Seekers mask, p.29
Seeker's Mask, page 29
part #3 of Kencyrath Series
Strange. Instead of diminishing, the dunes were growing bigger and softer the farther east they went. All Jame could see now from their troughs was the darkening sky above. On the crests, a rising wind had begun to whip sand from rise to rise. It stung her face as she glanced back. The storm-rack rolled close on their heels, black against the sky's deepening blue, blotting out the stars. Bolts of searing white leaped between it and the ground. Ahead, the faint glow of the weirding cliff seemed farther away than ever.
At the foot of a slope Jame tripped over a stone...no, over the top of a shattered wall, scoured clean by the swooping wind. All around, masonry fragments jutted out of the sand like so many decayed teeth. If these were the ruins on which Mount Alban had snagged, the on-coming storm must have dislodged it. If so, not only did it seem farther away, it was.
"Run," said Brier.
Jame tried. The dunes were mountainous now, though, and her feet sank into them to the ankles. For all her weight, Brier was well ahead of her, travelling fast.
Be damned if I'll call for help, Jame thought, struggling to catch up. Be damned....
Salt stung her eyes like sea spray. Across her shoulders, her jacket felt heavy and damp with sweat. She floundered up the highest range of drifts yet and saw the weirding beyond like a glowing cliff against which the dune was poised to break. High above glowed the lights of the scrollsmen's keep. Below, the rope ladder swung wildly in the wind. Brier had almost reached it.
"Don't stop!" she called back sharply.
But Jame already had, panting. The slanted edge of the storm had overtaken her to the north. As it closed with the weirding, lightning leaped between them, flash on booming flash. The shock rolled southward toward the keep. In the flickering glare, the far end of the ridge on which she stood seemed to be cresting like a wave and crashing down in salt white.
"Move!" shouted Brier.
Jame took an almost involuntary step forward, and sank up to her knees. She could feel sand melting away under her. Up to her thighs, her waist....
"Brier...." she heard herself cry, in a voice so thin with fear that she scarcely recognized it. Up to her chest....
...and down, mouth and eyes closed barely in time, sand pressing in on them, stopping ears suddenly against the thunder's boom. Her up-thrown hands writhed free for a moment—Here I am, here....—then the earth gripped them. Squeezed, the breath trapped burning in her lungs as she was in this sandy grave, buried alive.... How deep did Rose sink? How long did she live?
Got you now, thief, Ragga's voice seemed to grate in her mind.
But the sand was changing. Her frantic hands moved again, as if through mud, then water. Eyes opened, shut again hastily against the saline sting. Then suddenly she was tumbling forward in darkness, over and over, hammered by a muted roar. No air. Which way was up? Drowning....
Cold hands seized her, shoved her...downward, she thought, and struggled feebly. Cold words bubbled in her ear: Don't, you fool. For your brother's sake....
The roar burst full-throated around her. Air, thick with salt spray; waves, throwing her up against the glowing cliff. Underwater again, then shoved back to the surface where a strong hand grabbed her by the collar and jerked her upward. Her fingers closed on shaggy wood. She clung, gasping, still in Brier's powerful grasp. On the Director's fragile stair, in the tumultuous darkness, they listened to the boom and crash below them of the returning salt sea.
Interim V
The Grimly Holt: 60th of Spring
The forest keep lay drowned in mist as though at the bottom of a luminous sea. Difficult to say in that glowing twilight when dawn came, or noon, or setting sun.
The shadow of that other, darker keep had long since faded like a bad dream, taking with it the stench of sickness and burning. The wolvers had not discussed it, afraid that words would bring it back. There were some things about humankind, after all, which few of them wished to know. Besides, there was so much else about which to sing.
Abandoning the outer walls of the keep to the weirding's care, the wolvers happily speculated about its interior. How thick had been the walls, how patterned the roof beams and floor, and where (whined hungry cubs) had food been stored? As debate rose and fell, weirding trickled in the long-gone windows to take the hazy shape of each detail, building its reality, a fragile shell crafted of song, cupped in a hollow of mist.
By the hearth, Torisen stirred in his sleep and mumbled incoherent words of distress. Not long ago, his breathing had changed from the deep, slow rhythm of dwar. Now he was beginning to surface, through the level of dreams. His hands twitched, as if clutching at something or trying to pull away.
"...hurting me," he muttered. "Let go, let...ah!"
His eyes flickered open. He blinked, confused, then focussed on the worried face bending over him.
"Oh. Hello, Grimly." His right hand hurt. He frowned at swollen, splinted fingers. Kin-Slayer lay across the nearby hearth, sullenly reflecting the pale flames which danced in the grate. "W-Where am I? What happened?"
"How much do you remember?"
The Wolver's careful tone chilled him. The last thing which he recalled clearly was trying to last out the night awake in his Kothifir quarters. Obviously, he hadn't succeeded. After that? Snatches of memory, as broken as the dreams which they might in fact be. His breath caught.
"Grimly, did I kill Burr?"
"No, no. You haven't killed anyone this time, not even a horse."
Torisen looked at Kin-Slayer, confused. "But I was supposed to.... Father said...."
But then Jame had shot the bolt. He could still feel Ganth's madness pressing hard against that locked door in his soul, but as long as the bolt held....
He shook himself. Just another stupid dream. Absurd, to think that it had anything to do with this blessed return to sanity...assuming he was sane.
He looked at the surrounding walls of glowing mist, at the semblance of smoking torches and the phantom flames on the hearth. It might have been a hall hollowed out of living cloud. More mist drifted over the ground, or was it a floor? He lay on something ill-defined and yielding, yet substantial enough to support his weight. A muffled chuckling came from underneath. His fingers gingerly probing downward, touched water so cold that it seemed to burn. It was a...a brook, swift with melted snow, running down the length of a ruined hall. This was the wolvers' keep, where he had often been a guest before; and there at its far end were his hosts: dark, lupine shapes with glowing eyes regarding him shyly askance. Their song rose and fell. The misty floor seemed to firm. He jerked up his hand before it could become trapped, then lay it wonderingly down again on a surface textured like that of worn stone paving, almost gritty to the touch.
"I was northward bound on the River Road." he said slowly, remembering. "Just short of the holt, you and a weirdingstrom overtook me. And then...and then....
"We took refuge here," said Grimly, still with great care. "You looked at the sword in your hand and said, 'There's more than one way to break a grip.' Remember? Then you pried loose your fingers one by one. Three broke. Then, finally, you slept."
"How long?"
Grimly glanced up at the nebulous beams supporting the roof of mist. "Hard to say. Fourteen hours, at least."
Torisen nodded. Even that much dwar sleep would hardly set all to right, but he knew by the deep itch in flesh and bone that healing had begun. He wouldn't lose his right hand this time, as he so nearly had at Urakarn.
"What is it?" the Wolver asked sharply.
The old terror of mutilation had leaped on Torisen suddenly, and with it the memory of that last true dream before his present waking.
"I-I was in the Southern Wastes, trying to pull Rose Iron-thorn out of sinksand...."
But then it hadn't been Rose at all but his sister Jame, sinking, pulling him down with her. "You can't bear to look at my face, can you?" she had jeered up at him. "It's the price I've already paid for your cowardice."
She wouldn't let go. Her nails were tearing the flesh off his hands....
"Let go, let go...." he gasped, and found himself struggling against Grimly's restraining grip. "Let go, dammit! I've got to leave for Gothregor. Now."
"You can't," said Grimly, holding him down. "Not in this weather. Be sensible, Tori! The Riverland is over four hundred miles away."
"Then I'll weird-walk. It's been done before."
"D'you want to arrive piece-meal over the next ten years? That's been known to happen too!"
By now, they were nearly shouting. Furry ears flicked in their direction. The wolvers had chosen the wrong moment, though, to let their attention wander. The weirding outside the keep had been stationary for some time. Now it stirred with a sigh and began to flow—northward, as if at the turning of a tide. The song-crafted inner shell shifted with it, away from the shadow of the brook under the floor, away from the old ruins, taking its crafters with it.
"Now what?" Torisen asked.
Grimly had leaped to his feet, all four of them. His hackles had risen.
"Damned if I know. We're adrift, in a cockleshell of song. This has never happened before...but then you've never been our guest during a weirdingstrom before, either, have you?" He showed sharp teeth in a nervous grin. "I've noticed, Torisen Black Lord, that what you want, you usually get. Maybe we're bound for Gothregor after all."
PART VI
Mount Alban: 60th of Spring
I
The conference was held in the library. Outside its southward facing windows, lightning intermittently lit the storm-maddened Salt Sea, patently no longer dry. In the claps of darkness between, waves crested and crashed against Mount Alban's phantom foundation. Each time, the ironwood walls of the keep shivered and lamps swayed.
Singers, scrollsmen and randon cadets crowded into the room listening as Brier Iron-thorn made her report to the Director and Captain Hawthorn. Scholarly heads nodded. They had all heard rumors of this rare Southron phenomenon, the alluvial transformation, now demonstrated to be scrollsman's fact rather than singer's fancy. What an opportunity to investigate, even for those Kendar prone to sea-sickness.
Kirien stood near the edge of the crowd, taking notes in her spiky script which Aunt Trishien's hand would also be recording in far off Gothregor. Singer Ashe, hooded and dark, stood behind her like a shadow. Both looked up sharply when Brier described in her flat voice how the Knorth had been swallowed up by the sand and spat out by the sea. Everyone turned to regard the wet, bedraggled figure in the corner, but it kept its silence. No matter. They would barter for details later.
Jame was grateful not to be questioned, especially by Brier. The sea had returned. Brier must wonder if her mother had too. Jame hadn't told her about those cold hands, that salt-chilled voice. For your brother's sake.... Perhaps she had imagined it, and that other voice as well, the Earth Wife's gloat. Probably. But still she couldn't stop shivering.
"So it comes to this," said the Director, when Brier had finished. "If the storm flays away enough of our weirding support before we regain the rest of Mount Alban, this college will fall. Literally. The question is, can we do anything to prevent it?"
"It depends on will-power," said Index. "Either ours, or someone else's. Nothing happens by chance on this world."
That raised a fury of protest. Was he suggesting some sort of divine interference? From their god?
"Isn't that what we've been waiting for all these millennia?" snapped the old man. "But why only look within the Kencyrath? We're newcomers on an ancient world...."
" 'Step-children,' " said the Knorth suddenly.
Index glared at her. "Whatever. The point is, there are forces on Rathillien about which we know virtually nothing. Now, among the Merikit...."
Groans drown him out, the loudest from those the most in his debt. "Old facts, cold facts!"
"Stick to remembering ours—while you still can!"
"How long, Index, since you last discovered something for yourself?"
"Order," said the Director, cutting them short. "If willing ourselves not to fall can help, do it. In the meantime, bail out the lower rooms."
As the library cleared, Jame stopped Hawthorn. "About Cadet Brier. Rue tells me that you relieved her of command for endangering her squad. Well, she came south to help me, and then...."
The captain raised a hand in warning. "This sounds like house business. Tell your lord brother, not me. So, you were acting as your lady's escort?" she asked, stopping Brier at the door.
The Kendar gave Jame a brief, unreadable look. "I...suppose so, ran."
"Why didn't you say so before? That puts your actions on equal footing with mine, escorting the Brandan Matriarch—for which, ancestors have mercy on us both. Take back your command."
That's one thing set right, at least, Jame thought as Brier acknowledged, expressionless, while Rue grinned at Vant's sour face.
As for telling Torisen, though...First, let him damn well ask.
II
It was a long night.
Hour after hour, the sea broke against Mount Alban, each blow making the wooden walls shudder while moisture ran down them like cold sweat. Everything got wet except the precious scrolls, hastily wrapped in oiled silk. Soon the highest waves threatened the keep's lowest rooms—because of a rising sea or a sinking fortress, no one could say. Scholars scrambled to save their possessions until a wave surging into one room nearly swept a clutch of singers out with it. Upstairs, Kindrie and the infirmarian already had their hands full with a host of minor injuries. Finally, Hawthorn ordered the academic community out from under foot and the randon settled down to cope.
Jame stayed out of their way. She knew she should use this opportunity to rest, if not sleep, but she was far too unsettled. Index's words haunted her: "there are forces on Rathillien about which we know virtually nothing." Sweet Trinity, yes. The terror of those moments under the sand caught her again by the throat, stopping her breath.
Got you now, thief....
Despite everything, she had only taken Mother Ragga half in earnest. Now how could she set foot on the earth again, anywhere, when at any moment it might open and swallow her? Had she forfeited her right not only to be among her own people but on this world altogether?
...a mistake, too dangerous to live, cursed be and cast out....
So she wandered on about the lower rooms, aimlessly, a wet, unhappy ounce creeping on her heels and standing disconsolately on her toes whenever she stopped. If the sheer will not to drown could help, Jorin was doing his part. Then his ears flicked: they were being followed. Jame turned a corner, reversed sharply, and found herself holding an indignant Graykin at knife point.
The Southron still looked shaky, she thought, but much improved. Perhaps when she had ordered him to sleep, she had accidentally plunged him into his first experience with dwar. At any rate, the infirmarian had judged him fit enough to make room for more recent casualties.
"I'm your sneak," he said when she demanded to know why he was following her. "Just tell me who else I should sneak after and I'll get on with it. You know," he added impatiently, as if to someone slow witted. "Who's your worst enemy here? The Director? That Brandan captain?"
"Hawthorn? Sweet Trinity, why?"
He shot her a sly, side-long look. "They're in command, aren't they? But you should be. The Highlord's closest blood-kin, aren't you?"
"Yes, but...."
Jame stopped, perplexed. If only custom, not law, had kept her subservient in the Women's Hall, she had no idea what her true status was. Graykin might even conceivably be right.
"Be that as it may, I can't do a better job just now than they can, so the question is moot. This is survival, Gray, not politics."
"Politics are survival," the Southron muttered, but she had already turned away.
At last the wind dropped, and then the waves. As quiet returned to the shaken keep, a stealthy rattling could be heard as all the salt water soaking walls, furnishings, and clothes changed back to glistening salt sand. Jame shook about a pound of it out of her boots, then went up to the observation deck with ounce and spy trailing after her.
The old scrollsman Index acknowledged her with a grunt as she joined him at the rail. They looked out over a featureless expanse of weirding mist level with the lowest rooms, faintly luminous under a predawn sky.
"Where do you suppose we are?" Jame asked.
"How should I know?" the old man snapped. "This whole junket wasn't my idea."
"But you think it was someone's?"
"Or something's. There are reasons for everything. Most people are just too lazy or stupid to figure them out. Which are you?"
"Uh...ignorant, I hope, rather than stupid. Afraid rather than lazy. About what you said in the library...what forces?"
"Among the Merikit? The Burnt Man, for one. Ha! Heard of him, have you?"
Jame had shivered, remembering nightmares of pursuit, a charred hand thrust up through campfire debris, a charcoal-smeared man laying fires in the wilderness. Out of her pocket she drew the cinder shaped like a phalange. Index snatched it.
"A Burnt Man's bone," he said gleefully, turning it over in his own bony fingers. "Bonfire, bone-fire. Tell you about that, shall I?"
"Please."
"On Midwinter's Day the Merikit burn the biggest log they can find, then bury whatever remains of it along with everyone's hearth ashes. 'Burying winter,' they call it, or 'burning the Burnt Man.' It's meant to hurry on spring, you see. Then these cinders start to turn up in their fireplaces. Not just finger bones; all different sorts. They collect 'em until they have about two hundred, a complete skeleton. Just before Summer Eve, fires are laid along the borders of the land which the Merikit claim, each with a 'bone' in it. During the festival, the chief strips naked and smears himself with charcoal to personify the Burnt Man. When he jumps over the first fire, the 'bone' in it bursts into flame. All the 'bones' in all the fires ignite at the same time. The shaman-elders claim that he passes over the whole lot simultaneously."
