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

by P. C. Hodgell

  Cracks broke Cyd’s line, and he passed through.

  She drew back a pace, but only that. They circled again, chest to chest. Tall as she was, he overtopped her like a smoking mountain. Her doeskin tunic was spotted with soot and burning embers.

  Behind them, Mother Raga and Hatch had their hands at each other’s throats, one reaching up, the other down, due to their disparate heights. Trinity, were they infected too? But Raga was the Earth Wife, herself a force to be reckoned with. She broke Hatch’s grip and retreated to the well. One on either side of it, grimacing at each other across its mouth, they wound the winch to bring up a bucket of water.

  Cyd’s face flushed with more than rage. The tips of her long red hair, already flowing down her back like a river of fire, began to singe. She didn’t give ground, however, until Mother Raga shouted a warning.

  The Earth Wife emptied the bucket on Chingetai. Given how short she was, the water slapped no higher than his waist, but below that the molten veins also ran. A great cloud of steam rose off of his buttocks and he bolted forward with a yelp, nearly running over his consort. It was a wonder, between fire and ice water, that the offended parts didn’t shatter and fall off. As it was, the Merikit chieftain charged around the square trailing smoke, howling, and clutching his bottom.

  “Serves you right, Chingely!” the Earth Wife shouted after him. “Don’t mess with what you can’t control!”

  Someone threw him a jacket. He wrapped its arms around his waist and smothered his haunches with its folds. As ebbing stream seeped out around the edges, he stood dripping sweat, shuddering like an overwrought stallion. Jame wondered how much he remembered of what had just happened. Most of it, she guessed, judging from the apprehensive sidelong glance he shot at his consort.

  Cyd was brushing herself off and frowning at the holes burnt in her clothing. Some of the amber had melted, drizzling resin down her front. A fly trapped in one lump of it emerged, fiddled its legs experimentally, and flew away.

  “Well,” she said to her mate. “Are you quite finished?”

  Chingetai shook himself.

  “Not quite,” he said, making a supreme effort to compose himself, “and neither are you. We have honored air, water, and fire. Have you forgotten the Earth Wife’s turn?”

  Gran Cyd’s lip twitched. “I supposed that she had just taken it.”

  Mother Raga made a rude sound.

  Ignoring her, the Merikit chieftain assumed an injured look. “How can you say so, beloved? We still have a yackcarn bull to hunt, for her honor and for that of the tribe.”

  “By which you mean for yourself.”

  By now, Chingetai had regained his aplomb. He removed the jacket from his waist and shrugged himself into it, a tight fit. “For me, for us all. Friends! Warriors of renown! Join me—or rather the Earth Wife’s Favorite—in this great hunt! Forward!”

  Boom-wah-wah-boom! went the drums as the Merikit streamed out of Tagmeth, snatching up their weapons at the gate. Failing to catch Chingetai, who had set off almost at a run, Cyd seized Hatch.

  “If you can, please tell my dear consort to put on some pants.”

  As one, the garrison craned to look up at Jame.

  She sighed and called down to them, “Oh, all right. Go, if you must,”

  The barracks emptied.

  Jame descended more slowly. She was beginning to feel more herself, less shivery and shaken. Her side still hurt abominably, though, and she didn’t intend to ride after the hounds, assuming they weren’t all still too stuffed from their morning’s gorge to hunt at all.

  By now it was late afternoon. The sun had set and long shadows stretched across the courtyard. The square had been scuffled virtually out of existence by all of the hasty feet passing over it, but a few torches still feebly flared against the walls and blue smoke drifted. A clatter rose from the kitchen where the cooks were dealing with the yackcarn cow’s monstrous carcass as well as with other dishes. Jame worried briefly about the outlay for fifty-odd extra mouths. With potential famine coming, Tagmeth seemed to be feasting a lot. On the other hand, Marc was right that not all this flood of fresh meat would fit into their modest smokehouse. Besides, it was important to show their guests fit hospitality.

  Her steps slowed. By now nearly all of the torches had guttered out. Where the last one still burned, its flickering light fell between the arches. There was the tracery of stone, but it seemed oddly insubstantial, like a screen of gauze, and something moved behind it. Two figures approached through hints of a glimmering landscape. Stone muted the colors, but surely that was the flash of blue water, and beyond it sand golden under slanting beams of afternoon sunlight. The figures neared. Now they were walking forward down what seemed to be a short tunnel. Just as the torch flared out, they stepped into the courtyard. It was Lyra and Prid, their arms full of small brown and purple fruits.

  “You see?” the former was saying to the latter. “Wasn’t that wonderful?”

  Jame cleared her throat.

  The girls jumped, spilling figs and dates across the flagstones.

  “W-we didn’t mean . . .” stammered Lyra. “I didn’t t-think . . .”

  “Do you ever? I take it that this has something to do with all of the times you disappeared when you were a guest here.”

  Despite the shadows into which she had stepped, Lyra could be seen to blush furiously.

  “It was my secret,” she mumbled, not meeting Jame’s eyes. “You all thought that I was so silly, so . . . so worthless. But I can’t have been, could I, when I knew about this?”

  Jame sighed.

  “We’ll talk later. For now, take this fruit to the kitchen. Rackny will find some use for it.”

  Chastened, the girls gathered up what they had dropped and scurried away.

  Jame regarded what appeared to be a solid stone wall. This development was indeed peculiar, and interesting. But there would be an opportunity later to consider its implications.

  Out in the hills, the hounds were hallooing and voices shouted. Time to see what Chingetai was up to now.

  IV

  JAME SAT ON the close-cropped hillside in the deepening twilight, surrounded by dancing fireflies. The western sky glowed cobalt while the eastern shaded into black velvet. As if in imitation of the earth, stars spangled the whole moonless vault above, winking brighter and brighter as the light faded.

  Below, on the lush grass of the island’s lower pasture, tables and benches were being set out. Marc had apparently decided that everyone had seen enough of the courtyard for one day. The garrison and its guests would dine by torchlight under a sparkling canopy of stars—if anyone got a chance to eat, that was.

  Hunters called to each other in the darkening hills. Hounds belled, sounding baffled and, sometimes, frightened, those that still gave voice at all. Fruitless hours had passed, not that the hunt seemed to range far a field.

  Someone sat down beside Jame.

  “They’ve lost the scent again,” said Char.

  “Why do they keep doing that? I’d swear that he hasn’t traveled far, and that mostly in circles. Trinity, he’s passed by here on the road twice already.”

  Char snorted. “Myself, I think it’s that white brute of yours. Whenever they find the track, he muddles it with his own cursed scent and the dogs go mad with fear. Most of them have run off by now. I hear that our own direhounds are cowering in the kennel.”

  “Death’s-head probably doesn’t want to lose his playmate. Are you disappointed that they haven’t caught our visitor yet?”

  Char stirred restlessly. “Yes. No. Dammit, I’m not sure. I want that pest gone, but do I want him dead? I thought I did. Look at what he’s done to the herd. To Bene.” With a whoof and a sigh, the cow settled behind them. Char leaned back against her bulging belly. “Still, he only acted according to his nature, and so did they.”

  A contingent of Merikit appeared on top of the facing cliff, one almost falling off in his forward plunge. Jame remembered, from experience,
how suddenly one came to the edge. They withdrew, their grumbles audible across the valley.

  More Kencyr settled onto the hillside to watch the show, Char’s ten among them.

  Torchlight flared over the shoulder of a hill downstream. A dog yelped with panic, but the sound was drowned by many eager shouts.

  Char sat up. “They’re on the track again. Look.”

  Up the New Road trotted the yackcarn bull, making his third pass, a bobbing dab of darkness all but swallowed by the valley’s growing shadows.

  “. . . huh, huh, huh . . .”

  Panting, nearly done, he turned aside and staggered up the slope toward the herd, which scattered at his approach. Bene lumbered to her feet. Horns and tusks bowed his head nearly to the ground. He stumbled over his dangling scrotum but kept going, up to Jame and past her, with a desperate look askance. The cows lowed as he passed. The garrison rose and turned as one to watch him go.

  The Merikit rounded the bend and surged forward, still shouting. They followed the only dogs still on the scent, Tagmeth’s matched pair of Molocar all but dragging Tiens on their heels. After him came Chingetai brandishing a boar spear. Jame noted that he had found a pair of pants somewhere, although they fit him as tightly as a casing did a sausage.

  More torches glared through the trees upslope and more shouts sounded. Another company of hunters. The bull was surrounded. He turned at bay just short of the forest. The oncoming light cast his shadow gigantic against the lowered boughs as the Merikit surged up after him past the Kencyr.

  “Squeeee . . . !”

  At this desperate challenge, his pursuers slowed. Even the Molocar hesitated, looking puzzled. The light behind emerged from the trees, banishing that enormous shadow, leaving a diminutive figure roughly the size of a donkey but much heavier, with huge genitalia. As if to stress the latter, the bull extended his arm-length penis and pissed on the ground—in defiance or fear, it was impossible to tell which.

  If anyone had laughed at that moment, especially Gran Cyd, who had just come up behind the Merikit chieftain with her baby strapped to her back, the entire hillside would have roared and Chingetai would have been destroyed.

  Instead, Tirresian said, quite clearly, “Poor bully.”

  Those might have been her first words.

  “He . . . ah . . . is very well endowed,” said her mother, no doubt biting her lip.

  After a moment’s flabbergasted silence, Chingetai took the hint.

  “What a magnificent male,” he exclaimed. “Just look at him! Should we destroy such an exemplar of our tribe’s virility? I think not. Behold the Merikits’ new totem!”

  That roused a cheer, ironic from the war maids, hesitant from the Merikit men, heartfelt from the Kencyr. Someone produced a rope and slung a loop over the bull’s neck. He fought a bit, but on the whole seemed relieved at his fate. Jame imagined that if the lodge-wyves of the village had the last laugh, they would be wise to keep it behind their teeth.

  Chingetai swung wide his brawny arms. “And now,” he bellowed to the hillside and all who stood there, listening, “we feast! To neighbors!”

  “To neighbors,” Jame echoed the toast, raising an open hand instead of a cup. They would all have sufficient to drink soon enough, and well earned at that.

  Chapter X

  The Gates of Tagmeth

  Autumn 37—Winter’s Eve

  I

  LYRA SCUFFED A BOOT on the floor, refusing to meet Jame’s eyes.

  “Why are you blaming me?”

  “I’m not. You didn’t tell me this story before. Very well. I’d like to hear it now. How did you discover Tagmeth’s gates?”

  “You told me to leave you alone,” the girl burst out. “You know you did! And no one else would talk to me—at least, no one interesting. I was lonely. I was bored. So I crept around this rotten old keep trying to keep out of the way so that no one else would tell me to get lost.”

  Jame sighed. “That’s not what I said, or meant. Lyra, sometimes people have work to do and no time to play. I’ve told you that before.”

  Lyra regarded her boot. Scrape, scrape. “He wanted to play,” she mumbled. “Timmon. The Ardeth Lordan. He smiled at me and I felt . . . I felt . . .”

  “I know. He does that to people.”

  “He doesn’t to you,” the girl muttered, “and I know that he’s tried. Am I so much more foolish?”

  How to answer that honestly?

  “No, just young. Timmon is heady stuff. He doesn’t mean harm, but he doesn’t always consider consequences.”

  Lyra blushed. “Neither do I—sometimes—but I do try.”

  “I know,” said Jame again, wondering if she did. However, scolding Lyra was like slapping a kitten. After all, she was growing up as fast as she could, in a house that required nothing from its ladies but beauty and mindless compliance, Kallystine and Cattila notwithstanding.

  “How did it happen?” she pressed.

  “It was after you told me to go away. Then Timmon teased me. I was in the courtyard. Cooks were clattering about the kitchen and oh, I was so hungry, but there were too many of them and I couldn’t sneak in to grab a bite to eat. That big Kendar Marc came to the door. He would have been kind, but he didn’t see me. Then he went back inside. Shadows were growing against the walls. I thought, oh, if only I could walk through them into someplace far away. And I did.”

  Jame curbed her impatience. “Again, how?”

  Lyra smiled to herself. “It isn’t so hard when you know the trick. Look for an arch where the mortar has cracked. The shadows grow there, you see, and you stick your fingers into them, sideways. The stones seem to move but don’t, really. Then, suddenly, a light shines through. I crept inside, and found myself in another place. There were funny skinny trees and water and sand and all the figs I could eat. You didn’t even notice when I was sick afterward, did you?”

  “Sorry. No, I didn’t.”

  “You see? No one cares about me. I might as well be d-dead.”

  “Don’t say that. I care. So does your great-grandmother Cattila, the Earth Wife, and even Timmon.”

  Lyra brightened. “Really? Oh, he’s so handsome. . .!”

  “Er . . . yes. He is that. So you found another land beyond the arch. More than one, or so I gather, beyond other arches.”

  Lyra nodded, proud. “Also a peach orchard.” Then she looked uneasy. “There was another place that wasn’t at all nice. The grass was gray and whined and—and something was charging down on me. I didn’t stay to find out what.”

  Jame wasn’t sure either, although the description tapped some memory that she couldn’t quite recall.

  “I take it that your great-granduncle didn’t discover any such thing when he was in residence here.”

  Lyra looked scornful. “Of course not. You have to be clever to make such a discovery. He wasn’t. I was.”

  Prid appeared in the doorway. “Lyra, we’re leaving. Or—or do you want to stay here?”

  The plea in her voice was obvious. Jame sensed that she still wanted someone to stand between her and Hatch, perhaps even more so after the equinox rites where his good performance may have caused her to question her dismissive attitude toward him. Ah, young love, as far as she knew what that was.

  Lyra all but ran to her friend and seized her arm.

  “Of course I want to go. Come on!”

  Jame struggled up from her chair. “Lyra, wait . . . !”

  “Good-bye, housebond!” Prid called back to her as Lyra tugged her down the stair.

  Jame followed more slowly. Kells’ poultices and a night of deep sleep had gone a long way toward setting her right, but there was still a savage stitch in her side.

  Below in the courtyard, Gran Cyd and Chingetai waited on their ponies, ready to leave. Lyra had already scrambled into her saddle and taken off with Prid rushing to catch up.

  Dammit, Jame still had questions to ask the Caineron. Her hasty departure perhaps was a sign that she didn’t want to answer.
Secrets were power, of which Lyra had precious little. Just the same. . .

  Chingetai sat tall in the saddle, an impression of grandeur somewhat limited by his feet nearly touching the ground. Jame wondered if he had convinced himself that he had a genuine prize in the captured bull or if he was putting on a show. Gran Cyd kept a straight face, but her eyes twinkled. So did those of Tirresian, who peered over her shoulder from a back harness.

  “We are neighbors and allies,” Chingetai proclaimed. “Perhaps in future we will also be trading partners.”

  Jame smiled wryly. He must have seen that they had precious little to spare.

  Cyd corrected him gently. “As allies and neighbors, and as the father of my baby, you have the right to ask for anything within the Merikits’ power to give.”

  Marc emerged from the kitchen bearing tankards of cider on a tray—a stirrup cup for friends. All toasted each other and drank.

  With that, the Merikit turned and rode out of the courtyard.

  In the outer ward, Jame saw Cyd pause and bend down to speak kindly to Must. That made her uneasy, remembering the Merikit queen’s prophecy that the venture at Tagmeth would fail if she did not somehow help the Caineron fugitive. Well enough, and so she wished, but how?

  The procession met with the other hillsmen on the road and climbed the steps beside the descending Silver. Most of them walked beside ponies laden with the spoils of the hunt. The yackcarn bull trudged at rope’s end between two mounts, who regarded him warily askance. Jame wondered about his fate. He was probably doomed to become the village pet.

  On their departure, the keep settled down to its usual morning routine with Kendar scattering this way and that to their assigned tasks.

  Jame regarded the arch through which Lyra and Prid had walked the night before. It looked and felt perfectly solid. Meanwhile, passing Kendar regarded her curiously.

  Somewhat abashed, she retreated to her quarters to write a report to Tori.

  Then Brier arrived to discuss how each ten command would be employed over the next ten days. It was decided that Char would have his command back to help shift the cows and horses to fresh pasturage down stream.