By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  Not so normal, perhaps, after all.

  She wandered on, lost. Notwithstanding her experiences in Kothifir, she was at heart the child of a small, isolated border keep. How could people live in such a maze without going mad? Maybe they all were. That would explain a lot.

  She came to the ruins of an old city wall and turned right again.

  If she were bound to Jame, could she find her? It seemed to work that way for Highborn: after all, Jame had found Brier in the chaos of the Western Lands, through one of Tagmeth’s gates. But could Brier have found her?

  I must ask, thought Rue.

  All the Kendar at Tagmeth would be asking themselves such questions as the Randon Council drew near, but could any of them pass muster if Jame wasn’t there?

  Instead, for some reason, she was here.

  At least Brier knew where she had gone, sort of. Jame had left a note.

  Rue stopped short. Passersby bounced off her, cursing, but she didn’t notice. Her hand dived into her coat and pulled out the scrap of parchment that she had found in Jame’s quarters, the one that had sent her pelting after her mistress in the first place:

  “Away on personal business. Don’t worry.”

  She didn’t remember stuffing the note into her pocket. At the time, she had barely been thinking at all. Sweet Trinity. The people back at the keep had no idea where they had gone. Brier was going to kill her. Maybe Jame would too.

  After that, the day was a nightmare. Hot, tired, and thirsty, Rue wandered on. More often than not, she turned right and so, not surprisingly, began to feel that she was going in circles.

  Here was a market in a small shady square with a fountain playing at its heart. Rue drank from cupped hands and sat down on the rim to rest her feet. Potatoes, onions, green peppers, tomatoes . . . most looked good, but few customers were buying.

  “Fresh from the country!” one vendor called over and over again in an exhausted voice, as if lamenting the end of the world. “Get ’em before they walk away. You, young lady, have a sample.”

  He handed Rue a tomato. It was big and red, but oddly shaped with bulges in unexpected places. She accepted it gingerly. Yes, she was hungry—breakfast seemed a long time ago—but the thing gave her pause. Drawing her knife, she sliced into it. As the skin split, little red seed packets spilled out over her hand along with gout of watery juice. Some of the bundles were pulsing.

  “Overripe,” muttered the vendor, hastily taking it from her and dropping its soggy remains into a box under his cart.

  “I think it was pregnant,” said Rue, feeling queasy.

  Voices rose from the other side of the market, one of them sharp and familiar.

  “This is a public place,” Cleppetty was saying belligerently to the three men who loomed over her. “We pay our taxes. We’ve a right to be here.”

  “Yeah,” said her young, gangly escort, trying to sound tough but swallowing hard. “Leave us alone or we’ll set the guards on you.”

  “What guards?” said one, looking around with raised eyebrows. “If you mean Sart Nine-toes, he’s on duty across town.”

  “Ha.” Cleppetty jammed her fists on her hips. A market basket hung from the crook of one angular arm. “You made sure of that, didn’t you, before accosting us. Brave puppies, to show your teeth when the big dog is away.”

  Rue rose and quietly pulled out the box of discarded vegetables. The vendor had retreated to the edge of the square where most of his peers stood warily watching the confrontation.

  Cleppetty’s opponents were large, rough-looking men, not Rue’s idea at all of thieves, and they carried themselves like street fighters.

  “Old woman, old woman,” one said with a contemptuous laugh. “Who’s that toothless bitch snarling now? Just tell us where your precious Mistress Abernia is, and your sweet Talisman. Then you can be on your way.”

  “You leave her alone!”

  The young escort lunged forward, and met a fist to the jaw. He fell over backward with a crash and lay still.

  “Ghillie!” cried Cleppetty, bending over him.

  The other men laughed, until one was hit in the mouth with a disintegrating tomato. He backed up, sputtering, clawing at his face.

  “It burns! G’ah, I swallowed some of it!”

  Rue changed positions and pelted another man with a cucumber on the ear. It split, raining maggots down his collar. A rutabaga followed it. That made a satisfying thud but it only wobbled off afterward, bruised and whimpering. An eggplant . . .

  I didn’t throw that, thought Rue, and glanced aside to see the merchants also picking up missiles.

  A green pepper. When it split, its seeds unfolded like so many baby spiders and swarmed over the third man.

  The first bent over retching. The third frantically swatted at his head. The second recovered himself, spotted Rue, and charged at her. She evaded him with water-flowing Senethar, tripped him as he passed, and sent him sprawling into the fountain where he fell with a great splash and knocked himself out against its opposite rim.

  The vendors cheered.

  Under cover of a continued barrage of vegetables, Rue helped Cleppetty get Ghillie to his feet and the three of them staggered off into the labyrinth.

  “Which way?” Rue panted.

  “Follow me. It isn’t far.”

  Nor was it. Here was the scorched side of the Skyrrman. Kithra popped out of the front door, staring, followed by a thick-set fellow who presumably was her husband, Rothan.

  “Not now,” Cleppetty wheezed.

  Here was the fountain court and, at last, there was the Res aB’tyrr with the cat Boo a dark blot on its doorstep, meowing, as if he had never left.

  They helped Ghillie stagger up to his second-floor room and then retreated to the kitchen, where Cleppetty at once put on a kettle.

  “Mistress, you have problems,” said Rue, and yawned. It had been a long day, and it was only half over. Then again, she hadn’t slept since . . . when? Time had passed in the tunnels and the Anarchies—how much, she wasn’t sure.

  “Who were those men? What did they want?”

  “You heard them.” Cleppetty thumped mugs on the table and rummaged in a drawer for tea. “Mistress Abernia was Sirdan Men-dalis’ ‘guest.’ Ha! Now he seems to have misplaced her, and with her his hold over the Talisman. He tends to lose people, that man, but someone else is always to blame, or so he says. As to those men at the market, they’re brigands. Used to belong to Blind Bortis’ gang until he disappeared into something called the Anarchies. Instead of haunting the mountain passes, now they hire themselves out as thugs to whomever will pay them. That looks a lot like Men-dalis, these days.” She leaned on the sideboard, for a moment looking unnervingly tired. “I wish Sart were here. He could whip these curs into shape, or so he says. Heh, men. In the end, it always comes down on us women.”

  Rue yawned again.

  “You’re worn out,” said Cleppetty, regarding her critically. “And you’re just a child at that.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are so, whatever your age. I’ll show you where you can put your boots up for a while. Nothing should happen for hours yet. Then you’ll need to be sharp, won’t you? And you aren’t about to chase after our Talisman again, are you?”

  “I suppose not,” said Rue, thinking of the day’s frustrations, how helpless they had made her feel.

  “Good. Come along.”

  II

  AND THAT WAS WHERE RUE found herself now, in a cheery little room with blue flowers painted on the ceiling.

  “Wake, oh wake,” she thought she had heard a voice calling. The room had been full of a sweet presence and melting light. Now only shafts of the latter slanted in the western facing window. Day was fading.

  She hadn’t meant to sleep so long, nor did she have much of an excuse except that she had been tired and, well, overwhelmed by recent events.

  A child? Ha. Still . . .

  Highborn were better at keeping vigils than Kendar. Look at Torise
n, who once had spent nearly two weeks awake although, granted, it had driven him almost mad. The whisper was that he had feared bad dreams. One didn’t hear as much about such behavior on his part these days, since his sister had returned. Hope, there. Like most Kendar, Rue wasn’t entirely sure where her loyalties lay. She was Jame’s, bound or not. But Torisen was the Highlord. The health of her home, of her people, depended on the ability of those two to accept each other.

  Weighty thoughts. No wonder Rue was finding it hard to breathe. Her eyes had drifted shut again. She opened them. What she had at first supposed to be the heft of anxiety was in fact Boo sitting on her chest, toes tucked in, purring loud enough to rattle her ribcage.

  “Hello, cat,” she said, freeing a hand from the blanket to scratch his nocked ears. “We were introduced, oh, sometime much earlier today.”

  Someone rushed into the room. A girl. Wearing very little.

  “You’re awake!” she exclaimed. “Good! No one will scold me for disturbing you!”

  Rue watched as she threw open the chest at the foot of an opposite bed and began to rummage through it. Clothes flew.

  “What to wear, what to wear . . .”

  “To do what?”

  The girl shot a simpering smirk over her shoulder. “I’m the new dancer, aren’t I? Oh, they’ll see something tonight!”

  They would see a lot, thought Rue, regarding the tumble of diaphanous clothing.

  “The trouble is,” the girl said, holding up a sheer—scarf? bodice? pair of drawers?—“the B’tyrr set such a high standard, and yet no one I’ve asked can really describe what she wore. Or didn’t wear. Is this fetching enough?”

  Rue stared through the transparent garment, whatever it was. “The B’tyrr?”

  “Or the Bat-ears, some say. Anyhow, this was years ago—oh, she must be so old now—but her legend lingers, damn her. You should know. After all, she was one of you.”

  “One of my what?”

  The girl rushed out of the room without bothering to answer, trailing filmy snatches of cloth.

  Rue pushed off Boo, who complained, and rose.

  Her coat and boots were alternately on and under a nearby chair. Had she put them there? How sleepy had she been? No matter.

  The bedroom was one of several lining the second-floor balcony that linked the front and back halves of the inn. Below were the stable and its attendant yard. At the north end was a square stairwell that led down to the inn’s kitchen, from which delightful smells arose.

  Rue descended.

  Three kettles boiled over the flames, one for stew, one for soup, and one, tucked under the stair, with a scullery behind it, for wash water. Besides, between the kitchen and the main room spits turned over flames on which were skewered fowl and a dripping haunch of beef.

  Rue’s stomach grumbled.

  “Sit down and eat,” said Cleppetty, thrusting a bowl into her hands.

  Rue was hungry, but memory of the market made her hesitate.

  “Are there . . . vegetables in this?”

  “Yes. This nonsense has been going on long enough for us to have learned a few tricks. At first it was enough to buy only from the country or from the gardens in the outer ring of the city. Since then, the blight has spread. Now, we try to catch vegetables and fruits just before they ripen. Their innards may look strange, but they taste all right, if not quite up to their full savor.”

  Cleppetty sighed, the thwarted professional. “A real trial it’s been for us cooks. Still, trial and error. Oh, but such errors . . . !”

  She shook herself. “Dried beans have always been safe, though. That’s what you have there, with lentils, basil, and a touch of saffron. As for meat . . .”

  Boo had followed Rue into the kitchen and sat up begging for dinner. Cleppetty slapped out raw chicken livers on the kitchen table. They quivered. She flailed away at them with a hand mace until they were flat, bloodless, and still.

  Boo protested.

  “He prefers them still a-twitch,” Cleppetty explained, serving the cat, “like the mice he’s gotten too fat to hunt. I found that out when I left the kitchen unattended for a moment and came back to catch him playing with his dinner. But why take chances?”

  “And that?” Rue glanced at the beef roast.

  “Cook anything long enough and it gives in.”

  Rue tasted her soup warily. It was delicious.

  Cleppetty crumbled something onto a plate and touched a flame to it. Incense spiraled up.

  Ahh . . . ! the room seemed to breathe, and for a moment a flush of light washed over it.

  “There,” said Cleppetty to the air, with a note of huffy indulgence. “Happy?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, we have a resident goddess, thanks to our Talisman. We don’t know her name. She followed Jame home on the Feast of Dead Gods, dying herself, as I understand it. That happens to gods who outlive their believers. Jame may be a monotheist—you all are, poor things—but she’d seen enough to believe that our gods, on some level, are real. She offered that to our lady. She’s been here ever since.”

  Rue wrestled with this. “Jame said that she believed in this goddess on those terms? And you make her offerings?”

  “Well, yes, for encouragement. Why not?”

  “Have you ever seen her?”

  Cleppetty shrugged. “A glimpse, now and then, out of the corner of my eye. Leave something to faith, I say. The Talisman did.”

  From the dining hall came the sound of the front door stealthily opening.

  Cleppetty darted out. Peering past the meat spits, Rue saw that she had collared Kithra as she had tried to sneak in.

  “Let me go!” the girl cried, struggling to free herself from the cook’s grip. “You’re keeping him a prisoner! I just know it!”

  Cleppetty shook her. “You know no such thing, you little fool. Master Tubain has taken to his bed, upset over misplacing his wife. That’s all.”

  “For two whole months?”

  “He’s very upset. I’ll not have you disturbing him. Go home.”

  “This is my home, not that horrid wreck! Why can’t Rothy and I live here in comfort while it’s being rebuilt? Uncle Tuby will agree, I know he will, if only I can talk to him!”

  Cleppetty shoved her out the door, slammed it behind her, and stalked back to the kitchen.

  Rue hastily resumed her seat.

  Her hostess snatched up any stray dish she could lay hands on and dumped it into the streaming wash water. When this didn’t adequately express her feelings, she set about clattering pots and pans as if they had mortally offended her.

  Rue ate her soup, trying to look tactful but flushed with curiosity.

  “Oh, that girl!” Cleppetty paused, hugging herself fiercely as if afraid that she would fly apart. “It’s her own silly fault that she’s living under half of a roof. She was a maid there, back when Marplet sen Tenko owned it, but he threw her out. We took her in and Tubain’s nephew Rothan married her. That gave her ideas. Rothan is Tubain’s heir, y’see. Some day the Res aB’tyrr will belong to him. Well, Kithra decided that it belonged to her now. Mistress Abernia and I were to step aside, if you please. To get some peace, Tubain bought the ruins of the Skyrrman and gave them to his nephew to rebuild on condition that he take his bride to live there in the meantime. He’s not been very handy at it so far, even with Tuby paying most of the bills. And so we rub along from day to day as neighbors. Of all times, though, for her to start raising a fuss . . . !”

  The front door opened again, flung wide this time. Heavy footsteps stomped across the hall floor. Rue jumped up in alarm as a man nearly as big as a Kendar burst into the kitchen.

  “Sweet-tart!” he shouted, and swung Cleppetty off her feet into a smacking kiss. “The captain has given me the night off. I’m yours until dawn! Who is this?”

  He turned, smiling, to regard Rue.

  She stared at him—wide mouth, small eyes, scrunched features that might have been described as pleasantly ugly
—and couldn’t decide what to make of him.

  Cleppetty straightened her clothing, unaccountably blushed, and introduced her guest.

  “Well now,” he said. “So the Talisman sent you. I’ve been told to keep an eye out for that little lady.”

  “Why?” demanded Rue and Cleppetty, simultaneously.

  “Nothing to worry your pretty heads about.” He grinned, giving the impression of being entirely trustworthy.

  Cleppetty glowered. “You swear?”

  “Trust me, love.”

  She relaxed. “Well then. This is Sart Nine-toes, Rue. My husband.”

  Chapter VIII

  Meanwhile

  Spring 55

  I

  IN THE STABLE beneath Tagmeth’s courtyard, Brier picked up the chestnut’s rear hoof and examined it. The horse shifted uneasily, ready to flinch away or to kick. She gave him a slap on the rump to settle him.

  “You thought he might be developing a crack,” she said to Cheva.

  The horse-mistress leaned down to look. Perhaps it was true that one came to resemble one’s partner, or charges, or pets: Cheva’s face was distinctly long, bony, and equine, proof if any was needed of her many years among the remount herd.

  “That’s always a danger with a flared hoof wall,” she said, “as I’ve warned you before. I thought this morning that it felt warm. And he’s obviously sensitive to the touch. You’d do better with a different mount, especially for such a demanding ride.”

  One hundred and fifty miles to Gothregor, starting two days from now, the longest she dared to wait, with three days on the road. Yes, if they started with sound mounts, pressed it, and didn’t depend on the post-stations. After all, it would seem as if half the Riverland were on the road south to attend the Randon Council.

  Was she spooking at shadows, Brier wondered, to mistrust the way-stables at Restormir and Wilden? They were manned by Caineron and Randir, though, the houses least likely to want an additional Knorth presence at the Highlord’s keep. It would also be in their best interest, as they saw it, to keep Torisen’s sister and heir away.