Godless World 2 - Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  Mordyn struggled ineffectually against the encroaching despair. It leached out of Kan Avor's ruined fabric into his heart. When Wain nan Horin-Gyre came for him, with her Shield grim and silent about her, he made no complaint or resistance. He allowed them to take him out into the bitter air. There was a fine crystalline dust of snow across the city, glinting like innumerable minute fragments of glass. There were icicles hanging from the ruins. His breath steamed in front of him.

  On the street, in between heaps of mud that had been cleared from the roadway, columns of men and women were forming up. Scores of cruel faces watched the Chancellor shambling past. There were Kyrinin, lean and pale, and horses, great dark beasts, with the warriors who had escorted Temegrin to his death astride them.

  The Chancellor was taken up the spiral staircase and dragged into the columned hall from which he had watched the slaughter of the Lannis farmers in the street below. Aeglyss was there, slumped on the stone bench at the far end, and Shraeve the Inkallim, with her raven-black hair and dead eyes, and a single tall Kyrinin whose face was an intricate dance of blue curls and curves. The na'kyrim did not look up as Mordyn was brought in.

  "Bring him here. To me," he said, and his voice was feeble.

  Two of Wain's Shield took hold of Mordyn's arms, swept him down the centre of the hall and cast him onto the wooden floor in front of Aeglyss. The halfbreed's naked foot, Mordyn saw, was trembling, twitching in tiny spasms.

  "Come here, Shadowhand," Aeglyss hissed at him.

  Mordyn wanted nothing more than to haul himself away, put as much space as he could between himself and this monstrosity. But a compulsion was upon him, and he slid himself forwards and rested his back against the stone bench, almost touching the na'kyrim's legs.

  "Send your warriors away, Wain," Aeglyss said, at last lifting his head a little, staring out from under his creased and gaunt brow. "You do not need your Shield here."

  The warriors did not hesitate, Mordyn saw. They did not wait for Wain's command, or even look to her for assent. They turned and went silently from the hall. Wain herself stood still and limp, watching Aeglyss. Shraeve, leaning against one of the stone columns, snorted in amusement, or perhaps contempt.

  "Be quiet," Aeglyss muttered, sounding more weary than angry. He rose to his feet and tottered away from Mordyn, stooped and unsteady. It put the Chancellor in mind of the aged cripples that haunted Vaymouth's streets, or the dying, wasted victims of the King's Rot. It was absurd to be afraid of such an enfeebled figure, yet Mordyn knew, with an absolute certainty that was beyond the argument of his eyes, that fear was justified.

  "It is not what I intended," Aeglyss said as he shuffled down the hall's length. His bare feet made soft scraping sounds. "You understand that, Wain?"

  Mordyn saw her nod.

  "None of it is as I intended. The Anain . . ." He shook his head convulsively, shivered. "I did nothing to harm them, yet they come for me. I went seeking her - K'rina - but they stole her, and I found this one instead."

  He turned, halfway down the hall, and glanced back at Mordyn. It was a casual, cursory glance.

  "And now that fool . . . that idiot of an Eagle . . . has forced me . . . Left me no choice, Wain. You see? The storm is breaking, and I must armour myself against it, or it will consume me. All of us."

  He laid a hand on Wain's cheek. Her eyes half-closed at the touch, and Mordyn thought he glimpsed both ecstasy and horror in her face, just for a moment, before it settled back into blank repose. The lone Kyrinin had turned away, moving soundlessly to gaze out from the open window.

  "I have the Chancellor of Gryvan oc Haig," Aeglyss said, letting his hand fall away from Wain's skin. "I cannot turn away from that. Cannot set aside what is being offered me. Everything, everything is possible."

  His voice was rising, taking on a shrill, unstable edge.

  "Shraeve, do you understand?" He was staring at the Inkallim. She remained silent, unmoving. "I can only hold one mind. Securely, unbreakably. Only one. Oh, I must crack my own heart today. Do you understand?"

  Aeglyss was wringing his hands, kneading them together like a man consumed by uncontrollable grief.

  "I cannot . . . I am too weak. Even Orlane could not do more. If I lay myself across two of them I will be too thin, too feeble." He turned back to Wain, who was watching him without any hint of emotion, and smiled at her through tears. "Forgive me for my weakness, beloved. Forgive my failings. If I had known . . . I did not know I would have to take away what I have given you."

  He spun away again, as if he could not bear to set eyes upon her. "Raven, do you not understand? We must have this . . ." Aeglyss extended a bony finger towards Mordyn. The Shadowhand shrank away from the gesture. "I must. And to have him, I must give up what I hold most dear. But it would be too cruel to leave her without that light, now that she has known it, to withdraw the shelter of my wing. She would not understand it . . . me. She would not forgive."

  He hung his head.

  "Shraeve?" he said. Plaintive. Imploring. Insistent. "Have you not yet seen enough? Do you not yet believe in what I make possible?"

  The Inkallim stared at him for a moment or two, then slowly, slowly, she turned her head towards Wain nan Horin-Gyre. Mordyn felt himself, and all the world, poised between two forms, caught in a shapeless moment beyond which it might become one thing, or another, wholly different.

  "Shraeve," Aeglyss whispered.

  And she was moving: one long stride, and two, and one of her blades was coming out over her shoulder. Mordyn wanted to close his eyes, but could not.

  Wain stood quite still. She was watching Aeglyss, though his back was turned to her. Her face was calm. It remained so even as Shraeve reached her, and even as the blade descended. Mordyn saw metal flash down, heard a dull sound, a soft breath. Aeglyss howled, and the pain in that cry struck the Chancellor blind and deaf and stilled his mind and froze his heart. He drifted in a small death of darkness and silence.

  "Do you see? Do you see?"

  Mordyn Jerain blinked and came back to himself. He did not know how long he had been lost. He was still slumped where he had been before, against the bench where the long-gone Gyre Thanes once sat. He could still hear the dripping of water, still feel the grain of the floorboards beneath his fingers.

  But now Aeglyss had hold of his head, one hand pressed to each of Mordyn's temples, and the na'kyrim was leaning in to fill his field of vision.

  "Do you see?" Aeglyss demanded again. His voice filled Mordyn with grief, and with anger and with fear. It crowded out his own thoughts and left no room for his own feelings. He could not breathe. Nor could he turn his head, but out of the corner of his eye he could see a body on the ground, and Shraeve standing over it. She still held her sword. It hung straight down at her side. Something - blood - was dripping from its tip. The Kyrinin warrior was at her side, staring down at the corpse.

  "Do you see what I have given up for you, Shadowhand?" Aeglyss demanded of him. His eyes were bloodshot, tear-filled, anguished. "Do you understand the price I have paid? What I . . . I have killed a Thane's sister for you. One who loved me. Would have loved me for ever, without fail. Are you worthy? Are you . . ."

  The na'kyrim broke off, turned away, shaking and choking. Freed of the pressure of those mad eyes, Mordyn could suck in a great breath of air. He lifted his arm. Never had he felt so devoid of strength. Aeglyss recovered himself and fixed him once more with an unrelenting gaze. Mordyn felt a mounting pulse in his head; not his own heartbeat, it was faster, harder than that, hammer blows pounding against the inner curve of his skull.

  "Now," rasped Aeglyss, "now you will see what wonders I can bring, Shraeve. Now you will see that you are right in thinking me the answer to the world's need."

  Mordyn tried to struggle, he commanded his arms and legs to lash out. Yet they barely stirred. The strings that bound his body to his will were loosened. He made to cry out - he did not know whether in fear or abuse - but no sound louder than a croak escaped
his constricting throat.

  "There is no more time," Aeglyss whispered. "Not for any of us. No more time for hiding or hanging back. We must race now, Shadowhand; race for the sun and the light and the glory. And death will take the hindmost."

  Mordyn felt tears on his face. The hands that clasped his head were throbbing, beating against his temples with their insistent heat and force. His sight was blurring and darkening from the edges. He felt himself to be falling away inside his own head, descending into darkness. He could see nothing but those inhuman eyes before him. They were dwindling, but it was him who was receding, not them. And in the space he left behind him, another was rushing in, and he could feel the grief, the exultation, the delirious potency of that other as if they were his own.

  The Shadowhand briefly imagined himself embracing Tara, his precious wife; smelling her hair, feeling her cheek against his. He managed, just for a few transitory instants, to hold her, and feel again the wonderful lightness of love. Then he was pulling away even from her. He reached out as he fell, but she was gone. He was gone.

  The shutters were closed in the Palace of Red Stone. The fires and the braziers were stoked up, curtains drawn across every door. But still Tara Jerain felt cold. Ever since the Crossing, Vaymouth had been in the grip of chill winds coming down all the way from the Karkyre Peaks, perhaps from the Tan Dihrin itself. They laid frosts across the gardens and the rooftops, had even once, briefly, locked every drinking trough and washerwoman's tub in ice.

  The Shadowhand's wife walked alone through the echoing corridors of the Palace at dusk. She carried a candle, cupping its flame with her hand, following its shimmering light down the marble ways. She had nowhere to go, and nothing to do, this night. Her maids were drawing her a bath, and spreading fresh silks across her bed, but she was restless and not yet ready to sink back into the warm waters or into sleep.

  Each of the last half-dozen evenings had been the same. With the onset of dusk, Tara found her mood darkening in turn. An imprecise, indefinable anxiety began to seep into her thoughts. She could settle to no task, and find no distraction. This fretful stirring of her mind forced her body into motion. It brought no great easing of her worries, but the act of pacing through the halls and passages kept them in the background.

  And what was it that so undermined her ease? She could not say, though of course her persistent fear for her husband's safety was a part of it. Word had come to Vaymouth of Aewult's defeat - humiliation, some murmured when they thought themselves safe from prying ears - outside Glasbridge, but her unease had already taken root before that grim news. Perhaps it was only weariness, for her sleep had been a poor and wretched thing for some time now. She woke in the morning with heavy eyes, and a heavy heart, and fading memories of distressing dreams. She was not alone in suffering thus, she had gathered. There was something in the season, or in the air coming down out of the north, inimical to restful sleep, it seemed.

  A movement of the chilly air shook the flame of the candle, and she paused for a moment to ensure it did not falter. A chink, somewhere, in the palace's defences. She would have one of the maids go in search of a shutter left open, or a door ajar. Tara wanted the palace sealed, impenetrable to the winter.

  She walked on. There was no sound save the soft tread of her slippers. The silence was not peaceful, though. It was, she now thought, oppressive as never before. She would like it to be broken, and with one sound above all others: Mordyn's voice, ringing from the stone and marble walls, echoing through the chambers. Nobody seemed to be able to tell her where her husband was, or why she had received no word from him. He had marched with Aewult, someone told her, and returned with him to Kolkyre; he was in the Tower of Thrones, locking horns with Roaric oc Kilkry-Haig, another said. Or, inexplicably, had he gone to Highfast, as one rumour had it? She did not know. But she did know that she wanted him back, warming her bed and her heart and armouring her against the chills of winter. Perhaps only then would she sleep deeply again, and only then would the mist of unease be lifted.

  Tara's maids had put scented oils in the bath. She smelled them before she entered the room and felt the hot steam. Braziers were burning here, and oil lamps. She pinched the candle out and handed it to one of the girls. Another took her velvet robe from her shoulders as she shrugged it off, and gathered her clothes as she shed them. She stepped into the bath. They left her alone then, and she closed her eyes, and felt the tingle of her immersed skin, breathed in the perfumes and the heat. She closed her eyes, and tried not to think of Mordyn, and of his absence.

  VIII

  Anyara refused to think of herself as a prisoner. She stubbornly behaved as if she were an honoured guest, and Aewult nan Haig and his followers conspired in that pretence sufficiently to give it a semblance of credibility. The tent she was housed in was enormous, with heavy canvas walls that were hung, inside, with fine rugs. Wooden planks had been laid for flooring, and a partition raised to give her an almost private bedchamber. She could come and go as she pleased, though the world of a huge and, she could not help but feel, hostile army camp was not appealing. The limits were unspoken, and she chose not to test them. She knew well enough that if she tried to enter Kolkyre, or to stray far beyond the bounds of the encampment in any direction, she would find her way obstructed. The obstruction might be polite, even deferential, but she did not doubt it would be firm.

  Coinach took this gentle imprisonment far worse than she did. She remembered a gaol cell in Anduran, when her captors, the Horin-Gyre Blood, had been much less soft-spoken; he saw only insult and humiliation and his own failure to discharge his duty as her shieldman.

  "Don't be so miserable," she said to him one day. "I don't care what you think, I say it's no part of your task to go picking fights with the High Thane's entire army."

  Coinach sat on the edge of the cot where he snatched brief spells of sleep - though only during the day, when Anyara was awake; he insisted on keeping solitary, wakeful watch all through the night - and glowered at her in a way that she was not sure was entirely fitting for a shieldman.

  "You can't cut me a path out of this with your sword," Anyara insisted, "so stop daydreaming about it. It's no help to me to have you moping around."

  "It is unforgivable that they should make a hostage of a Thane's sister."

  "Maybe it is. But listen to me. What matters here is that we try to make sure Orisian still has a Blood to be Thane of, when he gets back from wherever it is he's gone. If staying here, or going to Vaymouth even, is what's needed to keep Aewult from losing his mind completely, I'll do it."

  It was easy to summon up such words when talking to Coinach, but Anyara was a less compliant audience for herself. At every mention of her brother's name, she had to crush the doubts and fears that swirled up within her. Only by denying them her attention could she keep the tears from her eyes, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Wherever he was, whatever had happened to him, there was nothing she could do about it now. There was little she could do about her own situation, either, and though she secretly dreaded the prospect of being carried off to Vaymouth, that sentiment too she chose to ignore.

  One morning, the sides of the tent were stiff and creaking with a hard frost. The water in the bowl by Anyara's bed was frozen. Lying there, bleary-eyed and with a neck aching from the overly soft pillow, she could hear Coinach moving about in the outer part of the tent. Perhaps he thought he was being quiet, trying not to disturb her, but she could hear him pulling back the flap of the tent, gasping softly at the cruelly cold air that must be greeting him. She smiled a little to herself at that. She heard muffled voices, and a rattle of pots. One of Aewult's cooks was bringing food - usually a thick oat porridge with bread and honey - and handing it over to Coinach. The shieldman insisted on tasting everything that was provided for Anyara to eat before it got anywhere near her. She had told him she thought it more than a little unlikely that Aewult meant to poison her, but in this at least he was immovable.

  Hi
s expression was grim when she finally emerged to break her fast.

  "What is it?" she asked as she sank into one of the cushioned chairs that they had been given.

  "The word is that the Bloodheir's blockading Kolkyre."

  "What?"

  Coinach shrugged. "I don't know if it's true or not. That's what the cook says. A test of wills between Aewult and Roaric. The Bloodheir wants the men who killed his warriors while he was away, and Roaric won't hand them over. And now, apparently, he's saying he won't make any payment to the families of the dead men until Aewult's paid for all the horses and cattle the army's taken."

  Anyara groaned.

  "Aewult wants the Kilkry army that Roaric's gathered in there disbanded all over again, too, I think," Coinach added glumly. "The Thane refuses, of course. And . . . well, it sounds as though Roaric's demanding that you be returned to the Tower of Thrones."

  "Oh, so now I'm to be some little token for these . . . idiots to fight over?"

  "He's only trying to stand by you, to get you out of Aewult's grasp."

  "No, he's not," Anyara snapped. "He's trying to undo every insult he thinks his Blood has suffered at the hands of Haig. He's trying to prove he's strong enough and big enough to be Thane, and to face up to Aewult." Her shoulders sagged, and she stared down into the grey porridge in her bowl. "Oh, I don't know. I'm sure he thinks he's helping. Aewult's the wrong man to try to prove himself against, though, and this is the wrong time. Can't he see that? Has everyone lost their mind?"

  "He's got a dead brother and a dead father burdening him," Coinach murmured.