The man who spoke bent over a fire, stirring it with a metal rod. There was something of Torisen in his features, something of Ganth in his voice, but both on the turn. Though still young and handsome, he looked like a man with a secret taste for spoiled meat, his own flesh just beginning to ripen on the bone.
Jame stood rooted, staring at him. This, without doubt, was her long-dead uncle Greshan.
"Having been on your travels," he said to the Whinno-hir in a conversational tone, "you may not know this, but your mistress Kinzi, my dear grandmother, has seen fit to stand between me and my chosen consort. She has even talked Father into sending my brother to seek the contract that should be mine. Dear little Gangoid. Sweet little Gangrene. As if he were man enough for Rawneth, or for anything else. I will have her, you know. I always get what I want. But your lady must be taught not to meddle, and you will bear that message to her."
He drew out the iron, which by now was glowing red hot, and spat on it. Fixed to its end were the three curved lines of the rathorn sigil, incandescent with heat.
With an effort, the mare controlled herself, although her wide, dark eyes still rolled white. The men gasped and fell back a step. Their ropes now hung loosely around a slender woman with long, white hair and a triangular face.
Please, she said. Please.
"Well, well, well." Greshan thrust the iron back into the heart of the fire and rose. "I've heard that your kind can shape-change, but never believed it. Now, is this form true, or an illusion? Shall we find out?"
He sauntered around her, stepping over the slackened ropes. "You aren't bad looking . . . for an animal. I've had worse. Perhaps we can handle this another way, if you please me."
As he came up behind her, his hand dropped to loosen his belt. In a flash, she was again equine, lashing out with small, sharp hooves. He fell over backwards with a yelp and scuttled away. Once clear, he rose, his face going from white to blotchy red with anger.
"You mangy, flea-bitten nag, look what you did!"
She might have cracked open his skull. Instead, she had ripped his coat and knocked him into a mud puddle.
He grabbed the hot iron and stalked toward her.
"Bring her down!"
Ropes tightened around her legs. She crashed over on her side.
"You. Hold her head."
A wooden-faced Kendar forced it to the ground and knelt on her neck, one hand brutally twisted in her mane. Greshan stepped forward and thrust the glowing iron into the Whinno-hir's face.
Her scream and the stench of burning hair shocked Jame from her trance. She sprang at Greshan, the rathorn battle-shriek tearing from her throat and her claws out. He saw her. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. So did the brand. But at the end of her lunge, he wasn't there. Face down in deep mould, she heard the fading echoes of shouts as the mare freed herself and then the receding beat of hooves. She was alone, the glen undisturbed by fire or struggle.
Did I dream it? She wondered, but then she felt a hard shape under her hand, under the loom of decades and drew it out. It was a rusted metal rod, its end bent into the sigil of a Knorth branding iron.
You can visit the past, Tirandys had once told her, speaking of the Master's House, but you can't change it.
"Damn, damn, damn!" said Jame.
However, this terrible story wasn't over yet.
Today, we finish what my sweet Greshan began.
The hounds were still on the trail of their prey and she was still lost. Jame pulled herself together and rose.
Water flows downhill. Find water.
V
Some time later, how long she hardly knew, Jame found herself stumbling up a slope. Something beyond the ridge above her was moving, something big.
Overhead, golden leaves undulated against a leaden sky. Supple withies swayed back until the trunk invisible beneath them groaned, then surged forward with a great swooshhhh.
From the crest, she looked down on the errant golden willow. It had just passed by, a shimmering hillock of narrow leaves on long, wand-like stems, fighting its way up the bed of a mountain stream. Beneath, its roots writhed in a serpentine node, cracking out like whips to anchor and pull, digging into the stream bed to push. Its trunk swayed back, then surged forward. As it did so, the chain fettering it rose dripping from the stream and the huge boulder to which it was attached ground forward another inch. Back and forth, back and forth.
This was the tree that, not so long ago, had carried Jame and her cousin Kindrie across the Silver, away from the Randir's ravening pack, not that it had probably been aware of them clinging like a pair of aphids to its boughs. Now here it was, all but trapped, wood for the axe.
A moment's dizziness, and suddenly she was slithering down the steep slope, into the stream. Half obstructed as it was below by the boulder, it had risen far above its natural bed. Moreover, the willow's roots had churned it to the consistence of thick oatmeal lumpy with stones and apparently bottomless.
Flailing about, she managed to grab the overhanging branch of a tree that had survived the willow's passing. Whether she clawed her way out or the tree pulled her up, Jame had no idea. As she lay panting on the bank among its hunched roots (why did she have the impression that they had pulled themselves out of the willow's way?), a hoarse, hollow voice spoke above her, sounding not altogether pleased:
"You again, girl. I might have known."
Jame looked up.
The tree's trunk was a knobby, thick affair, easily twice as wide around as her arms could have reached. Shaggy bark clung to its bulges like an ill-fitting dress. Some eight feet up was a broad burl that suggested a contorted face, with a large hole where a major branch had long since broken off. The whole looked not unlike a natural imu.
"Earth Wife? Mother Ragga?"
"G'ah," said the voice, as if clearing its throat, and the hole spat out a shower of leave mold mixed with old bird bones, twigs, and one very angry squirrel. "Step-mother to you, if that. Get off my feet. Your blood is poison."
Jame let her head droop. The rag around her wrist was dripping red. ". . . could have told you that," she muttered, trying to tighten it with teeth and her free hand. ". . .'s hardly a secret anymore."
"Get up," said the hollow voice as the squirrel furiously scolded them both from a nearby branch. "G'aaah up! They have her."
Then Jame heard the Whinno-hir's despairing cry. Over it soared the rathorn's scream, mingling with the mad howl of the direhounds.
VI
Jame clawed her way to her feet, bark shredding under her nails. The sounds were surprisingly close. Trinity, had they all been running in circles? She fought her way down stream through brambles, past the boulder, up the far slope. The ridge above was crowned with throttle-berries and under them ran the narrow paths of wild things. Clothed this time, but otherwise as wet and slippery with mud as she had been at the falls, Jame slithered between the roots until she could see into the hollow beyond.
On the far side, the Whinno-hir huddled, a pale blur, against the trunk of a giant fir. Bare, lower branches thrust out around her like so many brittle arms seeking to protect a ghost.
The rathorn colt also stood between her and the hounds. Three lay dead and mangled at his feet. A fourth dragged itself in circles, snapping furiously at its own useless hindquarters. The last two, one on each side, darted back and forth, trying to draw their quarry off balance.
The colt reared up, presenting his horned mask, greaves, and ivory sheathed belly. Head on, only his hind legs were vulnerable. Hackles rattled and rose, lifting the lower half of his mane, a spiky wave down his spine, and his tail. As the hounds lunged, he pivoted on his hocks and struck at them, fangs snapping, with the whip-crack speed of a snake. One came too close, and was impaled on the twin horns. As the colt flung him off, his mate lunged for the rathorn's throat, broke his teeth on the ivory armor, and went down with a shriek under sharp hooves.
The hound with the broken back had stopped circling. It snarled as the rathorn loomed over it. The h
ooves drove down again in a precise blow to the skull that shattered it.
Sudden silence.
There in the midst of carnage stood the rathorn like some fabulous cross between a dragon and a warhorse, all white except for his own blood and that of the hounds. The latter ran down the curved horns into grooves in the ivory mask, between the glittering red eyes, down to the mouth where it was caught by the flick of a pink tongue between white fangs.
Then he gave himself a very equine shake that set his mane flying and uttered a loud snort of satisfaction.
Jame could feel his eyes fix on her. He snorted again: "Huuh!"
She crawled out from under the bushes and stood, swaying slightly. "All right. You can see me and I can see you. What next?"
Below, undergrowth crackled and parted for Gorbel, closely followed by his two men. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, not unlike the rathorn's, and swung down from his mount, a wickedly sharp boar spear in hand. His companions kept to their saddles, but with difficulty: all three horses had caught the rathorn's disturbing scent. The colt lowered his bloody horns at them and snarled. They backed, wild-eyed, barely under control.
The Caineron took up a stance, perhaps by accident, between Jame and the ivory-clad beast. One of his own hounds lay disemboweled at his feet. Jame didn't like the odds for either man or beast. She slid down through the bracken to his Gorbel's side and touched his sleeve. "Please. Don't."
He shot her a look askance, taking in her filthy condition. "Been playing in the mud again, have you? Father would love to see you now."
"Well, I've seen him turning handle over spout in mid-air, filling his pants. Who d'you think is ahead so far?"
The sound he made might almost have been a laugh.
Then both horns and spear swung around to cover the opposite side of the hollow. Someone or thing was approaching. A snuffle, a sneeze, and the Molocar Torvo shambled panting into the clearing, followed by his master Tarn.
Both were utterly disheveled and matted with burrs. One of the Caineron snickered. Gorbel looked exasperated. When Tarn saw the rathorn, however, his face lit up with delight.
"See?" he demanded of them all. "See? I don't know what trail you lot followed to get here, but we came by the true one, every step of the way." He dropped to his knees and threw his arms the enormous, shaggy hound. "Good boy, Torvie, good boy!"
Torvo licked his master's face and slowly collapsed in the boy's embrace.
Tarn shook him. "Torvie, you idiot, this is no time for a nap. There's the rathorn. There! We still have to take it." The hound breathed in long, rasping sighs, with a rattle at the end of each, his half open eye-lids fluttered. "Torvie!"
Everyone was watching now, transfixed.
"Torvie, wake up! You're not going to die. No, no . . ."
The rathorn colt began to quiver. His hackles had fallen and he seemed somehow smaller than he had been, more vulnerable. His own grief had scabbed over, Jame realized, but never healed, like an abscess on the soul. What he saw now was not a boy and a dying hound but himself in the last moments of his dam's life, frantic that she not leave him, knowing that she must, but not yet, please, not yet.
The hound's breath rattled and stopped.
For a moment, no one breathed.
Then the rathorn screamed.
His grief and despair blasted the clearing, withering every leaf, killing every blade of grass. Jame fell to her knees, hands over her ears, but the sound was in her heart, in her soul, ripping open old scars.
She was with her first teacher and nurse, Winter, as Kin-Slayer in her father's hands sheared the Kendar woman nearly in two.
She was on the edge of the Escarpment, watching her mother plummet into the abyss.
She was crouching beside the body of the man who had taught her honor and given her love under the eaves of darkness.
Good-bye, Tirandys, Senethari. Good-bye.
A hand on her shoulder . . . Torisen? No. Gorbel.
"B-but I never cry," she told him, feeling tears track down her muddy face.
"Neither do I," he said, and perfunctorily wiped a streaming nose on his sleeve.
Somewhere beyond her own grief, she had glimpsed a fat man beating a woman over and over, despite her screams, until she lay still on the floor in a pool of blood that inched toward a child's bed.
Tarn bent over Torvo, sobbing. "It's my fault! It's all my fault!"
Otherwise, the clearing was empty.
Jame glanced toward where the Caineron had been.
"They ran away," said Gorbel flatly. "I might have too, if I'd been on horseback."
"The rathorn?"
Then they heard him shriek, not far away. He sounded terrified. Gorbel grabbed his spear and plunged off in the direction of the sound, with Jame hard on his heels.
VII
They came to the churning stream, the boulder, and the willow. The latter two had progressed perhaps a foot since Jame had last seen it, but where was the rathorn?
The willow swung back and surged ahead, its leaves flowing molten gold. The chain rose dripping, and there was the colt, brought up with it. In his headlong flight, he had plunged into the quagmire and somehow gotten his lesser horn wedged into a link of the chain.
"Oh, shit," said Jame.
The colt snorted out mud, wheezed, and began feebly to struggle. The willow swung back and the chain sank again, dragging him down with it.
"Damn," said Gorbel. "There goes my trophy."
"Quit on me now and I'll hand you something you'll be even sorrier to lose. Come on."
Seen close up, the boulder really did look like a dislodged chunk of mountain. A very big chunk. With muddy water boiling around it. Jame took a running jump and for a moment hung from its slick rock-face by her nails. The roar of the water echoed in her head. Then she forced the world back into focus and clawed her way up. Luckily, the boulder was full of cracks and niches. When she reached the top, she looked back down to see Gorbel trying to follow her, still stubbornly clutching his boar spear. She grabbed its shaft below the head and braced herself. He climbed up hand over hand and collapsed gasping beside her.
"This . . . is . . . insane."
"But interesting. Look."
The willow was shedding wands. As they floated down, they grew thread-like roots and clustered around the rock's base, busily prying into its fractures. The cap of each rootlet excreted an acid that allowed both the saplings and their parent tree to anchor themselves with startling speed, years of erosion accomplished in minutes. Still, that might not be fast enough.
"Can you use that pig-sticker to pry this open?" she asked, shouting to make herself heard.
He examined the link that hooked the chain's ends together. "I might. Why?"
"Just do it, once I reach the colt."
He caught her arm. "Again, why?"
"Because I killed his dam."
Rathorn ivory is the second hardest substance on Rathillien, and it never stops growing. If they live long enough—and some scrollsmen argue that, like the Whinno-hir, they are potentially immortal—their armor eventually encases them in a living tomb.
The mare had been staggering under its weight, breathing in hissing gasps through bared fangs because the nasal pits of her mask had grown shut, as had one eye hole. He had walked beside her, crying, now a yearling foal, now a slender, white-haired boy with red, red eyes: No, you're not going to die! No, no . . .
"You bagged a rathorn?" Gorbel's goggle eyes were suddenly those of a child, wide with wonder. "How?" he demanded eagerly. "With what weapon?"
"There isn't time. . ."
"Tell me, and I'll help."
"With a knife."
If you kill me, my child will kill you.
"Through the eye."
Kill me.
"At extremely close quarters."
The chain was rising again, and the rathorn with it. Gorbel still held Jame's arm, for a moment supporting her as she sagged. He peered at her face, white under its muddy ma
sk, but if the cloth around her wrist was more red than brown, he didn't notice.
"Are you all right?"
I'm bleeding to death, Jame thought with odd detachment. Well, either I have enough blood left in me to do this or I don't.
"Besides," she said out loud, "I owe the tree too."
He was surprised into letting her go, and she stepped out onto the taut chain. The colt's weakening struggles barely caused a tremor, but at least he was still alive. The links were slick and knobby underfoot (who brings a chain on a hunt? They must have sent to Restormir or Wilden for it), but it was at least as thick as the rope that had stretched across the Great Hall.
To Ride a Rathorn Page 27