might clear it. “He deserves better from you than…”
“It’s my privacy that Yvane protects, not her own.”
Orisian jumped sideways, almost exclaiming in surprise. Seated there, in a chair that a moment ago had been empty, was a na’kyrim: a short young man with his hands resting on his knees. His voice was soft, fluty.
“Don’t worry,” said Yvane before Orisian could speak, or call for Rothe. “He’s no threat. This is Bannain, from Highfast.”
Orisian took another step backwards, still unsettled. The man, he was sure, had not been there when he entered the room.
“How…” he began, but was not sure how to complete the question.
Bannain smiled in a detached kind of way, and flourished his long fingers.
“Mere trickery. I apologise if I startled you.”
“Of course you startled me,” snapped Orisian.
Yvane laid a hand on his arm, all the while frowning at Bannain as if in reprimand.
“He might be a little full of himself, Orisian, but he means no harm. Bannain has the knack of using the Shared in a very potent, but very narrow” — she emphasised that word — “way. It makes him well suited to certain tasks. He’s been serving the Elect as a messenger for quite a few years.”
Bannain folded his arms across his chest and stretched his legs out, resting the heel of one foot on the toe of the other.
“It’s nothing too sinister,” Yvane continued. “He just makes the eye… slide over him, if you like. He can only keep it up for a few moments, so he’s not as clever as he thinks he is.”
The younger na’kyrim smiled again. “All true. Again, I am sorry. I only wished to avoid the attention of anyone who came with you. Normally, none but Lheanor and one or two others know of my visits to Kolkyre. Of course, once I found out Yvane was here with news from the north I had to come and speak with her; and she in turn insists I tell my story to you as well.”
“Your story?” Orisian asked warily.
“Bannain was sent here by the Council at Highfast to warn Lheanor,” Yvane explained. “I think you might want to hear what he has to say.”
“All right, then. Tell me.” Orisian could not quite shed his caution and mistrust. If Yvane said this man was safe, and had something useful to say, he believed her, but it did not mean he had to like Bannain’s manner.
“Hard to explain, to one who is not na’kyrim,” the young man said, “but Yvane claims you’re more likely to grasp it than most. She’s told you already about the canker that’s appeared in the Shared?” His nose wrinkled in distaste as he asked the question.
“She has. And about its cause.”
“Its cause. Indeed. You’ve met this man Aeglyss, I’m told.”
“Not met. I’ve seen him, once. My sister was unlucky enough to spend more time in his company than me.”
“Unlucky indeed, I imagine. We have one at Highfast — a woman from Dyrkyrnon — who knows Aeglyss of old, from when he was young. She has nothing good to say of him. She is certain that he is the source of the disturbances that now torment all waking na’kyrim. I gather Yvane here shares that certainty. But the real question is how did this happen? What does it signify?”
Bannain looked from Orisian to Yvane, his eyebrows raised like a tale-teller teasing his audience.
“Don’t overdo it,” growled Yvane. “Orisian is as much a Thane as Lheanor is, don’t forget.”
Bannain gave no sign of being abashed by the scolding.
“The Council at Highfast has given much thought to these matters,” he continued, now setting his elbows on the arms of the chair and making a tent of his fingers. “This is as close to understanding as they have come: on that night, the night none of us — none amongst the waking — is likely to forget, something happened to this Aeglyss. Something that broke the barriers between his mind and the Shared.
“Precisely what it was hardly matters. The nub of things is this: Aeglyss has become something… new. Or very old, depending on how you look at it. There’s been no na’kyrim who could cast such a long shadow in hundreds of years. The Shared has poured into him — and a little of him has leaked back into the Shared. He may be capable of remarkable things now.
“And thus the essence of the message Cerys had me bring to Lheanor: be careful. Be cautious. However things may seem to be now, it is the judgement of Highfast that the armies of the Black Road are not the most dangerous thing in the Glas valley.”
Orisian stared at the young na’kyrim. “That much we already suspected.”
“There’s a little more,” Yvane said, and looked pointedly at Bannain.
“A little, yes,” he agreed. “Harder, though, to read its significance. There is a man at Highfast we call the Dreamer. He sleeps and speaks, now and again, of the currents flowing in the deepest Shared. Little of what he has said makes any sense, but some of it, some of it is very dark. It seems that the changes in the Shared have caught the attention of those best left undisturbed. The Dreamer whispers that the Anain are stirring.”
“Well, that…” Orisian shut his mouth. He had no idea what he could sensibly say in response. The Anain — the race unlike any other, implacable, unknowable — were as far beyond his experience as anything could possibly be. To him, they were little more than creatures out of strange, usually fearful, stories; hardly more real than the wolfenkind who had disappeared from the world over a thousand years ago. He knew, having seen it with his own eyes and heard of it from Ess’yr, that they were more than that to the Kyrinin, but the knowledge had done nothing to blunt his own ignorance.
“The Anain have not roused themselves in a long time,” Yvane murmured. “Not since they raised the Deep Rove, in fact: better than three centuries. All that time, they’ve taken no interest in what’s happening. If they’ve shaken off their indifference now, there will be trouble.”
Orisian raised his hands in exasperated helplessness.
“Not trouble I can do anything about, though.” He looked questioningly first at Yvane and then at Bannain. “Aeglyss, the Shared: these things are far enough beyond my grasp already. But the Anain?”
“Beyond the grasp of any of us,” conceded Bannain.
“But you do understand things that others might not,” said Yvane, that blunt insistence Orisian knew so well creeping into her voice. “Your mind is a little less closed against all of this than most. You had Inurian at your side for all those years. You were there — you saw what happened — when I reached out to Aeglyss. This… this is moving beyond the understanding of… Huanin memories are too short. You all think you remember the likes of Minon or Orlane Kingbinder, but it’s been centuries. You’ve all grown too used to knowing only na’kyrim like me and Bannain, with our silly, secret little talents. And the Anain: a hundred thousand swords would not suffice if they chose to wake from their slumber.”
“I see that,” said Orisian. “I do.” And he did, at least in part. All those hours he had spent with Inurian, all his fascination for the Kyrinin, the days he had spent in a Fox vo’an and the anhyne he had seen there: these things told him that there was more to the world than the machinations of Thanes, strengths other than those that resided in swords and spears.
“Lheanor said the same thing,” Bannain said. “He listened to what I had to tell him, and nodded, and said that he understood.” The na’kyrim smiled ruefully and let his head tip to one side. “But he didn’t really. He can’t truly see how furious the coming storm might be. How could he? How could anyone but we na’kyrim? Aeglyss is becoming a fever in the Shared. And the Shared is… it is the thought of which we are all the expression. Huanin, Kyrinin, na’kyrim: all of us.”
“Come to Highfast,” Yvane said abruptly to Orisian. “Hammarn and I will be leaving tomorrow with Bannain. Come and talk to the people there.” She glanced at Bannain. “The Council of Highfast is not famous for stirring itself in aid of others, but they might. They might, if they believed you worthy of that aid.”
Orisian looked at her, and as he met her sharp, grey eyes he could have been looking into the face of Inurian: Inurian, who in the last few years had been the one person he had always felt he could trust and be certain of. Though Yvane was far less gentle and caring than Inurian had been, and Orisian had known her for only a matter of weeks, he did trust her. She made a great show of her indifference to the concerns of everyone else, but there were signs, now and again, that that was more out of choice and habit than nature.
“I’m going to Kolglas,” Orisian murmured. Highfast: a secret place, where Inurian had lived before he came to Kolglas. A year ago, he would have leaped at the chance to visit such a mysterious place, to make that kind of
