Rhiana, having seen Kate's world, understood how different her own looked. "This is the great hall of my castle, Smeachwykke, in the town of Ruddy Smeachwykke," Rhiana said. "This is my home."
Kate nodded, saying nothing. She'd begun studying the people; from time to time she looked down at her own plain clothes with an expression close to dismay.
Rhiana had no more time to worry about Kate, though. She turned to her seneschal, Cowen, and said, "The Aregen is Callion, who stole the Watchers and forced the Rift to stay open, and who tried to enslave the Watchmistress before she took oath. The Kin is Val Peloral, the son and heir of Lorus Peloral, with whom I was treating for land on the day we were forced by an attack of Rift-monsters to flee into the Machine World."
The murmur of amazement from the eighty or so assembled nobles, merchants, craftsmen, family members, and sundry entertainers drowned her out for a moment. She heard awed whispers about the Machine World, and about Callion.
She raised her voice, and the murmurs died. "Both the Aregen and the Kin are traitors. They must be held in the tower until they can be tried by the Watchmistress and the council. The dagreth needs a wizard with better skills than mine to tend to the eye he lost today. The noble warrag, whose name was Errga, had family, and someone must find them and tell them that he died in the taking of Callion. They must be permitted audience at the trial, so that they can ask for a sentence that will satisfy them. Kate Beacham is human, from the same town as our Watchmistress, though I gather they did not know each other well, and she has sacrificed everything she had to help us. Please give her a good room, find her some clothing, take her some food, and let her rest."
She turned to Kate to see if that would be acceptable to her. "You'll be all right alone for a while?"
"I'll be fine. I think being alone will be the best thing for me," Kate said. "This is…just a little too much."
"I know," Rhiana told her. "Then I will take care of the things that have gone undone in my absence, and I will see you in the morning."
Kate nodded.
Cowen waved over one of the serving girls to take Kate to a room, and got guards and the town's chief wizard, Harch, who almost always availed himself of the castle's table, and so was conveniently at hand, to take Val and Callion up to the tower. Rhiana had said nothing about the Watchers. She left them in Kate's care, for she knew she could trust Kate not to open the decanter, and she didn't know for sure that anyone else would not be curious enough or stupid enough to do just that. When the Watchmistress and the members of the council arrived, Rhiana could have Kate hand the bottle over to them, and they could throw it through the Rift and be done with it.
Her son came to her side, already taller by half a hand than she was, and he had been that much shorter the last time she saw him. He hugged her and she wrapped her arms around his waist tightly. "Cowen came for me," he said. "He said you were missing and that we had to presume you were dead, and that I would be seated as Lord Smeachwykke until we found the truth…if we ever did."
"I'm sorry," Rhiana said. "I'm sorry I could not come to you sooner, but I had no choice. I was drawn into the Machine World by a spell and could not return until I fulfilled the conditions of the spell."
"I don't care how long you were gone," Tabin said. "I'm just glad you're alive. Every day when I got up, I told myself that would be the day you came home. And every night as I was falling asleep, I prayed that since you hadn't been able to come home that day, you would come home the next."
"And here I am," she said, hugging him. Thirteen years old, and he looked so much like Haddis. Pale-haired and gray-eyed, he had the look and carriage of a hunting hawk, except with her. She could see in him the gentleness and the compassion that he kept secret from everyone else. "So have you been invested yet?"
"Cowen wanted to wait. He kept saying he couldn't believe you were really dead, and that if we just waited a little longer, we might save ourselves the trouble."
Rhiana smiled. That was Cowen—as long as he didn't take the final steps to any unpleasant thing, he could keep it from being real. He hadn't been avoiding nuisance or work—he'd been trying to make her alive instead of dead. This time, of course, he'd been right.
Two healers had been brought in from their cottage at the foot of the castle. They were still both panting a little from their run as Rhiana's messenger girl led them to Tik. One of them, a plump old biddy named Daes, clucked over Rhiana's clumsy work, the other, Oluen, skinnier and taller and ferretlike, elbowed Daes and murmured something under her breath that made Rhiana think she had reminded Daes the lady wasn't to be criticized for her ineptitude. Rhiana turned away so that they could work in private. She deserved criticism. The work she'd done on Tik had been hideous.
Another of the serving girls, this one the interned daughter of Lord Dirry, trotted up to her. Ladies didn't trot while in the great hall, but Rhiana was in no mood for teaching or correction. "What is it, Cathenn?"
"I've put out a day dress for you, Lady Smeachwykke," she said. "And some slippers, and a good overdress."
Rhiana looked down at her sneakers and jeans and plain shirt of soft, alien cotton, and said, "I'll just wear this for a while. I don't really have time yet to bother with redressing. But thank you. I'll go to my chambers once I've done the few things that simply won't wait."
Cathenn ducked her head and bent a knee in the sloppiest curtsey Rhiana had seen in years. She winced and stalked off to find Harch, to see if he could summon the Watchmistress and the council to Ruddy Smeachwykke, to save her the trouble and danger of transporting her prisoners overland.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Callion, propped against a stone wall away from the blinding sunlight pouring through the barred tower window, looked at the Kin who curled up in the straw in the cell next to his.
"You're an idiot," he said. "You're a damned fool. I waited for you in my office chair, sleeping—at least pretending to sleep—and all you had to do was come in quietly and capture me. I left the doors unlocked, I trapped the Devourers inside of a bottle so that one of your people could safely and conveniently carry them. All you had to do was come through that door."
Val lay still, his eyes partly open, his face expressionless.
"But you had to make a huge scene. Had to let the dagreth and the warrag come through my front door like vice cops on a drug raid, had to put a spell on the shotgun so that it exploded and killed the warrag and tore up the dagreth and blew shrapnel into me. You and I could have walked in here—walked in—you unsuspected by anyone and me all humble and repentant and the fucking Watchmistress and all her cronies and those bitches that dragged us in here would have been scraps of flesh and blood on the cobblestones before anyone realized anything. We could have overthrown Glenraven in two days, you and me and your friends."
The Kin lord rolled over, turning his back on the Aregen.
"Oh, yes. Just ignore me. But who is going to release the Devourers now, eh? Who is going to get the two of us out of these damned bindings before they burn us or behead us or kill us in whatever other manner they plan? Who is going to tell your friends to be ready, that we're here? Answer me that."
The Kin sighed.
"I thought you were clever. Cunning. I thought I could work with you. But you're a fool, and I'm a worse fool for not seeing it the first time you called me." Callion glared at the ridiculous loops of yellow nylon rope—loops that kept his arms and legs paralyzed and left him helpless to do anything.
Furious as he was, he aimed his anger at himself much more than at the Kin. He'd gotten the fate he deserved for being stupid enough to deal with a traitor.
Chapter Forty
Kate stood on the balcony outside of her room, listening to the midday noises of this world displaced in time. A blacksmith hammered metal at his forge; soldiers drilled with swords to the clash of steel and the bellowing voice of a sergeant; rich male voices sang an a cappella melody in complex counterpoint; a woman shouted imprecations and demands
at a boy who hadn't completed a chore and who had evidently been distracted by something more amusing; wooden wheels rattled over cobblestones and shod hooves clanged and clattered; bells rang, water rushed.
In the cold air she could smell wood fires and horses and cattle, cooking meat and coming snow. Women in leather tunics and coarse homespun shirts and dark woven pants trudged by carrying bags, and men similarly dressed rode horses across a stone-paved courtyard just visible from her balcony. Every scent, every sound, every sight, told her how far she was from home.
Her home was not another country, reachable by ship or horseback or car or plane; her home was another world, and it lay far behind her, and she didn't know if she would ever go back, or if she could.
Above the far wall of the castle she could see the peaks of mountains, white with snow, black stone showing through like night through a torn linen curtain. The sunshine, so brilliant earlier, had vanished beneath the leading edge of tight-packed gray clouds, and the workers below her had begun moving faster as they noticed the threat in the sky. She pulled the fur-lined velvet cloak more tightly around her shoulders, but a sharp-toothed rising wind bit through the cloth and fur and whistled its song of snow. At last the cold got to be too much, and Kate moved inside, shoved the mullioned glass doors closed, and put a few more logs on the fire.
The fire made the room less forbidding. The warm dancing light, gold and red, brought the huge canopy bed with its heavy damask draperies closer, made it seem smaller; the gray, stone walls shone ruddy and warm. She pulled a chair closer to the fire, lifted her full-length skirt a bit, and settled into it.
The girl had been in twice to bring her food, once to bring her clothes, once to see if she wished to have company or visit with anyone. Kate wanted no company but her own; she wanted only the silence, because only with silence could she reshape herself, settle into this world that wasn't hers. Only if left alone for a time could she sort out all the hard-edged differences in place and custom that shouted at her from the balcony; those voices of strangeness and change would be muted if mixed in with the voices of people, because people added an element of sameness, of comprehensibility, to any alien setting.
She wanted to know the differences first, so that she didn't crash through them unwittingly. She would discover the samenesses later, and appreciate them when she found them.
She turned at the sound of a knock at her door. Tik peered in, two-eyed again, his face still lightly scarred but without the raw red ridges and ugly mismatched creases it had borne the day before. He grinned at her, flashing huge eyeteeth and knife-edged molars, and said, "Now would be the perfect time for a beer, wouldn't it?"
She laughed. "It would, in fact."
"So I brought us some." He showed her a hogshead cask, wood-bunged, and two heavy wooden mugs. "May I come in."
"I have a place by the fire just for you."
She discovered, to her surprise, that she didn't crave solitude as much as she'd thought.
Tik pried the bung out with two claws, stuck a metal tap in, and tipped the keg on its side. He filled her glass first, then his. She couldn't judge the color of the beer once it was inside her mug, but the liquid that poured out of the cask, even backlit by the fire, looked as red-brown as walnut dye. She lifted the mug, sipped, and murmured, "Holy Pete!"
"Stronger than your beer, isn't it?"
"Strong enough to walk to the bar on its own—and pick a fight when it got there."
"It's Kirchmuen, harvest beer. I never had it until the start of the Peace. The Machnan brew it—do a good standup job of it, too."
Kate, longing for ripe hard cheese and crackers to cut the taste, nodded. "Standup, for sure."
Tik settled onto the floor across from her chair and leaned against the raised hearth. His red braid gleamed like burnished copper in the firelight and gold glimmered in the flowing folds of his robe, a full, heavy winter garment of glorious sapphire blue. "You've been kind to me," he said. "Truly kind and never condescending. I like you. You're a good woman, and brave, and you deserve better than you got in your world."
She didn't know what to say. She smiled at him, feeling foolish and awkward. "You're kind to say so."
"Bullshit, to borrow your phrase. I'm only stating facts. I'll state another fact, Kate. You don't want to be here. Glenraven isn't the Machine World and it can't ever be. For all your world's faults—and it had many of them—it was a better place than this. Safer. Saner. And you had a place in it."
"Trying to tell me I ought to go home, Tik?"
"In a way. I'm telling you that the life you'll have here will be dirty and hard and short, or else marked by privilege and the hatred of the people beneath you. You're a hero in this world. They'll give you a title and a castle and people to do what you tell them to, but there isn't a one of them who won't know you're magic-blind, crippled, nearly as helpless as the Watchmistress from your world who hasn't any magic at all."
"I was under the impression that everyone loved the Watchmistress."
"You were wrong. As many despise her as love her. She's an outsider, and Glenraven is not a world that welcomes outsiders with a cheer and a grand ball."
Kate nodded. "I know about being an outsider. I spent a lot of my life that way. Sometimes people will come to accept the outsiders among them."
"Sometimes they don't."
Kate took another sip of the bitter beer. It warmed her on its way down, but even after half a mug she found it overpowering. She said, "You don't like her much, do you?"
Tik's small dark eyes glittered, and his long muzzle dropped open in surprise. "Who?"
"The Watchmistress."
He laughed, his laughter a booming growl that rattled the tiny panes of glass. "I don't know her. I'm only Tik, the dagreth. I'm not someone who meets a Watchmistress or sits in court or leads a band of loyal followers. I'm not even of the Three Peoples—the Aregen, the Kin, and the Machnan. I'm Kin-hera, the Lesser People, sometimes not even people at all." His close-mouthed smile and the backward flicking of his ears showed a bitterness about his state that his words belied. "The warrags, the tesbits, the dagreths, the stone-eaters, the gorrins; in our lives we'll never be elevated enough to speak to a Watchmistress."
"But that didn't answer my question. You don't like her, do you?"
The dagreth shrugged. "I don't like what I hear of her, but my opinion is a thing of no importance. She changes established custom just to make change, and looks at this world as a defective version of the Machine World, one that won't be better—won't be good—until it mimics every excess and sin the Machine World claims." He chuffed. "And obviously I have my opinions, and just as obviously they matter not a whit to anyone but me."
"You don't think I'd like it here."
"Bluntly…no." He watched her over the rim of his mug, drew a long, loud swallow, and set the mug on the hearth beside him. "Because of what I am, I'm an outsider to all but my own sort of people. But hundreds of my own sort of people live near my hut, and I have dozens of eligible mates in my own stretch of forest. You'll be alone, more alone even than Jayjay Bennington, the Watchmistress, because she mated across species to some Alfkindir lordling so desperate for sex that he was willing to bear the shame of his cross-bred union for the rest of his life. You might think the Machnan are close enough to your sort that you could marry and be accepted, but they know you aren't Machnan and they will never forget that fact."
Kate looked at his earnest, kind face, and sighed. "I've thought about those things, Tik. I have. I don't want to be Lady anything or wear these long heavy dresses or live by candlelight or feel rich because I own a single book. I like electricity. I like being able to go to a bookstore and pick up ten paperbacks over the weekend and settle back on my couch and not do a damn thing from Friday night to Monday morning but read, and watch the New York Rangers hit a puck around on the ice."
"Then you know how hard it would be for you here."
"I do know. Of course I know. But I don't have an
ything left back there."
"You have more back there than you could ever have here, Rhiana's facile promises of friendships and futures notwithstanding."
"I'll probably go back."
"I have friends who can help you, Kate. Friends who could form a gate for you, if you could only picture the place you wanted to go."
She nodded. "Once the Watchmistress has tried Callion and Val and I've seen the Rift closed, I'm pretty sure I'll go back. When I came here I wasn't planning on staying. I just wanted to get away for a while from a place and people who would destroy everything I owned because I didn't see the world or religion the way they did."
"Once the trial is over?" Tik shook his head. "No."
"Yeah. I promised Rhiana I would stay for that, to give what little testimony I have to offer."
Tik still shook his head. He mumbled something, and Kate thought, but couldn't be certain, that he'd said, "That will be too late."
"What?" she asked.
"Merely thinking about the schedules of my friends, and how they will mesh with your plans. I'm not sure that they will if you don't act decisively."
"Decisively. Mmmm. Yes. I've spent a great deal of time lately acting decisively, and I can't say I like where it's gotten me. But never mind. My problems are just that—mine. Not something to whine to a friend about." Kate held out her mug. "Pour me another one, would you?"
The second mug was as bitter as the first. Dark and bitter. Much like her life. Kate thought if she drank the cask dry, the bitterness would never leave and never lessen.
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 25