“Good,” Orisian said, and smiled. “Good. We mean to go on, across the Peaks.”
Ess’yr nodded. “We will follow your trail. Guard your heels. Fox know high ground better than White Owl.”
Varryn spoke quickly and sharply to his sister in their own tongue. Orisian caught the tone, even if he could understand none of the words: argumentative, contradictory. Ess’yr murmured a soft reply. Varryn turned his gaze upon Orisian. There were flecks of blood laid over the warrior’s tattoos, tiny dark, dry spots across his cheek. There was no way to tell whether it was his own or someone else’s.
“I ask something of you,” Varryn said.
“What?” Orisian asked. Ess’yr was turning away, moving off across the fall of the slope. Orisian watched her go.
“Tell my sister you need us no more,” said Varryn. “Tell her it is done. There is no promise to hold her. No need.”
“You want to leave?” Orisian asked him, still unable to tear his eyes away from Ess’yr’s retreating back.
“You go where we are not welcome. Our fight is with the White Owl.”
Ess’yr squatted down, laying her bow and spear out on the grass. Orisian looked at Varryn. The Kyrinin’s gaze was intense and demanding.
“And Ess’yr does not want to go?” Orisian asked. “Is it the ra’tyn? The promise she made to Inurian?”
“Tell her there is no need,” Varryn said.
“I don’t think your fight is only with the White Owl, any more than mine is only with Horin-Gyre,” Orisian said. “Things have changed. We’re not just fighting the old battles any more.”
“Nevertheless. I ask you to release my sister. She does not see clearly in this. She sees in you the… child, the memory, of the na’kyrim she loved.”
“Inurian,” Orisian snapped. “His name was Inurian.” He knew Varryn had never been fond of Inurian, had undoubtedly disapproved of his sister’s involvement with him. His temper was too easily stirred to let such things go unchallenged now.
“Will you speak to her?” Varryn asked, unmoved.
Orisian looked at Ess’yr once more. Could she hear what they were saying? He was not sure. She gave no sign of it, but he had grown used to a paucity of signs where the Kyrinin were concerned. She was balanced on her haunches, unstringing her bow, or replacing the string. She did it, as she did everything, with delicate, careful hands.
Nothing good had come out of all that had happened since Winterbirth, save perhaps this, Orisian thought. Save Ess’yr. He did not know whether she only saw in him a reminder of Inurian and, he found, he did not care. A multitude of thoughts jostled for his attention, each momentary and passing. If Varryn and Ess’yr went alone back into the Veiled Woods, or tried to make their way north, they would surely die. The distances were too great, the dangers too numerous. And he did not want this parting. He was selfishly afraid of it, of the loss it would entail.
“No,” he said. “We’re all fighting the same battle, even if you don’t believe it. I won’t send her away. I’ll not tell her — or you — either to stay or to go. She can make her own choices in this. We all do.”
Varryn stalked away from him without another word. Orisian hung his head for a moment, and then turned to tell Torcaill to ready the company for the mountains. He found Yvane staring at him. The na ’kyrim was sitting cross-legged, absently scratching the back of her hand and watching him with rare intensity.
“What?” he asked her.
She shook her head, and dropped her gaze to her hands. “Nothing.”
II
As they struggled through the Karkyre Peaks, Orisian was constantly beset by images and memories of the Car Criagar. Now, as then, there was snow and biting winds, though the cold was not quite as deep and his clothes offered more protection. Now, as then, he fought as much against grief and fear as he did against the elements and the brutal terrain. This time, though, he was possessed of an anger that had not been in him before. It was a hard and uncomfortable sensation, lodged like a splinter in his mind. He distrusted it, and doubted it, but could not — or did not want to — rid himself of it. He thought he had learned that vengeance could not heal his wounds, yet now he found himself craving it. The desire crept up on his weary thoughts every now and then, twisted them into the certainty that what was required was death, and yet more death. Every time he lapsed into such bitter reverie, he had to shake himself free of it. And every time he felt a little more distanced from himself, as if he was becoming a stranger inside his own skull.
They followed goat trails through the stone wilderness of the Peaks, and saw no one. They moved slowly. The paths were narrow and often little more than scratches on the sheer flanks of the mountains. Two of Torcaill’s warriors were carrying wounds that hampered them, and K’rina had to be helped and herded like a weak child. Eshenna too was tiring. They had to stop often, and rest as best they could on the exposed slopes.
There was little talk. It was not just weariness, Orisian suspected, but apprehension at the thought of what might await them once they left the Peaks behind. He felt like a sailor returning from a long voyage, without word of what to expect on his return, but filled with presentiments of ill tidings. He told himself that he would most likely find Aewult nan Haig triumphant, the Black Road driven back from Glasbridge and Anduran. He tried to believe it. And in any case, he wondered, if that was indeed what they found, what then would Rothe and the others have died for? Nothing more than the faulty instincts of their Thane?
Every night, there was the threat of a renewed assault by White Owls. Each night it did not come, and slowly the fear of it dwindled. Ess’yr and Varryn still hung back, disappearing from sight for as much as half a day at times. They — or Ess’yr, at least, for Varryn had not spoken to him since the day they left the Veiled Woods — brought no word of pursuit when they returned from their wanderings. The relief Orisian felt at that was muted and sour. It was too late for Rothe. He asked himself again and again whether he would have followed Eshenna out from Highfast, had he known what would come of it, and never found an answer.
Stone lived up to its name. It was a broad sprawl of rock-built cottages above the gorge of the Kyre river. There was a quarry full of massive stone blocks and boulders beside it, as if some giant of the One Race had taken a huge bite out of the mountainside and spat out the shattered remnants. They came to the village from the north, crossing a saddle between two jagged peaks in the teeth of a bitter wind. The roaring river lay between them and Stone, and swaying over the foamy waters was a fragile-looking bridge of rope and planking.
Even reaching the bridge was an unnerving task, for the trail cut its way back and forth down an almost sheer cliff. It was littered with loose pebbles and riven with cracks. Every moment of their descent seemed laden with the possibility of disaster. His first few tentative paces onto the bridge convinced Orisian that it was at least as full of unfortunate potential. It swung and shifted beneath him like a living thing, responding to every surge of the wind. He grasped the rough rope tightly and kept his eyes fixed on the cluster of houses ahead.
People were gathering there: a small, curious crowd of onlookers. Orisian could guess how cautious and uncertain he and all the others must appear as they crept across the flimsy span. He did not care. Stone looked bleak, and rough, and impoverished, but it was a welcome sight. Only now, seeing those low, solid huts and the lights burning in the windows and the woodsmoke being whipped away by the gale, did the Veiled Woods and the White Owls and even the Anain feel as though they were at last falling away behind him. As he stepped off the last wet wooden plank and set his foot down on rock, it was like crossing a boundary, returning to a world more familiar.
He turned to watch Torcaill and Yvane and the rest struggling across the bridge. Eshenna had to coax and edge K’rina across, the two women almost embracing. Orisian was assailed by the image of the two of them toppling and plunging into the torrent, carrying with them the last vestige of sense to all that had happened. Only Ess’yr and Varryn, bringing up the rear, were casual, striding nonchalantly without so much as a glance down.