Lacklaugh sighed. “He was always strong, but to make himself felt all through the Shared like this… it defies understanding.”
“Agreed. Something happened, clearly. We all felt the moment when something… broke. Whatever happened, he’s not the Aeglyss we knew. Even then, when we cast him out, we were more than a little afraid of him, and of what he might do. Now…” Arquan shook his head as if shying away from the thought. “So what will you be saying to the rest of the elders tomorrow?” he asked.
“That I expect K’rina to keep trying to leave us, and that I see little sense in seeking to prevent her. If she stays here, she will only sink further and further into despair. She may harm herself, or someone else, in the end.”
Arquan stared into his cup of wine.
“Trouble’s even more likely to find her if she wanders off in search of Aeglyss,” he said disconsolately.
Lacklaugh rose. He took a fishing spear from the wall and peered at its viciously barbed point.
“I need to replace the bindings on this,” he muttered, and began searching around for some cord.
“This place hardens hearts,” Arquan said, though without the accusation or reproach that the words implied.
“It does,” agreed Lacklaugh as he sat back down and laid the spear across his knees. “Dyrkyrnon has never been a hotbed of soft hearts. But then, soft hearts are not what we have needed. If K’rina chooses to leave — however misguided the reasons for that choice — she puts herself beyond our protection. Our world is bounded by the pools, the mists. If we reach out beyond those limits, we invite the world to reach in. That is not what any of us would want.”
“No.”
“I still have friends amongst the Heron, though. I know young warriors who grow bored now that there is peace with the Hawk. No doubt they long for some kind of adventure. They might follow her — some of the way, at least. Guard her. Unless you want to volunteer as her guardian?”
“I’m an old man, and a coward.” Arquan raised his left hand, showing the stubs of his two missing fingers. “I had my fill of the wide world long ago. It kept part of me so that I should not forget just how much it disliked me.”
Lacklaugh did not look up. He was frowning in concentration as he wound the cord around the haft of his spear, binding the barbed bone point in place.
“I don’t suppose there’s any of us here who would leap at the chance to walk by her side,” Arquan said. “Not at the best of times, and certainly not if Aeglyss is waiting at the end of whatever road she wants to follow. Perhaps your Heron friends are the best we can do.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Lacklaugh, grimacing as he pulled the cord tight. “You should not condemn yourself, or the rest of us, too harshly, though. If Aeglyss is indeed the cause of this… this sickening of the Shared, none of us here could offer K’rina much in the way of protection. None of us has that kind of strength, for all that we have the most potent na’kyrim outside Adravane amongst our number.”
“We do,” agreed Arquan glumly, then corrected himself at once. “We did. It appears the one we cast out can now lay claim to that dubious honour.”
CHAPTER 1
Put ten Kilkry men in a Kolkyre tavern, ply them with drink for a time, and you will hear ten different views on how it came to pass that their Blood meekly surrendered its authority to the Haig line. And there will be a seam of truth running through each one of those views, for no single blow broke the strength and will of the Kilkry Blood. Rather, it was an accumulation of wounds and ill fortune that undid their rule.
Some fifty years before, Kilkry had led the other Bloods to victory against Gyre and the Black Road cult. Their immense losses in battle, and through defection to the Black Road, had still not been entirely made good. And even as Kilkry laboured beneath those lingering wounds, Haig was rising to new heights of strength and prosperity. It had taken a century and a half, but the lands around Vaymouth — ruined during the Storm Years — were at last restored to the bountiful fertility that had seen them called The Verdant Shores in the days when they fed half the Aygll Kingship. The Thanes of the Haig Blood had grown rich, their armies numerous, their influence over the Taral and Ayth Bloods pervasive, on the back of those lands.
When the time came, the men of Kilkry, and of Lannis, would willingly have taken up arms, but Cannoch oc Kilkry could not bring himself to return the Bloods to the horrors of civil strife. He bent his knee, and with nothing more than that Haig became highest of all the True Bloods. Hundreds — most likely thousands — would have died had Cannoch not humbled himself so, but you will find few people in the backstreets of Kolkyre prepared to thank him for it. The memory of better times suffuses this Blood, undimmed by the passage of time. Each generation is heir to the resentment and bitterness of the one before. These are people whose pride runs deep; they bred High Thanes once, and they are not likely to forget it.
I
The na’kyrim lay curled on a pallet of interlaced hazel and juniper boughs inside the Voice’s lodge. His knees were pressed up into his chest. His face rested in the sheltering cup of his hands. There was a pale, thin crust of vomit on the pallet by his head, and on his lips. There had been almost nothing in his stomach to come up, for he had hardly eaten since being brought down from the Breaking Stone. There were terrible wounds beneath the bindings on his wrists. The bandages were stained brown and earth-red by his blood.
He was alone in the hut save for a single Kyrinin woman: an aged, time-worn, herb-wise healer. Outside, on the threshold of the lodge, two warriors were squatting down on their haunches. Their purpose was not the imprisonment of the na’kyrim but his protection. Ever since Aeglyss had been taken down from the Breaking Stone and brought back here, there had been ill-tempered argument and dissent. This, the heart and home of the White Owl clan, the ancient vo’an around which its life turned, had been shaken. Children were kept out of sight while their parents met around the fires, arguing, accusing. Some wanted to kill the na’kyrim, to cut his throat and leave him for the eaters of the dead in the forest, as befitted an outsider, a betrayer. Others caught the scent of significance, of purpose. He had survived the Breaking Stone, and when he had been taken down from it and carried back to the vo’an, something else had come with him: something untouchable, invisible, unnamed. But it could be felt.
The na’kyrim woke. He blinked. The healer came and stood over him.
“You have not slept long,” she said.
“I cannot rest. Whenever I close my eyes, my head is filled with a stench of malice and doubt. I’m surrounded by it here.”
The healer’s expression offered no denial. Aeglyss tried to raise himself up on his elbows, but failed. He slumped back with a hiss.
“You are weak,” the healing woman murmured. “You need food, and water. And I cannot stop the weeping of your wounds. Your blood runs like a river. It is poisoned.”
“You can’t heal what ails me,” Aeglyss said. “Can’t even understand it. Your own blood is too pure for that. My wounds will look after themselves. Whatever it is that’s in me, it’s not poison. Not poison.”
He grimaced and twisted his head as if afflicted by some blinding light.
