To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  III

  The days of high summer passed, divided for Jame between lessons and barracks duty, rathorn colt and Whinno-hir mare, Bear and a changing assortment of gray scarved senior randon, who always seemed to be there, watching, at the worst possible moments.

  On the good side, Bel-tairi was healing rapidly.

  "Soon she'll be fit to ride," the horse-master said, with a side-long glance at Jame.

  However, Jame had no idea if the mare would permit such a liberty. Bel was still bound to her great-grandmother, as far as she could tell, or at least to the blood that bound Kinzi's soul to her death banner. Death was proving to be at least as complicated as life.

  The colt continued to run wild. With Bel for company, however, he didn't plague the remount herd so, except for random sightings, only Jame and the horse-master knew that he still haunted the area. Sometimes the master brought out harnesses and lunge lines, but on the rare occasions when the colt allowed them to be strapped on, it was only for the pleasure of tearing them apart. Normal training for him, obviously, was out of the question.

  "Never mind," said the master with a sigh, watching the colt prance off flinging aside snapped leather straps and broken rope. "I'll think of something."

  Jame hoped so. She had an odd feeling that they would never be complete without each other, but how was she to ride such a creature when she still could barely stay on the quietest lesson horse? Forget the bridle bit. As with the Whinno-hir, she sensed that the colt would never submit to one. A halter, maybe, for appearance's sake. At the very least, though, she was going to need a tightly girthed saddle and stirrups.

  Still, he was young, and so was she. There was time.

  More worrying were reports that hill tribes had begun to raid farther south, and more aggressively. A Caineron flock had been slaughtered in the high fields, the carcasses left to rot, and the Kendar herders flayed alive. Worse, not only were their skins taken but their raw flesh was smeared with sheep fat so that, when found, they were still alive, in agony, begging for the White Knife. Perhaps one shouldn't wonder at such barbarity, given Caldane's practices, but it still didn't sound right to Jame. From what little she knew of the Merikit, they weren't given to wasteful, wanton cruelty. Nonetheless, Caldane now regularly hunted them, pushing farther and farther into northern lands once closed to him, thwarted only by the mysterious folds in the land from striking at the heart of Merikit territory.

  She could only guess what the scrollsman Index felt after his years of study and friendship with the Merikit. He had given up demanding that she take him with her up into the hills, which was ominous in itself. She hoped he wasn't going to do something stupid, while simultaneously feeling guilty that she hadn't come up with a plan of her own. She was, after all, still the Earth Wife's Favorite and, technically, Chingetai's heir.

  And the Burnt Man's son, she reminded herself.

  Trinity knew, she had no desire to face that nightmare again, Burnt Man and Dark Judge combined, ready to pass judgment on such an errant darkling as herself. To them, she must represent the worst of both worlds, much as they did to her.

  Then there was Torisen. She heard nothing more about her brother's problem in remembering the names of those Kendar bound to him. Sometimes, though, she felt a shiver ripple through the fabric of her house and for days after that, everyone would call each other by name in her presence. She wasn't sure what good it would do, but she began to learn every Knorth name she could, alive or dead, until her head hurt.

  IV

  One night late in the barracks dining room, Jame dawdled over a cup of cider, listening to Vant set the next day's duty roster with the other ten-commanders of their house. As this was one of his chores, she didn't have to be there, but it amused her how his eyes kept sliding toward her and how at such times he lost focus on the matter at hand.

  Just then, a sort of muffled rumpus broke out overhead, punctuated by Graykin's sharp voice raised in protest.

  Jame rose. "Carry on," she said to the ten-commanders. "The roster sounds fine, Vant, except that you have cadet Cherry cooking dinner and cleaning the latrine simultaneously. What goes in does come out, but usually not that fast, unless Cherry is a much worse cook than I realized."

  With that, she went quickly up the stair with Jorin on her heels. The second story dorm was quiet. Above, however, feet tramped back and forth between the front common room and the lordan's quarters to the back.

  From the landing, Jame saw that the latter's anteroom door stood wide open, as did that of the larger, inner chamber. Flames leaped in the over-sized fireplace. She fell back a step before the heat, feeling for a moment as if she had suddenly walked into her as yet unresolved, recurrent nightmare. The floor was even strewn with clothes.

  Inside, Rue was directing the dismantlement of the northern wall of chests, while Graykin stood before the southern ramparts as if ready to defend them with his life.

  "What's going on?" Jame asked the assembly at large.

  Rue set a pugnacious jaw.

  "Well, lady, you keep coming back clad in naught but rags, if that. It isn't proper."

  What she meant was Consider our pride, if not your own, and Jame knew it. Clothes weren't that important to her, but the other houses were beginning to laugh at the increasingly shabby Knorth lordan.

  She glanced at her servant, who glared back at her defiantly.

  "There's plenty dumped out on the floor already," he said. "Tell them to leave this side alone."

  Besides his normal, dusty gear, he wore an elegant if filthy scarf woven of silvery silk, embroidered along the borders in peacock blue with animals engaged in enthusiastic if highly improbable frolics. No doubt he had pilfered it from one of the chests. Well, she had told him to take whatever he wanted. She also suspected that he had wormed through the southern barrier to set up his new lodgings in the deserted rooms beyond. It was easy to forget that the lordan's suite extended in both directions down the length of the western wall.

  "Leave the south side of the room intact for the time being," she told Rue. "Trinity knows, there's enough here already for me to wear a different set of clothes every day for a year."

  Rue wrinkled her pug nose at the armful she had scooped up. "But not all of it is salvageable." She tossed the lot into the flames, which snatched it and roared up the chimney. "Ugh, that stink!"

  Jame regarded the room's north wall. "Let's have it all down," she said abruptly. "I want to see what's behind it."

  Cadets stared at her for a moment, then Rue gave a whoop of delight and practically threw herself at the barrier. Jame backed out of the way as the others leaped to help. It hadn't occurred to her that they had been itching to reclaim the lost rooms—more like to exorcise them. It had to happen sooner or later.

  But am I ready? she asked herself, and didn't know the answer.

  Not all the chests contained clothes. Some held ornate weapons more for show than use, pretty baubles, broken musical instruments, scrolls with many interesting illustrations along the lines of the scarf, and enough ointments, unguents, and cosmetics to have kept the courtesans of Tai-tastigon in business for a year.

  There were also cracked kegs leaking a gooey, amber substance and crates of corked bottles of every size, shape, and color.

  Beyond that was a door.

  When Rue stepped forward to open it, however, Jame stopped her.

  "After all," she said, bracing herself, "he was my uncle."

  It was unlocked, but its rusty hinges ground like iron teeth and all was dark within. Dar ran to fetch lights. As she waited, Jame tested the stale air both with her own senses and with Jorin's. Here and now, though, the attic smelled worse than the darkness before her. When Rue handed her a lit candle, she entered cautiously, to find dust, small empty rooms, smaller windows in the outer wall, and at the end of the hall, a kitchen. These were the servants' quarters.

  Looking back down the long, dusty hall, she saw Graykin still in the central room, glowering back at he
r, guarding the unseen master chambers behind him that he had claimed as his own.

  He was welcome to them.

  Jame sighed for the lost, airy freedom of her attic.

  "If those rooms were cleaned up," she said as they left the dreary wing, "I suppose I could live there. It will certainly be warmer than the attic, come winter. Rue, ask Ran Harn if we can knock out some walls to make larger spaces, and maybe enlarge some windows. Cold be damned. I hate feeling shut in."

  Rue agreed with such enthusiasm that Jame realized her odd choice of living quarters had been as much a source of embarrassment to her house as her sparse wardrobe. Speaking of which . . .

  "As a council member, Ran Harn needs a proper scarf. Graykin, give me that, please. Consider it rent," she added as he hesitated to surrender his prize. "Rue, wash it and do something about that border. We can't have the Knorth war leader sporting hounds in heat, or hopping hares, or whatever these beasties are supposed to be."

  In the common room across the landing, cadets both female and male were busily sorting, cutting, and sewing. Dusk had fallen. Candles cast pools of light through which needle and knife flashed like silvery fish. The cadets might be serving their own pride as much as her need, but the cheerful babble of their voices and the sacrifice of their scant free time touched Jame.

  "Use most of this to make new clothes for the cadets," she told Rue. "Truly, I only need a serviceable wardrobe, not an enormous or fancy one, and some of us are even shabbier than I am. Remember, we're a poor house. I'll wear whatever you can salvage for me—within reason—but not that damned jacket."

  The Lordan's Coat sprawled on a chair in the corner, as if sent there in punishment like a naughty child. Even untenanted, it had an air of indolent, stupid malice to it as faint but persistent as its reek, and just as personal.

  Rue made a face. "Beautiful needlework it may be, but a foul thing nonetheless. You wouldn't think that one man could leave such a taint."

  "Master Gerridon did," said Jame grimly, not adding that he, too, had been her uncle.

  The smell reminded her that she had only reclaimed a few, dusty rooms. Greshan's personal quarters and the nightmare he had left behind had not yet been exorcized. In that, the coat seemed to mock her, the past overshadowing the present and threatening the future. For that matter, if she failed the autumn cull, all here would sink back into obscurity; and she knew, perhaps better than anyone, what malignant strength that darkness held.

  Given that, it was a comfort to pass through the candle-glow of the common room, greeting those cadets whom she knew by name, learning the names of others. As master ten of the entire barracks she should have done this long ago, except for distractions and a lingering fear that many (like Vant) wished that she would just go away. Their cheerful welcome on this particular evening warmed her. Had she really, somehow, come to be accepted?

  But at the door, watching, stood Briar Iron-thorn, as wooden faced as ever, judgment reserved.

  No, thought Jame sadly, slipping past the big Southron and down the stair with Jorin on her heels. She wasn't home yet.

  V

  The remains of an incredible sunset hung over the black bulk of the western mountains, smears and whorls of red, orange, and yellow, lurid and smoldering, as if the entire sky were a great fire dying down to ash. Such spectacles had become common since the eruption, and the light on cloudy days was often an odd, murky yellow tinged with olive green shadows. The wind picked up. Dust rattled in the practice square and the tin roof of the surrounding arcade flexed with a hollow boom like imitation thunder. Warm light spilled from barracks' doors and windows. Supper over, cadets and randon alike were settling down to their favorite evening pursuits before bed.

  Jame walked south, then east around the square, bound for Old Tentir—not the most direct route, but she preferred to stay clear of the Caineron and Randir quarters when by herself. After all, why ask for trouble?

  She wondered, looking across at them: where did one draw the line between house and college loyalties? Just before their oath-taking, the Commandant had said, "While you attend this college, it is your home and all within it are your family, wherever you were born, whomever you call 'enemy' outside these walls. Here we are all blood-kin."

  So far, it hadn't quite worked out that way . . . or had it? There were rivalries between barracks, of course, that turned many lessons into fierce competitions; but that was nothing, and good in its way. Here, everyone competed all the time, enthusiastically.

  However, you didn't tie blood-kin to a tree as bait for a rathorn, or try to feed them to a poor, mad monster in his lair, or drop poisonous snakes on them as they slept.

  As for the first, though, Gorbel probably hadn't meant to harm her, intending to get the rathorn before it got her.

  The Randir had indeed tossed her into Bear's den, but that was before she had formally become a cadet.

  True, she still had no idea who had introduced her to Addy the gilded swamp adder so informally.

  Then there was the Randir Tempter . . . but presumably, whether the Witch watched through the randon's eyes or not, she was only doing her job. She and the Commandant both tested weaknesses and exposed flaws—valuable work, as far as that went. Jame had certainly learned more about self-control here in a half a season than in years outside the college walls.

  Yes, but if so why had no one tested Greshan . . . unless that role had fallen to the unfortunate Roane? Was Roane the Randir also a tempter? If so, how far had he intended to go before he passed judgment on the Knorth lordan? Too far, it seemed, as Roane had ended up dead, warping her father's life forever in the process. How far were the current tempter and commandant prepared to go?

  Could one be at Tentir, but not of it?

  Clearly, her uncle Greshan hadn't belonged here, only attending because that was what the Knorth lordan was supposed to do. From what she had heard, he had made no attempt to fulfill a cadet's duties. Did Gorbel belong? Did Timmon? Did she? The Commandant had said that the college had its own rules, its own justice, and that by the end she would know for sure whether or not she had succeeded. Getting out alive would be a good start. Ah, but winning one's randon collar would be even better.

  Jorin's ears flicked as something stirred on the other side of the square. The lower story of the Randir barracks was dark, the main door almost invisible in the arcade's shadow, but figures were slipping out of it and moving quickly, silently, toward Old Tentir. Some seemed to be carrying bows.

  What in Perimal's name . . .?

  Keeping to the shadows herself, Jame entered the great hall by its southern-most door. On the other side was the ramp leading down to the stables. That was where they were going. She had been bound there herself, to ask the horse-master some minor question about Bel. If those were bows, who or what were the Randir hunting with such stealth in such an unlikely place at this time of night? Should she tell someone or find out first, if she could, what was going on? The latter appealed more. She crossed the hall and descended, moving briskly and openly, as if nothing were wrong.

  Most of the subterranean stable was dark, its inmates fed and settled for the night. Here and there for light, candles floated in pans of water, open flame being a serious danger when surrounded by so much dry wood and hay. As she passed, Jame glimpsed pale, hooded faces drawing back into the dark and heard the restless movements of horses. Jorin growled, until a soft word from her quieted him. But he had caught a familiar scent, and they followed it, down again into the fire-timber hall, where giant upright trunks of iron-wood smoldered in their pits, fifty feet from brick floor to ceiling. Here among other facilities was the farrier's forge, glowing red.

  A gray mare stood patiently in cross-ties, waiting to be fitted with new shoes. The horse-master himself manned bellows, tongs, and hammer, his bald head shining with sweat that ran freely down his face, unimpeded by his flattened nose. When he saw Jame, his eyebrows rose but he continued as if a visit by the Knorth Lordan at such an hour was noth
ing unusual.

  "What a beautiful animal," said Jame, running a hand down the mare's neck.

  Encircling it was a thin leather band. All traces of paint had been washed away, but between the band and those mild, leaf-green eyes, the creature was unmistakable. Jame was greatly relieved that Mer-kanti had outrun the volcano; she had been worried about him. But what was either he or his mare doing here?

  "Her name is Mirah." He lifted a fore-hoof to check it against the shoe. Jame bent as if to examine his work. "Her master is in danger," he breathed, lips barely moving. "The bastards have set an ambush. You've got to warn him."

  "Where is he?"

  "Probably in Ran Harn's apartment."

  Jame straightened with a casual "Good night, then," hoping that her sudden departure would take the lurkers off guard. She hadn't spotted any in the fire timber hall, but three surrounded her at the top of the ramp, bows drawn.