Home.
She had told Brier that they were going there when they had left Kothifir. That had turned out not to be true, as she should have known it would. All her life, she had been searching for a place to belong. Tai-tastigon and Tentir had come closest, Gothregor and Kothifir never, much less the Haunted Lands keep where she and Tori had been born or the Master’s House in Perimal Darkling where she had grown up—a place still mercifully vague in her memory.
Home had also meant rejoining the Kencyrath, only to find that she must forge her own place there, in a society that otherwise had none bearable for her.
Most of all, home had meant Tori, a return to her other half. Well, she was working on that, despite her brother’s current strange and shifting mood.
That reminded her: the Jaran Matriarch had asked her to visit before her departure. Now was as good a time as any, while she had a moment to spare.
She found Trishien in her summer quarters on the top floor of the Jaran compound within the women’s quarters.
“The guards didn’t want to let me in,” she said.
Trishien almost slammed her book shut but restrained herself, closing it gently and resting her thin hands upon it.
“That wretched Karidia. Her order that you be banished from the Women’s Halls was supported by Adiraina, who should have known better. They can’t shut you out any more than they can your brother. I told them that.”
Jame sat down in a chair facing the matriarch. “Is it my imagination, or have there been changes in the Women’s World? Kallystine usurping Cattila’s role—that can’t be normal.”
“Nor is it. We don’t know what is going on within the Caineron, or the Randir, for that matter. I suppose the balance tipped when Rawneth more or less took over her house. Her son Kenan may officially be Lord Randir, but none of his people seem to be bound to him.”
“That was my impression, too. Kindrie says that besides Rawneth personally binding Kendar, some are bound to lesser Randir Highborn, even within the Priests’ College.”
“Ah. I had wondered.”
Trishien’s ink-stained fingers restlessly tapped the book’s cover. She put it aside with an impatient moue and picked up a loose skein of multicolored yarn from a basket at her feet. This she draped over Jame’s hands and began to wind it up.
“For that matter,” said Jame, obligingly tilting the skein back and forth, “everything has been in flux since Jamethiel Dream-weaver helped to cause the Fall. The balance swings one way, then the other. She had power. Then women were stripped of it. Now there’s Rawneth, Brenwyr, Cattila, and you.”
Trishien smiled. “You flatter me.”
“Not at all. Kirien values you, and she will be the next head of the Jaran, a lady instead of a lord, the first since the Fall, with her house’s consent.”
“And you . . .”
“Yes. The Highlord’s lordan. I don’t think, though, that anyone actually expects me to succeed him.”
“On the contrary, it is what some fear.”
Jame was surprised. Despite having been her brother’s declared heir for two years now, she hadn’t thought of herself as a potential political power.
“I suppose, if I survive the next year on my own . . . By the way, you’re wrapping that yarn around your fist.”
Trishien shook free her now club-like hand and ruefully regarded the resulting rainbow tangle in her lap. “You should see my attempts at knitting.”
“The Earth Wife, that is, Cattila’s sometime Ear, tried to teach me, using a half unraveled foxkin. The lesson did not go well.”
The Jaran Matriarch dumped the mangled skein back into the basket as if gladly washing her hands of it. “Your brother is struggling with his attitude toward you, as you no doubt have noticed. He gives chances, but then seems to withdraw his support.”
Jame snorted. “‘Seems’?”
“Think. He could have slapped you down, hard, any number of times. What he withholds, he does in part because the Kencyrath can only be pushed so far, so fast. I will own, though, that his current mood perplexes me.”
“About that . . . lady, I’m worried. Has he confided in you?”
“No. He used to, sometimes, but not since his return from Mount Alban after the Feast of Fools.”
“That was when he found out that I had bound Brier Iron-thorn.”
“That, no doubt, is part of it but not, I think, all. I feel . . . I feel . . .” She shook her head, helpless, baffled. “Something is wrong. Whatever it is, though, he must deal with it himself. The pressure has been building for some time between what he knows and what he cannot bring himself to admit. Whatever is going on now, it plays into that.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to slap him silly . . . or sane.”
Jame rose to leave, but paused in the doorway.
“How did you know that I wouldn’t be staying at Gothregor?”
Trishien smiled sadly. “Can destruction dwell with creation without preservation?”
“Oh,” said Jame blankly. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to those who know how to think. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—at present, that excludes most of the Kencyrath. Fare you well, child.”
VII
MORE KENDAR returned from Kothifir to fill out the new command’s ranks, also some second-year cadets newly graduated from Tentir.
In addition to her core ten-commands, Torisen had picked out nine officers each with expertise in a particular field who would have supervision over the tens in rotation, but would hold none of their own. Brier, Rue, and Marc came first, of course. After them, there was leather-faced Corva as horse-mistress, a Southron master cook named Rackny, hunt-master Tiens, Fen the Farmer, Swar the Smith, and Torisen’s favorite herbalist, Kells. Their absence would ease some of the pressure on Gothregor as its people returned, but still these were among the fortress’s best. Perhaps Tori wanted her to succeed after all.
Nonetheless, she wondered about their loyalty since all, except Brier, were bound to her brother. Maybe the fact that she and Tori were twins would again work in her favor. As she met her new command one by one, though, she was struck by their stony response. It had been a strain for those stationed at Kothifir to be so far from their lord. Arguably, Brier’s bond to the Highlord would not have broken if she had been part of Gothregor’s garrison. Tagmeth was closer than Kothifir, but still uncomfortably far afield. Would they give her the support she needed? Could she engage their enthusiasm in establishing a keep that none of them, at least at first, would see as their home? Only time would tell.
On the fifteenth of Summer, the new one-hundred command assembled at the foot of Gothregor’s steps.
“Ready, lass?” asked Marc. Too big to ride a horse, he was prepared to walk the entire way.
Jame looked in his twinkling eyes, level with her own, mounted as she was on the delicate Whinno-hir Bel-tairi, and drew strength from them. Then she twisted in the saddle to gaze back at her people. How odd to think of them as such, except for the faces of her erstwhile ten dotted among their ranks.
“I’m not a leader,” she wanted to protest. “Who would be such a fool as to follow me?”
But that answer would not satisfy the randon. She was trapped in the expectations of her people, if not of her god-damn god.
“Forward, then,” she said.
Brier Iron-thorn raised a hand. As it fell, horses stepped out, oxen-wains rolled, and boots scuffed the stones of the River Road. The small herd of black, bad-tempered cows that were going with them raised hoarse bellows of protest, answered by the shrill chiding of caged chickens and the howl of dogs from the hunting pack. Geese honked. Sheep bleated. Swine squealed. Horses snorted.
Back in the ranks, someone began to sing:
“Oh, I have come from the far White Hills,
My home to seek, my kin to greet.
Oh, where is my lord on the gray, gray heath?
Gone, gone away, forever . . .”
<
br /> Chapter III
Northward Bound
Summer 15—25
I
SOME FORTY LEAGUES lay between Gothregor and Tagmeth. A rider using post-horses could have covered that distance in twelve hours. Kendar running would have taken two days. However, Jame hadn’t considered her newly acquired livestock.
“These cows will move about ten miles a day, if you’re lucky, and the oxen less,” Char pointed out with ill-concealed glee. “That is, if the former don’t stampede. Then you either have to round them up or leave them behind. And they will need a midday break to graze.”
Jame considered the herd of tossing black heads and red-rimmed, truculent nostrils that jammed the road at the end of the column. How many were there anyway? Thirty? Forty? They seemed to form one bad-tempered beast with many horns and hooves. Her command had barely left Gothregor before the problem had become obvious, as indeed it should have before they had even set out. All those conferences and consultations, all those hours spent lying awake, trying to think of everything that could go wrong . . .
She had hoped to keep their mission a secret, or at least their destination, so as to reach Tagmeth before potentially hostile keeps along the way learned what was afoot. Small chance of that now.
“Do we go back?” asked Char, lifting his reins as if about to turn.
“No,” said Jame. “Since you know so much about cattle, I put you in charge of them. See that they keep up.”
Char glowered. “I didn’t train at Tentir to become a cowherd.”
“You barely trained at Tentir at all,” Dar pointed out with a grin.
Jame rode back to the head of the column, past so many watchful eyes.
“Already we’re off on the wrong foot,” she muttered to Brier. The keeps lay some twenty-five miles apart. “Send word ahead to Falkirr that we will be there on the sixteenth, to Shadow Rock on the eighteenth, to Tentir on the twentieth, and to Mount Alban on the twenty-second. After that, we’ll hope to sneak past Restormir on the twenty-fourth.”
“D’you think we can?”
Jame shrugged. “We have to try.”
II
CHAR WAS RIGHT: they only made it half way to Falkirr on that first day, and the cattle barely that. More docile animals would have moved faster, but these were the ill-tempered, barely domesticated kine native to the Riverland, distant cousins to the wild yackcarn of the north. They had been lagging since their midday browse, adopting a mule-like trudge punctuated by random dashes into the bush that lined the road. When Char’s sweating, cursing ten-command drove them into camp after dusk, they charged among the tents, trampling some and overturning cooking pots, before finally being corralled into a sullen mob.
“Really, Char?” said Jame, regarding them.
Char glowered. “Really, Ran.”
“I told you, I’m not . . . oh, forget it. Just keep up.”
She supposed, riding away, that the herd could be left to follow at its own pace, but somehow she didn’t think that it could make it past Wilden alone, much less past Restormir. Did she really need such a fractious charge? Well, yes, for milk as well as for meat if the winter should prove as harsh as she feared it would.
III
THE NEXT EVENING they arrived at Falkirr.
Brant, Lord Brandan, greeted Jame and her officers in his hall. A weathered man in a patched coat, he was used to working shoulder to shoulder with his Kendar in all seasons. Now they were preparing for the mid-summer Minor Harvest to bring in the hay as fodder for the winter to come. Jame supposed that it was too late to plant anything at Tagmeth that could be harvested this year. They would have to carefully ration the grain now bulging the supply wagons.
Brant’s sister Brenwyr swept into the hall as they were sitting down to a plain but hardy dinner.
“So you are striking out on your own,” she said to Jame as she spread her full skirt around the chair that her brother had risen to offer her. Jame noted that the Iron Matriarch’s skirt was divided for riding—no tight under-gown for her, to the other Matriarchs’ distress, although she did wear the traditional mask.
“Yes. It remains to be seen, though, if we can last the winter on our own.”
Brenwyr’s brown eyes snapped at her through her mask’s slits. “I should think you can do anything you set your mind to, child. Is Torisen being unreasonable?”
Jame accepted a bowl of stew in which chunks of vegetables and venison bobbed.
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, breaking off a hunk of bread and dipping it in the broth. “I’m only just learning what work is involved. The Kendar will advise me. I hope. How is Aerulan?”
“Besides being dead?” Brenwyr gave a harsh laugh, but her face softened. She ran gloved finger tips down the front of her stiff, rust-brown jacket, flicking open buttons. When she spread the garment to reveal its lining, Jame saw her late cousin’s face smiling at her over the Brendan’s shoulder.
“You reworked her death banner?”
“Only enough to make it fit.”
She gave herself, or rather Aerulan, a brief hug, and shivered. Perhaps her long-dead lover had returned the embrace.
Pages brought in the second course—fish stuffed with almonds and baked in pastry. Jame slipped her half-eaten bowl of stew under the table to an eagerly waiting Jorin.
Aerulan had been slain by Shadow Assassins, her throat slit, her blood soaking the dress she wore, which had subsequently been unraveled and woven into her death banner. No one at the time had realized that the blood had trapped her soul in the weave. Jame wondered if such use as this would eventually rub off the dried flakes, but decided not to mention the possibility to Brenwyr. It was good—and exceedingly rare—to see the Iron Matriarch happy.
IV
THE NEXT DAY they crossed the Silver to its western bank and continued north on the New Road.
It was beautiful, early summer weather. Clouds drifted southward overhead against an azure sky. Wind plaited meadow grass. Late spring flowers spangled the slopes that ran down to the river. Deer bounced off the road into trees as the cavalcade came into sight, causing the gazehounds to whine and pull at their leashes, upsetting the lymers who hadn’t yet caught the scent. Glittering jewel-jaws danced over the grass to feast on unseen carrion. Jorin trotted off to investigate, but Jame called him back. No need to borrow trouble. Occasionally she caught a flash of white between trees upslope. By the bond between them, she knew that the rathorn colt Death’s-head was keeping pace with her, and that it irritated him she was going so slowly.
At a break for lunch beside a waterfall, Jame sought out Marc.
“We’ve come at least thirty miles so far,” she said, “with ninety more to go. How are you holding up?”
The big Kendar grinned at her from his seat on a mossy rock. His boots were off, his feet turning wrinkly white in the cold water. He wriggled gnarled toes with evident pleasure. “This is a pleasant summer’s stroll, lass. For a long time I’ve been looking for a chance to stretch my legs.”
Then it was up again and back on the New Road, just as Char’s charges caught up with them again.
V
THEY NEARED SHADOW ROCK soon after sunset.
First, one saw the lush bottomland meadow, already sunk into shadows, the disputed ownership of which had nearly brought the Danior and the Randir to war with each other two years ago. The Silver still ran in its new bed, putting the land firmly on the Danior side. Good. As one of the smallest houses in the Riverland, one-eighth the size of its rival, the Danior would never have survived a full-out conflict with the Randir. Arguably, only their close connection with the Knorth had kept them intact so far.
Jame’s eyes were drawn across the river, up the slot valley that housed the Randir fortress. Wilden always reminded her of a wedge-shaped jaw full of sharp teeth with streams that trickled down from the lower moat like drool. Tall, bleak buildings clustered in compounds divided by steep, jagged roads, all under the shadow of the Witch’s Towe
r on the upper terrace. So, too, was the shed-like entrance to the subterranean Priests’ College, although it was not visible from this distance. That made Jame think of Kindrie, who had spent his benighted childhood there.
Benighted, too, seemed to be the entire fortress on this early summer evening. The streets and courtyards were empty. If lights had been kindled within, shutters had also been closed. The only movement was a trickle of smoke or mist emanating from the tower, rising to hang still in the now windless air. The sight made Jame feel tense, breathless. Wilden might have been some great beast frozen in a crouch.
Shadow Rock, on the other hand, bustled happily. Workers were coming in from the fields, hunters from the hills. Bright flags hung motionless from its towers, or perhaps that was laundry. Silver flashed on the wall, followed by the faint, tinny sound of a horn. The visitors had been sighted.
“We heard you were on your way,” said Cousin Holly, Lord Danior, greeting Jame and her officers in his small inner ward. “There isn’t much left by way of wine, but the cider is especially good this year. Come in and partake.”
They drank the welcome cup while Holly’s young son pelted around the hall shrieking “Kitty! Kitty!” and Jorin slunk from one hiding place to another. Jame caught the boy as he hurtled past, pleased to note in doing so that her shoulder now took the strain without complaint.
“Cousin Jame, Cousin Jame!” he shouted in her ear, then wiggled free.
Jorin fled.
Holly had been Torisen’s heir apparent before Jame’s arrival, and his son after him, but he didn’t seem to resent her accession as the Knorth Lordan.
“That would be foolish,” he had once told her. “As if I could impose my will on the entire Kencyrath, or would even want to.”
The Gates of Tagmeth (Chronicles of the Kencyrath Book 8) Page 5