The Heir of Night (26 page)

It was very quiet in the old High Hall after they had gone. The dust settled slowly and the golden motes began to disappear. Some time later, a disturbance rippled through the air. The tremor faded and the air grew still again, only to be redisturbed, first by another ripple and then by a slow rent opening in the center of the hall—just wide enough to let a shadow ooze through onto the floor. The shadow paused, swaying, while the rent closed behind it.

Slowly, the shadow undulated across the floor and up one of the frayed tapestries, blending into the fabric of decay and age. It was weary, both from its journey through the Place Between, moving cautiously so that its enemies remained unaware, and from expending the vast energy necessary to open a door into this place. Now it must rest and restore its strength, and this dim, derelict hall would serve that purpose well. It was not a place where people seemed likely to come. The shadow hissed softly at that thought, the sound unexpectedly loud in the silence.

The creature hissed again and drew back further into the shadows, merging with the stone of the walls, for becoming one with its surroundings was part of its strength. For the moment, it would lie low, so that when it did make its move there would be no mistakes. Not like Nirn and the Raptor, both of whom had underestimated their opponents. Still, they had served their purpose, distracting the enemy from its own secret presence and doing sufficient damage to tie up the Golden Fire for some time.

The shadow reflected on that last point with satisfaction as it settled down to wait. After all, it could afford to be patient. Even if someone came and looked there would be nothing to see, just a darker patch of shadow that was part of the wall with its tattered hangings. But as it turned out, concealed or not, the shadow was completely safe. No one came.

PART II
Storm Shadows

15

I
t was well past midnight and the Keep of Winds was quiet, although the Earl of Night did not think that it would sleep easily again for a long time. He was sprawled in a chair before the fire in his chambers, bone weary and still in the armor he had worn since the attack. So much had happened in so short a time, a potent reminder that their long vigil on the Wall had some meaning, after all.

As if, he thought, anyone with eyes could doubt that, given the withered lands that surround us and the foul creatures haunting every pass and dark ravine!

The Earl sighed, shifting in his seat. He was fortunate, he supposed, to have seen some of the other lands and creatures of this world and to know how twisted and tainted the Wall was by comparison. For most Derai, the Wall and its strongholds were all they ever knew: a bleak and narrow world—and one ill equipped, now, to withstand its enemy. The attack on the keep had proven that.

The frown between the Earl’s brows bit more deeply as he considered the consequences of the attack, some immediate, others more long-lasting. The death and destruction was bad, but could be borne; the sweeping away of the Derai belief in the inviolability of their keeps could prove harder to overcome.
But the news that Korriya had brought him—that was far worse than any physical attack. The Earl’s hand closed into a fist. If only Korriya had not been so compelling and he could have dismissed her words. But he remembered the priestess well from their childhood together. Level headed and pragmatic, that was Korriya, with both feet firmly on the ground. She was not a person whose arguments should be dismissed lightly, if at all.

I should have known, the Earl thought. Maybe he
had
known. Malian was so like Nerion had been at the same age, but he had closed his eyes to the likeness, denying its potential implications. He had even dared to hope that Korriya might be mistaken, when he should have learned the futility of hope long ago. But Asantir’s account of events in the Old Keep had swept away any vestige of doubt, and the news would not stay quiet for long. Someone would talk; sooner or later, someone always did.

He shook his head, wondering how many Earls of Night before him had experienced such a succession of disasters. The aftermath of battle he could deal with: the endless discussions of how best to secure the keep and the daunting logistics of maintaining everyday life, despite the destruction everywhere. He could also understand and manage both those who seemed frozen in bewilderment and shock, unable to act, and the others who raged and called on him to exact swift retribution. That was all part of his duty as Earl, as fighting in defense of the keep had been. But these other matters, the stories of demons and old powers, the part his own daughter had played—the Earl shook his head again, staring blindly into the fire.

He had been stunned when Asantir came to him with Haimyr’s story that one of the heralds was a seeker. He had inherited his father’s aversion to those with the old powers, but he was still shocked to think that those despised powers might not, after all, be unique to the Derai. The Earl could not recall any instance in the long history of the Alliance where the Derai had encountered any other race with powers
comparable to theirs—aside from the Swarm, of course. It was part of what set them apart, even if they now feared and mistrusted that particular aspect of their heritage.

The fingers of the Earl’s right hand drummed on his chair arm. “Ay, we fear it. But we’ve relied on it, too, just as we’ve relied on the long tradition of the inviolability of the power bound into the Old Keep.” The more fools we, he added to himself, thinking we could abandon the place so completely and still rely on its wards to defend us.

Now he was faced with the unpalatable probability that neglect of the old powers might prove to be the Derai’s undoing. And he was still his father’s son. It galled him that the priesthood might be essential to Derai survival, but he could not deny the evidence of recent events. Even so, he had been deeply reluctant when the heralds asked for the aid of Korriya’s priests. He had only agreed, unhappily, at Asantir’s urging.

The first time in five hundred years that the warrior kind had sought aid from the Temple quarter—and he was the Earl who had allowed it. His father, the Old Earl, would not have done it; he would have let Malian die first.

If he were here now, he would call me weak, the Earl thought, his expression weary. And perhaps he would be right, since I found that I could not bear to lose my child, as I lost my wife. Yet now I will lose Malian anyway, for exactly the same reason that I lost Nerion.

He could feel the weight of his duty—to his House, to the Derai Alliance, and to the Blood Oath that bound him, as it had bound every Earl for five hundred years—settling on him now, heavier by far than the weight of his armor.

Heavy, yes, but not in the same way as the message delivered to him by the heralds of the Guild, which sat in his belly like a stone. He could not speak of it to anyone, dared not, and that circumstance, together with their priestlike powers, made him reflect dourly on the breed called heralds. Their very presence was like a rock dropped into a pool and he had seen the dark looks and heard the mutterings that followed them.

“They have witnessed Derai weakness and seen too much for outsiders,” the mutterers said, giving
outsiders
its old, dangerous twist, which meant both stranger and enemy.

The Earl grimaced as he remembered the uncanny power of the heralds’ sigil of silence. Once invoked, it was as though an invisible wall had sprung up around themselves and the Earl. Asantir—watching to make sure that he came to no harm—could see, but not hear a word that was spoken. And the heralds had spoken sometimes in unison, sometimes alternately, as though neither of them knew the message in its entirety.

They had been sent, they told him, by an old friend of his youth, from the time when he traveled in the River lands. The friend was a River merchant called Vhirinal, who had risen to be an Ephor, or ruler, in the city of Terebanth. It appeared that information flowed as freely as gold along the trading routes between the River cities, and that in recent years these flows had widened to include some of the Derai Houses along the Wall. Eventually, all the information, like much of the gold, came to the Ephors of Terebanth and so it was that Vhirinal had learned something that concerned his old friend, Tasarion, who was now the Earl of Night.

“There is a traitor in your household,”
the herald Jehane had said, speaking the Ephor’s warning aloud.

“One who is close to you but whom you suspect not,”
the herald Tarathan had continued.
“Beware!”
the heralds had then chanted in unison.
“Beware, Earl of Night, for the hounds of your enemies hunt!”

One who is close to you but whom you suspect not.
It could be anyone—anyone whom he saw every day and trusted, as a retainer or a friend, even a lover. The Earl flinched away from that last thought, but it could not be ignored.

“Someone close to me, whom I suspect not.” He spoke slowly to the quiet night. “Rowan is the obvious choice, the stranger out of the Winter Country. There are already plenty who say that she has bewitched me, and why else but to betray me in the end? Or Haimyr, the outsider who has dwelt
so long amongst us. Yet if they are traitors, whom do they serve? Are the people of Winter or far-off Ij
my
enemies? There is no sense in that.” The Earl’s fingers drummed again:
Beware Earl of Night for the hounds of your enemies hunt.
He frowned at the fire. “I know that our Derai enemies were not responsible for last night’s attack, but they could have suborned someone close to me, all the same. But if so, who? And to what specific end, beyond the obvious betrayal?”

There were so many possible candidates. Gerenth was dead, but he had served the Old Earl faithfully all his life; it seemed unlikely that he would have turned traitor. Asantir? The Earl hesitated, but only briefly. She had been so close to him for so long, and he would sooner mistrust his own right arm. It was much the same with Nhairin, for if Asantir was his right arm then the High Steward of the keep was certainly his left. And Teron came from the family that had always commanded Cloud Hold for the House of Night; a family as famous for their unswerving loyalty and courage as they were for their dogmatism and lack of imagination.

It was unthinkable, the Earl reflected wryly, that one of that family would have the initiative to be a traitor, let alone the inclination.

The other unpleasant possibility was that the message itself was a ploy, a poisoned barb planted by his enemies to sow suspicion and distrust. It need not even mean that Vhirinal, once his friend, had become his enemy, or the friend of his enemies. Those same adversaries need only have ensured that the rumor of a traitor came creeping to the Ephor’s ears. Still, the Earl told himself, the Vhirinal he remembered would know to be wary of such ploys. He must have given the tale considerable credence to go to the expense of employing heralds and sending them on the long journey to the Wall of Night.

“A very great friend then,” the Earl mused, “or a great enemy.” But he had no way of judging which was true, any more than he could determine the identity of the traitor—if
he or she truly existed. He had to suspect everyone while continuing to act as though he trusted all, and hope that sooner or later the traitor’s mask would slip.

The door opened softly onto the darkness of his thoughts and a tall, white-clad figure was outlined briefly against the corridor before stepping inside and closing the door. The firelight fell short of her face, leaving it in shadow as she crossed to his chair. “You are awake late, Earl of Night,” Rowan Birchmoon said gently. “It would be better if you took off that armor and got some rest.”

He gazed back at her. “I am well enough, my Lady of Winter. The armor helps remind me of my responsibilities.”

She stroked his dark, gray-flecked hair with one white, slender hand. “It does no good to spend the night gnawing over your troubles like an old hound. You need sleep.”

“Sorcery, attacks in the night, and attempts on the life of my Heir,” he said, matching her tone. “These are troubles enough for any Derai hound to gnaw on, don’t you think?”