Nightchild

'And the hunters?' Hirad hardly dared ask.

He felt Sha-Kaan sigh, a weary sound booming about his mind. 'They are everywhere, it seems. News of your departure has reached the wrong ears and they come in greater numbers. We have killed when we must but they are not deterred. Help us, Hirad Coldheart.'

Hirad punched the wall by his head. All the hurricanes, tempests and floods. And only the innocent seemed to have died.

'I will, Great Kaan,' he said. T will call you when we reach them.'

'Make it soon,' said the old dragon. 'Or one of these hunters will claim their prize before long.'

And he was gone.

Needing air, Hirad jumped off the bunk and walked out on to the deck, coming to stand by the starboard rail and look out over the benign seas, so beautiful when they were blue. He scratched his head and puffed out his cheeks, willing the ship to go faster. He heard someone walking up to him.

'Something wrong?' asked Ilkar.

'The usual,' said Hirad.

'The Kaan,' said Ilkar.

Hirad nodded. T don't know what to-'

But Ilkar wasn't listening to him. The elf stared out and ahead of them, then ran towards the bow of the ship, leaning out, peering into the distance and the empty horizon beyond the Ocean Elm. Hirad caught him up.

'What is it, Ilkar,' he asked.

Ilkar shook his head. 'Gods drowning, Hirad. There's so many of them.'

'So many of what?'

A shout echoed down from the crow's nest.

'Them,' said Ilkar, pointing way out to sea.

Hirad strained his eyes, seeing tiny shapes in the haze at the edge of his vision. They were sails. He counted seven. There could have been more but the distance confused his eyes.

'Who?' he asked through he knew the answer.

'Dordovans,' said Ilkar. 'It's the whole damned Dordovan fleet.'

Hirad didn't wait, he couldn't afford to. He returned to his cabin. They needed help and, with or without fire, there was only one source.

The Kaan.

Denser kissed Erienne's breasts gently, his tongue flickering at her nipples while his hand caressed her side and right thigh. She giggled and lifted his head, looking deep into his eyes.

'I've been fantasising about this,' he said.

'But not practising, I trust,' she replied, drawing him forward to kiss his lips. T wonder what you'd be like with a smooth chin?'

Denser scratched at his beard. 'Younger,' he said. 'Definitely younger.' But Erienne could see him struggling to smile.

'What is it, love?' she asked. 'Don't look so sombre. We're nearly there.'

'Yes, I know.' He looked away and watched his hand run down her stomach to rest on her pubis. Erienne felt a warmth rushing through her but took his hand away in any case.

'So what is it?' she asked. 'No answer, no fun.'

He stared at her face and she could see his eyes roving, taking in everything from her crown to the point of her chin. He nodded.

'All right. It had better be now.'

He rolled out of bed and she watched him pull on his shirt and loin cloth, her heart suddenly beating anxiously, her mind rushed with a thousand uneasy thoughts.

'Denser?'

'Put your shirt on and look at this.'

She cast around for and found her shirt, rearranging it to slip it over her head while she watched him open a cabinet and pull out some parchment. He handed her a page.

'Seen this before?' he asked, coming to sit beside her and stroke her hair.

She pulled her shirt over her waist and sat on the tails, covering herself. She unfolded the page and gasped.

'Where did you get this?'

'Your library,' he said. 'There are others but this is the one you have to see now.'

She looked hard into his eyes and saw terrible sorrow there. Her heart lurched and thudded painfully. She realised she was scared.

'But it's Lore. Lower Lore, I grant you, but Dordovan all the same.'

'It's part of the Tinjata Prophecy,' he said.

Erienne shook her head. 'I don't recognise it.'

'I know you don't. They hide it from people they don't want to see it and refuse to offer the translation to others.'

'People like you,' she said.

'Yes, so I stole it. I had to know.' He grimaced and swallowed and she put a hand to his face, trying to comfort him for a pain she didn't understand. 'And now I do.'

He handed her a second sheet. She took it and read it. It was a translation. Short, filled with gaps, but for all that, very explicit. She began to tremble, the parchment shaking in her hand. She had a lump in her throat and her stomach twisted. She looked at the prophecy, then back at the translation, searching word by word for an error.

'No, no, no,' she whispered, her eyes scanning feverishly, finger following lines of text.

And there was one. Basic but commonplace in untrained translation.

'Oh Denser,' she said. 'It's wrong. Whoever did it translated it wrong.'

'Where… how?'

He grabbed the parchments from her, she didn't know why. So she pointed at a single word in the Lore.

'They got the gender wrong,' she said, dragging in her last breath before the tears came. 'That doesn't mean Father. It means Mother.'

Chapter 32

For one brief day, as they closed on the Dordovan fleet heading in from the west, Denser and Erienne hoped it might not come to the death of either of them. The clouds carried on thinning, the sun warmed them from a patched blue sky and the winds were exactly as strong as Jevin expected for this part of the Southern Ocean.

They had cried long together, bolting the door of their cabin and refusing any refreshment but their own company. Once they'd regained control and could bear not to clutch each other, Erienne had scoured the pages of the prophecy Denser had brought for some clue that their reading of it was wrong. But there was nothing, and Tinjata knew his signs only too well.

In the early evening of the sixth day, Denser lay with an arm around Erienne's shoulders, stroking her right arm with the tips of his fingers. The love they had made was tearful and tender, sensuous and quiet, each delighting in the other's body, knowing the other's pleasure by the sound of a sigh or a groan. No words were necessary then and they weren't now as they basked in the afterglow, the sun still streaming through the window from low on the horizon.

Soon, it would be time for dinner with The Raven, and to watch the sunset, glorious and red, firing its energies across the darkening sky under the remaining cloud. But for now they lay silent, staring at the ceiling above them, their bodies warm and the silence beautiful. Denser breathed in deep, Erienne's scent filling his nostrils. Maybe. Maybe her sacrifice wouldn't be necessary.

He knew he should worry about the Dordovans, who could reach the Ornouth Archipelago in front of them, but somehow he was certain they would fail. All that consumed him was the burgeoning hope that Lyanna's Night was over. If the weather held, if calm returned to Balaia and the Southern Ocean, it could really only

mean one thing. That Lyanna had learned the control that was vital to her and Balaian survival. And if that was so, Erienne wouldn't have to die.

A shadow passed in front of the sun. Denser craned his head to the window to watch it pass. The shadow deepened and he frowned.

'Sundown's early tonight,' he said, propping himself on one elbow and looking down at Erienne.

'No it isn't,' she whispered, and there were tears standing in her eyes. 'It's started again.'

'No, love,' he said, but he already knew it was true.

The temperature was falling, the ship was shifting against its forward motion. There was a swell rising and a storm coming.

'We knew it couldn't last,' she said. 'Didn't we?'