The Heir of Night (8 page)

Malian blinked at the circular table that had appeared in the center of the room. Its circumference was vast and supported on what looked like a massive tree trunk, rooted into the stone floor. She moved closer and saw that the table was divided into twelve equal parts, each one separated by fiery lines. The surface was cloudy, filled with moving shapes that she could not make out.

“No child of the Blood of Night has stood at this table in over five hundred years,”
the Fire said.
“But if you look closely, you will see your place.”

Malian looked again and saw that one of the twelve sections was growing clearer. As she watched, it became a field of gold with a glittering horse flying across it, its wings cleaving heaven.

“Touch it with your hand and mind at the same time, and join with me,”
the Fire commanded.
“As you do so, let the boy take your other hand. He will anchor you here, for that is part of his gift. But be careful, boy, not to touch the table yourself, for only the Blood may do so and live.”

“I was born to the House of Blood,” Kalan said, but he sounded uncertain.

“It is not the same, alas,”
the Fire replied.
“Your House has named itself for the blood of battle and war, at which it excels, whereas I speak of
the
Blood, the kin bound to us since the beginning of the Derai Alliance. Now, Heir of Night, are you ready?”

“I am,” said Malian and placed her right palm on the table. The surface was cool as flowing water, and she could feel the contrasting warmth of Kalan’s right hand, clasping her left. Her whole being was infused with light; she felt intensely and gloriously alive with it and could sense the Old Keep, with all its silent levels, rising above her. She shot up through them like an arrow burning through darkness, past the enormity of empty rooms and vast echoing corridors. The chill of long neglect numbed her but she forced herself on, coming at last to the tiled halls and wooden galleries of the upper levels. From there, it was only a very short journey into the New Keep with its lights and warmth and life, a life that was muted now in sleep.

Too much sleep. Malian could feel the silence of death and smell congealing blood. She was aware, too, of the dark malice of her enemies, regrouping now from the hunt and preparing to attack again.

The Fire in her mind drew her attention to the bronze gargoyles
that leered down from every major door and gateway in the New Keep, forgotten through the long years and unseen by those who passed by every day. Now their leers had grown tortured, contorted beyond the grotesque into silent screams. Malian let her awareness settle on a verdigris-rimed gargoyle that crouched above the main entrance into the High Hall.

‘“Ware,” she whispered to it. ‘“Ware foes, ‘ware terror, ‘ware treachery by night!” She felt it shudder, heard the faint shiver of sound that ran through it, but nothing more happened.

“You must try harder, Child.”
Malian felt the urgency of the Fire in her mind, and also its fear, matching her own.
“They are slaying your clan and your kin. Do not whisper the alarm
—
thunder it through the keep! It is in your hands, and yours alone, Heir of Night!”
The Fire’s power burned along her veins, searing every nerve ending and flaring from her mind into the gargoyle, wreathing it in golden flame. Far down in the Old Keep, Kalan threw up his free arm to protect his eyes from the light that snapped out of her.

“Awake!” Malian cried at the top of her voice. “’Ware foes! ’Ware blood! ’Ware ruin in the night! Awake, Earl of Night! To arms, Keep of Winds!”

All through the New Keep the gargoyles sprang fiercely into life, yammering out her call to arms in a wild clangor that went on and on and did not stop. Malian heard the shouting and clatter of weaponry, the war cries and the rush of running feet as she swept through the darkness like a flame.

“Awake, Nhairin!” she commanded. “To arms, Asantir! Treachery and blood! Awake, Earl of Night!” she cried again, and felt the flash of her father’s mind, like a blade being drawn to cross hers before she sprang away. She heard the sudden outcry, and the clash of steel on steel, and knew that the intruders had been discovered at last.

“‘Ware foes!” Malian shook the keep with one last call. She felt weary now, ready to return through the Old Keep to its heart, her place of safety.

Something caught at her mind and held on; a suffocating
darkness coiled itself around her. Malian felt a terrible hunger that sought to drain her soul and her power with it, down to the marrow—and realized that she had forgotten the Raptor of Darkness, was not even thinking of it as she turned away. It would have leached her to a husk in an instant if she had not been filled with raging wildfire and linked to Kalan in the heart of the Old Keep. Even so, she felt the protective link waver as darkness dragged at her soul, inexorable as an ebb tide.

Malian screamed and fought back, struggling to sear the engulfing darkness with fire while holding on to the link to Kalan. She heard Kalan scream, too, pouring his strength into hers and pushing back against that terrible, draining force. For a moment their resistance held, but Malian could feel the Raptor’s satisfaction and its greed beating in on her, and knew, in a blinding flash of terror, that it was far, far stronger than she was. Struggle though she would, she could not break free, and already her strength was fading. Kalan was cursing; she could hear him far down in her mind, while the darkness crept in and her last defences crumbled.

Is this how Yorindesarinen felt at the end, Malian wondered, with the Worm’s venom in her veins and her lifeblood draining away?

The thought of the hero rallied her, like a star blazing in darkness, and she clung to it like a spar. She felt her attacker pause, its malice and hunger hesitating for a single instant, and a new voice, calm and yet compelling, spoke in her head:
“Hold on. Help is coming! “

Fire snapped back into her mind, flinging the darkness back. There was someone standing in the heart of the fire, Malian thought dizzily, as the image of a man scored itself into her brain; he seemed made of flame and lightning coruscated around him. Someone else stood in his shadow, as deep and cool as he was bright, but Malian was dazzled by the flames and could not see either figure clearly. The Fire roared, assaulting the Raptor’s power, and its voice rang out like a thunderclap:
“Begone, Raptor of Darkness!”

There was more than one voice bound into that thunder, weaving in and out of each other and the Fire. Malian reached out to them through the conflagration and felt a touch on her mind that was gentle, luminous, and clear, like light dancing on water. Through or beyond it she sensed a hotter, deeper blaze, and then another touch that was cold, gray steel. There were other minds there, too, paler and dimmer again, but all were bound up into the Golden Fire, joined in battle against the Raptor of Darkness.

Malian exerted herself for one last effort, joining her strength to theirs and pushing back hard against the Raptor’s mass. It was still frighteningly strong and she could feel it hunting for weaknesses to exploit, but the Fire, too, was relentless. Slowly but inexorably, the Raptor was driven back. Gouts of golden flame burned into its darkness until it was in full retreat, dwindling before the onslaught and hunting for escape.

Done, thought Malian—and faltered, falling away from the firestorm. Out of control, she plummeted headlong, down through the Old Keep toward her crumpled body and the pinprick of light that she recognized as her own dwindling consciousness.

Collapsing in on myself, she thought with mild hilarity. She knew that she was falling much too fast and should feel frightened, and part of her did, but mostly she was too exhausted to care. Her body and the tiled floor were rushing up to meet her and she could hear Kalan cursing again.

The light—which Malian had thought entirely gone out—sparked, and she felt the touch of another mind, the one that was cool and deep as water, joining with hers. It held her up and slowed her headlong descent so that she was floating rather than falling, sinking gently back into her body. “Who?” Malian asked in bewilderment, but even that last touch was gone. Kalan’s frightened, tear-tracked face blurred above hers for one brief moment, then all light flickered and went out.

5

N
hairin limped toward the frontline of the battle that had raged throughout the night, rubbing at the tight scar on her face and cursing the bad leg that had prevented her from playing any real part in the fighting. A troop of the keep garrison doubled past without speaking. For all the attention they paid, she might as well have been invisible.

Useless! Nhairin derided herself, but pressed stubbornly on, her thoughts circling back to what could have gone so hideously, disastrously wrong. She had stumbled from her bed when the alarms rang out, echoing the imperative cry that had snapped like a lightning crack into her head:
“Awake! ’Ware foes! ’Ware blood! ’Ware ruin in the night!”
Like half the keep, it had sent her grabbing for clothes and weapons even as she struggled to throw off sleep. She remembered cursing everything: the darkness, the confusion, and especially the lameness that had meant that she could not keep up with the running melees being fought along corridors, up stairwells, and through room after room. She had, Nhairin reflected bitterly, simply been in the way.

It was Asantir who had finally yelled at her to get back. The captain had come charging past with half the Honor Guard behind her, torchlight leaping wildly across her inlaid
helm and along the naked blade of her sword. She had cursed Nhairin for a fool, demanding whether she wanted to get herself killed, before sweeping on and up the central stairs with the guard baying at her heels. They had met a wedge of the black-clad intruders on the first landing—and the rest had been a reeling, thrusting, cut, and slash of bloody ruin. Nhairin, accepting at last that she would be more hindrance than help, had gotten back as ordered.

She had done what she could to rally those behind the fighting lines, forming the stewards and any others who were willing into squads. Those with weapons and some ability to use them she sent forward to support the guards while she, together with the rest, organized medicine, bandages, and a place to tend the wounded. They had been more than busy as the long hours dragged by and the High Hall became a nightmare of blood and gaping wounds, voices that cried ceaselessly for aid, and the groans of the dying. And there had been too many for whom nothing could be done, except to send their cloak-covered bodies on to the Hall of Silence.

It was dawn, a gray creeping dawn, before Nhairin had time to take stock of the battle’s bloody aftermath. Now she picked her careful way along a corridor strewn with splintered wood and broken doors that marked where Asantir and the Honor Guard had hacked and fought their way forward. Debris and bodies were piled on either side, and Nhairin’s heart sank as she realized that the wreckage was growing worse as she approached the Heir’s quarter. The floor was sticky with blood and there were far too many of their own amongst the black-clad bodies of the intruders. The faces of the guards standing watch over the Heir’s rooms were drawn in the pale light; they turned their faces away as she limped up, avoiding her gaze.

It should have warned her. It did warn her. Even so, Nhairin staggered, her stomach heaving, when she saw the carnage in the Heir’s chambers: Doria and Nesta with their throats torn out, the dismembered bodies of the pages, the blood sprayed across every wall and soaked blackly into
furnishings. She could see how those of the household who had not died immediately must have stumbled and crawled to dodge blows, although it had not saved them. Nhairin rested one hand against the wall for support, closing her eyes against the horror. Blood roared in her ears like the ocean, but finally she found the strength to grate out the one, vital question: “Where is the Heir?”

The guards exchanged a look, their expressions bleak. “Not here,” one told her, anger and the echo of her own horror in his voice. “Nine knows, we’ve searched, but there’s no body with the dead and no word of her amongst the living.”

“But given the night’s events,” the other added, “we fear the worst.”

Appalled, Nhairin sought out Asantir, finding her amidst the wreckage of the invaders’ last stand. The Honor Captain was surrounded by a tattered remnant of her guard and what seemed like a small army of the main keep garrison. One guard was binding up a bloody wound to the captain’s shoulder while a sergeant pored over plans spread out on the floor. Asantir leaned over his shoulder and nodded as his finger stabbed from one corridor to the next. The grim and weary troops surrounding them were either watching, too, or occupied with their own hurts and battered gear.

Nhairin hesitated as Asantir turned away from the plans to deal with fresh dispatches coming in. Sarus had secured the Temple quarter, one runner reported, but it was very bad there, as badly hit as the Heir’s quarter, or worse. The attackers had been determined and merciless, despite nearly all those they killed having been unarmed. Worse, though—and here the whites of the runner’s eyes showed—there had been some kind of demon loose. Mind and soul, it had sucked its victims dry.