Seekers mask, p.38
Seeker's Mask, page 38
part #3 of Kencyrath Series
"Kithorn," said Ashe.
Then Jame recognized it too, not because she had ever seen this sad place before but because her Kendar friend Marc had described it to her so clearly—his childhood home, until Merikit had slaughtered everyone in it almost eighty years ago. That, and Marc's revenge, had closed these hills to the Kencyrath ever since, except for boys slipping up to these ruins on a dare to search for relics of its garrison. Last winter, her brother had come here on a similar mission and accidentally left the old tower in flames behind him.
A shiver ran down Jame's spine. From these walls, Tori had seen the Burnt Man face to face.
She ducked back. Seven figures had trotted into the courtyard through its eastern gate, one after another. Four of them were not the Burning Ones, as she had for a moment feared, but half-naked Merikit elders, smeared white with ash, each carrying a sack. Breasts made of goat udders swayed under gray hair loose to the waist.
Ching went the bells strapped to their ankles. Ching, ching!
Between them came three figures if possible even stranger: an overpadded parody of a woman with a hard, male face framed by a wig of straw; a dripping wet youth festooned with bladder weeds; an incredibly hairy man, aflutter with black feathers knotted to every elflock.
The whole procession jogged solemnly sunwise around the courtyard, ching, ching, ching.
"First close the outer circle," said Ashe softly, "then circle the inner square...to create sacred space. The summer rites begin."
"And we," said Kirien, "are inside the circle."
The first shaman-elder and the "woman" stopped at the eastern corner of the square which their perambulation had defined. The second elder halted with the feathered man to the south; the third with the wet boy, to the west; the fourth by himself to the north. While the three squatted patiently in their corners to wait, the four ash-smeared elders emptied their sacks respectively of clay, wicker, bucket, and kindling. Along with this last came tumbling out what appeared to be a crude, black skull. The solitary elder began to arrange the kindling around it, crooning softly in an age-cracked voice.
Jame recognized that chant. Four days ago, north of Falkirr, she had heard the charcoal-blackened Merikit sing it as he laid a Summer Eve bonfire. The Burnt Man's bone which she had taken from that site was no longer in her pocket. Now where.... Ah. She had forgotten to reclaim it from Index.
Index, who had come down here before them. Sweet Trinity, where was he?
Other Merikit emerged from the surrounding ruins—a good dozen of them half-naked like their elders and intricately tattooed. A nervous young man in green homespun appeared last, with obvious reluctance, gingerly holding an ivy crown.
Kindrie made a stifled sound. A huge, young Merikit stood close beside them, wearing scarlet drawers and nothing else. His long, fox-red hair was all combed to the left into a dozen or more braids. His heavy arms and chest were black with tattoos. He must have come down from Mount Alban, for surely those big, bare feet matched one set of the prints which Jame had seen above. Green, slightly crossed eyes widened in wonder as he touched the Shanir's white hair. He gave it a tug. Kindrie gasped, almost falling. The big man grinned and took a firmer grip.
"No," said Jame, as if to a large, chancy dog, and put her hand on the Merikit's elbow.
Her nails found the nerve. He let go of Kindrie with an exclamation, eyes bulging at first with astonishment, then with outrage. He was, thought Jame, looking up, very, very big.
Something crashed down the Mount Alban stairs: a storage crate, disintegrating as it fell. Butterflies caught perhaps a hundred summers ago shimmered azure and amethyst, gold-veined and bronze, their wings turning to dust with the first frantic beat. The crimson moss that had preserved them rained down like a shower of sparks. From above, quite clearly, came a snickering laugh.
The big Merikit laughed too, but the grin which he turned down on Jame was bright with malice. He juggled one of the moss clumps from hand to hand, as if it were as fiery as its color, then tossed it onto the jumble of dry branches below.
"Oh my God," breathed Kirien, staring down at the wood pile, then up at Mount Alban's vulnerable underpinnings.
More bonfires than one had been laid for Summer Eve.
Interim VII
Mount Alban: 60th of Spring
I
"So this," said Torisen, "is what the Jaran Matriarch meant about Mount Alban not being where it ought."
He was standing in the college's vaulted lower hall which looked perfectly normal, with one exception. So had the entire establishment as they had approached it, apparently untouched by the surge of weirding which had just rolled past at cliff-top level and the tremor which had run before it. He should have guessed, though, that the ghostly light spreading inside the cliff-face from window to window had had nothing to do with welcome. Now here was this ghostly stair molded in weirding mist and all the internal structure above too, as far as he could see, except for the shadowy lines of its ironwood skeleton.
"Hello?" he shouted up the glowing well. "Is anyone there?"
"They'll never hear you above," said Grimly.
The Wolver sat down on his haunches and began to lick a raw foot-pad. They had come over thirty leagues since sun-rise, exhausting several changes of mount, but he had insisted on running most of that distance. Better sore paws than more saddle sores. Now, however, he wasn't so sure.
Torisen had turned away, swearing under his breath. To have come so far, only to be thwarted again.... After a winter of hiding at Kothifir, this rush to reunion had caught him up like a spring thaw. He didn't know to what end he was hurtling, what would happen when, at last, he and his sister met, but meet they must. Soon.
Frustration sharpened by urgency turned him back to the stair's foot, set loose the innate power of a Highborn in his voice: "Dammit, COME DOWN!"
Grimly goggled, the fur slowly roaching up along his spine. Something was coming down the stair. At first, it seemed no more than wisps of smoke rising off each step in turn, then indistinct feet, legs, body, head—a complete ghost silently, steadily descending.
Torisen went back a step, almost tripping over the Wolver who had scuttled around behind him. His throat felt scraped raw by those ill-chosen words of command. What in Perimal's name had he summoned? Something in the set of those broad ghostly shoulders, that deliberate, grim tread....
"Iron-thorn?" he breathed. "Brier? Dammit, Rowan, shut that door!"
Too late. A gust of wind swept into the hall around the steward's stocky form, rattling last autumn's leaves under her feet. The ghost on the stair faltered, then unraveled. Gone.
Rowan hadn't seen it. Expressionless as her scarred face always was, her tense carriage as she hurried down the hall betrayed a problem of her own.
"Don't tell me Kallystine has caught up with us!" Torisen exclaimed involuntarily.
Rowan almost smiled. "Not that. My lord...Blackie...we've found something you should see."
II
South of Mount Alban, the damned horse slowed again, stumbling, ropes of bloody lather hanging from its lowered muzzle. Kallystine kicked at it savagely.
"Lady, ease up," warned the captain of her guard. "It's nearly spent."
M'lady cursed behind her mask. Damn Torisen anyway, for grabbing all the remounts between Gothregor and the scrollsmen's college, as if that would stop her. One by one as their horses failed, she had lost all her escort except its captain. She wouldn't catch the Highlord with a force behind her, but by God she would catch him, if she had to kill every horse in the valley.
A breath of wind teased her heavy travel mask awry. She jerked it back into place. Not since the assault by that Knorth bitch had she dared to look in a mirror, not that she had one left intact, but the potion's effect was only temporary. It must be.
...don't think about the maid's withered hand, clawing at the braid twisted around her neck, don't think....
What did she have but her lovely, lovely face? What else was she? A glittering gown, a hollow mask....
No. She was and always would be beautiful, beautiful—which was more than could be said, now or ever again, for the Knorth Jameth.
Remembering that, Kallystine smiled.
"Weirding coming up fast behind, lady," said the captain, looking back. "Another bank that should pass well overhead and a smaller patch at river level."
"Shut up. How far to Mount Alban now?"
"After the weirdingstrom, lady, that's hard to say. I haven't recognized half the land we've travelled through today."
"Damn you, how far?"
The randon sighed. "With luck, around the next bend."
Kallystine set her eyes on it and her heels to her horse.
Soon, she thought, with a hidden smile less pleasant even than the first. Very, very soon.
III
The gorge north of Mount Alban echoed with the muted roar of the Silver. Overhanging trees dripped with spray and the stones of the River Road shone darkly. Bats flitted through shadows that had grown deep and cool with the sun's setting. Then larger shapes were among them, clowning in the spray, snapping bats out of mid-air and letting them drop, foxkin at play.
Their appearance preceded the clop of hooves, the jingle and groan of harnesses. Down the River Road came riders grimly upright in the saddle with the blood-shot eyes and strained faces of the hideously hung-over. One of them carried, drooping, a standard with the device of a serpent devouring its young, gold on black. A curtained horse litter followed. Beside it plodded an enormous draft-horse on whose back, hunched like a golden toad, rode Caldane, Lord Caineron.
His daughter Lyra followed him. Claiming that litter-travel made her sick (which it did, if she stuck a finger down her throat), she had been allowed to ride her little hill-pony. Consequently, at the end of this second day's travel, she was not only cold, tired, and hungry (as when was she not?) but also very saddle-sore. Nonetheless, how wonderful finally to be off on an adventure! She even took pleasure in feeling so much better, saddle-sores notwithstanding, than most of the Caineron Kendar. Once in Karkinaroth she had tried to pass on a stomach ache from too many sweets to her servant Gricki, without success. Father must know a very special trick to have so thoroughly inflicted the aftermath of his five day binge on his Kendar.
She bet that he wished he knew a trick as good, to get out of escorting Gran on this visit to the Women's Halls at Gothregor. He had better, Gran had said ominously, after incapacitating all her servants—except, of course, the Ear, whom nothing ever seemed to upset.
This would be their second night on the road, and they had come scarcely twenty-five miles south of Restormir. Gran complained of being jostled if they went faster. Besides, groggy Kendar kept falling out of the saddle, which Lyra had found hilarious, the first dozen or so times. By now, however, two-thirds of their company had been left behind and they had picked up a bare score of those Kendar who had been caught out on patrol when the weirdingstrom had swept down on them. The rest, it was hoped, would make their way home eventually. How long it would take some of those still at Restormir to recover from that terrible night's madness, no one could say. Lyra missed a dozen familiar faces in her father's retinue, without thinking much about it. She didn't know that they had quietly been slipped the white knife—and assisted in its use, if necessary.
Meanwhile, Gran had been hectoring Father for two days about the over-indulgence which had left them so short-handed, and about any other of his faults which she could bring to mind. Now, with sunset, she turned to his lack of foresight. If they had followed the New Road on the west bank, they would have been at the Jaran's Valantir by now, snug for the night. Did he want her to catch her death of cold out in this wilderness? Well? Did he?
Father hunched ever lower in the saddle, muttering.
Lyra nudged her pony closer, trying to eaves-drop, and ducked as Gran's foxkin Precious swooped close overhead, big ears cocked.
"What did you say, young man?" demanded Gran, peering at him through the leaf-patterned curtains of the litter. From behind her came the Ear's earthy chuckle. How could the two of them fit in so small a space? "You'd like to do what?"
Father started to answer, but a hiccup stopped him. He clutched wildly at his horse's mane, as if to anchor himself. Lyra wondered if that was also why he had put on every scrap of heavy gold he could wear. She knew for a fact, having seen it, that last night his servants had staked him down like a tent. His mount, the largest in the farm stable, laid back its ears, set its prognathous jaw, and plodded stolidly on.
They rounded a bend. The river divided around a wooded island, plunging down on either side in rapids and falls. Father straightened, staring from his superior height at something below still hidden from his daughter.
"My barge," he said thickly. "My beautiful barge," and spurred his mount into a heavy trot toward Mount Alban.
IV
Rowan led Torisen out the smallest of the hall's three inset doors and through the old fort ruins beyond. Stones still rattled down from the cliff after the most recent tremor. Such after-shocks might be expected for days, Torisen had been told, assuming (dire thought) that they weren't instead a prelude to worse. No one knew yet what permanent changes so severe a weirdingstrom might have wrought down the entire length of the Silver. He noted, however, that not one leaning stone of the ancient fort had toppled. In their midst, ready for Summer Eve, someone had laid a small bonfire.
On the shoulder of the foothill where the fort stood, Torisen paused to look down the valley. The sun had just set over its western rim and purple shadows were lengthening down its slopes. The river threaded through them alight in the after-glow of sunset with that argent gleam which had given it its name. No sign yet of Kallystine. Good.
It was strange that he had ever felt attracted to that gilded lady or, for that matter, that he thought of her with such aversion now. Both emotions seemed unreasonably strong, especially in that he preferred not to feel strongly about anyone: it was too much like being in their power. He had long suspected Kallystine of trying to manipulate him through unnatural means. Soon their contract would expire, ancestors be praised—but Caineron had made it clear that he would consider failure to reinstate as a mortal insult. Oh, for an unequivocal excuse to break clean away.
Patches of weirding drifted by down by the Silver, tinged red by the setting sun. Their silent passage reminded him of Brier Iron-Thorn's ghost-like descent and disappearance...where? Northward, presumably, with the weirding-flow. That was probably where Mount Alban's innards had gone as well—taking Jame with them? Oh, to slip away like that, out of everyone's reach, as he used to do into the Southern Wastes....
"This way, my lord," said Rowan impatiently. "Around on the south side."
The "something" which she wished to show him hung tangled in cloud-of-thorn bushes at the cliff's foot. It was a canvas sack, as long and thin as a rolled carpet, but disturbingly articulated. It must have fallen or been thrown from high above, to have smashed its way so far in among the tough branches before stopping, impaled. Blood ran down the long thorns from the punctured bag. The sodden ground beneath shimmered with the azure wings of feasting jewel-jaws.
Torisen realized why Rowan was watching him so anxiously.
"No doubt," he said, "someone will eventually stuff my sister in a sack and throw her off the highest cliff available, but not this time."
How he knew, as at Gothregor, that Jame still lived, he couldn't (wouldn't?) say, even to himself. Once again, Torisen was uneasily aware of questions unasked...of unwanted answers?
"Highlord!" said a voice overhead.
A randon officer dropped down beside them, seemingly out of the sky.
"Captain Hawthorn, isn't it?" Torisen looked up. Those naked trunks which he had taken for dead trees growing out of the cliff-face.... "Is that thing some sort of a ladder?"
"Yes, lord. 'Some sort' is about right, but it's come in handy despite itself. Not very good for carrying bodies down, though."
"So I noticed. Would it be tactless to inquire...?"
"Who? Highlord, perhaps you can tell me."
Gingerly, the Brandan officer reached into the cloud-of-thorn and loosened the mouth of the sack. Out of it lolled a head. The Wolver growled. Those dead eyes seemed to stare at him, yellow irises and whites so suffused with blood as to be almost indistinguishable. The rest of the face, too, was blood-smeared—over skin that didn't seem to be there at all.
"Mere-tattooing?" he demanded.
Torisen nodded curtly. "A Bashtiri Shadow Master, unmasked."
The assassin's jaw fell open, as if about to answer, and then fell off. It rattled down through the branches to the ground, scattering the jewel-jaws, but only for a moment. The Brandan captain flipped the canvas back over that terrible face. As she withdrew her hand, a thorn laid open the back of it.
"Damn," she said mildly, brushing away eager azure wings.
"That's the last Kencyr blood he will ever cause to be spilled," said Torisen, hard-voiced. He had always known what misery the Shadow Guild had caused his house, but never before had it seemed...personal. So this was the creature who had come to kill Jame. "Shove kindling under these bushes. Burn the carrion where it hangs. Now, captain, will you please tell me where my sister is?"
Somehow, it didn't surprise him that the randon didn't know.
"She ought to be back soon, though," Hawthorn said, as if Jame had merely stepped out on an errand.
Both glanced up as two Brandan cadets dropped down from the hanging stair, followed by a scruffy young man. The latter slunk off to one side, trying not to catch anyone's eye.
Hawthorn shrugged, dismissing him. "At least," she said, "with the whole college as chaperon, the young lady can't get into too much trouble."
"Huh!" said Grimly.
Torisen had turned to look down the valley, which dusk was beginning to obscure. The Silver, tarnished, had lost its gleam except to the south, where it disappeared around a bend. There, the light on it grew, and on the cliffs facing it. A cloud billowed silently around the turn, its heart coolly on fire as if with continual heat lightning. It filled the valley from side to side, its raised skirts trailing over the top of the foothills, its crown just below the cliff summits.
Then Jame recognized it too, not because she had ever seen this sad place before but because her Kendar friend Marc had described it to her so clearly—his childhood home, until Merikit had slaughtered everyone in it almost eighty years ago. That, and Marc's revenge, had closed these hills to the Kencyrath ever since, except for boys slipping up to these ruins on a dare to search for relics of its garrison. Last winter, her brother had come here on a similar mission and accidentally left the old tower in flames behind him.
A shiver ran down Jame's spine. From these walls, Tori had seen the Burnt Man face to face.
She ducked back. Seven figures had trotted into the courtyard through its eastern gate, one after another. Four of them were not the Burning Ones, as she had for a moment feared, but half-naked Merikit elders, smeared white with ash, each carrying a sack. Breasts made of goat udders swayed under gray hair loose to the waist.
Ching went the bells strapped to their ankles. Ching, ching!
Between them came three figures if possible even stranger: an overpadded parody of a woman with a hard, male face framed by a wig of straw; a dripping wet youth festooned with bladder weeds; an incredibly hairy man, aflutter with black feathers knotted to every elflock.
The whole procession jogged solemnly sunwise around the courtyard, ching, ching, ching.
"First close the outer circle," said Ashe softly, "then circle the inner square...to create sacred space. The summer rites begin."
"And we," said Kirien, "are inside the circle."
The first shaman-elder and the "woman" stopped at the eastern corner of the square which their perambulation had defined. The second elder halted with the feathered man to the south; the third with the wet boy, to the west; the fourth by himself to the north. While the three squatted patiently in their corners to wait, the four ash-smeared elders emptied their sacks respectively of clay, wicker, bucket, and kindling. Along with this last came tumbling out what appeared to be a crude, black skull. The solitary elder began to arrange the kindling around it, crooning softly in an age-cracked voice.
Jame recognized that chant. Four days ago, north of Falkirr, she had heard the charcoal-blackened Merikit sing it as he laid a Summer Eve bonfire. The Burnt Man's bone which she had taken from that site was no longer in her pocket. Now where.... Ah. She had forgotten to reclaim it from Index.
Index, who had come down here before them. Sweet Trinity, where was he?
Other Merikit emerged from the surrounding ruins—a good dozen of them half-naked like their elders and intricately tattooed. A nervous young man in green homespun appeared last, with obvious reluctance, gingerly holding an ivy crown.
Kindrie made a stifled sound. A huge, young Merikit stood close beside them, wearing scarlet drawers and nothing else. His long, fox-red hair was all combed to the left into a dozen or more braids. His heavy arms and chest were black with tattoos. He must have come down from Mount Alban, for surely those big, bare feet matched one set of the prints which Jame had seen above. Green, slightly crossed eyes widened in wonder as he touched the Shanir's white hair. He gave it a tug. Kindrie gasped, almost falling. The big man grinned and took a firmer grip.
"No," said Jame, as if to a large, chancy dog, and put her hand on the Merikit's elbow.
Her nails found the nerve. He let go of Kindrie with an exclamation, eyes bulging at first with astonishment, then with outrage. He was, thought Jame, looking up, very, very big.
Something crashed down the Mount Alban stairs: a storage crate, disintegrating as it fell. Butterflies caught perhaps a hundred summers ago shimmered azure and amethyst, gold-veined and bronze, their wings turning to dust with the first frantic beat. The crimson moss that had preserved them rained down like a shower of sparks. From above, quite clearly, came a snickering laugh.
The big Merikit laughed too, but the grin which he turned down on Jame was bright with malice. He juggled one of the moss clumps from hand to hand, as if it were as fiery as its color, then tossed it onto the jumble of dry branches below.
"Oh my God," breathed Kirien, staring down at the wood pile, then up at Mount Alban's vulnerable underpinnings.
More bonfires than one had been laid for Summer Eve.
Interim VII
Mount Alban: 60th of Spring
I
"So this," said Torisen, "is what the Jaran Matriarch meant about Mount Alban not being where it ought."
He was standing in the college's vaulted lower hall which looked perfectly normal, with one exception. So had the entire establishment as they had approached it, apparently untouched by the surge of weirding which had just rolled past at cliff-top level and the tremor which had run before it. He should have guessed, though, that the ghostly light spreading inside the cliff-face from window to window had had nothing to do with welcome. Now here was this ghostly stair molded in weirding mist and all the internal structure above too, as far as he could see, except for the shadowy lines of its ironwood skeleton.
"Hello?" he shouted up the glowing well. "Is anyone there?"
"They'll never hear you above," said Grimly.
The Wolver sat down on his haunches and began to lick a raw foot-pad. They had come over thirty leagues since sun-rise, exhausting several changes of mount, but he had insisted on running most of that distance. Better sore paws than more saddle sores. Now, however, he wasn't so sure.
Torisen had turned away, swearing under his breath. To have come so far, only to be thwarted again.... After a winter of hiding at Kothifir, this rush to reunion had caught him up like a spring thaw. He didn't know to what end he was hurtling, what would happen when, at last, he and his sister met, but meet they must. Soon.
Frustration sharpened by urgency turned him back to the stair's foot, set loose the innate power of a Highborn in his voice: "Dammit, COME DOWN!"
Grimly goggled, the fur slowly roaching up along his spine. Something was coming down the stair. At first, it seemed no more than wisps of smoke rising off each step in turn, then indistinct feet, legs, body, head—a complete ghost silently, steadily descending.
Torisen went back a step, almost tripping over the Wolver who had scuttled around behind him. His throat felt scraped raw by those ill-chosen words of command. What in Perimal's name had he summoned? Something in the set of those broad ghostly shoulders, that deliberate, grim tread....
"Iron-thorn?" he breathed. "Brier? Dammit, Rowan, shut that door!"
Too late. A gust of wind swept into the hall around the steward's stocky form, rattling last autumn's leaves under her feet. The ghost on the stair faltered, then unraveled. Gone.
Rowan hadn't seen it. Expressionless as her scarred face always was, her tense carriage as she hurried down the hall betrayed a problem of her own.
"Don't tell me Kallystine has caught up with us!" Torisen exclaimed involuntarily.
Rowan almost smiled. "Not that. My lord...Blackie...we've found something you should see."
II
South of Mount Alban, the damned horse slowed again, stumbling, ropes of bloody lather hanging from its lowered muzzle. Kallystine kicked at it savagely.
"Lady, ease up," warned the captain of her guard. "It's nearly spent."
M'lady cursed behind her mask. Damn Torisen anyway, for grabbing all the remounts between Gothregor and the scrollsmen's college, as if that would stop her. One by one as their horses failed, she had lost all her escort except its captain. She wouldn't catch the Highlord with a force behind her, but by God she would catch him, if she had to kill every horse in the valley.
A breath of wind teased her heavy travel mask awry. She jerked it back into place. Not since the assault by that Knorth bitch had she dared to look in a mirror, not that she had one left intact, but the potion's effect was only temporary. It must be.
...don't think about the maid's withered hand, clawing at the braid twisted around her neck, don't think....
What did she have but her lovely, lovely face? What else was she? A glittering gown, a hollow mask....
No. She was and always would be beautiful, beautiful—which was more than could be said, now or ever again, for the Knorth Jameth.
Remembering that, Kallystine smiled.
"Weirding coming up fast behind, lady," said the captain, looking back. "Another bank that should pass well overhead and a smaller patch at river level."
"Shut up. How far to Mount Alban now?"
"After the weirdingstrom, lady, that's hard to say. I haven't recognized half the land we've travelled through today."
"Damn you, how far?"
The randon sighed. "With luck, around the next bend."
Kallystine set her eyes on it and her heels to her horse.
Soon, she thought, with a hidden smile less pleasant even than the first. Very, very soon.
III
The gorge north of Mount Alban echoed with the muted roar of the Silver. Overhanging trees dripped with spray and the stones of the River Road shone darkly. Bats flitted through shadows that had grown deep and cool with the sun's setting. Then larger shapes were among them, clowning in the spray, snapping bats out of mid-air and letting them drop, foxkin at play.
Their appearance preceded the clop of hooves, the jingle and groan of harnesses. Down the River Road came riders grimly upright in the saddle with the blood-shot eyes and strained faces of the hideously hung-over. One of them carried, drooping, a standard with the device of a serpent devouring its young, gold on black. A curtained horse litter followed. Beside it plodded an enormous draft-horse on whose back, hunched like a golden toad, rode Caldane, Lord Caineron.
His daughter Lyra followed him. Claiming that litter-travel made her sick (which it did, if she stuck a finger down her throat), she had been allowed to ride her little hill-pony. Consequently, at the end of this second day's travel, she was not only cold, tired, and hungry (as when was she not?) but also very saddle-sore. Nonetheless, how wonderful finally to be off on an adventure! She even took pleasure in feeling so much better, saddle-sores notwithstanding, than most of the Caineron Kendar. Once in Karkinaroth she had tried to pass on a stomach ache from too many sweets to her servant Gricki, without success. Father must know a very special trick to have so thoroughly inflicted the aftermath of his five day binge on his Kendar.
She bet that he wished he knew a trick as good, to get out of escorting Gran on this visit to the Women's Halls at Gothregor. He had better, Gran had said ominously, after incapacitating all her servants—except, of course, the Ear, whom nothing ever seemed to upset.
This would be their second night on the road, and they had come scarcely twenty-five miles south of Restormir. Gran complained of being jostled if they went faster. Besides, groggy Kendar kept falling out of the saddle, which Lyra had found hilarious, the first dozen or so times. By now, however, two-thirds of their company had been left behind and they had picked up a bare score of those Kendar who had been caught out on patrol when the weirdingstrom had swept down on them. The rest, it was hoped, would make their way home eventually. How long it would take some of those still at Restormir to recover from that terrible night's madness, no one could say. Lyra missed a dozen familiar faces in her father's retinue, without thinking much about it. She didn't know that they had quietly been slipped the white knife—and assisted in its use, if necessary.
Meanwhile, Gran had been hectoring Father for two days about the over-indulgence which had left them so short-handed, and about any other of his faults which she could bring to mind. Now, with sunset, she turned to his lack of foresight. If they had followed the New Road on the west bank, they would have been at the Jaran's Valantir by now, snug for the night. Did he want her to catch her death of cold out in this wilderness? Well? Did he?
Father hunched ever lower in the saddle, muttering.
Lyra nudged her pony closer, trying to eaves-drop, and ducked as Gran's foxkin Precious swooped close overhead, big ears cocked.
"What did you say, young man?" demanded Gran, peering at him through the leaf-patterned curtains of the litter. From behind her came the Ear's earthy chuckle. How could the two of them fit in so small a space? "You'd like to do what?"
Father started to answer, but a hiccup stopped him. He clutched wildly at his horse's mane, as if to anchor himself. Lyra wondered if that was also why he had put on every scrap of heavy gold he could wear. She knew for a fact, having seen it, that last night his servants had staked him down like a tent. His mount, the largest in the farm stable, laid back its ears, set its prognathous jaw, and plodded stolidly on.
They rounded a bend. The river divided around a wooded island, plunging down on either side in rapids and falls. Father straightened, staring from his superior height at something below still hidden from his daughter.
"My barge," he said thickly. "My beautiful barge," and spurred his mount into a heavy trot toward Mount Alban.
IV
Rowan led Torisen out the smallest of the hall's three inset doors and through the old fort ruins beyond. Stones still rattled down from the cliff after the most recent tremor. Such after-shocks might be expected for days, Torisen had been told, assuming (dire thought) that they weren't instead a prelude to worse. No one knew yet what permanent changes so severe a weirdingstrom might have wrought down the entire length of the Silver. He noted, however, that not one leaning stone of the ancient fort had toppled. In their midst, ready for Summer Eve, someone had laid a small bonfire.
On the shoulder of the foothill where the fort stood, Torisen paused to look down the valley. The sun had just set over its western rim and purple shadows were lengthening down its slopes. The river threaded through them alight in the after-glow of sunset with that argent gleam which had given it its name. No sign yet of Kallystine. Good.
It was strange that he had ever felt attracted to that gilded lady or, for that matter, that he thought of her with such aversion now. Both emotions seemed unreasonably strong, especially in that he preferred not to feel strongly about anyone: it was too much like being in their power. He had long suspected Kallystine of trying to manipulate him through unnatural means. Soon their contract would expire, ancestors be praised—but Caineron had made it clear that he would consider failure to reinstate as a mortal insult. Oh, for an unequivocal excuse to break clean away.
Patches of weirding drifted by down by the Silver, tinged red by the setting sun. Their silent passage reminded him of Brier Iron-Thorn's ghost-like descent and disappearance...where? Northward, presumably, with the weirding-flow. That was probably where Mount Alban's innards had gone as well—taking Jame with them? Oh, to slip away like that, out of everyone's reach, as he used to do into the Southern Wastes....
"This way, my lord," said Rowan impatiently. "Around on the south side."
The "something" which she wished to show him hung tangled in cloud-of-thorn bushes at the cliff's foot. It was a canvas sack, as long and thin as a rolled carpet, but disturbingly articulated. It must have fallen or been thrown from high above, to have smashed its way so far in among the tough branches before stopping, impaled. Blood ran down the long thorns from the punctured bag. The sodden ground beneath shimmered with the azure wings of feasting jewel-jaws.
Torisen realized why Rowan was watching him so anxiously.
"No doubt," he said, "someone will eventually stuff my sister in a sack and throw her off the highest cliff available, but not this time."
How he knew, as at Gothregor, that Jame still lived, he couldn't (wouldn't?) say, even to himself. Once again, Torisen was uneasily aware of questions unasked...of unwanted answers?
"Highlord!" said a voice overhead.
A randon officer dropped down beside them, seemingly out of the sky.
"Captain Hawthorn, isn't it?" Torisen looked up. Those naked trunks which he had taken for dead trees growing out of the cliff-face.... "Is that thing some sort of a ladder?"
"Yes, lord. 'Some sort' is about right, but it's come in handy despite itself. Not very good for carrying bodies down, though."
"So I noticed. Would it be tactless to inquire...?"
"Who? Highlord, perhaps you can tell me."
Gingerly, the Brandan officer reached into the cloud-of-thorn and loosened the mouth of the sack. Out of it lolled a head. The Wolver growled. Those dead eyes seemed to stare at him, yellow irises and whites so suffused with blood as to be almost indistinguishable. The rest of the face, too, was blood-smeared—over skin that didn't seem to be there at all.
"Mere-tattooing?" he demanded.
Torisen nodded curtly. "A Bashtiri Shadow Master, unmasked."
The assassin's jaw fell open, as if about to answer, and then fell off. It rattled down through the branches to the ground, scattering the jewel-jaws, but only for a moment. The Brandan captain flipped the canvas back over that terrible face. As she withdrew her hand, a thorn laid open the back of it.
"Damn," she said mildly, brushing away eager azure wings.
"That's the last Kencyr blood he will ever cause to be spilled," said Torisen, hard-voiced. He had always known what misery the Shadow Guild had caused his house, but never before had it seemed...personal. So this was the creature who had come to kill Jame. "Shove kindling under these bushes. Burn the carrion where it hangs. Now, captain, will you please tell me where my sister is?"
Somehow, it didn't surprise him that the randon didn't know.
"She ought to be back soon, though," Hawthorn said, as if Jame had merely stepped out on an errand.
Both glanced up as two Brandan cadets dropped down from the hanging stair, followed by a scruffy young man. The latter slunk off to one side, trying not to catch anyone's eye.
Hawthorn shrugged, dismissing him. "At least," she said, "with the whole college as chaperon, the young lady can't get into too much trouble."
"Huh!" said Grimly.
Torisen had turned to look down the valley, which dusk was beginning to obscure. The Silver, tarnished, had lost its gleam except to the south, where it disappeared around a bend. There, the light on it grew, and on the cliffs facing it. A cloud billowed silently around the turn, its heart coolly on fire as if with continual heat lightning. It filled the valley from side to side, its raised skirts trailing over the top of the foothills, its crown just below the cliff summits.
