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Ah, Abyss take me …
Still. Her grip had been sure. He wanted to feel it again.
* * *
Infayen Menand sat up on her cot, pushing hair from her eyes, and squinted across at her lieutenant. ‘He did what?’
‘Masturbated, sir. As his clothes burned away.’
‘And the flames did not harm him?’
‘No sir.’
‘Hmm. I want some of that magic, I think.’ Glancing up, she noted a glint of hilarity in the soldier standing before her, and scowled. ‘Against the flames, fool, not the rest. Get out.’
When the man was gone, Infayen remained sitting for a time, and then she rose, collected her cloak, and left her tent.
She walked through the encampment, and then took the high track that skirted Neret Sorr’s main street, remaining on the back-slope of the ridge as she traversed the length of the village until the trail intersected the cobbled ascent to the keep, whereupon she began the climb to the inner gatehouse.
r /> A short time later she reached the courtyard, crossed it and entered the estate itself. The emanation from the stones washed walls and floors, streamed down from vaulted ceilings, until every high window appeared, not as a portal of sunlight, but as a dulled stain marring the refulgence. The intensity of the ethereal aura deepened as she approached the now sanctified east wing of the keep, the newly named Temple of Light.
The architecture ill suited the name’s implied glory, as most of the rooms were cramped, with low ceilings, and the tiled floors bore scrapes and gouges from careless shifting of heavy furniture. The central Chamber of Light, now home to its eponymous throne, was the ground floor of the tower. The floors above had been removed, permitting the golden light to rise skyward with such vehemence at the top that the conical roof was no longer visible – instead, it seemed that a newborn sun commanded the tower’s loftiest reach.
None of this impressed Infayen much, and in that regard it was in keeping with her life’s experiences thus far. She understood the paucity of her own imagination, and the absence of wonder that accompanied it, but considered neither to be egregious flaws. In place of such dubious virtues, she held to an unassailable capacity for severity, and this trait made her the most respected and feared captain in Urusander’s Legion. She knew this and felt no pride, nor sense of accomplishment. It was, after all, the legacy of the Menand bloodline, the last remnant of a heroic family that had seen its prestige battered, stained and finally dragged down into disrepute – all through no particular fault of kin, present or past. Rather, the qualities of command which Infayen had inherited had, time and again during the wars, driven her ancestors to the forefront of every battle, every dire extremity, every desperate and forlorn last stand. The implacable rules of attrition did the rest. The Menand name was now synonymous with failure.
Infayen possessed a bastard daughter, Menandore, fostered with another family in some pallid mockery of the tradition of hostages among the highborn, but it was an arrangement yielding no gain, supplying the simple expediency of keeping the wretched child out of Infayen’s way, which further served to drive the unwanted daughter from her thoughts as well.
Imagination was necessary in contemplating an offspring’s future, and with it all the presentiments and potentials revealed by that child. Infayen saw Menandore, in those rare times that she considered the question, as serving as nothing more than a flawed replacement to herself, come the day when Infayen fell in her own battle, her own forlorn stand. As such, the bastard daughter marked a natural step in her family line’s inevitable descent.
New blood stood no chance against the House of Menand’s fate. Necessity, after all, possessed a bloodless quality, for all the blood it might have spilled, or would spill in the days to come. Families rarely fell in sudden collapse. More common, she knew, was the slow decrepitude of generation following generation, like the turgid swirling of a muddy pond as the season dried, and dried.
In such straits, imagination was useless, and she saw herself as well adapted to her diminishing world. Leave it to the others, with their emboldened ambitions and awkward avarice, to reap the glories of this civil war. Infayen expected to die in the victory. Her lifeblood, draining away, would fill a bowl, to be delivered to her daughter, and from that coagulated failure Menandore was welcome to sip, as her mother had done before her.
Welcome, the taste would say, to the family.
Once she announced herself, she did not have to wait long before being granted an audience with the High Priestess.
The Chamber of Light was bright enough to blind her to its details, barring that of Syntara who stood awaiting her. This was satisfactory. She had no interest in the trappings of this new faith.
‘Hunn Raal fucked a cookfire,’ she said.
Syntara’s perfect brows lifted.
In a monotone, Infayen explained what had been witnessed.
* * *
Betrayal was not something Sharenas Ankhadu had contemplated when mapping out the course of her life. Perhaps, on occasion, she might find herself a victim to it. But the blood on her own hands was unexpected, and the righteous cause driving those who now pursued her gnawed at her resolve. Her list of reasons for doing what she had done held a taint of selfishness. Indignation and affront were all very well, sufficient to justify harsh words or, in extremity, a slap. Modest answers, in other words, to match the personal scale of the moment. But a sword through the neck, at a tavern table, with the head rolling, bouncing upon the ale-spilled wood … when did I begin this new habit of losing control?
Vatha Urusander was a man with blunted needs. She had supped on his frustration, and had walked down into Neret Sorr, and then into the Legion camp, bloated by its fury. Each face she had confronted had seemed transformed, its every detail born anew in her searing focus. These are the enemies of peace. The face of Serap. The faces of Esthala and her husband. Of Hallyd Bahann, Tathe Lorat, Infayen. Hunn Raal.
Some of those faces are now still, enlivened no more. Frozen in their moments of culpability. The others … they bear lively masks of rage, and yearn for my death.
If betrayal has a known visage in this, it is mine.
Flakes of snow drifted down silent as ash. The sky above was bright but colourless, as white as the layers of snow now clinging to leafless branches and carpeting the forest floor. Winter’s gift was stillness, the muting of life into something like somnolence. The blinding shock of blood did not belong. Disquieted by what felt to her like an act of iniquity, if not desecration, Sharenas crouched and ran the length of her sword blade across the wool of the soldier’s tunic, wiping clean the gore from one side. She reversed the flat of the weapon and repeated the task, and then, with a final regretful glance at the pallid, lifeless face of the man who had been tracking her – seeing how the snowflakes still melted as they alighted upon his brow, cheeks, and beard, and swam like shallow tears upon his staring but sightless eyes – she straightened and slid the sword back into its scabbard.
Flames had devoured the forest here and there, leaving scorched patches and elongated runs of blackened ruin. The stench remained, making acrid the cold air. She had found tracks nonetheless: the spalled punctures of deer hoofs, the clawed punches of hunting creatures, and here and there, already vanishing beneath the new snowfall, the pattered prints of small birds and scampering mice.
