“My brother with be waiting for me, yes. There will be a great battle soon. I should be there.”
“Of course. Your reputation is well known. They tell me you are a fierce young woman, Wain nan Horin-Gyre. But a faithful one, too.”
“I hope to be.”
“Well. Fiallic also told me you brought a halfbreed with you, who is already causing trouble.”
“We sent him away. We tried to set him aside, and the woodwights too. But fate has returned him to us. He brings the White Owls to fight for our cause; more than ever before. He says there are many hundreds of them, many hundreds, already moving through Anlane. It seems to me… or at least it did… I thought perhaps he would not have returned, despite all the obstacles, were he not fated to play a part in our struggle.”
“It seems to you? You know, do you not, that the Lore frowns upon any suggestion that we can know in advance what course fate will follow?”
“I do. I pretend no knowledge of it. I speak only of a willingness to accept that fate may impose distasteful allies, whatever my personal preferences.”
“That’s a neat construction. It has a dutiful sound to it. Were you tutored in the creed by the Lore as a child?”
Wain nodded. “My father brought two Lore Inkallim to Hakkan when my brother and I were young. They remained only for a year or two.” She felt now, facing this Inner Servant, much as she had then, listening in rapt wonder to the soft, firm voices of those tutors. The truth of what they had told her, all those years ago, had been so clear to her that it was like a blast of cold wind, scouring away dust from her child’s heart.
“A good man, Angain,” Goedellin mused. “Would that more of the Thanes did the same. It’s rare for them to invite such tutors into their homes these days. Your Blood has long been an example that others might look to; a shame it has gone unregarded by those with the most to learn.”
Wain hung her head and said nothing.
“You are uncertain now, of the halfbreed’s place?” Goedellin asked her. “Of whether he is to be a part of all this?”
Wain nodded silently.
“So,” the Inkallim sighed. “Whenever we come to a fork in the road, it looks like a choice. It feels like a decision. But these feelings, these choices that we imagine we could make, they are illusions. Choice and decision were taken from us. The Gods require of us that we learn to live without them; learn that some things are beyond our power to change. Such is the penance we must all do, in answer to the hubris of our forebears. You understand all of this, of course?”
“I do,” Wain said.
“It is, in part, only a matter of perspective. A life can have but one path. We poor mortals see that path only when we stand at death’s very portal, and can turn and look back down the road we have travelled. Then, and only then, we see the way we have come, unbranching, stretching back to the moment of our birth. The Black Road. However it might have appeared to us as we walked it, there were in truth no choices, no decisions. Only that one path, as the Hooded God read it in his book when we drew our first breath in this empty world.”
Goedellin was watching her, pursing his dark-tinted lips. It seemed that he expected some kind of response.
“I understand this,” Wain said. “I accepted it long ago.”
“The creed rules your heart, and your mind?” Goedellin asked her. “Unreservedly? Certainly?”
“It does,” she replied without hesitation.
Goedellin nodded: a gentle, kindly gesture. “And this na’kyrim? Is he a true adherent of the creed?”
Wain’s hesitation was fleeting, but she saw in Goedellin’s eyes that he noted it. “I believe he is,” she said. She knew it sounded defensive. “I am not certain.”
Again, Goedellin nodded. “You do well not to claim certainty. There’s none of us, save the Last God himself, who can see into a heart and take the true measure of its devotion.”
A sound outside caught his attention. He rose crookedly to his feet, and went with small, careful steps to the window. He beckoned Wain with a gnarled finger. Looking out, she saw twenty or thirty young children clustered in the yard. Many were crying, others were sullen and silent and fearful. Several shivered, clothed in thin garments that were no match for the wintry air. Battle Inkallim shepherded them across the cobblestones.
“A small part of the harvest,” Goedellin murmured.
One of the children – a little girl – was jostled from behind and fell, cracking her knees. She wailed. One of the ravens reached down with a single hand and lifted her bodily to her feet, pushed her back in amongst the crowd of waifs.
“You’re sending them north?” Wain asked.
“Of course. There is nothing for them here. Those that survive will be Children of the Hundred, one day. We do them a great service, though they may not know it for some time. And there will be losses to be made good. There will be gaps in the rank of the Battle to be filled before all this is done.”
“You do mean to see this war fought, then,” Wain murmured. “To its conclusion. Whatever that may be.”
Goedellin shuffled back towards his chair. “We have three thousand of the Battle here. Such a force does not march lightly. They will not be returning to Kan Dredar until they have tested themselves fully against the Haig Bloods, and against fate.”
Wain returned to her own seat.
“Your devotion to the creed is well known, of course,” the Inkallim said as he settled back down. “My earlier question was not born of any doubt. How stands your brother in this regard? Do the fires of the faith burn as brightly in the new Thane of the Horin-Gyre Blood as they do in you? As they did in your father?”
“They do.” Wain might have said no more than that, but her mind was caught up in this strange fancy that she was a child again, and Goedellin one of those old tutors who had so impressed her. Their wisdom, their sere gravity, had always compelled her to speak honestly. “Perhaps it takes more… effort on his part to hold firm to the creed. But he does hold firm.”
“Do you understand why I make these enquiries, and ponder these matters?”
“I would not question the Lore’s right to enquire as it sees fit in matters of the faith.”
“No. I imagine you would not. Still, this is not solely a matter of the faith. The Lore, the Battle, the Hunt: all the Children of the Hundred are now engaged in this struggle that your Blood began. We are committed, to some extent. We will incur loss. We face risks, in terms of our standing, our relationship with the other Bloods. With Thanes.”
“Your support for my Blood is a great gift. I – and my brother – know it.”
“Well, there is the nub of things. Our support is for your Blood only insofar as it serves the larger purpose of supporting, of strengthening, the creed. So long as this war, and the survival of your Blood, offers some possibility of advancing the cause and the dominion of the Black Road, we Inkallim have little choice but to test the limitations that fate might set upon that advance.” Goedellin glanced up from his hunched position, scouring Wain’s face for some sign. “Do you think survival is too strong a word to use, perhaps?”
Outside, in the yard, a baby was crying now. It was a piercing sound, distracting. Wain hesitated. “I do not know. We have spent most of my Blood’s fighting strength here. But it does not matter, in the end. If my Blood is fated to pass into extinction, so it must be. I know…” She faltered, fearful now that she might say the wrong thing. Yet the Inkallim’s steady gaze struck her as more reassuring than threatening. “I know, or think I know, that our success has won us little affection from the Gyre Blood. The reasons why that should be so are obscure to me.”
Goedellin grunted and lowered his eyes. “Our High Thane excels in matters of obscurity. Well. Your Blood will survive, if fate smiles upon us. Your brother might have made the shaping of such a smile a little easier, had he left an heir behind him, safe in your mother’s care at Hakkan. No matter. We – the Inkallim – will stand shoulder to shoulder with you. For so long as it seems that such unity serves the cause of the Black Road, of course. Do you understand yet the import of what I said about choice? Its illusory nature?”