He lay there and willed his fear into submission. He denied the pulsing ache in his head until it slipped into the background. He begged himself to rise above the harrying doubts and distractions that dogged his every thought. Slowly, in the night’s darkness, he gained some small mastery over it all, and was, for a time, himself again. There was always an answer to every question; a chink in the defences of every obstacle that lay athwart his path. He struggled to make himself believe that, alone amidst the city’s foul decay, and tried not to think of what lay outside the locked door. He tried not to imagine what might lie beyond that one cold night’s horizon.

VI

“I’m told that Avann oc Gyre held audiences here, in this very chamber, before he fell foul of the High Thanes of Kilkry.”

Aeglyss walked slowly, a little unsteadily, around the periphery of the columned hall.

“Do you like it, Chancellor?” he asked.

They were high here, by the broken-topped standards of Kan Avor: two storeys above the mud that passed for ground; two flights of coiled, slippery steps above the highest water marks the flood had imprinted on the buildings. The planking of the hall’s wooden floor was intact, but overlaid, in places, by moss and slime. Great thick beams still supported the roof above, but there were holes that had admitted the rain and the wind and light. The columns on which the beams rested were pitted and eroded. The stone bench that stood at the far end of the hall was spotted with patches of lichen. There was a smell of soft, saturated timber.

Mordyn Jerain hardly noticed the damp and the decay and the stenches any more. Three days and three nights he had been here, trapped in this mad, corrupt nest of snakes. He thought it was that long, at least. His senses, his awareness of what was around him, came and went. Sometimes, momentarily, he forgot who he was. The only thing he never forgot was Aeglyss. The malignant presence of the halfbreed was everywhere, in the walls, in the air he breathed, in the interstices of his thoughts. When he slept, the Shadowhand dreamed dreams that he did not believe were even his own. He dreamed of forests, and of fires, and murder and rage, and all of it, he was almost certain, was born of this creature who was twisting the world into an imitation of his own diseased mind.

Mordyn’s body was recovering slowly. But his heart, his spirit and his hope were being picked, bit by bit, apart. He had given up trying to speak to Wain nan Horin-Gyre. She was nothing more than an obedient hound at the halfbreed’s heel, of no more consequence or significance than the Kyrinin who came and went at his command, or the scores of men and women who milled about Kan Avor’s rubble-strewn streets. There was, Mordyn now knew, nothing here that mattered save Aeglyss. But he had no idea what to do with that knowledge, or even where it had come from, how it had infested his mind. He had never imagined that the world held such things as this halfbreed. He had no weapons in his armoury of manipulation and influence that could serve against such an opponent. And though despair was no part of his nature, it was taking hold of him.

“Come here,” Aeglyss said, beckoning Mordyn to join him at one of the windows.

The halfbreed laid a spindly arm across Mordyn’s shoulders. Its touch filled the Chancellor with revulsion, though there was no weight to it.

He was alone here with the na’kyrim. Wain and some of her warriors waited outside, on the stairway. He could kill Aeglyss before they could possibly intervene; throttle the vile life out of him perhaps, or beat his head to a pulp on the stone window ledge. He could do it. His body was strong enough. Not his heart, though. Not his will. This man cannot be killed, some awed part of his mind whispered to him, any more than the wind could be dragged out of the sky and crushed in your hands; any more than winter could be slain, with axe or fire or storm of arrows.

“Look at that.” Aeglyss extended a crooked, wiry finger.

Below, in a wide street, a crowd was gathered. It surged back and forth, like a mountain stream plunging and swirling in a rocky bowl. In its midst were three figures: mud-streaked men clad in simple clothes, flailing about with clubs and staves.

“Thieves,” Aeglyss whispered in Mordyn’s ear, holding him close. “Farmers who lost their land, I suppose. They stole food from us in the night, killed one of Wain’s guards. They thought themselves safe, hiding down by the river. But no. My White Owls can find anyone, if there’s a trail to follow.”

The crowd – a jumbled mixture of warriors, and Inkallim, and men and women as ragged as the farmers were – howled and roared and drove the captives up and down the street. One of the men slipped and went down. The throng flowed over him, trampling.

“Can you feel it?” Aeglyss asked. “The need they have, for blood.”

Mordyn shivered, though he was not cold.

“I don’t know, you see,” Aeglyss hissed, “whether it is mine or theirs. Whether I… make it, or whether it came here in their minds, already nestled there. There’s too much I don’t know. Don’t understand.”

A rock struck one of the farmers on the side of the head. Blood at once ran down his face, and he staggered, lifting his hands in a vain effort at protection. Someone stabbed a spear into his stomach. A sword slashed in and lifted a part of his scalp away from his skull. The man fell, silently.

A small band of Kyrinin appeared at the end of the street.

“Ah, look now,” Aeglyss breathed. “Now they’ll have what they want. Now the beast that’s in them will be fed.”

He leaned forwards out of the window, his arm slipping away from Mordyn’s shoulder as he did so. The Chancellor sagged a little at the sudden removal of that terrible, weightless burden.

“Let the White Owls have that last one,” Aeglyss shouted down. Every face, every gaze, was drawn by his cry. The sound was not loud, but penetrating, as if it was the voice of the city itself, emerging from the stone and the earth. “Let his punishment be at their hands.”

He looked back to Mordyn and smiled. The crowd parted and the few Kyrinin came softly through it. The last surviving prisoner was weeping and shaking. He made no attempt to flee; simply stood there, and beat his chest in despair. The Kyrinin took him and bound his hands and his feet and laid him down in the middle of the street. A perfect circle of silent, attentive observers formed. There was an awful stillness about the scene: an expectant, anticipatory thrill. Mordyn could feel it himself, the yearning for this moment to culminate in cathartic violence.

The Kyrinin tore the man’s shirt from his body. Two of them produced knives. They began to carve long strips of skin away from his chest.

Aeglyss closed his eyes and lifted his head back and breathed in deeply, as if inhaling the screams.

“Sit, Chancellor. You must be tired.” He took Mordyn to the ancient bench and settled him onto it. “Thanes sat there once. And now you.”

Mordyn had to press his hands down against the rough stone to hold himself steady and erect. Aeglyss lowered himself onto the floor and sat there, cross-legged. The robe he wore was filthy, its hem frayed. He was looking at his fingernails. Delicately, he lifted one away from its bed. It fell like the petal of dead flower. Aeglyss grunted. He lifted the exposed fingertip to his mouth and licked it, watching Mordyn now.

“Too much for this poor body,” Aeglyss said. He sounded sad and tired. “My exertions in securing your presence here… I reached a little too far, I think. I am learning, but too slowly. Too slowly.”

He coughed, and bloody saliva crept over his chin. He dragged the back of his hand across it.

“I don’t know what to do with you, Shadowhand. You’re too precious a thing to be given up to the rest of them. They’d squander you. Waste you. Yet… oh, to put her aside would be too much for me. Too cruel.”