Fall of Thanes

*

Light had come into the hall in Kan Avor as fully as it ever would on this grey day. Eska could feel stiffness and ache spreading in her legs. Others, their muscles less honed than hers, had long ago sunk to the floor, sitting cross-legged on the wet boards or leaning against walls or pillars. Eska glanced out of the window. Snow was billowing through the quiet streets outside, spilling over and through the shattered ruins of this once-great city. The cold air set her face burning, chilling the beads of sweat that still studded her brow. Her heart had slowed now, returning to its normal leisurely pace, but the memory of the hammer beat it had raced to was there in the cage of her chest. They had been moments out of time, those, a waking dream that felt endless from within its embrace. A dream of exultant, elevatory violence and joy. It had come without any warning, plucking her away from this hall, this city, and bearing her up out of the dull confines of her own head. She had been blind and deaf, riding the fury of others, feeling the wind of countless lives howling away into nothingness, knowing what it was to be at once herself and thousands, an overpowering sense of omnipotence and inevitable triumph. In that timeless span, she had been part of something vast, glorious, and unstoppable. Plunging back into the hall, looking out from behind her own eyes and becoming aware once more of the hundreds of separate, silent figures crowded in there with her, had been disorientating. She had felt a cavernous loss in the pit of her stomach. Some of those present were undone by their parting from such glories, and fell wailing to the floor. One began to claw frantically at the rough stone of one of the columns, as if trying to climb back to the heights from which he, and all of them, had been so abruptly torn. He tore his fingertips to bloody shreds before he calmed, and slipped down, unconscious. Eska knew only one thing: a great victory had been won for the creed. The enemies of the faith had been consumed by a fearful storm. And she had been there, within that storm. Beyond that, nothing was clear to her. Was she in error to resist this delicious madness? Could this halfbreed, now slumped and shrunken and still, insensate upon his bench, truly be the incarnation of the Kall, come to destroy the world and release it from its long suffering? Kanin oc Horin-Gyre meant to bring Aeglyss down, but she doubted now whether that was anything more than a lone sailor proposing war upon the storm, the sky itself. A pair of Battle Inkallim were approaching her through the crowd, one coming from the doors, the other from behind the stone bench where Aeglyss was still slumped, insensible and dormant. They came slowly, drifting almost casually between the close-pressed bodies. She should have sensed their movement long before. In her distraction she had missed what the rawest of trainees would have seen at once. It seemed unlikely that the ravens meant to kill her here and now, but if they did it would be futile to fight them. Spear and crossbow had been left secreted amongst the ruins outside, for none save Battle Inkallim or White Owls were permitted to bring weapons into the halfbreed’s presence. She visualised the drop from the window behind her to the empty street below. The leap would almost certainly break her ankles or legs, but she readied herself for it. Cautious habit had placed her here, within reach of that last, desperate recourse, when she first entered the hall. It would be her only chance if blades were bared. Her eyes and those of the closest Inkallim met as he edged to within a long arm’s reach of her. Neither blinked, neither betrayed any sign of emotion or concern. “Shraeve would speak with you when this is done,” the man said. Quite without nuance or threat. “She requests that you remain behind when all the rest leave here.” Eska thought for a moment, maintaining her steady gaze. “I am required elsewhere,” she said, matching the man’s relaxed ma