Cerys leaned over the Dreamer, angling her head so that her ear hovered over his lips. “He chose this,” she said, “but when he made his choice, the Shared was a wonder; a benign ocean to be explored. Some of us here envied him greatly, for his ability to give himself up to it so completely. Now, though… the ocean he travels has turned against him. Against us all.”
One of the other na’kyrim, a tall and striking man, more powerfully built than any other of his kind that Orisian had seen, laid a hand on the Elect’s back. It looked to Orisian like comfort. Cerys gave no sign that she felt the touch. She straightened.
“Even if we were deaf to the troubles in the Shared, Thane, we would still know that things had gone awry.” She extended a long, languid finger towards the Dreamer. “Tyn’s rest was once peaceful. Now it cannot even be called rest. He suffers, and his suffering spills over, in his tormented mutterings, his decaying body. He is quiet now, but often he is gripped by spasms. Sometimes he cries out: not words at all, just cries of horror. The change began on that night when we all sensed… whatever it was we sensed.”
“Aeglyss,” Orisian said.
“Yes,” one of the other na’kyrim said quickly, before Cerys could reply. Orisian looked at her, and saw a young woman with fierce, clear grey eyes. Her features were unremarkable, more humanlike than those of most of her colleagues. Even her skin, though pale, had a certain warm health to it that most na’kyrim lacked. Orisian’s mind made a swift connection.
“You know him? Aeglyss, I mean. Bannain said there was someone here who knew him long ago, in Dyrkyrnon.”
The young woman made to speak, but Cerys held a hand out, stilling her. Orisian saw plainly enough that obedience to the gesture required an effort of self-control.
“This is Eshenna,” the Elect said. “She came to us only a few years ago. And before that, yes, she lived in Dyrkyrnon. As did Aeglyss for a time, apparently. When he was a child.”
“I did not know him well,” Eshenna said, her gaze fixed on Orisian, “but well enough to recognise his presence in the Shared.”
“And you know this woman K’rina?” Orisian asked.
“We will talk of Aeglyss later,” the Elect said quietly. She was watching the Dreamer now. “There was another reason I wanted you to see Tyn; other news, that has come from his lips, drifting up out of whatever depths he is now lost in.” She turned back to Orisian. “He speaks, you see. Our Dreamer speaks.”
Orisian glanced back to the Dreamer. Tyn’s cheek was twitching, his lips trembling. One of the na’kyrim — the man who had comforted Cerys before — sat on the edge of the bed and pressed his palm to the sleeper’s forehead. His fingernails, Orisian saw, were as white as any Kyrinin’s.
“Yes, I know he speaks,” Orisian said. He tried to keep his voice level, calm. It was unsettling to be the object of so many pairs of intent, inhuman eyes, to be beneath the strange weight of their attention. And a vague frustration was building in him. He wanted to speak of Aeglyss now, not later. He had slept badly in the dank dormitory down in the guts of Highfast. Lying awake in the darkness, hearing the drip of water, the scurry of rats, his restless mind had turned from one image to another, and then another, without pause: Inurian, Ess’yr, Kennet. Dawn had found him still tired, and uneasy; doubtful of himself, and of Highfast.
“These days, much of what Tyn says is garbled,” Cerys said. “It makes little sense, though it is all shot through with fear, and with distress. Until recently, we had scribes at his bedside all the time to record whatever they could. We had to remove them. They were becoming… sick. Whatever corruption Aeglyss is spreading through the Shared is stronger here. Poor Tyn is a wick, through which it rises and leaks out.”
“What is it that you want me to hear, then?” asked Orisian. The desire to leave this small, oppressive room with its decay-tinged air was growing strong within him. Rothe was awaiting him outside; fretting, no doubt, at being refused permission to accompany his charge into this chamber.
“Amongst those fragments Tyn has spoken that make any sense, much concerns the Anain. It accords with what some of us have suspected. They are stirring, Thane. They rouse themselves, and turn their attention outward, as they have not done for centuries.”
She watched Orisian intently, searching for some reaction; all of them did. Rather than look back into those penetrating eyes, Orisian stared at Tyn’s pallid face.
“Bannain said as much,” he murmured.
“The Anain answer to no law but their own,” Cerys said. “The rest of us — Huanin, Kyrinin, Saolin, na’kyrim — we are like bubbles of air that rise out the Shared, spin about on its surface. The Anain, they are the currents that move it; they are its ebb and flow. If they wake, if they… exert themselves, we will all be as powerless as the meekest lamb.”
“I understand that. As I can do nothing to prevent it, it seems pointless to fret over it.”
“Then you do not fully understand,” Cerys said gravely. Orisian thought there was perhaps a trace of disappointment in her voice, but it was so faint that he could not be sure. “The attention of the Anain has been drawn by what happened to Aeglyss, by what he has become. We are all but certain of that. His power, his pain and anger, foul the Shared. That must be to the Anain as it would be to us if the air we breathe, the water we drink, the blood in our veins, were all corrupted. To know their intent or purposes is beyond us, but we fear they rise in order to oppose and destroy Aeglyss.”
“Fear?” Orisian echoed. “He’s as much to blame for the death of my father as anyone. He imprisoned my sister. Killed Inurian, we think. I do not fear his destruction.”
“You should fear the means of it, if that means is the Anain,” Cerys snapped. Orisian blinked in surprise at the sudden sharpness of her tone, and the way her words rang in his ears. There was a shivering down his spine, and a tingling in his scalp. For a moment, he was aware of nothing but the Elect’s cold, hard face looming large in his vision. She was not human, he reminded himself; and not all na’kyrim were as restrained and gentle in their capacities as Inurian had been. He almost took a step backwards, giving in to the thrill of fear that jolted his heart, but he held himself firm.
“Last time the Anain rose,” Cerys continued, more levelly, “they turned back armies, drowned a city beneath a sea of trees. They care nothing for our concerns, Thane, and we know next to nothing of theirs. They might raise another Deep Rove over your whole Glas valley. They might slaughter every na’kyrim in the world, all in the name of just one whose life offends them.”
Orisian drew a deep breath down into his chest. His heartbeat slowed a little.
“You’re afraid,” he said quietly, facing Cerys. “Yvane told me as much.”
He saw the Elect’s jaw tighten, and fear fluttered again in his stomach, but he pressed on. “She said you — and her, and all na’kyrim — are afraid of Aeglyss, and of what he might do. There’s more, though, isn’t there? You’re afraid of what might happen because of him, too. It might be the Anain, it might be Gryvan oc Haig, when he finds out there’s a powerful na’kyrim who has sided with the Black Road.”
No one replied for what seemed like a long time. Cerys had taken hold of the chain she wore around her neck. She stared at Orisian for a moment, then closed her eyes.
“Yvane ever thought in such ruts,” someone said — Orisian was not sure who, though the voice was male.
Cerys smiled briefly, sadly.
“Will you come with me, Thane? Being in this room gives me a cruel headache. Perhaps fresher air is what we need.”
He followed her willingly, glad to leave the tight confines of the Dreamer’s chamber. Rothe’s relief when he saw them emerge was evident. The big shieldman fell in close behind Orisian, who gave him a reassuring smile. The Elect made no protest at Rothe’s presence.
He expected that Cerys would lead them back down, through the huge keep and into the passages and chambers cut into the rock of the mountain like the tracks of maggots in an apple. Instead, they climbed. A stone spiral of steps carried them up and disgorged them, unexpectedly, onto the keep’s roof.
The wind blasted away all memory of the airless chamber where Tyn lay. It tugged at Orisian’s hair and jacket, snapped the Elect’s long, heavy dress about her legs. Orisian closed one eye and twisted his head away from the gale. Clouds were surging along overhead, layer upon layer of them flowing across the sky, a turbulent flood of vapours and mists. The convolutions and complexities of Highfast tumbled away beneath them: walls and buildings and battlements spilling down from the keep to crowd the peak.
Cerys, though, led them around the low crenellations to the keep’s eastern edge. Holding her hair back from
