No one swam in the Silver by choice: those who did tended not to come out, nor were their bodies ever found. The Merikit blamed the River Snake. Jame believed them, having been dropped halfway down the Snake's gullet at Kithorn. However, the river's tributaries were generally considered to be safe.
South of Tentir, one such stream tumbled down through a series of falls, basins, and rapids. Jame heard the water's roar as she approached on a path hacked through rampant cloud-of-thorn bushes, also the laughter of cadets who had had the same idea and a head start on her. She stripped off her filthy clothing as she went, mindful of those reaching three-inch thorns.
Here a rock thrust up into the afternoon sun. Dropping her bundle of clothes at its base, she climbed toward the sound of water, untangling her mud-clotted hair as she went. At the top she was met by the delicious tingle of cold spray on her bare, hot skin and a cool breath that lifted sweaty tendrils from her face. Across the gorge, the stream plunged over boulders, half rapids, half falls, into a wide, oblong cauldron. The swiftest water flowed past on the far side of some large, flat-topped rocks into a stony bottleneck, then down into the next pool. The rest of the basin swirled slowly in an ever-renewing backwater. Heads bobbed in it, turned up open-mouthed to stare at her. Well, let them look. She poised defiantly on the brink for a moment, then dived.
It occurred to Jame in mid-air that jumping headfirst into unfamiliar water was not very smart and, sure enough, she barely missed a submerged ledge.
Fed by mountain snows, the water was cold enough to jolt the heart. It was also surprisingly deep once away from its treacherous margin. A chasm opened in its bed, gaping down below the reach of light—the work, surely, of the River Snake's writhing rather than of mere erosion. Fish hung over its terraces, motionless except for the shimmer of their scales in the mottled light. Then, in the flick of an eye, they were gone. Through the cloud of dirt drifting off of her skin, Jame thought she saw something below in the abyss, something that stirred and began slowly to rise.
A hand touched her shoulder. Jame lost her breath in a flurry of bubbles and surfaced, gasping. Timmon's golden head bobbed up beside her.
"You scared me," he said. "People don't usually dive off Breakneck Rock head first." He looked at her closely. "Your teeth are chattering and your lips are turning blue with the cold. Come on."
He swam to one of the flat midstream rocks and climbed up onto it. Turning, he offered her his hand. Mindful that her gloves were with the rest of her clothes, on shore, Jame scrambled up without his help and stretched out face down on the rock, hands tucked under her elbows. The stone was blessedly warm. Slowly, the memory faded of what she thought she had seen in the depths. A leviathan in a puddle indeed—not that it would have been the first time she had seen such a thing.
The other swimmers were slipping out of the pool and departing, either through tact or out of sheer embarrassment. At that moment, Jame didn't care which.
"Ah," she said with a contented sigh, relaxing. "This is nice."
Timmon cradled his head on folded arms, regarding her askance. She thought he was going to ask her about the defenestration of Corrudin, but word of that mishap apparently hadn't yet reached him.
Instead, he said, "No one would mistake you for a boy, but I can count every one of your ribs. You really should eat more."
"So everyone tells me, but I think my sense of taste was permanently damaged in the Haunted Lands. How would you like to dine day after day on whimpering vegetables?"
"Not much. Did they really?"
"When they weren't groaning or screaming, and the potatoes' eyes followed you reproachfully around the room. We won't even discuss the cabbage heads or what was in them."
"Thank you. I think I've already lost my taste for supper."
He, at least, needn't worry about starving, any more than about growing fat. Through streamers of wet, black hair, she regarded the slim, nicely muscled body stretched out beside her, alabaster white except for his tanned face where the sun had brought out an unexpected garnish of freckles. He grinned at her and she looked quickly away, surprised to discover by the heat in her own face that she was blushing.
They were lying close enough together to feel each other's warmth. Timmon ran a fingertip lightly over her skin. With an effort, Jame held still, although the hairs on her arm quivered and rose.
He smiled. "You aren't used to being touched, are you?"
Hit, pushed, kicked, occasionally thrown off high buildings, yes . . . but no, mere touching wasn't a common experience for Jame. Neither was being hit by rocks.
"Hey!" said Timmon, rousing, as a pebble bounced off his bare back.
Two figures stood on Breakneck Rock. For a moment, Jame had the strangest feeling that all of this had happened before, only that man in a bright coat had been someone else, and so had she. A scrap of dream, a bitter rind of helplessness and shame . . . or had it been she on the rock, looking down scornfully at a thin, naked boy trying futilely to cover himself?
But the newcomers proved to be only Gorbel, his scarlet coat aglow like a banked fire in the gathering twilight, and one of his friends. The latter leered down at them.
"Fast work, Ardeth!" he shouted over the waterfall's clamor. "At least save us a bit of Knorth thigh!"
As Timmon swore back good-naturedly, Jame regarded the Caineron Lordan, who stared back at her without expression. Clearly, he had been pleased by her handling of his grand-uncle, as had been the Commandant. Corrudin must normally keep well in the background for his name never to have come up before outside his own house. Was he the brains behind Caldane's otherwise mindless drive for power? Caineron politics obviously were far more complex than she had realized.
Someone was shouting. The words were broken by distance, water, and tree, but they were coming closer. Again came the cry, clearer now:
". . . rathorn! There's a rathorn in the woods!"
The second Caineron plunged out of sight—from the sound of it, into a thorn bush—but Gorbel had turned and now stood as if rooted to the spot. Then he began, slowly, to retreat backward toward the rock's slippery edge.
Jame and Timmon jumped to their feet.
"Watch out!" Timmon shouted, but too late: Gorbel's foot came down on vacant air. He tottered for a moment, arms wind-milling wildly, then fell. He landed with a great splash and immediately sank. The water turned red. Trinity, if he had hit the ledge . . .
Timmon dived in after him. On the verge of following, Jame froze.
Something white had emerged on top of the rock; something like a horse, but clad underneath in bands of ivory armor from throat to loins. Ivory also masked its face like a battle helm, and out of it grew two horns, the smaller between flared nasal pits, the larger, wickedly curved, between deep-set ruby eyes. It stared down at Jame, and bared its fangs with a long, soft hiss of satisfaction.
Jame felt her jaw drop. The last time she had seen the rathorn colt, it had only been a foal. Time passes: it had grown.
Timmon surfaced with a thrashing, sputtering Gorbel. The back-flop had apparently saved the latter's neck, but not taught him how to swim.
"Help!" Timmon shouted, and flinched as Gorbel's flailing fist caught him in the nose. Then the weight of sodden clothing dragged them both down again.
Rathorn be damned. Jame dived in.
Again, the shock of cold water, again the glimmering depths, with two figures sinking into them. Their struggle had taken them out beyond the ledge. Timmon was trying to strip off the deadly coat, which seemed to have developed a dozen extra arms, while Gorbel clutched at him with a drowning man's panic. Jame swam after them. Her ears throbbed in time to her heart-beat and her lungs ached by the time she caught up. The Caineron, mercifully, finally went limp. She hooked her nails in the coat and ripped, releasing a fresh cloud of red dye. They wrestled the remains off a now unconscious Gorbel and struck out for the surface, taking him with them.
Far below in the rock shadows, eyes as large and unblinking as dinner plates thoughtfully watched them go.
Gasping, Knorth and Ardeth dragged the Caineron ashore. Gorbel made a gurgling sound. Timmon turned him on his side as he began to vomit water and what was left of his lunch.
They were on a spit of rock between the upper basin and the first of a series below, with water thundering down through the narrow throat of a chasm at one end. The noise covered the sound of approaching hooves. Jame had no doubt, however, what had just breathed down the back of her neck. She turned and found herself eye to eye with the rathorn colt. His nasal tusk came up almost gently under her chin, lifting it, obliging her to rise or be impaled.
Something red flew out of the water with a wet sound—p-toot!—as if it had been spat. Gorbel's coat whacked the colt in the head and flung its dismembered arms around his neck. He squealed and reared, fore-hooves flailing, rear slipping on the wet rock. Over he went, backward, to a shout of alarm from Timmon and a squawk from Gorbel.
Jame ran.
Below Breakneck Rock, a wall of thorns kept her beside the river as it snaked down the mountain side from wide pool to narrow rapids, from outthrust rock spit to cleft gorge. The roar of water deepened as more streams joined it, covering any sound of pursuit, and she must watch where she placed her bare feet rather than look back. There was no turning to fight such a thing anyway, no chance at all except either to lose it or to reach safety before it caught her.
Jame paused on top of a boulder the size of a small house. Rubble spilled precipitously down its far side to a narrow rock ledge. Beyond that gaped the mouth of Perimal's Cauldron with the river thundering down into it and mist billowing out. From here, she could see no way out below. She was turning to back-track when a stone shifted under her foot and suddenly she was falling.
There are probably worse things than tumbling, naked, down a steep, rocky slope, but at the moment Jame couldn't think of any, unless it was the abrupt stop at the end. Bruised and breathless, she found herself sprawling on the stone ledge at the cauldron's smoking rim, amazed that she hadn't broken anything or gone over the edge.
But she wasn't alone.
Kinzi-kin.
On the far landward end of the ledge stood a figure wreathed in mist, haloed with thorns. Long white hair—or was it a mane?—stirred in the updraft. Ears pricked through it. Jame wondered if in her fall she had cracked her skull without noticing it. As the mist shifted, at one moment the other's form appeared to be that of a thin, pale woman; the next, that of a spectral horse, and yet not quite.
Trinity. Was it a Whinno-hir? A name came back to her: Bel-tairi. The missing White Lady.
One dark, liquid eye regarded her warily.
My lady Kinzi bade me find you.
Jame sat up, wincing.
"Your lady . . . my great-grandmother Kinzi . . . is dead. Sorry. It was a long time ago."
The dark eye showed a white rim.
How long?
Jame thought fast, doing sums. "Er . . . thirty-four years."
The other flinched. Jame saw her clearly for a moment as a small, painfully thin mare who pawed the ground in denial and tossed her head as if to dislodge those words that threatened to shatter her already tottering world. The hidden half of her face emerged briefly from the veil of silvery hair. Something about it was terribly wrong.
Then she was a woman again, with trembling hands clasped over her ears as if to hear nothing more.
No, no, no. Dead? And for so long? Oh, Kinzi, for me it was one endless night full of terrible dreams. Kinzi-kin, my lady bids me warn you . . . but my lady is dead, yet she summoned me, spoke to me. In a grove. Under the eyes of so many silent watchers.
That must have been the stand of trees where the Tishooo had left the Knorth death banners hung as if in some aerial hall, Jame thought.
"Kinzi's banner called to you, lady?" she asked, to make sure.
Yes, yes. Oh, her blood must have trapped her soul in the weave of her death.
Damn. Jame had suspected as much with Aerulan. The wider implications appalled her, but there was no time to consider them now.
"You said my great-grandmother sent you to warn me. About what?"
Rocks rattled down, followed a moment later by the rathorn like a bolt of white lightning, all horns, hooves, and fangs. The Whinno-hir screamed and vanished. Where she had stood was a gap in the cloud-of-thorn bushes. Jame bolted through it, the rathorn roaring on her heels. The path ended in a wall of thorns. Beneath them was a dark hole, a burrow leading to some animal's lair. Jame dived down it. Wet skin and damp soil turned it into a slick, muddy chute, with a quick glimpse at the bottom of furry hindquarters scuttling for dear life out the back door.
The rathorn crashed down on the bush. Thorn and dry branch snapped against his armor and between the twin scythes of his horns. Jame started up, but her loose hair caught on the brambles. Trapped, through a fretwork of thorns she saw something white eclipse the darkening sky like a falling moon. Then the rathorn smashed down again, and she scrambled free.
Her wild flight ended abruptly against a pair of legs. There was a crescent of them, and a spiked ring of spears leveled over her head at the bush. In its ruin, the rathorn reared and screamed his defiance. His sides and flanks were bloody from the bite of thorns and his red, red eyes glared into hers.
Come away from them, said his voice in her mind. Come away with me and let us be done.
A hand on her shoulder stopped her.
The colt snorted. If not today, then tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Wait. Then he turned and plunged away.
Captain Hawthorn grounded her spear with a sigh. "One thing about having you around, lady," she said to Jame. "Life is never dull."
They all ended up in the Commandant's office, which turned out to be adjacent to the Map Room.
Timmon had found his pants. Jame was shivering naked inside a borrowed jacket. Gorbel, in his pink-stained shirt, was throwing a tantrum.
"You have to let me hunt it!" he raged, leaning over the Commandant's desk and fairly shouting in his face. "No one has ever bagged a rathorn before! When am I ever likely to get another chance like this?"
Gorbel, obviously, was an avid hunter. Jame had never seen him so animated or less like the miniature version of his father that he always tried to be—not that Caldane didn't hunt too, she thought, remembering the Merikit skins, scalps still attached, strewn about his bedroom at Restormir.
No one had mentioned the pale Whinno-hir. Jame began to wonder if she had imagined their strange conversation. Great-grandmother Kinzi's soul trapped in the web of her death? A warning never quite delivered?
"You've got to let me hunt him!" Gorbel cried, adding in a rising note of triumphant, "Father would insist!"
The Commandant regarded him thoughtfully.
"Something does have to be done about that beast, sir," said Hawthorn, regretfully. "I've never seen its like, all white and red eyed—magnificent, in terrible a way—but it's clearly a rogue. A death's-head. No rage will let it join, and they're social creatures, rathorns, for all their filthy tempers. On its own, it will go mad, if it hasn't already. It's dangerous."
The other randon murmured agreement.
"At least we know now why the herd has been acting up," said the horse-master. "Of course it would, with something like that on the prowl."
"Yes, but why here? True, some of them are man-eaters, but to attack so close to a keep and with such determination . . ."
Everyone looked at Jame.
She glared back through a tangle of wet, muddy hair with enough broken thorns in it to build a respectable bird's nest and wished she could stop shivering. It wasn't just that she was cold and wet, or that under the coat her body was laced with stinging scratches. The colt had been inside her mind. She could still taste his fury, but beneath that the grief and aching loneliness. She had taken away the only thing he had ever loved. Now she was all he had left, and he wanted her dead only a shade more fiercely than he wished for his own death.
"Indeed," said the Commandant, "something must be done. But not by cadets."
Gorbel looked stunned, then furious. The Commandant ignored him.
"Organize a hunt. Take randon and sergeants, war-hounds and hawks. The Falconer will be our eyes, as usual. See to it. Dismissed."
And they all found themselves trooping outside, including a stunned, stammering Gorbel. "B-b-b-but the Commandant is a Caineron!" he said with genuine, almost hurt bewilderment.
Timmon shrugged. "Perhaps Daddy's reach isn't as long as you supposed. Perhaps Sheth will let you kill something later. Something small."
"Ah!" Gorbel snarled and stalked off, squelching loudly in his wet boots.
"I'll see you back to your quarters," said Timmon to Jame, sounding a shade too pleased with the situation.
"No, you won't," she snapped, shrugging off his solicitous arm.
"Don't you at least want this?" he called after her, holding up the borrowed coat which had come off in his hand.
"No!"
Cadets stared, aghast, or dived for cover as she stormed down the arcade. One, his arms full of armor to be cleaned, fell with a great clatter head first over the rail into the training square.
Rue met Jame at the Knorth door. The cadet's jaw fell. "Lady, you . . . you're . . ."
"Wet, cold, muddy, and in a foul temper. Just get me some hot water before I kill somebody. And stop staring at my ribs!"