The Sea of Time

by P. C. Hodgell

  “The sumac always begins to creep with the first thaw. So do other brush.” Hull chuckled. “I had a crew caught up yesterday in a patch of crawling raspberry canes that nearly carried them away. We’re anchoring the more valuable standing trees, in case they get restless. How is it downriver?”

  “The water meadow dikes are rebuilt. Now they’re working on the terraces.”

  Torisen remembered watching Kendar hoist stone blocks back into place that morning after the flood that had dislodged them the previous year. Before that, the Riverland had been wracked with earthquakes, tornadoes, and fire. Earth, air, fire, and water.

  All since your sister came home.

  Now, that had to be a coincidence . . . didn’t it?

  The water meadow itself would grow the coming year’s crop of hay. Above it, tier on tier, would rise stands of oats, wheat, rye, and barley, unless another natural disaster wiped them out.

  Torisen wished that he could lend a hand in the restorations, not that he actually had the strength or skill to do so. God’s claws, at present he could barely dismount without help.

  Cripple.

  No doubt, though, his people were glad to see him keep his hands clean for once.

  “We should be planting peas and beans within a few days,” he said, “as long as the shwupp stay in the river bottoms.”

  Hull grimaced. “I hate those sneaky bastards. One wrong step and you’re in a mud pot with your bones half stripped.”

  He started as a white shape ghosted out of the trees and trotted past him with lolling tongue and cold blue eyes. Nothing had been seen or heard of the Gnasher since Torisen’s encounter with him in the woods north of Gothregor. Perhaps his broken leg had done him in, as Burr had hoped. At any rate, Yce couldn’t be confined forever.

  As they talked, workers passed, bound downhill. Someone below exclaimed in surprise. Foresters started to run, calling questions.

  “There’s something unexpected in the coppice,” said Hull. “Your pardon, my lord.”

  He hurried off into the fog, axe in hand. Torisen followed more slowly on Snow. A babble of voices rose to meet him:

  “Can you see . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Damn this fog . . . watch out!”

  Wood splintered and rocks churned together. Men shouted in alarm. Something huge was coming up the hill, grinding and smashing its way through the undergrowth. A shape loomed out of the mist.

  Snow squealed, spun, and bolted. Before Torisen could rein her in, she cut too close to a tree and slammed his sore knee against it. Dazed with pain, he fell.

  The thing was almost on top of him. Bare golden branches swayed back and forth overhead and a massive trunk seemed to reel against the sky. Long fringe roots snaked past him, each tipped with a secretion that ate into the ground and gave the tree innumerable toeholds with which to pull itself along. One nearly lanced through his thigh. The tree which he had hit began to tilt as its own roots lost their grip in the loosened soil. It crashed over, luckily away from Torisen, but the next moment he had tumbled into the cavity left by its root ball. A writhing node of rootlets passed over him like so many wooden snakes, stiff and acreak with the sap just beginning to flow through them. For a moment the tree’s full weight sagged into the hole, pressing him down into the mud. Then it lifted, and the golden willow churned on its way.

  People were shouting his name. “Highlord! Blackie! Where are you?”

  Torisen spat out mud and croaked back, “Here. In the earth.”

  Yce appeared at the edge of the pit, yipping, to be shoved aside. Just as hands reached down to grab him, something under the mud caught his boot and nearly jerked him out of their grasp. Bubbles rose around him through the liquefied soil.

  Bloop. Bloop, bloop.

  “Shwupp,” said Hull, and pulled.

  They extricated Torisen hastily, with such brute force that he thought they were going to tear him in two. Once he was out of the hole, a circle of anxious faces closed around him. Without thinking, he put weight on his sore leg and pitched forward into their arms. Snow, caught, was led back to him and with difficulty he mounted.

  “You are going back to the keep, aren’t you?” Hull asked anxiously, looking up at him.

  Cold and shock made Torisen’s teeth clatter, and his sodden clothes dripped with mud. No clean hands this time, after all.

  “I’d better, hadn’t I?” he said, trying to smile.

  II

  LORD CAINERON and the Director of Mount Alban sat in the college’s library on either side of its massive oak table. The southward-facing window was curtained with oiled cloth to keep out the fog, leaving a gloomy interior lit with candles as if it were twilight. In fact, it was morning on the last day of winter. The Director leaned back in his chair, his blind, opaque eyes overhung by shaggy, scar-broken brows. Caldane sat opposite in hunting leathers that strained against his girth. He had just finished a late breakfast, more by fretfully scattering its remains about the table and the floor than by consuming them. He seemed simultaneously eager and on edge, although he did his best to hide it. The former randon who served as the college’s current director might not have noticed, but Kirien suspected that he did: Taur was no one’s fool.

  Kirien herself stood behind a screen by the door.

  The inhabitants of the college had kept their visitor under covert observation since his arrival the previous evening with a large hunting party that claimed to be lost in the dense fog. The Director had pointed out that Valantir across the river had better accommodations, but Caldane had insisted that he couldn’t find the Jaran keep, which might have been true. On the other hand, the Caineron and the Jaran hadn’t been on good terms since the previous summer. Certainly, the current if temporary lord of Valantir, Kirien’s uncle, would have objected to Caldane’s hunters on his land. So did Kirien, as the Jaran Lordan.

  Caldane wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his gilded leathers, leaving a greasy smear.

  “For this hospitality, again, much thanks,” he said. “Such a fog I’ve never before seen, although we do get some monsters in the early spring. They can last for days.”

  “I trust you wouldn’t be exiled from your home for that long, my lord,” said Ran Taur dryly.

  Caldane shot the big Kendar a suspicious look. Was he being hinted away?

  Yes, thought Kirien. Go.

  Caldane leaned back. His chair groaned as he overlapped it on all sides.

  “We won’t be leaving just yet,” he said. “I’ve wanted to have a word with you for some time, Ran Taur.” He gestured around him at the library’s scrolls on their towering shelves under the vaulted roof. “It’s about these. How many would you say came with us to Rathillien?”

  “Several dozen, at least. We didn’t have time to gather more.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Scrollsmen and singers dictated them from memory.”

  “Ah. Singers. Now, this has always puzzled me: given their use of the Lawful Lie, how can we trust anything that they say?”

  “Singers swear not to distort the basic truth in their songs.”

  “But they do take liberties with it.”

  “They may. Such songs as abuse the privilege, however, don’t endure, nor do we record them.”

  Caldane leaned forward. “But how do you know what to write down and what to let fade? This summer, my hunters were put off the trail of a particularly valuable golden willow with some song only two generations old. I gather, after questioning my own scrollsmen, that that song endures only in memory.”

  “Then it isn’t law. Your hunters were misled.”

  “Ah. I thought as much. And what about these songs of Ashe’s about the battle at the Cataracts? I was there, man. The dead didn’t speak to me. They were just that: dead.”

  “If you don’t hear something yourself, my lord, does that make it a lie?”

  “If some blasted singer says it, does that make it the truth?”

  “That depen
ds on the judgment of the scrollsmen, when it comes to recording a particular song. The two branches of the college keep each other in check. Have you discussed this matter with my lord Corrudin?”

  Caldane looked huffy. “I’ve talked to my uncle, yes, although he tends to back into a corner whenever addressed. What that little Knorth bitch did to him at Tentir, I’ve yet to discover, except that it involved falling out a window. He helped me to make sense of things, although we didn’t reach the same conclusions on some matters.”

  He made himself sit back with a creak of wood and leather. His beringed, pudgy fingers tapped nervously on the arms of his chair. “Now see here: I don’t quarrel with the oldest songs, the ones composed before the Fall that come to us only through memory. After all, those can be dismissed as legends rather than laws. It’s the more recent lot that worry me. For instance, those that demand individual responsibility rather than loyalty to one’s lord.”

  “Honor’s Paradox,” murmured Ran Taur, “born of Gerridon’s fall.”

  “Yes. That. A lot of romantic claptrap, if you ask me. Why, my own war-leader, Sheth Sharp-tongue, was misled by it, and the result? He released that brother of his . . .”

  “Bear.”

  “. . . a dangerous madman, mind you, to roam the Riverland at will. Then the Highlord’s hoyden sister graduated from Tentir, against my express orders.”

  “The randon have their own code, as you may have noticed. They are not political.”

  “Tell that to the Randir.”

  The Director sighed. “M’lady Rawneth pushes to have her own will, not unlike you, m’lord.”

  Caldane scowled, uncertain if he had just been handed a compliment, an insult, or simply a fact.

  “You think I am wrong to want the Knorth so-called lordan returned to her proper place? What kind of a success has she been at Kothifir, pray tell? I’m told that she is often absent from her post in the camp. Will Harn punish her for that? Probably not. He has also been corrupted by such songs as Ashe sings. Huh. That woman is an abomination. She should have long since been consigned to the pyre where she belongs.”

  Kirien became aware of a coldness beside her, and Ashe’s yellow, knobby hand touched her arm.

  “Caldane’s men . . . have sealed off the college,” the haunt singer muttered in her hoarse, halting voice. “Not that the fog . . . hadn’t already.”

  “But why would Caldane do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know . . . but from what I’ve heard . . . I suspect.”

  “Have we no way to signal Valantir for help?”

  “Not . . . that I can see.”

  “Well, we still have this.” Kirien extracted a tablet from her jacket and began to write on it in her rapid, spiky script.

  “There are no far-writers closer than Gothregor,” said Ashe. “It and the Matriarch Trishien . . . are a hundred miles away.”

  “I know Tori and Aunt Trish. They’ll find some way to answer, although it may take time.”

  “Then there’s another song of special interest to me,” Caldane was saying, leaning forward again, more eagerly than before although he sought to hide it. “‘Gerridon Highlord, Master of Knorth, a proud man was he. The Three People held he in his hand—Arrin-ken, Highborn, and Kendar—by right of birth and might.’ D’you remember it?”

  “Everyone does,” said the Director. “So?”

  “My own scrollsmen tell me that it was composed on this world after the Fall and subsequently written down. Only one copy exists. Now, that I would like to see.”

  “Why?”

  Caldane airily waved a fat, dismissive hand. “What would your scholars say? Intellectual curiosity.” He looked around the library. “Is it here?”

  “Possibly. Most Kencyr know that song by heart, though, passed on as it has been from mouth to mouth. No one has had to refer to the original manuscript in years. Who even knows where it is?”

  “One man, I’m told,” said Caldane, leaning back again with a smug smile. “A scholar named Index.”

  III

  SOMEONE MUST HAVE RUN ON AHEAD, because Torisen and Yce were met at the gate of Gothregor by Burr, Rowan, Grimly, and a dozen other Kendar. So much for his hope to slip in unobserved.

  “We’ve built up the mess hall fire,” said Burr, steadying him as he dismounted. “You can strip and bathe in front of it.”

  “I thought maybe the stable would be more suitable . . .”

  “No.”

  Torisen submitted. He owed them that much for having given them such a scare, and the warmth of the leaping fire would be more than welcome. His fingers shook with the cold as he fumbled at clasps and laces. The black leather was slimy with mud, and it clung. With Rowan’s help, he peeled it off. Grimly hauled free a boot and regarded its ripped sole.

  “Shwupp?” he asked, looking up.

  “On a hillside, no less, and that damn golden willow too. It must have been hibernating under cover of the alder coppice.”

  They sluiced him down with warm water, leaving a muddy mess on the floor. Burr returned with clean clothes and boots. Kindrie burst into the hall on his heels.

  Torisen and his cousin hadn’t spoken since the latter had suggested that all binding might be a Shanir trait—something which Tori didn’t wish to consider. In the meantime, Kindrie had stayed out of his way, devoting himself in his own quarters to sorting through the Highlord’s long-neglected correspondence. He had a scroll in his hand now and his face was nearly as white as his hair.

  Now what? Torisen wondered as he dried himself with a scrap of sheepskin.

  “Speaking of the willow,” he said, turning to Rowan, “it occurs to me that it only does harm when someone is chasing it. Therefore, I’m giving it the freedom of the forest, as long as it stays on my land.”

  “Well enough,” said Rowan, with her habitual lack of expression, “but who’s going to explain that restriction to a tree?”

  Kindrie was virtually dancing with agitation. “Please, read this.”

  “You read it. My hands are wet.”

  Kindrie gulped and unrolled the scroll. “‘From Caldane, Lord Caineron, to Torisen, Lord Knorth, greetings,’” he began in a shaky voice.

  “Caldane never calls you Highlord if he can help it,” remarked Rowan.

  “‘Last summer you may have heard of a dispute between the Caineron and the Jaran over the ownership of a particular golden willow. The Jaran sought to prove their case with a song, and while they were singing it, the tree in question escaped. As you may recall, I have never cared for singers’ fancies. Consequently, I propose to visit Mount Alban near winter’s end to undertake some long overdue housecleaning. If I hear nothing from you before that time, I will assume that you agree with the measures that I intend to undertake.’”

  “Sweet Trinity,” Torisen said, staring at his cousin. “When did this arrive?”

  “A fortnight ago. He must have known that you wouldn’t get to it in time.”

  A disturbance at the door caused heads to turn. In glided a Jaran lady, moving faster than seemed possible given her tight underskirt. Lenses worked into her mask swept the room, settling on Torisen.

  “My lord, have you heard?”

  “Just now, Matriarch. How did you . . .”

  Trishien produced a tablet covered with a spiky script not her own. “Caldane has seized Mount Alban!”

  “What about Valantir?” demanded Rowan. “The Jaran are closest, and the college’s natural defenders.”

  “The fog is even worse to the north,” said Trishien impatiently. “The keeps there are cut off from each other, and no one closer than Gothregor can far-write.”

  “We’ll have to ride fast, then,” Torisen said, belatedly grabbing his pants and struggling into them. “It’s a good hundred miles to Mount Alban. With regular changes, post-horses can make it by tonight.”

  “There are only a dozen or so remounts standing ready at each station,” Rowan warned.

  “My vanguard will take the
m, leaving one or two for emergencies. The rest of the Knorth must follow as quickly as they can. They may be able to pick up fresh horses at Falkirr, Shadow Rock, and Tentir. Call up an armed hundred-command, Rowan.”

  “I’ll find a divided skirt and come with you,” said Trishien. “Don’t leave without me.” She was gone before anyone could protest.

  Torisen finished dressing more slowly, thinking, as people rushed about him. How big a force had Caineron brought? What exactly did he mean to do, and how quickly could he do it? The heart of the Kencyrath lay at Mount Alban, encoded in a matrix of scrolls and songs. True enough, the last two had become confused during the flight to Rathillien, and the Lawful Lie hadn’t helped, but to lose any one of them risked unraveling the very fabric of his world.

  As he buckled his belt, he thought of something else.

  “Burr, go back to my quarters and fetch Kin-Slayer. Yes,” he added, seeing his servant’s startled expression. “It’s that serious.”

  IV

  KIRIEN AND ASHE hurried down stairs that jinked precipitously through the wooden heart of Mount Alban. The cliff face had been carved out and replaced by a labyrinth of chambers, hallways, and steps all at different levels. Sometimes one could look up the stair well for several erratic stories. Other times, one had to duck under low beams, all the while watching one’s feet on worn, moss-covered treads. There was a more direct stair, but they had chosen not to take it for fear of whom they might meet. Diffuse light filtered through from various outside windows, aided by candles set on banisters, weeping wax. Indistinct voices murmured about them, but the usual morning chatter of the college community was absent.

  “You there. Halt.”

  The command came from above them on the last landing which they had passed. A big Kendar stood there, clad in Caineron hunting leathers.

  “My lord wants to see you,” he said, “and the scrollsman Index. Where is he?”

  Ashe stepped in front of Kirien, her iron-shod staff raised.

  “Don’t be foolish,” said the man, and drew his sword.

  He had barely taken a step forward, however, when a stone crashed down on his head. As he collapsed, a ball of twine bounced on the boards beside him.