Nearer home the sky began to clear and he approached the fortress in cold, brilliant sunshine. The frosty air was still and silent, the only sound his steed’s hoofs muffled by the snow. He could see no guards, no sentries… not a soul. The roan passed over the outer drawbridge, and still no one challenged his presence.
Aldric frowned and scanned the courtyard, then dismounted. Though the stables were empty of grooms there were horses in the stalls and even his new battle armour still boxed in one corner, not yet unpacked. Intrigued and by now wary, he moved quietly up into the citadel itself.
Inside was cold, the gloominess accentuated by the dust-flecked shafts of light streaming from the western windows. There was neither movement nor sound save that made by Aldric himself. He had never seen the long corridors so still and dark; even late at night there were usually lamps and servants, but now there was nothing except the slow eddy of golden specks washed by the evening light. Aldric shivered and his sword appeared in one hand almost of its own volition. Very carefully he eased back one of the great hall’s doors and slipped inside.
The vast chamber was completely deserted; the ashes of dead fires slumped grey in the hearths and of lamps and candles only charred wicks remained. Crossing the hall at a run, Aldric took the stairs four at a time, up the right fork leading past the galleries, into the donjon and towards the lord’s private apartments. Twice he almost went headlong, for apart from a little light filtering in the passages were in total darkness.
At the foot of the spiral stair leading to his father’s tower rooms, he paused to regain his breath and to listen. All the corridors with access to that door had
en-canath
, singing floors, uncarpeted loose-laid boards designed to creak at the slightest pressure. Now they were silent; almost as silent as the young warrior who slid upstairs like a stalking cat.
The planks groaned thinly when Aldric set foot to them and he hesitated briefly before continuing to his father’s door. Beginning to ease it open, he grimaced— with the floors announcing his every step, further caution seemed superfluous. He threw open the door and went inside.
The sword slid from his slack fingers. A thousand thoughts became one vast silent scream ringing endlessly through the echoing caverns of his mind.
Haranil-arluth Talvalin sat in his high-backed chair by the fireplace, with his great
taiken
resting on his knees. His head drooped forward on to his breast and it seemed that the old lord slept. Only the spear which nailed him to his chair destroyed the illusion.
A few feet away Joren and his four sisters lay heaped against the wall, their rich garments glimmering like so many cut flowers in the wan light. The women had each been stabbed once, in the neck from behind, but someone had fought. Blood puddled thickly on the floor, spattered the walls and smeared across ripped fabrics and hacked furniture. Aldric stared for a long time at Joren’s face, at the loosely gaping mouth and the obscene emptiness of wide, dead eyes.
Then he began to cry.
When he had recovered from the convulsive sobbing, Aldric pressed his face to the cool wood of the door and tried to comprehend the enormity forced upon him. He had been late. He had promised his father, his lord, that he would return at a certain time and he had broken that promise. Broken his Word. Logic nagged that this was not of his choosing, that he would anyway have done no more than die with the rest. But logic had no place in a
kailin’s
honour-code. Without a Word he would be better dead.
As his arm hung limply by his side something touched it. Aldric glanced down and his scarred left palm seemed to burn with a fresh and freezing pain. The hilt of his
tsepan
glittered coldly at him, and his stomach lurched.
Slowly he drew the thin blade. Its lacquered hilt was chill against his hand, and the hand itself trembled. Staring at the bitter point and cruel edges, he quailed at what was expected of him. To die… And for what purpose? It would neither avenge the killings nor mourn them; nor even carry out the funeral rites. But not to do so would dishonour his name throughout eternity.
“No!” The word spat from bloodless lips, chasing the
tsepan
as it flickered across the room to thud into a panel. Thrumming with the impact, its pommel swayed so that the blue-enameled crest—his crest—winked at him like a sardonic eye, mocking his cowardice. Aldric rubbed his throbbing hand, but the pain would not go away. His haunted eyes looked far into the distance, towards the sun hanging low over the Blue Mountains, edging a lapis lazuli sky with gold, A gentle breeze passed through the shattered window, caressing his face and the sweat beading it.
I have lived as well as I may, Aldric thought. I have eaten good food and drunk fine wine, I have had worthy friends. I might have loved… I have never slain a man. Why then fear to die? All must go out into the darkness, and only
kailinin
may choose their time of passing. It is an honourable right, that one may leave this melancholy world to return reborn in the great circle.
Quietly he crossed the room and twisted the
tsepan
free, then returned to kneel at his father’s feet, laying the dirk before him. Caring nothing for the still-wet blood upon it, he bowed and pressed his brow against the floor. Cold stickiness spread across his skin. The formal phrases for the rite of
tsepanak’ulleth
refused to form in his head and he was ashamed. Quickly he opened tunic and shirt, then reversed the dirk and nuzzled its point into place under his breastbone. The weapon stung.
“My lord father,” he whispered at last, “I am dishonoured and full of sorrow. I ask forgiveness and offer my life as recompense.”
“Do… not!”
The barely audible words shocked Aldric like the stroke of a mace. Blood trickled from where the
tsepan’s
point had broken skin and jabbed deep, but the boy felt nothing. He stared into eyes lit from within by the effort of holding off death by force of will alone.
“You live… good. Good…” Aldric kept quiet, knowing that Haranil-arthul must have had good cause to cling to this half-life so long. “Duergar has done this…” the old man gasped hoarsely. “Destroyed us…” As Aldric listened, his father choked out the story. It made grim listening. Duergar Vathach had been a familiar figure at all hours of the day or night, and when he appeared just before dawn the doors were opened. But hiding in the shadows had been a gang of hired bravoes who had rushed the sleeping citadel, slaying all who refused to serve their master. Duergar was no scholar, but a necromancer of the Drusalan Empire, aflame with some mad scheme. Clan Talvalin had been convenient hosts, now no longer needed.
“Forget
tsepan
—laws—honour if you must. But live— let the clan survive. It must… not die… as I die… Please… my son…” Aldric clutched the old man’s hand desperately as his father stiffened, dragging in a shuddering breath. That breath came out again in a faint little moan as Haranil, the Clan-Lord Talvalin, in his sixty-sixth year, relaxed in his chair for the last time. Aldric felt the life take its leave, released at last by the stubborn will to brush past like a movement in the air. And then it was over.
Although his face was taut with grief and tears ran down his cheeks, Aldric had no time for mourning; he had much to do. Reaching down, he lifted the
tsepan
and pressed it to his lips.
Then he sliced it deeply across the scars on his left palm, cancelling all other oaths in a scarlet spurt of blood. The pain purged him of confused emotions, and he was able to stare dispassionately at the pulsing cut before putting it to his mouth and swallowing some of the sweet-salt flow. It was warm in his cold throat.
“
En mollath venjens warnan
,” he said harshly. “The curse of vengeance be upon thee, Duergar Vathach my enemy. Thy life will pay the weregild for my father. On my blood I swear it.” Gripping his queue in smeared fingers he slashed it off with the dirk, then did the same to each ear-lock and flung all three to the ground. The cropped hair gave him a strange, youthful look belied by his eyes and by the blood oozing down his face. “I renounce my duty,” he intoned as each tag of hair came free. “To Heaven if it guard thee; to any king whose laws protect thee; and to my honour lest it make me fear to slay thee—by any means I may.” It was a sentence of death for Duergar and maybe for himself as well. He completed the old ritual of the
venjens-eijo
, the avenging exile, by sheathing his dirk and saluting with his sword before returning it to the scabbard across his back.
Then from the corridor outside a singing floor began to squeal.
Only a muscle moved in Aldric’s cheek for perhaps three seconds. Then he snatched the heavy
taiken
off his father’s lap and shrank into the shadows just before the door opened to admit torchlight and men. Their faces were familiar: men who had called themselves traders, on their way from Datherga to Radmur with a wagon-load of swords. So they had claimed. They and others like them had trickled through Dunrath like a rivulet of dirty water—Duergar’s raiders. With hindsight it was all so very clear.
Both wore
taipanin
—shortswords—through their belts, and armour of a kind, but the first also had a visored helmet and Aldric coldly marked him down. Such headgear would be useful when he had to walk unnoticed from the citadel. Cocking the
taiken
double-handed behind his head, the boy took a soft step forward.
Even now he was not ready to strike without warning from behind like an assassin—but giving this murderer fair warning was downright stupid. Then his problems vanished as, for some reason, the helmeted man looked around. His head tumbled to the floor wearing the slightly confused expression of a man who literally never knew what had hit him.
Aldric stepped across the corpse,
taiken
already in attack position and concentration focused on the second man who gaped, foolishly forgot his torch was a useful makeshift weapon and dropped it in favour of his sword. The delay was nothing less than fatal.
Something flickered across his body from shoulder to hip and the hand which steadied his scabbard. It was a stroke so old that it came from a time when
taikenin
were curved—but neither time nor straight blades reduced its efficiency. The mercenary stood for a moment, eyes and mouth wide with shock. His left hand dropped from its wrist just an instant before his body split along the huge diagonal cut.
Aldric stared at the exploded corpse for several minutes. After his near suicide and the shock of everything that had followed, he was close to fainting. Only adrenalin had kept him on his feet, and now it ebbed swiftly to leave him nauseous and unsteady. This revelation of his own appalling skill was too much. He had never killed before, and to start like this… And why that cut—something out of the distant past? The sour taste of vomit rose in his throat and his head spun. Then, as he had been taught, the
kailin
breathed deeply, pushing the shattered dead from his plane of awareness. They ceased to be sickening, just as they had ceased to be threatening. Regrets, qualms and conscience would remain, but they would no longer interfere with his survival.
He did three things in rapid succession: broke his father’s sword against the fireplace and left its shards respectfully at the old man’s feet; picked up the soldier’s helmet, shook out its ex-owner’s head and set it on his own; and set a torch to the place. Noting with grim satisfaction that not even fresh-spilt blood stopped the flame from taking hold, Aldric bowed once to the funeral pyre and walked away.
There were still only one or two people to be seen, and he wondered where they had been earlier on. It was only when Aldric rode out of the stable that he realised with horror that he had seen no other horsemen. The roan gelding seemed to be shouting for attention as he trotted quickly for the drawbridge, but since an alarm gong began to sound as dark smoke billowed from the donjon, nobody showed much interest. It gave him the chance to pause near the winding-gear for the drawbridge and delicately saw through the ropes holding its counterweight portcullis. There were no guards anywhere, although the icy wind slicing in from outside should have told him why.
As the cords began to unravel and snap of their own accord under their burden, he set heels to the horse and went over the bridge as fast as he was able. Even then he felt a sudden upward lurch as a rattling rumble broke out behind him. His mount jumped the last few feet as the drawbridge made a violent, uncontrolled ascent and slammed behind him with a huge hollow bang.
Aldric rode straight for Baelen Forest, though had he known of the guards sheltering from the wind within the gatehouse his course might have been more crooked. Instead it remained as unerring as the arrow which slammed into his left shoulder. The boy might have gasped, even screamed—he could not remember. His only recollection was of the world spinning away down a long polished tube that had utter blackness at the bottom.
When he came to his senses there were trees all around him and the horse had slowed to a walk. The high saddle had held him in place, as it was meant to do, despite the way he swayed drunkenly with every step the gelding took. Aldric straightened up as best he could. The wind was still sighing about his ears, and when he looked up past dark branches to the sky he could see stars. There was a vague threat of rain in the air; it was marginally warmer and the snow was turning slushy. At least that would make his tracks harder to follow…
Then the trees came to a sudden end and a valley yawned before him. Aldric tensed, knowing this place all too well, but with nowhere else to go he rode out from the tumbled light and shadow on to the upper slope. He glanced back painfully, listening for sounds of pursuit and hearing none. What might have been a fragile laugh formed in his throat, only to die in a gurgle when he saw what hung above the forest behind him.
Away to the north-east, above Dunrath, a bloated spiral cloud was swallowing the sky. Long tendrils stretched towards the forest until it resembled some vast hand extending taloned fingers southward to clutch and rend. A flicker passed through the cloud, throwing its coiling bulk into sharp relief—but no lightning Aldric had ever seen was that vivid, venomous green.