Fall of Thanes

V

A host of crows came raucously in under the clouds, like black fish shoaling in the shallow sky. They jostled and tumbled and rolled their way down into the naked trees on the edge of town, where they roosted. Orisian watched their tumultuous descent through the dusk, and in their voices heard the sound of Highfast, where he had watched their like playing violent games with the mountain wind. Highfast, of which neither Yvane nor Eshenna would willingly speak now, fearful of its meaning, of what they had felt happening there.

Only the vaguest of rumours had reached Ive regarding that remote stronghold’s fate, but Orisian had access to other truths, ones he thought more reliable than the wild stories of terrified villagers. He believed what Yvane had told him before she fell into grim reticence on the subject: na’kyrim minds snuffed out like crushed candle flames, a torrent of death and destruction running through the Shared. Aeglyss. Aeglyss, the question to which he could find no answer. Perhaps there was none to be had, but he could not bring himself to stop looking.

Torcaill and a handful of his warriors walked at Orisian’s back. They had been shadowing him for much of the day, disturbed by the violence visited upon Ive’s sentries in the night, and upon the Haig messengers. Every raised voice, every figure moving in an alley or doorway, seemed a possible threat. A formless dread, an anticipation of imminent catastrophe, was in the air.

When they reached the house where Eshenna and Yvane sheltered, Orisian defied Torcaill’s protests and left his escort on the street. It was not only that he found the poorly concealed unease of the warriors when in the company of na’kyrim distracting; there was also a deeper-rooted instinct to keep some portion of whatever incomplete and vague truths might emerge here hidden. There was too much in K’rina’s plight, and in the things Yvane and Eshenna spoke of, that could point the way to despair.

Yvane and Eshenna were seated by the crackling fire. They had flatbreads spread on slates and propped up to cook in front of the flames.

“You heard what happened this morning?” Orisian asked as he entered. “To Aewult’s emissaries?”

Yvane nodded. “We could hardly miss it. Noisier than rutting stags.”

“Every time we get word of what’s going on out in the countryside, it’s of some horror worse than the last,” Orisian said. “Everything’s falling apart. Everyone’s going mad.”

“There’s a fever in the world. The weak, the angry, the fearful, the bitter; they’ll lose themselves to it first. And there’s never been a shortage of those sentiments in the world, has there? But we could all follow. Every one of us, pure-blooded or not, knowing it or not, is touched by the Shared. Aeglyss will rot us all from the inside out. He may not even mean to.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Whether by choice or not, he’s potent enough to make his own sickness into everyone’s. Or bring the sickness that’s already there to the surface.”

She sounded tired, defeated, to Orisian. That was not the Yvane he needed.

“You talk like one of the Black Roaders. A sick world, ready to rot from the inside?”

Yvane sighed. “Centuries of Huanin killing Kyrinin, True Blood killing Black Road. Sons killing fathers killing sons. Aeglyss is making nothing new; he’s only releasing what’s always there, under the surface.”

Orisian flicked a hand at her in irritation. “There’s more than that. We haven’t lost yet.”

“Of course there’s more than that,” Yvane said. “But the Shared remembers all things. It makes memories of every sentiment, every thought, every desire. Believe me, a great many of them are dark.”

“Not all, though,” Orisian said stubbornly.

Yvane looked up at him. She had weary eyes.

“What do you want to do?” she asked him.

“That’s what I have to decide. It’s why I’m here.”

“We’ve told you all we can.”

“There’s no time left, Yvane. The Black Road is winning. We’ll be cut off, or worse, any day now. We can’t remain here. But where we should go, what we should do… You can’t tell me, but perhaps she can.” He pointed at the wall, and beyond it the yard and the shed and the mute, damaged na’kyrim within.

“We don’t even know if she’s got any secrets to reveal,” Yvane muttered stubbornly.

“I need to find out.” He could hear his voice rising, his frustration stretching it. “Inurian could reach inside anyone and tell truth from lie, read the temper of their heart. You can find another na’kyrim wherever they are, and speak with them. I’ve seen you do it. Eshenna can find minds in the Shared. She led us to K’rina in the first place. I don’t believe there’s nothing more we can know. I need you to help me find an answer, in the Shared, in K’rina. Anywhere. Somehow. Please.”

Orisian felt guiltily as though he were accusing these two na’kyrim of something. That was not what he intended, but Yvane’s intransigence bred a certain reckless desperation in him.

“You don’t understand what you’re asking,” Yvane said. “The Shared’s nothing but storm and misery and horror now. It’s a darkness, haunted by beasts. By one beast in particular.”

“As is the world. That’s why it matters. I know you never wanted to be a part of this, not any of it. I know that. But you’ve got to choose sides, Yvane. I can’t understand, but still I ask. Who are you trying to protect? K’rina? Yourself?”

“I will do it.”

Orisian looked in surprise at Eshenna.

“Do what?” Yvane asked the other na’kyrim sharply.

“Reach out. Reach for her,” Eshenna said quietly, without looking up. “I can’t carry on like this. It’s grinding me away, inside and out. When I wake, the first thing I feel is fear, as if it’s been waiting there at the side of my bed while I slept. Like a black dog, waiting for me to come back to it. Hateful. I’m too tired to carry that weight all day, every day. I can hardly think straight; everything in my head that’s mine is getting drowned out.”

“I know,” Yvane said. She looked as if she was about to say more, but pursed her lips. There was, Orisian recognised, a certain strain of sympathy and understanding that she could fall back upon-if she chose to-only when dealing with other na’kyrim. It remained, and she could still find it, even when her temper ran hot. It clouded her judgement too, he thought, when it came to K’rina.

“Perhaps I should never have left Highfast,” Eshenna sighed, “but all of this would still have found me there. Perhaps worse. In any case, it won’t stop.” She glanced up at Yvane, seeking confirmation. “It’s not going to stop, is it? Not unless Aeglyss chooses to stop it. Or someone kills him.”

“I doubt he could choose to stop this,” Yvane said. “I doubt he can control anything about it, really.”

“Then someone has to kill him.”

“If you reach into the Shared, if you let even the smallest part of it into you… you risk letting him in too.” Yvane was sad rather than argumentative. “You know that? It’s his territory now. His hunting ground. You might come apart.”

“The first thing I feel when I wake up is fear,” Eshenna repeated in a flat voice. “That is already breaking me apart.”

The three of them went together to the shed at the end of the yard, each carrying a candle that they had to shield against the shifting of the cold dusk air. They entered in silence, and set the lights down, and gathered about K’rina. She did not respond to their presence. She just lay there, curled on her bed of straw; perhaps asleep, perhaps not.

Yvane gently roused K’rina and lifted her onto her knees.

“Can you hear me?” Yvane asked quietly.

K’rina remained blank. Silent. Yvane backed away and Eshenna took her place, kneeling in front of K’rina.

“Be careful,” Yvane said. She was resigned now. “Go no further, no deeper, than you must.”

“I know,” Eshenna replied as she reached up and brushed K’rina’s hair away from her eyes. She laid one hand on the na’kyrim’s cheek, the other on her hand where it rested in her lap. In another place, between other people, it could have been a loving contact, Orisian thought. A gesture of affection.

“I’m sorry,” he said. The words came of their own accord. He suddenly felt guilty, even ashamed, that he had forced this. Yet it was necessary, his instincts insisted.

“Keep quiet,” Yvane said.

Eshenna closed her eyes, bowed her head a little. Her breath fluttered out of her. Her shoulders sagged. She might almost have been falling asleep. K’rina remained wholly impassive. The two of them sat thus, linked in their different, unnatural trances, for so long that Orisian’s doubts began to reassert themselves.

“It’s not working,” he whispered to Yvane. She splayed her hand at him, irritably demanding silence. She was frowning in concentration.

Somewhere outside, diminished by distance, Orisian thought he could just still hear the harsh calling of the crows. The sound seemed to him to have a hostile edge to it now, as if mocking his hopeless efforts to oppose forces that could not be opposed, or understood. He flailed about like a drowning man in a flood, he thought. Perhaps all he could hope for was that he did not drag too many others down with him. He caught himself before that despair took too firm a hold. Could he even trust it as wholly his own?

A faint hiss from Yvane brought him back from his dark, distracted reverie. Eshenna was gasping. Her jaw cracked open and shut, the joint creaking as her muscles spasmed. A blush was spreading through her cheeks and brow, brightening and deepening with every desperate breath.

Orisian looked at Yvane in concern. She narrowed her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t tell what’s happening.”

Eshenna jerked, almost as if she was trying to pull away from K’rina, but she did not-or could not-release her grip. Her spine curved and flexed, snapping her head back then down again into her chest.

Orisian saw Yvane wincing, her brow creasing. She shrank away from the other two na’kyrim.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“Something…” she whispered, then shook her head sharply, as if beset by a host of biting flies.

Orisian could hear-or feel-a roaring, like a distant waterfall, or a storm blowing through trees. But it was inside his head, not outside, in the bone of his skull and the substance of his thoughts. It bled darkness from the edges of its sound, blurring shadows across his vision. The world was tumbling away from him, or he from it. The cramped shed around him swelled, rushing out to become a vertiginously immense space.

“Separate them,” he said, reeling at the dizzying sense of dislocation. He reached out and took hold of Eshenna’s arm, trying to pull it away from K’rina. “Help me,” he hissed at Yvane.

There was an instant of reluctance, a hesitant fear, and then Yvane too had hold of Eshenna, and was murmuring urgently to her.

“Come back, Eshenna. Come back. Can you hear me? Come back to yourself.”

Orisian could barely hear her above the rushing within his skull. The sensation of falling was sickening.

It was only with the greatest difficulty that they could part the two of them. K’rina slumped limply to the straw. Eshenna fell back into Orisian’s arms. He laid her down as gently as he could. She was calm now, though tremors still inhabited her hands, and when her eyes struggled open, her gaze was unfocused. Orisian found himself cradling her head, and could feel the dampness of sweat in her hair. Her stone-grey eyes blinked up at him.

“She’s empty,” Eshenna gasped. “Nothing there, just a pit that falls away for ever. Into nothingness. It wanted to take hold of me, and I could not prevent it. But it didn’t know me. That’s the only thing that saved me. It’s made for someone else, waiting for someone else, or I would have been lost. Swallowed up and caged in there for ever.”

She was crying, though whether it was from pain, or fear, or relief Orisian could not tell.

“Be still,” said Yvane. She spoke to Eshenna, but it was K’rina she was looking at, in the flickering light of the candles, and it was a look of suppressed horror or perhaps grief.

“Was it Aeglyss?” Orisian asked.

“No, no,” Eshenna said, casting a desolate glance towards the prostrate na’kyrim. “It’s what’s in her; what’s been made of her. She wasn’t meant for us. We should never have taken her. We should never have interfered. We’ve ruined everything.”

There were voices outside in the yard. Footsteps on the paving stones, a muttered conversation, and then a rapping at the door that shook it on its old hinges.

“The Black Road, sire,” Torcaill shouted. “They’re on the road south of here, close enough to reach us tomorrow from the sound of it. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands.”

“All right,” called Orisian. Then, more softly: “I’m coming.”

He cast a last worried glance at Eshenna and met her tear-filled eyes.

“I have to go,” he said.

“It’s true, what I said before,” she breathed.

“What?”

“Someone has to kill him.”