“Look,” said Rue.
A company of Caineron randon was trotting across the bridge from the keep to the River Road. Jame recognized Cloud’s steel-gray coat and the tall figure on his back. She descended to greet Caldane’s war-leader, as she supposed Sheth Sharp-tongue still was.
“Commandant.”
“Cadet.”
The earth shuddered again. Snow and debris cascaded down the sides of the tower from the Crown, where chunks of masonry had already been dislodged.
“This has been going on for a fortnight,” remarked Sheth. “Eventually it got on m’lord’s nerves. He left four days ago, no doubt to travel slowly and in comfort. With luck, we won’t catch up with him until Gothregor.”
Jame looked at him askance. “Was that why you asked me to meet you here and why you waited behind—to provide a shield?”
“Do you need one?” he asked lightly. “More often, it seems, m’lord Caineron has required protection from you than the reverse. Say, rather, that we randon should ride together.”
If so, it was nice to be included in the ranks. Jame wondered what he and the other randon officers had heard about Tagmeth. Not much, probably. It said a lot, though, that she and her Kendar had lasted the winter there without crying for help.
“Commandant, what’s going on?”
“It would spoil the surprise if I told you. Then, too, perhaps things won’t turn out as I fear they may.”
With that she had to be content.
She did learn, however, that Cattila was still alive, but failing. When Caldane had grown tired of waiting for her to die, and of having his home crumble over his head, he had departed early, taking Lyra and Kallystine with him, the former against her will. Hopefully someone had stayed behind: A sad thought that that indomitable old lady might have been left to die without kith or kin.
The rest of the day passed agreeably enough. To her surprise, the Commandant proved an entertaining conversationalist who made her laugh more than she would have believed possible. In turn, it was tempting to tell him more than she should. At least she was able to set his mind at ease about his older brother Bear and to praise the Caineron randons’ respect for him. She said nothing about Tiggeri’s abortive hunt. No doubt he had already heard about that from other sources.
“I thought you might be good for each other,” he said with a faint smile when he had heard her out, “assuming you didn’t kill each other. As for Bear’s possible, eventual recovery, well, it’s a pleasant thought.”
“But not one that you believe in.”
“Hope only goes so far.”
Some time later they stopped briefly to let the horses rest.
Jame wandered away. As amiable as the Commandant had been, talking to him at length was a bit of strain, like discoursing with a legend. Of course, she supposed that by those standards she was a legend, too, but only one in the making. He, on the other hand, was the Commandant and would never be anything less, whatever his fool of a lord decided.
The fading day glimmered, white snow under dark boughs, limned with blue shadows, and here was a slope of boulders recently shaken down from the heights. Some of them still seemed to be in motion. One reshaped itself as she approached, its blocky lines arranging themselves into the curve of a hunched back, of drawn up knees, of tightly folded arms, of a rough head that slowly lifted at the crunch of her footsteps.
“Mother Ragga.”
“Oh,” the Earth Wife groaned, and the ground shifted. “Why do people have to die? I escaped death, didn’t I? Why can’t she?”
“Is Cattila in much pain?”
“It comes and goes. I transfer what I can to the earth.”
“Are you with her now?”
“Of course. She is my old gossip. Who else can I talk to when she is gone? Even Gran Cyd wouldn’t understand. You?” She made a grating sound and spat out pebbles. “Don’t make me laugh. We old women have a language all our own. Such days we have seen. And it’s been fun, listening to all of your problems.”
“Mine?”
“Yours, true, but also those of your people. Oh, you are a strange race, or collection of them. Who else would worship such a god, not that you really do, or take on such a world-spanning task, not that most of you seem to believe in it anymore. You, though, child; you believe.”
“My experience gives me little choice.”
“Ha. There it is, that wry acceptance. Should I believe you, though?”
“I know what I know. Rathillien is my home too. I love it. I want to defend it. What can the Three do, though, without the Four?”
The Earth Wife irritably gummed more rock and dribbled gravel. “I dunno. I’m thinking. Why do we have to have this conversation over and over? Try turning the world sideways on its axis, that’s me. Oh!”
Another shudder of the earth, another displaced mortal tremor. Boulders tilted and rolled, including the one that had been the Earth Wife. Jame scuttled backward. It ground to a halt face down, nearly on her toes. Then all was still again until voices below called anxiously to her.
She went back to join the others.
II
NOT LONG AFTERWARD, at twilight, they came to Mount Alban. Kedan, who was both Lord Jedrak and Lord Jaran by that house’s eccentric reckoning, meet them at the gate of the Scrollsmen’s College. With him were the college’s Director Taur, its lordan Kirien, and Kindrie.
Jame could tell at a glance that something had changed between the latter two. What, she didn’t guess until at dinner she saw them with their heads together, sharing a private joke.
“All right,” she told them later. “I’m stupid. Congratulations.”
“Were we that obvious?” asked Kindrie, blushing furiously.
“I don’t really have the experience to answer that, but I think so. Never mind. No one will mind as long as you don’t plan on having children anytime soon.”
Kirien regarded her, head atilt. “I know what I’m doing. Do you?”
“Point taken. I think so, but I’m not ready yet to put it to the test. Besides, with whom?”
“What?” said Kindrie in confusion, looking from one to the other.
Both burst out laughing.
“Never mind,” said Kirien, patting his arm. “If you need to be concerned, I will tell you.”
The next day, augmented by the Mount Alban contingent, the party reached Tentir around midafternoon. There, more randon rode out to join them, including the current Coman commandant. With a sour look at Jame, the latter pushed her back in line and took her place beside his fellow war-leader. He talked a lot to Sheth, but got little response. Jame couldn’t hear most of it. However, she got the impression that the Coman wanted to know why he and his fellows had been called out. The High Council was the lords’ business, after all. The randon would have their say on the First of Summer. That last came through clearly, as did the glare that he shot back over his shoulder at her.
“You have no friend there,” murmured Kirien, who had also been listening.
“Then we have to hope that actions speak louder than prejudices.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Cynic.”
Shadow Rock was reached late in the day.
Holly, Lord Danior, had already set off for Gothregor, but had left orders that his cousin be received in his absence. Thus Jame found herself again situated opposite Wilden, and very uncomfortable at the prospect.
“Lord Caineron was there for three nights,” Holly’s steward told them. “Trinity knows what devilry they were concocting.”
He would say that, thought Jame, given the animosity between the two keeps, but still . . .
“Anyway,” the Kendar continued, “Lord Randir left for Gothregor yesterday, his lady mother traveling with him.”
That last was a surprise. Rawneth hadn’t been at the Knorth keep since Kinzi had ordered her out of it many years ago, before the massacre. That she should return now stuck Jame as both odd and ominous.
; “I had a strange experience travelling nearby, last summer,” said Kindrie, standing that evening on the ramparts with Jame and Kirien, all three of them staring across the valley at the dark mass that was the Randir fortress. “Someone was wandering the streets, knocking on doors.”
“‘Let me in, let me out,’” murmured Jame.
Kindrie looked at her in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”
“She came to a gate that opened, and her guards rushed inside. They killed whomever answered her summons. The next day they accused that entire household of treason, apparently for seeing what they shouldn’t have. The family chose the White Knife. Some Kendar escaped, though, and took refuge with me at Tagmeth. That’s how I heard the story.”
“Was it Rawneth?” asked Kirien.
“So the Kendar said. So I believe. Apparently she doesn’t sleep well these days. Cousin Holly thought he saw something strange the night that Tori slept here on the way back from Mount Alban, but he didn’t say what. At the time, I was trying to remember a dream of my own. Now I wish that I had pressed for details.”
She was beginning to get an idea, though.
III
THE NEXT MORNING they set off again, intending to reach Gothregor that night. However, at Falkirr they caught up with Lord Caineron. It was only midafternoon, but Caldane had already stopped to enjoy Brandan hospitality and, Jame suspected, to cajole Brant, Lord Brandan. Politics already curdled the air.
“I have to stop here,” Sheth told her. “You can ride on, though.”
Jame wished that she could, but the valley was clogged with camping Caineron, too many having arrived to be housed in the fortress. As for striking east into the hills, Bel hadn’t yet shown any desire to leave the road. Would she if Jame turned her head that way? Would they be followed if she did?
As Jame was pondering this, a message arrived from the keep. Lord Brandan and Lady Brenwyr requested her presence at dinner.
Her contingent and that of Mount Alban camped outside the walls, glad enough not to share a roof with the Caineron before they must.
The meal that night was finer than Jame’s last at Falkirr, but only in terms of its participants being better dressed. Caldane was certainly gorgeous in scarlet damask trimmed with spotted ermine, looking as broad as the setting sun on a cloudless day and as incandescent of face. As Gorbel had hinted, he had spent the winter eating and now required a double bench rather than a chair, even then overflowing it on all sides. Brant and Brenwyr shared the high table with him, the former in a plain coat of good quality, the latter, perhaps defiantly, in the brown jacket that encased Aerulan’s death banner.
Jame fingered the collar of her own coat. It had been presented to her on her departure from Tagmeth, a tailored crazy quilt composed of the Kendars’ best scraps, many of them heirlooms. It hadn’t previously occurred to her that such things were valued relics, carried in one’s permanent kit, rarely used except, perhaps, in one’s eventual death banner. She had been deeply touched to receive such a gift, and unsure at first if it or another constituted her finest gear. The latter would serve for the Council Meeting itself, for many reasons. In the meantime, she felt quite elegant as she was.
Caldane talked a lot and frequently laughed, all the while leaning toward Brant. On Brant’s other side was Kallystine, who gave the impression of having crammed herself into the high table. When she bent toward Lord Brandan, she exposed an expanse of spectacular white cleavage over cream velvet sprinkled with opals. Her face, however, remained veiled and she ate little.
Kirien and Kindrie sat with Jame along a side table.
Opposite them were Gorbel and Lyra, the former glowering, the latter miserable, trying to catch Jame’s eye. Trouble there, thought Jame.
Caldane leaned toward Brant, overturning a cup with his trailing sleeve and planting his elbow in the resultant flood. “All of this fuss over procedure! Don’t you think we should be looking forward rather than back? What is the past but a pyre of failed hopes, dead promises, and corrupt traditions? It’s time for new ideas.”
“Ask the Highlord when he thinks of such things,” said Brenwyr tartly.
Caldane smiled, as if to say, “Ah, the dear ladies.”
“I understand,” he said to the matriarch, “that you have also been summoned to Gothregor. What is all of that about, eh?”
Behind her mask, Kallystine appeared to simper.
“No doubt Adiraina will inform me when I arrive,” said Brenwyr, and turned away to signify the end of that conversation.
When the meal concluded at last, the Tagmeth and Mount Alban parties returned to their campsite. It was a cool, crisp night under a glorious array of stars. The moon’s last thin crescent had long since set. Tomorrow it would fall into the dark, an ominous thought.
Something was ending, thought Jame, poking at the fire to rouse it, too restless herself to sleep. Maybe several things.
They had camped under the spreading boughs of an enormous oak, on ground raised above the general snowmelt by a lacework of roots. Last year’s dried leaves rustled overhead and arthritic twigs creaked uneasily, although there was no wind. The night held its breath.
Everything ends, darkness seemed to whisper. Eventually.
Voices sounded. A sentry came into the firelight, escorting a slight figure bundled in a cloak. Jame rose in time to receive Lyra’s rush of an embrace.
“Oh, take me home, take me home!” the girl sobbed, clutching the plain jacket that Jame had exchanged for her finery. “Gran is so sick and Kallystine made me leave her and oh, I just want to go h-h-home!”
“There you are.”
A second muffled figure emerged from the shadows, Caineron guards looming behind her. Knorth and Jaran randon coalesced silently, warily, around them.
“Easy,” Jame said. “These are guests. I think.”
Kallystine pushed back her hood. Eyes glinted through a slit in her heavy veil.
“Dear little sister. Why did you run off? If you were upset, you should have come to me.”
Lyra clung to Jame. “You? Never! You made me leave Gran and-and you said that Father was going to contract me to Lord Randir f-for an heir!”
“If I did, when he does, how will it help to complain? The match has my sanction. His, of course, will follow. As for your precious Gran, she has lived her day—in fact, an age of them. Didn’t you hear Father? It’s time for new things.”
“Would you put Cattila on her pyre before her death?” Jame asked. “Would you turn your back on the past?”
Kallystine laughed. “Gladly! So should you. What has our history offered but pain? Ah, I admit that I don’t know much about your previous life. No one does, it seems—not even your brother. But something like you doesn’t spring out of nowhere. Could it be our past again to blame? With your ideas, you and dear Torisen are both relics. Archaic. Our people have moved on.”
“Yet the past made us all, and marred us. I’m sorry about your face.”
Kallystine all but spat at her. “Hypocrite! At least I paid you back. You are also damaged goods.”
Jame had to think about that for a moment. “Oh. You mean this.” She touched the scar on her cheek. “What of it?”
Kallystine grimaced in frustration. “How can it signify so little to you? I should have guessed it, though, unnatural creature that you are. No wonder the Women’s World threw you out and no man will offer for you except as breeding stock. Not for long, however. Your house is all but spent. Soon, soon, we will wipe your name off every scroll, out of every song. No one will know that you ever existed.”
Jame smiled. “Be that as it may, I’m here now and so are you. What next?”
Yet again the earth stirred. Lyra yelped. Jame hustled her off the spread of roots as it began to writhe underfoot. Overhead, boughs as thick as limbs shifted, groaning. Leaves crackled, then ignited as embers from the disturbed fire rose to kindle them. The deep fissures of its trunk gaped and shifted. A seamed face formed. Toothless mouth, hangi
ng jowls, furrowed cheeks, poached eyes . . . it screamed with a mighty rending of wood, then muscles went slack and fissures drooped. The fiery crown burned out. Night returned, to the distant cry of horses and the sense of a diminished world.
Kallystine clapped her hands.
“Don’t tell me. The hag is dead. At last! Now I shall be matriarch!”
The oak settled with a groan. A crack ran up its trunk, jagged as a lightning bolt, and half of the tree fell with a hideous shriek. If not for Kallystine’s guard sweeping her out of the way, she would have been crushed.
“Just the same,” said Jame, in none too steady a voice, “if she had wanted, she could have killed you.”
Kallystine made a choking sound and caused her veil to flutter by breathing hard behind it.
“Be that as it may,” she croaked. “Lyra. Come with me.”
“You have to go,” Jame said gently to the stricken girl. “Things will work out.”
“Do you promise?”
“How can I? But I’ll do what I can.”
IV
THEY REACHED GOTHREGOR the next evening after a long, slow ride on the heels of the Caineron contingent. It was the 99th of Winter.
Jame and Damson’s ten-command settled into their old quarters in the barracks. Rue grumbled that Jame, here on official business and the Highlord’s heir to boot, wasn’t given something better. Jame pointed out that they were lucky to have a roof overhead at all. While Gothregor was huge, most of it was either ruins or occupied by the Women’s Halls. An extensive tent city had sprung up outside its gates, including one enormous, luxurious structure occupied by Lord Caineron and his retinue. Receptions started there as soon as the canvas was up, promising to continue long into the night. Meanwhile, people walked from tent to tent to visit after the winter’s isolation and, no doubt, to discuss the coming meeting. Politics again, thought Jame. Only a few people, she noted, came into the fortress itself, and those left early.
She stepped outside the barracks and looked across the inner ward to the old keep. In the southwestern tower where Torisen kept his sparse bedchamber, a solitary candle flickered like a distant star.
The Gates of Tagmeth (Chronicles of the Kencyrath Book 8) Page 34