body. Nevertheless he kept trying to fight, reaching for Vaelin’s throat with chained hands. He may have been more than a match for three drunken sailors the night before, but in the midst of his thirst, his weakness was pitiable. Vaelin shrugged his hands aside and clamped his own about Nortah’s neck, pressing his head hard against the wall.
“What do I know of family?” he grated, teeth clenched. “I know what I lost. Sella was my family too, and so are you, you self-pitying fool!”
Nortah stopped struggling as Vaelin’s hands tightened on his throat, the animosity draining from his face to be replaced by a grim, hungry acceptance. “Do it,” he whispered. “They’re all gone. Caenis, Dentos, Barkus . . . Sella. All gone. Send me to them. Send me to her.”
Vaelin’s hands slackened and he moved back, finding he couldn’t meet the desperate plea in Nortah’s eyes. This man was a ghost, a tired echo of the overly proud scion of Renfaelin nobility Vaelin had met the day they were taken into the House of the Sixth Order all those many years ago. A decade of harsh tutelage and war had transformed that boy into a man of deep compassion and great courage, ensuring his elevation to the highest rank in the pantheon of heroes to arise from the prolonged nightmare of the Liberation War. But, as Vaelin had often observed, in peacetime the rewards of courage were often meagre.
“I told you before,” he said. “The Beyond is not . . . was not what they told us. She won’t be there.”
“You can’t be sure,” Nortah insisted. “You told me that too. There is something there, something on the other side. You’ve seen it . . .”
“She won’t be there!” Vaelin rounded on Nortah, fully intending to beat him down, try to pummel some sense into his addled brain. He stopped upon seeing the undimmed hope in his brother’s gaze. As much as he thirsted for drink, it was plain he thirsted more for death.
“Our brothers died,” Vaelin said, straightening and putting as much surety as he could into his voice. “Dentos and Barkus in Alpira, Caenis in Volaria. And your wife died, brother. Sella died of a tumour in her breast two years ago. Brother Kehlan and all the healers in the Reaches tried but couldn’t save her. The memories carried by those she loved are her Beyond. She is truly gone, but your children are still here and I’m not yet prepared to make them orphans.”
Nortah’s strength seemed to seep away in an instant and he subsided back to the floor. “Dreamt about him again last night, y’know,” he said in a low mumble as Vaelin’s fist rapped on the door. “Caenis, I mean. It’s always the same, we stroll around that blood-soaked temple where we saved the queen, stepping over the bodies as if they’re not there. I don’t always remember on waking what he tells me, but this time I did. Want to hear it, brother?”
Vaelin paused as the guard heaved the door open, glancing back at Nortah’s slumped form. He wondered how it was possible to barely recognise a man he had known since childhood, his last brother transformed into a pathetic remnant, a stranger.
“Yes,” he said. “What did he say?”
“Said we should listen for the wolf’s call.” Nortah’s head swivelled towards him, red eyes blinking with the exhaustion that told of an imminent faint. “Any notion of what he meant?” he asked before passing out.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Petition Day was another reason Vaelin did all he could to absent himself from the tower. As Appointed Delegate, Lord Orven would deal with most of the myriad requests and complaints, but there were always some that required the Tower Lord’s personal attention. The tedium was shot through with an underlying sadness born of a realisation that, had she survived the Liberation War, Dahrena would have been much better suited to this role. Although none had ever dared voice such opinions, he could recognise a similar sentiment in the often irked faces of the more long-standing denizens of the Reaches who came seeking his judgement. As adopted daughter to the previous Tower Lord, Dahrena had been accepted as one of them whilst he, even after so many years in the chair, was often still seen as an interloper. When presented with the more complex cases, she would have drawn on a wealth of knowledge and experience, not to mention personal attachments, that could ease the