"Wait and see," said Rue.
The Caineron focused blurry eyes on her. For so young a boy, barely fifteen, he looked remarkably dissolute, like someone recovering from a vicious hangover. He might well be: two days ago Caldane had indulged in an epic drinking binge and passed the effects on to all the Kendar bound to him who hadn't yet learned how to defend themselves.
"Think you're so clever for getting out of this, eh, shag-head?" he said thickly, indicating the grim stream of exhausted cadets pounding past the door. "And you got out of High Keep too, didn't you? One more minor house dying on its feet, one more Kendar scuttling out before it falls. . ."
Rue's ill-cropped hair almost bristled. She had hacked it off to leave in her lord's cold hand in case she should never return—a poor substitute for her bones burnt to honorable ash on the pyre but better than nothing. If she had been glad to escape that grim place, guilt had made her chop all the more fiercely.
"I have my lord's permission to train with the Highlord's folk. Min-drear randon always do."
"Damn, bloody Mind-rear, trotting after a crazy rat-horn . . ."
"That's rath-orn, moron." Rue glanced up at the Knorth house banner, at the fierce, horned beast embroidered on it, ivory armor agleam in the darkening hall. How could anyone make fun of a thing like that, except perhaps some idiot Riverlander who had never even seen one?
The Coman glanced out the door. "Here comes your house again, lad. Up and out."
The Caineron cadet lurched to his feet. At the door, he looked back at Rue. "I'll remember you, Mind-rear. And we Caineron all remember Brier bloody Iron-thorn." For a moment Caldane seemed to leer out of the boy's heavy eyes. Rue fell back a step, making the Darkwyr sign against evil. He blinked, laughed uncertainly, and stumbled out to be swept up by his people as they thundered past.
The Coman stared after him. "Has everyone gone mad?" He looked at Rue as if tempted to make the warding sign against her. "Insanity is contagious. Ganth Gray Lord infected the entire Host in the White Hills and now Torisen Black Lord is doing it again!"
"If you want to complain to him," said Rue as the far door was forced open, screeching on bent hinges, "here's your chance."
Into the twilight of the hall came two riders, one on a tall black stallion, the other on a small, gray mare with an intricately braided white mane.
"That's Lord Ardeth," said the Coman, staring at the latter. "What in Perimal's name. . ." His voice trailed off and his jaw dropped.
The lord of Omiroth seemed to have brought a great light into the hall, as if at the rising of the full moon that was the emblem of his house. It shone bone-deep through his clothes, through his very flesh. But no, thought Rue, also staring: it must only be that snow-white hair. And yet, and yet . . .
The Ardeth were an arrogant lot, proud of their subtle lord who in his one hundred and fifty odd years had brought his house through so many disasters that even the scrollsmen of Mount Alban had lost count. The worst had been the thirty-one years of chaos after the White Hills when, without a highlord, the Kencyrath had nearly fallen apart. Only Ardeth had known that Ganth's heir lived: the boy Torisen, exile-born, who had come to him in secret and whom Ardeth had hidden among the randon of the Southern Host. There, four years ago, Torisen had come of age and at last claimed his father's seat.
The Caineron claimed that he was still Ardeth's puppet, or worse.
At the Cataracts, others suspected that the Highlord was slipping through his mentor's fingers.
Since then, his friends had begun to wonder if, after all, Torisen needed Ardeth's influence to save him from himself.
Rue knew instinctively that the old lord was now trying to reassert control over the younger man.
Perhaps that was only right, she thought, half-dazed, drawn to the old Highborn as if to the sun after bitter cold. Perhaps here was the true heart of the Kencyrath, its secret master to whom all should yield as Torisen himself once had. Her own lord was a broken man, his sons ash before him, his Kendar loosely bound to him by his faltering will. Torisen Highlord held his own people almost as lightly—through weakness, sneered the Caineron, whose own lord gripped them like cruel death; through misplaced tact, said his allies, shrugging. Rue only knew that it made her nervous. What a splendid thing it would be, she now thought, to fall at Ardeth's feet, to put her life between those thin, strong hands and hear his murmured words of welcome.
Then she shook herself, silently cursing. Everyone knew that old Adric had a taste for the exotic drugs of the Poison Courts and had resorted to them for help before now, sometimes with unnerving results. Let him glow in the dark like a rotten eel. She was a Min-drear and would hold true to her bond, if not for her lord's sake then for her mother and her mother's mother before her.
Torisen Black Lord, Highlord of the Kencyrath, rode into Tentir on his war-horse Storm like the shadow cast by the other's brilliance. Dark clothing, dark ruffled hair shot with premature gray, both horse and rider seemed to melt into the hall's shadows except for the latter's face, pale with strain floating forward wraithlike—that, and his fine-boned left hand with its tracery of white scars, gripping the reins. His right hand he carried out of sight, thrust into a dusty coat.
A large, gray wolf slunk at his side as close as he could get without being stepped on, closer than Storm liked, judging by the roll of the stallion's eye. However, the Wolver Grimly only watched his old friend Torisen with unhappy concern.
If Ardeth's lunar glow seemed to promise safety, the Knorth appeared to be in obstinate self-eclipse, dark of the moon, when all things fall into doubt and danger. He neither looked at his old mentor nor seemed to listen to him. Nonetheless, he rode with all his weight on the outside stirrup, leaning away from that soft, insistent voice.
Rue got the Coman's attention by kicking him in the shin. "Go tell the Commandant we have company."
"Yes," he said, still staring, and then, belatedly, "ouch."
He stumbled out the door without looking, and brought down an entire Edirr squad.
"Rest!" roared a sergeant.
All around the square, cadets collapsed, panting, on the boards.
Meanwhile, other riders had entered the hall at a wary distance from their lords, two columns of them, split by house. They ignored each other but their mounts, catching their mood, fidgeted and snapped.
Rue's attention leaped to the most reassuring face in the crowd, there, a respectful length behind the captain of Ardeth's guard. Teak brown from the southern sun, short cropped hair the smoldering red of mahogany, Brier Iron-thorn had come to Tentir by a long, hard road. She was older than most cadets, more experienced, and mistrusted by them for her sudden change of houses at the Cataracts. Before that, no one had believed that such a thing was possible. Not from the Caineron. Not against the will of its lord. But here she was, even more an outsider than Rue. If anyone could show these smug Riverlanders a thing or two, it was Rose Iron-thorn's hard, handsome daughter.
Oh, please, thought Rue, let her start with him.
Five-commander Vant rode glowering at Brier's back. They had all seethed with resentment when a former Caineron yondri had been put in charge over them, but none more so than Vant who had been forced to yield ten-command to her. If he kept in Brier's shadow now, it was because he hoped that she would draw the lightning of whatever punishment they all have earned.
Hooves rattled on the flagstones. A bay gelding danced nervously, eyes rolling, between the two lords and their retinues. Everyone looked somewhere else except Rue, who stared open-mouthed despite herself.
Like her brother, the bay's rider wore black, but her jacket had an odd cut to it, one sleeve tight and the other full. Unlike Torisen, the slim hands that nervously gripped the reins were sheathed in black gloves. What she didn't wear—and this was why no one would look at her directly—was a mask. For a Highborn lady to show her face naked to the world was indecent, much less one marked across the cheek by a thin, straight, barely healed scar. That she looked so mu
ch like a younger version of her brother was, in contrast, merely disconcerting.
So was the thin, sharp face that peered warily over her shoulder. The bay bore two riders, the second Caineron's half-caste bastard son who, somehow, had become the first's servant.
As if to compound this strangeness, a Royal Gold hunting ounce trotted after them into the hall. The cat, Jorin, was blind, which perhaps explained why he blithely plumped himself down in the path of the on-coming riders and began industriously to wash.
His tail twitched under a descending hoof. He leaped up, squalling, the bay shied, and both riders fell off.
The whole mixed retinue was suddenly in motion, horses separating by house and wheeling about to face each other, their riders' hands falling instinctively to sword hilts.
The bay, unheeded, tossed his head and trotted sedately off down the ramp.
Only the black stallion and the gray mare hadn't moved. Ardeth's voice murmured on, oblivious. Torisen stilled the commotion behind him with a raised hand—the right, its three broken fingers splinted and heavily bandaged. He looked past Rue, and his thin mouth twisted in a wry half-smile. She realized, with a start, that the Commandant had entered the hall during the confusion and was standing behind her.
She had to crane to see his face. Sheth Sharp-tongue was tall even for a Kendar, with a touch of Highborn subtlety in his features. Highborn and Kendar alike found him unnerving. Most believed, however, that he was the greatest randon of his generation. Rue remembered uneasily that Sheth was also a Caineron and that house's war-leader.
"My lords, welcome to Tentir," he said.
His gaze fell, speculatively, on the bedraggled figure in the middle of the hall, who had picked herself up and was slapping dust off her clothes. Her companion and cat both tried to hide behind her. Meeting the Commandant's eyes with a carefully blank stare, she swept up long, black hair that had tumbled down in her fall and twisted it back up under her cap.
"Who have we here?" he asked of no one in particular.
Rue couldn't help it. " 'Some fool with a stick,' " she muttered.
The Commandant glanced down at her. "I daresay," he said dryly. "My lords, welcome to Tentir."
Rue ducked hastily away from him to hold Storm. The tall stallion snorted down his nose at her and stood rock still as Torisen awkwardly dismounted, favoring his injured hand.
"Honor be to your halls," he responded, preoccupied, and touched the mare's shoulder with concern. Sweat had turned it pewter gray, and she was trembling with fatigue. "My lady? Adric, for Trinity's sake. . .! Think of Brithany, if not of yourself."
Ardeth had also swung down and was drifting toward him like a sleep-walker, still murmuring. Sheth raised an eyebrow as both Grimly and the Highlord retreated behind Storm, the wolver keeping between the two Highborn, ignored by both. The stallion laid back his ears but subsided, grudgingly, at a sharp word from his master. Ardeth's power rippled out through the hall. The stitches on the nearest banner rustled as if trying to escape.
"You know," said the Commandant mildly, "each stitch represents a randon's bond the eternal fabric of his house. The cadet candidates here haven't yet formally earned their scarves nor set their marks, so they aren't as strongly anchored as their seniors."
"Tell him, not me!" Torisen snapped, circling behind his horse. "Adric, you should rest. Remember your heart."
"Yes, Grandfather. Please rest."
A handsome young man had slipped into the hall from the arcade. He wore a cadet's belted jacket, but of an elegant cut and material touched with embroidery as golden as his hair. Obviously, he hadn't taken part in the run. Rue's first indignant thought was that, Highborn or not, he should have. That conviction faded, however, in the presence of a glamour more subtle than his grandfather's, but still enough to make Rue stare. So did Torisen.
"Peri," he gasped.
"No," said the Commandant, giving him a brief, hard look. "His son, Timmon."
As Ardeth advanced smiling on the boy, his attention diverted, the whole room seemed to breathe for the first time since he had entered the hall. Torisen sagged against Storm's hindquarters, and not just with relief that the old lord was no longer focused on him. He looked like someone who had taken a hard, unexpected blow. The Wolver rose up on his hind legs and became a very hairy, very worried young man, reaching out to steady his friend.
"Look at you," Ardeth was saying fondly to his grandson. "All dressed up like a randon. Your father would be so proud."
Among the Kendar, someone turned a snort into a cough. Timmon's father Pereden had never trained at Tentir. Nonetheless, he had expected to lead the Southern Host and finally had gotten his chance after Torisen put down the commander's collar to become Highlord. On Pereden's orders, against the advice of his randon, the Host had marched to near ruin against the vastly larger Waster Horde. Pereden himself was believed to have died in the Wastes. A good thing too, many thought, but no one said so in his father's presence. Ardeth had spent the previous winter vainly searching the Southern Wastes for the bones of his beloved, heroic son.
Now, his mind momentarily off the Highlord, the old man sagged with exhaustion.
Timmon regarded him with growing alarm. "Please, Grandfather," he said again. "Come to my quarters and rest. Your business with the Highlord can wait."
Ardeth patted his grandson's arm absent-mindedly. There was a winning quality in the boy's voice that made even strangers eager to please him, but his words had set the old lord's thoughts wandering back to the real business at hand: convincing Torisen that his best interests, nay, his very survival, lay in putting his shaken fortunes in the hands of his former mentor. No one could doubt Ardeth's thoughts, because he spoke them out loud.
"You must remember, my dear boy," he added, with devastating candor, "that many believe you as prone to madness as your late, unlamented father." His pale blue eyes drifted to that second black-clad figure standing silent between the restless battle lines. "Indeed, once news of your latest scheme leaks out, even I may be unable to save you."
Torisen straightened with a jerk. "Young man," he said, forcing himself to look at Timmon, "if you will extend your hospitality to me and my friend Grimly, we will gladly drink the welcome cup in your quarters. Adric?"
Ardeth smiled, the drug-fired light again emerging from the cloud of his exhaustion. The hall shivered as his renewed power rippled through it. "But of course I will join you, dear boy. We have so much to discuss."
"Take care of your grand-dam," Torisen said to Storm, who snorted: of course. Avoiding the old man's extended hand, he slipped out of the hall into New Tentir with Grimly again on all fours trotting at his heel.
"Well done, my lord," murmured the Commandant as Torisen passed, adding blandly, "I believe I will join you." At the door, he turned.
"Conduct the Highlord's . . . er . . . guests to the Knorth quarters," he said to Rue. "As for you—" his hooded glance swooped back to the other uneasily waiting cadets "—I will have something to say to you later. In the meantime, tend to these horses. All of them."
Ardeth's guard gingerly skirted the Highlord's sister with eyes averted and thrust their reins into unwilling Knorth hands. The mutter of protest that followed them died under Iron-thorn's hard eyes. Tired and hungry, the Knorth cadets sullenly followed their Southron ten-commander down the ramp.
The Highlord's sister was left standing in the middle of the hall. She looked about her at the banners, the battle flags and, above, at the faint glimmer of randon collars hanging on the upper walls.
"So this is Tentir," said her other companion, looking down his sharp nose at the disheveled, darkening hall.
"Yes," said his mistress, in quite another tone. "This is Tentir."
Rue approached them, reminding herself that she had spoken to the Highborn before, but Jameth's face had been decently masked then. She looked quickly away as the other turned to her.
"If you'll follow me, lady."
As they climbed the stairs to
the second story Knorth guest quarters, the relentless shout rose again from the training yard outside:
"All right, younglings, rest's over. Up and run, run, RUN!"
Chapter II: Wyrm Hunt
Summer 1
I
"We're lost," said Graykin, glowering about the low, dusty corridor. "Three times now, I've trod on the same loose board. Here, you!"—this, to the straw-haired cadet who led them. "Do you even know where you're going?"
The young Kendar named Rue glanced back at them, then quickly away. "Where, yes; how, no. Most of the second and third floors are unused, except for guest quarters and the outermost rooms. We don't like coming up here. Besides, there are stories. . . ."
"Oh?" said Graykin with a nasty grin, baring still raw gaps where m'lord Caldane had knocked out some of his teeth. "More 'singers' fancies'?"
To Ride a Rathorn Page 2