Wain had no intention of being drawn so easily into criticism of Ragnor oc Gyre. That a Banner-captain of the Battle should tread upon such ground was in itself worrying: it spoke of dangerous, unpredictable times.
“How many swords does Temegrin command?” she asked.
“A thousand and a half. Five hundred of them are Tarbains. Well-trained and disciplined, by the standards of Tarbains, but Tarbains nevertheless. It was we Inkallim, and the army of farmers and herdsmen and fishermen, that took Tanwrye, not the swords of Gyre.”
Wain grunted non-committally.
“My advice to you would be to have a care in your dealings with the Eagle,” Fiallic continued. “His master in Kan Dredar does not like this war. We do not know what orders Temegrin was given, but it is unlikely they were the same as those I received from the First of the Battle.”
“And they were?” asked Wain. She strove to sound only mildly interested. There was something unsettling about one of the ravens being so forthcoming. She had never known there to be anything other than unity of purpose between the Inkallim and the Gyre Blood; not in her lifetime, at least.
“To pursue this conflict as far, and as fiercely, as fate will allow. To make myself an ally of your Blood. To oppose any effort — from whatever quarter — to deny the full expression of whatever outcome fate has in mind for us.”
“And what outcome is it that you expect? What do the Children of the Hundred hope for?”
Fiallic smiled. The wagon, now empty, was being slowly wheeled around. The huge horse that drew it looked weary; its head was hanging low. Little birds were already dropping down from the battlements to scavenge feed that had leaked out from the sacks.
“I expect nothing,” Fiallic said. “I wait to be shown what the Black Road has in store for us. We have the beast by the tail now. It will either turn upon us, and consume us, or drag us in its wake to glory.”
“The beast?”
“War. There is no surer way to test fate.”
“No,” said Wain quietly.
“You should speak with Goedellin.”
Wain hung her head for a moment. Those strange, intense moments with Aeglyss had left her inexplicably tired. Her arms and shoulders felt slack, lifeless; her thoughts were sluggish.
“Be assured that the Children of the Hundred are your friends,” Fiallic said with measured precision. “The Horin-Gyre Blood has earned the gratitude of all in whom the faith burns brightly. If there are others whose gratitude is more… grudging, well, all the more reason to secure whatever bonds of friendship are offered. Goedellin represents the First of the Lore here. Whatever Temegrin may think, there is none more central to matters than Goedellin. There is none whose friendship could do more to secure your Blood’s position.”
“Very well. Very well.”
VI
Goedellin, Inner Servant of the Lore Inkall, was not a man whose appearance put those meeting him for the first time at their ease. What little hair remained on his head was white and wispy; the scalp that showed beneath it was a tapestry of blotches, moles and blemishes. His lips were dark grey, veined with streaks of black: the legacy of the seerstem that some of the Lore used. His back was bent into a hook, pulling his shoulders and head down and forwards. Wain towered over him. Walking alongside him through the yard of what had been Anduran’s gaol, she had to shorten her stride to little more than a shuffle to avoid leaving him behind. The Inkallim’s legs were crooked, swaying out at the knees. He leaned on a thick, twisted stick.
“It was the house of the gaoler, I am told,” Goedellin said as they drew near to the squat building.
“Yes,” Wain murmured. “I think it was.” She found Goedellin unsettling not so much in how he looked as in who he was. The Inner Servants of the Lore were its most senior and most respected members. Each one had spent years in the consideration of the creed, reflecting upon its meaning. They stood but a single step beneath the First himself in the hierarchy. For one such as Wain, wedded to the faith in heart and mind, Goedellin inspired a respectful, nervous awe that the bloodiest, most terrible of warriors could never have matched.
The door to the house opened as Goedellin stepped carefully up onto the threshold. A young Inkallim, perhaps a candidate for the Lore, ushered them inside. The interior was bare — looted, Wain suspected, when she and her brother had first overrun this city — but that austerity seemed fitting for the lodging of the Lore. The room Goedellin led her into still held a grand table — its surface now scarred, and notches cut into its edges — but the chairs clearly did not belong. They were simple, crude. Goedellin settled stiffly into one. He rested his walking stick against its arm, and indicated that Wain should sit opposite him.
“Fiallic advises me that I should not detain you for too long,” the old man said. The tilt of his head made it hard to see his lips or eyes. Wain found herself staring at his scalp. “He tells me you will be eager to leave this place, and return to Glasbridge.”
“My brother with be waiting for me, yes. There will be a great battle soon. I should be there.”
“Of course. Your reputation is well known. They tell me you are a fierce young woman, Wain nan Horin-Gyre. But a faithful one, too.”
“I hope to be.”
“Well. Fiallic also told me you brought a halfbreed with you, who is already causing trouble.”
“We sent him away. We tried to set him aside, and the woodwights too. But fate has returned him to us. He brings the White Owls to fight for our cause; more than ever before. He says there are many hundreds of them, many hundreds, already moving through Anlane. It seems to me… or at least it did… I thought perhaps he would not have returned, despite all the obstacles, were he not fated to play a part in our struggle.”
“It seems to you? You know, do you not, that the Lore frowns upon any suggestion that we can know in advance what course fate will follow?”
“I do. I pretend no knowledge of it. I speak only of a willingness to accept that fate may impose distasteful allies, whatever my personal preferences.”
“That’s a neat construction. It has a dutiful sound to it. Were you tutored in the creed by the Lore as a child?”
Wain nodded. “My father brought two Lore Inkallim to Hakkan when my brother and I were young. They remained only for a year or two.” She felt now, facing this Inner Servant, much as she had then, listening in rapt wonder to the soft, firm voices of those tutors. The truth of what they had told her, all those years ago, had been so clear to her that it was like a blast of cold wind, scouring away dust from her child’s heart.
“A good man, Angain,” Goedellin mused. “Would that more of the Thanes did the same. It’s rare for them to invite such tutors into their homes these days. Your Blood has long been an example that others might look to; a shame it has gone unregarded by those with the most to learn.”
Wain hung her head and said nothing.
“You are uncertain now, of the halfbreed’s place?” Goedellin asked her. “Of whether he is to be a part of all this?”
Wain nodded silently.
“So,” the Inkallim sighed. “Whenever we come to a fork in the road, it looks like a choice. It feels like a decision. But these feelings, these choices that we imagine we could make, they are illusions. Choice and decision were taken from us. The Gods require of us that we learn to live without them; learn that some things are beyond our power to change. Such is the penance we must all do, in answer to the hubris of our forebears. You understand all of this, of course?”
“I do,” Wain said.
“It is, in part, only a matter of perspective. A life can have but one path. We poor mortals see that path only when we stand at death’s very portal, and can turn and look back down the road we have travelled. Then, and only then, we see the way we have come, unbranching, stretching back to the moment of our birth. The Black Road. However it might have appeared to us as we walked it, there were in truth no choices, no decisions. Only that one path, as the Hooded God read it in his book when we drew our first breath in this empty world.”