Fall of Thanes by Brian Ruckley Page A

reach, untouchable, inviolable.
    "You cannot kill me, for I am not as you are," Aeglyss said. He slammed his bony fist down on the table. "You think because I am flesh, I am weak. No, no. You must learn to think differently. You will learn. For all your hatred and your betrayals, I will raise you up. I will give you all that you want, feed all the hungers in your hearts, and those who turn against me will be cast down and ruined. There is no other way. No other truth."
    "As it is written," Shraeve murmured as she picked up her sword and came back around the table to stand beside Hothyn. The two warriors, Inkallim and White Owl, flanked the na'kyrim . And no gaze would meet the challenge those three offered. No one could deny them the submission they demanded.
    "Kill the girl who served me my wine," Aeglyss said. "And all the rest of the servants. All of them."
    He looked up at Shraeve and she nodded.
    "You've uttered not a word, Thane," Aeglyss said to Kanin. "I've never known such silence from you. Have you nothing to say?"
    "Nothing." Kanin rose, horrified at the effort it took to turn away from Aeglyss, and at the yearning he felt to love the halfbreed and all that he offered. But his hatred provided the one, thin sheen of armour he needed to resist that call. He spared a lingering moment for a last look at Cannek lying dead on the floor, and walked out. An absurd, half-formed smile had been locked into the Inkallim's lips by death.
    Kanin waited outside, and the rest came soon after him, emerging blinking into the clear winter light. All were silent; some thoughtful, some shocked and shaken. In some faces he was sickened to see a sort of joy. This, he understood, was how it happened. There were some--many, perhaps--who found the horrors that Aeglyss embodied and offered not repellent but intoxicating. Once they caught their first scent of his corruption they wanted nothing more than to drink deep of it, to drown themselves in it.
    When Goedellin appeared, Kanin stepped in front of the Lore Inkallim, forcing the old, bent man to stop.
    "How many have to die, Goedellin? Before you will open your eyes to this madness?"
    The Inner Servant rapped the heel of his walking stick on the ground but said nothing.
    "My sister was the truest and most loyal follower of the creed, old man. Every beat of her heart was a promise of faith. Is she owed nothing for that lifetime of fidelity? Did it earn her no honour from the Lore?"
    "Such matters are not straightforward, Thane," Goedellin grumbled. He shuffled sideways, trying to pass.
    Kanin blocked his path. "We had tutors when we were children," he said quietly, insistently. "Tutors from your Inkall."
    "I know. Wain told me."
    "Did she tell you that my father wanted to send them away? After only a couple of seasons, he doubted his decision to bring them to Hakkan. She changed so quickly, you see. She devoured their teachings as if she had been starving until then, without ever knowing it. My father was disturbed by it."
    The Inner Servant of the Lore angled his head a little, looking up to meet Kanin's gaze just for a moment.
    "We knew nothing of it until one day the tutors were simply gone. Wain flew into such a rage." Kanin smiled at the memory, at the thought of that distant childhood, but knew it would bring unbearable pain if he let it take too firm a hold. "She meant to have them back, and she did. A little girl, Goedellin, bending a whole castle, the household of a Thane, to her will. She sulked, and raged, and the tutors were recalled. That was what it meant to her."
    The Inkallim was shaking his bowed head, though what the gesture meant Kanin did not know.
    "She should not have died," Kanin whispered. "You know this is not as it should be. You know this is not fate."
    "What else is there, Thane?" Goedellin snapped. "What else is there?"
    "Corruption! You think the warriors of the creed are fated to fawn over that monstrous little creature in there? You think this is what Tegric's