Bloodheir

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.

“No, no,” he gasped. His thin hands went to the sides of his head. New blood bloomed at his wrists, blushing through his bandages. The healing woman took a step backwards, away from him and towards the doorway that led out into the bright, safe world beyond. She could smell death here, in the air and the hides and the earth of the lodge. It should, perhaps, be burned when the na’kyrim was gone.

“Wait,” Aeglyss snapped, reaching out to her, clawing the air. His eyes were pressed shut. “Do not leave me.”

With a great effort he shifted to the edge of the pallet. He opened watery eyes, swung his feet out to rest on the ground.

“A passing moment only. It is so… so much, you see. You could not imagine. The Shared runs in me like… it boils.”

“You are bleeding,” the woman observed.

Aeglyss glanced at the bloodstained bindings and gave a faint shrug.

“Leave it. It’s not… you must do something for me. Go to the Voice. Tell her I would talk with her.”

The Voice of the White Owls was an old woman, silver-haired, stooped, slow. She wore the pale, speckled feathers of the owl around her neck. She leaned on a staff of oak. She whispered as she came, murmuring phrases that had been passed down over centuries as tools to focus and clear the mind. The healing woman followed in her footsteps.

They found the na’kyrim on his knees in the centre of the lodge, beside the ashen remains of the fire. He was flexing the fingers of his right hand, opening and closing them again and again. Both Voice and healer hesitated in the lodge’s entrance, like deer catching danger on the wind.

“Do you mean to live or die?” the Voice asked.

Aeglyss looked up. At first his expression was blank, as if he did not recognise her, or did not speak the people’s tongue. Then the clouds cleared from his eyes and he grimaced.

“Live. Help me up.”

The Voice nodded to the healing woman, but she hesitated, reluctant.

“Help me up,” rasped Aeglyss, and such was the weight of that command that even the Voice took a step forwards before she caught herself. The healing woman was faster, and more pliable. She went to the na’kyrim ’s side, and he hauled himself up onto his feet, anchoring himself with handfuls of her clothes.

“Even after I have survived the Breaking Stone, there are those who would deny me my place here,” said Aeglyss bitterly. “Do not imagine I am deaf, or blind, to it.”

“Some are afraid,” said the Voice. “Others are uncertain. Bad dreams assail us in the night since you returned. We are afflicted by ill tempers, mistrust. The people fear that your presence discolours their thoughts. They say you have clouded my judgement; that you have done so before, and do so now. That you betrayed us to your Huanin friends. They say we should take the life that has been spared by the Breaking Stone. Others say it is not for us to take a life that the Stone refuses.”

“Bad dreams? Nothing that stalks this camp is anything more than a faint echo of what burns inside my head. What you feel is a breeze, a moth’s flutter. I suffer the full storm, waking or sleeping.”

Still he clung to the healer’s shoulder, unable to support his own weight. He was more than a head taller than the old woman, but wasted and lean, like a sapling spindling its way up towards distant light. She was steady beneath the burden.

“And I was the betrayed, not the betrayer,” muttered Aeglyss. “But you, Voice? What do you say? What conclusions have you reached in all your pondering, your delay?”

“I have not decided,” the Voice said carefully. “There has not been enough talk. Not yet. You live, for now, and I…” she stumbled over her words, twitched her head in a kind of sudden uncertainty that no Voice should every display “… there is no decision yet. Until there is a decision, you cannot die. That must be enough.”

Aeglyss laughed. The healing woman started away from him, alarmed at the raucous human sound. He held her there at his side; leaned on her.

“Not enough. No. Never enough. Never…”

He swayed. His eyelids fluttered, his chin sank down towards his chest. The healing woman, freed of some intangible restraint that revealed itself only by its absence, darted away from him, making for the protection of the Voice. Aeglyss staggered a few steps to one side. The Voice watched impassively. The na’kyrim steadied himself. His eyes opened, clear and sharp once more. He lowered himself gingerly down onto the sleeping pallet, and smiled ruefully at the two women.

“It will take time, for me to learn. To control this. I need one thing from you, though. Now, not later, not after any decisions. I will give the White Owls a gift of great strength in time, Voice, but first, you must do this one thing for me: send spear a’ans south. There is a woman, a Heron-born na’kyrim, who will come to me from out of the south. We — I — must have her.”

The Voice was shaking her head. She tried to deny him. His brow furrowed. His mouth tightened. He held out his hands, palms up, towards her.

“You must do this one small thing for me, Voice,” he whispered. Quite soft. Quite calm, but his voice was daggers in her ears, a cold compulsion in her heart. She nodded once and went, shivering, from the lodge, the healing woman close behind, casting fearful, awed glances back over her shoulder.

And in the lodge, Aeglyss the na’kyrim sank back on the pallet of juniper and hazel boughs. He held his arms flat at his sides, a little away from his body. His lips trembled now, in pain or fear or horror. The blood came freely from his wounds, saturating the cloth wrappings about his wrists, falling in viscous drips down amongst the twigs and fronds beneath him.