This sheltered place would have been a much better campsite than the one she had chosen, Jame thought, and then saw that someone had had the same idea. Several yards from the waterfall, a shallow cave opened into the escarpment. Tucked under the cliff's over-hang was a stone-lined fire-pit, with embers still smoldering in a deep bed of white ash. More rocks formed a semi-circle outside. As Jame cautiously stepped between them toward the pit, her altered perspective suddenly changed them from random heaps to the crude semblance of human forms. One looked vaguely like a figure half-reclining, small boulders for the extended body, a pile of flat rocks for the torso, a round rock for a head, by nature even given the hint of a face. Imagination turned three more piles into seated men.
As Jame backed away from the cave, something made her look up. On top of the escarpment, on the lip of the falls, stood a man, looking down at her. She only saw him for a moment, long enough to note the hood that concealed most of his face and his hunting leathers, worn to a mottled green almost invisible against the undergrowth. She had barely drawn breath to hail him when he melted back into a clump of shrubs.
Jame scrambled up a spill of rocks to the top of the falls. By the time she got there, however, the stranger was gone, leaving not a foot-print, not a broken leaf, only a flight of azure-winged jewel-jaws spiraling up through the trees. If she hadn't stumbled across his campsite below, she would have thought that she had imagined him. Even so . . .
Turning, Jame looked back the way that she had come. From this height, she had a view over the host trees and pine spinney, down to the meadow where the chestnut gelding was rolling on his back, feathered hooves kicking the sky. For him, this must be paradise. Neither the rathorn nor the Whinno-hir were in sight, although a twinge in the bond that they now shared told her that the colt at least had not gone far. Beyond the trees at the meadow's foot there seemed to be a gap, and beyond that a high bluff crowned with more trees. She could hear the distant, hollow roar of water running between rocky walls. Could that be the Silver? Sunlight glinted on it farther upstream where it converged with another, smaller torrent. Between their fork rose the lower reaches of the northern Snowthorns, dismissed in the local parlance as "hills." Higher, more jagged mountains loomed beyond, including one at some distance whose heights were wreathed with smoke.
Wonderful, thought Jame. Earthquakes, weirdingstroms, floods, and now maybe a volcano.
She was about to descend when something across the river on top of the opposite cliff caught her attention. Although nearly masked with leaves, it looked like the remains of a curtain wall, enclosing a shattered tower. She had never seen it from this angle before, but it looked alarmingly like the ruins of Kithorn—which made no sense whatsoever. The nearest keep on the east bank to the north of Tentir was Mount Alban, home to the Scrollsmen's' College, but that would place her within spitting distance of the west bank Jaran fortress, Valantir, of which there was no sign.
Then she remembered that the Riverland fortifications had originally come in pairs, built by the ancient kingdoms of Bashti and Hathir to glare at each other across the Silver. Since then, a number had disappeared altogether, their stones dismantled to rebuild the nearest Kencyr keep. There must once have been at least a tower opposite Tentir. Perhaps this was its ruin, although that would place her much closer to the college than she had thought. Still, better that than opposite Kithorn, on Merikit land, only days from the summer solstice.
"Either way," she said to Jorin as they started back down toward their camp, "there's not much we can do about it short of running like hell, and I can't go anywhere until I've settled matters with that blasted rathorn."
Jorin ignored her in favor of a glittering, golden beetle that whirred past his nose. With a snap he ate it, and then was noisily sick. It had tasted awful. That night neither he nor Jame had any desire for food.
Perhaps it was the rumble of her empty stomach that roused Jame sometime later. It can't be very late, though, she thought, only half awake, looking up at a swollen gibbous moon that would soon be full. Just in time for the solstice. Odd. On Rathillien, was there some correlation between a full moon and the longest day? Will have to ask Kirien or Index, she thought drowsily.
Before she could sink back into sleep, however, some slight change in the stream's chuckle made her blink.
A man was bathing in it. Jame thought at first that it was Kindrie, but only because of the long white hair—too long, surely, unbound, waist-length, clinging to the stranger's shoulders and back. Moonlight turned his whole body into gleaming alabaster except where blue shadows traced wiry muscles and the threads of old scars. He scooped up water and dashed it in his face. It ran down, gleaming, over the hard lines of his chest, stomach, and loins.
Since when do I dream of naked men? Jame thought. All right. Since Timmon. And Tori. But who is this? Trinity, I'm not dreaming . . . am I?
The stranger waded ashore. He made hardly a sound on the pebbly bank, nor as he dried himself with wisps of grass, nor as he slipped back into his well-worn hunting leathers.
Glow-bugs traced his movements. He played with them, sculpting their flight with his white hands, expanding his gestures into wide, glowing sweeps. They danced with him, and he with them, wind-blowing kantirs in a moon-silvered field. At times, in flight, his feet barely touched the bending grass. So her mother the Dream-weaver had danced, free of earth, free of pain or regret, free as the wind blows. Jame longed to join him, to shed all that weighed her down—her past, her responsibilities, herself—but dull flesh bound her, helpless. Instead, she watched until the moon set and sleep took her into dreams of aching grace.
III
In the morning, a strange mare grazed beside Chumley in the field. Jame didn't see her at first, so perfectly did she blend with the play of sun and shadow on the grass. Even then, Jame didn't at first believe her eyes. Of the many strange things she had encountered in her life, a green horse ranked near the top. The mare greeted her with a friendly whicker, long, moss green tail swishing at flies. On closer inspection, Jame saw that although her eyes were the color of new leaves, her coat was actually pearl gray, subtly stained in all the shades of leaf and lichen, wood and stone. In fact, thought Jame, tracing the swoop of a line down her shoulder—tawny gold tinged with a rosy haze the color of ripening wheat—she was beautiful, a true work of art, and also excellently camouflaged.
Around her neck was a leather band. Curious, Jame slid a finger under it. Immediately, blood began to trickle down the mare's neck from a small, neat hole in her throat. It stopped as soon as Jame hastily released the band, which she now saw had a small plug on its inner surface. The mare had raised her head with a look of mild inquiry, but dropped it again to graze when she saw that nothing more was required of her.
How very odd. A campsite with stone figures for company, a naked man bathing, and now this. It seemed that she had encroached on someone's territory, but whose?
She was gnawing a wedge of rock-hard bread, hoping she wasn't about to break another tooth, when the rathorn returned, again accompanied by Bel. He swerved to inspect the newcomer, who squealed and kicked him in the face when he got too close. Jame winced, feeling his head ring inside its ivory mask. He retreated, then began to prance back and forth, slashing at weeds, deliberately ignoring both Jame and the strange mare.
Now that he wasn't trying to kill her, she had a chance to observe him more closely. For all his fluid stride and proudly cocked head, his white coat was dull and staring, his mane and tail tangled into elf-locks. As for his ribs, she could count them as easily as she could her own.
Despite that, he was no fool. She sensed that he understood as well as she did that they were now bound together, and had as little idea how to handle the situation. Of course, he was furious and resentful. If the situation had been reversed, she would have been tearing out her hair—or better yet, his. To be in the power of one's worst enemy . . . how did one live with that? How had she, during all those lost years in Perimal Darkl
ing? But then at some fundamental level she had still been free, still been herself, thanks to Tirandys' subtle distortion of his master's orders. That would have ended in Gerridon's beribboned bed, where she would have taken her mother's place in more ways than one. Instead, someone (Bender?) had handed her a knife and she had reclaimed her life with its sharp edge.
This bond would be much harder to sever than the Master's wrist. If the old songs were right, it bound her and the rathorn together to death and perhaps beyond. Even more surely, she knew that if she pushed the colt too hard against his will, he would lash back as best he could, even to his own destruction. This had to be subtle. A courtship. Even a seduction.
Still, things weren't as bad as they had been. Their experiences together in the soulscape, while terrifying, had taken some of the edge off his anger at her. After all, they had arguably saved each other from the haunt stallion Iron-jaw and she had gone back for him, even if the Earth Wife's protection had turned out to make that unnecessary.
More important, he now had the company of the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi. As different as they were in many respects—not least in that she was prey and he a predator—both were herd animals. Much of his previous despair and incipient madness had been rooted in his isolation after his mother's death at Jame's hand. Captain Hawthorn had called the colt a rogue, a death's-head, adding that no rage would let him join it. Jame wondered if he had tried and been repulsed. That long, half-healed scar down his side above the protective armor suggested the work of another rathorn stallion's nasal tusk. For that matter, maybe he had been lurking around the Knorth horses not in search of meat but of companionship. After all, he hadn't attacked any of them. Poor boy.
Boy. When they had first met, she had judged him to be either a weanling or a yearling, but what did she know? Her only real experience with horses before that had been with her father's war-horse Iron Jaw and the monster that he had become.
How old was the rathorn colt now? Less than two years, at a guess, and, for all his inches, not yet full grown. She wondered at what age it would be safe to ride him, assuming they got that far without killing each other. Working in the stable, she had overheard the horse-master speak of a two-year-old filly whose knees had finally closed, whatever that meant beyond that she was now old enough to work. It made sense after all that a foal couldn't bear the weight of a rider before it was strong enough.
Then again, this was a rathorn, not a horse. As far as Jame knew, no one had ever ridden one before, at any age, or at least not lived to brag of it. "To ride a rathorn" was madness—wasn't it? Still, she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like in real life, not just in a dream of the soulscape.
She also wondered what the colt's name was. No doubt he had one, and it would be impertinent of her to try to saddle him with another.
"Snowfire?" she said experimentally, and he turned to glare at her down his long, gleaming nose. "Precious? All right, all right. You'll tell me when you're ready."
By now, it was afternoon.
Jame took a handful of oats from her knapsack and went to lay on her back in the long grass. Stems tickled her ears and insects crawled over her outflung arms. The sun beat on her face, turning her shut eyelids into red-veined curtains. Her skin began to glow. She remembered with unease that there were now only four days until the longest of the year, the summer solstice, but pushed the thought away.
She was almost asleep when she heard the cautious approach of hooves, then teeth tearing nearby grass. Through narrowed lids, she saw the Whinno-hir.
"I'm sorry I frightened you," she murmured, barely moving her lips. The sound of grazing stopped, but while the hooves shifted uneasily, they didn't move away. "What my uncle did to you was unforgivable, and I may turn out to be more like him than like my great-grandmother Kinzi. Truly, though, I'm trying not to. Will you help me, for her sake? Can we at least start over?"
She let her fingers uncurl. After a long moment, velvet lips brushed her palm to scoop up the grain.
IV
That night, Jame woke to Jorin's low growl and lay still, holding him, her senses at full stretch. The crickets and night birds had fallen silent. She thought she had heard . . . no, smelled . . . something too, before she was fully awake, something that had darkened her last dreams with the shades of smoldering nightmare. Burnt fur. That was it.
She scanned the meadow and trees or what she could see of them, which was virtually nothing. The moon had long since set, and a haze shrouded the stars. No wind stirred the grass. Even the stream seemed oddly muted. She rose to add more wood to her campfire, moving slowly, deliberately.
Show no fear.
Why had that thought suddenly leaped into her mind?
Because he can smell fear, and guilt.
Out in the darkness, Chumley squealed and bolted, ponderous hooves thudding away.
Shouldn't have feigned lameness. Bet you're sorry now.
A swift rush through the grass and Bel-tairi appeared on the edge of the firelight. There she stood, poised for further flight with one fore-hoof raised, looking back over her shoulder into the darkness. Then, still looking back, she edged sideways in so close to the fire that she trod on its outer branches and jumped as they snapped.
A moment later, the rathorn colt joined her, taking the outer position of guard. Both ignored Jame, but through the colt's senses as well as through Jorin's she now heard the slow tread of great paws and smelled, much stronger than before, that peculiar, acrid stench of burnt hair. There, beyond the firelight, the Dark Judge paced. The equines turned with him, Jame now circling between them and the intruder with Jorin so close on her inner heel that he threatened to trip her.
. . . bloody, stupid Merikit . . .
The great cat's mutter rumbled through flesh and shuddered in the bone. Not just that: the earth itself shook. To the north, in the dark, rose a column of smoke, its dimensions defined by inner flickering tongues of lightning, its sullen mutter rolling down the valley. It seemed closer than it had by day unless (alarming thought) this was another mountain. What if the entire range erupted?
. . . think they can fool us, do they? Not again. Never again.
Us? thought Jame. Who is "us"?
By now she could make out the prowling hulk of the blind Arrin-ken, always so much larger than one expected. It seemed to flow around the margin of the camp, a net of fiery cracks cast over darkness, opening into it. The fire-bugs had left the field and swarmed about a dark, upright shape that walked silently at the great cat's side. When the insects touched the second figure, they flared briefly and fell so that its passage was marked by a thousand tiny deaths.
. . . burn, burn, burn them all, as we were burned.
The mutter deepened to a growl, under-laid with hunger and a terrible, gloating eagerness.
Eat away weakness. Consume sin. Devour guilt. You!
His massive head swung toward Jame as the earth shuddered again. His companion also turned. Dying fire-bugs flared in the latter's eye-sockets, giving a brief glimpse of a charred, ravaged face that had once been human.
Come to justice, little nemesis. Be purified in our flame for your holy purpose.
"No."
He was frightening Bel, and that angered her.
"I will judge myself, as I always have, and will accept no more mercy than I am prepared to give. Now go away, you pompous bully; you've upset m'lady."
Huh!
His contemptuous snort blew her campfire apart. To the north, a second dark, roiling cloud arose, defined by the hot cinders swirling in it and the forked lightning at its heart. A distant boom rolled down the valley like thunder, and the earth shook again.
Mare and colt both screamed. The next moment, the rathorn had charged the intruders, who dissolved into a shower of sparks before him. Jame caught the mare and made her stand, trembling, as she plucked burning embers out of her mane and tail.
"Death's-head!" she shouted after the colt. "Come back, you fool!"
Eventuall
y he did, having made sure the others had really gone.
"Death's-head," Jame repeated, watching him solicitously lick a scorched patch on the mare's shoulder. "Are you sure you want that for a name?" He bared his fangs at her over Bel's back and hissed, reminding her of the Randir's adder. "All right, all right. After all, that's what you are. Death's-head and Nemesis it is, then, although for the element of surprise I would have preferred Snowball and Buttercup."
V
Recovering Chumley took most of the next day, during which Jame came to the reluctant conclusion that she was nowhere near the randon college.
For one thing, the more she saw of those ruins on the opposite bank, the more like Kithorn they looked.
For another, she was fairly sure she would have noticed a smoking mountain in the immediate vicinity. Poor as she was at guessing distances on such a scale, she was fairly sure it couldn't be more than five miles away, although the previous day it had seemed more distant.
To Ride a Rathorn Page 35