The Heir of Night

by Helen Lowe

  The fire crackled on the hearth, and the tapestry on the wall stirred. Outside the wind’s voice rose on a knife-sharp edge: The eye had passed and now the tempest would rage around the keep again. The figures in the hanging rippled and shifted as though answering the rising wind, but Malian was already asleep and Nhairin gave no sign of noticing.

  A blot of darkness, deeper than the shadows cast into relief by the fire, uncurled from the hanging’s depths. A flat, narrow head swayed forward and a sinuous body followed, disengaging from the fabric. The head swung slowly from side to side, surveying the room, before dropping silently to the floor. Still Nhairin did not move or turn her head, and the red glow of the fire sank back onto its bed of coals. The creature waited for a long moment more, watching the steward, before turning toward the bed and the girl who slept there.

  19

  The Huntmaster

  The storm assaulted the Keep of Winds with renewed fury, battering the watchtowers and shrieking along the ramparts of spear-deep stone. Even in the inner fastness of the Temple quarter, its voice formed an uneasy backdrop to the tumbled darkness of Kalan’s dreams. He had dreamed every night since returning to the New Keep, a jumble of faces and voices and scenes that were as random and disconnected as the debris caught in the storm’s vortex.

  On the first night back, Kalan had seen his father’s face, cold and closed, just as it had been on the day he disowned Kalan and threw him out. Although not the formal rite of renunciation and expulsion, his father’s words had been sharp and cold as stone. “What are you, boy? Who? You must be a changeling, an incubus, for none of our family ever had such powers!” In the dream Kalan had stretched out his hands, trying to protest, but his father had turned away. Only his voice came floating back: “Nay, do not cry out to me for I invoked the rite long ago. You are no more son of mine!”

  You are no more son of mine. Kalan had woken in a panic to the pressing darkness of his sleeping cell. The storm had still been building then, but he had felt its power closing in on him like the walls of the narrow chamber.

  The dreams, like the storm, had grown in strength as the days passed and although none were as clear as that of Kalan’s father, they were all shot through with a sense of threat, snatches of conversation, and the keep seen from odd angles. Other images intruded as well: Malian pacing in a red and white room; a glimpse of the heralds standing by a great pillar of stone, the wind whipping their hair beneath a sullen sky—and a great war spear with a blade like black flame and a collar of feathers, darkly iridescent as a crow’s wing. It sang to him, a low, fierce song of danger that reverberated in the core of his being.

  “But you are lost,” Kalan said, coming on it unexpectedly through a wreathing of mist. “You pierced the Raptor of Darkness and fell with it, into the void.”

  But the spear sang on, pursuing Kalan through his dreams, and sometimes the sense of menace grew so oppressive that he would fight to wake up, only to spend long hours afterward counting the stones in the walls of his room. The days were little better, for he was no longer free to come and go as he pleased. Sister Korriya wanted an eye kept on him, and so there was no more slipping away on his own: Library or Temple, every minute of his time was closely watched. He even slept alone, in the narrow cell rather than the novice dormitory.

  Sister Korriya had said that it was for his own good. There were still dark forces at work, she explained, and grave fears for both his safety and that of the Heir. He would have to be patient and put up with their watch over him until things settled down.

  The priestess’s face had been drawn with exhaustion, for the High Priest, already old, was now seriously ill and the burden of setting the Temple quarter to rights had fallen heavily on her. And she, like many others in the quarter, still wore the haunted look of those who had survived the Raptor’s attack. So although Kalan found it hard to believe that so close a watch was really for his protection, given that they had beaten back the Darkswarm attack and slain the Raptor of Darkness in the end, he said nothing. Sister Korriya did not need the burden of his rebellion on her already weary shoulders, and besides, he still felt guilt for that haunted look.

  Again and again, Kalan went over what had happened on the night of the attack, asking himself whether the real reason he had gone into the Old Keep might not have been because it was safer than turning back to face danger and death? Maybe he could have done more to foil the Raptor’s attack, should have done more. Was that, he wondered, why Ornorith had turned her face away and let the walls of the Temple quarter close in on him again?

  “I can’t go meekly back to the old life,” Kalan vowed to his silent room. “I won’t!” But as the days dragged on and the dreams worsened, so that he always woke feeling exhausted, he could not help wondering if the Old Keep had just been another dark dream, the ring on his hand part of some greater confusion.

  The dream he tossed in now was the wildest yet, but clearer than any except the first. He felt as though he were hurtling forward on the back of the storm itself, and the darkness was filled with voices that shrieked of despair and death. Kalan could not unravel exact words, but he caught the note of rising panic and a sense of danger so pressing that he could almost taste it. He knew that he was searching for someone that he needed to find, but could not; and now even he, the keen sighted, was lost—until the blindness of the dream shredded and he found himself looking into a room that was richly hung in red and white, but full of shadows.

  A woman with a scarred face sat in a chair by the fire, lost in contemplation of its depths, while on the wall a tapestry stirred. Slowly, a clot of darkness began to emerge from the surface of the hanging cloth. The figures in the hanging rippled and shifted as the darkness took shape, a flat head swinging to survey the room. The woman continued to stare into the flames, oblivious to the movement on the wall.

  The swinging head moved with the draughts that crept through tightly closed shutters, and the current of the creature’s excitement sifted into Kalan’s dream: It was close now, so close to its prey—and no one had even suspected it was there as it worked its way from shadow to shadow, slipping from the Old Keep into the New beneath the noses of the watching guards. Blind they were, blind and deaf to their danger in these perilous times, even when it ghosted past. Fools! It would deal with their kind later.

  The creature’s only concern was the corrosive taint of silver in the air, a taint that had strengthened as it drew closer to its quarry. The silver burned in its nostrils and throat like acid, making it hard to think clearly, although it could see now that the girl herself was the source. A faint silver glow hovered around her, like corruption around a corpse.

  The flat head drew back, the sensitive nostrils flaring, for the taint was elusively familiar: The creature felt it should recognize it from some other place or time. And the tapestry itself, which had seemed the obvious hiding place with its thick folds and detailed hunting scene, was now stirring with an uneasy life of its own. In the end, however, what could it signify? The girl was safely asleep, alone except for the one lame retainer who might as well have been asleep herself.

  Deliberately, the long sinuous body disengaged itself from the concealing tapestry and dropped to the floor. There it paused, gathering itself, before flowing toward the bed and the girl who slept there.

  Kalan tried desperately to shout or intervene in some way, if only to rouse the woman by the fire into action, but the darkness closed around him again, pulling him back into the storm. He fought against it, but the dream swept him on. When it finally released him, battered and breathless, it was into the gray and black of a fogbound night—and Kalan could not quite remember what had happened immediately before.

  He stood on a path surrounded by banks of fog that stretched between the stark trunks and branching black of a great forest. The Gate of Dreams, Kalan thought—except that this forest seemed vaster, wilder, and infinitely older than the wood that surrounded Yorindesarinen’s fire. He shivered, for the space between
the trees was dense with impenetrable undergrowth and the voice of the storm had gone, replaced by the creak and rustle of branches rubbing together. It sounded, he thought uneasily, like some dark, secret, and not altogether friendly conversation.

  The fog in front of him lifted slowly and drifted apart, revealing the tall figure of a man. His back was turned to Kalan and a long black cloak fell almost to his booted heels; his right hand grasped a tall, hooded spear and a crow perched on his left shoulder. The bird’s head turned, snaring Kalan’s gaze with one bright eye, then it lifted its wings and cawed, the harsh cry echoing through trees and mist. The man looked around and Kalan gasped, for the stranger’s face was concealed beneath a mask of black leather and his left hand had been severed at the wrist.

  Kalan forced himself to speak boldly. “Who are you?” he asked. The mask’s blank eyeholes were fixed on him but the man did not speak, just stood there, leaning on the hooded spear. “What is your name?” Kalan said, trying again.

  The crow cawed a warning; the masked man’s voice, in the quiet of the wood, was as harsh as the bird’s. “Welcome, Token-bearer,” he said. “It has been a long time since the Huntmaster was summoned to the Hunt.”

  Kalan hesitated, uncertain what he meant and whether it would be safe to ask. “The Huntmaster?” he echoed uneasily. “What hunt?”

  The black mask continued to watch him. “It is a wise person,” the harsh voice said, “who knows the face of his friends—and of his enemies.”

  “What?” said Kalan, but the man was already walking away, the black cloak billowing at his heels. Kalan stood rooted to the spot, staring after him, but just as the stranger seemed about to disappear completely into the grayness, the black mask looked back.

  “Well?” the harsh voice said. “Yours is the choice, to walk with me or to turn back. But the Hunt calls, so choose swiftly!” He did not wait for an answer but strode on, into the thick fog between the trees.

  Kalan hesitated, more than a little unsure of this stranger but equally reluctant to be left behind. He took a deep breath and followed, plunging deeper into the dream—if dream it was—until the fog rolled in around him and he could not see even the trunks of the forest trees. Remembering what Jehane Mor had said about the dangers of the Gate of Dreams, Kalan stopped.

  “Do not give in to fear,” said the harsh voice, from directly ahead. “There are too many powers in this place that feed off it and will be drawn to you.”

  The fog lifted again with the voice and Kalan saw the masked figure waiting for him. “You did well to follow this far,” the Huntmaster said, “but we still have a long way to go.”

  Through mists and time, thought Kalan with an inward shiver, and wondered exactly where his dream had led him.

  The mouth beneath the mask was set in a hard line, but now it twisted slightly. “A very long way from anywhere you know, boy.”

  Kalan was not even surprised. It seemed inevitable, so far beyond the Gate of Dreams, that this chance-met stranger should be able to read his mind. The twist to the mouth beneath the mask grew even more pronounced. “I assure you, boy, there is no chance to this meeting.”

  Kalan stared hard at the black mask and the hooded spear, the severed hand, and the crow on the black-cloaked shoulder. Motionless, silent, the crow stared back. This close, he could sense the link between man and bird, like the current that flows cold between moon and tide. He wondered who they were and why—since this meeting was not chance—they had sought him out?

  “Who are you?” Kalan asked for the second time. “What does it mean, to be the Huntmaster?”

  The black mask looked down at him, expressionless. Then the harsh voice said: “Every question must find its own answer, every questioner his or her own.”

  “What kind of answer is that?” demanded Kalan, exasperated, but only the echoes of his own voice answered him and even they dissipated into the fog. In the distance a hound bayed, and the black mask turned toward the sound.

  “Ah,” the Huntmaster said, as though hearing something he had been expecting. He strode away without another word, and the crow rose from his shoulder and flew ahead on silent wings. The ground was rising and the trees drew in close, their roots twisting across the path, and Kalan had to hurry to catch up. Mist trailed between the branches like moss and every now and then, when Kalan glanced up from watching his feet, he could have sworn he glimpsed movement in its depths. Slowly, a fierce humming song rose above the rustle of the trees.

  “So it can follow me even here,” Kalan muttered, his footsteps lagging. Soon he detected something swimming toward him through the mist and stopped altogether, even though he had already guessed the shape of what hung there, just beyond the limit of his keen vision. The song was darkly exultant and grew stronger when he halted, filling the world of mist and forest. The crow circled back, hovering silently overhead.

  The mist grew transparent as a veil and now Kalan could see the spear, floating in midair: There was the leaf-shaped blade of black steel and there, the collar of dark, shining feathers. The fierce, compelling song poured out of it and Kalan wondered whether the spear sang for him or for the masked, enigmatic figure who had turned and walked back to join him.

  “I thought this spear was destroyed,” Kalan said, without taking his eyes off the black blade, “when Captain Asantir used it against the Raptor of Darkness.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the dark mask watching him.

  “It is not the same spear,” the hard voice replied at last, as though grudging the answer, “although it is like enough to be its twin.” He paused, as though weighing some other thought, then added, “This is a Great Spear. Such weapons are not to be used lightly.”

  Kalan frowned, thinking about what had happened in the Old Keep. “Was it wrong, then, for the captain to wield the other spear against the Raptor of Darkness? Was that using it lightly?”

  The mouth beneath the mask twisted again, in what Kalan suspected was meant to be humor. “Boy, anything that slays a Raptor of Darkness is never used lightly. Do you have any idea how powerful an enemy that demon was? Hylcarian himself, given his current strength, would have struggled to destroy it outright, even with all the smaller powers from your keep gathered in. Make no mistake, it was the cast with the Great Spear that made the end certain, for even the slightest touch from such a blade is death.”

  Kalan continued to frown, while his eyes drank in the terrible beauty of the spear. “The Darkswarm must have placed great importance on that raid,” he said eventually, looking around, “to have brought such an ally with them.”

  The eyeholes studied him, wells of darkness in the surface of the mask. “Ah, so you are thinking now, are you? I was beginning to wonder if that was something the Derai had forgotten how to do. But you are right. I would call that raid a great cast of the dice, one made for very high stakes.”

  Kalan’s thoughts raced back to what Yorindesarinen had said in the glade between worlds; he did not even try to conceal the memory from his companion. “She said that Malian is the Chosen of Mhaelanar, the One who will finally defeat the Swarm, once and for all—but that the Swarm knows her identity now. They must have thought a Raptor would make certain of her death.”

  The lip beneath the black mask curled. “If Night falls, all fall. Did you think it was just an old saying, boy?”

  Kalan’s chin jutted. “No,” he said. “But even if they had killed Malian, there is still the Earl and Sister Korriya after him. Malian alone is not Night.”

  The mouth’s hard curl became sardonic. “She is the Child of Night, the single thread on which prophecy suggests that the fate of both the Derai and the Swarm is balanced. Without her, at best the stalemate continues; at worst, the balance tips toward the Swarm. High stakes, indeed, and worth more than a little risk, especially if one can weight the dice in one’s favor with a Raptor of Darkness. And if the Golden Fire had not pushed the Raptor back, that night in the Temple quarter, then there would have been no Sister Korriy
a. Night and the Derai would have hung by a single thread—and I think your enemies had plans and to spare for him.”

  A chill crept along Kalan’s spine. “For the Earl of Night?” Annoyed when his voice came out between a whisper and a croak, he tried again. “What plans?”

  “Vengeance served very cold, boy, out of the darkness of the soul, what else?” There were echoes in the harsh voice that had not been there before, like the distant grumble of thunder when a storm was brewing along the highest ramparts of the Wall. Echoes of power, Kalan thought with a shiver, and had a swift flash of long years spent gazing into the void between worlds. But the spear’s fierce song twined into his mind, pulling him back from that edge to concentrate on what his companion was saying.

  “Oh, yes, they had their plans for your beleaguered Earl and none of them a quick death upon the blade. The gradual destruction of his House and keep around him, that would have begun it; then the inexorable erosion of trust and the attrition, one by one, of all those whom he loves. Perhaps then his enemies would have been content with the smaller pleasures of capture and torture and finally, in absolute and utter despair, death. But then again, perhaps not.”

  Kalan shuddered, feeling the bitter chill of the void tearing at the edges of his soul, but he kept his voice steady. “How do you know all this?”

  “I?” the other answered. “I know many things, as do all who dwell within the folds and mists of time. You have spoken with the star-bright hero already, yet I have dwelt here longer, and deeper, too, in the twists and turnings of the mist—perhaps the deepest of all. There is little that is hidden from me, especially of the darkness that eats at the soul, brooding and festering in on itself. And there are too many who walk here heedlessly, sure of their own power: They never think to ask who may ghost through the mist beside them, or overhear when their words or thoughts plummet like stones into the deep places.”