The Gates of Tagmeth (Chronicles of the Kencyrath Book 8)

by P. C. Hodgell

  Attendants were carrying platters of bread, cheese, and onions into the mess hall where Kendar were already gathering. They would eat as they arrived, or take food back to wherever their work awaited. Dinner was the more social meal of the day.

  Jame scanned the room. Lyra wasn’t there, which was odd because she never missed a meal. Jame stopped a server to ask.

  The man sniffed. “Oh, the little lady came in earlier and asked for bread and cheese in a sack. No onions, thank you very much. Then she left.”

  Her picnic lunch.

  Jame left the hall, the keep, the island, moving fast. That little fool. But Lyra was her responsibility, unlike the Caineron Mustard, and her earned name wasn’t Lack-wit without reason.

  The pool of which Lyra had spoken was about half a mile south of Tagmeth above the eastern bank. Jame first saw its lip, which thrust out over the River Road and projected a waterfall directly into the Silver. Stone steps led up. She climbed two at a time, slipping and sliding, then paused, breathless, at the top. Here a swift mountain stream had hollowed out a wide basin where water swirled before plunging out over the falls. Lyra sat on a rock beside the pool, looking disconsolate. She jumped up when she saw Jame.

  “Oh! You finally came! Can we eat now?”

  Jame ignored the untouched sack of provisions lying at the girl’s feet.

  “Lyra, didn’t I tell you this was dangerous?”

  Lyra pouted. “You said that about the Silver. Lots of people must come here, or they wouldn’t have built those steps.”

  True enough, as far as it went. Jame eyed the swirling water. It would take a strong swimmer to fight that current hence, no doubt, the challenge.

  “Come away from the edge,” she said.

  Lyra flushed with indignation and started to scramble to her feet. “You think I’m just a silly child.”

  Her foot caught in her skirt. She exclaimed again, this time with alarm, and tumbled into the water.

  Jame lunged after her. The basin’s margin was shallow, but even so close to the shore the current was fierce. Trapped air puffed up Lyra’s skirt. Before Jame could reach her, she had been swept away, crying.

  “Help, help! I can’t swim!”

  The current swirled her around the pool, just out of reach. Swearing, Jame tore off her jacket and kicked off her boots. During that short delay, Lyra was borne toward the waterfall. She disappeared over it with a shriek.

  Jame ran around the edge of the basin, jumping from rock to rock. At the head of the falls, she anxiously scanned the river below. Lyra bobbed up, already some fifty feet downstream, then sank again.

  Jame dived in, wondering belatedly, in mid-air, if she was about to break her neck. From above, one could see the river’s rocky bed. Once in, however, the bottom seemed to fall away, just as it had at the foot of the Steps when she had gone in, through blocks of shifting ice, to rescue the Merikit girl Prid.

  The water was ice melt, shockingly cold, the current swift. Jame surfaced, sputtering, and struck out downstream. How could she hope to catch up? This was a stupid thing to do, but what else could she have done?

  She had the impression that someone was on the New Road, keeping pace with her. Yes. A golden horse, its rider shouting and waving, but she couldn’t make out who it was or what he was saying. She tried to point him downstream. A surge of water closed over her head. When she broke the surface again, horse and rider were gone. The river swept her around one curve, then another, then another, and there was the horse, now riderless.

  Two heads, one dark, one fair, bobbed as the water surged around them. As Jame swept down on them, they disappeared. Her flailing hand caught a taut rope. It led back to the horse, attached to his saddle. It rasped through her fingers as the horse was dragged, feet braced, toward the river bank. Something was pulling the two swimmers down. Jame took a deep breath and dived, keeping her grip on the rope.

  Hand over hand, she pulled herself down. As her eyes adjusted to the murky depths, she saw a clotted shadow near the bottom that resolved itself into Lyra and her would-be rescuer, tangled in the rope and in each other’s arms.

  Beneath them, the river bed appeared to be paved with shield-sized scales. Trinity. It must be the River Snake, whose head lay under Kithorn, its heart at Hurlen, and its tail in the Eastern Sea, one of the Chaos Serpents that underlay much of Rathillien, whose writhing convulsed the earth.

  She was nearly out of air. Soon she must either strike for the surface or breathe water. While the latter should kill her, this apparently was sacred space. Letting out the last of her breath, she sniffed in a nose full of water, then choked as the icy fluid flooded her lungs.

  There was a moment of panic: Was I wrong? Am I drowning?

  But the next breath was easier, if no less painful. The two below had no doubt already, perforce, discovered this.

  Now Jame could make out a puckered orifice between the scales, fringed with twisting serpentine forms. Several of them were wrapped around one leg of the fair-haired swimmer. With a jerk, they drew him and Lyra farther down. The orifice dilated. Within were ring upon ring of teeth.

  Jame groped for her boot knife, then remembered that she had left it (and her boots) beside the pool. She swarmed down the others’ bodies, unsheathing her claws.

  Something flickered past her in the water. Blackheads. She slashed at them and missed. A vast body brushed past her, whiskers tickling. The parasites fastened on it, then dissolved. A huge fishy eye regarded her solemnly askance.

  BLOOP, said the Eaten One, and swam away.

  The River Snake’s tentacles withdrew.

  Freed, the rope jerked them up to the surface and onto the shore, where the horse had backed himself into a thicket and was snorting among its thorns.

  All three lay on the ground, retching up water.

  The blonde boy clutched his side where the rope had drawn taut. “I think . . . my ribs . . . are broken,” he gasped. “I thought . . . I was going to be . . . torn in two. Who’s . . . the drowned rabbit?”

  Lyra glared at him through bedraggled strands of wet hair. “I am not!”

  “Which?”

  “Either!”

  Jame gingerly drew a breath and spoke hoarsely. “Lyra, meet Timmon, the Ardeth Lordan. Timmon, meet Lyra Lack-wit of the Caineron.”

  Chapter V

  Dreams and Deeper

  Summer 55—64

  I

  TIMMON GINGERLY SHIFTED in the chair, mindful of his sore sides.

  “I’ve heard a lot recently about that girl’s knack for getting into foolish scrapes,” he said, “often with you getting her out of them. The Karkinorans really tried to kidnap you in her stead? I pity them. Did Lyra tell you that she’s about to be contracted to my dear cousin, Dari?”

  “Yes.”

  They were in the ground story of the tower keep, which the Kendar had hastily prepared for their new, Highborn, guest. Lyra’s apartment was on the second floor, Jame’s on the third and highest. Jame leaned against Timmon’s mantelpiece, regarding him. Even in pain and disarray, he was an uncommonly handsome young man about her own age with tousled blond hair—an unusual color for a Kencyr—and charming features. Indeed, “charm” was his outstanding characteristic. When Jame had first met him at Tentir, he had used this Shanir trait unstintingly to make people like him and to get his own way. No one had gotten away with more than Timmon. It had baffled him that, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t charm his way into Jame’s bed. That, instead, she had found him funny was, to him, incomprehensible.

  Then again, sometimes Timmon’s antics were anything but humorous.

  She remembered the cadet Narsa whom he had seduced in part to make her jealous. Desperate, pregnant, the girl had hanged herself over Timmon’s bed, to his profound shock. That, perhaps, was the first time he had ever been brought face to face with the consequences of his actions. It was certainly the first sign Jame had seen that he might someday grow up.

  However, he didn’t lack for phy
sical courage, as he had shown when the Karnids had marched on Kothifir. That in itself had gotten him past his second year as a randon cadet.

  Timmon might not have broken his ribs in the tug-of-war between the River Snake and his horse, but Kells suspected that he had cracked several of them. Certainly, the resulting band of bruises was impressive. It also hurt him to draw a deep breath, so the herbalist had bound them to prevent him from doing himself further injury. There seemed to be no other treatment but time and rest, short of calling in a healer like Kindrie.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Jame, “is why you are here at all. This is a long way from Omiroth.”

  Timmon grimaced and tried not to squirm. Patience was not one of his virtues, such as they were.

  “Ever since I got back from Kothifir,” he said, “Mother has been keeping me close. Grandfather Adric is fine some days, completely soft on others. The thing is, if—when—he truly goes over the edge, there’s going to be a battle for the succession.”

  “But you’re his declared heir.”

  Timmon snorted. “Dari doesn’t put much stock in that. Truth be told, he runs Omiroth these days and only wants me to keep out of his way. Of course, Mother fights that. She’s always scheming, always pushing me to the front. I hate it.”

  “If you don’t succeed your grandfather, though, what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Fall back on my randon status, perhaps.”

  “What assignment have they given you for your third year as a cadet?”

  He made a face. “I’m supposed to command the household guard. They gave me a pretty uniform, which Mother adores, but mostly I’m ignored.”

  “Oh, Timmon.”

  He had always been inclined to dodge responsibility. As a child, he had even been given a whipping boy in the person of his half-brother Drie, who now swam with his lover, the Eaten One, if she hadn’t already digested him. Jame thought Timmon had more ability than he usually showed. If, however, nobody gave him a job worth doing, he would slide back into his old, lackadaisical ways as, it seemed, he had.

  “Gorbel hasn’t been sent out to conquer the world either,” said Timmon, with a pout that made him look about twelve years old.

  “I suppose not, but he will probably find something useful to do.”

  “You always did like him best.”

  Gorbel’s bulging forehead and down-turned, batrachian mouth filled Jame’s mind. She burst out laughing. “Whatever else you say about him, at least he’s competent. Usually. How many times has he tried to kill me?”

  “Note, without success.”

  “Points for effort, though. And he was under orders from his father.”

  It occurred to her that perhaps of the three lordan she was the most fortunate to have been given a chance to prove herself. Timmon and Gorbel were tangled up in house politics. Tori had removed her from that immediate arena, not that she wouldn’t eventually have to answer for her performance on her own, to him, to the High Council, and to the Randon.

  That last thought gave her pause. What would happen if Timmon and Gorbel didn’t find a way to show their mettle? Would the randon still accept them, or perhaps make them repeat their third year as they had Char? She was fond of both, sometimes against her better judgment. More important, she thought she could work with them if they ever did come into power, and with Kirien of the Jaran too. That made three potential new allies for the beleaguered Knorth, one of them both powerful and unexpected.

  And don’t forget Shade, she thought, not that she exactly saw what Lord Randir’s Shanir, illegitimate, half-Kendar daughter could do to help anyone.

  Then there was the lost heir Randiroc. Although he chose to live in the wilds, seldom seen, seldom speaking, he was a randon and innately very powerful, as well as a friend, of sorts.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re here,” she said to Timmon, reverting to her first question.

  He fidgeted.

  “Oh, well, when Dari sent a convoy to claim his new consort, I snuck out of Omiroth and joined them on the road. I know, I know: it was a stupid thing to do, but I was so tired of politics, of . . . of feeling helpless, and being manipulated. Not that the convoy exactly welcomed me. I suppose they sent a message back posthaste to tell Dari that I was with them. Mother will be furious.”

  “Did you stop at Gothregor?”

  He blinked. “Oh. You’re thinking about your precious brother, aren’t you?”

  When she didn’t immediately answer, he gave her a sidelong, sly glance.

  “Still fighting, are you?”

  “Not . . . as such.”

  “Well, why not? Ever since you returned to the Kencyrath, he’s been jerking you around. What, really, do you owe him?”

  “I’m his lordan.”

  “As I am my grandfather’s, but only because he thinks that I’m my father, and we both know what a bastard Pereden was. Petulant, weak . . . a third of the Southern Host died because of him.”

  “You aren’t your father.”

  “What am I, then? What are you? Don’t you ever feel as if the past is rising up to crush you? There’s so much of it.”

  True enough. Neither she nor Tori would be who they were without the looming shadows cast by their ancestors, by their own childhood. How did one distinguish oneself against such darkness?

  “No,” she said to Timmon. “We are something new. Their choices created our background, but our actions define us against it. You can’t surrender responsibility for who you are or you will become your father, reborn.”

  “Pereden was Grandfather’s darling. He would welcome his return. So would Mother. Sometimes . . . sometimes I wake in the night and find her in my bed.”

  “Timmon!”

  He shivered. “She’s lonely. She needs, she needs . . . not me. I try and try, but I’m not enough. I never will be. She tells me that, over and over.”

  “Trinity. No wonder you wanted to get away. Now listen to me: Adric is dying. If you show yourself to be nothing but your father’s son, Dari will eat you alive.”

  “And you?”

  “I am myself.”

  “Then Ancestors help us all.”

  “Huh. As you say. But about Tori . . .”

  Timmon had slid down until he almost cowered in his chair. Now he drew himself up again, wincing at the effort.

  “Er, about that . . . no one quite knows what the problem is. Torisen is at least as strong as you are or he would never have become Highlord. His weaknesses are hidden, personal. I get the feeling sometimes that he doesn’t shoulder the past as well as you do, or ask himself the same questions about it. Whatever haunts him, he hasn’t gotten past it. And it seems to lean more heavily on him since the recent Feast of Fools.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Mostly, I hear things, second- or third-hand. He’s shorter-tempered now, although he usually apologizes for any outbursts afterward. He talks to himself, or maybe to someone else who isn’t there. And he has bad headaches. There are other things—for example, that hailstorm that destroyed Gothregor’s orchard and early crops. Then, after the damp, there was a plague of locusts. Only at Gothregor, mind you. Torisen had to borrow Geri to lead them into the Silver, where they drowned and clotted the river as far south as Omiroth. Dari was furious.”

  “All of this sounds like a run of very bad luck.”

  “I haven’t even mentioned a murrain on the Knorth cattle.”

  Jame gave herself a shake. Tori would have to manage on his own for now, as he had left her to do, although a thought lingered: Was it possible that he still had to prove himself as Highlord, just as she did as his lordan? There it was again, the weight of the past—Gerridon’s treachery, the Dream-weaver’s fall, Ganth’s madness—all of which called the present into question.

  What if we are among the things that need to be broken?

  “So you went on to Restormir to fetch Lyra,” she said, pulling herself together. “What happened there?”


  “Lord Caldane hemmed and hawed. It seems that his great-grandmother Cattila didn’t approve of the match and was sheltering his daughter in the keep’s Crown, where no man is allowed to go. Kallystine said she would bring Lyra down.”

  He paused, and shivered.

  “That woman frightens me. She has a wonderful body—I can see why Torisen was entranced by it—but there’s something wrong with her face. Anyway, she went up to the Crown but came down alone, shaking. The Caineron Matriarch may be ill, but she can hold her own. And there was someone else up there with her. Her Ear, Gorbel said. We heard shouting. Then the tower began to sway. Caldane turned as white as slab of lard and started to hiccup. Everyone piled on top of him, but he lifted them all off the floor. If someone hadn’t thrown a noose around his foot to anchor him, I don’t know what would have happened. Why are you laughing?”

  Jame wiped her eyes. “Sometimes I have to remind myself that that man deserves everything he gets. So he still thinks Lyra is with Cattila in the Crown.”

  “As far as I know. Instead, she’s here. Hello, rabbit.”

  Lyra hesitated in the doorway, looking wary and a bit frightened. She had found a dry dress, which fit her like a sack, and had made an effort to untangle her wet hair, without much success.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said.

  “Runagate? Hoyden?” He glanced at Jame with a grin. “That sounds a lot like you.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “I begin to see how you two have ended up together. Are you going to ride the rathorn too, Flopsy?”

  “Don’t call me that!” Lyra shouted, and fled.

  “I’m beginning to like that girl,” said Timmon.