On the treeless high ground of the Car Criagar a snowstorm had lashed at them. A slide of rock and snow carried off a few victims. There had been no rest on those hostile slopes, so now, with the peaks behind them, he had ordered a brief pause on this lonely hillock. He did not want to blindly lead weary warriors still further into unknown lands. He sent messengers and scouts racing ahead and waited to see what word they might bring back.
The Thane—he still was not accustomed to thinking of himself as such—was seated on a dusky brown rug, breaking his fast on the same biscuits and gruel that fed his warriors, when a tired-eyed man came scrambling up the hillside and fell to his knees before him. It was one of the sentries posted on the camp’s outskirts. Kanin calmly set down his bowl and wiped his lips with his cuff. He waited for the man to speak.
‘There is an Inkallim here, lord. One of the Hunt. He would speak with you.’
That caught Kanin’s attention.
‘Bring him to me, then.’
The man, when he came striding up out of the forest, was accompanied by a great, thick-jawed hound. The beast loped heavily along at its master’s heels. They never leash those creatures, Kanin thought. However ruthlessly trained they were, the Hunt’s dogs always had a feral, threatening air. Of course, if they were leashed it might make people less intimidated by them, and that would not accord with the Hunt’s desires.
The Inkallim was relaxed and casual, but that could not hide the signs of a hard journey. He was pale and gaunt, befitting a man who had seen little of rest or food in several days. As he halted before Kanin his hound sat at his side and fixed its dark eyes on the Thane. Kanin did not rise from his rug, and after a moment’s pause the Inkallim squatted down on his haunches.
‘Lord,’ the man said.
‘You are one of Cannek’s?’
‘Of the Hunt, yes. Two of us came on the trail of the Lannis-Haig girl, up over the tops from the falls where the halfbreed was killed.’
‘And?’
‘There are six of them. Two wights, a na’kyrim, a Lannis warrior, the girl and a youth: most likely her brother.’
Kanin grimaced and rubbed at his eye in frustration.
‘So you’ve failed to kill them,’ he muttered.
‘My companion made an attempt, as they descended from the mountains. It was unsuccessful. I thought it best to follow at a distance, rather than risk my own death and the loss of their trail.’
‘Of course. Where are they now?’
‘They entered Koldihrve this morning. Had I not seen your approach, I would have pursued them and made another attempt in the town.’
‘Igris!’ Kanin shouted, clambering to his feet. His bowl of gruel toppled as he went, spilling its contents across the rug. The Inkallim’s hound sprang to its feet and growled.
Kanin’s shieldman trotted up from his post a short distance away.
‘Find a rider, with a fast horse,’ the Thane snapped. ‘They’re to make for Koldihrve. I want a message given to whoever passes for a ruler there: the Black Road is coming, and if the Lannis-Haig children are not delivered up to me I will raze the town to the ground, I will slaughter their stock and drown every child of their own in the river.’
Igris nodded and turned away.
‘And break camp,’ Kanin shouted after him. ‘Everyone is to be mounted and ready by the time that messenger is on his way. I want us within sight of Koldihrve by tomorrow’s first light.’
The walls of the Lore Inkall’s Sanctuary at Kan Dredar enclosed a forest. Hundreds of pine trees stood within their bounds, carpeting the ground with more than a century’s needles. They filled the great enclosure with the scent of their sap and the air had a close, embracing feel that only the strongest of winds could disturb. There was seldom any sound beneath their dark green canopy, save the twittering of the small birds that flocked to their shelter in winter or the tolling of a bell to mark some ritual observance. The city in the valley below—the sprawling stronghold of the Gyre Blood—rarely made its presence known. Even the most bullish children of Kan Dredar knew better than to venture over the granite wall of the Sanctuary.
This was Theor’s domain, and had been his home for all save the first few years of his life. His parents were a distant memory, almost washed away by time. He had been only five or six—he could not be certain which, since no precise record was kept—when they handed him over to the Inkallim in exchange for a few silver coins. Many others entered the Inkall in the same way. Theor, when he thought of his mother and father at all, was grateful for their decision.
Today, many more people than usual were moving from building to building amongst the Sanctuary’s trees. As well as Theor’s robed Lore Inkallim, there were warriors of the Battle and grim-faced stalkers and trackers of the Hunt. Such activity was only stirred up by the few formal ceremonies of the year or, as now, by the gathering of the Firsts in the Roundhall. Theor knew that it was a pale echo of what was happening beyond his walls: Kan Dredar was in ferment, the people roused by rumours of great victories won in the south. The talk on the streets and in the markets was of nothing else.
Theor walked alone towards the Roundhall. When these meetings were held, the Firsts came and went without their attendants. The oaken doors of the hall stood open, awaiting him. A single servant was sweeping the tiled floor of the wide, circular chamber. At Theor’s arrival, the man quietly left, averting his eyes. The hall was simple, undecorated. A pool of yellowish light fell from candles burning on a central stand. Three chairs were arrayed around its edge. Theor sat and waited.
Nyve of the Battle was the next to enter. Theor’s friend walked silently to his chair. They did not look at one another. Avenn came last. The First of the Hunt was a lean, taut woman, several years younger than the two men. Her face, framed by straight black hair, was pock-marked with the scars of a childhood disease. As she took her seat the doors swung shut and the Firsts were alone in candle-light.
‘Beneath the unclosing eyes of the Last God all is seen,’ Theor breathed.
‘For his eyes are the sun and the moon,’ the others said in unison.
‘And he sees my heart and my will.’
‘There is only the Black Road .’
‘Only the Road.’
‘Only the Road,’ Nyve and Avenn repeated.
Tiny echoes from the hall’s bare stone walls filled out their voices.
‘Ten men were found, crossing the Vale of Stones,’ Theor said. ‘They were Horin-Gyre. Old warriors, long settled on farms in the Olon valley; farms they abandoned to go to war.’
‘There have been others,’ said Nyve, ‘even from Ragnor’s own garrison here. Three deserters were garrotted this week. They claimed they meant to go south. Anduran’s fall has set many to dreaming of the homeland, and of the Kall.’
‘The Kall is for the Lore, not the people, to pronounce. This is not the promised renewal.’
‘As you say. None would question the Lore’s primacy in such a matter.’
Theor turned towards Avenn.
‘Do you have the answers we sought, First?’
‘In part, I think.’ Her accent was precise, curt: a relic of an impoverished upbringing in the Fane-Gyre mountains. ‘The message that Vana oc Horin-Gyre’s people found on the High Thane’s courier is in a cipher we have not seen before. We cannot read it.’ She saw the disappointment in Theor’s eyes, and pressed on quickly before he had a chance to speak it. ‘But the cipher’s form and structure are familiar. No one of Horin-Gyre would have recognised it for what it is; it’s fortunate that Vana was willing to pass it to the Hunt. I am told it is most likely a variation on those that Gryvan’s Shadowhand introduced in Vaymouth.’