The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe Page A

obvious effort, and stood for a moment, his fist still clenched and his head bent. “No,” he said again, his voice very quiet but with a deliberation that was more terrible than his rage. “I will not have it. Not again.”
    Korriya looked at him with compassion. “Tasarion, it is only surmise, but still—”
    “I must prepare myself for the worst,” he finished harshly, “given your impeccable reasoning. And do not remind me that no reasoning, however impeccable, is infallible and that we can be certain of nothing until the Heir is found. Not,” he added bleakly, “that she will be able to remain Heir if your suspicion is correct.” The face he turned toward her was bleak as his voice. “Is there more, Kinswoman? You had one more riddle, I believe?”
    “How did the attackers breach the Old Keep?” murmured Asantir, and the priestess nodded. The lines of exhaustion and strain on her face were very marked now.
    “I think,” she said, “that you will find my suspicions in this case the least palatable of all.”
    The Earl seated himself again, his face grim. “Another Matter of Blood?” he asked. She nodded and he made a brief, impatient gesture. “Speak, then. You need not spare me.”
    “Indeed,” she replied quietly, “I do not think I can. Your squire spoke of treachery and I believe that he is right. I do not believe that we are so weak, even now, that the Swarm could penetrate the Old Keep unaided. Only one of the Blood, or a very great power indeed, could set aside its inbuilt wards. When the attackers first poured into the Temple quarter there was a hint of something, a signature or seal on the spells they were using, that I recognized. It was elusive but familiar, although I could not name it. Then, of course,the Raptor came and there was no time left for naming things.” She paused, almost visibly gathering her strength. “Since then, however, I have returned again and again to that elusive familiarity and finally a name has come to me. Yet it seems unthinkable.”
    “Except,” the Earl said sharply, “that you are thinking it. No more riddles, Korriya. Name me this name!”
    She raised her eyes to his. “Nerion,” she said.
    He recoiled as if she had struck him. “How can that be?” he cried. “They told us she was dead!”
    “They said!” Korriya returned, with fine scorn. “She was exiled amongst those who have no cause to love this House—yet who, here, asked after the manner of her death, or sought her body for burial when they said that she was gone? We were all too ready to accept their word that she was dead. But if she was still alive, if she had not died but fled, then she might well seek revenge.”
    “And so,” said Asantir, “by way of the fourth riddle, we come back to the first, at least in part. They did seem to be seeking something, or someone, even to the extent of leaving it too late for retreat.”
    “What are you suggesting?” the Earl asked her. “That the mother seeks the daughter?”
    “It fits a part of the picture,” Asantir replied, “although the attackers may well have had several objectives.” She frowned. “It does not tell us why they attacked now, however.”
    “But Nerion,” said the Earl, shaking his head, “alive and gone over to the Darkswarm? How can that even begin to be possible?”
    Wearily, the priestess leaned back in her chair. “You are thinking of the Nerion we both knew. Now think of her fate: cast out, exiled, abandoned. And the fact remains that someone led our attackers through the Old Keep, someone who knew it very well.”
    “And Nerion, more than any other, ran wild there when we were young.” The Earl thrust to his feet again, stalkingback and forward between table and fire. “Now Malian is believed missing in the same place. If Nerion is in there—” He shook his head. “If only I could place more confidence in your report of the Golden Fire, but a five-hundred-year-old memory is a slender thread on which