Fall of Thanes

VI

Anyara woke in a sweat, with a soft cry and a racing heart. In her dreams she had been pursued by a twisted, bestial form of herself, driven wild by fear and anger and grief. The roiling darkness that had been all about her had thickened and churned to prevent her escape, holding her for her own clawed fingers to rend. She wiped her brow, pulled her cloyingly damp nightgown away from her skin. These cruel dreams had ebbed a little in the first few days of her enforced sojourn in Vaymouth. Now they had returned with renewed and hungry vigour. Each night she spent in the Palace of Red Stone, they came more fiercely than the last. A few tears ran down her face, the echo of the unconstrained, fevered emotions of her sleep. She brushed them away and rose, feeling heavy, from the bed. In the night, the palace was perfectly silent. Faint moonlight fell through the windows. The air was cool and still. Anyara settled a heavy robe about her shoulders and pulled its fur collar tight about her throat. She slipped her feet into soft hide sandals and went out into the passageway. “All you all right?” The voice startled her. Coinach stepped forward into the soft pool of silver shed by a little skylight. “I forgot you were here.” Anyara smiled. “Always. I thought I heard you but was not sure. I should have come in to check.” “No, no.” Anyara waved her shieldman’s self-doubt away. “I’m fine. Can’t sleep, that’s all.” She glanced at the simple wooden chair let into an alcove where Coinach spent each night. “You can’t get much sleep either, I imagine,” she said. “I am not here to sleep, my lady. But I’ve had much worse beds in my time, in any case.” They both spoke in whispers. The heavy silence of the palace felt insistent, as if it would resent any attempt to disturb it. “Will you walk with me a little?” Anyara asked. “My head needs clearing.” They went together along the corridor, the sound of their careful footsteps sighing along the stone walls ahead of them. From each narrow window high in those walls a diffuse beam of moonlight descended to illuminate them as they passed beneath it. There was the faintest lingering scent on the air, like a memory of warmer days. “What is that smell?” Anyara murmured. “It never seems to quite go away.” “The Shadowhand’s wife roasts spices on her braziers,” Coinach whispered. “Oh. I never thought to ask her.” Anyara led the way into a long, thin room that ran along the side of the palace. Facing them were tall, barred doors inlaid with patterns of pearl and dark wood. Anyara went to one and lifted the thin beam that held it closed. “I’d like to see the moon,” she said. But Coinach gently interposed himself. “They sometimes have guards out on the terraces. Best to let me go first.” He pulled open the great shutter, and the cold night air swept in. Anyara closed her eyes for a moment, savouring its cleansing flow over her face, through her hair. “Come,” Coinach said. “There’s no one here.” They stepped out onto the narrow terrace. Before them Vaymouth was a dark ocean, speckled with just a few faint points of light, bounded by the smooth, dark curve of its walls as they swept away into the distance. The Moon Palace rose, a lambent mass, above the city’s heart, as if some wan, sickly giant had hunched his shoulders up out of dark earth. Anyara turned about, searching instead for the true moon. It stood just above the city wall, bright and large. She gazed up at it, letting its light fill her eyes and her mind for a moment. Then she dropped her head, and looked back to the sleeping city. “Vaymouth’s bigger than I ever imagined,” she said. “I knew but didn’t know. That sounds stupid, doesn’t it?” “No, my lady.” “I’m afraid,” Anyara said abruptly, surprising herself. She had not meant to say that, yet the sound of the words seemed right. Fitting. “I thought I could bear everything, anything, if I had to. I thought I’d mastered it, but now it’s growing heavy again, all the fear and the sorrow. I don’t want to be frightened. I hate it.” Coinach was looking at her, but his face was in shadow and she could not be sure what expression he wore. She did not know quite what she wanted from him. Still, she felt an unexpected easing within her, now that she had permitted this small fraction of her fragility to show itself. Out in Vaymouth’s great darkness: a blooming orange glow, much stronger and larger than any of the other tiny lights shining there. Anyara frowned at it, puzzled. Coinach followed her gaze. The glow spread, and splayed itself outwards and upwards, a fiery fist swelling and then unfurling thick fingers of flame that reached for the star-strewn sky. “That’ll be an unpleasant waking for someone,” Coinach said softly. There was another, further off, in an entirely different quarter of the city: another seed of fire that flickered into being and then built and built. The nocturnal silence that had seemed so natural before now felt out of place. The flames clambered ferociously higher and higher, their hearts turning white, but no sound reached the Palace of Red Stone. There was scent, though, the first bitter trace of smoke in the air. “Look, there’s a third,” Coinach said, pointing out into the night. “And there,” said Anyara. It seemed that every part of Vaymouth had its own eruption of consuming flame. The Moon Palace was growing dimmer, obscured by drifting smoke, its reflected moonlight outshone by a wilder, more sinister light. And the first sounds reached Anyara’s ears: a murmur of calamity, anguished cries blunted and flattened by distance, the roaring of delirious firestorms made into a whisper. “What’s happening?” she wondered. “I don’t know.” Anyara shifted uneasily. There was too much of the quality of her dreams about this. Too much of the madness she felt ru

*

“I will see it!” Gryvan oc Haig snapped at Kale. That flare of anger was enough to make the shieldman nod curtly and avert his eyes. “As you wish, sire,” the lean warrior said, nudging his horse on ahead. “I will see what’s done to my city!” Gryvan shouted after his guardian. “It is my right, my duty!” His own vehemence shocked him, and made him a little ashamed. He glanced uncomfortably around. Many in the mass of riders were looking at him. All, at least, had the grace to turn away when his own gaze fell upon them. It was unwise, Gryvan knew, to flaunt his anger—his confusion, if he was honest—so brazenly, before so many eyes, but his grip on his emotions grew daily less sure. They tore their way up through him, every setback bringing them closer to boiling over. He imagined them as some pack of beasts clawing at his i