The Horse Lord by Peter Morwood Read Free Book Online Page B

a little light filtering in the passages were in total darkness.
    At the foot of the spiral stair leading to his father’s tower rooms, he paused to regain his breath and to listen. All the corridors with access to that door had
en-canath
, singing floors, uncarpeted loose-laid boards designed to creak at the slightest pressure. Now they were silent; almost as silent as the young warrior who slid upstairs like a stalking cat.
    The planks groaned thinly when Aldric set foot to them and he hesitated briefly before continuing to his father’s door. Beginning to ease it open, he grimaced— with the floors announcing his every step, further caution seemed superfluous. He threw open the door and went inside.
    The sword slid from his slack fingers. A thousand thoughts became one vast silent scream ringing endlessly through the echoing caverns of his mind.
    Haranil-arluth Talvalin sat in his high-backed chair by the fireplace, with his great
taiken
resting on his knees. His head drooped forward on to his breast and it seemed that the old lord slept. Only the spear which nailed him to his chair destroyed the illusion.
    A few feet away Joren and his four sisters lay heaped against the wall, their rich garments glimmering like so many cut flowers in the wan light. The women had each been stabbed once, in the neck from behind, but someone had fought. Blood puddled thickly on the floor, spattered the walls and smeared across ripped fabrics and hacked furniture. Aldric stared for a long time at Joren’s face, at the loosely gaping mouth and the obscene emptiness of wide, dead eyes.
    Then he began to cry.
    When he had recovered from the convulsive sobbing, Aldric pressed his face to the cool wood of the door and tried to comprehend the enormity forced upon him. He had been late. He had promised his father, his lord, that he would return at a certain time and he had broken that promise. Broken his Word. Logic nagged that this was not of his choosing, that he would anyway have done no more than die with the rest. But logic had no place in a
kailin’s
honour-code. Without a Word he would be better dead.
    As his arm hung limply by his side something touched it. Aldric glanced down and his scarred left palm seemed to burn with a fresh and freezing pain. The hilt of his
tsepan
glittered coldly at him, and his stomach lurched.
    Slowly he drew the thin blade. Its lacquered hilt was chill against his hand, and the hand itself trembled. Staring at the bitter point and cruel edges, he quailed at what was expected of him. To die… And for what purpose? It would neither avenge the killings nor mourn them; nor even carry out the funeral rites. But not to do so would dishonour his name throughout eternity.
    “No!” The word spat from bloodless lips, chasing the
tsepan
as it flickered across the room to thud into a panel. Thrumming with the impact, its pommel swayed so that the blue-enameled crest—his crest—winked at him like a sardonic eye, mocking his cowardice. Aldric rubbed his throbbing hand, but the pain would not go away. His haunted eyes looked far into the distance, towards the sun hanging low over the Blue Mountains, edging a lapis lazuli sky with gold, A gentle breeze passed through the shattered window, caressing his face and the sweat beading it.
    I have lived as well as I may, Aldric thought. I have eaten good food and drunk fine wine, I have had worthy friends. I might have loved… I have never slain a man. Why then fear to die? All must go out into the darkness, and only
kailinin
may choose their time of passing. It is an honourable right, that one may leave this melancholy world to return reborn in the great circle.
    Quietly he crossed the room and twisted the
tsepan
free, then returned to kneel at his father’s feet, laying the dirk before him. Caring nothing for the still-wet blood upon it, he bowed and pressed his brow against the floor. Cold stickiness spread across his skin. The formal phrases for the rite