“The Dreamer woke, and… and I don’t know. The na’kyrim fell to slaughtering one another. Woodwights came; there was madness. A madness in the air, in the heart. It was a horror, sire. If you could have seen…”
“Where are the na’kyrim?” Orisian demanded. “They can’t all be dead, can they?”
Herraic winced, as if struck.
“Where are they?” Orisian asked again, taking a step closer to the portly Captain.
“There’s an old cellar, once for wine and ale. We keep them there.”
“Show us,” Orisian said quietly
The stench was startling: ordure and sweat and mould and misery, all hot in Orisian’s face as the cellar exhaled a gout of its vile breath. He stood only for a moment on the threshold; saw in the sickly candlelight the hunched forms of men and women crowded into corners, lying asleep or unconscious or dead along the walls, two or three coming unsteadily towards the faint light admitted by the opening of the door. A moment was enough to see all this, and to feel the unreasoning anger boiling up in him, to feel tears burning in his eyes, not knowing whether they were born of the acrid stink, or despair, or pure, perfect rage.
He spun about and lunged for Herraic. The Captain gave a yelp of surprise and raised his hands in defence, but Orisian rode a ferocious wave and would not be denied. He slapped Herraic’s hands aside, seized a bunch of his jerkin and punched the man back against the wall. Herraic stumbled at the impact, and Orisian bore him down to the floor of the passageway.
“Orisian!” he heard someone shouting. The cry was distant, coming from far outside the narrow, choking ambit of his attention. He pressed a knee onto Herraic’s chest. The Captain of Highfast struggled, but was pinned into the angle between floor and wall. Orisian tugged at the hilt of his sword. The wall hindered him: his knuckles jarred against the stonework. He felt no pain, but the delay saved Herraic.
“Orisian!” someone shouted again. Taim Narran, he knew, though the knowledge had no purchase upon him, no meaning that could penetrate his inundating fury. He twisted to free his sword. Herraic was pushing at him, the Captain’s eyes stretched in alarm.
Then an arm was about Orisian’s chest, drawing him calmly but irresistibly up and away. Herraic rolled out from beneath him and scrambled to his feet. Orisian bucked for a moment against Taim’s restraining grasp, then ceased his struggles.
“We’ve foes enough already, sire,” Taim murmured as he withdrew his arms.
Orisian said nothing. He stared bitterly at Herraic, who had backed himself up against the opposite side of the passage, quivering like a hunted and cornered fawn.
“It had to be done,” Herraic gasped. “It had to be done. You don’t know what it was like. The safety of my men… We couldn’t be sure of anything.”
“Where are the rest of them?” Orisian asked.
“Dead,” said Herraic, then hurriedly: “Killed by the Dreamer, or the wights that came. You don’t know what it was like. Please…”
Orisian ground his right hand into a fist, clenching his fingernails into the palm of his hand. Only thus could he master the desire to reach again for his sword. The dancing shadows thrown by the torchlight surged and pulsed at the edge of his vision, a mocking chorus that seemed to urge him on and demand violence of him. The floor rocked beneath his feet. Herraic clearly saw something of the battle raging between instinct and restraint.
“They’re safe here,” the Captain of Highfast cried, imploring. “Tempers are running hot and hard, too much for me to control. If I’d let them wander about, I couldn’t be certain of keeping them alive. I couldn’t be sure of their safety.”
“Feared for your own, more likely,” Taim Narran said levelly. He had a hand on Orisian’s arm again, gently drawing him back round towards the cellar doorway.
“Are you all right, sire?” he asked.
Orisian puffed out his cheeks and nodded. He turned his back on Herraic. Standing in the doorway, short and pale and blinking, with his hands clasped up by his chin, was Hammarn of Koldihrve. The old na’kyrim looked with faint curiosity at Orisian.
“I know you, I think.” He smiled, pleased by the acuity of his own memory. “Yes, yes. Rode a ship with you, and walked a road. Though you were prettier then.”
Orisian brushed a reflexive fingertip along the line the scar on his cheek. Hammarn looked from side to side, his face twitching into anticipation, both alarmed and excited. “Is the lady with you? The one with the nettlesome tongue?”
Orisian gave a sad, gentle grunt. “Yvane? Yes, she’ll be here, Hammarn. Come, I’ll take you to her.”
IV
“What else would you expect?” asked Yvane. “The oldest of hatreds, the oldest of fears. And they could hardly have a better excuse to surrender to it. Aeglyss reminded them of where those fears come from. And with his corruption of the Shared feeding their every doubt, every suspicion, every buried resentment… no, it’s no surprise.”
“You’d forgive them?” asked Orisian, disbelieving. “You, of all people?”
They were descending a long sloping corridor, just the two of them, walking slowly down into Highfast’s foundations. The passageway was dark, save for the torch Orisian carried. The flame flapped now and again, sending their shadows careening over the square-cut stone facing of the walls. Even here, close to the stronghold’s roots, the air moved. The breath of the Karkyre Peaks found its way in through the porous skin of Highfast to these deep places.
“I didn’t say anything about forgiveness,” Yvane told him.
“But you accept it.”
“And nothing about acceptance, either,” the na’kyrim said. “You’re too young.”
Orisian came to a sudden halt and turned to her, angry.
“Or I’m too old, too bruised,” she said quickly. “Either way, horrors that seem fresh and new to you are stale to me. What happened here, what Herraic and his men did, that’s the stuff of every tale I heard in my childhood. It’s the commonest of currencies between Huanin and na’kyrim, at least since the War of the Tainted. I despise it. Loathe it. I’m just not surprised by it.”
He glared at her, then shook his head and continued down the sinking passage.
“Perhaps I’ve lived too long,” Yvane muttered as she followed him. “But it’s not just that. I fear anger, as you should. Let it in, give it nourishment and it’ll overrun you.”
Orisian said nothing, marching sullenly on. His fist about the burning torch was painfully tight, he realised. It took a moment of concentration to soften the muscles and take some of the iron out of his fingers. He knew she was right, and he did fear what might happen inside him-what might already be happening-if he yielded to the torrent of emotions he could sense running there. But anger was not the strongest, the most dangerous current; the shadow he felt at his heels, its ever more familiar breath across the nape of his neck, was a desolate hopelessness. It was despair not rage that would claim him if his defences faltered.
They spiralled down a rough staircase, a columnar vein bearing them ever further from the distant, forgotten sky. Of all the surviving na’kyrim, only Hammarn had remained up in the portions of Highfast that had been built atop the pinnacle rather than carved out of it. He had passed the first night of his recovered freedom in a small, high sleeping chamber with Yvane and K’rina. All the rest, with barely a word, hardly a moment spared to gather food and water, had disappeared into these ancient, chthonic depths. As if to turn their backs upon the world and separate themselves from it. As if compelled by fear, or shame, or bitterness to bury themselves.
An errant shadow angling across the stonework of the stairway caught Orisian’s eye. He paused, touched fingertip to rock. He traced the carved symbols, their edges blunted and bevelled by time.
“Look at that,” he muttered. “A stonemason’s mark, I think. That must be… how old?”
Yvane leaned against the wall, a couple of steps above him. She was a little out of breath. “Seven hundred years or more. One of Marain’s masons, perhaps.”
“So many lifetimes, and it’s lain here in the stone all that time. Kings, and wars, and Thanes, all come and gone, half-forgotten.” He let his hand fall. He felt the weight of the unknown past here. A thousand and more years,
