“The Heir Of Night” map: artist, Peter Fitzpatrick

The last deleted scene that I posted focused on Kalan, in a period before the action in Daughter of Blood begins. In it, Kalan and the heralds, Jehane Mor and Tarathan of Ar,  were approaching Port Farewell, the capital of Aralorn, a country in Haarth’s Southern Realms.

This excerpt follows on immediately from the previous “deleted scene” and has some nice backstory for the heralds—but not The Wall of Night series essential material, I hasten to add.

Naturally, the standard warning applies: “All deleted scenes are at “first draft” level only—i.e. very much raw material. Consider yourself duly warned.” Otherwise, onward!

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USA

Deleted Scene 4: Kalan Approaches Port Farewell

“He continued to whistle the same snatch of notes on and off as the road curved its way up the next slope, but the whistle died away when they crested the low saddle and he saw the vista in front of him. The hills descended into a rocky sweep of coast where long blue-green swells terminated in a welter of white, upflung spray; even from the ridge Kalan could hear its crash and the plaintive cries of the birds gliding above the spume.

Further out, the bright water shaded into deep teal, still shot-through with jade where the sun caught it, while further out again there was only a long, dark blue line where the summer sky curved to meet the ocean. The line was not the end of the world, Kalan knew that, but right now, he felt as though he was looking at it anyway—because all that lay beyond that line was more ocean and more sky, a vast distance that no one had ever crossed. Or if they had, no ship had returned to report what lay on the far side.

Kalan blinked, the weight of his eyelids in sharp contrast to the lightness in his head. He was barely able to turn his head to look north or south, where the same immensity of water stretched away, broken only by an occasional green headland—and could not even imagine abandoning land’s solidity for that vast restlessness.

Tarathan gripped his forearm with a gauntleted hand, and the dizziness eased. “Jhaine has no oceans either: no bodies of water larger than a small lake.” The herald’s dark gaze matched the mix of amusement and remembered wonder in his mindtone as he lifted his hand away. “The first time I saw this I was so disorientated I had to hide my face in the ground.”

UK/AU/NZ

“Later though,” Jehane Mor added, “he rode his horse out into the water until the poor beast was swimming, to see if there was a kingdom beneath the waves.”

“I was young,” Tarathan said to Kalan. “Younger than you are now, in fact. And that day I felt it, as though both I and the world had been made new.”

“I hadn’t seen you laugh and shout like that for a long time.” Jehane Mor’s eyes were more gray than green as she looked seaward. “I felt the wonder, too—but also the terror, remembering the Cataclysm and visualizing all this water thundering up over the land and drowning everything: cities and farms, people and animals and trees.”

Kalan found it hard to even begin to imagine it with the sun sparkling on the blue-green water below, but he still shivered, chilled despite the blazing sun. The seabirds’ cries sounded mournful now, as though articulating a deep ancestral memory of the time and events that had almost destroyed Haarth.

Because we came here, he thought: tearing apart the fabric of the world with our great portal and dragging the Swarm through with us. His hands clenched on the reins, and Tercel moved uneasily, his ears swiveling back. Beside him, Madder stamped and shook out his mane, as if saying it was time to move on …”

© Helen Lowe