To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  However, she hadn't taken into account Old Tentir's confusing innards, or her own rattled wits. Once away from the windows and daylight, she quickly became lost in the maze of dusty corridors. This was ridiculous, she thought. After all, as the Talisman she had mastered the layout of an entire city. However, complex though it was, Tai-tastigon hadn't been deliberately built to bewilder. Here, even straight hallways seemed to take a perverse pleasure in wandering. Where was Graykin when she needed him? Dammit, she was going to be late for her own expulsion.

  A dingy, long tailed rat made her jump as it broke cover and scurried down the passage away from her.

  Suddenly, a great paw of a hand, all claws, shot out of a swinging panel down by the floor, seized the rat, and snatched it back inside. Jame hadn't realized where she was, much less that the feeding flap to Bear's prison was double-hinged. She knelt and cautiously pushed it open a crack. A gust of hot, foul air breathed through it into her face. She could see Bear's massive form hunched against the glow of the fireplace. He bent his shaggy head to what he held in his hands. The rat screamed once, and then was silent. Jame eased the panel shut on the sound of strong teeth ripping wetly at the small, furry carcass and crunching its bones.

  Around the next corner came a glimmer of daylight. Jame followed it to a window which again overlooked the inner square. For all her wandering, she had ended up in the room next to the one where she had started out. On the other hand, the Commandant's balcony was now directly below her, one story down. She surveyed the square. In this, the free period before dinner, it was nearly empty.

  The Coman cadet from the Falconer's class whom she now knew as Gari crossed the arena, surrounded to the waist by a swarm of bouncing grasshoppers. He didn't seem to have any control over what kind of insect he attracted, although they did seem in some way to reflect his current mood. A cry of dismay greeted him as he entered his barracks. They shouldn't complain, thought Jame. The last time, after a particularly miserable work-detail cleaning latrines, it had been a swarm of stink-beetles.

  Swinging her legs over the window ledge, she dropped lightly onto the balcony.

  "Most people use the door," said the Commandant's voice from inside.

  "Sorry, ran." Jame brushed aside a filmy curtain and entered, wet boots squelching, leaving a trail of muddy prints. "I got lost."

  It was a large room, indirectly lit by windows on either side of the balcony. These were shaded with taut, peach-colored cloth, probably old tent canvas, vertically slashed to allow the breeze to edge through. The filtered light cast a mellow glow over walls covered with exquisitely detailed murals.

  The Commandant lounged in a chair slightly back from one of the windows, his long, elegantly booted legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. Silver flashed: he was whittling a bit of wood with a small knife. Although it was hard to tell with his face in shadow, Jame thought that he sounded tired.

  "This is the Map Room," he said, with a languid wave of his hand. "Here you see accurate depictions of all our major battles on Rathillien, and in the cabinets below are accounts of the participants. Yes, that one is the Cataracts."

  The mural in question occupied a large portion of the northern wall. Jame recognized Hurlen, that town of wooden towers built on many islets at the convergence of the Silver and the Tardy. There was the Upper Meadow where the Host had camped; there, the Lower Huddles, along which she had been riding when the Caineron charge had come over the crest on top of her; there, off to the left, the mysterious, lethal Heart of the Woods where her brother and Pereden had fought.

  Looking closer, she saw tiny figures including one in black, repeated at different places in the field. By their growing size, she could trace her brother's progress through the conflict, except that several times he appeared to be two places at once.

  "That is one of the mysteries of the Cataracts," said the Commandant, watching her. "Who was the rider in black on a white horse who suddenly appeared in the midst of the battle? My lord Caldane claims that the High Lord sent a decoy into the field to lessen his own chances of being killed. Why, then, a white horse, when everyone knows Torisen's mount is black?"

  "That was by accident," said Jame, still looking at the map. "So was my presence in the Caineron charge. I was just trying to get across the field. Also, I'm the one who . . . er . . . borrowed your warhorse later. Sorry, but it really was an emergency."

  "I will take your word for it and not press to know why you, of all people, tried to ride Cloud bareback. Interesting. That answers quite a few questions, if not why you arrived there and again here wearing a Tastigon knife-fighter's jacket."

  "It's called a d'hen and with due respect, ran, that's all I will tell you about it."

  "I see." He leaned back, hands dropping with their work into his lap. "Now, did I or did I not request that you not break any more instructors?"

  Jame swallowed. "You did, ran. Sorry. Is he badly hurt?"

  "A cracked collarbone and many bruises. Worse, only by concentrating can he prevent himself from backing up, regardless of what lies behind him. I would say that Kibben is avenged, and then some. Out of curiosity, may I ask what happened?"

  So he hadn't been close enough to hear. Jame told him what Corrudin had tried to make her do. "It would have destroyed Brier," she concluded, "and she's already been hurt far too much by my kind. It might also have destroyed me. I suddenly thought, maybe that's what he wants, and be damned if I'm going to be forced into it."

  "A good instinct," murmured the randon. "It was his desire, no, his demand, that he be allowed to try. A powerful Shanir, that, and dangerous. After all, he brings out the worst in everyone. Truth for truth, Knorth. You would have done my house a service if you had broken his neck, but then we would probably have had civil war. There will be trouble enough as it is, but that needn't concern you. He may have also influenced the worst in me when I allowed the test; however, I had just heard that you were sitting in a mud puddle, having hysterics."

  "And, as lordan, if I should break, better here than later."

  He gave her a shadowy, fleeting smile. "I see you understand."

  "But ran, what I did to Corrudin, whether he deserved it or not, wasn't that also a gross abuse of power? I can't seem to get it right. First I can't exert control over an arrogant twit like Vant; then I force a Shanir Highborn to commit defenestration. Maybe I don't belong here after all."

  "With that power, where would you go?" He spoke softly, a voice out the gathering shadows, giving shape to her own fears. "Untrained as you are, who is safe against you? Not enemies, not friends, perhaps not even own your brother."

  He shifted to prop his chin on his fist. She felt the pressure of his assessing eyes and the keen mind behind them at work on the problem. On her. "It seems to me," he said, "that you hate your own blood and its inherent power. Perhaps that mistrust is warranted. Dark things stir in you, girl. I sense them. But part of what you are is also the blessing, or the curse, of our god. Your position in the Kencyrath is unique. You are a Shanir, a Highborn, the Knorth Lordan, and a female. If you don't learn how to control your innate abilities, either they will destroy you or you will fall back into the trap that you came here to escape. Do you see another course?"

  "N-no, ran." And she didn't, short of leaving her people behind forever. But if she returned to Tai-tastigon as the Talisman, she would still be herself. If you start running away, she had told Niall, speaking of nightmare, you may never stop. The same held true here, even more so.

  He leaned back again, into shadow. "Tentir is a testing ground. If it eases your mind, I promise that by the time you leave, you will know beyond a doubt if you have succeeded or failed."

  Jame's heart gave a leap.

  "Then I'm not expelled, ran?"

  "No. You are riding the rathorn now, to what fate I have no idea, but it would be unwise of me to interfere. I believe, however, that I should assign you extra duty for damaging the arcade roof, say, by repairing it. Please leave
the normal way, through the door. The college has had enough excitement for the time being."

  Her foot was on the threshold when he spoke again, out of the gathering darkness:

  "By the way, you also should know that the Randir Tempter has returned to her duties at Tentir—prematurely, I would have thought, but here she is. Take care, Knorth. She has no love for your house or for you."

  "Yes, ran. Thank you." She saluted him and left.

  Only on the way out did she recognize what the Commandant had been carving. It was a little, wooden soldier.

  This time, she found the stair easily and was descending to the main hall when a mound of dirty clothes on a pair of muddy legs entered from New Tentir. Jame wasn't sure about the legs, but she recognized the mud.

  "Rue?"

  The clothes dropped and there was the border cadet waist deep in them, gaping at her.

  "Lady! You're still here!"

  "Of course I am. Oh, you mean I haven't been kicked out yet. No, but we have to repair the roof."

  "That's all?" A huge grin split the girl's face. "My, won't Vant be surprised."

  "What's all this about?" Jame asked, indicating the sprawling heap.

  Rue shrugged. "Vant gave our ten punishment duty for the mud fight. It's laundry day down in the fire timber hall, and we have to wash the entire barracks' dirty underwear."

  At that moment, Vant himself entered the hall. "You, shortie, what're these clothes doing on the floor? Can't stay out of the dirt, eh?" Then he saw Jame, and turned his start into a sideways salute with eyes averted. "Your possessions are packed, lady. We can have you on the road to Gothregor before dinner."

  "Oh, can you." Jame finished her descent at a leisurely stroll. She had no impulse whatsoever to lose her temper: after Corrudin, this seemed like a minor affair and Vant, for all his six feet of arrogant bluster, a bug not worth squashing. "Such unseemly haste, but then every time you turn around, you apparently expect to find me gone. Well, now you can relax. At least this side of the autumn cull, I'm not going anywhere."

  Others of her ten had entered as she spoke, each with arms full of laundry. Vant was staring at her now, open-mouthed.

  "You throw Lord Caineron's chief advisor out a third story window, and the Commandant doesn't expel you? Is he insane?"

  "You may ask him that, with my blessing. In the meantime, I rescind your punishment order. Each ten will do its own washing, as usual. And in future you will clear any such order with me before you issue it. I'll be making a list"—as soon as I can find a reliable master ten to consult, she thought—"specifying what duties are yours and what are mine."

  Vant stood rigid, staring straight ahead. "Lady, I can't read."

  Jame remembered that he had indeed lost most of his points in the entry trials on that score.

  "Learn," she said, and walked out.

  Rue followed her, trailing clothes as she sorted out the muddiest of them. "What about yours, lady?"

  Jame plucked at her shirt, feeling it unglue from her skin and bits of half-dry mud rattle down between her breasts. Head to foot, she was a mess.

  "I need a bath," she said, "or better yet, a swim."

  Chapter XI: The White Lady

  Summer 42

  I

  No one swam in the Silver by choice: those who did tended not to come out, nor were their bodies ever found. The Merikit blamed the River Snake. Jame believed them, having been dropped halfway down the Snake's gullet at Kithorn. However, the river's tributaries were generally considered to be safe.

  South of Tentir, one such stream tumbled down through a series of falls, basins, and rapids. Jame heard the water's roar as she approached on a path hacked through rampant cloud-of-thorn bushes, also the laughter of cadets who had had the same idea and a head start on her. She stripped off her filthy clothing as she went, mindful of those reaching three-inch thorns.

  Here a rock thrust up into the afternoon sun. Dropping her bundle of clothes at its base, she climbed toward the sound of water, untangling her mud-clotted hair as she went. At the top she was met by the delicious tingle of cold spray on her bare, hot skin and a cool breath that lifted sweaty tendrils from her face. Across the gorge, the stream plunged over boulders, half rapids, half falls, into a wide, oblong cauldron. The swiftest water flowed past on the far side of some large, flat-topped rocks into a stony bottleneck, then down into the next pool. The rest of the basin swirled slowly in an ever-renewing backwater. Heads bobbed in it, turned up open-mouthed to stare at her. Well, let them look. She poised defiantly on the brink for a moment, then dived.

  It occurred to Jame in mid-air that jumping headfirst into unfamiliar water was not very smart and, sure enough, she barely missed a submerged ledge.

  Fed by mountain snows, the water was cold enough to jolt the heart. It was also surprisingly deep once away from its treacherous margin. A chasm opened in its bed, gaping down below the reach of light—the work, surely, of the River Snake's writhing rather than of mere erosion. Fish hung over its terraces, motionless except for the shimmer of their scales in the mottled light. Then, in the flick of an eye, they were gone. Through the cloud of dirt drifting off of her skin, Jame thought she saw something below in the abyss, something that stirred and began slowly to rise.

  A hand touched her shoulder. Jame lost her breath in a flurry of bubbles and surfaced, gasping. Timmon's golden head bobbed up beside her.

  "You scared me," he said. "People don't usually dive off Breakneck Rock head first." He looked at her closely. "Your teeth are chattering and your lips are turning blue with the cold. Come on."

  He swam to one of the flat midstream rocks and climbed up onto it. Turning, he offered her his hand. Mindful that her gloves were with the rest of her clothes, on shore, Jame scrambled up without his help and stretched out face down on the rock, hands tucked under her elbows. The stone was blessedly warm. Slowly, the memory faded of what she thought she had seen in the depths. A leviathan in a puddle indeed—not that it would have been the first time she had seen such a thing.

  The other swimmers were slipping out of the pool and departing, either through tact or out of sheer embarrassment. At that moment, Jame didn't care which.

  "Ah," she said with a contented sigh, relaxing. "This is nice."

  Timmon cradled his head on folded arms, regarding her askance. She thought he was going to ask her about the defenestration of Corrudin, but word of that mishap apparently hadn't yet reached him.

  Instead, he said, "No one would mistake you for a boy, but I can count every one of your ribs. You really should eat more."

  "So everyone tells me, but I think my sense of taste was permanently damaged in the Haunted Lands. How would you like to dine day after day on whimpering vegetables?"

  "Not much. Did they really?"

  "When they weren't groaning or screaming, and the potatoes' eyes followed you reproachfully around the room. We won't even discuss the cabbage heads or what was in them."

  "Thank you. I think I've already lost my taste for supper."

  He, at least, needn't worry about starving, any more than about growing fat. Through streamers of wet, black hair, she regarded the slim, nicely muscled body stretched out beside her, alabaster white except for his tanned face where the sun had brought out an unexpected garnish of freckles. He grinned at her and she looked quickly away, surprised to discover by the heat in her own face that she was blushing.

  They were lying close enough together to feel each other's warmth. Timmon ran a fingertip lightly over her skin. With an effort, Jame held still, although the hairs on her arm quivered and rose.

  He smiled. "You aren't used to being touched, are you?"

  Hit, pushed, kicked, occasionally thrown off high buildings, yes . . . but no, mere touching wasn't a common experience for Jame. Neither was being hit by rocks.

  "Hey!" said Timmon, rousing, as a pebble bounced off his bare back.

  Two figures stood on Breakneck Rock. For a moment, Jame had the strangest feelin
g that all of this had happened before, only that man in a bright coat had been someone else, and so had she. A scrap of dream, a bitter rind of helplessness and shame . . . or had it been she on the rock, looking down scornfully at a thin, naked boy trying futilely to cover himself?

  But the newcomers proved to be only Gorbel, his scarlet coat aglow like a banked fire in the gathering twilight, and one of his friends. The latter leered down at them.

  "Fast work, Ardeth!" he shouted over the waterfall's clamor. "At least save us a bit of Knorth thigh!"

  As Timmon swore back good-naturedly, Jame regarded the Caineron Lordan, who stared back at her without expression. Clearly, he had been pleased by her handling of his grand-uncle, as had been the Commandant. Corrudin must normally keep well in the background for his name never to have come up before outside his own house. Was he the brains behind Caldane's otherwise mindless drive for power? Caineron politics obviously were far more complex than she had realized.