A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

The North shone like crushed diamond beneath the midnight sun. Wulf had no idea how long he and Thrit had been riding. They slept when they were tired, in the few shelters they could find in the wilds: hollows behind waterfalls, ledges fringed with dripping ice. No summer could melt the eversnow – not even this summer of fire – but it could soften it.

Járthfall was a long way into the Northern Plain. Still, all housecarls learned to live off the land. There were bear grapes sleeping under the snow, speckled clutches in low nests, animals and birds to hunt.

For a time, all that lay before them were steep bluffs of rock that knuckled from snow. They breathed cleaner air than they had in weeks. The horses fought their way on to higher and higher ground, hooves sinking deep, while Thrit tried to keep their spirits up, singing when there was no quarry to scare.

It was only on their second week of riding that they saw a wyvern for the first time – heading south, uninterested. This must be a poor hunting ground when feasts of flesh were piled elsewhere. Still, they were more careful after that. One night, they woke to see a creature pass below, a huge scaled elk with embers for eyes.

The next day, they saw one of the great wyrms, the one Einlek had called Valeysa. Tawny all over, the beast flew straight overhead, like the wyvern, heading for Eldyng.

Next came an ancient forest of blood pines, which seemed tall enough to brush the clouds, snow tumbling from their branches. A carpet of dark needles hushed the hoofbeats.

When Wulf and Thrit emerged, they beheld a lake, and mountains blocked their way eastward – one with two peaks, draped in snow. These were the Oxhorns. On the far side of the greenish water, a shelf of rumpled ice slouched over a sheer wall of rock, shedding grey waterfalls. White rubble had calved into the lake. Its shore housed the bones of a camp, with a firepit and a rack for stretching hides.

‘This is too small to be the main camp,’ Wulf observed. ‘Must be for bathing and the like – but we’re in the right place.’

‘Aye. This is Járthfall.’ Thrit eyed the hanging ice. ‘I really don’t like the look of that.’

‘The outpost won’t be on it.’

‘I wager we’ll still have to cross it to get there. An ice helm is an excellent defence against unfriendly visitors.’ Thrit turned in his saddle, searching the valley, then nodded to a faded path that disappeared into the mountains. ‘That should be our way in. Looks like a steep ride.’

‘You wait here, if you need a rest,’ Wulf said. Thrit rubbed his eyes. ‘I can head up alone.’

‘I believe I made myself very clear, Wulfert. You go nowhere alone.’ Thrit gave his horse a pat. ‘Up to the outpost, then. Let’s warm our bones and think of some way to embarrass Karl.’

****

Her light kept the darkness away. Dumai watched its flicker, the way it revealed the veins in her hands.

It had also revealed the paintings in the cave. They could have been recent or very old, but she felt it was the latter. She took in the rough figures, the runes – things she was certain she had no hope of understanding.

The largest of the images was a circle with lines streaming out from it, surrounded by stars. It crossed the whole ceiling before curving down into the wall opposite Dumai. This could be an ancient hand trying to capture a shooting star. She had wished on many of those as a child, lying on the temple roof with Kanifa.

Or it could be the great comet Tonra had believed would come.

Below, hundreds of handprints overlaid one another, pressed into the wall with many shades of paint. The red ones troubled her. They all seemed to be reaching for the star, or warding it away.

Is this Kwiriki’s Lantern?

Nikeya slept on at her side. They had to find Furtia, but they were both bruised and exhausted, and Dumai knew better than to goad another mountain. Brhazat had reminded her of the importance of that lesson. Let Nikeya sleep in peace for just a little longer.

She had not heard a word from the inbetween, though she sensed they were in the right place, or close to it. The silence was starting to trouble her.

When Nikeya stirred, she looked around and blinked, as if she had forgotten where she was. Seeing Dumai, her face softened into an unguarded smile. A moment later, her brow pinched.

‘My fingers.’

Dumai took off her mittens for her. When she saw, her chest tightened. ‘You have frostnip.’ She blew warmth on to her fingertips, which had turned pink and swelled a little. ‘You must keep your hands moving as we go on.’

‘Will I lose the fingers?’

‘Not if you keep them out of the cold.’

‘What happened to yours?’

Dumai curled them in her gauntlet. Nikeya reached for the cord around her wrist, asking permission with her gaze. When Dumai nodded, she unwound it and eased the armoured glove off, so she could see the remnant fingers.

‘I was ten,’ Dumai said, letting her touch them. ‘The snowstorm came out of nowhere, while we had climbers on the peak. The sky had been clear all morning, but a mountain makes its own weather.

‘When they brought the first man down, one hand frozen solid, I ran out, certain I could find my mother. In my haste, I forgot my gloves.’ She almost shivered, remembering. ‘It was like . . . falling inside a pearl. In moments, I had lost my bearings in the snow. Mother found me just in time. I lived, but my fingertips died. She trimmed them with a blade.’

‘That must have been terrifying, for a child. I never knew such hardship.’

‘It taught me to keep my guard up, even when I think I know exactly what I’m doing. And to raise it higher when I have no idea.’ Dumai looked at her. ‘Did the River Lord tell you to seduce me?’

Nikeya kept hold of her hand.

‘Of course he did,’ she said, very softly. ‘But you’ve always known that.’

‘How can I ever trust you, then?’

‘You already do. You were not made for artifice and intrigue, Dumai. It’s what I’ve always liked about you. You trust people, because you want to see the good in them. Even me, in spite of yourself.’ Nikeya traced the line of her jaw. ‘I know I have tested your patience, but I needed to see who you were, to make sure Seiiki had a ruler who would protect its people. I think you could be that ruler – born to a mother from the dust provinces, raised on a mountain to cherish the gods.’

‘My father loves the gods, too, and the people. It is yours who stops him knowing them.’

‘Dumai.’ Nikeya cupped her cheek. ‘I know I am a Kuposa. I know you see me as his instrument, a bird who sings only his songs, but I told you. I am my own woman.’ Her voice caught. ‘I can’t deny that I am like him. But I am also like my mother, and she taught me to love the gods. So I will stand with you . . . and I would be your comfort. If you let me.’

When Dumai drew back to look at the Lady of Faces, she found her gaze as bright as tumbled stone, her lips a silent invitation. This was her true face, vulnerable in its nakedness.

Her fingers were still cold. Dumai almost closed her eyes when Nikeya brushed her cheeks, her lips – except she never wanted to stop looking at her. In this glow, she was painted in moonlight.

‘I don’t watch to watch you fade on that throne,’ came her whisper. ‘Look at my cousin. Sipwo is a ghost of her old self, starved of love. You’ll suffocate without it, Dumai.’ She was so close. ‘It’s just us here. No one will know.’

Seiiki was so far away. Dumai touched her wrist – and it was all of it, all of her, her cleverness and her smile and her laugh, her fearless resolve, her warmth in the iron cold of the North.

It was her loyalty, which could be a trap, but could just as well be real, in this place.

It was two long years and thirty years. It broke her guard. It broke the lock. She let go of her last shred of resistance, and it floated away, lighter for having been released. Nikeya leaned into her, holding her face as if it were unbearably delicate, fingertips light as breath. Dumai grasped her in return – and then Nikeya kissed her, soft as the first rain of spring, washing the rest of the world away.

All her life, she had buried the part of her that longed for an embrace like this. There had been little room for softness on the mountain, where survival and ritual had been all that mattered.

But this mattered now. Within that kiss, nothing else did. Seiiki was gone, and so were the intrigues of court and the lure of the sky, and anything else that would keep them apart.

Nikeya drew back to whisper her name. Dumai breathed her in, a wingbeat between her legs. When their lips met again, warmth filled her throat like a long drink of sunlight.

Daughter, have you lost your senses?

No, she thought. No, I have found them.

A memory welled, of the first time she had seen another woman naked – a young widow of Ginura, warming herself in the hot spring after her climb. Her hair down her back, long dark brushstrokes of it, and her hip, curving like a shell from the sea.

The woman had caught her looking and smiled, and Dumai had rushed off to finish her chores, face on fire. Later, the woman had caught her in the corridor and kissed her on the cheek, leaving with a wisp of laughter. It was all she had thought about for a month.

She had not understood her feelings. Not then. She had tucked that morning and that sweet kiss away, to cherish only in secret, in darkness – but from then on, her senses were sharp around women. A sharpening not like the tip of a blade, but like music soaring to the height of its power, or an unexpected chill, making her breath catch and her skin awaken. Some women left her with the thought that everything was new and bright.

Kuposa pa Nikeya had made her world so bright it hurt.

Now the hurting ceased. Nikeya threaded both arms around her, and Dumai pressed her as close as she had always yearned, and it made sense, it had always made sense.

You are near.

Dumai broke the kiss, chest hitching. ‘Dumai.’ Nikeya touched her cheek. ‘What is it?’

‘The messenger.’ Dumai was already on her feet, delving into the mountain with a laugh. ‘She’s here.’

Wait for me, sister. The voice coursed through her mind, drowning Nikeya. Go to the place I showed you. I will meet you there. This was why she had come here. The small glow in her hand lit the way.

She emerged from another crack in the rock, a different flank of the mountain, where two peaks walled a small, deep valley. The sun had bronzed the sky.

Nikeya stepped out, too, blinking against the light. Dumai crunched uphill, through untouched snow. ‘I must say, this is a first, Princess. I have never kissed someone and had them run away at once,’ Nikeya remarked, trudging in her wake. ‘Usually they wait a few hours.’

‘Please, Nikeya, be quiet.’

‘I’ll be quiet as a pond if you tell me what’s happening. I don’t see a map in your hand.’

‘I hear her. Just like I hear Furtia.’

‘Who?’

‘The woman in my dream.’

‘Wait.’ Nikeya was already out of breath. ‘You’re telling me we’re here because you had a dream?’

At the top of the slope, Dumai stopped. Before her lay another field of snow, and across it was the mountain she had seen, with twin peaks. The sight of it made her laugh again, in sheer relief. It was real. Her sister must be here. She stepped forward, and then straight back.

Something felt wrong. She took stock of the scene, the long downward course of the snow from elsewhere in the mountains. To the west, it suddenly fell away, as if cut with a knife. Dumai knelt to scrape the top layer off, finding dense ice beneath, pleated and wrinkled like cloth left to dry, shaded with blue. Somewhere below, she could hear water rushing.

‘It’s a glacier. A climber told me about them,’ she said. ‘The ice moves too slowly to see, but it is always moving. Always melting.’ She straightened. ‘These can be very dangerous.’

‘Then let’s not cross it.’ Nikeya grasped her elbow. ‘Dumai, answer me. You really came to the North . . . for a dream?’

A thread of black was rising farther down the glacier. Without replying, Dumai started towards it, then passed her other sickle to Nikeya. ‘In case you slip,’ she said, and headed for the smoke.

Close to where the ice ended, a crag of weathered rock carved free, long and flat enough that several wooden buildings had been raised on it, not like any she had seen in the East. That must be where her sister was waiting.

They picked their way along the thick ice. At one point, Nikeya strayed too far, and her boot punched through a rotten spot. Dumai steadied her, and Nikeya clutched at her sleeve in return, breathing out long sashes of fog. After that, they tried to keep to solid ground.

When Dumai saw the dark mounds on the snow, she paused, instinct rising. Taking a deep breath, she risked the glacier and walked slowly towards the nearest.

A young woman lay dead, brown eyes iced open. Her hands were red, and blood had soaked into the snow, from the gash that lined her throat from ear to ear.

Nikeya caught up. ‘The sickness.’ She took a step away, covering her mouth with her sleeve. ‘We should not be here.’

Dumai counted the bodies. Most of the twenty she could see were almost naked, despite the perishing cold, and long cuts streaked their limbs, like those on the young soldier near the Daprang.

It only occurred to her that there must be at least one survivor – the person who had lit the fire, who had cut the others’ throats – when a bellow of anger came from the outpost, and a man with a sword was running towards them.