A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

On Cenning Moor, soldiers fought by wyrmfire. In the depths of Hollow Crag, thousands of survivors listened to the clash, knowing well that if it stopped, their lives would be snuffed out next.

Enwombed in her chamber, the Queen of Inys laboured – her body opening by increments, for hours. Her grandmother prayed at her side. Bourn waited at the end of the pallet, while her ladies hovered nearby. No one else. The birth of a Berethnet was sacred, to be witnessed only by a few.

Candles melted into stumps. Past the thick walls of Hollow Crag, half of the nobles were on the moor with the soldiers and knights, fighting the onslaught of creatures. This deep in the cave, Glorian could hear nothing.

‘The battle,’ she blew out. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’

‘You mustn’t think of it,’ Florell told her. ‘You must only think of this, Glorian.’

‘I want—’ Another pain struck her. When it had passed, she gasped for breath. ‘How many have come?’

‘Sweeting, please.’

‘I am almost eighteen,’ Glorian ground out. ‘Helisent, ask your father.’

Her mind went white with the next cramp. After an eternity, Bourn gave Marian a nod.

‘Your Grace, you have opened enough,’ they told Glorian. ‘When you feel ready, you can start to push.’ Glorian braced herself on her elbows. ‘Since there is no birthing stool, I would urge you to kneel for this part of your labour.’

‘You ask her to bear a child on her knees?’ Florell said, stunned. ‘This is the Queen of Inys.’

‘The pain is in her back, my lady,’ Bourn said in clipped tones. ‘Lying on it will not help. An upright position is far more—’

‘No, Mastress Bourn,’ Marian cut in. ‘It would be unbecoming for a queen. I gave birth to a strong child on my back. So did the Damsel.’

The Damsel died, Glorian tried to scream, but pain stripped those words away. Her body moved with a will of its own.

She closed her eyes, trying in vain to escape her straining flesh. She pictured the sky lights, the calming blue and green of them. Her mother after the attack, gentle for the first time in years. Her father sitting at her side, the sun reflecting off the water in the queenswood.

That is the hardest part. Knowing that you embody a realm, he whispered. As her womb tided, so did all of Inys. That your eyes are its vigilance; your stomach, its strength; your heart, its shield; your flesh, its future.

A sudden tumult roused her. ‘What is it?’ she said. Julain mopped her brow. ‘Who’s there?’

Julain swallowed. ‘Prince Guma.’

‘Send him away,’ Marian said, her face stark with anger. ‘Sir Bramel, keep him out.’

Glorian glimpsed his face, the flash of tawny eyes, before her guards wrestled him back. She gathered her belly into her arms.

I will not let him get to you.

A deep burning between her legs, far stronger than before. She gripped her ladies’ hands as if she would break them, a cry scraping from her throat. She thought of praying, or dreaming, but she could do neither. In the haze of the next push, she thought of Numun of Carmentum – ash now, perhaps, along with her republic. It made no sense to envy her.

And yet Numun never had to rip herself asunder.

Damn you. A low sound, her own. Damn you, Galian Berethnet. Why did you not have to suffer, but each of your descendants did?

When the tightening was over, she slackened, eyelids heavy. ‘Glorian, don’t give up,’ Julain urged.

Why is this the only way?

Glorian let her head sink into the pillow. She was tired – so tired. She imagined Fýredel before her, waiting to eat her child alive.

****

The Womb of Fire had spilled into Inys. Wulfert Glenn saw it from a distance, his eyes watering from the wind and the smoke. It had taken him weeks to make it this far, but at last he was here, on Cenning Moor.

His steed galloped for Hollow Crag, where Riksard had said his father was hiding. The wyverns and their beasts had found it first. Blood and filth turned the ground to a slester, and fires roared all over the moor, turning the night red. They lit the creased face of the rock.

He rode towards where the fighting was thickest, clad in his chainmail. ‘Stay in formation,’ a voice bellowed to his right.

Wulf stopped his horse. He knew that voice. Just as he thought he saw Roland, fire erupted across the grass, flames as tall as the giants of Northern lore. He shielded his face.

Cries of pain and fear were pealing. Three wyverns lit the moor with their own fire, making it easier to see their prey. Whatever way he turned, there was madness: horses rearing and whinnying, corpses on corpses, moving nightmares.

‘Wulf!’

He coughed his guts up as ash filled his mouth. Yanking his swatch of wet cloth back over it, he took out the spear from Tunuva and unfolded it the way she had shown him. As soon as the hinges were locked in position, he wheeled around, searching for the source of the voice, and saw his brother, filthy and bleeding, hacking at the beasts from horseback.

‘Rollo,’ he roared into the din – then something slammed into him, and he fell into thick mud.

The shock of the blow left him winded. He twisted on to his side to see a monstrous thing, like an ox. It rammed its horns into his horse, then lunged for him, sparks blowing from its nostrils. Wulf wrestled free of the mud and gore, just as teeth plunged into his shoulder. Shouting in agony, he made a grab for the spear, seized the beast by its bare animal halse and drove the point into the roof of its mouth.

‘Wulf!’

Drenched in sludge, Wulf wrenched his spear free and crawled through the crush, trying to get back to his feet. His shoulder burned. ‘Thrit—’ The clangoring swallowed his words. ‘Thrit!’

He buffeted through the soldiers, ducked away from a lindworm. A wyvern swooped low, and he rolled under it, and next thing he knew, he had crashed straight into Thrit.

‘Wulf, where the fuck did you come from?’ he shouted through his cloth. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Lasia. Not long.’ Wulf let go of him to take a shield from a dead knight, hefting it on to his arm, and they turned their backs to each other. ‘I take it we’re defending Hollow Crag.’

‘Apparently.’ Thrit dashed the sweat from his brow. ‘Queen Glorian is in there. There’s word she’s in labour.’

Wulf stared towards the rock. ‘What is she doing here?’

‘Unhappy coincidence.’

‘I should go in there, to help guard her—’

‘Yes, by all means, barge in and show Prince Guma the face of the man who made him a wittol,’ Thrit barked at him. ‘Don’t be a fool, Wulf. Her battle is in there.’ He nocked two arrows. ‘Ours is out here.’

Wulf nodded, and raised his spear.