Helen Lowe - The Heir of Night: The Wall of Night Book One

H E L E N L O W E

THE

HEIR OF

NIGHT

THE WALL OF NIGHT
BOOK ONE

"Awake! 'Ware foes! 'Ware blood!

'Ware ruin in the night! Awake, Earl of Night!

To arms, Keep of Winds!"

All through the New Keep the gargoyles sprang fiercely into life, yammering out her call to arms in a wild clangor that went on and on and did not stop. Malian heard the shouting and clatter of weaponry, the war cries and the rush of running feet as she swept through the darkness like a flame.

"Awake, Nhairin!" she commanded. "To arms, Asantir! Treachery and blood! Awake, Earl of Night!" she cried again, and felt the flash of her father's mind, like a blade being drawn to cross hers before she sprang away. She heard the sudden outcry, and the clash of steel on steel, and knew that the intruders had been discovered at last.

"'Ware foes!" Malian shook the keep with one last call. She felt weary now, ready to return through the Old Keep to its heart, her place of safety.

Something caught at her mind and held on; a suffocating darkness coiled itself around her. Malian felt a terrible hunger that sought to drain her soul and her power with it, down to the marrow--and realized that she had forgotten the Raptor of Darkness ...

In memory of my parents,
Malcolm and Esther Lowe

Contents

T he wind blew out of the northwest in dry, fierce gusts, sweeping across the face of the Gray Lands. It clawed at the close-hauled shutters and billowed every tapestry and hanging banner in the keep. Loose tiles rattled and slid, bouncing off tall towers into the black depths below; as the wind whistled through the Old Keep, finding every crack and chink in its shutters and blowing the dust of years along the floors. It whispered in the tattered hangings that had once graced the High Hall, back in those far-off days when the hall had blazed with light and laughter, gleaming with jewel and sword. Now the cool, dry fingers of wind teased their frayed edges and banged a whole succession of doors that long neglect had loosened on their hinges. Stone and mortar were still strong, even here, and the shutters held against the elements, but everything else was given over to the slow corrosion of time.

Another tile banged and rattled its way down the roof as a slight figure swarmed up one of the massive stone pillars that marched along either side of the hall. There was an alarming creak as the climber swung up and over the balustrade of a wooden gallery, high above the hall floor--but the timbers held. The climber paused, looking around with satisfaction, and wiped dusty hands on the seat of her plain, black pants. A narrow, wooden staircase twisted up toward another, even higher gallery of sculpted stone, but the treads stopped just short of the top. She studied the gap, her eyes narrowed as they traced the leap she would need to make: from the top of the stair to the gargoyles beneath the stone balcony, and then up, by a series of precarious finger- and toe-holds, onto the balcony itself.

The girl frowned, knowing that to miss that jump would mean plummeting to certain death, then shrugged and began to climb, testing each wooden tread before trusting her weight to it. She paused again on the topmost step, then sprang, her first hand slapping onto a corbel while the other grasped at a gargoyle's half-spread wing. She hung for a moment, swinging, then knifed her feet up onto the gargoyle's claws before scrambling over the high shoulder and into the gallery itself. Her eyes shone with triumph and excitement as she stared through the rear of the gallery into another hall.

Although smaller than the High Hall below, she could see that it had once been richer and more elegant. Beneath the dust, the floors were a mosaic of beasts, birds, and trailing vines; panels of metal and jeweled glass decorated the walls. There was a dais at the far end of the long room, with the fragile remains of a tapestry draped on the wall behind it. The hanging would have been bright with color once, the girl thought; the whole hall must have glowed with it, but it was a dim and lifeless place now.

She stepped forward, then jumped and swung around as her reflection leapt to life in the mirrored walls. A short, slightly built girl stared back at her out of eyes like smoke in a delicately chiseled face. She continued to stare for a moment, then poked her tongue out at the reflection, laughing at her own fright. "This must be the Hall of Mirrors," she said, pitching her voice against the silence. She knew that Yorindesarinen herself would have walked here once, if all the tales were true, and Telemanthar, the Swordsman of Stars. But now there was only emptiness and decay.

She walked the length of the hall and stepped onto the shallow dais. Most of the tapestry on the rear wall had decayed into shreds or been eaten by moths, but part of the central panel was still intact. The background was darkness, rimmed with fire, but the foreground was occupied by a figure in hacked and riven armor, confronting a creature that was as vast as the tapestry itself. Its flat, serpentine head loomed out of the surrounding darkness, exuding menace, and its bulk was doom. The figure of the hero, dwarfed beneath its shadow, looked overmatched and very much alone.

The girl touched the battered figure with her fingertips, then pulled back as the fabric crumbled further. "The hero Yorindesarinen," she whispered, "and the Worm of Chaos. This should never have been left here, to fall into ruin." She hummed a thread of tune that was first martial, then turned to haunting sadness as she slid forward, raising an imaginary sword against an unseen opponent. Her eyes were half closed as she became the fated hero in her mind, watching the legendary frost-fire gleam along her blade.

Another door banged in the distance and a voice called, echoing along silent corridors and through the dusty hall. "Malian! Mal--lee-ee--aan, my poppet!" The Old Keep caught the voice and tossed it into shadowy corners, bouncing echoes off stone and shutter while the wind whispered all around. "Where are you-oo-oo? Is this fit behavior for a Lady of Night? You are naught but an imp of wickedness, child!"

The door banged again, cutting off the voice, but the damage was done. The bright figure of Yorindesarinen faded back into memory and Malian was no longer a hero of song and story, but a half-grown girl in grubby clothes. Frowning, she smoothed her hands over her dark braid. The hero Yorindesarinen, she thought, would not have been plagued with nurses when she was a girl; she would have been too busy learning hero craft and worm slaying.

Malian hummed the snatch of tune again and sighed, walking back to the stone balcony--then froze at a suggestion of movement from the High Hall, two storeys below. Crouching down, she peered between the stone balusters, then smiled and stood up again as a shimmer of lilting sound followed the initial footfall. A slender, golden figure gazed up at her through the twilit gloom, his hands on his hips and his sleeves flared wide, casting a fantastic shadow to either side. One by one the tiny golden bells on his clothes fell silent.