Gothregor's herbalist stood over a simmering pot, stirring it. The cream-colored paste was almost ready. From a basket at his elbow, he picked out a large, hairy leaf of comfrey and added it to the mixture, making a face as its spines stung his fingers.
Afternoon light slanted into his workroom through its southern facing windows. It also shone through the pot's stream and the glass bottles arrayed on the sill with their tinctures of iodine, decoctions of agrimony, burdock juice, and spirit of camphor, among a score of others. The Kendar's hands moved through a haze of pale green, rose, and amber light as if he were also mixing them too into his healing art, as perhaps he was.
Outside lay the broad inner ward of the Knorth fortress, with the garrison's barracks in the outer wall to the right. To the left rose the Old Keep. If one craned out the window to look east, far back beyond the Women's Halls loomed the desolation of the Ghost Walks, where the Highlord and his family had lived until assassins had slaughtered all but a handful and the rest had gone into exile with Ganth Gray Lord.
The physician sighed. He himself was a Knorth, as his family had been for generations. It grieved him that so few of his house were left. If . . . no, when its last two Highborn were gone, what would happen to their people?
A door opened in the wall beside the old keep. From it emerged a lady, followed by a randon guard. From their purposeful angle across the inner ward, they were headed straight for the infirmary.
"Company from the Women's Halls," remarked the herbalist, as if to himself. "I think . . . yes, they're Ardeth."
From behind him came a stifled exclamation from his waiting patient and a rustle of cloth. Then all was still again.
As he wrapped his apron around his hands and lifted the pot off its tripod, away from the fire beneath, the Highborn entered without knocking. He turned and saluted her respectfully.
"Lady, how may I serve you?"
The Ardeth swept into the cluttered room, black eyes darting about it behind her mask. Because of her tight under skirt, she moved in tiny steps converted by long practice into a smooth glide. However, her full outer skirt brushed against glasses, instruments, and furniture, knocking some over. As she pivoted, the belling garment toppled a chair. This, in turn, snagged the table's floor-length cover and would have pulled it off if the doctor hadn't hastily set the pot on it.
"Guard, tell this Knorth my business."
The randon sergeant—a woman, as were all who protected the Women's Halls—returned the herbalist's salute. She would have been more deferential if he had been a Shanir healer or even a surgeon, but still as a soldier she had a healthy respect for anyone connected with the healing arts.
"My lady seeks the Highlord." She regarded the pot of steaming paste and raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment on it. "Matriarch Adiraina wishes to speak to him."
The herbalist bowed. "I will inform my lord when I see him. He has spent the morning searching for a missing Knorth Kendar. That, perhaps, is why you have failed as yet to . . . er . . . run him down."
"Perhaps," agreed the sergeant. "Lady?"
The Ardeth had made a dart for the door leading to the infirmary. Inside, she bent down and peered under each bed in turn as if she expected to find the Highlord of the Kencyrath hiding beneath one of them. Disappointed, she returned to the workroom. There, the draped surgeon's table caught her eye. As she approached it, however, a low growl stopped her in her tracks and the guard's hand dropped to her sword. The cloth stirred. A sharp muzzle emerged, flat to the ground, followed by a pair of fierce, ice blue eyes set in creamy fur. The wolver pup glared at the two Ardeth and growled again, low in her throat, showing a dark, curled lip and the needles of her white teeth.
"Well!" said the lady. "I thought we had seen the last of these mangy creatures."
With that, she turned on her heel and glided away. The guard saluted, with an amused glance at those defiant, blue eyes, and followed.
The physician began to soak linen bandages in the cooling pot.
After a moment, the table cloth lifted and Torisen Black Lord crawled out from underneath.
"The Ardeth matriarch is looking for you, my lord," the Kendar reported dutifully.
Torisen righted the chair and sat down on it. The pup slunk out and crouched warily beneath, making herself as small as possible. The Highborn looked very tired and not a little dusty, with cobwebs adding more strands of white to his dark, ruffled hair. "If Burr asks," he said, with a wry smile, "you can tell him that I've already searched under the surgeon's table."
"And for whom are you searching, my lord?"
Torisen tried to meet the other's sober gaze, and failed. That was the trouble: as in the commons room that first night, he couldn't remember the ruddy-faced Kendar's name. And now the man was missing.
"My lord?" The herbalist was regarding him with concern, probably wondering if, like his father before him, he was coming unhinged.
Was he?
Then with a sick jolt, Torisen remembered why he had come to the infirmary in the first place. Reluctantly, not looking at it, he placed his injured hand on the table.
The herbalist loosened the bandages.
"Well now, that's not so bad," he said, examining the three broken fingers, splinted together to immobilize them.
His tone was so kind, so reassuring, that Torisen looked up sharply. Yes, this man knew his dread of becoming a cripple. Perhaps everyone did. Trinity.
"The swelling has gone down considerably. And this happened . . . when?"
"About six days ago."
The herbalist reset the splints and began to wrap his hand with paste-soaked cloth. "Another term for comfrey is 'bone-knit,' " he said. "I've heard that some such plants of great potency grew among the white flowers in your great-grandmother Kinzi's Moon Garden, along with many other special herbs; but the way into that place was lost long ago. In another week, barring accidents, you can have your hand back. There."
Torisen blankly regarded the neat, new bandage that imprisoned all but his thumb.
The herbalist turned to straightened his work area. "My lord. . ." he said over his shoulder.
"Yes?"
"The missing Kendar is named Mullen. Do you remember who I am?"
He asked it casually, without turning, but tension underlay his voice.
"I do. Thank you, Kells."
A hundred other Kendar names raced through Torisen's mind as he slipped out by way of the infirmary, the wolver pup following at a wary distance as if afraid he would chase her away. Harn, Burr, Rowan, Winter . . . no, she was long dead, cut nearly in two by his father's sword . . . Chen, Laurel, Rose Iron-thorn . . .
It was nothing, he told himself uneasily, to forget one out of so many. Yes, he was new at this, but surely such things happened all the time. Besides, this Kendar had been in his service less than a year.
The battle at the Cataracts the previous fall had opened gaping holes in the Knorth ranks which many were eager to fill. Torisen wasn't sure why, but he could only bind a certain number before he began to feel a distinct, distracting strain. At the Cataracts, he knew he had over-extended himself. Still, if he could, he would have taken in anybody who asked. One way or another, weren't they all Ganth's victims? However, as Burr had explained to him, the Knorth Kendar kept close track of status and resented any infringement of it, as many did his acceptance of that turn-collar, Brier Iron-thorn.
In their estimate, first came the Exiles, who had disappeared with Ganth into the Haunted Lands and paid for their loyalty with their lives. Of them, only Torisen, his sister and, it was rumored, a priest had survived—how, exactly, remained unclear.
Next were Those-Who-Returned, whom Ganth in his madness had driven back at the high passes of the Ebonbane.
Last came the Faith-breakers, who had chosen to stay with the Host after the White Hills when Ganth had thrown down his name and title. These Kendar had sought and for the most part had found places in other houses, whose ranks had also been thinned by battle. Torisen had heard rumors that some had gone into the Randir and remained there, implacable foes of the house that they believed had betrayed them.
At any rate, by the time Those-Who-Returned had limped back, the Kencyrath had had little room for them except as yondri-gon, threshold-dwellers, in whatever house would give them shelter. In token of their fervent hope that the Highlord would one day return, many had branded themselves with the Knorth sigil, the same highly stylized rathorn head used to mark the Knorth herd. It was Torisen's goal to reclaim these first, along with their families; but there were so many. It had been so much easier when he had been merely the commander of the Southern Host. Then he had been responsible for some twenty-five thousand lives, but for none of their souls. Now, two thousand-odd Knorth Kencyr, body and soul, laid claim to him, with many, many more still unredeemed. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, unable for a moment to breathe under the pressure of their need. At such times, floundering in the dark, he felt like a swimmer dragged down by a multitude of clutching hands, desperate to cast off every last one of them. Dammit, he couldn't save everybody.
Ha. You can't even save yourself, boy.
But he thought that he had at least rescued the missing Kendar—a middle-aged Danior yondri, he now remembered, One-Who-Had-Returned. When the man had knelt before him, he had seen the three wavy scar lines of the Knorth sigil branded on the back of the man's neck. This is someone, he had thought as he accepted those broad, worn hands between his own, who knew my father's face; and he had felt embarrassed by the glowing gratitude in that round, red face. No one should have such power to make or break, power that he often saw other lords abuse as his father had, power that he didn't really want.
Admit it, boy. You're weak and you know it, especially since your sister returned. She's gelded you, and you never even noticed.
Sometimes it was hard not to snap back at that voice in his mind, behind the locked door in his soul.
Oh yes, father? he wanted to say. Was it better to give up, as you did, and let everything fall apart around you? And if my sister sometimes unnerves me, our mother unmanned you. Destruction begins with love, you said. Remember?
But he couldn't say that. Not yet. The image formed in his mind of the hall of the Haunted Lands' keep where he had grown up. He was sitting in it still, in the dust and dark, his back hunched against the voice behind the locked door.
Just ignore it, he told himself doggedly. Father is dead. Sooner or later, he's got to shut up.
Of course, not love but duty bound him to the forgotten Kendar. When he found what's-his-name, he would give him a good tongue-lash for neglecting his duty that morning and then reinstate him. That would show Kendar like Kells how foolish they were to have made such a fuss.
He had been headed for the garrison dormitory, meaning to search it, when a voice ahead stopped him. In the sharp diction of the Coman, a lady was demanding to know where the Highlord might be found.
Torisen turned and bolted for cover.
Late that afternoon, a tired post horse trotted through the north gate into Gothregor and stopped. Its rider swung stiffly down, staggering as her feet hit the earth. One leg nearly buckled. Steward Rowan hung on to the saddle, cursing softly, waiting for the old injury to release her cramped muscles. She owed those damn Karnids for more than the scars on her face.
Before her lay the broad, green inner ward, sliding into the shadow of the western mountains as the sun set behind them. At this hour, the Knorth garrison should have been settling down for the night. Instead, small, determined processions crisscrossed the darkening grass. Each was led by the gliding form of a lady followed, like a goose with her goslings, by a line of masked Highborn girls and a randon guard who brought up the rear. When two such lines meet, they cut through each other without a word in passing. Others were threading purposefully through the garrison's barracks, kitchens, and other domestic offices. A few Knorth Kendar could be seen whisking furtively in and out of sight, trying to keep out of the way.
As Rowan stood, staring, she was spotted. A small, plump lady turned abruptly and came at her as much at a run as her tight underskirt allowed. Her line of girls—by far the longest and most varied in the ward—swerved to follow her. Rowan saw as she approached that it was Karidia, the Coman Matriarch.
She saluted, one hand twisted in her horse's mane both to keep her balance and to prevent the animal from wandering off in search of its dinner.
"Matriarch, how may I serve you?"
Karidia glared at her, straining within her tight bodice to regain her breath. The garment creaked alarmingly. What could be seen of her face below the mask was bright red. "You can tell me . . . where that precious Torisen of yours . . . is hiding."
"Lady, I just got here. I don't know."
The Coman made a sound of disgust. "You Knorth! Always misplacing . . . your Highborn. Trinity! With only two . . . it shouldn't be that hard . . . to keep track of them."
She turned with a haughty toss of her head, but spoiled the effect by tripping over her own full hem and falling flat on her face. The girls squealed. The guard set her back on her feet and off she sailed for all the world like a righted clockwork toy, her exhausted retinue trailing after her.
Rowan sighed.
By now, the stables should have been moved from under the fortress into converted rooms set into the outer wall, opening onto the inner ward. However, given the past week's confusion, no one had had time. Rowan limped down the ramp to the winter stalls, found an empty box and, there being no one on duty to help her, put up the horse herself.
Down the row, she heard restless hooves. When she went to investigate, Storm lunged at her over the top of his open half-door, teeth snapping almost in her face. Then he recognized her and withdrew with a whickered apology.
Rowan found her lord in the neighboring tack-room, sitting on a bale of hay, trying one-handed to mend a broken stirrup leather. She sank down gratefully opposite him and stretched out her sore leg.
"I'm surprised you aren't hiding in Storm's box," she said, rubbing knotted muscles, "or under that nice big pile of manure around the corner."
"I'm keeping the latter in reserve. As for Storm, he'd keep them off all right, but he doesn't like my shadow. There," he added with a jerk of his head, seeing the question in her eyes.
In a dim far corner, now that she looked, Rowan could make out the curled shape of a pup. Blue eyes met hers defiantly over the white brush of a tail.
"Isn't that a wolver? Are Grimly's people still here?"
"No. They left this morning. We thought at first that she'd been left behind by accident, but now I think that she decided, ancestors know why, to stay. At any rate, no one can catch her and she follows me everywhere, just out of reach."
"Odd. How old d'you think she is?"
"I'm guessing about five years. Wolvers live longer than wolves and mature more slowly. Then again, she's from the deep Weald. Things may be different there."
"Yes. A lot more savage. And look at the size of those paws. If she grows into them . . ."
"She'll be enormous, and a shape-shifter by the time she reaches adolescence, if not before."
They regarded the pup thoughtfully. She glared back at them as is to demand, So what?
"Well," said Torisen, with the air of resolutely turning to business, "what news from Tentir? Burr told me about the qualifying tests."
Rowan nodded. "A nasty surprise, that. Usually, such things get sorted out before the cadet candidates arrive." She took a deep breath. "Well, when I left yesterday morning, your sister had one of the lowest scores in her class. Short of a miracle, and with a Caineron commandant in charge . . ."
"Trinity," said Torisen blankly. "I don't suppose I really expected her to make it through the whole year, but to have failed so quickly. . . . Damn. I thought I would have more time to make alternate plans. This puts us back to where we were last winter."
"Worse. I'd be no friend if I didn't tell you this, Blackie, but now the pressure is really going to be on for either you or your sister to form a contract with another house. True, the hunt going on now for you is a farce. At a guess, the Council of Matriarchs summoned you and you didn't respond fast enough."
"Not the Council," Torisen murmured, still fiddling with the broken strap. Even with two hands, he didn't think it could be fixed: there were too many other weakened patches. "Just Adiraina, trying to get a jump on the game. I suspect it's every matriarch for herself now."
"Huh. Well, it doesn't help that you've picked this of all times to fight with Adric."
"Not that, exactly, but close enough. It had to come some day."
Rowan snorted. "Yes, but now? Anyway, in case you haven't noticed, Gothregor is up to its turrets in hunting parties, each with a bevy of prospective consorts in tow. Yes, it's ridiculous, but I know these women. When today's ruckus dies down, they'll settle in for the long chase. And I have to tell you, Blackie, we'll need help getting through next winter. If not from the Ardeth, then where?"
Torisen had been worrying about that too, but now flicked it aside. "One disaster at a time, please."
"All right." Rowan leaned forward, steeling herself. "I do see a way out of at least one mess. Take you sister not as your lordan but—" she paused, with a gulp "—as your consort."
The strap slipped from Torisen's hand. Before it hit the floor, the pup snapped it up and retreated to her corner to gnaw it.
"Well, why not?" Rowan demanded. "If you were twins, it would only be natural. As it is . . . well, you are the last two pure-blooded Knorth. How better to re-establish the line and simultaneously take you both off the . . . er . . . market. The Matriarchs might even approve. I've heard rumors that they arranged similar matches in the past, brother to sister, uncle to niece, father to daughter, trying to create the Tyr-ridan."
"Ending up with monsters, more likely."
"Well, yes. Sometimes. Usually. Nonetheless, the basic idea is sound, and some matriarchs still carry far more weight with their lords than you might guess."
"Yes, but . . ."
The pup's ears pricked and she growled softly. Someone was coming. Storm lunged, only to recoil at a sharp slap to the nose. A Jaran randon appeared at the tack room door.
"So here you are, my lord," she said with a smile and a salute.
They all started at a crash. Storm was trying to kick down the intervening wall. Torisen thumped on it with his good fist.
"Behave! Fair is fair. You've tracked me down, captain, and I owe you for covering my retreat that first night. How may I serve you?"
"M'lady Trishien asks if you can spare her a few minutes. She promises you safe conduct, at least where our people are concerned."
Torisen considered. He rather liked the scholarly Jaran Matriarch and, as far as he knew, none of the hunting parties above were hers. Besides, at some point he had to talk to someone on the Matriarchs' Council besides Adiraina.
"All right." He rose and stretched. "Since my work here seems to have been . . . er . . . devoured"—he glanced at the pup—"I am at your command."
Rowan watched them go, the wolver trotting a distance behind. She thought about what she had said concerning Jameth and wondered how many other Knorth Kendar had had the same idea. It might save them all, or the two Highborn in question might kill each other first.
"Just consider it," she muttered at the Highlord's receding back. "We can't go on like this much longer."
Above the stables lay the subterranean levels of the Women's Halls. As they threaded their way through dark corridors, Torisen thought about what Rowan had suggested. It had practically knocked the breath out of him. He still couldn't quite bring the idea into focus, any more than if someone had told him that the moon had turned backward in its course. Jame was his sister, ten years his junior, a Shanir, his twin . . . and she was Jame.
Images of her flickered through his mind: the half-feral child with ragged clothes and silver-gray eyes too large for her thin face; the girl on the edge of the Escarpment, crying for a dead darkling changer; the child-woman in the ruins of Kithorn, whistling up the south wind to take them home.
Then, last night, had come that strange dream that they were dancing. How she had moved, with such aching grace. Long, lovely hair had slid through his scarred fingers like black water over fissured rock, and he had hardly known if he wanted to let it glide free or to grip and wrench it out by the roots.
Let me not see . . .
Then the ruddy Kendar had interrupted them to beg that she, not he, remember his name. What business was that of hers?
Your Shanir twin, boy, your darker half, returned to destroy you . . .
No. The bolt was shot, whatever that meant.
They reached the Jaran compound without incident and climbed to the matriarch's third story chambers.
At her biding, Torisen entered and stopped short, blinded by the light streaming through the western windows. The forecourt below now lay deep in dusk, but up here the day was still dying.
"Step to the right, my lord."
When he did, the bulk of the old keep mercifully blocked the setting sun and, slowly, his sight returned. The Jaran Matriarch had risen from her writing table near the window to greet him. The lens sown into her mask flashed fire as she returned his salute, but her voice was cool and lightly amused.
"Honor be to your halls, my lord. You're a hard man to find. My sister matriarchs have been complaining about it most bitterly."
She resumed her seat, sweeping her full skirt around the chair legs, and picked up her pen. Torisen noted that it had worn a permanent groove in her index finger and that her hands were ingrained with ink spots. He carefully moved a stack of manuscripts to the floor and perched on the window ledge.
"What do you write, my lady?" he asked as she dipped the quill and resumed her flowing, rounded script on the page before her.
"That you look tired, but far better than the last time we meet."
It was hard to remember that that had only been six days ago. So much had happened. "My thanks again, matriarch, for telling me where to find my sister. Without you, I probably still wouldn't know."
She smiled slightly. "Oh, I think Lady Jameth will always, eventually, make herself known. One might more easily conceal an earthquake. I also write that you seem to have acquired a new . . . er . . . pet? Dear me. One never quite knows how to refer to a wolver."
She regarded the pup thoughtfully, then extended a hand to her. Torisen held his breath. The pup crept forward, touched the matriarch's fingertips with a cold nose, and immediately retreated.
"Well," said Trishien. "That will do for a start. My greetings to you too, little one. Still, how very odd. Have you bound her to you, my lord?"
"No!"
"Would you know if you had?"
"I'm . . . not sure. I think so."
"Ah." Torisen wished that he could see the Jaran's eyes more clearly. Glassed over as they were and reflecting the sunset sky, it was impossible to guess her thoughts. "You came into your power late, my lord. We scrollsmen have wondered before now how well you understand it."
"Do you write that too?" Torisen asked, watching the quill move. He spoke more sharply than he had intended.
She might have read his mind; assuredly she did his tone. "My lord, when you assumed your father's seat, you took responsibility for your people and consequently opened wide tracts of your life to them. I speak here of the entire Kencyrath. Of course we discuss you. I am sorry if you find that offensive—and I can see that you do—but you must learn to accept it." Her lips twitched. "I also write that your hair is laced with cobwebs and straw, from which I deduce that you have recently been in a stable . . . and perhaps under various articles of furniture?"
Torisen relaxed with a wry laugh. "Your sister matriarchs press me hard although not," he added, thinking of the manure pile, "to the last extreme. Yet."
"I think you will find only the Ardeth, the Danior, and the Coman in hot pursuit. Yolindra of the Edirr may also try her hand, if only to tease Karidia. Luckily, the Caineron, Randir, and Brandan matriarchs are not currently in residence at Gothregor, although you may well hear from them."
"I've already heard from the Brandan, but not about my sister. Brant wants to conclude negotiations for my cousin Aerulan, but I don't understand. Aerulan died a long time ago."
Trishien put down her quill. "Thirty-four years ago, my lord, with all the other ladies of your house except for poor Tieri. It's Aerulan's death banner Lord Brandan wants. Before the massacre, he negotiated a contract with your father for her in perpetuity."
"Yes, for a huge sum of money not yet paid, but now he's dead and so is she." He grimaced and rubbed his temple.
"Are you unwell, my lord?"
"Not exactly." Dealing with the Women's World made his head ache. There were always things left unsaid that he was supposed to understand. "I told Brant last winter that he could keep the banner with my blessings. Sweet Trinity, how can I profit from so much grief?"
"I . . . see." She picked up the pen and resumed writing. "Your generosity does you credit, especially when you need funds so badly. Yes, yes, we all know about that. But here your tact may be misplaced."
There it is again: the unspoken message, this time unmistakably a warning, but he knew from experience that she would tell him nothing more.
Trishien sighed. "This would be so much easier if your house had a matriarch. Have you considered your sister . . ."
"No!"
"Very well. I will only say that it would be better if you let Lord Brandan pay the dowry in full, but I can see that telling you will do no good. You don't mean to profit from anything your father did if you can help it, beyond claiming his power."
This hit too close for comfort. Veer away.
"You mentioned four houses in pursuit," he said, attempting levity. "What, have the Jaran no taste for the hunt? I seem to remember that you also wanted to see me when I first arrived."
"That was only to tell you that Lord Ardeth has recovered from his illness and is on his way home, although in a fragile state of health. As to the other matter . . . ." Trishien sighed in vexation and rubbed the side of her nose, leaving an ink smudge. "I admit that I am tempted. After all, we have one lady who would suit you very well whom you already like; but she would hardly thank me for interrupting her scholarship."
"You mean Kirien."
He considered the Jaran Lordan with her intelligence, good nature, and dry wit. Yes, if forced to it he could do worse; but no, she would never leave her studies. He wondered how she would find time for them when she came of age and assumed control of her house, if as Highlord he still permitted it. She might prefer that he did not. As Kirien had explained it to him, the entire Jaran had flipped a coin for lordship and she had lost.
"However," said the matriarch, resuming her usual brisk manner, "I did ask you to come in part because of her. Earlier today, Kirien sent this message."
She handed him a paper containing a half dozen lines of Kirien's distinctive, spiky script.
He read quickly. "Jame has passed the tests after all, but since then she has disappeared. Harn is searching for her."
His hands felt cold, his mind an echoing vault. I endangered my sister when I sent her here last winter without protection. I didn't know. I didn't know. But this time I've done it well aware of the risk she faces. Do I want to see her dead?
"Your pardon, lady," he said, rising quickly. "I must leave for Tentir at once."
He was half way to the door when she called after him: "Wait!"
Her hand was writing again, but the letters that emerged jagged across the page, interrupting her normal, smooth flow. Kirien was sending another message.
The Matriarch is a Shanir, Torisen realized, and despite himself drew back a step. Perhaps Kirien is one too. At the same time, another, cooler part of his mind observed, So that's why Trishien's news is so much more recent than Rowan's, although my steward half killed herself bringing it to me.
Trishien read what she had written, and smiled. "Ah. The lost is found. Your war-leader Harn has rescued your sister from the bear's den—now what could that be? a metaphor perhaps?—and even now she is accepting her scarf as a cadet from his hands."
The sun set. Cool mountain shadow swept into the room with the first breath of night. Torisen shivered, then wondered why.
She is slipping out of your control, boy. I said she was too strong for you.
But Jame was safe . . . for the minute at least. Surely Harn could keep her out of future trouble.
And since when, boy, has anyone ever managed to do that?
A rap on the door made them both start. Outside, Karidia's voice rose over the captain's protests like the shrill yap of a lap dog out for blood: "Trishien, you open this door this minute! I know you're hiding him in there!"
"Oh dear," said Trishien as Torisen looked frantically for another way to out. "I'm afraid there's just the door. And the windows. I am sorry."
Plump little fists pounded on the door. "You selfish, glass-eyed, book-loving snob, let me in!"
"The window it is, then," said Torisen, and swung his legs over the sill.
The wall below was thick with ivy, but he was still three stories up, and he only had one good hand. His feet scrabbled for purchase in the tangle of tough vines. Stiff leaves poked him in the eyes. The trick was to step down, secure a foot, then let go and grab a lower handhold, quickly, before gravity pulled him off the wall. Above, the pup leaned out the window yipping with distress. Torisen was about half way down when she lunched herself after him. Instinctively, he let go to catch her and they both fell, straight into Burr's arms. The burly Kendar set Torisen on his feet and the pup leaped to the ground.
Trishien laughed down at them. "I do believe that you and Lady Jameth are related after all. Now please excuse me, my lord. Someone is at the door."
"Run," said Torisen to Burr, and followed his own advice.
They stopped in the forecourt, hard against the stone flank of the old keep.
"Trinity," said Torisen, laughing, holding a stitch in his side. "I'll never regard a stag hunt the same way again." Then he saw Burr's expression. "What's the matter?"
"My lord, Steward Rowan has found the Kendar Mullen."
His formality set Torisen back. "Found who? Oh. Of course. Where?"
"In the death banner hall."
They were almost at its door. Torisen hesitated a moment, his hand on the latch, then entered, followed by Burr. They left the pup, forgotten and rigid, on the threshold.
The hall took up the old keep's first floor, a low-ceilinged, unfurnished, windowless chamber. A torch set in a bracket by the door brought flickers of false life to the gallery of faces crowding the walls. There hung the Knorth dead. Most were Highborn with the family's sharp, proud features, not a few of them betraying the mad twist that ran also through the Knorth blood. These were portrait banners, but also sometimes caricatures; in death if not in life, all Highborn faced the judgment of those over whom they had had power. Also among their serried ranks were a few Kendar, mostly noted randon, scrollsmen, or artisans. Every banner was woven out of threads unraveled from the clothes in which each, man, woman, or child, had died. The air stank of cold stone and old, moldering cloth, laced with the unexpected reek of fresh blood.
Rowan sat in the middle of the floor, cradling the head of a missing Kendar. When she looked up, her scarred face, never expressive, seemed less animate than the dead that surrounded her.
"I looked here first, my lord, and found him."
Torisen knelt beside her. It took a moment to realize what he was seeing.
The Kendar's broad face was relatively unmarked, but whatever ruddy color it still possessed now came from torchlight alone. Below that, the broad chest and gnarled arms seemed to hang in dark, clotted tatters, as if he had started cutting the wavy lines of the rathorn sigil into his clothes and gone on to the skin beneath, slicing deeper and deeper except where old battle scars had turned aside the blade. Much of the blood had long since dried. Some still welled in sluggish surges from his throat, where the white hilted knife had at last cut too deep. The blood in which Torisen knelt was still warm. He could feel it seeping through his clothes.
The man was still breathing, but just barely. His eyes half opened like those of a tired child reluctant to wake. Then he saw who bent over him and smiled.
"My lord."
Torisen gripped the Kendar's worn hand. "Mullen. Welcome home."
The smile remained, but the eyes lost their focus and no breath returned.
Torisen sat back on his heels, feeling dazed. He stared at the pattern of blood, fresh and dried, spread out around him in a pool, then running dark into the flagstone's cracks. "This took time."
"Probably most of the day," Rowan agreed. She regarded her lord steadily. He could also feel Burr's eyes on him, and a weight as if all his dead ancestors lining the walls also watched in judgment.
"You want me to understand," he said to them all, "but I don't. Why here? Why like this?"
"D'you mean why'd he turn himself into the raw material of a death banner?" Burr asked gruffly. "To be remembered, of course, and what better place for it than this?"
"My lord . . . Blackie . . . " Rowan spoke gently, as if to a slow-witted child. "Did you have any sense that this was happening?"
"Of course not!"
"You would have if he had been one of your people dying at the Cataracts."
Torisen started to answer, then stopped. He remembered that restless and, to him, inexplicable urge that had driven him out after the battle to search through the carnage for the mortally wounded of his house, to bring them honorable death and release from pain by the white-hilted knife.
"Are you saying that he did this, and took so long about it, hoping that I would come to find him?" He looked from one impassive face to the other, appalled. "Trinity! You know I didn't cast him off on purpose!"
"We know," said Rowan. "You just forgot his name, and the bond broke. But you did remember him in the end." She paused, then asked carefully, "Will it happen again?"
Torisen rose, greatly perturbed. He started to run a hand through his hair, then stopped, seeing that it was still wet with Mullen's blood. "I don't know. I don't know why it happened this time, unless I took too many new Kendar into my service at the Cataracts and just couldn't hold on to them all."
But there was more to it than that. They all sensed it, without knowing what it was, much less what to do about it.
Ha, boy. I told you: you're weak.
Torisen looked from Burr to Rowan and back again. After everything the three of them had been through together, over nearly two decades, they trusted each other with their lives, their souls, and their honor. But then so did every Kendar sworn to him. Where was the flaw that had let this man slip away?
Didn't you abandon me, your father and lord, to my death? For that I died cursing you. Lack-faith, oath-breaker, do you wonder that your title rings false and your people fall away?
Words echoed in the hollow shell of his soul, and he still couldn't turn to answer them. The dead watched, their judgment hanging over him like the blade Kin-Slayer, bane of the unworthy.
I must find my own way, he thought, steeling himself. For my people's sake if not for my own. The old times have passed, but not honor.
"I swear to you," he said, swinging around to address all the watching faces, alive and dead, "I will find out why this happened and I will never let it happen again. My word on it."
A shiver went through the hall, as if all in it had been holding their breath.
"What of this man?" Rowan asked, Mullen still limp in her arms.
"He deserves to be remembered, as he wished. Let his body be given to the pyre and his clothes to the artisans, that his banner may hang here forever with his peers."
Noble words, Torisen thought as he watched Burr and Rowan gather up the corpse. With his broken hand, he couldn't help even if they had let him, nor would it have been his place to do so. Mullen had passed into the care of his own people. Noble words indeed, but with a muffled echo in this place of the dead that chilled his heart. If he couldn't make them good, the Third Face of God, Regonereth, would have precious little mercy on his soul.
Nor you either, he thought. My sister. My nemesis.
On the threshold, the wolver pup threw back her head and howled against the coming of the night.