Several members of the Council snorted.
"Blackie will never carry through with that," said the Coman. "We all know that he's just buying time. I've even heard that he's considering taking her as his consort when she fails here."
"If she fails."
"When, you mean."
"No, if!"
"No, dammit, when! Remember, none of us thought she would get even this far."
"D'you really think Blackie might contract for her?" the Danior asked Harn undercover of the general uproar, leaning past a disdainful Ardeth who pretended not to hear him. "After all, that was the Knorth way with powerful Shanir before the Fall, and it's not as if he has to ask anyone's permission now."
Harn grunted. "How should I know? Nobody tells me anything."
"Gently, gently." Sheth eased his arm in its sling with a faint grimace. As the candles had waned, the shadows under his eyes had grown. "You begin to sound like a conclave of scrollsmen. No offense, Jurien."
The Jaran Highborn shrugged. He sat on that council as well and might one day, when he retired as a randon, become its director. "Why should I take offense at the truth? Academia has made squabbling a fine art. You, my dear friends, are mere novices by comparison. For that matter, Mount Alban would be pleased to offer the Knorth Lordan a place, if Tentir is fool enough to toss her out. With her brother's permission, of course. She has a mind, that girl. I suggest that we dismiss it at our peril. Anyway, she needn't graduate from Tentir to become Highlord. Ganth didn't. Torisen didn't."
"And here she is vulnerable."
Everyone turned to the Commandant. After all, so far he had only listed reasons why the Knorth Lordan should stay.
"There are the usual risks, of course, but so far she has proved equal to them. If anything, we have been in more danger from her than she from us."
Somebody laughed. Others glared.
"However, this is the Highlord's heir, subject to special judgment. If she passes this cull, the next may prove far more deadly. Come summer, do you really think that she will pass unchallenged, or must she suffer the fate of her uncle? Yes, I both like and value her, too well to want her blood on my hands."
"Nor on mine." Harn let fall his black stone to lie beside Sheth's. He tugged at his already tight scarf, turning an alarming shade of purple in the process. "My house brought death and bitter shame on Tentir once. Never again."
That seemed to take his last breath. As he strained, gaping, to draw another, the Danior made a dive for him across the Ardeth. However, the sergeant standing behind Harn reached him first, slipping a knife under the scarf, as if to cut his throat, but instead slicing free the silk.
"I think," said the Commandant, as Harn sat gasping, his face slowly changing from purple to mottled red, "that a short recess is in order."
Four white, five black.
It was nearly dawn. Soon would come the third and last round of the cull when Commandant and Knorth war-leader must cast their extra votes, with only one cadet in question.
VII
Jame sat shivering on the ledge of the raised hearth, the Lordan's Coat draped over her shoulders, staring at Narsa's knife which had been driven deep into the floor at the center of the old blood stain. New blood spread out around it and welled up through cracks as if the very wood bled.
Trinity, what a terrible dream.
She had suddenly found herself straddling the hips of a prone Timmon, both of them naked. He had looked as surprised as she had felt, but then he had smiled.
"At last!"
The smile twitched and faded from unease to dawning alarm.
"I think," he had said uncertainly, "that I'm going to throw up again."
"Not on me, you aren't. I told you this dream was dangerous."
Then she had looked down and realized that she was gripping not what she had thought but the hilt of the knife as it jutted obscenely out of Timmon's stomach. Her fingers were still cramped with the effort that it had taken to drive the steel through him, and his blood spilled out over her hands.
With that, she had started awake on the hearth and hastily leaned over its edge to vomit green slime onto the floor, where it was now eating a hole in the wood. Oh, for a drink of cold, clean water. A river. An ocean. But those were passing thoughts.
She also hoped that Timmon was all right. Huh. If nothing else, maybe this would teach him to stay out of her dreams, even when summoned.
What appalled her most, however, was that that had only been the end of the nightmare. In the shock of waking, she had forgotten the rest.
At least she had stopped shivering. The fire roared at her back, fed with more shattered crates, warming her through the heavy, embroidered coat. She had the odd sensation of expanding to fill it. A warmth also filled her stomach, replacing the previous clammy nausea. There was a cup of wine in her hand. She sipped it, and felt the glow within increase.
That's funny, she thought, and heard someone chuckle thickly—herself, but not in her voice.
A soft laugh echoed her from the other side of the hearth, from a dark Randir face. Who . . . oh.
"M'dear friend, Roane."
That slurred voice again. Not hers. His. Greshan's.
"Well, of course," it said. "After all, I am the Knorth Lordan."
"Of course you are," murmured the Randir, and touched his glass to his lips without drinking.
The Knorth knew vaguely that he had had far more wine tonight than his companion.
Can't hold his liquor and knows it. Not like me.
He took another gulp and started to say something so clever that he burst out laughing at the mere thought of it. Wine spurted out his nose like blood onto his white shirt. That, too, struck him as exquisitely funny.
Behind Roane, in the shadows, stood two figures, watching. He squinted at them. One had a strangely shaped head, as if it had been smashed flat on one side; the other seemed to be chewing on something that squirmed and faintly buzzed. More Randir. Roane had strange servants. Well, damn them all with their superior, knowing airs. He would show them something that they wouldn't soon forget. The best joke yet.
"No, truly," he heard himself cry, "such games we used to play, my brother and I. The things I made him do!"
"Did he enjoy them?"
"Now, if he had, where would have been the fun? Once the poor little fool even tried to tell Father, who called him a liar to his face for his pains."
He was leaning forward now, supporting himself with a hand heavy with glittering golden rings, the gifts of a doting parent.
Wrap the old fool 'round m'little finger. Be done with him soon. Then we'll see how a true highlord can rule.
In the meantime, there was this damned Randir with his knowing smirk, as if he knew how much Greshan's younger brother vexed him, and how much it irked him that he was vexed.
"Killed our mother, didn't he? Giving birth. Father hates him for that. So do I."
Saying too much. Stop it.
He dropped his voice conspiratorially. "Listen. This very minute, he sleeps below in his virtuous cot. Dear little Gangrene, all grown up and come to play soldier. Shall we summon him, eh? See if he remembers our old midnight game?"
"Why not? It might be . . . amusing. Permit me."
Roane's misshapen servant stepped forward in response to a languid gesture and silently left the room.
Greshan licked his lips, feeling a sudden flush of anticipation. It had been a long time. Not that the real pleasure came from the act, but from the control, the sense of superiority. No one stood up for Ganth Grayling but their grandmother Kinzi, and he was sure that the little bastard hadn't told her anything. He had that much pride at least. Too much pride. To think that dear little Gander had actually come here, as if to make something of himself. What arrogance. Clearly, he hadn't yet learned his place, which was to be, always and forever, infinitely his brother's inferior.
The door opened. On the threshold stood a slim figure, backed by the odd clot that was Roane's servan
t. The latter shoved the former inside and closed the door after them. The lock snicked. At a push, the boy stumbled forward through a welter of discarded clothes and came into the light.
Jame looked into Torisen's wary eyes.
We have been here before, haven't we? they seemed to ask.
Yes. Now we are here again.
The others' voices became a distant mutter. Greshan was telling his brother Ganth to take off his clothes. Fingers fumbling numbly, the thin boy with the strangely familiar face removed his tunic. Knorth and Randir laughed at his slight build.
"Now the pants," said Greshan.
Tori, remember in the Earth Wife's lodge? I warned you this was coming. Fight him! Resist!
When the boy didn't move, the ruin that was Simmel grabbed one of his arms and the Tempter, coming out of the shadows, seized the other. Her ruined lips moved, dribbling insectile fragments, as she whispered honeyed poison in his ear. Roane sauntered toward him, turning a familiar knife in his hands. Now he was behind the young cadet who was, simultaneously, Ganth Grayling in the past and Torisen Black Lord in the present.
Jame shivered. She had wanted to learn what had happened to her father, not to force Tori to relive it; but she had also wanted him to see, to understand. Was this all her fault?
She felt her ears clear, as if water had drained out of them.
"Little boys should do as they are told," Roane was saying softly.
He teased the knife point under the captive's waist band and, with a flick of the wrist, cut it.
"In your grandfather Gerraint's day, your house was soft, rotting from within. There sits the sodden proof on the hearth."
The blade slid neatly down first one leg, then the other. Snick, snick. Clothes fell away.
"Such a one I could have molded to my purpose, or so I believed."
He was speaking directly to Torisen now, a dead voice out of the dead past, yet with a familiar under-note. Simmel snickered. The Tempter broke into her ghastly grin. Both pressed in on their prisoner who stood rigid between them. This was the boy whom Jame had met in the Earth Wife's lodge, her twin brother as he should always have been, her age, her peer, but now so terribly vulnerable. Granted, being stripped naked didn't help.
Simmel leaned in, mumbling through a mouthful of dust. "You're weak, and y'know it."
From the other side came the Tempter's insidious, buzzing whisper: "Your people trust you and you fail them. How many more will slip through your fingers?"
Torisen's hands clenched into fists. They had been unmarked in the Earth Wife's lodge, but now the hint of white scars rose on them. The Randirs' words had hurt. Sinews flexed up his arms as he tested the grip in which he was held. For someone so slight, he had wiry muscles and balance, but not yet the experience he would gain with age.
I'm sorry, Jame tried to tell him.
The corner of his mouth almost twitched in response: You would be.
Roane followed his gaze. "You see her in his eyes, don't you? Your sister. The Shanir freak from nowhere. She will fail you too, or worse. See how alike they are, uncle and niece, monsters both."
We are not!
"Monsters, or alike?"
Snarling, Jame struggled to free herself. Just you wait.
Although she could see and hear clearly, Greshan's essence still enfolded her like the rank folds of his coat. This might be her dream, but she no longer felt in control of it.
A trap. A trick. But whose, and how?
"Witch." Her voice was his, thick, hard to manage. "You planned this."
Roane smiled, mockingly, askance, teeth white and sharp, eyes obsidian. "I hoped, and the liquor helped. Dear, dead Greshan. How else was I to learn what you would never tell me?"
"Don't . . ."
Jame felt his dull alarm, like the noxious gas of corruption rising through mud.
"Ah, but why not? We might have savored this together. Lover, how we would have laughed! But the past has weight. Set in motion, it must follow its course." Long-nailed fingers caressed the captive's cheek. Torisen stiffened. "Now be a good little boy," purred that two-toned voice, Roane and Rawneth together. "Submit."
As the Randir moved behind him, his gaze becoming remote and stony. So he must have looked when the Karnid torturers had presented him with their gloves of white-hot wire. Now as then, he would endure and survive; but oh, the pain and the scars, the branded memory . . .
Jame felt something inside her snap.
Be angry. Be strong.
"You will not hurt my brother," she said, and she spoke from the clutch of cold hands, over her shoulder to a man dead these forty years.
Her hands twisted in their clammy grasp and gripped them in turn. She sent Simmel floundering, suddenly boneless, into the figure on the hearth and the Tempter headfirst into the fire. The knife's point skittered across her hip, drawing its own hot line of pain. As Roane's wrist shot past, she grabbed it, pulled, and bent. They were on the floor now, she on top, Narsa's blade between them. Firelight shifted across their faces as the Tempter staggered about the room, wrapped in flames. Flakes of charred cloth and skin whirled away. Then a swarm of blazing bees erupted from her and she fell.
Jame looked down into the Randir's wide, obsidian eyes, and smiled. "The past does have weight," she said. "Let's see how you like it." And she drove the knife into his belly. Down it went with all her cold fury behind it through muscle walls, scrapping against the spine, into the floor. Blood welled up over her hands. Then, slowly, she screwed the blade home.
Something shadowy blundered away from the hearth with a faint cry of horror and the fading stink of voided bowels. Her brother stood in its place, a black silhouette against the flames.
"This is what happened," she told him, breathing hard, trying to collect herself. "Our father's berserker nature saved him, but he couldn't face what he was or what he had done, so he left Tentir that night. Tori? Do you hear me?"
But he was gone.
Jame looked down at a knife stuck in the floor, in the middle of the old stain, and at her own bloody hands, the palms cut on the blade's edge.
"Oh, schist," she said, then bent over to retch painfully from the bottom of her soul.
Chapter XXIII: Touchstone
Summer 111
I
An hour or so before dawn, the horse-master emerged from Old Tentir into the training square. There he paused, rubbing his hands together for warmth against the early morning chill, noting the unusual but subdued stir in the barracks. Some cadets still kept vigil, perhaps playing gen to stay awake. Others probably dozed on benches or the floor, waiting for word of the cull's outcome. Only the most phlegmatic or exhausted would be in bed.
Where had he been, some fifty years ago, on this night? For a moment he couldn't remember and felt mildly alarmed. Had that Randir bash to the skull scrambled his few remaining wits? After all, it wasn't as if he had any hair left to cushion the odd blow. Then to his relief it came back to him: He had been in the stable. With the dun mare. Waiting for her to foal. Of course, she had waited until he turned his back. They always did. A fine colt that had been—three white socks twinkling in the dusk as if they ran by themselves. Odd to think that the mare and all her babies were long dead, although their blood still ran strong in the herd. Wild Ginger and steady Brownie, foolish Knicker who spooked at everything and naughty Marne with that sly, side-long look before she kicked . . . .
Come Autumn's Eve, he would walk between the stalls naming all their occupants, past and present, perhaps pausing by an empty box to listen to a mare suckle a newborn foal, fifty years ago.
Above, the Map Room windows glowed softly. The Council was still hard at it. The horse-master had guessed that they would have a long session, if only because of one particular cadet. Being who and what he was, he worried more about the fate of two unlikely equines. Still, it was a pity that such a fog of distractions surrounded the Knorth Lordan. With any other cadet . . . ah, well, there it was: she wasn't just a cadet but a lorda
n, and Knorth, and female. Too many complications, too much to make the Council nervous, especially these days. Things were much simpler in the stable—usually.
He applied his flattened nose to his sleeve, sniffed, and made a face at the stench that clung to it. You've lived to see strange times, old man.
Shouldering his leather work bag, he left the college by its lesser northern gate and headed west along its outer wall, toward the hills above.
It was still dark with a freckling of stars overhead and a waning gibbous moon perched atop the western peaks, about to roll down the far side. The air was crisp and still, his breath a haze through which he walked. He thought about winter fodder, and bedding, and the stable fit to burst with horses on the coldest days when all must be brought in or risk lung infection. The Commandant would probably allow him to use the Great Hall for the over-flow or for quarantine if the winter cough broke out again. Some Highborn might complain—what, a manure pile under our precious house banners?—but Sheth Sharp-tongue was too sensible to listen to such nonsense. If he weren't also so moody, he would have made a good horse. That, from the master, was the highest form of praise.
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