By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  Brier’s eyes flickered to the tower’s second-story window. Of all the things that had changed recently, the most disturbing one was the arrival of their mysterious guest of the previous night. However, he had neither moved nor spoken since and still, as dank as his clothes were, no one had dared to touch him.

  What about the lordan’s third-story quarters? Dared she go see what state they were in? No.

  Then there was Graykin. Brier didn’t trust the spy, but she also didn’t see any reason for him to creep around the dormitories by night harvesting hair. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him all day, though, which was odd.

  The watch horn sounded, on a wavering note. The newcomer was suspect but not in force, and coming from the south. Brier gestured to the guard on top of the wall: let him through, but beware.

  She waited in the courtyard, thinking, Now what?

  A hunting party rode in, several Caineron Kendar, but also a Highborn. Fash swung down from his horse, grinning.

  “Ah, Brier Iron-thorn. And where is your mistress, Jameth Priest’s-butt?”

  Brier smiled tightly. “We know her as ‘Jame,’ ran. Or M’lady. Or Lordan.”

  “You would, as close as you two have always been. We’ve laughed about that, many a night, over our cups.”

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “Oh,” he said, with an airy wave of his hand, “I was nearby and just thought I would drop in. I’ll take a cup of wine, if you still have any.”

  Wine was one thing that the gates did not provide, although Kells was experimenting with dandelions. The keep only held a few precious bottles.

  “Hard cider or nothing,” said Brier firmly. “For your men too.”

  Fash wandered off, looking around him with a condescending smirk, while his stony-faced servants continued to sit their horses. Brier gestured for the cider, also to indicate that Fash’s mount was not to be stabled. With luck, this would be a brief stay.

  The Caineron turned into the mess hall. Brier followed. She noted that the Serpent-Skin Cloak had crawled up onto one of the chairs by the fireplace. There it lay coiled, looking innocuous, like a fat, breathing rug, as it slept off its meager meal of mouse. As usual when not needed, the mess tables and benches had been cleared back to the walls. Fash wandered restlessly about the open space between fireplace and kitchen door.

  “I’m surprised that you haven’t left for Gothregor yet,” he said. “All of our class will be there. Gorbel, Higbert, and the rest set out days ago from Restormir. Timmon, Shade, our instructors . . . there will be parties in camp every night until the muster, and then a feast of celebration in the great hall, or what passes for it in the Highlord’s keep.” He laughed. “I hear that Torisen decks out a space in the abandoned rooms, under the open sky. Quaint. I suppose, though, that it’s the best he can do given that most of Gothregor is a ruin either overrun with ghosts or infested by the Women’s World. Have you heard any news of him?”

  Brier received more or less regular letters from Torisen’s steward Rowan, who seemed to think that her lord’s sister should be kept informed, judging, rightly, that Torisen himself was an indifferent correspondent.

  “I hear that he has recovered his health. Mostly.”

  “Tsk. Lung-rot is a tricky thing, or so I understand. It never occurred to any of us that an adult Highborn could catch it, much less nearly die of it. There must have been some weakness there. I hear that the Council Meeting was called off because he kept coughing up blood.”

  Brier felt her lips tighten. She didn’t know what exactly had happened—no one did except Jame, Torisen himself, and their cousin Kindrie. It was enough for her that the Highlord was on the mend.

  Enough, too, of the offensive. Attack.

  “If your lord Gorbel left for Gothregor days ago, why didn’t you go with him?”

  “Oh,” said Fash, attempting to speak lightly although his smile cracked at the edges. “Didn’t I tell you? I am no longer a randon cadet.”

  Brier was shocked. “But you passed into your final year!”

  “Things change.”

  He spoke now as if unable to stop, and continued to pace.

  “I went to Tentir because Gorbel did. He was the Caineron lordan—still is, for that matter. He was to be my patron, my lord. But he doesn’t like me. Why? I supported him. I opposed his enemies. What else was I supposed to do? Then he met that bitch Jameth and he changed unless . . . unless I was wrong about him all along. Maybe he was always weak and I just didn’t want to see it. No. She seduced him, without so much as a touch given or received nor wanted on either side, as far as I could see. You Knorth, what is it about you that changes things?”

  He seemed genuinely to be asking, but Brier had no answer. She had been Knorth ever since she had broken with the Caineron and sworn to Torisen, but realized now that she had not at heart considered herself as such.

  She thought of her anger against Jame.

  What is this wall that I raise between myself and all Highborn? Am I so damaged that I can not truly acknowledge any of them? Do they deserve it, though?

  No. What Jame had done . . . in running away? In choosing other loyalties? . . . was inexcusable.

  A Kendar arrived with a glass of cider. Fash impatiently waved him off. Brier accepted it and sipped. Its bright tang cleared her throat and her head.

  “What will you do now?”

  He laughed, not with humor. “Lord Tiggeri offered me a position, provided I quit the randon. ‘Jumped up bullyboys,’ he calls them. What reasonable man would submit to such discipline? I wasn’t happy at Tentir, you know. All of those restrictions, those rules . . . Honor, always honor! Where was the scope for my talents? Tiggeri understood. And Gorbel had as good as shrugged me off. So here I am.”

  “Yes,” said Brier. “I can see that.”

  One tended to focus on the Kendars’ need to be bound. Everyone knew, though, that the Caineron had more Highborn than appropriate positions for them. A stud-barn run amuck, someone had once said, holding too many frustrated stallions.

  “Has Tiggeri bound you yet?”

  “No. He will, though. He as much as promised.”

  In the meantime, on that scant reassurance, he had given up his career as a randon cadet. All of his friends had left for the muster. Whatever else their future held, they would at least be randon officers. He wished that he could have gone with them. Brier saw, now, why he had come to Tagmeth, no doubt having heard that the Knorth contingent had not yet passed Restormir southward bound. He had hoped that they, too, were somehow stranded, as they would be if she waited any longer for Jame. It would have been sweet to jeer in a Knorth face. It might have made him feel better.

  Brier almost felt sorry for him, but not quite. This, after all, was the hunter who had provided Lord Caineron the Merikit skins with which he furnished his private quarters. Brier’s attitude toward Jame’s pet hill tribe was ambiguous—after all, they had killed Marc’s family, which as his great-granddaughter was also her own—but she preferred to see them wearing their own pelts.

  From the distance, muffled by walls, came a wail.

  “That sounds like a cat fight,” said Fash, looking fretful.

  Brier, however, recognized the racket with horror. The baby Benj had a particularly piercing cry, and he didn’t stop for days on end. His nurse Girt must be bringing him through the gate from the oases. Benj was Must’s son, sired by rape by her half-brother Tiggeri. Jame had sworn that the child wasn’t at Tagmeth, which had been true at the time. Tiggeri’s servant Fash must not know that he was here now.

  “So,” said Fash, assuming a smile. “Where is your lady anyway?”

  “Out,” said Brier brusquely. “About. Should she hang around in case you chose to drop in?”

  The noise was getting closer, and louder.

  “I’ll see if I can find her,” Brier said, thinking fast. She had to get rid of this most unwelcome guest. “In the meantime, why don’t you hav
e a seat?”

  “Courtesy, at last.”

  Fash looked around with a hint of renewed arrogance. Brier Iron-thorn might be Tentir’s darling, but she was, after all, only a Kendar. All that offered itself was the chair by the fire. The “cushion” no doubt looked soft to him, after hours in the saddle. He threw himself down on it with a negligent air.

  Instantly, his expression changed. From under his buttocks erupted a great hissing and writhing. He grabbed the chair arms and raised himself on them as if trying to levitate his entire body. Black tails whipped his legs. Indignant heads snaked up between his spread thighs.

  Hiss, snap, eek!

  Fash launched himself off the chair with a falsetto screech and bolted out the door, clutching at every part of his anatomy that he could reach below the waist to make sure that it was still there. A wild clatter broke out in the courtyard as he threw himself at his startled horse, which plunged out of the keep with Fash clinging to its side.

  His servants exchanged looks. Then as one they shrugged and spurred after their master.

  Marc looked into the mess hall. “What on earth did you do to that boy? Here now, have you been laughing?”

  Brier wiped her eyes and straightened her expression. “Who, me?”

  “I think,” said Marc profoundly, “that you have a very strange sense of humor, but it’s good at least to know that you have one at all. You may need it. Here’s Nurse Girt come to see you.”

  IV

  THE KENDAR GIRT stood by the gate to the oasis, trying to hold an infant who seemed to be all flailing limbs and bloated, red face.

  She had done Malign an injustice, thought Brier. Benj was a much uglier baby than the yack-calf.

  He now paused in his wailing to stare at her. Maybe this would be all right after all. When she took a step closer, however, his mouth opened, seemingly from ear to ear, and cacophony spewed out.

  “He won’t stop,” Girt said, her voice unnaturally shrill, pitched to rise over the uproar. She looked distraught, with bruised, sleepless eyes and loose skin that hung off the bones of her face. “Day and night, on and on and on . . . this will kill him!”

  It will certainly kill you, Brier thought, keeping her distance.

  “You nursed both his mother Must and her mother before her,” she said. “Surely you’ve handled such a situation before.”

  “No!” Girt wailed. “They were both such good babies! I thought that other nurses exaggerated their problems. Infants are sweet little things that cuddle and coo. This one, though . . .”

  Benj drew a deep breath and screamed. His face turned almost black.

  “Even in his sleep he fusses unless I hold him and even then . . .”

  Brier was beginning to feel fraught too. She had no experience with babies except for that once. Memory jolted her back to Kothifir, outside the burning tower. His mother had thrown him out a window just before the flames had engulfed her. Brier had caught him. Oh good, she had thought, with such a sense of relief, but then she had realized that the child wasn’t breathing. The fall and her own arms had broken his neck.

  Hold his head just so . . .

  Forget that. Forget.

  “There are other Caineron refugees,” she said. “Can’t one of them help you?”

  “Most of them are men. What do they know? The others tried. Nothing worked.”

  Knorth Kendar had begun to gather around them, drawn by the piercing wail—some women, some men.

  “Swaddle him,” one suggested.

  “Burp him.”

  “Take him for a nice long ride down the valley.”

  “I’ve tried!” cried poor Girt, nearly in tears. “My lady’s child, my future lord, I’ve failed him!”

  Graykin emerged from the tower, looking frazzled. “Will no one shut up that brat?”

  Brier turned on him, almost in relief. Here was someone at whom she could lash out.

  “Where in Perimal’s name have you been all day? Don’t you realize that Tagmeth’s very existence is at stake?”

  “Oh, bother this precious keep!” He stomped, his overlong, oversized pink court coat flouncing against patched breeches. “I know what I know, which is more than you do. He’s talked to me. Finally.”

  “Our guest? What did he say?”

  Graykin sputtered. It was against his nature to give away information, but now, under these circumstances . . .

  “He . . . he . . . for a long time, he just huddled there, as if he hurt down to his very core. His eyes were . . . anxious? Haunted? Trinity, I’ve never seen anyone look so wretched! ‘Jamie,’ he said once, and gulped. ‘Warn . . .’”

  “Who? About what?”

  “‘I am not who I am.’ He said that too, whispering, all in a rush as if afraid that someone would stop him. ‘I would never hurt . . .’ Then his expression changed and he smiled, oh, so slyly. ‘Jamethiel,’ he said. ‘Child, I wait.’”

  Brier shivered despite herself. Graykin had conjured up the smirk of a skull with dead eyes.

  “I don’t know who or what he is,” said Graykin, “but he’s dangerous.”

  The boy looked so nakedly earnest that Brier almost believed him. Almost. But he wasn’t a boy. He was a spy. And a half-breed. And Caineron’s own spawn.

  “So you said before. Prove it.”

  Benj gathered himself together in a knot, then flung wide all of his limbs. His cry was enough to split stone.

  “Oh, for Trinity’s sake!” Graykin snatched him out of Girt’s arms and shook him, hard. “Will . . . you . . . shut . . . up!”

  Kendar dived at him. Brier found herself in a kind of scrimmage amidst flailing hands, the baby bobbing above it, across fingertips. He landed in her arms.

  “Coo,” said Benj. Then his face scrunched up.

  “Here.” She thrust him back into Girt’s anxious embrace. “You”—this, to Graykin—“get out of my sight.”

  The Southron staggered back, looking stunned. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean . . . I wouldn’t hurt . . . but I’ll show you yet. This is a trap set for our lady, in the guise of a friend.”

  “Go,” said Brier.

  Graykin went.

  V

  BRIER FOUND HERSELF suddenly frantic to leave. It might already be late afternoon, but the traveling party was ready. Why wait until the next morning? Jame wasn’t here now. There was no guarantee that she would arrive before then, curse her.

  “Then too,” Brier said to Dar when he answered her hasty summons, “who knows what Fash will say about his visit?”

  Dar scratched his head. “Maybe he won’t say anything. After all, he came off looking like a proper fool, and his followers won’t know what happened at all, unless he tells them. Still, if we ride on his heels, we should be able to slip past Restormir before dawn. They won’t expect that.”

  It was also in the back of both their minds that they didn’t want to spend another night at Tagmeth given its current guest. Dar had had bad dreams too.

  Up in the tower, Graykin screamed.

  He wasn’t in his first-floor apartment. Her heart pounding, Brier charged up the stairs, Dar and half a dozen other Kendar close behind her. They piled into her back when she stopped abruptly outside the second-story door. It swung open at her touch, creaking. One chair by the fire had been overturned. In the other sat a hunched, gaunt figure, whose raised shoulders quivered. He lifted the face of a skull and laughed silently up at her. That was bad enough but his eyes, oh, they were terrible.

  A shape huddled on the hearthstone. It too shook, or maybe that was only the throb of the black cloak that overspread it.

  Brier gingerly reached past the serpents’ heads. Some hissed. Others wound about her hand in what seemed almost like a scaly caress. Graykin stared up at her with wide, crazed eyes. He drooled. A growl edged through lips bitten raw, then a whimper, then a howl.

  “Now what?” asked a shaken Dar as Brier half-closed the door on the scene. Inside, the wail went on and on, interrupted by slobbering as
the Southron attacked his own already mangled flesh.

  “How can we help either one of them?”

  That sounded hollow even to Brier, who had spoken; but, really, what could they do?

  “The White Knife,” said one of the other Kendar hoarsely. “Kill them both.”

  “We could at least hack those snakes off of him,” said another.

  “I don’t think so.” Brier tried to collect her scattered wits. She didn’t know what the Serpent-Skin Cloak was supposed to do, but destroying it didn’t feel like the right answer. It was the Cloak, for Trinity’s sake, one of the Kencyrath’s three no-longer-so-lost objects of power. If the Tyr-ridan was finally about to appear, why not them too?

  Endgames, she thought, and shivered.

  “This is something for our lady to sort out. We are still going.”

  “But . . .”

  “I know. This leaves the garrison in a bad situation. All I can suggest is that those two be separated. Ask Kells about drugging them. Everyone else should sleep as little as possible. Do it in shifts, if necessary. Keep watch on each other. No more sleepwalking.”

  Her gaze rose despite her to the floor of the third story, to Jame’s quarters. No, dammit, she would not climb to see what state they were in. Let Jame deal with that too, when she deigned to return.

  Chapter XII

  By Demons Possessed

  Spring 57

  I

  THE STREETS OF TAI-TASTIGON darkened as night fell. Doors closed, then opened again, just a crack, as rumors ran through the city:

  “Have you heard . . .” “Is it true?” “Yes, in the Temple District, all of them coming together!” “But what about our gods? They need us.” “They didn’t call.” “They need us.”

  Doors opened farther. The night folk were already abroad, streaming past. Listen to the swift patter of their feet on the cobblestones, the swish of dark robes. One by one, the day folk emerged. Some were drawn back inside by anxious wives or husbands, mothers or fathers. Some crept back by themselves as their nerve failed them and there they would sit, huddled over banked fires, their ears stuffed with cotton, the rest of that long, long night. Meanwhile, their neighbors took to the streets, men and women, young and old. The patter became a rush.