Winterbirth (47 page)

* * *

Highfast: squatting atop a massive pinnacle of rock, defended as surely by the precipitous cliffs beneath as by its own thick walls, it was the most impregnable of all the holdings the Kilkry Blood had inherited from the Aygll Kingship. Marain the Stonemason built it, and that feat alone had ensured that his name was better remembered than that of the monarch who commanded him. Its purpose, the need that had driven more than a hundred labourers to their deaths on the crags and narrow paths of the Karkyre Mountains in the decade it had taken to build, was the defence of an ancient road. Since then the current of history had shifted course. The road fell into disuse during the Storm Years that followed the Kingship's fall. Highfast had become a forgotten fortress, sunk deep into the ferocious solitude of the mountains. There had been bloodshed beneath its walls many times in its long, slow life, but it was a place of peace for those who now inhabited it.

The rocky peak upon which Highfast perched was no mere foundation for its walls and turrets. Marain's armies of workers had burrowed down into the bones of the mountain, threading a warren of chambers and tunnels through the stone. In places, where the cliffs were sheer and invulnerable to assault, those tunnels broke the skin of the mountain. Windows and platforms opened out onto vertiginous views across a plunging gorge. Just as they admitted some small quantity of light, so too these apertures gave access to the unceasing winds that coursed around the mountain tops. Sometimes the network of passageways would reverberate beneath the rushing air, as if they were the lungs of a living giant.

That sound, almost beneath the reach of even her
na'kyrim
ears, was one that usually gave comfort to Cerys the Elect. She had lived within the confines of Highfast for fifty years, and knew all its moods. Its permanence and familiarity anchored her. She felt safe in its body.

She stood now upon a high balcony, looking down on the cavernous Scribing Hall. Beneath the light spilling in through high, narrow windows, a dozen
na'kyrim
pored over manuscripts and books, transcribing, copying, preserving. There was no sound save the rumbling of the wind in the rock, the rustling of quills and the occasional brittle sigh of a page being turned. With its seamless blending of stillness and industry, it was a scene that in years gone by would have taken the edge from any disturbance in Cerys' breast.

Today, her thoughts were not so easily quieted, and she was not alone in that. She had seen it in the faces of a few others, those in whom the Shared flowed most strongly. The pained uncertainty she felt in her own heart was reflected in their eyes. The seed of that uncertainty had been sown yesterday: it had come to her, quite sudden and sure, that one of them - one of the waking - was no longer present in the Shared, but only remembered there. And though she could not be sure, not yet, she thought she knew who it was.

She smoothed the feathers of the great black crow that perched upon the balcony's balustrade.

'Can you tell me it's not true, my sweet one?' she murmured to the bird. It fixed its bead-like eye upon her, and she smiled. 'No, you'll be no help to me, old feathers.'

The messenger, a thin, gangly
na'kyrim
who rubbed his hands together as if striving to rid them of some clinging stain, found her there, lost in thought above the toiling scribes.

'Elect,' he whispered, fearing to disturb the concentration of those labouring below, 'the Dreamer speaks.'

For thirty years Tyn of Kilvale, the Dreamer, had lain in a chamber high in the Great Keep of Highfast.

Young
na'kyrim
tended him, bathing his bedsores, turning him and cleaning him. Often it was the first task given to those newly arrived at Highfast. It taught them patience and passivity. And proper awe for the Shared, for Tyn's slumber was that of one falling away from the world and into the infinite ocean of that incomprehensible space. The Dreamer dreamed, but not as others did.

There were others, too, who attended him. Their duty was more singular. One after another, they would take their turn watching over the sleeping
na'kyrim,
waiting. In his ever-deepening sleep Tyn journeyed down paths unknown to those who still resided in the tangible world, and on occasion something of what he found there would emerge, half-formed, from his splitting, flaking lips. These were the words for which those at his side waited, for they were words trawled up from the deepest, furthest reaches of the Shared; otherworldly treasure cast up on the beach of his bed-chamber. As the years passed he spoke less and less often. Seldom now did the Dreamer rise close enough to wakefulness for any fragment to be recorded.

It came as no great surprise to Cerys that this should be one of those infrequent times. Inurian had spent many hours at the Dreamer's bedside in his younger years. She followed the messenger up the winding stairways towards Tyn's chamber, apprehension stirring in her stomach. It would cause her nothing but pain to have her fears confirmed.

To her relief, Cerys found Tyn as deeply asleep as ever. His attendants kept his appearance as healthy as they could. Someone setting eyes upon him for the first time, and not knowing his past or future, might imagine that here was an old man who had fallen asleep mere moments before. For those who knew better there were signs of his long, slow disengagement from the world of the waking. His skin had become a fine veil of ivory. It stretched feebly over the bones of his face. His sparse silver hair lay on the pillow like the collapsed web of a dead spider. The undulations of the bed covering hinted at an emaciated form beneath.

It was not age that had worked such changes upon the Dreamer's body. He had lived for seventy years; not so long for one of the
na'kyrim.
The Shared was drawing him ever further away from the shell of his flesh, and day by day he was sloughing it like the old skin of a snake. Every few months Amonyn would come and lay his hands upon Tyn's chest in an effort to stave off the slow decay of his fleshly form. The sessions always left the healer drained, and they seldom had great effect. Only in Dyrkyrnon or somewhere in the dark heart of Adravane might there be
na'kyrim
who could surpass Amonyn's skills in healing, but that which consumed Tyn was beyond his power to thwart. The most important part of Tyn had ceased to care about the world in which his body slept, and without that interest to call upon there was little even Amonyn could do.

A scribe sat to one side of the bed. The man was leafing through papers. He rose as the Elect entered.

He had the look of a man who longed to trade his place with another.

'Elect,' he whispered, 'I think I have it all, but he spoke only briefly . . . and so fast.'

'Spoke of what?' Cerys asked. She leaned over the frail figure in the bed. Beneath almost translucent lids, Tyn's eyes rolled this way and that like beetles struggling under a silken cloth. What sights he must see, she thought to herself. Does he even remember that the rest of us are still out here, in this other place?

'M-most confused, Elect,' the scribe said. 'You may comprehend more clearly than I...'

He held out the sheets of parchment. Cerys took them without examining them.

'The gist?' she insisted gently.

'Mention of Inurian, I think. Perhaps ... I think perhaps death, Elect. His death. But something - someone - else, as well. A man, though the Dreamer spoke as if it were a beast: a black-hearted beast, loose in the Shared.'

Cerys nodded. It was as she had anticipated. Tyn's words were seldom obvious in their meaning - how could they be, having travelled so far and across such strange territory - but this message was clear enough, and it fitted with what the Shared whispered in her own mind. Inurian was gone, then. She would not be the only one at Highfast to feel that loss keenly. But what of the other part? This other man? Cerys had the deep, instinctive sense that change was in the wind. For a waking
na'kyrim
such instincts were seldom to be ignored, and now they whispered to her that if change was coming it would not be of a gentle kind.

With worry etched upon her brow she went to find Olyn. The keeper of crows was the one to whom the Elect always turned in matters of the deep Shared, since Inurian had left Highfast.

* * *

As Orisian and the others drew closer, more details became visible amongst the mass of ruins. Most of them stood no taller than a man. In places the city was nothing more than a jumble of stone and rock, gathering snow in its crannies, but here and there the rough outline of walls, of doorways and chambers emerged out of the rubble. They came up to the first crumbling wall and passed through a breach into the dead streets beyond. The wind at once fell away a little. Orisian puffed his cheeks out and rubbed at his face. There was no feeling in his skin. Rothe laid his hand upon a massive stone block. Its dark, ancient surface was crusted with overlaid growths of lichen.

'They must have been very great buildings once,' he said, glancing round at Orisian.

They picked their way through the bones of the city, as cautious in their steps as if it were the bones of its ages-dead inhabitants they were treading upon. Ess'yr and Varryn were tense, moving like deer that sensed but could not see the hunter. Instinctively, all of them crouched a little to keep their heads below the horizon. The wind howled above them. The daylight would fade soon, and the thought of night casting its cloak over these ruins was unsettling.

A space opened out before them, where snow had piled up in drifts. They paused on its threshold.

Looking from face to face, Orisian drew some comfort from the evidence that the unease was not his alone. Even Ess'yr and Varryn were on edge here, far from their protective forests. The two were muttering to one another in clipped sentences.

'We could wander here for hours,' said Rothe. 'We should find somewhere to pass the night.'

'Agreed,' said Varryn.

They found a place, in the corner of what had been a small house, where the wind and snow did not reach. A few strips of dried meat were passed around, and they took sips of water from skins that were almost empty. They crowded together, all of them except for Varryn. He sat erect with his back against the wall.

'I will take watch for the first part of the night,' Rothe said to him. At first the Kyrinin did not seem to have heard, but then he gave a slight nod.

Orisian, pressed close against his sister, felt her hand reaching for his. Whether it was for his comfort or her own he did not know, but he held tight. Hunger pinched at his stomach. When he closed his eyes sleep seemed a distant hope.

Unprompted, the image of Ess'yr's white, naked back came into his mind. He stirred uneasily. It was followed by the sight of Inurian, alone in the clearing where they had left him. Orisian had watched his mother die. He had seen her lips part and the breath rattle out from her chest for the last time, and her eyes lose in a single instant the undefined lustre of life. He imagined the light in Inurian's slate-grey eyes going out. Unconsciously he tightened his grip upon his sister's hand.

'Sleep,' whispered Anyara.

He wished he could.

In the darkness of that night the wind moaned without pause over and through the skeletal city. After a time there was no more snow. The temperature fell as the hours went by. Orisian heard Varryn rising and taking Rothe's watchful place. The two said nothing to each other.

Dawn amidst the mists and clouds was a muted thing. The light that came was watery and lifeless.

Though the wind had fallen away the sky was an ocean of grey, merging with the snow-dusted peaks and slopes. The cliffs to the west loomed over the city, watching over its corpse just as they must have observed its life. The five of them could have been alone in all the world.

Anyara flexed her arms and legs. 'I'll never be warm again,' she said.

Ess'yr passed out a small handful of hazelnuts. As the others cracked them open on stones, Varryn scooped up some snow and crushed it against his face, pressing it into his eyes. They sat in a small circle, eating in silence.

'What do we do now?' asked Anyara eventually.

'As Inurian said. Find the
na'kyrim,'
said Orisian.

'If she's here at all,' said Rothe disconsolately.

'She is here,' Varryn said.

'But the word of a dying...' Rothe caught himself and glanced at Orisian. 'Forgive me,' he said.

Orisian smiled weakly. 'Inurian was sure we would find her here.'

'We will look for sign. There will be tracks,' said Ess'yr.

'Why not just shout for her? She'll hear us from miles away up here,' suggested Anyara.

'And others will,' said Varryn, with an edge of contempt in his voice. The Kyrinin turned his attention to one of the ties on his hide boots, which had come loose.

Ess'yr opened a pouch at her belt and produced some browned scraps of some kind of food. She passed one to each of Orisian, Anyara and Rothe and replaced the rest in the pouch. 'Chew, not swallow,' she said. 'It is
huuryn
root.' Rothe eyed the unappealing chunk of wizened root in the palm of his hand. Anyara had already slipped hers into her mouth and was chewing vigorously, and after only a moment's hesitation Orisian followed suit. The shieldman did the same with a show of reluctance. A bitter taste flooded Orisian's mouth as soon as he bit down. It reminded him of the drink he had been given in In'hynyr's tent, but whether it was quite the same he could not be sure. At first he felt no effects, then a strange, blurred feeling developed behind his eyes. The cold seemed to recede a little from his hands and arms and feet and his weariness was blunted. He poked the root mto the side of his mouth and held it there between jaw and lip. Its sharp juices sent tingles running through his gums.

They moved methodically through the ruins. The two Kyrinin kept their eyes on the ground, and occasionally they would stoop and examine some patch of snow, rock or earth. Each time they quickly moved on. In the flat light, with the sun invisible behind banks of cloud, Orisian would have lost all sense of direction but for the towering craggy cliffs that stood above the city. Wisps of snow were trailing from the heights. Once, Orisian caught sight of a pair of great black birds flashing across the face of the cliffs.