Brian Ruckley - Fall of Thanes

He sat heavily on a three-legged stool close by the fire. His limbs would not rest, though, and he was back on his feet in a moment.

“Does Goedellin concur in this?” he demanded. “Does the Lore give its backing?”

Cannek sighed expressively. “The Lore deals in fine judgements. The intricacies of the creed, teasing out the complexities of any case or cause: these are things we can leave to Goedellin. You and I, we can deal in more… direct explorations of fate’s intent.”

“No, then,” said Kanin. “The Lore will not take your side. Our side.”

“The Lore-or Goedellin, who is the Lore here and now-reserves its judgement,” said Cannek, spreading his arms. “Let us leave it at that.”

“Can’t he see?” cried Kanin in exasperation. “Is he so slack-eyed he can’t see an enemy when one stands before him?”

“It is possible to see too much, sometimes.” Cannek said. “Too many possibilities, too many potential explanations. Success easily overturns old rules, old ways of thinking. Such are the victories we have gained, it is no surprise that some-many-see the glimmer of still greater, perhaps even final, glories on the horizon. For such a prize, they are willing to keep the most surprising company.

“But in any case, I do not think of Aeglyss as my enemy, Thane. I will try to kill him, but not out of malice. I simply mistrust the notion that he is fated to play so central a role in our affairs. I mistrust the notion that a halfbreed, and one whose adherence to the creed is at best questionable, should be the one to usher in the final triumph of our faith. Others find those notions more plausible than I. There is error, somewhere. My only intent is to remove any uncertainty over whose it is. Fate already knows the answer. Soon, we will too.”

And that is where our ways must part, thought Kanin. The vengeful, unambiguous passion that burned in him was something Cannek would never share. The Inkallim still framed everything in terms of the faith, of fate. Once Kanin might have thought in the same patterns, but such habits had flaked away from his mind like dead skin, day by day.

The door creaked open, caught by the cold wind. A flurry of snowflakes tumbled in and Kanin saw, sitting outside, one of Cannek’s great dark, jowly hounds. As if sensing an invitation, the beast rose and took a couple of heavy paces towards the light and warmth. Cannek rose and went to the door, giving an animal hiss. The dog sank back onto its haunches as the Inkallim closed it out.

“I will come to Hommen,” Kanin said.

“Indeed,” said Cannek, going to stand by the fire, taking its heat into his back. “Even uninvited, your presence could hardly be challenged. You are a Thane, after all.”

“I want to see him die.”

“I assumed you would.”

“We’ll leave in the morning.”

“You do as you wish. I will be travelling through the night.” The Inkallim scooped his knives up from the table and began strapping them back onto his arms. “It would be best if we did not arrive together. Our intimacies must remain secret, Thane, like any pair of illicit lovers.”

Kanin grimaced. “It’s not love we cultivate.”

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.”