Bloodheir (2 page)
Authors: Brian Ruckley
Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Fiction, #Fantasy Fiction, #Epic
For years, an uneasy peace has held between the True Bloods and the followers of the Black Road, whose uncompromising creed of predestination long ago led to their exile into the north. The Lannis and Kilkry Bloods remain wary of the threat posed by the Black Road, but elsewhere in the domains of Gryvan oc Haig, the High Thane of the True Bloods, thoughts have turned to commerce and conquest in the far-distant south.
On the night of the annual festival of Winterbirth, sudden disaster engulfs the Lannis Blood. Their frontier stronghold of Tanwrye is besieged by one Black Road army; a second, impossibly, emerges from the vast forests of Anlane to assault their capital at Anduran. And Castle Kolglas, home to the Lannis Thane’s nephew Orisian, is overrun by Inkallim, the dreaded elite warriors of the Black Road. Orisian sees his father slain, and his sister Anyara carried off into captivity along with his friend and mentor, the
na’kyrim
Inurian. Orisian himself barely escapes, fleeing into the wilderness with his bodyguard Rothe.
The Black Road invaders, led by Kanin and Wain nan Horin-Gyre, have forged an improbable and fragile alliance with the White Owl Kyrinin, mediated by a bitter
na’kyrim
named Aeglyss. With surprise on their side, and the fierce fatalism of their creed driving them on, they seize Anduran and slaughter the Lannis Thane and his family. Amidst the ruin, Inurian increasingly comes to fear that still greater danger lurks unrecognised, for he senses in Aeglyss both disfiguring anger and immense, as yet untapped, power.
Orisian receives unexpected aid from the Fox Kyrinin, and is soon reunited with Anyara and Inurian, who have made good their escape. But it is a joyless reunion: the enemy are in close pursuit and Inurian has been gravely wounded. As his strength fades, Inurian compels Orisian and the others to leave him behind.
Aeglyss confronts the dying Inurian, pleading for his aid and guidance, offering the chance of survival in exchange. Inurian refuses, and is slain by an enraged Aeglyss. Increasingly unstable, Aeglyss then finds himself rejected by the leaders of the Black Road as well. The alliance he built for them with the White Owls is repudiated by Kanin nan Horin-Gyre and Aeglyss is seized by the Kyrinin, required to answer for the failure of the promises he made.
Orisian and his companions find brief refuge in the mountainous Car Criagar with Yvane, another
na’kyrim
, but continuing pursuit drives them on and they make for Koldihrve, a remote town where they hope to find a ship to carry them south. In the course of their journey Orisian’s interest in Ess’yr, the Kyrinin woman acting as both guide and guardian to him, grows. He comes to realise that she was Inurian’s lover, but is nevertheless increasingly, though hesitantly, attracted to her himself.
Events are moving rapidly elsewhere, as the world slips towards chaos. The forces of the Black Road, led by Wain nan Horin-Gyre and by the implacable Inkallim Shraeve, continue their remorseless destruction of the Lannis Blood. In the far north, the secretive leaders of the Inkallim compete with the High Thane of Gyre himself for influence over this invasion that has achieved successes far beyond anyone’s expectations; in the south, Gryvan oc Haig reluctantly and sluggishly assembles an army to march in support of Lannis, relying always upon the assurances of his infamous Chancellor, Mordyn Jerain, that events can be easily controlled.
Orisian and his companions escape on a ship even as Black Road warriors, with Kanin himself at their head, descend upon Koldihrve. They are carried to safety in Kolkyre, the capital of the Kilkry Blood.
Meanwhile, the White Owl Kyrinin have made a fateful decision. Considering themselves betrayed, they crucify Aeglyss upon their ancient Breaking Stone. His agonies, though, lead not to death but to transformation. And in the moment of that transformation,
na’kyrim
everywhere – whether Yvane in Kolkyre’s Tower of Thrones, or those hiding away in the fortress sanctuary of Highfast – sense the burgeoning of his terrible power; power that could have dire consequences for everyone in the Godless World.
I
I will set the tale down here much as I had it from an old woman in Hoke, as she had it from her
grandmother, and she from her grandmother before. I doubt there is anyone who has not heard it
in one form or another. It is a good tale, but the wise will not take it as the truth, whole and
entire. However flawed our understanding of the Anain may be, we can assume that they would
not trouble to be so clear in the expression of their desire as this tale would have us believe. Nor
does it seem likely that they would display even such brief patience as the story suggests. We
lesser races, after all, must seem to them as slow and stilted and inconsequential as the mute and
dull beasts of the field seem to us.
Tane, the Shining City, had fallen. The Kyrinin were undone, their lords and captains slain, their
armies scattered to the winds. The streets were strewn with bodies and the drains overflowing
with blood. The triumphant Huanin armies, marching under the argent stag-banner of the Alsire
King, had broken down the walls and claimed the city as their own.
The conquering King stared out from the highest room of the Rose Citadel, in Tane’s gilded
heart, and he looked upon his work and was glad, for though he saw ruin and fire, still the city
was the greatest in all the world and in it he would be the greatest King.
Now a tall tree grew in the courtyard outside that noble tower. The tree stretched a branch in
through the window, and the branch twisted and cracked as it came. In the sound of its wooden
bones breaking was a voice that spoke to the King.
“This city has run with blood, and the mind of the world is riven with pain and grief and fury. It
is enough. Now we claim this place and will cleanse it and make it ours. You must take your
armies away.”
“I will not,” the King replied, “for my warriors have given their lives to win this great city for me
and it is to be the home and heart of my people.”
At these words, the branch withdrew and the great tree was once more a tree, silent and still. The
King summoned his servants and said to them, “Take your axes and cut down the tree in the
courtyard, for I mislike its countenance. And when you have cut it down, burn the wood so that
not a twig remains.”
On the evening of the following day the King was again in that high chamber. Leaves blew in
through the open window and spun upon the breeze and filled the room, and in the sighing of their
dance was a voice that spoke to the King.
“This war of yours fouls the mind of the world. This city is filled with the cries of the dead and it
is no place for the living. We will see an end to this war; we will take this city and still its torment.
Yours is the heart that will be broken if you do not depart from here with all your host, for this is a
city of the dead and so it will remain.”
But again the King shook his head. “If I leave as you request, all that has gone before – all the
strife and the struggle that cast their dark pall over the land these last years – all this will be for
nothing. I will not go, for all the lives that have been taken and all the loss that has been suffered
were for the purpose of bringing me here.”
And at these words of the King, the leaves that were in the room fell to the floor and spoke no
more to him. The King summoned his servants and said to them, “Clear out these leaves and
make a fire of them in the courtyard. When they are burned away to nothing, return and close this
window up with shutters, and nail it fast. I dislike the breeze.”
Now the King had a daughter, who was as bright in his eyes as the morning. On the third night
the father and the daughter ate together in that highest chamber of the Rose Citadel, and made
one another great promises for a glorious future.
But the Citadel shook in its stone bones, and the walls trembled. The shutters that had been fixed
across the window were torn apart. Vines that grew without the Citadel came in like a thousand
writhing snakes and they seized the King’s daughter. They lifted her from the floor and coiled
about her.
And the voice of the vines said, “Twice you have refused us, and thrice we will not allow. You will
depart from this place on the morrow, or nothing of your happiness will remain unruined.”
And the vines broke the neck of the King’s child, and cracked her spine and snapped her arms
and legs and cast her down on the cold stone floor at the King’s feet.
As the heartbroken King’s host departed the next morning, the ground shivered behind them and
brought forth saplings: an ocean of trees sprang from the blood-fed loam and reached up towards
the sun. When night fell and the King turned and looked back the way he had come, he saw not
the great plain there had once been but a forest so vast that his eye could not track its limits. And
of Tane, of the greatest and most wondrous city in all the world, there was no sign, for the forest
had swallowed it and all its countless corpses.
Thus ended the War of the Tainted. Thus was born the Deep Rove, and men called it the Forest of
the Dead and did not walk beneath its ill-rumoured canopy.
from
Tales of the Anain
by
Arvent of Dun Aygll
K’rina had been weeping intermittently for days. Her
na’kyrim
eyes, once so beautiful, were now red, veined and bleary. She did not sleep, took no food, hardly spoke. Her friends feared for her, but she did not respond to their efforts to help or comfort her.
She wandered amongst the pools and reed-beds that surrounded Dyrkyrnon. She squatted down beside stagnant ponds and peered blankly at the grey water. When wet fogs and drizzles drifted across the vast marshes she did not seem to notice, but allowed the moisture to settle on her hair and skin, mingling with her tears. Everywhere she went she was followed by two girls. They stayed a few paces behind her and did not intrude upon her grief-fuelled daze. They simply watched, and kept her from harm, and each night reported to the elders.