“When I lived with the Seordah, I met a woman. Very small, very old, but every soul in her tribe afforded her the greatest respect.” Dahrena added more fuel to the fire as she spoke, Vaelin huddling in his cloak, as close to the flames as he dared. The chill had lessened somewhat but still he trembled.
“I sensed her gift,” Dahrena continued. “And she sensed mine. The Seordah are not like us, they speak openly of the Dark, discuss it, try to understand it, even though true understanding still eludes even the wisest amongst them. She told me something about the nature of gifts, she told me that the greater the gift the greater the price it exacts. For this reason she rarely used her own, for it was great indeed, but every instant of its use brought death one step closer, and she wished to see her grandchildren grow. I only saw her use it once, when the summer came. Fires are common in the great forest during the summer months, the tinder grows dry and it only takes a single bolt of lightning to set whole swathes alight. The Seordah do not fear the fires of summer, in fact they welcome them, for they thin the forest where it grows too thick to hunt, and bring forth stronger trees from the cindered ground. But sometimes the fires grow large, and when two or more fires meet they birth an inferno that destroys more than it renews. And that summer was very hot.
“When it came it moved so fast there was no outrunning it, the way it leapt from tree to tree, as if it were some great hungry beast, and we were its next meal. It surrounded the camp on all sides, we huddled in the centre and my brothers and sisters sang their death songs. Then this small, old woman stepped forward. She spoke no incantations, made no gestures, just stood and stared at the fire. And the sky . . . the sky became black. The wind came down, chill and cold, bearing rain, a rain so heavy it bore us to the ground with the weight of its waters, so much I feared I had been saved from burning only to drown. Steam billowed as it met the fire, covering us all in a dense mist, and when it faded the fire had gone, leaving damp, blackened stumps, and an old woman lying on the ground, bleeding as you bled just now.”
Vaelin rubbed his hands together, trying to keep the chatter from his teeth. “D-did she live?”
Dahrena gave a small smile and nodded. “Just one more season. To the best of my knowledge she never used her gift again. It was strange but the summer ended that day, rain and wind replacing sun and heat until autumn brought golden relief. She told me she had tipped the balance too far and it would take time for the scales to right themselves.”
Dahrena extended a hand towards the fire, fingers wide in the warmth. “Our gifts are us, my lord. They do not come from elsewhere, they are as much a part of your being as your thoughts or your senses, and like any other action they require fuel, fuel that burns with the use, as this fire will burn until it’s nothing but ash.” She withdrew her hand, her face serious. “As First Counsel, I ask that you exercise greater care in future.”
“S-something comes,” he stammered, clenching his teeth in frustration. “My song brings warning.”
“Warning of what?”
Lyrna’s face . . . The song like a scream . . .
He closed his eyes against the vision, fearing the song would return, knowing he wouldn’t survive another verse. “I don’t kn-know. B-but there is one amongst the gifted who may, one who lives at the p-place they call the Dark Clave . . . A man named Harlick.”
She wanted him to spend the next day resting but he refused, clamping himself to Flame’s saddle and staying there by sheer effort of will, though Captain Orven had to reach out and steady him a few times. The guardsman was clearly disconcerted by his Tower Lord’s sudden and unexplained illness but wise enough not to voice any unwelcome questions. Insha ka Forna however, felt no such restraint, offering several caustic observations to Dahrena throughout the day. He thought it best not to ask for a translation, though from the discomfort on Orven’s face, it seemed his knowledge of the Eorhil language had grown considerably.
The chill had begun to abate by midday, and by the time they made camp all trace of the tremble had disappeared. But the vision lingered, the princess’s face capturing his thoughts with maddening compulsion. Throughout his captivity he had never sought her out when he sang, more through indifference than spite. His anger towards her had faded that day on the Linesh docks, but he never grew any more regard for her than his already healthy respect for the sharpness of her mind. Her ambition had been too great, the crime they shared too terrible to allow for affection or friendship. There were times though, when he felt the song tug at him, singing the tune he recalled from his last vision of her, when she had wept, alone with no-one to see. But he had always resisted the song’s call, concentrating instead on Frentis and, occasionally, Sherin. Finding no more than the vaguest glimpses of the former and increasingly dim visions of the latter.
Is it because she feels our love gone? he often wondered. He understood now the blood-song was not limitless, that he could seek out only those he knew, those who had touched his soul somehow, and even then the clarity of the vision varied. His first visions of Sherin had been bright and clear, like looking through well-polished glass, gradually becoming more opaque as time passed. His last glimpse had seen her alongside Ahm Lin, standing in a courtyard set within a house of completely unfamiliar design, exchanging words with a man in plain clothing, unarmed but exuding a warrior’s nature. Vaelin saw how the man tried to hide his regard for Sherin, but it was clearly considerable from the way his eyes tracked her. Vaelin knew his own face had once held a near-exact expression. The vision faded, leaving hurt and regret in its wake. He didn’t search for her again for almost a year, and when he did all he could find was a sensation of clear air and great height, as if she stood atop a mountain . . . That and something more; she had been happy.
The journey to the place Sister Virula called the Dark Clave, and Dahrena called Nehrin’s Point, took the best part of another week, tracking through mountain and forest. They took hospitality from a few settlements along the way, Vaelin gaining an appreciation of the hardships and rewards on offer to those who chose to make a life in the Reaches.
“Came north four years ago, m’lord,” a gap-toothed Asraelin bargeman told him at Lowen’s Cove, a small port serving the mines some forty miles south of Mirror Sound. “Worked barges on the Brinewash from a boy, till the Fleet Lord scooped me up for my three years under the King’s flag. Half the fleet’s gone now, sold off to settle the war debts. Got left on the quay with no more than the shirt on my back, worked passage on a freighter to the Reaches. Came ashore penniless, now I got a wife, son, house and third share in my own barge.”
“You don’t miss the Realm?” Vaelin asked.
“What’s there to miss? There a man is born to his station, here he makes his own. And the air.” The bargeman put his head back and breathed in deeply. “It’s clearer, sweeter. In the Realm I was always choking.”
Nehrin’s Point sat on a promontory overlooking a sickle-shaped bay where waves pounded a beach of white sand. There were perhaps forty houses, well-built with thick stone walls against the sea-borne wind. They arrived in late afternoon when a stream of children were emerging from one of the larger buildings. There was no sign of any Faith presence or guard house.
Vaelin made for the large building where a blond, bearded man played with an equally blond boy of no more than six years age. The boy was throwing stones at the blond man, his small hands plucking them from a pile at his feet, the man batting them away with a stick. Despite his age the boy had a good arm, his throws fast and precise, but the blond man smacked every stone from the air with unerring precision as the stick moved in a blur, stopping as he caught sight of Vaelin, giving a pained grunt as one of the boy’s stones thumped into his chest.