Honor's Paradox-ARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  “The dead know only what concerns the dead

  And what concerns the dead is more than death

  Unsettled crimes and unrequited passions

  All matters left unfinished in their fashions

  Are whispered among those who lack for breath.

  What I know, lady . . . is that fewer of us walk the Grayland . . . than we did a day ago. I would know . . . why.”

  The Gray Lands was the border between life and death where some Kencyr found themselves trapped if their remains were not given to the pyre. To Jame, from her glimpses of it, it looked much like the accursed Haunted Lands surrounding the keep where she and her brother had been born during their father’s bitter exile.

  “It came to my attention,” she said carefully, circling the fire to keep it between herself and the haunt, “that those death banners woven from the blood-stained clothes of their subjects had snared their souls in the weave. Not all Knorth wished to remain so trapped. I offered them freedom.”

  “Oblivion, you mean . . . with a torch’s flame.”

  “They chose to embrace it. I forced no one. By the way, if I might point out, you yourself stand in imminent danger of immolation.”

  “Ah.” Ashe looked down at the hem of her robe, which was beginning to smolder where cinders from the fire had fallen on it. She paused to consider, then thumped out the sparks with the iron-shod foot of her staff. “Someday, perhaps . . . but not just yet. Life is still . . . too interesting.”

  Jame was suddenly enlightened. “You hope to see it through to the coming of the Tyr-ridan and the Master’s second fall.”

  “If fall . . . he does. What singer willingly . . . leaves a song unfinished?”

  “And I already know that you think I may become Nemesis, the Third Face of our God.”

  Ashe spread her hands. Several fingertips were missing. “Who else . . . is there?”

  Indeed, there were only three pure-blooded Knorth left—herself, her brother, and their first cousin Kindrie, who had only recently discovered that he was legitimate. However, each had to recognize and accept his or her role for the Tyr-ridan to be complete. Torisen had no idea that he might become That-Which-Creates. Given how he felt about the Shanir, that was bound to come as a shock. Kindrie guessed that as a healer he was destined to become Argentiel, Preservation, and the thought horrified him. She was closest to fulfilling the position for which thirty millennia of her people’s history had sought to prepare her, but—Ancestors, please!—not just yet.

  She looked sharply at the singer. “You’re here to try to talk me into staying away from the hills.”

  “Think . . . what you may someday mean to your people. Should you risk yourself . . . for such foolishness?”

  “Ashe, last Summer’s Eve you witnessed the Merikits’ rites. You know that they deal with real power, however alien it is to us. And we need this world’s good will in order to live here. I didn’t choose to become the Earth Wife’s Favorite, you know. It was literally thrust upon me. Now every time I miss a ritual, something goes wrong. Besides, didn’t you once say that only a Kencyr can kill a Tyr-ridan?”

  “So an old song claims. But at present . . . you are only a nemesis . . . not the definite article.”

  “So I should be wrapped in cotton until fate decides? Ashe, I can’t live that way. There’s too much to do.

  Ashe sighed. “Can you at least . . . try to use . . . a little common sense?”

  Jame smiled, her thin lips tugged further awry by the scar across one cheek bone, a present of the Women’s World. “I can try, but you know me: if I knew what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t be doing it.”

  A muffled cry full of terror rose from the barracks below.

  Jame cursed. “I knew we were going to give Niall nightmares. I’ve a cadet to comfort, then a few hours of dwar to catch before I leave for Kithorn. Ashe, please go away and do whatever it is you do instead of sleeping.”

  She left the apartment as the frightened cry sounded again and other voices rose in drowsy protest.

  Ashe grounded her staff and shook her grizzled head. “Some nemesis,” she muttered.

  CHAPTER II

  Winter Solstice

  Winter 65

  I

  Four fantastic figures gamboled by torchlight in the snowy courtyard of ruined Kithorn.

  One, short and stocky, wore a gaudy skirt and goat udders that slapped against his bare, sweating chest as he pirouetted about the square.

  Another fluttered around him with black feathers sewn to every inch of his clothing, ruffled by the cold wind into cat’s-paw waves.

  A third figure smeared all over in charcoal stalked them both on tiptoe with exaggerated caution.

  Under their feet crawled the fourth, shrouded in the head-and-skin cape of a huge catfish.

  The Burnt Man popped up in front of the Earth Wife (who shrieked) and shoved ”her” backward over the Eaten One’s scaly form while the Falling Man flapped in protest. Then they were all up again, panting smoky clouds, circling each other like carnival clowns.

  Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

  Why are they playing the fool? wondered Jame from the snowy hollow outside the gatehouse where she crouched. Didn’t they know how dangerous it could be to mock the Four?

  They weren’t drunk, she decided, watching their lurching, desperate sport. They were exhausted. It must be nearly dawn, the solstice night almost past. How long had they been cavorting, and for what audience?

  Jame lowered herself in the depression and peered upward through the gatehouse. Something sat on the shattered tower of Kithorn, as if on a throne, something huge, defined against the moonless night sky only by the glowing fissures in his skin. Jame’s own skin crawled. The Burnt Man himself brooded over the shambling shamans below.

  Well, whatever their game, she knew better than to disturb it.

  She was about to push herself up to leave when a burnt, sizzling stick was thrust into the snow inches from her face. No, not a stick. A bone—more specifically the knobby end of a human humerus. Clumps of charred flesh clung to it near the shoulder, and to the half-skeletal body to which it was attached.

  A blunt, blind head swung inches over her head as if questing. Fire had burned away its nose and sheared off its lips from yellow, snaggle teeth. The remaining flesh crackled and split as it moved, expelling waves of heat and a pyric stench. Other forms shuffled around the hollow in various stages of combustion.

  The Burning Ones, thought Jame, trying not to breathe, holding very still. The Burnt Man’s hunting pack.

  Their usual prey were kin-slayers. While they could neither see nor smell, they could track guilt.

  Vant, she thought, and the ravaged head swung toward her.

  “Huh!” it said, snorting out chunks of its own charred lungs.

  The cadet’s death in the fire pit of Tentir still haunted her. As unpleasant as he had been, he hadn’t deserved such an end, nor should it interest the Burnt Man’s servants in her. Yes, Vant had been bone-kin, the grandson of her wretched uncle Greshan, but she hadn’t been there when he died. It wasn’t her fault . . . or was it? Vant would never have tackled her brother Torisen if he hadn’t thought that he was striking at her. She was the one whose very existence had driven him to such behavior, even though it was Tori whom he had nearly killed. For that matter, why had he been so clumsy? Rue had told her that it almost looked as if he had been pushed.

  The Burning One cocked his head as if testing her thoughts. It doubted her innocence. She almost agreed.

  Then a yelp in the square drew its attention. The creature swung about and shambled toward the gatehouse on the knobs of its truncated limbs, followed by the others.

  Between their contorted, smoldering bodies, Jame saw that the shaman playing the Burnt Man had appropriated one of the torches that defined sacred space and had set it to the Earth Wife’s flaring skirt. Fire bloomed. The Earth Wife squealed and ran about the square trailing flames until the Falling Man t
ripped him. As he floundered on the ground, the Eaten One lumbered over on all fours and doused the flames with more watery vomit than seemed humanly possible.

  Much more of this and none of them would survive.

  Jame rose and backed away. When she was clear, she turned and ran.

  Away from the torches, the night was very dark indeed, lit only by such stars as shone through a shifting overcast, and they were further dimmed by a gentle fall of snow. Shadows shifted from ink black to dusky blue, then back again. Faintly glimmering snow crunched and squeaked underfoot. Where was the damn village? Jame had counted on its lights to navigate, but not a candle illuminated the benighted landscape. She slipped and fell. The ground under her was unnaturally flat for hill country. No, not ground at all but rock-hard ice. She had strayed onto the frozen Silver. At least it would lead her upstream, so she followed it, if with some trepidation: the river was treacherous. Those who fell in seldom emerged nor could any boat sail on it for long.

  River Snake, River Snake, sleep deep.

  I tread as softly as I can.

  To her left, starlight shone briefly on snow-pillowed heights. Ah. The hill upon which the Merikit village was built.

  Jame left the river and nearly fell into the pit that was the ruins of the maidens’ lodge. The previous Winter’s Eve, part of the yackcarn stampede had shattered its low roof and plunged into it, wreaking havoc. Apparently the Merikit were waiting for spring to begin repairs. However, that didn’t explain the sharp tang of pitch rising out of it.

  Skirting the gaping cavity, Jame climbed. She knew she had reached the hilltop palisade when she ran into it nose first. Following its curve, she found the gate by touch. Inside, wooden walks echoed under her feet. Like the girls’ dwelling, most of the lodges were half sunken into the ground, marked only by long barrows of snow and smoke holes. Their entrances opened into the passageway under the boardwalk that connected the entire village.

  Where was everyone?

  Then soft voices reached her, and ahead she saw a large clot of shadows standing, their breath a halo around them. One turned.

  “There you are at last,” it said in Merikit. “Hurry. Gran Cyd is waiting for you.”

  Hands tugged at her sleeves, guiding her forward. She felt as much as saw that all were women, and here was their queen, recognizable by her regal height and by the faint glimmer of golden torques twisted around her wrists and neck.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said as they descended into Gran Cyd’s lodge. Without even starlight, one might as well have been stricken blind. “We started out before dawn, but I swear the colt lost his way more than once.”

  “Huh.”

  It could have been one of the Burning Ones passing judgment but softer, forgiving now that she had finally arrived.

  “Stay there.”

  Jame stopped. She could hear breathing all around her, from great, gusty snores to piping whistles, and she smelled rank fur. All breathed in unison, in and out, in and out. The rhythm of it tugged at her, catching her own breath. She swayed. It was a long time since her few snatched hours of dwar sleep the night before.

  In and out, in and out . . .

  A spark caught at a candle’s wick. Even such feeble light struck the eyes like a blow. Jame had the dazzled impression of Cyd’s strong, white arm encircling the flame and one of her dark red braids swinging perilously close to it.

  They seemed to have descended into a cave, full of hibernating beasts. At her feet lay a pair of hedgehogs curled up together, whistling softly in their sleep. The ceiling was hung with stalactites and the crumpled forms of sleeping bats. To one side, a mountain of fur that, surely, was a cave bear snorted and briefly stirred. It didn’t greatly surprise Jame to see a familiar fireplace at the far side of the rocky chamber nor the untidy figure sprawled on its hearth, her toothless mouth loudly agape. The Earth Wife’s lodge turned up wherever it was needed and so did Mother Ragga, the Earth Wife herself.

  Jame started toward the sleeper, picking her way, but Gran Cyd turned and stopped her with a gesture.

  “She won’t wake until the dawn. Rouse her now and she might die.”

  The earth, die?

  “Who makes up these rules?” she had once asked Mother Ragga.

  “They just are,” had come the implacable reply.

  Something apparently governed even the Four, as haphazard as their actions seemed to be. Jame wondered what.

  The candle flame danced. Cyd shielded it as a girl with long, tawny hair slipped down the stairs.

  “They said that you had come!”

  “Prid, the light.”

  “Oh.” Prid shut the door quickly behind her.

  “Why is everyone else standing in the dark?” asked Jame.

  “Because it isn’t dawn yet, nor may it ever be.”

  Jame considered this. It was still the solstice, the year’s longest night. That it fell during the dark of the moon helped her to understand. The Kencyrath went through something similar nine times a year, according to the lunar cycle—five nights with little or no light, made darker by the fear that the moon had been swallowed by the Shadows and would never return, heralding the end of their last sanctuary.

  The Merikit girl shivered, hugging herself. “Suppose the sun never rises? Suppose we stay buried in the dark, in winter, forever?”

  On this world, faith sometimes shaped reality. What if she was right? Winter forever . . .

  Then Jame remembered something that the scrollsman Index had once told her. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to burn a log representing the Burnt Man to prevent that and to help the season turn? Index called it ‘burying winter’ or ‘burning the Burnt Man.’ ”

  “We are supposed to, yes. You aren’t the only one who has kept us waiting.”

  “Let me guess. The log is Chingetai’s responsibility.”

  Once again, it seemed that the Merikit chief had thrown the rituals out of joint. The previous Summer’s Eve he had neglected his own borders in a bid to claim the entire Riverland. Jame had accidentally thwarted that by pocketing a Burnt Man’s bone. Then he had named her the Earth Wife’s Favorite and his own annual heir to try to save face. Despite that, he had attempted to cut her out of every ceremony since, often with calamitous results.

  Mother Ragga found the whole situation funny; the Burnt Man, however, was not amused.

  Think you can fool me? Not again. Never again.

  Not that he was a friend—to anyone, as far as Jame could make out, except perhaps to the blind Arrin-ken known as the Dark Judge. Now there was a link between Rathillien and the Kencyrath that boded well for neither.

  Meanwhile, the shamans were working themselves half to death to keep his smoldering attention diverted. How long could they last? Where in Perimal’s name was Chingetai?

  Gran Cyd raised the candle, illuminating an expanse of furry sleepers.

  “Gently, gently,” she said to her granddaughter, adding, to distract her, “One way or another, life goes on, yes, even into endless winter. Have you thought about what I said earlier? You are almost of an age to choose. Your mother was a master weaver, as the hangings in my lodge show. You loved working on the hand loom as a child. Now her lodge and great loom wait for you to become a woman.”

  The girl tossed her head. “ ‘What want I with hearth or housebond? What is a lodge but an earthbound trap?’ ”

  “Prid! I know that you watch the sacred mummeries even though they are forbidden to all womankind, but don’t quote them, especially not that one. Consider what happens in it.”

  “Sorry, Gran, but you know that I only want to run free as a war maid.”

  “But you don’t like to fight or to shed blood, even on the hunt. Moreover, ask your great-aunt Anku what she and the other so-called free women do day by day. Theirs is a job like any other, not an excuse never to grow up.”

  Prid muttered something.

  “What, child?”

  “I said, grown-ups die.”

 
; “So do we all, eventually; yes, like your mother.”

  The door opened a crack.

  “We see him!” someone hissed through it.

  The animals stirred, then subsided. On the hearth the Earth Wife groaned and tossed.

  Gran Cyd swept from the room with her candle, followed by Jame and Prid.

  Outside, everyone was pointing uphill, toward the sparkle of torches that seemed to hover just above the tree line. The queen raised her light, a solitary beacon. One torch above waved in response. The others formed an inverted “V” that swayed back and forth. The clouds cleared. By starlight, Jame saw two lines of men tugging on thick ropes. Between them, a raw spire rose, dipped, and fell.

  “Ah,” breathed the women.

  “They’ve been a fortnight cutting and trimming that tree,” Prid whispered to Jame. “I hear that this year’s is three feet across and fifty feet long. Chingetai has made something special to make it go faster than usual.”

  Upslope, the lines disintegrated and re-formed on either side of the tree trunk. Down the mountainside it came, bucking, gathering speed, to the sound of distant cheers.

  “They’re riding it?” Jame asked.

  “Yes! Isn’t it exciting?”

  The word for it was stupid, Jame thought, but oddly stirring.

  The log picked up speed. Flecks of light began to tumble off of it.

  The women fell silent.

  “Should it be coming straight toward the village?” Jame asked.

  “No.” Gran Cyd peered uphill, shading her eyes from her candle’s light. “It looks as if they’ve lost the pilot rope to the skid.”

  “And that’s not good.”

  “Thirteen tons of lumber aimed straight down our throats? No.”

  The erstwhile riders had grabbed the trailing lead ropes and were trying to slow the monstrous log’s descent, without success.