To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  "The other houses defend themselves mostly against each other. Who would attack a school where all young randon train?"

  The Merikit, Jame had said. The Seven Kings. The Shadow Guild. A rising of rhi-sar. Caldane, Lord Caineron, on a bad day.

  Vant had only laughed, as if humoring a moron.

  Beyond the wall was the orchard that each year supplied the college with its apple cider. The boughs were heavy with fruit ripening toward the autumn harvest, the ground beneath fragrant with windfalls that squelched and slipped underfoot. Beyond again were sloping pastures dappled with sleeping cows and sheep and other indistinct shapes that could have been anything. Although the eastern sky now showed the black silhouette of peaks, it was still very dark here in the valley below, and rather foggy.

  Jame tripped over a stump hidden in deep grass, then over another. A hare, breaking cover almost under her feet, made her heart leap. Ahead loomed the forest, in this light a solid black mass poised like an avalanche to topple over the land stolen from it. Under its eaves, seedlings had already begun to reclaim what was theirs.

  Jame stopped just short of those reaching shadows. For the first time, she wondered what she was doing here.

  Two by two, in perfect silence, points of light sprang up in the trees, some low, some high, more and more and more.

  The forest is watching me, she thought, and fished the imu medallion out of her pocket.

  "I have the Earth Wife's favor," she said, holding it up, wondering even as she spoke if that was still true in all senses of the word.

  She had promised to carry the little, clay face with its big ears into places where Mother Ragga otherwise was deaf, but she hadn't done anything yet about the duties foisted on her by the Merikit chief Chingetai. Damn the man anyway for making her his heir and, by implication, male, just to get out of a tight spot.

  Still, wasn't that exactly what Tori had done too, following the Merikit's lead and Kirien's advice?

  So here she stood at the boundary between two worlds, assigned much the same role in each, in danger of failing in both.

  The forest's eyes blinked. Then out of its shadows burst a flight of luminous moths. They swirled around Jame with the flash and flutter of a thousand wings, dusting her with their glow. One landed on her wrist and flexed pale gray-green wings overlaid with a tracery of silver. Its furry antennae twiddled furiously.

  "Have you a message for me?" Jame asked it, only half in jest.

  If so, there was no time for it. The next moment the moths spiraled up into the sky as rushing bodies parted the thick grass. Jame found herself surrounded by a milling pack of hounds. They were muzzled lymers, she saw, scent trackers with fringed dewlaps and busy, intrusive noses.

  One gave a muffled yelp and their black ranks parted to let through the direhounds. Jame stood very still among the glimmer of white backs. Teeth and eyes gleamed up at her. While not up to a Molocar's weight or strength, these hounds were killers. She had seen them practice on the weaker of their own kind: their mothers first taught them to eat meat by ripping apart the runt of each litter and feeding the bloody scraps to its stronger siblings.

  Then horsemen rode among the roiling pack, whipping them off. But there were too few of them to be the college hunt—a bare dozen or less.

  Someone laughed. "I don't believe it. First that Danior brat slinks out of Tentir with his mangy mutt and now here's the Knorth freak. Ho, my lord! Shall we loose the dogs again and see how fast a Knorth can run?"

  Jame recognized the voice: it was one of Gorbel's Highborn cronies. The Caineron Lordan himself rode apart, leaning down from the saddle to let the lymers sniff a white cloth with dark stains—at a guess, rathorn blood wiped from thorns. The dogs milled excitedly around him, although some shrank away, whimpering. A Kendar cadet lashed them back into line. Then they were off, black on black under the trees, casting back and forth for the scent.

  "My lord!" called the Highborn again.

  Gorbel straightened. "What?" he said, preoccupied, intent on the dogs.

  One gave a muffled yip and plunged into the forest, the rest a black tide flowing on his heels.

  Gorbel shouted: "Ha!" and spurred after them.

  Direhounds and horsemen followed. Jame dodged among them, sure they meant to ride her down. Instead, someone grabbed her by the collar and jerked her up across a horse's withers. A saddle horn punched her in the stomach with every stride. Branches whipped her buttocks and tore at her streaming hair. She started to slip. The horse shied violently as her nails bit into it and the rider cursed.

  Trinity, anything to stop this nightmare ride.

  Occasionally, prayers are answered.

  Something hard clipped Jame on the back of the head and she tumbled into merciful darkness.

  II

  Someone was groaning.

  Jame swallowed, dry-mouthed, and the sound stopped.

  Incautiously, she opened her eyes and winced as sunlight stabbed into them. Time had passed. The day must be well advanced. Before her lay a dappled glen carpeted with ferns, lined with slender, gleaming birch trees. She frowned, trying to remember something, anything. Shouts, dogs yelping, pain.

  That last was still with her. Her head throbbed with each heartbeat and her shoulders ached. She tried to straighten to ease the strain and discovered that her hands were bound tightly behind her, around a tree trunk.

  Footsteps.

  Someone sank onto his heels before her, bringing their eyes level.

  "So. Awake at last."

  She fumbled for a name to fit that narrow face with its mocking eyes. Simmel. A Randir.

  "Where . . ."

  "North of Tentir, lost in the folds of the hills. More than that, I can't tell you. The cursed land keeps shifting. Worse, that damn colt has crisscrossed it so often over the last few days that the lymers have run off in all directions and all but three of the Caineron after them." He laughed. "That house. So easily led."

  "You mean . . . misled."

  "That too. M'lord Gorbel insists, however, that we are on the true scent. Why? Because that Danior brat and his mangy mutt are still ahead of us. But it really isn't necessary to track the rathorn any farther." He brushed loose hair back from her face and let it slide through his fingers. "You see, now we have something he wants. You."

  Jame tried to answer, but the words stuck in her dry throat.

  "You'd like some water, I suppose," said the Randir, making no effort to get her any.

  Behind her back, she extended her claws. Her hands were so numb that she didn't know if she was breaking the rope that bound them, strand by strand, or merely shredding her own wrists. She hawked and spat froth, wishing a moment later that she hadn't turned her head to do so. The Randir's hand had dropped to finger her d'hen.

  "What a strange jacket," he murmured, spreading it open at the throat, regarding with detached interest the slight swell of breasts beneath her white shirt, the quick, secret pulse.

  When he raised his eyes, his pupils had expanded until only a rim of white remained. From the abyss within, whatever lived in the Randir Tempter's eyes regarded Jame with amused, indolent contempt.

  "So here you are, the last of Kinzi's female bloodline, the last Knorth lady."

  As he spoke, his voice shifted timber to a drowsy half-purr that made Jame's skin crawl.

  "And what do you think your great-grandmother, dear Kinzi, would make of you? Why, you're no lady at all, just a scrawny, mask-less hoyden playing soldier. Scarred, too. Damaged goods." His fingertips brushed her cheek, with a touch more of long, sharp nails than of his own short cut ones. He made a slight moue of disappointment. "I thought Kallystine had cut deeper, but never mind; even now she is paying for that mistake, and for many others."

  "Who are you?"

  "Even now you don't know. But then my name is legion, as are my forms and the eyes through which I see. Do you recognize these?"

  He opened his jacket at the throat. Around his neck was a string of human teeth,
the incisors chipped to sharp points. "The roots never stop bleeding," he said, more in his own voice than before, and bared his own sharpened teeth in a feral grin. "Ah, my family have been good servants to my lady, and my mother was one of the best. After you were done with her, my lady returned these to me, lest I forget. I will never forget, and neither should you."

  Then Jame remembered, with a shiver. Rawneth had used the soul of one of her randon captains, a former instructor at Tentir and guard at Gothregor, a woman whose name Jame had never been able to learn, to create a demon to hunt Kindrie. There under the shadow of the Witch's tower at Wilden, Bane had literally ripped open its seams with the Ivory Knife and the demon essence had spilled out onto the pavement as a sort of black sludge with a set of teeth—these teeth—afloat in it before they too sank.

  So that had been Simmel's mother and the Tempter's "cousin," caught in a situation not unlike Bane's own after the priest Ishtier had used his soul to create the Lower Town Monster—except that the Knife had presumably destroyed the randon's soul, but not necessarily her body. With Bane, the reverse might be true. Or not. Jame's head hurt enough as it was without trying to untangle such a riddle.

  The Randir put a finger to his lips. "Shhhh. You mustn't frighten her away."

  "Who?" Jame demanded, thoroughly confused as his voice changed again.

  "Why, Kinzi's pretty little Whinno-hir, although not so pretty now. I thought she was dead. No matter. Today we finish what my sweet Greshan began."

  A Caineron Highborn appeared behind him. "What, trifling with our bait? No fair, Simmel. We've earned that dubious pleasure, not you."

  The Randir flinched. His face, sallow before, went white with shock as his pupils suddenly contracted back to normal. He lurched to his feet and stumbled behind a bush, where they could hear him violently retching.

  "Odd people, the Randir," commented the Highborn.

  Jame recognized him from her first class with the Caineron, the one who had wanted to play games. Now he watched her with bright-eyed intensity, and licked his lips.

  "No," said Gorbel, behind him.

  "But, my lord, think how proud your father will be of you! Besides, afterward who could tell?"

  "I said, no." As the other withdrew, grumbling, Gorbel knelt and raised a leather water-bag to her lips.

  Jame drank, feeling as if she could drain a lake.

  "Enough," he said, and withdrew the bag.

  "Why?"

  "Once you helped the Ardeth Timmon save me from water," he said gruffly. "Now I save you with it. We're even."

  That wasn't what she had meant. The Caineron was right: after what she had done to him and to his pet advisor, Caldane would love anyone who brought her to grief; and even as his current lordan, Gorbel's position in that snake-pit of a house was none too secure.

  A shiver passed through the forest. Leaves rustled, trunks groaned, stirred by no breath of wind. Jame stiffened and tried to draw up her cramped legs.

  "I think," she said, as casually as possible, "that I may be sitting on a snake."

  "More likely a root. The rain last night loosened the soil. Arboreal drift, you know. Some trees prefer to spend the summer up-slope where it's cooler. Also, that damn willow is stirring things up."

  "It's here?"

  "Close enough, and on the move, dragging a chunk of mountain after it."

  He had risen and spoke in a preoccupied voice, listening. The woods quivered again.

  "Take cover. As for you," he looked down at Jame, expressionless, "wait."

  Left alone, unable to do otherwise, she waited.

  III

  Something was coming, something that glimmered between the white birch. The forest seemed to shift around it. Late spring flowers bloomed in the shadow of new leaves, stirred by a fresher breath than that of near midsummer. The Whinno-hir seemed to drift into the clearing like smoke, like mist. There at its edge she paused, shy as a doe with one delicate hoof poised in mid-air. Her coat was the color of fresh cream, her mane, tail, and stockings white, as were the dapples on her back and flanks. Large, dark eyes darted here and there, warily. Ears flicked. Then she snorted, tossed her head, and stomped.

  Jame caught a trace of what she had scented: the infinitely personal reek that clung to the Heir's Coat. But she had long since laid that aside.

  The hills fold space. Sometimes perhaps they also fold time. This wasn't the ragged creature that Jame had seen before, but what she had been. For a moment, it was forty-three years ago, and Greshan lurked behind her in ambush.

  "Lady!" Her voice came out as hollow as an echo in an empty room, straining to cross decades. "It's a trap. Run!"

  Twangggg . . .

  The note of the bow seemed by itself to flick a crimson line across that cream colored shoulder, so fast did the arrow fly.

  The Whinno-hir screamed, wheeled, and fled.

  Simmel leaped from the bushes to follow, already fitting another arrow to his bow, but Gorbel caught him by the jacket and swung him around, hard.

  "Never." Slap. "Hurt." Slap. "A Whinno-hir." Slap.

  He let go and the Randir fell.

  "I challenge you for this, lordling," he snarled through blood spilling from a split lip.

  "Do. Then you can explain to the Commandant why. Oh, Perimal."

  Half a dozen direhounds erupted from the undergrowth. They might not be scent trackers, but bloodshed almost under their noses whipped them to frenzy. Most charged after the wounded Whinno-hir. One made for the Randir. Gorbel caught the hound on his dagger as it leaped and flung it aside.

  "Damn waste of a good dog. Horses!" he roared, turning. "After them, you fools, before they catch her!"

  The three Caineron plunged away, two of them riding high in their stirrups, whooping, the third grim-faced with spurs clapped to his mount's sides.

  Simmel lurched to his feet and smeared blood across his white face with a shaking hand. His trembling fingers caught the necklace of teeth and broke it. He looked beyond sick, like an apple half-devoured from within by worms. His skin grew taut over bone and his eyes sank.

  "My lady honored me," he said, in a drying thread of a voice. "Then she left me. She left, with her will unfulfilled."

  He was Randir. His lady was Rawneth, the Witch of Wilden. Of course. That was who had spoken to her through him.

  "Your mistress has hag-ridden you," Jame said, to distract him, to gain time as she strained against her bonds. "I've seen this before, with a . . . a creature named Bane. Where is your shadow, Randir? What's happened to your soul?"

  His lips peeled back, teeth already falling from oozing gums, and went for Jame in a shamble. At last she wrenched her hands free. One came up with a rock in it. She smashed him on the side of the head and his skull crumpled like paper, empty. He fell, and in falling crumbled to dust and to a rain of bloody teeth within his cadet's uniform.

  IV

  Jame scrabbled off the remains of rope, noting that her claws had indeed picked apart one length, but they had also badly lacerated the opposite wrists. Her own blood, still flowing freely, had loosened the knots.

  A moment to tear strips of cloth from her shirt, another to bind up the bleeding wounds, and she was off, stumbling after the hunt. No tracker, she quickly went astray in the restless landscape. Somewhere hounds were baying and men shouting but, it seemed, in different directions. Perhaps Gorbel, that mighty hunter, had also gotten lost.

  The ground rippled with roots to trip her. Aspens quivered, reaching for the cool heights. Valley oaks dug in their gnarled toes. A grove of sumac scattered wildly in all directions. The whole Riverland felt unstable, shifting—from the crack on her head or blood loss or arboreal drift, Jame couldn't tell. Dense undergrowth, swaying trees, a sky rapidly clouding over—which way was north, which south? Lost. And under it all was the nightmare sense of needing to get somewhere, fearing that it was already too late.

  Shouts, crashes, a high, terrified whinny.

  Jame floundered through bushe
s and stopped, staring. She had caught up with the wrong hunt. Again.

  The Whinno-hir Bel-tairi plunged against the ropes that held her, jerking her captors back and forth. She was small and delicately made, but terror gave her strength. A violent lunge yanked a Kendar off his feet. She stood poised to trample him, but restrained herself, snorting, and he scrambled out of her way.

  "Hold her, damn you!"