The White Owls were agitated, yapping and whining at each other. Wain saw Hothyn – the one she took to be the closest thing these savages had to a leader – standing opposite her, staring down at the na’kyrim. For once, his face had an almost human animation. She saw horrified fascination. Whatever had happened here, it had produced something more complicated than simple fear amongst those who witnessed it. The Kyrinin seemed paralysed by bewilderment.
“The na’kyrim ’s sick. Get him indoors,” Wain said to her own warriors as they pushed up behind her.
They did as she commanded. The Kyrinin raised no objection, as she had half-expected they might. They watched as a couple of Wain’s Shield lifted Aeglyss between them. Strands of grass came with him, reluctant to release their grip. The warriors carried him back towards the inn. Wain followed, and a few paces behind her Hothyn came like an attentive, watchful hound.
“I can find no wound, other than scratches, save those he already bore,” the healer sighed as she washed the na’kyrim ’s blood from her hands. “Those holes in his wrists have opened up again. I have given him fresh bandages. That’s all I can do for him.”
The young woman shrugged. She seemed to Wain to be inexperienced, unsure of her knowledge and skills, but she was the best they had been able to find amongst the companies in Sirian’s Dyke. It took no great talent, in any case, to see that what afflicted Aeglyss was not merely to do with his body.
He was calmer now, but occasional tremors still shook his arms. His lips trembled. Sometimes he groaned or muttered barely audible nonsense. He had twice slipped into fraught laughter: a harsh, angry kind of cackle. Wain wondered if his mind had finally broken. The thought that, after all that had happened, this man might now betray her hopes by succumbing to madness made her angry.
The healer glanced nervously at Hothyn. The Kyrinin stood silently in the corner, as he had done throughout her examination of Aeglyss. His inhuman eyes never left the na’kyrim, never acknowledged the existence of anything save that gaunt form prostrate on the bed.
“Get out,” Wain said irritably to the younger woman. She bowed her head and left.
Aeglyss was murmuring again. Wain leaned over, straining to catch some of the words, but it was not even a human tongue he spoke in. Some woodwight cant, perhaps. His breath stank, an exhalation of decay, as if his flesh was rotting somewhere on the inside. Wain grimaced, and saw then that his eyes, so close to her own, were open: chips of grey stone, now shot with a net of red lines, like a myriad of tiny fissures exposing the meat that lay beneath their surface. She jerked her head away, repelled by such proximity.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
Aeglyss smiled feebly. “Nothing. I thrive.”
Wain snorted.
“You shouldn’t mock,” Aeglyss rasped. “It reveals the depths of your ignorance. I grow stronger.”
He laughed, but it was too much for him. The sound contorted itself into a wheezing cough that rocked his shoulders. Spittle flecked his chin. Wain turned away in disgust. Hothyn, she saw, remained fixated upon Aeglyss. The Kyrinin stood quite still, wide-eyed.
“I still live,” Aeglyss snapped. “They came for me, in their fear. They meant to quiet me, and silence me, and break me. Ha! They did not know! I still live, and they fled away, through the…”
His words collapsed into another fit of coughing. Wain looked back to him.
“You’re ranting,” she muttered. “Are you mad, then?”
“No. Not mad.” He sounded angry. “This isn’t madness, you stupid. .. Not madness. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know.” And as quickly as that, the anger was gone and what she saw in his face, and heard in his voice, was fear, confusion. Almost childlike; a sickening feebleness.
“I don’t understand,” he murmured. “What do the Anain care for me? What offence have I given to them? I’ve done nothing… yet they come and tear at my mind, try to snuff me out. They think they are the masters of everything. Or perhaps they don’t think at all. Perhaps.. . ah, what does it matter? I am beyond them. Even them.”
Wain had the impression that he had lapsed into some inward-looking reverie, but then his head lolled to one side and he stared straight at her.
“Do you hear me, Thane’s sister? I am beyond even them, the awful Anain. They cannot conquer me. What wondrous monster must I be, then?”
“I do not know,” Wain said. Pressure was building at her temples, a hot, hurtful beat in the bone of her skull. Somehow, she could still smell Aeglyss’s foul breath. It crowded her nostrils and writhed at the back of her mouth, down her throat. It was vile, but seemed no more terrible than the dead touch of his eyes on her skin. The room had become terribly oppressive. The air gave her no nourishment.
“You should rest,” she said, and left. She could hear Aeglyss laughing as she descended, and just as the sickly sound followed her, so she carried the stench of him with her, and the echo of his ferocity in her mind.
She demanded wine, and drank it thirstily. She had one of her Shield stoke up the fire and pile logs onto it until the flames leaped. Still she felt cold, beyond the reach of warmth.
The sound of horses outside stirred her out of her distraction. Shod hoofs were ringing on the cobbles of the yard. Voices were raised. She threw open the door of the inn and glared out, ready to vent her unease upon any convenient victim. The light that flooded out around her as she stood in the doorway illuminated thirty or more mounted figures, but Wain held her tongue. They were Inkallim, stern and haughty. Shraeve was at their head, and she stared down from her lofty position with an expression of arrogant amusement.
“I thought you would be back in Glasbridge by now,” the Inkallim said.
“And I thought you’d be riding with Fiallic and his host. He’s your master, isn’t he?”
“Fate’s my master, as it is yours. The approaches to Glasbridge must be held, if that host is to find its way to our enemy’s flank. That’s where the matter will be most bloodily decided, so that’s where we will stand.” Shraeve swung out of the saddle and dropped to the ground. “And, anyway, I was curious. I heard much that was interesting regarding your tame halfbreed, while I was in Anduran. It seems a good deal has changed since you and I were last in this dismal little village.”
“It’s none of your concern,” Wain snapped. “Those who bear more authority than you amongst the Children have spoken with me about Aeglyss. You’ll find quarters for your people amongst the cottages, if that’s what you seek. There’s no other room to spare.”
“You should learn to distinguish more precisely between your friends and your enemies, my lady,” Shraeve said with a contemptuous smile. “We ravens are your Blood’s closest allies now, whether you like it or not.” She led her horse away along the track towards the dark rows of hovels that ran down to the river. As one, the rest of the Inkallim silently dismounted and followed. Wain watched them go, wrestling to contain her shapeless, saturating anger, and then turned back into the inn and shut the door behind her.
The night sank to its coldest depths. Wain lay unsleeping in her chamber. A square of moonlight fell through the window and onto the bed sheets, like a gossamer-thin silvered scarf laid out there. She stared up at the rough wooden beams of the ceiling. Sleep had always been a problem for her when her mind was active. This was different, though. Whenever she tried to constrain her thoughts, they bounded away from her as if stung by the smack of a carter’s whip. And always they turned and turned about the subject of Aeglyss.
For a time she wished Kanin was there, then thought better of it. Her brother loathed the na’kyrim too much to see clearly. He was limited by that. His convictions had always been flawed by a seam of restraint. Kanin’s passion, his faith, could only carry him so far; it was never unconditional. She loved her brother for that failing, the sliver of difference between them that made him who he was. But still it was a difference; it meant there was a part of her he would never quite comprehend.