"That's a good two hundred feet," one Kendar muttered to another. Both had turned pale at the thought of dangling from such a height. Others also looked sick.
"But he didn't fall," Lyra continued. "We reeled him in . . . well, I helped a bit . . . and unhooked him. By then, though, Father was coming. I ran. Then Father caught you."
She looked up at Brier, a bit uncertainly.
"He said something about binding you by the seed, whatever that means, and ordered you to kneel. It scares when he uses that voice. Somehow, there's no disobeying it. I was back on top in Gran's garden by then, kneeling on the edge, so I couldn't see anything, but I could hear. Jame said, 'BOO!' and Father said, 'HIC!' and the next thing I know, he bobs out over the rail, into the shaft, floating upside down with his pants undone and flapping in his face."
"Sweet Trinity," breathed Harn. "Sheth said something at the Cataracts about Caineron 'not quite feeling in touch with things.' What in Perimal's name did our kitten do to him?"
"I don't know," said Lyra, "but he's terrified of her. Then she said, 'Make sport of decent Kendar, will you? Play God almighty in your high tower, huh? Well, the next time the urge takes you, remember me. And this. And keep looking down.'
"Then he started to scream.
"Brier, you said, 'You don't know what you've done.'
"And she said, 'I seldom do, but I do it anyway. This is what I am, Briar Iron-thorn. Remember that.'
"And neither of us ever will forget, will we? Because she said it in a voice just like Father's."
II
For a moment, no one spoke.
The wind shifted to and fro between them, swirling eddies of chaff like ghosts trying to rise from the shorn field, then slumping back among the rows. Vanguards of the north wind and of the tardy Tishooo from the south skirmished in the upper air.
Harn shot Torisen a look under his heavy brows. "Remind me later to tell you about something else that's happened. At Tentir. Concerning Caineron's councilor Corrudin."
Torisen didn't want to hear it. He had heard too much already.
Lyra's recitation had left her looking frightened, as if she hadn't realized what she was going to say until she had said it. Now she jumped and squealed as a dead bird plummeted to earth beside her. They were falling all over the field. So was a light fall of what at first appeared to be dirty snow. The clouds were almost upon them, growling with muffled thunder, pulling a shroud over the sun.
Marc tasted a flake that had fallen on his hand and spat it out. "Ash," he said. "I was afraid of this. Some mountain to the north has blown its top."
The harvest-master bustled up, scowling. "That hasn't happened in my lifetime," he said, as if to assert that it wasn't possible now. "Say you're right, though, we're way to the south. How much of the damn stuff could we possibly get?"
"Anywhere from a dusting to several feet." Marc looked apologetic. "Usually Old Man Tishooo blows the worst of it northward over the Barrier, but this time he seems to have been slow off the mark. It may also rain."
The master stared at him, then cast a wild glance at the upper terraces where cat's-paws of wind tossed the ripening grain in its gleaming bands. Golden brown barley bowed to shine silver gold. Wheat bent more stiffly, its beards of grain barely open.
"We might gather some," he muttered. "A few bushels of early wheat, at least, or rye, or oats, just in case . . ."
Torisen glanced at Marc, who shook his head. There wasn't time. "We must save what we can here in the water meadow," he said, "and hope for the best."
The master looked stricken. Just as hay was vital to the beasts' winter survival, so the Greater Harvest at summer's end was to anything on two legs.
Famine didn't scare him, Torisen realized. He was afraid that if supplies ran short, his lord would send most of his people south while he himself stayed to hold the keep with a token garrison. As weak as the Highlord had recently shown himself to be, to leave Gothregor unguarded was to risk having it seized by a stronger house. On the other hand, of those he sent away, how many would he forget? Mullen had flayed himself alive to escape such a fate.
All the weight of his position fell back on his shoulders, no longer to be escaped, harder than ever to bear. They depend on me. I gave them that right when I assumed my father's place.
He touched the Kendar's shoulder.
"It will be all right, Stav." Somehow. "Carry on."
The harvest-master blinked at the sound of his own name, and that sudden flare of panic faded from his eyes. He gave his lord a brusque, awkward nod and turned to the assembled troops. "Forget the last standing grass. Get those hayricks covered. Move!"
As Kendar sprang into action all over the field, Marc picked up a frightened Lyra, set her on her pony's back, and handed the reins to the already mounted cadet guard. "Ride for Gothregor," he said. "Fast. Tell them to bring in the livestock, hood the wells, close all chimney dampers, secure the shutters, and stuff as many cracks as possible with rags. At the very least, this is going to be messy." Lyra yelped as lightning split the sky and her pony shied. "Go. We'll follow as quickly as we can. And don't lock us out!" he bellowed after them.
At the bottom of their loads, all wains carried mats woven of wiry rye stalks. Kendar now hauled these out and started to pitch them over the hayricks. It took four to cover each stack. Frantic hands laced together the edges with wisps of straw and bound them to iron rings set in the stone foundations. Before some mats could be secured, they tore free to flap and flail while swearing Kendar fought to control them.
The winds were picking up, and they came from both directions. The Tishooo and the northern wind clashed overhead, warm and cold, clear and ash-laden, roiling together, with sudden cracks of blue sky between them and sharper cracks of lightning. Wrestling funnels dipped and swayed above the field, lashing it with their tails. Chaff flew. Horses screamed. Then the stack which Torisen was trying to cover exploded in his face.
Nearby, a Kendar cried out as the wind drove sharp straws like needles into her eyes.
Torisen found himself flat on his back, staring up at an ascending maelstrom of hay. It seemed to take shape as it rose, assuming the nebulous form of something huge with wings that spanned the entire valley. There might or might not have been the figure riding it, an old man whose beard streamed behind him. Against him came the clouds of ash, and they too had gained both form and voice.
"Wha, wha, wha?" howled the roiling, black figures of the Burning Ones. "Tha!"
They dived at Torisen.
My father's curse, he thought, watching them come. My own weakness. I deserve this.
The wolver pup Yce was suddenly crouching over him with her over-sized paws heavy on his chest and her white teeth bared at the falling sky. The thing of hay and wind swooped, every straw pricked to the attack, but what good is chaff against fire? Torisen threw his arms around the pup and rolled to protect her as flaming debris rained down on them. He found himself holding a small body shaken by its own pounding heart. Small hands, short fingered, long nailed, clutched his shirt. A child looked up at him with terrified blue eyes set in a mask of creamy fur, then buried her face against his chest. He tightened his grip.
Me, you can have; her, never.
The field burned around them, but the flames cast curiously little light. Falling ash had clamped a tight, black bowl over the earth. In the outer darkness, things fought with muffled bellows of thunder, but not even the lightning stroke of their blows penetrated the gloom. Then the sky split open and the deluge descended like a cataract.
The fires hissed out.
The world filled with noise and hard driven water.
Torisen stumbled to his feet, still clutching the child who was also a wolf, and nearly fell again. Mixed ash and mud slithered under foot, in a blinding rain. It had also turned surprisingly cold. Would the other ricks stand, or had they already lost the Lesser Harvest? Where was everyone? Please Trinity someone had pulled the injured Kendar to safety and tended her wounds.
It was a terrible thing to be maimed. Kindrie could help her, but he wasn't here. Because of Torisen. Because of something the healer had seen or felt in that moment when their hands had touched, his cringing at the mere thought of accepting a Shanir, the other's thin and cool and suddenly withdrawn.
"My lord, I can't do it."
Why? What corruption in him could repel one already tainted by the Old Blood? What, but a father's curse?
I am doomed and damned, he thought. That too perhaps I deserve, but not my people as well!
A vertical crack of light opened in the chaos and widened slightly. As it did so, faint horizontal lines joined it above and below. Trinity. It was a door, in the middle of a field. As he stood gaping at it, a familiar voice spoke from inside:
"Well? Don't you know enough to come in out of the rain?"
III
Torisen decided that he was dreaming, or had finally gone barking mad. Either seemed more likely that that the destroyed haystack had been build around such a large, stone hut, or rather a full-sized lodge. Down several steps was an earthen floor covered with lumpy forms. Opposite, a small fire smoked and flared on a sunken hearth, its light picking out low rafters from which hung an odd assortment of shapes. Most appeared to be drowsy bats and foxkin but one, larger, rustled leathery wings and glared sleepily at him with obsidian eyes set in a wizened, almost human face.
"Watch out for that one," said Jame behind him, closing the door. "It blew north with the weirdingstrom, and I don't think it's had a decent meal since."
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Torisen saw that the room was full of sleeping creatures. Hawks and sparrows, side by side, perched one-legged on the mantle, chair backs, and the enormous antlers of a snoring moose. Badgers and otters rolled up together for warmth under a table. That huge mound by the door was a cave bear, covered by a living coat of ermine which rose and fell with his stentorian breathing. As for the cauldron of water beside him, surreptitiously seething . . .
Stiff whiskers broke the surface, then a wide, gaping mouth and a pair of round, knowing eyes.
"Bloop," said the catfish solemnly, and sank back out of sight.
"What is all this?" Torisen asked, more convinced than ever that he had fallen into some insane dream.
"They're refugees, of course."
Jame picked her way across the room to a chair next to the fire.
"Not everyone could get to shelter when the ash-flow came . . ."
She removed a hedgehog from the seat and settling it in a basket of knit-work on the floor.
"Quip!" said the knitting in drowsy protest.
". . . but a lot did. It must have been a madhouse in here before Mother Ragga told them all to shut up and go to sleep."
She stepped up onto the chair, balancing carefully on its arms as it creaked under her, and began to do something to the upper end of an unusually large bundle suspended from the rafters.
The wolver pup wriggled out of Torisen's arms and bounded toward the hearth, where a cat rose, hissing, to meet him. It was a surprisingly big cat, Torisen noted, as its arched back rose higher and higher. Flames surrounded it in a nimbus of red-gold, bristling fur and its eyes reflected only fire.
"You'd better call off your friend," said Jame. "Jorin is in no mood for games, and I haven't the time. Who is she, anyway?"
"Yce, an orphan from the Deep Weald, or so Grimly tells me."
"Ice?"
"Close enough. It's a wolver term for a frozen crust over deep snow. The name seemed appropriate."
Pup and ounce met on the hearth. After a moment's hostile posing for honor's sake, they settled down side by side, not touching and studiously ignoring each other, to watch the fire.
"This is a very strange place," said Torisen, wiping rain out of his eyes the better to see it. "Where are we?"
"Inside the Earth Wife's lodge, which in turn could be anywhere. It moves around a lot. I found it in a meadow near Kithorn, just before a volcano caught up with me. Now I'm guessing we're closer to Gothregor, or were when you came through the door. But I'm forgetting my manners. Mother Ragga, this is my brother Torisen, Highlord of the Kencyrath. Tori, this is Mother Ragga, also known as the Earth Wife."
The lower edge of the bundle stirred. Knobby hands lifted what turned out to be the hem of an inverted outer skirt and a florid, upside-down face peered out, like a pudding hanging in a sack.
"Highlord, eh? About time we met. Welcome to my house, if not necessarily to my world."
The features started to rotate sickeningly, as if for a better look, but Jame gave her a warning slap.
"Stop that. D'you want to get stuck with your head on the wrong way?"
Torisen saw that the upper end of the bundle was a much patched underskirt held up, as was the whole body, by a rope around the ankles. Above that, close to the supporting beam, were a pair of enormously swollen feet. Jame resumed squeezing the sausage-like toes as if trying to milk an upside-down cow.
"That tickles!" protested Mother Ragga.
"I told you, this isn't my sort of job."
"What," asked Torisen, bemused, "hanging old women up by their heels?"
"That either. But Kindrie is the healer, not me—not that he could probably do any better. Y'see, the volcano melted all the fat in her body and it settled to what was then the lowest point. I'm trying to work it back into place before it cools and hardens where it is. This was her idea, by the way, and it seems to be working, if slowly."
The bundle twitched irritably. "Well, hurry up! I'm getting dizzy." Then she yelped as she was suddenly jerked up, her feet jamming hard against the underside of the rafter. Dislodged dust drifted down.
"Chumley!" Jame called into the darkness at the end of the room. "Stand still, you great lummox!"
Torisen traced the taut line of rope over the beam and down into the gloom. Beyond the mounds of sleeping animals, he could just make out an enormous pair of hindquarters with a flaxen tail swishing complacently between them. The rope appeared to be secured to the beast's other end.
"There's horse in the corner," he said. "Also, I think, a meadow."
He could see now that the room had no far wall. Where it should have been, there was a sea of grass lit only by the dance of fireflies and a few reluctant stars low on the horizon. Night, and no mountains. They were no longer in the Riverland, or at least that side of the lodge wasn't. Unconcerned, the big horse continued to graze.
"This is madness," he said.
"Oh, for Ancestors' sake." Jame stopped squeezing the Earth Wife's toes and began vigorously to knead her calves through the patched underskirt, ignoring muffled squawks of pain and a certain amount of thrashing below. "You must have seen as many strange things as I have—well, almost as many. Neither of us has lead an exactly normal life. Things happen to us. Powers seek us out. You know that, although you seem Perimal-bent on denying it. How can either of us be sure what's sane and what isn't?"
Torisen started to protest then stopped, considering his words. "We are a house noted for our madness, or so everyone says. Are they wrong? What about our father?"
His sister paused, frowning. "There's more to his story than we were ever told—if not enough to forgive him, perhaps enough to understand and take warning. Tori, since Summer Eve, have you had any strange dreams?"
He stiffened, remembering a flurry of them, some of which he had no intention of repeating to his sister. "All dreams are strange. What about it?"
She also looked acutely ill at ease, but determined. "I had one that first night at Tentir and another, later. Do you remember dreaming that you were a cadet at the college, and being summoned up to the lordan's quarters late one night?"
He did. Twice. Trinity, that second time . . .
"Do you remember who you were, and who waited for you on the hearth, wearing a particular coat?"
His mouth felt dry. "It was beautiful, all the colors of creation, but the man wearing it . . ."
". . . was Greshan, our uncle. A monster
. It was also me, somewhere inside him, only able to watch through his foul eyes. And you were there too, inside a young Ganth, our father."
He remembered, as hard as he had tried to forget. "So? It was only a dream." After all, he had been cured, mysteriously, miraculously, of those nightmares that had driven him to the edge of madness—or had he only be relieved of the foresight that had led him to try so hard to fight them off?
She sighed. "Perhaps they are only nightmares, frightening but harmless. I hope you're right. If not, though, I have to warn you: there will be at least one more, maybe several, in that room, before that hearth, and the last will be worse than all the others rolled up together. Something terrible happened to our father there. No one alive today knows what it was, but something at Tentir seems to be trying to show me, to show us.
To Ride a Rathorn Page 41