Bloodheir

V

He breathed, and the air was rough and jagged in his throat. He blinked, and the light sent splinters of pain back into the hollow cavity of his skull. He lifted a hand, and his arm felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else. Mordyn Jerain, the Shadowhand, came slowly back to himself.

There was a pillow under his head, a coarse linen sheet beneath his fingertips. He could hear someone moving, soft shoes on stone. His eyes no longer wanted to open. His head ached.

“I am thirsty,” he managed to say.

“Wain, pour some water from that jug,” someone — a man — said, in a voice so smooth, so richly contoured that it made Mordyn think of flowing honey.

He tried, and failed, to part his eyelids.

“Let me help you,” came that voice again. “You must sit up if you’re to drink.”

Then there were hands on his arm and shoulder, lifting him. Someone moved the pillow so that he could rest against it. The pain in his skull was unremitting.

“Where am I?” he asked. “Highfast?”

And there was laughter at that. The voice previously so unctuous and rich became strained, agitated.

“Highfast? No, it’s not Highfast. Not at all.” A finger pushed at Mordyn’s eyelid, lifting it. In the flare of harsh light, he glimpsed pale skin, a long and bony hand. “You’d know that soon enough if you’d open your eyes and look around.”

From the other side of the bed someone else was putting a beaker into his hand. He raised it and forced down a mouthful or two of water.

“You’ll damage him if you’re rough,” a woman said. The words might have implied compassion or rebuke; the voice that carried that was so emotionless, though, that they did neither. It was a cold statement of fact.

The man snorted. “He’s well enough. They mended his skull.”

Mordyn blinked again. He had to force his eyes to open against the intrusive, painful light. Tears formed as he winced and looked around him. The first thing he saw, the thing that snagged and held his attention, was the na’kyrim staring back at him. The man looked sick. The skin of his face was blotched and bruised, the shape and line of the underlying bones starkly visible. He watched Mordyn with an eager hunger that would have made the Shadowhand recoil had he possessed the strength to move.

“Welcome back,” the na’kyrim said, and he smiled in a way that put Mordyn in mind of the half-mad diseased beggars of the Ash Pit in Vaymouth.

The woman took the beaker from Mordyn’s hand and refilled it. He turned his head to follow her. She was impressive: sleek hair, an erect and powerful posture. There were rings on her fingers, and hundreds of others — of a more functional kind — in the vest of metal she wore over a padded shirt. The Shadowhand’s mind was sluggish, as if numbed by the pain in his head. He had to concentrate to string thoughts together. The woman was strong, and armoured. Her voice — what little he had heard of it — wore an accent he could not attach to any of the lands of the True Bloods. Improbable as it seemed, then, could she be of the Black Road?

“Anduran?” he murmured, turning back to the na’kyrim. “Is this Anduran?”

“No.” That pale, gaunt head shook. The na’kyrim straightened. He flicked one of his thin fingers at the wall. “This is older stone. Nothing of Sirian’s making.”

The woman returned the over-full beaker to Mordyn. His hand was unsteady. He spilled water on his chest as he drank.

“You are in Kan Avor,” she said. “I am Wain nan Horin-Gyre.”

Sister to Kanin, Mordyn thought at once. The Horin Blood sent its best, then, to fight this war. There could be no worse company for the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods to find himself in. He had no idea how he could have come into such an absurd situation. He remembered… a stone road, amidst stone mountains, and nothing thereafter. Could this all be just a feverish dream, tormenting his mind while his body lay in some distant, safe bed?

The na’kyrim was leaning over him again, smiling, regarding Mordyn with carnivorous glee. His face was so close that Mordyn shrank away from it, repulsed by the marbling of blood vessels and bruises.

“She is Wain, Chancellor, and I am Aeglyss.” He laid the tips of his white fingernails on Mordyn’s cheek, and the Shadowhand found the muscles in his jaw taut, his teeth grinding together. Tremors ran across his brow and scalp, like maggots swarming under his skin. “Remember my name, Chancellor. You will come to know it well, for we’ve a great deal to talk about, you and I.”

Mordyn felt sweat on his brow as Aeglyss backed away. A rootless fear was roaring in his mind, a wind bursting open shutters and bullying its way around the room of his skull. The beaker of water fell from his fingers, soaking the sheet over his stomach and hip. He had to clench his hands into knots to prevent them from shaking. Something in this halfbreed undermined all the precious self-control and clarity that Mordyn so valued. Desperate for something to hold on to, he looked back to Wain nan Horin-Gyre.

“I can speak for Gryvan oc Haig,” he said, almost ashamed at the strain in his voice. “I will gladly talk with you and your brother; not this other, this na’kyrim. I don’t know how he comes to be serving you, but he has no place amongst the councils of the great.”

Aeglyss was laughing, a sound both sickly and invasive, clambering in through Mordyn’s ears. Wain was silent, her face a passive mask.

“You are labouring under a misapprehension, Chancellor,” the na’kyrim said. There was harsh amusement in his tone. “It’s disappointing. Given what little I know of you, I’d have expected you to grasp the situation more quickly.”

Reluctantly, Mordyn turned to Aeglyss. He had never been this close to a na’kyrim before. Were their grey eyes always so like chips of cold stone? Was their skin always so corpse-pale? Did the object of their attention always feel so assailed, so overwhelmed?

“You think me Wain’s servant, perhaps?” Aeglyss asked with a lopsided smile. He stretched one arm out towards Mordyn, turning it to expose the underside of his wrist. The cuff of his jacket slid back a little way, revealing a swollen, scabbed wound. “I ceased to be anyone’s servant the day they put stakes through my arms. I learned then that a servant buys nothing but cruelty with his service. That loyalty is unknown to all of you with pure, unpolluted blood running in your veins.”

He interlaced his fingers to make a double fist of his hands. Mordyn could not look away, though he longed to. That fear was still there, tearing at his thoughts.

“Let me show you,” whispered Aeglyss, then more loudly: “Wain. Thane’s sister. Kneel for me, my beloved. Show this noble man how much of a servant I am to you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mordyn could see Wain doing as she was bid. Aeglyss did not even glance at her.

“Do you see, Chancellor? Do you understand? It is not the Horin-Gyre Blood you will be taking counsel with. It is not Wain who holds your life in her hands. It is not the Black Road that rules here. Come, I will show you.”

Kan Avor was all mud, ruin and rot. What had once been streets were now little more than soggy culverts ankle-deep in silt and decaying vegetation. Some of the buildings must once have been grand but the ones that still stood were now crumbling and gutted. Those walls that retained more than a few courses of stone bore dark, mouldy bands on them: the high-water marks left each winter when the Glas Water had been at its fullest flood. But the dam that had created that great lake was gone now, of course. The waters it had restrained had poured away and ravaged Glasbridge on their way to the sea. Freed from its watery imprisonment, Kan Avor was revealed as nothing more than the sodden, rotting skeleton of a long-dead city.

Mordyn Jerain hobbled along behind Aeglyss. Wain supported him, without which aid he would not have been able to walk. Every movement of his head triggered a pulse of pain. His body was feeble. He felt like an old man.

“Keep moving,” Aeglyss muttered. “If you stand still for too long, you’re likely to get stuck in the mud.” He laughed to himself.

In a small square, bordered by half-tumbled, roofless houses, people were labouring to clear away the silt that the Glas Water had left behind. They dug down to the ancient cobblestones, unearthing all manner of debris as they did so: roofing tiles, shattered pots, even bones. The mud was piled up at the edges of the square. Water oozed out from these mounds, spreading in a filthy slick across the newly exposed cobbles.

In the centre of the square, a broken statue lay in two pieces. It looked like the image of some tall and noble man, though it was so chipped and pitted and stained that it was impossible to be certain. Whoever’s glory it had been meant to extol, it no longer served that purpose: the figure had shattered across the waist, leaving legs and barrel-chest divided and forlorn.

Aeglyss lingered beside the head of the fallen statue. He looked almost wistful as he touched the cracked stone brow.

“I don’t know,” the na’kyrim murmured, as if in answer to some silent question.

Mordyn had to lean his weight against Wain. He hated such vulnerability, but his muscles and bones had nothing to offer him. He felt sick.

“Who are these people?” the Shadowhand asked.

Aeglyss lifted his head and looked around the square. For a moment, he seemed puzzled, like a man suddenly waking and not knowing quite where he was. A woman stumbled past, carrying a wicker basket of mud on her back. Aeglyss watched her empty it out, turn around and come back for another load.

“I don’t know. Oh, does it matter? They’re… followers, if you like.” Again, he laughed, in that disconnected, abrupt way. He was, as far as Mordyn could tell, quite mad.

“Come,” the na’kyrim said. “This isn’t what I wanted you to see. Not all, at least. I’ll show you. Can you climb some steps, great Chancellor?”

Mordyn started to shake his head, but lancing pain arrested the movement.

“No,” he groaned.

“Well, try. For me. You need to see for yourself. Everyone does.”

Wain helped the Chancellor to follow after Aeglyss. They moved away from the square, picking their way amongst ruins. Mordyn glimpsed indistinct figures here and there. There were men and women, human and Kyrinin, digging, gathering, watching, or just standing staring up at the sky or at leaning walls and broken-topped towers. Mordyn could not find purpose or pattern in anything he saw, and could not tell whether the lack was in him or in the world.

There was a stretch of wall, thirty or forty paces long, standing alone. Whatever buildings it had connected or guarded were gone, slumped into rubble. It was crenellated, with a flight of worn steps running up to the battlements. Aeglyss climbed up, beckoning for Mordyn to do likewise.

“I can’t,” he muttered.

“Of course you can,” the na’kyrim snapped irritably. He stopped halfway up the flight of stairs and turned. “You will. You’re stronger than you imagine. Lift your foot. One step at a time. You’re not so tired; not so weak. Climb up, Chancellor.”

And Mordyn’s weariness abated. The ache in his head receded, still there but set behind some softening barrier that left someone else to suffer it, not him, not now. Wain’s hand was at his elbow, easing him towards the steps. He drifted up them without feeling them beneath his feet. Then he was standing atop the orphaned wall, and the pale light was hurting his eyes. He winced against it.

“Look,” Aeglyss said at his side. “What do you see?”

The Chancellor looked and saw before him the edges of ruined Kan Avor, bleeding without clear boundary into the surrounding marshes and fields. The grey of fallen stone gave way bit by bit to the brown and green of mud and grass, and the black of still pools. There were distant copses, far-off barns and farmhouses like smudges on his eyes; a dark line, tracing the weaving course of a river. And beyond, high ground: ranks of hills and mountains rising up to merge into the featureless sky.

“What do you see?” Aeglyss asked again.

Mordyn narrowed his eyes. He saw figures moving across this great indistinct landscape. Small groups of people, out in the fields, following invisible tracks. Some were on horses, some on foot. Some came in wagons, some walked alone. He could see a dozen, two dozen, three.

“They don’t even know why they’re coming,” Aeglyss murmured. “They just come. It is like… do you suppose the geese know why they turn south when winter is come? Or do they just wake one morning and find that they must fly? Perhaps their hearts just long for the sun that has abandoned them, and that longing carries them aloft, and southwards, without them ever knowing its intent. Do you think that might be so, wise Chancellor?”

“I don’t know. I never troubled myself over the motives of geese.”

“Ha. No. Why should you? You are one of the great, and the powerful, of course. You have no need to concern yourself with such things. Well, I’ll tell you what I think, shall I? Would that interest you more?”

Mordyn closed his eyes for a moment, and turned his head away from the na’kyrim. He was afraid of this man.

“They don’t know why they come, these pilgrims,” Aeglyss continued. “I do. I know. They come because they have desires, and questions, and instincts, and longings; and because, to each and to all of these things, I am an answer. They come because the light of the sun will always draw life to it, without reason and without understanding. And I am that light. In the Shared, I now burn brightly, Chancellor. They cannot see it, cannot comprehend it, but they feel it. They feel the promise of glory, or of change, or of death, or of peace. They know, in their hearts, that something great and strange is happening here. So they come.”

Mordyn made to descend the short flight of steps. He felt dizzy and unstable, exposed.

“Stay,” Aeglyss whispered, and Mordyn’s body obeyed before his mind had even made sense of the word. “I am beset by enemies on every side, Shadowhand. My own kind, your kind. The Anain. I must armour myself. I must have friends, who will stand by me. I must have shield and sword, to protect myself and to strike out at those who would drag me down. I’ve learned well; slowly, but well. There are only friends and enemies. Nothing in between. So you must be a friend to me, Chancellor, or you are nothing.”

The na’kyrim turned and gazed out across the vast valley floor. A cough hunched his shoulders for a moment, then he straightened. He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his bony hand. There was something in his eyes, as he stared out, of wonder, or awe.

“This is what I wanted you to see. To understand,” he said softly. “It is not the Black Road that rules here. It is me. Or what burns in me.”

Mordyn was left, for a time, seated on wet stone, his back resting against the stub of a fallen pillar. His memory, his sense of himself, came and went. He was not certain how he had come to this place. It was some kind of empty hall, only half-roofed. There was wet moss beneath his fingers, growing in the cracks of the flagstone floor.

He could hear voices, sometimes loud and near, sometimes faint like weather far beyond a distant horizon. There were people standing close to him. One was the Horin Thane’s sister. She watched him, but did not speak to him. Warriors were gathered about her. Her Shield, perhaps. He was almost certain that the women of the Gyre Bloods sometimes had Shields, in mimicry of their menfolk. It was not only his hunger, or the pain in his head, that made it so difficult to dredge up such fragments of knowledge. To his profound distress, his mind, always his most prized possession, was unruly, sluggish. His every thought writhed and slipped away from him almost as soon as it was begun. There was something in the air of this place, in its foetid, decaying presence, that was inimical to sense and to order.

No, he told himself. That was a half-truth. It was the strange, mad na’kyrim. He was the source of the imbalance that afflicted everything here. Somehow, he was staining everything with his own delirium. Mordyn felt as if he had fallen into some fool’s story, of the mad times when halfbreeds wielded awful power, and bent the shape of the world to fit their own desires.

He realised he was slumping slowly to one side, his head lolling down towards his shoulder. He struggled to right himself, sighing at the discomfort such movement caused him. There were Kyrinin in the chamber now. His erratic vision turned them into tall, sweeping blurs. A vast terror shook the Chancellor of the Haig Bloods then, feeding off his helplessness and his pain. It receded, but left him feeling like a child, lost and confused, surrounded by things he could not understand.

The na’kyrim was there, face to face with Wain nan Horin-Gyre. Mordyn longed to close his eyes and shut out these vile visions, but he was transfixed. The sickly, half-human Aeglyss was smiling, whispering in tones of silver and velvet, cupping the woman’s chin, tipping her head back, tracing the line of her lips with a single fingertip. It looked obscene. Then the na’kyrim was turning his head, looking towards Mordyn. The smile remained in place. Splitting, bleeding lips stretched back to expose yellowing teeth. Mordyn felt that terror stirring again, reaching its tendrils up towards him.

“You look hungry, Chancellor. Shall I have someone fetch you food?” Even as he stared at Mordyn, and spoke to him, the na’kyrim ’s finger was stroking the skin of Wain’s throat, a vile caress. “Mutton, perhaps. It’s spitted outside.”

Mordyn blinked. He could not tell whether he was hungry or not, whether the emptiness he felt was of the stomach or the heart.

“Go and cut our honoured guest some meat, Wain,” Aeglyss murmured. He came and squatted down in front of the Chancellor.

“You’re fragile, Shadowhand. It hurts, I know. But you are not going to die. You will heal.”

“How… how did I come here?”

“Ha! A shame you slept through the whole adventure! I stole you away, from the greatest castle in all the Bloods. I did, and my White Owls. Oh, Chancellor, what wonders you poor, common Huanin are deprived of. What marvels you are blind to. I can feel the grass beneath their feet when they run, I can hear the wind in the trees above them. I can whisper in their heads and in their hearts, and they will do as I bid them, even if they never hear me.”

Someone else was moving behind the na’kyrim. Mordyn squinted, but his eyes were rebellious and faltering. He could see only that there was someone standing there, a woman perhaps. Hair as black as ink; something — sticks? The hilts of swords? — protruding from her shoulders.

“Is this truly the famed Shadowhand?” he heard her ask. A cold voice. He heard nothing in it save the wintry north, and hardness.

“Ah,” Aeglyss whispered without looking round. “They are interested in you, Chancellor. Of course they are. You’re a prize indeed. The ravens come to circle you. Perhaps they think your corpse is ready to be picked clean.”

“He could be of great value to us.” the woman said.

“Us?” Mordyn could see that Aeglyss was smiling. “I haven’t decided yet, Shraeve. I haven’t decided what his value is. But remember, in the days to come, that it was I who found him, I who brought him here.”

Wain returned and knelt at Mordyn’s side. She pressed a fragment of greasy mutton into his mouth. Its juices filled him with an urgent hunger. He chewed it and swallowed it down. It rasped a hot, painful track down his gullet.

“I don’t know what hold this madman has over you, lady,” he whispered, “but you must take me away from him. You must talk to me. I can make agreements…”

“Be quiet.” Aeglyss had risen to his feet. He kicked Mordyn’s foot. “She won’t bargain with you. Leave us, Wain. Wait for me. I will come to you soon.”

Mordyn watched in despair as the sister of the Horin-Gyre Thane meekly dropped a few more slivers of meat into his lap and retreated. He was not the only one to observe her departure with interest.

“Does Kanin know you’ve got her so well-trained?” the woman Aeglyss had called Shraeve asked. “Whatever you’ve done to her, he’ll not forgive you for this. Tell me, for I would know: is this the work of Orlane? Do you think yourself him, reborn?”

“Don’t speak of her,” Aeglyss snapped. “Or of things you don’t understand.” Mordyn felt the command like a blow upon his breastbone, a lance punched through his chest, even though it was not directed at him. The tall woman withstood it. But she could not meet the halfbreed’s gaze. She bent her head away. Inkallim, Mordyn thought, belatedly understanding Aeglyss’s reference to ravens. Even Inkallim will not face him down.

They locked Mordyn in a chamber that stank of rotting weed and noisome mud. A grey-brown sludge covered its floor. Black and green mould patterned its walls, following each seam and crack. Carved pillars flanked the door. A stone bench was cut into the bay of the window. There was a wide grate in which fierce fires must once have burned. Now there was nothing, save the cracked wooden pallet on which Mordyn lay, and the thin moth-holed blankets they gave him to cover himself.

He lay there and willed his fear into submission. He denied the pulsing ache in his head until it slipped into the background. He begged himself to rise above the harrying doubts and distractions that dogged his every thought. Slowly, in the night’s darkness, he gained some small mastery over it all, and was, for a time, himself again. There was always an answer to every question; a chink in the defences of every obstacle that lay athwart his path. He struggled to make himself believe that, alone amidst the city’s foul decay, and tried not to think of what lay outside the locked door. He tried not to imagine what might lie beyond that one cold night’s horizon.