To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  Jorin stood in rigid silhouette against the flames, his back and tail arched. A singing whine came out of his throat, like a saw cutting live bone. But what did he sense? Jame edged closer, peering at the hearth, the fire, the cauldron, the water . . . nothing. Debris rattled down. She looked up.

  "Timmon, your family crest is the full moon, isn't it? Then why is there a serpent rampant over your mantelpiece? Oh."

  The wyrm lost its grip on the crumbling stones and fell. Jorin dodged behind Jame. Recoiling, she tripped over him and went down hard, cracking her head on the scoured flagstones. The crawler landed on top of her.

  Knocked breathless, she barely had time to throw up an arm to protect her face. The wyrm twisted to right itself. Its sides were fringed not with legs but with fingers covered in a lacework of white scars. Her skin stung where the venom of its touch ate though her clothes; but the full sleeve of the knife-fighter's d'hen was reinforced to turn an attacker's blade, and so it did this creature's assault.

  "Are you the one?"

  Its features shifted inside the caul that enveloped its entire head except for a round mouth like a lamprey's. The dead changer glared at her and gnashed his ring of teeth.

  "Are you the one who stole my Beauty?"

  He thought she was Tori, Jame realized, and Beauty . . . Trinity, Beauty was his name for the wyrm.

  The face inside the membrane whipped back and forth, changing.

  "No, no, no. . . ."

  Tori's features emerged, haggard, desperate. "Adric, don't . . . help me, help. . . ."

  "How?" cried Jame, lowering her arm. "Oh Tori, let me help!"

  His fingers slid over her face, a touch as light as gossamer but it made her skin burn. She felt her body arch under his weight. Oh, touch me again. . .

  "No!"

  She was with her brother, circling, circling, the old lord's glamour beating against him/her/them like the desert sun, fifteen years' experience of each other all focused on this moment, on this issue: Who would be master?

  Oh Adric, I don't want to fight. I'm tired. I hurt. And I don't want to hurt you. . .

  Nowhere to hide. Be a rock, a black rock in the Southern Wastes, but what shadow lies behind it?

  Adric searching for the bones of his son, which I ordered to be burned in secret on the common pyre at the Cataracts . . . .

  (What?)

  I promised to protect him, as he once protected me. If he knew what you had done, Peri, it would kill him. I couldn't let you tell him. I keep my promises. But oh Adric, don't!

  "Don't what?" said Timmon.

  He was wiping her face where Tori—no, where the wyrm had brushed it. Her skin burned as if with too much sun, but no worse. The creature's venom must almost have been spent.

  "Nothing." She took a deep breath to collect herself and burst out coughing. The weakened fireplace had collapsed, overturning the cauldron onto the fire. Smoke still seeped out of the ruins, mixed with the gritty dust of stone and mortar. Jorin was sniffing at the mound of debris. Then he began to scratch around it as if trying to bury something. "What happened? Where's the wyrm?"

  "Under there. It attacked you, I hit it with a shovel, and the mantel fell on it. I thought the whole wall was going to come down, maybe the whole barracks."

  Both his voice and his hand shook slightly; he was not as calm as he wished to appear.

  Neither was she. Just now, linked by the wyrm, she had been in that tent by the Cataracts, in her brother's mind and memory, when he had broken Pereden's neck. The feel, the sound of it . . . and here was Pereden's son who had probably just saved her life, trying to laugh off the terror that still quivered in his very bones.

  If he knew what you had done . . .

  What had Timmon's father done, to be killed in secret, his bones given to the pyre in stealth? She only knew that the sight of Pereden's son had stricken her brother in the great hall, and guilt now kept him from defending himself as he must in order to survive.

  From overhead came the scuffle and thud of feet. Dust drifted down between the floorboards. Something fell with a crash.

  Jame lurched to her feet, and her sight blurred. She waited for it to clear.

  "How long has that been going on?"

  "About as long as you were unconscious. A few minutes. Is your life usually like this?"

  "More or less, and I still have to help my brother."

  "Rest first. Stay with me."

  She became aware of his arm around her waist, steadying her. It felt good to lean against someone.

  Oh, touch me again . . .

  "It's quiet here now," he said, "and safe, as long as the ceiling doesn't fall in. Stay. I've never met anyone like you before."

  For a moment, she was tempted. She had never met anyone like him either, nor was she used to flattery. He certainly had a beguiling air, and he was very handsome.

  Knorth and Ardeth, Ardeth and Knorth, circling, circling. . .

  "No." She pulled free of his embrace. "Stay here if you want. I'm going."

  "You can't help," he called after her.

  She paused on the stair. "Then I'll hurt. I'm good at that."

  Her first impression of the dining hall was of chaos. A mob of cadets had spilled in from the hallway, but no one seemed to be fighting now nor making much noise except for the scrape and shuffle of feet. She scrambled up on a table for a better look, catching her toe in the process and nearly falling flat among the crockery. It had been much too long a day. Knorth and Ardeth, Ardeth and Knorth were circling each other as if in a macabre dance, eyes glazed, faces twitching as if caught in a bad dream. Overhead, the ceiling roiled and groaned in a storm of wood. Jame cursed under her breath. She had seen this sort of thing before, in Restormir's main square during Caldane's epic drinking binge. When a lord let things get out of hand, it went hard on the Kendar bound to him, and these cadets were hardly more than children. She stumbled down the length of the table, jumped to the floor, and slipped out into the hall.

  The Ardeth guards were pounding on the front door, whose edges appeared to have grown shut. M'lord Ardeth did not want to be disturbed.

  Brier Iron-thorn was half way up the stair, hanging on to the rail. Blood as dark red as her hair ran down her face from a split lip, and someone had ripped the malachite stud out of her ear. She lurched around to block Jame's way, her green eyes murky and half-focused.

  "He saved me from the Caineron. Bound me. I am his, although I trust no Highborn fool enough to trust me. I don't trust you. You will only hurt him."

  Jame blinked. "Now, listen," she began, then stopped. There wasn't time. She ducked under Brier's arm and went up the stairs.

  At the top stood Sheth Sharp-tongue, the commandant of Tentir, waiting.

  "So, girl," he said, with a faint smile, "here we are. My Lord Caineron fears you. I begin to see why. Are you always this . . . er . . . disruptive?"

  The door was behind him and behind that, her brother fought for his life.

  "Do something!" she cried.

  "Why?"

  Timmon came up behind her. The Commandant ignored him. So did Jame.

  "You'd let them destroy each other?"

  "Why not?"

  For a moment, she saw him as a Caineron, the enemy of both her house and the Ardeth; but something else was at work here too, a cool assessment of power.

  "Now, what kind of highlord would need my help?" the tall randon said gently to her. "If he is weak enough to fall, better for the Kencyrath that he should, don't you think?"

  For a moment, she saw it: what chance did the Three People have if their highlord wasn't strong enough to lead them? Tori had weaknesses, no question about that. Suppose that in the end he wasn't able to surmount them. So the Kencyrath would fall and so would end their world.

  No.

  "Lord Caineron is strong," she said, "but strength isn't everything. There is also compassion, justice, and honor."

  Behind her, Timmon turned a gasp into a cough.

  The
Commandant regarded her, eyes hooded and enigmatic. She glowered back. One didn't say such things to such a man as this, but she had, and damned if she would play rabbit to his hawk now.

  He inclined his head and stepped aside.

  "Let me," said Timmon, pushing past her. "These are my quarters, after all." But the door wouldn't open. "Locked," he said, with ill-concealed relief.

  Jame put her hand on the latch. No, it wasn't locked. As below, the wood grain bound door, posts, and lintel together as if they had grown that way, with only a shallow crack between them.

  Her fingertips tingled. An image began to form in her mind, intricate and verdant, deep green laced with pale gold on a bronze filigree. It was a master rune. The Book Bound in Pale Leather, that dire compendium of power, was no longer in her hands; Bane guarded it and the Ivory Knife in that pest-hole of a prison in the rock face behind Mount Alban. She had had mixed experiences with it anyway, having once accidentally set fire to a blizzard, and this rune wasn't familiar to her at all. But she could still unmake it. Already she was teasing it apart in her mind, line by line.

  "What are you doing?" asked Timmon behind her.

  She ignored him. It was harder to ignore the looming presence of the Commandant. Did he know what she was doing? That man had Shanir blood, although what sort she couldn't guess.

  From inside came the murmur of Ardeth's voice: ". . . so like my dear son Pereden. Ah, what a lord he would have made. My heart breaks to think of it. You and he would have been like brothers and I a father to you both . . ."

  Tori couldn't stand much more of this. In his place, she would long since have flared and brought down the roof, just to shut the old man up.

  Jame backed away, then threw herself at the door.

  It disintegrated.

  She plunged into the room off balance, into a table laden with crystal, past it to the sound of shattering glass, into the folds of a curtain, through that with a mighty ripping of cloth, and onto a bed, which collapsed.

  Fighting free, she saw her brother staring at her open-mouthed, as well he might. Behind him, Ardeth put his hand on his shoulder.

  "My son . . ."

  And, finally, the Highlord turned on him. "NO!"

  The room shook. In all its corners, things broke, and the furniture lurched. Jame went over backward into the chasm between the bed and the wall, where she landed on top of something warm and furry that yelped.

  As she struggled with whatever-it-was, both of them tangled in a winding sheet of linens, she could hear Ardeth's guard pouring into the lower hall and confused sounds from the dining room below as dazed cadets began to sort themselves out.

  Closer at hand, her brother was speaking urgently. "Adric? Can you hear me? Damn, I was afraid of this. It's his heart. Commandant, does the college have a healer in residence?"

  "Not at present. The Priest's College claims that we wear them out too quickly."

  "Here's Grandfather's box of drugs. Which bottle?"

  "The blue one, I think. Yes. Hemlock, in wine. Filthy stuff, but I've seen him drink it many times to calm himself. Damn. You pour it, boy. I'm no good one-handed. There. Is that better, Adric? That's right. Drink some more. Here's your grandson to look after you."

  "Highlord, a word."

  Torisen and the Commandant moved closer. Jame stopped floundering.

  "Under other circumstances," panted the Wolver Grimly beneath her, "this would be fun."

  "Quiet!"

  She wished she could hide under the covers forever, but what would Ardeth think if he found her and Grimly there in the morning?

  "Your pardon, my lord, but it would be best if you were not here when he awakes."

  A deep, weary sigh answered him. "Yes. Yes, I see." Jame peeked out. Tori was rubbing his eyes. The dark circles under them looked like bruises, and the high cheekbones sharp enough to cut skin. He stood for a moment collecting his thoughts with an obvious effort. "Very well. I will ride on tonight, at least as far as Shadow Rock. As for my sister . . ."

  Jame rose, half-sheepish, half-defiant. Grimly's furry ears pricked up beside her, just clearing the coverlet. Here it came.

  ". . . she will be staying here as a cadet candidate and—" he paused to gulp "—as my heir, the Knorth Lordan."

  From below came a crash and much shouting. The dining hall had just collapsed into the kitchen below.

  Chapter 3: Wine, Women, and Wolvers

  2-3rd of Summer

  I

  He lay on the hard cot in the big, dark room, pretending to sleep. From all around him came the deep breath of his fellow cadets, mixed with their occasional murmurs, sighs, and snores. It should have been a time of utter peace, of deep sleep after good, hard work remembered almost luxuriously in the fading ache of muscle and mind. He should have been intensely happy and so he was, he told himself. He had begged to attend the college, with little hope that Father would permit it, yet here he was, against all odds, on the threshold of a new life.

  Why, then, did every nerve twang with tension?

  Feet shuffled on the floor overhead. Two voices rose and fell. Then one exploded in a shout of drunken laughter.

  The Lordan was carousing late again, probably with that sly-eyed Randir who would be drinking one cup to the other's three while seeming to keep pace.

  That afternoon, at the pool, he had looked up and seen them staring contemptuously down at him from atop Breakneck Rock. Their gaze, especially the Lordan's, had made him feel not just naked, as all the swimmers were, but stripped down to his pitiful soul and left there exposed, for all to see.

  He curled up shivering under the thin blanket. If only they would leave him alone . . .

  A hand on his shoulder that made his heart leap like a startled frog. A soft, mocking voice in his ear: "The Lordan wants you. In his quarters. Now."

  Torisen woke with a violent start, his heart pounding. Where was he? Not in the Knorth dormitory at Tentir. Tonight his sister Jame would be spending her first night there as a cadet candidate, as the Knorth Lordan. And he . . . he was on the run. From Ardeth. From her.

  "Awake?"

  A shimmer of starlight through an arched window caught the glow of eyes at his feet where Grimly curled up in his complete furs, muzzle across Torisen's ankles. The long jaw altered to a mouth still full of sharp teeth but capable of human speech. "Were you dreaming?"

  He sounded both worried and wary, with good cause. In the past, Torisen had sometimes stayed awake for days, even weeks, pushing himself to the edge of madness, all to avoid certain dreams.

  The Shanir dream, boy, his father had said. Are you a filthy Shanir?

  No, he was not, and he now knew that everyone had dreams of some sort. Still, that last really bad one had been enough to send him storming out of Kothifir and up the length of the Silver with the sword Kin-Slayer naked in his hand and his dead father's voice in his mind inciting him to murder.

  Your Shanir twin, boy, your darker half, returned to destroy you . . .

  Overtaken by the weirdingstrom, he and Grimly had sought refuge in the wolver's native holt on the edge of the great Weald. Then had come dark dreams. In one of them, he had found himself clutching Kin-slayer, cowering in the hall of the Haunted Lands keep where he and his sister had been born. He was hiding from her, as he had been in Kothifir all winter, but she found him. She always did. Father was there too, dead on the battlements with three arrows in his chest. No, on the stair descending, step by step, muttering as he came, cursing him, telling him to kill, to kill.

  The sword is in your hand, boy. You know that she is stronger than you. Save yourself. Strike!

  But Jame was stronger. She had cursed their father and slammed the door in his dead face. Then she had shot the bolt against his madness.

  When Torisen woke, his hand was already in splints.

  "You looked at Kin-Slayer and said, 'There's more than one way to break a grip,' " Grimly had told him. "Then you pried loose your fingers one by one."

 
Had he really meant to kill Jame? Surely not. As children they had been as close as a single soul shared by two bodies. He had played in her dreams and she in his, until Father taught him to fear both dreams and her. Still, how he had missed her after Father had driven her out, and how he had blamed himself for letting her go. Now, miraculously, she had returned to him. He loved her, if "love" was the right word for this roil of emotions.

  Father says destruction begins with love.

  "Does it hurt?" Grimly asked.