‘As it is written.’
‘As it is written.’
They left as they had come: one by one, alone. Avenn went first, striding out into the day’s white light. Theor and Nyve did not speak as they waited for her to disappear from view, but before the First of the Battle followed her out of the Roundhall Theor laid one hand upon his shoulder and let it rest there for a while.
Theor retired early to his private chambers that night. He sent away his servants and dressed himself in his night robes. He opened the carved box at his bedside and removed a scrap of seer-stem. The herb had blackened his lips over the years, and they tingled faintly now, anticipating what was to come. He lay down and slipped the stem into his mouth. He worked carefully at it with his teeth: crushing and squeezing, not breaking it apart. The dark juices oozed out and that familiar, comforting numbness began to spread over his tongue and lips. Slowly, slowly it would spread through his jaw and over his scalp and eventually seep into his mind. Then the visions would come. Sometimes, there was the precious sense of patterns emerging from the chaos of events and lives.
None save the Lore Inkallim were permitted the use of seerstem. Others, lacking the discipline of a lifetime’s schooling in the creed of the Road, could be led astray by the sights the stem offered. The key was to understand that it was not the future that was contained in these fleeting, formless visions, but the past and the present. When Theor dreamed seerstem dreams, he saw all the thousands of paths that had been followed to bring the present into being; he saw, in all their multitudes, the countless tales—finished and unfinished—that the Last God had read from his Book of Lives. But he did not see what was yet to befall those travelling that vast, intricate Black Road .
As he waited for the seerstem to take its effect the First of the Lore watched the flame on the candle by his bed. He was possessed by a vague unease. The weeks and months to come were likely to bring a war greater than any there had been for more than a century. That in itself did not concern him. The Kall would come only when all humankind was bound to the creed of the Black Road ; such unity could only be achieved through war and conquest. As the Kall itself was inevitable, so too was eventual victory, whatever the outcome of the present strife.
The roots of Theor’s disquiet lay rather in regret. He had thought, when Ragnor first ascended to his throne in Kan Dredar, that he would make a good High Thane. In those early years he had seemed of one mind with his late father: dutiful, secure in his adherence to the creed and to the primacy of its advancement. Somehow, Ragnor had instead become merely a ruler, consumed by the meaningless day-to-day business of power. And they—all of the Inkallim, but most of all Theor himself—had failed in their responsibilities. They had allowed the rot to set in. Once, it might have been cut out with nothing more than a child’s woodworking knife; now it would require a sword. Had he allowed the vigilance of the Lore to slip? Was he to blame that they had come to such extremity? In the end, it did not matter. This was the course they were fated to follow. But still, it could not hurt to ensure that no one had any further excuses to forget that the creed was the light that guided all things. When the Battle marched south, it would be fitting for a party of the Lore Inkallim to accompany it.
The seerstem’s tingling touch reached behind his ears, worked its way into the bones of his skull. He rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. Shapes were beginning to move on the inside of his eyelids. He stilled himself, forcing all thoughts from his mind. He waited to see what would come.
Taim Narran could not be sure what was being destroyed on the other side of the door. Judging by the sounds that filtered through the heavy oak, it was something substantial. Out of respect for Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig’s feelings—and perhaps, if he was honest, out of trepidation—he waited until the noise had subsided before entering.
Lheanor’s one surviving son—the Bloodheir, now—stood in the middle of the small room. Fragments of wood were scattered around him on the stone floor. A chair leg still hung, forgotten, from his limp hand. Roaric’s head was bowed, his eyes closed, his shoulders slumped. The Thane’s son had returned from the south only this morning. He had brought even fewer of his men back alive from Dargannan-Haig lands than Taim had. To be greeted with the news of his brother’s death at Grive would have been too much even for one of less tempestuous nature, Taim thought.
Roaric had not registered Taim’s presence. He stood quite still, lost in the numb fog of grief. Taim hesitated. He was not sure that he could offer anything to the young man; or that it would be welcomed, even if he could. They had been comrades, though, in Gryvan’s war; friends amidst a storm of hostility.
‘Roaric,’ he said softly, then, when there was no response, again more loudly: ‘Roaric.’
The younger man looked up, his eyes wild and bleary. They drifted over Taim, swung around across the window.
‘I am sorry,’ Taim murmured. ‘You deserved a better homecoming than this. We all did.’
Roaric let the chair leg slip from his fingers. It clattered to the floor. He walked to the window, unconsciously kicking aside the detritus of his rage as he went.
‘They’ll bleed rivers of blood in answer for this, the Black Road,’ he said thickly. He planted his hands on either side of the window, stared out over his father’s city. ‘I should have been here.’
‘We both should have been.’
‘I was proud when my father gave me charge of our armies to march south. Proud! And look at this now. All but a few hundred of the men who marched with me are dead. My brother’s dead. We’re nothing but shadows of what we once were, Kilkry and Lannis. We’re like sickly children, our strength leaking away from a thousand little sores.’
‘It’s not over yet,’ said Taim.
‘No?’ Roaric snapped. He spun away from the window and glared fiercely at Taim. The emotion lasted only for an instant, though. As soon as he saw Taim’s face Roaric’s own anger sank away. He only shook his head.
‘There will be a chance for us to give answer for what has happened,’ Taim said levelly.
‘Perhaps,’ murmured the Kilkry-Haig Bloodheir. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I leave for Glasbridge tomorrow. I wanted to see you, offer my regrets and good wishes, before I left.’
‘I am sorry to intrude.’
The soft voice from the doorway surprised both of them. Ilessa, Roaric’s mother, stood there. There was an awful pain in her face, Taim saw, when she looked at her son. She fears for him, he thought.
‘There is someone here I think you will wish to see, Taim Narran,’ Ilessa said. ‘Will you come with me?’
Taim glanced at Roaric, but the younger man had turned away, almost as if he was ashamed to meet his mother’s gaze. With a heavy heart, he followed Ilessa out and down the spiralling stairway that formed the spine of the Tower of Thrones .
‘Boats are coming to the harbour,’ Ilessa said as they went. ‘They’ve taken flight from Glasbridge; it’s fallen, Taim. Destroyed.’
A groan escaped Taim’s lips before he could restrain it.
‘All is not ill tidings today, though,’ Ilessa said quickly. ‘Come, in here.’
She ushered him through a doorway, but did not follow. He wondered why for a moment, then his eyes fell upon the room’s sole occupant: a slight woman seated at a table. At that sight, Taim’s breath caught in his throat and his mind was swept clean of all that had crowded it. Tears sprang to his eyes as she rose from the table and he went to embrace his wife.
‘I feared for you,’ he said as he crushed her to him and felt her arms about his waist. Here was light and hope amidst all the gloom, and he could do nothing more than cling to her.
‘And I for you,’ Jaen replied in an uneven voice. ‘You have been gone too long this time.’