by Helen Lowe
“You may.” Malian was grave, her reply pitched to the camp. The defenders murmured again as Kalan drew the leather casing over the spear’s blade, and Malian dismounted. The Code required that they now formally embrace, confirming good faith, but the remaining wyr hounds were ahead of Kalan as he stepped forward. A light that was more gilt than silver haloed each lean form as they paced to meet the Heir of Night.
“Chosen of Mhaelanar, Heir of the Derai. We are part of what was once Maurid, the Golden Fire of the House of Blood. We have waited long on your coming.”
“We were Yelusin.” The spark in Kalan’s mind flowered into life. “We, too, have waited for you and for this hour.”
Kalan wondered how many present could hear them, besides himself and Malian. Tirael and his company, probably, and Nimor if he were close enough. Yet he doubted that was all, despite Blood having turned away from the old ways.
Malian raised her right arm, Yorindesarinen’s armring silver fire about her wrist. “‘I seek out the hidden, the lost I find.’” She spoke quietly but her voice carried. “Maurid, Yelusin: you need wait no more. I am indeed the Chosen of Mhaelanar, returned at last to the Nine Houses.”
Flying under her true colors with a vengeance, Kalan thought—but knew she was right to do so. Whatever either of them might have preferred before reaching the Wall, now the Swarm breakout required a bold and resolute answer. The sounds of distant conflict could still be heard, but the quiet in the camp was absolute. Many in it would recognize Maurid and Yelusin as the Golden Fires of Blood and Sea—and Malian had just claimed a title that was straight out of legend. Chosen of Mhaelanar. Small wonder, Kalan reflected dourly, that no one can speak. Even Tirael and his company were silent, perhaps recognizing Malian’s armring, which was part of Yorindesarinen and Stars’ legacy to the Derai, or simply appreciating that they were watching both history and lore twist into a new shape before their eyes.
And waiting, Kalan realized, for me to respond first. “Heir of Night and of the Derai, Chosen of Mhaelanar.” He let Malian’s titles resound through the hush. “I greet you in the name of Lady Myrathis, the Bride of Blood, and salute you on behalf of the Storm Spears. Welcome to the House of Blood’s camp.” Stepping forward, he offered the formal embrace and kiss on either cheek that the Code prescribed. “How,” he asked silently, “did you know we were besieged?”
“Wolf,” she said softly, so only he would hear. “Rowan’s death and his shaman’s foreseeing drew him south. He’s been scouting this country for months, waiting on my coming, and saw the darkspawn buildup.”
Kalan’s gaze went past her to the wolf, and he inclined his head as he stepped back. An uncertain cheer rose from the earthworks, indicative of bemusement and doubt, as much as thankfulness. Most of the defenders, Kalan suspected, would be grappling to assimilate the fact they were alive at all. As I am, he added, his eyes lifting briefly to the sun, settling west into ochre-streaked cloud. His tired mind burned with questions about Wolf and Malian’s army, and how and when she had reached the Gray Lands, but getting answers would have to wait. Now he needed to ensure the dead were gathered up and the wounded tended, and the camp made as secure as possible before night fell.
First finish welcoming our rescuers to the camp, he reminded himself. Jad and Tirael came forward as Malian’s companions dismounted, raising their visors and loosening helmets. Malian turned to introduce the warrior on her right, but he lifted his helmet clear first—and Kalan recognized Ser Raven, the hedge knight from Normarch and Caer Argent. “How—” he began silently, before pulling himself together. “Ser Raven,” he said, still grappling to absorb the incongruity of the knight in this setting.
Ser Raven inclined his head. “Honor on you, Captain, and on your camp.”
As in Emer, the knight gave little away, but Kalan was remembering how they had fought shoulder-to-shoulder at midsummer, to prevent a Darksworn coterie from assassinating Ghiselaine of Ormond. Stepping forward, he clasped the knight’s hand and forearm. “Light and safety on your road, Ser Raven. I am surprised to see you here”—very surprised, he added silently—“but well met, nonetheless. So is this—” He let the sweep of his hand encompass both Malian’s escort and the force pursuing the Darksworn.
“My personal guard,” Raven replied, and Kalan caught a flicker in Malian’s gray eyes, which vanished too quickly to decipher, “and the vanguard of a larger force.”
New allies, indeed, Kalan thought, still trying to fit the knight into the puzzle of Malian’s arrival. Explanations can wait, he reminded himself, as rapid footsteps made him turn. “Captain,” Namath said urgently, “Murn asks that you come at once.” The marine cleared his throat. “He said it concerns Lady Myrathis.”
Myr. Kalan’s eyes jerked toward the inner camp, then back to Malian. “Excuse me, Heir of Night.” Even before she nodded, he had turned to Jad. “The perimeter’s yours,” he told him. “Lord Tirael, if you could see to our guests?” Striding clear, Kalan called Madder to him, but turned back to Namath from the saddle. “Fetch Taly as well.” Mechanically, his eyes swept the disposition of the earthworks as he urged the destrier toward the inner barrier, where everyone from the infirmary who could manage a weapon was deployed along the line of carts. A true forlorn hope, Kalan thought, passing Madder’s reins to the horsegirl who ran up. “Behave!” he ordered the roan, his focus on Myr’s tent—although he nodded to a haggard-faced Tyun, whose stretcher had been raised onto a platform of barrels and sacks, presumably so he could better oversee the defense.
Murn, standing in the entrance to Myr’s tent, looked even worse than the marine captain. “I’m sorry,” the secretary said, “Vael has tried, but by the time I found her—” He broke off, his face working.
“Let me pass.” Kalan’s voice rasped so harshly he did not recognize it. Stepping inside, he was assailed by the acridity of burned wool—and the sight of Myr’s bloodied body, with Faro and Rook collapsed beside her. “No!” Barely registering Vael’s presence, he struggled to give his thoughts shape. “She is dead. They are all dead.”
“Not all.” Two of the wyr hounds remained at the entry, but the other four pressed close on either side of him. “The child lives, and the other one . . .”
But not Myr, Kalan wanted to shout at them, as he had yelled at the sight of the oncoming army: I have lost the life I swore to protect with my own. Fury seared through his initial shock, before he drove the turmoil back down. Opening his locked fists, he forced himself into a semblance of calm as the wyr hounds gave voice, mourning the passing of a Daughter of Blood.
“The child lives.” Kalan blinked, thinking the hounds had spoken aloud, then realized it was Vael, raising his voice above their dirge. “And Rook may, Meraun willing.” He paused, his eyes holding Kalan’s. “I’m sorry,” he said, as Murn had done. “There was nothing to be done for Lady Myrathis.”
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. This time the flag wheel in Kalan’s head echoed the voice from his dream. Coming closer, he saw that Vael and the wyr hounds were right. Both Faro and Rook still lived, although the Adamant youth’s breathing was shallow. When Vael went to the entrance, Kalan heard him giving instructions to Murn about stretchers and drugs—but all he could do was sink onto his heels by Myr’s body and stare at the knife that had killed her.
The dagger, he thought numbly, that I gave to Faro. I was supposed to be her Honor Captain and champion, but instead I brought her murderer into the camp.
“No.” The wyr hounds’ whisper contradicted him at the same time as logic asserted itself, reminding him how easily Orth had overpowered Faro in the gully, and how he himself had disarmed the boy in the Red Keep stable. Any adult warrior entering the tent could have done the same, then used the knife for his or her own ends. And Myr’s hand was clasped over Faro’s, a gesture of comfort he doubted even she would offer her murderer.
You need to concentrate, Kalan told himself savagely, and learn whatever the tent’s interior can tell you. He took i
n Ise’s stick, hurled to the floor beside her silver tray, and the tapestry’s sundered halves—but what brought him to his feet was the way the scene it depicted had changed.
In one half of the web, the lady had her hands pressed over her face. In the other, the warrior had turned away from her—and the crow, which had previously gazed down on them both, clung to his shoulder. Formerly, too, the hind had lain at the lovers’ feet, while the hounds circled all. Now she fled from the warrior’s side of the tapestry, with the milk-white pack in pursuit. The scene was so vivid that Kalan half expected the Hunt to spring to life, baying for the chase and the kill as it had within the Gate of Dreams. Instead he heard voices outside, responding to the wyr hounds’ lament. And notwithstanding Myr’s death, he was still Honor Captain and needed to confirm what had happened, and have her body laid out as befitted a Daughter of Blood. Rook and Faro, too, must either be treated here in the tent, or taken to the infirmary.
Kalan cast a last, lingering look toward the tapestry as Faro groaned, his limbs twitching. When the tent flap lifted, Malian stepped through, her eyes silver in the gloom. “She is dead.” The way she spoke the words told Kalan she had heard his mental cry. “We have indeed come too late, for Lady Myrathis as for so many others. I am sorry.”
Kalan did not need the bond between them to know her regret was genuine. But Malian had not known Myr, so primarly her grief would be for him, not the young woman who lay at their feet. She will mourn as decency requires, he thought, but as swiftly move on. He heard more voices outside, demanding explanations as the wyr hounds fell quiet and the opening lifted again. This time it was Taly who entered, only to stop as he had, white and stricken when she saw Myr. And for Taly, Kalan knew, there would be no easy moving on.
PART VIII
The Shield of Heaven
59
Chrysalis
Lady Myr’s body had been taken to Khar’s tent, where she would lie in whatever state the camp could manage. Everyone had stood with their heads bowed as her bier was borne out by Taly and the surviving Blood exiles—other than Jad, who remained on the perimeter. And Machys and Aarion had both wept. For some reason that was what Faro remembered most. That and Taly, who had shed no tears, her expression still as winter’s frost, iron-hard across frozen ground.
Yet more than anyone else, perhaps even mistress Ise or Khar, Taly had truly loved Lady Myr.
Faro was ashamed, now, of the way he had despised Myr at first, simply because she had been visibly shaken by the fright he and Khar had given her, the first time they met on the Red Keep stairs. Afterward, too, she had embroiled Khar in a duel to the death, instead of defending what Faro had privately termed her own stupid honor. He had started to like her, though, when they fled the camp together. And in the end, Myr had stepped between him and Thanir’s knife.
At least, Faro thought, Thanir wasn’t able to make me kill her—although everyone will probably think I did, because he used my knife. The fact that the knife was the one Khar had given him, just made it all so much worse. Faro wondered what the Derai did to murderers, whether they were hanged like in Grayharbor, and had to fight not to cover his face with his hands and sob—not least because his mam always said that crying because life went against you was giving in to self-pity, which was unworthy conduct.
The healer, Vael, had checked Faro for injuries and cleaned away the worst of the blood, before taking the still-unconscious Rook to the infirmary. Afterward, Khar had sent almost everyone else away. Now, besides Faro himself, only Khar, Nimor, and Tirael remained, together with the two newcomers. Faro thought the lady looked like a younger version of Ilai, while the tall warrior accompanying her had eyes like Arcolin’s, so darkly blue they were almost black. The similarity made Faro want to shrink away and hide, despite having overheard Nimor tell Murn that Khar had slain the sorcerer during the battle. The envoy had said something about Yelusin as well, which Faro had not properly understood, except to grasp that the ships’ closely guarded identity might have been revealed.
All the same, he still avoided the tall warrior’s gaze, which was keen enough to pick out secrets, exactly like the raven he was named for. The lady was called Malian, and she seemed to know Khar well. Faro could tell by the way she touched Khar’s shoulder while moving past him to study the tapestry. He also saw how Khar turned toward the fleeting gesture, and to her. Once, Faro would have been jealous, as he had been of Lady Myr at first, because he wanted Khar to belong only to him. But not now, after Myr had died for him, when even remembering the old jealousy made Faro feel as if he had ill-wished her.
He wanted to ask what had happened to Thanir, but that would have meant drawing attention to himself—and Faro already dreaded their questions, which he would not be able to answer. His recollection of the time immediately before he fainted was vague, but some of the impressions were so strange they seemed like fever dreams. Particularly, Faro thought, the hounds in the tapestry appearing to be alive, and the crow turning into a woman. He knew he hadn’t dreamed the lightning that burned the hanging, though. Not that it changed anything. Myr was still dead.
I’m sorry, Faro cried silently, as he had when she was dying: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They felt like the only words left in the world, and he wanted to cry them out to Khar, too, who so far had barely glanced his way. He knows it’s my fault, Faro thought miserably. And because I’m his page, I’ve stained his honor as well as my own. The terror that Khar might disown him, because of that, was almost worse than the fear he might be hanged. Faro’s only comfort was that the wyr hounds had stayed with him when he crept to one side of the tent, to be out of everyone’s way. Yet he felt certain that when Khar left the camp, the hounds would accompany him, in the same way the original thirteen had bade Faro release them from the Red Keep so they could follow the Storm Spear into exile.
I always feel safer when they’re with me, Faro thought. Then again, he had thought he would be safe from the demons that came to the Ship’s Prow House if only he could reach the Derai Wall. His mam might have warned him against the Derai mariners and their stealing, but she had also told him how the Wall’s great strongholds held back the darkness that crouched at the edge of the world. And at first Faro had felt safer, because when he was with Khar the nightmares that had stalked his sleep since the Ship’s Prow House receded.
Once inside the Red Keep, he was always wary of the hard-faced Blood warriors and the stories whispered about the ruling kin—but he had only grown afraid again when Lord Huern’s path crossed his, that day in the stable. From a distance, the Son of Blood might seem like anyone else, but up close . . . Faro had felt the chill that came off him, exactly like the demons in the Ship’s Prow House, and when he looked sidelong, had felt sure he glimpsed jeweled pins, glimmering in braided hair. He had wanted to warn Khar, but whenever he tried—even when he wrestled to force words out, after Kolthis betrayed the camp and Khar rescued him and Lady Myr from the gully—his speech had remained locked.
Never speak of it, little rat. Let it be our secret, yours and mine. Faro guessed, now, that Thanir must have done something when he placed the two fingers over his lips that terrible night in Grayharbor. Something that meant Faro couldn’t speak of what happened, no matter how much he wanted to. So instead of being safe, he had brought the danger he feared with him, and Lady Myr had died because of it. And if he could not tell anyone what happened, then Thanir might find a way to use him again—and next time it might be Khar the dark warrior wanted dead. Despairing, Faro fought back another sob, even if what he dreaded most was that he had already lost Khar . . .
Despite his efforts, a sound between a hiccup and a sniff escaped, but it was Malian, not Khar, who looked his way. Her fingers still rested on the tapestry’s burned edge, but her steady gaze held Faro transfixed—before she smiled faintly, then stooped to pick up Mistress Ise’s staff, which was holding down the silver tray. “No!” Faro scrambled up, desperation wrenching the words out of him. “You mustn’t!”
> Malian checked. “Why not?” she asked. Now everyone was looking Faro’s way, including Khar, although the Storm Spear’s bleak expression did not change.
Faro could not answer, even indirectly, not even to share the conviction that when, ignorant of danger, he had looked into the shield-mirror that lay beneath the tray, Thanir and whoever else was on the other side must have looked back. Struggle though he might, no further explanation would emerge, only a combined plea and avowal as he turned to Khar. “I didn’t kill her!”
“I know.” Khar’s face remained closed, though, and the hand he placed on Faro’s shoulder was more weight than reassurance. “But you’re going to have to find a way to tell us who did.”
“He won’t be able to.” The warrior called Raven spoke for the first time. “Not until Thanir’s compulsion has been removed. But that’s only the surface layer. Beneath it, the boy’s encased in warding, a prohibition so subtle it’s almost invisible.”
Speculation flared in Khar’s face, before his expression closed in again. Tirael whistled softly, and Nimor was frowning. Only Malian and the wyr hounds appeared unaffected, although the hound closest to Faro whined a protest as his hand clenched on its fur.
“You did say there might be a compulsion.” Nimor glanced toward Tirael.
“Yes.” The Son of Stars was thoughtful. “But the structure of such workings, let alone unraveling them, has not been my study.”
“I might be able to help,” Malian said, in her cool way. Her regard was cool, too, as she studied Faro, who wanted to crawl away and hide again. But he knew none of those present, not even the wyr hounds, were going to let him out of their sight. So he hunched down into himself instead, while Malian turned to Khar. “How much do you know of his past?”