“Aeglyss, you mean?”
“The world’s changing around us. You feel it, don’t you?” Orisian looked questioningly at Taim, and at Torcaill. “Can’t you feel the twisting of things in your heart, your mind? I don’t sleep, so dark are my dreams. If I walk in Ive’s streets, in every eye I see tinder, waiting only for some spark to turn it into a raging fire. I killed-and you did, Torcaill-Kilkry men who had no thought save to shed blood. They’re supposed to be our allies. It’s all slipping away into chaos.”
He had been leaning forward in his chair, tightened by an urgency, a fierce desire to convey what he saw and felt. Now he slumped back.
“It may be that when we seized K’rina, we broke a thread in a pattern that was being woven. It may have been a mistake. I need to see if it can be undone. Anyway, Torcaill, I’ll only ask you to come as far as Ive Bridge. Once we’re sure the way to Highfast is clear, there’s something else I’ll want of you.”
“You need ask nothing of me, sire,” the warrior said sharply. “Only command. Your will governs us in all of this.”
He clearly meant what he said, despite his earlier truculence. Orisian only nodded, and Taim thought he saw a hint of sadness in the set of the Thane’s mouth. There were burdens there still, in the making of choices on behalf of others and the exercise of authority. However hard he tries, Taim thought, whatever cruelty he might permit in his name, this one will never have quite the cold instinct for it. He will never sit easy on a throne. But then perhaps Orisian did not, after all, truly believe there was any throne left for him to sit upon.
They each went their own way from that table: Orisian to speak with Ess’yr and Varryn, Taim to see what supplies he might buy or otherwise acquire without arousing alarm or suspicion amongst their Kilkry hosts, Torcaill to ready the warriors. Taim got no further than the outer yard of the barracks before he became aware of soft footsteps trailing him. He turned to find Yvane drawing near, stern-faced.
“Your Thane folds in on himself,” she said. “Withdraws. He feels himself alone and adrift, and in response makes himself so. There are shadows, calling him into themselves.”
“He has been roughly treated by the world of late.”
“For many years, I think. I don’t condemn him. All I say is, these are dangerous times for those with flaws in their armour. The houses with cracked foundations are the first to fall in a storm.”
“I didn’t know you were a master builder,” Taim muttered. “Or an armourer, for that matter.” The na’kyrim’s manner irritated him, though he recognised her intent. She did, he believed, feel a certain sincere concern for Orisian. As far as Taim could tell, the young Thane was uniquely honoured in that regard, since no one else save other na’kyrim seemed to merit it.
“He needs friends,” said Yvane, “and may need them still more before long. Your hothead of a swordsman was part right: we are stepping from storm into fire, but this storm isn’t one we can leave behind. It goes with us. Inside us.”
“Have you advised Orisian against it, then? If you think this leads us into…”
“Ha. You can be certain there’s none less eager than me to revisit whatever’s left of Highfast. But Orisian follows his instincts. And he may be right. Perhaps the only way to calm this storm, quench this fire, is from the inside.”
“Well, then. I’ll walk at his side, wherever he goes.”
“I know. You seem to have the calmest head around here, the least open to the poison that’s leaking into so many others. That’s good. I don’t know what it is that anchors you, but whatever it is, I hope it’s stubborn enough to last. Stay close by Orisian, if you care for him, and watch him. If his sight becomes clouded, he’ll need those whose eyes remain clear.”
“There’s nothing wrong with his sight,” Taim said, bristling at the implied lack of faith in Orisian’s resilience, or his judgement. “Anyway, you’ve never seemed shy of making your opinion known. Don’t you plan on being there, to polish his eyes for him?”
And the sudden sadness in her pale face-harbinger, it seemed to him, of a desolate despair that the na’kyrim barely held at bay-startled him into shame at his bitter tone.
“As I said,” Yvane sighed, “these are dangerous times for those with flaws in their armour. But we na’kyrim, we have no armour at all against this. We’re all flaw, our heads wide open to it. Believe me, I fear for your beloved Thane, but I like my own chances a good deal less than his. There may come a time when the very last people he should be listening to will be those who’ve woken to the Shared.”
She hung her head, as if momentarily defeated by the darkness of possible futures. Taim had never seen her give such an unguarded impression of vulnerability. He felt an urge to reach out and put a comforting hand on her arm, but he did not. He suspected there was enough prickly pride left in there to make any such gesture inadvisable.
“Just watch him,” she murmured. “Help him if he needs it, and if you can. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It doesn’t need saying,” Taim said gently. “I’d never do otherwise.”
Yvane nodded once and turned away, disappearing into the barracks. Taim looked after her, filled for a moment or two with an impotent sense of foreboding, not just for Yvane or Orisian, but all of them. Everyone caught in this churning maelstrom.
VI
Anyara woke in a sweat, with a soft cry and a racing heart. In her dreams she had been pursued by a twisted, bestial form of herself, driven wild by fear and anger and grief. The roiling darkness that had been all about her had thickened and churned to prevent her escape, holding her for her own clawed fingers to rend.
She wiped her brow, pulled her cloyingly damp nightgown away from her skin. These cruel dreams had ebbed a little in the first few days of her enforced sojourn in Vaymouth. Now they had returned with renewed and hungry vigour. Each night she spent in the Palace of Red Stone, they came more fiercely than the last. A few tears ran down her face, the echo of the unconstrained, fevered emotions of her sleep. She brushed them away and rose, feeling heavy, from the bed.
In the night, the palace was perfectly silent. Faint moonlight fell through the windows. The air was cool and still. Anyara settled a heavy robe about her shoulders and pulled its fur collar tight about her throat. She slipped her feet into soft hide sandals and went out into the passageway.
“All you all right?”
The voice startled her. Coinach stepped forward into the soft pool of silver shed by a little skylight.
“I forgot you were here.” Anyara smiled.
“Always. I thought I heard you but was not sure. I should have come in to check.”
“No, no.” Anyara waved her shieldman’s self-doubt away. “I’m fine. Can’t sleep, that’s all.”
She glanced at the simple wooden chair let into an alcove where Coinach spent each night.
“You can’t get much sleep either, I imagine,” she said.
“I am not here to sleep, my lady. But I’ve had much worse beds in my time, in any case.” They both spoke in whispers. The heavy silence of the palace felt insistent, as if it would resent any attempt to disturb it.
“Will you walk with me a little?” Anyara asked. “My head needs clearing.”
They went together along the corridor, the sound of their careful footsteps sighing along the stone walls ahead of them. From each narrow window high in those walls a diffuse beam of moonlight descended to illuminate them as they passed beneath it. There was the faintest lingering scent on the air, like a memory of warmer days.
“What is that smell?” Anyara murmured. “It never seems to quite go away.”
“The Shadowhand’s wife roasts spices on her braziers,” Coinach whispered.
“Oh. I never thought to ask her.”
Anyara led the way into a long, thin room that ran along the side of the palace. Facing them were tall, barred doors inlaid with patterns of pearl and dark wood. Anyara went to one and lifted the thin beam that held it closed.