He had passed in an instant from seemingly deep sleep to wakefulness. His grey eyes flicked open and met her own with a clear, alert gaze. A thrill of fear ran through her in that instant, as if she was a child caught observing some forbidden scene. He said nothing. He barely acknowledged her, in fact, beyond that first, piercing stare. He rose, doused his head and face with cold water and dressed.
Wain had sat naked on the bed and watched him moving about the room. She did not need him to speak to her. He was there, already, behind her eyes. Only when he was about to leave had he looked at her. He regarded her dispassionately. He crossed to her and turned her so that he could see the marks he had left on her back.
“Someone told me once that I had a dog’s heart,” he said. For some reason that made him laugh, bitter and pained. “But he underestimated me. I’ve a bit of the wolf in me, at least, from the look of you. I have been broken, and remade. He would not recognise me now.”
“You had bad dreams,” she said.
He took his hand away from her shoulder, but remained standing behind her. She did not dare to turn around.
“What is in me is never still,” Aeglyss said. “I always dream. Of more things than you can imagine. I dreamed K’rina.” There was a note of longing in his voice. Wain could hear his breathing. She wanted to look at him now, but was afraid of what she might see. He was too potent, too unbounded, for the eye to bear.
“She loved me, I think. Not as you do, my beloved. Not as you. But in her way.” He sighed. “We’ll see. I’ll have her with me, and we’ll see. My hounds are on her trail.”
He kissed the nape of Wain’s neck. Ice ran through her body, caressed her.
“Wait for me here,” he whispered. “I need to talk with the White Owls. They must be made to understand what happened. If not… these savages, they live in awe of the Anain. I can’t have them running back into Anlane telling tales of… I must… they must trust me. They must submit.”
Wain felt his fingernail slipping down her back, tracing her spine. It was a cold, transfixing sensation.
“I must set my hand firmly upon them. There can be no trust between me and them without that. There cannot be trust… except you. You I can trust, Wain, for you are mine. We are one, now. It was the only way I could be certain. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she had breathed, and then, soundlessly, he was gone.
She watched him now, and felt herself to be perched atop a towering cliff, gazing down from some unimaginable height upon that slight figure. Slight, yet wreathed about with terrible glory that none save she could see; radiant with the promise of power, utter and complete.
CHAPTER 3
When the One Race was no more, and the Gods resolved to make five to fill the void its destruction had left, the Gatekeeper first made the Huanin. Next The God Who Laughed made the Kyrinin, and the Light, who sang, made the Saolin. Then the fell Wildling, The Spear, made the Whreinin.
The maker of the last of the five was to be The Goddess. More than any save The God Who Laughed, she loved the green places of the world. More than any save The Raven she saw what lay beneath the world they had made, and saw that not everything that mattered could be touched or held in the hand. Thus she made the Anain, who have no substance save what they borrow from tree and leaf, who dwell in all places and none. And when he saw what she had done The God Who Laughed was pleased and said, “This is a good thing, for you have put life into that which is most beautiful in our creation.”
But the Gatekeeper said, “This is a fell thing you have done. These you have made are too potent and too deep. They will not love these others we have made, for all life save their own will seem to them a small and brief thing. They will know too little of death and of failings, and too much of things that are hidden from the others. This is not a gentle thought you have breathed into the mind of the world.”
The Goddess was not angry at these words. “These my children will be gentle in their way and in their own manner. But none can be always gentle. Your Huanin, Gatekeeper, will be sometimes fierce. The Kyrinin will be sometimes cold, the Saolin sometimes foolish. The Wildling’s wolfenkind will be sometimes most cruel. And my Anain, they will sometimes be more terrible and wondrous than all the others. For every world must have terrors and wonders in it, just as much as gentleness.”
I
Kolglas was an even more distressing sight than Taim Narran had expected. All through the long march from Kolkyre he had been steeling himself to withstand whatever might await him here, but those preparations made little difference. The town was in turmoil. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were crammed into its streets, its houses and barns. They had come from every corner of the Glas valley; from tiny villages and from lonely cottages in Anlane and the Car Criagar. Some were only passing through, their flight from the Black Road not yet done, and even those who meant to remain here in Kolglas carried fear on their faces. The joy with which many greeted the arrival of Taim and his six hundred men had a strained undercurrent of desperation, of hesitant hope. Ragged, cheering townsfolk clustered along the roadside as Taim led his little army in.
The worst sight was that of Castle Kolglas itself. It stood like a massive, sullen outcast on its tiny island. The causeway running out to it from the harbour was covered by the choppy sea, and Taim was glad of that. From this distance there was little outward sign of the fate that had befallen the castle, but he had no great desire to set foot within those abandoned walls. He knew the keep had been almost gutted and its roof ruined by fire after the Inkallim had finished their slaughter; he knew that the stables, and the barracks where the castle’s meagre garrison had slept, were wrecked. And he knew that if he entered the castle’s courtyard he would only be beset by images of the horrors of Winterbirth. He had heard more than enough reports of that savage night to satisfy any curiosity, and to feed his guilt at being so far away when his Blood had needed him.
The market square was crowded with wagons, makeshift shelters and rootless families, making it impossible to find a path through. Taim sent most of his men back to make camp on the south edge of the town, and went in search of someone who could tell him how things stood.
The man he found was Elach Mell, an old warrior who had been quietly seeing out the twilight of his life in the garrison of Kolglas for at least a dozen years. The tone of the few reports he had sent to Taim in the past week or two had been steadfast, resolute. Only now, in the cramped quarters the old man kept next to the square, could Taim see the true extent of Elach’s decline. He had never known the man well, and it had been years since they had last met, but his exhaustion was clear. His shoulders were slack, his eyes sluggish. Only the embers of whatever determination had sustained him thus far now remained, insufficient to oppose the persistent weight of all that had happened.
“There’s not enough food,” Elach said. His voice was flat. “The barns are almost empty. All but a few of the cattle and goats have been slaughtered. We’re trying to move people on to Stryne, or to Hommen. Some go willingly, others are reluctant.”
Taim nodded slowly. “How many men do you have fit for battle?” he asked.
“Two hundred, if you mean those with any training. A week ago, it would have been three, but… well, there’re coughs and agues in the town now that winter’s taken hold. I’ve lost fifteen or twenty in skirmishing up the road to Glasbridge. They’ve thrown some kind of wall across the road, you know, between here and there. Can’t get anyone beyond it. And I had to send three dozen to Drinan.”