"It was." Harn looked at her under craggy, lowered brows. "What have you heard?"
"Nothing." In fact, she was surprised. How did this tie into anything that had happened since?
"Mind you, your father and I were nearly the same age, but I came to Tentir the year after he left, at the same time as Sheth Sharp-tongue. From what I heard, though, Greshan summoned Ganth to his quarters in the middle of the night. Roane was there. He and the lordan had been drinking. Greshan was his father's darling, but . . . well, as a Highlord, he would have been a disaster."
"Worse than Ganth Gray Lord?"
She heard the bitterness in her voice. After all, they were discussing the man who had led his people to disaster in the White Hills and later had driven his only daughter out into the Haunted Lands to seek whatever protection she could find, even in Perimal Darkling, even in the Master's House itself.
But Harn was shaking his massive head. "It isn't that simple. Nothing ever is that really matters. Parents, children, family . . . and we're talking about a boy here, younger than you are now. I meet Ganth Grayling once at Gothregor, before his brief career at Tentir. His lord father Gerraint treated him like shit. Called him a liar in front of us all, although we never knew why, while that damned Greshan stood by smirking. Ganth slunk off like a whipped puppy."
Jame stared. To her, Ganth Graylord had always been a monster. She could barely conceive of him as a helpless boy younger than herself, despised by his own father.
"What happened in the lordan's quarters?"
"No one knows exactly. When the randon broke in, Roane was dead, Greshan was fouling himself in a corner, and Roane's servant was floundering around on fire. Also, for some reason, Ganth was stark naked."
Jame caught her breath, remembering her foul dream, that first night at Tentir, when the Knorth lordan had suggested calling "Dear little Gangrene" up to his apartment for some "midnight games" to impress his Randir friend. Only she had been the lordan, inside Greshan's dirty coat, inside his stinking skin. The thought made her want to crawl back into the bath and shrub herself raw to remove even the memory of that tainted touch.
"Anyway," Harn was saying, "Ganth put on some clothes and walked out of Tentir without a word to anyone. That was the end of him as a randon. A year later, Gerraint and Greshan were both dead, and Ganth was Highlord."
"Trinity. Does Tori know all this?"
"Not about Roane. That secret belongs to Tentir and Blackie doesn't. Ardeth did him no service in forbidding him to train here."
"But the randon respect him, and he loves them. He said once that the Southern Host was his true family."
"Yes. In a sense we raised him and he's done us proud. We haven't had such a decent, competent Highlord in a long time—not that those are necessarily the qualities that we need just now. These are perilous times. To survive, should we side with the just or with the powerful? Well, I made my choice when I put my hands between his in this very room and swore to follow him to the death. It's life that scares me. We totter on a knife's edge. In these treacherous times, where does honor lie?"
Jame listened, a chill running up her spine. She had thought it was only her own weakness that made her doubt, but here was one of the foremost randon of his age asking the same questions.
"You've sworn loyalty to Torisen Black Lord. Don't you trust him to recognize honor when he sees it?"
"Yes. But he still isn't one of us."
Poor Tori, Jame thought.
It had occurred to her before that her brother must feel nearly as rootless here in the Riverland as she did, neither of them having grown up in the heart of the Kencyrath. Still, she had envied him his link with the randon of the Southern Host. Now it seemed that that might not be as strong as she had supposed, lacking the Tentir bond, and here he was giving her this precious chance which he himself had been denied . . . if she lived to take advantage of it.
"Are the Randir going to keep attacking me?"
"They mean all Knorth ill. Never forget that." He scratched his stubbly chin thoughtfully, with an audible rasp. "A strange house, the Randir. Secrets within secrets. Of course, it doesn't help that the Witch has chased out their natural lord and set her son in his place, which is enough in itself to set up some fierce cross-currents."
"How did that happen, anyway?"
"I dunno for sure. The old Randir lord died, and Rawneth put a contract with the Shadow Assassins on his heir, Randiroc. Your father Ganth was to have sorted out that mess, but then came the massacre of the Knorth ladies and the White Hills. With no highlord in power to stop her, Rawneth did as she pleased."
Another piece of the puzzle, thought Jame, if only I knew where to place it.
"A strange house it was then," Harn was saying, "and stranger still it's become. Some Randir never use their true name unless among themselves. Some don't seem to have names at all outside their own house."
"Like the Randir Tempter?"
"That one." He growled, almost like Bear. If he had had claws, he would have flexed them. "Aye."
"In the hall, during the rope test, she said that I had hurt her cousin. I don't know whom she meant."
"Huh. Roane, perhaps, if she was speaking to you as a Knorth. On the other hand, the Randir tend to call all their blood-kin 'cousin.' " He shook himself. "At any rate, those here won't have so free a hand once you're an acknowledged cadet. Randon discipline tries to transcend house politics, not that it isn't getting harder and harder with lords like Caldane stirring the pot. You watch out for that Gorbel too, girl."
"That's another thing, ran. Why Gorbel? He isn't one of Caldane's established sons, is he?"
Harn gave a snort of laughter. "I'd like to see any of that lot try to fit in here. I hear Grondin is so fat that he has to be moved around his own house in a wheel-barrow, and the rest are too old. I don't know this Gorbel, but he's probably the son closest to cadet quality that Caldane could dig up and, for his pains, he gets the title 'lordan' slapped on him, not that he's apt to keep it long. He's only here because you are, as long and probably no longer. I'm not saying the boy is smart enough to cause true mischief, but he's bound to try."
"I'll be careful, ran. At least it's only for a year."
He snorted again. "One year? Try three, if you do well, and not all will be spent here under the protection of the college. You really don't know what you're getting into, do you?"
"Er . . . apparently not. I seldom do. And Tori didn't have time to explain much. What happens after Tentir?"
"That will depend on your final ranking, assuming you survive the autumn and spring culls. Some people have to repeat Tentir as novice cadets. That's what you'll become tonight. You get two tries. Do better, and they send you out into the field—to the Southern Host at Kothifir if you're lucky, or as an honor guard attached to the Women's Halls at Gothregor. Some third year master cadets come back here to teach and to learn advanced techniques. Some finish up with their house's randon, wherever their lord sends them. One way or another, all have to prove themselves to the Randon Council. In the end, maybe one in ten win their collars."
They hadn't noticed as they spoke that the room was falling into shadow. Then from somewhere far below came the peremptory note of a horn.
Harn sprang up, aghast as a tardy schoolboy. "It's beginning, and I'm not even dressed!"
He was, in fact, a good deal more dressed than Jame. She stripped off his coat, threw it at him in passing as if at a distraught bull, and bolted down the stairs in a glimmer of white limbs and black, whipping hair with what was left of her own clothing bundled in her arms. Around the first turn, she ran full tilt into Graykin. They tumbled down the rest of the way together. At the bottom, Jame contrived to land on top.
"I'm dead," Graykin moaned.
"No." She rolled off of him onto her feet and began rapidly sorting through her salvaged clothes, discarding most of them. "With luck, I only broke your back. You deserve it. Spy on anyone else, Gray, but not on me."
" 's
not fair. You never tell me anything. Look," he said, doing anything but, struggling to sit up. "They've already started. It's too late. Give up this madness, take up your proper rank, and for God's sake put on some clothes!"
"I'm trying," said Jame, hopping on one foot to pull on a boot. "Highborn I may be, worse luck. However, I am not"—hop—"nor will I ever be"—hop—"a lady. Damn. The wrong foot, or the wrong boot. But I swear, on my honor, I'll be initiated tonight as a cadet if I have to do it wearing nothing but gloves and a surly expression."
Rue appeared, panting, with an armload of clothes. "Why'd you try to lose me?" she demanded of Gray. "Here. Hurry." She thrust the still damp but blessedly clean garments into Jame's arms. The shirt, jacket, and pants—Greshan's, no doubt—were still much too big, but at least the cuffs had been basted up. Reminded, Jame fished in the pocket of her discarded coat, drew out the two scarves, and tossed one to Rue.
Rue caught and stared at the sodden black cloth with its finely worked rathorn crest. "Where d'you find it?"
"Stuffed half way down my throat." Jame knotted her own scarf haphazardly around her neck. "I'll explain later. Damn. Where's my cap?"
Above, they could hear Harn apparently tearing apart his quarters. An anguished cry rolled down the stair: "Where's my damned shirt?"
Rue tugged urgently at Jame's sleeve. "God's claws, he's coming. Run!"
Too late. They shrank back as the burly randon blundered past, trying to pull himself together.
Jame started in pursuit, but Rue stopped her.
"He'll be going to join the officers by the front door. We need to come in with our house by the back." She looked about frantically. "Trinity, don't let us get lost now!"
Jame advanced on her servant. "Graykin . . . ."
"Oh, all right."
With an ill grace, he led them through a maze of halls to an obscure, narrow stair that plunged straight down to the first floor, emerging in the short, blind corridor between Old Tentir and the Randir barracks. Smart and stiff with a sense of occasion, answering the imperious summons of drum and horn, cadets passed the corridor's open end on the boardwalk, wheeled right, then left into the great hall, stepping proudly into their future.
"Coman," Rue breathed with relief. "Next Caineron, Jaran, and then Knorth. The other houses will be entering by the south door. We're in time."
Jame waited, fiddling discontentedly with her loose, wet hair as it tumbled well below her waist like a rain of black, blue-shot silk. It was her only vanity, but she usually kept it up out of the way, under a cap. Wearing it down now made her feel disheveled and vulnerable.
"Let me," said Graykin with irritation, beginning to comb out its heavy fall with nimble fingers. Then he twisted it up into a knot and secured it with thin-bladed knife, almost a spike, produced from somewhere on his person. "Honestly, don't you know any feminine arts?"
"Caineron . . . Jaran. . . ." Rue was counting down. "Here we come."
Vant appeared, almost strutting, at the head of the Knorth cadets. He started violently as Jame slid in before him, followed by Rue. His ten wavered and fell back as Brier lead her grinning squad to the fore. If there had been room or time, there might have been a serious scuffle, but they were almost to the door and the drumbeat called them insistently on.
Inside, the massed torchlight was almost blinding. Jame stopped dead on the threshold, sure for a moment that the hall was on fire, nearly tripping up all those behind her. She had to advance before her eyes had adjusted and blundered into the rear rank of the Jaran, who fended her off with a ripple of nervous laughter. Here at last was her place, before the blazing western fireplace and under the rathorn banner, parallel to Timmon on her right and the Jaran master-ten on her left, with her house drawn up behind her. The drums in the upper gallery ended with a thunderous flourish and fell silent.
In their wake, one heard only the crackle of fire, the slough of wind through upper windows, and the breathing of nine hundred-odd younglings.
Opposite, by the front door, stood the senior randon in a dark mass. Firelight glinted off their silver collars and caught the weathered, sometimes scar-broken lines of their faces. A few were clearly Highborn, smaller and finer boned than the Kendar, but claiming no precedence over them. Here as at Mount Alban, the Scrollsmen's College, ability outranked both blood and gender: at least a third of the senior randon were women, more than Jame had yet seen at Tentir. None of the latter, however, were Highborn.
Am I the first, ever, to come here? she wondered, and was suddenly, profoundly, grateful that she hadn't appeared in her uncle's stinking rags.
The Commandant stepped forward, his mix of blood clearer than ever in the keen lines of his face and in his tall, rangy form. He paced down the hall, his boots clicking on the flagstones in a measured tread. Around the high neck of his austere dress coat he wore a silver collar hung thick with plaques that chimed softly as he moved. So many battles. So much honor.
"Four long days ago," he said, "I welcomed you to Tentir as candidates. Now I do so again as novice cadets. Tonight you join our ranks and receive your scarves in token of the randon collars that you may someday earn. You have passed a time of testing, the first of many. Each day from now on will bring new challenges to surmount or to fail. A year hence, only the best of you will remain."
He regarded the cadets as he passed, as if already further thinning their ranks. It was hard not to cower under that ruthless, winnowing glance.
"As you progress, consider well your goals. This is no easy path to glory. It never has been. We buy our honor with blood, and scars, and pain."
Their eyes were drawn, with his, to the upper walls where the collars of the dead hung, glimmering down on this new, raw muster of children, many of whom had never seen death, much less the horrors of battle.
"Within our ranks, all of us have lost friends, family, beloved. Some we knowingly sent to their deaths and they willingly went, because it was necessary. We remember them always and honor their names. Death can be easier to bear than life. Oh, but it is sometimes hard. Very hard. Expect no soft choices here."
Gorbel yawned. Perhaps it was only nerves on his part, but it made Jame's jaw ache to imitate him. Ancestors, please, not now! she thought wildly as the Commandant stopped equidistant from the three Highborn cadets. He seemed now to speak directly to them.
"We randon think of ourselves as a breed apart, an amalgam of all that is best in the Kencyrath. Our ranks transcend politics, or should. Yes, we are loyal to our houses. Fiercely so. But also to each other. Note this and note it well: While you attend this college, it is your home and all within it are your family, wherever you were born, whomever you call 'enemy' outside these walls. Here we are all blood-kin. House and college, cadet and randon, Highborn and Kendar. Honor holds us in balance, but what is honor? Consider that too, as you progress, and remember that you are bound by whatever words you swear in this sacred hall, before your banners and under the insignia of our dead so, on peril of your souls, swear honestly or not at all." He turned, his coat swinging wide. "Officers, administer the oath."
Nine senior randon stepped forth, one from each house, and advanced on their respective body of cadets.
Harn Grip-hard stumped down the hall to the Knorth. He looked as if he had thrown on his dress clothes in the dark and not adjusted them since, which was probably true. The undershirt was the same that he had worn before, liberally spattered with grease. However, the honors suspended clanking from his massive collar out-numbered even the Commandant's. He stopped in front of Jame.
"Last chance to save yourself, girl."
"Now, ran, when have the Knorth ever showed that much sense?"
He gave a grunt of laughter. "Not in my lifetime, nor my father's before me. Give me your scarf."
She loosened the clumsy knot and handed it to him. He regarded her attempt at needlework with raised brows. "Perhaps better here than in the Women's Halls after all. Now for it. Do you swear to obey the rules of Tentir? To guard
its honor as closely as you do your own? To go out and come in, to live or to die, as you are bid? To protect its secrets now and forever, from all and sundry, whatever should befall?"
As he spoke, she heard the murmur of oaths and answers, weaving the fabric of Tentir around her, each house fitting into the pattern, somber Brandan and bright Edirr, subtle Ardeth and gaudy Caineron, rough-spun Kendar and silken Highborn, the oaths like sinews binding all together.
Now I join this pattern, she thought, this tapestry eternally renewed. Finally, the thread of my life will be racked into place, crossing the lives of others and crossed. Finally, I will belong.
But then she hesitated, frowning. There was a flaw somewhere in that texture of oaths given and received. A snag. Someone was swearing falsely. How could they at such a time when it weakened the whole fabric, or was that the point? This was as bad, as treacherous, as the notched rope, waiting for the first strain to fail. She began seriously to hunt for the fatal flaw, fingering through the different textures with all her Shanir wits. If she could find the source, she knew instinctively that she could destroy it.
To Ride a Rathorn Page 15