The valley of the Kyre ran away, seemingly endless, into the north and west, sinking all the time. At the outermost limit of his sight, Orisian could see sunlight on summits. They shone. Here in Stone, though, the greatest heights of the Peaks still stood between him and the sun. A woman emerged in the doorway of a nearby hut, shaking out a blanket. It was an action that belonged so wholly and utterly to the mundane world of daily life that it transfixed Orisian. He stared at the woman’s blunt outline, the snapping flurry of the blanket, as if seeing something wondrous, something he had never before witnessed. She looked up at him. He could not make out her features in the gloom. She turned and disappeared into the hut.

And Orisian sobbed. Just once: an abrupt, convulsive sob that burst up from within him and shook his shoulders and squeezed water from his eyes. He sniffed and blinked and pressed his sleeve against his eyes, drew it across his nose. His jaw ached, and he feared for a moment that he might have split open his cheek.

Ess’yr was there, on the fringe’s of Torcaill’s huddle of warriors. Beside those burly figures, she was lean and lithe, standing straight, and looking up at Orisian. He wanted to hide in that moment, wanted to take his terrible smallness and fragility and burrow it down into some safe cranny where he could close his eyes and sleep away this bitter winter. But he returned her gaze; held it for what felt like an age. When at last she turned away, he rose and went down to join them.

III

The Inkallim came to Hommen out of fog. On such heavy air there was no sound to warn of their coming. They emerged, a dark mass, silently; scores of them. Hundreds, perhaps. Fiallic the Banner-captain rode at the head of the long column. Amongst the marching warriors were small groups of captive children, stumbling along in tight, frightened knots, herded by Hunt Inkallim and their dogs. Even those beasts were silent, their baleful presence alone enough to cow the children into terrified obedience.

Kanin oc Horin-Gyre was bitterly disappointed to see them come, for he was planning slaughter, and feared that their arrival would deprive him of it. He had his whole little army ready for battle, taut like a drawn bowstring. The battle he hoped for was not with the Haig Bloods, though. His spears and shields faced not south or west, but east. The enemy approaching was Aeglyss and those – hundreds, by all accounts – who marched with him.

Kanin had been ready to march himself within hours of hearing of Wain’s death. He meant, in the towering, agonised fury that mastered him then, to sweep up the coast and on to Kan Avor, and to turn that ruined city into a slaughterhouse. The orders for assembly had been given, the plans made. But word came that Aeglyss was on the move himself, descending the Glas valley, marching to join the army of the Black Road, beyond Hommen. As soon as he heard that news, Kanin thought he glimpsed an inevitable future: fate would deliver Aeglyss into his arms, onto his swords. He need only wait, and ready himself, and brood, rehearsing endlessly in his imagination the death of the halfbreed.

That hope was snatched away by the emergence of the Inkallim from the wintry mists. Fiallic and Goedellin of the Lore came to him, but he already knew what they would say. He could read the denial of his desires in the old man’s hobble, and in the warrior’s grave face.

“Word reached us of your sister’s death,” Goedellin said. “Killed in the struggle against Temegrin’s company, when the Eagle assailed Kan Avor in pursuit of Gryvan’s Shadowhand. Such is the tale that reached us.”

“I heard the same. I do not believe it.”

“No,” Goedellin said. “I did not expect that you would. We doubt it ourselves, though the truth remains obscure. It has proved… difficult to obtain reliable information on what has taken place at Kan Avor. Even Cannek has not been able to sift fact from rumour.”

“I don’t need the Hunt to tell me what happened,” Kanin growled. “My sister is dead. The Eagle is dead. Whose hand wielded the blade does not matter. Aeglyss is responsible.”

“And what do you intend to do about it?”

“I mean to destroy the halfbreed, and any who stand at his side.”

Goedellin nodded. He smiled. Kanin saw sympathy in that smile, but he was beyond its reach.

“You burn, Thane. The fires of grief burn in you, to be quenched only by blood. Hold fast to your faith, though. Your sister has passed from this world, and now awaits her birth in another, better one. She feels no sorrow, or pain, and must no longer suffer the miseries that we who remain are subject to. The grief you feel is not for her, but for yourself, deprived of her company.”

For the first time in his life, Kanin felt the urge to decry such pieties, even those uttered by an Inner Servant of the Lore himself. No, he thought. No, this is not a selfish grief, and it is not a deluded one. Wain was betrayed, and it is not fate that bears the responsibility, but one man. If the creed would deny that, I choose what my own heart tells me over the creed. As soon as that thought was in his mind, he was shamed by it. Nothing he had been taught by his father, his mother, or even Wain herself would condone such arrogance. He could be shamed by it, though, and still know – in his gut, and his heart – that it was true.

“There is a great battle waiting to be fought,” Goedellin said. “Just ahead of us, a few more paces, a few more days, down the Black Road. If we are its victors, this world will be changed. And if we are to be worthy of any victory that fate might offer, we must be united. Of one mind, clean and humble. The Banner-captain of the Battle is to be the one who leads us, who bears all our hopes.”

Kanin looked towards Fiallic. The Inkallim was a silent and still observer, a model of respect. Everything in his expression and his posture suggested deference to the old, hunched man who was speaking. Speaking platitudes, Kanin’s seething mind insisted.

Goedellin stirred the snow at his feet with the butt of his walking stick. “The Children of the Hundred believe the na’kyrim can be of no further service to our cause. His part in this is done.”

“You mean that you now fear him,” Kanin muttered. “You see, too late, that he is a poison, who won’t be controlled any more than.. .”

“Enough,” Goedellin said. “His presence no longer serves the creed. Satisfy yourself with that. But we will end his service, Thane. Not you. If it comforts you, think thus: your heart will have its desire, for the halfbreed will die. But not by your hand.” His beady eyes narrowed. “You would be better served by taking comfort in your faith. Fate has its plan for us all and, no matter how fierce the passions that burn in our breast, it cannot be gainsaid. If it’s bloodshed you crave, seek it on the field of battle, on the road to Kolkyre. The world waits to be subdued, Thane. That’s the cause in which to spend your anger now.”

“I will try to remember your guidance,” Kanin said. He was curt, unable to pretend to any enthusiasm. Goedellin appeared satisfied.

“There is often benefit concealed in the cruellest cuts,” the old Inkallim said. “We all serve a higher purpose. We are working for the deliverance of the world, of all humankind, out of shadow and into light. The na’kyrim has served that purpose, as he was fated to do. Your sister’s death was unlooked for – I dared to hope she would be a faithful servant of the creed in this world for years to come – but that of Temegrin is a boon, even if it brings with it much uncertainty and risk. It removes an obstacle upon our path, for he sought too often to pull against the current of fate.

“And if it is true, as rumour testifies, and as Temegrin believed, that the halfbreed has somehow brought the Chancellor of the Haig Blood within our grasp, we will look back on these as days when fate truly smiled upon our endeavours.”