Everyone agreed afterward that it had been the most eventful Minor Harvest in living memory.
All the northern keeps received at least a dusting of ash and a day of darkness, reeking of sulfur, not unlike the end of the world. Beasts ran mad in the fields, the Silver seethed white with debris, and scrollsmen gleefully collected samples from the ramparts of Mount Alban. Later, one swore that he had recreated a miniature volcano, but as the glass globe containing it immediately exploded, his claim went unrecorded—and no, colleagues said, the chaos to which his room had been reduced proved nothing, unless he wanted to credit the college kitchen with similar feats of spontaneous creation on a daily basis.
Gothregor suffered the worst of ash, wind, and rain, due to the clash of the north wind and the Tishooo directly overhead. Half a dozen hay ricks were torn apart or burnt down, but the rest stood firm under their hoods of woven rye while their stone foundations raised them above the subsequent torrent of ash-laden mud.
The stepped fields above, however, were utterly destroyed, and their precious crops with them.
The only good thing was that a day later the Highlord had suddenly reappeared, face down and dazed but otherwise unhurt, in the middle of the ruined field.
The day after that, his sister the lordan Jameth limped back into Tentir by a side door, apparently hoping that her return would escape immediate notice. It didn't.
Vant stopped short in the doorway of the Knorth barracks, staring at this dirty, singed apparition with its clothes hanging off it in rags and its eyebrows gone.
"Lady, what in Perimal's name happened to you?"
"Don't ask," she snarled, echoed by the ounce at her heels. "Just tell Rue to get me hot water, fresh clothes, and food. Lots of it. I'm starved."
The randon college quickly settled back into its routine, with a growing sense of urgency. All too soon would come the autumn cull and the end of many hopes.
Jame in particular had cause to worry. After a slow start, she had lost more training time than any other cadet due to various mishaps, and now she was hindered by severely bruised if not broken ribs. Her ten-command began to look worried and Vant increasingly smug.
It disturbed her to learn, by accident, that the cull would not be like the summer testing, as she had assumed.
She and Timmon were on their way down from sword practice on the second floor of Old Tentir. Jame, as usual, had been disarmed with unnerving speed. This time the blade had spun straight out the window, to be caught below by the Commandant and returned with a polite request that in future the Knorth Lordan was, please, not to substitute disemboweling her instructors for driving them insane.
Huh, thought Jame sourly. Sheth hadn't even had to ask whose escaped weapon it was.
"That's another black stone for you, for sure," said Timmon cheerfully. "Maybe you'll break the college record and get all eleven of them. You know," he added, seeing her puzzled expression. "Black stone, white stone, leave or stay."
"I don't know. What are you talking about?"
"I keep forgetting. You weren't raised in the randon tradition, were you? See, each member of the Randon Council has one black stone and one white. That's . . ."
"Eighteen in all. I can count, you know."
"Actually, it's twenty-two, because the Highlord's war leader—Ran Harn, in this case—and the Commandant each get an extra black and white to play with. You look confused. Now, attend, child, while I teach you the facts of life."
He sat down on the steps, obliging her to do the same and other cadets to swerve, cursing, around them.
Jame gritted her teeth. She hated it when Timmon went all superior on her or forced her to follow his lead. Even more, though, she feared these sudden gulfs of ignorance that kept opening up under her feet, threatening to swallow her whole.
"Did you notice that rather severe Ardeth randon watching us at play just now, when you threw your sword out the window? Remember his gray silk scarf? That's the mark of a randon council member, one of nine, each a former commandant of Tentir except for the one currently wearing the white scarf."
"Sheth Sharp-tongue."
"Indeed. You may also have noticed other gray scarves wandering around the college recently. Even Harn Grip-hard had dug up some ratty bit of gray cloth to mark his rank—honestly, your house and its clothes! Anyway, they're taking note of the best and the worst of us. Sometime before Autumn Eve, they meet in the college Map Room to cast the stones.
"Imagine the scene: It's nightfall. The room is lit with a thousand candles, illuminating the murals of all our greatest battles. The Council sits in a circle on the floor. Behind each stands a sergeant of his or her house. Also there's a scrollsman tucked away in a corner somewhere to keep score.
"So. Starting with the Highlord's house, the attendant randon calls out the name of each cadet in turn. As lordan, you'll come either first or last, as I will for the Ardeth. If no one casts a stone, you're in. The same goes for one or more unchallenged whites. Get only black, though, and you're out."
His blithe tone began to make Jame feel queasy. Of his own success, he apparently had no doubt. It was that stress on the second-person pronoun "you" that twisted her guts.
"Yes," she said, "but what if there's a mix of black and white stones?"
"Ah, then it gets interesting. In the second round, get at least six white stones and you're in, or at least six black and you're out. If it's four or five either way, though, they consider it too close to call, so on to round three, where Harn's and Sheth's extra stones come into play. There, simple majority rules."
"Enough," she said, standing up. "You're making my head hurt."
"Ah, don't fret." He also rose, with a laugh. "If you do get thrown out, you can always try a contract with me. Trust me, it would be fun. We could practice tonight, to see if we suit each other."
Just then, an Ardeth girl brushed past them on the way down the stairs, ramming her elbow into Jame's sore ribs as if by accident. Timmon caught her as she lurched sideways and nearly fell.
"Narsa!" he shouted after the descending Kendar. "Stop that!"
Jame caught her breath and drew herself upright, out of his embrace. She had recognized Timmon's one night conquest from so many weeks ago before he had given up trying to make her jealous.
"Still after you, is she?"
Timmon looked exasperated. "I keep telling her that it's over. Why won't she believe me?"
"You, my boy, have been a bit too free with your glamour, and don't look at me like that: You know what I mean."
"There was never a problem with it until you came along," he muttered, no longer meeting her eyes.
"None that you deigned to notice, anyway, and from now on stay out of my dreams. One of these nights, you're going to get hurt."
They had reached the great hall and stopped to watch the Danior cadet Tarn wrestling with a Molocar pup. Young as it was, all bumbling paws and flopping dewlaps, it easily bowled him over and sat on his chest, licking his face.
"The Caineron Lordan gave him to me," he explained, trying to escape its great, sloppy tongue. "We haven't bonded yet, and of course nothing can replace Torvo—Turvie, stop that!—but still . . ."
He laughed as the pup rolled onto its back, grinning idiotically, and presented its belly to be rubbed.
Jame pressed her hand to her forehead in sudden pain. "Ouch."
"Now what?" Timmon demanded, half solicitous, half exasperated.
"Nothing. Someone I've been expecting has just arrived." She flinched again. "Quit it! I hear you. I'm coming. Excuse me," she said to Timmon. "I've got to find the horse-master."
On the ramp down to the underground stable, she met Gorbel and the other four Highborn of his ten-command, on their way up from their last lesson of the day. The Caineron Lordan grunted when he saw her and would have limped past without speaking.
"It was kind of you to give Tarn that puppy," she said, stopping him.
"Huh." His eyes, bloodshot and sullen, refused to meet her own. Obviously his willow-infected foot still hurt despite Kindrie's best efforts. "Runt of the litter, wasn't it? Either that or throw it to the direhounds."
One of the Caineron made a low comment to another, and both snickered. Gorbel had come back from Restormir with a new set of Highborn "friends" or, more likely, spies for his father. Jame wondered how they could rank as cadets, arriving this late in the season, long past the tests. The Commandant hadn't said anything, but then neither had he about Gorbel.
At a guess, the Caineron Lordan had also gotten an earful from Caldane about fraternizing with the hated Knorth, however accidentally. Jame sighed. It looked as if they were going to be enemies again, not that they had ever had much of a chance at friendship. A shame, that: Gorbel was better than most of his house, when his father left him alone. She stepped aside and let him go.
The horse-master stood at the door of the tack-room, watching with disapproval as the five Kendar Caineron cleaned up after the Highborn whom they served.
"You ride it, you care for it," he muttered aside to Jame. "M'lord Gorbel knows that. What cause has he suddenly to go all high and mighty?"
"I think his father is riding him. Hard. And his foot hurts, which is partly my fault. Master, I need your help."
He raised bushy eyebrows at her. "Now what have you done, stampeded the herd off to Hurlen?"
"No, they're quite close," she said, somewhat distractedly, adding as if to the air, "Stop that, or d'you want me to start shouting back?"
"Here now, lady, are you all right?"
"Oh, I'm not the one hurt . . . much. Please, master, come with me, and bring your tools."
"Which? What for?"
"Over-grown hooves, back teeth that need floating, a bowed tendon, and a roast chicken. No, sorry, I'm supposed to bring that last one. Meet you at the north gate."
Some fifteen minutes later Jame emerged from Tentir with a soggy bundle hidden under her jacket, leaking grease onto her shirt. The horse-master waited, a bulging leather work-bag slung over his shoulder.
"I think," he said, "that you three lordan have run mad. That fool Timmon just tried to charm his way into coming too."
Of course his curiosity would have been piqued, thought Jame, looking anxiously about for the Ardeth's grinning face.
"No, no. I set him to cleaning tack—a proper punishment for all the times he's left his own mount in a muck sweat. The last I saw, the Caineron were jamming the tack-room door, pretending to be deaf and pointedly polishing spurs, with him boxed inside. Ha. Let him practice his guiles on that lot. Now, which way?"
Jame paused to check her mental compass. "West, above the college."
He grunted and set off. Like most of his charges, the horse-master had four gaits: walk, trot, canter, and bolt. Their brisk pace soon had Jame clutching a stitch in her side. They passed between the trees, climbing toward where the lower slopes of the Snowthorns were strewn with enormous, fallen boulders, like so many snaggle-teeth set in a giant's lower jaw. Most of them still had drifts of volcanic ash piled against their western sides where the pounding rain had failed to wash them completely away.
Rounding a huge rock, they came on a pale lady with long, white hair, sitting on a stone. She leaped up with a frightened cry, swayed, and became a Whinno-hir standing on three feet with the fourth raised, delicate hoof trembling.
The horse-master had stopped dead, staring. "M'lady? Bel-tairi? I thought you were dead!" He dropped his bag with a muffled, complicated crash and threw his arms around her neck. The mare suppressed a start, then bent her head gently to return the embrace.
A sharp clatter of hooves, and there was the rathorn colt, ears flat, crest rising all down his spine.
"It's all right!" Jame hastily stepped between them. "I told you: what do I know about these things? But he can help. Here." She tossed the soggy bag at the colt's feet. He ripped it open and began to tear at the roast fowl, all the time keeping a wary eye on the two Kencyr.
"Seems you've been busy, lady," said the horse-master to Jame. He blew his nose on his sleeve and reached for his tools. "Ancestors know, you're the last person on Rathillien I would expect to be keeping such company, nor yet a Whinno-hir with a rathorn, for that matter. How did it happen, and where's m'lady Bel been these forty years past, while we all mourned her as dead?"
While he bound the bowed tendon back into place and trimmed the mare's hooves, Jame tried to explain, if not the whole story, at least as much as applied to the two equines. It was, perforce, a narrative full of holes.
"Let's see if I've got this straight," said the horse-master at last, as he lifted one of Bel's rear hoofs and began to rasp it flat. "M'lady here gets branded by that bastard Greshan, then chased to the top of a mountain path where she finds a stone door opening into . . . what? Oh, right: the lodge of the Earth Wife, whoever that might be. There she falls asleep for the next forty-odd years until she hears Lady Kinzi's death banner calling to her. Once she's found that, she comes looking for you. At that point, four decades' worth of teeth and toenails all catch up with her at once."
"Er, yes, more or less." She noted that he had skipped over the mystery of Greshan's death, if indeed it was a mystery and not simply a hunting accident as Hallik Hard-hand had reported, before killing himself. On the other hand, how many would know the truth, besides those who had been there? "You believe me?"
"I'm not about to call the Highlord's sister a liar. Besides, here Bel-tairi is." He started gently to brush her mane away from the ruined side of her face, but let it alone when she flinched. Instead, he turned his attention to the over-grown sweep of her tail, tangled with briers but still magnificent. "A pity to cut that. Braid it, maybe, but later." He drew a long file out of his sack. "Open wide, m'lady."
When the Whinno-hir did, looking nervous, he unceremoniously slid his hand into her mouth, seized her tongue, and drew it out to one side.
"Here, make yourself useful. Hang on to this, firm but gentle. Don't pull it."
Jame found herself gripping that surprisingly thick, muscular organ. It twitched. The mare's eye rolled with alarm as the master slid the file between her back teeth and her raw, inner cheek, but Jame's hold immobilized her as he began to rasp away the barbs. The sound was awful.
A hot, menacingly snort blasted down the back of Jame's neck.
"Don't give me that look," she told the rathorn over her shoulder. "This is apparently how it's done, and it doesn't seem to hurt her."
"Not if done right," said the master briskly. "Change sides. Hold. And that's that. A few weeks for the mouth to heal, a bit longer for the tendon, decent forage with plenty of oats, and all will be right again."
"Except for her poor face," said Jame, watching the mare wander off, gingerly working her jaw.
"Well, yes. No helping that, worse luck, but one can live with scars, as well you know." He bent to clean and stow his tools. "About the rathorn, now. You say he's gotten himself blood-bound to you—a damn fool thing to do, but there it is. How d'you mean to handle that?"
Jame sat down on a rock and considered. The colt crouched some distance away like a great cat, pinning his prey with a dew-spur, occasionally raising his head to spit a bone at her.
How indeed?
So far, he had communicated with her mostly in blasts of raw emotion, usually rage or fear. He was intelligent, though, with a complex language of his own comprised, as far as she could tell, largely of scents and images. No doubt he already understood her better than she did him, although she suspected that he would pretend to misunderstand whenever it suited him. They hadn't come yet to a true test of wills.
Just you try, said those red, red eyes, with a glint of unholy anticipation.
Jame sighed. Sooner or later, she would have to. In the meantime, ancestors help them, they were stuck with each other.
The master stood and shouldered his bag. "You're going to need help," he said flatly.
Jame had been hoping for just such an offer, but now she hesitated. This was clearly a job as much for a dragon-tamer as for a horse-trainer; and while the bond between them prevented the colt from deliberately killing her, she sensed that he would cheerfully slaughter anyone else who annoyed him.
"I think," she said, "that he and I should get better acquainted first. I'm right, aren't I, that he's still too young to put under saddle?"
"By half a year at least, if he were a horse. With a rathorn, who knows?" He shook his head—in exasperation or amusement, it was hard to tell. "Mad, the pair of you. No, I won't speak of this to anyone, nor of m'lady Bel's return. Yet. Small blame to her, poor thing, but Trinity only knows what ancient stink her reappearance may stir up."
On the point of leaving, he paused and looked back at them with a sudden lop-sided smile under his flattened nose.
"Ah, but what a thing that will be, someday, to ride a rathorn—assuming he doesn't have you for breakfast first."
Three weeks passed.
By now Jame's ribs had healed, although the bruise on her side remained a wonder to behold, if anyone had been there to see it. On her return that first night, Graykin had announced that he had found lodgings more to his taste and had departed, meager possessions in hand. Jame wondered where he had gone and what he found, day after day, to occupy himself, but was too pleased at her sudden privacy to ask questions on the increasingly rare occasions when he reported to her. She hadn't realized until then how much she had grown to dislike his nightly, disapproving presence. God's claws, if she didn't care how she looked, why should he?
On the other hand, Harn had finally exerted his authority during her absence to repair the barracks roof. She supposed the work had to be done sometime. Still, it irked her not to see the stars at night slowly wheeling overhead or to wake in the morning with dew on her face.
. . . rootless and roofless . . .
Huh. Maybe she just didn't like roofs.
Worse, though, with the attic enclosed, for the first time she became aware of the stale reek of the lordan's quarters below, seeping up through the floor-boards. The smell gave her bad dreams, or rather the same dream over and over, in which she sat drunk beside a roaring hearth, listening with a terrible, gloating anticipation to hesitant steps as they approached on the outer stair. Then the door would open and she would see her brother's bewildered eyes set in their father's incongruously young, terrified face.
One night, the door opened and Timmon stood on the threshold, his smirk melting into dismay.
"Eek!" he said.
"You have the most uncomfortable dreams," he informed her the next day. "Just once, why can't I find you frolicking naked in a meadow or something?"
"I frolic poorly, and I did warn you. That dream is particularly dangerous. Stay out of it."
She certainly wished that she could, but some sly, malignant force seemed to be behind it, pushing. Sooner or later, as she had warned Tori, they would both have to see it through, but not just yet.
In the meantime, partly to escape it, partly to keep Bel and the rathorn company, she took to sleeping up among the boulders, sometimes waking in the early dawn to find herself bracketed by their warm bodies. Whenever that happened, the colt always lurched to his feet with a snort of disgust as if to say, How dare you sneak up on me?
Often, though, she woke to the arrival of the horse-master, come to apply fresh poultices and to re-bandage the mare's leg. A bowed tendon, obviously, was not to be taken lightly. As night turned to pallid dawn, he often stood with her by the hour in a mountain stream, up to their respective knees in icy water and his flat nose running with the cold. Meanwhile, a diet of oats and lush summer grass began to fill in the flesh between her ribs and to restore the gloss to her coat.
The colt foraged for himself, although he still complained bitterly whenever Jame forgot to bring him treats or anything other than his beloved roast fowl.
"So learn how to catch and cook them yourself," she told his retreating back as he stalked away from an offering of (admittedly) rather tough stewed kidneys.
She emptied the sack on the ground in case he changed his mind and tucked her hands under her armpits to warm them. It might be summer, but mornings on the mountain were cold. She missed her gloves, the last pair having gone up in flames while rescuing the Earth Wife. Rue could knit her mittens by the dozen, but was struggling with bits of soft leather to make acceptable alternatives with fingers.
The horse-master came back with the Whinno-hir limping after him. "Fifteen minutes' walk twice a day," he said. "Slow and sure. Not to fret, lass: she's getting there, although things would go much faster with a few leaves of comfrey and yarrow from your grandmother's moon garden. That in a mash of linseed oil and mangle-wart would do wonders."
He paused. "A word of warning: sleeping up here is all well and good, and I daresay that colt won't let anything happen to you, however foul his temper, but be careful. The hill-tribes have started raiding southward earlier than usual, and coming in larger numbers. There's already been trouble at Restormir and Valantir with their outlying herds. I dunno what's gotten into old Chingetai. He must realize that if his folk start killing ours, there'll be Perimal to pay."
Jame wondered too. The Merikit had made a proper mess of their midsummer rites and were lucky as a result not to have been buried up to their necks in volcanic ash or mud slides, if not molten lava. Could the chief's power be so undermined that he had to prove himself with these dangerous raids or—here was a thought—what about the tribes living farther north, near the Barrier, whom the Earth Wife had mentioned? Thanks to Chingetai's earlier scheme, the Merikits' territory now lay open and unguarded in all directions.
Below in New Tentir, the morning horn sounded.
Late again, Jame thought, dashing breathless into the square with Jorin on her heels. Rue slipped a chunk of bread into her hand as she passed. At least she had managed to enforce her order that the rest of the Knorth eat breakfast whether she was there or not, despite Vant's protests. No doubt he had taken his complaint to higher authorities. Having heard nothing back, Jame only hoped that no one was keeping a secret ledger against her, full of black stones.
As she took her place before her house, twitching grass-stained clothes straight, the master sergeant on duty stepped forward to announce the day's assignments. For Jame's ten, this amounted to field maneuvers and archery before lunch, the Sene and composition afterward, partnered respectively with ten-commands from the Coman, Danior, Edirr, and Jaran. Only the last caused a murmur of dismay among the Knorth: according to rumor, the scholarly Jaran were taught their letters before they learned how to walk. Now, how unnatural and unfair was that?
Nonetheless, Jame enjoyed her classes. Maneuvers involved not just formation work but directed attacks, each member of the ten responding to her gestures like the fingers of a hand. They were learning to work well together, knowing each other's strengths and weaknesses, trusting that however unorthodox her orders, they usually got results. There were, Jame supposed, some advantages in coming to such work with no preconceived ideas, assuming that one didn't confuse one's own command more than one did the enemy. In the meantime, it was rather fun to see how often she could make Brier blink with well-concealed surprise.
During archery practice, as an experiment, they blindfolded Erim and spun him around until he wobbled like a drunkard. His subsequent shots hit a half-inch sapling, a rabbit hole, and the sergeant's hat. He could hit anything, he admitted afterward, somewhat shame-faced, as long as it wasn't alive.
After lunch, they practiced the Sene with the Edirr, who could be trusted to bring imagination and enthusiasm to any endeavor. It took skill to shift from Senetha to Senethar in time to the flute, which played for one but not for the other, stopping and starting at the player's whim. Dance to fight, fight to dance, the forms flowed together and apart. At one point, Jame found herself part of a line of Knorth dancers all moving as one, met by an Edirr row that mirrored their actions. At such a moment, it felt as if the world itself was finally coming into balance, the same thrill running down every nerve.
Then the instructor clapped to end the lesson.
Jame and her Edirr opposite relaxed and saluted each other with a mutual sigh of appreciation:
Ah, that was nice.
On the way to the last class, an unfamiliar sergeant pulled Jame aside and directed her to follow him into a section of Old Tentir where she had never been before. There, he showed her into an interior room some thirty feet square, its wooden walls deeply gouged and prickly with splinters. Even more unusual, a wide circle had been cut in the ceiling so that it opened into the room above. A waist-high wall surrounded the hole and several dark figures lined it, back-lit by torches. The glimmers of a white scarf and of a pale gray one marked the presence of two randon council members.
The sergeant handed Jame a padded jacket and a leather hood with a metal grill over the face, then withdrew. So, she thought, shrugging on the heavy coat and buckling it. This was the infamous fight pit, where the Arrin-thar was taught and cadets were thrown to the monster. After the last lesson, it felt like a sudden plunge into the dark heart of the Kencyrath, where secrets were sealed with spilt blood and tied up with entrails.
She wasn't surprised when the door opposite opened and Bear shambled in.
He was every bit as large as she remembered, barefoot, and as shabbily dressed. Tangled gray hair tumbled into the horrible cleft in his skull. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, then saw her and uttered a grunt of mingled surprise and interest.
She made herself stand still as he lumbered over to her, his personal miasma rolling forward with him. Trinity, didn't anyone ever provide the poor man with bath water? Then again, he might simply drink it. He touched her hair—since she had lost her last cap, she had taken to braiding it—and sniffed its scent on his fingertips. His claws were huge, more overgrown than the last time she had seen him and beginning to curve in on themselves, as did his toenails to the extent that walking must surely be painful. He took her hands, turned them over, and pressed the palms to make her own much smaller claws extend.
"Huh," he said, satisfied, letting them go.
She pulled on the hood and mask. He had none. Did the watchers think she would never break through his guard, or didn't they care?
"We gave him a White Knife," Harn had said. "He picked his toenails with it. Some would poison his food or rush him with spears like a cornered boar, but God curse anyone who takes the life of such a man without a fair fight."
They saluted each other, formal on her part, sketchy on his as if he only half remembered how. For that matter, she recalled precious little of her one lesson with the clawed gloves. At the time, she had been too shocked by the instructor's matter-of-fact acceptance that she had the real things. He had said then that she would need special training. Well, here it was.
She imitated Bear's pose, hands up, claws out, weight balanced between one foot advanced and the other withdrawn. He began a series of movements, slowly, so that she could mirror them. These must be the practice kantirs of the Arrin-thar, similar to those of the Senethar or the Sene but darker and deeper.
Here we reach the hidden nature, she thought. Here is the secret compact with our god, who has made us his champions and his monsters. Remember, you have five razors on each hand—you, who don't even like knives. But you are no one's prey, and no one can disarm you without destroying what you are.
After a lifetime of concealment, the change in focus felt very strange, and almost exhilarating.
Bear's actions became faster and surer as his body remembered what his mind had forgotten. His claws raked the air in slashes that could tear out a throat or rip off a face. Strike lower to disembowel.
He clapped.
Jame stopped, startled, then surrendered her hands to his so that he might shape them properly. Of course: her nails, like his, curved, although not as much. A straight, fire-leaping spear-strike wouldn't work. She must angle the blow, so, to penetrate the muscle wall and scoop out the vitals within. Huh. Just what she needed: something to make her more dangerous. Never mind. One used what one was given.
Faster now.
They no longer mirrored each other but struck and countered, advancing, retreating. He was nearly three times her size and weight, his enormous hands surprisingly fast, but his half-crippled feet less so. Use that. She must play agile ounce to his massive Arrin-ken. Slip under his swing, slash at his side in passing . . . damn, why hadn't they given him armor? He turned, nearly catching her. A huge grin split his bearded face. She wouldn't trick him that way again.
For some time, there had been a growing disturbance on the balcony, erupting suddenly into a scuffle.
". . . told you this was too dangerous!" someone was shouting. It sounded like Harn. "Stop them!"
Despite herself, Jame glanced up. At that moment, Bear's open palm strike caught her in the face guard and smashed her back against the wall. He had, of course, expected her to block or dodge. All she could see, and that not very clearly because they were so close, were his claws driven through and entangled in the metal mesh.
A roar. A thud that shook the floor. Harn must have jumped down into the pit and be coming at them. Bear swung around to face him, perforce swinging her with him, nearly off her feet. He shook his hand to free it, only managing to shake her as she gripped his wrist until she thought her neck would snap. If she was lucky, only the hood would rip off.
"Er . . ." she said, aware that probably no one could hear her. "Help?"
Then she remembered, and clapped her hands.
Bear stopped immediately. Harn did too, if only because several randon had grabbed him by the arms and were holding him.
"Child?" Sheth spoke mildly, somewhere behind her, also from the pit floor. For a moment there, it must have rained randon. "Are you all right?"
"In a minute." To herself, she sounded muffled and half-strangled, which was close to the case. "Can someone please get this hood off of me?"
She felt strong fingers unlace the cords behind her head and at last was able to wriggle free, wincing as caught strands of hair pulled out at the root. Her head at least still seemed to be attached, as she discovered by gingerly rotating it.
Bear had stepped back, one huge hand still tangled in the mask, the other absently scratching himself. That filthy lair of his must breed fleas by the dynasty. He also needed new clothes even worse than she did, especially pants.
"You know," Sheth was saying gently to Harn, "you nearly got your lordan killed. Bear was under control. You weren't."
The burly randon stared at him, then shook off his captors and blundered away. As Timmon had noted, he was indeed wearing what looked like a gray rag around his neck, probably the closest thing to a council scarf that he could find. Jame started after him, but Sheth stopped her. "Let him go. He needs to think about this."
"Ran, does it help or hurt him that I'm here?"
The Commandant considered this. "A good question, but then I don't know the answer, for any of us. We will just have to see, won't we?"
He had turned to go when she spoke again, on impulse: "Commandant, Bear is your older brother, isn't he? You were the one who pulled him out of the pyre, there, in the White Hills, when he had been left for dead."
He paused, a dark elegant shape in the door way, head bowed, face averted. "Ah, yes. And did that help or hurt? I don't know the answer to that question either."
Then he was gone.