Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

'You will, because I ask you to. You have always trusted me and you must trust me in this. Aeglyss is coming for me. I can hear him, inside my head. That is why I have come with you this far, to draw him in to this place where he can go no further. His Kyrinin will not willingly go beyond the dyn ham, and neither will Aeglyss if he has me. But you must keep going. Others might come: Horin-Gyre or worse.

  This only delays them. You cannot tarry.'

  Orisian shook his head.

  'Where is Ess'yr?' Inurian asked, and she moved forwards and knelt down.

  Orisian followed nothing of what passed between them. It was murmured, in the fluid language of the Fox, but his mind was numb in any case and he could not tear his gaze from Inurian's elegant hand that lay still beside his own. He sensed from Inurian's tone that he was asking Ess'yr a question. She did not reply at once. Varryn took a few quick steps closer and snapped something. He was angry. Ess'yr gave an answer, and her brother spun away and strode towards the dyn hane. Inurian was smiling. Ess'yr bent and laid a kiss upon his lips.

  'Go,' whispered Inurian.

  It was a moment before Orisian realised the command was meant for him. He shook his head again.

  'Take him, Rothe,' said Inurian. Ess'yr had risen and was walking away. Her shoulders were rigid, as if only their strength contained something within her.

  Rothe took hold of Orisian's arm. 'Come away,' he said.

  Anyara knelt down and embraced the na'kyrim. 'Goodbye,' she whispered, then she stood up and followed after the Kyrinin.

  'Orisian...' Rothe said, but Orisian shook his hand off and held Inurian as his sister had done. He tried to enclose his body, to gather it to himself. He could feel Inurian's ribcage rising and falling, hear his faltering breath.

  'Go,' said Inurian in his ear. 'He is close. Go, Orisian. I will not forget you.'

  'I will see you again,' said Orisian, and he let Rothe pull him gently to his feet and lead him away.

  X

  THE FOREST BREATHED its soft, even breath. Twigs stirred in the faintest of breezes. An owl roosting high against the trunk of an oak blinked and peered down as fleet-footed shapes sped beneath.

  On a rocky knoll, a black bear nosing for insects in mulch-packed crannies raised its head and turned this way and that, teasing a scent out of the air. Snuffling in irritation, it scrambled down from the rocks and padded away. Bounding forms swept past the knoll, emerging from and disappearing into the forest in the space of a few moments. Mice cowered amidst the springy turf as silent foot-falls shook their domain. A single dead leaf, one of the last vestiges of autumn, spiralled down and was tumbled in the wake of a rushing figure before it resumed its descent.

  Inurian stood by the river. The dyn bane was at his back. The sound of the falls filled his ears. The winter sun had broken through and was lighting the highest parts of the cliffs. The bitter edge was gone from the air. It was very beautiful, he thought. This had always been his favourite time of year.

  A face drifted before his inner eye, that of Ess'yr. It bore with it more pain than he could countenance.

  He set it aside and looked to the still forest downstream. He waited; for how long, he could not say.

  How strange it is, he thought, to come to such an ending. I am not done with life. Can it really all be so easily ended? Of course it can, he told himself. It had been a path woven of a thousand small chances, the intersection of countless other lives: one wandering na'kyrim happening upon a good man in a castle in the sea; another eaten away by anger and bitterness; a fevered woman long ago sowing the seed of a cult, her garbled words reaching out over all the years to set Thane against Thane; an arrow in the darkness. Just one arrow.

  He saw shapes moving amongst the trees. There was no sound to mark their coming. He knew them for what they were. They emerged at first one by one, then a score. A wide arc of Kyrinin stood facing him.

  And still there was no sound save the rushing water.

  Inurian swayed a little. It had been a terrible struggle to rise to his feet. Although the pain had all but gone now, he thought the effort had sundered something deep inside him. He had the sense of his thoughts trying to lift away and drift upwards. He had to fight to hold them to him. He glanced up. The sky was a field of pure blue. The light seemed to have such clarity that he could have seen to the end of the world had the rock walls not pressed in so close about this place. For a moment he was rising, floating towards that blue expanse. He caught himself and drew his gaze back to the clearing.

  Aeglyss was there now, sitting astride a brown horse. He had passed through the line of Kyrinin and was watching Inurian. The horse was breathing hard and jinking around, breaking up the soft, wet earth.

  Aeglyss passed his reins to one of the Kyrinin and swung out of the saddle. He patted the horse's neck as he stepped forwards. He came up to Inurian.

  'You look weary,' he said, tilting his head a little to one side.

  'I am tired,' agreed Inurian. In his mind the words were clear, yet they sounded heavy and slurred in the wintry air.

  Aeglyss was removing his riding gloves now, folding them over his belt and flexing his fingers. The horse behind him was still shifting about, shaking its head.

  'Are you dying?' he asked.

  Inurian closed his eyes for a moment. 'I am,' he said.

  'Come back with me. The White Owls have good healers. Perhaps we can keep you alive.'

  Inurian shook his head with care, fearful of dizziness. 'No,' he said.

  'But this is foolish,' said Aeglyss. 'Why die such a wasteful death? Come back with me. Teach me what you know. Stand with me.'

  Inurian was silent. Something was rising from the pit of his stomach, drifting up through his chest. His legs, which had felt so heavy not long before, were now weightless. He could hear the feeble beating of his heart.

  'Do not leave me. I need you,' said Aeglyss softly. 'Please.' He was imploring, grief-stricken almost.

  Inurian pitied the other man in that moment.

  'I cannot stay,' Inurian said. He struggled to focus on the face before him. A fine network of thin red lines was strung across Aeglyss' eyes. He had the skin of a corpse. An angry wound marred his lower lip.

  There were other, deeper marks that only Inurian could have sensed.

  'You've over-reached yourself, haven't you?' he said. 'Attempted something that was almost beyond you.'

  Aeglyss flicked a hand dismissively, though Inurian felt the irritation in the gesture as well.

  'Some woman, spying, eavesdropping. I chased her off.' He looked over Inurian's shoulder. 'Clever, to put the dyn bane across the trail. Whose idea was that? The White Owls're hungry for Fox blood, but this will turn them aside. For now. It doesn't matter, of course. You're the one I came for.'

  'I may be dying,' Inurian said, 'but your sickness is the greater, Aeglyss. It will destroy you. You must know that.' He coughed, and felt salty fluid in the back of his mouth. His throat was burning.

  'Please,' whispered Aeglyss again, and this time his voice was a caress. Inurian felt the other's will laying its dark fingers upon his thoughts. He hungered to do as Aeglyss asked: to free himself of his suffering, to cling to precious life. This is how it happens, he thought. He shook his head.

  'You've not the strength to bind me to your will. Not the skill, certainly.'

  For long moments Aeglyss stood there, as immobile as his Kyrinin followers, staring. Inurian blinked.

  There was a cloudiness spreading across his vision, bleeding in from the edges like a fog, and he could see little but Aeglyss' face. He thought he saw many things there: the old anger and hunger, but also something in the eyes and the set of the brow that spoke of puzzlement and pain, like a child who did not understand why he was being punished.

  'Last chance,' Aeglyss said. 'I will forgive you all your insults, if you come back with me. Teach me.'

  'No.'

  Aeglyss turned on his heel and walked away. Inurian felt a strange surge of release.

&n
bsp; 'Aeglyss, wait,' he said.

  Aeglyss glanced back.

  'They will kill you sooner or later,' Inurian said. 'The White Owls, or the Black Road , or the Haig Bloods. You think you can play their games, be a part of it all. But you can't, Aeglyss. They'll not love you for seeking to be one of them.'

  Aeglyss seized a spear from the hand of the nearest White Owl. His teeth were bared in a grimace of fury. He strode up to Inurian and drove the spear through his midriff, impaling him upon its shaft.

  'No games, little man,' hissed Aeglyss.

  Inurian slumped. Aeglyss held him up.

  'You once called me a dog that thought it was a wolf. Tell me now, Inurian. Which am I now? Dog or wolf?'

  'You have a dog's heart.'

  'Very well. But it beats more strongly than yours.'

  'I've made my choice,' murmured Inurian and felt his last strength passing out between his lips and into the sharp air. It was easier than he had expected to let go.

  Aeglyss spat upon his cheek and released the spear. Inurian fell on to his side. Aeglyss stepped back.

  'I'm sorry,' Inurian murmured.

  'Finish him,' Aeglyss said in the White Owl tongue. The Shared sang in the words, put a core of command and insistence into them that could not be denied. The Kyrinin poured forwards. They crowded around Inurian and he disappeared beneath a frenzy of stabbing spears and stamping feet.

  Aeglyss stood and watched for a while, then went back to his horse. He gave one sharp cry, of some kind of pain or anger, as he swept up into the saddle.

  Riding away, Aeglyss was hunched low. He did not look back. The Kyrinin fell in behind him and were soon swallowed by the woods. The bloodied corpse of the na'kyrim from Castle Kolglas lay alone on the damp grass, waiting for the carrion birds. The sound of the falls rolled on.

  Chapter 4

  Car Criagar

  FROM THE TOWERING heights of the Tan Dihrin - the World Mountains - spill chains of lesser peaks like arms reaching out across the earth. Of these the longest is the Car Criagar. Less fierce than the Car Dine to its north but still wild and rugged enough, the Car Criagar is a great wall of mountain tops stretched between the valleys of the Dihrve and the Glas. Its lower slopes are clothed in forest, but wind-scoured moors and rockfields drape its peaks. All through summer, snow clings to bowls and slopes that never see the sun. When the season turns and the nights grow longer, the Tan Dihrin sends its breath down from the roof of the world, and the high Car Criagar is lost in shifting snow and storm. Yet in this heart - and soul-breaking place, that has no love for life, there are the carcasses of ancient cities and fortresses. These, it is said, were the dwelling places of a people who lived and ruled long before the Gods departed this world.

  They must have been a mighty people, greater in will and capacity than we are today, to have built so grandly in such places. Those who visit the ruins now - Kyrinin, or masterless men, or hunters from the valley of the Glas - come as scavengers, wanderers. They mistrust these abandoned places, and tell tales of ghosts and beasts that haunt them. Perhaps their unease has deeper roots, though. Perhaps they do not wish to be reminded of how far short they fall of those ancestors who lived in the light of the Gods.

  from Hallantyr's Sojourn

  I

  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 o
f 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.'