"A Night of Blood" by A.R. George

A daughter of the blood did not have nightmares.

Lady Turiale Palantas did not toss or cry out as she slept; she breathed evenly as she lay, the fluid contours of her shoulder and side as natural a part of the night as the stars. Her pale Elven face gave no more away in slumber than it did with her wakeful mind to shape it: it was perfect, cold, impervious.

Just so was it set in her dream. There, in a world halfway between mind-shadows and memory, Turiale again watched her husband Darriach jerk and twist in the withered clutches of a vampire-demon, his eyes as empty as the Void, with choked, animal sounds crawling from his mouth. From the vampire’s lipless mouth, fixed at the base of Darriach’s throat, came only blood.

She did not feel grief. Grief was a lesson that Dark Elven souls did not learn … like love. But Darriach Rimairan had been hers – she had favoured him, lain with him, come as close to trusting him as any Dark Elf could – and she felt his loss as closely as she had on the day he had died.

In other words, she felt it with soul-numbing fury.

Turiale’s powerful, luminous green eyes turned in the dream, looking down towards the memory-shade of the road, where she knew the boy lay. The boy! Miserable get of her own noble blood! A single glance at the still, blood-smeared child in her dreams – the only place where she could afford to loose her rage – was enough to make a snarl break the ice of her face. The deathly grey eyes that fluttered so weakly by the roadside had looked upon as much misfortune for Family Palantas as Turiale had in centuries of life …

You have cost me alliances, she hissed, but only in a dream-voice. You have cost me blood and security. You have cost me Darriach. And for what? What are you if measured against him? I should have taken even his soulless body from the vampire rather than you, Tuchatar! ‘Poor trade’ is too good a name – I should rather say ‘worthless’!

Open, shut. Open, shut. Graveyard-grey, darkness. The marked eyes of her son continued to blink slowly in the night, just as they had on the true night whence the memory came, staring into nothing.

How can the Palantasi rely on you? How?

She woke without a cry … still cool, still calm … but the surge of Darkness that swelled about her in her secret anger was enough to make the room seethe. Beside her, Alantir Chamryne stirred – her newest favoured prospect to assume the lordship of the family – and awoke, rising fluidly to a seated position. His pale skin was almost silver in the moonlight. “Lady? Is aught amiss?”

“Yes,” Turiale replied coldly, rolling about to face him. “You still have not gotten me another child.”

Alantir began to bend forward, one hand reaching down, but paused as she caught it in her own. “If I conceive again, Alantir …”

“A Lord of Family Palantas will return to the household?” he suggested with an arch smile, which quickly vanished as the Lady spoke again.

“If I conceive again, Alantir … and your child has cursed grey eyes like my first … I will kill you both.”

Turiale’s was not the only dream that night.

The running-rails stretched out before him, a single inch wide, suspended at varying heights above the training hall floor – the highest at ten feet. He stepped out onto the first rail, poised high above the polished floor, and slowly began to place foot after foot with his eyes on the six feet intervening between himself and the second.

“Your pardon, young lord, I had no idea that these were ‘shuffling-rails’,” a cold voice said from below, a clear and perfect memory. “Move!”

He looked down, down to Alantir’s smirking face, and teetered for a moment. Then he straightened and stepped forward into a dead run, trying to move with the violent shake and sway of the railing. The end of the first rail loomed; he leaped the two feet up and away to land safely on the start of the second, wavering there as he alighted.

“It is not a standing-rail, either!”

Again he pressed on at a run, darting hard over the bucking rail, and threw himself away from the second rail’s end towards the third. But there was a problem – a shift of balance as he leaped – and as his leading foot stretched out towards the third rail, it slipped away to tread the air instead. Down he fell, the breath exploding from his lungs as his curled back hit the polished floor, rendering his recovery-roll a slow, feeble action.

“Oh, sweet Night -!” Alantir strode for the starting rail himself, vaulting up and landing as lightly as a perching falcon. With barely a heartbeat’s flicker to assure his balance he was away, flying over the rails like a ship gliding under full sail, riding up and down with their buck and sway. Towards the end of the sixth rail he leaped up into the air, effortlessly somersaulting backwards along the slender inch of rounded wood, and then leaped up again to spin, twist and kick in a soldier’s intricate dance, lethal and beautiful.

“So much remains for a staggering fool who can barely stand,” the master swordsman tossed off contemptuously, his dance subsiding in a fluttering of cloth. “This is all wasted on your clumsy limbs. Go and tell the Lady to give you up for demon-leavings, Tuchatar …”

Alantir dropped back silkily to the ground, towering over the seven-year-old, and gestured towards the flat, disgusted green eyes of the Lady on the sidelines … who had, the boy realised, been watching every damning moment …

“Lord Schiri!”

Schiri’s eyes flicked open from the tangled mixture of dream and memory, focusing on the blurry page of curlicued letters against which his cheek rested. He sat up immediately, smoothing out the crumpled parchment and starting to read again, but Orchastyn – Family Palantas’s renowned Year-Scribe, a keeper of the official family records – pointedly reached out his wasted hands to slide the scroll away.

“The seventeen major tributaries of the North’s Source River?” he prompted flatly.

After a few moments of silence, Schiri began to answer. “The Aylemere, the Balfjor, the Brisling –”

“Bristling,” interrupted Orchastyn, “is what a dog does in anger. Not 'Brissling', Brisling! Ten years of my tutelage, and you still have as weak an ear for the Common Tongue as a commoner yourself! Do you think even lowly humans will regard you with more than contempt if you should ever speak to them as an imbecile might, hmm? You will do your blood no honour like that.”

Schiri listened to Orchastyn’s upbraiding without comment. The threat was an old one, and after so many years it carried little weight. He had realised long ago – on the same day that his dream had recounted, seven years past, in fact – that his flaws extended beyond just his grey eyes, and that one day the Lady would kill him for it.

Will it happen tonight?

“Did Lord Chamryne return to his family’s estate this evening, Orchastyn?” asked Schiri aloud.

Orchastyn smoothed out his long robes over his knees, looking irritated but unsurprised by the interruption. “No, he did not. He stays with the Lady tonight. So you had best cease to look to divine intervention for your deliverance, and start to at least feign the presence of some talent or another!”

“She is of a late age for another child,” said Schiri.

“But not beyond her time,” Orchastyn replied. “And if she does conceive, you are dead, my grey-eyed, ill-starred young Tuchatar. So apply yourself!”

Tuchatar … Schiri bent over the next scrolls Orchastyn pushed at him in silence, pursued as ever by that name, which had chased him like a hunting-hound all his life. He had thought it his true name for many years, so fulsomely did the household make use of it. Poor trade – for Lord Darriach, for Family Palantas’s standing …

At Orchastyn’s prompting he began to recite his lessons – the detailed geography of the North and West – but as always, however many questions he answered, Orchastyn always had one that he could not answer. This night, Orchastyn forced him to give all his answers in the Common Tongue – that lowly, clumsy human-speech which was somehow still too much for Schiri’s mouth to contend with.

“Quite a sterling effort, hmm?” Orchastyn said at last, using that same, contemptuous interrogative that somehow stung more than his threats of failure. “Enough. I wish I could say it is only the hour that has made you so simple. Go to your rest and we shall return to study in due course.”

Schiri rose, leaving Orchastyn to clean everything away, and passed through the open doorway into his bedchamber – large, every wall swathed in Palantasa black-and-silver, with a low pallet at the chamber’s end. He lay on the pallet until the last sounds of the Year-Scribe’s cleaning had faded, and with it the light of the scribe’s lantern, before he rose again and moved to the window. At first he simply looked out from the estate’s lofty height, gazing down into the moon-sharpened gorge that the savage Dhaila River had carved for itself, watching the silver foam surging and swirling far, far below. Then he climbed onto the window-ledge, glanced fleetingly at the silent room behind him, and slid away into the night.

The moonlight and the night air both bore down on him with icy force as his light-shod feet met the projecting architrave below the window. Up here, the illusion that flight was possible for Mortal kind was dangerously powerful, strengthened by the wash of the wind – tangible as the waves below.

Schiri walked along the architrave carefully, his shoulder sliding against the wall as he moved, his hair whipping hard enough to sting his face. Silver above and silver below; on rainy nights the silver became molten, perilously dazzling, but tonight it was simply the hushed, regal silver of the Palantasi themselves. That was not to say that the night was devoid of distractions for Schiri’s lofty walk: the sounds that stretched out above his head as he passed under the Lady’s window made every step feel like a dance on ice.

He had made this journey many times before over the last seven years. He knew precisely how many steps it took to get to his destination, precisely how far the moon would move before he reached it. Why he trod the narrow stone ‘path’ above the Dhaila’s gorge was more difficult to say. Schiri had never been distracted by beauty – it had never been pointed out to him – and he had no desire to die, despite the inevitability of it. Perhaps he continued these nightly visits because time seemed too timid to pass while the Dhaila eternally roiled and churned below, and if only he could stay there overlooking the gorge, he too could live forever.

Star-spray shimmered above Schiri as he reached the first heavy, jutting arm of iron that projected sharply from the wall, tapering out over the gorge. The spike was embedded there to deter the charge of enemy Wyverns; together with its other fellows studded about the stone, it had done its duty well over the centuries. Schiri walked out along the length of iron, inches from oblivion, until he stood at the spike’s tapering end and looked down on the Dhaila’s powerful, frothy coils.

Momentarily the boy closed his eyes, casting his mind out for some trace, some hint of the Darkness that he had not yet inherited. It was a token effort, more effected out of habit than any imminent expectation. The nobility of Family Palantas possessed unquestionably the greatest Dark power – the greatest ‘presence’ – in all Alachast, strengthened by the souls of their equally great ancestors; Turiale Palantas was one of the most powerful Mortal creatures in existence. But Schiri, although an infant of barely fourteen years, had shown no trace of a power he should nevertheless have owned after just a decade of life.

Presumably the Darkness would not come to one of the dayathalorachai, the Dead-Eyed. Schiri was aware that he should have died at birth, that by token of his grey eyes he was born only to be a sacrifice – Turiale had told him so.

“I shall find a gift,” Schiri chanted as he opened his eyes again, uttering the litany like an incantation. “I shall find a gift, I shall find a gift …” Too clumsy for swordsmanship, too slow-witted for scholarship, but there must be something else!

If only he could be sure that the Lady would value whatever it was …

The running-rails stretched out before Schiri, as wearing a sight as ever. This was no dream, now, but a morning in the training hall with the brilliant Alantir Chamryne, who sought favour with the Lady as usual by trying to teach her hopeless son. Over the years thus far he had painstakingly managed to teach Schiri how to run the rails, but that was – as Schiri had learned – the very least of the rails’ application; their true purpose was as a sparring-platform.

“Are you ready, Tuchatar?” Alantir called out, standing on the far rail facing Schiri with his familiar, carelessly graceful posture. “Come, then – engage!”

Schiri leaped forward, holding his sword low out to one side as he ran, trying not to be distracted by the shadow flowing to meet him. They did not spar with toy weapons, but steel blades; Alantir was far too skilled to injure or be injured by Schiri, and if Schiri injured himself, what better way to teach him proper care?

The rails shivered under his feet with each running step, and the meeting of pupil and tutor on the central rail set up a chaotic reverberation – two rhythms at odds with each other. Schiri rode it out with a slightly slower step, cautious of the tricks Alantir might play; he well remembered the first time he had managed to meet his teacher in the middle, only to tumble away to the floor as Alantir smiled and stamped down hard on the rail.

“Swiftly, swiftly! Close with me before I have time to put three throwing-knives in your throat!” Alantir ordered in the present, and Schiri obeyed, quickening his pace again to reach the son of the Chamryni. Alantir feinted and lunged at him as he drew within reach, springing hard to set the rail shuddering, but Schiri slid back from Alantir’s slash and then leaped quickly in place to avoid the worst of the rail’s bucking.

Alantir danced after him, his boots whispering on the wooden rail, pressing Schiri back towards the rail’s end. All of these were old tricks, things that Schiri had fouled many times before, and he had no doubt that a new trick awaited him today. But he went through the motions all the same: slipping back from the flashing swings, flipping backwards onto the previous rail – that one movement alone had taken near on a year to achieve – and then meeting Alantir’s aggressive leap onto the rail with an upward slash that sharply checked his momentum.

So again Alantir danced back, somersaulting lightly onto the middle rail again, ducking, overleaping and parrying the blows of his advancing pupil with calls of ‘Harder!’, ‘Swifter!’, ‘More subtle, boy!’ Subtlety was Alantir’s dearest concern – swinging the sword in ambiguous strokes that could fall one way or another. Reading the swordmaster’s lashing blade was like trying to gauge the future in the stars: useless.

So Schiri maintained, at least. He continued to press his ‘advantage’ on the rails, knowing that any check in his forward momentum would result in Alantir coming at him again, and moved on steadily, pressing his teacher back to his end of the rail until he had leaped back onto the further rail for Schiri to follow.

Here approached the inevitable end of the lesson. Schiri checked his pace at the end of the rail, launching himself towards the next with his sword curled back to strike, knowing full well that Alantir would dash the blow away and somehow send him sprawling as he had for the last twenty days of lessons.

But as Schiri landed, bringing his sword about in the arc that was supposed to deflect Alantir’s unbalancing slash, the shrill ring of steel warned him that their blades had met and Alantir’s had flicked aside. This had happened only once before, and Schiri nearly ruined this latest opportunity in the same way he had the last time: he paused in unprepared surprise rather than press in again and keep momentum.

His focus snapped back just as Alantir lunged at him, forcing him to flip back onto the last rail, but rather than keep backing away, he met Alantir’s attempt to leap back onto the middle rail with a warding cut. Alantir somersaulted back again, and Schiri repeated his first successful leap onto the swordmaster’s rail, advancing steadily to push Alantir back further …

Suddenly, Alantir dropped out of view. Too late Schiri realised that the swordmaster had leaped from the rail and caught at it with his free hand – too late because Alantir’s boot had already whipped up from below and hooked around Schiri’s grounding foot, wrenching it out from under him.

A new trick, surely enough. Schiri fell, briefly tangling around the rail before he fell away to the ground. The moment his back touched the polished floor he was already beginning to roll to his feet, but no speed could reverse the disadvantage; all Alantir had to do was let go of the rail, drop lightly to his feet, and set his blade at Schiri’s throat.

“Well?” he said.

“Kaydhil,” replied Schiri, yielding the fight, but his eyes flickered resentfully. “You have always told me that on no account must I leave the rail.”

Alantir’s mouth curled with contempt as he sheathed his sword. “Sullenness ill-becomes the Palantasa heir. Did I say that I would stay upon the rail? And do you imagine that there are any rules in engagements outside the training hall?”

“I never said –”

“The lesson is finished, Tuchatar. I suggest you go back to your practice of the Prescribed Elements and spend less of your time whining, or you will remain talentless all your life.”

Schiri silently rose from the floor, leaving Alantir to turn and glide from the hall. Once the swordmaster’s steps had merged with the faint but busy humming of the rest of the household, the boy positioned himself in the middle of the empty hall and began the stately dance of the sword’s Prescribed Elements – such a pale, clumsy shadow of the swordmaster’s, as it always seemed!

“The sword is your salvation.” He began to recite the Amalarr’ai, the Warrior’s Code, as his feet first ‘walked the grid’ described in the Elements. “It is your honour and your strength. Life and death shine beneath the metal’s sheen –” Schiri whirled with his blade as he leaped, landing softly – “your life, your enemy’s death –” another leap and twist – “but only if you take that power for your own …”

The Palantasa heir carried on in his soft recital as he twirled, kicked and spun alone, hearing the words, but not believing them.

Orchastyn was in a sour mood during Schiri’s more scholastic lessons that evening, and little wonder – Schiri had answered all of his questions on Alachastan politics and genealogy swiftly, but could not duplicate the feat in the Common Tongue. The words came, more or less, but their proper form and pronunciation did not.

“Tell me, Tuchatar,” the Year-Scribe said acerbically, “do you think those of the ancient Family Aschur desired their juice, as you seem intent upon saying, or their dues, hmm? Perhaps they cared more for wetting their throats than for their political situation?”

“Their dues,” Schiri tried again.

The scribe’s mouth wrung down further. “‘Deuce’ is a very mild curse. Listen to what I say, then repeat it! ‘The great Nightlord’.”

“The great –”

“No! Not ‘crate’! Our noble father holds dominion over wooden boxes, hmm?”

Orchastyn was still in full voice over the differences between C and alien G when the door burst open most indecorously, admitting an impassive manservant whose dishevelled hair nevertheless told a much different tale about his composure. “Master Orchastyn,” he said in an even but slightly breathless voice, “I have news.”

“It can wait!” Orchastyn snapped back, not even rising from his cross-legged post before Schiri. “No-one is to disrupt me in the evenings save our Lady, and you carry no token from the Lady.”

“The House Steward sent me, master,” replied the manservant, ignoring Orchastyn’s impatient wave for him to begone. “Nir’amyl wishes you to know of this – as indeed all the household should know, and would deeply care to know.”

“Nir’amyl is a self-important fool,” growled Orchastyn, but the old Elf rose from the floor nevertheless, slowly but smoothly. To Schiri he gave a short, curt gesture to the scrolls on the floor, bidding the heir continue his study while he left the room with the messenger.

Only heartbeats later, the Year-Scribe returned, his face set pale and strange. Schiri looked up at him from his scroll uncomprehendingly as Orchastyn began to roll it shut, tidying away the rest of the parchment with all sourness gone.

“My tutelage finishes early tonight, young lord,” declared the old Year-Scribe almost brightly, and left the room with a lightened step.

Schiri did not know what to do with time to himself. His late-night walks above the Dhaila were the closest thing to it he knew. After an uncertain pause, glancing around the room, the family heir rose and left his quarters, moving out into the hall with its scattered, hastening servants.

The servants still went about their duties as swiftly and efficiently as ever, but they seemed to move in groups tonight rather than singly, murmuring to each other as they passed. Schiri stood and watched them for a while from his doorway, then turned to address one of the bodyguards flanking his door. “Kassas, has something happened?”

The silvery-haired soldier – his guardian since earliest infancy – turned her head fractionally to look at him, still standing otherwise motionless at her post. “Not yet, my lord, but it will,” she replied in her quiet voice.

Schiri watched her for a moment. “For good or ill?”

“That depends entirely on whose good you have in mind, my lord,” answered Kassas.

Kassas’ unenlightening answers seemed unlikely to improve, so Schiri moved away from his doorway and strode down the hall towards the winding central stair. It felt strange to walk unattended; Kassas and her companion remained at their post by his quarters, watching him depart in an impassive silence that persisted until they were out of sight.

Schiri descended just one flight of Donnyn Shalach’s many stairs, staying close to the black-and-silver hangings on the cold walls to avoid being trampled by the flitting servants. Once on the lower floor, he set his course for the Hall of Audience where his mother must be sitting at this hour, holding latter council with her advisors before her day ended.

Partway down the long, austerely decorated corridor, however, Schiri came upon Alantir hastening the other way. The younger son of Family Chamryne looked at him in surprise for a moment to find him there, then smiled crookedly and set his course to intercept the boy, giving a soft shake of his head.

“You have heard the news, then, Tuchatar?” he observed.

“No,” Schiri replied. “I am seeking it.”

Alantir laughed. “Let me save you the long walk. These are the tidings that all Alachast will wonder to hear: the Lady is with child again!”

“I see,” said Schiri.

The swordmaster flashed him another smile, this one filled a little more with the reeking pride that he could clearly afford to show about the household now, and strode on down the busy corridor. Schiri stayed where he was for a moment, surrounded by the rushing servants, now acutely aware of the sidelong glances they had been flashing in his direction.

He had anticipated death. Every morning began with the thought that perhaps all would end by evening; this morning had been no different. But rather than feel any relief at the long wait’s end, as some tales described, Schiri felt only a cold, heavy pain in his stomach. It was not quite a fear of dying – it was a fear of dying as he had been born, uselessly and pointlessly.

Death was still not certain, of course. Until Turiale’s new child was born – and born with true, Dark Elven green eyes besides – Schiri was as safe as he had ever been. But his heart gave him the same advice that Orchastyn had always given: divine intervention was not forthcoming. The choice between life and death had lain squarely with him … and he had not been able to take advantage of it.

“Alantir!” Schiri called out, turning suddenly to face the swordmaster’s departing back. Alantir turned, but so did several of the servants, and Alantir did not reprimand them or bid them go back to their duties.

Schiri did not want all the household to listen. “Even should your child be born safe, Alantir,” he began in Common, “it would be safer by far in such dangerous times to have more than one ready to assure the –”

“Are you going to say something to me, Tuchatar, or simply babble away in that dull-witted human drivel?” interrupted Alantir irritably.

“I do not care for the thought that low-born ears should hear this,” replied Schiri, still speaking the Common Tongue as he nodded to the watching servants.

Alantir cast him a look of irritation and turned away disgustedly, striding on down the corridor. Schiri began to turn away himself, then stopped as a strange realisation came to him: no spark of comprehension had kindled in the swordmaster’s eyes. Alantir had not understood what he had said.

Schiri’s appalling accent, perhaps? But only one of those words had contained a sound he could not recognisably pronounce. “Alantir, do you understand me?” he called insistently.

“Understand!” Alantir snapped back impatiently over his shoulder, not pausing this time – but his voice was short and clipped, uttering an inarticulate part-sentence that would have put Orchastyn in a fury.

Schiri’s brows began to draw down in a faint frown as he finally turned away, but it was in incomprehension rather than displeasure.

The Lady was, naturally, in elevated spirits as Schiri finally entered the Hall of Audience to speak with her, though the only evidence of her pleasure was in her vivid eyes; her face was as expressionless as ever. When she noticed her son, she rose from her high place on the dais and watched him for a moment, her pallid fingertips still touching the seat of her authority.

“If you are here to shame your blood by begging, Tuchatar,” she said at last, “I shall only tempt Immortal Fate and be rid of you now.”

“I am not here to beg,” answered Schiri. “I am here to reason. The Nynara have become steadily bolder since –”

“Since your birth! They believe that Turiale Llumara has grown weak because she desperately clings to a misbegotten curse for her survival. And Family Palantas does indeed sit in a precarious position with you as its inheritor. A true heir will teach Alachast differently.” Turiale sharply shook her head. “I cannot let you live, even as a disinherited son. There can be no question as to who gains dominion over this family after me – no dissidents using a secondary heir as a pawn to divide the Palantasi.”

“I would not do that,” Schiri said.

“If you did not do that,” replied Turiale, “you would be even less worthy of my blood than I imagine, and that is saying much, Tuchatar. Go now. You may use your last days as you wish.”

Schiri turned away from the dais, but paused by the door as his mother smoothly seated herself, her livery fluttering back into stillness. He did not turn around. “Did Darriach Rimairan speak the Common Tongue, Lady?”

“And what brings you to speak of this now?” she responded, her voice suddenly sharp and cold. “Yes, he did speak the Common Tongue. He owned every gift that you do not.”

“At what age?”

“You are wasting what precious little remains of your life with these irrelevancies. Go.”

Autumn came to the Donnyn Shalach, slowly stripping leaves away from the trees in the forests to the west. Sometimes a brown, crumpled leaf reached as far and high as Schiri’s window, flung up by the fierce winds that surrounded the Dhaila all seasons of the year. He had little to do but observe such things, left as he was without his usual studies and duties to occupy his time. The servants no longer came near him, doubly wary of approaching the Dead-Eyed boy now that they knew for certain he was marked by death.

The bodyguards were also gone from his door, though Schiri heard Kassas’s familiar tread pass by on fleeting occasion, her new duties unknown. It was as if he were a ghost already, unseen and unmarked, sitting and silently waiting for Immortal Death to draw him away from the Mortal Plane. Flight did not occur to him, even once; life outside the Donnyn Shalach was no life at all. Not for a son of the blood.

For the first month he merely sat and watched the Dhaila from his window, or drifted about the household to watch its goings-on. He walked across the architrave to stand above the Dhaila every night, though it did not stop time from flowing and autumn from fleeting on its seasonal path.

In the second month, Schiri returned to his training hall and danced with his blade again, greeting the morning and the evening with the calm order of the Elements and the soft litany of the Amalarr’ai. He danced away the rest of the autumn with the sparse, fluttering dry leaves on the wind outside, then whirled and spun through winter like the fluttering snowflakes that replaced them.

During the latter days of that same winter, he stepped out of his room into the icy moonlight to stand above the Dhaila, poised on the precarious iron thorn above the river-gorge and the world with all the merciless certainty of time flowing around him, and suddenly knew it would be the last time.

The morning after was chaos.

Schiri woke to the sound of the Palantasi’s fury – raised voices clamouring outside his quarters, running feet, slamming doors. Rolling away from his pallet, the boy walked to the doorway and watched the scattering figures for a while, his ears assaulted on all sides by the shouting of the servants and soldiers alike.

“Nynara vermin!” they were all snarling, in one form or another.

Kassas passed Schiri’s door not long after his awakening, and rushed towards him rather than drift away like a shadow, the silver threads in her tight-pulled hair only a few shades lighter than her face. “Lord, be on your guard!” she warned him grimly. “An assassin of the Nynarai has been about in the household – and may still be here!”

“How so?” said Schiri.

“The Lady was poisoned as she slept - a dart from the window, Lord Alantir says!”

The steward, Nir’amyl, was mustering a semblance of order in the frenzied household, though it took the most admirable extent of his skills, and Alantir could be heard in the outer courtyard below, directing a search for some trace of the damnable Nynara snake. Schiri knew that Turiale was not dead – not all of Nir’amyl’s talent would have quelled the uproar then – but more precise news was difficult to come by in the commotion.

It was not until the next day that all in the household knew for certain: the poison had not been strong enough to fell the great Mistress of the Family Ascendant. Lady Turiale lived.

Lady Turiale’s unborn child did not.

Some of the handmaidens to the Lady swore that they had seen to the tiny, abortive infant, and that its unopened eyes – when examined – had been the brilliant green of a clear-worked emerald. Nir’amyl began to punish all in the household who spread such pointless rumours.

The day after the next, Orchastyn returned to Schiri’s quarters to resume his lessons.

Alantir’s fury was palpable when he first returned to train Schiri again, some days later – by a dark evening, for once, rather than morning – but it was a fury tempered by defiance. “These Nynarai have done nothing but deny the inevitable,” he snarled, stalking away from the window’s starry view into the centre of the training hall while Schiri silently watched him. “There is more than time enough. The Lady is stronger than any poison, and so am I! Even the Dark Temples have said that she shall conceive again soon.”

“Do we train, Alantir?” said Schiri.

The frown slid from Alantir’s face, replaced by a faint look of contempt. “If we must. There seems little point to it, to my mind. Take my advice and do not settle yourself too readily in your old place, boy.”

They both moved to the running-rails, taking up opposite points. “Engage!” Alantir called out, and Schiri darted out to meet the swordmaster, his feet whispering over the rail as they had done so many thousands of times before. Their convergence on the central rail was swift and sharp, sending them dancing back and forth along the shuddering timber, leaping back and forth between the precarious tiers of the other rails.

In the midst of a particularly vicious trade of blows, Alantir dropped away from the rail again, catching at it one-handed and kicking up at Schiri’s legs. Remembering the trick, Schiri leaped up tightly as the swordmaster’s foot whipped under him, landed intentionally hard to try and shake his grip on the rail – and then fell to the floor as the railing shore away beneath his feet, split in half by a sharp upswing of Alantir’s sword.

Alantir, for his part, released the broken railing as it began to tumble down and dropped lightly to his feet again, catching Schiri in mid-roll with a sword at his throat. “Well?”

“You sundered the railing,” Schiri said.

“I warn you, Tuchatar, my tolerance for whining is very slight tonight. Did I win or did I lose?”

“Kaydhil. Yours is the bout.”

“Better.” Alantir removed his sword from Schiri’s throat, letting the boy rise from the floor. “Now, your balance is still –”

“Again.”

Alantir broke off, observing Schiri with some surprise, and not a little annoyance for his interruption. “We will spar again this night, but not before you have shown me –”

“Again.”

More than a flicker of anger swept over Alantir’s face this time, but he banished it swiftly with a look of grim amusement. “You have decided to direct the lessons today, have you, lordling? As you wish. A full bout upon the floor it shall be – perhaps the lesser demands of balance will aid you.”

“But first,” continued Schiri, “I wish to see you spar with another.” His grey eyes flicked across the long hall towards the doorway, where his bodyguards stood in their recently resumed vigil. “Kassas.”

“Kassas is not in such pressing need of training.”

“I can learn yet from observation.”

“I have not yet found any measure capable of effectively teaching you,” returned the swordmaster harshly, his annoyance growing perilously close to anger. “Very well! Little reason to trouble myself over whether you learn or whether you do not. -Kassas, come here!”

Schiri stood to one side as Kassas left the door to her lone comrade and approached Alantir silently. The Palantasa heir had rarely seen others fight; his secluded world usually contained only Alantir, Orchastyn, Kassas and – on occasion – the Lady. Kassas, for her part, seemed faintly bemused by her new role, but saluted Alantir and dropped back into a battle-ready stance without speaking.

The bout that ensued was fast, sharp, and very brief. Alantir and Kassas circled each other for a while, drifting around in graceful circles, before Alantir presented a false opening – one turned shoulder – and Kassas lunged in. Their blades flashed as momentum countered momentum, and though Kassas’ every stroke snapped with the precision of a Dark Priest’s descending blade of sacrifice, her speed was not equal to Alantir’s. After a dazzling but brief dance, she ended on the floor in a pose Schiri knew well, softly murmuring ‘kaydhil’ as the son of the Chamryni waited.

“Are you sufficiently educated?” Alantir snapped, stepping back and letting Kassas flow to her feet as he rounded on Schiri. It appeared that the swordmaster had crossed that line from irritation to anger during the bout with Kassas, and his mood was now bitter again.

Schiri said nothing immediately. He was watching Kassas glide back to the doorway, the silver streaks in her hair glinting as she strode past one of the softly flickering torches. So many centuries of life as a soldier, and yet … “That was very brief, Alantir.”

“If you knew anything of true fighting,” hissed the swordmaster, “that would come as no surprise. A fight in earnest rarely lasts beyond the first engagement. You are uncharacteristically fond of your voice tonight, Tuchatar!”

Once more Schiri was momentarily silent, a persistent confusion entangling him again, the same that he had felt when Alantir had stumbled over the Common Tongue. Kassas had failed to recognise Alantir’s false opening, masterfully subtle though it had been … and yet Kassas was skilful enough to be the noble heir’s bodyguard. “You and I have often sparred longer.”

It occurred to Schiri, then – a tentative thought like the first, faltering step he had ever taken onto the narrow iron walk out over the Dhaila – that perhaps he had not always been capable of Alantir’s drills because no child would be. And yet … in spite of that … he had performed many of them regardless …

No, not many. Most.

“Of course. We have never fought in earnest,” Alantir flung back sharply.

“Why so?”

“Why so?” The swordmaster’s lip curled back in more open anger, and he made the familiar, beckoning gesture which he always used to call for a guarded stance. “I shall show you, boy!”

Like a shadowy cat, Alantir began to prowl around Schiri. Schiri circled with him, his mind still tangled with confusion, but lucidly still and clear on another point: the dance of the Elements. Alantir presented four false openings, cunning and subtle; Schiri ignored them all, and Alantir’s trained eyes dismissed all of Schiri’s.

Suddenly, clearly determining to make an opening, Alantir lunged in, dashing Schiri’s sword away high and slicing lower at his middle. Schiri leaped back, then made a sharp returning step and answered with a flying upward stroke that Alantir agilely ducked aside from …

… But in the pause that followed, a small, fine lock of dark hair fluttered to the floor.

Schiri looked back swiftly to the swordmaster, searching for the ragged end of the lock with a strange feeling in his chest … but found that Alantir was no longer in front of him. With a short slide to one side and a tight, twisting step that Schiri did not recognise – astonishingly swift and effective – the swordmaster had moved around to Schiri’s left, and his blade was already whipping in response at Schiri’s face.

Half a dodge was all that Schiri could manage. Alantir’s sword streaked across his forehead as he turned, its power perfectly calculated, stunning him with the blow and then blinding him with the blood that began to seep into his eyes. A boot lashed heavily at the side of his knee, unbalancing him with a flare of pain and then dropping him on both knees to the wooden floor. By the time he had cleared some of the stinging blood from his eyes and regained his sight, he could see as well as feel the longsword levelled at his throat.

Silence ensued as Alantir waited, his narrow, angry eyes fixed expectantly on Schiri’s face. The torn lock of hair fluttered at his cheekbone as he looked down. “Well?”

“You never taught me that latter step,” said Schiri.

With another, more vivid flare of anger in his eyes, Alantir leaned in and struck the boy across the face, splitting his lip and knocking him onto his back before he set the longsword at his throat again. The swordmaster said nothing, now; only waited.

“Kaydhil. Yours is the bout.”

“Spare yourself the pain of delay next time,” Alantir returned, and removed his sword from Schiri’s throat. “We are –”

“Again.”

“What?” The younger son of Family Chamryne hissed to vent his rebuilding wrath. “I am losing all patience with you, Tuchatar. Do not tempt me! We are done. Clean your petulant little face and go back to your drills before you trouble me again.”

Alantir started to turn away, but Schiri rose again from the floor – a bloody apparition, beyond fear, beyond despair, and screamed at him in a voice that all in the household heard and wondered at: “Again, I said!”

“This is –” began Alantir, his eyes sliding coldly sidelong back to the boy, and then uttered a startled blasphemy as Schiri flew at him, raising his longsword with mere heartbeats left to parry. “Enough! Stop! We are done!” the swordmaster shouted to punctuate each parry or dodge, dancing and whirling away from Schiri’s snaking sword.

Schiri snarled back at him in reply, deep in the back of his throat. Alantir could recognise nothing of the Palantasa heir in his face: he was no longer a silent, frustrated child, but a bloody-faced demon, his flared grey eyes fey and wild with a lust for death. “Enough, you mindless infant! The Lady’s fury will be terrible if you force me to kill you –”

Then there was no more time for words, and hardly time for breath. Schiri pressed in with a flurry of flying silver, screaming something else at Alantir which could not be clearly discerned, and Alantir retaliated at last. Setting his teeth, the swordsman pressed back, whirling and lashing out with whip-like strikes to drive Schiri away.

Except that Schiri was not driven away. Cold perspiration broke out on Alantir’s face in spite of his exertions as Schiri spun and ducked aside from every counter-strike, slipping in and under bladeswings, returning to the attack with the relentless ferocity of the River Dhaila beating at the walls of its gorge. When did the boy become so swift? whispered a thought in his mind, but he beat it down with another furious rain of blows.

Schiri stood fast against the rain. He barely shifted back a half-step, parrying one slash and twisting about to evade the others. Alantir choked back an incredulous curse as the boy executed a perfect imitation of the swordmaster’s own twisting snake-step from the last bout, leaping sharply to the side to avoid it even as he swore … and then felt the thump of a wall at his back.

“Kaydhil, then! Yours is the –” Alantir forced out.

The longsword whipped about in a lethal half-arc, shearing through half of Alantir’s chest to drown his latter words in blood. Alantir stared down at the blood-spray, watching it spatter and gush onto the floor and the boy’s blade, and then looked up into Schiri’s wild, deathly eyes with lips incredulously parted.

Schiri jerked the blade again, wrenching it further across the swordmaster’s body as if trying to halve it altogether, hissing out through his teeth as he drove Alantir harder against the bloody wall. He wrenched the blade a third and fourth time, also, while footsteps came running into the training hall to learn the nature of the chaos, but Alantir was already well and truly dead.

A crowd of household attendants stood in the doorway as Schiri finally turned away, letting the former son of the Chamryni fall face-down on the floor behind him in a splatter of gore. Their whispers were sharp and incredulous, spilling out over each other in a flurry of disbelief – but which was the more stunning news? That their cursed family heir had brought yet another capable Family Marshal to death, or that Alantir Chamryne had somehow been slain by a child one-twentieth his age?

Silence fell upon the great cluster of servants suddenly. Slowly, like a dark ship gliding through a parting wave, the Lady passed through the doorway, drawn up tall and terrible, and looked upon the chaos within with slowly widening eyes.

For long moments Turiale stood so, with her teeth set and her wrath blazing forth in a great welling of Darkness. The servants began to exchange taut glances, unable to guess where this would lead – or to what injury for themselves. “What – is – this?”

Schiri turned to look back pensively over his shoulder at the question, as if pondering Alantir’s dead body himself, then looked back at the Lady without reply. Her burning gaze narrowed to twin slits of rage, and she started forward with the speed of the very serpent coiled on her livery. “What have you done, Tuchatar?”

Again like the serpent, she coiled to strike, her hand flying back in readiness with the Darkness seething about her … but her fury cooled to astonishment in an instant when she looked full into her son’s face. Schiri had not cast down his eyes before her wrath; no, he was watching her with the air of one about to tell a marvellous jest, his expression a strange mixture of an arched brow and a beatific smile.

His eyes were now bright and cold, vivid with a Darkness of his own.

“Oh, but you do not need him, Lady,” he told her lightly, and laughed a strange, thin laugh as he wiped the blood from his face. “Not if he cannot deal with Tuchatar.”

Turiale remained silent, momentarily surprised. Schiri smiled wider. “And you will not need him for the other reason, either. I think we shall not be needing a new heir after all.”

“Do you indeed?” she said, finding her voice at last with a steeping of ice.

Schiri laughed again, the same fey, precarious laugh; the look on his face was like one intoxicated, though it was clearly a sweeter drink than wine that had rendered him so. “I should never presume to advise the Mistress of the Family, of course … but there is not much point in trying if you know I shall only kill the child again, hmm?”