He and his dozen guards maintained a steady but slow pace. They stopped twice at wayside inns to pass the night. On both occasions, a couple of the guards raced ahead to have the inns cleared and rooms prepared. The Chancellor noted, but found uninteresting, the mixture of awe and antipathy with which the innkeepers and their staff regarded him. He had one of his guards taste all the food that was served before he allowed any of it to pass his own lips. He slept badly, disturbed by uneven mattresses, the creeping of rats in the roof, the pattering of rain. Once, on the second night, he was even woken, after he had finally fallen asleep, by the clatter of some horse trotting by outside in the darkness.

Early on the third and last day of the journey they passed by the tomb of Morvain. A crude and unimpressive memorial to that infamous rebel’s life and death, Mordyn thought, but still it was the first thing he had seen since leaving Kolkyre that caught his interest. The tomb’s roof had fallen in. The Chancellor reined in his horse and looked about him. He took in the bleak, bare walls of the valley, the foaming river rushing over boulders down below. It was an austere resting place for the corpse of one supposedly so vital, so vigorous.

Morvain had, in the Shadowhand’s view, died a foolish, pointless death. The rebel had driven his army to the brink of starvation maintaining his unsuccessful siege of Highfast. Finally admitting defeat and leading them back down this road, he had been thrown by his horse and soon died of his injuries. All in the cause of rebelling against a Kingship that was already failing, and of besieging a castle that was not only famously impregnable but also, by then, unimportant. There could be few more pointed illustrations of the need to choose one’s battles with care.

Mordyn could see that there were inscriptions on some of the jumbled rocks of the tomb. He was almost tempted to dismount and clamber up there to see what they said. It would be fitting if they were homilies on the fate awaiting those whose ambition outran their judgement, but that seemed more than a little unlikely.

The Shadowhand turned away. One of his escort was pointing up the track. Frowning, Mordyn looked, and saw a single riderless horse standing dejectedly in the road some way ahead.

He lifted a heel to nudge his own horse onwards. Before he could jab it back into the animal’s flank, one of his guards was shouting.

“There’s someone up there.”

“What’s that?” another of the warriors called out.

Several of them kicked at their mounts, moving closer to Mordyn.

He looked back up at the tomb. It was almost impossible to make anything out clearly, but there did seem to be someone rising amidst the rocks: an indistinct, slight figure with something in its hands. The Shadowhand frowned. There was a crack and something was in the air, darting down. The sun came out. Its glare filled his eyes.

Mordyn felt an impact on his head and the world was suddenly smeared, blotched with black and dark red patches. Then he was seeing the sky, seeing the great sheet of cloud that was sliding away from the sun and leaving blue in its wake. He hit the ground and darkness enfolded him.

X

Tyn the Dreamer was a disturbing sight. He looked like a corpse. There was a faint acrid, sickly smell in the room, hovering on the edge of Orisian’s senses and whispering of death to him. Tyn’s silver hair – sparse but long – was splayed lifelessly across his pillow. His face looked like a skull overlaid with a thin white gauze. There was nothing to say the man was alive save the intermittent feeble rise and fall of his chest beneath the sheets.

Cerys and the other half-dozen na’kyrim who accompanied her and Orisian had a quiet, reserved demeanour, as if they were in the presence of some dead, mourned lord. Orisian looked around the small gathering – Cerys had not deigned to tell him the names of these people – and saw sorrow and awe together in their expressions. Turning back to Tyn, he wondered how old the man was. To judge by his emaciated appearance and his discoloured, fragile skin, he might have been over a century, but Orisian knew better than to make assumptions in the strange world of the na’kyrim.

“He has weakened a good deal, these last few days,” Cerys murmured. “His body is failing, and not even Amonyn can do anything to halt its decline.”

“Is he dying?” Orisian asked quietly.

“Perhaps. We do not know. Tyn long ago passed beyond our understanding. You are looking at something – at a man – unique in all the world. His mind travels parts of the Shared we could not follow him into, even before the recent… changes made it such a turbulent place.”

Cerys leaned over the Dreamer, angling her head so that her ear hovered over his lips. “He chose this,” she said, “but when he made his choice, the Shared was a wonder; a benign ocean to be explored. Some of us here envied him greatly, for his ability to give himself up to it so completely. Now, though… the ocean he travels has turned against him. Against us all.”

One of the other na’kyrim, a tall and striking man, more powerfully built than any other of his kind that Orisian had seen, laid a hand on the Elect’s back. It looked to Orisian like comfort. Cerys gave no sign that she felt the touch. She straightened.

“Even if we were deaf to the troubles in the Shared, Thane, we would still know that things had gone awry.” She extended a long, languid finger towards the Dreamer. “Tyn’s rest was once peaceful. Now it cannot even be called rest. He suffers, and his suffering spills over, in his tormented mutterings, his decaying body. He is quiet now, but often he is gripped by spasms. Sometimes he cries out: not words at all, just cries of horror. The change began on that night when we all sensed… whatever it was we sensed.”

“Aeglyss,” Orisian said.

“Yes,” one of the other na’kyrim said quickly, before Cerys could reply. Orisian looked at her, and saw a young woman with fierce, clear grey eyes. Her features were unremarkable, more humanlike than those of most of her colleagues. Even her skin, though pale, had a certain warm health to it that most na’kyrim lacked. Orisian’s mind made a swift connection.

“You know him? Aeglyss, I mean. Bannain said there was someone here who knew him long ago, in Dyrkyrnon.”

The young woman made to speak, but Cerys held a hand out, stilling her. Orisian saw plainly enough that obedience to the gesture required an effort of self-control.

“This is Eshenna,” the Elect said. “She came to us only a few years ago. And before that, yes, she lived in Dyrkyrnon. As did Aeglyss for a time, apparently. When he was a child.”

“I did not know him well,” Eshenna said, her gaze fixed on Orisian, “but well enough to recognise his presence in the Shared.”

“And you know this woman K’rina?” Orisian asked.

“We will talk of Aeglyss later,” the Elect said quietly. She was watching the Dreamer now. “There was another reason I wanted you to see Tyn; other news, that has come from his lips, drifting up out of whatever depths he is now lost in.” She turned back to Orisian. “He speaks, you see. Our Dreamer speaks.”

Orisian glanced back to the Dreamer. Tyn’s cheek was twitching, his lips trembling. One of the na’kyrim – the man who had comforted Cerys before – sat on the edge of the bed and pressed his palm to the sleeper’s forehead. His fingernails, Orisian saw, were as white as any Kyrinin’s.

“Yes, I know he speaks,” Orisian said. He tried to keep his voice level, calm. It was unsettling to be the object of so many pairs of intent, inhuman eyes, to be beneath the strange weight of their attention. And a vague frustration was building in him. He wanted to speak of Aeglyss now, not later. He had slept badly in the dank dormitory down in the guts of Highfast. Lying awake in the darkness, hearing the drip of water, the scurry of rats, his restless mind had turned from one image to another, and then another, without pause: Inurian, Ess’yr, Kennet. Dawn had found him still tired, and uneasy; doubtful of himself, and of Highfast.