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

by P. C. Hodgell

  “Timmon, this is serious. Can I trust you not to tell anyone that Lyra is here?”

  “Who would I tell? Maybe Gorbel. I mean, what are you going to do with her? Somehow, sooner or later, the Caineron will find out and come for her. If Gorbel knew, maybe he could smuggle her back into Restormir.”

  “And then her father will contract her to your cousin, thereby implying his support of said cousin’s claim to the Ardeth when your grandfather dies.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “Leave her alone, Timmon, and give me a little time. I’ll think of something.”

  “You always do.” Timmon settled gingerly back in his chair. A faint, inward smile twitched his lips. “Just the same, it would be fun to rob dear Dari of his prize.”

  II

  AFTER THAT, Jame kept a close eye on both of her guests, whenever she could.

  Timmon fretted at the pain that kept him from his usual activities and was clearly bored. In the past, that had made him unintentionally dangerous. However, as far as Jame could see, he didn’t apply any more charm to Lyra than was typical for him. Mostly, he teased, she blushed and fled, but always came back.

  “I don’t understand it,” Jame said one day to Marc in the kitchen, where he was experimenting with blueberry custard. “If she doesn’t like him, why doesn’t she just stay away?”

  Marc carefully cracked an egg. The white brimmed over his fingers; the yolk settled to the bottom of the shell like a wary yellow eye. He tipped the latter into a pan with milk, corn starch, sugar, and a handful of berries.

  “Here,” he said, putting the pan over a low fire and handing Jame a wooden spoon. “Stir.”

  She took the implement with trepidation. “I’m not sure about this. Remember when I tried to make bread?”

  That had been in Tai-tastigon, at the urging of Cleppetty. The dough had risen due not to the action of yeast but to the growth of rudimentary internal organs.

  “That was before my time at the Res aB’tyrr,” said Marc. “I did hear, though, that the resulting loaf had an interesting texture.”

  While Jame tended gingerly to the mixture, he turned to prepare the ingredients for frumenty. Without molten glass to play with, he had turned to the alchemy of the kitchen. The creative urge could take many directions, Jame noted.

  “Concerning Lyra,” he said, his back turned, “not that I know much about young ladies, but your friend Timmon is very good looking and she is of an age to notice such things.”

  Jame snorted.

  “There is this, too. I have the impression that Highborn girls are deliberately kept in the dark about some things.”

  That gave Jame pause. Well, yes. No one had explained the facts of life to many of the girls she had met in the Woman’s Halls, to Lyra least of all.

  And to her?

  So much of her childhood in the Master’s House was a mystery. However, she was fairly sure that Gerridon had reserved her for himself, ending in that disastrous encounter beside the red ribbons of the bridal bed.

  And Keral?

  The changer’s lopsided face leered at her out of the past. Such fun we could have, but you are meat for my master.

  Innocent but not ignorant, the Arrin-ken Immalai had called her on another occasion.

  Maybe so. One watched. One learned. There were different kinds of experience.

  Yes, Timmon was handsome, but he had never stirred her. Jame thought uneasily of those who had. Bane, her sadistic half-brother; Randiroc, the lost Randir Heir; Tori . . .

  Another memory rose, unbidden, unwelcome:

  She was a child again, dancing all by herself in the hall of the Haunted Lands keep, but someone watched her from the shadows.

  “You’ve come back to me.”

  It was Ganth’s voice, husky, quivering.

  “Oh, I knew you would. I knew . . .”

  Then as he stepped forward, he saw her more clearly, and the desperate tenderness ran out of his expression like molten wax. Before she could move, he struck her across the face and slammed her back against the wall. His hot breath roared in her face. His shaking body pinned her to the cold stones.

  “You changeling! You imposter! How dare you be so like her? And yet, and yet, you are, so like . . .”

  His kiss had bruised her lips. She could still taste it, as sour as vomit.

  “Father, no . . .”

  Destruction begins with love, he had said and, for him, so it had.

  Jame wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

  No wonder her thoughts on the subject were so confused. Anyone who involved himself with her was courting serious trouble.

  “Lass?” Marc had come up behind her, concerned. “What is it?”

  Jame looked down at the pan and gave a shaky laugh. “The spoon appears to be on fire, and the berries are trying to escape.”

  Sure enough, little puffs of steam and spurts of flame emerged from the thickening custard around the spoon. The berries, driven before the latter, erupted into blue stars and smears as the heat burst them.

  “That’s rather sad,” said Jame.

  “Remind me never to make cranberry sauce in your presence.”

  III

  SOON AFTER THIS, Lyra started to disappear for half a day or more at a time, which made Jame even less sure she knew what was going on. One morning, she could have sworn that the girl was on the stair just below her. When she reached the courtyard, however, Lyra had disappeared.

  “Oh, here and there,” Lyra said when asked where she had been, vaguely waving a half-eaten piece of fruit in the air.

  “And where did you get that peach? I didn’t think that they grew in the Riverland.”

  Lyra stuffed what was left of it into her mouth, swallowed, and choked on the pit. By the time Jame had dislodged it by pounding her on the back, the question had been forgotten.

  IV

  DUSK.

  Light spilled out of the mess-room windows to lie in flickering bars across Tagmeth’s courtyard. Supper was done. Now came the time to relax before sleep. The cheerful chatter died as someone began to sing an old riddle song in a plaintive, minor key:

  “Oh, where you go is who you are,

  Or so our fathers say.

  But who you are is where you stay,

  Our mothers say, our mothers say . . .”

  The inner wall of the courtyard incorporated the arches of the ancient hill fort that had preceded the current structure. The arches’ spans had been filled with stone blocks. Fingers crept out of a fissure between them which seemed to expand at their touch, wider, deeper, until a slim figure was able to wriggle out between the crack’s parted lips.

  Lyra rose and shook out her crumpled skirt. Good. No one had seen her emerge. This, after all, was her secret, gained while lurking around the keep, trying to keep out of the way. Jame didn’t want her company? Very well. In turn, she didn’t want Timmon’s teasing, which made her feel very young and very stupid. Well, she wasn’t—stupid, that is—since she had discovered this marvelous secret of Tagmeth’s. Nor would she share it, oh no, not until she was given credit for being the clever girl that she was.

  “So who am I, come from afar,

  Who find myself now here today?

  Oh mother, say; oh father, say.

  Where my lord goes, I follow him

  Though it be far away.”

  Lyra sniffed her sleeve and made a face. The fabric stank. The place she had just come from had frightened her. She should have returned to the peach orchard or to the oasis, not gone exploring, even if that was what Jame would have done, and she did so want to be like the Knorth Lordan, who was always having adventures. Then again, Jame always survived them. Lyra hadn’t been sure she would, this time. What an awful place with its whining, gray grass and hills rolling on and on under a leaden sky and the bloated, dead eye of the moon. Even now, she imagined that she felt the ground drumming under her with hoofbeats, but she hadn’t stayed to see what might be coming. Now she was home again, o
h so tired, so hungry.

  The song ended, to applause. A babble of talk followed.

  Lyra’s stomach grumbled. She could steal in to raid the kitchen, but didn’t want to risk being seen. Instead, she sidled around the edge of the courtyard to the tower keep’s door and slipped inside.

  She meant to climb to her second-story apartment, but stopped short, goggling, at the sight of Timmon’s ground-floor quarters.

  The room was illuminated by a blazing fire on the hearth and by a massive chandelier studded with too many candles to count. Flickering light shone on rich tapestries, making the figures depicted there seem to move as they hunted and feasted. What really drew Lyra’s attention, though, was the table beneath the chandelier. On it was a golden platter swimming with eels in cream, bowls of exotic fruit, damson tarts, blue custard, spiced brie, capons stuffed with figs, and a roast peacock dressed in its own feathers, among a dozen other dishes, each one more luscious than the last.

  Something was wrong here. Before Lyra could think what it was, however, Timmon stepped out of the shadows.

  “Welcome. Join me.”

  In his own way, he was as luscious as anything on the table. Rose-gold hair, a dress coat alive with swirls of scarlet and gold thread, rubies on every finger, and oh, his smile . . .

  Lyra shrank back, all too aware of her own dowdy clothes. When she looked down, however, she saw that she was clad in her favorite flame red skirt and a tight crimson bodice embroidered with pearls. Somewhat emboldened, drawn toward the savory smell of so much rich food, she ventured away from the mural stair, into the room.

  Timmon’s smile grew even more beguiling. “You are hungry, aren’t you? Sit down. Partake.”

  Lyra eased into a chair, watching him warily. His teasing had made her feel like a helpless child, but she wasn’t, not with one contract behind her and another ahead, even if the latter made her shudder. After all, she had met fish-eyed Dari and smelled his rotten breath.

  “He will break you to his liking,” Kallystine had said. Through her thick mask it had looked as if she had no lips at all, just perfect white teeth bared in the cold slit of a smile.

  He will break me. What does that mean?

  Timmon poured her a glass of spiced wine. Lyra took a sip. Warmth ran down her throat into her stomach, which growled in appreciation. She pulled a leg off a capon, first nibbled, then tore at it. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

  “I’m sorry if I upset you before,” said Timmon. “We could be such good friends, or more.”

  The figures in the tapestries drifted away from the feast toward a door, which opened into a luxurious bed-chamber. Lyra dismissed both it and them as inconsequential. “More than what?”

  “Well, haven’t you ever had a . . . special friend?”

  “Not until I met Jame.”

  Impatience flickered across his handsome face. “That’s not what I meant. How about Prince Odalian, your first contract?”

  Lyra picked up a garlic snail and popped it into her mouth. “He was nice,” she said, chewing, swallowing, “but I hardly ever saw him.”

  Timmon sat down opposite her, looking thunderstruck. “Jame tried to warn me, but . . . You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “Humph. You say all sorts of silly things, like calling me a drowned rabbit or Flopsy.” Her nether lip quivered. “Everyone thinks I’m such an idiot.”

  “Don’t cry! Look, have one of these candied slugs. They’re your favorite, aren’t they?”

  Lyra hesitated, wary. “Truce?”

  “What? Yes. All right.”

  With a tremulous smile, she reached for the slug, but it crawled away from her, leaving a trail of caramelized slime. The whole table started to move, as if touched by some creeping blight. Eels uncoiled and wriggled off their platter. Fruit rotted. The peacock struggled to its feet, shedding feathers, then sprawled as overcooked legs gave way under it and bones tore through its crispy skin.

  Timmon leaped up, shocked, and darted around the table to grab Lyra, who in turn clung to him. Their fine clothes had turned into filthy rags hanging off their limbs. Candles sputtered out. Tapestries rotted off the walls. That stench . . . Lyra had smelled it before, under a leaden sky, but how much worse it was now, in this dank, close space.

  Many tables surrounded them, at which sat hunched figures. A voice spoke, as high and thin as a knife scraping bone but distant, too.

  “You have betrayed me, you and you and you, who would have made my son Highlord in my place. But I was too strong for him, for you all, and so he fled. I curse him. I curse every one of you.”

  “Yes, yes,” breathed someone in the shadows, reaching out long fingers to touch the speaker’s shoulder. “Make them prove themselves. Their knives are in their hands. Make them use them on you, or on themselves. What price blood on the floor? What price a traitor’s guilt?”

  “Oh.” Lyra drew back into Timmon’s arms. He was shaking almost as much as she was.

  “This isn’t my dream,” he said. “It isn’t.”

  A breath of air moved through the hall. The figures crumbled to dust, all but one who still regarded the interlopers from a dim corner with malicious, gleaming eyes. A hand snaked out to grip Lyra’s wrist. How cold it was, how tight its hold.

  “Children,” whispered that chill voice in her ear and, horribly, it seemed to smile. “Little, lost children. Come play with me.”

  Lyra screwed shut her eyes. She wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t. But the floor shivered under her feet, a drum-beat of hooves coming closer and closer. Not over rolling hills, though. Rather, it was descending the stair.

  “Whose dream is this?” said a sharp voice. “Lyra? Timmon? Tori, wake up!”

  Lyra blinked. She lay huddled in her bed, gripped by strong arms that were not Timmon’s. Looking up through frightened tears, she saw the line of Jame’s chin, drawn taut with anger. Likewise, in the dim light the Knorth’s silver-gray eyes seemed to rage with cold fire. There was the thin white line of a scar across one cheek, the mark of Kallystine’s razor ring, which had at first horrified Lyra. It occurred to her that she hadn’t noticed it in a long time.

  How odd, she thought, inconsequently, that it doesn’t bother her at all. What must it be like, to care so little about one’s personal appearance, much less need to?

  A shout came from below: “Lyra! Where are you?”

  “Here,” Jame called back.

  The Ardeth appeared on the stairs, wide-eyed and tousled in his night gear, arms clasped around his aching ribs.

  On his heels came Brier, Rue, and several other Kendar, drawn by the uproar. Jame sent them off to bed except for Rue, who was dispatched to the kitchen to fetch warm cider and buttered bread.

  “W-what happened?” Lyra asked. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  Jame glared at Timmon. “D’you want to explain?”

  “Er . . . not really.”

  “Then I will. Lyra, Timmon can get into your dreams, at least when he’s physically close to you. He tried it with me at Tentir, without much success.”

  “Is it my fault that your dreams are so weird? I still say that we could have had a lot of harmless fun.”

  “I can defend myself. Can this child?”

  “From me, yes, as it turns out. Because she is a child.”

  “I am not . . .”

  “Hush. But you were drawn deeper than that, weren’t you? All the way down into the soulscape.”

  Now Timmon looked worried, even a little scared. “It was a terrible place, that hall. Those ghosts . . . I can still taste them in the back of my throat, all dust and ash. So bitter. And there was something else that didn’t belong, that sucked us in . . .”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lyra. “Why is the soulscape so much worse than the dreamscape?”

  “Not worse. More dangerous, more . . . vital. Dreams can’t hurt you—much—but much that happens on the level of the soul can. Look at your arm.”

  Lyra shook
back her sleeve and stared at the bruises forming on her wrist, of four fingers and a thumb.

  “She grabbed me. Oh, it was horrible!”

  Jame put an arm around the girl’s shoulders, which felt as fragile and tremulous as a bird’s wing. “You’re awake now, and safe. But never go to that place again.”

  Rue returned with a platter of fresh bread and an ewer of warm, spiced cider. Lyra ate, nibbling at first, then bolting down chunks of the crusty loaf. It wasn’t only in a dream that she had missed supper.

  Jame drew Timmon aside.

  “You are here as my guest,” she told him, speaking softly but with vehemence, “and so is Lyra, an innocent under my protection. It never occurred to me that you would try so underhanded a thing.”

  “I was bored,” said Timmon, with a touch of defiance but not meeting her eyes. “I meant no harm. I’m sorry.”

  “I suppose you are. Nonetheless, you should leave. Tomorrow. Go home, Timmon. It won’t be pleasant, but there are things you have to face, your lady mother not least. Don’t tell anyone about Lyra, if you can help it. If you can’t, well, in a day or two she won’t be here any longer either.”

  Lyra heard this last bit and looked up, alarmed.

  “Are you sending me home too?”

  “No. Someplace else.” Relenting, she smiled at the girl. “I think you will like it.”

  Chapter VI

  Miming in the Hills

  Summer 65—66

  I

  TIMMON LEFT THE NEXT MORNING, looking so forlorn that Jame laughed in his face.

  “Go home,” she told him. “Grow up.”

  He pouted. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Survival is the issue, not fun. You may not have noticed, but the Kencyrath is starting to come apart at the seams. If Tori can’t hold himself together, how can he maintain control over the rest of us?”

  Timmon sobered. “You really think things are that bad?”

  “They’re headed that way. Right now, I try not to think at all, except about Tagmeth.”

  She wondered, though, as Timmon rode out the gate, if she should be doing more. Lyra and Timmon had somehow been drawn from the dreamscape down into her brother’s soul-image. It had indeed been haunted, by Ganth their father, by the unhappy Kendar left in his power after Tori’s escape, by someone else who shouldn’t have been there, but not, strangely, by Torisen himself. Last night her brother must have dreamed about the Haunted Lands keep. She remembered snatches of that, before Lyra and Timmon had arrived. Something in it was restless, and hungry, and desperate. Something with cruel eyes and a horrible, soft voice.