A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

They thought she had sheepsbane at first, from the blood-drinking ticks that lurked in the Fells. Then it was the throttle – except she had no soreness in her throat, no cough. Sometimes she was hot, and sometimes she was terribly cold. Doctor Forthard settled on winter gripe.

Time became shapeless and strange. Her ladies were barred from her chamber. Thanks to the spyhole, she knew why.

At last, she woke to see her father on the edge of her bed, dressed for a ride, cooling her brow with a damp cloth. The ruddy glow from the fire cast half of his face in shadow.

‘Father,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t.’

‘I had winter gripe as a child. It doesn’t come back.’

‘What if it isn’t winter gripe?’

In firelight, his eyes were more amber than hazel, like those of a hawk. ‘What else could it be?’

Glorian judged his expression. He would sooner hear a lie than talk to her about the sickness.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Then let us trust in the physician.’

He dabbed her cheeks. After a time, he returned the cloth to the ice basin, and a servant took it away.

‘Glorian,’ he said, ‘do you know what day it is?’ She shook her head, setting off a dull throb in her temples. ‘The Conviction leaves today. Your mother and I set out at sunrise for the royal wedding. The Virtues Council stands ready to keep the queendom strong, as it has whenever your mother has visited Hróth. You need not fear.’

‘I’ll be all right, Father.’

‘I never doubted it.’ He stroked her hair. ‘Time always passes too quickly while I’m here, doesn’t it?’

Sadness hooded his eyes. She wanted so much to prove she was brave, but the fever had left her weak as a mayfly.

‘I wish we could always be together, Papa,’ she whispered. ‘All of us.’ He leaned closer to hear. ‘That you never had to leave again.’

‘I wish the same.’ His callused hands clasped one of hers. ‘I make you this promise. One day, when you give your throne to your own daughter, when your mother and I have white hair and wrinkles, we shall all live in Hróth together. Every winter, we will watch the sky lights, and every summer, we will dance and laugh under the midnight sun.’

‘Truly?’

‘My solemn oath.’

Glorian nodded, tears prickling. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I’d like that more than anything.’

‘Then let it be our dream.’ His smile creased his eyes. ‘For now, I will see you in the summer, dróterning.’

Mustering her strength, Glorian shifted on to her elbows. Her father drew her into his arms, and she burrowed into his embrace, the fur of his collar tickling her cheek.

‘I love you, Papa.’

‘And I you.’ He planted a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Look after my heart. Rest, Glorian. Be strong.’

He released her back into the pillows and left. Unexpectedly, Queen Sabran took his place.

‘Glorian, are you awake?’

She tried to prop herself back up. ‘Yes, Mother.’

Queen Sabran came to stand a short way from the bed. ‘I came to bid you farewell.’ Her gold crown shone in the firelight. ‘I trust you are feeling better.’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Good.’ Queen Sabran looked down at her gloved hands. ‘Glorian, this is the first time I will be leaving you for so long. The Virtues Council has Inysh affairs under control, but should you need me, you may write. Give your letter to Lord Robart.’

‘I’ll be fine, Mother. You’ve left me here many times before.’

‘Times have changed.’

She sat on the chest at the end of the bed and gazed into the flames.

‘I know I have been unfeeling to you. All your life,’ she said. Glorian listened. ‘It is because I care, not because I do not. No one taught me how to be a mother, or a queen. I have only tried to armour you. The crown does not show mercy. It is cruel. You must have iron in your bones, as the Hróthi say, to stop yourself buckling under its weight.’

The fire crackled.

‘I am cold, too. Cold to my blood,’ Queen Sabran said, low enough that Glorian only just heard. ‘I felt the same cold after the Dreadmount opened, though I took pains to conceal it. I have had dreams that seem as real as if I were awake. I have heard a voice in the night.’

‘So have I,’ Glorian whispered.

‘What do you see, when you hear the voice?’

‘I think I remember . . . a shape, like a person.’

‘It will speak to you. You will not always understand.’

‘Who is it, Mother?’

For the first time, Glorian thought she glimpsed a flicker of disquiet in those green eyes.

‘I believe it is the Saint,’ her mother said, ‘but he speaks to us in mysterious ways. For me, the figure was a woman, who I believe was my higher self, the part of me that will rise to Halgalant. Sometimes there was just a voice. It allowed me to converse with the divine. Through those dreams, the Saint consoled and guided me, reminding me I was never alone.’

‘You don’t still have them?’

‘I learned how to control when they come. When I return from Vattengard, I will teach you, as best I can. In the meantime, you must speak of these dreams to no one, Glorian. Some, in their ignorance, would see them as proof of witchcraft or madness.’

A smart knock interrupted them. ‘Your Grace,’ a muffled voice said, ‘it’s time to leave.’

Queen Sabran stood. ‘Be well,’ she said. ‘Florell will stay here to help you.’

‘Are you sure, Mother?’ Glorian said, surprised. ‘Florell is your closest friend.’

‘I have Nyrun and Liuma. Florell knows you best. I trust her with you.’ Her face was back to pale stone. ‘Farewell, daughter. May the Saint, in his kindness, keep you safe.’

Glorian tried to find the words she wanted to express. I will make you proud. I am afraid. I love you, even if I do not think you love me half as much. I will never treat my daughter the way you have treated me.

‘Goodbye, Mother,’ was all she did say. ‘I bid you a safe voyage. Please send my good wishes to Lord Magnaust and Princess Idrega.’

‘I will.’

Queen Sabran turned away. Glorian found a deep well of courage and said, ‘I will be a good queen.’

Her mother stopped.

‘You think me weak,’ Glorian said, willing her voice not to quake. ‘You always have – but I know whose bone and blood I am. I am the chosen of the Saint, the fruit of his unending vine, the iron of the eversnow. I am the daughter of Sabran the Ambitious and the Hammer of the North, and I will rule this realm without fear. My reign will be remembered for centuries to come.’ She let the words soak through the silence, then said, ‘I am enough.’

For a very long time, Queen Sabran said nothing. Her expression was impossible to read.

‘Belief is only the first step,’ she said, very softly. ‘Start forging your armour, Glorian. You will need it.’

After she left, Glorian rose for the first time in days, and went to the window. The last she saw of her parents was two figures riding into the mist.

****

The Conviction, white from prow to stern, its planks like so many stacked ribs. The most impressive longship in the Inysh fleet, a wedding gift from a king to his queen. It carved its way through the grey waters of the Ashen Sea, flying the ensigns of Inys and Hróth.

Unlike most Hróthi ships, the Conviction had a deckhouse at its stern. Inside, Sabran Berethnet curled deeper into the furs on the bed, the cold gathering on her like frost on grass.

Bardholt returned from his walk on the deck, snow in his hair. Sabran watched him undress. Decades after his last battle, he still had the build of a warrior. Naked, he lay beside her and slipped a hand beneath the furs, finding her thigh. He was always warm as a coal.

‘Has the chill not passed, sweetheart?’

‘It will.’

Sabran tucked her head under his chin, tracing the old scars on his chest, which was still firm and muscular. He ran his fingers through her hair with the tenderness he reserved for his family.

Bardholt had bared his whole self to her. She knew every one of his sins from the war, the evils committed against him, the nightmares that drenched him in sweat. In return, she had told him about her leaden days, the days when she felt desolate without obvious cause.

Yet she had never found the mettle to tell him of the chilling dreams, the ones that had afflicted her for years, until they frightened her enough that she had locked the door. She had thought Bardholt a heathen once, all while she had nights when she was colder than an ice spirit, hearing voices in her head.

‘Is the fog still thick?’ she asked him in Hróthi.

‘Heavier than ever.’ He wrapped an arm around her. ‘Fear not. We’ve left in good time.’

It would still take more than a week to reach Vattengard. Bardholt had described it as a bleak fortress, leering at the Ments from across the Ashen Sea. Decades after seizing a realm for his family, Heryon Vattenvarg hungered for more. Magnaust was a proud fool – a Vetalda princess was too good for him – but Idrega was three years his senior, and clever, like her grandmother. If anyone could keep the Vatten in line, she could.

Now more than ever, the Chainmail of Virtudom had to hold strong. Clan Vatten had to remain loyal, and the Ments had to remain quiet. Rozaria Vetalda knew this, too. She had offered up the relative she thought would strengthen the links best, and Sabran had offered hers in return.

She had yet to tell Bardholt. He wanted Glorian to marry a Hróthi – he trusted his friends from the war and their heirs – but the Yscals had stood with Inys for centuries. Glorian would marry Therico, Magnaust would marry Idrega, and Virtudom would be safe.

She would tell him in Vattengard. He would be crestfallen, but she would make him see things her way, as she always did.

Bardholt was falling asleep beside her. His gold love-knot ring was polished, as always. ‘I told Glorian she could write,’ she said, making him stir. ‘If she needed my counsel.’

‘I am sure she took heart in that.’

‘Not just heart. Courage,’ Sabran said, very softly. ‘She told me she would rule without fear. That she was enough. She faced me, as I once faced the Malkin Queen when she dared underestimate my will. I saw my own eyes staring back.’

‘I told you. When Glorian is crowned, Inys will be in good hands.’ He caressed the underside of her breast. ‘And we can be together. No sea need ever stand between us.’

She imagined having him at her side every day, in her bed every night. Living as other companions did. ‘That dream is a long way ahead of us,’ she said, turning to look him in the eyes. ‘You and I may have silvers in our hair, but we cannot yet abandon our thrones.’

‘No. We fought too hard for them.’ He traced along her jaw. ‘And for each other.’

He lowered his lips to hers. She skimmed her fingertips through his beard, his mane of golden hair. Even now, so many years after their wedding night, his touch made her ache. When she took him inside her, he breathed her name like a prayer, as he always did.

After, he lay with one arm folded behind his head and the other around her waist, his damp brow furrowed in thought. ‘What troubles you?’ Sabran asked him, watching his face.

Bardholt stroked a hand up her back. ‘Glorian.’ There was doubt in his voice. ‘Forthard says she has winter gripe, but I have seen that many times. Twice now she has had these turns.’

Sabran closed her eyes. This was not another golden opportunity to tell him, but a tarnished one, years too late.

Instead, she could use it to smooth an old splinter.

‘The Royal Guard told me something,’ she said. ‘Before she collapsed, Wulfert Glenn had just left her side.’

‘What of it?’

‘He was with her the first time, too.’ She sat up to look him in the face. ‘Bard, I know you see yourself in him. I understand why you wanted them to be playmates – it gave him safety and legitimacy, to be seen as a friend of the princess. But though we scorn the old ways, we both know their hold on our lands. The Dreadmount has not ceased its smoking. After the attempt on Glorian, I fear what could happen if anyone learned of her closeness with the Child of the Woods.’

‘What has this to do with her sickness?’

‘Some northerners say fainting is a sign that a person has been near a witch.’

‘They called me witch, too. Heathen and accursed,’ he reminded her. ‘Even my own people, once. You saw through all that baseless fear, but you now ask me to hold it for Wulf?’

‘You must do as you will in your own household. But he and Glorian are not children now, and times have changed. This friendship you encouraged is dangerous for them both.’

‘What is it you propose?’

‘Send him away until the smoke clears. Have a sanctarian vouch for his virtue.’

‘And if he fails their tests?’ he said, quiet and bitter. ‘His father asked me to watch over him. How can I make him stand trial, as I did, when his only offence in this world was to be born?’

Sabran brushed his cheek, the one with the deep scar. ‘Think on it,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

Bardholt watched her reach for her comb. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth as she worked out the tangles in her hair, something Florell would usually do.

‘What?’ Sabran said, eyeing him over her shoulder. ‘What is it?’

‘I never thought, when I was young and foolish, that you could grow more beautiful.’ His gaze pierced her. ‘Before I take my seat at the Great Table, I could give you Yikala, as I gave you the North.’

She stopped.

‘Yikala,’ she said. ‘How could you?’

‘It was the Saint’s dream, to convert the South,’ Bardholt said. ‘Let Kediko Onjenyu give up his old gods at last. Let him join the Chainmail of Virtudom. Let them all. I am the Hammer of the North, and you are Sabran the Ambitious. There is nothing we cannot do.’

Sabran saw the oath written into his eyes. Without answering, she kept combing her hair.

An hour later, he was sound asleep, the years stripped from his face. Sabran lay awake, wanting the other intimacy, the one she never dared reveal. It was the love of the divine, mysterious and terrible. For the first time in years, she opened the door, sinking below that first threshold of sleep.

Are you there?

Yes, said the voice that was not a voice. I was sleeping. A shiver that tasted of caution. It has been some time since you last called, old friend.

It is fear that draws me back. For my daughter.

The silence returned, and she thought the shadow had refused her overture.

Daughters, the voice said. From the moment when they stirred in our wombs, they possessed us. We made them, knowing they would leave us, but their flesh was ours, at first, and we can never let them go.

Sabran was certain of it now. The woman was her – but not in her body, the body she could feel, the body that had grown a child and borne her through the world. This was the divine self, the part of her that was also the Saint.

I see now that you were never a curse. She opened her eyes a little, watching how the waking dream silvered her breath. You were always my friend, and I miss your counsel.

As I miss yours. She sensed grief from the other side. I wish we could meet, and embrace, as sisters. I wish I had some certainty that this was not a dream.

A dream is no less true than any other thing.

Sabran dressed in a red gown. When she looked back, Bardholt was still asleep, his hand open on his chest – her proud Northern king, still hungry to exalt the Saint.

When they reached Vattengard, she would pray for guidance.

Swathed in a cloak, she stepped outside and walked towards the prow. Her subjects cleared a path for her. She caught sight of Wulfert Glenn, who dipped his head respectfully.

Small wonder Glorian was drawn to him. He, too, was caught between two realms.

The fog hung dark, with no trace of the sun behind it. Sabran stood tall at the head of the ship, as she had the day of her coronation. She watched steam waft from the black waters.

For a moment, she was that Sabran again, dressed in green for a new age. The crowd, the crowd was calling her name – calling to her, their Queen of Inys. That day she had laughed for the first time in years. She was young and alive and the world was before her.

A wind blew from the south. Her body stilled, and she faced it, her hair curling about her throat.

****

The fog was like smoke, except it was freezing. Rain would fall soon, and on a birling, there was no escape. Wulf shook his wet hair out of his eyes as he pieced a halyard back together. Beside him, Vell mixed hemp into tar, making caulk. He shivered in his furs, his pale cheeks raw.

‘Can’t hope it will be much warmer in Vattengard,’ he said. ‘Winter is no time for a wedding, whatever the Saint says.’

‘Aye.’ Wulf put the halyard down to blow into his hands. ‘I feel for Princess Idrega. A grim time to wed, but especially to wed a sneering upstart like Magnaust Vatten.’

He let his gaze drift to the greyness above. It felt as if the clouds had come to join them on the ship. His hand went to the sunstone under his tunic, the one Eydag had given him.

‘Would you ever wed?’ Vell asked him.

Against his will, Wulf glanced towards Regny, who was watching the sea with folded arms.

‘I don’t think I’m fated for it,’ Wulf said. ‘You?’

‘I could die merry either way. What I want is to serve King Bardholt until his death, and then see out the rest of my days in the South, where it’s warm. If anyone wants to share that with me – friend or lover – well, that would be a fine thing. But I could go just as well alone.’

‘I always thought you were rooted to Hróth,’ Wulf said with a chuckle. ‘Where in the South?’

‘Kumenga, in Lasia. A port on the Halassa Sea. I met a merchant from there once. She told me Kumengan wine is like sundrops. Ever since, I’ve imagined what the sun must taste like.’

‘Sounds a good way to live. I might join you.’

They both lowered their heads when the queen emerged from her cabin. Dressed in rich red, she stood out like a bent nail among the crew. She cut Wulf an unreadable look as she passed.

When she reached the prow, strands of her black hair pulled free. Wulf wondered when the Inysh had first realised their queens were always born with the same face. How they had avoided suspicion on that isle, which feared the shadow of its past, and a witch. Perhaps because the Berethnets had wealth and high walls and a legend behind them.

Wulf had nothing. No legend, no past, no explanations. Only a vague dream of bees.

‘Vell. Wulf.’

They looked up. King Bardholt had appeared, draped in his bear pelt. ‘Sire,’ they both said.

‘Wulf, I need to speak to you.’

Vell shot him a curious glance. Wulf rose and walked beside the king across the deck.

‘How are you?’ Bardholt asked him.

‘Glad to be back on the waves, Your Grace.’

‘Good.’ His smile was tight. ‘Wulf, I need you to do something for me after this wedding. I need you to return to Inys and spend a few weeks with the sanctarians at Rathdun.’

‘Sire?’

Bardholt stopped and faced him. His expression drifted between resolve and deep sorrow, and his throat worked. ‘My daughter has experienced some fainting turns,’ he finally said. ‘I understand that on both occasions, she was in your company just before she collapsed.’

‘Is Lady Glorian all right?’

‘She is, but the coincidence is unfortunate. It has stoked some of the old misgivings about you.’ Bardholt took him by the shoulder. ‘I swore I would protect you, give you a place of honour at my side. But to silence these backbiters once and for all, I think it best we ask the sanctarians to confirm that you carry no curse.’

Wulf stared at him as the words sank in. ‘Do you mean I’m to . . . leave your household?’

‘No, no. You’ll only be there for a time, Wulf. You are my retainer, sworn to me for life.’

He tried to steady his breathing. ‘What if the sanctarians say I am a witch?’

‘They will not.’ Bardholt tightened his grasp. ‘Have no fear. I know the Saint is with you.’

He looked as if he might say more. Instead, he strode away, leaving Wulf with his heart ramming at his chest.

All the training he had done, all those years. His fathers’ love for him. Their sacrifices to give him a good life. His dreams of knighthood. All of it would slip away when he set foot in Rathdun Sanctuary.

He grasped the mast to keep standing. Roland had told him what those witchfinders did – the questions that were always traps, ordeals meant to force out any trace of witchery. Through brimming eyes, Wulf watched King Bardholt join Queen Sabran.

That was when he heard it. A slow and cadenced beat, like oars striking in unison at water.

Every head on the ship turned. Bardholt placed a hand on the side. ‘Archers,’ he called. Along with half the seafarers, Regny nocked an arrow. ‘Steady.’

‘Sire, what comes?’ a voice said.

‘Let us see.’ Bardholt narrowed his eyes. ‘It has been a long time since I last heard drums.’

Not drums, Wulf thought at first, but Bardholt would know better. After all, he had been to war.

It could be the Ments. Perhaps even the Vatten. The wedding might have been their chance to lure Bardholt to the sea, where they were strong. Perhaps they were tired of being his stewards, and even an Yscali princess could not temper their ambition. With those possibilities loud in his head, Wulf looked into the fog, one hand on his sax.

What emerged from that fog was no enemy ship. It came not from the water, but the sky.

A dark bird of prey, soaring on the wind. A sea hawk, Wulf thought distantly – except its wings were wider than the ship was long. They sheared the waves. In those first moments of seeing it, as his mind grasped for a touchstone and his senses slowed to a trickle, he recalled tapestries, sanctuary windows, prayer books, and the monster that haunted their borders.

Its eyes were firepits, each slashed with a pupil as black as its scales. Eyes both empty and ferociously alive. The beast loomed above the Conviction, held aloft by those dread wings.

And Wulf remembered he was flesh. He was skin papered on sinew, wrapped around bone, sprouting nails and teeth and hair, and all of it could be consumed.

The wyrm – for wyrm it was – did not utter a word. Instead, it opened its mouth wide, showing rows of teeth (Saint, save us, save us), and from its abyss of a throat, light rose.

Bardholt did not baulk. Neither did the Queen of Inys. It could have been courage; it could have been the numbness of fear, a fright that stole the voice and bound the limbs.

They never cried for mercy. Nor did they try to fight or flee. Instead, with their last breaths of life, the king and queen reached for each other. Wulf saw Bardholt move in front of Sabran, as if he had even a faint hope of saving her – saw the stark flash of his face, her long hair streaming in the wind – before the fire devoured them both.

It did not stop at the prow. Though Wulf had no time to escape the red death, some instinct made him lunge for the mast, the only protection. He shouted as his cloak went up. Scarlet flame roared across the deck, sparks blistering his knuckles and nape, strokes of searing metal on his skin.

The top of the mast crumbled away, and scraps of sail came loose, on fire.

All was red. All was white, all was black. The screams of the dying shredded the air. Everywhere, they were burning, and he could smell the bubbling melt of them, fat and copper, a choked sweetness. Through the glare, he glimpsed a tail as thick as a tree, ending with terrible iron spikes. That was the last of the creature he saw before the fog enshrouded it.

The Nameless One. He had returned at last, come to take his vengeance.

Wulf ripped off his cloak, but everything he touched set him alight again. His gloves held flame. His footprints. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He had never seen fire like this.

He dropped to the deck. With sleeved hands, he scrubbed, crazed by pain, at his eyes, more tears blurring them. Bodies, writhing as they ruckled out their final sounds, others already husks. He found Vell, but that was not Vell, that thing was not Vell—

He could hear Regny now, her cries of agony. She thrashed in a lake of spilled tar, snarled in her own blazing furs. Breathing in hot ash, he crawled to her, clenching his teeth.

The wind changed, and the day fell dark, so all that lit the ship was the fire. The creature must be wheeling around, coming to finish its work. Embers fell like a shower of molten glass. Everything they touched burst into flame. Wulf pulled himself forward, even as they landed all over him.

Howls rose from the blackening fog. The other ships. Almost blind from the smoke, Wulf gathered Regny, hands slick with tar. He brought her to his chest, coughing, and burned with her, a wicker man.

Death by fire or death by water. Twenty seemed too young to ask. He thought of staying on the deck, to feel his death to the last throe before he never felt again. Then he stood.

Only witches died by fire. Let his last day, his last choice, be the truth.