushing after him. The dash around the curving shore did not take long, but the horses were blowing hard as they slowed at the edge of Kolgias.

  The main street and most of the little tracks that ran off on either side were busy. Kolgias always sucked people in at Winterbirth, as surely as a full-laden fishing boat drew gulls. The stalls around the edge of the market square were doing a roaring trade in everything from candles to snowboots, and so much money changing hands had created an infectious air of good humour. Some of the stallholders called out and waved as Orisian went by.

  The area around the cairn in the heart of the square, by contrast, was almost empty, with only a screaming gang of children chasing one another round and round the small tower of stones. The monument was a memorial to the Battle of Kolglas. Sirian had been only master of Kolglas then, holding it in the name of the Kilkry Thane at a time when the exile of the Gyre Blood and its followers was still young, their hunger to return still raw and urgent. It had fallen to Sirian to turn back the armies of the Black Road when they poured south across the Vale of Stones and down the length of the Glas valley. His reward for the victory: the right to found his own Blood, to rule over the valley he had defended, and to hold it in perpetuity against the exiles in the north.

  The cairn had stood here, with children playing around it and travellers resting by it, for well over a century. Despite its long familiarity it retained a powerful symbolic meaning for the whole Lannis Blood.

  None who journeyed out from Kolglas could say they had truly returned until they had been to it. First Orisian, then Rothe and Kylane, leaned down to lay a hand upon the round, aged stone that surmounted the cairn. It had been smoothed by the brushing of countless fingertips.

  'To the castle, then?' Rothe asked, and Orisian nodded.

  They went down towards the sea. As they rode out on to the causeway the clouds parted for the first time that day, and the low, late sun cast the faintest of shadows out across the tranquil water. The castle's sheer walls looked almost warm in the light. The gate was open and as they passed into the courtyard beyond, Orisian found himself smiling again. It was, after all, good to be home.

  There were few people about: a small group stacking firewood by the stables, and a handful of warriors sharpening swords on a grinding stone outside their sleeping quarters. Half the fighting men of castle and town had gone south to join the war against Dargannan-Haig almost a year ago. The place had been subdued ever since.

  Orisian and his shieldmen crossed to the stable block and dismounted. Bair, the youngest of the stablehands, scampered out to take their horses.

  'Take good care of them, Bair,' said Orisian, 'they have been gentle with us.'

  Some of those taken ill with the Heart Fever had survived its scourges, Orisian's own sister Anyara amongst them. She had been fortunate and was unmarred by the sickness. Other survivors, like Bair, had been damaged. The young boy was mute. Nevertheless, he had one of the most lively and expressive faces Orisian had ever seen, and a nature as unfailingly merry as anyone he knew. With a grin, Bair gathered up the reins and led the horses towards their stables.

  'Back to the quiet life, then,' said Rothe, feigning disappointment.

  'Only for a day or two,' Orisian said. 'Winterbirth should bring all the excitement you could wish for.'

  The two shieldmen said their farewells, shouldered their packs and headed for the guards' bunkhouse.

  Orisian looked up at the keep. The windows were dark and blank, and the building had a lifeless air.

  With a slight, belated twinge of foreboding, he hefted his travelling pack and headed for the main stairway.

  From the forest above the road, eyes that were not human had watched the three riders gallop that last stretch to the edge of the town. The light would fail soon. The watcher's sight was sharp, but even he would not be able to make out any movement on the road from this distance once night had fallen.

  Although the Huanin in the cottages and farmhouses scattered along the coast were as good as blind in the darkness there would still be some small chance of discovery if he went closer, out of the loving embrace of
the forest. There was little to be gained from such a risk; it was clear the enemy did not suspect what was about to befall them. They went about their crude, loud lives just as they always did.

  The watcher rose. He had been crouched motionless for half the day, yet there was no stiffness in his lithe limbs. He adjusted the position of his bow and quiver on his back and picked up his spear. For a moment he laid his long, tapering fingers upon its point. It would be good to bathe it in Huanin blood. His heart sang at the thought.

  He turned away from the feeble necklace of lights springing up in the cottages along the shore and the forest's shadows enfolded him.

  Orisian's bedchamber was cold, but there was comfort in its familiarity. A knock at the door just as he finished changing announced the arrival of Ilain, the keep's oldest chambermaid.

  'We were not sure when you would get back, or we could have had some food waiting for you.'

  Warmth and severity rubbed shoulders in her voice. She worked as she talked, gathering up his discarded riding clothes and clutching them to her chest.

  'Sorry, Ilain. But I'm not hungry, in any case. We ate as we rode.'

  'Well,' she said, 'that will foul up your stomach sure as fish are wet. No matter. You'll want a rest?'

  'No. Really, I'm fine.'

  The chambermaid frowned. 'You'll have a fire lit, at least.'

  'Yes, please,' responded Orisian promptly, knowing better than to refuse her again.

  She turned, still carrying his clothes, to go and fetch a taper.

  'Where is everyone, Ilain?' asked Orisian.

  'I think Anyara is with your father. He is still unwell.'

  'And Inurian?'

  Ilain rolled her eyes skywards, and Orisian felt a twinge of instinctive guilt at her displeasure. He had never quite shaken off the childhood memory of Ilain's scoldings. More often than not Anyara or Fariel had been at the root of whatever misadventure incurred the chambermaid's wrath; nevertheless, it had usually been Orisian who was left to face the consequences, never quite as adept as the other two at identifying the ideal moment to disappear. He was too old now for her to scold, but when Ilain disapproved of something it was not well concealed. Inurian was counsellor to Orisian's father, and the closest thing to a friend Kennet nan Lannis-Haig had. That was not enough to make everyone in the castle comfortable with his presence.

  'He is in his rooms, no doubt,' Ilain said, and swept out.

  Orisian hesitated. He knew he should visit his father, but he had a strong urge to put that off a while longer. It was a much easier thought to go to Inurian. That at least would be a meeting that had only uncomplicated feelings attached to it.

  The door to Inurian's chambers, which lay on the top floor of the keep, was closed as always. Orisian listened for a moment. There was no sound from within. He knocked.

  'Come in, Orisian.'

  As he entered he at once caught the unique scent that always greeted him here: a tantalising, rich mixture of parchment, leather and herbs. The room was small and crowded. Book-lined shelves filled one wall; racks of jars and pots packed with herbs, powders, spices, even soils, another. An ancient, scored table held a scattering of papers, maps and a neatly arranged collection of dried and wizened mushrooms. To one side, a curtain concealed the tiny bed-chamber in which Inurian slept. In the narrow window Idrin the crow was bobbing up and down on his perch.

  A handful of carved wooden figurines and a small pile of manuscripts cluttered the desk. Inurian himself was sitting behind it, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest. He was a small man of middle years, with a mop of pale brown hair interspersed here and there with grey strands like threads of silver.

  The one thing that anyone meeting him for the first time would notice, however, was that he was a na'kyrim: a child of two races. In him, Huanin and Kyrinin were blended. His Kyrinin father had given him penetrating eyes of a pure flinty grey and the fine features and thin, almost colourless, lips of his inhuman kind. When he came from behind the desk and reached out to greet Orisian, his lean, long fingers and clouded nails also betrayed his mixed parentage.

  There were other, invisible, marks too. Inurian would never have children; no na'kyrim could. And there was the Shared, that mysterious, intangible realm lying beneath the surface of existence. It was beyond the reach, and the understanding, of pure-bred Huanin and Kyrinin, yet the intermixing of their blood sometimes gave a na'kyrim child access to its secrets and powers. Those in whom that contact with the Shared flowered were named the waking. Inurian was one such.

  Orisian could not remember a time when Inurian had not been here, in his little rooms at the summit of the castle. He had come to Kolglas before Orisian was born, finding in Kennet nan Lannis-Haig a rare thing in these days: a human who would offer friendship to a na'kyrim. It was not a sentiment all in the castle could share. The War of the Tainted had ended forever the days when Huanin and Kyrinin walked side by side; there was little goodwill for the offspring of any union that defied the weight of that history, and even less for those woken into the Shared. Still, Inurian had stood loyally at the side of the lord of Kolglas for years. And since the deaths of Lairis and Fariel, and Kennet's decline into misery, he had become steadily more important to Orisian as well.

  'How was your journey?' Inurian asked, his voice smooth and warm.

  'Cold. A little damp.'

  Idrin croaked in the window, and Inurian chuckled.

  'Well, we are both pleased to see you in any case. Is Croesan well? And Naradin's child safely born?'

  Orisian bent over the table, peering at the mushrooms arrayed there and prodding one. 'Yes, to both.

  Croesan has a very healthy grandson. What are these for, Inurian?'

  The na'kyrim waved a dismissive hand. 'Curiosity. One eases the birthing of calves, another soothes aching joints and so on. Nothing of great consequence.'

  'You've been into the forests again, then.'

  'Indeed. The slopes of the Car Anagais hold many secrets for those who know where to look.'

  'When can I come with you?' asked Orisian.

  Inurian shrugged. 'We'll see,' he said. 'Soon, perhaps.' It was what he always said.

  Orisian went to stroke Idrin's glossy breast. The crow blinked and ducked his head in the hope that Orisian would pet the nape of his neck.

  'I cling to the slender hope that if I search long and hard enough I may yet find a cure for disobedience in crows,' muttered Inurian.

  'But an obedient Idrin would not be Idrin,' said Orisian.

  'True.'

  Orisian sat on the corner of the desk.

  'My father?' he asked quietly.

  Inurian returned to his seat with a sigh. 'For him I have no cures, I'm afraid. Not that I could administer them even if I did, as he will see no one save your sister. She has tended him ever since you left for Anduran. His grief must run its course, Orisian. He will remember himself soon.'

  'He'll come to the feast?'

  'I'm sure. You know these moods pass.'

  'I do. It seems they take longer each time, though. I am afraid that some day one will come that does not leave him.'

  Inurian regarded the youth for a moment, sadness tweaking at the corners of his mouth.

  'Shall we go hunting on the first day of winter?' he asked.

  Orisian brightened a little at the suggestion.

  'We could. I've missed the hawks while I was at Anduran. Uncle Croesan prefers crashing through the forest with packs of hounds. I had to go along with him, but it's not really my idea of hunting.'

  'A fact of life: Thanes must make more noise about their business than ordinary folk, whatever that business is.'

  'What is planned for Winterbirth, then?' asked Orisian.

  'Oh, I would be the wrong person to ask,' said Inurian. 'You know half of what goes on here is a mystery to me.'

  'Hardly.'

  'Well, in any case, I have not been paying much attention. There will be all the usual gluttony, of course. I hea
rd something about entertainers as well. There's a troupe of acrobats or something similar coming to town. Masterless men.'

  Orisian raised his eyebrows in surprise. Masterless men, those who owed no allegiance to any Blood, were not an unknown sight in these parts, but most of them were solitary traders or hunters from the hills and mountains to the north. They entered Lannis-Haig lands only to ply their wares in Glasbridge or Anduran. He could not remember ever having heard of more than two or three travelling together.

  'I imagine I will be called upon as well,' continued Inurian, 'since there will probably be the usual granting of boons.'

  'No doubt,' said Orisian. He understood little of the strange, unpredictable gifts some na'kyrim possessed - the Shared was something Inurian did not talk about - but he did know that Inurian disliked ostentatious displays of his talents. They would be to the fore in any granting of boons.

  'Your father likes it,' Inurian said. 'At least he has in the past. It may... cheer him a little.'

  Orisian nodded. 'I suppose I should go to see him.'

  'You should,' agreed Inurian. 'He will be glad of it. Never forget that he loves you, Orisian. Sometimes he may forget himself, but the real Kennet loves you dearly. You know that I, of all people, could not be wrong about that.'

  That much, Orisian recognised as the truth. There were no secrets from a na'kyrim with the gift of seeing what was within. Inurian always knew what lay in the heart.

  'I know you're right,' said Orisian. 'But it is hard to remember, sometimes.'

  'Come to me when you need reminding,' smiled Inurian gently.