Theor turned towards Avenn.
'Do you have the answers we sought, First?'
'In part, I think.' Her accent was precise, curt: a relic of an impoverished upbringing in the Fane-Gyre mountains. 'The message that Vana oc Horin-Gyre's people found on the High Thane's courier is in a cipher we have not seen before. We cannot read it.' She saw the disappointment in Theor's eyes, and pressed on quickly before he had a chance to speak it. 'But the cipher's form and structure are familiar.
No one of Horin-Gyre would have recognised it for what it is; it's fortunate that Vana was willing to pass it to the Hunt. I am told it is most likely a variation on those that Gryvan's Shadowhand introduced in Vaymouth.'
'And the messenger himself?' Theor asked darkly. "What did he have to say?'
'He told us as much as he knew before he died. It was not easy to break him, but we found his limits.
Although he did not live long enough for us to test him repeatedly, we are confident he told us everything he could. He was bound for Dun Aygll, in the guise of a shepherd. There, he knew only that he was to pass the message to a stallholder in one of the markets.'
'It is not much,' murmured Nyve.
'It is enough,' Theor said.
Avenn nodded. 'We deal in likelihoods, in possibilities. But the Hunt's judgement is clear: Ragnor oc Gyre corresponds with the Haig Chancellor. Perhaps with Gryvan oc Haig himself.'
'They are one and the same, Gryvan and his Shadowhand,' Theor asserted. 'The Chancellor holds the reins of the Haig Bloods just as much as the High Thane does.'
'In most things, that is true,' the First of the Hunt agreed. "Well, then,' sighed Theor, 'the time has come for us to make some decisions. The ice is breaking beneath our feet; we must rush onwards, or turn back.'
'Agreed,' Nyve rumbled. 'Our High Thane seeks to play the Bloods against one another. The Horin lands have been all but promised to both Gaven and Wyn should Kanin fail to return, so they will not demur if Ragnor withholds his aid. Our Bloods have lost their vigour; forgotten their heritage. Wealth and power in this world please them more than the prospect of the next, and Ragnor fears his wealth and power will be at risk if he tests himself against Gryvan oc Haig. Only Horin out of all of them has kept the creed at its very heart, and now Angain is dead and his son will be abandoned.' He shook his head in puzzlement. 'It is surprising that the Gyre Thane should so far forget himself.'
'It is not so long ago that the Inkall aided a Gyre Thane in humbling Horin-Gyre,' Avenn pointed out softly.
'Those were different times,' Theor said, 'and Ragnor's father a different man. He had no secrets from us. He needed none, since his will ran in the same riverbed as our own. What was done then in the Stone Vale strengthened Gyre, and in those days that meant it strengthened the creed. Our loyalty is first to the creed, second the Gyre Blood and only third the High Thane - the man - himself. If the needs of the first two now dictate it, the last may be set aside.'
'We have long known that Ragnor holds us too lightly in his regard,' said Nyve. His gaze was wandering over the tiled floor like a man who had dropped some coin and lost it in the pattern. 'It has been clear for a long time that there might come a moment such as this, when we must decide whether to put our hand more firmly upon the tiller. I take it we are agreed, that something is wrong . . . rotten . . . when victories such as those Kanin nan Horin-Gyre has won elicit no response from the High Thane?'
Theor and Avenn both nodded.
Nyve rocked his head to one side. Still he did not look up. 'Vana oc Horin-Gyre is not Angain's widow for nothing. She is already gathering fresh forces. She may send them to her son's aid even if Ragnor forbids it.'
Avenn's voice betrayed an eagerness when she spoke. 'Given encouragement, there are many who would march, whether or not Ragnor wishes it.'
For the first time, Theor thought he knew what was fated to follow from this meeting, the role they were to play in the unfolding of fate's pattern. He had never doubted the shape of Avenn's instincts: the Hunt always found itself leaders with a taste for the Road's most dramatic twists and turns. Nyve he had not been so certain of. His old friend was harder to read, not given to haste or precipitous action.
'How many more swords can Vana put in the field?' Theor asked.
Nyve glanced at Avenn, silently acknowledging that she might know something he did not. The Hunt had an eye and an ear in every corner of every Blood.
'No more than another thousand,' Avenn said. 'They are the last, unless she were to leave Hakkan itself defenceless.'
'Not many,' said Theor. 'Whatever happens, we should at least strive to preserve the Horin-Gyre Blood.
They must be protected if the creed is to be strengthened rather than weakened by all of this. They are a beacon others can look to, especially now that they have achieved the impossible.'
'They are,' Nyve agreed. 'All would depend upon the common-folk. Put enough fire in the bellies of his people and even a High Thane cannot disregard it. What does the Hunt say, Avenn?'
'We can stir the villages. Dozens have already gone across the Stone Vale. There is a fervour not seen in many years: feasting and bonfires and telling battle tales. My people could set talk of glory loose in every meeting hall, every farmyard; light a fire the Thanes could not restrain.'
'Even with every sword Horin-Gyre can muster and an army of commonfolk alongside them, Kanin could not stand against the full weight of Haig,' Nyve observed. He was methodically massaging his crooked fingers. 'He will be consumed. As, it seems, Ragnor wishes.'
'All might be different, were the Battle to march,' Avenn suggested.
Neither Theor nor Nyve replied at once. Nyve's kneading of his fingers did not pause, as if he had not even heard what Avenn said. Theor regarded the First of the Hunt thoughtfully. She was impatient, always eager to moving on. Perhaps it was for the best. They all knew this was the crux of the decision that must be made.
'That would remove all restraint,' Nyve observed quietly.
'Perhaps that is what is required,' Theor said. His tone was gentle, conversational. He would not compel his old friend into this. In times such as these, unanimity was important. 'If Ragnor oc Gyre has made agreements with the Haig Thane; if he would rather see the Horin-Gyre Blood broken than risk open warfare with Haig; if he prefers playing games of worldly power, and the warm safety of his throne, to seeking the creed's rightful dominion over all people — if all of this is true, then perhaps the time for restraint has passed. War forges a people as the furnace does a sword. It will restore our people's temper. And if the Battle marches, nothing Ragnor can do will stop the fire we set. Thousands — tens of thousands - will follow.'
'That's true,' Nyve said quietly, 'that's true.' He lapsed into silence.
Theor thought it best to leave the First of the Battle to his ruminations. He turned to Avenn.
'Tell me, do you remember a conversation we had three years ago? I believe it was at the wedding of the Gaven-Gyre Bloodheir. You made some mention of a woman you had in Kolkyre. A blade, you called her, poised over our enemy's heart.'
She smiled. It was a wolfish kind of expression, Theor thought.
'I remember it well. I am surprised you do, Lorekeeper.'
'Oh, I find I remember a great many things as I get older. It's perverse, but there you are. If we are to abandon ourselves to fate, shed all restraint, I wonder if the time might not have come to let that blade fall?'
'Gladly, if it is our united will,' said Avenn, with a sideways glance at Nyve. 'That is one death that would fill our people with belief. Once that head rolled, it is unlikely that anyone could prevent conflagration: not us, not Ragnor, not Gryvan oc Haig.'
'We choose how we meet fate, not what that fate is,' Theor said. 'If it is written that we are to succeed in this, we will do so no matter what dangers or obstacles may seem to bar our way. I do nothing without full consent, but I say the time has come.'
Nyve laid his hands like crumpled cloth in his lap. 'T
he Battle will march.'
So it is done, Theor thought. For good or ill, we put ourselves in fate's balance; we face a tumultuous future. 'We are agreed, then. The Battle will march, a Thane will die and the people will rise. Let it be as it is written.'
'As it is written.'
'As it is written.'
They left as they had come: one by one, alone. Avenn went first, striding out into the day's white light.
Theor and Nyve did not speak as they waited for her to disappear from view, but before the First of the Battle followed her out of the Roundhall Theor laid one hand upon his shoulder and let it rest there for a while.
Theor retired early to his private chambers that night. He sent away his servants and dressed himself in his night robes. He opened the carved box at his bedside and removed a scrap of seerstem. The herb had blackened his lips over the years, and they tingled faintly now, anticipating what was to come. He lay down and slipped the stem into his mouth. He worked carefully at it with his teeth: crushing and squeezing, not breaking it apart. The dark juices oozed out and that familiar, comforting numbness began to spread over his tongue and lips. Slowly, slowly it would spread through his jaw and over his scalp and eventually seep into his mind. Then the visions would come. Sometimes, there was the precious sense of patterns emerging from the chaos of events and lives.
None save the Lore Inkallim were permitted the use of seerstem. Others, lacking the discipline of a lifetime's schooling in the creed of the Road, could be led astray by the sights the stem offered. The key was to understand that it was not the future that was contained in these fleeting, formless visions, but the past and the present. When Theor dreamed seerstem dreams, he saw all the thousands of paths that had been followed to bring the present into being; he saw, in all their multitudes, the countless tales — finished and unfinished — that the Last God had read from his Book of Lives. But he did not see what was yet to befall those travelling that vast, intricate Black Road.
As he waited for the seerstem to take its effect the First of the Lore watched the flame on the candle by his bed. He was possessed by a vague unease. The weeks and months to come were likely to bring a war greater than any there had been for more than a century. That in itself did not concern him. The Kall would come only when all humankind was bound to the creed of the Black Road ; such unity could only be achieved through war and conquest. As the Kall itself was inevitable, so too was eventual victory, whatever the outcome of the present strife.
The roots of Theor's disquiet lay rather in regret. He had thought, when Ragnor first ascended to his throne in Kan Dredar, that he would make a good High Thane. In those early years he had seemed of one mind with his late father: dutiful, secure in his adherence to the creed and to the primacy of its advancement. Somehow, Ragnor had instead become merely a ruler, consumed by the meaningless day-to-day business of power. And they - all of the Inkallim, but most of all Theor himself - had failed in their responsibilities. They had allowed the rot to set in. Once, it might have been cut out with nothing more than a child's woodworking knife; now it would require a sword. Had he allowed the vigilance of the Lore to slip? Was he to blame that they had come to such extremity? In the end, it did not matter.
This was the course they were fated to follow. But still, it could not hurt to ensure that no one had any further excuses to forget that the creed was the light that guided all things. When the Battle marched south, it would be fitting for a party of the Lore Inkallim to accompany it.
The seerstem's tingling touch reached behind his ears, worked its way into the bones of his skull. He rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. Shapes were beginning to move on the inside of his eyelids. He stilled himself, forcing all thoughts from his mind. He waited to see what would come.
Taim Narran could not be sure what was being destroyed on the other side of the door. Judging by the sounds that filtered through the heavy oak, it was something substantial. Out of respect for Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig's feelings — and perhaps, if he was honest, out of trepidation - he waited until the noise had subsided before entering.
Lheanor's one surviving son - the Bloodheir, now - stood in the middle of the small room. Fragments of wood were scattered around him on the stone floor. A chair leg still hung, forgotten, from his limp hand.
Roaric's head was bowed, his eyes closed, his shoulders slumped. The Thane's son had returned from the south only this morning. He had brought even fewer of his men back alive from Dargannan-Haig lands than Taim had. To be greeted with the news of his brother's death at Grive would have been too much even for one of less tempestuous nature, Taim thought.
Roaric had not registered Taim's presence. He stood quite still, lost in the numb fog of grief. Taim hesitated. He was not sure that he could offer anything to the young man; or that it would be welcomed, even if he could. They had been comrades, though, in Gryvan's war; friends amidst a storm of hostility.
'Roaric,' he said softly, then, when there was no response, again more loudly: 'Roaric.'
The younger man looked up, his eyes wild and bleary. They drifted over Taim, swung around across the window.
'I am sorry,' Taim murmured. 'You deserved a better homecoming than this. We all did.'
Roaric let the chair leg slip from his fingers. It clattered to the floor. He walked to the window, unconsciously kicking aside the detritus of his rage as he went.
'They'll bleed rivers of blood in answer for this, the Black Road ,' he said thickly. He planted his hands on either side of the window, stared out over his father's city. 'I should have been here.'
'We both should have been.'
'I was proud when my father gave me charge of our armies to march south. Proud! And look at this now. All but a few hundred of the men who marched with me are dead. My brother's dead. We're nothing but shadows of what we once were, Kilkry and Lannis. We're like sickly children, our strength leaking away from a thousand little sores.'
'It's not over yet,' said Taim.
'No?' Roaric snapped. He spun away from the window and glared fiercely at Taim. The emotion lasted only for an instant, though. As soon as he saw Taim's face Roaric's own anger sank away. He only shook his head.
'There will be a chance for us to give answer for what has happened,' Taim said levelly.
'Perhaps,' murmured the Kilkry-Haig Bloodheir. 'Perhaps.'
'I leave for Glasbridge tomorrow. I wanted to see you, offer my regrets and good wishes, before I left.'
'I am sorry to intrude.'
The soft voice from the doorway surprised both of them. Ilessa, Roaric's mother, stood there. There was an awful pain in her face, Taim saw, when she looked at her son. She fears for him, he thought.
'There is someone here I think you will wish to see, Taim Narran,' Ilessa said. 'Will you come with me?'
Taim glanced at Roaric, but the younger man had turned away, almost as if he was ashamed to meet his mother's gaze. With a heavy heart, he followed Ilessa out and down the spiralling stairway that formed the spine of the Tower of Thrones .
'Boats are coming to the harbour,' Ilessa said as they went. 'They've taken flight from Glasbridge; it's fallen, Taim. Destroyed.'
A groan escaped Taim's lips before he could restrain it.
'All is not ill tidings today, though,' Ilessa said quickly. 'Come, in here.'
She ushered him through a doorway, but did not follow. He wondered why for a moment, then his eyes fell upon the room's sole occupant: a slight woman seated at a table. At that sight, Taim's breath caught in his throat and his mind was swept clean of all that had crowded it. Tears sprang to his eyes as she rose from the table and he went to embrace his wife.
'I feared for you,' he said as he crushed her to him and felt her arms about his waist. Here was light and hope amidst all the gloom, and he could do nothing more than cling to her.
'And I for you,'Jaen replied in an uneven voice. 'You have been gone too long this time.'
'Yes, far too long.' And that was all he'cou
ld say for a little while.
She told him, later, of Glasbridge's end; of the still, misty morning when a wild flood came out of the north. The Glas became a wall of water roaring down the valley. It swept across the camp of warriors outside the town's northern gate, gathering a cargo of dead men and horses. It piled up against the palisade and the bridges, hammering at them with trees and boulders and corpses carried by the surge.
The water swelled and foamed until it tore the great timbers of Glasbridge's stockade out of the earth.
The wall of oak that had guarded the town's northern flank was ripped away and carried down to the sea. The flood rushed through the heart of the town. And at last, almost upon the stroke of noon, the stone bridge that had spanned the mouth of the river since the days of the Aygll Kingship broke and crashed with a defeated rumble into the foaming waters.
There were hours of chaos, of noise and fear and anger. At dusk the army of the Black Road came in the wake of the flood, and then there was nothing left but fear.
Taim's wife, his daughter and her husband fought their way to the docks and in the mad tumult of the waterside managed to buy their way on to a little fishing boat. The vessel, labouring beneath a mass of frightened families, struggled out into the estuary. Looking back as they drew close to Kolglas, they had seen the night sky lit by a diffuse orange glow, and they knew that Glasbridge was afire.
Through all this grim tale Taim felt only relief and the lifting of a great burden. His wife and daughter were delivered to him out of the slaughter that had consumed his homeland. Beyond hope, the darkness had seen fit to allow him this one ray of light. When they lay that night in one another's arms for the first time in so long, he found that he still had the capacity, for a time, to believe in - and to accept — sanctuary.
VII
ORISIAN AND YVANE were sitting on the shore behind Hammarn's hut. The na'kyrim was scraping dirt from beneath her fingernails with a twig. Orisian was watching Edryn Delyne's ship. Torches had been lit at bow and stern as dusk began to fall. Now and again their light flickered as somebody moved in front of them.
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