That morning the grass had been lightly dusted with ash, and the ground now trembled almost continually. What was more, behind a screen of smoke the mountain top seemed to be growing some sort of spine or protrusion like nothing she had ever seen before—a plug of half-cooled lava, perhaps, forced upward by titanic pressure from beneath. If the mountain should pop its cork, well, the thought did not encourage hope for a quiet life in the near future.
One disaster at a time, though. First, find Chumley.
In the beginning, the trail was clear: A near-ton of panicking horse-flesh tends to leave its mark. However, rough terrain intervened, and then Jorin ran into a patch of deadman's-breath that left him rolling on the ground, trying to escape his own nose.
Jame was about to give up when she heard Bel calling. She followed the sound to a deep ravine. The Whinno-hir stood at the brink and there at the bottom was the gelding, up to his withers in brambles, looking unhurt but deeply embarrassed. He whickered plaintively up at her.
"All right," she said. "Hold your horses . . . er . . . that is, hold still."
She had brought her grapnel rope, which was hardly strong enough to haul up such a weight by brute force, even if she had had the strength to try. This would only work if Chumley stopped waiting to be rescued and started helping himself. Jame looped the rope twice around a smooth-barked tree and scrambled down. Luckily, the gelding still wore his halter. She secured the rope to it and encouraged him to climb, but kept sliding back herself.
Frustrated, she grabbed a handful of his flaxen mane, pulled herself up onto his broad back, and dug her heels into his sides. When he only shifted uneasily, she unsheathed her claws. Their use resulted in a surge upward. When he faltered, Jame flicked loose the slackened rope from around the tree and again pulled it taut, preventing him from sliding back down unless he wanted his neck to stretch like taffy. Thus by fits and starts they finally lurched up the slope and out of the ravine.
At the top, Jame slid down onto shaking legs and leaned against the gelding's sweat-stained side. Chumley was also trembling, but didn't draw away from her, which improved her opinion of his good sense, or at least of his good nature.
When they finally got back to the meadow, she cleaned the scratches on his neck and gave him a thorough grooming. Brushes, combs, and a hoof-pick had also been among her knapsack stash, on the advice of a bemused horse-master who couldn't imagine what a confirmed equinophobe like Jame wanted with them. However, she had had plenty of experience putting up her mounts after lessons, and even more when sharing her ten's various punishment duties.
The gelding leaned into the curry brush with a groan of pleasure. Remnants of his rough, winter coat came off in felt-like mats on the bristles and dried mud crumbled to dust. Then there were his hooves to pick, once one found them under all that heavy feathering, and his mane and tail to comb, tangled as they were with burrs and bracken.
As she worked, Jame wondered if in future she should hobble him. No, she decided. If he had to run again, better that he not trip and break his neck. Anyway, after the first shock of sharing pasture with a carnivorous rathorn, he had settled down remarkably fast. Rathorns used scent to communicate. Jame suspected that the colt could change the way he smelled to soothe potential prey just as he could to terrorize enemies. Bel enjoyed company as she grazed; therefore, Chumley had been made to feel welcome and seemed disinclined to stray, even after the previous night's visitors.
The Dark Judge and the Burnt Man, the worst (or least the most unstable and dangerous) of both worlds, Kencyrath and Rathillien. Now, there was trouble beyond the scope of her imagination, and only three days to go until the solstice.
The gelding took a long time, leaving Jame hot, sweaty, and plastered with loose horse hairs. Set free, he stretched like an over-grown cat, yawned hugely, and ambled off for a nice roll in the mud.
"Huh!" said Jame, dropping the brushes in disgust as she watched him undo all her hard work. Then she went to wash in the stream. She was considering a swim when the Whinno-hir's reflection appeared in the water behind her own and a soft nose nudged her shoulder.
Oh well, she thought. This too had been part of her plan.
As Kinzi's mount, Bel must have been groomed lovingly and often. Her body remembered it as the brushes slid over her coat even as she trembled, no doubt also remembering the last time she had been touched by human hands.
One usually began with the head. However, when the mare flinched away, Jame smoothed her mane to the right and started on the left side. At the withers, she paused to probe tense shoulder muscles with her finger tips, then knead them with her knuckles until Bel relaxed, sighing, shot-hipped. With brush and touch, Jame moved down the mare's body. Dull, dead hair lifted from creamy new growth; white dapples emerged on back and flanks. The white tail seemed to lengthen as she combed it until half of it trailed on the ground. The mane also proved surprisingly long, reaching below the mare's knees. However, not until Jame reached Bel's hooves did she realize what was happening.
As she held one in her hand, about to pick it clean, she noted how long it was in the toe. In fact, it grew as she watched, becoming wavy and turning up at the end like a dandy's slipper. Forty-odd years in the Earth Wife's lodge were catching up with the mare all at once. No wonder her hair was suddenly so long. If she had been a normal horse, not a potentially immortal Whinno-hir, she probably would have dropped dead of extreme old age on the spot, just when she had had been brought at last to accept life.
Bel shook free her foot and placed it gingerly on the ground. All four hooves now looked like curved skids and were obviously painful.
The rathorn's teeth closed on Jame's collar. He lifted her off her feet, gave her a hard shake, and let her drop, with a menacing snort down the back of her neck.
"Look," she said, on bruised knees, glowering up over her shoulder at him. "This isn't my fault. And no, I didn't think to bring farrier's tools, supposing I'd know what to do with them if I had them. D'you want me to float her back teeth too?"
It occurred to her even as she spoke that that too would probably be required, as it was with horses. Barbs grew on the outer edge of their teeth, designed to keep hay from falling out of their mouths as they chewed. However, unless these hooks were periodically filed down, they could rasp the inner cheek raw. If that was true, as with her hooves and hair, the Whinno-hir would now also have trouble eating. Of the four of them, that only left Jorin with a decent appetite, as long as he stayed away from pretty bugs.
A spill of white mane between the ears fell like a curtain over the mare's features. Jame parted it, slowly, carefully, unveiling a mystery.
A woman gazed steadily back at her out of one large, liquid eye set in half a flawless face. A savage scar seamed the other eye shut before curving off down her cheek to the rim of her nose. Jame traced it with a finger, overwhelmed with pity and rage. Nothing was bad enough for the man who had done this, never mind that he was long dead. She was Nemesis, dammit, or soon would be. Who said that vengeance stopped with the pyre?
A light touch brought her back to herself. As she examined Bel's scars, so Bel had been studying hers. The other's cool, slim hands slid up to cradle her face, lifting black hair as Jame's did white.
We are sisters of the brand, her voice murmured in Jame's mind. We are stronger than what has been done to us. So my lady told me. So, thanks to you, I now understand. Be at rest in your strength, Kinzi-kin, as I now am in mine.
She kissed Jame lightly on the lips, then let the black hair swing back over her face. By the time Jame had scooped it clear, the mare had moving gingerly away on her over-grown hooves, shaking each in turn before she stepped on it like a cat who has accidentally trod in something unpleasant. In her place, the rathorn stood glowering.
"What's the matter?" Jame twisted up her hair and clapped her cap back over it. "Haven't you ever seen two girls sharing secrets?" She retrieved a brush. "Your turn."
But the colt only gave a snort and trotted of
f.
VI
That night Jame sat by the fire combing her damp hair with her claws, trying to decide if she really needed any dinner. Jorin had already gone off to hunt his own.
Rescuing Chumley, not to mention grooming him and the mare, had been surprisingly hard work, and a swim in the chilly stream afterward had only restored her in part.
Face it, she thought glumly, teasing out a snarl. You're starting to draw on reserves that you don't have. After all, there are reasons why people eat regular meals.
The rathorn hadn't eaten yet either . . . in how many days? And he was a growing boy, if usually a blood-thirsty one. His anger at her had faded somewhat, unless he remembered to keep it fueled. Now, more than anything else, he was being stubborn.
I won't eat and you can't make me.
Idiot.
And so, of course, was she as well, for getting them all into this fix.
"I ought to have a sign nailed to my back," she muttered, getting her nails caught in her hair and impatiently yanking a dozen strands out by the roots. " 'Unsafe for man or beast.' "
"How about women and children?"
The gruff voice made Jame start.
On the other side of the fire, just beyond its light, sat a large, lumpy figure that might have been a hillock rising out of the grass. Jame could barely make out a shaggy head and hands with fingers like thick, knobby twigs. Click, click, click . . . it was knitting, and what it knitted was alive.
"Quip?" said the work, flexing on the long, thin needles that were its bones. Bright eyes in a fox-like face caught the firelight. "Quip!"
"Almost done, my sweetling. Patience."
"Some day," said Jame, "will you teach me how to knit? I'm hopeless with needle and thread, but that looks . . . well, restful. Most of the time."
The foxkin was flapping his one finished wing frantically, trying to escape. The Earth Wife wrestled him down. "Wait till I cast off, dumpling. D'you want to unravel in mid-air?" She examined the limb more closely and clucked in disapproval. "I've made a right mess of this. Too much on my mind. Hold still, pumpkin. This won't hurt . . . much."
"QUEEE!"
Jame winced as powerful fingers slid the work in question off the bone and ripped it out back to the shoulder.
The Earth Wife glared at her, eyes reflecting flames. Fire-bugs nestled in her wild hair, illuminating patches of its tangle and stray quadrants of her lumpy face. "Should I let it go a cripple? Here. You try." She tossed the living bundle to Jame, who nearly dropped it into the fire. "First, take off those stupid gloves. Then put the stitches back on the needle."
Jame hastily stripped off her gloves as the creature crawled about in her lap, making small, busy sounds to itself as if taking notes. Its body was quite solid, furry, and about twice the size of a bat's, but the wing stubs ended in a frill of loops. She picked up the latter one by one, sliding them onto a slender, white needle. The foxkin hooked his hind claws over the bone and hung upside down from it, regarding her inquisitively.
"Quip?"
"Now what?" Jame asked, holding the needle and its burden away from her face.
"Take the other needle in your left hand and slip its point through the first stitch from front to back. Now loop the yarn over the left needle, draw one stitch through the other, and lift the new stitch off to the left. Careful. Don't accidentally knit in his claws or he can't use 'um."
"Squeee!"
"And not so tight. Let it ride loose on the bone. I hear you had company last night, and the night before that—yes, through the big ears of that imu in your pocket. So the Burnt Man won't be fooled any longer, will he?"
"So the Dark Judge said." Jame focused on capturing the next stitch. How could someone so nimble-fingered at picking locks be so clumsy with any sort of needlework? "Is that bad?"
Mother Ragga snorted. The sound turned into a truly seismic belch that shook the ground and dislodged burning branches in the campfire in a shower of sparks. To the north, the volcano rumbled as if in sullen reply. Fire glowered at the base of the spine at its top, sending veins of incandescent scarlet upward. The clouds above reflected back a ruddy, smoldering glow. In the darkened meadow, Chumley neighed uneasily. Much more of this, and there would be another stampede.
" 'Is that bad?' " Mother Ragga repeated in what might have been a mincing imitation of Jame's voice. "By stock and stone, girl, I can't make out whether you're innocent or ignorant, not that one isn't as dangerous as t'other. I told you in the Moon Garden: there are rules. If the Burnt Man wasn't fooled before, at least he pretended to be, and so the seasons rolled on. Where are we now, if death won't yield to life? Somehow, that great, bloody burnt cat of yours is mucking things up. Got it in for you, has he? Why?"
Jame gave an uncomfortable shrug and dropped a stitch. "Damn. I'm apparently half way to becoming That-Which-Destroys, whether I like it or not. If I have a correspondence to any of the Four, it would probably be to fire. The burnt cat shares that link, but he has his own ideas about what should be destroyed."
"Huh. Namely everything. That's where you confuse me, girl. Granted, you can be lethal. What you did to the colt, now, that was nasty, but here you are, trying to help him, and the mare too. How does that fit with this three faced god-thingie of yours?"
"I've been asked that before." Jame probed for the lost stitch and accidentally poked the foxkin, who squealed in protest and nipped all the way around her fingertip with his sharp teeth, luckily without breaking the skin. "Sorry. It's a hard question. If the priests know . . . well, I'm not going to ask those bastards anything. There's honor, of course, but also responsibility and kindness. Good teachers taught me that. They also taught me to try to balance myself, not that I always succeed. Some things need to be broken. Others don't. I try to make distinctions and act accordingly. Then again, I'm not the Third Face of God yet and may never be, if the other two don't show up. But if I should become Regonereth, the Ivory Knife incarnate, destroying everything I touch, everything I love—well, I'll do what I was born to do, break what needs to be broken, and then break myself."
She hadn't quite thought it through before, but there it was, with a nice, solid thud. Such power without responsibility would pervert everything she had ever tried to accomplish and dishonor her Senethari, at least one of whom had died for her sake. The least she could do was back her word with her life.
The Earth Wife eyed her askance. "Huh. Give that back. I should have started you on something easy. Like a tube-worm."
Jame returned the incomplete foxkin, surprised at her own reluctance. Knitting might not always be restful, but she suspected that it was addictive, assuming the work in progress could be persuaded not to eat one's fingers.
She looked again at the glowering mountain. How close it now seemed, blotting out half the night sky, its fire-veined tip thrust, pulsing, up into the dark.
"Is it my imagination, or is that thing trying to creep up on us?"
"Schist, girl. You're in sacred space now. Sometimes it surprises even me."
"Oh." Jame considered this. On the whole, it was not reassuring. She glanced up again at the throbbing tip. "Impressive."
The shadowy figure gave a rumbling chuckle. "Aye, that he is. A hot lover to warm an old woman's bed. Too hot for those damn fool Merikit. Chingetai has gotten into the habit of underestimating us. Thinks he can trot in wearing the Burnt Man's soot and do what he likes."
"He wasn't there for most of the Summer's Eve rite," said Jame soberly. "He didn't see it from inside sacred space, the way I did, when the Four unmasked and turned a mummery into the real thing.
"That is Kithorn over there, isn't it? How in Perimal's name did I get here?"
"You asked, I answered: 'Take me where you will, wherever he waits.' The land folds at my bidding, doesn't it?"
"Yes, but I thought that if I brought Kencyr steel, even horse tack, over the Merikit border, some sort of alarm went off."
"So it should have, but now, thanks to that silly bugger C
hingetai, all his borders are down, including those to the north, and there are tribes up there near the Barrier all too friendly with the shadows."
"I didn't know that," said Jame, startled.
"Har-rumph! Who d'you think guards the northern end of the Riverland, or should if he was paying attention? The Silver is a natural concourse to the heart of Rathillien. Last year, didn't you people stop a thrust up from the south? First bit of useful work you've done since you got here. Chingetai should have made his northern border secure at Summer's Eve, but instead he makes a grab for the entire Riverland and gets his fingers burned for his pains. You're doing, that, I hear tell."
"It wasn't deliberate. How was I to know that pocketing a Burnt Man's bone would spoil his plan? Er . . . does he know that I'm here?"
To Ride a Rathorn Page 36