"At this rate," murmured the young Danior to the Brandan in the pause between rounds, "we won't be done until dawn. D'you think the Commandant will last that long?"
The Brandan gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I've seen Sheth Sharp-tongue direct a battle, aye, and fight in it for three days running, with a thigh slashed two inches deep. We only found out about it at the end, when he dismounted and collapsed from loss of blood. Awl worries me more. Every time she touches that damn black ball, something goes out of her."
"And Harn?"
"You sit closer to him than I do. Keep watch. I don't like his color, or the way he keeps tightening that blasted scarf; and I don't trust the Ardeth to help, although he sits closer still."
They both glanced at the senior Ardeth who stood aside, sipping amber wine from a crystal glass. He and the Jaran were the only pure Highborn currently on the Randon Council, although otherwise they were as different from each other as fine leather and rough silk.
"So Lord Ardeth still isn't speaking to Blackie."
"Not directly." The Brandan took a swig of watered cider. Only Harn was drinking his neat, and hard. "We hear rumors that he's trying to get at the Highlord through his matriarch, Adiraina. Our own matriarch hasn't been near Gothregor since she returned the Knorth death banner."
Tactfully, the Danior didn't comment on this. Everyone knew that Brenwyr was unwell and that her lord brother worried about her, but whatever ailed her belonged to the impenetrable, no doubt trivial mysteries of the Women's World.
The Commandant returned to the circle and sank into his place on the floor, followed soon after with some cracking of stiff joints by the rest of the Council. The second round of the cull was about to begin.
V
Getting back to sleep required several more pulls on the green bottle, taken reluctantly: Jame remembered all too clearly how helpless she had felt when Kindrie had dosed her with hemlock. Dreams were tricky enough as it was, she thought as she dropped back into her noisome nest on the hearth, head and stomach roiling.
As it was, she no longer knew who was dreaming what. Had that last been a dream at all, or had she descended far enough to eavesdrop on Tori at the bolted door in his soul-image? Even then, it had been strange, that slip from her father's voice to her uncle's. Greshan, a blood-binder? It didn't surprise her much, nor that his Shanir powers should have proved so much weaker than her father's, considering that the older boy had only been able to bind the younger for short periods of time. It certainly helped to explain Ganth's hatred of the Old Blood, without forcing him to realize that he possessed it himself.
What a miserable childhood he must have had, almost as bad as her own. What had it been like, to live under the shadow of such alternating cruelty and neglect? Her mind drifted toward sleep, trying to imagine the boy her father had been.
It was Autumn's Eve.
The boy wandered in his grandmother's Moon Garden, between banks of tall, pale comfrey and lacy yarrow, between primrose and arching fern. He had the slight build of his house and the fine, strong bones just emerging from childhood, but undercut by an anxious air like that of a beaten puppy. All around were healing herbs, but none to cure the emptiness within, the echoing sense of worthlessness so carefully nurtured by his older brother, the Knorth Lordan.
Another walked beside him in his moon-cast shadow: daughter-to-be, child of his ruined future. If he thinks so little of you, it asked, why does he bother to torment you at all?
The boy didn't know. All he asked was to be left alone. Somehow, though, he was like a secret itch that his brother felt compelled to scratch until it bled.
He glanced unhappily up at a dark window set high in the garden's northern wall. Only with his grandmother Kinzi did he feel safe, but the Knorth Matriarch was visiting her friend Adiraina in the Women's Halls. He would wait here until she came home. Then he would go up to say good night and hear a kind word in return.
He turned, and found that he was no longer alone. The door to the outer halls had silently opened. Just inside it stood a slim, masked girl clad in black, white, and silver, her eyes fixed, greedily, on that dark, upper window.
Jame half-woke with a sick start.
That's Rawneth, she thought, gulping down green nausea. Young, beautiful, and oh, so hungry. But for what?
Now they were in Kinzi's apartment, and Rawneth was looking through the Matriarch's possessions.
This is wrong. Why did you bring her here?
She had been so kind to him in the garden, so sympathetic. Why hadn't he gone with his father on this Autumn's Eve to remember the Knorth dead? The Highlord hadn't asked him? Oh. Well, perhaps Lord Gerraint thought that he would be bored and it was, really, such a long, dull ceremony. Anyway, it was the Lordan's duty to attend his father tonight. What, Greshan hadn't gone either? He was out hunting? How curious.
He reminded himself that she was only sixteen, a bare three years his senior, but so poised that they might have belonged to different generations. The lower third of her full skirt, her arms, and her mask were black, her bodice white, tight laced with silver—the markings of an elegant direhound.
She had always wanted to see the Knorth quarters, especially those of the Knorth Matriarch. Would he show her? How her dark eyes glittered behind her mask, how red those thin lips against that white skin. Her finger-tips, long nailed, caressed his cheek and he shuddered, torn between desire and repulsion, hardly knowing which stirred him more. Show me. Please?
Now he stood back watching, increasingly uncomfortable, as her pretense of delicate curiosity fell away and she began to paw through Kinzi's things like a dog on the scent, digging avidly for dirt. What she found was a square of fine linen, covered with tiny knot-stitches.
"Well, well, well."
Greshan lounged in the doorway. He reeked of the hunt, of sweat, blood, and offal, a filthy, gorgeously embroidered coat draped over one shoulder. Tunic laces hung loose, half undone, at his throat.
"What have you brought me, Gander? Will I enjoy it?"
They circled each other beside Kinzi's bed. Her long, black hair stirred and rose about her as if in an updraft, although the room was close and still. Her fingertips brushed against his bare chest, leaving faint red lines. He slid his hand through her shining hair, then suddenly gripped it and jerked her face up to his. She stifled a cry, but tears of pain glittered in her pale cheeks. He bent his head, licked them off, and shuddered.
"Bitter," he said thickly. "And potent. Is the magic in your blood as strong?"
"Taste it and see."
The tendrils of black hair that had wound about his hand slowly relaxed into a caress. She gave a husky laugh.
"You should meet my cousin Roane. He likes to play games too."
"Later. Gangray, get out."
She eyed Ganth askance over Greshan's shoulder, black eyes glittering half in mockery, half in challenge. "Oh, let the little boy watch . . . unless he wishes to join us and become a man."
Then everything stopped.
Kinzi stood in the doorway. The Knorth Matriarch was a tiny, neat, old woman with a crown of tightly plaited white hair which, unbound, would have brushed the floor; but all one really saw, in that frozen moment, were her eyes, as hard, bright, and cold as burnished silver.
"Leave," she said to her older grandson. "Now."
Greshan goggled at her, made a choking sound, and reeled past, out of the room.
Knorth and Randir faced each other.
"So. You would bind the Highlord's heir if you could."
"Do you think it beyond me, Matriarch?"
"I think you believe that very little is."
They were circling each other now, gliding, the tall, elegant girl and the tiny, old woman. The boy, forgotten, backed into the corner, as far away as he could get. It seemed to him as if the room was tilting this way and that, twisted by the clash of their wills; but there was no question who was the stronger.
Kinzi held out her small hand. "Give me that."
>
All this time, Rawneth had been clutching the embroidery with its fine pattern of knot work. Now she tried instinctively to hide it behind her back, but Kinzi's hand was still out. Step by grudging step, she drew the younger woman to her and took the cloth from her.
"If I were to tell the Highlord what those knots say. . ." Rawneth began defiantly.
"Would you indeed, and betray the very heart of the Women's World? What Adiraina writes in the love-knots of this old letter is meant for me alone."
"If I told. . . ."
"You would be excluded forever from the solace of sisterkin-ship—if, indeed, anyone should ever want you. As it is, I cast you out from the Women's Halls. Never come back. And leave my grandson alone. He may be a fool, but he is not for the likes of you, nor do you want him for anything but his bloodlines. I smell your ambition, girl, rank as a whore's lust."
The Randir drew herself up, trembling with rage.
"Do you think you Knorth will rule the Kencyrath forever," she spat, "you, who are already so few? And who will come next, when your oh-so-pure blood is finally spent? Do you think about that, old woman, in the long nights? You should. Change is coming. I have foreseen it. I am part of it."
"Not today. Not while I live. Go, snake-heart. Now."
And Rawneth went, out of the room, out of the Knorth quarters, out of Gothregor.
Kinzi sank onto her bed and dropped her head into her trembling hands. She looked suddenly smaller and more vulnerable than the boy had ever seen her. It frightened him.
She looked up. "Ah, child. You shouldn't have seen that. Forget."
His eyes went blank and he stood swaying like one asleep on his feet. Clearly, he had indeed forgotten.
Her gaze shifted to the watcher who stood in his shadow. "Perhaps that was wrong of me. I never made him face what he was, or knew what his brother had done to him as a child until it was too late, the harm already done, and he grown out of reach. I made so many mistakes. We all did. And now you live with the consequences."
Lady . . .
It was hard to speak as a dream within a dream, to a past in which she did not exist. Her voice sounded to her like the thin whine of the winter wind under a door.
Rawneth. The Witch. I see how your quarrel started, but why did it end like that, in such slaughter?
Kinzi seemed about to answer, but then her look sharpened, and her voice as well. "Child, you have company. Wake up."
"W-w-wha . . .?"
Jame lurched out of sleep, thoroughly disoriented. Where was she . . . and why was someone scrabbling at the jacket, trying to get at her throat? She freed a hand with difficulty from the coat's embrace, caught the other by the wrist, and stopped the knife's descent. Along its fire-lit edge, she met a young Kendar's furious glare.
"Narsa, what in Perimal's name . . ."
"I told you: Timmon is mine."
The Ardeth cadet bore down on the steel until the point touched the hollow of her throat, but then Jame gathered her wits and kicked her off. Both rolled off the raised hearth and onto their feet, one surprised to find that, as in her dream, she was naked. And unarmed. And furious.
"Dammit, I was finally about to get some answers, and you come busting in with your stupid jealousy! Oh." The floor seemed to lurch; no, that had been her own unsteady legs. The square bottle was striking back.
Wonderful, she thought. I'm about to fight for my life while half-drunk.
"I told you . . ."
"And I'm telling you: he's not mine." Jame sat down on the hearth, to make a virtue of necessity. "Take him if you can get him, with my blessings, or find someone better."
"Y-you've bewitched him!" The knife wove before the Ardeth, but her eyes spilled over with such tears that it seemed unlikely she could strike true with it. Her thin face was already blotched and swollen with weeping. "He can't talk about anyone but you, especially tonight. Jameth this, Jameth that, on and on and on . . . "
"You're the one who put Addy in my bed," said Jame, suddenly enlightened. "You did me a good turn there, but you've got to stop sneaking up on me while I'm asleep. Someone could get hurt."
"Witch!" Narsa threw the knife at her, missed, and fled, wailing.
As Jame fished in the ashes of the dying fire for the blade, Jorin ambled out of the shadows, yawning.
"Some guardian you are," she told him.
How was she supposed to dream true with all these interruptions? For that matter, how did one tell the true from the false in such matters? That last dream had felt painfully real. How like Greshan, and Rawneth, and—here came a pause—that poor boy, who would one day become her father. But nowhere had she caught so much as a glimpse of her brother, Tori.
Jame sighed. Painful or not, it hadn't been the dream she was after. She would have to try again.
Whatever was in the green bottle seemed to help, even if it made waking more a nightmare than sleep. She picked it up, feeling by its heft that it was still half full, with a solid residue at the bottom.
A warning sounded in the back of her mind: The more you drink, the less control you will have. Under that came a more urgent whisper: Think. The Witch's taunt has set you on this path: Little girl, dare you try?
She wasn't thinking clearly and she knew it; but the taunt galled, as it was meant to. Caution be damned.
Yes, I dare.
She up-ended the bottle and, half choking, drained it.
VI
The second round of the cull slowly drew to its close. This time, the Council had reversed the order so that the Knorth came last. Before that, the stones were cast again and again, settling the fate of cadet after cadet. Three black and six white, in. Six black and three white, out.
The Danior sniffed. "Do you smell something burning?"
A sergeant went to investigate. On his return, he bent to whisper in the Commandant's ear, then resumed his station.
"Well?" demanded the Ardeth.
Sheth dismissed the matter with an incautious shrug, followed by a suppressed wince. "There has been a small fire in the stable, but it is under control. Proceed."
Finally, only one cadet remained in doubt: the Knorth Lordan, Jameth.
The Randir and Jaran cast as they had at first, the former against, the latter for. The Ardeth also tossed an obsidian sphere into the circle: even if it hadn't suited M'lord Adric that the Knorth girl should escape his schemes, the senior randon of his house didn't approve of her being at Tentir on general principles. The Danior, defiantly, cast white, as did the Edirr, with a mischievous grin. Coman, black. Brandan, white.
"That's four white and three black," murmured the Commandant. He fingered a stone, then sighed and cast it.
Black.
"Why?" burst out the Danior. "I thought you liked her."
"So I do."
"What, then? Did M'lord Caldane order you to vote against her?"
"Of course."
"And you agreed?"
The Danior's voice cracked slightly. He wasn't asking as much for one cadet, even a lordan, as for Tentir. The others stirred uneasily. All knew that politics played a role at this level, but none cared to admit it, especially when it ran counter to their own instincts. If the best among them surrendered his judgment to his lord's will, what case could the rest make for following their conscience rather than orders?
"I take my lord's wishes into consideration," said Sheth levelly, "but only that. As for the Knorth Jameth, as we all know by now, she has great power and is learning—for the most part—how to control it. As for skills, her Senethar is excellent. Although she might still learn something from Randiroc about wind-blowing, I doubt if anyone in generations has seen a purer style."
"Yes." The Coman leaned forward, as pugnacious as his young lord. "But where did she learn it, eh? Who was her Senethari?"
This, indeed, still caused debate in the officers' mess-hall. In Jameth, they seemed to have an effect without a cause, a pupil without a teacher. If she had belonged to any other house, they could have
shrugged it off as chance, however unlikely. With the Knorth, however, one had to wonder.
"Well, whoever it was," the Brandan said, "we are her teachers now. Her weapons' mastery is less than satisfactory . . ."
"Flying swords," murmured the Ardeth. "A new form of combat, perhaps? I seem to remember that her brother once favored throwing knives."
". . . however, it isn't hopeless. She can learn. The same goes for leadership."
"But don't forget," interposed the Randir, startling the others because she had spoken so little that evening, "we aren't talking about an ordinary cadet here. She is the Highlord's heir and his possible successor."
To Ride a Rathorn Page 49