‘Will you have an answer for them?’

‘Glyph, the same answer. Always the same answer.’

‘Yedan, you have become a war-master in your own right.’

But Narad shook his head. ‘No, I have not. But the one who speaks through me, Glyph… ah, that one. Cold, a soul unloved. There are some for whom doubt does not weaken, for whom uncertainty only strengthens resolve. I said “cold”, did I not? The wrong word. Indeed, there is no word for that man. In my dreams, I become him. In my dreams, he dwells within me.’

‘We lost no one,’ Glyph said.

Narad closed his eyes. ‘Not true.’

‘Yedan?’

‘Before this battle, we lost everyone.’

After a long moment, Glyph suddenly sobbed. Quickly turning away, he stumbled off.

Left in his wake, Lahanis glared at Narad. ‘This is how you celebrate our victory?’

‘When there is nothing to celebrate, Lahanis, then my answer must be yes, this is how we are to celebrate our victories.’

She snarled and then swung about, marching off to re-join her Butchers.

Narad stared after her. The loss of children was a terrible thing.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE WINDS BATTERED AT THE STONE WALLS OF TULLA KEEP, sweeping round the turreted cones of the tower roofs that had been raised to fend off the winter, scouring free of snow the walkways, the crenellations and the black pocks of the murder holes in the outer walls and gatehouse. The granite, grey as ice, was cold enough to burn skin.

The keep surmounted a crag of stone, but the jagged outcrops of the surrounding ridge rose higher still, like the stubs of rotted teeth, and there the snow huddled in pockets, ice forming rivers in the cracks and fissures. Sukul Ankhadu so disliked this season, with the cold laying siege to the keep and the wagonloads of firewood dwindling as the months dragged on. More than half the rooms and an entire wing of the main building had been abandoned to the chill, and this did nothing to insulate the remaining rooms where braziers burned continuously, or hearths blazed night and day.

Under the disapproving regard of Castellan Rancept, she had taken to drinking more wine than usual, ill befitting a girl not yet into womanhood, and wandering about wrapped in a fur robe the trailing edge of which had once been white.

Restlessness was a dark force in the soul, riding currents of longing for what could not be found, much less recognized. Rooms shrank, corridors narrowed, and the light from lanterns and oil lamps seemed to withdraw, abandoning the world to shadows and gloom.

She stood now, alone, in an unused fitting room crowded with chests and winter gear stored here on behalf of the keep’s guests, of which there were many, with more arriving each day. The floor’s thin planks of wood beneath her moccasins were covered by a worn rug, and both warmth and voices from the chamber below drifted up to her.