by Helen Lowe
Wolf’s regard was unblinking. “That is also why I came. My shaman’s power and blood kinship to Rowan will help moor you to her bridge.”
Blood is always strongest. Malian repeated Faro’s words to herself. But locks of hair are strong as well. The only rune scroll that did not have both was the one for the Rose. But she had the walking stick, and a tress of Lady Mayaraní’s hair—which Kalan and Taly had removed from a locket that belonged to Mistress Ise, both having been adamant that Lady Myr’s body must lie undisturbed.
It will serve, Malian thought, and turned toward the cairn.
The day had been clear, so Nimor’s pilot star and the waning moon both hung overhead, marking the opening in the roughly dressed stone as she rested a gentle hand on Falath’s head. The darkness beyond the cairn’s mouth was immense: a reminder, had Malian needed one, that she had no idea whether this would work, only whatever hope the remnant Fires saw—and the certainty that she had to try. Behind her, Rhaikir and the cadres were silent, Wolf a shadow in the dusk as she gave Falath a last pat and stepped into the mouth of the tomb.
Malian felt the stir of Wolf’s magic, sealing the threshold behind her as Rhaikir and his adepts invoked their shielding circle. She had a brief, dizzying sense of the corvids’ wings from her Stoneford fever, spiraling about her, before they dissipated into the murmur of Haarth’s song, rising through the cairn’s wellspring of power. Stepping forward, Malian placed her left hand on the pale boulder that served as a plinth. The armring flamed into silver life and the shadow of a gate rose before her, shaped out of mist and darkness. But before Malian could step forward, a phantom cavemouth appeared between it and her. “We made a bargain, the sword and I.” Amaliannarath’s mindvoice whispered out of the cavern’s mouth and echoed from the frost-fire sword. “As you did also, Namesake, in the Stoneford chapel.”
“To take Fire as my own,” Malian said slowly. She hesitated, wondering if taking the ghost of one of the three sundered Ascendants on her quest to restore the Golden Fire could bring about Emuun’s prediction that she would be the stake driven into the heart of the Derai Alliance. Yet having accepted the sword and pledged her word to Raven, Malian could see no alternative. She remembered, too, how Amaliannarath’s ghost had spoken out of the blade in Stoneford. “So as long as I have the sword,” she said aloud, “I will always carry you as well.”
“A promise made to the dying,” the ghost whispered. “The sword carries a fragment of my essence as you now carry sparks of what were once Yelusin, Maurid, and Kamioriol. You will need us all, Child of Night.”
Did the sword foresee that, Malian wondered, as well as my need of Fire: is that why it made the bargain that binds me now? Nhenir was silent, and the fragments of Yelusin and Maurid were quiescent, too, which implied that this was her decision.
“It is.” Now Nhenir did speak, silver in her mind. “The Chosen of Mhaelanar must determine her own path.”
Only in this case, Malian thought, there is no other path. “So be it,” she said. The specter of the cave mouth vanished, leaving the gate of mist and shadow clear. Raising the armring high, Malian spoke the words inscribed inside its band: “‘I move through worlds and time . . .’” And she did, stepping out of Rowan Birchmoon’s cairn and into the Gate of Dreams, to stand before the psychic manifestation of the Gate of Winds that guarded the Derai realm—which had remained closed to her throughout six years of exile. Now, for the first time since she had ridden away from the Keep of Winds and her old life, Malian reached beyond the psychic barrier.
“‘. . . I seek out the hidden, the lost I find.’” Silent as a ghost herself, inexorable as the passage of time, she descended through the vast, abandoned layers of the Old Keep and into the room that lay at its heart. “Hylcarian,” she said, both aloud and with her mind’s voice. “I have returned as I said I would.”
At first only silence answered, but gradually Malian felt the unfolding: as though a small space had opened to reveal a greater whole. Flame danced at the periphery of her vision. “Child of Night.” The voice was fire’s crackle through parched grass. “Is my waiting done?”
“It is. With your permission, I shall enter your secret heart, as I did once before when need drove me. But I do not come alone.”
“So I perceive.” The flicker of light became a sun rising in fire and gold. The voice was summer thunder, rumbling out of a clear sky. “You are welcome into my heart, Child of Night. Yet although a child no longer, to enter you must still take the step of trust.”
Out beyond worlds, Malian knew, and time as well, like the tower she had climbed in Jaransor, and the cave Amaliannarath had made for her sleepers. Closing her eyes, Malian emptied her mind and heart, until all that remained was the murmur of Haarth’s song and the darkness between worlds. Finally, her soul’s eye opened into the heart of a blazing sun.
In the waking world, gazing into the face of the sun meant going blind—but the eye that was Malian’s soul could not look away, and the brilliance was liquid fire along her veins. She was burning, burning, held in a crucible in which she, too, must be remade or die. “Malian.” The whisper was a tendril of silver spun across molten gold. She had heard it once before when she hung between life and death, only then it had been Darksworn sorcery that reached out to engulf her.
“Yorindesarinen.” Malian was not sure whether she spoke in words or her entire being rang with the hero’s name. The tendril became a kindling of white and indigo flame in a glade between worlds, and although Malian was still on fire, the surrounding conflagration was no longer molten. She watched Yorindesarinen’s fire burn to gray ash, only to ignite again, brighter and stronger than before. A silver phoenix appeared in the flames, its tail an aurora and its eyes spring stars.
“I am Iriellirin. Your helm is wrought in my likeness and you bear my image on your back.” The voice was both keen edged and bright as the bird soared out of the fire and settled on Malian’s shoulder. “You are dear to the greatest and most beloved of my daughters; my youngest son has given you a lock of his hair.” Silver claws dug deep but caused no pain, and the fire in her veins cooled.
“I am Yelusin.” The spark within Malian danced free, expanding into an ocean of light. A mer-dragon swam out of it and curled about her, gazing down from the eyes painted on Sea House ships.
“I am Maurid.” The hydra’s essence also left Malian and grew, rearing multiple heads. “My daughter is lost, but you protect my son. And you have left my new Blood free.”
“I am Kamioriol.” Roses blossomed in the heart of the fire, exploding in fireworks, only to rebloom again. “Myrathis was also mine and you bring Mayaraní with you. I mourn them both . . .”
“I am Yyr.” The gryphon of Swords circled.
“I am Iluthys . . . Thuunoth . . . Sirithilorn.” The centaur of Peace gave way to the sphinx of Adamant, and then the sweep of the simurgh’s wings.
“Namesake, I am Amaliannarath. The power released into Haarth through my dying reawakened my long-estranged sister, Yelusin. I crossed the void with Fire and brought you the hero’s sword.” The golden conflagration stilled as the phantom voice spoke—before the crucible flared back into life. This time the protective entities were a firebreak, enclosing Malian as she stepped into its burning heart, the same way Tarathan had once entered Yorindesarinen’s fire to find her. Tarathan . . . His element was also fire, the magma that lay at the heart of the world, and momentarily, the Song of Haarth was all about her with its myriad voices. But the furnace roared again, and Malian spread her arms wide, expanding mind and heart and spirit to embrace it. When she opened her physical eyes at last, she was standing in a room with twelve walls and twelve doors, which blurred into a star-filled firmament.
The last time Malian had been here, the door frames had been golden flame and the space within them shimmering mist. Now each door was a sheet of fire and the arches above them constellations. The circular table still stood in the center of the room, its base an immense tree trunk, its
surface divided into twelve equal parts by fiery lines. Six of the twelve parts remained as Malian had first seen them, cloudy and filled with indecipherable moving shapes. Five were now fields of gold containing a single, sharp-edged image: the phoenix of Stars and mer-dragon of Sea, the bloom of the Rose and the hydra of Blood, and the winged horse of Night. A sixth section glimmered white with a hint of rose-gold in its depths. Within it, the silhouette of a firedrake lay coiled amid silver and gold flame.
“Child of Night, Heir of the Derai, Chosen of Mhaelanar.” Hylcarian’s voice was light and warmth and heat. “Welcome again, Malian, into my heart, which is also the heart of the Golden Fire.” The summer voice paused. “Welcome, also, to our sister, long sundered.”
“Welcome,” the others voices murmured, and then, speaking as one voice that resounded through Malian and the room, “The maelstrom rises, Child of Night, and need presses. You must begin what you came here to do: restore us.”
Malian bowed, her palms placed together in the Blood of the Derai’s ancient salute to the Golden Fire, which she had used to acknowledge Faro’s gift of the rune scrolls. When she straightened, the table had altered shape so that she now saw it entirely as a tree, one so vast Malian was not sure even her soul’s eye could encompass it. The trunk extended far below the tabletop and the roots delved deeper still, far back along the twists and turns of time. The canopy above her head held myriad stars and worlds, the slow spiral of galaxies, and the unfolding and closing in again of universes. “It’s so huge,” Malian whispered, mostly to herself, but of course they heard her.
“Once,” Hylcarian told her, “we were flame that moved in the darkness between its branches, before we acquired thought and will and form. When the ancestors of what you call the Derai and the Sworn were first born, we were drawn to the galaxy of their smaller sparks, shaping and reshaping ourselves until your forebears could see us clearly. Only then could they also hear us when we spoke, and learn to speak to us in return.”
“Until the maelstrom rose.” All the entities present spoke as one, Amaliannarath’s whisper weaving through the rest. “Now, follow the sun’s path about the table and lay each of your scrolls in their place.”
East to west, Malian thought, only where’s north? But when she looked up, Nimor’s pilot star hung over the winged horse, while one of the new constellations she had seen on her journey into southern Aralorn was rising above the phoenix opposite. “Three times is best, one circuit for each of the Derai’s three castes.” This was Nhenir’s mindwhisper, but no voice of fire gainsaid the helm’s advice. So Malian paced east to west around the table, laying down three of the nine scrolls with each pass: first Tirael’s fair hair for Stars, with one of Nimor’s cabled locks for Sea, and Lady Mayaraní’s dark tress for the Rose. The second time around, she set down the scroll with a scraping from Rook’s close-shaven head for Adamant, followed by the two that Garan had brought her from Peace and Morning. She kept her own for the third circuit, together with Faro’s offering, and finally—and far from least, she supposed—Kelyr’s scroll for Swords.
Nine of the table’s twelve sections were gold now, the images of the simurgh and the centaur, the sphinx and the gryphon all burning bright. Malian halted by what she guessed was Fire’s place, studying the firedrake and thinking that she should have made a scroll for Raven as well . . . Then again, he had said that Fire was making its alliance with her, rather than rejoining the Derai. Reluctantly, she looked beyond the firedrake to the two segments that remained clouded, any image no more than a turn of shadow within their murk. Salar and Nindorith: she was almost afraid to think their names, in case the Ascendants became aware of what she was doing.
“They will not know,” Amaliannarath told her. “The way here has been closed to both since the Sundering, as it was for me. I could not have come here now if you had not brought me and the others allowed me in. But I am dead, so can no longer be part of the crucible.”
“Yet even with you here,” Malian said, “the table—like the Derai and the Sworn—is no longer whole. How much difference will that make, in seeking to restore the Fire?”
Malian sensed Hylcarian deliberate. “We were born Twelve,” he said finally, “so even if the other two were present, Amaliannarath’s loss might tip the scales against us.”
“I doubt Salar would be capable of reentering the crucible now.” Amaliannarath was dispassionate. “He has spent too long in the maelstrom.”
“But you are right to be concerned, Child of Night.” Now the ten entities spoke as one. “With three of the Twelve absent, we cannot assume that the alchemy of our beginning can be replicated. Restoration may fail, or what is reborn may be Other than what we were before.”
Yet even if the whole enterprise was doomed to failure from the outset, Malian knew she could not turn back. “If only the shield had remained whole and the arms of Yorindesarinen intact.” She spoke her regret aloud. “They might have countered Amaliannarath’s loss.”
Hylcarian’s thunder rumbled about tree and table. “A buckler made of metal shattered. But you, Malian, are the shield of heaven, the aegis of Mhaelanar born into the world. Just as it was Yorindesarinen’s will and courage that stopped the Worm, not the arms she bore.”
Again, the ten voices spoke as one. “Do what must be done, Chosen of Mhaelanar. Take your god-forged sword and drive it into the table’s heart.”
Not a stake, Malian thought, understanding at last, but a sword—for this place, with the table as its core, was undoubtedly the heart of the Derai Alliance. “Are you sure?” she asked at last. Her voice sounded small against the surrounding vastness, the intonation that of the child Malian, from when she had first come here.
“Child of Night, there is no other way.” The summer thunder was muted now, Hylcarian’s voice gentle. “Iriellirin may wear the phoenix form, but we were all born from Terennin’s fire, which must return to ash before it can reignite.”
“But you don’t know for certain that it will.”
“What in all the worlds and across time is ever certain? Yet even if everything we hope for comes to pass, we will not be reborn with the strength, built up over long aeons, that was ours before the Night of Death. That is part of the price we must pay to be made new.”
The Night of Death . . . Malian wanted to ask whether Raven’s account of the Sundering was true and whether what she was about to do now could undo that, but the time for both questions and doubt was past. One way, or the other, she thought—and drew the frost-fire sword, the blade already glowing white as it cleared the sheath. The armring, too, was silver fire, and she knew that Nhenir, the moon-bright helm, would be as she had first seen it: black adamantine steel decorated with pearl and silver, with the phoenix wings swept up to either side and wrapped about the casque. Malian lowered the visor that was shaped into the dawn eyes of Terennin over her own, so no glamour or working born of power would cloud her vision, and closed both hands around the sword’s hilt, raising it high.
“Now, Child of Night!” Ten voices reverberated as one between the fiery doors. Reaching deep within herself, Malian released the power she had kept banked for so long, hiding from both the Derai and the Swarm. Wreathed in silver flame and anchored in the Song of Haarth, she drove the frost-fire sword down, deep into the table and through it, into the heart of the tree—and the twelve-sided room exploded in fire, hurling her into a void beyond thought, memory, and time.
Here ends The Wall of Night Book Three,
Daughter Of Blood
To be continued in The Wall of Night Book Four,
The Chaos Gate
Glossary
Aarion: House of Blood Honor Guard in Jad’s eight-unit
Aeln: Night honor guard in Asantir’s escort
Aeris: city kingdom in the lands beyond the River
Aikanor: Heir of Night at the time of the Derai civil war and Great Betrayal
Aithe: lieutenant in the Prince of Fire’s personal guard
Aiv: Hous
e of Blood groom
Alliance: alliance of the nine Houses of the Derai; also Derai Alliance
Amaliannarath: Darksworn Ascendant, most closely associated with the nation of Fire
Amarn: Darksworn adept, sworn to the sorcerer Nirn
Ammaran: Heir of Blood over four hundred years before, last of an older line
Amrathin: Earl of Blood over four hundred years before, last of an older line
Anchor, the: Grayharbor inn
Andron: smith to Grayharbor’s town guard, also a fire-watch captain
Anvin:a Son of Blood, sixth child of the Earl of Blood; full brother to Kharalthor, Hatha, Liankhara, and Sardonya; half brother to Parannis and Sarein; also half brother to Myrathis
Ar: city of the River
Ara-fyr: border watch in southern Aralorn
Aralorn: realm of Haarth, located south of the River
Aralth: chamberlain to the Earl of Blood
Aranraith: a leader of the Darksworn, Prince of the House of Sun
Aravenor: Lord Captain of the Patrol
Arcolin: lieutenant to Aranraith; formerly Swarm envoy in Emer
Asantir: Commander of Night
Ascendant: Sworn term for three of their greatest powers, magical beings associated with each of their three nations respectively: Salar for Sun, Nindorith for Lightning, and Amaliannarath for Fire
Ash: River tinker
Asha: Night honor guard in Garan’s eight-unit
Ash Days: the half way point between Autumn’s Eve and Autumn’s Night in Haarth’s Southern Realms
Audin Sondargent: Emerian knight, nephew to the Duke of Emer
Autumn’s Eve: the autumn equinox
Autumn’s Night: the Southern Realms festival dedicated to Kan that marks the transition from autumn to winter; also known as Winter’s Eve