Godless World 2 - Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  "The Shadowhand's coming," one was saying, his voice all awe and trepidation. "The Shadowhand's coming."

  XI

  Sirian's Dyke was a changed village. The last time Wain had been here, she had witnessed the destruction by Shraeve and her Inkallim of the great dam that gave the place its name. Parts of that dam still stood, but they were now only pointless reminders of the hubris of a long-dead Thane. The Glas Water, the marshy lake the dam had retained in order to drown Kan Avor, was gone. The river now flowed unimpeded. Its banks were indistinct: huge expanses of waterlogged mud and debris laid down in the flood of the dam's breaking.

  The village itself had lost its purpose in the moment of the dam's ruin. Its people had, for years, been employed in the maintenance of the dyke and in serving the needs of travellers on the road from Anduran to Glasbridge. The dyke was gone, and there were no travellers on the road, only warriors. Bereft of purpose, Sirian's Dyke was now bereft too of its inhabitants. Not a single man, woman or child of the Lannis Blood remained. Those who had not been killed when the Black Road first overran the village, or had not fled of their own accord, had been dispersed: the adults pressed into service in Anduran or Glasbridge, the children most likely seized by the Inkallim and sent north.

  In place of the original villagers, Sirian's Dyke now housed a few Inkallim and the dozens of eager followers they had gathered to themselves. They were only passing through, making for the battle everyone knew was imminent, at Glasbridge or beyond. Fiallic was taking the bulk of the army along the southern side of the valley, intending to fall upon the flank or rear of any force that marched against Glasbridge. Those, like Wain, who had chosen to follow the road down the river's northern bank faced a more trying journey. Beyond Sirian's Dyke, she knew, the way through the flood-wrecked landscape would be difficult. But it would take her back to Kanin's side, and that was where she meant to stand and fight. It had, too, the advantage of keeping Aeglyss and his Kyrinin away from the great mass of the faithful, and from the wrath of Temegrin the Eagle.

  Satisfied that her horse was suitably settled for the night, Wain backed out of the stall, slapping the beast's haunches as she went. The gesture was part irritation and part grudging respect for the animal's obstinacy; it had been stubborn and obstreperous all day. It looked back at her with what she suspected was contempt.

  In the yard outside, her warriors were making arrangements for their own horses, tying them to a long rope stretched along the side of the stable block. Beyond them, out in the damp dusk where the village gave way to open fields and copses, Wain could see the indistinct shapes of the White Owls, pitching their own camp. Aeglyss would be with them. His mood had been foul ever since Anduran, his presence so brooding and surly that it had unsettled everyone, including Wain. He had not uttered a single word to her - or to anyone, as far as she could tell - for more than a day. Sometimes when she looked at the halfbreed, she felt as though she was looking upon the greatest hope for their cause. Sometimes she was only afraid.

  The inn was already crowded. Thirty or forty commoners of the Gaven-Gyre Blood had taken it over. Wain had her warriors turn them out. She meant to shut herself away in a room, and sleep for as long as her restless mind and body would permit. Such was her hope, but nothing came of it. Her thoughts were too turbulent to submit to slumber. She lay in the darkness with her eyes open for a while, then rose and pulled on her boots and jerkin and leggings, and went out into the yard.

  It was a still night, and quiet, but it spoke to her of a change in the weather. She had grown up in Castle Hakkan, where every winter brought intensive tuition in the art of reading the air and the wind and the sky. Snow was coming, she thought. That would be a good thing. No one chose to fight in this season willingly, but if it must be done, it would surely favour the cause of the Black Road. The enemy they were to face could not know winter quite as intimately as did the Gyre Bloods.

  The guards attending to the horses noticed her presence and busied themselves, taking on an air of exaggerated alertness. She gazed up. The clouds that would bring the snow were not here yet. The night sky glittered with innumerable stars, strewn across the firmament like grains of luminous sand. The moon was bright. Wain's breath plumed mistily upwards and dispersed onto the chill air. A fox barked once, out near the river. Drunken laughter, good-humoured, was drifting out from one of the cottages. Then she heard another sound, at first unclear. She turned. It was Kyrinin voices, high and sharp on the clear air, but meaningless to her. For a moment she imagined it to be an argument amongst dogs, a dispute amongst birds. Then she caught the tone of alarm, the anger and fear that animated the incomprehensible words.

  Wain hesitated. She did not know quite what held her back. It was an imprecise trepidation. She shook it off and strode out into the moon-washed field. A handful of warriors straggled after her. The White Owl camp was in tumult. Some of the Kyrinin warriors had already scattered out from amongst the crude tents and now stood some distance away, staring back, taut like dogs sensing danger but not yet understanding it. A knot of White Owls remained at the centre of the encampment, milling about in a way she had never seen amongst Kyrinin before. Some were shouting, their voices strained. None seemed even to notice Wain's arrival.

  She pushed her way through, and still none of the Kyrinin paid her any heed. Their attention was fixed upon the small patch of ground they had encircled. Aeglyss was lying there, half-curled on his side, one arm stretched out. His hand shook, jerking back and forth over the grass. His eyes were clamped shut. A low groan forced its way out between his teeth. Wain took a step forwards, intending to lift him bodily, but stopped short. Even in the flattening, colourless moonlight, and with the flickering shadows cast by small campfires, it was clear that something was wrong.

  Aeglyss lay on a great disc of dead grass: a near-perfect circle much paler than the rest of the field. Within that circle, the grass was not only dead but unnaturally long, sprawling in great matted swathes. It was as if a great clump of whip-like stalks had come surging up out of the ground, and then died back in almost the same instant. And as her eyes picked out more detail, Wain saw that there were tendrils of now-dead and brittle grass wrapped around the wrist of the na'kyrim's outstretched arm; another hung about his neck like some rustic ornament, a third spiralled around his leg. There was soil smeared across his face and through his hair. A slick of blood, black by the light of the moon, had spread from the wound in his wrist. He jerked convulsively. There was a strange, warm smell on the night air that Wain could not place. It was redolent of ploughed fields, wet logs. It did not belong.

  The White Owls were agitated, yapping and whining at each other. Wain saw Hothyn - the one she took to be the closest thing these savages had to a leader - standing opposite her, staring down at the na'kyrim. For once, his face had an almost human animation. She saw horrified fascination. Whatever had happened here, it had produced something more complicated than simple fear amongst those who witnessed it. The Kyrinin seemed paralysed by bewilderment.

  "The na'kyrim's sick. Get him indoors," Wain said to her own warriors as they pushed up behind her.

  They did as she commanded. The Kyrinin raised no objection, as she had half-expected they might. They watched as a couple of Wain's Shield lifted Aeglyss between them. Strands of grass came with him, reluctant to release their grip. The warriors carried him back towards the inn. Wain followed, and a few paces behind her Hothyn came like an attentive, watchful hound.

  "I can find no wound, other than scratches, save those he already bore," the healer sighed as she washed the na'kyrim's blood from her hands. "Those holes in his wrists have opened up again. I have given him fresh bandages. That's all I can do for him."

  The young woman shrugged. She seemed to Wain to be inexperienced, unsure of her knowledge and skills, but she was the best they had been able to find amongst the companies in Sirian's Dyke. It took no great talent, in any case, to see that what afflicted Aeglyss was not merely to do with his body.r />
  He was calmer now, but occasional tremors still shook his arms. His lips trembled. Sometimes he groaned or muttered barely audible nonsense. He had twice slipped into fraught laughter: a harsh, angry kind of cackle. Wain wondered if his mind had finally broken. The thought that, after all that had happened, this man might now betray her hopes by succumbing to madness made her angry.

  The healer glanced nervously at Hothyn. The Kyrinin stood silently in the corner, as he had done throughout her examination of Aeglyss. His inhuman eyes never left the na'kyrim, never acknowledged the existence of anything save that gaunt form prostrate on the bed.

  "Get out," Wain said irritably to the younger woman. She bowed her head and left.

  Aeglyss was murmuring again. Wain leaned over, straining to catch some of the words, but it was not even a human tongue he spoke in. Some woodwight cant, perhaps. His breath stank, an exhalation of decay, as if his flesh was rotting somewhere on the inside. Wain grimaced, and saw then that his eyes, so close to her own, were open: chips of grey stone, now shot with a net of red lines, like a myriad of tiny fissures exposing the meat that lay beneath their surface. She jerked her head away, repelled by such proximity.

  "What's wrong with you?" she asked.

  Aeglyss smiled feebly. "Nothing. I thrive."

  Wain snorted.

  "You shouldn't mock," Aeglyss rasped. "It reveals the depths of your ignorance. I grow stronger."

  He laughed, but it was too much for him. The sound contorted itself into a wheezing cough that rocked his shoulders. Spittle flecked his chin. Wain turned away in disgust. Hothyn, she saw, remained fixated upon Aeglyss. The Kyrinin stood quite still, wide-eyed.

  "I still live," Aeglyss snapped. "They came for me, in their fear. They meant to quiet me, and silence me, and break me. Ha! They did not know! I still live, and they fled away, through the . . ."

  His words collapsed into another fit of coughing. Wain looked back to him.

  "You're ranting," she muttered. "Are you mad, then?"

  "No. Not mad." He sounded angry. "This isn't madness, you stupid . . . Not madness. I don't know what it is. I don't know." And as quickly as that, the anger was gone and what she saw in his face, and heard in his voice, was fear, confusion. Almost childlike; a sickening feebleness.

  "I don't understand," he murmured. "What do the Anain care for me? What offence have I given to them? I've done nothing . . . yet they come and tear at my mind, try to snuff me out. They think they are the masters of everything. Or perhaps they don't think at all. Perhaps . . . ah, what does it matter? I am beyond them. Even them."

  Wain had the impression that he had lapsed into some inward-looking reverie, but then his head lolled to one side and he stared straight at her.

  "Do you hear me, Thane's sister? I am beyond even them, the awful Anain. They cannot conquer me. What wondrous monster must I be, then?"

  "I do not know," Wain said. Pressure was building at her temples, a hot, hurtful beat in the bone of her skull. Somehow, she could still smell Aeglyss's foul breath. It crowded her nostrils and writhed at the back of her mouth, down her throat. It was vile, but seemed no more terrible than the dead touch of his eyes on her skin. The room had become terribly oppressive. The air gave her no nourishment.

  "You should rest," she said, and left. She could hear Aeglyss laughing as she descended, and just as the sickly sound followed her, so she carried the stench of him with her, and the echo of his ferocity in her mind.

  She demanded wine, and drank it thirstily. She had one of her Shield stoke up the fire and pile logs onto it until the flames leaped. Still she felt cold, beyond the reach of warmth.

  The sound of horses outside stirred her out of her distraction. Shod hoofs were ringing on the cobbles of the yard. Voices were raised. She threw open the door of the inn and glared out, ready to vent her unease upon any convenient victim. The light that flooded out around her as she stood in the doorway illuminated thirty or more mounted figures, but Wain held her tongue. They were Inkallim, stern and haughty. Shraeve was at their head, and she stared down from her lofty position with an expression of arrogant amusement.

  "I thought you would be back in Glasbridge by now," the Inkallim said.

  "And I thought you'd be riding with Fiallic and his host. He's your master, isn't he?"

  "Fate's my master, as it is yours. The approaches to Glasbridge must be held, if that host is to find its way to our enemy's flank. That's where the matter will be most bloodily decided, so that's where we will stand." Shraeve swung out of the saddle and dropped to the ground. "And, anyway, I was curious. I heard much that was interesting regarding your tame halfbreed, while I was in Anduran. It seems a good deal has changed since you and I were last in this dismal little village."

  "It's none of your concern," Wain snapped. "Those who bear more authority than you amongst the Children have spoken with me about Aeglyss. You'll find quarters for your people amongst the cottages, if that's what you seek. There's no other room to spare."

  "You should learn to distinguish more precisely between your friends and your enemies, my lady," Shraeve said with a contemptuous smile. "We ravens are your Blood's closest allies now, whether you like it or not." She led her horse away along the track towards the dark rows of hovels that ran down to the river. As one, the rest of the Inkallim silently dismounted and followed. Wain watched them go, wrestling to contain her shapeless, saturating anger, and then turned back into the inn and shut the door behind her.

  The night sank to its coldest depths. Wain lay unsleeping in her chamber. A square of moonlight fell through the window and onto the bed sheets, like a gossamer-thin silvered scarf laid out there. She stared up at the rough wooden beams of the ceiling. Sleep had always been a problem for her when her mind was active. This was different, though. Whenever she tried to constrain her thoughts, they bounded away from her as if stung by the smack of a carter's whip. And always they turned and turned about the subject of Aeglyss.

  For a time she wished Kanin was there, then thought better of it. Her brother loathed the na'kyrim too much to see clearly. He was limited by that. His convictions had always been flawed by a seam of restraint. Kanin's passion, his faith, could only carry him so far; it was never unconditional. She loved her brother for that failing, the sliver of difference between them that made him who he was. But still it was a difference; it meant there was a part of her he would never quite comprehend.

  Wain had never yet found a boundary she would hesitate to cross if the Black Road led her that way. Was that why she felt this aching hunger in her chest? Something in her had stirred and glimpsed a far horizon that promised much. Whatever it was, Aeglyss had woken it. Yet he had woken revulsion in her too.

  The shadows shifted. The dark pools in the room flowed and parted and Aeglyss was standing by her bed. He was reaching out a single thin hand towards her. She opened her mouth to cry out, commanded her body to strike out at him, yet she made no sound or movement. Fear rattled in her head, but it was short-lived. Something else displaced it; something still and soft that settled over her. Aeglyss took a step closer. He leaned into the shaft of moonlight. It put a bar of light along his cheekbone. Wain lay quite still, yet she felt as if every muscle in her body was quivering in urgent terror. New thoughts were laying themselves down in her mind, crossing the gap between Aeglyss and her like silent whispers. They were not hers, yet alike enough to her own that she could not turn them away.

  "Have you ever been refused, Thane's sister?" he was asking her. "In anything?"

  His voice was a living thing that eased itself up against her skin, curled around her shoulders and throat and touched itself against her lips.

  "I have grown so weary of it, you see," Aeglyss murmured, and he was close to her. She felt his hand on her breast, gentle. She felt him in her head, and she could not tell what was him and what her.

  "All my life I have been denied by those who thought themselves my betters," he whispered. "Not any more. Not in anything. I a
m learning, slowly. Each day I see afresh what is possible, each day I grow. I can turn back the Anain themselves; I can taste thoughts in minds half a world away; I can hear my mother, can call her . . . no, no. Not my mother."

  He blinked and shook his head, wincing. For a moment, Wain recovered herself and drew breath to cry out. Then the na'kyrim's eyes were on her once again and his hand was clamped over her mouth. Her sense of herself flickered and receded as smoothly and steadily as a soft tide.

  "Hush, hush. This isn't for anyone but you and I. This is to be love. Only that, for ever. It's what you want, if you'll but listen to your own desires. I'll show you the way. We'll go together."

  As he lifted the sheets away, some silent part of Wain cried out one last time in horror and fear. It was a vanishing, vanquished part, and soon it was gone altogether.

  Aeglyss stood in the milky early-morning light, talking intently with Hothyn and half a dozen more White Owls. Wain looked down upon him from the window of her room in the inn. She could see him clearly, below in the yard, yet he was there in the window with her too. He was entwined about her thoughts like ivy on a tree. She would never be without him now.

  She was aware that the sensations coursing through her, the certainties fortifying themselves within her head, were not her own. It seemed unimportant; just as unimportant as the faint, faint voice of guilt that survived somewhere inside her. That voice murmured of betrayal. She had betrayed her brother. How, she could not understand. The accusatory voice spoke in a language that she did not comprehend, though she knew that once - before last night - it had been the tongue of her own thoughts. She found it easy to disregard even that strangeness. The Black Road followed whatever course it must, and never had she felt her feet, and all the world's, to be more firmly upon it.

  She had been awake, in the small hours of the night, when Aeglyss was restlessly turning in his sleep. Moonlight lit the trails of tears on his face. He had wept and cursed without waking and she had heard the torment in his voice.