Bloodheir

Cerys smashed the chair across his back. It burst into fragments. He staggered up, dropping the flaming brand. He spun and seemed to Cerys to fill her vision. Sheets of flame were roaring up the shelves and walls behind him. He bore down on her. There was blood in Tyn’s long hair: ruby strands in that silver waterfall. Smoke billowed across his shoulders.

He took hold of her chain of office and twisted it in his hands, tightening it around her neck.

“Did you want to kill me, Elect? Is that what you wanted?”

There were others beating him, trying to drag him off. He roared defiance and pulled the chain tighter and tighter. Cerys clawed at Tyn’s face. She opened fresh cuts over those that already disfigured it.

“My spears are at the gates, Elect. It is done. I will make war on all the world, if it makes war on me.”

His restraint was crumbling. His wild, blind rage roared through the Shared. He was a terrible thing, she saw now. Worse even than they had feared; more consumed by hate and anger, more potent. He was a tempest that would not cease until it had brought all the world, and all the Shared, to ruin.

Cerys clutched at the chain. So many times she had felt those iron links beneath her fingertips. She smelled his blood, and the smoke. She began to thin. The Shared pulled her gently apart, like a soft breeze working upon the morning’s mist. Tyn’s face was twisted into a furious mask of hatred. She felt something cracking and collapsing in her throat. She saw flames, all around her. Her hands, pale, beautiful, lifted for a moment before her eyes, then dropped. Though she thought her eyes were still open, there was only darkness after that. She surrendered, and let herself end, and fall backwards, dissolving, away and down into the limitless depths.

Herraic Cre

Herraic was a man aware of his own shortcomings. He sometimes regretted them, in a detached and melancholic way, but had long since stopped imagining he could change himself. As distant cousin to the Thane, he might have expected swift elevation to some lucrative or responsible post; instead, he had filled a succession of undemanding and at times almost trivial positions. For several years he had been harbourmaster, not of Kolkyre or Do

Even so, as Captain of Highfast he had found a degree of contentment. Nothing of any great consequence ever happened here amidst the Peaks. His responsibilities were simple and therefore within his capabilities: ensuring the safety of the na’kyrim who dwelled in the castle’s roots, keeping the road out to the west clear of thieves, and maintaining order amongst the few inhabitants of the nearby mountains and forests. Those inhabitants were self-reliant, solitary folk who made almost no demands upon his attention. The sense of having at last found a task to which he was suited had engendered a certain peace in Herraic’s heart.

That peace had been shattered by recent events. He seldom had cause to spend much time with Cerys and the other na’kyrim, but their agitated and despondent state had communicated itself to him over the last two or three weeks. Then the La

Finally – the torch to the pyre of Herraic’s dwindling ease – there had been the mysterious business with the na’kyrim risen from his bed after years of dreaming. Herraic had not fully understood the explanation of that, though it had all sounded to him unpleasantly like the kind of thing that went on in olden days, when halfbreeds wielded terrible power.

Now, when he had rashly started to think that things could not get any worse, might even be showing some signs of improvement, he smelled smoke. It was not the familiar oily stink of lamps, nor the homely scent of charcoal from kitchens or brazier. This was a drier, stronger smell. It reminded him of a long ago day when wildfires had torn through the grasslands around Skeil Anchor one parched summer. He knew at once that whatever was burning should not be. He left his quiet chambers and went out into the deep courtyard before the main keep, to discover a world abandoned by reason, plunged into derangement.

Distraught voices and smoke coiled up out of Highfast’s guts. People were ru

The smoke carried with it fear beyond anything it should naturally have induced: fear that seeped in through the nose and eyes and ears and twisted itself around Herraic’s mind, dizzying and nauseating him. His heart raced, as if meaning to tear itself apart. He found images of blood and violence rushing through his head, invading him. When he tried to shout out commands, an inarticulate, barely human wail escaped his throat instead.

He heard the deep, rumbling, grating sound of Highfast’s main gate opening, and turned in confusion. The i

Someone brushed past him, almost knocking him over.

“It’s the library,” they were shouting. “The halfbreeds have gone mad. They’re killing each other.”

Herraic’s hands were shaking now. Savage emotions – terror, fury – that were not his own had him in their grip. He was watching, in disbelieving shock, his own mind, his life and everything he had ever thought to be true, all coming apart.

More figures ru

Herraic hid in a long-abandoned storeroom until the cacophony, both outside and within his skull, subsided. He could not tell how long it took, for he was alone and lost and besieged. As the noises – terrible noises, death cries, screams – fell away, so the relentless, disorientating waves of fear receded. His breath came more easily. His mind fell back into a shape he could recognise. And as it did so, he understood that whatever had happened, it had not been a natural thing, of the natural world. It had been some strange intrusion of the inhuman, incorporeal domain of the na’kyrim into his own. He went, still trembling, to discover what kind of disaster had befallen the castle he had been meant to hold. He held his sword out in front of him, knowing that it was far too late for such a gesture, but clinging to that small token of defiance, and the illusory capability it suggested.