Forge of Darkness

In her head she had run through her arguments in this assertion countless times. The proof, as far as she was concerned, was found in the currency used, because it was always the same. From the Forulkan commander ordering her soldiers into battle, to the paying of a fine for baring a weapon on the streets of Kharkanas: disobey at peril to your life. If not your life then your freedom, and if not your freedom then your will, and if not your will, then your desire. What are these? They are coins of varying measure, a gradient of worth and value.



Rule my flesh, rule my soul. The currency is the same.



She had no time for scholars and their sophist games. And no time for poets, either, who seemed obsessed with obscuring hard truths inside seductive language. Their collective gifts were ones of distraction, a tripping dance of entertainment along the cliff’s edge.



A sudden blur in the grainy gloom. A high-pitched scream intended to freeze the prey. Iron blade, serpent-twined, rippling out beneath the swirling stars, like a tongue of Vitr. Piercing scream, the thrashing on the ground of a mortally wounded body. A hissing growl, paws scrabbling behind her. Lunging motion***



Faror Hend straightened, holding up a hand to keep Spinnock silent. Another eerie cry sounded in the night, distant and to the west. She saw Spinnock draw his sword, watched him slowly rise to his feet. Finarra Stone was late — half the night was gone. ‘I hear no other voice,’ Faror said. ‘No heghest or tramil.’



‘Nor that of a horse,’ Spinnock said.



That was true. She hesitated, breath slowly hissing out from her nostrils.



‘Still,’ Spinnock went on, ‘I am made uneasy. Is it common that Finarra remain out so late?’



Faror shook her head, and then reached a decision. ‘Stay here, Spinnock. I will ride out in search of her.’



‘You ride to where those wolves do battle, cousin.’



She would not lie to him. ‘If only to ascertain that their quarry is not our captain.’



‘Good,’ he grunted. ‘Because I fear for her now.’



‘Build up the fire again,’ she said to him, collecting her saddle and hurrying over to her mount.



‘Faror.’



She turned. His eyes glittered above the first lick of flames from the embers. The light made his face seem flushed.



‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘I do not want to lose you.’



She thought to say something to ease him, to push him away from things lying beneath his words. To push herself away. ‘Spinnock,’ she said, ‘you have many cousins.’



He looked startled.



She turned back to her horse, not wanting to see more. Her tone had been dismissive. She’d not meant it to be, and its harshness seemed to echo in the silence between them now, cruel as a cut. She quickly saddled her horse, mounted up and lifted her lance from its sheath. Heel-nudging her mount out from the shelter of high, craggy boulders, she guided it towards the verge.



More wolves were keening to the night. Against small prey, the packs amounted to but three or four. But this sounded like a dozen, perhaps more. Too many even for a heghest. But she could hear no other cries — and a tramil’s bellow could knock down a stone wall.



It’s her. Her horse is dead. She fights alone.



Beneath the swirl of starlight, Faror urged her mount into a canter.



The memory of Spinnock’s face, above those newborn flames, hovered in her mind. Cursing under her breath, she sought to dispel it. When that did not work, she forced upon it a transformation, into the visage of her betrothed. Few would claim that Kagamandra Tulas was handsome: his face was too thin, accentuating the gauntness that was his legacy from the wars — the years of deprivation and hunger — and in his eyes there was something hollow, like emptied shells, haunted by cruel memories that shied from the light. She knew he did not love her; she believed he was no longer capable of love.



Born in a Lesser House, he had been an officer in Urusander’s Legion, commanding a cohort. If nothing else had ever overtaken Tulas in the wars, his station would have been of little value to House Durav. A lowborn of the Legion was no prize for any bride. Yet if love were possible — if this bitter, damaged man could earn such a thing, and learn to reciprocate in kind — then few would have opposed the union. But glory had found Tulas, and in that moment — when he saved the life of Silchas Ruin — the cohort commander had won the blessing of Mother Dark herself. A new High House would be the reward of this marriage, the elevation of Kagamandra’s extended family.



For the sake of her own bloodline, she would have to find a way to love Kagamandra Tulas.