He went sluggishly towards the window. He halted an arm’s length back from it, keeping to the dark. He did not want to be seen if he could help it, and he was close enough to look down upon the little orchard, bounded by high stone walls, that lay behind the barracks. The ancient, crooked apple trees clenched up like wizened hands, half-lit by lamps burning in the kitchens. Almost beyond the reach of that light, in the heart of the grove, Ess’yr and Varryn had made shelters from stakes and hides.
Orisian could see the two Kyrinin now, moving amongst the trees. They drifted through the winter’s dark, unhurried. They were gathering sticks for a fire. Orisian held himself quite still. Even his breathing grew shallow and soft. He did not know if they could see him from down there amongst the shadows, but they might. Their eyes were more than human, after all.
Ess’yr squatted down on her haunches to build the fire. Her hair slipped forward to hide her face. Orisian watched her hands instead. They were pale, indistinct shapes, but still their movements had grace and ease. Done with her preparations, she reached for some small bag or pouch and scattered something from it on a flat stone at the fireside. Food, Orisian knew. He had seen this many times since that first night with her in the forests far north of here. She left morsels for the restless dead.
He found himself wishing Ess’yr would look up, and turn her face towards him. He both wanted her to know that he was watching her, and feared it. Perhaps she already knew. Perhaps she knew that he was constantly aware of her presence; that wherever they were, whoever he was talking to, if she was near there was always a portion of his attention claimed by her.
He could hear voices, softened and blurred, from the rooms below, and, more distant, the lowing of cattle, penned up in some yard or barn. Sparks flared amongst the sleeping apple trees. Once, twice, Ess’yr struck glimmers of fire from a flint. One must have taken, for she delicately raised the little bundle of kindling in her cupped hands and blew upon it. In moments, a tiny flame was born. Orisian could see her face then; see a faint line of firelight reflected on her hair. He smiled.
There were footsteps in the passageway outside. Taim Narran was calling for him. Orisian turned away from the window, feeling as he did so suddenly and terribly sad.
“You wanted to be informed, sire, if the prisoner was saying anything of interest,” Taim said when Orisian opened the door.
“Wait a moment while I get a cloak,” Orisian murmured.
“I can tell you what he’s saying. If you would prefer to stay here. There is no need…”
“Do you think it’s too cold for me outside?” Orisian asked gently as he settled the cloak about his shoulders. “Or that I should not see what happens to prisoners in Ive?”
His Captain made no reply.
“It’s all right, Taim. Whatever was fragile in me was broken long ago. Lead the way.”
II
The room clenched about him like a tight, hot fist. The heat of half a dozen small braziers was gathered by the rock walls, concentrated, blasted back to make the air thick and suffocating. Within a couple of paces Orisian could feel sweat on his forehead. The orange-red heart of each brazier almost seemed to pulse, so intense was the light and heat being hammered out into the cramped space.
The prisoner was tied to the far wall. His arms were stretched up and apart, bound to iron rings set in the stonework. He had slumped down and his own weight had tautened the muscles in his arms and shoulders. He was naked to the waist, his skin overlaid with a film of sweat. Fresh burns pockmarked his chest, red and brown and raw. The man who had inflicted them was standing to one side, stocky, black-bearded. Orisian vaguely recognised him: he had seen him around the barracks once or twice before. One of the town’s Guard. He wore massive leather gloves, and was watching the hilt of a knife sunk into the brazier. He did not even look up when Orisian and the others entered. There was no room in his attention for anything save that knife, buried in the fire, collecting into its metal the savage heat.
One of the several Kilkry warriors gathered there grasped the prisoner’s hair and lifted his head up. His nose was broken and bent. The blood from it might be what crusted the man’s lips, or his mouth might be shattered as well. Orisian winced momentarily at the sight of him. His own jaw and cheek gave a single aching beat, remembering the ruin visited upon them by the haft of a Kyrinin spear. A thread of mixed saliva and blood hung from the man’s chin. Some remembered instinct made Orisian want to turn away. It was the stirring of the person he no longer quite was. It lacked conviction. He chose to look.
“Speak,” someone hissed at the broken Black Roader. “Let’s hear your poison again.”
Orisian glanced at Taim. His Captain’s face was fixed and grim. Was there the slightest disapproving tightening around his eyes? A faint disgusted curl at the edge of his mouth? Orisian could not be sure. Perhaps he wanted to see those things there, and allowed that desire to imagine them for him. He wanted to find in Taim some disgust and revulsion that he could borrow for himself; to be as horrified by this sight as he would have been just a few weeks ago.
The man’s voice was stronger than Orisian would have expected. Uneven but clear despite the distortion of his heavy northern accent.
“You’re finished. Your time’s done. It’s his time now. The Black Road’s time. The Kall. He’ll cast you all down into ruin and wreck, and lead us to the mastery of the world, and open the path for the Gods to return.”
“Who will?” the interrogator demanded, shaking the man’s head so violently he pulled a fistful of hair from his scalp. He took hold again and twisted the prisoner’s face toward Orisian.
Orisian watched those battered lips stretching into a snarling smile.
“The halfbreed. The Fisherwoman’s heir. Fate works through him.”
“His name?” Orisian asked quietly.
“Not to be named. The na’kyrim. In Kan Avor. That is enough.”
“Aeglyss?” Orisian demanded, but the prisoner only grinned at him through blood. There was a madness in his eyes. A sort of mad joy, Orisian thought, a delight at the descent of the world into savagery.
“Keep him alive,” Orisian said, and left the choking heat of that deep chamber without another word. He climbed up the steps and out into the bitter night air. Tiny flecks of snow were darting down out of the darkness, dancing in the cauldron of the courtyard. He felt them falling on his cheeks and lips: points of numbing cold.
“It’s as you thought,” Taim said behind him. “As your na’kyrim have been saying. Whether in his own right, or as someone else’s tool, the halfbreed’s worked his way to the heart of things.”
Orisian looked up into the black sky, blinking against the grainy snow.
“They’re not my na’kyrim,” he said.
In Eshenna’s half-human eyes, Orisian saw very human things: exhaustion and a haunted, hunted unease. When first he met this na’kyrim in Highfast, he had found her determined, firm. That vigour was gone, or at least buried by the debris of what she had seen since then.
“Where’s Yvane?” Orisian asked her.
“With K’rina.” She spoke that name with obvious reluctance. Another of the petty, cruel tricks the world was working upon its inhabitants in these troubled times: it had been Eshenna who insisted most determinedly that K’rina might be a weapon in the struggle against Aeglyss, yet the cost of finding her, and her condition when they did, had shaken Eshenna to her core. She had not been as well prepared as she imagined for what lay outside the walls of Highfast.