Time enough for that, he told himself. Later, when they’ve settled in. Or perhaps in the morning.
Thorin would have looked outside, but his room had no window. He longed to be free of Grimhold.
Baron Glass felt remarkably old. Alone in his chamber, he sat staring at his plate of cold food, rubbing the stump where his arm had been. As too often happened these days, he began to feel sleepy.
Old men take naps, he told himself. Without arguing he gave in to his grogginess and laid himself down on his bed, which felt extraordinarily comfortable. Reaching out with his only hand, he dragged the wooden table close to the bedside and pinched out the candles. The darkness felt good. He would sleep, he decided, and see Lukien later. His troubled mind began to ease, and soon he drifted off.
Baron Glass slept. And as he slept he dreamed.
He had not told anyone of the vivid nightmares he’d been having, not even Meriel. In that strange, knowing state viewing one’s own dreams, it did not surprise Baron Glass that the images started up again, pulling him from a peaceful netherworld to a place of living colours. It was the doing of Kahldris, the spirit of the armour — he knew this now with certainty. He had never before seen the things his brain was showing him, yet he knew they were real experiences lived by someone other than himself.
A man on a warhorse, on a hill, overlooking a valley. White hair, long and straight, stirring in the breeze and across his hardened face. Black armour encased his chest and arms and legs, fitting him like a living thing, sprouting spikes and glistening with light. Behind the man rode a standard bearer with a triangular flag, and behind the flagman rode an army.
Baron Glass looked deeper into his dream. He studied the face of the white-haired man, who turned his own face toward the watching baron with a disquieting expression. Staring eyes pierced the baron, but he was not afraid. He knew that this was Kahldris, as he had been, as he might still be in some world of the dead.
A general, thought Thorin. He had been told that Kahldris was a general, a leader of men as he himself had been. And when this revelation struck him Kahldris nodded, as if to agree. Instantly an understanding passed between them.
Thorin’s disembodied eyes gazed out over the valley. There he saw a city dotted with towers with a river running through it. Because it was a dream, he could see beyond the city, too, beyond the desert to another army in the sands, marching slowly, herding kreels, a dark-skinned band snaking purposefully through the sun. These were Jadori; Thorin recognised them easily. But he was perplexed by the vision, and so looked back to Kahldris for answers.
The man on the horse still sat there, but it wasn’t Kahldris any more. Baron Glass saw his own face staring back at him. He looked youthful, strong again. His body filled the armour like an athlete’s. In his right hand he held the stallion’s reins. In his left hand — a hand attached to an arm he’d lost ages ago — gleamed a sword.
Thorin awoke, gasping. He sat up, looked around the darkened room and felt for the stump of his arm. As always it was there, taunting him.
‘Great Fate. .’
He caught his breath and calmed himself. Suddenly cold, he craved the light of the candles he’d extinguished, but was too shaken to light them or move from his bed.
‘Kahldris,’ he whispered, his eyes scanning the blackness. ‘Are you here?’
The Akari didn’t need to answer. Thorin could feel his presence in the cold against his skin. He knew the spirit was with him, maybe sitting next to him on the mattress, whispering like a demon in his ear, telling him about the armour, wordless but clear. Thorin rubbed his shoulder stump as he listened to the faint voice, deciphering its dark intentions. He felt a warmth flood his shoulder that shouldn’t have been there, and then he knew what Kahldris meant.
‘The armour will make me whole again.’
It had been years since Baron Glass had shed a tear but he felt like crying now. This bitter battle had raged in him since he’d come to Grimhold, and he knew his resolve was weakening. The Devil’s Armour could be his, for it was waiting for him in its dungeonlike hold, and all the doors barring his way would be unlocked. Somehow, whenever he secretly went to gaze upon the armour, the doors were always unlocked.
‘No,’ he said, steeling himself. He looked around the darkened chamber. ‘Do you hear me? Whatever beast you be, listen to me now — I am not a thief. I will not steal or go against these good hosts.’ He rose in anger. ‘Do you hear me? Answer me, you devil!’
There was a pause and an awful silence. Then the coldness of the room increased and the voice of Kahldris rang in Thorin’s head.
Then why do you stay?
Thorin could not — would not — answer the Akari. The answer was simply too frightful. The cold and Kahldris finally retreated. Thorin stood without moving for a long time. When at last he had the courage, he left his chamber in search of a taper to light his candles.
7
The great fortress of Grimhold had been built into a mountainside by a race who thought little of such monumental tasks. The Akari were peaceful poets and thinkers, mostly, but the warriors among them were wary of their distant neighbours in Jador. Once, the Akari civilisation had flourished in its desert valley, a cultured oasis surrounded by sand. Grimhold had been built on the outskirts of the Akari world, on its frontier fringes. It had taken a decade for the Akari to build the keep, tunnelling out its labyrinthine core and moulding great, smooth turrets from the excavated rock, so that the fortress looked as if it had been there forever and was difficult for enemies to spot.
On one such turret stood a young woman, alone, wrapped in the soothing darkness of a desert night, her face turned to the blackened sky, her blank and featureless eyes enraptured by the bounty of stars. This particular turret was stout and low, almost a balcony, jutting up from the rear of the keep, and afforded a breathtaking view of the valley that had once suckled the dead Akari race. The woman on the turret was unconcerned with the valley, however, or with the history of the fortress she called home. Instead she was mesmerised by the stars and the ethereal voice in her head that explained them to her.
White-Eye had never seen stars with her own eyes. It was the eye inside her mind that let her see, and it was the gentle coaching of her spirit Faralok that brought the images alive. Tonight, with Faralok’s help, White-Eye could see the carpet of stars as well as any sighted girl. She knew their twinkling beats, knew their placement in the sky and could point at them precisely with an outstretched finger. Blind since birth, White-Eye had been given an astonishing gift by Faralok. He and his strange magic had brought life to her milky eyes.
I have never seen snow, she thought suddenly. I wonder if it is like the stars.
No Jadori had ever seen snow, but Gilwyn had told her about it. He had said that it was white and cold and twinkled like stars. White-Eye wrapped her arms about her shoulders. When the sun went down the desert cooled quickly, and that was good for White-Eye. Sunlight caused her the most intense pain. It was why she had come to live in Grimhold, away from her bright city, to live in the dark, safe recesses of the keep. She had been an infant then, newly born with eyes like two quartz stones and a mother dead in childbirth, dead because Lukien had slain her. It had been a horrible mistake, one that still haunted the Bronze Knight. Years later, it had brought him to White-Eye as her protector.