Free Fall of Thanes by Brian Ruckley Page B

can smell the spice-thick air of Adravane's Inner Court," the na'kyrim murmured. "I feel the sand beneath the hoofs of a Saolin running on the Din Sive shore. I remember the Whreinin; can reach out and know what it was to be of the wolfenkind. The Anain raised a forest to drown a city with trees, yet they flee from the shadow of my mind as I move through the Shared. But they cannot flee far enough, or fast enough. Even them I can taste. Their age, their thoughts running like blood through veins of leaf and bough. All of this flows through me, and I flow through all things."
    He shivered, as if a cold pleasure filled him. "Your cause has found a servant in me, and the world has never seen my like. Such is the gift that fate, through me, bestows upon you. It is a terrible gift, but that is my burden. I will bear it and I will serve you."
    He looked around them all then, giving each of those at the table a brief moment of his undivided attention. His gaze brushed most briefly over Kanin, or so it seemed to Kanin himself. Even that instant of contact was enough to feel the weight of what lay behind the na'kyrim 's eyes. To Kanin, it was oppressive and invasive. To others, he saw as their turns came, one by one, it was exhilarating.
    "I am the answer you and your people have been seeking all these years," Aeglyss breathed at length.
    And Kanin felt it. He felt it blooming in his breast and spreading its warmth through his limbs. It lifted him, and for the space of those few heartbeats there was nothing but the utter delight of knowing that all was as it should, and must, be. That all his hopes would be fulfilled, in their last and smallest detail. That the world this na'kyrim could promise him was all he could ever desire. Yet still, amidst it all, there was a hard nugget marring the perfection of the sensation: a nugget of hatred; the contradictory whisper that his truest, deepest desire could not be fulfilled by this halfbreed, but only by his death.
    "All I ask is that you put your faith in me," Aeglyss said. "And in the allies I bring to your cause. The White Owls. The force of my own will. The Shadowhand."
    "It's true, then, that the Shadowhand is bound? That you have done to him what Orlane did to Tarcene?" Goedellin's voice broke the skin of the moment. Kanin found himself suddenly breathing deeply, realising only now that he had been holding his breath.
    "To have such a weapon at our enemy's very heart..." whispered Talark.
    "The Haig Chancellor is bound to our service --" Shraeve began, but Aeglyss cut her short with a strange, strangled grunt.
    "Some things should not be spoken of," the na'kyrim said. "Think instead of the gifts I shall bring you. Kolkyre, Kilvale. Even unto Vaymouth itself, if that is your wish."
    "Still, Tarcene's binding hardly ended well. Not for the Kingbinder himself, nor for the Kyrinin he served. Certainly not for Tarcene," murmured Cannek, but no one save Kanin seemed to even notice that he had spoken.
    "There are things--aspects of what I have become--that none can understand," Aeglyss continued. "Burdens I must bear alone, in silence. Only my own kind could understand what I... but they are afraid. They fear my brightness will burn them. Only one... only she... She would understand."
    His head twitched and dipped to one side. His crab-like hand scraped rigidly across the surface of the table. His eyes lost their focus.
    "But she's been stolen from me," he rasped. "I can't find her. She is gone."
    Goedellin was regarding the na'kyrim with consternation. Talark frowned uneasily. Yes, Kanin thought, you can see if you choose to; see his madness. This is the man you would make master of your hopes, your fates? This poisoned ruin of a man, whose thoughts trickle through his own fingers like so much grain? But the moment did not last. The doubts had no time to take root.
    "We should eat," Shraeve said, and at the sound of her voice Aeglyss recovered himself.
    "Yes," he sighed, straightening in his