with me. The flood is in me. Once I master it, I will repair its ravages.”
He smiled, and Kanin saw yellowing teeth, black veins of corruption and decay spreading from them through white gums. He imagined that were he close enough he would catch the stink of rot from that foul mouth. The smile faded, and Aeglyss closed his eyes.
“I can smell the spice-thick air of Adravane’s Inner Court,” the na’kyrim murmured. “I feel the sand beneath the hoofs of a Saolin running on the Din Sive shore. I remember the Whreinin; can reach out and know what it was to be of the wolfenkind. The Anain raised a forest to drown a city with trees, yet they flee from the shadow of my mind as I move through the Shared. But they cannot flee far enough, or fast enough. Even them I can taste. Their age, their thoughts running like blood through veins of leaf and bough. All of this flows through me, and I flow through all things.”
He shivered, as if a cold pleasure filled him. “Your cause has found a servant in me, and the world has never seen my like. Such is the gift that fate, through me, bestows upon you. It is a terrible gift, but that is my burden. I will bear it and I will serve you.”
He looked around them all then, giving each of those at the table a brief moment of his undivided attention. His gaze brushed most briefly over Kanin, or so it seemed to Kanin himself. Even that instant of contact was enough to feel the weight of what lay behind the na’kyrim’s eyes. To Kanin, it was oppressive and invasive. To others, he saw as their turns came, one by one, it was exhilarating.
“I am the answer you and your people have been seeking all these years,” Aeglyss breathed at length.
And Kanin felt it. He felt it blooming in his breast and spreading its warmth through his limbs. It lifted him, and for the space of those few heartbeats there was nothing but the utter delight of knowing that all was as it should, and must, be. That all his hopes would be fulfilled, in their last and smallest detail. That the world this na’kyrim could promise him was all he could ever desire. Yet still, amidst it all, there was a hard nugget marring the perfection of the sensation: a nugget of hatred; the contradictory whisper that his truest, deepest desire could not be fulfilled by this halfbreed, but only by his death.
“All I ask is that you put your faith in me,” Aeglyss said. “And in the allies I bring to your cause. The White Owls. The force of my own will. The Shadowhand.”
“It’s true, then, that the Shadowhand is bound? That you have done to him what Orlane did to Tarcene?” Goedellin’s voice broke the skin of the moment. Kanin found himself suddenly breathing deeply, realising only now that he had been holding his breath.
“To have such a weapon at our enemy’s very heart…” whispered Talark.
“The Haig Chancellor is bound to our service — ” Shraeve began, but Aeglyss cut her short with a strange, strangled grunt.
“Some things should not be spoken of,” the na’kyrim said. “Think instead of the gifts I shall bring you. Kolkyre, Kilvale. Even unto Vaymouth itself, if that is your wish.”
“Still, Tarcene’s binding hardly ended well. Not for the Kingbinder himself, nor for the Kyrinin he served. Certainly not for Tarcene,” murmured Cannek, but no one save Kanin seemed to even notice that he had spoken.
“There are things-aspects of what I have become-that none can understand,” Aeglyss continued. “Burdens I must bear alone, in silence. Only my own kind could understand what I… but they are afraid. They fear my brightness will burn them. Only one… only she… She would understand.”
His head twitched and dipped to one side. His crab-like hand scraped rigidly across the surface of the table. His eyes lost their focus.
“But she’s been stolen from me,” he rasped. “I can’t find her. She is gone.”
Goedellin was regarding the na’kyrim with consternation. Talark frowned uneasily. Yes, Kanin thought, you can see if you choose to; see his madness. This is the man you would make master of your hopes, your fates? This poisoned ruin of a man, whose thoughts trickle through his own fingers like so much grain? But the moment did not last. The doubts had no time to take root.
“We should eat,” Shraeve said, and at the sound of her voice Aeglyss recovered himself.
“Yes,” he sighed, straightening in his chair, drawing his hand back to press it against his chest. “We should eat.”
The food was neither plentiful nor elegant. Bread and broth and a single haunch of mutton. They ate in silence. All save Aeglyss. He touched nothing, only watched.
A serving girl made her way around the table, pouring out wine from a clay jug. She came to Aeglyss last, and wiped the lip of the jug clean with a cloth before emptying the last of its contents into his cup. Aeglyss pushed away his plateful of neglected food. He lifted the cup to his lips and drank deeply. As he set it down again his hand gave a brief involuntary jerk, spilling wine on the table.
Kanin saw Cannek lay down a hunk of bread he had been gnawing. The Inkallim was watching Aeglyss intently. Others caught the change in mood. Conversations died.
Aeglyss’ face was white, paler even than it had been before. His eyes, the pupils dilated, were gleaming wetly. A muscle in his left cheek twitched, though his jaw was tight clenched. Otherwise, he was as motionless as a statue. Kanin looked around. Every eye was upon the halfbreed.
Still Aeglyss had not moved. His white fingernails were digging into the rough surface of the table. His eyes stared rigidly at Cannek. The Inkallim was quite calm.
“What have you done?” Shraeve said softly.
Abruptly Aeglyss retched, gripped by a convulsion that rose from deep in his midriff. He hunched forward and then straightened with a great gasp. The movement seemed to release all the tension from his body. He put one hand to his mouth and spat a small dark object into his palm. He held it out: a perfect orb of black matter the size of an eyeball, with strands of saliva still clinging to it.
“Yours, I think,” said Aeglyss thickly to Cannek. He set it down upon the table, where it rested like a dull, sodden marble a child had discarded. Cannek regarded it thoughtfully for a moment or two, his hands clasped together before him. The globule lost its form, slumping into a viscous stain.
“That’s very clever,” Cannek murmured with a smile.
“What is this?” Goedellin asked, his voice all indignant puzzlement. “Poison?”
Cannek’s hands parted, and there was a blade in one of them. Shraeve’s arm snapped up. One of her swords, still sheathed, came spinning across the table. Cannek ducked and swayed to one side, so that the sword went cartwheeling away off the side of his head. It was enough to spoil his own aim. His knife, sent darting out with a flick of his wrist, flashed past Aeglyss’ shoulder. Shraeve followed her sword, vaulting the table, pivoting on one hand to drive a straight-legged kick into Cannek’s chest. The Hunt Inkallim went crashing back with his chair, rolling and rising smoothly to a crouch.
But Shraeve was too fast even for him. In the moment it took Cannek to recover his balance, she hit him with her full weight, wrapping an arm about his neck, splaying her other hand over his eyes. She took him backwards, tumbled the pair of them across the floor. And out of that blur of movement rose a clear, long cracking.
Shraeve stood. Cannek lay, eyes and mouth open, head tilted sideways on a broken neck. Shraeve brushed dust from her knees. The assembled warriors stared in a mixture of amazement and confusion at the dead Inkallim. Only Kanin turned back at once to Aeglyss. And found the na’kyrim watching him. Aeglyss wiped the back of his hand across his lips. He was breathing fast.
“Is that what you all require?” the halfbreed said loudly, and was at once the focus of all attention once more. “That’s the kind of answer you people demand, isn’t it? There’s fate for you. There’s the choice made for you. I live.”
Kanin wondered if he was the only one to hear the contempt, the bitterness, that suffused Aeglyss’ words. Silently, he raged against the immobility of his limbs, and against the impotence of his own anger. His sword was within reach-he imagined it calling out to him-but Aeglyss, the idea of Aeglyss, filled his field of vision: out of reach, untouchable, inviolable.
“You cannot kill me, for I am not as you are,” Aeglyss said. He slammed his bony fist down on the table. “You think because I am flesh, I am weak. No, no. You must learn to think differently. You will learn. For all your hatred and your betrayals, I will raise you up. I will give you all that you want, feed all the hungers in your hearts, and those who turn against me will be cast down and ruined. There is no other way. No other truth.”
“As it is written,” Shraeve murmured as she picked up her sword and came back around the table to stand beside Hothyn. The two warriors, Inkallim and White Owl, flanked the na’kyrim. And no gaze would meet the
