in all of this. And that the awful, crippling guilt he now felt was somehow deserved. He had come to mistrust so many of his feelings, his instincts, and to fear their turbulence, tossed about by gales that seemed to come from outside him, but that… that guilt felt true and clear, even if he did not understand whence it sprang.
“You’ve done nothing but give Ragnor the excuse to tear the Inkalls apart,” he said leadenly, recognising the futility of anything other than silence.
“It had to come, sooner or later,” Avenn shouted. “This is the time when all matters will be resolved. This is the time when the world must come apart, when all hopes and intents shall fail, save that of fate itself. This is the end of this world, old man, and if your wits and your courage had not failed you, you would see that as clearly as the rest of us. You betray the Lore, and the faith, with your craven reticence.”
“No…” Theor could find no words, no armour against either her accusations or the world’s collapse.
“The First of the Battle will stand by the Hunt in this, even if the Lore will not,” Avenn said.
“Did Nyve know?” Theor asked, dreading the answer.
“No. But he will not contest fate’s course. He will welcome it.”
That was true, of course. The flood that seemed to be bearing all of them along in its destructive embrace had taken hold of Nyve. It was more than a lifetime’s friendship could hope to resist.
“And Ragnor will leave him no choice now,” Avenn continued. She spoke almost casually, as to some servant or follower. “He will surely come against us. Good. The people will rise up in our defence if he makes war upon the Inkalls.”
“You think that will deter him?” Theor said. “You think he cares any more about what is wise or considered? He doesn’t care. He is as blind as… as all of us.”
“Fate will show us the way. And if that way is to ruin and rue, so be it. How could the end of all things and the birthing of new be attended by anything but ruin?”
“You’re mad,” murmured Theor, turning away, walking towards the door. “As are we all now.”
He left her there, not even glancing back to see whether the First of the Hunt followed him out of the meditatory chamber. There was nothing more to be said. The world had become inimical to words, and to reason. The madness that had so many others in its grip would brook no resistance from those-like Theor-who found themselves beyond its grasp; and so he was to be forgotten, ignored. He could no longer find the strength within himself to resent or oppose that.
Outside, it was snowing, but it was a meagre, grainy kind of snow. The flakes were not the buoyant fat flowers of midwinter, but icy granules that came on desultory gusts of wind. Thick snow still lay over the Sanctuary, the relic of what had already been a long, hard season. There would be a thaw soon enough, Theor knew. The days were slowly lengthening. The mountain streams would fatten with meltwater and rush white and blue down into the valley. The lying snow would merge into the earth and bloat it, turn it to mud. There would, eventually, be a breaking of buds and a piercing of that mud by soft new shoots. If the world did not come to its end. If this was not, in fact, the Kall.
Theor was tired. No, more than tired. Utterly drained. Lifeless, lightless.
A young Inkallim came a little hesitantly across the snow towards him. A girl whose name he could not recall. So much seemed to be slipping away from him now.
“First, there is a messenger come from the Battle.”
Theor came to a shuffling halt. The hem of his robe settled over the snow.
“From Nyve?” he asked wearily.
“Yes, First. The messenger asks that you return with him to consult with the First of the Battle. There are… apparently, there are companies of Gyre warriors moving out from Kan Dredar. Moving up the slopes.”
“Of course there are,” sighed Theor. His bones felt heavy, as if they were encrusted with defeat and disappointment, so thickened and burdened by their own weight that he could hardly lift them. All he wanted to do, all he could conceive of doing, was sleep. Hide away behind a locked door, in darkness, and be nothing for a time.
“Send the messenger back where he came from,” he said. “Tell him I will come later. Not now. Later, if I can.”
He trudged on, moving beneath the pine trees that filled so much of the compound. The young Inkallim had not moved.
“What is happening, First?” she called after him. It was not quite fear that coloured her voice. Not yet.
“Nothing, child,” Theor said without stopping or looking round. “Nothing.”
IV
When Theor woke, it was from an intermittent slumber that had done nothing to renew him. He rose stiffly and dressed. His skin felt every scrape of his robe’s rough material. He felt no hunger or thirst, no desire of any kind that might lead him out from this bare chamber. Yet there was nothing to hold him here either. Solitude brought no easing of his despair.
He went out, and found others clustered in the corridor, conferring in muted whispers. They looked up, startled, at his emergence.
“You should see…” one of them stammered.
He let them lead him to the walls of the Sanctuary. Let them guide him up the steps onto the narrow walkway cut into its inner face. He went numbly, without expectation.
What they wanted to show him was smoke. It was climbing up into a sky thick with white clouds, tracing its darker way against that bleached background in two twisting columns that merged as they rose, and then slowly bent and spread to drift in black sheets high above the snow-clad hills. Those who accompanied him talked and fretted, but Theor took none of it in. He gazed up at that dark pillar ascending from the earth towards the firmament above and felt nothing. No surprise, no confusion, no fear. He found himself beyond such things.
It was the compound of the Battle burning. There was nothing else out there on the wooded slopes that could give rise to such a conflagration. The wind was coming from his back, otherwise Theor did not doubt that he would have smelled the ash, the burning timbers. Perhaps burning flesh. Perhaps he would even have heard the cries of the dying, the commotion of sudden death.
As they stood there on the wall, a shape emerged from the trees, coming steadily towards them. Some cried out and pointed, tugging at Theor’s arm to direct his attention. He did not respond. It was a grey horse, trotting along, following the hard-packed snow of the path between the deeper, pristine drifts that flanked it. It came at its own pace, following its own course, for the man who rode it was slumped forward, draped limply around its neck. Even from this distance, it was not hard to recognise him as a Battle Inkallim. The blackness of his hair, and of his leather armour, stood out against the pale hide of his mount and the luminously white snow.
The man’s blood had stained the horse’s shoulder, forming a dark red-brown blemish that flexed and pulsed as it moved along. There were crossbow bolts standing proud from the man’s back. Two of them, Theor thought, though he could not be sure.
“We must intercede, First,” one of those gathered upon the wall cried, all panic and confusion. “They will listen to the Lore, surely? The High Thane, the Battle, they must listen to the Lore. No one else perhaps, but us.”
Theor did not know what to say. Neither Ragnor nor Nyve would listen. They had boiled over and could hear nothing but the roaring of their own hearts, their own rages. The time when consideration, negotiation, moderation might gain any purchase upon anyone had passed. Fury bestrode the world and would not yield its dominion. That Theor himself could not partake of the heady brew rendered him isolated, at a loss. For whatever reason, he had been left becalmed and irrelevant in some backwater while the river flooded on without him. As if fate had no further need for him. If it even was fate that governed this torrent.
He turned away while the horse was still approaching with its grim cargo. He descended from the wall, ignoring the questions and pleas his fellow Inkallim belaboured him with. He went silently back to his own small bedchamber and closed the door behind him, and took a little box out from its hiding place.
Three of the Lore had now died within the walls of the Sanctuary while dreaming seerstem dreams. It was unprecedented. Theor himself had forbidden any others to venture into that once-so-soothing territory. But now…
