Trembling, the Mhybe looked down at Silverfox. The girl's eyes were wide, even now filling with tears as she stared up at her mother. 'Do I?' she whispered. 'Do I feed on you?'
The Mhybe closed her eyes, wishing she could hide the truth from Silverfox once again, and for ever more. Instead, she said, 'Not your choice, daughter — it is simply part of what you are, and I accept this' — and yet rage at the foul cruelty of it — 'as must you. There is an urgency within you, Silverfox, a force ancient and undeniable — you know it as well, feel it-'
'Ancient and undeniable?' Kallor rasped. 'You don't know the half of it, woman.' He jolted forward across the table and grasped Silverfox's tunic, pulled her close. Their faces inches apart, the High King bared his teeth. 'You're in there, aren't you? I know it. I feel it. Come out, bitch-'
'Release her,' Brood commanded in a low, soft voice.
The High King's sneer broadened. He relented his grip on the girl's tunic, slowly leaned back.
Heart pounding, the Mhybe raised a trembling hand to her face. Terror had ripped through her when Kallor had grasped her daughter, an icy flood that left her limbs without strength — vanquishing with ease her maternal instinct to defend — revealing to herself, and to everyone present, her own cowardice. She felt tears of shame well in her eyes, trickle down her lined cheeks.
'Touch her again,' the warlord continued, 'and I will beat you senseless, Kallor.'
'As you like,' the ancient warrior replied.
Armour rustled as Whiskeyjack turned to Caladan Brood. The commander's face was dark, his expression harsh. 'Had you not done so, Warlord, I would have voiced my own threat.' He fixed iron eyes on the High King. 'Harm a child? I would not beat you senseless, Kallor, I would rip your heart out.'
The High King grinned. 'Indeed. I shake with fear.'
'That will do,' Whiskeyjack murmured. His gauntleted left hand lashed out in a backhanded slap, striking Kallor's face. Blood sprayed across the table as the High King's head snapped back. The force of the blow staggered him. The handle of his bastard sword was suddenly in his hands, the sword hissing — then halting, half drawn.
Kallor could not move his arms further, for Caladan Brood now gripped both wrists. The High King strained, blood vessels swelling on his neck and temple, achieving nothing. Brood must have tightened his huge hands then, for he gasped, the sword's handle dropping from his grasp, the weapon thunking back into the scabbard. Brood stepped closer, but the Mhybe heard his soft words none the less. 'Accept what you have earned, Kallor. I have had quite enough of your contempt at this gathering. Any further test of my temper and it shall be my hammer striking your face. Understood?'
After a long moment, the High King grunted.
Brood released him.
Silence filled the tent, no-one moving, all eyes on Kallor's bleeding face.
Dujek withdrew a cloth from his belt — crusted with dried shaving soap — and tossed it at the High King. 'Keep it,' he growled.
The Mhybe moved up behind a pale, wide-eyed Silverfox, and laid her hands on her daughter's shoulders. 'No more,' she whispered. 'Please.'
Whiskeyjack faced Brood once again, ignoring Kallor as if the man had ceased to exist. 'Explain please, Warlord,' he said in a calm voice. 'What in Hood's name is this child?'
Shrugging her mother's hands from her shoulders, Silverfox stood, poised as if about to flee. Then she shook her head, wiped her eyes and drew a shuddering breath. 'No,' she said, 'let none answer but me.' She looked up at her mother — the briefest meeting of gazes — then surveyed the others once more. 'In all things,' she whispered, 'let none answer but me.'
The Mhybe reached out a hand, but could not touch. 'You must accept it, daughter,' she said, hearing the brittle-ness of her own conviction, and knowing — with a renewed surge of shame — that the others heard it as well. You must forgive … forgive yourself. Oh, spirits below, I dare not speak such words — I have lost that right, I have surely lost it now …
Silverfox turned to Whiskeyjack. 'The truth, now, Uncle. I am born of two souls, one of whom you knew very well. The woman Tattersail. The other soul belonged to the discorporate, ravaged remnants of a High Mage named Nightchill — in truth, little more than her charred flesh and bones, though other fragments of her were preserved as a consequence of a sealing spell. Tattersail's … death … occurred within the sphere of the Tellann warren — as projected by a T'lan Imass-'
The Mhybe alone saw the standard-bearer Artanthos flinch. And what, sir, do you know of this? The question flitted briefly through her mind — conjecture and consideration were tasks too demanding to exercise.
'Within that influence, Uncle,' Silverfox continued, 'something happened. Something unexpected. A Bonecaster from the distant past appeared, as did an Elder God, and a mortal soul-'
Cloth held to his face, Kallor's snort was muffled. ' "Nightchill",' he murmured. 'Such a lack of imagination … Did K'rul even know? Ah, what irony. '
Silverfox resumed. 'It was these three who gathered to help my mother, this Rhivi woman who found herself with an impossible child. I was born in two places at once — among the Rhivi in this world, and into the hands of the Bonecaster in the Tellann warren.' She hesitated, shuddering as if suddenly spent. 'My future,' she whispered after a moment, her arms drawing around herself, 'belongs to the T'lan Imass.' She spun suddenly to Korlat. 'They are gathering, and you will need their power in the war to come.'
'Unholy conjoining,' Kallor rasped, hand and cloth falling away, eyes narrowed, his face white as parchment behind the smeared blood. 'As I had feared — oh, you fools. Every one of you. Fools-'
'Gathering,' the Tiste Andii repeated, also ignoring the High King. 'Why? To what end, Silverfox?'
'That is for me to decide, for I exist to command them. To command them all. My birth proclaimed the Gathering — a demand that every T'lan Imass on this world has heard. And now, those who are able, are coming. They are coming.'
In his mind, Whiskeyjack was reeling. Fissures in Brood's contingent was alarming enough, but the child's revelations … his thoughts spun, spiralled down … then arose in a new place. The command tent and its confines slipped away, and he found himself in a world of twisted schemes, dark betrayals and their fierce, unexpected consequences — a world he hated with a passion.
Memories rose like spectres. The Enfilade at Pale, the decimation of the Bridgeburners, the assault on Moon's Spawn. A plague of suspicions, a maelstrom of desperate schemes…
A'Karonys, Bellurdan, Nightchill, Tattersail… The list of mages whose deaths could be laid at High Mage Tayschrenn's sandalled feet was written in the blood of senseless paranoia. Whiskeyjack had not been sorry to see the High Mage take his leave, though the commander suspected he was not as far off as it seemed. Outlawry, Laseen's proclamation cut us loose … but it's all a lie. Only he and Dujek knew the truth of that — the remainder of the Host believed they had indeed been outlawed by the Empress. Their loyalty was to Dujek Onearm, and, perhaps, to me as well. And Hood knows, we'll test that loyalty before we're done...
Yet she knows. The girl knows. He had no doubt that she was Tattersail reborn — the sorceress was there, in the cast of the child's features, in the way she stood and moved, in that sleepy, knowing gaze. The repercussions that tumbled from that truth overwhelmed Whiskeyjack — he needed time, time to think …
Tattersail reborn. damn you to Hood, Tayschrenn — in' advertent or not — what have you done?
Whiskeyjack had not known Nightchill — they'd never spoken and the breadth of his knowledge was based solely on the tales he'd heard. Mate to the Thelomen, Bellurdan, and a practitioner of High Rashan sorcery, she had been among the Emperor's chosen. Ultimately betrayed, just as the Bridgeburners had been …