Brian Ruckley: Winterbirth

Yet when the muted, half-hearted daybreak came, the na’kyrim still lived. The flow of tears had stopped. He regarded his Kyrinin guards, his eyes bleak and despairing. The White Owls returned his gaze impassively, unflinching.

By the time the day had turned again, falling back towards night, the na’kyrim had lived longer than any victim of the Breaking Stone in many years. The clouds scattered in the evening and an orange-yellow light fell upon the great boulder and its burden. Death came stalking across the grass, and breathed upon the na’kyrim . Air rattled in his clotted lungs, the muscles in his impaled arms slackened, his head lolled loosely. The two Kyrinin rose and stepped forwards to witness the end.

But the end that was coming was not what they thought. The rattle in the na’kyrim ’s chest stilled. An immense silence fell, and with it the darkness. Tears once more began to fall, but they were of blood, not water. The gaunt head was slowly raised, as if struggling against some awful weight. As the sun slipped away and shadows massed all around, the na’kyrim opened his bloody eyes and fixed the Kyrinin with a gaze that spoke no longer of despair, but of a terrible, revelatory horror.

From the balcony on the west face of Highfast, Cerys and Amonyn could see the peaks of the Karkyre Mountains starkly silhouetted by the last vestiges of the fire-red dusk. They stood together, wrapped in a single woollen blanket, snow swirling lightly about them. The heat that Amonyn had woven out of the Shared warded both of them against the elements. It was the faltering of that heat, the sudden intrusion of the winter’s biting chill, that warned Cerys. In the next moment she had the lurching sense of the world slipping away from her and but for Amonyn’s strong arms holding her up she might have fallen.

‘Ah,’ she breathed as she leaned against him. ‘What was that?’

‘Something . . . someone . . . changed,’ he whispered, and she could hear the sudden strain in his voice. Tiny tears were beading at the corners of his eyes. ‘Such suffering. Such . . . wonder.’

‘Elect,’ someone was calling from the chamber within. ‘Elect, the Dreamer . . .’ The man’s voice was filled with urgency, with fear. ‘The Dreamer . . . weeps.’

In a bedchamber high in the Tower of Thrones, Yvane the na’kyrim woke from sleep with a piercing scream. The crisp white sheets fell from her as she jerked upright, her face slick with sweat. For long moments she sat thus, her hands clawing at the bedclothes. Breath would not come to her and she gasped for air.

The door burst open and a guard rushed in: one of Taim’s men, posted outside despite her protestations. He came to the side of the bed. She turned and stared at him, uncomprehending, still lost in black nightmare.

‘I dreamed of darkness,’ she said in a cracking, enfeebled voice. ‘A man. A terrible, broken man, with nothing but rage in his heart.’

To be continued . . .

Began when the Gods made the world and put the One Race in it to inhabit it.

Ended when the One Race rose up against the Gods and was destroyed.

Began when the Gods made the Five Races: Huanin, Kyrinin, Whreinin, Saolin and Anain.

The Huanin and Kyrinin made war upon the Whreinin and destroyed that race, and were thereafter named the Tainted Races for their sin, and forfeited the love of the Gods.

Ended when the Gods departed from the world.

Began with the absence of the Gods, and with chaos.

Year

280 The Adravane and Aygll Kingships arose

451 The Alsire Kingship arose, and the era of the Three Kingships began

775 The Huanin Kingships united against the Kyrinin clans and the War of the Tainted began

788 Tane was destroyed, the Deep Rove was raised by the Anain, and the War of the Tainted ended

793 The last Aygll King was slain, the era of the Three Kingships ended, and the Storm Years began

847 The Bloods—Kilkry, Haig, Gyre, Ayth and Taral—were founded in Aygll lands, and Kulkain oc Kilkry became the first Thane of Thanes; the end of the Storm Years

852 The last Alsire King was slain, and the first King of the Dornach line took his throne

922 The Black Road heresy arose in Kilvale, and was outlawed by the Bloods

942 The Gyre Blood, and all adherents of the Black Road, were exiled beyond the Vale of Stones and founded there the Bloods of the Black Road: Gyre, Horin, Gaven, Wyn and Fane

973 The Lannis Blood was founded, in reward for Sirian’s defeat of the invading forces of the Black Road at Kolglas

997 Haig replaced Kilkry as first amongst the True Bloods

1052 The Dargannan Blood was founded

1069 The Lannis-Haig Blood defeated Horin-Gyre in battle at Tanwrye

1097 The Lannis-Haig Blood was afflicted by the Heart Fever

1102 The Dargannan Blood rebelled against the authority of Haig, and Gryvan oc Haig, Thane of Thanes, summoned the armies of the True Bloods to march against them