Then someone took hold of her hand. Someone was murmuring her name, laying down soft walls of protection around the bruised periphery of her mind. It was Amonyn, of course; there, at her side amidst the madness, easing her back towards a clear sense of herself. She held on to him tightly, and pressed her face into his shoulder for a few moments. When she felt strong enough to look up and into his eyes, she saw there such an enervated, haunted spirit that it almost broke her. But she said nothing. There was nothing to say. They went onwards together.
One of Herraic’s men was hunched down outside the door, his spear lying forgotten at his side. He had wrapped his arms about his knees, pulling his legs in to his chest. He was shaking. Amonyn knelt beside him while Cerys opened the door. She half expected to die in the next few moments.
There was an overturned table. The mattress of the bed had been shredded, its horsehair stuffing disgorged in great black drifts across the floor. The shards of a clay jug were scattered across the room, a great swathe of wet stone on the wall showing where it had struck. And there was blood: on the sheet, on Tyn’s crooked fingers, and on his face, where Aeglyss had clawed furrows out of the flesh of his cheeks.
The eyes that turned upon Cerys were bestial. The snarl was something that could only come from an animal’s throat. Yet he wept, and the grief and pain that swirled about him and buffeted her senses belonged to something more than a beast. He gave no sign of recognising her; she barely recognised herself, for she was adrift now, in the limitless Shared.
“She is gone,” he howled, and the sound staggered her, sent her to her knees, hands clasped uselessly over her ears.
“Lost in the green.” He tore at the gown he wore, ripping open its front, revealing the white skin and the cage of the ribs beneath. “Taken from me. Again, and again, and again. Always to be taken from me.”
He was hobbling towards her, like some tottering corpse. Cerys tried to get to her feet, but he had hold of her and there was a strength in him far greater than anything Tyn’s wasted muscles could have allowed. His fingers dug into her shoulder, crushing down onto bone. She cried out. He lifted her onto her feet, as if she was a child’s straw doll. He pressed her against the wall.
“How?” he shouted into her face. “Tell me! Why have they taken her from me? Dragging her down into the…”
His voice faltered. He gagged and spluttered as if choked by his own rage.
Cerys took a feeble hold on his wrists, but could do nothing to loosen his grip upon her. There was blood on his arms. She could feel it flowing beneath her fingers, from wounds in Tyn’s wrists. How much blood could there be, in this emaciated body?
“Aeglyss,” she murmured. It was not her that he raged against, she knew. The violence that set the Shared afire was not directed at her. It was uncontrolled, unfocused.
“Let me help you,” she managed to say. But he did not seem to hear her.
“They’ll not have me. Not!” He spat the words. His spittle was on her lips, across her eyes.
Then Amonyn was there, hauling at Tyn’s arms. Aeglyss turned and looked upon Amonyn, and Cerys felt the contemptuous hatred surge like a boiling thundercloud. She opened her mouth to cry out in warning, but there was no time. Aeglyss released her, she slumped; he struck Amonyn, just once, across the head.
Amonyn fell, and in that fall somehow the greatest extremities of blind fury were spent. Tyn’s bony shoulders went slack as he stared down at the prostrate figure. Cerys could breathe again, could give her thoughts some kind of form. She steadied herself on her feet, still leaning against the wall. She thought she could hear footsteps, somewhere off in the maze of passageways, drawing closer.
“The healer,” Aeglyss murmured, still staring at Amonyn. He knelt.
“No,” Cerys whispered, unsure of what it was she denied, or feared.
“Be silent. Liar. You think I don’t know your lies? Your deceit?”
She felt cold.
“You’re less than nothing. All of you here, little rats hiding in your tunnels. There’s nothing for me here, nothing that you’ll give me. Ha! Nothing’s given. Only taken.”
He caressed Amonyn’s slack face.
“You think I don’t know you have secrets? You think I don’t know you mean to betray me? I know betrayal, as I know water and meat and the turning of the seasons. It is… it never changes.”
“No,” whispered Cerys. She pushed herself away from the wall, reaching for him.
“Be silent.” And she was, for her throat clenched itself shut and she could draw no breath, and her legs and her arms were twigs, grass. She fell.
“Each day, I grow stronger,” Aeglyss said softly. “Each day, I sink deeper. I learn. Things are revealed to me.” He leaned down close to Amonyn, sniffing at him. “You na’kyrim. You… halfbreeds. There is nothing you can keep from me. You, least of all.”
He rose, and loomed over Cerys. She was stretching out an arm, trying to take hold of Amonyn’s hand. She did not want to die, but she wanted him to die even less.
“You were my own kind,” Aeglyss was saying. She paid him no heed. All that mattered was that she touch Amonyn, that neither he nor she should be alone. “But you want nothing to do with me. I know that. So be it. I am not of your kind any more. I am something else, and I am to have nothing: no companions, no sanctuary, no… It does not matter. The Anain may hunt me, take everything that I love, if they want. You can plot against me. No matter. I take what I need, Elect. There is to be no more trust, no more talking. Not in all the world.”
He came down onto his hands and knees, crouched over her like a dog. She felt his lips brushing her ear.
“You should not have tried to keep secrets from me. I know you have the Shadowhand here, Elect,” he said. And then he collapsed. Tyn lay curled on the floor, his shallow, rattling breath the only sound save the heavy footsteps of Herraic’s warriors coming running.
They buried Rothe in the clearing where he had fallen. Torcaill was disapproving, Orisian knew, eager to be away from that threatening place with its smothering mists and enclosing trees, but he said nothing. Eshenna and Yvane were uneasy, fearful no doubt of any intrusion upon this domain of the Anain, but they raised no complaint. Orisian dug the grave himself, first with a short blade one of the warriors lent him, to break open the soft, wet earth, then with his hands, clawing out great fistfuls of the black soil. Others helped, but he barely registered their presence or their exertions.
The few horses that had not been lost in the sprawling, frantic pursuit and skirmishing through the forest grazed on the glade’s wet grass. Ess’yr and Varryn sat on a log, watching. Sentries looked nervously out on all sides, knowing they had little chance of anticipating any attack. Torcaill himself knelt, cleaning Rothe’s sword. All of this Orisian knew, vaguely, was around him. It seemed like nothing to do with him. He just dug.
They lowered Rothe into the ground. Torcaill laid the sword on his chest, folded his arms across it. Then Orisian laid Rothe’s shield over his hands. As he straightened, the warriors — not many more than twenty of them alive now — stepped forwards, ringing the shallow grave. As one, they bent and began covering Rothe with earth. Orisian watched that face he knew so well gradually, incrementally disappear.
“He deserved a pyre,” he murmured. His jaw throbbed. His mouth was swollen and tasted foul, of blood and ruin. He could not speak well, or clearly.
“He did,” Torcaill agreed. “But this is the best we can do for him. It’s better than others have had, today.”
“They all deserved better. But him especially.”
After it was done, they covered the grave with dead wood and stones.
Orisian sat, numb and cold, while one of the warriors — he did not even know his name — cleaned the dried blood from his face. Probing with his tongue, he could feel the empty sockets of the teeth he had lost. It was not until the needle and sinew began to close up the great gash across his cheek that he felt the pain. It was sharp and insistent enough
to cut through the fog that enshrouded his mind. He closed his eyes and endured it as the stitches went in.
Afterwards, Ess’yr beckoned him over. She said nothing, but made him sit at her side. She had collected a few clumps of some pale green moss-like plant. Now she chewed on a little of it. After a few moments, she touched a thumb to his chin and pressed his mouth open. She removed the moist, pulped mass from her own mouth and gently pressed it into the space between his cheek and gum. The juices that oozed from it made his wounds sting.
Wreaths of mist drifted amongst the treetops all around. Orisian stared blankly at them. His gaze slipped down and rested on K’rina. She was sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth. She turned her hands over, and back and over again, examining them as if she had never seen such strange objects before. The tiny scratches all over her skin were like a fine net. No word, no sense, had passed her lips since they had found her; no sign that she was anything more than a madwoman, lost in the forest. That was the treasure Rothe and the others had died to deliver into Orisian’s hands.
Someone shouted out. Men were running. Ess’yr was on her feet, raising her bow.
“They’re coming again,” Orisian heard. It might have been Torcaill’s voice. He looked at Rothe’s grave. Someone leaped across it, rushing with sword drawn to meet whatever danger now came.
Dull and distant, without thought, Orisian reached for his own blade and rose to his feet.
For two days they waited. Guards stood outside the door behind which the monster lurked. Or possibly lurked. Cerys and others went back and forth from that gloomy chamber, spending hours at Tyn’s bedside, and learned nothing. They found nothing save silence, and a dead, empty space in the Shared. The Dreamer breathed, his eyes moved beneath their lids, but there was no life in him. His body was truly a shell now, an empty, abandoned shell. There was no Tyn, no Aeglyss. The wounds in his face and his wrists dried, but did not heal. Cerys sat and stared into that gaunt face, as if by merely looking she might find some answer. But none came. The Shared was still, unresponsive. The Dreamer did not stir. The iron chain around her neck grew heavier.
Amonyn lay in his own quarters, alive but bruised both without and within. Herraic came to see Tyn himself, and fretted and frowned impotently until Cerys asked him to leave. Mordyn Jerain hesitated between life and death, his wounds half-healed. Olyn stayed in the crows’ roost, and would not emerge. Highfast was paralysed, prostrated by trepidation and gloom and uncertainty. Snow fell, and laid white blankets across the roofs and battlements and courtyards.
During the short hours of daylight, the Elect could busy herself with her duties. She could find enough activity to fend off the darkest of her thoughts. It was an illusory, temporary calm but necessary. At night, she had no such defences, and could not even take comfort in Amonyn’s company. Guilt and doubts circled her, snapping at her.
She wondered if she had failed Tyn, through some lack of wisdom or lack of knowledge in the ways of the Shared. Not for the first time, she thought of Inurian. He might have been Elect instead of her, had he stayed in Highfast. Had that been what he wanted from life. Would his failures have been less?
Now and again, in the sleepless night, Cerys would shake and scold herself for giving in to such futile self-doubt. It served no purpose to play these games. What was done, was done. Still, dawn would find her at the Dreamer’s bedside. She rested her elbows on his sheets, held her chain of office clasped in her hands. She closed her eyes and wondered if Tyn was still there, somewhere, and if he would hear her when she asked for his forgiveness.
Then, on the morning of the third day: “Elect.”
She opened her eyes. Tyn was gazing at her. He was smiling. And it was not Tyn.
“They are here.”
He was rising from the bed, casting aside the sheet. She could only watch.
“Did you think I had gone? No, Elect. Just waiting. I do not mean to leave this place empty-handed. And I do have friends, after all. Would you like to meet them?”
He came around the bed to her side, took her hand in his. There was no warmth in his skin, only the cold of dead flesh.
“Walk with me, Elect. Show me your mighty library, your precious store of wisdom that fills you with such pride.”
She saw — or thought she saw — him enshrouded by a vast cape of shadow that swelled up behind him like a living thing. It drowned out the world, leaving her alone with him, the two of them alone in a dark domain where the very air was made of his thoughts, the ground upon which she walked was made of his hatred for her and for all things.
They moved, though she could not say which of them led the other. A door opened, and there were men there. Warriors. Guards, she vaguely remembered. She saw them faintly, as through a veil. They were saying something, but their words were only sounds that fluttered up against her and fell away, spent and meaningless.
“No,” she heard Aeglyss saying, and his voice was all about her, in her blood and her bones. “The Elect and I are going to the library. You, you are going to the gates. Open them. Open Highfast.”
He drew her onwards, through corridors. They passed by torches burning on the walls. Aeglyss took one and lit their way with it, though the shadows stayed all around them, and the light seemed sickly to Cerys. She recognised the passageways they walked along, knew that they were familiar, but they belonged to someone else, to another life.
They entered into a great chamber, where daylight spilled in through high windows, and there were ranks of writing desks. Cerys smelled parchment and ink and dust. She knew this place. There were people here: just one or two. They were afraid. They cowered. Aeglyss could taste their fear, and she could too. It was a sharp, acrid touch on her tongue, in her nose.
Aeglyss turned around and around, arms outstretched, the flame of his torch crackling.
“Look, Elect. What a wonder.”
She looked, and saw books, and rolls of parchment and shelves. The Scribing Hall, she thought. The library.
“Tyn? Elect, what is happening?” someone called.
She frowned in the direction of the voice. A man was there, half-hidden behind one the desks. He stared out, fearful. Bannain, she thought to herself. I remember his name.
“Nothing,” Aeglyss shouted. Then he had hold of the front of Cerys’s dress. He dragged her close to him. She did not resist, for he was already all around her.
“Wake, Elect. Wake up. You should see this.”
She plummeted back into her body as if falling from a great height into a pool of cold water. She gasped for breath. Her head spun.
“What a task,” Aeglyss cried. “What a burden, to watch over all this for so many years.”
“Leave us!” Cerys shouted, her mind tumbling away into panic.
“No! Whose gratitude have you earned by all these years of devotions? What have you achieved by storing up the past here, making it so precious?”
“Please. Please.”
She cast a desperate glance sideways. Bannain and two scribes were rising hesitantly.
“Forget them,” Aeglyss hissed. “I am here to relieve you of your burdens, Elect. All of you. Memory is no longer needed, for what is to come will be unlike what has been before. There are to be no more secrets. I declare the past dead. Your task is done with. Are you not pleased?”
“Release me.” She struggled against him, but his grip was firm.
“Oh, I intend to. I will take the weight of your responsibilities from your shoulders.”
He threw her down, and she sprawled to the floor, sending a chair skittering away across the flagstones. He was laughing. Savage glee poured forth from Tyn’s stale throat, coarse and wild. Cerys got to her feet.
Aeglyss strode down a rank of shelves, drawing the flame of the torch he carried across the books and the scrolls and the manuscripts.
“No,” Cerys shouted, but he ignored her.
Gouts of black smoke burst up. She could see flames taking hold. Everything that mattered about
Highfast was here, in this hall. And Aeglyss laughed as he swept the torch back and forth. Cerys moved towards him, but Bannain was faster. He darted forwards, and as he did so he faded. He folded the Shared about himself for a heartbeat, spilled the Elect’s gaze off his back. He was gone. Gone to her, but not to Aeglyss. Tyn’s arm snapped around. Sparks erupted in a frenzied cloud as the torch struck Bannain on the side of the head.
He crashed against one of the desks. Aeglyss followed him, kicking aside a chair that came between them.
“You think tricks like that will work on me? That is my ocean you’re swimming in, child.”
Bannain groaned and rolled onto his side. Cerys glimpsed a red welt across his temple. She cast about for something, anything, to use against Aeglyss. Smoke was thickening the air now, rasping down into her chest with every breath. The sound of the hungry, consuming flames filled her ears, and their hateful, triumphant light danced across the walls. She took up a chair and rushed towards Aeglyss.
He crouched and struck Bannain’s head again and again with the torch. Embers spun away across the floor. There was a stench of burned hair and flesh. Bannain was not struggling. Aeglyss laughed.
Cerys smashed the chair across his back. It burst into fragments. He staggered up, dropping the flaming brand. He spun and seemed to Cerys to fill her vision. Sheets of flame were roaring up the shelves and walls behind him. He bore down on her. There was blood in Tyn’s long hair: ruby strands in that silver waterfall. Smoke billowed across his shoulders.
He took hold of her chain of office and twisted it in his hands, tightening it around her neck.
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