He gave a sudden, harsh laugh, his bowed head jerking up and cracking against the stone wall. ‘Of course you know what it means. You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? Anyway, it was a bad winter, not a time to be alone in deep Anlane. She kept me alive, though, somehow. She was a strong woman. Ah, and beautiful. As beautiful as any Kyrinin you’ve ever seen.
‘I remember walking through snowdrifts as high as my waist, and some so high she had to carry me on her back. I remember hiding, for days at a time. We left White Owl lands, crossed into Snake and then beyond, and always we were hiding. Can you imagine? I still feel the cold, sometimes, even when there’s a fire burning. I can’t get warm. It was a long time, always moving, always starving, always alone.’
His hands shifted. Inurian saw them twitching.
‘There was a storm eventually, worse than anything before,’ said Aeglyss. ‘One morning, she just stayed asleep. She would not wake no matter how I shook her. I lay down beside her, and folded her arms around me. I knew ... I could feel... that if I could find the way to use it, the Shared could keep her alive. It was like seeing a light just out reach, and every time I reached for it, it went away. I could tell that there was warmth in the Shared, but I had no idea how to draw it out. No one had taught me. So she died, and I waited for the end to come.
‘They came instead. She had come far enough, you see. She had... lasted long enough. They found me beside her and took me into the marshes.’
Again, Aeglyss broke off. He looked up at Inurian for the first time. There was not enough moonlight for Inurian to make out his features clearly. Still, there was a pallid, haunted look about the man’s face that chilled him.
‘That is where I first heard your name, you know,’ said Aeglyss. ‘Those fools sitting around in their tents and huts; said you understood more about the Shared than most, even though it was not strong in you. I thought nothing of it, then. And yet all those years later, I found myself in Hakkan talking about Kolglas, and I remembered you. Ha! Almost enough to make you believe in the Black Road, do you think?
‘Here we are. You and I, the knowledge and the power. The two halves of something that could be quite new. That is how it ought to be. You must be my guide through the deep places of the Shared. It’s there in me: this... vastness, that I don’t know how to reach, how to use. Do you understand?’
Inurian could sense the other man’s need, his longing. Something in Aeglyss was breaking, or perhaps had broken long ago.
‘I cannot help you,’ said Inurian. ‘I told you that before.’
‘Cannot?’ cried Aeglyss, surging to his feet. His voice lashed out. Inurian felt his skin crawling with the tread of a thousand imagined insects. He might die now, he thought. Now, in this cell with no one to see, he might easily die.
Aeglyss leaned against the wall. One hand hung at his side. The other was pressed to the stone, splayed like a huge, rigid spider. When he spoke again, his voice was quite level. ‘You can see what is inside men.’
‘I can sometimes . . . know what is unspoken,’ said Inurian carefully.
‘What do you see in me?’ asked Aeglyss.
Inurian closed his eyes for a moment. He lay quite still beneath Aeglyss’ intense gaze. He felt the hard, cold floor of the cell against his side. He focused upon it, shutting out the blackness that strove to force its way into his mind.
Aeglyss laughed bitterly. ‘You are afraid. Everyone is afraid of me. They always have been. The White Owls wanted to kill me; Dyrkyrnon cast me out. Even these Black Road bitches, after I have brought them to the edge of greatness. Whatever I do for them, they will not let me be one of them. I know that.’
Knowing was not the same as believing in the heart, Inurian reflected. Whatever Aeglyss might say, the hope—the need—for acceptance was so powerful in him it leaked out, giving the lie to his words even as he spoke them. He still craved the approval of the Horin-Gyre leaders. His desire to belong somewhere, anywhere, was painfully obvious to Inurian.
‘The fear is too much for them,’ Aeglyss continued. ‘All afraid, but now they do not even know what they fear. I will not be put aside any more. I will not! You, you of all people, will not turn away from me.’ He shivered and clasped his arms across his chest. He was swaying. ‘Who has been the greatest of our kind? Dorthyn who hunted the Whreinin out of the south? Minon the Torturer? Orlane Kingbinder?’
‘All were powerful in their ways,’ Inurian murmured. ‘Their power added little happiness to the world, but in any case you overestimate your strength if you mean to compare it to theirs.’
‘You could teach me their ways,’ said Aeglyss, then, no longer addressing Inurian, ‘To bind a King...’ He shook himself. ‘I think ... I think I cannot continue like this. I think I will lose my mind. Or die, perhaps. Will you help me, Inurian?’
When Inurian did not reply, Aeglyss turned as if to go. Inurian lifted himself up on one arm.
‘I would help you if I could, Aeglyss,’ he said.
Aeglyss stopped. He stood there, his head bowed, his hands digging into his shoulders.
‘Not just for your sake,’ continued Inurian, ‘but because of what you might do. It is too late, though. Your heart, your intent—they’re too... damaged. I have known little love in my life, Aeglyss. All our kind learn what it is to be feared, to be turned away. I am sorry for what you have suffered, but the pain need not lead to whatever place it is you have found yourself in. It need not have brought you to this.’
‘Help me, then,’ said Aeglyss urgently. ‘Do not refuse me. Please, you are the only one who could understand. I will give you whatever you want.’
‘Is that truly all you have seen in the Shared? Power? A way to bend others to your will?’
‘You talk of power as if it is an evil thing. I see a strength that is given to me, but not to others. Only a fool would turn aside from such a boon. What else would you have me see?’
‘That all is one. If you use the Shared to harm others, you harm yourself.’
‘All is one. All is one! No. I don’t think so. All is hate, fear, pain. If others seek to harm me—as they will, as they have always done—would you have me lie still and unprotesting beneath their blows?’
‘Then I am sorry. I cannot teach you to see what I see; I cannot heal your wounds. You would not use anything I taught you well.’
Inurian stretched himself out on the floor and shut his eyes. He could feel Aeglyss standing there for a little while, feel the weight of his presence.
‘I will wait for you to change your mind, Inurian,’ Aeglyss breathed. ‘But not for long. Not long.’
Then he left.
Inurian did not sleep for a long time. He lay awake, staring at the wall of his cell. For some reason, out of all that had been said, it was the names Aeglyss had spoken that haunted him the most: Dorthyn, Minon, and Orlane Kingbinder, most fearful of them all. Great powers they had been in their time; true shapers, who moulded the course of the world.
The na’kyrim now were but an echo of what they were when the world was younger, and it had always seemed to Inurian a good thing that it was so. The might of the great na’kyrim of old bred fear and loathing in those, Huanin and Kyrinin alike, who could never hope to understand it. Worse, it had corrupted the na’kyrim themselves, made them drunk with their potency. Many had become the eyes of bloody storms. Such was the company Aeglyss sought to count himself in, and Inurian could almost smell the truth of it. This marred young na’kyrim, burning with anger and pain, would cast a long shadow if he ever came by the power he craved. Inurian felt the awful horrors of history crowding in, clamouring to be unleashed once more upon the world.