Riding away, Aeglyss was hunched low. He did not look back. The Kyrinin fell in behind him and were soon swallowed by the woods. The bloodied corpse of the na’kyrim from Castle Kolglas lay alone on the damp grass, waiting for the carrion birds. The sound of the falls rolled on.
Chapter 4
Car Criagar
From the towering heights of the Tan Dihrin—the World Mountains—spill chains of lesser peaks like arms reaching out across the earth. Of these the longest is the Car Criagar. Less fierce than the Car Dine to its north but still wild and rugged enough, the Car Criagar is a great wall of mountain tops stretched between the valleys of the Dihrve and the Glas. Its lower slopes are clothed in forest, but wind-scoured moors and rockfields drape its peaks. All through summer, snow clings to bowls and slopes that never see the sun. When the season turns and the nights grow longer, the Tan Dihrin sends its breath down from the roof of the world, and the high Car Criagar is lost in shifting snow and storm. Yet in this heart—and soul-breaking place, that has no love for life, there are the carcasses of ancient cities and fortresses. These, it is said, were the dwelling places of a people who lived and ruled long before the Gods departed this world.
They must have been a mighty people, greater in will and capacity than we are today, to have built so grandly in such places. Those who visit the ruins now—Kyrinin, or masterless men, or hunters from the valley of the Glas—come as scavengers, wanderers. They mistrust these abandoned places, and tell tales of ghosts and beasts that haunt them. Perhaps their unease has deeper roots, though. Perhaps they do not wish to be reminded of how far short they fall of those ancestors who lived in the light of the Gods.
Dun Aygll was a city of stone and marble memories. Lying at the edge of the high grasslands and moors in the north of Ayth-Haig lands, it had been the seat of the Aygll Kings from Abban, the first, to Lerr, the last, the boy king murdered at In’Vay. Palaces still dotted the city—survivors of the fire and ruin that attended the Kingship’s fall and of the Storm Years that followed it—but they had fallen into disrepair as the wealth and power of the Ayth Thanes who now ruled there had declined. The remembered splendour of those royal residences, implicit in the crumbling architecture and the mosaics and frescoes that could still be glimpsed behind overgrowing weeds, haunted the city and lent it an air of neglect and decay. Packs of wild dogs roamed the courtyards and gardens in which kings who ruled from the Vale of Tears to the Bay of Gold had spent their days. Beggars and thieves, the destitute and the desperate, were the only people who now found refuge beneath roofs that had echoed long ago to the pomp of ceremony.
Only one palace remained intact: a long, low fortified residence on the town’s northern edge where the Thane Ranal oc Ayth-Haig lived in drink-soaked seclusion. Its proper name was the Bann Ilin; many called it the Sot’s Palace. The Ayth Blood had fallen far from its early days of influence and grandeur. A succession of dissolute and spendthrift leaders had reduced it to its current state of fawning obedience to the Haig Thanes. Even Ranal’s authority over his own lands was tenuous. Whether it was the lords in Asger Tan and Ist Norr on the distant coast, the bandit settlements and goldpanners’ camps in the denuded Far Dyne Hills or the companies of Haig soldiers who patrolled the great highways of his territory, there were many within his domain whose loyalty to him was notional at best.
Taim Narran dar Lannis-Haig rode into this fading city at the head of a column of exhausted men. His company was less than it had been. The weakest of his band had been left in Vaymouth, under the watchful eye of one of the few merchants in the city whose roots lay in the Glas valley. No more had died on the road west along the Nar Vay coastline and up through Dramain to Dun Aygll, but the journey had taken its toll. Their food was all but gone and they lived on what they could buy or barter from farmers and traders along the way. Taim had been glad to leave Haig lands behind, and even Dun Aygll, with its grim, dank feel, was a pleasing sight. The Ayth-Haig Blood was little more friendly to his own than Haig itself, but their arrival here meant they were nearing more welcoming regions: a few days further and they would reach Kilvale, on the southern border of Kilkry-Haig. There at last they could be certain of finding true allies.
Rest must come first, though. For three centuries or more a great horse market had been held each year in Dun Aygll. Its stables and sheds lay empty for much of the time, and they provided a temporary home for warriors and animals alike once Taim had agreed a price with the market warden, a minor official of the Ironworkers’ Craft. Only two of the Crafts—the Ironworkers and the Woollers—kept their Senior Houses in Dun Aygll; over the years the rest had migrated first to Kolkyre, when Kilkry was supreme amongst the Bloods, then to Vaymouth when Haig took on the mantle. The Crafts always flocked to power, like buzzards shadowing a retreating army. The two that remained in Dun Aygll were, at least as much as the Thane, the masters of the city. It was to the Crafthouse of the Woollers that Taim went after his men had been settled. His father had been a member, and that, he thought, was enough to mean that the Woollers’ House might be a source of the information he craved.
The building was a grand one, set back from the street behind a columned entryway. A beggar, her face mauled by disease—the King’s Rot that some held to be a curse bequeathed to his subjects by the last Aygll monarch as he died—held a pleading hand out towards Taim from her station on the steps.
Taim looked up at the building’s façade. It must once have been bright with a rainbow of colours, for the minute tiles of a huge mosaic pattern curved and swept across the stonework. Their hues now gave only a muted hint of their former glory. Carved faces gazed down upon him as he passed between the columns and through the open doorway. There was a short passageway, and then a gate of wrought iron blocked his path. Beyond it, he could see a garden laid out around a crumbling fountain.
A sceptical guard gave him admittance and told him to wait while someone was summoned. The official too, when he came, was less than welcoming; only after a show of reluctance did he go to find a more senior officer for Taim to talk to.
Taim sat on a pitted stone bench beside the fountain, gazing at the thin stream of water that flowed from the mouth of a twisting fish. The skill of the mason who had carved the fountain had been overwhelmed by time. The fish was pitted and flaking. Looking around, Taim could see that the gardens were still cared for, but winter had robbed them of beauty. Bare earth, browned stems, piles of fallen leaves and a scattering of scrawny evergreen shrubs were all that could be seen. The gardens filled the centre of a great quadrangle, around which a porticoed walkway ran. There was no sign of life. The place had a somnolent feel.
In the end, they sent the Craftmaster’s Secretary to talk with him. He was a portly, round-faced man from Drandar, who appeared to have a stock of genuine goodwill for Lannis-Haig. He said he had visited Anduran several times.
‘Your Thane, all of your Thanes, have been good friends to our Craft in the Glas valley.’
‘The wooller’s trade is a part of my Blood’s life. It has always been so.’
‘These are sorry times for us all,’ murmured the Secretary. ‘No good can come of such disruption.’
‘Do you know anything of what has happened? There was little word on the road from Vaymouth.’
The Secretary grew uneasy. He pursed his lips and brushed dust from the surface of the bench. ‘It is not usual for word gathered through Craft channels to be shared too widely,’ he said, but hastily continued when he saw disappointment in Taim’s face, ‘yet your father was, as you say, a member, and you could no doubt get the same information elsewhere. We know nothing that is not known outside these walls, I think.’