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When Albryan Lana saw the panther, he crouched low in the bushes, mouth going half open, a length of wavy auburn hair escaping its knot at the back of his head to tickle his fuzzy upper lip.
The cat was beautiful, mist-and-charcoal-striped like the finest tabby silk from the weavers of Sanghui, and Albryan raised an arrow to his bow for a brief moment before deciding against it. It didn’t seem right. Not at this time of year, with the woods emerging from the teeth of winter and the great cat having survived the lean season. It looked rangy, yet big-boned, probably a male. Rare enough to see one here, in the lower hillands of the sacred forest. It must have ranged down from the Svanlyn mountains, perhaps looking for food, for easy prey. Lambs from the western borderlands of Qwu’Mallorn.
The cat had come to lap at the pool which lay at the foot of a great, grey-barked ironwood tree. Albryan had been on his way to touch the great tree and kneel at its foot, to say a prayer to the goddess his people named Qwu’Kiya, mother deity of the magic-folk, or the Morgei as they were known to outsiders. Now he crouched in the undergrowth, making no sound, and watched until the panther finished drinking and slinked away into the bushes.
By the time Albryan finished paying his respects at the ironwood, the sun was westering and an icy breeze had come up, blowing straight down from the mountains. He shivered and hooked his hunting bow over his shoulder, attaching the leather cap on his quiver. It was time to head back. Even though he had caught nothing on this little trip, despite dreams of fur-lined boots and perhaps a warm pair of gloves, he still felt that it had been worthwhile.
It was two hours’ walk back to the barracks near the town of Tenna. The air was cold, though at least the forest canopy kept things somewhat insulated down here. Albryan’s upcoming assignment would take him into the land of Vailana, a vast plainsland that baked hard in summer and froze solid in winter. Armour City, its capital and buzzing hive, never seemed to variate its dust and dirt despite the passing of seasons. Albryan had been born there, but held few fond memories of the place. He had been about seven years old when the blood sorcerer, Arran Sylvaissen, had forced the Morgei out of Vailana and into the refuges of their ancestral home, Qwu’Mallorn, called by outsiders the Forest of the Morning.
Half ancestral for Albryan, some might say. Though he was possessed of a strong Gift, fit for war-magic, more than respectable for a son of a noble house such as his father’s, Albryan was never unaware that he did not look Morgein. The reddish hair, blue-green eyes, and freckles that sprinkled his cheeks even in full adulthood came from his mother, who had been nonmage Vailanan. This wasn’t that unusual; not for Vailanan-born mages, anyhow. Morgei and nonmage had once mixed freely in the bustling marketplaces of Vailana, but here, where the old mage-families still ruled the sacred forest, blood had always mattered more.
Albryan’s mother was gone now; she had caught a deadly disease less than a year after their family had fled Armour City. Albryan’s father, Alban Lana, had remarried into a much more profitable situation, a prosperous noblewoman from the town of Catroot. His older brother Caras had also stayed in Catroot, was now married to a Councilwoman with whom he had two young daughters and a third on the way, and Albryan had joined the army.
Though he often missed Caras, it was a huge relief to be two hundred miles away from his father, and Albryan had not returned to Catroot very often during his past nine years at the barracks of Tenna. He slowed for a moment on the narrow forest path, last year’s leaves crunching under his boots, and noticed how pale his skin had become, after the winter and so many days of wearing full armour. The three white scars that striped the wrist of his right arm were barely visible these days.
Albryan shook his head, not wanting to dwell on thoughts of his family. The boughs of star chestnut and bushwillow were bare all around him, but the false olives and twisted milkwoods had weathered the winter in their thick evergreen coats. They made dark splashes of life along the way, the olives bushy as the end of a broom, the milkwoods twisting their branches against the forest floor like thick black snakes shedding skins of peat-coloured bark.
Around sunset he stopped to defuse a snare he had set earlier, and found caught in it a plump hare, still warm. Certainly not big enough for a pair of gloves, but more than adequate for dinner. He would be late, but Albryan had no fear of walking back in the moonlight. His friends and fellow officers of the Morgein army might miss him, this night just before he was due to leave, but he could say his goodbyes over breakfast tomorrow. He built a fire, skinned and spitted and roasted the hare, and enjoyed the solitude and secret noises of the evening forest.
By the time he arrived back, almost everyone else was asleep. He let himself into his private quarters, stripped off his comfortable long tunic and woollen breeches, and went to bed.
His dreams were unsettled, of blood and ash and dark magic, and the exodus of the Morgei from Armour City.
Albryan had not been there, that night nearly nineteen years ago when Arran Sylvaissen’s armies had sacked the city. His family had fled for the refuge of Qwu’Mallorn some weeks beforehand. But when he was sixteen, he’d spent a while as a patient in the mind-healers’ sanitorium in Catroot. Some of those who’d survived the massacre still came there for intermittent treatment, and Albryan had heard stories that chilled his blood when he was still a young boy. In the years since he’d joined the army, he’d tussled with Arran’s nonmage armies often enough in the ongoing war, and seen more than a few blood-chilling things for himself.
He dreamed of the musket guns and cannons that Arran’s soldiers carried, the thunderclap when they discharged, the crash and shatter of lead all around the battlefield. Magic could nullify the devastating effects of these weapons, but only when the magician was quick and focused enough. And the backscatter could be dangerous. Albryan had lost enough horses from under him whilst protecting his men.
He dreamed of all he feared: armies invading Qwu’Mallorn, breaking the magical barrier, overrunning the sacred woodland. He dreamed of a dark shadow that engulfed all the earth, more terrible than anything he’d ever imagined. He dreamed of the death of gods, the desolation of all civilization.
“Put some backbone into it, you lazy lot! I’ve seen better lines at the marketplace! Perhaps I should go and find your little brothers back home and put them into formation! They couldn’t be worse than you! By the Goddess’s tits, there’s been too much slacking off around here! Now get your lazy arses to the top of the hill, and best hope I don’t catch up with you!”
He came conscious with a start, heart thundering in his chest, chilled in the breeze that wafted through his half-open window-shutter. It was morning, and the barracks had come to life around him. A drill-sergeant was shouting at a group of recruits outside, loud enough so that Albryan could hear every word as if he were standing right over the bed.
Slowly, Albryan made himself breathe deeper, calmed his racing heart. He was no stranger to bad dreams. Seeking to settle himself, he tried to place the voice of the sergeant. Not one of his; but it had been a long time since Albryan had had a command of his own.
Far too good at being a spy, he thought, a touch sourly, and with that heaved himself out of bed. Flinging his nightshirt aside, he opened the door to his closet. Like the rest of the room, it was made of a light golden wood which looked decorative but was hard enough to sharpen and use as spear-points. It was harvested from the yellowwood trees which grew only in Qwu’Mallorn.
Albryan cast a longing look over his standard-issue ringmail and silver-edged plate, and ran the velvet of one of the forest-green tunics between his fingers. No uniform for you today, Captain Albryan Lana. He reached for the rough garments that lay across the stool in the corner, the clothes of a man inured to hardship and bloodshed, the leather and steel of a nonmage mercenary. His disguise.
He ran a hand along his heavily stubbled jaw, yet another thing that set him apart from the average Morgein man. It itched already, but it was better he should look the part. He quickly dressed himself in the leather and undyed wool, and headed to the mess for breakfast.
The recruits had already been in and out, and the mess-hall was almost quiet. Albryan joined a table with his fellow officers, who welcomed him like the brothers they were. Outside the wide-open windows, the woodland encroached close to the building, threatening to embrace it back to nature. In Qwu’Mallorn, the forest was never far away.
The shouty sergeant had sent his unlucky recruits all the way up Triaan’s Hill, a high rocky knoll atop which General Thinas Sovaya, the commander-in-chief of Qwu’Mallorn’s armed forces, had his quarters. The road up there was long and winding. Beyond the hill to the east lay the town of Tenna, which held the dubious distinction of being the closest settlement to the Vailanan border. People said that traders from all across the continent had once come to Tenna, buying and selling fabulous goods in the marketplace. Little remained of those glory days, and Albryan had never known the town as anything other than a military outpost.
The banter of his brothers-in-arms flowed around Albryan, and when he finished eating, it ebbed expectantly. It was time to say his goodbyes.
“Good luck out there,” said Gardan Féa, a young lieutenant who was on his third cup of coffee. He was only twenty, completely beardless, tawny-skinned, dark-eyed, black-haired, almost an exact average of the mage-folk. Next to him, his best friend and fellow lieutenant, Erastes Linné, nodded.
“I hear that soon the two of you will be heading out as well,” Albryan remarked.
“Only a simple expedition. Reconnaissance,” Erastes confirmed. He was a bit fairer than Gardan, with eyes that were almost green and hair more sandy than brown, but was also smaller, as the Morgei often tended to be. Albryan’s mother had been both fair-skinned and unusually tall, and Albryan, correspondingly, towered over every other officer at the table.
Albryan glanced over at the youngest lieutenant, Evanos Sevelai, and to his surprise the young man saluted him. “Good luck, sir!” The hilariously forgetful gesture—Evanos had once been a sergeant under Albryan’s command—broke the ice, and the table erupted into laughter.
The mirth was led by Captain Elithan Dorad, who lounged back in his chair almost like the panther Albryan had seen yesterday. Elithan was his best friend and by far the handsomest of the lot, with glossy jet-black curls that brushed his collar, a broad smile that came often and easily, and a sprinkling of acorn-brown freckles across the deep tan of his cheekbones. They were the same age, and had trained together, developing a bond almost as close as the one Albryan shared with his blood brother Caras.
Albryan stood up, and Elithan rose and came over to him, clasping his hand warmly.
“Get away with you,” he said with that easy grin and a wink. “Can’t wait to see the door close on your ugly face.”
“And on yours, you goat.”
Elithan’s face became serious again. “Don’t be too long out there, Bryan,” he said, clasping Albryan’s shoulder. “Ambry misses you, and the little ones do as well. But she has told me specifically to tell you that she hates when her ‘Uncle Bry’ goes away.”
“And the youngest?” In contrast to Albryan’s relatively chaste ways, Elithan had already produced four children in the vicinity of Tenna. He had not yet convinced any of their mothers to marry him, although Albryan often wondered if the convincing would not in fact run the other way. Elithan had his own income and plenty of personal glory as a war hero, after all.
“You will miss her naming ceremony.” Elithan scowled good-naturedly. “And I will not tell you what her mother has chosen for a name, until you get back.”
“Tell Ambry I will miss her too,” Albryan said. “Even if she is the daughter of a goat.”
Albryan was already on his way out as Elithan threw him a parting insult and a last chuckle. The general was not known to be a patient man, and he was worried he might be late already. He threw a quick salute to a few officers conversing at other tables; they gave the Morgein military salute back, their right hands going from heart to brow and out.
The path up Triaan’s Hill was winding and steep, and by the time he reached the top, the sun was shining brightly and Albryan felt the first stirrings of summer. The cluster of low wooden buildings which surrounded General Thinas Sovaya’s office had no forest cover, only the occasional thorn-bush growing between the bony rocks that serrated the summit of the tiny hill. Most of the open space was used for parades, exercise and inspections of the troops.
The reception area of Thinas’s office was empty, as usual. The general kept finding better jobs for his secretaries. Such as spy. Albryan had had a brief stint as the general’s secretary, and held the record for being the man who had occupied that position for the shortest amount of time.
The door to the general’s office was closed, which was unusual. Albryan rapped at it, and heard Thinas call him in, but the door jerked open before he could lay a hand on the knob.
Albryan came face-to-face with a cinnamon-haired woman in green robes. Unfortunately, he recognized her immediately. Mialiné Ebraskaia. She flounced to the other side of the tiny room upon seeing him. “Is this truly more important than what I have to say, Thinas?”
The general, behind his desk, looked a good deal more careworn than Albryan had seen him lately. Thinas Sovaya was not what people expected to see in a highly-renowned military man even at the best of times, and he was getting old. He had not won his high position by prowess nor even the strength of his Mage-Gift. Thinas was a born strategist, and it was his careful planning and broad vision that had kept the Forest of the Morning safe, all these years. The general’s hair had long since turned silver, but his eyes were still ageless, bright and dark brown. He was dark even by the standards of his people, and some had been known to call him “the old forest goblin” with varying degrees of affection.
The general ignored Mialiné’s sally towards him. “You’re late,” he told Albryan, though without any true sternness.
“Please accept my apologies,” Albryan said, bowing. He inclined himself very slightly in Mialiné Ebraskaia’s direction. “My lady.”
“I see you are dressed as befits your kind, today,” Mialiné said acidly, looking Albryan up and down. She glanced at Thinas. “Are you sure you can trust this—this half-breed?”
“Fine thing for you to say,” Albryan snapped, before the general could respond. “With your own sister sitting in Armour City beside the enemy.”
Mialiné went chalk white, and for once Albryan wondered whether he might have gone too far. Arran Sylvaissen, enigmatic as he was, had no natural children of his own. Some said that the dark magic he practiced prevented it. Little was known regarding blood sorcery in Qwu’Mallorn; it had been outlawed for hundreds of years.
Regardless of the reason, Arran Sylvaissen seemed to collect foster children the way some noble ladies collected hunting dogs. Somehow—Albryan didn’t know the full story—Dannine, birth daughter of the Councilwoman Tiralinna Ebraskaia and Mialiné’s older sister, had become one of those children. Apparently snatched from her mother’s retinue in the chaos of fleeing Armour City as a small child, she had been raised a princess of Vailana, Arran’s favoured daughter. Now, nineteen years later, she was as accomplished a blood sorcerer as Arran himself. She had killed more of Albryan’s comrades than anybody else. She was known amongst the men as a shadow that hunted by night, a glinting shape seen for a moment in the darkness just before you died.
“You dare speak of this?” Mialiné hissed. “Of my sister, whose memory I grieve, stolen from us by the enemy?”
“Stolen? Fine story. They tell something different, when you listen in the right places.”
Before she could retort again, Thinas rose from his seat. “That is enough,” he said coldly, and both of them recoiled from him. Thinas did not often need to raise his voice to express displeasure. “Mialiné, I remind you once more that I will not be responsible for your sorcerers. They are not enlisted in the army, and most of them are women. I have no authority over them, and I cannot stop whatever antics they dream up. You must instil discipline in them yourself.”
Mialiné glared at the general with a grudging respect she had never given Albryan. “If I could, I would spank them from here to Catroot,” she said. She edged around Albryan, making sure not to brush against him in the tiny enclosed space. She left with a toss of her head, without saying goodbye. Thinas immediately rounded on Albryan.
“Just what is it you think you are doing?”
“Defending myself,” Albryan snapped.
“No. You are aggravating an ally whom we both badly need.” Thinas glanced around his desk, which as usual was overflowing under stacks of paperwork, and snatched a map off the top of a teetering pile. “Do you think you could suppress your own sense of self-importance for a few weeks, and get your actual job done?”
Sullenly, Albryan took the map from his superior. “Sorry, sir,” he said in a low voice.
“Do not be sorry. Do better.” Thinas sat down again, as angrily as Albryan had ever seen anyone sit. “Leave that story about Dannine Ebraskaia alone. No-one cares how the girl got into the clutches of Arran Sylvaissen. The trouble she’s caused—that’s our problem, now. Along with the other accursed so-called children of this blood sorcerer.”
Albryan let the silence sit for a moment before he asked, “Why was she here? Mialiné?”
“The usual. Trying to get me to discipline some scouts of hers.” Thinas shook his head. “Mialiné, despite her fierceness, is desperately afraid of offending anybody whose birth ranks higher than hers. Since I am counted as an independent party, she thinks that I can get away with disciplining the daughters of powerful women better than she can.”
Albryan shrugged. “You probably could.”
“True. But why take on this extra burden unless she makes it worth my while?”
Albryan suppressed a smile. It was not often that Thinas could boast of having the upper hand against one of the highborn who moved in Council circles. Mialiné was young, subordinate to her mother, and she had been made captain of the female sorcerers who were the town’s first line of defence without having any qualifications, as far as Albryan could see, apart from her high birth. Unlike the army, where men were promoted according to their skillset and prowess, the highborn females had a constantly shifting pecking order based on whose family possessed the most power and influence. And many of those families had been feuding against each other just a few generations ago.
The officers sometimes jested, amongst themselves, that the women should be made to join the army and learn proper discipline and obedience. But it was a suggestion that no-one would ever take seriously. No Morgein man, especially one who was common-born, would be permitted to issue orders to a daughter of the high houses. The camaraderie of the army, where common-born sergeants could order highborn boys around and make them scrub the latrines, could only exist amongst men, who had no political voice and no place in the ruling chambers of Qwu’Mallorn.
The general also firmly believed that the presence of women amongst them would distract most of his soldiers from their duty. Not for fear of love trysts—there were enough same-sex trysts amongst the soldiers regardless—but because of the perceived duty of all Morgein men: to protect the womenfolk, the core of the tribe, at all cost, even in battle. “Put girls in the ranks,” Thinas had once said to Albryan, “and they’ll never see a trace of the enemy. Our lads’ll fall over themselves, just to protect them, and then who will hold the lines?”
Thinas gestured towards a chair, his anger seemingly forgotten. “Are you ready to receive your final orders?”
Albryan gathered himself together, and sat down with the curt nod of the professional soldier. “I’m ready.”
