Fall of Thanes

VIII

Kanin rose feebly through oceans of pain. He was made of it, and inhabited it. The light he ascended towards hurt him. The hard stone he began to feel beneath him woke aches in his muscles. And his hands… his hands gathered into them all that ocean through which he swam. They were like fire.

He moaned as he forced open his crusted eyes. The pain of his maimed hands was beyond anything he could have conceived of. There was nothing else save that searing, pounding, crippling torment. All that he saw and heard came to him through the howl of agony, rendered all but senseless by its journey.

Shraeve was standing before Aeglyss. Saying something, angry. The na’kyrim simply stared at her.

Shraeve shouted at him. Kanin could not make out what she was saying. Her anger could not penetrate his pain. But then, though his lips did not move, Aeglyss spoke, and Kanin could hear his words, for they were of the same stuff as his pain, and thus within him. A part of him.

“The Shadowhand is dead. I can’t remember… did I tell you that? He died. And was glad of it. I tasted him as he faded into… into the Shared. Into me. No, it doesn’t matter. He served his purpose. He did what I required of him.

“As did you, my fierce raven, until this… this doubt entered into you. What happened? Is it too bright for you, this light you have helped to reveal? I tell you there is no more need for armies or for wars, that the victory is already won. But you don’t understand. You don’t hear. Very well. Very well.”

Something else amongst Kanin’s pain then. A flow, a gathering of force. Shraeve had gone down onto her knees. One hand reached impotently towards Aeglyss, the other fumbled at the hilt of one of her swords.

“I knew you would turn against me eventually,” Kanin heard the great voice say, almost sad. “The last of them, perhaps, but in the end… the same. But I can heal you of this betrayal, Shraeve. The Shadowhand is gone… that fragment of my will I lodged in his mind is returned to me. I can give it to you, and bind us closer than ever before. I can give you back that faith you have lost.”

Shraeve was sitting back on her heels, her spine arching, her head tipping back. Her arms fell limp at her sides. Her mouth was open, and though Kanin could hear nothing from her, he thought she might be screaming.

“Yes…” the halfbreed’s voice whispered in the bones of Kanin’s skull. “You don’t have to leave me yet. Never. You’ll stay at my side. Can you see, Thane? Do you see? This is what your sister submitted herself to. She became a part of me, as she could never have been a part of you.”

Kanin fainted away at that moment, but the refuge of insensibility was fleeting. He was called back, dragged back into that foul hall of pain and cruelty and horrors. Aeglyss had not moved. Shraeve was striding towards the door. Kanin knew-or was shown-that the Inkallim was no longer as she had been. Though he saw two people before him, there was but a single will.

“We might need her yet, Thane,” the monster murmured inside him. “There is an… intent. Somewhere near. Intent. Not fierce, not burning, but clear. Becoming clear. I feel it but cannot find it. We will see. You and I. We will see.”

*

Never had Eska moved with such care and precision. A near-lifetime of training, of submission to the strictures and teachings of the Hunt, went into her every delicate step over the loose rubble. She judged every fall of her foot with minute attention; assessed and refined her balance constantly. She passed across the treacherous territory of Kan Avor as silently and slowly as would a cat suspecting the presence of an unprepared mouse.

She did not return to her previous vantage point. To do so would be absurdly reckless, and though her emotions were running high, they were not yet so incapacitating as to rob her of all sense. She found instead a more distant but well concealed perch. There was an empty courtyard that must once have been colonnaded, for there were the stumps of columns, like a line of dead trees. Set into its furthest wall were shelved alcoves in which she guessed statues once had stood. Those statues were long gone, and Eska crouched in place of one of them, half her own height above the ground. She was in shadow there and confident none but the most acute of eyes would uncover her.

From that secluded nook she could gaze out across the ruined court and through a gap in the opposite wall-originally a window perhaps, but now roughened into a ragged hole-into the street beyond. Thirty paces up that street, in her line of sight, two Battle Inkallim stood outside the door from which she had seen the halfbreed emerge to confront Kanin oc Horin-Gyre. The door, she assumed, behind which the na’kyrim now lurked, somewhere in the crumbling palace. She meant to put an end to him-was determined upon it as she had been upon no other task in her life-but would do so meticulously. Carefully. And that required the removal of those who would protect him.

She had seen no sign of other Inkallim on her approach to this hiding place. Had seen in fact hardly anyone who was not obviously sick in body or mind or both. The whole city had declined into a kind of demented lassitude. Whatever unnatural pall of corruption lay over the place-and she could feel it herself, feeding the turbulent emotions within her-had defeated and destroyed all save a handful of its inhabitants.

She set one bolt down on the ledge at her feet. Held another between her teeth while she cocked the bow. Everything was done slowly, with small movements. She had nothing and no one to fall back on this time. There could be no mistakes.

She took aim. She visualised the flight of the bolt, its dipping flight across the courtyard, through the window, out into the light and on into flesh. It was clear in her mind’s eye. The man she had taken as her target was looking away, talking to his companion. She exhaled, waited for a single heartbeat and released the bowstring. As soon as it was gone, she knew it was a good kill. If the man did not make some sudden, unexpected move, he was dead.

She lowered the crossbow and levered its string back into place. She did not watch the first bolt’s flight as she reached for the next, but she listened attentively and was rewarded with the thud of its strike and the cry of surprise that greeted it. She raised the reloaded bow and settled herself for the second time.

One of the Inkallim was down, moving fitfully and, she could tell from those movements, hopelessly. The second was running down the line of her aim. He was good, she acknowledged. Alert and fast. She fixed her eyes on his chest, just off centre, and exhaled.

The Inkallim veered abruptly out of sight. She could hear him for a moment, but then even that clue was taken away. She dropped lightly to the ground. Her spear rested against the wall by the alcove, but she left it where it was for now. If he got close enough for her to need a spear, she would most likely be in fatal trouble anyway.

She strained her senses, reaching out to gather in any traitorous sound or glimpse that might offer itself. Nothing came. She turned slowly, crossbow poised. Nothing. She waited.

The Inkallim came rushing from behind her. She heard his boots on the stone slabs. She spun and looked into his eyes, and the crossbow trembled in her hands as it loosed its cargo. The bolt knocked the raven off his feet. Eska puffed out her cheeks.

She caught dark movement at the very edge of her field of vision. Turned. And saw Shraeve sprinting towards her. The door on the far side of the street stood open. Shraeve was running for the hole in the wall that separated them. There was no time for another bolt. Eska reached blindly for her spear.

Shraeve leaped, bent her head down, folded her knees up into her chest, and came flashing through the ragged window. Eska had her spear in her hand and was running before the raven hit the ground. She ran not for the open door, but for the ruins. Her only chance, she knew, would be if she could rid herself of Shraeve.

Eska had always been fast, even by the standards of the Hunt. Shraeve matched her, though. Eska could measure in the sound of the raven’s pounding feet the ebbing away of her hopes. She cut into alleyways, vaulted fallen walls, swept over tumbled stones lying like scree against the face of a building. And Shraeve drew gradually closer.

Eska burst upon a band of ragged people struggling over the corpse of a dog. They were pulling it this way and that, snarling at one another. They looked up and let the carcass fall. To her they were made of stone. She weaved her path through them without breaking stride, heard their cries like low moans falling from her back. She heard too their more strident cries as Shraeve ploughed through them, and the sound of impacts and bodies falling.

Eska asked her legs for more and found they had but little to give her. The slightest lengthening of her stride. That was all. She still held her crossbow in one hand, her spear in the other. They hampered her and grew steadily heavier. A passageway spat her out into open ground: a wide square speckled with pale bodies from which birds rose and dogs retreated at her sudden appearance.

She turned, out in the open, chest heaving, lungs burning, to face Shraeve. Who slowed as she came near, lapsing into a casual walk and then coming to a halt. She had not even drawn her swords. She stood there empty-handed, and regarded Eska with narrow, dispassionate eyes.

“My feet are on the Road,” Eska said breathlessly, and flung the crossbow.

She darted forward in its wake, both hands set firmly on her spear. Shraeve dodged the spinning bow with ease and reached for her swords. By the time Eska closed with her, the blades were free but still high. It looked like a trap to Eska, who could see the shaft of her spear shattering beneath downward blows. At the last moment she snatched the blade of the spear aside and brought the butt round in a low sweep towards Shraeve’s knee. The raven danced back out of reach.

Shraeve rushed forward behind that failed attack, but Eska, retreating, managed to spin the spear in her hands in time to level its tip and fend off the charge. They circled one another. Eska placed her feet carefully, mistrusting the uneven ground. She never let her attention stray from Shraeve, though. She did not expect this to last long.

“You have betrayed the faith,” she said, in the slender hope of winning some minor advantage by distracting the raven. But Shraeve did not even blink. She might as well have been deaf.

Eska caught the slight dip in Shraeve’s hips. It gave the merest instant of warning. Shraeve surged forward. Eska stabbed. Shraeve crossed her swords beneath the spear and snapped them up. Eska watched the shaft of her spear caught in the intersection of those two rising blades, lifted by them, its barbed point guided harmlessly over Shraeve’s shoulder. She tried to whip it back, prepare for another lunge, but it was too late. Shraeve somehow parted her swords in such a way that one pushed the spear out high and wide as the other came low and flat for Eska’s belly. It was smoother and neater and faster than anything Eska had ever seen.

She twisted desperately, but still the blade sliced across her lower back. She felt it cutting her. And still Shraeve was moving. Inside the spear now, she pivoted on her leading foot and kicked Eska in the stomach.

Eska staggered. Bile burned up her throat and she gagged. Her spear was torn from her hands. Her heels met a block of stone and she fell. The back of her head hit another hard angle as she landed, and pain encircled her skull.

She grimaced up and saw Shraeve standing over her, swords already returning to their sheaths. Eska tried to roll onto her hands and knees, but her wounded back cramped and the searing pain locked her in place. Shraeve picked up the barbed spear. She held it over Eska’s stomach. Drew it back in preparation for the final strike.

Then suddenly lifted her head, and turned it to one side, frowning. As if she caught some summons on the air. Eska could hear nothing. But Shraeve straightened, shook her head once. Eska tried to roll aside again, and this time she mastered her body’s protests. She began to move just as Shraeve, almost absently, punched the spear down.

It went through Eska’s side. She heard its point grating on the stones beneath her, felt her blood following it. She gasped and took hold of the spear’s shaft with one hand. Through eyes almost shut by pain, she saw Shraeve turning away, running back towards the centre of Kan Avor.