“Who are you?” he asked quietly. His voice cracked and creaked like the stale hinge of a long-forgotten door.
“Shraeve,” she told him. “Shraeve. You know me.”
“I know everyone,” he grunted. And turned away once more, lurching on in his unsteady circuit of the hall. There were cries rising up from outside, wailing that might be lamentation or simple madness. The Inkallim was not distracted by them. Such sounds-and worse-were common currency now in Kan Avor. The city had found its voice in them. She followed after the na’kyrim.
“Shraeve…” he whispered. “Shraeve… Shraeve. Yes, the raven. The fierce one, the cold one. Thinks she’s so wise, so clever. Not a true friend.”
“You can calm them,” she insisted. “You must calm them, bring our people back to us. If they will not- cannot-submit themselves to our commands, everything we have gained could yet slip away.”
“There is nothing I can do,” Aeglyss said bluntly, and then halted and looked around him as if puzzled. He frowned in contemplation.
“There must be,” said Shraeve.
He stared at her, and there was a shifting of the shadows about him. He flickered in and out of darkness for a few moments. It pained her eyes, and she clenched them almost shut.
“Must be?” he hissed. “Don’t you think I would, if I could?”
Scourges and daggers filled his voice. She, Banner-captain of the Battle Inkallim, quailed before this feeble, tottering figure.
“Nothing must be,” he cried in tones of venom and fire. “I am only the gate, and the truth enters through me, becomes me, and shapes the world according to its tenets. What we see now is only the true nature of the world, of us all. Nothing more. I cannot prevent it.” He was suddenly speaking softly, so laden with sorrow and regret that those same feelings took hold of Shraeve. “I cannot close what has been opened. Cannot heal my wounds. Cannot bring them back, none of them. I cannot even tell, any more, where I end and it… everything… begins. I don’t know whether I poisoned it, or it me… You can’t imagine… how I wish…”
He sagged against a pillar, then just as quickly gathered himself and lifted his head.
“We discover the truth now. That’s the thing. We become what we have always been, at our root. We enter an age of misrule, and I am its herald, its doorkeeper, its lord. Its God.”
“The Black Road is the truth,” Shraeve said. She backed away from him. He waved a dismissive hand in her direction, its flaking raw skin oozing fluid.
“Hate is coming,” he murmured, lifting his gaze towards the ruptured roof of the hall. “He is coming. From Glasbridge. Is there… is there still a place called Glasbridge?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, he burns brightly. He’s the hardest, the purest of you all. Nothing but hate to him, and it’s all his own. He takes nothing from me, gives nothing.” The na’kyrim sounded strangely joyful, raised up by a perverse pleasure.
“Who?” Shraeve asked. “Kanin?”
“Kanin. Yes. The brother. There’s no flame will forge a keener hatred than the breaking of families. I know that. I learned that. I learned that a long time ago.”
“He’s coming here?” Shraeve asked.
He looked at her clearly for the first time then, fully present and aware. He appeared almost surprised to discover that he was not alone, though his sallow features were only briefly troubled.
“You should not spend your energies fighting a chaos that cannot be halted,” he rasped. “You do not need to worry about such things. Whatever consumes us, will consume our enemies too. There are none left to oppose us, for my Shadowhand does his work well. None except him perhaps. Kanin. He’s moving. Drawing near, with hate in his heart and hate all around him, like a cloud. He’s done what you say you can’t, raven: kept a host at his side, found the will to quell it and guide it. So now we’ll see. Who is stronger, the Battle Inkall or a Thane who has no thought in his head save vengeance?”
“Do not let her die.”
“Get out of my way, then,” barked Yvane, pushing Orisian so forcefully that he rocked back on his heels.
She was packing moss around the arrow embedded in Ess’yr’s pale flesh. The Kyrinin’s throat was trembling with each breath as if it contained beating wings. Her eyes were open but unseeing. Orisian had leaned over her, and looked into them, and found nothing there. No response, no recognition, only vacant grey orbs in which he saw the depths of his own despair.
“Please,” he said now to Yvane, but the na’kyrim was not paying any attention to him.
“Where’s Varryn?” She looked around, fruitlessly scanning the silent forest. “I need those herbs before I try to take the arrow out.”
The blood had almost stopped. It had soaked into Ess’yr’s jerkin and into the grass beneath her. It had laid down crusted ribbons across the ivory of her exposed breast and shoulder. It had coated Yvane’s fingers. The fletching of the arrow, standing almost two hand spans above Ess’yr’s chest, twitched in time with her breathing.
“Is she — ” Orisian began.
“I don’t know,” Yvane shouted without looking at him. She bent down and pressed her ear to that pallid chest. She listened for a moment and then straightened and pushed a finger into Ess’yr’s mouth, parting her slack lips.
“She’s not breathing blood, as far as I can see or hear,” Yvane said. “That’s good. Where’s Varryn?”
“Watch her!” Taim Narran was suddenly shouting.
Orisian twisted round on his haunches, startled by the anger in the Captain’s voice. K’rina was staggering away, plunging with surprising speed into the thickets to the north of the spreading oak tree. Taim was already running after her, spitting curses at the man who had been tasked with watching the comatose na’kyrim. That man was entirely untouched by Taim’s scorn, for he had his head in his hands and was groaning distantly.
Orisian surged to his feet, so clumsily that he lurched sideways and almost fell. He could still see K’rina, struggling with entangling briars. She would not get far, surely. Taim would have her in just a moment or two. He looked down at Ess’yr; felt anew the aridity of his mouth, the impotent tremors starting in his hands. The fear. He knelt down again.
“Keep clear,” Yvane muttered. “Give me room.”
She tried to feel under Ess’yr’s shoulder while holding down the compress of moss with her other hand, but quickly hissed in frustration.
“Lift her up a little,” she told Orisian.
He was afraid to touch Ess’yr. He felt sick at the thought of causing her pain, of doing unwitting harm.
“Lift her shoulder,” Yvane snapped.
He did, and Ess’yr gave a faint, descending sigh. She was still there, at least enough to feel something. Yvane probed at her back, exploring her shoulder blade with firm fingers. Apparently satisfied, she nodded to Orisian, and he let Ess’yr sink back into the grass as gently as he could. She was so light, he thought. So light.
“The head of the arrow’s almost through,” Yvane said softly. “Nicking her shoulder blade, I think, not in it.”
“Is that good?” Orisian asked.
“Maybe. Is any of this good? Arrow has to come out, or she’ll die a hard death. Might do anyway. Getting it out’s going to be an ugly business.” She shook her head.
Taim Narran returned, a feebly struggling K’rina held tightly in his grasp. Orisian registered them only in the dimmest of ways, for he was shaken by memories of almost visionary intensity and immediacy. Inurian, lying with an arrow buried deep in his back, the strength-the life-draining from him with every breath. The two of them, Kyrinin and na’kyrim, lay side by side in his imagination.
“Look at her, look at her,” Yvane was whispering. “What’s a Fox doing here? She should be up there in the Car Criagar, in some vo’an. Hunting deer. Tanning hides. They should all be there still. Not dead, not dying.”
She looked up as Taim gently settled K’rina down onto the ground beside them. As Yvane’s gaze settled upon her fellow na’kyrim, whose expression was entirely blank, almost childlike, her brow furrowed and sadness tugged at the corners of her mouth.
A mist of light rain drifted down through the branches of the oak. It was cold on Orisian’s face. He curled his
