“Let me help you,” she managed to say. But he did not seem to hear her.
“They’ll not have me. Not!” He spat the words. His spittle was on her lips, across her eyes.
Then Amonyn was there, hauling at Tyn’s arms. Aeglyss turned and looked upon Amonyn, and Cerys felt the contemptuous hatred surge like a boiling thundercloud. She opened her mouth to cry out in warning, but there was no time. Aeglyss released her, she slumped; he struck Amonyn, just once, across the head.
Amonyn fell, and in that fall somehow the greatest extremities of blind fury were spent. Tyn’s bony shoulders went slack as he stared down at the prostrate figure. Cerys could breathe again, could give her thoughts some kind of form. She steadied herself on her feet, still leaning against the wall. She thought she could hear footsteps, somewhere off in the maze of passageways, drawing closer.
“The healer,” Aeglyss murmured, still staring at Amonyn. He knelt.
“No,” Cerys whispered, unsure of what it was she denied, or feared.
“Be silent. Liar. You think I don’t know your lies? Your deceit?”
She felt cold.
“You’re less than nothing. All of you here, little rats hiding in your tunnels. There’s nothing for me here, nothing that you’ll give me. Ha! Nothing’s given. Only taken.”
He caressed Amonyn’s slack face.
“You think I don’t know you have secrets? You think I don’t know you mean to betray me? I know betrayal, as I know water and meat and the turning of the seasons. It is… it never changes.”
“No,” whispered Cerys. She pushed herself away from the wall, reaching for him.
“Be silent.” And she was, for her throat clenched itself shut and she could draw no breath, and her legs and her arms were twigs, grass. She fell.
“Each day, I grow stronger,” Aeglyss said softly. “Each day, I sink deeper. I learn. Things are revealed to me.” He leaned down close to Amonyn, sniffing at him. “You na’kyrim. You… halfbreeds. There is nothing you can keep from me. You, least of all.”
He rose, and loomed over Cerys. She was stretching out an arm, trying to take hold of Amonyn’s hand. She did not want to die, but she wanted him to die even less.
“You were my own kind,” Aeglyss was saying. She paid him no heed. All that mattered was that she touch Amonyn, that neither he nor she should be alone. “But you want nothing to do with me. I know that. So be it. I am not of your kind any more. I am something else, and I am to have nothing: no companions, no sanctuary, no… It does not matter. The Anain may hunt me, take everything that I love, if they want. You can plot against me. No matter. I take what I need, Elect. There is to be no more trust, no more talking. Not in all the world.”
He came down onto his hands and knees, crouched over her like a dog. She felt his lips brushing her ear.
“You should not have tried to keep secrets from me. I know you have the Shadowhand here, Elect,” he said. And then he collapsed. Tyn lay curled on the floor, his shallow, rattling breath the only sound save the heavy footsteps of Herraic’s warriors coming running.
They buried Rothe in the clearing where he had fallen. Torcaill was disapproving, Orisian knew, eager to be away from that threatening place with its smothering mists and enclosing trees, but he said nothing. Eshenna and Yvane were uneasy, fearful no doubt of any intrusion upon this domain of the Anain, but they raised no complaint. Orisian dug the grave himself, first with a short blade one of the warriors lent him, to break open the soft, wet earth, then with his hands, clawing out great fistfuls of the black soil. Others helped, but he barely registered their presence or their exertions.
The few horses that had not been lost in the sprawling, frantic pursuit and skirmishing through the forest grazed on the glade’s wet grass. Ess’yr and Varryn sat on a log, watching. Sentries looked nervously out on all sides, knowing they had little chance of anticipating any attack. Torcaill himself knelt, cleaning Rothe’s sword. All of this Orisian knew, vaguely, was around him. It seemed like nothing to do with him. He just dug.
They lowered Rothe into the ground. Torcaill laid the sword on his chest, folded his arms across it. Then Orisian laid Rothe’s shield over his hands. As he straightened, the warriors — not many more than twenty of them alive now — stepped forwards, ringing the shallow grave. As one, they bent and began covering Rothe with earth. Orisian watched that face he knew so well gradually, incrementally disappear.
“He deserved a pyre,” he murmured. His jaw throbbed. His mouth was swollen and tasted foul, of blood and ruin. He could not speak well, or clearly.
“He did,” Torcaill agreed. “But this is the best we can do for him. It’s better than others have had, today.”
“They all deserved better. But him especially.”
After it was done, they covered the grave with dead wood and stones.
Orisian sat, numb and cold, while one of the warriors — he did not even know his name — cleaned the dried blood from his face. Probing with his tongue, he could feel the empty sockets of the teeth he had lost. It was not until the needle and sinew began to close up the great gash across his cheek that he felt the pain. It was sharp and insistent enough to cut through the fog that enshrouded his mind. He closed his eyes and endured it as the stitches went in.
Afterwards, Ess’yr beckoned him over. She said nothing, but made him sit at her side. She had collected a few clumps of some pale green moss-like plant. Now she chewed on a little of it. After a few moments, she touched a thumb to his chin and pressed his mouth open. She removed the moist, pulped mass from her own mouth and gently pressed it into the space between his cheek and gum. The juices that oozed from it made his wounds sting.
Wreaths of mist drifted amongst the treetops all around. Orisian stared blankly at them. His gaze slipped down and rested on K’rina. She was sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth. She turned her hands over, and back and over again, examining them as if she had never seen such strange objects before. The tiny scratches all over her skin were like a fine net. No word, no sense, had passed her lips since they had found her; no sign that she was anything more than a madwoman, lost in the forest. That was the treasure Rothe and the others had died to deliver into Orisian’s hands.
Someone shouted out. Men were running. Ess’yr was on her feet, raising her bow.
“They’re coming again,” Orisian heard. It might have been Torcaill’s voice. He looked at Rothe’s grave. Someone leaped across it, rushing with sword drawn to meet whatever danger now came.
Dull and distant, without thought, Orisian reached for his own blade and rose to his feet.
For two days they waited. Guards stood outside the door behind which the monster lurked. Or possibly lurked. Cerys and others went back and forth from that gloomy chamber, spending hours at Tyn’s bedside, and learned nothing. They found nothing save silence, and a dead, empty space in the Shared. The Dreamer breathed, his eyes moved beneath their lids, but there was no life in him. His body was truly a shell now, an empty, abandoned shell. There was no Tyn, no Aeglyss. The wounds in his face and his wrists dried, but did not heal. Cerys sat and stared into that gaunt face, as if by merely looking she might find some answer. But none came. The Shared was still, unresponsive. The Dreamer did not stir. The iron chain around her neck grew heavier.
Amonyn lay in his own quarters, alive but bruised both without and within. Herraic came to see Tyn himself, and fretted and frowned impotently until Cerys asked him to leave. Mordyn Jerain hesitated between life and death, his wounds half-healed. Olyn stayed in the crows’ roost, and would not emerge. Highfast was paralysed, prostrated by trepidation and gloom and uncertainty. Snow fell, and laid white blankets across the roofs and battlements and courtyards.
During the short hours of daylight, the Elect could busy herself with her duties. She could find enough activity to fend off the darkest of her thoughts. It was an illusory, temporary calm but necessary. At night, she had no such defences, and could not even take comfort in Amonyn’s company. Guilt and doubts circled her, snapping at her.