Fall of Thanes

II

The room clenched about him like a tight, hot fist. The heat of half a dozen small braziers was gathered by the rock walls, concentrated, blasted back to make the air thick and suffocating. Within a couple of paces Orisian could feel sweat on his forehead. The orange-red heart of each brazier almost seemed to pulse, so intense was the light and heat being hammered out into the cramped space. The prisoner was tied to the far wall. His arms were stretched up and apart, bound to iron rings set in the stonework. He had slumped down and his own weight had tautened the muscles in his arms and shoulders. He was naked to the waist, his skin overlaid with a film of sweat. Fresh burns pockmarked his chest, red and brown and raw. The man who had inflicted them was standing to one side, stocky, black-bearded. Orisian vaguely recognised him: he had seen him around the barracks once or twice before. One of the town’s Guard. He wore massive leather gloves, and was watching the hilt of a knife sunk into the brazier. He did not even look up when Orisian and the others entered. There was no room in his attention for anything save that knife, buried in the fire, collecting into its metal the savage heat. One of the several Kilkry warriors gathered there grasped the prisoner’s hair and lifted his head up. His nose was broken and bent. The blood from it might be what crusted the man’s lips, or his mouth might be shattered as well. Orisian winced momentarily at the sight of him. His own jaw and cheek gave a single aching beat, remembering the ruin visited upon them by the haft of a Kyrinin spear. A thread of mixed saliva and blood hung from the man’s chin. Some remembered instinct made Orisian want to turn away. It was the stirring of the person he no longer quite was. It lacked conviction. He chose to look. “Speak,” someone hissed at the broken Black Roader. “Let’s hear your poison again.” Orisian glanced at Taim. His Captain’s face was fixed and grim. Was there the slightest disapproving tightening around his eyes? A faint disgusted curl at the edge of his mouth? Orisian could not be sure. Perhaps he wanted to see those things there, and allowed that desire to imagine them for him. He wanted to find in Taim some disgust and revulsion that he could borrow for himself; to be as horrified by this sight as he would have been just a few weeks ago. The man’s voice was stronger than Orisian would have expected. Uneven but clear despite the distortion of his heavy northern accent. “You’re finished. Your time’s done. It’s his time now. The Black Road’s time. The Kall. He’ll cast you all down into ruin and wreck, and lead us to the mastery of the world, and open the path for the Gods to return.” “Who will?” the interrogator demanded, shaking the man’s head so violently he pulled a fistful of hair from his scalp. He took hold again and twisted the prisoner’s face toward Orisian. Orisian watched those battered lips stretching into a snarling smile. “The halfbreed. The Fisherwoman’s heir. Fate works through him.” “His name?” Orisian asked quietly. “Not to be named. The na’kyrim. In Kan Avor. That is enough.” “Aeglyss?” Orisian demanded, but the prisoner only gri