“I would not ask you to be,” Orisian cried into the gale.

“Whether malice moves her tongue or not, Yvane is right. We are all afraid of Aeglyss, and of what his presence in the world might presage. If men decide that na’kyrim are once again a danger, there are too few of us, and we are too feeble, to do anything other than die meekly or flee. If the Anain decide they mislike the course of events, there’s no one who could obstruct their will, no matter how strange or heartless its exercising. And if Aeglyss can master the possibilities of what he is becoming, rather than being destroyed by them, we might all be wading through the blood of the slaughtered before long. Do you know what is truly different about him, Thane? Do you understand why we – and you – should find him worthy of our fear?”

Orisian waited for her to give him the answer.

“Because he is an old thing,” the Elect shouted above the wind’s roar. “Something none of us have seen in our lifetimes. He is a na’kyrim so potent, so immersed in the Shared, that he, perhaps alone amongst us all, need not be afraid. Think! What kind of monstrosity must he be, for the Anain themselves to take notice of him? He may not have realised it himself yet, may not have understood what he is, but all of us here can feel it, in our hearts and in our minds. He is the first of our kind in more than three hundred years who might make himself the father of fear, rather than its child.”

She held out a hand towards him. He hesitated for only the briefest of moments, then reached out and grasped it. The Elect’s eyes narrowed a fraction; her lips tightened. Orisian felt a faint and distant flutter of warmth run across the palm of his hand.

“You feel that?” Cerys asked him.

“Something.”

She released him. “You – your race – might be deaf and blind to the Shared, but that does not mean you are beyond its reach. If you were, I could not make you feel even that faint touch. There will be many, not just na’kyrim, whose sleep is disturbed by bad dreams now. There will be many whose minds become tinged with an anger not entirely their own.

“No creature whose head holds thoughts is truly separate from the Shared. Some believe it is the very stuff of which your mind is made. That is the country over which Aeglyss casts his shadow. That is where the Anain are rising.” She sighed. “It is not only us poor na’kyrim who have things to fear in these times, Thane. Aeglyss is poisoning the well from which we all draw our thoughts, our desires. We na’kyrim are just the first to catch the taste of it.”

On that wind-battered rooftop, with dark clouds rushing overhead and the cries of crows echoing in the bleak gorge, Orisian had a momentary sense of the world as a savagely hostile place. Cerys spoke of things he barely understood, yet for that moment he did not doubt that she was right. Terrible darkness could descend. It was possible, in a world such as this, for horror to be piled upon horror; for even the suffering he had already witnessed to be exceeded. He looked away from the na’kyrim ’s earnest face. Rothe was standing close by, watching in silence. Orisian shivered.

“Can you tell me how to oppose him, then?” he asked Cerys.

“Only in part,” the Elect said. “Perhaps by warning you of the dangers, we can arm you against them in some small way. And there is Eshenna. Talk with her. She believes… I cannot say whether she is right or not, but she believes there is something that might be done; chinks in Aeglyss’s armour.”

Orisian nodded.

“You may find her more like the Inurian you remember,” Cerys observed as she led him back towards the stairwell. “She is not yet beset by fear, nor bereft of curiosity about the world. But remember that she is young, by our reckoning. Impetuous. And she remembers Aeglyss. Her thinking is coloured by that.”

Highfast sank into another winter twilight as if it was going home, returning to the stuff of which it was made. The gale subsided, clouds congregated and breathed a fine mist across the fortress. Darkness mustered around the turrets and battlements, drifted down the flanks of the towers, pooled in its deep courtyards. The last few crows called out as they descended invisibly out of the night sky towards their roost.

Orisian, Rothe and Yvane walked in silence through the labyrinth of sombre passageways. A torch-bearer lit their way, chasing the shadows ahead of them. In their wake, the dark swept back in, tumbling always at Orisian’s heels.

Their guide pushed open a door for them and stood to one side.

“I’ll wait out here, to light your way back,” he said.

Within, they found Eshenna alone in a long, narrow dormitory. She sat on one of the beds, hands resting in her lap. In the tinted light of a single oil lamp, she might almost pass for human, Orisian thought. She stood when he entered, nodded. She looked nervous. He gestured for her to sit down again. He and Yvane sat on the bed opposite her. Rothe waited near to the door.

Orisian did not know whether bringing Yvane had been wise, but he wanted her help in navigating these waters. There was too much here that was unfamiliar and unknown. Yvane was no replacement for Inurian, but she was the closest thing he had to an interpreter.

“You know Aeglyss?” he asked Eshenna, and she nodded gravely.

“I wake every morning with the taste of anger in my mouth, the sound of hatred ringing in my ears. If I close my eyes now, I can feel his bile seeping into my mind. I know Aeglyss. I know this is him.”

“Tell me who he is,” Orisian said.

“He was a savage child.” Eshenna spoke with feeling. “Not in deeds, so much, but in words, and in instincts. Spiteful. He suffered a great deal before he reached Dyrkyrnon. Many of us did, but most overcame those memories, or learned to live with them. He… treasured them, almost. He could not separate himself from what had happened to him, what had happened to his parents. The past weighed heavily on him.

“He told us that his father was a warrior of the Black Road, and that the White Owls killed him for loving a Kyrinin woman. His mother died, frozen or starved, on the northern edge of the marshes. She had fled from the clan with Aeglyss when they decided to kill him too. So he told the story, at least.”

“But he didn’t stay in Dyrkyrnon,” Orisian said.

“He did for some years, but he was cast out. He inflicted many small cruelties, and some not so small. A girl…” Eshenna winced at the memory. “One girl in particular, Aeglyss desired. She was cold to him, as many of us were, but her coldness pained him in a different way. Much sharper. He would not – could not, I suppose – accept it, or ignore it. It ate away at him. One day he was found, alone in the marsh, crouching by a pool, staring down into the water. He was watching the girl. She was in there, under the surface, on her back. Mouth open. Drowning, without struggling.

“They hauled her out, and managed to save her. Aeglyss never said anything about it, not a word. The girl claimed not to remember what had happened. Whether that was true or not, she was never happy again; she never slept well, or laughed without a shadow in her voice. Everyone knew Aeglyss had… made it happen. Even then, the Shared had woken in him more strongly than some of us could understand. Everyone was afraid of what he might do, so they cast him out.”

“Would have spared us all some trouble if they’d just killed him,” muttered Yvane.

“I think there were some who wanted to. But he was sent away. No one in Dyrkyrnon ever heard of him again, as far as I know.”

“Until now, I imagine,” Yvane grunted. “I dare say he’s back on their minds now.”

Eshenna nodded. “They’ll not act against him, though, if they can help it. Dyrkyrnon’s like Highfast in that: they want no dealings with the wider world, in case it should decide to have dealings with them.”