To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  There. I warned you never to spy on me again.

  A few embers glowed on the hearth among heaps of smoldering rags. Jame tossed in the wreckage of a cedar chest to rouse the flames and held her hands up to them as they flared. She still felt very cold, and shaken, and not at all prepared for what came next.

  For that matter, was it really necessary, or even wise? One couldn't be physically hurt in dreams as one could in the soulscape, or so she supposed, but if she had actually begun to dream true, nightmares of the past might tell her things that hurt far worse than any punch in the nose. Did she really want to know what had happened in this room to her father so long ago? The old days held so many dark things, some perhaps best left undisturbed.

  Ah, but the past wasn't dead, only asleep, waiting to rise again and to strike. She had the Witch's promise of that.

  "Something changed your father, Rawneth had said through the Tempter's bleeding lips. "His blood is yours, and your brother's as well. Is his final madness also your joint inheritance? Can either of you truly know yourself until you understand him?

  Huh. So much for any choice in the matter. This concerned Tori as much as it did her. Besides, in her experience if you turned your back on a problem, it tended to bite you in the ass.

  Here was a pile of not too musty clothing, perhaps dropped by Rue in her rush downstairs. Jame heaped them on the raised hearth in a rough bed, lay down, still fully clothed, and tried to make herself comfortable. The fire warmed her back and Jorin crept into her arms, but she continued to shiver.

  From the shadows by the door where she had let it fall, the Lordan's Coat smirked at her. There was no other word for the expression conveyed by those peaked folds of stitch-thickened cloth, too heavy to crumple even when unceremoniously dropped. With a sigh, over Jorin's protest at being disturbed, she rose to fetch it. After all, why else had she brought the damn thing in here with her? Rue had cleaned it as best she could and darned the ripped lining, but at the least movement the old stench seeped out of it, as strong, personal, and offensive as ever. As Jame returned to the hearth with it, she considered throwing it on the fire. Heirloom or not, Greshan had surely tainted it past repair. But if it had become the flayed skin of old nightmares, she still needed to learn its secrets.

  With a smug reek, the coat settled over her in an unwelcome embrace. Wrinkles in the garments upon which she lay creased her flesh and Jorin grumbled as she shifted restlessly. The fire snarled over its wooden prey. From outside came the muted stir of the barracks.

  Never in her life had she felt less like falling asleep.

  II

  "What are you grinning at?"

  Harn Grip-hard glared at the senior Edirr randon, sitting cross-legged third to his right around the circle, beyond the haughty Ardeth and a Danior who seemed far too young to be here, in such august company. As in the hall below, the Randon Council kept to the order of their house banners, but in a circle without head or foot.

  "Oh, nothing, nothing," said the Edirr hastily, and turned to speak to the grave Brandan on his right.

  Harn tugged at the silk scarf. Pretty it might be, but slippery; he had had to knot it around his thick neck to keep it from slithering off. Now, however, he felt as if it was trying to strangle him. Either that, or guilt: The cadet Rue had intercepted him just outside the Map Room with a quick, hissed message that the Knorth Lordan had said he should wear it—this, when Jameth must know that he was about to betray her.

  He squinted surreptitiously at the embroidered border that seemed to amuse the Edirr so much. Seen upside down, it looked like an abstract pattern, peacock blue thread on shimmering gray. Nothing to laugh at there, or anywhere else tonight that he could see.

  The Tempter's grisly fate didn't bother him—much: clearly, the woman had crossed any number of lines, putting an arrow through Sheth Sharp-tongue being the least of them.

  But that boy in the square with his throat torn out . . . such a pitiful, little heap he had made, his eyes and mouth agape with frozen horror. Harn remembered him alive, small for his age with a thin, intent face, struggling to keep up. A child. The Tempter would have used that: Here is your chance to prove yourself, to be blooded in your lady's service.

  Blood. The ground had been soaked with it. His own hands felt wet and greasy—only with sweat, he told himself; but when he closed his eyes, all he saw was red.

  What's happening to us, Blackie? How can such a thing occur, here of all places? Have we failed in honor, or has honor failed us?

  He rolled two stones in his palm—one white quartz, the other black limestone, both polished smooth by a mountain stream and warming to his touch. Two more of each lay before him. Like the rest of the Council, he had spent the last few weeks making up his mind which stone each cadet had earned, white or black, in or out. Some of the choices hadn't been easy. One was getting harder by the minute. Perhaps he should ask for a delay. After such a night, were any of them fit to judge wisely?

  The senior Randir Awl sat across from him, her back roughly to the east wall as his was to the balcony and the west. Murals flickered by candle-light all around them, each the bloody chaos of battle resolved into clean lines and glowing color. There on the north wall was the newest: the Cataracts. Awl had done fine service at the Lower Huddles and on many other so-called fields of honor, often by his side. A good woman. A good randon. Tonight, though, she looked like the unburnt dead. At her left hand was a knobby bone, the vertebra of a large snake; at her right, a black . . . thing, compact but convoluted, as if tightly wound, with an oily sheen—both no doubt the choice of her lady the Witch. Harn was angry for his colleague's sake. What had happened tonight wasn't her fault. Why did clean hands such as hers have to touch such things?

  But she hadn't asked to delay the cull.

  The Commandant sat to his left, beyond the Jaran. Candle-glow picked out the hawk-sharp lines of his face and a fresh, white scarf serving as a sling. His shoulder must throb with every heartbeat, but he showed no sign of it except perhaps for the gathering shadows under his eyes.

  He hadn't asked for a delay either.

  Harn sighed. If Sheth could do this with a bloody hole punched through him, so could he. Oh, but it was hard.

  "We know why we are here." The Commandant's voice was flat. This is our sworn duty, its inflection said, and we may not turn from it. "The college cannot support its current population over the coming winter. More important, only the best belong here, and we have now had time to determine who they are. A score have already departed this night."

  Awl's thin lips tightened, but she didn't speak nor did anyone look at her.

  "We need to cull at least a hundred more. Are we agreed? Then let the stones fall—for the good of our randon fellowship, for our houses, for the Kencyrath as a whole, and for our personal honor, tonight so grievously wounded. May duty heal us all."

  III

  This is ridiculous, thought Jame, still fidgeting on the hearth.

  Never patient where his comfort was concerned, Jorin had long since retreated to a quiet corner. She herself had slept sound in stranger places than this. So, why not tonight?

  Earlier, she had wished she had some of Kindrie's foul tincture of hemlock. That in turn had reminded her of the bottles Rue had unearthed and, rising, she had found one still marginally drinkable, in a square green bottle sealed with wax and soft lead. Tubain had kept a similar jar behind the counter at the Res aB'tyrr in Tai-tastigon, until Cleppetty had made him empty it into the gutter. Jame remembered the curb-stones smoking. But Highborn, she reminded herself, were very hard to poison. Anise, tansy, wormwood, and a kick like a cart horse. One swallow had numbed her mouth and made her eyes sting; but that, apparently, was all.

  Oh, why couldn't she sleep?

  "Because you will always fail," said the Tempter's voice, filtered through a hum of insects.

  She hawked to clear her throat. An ejected bee tumbled out onto the floor, its guts ripped out with its stinger. It righted itsel
f, unsteadily, and bumbled into the fire where flames kindled its wings. The Randir herself stood in shadow, her form still yet strangely a-seethe.

  "You haven't the focus," she said. "Lover of confusion, of chaos, of destruction."

  "I am not! I just don't see things as simply as you Randir do. Poor Shade. I made her head hurt. Mine is throbbing now too."

  "Serves yuh right." Simmel balanced on the wobbly chair set against the side door, gumming his words without teeth. Grains of dust trickled out of his ears and empty eye sockets, tick, tick, tick, onto the floor. "Look at m' poor head, all s-smashed an' hollow."

  "Thank your lady for that," Jame snapped. "She's the one who emptied your skull, not me, and you let her. The world is not black and white."

  "It is tonight," said the Tempter, with a ghastly, toothy smile full of mangled, wriggling bees. "White stone, in; black stone, out."

  Jame felt warmth against her back. She thought it was the fire, until it stirred restlessly.

  "I'm going to fail," murmured her brother. "So many faces, so many names . . . how can I remember them all?"

  They might have been children again in the keep in the Haunted Lands, huddled together in bed for comfort, for protection.

  "Mullen. Marc. I will never forget them, but one is dead and the other refused my bond. Father said I was weak, and I am. I am. I am."

  All right, Jame thought. I'm asleep after all, but is this my dream or his?

  "I'm going to fail . . ."

  She tried to turn, but the lordan's jacket fought her. How many arms did the thing have anyway, and why couldn't it keep them to itself?

  "Tori, let me help you. Dammit"—this in a sputter to the coat, as it wrapped a boneless sleeve around her face and tried to stuff itself down her throat—"Ummph . . . let me go! Tori!"

  Could he hear her? Was he even there anymore?

  With a great effort she flung off the coat and scrambled to her feet, to find by the draft that she had shed all her other clothing as well. Simmel snickered from the shadows.

  "Oh, shut up," she snarled at him. "You're not so pretty yourself."

  "Remember me!" dry voices cried from the ashes of the past, from the crack and greedy hiss of the pyre. "Remember me! I brought your grandfather word of his son's death, and for that he cursed me."

  "I honored seven contracts, at last dying in childbirth far from home."

  "I fought beside your father in the White Hills, and died at the hands of my own mate for the sake of our unborn child."

  "I saved Tentir's honor at the point of the White Knife or thought that I did, but all in vain . . ."

  She could almost see them now in the arc of the fireplace, a vast, gray host crowding around her brother, reaching out to him with unraveling hands. How many there were, all the past Highborn and Kendar of their house whose blood, like Kinzi's and Aerulan's, trapped their souls in the weave of their death.

  Torisen held out his beautiful, scarred hands—to embrace or to ward them off?

  "Yes, yes, I know my duty and am honor bound to it, but so many names, so many faces—how can I remember you all?"

  That last gray shape who had spoken of honor, Tentir, and the White Knife . . . he had been a big Kendar with large hands and a broad, almost familiar face.

  I know him, thought Jame. I know him!

  "Tori!" she called over the wasteland of ashen heads, of gray faces turning slowly toward her even as they crumbled to ruin. "That's Hallik Hard-hand, Harn's father! And that other must be Sere, Winter's mate. Don't you remember his face painted on the walls of our parents' bedroom? I know others as well, dead and alive. Let me help!"

  But could he hear her? The cries had grown shrill, demanding: "Me!"

  "Me!"

  "Take me!"

  Banners unraveled and rewove to clothe the living. Highborn ladies swarmed around Torisen in a swirl of stolen funereal finery, clawing strips off each other to reach him. What are the claims of the dead compared to the ravenous hunger of the living?

  "Take me!"

  "Me!"

  "Me!"

  What was this, a feeding frenzy?

  Jame plunged in among them, naked and thoroughly exasperated. They scattered before her with faint, horrified shrieks at her unmasked face. No doubt about it: This was Tori's nightmare, asleep and awake. If even a fraction of it was true, the Women's World had lost its mind, or at least its head. No wonder Tori was running scared. But where was he, or rather where were they?

  She had followed him to a cold, dark place which, surely, she should know by that thin, sour smell, but it was so very, very dark, and it felt safer somehow not to know, or to be noticed. Voices muttered, rising and falling, woven together with the dense texture of an argument that never ends but only repeats with endless variations.

  ". . . hands, hands, hands," Torisen was saying. He sounded much younger than he had a moment ago, and his voice cracked with helpless exhaustion. "How they clutch and cling! They will drag me down, but I swore never to fail another as I did Mullen. I s-swore!"

  A hoarse, muffled voice answered him, an insidious murmur from within. "We all swear. Many swore to me, and all swore false. I have lost thousands. I lost you, my only son. What is one man compared to that?"

  "He was just that, a man, and he trusted me. They all do."

  "All who trust are fools. I trusted you. Trust no one."

  "But she's my s-sister, my twin, my other half. Why can't I trust her and accept her help?"

  It was the voice of a child, pleading against the dark. Jame wanted to shout at it, "Oh, grow up! Don't ask. Tell him!" But her own voice caught in her throat.

  "Because, boy, she is Shanir."

  "Is—is that really so bad?"

  Now she was truly struck dumb. When had Tori begun to question that, the bedrock of their early training?

  "Anar taught us the old stories. Mother sang them to us in the dark, before she went away. Once, those of the Old Blood did great things . . ."

  "Terrible things."

  "That too. Yet everything else in life is gray. Why is only this black and white?"

  . . . white stone, black stone, in or out . . .

  "You ask me that, again and again and again. Do you think, if you whine long enough, I can change night to day? Weak, foolish, faithless boy. Shall I tell you, again, what that filthy Shanir, my brother Greshan, did to me as a child, no older than you are now? Shall I show you?"

  No! Jame wanted to shout. Leave him alone, you bully! But fear swallowed her voice.

  "See. Hear. Learn," said that loathsome voice, gloating over each word. "Just a drop of his blood on the knife's tip, not strong enough to bind for more than an hour or two, just long enough to make the game more interesting. Dear little Gangrene. You went crying to Father the last time, but he didn't believe you, and he never will. Not against me. You're a worthless, sniveling liar, and everyone knows it. Now open wide like a good little boy or I'll break your teeth—again—with the blade. There. Now, come to me."

  And Jame woke on the cold hearth, with the iron taste of blood in her mouth from her own bitten tongue and her brother's cry of horror echoing in her mind.

  IV

  The first round of the cull went much as expected, although with a few surprises. Naturally, the Highlord's house began, and the first name called by the sergeant standing behind Harn Grip-hard was that of the Knorth Lordan.

  For a long moment, no one moved except for Harn, tugging again at his gray silk scarf. No stone cast, black or white, meant that Jameth was in. Then the senior Jaran leaned forward and rolled an ivory ball carved with lesser runes into the circle. Harn felt the room swim. Must he be the one after all to cast the black? But the Randir spared him. Whether on her own judgment or by order of her lady, she let drop her black ball. It neither bounced nor rolled, but fell with a plop and lay there, twitching slightly.

  Again, everyone waited, but no one moved. Then Jaran and Randir scooped up their markers and the next name was called.
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br />   Harn let his breath out in a loud whoosh, causing the Commandant to shoot him an amused glance. Jameth's fate would not be decided until the second round, or possibly the third and last.

  Judgment was also suspended on the Caineron and Ardeth lordans. Politics aside, some felt that the former was too clumsy and the latter too casual to make good randon. Brier Iron-thorn also received one white and one black stone. No one doubted her ability, but several were still wary of her sudden change of houses. Such things rarely happened, and caused great suspicion when they did. At the end of the first round, the fates of some two hundred cadets remained undecided.

  By now, it was well into the night, the thick candles banded with the hours half burnt.