To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  Just then, Jorin trotted into the room and jumped up onto the cot. Jame yelped as his weight landed on her bandaged arm. Marc scooped up the ounce and rolled him over between them, upside-down.

  "Hello, kitten," he said, rubbing the exposed, furry stomach. Jorin stretched, back arching, paws in the air, and began to purr.

  "Where did you spring from?" Jame asked the Kendar over the cat's rumble.

  "Oh, Gothregor. Everyone is back, except for those still attached to the Southern Host or elsewhere. Your lord brother will need every hand he can get for the haying, come midsummer."

  Jame tried to imagine the seven foot tall Kendar wielding a scythe instead of his usual two-edged war axe. "He's got you out cutting the grass?"

  "Nothing wrong with working the land, lass. I'll take that any day over a battlefield, where naught grows but bones from the earth after the first frost. Mind you, they say blood is a good fertilizer, but not one I'd use by choice."

  Marc had never cared much for fighting, come to that. In battle, he usually feigned a berserker fit and scared the enemy into head-long flight. She had seen him once empty a hostile tavern the same way, with brigands flying through the doors, out the windows, and even up the chimney.

  "Mostly, though," he said, "I've been seeing what can be done to put that big stained glass window back together. You know, the one facing east in the old keep, the map of Rathillien. A gorgeous thing. Somehow, though, it got smashed to pieces."

  "Er . . . I'm afraid that was me. At the time, I had a pack of shadow assassins after me and used a rune to blow away their souls. Unfortunately, the window blew out too. So did a lot of death banners from the lower hall. Sorry."

  There was a short pause, followed by a resigned sigh. "Ah well. I should have guessed as much. That's all right then, as long as it was in a good cause."

  She started to turn to look at him, but stopped herself, in case he wasn't there after all. If this was a dream, she didn't want to wake.

  "Are you teasing me?"

  "Not at all. The window can be replaced. I hope. You can't. Besides, I enjoy the work."

  He would, thought Jame, a bit envious given her own lack of talent. Marc had always had an artistic bent but precious little chance to develop it.

  "Here."

  He dropped something smooth and cool into her hand.

  "We were melting down some salvaged shards of red glass—did you know the color comes in part from real gold?—when your lord brother nicked a finger and a drop of his blood fell into the mix. The result was . . . interesting."

  Jame held the fragment up to the moon. Even such faint, silvery light woke a ruby glow in the heart of the glass. It seemed to her that she held something alive, but with a sort of life beyond her experience or comprehension.

  "I'd like to experiment with other colors," said the big Kendar wistfully. "It's awkward, though, asking the Highlord of the Kencyrath to bleed on request."

  Jame braced herself. She had to know. "I suppose," she said carefully, "that Tori has offered you a place in his—that is, in our house."

  He shifted, to muffled protests both from cot and cat. "He did, yes. I declined the honor."

  "But . . . why? Ancestors know, you've earned it."

  "Oh," he said, trying to sound casual, "I thought I'd wait a bit, just to see what else might come along."

  Jame nearly sat up, but the effort made her head spin.

  "Marc," she said urgently, clutching his jacket, "you can't count on me ever having an establishment of my own, much less being allowed officially to bind Kendar to me. Think! Is Tori likely to give me that much power?"

  "He made you his lordan, lass."

  "Yes, but that was only to buy time. He can pitch me back into the Women's Halls whenever he wants, assuming the matriarchs don't toss me out again. Why, he hasn't even come to see if I've managed to get myself killed yet."

  "Oh, he came." Marc chuckled. "You called him 'Daddy's boy' and told him to go away."

  "Oh," said Jame blankly. "Oh dear. Wait a moment. How long have I been unconscious?"

  "More than a week. Your cousin Kindrie went into the soulscape to see what was keeping you, and came back with two black eyes. He said something about being trampled by a rage of rathorns."

  For the first time since waking, Jame remembered the rathorn colt. Trinity, where was he? It struck her now that she hadn't felt his presence since they had ran in different directions to escape the haunt stallion. Surely she would know if he was dead . . . wouldn't she? What if she had left him trapped in the soulscape?

  "I have to go back," she said, struggling to free herself from Marc's arms. "He won't know how to get out. He'll wander there, lost, until he dies."

  "Gently, gently. Who will?"

  "The colt. Marc, I said I'd done something awful, and I have. I've blood-bound a young rathorn."

  He didn't push her away, but she felt his breath catch. "I didn't know you were a binder," he said, with a careful lack of emphasis. "Still, I suppose it's nothing you can help. Why bind a rathorn, though, of all creatures?"

  "It wasn't intentional. He bit me."

  "Ah. Well, there's no accounting for taste."

  Jame felt a surge of relief. "Now you're laughing at me." If he could accept this, the worst thing she knew about herself, perhaps their friendship would survive after all.

  But that didn't help the colt.

  "I brought someone to meet you," said Marc, deliberately changing the subject.

  She felt him move, then heard a flint rasp. The sudden flare of light momentarily blinded her. When her eyes cleared, she saw a child's wisp of a shadow cast on the far wall. Marc had set a lit candle down behind a lumpy saddle-bag on the table.

  "This is my sister, Willow. Willow, meet my Lady Jamethiel. If you're good, she may let you call her Jame."

  "I would be honored," said Jame, a little shaken, as the shadow sketched a wary salute.

  She knew, of course, that her brother had found the child's bones at Kithorn the previous autumn and for some reason had carried them all the way south to the battle at the Cataracts. A little girl, trapped in death for decades under the ruins of her house . . . there she had hidden while her family was slaughtered above her, and there she had starved to death. But blood and bone trap the soul until fire sets it free, so here she still was.

  Jorin's head popped up. He wriggled free, hopped down, and bounced at the shadow, which recoiled from him.

  "He's frightening her," said Jame sharply.

  "Give them a moment. Ah, that's my girl."

  Cat and shadow had begun to chase each other back and forth, up and down the wall, while Marc moved the candle to give the game more scope.

  "I keep meaning to give her to the pyre." He sighed. "After losing her once, though, it's hard to let go again."

  In his tone, Jame heard the boy that he had been, who had lost everything he had ever loved. The old ache had never really healed, nor the loneliness gone away except, perhaps, for a time when two unlikely friends had shared a loft in Tai-tastigon.

  "D'you suppose," he asked, "that it hurts her to stay like this?"

  "I don't think so," said Jame, watching ounce and shadow child play, "but what do I know? You should ask Ashe."

  He took a deep breath. "So I will. Until then, I'll hold on to her a bit longer, just to see what else might come along."

  Neither spoke after that. Jame settled back against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

  II

  Some time later she woke, or thought that she did.

  The room had tarnished to a kind of thick, half light that belonged neither to day nor to night and cast no shadows but two. One was her own. The other sat cross-legged on a blanket, watching her, or so she assumed. It had a child's shape and some hint of shadowy features, but she could see through it to the wall beyond, to shelves thick with dust, lined with broken jars.

  "This is a dream, isn't it?" she asked the silent watcher. "You're Willow, and this is where
my brother found you, in the still room at Kithorn, under the charred hall."

  No answer. Jame gathered herself to rise, but hesitated as the other drew back. "You're afraid of me. Why?"

  Then she saw that her hands were tipped with six inch long ivory claws that rasped on the floor and would not retract. Her clothes had also changed to the close-fitting costume of a Senetha dancer with its oddly placed slashes. There were more of them than she remembered. Reaper of souls. Who had called her that? Dancer's daughter. She felt her Shanir nature stir, dark, dangerous, and seductive.

  "Is this what you see in me? Is this what you fear . . . for yourself? No. For your brother."

  She settled carefully back against the wall.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take your place in his life. When Marc and I first met, I'd lost my family too. I was . . . almost feral. You know," she added, reminding herself that, after all, this was only a child, "like a kitten that's grown up wild and never learned how to purr."

  She frowned at her over-grown claws and clicked them together irritably. "Even for a dream, this is ridiculous. Maybe I should take up knitting. Knit one, purl two . . . but I'd only end up making cats' cradles and tying my hands together. I can't even pick my nose with these things without picking my brain, and there's little enough of that to begin with."

  The shadow child uttered no sound, but something about her suggested a suppressed giggle.

  Good, thought Jame, relaxing slightly, and continued, as much now to herself as to the child.

  "It's hard to be Kencyr, much less a Highborn Shanir. Honor as we practice it is a cold, hard thing. It breaks some people. It turns others into monsters. I could easily be as bad as you fear I am . . . no, much worse . . . if I hadn't been shown kindness. First there were the Kendar at my home keep, then Tirandys, then Marc, and I love them all for it. I especially love your brother for reminding me what decency is, simply by being himself. I would rather die than hurt him. My word on it."

  More tension left the small, shadowy figure, but a question lingered.

  "Why can't I give him what he needs most, a home? Because I don't have one myself and perhaps never will." Jame thrust fingers into her loose hair in an exasperation which grew when her claws became entangled. She tugged, nearly poked herself in the eye, and swore in a language hopefully unknown to a child from remote Kithorn.

  "So far, by accident, I've bound a half-bred Southron and a rathorn colt out for my blood (which he got, ancestors help him). Oh, and let's not forget my dear half-brother Bane, who flays little boys alive for sport, or used to. Maybe I don't deserve anyone better. The point is, though, not what they owe me but what I owe them, and so far as a bounden Highborn I've done a rotten job all around. I'm not going to promise Marc anything I can't give him. He deserves better than that."

  Now, Jame thought, comes the hard part. She leaned forward, looking as serious as she could with both hands still tangled in her hair as if she was trying to tear it out by the roots.

  "Willow, I need your help. This is a dream, part of the dreamscape. I need to go deeper, into the soulscape. I've gotten there before accidentally (and by now you probably think that 'Accident' is my middle name), but I don't know how to do it deliberately. You helped Kindrie to enter my brother's soul-image last winter on the march south, when he fell asleep and couldn't wake up. Will you help me now? Please. The colt is still trapped there. He's bound to me, however reluctantly, so I have to rescue him if I can, at the very least. Tirandys and the Kendar taught me that."

  She didn't know how Willow would respond, or even if she understood. After all, this was a child, and one long dead at that.

  Time stretched on and on in silence, until it lost all meaning. Dust drifted down. Flesh began to melt. The dancing costume now hung on wasted limbs and her hands had fallen to her lap, each still loosely gripping a mass of black hair with bits of dried scalp attached to it. Jame felt, dimly, that this should concern her, and there was a niggling sense of something else important, forgotten; but it was too much trouble to remember. All she wanted was to lie down and to sleep forever, but she was cold, so cold. Crawl across the floor through thick dust, lift the edge of the blanket . . . but someone was already under it, waiting, with eye sockets full of lonely shadow.

  Those who receive kindness owe kindness in return.

  Jame crept under the blanket and took the small bones in arms hardly less clothed in flesh. Dust fell. And silence. And the long night of the dead without a dawn.

  III

  Then someone spoke her name, or rather that hated corruption of it: "Jameth." And again, "Jameth."

  The voice was muffled, but it was also clearly angry.

  Jame stirred uneasily. She would rather sleep on and on, with no worries except perhaps that her teeth would eventually fall out, like her hair.

  Wait a minute. That had been a dream, hadn't it? Trinity, she hoped so. Yes, she still had a full if rather tangled head of hair, and no clothes.

  That last was changing, though. She felt her name draw her on, into a web of unseen thread. Coarse strands touched her, lightly at first, then with more persistence, snaring, entangling, thickening. And they stank. It was like being pressed face-first into dank, moldy cloth. Just as she was about to panic, she found herself on the other side, in a circular room. Like the death banner hall at Gothregor, it was dark and windowless, with an oppressively low ceiling. Torches flared at intervals around the stone walls. Between them hung dark tapestries full of lurking shadows that seemed furtively to shift as if aware of her presence. Opposite, however, fire light flickered on a familiar, gentle face.

  Jame had never actually met her cousin Aerulan. After all, it was more than forty years since the massacre that had claimed all the Knorth ladies but one, the child Tieri, whom Aerulan had died protecting. However, over the past, dismal winter confined in the Women's Halls at Gothregor, wearing her dead cousin's clothes because Tori hadn't thought to provide her with anything more suitable, she had often visited Aerulan's banner where it had hung among the ranks of her family's dead—that is, until that last night when the Tishooo had blown them all out the window.

  Now here they both were again, except . . . except it appeared to be Aerulan herself standing there, smiling back at her.

  Blink. Look again.

  While the other's face had the shape and fullness of life, it was marked by the fine weave of death, and its smile was a mere tug of stitches. Nonetheless, Aerulan's soul gazed out through warp and woof, clear-eyed and wryly amused.

  So here we are again, cousin.

  Was this another dream, or had she indeed reached the soulscape? If the latter, whose voice had drawn her and where was she now?

  The answer came in the click of boot-heels and the jangle of heavy spurs, both muffled by the stone and thick cloth of the walls.

  Brenwyr stalked past in a swirl of her divided riding skirt, arms folded tightly across her chest as if holding herself together. No longer smiling, Aerulan watched her pass. As the dead girl turned her head, Jame saw that it had no back except the concave reverse of her face, rough with tied off threads.

  The Brandan Matriarch seemed oblivious to them both. What comfort could she take in that which she could not see, and who could see anything through an eyeless seeker's mask? In the Women's Halls, Jame had sometimes been forced to wear one herself as punishment for her restless wanderings. More commonly, though, the mask was used in a child's game. The girl wearing it lost not only her sight but her identity until she managed to catch another player. Then she passed on the mask and assumed the new seeker's name. In the end, everyone was someone else except for the girl left wearing the mask, who became no one, nameless and lost. Sometimes, she wore it for days until an older girl took pity on her and removed it.

  But who could free a matriarch blinded by her own despair?

  "What can I do? What can I do?" Brenwyr was muttering to herself in a rant as circular and obsessive as her pacing. "We had a contract, dammit! Y
ou were to have been mine forever. But then you died and the Gray Lord went into exile, and now his son tells my brother to forget the price. Adiraina says that he's only a man, that he doesn't understand, that he means to be kind. Ha! How can I keep you, and yet how can I bear to lose you again? This will destroy me. Worse, what if it drives me to destroy others?"

  The shadows stirred in the tapestries as she passed, creeping forward, gaining definition. Her demons. Her memories.

  Here stood a child grotesque in her brother's over-sized clothes, a knife in one hand, a hacked off hank of long, black hair dangling from the other. Every line of her unhappy face said, It didn't work. I still hate myself.