A huge man, all muscular bulk, appeared in the doorway: Igris, chief of Kanin’s shieldmen. He waited in silence, staring rigidly ahead. Kanin set aside the comb.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘The halfbreed asked for an audience. We told him you would not see him.’ The man’s voice was deep and strong.
‘Very well,’ said Kanin. Wain rose and began buckling on her sword belt.
‘He’s insistent, though,’ Igris said. ‘He still waits outside. He asks that he be allowed to speak with the other halfbreed, the one from Kolglas. The guards turned him away when he tried to get in to the gaol.’
Kanin sighed in irritation. ‘So he has you running around as his messenger, does he?’
For the first time, the shieldman glanced at his master. His face was impassive, but there might have been the faintest flicker of doubt in his eyes.
‘Perhaps he charmed you with that voice of his?’ Kanin suggested. ‘Perhaps you listened a little too closely when he suggested you should pass on his request?’
‘No, my lord. I do not think so.’
‘Well you wouldn’t, would you? What do you think, Wain? Perhaps we should rid ourselves of Aeglyss.’
His sister was testing her blade’s edge with her thumb.
‘He’s obsessed with Kennet’s tame halfbreed. Let them talk to each other. What harm can it do? It might keep Aeglyss quiet for a while, at least.’
There was room in the Shared for Inurian to find peace. By stilling the chatter of his senses and freeing his mind of all contact with the world about him, he could sink back through deep strata of silence and darkness. He could bring about dissolution. It was a feeling none save another na’kyrim could hope to understand, and even amongst them precious few could attain it as he did. Time lost its meaning there, in the abyssal places, and the mind could find solace. It was a respite he needed during his incarceration in Anduran.
On the fifth night of his imprisonment he lay down upon the floor. He let his awareness of the cold and of the stone beneath him fall away. He shut out the harsh voices in the yard outside and the whispering rivulets of rainwater trickling down the walls of his prison. His breathing shallowed, taking on a steady trance-rhythm. His thoughts slipped away behind him, like eddies in the wake of a ship. His mind was smoke, attenuating. He was thousands, thousands of thousands. He was Huanin, Kyrinin, even joyful Saolin. He ran within Kyrinin hunters, felt the lovestruck awe of every Huanin mother, the abandoned exultation of the Saolin’s shapeshifting.
Even the Whreinin had left their traces in the eternity of the Shared. Although the wolfenkind were long gone, they had once walked the world and the Shared would never forget it. He could sense the wolfenkind’s savage cruelty, that had finally driven the Tainted Races to hound them to extinction, but there was no judgement in the sensing of it. The Shared was all things, and there was no good or evil in it, no right and wrong. There was only existence, or the memory of existence.
The Anain alone lay beyond him. They were there, like the rest—theirs was an immeasurable, illimitable presence—but their nature was of a different kind, and not something any na’kyrim could comprehend or taste.
Inurian faded, dispersing into the seamless unity that underlay thought and life. He had surrendered himself thus to the Shared many times in his life, but on this occasion the experience was marred. Something tugged at his awareness, refusing to allow its cleansing dissolution. It was as if the last flimsy threads of his mind caught upon some snag and were held. For a moment he strove to dissipate those final elements of his self. The focus grew stronger. The sensation of his thoughts recoalescing was almost physical. It grieved him to be thus denied release. As he ascended towards consciousness, he felt that which had prevented his escape drawing closer: a turbulent shadow casting itself over him and wrapping the sharp stench of corruption around him. Like a drop falling upon the still surface of a pool, something had marred the perfection of the Shared.
He opened his eyes to find Aeglyss standing before him.
‘I am not sure what you were doing, but I would like to learn the way of it,’ Aeglyss said quietly. A faint smile was playing across his pale, thin lips.
Inurian rose and flexed his right knee to ease its protests. The long walk through Anlane, and the damp and cold of his miserable cell, had reminded the joint of a twisting fall long ago on the rough slopes of the Car Anagais. He returned his visitor’s gaze unresponsively, burying his surprise and the sudden presentiment of horror that accompanied it. It was clear that Aeglyss was the cause of the turbulence in the Shared; what that implied about the man’s potential potency put a sliver of fear into Inurian’s heart.
‘Can we not even talk to one another?’ Aeglyss persisted. ‘I wish only to learn from you. I need your help—your guidance—to harness the strength I know I possess.’
He took a short step closer to Inurian. ‘Our interests run in the same channel. These people would kill you without a second thought: I have been arguing on your behalf ever since we arrived here.’
‘That’s a lie,’ Inurian said evenly.
‘Ah, so you’re interested enough to go scrabbling about inside my head. What do you see there? I could keep you out—I did at Kolglas—but there’s no need to. You must know I mean you no harm.’
‘I don’t need the Shared to tell me that you are no friend of mine,’ replied Inurian. It was true only in part. He was not prepared to give even a hint of how unsettling the things he sensed in Aeglyss were. The younger man carried such a roiling knot of anger and resentment in him that Inurian could almost taste it.
‘Use me, then, if you refuse my friendship,’ snapped Aeglyss. ‘I hoped for more from another na’kyrim, but I should have known better. I’ve had no better from na’kyrim than from anyone else. Why should you be any different?’
It took an effort of will for Inurian not to wince at the sharp, sudden pain that flared in Aeglyss as he spoke. That was what underlay all the more ferocious emotions that burned in Aeglyss. Beneath the bitterness was pain: a deep-rooted hurt, profound and lonely.
‘Help me because I can help you,’ Aeglyss insisted. ‘I cannot force you—I know I’ve not the strength for that, not yet—but if you help me to understand what I am capable of, you will benefit as much as I will. I know I can do things with the Shared no one has been able to do in years. I know it!’
Inurian regarded the other man. He could almost pity him. Almost, bur not quite.
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘I cannot help you.’
For an instant, a terrible fury burned in Aeglyss’ grey eyes. Unable to help himself, Inurian glanced away. When he forced himself to meet the other’s gaze again, that fury had gone.
‘We can talk about it another time, perhaps,’ said Aeglyss.
He left, closing and barring the door behind him.
In the first hour or two of daylight, the Children of the Hundred came out on to Anduran’s market square. Kanin was there, organising a party of Horin-Gyre warriors who were about to head south down the valley. Anduran itself might have fallen quickly, but there was troubling, sporadic resistance throughout the country-side. The survivors of a minor battle near Targlas, halfway between Anduran and Tanwrye, had just straggled in: they had been victorious, and probably broken the will of that town’s populace, but it had cost thirty lives that Kanin could ill afford.
Already in a foul mood, he watched the Inkallim taking up their sparring positions. Every morning they did this, performing their elaborate and precise ritualistic combats beneath the steely gaze of Shraeve, their leader.
She stood attentive and motionless as the first clash of blades rang out. She was a tall woman, lean and powerful. Her long hair, dyed black like that of all Inkallim, was tied back. Two swords were sheathed crossways upon her back. Never yet had Kanin seen her draw them. She would be lethal, he knew: lethality was the sole purpose of the Battle Inkall. Although only around eighty remained of the hundred or more who had joined the long march through Anlane—a dozen or so Hunt Inkallim had come too, but their business was not on the battlefield—eighty of the Battle were worth at least two hundred ordinary warriors, probably more. They followed Shraeve’s command, though. Kanin could no more tell them when and where to employ their skills than he could order the passage of the clouds across the sky. He was not inclined to make the attempt, in any case; he would as soon trust one of the long-dead wolfenkind as the ravens’ loyalty to his cause.