Kan Avor was all mud, ruin and rot. What had once been streets were now little more than soggy culverts ankle-deep in silt and decaying vegetation. Some of the buildings must once have been grand but the ones that still stood were now crumbling and gutted. Those walls that retained more than a few courses of stone bore dark, mouldy bands on them: the high-water marks left each winter when the Glas Water had been at its fullest flood. But the dam that had created that great lake was gone now, of course. The waters it had restrained had poured away and ravaged Glasbridge on their way to the sea. Freed from its watery imprisonment, Kan Avor was revealed as nothing more than the sodden, rotting skeleton of a long-dead city.
Mordyn Jerain hobbled along behind Aeglyss. Wain supported him, without which aid he would not have been able to walk. Every movement of his head triggered a pulse of pain. His body was feeble. He felt like an old man.
“Keep moving,” Aeglyss muttered. “If you stand still for too long, you’re likely to get stuck in the mud.” He laughed to himself.
In a small square, bordered by half-tumbled, roofless houses, people were labouring to clear away the silt that the Glas Water had left behind. They dug down to the ancient cobblestones, unearthing all manner of debris as they did so: roofing tiles, shattered pots, even bones. The mud was piled up at the edges of the square. Water oozed out from these mounds, spreading in a filthy slick across the newly exposed cobbles.
In the centre of the square, a broken statue lay in two pieces. It looked like the image of some tall and noble man, though it was so chipped and pitted and stained that it was impossible to be certain. Whoever’s glory it had been meant to extol, it no longer served that purpose: the figure had shattered across the waist, leaving legs and barrel-chest divided and forlorn.
Aeglyss lingered beside the head of the fallen statue. He looked almost wistful as he touched the cracked stone brow.
“I don’t know,” the na’kyrim murmured, as if in answer to some silent question.
Mordyn had to lean his weight against Wain. He hated such vulnerability, but his muscles and bones had nothing to offer him. He felt sick.
“Who are these people?” the Shadowhand asked.
Aeglyss lifted his head and looked around the square. For a moment, he seemed puzzled, like a man suddenly waking and not knowing quite where he was. A woman stumbled past, carrying a wicker basket of mud on her back. Aeglyss watched her empty it out, turn around and come back for another load.
“I don’t know. Oh, does it matter? They’re… followers, if you like.” Again, he laughed, in that disconnected, abrupt way. He was, as far as Mordyn could tell, quite mad.
“Come,” the na’kyrim said. “This isn’t what I wanted you to see. Not all, at least. I’ll show you. Can you climb some steps, great Chancellor?”
Mordyn started to shake his head, but lancing pain arrested the movement.
“No,” he groaned.
“Well, try. For me. You need to see for yourself. Everyone does.”
Wain helped the Chancellor to follow after Aeglyss. They moved away from the square, picking their way amongst ruins. Mordyn glimpsed indistinct figures here and there. There were men and women, human and Kyrinin, digging, gathering, watching, or just standing staring up at the sky or at leaning walls and broken-topped towers. Mordyn could not find purpose or pattern in anything he saw, and could not tell whether the lack was in him or in the world.
There was a stretch of wall, thirty or forty paces long, standing alone. Whatever buildings it had connected or guarded were gone, slumped into rubble. It was crenellated, with a flight of worn steps running up to the battlements. Aeglyss climbed up, beckoning for Mordyn to do likewise.
“I can’t,” he muttered.
“Of course you can,” the na’kyrim snapped irritably. He stopped halfway up the flight of stairs and turned. “You will. You’re stronger than you imagine. Lift your foot. One step at a time. You’re not so tired; not so weak. Climb up, Chancellor.”
And Mordyn’s weariness abated. The ache in his head receded, still there but set behind some softening barrier that left someone else to suffer it, not him, not now. Wain’s hand was at his elbow, easing him towards the steps. He drifted up them without feeling them beneath his feet. Then he was standing atop the orphaned wall, and the pale light was hurting his eyes. He winced against it.
“Look,” Aeglyss said at his side. “What do you see?”
The Chancellor looked and saw before him the edges of ruined Kan Avor, bleeding without clear boundary into the surrounding marshes and fields. The grey of fallen stone gave way bit by bit to the brown and green of mud and grass, and the black of still pools. There were distant copses, far-off barns and farmhouses like smudges on his eyes; a dark line, tracing the weaving course of a river. And beyond, high ground: ranks of hills and mountains rising up to merge into the featureless sky.
“What do you see?” Aeglyss asked again.
Mordyn narrowed his eyes. He saw figures moving across this great indistinct landscape. Small groups of people, out in the fields, following invisible tracks. Some were on horses, some on foot. Some came in wagons, some walked alone. He could see a dozen, two dozen, three.
“They don’t even know why they’re coming,” Aeglyss murmured. “They just come. It is like… do you suppose the geese know why they turn south when winter is come? Or do they just wake one morning and find that they must fly? Perhaps their hearts just long for the sun that has abandoned them, and that longing carries them aloft, and southwards, without them ever knowing its intent. Do you think that might be so, wise Chancellor?”
“I don’t know. I never troubled myself over the motives of geese.”
“Ha. No. Why should you? You are one of the great, and the powerful, of course. You have no need to concern yourself with such things. Well, I’ll tell you what I think, shall I? Would that interest you more?”
Mordyn closed his eyes for a moment, and turned his head away from the na’kyrim. He was afraid of this man.
“They don’t know why they come, these pilgrims,” Aeglyss continued. “I do. I know. They come because they have desires, and questions, and instincts, and longings; and because, to each and to all of these things, I am an answer. They come because the light of the sun will always draw life to it, without reason and without understanding. And I am that light. In the Shared, I now burn brightly, Chancellor. They cannot see it, cannot comprehend it, but they feel it. They feel the promise of glory, or of change, or of death, or of peace. They know, in their hearts, that something great and strange is happening here. So they come.”
Mordyn made to descend the short flight of steps. He felt dizzy and unstable, exposed.
“Stay,” Aeglyss whispered, and Mordyn’s body obeyed before his mind had even made sense of the word. “I am beset by enemies on every side, Shadowhand. My own kind, your kind. The Anain. I must armour myself. I must have friends, who will stand by me. I must have shield and sword, to protect myself and to strike out at those who would drag me down. I’ve learned well; slowly, but well. There are only friends and enemies. Nothing in between. So you must be a friend to me, Chancellor, or you are nothing.”
The na’kyrim turned and gazed out across the vast valley floor. A cough hunched his shoulders for a moment, then he straightened. He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his bony hand. There was something in his eyes, as he stared out, of wonder, or awe.
“This is what I wanted you to see. To understand,” he said softly. “It is not the Black Road that rules here. It is me. Or what burns in me.”
Mordyn was left, for a time, seated on wet stone, his back resting against the stub of a fallen pillar. His memory, his sense of himself, came and went. He was not certain how he had come to this place. It was some kind of empty hall, only half-roofed. There was wet moss beneath his fingers, growing in the cracks of the flagstone floor.