CHAPTER 5

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Kan Avor

There is a ruin at the heart of the Lannis Blood: Kan Avor, the drowned city where once the Thanes of Gyre ruled, and where the creed of the Black Road was nurtured and tended. It stands now empty and silent, in the cold embrace of still waters and marsh. Birds roost upon its crumbling walls and bats hide in its broken towers. The people of the Glas Valley treasure this ruin, and all but venerate it. They think it a token of their determination, a glorious symbol of their past triumphs over the Black Road. They imagine that its persistence invigorates them. “See,” they say to one another. “See these broken and shackled towers. Here is the fate of our enemies. So strong is our grasp upon this land that we can tame mighty rivers and with them drown the cities of our foes.” It would have been better to unpick this city: to break it apart, stone from stone, carry away its every timber, plough its streets back into the soft earth until nothing remained. Kan Avor is the constant shadow of the past upon the present. It commemorates not glory but unforgiven and unforgotten hurts. When men venerate the memory of war and strife, and make temples of its relics, and seek to learn from the ruins of yesterday how they should live their lives today, then they have made themselves prisoners of the past, condemned to fight its wars again and again. For few wars are ever truly finished. There is always some remaining vein of bitterness for those who can neither forgive nor forget to mine. Time works many wonders, but they are not all to be treasured. It makes shackles out of past triumphs, burdens from victories. Bonds from memories. And it heals only if those who ride its currents are willing to be healed.

From Hallantyr’s Sojourn

I

The Inkallim came to the na’kyrim in his ruined, rotting citadel on the floodplain. She came hesitantly, almost stumbling, eyes gritted and reddened by sleeplessness. Though the waters that had once imprisoned this city had retreated, it could never be free of their legacy. So she came with mud on her shoes, the stink of decay and mould on her clothing. And though she was one of the Children of the Hundred, and had been fashioned by those who trained her into a cold and remorseless weapon, imbued with all the certainty of her faith and her capabilities, the world had become wholly inhospitable to certainties. So she came as a supplicant, and for the first time in her hard life there was fear in her as she spoke. “Aeglyss, can you hear me?” The na’kyrim did not pause in his shuffling, limping, staggering progress around the columned hall. He hauled his cadaverous form on a weaving path amongst and around the pillars, wandering aimless in that sparse forest of stone trees. He walked barefoot, and his split and scabbed feet left prints of pus and blood on the dank floorboards. He moved slowly, and seemed at each and every moment to be on the point of falling. Yet the air the Inkallim breathed felt alive. It was heavy in her mouth and throat and lungs, full of his power. It pressed upon her chest and her back and shoulders, as if he was not only contained within this shambling and broken body in its stained, ragged gown, but also in the glistening, moist walls and in the space they defined. As if he was everywhere. She followed him, walking in those bloody footprints. “Can you hear me?” she asked. “You must help me. You must hide some of your light, Aeglyss.” He did not seem to hear her, for though he murmured erratic little whispers, whatever conversation he held was with himself, or with no one. What few words rose loud enough for the Inkallim to hear were in a language she did not know. “Please,” she said. A word that her lips barely remembered well enough to form. “Our warriors turn on one another. They forget themselves, their cause, everything. They lie down and do not rise. They lose their minds. There is sickness in every street, every shelter. Fevers claim more each day, and there is barely a healer with enough sense or strength to treat them. Our triumph—the creed’s ascendancy—remains incomplete…” He turned suddenly and sharply. His thin gown hung slack from his bony shoulders. The contours of his bones—ribs, hips—showed through its material. He stared at her from deep within the pits his eyes had sunk into. There was blood in those eyes, a fine net of countless broken vessels leaking soft red. “Who are you?” he asked quietly. His voice cracked and creaked like the stale hinge of a long-forgotten door. “Shraeve,” she told him. “Shraeve. You know me.” “I know everyone,” he grunted. And turned away once more, lurching on in his unsteady circuit of the hall. There were cries rising up from outside, wailing that might be lamentation or simple madness. The Inkallim was not distracted by them. Such sounds—and worse—were common currency now in Kan Avor. The city had found its voice in them. She followed after the na’kyrim. “Shraeve…” he whispered. “Shraeve… Shraeve. Yes, the raven. The fierce one, the cold one. Thinks she’s so wise, so clever. Not a true friend.” “You can calm them,” she insisted. “You must calm them, bring our people back to us. If they will not—cannot—submit themselves to our commands, everything we have gained could yet slip away.” “There is nothing I can do,” Aeglyss said bluntly, and then halted and looked around him as if puzzled. He frowned in contemplation. “There must be,” said Shraeve. He stared at her, and there was a shifting of the shadows about him. He flickered in and out of darkness for a few moments. It pained her eyes, and she clenched them almost shut. “Must be?” he hissed. “Don’t you think I would, if I could?” Scourges and daggers filled his voice. She, Banner-captain of the Battle Inkallim, quailed before this feeble, tottering figure. “Nothing must be,” he cried in tones of venom and fire. “I am only the gate, and the truth enters through me, becomes me, and shapes the world according to its tenets. What we see now is only the true nature of the world, of us all. Nothing more. I cannot prevent it.” He was suddenly speaking softly, so laden with sorrow and regret that those same feelings took hold of Shraeve. “I cannot close what has been opened. Cannot heal my wounds. Cannot bring them back, none of them. I cannot even tell, any more, where I end and it… everything… begins. I don’t know whether I poisoned it, or it me… You can’t imagine… how I wish…” He sagged against a pillar, then just as quickly gathered himself and lifted his head. “We discover the truth now. That’s the thing. We become what we have always been, at our root. We enter an age of misrule, and I am its herald, its doorkeeper, its lord. Its God.” “The Black Road is the truth,” Shraeve said. She backed away from him. He waved a dismissive hand in her direction, its flaking raw skin oozing fluid. “Hate is coming,” he murmured, lifting his gaze towards the ruptured roof of the hall. “He is coming. From Glasbridge. Is there… is there still a place called Glasbridge?” “Of course.” “Oh, he burns brightly. He’s the hardest, the purest of you all. Nothing but hate to him, and it’s all his own. He takes nothing from me, gives nothing.” The na’kyrim sounded strangely joyful, raised up by a perverse pleasure. “Who?” Shraeve asked. “Kanin?” “Kanin. Yes. The brother. There’s no flame will forge a keener hatred than the breaking of families. I know that. I learned that. I learned that a long time ago.” “He’s coming here?” Shraeve asked. He looked at her clearly for the first time then, fully present and aware. He appeared almost surprised to discover that he was not alone, though his sallow features were only briefly troubled. “You should not spend your energies fighting a chaos that cannot be halted,” he rasped. “You do not need to worry about such things. Whatever consumes us, will consume our enemies too. There are none left to oppose us, for my Shadowhand does his work well. None except him perhaps. Kanin. He’s moving. Drawing near, with hate in his heart and hate all around him, like a cloud. He’s done what you say you can’t, raven: kept a host at his side, found the will to quell it and guide it. So now we’ll see. Who is stronger, the Battle Inkall or a Thane who has no thought in his head save vengeance?” “Do not let her die.” “Get out of my way, then,” barked Yvane, pushing Orisian so forcefully that he rocked back on his heels. She was packing moss around the arrow embedded in Ess’yr’s pale flesh. The Kyrinin’s throat was trembling with each breath as if it contained beating wings. Her eyes were open but unseeing. Orisian had leaned over her, and looked into them, and found nothing there. No response, no recognition, only vacant grey orbs in which he saw the depths of his own despair. “Please,” he said now to Yvane, but the na’kyrim was not paying any attention to him. “Where’s Varryn?” She looked around, fruitlessly scanning the silent forest. “I need those herbs before I try to take the arrow out.” The blood had almost stopped. It had soaked into Ess’yr’s jerkin and into the grass beneath her. It had laid down crusted ribbons across the ivory of her exposed breast and shoulder. It had coated Yvane’s fingers. The fletching of the arrow, standing almost two hand spans above Ess’yr’s chest, twitched in time with her breathing. “Is she —” Orisian began. “I don’t know,” Yvane shouted without looking at him. She bent down and pressed her ear to that pallid chest. She listened for a moment and then straightened and pushed a finger into Ess’yr’s mouth, parting her slack lips. “She’s not breathing blood, as far as I can see or hear,” Yvane said. “That’s good. Where’s Varryn?” “Watch her!” Taim Narran was suddenly shouting. Orisian twisted round on his haunches, startled by the anger in the Captain’s voice. K’rina was staggering away, plunging with surprising speed into the thickets to the north of the spreading oak tree. Taim was already running after her, spitting curses at the man who had been tasked with watching the comatose na’kyrim. That man was entirely untouched by Taim’s scorn, for he had his head in his hands and was groaning distantly. Orisian surged to his feet, so clumsily that he lurched sideways and almost fell. He could still see K’rina, struggling with entangling briars. She would not get far, surely. Taim would have her in just a moment or two. He looked down at Ess’yr; felt anew the aridity of his mouth, the impotent tremors starting in his hands. The fear. He knelt down again. “Keep clear,” Yvane muttered. “Give me room.” She tried to feel under Ess’yr’s shoulder while holding down the compress of moss with her other hand, but quickly hissed in frustration. “Lift her up a little,” she told Orisian. He was afraid to touch Ess’yr. He felt sick at the thought of causing her pain, of doing unwitting harm. “Lift her shoulder,” Yvane snapped. He did, and Ess’yr gave a faint, descending sigh. She was still there, at least enough to feel something. Yvane probed at her back, exploring her shoulder blade with firm fingers. Apparently satisfied, she nodded to Orisian, and he let Ess’yr sink back into the grass as gently as he could. She was so light, he thought. So light. “The head of the arrow’s almost through,” Yvane said softly. “Nicking her shoulder blade, I think, not in it.” “Is that good?” Orisian asked. “Maybe. Is any of this good? Arrow has to come out, or she’ll die a hard death. Might do anyway. Getting it out’s going to be an ugly business.” She shook her head. Taim Narran returned, a feebly struggling K’rina held tightly in his grasp. Orisian registered them only in the dimmest of ways, for he was shaken by memories of almost visionary intensity and immediacy. Inurian, lying with an arrow buried deep in his back, the strength—the life—draining from him with every breath. The two of them, Kyrinin and na’kyrim, lay side by side in his imagination. “Look at her, look at her,” Yvane was whispering. “What’s a Fox doing here? She should be up there in the Car Criagar, in some vo’an. Hunting deer. Tanning hides. They should all be there still. Not dead, not dying.” She looked up as Taim gently settled K’rina down onto the ground beside them. As Yvane’s gaze settled upon her fellow na’kyrim, whose expression was entirely blank, almost childlike, her brow furrowed and sadness tugged at the corners of her mouth. A mist of light rain drifted down through the branches of the oak. It was cold on Orisian’s face. He curled his lips into his mouth, sucked that wet breath of the sky from them. Ess’yr’s eyes were slowly closing. “We need shelter,” he said. Yvane nodded curtly. K’rina was trying to rise again. Taim Narran pressed her down with a hand upon her shoulder. Orisian looked around. The dead lay all about, some in strangely twisted or contorted poses, other looking as if they had fallen asleep. Of the three Lannis warriors who had survived, two stood staring silently outward, though it was difficult to tell whether they were watchful or simply lost in distraction. The third, the man who had let K’rina slip away from him, was still whimpering into his hands. Lost not in distraction but in the miasma of dismay and despair Orisian could sense thickening just beyond the boundaries of his own thoughts. He saw all this, and found it faintly unreal and distant, as if he viewed it through the translucent gauze of the thinnest curtain. Varryn came running, spear in one hand, a mass of leaves and stems and bark in the other. He rushed in and dropped to one knee beside his ailing sister; opened his fingers to show his bounty to Yvane. The na’kyrim stared at the herbs and then grunted. “If that’s the best we can do,” she said. “The forest edge is near,” Varryn reported dully. “Open ground. A Huanin hut. Empty.” “We should go,” Orisian said at once. Yvane grimaced. “She won’t move well. We need to get the arrow out first.” They carried Ess’yr back to the stream down which they had fled earlier. She moaned as they went, lapsing in and out of consciousness. Every agonised sound that escaped her lips rasped on Orisian’s ears and made him wince. At the water’s edge they laid her down on her side. Yvane quietly and calmly cut away Ess’yr’s jacket with a knife, peeling it back from her shoulder. The na’kyrim whispered to Varryn in the language of the Fox as she worked. His expression betrayed no reaction to her words. His gaze never strayed from his sister’s face. Orisian turned his head aside, averting his eyes from the blood caking Ess’yr’s skin. He looked back in time to see Yvane setting down a crushed handful of the herbs mixed with moss. She had squeezed it into a neat, flat compress. Then she nodded to Varryn. He took the protruding shaft of the arrow in both hands and snapped it cleanly off, close to the flights. Ess’yr gasped, the pain finding her even in whatever distant, detached place she now resided. Orisian’s eyes widened in sudden understanding as Varryn took hold once more of the broken shaft. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Be quiet,” Yvane told him. “This needs doing.” She rotated and stretched Ess’yr’s arm a little, flexing the shoulder blade beneath her pristine skin. And Varryn pushed the arrow deeper. Its point burst bloodily out from Ess’yr’s back. She jerked and groaned, but Yvane held her. Varryn moved quickly round behind his sister, took hold of the gory head of the arrow and pulled it, with a single, firm movement, through her body. Rivulets of blood trickled from both new and old wounds. They washed her with water from the river, working back through the gore to expose and clean the tears in her skin. Orisian had to fight off waves of nausea, and his hands shook as he opened them to let the water he cupped there spill across her breast and shoulder. It was not horror or disgust that had hold of him, but fear. The thought of this woman dying made him feeble. Helpless. Once the wounds were bandaged, poultices securely strapped in place, Varryn slung his sister over his shoulder and strode away northwards without another word. “Thank you,” Orisian said to Yvane as she rose, wiping mud from her knees. She did not reply, but went to help K’rina get to her feet. Taim already had the three warriors moving, following Varryn. He watched Orisian with an unreadable expression. “Are you all right?” he asked. Orisian shook his head then shrugged. He did not know the answer to that question, and it seemed entirely unimportant to him. “We should hurry,” he said, stooping to pick up his shield. “The White Owls might come back.” “They’d probably have returned already if they were going to. Some kind of madness in them, to fight as they did. Should have waited for darkness, picked us off one by one. Not the Kyrinin way, running onto swords and shields like that. As if they didn’t care any more about their own lives. Perhaps they don’t care enough about ours to try again.” They went in a straggling single line through the fringe of Anlane, moving with less caution now than once they had. It did not take long for the forest to begin to thin. The trees were interspersed with stumps where the tallest and straightest of their brethren had been felled. Soon enough, there were more stumps than standing trees, and they came out at the crest of a long, shallow grassy slope. At its foot was a woodsman’s cottage. Its shutters and door hung open. Crows roosting on its roof scattered upwards. Varryn was already halfway down the slope. Orisian paused there, amongst the last of the saplings, Anlane’s outliers. Beyond that cottage, stretching out into the grey veils of soft rain, was the Glas Valley. Flat ground scattered with clumps of trees, dotted here and there with lonely buildings almost lost in the mist. Home. But he felt neither welcomed nor relieved. It had been a kind of desperate hope that brought him here, yet now he could imagine nothing good coming of this return. And still, despite that terrible foreboding, he felt it was where he had to be. If he belonged anywhere, it was here, in this bleak moment; and if there was any purpose he could claim as his own, it awaited him somewhere out there in the mist. In his homeland.