Someone was calling her.
"Jame." And again, "Jame."
She knew that voice, although it seemed a lifetime since she had last heard it.
"Jame. Come on now, lass. Wake up."
Part of her was still running, lost among hills that rolled on forever, but the rest of her would rather die than not answer that call. Her eyes fluttered open. The moon glowed through tall windows, throwing tranquil bars of light on the floor, onto facing rows of cots empty except for the one in which she lay, but not alone. A strong arm held her. She knew that touch, that very smell, clean and honest as the man himself.
"Oh, Marc," she said. "I had such an awful dream."
But then, when she raised her hand to touch him, to be sure he was really there, she saw that her arm was heavily bandaged from wrist to elbow. No, it hadn't all been a dream. The worst part was true.
"Marc, I've done a terrible thing."
"Have you now." His big, rough hand gently stroked her hair. "You'd better tell me about it, then."
For a long while, however, neither of them spoke. They hadn't seen each other in nearly a year, not since the battle at the Cataracts. It seemed more like a lifetime ago, Jame thought, settling against the Kendar's broad chest, feeling him breathe and listening to his heart beat, steady and strong.
She remembered how they had first met. Dashing around a corner in Tai-tastigon with the stolen Peacock Gloves tucked into her wallet and the city guards on her heels, she had run head-on into what she at first had thought was a wall. Then it had put out big hands to catch her on the rebound.
He had walked all the way from East Kenshold—a big Kendar in late middle-age, turned out by the new lord of a minor house for defending the old lord's Whinno-hir mare from being ridden against her will. Before that, he had been a Caineron yondri with the Southern Host; before that, the last survivor of another minor house that had held Kithorn until the Merikit slaughtered everyone except Marc, who had been out hunting at the time and had come home to red ruin. By the time he had reached Tai-tastigon, seventy-odd years later, he had been tired unto death and ready to die, sure that at his age no Kencyr house would ever accept him again.
He had, however, woken in time to save her from a brigands' attack in the alley below—this, by climbing down two stories from the inn's loft "and then, to save time, falling the rest of the way," as he had put it later.
He was the most solidly decent person Jame had ever known, and she trusted his moral sense far more than she did her own.
However, he had assumed that she was Kendar with only enough Highborn blood to account for her various strange attributes. After all, Kencyr ladies were a breed apart, seldom seen outside their own halls and then only heavily masked. That one of them should be the infamous Talisman, apprentice to the greatest thief in Tai-tastigon, had never crossed his mind. At the time, Jame hadn't been sure herself what she was, and certainly hadn't guessed that the Highlord of the Kencyrath was her long-lost twin brother Tori.
Then she had found out, and so had Marc.
Would there ever be that easy friendship and equality between them again? Could there be between a Highborn and a Kendar? They hadn't yet crossed that bridge, yet here he was. Hang on to that.
Just then, Jorin trotted into the room and jumped up onto the cot. Jame yelped as his weight landed on her bandaged arm. Marc scooped up the ounce and rolled him over between them, upside-down.
"Hello, kitten," he said, rubbing the exposed, furry stomach. Jorin stretched, back arching, paws in the air, and began to purr.
"Where did you spring from?" Jame asked the Kendar over the cat's rumble.
"Oh, Gothregor. Everyone is back, except for those still attached to the Southern Host or elsewhere. Your lord brother will need every hand he can get for the haying, come midsummer."
Jame tried to imagine the seven foot tall Kendar wielding a scythe instead of his usual two-edged war axe. "He's got you out cutting the grass?"
"Nothing wrong with working the land, lass. I'll take that any day over a battlefield, where naught grows but bones from the earth after the first frost. Mind you, they say blood is a good fertilizer, but not one I'd use by choice."
Marc had never cared much for fighting, come to that. In battle, he usually feigned a berserker fit and scared the enemy into head-long flight. She had seen him once empty a hostile tavern the same way, with brigands flying through the doors, out the windows, and even up the chimney.
"Mostly, though," he said, "I've been seeing what can be done to put that big stained glass window back together. You know, the one facing east in the old keep, the map of Rathillien. A gorgeous thing. Somehow, though, it got smashed to pieces."
"Er . . . I'm afraid that was me. At the time, I had a pack of shadow assassins after me and used a rune to blow away their souls. Unfortunately, the window blew out too. So did a lot of death banners from the lower hall. Sorry."
There was a short pause, followed by a resigned sigh. "Ah well. I should have guessed as much. That's all right then, as long as it was in a good cause."
She started to turn to look at him, but stopped herself, in case he wasn't there after all. If this was a dream, she didn't want to wake.
"Are you teasing me?"
"Not at all. The window can be replaced. I hope. You can't. Besides, I enjoy the work."
He would, thought Jame, a bit envious given her own lack of talent. Marc had always had an artistic bent but precious little chance to develop it.
"Here."
He dropped something smooth and cool into her hand.
"We were melting down some salvaged shards of red glass—did you know the color comes in part from real gold?—when your lord brother nicked a finger and a drop of his blood fell into the mix. The result was . . . interesting."
Jame held the fragment up to the moon. Even such faint, silvery light woke a ruby glow in the heart of the glass. It seemed to her that she held something alive, but with a sort of life beyond her experience or comprehension.
"I'd like to experiment with other colors," said the big Kendar wistfully. "It's awkward, though, asking the Highlord of the Kencyrath to bleed on request."
Jame braced herself. She had to know. "I suppose," she said carefully, "that Tori has offered you a place in his—that is, in our house."
He shifted, to muffled protests both from cot and cat. "He did, yes. I declined the honor."
"But . . . why? Ancestors know, you've earned it."
"Oh," he said, trying to sound casual, "I thought I'd wait a bit, just to see what else might come along."
Jame nearly sat up, but the effort made her head spin.
"Marc," she said urgently, clutching his jacket, "you can't count on me ever having an establishment of my own, much less being allowed officially to bind Kendar to me. Think! Is Tori likely to give me that much power?"
"He made you his lordan, lass."
"Yes, but that was only to buy time. He can pitch me back into the Women's Halls whenever he wants, assuming the matriarchs don't toss me out again. Why, he hasn't even come to see if I've managed to get myself killed yet."
"Oh, he came." Marc chuckled. "You called him 'Daddy's boy' and told him to go away."
"Oh," said Jame blankly. "Oh dear. Wait a moment. How long have I been unconscious?"
"More than a week. Your cousin Kindrie went into the soulscape to see what was keeping you, and came back with two black eyes. He said something about being trampled by a rage of rathorns."
For the first time since waking, Jame remembered the rathorn colt. Trinity, where was he? It struck her now that she hadn't felt his presence since they had ran in different directions to escape the haunt stallion. Surely she would know if he was dead . . . wouldn't she? What if she had left him trapped in the soulscape?
"I have to go back," she said, struggling to free herself from Marc's arms. "He won't know how to get out. He'll wander there, lost, until he dies."
"Gently, gently. Who will?"
"The colt. Marc, I said I'd done something awful, and I have. I've blood-bound a young rathorn."
He didn't push her away, but she felt his breath catch. "I didn't know you were a binder," he said, with a careful lack of emphasis. "Still, I suppose it's nothing you can help. Why bind a rathorn, though, of all creatures?"
"It wasn't intentional. He bit me."
"Ah. Well, there's no accounting for taste."
Jame felt a surge of relief. "Now you're laughing at me." If he could accept this, the worst thing she knew about herself, perhaps their friendship would survive after all.
But that didn't help the colt.
"I brought someone to meet you," said Marc, deliberately changing the subject.
She felt him move, then heard a flint rasp. The sudden flare of light momentarily blinded her. When her eyes cleared, she saw a child's wisp of a shadow cast on the far wall. Marc had set a lit candle down behind a lumpy saddle-bag on the table.
"This is my sister, Willow. Willow, meet my Lady Jamethiel. If you're good, she may let you call her Jame."
"I would be honored," said Jame, a little shaken, as the shadow sketched a wary salute.
She knew, of course, that her brother had found the child's bones at Kithorn the previous autumn and for some reason had carried them all the way south to the battle at the Cataracts. A little girl, trapped in death for decades under the ruins of her house . . . there she had hidden while her family was slaughtered above her, and there she had starved to death. But blood and bone trap the soul until fire sets it free, so here she still was.
Jorin's head popped up. He wriggled free, hopped down, and bounced at the shadow, which recoiled from him.
"He's frightening her," said Jame sharply.
"Give them a moment. Ah, that's my girl."
Cat and shadow had begun to chase each other back and forth, up and down the wall, while Marc moved the candle to give the game more scope.
"I keep meaning to give her to the pyre." He sighed. "After losing her once, though, it's hard to let go again."
In his tone, Jame heard the boy that he had been, who had lost everything he had ever loved. The old ache had never really healed, nor the loneliness gone away except, perhaps, for a time when two unlikely friends had shared a loft in Tai-tastigon.
"D'you suppose," he asked, "that it hurts her to stay like this?"
"I don't think so," said Jame, watching ounce and shadow child play, "but what do I know? You should ask Ashe."
He took a deep breath. "So I will. Until then, I'll hold on to her a bit longer, just to see what else might come along."
Neither spoke after that. Jame settled back against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
Some time later she woke, or thought that she did.
The room had tarnished to a kind of thick, half light that belonged neither to day nor to night and cast no shadows but two. One was her own. The other sat cross-legged on a blanket, watching her, or so she assumed. It had a child's shape and some hint of shadowy features, but she could see through it to the wall beyond, to shelves thick with dust, lined with broken jars.
"This is a dream, isn't it?" she asked the silent watcher. "You're Willow, and this is where my brother found you, in the still room at Kithorn, under the charred hall."
No answer. Jame gathered herself to rise, but hesitated as the other drew back. "You're afraid of me. Why?"
Then she saw that her hands were tipped with six inch long ivory claws that rasped on the floor and would not retract. Her clothes had also changed to the close-fitting costume of a Senetha dancer with its oddly placed slashes. There were more of them than she remembered. Reaper of souls. Who had called her that? Dancer's daughter. She felt her Shanir nature stir, dark, dangerous, and seductive.
"Is this what you see in me? Is this what you fear . . . for yourself? No. For your brother."
She settled carefully back against the wall.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take your place in his life. When Marc and I first met, I'd lost my family too. I was . . . almost feral. You know," she added, reminding herself that, after all, this was only a child, "like a kitten that's grown up wild and never learned how to purr."
She frowned at her over-grown claws and clicked them together irritably. "Even for a dream, this is ridiculous. Maybe I should take up knitting. Knit one, purl two . . . but I'd only end up making cats' cradles and tying my hands together. I can't even pick my nose with these things without picking my brain, and there's little enough of that to begin with."
The shadow child uttered no sound, but something about her suggested a suppressed giggle.
Good, thought Jame, relaxing slightly, and continued, as much now to herself as to the child.
"It's hard to be Kencyr, much less a Highborn Shanir. Honor as we practice it is a cold, hard thing. It breaks some people. It turns others into monsters. I could easily be as bad as you fear I am . . . no, much worse . . . if I hadn't been shown kindness. First there were the Kendar at my home keep, then Tirandys, then Marc, and I love them all for it. I especially love your brother for reminding me what decency is, simply by being himself. I would rather die than hurt him. My word on it."
More tension left the small, shadowy figure, but a question lingered.
"Why can't I give him what he needs most, a home? Because I don't have one myself and perhaps never will." Jame thrust fingers into her loose hair in an exasperation which grew when her claws became entangled. She tugged, nearly poked herself in the eye, and swore in a language hopefully unknown to a child from remote Kithorn.
"So far, by accident, I've bound a half-bred Southron and a rathorn colt out for my blood (which he got, ancestors help him). Oh, and let's not forget my dear half-brother Bane, who flays little boys alive for sport, or used to. Maybe I don't deserve anyone better. The point is, though, not what they owe me but what I owe them, and so far as a bounden Highborn I've done a rotten job all around. I'm not going to promise Marc anything I can't give him. He deserves better than that."
Now, Jame thought, comes the hard part. She leaned forward, looking as serious as she could with both hands still tangled in her hair as if she was trying to tear it out by the roots.
"Willow, I need your help. This is a dream, part of the dreamscape. I need to go deeper, into the soulscape. I've gotten there before accidentally (and by now you probably think that 'Accident' is my middle name), but I don't know how to do it deliberately. You helped Kindrie to enter my brother's soul-image last winter on the march south, when he fell asleep and couldn't wake up. Will you help me now? Please. The colt is still trapped there. He's bound to me, however reluctantly, so I have to rescue him if I can, at the very least. Tirandys and the Kendar taught me that."
She didn't know how Willow would respond, or even if she understood. After all, this was a child, and one long dead at that.
Time stretched on and on in silence, until it lost all meaning. Dust drifted down. Flesh began to melt. The dancing costume now hung on wasted limbs and her hands had fallen to her lap, each still loosely gripping a mass of black hair with bits of dried scalp attached to it. Jame felt, dimly, that this should concern her, and there was a niggling sense of something else important, forgotten; but it was too much trouble to remember. All she wanted was to lie down and to sleep forever, but she was cold, so cold. Crawl across the floor through thick dust, lift the edge of the blanket . . . but someone was already under it, waiting, with eye sockets full of lonely shadow.
Those who receive kindness owe kindness in return.
Jame crept under the blanket and took the small bones in arms hardly less clothed in flesh. Dust fell. And silence. And the long night of the dead without a dawn.
Then someone spoke her name, or rather that hated corruption of it: "Jameth." And again, "Jameth."
The voice was muffled, but it was also clearly angry.
Jame stirred uneasily. She would rather sleep on and on, with no worries except perhaps that her teeth would eventually fall out, like her hair.
Wait a minute. That had been a dream, hadn't it? Trinity, she hoped so. Yes, she still had a full if rather tangled head of hair, and no clothes.
That last was changing, though. She felt her name draw her on, into a web of unseen thread. Coarse strands touched her, lightly at first, then with more persistence, snaring, entangling, thickening. And they stank. It was like being pressed face-first into dank, moldy cloth. Just as she was about to panic, she found herself on the other side, in a circular room. Like the death banner hall at Gothregor, it was dark and windowless, with an oppressively low ceiling. Torches flared at intervals around the stone walls. Between them hung dark tapestries full of lurking shadows that seemed furtively to shift as if aware of her presence. Opposite, however, fire light flickered on a familiar, gentle face.
Jame had never actually met her cousin Aerulan. After all, it was more than forty years since the massacre that had claimed all the Knorth ladies but one, the child Tieri, whom Aerulan had died protecting. However, over the past, dismal winter confined in the Women's Halls at Gothregor, wearing her dead cousin's clothes because Tori hadn't thought to provide her with anything more suitable, she had often visited Aerulan's banner where it had hung among the ranks of her family's dead—that is, until that last night when the Tishooo had blown them all out the window.
Now here they both were again, except . . . except it appeared to be Aerulan herself standing there, smiling back at her.
Blink. Look again.
While the other's face had the shape and fullness of life, it was marked by the fine weave of death, and its smile was a mere tug of stitches. Nonetheless, Aerulan's soul gazed out through warp and woof, clear-eyed and wryly amused.
So here we are again, cousin.
Was this another dream, or had she indeed reached the soulscape? If the latter, whose voice had drawn her and where was she now?
The answer came in the click of boot-heels and the jangle of heavy spurs, both muffled by the stone and thick cloth of the walls.
Brenwyr stalked past in a swirl of her divided riding skirt, arms folded tightly across her chest as if holding herself together. No longer smiling, Aerulan watched her pass. As the dead girl turned her head, Jame saw that it had no back except the concave reverse of her face, rough with tied off threads.
The Brandan Matriarch seemed oblivious to them both. What comfort could she take in that which she could not see, and who could see anything through an eyeless seeker's mask? In the Women's Halls, Jame had sometimes been forced to wear one herself as punishment for her restless wanderings. More commonly, though, the mask was used in a child's game. The girl wearing it lost not only her sight but her identity until she managed to catch another player. Then she passed on the mask and assumed the new seeker's name. In the end, everyone was someone else except for the girl left wearing the mask, who became no one, nameless and lost. Sometimes, she wore it for days until an older girl took pity on her and removed it.
But who could free a matriarch blinded by her own despair?
"What can I do? What can I do?" Brenwyr was muttering to herself in a rant as circular and obsessive as her pacing. "We had a contract, dammit! You were to have been mine forever. But then you died and the Gray Lord went into exile, and now his son tells my brother to forget the price. Adiraina says that he's only a man, that he doesn't understand, that he means to be kind. Ha! How can I keep you, and yet how can I bear to lose you again? This will destroy me. Worse, what if it drives me to destroy others?"
The shadows stirred in the tapestries as she passed, creeping forward, gaining definition. Her demons. Her memories.
Here stood a child grotesque in her brother's over-sized clothes, a knife in one hand, a hacked off hank of long, black hair dangling from the other. Every line of her unhappy face said, It didn't work. I still hate myself.
In the next tapestry, the same girl knelt beside the body of a woman who, arms full of boy's clothing, had tumbled down a flight of stairs and broken her neck.
Brenwyr beat her blind face with clenched fists. "Oh, mother, I didn't mean to curse you. I didn't. I didn't. But I am a Shanir maledight, a monster. What can I do but harm? Adiraina, grandmother-kin, you tell me to be strong and so I have been. The Iron Matriarch they call me, but they don't know. They don't know. Aerulan, sister-kin, you gave me strength, and love, and then you died. Oh, I cursed your murderer and doom fell on him, but you are still dead. And now must I lose your banner too? He tossed you to me, ancestors damn him, like a bone to a dog! The insult, the shame. I should curse him. No, no, I have already cursed his sister. 'Rootless and roofless' . . . damn you, Jameth!"
Jame flinched. That was the same harsh, heart-broken cry that had drawn her here.
Then she fought to keep her balance. Only now did she realize that she was again wearing Aerulan's clothes, including the tight underskirt that practically bound her legs together. To fall over at the Brandon's feet would be awkward, to say the least. She wondered in passing if "damn you" counted as a maledight curse.
Brenwyr said it again, with a breaking voice. "You stole her, seduced her with that accursed Knorth charm. Ah, how well I remember it. How I have felt it, even with you. On the road. In the cold. Did you sleep with her?"
That, thought Jame, still tottering precariously, was one way to put it. She had retrieved Aerulan's banner from the tree where the Tishooo had left it and taken it north with her. Yes, the nights had been cold. Yes, she had used the banner as a blanket for warmth and sometimes woke to feel her cousin's comforting arms around her. Willow wasn't the first of the dead with whom she had shared comfort. It probably wouldn't help, though, to say that she had slept not only with Brenwyr's beloved but under her.
As the matriarch paced on and on, the shadows kept pace with her from tapestry to tapestry, mirroring her thoughts, mocking them.
You are ugly, dangerous, a killer, they said. Who could love you but one of the mad Knorth, and now she is dead. Maledight, monster. Curse yourself and die.
Jame watched the roil of dark stitches and wondered. Doubtless, the Brandan Matriarch had a terrible opinion of herself, and the possible loss of Aerulan had stirred up all the destructive self-loathing at the bottom of her soul, but this seemed extreme. Moreover, she sensed another presence in the room, slyly lurking. If she, Jame, was here, why not someone else? As if in answer, the stitches of the nearest tapestry seethed like so many maggots into the semblance of a masked face that turned to look at Jame askance. It smiled.
I told you. My name is legion, as are my forms and the eyes through which I see. Miserable orphan of a ruined house, do you know me now?
"Oh, yes," breathed Jame, her fists clenching, nails biting palms. "We met in the eyes of your tempter and again when you spoke through that wretched boy whom you hag-rode to his death. Worm in the weave, I name you, and witch in the tower. Rawneth, the great bitch of Wilden."
The other began to laugh, and Jame went for her, claws first. The face distorted in a soundless scream as her nails hooked in it and tore downward. The fabric disintegrated into striped, twitching threads and slimy clots that slopped to the floor, stinking like the contents of an unplugged drain.
"Ugh," said Jame, regarding her befouled nails, wondering if she would ever get them clean again.
Brenwyr had spun around. "Who's there?" she demanded harshly. "Name yourself, so that I may know whom to curse."
Jame floundered to her feet, fighting not only the tight undergarment but the full outer skirt. Trinity, neither had been this bad in the real world. In them, she might hop or roll, but little else. The Brandan Matriarch was advancing on her, arms blindly groping. Her sleeves, her very hands, trailed threads as her entire soul-image began to unravel. Over her shoulder, Jame saw Aerulan.
Go, mouthed her cousin, so urgently that the stitches sealing her woven lips snapped and bled.
Jame ducked away, lost her balance again and, in a sharp ripping of undergarments, toppled through the hole left by the disintegrating tapestry. As she fell away into the outer darkness of the soulscape, she saw the receding image of Brenwyr. The matriarch had stopped, her shoulders slumped. Then she drew herself up and began slowly, grimly, to pull back together the frayed threads of her being.
The soulscape seemed to connect all individual soul-images, but it wasn't clear to Jame exactly how. One could get lost in here forever, or stumble into something really nasty, as she just had.
Trinity, could Rawneth wander here as she pleased, or did she only infest Brenwyr's soul-image? There, she had clearly found a chink in the Iron Matriarch's armor, and Brenwyr was too blinded by grief and rage to defend herself. Jame sensed that she had expelled the Witch at least temporarily. But there were other banners in Brenwyr's soul-image, other "eyes" through which that malignant creature might peer. Somehow, the matriarch must shed that accursed seeker's mask. Aerulan, or rather her banner, was the key, but one problem at a time.
It was hard, though, not to think what power it would give one to have free range of the soulscape. Trinity, what a way to find things out, if not to destroy one's enemies outright. She pictured herself armored and deadly, cutting a swathe through the rotten patches of the soulscape, up to the Master's very door. But why stop there? Why not pursue the monster into his maze and there destroy him once and for all? Why have such power if not to use it?
Nemesis.
The word emerged out of the darkness as a harsh cough, as if it were trying to dislodge clinkers in the throat. With it came the stench of burnt fur.
What have you done now?
The name drew her, but not as strongly as "Jameth" had done. After all, while she was clearly a nemesis, aligned with That-Which-Destroys, she wasn't yet the Nemesis, Third Face of God. Dammit, what had she done now except defend herself . . . and rip the guts out of a putrid banner in someone else's soul-image . . . and blood-bind a rathorn.
Where was the colt? What if she had really killed him . . . but wouldn't she know if she had? She reached deep into her own soul, to a part that ached like an over-taxed muscle. Weakness sent quivers through all her limbs. He hadn't the stamina for this. She felt his exhaustion threatening to undo them both.
No, she told herself. Be strong. Be angry.
That blasted cat, Arrin-ken be damned. If he must prowl the soulscape, why didn't he go after the Witch for tormenting Brenwyr? So much was rotten in the Kencyrath, both openly and in secret. Honor had been twisted until for some Highborn it was nothing but a Lawful Lie, and the breaking of it of little more importance. Where were the judges that should call such oath-breakers to justice? What worms ever now were undermining from within the fabric of the Three People so that all in the end might fall to ruin?
Her throat hurt. She had shouted her questions into the darkness. Now she waited for a reply.
Nothing.
Then, faintly, she heard someone calling her:
Kinzi-kin. Come. Please.
When she turned toward the voice, another tapestry hung before her. This one depicted a garden in full bloom, and all the blooms were white. Pushing it aside, she stepped into the Moon Garden.
For a moment, Jame thought that she was in the real garden at Gothregor, which she had discovered the previous winter during her ceaseless wanderings through the empty eastern halls. It occupied a secret courtyard abutting the Ghost Walks, where the women of her house had lived before the massacre and, when she had last seen it, it had been a riot of snowy blossoms in the early spring.
So it still was, although the year had passed well into summer. Moreover, the lofty comfrey, lacy yarrow, heart's ease and self-heal all glowed softly in the dusk while pollen floated, glimmering, on the still air. At the north end grew an flowering apple tree where none had been before. Under it sat a pale lady, with the head of the rathorn cradled in her lap.
Lully lully lullaby, she sang in a low murmur, stroking his white neck and mane. Dream of meadows, free of flies . . .
"Isn't this Kindrie's soul-image?" Jame asked, perplexed. "How did you get here?"
The lady paused and raised her head, the right side turned away. Who is Kindrie?
Her lips didn't move. They never had, Jame realized, when she spoke, and that was only when she wore the aspect of a woman.
"Kinzi's great-grandson. He was born in this garden—the real one, I mean. His mother Tieri, Kinzi's grand-daughter, died here."
She glanced at the southern wall where Tieri's death banner should have hung. Moss and shadow suggested that gentle, sad face against the stones, but nothing more. For that matter, she supposed that while all soul-images were unique, people must model them after something familiar to them. She would have liked the garden for her own soul's haven, although for her it probably would sprout carnivorous daisies and flights of bright-winged carrion jewel-jaws.
The White Lady was shaking her head. Names, names, names. Never born, never lived, never died. Her hand stole up to her hidden cheek, touched it, jerked away. Someone hurt me. Who? And my lady dead? No, no, no. This is all a bad dream, and so are you. Go away.
She bent again over the colt, crooning,
Dream of friends who never lie,
And of love that never dies . . .
The whole garden had a strange texture, best seen out of the corner of the eye, a sort of cross-hatching.
At Perimal's Cauldron, the Whinno-hir had said that she had spoken to Kinzi, that the matriarch's blood had trapped her soul in the weave of her death.
Jame touched a nearby lily. Its white petals looked like cool, living velvet, but they felt like coarse, damp cloth. "I think," she said, "that we are in the background of Lady Kinzi's death banner."
If, however, this was the remnant of her great-grandmother's soul-image, might some element of her still inhabit it?
But all life must end in sighs,
So lully lully lullaby.
A square of candle-light glimmered on the garden, silvering grass and flower, changing their shadows to pewter. It fell from an open window set high in the northern, outer wall, where the Ghost Walks began. During her visits here in the flesh, Jame had noticed the bricked up aperture, but had not known to whom that lovely view down into the garden had belonged, much less why it had been obstructed. Now a figure stood at the open window in dark silhouette against the flickering light. She had heard that Kinzi was a small, trim woman, and so was this silent watcher, although nothing could be seen of her face. What a long shadow that tiny figure had cast, until assassins cut it short.
Jame felt suddenly, acutely, self-conscious. She still wore the remnants of Aerulan's clothes, little better than tatters, and no mask. Moreover, the rags stank with the residual effluvium of the shredded tapestry. This time, not only had she arrived inappropriately clothed but reeking like an open sewer. She saluted the figure in the window with as much dignity as she could muster. Perhaps the other nodded slightly in reply, perhaps not. Life, death, and the abyss of time lay between them.
Lully lully lullaby . . .
The sad little song began again, lamenting all that had been lost. Lives, hope, honor, all gone, and only the victims were left to pay, and pay, and pay. A house in ruins. Her house. A family put to the knife, and that too hers. Vengeance be damned. Where was justice?
Be strong. Be angry.
Jame was pacing now, impatiently plucking off sodden rags. She felt dangerous. She felt deadly. All that she had shouted into the darkness echoed in her mind, the challenge unanswered. Her god was no help—long ago, those three faces had turned away—and his judges went their own inscrutable way, far from the walks of those whom they were to have served.
The garden fell gradually into shadow, the inner light of its blooms flickering out one by one.
"You leave us in the dark, and damn us when we stumble."
Her angry voice came back flat and muffled, off stone walls that were in fact cloth, threadbare leavings of the dead.
"You let honor perish and those who flaunt it prosper."
Remember that all men do lie,
If not in words, then deeds belie. . .
"You demand that we fight your battles, yet the weapons that you give us shatter in our hands."
To whom was she speaking? Did it matter? She flung out the words like knives, not caring whom they hit.
"Yet through this all, we are bound to keep faith?"
"Watch where you tread."
The voice grumbled down, huge, like thunder in the mountains. This time, there was an echo. Jame stopped short. During her rant, space had changed around her. She could still see the lit window, but it seemed lower than before, the fire in it dying in a wrought iron grate. Of Kinzi, if indeed it had been she, there was no sign. Instead, Whinno-hir and rathorn colt huddled together in the embers' ruddy glow. Walls still surrounded them and the drum tower of the Ghost Walks still loomed over head, but then the latter shifted on its foundations. Stone ground on stone. Grit rattled down. Was it going to fall? No. Slowly, ponderously, it began to rock. Back and forth. Back and forth. And it had gone all lumpy, more toward the bottom than the top, against which a faint, full moon seemed to be rising.
. . . click, click, click . . .
Needles, knitting—what, Jame couldn't see, but as for who . . . . She gulped.
"Mother Ragga, how did I . . . that is, how did we get into your lodge?"
A grunt of disgust made the air shake, as if something massive had fallen. What Jame had thought to be the moon leaned over her, glowering. Mother Ragga had a face not unlike a monstrous dumpling gone bad, soft here, bulging there, alight with mottled indignation.
"This is what the Merikit call sacred space—Rathillien's soulscape, as it were. You always did creep inside, girl, whenever you found a chink. Since those idiots invited you through the front door as my Favorite, though, there seems to be no keeping you out, short of killing you. I'm considering that."
"What? But why?"
"Look where you have trodden."
The upper reaches of the room might be the lodge, grown large enough to swallow an army whole, but the dirt floor where Ragga kept her earth map was still the Moon Garden, or what was left of it. Jame saw with dismay that in raging back and forth she had destroyed a wide swath of it. Comfrey, yarrow, and heart's-ease lay not just broken under her feet but rotting, with the threads of Kinzi's banner showing through like tendons laid bare. She flexed her hands, staring at the ivory gauntlets that gloved them. She wore armor from throat to loins but, like the rathorn, only on the front. The draft from behind was disconcerting.
She had dreamed of slashing through the soulscape, a warrior clad in gleaming ivory, destroying all that was rotten in it. What if, however, like the Ivory Knife, everything that she touched died, the fair with the foul? Was that what it meant to be the Third Face of God?
"You asked why," grumbled that enormous voice. "You ask much. But what will your answers cost? It isn't the Favorite's role to ask but to act, yet that might be worse. What about the summer solstice, eh?"
Jame had nearly forgotten, and it wasn't far off.
"Didn't we take care of my part in that on Summer's Eve?" she asked nervously. "After all, I've already fought last year's Favorite—sort of. It wasn't my idea to combine that rite with establishing the boundaries, nor to get dragged into either one of them, for that matter."
"Huh. Well I know it, and little it matters. There are rules. Remember, not only does the Favorite mate with the Earth Wife for the fertility of the land, but then she passes off her lover to her consort the Burnt Man as their son. It's called 'fooling death.' "
"Who makes up these games anyway?" Jame asked.
The rocking stopped for a moment. "Don't know. Doesn't matter. They just are. I might blink at some of 'em, but the Burnt Man won't. Not now, anyway. Since you became involved, he's somehow gotten mixed up with that blind judge of yours. Bad breath, a worse attitude, and he's out of his tiny little cinder of a mind. Then there's you, another disaster waiting to happen. Oh, you may regret it afterward and try to make amends, but some things once broken can never be mended."
And they will hunt you till you die, sang the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi on the Earth Wife's hearth, rocking the white-haired boy that was the rathorn colt.
And then your mouth will fill with flies,
So lully lully lullaby.
The Earth Wife's face filled half the sky, and her anger pressed down as one feels the weight of a mountain from within a cave or that of a boulder poised to fall. "Did you hear that, you wretched girl? What did you people do to this poor creature? She came to me wounded in body and soul. I sheltered her in my lodge—days, years, what does time matter? Then her lady called her forth. Is her torment to begin all over again? I tell you straight, I'd rather destroy the lot of you than go through that again. Don't think that I can't! And what's the matter with that colt?"
As Jame fumbled for the answer least likely to get her killed, the Whinno-hir spoke again:
My lady bade me find you.
They might have been back at Perimal's Cauldron, but the shock of that first meeting had passed into a dream-like acceptance.
My lady bids me warn you. Of the Knorth Highborn, only three of you are left.
Jame blinked. Three? "Lady, who . . .?"
One is still too wounded to know himself, and the other's mind is poisoned against his own nature. You are the closest of the three to realizing who and what you are, but you also have the darkling glamour bred into your very bones. The haunt singer Ashe has warned my lady, and my lady has warned me.
"Wait a minute. How does Kinzi know—I mean, about the third? This side of the shadows, except for Tori and me, there's only our cousin Kindrie, and he was born long after the massacre."
The dead know what concerns the dead. My unfortunate granddaughter Tieri is dead, and so am I. While our blood traps us, we walk the Gray Land together, two of a silent host.
The Whinno-hir's voice changed. Her fire-cast shadow lengthened and thinned, as if cast by someone else, small and trim.
Jame gulped. The Gray Land? One by one, all the things she thought she knew about death were proving false, but she must keep to the point. "Lady, Kindrie is a bastard, or doesn't legitimacy count after all?"
It does. Blood of my blood, some things that matter very much are unfair, but true. It is also true that I told your father to draw strength from his anger, but he did not have the discipline to control what he called up. How could he, while he denied what he was?
Be strong, Jame had told herself. Be angry.
"Great-grandmother, I know who I am and what I may become."
Ah, but what if you are truly alone, with neither That-Which-Creates nor That-Which-Preserves to balance you? Have you the strength, alone, to balance yourself?
"Huh." The Earth Wife leaned back, her face a pocked moon rising, and the tower groaned as she resumed her slow rocking. "That's the kernel of the nut. Balance. We four have it—most of the time; you three don't. By stone and stock, you don't even seem to know who you are. As I understand it, you people have ruined world after world. Should Rathillien topple as well for your faults?"
"I think," said Jame carefully, "that without us this world is doomed. Mother Ragga, have you looked into the face of the shadows that loom over you? I have. As everyone keeps reminding me, I was raised among them. If I remembered more of those lost years, perhaps there would be less of me left to recover."
She paused, surprised by her own words. Of course, her lost childhood still bothered her. (Confess.) What had she done under shadows' eaves and what had been done to her? (You know your faults.) Perhaps, after all, she had deserved the latter, and much more beside.
Huh. I know who I am, she had just said, and of this much she was sure:
"Thanks to my Senethari Tirandys . . . and to Bender, his brother . . . my honor has survived."
"So far," grumbled the Earth Wife.
"Well, yes, but who can say more than that?"
Enough. I am sorry, child, but desperate times, desperate measures. Ashe is right: Tentir will test you as it has all Knorth lordan. Succeed or fail. Live or die. Now give back this poor boy's armor until you earn the right to wear it. Besides, he is cold.
So was Jame, all up her bare back. Half clothed was far worse than stark naked, but must she face the outer darkness in nothing but her skin? What if the blind Arrin-ken was waiting for her? On the other hand, did she really want to back out of the Earth Wife's presence or, worse, turn bare buttocks on her great-grandmother? Oh well.
At the thought, she felt suddenly lighter, with good reason: the armor was gone, or rather back where it belonged.
"I cared for the mare," grumbled that huge voice, thunder receding. "I will keep what watch I can over her fosterling until (if ever) you assume your responsibilities. Here."
Something scratchy dropped around her bare shoulders—a kind of blanket, knit of moss and lichen.
"Now sleep."
And, despite herself, she did.