“Will I? Tell me why?” He fought to keep the harshness from his voice, knowing that to be
kailin-eir
was of necessity to accept ill-fortune with the same courteous equanimity as the most splendid victory.
“You should know.” Kyrin’s voice was very soft. “You’ve come to terms with a greater loss than my going away.”
“I… I had no choice then. I have now—and the power to alter it. You said yourself I was heir to lands and ranks and titles. So… What I want, I take, and no man—or woman—can gainsay me.” The girl stared at him in disbelief, then stepped over to his bedroom door and threw it open. One corner of her mouth tugged down as she tried to summon up contempt and failed. “You’re crying again,” he said, not caring that the words came out like the crack of a whip.
Kyrin flinched as if he had indeed lashed her across the face, and still the tears welled silently from her eyes even when she scrubbed at them with her knuckles in a gesture almost violent enough to bruise the sockets. There were no sobs, and when she spoke her voice was without a tremor though it was faint and desolate. “Yes, I’m crying. Crying for you—for whatever spark within you that must have died last night. Because you aren’t the man I knew any more. I’m crying for you, Aldric. Because someone must.” She entered the room and returned seconds later with Widowmaker in her hands. “Here,
kailin-eir
Aldric
ilauem-arluth
Talvalin. Wait for Seorth and my father. Justify your token’s name and kill them both, then take me to your bed by force. Because you’re not a naked barbarian makes all the difference to rape and murder…” She flung the longsword at him.
Aldric caught the weapon without thinking, his gaze fixed on the girl’s face which still held more of sorrow than of rage. Hard to hurt an enemy, he thought sombrely, easier to hurt a friend—and easiest of all to break a lover’s heart. Perhaps it was as well, to make their parting easier. Then his fingers clenched spasmodically around the
taiken’s
hilt. He wanted to shout, to rave, to smash things, to… Yes, to kill… something, anything, himself. To behave as not even the lowliest of lordless
eijin
should behave.
Then it was as if a sheet of ice closed over the anger boiling in his brain, and he became abruptly calm again. Why so angry? he asked himself. Especially with Kyrin, who had done nothing except react the way any right-minded woman would to his vile temper and grossly dishonourable suggestion. The whole foul episode was his own fault and no one else’s. His thoughts touched briefly on the
tsepan
pushed with meticulous nonchalance through his belt, then dismissed it with a mental shrug. Why bother, when at any time within the next three weeks he could be flung into the Void. If he survived beyond that, perhaps his formal suicide might recompense many people for many things, but first and foremost were Kalarr and Duergar. Their deaths, whether formal or otherwise, were long overdue.
Aldric went down on both knees and laid the
taiken
at Kyrin’s feet, then bent forward and pressed his brow to the cool, lacquered scabbard. “Tehal Kyrin-an,” he whispered huskily. “Lady, forgive the words I spoke in anger.”
She knelt too, so that their faces were once more level; so that she could watch his eyes and see if they truly mirrored what he said, or gave the lie to his courteous phrases. What she saw was an expression disturbingly like that he had worn after learning of his brother’s apparent treason, except that this time it was directed at himself. It was shocked, haunted, unwilling to believe how easily mere words had soured their relationship. A face which should have wept, but where any tears had frozen in eyes like obsidian, or flint, or jade. The same bone-chilling grey-green as a winter sea. A widowmak-er’s eyes.
“I am truly sorry, Kyrin.”
“I believe you.”
He bowed forward slightly, as much to hide his face as to acknowledge her acceptance of his apology. Kyrin hesitated, then leaned towards him and touched her lips against each eyelid, then to forehead and mouth. The movement was less a kiss than a valediction, and Aldric knew it.
“Go now, Kyrin-ain,” he muttered. “All the words were said long ago.”
She rose and walked away, then stopped and took a few steps back towards him. “I cannot just leave like this,” she said firmly. “Aldric-eir, the quarrel’s already been forgotten. You acted honourably towards me at all times, and I shall tell Seorth of it. Any house of ours is yours, Alban, fire and food and safety if you ever need it. I promise.” Kyrin bowed slightly, the way she had seen Aldric do so many times. “Go with God, Aldric— and may Heaven grant you long life.”
“Long life is often no great gift,” Aldric murmured, “and can sometimes be a curse.” He thought for a moment, staring into space with narrowed, frosty eyes, then half-smiled and said:
” ‘What is life, except
Excuse for death, or death but
An escape from life?’ ”
“Recall my name with kindness, lady, now and then.” As she left him kneeling there, a black figure with a black
taiken
before him, Kyrin thought about his poem and as she did she shuddered.
From the balcony of Dunrath’s donjon Lord Santon’s legion resembled a child’s toy soldiers, set out in little blocks of men around the fortress walls just out of arrow-shot. Duergar Vathach leaned on a parapet and surveyed them dispassionately, aware of the impasse which had caused the siege. With another thousand picked troopers of Grand Warlord Etzel’s guard he could pulverise the small Alban host, while without them he merely stood up here and wished. Fabric rustled behind him and he turned as Kalarr cu Ruruc stepped out on to the balcony, wind whipping at his forbidding vermeil robes.
“Have they altered their disposition?” he demanded.
“Not since dawn. Why? What difference would it make?”
“Enough to annoy me greatly. I’ve spent the night preparing a spell based on the siege positions they assumed when they arrived last night, and while it’s effective it’s also inflexible. What about the
traugarin
?”
“The putrefaction stopped once the air cooled—it has not returned.”
“Good. One disadvantage about using corpses as soldiers, little necromancer, is that you can resurrect the bodies, but you have to keep fending off the natural processes which follow death. Awkward if you don’t want your army rotting away before you can put them to use.”
“But having set the Charm of Undeath on them, I have to keep them in that state. The spell will not affect a cadaver more than once.”
“Isn’t life awkward for the workaday wizard,” Kalarr observed drily. “Why you didn’t think of weather-magic before, I cannot imagine. After all, even the Drusalan Empire must know that killed meat keeps better when it’s cold.”
“I don’t like nature-magic; it’s slow, clumsy, crude— and hard to control safely.”
” ‘Like!’” scoffed cu Ruruc.“‘Safe!’ Those are not words a true sorcerer should have in his vocabulary.”
Duergar sensibly did not argue with him and the issue was tacitly dropped. “It seems,” Kalarr continued, “that yonder lord has sent me his defiance.” He grinned with sinister relish as he used the old term. “Therefore I feel justified in giving him a demonstration of the power which he has challenged—making sure, of course, that enough are left alive for the warning to be noted.” Though his lean face remained devoid of all expression, there was an ugly purr of eagerness in his voice as it shaped the prolix phrases.
Duergar looked at Sainton’s army, the scales of their
tsalaerin
twinkling in the chilly sunlight, then turned to his companion. “What do you intend?” he ventured carefully, knowing from previous experience that with this mood of fierce exuberance on him, it was unsafe to be near Kalarr.
“Once, long ago,” cu Ruruc said, “someone called me the slayer of hosts. It is time, I think, to reaffirm that title. There’s a spell known to few sorcerers and seldom written in grimoires. I know that spell, and have spent the night preparing it. Now it merely needs priming and direction before I can unleash it.”
“But…” Duergar began, reluctant to raise an objection, yet knowing it had to be done, “but surely they have some protection—otherwise they wouldn’t have dared to come so close.”
Kalarr allowed himself to smile with a slow, evil unveiling of his teeth. But he was not angry, merely amused. “You’re very sharp today, my friend,” he observed. “Such a theory crossed my mind earlier this morning, so I tested it. Lesser enchantments only, mere probes, extinguishing fires and the like—but nothing so dramatic that it might remind them they’re besieging a sorcerer’s fortress. They’ll learn that soon enough.
“That army’s as helpless as a tethered goat, thanks to its commander’s pride. I know these high-clan
kailinin-eir
, though they ignored me until I persuaded them otherwise. A haughty, stubborn breed, who can’t see farther than their long patrician noses. Magic’s something from a story to them, and wizards are less than dirt.”
“Not to all of them.” Neither sorcerer had heard Bai-art emerge on to the balcony behind them until he spoke. “My brother understands you well, cu Ruruc. That’s why he’s going to kill you.”
The wizards glanced at Baiart, then at each other. Ka-larr’s nostrils twitched and Duergar broke into a high-pitched bray of laughter. “Your brother,” spluttered the Drusalan necromancer when he had regained a little composure, “is still floating about on the high seas, prey to everything we choose to throw at him.”
“My brother,” corrected Baiart with a hint of his old suavity, “passed from your reach when that flying eye was destroyed. I was there. I saw it happen and heard how you reacted. You don’t even know where he is anymore, much less have any power to harm him.”
Kalarr’s saturnine face darkened. “Maybe so, Tal-valin,” he hissed. “But if you stay here a little longer, you will get some inkling of what awaits bold clan-lord Aldric”—he sneered the words—”if he has the courage to come back.”
“You’re scared of him, aren’t you?” Baiart jeered. “He killed the monsters that you sent to get him and now he’s escaped you. And you’re afraid!”
“If death is what you want…” Duergar snarled, lifting his open hand only to have it seized by Kalarr and forcibly lowered again.
“Then it’s the last thing that we’ll give you,” cu Ruruc finished. “However much you may deserve it—or desire it.”
When Aldric eventually stood up, after several minutes of utter stillness, he walked quietly into his room and began to don his armour, dismissing the servant who would have helped him so that he could concentrate completely on the task and so prevent his mind from dwelling on… other things.
An-moyya-tsalaer
was difficult to put on without assistance; its complicated design required each part to be fitted in a certain sequence, although once that sequence had been mastered an agile warrior could scramble into his battle harness with remarkable speed.
Aldric could do so in a matter of minutes, but on this occasion he moved slowly and methodically, letting himself become totally absorbed by the precise, almost ritual care needed when a man sheathed himself entirely in metal but wished to remain flexible enough to move. The
elyu-dlas
and its matching wing-shouldered over-mantle were both padded to mute the rustling scrape of lamellar armour, and both were marked with the spread-eagle crest of clan Talvalin embroidered in silver on dark blue. Once he had put on both these and arranged the high collars properly, Aldric changed Widowmaker’s braided combat hilt for a ceremonial grip of etched silver which someone, probably Gemmel, had left on the low bedside table, and slung the sword horizontally so that hilt and scabbard protruded through the slits cut in his robe for that purpose. In what amounted to court dress, the wearing of
taikenin
slung eijo-style across one’s back was definitely not encouraged. Belting his Colour-Robe with a sash through which he slipped his
tsepan
, Aldric picked up his helmet and, methodical care now set aside, hurried to the council room. From what he had seen of the building, it was constructed in the usual fashion of Alban town houses: the bath-house and the eating-hall had been in the usual places and he guessed the meeting-chamber would be too. On that assumption he felt able to take a shortcut through one of the upper galleries.
Someone had laid down thick mats of woven straw to protect the fine wood floors from many feet in military boots. Since Aldric was wearing his own long, soft-soled moccasins he made virtually no noise as he hastily strode along the corridors. Had he given the matter any thought, he might have realised that walking so quietly through a houseful of high-ranking lords could lead to his being somewhere he was neither expected, wanted nor supposed to be. He gave such a possibility no consideration at all until he crossed a high balcony and by then it was too late.
There was a clear view through its carved screen into a narrow hall well-lit by several tall windows, and from the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something which made him pause for a closer look. Glancing down without thought for the consequences of his action, Aldric went suddenly pale and stifled a gasp as he flattened against the wall.
There were three men in a tableau below him: King Rynert sat at one end of the hall, a fully-armoured Dewan ar Korentin stood in the centre with his arms folded so that his drawn sword rested threateningly on his left shoulder, and a third figure knelt politely on one knee in the dark area between two windows. Not that he needed to take such trouble, for he was dressed from head to foot in black with only his eyes and a thin stripe of face visible. In the shadows he was almost invisible. He had no obvious weapons, but the mere reputation of the
tulathin
was reason enough for ar Korentin’s caution. Sudden violence and a
taulath
went hand-in-hand.
Aldric could hear the soft murmur of voices, but not enough to make sense of their conversation. He did not really want to know anything about it, and indeed wished most heartily that he had gone another way. It was too late now to creep away; getting in unnoticed had probably used up all his luck for the day on that score at least. Why King Rynert was having any dealings at all with a
taulath
—a shadow-thief—was beyond Aldric’s comprehension.
Eijin
were men who, willingly or not, had lost their honour.
Tulathin
did not know the meaning of the word. They were mercenaries; spies, kidnappers, assassins… any task at all was performed without question, just so long as their price was met.