The Sea of Time

by P. C. Hodgell

  The other two lordan argued all the way up the cliff about the recent hazing.

  “It’s traditional,” Gorbel insisted yet again. “Cadets new to Kothifir are always tested.”

  “What, with being made to wash dishes?”

  “That was a special task, just for you.”

  “Well, it didn’t do much good. My house still doesn’t take me seriously.”

  “They do as a scullery maid.”

  Gorbel’s eyes were screwed shut and his squat face ran with sweat. Without thinking, Jame had led them to the open lift cage. She joined in the conversation to distract him.

  “Perhaps your approach was the best, simply to ignore an inappropriate challenge. I don’t know if I did my house a favor by forbidding them altogether. D’you think that’s going to make my cadets anxious to prove themselves in other ways?”

  Gorbel considered this. “It might, especially among those who haven’t been blooded yet. Trinity!”

  The cage had bounced and his eyes had involuntarily popped open. He stared, transfixed, at the abyss beneath his feet.

  Jame hastily told him about Shade’s observations concerning the missing Randir.

  “Is it just cadets who are disappearing or established randon too?” asked Timmon.

  “I think both.”

  “It’s serious, then, although as the presumed commander of the Ardeth barracks—ha!—I haven’t heard anything about it. Have you, Gorbel?”

  “A word or two, yes. Obviously not enough.”

  “Well,” said Jame, “the more who know, the sooner we may have an answer. Not all the Randir are rotten, and it seems to be the good ones who are being targeted.”

  The lift cage swooped over the balustrade and landed with a thump on Kothifir’s forecourt. Gorbel let out his breath with a loud “Huh!” and wiped his brow.

  When they stepped out, the swirling street greeted them. It was even more crowded than it had been at the solstice, apprentices, journeymen, and masters intermingling, each festooned with the bright ribbons denoting his or her individual guild. Distant horns and drums sounded. People began to move toward the noise, toward the central plaza. Bands went with them, playing different, discordant tunes while venders loudly hawked their wares from the sidelines. The three lordan bought fish strips dusted in almonds and paper twists full of garlic snails to munch on the way. Reaching the plaza, they climbed up onto a convenient balcony, not high enough to set Gorbel’s nerves freshly ajangle.

  From above, they watched the Kothifirans organize themselves into guilds. This time they didn’t carry golden emblems, so they must have something other than races in mind. Dozens of pots hung some three stories up, suspended from catwalks invisible above the perennially circling clouds. Guilds were forming under them. The bands trailed off into expectant silence as the three guild lords appeared high on the stairs of the Rose Tower.

  “Welcome to the Equinox!” Lord Merchandy called down in his reedy voice. The people below hushed each other in order to listen. “We meet here balanced between seasons, between success and potential disaster, or greater success. The fall harvest is safely in. The winter crops are yet to be planted. More important, we are about to launch the biggest trade caravan ever to enter the Wastes . . .”

  He coughed, his voice failing. Lady Professionate took his arm to steady him. Ruso stepped forward.

  “To the greater glory of Kothifir, then, and to profit!” he roared over the railing. “Ready, steady, climb!”

  The plaza dissolved into chaos. Some rushed off to snatch materials from side streets. The carpenters’ guide came running back with boards which they began hastily to bang into a platform. The masons hauled in stone blocks. Bricklayers slapped brick on brick. Tapestry makers wheeled in their largest upright loom and swarmed up the warp threads to the top bar. Binders stacked up books. Most of the others, who couldn’t turn to their working materials, bent down and began to form human towers. The nearest rose close by the watching lordan, one tier, two . . . People leaned in to support the base while others climbed onto their shoulders and stood, wavering. Three, four, five . . .

  The pots still swung high above their heads.

  “I bet they don’t make it,” said Timmon.

  Gorbel grunted. “How much?”

  “A golden arax.”

  “Done.”

  Six, seven, eight . . .

  “Look,” said Jame, pointing.

  A curious apparition had appeared at the edge of the plaza. It looked at first like ten gray-clad men standing, unsupported, on each other’s shoulders, swaying forward in unison step by step. Then one saw that they were connected by two parallel ropes with loops for each one’s feet and hands. The clouds thinned momentarily. On a catwalk overhead, two more men pushed one end and then the other of a beam balanced across the handrail. The upper ends of the ropes were secured to this bar. Its movement swung the attenuated tower forward like the crosspiece of a puppeteer.

  Jame recognized the top man just as he spotted her. Graykin flashed her a grin that reminded her how young he actually was.

  “Go, Intelligencer!” she called to him, clapping. “Rah, rah, rah!”

  Timmon and Gorbel stared at her.

  Below, the binders’ pile of books began to slide, taking those who knelt on it with it. They spilled over into the next tower, taking it down, and so on and on in a spreading circle. The chaos lapped over the masons, who had only succeeded in raising one level of stone, and collapsed the carpenters’ jury-rigged tower. Amid yells and not a few screams, the spies advanced, even after the lowest two had been knocked out of their stirrups. Graykin reached up and struck a pot. It burst, spraying him and those beneath him with honeyed milk.

  “What in Perimal’s name . . .” said Timmon.

  “I think it’s a fertility ritual, or a way to secure luck, or both. Do our ceremonies make any more sense?”

  “Of course they do,” said Gorbel, wiping splattered milk off his face. “If nothing else, none of them is this messy.”

  “Better spilt milk than blood.”

  Below, the plaza was sorting itself out with many cries that the Intelligencers’ Guild had cheated. Graykin’s tower clambered down and bolted for cover, leaving its leader to stand for a moment at the mouth of a side street making a rude gesture. Then he too scampered back into the shadows.

  “As a portent, though,” said Jame thoughtfully, “I don’t much like it, assuming one believes in such things.”

  “Let’s go see what the Undercliff has to offer,” said Timmon.

  “We have to report back at noon, not long from now,” Jame said regretfully. “Anyway, I understand all that happens is that the old gods wage a glorified food-fight, and the Favorite has to eat everything that hits him.”

  With that, they turned reluctantly back to the Rim, where this time they took the enclosed cage down.

  Rue was waiting for Jame at the gate to the barracks, practically hopping from foot to foot with excitement.

  “They’ve posted who’s going with the caravan to guard it, and our ten-command is on the list!”

  Jame stopped short, remembering her recent restriction to the camp and its environs. “No.”

  “Yes! There are one hundred and fifty wagons, three hundred attendants, a thousand Kothifiran guards, and four hundred of us. The Commandant left you a message.”

  Jame accepted the note and unfolded it. “With such a large escort,” Harn had written in his barely legible scrawl, “I dare you to get into trouble.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Pounding on the Door

  Autumn 49

  I

  BANG, BANG, BANG!

  Torisen couldn’t sleep with that pounding inside his head.

  “Be quiet!” he shouted at it.

  Yce licked his chin. When had she slipped under the covers with him?

  “Be strong,” the wolver pup whined to him, her whiskered lips tickling his beard. “Remember, fathers may devour their young, but
only if we are weak.”

  “Be still,” whispered Jame’s voice in his ear as her strong, slender arms wound around him and her body pressed against his. “He has to sleep sooner or later. Then we will have him.”

  How like them both to think in terms of fighting back. How alike they were, in so many ways.

  And white-haired Kindrie? He stood aloof with his back turned, braced against that crack of anger, but stubborn too in his endurance. Ancestors knew, he had suffered as much as any of them.

  Am I weaker than he? Torisen wondered.

  But their cases were different: Kindrie had faced his demons and (presumably) won, while Torisen still had his dead father lodged like a festering splinter in his soul-image, behind a none too securely locked door.

  The tapping began again, almost sly at first but getting louder and louder as Ganth raged.

  Do you think you can ignore me? Stupid boy, who has brought a Shanir abomination into my house! Stupid girl, with your cursed blood!

  Torisen tightened his grip on his sister in the bed where they cowered together, children again. “Mother is gone. I’ll protect you.”

  “And Kindrie too?”

  In the sodden field between Wilden and Shadow Rock, the healer had warned him barely in time about shape-shifting Kenan and arguably had saved his life. In return, he had welcomed their Shanir cousin into the Knorth’s “small but interestingly inbred family.” Father couldn’t make him take back those words . . . could he?

  The thought was greeted with harsh laughter. Would you challenge me, boy?

  Jame was already drawing away, a child no longer but a supple-limbed temptress whose touch he longed to regain. “You let me go before. Will you again?”

  “Never!” he cried, and cringed at the loudness of his own voice. “I love you!”

  Tap, tap, boom!

  He lurched awake in his tower bedroom at Gothregor. From the hearth, Yce regarded him warily.

  II

  THE JARAN MATRIARCH TRISHIEN sat by an open window in the Women’s Halls, reading. A cool breeze scented with fallen leaves stirred the brightly illuminated pages of her book. Winter was coming. She could feel it in her bones. Soon she would have to spend more time in the warm common room, forfeiting her precious privacy. Time to enjoy it while she could.

  A tentative knock on the door made her sigh and put aside her work. Kindrie sidled apologetically into the room, his white hair as always disordered and his pale cheeks slightly flushed from the climb to her quarters.

  “Lady, I brought you the salve that Kells promised.”

  Trishien opened the glass jar which he proffered and sniffed. “Almond oil and peppermint, I think, with a dash of cayenne. Ah, that scent clears the head, even if my problems lie elsewhere.”

  “Yes, also white willow and birch. I helped Kells mix it. If you like,” he added, hesitantly, “and if the joint pain increases, I can work with your soul-image. I’ve had some practice in that area with Index at Mount Alban.”

  Trishien smiled, imagining what such sessions with the irascible old scrollsman must be like. What was Index’s soul-image? Probably his precious herb shed. What was her own? Most people didn’t know, but she suspected it was a library or even a single scroll. If the latter, how curious it would be to know which one, and how it ended. “Come winter, I may accept your offer. So.” She regarded him from behind the flash of reading lens slotted into her matron’s mask. “You are still assisting the herbalist. Nothing else?”

  Kindrie looked, abashed, at his boots. “I help wherever I can, but no, Torisen hasn’t let me near his papers yet.”

  Trishien sighed. “Stubborn, foolish boy, not to take help when he needs it. Even I have heard how his piles of correspondence grow daily and business goes untended. Why else does he think Kirien sent you to Gothregor? Do you miss her?”

  “Yes, lady,” said the healer, in a wistful tone that told her more than his words. “She gave me this,” he added, as if in explanation, fingering his blue woolen robe.

  “Of course she did,” said Trishien with a half smile. “My grandniece has good taste in all matters.”

  “Am I disturbing you, lady?” asked a voice at the still-open door. There stood Torisen Highlord himself, looking ghastly. His face was white under his beard and his silver-gray eyes opaque with pain. He stepped into the room and stumbled against a chest. “Sorry. I have a blinding headache. Literally.”

  Trishien went quickly to help him settle into a chair.

  Yce crouched on the threshold, wary and watchful.

  Kindrie hovered, unsure whether to help or to go away.

  “Stay,” Trishien whispered to him. To Torisen she said, “How may I assist you, my lord?”

  He laughed a bit shakily. “The last time something like this happened, talking to you helped. If I told Burr or Rowan, they would fuss me halfway to my pyre.”

  Trishien turned to her table, deliberately slid the lens out of her mask, and laid them carefully down.

  As once before, her naked, farsighted gaze discerned the shadow that stooped over the Highlord’s bent shoulders, shrouding him.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Bang, bang, bang, he won’t stop pounding on the door inside my soul-image. The panels are shaking. The lock is jumping half out of its socket.”

  Trishien felt her own heart knock against her ribs. Who was she to meddle with a problem such as this? But she must try. “It sounds to me,” she said carefully, “as if your father is throwing a temper tantrum.” The shadow raised an indistinct head over the Highlord’s dark, bent one. “Yes, you, My Lord Ganth. What, pray tell, is the problem this time?”

  Torisen lifted his own head so that the other’s features overlay it like a caul; cold, silver eyes glimmering through.

  “I want that stinking Shanir out of my house,” he said in a harsh voice not his own. “Now. See how he lurks, spying. What is he thinking, eh?”

  Kindrie flinched and again edged toward the door. Again, Trishien stopped him.

  “What do you see?” he whispered.

  Rising anger mastered her fear, although her voice still shook. “A sorry sight. You always did hide behind your anger, Ganth. When you couldn’t have what you wanted, you tried to tear down everything, at whatever cost to anyone else. You were hurt, by your brother, by your father, by life, so you hurt others. All your son wants is to build a better world. He has the innate power to do that. Who are you to stop him?”

  “My world ended in ruins. So will his. Do you think he is stronger than I am?”

  “Or do you mean, than you were? Yes, when you leave him alone. Oh, Ganth.” Her anger gave way to pity. “I loved you once. Perhaps I still do. Don’t destroy yourself a second time in your son.”

  “Ah, Trish. I could never love you as you deserved, not after I saw her.”

  Again, that mysterious woman who had seduced the Highlord of the Kencyrath, had become his children’s mother, and had destroyed him with her leaving.

  “‘Alas,’” Trishien murmured, “‘for the greed of a man and the deceit of a woman, that we should come to this!’”

  “You don’t understand. What happened was fated.”

  “Well, it was certainly fatal. Accept that and leave this boy alone.”

  “Never!” His shadow spread, devouring the room. Kindrie shivered in the sudden chill as if under an eclipse, the past overarching the present. Yce tensed, snarling. “I do with my own flesh what I choose!”

  Trishien gripped Torisen’s head. It took all her strength to force the darkness back through his eyes into his bones. “Ganth, my love, you are dead. Go away.”

  Torisen swayed and nearly pitched out of the chair, but Trishien caught him by the shoulders.

  “I think I understand what you did, lady,” the healer said over the dark, bowed head which he dared not touch, “and I thank you for it, but we both know that he will never be whole while that presence haunts him.”

  Trishien sighed. “I have no power to e
xorcise it for more than a time. Perhaps you do.”

  Kindrie drew back. “Lady, to touch him is to release what lies within, whether he is ready or not.”

  “Perhaps, then, this is something he must do for himself. At least we have gained a respite.”

  Torisen caught his breath sharply and straightened, wiping a hand across his sweat-beaded face.

  “What was I saying?” he asked, blinking, sounding dazed.

  “Nothing to fret about, my lord.” But her hands trembled as she fitted the lens back into her mask. Had she done good here, or further harm? “How do you feel now?”

  “Better,” he said in wonder, touching his temple. “The pounding has stopped. All that’s left is a mutter and a sense of . . . pity? But that makes no sense.”

  Kindrie stirred.

  “Oh,” said Torisen, noticing him for the first time. “It’s you.”

  “Do you want me to leave, my lord?”

  “No.” He shook his head gingerly as if to clear it, and winced again. “I’ve been in a damnable muddle about you for far too long. This is your family. I said so. You’ll stay, if you please, and take up the job you came to do. Ancestors know, I need the help.”

  Trishien’s eyes met Kindrie’s over his head and she nodded. One step at a time.

  CHAPTER IX

  Into the Wastes

  Autumn 50–Winter 12

  I

  THE CARAVAN was scheduled to depart on the first of Winter, ten days in the future. Meanwhile, Kothifir seethed like a kicked ants’ nest, getting ready. Couriers came and went between the city and the western training field where the wagons met. Every day, more joined those already there. Many of the latter had never traveled the Wastes before and were more eager to join in the potential profit than knowledgeable about the risks.

  “They say it’s not only the biggest convoy ever,” said Timmon, “but also possibly the last.”

  He, Jame, and Gorbel had met at the canteen after a day of maneuvers to share a cask of the Ardeth Lordan’s private wine stock. Gorbel probably had his own. Jame didn’t, not having thought to lay in such a supply. She sipped, trying not to make a face. Fine vintages were probably wasted on her anyway, if this was one of them.