The new voice, while not a roar, carried such power that the struggling cadets stopped. Gorbel stood in the doorway to Old Tentir, his armor reeking with boar’s blood, his attendants dimly seen behind him in the great hall carrying the prize of his hunt on a pole thrust through its hocks. As he stumped forward, cadets cleared a path. Jame took advantage of their distraction to slip within the steel ring and kneel beside the Commandant. He had been struck across the face, luckily with the back of Bear’s hand, otherwise he would have had no face left to speak of. Already he was struggling to rise.
“Weapons up!” Sheth ordered the cadets and the handful of randon who had joined them.
Gorbel entered the ring and faced Bear. His hands came up and his head down in a cadet’s salute to a senior randon. Others joined him one by one, until Bear was surrounded by a circle of silent respect. Jame removed the collar from his neck. Bear snuffled and slowly straightened. Awkwardly, as if he had almost forgotten how, he returned their salute.
The Commandant climbed to his feet, shrugging off the hands that reached out to steady him, and touched his brother’s shoulder. Face to face, one saw the resemblance between them: beyond the elder’s unkempt wildness and the younger’s somewhat ruffled suavity, the same sharp features, the same set of jaw and hawk’s eye. Then Sheth led Bear away, through the silent watchers, back to his noisome den.
IV
It was dusk by the time the Commandant finally returned to his quarters which, like his office, opened off the Map Room. He stilled on the threshold, sensing movement by the balcony. A figure advanced into the room, the hunched shoulders of the Snowthorns over its head, a nimbus of evening stars above that. No Kendar was so slight; no Kendar but Harn Grip-hard would have approached him at such a time, after such a day. But Harn was with the Southern Host by now. Odd, to miss his old rival so.
“I came to see if you and Bear are all right,” said the Knorth Lordan.
Sheth sighed and unwrapped his official scarf. In fact, his face still throbbed and several teeth had been loosened, but it could have been so much worse.
“Bear is asleep,” he said. “They must have saved up their rations of applejack for a long time to get him so drunk.”
“Gorbel did well, though, didn’t he?”
“Very well. His father errs in underestimating him.”
“You do realize that Fash set you up to sanction Bear’s execution.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he said dryly. “Also that he would have been unlikely to think up such a scheme on his own.”
“Caldane is pushing. He wants to be sure of you.”
“Of that, too, I am aware. Why else do you suppose that he demanded that you renew your lessons with Bear?”
She stepped forward, almost into the light of his candle, speaking urgently. “Ran, you mustn’t give in. This is Honor’s Paradox, pure and raw, and you are the honor of Tentir.”
This amused him, or would have if he weren’t so tired and his face didn’t hurt so much.
“Child, what will you say next?”
“Only this: my first Senethari fell prey to the paradox, and to prove that I am serious, I will tell you who he was: Tirandys himself.”
The room seemed to shift. He was acutely aware of all the battle maps painted on its wall from the Cataracts to the Fall, three thousand-odd years ago. So many victories, so many more tragic defeats. It was as if the fabled past had risen before him in the figure of one slim girl. The randon had long wondered who had first taught her the Senethar, and here was the answer, impossible as it seemed.
“Child, Tirandys was of the Master’s generation, long, long ago.”
“He was also a darkling changer, who learned too late that his honor couldn’t be trusted to his lord. Time moves differently under shadows’ eaves. You met him yourself at the Cataracts, when he was impersonating Prince Odalian of Karkinaroth.”
Sheth remembered the prince—a poor, doomed fool who had wanted to emulate the Kencyr and had paid for it with his life, or all the time had they been dealing with one of the Master’s chosen, the originator of the Senetha himself?
“Do such legends still walk under the sun?”
“You should know, for you are one of them. Senethari, please. I don’t want to lose another teacher to Honor’s accursed Paradox.”
She took his breath away. Singers’ lie and scrollsmen’s fact, all of the Kencyrath’s long, tortured history seemed to unroll before him. Was he truly set upon the same path? He was ambitious, yes, but this was too much. One did what one could, where one was. For him, it was here in Tentir’s Map Room, faced with a shadow that embodied everything he had ever fought both for and against.
“You, a Knorth, tell a Caineron this?”
“Not a Caineron,” came that voice out of the darkness of his own soul. “The Commandant of Tentir.”
He fingered his scarf without thinking. “Then a Commandant has heard you.”
He stepped forward to draw her within his candle’s light and she resolved into a slim girl whose silver-gray eyes were too large for her thin face. He touched her scarred cheek.
“Ah, you Knorth, who make even your enemies love you. To bed, now, child. Tomorrow is a new year.”
She withdrew, saluting him. “As you command, Senethari.” And left.
V
Before Jame retired for the night, however, she checked the wyrm’s chest one last time. Jorin crouched before it, quivering, tail a-twitch, like a cat waiting for its prey to break cover. The chest itself rattled on the floor in a nervous little dance.
Jame opened it.
The chrysalis was rocking back and forth in its tawdry bed. Cracks laced its shell, then shards fell away to reveal something within covered with a dark, wet caul.
A gasp sounded from the door. Rue stood there open-mouthed, with other cadets arriving to gawk behind her.
“Lady, be careful!”
“Stand back,” said Jame, still unsure of what she was dealing with.
The struggles inside the chest stilled as if exhaustion had taken hold. Jame carefully hooked her claws in the membrane where it seemed the thinnest. It split at her touch. Something like a child lay within, curled in a fetal position, thumb in its mouth. Its body, however, was scarcely more than a tangible shadow and nearly as light when Jame picked it up. She saw that it had not one set of arms but three, the middle two rudimentary with hands folded over its stomach, the lower two almost but not quite legs.
The membrane fell in twin drapes from its shoulders, rustling and unfurling as golden light began to spread through its veins. From black to midnight blue to azure, the veil lightened as if with the sunrise into a pair of glowing wings.
Jame held them away from her body so as not to damage them. Jorin, sniffing, seemed inclined to bat until a quick word from her made him withdraw his paw.
The wings brushed the floor and spread to an arm’s width each. They were already drying. The shadow child sighed, removed its thumb from its mouth, and opened its eyes. They too were golden.
Memory stirred.
Golden-eyed shadows crouched over her in Perimal Darkling, around the Master’s bed. Long fingers like shadows in the coverlet’s creases poked at her. Except for their eyes, their bodies seemed no more substantial than those shadows.
“Who are you?”
Forgotten us so soon? Shame, shame, shame! Our lord sent for us, called us from our dim world into his dim rooms, up from the depths of the House. Said, “Teach this child the Great Dance, as you taught the other one. One name will do for both.” And so we taught you, the new Dream-weaver. Years, it’s been, all to be consummated tonight. Now get up, up, up . . . or shall we get into bed with you?
No!
Jame shuddered at the memory, but what she held, blinking at her, was innocence.
“I think I know your elders,” Jame said to the shadow child. “May you too achieve that last metamorphosis and teach others how to dance, but not as I almost did. Farewell,
unfallen darkling; Beauty, farewell.”
It smiled at her, flicked its wings, and rose from her arms. The others rushed in as it fluttered out the window and rose against a gibbous moon near the full. All watched it until it veered north and was soon out of sight.
“Legends indeed,” said Jame, turning to her cadets. “And a happy new year to you all.”
CHAPTER IX
Echoes of Kothifir
Spring 20–21
I
Speckled with drying blood, the Coman scout panted up the ridge through leafless trees.
“Their headquarters are near Perimal’s Cauldron,” she reported. “They spotted us. Hurl got egged.”
“The first cadet lost and it had to be one of mine,” said the Coman master-ten-commander Clary. “Still, that’s useful information. We can storm them while we still have full sacks.”
Jame sighed, her breath a cloud on the crisp air. Clouds scudded overhead against a bright sky, and the occasional snowflake drifted down. Spring, ever fickle, had turned to glance back at winter.
The Coman was annoyingly eager to leap ahead with the exercise. Perhaps uncertainty unnerved him, or maybe he wanted somehow to make his half of the team look good at the expense of hers, which was stupid. Of all houses to be paired with on this rare, much-coveted double lesson, why couldn’t it have been the Brandan or the Danior, her natural allies? Instead, she was set against both on the other side.
Anyway, hadn’t she seen Clary talking with Fash before the class? Fash, as usual, had been jovial. Clary had looked uncomfortable. Everyone knew that the Coman lord couldn’t make up his mind whether to support the Knorth or the Caineron who, after all, were his blood-kin. Awkward for him, unfair for his cadets, who couldn’t decide where their loyalty lay.
Still, while at Tentir all were family, regardless of house politics. That, according to the Commandant.
Ha.
“Such an assault should only be out of desperation if we run out of time,” she said, repeating the sargents’ earlier advice. “As it is, we still have most of the day if we need it. No one has found the target yet, and that’s the main objective.”
“It would help if we knew what we were looking for,” Clary grumbled.
He had a point, and made another one by not meeting her eyes, which also annoyed her. Surely she had gotten past that point at Tentir after two culls. Her ten-command stirred restively, picking up his tone and her discontent with it.
“The sargents say we’ll know it when we see it,” she said.
“ ’Ware, camp,” called a sentry.
Someone crunched up the northern slope from Tentir through the detritus of last year’s leaves. Color flared between white birch trunks, crimson shading into purple with swirls of turquoise. Who wore a court robe in the wilds? A thin, sallow face appeared, shiny with sweat under a thatch of lank, black hair.
“Graykin, what are you doing here, much less dressed like that?”
Her Southron servant drew himself up, trying for dignity’s sake to catch his breath, and slid his hands lovingly over his fine, silken raiment.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? I’m traveling with a caravan of merchants. One has to dress the part.”
“At m’lady’s expense, eh?” said Rue, coming up.
She had complained about how much of her allowance Jame had settled on her servant, not knowing how guilty Jame had felt about shortchanging him earlier. After all, before the Brandan settlement neither Jame nor Tori had had a bean to spare. Now either Tori had forgotten (again) or it was up to her to outfit all the Knorth cadets. So far, though, she hadn’t had a chance.
“Aren’t you supposed to be researching the Southern Wastes at the Scrollsmen’s College?” she demanded of Graykin.
He glared down his nose at her and sniffed. “I’ve learned all that I’m likely to at Mount Alban, thank you very much. It’s time to head out into the field, or rather south to Kothifir to prepare the way for you, Lordan.”
Why should that title irk Jame so much, coming from him? Probably because, as her self-appointed sneak, he equated his value with hers, and had what she considered to be delusions of grandeur.
Brier Iron-thorn loomed over them, the late-morning sun turning her cropped, dark red hair into a fire-tipped halo. She was frowning. “This caravan of yours, it came from the south but started peddling its wares at the Riverland’s northern end? Is this a sanctioned expedition?”
“Sanctioned by whom?” demanded Rue. As a brat from a northern border keep, she had limited firsthand knowledge of the South, which clearly irked her.
Brier, a born Southron herself, took pity on her and, incidentally, on Jame.
“By King Krothen of Kothifir. All spoils of the Wastes pass through his fat hands so that he can claim taxes and whatever catches his fancy, hence the source of his vast, personal wealth and, by extension, the existence of the Southern Host. Merchants are always trying to get around him, but whatever he doesn’t touch, wherever it goes, eventually crumbles to dust.”
Graykin clutched at his treasured finery. “What, even this?”
“Probably. Perhaps that’s why your new friends are trying to outrun their customers, but they’ll have little luck: most Kencyr know Southron ways.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Jame. “What’s in the Southern Wastes except sand, dead cities, and an occasional, inconvenient salt sea?”
“That’s the mystery,” Dar said, shamelessly eavesdropping with Mint at his elbow. “Seekers go into the desert, leading caravans, and come back with treasures. Sometimes Kencyr are hired as guards against clashes with Nekriens, Wasters, and Karnids, but they’re sworn to secrecy. Lord Caldane would give half his wealth to know what’s going on, which is why no one employs Caineron guards.”
“Kothifir itself is a strange place, from what I hear,” Erim added in his slow, deliberate way. One always expected him to say something stupid, but he never did. “The local temples keep losing their gods and trying to find them again. Months pass when nothing seems to work properly.”
Cadets stirred uneasily. Before Tai-tastigon, such a statement would also have thrown Jame. What, other gods besides he (or she, or it) of the Three Faces? The Kencyrath was perforce monotheistic, having been bound together by that enigmatic deity, yet other forces undoubtedly existed on Rathillien. For the first time, she felt an eager quiver at the thought of exploring this strange new city—if only she passed the final cull and was assigned there.
Rue had been shifting from foot to foot. “Maybe the merchants have something that won’t crumble when you look at it. Lady, please! You need finer clothes than your forage jacket.”
Poor Rue. Obviously she hadn’t forgotten the disgrace, as she saw it, of Jame’s appearance before the High Council.
Graykin handed Jame a sack of coins. “You have no idea what these are worth,” he said. “I’ve taken enough for my needs. Squander the rest if you want.”
My brother gave me this, Jame thought, balancing the bag’s not inconsiderable weight on her palm. He didn’t have to. Maybe, on some level, he also misses the days when we shared everything, before Father came between us.
She gave the sack to Rue. “Spend what you like, within reason. We won’t lose for lack of one cadet—I hope,” she added to the Coman ten-commander, who was looking restive.
“Can’t you discuss all of this after the lesson?”
he demanded.
“I may not be here when you’re done,” said Graykin, himself beginning to fidget. “The caravan is moving off as soon as its business here is finished . . .”
“Definitely unsanctioned,” murmured Brier.
“. . . and I don’t want to be left behind.”
Yet he stayed, fretting from foot to foot. There was clearly more on his mind.
“Gray, what aren’t you telling me?”
He spoke in a low rush, leaning toward her. “You gave that knot letter to Kindrie and he’s had it translated.”
“What?” Jame f
elt a jolt of shock. She had entirely forgotten about Kinzi’s scrap of linen.
“Did he steal it, then?”
“No. It must have been in the knapsack with . . . never mind. What did it say?”
“That damned haunt singer forbade me to tell you—me, your personal sneak! You’ll have to ask your cousin.”
Jame chewed her lip, trying to work out when she could take time off to visit Mount Alban.
“Camp!” came the sentry’s urgent cry, closely followed by a volley of missiles.
Brier shoved Jame behind Graykin, who grunted and sat down, hard, almost on top of her. Cadets sped off in pursuit of the intruders, snatching slings from their belts and white ovoids from their pouches.
“Look what you’ve done to me!” Graykin gasped, clutching his chest. “I’m dead!”
Jame knelt beside him. “Oh, don’t be silly. It was only an egg.”
“This?” He threw wide his arms to expose red ruin.
“Well, an egg with the yolk blown out, refilled with whatever blood the butcher had on hand, and resealed with wax. Messy, I grant you, but hardly fatal.”
“But my robe!” wailed poor Graykin.
“Rub it in salt and soak it in cold water before you wash it. That’s what the losers of this skirmish have to do with all the soiled clothing. It and they get thrown off Breakneck Rock into the Burley which, at this time of year, is no treat.”
The Coman was nearly dancing with impatience. “We have to shift camp. Now.”
“All right, all right. If I don’t make it back to Tentir in time, Gray, I’ll see you in Kothifir.”
As Graykin wobbled off, Jame turned to the Coman. “I suggest that we move west toward the cloud-of-thorns. There are passageways beneath them if we have to scuttle. Niall, stay here and tell the scouts as they come in where we’ve gone.”
They moved out.
No one spent much time in this area, and now Jame saw why. Close as it was to Tentir, and relatively small, it seemed to embody all the strangeness of the uncharted Riverland. Beyond sight of the college, they moved through areas ankle deep in snow where winter still ruled and others bright with spring flowers. The land rippled in moraines that ran mostly north to south, down to the snow-swollen Burley; but that tributary of the Silver seemed ridiculously far away—a rushing sound rather than a presence—and the now-veiled sun seemed to shift from one side of the sky to the other. Unseen birds called. Leaves rustled under the unwary foot.
Honor's Paradox-ARC Page 13