slightly against the sunlight.
“Am I far behind the rest?” the man asked between labored breaths.
Tegric noted the bandaged feet, the trembling hands.
“Some way,” he said softly.
The man nodded, unsurprised and seemingly unperturbed. He wiped his brow with the hem of his robe; the material came away sweaty and dirty.
“You are waiting here?” he asked Tegric, who nodded in reply.
The man cast around, scanning the warriors scattered amongst the great boulders all around him.
“How many of you are there?”
“A hundred,” Tegric told him.
The old man chuckled, though it was a cold and humorless kind of laugh.
“You have come to the end of your Roads then, you hundred. I had best press on, and discover where my own fate runs out.”
“Do so,” said Tegric levelly. He watched the man make his unsteady way along the path already trodden by so many thousands. There had been, in the gentle edges of his accent, no hint of the Gyre Blood or the Glas valley where Avann had ruled.
“Where are you from, old father?” Tegric called after him.
“Kilvale, in Kilkry lands,” the man replied.
“Did you know the Fisherwoman, then?” Tegric asked, unable to keep the edge of wonder from his voice.
The old man paused and carefully turned to look back at the warrior.
“I heard her speak. I knew her a little, before they killed her.”
“There will be a day, you know, when the Black Road marches through this pass again,” Tegric said. “But then we will be marching out of the north, not into it. And we will march all the way to Kilvale and beyond.”
Again the man laughed his rough laugh. “You are right. They’ve driven us from our homes, cast even your Thane out from his castle, but the creed survives. You and I are not fated to see it, friend, but the Black Road will rule in the hearts of all men one day, and all things will come to their end. This is a war that will not be done until the world itself is unmade.”
Tegric gazed after the receding figure for a time. Then he returned to his sewing.
A while later, his hand paused in its rhythmic motion, the needle poised in mid-descent. There was something moving amongst the rocks, back down the pass to the south. He carefully set aside his tunic and half- rose, leaning forward on one knee.
“Kilkry,” he heard one of his warriors muttering off to his left.
And the shape coalescing out of the rock and the bright light did indeed look to be a rider. Nor was it alone. At least a score of horsemen were picking their way up the Vale of Stones.
Tegric laid a hand instinctively on the cool metal of his chain vest. He could feel the dried blood, the legacy of a week’s almost constant battle, beneath his fingertips. He was not afraid to die. That was one fear the Black Road lifted from a man’s back. If he feared anything, it was that he should fail in his determination to face, both willingly and humbly, whatever was to come.
“Ready yourselves,” he said, loud enough for only the few nearest men to hear. They passed the word along. Tegric snapped the needle from the end of its thread and slipped his tunic back on. He lifted his mail shirt above his head and dropped its familiar weight onto his shoulders. Like smoke rising from a newly caught fire, the line of riders below was lengthening, curling and curving its way up the pass.
The horsemen of Kilkry were the best mounted warriors to be found in all the Bloods, but their prowess would count for little where Tegric had chosen to make his stand. A titanic fall of rocks from the cliffs above had almost choked the Stone Vale with rubble. The riders would be greatly hampered, perhaps even forced to dismount. Tegric’s swordsmen and archers would have the advantage here. Later, when the main body of the pursuing army came up, they would be overwhelmed, but that did not matter.
He glanced at the sun, a searingly bright orb in the perfectly blue sky. He could hear the buzzards and the ravens, could glimpse their dark forms gliding in effortless spirals. It did not seem a bad place, a bad day, to die. If, when he woke in the new world the Black Road promised him, this was his last memory of his first life, of this failed world, it would not displease him.
Tegric Wyn dar Gyre rose and buckled on his sword belt.
Mist had draped itself across the village, so that water, land and air had all run together. The domed huts were indistinct shapes, bulging out of the morning vapors here and there like burial mounds. Dew lay heavy on the cut slabs of turf that covered them. A lone fisherman was easing his flatboat out into one of the channels that meandered through the reedbeds around the village. There was no other sign of life save the wispy threads rising from the smokeholes of one or two of the huts. Not a breath of wind disturbed their ascent as the trails of smoke climbed high into the air before losing themselves in the greyness.
One larger hut stood apart from the others on raised ground. A figure emerged out of the mist, walking toward it: a youth, no more than fifteen or sixteen. His tread left deep prints in the mossy grass. Outside the hut he stopped and gathered himself. He stood straight and looked around for a moment. He breathed the damp air in and out, as if cleansing himself.
As the deerskin that hung across the opening fell back into place behind him, the interior was cast into a deep gloom. Only the faintest light oozed in through the small hole in the center of the roof; the peat fire had been dampened down to embers. The youth could make out the indistinct forms of a dozen or more people sitting motionless in a semi-circle. Some of their faces were touched by the glow of the embers, lighting their cheeks a little. He knew them, but it was an irrelevance here and now. On this morning they were one; they were the will of the place, of Dyrkyrnon. In the background, all but beneath the reach of even his acute hearing, a dolorous rhythm was being chanted. He had never heard the sound before, yet knew what it was: a truth chant, a habit borrowed from the Heron Kyrinin. They were seeking wisdom.
“Sit,” someone said.
He lowered himself to the ground and crossed his legs. He fixed his eyes on the firepit.
“We have sat through the night,” said someone else, “to give thought to this matter.”
The youth nodded and pressed his thin lips tight together.
“It is a heavy duty,” continued the second speaker, “and a sad burden that we should be called upon to make such judgments. Dyrkyrnon is a place of sanctuary, open to all those of our kind who can find no peace or safety in the outer world. Yet we came together to determine whether you should be turned out, Aeglyss, and sent away from here.”
Aeglyss said nothing. His face remained impassive, his gaze unwavering.
“You were taken in, and given comfort. You would have died at your mother’s side if you had not been found and brought here. Yet you have sown discord. The friendship and trust you were offered have been repaid with cruelty. Dyrkyrnon suffers now by your presence. Aeglyss, you shall leave this place, and have no discourse with any who make their homes here. We cast you out.”
There was a flicker of response in the youth’s face then: a trembling in the tight-clenched jaw, a shiver at the corner of his mouth. He closed his eyes. The peaty smoke was thickening the air. It touched the back of his throat and nose.
“You are young, Aeglyss,” the voice from beyond the smoldering fire said, a little softer now. “It may be that age will teach you where we have failed. If that should be the case, you will be welcome here once more.”
He stared at the half-lit faces opposite him, a cold anger in his look.
“You came to us out of a storm,” said a woman, “and you carry the storm within you. It is beyond us to tame it. It is too deep-rooted. When it is gone, or mastered, return to us. The judgment can be rescinded. You belong here.”
He laughed at that, the sound harsh and sudden in the still atmosphere. There were tears welling up in his
