in one hand, his bulk and ferocity and skill a barrier to any who might now threaten her.
Nienna slept uneasily. The Cailleach Fortress was not just unwelcoming, but deeply unnerving. As she lay, thinking about her dead friend Katrina and all the good times they'd been through, and contemplating the young woman's death for the thousandth time, so she would hear gentle whispers like draughts from the higher reaches of the chamber, or hisses and bangs, like popping stones in the fire. Nienna thought of her mother, a long way distant, lost and lonely – possibly even dead. Had she fallen when the Army of Iron invaded Falanor? Was she dead and buried, food for worms? Or had she found an escape? After all, she was a very resilient woman. She was the daughter of Kell.
Saark, on the other hand, tossed and turned, his teeth hurting him, his blood hurting him. His heart raced through his ears, pounded at him with hammers as his body fluctuated from a heart rate of one beat per minute, leaving him gasping for oxygen, then shooting up to two or even three hundred beats, racing through his chest like a steam-powered clockwork engine and making him claw his blankets in panic, the world a swirl of weird colours and surreal smells and sounds as his senses adjusted, and he felt himself dropping into the world of the altered human…
Eventually the feelings passed, and Saark was just falling into an exhausted sleep after three nights of wakefulness when he sensed somebody close to him. A hand touched his chest, lightly, and Saark's eyes flared open in panic. It was Myriam. He remembered the last time she had been this close; the stab of the knife, the wound in his guts, eating soil. Saark grabbed her wrist, a savage hard movement, but Myriam did not complain. She was there, beside him, her breathing slow, her eyes glittering.
She leaned close, so that her words tickled his ear, and Saark was a split second from drawing his punchdagger and feeding it to her eyeball. 'I would speak with you,' she said, words gentle.
'Last time you wanted to speak with me, you stabbed me in the belly.'
'That was different.' She seemed to be fighting something, and her face twisted. 'I am… different.'
'Really? That is a surprise.'
'Damn you, Saark! Come outside.'
She stood, and he let go of her wrist, leaving enraged marks where his surprisingly powerful grip had scoured her flesh. He watched her leave, a cold wind and curls of snow entering the warm guard room on her departure. Cursing, Saark rolled from his hard bed and pulled on trews, boots and cloak. He stepped outside, closing the door quietly behind him, and was hit in the face by a snap of wind-driven snow. He gasped. The cold reached into every gap in his clothing and bit him like a piranha. He cursed. Then cursed again. He saw Myriam further ahead, sheltering under a huge towering buttress of stone. Saark put his hand on the hilt of his rapier, and walked towards her, grimly. If there was any foul play, he would gut her like a fish.
The sky was dark, but a glowing edge to the horizon signified the beginnings of dawn. Snow and wind whipped and shrieked. Saark gazed up at the massive keep, huge and black, slick with ice and slightly jigged from the vertical.
Walking towards Myriam, one hand holding the neck of his cloak together, he snapped, 'What the shit do you want, woman? It isn't normal to be out in this.' 'You'd better get used to it. We have a long way to go.'
'What do you want?'
Myriam met his gaze, then. 'I wanted to say I am sorry. About before, in Falanor, when I…'
'When you stabbed me in the guts? You bitch.'
'Yes. I was. I was fuelled by hatred, by need, by a lust for life. It has made me irrational. Unpredictable. And I confess, a little… insane.' She took a deep breath. Looked off, over the skewed fortress battlements. 'I would make amends. I would say that I am sorry. That is all.'
'Kell is taking you to the Silva Valley. We are here because of you.'
Myriam shook her head. 'I cannot explain it, but you are here for a greater good. This is what the magick has shown me, taught me, revealed to me.'
Saark's eyes were hard. 'You'll not con me with your half-penny tricks, bitch. I've seen plenty of part time conjurers in my time; and in my experience, the only thing they crave is silver coin. Amazingly, this impending accrued wealth always coincides with a 'greater good'. Crazy, wouldn't you agree?'
'You can believe what you wish. But Kell believes, and that is for all our benefit.'
'Yeah, well, the old goat's a rancid fool.'
'I will say it again. I am sorry. You can take it with grace, and acknowledge that I may have changed – that, bizarrely – spending time with Nienna has, shall we say, altered my view of the world. She has touched me. She has changed me. And now, because I have changed, the magick runs deeper through my veins. In sacrificing my hate, in stepping away from my rage, I can see more clearly.'
'Good for you, girl! What do you want? A big sloppy kiss?'
'Curb your cynicism,' she snapped, and he could see tears on her cheeks. Saark chewed his lip, and considered stepping close to her, holding her, hugging her, telling her he forgave the vicious stabbing back in the woods. But his mind shifted. She was a chameleon. She was out for self-preservation. He did not believe she had changed, but still sought personal profit at their little group's expense.
'Ha! I'm going back to bed. Save your sob stories for Kell. He's a sucker for a dying woman.'
'But you, Saark? What do you care about?'
Saark gave a dark smile under the glowing edges of a rising winter sun. 'Why, I'm a soft touch when it comes to myself.'
'So we are the same, then?'
Saark stared at Myriam, stared at her hard as the truth of her words bit him. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. She was correct. They were exactly the same. Saark used people for his own ends. He always had, and he always would. He was vain, narcissistic, and totally enveloped with furthering his own pleasure – and life. Shit, he realised. Shit. In Myriam's position, would he have acted the same? Would he have stabbed somebody, poisoned another, in order to force them to help? And he knew, deep down in the glowing embers of his ruptured heart, that he probably would.
With shame touching him, he turned and went back to his cold bed. And the pounding of the rampant vachine blood-oil in his veins echoed right down to his soul.
Soon after dawn they followed a narrow alleyway through the fortress, winding between towering dark walls which exuded not just cold and gloom and abandonment, but an inherent dread which seemed to be a part of this long-deserted fortress. People had not only died here, it felt as if their souls had been sucked into the very stones, distorting them, tearing them free.
Kell led the way, walking his skittish horse with Nienna in the saddle. He didn't want to let her out of his sight. Nobody would take his granddaughter from him again; not without stepping over his dead body first. Next came Myriam, dressed in warm winter garb, her face seeming more shrunken on this freezing morn, her eyes ringed with purple and black, her breathing rasping and shallow. And behind came Saark, a wary eye on Myriam, listening to her ragged cancerous breathing and wondering how long she really had left. She wanted to reach Silva Valley, but according to Kell it was a hard, brutal journey and Saark could not quite puzzle out why he was still agreeing to do it. Surely, he could turn around now? He had Nienna. He had the antidote. And even if he believed Myriam's magick, her supposed prophecy, if he headed away from the Black Pikes then surely he would never see a pride of snow lions. How, then, could he lose Nienna to attack? It was strange. Saark decided to question Kell in private when the opportunity arose.
Within the hour they were free of the Cailleach Fortress, and in a narrow valley which ran beyond, through a narrow pass with massive, sheer towering walls. It was terribly gloomy in the pass, and huge rocks littered the floor, in places rising in piles which the group had to scramble up and over, slipping and sliding on wet rocks and ice. The horses struggled on gamely, and with pride Saark watched Mary – more agile than them all, despite carrying a heavy load on her back. The donkey did not complain, but willingly climbed each hill of loose rock to stand, staring down at the cursing humans with an almost equine arrogance.
After a while, Kell called a halt. 'It's no good taking the horses any further, unless we intend to eat them.'
Everybody stared at him. 'You can't eat a good horse,' snapped Saark. 'What a waste of a fine creature!'
Kell grunted. 'It's meat, like anything else. But the path will grow ever more treacherous; best now to let them free. They will soon start to slow us down. If we release them here, there's a chance we may find them on
