Rue met her at the barracks door, with a startled glance after the retreating Randir, then another at the general stir along arcade.
"Lady, what's going on?"
Jame didn't feel like explaining, assuming she could, so she chose the simplest answer: "The autumn cull has begun."
The cadet shot an aghast look across the square at the lit windows of the Map Room. "What, tonight?"
Other Knorth cadets crowded behind her in a rising babble of voices: "What did she say?"
"They're casting the stones!"
"But what's this about a pile of corpses in the stable?"
"Never mind that. It's the cull!"
Jame recaptured Rue's attention with difficulty.
"Take the gray silk scarf to Ran Harn. Hurry."
"B-but I haven't even had time to wash it, and as for the embroidery . . ."
"Never mind that. He's about to cast the stones with what looks like a dirty sock tied around his neck. Go."
She climbed the stairs against a swift tide of descending cadets. They had all known this was coming, of course, but to have it suddenly upon them was another thing altogether. It didn't look as if anyone else would either want or get much sleep that night.
The Lordan's Coat still sprawled, ignobly abandoned, in the corner of the third floor common room. Dragging it by the collar as if by the scruff of the neck, she entered the lordan's apartment and closed both doors behind her. Jorin slipped through on her heels.
The inner room had been left a desolation of discarded clothes, empty chests, and tarnished trinkets, the tawdry remains of a worthless life and of a death largely unmourned. Even the smell seemed old, a dusty, faint reek of mortality. The door to the north wing servants' quarters stood ajar, and a thin, cold breath of air moved through it like a long sigh. Jame closed it. Then, feeling a bit foolish, she balanced a chair against it so that it would topple if the door moved.
Somewhere behind all those other boxes against the south wall, there was another door, but she didn't care to dig it out. Either Graykin was asleep in whatever nest he had made there or, more likely, he was out earning his keep by spying on the Map Room. Whichever, what she had to do now was none of his business. With a certain grim amusement, she booby-trapped that side of the room too with an assortment of knickknacks and bottles sure to crunch or roll under the unwary foot.
There. I warned you never to spy on me again.
A few embers glowed on the hearth among heaps of smoldering rags. Jame tossed in the wreckage of a cedar chest to rouse the flames and held her hands up to them as they flared. She still felt very cold, and shaken, and not at all prepared for what came next.
For that matter, was it really necessary, or even wise? One couldn't be physically hurt in dreams as one could in the soulscape, or so she supposed, but if she had actually begun to dream true, nightmares of the past might tell her things that hurt far worse than any punch in the nose. Did she really want to know what had happened in this room to her father so long ago? The old days held so many dark things, some perhaps best left undisturbed.
Ah, but the past wasn't dead, only asleep, waiting to rise again and to strike. She had the Witch's promise of that.
"Something changed your father, Rawneth had said through the Tempter's bleeding lips. "His blood is yours, and your brother's as well. Is his final madness also your joint inheritance? Can either of you truly know yourself until you understand him?
Huh. So much for any choice in the matter. This concerned Tori as much as it did her. Besides, in her experience if you turned your back on a problem, it tended to bite you in the ass.
Here was a pile of not too musty clothing, perhaps dropped by Rue in her rush downstairs. Jame heaped them on the raised hearth in a rough bed, lay down, still fully clothed, and tried to make herself comfortable. The fire warmed her back and Jorin crept into her arms, but she continued to shiver.
From the shadows by the door where she had let it fall, the Lordan's Coat smirked at her. There was no other word for the expression conveyed by those peaked folds of stitch-thickened cloth, too heavy to crumple even when unceremoniously dropped. With a sigh, over Jorin's protest at being disturbed, she rose to fetch it. After all, why else had she brought the damn thing in here with her? Rue had cleaned it as best she could and darned the ripped lining, but at the least movement the old stench seeped out of it, as strong, personal, and offensive as ever. As Jame returned to the hearth with it, she considered throwing it on the fire. Heirloom or not, Greshan had surely tainted it past repair. But if it had become the flayed skin of old nightmares, she still needed to learn its secrets.
With a smug reek, the coat settled over her in an unwelcome embrace. Wrinkles in the garments upon which she lay creased her flesh and Jorin grumbled as she shifted restlessly. The fire snarled over its wooden prey. From outside came the muted stir of the barracks.
Never in her life had she felt less like falling asleep.
"What are you grinning at?"
Harn Grip-hard glared at the senior Edirr randon, sitting cross-legged third to his right around the circle, beyond the haughty Ardeth and a Danior who seemed far too young to be here, in such august company. As in the hall below, the Randon Council kept to the order of their house banners, but in a circle without head or foot.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," said the Edirr hastily, and turned to speak to the grave Brandan on his right.
Harn tugged at the silk scarf. Pretty it might be, but slippery; he had had to knot it around his thick neck to keep it from slithering off. Now, however, he felt as if it was trying to strangle him. Either that, or guilt: The cadet Rue had intercepted him just outside the Map Room with a quick, hissed message that the Knorth Lordan had said he should wear it—this, when Jameth must know that he was about to betray her.
He squinted surreptitiously at the embroidered border that seemed to amuse the Edirr so much. Seen upside down, it looked like an abstract pattern, peacock blue thread on shimmering gray. Nothing to laugh at there, or anywhere else tonight that he could see.
The Tempter's grisly fate didn't bother him—much: clearly, the woman had crossed any number of lines, putting an arrow through Sheth Sharp-tongue being the least of them.
But that boy in the square with his throat torn out . . . such a pitiful, little heap he had made, his eyes and mouth agape with frozen horror. Harn remembered him alive, small for his age with a thin, intent face, struggling to keep up. A child. The Tempter would have used that: Here is your chance to prove yourself, to be blooded in your lady's service.
Blood. The ground had been soaked with it. His own hands felt wet and greasy—only with sweat, he told himself; but when he closed his eyes, all he saw was red.
What's happening to us, Blackie? How can such a thing occur, here of all places? Have we failed in honor, or has honor failed us?
He rolled two stones in his palm—one white quartz, the other black limestone, both polished smooth by a mountain stream and warming to his touch. Two more of each lay before him. Like the rest of the Council, he had spent the last few weeks making up his mind which stone each cadet had earned, white or black, in or out. Some of the choices hadn't been easy. One was getting harder by the minute. Perhaps he should ask for a delay. After such a night, were any of them fit to judge wisely?
The senior Randir Awl sat across from him, her back roughly to the east wall as his was to the balcony and the west. Murals flickered by candle-light all around them, each the bloody chaos of battle resolved into clean lines and glowing color. There on the north wall was the newest: the Cataracts. Awl had done fine service at the Lower Huddles and on many other so-called fields of honor, often by his side. A good woman. A good randon. Tonight, though, she looked like the unburnt dead. At her left hand was a knobby bone, the vertebra of a large snake; at her right, a black . . . thing, compact but convoluted, as if tightly wound, with an oily sheen—both no doubt the choice of her lady the Witch. Harn was angry for his colleague's sake. What had happened tonight wasn't her fault. Why did clean hands such as hers have to touch such things?
But she hadn't asked to delay the cull.
The Commandant sat to his left, beyond the Jaran. Candle-glow picked out the hawk-sharp lines of his face and a fresh, white scarf serving as a sling. His shoulder must throb with every heartbeat, but he showed no sign of it except perhaps for the gathering shadows under his eyes.
He hadn't asked for a delay either.
Harn sighed. If Sheth could do this with a bloody hole punched through him, so could he. Oh, but it was hard.
"We know why we are here." The Commandant's voice was flat. This is our sworn duty, its inflection said, and we may not turn from it. "The college cannot support its current population over the coming winter. More important, only the best belong here, and we have now had time to determine who they are. A score have already departed this night."
Awl's thin lips tightened, but she didn't speak nor did anyone look at her.
"We need to cull at least a hundred more. Are we agreed? Then let the stones fall—for the good of our randon fellowship, for our houses, for the Kencyrath as a whole, and for our personal honor, tonight so grievously wounded. May duty heal us all."
This is ridiculous, thought Jame, still fidgeting on the hearth.
Never patient where his comfort was concerned, Jorin had long since retreated to a quiet corner. She herself had slept sound in stranger places than this. So, why not tonight?
Earlier, she had wished she had some of Kindrie's foul tincture of hemlock. That in turn had reminded her of the bottles Rue had unearthed and, rising, she had found one still marginally drinkable, in a square green bottle sealed with wax and soft lead. Tubain had kept a similar jar behind the counter at the Res aB'tyrr in Tai-tastigon, until Cleppetty had made him empty it into the gutter. Jame remembered the curb-stones smoking. But Highborn, she reminded herself, were very hard to poison. Anise, tansy, wormwood, and a kick like a cart horse. One swallow had numbed her mouth and made her eyes sting; but that, apparently, was all.
Oh, why couldn't she sleep?
"Because you will always fail," said the Tempter's voice, filtered through a hum of insects.
She hawked to clear her throat. An ejected bee tumbled out onto the floor, its guts ripped out with its stinger. It righted itself, unsteadily, and bumbled into the fire where flames kindled its wings. The Randir herself stood in shadow, her form still yet strangely a-seethe.
"You haven't the focus," she said. "Lover of confusion, of chaos, of destruction."
"I am not! I just don't see things as simply as you Randir do. Poor Shade. I made her head hurt. Mine is throbbing now too."
"Serves yuh right." Simmel balanced on the wobbly chair set against the side door, gumming his words without teeth. Grains of dust trickled out of his ears and empty eye sockets, tick, tick, tick, onto the floor. "Look at m' poor head, all s-smashed an' hollow."
"Thank your lady for that," Jame snapped. "She's the one who emptied your skull, not me, and you let her. The world is not black and white."
"It is tonight," said the Tempter, with a ghastly, toothy smile full of mangled, wriggling bees. "White stone, in; black stone, out."
Jame felt warmth against her back. She thought it was the fire, until it stirred restlessly.
"I'm going to fail," murmured her brother. "So many faces, so many names . . . how can I remember them all?"
They might have been children again in the keep in the Haunted Lands, huddled together in bed for comfort, for protection.
"Mullen. Marc. I will never forget them, but one is dead and the other refused my bond. Father said I was weak, and I am. I am. I am."
All right, Jame thought. I'm asleep after all, but is this my dream or his?
"I'm going to fail . . ."
She tried to turn, but the lordan's jacket fought her. How many arms did the thing have anyway, and why couldn't it keep them to itself?
"Tori, let me help you. Dammit"—this in a sputter to the coat, as it wrapped a boneless sleeve around her face and tried to stuff itself down her throat—"Ummph . . . let me go! Tori!"
Could he hear her? Was he even there anymore?
With a great effort she flung off the coat and scrambled to her feet, to find by the draft that she had shed all her other clothing as well. Simmel snickered from the shadows.
"Oh, shut up," she snarled at him. "You're not so pretty yourself."
"Remember me!" dry voices cried from the ashes of the past, from the crack and greedy hiss of the pyre. "Remember me! I brought your grandfather word of his son's death, and for that he cursed me."
"I honored seven contracts, at last dying in childbirth far from home."
"I fought beside your father in the White Hills, and died at the hands of my own mate for the sake of our unborn child."
"I saved Tentir's honor at the point of the White Knife or thought that I did, but all in vain . . ."
She could almost see them now in the arc of the fireplace, a vast, gray host crowding around her brother, reaching out to him with unraveling hands. How many there were, all the past Highborn and Kendar of their house whose blood, like Kinzi's and Aerulan's, trapped their souls in the weave of their death.
Torisen held out his beautiful, scarred hands—to embrace or to ward them off?
"Yes, yes, I know my duty and am honor bound to it, but so many names, so many faces—how can I remember you all?"
That last gray shape who had spoken of honor, Tentir, and the White Knife . . . he had been a big Kendar with large hands and a broad, almost familiar face.
I know him, thought Jame. I know him!
"Tori!" she called over the wasteland of ashen heads, of gray faces turning slowly toward her even as they crumbled to ruin. "That's Hallik Hard-hand, Harn's father! And that other must be Sere, Winter's mate. Don't you remember his face painted on the walls of our parents' bedroom? I know others as well, dead and alive. Let me help!"
But could he hear her? The cries had grown shrill, demanding: "Me!"
"Me!"
"Take me!"
Banners unraveled and rewove to clothe the living. Highborn ladies swarmed around Torisen in a swirl of stolen funereal finery, clawing strips off each other to reach him. What are the claims of the dead compared to the ravenous hunger of the living?
"Take me!"
"Me!"
"Me!"
What was this, a feeding frenzy?
Jame plunged in among them, naked and thoroughly exasperated. They scattered before her with faint, horrified shrieks at her unmasked face. No doubt about it: This was Tori's nightmare, asleep and awake. If even a fraction of it was true, the Women's World had lost its mind, or at least its head. No wonder Tori was running scared. But where was he, or rather where were they?
She had followed him to a cold, dark place which, surely, she should know by that thin, sour smell, but it was so very, very dark, and it felt safer somehow not to know, or to be noticed. Voices muttered, rising and falling, woven together with the dense texture of an argument that never ends but only repeats with endless variations.
". . . hands, hands, hands," Torisen was saying. He sounded much younger than he had a moment ago, and his voice cracked with helpless exhaustion. "How they clutch and cling! They will drag me down, but I swore never to fail another as I did Mullen. I s-swore!"
A hoarse, muffled voice answered him, an insidious murmur from within. "We all swear. Many swore to me, and all swore false. I have lost thousands. I lost you, my only son. What is one man compared to that?"
"He was just that, a man, and he trusted me. They all do."
"All who trust are fools. I trusted you. Trust no one."
"But she's my s-sister, my twin, my other half. Why can't I trust her and accept her help?"
It was the voice of a child, pleading against the dark. Jame wanted to shout at it, "Oh, grow up! Don't ask. Tell him!" But her own voice caught in her throat.
"Because, boy, she is Shanir."
"Is—is that really so bad?"
Now she was truly struck dumb. When had Tori begun to question that, the bedrock of their early training?
"Anar taught us the old stories. Mother sang them to us in the dark, before she went away. Once, those of the Old Blood did great things . . ."
"Terrible things."
"That too. Yet everything else in life is gray. Why is only this black and white?"
. . . white stone, black stone, in or out . . .
"You ask me that, again and again and again. Do you think, if you whine long enough, I can change night to day? Weak, foolish, faithless boy. Shall I tell you, again, what that filthy Shanir, my brother Greshan, did to me as a child, no older than you are now? Shall I show you?"
No! Jame wanted to shout. Leave him alone, you bully! But fear swallowed her voice.
"See. Hear. Learn," said that loathsome voice, gloating over each word. "Just a drop of his blood on the knife's tip, not strong enough to bind for more than an hour or two, just long enough to make the game more interesting. Dear little Gangrene. You went crying to Father the last time, but he didn't believe you, and he never will. Not against me. You're a worthless, sniveling liar, and everyone knows it. Now open wide like a good little boy or I'll break your teeth—again—with the blade. There. Now, come to me."
And Jame woke on the cold hearth, with the iron taste of blood in her mouth from her own bitten tongue and her brother's cry of horror echoing in her mind.
The first round of the cull went much as expected, although with a few surprises. Naturally, the Highlord's house began, and the first name called by the sergeant standing behind Harn Grip-hard was that of the Knorth Lordan.
For a long moment, no one moved except for Harn, tugging again at his gray silk scarf. No stone cast, black or white, meant that Jameth was in. Then the senior Jaran leaned forward and rolled an ivory ball carved with lesser runes into the circle. Harn felt the room swim. Must he be the one after all to cast the black? But the Randir spared him. Whether on her own judgment or by order of her lady, she let drop her black ball. It neither bounced nor rolled, but fell with a plop and lay there, twitching slightly.
Again, everyone waited, but no one moved. Then Jaran and Randir scooped up their markers and the next name was called.
Harn let his breath out in a loud whoosh, causing the Commandant to shoot him an amused glance. Jameth's fate would not be decided until the second round, or possibly the third and last.
Judgment was also suspended on the Caineron and Ardeth lordans. Politics aside, some felt that the former was too clumsy and the latter too casual to make good randon. Brier Iron-thorn also received one white and one black stone. No one doubted her ability, but several were still wary of her sudden change of houses. Such things rarely happened, and caused great suspicion when they did. At the end of the first round, the fates of some two hundred cadets remained undecided.
By now, it was well into the night, the thick candles banded with the hours half burnt.
"At this rate," murmured the young Danior to the Brandan in the pause between rounds, "we won't be done until dawn. D'you think the Commandant will last that long?"
The Brandan gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I've seen Sheth Sharp-tongue direct a battle, aye, and fight in it for three days running, with a thigh slashed two inches deep. We only found out about it at the end, when he dismounted and collapsed from loss of blood. Awl worries me more. Every time she touches that damn black ball, something goes out of her."
"And Harn?"
"You sit closer to him than I do. Keep watch. I don't like his color, or the way he keeps tightening that blasted scarf; and I don't trust the Ardeth to help, although he sits closer still."
They both glanced at the senior Ardeth who stood aside, sipping amber wine from a crystal glass. He and the Jaran were the only pure Highborn currently on the Randon Council, although otherwise they were as different from each other as fine leather and rough silk.
"So Lord Ardeth still isn't speaking to Blackie."
"Not directly." The Brandan took a swig of watered cider. Only Harn was drinking his neat, and hard. "We hear rumors that he's trying to get at the Highlord through his matriarch, Adiraina. Our own matriarch hasn't been near Gothregor since she returned the Knorth death banner."
Tactfully, the Danior didn't comment on this. Everyone knew that Brenwyr was unwell and that her lord brother worried about her, but whatever ailed her belonged to the impenetrable, no doubt trivial mysteries of the Women's World.
The Commandant returned to the circle and sank into his place on the floor, followed soon after with some cracking of stiff joints by the rest of the Council. The second round of the cull was about to begin.
Getting back to sleep required several more pulls on the green bottle, taken reluctantly: Jame remembered all too clearly how helpless she had felt when Kindrie had dosed her with hemlock. Dreams were tricky enough as it was, she thought as she dropped back into her noisome nest on the hearth, head and stomach roiling.
As it was, she no longer knew who was dreaming what. Had that last been a dream at all, or had she descended far enough to eavesdrop on Tori at the bolted door in his soul-image? Even then, it had been strange, that slip from her father's voice to her uncle's. Greshan, a blood-binder? It didn't surprise her much, nor that his Shanir powers should have proved so much weaker than her father's, considering that the older boy had only been able to bind the younger for short periods of time. It certainly helped to explain Ganth's hatred of the Old Blood, without forcing him to realize that he possessed it himself.
What a miserable childhood he must have had, almost as bad as her own. What had it been like, to live under the shadow of such alternating cruelty and neglect? Her mind drifted toward sleep, trying to imagine the boy her father had been.
It was Autumn's Eve.
The boy wandered in his grandmother's Moon Garden, between banks of tall, pale comfrey and lacy yarrow, between primrose and arching fern. He had the slight build of his house and the fine, strong bones just emerging from childhood, but undercut by an anxious air like that of a beaten puppy. All around were healing herbs, but none to cure the emptiness within, the echoing sense of worthlessness so carefully nurtured by his older brother, the Knorth Lordan.
Another walked beside him in his moon-cast shadow: daughter-to-be, child of his ruined future. If he thinks so little of you, it asked, why does he bother to torment you at all?
The boy didn't know. All he asked was to be left alone. Somehow, though, he was like a secret itch that his brother felt compelled to scratch until it bled.
He glanced unhappily up at a dark window set high in the garden's northern wall. Only with his grandmother Kinzi did he feel safe, but the Knorth Matriarch was visiting her friend Adiraina in the Women's Halls. He would wait here until she came home. Then he would go up to say good night and hear a kind word in return.
He turned, and found that he was no longer alone. The door to the outer halls had silently opened. Just inside it stood a slim, masked girl clad in black, white, and silver, her eyes fixed, greedily, on that dark, upper window.
Jame half-woke with a sick start.
That's Rawneth, she thought, gulping down green nausea. Young, beautiful, and oh, so hungry. But for what?
Now they were in Kinzi's apartment, and Rawneth was looking through the Matriarch's possessions.
This is wrong. Why did you bring her here?
She had been so kind to him in the garden, so sympathetic. Why hadn't he gone with his father on this Autumn's Eve to remember the Knorth dead? The Highlord hadn't asked him? Oh. Well, perhaps Lord Gerraint thought that he would be bored and it was, really, such a long, dull ceremony. Anyway, it was the Lordan's duty to attend his father tonight. What, Greshan hadn't gone either? He was out hunting? How curious.
He reminded himself that she was only sixteen, a bare three years his senior, but so poised that they might have belonged to different generations. The lower third of her full skirt, her arms, and her mask were black, her bodice white, tight laced with silver—the markings of an elegant direhound.
She had always wanted to see the Knorth quarters, especially those of the Knorth Matriarch. Would he show her? How her dark eyes glittered behind her mask, how red those thin lips against that white skin. Her finger-tips, long nailed, caressed his cheek and he shuddered, torn between desire and repulsion, hardly knowing which stirred him more. Show me. Please?
Now he stood back watching, increasingly uncomfortable, as her pretense of delicate curiosity fell away and she began to paw through Kinzi's things like a dog on the scent, digging avidly for dirt. What she found was a square of fine linen, covered with tiny knot-stitches.
"Well, well, well."
Greshan lounged in the doorway. He reeked of the hunt, of sweat, blood, and offal, a filthy, gorgeously embroidered coat draped over one shoulder. Tunic laces hung loose, half undone, at his throat.
"What have you brought me, Gander? Will I enjoy it?"
They circled each other beside Kinzi's bed. Her long, black hair stirred and rose about her as if in an updraft, although the room was close and still. Her fingertips brushed against his bare chest, leaving faint red lines. He slid his hand through her shining hair, then suddenly gripped it and jerked her face up to his. She stifled a cry, but tears of pain glittered in her pale cheeks. He bent his head, licked them off, and shuddered.
"Bitter," he said thickly. "And potent. Is the magic in your blood as strong?"
"Taste it and see."
The tendrils of black hair that had wound about his hand slowly relaxed into a caress. She gave a husky laugh.
"You should meet my cousin Roane. He likes to play games too."
"Later. Gangray, get out."
She eyed Ganth askance over Greshan's shoulder, black eyes glittering half in mockery, half in challenge. "Oh, let the little boy watch . . . unless he wishes to join us and become a man."
Then everything stopped.
Kinzi stood in the doorway. The Knorth Matriarch was a tiny, neat, old woman with a crown of tightly plaited white hair which, unbound, would have brushed the floor; but all one really saw, in that frozen moment, were her eyes, as hard, bright, and cold as burnished silver.
"Leave," she said to her older grandson. "Now."
Greshan goggled at her, made a choking sound, and reeled past, out of the room.
Knorth and Randir faced each other.
"So. You would bind the Highlord's heir if you could."
"Do you think it beyond me, Matriarch?"
"I think you believe that very little is."
They were circling each other now, gliding, the tall, elegant girl and the tiny, old woman. The boy, forgotten, backed into the corner, as far away as he could get. It seemed to him as if the room was tilting this way and that, twisted by the clash of their wills; but there was no question who was the stronger.
Kinzi held out her small hand. "Give me that."
All this time, Rawneth had been clutching the embroidery with its fine pattern of knot work. Now she tried instinctively to hide it behind her back, but Kinzi's hand was still out. Step by grudging step, she drew the younger woman to her and took the cloth from her.
"If I were to tell the Highlord what those knots say. . ." Rawneth began defiantly.
"Would you indeed, and betray the very heart of the Women's World? What Adiraina writes in the love-knots of this old letter is meant for me alone."
"If I told. . . ."
"You would be excluded forever from the solace of sisterkin-ship—if, indeed, anyone should ever want you. As it is, I cast you out from the Women's Halls. Never come back. And leave my grandson alone. He may be a fool, but he is not for the likes of you, nor do you want him for anything but his bloodlines. I smell your ambition, girl, rank as a whore's lust."
The Randir drew herself up, trembling with rage.
"Do you think you Knorth will rule the Kencyrath forever," she spat, "you, who are already so few? And who will come next, when your oh-so-pure blood is finally spent? Do you think about that, old woman, in the long nights? You should. Change is coming. I have foreseen it. I am part of it."
"Not today. Not while I live. Go, snake-heart. Now."
And Rawneth went, out of the room, out of the Knorth quarters, out of Gothregor.
Kinzi sank onto her bed and dropped her head into her trembling hands. She looked suddenly smaller and more vulnerable than the boy had ever seen her. It frightened him.
She looked up. "Ah, child. You shouldn't have seen that. Forget."
His eyes went blank and he stood swaying like one asleep on his feet. Clearly, he had indeed forgotten.
Her gaze shifted to the watcher who stood in his shadow. "Perhaps that was wrong of me. I never made him face what he was, or knew what his brother had done to him as a child until it was too late, the harm already done, and he grown out of reach. I made so many mistakes. We all did. And now you live with the consequences."
Lady . . .
It was hard to speak as a dream within a dream, to a past in which she did not exist. Her voice sounded to her like the thin whine of the winter wind under a door.
Rawneth. The Witch. I see how your quarrel started, but why did it end like that, in such slaughter?
Kinzi seemed about to answer, but then her look sharpened, and her voice as well. "Child, you have company. Wake up."
"W-w-wha . . .?"
Jame lurched out of sleep, thoroughly disoriented. Where was she . . . and why was someone scrabbling at the jacket, trying to get at her throat? She freed a hand with difficulty from the coat's embrace, caught the other by the wrist, and stopped the knife's descent. Along its fire-lit edge, she met a young Kendar's furious glare.
"Narsa, what in Perimal's name . . ."
"I told you: Timmon is mine."
The Ardeth cadet bore down on the steel until the point touched the hollow of her throat, but then Jame gathered her wits and kicked her off. Both rolled off the raised hearth and onto their feet, one surprised to find that, as in her dream, she was naked. And unarmed. And furious.
"Dammit, I was finally about to get some answers, and you come busting in with your stupid jealousy! Oh." The floor seemed to lurch; no, that had been her own unsteady legs. The square bottle was striking back.
Wonderful, she thought. I'm about to fight for my life while half-drunk.
"I told you . . ."
"And I'm telling you: he's not mine." Jame sat down on the hearth, to make a virtue of necessity. "Take him if you can get him, with my blessings, or find someone better."
"Y-you've bewitched him!" The knife wove before the Ardeth, but her eyes spilled over with such tears that it seemed unlikely she could strike true with it. Her thin face was already blotched and swollen with weeping. "He can't talk about anyone but you, especially tonight. Jameth this, Jameth that, on and on and on . . . "
"You're the one who put Addy in my bed," said Jame, suddenly enlightened. "You did me a good turn there, but you've got to stop sneaking up on me while I'm asleep. Someone could get hurt."
"Witch!" Narsa threw the knife at her, missed, and fled, wailing.
As Jame fished in the ashes of the dying fire for the blade, Jorin ambled out of the shadows, yawning.
"Some guardian you are," she told him.
How was she supposed to dream true with all these interruptions? For that matter, how did one tell the true from the false in such matters? That last dream had felt painfully real. How like Greshan, and Rawneth, and—here came a pause—that poor boy, who would one day become her father. But nowhere had she caught so much as a glimpse of her brother, Tori.
Jame sighed. Painful or not, it hadn't been the dream she was after. She would have to try again.
Whatever was in the green bottle seemed to help, even if it made waking more a nightmare than sleep. She picked it up, feeling by its heft that it was still half full, with a solid residue at the bottom.
A warning sounded in the back of her mind: The more you drink, the less control you will have. Under that came a more urgent whisper: Think. The Witch's taunt has set you on this path: Little girl, dare you try?
She wasn't thinking clearly and she knew it; but the taunt galled, as it was meant to. Caution be damned.
Yes, I dare.
She up-ended the bottle and, half choking, drained it.
The second round of the cull slowly drew to its close. This time, the Council had reversed the order so that the Knorth came last. Before that, the stones were cast again and again, settling the fate of cadet after cadet. Three black and six white, in. Six black and three white, out.
The Danior sniffed. "Do you smell something burning?"
A sergeant went to investigate. On his return, he bent to whisper in the Commandant's ear, then resumed his station.
"Well?" demanded the Ardeth.
Sheth dismissed the matter with an incautious shrug, followed by a suppressed wince. "There has been a small fire in the stable, but it is under control. Proceed."
Finally, only one cadet remained in doubt: the Knorth Lordan, Jameth.
The Randir and Jaran cast as they had at first, the former against, the latter for. The Ardeth also tossed an obsidian sphere into the circle: even if it hadn't suited M'lord Adric that the Knorth girl should escape his schemes, the senior randon of his house didn't approve of her being at Tentir on general principles. The Danior, defiantly, cast white, as did the Edirr, with a mischievous grin. Coman, black. Brandan, white.
"That's four white and three black," murmured the Commandant. He fingered a stone, then sighed and cast it.
Black.
"Why?" burst out the Danior. "I thought you liked her."
"So I do."
"What, then? Did M'lord Caldane order you to vote against her?"
"Of course."
"And you agreed?"
The Danior's voice cracked slightly. He wasn't asking as much for one cadet, even a lordan, as for Tentir. The others stirred uneasily. All knew that politics played a role at this level, but none cared to admit it, especially when it ran counter to their own instincts. If the best among them surrendered his judgment to his lord's will, what case could the rest make for following their conscience rather than orders?
"I take my lord's wishes into consideration," said Sheth levelly, "but only that. As for the Knorth Jameth, as we all know by now, she has great power and is learning—for the most part—how to control it. As for skills, her Senethar is excellent. Although she might still learn something from Randiroc about wind-blowing, I doubt if anyone in generations has seen a purer style."
"Yes." The Coman leaned forward, as pugnacious as his young lord. "But where did she learn it, eh? Who was her Senethari?"
This, indeed, still caused debate in the officers' mess-hall. In Jameth, they seemed to have an effect without a cause, a pupil without a teacher. If she had belonged to any other house, they could have shrugged it off as chance, however unlikely. With the Knorth, however, one had to wonder.
"Well, whoever it was," the Brandan said, "we are her teachers now. Her weapons' mastery is less than satisfactory . . ."
"Flying swords," murmured the Ardeth. "A new form of combat, perhaps? I seem to remember that her brother once favored throwing knives."
". . . however, it isn't hopeless. She can learn. The same goes for leadership."
"But don't forget," interposed the Randir, startling the others because she had spoken so little that evening, "we aren't talking about an ordinary cadet here. She is the Highlord's heir and his possible successor."
Several members of the Council snorted.
"Blackie will never carry through with that," said the Coman. "We all know that he's just buying time. I've even heard that he's considering taking her as his consort when she fails here."
"If she fails."
"When, you mean."
"No, if!"
"No, dammit, when! Remember, none of us thought she would get even this far."
"D'you really think Blackie might contract for her?" the Danior asked Harn undercover of the general uproar, leaning past a disdainful Ardeth who pretended not to hear him. "After all, that was the Knorth way with powerful Shanir before the Fall, and it's not as if he has to ask anyone's permission now."
Harn grunted. "How should I know? Nobody tells me anything."
"Gently, gently." Sheth eased his arm in its sling with a faint grimace. As the candles had waned, the shadows under his eyes had grown. "You begin to sound like a conclave of scrollsmen. No offense, Jurien."
The Jaran Highborn shrugged. He sat on that council as well and might one day, when he retired as a randon, become its director. "Why should I take offense at the truth? Academia has made squabbling a fine art. You, my dear friends, are mere novices by comparison. For that matter, Mount Alban would be pleased to offer the Knorth Lordan a place, if Tentir is fool enough to toss her out. With her brother's permission, of course. She has a mind, that girl. I suggest that we dismiss it at our peril. Anyway, she needn't graduate from Tentir to become Highlord. Ganth didn't. Torisen didn't."
"And here she is vulnerable."
Everyone turned to the Commandant. After all, so far he had only listed reasons why the Knorth Lordan should stay.
"There are the usual risks, of course, but so far she has proved equal to them. If anything, we have been in more danger from her than she from us."
Somebody laughed. Others glared.
"However, this is the Highlord's heir, subject to special judgment. If she passes this cull, the next may prove far more deadly. Come summer, do you really think that she will pass unchallenged, or must she suffer the fate of her uncle? Yes, I both like and value her, too well to want her blood on my hands."
"Nor on mine." Harn let fall his black stone to lie beside Sheth's. He tugged at his already tight scarf, turning an alarming shade of purple in the process. "My house brought death and bitter shame on Tentir once. Never again."
That seemed to take his last breath. As he strained, gaping, to draw another, the Danior made a dive for him across the Ardeth. However, the sergeant standing behind Harn reached him first, slipping a knife under the scarf, as if to cut his throat, but instead slicing free the silk.
"I think," said the Commandant, as Harn sat gasping, his face slowly changing from purple to mottled red, "that a short recess is in order."
Four white, five black.
It was nearly dawn. Soon would come the third and last round of the cull when Commandant and Knorth war-leader must cast their extra votes, with only one cadet in question.
Jame sat shivering on the ledge of the raised hearth, the Lordan's Coat draped over her shoulders, staring at Narsa's knife which had been driven deep into the floor at the center of the old blood stain. New blood spread out around it and welled up through cracks as if the very wood bled.
Trinity, what a terrible dream.
She had suddenly found herself straddling the hips of a prone Timmon, both of them naked. He had looked as surprised as she had felt, but then he had smiled.
"At last!"
The smile twitched and faded from unease to dawning alarm.
"I think," he had said uncertainly, "that I'm going to throw up again."
"Not on me, you aren't. I told you this dream was dangerous."
Then she had looked down and realized that she was gripping not what she had thought but the hilt of the knife as it jutted obscenely out of Timmon's stomach. Her fingers were still cramped with the effort that it had taken to drive the steel through him, and his blood spilled out over her hands.
With that, she had started awake on the hearth and hastily leaned over its edge to vomit green slime onto the floor, where it was now eating a hole in the wood. Oh, for a drink of cold, clean water. A river. An ocean. But those were passing thoughts.
She also hoped that Timmon was all right. Huh. If nothing else, maybe this would teach him to stay out of her dreams, even when summoned.
What appalled her most, however, was that that had only been the end of the nightmare. In the shock of waking, she had forgotten the rest.
At least she had stopped shivering. The fire roared at her back, fed with more shattered crates, warming her through the heavy, embroidered coat. She had the odd sensation of expanding to fill it. A warmth also filled her stomach, replacing the previous clammy nausea. There was a cup of wine in her hand. She sipped it, and felt the glow within increase.
That's funny, she thought, and heard someone chuckle thickly—herself, but not in her voice.
A soft laugh echoed her from the other side of the hearth, from a dark Randir face. Who . . . oh.
"M'dear friend, Roane."
That slurred voice again. Not hers. His. Greshan's.
"Well, of course," it said. "After all, I am the Knorth Lordan."
"Of course you are," murmured the Randir, and touched his glass to his lips without drinking.
The Knorth knew vaguely that he had had far more wine tonight than his companion.
Can't hold his liquor and knows it. Not like me.
He took another gulp and started to say something so clever that he burst out laughing at the mere thought of it. Wine spurted out his nose like blood onto his white shirt. That, too, struck him as exquisitely funny.
Behind Roane, in the shadows, stood two figures, watching. He squinted at them. One had a strangely shaped head, as if it had been smashed flat on one side; the other seemed to be chewing on something that squirmed and faintly buzzed. More Randir. Roane had strange servants. Well, damn them all with their superior, knowing airs. He would show them something that they wouldn't soon forget. The best joke yet.
"No, truly," he heard himself cry, "such games we used to play, my brother and I. The things I made him do!"
"Did he enjoy them?"
"Now, if he had, where would have been the fun? Once the poor little fool even tried to tell Father, who called him a liar to his face for his pains."
He was leaning forward now, supporting himself with a hand heavy with glittering golden rings, the gifts of a doting parent.
Wrap the old fool 'round m'little finger. Be done with him soon. Then we'll see how a true highlord can rule.
In the meantime, there was this damned Randir with his knowing smirk, as if he knew how much Greshan's younger brother vexed him, and how much it irked him that he was vexed.
"Killed our mother, didn't he? Giving birth. Father hates him for that. So do I."
Saying too much. Stop it.
He dropped his voice conspiratorially. "Listen. This very minute, he sleeps below in his virtuous cot. Dear little Gangrene, all grown up and come to play soldier. Shall we summon him, eh? See if he remembers our old midnight game?"
"Why not? It might be . . . amusing. Permit me."
Roane's misshapen servant stepped forward in response to a languid gesture and silently left the room.
Greshan licked his lips, feeling a sudden flush of anticipation. It had been a long time. Not that the real pleasure came from the act, but from the control, the sense of superiority. No one stood up for Ganth Grayling but their grandmother Kinzi, and he was sure that the little bastard hadn't told her anything. He had that much pride at least. Too much pride. To think that dear little Gander had actually come here, as if to make something of himself. What arrogance. Clearly, he hadn't yet learned his place, which was to be, always and forever, infinitely his brother's inferior.
The door opened. On the threshold stood a slim figure, backed by the odd clot that was Roane's servant. The latter shoved the former inside and closed the door after them. The lock snicked. At a push, the boy stumbled forward through a welter of discarded clothes and came into the light.
Jame looked into Torisen's wary eyes.
We have been here before, haven't we? they seemed to ask.
Yes. Now we are here again.
The others' voices became a distant mutter. Greshan was telling his brother Ganth to take off his clothes. Fingers fumbling numbly, the thin boy with the strangely familiar face removed his tunic. Knorth and Randir laughed at his slight build.
"Now the pants," said Greshan.
Tori, remember in the Earth Wife's lodge? I warned you this was coming. Fight him! Resist!
When the boy didn't move, the ruin that was Simmel grabbed one of his arms and the Tempter, coming out of the shadows, seized the other. Her ruined lips moved, dribbling insectile fragments, as she whispered honeyed poison in his ear. Roane sauntered toward him, turning a familiar knife in his hands. Now he was behind the young cadet who was, simultaneously, Ganth Grayling in the past and Torisen Black Lord in the present.
Jame shivered. She had wanted to learn what had happened to her father, not to force Tori to relive it; but she had also wanted him to see, to understand. Was this all her fault?
She felt her ears clear, as if water had drained out of them.
"Little boys should do as they are told," Roane was saying softly.
He teased the knife point under the captive's waist band and, with a flick of the wrist, cut it.
"In your grandfather Gerraint's day, your house was soft, rotting from within. There sits the sodden proof on the hearth."
The blade slid neatly down first one leg, then the other. Snick, snick. Clothes fell away.
"Such a one I could have molded to my purpose, or so I believed."
He was speaking directly to Torisen now, a dead voice out of the dead past, yet with a familiar under-note. Simmel snickered. The Tempter broke into her ghastly grin. Both pressed in on their prisoner who stood rigid between them. This was the boy whom Jame had met in the Earth Wife's lodge, her twin brother as he should always have been, her age, her peer, but now so terribly vulnerable. Granted, being stripped naked didn't help.
Simmel leaned in, mumbling through a mouthful of dust. "You're weak, and y'know it."
From the other side came the Tempter's insidious, buzzing whisper: "Your people trust you and you fail them. How many more will slip through your fingers?"
Torisen's hands clenched into fists. They had been unmarked in the Earth Wife's lodge, but now the hint of white scars rose on them. The Randirs' words had hurt. Sinews flexed up his arms as he tested the grip in which he was held. For someone so slight, he had wiry muscles and balance, but not yet the experience he would gain with age.
I'm sorry, Jame tried to tell him.
The corner of his mouth almost twitched in response: You would be.
Roane followed his gaze. "You see her in his eyes, don't you? Your sister. The Shanir freak from nowhere. She will fail you too, or worse. See how alike they are, uncle and niece, monsters both."
We are not!
"Monsters, or alike?"
Snarling, Jame struggled to free herself. Just you wait.
Although she could see and hear clearly, Greshan's essence still enfolded her like the rank folds of his coat. This might be her dream, but she no longer felt in control of it.
A trap. A trick. But whose, and how?
"Witch." Her voice was his, thick, hard to manage. "You planned this."
Roane smiled, mockingly, askance, teeth white and sharp, eyes obsidian. "I hoped, and the liquor helped. Dear, dead Greshan. How else was I to learn what you would never tell me?"
"Don't . . ."
Jame felt his dull alarm, like the noxious gas of corruption rising through mud.
"Ah, but why not? We might have savored this together. Lover, how we would have laughed! But the past has weight. Set in motion, it must follow its course." Long-nailed fingers caressed the captive's cheek. Torisen stiffened. "Now be a good little boy," purred that two-toned voice, Roane and Rawneth together. "Submit."
As the Randir moved behind him, his gaze becoming remote and stony. So he must have looked when the Karnid torturers had presented him with their gloves of white-hot wire. Now as then, he would endure and survive; but oh, the pain and the scars, the branded memory . . .
Jame felt something inside her snap.
Be angry. Be strong.
"You will not hurt my brother," she said, and she spoke from the clutch of cold hands, over her shoulder to a man dead these forty years.
Her hands twisted in their clammy grasp and gripped them in turn. She sent Simmel floundering, suddenly boneless, into the figure on the hearth and the Tempter headfirst into the fire. The knife's point skittered across her hip, drawing its own hot line of pain. As Roane's wrist shot past, she grabbed it, pulled, and bent. They were on the floor now, she on top, Narsa's blade between them. Firelight shifted across their faces as the Tempter staggered about the room, wrapped in flames. Flakes of charred cloth and skin whirled away. Then a swarm of blazing bees erupted from her and she fell.
Jame looked down into the Randir's wide, obsidian eyes, and smiled. "The past does have weight," she said. "Let's see how you like it." And she drove the knife into his belly. Down it went with all her cold fury behind it through muscle walls, scrapping against the spine, into the floor. Blood welled up over her hands. Then, slowly, she screwed the blade home.
Something shadowy blundered away from the hearth with a faint cry of horror and the fading stink of voided bowels. Her brother stood in its place, a black silhouette against the flames.
"This is what happened," she told him, breathing hard, trying to collect herself. "Our father's berserker nature saved him, but he couldn't face what he was or what he had done, so he left Tentir that night. Tori? Do you hear me?"
But he was gone.
Jame looked down at a knife stuck in the floor, in the middle of the old stain, and at her own bloody hands, the palms cut on the blade's edge.
"Oh, schist," she said, then bent over to retch painfully from the bottom of her soul.