CHAPTER III
Pyres and the Pit
Winter 70I
Jame half woke, tangled in sleeping furs.
Where am I? she thought.
The white-washed wall beside her danced with murals given life by the low fire sulking beneath the great bronze basin while rain tapped on the copper smoke hood above. Rue snored softly in her own mound of blankets by the door. Of course. She was back in her quarters at Tentir, almost too tired from the long ride south from the Merikit village to sleep.
But she had slept, and dreamed of dark things. Fire and ash, furious blue eyes in a charred face, a seared finger encircled by a ring, jutting out of a pile of corpses . . .
Some images she recognized, but to whom had the other ones belonged? Over the past year she had sometimes shared the dreamscape with both Timmon, set on seduction, and her twin brother Torisen, pulled in against his will. Neither showed her anything she wanted to see. To sleep again was to risk falling back into nightmare, but oh, she ached for rest.
A branch snapped and the flames leaped. Her eyelids flickered, then fell again. Through them she still saw fire. . . .
Such pulsing heat, such an incandescent glow! Beads of sweat burst on her brow and trickled down, stinging, into her eyes. It hurt to breathe. Tentir’s fire timbers loomed around her like a forest perpetually eaten by sullen, internal flame.
The vents far above sucked in a breath of hot air: “Aaaah . . .”
Embers glowed, above, below, while black flakes of combustion fluttered against ironwood trunks like infernal butterflies.
At her feet, the floor fell away into a wide-mouthed pit where once a fire timber had stood. “Haahh . . .” breathed the searing air again, and coals glowed in the pit’s deep bed.
“Afraid, little man?”
The creature who spoke looked like Caldane’s son Nusair, but its hair was white under its ruddy fire-tint. It was a Shanir—worse, a darkling changer, once one of the Master’s most loyal servants, now turned against him in a desperate bid for freedom.
“Afraid? Oh you? Moderately.”
That wasn’t her voice, nor her hand creeping to the collar of her dress coat where (since when?) she carried a set of throwing knives.
“Now, what would really frighten you? Shall we find out? Beauty, now!”
Something gray near her foot, something that sank fangs into her leg even as her hand whipped down to bury a blade in its head, and her senses reeled.
But the darkling wyrm is cocooned in a trunk in Greshan’s chambers, she thought, bewildered. It had bitten her brother two years ago when he had visited Tentir on the way south to battle at the Cataracts, and now she was protecting it while it metamorphosed into . . . what?
Then wyrm and changer were gone and again she circled the pit. This time Vant moved opposite her, his handsome face underlit by glowing coals, twisted with hate.
“Does honor mean nothing to you?” he snarled at her. “Do the rules? Then again, why should they when the Commandant lets you break them over and over? Quite his little pet, aren’t you? You think you’re so clever that you can get away with anything. Well, not this time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your scarf. Someone has already scalped you, but here you are, still in play.”
It was the Winter War, and Timmon had seized her scarf before the contest had even begun, officially removing her from competition.
“You think I’m Jame,” said the voice that she now recognized as her brother’s.
Vant spoke to him, not to me. I wasn’t there. Rue told me.
Vant spat on the stones. His saliva skipped among them, sizzling, going, gone. “The spoiled brat. The Highborn little lady. What did your brother think, that Tentir needed a mascot? It was an honest mistake!”
“What was?” asked both siblings in one voice, and that his.
“How could anyone seriously believe that hillmen were attacking on Tentir’s doorstep? What logic was there in that? What sense is there in anything that you do or that happens around you?”
“You didn’t send help. You laughed. A cadet died.”
The steel in Torisen’s voice pierced her. Beneath it she felt his barely suppressed rage that one of the precious young Kendar entrusted to him had been lost. The other lords mistook his mild ways for weakness, but for thirty millennia his ancestors had been Highlord of the Kencyrath, just as he was now, and their power ran in his veins. As such, he was responsible for the well-being of all his people, in life, in death.
Anise with a Noyat arrow jutting out of her stomach, so scared, then so cold. And I nearly flayed you alive for it, Vant, Ancestors forgive me. Now here you are, with fire at your feet.
“I was master-ten of my barracks. I still should be.” Before his lord, the cadet’s outrage thinned to a self-justifying whine. “Am I to pay for one misjudgment forever?”
“That depends on you.” Trinity, but Tori sounded cold, no less than an Arrin-ken passing judgment. Despite the heat, the words half froze on his lips, issuing forth in a plume of frost. “In Sheth’s place, I would have thrown you out of Tentir altogether.”
“You misbegotten bitch!”
Suddenly Vant was upon him, grappling, trying to throw him onto the coals. They wrestled back and forth on the pit’s rim. Then Vant lurched free, shaking his head. He looked startled and dazed, as if dealt an unexpected blow.
“You . . .” His eyes wildly searched the shadows. “Don’t!”
And he reeled again, over the edge, onto the coals, rolling to his feet. For the first time he clearly saw and recognized his adversary as the Highlord.
“Oh.”
“Now that that’s settled, get out of that damn firebox.” In life, in death . . .
Do it, you fool! Jame thought behind the mask of her brother’s face. Don’t haggle!
But even now Vant didn’t believe that such a terrible thing could happen to him.
“Not until you make me master-ten of my barracks again and withdraw that bitch sister of yours. You must see that her presence here isn’t right!”
Get out, get out, get out . . .
“I suppose you know that your boots are smoking. I can’t be blackmailed, Vant. It would be a betrayal of my position.”
The cadet beat at his smoldering clothes with a kind of exasperated irritation.
“You’re Highlord, dammit!” The furnace breath of the pit made him increasingly hoarse as his throat closed. “You can do . . . what you please!”
“Not so,” came the pitiless answer. “To lead is also to serve . . . something that you never seem to have grasped. What you ask would be a betrayal of responsibility. Come out, Vant. Now.”
Fire flared under Vant’s hands.
“I don’t believe this. I don’t accept it. It isn’t fair!”
“Is the truth? Come out. Here, take my hand.”
The flames rose, licking from pants to jacket, with a sudden rush to the hair. At last Vant believed the unthinkable.
“I will . . . have justice,” he panted as the smoke gnawed at his throat, “or I will . . . have revenge.”
Torisen/I/we reach for him, but Brier stops us.
“He would have pulled you in, lord.”
Tori didn’t deserve that. Did I? Did Vant?
Pyre succeeded pyre, as if all the flames in the world roiled through her dreams:
At the Haunted Lands keep, where her father Ganth presumably had burned.
But I wasn’t there either. Kindrie told me.
In Wilden’s forecourt.
Ah, Rawneth. How much will your people endure when you put their children to the torch?
At the Cataracts.
Oh, Tirandys, Senethari, I will never forget.
At the Cataracts again.
This was confusing. Who had told her about the common pyre and why did she remember it now? A ring, a blackened finger, broken off, pocketed.
I took both from my father to give to my brother, but who else would do such a thing, and why?
She couldn’t see the faces of the living or of the dead. What she did see, abruptly, was a fair-haired young man with a swollen nose.
“I think you’ve broken it,” he said in a nasal, petulant whine.
He looked like Timmon. His eyes were Timmon’s, wide with surprise to hear his father’s voice issuing from his lips. Once again the Ardeth Lordan had invaded her dreams, damn him.
“Why did you do it, Pereden?”
That was her brother again, speaking to Timmon’s father. They were in the Highlord’s tent at the Cataracts. Torisen sounded exhausted, as well he might be, having fought and won such a battle. Worse, he had just come from culling the bloody field where he had granted so many of the fatally wounded the White Knife. The least they had deserved was an honorable death at the hands of their lord. In death as in life, they were his responsibility, at whatever cost to him. Yes, he was exhausted, but there was hurt in his voice too, and a desperate need to understand.
“Why, Peri?”
“What else had you left me to do? Damn.” His nose had started to bleed. Torisen gave him a handkerchief. Pereden began to pace, he and a bewildered Timmon both, overlapping, caught in the same dream of a memory that was Torisen’s. “Taking my rightful place as commander of the Southern Host, turning my father against me . . . You lied to him!”
Behind Pereden’s fury, his son’s bafflement and interest grew. Jame knew from a previous dream where this conversation would end, if not what went before. Timmon mustn’t know, even if to stop now was to thwart her own curiosity. Why had Torisen broken not just Pereden’s nose but his neck, then sent his body to burn on the common pyre?
No more of this. No more. Wake up, wake up, wake up—
And she did, to find Rue hovering anxiously over her.
“You were having a nightmare, lady.”
“You’re telling me.”
Jame threw back the furs. Her slim, naked body steamed with sweat while the cold air raised goosebumps down her arms.
“Damn and blast that Timmon,” she said thickly, rubbing her face. “He’s gotten into my dreams again and between us we’ve ensnared Tori. But who else’s dream was I in? That finger, that ring . . . ah, never mind,” she added, seeing Rue’s confused, concerned expression. “Fetch me something to drink, please.”
The Ardeth Lordan was a charmer, a dream-stalker, and a would-be seducer, except every time he tried to entangle her in one of his erotic fantasies, between them they seemed to open the door to her brother’s sleeping mind which, while fascinating, was hardly fair to Tori.
As for that last dream . . .
Timmon had adored his father and still tried to imitate him. Jame suspected that therein lay the source of half the Ardeth Lordan’s personality flaws, not that Timmon saw them as such.
“Damn him,” she muttered again, accepting a cup of cold water from Rue. In so many other ways, he was almost worthwhile.
IIAs it happened, their first class was together.
Timmon arrived with his ten-command, looking aggrieved, with dark smudges under his eyes.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “I try to arrange some harmless fun on a fur rug in front of a cheerful fireplace, and you drag me from one immolation to another.”
“Good morning to you too. Sorry about that, but I did warn you to keep out of my dreams.”
“If I were Torisen, you wouldn’t fight me so hard,” he muttered. It was a sore point that, despite herself, Jame found her brother more interesting than she did him. “And what about that last bit? My father called your brother a liar!”
“I have no more idea than you do what that was about. Of all people, you should know that dreams don’t always make sense.”
Seeing that he was about to argue, she abruptly changed the topic.
“For that matter, I’ve a bone to pick with you. Why did you tackle me in Greshan’s quarters before the Winter War even started?”
“I didn’t think you’d let me do it afterward.”
“Let you? Huh. And how did Torisen get my scarf back from you?”
At this, Timmon looked distinctly sheepish. “If he hasn’t told you, I’m not going to.”
“Could it be . . . oh no!” She burst out laughing. “You tackled him in the Knorth kitchen thinking he was me. He took the scarf and locked you in!”
With that, Jame stifling mirth and Timmon very red in the face, they reached their destination: a room in Old Tentir with rush mats strewn about the floor. Timmon stopped on the threshold.
“Oh no. Not the Senethar this early in the morning. I’m for my bed again.”
“Not so fast.” The randon instructor entered behind them.
Timmon smiled, all dimples with the trace of a pout. “I didn’t sleep well last night, Ran. Really, I’d rather not.”
The randon, an Ardeth, smiled back with more teeth than humor. “Like it or not, young Lordan, you’ll learn your lesson. Everyone, coats off and take your places for the fire-leaping kantirs.”
“Losing your charm, Timmon?” Jame asked.
“I don’t understand. Usually the only one who denies me is you. What’s gotten into the randon of my house lately?”
Still grumbling, he and Jame dutifully squared up as their ten-commands followed suit. Fire-leaping Senethar consisted of a series of kicks and blows. Its kantirs could be practiced alone but when in class two opponents mirrored each other, starting slow, getting faster, not seeking to connect. Jame’s fist brushed past Timmon’s ear, and his past hers. Simultaneous kicks pivoted them away from each other, then back. So far, properly speaking, they were engaged in the Senetha, the Senethar’s dance form. The pace quickened. Each focused on a point just short of the other. Timmon’s booted foot stopped close enough for her to smell its fine leather and to see, cross-eyed, the dirt engrained in its sole. Hers brushed the tip of his nose.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
You broke my nose, Pereden had said to Torisen. When and why?
. . . two figures in the Heart of the Wood at the Cataracts, fighting. The one in black drove the other’s nasal guard back into his face with the hilt of his sword. The one in dusty blue dropped. Then the changers came . . .
Turn, back kick. A thud as two other opponents misjudged and fouled each other. The randon’s measured rebuke. Closer now, one arm scooping around the other’s neck. An extended foot sweep that would have brought both of them down if it had connected.
Tori broke Pereden’s neck.
“Why did you do it, Peri?”
Do what? If that had been Pereden in blue armor, why had he and Torisen been fighting at all while the greater battle with the Waster Horde raged around them?
Someone came to the door and spoke to the instructor.
“Your lucky day,” he said, turning to Timmon. “There’s a lady to see you. I think it’s your mother.”
“You call that luck? Now can I leave?”
“Go. But you still owe me three kantirs. The rest of you, mind your manners: Ran Aden is with her.”
“Who?” Jame asked the cadet next to her.
“Lord Ardeth’s war-leader, also his younger brother, also a former commandant of Tentir . . .”
“And therefore a member of the Randon Council,” Jame concluded.
So that was the name of the Ardeth who had watched her with such cold disapproval during the last cull and then voted against her. Around him she would certainly watch her step.
The lesson continued, with Drie as Jame’s new partner. At their first move, he slid past her in water-flowing, nearly causing her to fall as she anticipated a different maneuver.
“Drie, that’s the wrong kantir,” she hissed at him. “Wake up!”
Timmon’s servant smiled at her dreamily and continued to drift through the forms. Water-flowing was often used to counter fire-leaping as it channeled aside any attack. They were moving fast now, Jame on the offense, Drie on the defense, and others were making room for them. The instructor watched without comment. Drie moved beautifully, fully poised as little as he seemed to be paying attention, tempting Jame to step up her assault. Spin, kick, strike—except for the whisper of contact she might have faced wind-blowing, that most difficult of forms. He slid backward, water over stones, tempting her into an unwisely extended move. In the moment that she wavered, off balance, the Kendar calmly tapped her on the forehead and landed her flat on her back on a rush mat in a billow of dust. Rue looked startled; Brier raised an eyebrow: Jame rarely lost at the Senethar. The class, both Ardeth and Knorth, applauded. So did Jame after a moment of surprise, slapping the floor with an appreciative hand.
“There you see a perfect example of fire-leaping’s weakness,” said the instructor. “What should you have done, cadet?”
Besides disobeying instructions to respond?
“Not over-extended to begin with, Ran, then countered with earth-moving,” said Jame, rising and dusting herself off.
Who but Drie, she thought, could do things his own way and get away with it? Come to think of it, whatever the lesson, she had never seen him do anything except water flowing, and no one had ever called him on it. After his own fashion, he was as much a charmer as his master Timmon.
IIIThe morning’s second class was for those Shanir with special links to animals, conducted in the Falconer’s second-story mews.
A gust of welcome warm air greeted Jame and her blind hunting ounce Jorin as they entered. With the onset of winter, the windows had been sealed with oiled linen and fires burned at both ends of the long room, more for the comfort of its avian inhabitants than for the cadets.
The Danior Tarn was already there with his Molocar pup Torvi; the Edirr Mouse with her twin albino mice perched one behind each ear; the Caineron Dure with his secret in his pocket; the Coman Gari, thankfully without any insect horde; the Randir Shade with her gilded swamp adder Addy; and the Ardeth Drie, whom no one could explain.
Jame stripped off her coat and joined Shade by the back wall, away from the others. In general, she wished that all of Tentir could act as much in fellowship as the Falconer’s class, regardless of their house affiliations, but she had a special reason for seeking out the Randir.
Shade looked even more attenuated than she had during the Winter War, as if her very bones had lengthened or perhaps multiplied. Long, white fingers played restlessly with Addy’s gleaming coils.
“How are you?” Jame asked in a whisper as the Falconer turned his attention to another cadet.
Shade gave her a hooded look. “How do you think?”
Jame remembered that strange scene in the Caineron barracks when Shade had held off Fash with Addy twined around her arm—and vice versa. No normal limb bent in such a sinuous fashion. The Randir master-ten Reef had also been there. Jame wondered if Reef or anyone else had been at the right angle to witness the phenomenon.
“I’d be shaken,” Jame admitted. “It’s not something one would expect. I always thought that changers were made in the depths of Perimal Darkling”—like Keral, she thought—“not born free here on Rathillien.”
“Is that what I’m becoming, a darkling changer?”
“I think so, although again how and why baffle me.”
“Born, not made. Is that any better?”
“It is if it makes you an unfallen darkling”—she glanced around; no one was listening—“like me. I grew up under shadows’ eaves, in the Master’s House itself. A lot of it I don’t remember clearly, but I do know that I never submitted to his will. We can’t help what we are.”
“You, a Knorth, tell me this?”
“Not as a Randir. As a member of the Falconer’s class. As a fellow randon cadet. Honor is hard for us, but not impossible.”
“Blood will tell,” said the Randir morosely. She tugged an earlobe and grimaced as it stretched.
Jame was suddenly reminded of Prince Odalian of Karkinaroth pulling his fingers like taffy and laughing hysterically. Another innocent victim, forced into a changer’s role. She put a quick hand over Shade’s.
“Don’t. Not until you’re sure you can return to normal.”
The other gave a crack of laughter that turned curious heads. “Normal. Will I ever be that again? Was I ever, to begin with?”
Jame’s answering grin was lopsided. “First, define ‘normal.’ We are more than blood, Shade, more than our heredity or our past.” One has to believe that, she thought. Oh, but sometimes it was hard. “You haven’t fallen.”
“Sometimes I think that my entire house has, except for the Randir Heir.”
That was harder to answer. Given the pernicious influence of the Witch of Wilden, Shade’s grandmother, how many remained untainted? Jame thought of the silent Randir Kendar standing by the pyre of their young, of Randiroc and of Sargent Corvine who had carved the name of her dead son into her flesh, lest she forget. Then too, there was Quill’s guess that not all Randir were bound to the same lord, or lady. Rawneth had her share of followers, but not all embraced her power. Some clearly looked elsewhere, and not necessarily to her son. It was a confusing situation, especially hard on the innocent.
“There’s honor in your house yet,” she insisted, “however endangered.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Listen, Shade, what you are becoming is complicated, but no disgrace unless you make it one.”
Shade grunted. Jame didn’t think that the Randir believed her, not that it was an easy thing to accept. The only changers she had previously known, except for Odalian, were the Master’s servants, corrupted by their own will—yes, even Tirandys, however much he had regretted his action and tried to rebel against it. But how had Shade gotten the darkling taint into her blood, and how strong was it?
“Whatever you do,” she told the Randir, “don’t let the rest of your house know.”
“Why?”
“I think your granddam Rawneth has been spying on you through Addy, perhaps to see if you begin to change. You may have broken that bond when Addy bit you, if you’re a blood-binder too, but I don’t know for sure. Does your bond to her feel any different now?”
The Falconer’s merlin had been staring hard at them. Now it gave a jeering cry. Its master’s sealed eyes followed the raptor’s gaze.
“You,” he said, jabbing his sharp chin at Jame. “Repeat the purpose of this class.”
Jame started like the guilty schoolgirl that she was. “T-to learn how to enhance the bond with our bound-creatures, Ran.”
“And are you satisfied with your progress?”
Jame sighed and rubbed the creamy fur of Jorin’s belly as the ounce stretched out beside her, purring. “No.” When upset or frightened, the ounce still tended to withdraw into himself, not that he ever seemed to lose the use of her senses.
“Then pay attention. All of you, focus on your partners.”
Jame closed her eyes and tried. What she felt mostly was hunger, having had little appetite for breakfast, but was that her, or Jorin, or both of them? Smell: the sharp scent of raptor droppings, leather from their tack, a dead mouse in the wall. Touch: the hard floor, warmth to one side where the fire burned, the sudden butt of Jorin’s head demanding more attention. Hearing: the others’ breaths, the dry rustle of Addy’s scales, the Molocar Torvi’s gaping yawn.
“Oh, wake up,” snapped the Falconer. “What’s wrong with all of you today? You, Dure, show us what you keep in your pocket.”
Reluctantly, the Caineron drew out his right hand, holding what appeared to be a gray rock. When he tickled its underside, however, it extruded tiny bright eyes and clawed feet. Those who hadn’t seen it before leaned forward to look.
“Why,” said Mouse, “it’s a trock. A scavenger. We had an infestation of them once in the outhouse. Father couldn’t sit down for a week.”
Dure glowered. “Well, this one is my trock. I’ve had it since it was a pebble. Generally, it isn’t very useful unless I want it to gnaw through something. Eating is what it does, and it can digest anything.”
Gari nudged Mouse. “Can you send your mind after it into the gutter?” he asked innocently.
“Now, children.” That was Tarn, speaking from the lofty, highly functional link that he shared with the huge Molocar pup sprawling at his side. “Not every bond is equal. For that matter, to whom or what is Drie bound?”
They all looked at the Ardeth cadet, who as usual was staring dreamily into space.
“Wake up!” the Falconer shouted at him.
Drie blinked but didn’t answer.
The randon snarled and launched his bird. The merlin dived straight for the delinquent cadet’s face, shearing off at the last moment with a near squawk. Drie scrambled to his feet, suddenly wide awake, and fled, closely pursued. Behind him he left a trail of wet footprints.
“Damn,” said Tarn. “Now we’ll probably never find out.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jame said. “Now I’m curious.”
“Huh-oh.” Gari shivered. “Why do I smell disaster?”
In exiting the door, Drie nearly collided with Gorbel as he entered, pook under his arm.
“You said I should ask,” he growled at Jame. “Falconer, am I bound to this thing?”
The “thing” wriggled and produced a pair of button eyes amidst all of its shaggy fur. “Woof,” it said, and produced a red, panting tongue.
Pooks were odd, native creatures. Technically canine, despite diminished smell and sight, they could track prey across the folds in the land, which made them invaluable to those Kencyr who admitted that said folds actually existed. Gorbel had sent to Restormir, his father’s keep, for this particular specimen when he had set out to hunt the cave bear that was preying on Tentir’s herd. Arguably, the pook had saved his life by guiding Jame to him.
Master and dog scratched their ears simultaneously. The infestation of fleas that Gari had set loose during the Winter War in the Caineron barracks still seemed to be rampant. Gorbel glared at Gari.
“Sorry about that. I’ll clear them out if you like,” Gari offered.
“You do that.”
Torvi the Molocar rose and ambled over to inspect the new dog. His paws on Gorbel’s shoulders, he presented the lordan with jaws capable of removing the front of his head, skull and all. Gorbel held the squirming pook out of reach. “Down,” he said with the authority of a hunt master. Torvi licked his face apologetically and retreated.
“There’s definitely some link there,” said the Falconer, “but undeveloped. You’d better start attending my classes.”
The Caineron sat down with a grunt next to Jame and wiped the dog slather off his face with a sleeve. “Is this going to help?”
“I’m not sure. The skill seems to be something that can be learned, but not necessarily taught.” She scratched what she thought was the pook’s head, only to have a short tail wave in her face.
Soon after, the class ended.
“Who was that cadet who nearly ran me over?” Gorbel asked as they left the mews together.
“Drie, one of Timmon’s ten-command. No one has figured out yet what creature he’s bound to.”
“Humph. Well, it may mean nothing, but last fall, hearing that he didn’t like to swim, Fash and Higbert threw him into the Silver. Don’t look at me like that; it wasn’t my idea. Most people don’t come out alive. He did, with a smile.”
“So Drie may be bound to something aquatic. Well, that’s no surprise, if definitely weird.”
On the boardwalk that ran around the training square they encountered Fash, one of Gorbel’s ten-command but never noticeably subservient to him. To Fash, everything seemed to be a private, not very pleasant joke. Jorin growled at his scent. During the Winter War, the Caineron had only been stopped from skinning the ounce alive by Shade’s intervention. He grinned at the furry bundle under Gorbel’s arm.
“Good old One Eye. No, wait. I think you’re carrying him backward.”
Gorbel hoisted the pook and examined him, one end, then the other. “You’re right. I swear this pup can turn around inside his own skin.”
He trudged off, bright eyes peering back at them from under his arm.
Fash transferred his toothy grin to Jame. “Good old Gorbelly. Don’t they make a sweet couple? Of course, the question is ‘A couple of what?’ ”
“Half of it is the lordan of your house.”
“For a while. Until his father gets tired of his failures.”
“Which are?”
His smile broadened. “Well, you’re still here, aren’t you? At least until this afternoon.”
“And then?”
“You’ll see, beastie girl. You’ll see.”
With that he turned on his heel and strolled off, laughing softly.
IVBrier Iron-thorn spent the lesson period after lunch in the barracks, overseeing the ongoing renovations to her lady’s chambers and setting the garrison’s affairs in order for the coming week.
She preferred to do the latter in the privacy of the empty dining hall, having only learned how to read and write since she had come to Tentir and feeling that her efforts still halted badly.
There. The wretched quill had sputtered and blotched again as she leaned too heavily on it. Incompetence fretted Brier almost as much as cowardice; certainly, one saw the first more often than the second in the Kencyrath, where neither should exist at all. Grumbling, she started afresh, a swath of hair like fresh-cut mahogany swinging into her jade-green eyes.
Like most traditional Kendar, Brier trusted her memory more than words on paper. Paper could be destroyed. Well, then, so could people. That had been an added tragedy to the Fall: so much knowledge had been left behind that now fact and the singers’ cherished Lawful Lie were often hard to tell apart. There was something to be said, however, for a notice that could be nailed to the wall rather than repeated nine times to the other house commanders. Certainly, the posted, official lesson schedule made planning easier, even when subject to last-minute alterations.
It still struck her as odd that, following Vant’s demotion and subsequent death, she had become the barracks’ acting master-ten while remaining the Knorth Lordan’s five-commander, a backward situation if ever there was one. The former never would have worked in her early days at the college when most Knorth had seen her only as a Caineron turn-collar inexplicably accepted by the Highlord into his service. She supposed that she had won their trust, although how remained a mystery to her when she still didn’t trust herself. Maybe being competent was its own reward, assuming that she was.
Her own feelings about her change of allegiance remained confused. Yes, she would serve her new lord with body, soul, and honor, yet behind her stood generations of Caineron yondri-gon. Did one ever successfully change houses or lords?
Scullery, stable, laundry, latrine, trock duty . . .
With their lord’s newfound wealth from selling Aerulan’s death banner in perpetuity to the Brandan, he could have afforded to assign some of his Kendar to act as servants for his cadets as was done in other houses such as the Caineron and Ardeth. However, Jameth hadn’t asked for them. Brier approved. They had done well enough so far without such help, sharing the least favorite duties. Being a randon wasn’t all glory—far from it. Lessons in discipline and endurance learned at the college would be invaluable later.
She paused to consider what to assign her own ten-command with its lordan leader. Vant had thought he could drive Jameth out by heaping unpleasant chores on her, not that her ten had let her accompany them on the worst of these. To have their lordan up to her knees in sewage hadn’t pleased any of them, as willing as she had been to serve. But she was also considerate and honored their feelings.
Usually.
All in all, thought Brier, dripping the pen again, what a long way they both have come.
In the early days at the college, no one had been able to look the Highborn in her bare face, so used were they to females of her sequestered caste wearing masks. And that scar across her cheekbone—could it really have come from some squabble in the Women’s Halls? Who would have dared to cut her? Moreover, how had they survived her backlash? People didn’t affront Jameth without cost. That much Brier had learned in her short time under Knorth rule. Once the thought of a lady striking back would have horrified her house. Now most of its Kendar showed an odd pride in Jameth’s eccentricities and knack for absurd situations.
Brier herself reserved judgment. Nothing in her past as a Caineron yondri inclined her to trust any Highborn, not that the Knorth hadn’t treated her well. That more than anything else kept her off balance, waiting for them to show their true colors. Still, there was something about this odd lordan that, against her will, compelled her attention.
“Fallen for the Knorth, have you?” jeered the Caineron lover whom she had left behind. “And you really think that you can trust them?”
Brier didn’t know, but she would try. What else, after all, could she do?
Voices sounded in the outer hall. Someone laughed. Brier gratefully put down the again sputtering quill and went to investigate.
Her ten-command were shedding their winter coats and shaking snow off of them. Smallest and slightest among them, the lordan was easy to spot. But what had happened to her face? Brier stalked over and caught Jameth by the chin, turning her head to see. The Highborn gave her a rueful smile. One of her eyes had swollen almost shut and her lip was split.
“I got run over by a cow,” she said.
It was calving season for the black, bad-tempered herd, whose expectant mothers liked to wander off to bear their young in private. Cadets were duly sent to bring them back. That had been the ten’s charge instead of their usual third-period class.
Dar grinned. “We came on her just after she’d dropped, with the calf steaming in the snow, barely on its feet. Of course she charged us. M’lady’s horse threw her, getting out of the way, and both beasts trampled her.”
“Actually,” said Killy, “I think it was the calf scrambling to catch up who did the worst damage.”
Brier let go of the lordan’s chin. I sent her on that duty, she thought, then chided herself: Am I to blame that the chit can’t stay out of trouble? And who am I, anyway, to touch her?
“You could have been gored,” she said gruffly.
Jameth shrugged it off, as unnervingly dismissive of risk as always. “So could any one of us.”
“There was a funny smell, too,” said stolid Erim, obviously following his own line of thought. “Like burning fur. And we saw prints in the snow.”
“Cave bear?” Brier asked sharply. Any large predator on the prowl was cause for concern with the herd willfully astray.
“Bigger than that, and melted, then frozen again, around the edges.”
“I think it was the Dark Judge,” said Mint, for once without the trace of a smile. “Haven’t you heard him howling in the night?”
They had all heard something.
“The wind,” said Killy, uncertainly.
“Wolves,” suggested Quill.
“All things end, light, hope, and life. Come to judgment. Come!”
A shiver ran though the assembled cadets as the lordan murmured the blind Arrin-ken’s terrible cry. The third of the Three People had disappeared into the wilds of Rathillien so long ago that they had come to seem like legends of another age. It was hardly fair that the Riverland itself should be haunted by the most dire of their ranks, a great cat blinded by the changer Keral with burning coals on the Master’s own hearth, now as bent on justice as a lesser creature might be on revenge. Indeed, could he still tell one from the other? Either way, who was he hunting now?
Brier clapped her hands, making them all jump.
“Enough shivering at shadows. Time for your fourth-period class.”
As the cadets dispersed, Brier touched the Highborn’s sleeve.
“They go to study the Senetha,” she said. “The Commandant has sent word that he expects you in the Bear Pit.”
One eyebrow raised while the other twitched over its swollen socket. “So that was what Fash meant,” the lordan murmured to herself. “Thank you, Brier. I’ll see you at dinner. I hope.”
And with that she was gone, leaving her coat a muddy, forgotten mound on the floor.
VThe Pit was as Jame remembered it—a windowless thirty-foot-square room deep in Old Tentir, its walls serrated with splinters, its floor gouged here, stained there. A round hole in the ceiling surrounded by a waist-high wall opened into the room above, forming a balcony. Torches flared there, casting a wavering circle of light on the floor below. No sound penetrated this far into the old fortress. One might have been stricken deaf. This was the dark, bloody heart of the Shanir, where their god’s chosen monsters battled with claw and tooth, where those such as Jame—gifted (or cursed)—learned how to fight.
The arena was empty, the balcony deserted, but a heavily padded coat and leather helmet with a metal face grid hung from the wall. Jame put them on.
As she waited, her thoughts returned to the Dark Judge. If he was nosing around, someone was guilty of something, or so he at least believed. His prey were Shanir linked to That-Which-Destroys, and she knew that he ached for the excuse to judge her.
By association, she considered the Burnt Man, now safely in the ground until Summer’s Eve. He and the blind Arrin-ken had made a lethal pair, the most dangerous aspects of Rathillien and the Kencyrath combined. She had noticed before how this world responded to such correspondences.
What would the Burning Ones do in their master’s absence? If she had guessed right at the solstice, Vant now led them in another cross between the two worlds. So, whom did the Dark Judge and the Burning Ones hunt, assuming they both followed the same trail? Vant was the crux, and Ancestors knew he had no love for her. At least like the Burnt Man, the Burning Ones tended to stay far to the north, on Merikit land. It wasn’t their footsteps that she had seen melted into the snow.
Ah, enough of that, she thought, shaking herself. Back to the matter at hand.
It was a long time since her last lesson here, before her brain-damaged Senethari had been judged too dangerous to impart such potentially lethal instruction. She had worried about him, but denied entrance to his hot, close apartment, she had been unable to visit him, much less to see to his needs.
No one else understands, she thought. He’s trapped. Buried alive. His brother should know better.
As if in answer to her thought, she heard a whisper of cloth above and looked up to see a dark silhouette behind the balcony wall. The face was invisible, but firelight turned the Commandant’s white scarf red as if dipped in blood.
Jame saluted him in silence. In silence, he inclined his head.
The opposite door opened. Through it came a shuffling, snuffling sound, and then a dark, hunched form that filled the frame from side to side.
Jame hadn’t seen Bear since the night when renegade Randir cadets had tried to assassinate their natural lord in Tentir’s stable. As Bear emerged blinking into the light, she was appalled at his filthy condition, even more so by his enormous ivory claws, far too large to retract. Those on his fingers were bad enough; those on his toes, however, had again grown to curve back on themselves, piercing the soles of his feet. He entered, shambling, on all fours. Firelight defined the fearful cleft in his skull left by an enemy’s axe, seared by the pyre that had failed to consume him. No one so grievously wounded should still be alive, but Kencyr are hard to kill. So he had been for the past thirty-some years.
Jame stared. It had been some time since she had last seen him, admittedly, but wasn’t the chasm in his skull marginally shallower than it had been? She remembered it as nearly splitting an eyebrow. Now the stub of a white scar rose to disappear into the wild tangle of his gray hair.
He sat back on his haunches and surveyed the room. Her heart ached for him; this wreckage had been one of the Kencyrath’s greatest war-leaders, victor of a hundred battles. No one, great or small, should come to such a state.
His nostrils flared and he grunted.
The next moment, he was upon her.
Jame ducked as lethal claws swept over her head, raking splinters off the wall. Their return stroke rasped against the metal mesh protecting her face. She dived sideways, but he followed, teeth bared. His bite tore away half of her sleeve. She blocked with the other one, desperately wishing for her knife-fighter’s d’hen with its reinforced fabric. Mere padding was slight protection here. Rolling out of his reach, she set herself on guard with claws out. Sweet Trinity, did she really want to use them on him, against no armor at all? On the other hand, he seemed set to disembowel her if he could.
The Commandant had discontinued their lessons because he had deemed them too dangerous. Why had he changed his mind?
Here Bear came again. As she threw herself under the arc of his blow, she felt his claws rip open the lacing of her helmet and tangle in her hair. Now he was lifting her. Her feet left the floor.
With a swirl of black, the Commandant vaulted the railing and landed behind his brother. Jame pulled off her mask, keeping her eyes on Bear.
“S-senethari . . .”
“Huh.” He lifted her further still and held her inches from his face. “You.” He touched her blackening eye, the split lip. A tremor wracked him. He dropped her and retreated, shaking his head as if it hurt. “Ca . . . ca . . . can’t!”
The Commandant put a hand on his shoulder and escorted him from the room. Jame, left alone, thoughtfully stripped off what was left of her armor.
VIOn the way back to her quarters, crossing the great hall, she encountered Timmon, his mother, and Ran Aden.
Lady Distan wore a damask travel cloak trimmed with pink fur over a rippling peach gown. Head to foot, she seemed all the hues and fragrances of a walking rose garden, yet so proud and sleek as to put that lovely flower to shame. Under her mask, no doubt she strongly resembled both her handsome son and his father, her consort and half-brother Pereden.
“So,” she said, regarding Jame down her exquisite nose, “this is your little friend.”
Jame raised an eyebrow. If the lady was taller than she, that was due to undoubtedly lovely hair piled up under her riding hood. In all her elegant assurance, though, she did make one feel small, especially with a bruised face and torn clothes.
So did Ran Aden, standing back and regarding her with cool, critical distain.
“Mother, Granduncle Aden, this is Jameth, the Knorth Lordan.”
Jame sketched a salute, thinking, Trinity, I hate that name; but she was in no mood to make the Ardeth a gift of her true identity.
For all that, she was acutely aware of how these two nobles must see her—a disheveled hoyden playing at soldier. Highborn girls sometimes went through such a phase, Brenwyr had told her, never mind that Brenwyr herself had never fully outgrown it. Mock berserker states sometimes accompanied it. Timmon knew that there was nothing feigned about Jame’s occasional flares.
“One can see the Knorth in her—barely,” said his mother, pulling on a pair of pale pink gloves. “How old are you, child?”
That was a good query. To say “as old as my brother” was to raise more questions than it answered, given that her twin was a good ten years older than she was. For that matter, she had no idea who had been born first.
“About Timmon’s age, lady.”
With a clatter of hooves, Distan’s mare was brought up from the subterranean stable. Jame felt that only by an oversight was the horse white rather than rose-tinted, until she saw the glow of pink, albino eyes.
“And who was your mother?”
To ask directly was a gross impertinence. Clearly, Lady Distan saw no reason to be polite with such a snippet as Jame.
Receiving no answer, she sniffed delicately and turned to her son.
“Has she told you?”
“No, Mother.” Poor Timmon looked embarrassed and uncomfortable up to the red tips of his ears. Clearly, he didn’t feel that his dam knew whom she was talking about, which was quite true. “We aren’t on those terms.”
“Then try harder. Adiraina swears that her bloodlines are pure, appearances notwithstanding. Someone has to bed her. It might as well be you.”
“Yes, Mother.” His whole face was burning now.
Curious. In the past, he might have laughed. Jame wondered if, despite his attempt last night at a cozy fire, he was finally beginning to take her seriously.
Lady Distan patted Timmon’s cheek. “Take care of yourself, my dear boy. Remember what I told you, also what you owe both to your blood and to your dear father’s memory.”
Other hooves resounded on the ramp: m’lady’s escort. She kissed Timmon, accepted Ran Aden’s assistance to mount, and rode out of the hall in stately grandeur, followed by her uncle.
Timmon deflated with a long, pent-up sigh. “If it’s any help,” he said, “I apologize. To her mind and Granduncle Aden’s, no blood is finer than their own, and you do look like a proper hobbledehoy. What happened to your face?”
“First a horse, then a cow, then her calf, and finally Bear. I feel as if I’ve been trampled by an entire menagerie.”
“The Commandant threw you back into the Pit? Why?”
“Be damned if I know, unless Lord Caineron is riding him again to have me torn to pieces, which nearly happened. Timmon, how long does it take a Kendar Shanir to heal?”
“You’re asking me? Eventually, I suppose most do, if they aren’t killed outright. Why?”
She told him.
“You’re dreaming,” he said. “Why now, after so long?”
“Maybe,” said Jame, “because he finally has someone to teach. A vacant mind rots. But as long as he’s locked up in that hellhole, how can he get better?”
Timmon shook his head. “More wishful thinking. Focus on the present, and the future. Did you know, by the way, that your lips are turning blue? Here. Take my coat.” He shrugged it over her shoulders.
“Following mother’s advice?”
“Mother knows best. Sometimes. You know that I want to bed you—I’ve certainly been trying hard enough—but not for Mother’s sake or for her precious bloodlines. Although mind you,” he added thoughtfully, “it couldn’t hurt right now.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
They had walked out onto the snowy boardwalk, where Timmon’s coat was indeed welcome. Now it was his turn to shiver, although not necessarily from the cold.
“You know that my grandfather Lord Ardeth has been in the Southern Wastes since last winter looking for my father’s bones. Well, in his absence Cousin Dari has been managing the house.”
“He with the breath of a rotten eel.”
“Well, yes, but that’s not entirely his fault. The poor man is allergic to his own teeth. They keep rotting, falling out, and growing back. Anyway, now he’s applied to the Highlord to be made lordan regent.”
“He can override you and dethrone his lord that easily?”
“Only if the entire house and the Highlord agree. So far, Dari doesn’t have enough support. Mother fears, though, that Grandfather is going soft. He’s certainly old enough and with this obsession of his . . .”
That, Jame could understand. Highborn lived a long time, but their ends tended to be abrupt, as if their brains suddenly crumbled under the weight of years. The strain of Adric’s grief might well hasten that decline, especially as his search continued to be futile.
. . . a ring, a blackened finger, broken off, pocketed . . . whose, and by whom?
“Wait a minute. These Ardeth randon who’ve been so hard on you recently—are they by any chance bound to Dari?”
He gaped at her for a moment, looking very young indeed. “I think you’re right. Nice to know that the change is in them, not in me. So now all I need to worry about is the Lordans’ Presentation.”
“The what?”
His face broke into a grin. “No one told you? Again?”
“Timmon, you know that I’m new to all of this.”
“It’s nothing all that frightful this time—usually. Toward the end of winter, the High Council meets to determine who’s hiring out mercenaries to whom, so that we don’t end up meeting each other in the field. The lords use the occasion to introduce their current heirs to each other.”
“What, all of them?”
“Well, as many as are free to come. Some are with the Southern Host or off on diplomatic missions. With Dari on the prowl, I have to go to uphold my status as lordan. Gorbel probably will too, unless that fickle father of his pulls a sudden switch on him. As for you, out of sight, out of mind—or will your brother force the Council to gaze on your naked if battered splendor?”
He meant her refusal to wear a mask like a proper Highborn lady. Be damned if she would, thought Jame, fingering her split lip. Anyway, there would be time to heal, barring any further stampedes.
But Timmon had also reminded her of that old, nagging question: would Tori really let her finish her training at Tentir, much less let her go on (assuming she passed) to join the Southern Host? She knew that he had doubts. Like Chingetai, he had been trapped by his own impulsive choice to make her his heir. The other lords would prey on that uncertainty if he let them.
“I think I’ll go too,” she said, “invited or not.”
Supper followed, an evening of going over Brier’s arrangements for the coming week, and finally bed.
On the edge of sleep, Jame mulled over Timmon’s words and came wide awake with a jolt. All the lordans . . . Kirien!