“You wouldn’t ask that if you understood,” Yvane said. “No reason why you should, of course. Last time I reached out through the Shared to Aeglyss, he drove me off. It… hurt.”
“I know. But…” Orisian reached for words, finding nothing to quite express what he felt. “Something’s changed. You’ve said it yourself. We — no — you might be the only person here who can say what it is.”
“It’s like an ocean, the Shared,” Yvane said. She was unusually passive. Distant. “What’s in it now is… poison. You’re asking me to swim out into a poisoned sea; breathe its waters.”
“Only to arm ourselves against our enemies. To know what we face. Aewult and his thousands of warriors: they think they’re the answer to every question. They think nothing else matters. Maybe they’re wrong.”
“If I do it,” muttered Yvane, recovering a touch of her customary bristle, “it’ll be for me. It’ll be because Inurian was a wise man who probably didn’t deserve to die, and because he saw threat in Aeglyss. Not for Thanes or Bloodheirs or armies; not to help you Huanin kill each other in ever greater numbers.”
“You will do it, then?” Anyara said, with a soft smile.
The three of them watched in silence while Yvane willed herself into slumber: Hammarn sitting nervously on the end of the bed, Orisian and Anyara leaning against the frame of the window. There was nothing obviously amiss with the sleep into which Yvane fell. Her face slackened, her eyelids trembled minutely. She looked gentle in her repose, as she never quite did when awake.
Orisian watched intently, aware that for all the apparent mundanity of the scene he was witnessing something remarkable. Yvane was right, of course, when she said he did not understand this. No human could. The Shared was the sole preserve of na’kyrim. He did not envy them that. Few of the mighty na’kyrim of legend, who wielded great powers drawn from the Shared, had profited by it in the end. While they lived, though, they had done enough harm to make those of his own time outcasts, feared and loathed as much for the mystery they embodied as for the mixed blood that ran in their veins. If the Shared was a gift, it came at a heavy price.
Yvane made soft sounds. Hammarn was growing nervous, fidgeting. The muffled noise of laughter and cheering rose up from outside. Neither Orisian nor Anyara looked round. Yvane held their attention.
Her head rolled slowly to one side. One of her hands opened, splaying itself out on the bed sheet. Hammarn stood up and edged closer to the window, though never taking his eyes off Yvane.
“Not sure,” he whispered. “Not sure.”
“Not sure of what?” Anyara asked.
The old na’kyrim shook his head sharply. “Feels… Not sure.”
There was a tremor in Yvane’s shoulders. Her breaths were coming faster and faster, turning into a faint panting.
“Is something wrong?” Orisian asked, pushing himself away from the wall. “Hammarn, is something wrong?” If Yvane came to harm in this endeavour, he knew that much of the blame would be his to bear.
Hammarn did not seem to have heard him.
“No,” breathed Yvane. Her eyes were still closed, but her head was lifting now, coming away from the pillow. “That is not my name. I am not her.”
“We should wake her,” said Anyara, stepping towards the bed.
“No,” snapped Yvane, much louder this time. Orisian could see the muscles in her pale neck, strung taut as a bowstring. Her hands were bunching into fists. A shiver ran down Orisian’s spine.
Hammarn was sinking down to the floor, shaking. A faint moan escaped his lips.
Yvane pressed her head and shoulders back against the wall. Her eyes snapped open. Orisian saw alarm in them. He moved to go to her side, but before he had taken more than a couple of strides Hammarn was yelping and scrambling towards the corner of the room.
“He’s here!” Hammarn cried. He twisted his head violently round and down, as if averting his eyes from some horrifying sight.
“Go,” Yvane rasped. “Go.” She was staring fixedly towards the door. Orisian and Anyara, standing side by side, looked that way. There was nothing: the plain wood of the door, the grey stonework of the walls. Nothing.
“I am not the one you seek,” Yvane said.
Orisian’s skin was crawling. The air was suddenly thick in his throat, the light fading around the edges of his vision. He put a hand on Anyara’s arm, as much to stave off the dizzying sense of disorientation that beset him as anything. Shadows seemed to be… moving, shifting. He believed, in that moment, that there was something in the room with them. Something he could not see, or hear, but something that nevertheless had a weight, a presence.
“Leave me. Leave us.” Yvane spat the words out. Fear and anger and insistence swelled her voice.
Anyara swayed against Orisian. He glanced at her, and saw beads of sweat on her brow, her eyelids sagging. He put an arm around her. Something unseen, intangible, was constricting his chest.
Then, without warning, it was gone. He breathed again, deeply. Anyara stiffened and straightened at his side. The tension ran out of Yvane’s frame. Her shoulders sagged and she put her good hand to the side of her head, pressing briefly against her skull as if fighting off an ache.
“I will be listening to your suggestions with much less sympathy in future,” the na’kyrim murmured.
“What happened?” Orisian asked.
“I turned stupid. That’s what happened.”
Hammarn unfolded himself out of the corner and hurried to Yvane’s side. He regarded her with acute concern.
“Gone, though?” he whispered. “Gone? And you safe, lady? Safe and well.”
Yvane smiled at him. Orisian noted the fragility of that smile; its weary, almost sad tone.
“He’s gone, my friend,” Yvane said, and turned to Orisian. “The Shared’s a seething pit, and Aeglyss is the snake in its depths. I should have turned away, but… I was so close. I looked upon him. It might have been… I can’t be sure. Perhaps there were Kyrinin there. He might be amongst the White Owls.”
She closed her eyes, wrinkled her brow. The rawness of the memory was plain in her face.
“Whatever he’s become, it’s far beyond me. He had hold of me at once. But didn’t know me.” She grunted. “Thought I was someone else. And when I pulled away, came rushing back to myself, he followed. He couldn’t do that before.” She stared at Orisian. “He’s learning new tricks.”
“He didn’t harm you, though,” Orisian said quietly. “Did he?”
Yvane shook her head just once. “He’s got ten — a hundred — times my strength in the Shared, but he doesn’t know how to use it. Not yet. He’s wild, half-mad. Still, I’ll not be trying it again. Next time, I wouldn’t get back; not unless he’s the slowest learner the world has ever seen.”
“At least we know it’s him now,” Anyara said. She spoke much more gently than was her wont, almost hesitant. “For sure, I mean. We — you — learned that much.”
“That much, and a little more. He thought I was someone else, and when that thought was in him, I felt such… need. Such longing. There’s someone he’s searching for, someone he longs for, and her name is K’rina.”
Ammen Lyre dar Kilkry-Haig had learned many things from his father, Ochan. He had learned that a clever man need not be subject to the same rules and restrictions as others; that the weak made themselves victims by virtue of their shortcomings; that a father might love daughters easily but would only love a son who fought for, and earned, that affection.
A year ago, not long after Ammen’s thirteenth birthday, he had been cornered in a Kolkyre alleyway by two youths. They had good cause. While out that night carrying messages for Ochan, Ammen had found a man sprawled in the middle of a narrow, dark street. The reek of drink was as strong as he had ever smelled. Groping through the man’s clothes, Ammen was disappointed to find not a single coin, but the sot did wear a fine little knife on his belt, a blade with a horn handle and a decorated scabbard of good leather. Ammen unbuckled the belt and slid the knife off, complete with sheath. As he straightened, glancing up and down the silent street, the drunken man suddenly cried out and grabbed at Ammen’s sleeve.
Surprised rather than alarmed, Ammen tried to pull away, but the man’s grip was much stronger than seemed reasonable. He rolled onto his side, shouting incoherently, pulling so hard at Ammen’s arm that the boy almost fell to his knees. Ammen kicked him as hard as he could in the face. The man wailed and relinquished his hold. Ammen wasted another moment in stamping ineffectually on his hand and then walked away. This was one of the many small pieces of advice — all of it seeming the greatest, fiercest wisdom to Ammen — that his father had imparted: a running man is more obvious than a painted dancing girl in a room full of fishwives. So if you want to
