Winterbirth (61 page)

Anyara glanced at the knot of Kyrinin who now silently faced them. She felt, for the first time, a sense of threat.

'Come along, then,' Yvane said, and set off back the way they had come.

Orisian and Anyara hurried to catch up with her, Rothe lingering for a moment to ensure the Fox did not come after them.

'No point in digging our heels in once they've made up their minds,' said Yvane. 'They'll not want to get involved in arguments amongst Huanin. Probably blame us for bringing outsiders to their doorstep, as well. All in all, we have outstayed our welcome, I think.'

ORISIAN FOUND THE Vale of Tears a very different place to his own homeland. The valley was scattered with ramshackle farmsteads. They were smaller and more crudely built than those in the Glas valley, and stood amongst unkempt fields. The soil was heavy and wet; there were many little marshes and beds of rushes. The cattle that grazed the floodplain looked listless and morose.

Time and again, as they made their steady way down towards the sea, they passed by the ruins of abandoned farm buildings. Most were little more than rubble but now and again they would come across the full shell of a house, overgrown by moss and trailing plants. There had been more people here once, Orisian thought, a great many more.

Occasionally they spotted a lone herdsman following along behind his cattle, tapping at their hindquarters with a switch. A hunter crossed their path once, leading a pony that bore the gutted corpse of a deer. He came into sight a hundred or so paces ahead of them, and paused to gaze in their direction for a moment.

He was a strange, burly figure almost lost beneath the thick furs he wore. Rothe raised a hand in greeting, but the man did not respond and continued on his way towards a distant shack further out by the river.

They camped by a small grove of trees. Varryn found some kindling, and they soon had a fire alight.

Ess'yr lowered herself to the ground with care. For the first few hours after leaving the
vo'an
she had moved well, almost recapturing the lithe grace that had been hers before she was injured. Her stride had shortened and stiffened as the day wore on.

Yvane emerged from amongst the trees, clutching odd, globe-shaped objects in her grubby hands. She smiled at the puzzled expression on Orisian and Anyara's faces.

'Earth mutton,' she said. 'Never seen it before?'

Anyara and Orisian shook their heads, but Rothe grunted softly.

'Mushroom from underground. Used to be much sought after, that, when I was a child in Targlas,' he said. 'My father took me searching for it. Don't think anyone goes hunting for it nowadays, though.'

'Well, it's still good food in these parts,' Yvane said. 'The Fox think it something of a delicacy. You should consider yourselves fortunate to be served with such food.'

She and Varryn sliced the fungus into thin strips, turning each one briefly over the fire before passing it out. The flavour was good, with a meaty hint beneath the taste of soil.

As they went on down towards Koldihrve, Orisian asked Yvane about the ruined farmhouses that dotted the landscape.

'There were more people here once, and they made a better living from the land,' she said.

'That much I'd guessed,' said Orisian pointedly.

The
na'kyrim
shot him a wry glance.

'Losing a little of that great gentleness of yours?' she enquired. 'Might not be such a bad thing, so long as you don't get carried away. Anyway, this was Aygll land before the War of the Tainted. Went wild in the Storm Years after the Kingship fell, and never got over it.'

They passed a dozen Kyrinin who were perhaps making for the
vo'an
on the lakeshore. Varryn exchanged a few soft words with them. From the direction of their glances, it seemed that Ess'yr was the subject of their discussion. One of the travellers produced a small packet from inside his tunic and unwrapped a bound bundle of twigs. Varryn accepted it with a nod of his head and the other Kyrinin went on their way.

When they rested for a time in the early afternoon, Varryn heated some water over a small fire. He dropped the twigs in and let them stew. A sharp, almost acrid, scent rose from the pot. Ess'yr drank the infusion down and afterwards a little of the paleness was gone from her cheeks and she walked with an easier stride.

That evening, when they bedded down a short way from the track, Orisian went and sat beside her. No one else seemed to be paying them any attention. He spoke to her quietly.

'How are your ribs?'

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. 'Nothing,' she said. 'I live still.'

Her tattoos were still livid, not yet settled into her skin. They were much less dense than those upon her brother's face. A spiral swung around the swell of her cheek; fronds of dye cupped the corners of her eyes. It was almost beautiful. Only the first
kin'thyn,
Orisian supposed. More would come if she killed again.

'Inurian always seemed to have a cure for any ill,' Orisian said. 'The same medicines you use, I suppose.

He learned them from you? From the Fox, I mean?'

Ess'yr only nodded at that. She was looking at him now, with those still, strong eyes.

'You sent your sister to me,' she said. 'That was well done.'

Orisian knew what she meant: the cord of Inurian's life.

'It was Yvane's idea. It seemed right.'

'You feel more clearly than most of your kind,' she said and there was the slightest, gentlest of smiles on her delicate lips.

Orisian felt a breath of heat rising in his face. For the first time in many days, he had a glimpse of that Ess'yr he had seen before they reached Anduran: the one who looked at him as if he was Orisian, not just some Huanin. Her hand lay only the shortest of reaches from his own, her fingers pressed softly into the yielding moss.

'You buried it in a
dyn ham?
Orisian asked.

There was only a fleeting pause. Anyone watching her less carefully than Orisian would have missed the momentary tightening at the corner of her eyes. He wanted to touch her in that instant — to offer comfort

- but he did not.

'No,' she said. 'He was
na'kyrim.
Only half of him was of the true people. But I found a place. I cut a good willow staff. It will leaf when the winter is over.'

'Did you . . . How long did you know him for?' Orisian asked her.

She thought for a moment, and he feared she was not going to reply; that, as so often when he asked a question she did not wish to answer, she would not hear it. She did, though.

'Five summers ago. He visited my
a'an.
I saw him, but I did not speak with him until the next summer.

He came back.'

'And . . .' Orisian had to suppress the urge to cough, 'you loved him then?'

'Well enough,' was all Ess'yr said, as if he had asked how she liked their campsite. Orisian could not tell whether the question had offended her.

'He was very kind to me,' he said. 'Always. I would have been very lonely if he had not been there . . . after the Fever. He was always there to talk to, about anything. I will miss him.'

And to his surprise she smiled again, the curling lines upon her face flexing themselves gracefully.

'He loved you,' she said. Her voice was so gentle, so careful of his feelings, that it gave him the will to take a further step.

'What was it he said to you, by the waterfall? When Varryn was angry. I heard
"ra'tyn",
and it seemed important. Did it have something to do with me?'

Her gaze flicked down, and he knew that he had reached too far. She gave no sign of anger, and did not shrink away from him, yet he felt the distance between them suddenly yawn. She was no longer Ess'yr, who he knew a little; she became the Kyrinin, who he knew hardly at all.

'That is not spoken of,' she said, and turned away from him, a slight rigidity in the movement the only hint of her injury. That, he knew, ended the conversation.

He stayed there for a little while, wrestling with frustration. She made him feel like a child. He knew she did not mean to do it, but still it cut him. His own shortcomings annoyed him more, though. There was some key, he thought, some turn of phrase or way of being, that he lacked. He could not quite close the gap. And yet, if asked, he could not, or would not, have explained precisely why it mattered to him; why he wanted so much to narrow that distance between himself and Ess'yr.

In the morning, they awoke to find Yvane still wrapped in her bedding, her breathing shallow and fluttering. Rothe, who had taken the last watch, said she had been thus for half an hour or more. She would not wake, not even when Orisian gave her shoulder a tentative shake. They spent long minutes in indecision.

'We should get some water from a stream . . .' Rothe was saying when at last Yvane returned to herself, sat up and glared at her audience.

'What are you all looking at?' she demanded, sounding a little groggy.

They busied themselves with the packing away of their simple camp and the sharing out of some food.

Only after they were on the move, working their way along a sodden stretch of the track where thick rushes had all but overwhelmed the path, did Orisian ease himself to Yvane's side and ask her what had happened.

'Visited Koldihrve, as I visited Inurian in Anduran,' she said. 'Best to make sure of some kind of welcome. The place has few comforts to offer, but Hammarn will give us a roof over our heads at least. I think I scared him halfway to death. It's a long time since he saw me like that; I think he'd forgotten. His mind has more holes in it than a mismended net.'

She clearly saw or sensed some doubt in Orisian, for she smiled at him.

'Don't worry. Hammarn is just an old, distracted
na'kyrim.
He can be a bit . . . unusual, but his heart is true enough. He's a friend, and will be nothing but delighted to have so many visitors. That's not something you could say for most in Koldihrve.'

Orisian did not relish the prospect of arriving in a town of masterless men. He could guess that there would be no warm welcome waiting there. Against that, though, he could set the thought that he was about to see a place where Huanin and Kyrinin lived peacefully alongside one another. He knew of no other place where such a thing would happen in these days. He had not thought of it before, but it was obvious that there would be
na'kyrim
here, and that knowledge quickened his pulse a fraction. Inurian and Yvane were the only
na'kyrim
he had ever known. The only other he had even seen – just for a moment — had been at Kolglas on the night of Winterbirth: Aeglyss.

'Yvane,' he asked, 'do you know ... is Koldihrve where Inurian came from? I know his father was from the Fox clan, but I never knew where he grew up.'

'No,' said Yvane softly. 'Inurian was born in a summer
a'an
in the Car Anagais. His mother . . .' she paused and looked at him. 'Best to leave that,' she said. 'It is not the happiest of tales. Don't you think, in any case, that he would have told you himself, if he wanted you to know?'

Orisian gazed at the muddy ground passing beneath his feet.

'Perhaps,' he said. 'Perhaps he meant to tell me many things one day. He meant to take me with him into the forest, I think. Maybe even next summer.'

'Perhaps he did,' said Yvane. 'I don't think he would have taken any other Huanin, but you... yes, perhaps.'

She fell silent then, and they trudged along. Flakes of snow began to drift down from the flat, endless clouds. A flight of ducks whirred overhead like fat bolts loosed from some crossbow. Up in the forests on the edge of the Car Criagar a stag bellowed. It was a mournful sound. Some stories said that all the creatures of the world wept when the Gods departed, save the Huanin and the Kyrinin who were the cause of it.

Something else has passed away this time, Orisian thought. Let this night be a warm memory; let it be a seed of life. Those were the words his father had spoken on Winterbirth's eve, as he had done every year for as long as Orisian could remember. But this time the memories of Winterbirth carried nothing of warmth. No seed - at least none with any good in it - had been planted in Castle Kolglas. If spring did come, it would break upon a world changed beyond recognition.

They came to a derelict barn, and rested there for a little while. The snow had turned to desultory sleet.

The building's roof was skeletal, its rotting beams exposed like the ribs of some half-decayed carcass deposited by flood waters.

Yvane dozed, huddled in her cloak. Rothe shared some food with Anyara. The two Kyrinin whispered to one another while Varryn applied a balm to the still raw tattoos on his sister's face. Orisian could not settle and wandered listlessly around the barn. There was no sign of fire or storm or other damage. Like all the other abandoned farmsteads they had passed on their journey down the valley, it had been killed by neglect, not some sudden catastrophe.

He clambered into a gap in the wall. The stones were overgrown by a carapace of grey-green lichens.

Orisian ran his fingers over them, testing their minutely intricate texture. The wind gusted, throwing a scattering of sharp sleet into his face, and he grimaced, turning his head away.

'Keep under cover,' called Rothe. 'We don't know who might be watching.'

Orisian took a step down from the breach. Something made him look outwards once more. He saw a group of figures standing twenty paces or so away: Kyrinin warriors, staring silently at him. Their faces were thick with the tattoos of the
kin'thyn.
For a few seconds he and they were motionless as the sleet swept across them. Then Varryn came soundlessly up to his shoulder, and brushed past him. Orisian watched as Varryn conferred with the newcomers.

'What's happening?' Rothe asked from behind Orisian.

He could only shrug in reply.

After a few minutes, the band of warriors drifted away into the surrounding scrub and Varryn came striding back. His gait was purposeful, almost hasty.