To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  "The cadet Simmel gave his life for you, lady, but you left him to die alone."

  "Not quite alone. You were there. In fact, I believe that you killed him. Did you enjoy it, Kinzi-kin? Was his death sweet?"

  "Dust and bloody teeth scattered in the dirt. I took no pleasure in it, snake-heart, nor in what you are doing to your servant now, enemy of my house that she is."

  The Tempter bared her sharp teeth, or perhaps the Witch did, twitching the other's raw sinews like some ghastly puppeteer. "You Knorth, hypocrites from first to last. The Old Blood runs strong in you. You savor it, girl, don't you? Did your father, the night that he slew my dear cousin Roane? Well, did he?"

  Jame stared at her. "You don't know what really happened, do you? Your lover Greshan wouldn't tell you, for all your wiles, and that still galls you, after all these years."

  "Just as it does you, dear child." She raised a hand as if to caress Jame's hair, but Jame slid away from it. "Something changed your father. Several things. And this was one of the first. His blood is yours, and your brother's as well. Is his final madness also your joint inheritance? How much easier it is to hate than to understand, but can either of you truly know yourself until you understand him? Little girl, dare you try?"

  The Witch knew something about the haunted room, about the lordan's coat, about nightmares faced or fled. Such things weren't spoken of outside the Knorth barracks, but they were hardly secrets either.

  Her black eyes turned to sweep contemptuously over the silent, watching randon.

  "And you, Tentir, such noble talk of honor when my darling Greshan's blood is still wet upon your hands. What are decades to such guilt as that? Be assured: he will yet have his revenge, and soon."

  She swung back to smile almost playfully at Jame. "But first, dear child, I think I will finish Kallystine's work and rip off your face."

  Her hands curled into claws and her ruined mouth gaped, wide, then wider, all sharp teeth bared to bite, to tear.

  "Steady," murmured someone. It sounded like the Commandant, but his voice was strangely blurred, as if with the hum of wings. "Wait, wait . . ."

  Jame smiled into that terrible face, without humor, without mercy.

  "I told you once, as the Randir Tempter, never to touch me again and now, in her form, you can't. But I can touch you."

  She extended a claw and drew it delicately in a swooping curve down the woman's face from the forehead, across the bridge of the nose, down to circle that ghastly mouth. Her finger tip left a thin, red line.

  "There. The first stroke of the rathorn brand. Of course, when your dear Greshan did this to the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi, he used searing iron. What is it about innocence that drives you to destroy it?"

  She traced a second red curve from one nostril up around a sharp cheekbone. "The lesser horn. Slayer of innocents, you ordered the assassination of all my female blood-kin, didn't you? Why? What did you and Kinzi quarrel about that it should lead to such slaughter?

  "The line of the greater horn, you know," she added, conversationally, "will cut across your eye, as it did across Bel's."

  Then Jame hear it under the other's voice, the deep temptation that had been there all along:

  Give up. Give in. Become the monster that you know you are.

  The Randir began to laugh, half-choking on the ruins of her tongue. "Oh, child of darkness. Tempt me to speak, would you? But I am older than you, and stronger. How you betray yourself! Tricked. Trapped. Here, before all those whose opinions you value most. Cut deeper, then, and prove me right."

  Silver eyes reflected back from the gloating, obsidian stare. Behind them both, the angry, frustrated thrum of wings swelled.

  Jame's smile grew. "So be it."

  She cupped the woman's face in her hands, claws extending, and kissed her on the lips. "Tempter, victim of a greater temptation, randon, sister, farewell. I'm sorry." Then she drove her thumbs into the other's mouth, back to the hinges, forcing her jaws open.

  "Gari, now!"

  The bee swarm roared over Jame's shoulders, around her head, and down the Randir's throat. Eyes widened in shock as they began to sting and to die, inside her, yet more came, and more. They crawled down Jame's arms in a furry, furious pelt, down her hands, down into that seething mouth. The Randir began to gag and thrash, but she couldn't touch the one who held her. When she fell, Jame went down with her, straddling her body as it bucked and convulsed under her.

  "This is your servant!" she shouted into those bulging eyes, at the alien presence within. "Keep faith with her and stay to honor her death!" But the black pupils were already contracting as the Witch fled.

  Jame let go and sat back heavily on the floor.

  "Damn you," she muttered, close to tears. "Witch, bitch, worm, damn you to the Gray Lands and there let the dead have their way with you forever."

  She had no wish to witness those final, terrible death throes, but it seemed as if someone should. At last the body lay still, except where dying bees crawled beneath its clothes, their entrails torn out with their stingers. Then came a bright flutter of carrion jewel-jaws that settled, eagerly, on whatever exposed flesh they could find.

  Timmon leaned against a pillar, throwing up his dinner.

  "I just told them to go," Gari was saying, again and again. "I didn't tell them to do that. I didn't . . . I didn't . . ."

  Sheth put his uninjured arm around the boy, and the cadet clung to him, sobbing. "Of course you didn't," the Commandant said gently.

  "Huh." Gorbel nudged the body with his foot, only just not kicking it in case some of the bees were still alive and armed. "You do come up with interesting ways to kill people, Knorth."

  "Oh, shut up," said Jame.

  She considered vomiting too, but decided it wouldn't make her feel any better. Nothing she could think of would. But here was Jorin, anxiously nuzzling her ear, trying to crawl into her lap where he hadn't fit since he was a kitten. She held him, surprised to find that she was both chilled and shivering.

  The Commandant stood over her. "All right, child?"

  She gave a laugh that was half a sob. "You keep asking me that, ran."

  "With you, the question continually arises."

  "Er . . . you do know that you still have an arrow stuck through your shoulder, don't you?"

  "I had noticed," he said dryly.

  Harn snapped off the head and pulled out the shaft, which had punched Sheth's silk scarf of office through the wound from entry to exit. "No splinters there," he said. "Finally, the damned thing has served a purpose."

  Jame climbed to her feet, trying to pull herself together. She thought distractedly that she must give Harn the silver silk scarf as soon as possible, cavorting beasties be damned. It seemed a lifetime since she had first seen it wrapped around Graykin's dirty neck.

  "I'm curious," said the Commandant to her. "What did the Tempter mean about you killing Simmel? That young man's fate has always puzzled me. All we ever found were his clothes and a pile of teeth."

  "Well, ran, I did hit him in the head with a rock, but that's not why he crumbled to dust."

  "I see. Or rather, I don't. Perhaps, at some future date, you will enlighten me."

  By now, the others who had lain in ambush had slipped away. Making no fuss about it, the hunt-master gave a lymer the scent from the feathers of the arrow that Randiroc had snapped in two. When the tracker had found the scent and sped up the ramp in pursuit, he loosed a direhound after it.

  "This has not been one of Tentir's better days," remarked the Commandant. "It might, however, have been worse."

  He turned aside to speak with the Randir Lordan. Mirah had sunk to the ground asleep, legs folded neatly under her, head cradled in her master's arms. Clearly, she would not be fit to travel at least until morning.

  Harn stared down at the Randir's body. "Trinity, girl, Blackie would never . . ."

  "No, ran, I don't suppose he would; but I am not my brother."

  The big Kendar regarded her soberly fo
r a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "It will be Autumn's Eve in ten days," he said. "Blackie hasn't asked for you, but tomorrow you should leave for Gothregor to stand by him on the night. I think he's going to need you."

  His eyes were still on her, hesitant but heavy with judgment.

  "Tonight we cast the stones for the autumn cull. I'm sorry, but I don't think you will be coming back."

  VI

  Jame left the stable, feeling numb.

  The college was still in the process of rousing; the departure of its Shanir, without a general alarm, had been too sudden to create more than an initial stir, but now word was filtering back to the barracks that something startling if not terrible had happened. Lights flared in rooms among groggy sleepers. Those who hadn't yet gone to bed stood in their barracks doorways, bootless, calling questions to which there were few if any answers. Jame slipped by them as if invisible.

  Outside her own barracks, she stopped to lean on the rail. Across the practice square, on the second floor of Old Tentir, candle light glowed through the peach-colored screens of the Map Room and spilled out onto the Commandant's balcony. There, tonight, the casting of the stones, the autumn cull, would take place, but probably not for awhile yet: the Commandant would need to have his shoulder properly patched up, and then there was that mess below to sort out. She wondered what they would do with the Tempter's body. On her way out, she had heard Sheth say something about putting it outside the walls, to be claimed by whomever cared to take the trouble. If not, he had said, let Randiroc's jewel-jaws have it.

  Was that fair? Was it right? She didn't know.

  Almost at her feet, on the other side of the low wall and in its moon-cast shadow, the direhound raised its black head and snarled up at her over its prey. Front paws on the rail, Jorin growled back. The white lymer crouched to one side, its tracking done, patiently waiting for its reward of fresh entrails.

  "I know the hunt-master doesn't starve you," she told them both. "Return to him." The hound bared bloody fangs and crouched to spring. "Go."

  As one, they flattened and went, slinking.

  Huddled as the body was, she could only guess that the Randir cadet was male. Given the great pool of blood in which he lay, he was most certainly dead. So. Those were the fingers that had smoothed the arrow's feathers, set its notch to the string, and loosed it at a man whom this cadet had been told was a mortal enemy of his house.

  "I'm afraid," she said to him, "that you've been both gulled and culled. Perhaps I have been and will be too, soon."

  Maybe Harn was right. Maybe she didn't belong at Tentir and should be cast out. On the simple level of skill, except in a few areas she still trailed far behind the rest of her class. There was still a huge gap between their experience and hers. And she was dangerous—but would she be any less so elsewhere? Sending her back to Gothregor for anything longer than a visit was chancy, to say the least. What did one do with a nemesis, anyway, between catastrophes?

  "I have got to learn how to knit," Jame muttered to herself. "What's the worst I can do with a ball of yarn and a pair of needles? No, don't answer that."

  "I've been looking for you," said a grim voice, and there was Shade, with Addy draped around her neck like a thick, golden collar. She glanced over the railing. "Quirl. He always was a fool. Then again, I wasn't so bloody smart this evening either. Why did you do it?"

  "Do what, or rather, which? It's been a busy night."

  The other snorted. "You might well say so. I mean, why did you stop me? I could be packing now too, or more likely looking for a White Knife. My lady grand-dam does not like failure."

  Jame had forgotten that Shade was Rawneth's half-Kendar grand-daughter and that Lord Kenan was her father, not that either seemed to count for much among the Randir.

  "Would you have done it? Shot a fellow randon from ambush in the heart of Tentir?"

  Shade scowled. "I don't know what I was going to do. Listening to the Tempter, it sounded right: kill the enemy of our house; accomplish what even the dread Shadow Assassins have failed to do, these forty years past; protect our blood. Then I followed you, and spoke to him, and suddenly nothing was simple anymore." She shook her head. "It was always so clear before. Us against you. That's the way I was raised. No questions. No hesitation. Tentir is changing that, and so are you. I don't like it. It makes my head hurt." She shot Jame a look askance. "I was there, you know, in the stable. That devil hound went for me first because I was closest, but he veered off."

  "Why not? You hands were clean."

  "Is that why you stopped me from stepping forward?"

  "I suppose. Also, I like your snake." Jame looked up at the Map Room where shadows were beginning to move against the peach-colored screens. "Tonight, for me too, there were moments of such blinding clarity, when I knew exactly what I had to do and how to do it."

  She rubbed her mouth, as if to wipe away the cold touch of the Tempter's lips: Victim of a greater temptation, randon, sister, farewell. Somehow, she had known that the swarm was coming, and why, and how to open the way for it. No doubt. No hesitation. No question, even now. Only guilt.

  Jame sighed. "Now so much is murky again. Right and wrong, good and evil, honor and loyalty . . . "

  "You sound more familiar with confusion than with certainty. I don't envy you." Shade nodded toward the body almost at their feet. "That's certain, at least."

  "Death? I'm beginning to think that it's the most complicated thing of all, next to honor."

  She straightened and stretched, feeling the strain of the day in all the muscles down her back, hearing her spine creak.

  "The cull is about to begin, the stones to be cast. I wish you luck, Randir. For my part, this is probably my last night at the college, and I have one last thing to do while I still have the chance."

  The other looked at her suspiciously. "What?"

  Jame had started to turn toward the barracks door but hesitated, looking back. A wry smile twisted her face. "Why, sleep, of course. And dream."

  Chapter XXII: Casting the Stones

  Summer 110

  I

  Rue met her at the barracks door, with a startled glance after the retreating Randir, then another at the general stir along arcade.

  "Lady, what's going on?"

  Jame didn't feel like explaining, assuming she could, so she chose the simplest answer: "The autumn cull has begun."

  The cadet shot an aghast look across the square at the lit windows of the Map Room. "What, tonight?"

  Other Knorth cadets crowded behind her in a rising babble of voices: "What did she say?"

  "They're casting the stones!"

  "But what's this about a pile of corpses in the stable?"

  "Never mind that. It's the cull!"

  Jame recaptured Rue's attention with difficulty.

  "Take the gray silk scarf to Ran Harn. Hurry."

  "B-but I haven't even had time to wash it, and as for the embroidery . . ."

  "Never mind that. He's about to cast the stones with what looks like a dirty sock tied around his neck. Go."

  She climbed the stairs against a swift tide of descending cadets. They had all known this was coming, of course, but to have it suddenly upon them was another thing altogether. It didn't look as if anyone else would either want or get much sleep that night.

  The Lordan's Coat still sprawled, ignobly abandoned, in the corner of the third floor common room. Dragging it by the collar as if by the scruff of the neck, she entered the lordan's apartment and closed both doors behind her. Jorin slipped through on her heels.

  The inner room had been left a desolation of discarded clothes, empty chests, and tarnished trinkets, the tawdry remains of a worthless life and of a death largely unmourned. Even the smell seemed old, a dusty, faint reek of mortality. The door to the north wing servants' quarters stood ajar, and a thin, cold breath of air moved through it like a long sigh. Jame closed it. Then, feeling a bit foolish, she balanced a chair against it so that it would top
ple if the door moved.

  Somewhere behind all those other boxes against the south wall, there was another door, but she didn't care to dig it out. Either Graykin was asleep in whatever nest he had made there or, more likely, he was out earning his keep by spying on the Map Room. Whichever, what she had to do now was none of his business. With a certain grim amusement, she booby-trapped that side of the room too with an assortment of knickknacks and bottles sure to crunch or roll under the unwary foot.